‘Whist.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘And it was piss-boring. I’m not going to get anywhere if we just hang around in this hotel, you know.’
‘It’s all right. I’ve got a plan.’
‘What?’
‘We hire the hotel boat and cruise the beach.’
‘I dunno… I’ve never rowed before. I don’t think we’d look too cool.’
‘It’s not a rowing boat, you arsehole. It’s a speedboat.’
‘A speedboat? Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A speedboat? That’s superb. I’ve never been in a speedboat.’
‘You haven’t been in a speedboat
‘No.’
‘What boats
‘Um… a ferry. That’s about it.’
‘You’re a glamorous guy, Dave. You know that?’
‘Tell me about it.’
Ranj seemed to know exactly how to drive a speedboat, even though he claimed that he’d never done it before. We took some cocktails with us, just so we could look even more like James Bond, and did a few lengths of the beach with me leaning out of the side of the boat and screaming for joy. I’d never been so happy in my life. Within a week I seemed to have gone from one of the lowest lows of my life to… to actually
We couldn’t get close enough to the beach to really size up the talent on offer, so we disembarked at one end and took our cocktails for a prowl. Ranj seemed to have a kind of sexual radar which could detect women from huge distances, and as the signals got stronger, he almost went into a trance.
‘I can feel something good. There’s something good coming. Eyes left. Eyes left.’ He was almost running now, and with my feet sinking into the hot sand, I struggled to keep up.
Then Ranj stopped dead, and I almost bumped into him.
‘Bingo. Seven blondes.’
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘Where?’
‘By the water. Down there.’
‘Can we have a rest? I can’t walk that far.’
‘Shit – look at that!’
‘What?’
‘Those two.’
He pointed inland, and I saw two Europeans in the middle distance, dressed in white saris, sitting in the shade. I realized that amongst all the women I’d seen in the whole country, I’d never seen a white sari before. I’d also never seen any Westerners in saris, so it was a strange sight. I couldn’t quite make out their faces, but there was something vaguely familiar about them.
‘That’s weird, that is,’ he said.
‘I think I recognize them.’
‘You know what a white sari means?’
‘No.’
‘It’s like wearing black in England.’
‘What – for mourning?’
‘Yeah. Widows have to wear white – it symbolizes giving up on worldly pleasures and all that shit.’
‘D’you reckon…?’
‘She’s smoking a joint. She’s dressed up like that and she’s smoking a joint.’
‘I really think I recognize them.’
‘It’s spooky. That gives me the shivers, that does.’
‘I’m going to have a look.’
‘Suit yourself. I’m off down there to check out the babes.’
As I got closer and the faces became more distinct, I realized that the two girls were Fee and Caz. And they both looked like death: even thinner than before, with pale, blotchy skin and greasy hair. When Fee saw me approach, she did a huge double take.
‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘It’s you!’
‘Yup.’
She stared at me with a look of horrified revulsion.
‘What happened to you?’
I was about to say that I’d got ill when I realized that she was referring to my Hawaiian shirt and lemon- yellow shorts, my cocktail and the snorkelling gear hanging round my neck.
‘Oh, you know. The usual,’ I said.
She didn’t know how to answer that one.
‘But… what are you doing here?’
‘Just – you know. Hanging out. What about you?’
‘Same, really.’
Caz, I noticed, was sitting bolt upright in the sand, staring into the middle distance and rocking backwards and forwards like an autistic child. She still hadn’t looked at me or even, apparently, noticed my presence.
‘Is she all right?’ I said.
‘No. As it happens, she isn’t,’ said Fee, in a tone of voice which seemed to imply that I was to blame.
‘This is the most incredible coincidence. What are you doing all the way down here? I thought you were on an ashram with Whatsername.’
‘Whatsername, as you so rightly call her, is not in our good books.’
‘What d’she do?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve got time,’ I said, sitting down in the sand, and registering that Ranj had already infiltrated himself into the group of blonde bathers. Caz was still rocking and staring out to sea.
I could tell that Fee was wound tight with stress, and though she didn’t want to admit it, she was obviously pleased to see me. She stared at me for a while, puffing on her joint, before passing it over and beginning her story.
‘It all comes down to this guy. He’s called Ping…’
‘Ping?’
‘… and he’s the teacher of Intimate Yoga on our ashram. Anyway – we’ve been there twice before, and this was our third visit of the year, and each time we’ve been, Caz has developed more and more of a thing with Ping. Anyway – this time, we take Whatsername with us,
She went silent and stared into space with her lips pursed.
‘What happened?’
‘Well – to cut a long story short, we were in an Intimate Yoga lesson, and Ping was helping Liz… I mean,
