Women of a Dangerous Age

Ali studied the image again. ‘Mmm. But you’re not exactly working with Mario Testino either.’

Laughing and, in Lou’s case, resigned, both women stepped away from the bench and joined the crowds thronging the gardens.

‘If you don’t mind, I really want to have a last walk round alone,’ said Ali, slinging her camera over her shoulder. ‘Just to take it all in. I’ll see you back at the gate.’

Lou nodded, happy at the chance of having a final wander herself. As the trip drew to an end, she was conscious of trying to drain every last sensation from the few days she had left. She wanted to be able to relive the holiday in detail during the winter months that lay ahead back home.

She thought back to that conversation with Fiona three months earlier, when she’d had no plans to go away over the Christmas break. Then, just as she thought she would explode if anyone else asked her how she was, or what she would be doing at Christmas now that she was single again, inspiration had come from nowhere. In reply to her close friend’s invitation to her and her husband Charlie’s remote Devon farmhouse bought only for its vast unrealised potential that, two years later, had still to be realised, Lou blurted, ‘Actually, I’ve made plans. I’m going to India.’

The words were out before she’d even thought them. She still wasn’t sure which of them had been more surprised by her answer.

To everyone’s surprise, her own included, she had booked herself the last place on a ‘Highlights of Rajasthan’ tour. She had been told to expect the poverty and squalor, the streets teeming with people, the colours, the smells but nothing had prepared her for what she had experienced. Never had she been exposed to so many dizzying extremes at once. As exciting, after years of holidaying as a family or alone with Hooker, was the discovery that she enjoyed meeting new people, having responsibility for no one but herself. The holiday had done just what she’d hoped and drawn a thick line between her past and her future. When she returned home, everything would have changed. She would no longer be living with Hooker in their family home. She would be an independent woman with a life, a new business and a home of her own. She was resolved not to mess up this second chance.

As Ali walked away from Lou, she thought about their conversation. ‘My boyfriend’. That’s what she had called Ian. A word she had never used to describe him before, but it had emerged all by itself when they were waiting their turn for the photograph. She liked the description, the unexpected way the two words made her feel: secure, loved, part of a unit even though she and Ian had seen so little of one another since the evening he made his surprise announcement. He wanted ‘to put the relationship on a more permanent footing’, to have her not as a mistress but as a partner. That’s what he had said. There was a lot to work out, not least of all his breaking the news to his wife, which he wouldn’t do until after Christmas. ‘It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.’ Even though his marriage had been over in all but name for years, he still had the decency to treat his wife with consideration and respect. That was just another aspect to his character that she loved and admired. Until he told his wife, Ali had to hug her secret to herself, enjoy its promise, and wait.

For the last couple of months before she came to India, work had taken them both in different directions. The lead-up to Christmas was always the busiest time of her year when people wanted to splurge their money on bespoke jewellery, so she had been busy designing and making to commission, as well as selling from her latest collection. At the same time, Ian had been called abroad to discuss some potential corporate merger. She hadn’t taken in the details. They had at last managed to find time for each other the evening before she left. To her disappointment, he had to go home before midnight. He didn’t go into details and she hadn’t pressed him. She didn’t want to know how he was spending Christmas with his wife while she was away. Next year, it would just be the two of them. Knowing that had been enough.

As Ali browsed through the rooms of the tiny museum, she thought how much Ian would have enjoyed being here with her. Well, as this was the last holiday she’d be taking on her own, she had decided to make the most of it. When she’d joined the group in Delhi, she’d been disappointed to find her travelling companions were a more sober bunch than she’d holidayed with in the past. Three smug couples, a middle-aged mother and her son, a widowed doctor and a man travelling alone since his wife had a fear of flying, and another slightly older woman she now knew to be Lou, whose idiosyncratic dress sense and wild hair made her look as if she at least might be fun. Ali had watched Lou with the others. At first Lou had been tentative, as if exploring her ability to make new friends but, as the days passed, she had become more confident. Soon her laugh was one of the things that marked her out, a loud earthy giggle, often at the centre of whatever was going on. Unlike her, Ali preferred to hold herself back so no one could make any demands on her, nor she on them.

She glanced over the architectural drawings, then stepped outside for a final look at the Taj, magnificent symbol for eternal love. With Ian in the forefront of her thoughts again, she crossed the garden to join the others near the huge arched main gateway, where she found Lou engaged in a vigorous discussion with Bharat, their guide.

‘But I’d rather walk to the car park,’ Lou was saying, quite unaffected by the way those in the group already there were glaring at her, no doubt impatient to reach their hotel, a good wash and a gin and tonic.

‘No, no, madam,’ insisted Bharat. ‘You must take bus.’

‘But Bharat, it can’t be more than half a kilometre at the most. I won’t hold you up if I start now and I’ll meet you there.’ She was being quite calm, controlled but determined.

Ali walked over to the two of them. ‘I’d like to walk too, Bharat. Nothing’ll happen to us, if that’s what you’re worried about. There are too many people around.’

Surprised by her intervention, Lou smiled, clearly glad of the support. She flicked her scarf over her right shoulder.

Apart from the anxiety about deviating from the schedule by letting two of his charges out of his sight, Bharat seemed bemused that any right-minded visitor would want to walk when there was perfectly good transport. But he folded in the face of their joint determination. ‘OK, madam. You go together. We’ll meet you in the car park.’

Once beyond the gateway, past the entry queues – one for nationals, one for foreigners – waiting to get through security, they found themselves outside the sandstone walls. Immediately, they were besieged by postcard and souvenir sellers, mostly young children, who swarmed around them, thrusting their wares under their noses, shouting prices and persuasion alongside would-be guides.

‘Where you from, madam? England? Very nice place. London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester … You want tour guide for Red Fort? Very important see everything.’

Dejected-looking horses and camels decorated with tinsel, their skin stretched tight over protruding bones, were hitched to carriages at the side of the road. Tuk-tuk and rickshaw drivers were touting for business too. ‘You want rickshaw. Good price. Baby Taj then Agra Fort. Show you my magical India. Two hundred rupees.’

The two women had been in India long enough to know that the only way through was to say little, and keep on walking. Eventually, to their relief, everyone’s attention switched to a large group of Americans emerging from the complex behind them and they were left alone.

‘Thank God for that,’ said Lou. ‘I don’t want to get Bharat into trouble but we spend so much time cooped up in the minibus. l had to experience some of this for myself.’ As they waited in a herd of goats for the stragglers to climb onto the scrubby verge, a pair of ragged dark-eyed children approached them, hands out, begging, ‘Dollar, dollar.’ A man selling sugar cane juice turned his blue mangle and shouted something from the other side of the road. Lou shook her head and carried on walking, Ali running to catch up, the ragamuffins running behind her. The smells of horseshit, bad drains, woodsmoke and cooking drifted through the dusty air. They stood to one side as an electric bus whirred past. Ali took a couple of snaps of a moth-eaten camel pulling a cart, then another of the children who giggled when she showed them the image on her camera.

‘I just wanted to escape the group for a bit longer. Not that there’s anything wrong with them,’ she hurried to add. For some reason, she didn’t want Lou to think badly of her.

‘They’re not that bad.’ Lou smiled. ‘You just haven’t got to know them.’

‘I know, I haven’t made much effort.’ She sounded suddenly anxious.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lou reassured her. ‘You’re down as a free spirit. I think everyone rather envies your independence.’

‘Well, it’s my last holiday alone, so I’ve been making the most of it.’

‘Seems to me that travelling alone but in the company of strangers is about a million times less fraught and tantrum-filled than travelling with family – especially my husband.’ Lou laughed at the thought. ‘Show him an airport and I’ll show you a man on the point of a coronary. And that’s before we’ve even left the country.’

‘You’re married?’ Ali noticed Lou wore no rings.

‘Not any more.’ Her face assumed a guarded expression. ‘I guess you’re not either?’

‘No, but I’m moving in with my boyfriend when I get back.’ Her cheeks were burning. Letting even a bit of her secret go made it feel less special, even though Lou didn’t know her or Ian. She immediately wished she hadn’t said anything. ‘I’m not meant to talk about it really. At least, not until he’s told his wife.’

‘Oh! His wife,’ Lou echoed.

Ali thought she heard disapproval, but when she looked, Lou simply smiled and gave the slightest shake of her head. They detoured round a white cow standing among a pile of rubbish and plastic bags. ‘Odd the way sacred animals exist on such an unsacred diet.’ And the subject was closed.

For the rest of the short way, they walked in a companionable silence, each lost in her own thoughts. Entering the busy car park filled with sudden exhaust and engine noise, they found their minibus and chose two seats side by side.

As they drove to the safari lodge on the Chambal river where they were spending their last two nights, Lou found herself enjoying Ali’s company more and more. There was something about her that reminded Lou of her younger sister, Jenny, killed only eighteen months earlier in a motorway pile-up. Although Jenny had been a loner all her life, the two sisters had shared a particular bond. Since they were teenagers, they had confided only in one another, knowing that all their secrets were safe. Since Jenny’s death no one had come near to filling her place in Lou’s life, not even Fiona, her closest friend. Talking to Ali, Lou found a similar intensity to Jenny’s. She heard something like Jenny’s dry sense of humour, and sensed the same reserve. Lou had been given a glimpse into Ali’s life but she didn’t expect her to tell any more. Given her own unwillingness to bare her soul at this point in her life, Lou sympathised with the younger woman’s reticence and didn’t press her. She was relieved not to have to account for herself and explain the actions she’d taken only months before. There’d be plenty of time to examine the repercussions of those when she got home.

For those last two nights, Ali unexpectedly opened up. She followed Lou’s lead and chatted with the others after supper around the dying embers of the bonfire, easily finding her place within the group. But this happened so late in the trip that there was no pressure for her to give anything of herself away. By the time they returned to Delhi for the flight home, Lou had arranged to meet Ali again on their home turf. She was intrigued by ‘the cat who walked alone’.

2

Delhi airport was teeming with people. Lou’s suitcase felt heavy and unwieldy as she concentrated on tipping it to one side so that it could roll along on the one wheel that hadn’t jammed. She hated airports, hated flying and was trying to drift into the zone necessary for any air travel to be … not pleasurable, never that, but endurable. She was looking for that Zen-like calm where anything problematic would just slip by her. Key to that condition was maintaining a cool indifference towards everything going on around her. Otherwise, she would be reduced to a gibbering state of impatience, then fear.

She and Ali stood together in the queue that snaked away from the check-in desk. They didn’t talk, just observed the hordes: families with children refusing to stay in line; trolleys laden with belongings heading with their owners towards a new start in another country; couples entwined after the romantic holiday of a lifetime; others barely speaking.

Eventually, they reached the front. She hefted her case onto the scales, catching her breath as she felt an ominous twinge in the small of her back, and watched the number of kilograms clocking up. Please God, let the airline official turn a blind eye.

‘It’s four kilos overweight,’ he announced, barely looking up.

Fuck. She should never have put in the fabric she’d bought in Udaipur. Instead, she should have had them shipped home like the rest of the fabric and the two bedspreads she hadn’t been able to resist in Jodhpur. ‘But you’ll let it go?’ she wheedled.

The official was unmoved. ‘You’ll have to pay the surcharge, I’m afraid. The desk’s over there.’ He could have been pointing anywhere. ‘Or you’ll have to remove some of the contents.’

And do what with them? Leave them on the terminal floor?

She could feel herself dithering, flustered, incapable of making a sensible decision. To pay a fortune for a few lengths of Indian silk, or not to pay? That was the question. Fortunately, Ali answered it. ‘For God’s sake, you mustn’t pay on principle. You don’t have to pay more for your seat because you’re heavier than me.’

‘Thanks for that,’ Lou muttered.

‘No, seriously, the same should apply to luggage. There’s some room in my case. Let’s just transfer a few things and I’ll give them back when we land.’

Relieved to have her dilemma so easily resolved, Lou agreed and yanked her case off the weighing machine. As she slid it back towards the queue, the implications of this perhaps rash decision struck her. She was about to reveal her totally shoddy packing techniques to the entire airport. But too late now. Someone else had taken her place at the desk and Ali was already unzipping her case. She flipped the lid back to reveal her perfectly folded capsule wardrobe taking up two-thirds of the available space.

Reluctantly, remembering the haphazard approach she had taken to her own packing, Lou began to pull at the zip of her suitcase, eyeing the straining seams. It had only consented to fasten when she’d sat on the case and shifted her weight about on top so the zip could inch round. The only way forward was to repeat the process. She sat down heavily, then, holding onto the zip, her knuckles white with the effort of not letting go, she began to pull. Slowly at first, it then gave with a little rush before slowing again. With Ali holding the two open sides as close together as possible, the last corner was turned and eventually, to the amusement of everyone alleviating the boredom of their wait by watching her, the final side was coerced into unzipping.

Self-conscious, Lou clambered off the case, half falling as she did. Steadying herself with her hand on Ali’s butt, she was aware that most of the queue could almost certainly see all the way down her cleavage as she bent forward. Mortified, she straightened up as fast as she could, adjusting her top at the same time.