In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,70

You’re stealing my things, I’ll have you arrested. You’re so cruel and selfish. I hate you, I’ll never speak to you again.

For the first time there are paid hospital attendants to watch over her and this means that he doesn’t have to be there every day. He’s happy to keep some distance between them. So he checks in for an hour each afternoon, then heads back to the room, but there’s not much chance for rest. Instead there are frantic preparations for Anna’s return. In consultation with her partner and family back home, it’s been decided that she will be accompanied by Dr Ajoy and the other friendly doctor from the hospital who helped orchestrate her escape. Arranging tickets and visas at short notice for them is a devilishly complicated business, involving faxes to the South African embassy and the airline, with all sorts of supporting documentation, some of which must come from home. But it’s all finally resolved and the evening arrives when he can bring her rucksack to the hospital, along with her passport and ticket, and say goodbye.

After everything that’s gone before, the moment is somehow small and empty. Her attention is not on him, but on her luggage, which she must instantly unpack and check and re-order. You see, he tells her ruefully, everything’s there, nothing’s been stolen. The different bags of clothes with their little labels are a sad reminder of where the journey began.

She comes outside to say goodbye. She’s wearing the shoes she’s been demanding for so long and appears almost serene. The high tide of madness has receded, leaving behind this translucent husk of a woman who nearly resembles his old friend. But not quite. There is a chilly reserve between them, which covers over a gulf so huge that it can perhaps never be bridged. Nevertheless, he finds it in himself to embrace her. Goodbye, he says. Take care of yourself.

You too. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

Or some such words. Whatever they say, it is in breezy phrases like these, phrases without content, or perhaps too much. Then he is driving away from her, with Rex at the wheel, looking back one last time at the solitary, lost figure in the twilight.

It’s only now that the full force of what’s happened begins to hit him. Until this point he has been constantly in action, at the receiving end of calamity, with no chance for reflection. It’s like a hurricane has blown through his life, flattening every structure, and in the aftermath the silence and vacancy are immense.

There is nothing to do, but his body struggles to accept it. He is constantly on edge, constantly prepared for crisis. He sleeps badly and lightly, and wakes long before dawn. The days are empty and he doesn’t know how to fill them. Gradually he moves out of his head and starts to see what’s around him. He notices his own face again, how much weight he’s lost, the fixed stare of his eyes.

Mostly he sits around, talking to Caroline, or goes for stumbling walks on the beach. His body slows and eventually accepts the aimlessness, but inside, deep down, it’s like an engine with a missing part, forever turning over, screaming in the same high gear.

News comes to him from South Africa. Anna is safely home. Then she’s booked into the clinic. A great many of her friends can’t or don’t want to see her, they’re too horrified by what she’s done. At first she has tried to dismiss her stunt in India as a small upset in an otherwise wonderful holiday, but eventually acknowledges the full extent of the disaster. She’s in constant touch with Jean but it’s not clear where that liaison is heading.

Most of this information reaches him through Anna’s girlfriend, with whom I have long tearful conversations almost every day. She continues to see Anna regularly at the hospital, even though they’ve agreed to separate and see what the future brings. She’s in need of comfort, which I’m scarcely able to offer, and she extends comfort of her own. Sometimes she asks advice. On this score I don’t hold back, let go of her, I say, she’s going to kill herself one day. I know it’s true, she’s like a bomb that might go off at any moment and I want the space around her cleared.

All of this, the confusion and frenzy around Anna, is now on the other side of the world. He is not responsible, not accountable,