5

LEO SHUFFLED OUT OF THE ROOM, DOWN THE CORRIDOR OF the sleeping clinic to the telephone in the foyer. He hovered over the receiver wondering who to call first. Start with the easiest, he thought, so he dialled the hotel in Quito where they had been staying. They had kept their room on for the Cotopaxi excursion and left half their luggage there. Leo and Eleni had grown very fond of the owner, Celeste, in the few weeks they had stayed there. She was more matriarch than manager; a zestful attractive lady in her forties who advised and mothered the young backpackers who frequented her hotel. When she discovered that Eleni could sing she taught her a host of Ecuadorean love songs. Leo couldn’t think of anyone else in the country who he could rely on for help, and true to her caring image Celeste promised to be in Latacunga by morning.

Then he called his parents, but it was 5 a.m. in England and the answering machine was on, so he tried his friend Charlie, who answered in a dozy mumble. He listened to Leo’s strained voice and wondered whether he was not in one of those twilight nightmares that appear so real you are convinced you are awake. ‘Is this a joke?’ he kept repeating and: ‘Do you know what time it is here?’ He pulled himself up to sit on the side of his bed and turned on the lamp. It was only the dual shock of gravity and light that eventually brought him tumbling out of his torpor. There was a long silence.

‘Leo, what happened?’

‘It was a bus crash, but I can’t remember anything about it.’

‘My God, are you all right?’

‘Bruised and cut, nothing broken. I’m fine.’

Charlie could not disguise his relief and he felt guilty for enquiring after the living.

‘Charlie, I can’t get hold of my mum and dad, and I’ve got to tell Eleni’s mum. I can’t call direct from here. Will you ring her and tell her to call me?’

‘Oh, er . . . I don’t think I can do that, I don’t really know her.’ Breaking the news to Eleni’s mother, Alexandria, would be like opening a window in a flood. There would be a deluge of grief that would flatten all in its path. ‘Look, I’ll keep trying your parents, maybe they should contact her.’

Ten minutes later Leo’s father called; Charlie had managed to rouse him from his bed. He was clearly shaken and he spoke in an unfamiliar high pitch that cracked and wavered yet never quite broke. Leo’s father, Frank, was as soft as a runny Brie, a gentle man who had survived a difficult childhood. Both his parents were dead before he was thirteen and he had been adopted into a poor family from Leeds who made him sleep in an attic, but he was not one for discussing his past or his emotions. Occasionally in a cinema or theatre some ancient trigger would be released and he would be catapulted back to his youth, right into the heart of the grief that he had been too young to name, bypassing in an instant the intervening years of middle-class stability, and he would find himself silently crying.

Now, once more, he saw himself as a child without his mother and his heart opened up like an oyster, his intestines knotted and his breath faltered. He’d harboured a soft spot for Eleni ever since their first meeting, when she had thrown her arms around him and hugged him like a long-lost relative.

Frank knew what Leo was going through but he offered no words of comfort. He never knew what to say, so he generally said nothing. From a very young age Leo had known that it was pointless trying to discuss anything emotional with his father. Whenever Leo was going through a rocky patch Frank would go inside himself and behave like a helpless bystander while Leo’s mother, Eve, would try to sort things out. Leo attributed his father’s silent impenetrability to his childhood as an orphan, not that Leo knew much about it. He had given up hope that they would ever have a proper adult relationship.

‘Dad, I want to come back with Eleni as soon as possible. I may need you to check out flights and help organize the funeral, but I’ve got to speak to Alexandria first,’ Leo said curtly.

‘You mean she doesn’t know yet?’

‘No, you can’t call Greece from here – don’t know why. Eleni used to go to the central telephone exchange. Anyway, I wondered if you could speak to Alexandria and ask her to phone me?’

There was a long pause. Leo could hear his father blowing his nose. ‘I don’t know,’ Frank said, his voice rising as he tried to suffocate his tears. ‘Don’t you think it would be better coming from you?’

Again this refusal. Breaking the news to Alexandria was a morbid responsibility and no one wanted to put their hand in the fire, least of all Frank. ‘Please, Dad.’

Frank sighed. ‘All right, wait by the phone . . . I’ll . . . I’ll wake up Eve and get her to call.’

Within minutes the phone rang again. Leo looked at the receiver and began to shake involuntarily. He took a deep breath and picked it up. He could hear Alexandria’s voice before he even got the phone to his ear. She was in full flow as though she was in the middle of an argument.

‘You promise me you look after her. You promise.’

‘There was nothing I could . . .’

‘Leo, you give me your word. I knew it was stupid idea to go there. You should have stop her. Why didn’t you stop her?’

‘I couldn’t stop her, the best I could do was follow her.’

‘Now she’s gone. My baby, my baby. It’s my fault I should never have relax.’

‘What?’

‘All this time I worry about her. I was so thinking about her all the time but this last two weeks I relax. I stop even to praying for her.’

‘Alexandria, it’s not your fault, it’s not my fault. It was a bus crash.’

‘But I should have been more strict from the start. I had bad feeling about this trip. I should have force her not to go. She would have hate me but at least she would be alive.’

She was not the only one who had had a bad feeling about their trip. Leo’s own mum, Eve, had sought many reassurances that it would be safe. They had discussed every worst-case scenario imaginable and he had calmed her with a confidence which masked his own fears. For Eleni, Latin America was a lifelong dream, she was going whether he came or not. But Leo had never been drawn to the place, and so he found himself in the strange position of rebutting advice which he secretly agreed with. There was only one reason he was going and that was because he loved Eleni so much that he could not contemplate a year without her. If he’d been given the choice he would have gone east to Thailand or Indonesia.

‘Why did God do this?’ Alexandria said. ‘Why take someone so young? She was such a good girl. Why? I don’t understand!’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think God cares who dies,’ Leo said. ‘If God did this then I don’t know why you believe in Him. Why bow down to a murderer?’

Alexandria was stunned by this remark and for a moment she fell in thrall to its cynical logic. After a long pause she said quietly, ‘Bring her back to me, Leo. I want to bury her here on Kithos. Here I look after her,’ and she hung up.

Leo was exhausted as he trudged back to his room. A bolt shot up from his knee and he gasped in pain. He manoeuvred himself gingerly into bed and slumped down once more to keep vigil over the eternal night, desperately chasing sleep, wondering how long he could stare at the crack in the ceiling before his eyes would bore through it and the entire weight of the universe would come crashing down on top of him. He threw the word ‘bus’ to the dogs in his mind that were scavenging for memories of the crash, but all he got back were the chewed remains of a different journey.

They were in Esmeraldas on the northern coast of Ecuador. The town’s reputed remoteness was its biggest draw, there was no access by road so they had come by boat through lush mosquito-infested marshlands. The only other way was by an old plantation train which dropped steeply down from Ibarra high on the Andean plateau. It was supposed to come every three days or so but there was no timetable. Every morning at dawn a crowd would gather at Esmeraldas station for an hour or so in case it came. On the days the train did come the whole town knew about it in minutes and people would come flooding to meet it. But only those who had waited could be sure of a seat out of town, the rest would scramble for standing room.

Leo and Eleni had spent a couple of days in this charming humid town where the electricity went off at eight in the evening and, with no cars, it was so quiet that they could hear people chatting several streets away. They were lucky that on the very day they wanted to leave, a train magically showed up and they managed to get seats.

They had been travelling an hour or so and climbed maybe a thousand metres when suddenly all the passengers began to gather their bags and clamber out of the windows. The train was slowing down but had not stopped and people were hanging out of the windows and doors.

‘What’s going on?’ Leo asked Eleni.

‘I don’t know but perhaps you should do what they’re doing,’ she said.

Leo climbed out of the window and shouted to the next man along to ask what was happening.

‘There’s only one bus. No more buses for two days,’ the man called. Leo did not have a clue what he was talking about. They were miles away from Ibarra, and he could not understand why everyone was getting off and in such a hurry. Before he could ask any more questions two more men had climbed out of his window and they were all hanging on shoulder to shoulder like swimmers at the beginning of an Olympic backstroke competition. By now all the men were on the outside of the train and the women, children and elderly were pushed up against the doors. There was such pandemonium on the train that Leo knew that, for whatever reason, it was best to be ready to jump out.

Eleni shouted out of the window to him, ‘There’s been a landslide further along the track and we have to get out here. Apparently there is a road from here up to Ibarra. A woman told me that we have to get the bus because there’s nowhere to stay here and there are a lot more people on this train than can get on that bus. She said there was only one bus driver prepared to make the journey. The track’s been blocked for a fortnight. Someone could have told us!’

As she spoke the train crossed over a bridge, Leo looked down and saw a shallow gorge beneath his feet. ‘Jesus, what the fuck am I doing here?’ he gasped, but he felt a thrill of excitement race through him. The train was pulling up into another plantation stop. There was nothing but a few small huts and a field of bananas climbing up a gentle slope. Beyond the field was a vertical wall of rock. They were still at least another fifteen hundred metres below the plateau. Past the huts a dirt track began, and there was the bus waiting with its engine running.

‘I’ll save you a seat,’ Leo shouted.

‘I’m coming out of the window, I’ll be right behind you,’ Eleni replied.

As soon as the bridge had been crossed, men started jumping from the train. Some of them fell in the mud. Others, more nimble, were already pelting towards the bus carrying their woven bags and chickens. Leo jumped, skidded but avoided the fall and hurtled after them. By the time he reached the bus every seat was either taken or reserved for a woman. People were squashed against the door. Now there were people standing the whole length of the bus and Leo was right at the door when the driver shouted out that he could take only two more. He gestured Leo to get on.

‘My girlfriend, what about my girlfriend?’

‘Of course, your girlfriend too.’ The driver smiled. ‘Do I look like a man who would separate a man from his woman?’

The crowd, which was mostly men, pulled back from the door to let the women and children get to the seats their husbands and fathers had reserved. When Eleni got on she laughed, ‘That was fun.’

Leo marvelled at the way the men had let the women on, back home it would have been strictly first come first served.

‘Thank God we made it,’ Eleni said. ‘I mean look at this place, we would have been buggered if we had to stay here.’ It was true, there was absolutely nothing to the place, no hotel, no restaurants, nothing. ‘We would have had to sleep rough and eat bananas.’

They both started giggling, they were breathless and excited, the absurdity of the moment had got to them.

‘Hey, chica,’ the driver called to Eleni, ‘you can sit on my gearbox.’

She looked at him and burst out laughing. The driver was mystified for a moment, then he too started laughing. ‘Oh she is naughty, that one. That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry.’ She struggled to contain herself and turned to Leo and said in English, ‘I think I’m going to wet myself,’ and she cracked up again.

‘Not a good time, Eleni, we’ve got all day on this bus.’

‘Oh dear,’ she gasped, ‘I don’t even know why I’m laughing.’ And she sat down on the boulder-sized plastic moulding of the gearbox next to the driver.

As they set off and Leo watched the crowd disperse he asked the driver why he hadn’t let anyone on the roof.

‘The road is very bad. It is too dangerous.’

‘That never stopped anyone before,’ Leo remarked.

‘This road is not normally used by buses and there has been a lot of rain. You will see, señor.’

They were not even around the first corner when the bus came to a standstill and the wheels were spinning in the mud. The driver got out of his seat to make an announcement. ‘The bus is too heavy. All the men must get off the bus. I will try to get out of this hole and if I cannot manage it I will ask you to push.’

All the men trooped off the bus. They were no more than fifty metres from the plantation, and some of the unlucky men who had not made it ran up the hill to help. Leo could see that the rear wheels were caught in a huge soggy ditch. This is no place for a bus, he thought. A man from the plantation came up with a couple of planks and put them under the wheels. The bus lurched forward, the planks broke and the bus slipped back.

‘Everyone push,’ the driver shouted. The men bounced the bus out and it drove ahead a little way and waited for the men to get back on board. A hundred metres further on and the men were off again. And so it continued for hours. One stretch of the road was so bad that the men did not bother getting back on, they just walked behind the bus until the next ditch. Eleni jumped off to find a bush, as did everyone at some point or another on that hellish journey. A great spirit of camaraderie built on the bus and the driver put a salsa tape on full volume. Everyone knew the words and was singing together at the top of their voices. Whatever Leo and Eleni felt about the buses in South America there was always a party atmosphere. People made friends, offered their food and sang. No matter how wretched the journey, Leo and Eleni could only marvel at the irrepressible joy of these people.

Rain began to thud on the metal roof of the bus. For ten hours they had soldiered on before reaching anything that resembled a road. It was dusk and everyone was exhausted. They were beginning to relax in the knowledge that the worst was over when the bus turned a corner and the driver let out a shriek. Around this bend nature had turned on its head. For a dizzying moment their eyes were confused; the landscape seemed to be moving in the shadows. The mountains were collapsing and changing shape. The road had disappeared under a huge slide of mud and rocks, which cascaded down into the valley like some primeval soup. There was a screech of brakes as the driver tried desperately to bring the bus to a halt. To their right was a sheer drop, to their left a jagged rock face. The driver fought to keep control, but the road surface was wet and they careered into the rocks. Metal scraped stone and sparks were thrown up against the windows. Passengers began to jump out of the rear door of the bus, tumbling on to the tarmac. Leo and Eleni hung on to each other in dismay, the bus bounced back off the rock and came to a halt just short of the landslide.

The men gathered to inspect the damage; the side of the bus was badly dented, but, worse, the engine wouldn’t start. Leo felt sorry for the driver who had taken so many risks to get them this far. If he couldn’t get the bus moving he would lose a lot of money. That night they slept on the bus, and in the morning they picked their way across the landswept road before finding a taxi to take them the last ten miles into Ibarra.

How strange, Leo thought, that they should have been involved in two bus crashes. Could that really be a coincidence or had fate been chasing Eleni? What if fate did exist? Eleni was frightened of only one thing in Latin America: buses. Not illness or crime or any other horror, only buses. And in the end the buses had got her. Perhaps somewhere deep in her soul she had known her fate.

On the other hand, Leo reasoned, maybe it had nothing to do with fate at all. It could work the other way round. We might be so frightened of something that we bring it upon ourselves. You’re standing on a ledge and you have a fear of falling, the fear makes you lose your balance. You’re frightened of dogs, the dog smells the fear and bites you. That makes some sense, but how does this apply to a bus crash? Could Eleni’s fear make a bus crash? That would imply the existence of the paranormal. Leo couldn’t stop himself from entertaining the idea.

Was Alexandria right? Could God have been harvesting for heaven? Or was Eleni just unlucky: in the wrong place at the wrong time?

His mind was racing, searching for an explanation of the inexplicable. Fate, telekinesis, luck, religion – now there was no territory that he would not explore. He was like a leaf buffeted in the breeze, unable to find his way back to the tree that had given him stability.