‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘We went down to the river and lost our way.’
‘After Veerapan’s warning, is it wise to wander around like that?’ Max asked, great concern in his voice.
‘Oh, come on,’ Clare chided, albeit gently. ‘We can’t be thinking like that for the rest of our time out here. Or we’d never go anywhere at all. Anyhow, Tammy looked after me. He should be back soon. Are you looking at the photos? I’d love to see them again.’
Max handed her the camera and she scrolled through some of the images. She stopped at the one taken at the election meeting, also wondering if the face in quarter-profile might be the boy’s, and if the blurry figure in the background could possibly be the cripple. There followed several shots of the procession, and the rioting. The photos showed police wielding batons, a man in handcuffs, and an angry crowd.
There were photos Max had taken before the assassination: an old woman in a mobile clinic, being operated on to remove her cataracts; a man having a vasectomy; a village school with posters of Gandhi and Nehru and other political heroes going back to the Emperors Ashoka and Akbar. There was a shot of a modern well and one of irrigated paddy fields. She liked the image of Shiva with his circling arms, his flames of life, one hand outstretched in that gesture of fearlessness Clare found increasingly so inspiring.
‘They make for a good balance,’ she said. ‘The subjects are so diverse.’
‘Yes, but the photography itself is so uninspired.’
‘That’s nonsense. You’re so ridiculously hard on yourself.’
Clare felt sorry for Max’s loss of confidence but also impatient that he didn’t fight it better.
‘Why give in to this self-undermining mood of yours?’ she asked. ‘This loss of heart in all you do that’s good?’
‘And what have I ever done that’s really good?’
‘That book on Mexico for one thing.’
‘Which got all those bad reviews.’
‘From professional rivals,’ Clare countered. ‘You got three good reviews, which you’ve typically forgotten. Didn’t you get a sense of real achievement from it? Isn’t that what ultimately matters? Think of what we’re doing together. All the research you’ve done. History… mythology… religion. You’ve read much more than I have. You put me to shame.’
‘In LA I had more time to research,’ said Max. ‘Not having a proper full-time job like you had. You know what gets me really badly? I’ve earned so damn little in my career.’
‘What’s it really matter about earning money?’
‘Only that my father earned it for me. And you make far more than I do, and without my initial advantages. You didn’t come from a cushy, moneyed background.’
‘You’ve got such a complex about being over-privileged, but don’t start comparing and competing. Haven’t we agreed we don’t compete? About anything, let alone our earnings. As for your father, he left you money! So what? If it hurts that badly, give it away. You’ve already donated some to good causes.’
‘But I never earned the dough that I donated. I’ve failed so far in most of my ambitions and, frankly, I’m worried about our book. I can’t help wondering if I at least am up to it.’ Max paused before blurting out what he’d been working up to admitting for some time. ‘There’s something else I should’ve told you a long time back.’
This is it, Clare thought. Whatever it might be.
‘I feel bad I’ve never told you,’ Max said. ‘It contributes to my feelings of inadequacy.’ He ran his hands through his hair, which was thick and dishevelled. Clare felt her impatience with him soften.
‘So at last you’re going to tell me, darling.’
‘I would have done so before but I feared to lose you.’
‘Lose me?’
‘I’ve never stopped loving you. That’s what makes this difficult.’ Max paused a second. ‘I feel so guilty.’
‘Makes what difficult?’ Clare asked, feeling slightly breathless. Max looked acutely unhappy now as well as tongue-tied. ‘Makes what difficult?’ she repeated, wondering if she really wished to know after all. Did she really want him to clarify her doubts and possibly intensify her pain? But she was no coward.
‘Are you in love with someone else?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Narayan.’
For a moment Clare stared at Max without comprehending what he had just said.
‘Oh, Christ!’ she exclaimed. ‘Not Narayan.’
‘Surely you suspected it?’ he asked.
‘Dammit, Max. I only knew you were intrigued by him… as a good friend.’
Clare pictured Narayan now; she forced herself to concentrate on him. There was a vivid memory of a barbecue party. She recalled how he’d jokingly raised his hands in horror at the sputtering, charred steak upon the grill. They’d been sitting together under the patchy moon shadows of a eucalyptus tree, the pungent scent of which she’d associated with him ever since. Narayan had suddenly gone solemn, looking at her almost with contrition, which she’d found confusing at the time. She’d imagined he was regretting his attraction to her, the tenderness she thought was directed at her and which conflicted with his friendship with her husband.
How blind I was, she thought now. How presumptuous.
‘I knew you were fascinated,’ she said at last, returning fully to the present. ‘I thought it was his being so different. His Indian culture, his way with words, maybe. His wit. I didn’t think of you as ever being in love with him. Does he love you back?’
‘He’s said so, yes. But sometimes it all seems so hopeless.’
‘Is that so?’ Clare snapped. ‘And yet you love me still. How complicated for you!’
She regretted the sarcasm instantly. She was sounding bitter when what she was really feeling was sheer despair.
‘I love our life together,’ Max protested. ‘Everything we’ve built. I love you. I could never live without you.’
He spoke earnestly. Although Clare believed what he was saying, it seemed so meagre in the context of the admission he’d now made.
‘But physically,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘you’re more in love with him?’
Max didn’t answer this and so Clare turned away. She felt a fierce anger as she went into their bedroom. He followed her, but she rejected his attempt to touch her. She thought about the despair in his eyes and in his voice before he told her this shattering news. It was one of those crises of confidence that often happened when he was feeling guilty over something. She listened as he spoke about how he was equally attracted to both of them but felt empty.
‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore,’ she said quietly. ‘Not right now.’
Max seemed highly distressed and tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away. How dare he assume she’d accept his embrace, imagining her pain so easily alleviated.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she told him, barely containing her fury. ‘Alone.’
Once Clare was away from Max, her anger started to subside. A curious numbness dulled her hurt, and slowly her mind began to drift. She thought of the home she shared with Max in Los Angeles, of their garden there, the mango and pawpaw trees loaded with green and yellow fruit, the frail hibiscus flowers, the bougainvillea in thorny red clusters trailing along the sandy-coloured garden walls, the palm trees shooting up so high with their untidy, clustered fronds. She envisaged the house itself, full of light and colour and the beautiful objects Max had given her. There was the Mayan head, the Toltec figurine (an early present) and the Hokusai woodblock print to welcome her return.
He’d been so obviously delighted and relieved to have her home again.
Home.
She recalled coming back from London in her double grief after both her mother and then Violet had died. The garden had been heavy with the scent of citrus. Max had thrown a barbecue party, inviting a group of friends, to cheer her up.
She remembered the noise of vigorous splashing in the pool.
It was the first time she saw Narayan. He was moving in a strangely seal-like, twisting way, the floodlight flashing over his supple body, the lucent water swirling as he broke the surface.
‘Who on earth is that?’ she had asked Max, who seemed surprised. His answer, she realised now, was a touch dismissive.
‘Oh, a guy I met at the gym. His name is Narayan. He’s an Indian university academic… a physicist. He’s only just come out here. I invited him because he knows no one and he’s lonely. A bit of a mad joker.’
He laughed at the incident and led her away from the poolside, past a number of guests who looked on, bewildered yet amused.
‘Let’s be by ourselves, darling,’ he said. ‘Narayan can look after himself all right. He’s got loads of confidence. Let’s leave them to enjoy themselves and go.’
Max drove them to their beach house in Malibu. The moon above the highway was veined and icy, the ocean to the left brokenly reflecting it.
‘I wanted to be alone with you,’ he said, his hands firm on the wheel.
‘Even if it means walking out on our guests?’ Clare asked.
‘They know about your grief,’ he replied. ‘Besides, I got a friend to host the party. We don’t need to be there to keep it going. Talk to me. Tell me about Violet.’
Clare took a sharp intake of breath.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Yes, I suppose I should. She was at home. She began struggling to breathe and I tried to give her the kiss of life. I’d called an ambulance and we got her to hospital, where they placed her in intensive care. She was put into an oxygen tent but it was too late. I was with her for several hours before she died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Max said simply.
Clare knew he would be remembering his own mother’s death, from emphysema, some years earlier. He had sobbed when he told her. He was able to release tears on rare occasions, and she respected him for this.
Max parked the car at the side of the beach house, and they walked down to the jetty, where their speedboat was moored. This was their special place, their very own patch of beach. Clare loved the Los Angeles beaches, wide and windswept as they were. She liked to watch the black-billed gulls wheeling in the air above and around the palm trees. She remembered how they’d once walked under the old pier at Santa Monica, the rumbling carousel above them, the tide sweeping in around the wooden piles, scored by the sea and thickly barnacled.
It had been dark there. Max had kissed her with a quickly mounting passion that had excited and touched her deeply.
The old beach shack that they’d repaired together five years before – sawing, hammering, creosoting and painting for hours every day – stood in stark contrast to the supercharged, streamlined and very modern speedboat. Clare thought it was a little flashy, but she never said so.
They’d created this place so they could be alone.
They climbed into the boat and headed rapidly out into the ocean, the waves thudding below them. Max had taken the wheel, and Clare stood with her arm around him.
Fifteen minutes later, Max stopped the boat and switched off the engine. He picked up his binoculars and peered out at the sea, waiting for something, barely restraining his excitement.
And then it came.
At first, it seemed as if a solitary wave was rising from the sea. It sank and then rose again. The water was heaving, rolling and breaking, as if it was about to deliver some dark secret. Then out of the water rose a streaming apparition, the water cascading down its massive flanks. It sank again.
Moments later, the head of the great mammal, its mouth agape, broke the water’s surface just in front of the boat. The surf boiled within its massive jaws. Its eye was like a flash of phosphorescence in the moonlight. Its powerful flipper hit the water, and its ribbed tail swept the air like some huge, glistening wing. The boat heeled over, flinging Clare against the stern.
Max threw himself across to grab her. Soaked and giddy, she clung to him. Another wave rose at them and hurled itself down before sweeping on. Clare caught one more sight of the whale as it plunged, its tail thrashing, sending a shivering last cascade of spray into the air.
‘I guess that was quite scary,’ said Max, as he secured the wheel.
‘Scary, yes,’ Clare agreed. ‘But it was so beautiful.’
She felt the tension leave her body. As it did so, she began to shiver. Noticing this, Max put his hands on her arms and began to rub them to warm her. Then he touched her face, moved his hands to her breasts and began kissing her, his mouth urgent as he loosened her clothes. Reaching down, he began to caress her, to enter her with his fingers. He yearned to arouse her, something always so essential to his own pleasure. Clare kissed him back. The memory of Violet as a child sprang involuntarily to mind, making her think of having a child herself, something they’d put off for too long.
They made love in the stern. She heard his breath quicken as he whispered her name and then the huge gasp as he came, his body stiff and shuddering, her own cries mingling with his. She thought of the whale plunging onwards. She listened to the wind, the rippling of the sea. She looked up at the stars, at their unimaginable distances away. They usually made her feel so small and negligible but now strangely enhanced the idea of their being so close together, so intimate; the indifferent, cold infinitudes of space and time seemed purposeless and meaningless by contrast.
For a while afterwards, they lay on the deck, Max on top. She loved his weight on her, the reassurance she got from his body, his mouth on hers again, his quiet breathing. He rolled off her and she reached over to fondle his now-soft cock, the feel of it in her hand only intensifying her sense of his vulnerability and the beauty of the release they’d given each other. She held his head to her breasts, feeling a dissolving tenderness within, as if he were that child she might conceive through him. She thought of the whale swimming in the distance, having heaved up to the surface like a sudden dream before plunging down into its fathomless dark world, moving slowly, inexorably away.
So much in life was receding from her, she now thought. She lay alone in bed in this ancient town in Southern India. Max was sleeping in another room, and she recalled with acute nostalgia that night only eight months ago, remembering the intensity of her happiness with him.
She thought back to a similar time: that night in the castle when they had made love for the first time, A nightingale was singing in the valley below, giving off its extraordinary varied notes, very clear and fast, as if it hastened towards the climax of its song in hope the ecstatic moment might endure forever. The next morning she and Max had gazed out through the mullioned windows, watching the swallows swinging off with a flutter and flash of pointed wings in long downward loops and quivering ascents. The birds threaded the valley with their exultant flight, swooping down to the bright river before hurtling up above the wooded hills. As Max and Clare kissed deeply, she thought what marvellous chance had brought them here together to fall so dazzlingly in love.
She heard a noise in next room. It was a thud. Someone falling?
The cripple came to mind, falling down while trying to reach her on his crutches. She felt haunted by two very different and conflicting memories of him: his evil manipulation of a dependent and naive young man who he’d urged to commit an act of bloody murder, and the tenderness he’d shown towards his fragile little daughter. Clare also recalled his forgiving words to his anguished wife. The woman had a sensitive but worn face, as if she’d suffered much. Clare had been touched by her motherly and wifely love, and hoped the cripple was always as kind to her as he’d appeared.
There were sounds of more awkward movements from next door, and then Clare heard someone call her name; it was Tammy. She threw on her dressing gown and opened the door to see him rising to his feet, a shamed expression on his face. She came out and closed the door behind her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tammy said. His voice was slurred. ‘I’m very drunk, I’m afraid. I’ve been feeling terrible because of what I told you about Max. Don’t think I did it out of malice. I know you can’t love me back but I can’t bear it that you don’t accept my love.’
‘Quiet, Tammy!’ Clare urged, her voice low but sharp. ‘Max is next door, asleep. Accept your love? Don’t be mad.’ She felt a throb of exasperation. ‘It’s a bit arrogant to suppose I would. Don’t you think it’s a touch insulting too?’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I wish I’d been told nothing.’
‘Narayan told you, I suppose?’
Tammy nodded in acute discomfort, and this slightly softened her. Just when her marriage to Max was under threat, here was Tammy making these amorous declarations. Clare found him pathetic in this intoxicated state. She hated his loss of dignity, in spite of his attempts to recover it.
‘You’d better go,’ she said.
Tammy moved his arms in a gesture of frustration.
‘I shouldn’t have come on this trip. I only came because of what he told me,’ he said. ‘Maybe he exaggerated something out of proportion. And now look at the stupid mess I’m in. It’s my fault, I know. Yes, it has been arrogant of me. I didn’t mean it to be insulting, though.’
He stopped, but obviously wanted to say more.
‘What?’ asked Clare.
‘Don’t worry about what’s happened. Veerapan’s a real alarmist. They won’t be pursuing us. I promise you’ll be safe.’
He left then, and Clare went back to bed. She wondered if Max, sleeping alone, was dreaming of her – or of Narayan.
Max woke alone and immediately missed Clare’s presence in the bed next to him. He would often wake in the night and loved to feel her back up close against him. They often slept with his arms around her, the muscles of his stomach against her buttocks, his hands upon her breasts. He loved the way their bodies fitted together, his hardness and her softness, the beating of her heart and the motion of her breathing.
He thought of her vulnerability now that he was alone, and she was on her own in another room. He knew that he’d caused her enormous pain, and this knowledge cut deep into his conscience. He couldn’t stop tracing in his memory the outline of events, the interrupted process of the development of his love for Narayan.
Memories flooded back. He’d contacted Narayan in Los Angeles a week after his return from London.
‘I hate the idea of Clare staying behind,’ Max told him as soon as they met. ‘I want to introduce you as soon as she gets back. I’d like you to be friends.’
‘I’d like that too,’ Narayan replied. ‘She sounds real cool.’
‘Real cool? You’re picking up our lingo quite impressively.’
Narayan smiled at this. Max was nervous of sounding too keen to meet him again, afraid of scaring him away.
‘Would you like to go surfing one of these days?’ he found himself asking. ‘It’d be a real Los Angeles experience.’ He was banking on Narayan’s adventurous spirit. ‘It’s be a challenge,’ he added.
Narayan hesitated. Max wondered if he’d pushed his luck too far, but then Narayan agreed, suggesting they meet at Venice Beach. He’d seen people surfing there when he’d met José.
When Narayan arrived, he was in a mildly combative, jokey mood; he claimed Max was leading him far astray with his American obsession over sport. But he took to surfing and learned quickly. They rode in several times together, but soon Narayan fell quite badly, gashing his shin against the board. He was stoic about it as he limped up the beach.
‘I’ve only myself to blame for trying to keep up with your really terrible showing off. It’s all this American competitiveness,’ he went on, mock plaintively. ‘I’m allowing it to corrupt my pristine Indian soul. You look disgustingly impressive, shooting around like that. I’ve become so envious. I want to look as good. Appearances, Max! Deceptive, vain, physical appearances! And to think my religion calls them mere illusion, while your civilisation’s built upon them.’
‘Oh come on,’ Max retorted. ‘What about all those ostentatious Indian palaces and monumental tombs? Are you sure your leg isn’t hurting badly? Or is your pristine Indian soul above mere pain?’
‘Total yoga may deliver one from pain,’ Narayan said. ‘I’m a long way from that, though. My flesh can hurt like bloody hell.’
‘Then perhaps you might stoop to taking some painkillers. There’s a drug store round the corner, full of those potions and pills we swallow endlessly. This shameful American obsession with the body, with the material world in general, by which you soulful Indians are, of course, quite uncorrupted.’
‘Mocking me again, Max,’ Narayan chided. ‘I hate airs of spiritual superiority; they always sound suspiciously like material sour grapes. There’s some terrible corruption in India, where the new middle classes are as avaricious as the middle classes anywhere in the world. Even I am not exactly a paragon of self-denial. My problem is I’m greedy, as I’ve said before. Greedy for a few base material advantages but more, I confess, for some love and admiration.’
Max was taken aback by this admission. Shortly afterwards, having bought a bandage in the drug store, he swabbed Narayan’s wound and tied the bandage around it. Their physical proximity as he tended to him caused him a stab of both tenderness and desire, curiously commingled. He recognised his attraction to Narayan was growing rather than diminishing. His feelings were enhanced by Narayan’s unexpected words of encouragement, however casually he’d uttered them.
Had he spoken them out of emotional loneliness? Was it because he genuinely liked Max’s admiration of him, just as long as nothing sexual followed? Max really had no idea but, as he drove home that evening, he suffered a sharp attack of conscience over Clare. He summoned up the memory of her beautiful face in an effort to counteract, to somehow erase, the handsome face of Narayan, a vision that threatened to haunt him equally with its very different but equally immense appeal.
Max rang Rick, saying he wanted to discuss some problems, but Rick had more urgent matters of his own to attend to. After countless affairs, Rick had settled down with an older man, Mike, who proved, with his stable ways, a perfect foil for Rick’s mercurial temperament. Rick told Max that they had agreed to have a HIV test and Rick had found himself to be HIV-positive. He’d taken this badly at first, and it had required patient persuasion from Mike to restore his confidence.
Max was much depressed by Rick’s news at first, but he knew something of the advances in medication and he decided to find out more. He recalled his affair with Rick with nostalgic tenderness and regretted that he’d ended it so badly. He was glad they’d never had penetrative sex, although he didn’t feel at all self-congratulatory about it; he worried far too much about Rick’s condition.
‘I have a photo session to complete in San Francisco,’ Max told him.
‘What did you want to talk about?’ Rick asked. ‘I can still listen and offer advice, you know… if you need it.’
Max sighed deeply.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he lied. ‘Nothing that can’t wait until I get back. I’ll be thinking of you.’
‘You sure you’re okay?’
It felt absurdly wrong to burden a man recently diagnosed with HIV with more to worry about, least of all the complexities of Max’s own love life.
‘I’m okay,’ he said.
The time in San Francisco afforded Max the opportunity to think things through as he was working. He decided to donate a large sum of the money inherited from his father to an AIDS charity. His father would undoubtedly have disapproved, but he didn’t let that worry him.
When he got back to Los Angeles, he was still torn about his feelings for Clare and Narayan. He called Clare often, loving the sound of her voice, reassured by its closeness and intimacy. Even so, his charged relationship with Narayan continued. Every other evening, they swam in the pool together or went surfing.
When Clare phoned from London to say she was catching a plane, she sounded strained. It was understandable, given that she’d stayed behind to look after Violet. When Max met her at the airport she broke down in his arms and told him that Violet had died. He held her tightly, desperate to console her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me on the phone?’ he eventually asked.
‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ she said. ‘You didn’t need to attend the funeral.’
‘Didn’t I?’
She didn’t respond to that.
‘I felt guilty about Violet… I still do,’ she said.
Max admired her honesty but felt sorrow for her pain, and her vulnerability again intensely moved him.
At the party Max had arranged to welcome Clare home, he wanted to introduce Narayan to her straightaway, but he didn’t arrive until very late. Max discovered later that he’d thought it amusing to slip into the pool, unobserved. When Max saw Narayan’s floodlit face surfacing in a stream of bubbles, he recognised an involuntary surge of delight and hope inside himself, and it alarmed him.
It was partly that rush of feeling that prompted him to leave the party with Clare and to drive out to Malibu. Of course, he wanted to be alone with her and to help with her grief. Getting away from Narayan, and from the turmoil his presence provoked, was not his primary motive though. He knew driving fast to the coast always raised Clare’s spirits. When the whale had surfaced, invoking awe and some degree of fear, the lovemaking that followed had been extraordinarily intense for both of them. It was the memory of this that allowed Max to feel unthreatened by any feelings for Narayan when they spoke on the phone the next day.
‘Hey, Max,’ Narayan greeted him. ‘Why leave last night as soon as you set eyes on me? People might’ve thought I was an interloper.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope you’re not too sore at me.’
‘I’m so sore, it’s really hurting. There I was, dripping from the pool, and all those smart people staring at me, wondering who is this mysterious, dusky stranger. A terrorist perhaps, sabotaging the swimming pool? Like in one of those wild soap operas. I mean, what with you rushing off in your swanky, high-tech car in the very middle of your own party. Such a dramatic style of life you have. It’s no wonder I find you so peculiar.’
‘And what about your own peculiar behaviour?’ Max asked. ‘Secretly entering the pool to thrash around like a zombie! Clare thinks you’re definitely cracked.’
‘So when are you going to allow me to meet her properly, so she knows I’m not cracked. From the glimpse I caught of her at the poolside, she looks a gorgeous broad.’
‘You don’t say “broad”, Narayan,’ Max chided. ‘All this low American slang you’re picking up, you must learn to use it a bit more accurately. I wouldn’t overdo it or people might think it was my vulgar influence.’
‘Then you must teach me classy correct American. If you come out to India, I’ll be helping you with classy Tamil, after all. You will be coming out to India sometime, yes?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure we shall. Sometime.’
‘That doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. I’m not starting to bore you with my endless chatter and idiotic antics, am I? Or are you just too busy now that Clare’s here?’
‘Of course not,’ said Max. ‘I really want you to meet her. Would you be free this weekend?’
Clare took to Narayan immediately. He behaved with all the easy courtesy that seemed second nature to him. He talked with her about Max, saying what a good friend he had become, and how open-minded and full of curiosity about India.
‘So,’ she began, after he left, ‘I like your new buddy. So you met at your gym? What started you off getting to know him? His being Indian, I assume.’
‘I’ve always been intrigued by India. Look, let’s go there some day.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Narayan can help us when we’re out there. He knows a lot about his country and he’s a practising Hindu. And he’s a really nice guy.’
‘I can see that. And, unlike some of your sports freak friends, he’s not just about macho vanity and self-absorption. It’s good he has a soul. When are you inviting him again?’
Max asked Narayan over two days later, and soon he was coming round at least twice a week. Eventually, Max broached with Clare the idea of their working together on a book about India. She thought it an excellent idea, and soon they started a course in Indian civilisation, offered by a university department. After a while Clare asked for a sabbatical from her job, and she and Max provisionally planned to go out to India the following year; they would stay with Narayan in Chennai.
Max continued to be disturbed by reluctant erotic fantasies of Narayan’s hard male body. He would often visualise that body swimming underwater in the pool or shooting in on a breaker, thighs flexed, plunging down the wall of a toppling wave. Max tried to confine these fantasies to a corner of his attention, admissible but unthreatening, concentrating instead on the reality of his sex life with Clare and the undiminished fulfilment she would always give him.