36.

Belle’s first meeting with Walter Guttridge, the archaeologist, was memorable. She had not expected him to be, well, so large – over six foot six – and well into his seventies too, with long straggly hair and a dark tan that served to exaggerate the deeply etched lines around his eyes. Judging by the look of him, he was still spry, but he had a strange habit of pulling his left ear when he was speaking.

‘I was sent here in 1905 from the British Museum,’ he said in a loud and strident voice after Harry had introduced them and he had agreed to take Belle out with him for the morning.

‘Quite a culture shock, I imagine.’

He nodded his agreement. ‘The government had recently decided to maintain and preserve Bagan. For more than thirty years I’ve been surveying the area, making recommendations, overseeing renovations and so on.’

They were walking and talking as he led her along sandy tracks towards the village, bypassing tall clumps of bamboo and wild banana and the secrets of the dense forest beyond. Harry had cried off with some excuse of work he urgently needed to do, and so Belle was on her own with this bear of a man who seemed so incongruous among the tiny Burmese and yet whom they all seemed to respect. He spoke to them in their own language and nodded and laughed as they replied.

Belle glanced up at him. ‘You know everyone?’

‘As I said, I’ve been here a long time.’

‘Would you ever go home?’

‘This is home.’

‘Even when you retire?’

‘I don’t intend to ever retire. I shall continue to live and work and then I shall drop. Here.’

‘The purser on the boat said you might be able to recall the story of a white baby being accompanied by a Burmese couple on their way to Mandalay.’

‘I recall it all right. Back in 1912, wasn’t it?’

‘1911, actually.’

‘Very curious it was … at the time.’

‘And you saw the baby yourself?’

‘Ah, no. That would have been my assistant.’

‘He’s here?’

‘He will be. He’s on his way down from Mandalay. Has family there.’

‘I hope he’ll be back before I have to leave.’

As they arrived she looked around at the village. At first glance, it appeared to consist entirely of wooden-framed houses, the walls constructed of intricately woven bamboo.

‘Are they bamboo? The walls?’

‘Toddy palm, actually. They cover the windows with bamboo matting.’

The first house, nestling amid the trees, built on stilts and with a thatched roof, looked cosy. In front and to the side of it, in an enclosed compound, a woman swept the earth, a child played with a ball, and several scrawny chickens pecked about in the dust. At the back two mottled goats were tethered to a spike and a dog lay slumbering in the shade.

‘What do the people do?’ she asked.

‘Cultivation, fishing. They make farm implements and nets, ropes, sails. And some make lacquerware to sell to the pilgrims who come.’

She had worked out Guttridge was deaf in the left ear, the one he continually pulled as if to encourage it to function again, and so she made a point of always walking on his right-hand side. They passed three barefoot monks in saffron-coloured robes with two very young ones following behind carrying bowls. Belle asked him about them.

‘Between the ages of seven and thirteen, the boys live together in the monasteries for differing amounts of time. Those who stay form strong bonds, become a family of sorts.’

‘Do all the boys have to do this?’

‘All Buddhist Burmese boys become novice monks for at least a few weeks, some for several months, some even for years, especially if they have no family.’

‘Can they leave?’

‘Of course. They can return to normal life at any time or they can stay on as a monk.’

‘And the bowls are to collect food?’

‘Yes. They can only eat what they are given. Sometimes it’s just rice. They believe life always includes an element of suffering and the cause of suffering is desire. To end the suffering, you give up desire and attachment. Hence their simple lifestyle.’

Belle wondered about it. Certainly, her desire for Oliver had ended in suffering but, despite that, wasn’t life all about light and shade? And she couldn’t help thinking she’d prefer facing the challenges of such a life, with all its ups and downs, rather than existing in a lacklustre one. But then again, she was young, and knew she had a lot to learn.

She paused to watch a beautifully dressed woman wearing a longyi with a traditional shawl, her neck and wrists encircled by gold chains. Squatting on the compacted earth, she was grinding the wood she would then mix with water to make thanaka paste. Shyly, she held some out and with a few nods encouraged Belle to take it. Belle smoothed some on her hand, but it dried rapidly in the oppressive heat and began to itch.

At a small crossroads an Indian man was waiting with a horse roped to a carriage, or rather something that looked more like a cart with open sides and a straw roof, clearly intended to serve as a carriage.

‘We are going in that?’

Guttridge nodded. ‘Best way. You’re welcome to walk but it’ll get hellishly hot.’

As they reached the odd-looking vehicle he helped Belle up the one step at the back and then folded himself into the cart too.

‘So, what are you doing today?’

‘Checking up on a stupa over on the far side.’

‘Stupa?’

‘A stupa, sometimes called a pagoda, is the top of a huge structure, often with a relic chamber inside. During the Pagan kingdom’s height between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, there were over ten thousand Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries built in these plains alone. It was Pagan then, not Bagan.’

‘How many are left?’

‘Less than three thousand. You’ll be able to spot the ones we’ve restored in recent years, mainly using Indian labour which hasn’t always gone down well.’ He shook his head. ‘Some are sadly too far gone. You’ll see them cracked and ruined, lost beneath the greenery strangling them. Mind you, the earthquakes haven’t helped. It’s a wonder so many have survived.’

‘And the people live among them?’

‘The way they have always done, although there’s talk of moving them out.’

‘What a shame. I like the idea that ordinary life is going on around the monuments.’

The carriage set off on its bumpy path, bypassing the occasional cow or sheep. With no springs to soften the ride, Belle was jolted, jerked and bumped as Guttridge’s booming voice fought with the loud screech of metallic wheels. She spotted stupa after stupa, usually in the reddish colour of the earth upon which they stood, looking as if they were acts of nature and not edifices built by man.

‘And what are all the trees?’

‘Tamarind, plum, neem mainly,’ he said. ‘But to really understand the layout a hot air balloon is the only way to see it all. Are you game? I’m going up tomorrow. You have time. My assistant won’t be back until later.’

Belle glanced up at the sky. Was she game?

‘Constructed in England to the highest standards and brought over some years ago. Completely transformed what we do. I’ve trained the local lads as helpers, so it’s perfectly safe.’

After a moment she nodded and began to feel excited. What did she have to lose?

‘You’ll have to be in the field by five in the morning. We always go up before dawn. Mark my words, seeing the sun rise over the plain is an experience you’ll never forget.’

At the sound of persistent knocking Belle woke in complete darkness, her head still throbbing from the hours she’d spent in the cart during the unforgiving heat of the previous day. She fumbled for a light switch, glanced at her watch and saw she only had five minutes before she was due to meet Walter Guttridge in the hall downstairs. She climbed into a pair of loose-fitting trousers, threw on a long-sleeved white shirt and then, as an afterthought, added a woollen cardigan. It might be cold up there this early in the day.

Guttridge was waiting for her as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Ready?’ he asked in a brisk tone of voice that brooked no dissent.

She nodded, wishing she’d had time for a cup of tea and slightly regretting she’d agreed to do this.

The driver of the bullock used a torch with just a suggestion of light to faintly reveal the track, though what he could see was a mystery to Belle. However, he succeeded in driving them to a place where her eye was instantly drawn to a brightly burning brazier. In the eerie silence, but for the sound of the fire, it took a while for her eyes to adjust to the gloomy field. Gradually she made out the shape of a huge balloon lying flat on the ground and saw dark figures were moving about noiselessly as they prepared the balloon for flight. She shivered, and by the time the gas was lit and had begun to roar, and the balloon had been raised from the ground, something was buzzing and thumping in her ears. The basket seemed so small and insignificant. Surely it couldn’t be safe?

‘Come on then,’ Guttridge said. ‘Time to climb in. I will be noting any changes I spot since I last went up, so I’m afraid I’ll not be talkative.’

He went first, along with one other man. As she waited her turn she admonished herself. Embrace the experience, she whispered. You may never get another chance. She used the moment to settle herself before a helper stepped forward with a stool which she used to climb into the basket in a less than graceful fashion, feeling glad she’d worn trousers. From there she could now see five other men holding the balloon steady by pulling on long ropes.

Guttridge explained the rules. Then the basket bumped a little and began to rise, and she felt a thrill.

Before long they were high above Bagan, drifting in the cool, silent air. At first, when she saw the land wreathed in mist, she felt disappointed. But then the mist melted and as the sun gradually rose, it tinted the tops of the pagodas and stupas in shimmering shades of pink and gold. Her spirits soared as she witnessed the full magnitude of the ancient plain. The further the balloon floated on, the more she saw: smoke circling up from a lone farm, tidy regulated patchworks of fields, bullocks already ploughing, birds swooping, and the silence broken only by the ringing of temple bells or the bark of a dog. She hadn’t expected the timeless tranquillity of floating in the air above the extraordinary expanse of so many ancient monuments. In the distance the sun streamed across the water of the Irrawaddy, turning it silvery-gold. She wasn’t religious but there was something about this she could only call mystical. Full of the sense there was so much more to life than she’d ever known, her eyes dampened. She felt light, transformed, as if she too belonged suspended high up, sharing the air with birds and the gentle wind. That the world could contain such extraordinary beauty and yet such violence seemed incomprehensible, but she knew she would somehow have to find a way to understand and accept these extremes.

She felt she could have stayed up there for days but by the time Guttridge had finished jotting his findings in his notebook the ride was almost over.

Their descent was slow and the landing bumpy as they came back down to earth, the basket thumping several times as it bounced along the ground. Apart from that slight discomfort Belle had spent the time smiling with satisfaction. She would live her life differently now. She would stop dwelling on what had happened in Rangoon. She would see with new eyes and stop worrying about what she couldn’t change. Never had she expected to ride in a hot air balloon in one of the world’s most extraordinary and beautiful settings. But she had.