Undercurrent by Frances Fyfield

you. You're a somebody ; you didn't become a nonentity with a dry career like me; you stayed that bright light you were. So bright, she could shine in the darkness, it had seemed to him, twenty years ago. Had her beauty been so spectacular, or was it another kind of singularity which made her so haunting, even against the dramatic scenery of the Indian subcontinent?

    Brilliant blue skies, the almost surreal colours of vegetation and the peacock shades of clothing against the dull browns of dried palm fronds which cooled the village houses. . . the vivid cerise of split watermelon; the yellow of the daily pineapple. . . He could struggle to remember the debilitating intoxication of the constant, visual feast it had been, and yet remember her, dressed in dull khaki trousers and her long hair in a twist. He could recall, with difficulty, the impact of the Indian women, the poor in the country, the rich in the hotels, universally exquisite but achingly untouchable.

    They were removed by their eyes, dress, language, decorum and, surely, indifference to a large, hulking young man who went pink in the sun and could not digest their food. The one who watched them covertly, aware of his clumsiness and their fragility. He should have remembered them; he should have remembered the magnificence of the scenery, captured painstakingly on his camera, but all he remembered was her, the one he was never allowed to photograph.

    Henry walked slowly through the streets, seeing nothing. He had been fragile when they had met, his stomach recovered to the extent that he could eat selectively and drink litres of bottled water a day. The water supplies weighed down his rucksack more than anything else and he was-too weak to sling it over his shoulder. And he was starved for conversation, too, after the deliberate isolation of his travels.

    He had been determined to avoid the wandering tribes of travellers with their incessant boasts of cheaper accommodation, cheaper dope, better bargains. He had wanted to climb hills and see unknown views, and had almost done it; he was sick of it, and sicker of his own indolence.
    Wherever he went, everyone else was working. They worked with incessant, labour-intensive industry while all he had done for three months was to follow an elaborate, carefully prepared itinerary and watch them about the business of their sweated labour.

    He was humbled by generosity, infuriated by incurable poverty; he was lonely and nervous and sick of responding to Hallo, how are you? with the single response possible, I'm good, thank you, in the hourly recitation of a daily lie. Coming into the sanctuary of a shaded guest house to find her sitting on the veranda, telling stories to children, her instant appeal to him was not unique, but simply inevitable.

    Perhaps because she liked poetry and thought it entirely natural to carry around a volume of verse when a packet of nuts would have been more useful. It was a cool evening; she wore a cheap shawl to cover her thin shoulders. He had thought, from behind, that she was an elderly woman.

    Henry had reached the view of the pier without noticing any building he had passed, lost in memory of another time and place, and he swore under his breath. This was the most regular habit of his lifetime, making journeys to foreign destinations, covering every inch on foot and then somehow not seeing a thing, walking around with his eyes on the ground, privately occupying another space. That was why, years since, thinking of Francesca even then, he had stopped carrying a camera, because when he looked at the pictures when he got home he recognized nothing, as if he had turned a blind eye to the lens, like Nelson to his telescope. He did not feel he had ever been there, and here he was now, just the same.

    You don't really look, Henry, do you? You take an inventory and pass it on.

    Francesca had not been critical when she said that. She had simply been curious, as she was about everything. It was