Chapter 10: A Close Shave

Abba.

That was the last thing I threw into the back of the pick-up as I joined Jed in the front seat. The drive was uneventful but for one thing. Almost as soon as we were at the end of the street, the lighting popped out in large swathes until there was no illumination around at all except that which was emitted by the vehicle.

On the trip, I asked myself, have the two girls made all the necessary preparations for our trip? I didn't think that there would have been much to do. It was pleasing that Sarita got on well enough with Kari and that she had returned earlier to spend the afternoon helping her.

What had the pair of them been doing?

Sarita

As I opened the door the antagonism from Kari hit me like a stone wall.

"Where have you been and what time are you setting off?" enquired Kari before I'd even got in the house. But that was not what was uppermost in her mind. There was resentment in her whole demeanour as she led the way up the stairs to the flat.

And it was evident when we reached the narrow entrance to the landing at the top of the stairs. Oh god! Is that what it smells like? No wonder the girl had such a poisonous look on her face this morning before we left. Kari must have thought we'd been bonking all night!

At the doorway to the bedsitter* I recognised the still strong odour of sex. "Oh, I see you never changed the sheets," I uttered as she almost bumped into me in the doorway.

She had it bad. I giggled, I just couldn't help it. What must James have thought throughout the day, having experienced that smell first thing this morning? And my treating it as hilarious was so out of character. Normally, I'd have been mortified. I think it was my nervousness that made me burst out with laughter.

"You're laughing at me!"

She accused me of laughing at HER!

"Oh, no way, it's not you. It's me. I'm so embarrassed I've been with James half the day and he acted so properly. James never said a word and what must he have thought? What must he have been thinking behind my back? In no way was I laughing at you. Myself, yes. You must think I was terrible."

I'd hardly moved from the doorway. Now I was aware of another source of an odour, a smell I recognised, a strong male smell came to me – from the heat of her body!

I stumbled backwards and stared at her incomprehensibly until I saw it. I started to chortle. A long low hiccupping sound escaped my attempts to put an end to noises escaping from the top of my throat.

That printed tee shirt that was tight across her bust. That was Abba's shirt. I knew enough to appreciate that there were clean ones around and she had pulled on his the one he had been wearing yesterday. Why?

Only one reason I could think of. It told me a lot about her. And she had not changed the sheets on the bed. How could someone want to sleep in sweaty bed after a man had used it?

The silly thing had it bad for my Abba. I let that thought tumble about inside me as if it were new. And I recognised that it was fact I'd known before

Jealousy hit me. I stifled that reaction. There was no room for that stupidity. We HAD to work together.

"Look, we're both interested in Abba?" I started.

If looks could kill, I'd be six feet under, the moment I opened my mouth.

Despite the resentment, which I ignored, I set out my case. "We've got to live together. You know what we did last night."

"That was obvious!" she spurted.

How do I approach this? If I'm not careful, the moment we're on the road, she'll take every opportunity to malign me to Abba. I know what females are like, bitchy!

I would do that, in her shoes. "You've made your feelings quite obvious. You showed us guys this morning what you felt about Abba and me. Are you going to stab me in the back the moment we set off? Come off it Kari, this is no time for petty jealousies. Apart from anything else, Abba won't stand for it."

"Abba, he, he saw?"

"Saw you this morning? Your girly temper tantrum was obvious to all." I had resented it then and I resented her attitude now.

"But he is he coming back? Can I still go with you?"

And then I relaxed. This was no time to fight over things. I needed this girl to come with us. We needed her expertise.

"Forget Abba's reaction, it's yours, that worries me."

"Sarita, what did Abba say about my reaction? Was he upset?"

"Abba? He never noticed a thing."

"What?"

"Abba's a man, of course he never noticed the way you took one look at the bed and stomped around."

"He never noticed?"

"Are you thick? Sorry that's, not very polite. Kari, Abba had his head in the clouds this morning, his mind was on other things than your childish behaviour."

Again I relented. That was unfair. "Kari, it wasn't childish. I know now, obviously you had expectations there."

"But how could you, the Virg... ?"

"The Virgin of Jaipur," I filled in and snorted. That was funny now, to me it was. It never had been before.

How could I? I could well ask myself the same question. Well, for the first thing, I never expected Miss Wet Fish to be jealous of me like that. I stared at her in that tee shirt. "You surprised me." I'd heard of students wearing their boyfriends' clothes without washing so they could smell them. " Have you got it bad for him too? I never knew."

"But you!" she accused.

And she was right, it was unreal for me to sleep with anyone.

Her surprise was evident in her face, "I never knew you and he were like that; it stunned me!"

"Kari, it shocked me too. I'm not promiscuous." She deserved an explanation. "Look Kari, I've got to tell you a little about myself.

"I was brought up, in India, to never look at a man before I was married, but here, so many Western girls appeared to be having fun. I gave it a shot and it's a mistake I've regretted ever since. That was five, six years ago and I vowed I'd wait for marriage. I've never slept with another man since, nor wanted to until last night. I knew my parents would do a better job of finding a suitable husband for me."

"You, you'd have a forced marriage?"

How is it that when you're tense, trying to make a point, the interchange takes its own course and you have to go off on a tangent to make yourself understood. This was getting us nowhere but, "Kari, now is not the time to talk about arranged marriages. Let's face it, I made a complete, how do you say, balls up, on my own."

"But a forced marriage?"

This had nothing to do with what we were talking about. "Listen. My parents wouldn't have forced me to into a marriage I didn't want. Just listen to what I'm saying. First, I was brought up strictly where girls were expected to perform well academically but I knew that before I was thirty, a marriage would be arranged and then I should have to devote my attention to my husband. And, for your benefit, I trusted my parents to choose someone, a man, compatible with my temperament. My father would never have forced me to have husband I did not want. There's a world of difference between a forced and an arranged marriage. Are you listening?"

"Yes," she said it reluctantly.

I just wanted her to understand the real me so I went on. "In the UK, I decided I'd find out what this wonderful life with 'sex for fun' was all about. I chose a handsome man a few years older than I was, a smart car, good restaurants. I had chosen a wonderful lover. I shan't go into it all. He saw me coming. He selected me. Believe me, I didn't choose a lover. He saw me for a simple gullible fool and seduced me before I knew what was happening.

"It took an unexpected call at his apartment to realise he was fucking another girl. They were laughing at me. When I picked myself up and when I managed to catch up on my lectures, I saw my credit cards had been maxed out. He had taken my virginity, my faith in men, and me for a ride."

She was listening now.

"For the last few years I've been hiding money problems, which I ran up then with his help. My parents don't know I was moonlighting, trying to make inroads to the debts. I was working as locum the day I was qualified, even every day off since."

"And?"

"That brings me to now, Kari, just listen. The last few days I haven't had a reply from Mum and Dad. Dad had been in bed. Mum had a small cold the last time I spoke, last Saturday."

That seems a year ago, not a week.

"I tried to ring my relatives and all I got was an answer phone from Uncle Gunji on Monday night. It told me the phones were working. There was no reply from any person. I tried everyone I knew. I can only assume they were taken by the virus, all of them."

"That must have been terrible?"

"No worse than what must have happened to you, to all of us."

"And?"

"And, Wednesday, I tried to get on a flight to Delhi but couldn't get to the airport, a crash or something, all flights cancelled. I was lucky to catch a train back here. We were crammed in. I stood all the way and my luggage was stolen. I had no idea what to do and went to the uni hall where I have a room. No one was there at all. I slept that night then went to the library to try the internet, to find what was happening. It was down."

"Down?" Kari had to ask because my garbled speech reflected the fact that I was upset.

"The internet."

"Yes, everybody knew that."

"I didn't but that's what I found out." We were just coming out of the library when I was grabbed. The police think he had raped others." I think the emotion showed how upset I was in recalling the incident, "Abba, he attacked him, he came out like a prancing fairy. It terrified me to recall that he practised dancing. I thought he was a queer, dancing down the steps but in two moves took him out. Calm as a cucumber he was."

"Cool as a cucumber."

"Whatever."

I decided to say no more about that. Much as I wanted to tell her everything, there was no need to admit to a killing by my Abba. I had no idea what the future might hold. "That's how Abba and I, how we met up!"

"Yesterday, but you!"

"Yes, I threw away all the morality that I was brought up to respect. I ignored my own experience and my own vows of caution and it was me who dragged him into bed. I needed him. He's saved my life. I've relied on him over the last two days when everything around us is turning stale and rotten, he's plodding on with his plans to take me to his grandfather's, where he's assured me we will be safe and I believe him."

"He's convinced me too, you know? I trust him."

"That's two of us and we have good reason. I'd trust him here more than I'd trust my own parents And I feel bad saying that because they might be dead. And I'm his."

Kari's face fell. I could see her disappointment having divulged how she felt she thought she had lost him.

Taking a deep breath, I was about to speak quietly. I put my arm around her. I wasn't good at 'lovey dovey'* but it came naturally to comfort her.

"I thought..." she choked.

"You thought he could do the same for you as he's doing for me. And you thought no way would the 'Virgin of Jaipur' beat you into his bed."

"Mmmm,"

"I want to ask you, Kari, how much do you want to come with us to this place he's talking about? You understand, it might all fall through? There might be nothing there."

"Are you trying to put me off?"

"Everything around us is falling to pieces. I'm trying not to raise your hopes."

"You believe him, don't you?"

"I believe him."

"Then I want to come, even if I can't be..."

"You want him, don't you?

"I'm sorry; I'll try not to come between you."

"But then we need you. We need you so much and I don't think he knows how much we need you. You have something to offer to help us, you're practical and neither of us two is. Can we be friends?"

"Please, can I come?"

"That's already agreed. I don't think it's up for discussion, that's if you want to?"

She did not have to answer that.

I took a deep breath, "Have you been listening to the radio?

"Yes?"

"You were listening after lunchtime to those scientists?"

"They've known about this for weeks; been tracking the deaths." Anger was in her recrimination.

"Yes, you heard what they said about who catches it and who doesn't?"

"Those who drink contaminated water and those who breathe in their breath. The worst hit are the elderly and the very young and then those living in close proximity, like prisons hospitals and old people's homes, students' halls of residence. They told all the universities to close down a week ago but a lot didn't, we didn't. Oh, and those in bad housing, having poor diets, they're more susceptible."

"And men and women? They were talking about that."

"They said the sexes were affected about the same, except for those with natural immunity. Oh but more women, had died. The lucky ones are those having natural 'ruby' something immunity or it might run in families or something about having some disease."

"Exactly."

"You are going to tell me something?"

"Have you had the rubella immunisation?

"Er?"

"Kari, think! When you were at school, did you and the other girls have an injection when you were about twelve?"

"Yes, something about causing problems in babies if we ever got pregnant. The nuns never said much about it."

"That was in all probability the rubella vaccine. What I'm saying is that it's most effective the more recent it is and no, it's too late to have it now. You know the rubella virus is passed on by direct contact and by coughing and sneezing the virus into the air. It takes two to three weeks to develop symptoms after being infected."

"But that's how these symptoms are passed on," it struck her except that the symptoms developed within two to three hours.

"Not unusual for viral transmission," but she wasn't listening.

"Ah! German measles!" she exclaimed all of a sudden.

I WAS getting through to her. "I'm trying to say, have you noticed that of the few people we've seen around, there are more young females?"

"Can't say I have."

'Well, if those with rubella antibodies are more resistant, who are the people more likely to have those antibodies, men or young females who have been given vaccine within the least ten years?"

"You mean I'm, not likely to..."

"Hold your horses. We're talking about a likelihood of survival, a one per cent or half a per cent advantage over somebody else."

"Oh."

"So why did you say that?"

"When I went in the other halls of residence at the uni, there was a group of females in the junior common room and I hardly saw any men there."

"But there could be reasons for that."

"But I opened the doors of a number of the rooms. There were more dead occupants in the men's rooms than in the women's."

"So, Doctor, what's your point?"

"I thought it was clear."

"As clear as mud."

"If we manage to stay alive then there are going to be more young women around than there are men."

"But I heard them say on the news that records had shown in the first week that more women had died than men. They try to confuse you don't they? There was another report said more women died."

"That's easily explained. We were studying Geriatrics about five years ago."

"Geriatrics? What's that got to do with it? That's old age, isn't it?"

I started again, "When we were studying Geriatrics four or five years ago, we looked at the demographic* make-up of the sexes by age."

"What?"

" ... How many old men and women there were. I bet you never knew that for every one hundred men over the age of sixty-five in 1984, there were a hundred and fifty six women alive? The difference is narrowing but I'm trying to explain that if old people died first then naturally there would be more female deaths than male. It explains that statement on the news."

"So even if more women died, you still think that more younger ones are surviving?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying and have you listened to the radio? Most of the speakers have been female today. I was listening to an Irish programme this morning and they said something like that."

"So how does that affect us?"

I'm trying to say, that for every man, every male survivor, there might be one, two or even more females.

"So you got in first and slept with him because you..."

I don't think I had thought that far ahead. Why had I jumped into bed with him? "There are so many reasons I made love to him and don't ask me to explain them all. I bet you couldn't tell me exactly why you were so upset this morning, I mean, why did you want him for your partner?"

"What?"

"One thing I'm certain of is that I'm going to fight to keep him."

"From me? And you want me to help you? What is it you want? Some little maid servant sniffing at his coat tails? No, thank you!"

"Kari, a man like Abba, I can't keep him. I saw that straightaway."

"Not good enough for him are we? No good in the sack*?"

"Oh Kari, if I weren't honest with you, in two days, two weeks, two months or two years with a shortage of men, you'd be doing more than sniffing around his coat tails, you'd be in the bed with him, we both know that. You're stunning and so poised and..." I felt so small next to her and it wasn't just her stature.

"So you want me to shake hands and say goodbye, is that it? We should ignore all the work I did for both of you last night?"

"Get real, Kari and listen."

"Listen to what? A..."

"Kari, LISTEN!"

She even took a step back as I shouted.

"If we are still together, the three of us, and you and I are fighting each other, not one of us is going to end up the winner. You know it won't work like that. I'll be looking over my shoulder?" The words slipped out before I had thought. She would be pain in the neck. Why couldn't we all just be friends? Why did emotions have to intercede? We should just work together.

Damn, I wanted Abba. I loved him. My logic was so wound up with emotions. I knew Kari was so beautiful. I wasn't prepared to give up Abba to her. She was tall, that reddish tint to her natural brown hair that I was so envious of. Everyone said she was a Viking born with the wrong colour hair. Her hair was magnificent. But I knew more about the Vikings than these British kids. Wasn't 'Eric the Red' a red-haired Viking? I had been to Yorvik*.

"Are you all right?"

I was hauled out of my reverie by the epitome of a Viking goddess. No wonder those men tried to rape her! Abba would fall for her; he wouldn't be able to help himself. Where would that leave me?

I knew so little about her but at least she was beginning to understand me. Or was she? What I was thinking was absurd but it made sense. I'd had it in the back of my mind all the time I'd been working out the demographic effects of this bloody virus.

Tentatively I started, "You know earlier, with Abba, I said, I'm his lover? I don't know exactly what I mean. But with him, I feel so ineffective. He needs more than just me. It's as if James was there supporting him today as I couldn't. Yesterday it was you.

"No, Kari, don't interrupt! We both need you with your practical bent. It's obvious we don't just want Abba, we need him and you both need me and my knowledge and skills. Apart from that, with all we're going to have to do, it's going to take two of us to look after a man like him." I was beseeching her as I asked, "Will you help me?"

"Of course I will but you get all the..."

"I mean. Oh, I don't know how to say this, not just with washing his clothes and cooking a meal but giving him support, companionship, you know?"

"I think I do. Yes, a second class citizen, a bloody maidservant!'

"I was thinking more like an equal."

"An equal, how do you work that out?"

With a lot of difficulty, "It's hard saying this but we don't want to be fighting each other. We want to do what's best for Abba. I want you to be his girlfriend too."

"Be his girlfriend?"

"One with benefits, if that's what you call it. That's if you want?"

"What are you saying?"

I don't want to lose him to you. I'm prepared to share if you are."

"Share?"

There was a pause, "Abba? Share Abba?" her eyes opened as her jaw dropped in amazement.

"Yes."

She was silent for over a minute. I could see the cogs in her brain revolving slowly until they came to a stop, "What is it with you, foreigners. It might be easy for you Muslims and your harems. You're used to it. We're not."

"Smack!"

Oh cripes! My hand stung. Her face was starting to reveal the outline of my handprint. "I didn't mean that. I was so wound up." I'd never hit anyone before. But to call me a Muslim! That was the worst thing you could call a Hindu.

"Muslim!" I spat out, "Don't you know wars have been fought to separate the Hindi and Moslem. They hate us more then the Jews and the Christians. You know India was divided between the Muslims and Hindus. They've wanted to enslave us for centuries and convert us all. A fat lot you know about the history of your Empire!"

"You HURT me!"

"Well you've hurt me."

She rubbed her face, "But what I mean is, don't Hindus too have more than one wife? You find it easier to share a man,"

"You're a Christian?"

"Yes."

"Then you're used to having loads of wives."

"But we don't."

"No? In your bible there are many men with lots of wives who are not condemned for practising polygamy. Polygamy isn't a crime in your religion or wasn't until recently. What about the church of the Latter Day Saints?"

"I've never heard of them."

"You have. They follow the book of Mormon."

"The Mormons?"

"You were brought up to be OK with polygamy, like Jacob and Abraham." Joseph Smith, a Mormon had thirty wives. He was one of the leaders of a Christian church. You're a Christian."

"But I'm C. of E.* I've never heard of Joseph what do you call him?"

"Exactly and I've never known a man with more than one wife. Joseph Smith was a Christian. You said you were one. Do you like being compared to him?"

"Er, no."

"Then do you understand when I disliked being compared to people who my friends would despise?"

"I've put my foot in it, haven't I?"

"Too right, polygamy is as alien to the way I was brought up as it is to you, if not more so."

"Can we start again?"

"Too right we can! Now, Kari, I haven't given it a lot of thought. But the idea has been running around in my head for hours." It had been smouldering there yesterday. "I want you to join us going to this Bow Valley place."

"Bow Valley?"

"Yes, Abba's grandfather's place is there. He let that drop earlier."

"If there are three of us going, I reckon we're going to be getting pretty close and if two of us are sleeping together then you will feel ostracised with us two as a couple, in a relationship. I could see you hanging around, moping about being left out. We both of us need all the friends we can get. I need a friend, as well as Abba's company. He makes me feel safe. I'm not sure it's the right thing to do. I'll probably prove to be the biggest fool ever but if you treat him right and don't push him away from me, I'll try not to get clingy if you have some time with Abba."

That came out all garbled and I had always prided myself on a clear exposition in writing up notes. What had come over me?

"Time with Abba?"

Had she not heard what I had said? She stared at me with wide open eyes. They were so big and blue and then she threw her arms around me and we hugged again. I felt better being given the affection of having another friend. I think the world was so dangerous. I felt terribly alone and it was less than a couple of hours, since Abba had dropped me off.

Kari moved back to speak, "Why are you doing this for me?"

"I think I need a friend and not someone ready to stab me in the back but believe me, if you try and split us apart, I'll fight you tooth and nail and I'll win no matter how beautiful you are."

"Beautiful! I'm an overgrown lumbering lank compared to you. I see why he fell for your sultry looks."

"Sultry?" Dirty unwashed more like.

We stared at each other jealously for a few moments and then burst out laughing in unison.

"As long as you recognise that if you play unfair you'll lose in the long run," I promised.

"You'd better not break your promise. Er, how do we do this?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it."

"But Abba comes first doesn't he?"

"That's right. Oh cripes! Are you safe?"

"Safe?"

"Have you been tested, STD's? You're not a virgin are you?"

"That's a lot to answer. No, I'm not a virgin I've had two men. The first, Alan, he gave me chlamydia. It was a girl that he had gone out with before me, well, that's what he said but I wasn't too sure now whether to believe him."

"So if you knew you had it, you've been tested? And had treatment?"

"Too right!" She went on in an embarrassed way, "Then I met Jason. He was virgin, of that there was no doubt. We were OK but he went off to a college near Newcastle and he met a girl within a week of arriving. I'm sort of glad; I couldn't have carried on with him, long distance. And he didn't even live that near me at home."

'You used condoms?"

"After Alan, too right and I was tested when we split up. I wasn't going to be bitten twice."

"That's one relief."

"What?"

"Well if you'd given anything to Abba like chlamydia, I'd get it too. You know it causes infertility if left untreated? You did say you got tested? I'm just trying to make quite sure."

"Yes, but not in the last year."

"But have you had any partners?"

"Not since last October when I met Jason, just a week before he told me we had broken up."

"Any since then?" Even as I spoke I was asking myself if Jason knew he was going to be breaking up before he schemed one last fuck. What is it with me? I always think the worst of men. I must train myself never to think of Abba like that. "So you haven't slept with anyone else?"

"You don't know?"

"What are you trying to say?"

"Everyone knows. They call me Miss Permafrost or Miss Fish."

I'd heard about her being called Wet Fish and going past male students as if they didn't exist. "Miss Permafrost?" I couldn't help giggling.

"Not so fast, you have a reputation too. You know you're renowned? I saw you over a year ago in the refectory. You reduced one young man who approached you into a snivelling wreck. The whole dining hall was laughing at him. You annihilated him completely. Some of them had just arrived from a history lecture on Europe a thousand years ago. You've been called The Tartar ever since. That's when they're not talking about the Virgin of Peshawar..."

"Jaipur." I filled in to both of our chuckles.

She went on, "I was so envious of your put down on him I had to look it up. The Tartars defeated most of Eastern Europe."

I smiled. I said nothing. Had someone known my family name was 'Tata'. It simply meant 'father'. I did not think there was any need to disclose that titbit of information to my new friend.

I had rather prided myself on the putdowns I delivered. I wasn't bothered as much as I used to be. I had the unfortunate appearance of looking young. Young freshers took me to be eighteen, naïve and waiting to be seduced. I disillusioned them as soon as possible. I had learned.

"Yes, I used to say things like, if your penis is twice the size of what you think your intelligence is, the girls here are going to be very dissatisfied."

"Uh?"

"Quite! It didn't have to make a lot of sense but it was fun looking up and seeing them work it out. While they were doing that I was wording a second more obvious put down that was only used if they had a come-back on the first."

Well, I was accused of being a lezzie too. In my case I'm afraid it upset me. I wasn't very good at put downs. I hated them saying that. I mean, I don't hate lesbians or anything but the insults were bad, they hurt."

"Well, the pair of us, we've got a lot in common. Look, we really should talk."

"I agree. Er, Sarita, Tell me what do I do, if he asks me to sleep with him?"

"You sleep with him. You will anyhow. You want to, don't you? You were jealous of me this morning just for that reason, I saw it."

"You won't mind?"

"Mind? Of course I mind but I'm going to have to learn to share and so are you. I think it's better if you get that out of the way before we travel."

"WHAT?"

"If you've seen the size of the tent we have, they call it a three-man tent. All I can say is that campers must be a lot friendlier than the homophobic men I've seen at uni. Three midgets would be hard pressed to lie down in it. There MIGHT be little space at the bottom for clothing."