MONEY TREE (21 page)

Anila felt her legs shake. ‘How much are you owed?’

He worked his fingers. ‘Six hundred Rupees,’ he announced triumphantly, sure that this would kill the wretched business.

Anila was making also calculations in her head. If she paid him 600 now, she would have just enough to keep the payments going to the wood gatherer until the agent arrived. But if he didn’t come? Sometimes he was a day late. Or if he came and refused
to buy the goods from the women. . .?

She reached into her sari and pulled out her purse. She looked over at her friends Leena and Divya. They looked at each other and nodded to her. She pulled out the diminishing pile of money – 600 had already been paid to Mr Roy – and counted out a further 600 Rupees. She held it out to the money lender.

‘This is from the cooperative. Now we have no more debts.’

The money lender grabbed the wad like it was a snake. He looked round. He had lost his hold, temporarily. There were no other ways he could think of scoring against his enemy, which she now was. It was time to leave with dignity. He flicked his head and his two men broke their stance and walked over. The three men turned and marched away together, the money lender hobbling in the middle.

Anila felt her shoulders sag. Around her, women were coming over and touching her and saying how strong she was and how they would back her. Others were already picking at the piles of wood coming off the back of the truck. The rusty body swung and creaked on its hinges as Mr Roy stood on its back and began unloading.

Anila selected her own materials and bundled them together within a long rag. She pulled the ends of the rag together and made a pack. With help from her friends she hefted the ungainly bundle onto her head and set off home to make her stools. She had a lot of hard work to do before the agent came. And she badly needed something physical to do to take her raging mind off the all-or-nothin
g situation she’d contrived for herself.

T
ed was tight-lipped as he and Erin stepped out of the bank and back into bedlam. It was a shock after the serenity of the inner courtyard and the ordered bustle of the bank’s operations room. It was eight pm and still broad daylight, yet the narrowness of the street and the three storey buildings in drab cement conveyed twilight.

They were accosted instantly - like flies round a tasty turd – by salesmen asking them to buy their hunger and gain absolution for their Western sin of plenty. A tiny hand touched
Ted’s arm like a warm feather. A girl-child stood with a thin quiet baby in her other scrawny arm. She wanted money, simply and clearly. Probably love too, but that was too nebulous.

He spared her neither from his tourist fortress; straight-jacketed by the warnings about giving to one, drawing the rest like magnets. The guilt would go with him, and always would, so much so that within five paces he was considering seriously going back to find her and press his guilt away with an Olympian donation. Instead he diverted his annoyance to
Erin. He stopped in the road and grabbed her shoulder to halt her and turn her to face him.

‘Listen lady, I’m fed up with you fixing my life for me. I told you before. I’m the reporter around here and I decide what I need to support my sto
ry. Am I making myself clear?!’

He had to shout above the din. They glared at each other. He dropped his arm at her withering look. She was unabashed and shouted back at him.

‘But you have to go see a village bank, Ted. How else are you going to find the truth?’

‘Look, just butt out
, will you? I’ve got enough material to file my report without acquiring a dose of malaria. I managed to avoid it in Baghdad. I don’t need to put my body on the line for a goddamn bit of local colour.’

‘If you didn’t have someone push you now and then,
Ted Saddler, you wouldn’t even get up in the morning.’

‘I was right! You’
re a control freak. You can’t help acting the big executive, can you? I’m not one of your boys, you know. And the one reason I didn’t object to a little trip to the back of beyond is that I’ll get some peace for a couple of days. By comparison, mosquito bites are going to feel like love pecks.’

‘Only if you have the skin of a rhino!’

‘What would you know about sensitivity?!’

Both their faces were red, and they realised they were gathering a small crowd. His exasperation subsided.

‘This is stupid. C’mon. Let’s move,’ he said. ‘CJ said we’d get a taxi at the end of the road. Are you up for this?’

‘I can take anything you can. Come on, tough guy, lead the way. I’m hanging on.’

She took a grip of his upper arm with both hands, and he was forced to laugh and shake his head. He wished he’d kept up the press-ups. He would join the gym when he got back. Give up the doughnuts. Maybe even the beer. Stick to whiskey. Gingerly they began to pick their way down the narrow street. They passed a deal being struck over a gutted electric motor, its copper innards being drawn out, weighed and exchanged for limp Rupees, pulled - soiled and damp like salad leaves - from some secret hiding place on the dealer’s body.

Ted
made the connection. This was New York’s Lower East Side, a hundred years ago, awash with 40 degrees heat, and 100% humidity. Endless noise, perpetual bustle, honing the new factories and salesmen who could beat the West, given the freedom from the choking embrace of corruption and poverty. He wondered if he could use the image in the book? His lofty thoughts crashed to earth.

‘Shit! ‘
Scuse my French.’

Ted
gazed at his foot and wiped off what he could of the sacred cow dung on the broken kerb. Erin kept the smirk off her face. The dark faces round him grinned broadly.

They twisted past street traders and stepped over beggars. They declined offers of help and cries for rupees. They took to the road to get past the odd cow chewing at a lump of spicy cardboard. The intimacy of the shared and outlandish obstacles forced them to swap their sullen faces for wry glances and even the odd grin. Ahead was daylight and the main Chandni Road. They were almost there when a man stepped in front of them.

‘Taxi, Sir, Lady?’ he bowed and swept a hand towards a two-tone cab sitting by the roadside with a driver behind the wheel.

There were no others in sight.
Ted felt like showing who was boss.

‘Great. Let’s grab it.’ 

He helped her into the back of the hot cab. They settled on the springy seat with its off-white cotton cover and Ted told the driver to take them back to their hotel.

They drove for a while, neither ready to make the first peace overture. They edged through the crammed streets, jolting and swaying. Ted was conscious of the smell from his shoe, and thrust it as far under the seat in front as possible. Abruptly their driver found a way through. They took off down a side street and began to make zigzags, sometimes running foul of jams in narrow streets but more often seeming to make real progress.

Ted
had begun by thinking that they’d got lucky and found a driver who really knew the best way through the city. But as they travelled he began to worry that they were being ripped off. It was an odd faculty of his. At any time, anywhere, Ted knew where he was facing, and where his start point was in relation to his present position. It worked in forests and in deserts and in cities. He’d established a reputation for it in his army days. It had been a sense that really came into its own on liberty nights in a strange city. Ted was unerringly able to get his cronies back to their unit no matter how blitzed. He was increasingly convinced they were heading in the wrong direction. They were heading north and away from their hotel.

‘Driver. Say, driver! We’re going the wrong way. We want the Hyatt Regency. It’s on the Ring Road.’

The driver’s dark eyes flicked back at him from the mirror. ‘Yes, sir. I know, sir. This is quicker way. First we have to go round.’

Ted
sat back reluctantly. ‘I’m not sure about this.’

‘How can you tell
Ted? I’m totally lost.’

‘Just something I’m good at.’

They went on for a minute or so until Ted’s patience began to run out. He saw the driver’s face in the mirror. It was looking back at him with increasing nervousness. The roads grew quieter, and if anything, narrower. They seemed to be edging further away from the great hulking buildings of the Raj. The houses were getting more run down. Ted leaned forward and put his big hand on the shoulder of the driver.

‘Ok buddy, that’s enough. I want you to turn round. Do you hear me?!’ The man shifted forward away from him.

‘Everything is ok, sir. Just a little further, you will see.’

Ted
was sweating now. This was a tough call in a strange city, but he knew he was right.

‘Stop the car. Now! We want this car turned round. We’re going back into the city, do you hear!’

‘Ted? Are you sure about this?’

Erin
was getting agitated. What was he trying to prove to her? How could he possibly know better than a local taxi driver? The driver was in a state now and began to speed up, crashing into top gear and careering through crossroads with total abandon.

‘Stop the car
, you idiot!’

Ted
reached forward and with hands pulled on the shoulders of the driver and shook him. It didn’t work.

‘Ok buddy, enough is enough!’

He put one arm round the man’s neck and squeezed.

‘
Ted! My god what are you doing, you lunatic! We’ll crash!’

The driver, ga
sping and gagging, made one last wrench of his wheel, The car swung down a narrow street, demolishing a pile of refuse in a cloud of rotting green and cardboard. As the screen cleared of debris, the taxi broke out into a small bare patch of ground, a maidan formed by squat grey houses on four sides. It was perhaps half the size of a football pitch. There was no exit ahead.

With
Ted’s arm tight round his neck, the driver came to a jerking stop half way across the dusty square. The engine stalled. Ted let go. The driver took his chance, shoved open the door and started to run back the way they’d come.

Ted
’s eyes followed him just in time to see a car draw up, plugging the way in. It held a driver, and two men in the back. They were all hanging out the open windows. The car reversed a couple of feet to make sure it was blocking as much of the exit as possible. Ted’s driver reached the new arrivals and started shouting and pointing furiously back at Ted and Erin. The two men in the back piled out and began to run towards them. Knives glinted in the sun.

‘
I
t’s a set-up! It’s a goddamn set-up!’

Ted
pounds the back of the driver’s seat. Erin is going
oh god, oh god
. Ted launches his great bulk out through door.

‘Where are you going!’
she wails.

He
dives in through the open driver’s door and jams himself behind the wheel. Fumbles for the key left in the ignition. The engine splutters, the car jumps forward and dies. In gear. Hasn’t used a stick shift since his army days. He wrenches it back and forward and finds neutral. Tries the ignition again, floors the accelerator at the same time. It splutters but still doesn’t catch. Flooded.

‘Hurry! Hurry!’ she
’s shouting.

He leans back, b
reathes, takes right foot off the accelerator, checks mirror. Men charging, light flickering on knives. Gently, gently, turns the key. Feels the rumble. Touches accelerator. Senses revs dropping again, about to stall! Lifts foot from pedal. Hears engine stutter, gasp, roar into life. Got it! Flings the gear-stick into first, releases the hand brake. Flattens the pedal and kangaroos off.

F
irst man hurls himself onto the bonnet, face contorted in anger, scrabbling at the windscreen. Second man gains purchase through the open window of the rear passenger door. Begins climbing in.

Ted
wrenches the wheel back and forward. The engine races as the revs mount. Slams into second gear and spins the wheel hard to the left. Man on bonnet sails off. Man two now half way through Erin’s window, slashing at her. Pinning her in the far corner.

Ted
flails with his big fist. Gets lucky and catches the man full on the side of the head. Man lurches back, dazed but not out, and still clinging to the door pillar. Erin delves into her small shoulder bag, pulls out a small canister. Rams it into the face of the attacker and presses. Jet of pepper spray floods his face. Howls and drops his knife and falls backwards out the window. Ted helps him on his way with a final swerve to the right.

Running
out of square now. Slams gearstick into reverse, kicks up a dust cloud making it impossible to spy the way out. Wrenches at the handbrake and spins the steering wheel, all the time foot hard to the floor in second gear. Engine shrieks and car judders round on the dirt and gravel. First man comes at them again. Ted doesn’t hesitate. Slips off the brake and shoots forward. The man crunches into the bonnet and smashes the windscreen as he bounces and caterwauls up and over the roof.