LONDON ALERT (2 page)

The
school had
a
bursary to help boys in difficult
circumstances and agreed to let
Holt
stay on
without the fees being paid
for
the
term and a half
remain
ing
until summer
.

‘It will give you time to find your feet,’ had said
the headmaster.

It did in a way, and especially at the beginning,
because everyone was so kind. A couple of boys had told their mothers, and they
invited Holt to their homes for the weekend. There, he was showered with
attention, compassion, and even love, which was a far cry from what he received
from his aunt. However, after five weeks, when things were getting back to
normal, a tremendous feeling of loneliness overcame him. Gone for a time was
the laughing boy playing practical jokes.

Even though his mother and father had had to
struggle to pay the mortgage on the house and the school fees, they were
considerably richer than his uncle and aunt, who with the connivance of the
solicitor had moved into his parents’ house. Just about able to find the money
to pay the mortgage using some of the money earmarked for Holt, they did not
have much left to spend on him. He could not expect any more holidays abroad.

That was not strictly true, for the first summer,
the brigadier’s family next door invited him to join them on their holiday in
France. What made the holiday with them especially enjoyable was the presence
of their vivacious daughter, Samantha. She was a year older than he and, as a
girl, so much more mature, and he was well aware she was quite out of his reach.
That did not prevent the sight of those bronze thighs emanating from her tight
shorts being a mixture of pleasure and torment. Yet, unlike many attractive
girls that age, she never put him down or ignored him. In fact, she always
listened to what he had to say with interest.

Unfortunately, the brigadier had retired from the
army, and the family soon after moved away, down to Hampshire.

After a year at an ordinary secondary school, Holt
was accepted at a grammar school. Without seeming to do any work he managed to
pass exams with top grades. The trouble was that apart from his unrequited
interest in the opposite sex, he had lost his appetite for life. In fact, it
was not just sex that he lacked but emotional contact.

His mother’s dying wish that he do something in
life of which she and Dad could have been proud haunted him, but becoming
increasingly withdrawn and lonely, he could not focus on anything.

The mean-spiritedness of his aunt, which had
rubbed off on his uncle, a decent but disappointed man, did not help matters.
They would run down anyone who was successful and would even try to nip any
aspirations Holt might harbour in the bud. Of course, they did it subtly. Their
favourite phrase seemed to be ‘We thought you would have…done the sensible thing’
– i.e.
 
not done it. Another was,
‘Aren’t you getting above yourself?’

Although very able, he could neither draw nor
dance. The former ruled out an obviously noble career in medicine, as boys
doing that did biology, which meant dissecting animals and drawing them lying
in foul-smelling formaldehyde.

Not being able to dance – maybe he got so stressed
and frustrated he could not get the rhythm – made getting to know girls nigh
impossible. Anyway, they found the tense vibes emanating from him off-putting,
in addition to finding his conversation too serious.

 He got through school virtually unnoticed, apart
from the times he played the odd practical joke. He was not viewed as a swot,
because he did not need to swot. He tried to keep a low profile and had already
left the school when the A-level exam results confirming he would get the
expected scholarship to Cambridge came out. By then he had grown quite tall,
but remained thin rather than elegantly slim.

In freshers’ week at Cambridge, he even found a
Jewish girl with whom an intellectual and then a physical spark was lit. She
was his first proper girlfriend, which meant things did not go according to
plan the first time – she had to go fishing for the condom he left behind.

At the end of freshers’
week, just when, for want of a better word, he thought he was getting into his
stride, she decided he was not a suitable partner either socially or physically
and ended the affair.

 ‘You need more
experience, but not with me,’ she had cuttingly said.

Trying to recover from
that put-down, he had consoled himself with the thought that the inevitable break-up
would have been even more painful had the relationship been more established. He
would be a hindrance for someone as socially ambitious as she. Indeed, why she
had taken to him in the first place was something of a mystery. Perhaps it was
because she too had been on unfamiliar territory.

From then on he put all
his energies into his studies, getting a double first in pure mathematics and
physics.

Such qualifications do
not lead to a specific job and only proved he was capable of many things. With no
idea of what he should do for a career that would have made his parents proud,
he went to see a London-based head-hunter called James recommended by his
tutor.

After they had talked
for a while, the nattily dressed man with highly polished shoes reassured Holt,
saying, ‘With your qualifications, I would have no difficulty in
ultimately
placing
you. You don’t need to worry.’

‘Really?’ replied Holt.
‘That’s good to hear.’

‘Yes. But – and it’s a
big but – you need to sort yourself out emotionally first. Otherwise, you won’t
settle anywhere and soon pack it in, leaving our client unhappy, not to mention
yourself in a quandary and even depressed. Not only that, it would forever damage
your prospects.’

‘How do I, as you say,
sort myself out? See a shrink?’

‘No, that would do more
harm than good. What you need is emotional experience – partly to make up for
the loss of your parents. You need to interact with ordinary people, a wide
range of people, in a relaxed setting. I don’t mean sex, although one never
knows. I sometimes think young people learn more in human terms dealing with
clients in a restaurant than they do in some intern placement in a legal office
gained through their parents’ connections.’

‘I don’t feel like
working as a waiter. Isn’t there something more exciting I could do?’

‘Yes. Have a gap year.
Travel.’

Holt’s eyes lit up at
the idea. The last time he had fun on a foreign holiday was with the
brigadier’s family years back.

‘I like the
idea
.’

 ‘That’s what I did,’
continued James. ‘Best thing I ever did.’

‘I haven’t…enough money
– gap years are for rich kids.’

‘Jeremy, I wasn’t so rich.
I got a job for a few months and saved up.’

‘Um.’

‘I tell you what. In view
of your exceptional qualifications and in the hope that you stay on our books,
our partnership will lend you ten thousand pounds, repayable in five years’
time. If in the meantime you get jobs through us, we may well find our way to
writing it off. Not a bad idea, eh?’

‘A great one! I like
it.’

They discussed the
details and came to an informal agreement, whereupon James called Accounts to
tell them to make out the cheque, ready for Holt to pick up on his way out.

‘See you in ten months’
or so time,’ he said as they shook hands.

‘Oh, by the way,’ he
added. ‘Don’t try to do too many countries. The main point is to meet people,
get to know them – a rolling stone gathers no moss. That said, it’s far easier
to make real friends, even with English people, when abroad. There are fewer
class barriers. Good luck!’

Not having a place of
his own to worry about made going away simpler. A friend from Cambridge who had
done a gap-year trip prior to university was more than glad to give him
some advice, as talking about the trip brought back happy memories and
delicious moments.

Taking his advice but
not so sure of the fantastic moments, Holt decided to fly to India to see Delhi
and the Taj Mahal, then take a boat to Singapore, from where he would take the
train to Thailand. Cambodia. Then California – being technically minded he
wanted to see Silicon Valley –Washington and New York. He would take the
consultant’s advice not to overdo it, and leave out Hong Kong, Japan, and
Australia.

He was surprised, on
looking on the internet, just how much help and advice there was on gap years for
people of all ages. One website, called gapadvice.org, had an invaluable gap-year
planning check list. But like the friend who had advised him, he did not want
to do a trip organized by others. Having adequate funds made doing it
independently much easier and safer, as he could always stay at a good hotel
should suitable backpacker accommodation be impossible to find.

It
took hi
m some six weeks to make the basic plan, get
the necessary inoculations, and do and get the things on that check list.
Once on the flight to Delhi, he
sat back
,
expecting the next eight months
or so to be plain sailing. He was soon to be in for a shock, on
e that would make him more wary thereafter.

He stayed at a
reasonable mid-market hotel, so there was nothing of concern there, but when he
came out of the American Express Bank in central Delhi after changing money, a
kid threw some foul-smelling poo all over his shoes. Someone immediately came
up to help him, but knowing that it was a trick to rob him, Holt pushed him
away and escaped. He finally sought sanctuary in a nearby five-star hotel,
thinking he could clean himself up there in comparative safety.

People looked at him in
askance as he went into the washroom, some even putting their hand up to their
nose, but no one stopped him, and he made it. The Sikh looking after the
facilities offered to help clean him up. Feeling sorry for the poor guy, Holt
gave him what in India would be an enormous tip and came out not smelling of
roses, but not smelling bad enough for people to immediately distance
themselves.

He decided a stiff
drink was in order and made his way to the bar and sat at a table with no other
guests in the immediate vicinity. However, he had hardly sat down when a mother
and girl in her late teens, obviously American from the way they were speaking,
installed themselves at the adjacent table. He hoped they could not smell him.

‘Another couple of days
and we’ll be out of here,’ said the girl.

Holt could not avoid
hearing other snippets of conversation and finally could not resist intruding.

‘Are you on holiday?’
he asked.

‘In theory, yes. In
reality, we’re just waking up from a nightmare.’

‘How’s that?’

‘We wanted,’ said the
mother, ‘to see the Taj Mahal and decided to stay what we thought would be merely
a couple of nights at a nearby hotel. When we checked in, the receptionist
asked us a number of questions, including whether we had health insurance.
“Better to be safe. Some guests have been ill,” he said.’

‘Were you?’ enquired
Holt.

‘Were we! The first
night we were fine and went off early the next morning to see the Taj Mahal,
which by the way was fantastic. We got back to the hotel, had a shower, and
then dinner. Everything seemed fine. Then in the middle of the night my
daughter had terrible stomach cramps and diarrhoea. She felt so terrible, she thought
she was going to die, so I called the front desk, who said the hotel doctor
would be with us shortly.’

‘That was lucky,’ said
Holt.

‘At the time we thought
so.’

‘What happened?’

‘When the doc arrived, surprisingly
quickly, he took one look at Sylvia and said it was so serious she would have
to go to the clinic. She was rushed there in some kind of ambulance and
remained there for ten days, most of the time on a drip.’

‘God!’

‘Although medical costs
are nowhere near those back in the States, the bill was quite sizable, but they
said it would be covered by the insurance. We’re convinced it was a scam.’

Holt subsequently did
some research and found that such cases were quite common. There were even instances
of monkeys being trained to bite tourists when ordered, so that a complaisant
doctor could order expensive anti-rabies treatment. In fact, the large number
of such cases prompted the British High Commission, which is what the embassy
is called in Commonwealth countries, to carry out an investigation, but no heads
rolled, as the provincial governor’s office had tenuous links with the perpetrators.

Holt returned to his
lesser hotel a wiser man, hoping no one would notice the smell given off by his
shoes.

He did a day trip to the
Taj Mahal, which was truly magnificent, and after a couple more days in Delhi took
the train to Mumbai. There he was to board a ship for the three-day
voyage to Singapore, one of the safest and cleanest places in the world, because
the government is so strict.

We won’t bore the
reader with the details of Holt’s subsequent travel, as so many have done
similar trips. Suffice to say, staying and eating at establishments ranging
from stylish hotels to beachside cafés, in addition to talking to people on the
beaches themselves, he did make many friends. Let it be said he did not fully
participate in Thailand’s full moon parties, as that was not his style.