The Harder They Fall (4 page)

Jason was no stranger. Dan and Andy had known him for years, in passing at least. Now in his early twenties, he still sported the moody, sullen attitude of his youth and insisted on wearing arty, dark attire even in the midst of summer, when the rest of the country was donning its shorts and vest, whatever the weather. He certainly hadn’t inherited his dress sense from his father, nor, it would seem, his business sense, for it was apparent from all previous communications that he didn’t want the money and was desperate to dispense with the responsibilities that came with it.

They at last made it inside the terminal and stopped at the first open area where they could get out of the flow of foot traffic. Dan was fidgety and felt sick.

“I’ll stay and check in with the haulage people, if you like,” Andy suggested.

“Yeah. Good idea. I’ll get to the hotel and set everything up. See you there.” Dan was already moving away, grateful that he could save face. The humidity wasn’t helping much, although didn’t normally bother him. Maybe it was something he’d eaten. The mere thought of food turned his stomach and he quickly stepped outside, gulping in a great lungful of mountain air. It was warm and moist, but wonderfully real compared to the plane, and it instantly eased the nausea.

Two groups of people congregated outside the terminal: passengers who had just exited and were now variously awaiting taxis or lifts, and then the taxi drivers, legitimate or otherwise, seeking to pick up a fare. Somewhere in amongst the latter group would be their connection and Dan started to scour the crowd, wondering how he might recognise this person. If he’d felt well, he’d have stayed with his brother, as their lift was someone Andy knew from his previous visit to Nepal. Dan rubbed his eyes and swallowed back the saliva, hoping it was the product of his mind rather than his stomach.

“Andrew!” a voice called from within the midst of waiting cars, a hand waving over the heads of the crowd, looming closer, until a smiling brown face came into view.

“Ah. Yeah,” Dan said under his breath with a weary realisation of how useful it could sometimes be that he and Andy looked so alike, although it wasn’t the easiest thing to explain to those who didn’t know them well.

“Hello,” the man said materialising in front of him, hand outstretched in friendship.

“Hi,” Dan smiled and shook the hand.

“You are not Andrew, I see, but you must surely be his brother Daniel,” the man smiled back.

“I am, though I prefer Dan.”

“Of course. I am Bhagwan,” he said, unhooking Dan’s holdall from his shoulder without waiting for confirmation that this was acceptable. Dan was glad to be rid of the weight and followed him through the rapidly diminishing horde, to the rusty old pickup truck parked at an angle of almost forty-five degrees to the kerb. The man chucked the bag in the back and Dan winced, hoping the thud as it landed was his water bottle rather than his tablet, not that it would matter by the time they reached the hotel, judging by the inch or so of rainwater it was now swimming in. He climbed into the front and fastened his seatbelt, noting that his companion had not fastened his own.

“So,” Bhagwan said, steering hard out onto the road. “You have not visited Nepal before?”

“No,” Dan replied, grasping for the handle on the inside of the door in an attempt to stay absolutely upright, so sure he was going to throw up at any second.

“And what do you think of it so far? Wet, huh?”

“You could say that,” Dan replied, although in all honesty it was no worse than September in England.

“Most people come when it is not monsoon season,” Bhagwan explained, throwing the truck around a corner and accelerating sharply up a steep slope. Dan lurched forward and pressed his lips together. He was starting to sweat with the effort of keeping his stomach contents where they were.

For this reason, he didn’t reply to the man’s observation and felt terribly rude, but he really didn’t want to risk opening his mouth, so he nodded and hummed, whilst Bhagwan narrated their journey through the current downpour, regaling him with tales of monsoon seasons past, where the roads were a foot deep in water, with graphic descriptions of floating excrement and other such unpleasantries, pinching his nose or adding sound effects for authenticity. None of this was helping at all.

By the time they pulled up outside the hotel, the urge to expel was so great that the best Dan could offer was a vague utterance of thanks and an apology before he bolted inside, on the lookout for anything that looked remotely like a toilet. To his delight, the symbols on the doors made for an easy mission. The man standing in the foyer watched on in bewilderment as his newest arrival sprinted straight for the restroom without a word.

Meanwhile, Bhagwan returned to the airport, where he parked almost identically to his prior visit and waited for Andy, who was in turn still waiting for the hold to be unloaded so that he could check their shipment had arrived in one piece. It wasn’t an especially precious cargo—not to him or Dan—but when they had been charged with the task of coordinating the ordering and delivery, it was made apparent that the equipment was vital to the survival of an entire village. With this in mind, and the desire for a new adventure lurking just below the surface, Andy suggested they fly out and oversee the delivery in person. Dan had immediately agreed, although he hadn’t seemed quite so enthusiastic since they left. He was very quiet, with none of his usual resistance to anything and everything Andy suggested.

After a wait of only half an hour, which seemed a lot longer in the absence of anything to do to pass it, a customs official confirmed that the equipment had been successfully unloaded and provided Andy with the number for the storage container, where it would remain until the following morning, ready to be transferred onto their transport to the village. Andy had readily entrusted Bhagwan with the task of arranging all of this, even though they had spoken just once during the past decade. He shoved the piece of paper with the storage container number deep into the zip pocket of his rucksack and headed out into the wet Kathmandu afternoon, genuinely thrilled to see his old friend and sharing a heartfelt embrace.

As they drove away from the airport, they caught up on the less complicated aspects of life in the years that had passed since they last saw each other, both much younger then and with fewer cares for the future. Andy had been hiking through the Himalayas at the time: the end of a three month treacherous journey across India. Unlike most of the other people he met on his travels, he wasn’t driven by any convoluted need to ‘find himself’, or attain some sense of inner peace; he sought adventure and it’s safe to say he found it the moment he accepted a lift on the back of Bhagwan’s pickup—as far as he could tell the exact same vehicle he was sitting in now. Last time, it had been the depths of winter, when snow and ice had blocked the road down into Kathmandu, turning a ten hour drive into a two day trial interspersed with impromptu stops to work with others traversing the pass, to clear rocks and massive hunks of ice from the narrow carriageway carved into the side of the mountains. This time, nearing the end of monsoon season, he didn’t expect it to be much safer and hoped his estimate of a one week round trip wasn’t overly optimistic, afraid to let Eleanor down for many reasons, not least that she was the champion of holding grudges. She’d yet to forgive him for breaking his leg and ‘shirking’ in the weeks preceding Adele and Tom’s wedding two years previously.

Bhagwan was coming to the end of the bit where he talked about his family and his wife, with whom he had three children: two girls and a boy. The girls were twins, aged eight, and the boy was four. Since the birth of his son, they had been unable to conceive again, much to Bhagwan’s sorrow. Andy thought it apt that ahead of them vast black clouds were forming, for he could sense where the conversation was going.

“And you, Andrew. Tell me of your beautiful wife and children.”

“I, err, I’m not married.” Andy began uneasily.

“Still enjoying the bachelor life, yes?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Andy said, relieved to be off the hook. Just to make sure, he added, “My brother has a young daughter, called Shaunna. She’s very precious.”

“How so?” Bhagwan asked. Andy was only too glad to oblige him with the information. It was raining heavily again, the lightning flashes casting the mountains in ominous black relief, the back of the truck skidding occasionally, but mostly taking the terrain confidently in its stride. If Andy were the cautious type, then he might have been a little more concerned about the dangers of tomorrow’s trip, but as with all these things, it was a challenge he’d accepted and therefore it had to be won.

They had arrived at the hotel, and he took money from his pocket, offering it to Bhagwan, who initially pushed it away, but eventually took it at Andy’s insistence. He knew that what would seem a pittance back home was significant compensation in Nepal and he wasn’t one to take advantage. Bhagwan thanked him for his generosity and stopped briefly to chat with the owner of the hotel (a distant cousin of some sort, like all the people in places like this), then left Andy to check in and find Dan. The owner of the hotel, who introduced himself as ‘Alan’, which Andy presumed to be a western name he had adopted to assist his guests, showed him to his room, indicating across the hallway to another door as they passed. Andy dumped his bag on the small bed, gave his face a quick freshen-up with a splash of cold water and went straight to Dan’s room. By now he would have the connection up and ready for the video conference and would no doubt have some comment to make about his rather late arrival.

As it turned out, Dan had nothing to say. He opened the door and pointed to his tablet, abandoned on the bed. Andy squinted at the screen.

“No connection. Bugger.”

“Yeah. Alan says the storm’s taken out the phone lines, so there’s not much we can do.”

“An interesting choice of name, I thought.” Dan didn’t comment. “Oh well. Not to worry. It wasn’t urgent, after all. We were only showing off really.” Andy watched his brother carefully, noting how pale he was. “You OK?”

“Yeah. Tired, that’s all. I hope they get it back up again soon. I could do with an early night. That 5 a.m. start is going to finish me off.”

“Bhagwan is coming back this evening, to share some of his famous hooch. It’s not bad stuff, actually.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dan yawned and stretched, immediately wishing he hadn’t. His chest felt tight and crampy and his balance was way off. He staggered slightly and steadied himself with a knee against the bed frame. Everything ached.

“You sure you’re OK?” Andy asked again.

“I’ll be fine,” Dan frowned, “although no doubt you’d prefer it if I left tomorrow to you?”

“Not at all,” Andy said defensively. The nine months they had been working together as Jeffries and Associates had gone even better than he’d expected, their perpetual sibling rivalry rarely rearing its head. On occasion, Dan could be offhand, his response underpinned by a misconception that Andy was somehow trying to stitch him up. The truth was that he had not once and nor would he ever try and get one over on his brother. If anything it was the other way around, a case of Dan assuming of others what was true of himself. Regardless, it was apparent that he wanted to be left alone to rest, so Andy headed back to his own room for a nap and a shower, with plenty of time before Bhagwan returned for an evening of drinking and singing. It was still early afternoon, with the hum of life and the pit-pat of rain floating through the open window. In spite of the humidity, there was a cool breeze, and Andy stripped to his boxers and lay on top of the sheets, quickly drifting off. He’d asked ‘Alan’ to wake him if he wasn’t up and about by six o’clock, so could safely relax and enjoy the break from reality. Across the way, Dan was also sleeping, in fits and starts. He couldn’t get comfortable and the waves of nausea had him dashing to the toilet so frequently he felt like he was undertaking a stamina run. Eventually he found a position where the sickness wasn’t quite so severe and pulled a sheet around him.

In the event, Andy didn’t need an alarm call and was up and in the shower by 5:30. He was already enjoying himself enough to waylay any guilt he might have about his motivations for returning to Nepal, for whilst they were honourable in most senses, he was still doing it by and large for the sense of adventure, and with Bhagwan for company, it would certainly be that.

The wet-room was quite something and typical of these kinds of places, he had come to realise on his travels. The locals could be living in relative destitution, barely enough to eat and only just keeping roofs over their heads, but the tourist hotels were kitted out to the highest possible standard. The shower, therefore, was the sort for which most British households would pay handsomely, with enough pressure to fell an elephant. Andy stepped out of the downpour to shampoo his hair, the lather disappearing immediately he put his head back under. When he emerged into the room a few minutes later, just as soon as he could tear himself away from the wondrous massaging effect of the water jets on his shoulders, he was breathless and refreshed. He unzipped his rucksack, pulled out a clean t-shirt and a pair of unnecessarily vibrant Bermuda shorts, gave his hair a quick shake and sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. He managed to get the left one on before the commotion outside drew his attention and he limped to the window to see what the fuss was about.

Adults were looking down from windows and children shouted as they ran through the streets, their faces lit with the devilish delight of those who know they are delivering news that will fill grown-ups with terror, but are yet to comprehend why. Andy couldn’t understand anything of what was being said and quickly put on his other shoe, nearly tripping over his untied laces on his way down to what could generously be described as the hotel’s lobby. It was deserted, and Andy spied the owner outside, engaged in a hurried dialogue with a boy of about ten. He wandered out onto the street, the rain immediately soaking his clothes right through, and listened in on their conversation, hoping his show of interest might afford an interpretation.