their partners every day, cancer is a fact of life. Gradually over time sharing the same train carriage with Special came to be worn like a charm, a talisman that influenced the way that Eliot confronted the challenges ahead. Special would visit Eliot on his journey many times and he would always have something to say.
Eliotturned his attention to the world outside and soon the sun’s warmth was beginning to make him drowsy and his father who was long dead was telling him how lucky he was and how things used to be so tough when he was a young boy, his mother always patching his clothes, putting cardboard inside his shoes to keep his feet dry, having to eat lard and tripe and rabbit to make ends meet and still despite all of this, never having two bob to rub together at the end of the fortnight.
4.
Are there any more questions for Eliot? I think that we have time for just one more.
That’s a great question. I don’t suppose that my answer will surprise you . We in the West, if that is the right way to group us, have very high expectations about what life will dish up to us, high expectations about how our lives will unfold. As I said earlier we want things in our lives to always be normal, predictable and when they are not we can be outraged as if certainty and predictability are a right. As I’m sure you know, certainty and predictability are not a right, this is not the way that life works for most people, the world is full of human beings after all. In the third world, life is a bit of a roller coaster ride for almost everyone. I would like to give you an example.
In the Pacific in the late nineties there was a community with an uncertain electricity supply, the generator always breaking down, a community with running water for two hours,twice a day, a community with a basic clinic but the hospital such as it was, nearly two hours away by canoe. A canoe trip through the dangers of the lagoon where you could wreck your stem or propeller on coral even in the daytime if you didn’t know what you were doing.
A local family who we worked with had a daughter, Regina, who was heavily pregnant. I’m not sure if she knew, but she was having twins and one night her waters broke prematurely and she felt that something was wrong. The canoe trip in the dark had to be made. A little boy was born in the dark, in this canoe on the way to the hospital and he was later to be christianed David after his father. As Regina stepped out of the canoe and onto the coral beach in front of the hospital, as she walked carrying her new born son in her arms, she gave birth to a little girl who would be christined Mary. Her head hit the coral shore. Mary lived for three days…….. I will never forget her funeral. The noises that we can make when we are mad with grief.It will stay with me for ever, the grief that accompanies something that is impossible to accept.There might be a lesson to be learnt for everyone from stories like this. I would also like to say that both my anecdotes have, at their centre, women who are pregnant and I hope that they highlight the special challenges facing all women in the developing world and indeed in Australia too. There is in my opinion, in these stories, food for thought, particularly for every man .
The room was silent.
Thank you Eliot, on behalf of our club I would like to express our appreciation to you for giving up your time to provide us with such an entertaining and insightful view of some of your experiences. Some of them very sad. We have really enjoyed listening to you this morning. I am sure they will stay with us for some time to come. We hope that you will be prepared to come back and talk to us again at our rotary club. On behalf of our members I would like you to accept this small gift as a sign of our appreciation.
Eliot thanked them for the invitation. He had enjoyed the opportunity to talk with them and some came to him and said how much they had enjoyed listening to his stories and then Barry with his giant M of hair under his nose,was at his side, positive and good natured like his sister and Eliot wondered why this was their first face to face contact since the funeral. As Eliot turned to go, suddenly the way he felt changed, he felt a tiredness. He felt hollow. He wouldn’t be going home, he wouldn’t be saying yes Marion I think that it went pretty well. They wouldn’t be opening a bottle of wine together.
Eliot felt the presence of a tall man,stooped by his tallness, standing at his right shoulder and as despair was creeping through him his life was about to change. He would soon look down the new path.
Hey that was great.
The tall man extended his open hand.
My name is Phil Simpson.…… I hope you won’t mind me asking a favour of you?
No. of course not Phil
I have a friend, a doctor, who lives in Strathmore,his name is Jalal Singh. He has lived in Australia for many years but recently he has started a school in the village of his birth in India, in UttarPradesh. He is looking for someone to help establish an English program in his school and I think that you are just the person he needs. Barry told me that you have worked as a teacher trainer for most of your working life and that there is a chance that you might be interested in taking on this role………….. If you are, would it be Ok if I was to get your contact details and pass them on to Mr.Singh?
Afterwards Eliot knew that he had surprised himself, because he accepted without drawing a breath and heard himself say yes of course it would be OK even though during the next few days the impossibility of him taking on that role came to visit him often. Excitement then dread and the dread when it came was frightening.
5.
The train’s rocking motion slowed, he heard the announcement, he opened his eyes.
The next station is Strathmore
Strathmore, he was there. He saw his face in the glass again and apprehension made him think of Marion, he saw her skin tight over bones, heard the rasping voice, smelt the death. Often he tried to go back in time, to see the young Marion, smiling and optimistic but those last days overwhelmed his thoughts. Did he want to do this? Was it right to do this without his partner? Maybe, a better question was, could he do this without Marion? He could ring Jalal Singh now, make up any number of stories, invent any kind of reason why he had to change his mind. He was sorry but he couldn’t go to Uttar Pradesh and then he could cross to the other patform and go home.Don’t be silly he said aloud. You need to know all of the details about the assignment before you can make a decision.
He got the map up on his phone. It was very simple and ten minutes later he was standing facing a grey metal grille gate, a black number seventy three set into a massive blue concrete wall. On the other side of the wall, a block like double storey house the same colour as the wall. The signs of affluence.The intercom above the number seventy three added to the feeling of fortress. As they were leaving Phil Simpson had said that Jalal Singh was Ananda Marga, and Ananda Marga was about a hot day in Brisbane and the Hilton Hotel where Prime Minister Desai was staying and someone put the bombs in the rubbish bins.
At one minute to eleven Eliot pressed the intercom button. A flutter of nervousness.
Hullo, It’s Eliot Wilson.
Inside, Jalal Singh was watching the morning show and after a few seconds he glanced at his watch, reached across his enormous black leather couch for the remote control and turned the TV off.
Shanti please answer that and tell Mr Wilson I will be out in a few moments.
While Shanti spoke on the intercom, Jalal stopped at the hallway mirror looked at himself, ran one hand over his bald pate, straightened the collar on his shirt and ran his fingers over the large grey lawn of a moustache.
Outside, the intercom clicked and a woman spoke.
Mr Singh is on his way, Mr Wilson.
Thank you
Just as Eliot began to wonder, the front gate swung open. Jalal Singh was shorter and older than Eliot
An hour later Eliot was retracing his steps back to Strathmore station. He had met Jalal Singh who was turning his family home in Madho Patti, in Uttar Pradesh, into a school. It had been decided on a handshake. Eliot would travel to Madho Patti in three weeks, to work in this school. It was what he was expected to say. So he was keen to work at this school was