‘I used to go to India for a few months every year. A couple of times we even drove there. You could in those days. One year I went to Benares. I rented a place for next to nothing and stayed about three months. Back then there were a lot of hippies in India. They’d run out of money and you’d see them begging. In Benares the hippies all hung out in the same places but I was staying in another part of the city. I think I paid something like three quid a month for my place, which I shared with two other Indian guys.’
I’d brought a bottle of gin and two tall glasses and a lemon and tins of tonic. I’d carried these in a basket the 100 yards or so along the path between his house and ours. Michael was sitting at the table fielding emails on his iPad when I arrived. He read out one to which he had tried and failed to frame a reply. As he read it his eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s difficult to know how to answer without sounding trite,’ he said. ‘I mean what does one say? I hate “passed on” and “passed away”, and “died” doesn’t seem right either.’
‘Kicked the bucket?’ I said. ‘Brown bread’? Then, feeling terribly sorry that at a time like this he had only me for company, and that I was likely to say all the wrong things, I said: ‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot, as you know.’ Then I produced the gin glasses and the rest of the makings and assembled a couple of paralysing gin and tonics. I’d also bought a packet of cigarettes, which I opened. Michael then abandoned his email correspondence in frustration and we carried our drinks over to a couple of fireside chairs and lit up.
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