There Must be More by David West

an immersive short story set in Delhi

There Must Be More

David West

In the mirror I see a trickle of blood start to seep from a cut on the edge of the faint old scar from my father's ring. I rinse off the remaining foam then tear off a small piece of toilet tissue and press it against the cut until the blood starts to congeal. I put on my linen suit. Good! My Round Table pin is in the left lapel. It's important to be seen to be supporting charities and you never know where you're going to meet another member. As my father used to say, before he abandoned us, it's not what you know, it's who you know! I boot up the laptop and check the presentation again. If I can win this project it'll really make me, I'll have arrived, earned my place at the top table! Yep, I've put together a first class presentation as usual. The phone rings.

"Hello, Mr James, your car has arrived."

"Thank you, I'll be down in five minutes." The lift doors open and a porter is there to take my laptop case. The Raj Palace hotel reception is bustling with tourists and businessmen, a cacophony of accents and colour. A party of perhaps a dozen Buddhist monks in orange robes catches my eye. One of them arrests my gaze and approaches me holding out a camera.

"You take photo please?" he smiles.

"I don't have time." I step around him and make my way to the Concierge's desk followed by my eager porter. A pretty young woman with long black hair, brown eyes and wearing a turquoise sari is waiting by the desk.

"Mr James?"

"My name is James Carter, yes."

"Welcome to Delhi Mr James. I am Sarvari, Mr Rao's personal assistant. Mr Rao is very, very much looking forward to meeting you. Our car is outside, this way please." Sarvari opens the back door of a black Mercedes and smiles. I settle into the sumptuous grey leather and look round to check that my laptop bag has been taken by the driver and put in the boot. She and the driver take the front seats and as we set off a tall Sikh hotel doorman salutes us.

We turn left out of the hotel gates and after a few hundred yards reach a junction with a main road. The driver begins blowing his horn and edges out into the traffic. A blue bus with many passengers clinging onto the outside lets us in. I have never seen anything like it; three wheeled yellow and green rickshaws jostle with cars, lorries and motorcycles, everyone hooting. I notice that all the lorries and buses although covered in Sanskrit writing have a large notice on the back saying "Horn Please!" We are passed by a motorcycle carrying a family of five, no six. Only the father is wearing a crash helmet.

"Mr James, the traffic is very good today and I think we will be at the office in very, very good time. I believe this is your first visit to India, yes?"

"Yes, although I hope to spend a lot of time here when we win the contract." She smiles.

At a junction a woman with a baby in her arms gets up from a carpet of filthy cardboard underneath the flyover for the Metro and begins working her way down the queue of traffic with hand outstretched. A few people drop coins into her hand and I am grateful for the tinted glass, I don't think she can see me.

"I am sorry about this Mr James; the police really should do something about these beggars. It is making a very very bad advertisement for India. What must you think?"

"Oh don't worry; it's much the same in England you know, just a lot colder." Thankfully the traffic starts to move again. Yes, India is the place to be. There seem to be construction sites on every street. The place is booming. We pass markets and shopping malls, garages, apartment blocks and shanty towns where hovels are built from corrugated iron and plastic sheeting. With some amusement I notice that they are all clustered around electricity pylons and have plugged themselves in, because through gaps in the sheeting I glimpse a television flickering. They do all right. Everywhere dogs seem to be running around barking. A horse drawn cart seems to be out of control and is losing much of its load of cardboard. Then my vision begins to blur.

It's quite sudden. Traffic comes to an abrupt halt. The white apartment building on the right is shaking, cracking and then falling. Dust rises and concrete blocks are tumbling and rolling across the road in front. Jesus, is it a bomb, earthquake? What the hell is happening?

"Oh Mr James, come, come quickly it is an earthquake. Very very bad. It is not safe. The Connaught Hotel is just over there, very nice hotel and new. We will be safe there. Come quickly!"

I follow Sarvari and notice that the driver stays with the car. Good, at least my laptop should be safe.

The Connaught Hotel towers up through the swirling dust, a black glass and steel triumph of modern engineering over nature. I follow Sarvari up some steps and through the rotating door. The cool air makes me shiver, just for a second. She leads me to the lounge area and we sit in leather armchairs around a large coffee table. A waiter approaches her at once and she addresses him in Hindi. She turns and smiles at me.

"Would you like coffee or tea Mr James? I'm afraid we may be stuck here a little while until the road is cleared. I will phone Mr Rao and explain. Perhaps some cake too?"

"Er, yes coffee would be nice. I need something to wake me up; I must be dreaming." Sarvari says a few more words to the waiter who bows and walks away. Then she takes a Blackberry out of her handbag and makes a call. I walk over to the window which has a panoramic view across the chaos. The apartment building is split in two. One part is rubble spewing out over the remnants of a wall and across the road; the other part is still standing like a five story open dolls house. All of life is there, kitchens with tables, fridges and cookers; bedrooms, some with double beds and some smaller ones with bunk beds; bathrooms; dining rooms; lounges. Many of the lounges have shrines to one Hindu god or another. Where are they today I wonder? Movement catches my eye. Some men are scrambling over the rubble with a ladder. They are making their way towards half a stairwell and I can see two children sitting a few steps up from a twenty foot gap before the staircase begins again.

"Mr Rao says that you must not worry Mr James. He will find time to see you today as he very much wants to hear about your experience with the power plants in China. He is very sorry that you have been so inconvenienced by this terrible earthquake. It is quite the worst one to hit Delhi in fifty years they are saying on the news."

"That is kind of him, but look ... I think I ought to go and see if I can help."

"Oh no Mr James, that is a very bad idea. It isn't safe! The police and the army will be here very very soon, I'm sure. They will deal with it. Ah look here is our coffee! Thank you Gupta! And look you see there, there is a digger coming. The road will be cleared soon. You just enjoy your coffee Mr James!"

Sarvari is right, a tracked, back acting excavator is moving across the rubble, looks like a Caterpillar 320C. The men have reached the children now and they are being handed down the ladder. What if there are people under the rubble? The Cat will crush them for sure.

"No I really think I should go and help. There's no sign of the police or army or anything." I turn and walk towards the door but there's a tug on my right arm. Her hand slides down my arm and I feel the pressure of her soft flesh in my hand.

"You must stay here Mr James. The road will be clear soon and Mr Rao is expecting us. What about your beautiful suit and shoes?"

"Perhaps you're right, I don't want... oh what are they doing with the bloody thing now? They'll have the rest of that apartment down if they start digging there!" I drop her hand and rush outside. The swish of the revolving door shuts out the calm coolness of the hotel. The morning heat of Delhi in June assaults me, then the noise. Many more people are rushing around now. Men and women are screaming, calling out names. The digger is scratching away at the rubble, its engine revving with the effort. I scramble across the rubble to it. "Stop!" I bang on the cab window then cross and un-cross my arms in a signal to stop. The driver looks at me blankly. "Does anyone here speak English?" I plead, looking around. There is a second's lull in the screaming then it starts again. "E-N-G-L-I-S-H? Does anyone speak English?"

"Sir, yes sir I am speaking English."

Oh thank God! A short fat man is clambering towards

"Look we must listen for people under here," I say pointing down and cupping my ear. "Can you make people quiet and get that digger turned off so that we can listen for people?"

"Sir, yes I am following you. I will try." He turns to go and I grab his hand.

"What is your name? I am James."

"Mr James Sir, yes my name is Alam. I will make quiet and then we will listen."

With an energy and surefootedness which belie his age and build, Alam is rushing around shouting, pointing and cupping his ear. Gradually the noise disperses. There is no such thing as silence in Delhi I have learnt, but as the digger engine stops this gets close to it. I kneel down in the rubble and press my ear into a gap. Nothing! I look up and all around me men, women and children are doing the same. I choose another spot and listen intently. Still nothing! Then there is a shout and everyone is making their way towards a teenage girl who is waving. I get there first, lie down and push my head into a gap in the rubble. Nothing at first, but now I can hear breathing.

"Hello, can you hear me? Keep calm we'll get you out." I start scrabbling at the blocks, broken furniture, shards of glass. Around me people are doing the same. We work as one. When a large block is uncovered hands appear around me and we lift. Then I see a foot. It's in a woman's shoe, a red shoe decorated with beads. Now I see a leg through a ripped sari streaked with blood. As we uncover more I see that the leg must be broken in a dozen places. Hands are working their way along the line of her body. Another large block is lifted to uncover her head. Oh God, that doesn't look good. I feel her neck for a pulse but feel nothing. I check my own neck to remind myself where the pulse should be. Mine is pounding like a piling rig. I check again for her pulse, but nothing. I can still hear breathing though, and now sobbing too.

"Alam, can we lift her now please?" We all gently lift together and curled up tight beneath her broken body is a child. The child's eyes blink and the gentle sobbing turns to screaming as it takes in the scene and its dead mother. The child's screams echo off the memory of my screams from a lifetime ago, cut short by the clout of my father's hand before he slammed the front door on my childhood for ever. A wall collapses inside me too and something breaks through. It rises slowly at first, slowly but insistently, then welling up through my stomach and chest, spurting, flowing, choking me, drowning me, I gasp for breath but there are only tears. Great, huge, marbles of tears that haven't seen the light of day for years roll down my dusty cheeks. I lift my hands to my face and see the shreds of skin and blood from tearing at blocks and splinters and broken glass. The tears collect my blood and drip onto the lifeless body beneath me, mixing with her blood and flesh and bone. I am aware of the screaming child being handed back down a chain of helping hands. Then Alam puts his arm around me.

"Sir, Mr James, there must be more. We must keep listening, keep digging. There must be more Mr James, there must be more!"

About the author

David West was a civil engineer who, having had a text book published in 2010, is now trying to turn his newly discovered discipline of writing three hundred words a day into something creative. There Must Be More was written for an assignment on the Open University's A215 Creative Writing course, and published in an anthology called Something Hidden by Bridgehouse Publishing. He is writing The Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, currently a series of four, with the fifth in progress.