Hot Water Man

by Deborah Moggach

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘But I’ve usually imagined him. I’ve never imagined her. What it must have been like to come to India, a journey taking weeks, and marry somebody you hardly knew. And there was no one else around, no family. Just this man.’

  She laughed. ‘Like you.’

  He paused. ‘Whatever you feel, or find out about him, there’s nothing much you can do. You’ve met this man on leave; he’s looking for a wife and he’s only got a few months to find one. You meet him over tea at someone’s house, that’s what Granny did, at her friend Aggy’s. He seems rather dashing, sort of restive and manly amongst the dainty cucumber sandwiches. He’s tanned, he’s in charge of a whole battalion out East. You can’t get to know him well, you couldn’t then, you’d always see him in company. Then you’re sailing out and that’s that.’ He put the radish into his mouth. Mohammed, waiting for this, whisked away the plates. ‘And whatever misgivings you felt, you wouldn’t talk about them – people didn’t, did they, marriage was marriage, you didn’t analyse and dissect and criticize . . .’

  This sounded heartfelt. She let it pass.

  ‘And the hardship,’ he said, ‘and the illness, and you’d expect to lose at least one child even in my grandmother’s day. And the heat – no air-conditioners . . .’

  ‘And the boredom.’

  ‘Perhaps. I doubt it. They had their circuit – Mrs Gracie was telling me about family life – and their occupations.’

  This could lead back to the B.W.A. She gazed at her yellow lap, thinking how to change the subject. After lunch, would he try to give her a lift to the B.W.A.? Then she heard his voice.

  ‘You know, I loved Grandad a lot.’

  ‘I know. I always liked the way you admired him.’

  ‘You thought he was a pompous old fool, didn’t you.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she lied. ‘Anyway I hardly knew him. He died before we got married, remember.’

  ‘How do you remember him?’

  ‘Tut-tutting at me in the garden when I was wearing my red bikini.’

  ‘Ah, that bikini.’

  ‘When I was swotting for my ‘A’ levels behind your shed. He thought my bikini was a portent of social disintegration. He was very upright, wasn’t he. Rather old-fashioned standards, even then. It was easy to sneer at him but actually I rather liked it. In retrospect anyway. It made him so solid, like a grandfather should be. I’d never known mine so he did instead.’

  Donald did not reply.

  ‘I thought he was very straight and honest,’ she said, ‘when people were proud to be that. A pillar of the Empire. He brought you up strictly and you’re rather like him in some ways.’ She stopped. ‘Goodness, what’s the matter? I mean, you look incorruptible. I’m sure that’s why they sent you out here. You must have inherited it from him.’

  He still looked startled. ‘Inherited what?’

  ‘Your integrity. That frank open gaze, the same blue eyes, as if he had nothing to hide.’

  To her relief Donald could not have driven her to the B.W.A. anyway; he had an appointment straight after lunch and she made a delaying excuse. She kissed him goodbye. Today she felt tender towards him, partly because he had not forced her to lie, or to decide not to do so, and partly because he had talked so thoughtfully. Recently so pompous, today he had seemed humble and uncertain. As if for once open to change. Besides, they had talked. Usually their meals were eaten in silence, broken only by hushed bickering. She had presumed they would have more to talk about here, in Pakistan, but it had been just the same as usual.

  Half an hour later she was sitting in a rickshaw. She unclicked her compact. In the powdery circle of mirror her face jogged, already beaded with sweat. Despite herself she had been flattered at Donald’s reaction to the dress. In fact, in a secret, niggling way she was flattered by this whole business. What would Roz say? In the Tube, Roz plastered ‘This Degrades Women’ stickers over midriffs of underwear advertisements. She herself had not; she had just trooped along, half-giggling behind her gloves. Now she was out here, in fact, the whole thing seemed dwindled and rather amusing though she had not been disloyal enough to say this to Donald. This place certainly gave it a new perspective. Roz’s insistence on calling Rick her ‘comrade and co-parent’ seemed quaint when in this city women walked around draped like furniture.

  She would not mention this outing to Roz. What the hell. The wind tossed her hair. She smiled. Out here she was free. Under the tassels the verges bounced past. Part of the reason she had not told Donald, of course, was that he would mock her. After all she had always gone on about women being exploited for their looks. And in this case, exploited for the colour of their skin, too. And she could hardly say she was being used when she had so readily agreed. Still, these were only trial shots. She was committing herself to nothing, and indeed nothing might come from them. It was just a jaunt, an exploration. She could not lounge about all day writing air letters. And here, when it came to jobs, one did not have the luxury of choice.

  She was nearly an hour late for her appointment. The studio lay in one of the many commercial suburbs and the driver kept getting lost. He would stop to ask people who bent down to get a good look at her. Just down this way, they gestured. Everything was just down this way, just one minute, just one mile. People always wanted to be helpful by saying the thing that would please. Donald, sometimes amused and sometimes aggravated, complained about this in the office. It is ready directly, they said. Directly after directly, stretching into the mists of the endlessly possible.

  Of course she need not have worried. Mr Pereira, a mild, polite man, did not seem to realize she was late. As at Sultan Rahim’s, here she sipped sweet tea and chatted to him about the climate, yes indeed it was most humid but not so humid as upcountry, Karachi being blessed by the sea breezes. She wondered if he even knew about her appointment. He himself had cousins in Hainault, Essex, a very pleasant part he believed – his cousin and his family, they owned a small newsagent’s business, she herself was perhaps acquainted with this Hainault? In fact, until now she had never known how to pronounce Hainault; no doubt Mr Pereira had got it right. He himself had never visited Britain. The British people, at his cousin’s they could purchase their household requirements also, the groceries and soap powders, his cousin’s shop remaining open until the late hours of the evening. She replied that such places were a boon for people who worked all day, increasingly so, as the British shopkeepers were too lazy and unimaginative to extend their opening hours beyond five-thirty p.m. to suit the changing circumstances of society. In fact, she added, it was the Asians who had become essential in the liberation of the British women, releasing them from the tyranny of trying to shop during their working hours and thus enabling them to carry out two jobs, one at work and one in the home. As in fact her husband’s firm was doing in this country, helping to establish supermarkets where everything was to be found swiftly under one roof, thus liberating the Pakistani housewife from the picturesque though lengthy daily grind of shopping at six different stalls. He replied that his cousin’s business was becoming most prosperous and that now his cousin was hoping to purchase the lease on adjoining property, with residential units above to rent to the persons who worked in the surrounding commercial area. Himself he hoped to visit Britian in the near future, he had heard that it was most pleasant at this time of the year, resembling the winter months in Karachi. She agreed that indeed June and July would be the best time to visit Hainault, Essex.

  Minutes ticked by. She gazed out of the window. The sign opposite said: Dr Ravi’s Revitalization Clinic. It was like sitting in Sultan’s office, and sitting in Superad. She could not tell whether this leisured politeness was due to her presence, an English woman, or whether Pakistanis always worked like this.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Mr Khan, from the Superad Agency, sent me here, I think I mentioned it in our telephone call. Just for some trial shots, I think, for their files.’

  She paused for him
to register this and perhaps to be impressed. After all, he could not have many British models coming to this bare, shabby studio little larger than a cupboard. He seemed unsurprised by this, either because he had been informed and did not think it noteworthy or because he had not been informed at all. Nobody reacted quite as she presumed. You arrived expecting something you had built up in your mind and then it melted away. The studio did not have the benefits of air-conditioning; in this heat she too gave up trying to find the answers.

  ‘I’m a bit hot,’ she said. ‘Shall I just powder my nose?’

  At this he rose from his seat and started fiddling about with the equipment. There was a basin in the corner, and a mirror. She re-applied her lipstick. Her aunt Midge used to say: ‘Horses sweat and men perspire but women only glow.’ She was sweating. She gazed into the cracked glass. She did not resemble a model. Her hair stuck to her forehead in squiggles like question marks.

  She climbed on to a stool. Behind her hung a white sheet. She felt ludicrous up there. In the unaccustomed short skirt she had to arrange her legs; she kept them pressed together but slanting sideways and crossed at the ankle as the Queen was supposed to do. She should have worn this dress for the office photo; what an easy way to please Donald. Why did she not bother to please him any more?

  He was standing beside her, tilting her head. ‘You permit me?’

  She wanted to say: in England I would never have been a model, even if I’d wanted to. I am neither sufficiently lovely nor sufficiently professional. But here the standards are different.

  ‘And . . . just so.’ Hand on her ankle, he moved her legs slightly more to the side.

  She kept herself rigid, staring at the left-hand wall. An advertisement hung there; no doubt one of his own photos. It showed a Pakistani girl with permed hair. She was sitting on a car bonnet as those girls did at the Earl’s Court Show; this girl however was decently clothed. Our Brake Linings Are Your Life. Would an English face like her own project even more reassurance about the quality and proven safety of the commodity? The girl was dressed in a trouser-suit, western-style. This made her more advanced. Modern expectations might be troublesome in a woman but when it came to a product, that was a different matter. Shamime had mentioned that only tarts, girls from lower-middle-class homes and non-Muslims modelled for a living – the sort of girls who became air-hostesses.

  The shutter clicked. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him approaching. With light fingers he turned her face the other way. Her legs slid round, to slant demurely to the right.

  ‘A profile now, if you please.’

  On this wall hung a certificate, perhaps from his unlikely Madison Avenue days, and the photo of a baby advertising powdered milk. It was a Pakistani baby, rather fetching, dark-eyed and fat. Probably they liked them fat. She did not move her mouth until the shutter clicked twice. Then she asked: ‘Have you, by any chance, heard of some saint or other – a hot water man?’

  ‘Please to wait a moment. Do not move your head.’

  She stayed rigid, eyes locked with the baby’s. He gazed back at her. His glossy limbs were creased and bendy. Three clicks.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Now, please to turn the head this side and look into the camera. A smile please.’

  ‘That’s difficult. Can you say something funny?’

  ‘My only joking it is in the Urdu. My English it is solely for the courtesies and the business.’

  She kept her gaze steadied into the camera. She stretched her skin into some sort of grimace, perhaps a smile. He clicked several times and lifted his head.

  ‘I am sorry. You were speaking?’

  ‘I said, is there a shrine somewhere near Karachi where women go to offer prayers? Something to do with warm water.’ She remembered the word. ‘A pir used to live there. A sacred place, apparently, for . . .’ she cleared her throat, ‘your people.’

  He gazed over the glass eye of his camera. ‘I am a Christian. I am in the dark, concerning this, the same as yourself.’

  She clapped a hand to her mouth, blushing. ‘How stupid of me.’ She tried to laugh. Of course, with a name like Pereira he must be Goan. She kept on thinking of them as all the same.

  ‘Ah, do not move please.’ He started clicking fast. ‘Excuse me, but for the first time you are looking natural.’

  20

  It had always taken Donald some time to work things out; he was made this way. During the days since the news about his grandfather he had been trying to organize his feelings. He was still confused; in a way he wanted to be. It was like the aftermath of an explosion when the haze and dust has yet to settle. When they did the damage would be revealed. He preferred to postpone this.

  In the daytime it was hard to concentrate anyway. There was business to attend to, faces waiting for an answer and traffic to be negotiated in his sweltering car. The days felt different now, since Before. They had lost their transparency. But he could ignore this, as one ignores an ache by being constantly on the move. And in the evenings there was Christine, whom he had not yet told. Once he told her, in words, it would be confirmed. He would no longer be able to talk about other things and ignore the misery.

  Yesterday Iona Gracie had phoned. The call had been about the Ginntho development but at the end he had asked if she knew more about this Marnley chap. The Indian woman had died, said Mrs Gracie, some years later. She had been thinking about it since Ronald’s visit – after all, she had little enough to think about except this blessed hotel, and her memories. As it happened, someone’s bearer was this woman’s cousin and she, Iona, had heard a few more facts some years later. The woman was a local girl, a Sindhi, and had returned to her village with the baby boy. Soon afterwards she had died. For the life of her she could not remember the name of the woman or the baby, even if she had known at the time.

  ‘Whose bearer was that?’ asked Donald, trying to sound conversational.

  She could not remember, it must have been – oh, fifty years ago. Some bungalow in Clifton – yes, it was painted pink now. Opposite the Dutch Consulate. A British family lived in it then. She had often played tennis there before she was married. Now it was all changed, of course, but the buildings remained.

  Donald told himself: it was a long time ago; half a century. Attitudes were different then, there was a different code of behaviour according to your class and your race. He remembered from school – he had always remembered that line from some play: But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

  But he could not settle his grandfather comfortably and forgettably into history. Even there he did not sit easy. He had not just gone along with the rules; he had exploited them. Mrs Gracie had admitted as much. It was one thing to take a native mistress and have her bear his child; it was another to treat her in a way which, even by the standards of the time must be considered cruel, cold and mean. Bad enough, in fact, for his grandfather to be transferred, no doubt for everybody’s sake.

  Looking back now and trying to remember Grandad, his memories were smudged. He did, in fact, remember him as tight-fisted. But that had seemed like Grandad’s personal resistance to a shoddier modern world; part of his noble obliviousness. What other traits had he himself seen as more heroic than they were? Must he go back, painfully pick them up, and turn them over? Feel them disintegrate?

  He would only picture Grandad during those last few years of his life. He would not creep right back into the past and ruin it, rendering valueless everything Grandad had shared with him, and everything Grandad had stood for. But the very word ‘Grandad’ now sounded inappropriate. Too false, too cosy. What words to replace it? An old man? A cruel old man?

  As an old man what had he been like? Someone more tender with plants than with people. Towards the end of his life he had treated his wife, by now frail and querulous, with a belligerent gallantry. Constricted by the narrow doorways, he shooed away others to let her through. He would snap at her but not allow anyone else to do so. He gua
rded her with fierce exasperation. Donald had presumed that their marriage had been quite happy. They had rubbed along; in those days one did not inspect the bond with the intricate vocabulary one did now. It was to Donald that he told all his jokes.

  Had Granny known? Surely not. The woman could have lived in the house and Granny would not have noticed. She seemed too absorbed in herself and her husband’s comforts, too preoccupied with the small moments of day-to-day life. (Had the native woman offered him something better than this?) Besides they had moved away from Karachi the moment they married, or soon after.

  What did it matter, something that this old man had once done, long ago? It did matter, of course, most dreadfully. It mattered that his grandfather had told nobody. Whether the reason was that he was too ashamed, or too uncaring, thinking it of no account – both mattered in their different ways and now Donald would never know which it was. Back in Brinton his grandmother, aged eighty-eight and bedridden, obviously had no knowledge of it; even if he wished he could find out nothing from her. Part of the horror of it was that his grandfather probably had had no moment, during all that time in India, that he would have needed to lie about any of this; not really. After all, a native woman was not the same as an English one; she was not part of one’s life in the same way. Perhaps she had meant more to him than that; but perhaps one did not recognize, even to oneself, that such a woman could.

  It was partly for this reason that he had not yet told Christine. She would wade in with all the arguments about injustice, racism, women’s roles, imperialism, all that. Which indeed was a point, but not the point. Besides, she had always accused him of hero-worshipping his grandfather. Through her indignation (aimed at Grandad) and genuine sympathy (aimed at himself, Donald) there might just be a faint taste of justified comeuppance. And he did not care to discover this.