Evelyn went outside. In the darkness, Minoo sat slumped on the veranda steps. She lowered herself carefully and sat down beside him.
“Were you thinking of your lost bride?” she asked.
He nodded.
“What was her name?”
“Bapsi.” He turned to her. “Mrs. Evelyn, I can’t go on like this. The hotel is falling to pieces around my head.”
“Is it?” She looked up, alarmed.
“I can’t work, I can’t sleep. Did God put us on this earth to suffer such unhappiness?”
She lowered her voice. “Have you thought about divorce? In England nowadays people do it all the time. They have a very short fuse.”
“I’ve been divorced,” said Madge. They swung around. “Am I butting in?”
“Sit down, madam, please,” said Minoo.
“Best thing I ever did.” Madge sat down beside them. “Because then I met Arnold. Honestly, it was as if I was born again. Another crack at it.” She turned to Evelyn. “You wouldn’t have recognized me with Howard—that’s my first. I was such a mouse.” She lit a cigarette. “With Arnold I became a different person. He made me laugh, you see. Oh we did have fun, right up to the end. I remember once, when he was bending down to get something from the floor—he had a terrible back—he said, ‘Now that I’m down here, is there anything else you want?’ ”
They sat, gazing into the darkness. At the far end of the veranda Eithne called: “Tommy … Tommy …?” She was looking for the cat.
“I only had the one husband,” said Evelyn. “He seemed enough for me at the time.”
Another voice in the garden called out: “Tinker? Tinker?…” Hermione too was searching for the cat.
“From what I understand, you lot can have another life but only after you’ve died,” said Madge. “Some of us can have another life when we’re still alive.” She drew on her cigarette. “It makes you feel you’ve lived longer, like a two-center holiday.”
“I thought I believed in God, ladies,” said Minoo. “But I’ve been having doubts.”
“To be perfectly honest,” said Evelyn, “so have I.”
“May I have one of those please, madam?”
Madge gave Minoo a cigarette and lit it. Evelyn liked cigarette smoke; it reminded her of Hugh. Besides, it kept the mosquitoes away. The three of them sat there, absorbed in their thoughts. The voices called faintly in the garden. A third one had joined them: “Felix … Felix!” Far away, beyond the wall, the traffic hooted.
Just then a figure appeared, walking up the drive. It was difficult to make out who it was—just a glimmer of pale clothes, like a ghost.
A hush fell. For a moment, all they could hear was the scrunch of footsteps on the gravel. The figure drew nearer. It was a woman.
“Lucy!” A voice cried out from the other end of the veranda. A plate clattered as Eithne dropped the cat’s food. “Lucy darling!” Eithne rushed up to where they sat on the steps. They moved aside to let her pass. “It’s my daughter!” she said breathlessly. Gripping the rail, she descended the steps.
Maybe she tripped. Nobody knew. Suddenly there was the sound of tearing wood. The rail broke and Eithne fell, heavily.
The three of them jumped to their feet.
“Eithne, are you all right?”
Evelyn, however, wasn’t looking at the prone body lying on the ground. She was looking at the woman who was near them now, approaching through the darkness: a middle-aged woman dressed in Indian clothes.
“Theresa!”
“Hallo, Mum.”
Evelyn hurried across the gravel and hugged her daughter—an awkward thing to do, with the rucksack getting in the way.
Eithne’s accident had a powerful effect on the residents. She had been taken to the Victoria Hospital with a broken hip. In their hearts they all knew what this meant. One thing led to another; those who went in with a broken hip seldom came out again. “It’s the beginning of the end,” said Hermione, not known for her tact.
The Ainslies visited Eithne the next day. Like an advance guard, they reported back their impressions of the hospital. Families around every bedside, they said, full-scale meals being set up, but otherwise the place wasn’t that different from a British hospital, including the brown faces of the staff. Eithne’s daughter had been notified and, despite her mother’s feeble protestations that there was no need, was flying out from Australia and would arrive the next day.
“One down, nineteen to go,” said Madge to Norman. “We’re like those lobsters in a tank, you know, when you go into a restaurant. Soon someone’s going to point a finger and say ‘I’ll have that one.’ ”
Norman liked Madge. She was a good-looking woman; must have been quite a trouser-stirrer in her youth. She smoked, too, unlike most of the niminy-piminy old biddies with whom he was surrounded. At one mad moment he had considered confiding in her. Most of his fellow residents looked the way old people were supposed to look; something beige about them, and they all had the same hairdos. Impossible to imagine they had ever had sexual intercourse. A few of them, however, like Madge, looked like ordinary women who happened to have got on a bit. Of these, Madge was the best specimen. She’d obviously had a lot of experience in the bedroom department and maybe could give him some reassurance about his little problem. Your hubby Arnold, did he find, as time went by, that he had less snap in the old celery? Norman, however, didn’t entirely trust Madge to keep it to herself. If his secret got out, he could never hold up his head again.
He had made up his mind to get some professional advice and had found the address of a clinic in the pages of the Bangalore Times. “Impotence,” said the small ad. “Premature Ejaculation, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, HIV Testing, Confidence Guaranteed.”
Norman sat crouched in the auto-rickshaw as it puttered along Elphinstone Street. The road was clogged with traffic. It was December 18, a momentous day. To admit he had a problem was one step; actively to do something about it, to lift the phone and make an appointment, was loin-girdingly bold. He needed to get it over with before Pauline arrived. It would be difficult to slip away when she was on the premises, being the dutiful daughter.
The rickshaw swerved around a bus. Its exhaust fumes made his eyes water. Why wasn’t Pauline bringing that husband of hers? Surely the chap would want to visit his own country and check up on his investment? Still, they couldn’t complain about Norman’s behavior this time. Nobody had chucked him out of The Marigold yet. Of course, the temptations hadn’t been numerous.
He thought about Eithne, the poor old bird, languishing in the hospital. He wished he hadn’t told her that her glasses made her look like Rosemary West.
“Is she a friend of yours?” Eithne had asked.
“No. Serial killer. Gloucester.”
“Pardon?” asked Eithne, never that bright at the best of times.
“Fred West, all that,” replied Norman. “Remember?”
Eithne had made a small, startled noise in her throat.
Really, Eithne should sue the bloody hotel, but their generation didn’t do things like that. It wouldn’t cross her mind. Besides, if Sonny had anything to do with it, which he did, the place had probably never been inspected nor had any sort of official certification in the first place.
The rickshaw veered across the traffic and came to a halt on a pile of rubble. Norman eased himself out and straightened up, with a groan. Up above him loomed a peeling building: Elphinstone Chambers. Signs attached to the various floors proclaimed the businesses within: Ishmail Tailoring, Suitings and Shirtings. Rahman Travel Agency. He looked farther up. Third Floor: Meerhar Clinic.
“These Indian Post-its are hopeless,” said Evelyn, picking one off the floor. “They don’t stick at all.”
“You don’t need attachments, Mum,” said her daughter. “Just let go.”
“Don’t be silly, dear. I won’t remember anything if I don’t remind myself.”
“It’s a joke, Mum. We did a lot of laughing in the ashr
ams.”
They left the bedroom and walked down the corridor. Theresa was still limping but Mrs. Cowasjee, in a rare moment of goodwill, had bandaged her foot. Theresa wore her mother’s bedroom slippers: powder blue, trimmed with fluff.
“Lucky it was just your foot,” said Evelyn. “I was so worried about you. One hears such stories.”
“I was fine,” said Theresa.
“Muslim terrorists—”
“Not in India—”
“Muslims are such trouble, bombing things, praying all the time—”
“Mum! Not all Muslims are terrorists.”
“Anyone who has ground elder can understand terrorism,” said Evelyn. “Pull up one bit and there’s still a whole lot more, breeding away under the soil—”
“Mum—”
“Pulling it up only encourages it, you see. Another bit pops up where you least expect it.”
“Mum!” Theresa stopped. “Don’t be so silly.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” said Evelyn sharply. “You sound about twelve years old.”
Evelyn couldn’t help it; her temper was short that day. Eithne’s fall had upset her and her own daughter, after only two days, was starting to irritate her. She looked at Theresa. Gray wires had appeared in her hair; Evelyn hadn’t noticed them before. Her daughter’s skin, bare of makeup, looked pasty. Really, six weeks in India and she hadn’t even got a tan. And those miserable, colorless pajamas! They looked nice on Indian women, but Theresa looked as if she’d been in bed with the flu.
“You must snap out of this cycle,” Evelyn said. “It just goes round and round. If you snapped out of it and grew up, then you’d be happy.”
“Good grief, Mum. You sound like a Hindu.”
“I do live here, you know.”
Theresa grunted. They walked into the lounge. Evelyn realized that things had shifted between them. She wasn’t the same person who had arrived so apprehensively three months earlier. Now she felt freer, with her bare legs and her new young friends. She had grown fond of Surinda and Rahul, who was less blasé than he looked. And then there were her fellow residents, who were by now so familiar that they were almost family. Above all it was this baffling and beguiling country that was altering her. And her daughter, whom she loved but whom she found so infuriating, had remained exactly the same.
Norman sat in the waiting room, looking sideways at the other men. There were eight of them, all Indian of course. Some of them smoked. They looked as if they had been sitting there since last year. Indians had that air about them, when they were waiting for something. What were they thinking about? All the shags that had finally come home to roost? Wondering if it had been worth it? You could bet they weren’t suffering from impotence. Indians were at it all the time; you only had to look at those swarms of children to realize that the average Bangalorean had no problem getting it up. And they were well versed, too, in the arts of love. The Kama Sutra, which Norman had eagerly read in his youth, listed eight kinds of nail marks—eight—to be used during coitus. Norman had only scratched a woman once, and that was involuntarily, in pain, when her watch strap caught his pubic hair.
What would the doctor do? Get him some Viagra for starters, see if that worked. Maybe he could prescribe some exotic elixir made out of powdered rhino horn or something. After all, this was India. At the last resort there was apparently a pump thing, but surely it wouldn’t come to that.
“Fancy a cigarette?” he said to the man next to him.
The chap waggled his head, no, and took one.
“Speak English?” asked Norman.
The man waggled his head again and said nothing.
They all looked like bank clerks—thin; poorly paid. You could sense the desperation. They probably went home to a couple of chappatis. Funny, really, that they had nothing except the one thing that Norman would give his eyeteeth for, if he still had any eyeteeth.
The door of the surgery opened and the nurse called out: “Mr. Smith!”
Nobody moved.
“Mr. Smith?”
She was looking at Norman. He jumped. He had forgotten he had given a false name.
Norman made his way across the room. He felt horribly conspicuous. For the first time in his life, he wished he were brown. Invisible, in fact.
The nurse opened the door and Norman stepped into the surgery. The doctor, dressed in a white jacket, sat behind a desk. He got to his feet.
Norman stood, frozen to the spot.
“Good God,” he said. “Dr. Rama!”
Theresa felt suffocated. Initially she had been relieved to have found her mother in fine form—even flourishing. For a conventional Englishwoman, Evelyn seemed to have adapted remarkably well. In fact her mother looked years younger. She had stopped wearing face powder—“It just slides off,” she said, “so I gave up”—and her skin was lightly tanned. The warm climate had eased her arthritis and she seemed altogether rejuvenated. “Just looking at the people in the street,” she said, “well, it makes you count your blessings, doesn’t it?” This, of course, was a great relief. Theresa didn’t feel quite so guilty about her now.
She had also been surprised by how pleased she had been to see her mother. Maybe it was a reaction to the loneliness and disappointment of her trip (yes, she could admit it now). She had just wanted to hug her.
Two days had passed, however, and the goodwill was evaporating. The trouble with visiting people so far away was that once you arrived, you had to stay for such a long time—two weeks, in her case. How maddening her mother was! It was odd, feeling the old irritations rise to the surface in these foreign surroundings, like hearing a nursery rhyme in the middle of a raga. Of course Theresa knew that wherever people went, they carried their baggage with them, but it was still an unwelcome sensation. And the hotel was getting on her nerves. At first glance it looked charming, but really what a ludicrous place it was, a time warp for grannies, is there honey still for tea? A place that reinforced every stereotype and confirmed every prejudice. They called the head bearer Jimmy, for God’s sake; didn’t they see how degrading that was? None of them seemed to have learned a single word of Hindi or the local language, Kannada, and Theresa’s efforts to interest them in the simplest tenets of Hinduism had been met with blank incomprehension. That awful old Norman Purse, the one with the purple nose, had even sniggered at the word lingam. It was extraordinary how the British could live in their own bubble. Of course, they had had centuries of practice.
It all stemmed from denial. Denial was the British default setting—denial of sexuality, denial of one’s feelings. Theresa herself had had to work on that; it had taken her years of therapy to realize that she hated her brother. Denial, of course, produced fear. Theresa could see it in the faces of the old people, so damaged by the Western culture in which they had been brought up. No wonder they knocked back the gin-and-tonics.
Funnily enough, the only person who seemed to be on Theresa’s wavelength was a working-class woman, Muriel Donnelly. They had sat in Muriel’s delightfully kitsch room and discussed reincarnation. Muriel was not an intellectual, by any stretch of the imagination, but Theresa had discovered that this could be an advantage for those who followed a spiritual path.
“They think I’m barmy,” said Muriel, “but you should see that Stella Englefield, she’s a sandwich short of a picnic. And that Dorothy Miller thinks she’s so hoity-toity but I’ve heard her singing ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ when she thinks nobody’s listening.”
She had told Theresa about a holy man she had visited in the Old City. Theresa had decided to go there and had obtained directions from the manager’s wife. After two days in The Marigold, she felt the need of a spiritual hit.
For Bangalore was far from exotic: a sprawling, featureless city filled with office blocks. On her first day Theresa had hired a car and taken her mother around; the driver had insisted on giving them a tour of the various IT buildings, including a glass edifice soon to be occupied by News C
orp.
“This is our Silicon Valley,” he said proudly. “Mr. Rupert Murdoch, you have heard of him? He is setting up a digital software facility for his global networks.”
“It’s just like Milton Keynes,” said Theresa.
“Sssh, dear,” said her mother.
“I’ve come halfway round the world to get away from this.”
Theresa could hardly visit a holy man wearing bedroom slippers. Her wound had nearly healed; she took off the bandage and slipped on her flip-flops. The manager had found her a storage room, crammed with two beds, on the top floor of the hotel; there were no other spare rooms, apparently.
Theresa wrapped a dupatta around her shoulders and went downstairs. The old dears were just shuffling in to lunch.
“Do stay and eat,” said her mother.
“No, I’ll see you later. Bye, Mum.” “Mum” sounded babyish—after all, Theresa was a middle-aged woman—but what did one call one’s mother? Could she change it to “Mother” at this late stage?
Theresa was pondering this when the door burst open and Norman Purse arrived. His face was brick red.
“Guess who I’ve just seen!” he barked at the queue. “Your precious Dr. Rama!”
“What do you mean, dear?” asked Evelyn.
“The fellow’s a bloody clap doctor!” Norman gave a snort. “Always knew there was something fishy about him. Smarming around with that hair.”
There was a silence.
“The man’s a charlatan!” said Norman. “He runs a clap clinic in Elphinstone Street!”
“What were you doing in a clap clinic, sweetie?” said Madge.
“I was walking past on my way to the bank.” Norman’s small, fierce eyes challenged her. “Saw the fellow coming out.”
There was another silence. One by one they turned to Minoo.
“Is this true?” somebody asked.
“That’s got their knickers in a twist,” chuckled Muriel. “No wonder he gave ’em all antibiotics.”
Lunch was over. The news of Dr. Rama’s treachery had had a powerful effect on many of the residents, who had now retired to their rooms for a brood and a nap. Muriel sat on the veranda with Douglas Ainslie, who as a man had been less susceptible to the doctor’s charms and who therefore felt less keenly a sense of betrayal.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A Novel Page 21
