1977 (21 page)

missing knives and forks and spoons and cruets and napkins from the dumbwaiter.

As he was doing this Lila’s door opened and a man came out. Mr Bhoolabhoy was so

startled that it took him a second or two to recognize Mr Pandey, the lawyer’s clerk. Mr

Pandey looked exhausted. He barely acknowledged Mr Bhoolabhoy’s surprised greeting, but

murmured something and went to his own room. According to the register Mr Pandey

wasn’t supposed to be in the hotel, not that the register was much to go by because often Mr

Pandey failed to sign in, but Mr Bhoolabhoy invariably had a few days’ notice of his arrival.

While Mr Bhoolabhoy was standing there wondering and entertaining vague suspicions

about Mr Pandey’s relationship with Lila, Lila’s door opened again and she emerged with her

hair down her back and across her massive shoulders wearing her shocking pink nylon

negligee—a see-through outer robe and underneath it, also see-through but rendered

opaque, a nightdress of the same colour and material. Her feet were stuffed into pink mules

with pink nylon-fur trimmings.

“Ah, it’s you,” she shrieked. “Good. Poor old Mr Pandey. He wasn’t up to it any longer.

What are you doing? Leave all that and wait for me in my room.”

She billowed past him shrieking to the cook which was to say using her normal speaking

voice, which Mr Bhoolabhoy often thought must be a contributory cause of her splitting

headaches. To get to the kitchen you went out of the dining-room along a passage and then

down another at right-angles to it and eventually reached the place where the food was

prepared. She was audible to Mr Bhoolabhoy throughout this journey. At some point on her

return journey she stopped talking to cook and started talking again to Mr Bhoolabhoy.

She was, he realized, in a good mood, a pleasant surprise after a day spent checking the

accounts.

“Pour me a drink, Franky,” she was saying. “I am dying of thirst from all this question,

answer, checking, checking and so much rigmarole with wheretofores and wheresoases and

as beforesaids. I feel worn to a shadow. I ordered a tandoori and a chicken curry. It will be

ready soon. We will have it in my room. Come, come, come.”

He followed her in and shut the door. The bed was rumpled, but it was also littered with

papers of the kind Mr Pandey brought up from his law firm. Moreover the room was full of

cigarette smoke and Lila only smoked during the day when she had business to attend to.

She normally attended to it stretched out on the day bed, the settee, which she collapsed on

to now as if resuming a position only momentarily abandoned. And Sunday
was
hair-washing

day even if by this time of night she had usually put it up. Sunday was also deshabille day. So

he must not harbour these dark thoughts. And as if certifying the innocence of the hours Mr

Pandey may have spent with her, there was his brief-case, propped against the legs of the

upright chair he must have been sitting on, a half emptied glass of orange juice on the table

by its side. On the table in front of the settee there was a tray of drinks, Lila’s ashtray, a legal-

looking document and a magnifying glass. The drinks were untouched as yet. Smoke she

might, but drink never, until business was over.

Mr Bhoolabhoy poured her a large Carews gin and tonic. Taking it she smiled fondly at him

from under her moustache.

“Have one yourself, Franky.”

The “Franky” was an indication that he was in favour.

“Cheers,” she said, had a good swig, put her head against the high arm of the settee. She

was still smiling.

“Did you have a nice day?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Very nice. And you, Lila?”

“I had a nice day too. But, oh, quite exhausting. Only poor Mr Pandey has had a rotten day.

Because of flying up this afternoon. He has never been in an aeroplane before.”

“Flying up? Mr Pandey?”

“You fly when you have to fly to be quick off the mark, whether you like it or not.” She

drained her glass and held it out. Mr Bhoolabhoy replenished it. “Tomorrow he can go back

by the midday train because the train gets in even earlier than the evening flight and anyway

now everything is settled, signed and witnessed.”

“What does this mean, Lila, my love? Settled signed and witnessed?”

“It means, Franky, that at last I am going to make some real money. Come, sit with me.

Tell me you still love me. What is money if one is not loved?”

Tears sprang to her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “What is the life of a woman if she is

not loved?” she said. He could not bear to see a woman cry. He sank on to the settee and

began to kiss the tears away.

“Ah!” she cried, clasping him. “My little Franky.”

Realizing he was getting an erection he thought: I am seriously oversexed. I have only to

touch or be touched by Lila and I am in this state. Perhaps I should have a word with Father

Sebastian about it.

“Ah,” she was saying again. “Oh, my Franky.”

“What do you mean, my love, real money?” he murmured into her throat.

“Real money is real money, but what is money? No—No!” she pushed him away, laughing,

the tears drying. “Later, later—for now just give me that drink. Real money you ask? Real

money is when you start thinking not in thousands of rupees but in lakhs of rupees because

then you can also start thinking in crores.”

“How are you going to make this real money, my love?” he asked, handing her the glass

again and then refilling his own.

“It is a secret. No one must know.” She sipped. “But I will tell
you
. Can you not guess? You

who were down in Ranpur for me and making a good impression?” She smacked a kiss on

his forehead. One spectacular episode apart the main things he could remember about

Ranpur were taking a locked briefcase to the lawyers, then calling every day from his hotel to

see if he was wanted—although wanted for what he could not tell because he seldom had

been wanted and then only to answer questions about the Smith’s accounts. Eventually he

had returned with the same locked briefcase, slightly heavier, none the wiser except in regard

to something called double-lotus.

“I cannot guess,” he said.

“Truly? Honestly?” She clasped her hands. “Then I will tell you, but not a word to be

breathed. Completion date is not until a month from now.”

“Completion date?”

“For the contract.” She paused. Her mouth quivered. “I am buying into the consortium.

You know what this means? It means I shall now profit from all the enterprises. Shiraz

Hotel Pankot, Shiraz Hotel Ranpur, Shiraz Hotel Mayapore, Mirat Lake Palace Hotel, and all

the Go-Go-Inns. Part of these profits of course will be ploughed back into the consortium

so that we can expand our enterprises, particularly down in Nansera which is to be

developed. Only that is very very confidential, my Franky.”

“But Lila, all this buying in must be costing you a great deal of money.”

She raised her hands in mock horror. “Oh, don’t speak of it. Dear God! It makes me quite

ill to think what it is costing.”

Mr Bhoolabhoy sipped his drink. It made him feel rather faint to be married to a woman

rich enough to buy her way into consortiums. It also made him wonder whether as her

husband he had in some way been illegally deprived of his rights. She had sometimes, too,

asked him to sign papers and he had done so without demanding to read them, being a man

for a quiet life. Perhaps, without knowing it, he was a member of this consortium too; and,

also without knowing it, for some years one of what he occasionally heard Lila and Mr

Pandey referring to as nominees. If Lila suddenly dropped dead (his eye on the open half-

eaten box of marrons glacés) what kind of mess would he find himself in? Mess, somehow it

would be sure to be, not clover. “You’re a loser, Billy-Boy,” Tusker had told him once,

“Lila’s a winner.” He had always imagined that if Lila died before he did he might, just, with

luck, find himself the proprietor of Smith’s, which she had bought before their marriage and

which she’d sworn had cost her every penny she owned in the world plus what she’d had to

borrow from the bank at extortionate interest.

“Lila, my love, my love,” he said, sitting next to her again, “wherever did you get this

money?”

“What money, Franky?”

“To buy into the consortium.”

She smiled. To Mr Bhoolabhoy the settee they were on suddenly felt as though it were

stuffed with blackmarket rupees. Most of Lila’s business friends looked like people who

owned such settees, come to think of it. Perhaps he should have thought of it before. He
had

thought of it before but the thought had so thoroughly frightened him that he had stopped

thinking it ages ago. Government was very hot on catching people dealing in black money.

The Prime Minister herself took a personal interest in putting a stop to it. Tusker was always

saying that the Prime Minister was the one person in India capable of ending corruption. Mr

Bhoolabhoy, although a Christian, was also a patriot. He had now a terrifying vision of Mrs

Gandhi walking into the room in that aristocratic way of hers and demanding that he and

Lila stand up while she personally investigated the settee to find out what it was stuffed with.

“What is wrong, Franky, my love?”

Actually, he realized, there were two things wrong: the thought that Lila had bought her

way into the consortium with black money (a deal to which he may unwittingly have been a

party, down in Ranpur particularly, signing this and signing that and thinking of nothing so

much as Hot Chichanya) and the thought that if Lila hadn’t used black money she must have

sold her only apparent asset: the hotel. Apart from St John’s his managership of the hotel

was the only thing he had in the world. Well, no. He had Lila. But what was Lila? A cross or

a blessing?

“There is nothing wrong, Lila, my love.”

“You look so sad. Let us have another drink. Then we will eat a lovely Tandoori, and

chicken curry, and perhaps some mutton-do-piaza and some lovely saffron rice. After that

we will make love.”

He poured more drinks, and tried to ignore the twinge of anticipation in his traitor-loins.

He did not want to make love but knew he was going to. He went heavy on the gin and light

on the tonic. The first swig of this richer mixture gave him the courage to say:

“Lila, have you sold the hotel?”

“Sell, buy? You cannot make this distinction. I buy my way into the consortium. The hotel

therefore becomes part of the consortium’s assets. But the consortium’s assets are also my

assets, so how can you say I have sold the hotel when it remains among my assets? All one

can say is that when I bought it I made a sound investment after all, which they tried to do

me out of by building the Shiraz. Now they know the value of this place. They cannot do

without me. Achchha. So now we make something out of it and of it. In this you will help

me, my Franky. We shall become rich together. But what is rich? What is rich if alone?”

She was crying again, or about to be.

“We make something of Smith’s?” he asked, trying to concentrate.

“Why not? Why eke would I buy into the consortium?”

“We redecorate? Refurnish? Advertise? I have heard about Nansera, Lila. It could be a

great opportunity for us.”

“This is what I am saying just now. I am very hungry, Franky. Ring the bell.”

He did so. Having done so he began to pace the room. His imagination was on fire. The

future looked promising after all. The hotel would flourish, side by side with the Shiraz. St

John’s would flourish too. And if they were going to make real money he could perhaps

persuade Lila to employ an under-manager. That would give him more time to devote to St

John’s.

“Lila,” he said, pouring more gin. “What a clever Lila it is. What a lovely Lila.” He kissed

her. Her tears flowed over his nose.

“Franky, Franky. Later, later.”

Old Prabhu came in with the tandoori. While they ate Mr Bhoolabhoy began to describe

the various things that ought to be done to bring Smith’s back up to scratch. Lila, occupied

with her chicken leg which she ate with her fingers, as he did his, nodded, nodded, said

nothing, burped, drank, attacked the chicken curry and rice and occasionally murmured, “All

such things will have to be gone into,” an apposite phrase that registered in Mr

Bhoolabhoy’s mind in a somewhat different context as he anticipated a reconnaissance of

that vast territory of her flesh.

At what hour precisely the reconnaissance had begun he could not recall when he woke in

the morning and returned on penitential knees to his own room, there to curl up in the

embryonic position. He could not remember the end of the meal, the beginning of conjugal

rites, or how many times they had been celebrated.

But he slept for only a few minutes in his own bed before being woken by the recollection