The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (14 page)

It was up Brigade Road, in the big hotels and shopping arcades, that he saw women with some flesh on their bones—flashing-eyed temptresses haggling over jewelry or sipping lattes in the coffee shops. He saw them on his trips to the Oberoi Hotel to buy yesterday’s
Daily Telegraph
. Those wearing saris revealed, at their midriffs, seductive bulges of skin. These were sometimes bedewed with perspiration. Norman imagined grabbing the hem and spinning the women like tops until they unraveled. He imagined dark nipples, puckered like currants, and thighs
kama sutra
’d around his neck. He imagined nuzzling enormous breasts that smelled of gardenias. Norman closed his eyes and pictured pussies that tasted of mangoes and prawns, the surprisingly luxurious starter at last night’s dinner. His carnal knowledge of Indian women was limited—to be frank, nonexistent—but he knew they were tutored in sexual wiles from an early age and the prostate doctor’s words had inflamed him. Surely here, in India, he could arouse his flagging libido?

There were, however, certain problems. To the younger, jeans-clad generation he was invisible. In recent years Norman had grown accustomed to this, of course; it was one of the penalties of growing older. The females of more mature appearance, however, presented another difficulty, for they were never alone. In India, as in Africa, there was no such thing as solitude. This made the lothario’s task a challenging one; like a lion, one had to single out one’s prey and separate her from the herd. So far he had not managed to accomplish this.

Norman flicked his cigarette into a bush. Behind him the aviary was silent; the budgies had settled down for the night. So had the old dears in their bedrooms. He too felt weary. His back ached; his varicose veins throbbed. He knew he was getting too old for this sort of caper, but one had to show willing. He would make discreet inquiries. Sonny would be the fellow; no doubt he was acquainted with the hot spots of his home city. Or Norman could have a man-to-man chat with Minoo Cowasjee, who ran the hotel. With a wife like that—what a harridan!—he was bound to have found solace in other arms.

Ah, the joys of coitus! After all, it was the only way a chap could tell that he was still alive.

T
he residents were eating breakfast.

“Listen to this, girls.” Madge Rheinhart adjusted her spectacles and read aloud from the
Daily Mail: “In a bid to control the London drugs epidemic, armed police are being recruited to patrol school playgrounds.”

“I read that yesterday,” said somebody.

“It’s yesterday’s paper.”

“Actually it’s three days old,” said another woman, whose name Evelyn hadn’t caught.

“Aren’t you glad we’ve got away from all that?”

“Good grief, Cooper’s Marmalade!”

The bearer put it on the table: a pot of Cooper’s Coarse Cut Marmalade, complete with saucer and teaspoon. There was a silence.

“Where did you buy it, dear?”

“A shop in Lady Curzon Street; it had Marmite, too. Cost an arm and a leg.”

“Still, one’s pension goes a long way here.”

“What did you say about the schools?”

“Oh do pay attention, Stella!”

Madge Rheinhart rolled her eyes. She was a bossy, good-humored woman. Her husband, apparently, had owned half Kensington. Today she wore tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt saying Starlight Express. Her spectacles hung around her neck on a diamanté chain. Evelyn wished she had thought of this; her own glasses hung on a sort of bootlace. Evelyn wasn’t a vain woman—her nails were her only weakness—but she admired pizazz in others.

Jean Ainslie leaned across from the next table. “Doug and I’ve been reading the Indian papers, haven’t we, darling?”

“Dull as ditch water,” said Douglas. “Full of cement tenders.”

Evelyn smiled. She liked Douglas because he had been kind to her on the plane.

“Anyway, they don’t have the crossword,” he said.

This was a source of some grievance. Norman Purse was the only person who managed to buy the
Daily Telegraph
on a regular basis. This was because he knew where to go—a source he kept secret—and set off smartly after breakfast. Evelyn had seen him striding down Brigade Road, waving away the beggars with his walking stick. Not only did he hog the papers all day—sometimes he managed to buy
The Times
, too—but he always filled in the crossword, triumphantly scrawling in Biro so nobody could rub it out. Worse still, it was often incomplete; this made it doubly annoying, especially when the clues he missed were easy ones. Even Evelyn could have solved
“Kentish town famous for its oysters (10).”

He was out now, buying the paper. Breakfast was being served by Jimmy the bearer, an elderly man in turban and stained white jacket. He was very slow, and brought out only one item at a time. Evelyn watched him cross the room carrying a bottle of ketchup on a tray; he carried it with care, as if it might explode. Still, they were in no hurry. Cereal was available, plus omelettes or hard-boiled eggs. Evelyn had once tried the sausages, but it was not an experience she cared to repeat. The dining room was gloomy, Indian buildings being constructed to keep out the sun, and some rebellious souls took their tea out onto the veranda.

Fifteen residents were already installed, and some more were expected in the next few weeks. Evelyn couldn’t remember all their names and was inclined to cling to those with whom she had made acquaintance in the first few days: the Ainslies; Madge Rheinhart, whom everyone knew because she organized things; and Stella Englefield, who had buried two husbands and was somewhat deaf. Who was going to sit with whom at meals? Friendships had been forged; territories staked out. It reminded Evelyn of boarding school, a period in her life that she remembered with painful clarity. Madge’s efforts to move people around at dinner had been firmly resisted by those who had found congenial companions and were determined to stick with them.

This morning Evelyn had taken pity on Muriel Donnelly, the latest arrival, and had joined her at a table for two next to the toilets.

“They try to do an English breakfast,” said Evelyn. “But it’s not the same, of course.”

“Milk’s funny,” said Muriel Donnelly.

“It’s boiled. I think it’s from buffaloes. The Ainslies are very adventurous—look, they’re eating little puffy things filled with curry. When in Rome and all that.”

“I go to Spain for my holidays,” said Muriel. “My son’s got a villa.”

“How nice,” replied Evelyn.

“It’s not hot like this.”

“It’s the humidity, you see.” Evelyn enjoyed being the expert. “Before the monsoon, apparently, it’s insufferable. Now it’s getting better and it should be very pleasant all winter.”

The ceiling fan creaked. At the next table, Madge anchored an airmail letter with the teapot.

“There are plans, apparently, to open another retirement hotel in Ooty,” said Evelyn. “That’s up in the hills where it’s cooler. The British used to move there in the summer months. Apparently it’s just like East Grinstead.”

The Marigold was, too. Sealed into their compound, the residents lived in a world that was, in many ways, more familiar than the England they had left behind. It was an England of Catherine Cookson paperbacks and clicking knitting needles, of Kraft Dairylea portions and a certain Proustian recall. Now that the summer was over, the
mali
was out planting English annuals—marigolds and cosmoses—widely spaced in damp depressions of earth. Evelyn itched to get her hands on the flower beds; gardeners here knew nothing about color and mass.

Outside the walls, India clamored. So many people, such need and desperation. Evelyn had ventured out only a few times; she found the experience disorienting. The moment she stepped through the gate, beggars stirred and clambered to their feet. Skeletal dogs nosed through heaps of rubbish. Even the holy cows, wandering between the cars, were cruelly thin. And then there was the legless young man, sitting on his trolley in the midst of the exhaust smoke.

“We can go for a walk later, if you’d like that,” said Evelyn. “It’s all very different, I must say. I mean, in England people have got so much, yet they’re becoming rather rude, don’t you find? Here they’ve got nothing at all yet they’re very polite.
‘How are you?’
they ask.
‘Where do you come from?’
Oh they pester you, but in the nicest way.”

Muriel didn’t appear to be listening. She was probably suffering from jet lag; after all, for her it must still be the middle of the night. Somebody had mentioned that she had been left on a hospital trolley for two days. Oh well, thought Evelyn, at least she’s got her legs. India, she was discovering, made one thankful for small mercies.

“I met some charming schoolchildren,” Evelyn said. “White socks, so neat and clean, and they called me ‘auntie.’ ”

Muriel pushed away her plate. Her face was the color of putty.

“Are you all right, dear?” asked Evelyn.

“Got a pain in my guts.”

“You poor thing.” Jean Ainslie leaned over from her table. “Probably Delhi belly. We’ve all had it.”

Evelyn scraped back her chair and stood up. “Come along. I’ll take you to the nurse.” She reached for Muriel’s arm.

“I can manage.”

Muriel was a stubborn old thing. A cockney, of course. They were an independent bunch.

“When I went to the nurse with tummy trouble,” said Jean Ainslie, “she insisted on looking at my feet.”

E
velyn left Muriel with the nurse—aka Mrs. Cowasjee, the manager’s wife—and walked into the garden. It was already hot. The
mali
, holding a dribbling hose, squatted in the flower bed. Around his waist was tucked a checkered dhoti. She had once owned a summer frock made out of the same material—D. H. Evans, if she remembered correctly. Up in the tree, rooks cawed. A man stood at the gate. “Memsahib!” he called out, hoarse with his secret. His bicycle was laden with bundles. “Memsahib! You want T-shirts? Slacks? Good price, madam!”

Evelyn feebly raised her hand in a gesture of both greeting and dismissal. Maybe she should buy a T-shirt and look like Madge; she already felt sapped of energy, however, and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The heat exhausted her. The need out there, the vastness of it, drained her. In a moment of rebellion, staggering in its boldness, she had decided to embark on a new life. Was it a sign of despair, a recognition of how little she was needed? Brick by brick she had created a family. Like the walls of this garden, they should have shielded her from the terrors of the world outside. One by one, however, the bricks had been removed and she was left alone in a foreign country.

Up in the nameless tree, the rooks bounced from branch to branch. If only she could believe what Beverley had said: that those birds had once been people, that this was not the end. Deep in her heart she had never believed the Christian thing; she had realized this in recent years. Nobody calling himself God could let what happened happen. Maybe Indians, to whom tragedies happened on an incomprehensible scale, had the sense to hold nobody responsible. For lives so desperate, so pitifully short, there must be a comfort in knowing that theirs was just a journey through the animal kingdom. No wonder they looked so resigned—serene, even. Maybe the limbless beggar, to whom she had timidly given a rupee the day before, believed that next time around he would return as a rook, hopping across the lawn on strong, springy legs.

Evelyn stood on the path, trying to work this out. She should have listened to her daughter, who had gone on about her holy man. The trouble was, Theresa was inclined to lecture and Evelyn had drifted off. She also had an uncomfortable feeling that Theresa was seeking some emotional nourishment she had been denied at home. Evelyn herself had never really spoken to an Indian. Until recently, the only ones she had met had been behind the counter at the post office or punching her ticket on the train to London. They were in a position of servitude. Once, the British had ruled this place. The Raj, however, like her certainties, had long since crumbled. Now it was she herself who was the ethnic minority. In this sprawling city there were millions of Indians and she hadn’t the faintest idea what went on in their heads. Maybe they possessed a spiritual belief that made sense of the senseless; that was the only way they managed to survive. It was all most confusing.

Hugh’s laugh boomed in her head.
Brace up, old girl!
How she envied the Ainslies, striding off hand in hand to explore the unknown! Evelyn had to make her own journey, with no companions except these near-strangers who sat on the veranda reading paperback novels with magnifying glasses. Some of them were already dozing. Creepers snaked up the wooden pillars of the hotel and smothered the roof tiles. It was like a scene from
The Sleeping Beauty
. The old building was crumbling; soon nature would engulf it and in years to come there would just be a pile of rubble. No, even this would have been scavenged; nothing lay around for long. It would be as if she and her fellow residents had never existed at all.

Norman, too, was asleep. He had returned from his mission; the newspaper lay on his lap. Evelyn crossed the lawn. Outside in the street, cars hooted. From the servants’ quarters came the sound of a radio—warbling Indian singing, eerily high.

Evelyn approached Norman. A fly, attracted by a ketchup stain on his jacket, buzzed around his chest. His tie, scattered with ash, was askew.

Evelyn stepped nearer. Norman’s purple hands lay on the
Daily Telegraph
. It was open at the Deaths page. He seemed to have underlined some of the words. Evelyn put on her spectacles.
“Peacefully,”
she read,
“after a long illness.”

Evelyn looked around; nobody was watching. With great care, she eased the paper out from under the weight of his hands. He stirred; a phlegmy sound came from his throat. She waited.

He flung his head back and started snoring—loud snores that made his body shudder. She knew the sound only too well from her nights next door. His mouth hung open, revealing the plastic gums of his dentures.