The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (34 page)

Apart from this, the visit had been an unexpected success. Christopher and his sister hadn’t quarreled once. It was strange how the thing you most dreaded could just evaporate. The two of them, in fact, looked somewhat distracted—dreamy, even. Nor did Theresa show any of her normal hostility to Marcia. And how attractive Theresa looked—almost vampish—in a red strappy dress trimmed with spangles. It must have raised a few eyebrows in the ashrams.

Evelyn had told them about the cremation that afternoon, about Dorothy’s revelations and the manager’s marital troubles. “He sent his wife packing on Tuesday. The poor man was so unhappy. Nobody knew except me; we’re friends, you see. He even showed me the shoes he wore, when they met.”

“Has he fallen in love with someone else?” asked Christopher, putting down his fork.

Evelyn shook her head. “He just felt beaten down by her. His wife was very bossy.”

“Really?” asked Christopher.

“Don’t be fooled by those saris,” said Evelyn. “Indian women can be very domineering. The man was a wreck; she made him feel so inadequate, you see.”

There was a silence. Christopher toyed with a prawn.

Marcia gazed at the sitar player, a young man in full Indian dress who sat on a plinth in the corner. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she murmured.

Marcia wore a turquoise top embroidered with mirrors. They seemed to be flashing messages of whose significance only their owner was aware. Perhaps India was having a beneficial effect on their marriage, Evelyn thought. The last time she had seen the two of them, relations seemed strained. Marcia was such a nervy woman, but now it seemed that her inner wires had been cut. She looked relaxed, almost pretty.

Evelyn would never discover the reason. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, they would be gone.

“Just think, Christmas on a beach!” said Evelyn. Her son and his family were traveling to Goa.

“I’m sorry we can’t be here,” said Marcia. “It’s the itinerary.”

“Don’t worry, it’s been lovely seeing you,” said Evelyn. They had been to the Bull Temple and the Botanical Gardens; they had crammed a lot into the two days. The visit could be counted a success despite the strangely bland atmosphere, as if everybody were sleepwalking.

“I feel very spoilt having you with me at all,” said Evelyn. “Some people have relatives flying out in January, after they’ve spent the actual day with their nearest and dearest.” She stopped. Weren’t
grandparents
supposed to be one’s nearest and dearest? “Muriel Donnelly thinks her son’s going to appear, poor soul. It’s the only thing that keeps her going. Hermione’s been praying for her each Sunday.”

“Where is her son?” asked Theresa.

“God only knows.” Evelyn smiled. “Perhaps that’s why Hermione’s been asking him. No answer so far. He sounds rather a rum character.”

“Who, God?” asked Theresa.

“No dear, her son. Into all sorts of shady dealings, apparently.”

“What sorts?” asked Theresa.

“Haven’t a clue. Nor has Muriel.”

A horrible suspicion was dawning on Evelyn. Perhaps Theresa was taking drugs. That would explain the long absences, sometimes for a whole afternoon. She returned bright-eyed, her cheeks flushed. Bangalore was apparently awash with drugs; Evelyn had read it in
The Times
of Karnataka, their reliable supply of English newspapers having died with Norman.

“Organized crime is rife in the city, with corruption at the highest levels. Crores of rupees are at stake in the escalating drugs traffic.”

Evelyn watched her daughter. Theresa swabbed a piece of naan bread around her plate and tore at it with her teeth. As she did so, she gazed dreamily into space. In the candlelight, Evelyn squinted at Theresa’s arms. Were those needle marks or mosquito bites?

Evelyn felt a sinking sensation in her bowels. Oh Lord. Perhaps this explained her daughter’s frequent trips to India.
I’m an India junkie
, she had said once.
I need my fix
. Evelyn wasn’t entirely ignorant on these matters. Oh Lord.

“How’re your young call-center friends?” asked Christopher.

Evelyn rallied. “Surinda got the sack last week, I’m afraid. Her heart wasn’t in it. She kept asking people about England and never got around to making any sales. Such a shame.”

Maybe she should ask the doctor’s advice—the real doctor from England, Dr. Ravi Kapoor, not the VD one with the hair.
The fellow’s a charlatan!
Suddenly, ridiculously, she missed Norman. Surinda, too, had disappeared from her life. It had been nice to have young faces around, faces that didn’t mirror back her own mortality. Living with old people was so ageing. That was the point of families—well, one of the points. Different generations thrown together. Now she had lost her surrogate granddaughter, Surinda, and her own daughter, the drug addict, would soon be gone.

The Lotus Restaurant was on the top floor; below them spread the lights of the city. Tonight, India felt alien to Evelyn, alarmingly so. Her efforts to tune herself into the place during the past weeks felt phony and misguided. Having no option, she had willed herself into feeling at home. In fact this country had transformed her children into strangers—adults with secrets she could no longer penetrate. Look at them, toying with their napkins and smiling to themselves!

No doubt this is natural, she thought. It doesn’t take India to turn one’s children into middle-aged adults with lives of their own. Oh Hugh, she thought. Oh Hugh.

“Happy Christmas, Ma.” Christopher leaned across the table and gave her a package.

Evelyn opened it. Inside lay some beautiful cloth, folded up: deep red silk with a gold border.

“It’s a sari,” he said. “I know, I know, but maybe just once, for a special occasion.”

“Where did you get that?” asked Marcia sharply. Evelyn suspected that it was Marcia who usually bought the presents.

“Just a shop,” he said. “It’s a
banarasi
sari.”

“A what?” asked Marcia.

“A
banarasi
sari, for special occasions.”

“How do you know that?” Marcia stared at him.

Christopher cleared his throat. “I read it in the guidebook. Now, who’s for pudding?”

Evelyn thanked him, though she couldn’t imagine ever wearing a sari, nor an occasion special enough to warrant such a thing. Widows in India wore white ones, as if they were already ghosts. She was glad Christopher hadn’t got her one of those.

“He’s great, isn’t he?” said Marcia.

Evelyn nodded. “So generous of him.”

Marcia didn’t mean Christopher, however. She was gazing at the sitar player.

“Look at those hands,” Marcia said softly. “The way they hold the instrument.”

Evelyn folded up the wrapping paper. Her generation, like Indians, never threw anything away. It might come in handy later.

“The way they move over the strings,” said Marcia, and relapsed into silence.

P
auline took her husband’s hand and led him through the garden.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

It was late. She led him past the servants’ quarters. A light glowed through the window; someone hawked and spat. Here, in their own homes, the familiar old bearers were strangers.

“Where are you taking me?” Ravi whispered.

“Through the wall.”

The moon was full. It was a clear night, the stars mirroring the lights of the city below. They were making their way through the farthest corner of the garden, where none of the guests ventured. In a pile of rubbish, something stirred.

Ahead was the door, half-obscured by creepers. “The servants use this route,” Pauline whispered. “When they go out. Errands and things. Back to their villages, perhaps, on their day off. I don’t know.”

She turned the knob. The door creaked open. They stepped through and emerged into the waste ground behind the hotel. There was a smell of shit. Ravi lifted his foot and inspected his shoe. Thorn bushes stood frozen in the moonlight; plastic bags were caught in their branches. Beyond them were the huts where the rag-pickers lived.

“Isn’t it like
Alice Through the Looking Glass
?” Pauline whispered. “Stepping into another world?”

“What do you want to show me?” Ravi was trying to be kind. After all, today her father had been dispatched to wherever it was that people went.

“Dorothy’s parents knew people who lived here,” she whispered. “She told me today. Years ago there was a garden here, and a bungalow. They were called Colonel and Mrs. Hislop, and she drank lemonade while they played bridge.”

She wanted her husband to feel the magic of this place. Surely it was still hidden in him somewhere, a connection?

“Sweetheart, I promised Minoo I’d look at the accounts,” he said. “The poor chap’ll be longing to go to bed.”

“I want to look after people,” Pauline said. “You’ve done it all your life, but I want to do it now. Those children I met, I’ve got their photos but I’ll never find them. Imagine building them a home here, the ones who’re alone in the world. I could be some use, Ravi.” She looked at his beautiful, grave profile. “Old and young people could be together. Don’t you see, it makes sense?” She pointed to the hotel behind them. “They miss young faces around them, they pine for them. They could teach them things; they both like the same sort of food, they think the same way. Old and young people have an awful lot in common, second childhood and all that. And they have all the time in the world.”

She stopped. It had come out more tepidly than she meant. Ravi’s presence had somehow sapped her.

He leaned toward her and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a lovely idea, darling. But I think they’re going to build a shopping mall here.”

R
avi felt terrible. He knew he should be sympathetic, but this place was dragging him under. It always happened, this slow suffocation. Back in the room the phone would be winking: his mother calling from Delhi,
When are you coming, my little Raviji?… Your father’s chest pains … your sister and that no-good husband of hers … your brother has been calling from Toronto, a divorce is in the cards and who’s going to pay his debts and what’s going to happen, that boy is wrecking his career …
Sonny, too, changed here. He shrank, a beleaguered man.

Life was so simple when you lived abroad; the weight fell off you. London was heedless and unjudgmental. The friends you made had earned, through kindness and compatibility, a place in your heart. And Mozart was there, to take your hand and lead you to heaven.

Ravi had tried to explain this to Pauline but she was fresh to his country; she couldn’t understand the remorselessness of it, the impossibility of change. India would steal Pauline from him and then abandon her. He wanted to grip his wife’s shoulders and yell:
Don’t you see? You’ll never get anything done!
But he didn’t yell, and now they were walking back to their room in the hotel. It was her father’s room, hardly conducive to marital high-jinks. The linen had been changed, of course, and the twin beds pushed together, but Norman was still there. People didn’t die; their presence was as powerful as ever. Even more powerful, because charged with one’s own guilt and the impossibility of reconciliation.

They walked along the veranda. The wood was rotten; it creaked beneath their feet. The missing handrail, where Eithne had fallen, had been replaced by a length of rope. How flimsy the world seemed, tonight. Maybe those who had children felt anchored. How was he to know?

Ravi’s heart ached. For himself, for Pauline. Still fresh, still horribly alive after all those years, grief waited in the darkness, ready to pounce.

T
he front door was locked; it was later than he thought. As Ravi rang the bell, Evelyn and her daughter walked up the drive. They had been out to dinner.

“Everyone seems to have gone to bed,” said Ravi.

The old bearer, Jimmy, hobbled up to the door, muttering like the porter in
Macbeth
. Ravi watched him through the glass, fiddling with the key.

“We adjourned to the Balmoral bar,” said Evelyn. “It’s a lovely hotel.” Good God, the woman was drunk. She frowned at Ravi. “I was going to ask you something but it’s gone right out of my head.”

The door opened. “Come on, Mum,” said Theresa, taking her arm.

Evelyn turned to Pauline. “I’m so sorry about your father,” she said. “Such a cheerful man. I miss him sitting on the veranda with his whisky and soda.”

“I still don’t understand how he died,” said Pauline. “What was he doing in the bazaar all by himself?”

There was a pause. Then Evelyn said: “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“He was buying you a Christmas present, of course.”

Pauline stared at her. “Was he?”

Evelyn moved away. “I’ll just get it from my room.”

“Goodness,” said Pauline. “He never bought me presents. My mother always did it for him.”

They waited in the lounge. A Christmas tree had been installed; it was hung with dusty paper lanterns. Somehow, the decorations made the room look even shabbier. Ravi gazed at the mismatched armchairs and threadbare rugs. He had to admit that the hotel had been something of a letdown. It was hard to believe that this was supposed to be the beginning of a new British empire, a global trade in the elderly.

You don’t understand
, Pauline had said.
To these people it’s charming. All the things you hate about India are the things we like. I’m in the travel business, I should know. Anyway, it reminds them of home
.

Theresa sat on the arm of the settee. She removed a sandal and inspected the sole of her foot.

“Anything the matter?” asked Ravi.

“It’s okay, it’s healed now.” Theresa’s toenails were painted crimson. They didn’t match her red, somewhat tarty dress, but the effect was invigorating. Though sharp-featured, Theresa was a handsome woman and looked in good health—lustrous hair, bright eyes. Ravi wondered if she was on HRT. Pauline had just started taking it, but she seemed as moody as ever. Hardly surprising, of course, at the moment.

“Do you know a man called P.K.?” asked Theresa.