The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (39 page)

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Authors: Deborah Moggach

Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Gerontology, #Old Age Homes, #Social Science, #Humorous, #British - India, #British, #General, #Literary, #Older people, #Fiction, #Media Tie-In

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Eunuchs in New Delhi are helping out local telephone customers by taking their complaints directly to telephone company offices, where they stage sit-ins and even threaten to expose themselves until the faults are fixed. Users have reported a marked improvement in services since the campaign began. “Efficiency of the field staff has improved and faults are often rectified without more ado,” says one phone company official. “It is the customer who ultimately gains.”

The Guardian
, F
EBRUARY
13, 2003

L
ate in January, Ravi and Pauline drove to High Wycombe, where she had grown up. In her lap sat a Safeway carrier bag; within it rested the urn containing what remained of her father. They planned to see him off, not down the Ganges but scattered over a smaller stream, deep in the beech woods where long ago he had liked to walk.

They parked the car and made their way through the woods. Pauline remembered the path though it had altered, as if she had dreamed it—the trees had grown taller, a new glade had opened out where once there had been brambles. A rustic sign now informed her that she was following the Chilterns Heritage Trail. Her father had liked walking with a stick, slashing at nettles, striding ahead so that she and her mother had to scamper along to keep up.

The path dropped toward the water. Ravi took her hand, to help her down. It was a blustery day; the wind whipped her hair against her cheek. They both felt curiously exhilarated.

“What happens if he blows away in the wrong direction?” she asked. “If he blows back in our faces?”

“I’d say
your father always got up my nose
.”

Pauline laughed. There was a new easiness between them these days. Maybe it had been unlocked by her father’s death. Pauline suspected it was more complicated than this, however—more to do with Ravi’s family than hers—but was disinclined to ask the reason in case it broke the spell. They had even made love in his parents’ house in Delhi—before dinner, in fact, with people chattering on the landing outside. Afterward they had caught each other’s eye during the meal and Ravi’s father asked: “What’s the joke? Anything we can share?”

They inched down the path, gripping the trees on either side. Roots broke through the earth. Later, Pauline remembered that descent, every step of it. She was thinking about the thorn trees in the waste ground behind The Marigold, the transformed landscape of Dorothy’s past and how Dorothy had finally found peace there. She was thinking of her own dream for its transformation, a scheme that now had Ravi’s support but that, in the chill of an English winter, seemed farcically unlikely.

Below, the water glinted. This was her father’s moment, she should be concentrating on him, but she was thinking about how she could find a plot of land and whether Sonny would help, with his networking skills. Sonny had been curiously attentive toward her before she left, something odd in his manner. He had dealt with all the funeral arrangements and even fetched the urn from the undertakers.

They arrived at the stream. It was somewhere here—she couldn’t be sure, not now—that the three of them had once had a picnic. “Dad had brought back some biltong from Zimbabwe—maybe it was still Rhodesia then—and it was as tough as leather. It
was
leather.” Pauline remembered her mother sitting on the rug, inching the skirt up over her knees to let the sun warm her legs. They had been happy sometimes, hadn’t they? Her mother’s pleasures were modest ones. Her father had taken a snapshot, but their photos had been destroyed when his bungalow burned down.

Pauline squatted and lifted out the urn. It was surprisingly heavy, but then you didn’t know what to expect, did you? With her fingernail she picked at the adhesive tape.

“Are you okay?” asked Ravi.

She nodded. She ripped off the tape, scrunched it up and shoved it into her jacket pocket. This whole occasion felt somehow lacking. Should they sing a hymn or something?

There was a pause. They glanced at each other, then she unscrewed the lid. Inside, packed tightly together, lay plastic bags of white powder.

Pauline gazed at them. For a moment she thought that this must be the Indian way of doing things. Then she looked at them again. “These aren’t ashes,” she said.

Ravi pulled out one of the bags. “Good God,” he said. “Is this what I think it is?”

A
few days later another urn arrived from India. It contained her father’s ashes. Accompanying it was a piece of paper with an address in Hackney where the white powder could be sold. It was signed
A Guilty Party
.

What guilty party? The image of Keith passed through Pauline’s mind. She preferred to suspect him rather than Sonny, because she had known him so briefly. With a near-stranger, anything is possible. But why would anybody do this to them? And why did he feel guilty? Neither she nor Ravi discovered the answer to this.

They buried the bags in their garden in Dulwich. Months passed. Of course it was bizarre to know they lay there, but no more bizarre, Pauline thought, than her existence on this earth, eating Pringles and brushing her hair. No more bizarre than two people endeavoring to spend their lives together.

Maybe she and Ravi would separate. They would fund new lives on the proceeds of a drug deal. She would build a children’s home in Bangalore, founded on heroin.

Oh yes?

There the bags remained. Call it moral rectitude, or a failure of nerve. But there, in the flower bed, lay buried possibilities. Perhaps she and Ravi would forget all about them. Perhaps, some time in the future, a fox would dig them up and they would wake in the morning and think it had been snowing.

T
he monsoon had come and gone. At The Marigold the morning mist cleared. A hoopoe, like a clockwork toy, stabbed at the grass. The dew silvered the spiders’ webs that draped the bougainvillaea. Soon the residents would be stirring. Over the past months there had been some changes. Several residents, for one reason or another, had returned to Britain. Jean Ainslie had gone to live in Surrey, with her daughter. More guests had arrived. Deep in the building, a radio bleeped a wake-up.

Outside, oblivious to the early morning rush hour, a beggar lay sleeping. He wore the Bata shoes, genuine leather, tip-top quality but somewhat battered now. It was no longer the elderly beggar, however, who lay there. His body had been removed some weeks earlier. The new shoe-owner was a good deal younger.

In India, nothing goes to waste.

A
nother year passed … the heat, the monsoon, the radiant winter dawns. In his studio Vinod, the man who shot the promo video for Sonny, was touching up a photo. He unsheathed his paintbrush and tested it against his finger. He dipped it into the brass water cup. Outside, traffic thundered along the Airport Road. Each year the traffic was heavier. Soon this building was to be demolished to make way for a luxury apartment complex. Already the billboard had been erected:
2 km from the Airport, 7 km from downtown Bangalore, Embassy Heights offers Discernment, Security and an Unrivaled Perfection of Design
.

The other businesses on his floor were vacating their premises. Soon, Vinod would have to find a new photographic studio. Plus his tooth was throbbing. He was too much of a coward, however, to visit the Chinese dentist, Mr. Liu, who would no doubt insist on pulling it out.

Vinod had bought a booklet called
Positive Thinking
from the stationery shop across the road. It supplied exercises in triumphing over physical affliction as well as the mental stresses of daily life. So far, despite repeated efforts, he had noticed no improvement.

Some occasions, however, had the power to lift his gloom. The recent wedding of Mr. Douglas Ainslie and Mrs. Evelyn Greenslade was one such case. That happiness could be found at such an advanced age had restored Vinod’s spirits, simply for its promise that such a possibility existed.

Vinod’s brush was sable, and so fine that he could barely see it without his spectacles. Head tilted, he inspected the photograph. It was matte finish, and thus capable of absorbing moisture. A trick he had learned, however, was to stroke the brush across the glue strip of an envelope before he began. This guaranteed that the paint would adhere to the surface.

He dipped his brush into carmine red. This he mixed with a little ochre pigment. Also some gray. Then he got to work on the cheeks—just a blush, scarcely a hint of pink. He did it tenderly, as if he himself were stroking the lady’s skin.

Next, he darkened the pigment for their lips. He rinsed his brush and started work on the gentleman; first he traced the outline of the lips, then he filled it in. Mr. Ainslie was laughing, showing teeth that Vinod had already whitened.

Outside a siren wailed. No doubt it was an important personage traveling to the airport—the minister, maybe, with full police escort. Each day thousands of people sped along this road, to be lifted into the sky and flung across the world. Vinod’s own sons, who had once sat in front of the camera, fidgeting in their school uniforms, had long since gone. In the studio, however, nothing moved except Vinod’s hand.

Half an hour passed. As he painted, Vinod thought of his own marriage. Here, in the photograph, lay proof that reincarnation of a sort was possible in this life rather than the next. To achieve this, however, a certain amount of ruthlessness was required. This was a quality he signally lacked. To judge from appearances, however—one of the requirements of his job—so did these newlyweds. They looked the gentlest of souls.

Another hour passed. Finally, Vinod rinsed his brush, wiped it and laid it on the table.

There.
Shabash
. He had taken years off their age. A certain artistry was required, to restore the ravages of time. With modest pride Vinod gazed at the photograph of the bride and groom, sitting side by side against the faded wallpaper of the Marigold lounge.

In its small way, it was a miracle. With their blushing cheeks and pink lips, the elderly couple looked quite young again.

This one is for Simon Booker
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to Sathnam Sanghera, Razia Hamid, Ian Robertson, Alan Hayling, Patricia Brent, Geraldine Willson-Fraser, Alexandra Hough, and Tom and Lottie for their help. Those who know Bangalore may find the place somewhat shifted around, but then memory plays tricks on us all.

A
LSO BY
D
EBORAH
M
OGGACH

Tulip Fever

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D
EBORAH
M
OGGACH
is the author of sixteen successful novels, including the bestselling
Tulip Fever
, and two collections of stories. Her screenplays include the film
Pride and Prejudice
, which was nominated for a BAFTA. She lives in North London.