The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (6 page)

Norman nodded enthusiastically.

“The lingam is worshipped, of course—especially in South India, and especially in the area around Bangalore. In fact, we have some of the most erotic carvings in the world.” Dr. Hussain leaned forward. “My dear fellow, they’d bring your eyes out on stalks.”

Norman stared at him. The chap was a consultant; he must know what he was talking about.

“Trust me. If you were ever lucky enough to go there, I’d guarantee you wouldn’t want to come home.” The fellow leaned even closer; Norman could smell peppermint on his breath. Dr. Hussain winked at him and whispered: “So much pussy you’ll be coughing up fur balls.”

T
he day after the operation, Ravi took the lift up to the G-U unit. Norman, in his pajamas, sat in the TV room. Next to him sat an elderly Jamaican patient. They were watching
Gilda
. Beside them their catheter sacs, filled with urine, sat on the floor like handbags.

Norman pointed to Rita Hayworth. “What a woman. Don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

The Jamaican man nodded. “What a woman,” he said.

“How are you feeling today?” asked Ravi.

“Piece of piss.” Norman chuckled. “Get it? Piss? Feel like a new man.” He nodded at his neighbor. “Just telling my friend here about that home you’re setting up.”

The other man nodded. Ravi felt a sudden tenderness toward them, sitting side by side like aunties, their handbags on the floor. For he knew, when Norman spoke again, that his plan had worked.

“Can I have another dekko at that brochure, old chap?”

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you

As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart …

Speak or act with a pure mind

And happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable.

S
AYINGS OF THE
B
UDDHA

E
velyn Greenslade was a dear, one of the favorites at Leaside. She was a little vague, of course, and inclined to live in the past, but that was hardly unusual. The past was palpable to the Leaside residents—memories of their youth so close they could feel the breath on their faces. Those far-off years remained inviolate; golden afternoons revisited as the elderly inhabitants sat in the lounge or watched TV in their rooms, their hands clasped around a cooling cup of tea. Evelyn drifted there, rudderless—why should she resist? The undertow pulled her back. They waited, her brothers and her school friends; they waited like fairground figures, needing her only to throw the switch and set them in motion. Moments of her childhood returned to her, crystal clear as if they had happened yesterday.

Evelyn had always been a docile, dreamy woman, no trouble to anyone. That was why the staff liked her. That was why she had come to live at Leaside, agreeing to her children’s suggestion that she could no longer cope on her own.
“I don’t want to be a burden,”
she said.

Her son and daughter had their own lives to lead. Besides, they were far away. Christopher was installed with his wife in New York; he had an incomprehensible job and a young family. On his last visit he had bought Evelyn a computer so they could exchange emails, but there had only been half an hour to learn how to use it. She had pretended to understand—she knew how fussed he became—but for the past six months it had sat there, reproaching her for her ineptitude. At first it sat on her dressing table, taking up valuable space, but then she demoted it to the floor.

It was her son’s idea that she should sell the house. Christopher was right, of course. Since Hugh’s death she simply couldn’t manage; everything seemed to break down at the same time, all the things her husband had normally fixed. How feeble she had become! It seemed to have happened overnight, that the stairs became too steep and bottle tops too stiff; suddenly, for no reason, she would burst into tears. And the countryside felt threatening now she was alone in it. She would wake at night, her heart pounding. Had she bolted the door? Sometimes she woke still groggy. For a moment everything was all right; Hugh was down in the kitchen, checking the corks on his disgusting homemade wine. A strange time to check, but still … And then she would realize.

When Christopher told her how much the house was worth, Evelyn was staggered. In her part of Sussex, apparently, property prices had soared. To think what she and Hugh had paid for it! This, combined with breaking her hip, made the whole thing inevitable. She put herself in her son’s hands. It was such a relief, to let a man take care of things again, and Christopher was a lot more efficient with money than his father. He suggested a place where she would be looked after but still retain, as he put it, a measure of independence—her own furniture around her, maybe a section of garden. Proceeds from the house sale should pay for this, he said, adding ominously, “Until, as may be, more comprehensive care might be needed.”

Even after this transaction a substantial amount of money remained. This, Evelyn insisted on giving to her children. They had, of course, protested, but she reasoned that they had better enjoy it when they really needed it. Finally, they agreed. After all, better to use it now before the government clobbered them. Death duties were iniquitous. What right had the Treasury to seize 40 percent from those prudent enough to save and prosper? Christopher could get quite emotional on this subject. Hadn’t it already been taxed? What message did this double whammy give the honest citizen?

So it was settled. “Shrouds have no pockets,” said Evelyn.

“Oh Mum, don’t be so morbid!” replied Theresa. Gratitude made her daughter snappy; Theresa had always been a turbulent woman.

Theresa lived up north, in Durham. Nowadays she seemed to be some sort of counselor, though Evelyn couldn’t quite imagine what sort of people would need her daughter’s help. Theresa came down to visit, of course, usually on her way to some holistic weekend. Evelyn found these events curiously exhausting. Theresa did take things to heart. She cross-questioned the staff on her mother’s behalf; when Evelyn made a mild complaint about the food, Theresa barged into the kitchen and demanded to see the cook.

Worse still were their tête-à-têtes. Theresa was processing the past, she said; she was working on her feelings of rejection. Had Evelyn felt ambivalent about her husband’s hostility toward his daughter, when she was little? Did she, as both wife and mother, find her loyalties split? This sort of talk confused Evelyn. The past she remembered bore almost no resemblance to Theresa’s version; the events might be the same, but it was like seeing a foreign film—Serbo-Croat or something—that was vaguely based on them but all in black-and-white and somehow depressing. Then off Theresa would go to some Group Hug in Arundel. Why, thought Evelyn, does she hug strangers, and never me?

Evelyn missed being touched. She missed Hugh’s arms around her. Without the casual contact of skin upon skin she felt brittle and unwanted; she felt like an old schoolbook, filled with irrelevant lessons, that somebody had shoved into a cupboard. The only hands upon her belonged to professionals—the visiting nurse taking her blood pressure or anointing the bruises that bloomed, after the slightest knock, on her papery skin. She had never considered herself a sensual woman, it wasn’t a word in her vocabulary, and she hadn’t expected this hunger. Nor the need to be needed. Nor the loneliness, in a building full of people. She was only seventy-three but, gradually, those familiar to her were deserting her by dying—her two brothers, several of her friends. People who understood what she meant. Now she had to start all over again with strangers—fellow residents whose wrinkled faces reflected her own mortality—she had to explain things to them. If, that is, they could be bothered to listen. Most of them didn’t, of course; old age had deepened their self-absorption. Even after a year it felt like being at a new boarding school, with no possibility of going home.

Evelyn hadn’t predicted this. She had expected the aches and pains, the failing vision, the reliance on others. She knew she sometimes became confused. But she hadn’t predicted the loneliness. She remembered Hugh, stuck with tubes, turning to her and smiling. “Old age is not for sissies,” he said. And then he had gone, and left her to it.

That was why she loved Beverley. Once a week Beverley visited Leaside to do yoga and manicures. She was a chatty, affectionate girl and had taken a shine to Evelyn. She kissed her and called her darling; she brought in a blast of fresh air. Beverley’s life was go-go-go; she whizzed around Sussex in her little car, running classes at a dizzying variety of venues: Pilates at the Chichester Meridian Hotel (Mondays), aerobics-’n’-line-dancing at the Summerleaze Health Club (Tuesdays), St. Tropez tanning at the Copthorne (Wednesday evenings) and Table Decorations for Special Occasions once a month at the Billingshurst community center. Then there was the acupuncture, which she was learning from a videotape, and her home hairdressing business. Among all this she found time for a packed and disastrous love life. It was no wonder that the arrival of Beverley’s yellow Honda, radio blaring, lifted Evelyn’s spirits.

After group yoga—only the less demanding postures, it was really an excuse for the old dears to have a snooze—Beverley would sit in Evelyn’s room and do her nails, tenderly holding her hand while her cigarette smouldered in the ashtray and she told her about her latest love rat.

“How could he?” Evelyn would say when Beverley paused for breath. “Fancy that!”

“And then Maureen saw him at the petrol station, filling up his car—three kids in the back and the bastard had never told me!”

“Which one is Maureen, dear?”

“The one with the allergies. Remember?” said Beverley. “Her face blew up when she got that kitten.”

It pained Evelyn that she looked forward to Beverley’s visits more than to those of her own daughter. They certainly saw more of each other.

It was Beverley who broke the news, one day in August.

“They’re closing this place down!” she whispered. “Heard the old bat in the office talking on the phone. Can’t afford to keep it going, the grasping sods. They’re going to knock it down and build houses on it.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s happening all over, sweet pea, it’s in the papers. Like, there’s new rules and regulations, nobody can afford them. Better just to flog the place and bugger off to Barbados.” She dipped her brush in the little pot.

“They can’t just do that without telling us.”

“Keep still, sweetheart.” Evelyn’s hand was trembling. Beverley held it steady and painted on the varnish. “What’s going to happen to you all, you poor things?”

I
t was true. Leaside, a large Edwardian building on a prime site three miles from Chichester, was to be sold. At this point Evelyn didn’t panic. She would move elsewhere. All her life, somebody had taken care of her.

She phoned her son in New York. Christopher would know what to do.

“Slightly bad news, Ma,” Christopher said. She recognized that voice from his childhood, when he hid his school reports.

Christopher went on about the stock market and September 11, something about falling returns. It was all beyond her. In the background, somewhere on the Upper East Side, one of his children shouted, “Dad, it’s not working!”

The gist seemed to be that she had less money than she thought. She heard the TV, and a child crying.

“Sorry, Ma, Marcia’s at the gym and I’m holding the fort. Got to go. We’ll work something out.”

She phoned her daughter. Theresa was furious; she had never had an easy relationship with her brother and was even more hostile toward his wife. “That bitch is bleeding him dry. You know she got a designer to do up their apartment? Know how much they cost? And private schools for the kids, skis and whatnot.”

Christopher sent Evelyn a sheet of incomprehensible figures. Oh Hugh, help me! Her pension, it seemed, had shrunk alarmingly. It was all due to the same thing, Christopher said: a slump in the world markets.

Theresa suggested that her mother come and live near her in Durham, an offer made with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. “Trouble is, I’m away so often, courses and things. I’m off to Skyros next month.”

“What about your counseling?” asked Evelyn.

“Oh, it’s very flexible. Usually just a couple of days a week; I can rearrange it with my clients.”

How can you live on that?
Evelyn opened her mouth, and closed it again. Of course she knew how.

“There’s always the local council,” said Theresa. “If you threw yourself on their mercy—I mean they’d have to help, wouldn’t they? They must have homes, or sheltered housing. I can make inquiries.”

Evelyn didn’t consider herself a snob, not really. However, she found this conversation depressing. Did her daughter understand nothing?

No doubt Theresa meant to be kind, but the message was clear: her mother was redundant. No longer a human being, she was a problem to be solved by the local authority, like a drug addict or one of the homeless. She
was
homeless. She was to be shunted away out of sight. How quickly, after Hugh’s death, had she become surplus to requirements!