Hot Water Man (25 page)

The road to Clifton, for instance. In his grandfather's day Clifton, built upon the only hill for miles, had been an elegant residential suburb. The sea had not been drained then; Clifton had been something of a resort, with an esplanade, a telescope and the sedate amusements of an Indian Brinton. In the days of the Raj the British families had lived there, and it was separated from the city by a stretch of causeway.

Now the sea had been drained, leaving miles of salt-bleached desert. All along the Clifton Road apartment blocks were being built, below them the empty canyons of garages and future supermarkets. The bleak buildings were softened in the evening light. Cameron's, amongst others, was helping push this country into the twentieth century. Surprisingly, he was a part of this. Between the blocks you could still glimpse vacant land marked out with posts. Goat herds picked their way around the cars parked by the Mid-East Medical Center, with its sprinkled lawns. Soon Clifton would be joined to Karachi. He negotiated the roundabout, with its Islamic Progress Monument, bright steel gleaming with hope, pointing up to the sky.

He drove into Clifton. The street was wide and empty here, lined with trees which were now casting long shadows across the road. The old bungalows resembled those near the Sind Club where Mrs Gracie lived. He drove up the hill and stopped outside the Dutch Consulate.

Across the street stood the pink bungalow. Its gates were open. Outside stood a huge tree with creepers hanging; perhaps this was a banyan, his grandfather had spoken about boys swinging in the banyans. Perhaps this too was a lie. Behind it the building looked unreal in this radiant light, like a pink, pillared wedding cake left outside too long.

He rang the bell. Closer, the paint was blistered. In this climate nothing remained new for long. The door was opened by a moustached bearer in white shirt and trousers. Donald paused. The furnishings looked sumptuous. He did not know how to begin.

‘I'm looking for a woman,' he said. ‘I wonder if you could help me.'

‘I will fetch memsahib.'

‘No, not memsahib. This was a long time ago. It concerns the servants, you see.' The bearer could not be over forty, but Donald felt reckless. For once he did not mind what anyone thought. ‘Is there an older servant here perhaps, who has been in this residence a long time?'

‘I do not understand. You are wanting sahib?'

‘Er no. There was recently perhaps an older bearer here, or perhaps a cook?'

A Pakistani woman appeared, glittering with jewellery and very plump. No, on second glance pregnant. She shook his hand. ‘Good evening.' She paused. ‘I believe we've met before. The Boat Club, perhaps? You are the new man at Cameron Chemicals. We were acquainted, too, with Mr Frank Smythe.'

He introduced himself. For a moment he had forgotten his job.

‘Yes, and my husband he works for Ciba-Geigy. That will explain it. We met at the reception. He will be returning in a moment. Please do come in and sit down.' She turned to the bearer and seemed to be ordering drinks.

He hesitated in the hall. ‘Actually, I really wanted to talk to your servants. I know it sounds funny.' He looked around at the various open doors. ‘Have any of them been here for a long time?'

She raised her eyebrows. ‘We have been here since nine years. I don't understand.'

‘I'm sorry. I know. Have any of your servants been here long?'

‘The servants? You are wishing to know about the servants?'

Donald rubbed his moustache, nodding. His face was hot.

‘The cook, he has just arrived from another residence. The bearer, Mumtaz, he is here when we shifted to Clifton. You are wanting a servant perhaps? You need a cook-bearer?'

Donald felt like a private detective, a shabby intruder fired by the chase. ‘Well no, not quite.' He turned to Mumtaz, who had not gone for the drinks. ‘You have worked here a long time?'

‘Since eleven years, sahib. Before this, in Lahore sahib's residence.'

‘Ah. Not long enough.'

The bearer coughed. ‘But mali, he is working here for very long years.'

‘Ah.' Hot with embarrassment, Donald looked at the hall sofa. It bore a row of plump silk cushions. They too seemed waiting for him to make himself plain. ‘Is he around?'

‘Not until tomorrow,' said the woman. ‘He is gone now.'

‘You don't by any chance know where he lives? I'm terribly sorry to be such a nuisance.'

‘He has done something wrong? I have never quite been trusting him.'

‘Heavens no. I'd just like to visit him to ask him about someone.'

‘I see. He has a friend you want as mali. I don't know where he is living. I don't know his name. I am just calling him mali.'

‘He lives backside.' The bearer pointed through the lounge door. This could mean any distance. The three of them stood there for some moments.

‘Mumtaz,
jao.
Take Mr Manley.'

Donald muttered his thanks to the pregnant lady, whose name he had not caught. She must think he was mad. But the English were mad, weren't they. This did not ease his blushes.

They walked out of the front gates. As they turned the corner, a silver Mercedes drove in behind them. He heard the car door slam, and raised voices speaking in Urdu. By this time he was out of sight down a steep path between the two compound walls. The ground dropped sharply here. He stooped to avoid the thorn bushes.

The path smelt of excrement. Ahead of him, dazzlingly white, walked his guide through this jungle. The earth was scattered with rubbish and dung. A pariah dog yapped at his trousers. The bearer walked swiftly; Donald hastened to keep up. Through the thin bushes ahead he could see some huts. He realized that a settlement clung to the side of Clifton, hidden from the houses above by the drop of the hill.

Now he was closed into a narrow lane, picking his way along a ditch that ran down the centre. It was sickeningly smelly. A radio played. Evening meals were being prepared, with cooking odours and clatter. On either side rooms were full of families; faces turned to stare but he did not like to pry too closely, they were so exposed. But then so was he. He hurried after Mumtaz who had turned up another lane. A hundred yards up the hill this man would have been serving him whisky and soda.

The huts were packed along either side. Children ran after him; a man shouted. In the twilight he slipped in the mud.

The bearer had moved into a doorway. Donald followed him. He blinked in the electric light. He was standing in a small room. Two women and some children disappeared through a fringed plastic hanging. An old man remained, lying on a rope bed.

Whether this was the mali he did not ever discover; he might just have been an old man with the longest memory. Donald cleared his throat and smiled. The bearer acted as interpreter, though how much he understood Donald could not guess. Donald told the old man how many years it was. Would they think in the same span as he did? Time altered according to your expectations of what life had to offer. He told him about an English army sahib called Manley, and the woman's name, Moni. Speaking it now, he realized that it might be a Hindu rather than Muslim name; after all, this was years before the separation of the two countries. If she had been Hindu the family that survived her would certainly have fled to India. If the family still existed; if indeed anyone still possibly knew.

He sat on the edge of the charpoy, sipping tea. The wooden frame dug into his thighs. The old man was sitting at the other end. He seemed to weigh nothing; it was Donald who sunk the thing down. Perhaps none of them understood what he was getting at. Did they realize they had something he needed? The women and children had returned to squat in the corner. Another man, also elderly, had arrived. His voice joined in the conversation, which sounded more like an argument. The women were talking now.
Moni
, he heard, their voices rising. They were too young; they could have no idea whom he was seeking. The argument seemed to be taken out of his hands. His legs had become numb but he did not like to move. By now other men were crowding the doorway.

With a scrape, someone dragged in a chair. They gestured that he should sit on it. Somebody shooed away a child. He rose with difficulty, stickily, and sat down. Everyone's eyes were upon him. He felt both the culprit and the honoured guest. He did not know which he was supposed to be. He addressed the second elderly man, who wore glasses and who seemed the most respected voice in the discussion.

‘Moni is dead,' he tried to explain. ‘I look', he pointed to his eyes, ‘for Moni's son.' He had forgotten the word for ‘son'. He could hardly indicate someone small, when his uncle would be over fifty years old. If indeed he was still alive. He looked around for the bearer, but Mumtaz had gone.

More men had arrived. With the rise and fall of the voices he felt his own hopes rise and diminish. Fifty years in a settled country was long enough but fifty years here seemed beyond any reckoning what with wars, and poverty, and families scattered like matchsticks over three countries on the tide of events his grandfather had helped to promote. Little shanty towns like this grew up overnight and then were destroyed without a trace. Up on the hill, in the big bungalows, nobody would even notice.

Men gestured and shouted; perhaps they just wanted him to get out. The light caught their wrist watches. What were they talking about? The room was filled with cheap cigarette smoke. Some of the words might be names, for all he knew. He felt like a child listening but not comprehending, back in Brinton at the beginning of his ignorance. Perhaps he should not have listened then.

Somebody touched his arm. It was the old man in the glasses. He pointed to Donald's chest. Donald inquiringly pressed his hand to his heart. The man wanted his pen. Donald took it from his breast pocket and gave it to him; the man passed it to someone else. Donald thought: perhaps they want my wallet. The talking grew louder. Another man leant down, pointed to Donald's knee and tapped it. The old man said something he could not understand, leant forward and fingered the sleeve of Donald's bush shirt. Donald sat rigid.

Another hand reached out and pointed to Donald's buttons, one by one. Donald buttoned up the top one, which was undone. He tried to keep smiling like a guest. Perhaps they were going to tear off his clothes. Perhaps they were going to get their own back. His shirt stuck to him damply.

A piece of paper was put into his hand. Mumtaz was pushing his way back through the other men. The man in the glasses nodded. The paper read:
Saleem Beg. Near Petrol Pump, Commercial West Colony, Karachi.

‘This is son of Moni,' said Mumtaz. ‘This,' he pointed, ‘his location.'

The old man pointed again to Donald's shirt, then made looping movements in the air. At last Donald understood.

‘Each day,' said Mumtaz, ‘he is sitting here. He is tailor.'

‘
Ah, the fair
tones of Mrs Manley.'

‘I was just phoning . . . you never seem to be in your office.'

‘My deepest apologies. I am going hither and thither.'

‘I was just wondering about the beach hut.'

‘No problem. I have the beautiful beach houses in my files.'

‘Oh good.' She felt the usual bafflement. Had he forgotten that she wanted one, then? She said: ‘And there was just one other thing. You are really the only person who might know. I've heard about a sort of shrine. I think it's a shrine. A place with hot water.'

‘You are wanting the sightseeing jaunt? This will be my pleasure.'

‘Well, sort of. Do you know the place?'

‘Any place you want, I will be taking you.'

Mohammed, waiting for his cue, took the receiver she passed him. He was, she hoped, going to explain the directions. He spoke in Urdu, seemingly for a long time but then it always seemed a lengthy process when the language was unknown, as a journey seems endless when the road is unfamiliar and the destination expected around every corner. Besides, as Donald remarked, in Pakistani conversations ten words will always do instead of one. Mohammed stood with his back to her. Perhaps instead of road directions he was discussing herself. He must know her secrets – he emptied the waste-paper basket, he brought her bed-tea in the mornings; he was the true inmate of this house, rather than their temporary, rented selves.

No problem, said Sultan. She went upstairs to change.

Last night she and Donald had quarrelled. She had made a fuss about going to some cocktails at the Weatherbys', saying how boring all the people were.

‘You don't have the wives,' she said.

‘You needn't have the wives. We're not Muslims.'

‘But the division's just the same. All you men talking about your work.'

‘Back home all your friends were women.'

‘Not women like these.'

‘Christine, I wish you'd learn to adapt.'

What she really meant, though had not said, was how boring they made Donald seem to her. How little any of them had been changed by this place. The English were so closed, hemmed in by their fixed beliefs and their fear of germs.

‘They just see this place as a threat,' she had said. (
They
, not
you.
) ‘Everything's conspiring against them, it's all falling to pieces in their hands, the biros aren't like the English ones.'

‘They aren't.' Donald shook his pen. It was after dinner and he was sitting at his desk.

‘It's a wartime mentality; they're locked in. No room for doubt or change. Duke getting all his stuff from the Commissary. I bet he couldn't tell a tandoori from a Toblerone.'

‘That's English. He eats Hershey Bars.'

‘Don't be pedantic.'

‘And he eats curries. He was having lunch today at the Welcome Tikka House.'

‘You know what I mean.'

Did he? She had looked at Donald's face in the lamplight. Before you could not have described it. Now, with his new moustache it was defined; he was a man with an identity. He looked heavier.