The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (22 page)

“I can’t hear!”

“I thought you’d like a surprise.”

“What?”

“Oh never mind. I’ll ring you when I’m coming.”

The line went dead. Evelyn put down the phone and slumped back on her bed. Of course she was thrilled that her daughter was coming, but she also felt drained. She had forgotten this particular brand of exhaustion that only Theresa could produce. Why hadn’t she told her earlier? Evelyn had known her daughter was going to visit at some point, but why hadn’t she given her any warning? Of course, Evelyn knew the answer. Theresa didn’t function like that. Evelyn’s heart thumped. Where was her daughter going to stay? As far as she knew, the hotel was full. Theresa wouldn’t—oh please God—sleep in her room, would she? There was a twin bed. Maybe Evelyn could get it removed. She could pretend it had never been there.

Had Theresa come to see her, a daughter–mother thing, or to find spiritual solace? Evelyn guessed the answer to this. Over the past years it had become clear that India had given Theresa something that she herself could not supply.

Oh Lord, Christopher would be here too. Did Theresa know this? Christopher and his family were coming just before Christmas, though thankfully staying at the Taj Balmoral Hotel. Oh Lord. Christopher. Theresa.
Marcia
.

She must phone Christopher and warn him. No—not warn him, of course. Tell him the good news that his sister was coming.

Oh heavens. If only she could pray, but Evelyn knew, definitively, that prayers no longer worked. If only she were Muriel, she could offer up something to a god. Krishna, the one with the blue face, was Muriel’s current favorite; she had installed a plaster figurine in her room. She had even been spotted removing a shortbread finger from the sideboard to give him after tea. But then Indians believed that God is everywhere. They prayed to film posters, to anything. They simply draped them in flowers and believed.

Evelyn looked at the possessions she had brought from England—framed photos, her silver hairbrush, the watercolor of West Wittering. She could hardly ply them with biscuits, she wasn’t completely gaga. Anyway it hadn’t worked, had it? Muriel’s son still hadn’t appeared. Only the day before, she had asked Muriel if there was any news from the neighbors in Chigwell, Muriel’s only contact.
“Not a sausage,”
Muriel had replied. If her son didn’t know his mother was in India, how on earth could he find her, with or without divine intervention?

Poor Muriel, thought Evelyn. At least I have my children.

This thought was less of a reassurance than she had hoped. She gazed at the soapstone Buddha she had bought Theresa for Christmas. On Tuesday there had been an outing to the First Choice Craft Emporium on Mahatma Gandhi Road. This was an establishment owned by a charming gentleman who said he would give them all a special price, as they were friends of his good friend Sonny-sahib. As Christmas was coming they had all gone a bit mad, buying more-or-less useless objects made of sandalwood and brass. It had taken ages, as these transactions always did, a clerk laboriously filling out forms in triplicate and getting them stamped by the man behind the desk. Now Evelyn could give the Buddha to her daughter in person!

Evelyn lifted the phone. It was early morning in New York; she could catch Christopher before he went to work.

The line was dead.

Evelyn got up and went downstairs. It was early evening: cow hour. On the landing, the young sweeper squatted beside his plastic bucket. He dipped his rag in the water, squeezed it and flicked it around the floor, rolling on his haunches, moving crablike across the landing. His torso was bare. His shoulder blades were so delicate, his neck so slender. Suddenly, Evelyn was overwhelmed with tenderness—a pure, maternal rush, long lost on her own children. He smiled at her, a smile so dazzling her heart melted. Funny that he was an Untouchable when she longed so strongly to touch him—to hold his thin body in her arms and to stroke his beautiful skin. He was very dark. Indians, she had realized, were as variously colored as the British. Dun skin, greeny-olive skin, glistening mahogany—as many variations as Norman’s purple nose, Madge’s leathery tan or her own papery pallor.

The sweeper edged into the corner to let her pass. He still smiled, his teeth startlingly white. How simple, to radiate such goodwill! How very easy it would be to love him—no guilt, no recriminations.

Evelyn went downstairs. The lobby was empty.

“Memsahib would like a sherry?”

Evelyn jumped. It was Ayub Khan, the other elderly bearer. He was an unfortunate-looking man whose face was cratered with scars, either from acne or smallpox. For him, too, Evelyn was overwhelmed with emotion. Pity, in his case. She wanted to touch him and make him better. She wanted to touch them all.

“No thank you, Ayub.”

Goodness, thought Evelyn, this country is having a funny effect on me. Pull yourself together. Of course it was easier to feel warmth toward foreign people whose lives were wretched. Certainly easier than toward the large, complicated human beings to whom she had given birth and whose imminent arrival filled her with such turbulence.

There was nobody behind the desk. “Is Mr. Cowasjee here?” she asked. “The phone seems to be broken.”

Ayub Khan waggled his head. The calendar, hanging on the wall, showed a photograph of kittens. It said
November
. Evelyn had a feeling that December had already begun; in this place one lost track of time. In a few weeks her son would arrive. She must tell him the news; Christopher had always needed to prepare himself, well in advance, for the unexpected.

Evelyn gazed at the glass table, next to the settee. On it lay
Reader’s Digest, Newsweek
and an Air France in-flight magazine. They had lain there undisturbed since her arrival. Next to them, in the ashtray, lay the stub of one of Madge’s cigarettes, stained scarlet. It had been there for days. Just then she couldn’t imagine anyone, ever, having the energy to remove it.

Her reverie was broken by the sound of footsteps. It was the Ainslies, back from some jaunt or other. They walked briskly across the lobby.

“It’s hard to believe it’ll soon be Christmas,” said Evelyn brightly. “This wonderful sunshine.”

“We’ve got a cassette of the King’s College Carols,” said Jean. “Doug and I play it at Christmas, wherever we are in the world.”

Evelyn stepped behind the desk, lifted the calendar off its hook and turned the page. As time went by they had all grown more proprietary about the hotel, treating it like home. Indeed, this had become more necessary as the proprietor himself seemed less and less in evidence. December’s photograph was cocker spaniel puppies.

“Both my children are coming for Christmas,” said Evelyn. She felt a timid flush of triumph about this; among the residents there was an undercurrent of rivalry on this subject.

“How lovely for you!” said Jean. “Of course Adam’s longing to come but we told him not to, we’re quite happy. Anyway he’s terribly busy—he’s doing some huge series for the BBC.”

Evelyn felt deflated. The implication, of course, was that her own children had such failed lives that they had nothing better to do. Oh Lord, was this true?

Douglas looked at his watch. “Sun’s over the yard-arm,” he said. “Time for a snort, girls?”

Evelyn declined, saying she needed to make a phone call but the line seemed to be dead. Yesterday there had been a power cut. It seemed a miracle that this country functioned at all, let alone supported a high-tech industry whose glittering office blocks rose into the sky only a mile down the road.

“Where
is
Minoo?” asked Douglas.

Evelyn lowered her voice. “I think they’re having another domestic.” Raised voices had been heard earlier, in the annex. “It’s such a curse. I must phone my son.”

And then she remembered what somebody had told her. There was a call center across the road.

T
he Ainslies sat in their room, drinking whisky with Olive Cooke. It was cheaper than running up a tab at the hotel bar and Jean, who believed in economies, had found a liquor store at Richmond Circus and brought back a bottle of Scotch. Safe in the bedroom they felt freer to gossip.

“Guess who we saw in town,” said Jean. “Dorothy.”

“Off on one of her walks?” asked Olive.

“We were just coming out of the bank—you know, Grindlays Bank in Lalbagh Street—and there she was, just wandering around looking odd.”

“The poor dear,” said Olive.

It was generally accepted that Dorothy Miller, the BBC lady, behaved strangely. For one thing she wandered off alone for long periods of time, sometimes even missing meals, and never told anyone where she had been.
“Just walking,”
she said. And with her arthritis, too.

“We followed her down the street,” said Jean. “She stood for ages outside the Mevali Tiffin Rooms, leaning on her stick.”

“Perhaps she just fancied a cup of tea,” said Douglas.

“No, there’s something odd about her.” Jean refilled Olive’s glass. “Yesterday we saw her in the Old Town. We were having lunch, a simple
thali
, quite delicious. We often eat pavement food, don’t we, Doug? It’s perfectly safe.” She lowered her voice. “I’m sure it’s Alzheimer’s, early stages.”

The residents of The Marigold, suffering the usual afflictions of age—memory loss, general vagueness—were alert for symptoms of more advanced senility in others. There was a shamefully triumphant feeling when this was spotted. Stella’s report of the nursery rhyme singing had surely, in Dorothy’s case, been proof of this. Apparently it had been “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.”

“They do wander,” said Jean. “Our friend Amy got dementia, didn’t she, Doug? She went walking down to the main road in the middle of the night, in her nightie. They had to lock her up. She kept watching a video of
E.T. ‘I want to go home.’
That was the bit she liked.”

“That’s where they try to go,” said Olive.

“What, home?”

Olive nodded. “To the home they’ve lost. Perhaps back to their childhood, who knows?”

“Funny they call a place like this a home,” said Jean.

“It’s not a home,” said Douglas sharply. “It’s a residential hotel.” He drained his glass. “And I don’t think we should talk about her like that.”

Douglas was fond of Dorothy Miller. In general, however, she wasn’t popular. This was partly because Dorothy was a late arrival, an outsider, when friendships had already been formed and patterns established. This would not have been a problem if she had joined in, but she was generally considered standoffish. She ate alone, a book propped in front of her, and refused to play bridge. Of course there were other loners—Graham Turner, for instance, but he was a sad old bachelor whom everybody pitied. Nobody could pity Dorothy.

Douglas, however, felt a certain admiration for her. This was partly because she had been a support to his son, Adam, in his career. But it was more than that. Surrounded by chattering women it was a relief to find somebody with no small talk, somebody so entirely unfluffy. He liked Dorothy’s plain face and square hands. She occupied the next room and when he woke at night he heard, faintly, the sound of her radio. Surely nobody entirely gaga would listen to the World Service?

Douglas looked at his wife. Her nose was peeling. Two weeks ago an arrangement had been set up with the Meridian Hotel, a concrete edifice that loomed up beyond the waste ground at the back. For a nominal fee, its pool had been made available to the residents of The Marigold. Several of them had been going there to swim and to sunbathe, an unwise decision in Jean’s case. Not only did she burn, she also broke out in a mildly disfiguring heat rash. Douglas couldn’t dissuade her, however; she enjoyed sipping cocktails and showing off her German to the airline crews.

Douglas turned away. He was suddenly overcome with such a powerful feeling he could scarcely breathe. Don’t think it, he told himself. Don’t even
think
of thinking it.

D
arkness had fallen. Evelyn paused beside the
paan
-seller’s stall. A stack of leaves glistened in the light from his spirit lamp. He had a chopping board and little pots of paste, like the glue pots at school. Madge, always game, had tried chewing some
paan
, but she said the little bits of nut got caught underneath her bridge.

Beyond the stalls stood the shabby concrete office building. “Karishma Plaza” was inscribed over the entrance. Lights blazed from the windows. The call center seemed to be open all night; Evelyn had seen the lights on her nocturnal rambles in the garden.

“Madam would like a
santara
?” The fruit-seller held out two oranges, one in each hand like a juggler.

Evelyn shook her head and, stepping around a shrouded body, hurried into the building. In the lobby, a man sat behind a desk. She asked for the call center and he pointed upstairs.

Evelyn walked up a flight of stairs, pushed open a swing door and found herself in an open-plan office. It was divided by partitions into little booths. In each booth sat an operative, wearing a headset. There must have been fifty of them. They all seemed to be talking at once.

Evelyn clutched the piece of paper. It had Christopher’s New York phone number written on it. Nowadays she had to write everything down. The only phone number she could remember, curiously enough, was the Hotpoint repair man in Chichester.

A minute passed. Nobody seemed to notice her; they were all too busy. Evelyn was mildly surprised. She had vaguely expected a reception desk and customers waiting to use the phones, something of that kind.

Then she noticed another curious thing. Affixed to each booth was the name of its occupant. She could only read the ones nearest her:
Sally Spears, Michael Parker, Mary Johnson
. But the people sitting in the booths were Indian—young men and women, dressed in jeans but definitely Indian.

Evelyn listened to the girl in the nearest booth. “Good afternoon,” she said, “this is Sally Spears calling, may I take a moment of your time?”

Good afternoon? It was seven o’clock at night. Evelyn’s head spun. Really, she must be getting confused. She was always getting things wrong. It was Hugh’s death that had done it. She had been perfectly all right until then; afterward, however, she had felt like Alice stepping through the looking-glass into a world where nothing quite made sense anymore.