The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A Novel

  “You’re lucky,” she said to Douglas.

  “Why?” He stared at her.

  “Not to be alone.”

  Douglas looked at her cigarette packet. “May I have one of those?” he asked.

  Surprised, Madge lit him a cigarette. Douglas sat there, smoking. He wore a lemon V-necked sweater, like Perry Como. Beneath the bland, golfing-pro exterior, however, she sensed something thrumming. She knew men; she knew something was up.

  Across the table, Graham Turner lit a small Panatella. His cheekbones were flushed. Leaning toward his neighbor, Olive Cooke, he said: “People think we’re waiting to die. Well, I’m starting to live.”

  Startled, Olive toyed with the cardboard strip from their shared Christmas cracker. It had failed to explode. She had pulled out the strip in the same manner, she imagined, as the surgeon back in Hornchurch had pulled out her varicose veins.

  Stella drained her glass of wine and rose unsteadily to her feet.

  “Oh Lord,” muttered Madge.

  “The tinkling piano in the next apartment,” sang Stella.

  Graham joined in. “These foolish things …”

  They looked at him, in surprise.

  “… remind me of you,” they sang together.

  The sisters from Fife joined in, slightly off-key. So did Mr. Desikachar, who had a pleasant baritone voice.

  Suddenly they were plunged into darkness.

  “Oh oh, a power cut,” said Stella.

  Minoo barked an order to Jimmy, presumably to find some candles. They heard the old bearer blundering against Eithne’s wheelchair as he made his way from the room.

  Eithne uttered a shrill laugh. “What fun! We can play Murder in the Dark.”

  “I know another game,” said Keith, making his way toward Theresa.

  “Oh!” squeaked Stella.

  “Sorry, wrong person,” said Keith.

  “Do carry on,” Stella giggled. “It was rather nice.”

  “Let’s play London Tube Stations,” said Madge. Her cigarette glowed in the dark. “Guess the one that doesn’t have any of the letters of mackerel in it.”

  “That’s just silly, Madge.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Dollis Hill.”

  “No, it’s got an l.”

  Minoo said: “I know. Think of the most comical Parsee name. Many of us are called by the name of a trade—”

  “Euston!”

  “No, it’s got an e—”

  “Cashmeresweaterwallah,” said Minoo.

  “I give up, Madge.”

  “Sodawaterbottleopenerwallah,” said Minoo.

  “All right then,” said Madge. “If you really give up. It’s St. John’s Wood.”

  They sat in the blackness, waiting for the lights to come on. Somebody cleared her throat. Faintly, they could hear the tick-tock of the grandfather clock.

  After a moment a voice said: “Do you think this is what it’s like?”

  “What?”

  “It. Do you think it’s like this?”

  “For goodness’ sake, Hermione, don’t be so morbid!”

  There was another pause.

  “I know. Moorgate.”

  “We’ve finished that game, Eithne.”

  “Anyway it’s got an a and an r—”

  “And an m—”

  Pauline felt a hand removing her paper hat. “Are you all right?” asked Ravi.

  She nodded. “Are you?”

  Maybe he nodded; it was too dark to tell. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The children’s thing,” said Ravi. “You really want to do it, don’t you?”

  She nodded. His hand stroked her hair.

  Dorothy spoke in the darkness. “There was a gully behind our house. Egrets, herons … I nearly drowned in it once. I used to dream about it.”

  She fell silent. Outside, the veranda creaked.

  “Someone’s here,” said Douglas. “Listen.”

  Madge flicked on her lighter. Illuminated from beneath, she resembled a skull. She was a skull, of course; they all were. “Can you see who it is?”

  They heard the veranda door opening. “Ma?” said a voice. “Is anybody there?”

  Jimmy entered with some candles. For a moment, a man was illuminated in the doorway. It was Christopher. Then the breeze blew the candles out and they were plunged back into darkness.

  “Christopher, is that you?” asked Evelyn.

  “What’s happened?” he asked. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  “Why are you back?” asked Evelyn, alarmed. “Has there been an accident?”

  Somebody scraped a match alight. Briefly they glimpsed Christopher’s wild eyes.

  “Why aren’t you in Goa?” asked Evelyn. “Where are the others?”

  “Ouch!” yelped somebody as the match burned her fingers. Darkness engulfed them.

  “I can’t talk now, Ma,” said Christopher, his voice shaky. “I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Tell her now, for God’s sake,” said Madge. “We’ll find out, sooner or later.”

  They sat in the darkness, waiting.

  “I’ve left my wife,” Christopher said.

  There was a gasp, like a wave pulling back over the pebbles.

  “You’ve what?” asked Evelyn.

  “And my children.” His voice was thick. “Yesterday. The coach drove away and I just stayed there. On the pavement outside the hotel.”

  “Crikey,” said Douglas.

  “Like thingy in that film,” said Madge.

  “Jack Nicholson,” said Graham. “Five Easy Pieces.”

  “I fell in love with somebody else,” said Christopher. “I’m going to live with her.”

  “What about Marcia?” asked his sister. “The children?”

  “They don’t need me.”

  Suddenly the lights came on. Christopher stood there, disheveled.

  “You can’t just do that,” said his mother.

  “I know,” he said. “But I have.” He stared at the room. They saw now that there was a suitcase on the floor. Jimmy instinctively moved toward it. Then he stopped, and glanced inquiringly at the manager.

  “My God,” said Theresa. “You, of all people.”

  “Sit down, old chap,” said Douglas. “You need a drink.”

  Christopher didn’t move. He wore a turquoise short-sleeved shirt. There were damp patches under the arms.

  “Who is this woman?” asked Madge, with interest.

  “She’s the greeter at the Taj Balmoral,” he said.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Sonny. “Aisha or Jana?”

  “Aisha,” said Christopher.

  “Good choice.” Sonny nodded. “She’s the babe.”

  Graham Turner loosened his tie. “Well I never,” he said.

  “Where is she?” asked Theresa.

  “In the garden.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s shy,” said Christopher.

  “But I thought she greeted people.”

  Christopher still seemed incapable of movement. He looked at Pauline. “Isn’t that the sari?” he asked, puzzled.

  “No it’s not!” said his mother.

  “The sari I gave you?” asked Christopher.

  Pauline frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, he’s just confused.” Evelyn turned to her son. “Do ask your lady friend in, darling. It’s chilly out there.”

  Christopher jumped. He swung around and walked into the garden. “Aisha?” he called “Aisha?” Deep in the darkness, a cat meowed.

  They sat there, waiting. Eithne gave a giggle. “Goodness me. And such a nice man. He helped me wind my wool.”

  Douglas drained his beer glass. “What a day,” he said. “Anyone else got something to tell us?”

  “Douggy, this is serious!” said his wife. “The man’s left his family.”

  Madge laughed her husky, smoker’s laugh. “At
least nobody can accuse us of falling asleep.”

  “Except for Dorothy,” said Pauline. “She has.”

  They turned.

  Dorothy sat in her chair, the paper hat crooked. There was something odd about the way she was slumped.

  Ravi grunted. There was a scrape as he pushed back his chair and leaped to his feet.

  When the Lord of the body arrives, and when he departs and wanders on, he takes them over with him, as the wind takes perfumes from their place of sleep.

  The Bhagavad Gita

  Dorothy’s ashes were scattered in the garden of The Marigold, her lost Eden, where she had played as a child. Adam Ainslie, her protégé, had flown out; so had a distant niece, bearing out Douglas’s observation that one had to be dead before anyone paid you a visit.

  “Out, out, brief candle,” Adam read:

  “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

  And then is heard no more …”

  Douglas was deeply disturbed. Is this what it’s like? somebody had said, during the power cut. He knew that it must have been an easeful death, simply to remain asleep when the lights came on, but he was gripped by panic.

  “Are you all right, Dad?” asked Adam.

  “Fine!” Douglas blew his nose.

  “I feel so guilty.” Adam sat down on the veranda steps. “I should have visited her. In London. I was always so busy, and now it’s too late.”

  Douglas looked at his wife. Jean was standing on the lawn talking to Evelyn. She shot a glance at their son. Sooner or later the three of them would have to sit down and discuss Adam’s sexual orientation. The thought of this conversation—indeed, any conversation—filled Douglas’s heart with lead.

  I can’t live the rest of my life with her.

  So what did one do? Cross the gas station forecourt, like Jack Nicholson, and climb into another vehicle? Evelyn’s son had done it.

  A chill wind blew. Evelyn hugged her cardigan to herself, wrapping it around her chest. It was an instinctive, girlish gesture. How frail she looked, as if a strong wind would topple her over!

  “This has knocked us for six,” said Douglas. He remembered the plane, how he blew up the plump lozenge of the neck cushion and passed it to Evelyn. Already he had wanted to ease her passage through life. It was hard, traveling alone.

  Evelyn, wrapped in the airline blanket. Recently the two of them had crossed the street to Khan’s Video Rental. At the crossroads some women waited for a bus—village women, Muslims, enveloped from head to foot in burkas. “Being old’s like wearing one of those,” Evelyn had said.

  Had Evelyn’s husband ever told her she was beautiful? Hugh sounded a breezy, no-nonsense fellow. Evelyn said he was devoted to their spaniel.

  “Here, Dad.” Adam passed him a Kleenex. He was looking at him oddly. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  “Who?” asked Douglas.

  “Dorothy.”

  “Ah,” said Douglas. “Yes.”

  The sun was sinking. At this time of day the garden was transformed into a place of great beauty. Douglas looked at Evelyn, still miraculously alive, her shadow lengthening across the grass. Her hair was no longer gray. In this light it shone, the palest gold. He wondered if she had been blond in her youth. Seventy-four years of her life were unknown to him, and yet here she was, utterly familiar.

  And then Adam took the apple, and ate it. Douglas hadn’t read the Bible since Sunday school. They were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, he knew that.

  Douglas got up, went indoors and lay down on the bed, his face pressed into the pillow.

  Later, when Adam and his mother had settled down for their little chat, Adam said: “Poor Dad, he couldn’t stop crying. It’s not like him.”

  “I never knew he was that fond of Dorothy,” said Jean.

  “He’s inconsolable.”

  The next day, Ravi and Pauline flew to Delhi to visit his family. She never discovered what had caused her husband to make that speech during the extraordinary Christmas dinner. Something had affected him powerfully, but he had been unable to put it into words. Maybe it was the scent of loss in the air, for that day she had decided to leave him.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. They arrived at Delhi Airport, where the hands of the clock had to be inched, laboriously, into the future; Pauline could see the knee of the man squatting behind the clock face. Why can’t we simply be mammals? she thought. We are mammals. Why can’t we simply be warm bodies in bed, our arms around each other? The world is too terrifying to face alone.

  Ravi touched her shoulder. “There they are,” he whispered.

  At the barrier stood his family—his parents, his sister, her two children, his Auntie Preethi. Ravi waved back.

  “Here goes,” he muttered, like a boy of six.

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that, Ma,” said Keith.

  “I had to tell somebody,” said Muriel. “Now you know when I’m going to die, you know how long we’ve got each other for.”

  “It gives me a weird feeling,” he said.

  Three of them were walking through the Botanical Gardens—Muriel, Keith and Theresa—though none of them was interested in plants. Theresa said: “Don’t believe all that stuff, palm leaves and stuff. It creates such helplessness.”

  “You’ve changed your tune,” said Keith.

  “I want to go home,” said Theresa. “I’m tired of it here, my clients need me, Mum’s got Christopher now, though God knows what he’s going to do here. I mean he’s a sort of stockbroker or something.”

  “Plenty of money in Bangalore, darling,” said Keith.

  A monkey swung past, carrying a baby under its arm, but they were used to monkeys now. In two days’ time Keith and his mother would be flying to Spain. He wore a red baseball cap pulled down over his forehead, and a shirt printed with pineapples. Already he seemed alien to Theresa. For two weeks they had been inseparable, but now he was returning to unknowability. On January 6 he would, like Persephone, be swallowed into the Underworld, the sunlit Underworld of the Costa del Sol, where in some incomprehensibly dodgy way he would go to ground. I shall remember you all my life, Theresa wanted to say. I love you. Not in the way Swamiji wrote in his Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, however. There’s nothing cosmic about my love; it’s only too particular. I love your arms and your skin and the smell of you. I love you inside me. I love your eyelashes brushing my cheek when you blink and the way you make me laugh. These foolish things.

  It was the next day. Sonny sat in the Gymkhana Club drinking whisky with Keith.

  “I’m just a small fish, my friend,” said Sonny. “That maderchod P.K. is too big for both of us.”

  “What’s a maderchod, mate?”

  “Motherfucker.” Sonny drained his glass and snapped his fingers for more drinks.

  “I’m cutting my losses and getting out of here,” said Keith.

  “I must tell you something.” Sonny lowered his voice. “I did a terrible deed and in my next life I shall pay for it. Revenge is not sweet, dear boy. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.”

  “What did you do, then?”

  “It was I who killed Norman-sahib.”

  “He died on the job, right?” said Keith, lighting a cigarette. “That’s the rumor, lucky old sod.”

  “He died in the arms of a hijra.”

  “A what?”

  “A eunuch.”

  Keith clapped his hand to his mouth.

  “It’s not funny!” barked Sonny. “How can I forgive myself? I shall make amends to the old Britishers, I have decided to devote myself to their well-being, but how will I help his poor daughter, so sad and pale?”

  The drinks arrived. Keith removed his ice cubes and put them in the ashtray.

  Sonny spoke the words not expecting an answer. He was merely thinking out loud in the company of his new confidant who might understand the pickle he was in, Keith-sahib being in a pickle himself. A worse one, Sonny suspec
ted, for he himself had never been involved in the drugs side of P.K.’s organization. Keith Donnelly, he guessed, knew more about this than he was prepared to divulge. Sonny certainly didn’t want to know, things being bad enough already. See no evil, hear no evil.

  “How can I help this poor lady,” said Sonny, “who in three days’ time will fly home with only the ashes of her father for comfort?”

  “You really want to help her?” Keith looked at him.

  Sonny nodded. How simple it was in his boyhood, being passed from knee to knee! His mother’s lips against his cheek, the smell of her perfume. If only he could rewind his video and dwindle into a child again, adored just for being a boy.

  Keith smiled. “I got an idea,” he said.

  It was late. Douglas stood at the gates of The Marigold, gazing at the crossroads. There were four choices: the airport, the town, the office world, the Old City. He had come to a moment of decision. His skull felt tight. Nearby, the gateman’s cigarette glowed. Douglas had given up smoking in 1986, but he needed one now.

  In the light of the streetlamps the legless beggar sat on his trolley. Evelyn said she only gave to two beggars; you had to make a decision on these matters. She gave to the legless man, for though young he was helpless. And she gave to the elderly beggar out of a feeling of solidarity. Their circumstances were worlds apart, but she said it all boiled down to the same thing.

  Douglas thought of the forty-eight years he had lain beside his wife. Dorothy had dreamed about the water buffalo in the stream behind her childhood home, now no doubt landscaped over to become a corporate lawn. Lying next to Jean’s nightie-clad body, Douglas, too, had dreamed. The years he had spent with his wife had dissolved away as if they had never been. It was bloody terrifying. Exhilarating, too. What was real, in this life? Had he ever grasped it, all those years of being a solicitor and a husband, of raising children and tramping across Dartmoor?

  Behind him, in the darkness, the crickets chirruped. Maybe they were tree frogs; he had never discovered. He knew nothing except that they would go on chirruping through the night and the beggars would go on waiting.

  How could he cause such pain when sooner or later they would all die? Was such monumental selfishness justified even in the young and heedless? Christopher, Evelyn’s son, was bad enough, running away with an Indian lady and leaving his children fatherless. Here he was, apparently aged seventy-one.