Hot Water Man

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Deborah Moggach

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Read on for an extract from Something to Hide

  Copyright

  About the Author

  East is East and West is West...

  Fresh from London, Christine and Donald Manley have come to the alien swelter of Karachi: Christine to conceive a child, Donald to sell the Pill for a pharmaceutical company. Among the ex-pats already there is straight-talking Duke Hanson, whose all-American values cannot prevent him falling, then sinking, helplessly in love with a sophisticated Pakistani girl. In the ensuing tangle of Anglo-American-Oriental relations, the strangest things for those who have come out East are revealed in the very people with whom they arrived...

  About the Author

  Deborah Moggach is the author of fifteen novels, including the bestseller Tulip Fever, and two collections of short stories. Her TV screenplays include the prize-winning Goggle-Eyes, Close Relations, Final Demand and the highly-acclaimed Love in a Cold Climate. Her movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was released in 2005. She has two more or less grown-up children and lives in North London.

  ALSO BY DEBORAH MOGGACH

  You Must Be Sisters

  Close to Home

  A Quiet Drink

  Porky

  Driving in the Dark

  To Have and to Hold

  Smile and Other Stories

  Stolen

  The Stand-In

  The Ex-Wives

  Changing Babies

  Seesaw

  Close Relations

  Tulip Fever

  Final Demand

  These Foolish Things

  To Enjum, with love

  Hot Water Man

  Deborah Moggach

  1

  ‘Too hot for the ladies,’ said his grandfather. ‘Too blessed hot. Had to send ’em away.’

  Donald, who was ten, twisted his feet around one way then the other. He wore grey socks darned by Granny.

  ‘Send ’em into the hills.’

  A sensible idea. Girls were no use, spoiling things and making you feel foolish.

  ‘Murree, Dehra Dun, Mussorie. Simla, of course. Good old Simla, good old English flowers. Lupins, dahlias, you name them.’

  Donald could name nothing but he knew the noises so well. Gandhi, Murree, this-wallah, that-wallah; sometimes he didn’t know which were people and which weren’t. They were part of the wallpaper of this house, its patterned carpet, the things upon which he gazed as his grandfather spoke.

  It was June 1955. Outside the day was hot, but not as hot as India. The sun lay across the carpet, warming its weave. The room was stuffy. Overhead a plane droned. He never noticed the drone except in summer; it was part of the heat, like the hum of the bees.

  When he was younger he had thought all old people came from India. Talk of natives and punkahs became, like blotchy hands, part of the process of ageing. Perhaps you collected India like a pension. Or perhaps the words were just in old people’s rooms, like Grandad’s brass boxes and stuffed mongoose on the lounge shelves. He was ignorant then. Later of course he worked it out and separated his grandparents from the others. They were special. This made it more noteworthy, sitting here long after the tea had grown cold.

  Grandad had forgotten his cup on the arm of his chair. Old people took so long. Outside it was all right; you could dawdle and explore, they did not make you hurry up because they were going so slowly themselves. Indoors it was different. But he did not like to get up, his mother and grandmother both being out.

  They called him an obedient child. People were always patting his head. This was only because he lived with his grandparents (well, Mum too, but it was an old person’s house). He couldn’t be cheeky like he was to his mother, because they didn’t catch on. He couldn’t run off because they couldn’t even start to find him. They probably hadn’t even noticed he’d gone.

  ‘When they’d gone, things shook down. Just the chaps together. Settled in for the summer, had to sweat it out didn’t we. Not much choice about that one. Those days, you did your duty. Had some laughs too. Just the boys together – bit like you and me, eh, old chap?’

  Donald nodded. But his mother and Granny were not up in the hills, they were down at the shops. They said they’d bring him back a Crunchie.

  Donald fingered the rim of his comic. He had tucked it down the crack in the armchair. He had never met an Indian, though he had seen pictures of them in Grandad’s books. They were different from Red Indians, he knew that much. But then he had never met Desperate Dan either, and he was real enough. When the women got back he would take Beano into the garden and sit in the bit nobody mowed behind the tool shed.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else. Sweat it out’s putting it mildly. The sun would go down and you’d still be standing in front of a blessed great fire. That’s what it felt like. Women couldn’t take it. Didn’t have the constitution.’

  Outside another plane droned overhead. Donald wiggled his feet. He loved Grandad. He was listening to Grandad’s voice, and listening for the click of the gate.

  2

  May 1975, and Duke was driving his wife to the airport. It lay in the desert, nine miles from the centre of Karachi. The airport road was always busy; even at two a.m. he was overtaking taxicabs. Up in the sky a light winked; it was moving with them.

  Is that my plane? He expected Minnie to ask this but she remained silent. She sat beside him, smoking, small and tense, her carton of Kent and her documents in her lap – her U.S. citizen’s passport, her tickets in their plastic envelope he had prepared for her. She was already removed; she was in the plane, she was changing flights at Kennedy, she was greeting their boys. Already the abstraction of the traveller was upon her – she, Minnie, usually so close and anxious, clinging to his arm. He missed her already.

  ‘Sahib?’ They had arrived. Faces were pressed against the window. ‘Remember me, sahib?’ Porters pushed to the front, pointing to their badge numbers. These fellows were smart. They knew all the businessmen; after seven months they recognized him. One of them got the door open, shouting bossily at the others to keep away. Duke bellowed in his terrible Urdu and pointed to the luggage. Free enterprise: he who tries hardest reaps the rewards. This was his personal motto too.

  The airport building was crowded day and night, bodies pressed against the glass to watch the drama of arrivals and departures, people standing on the roof watching the spotlit DC 10s being fed by tankers small as toys. Surrounded by scrubland and shabby suburbs, it was the big concrete theatre where everything happened. In the corridors families, waiting for local flights, slept in their bedrolls. Deep inside the building, within the smartened-up Transit Lounge, people sat in rows of chairs waiti
ng to resume flights to Singapore and Hong Kong. To them, Pakistan was one hour of gazing at the closed tourist booth with its folk dolls – Sindhi, Baluch, Punjabi – sheathed in plastic.

  Sitar-style Muzak played. They stood in the Departure Hall.

  ‘Duke, I’m a little nervous.’

  ‘Hey, hon, you’ll be there soon.’

  ‘That’s what scares me.’

  He took Minnie in his arms. Behind him the porter put down the suitcases. ‘Hell, Min, I wish I could come.’

  ‘That would be crazy. Besides, I’ve got the boys.’

  Minnie was returning to Wichita to escape the summer heat, to look after the boys in their college vacation and to have her womb removed. She stood aside while he checked in her ticket. She looked like the smallest of his sons. So slight, she was, with her black cropped hair and tanned face. Through a cloud of smoke she was gazing gravely at her cases, moving away along the rubber belt. She wore the sleeveless pink pants suit that she had not worn since they had arrived here – her creaseless travelling gear. Soon she would be beyond his help, in limbo land the other side of the Departure Lounge door; she was now a Pan-Am passenger he was unable to follow, with a boarding card and passport ready for its stamp. Like a patient, injected now and ready to go through the double doors beyond which nobody else can enter.

  He kissed her, holding her against him. He ran his hands up and down her thin, dry arms. Behind him the porter hawked and spat. He kissed her again, oblivious of the spectators. The buttons of her blouse pressed against his chest; behind the polyester, deep within her lay the mysterious place where his sons, now all over six foot, had lain growing.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ he whispered pointlessly.

  He watched her leave, pause at the desk for her passport to be stamped, then disappear through frosted doors marked Security: Ladies. There she would stand, husbandless, while a P.I.A. girl, head modestly swathed in a dupatta, patted her front and rear, searching for weapons.

  It was three a.m. but Duke was not tired. He was a big man, no beauty, strong as an ox. Prod him anywhere: muscle, all muscle. He believed in keeping trim. Soon when the sun rose he would be jogging, thudding along the dusty verges of K12 Housing Society. Pariah dogs would run out, yapping; they lived in the scrub of the empty plots. Past high white walls he would trot, past closed gates with their lozenge lights still bright though the sky was brighter. Gatemen would be sitting, propped up like dolls. No sound but his own feet, his own harsh breaths, and the murmur of air-conditioners outside closed bedroom windows. His business friends thought he was crazy; these Pakistanis did not take exercise. But he loved the early mornings, the distant loudspeaker calling from the mosque, and the air fresh before the heat closed in. He had urged Minnie to join him, these beautiful dawns. She seldom did. In the three months she had been in Karachi she had not settled; she could find nothing to say to the American wives and the slums reduced her to tears. In one small, uncomfortable way it was a relief she had gone. He had felt responsible for her, returning early from work when he had so much to do, trying to take on to his shoulders her burden of distress. Besides, she had missed their boys. He would ache for her but life would be simpler; without women it always was. This was what they used to do, apparently, out in these parts. Business did not stop for the heat.

  Minnie was three dots in the sky. They disappeared. Up there she would be settling back on her pillow. A stewardess, blonde and comprehensible, would be passing round the blankets sealed in cellophane. Duke was standing on the roof. Even at this hour of the night, the concrete ledge was warm. Another jumbo, a British Airways 747, had landed; in the spotlight, toy people climbed down the steps and made their way to the bus. Some paused. He knew what they thought: that the heat came from the exhaust jets of the plane. Only when they moved away did they realize that this fire was not something you could leave behind so easily. It would last from May through September.

  ‘Mr Hanson?’

  Duke turned. It was Mr Samir from Cameron Chemicals. His bald head glistened. They shook hands.

  ‘You have been seeing off your lady wife?’

  ‘She was sorry to leave,’ said Duke politely. ‘She’d gotten to like your city.’

  ‘We are all sorry too. But it is becoming so hot.’

  Actually the heat was the one thing she could take. Duke said nothing, but nodded.

  ‘She’ll return in September?’

  ‘Sure. I guess I know who you’re meeting. Your English manager.’

  ‘And his better half.’

  ‘Kinda warm time to arrive. They been out here before?’

  ‘I believe not. Mr Manley has only worked in London office. His tour here is two years.’

  ‘I’ll be seeing plenty of him.’ Duke worked for the Translux Group. Their hotel project here would be taking out a large contract with Cameron’s; interior fitments, paint. So far his hotel project was a flat stretch of scrub desert. These things took time. Here, they took time.

  He accompanied Mr Samir down the steps. Around the Arrivals Hall the windows were full of faces but only those who knew their status had walked through the doors to greet the travellers – besuited Pakistani businessmen, Europeans in bush shirts. One of Mr Samir’s colleagues was waiting, wanly at attention, in his hand a string of blossoms.

  ‘I bet you find them inconvenient, these night flights,’ said Duke. Aircraft usually landed in the small hours, destined to arrive at more attractive cities at a civilized time in the morning. To mention this would be tactless.

  ‘No, no.’ Mr Samir coughed. ‘No trouble.’

  Arrivals were trickling through. Roused from sleep, from the airline pillow against which, now, Minnie’s head must surely be resting, each face looked blank under the strip light. They had travelled 3,500 miles; above black deserts they had eaten untimely meals sealed in foil. They did not look ready.

  Duke spotted the English couple. They were younger than he had expected. The man, attempting casualness with his jacket over his arm, glanced back at the porter wheeling the luggage, then looked around at the faces. He was fair and freckled, pleasant-looking, softish. In this climate he would burn.

  His wife walked a step ahead of him. She was the same height as her husband; she wore a crumpled embroidered blouse and jeans. Her fairish hair was frizzed, like the girls did nowadays; underneath it her face was radiant with an English glow. She turned back to speak to her husband; the spectators had their eyes fixed on her.

  They met with much shaking of hands. ‘Mr Donald Manley,’ said Mr Samir to Duke. ‘Our new Sales Manager. Mrs Christine Manley.’

  ‘For us?’ The girl ducked. The garland was placed over her head. Her face lifted, blushing. ‘Do you always do this?’

  ‘It is our custom’, said Mr Samir, ‘for honoured guests.’

  ‘I feel such a mess. I’ve been asleep.’ She touched the wilted flowers. On her upper arm, Duke saw the new inoculation plaster. ‘They’re so beautiful. What are they called?’

  Mr Samir told her the name. Donald Manley said: ‘I’m so pleased to be here. My grandfather served in Karachi, years ago. He was in the army.’ The thread of the garland was tangled with his shoulder bag; he fumbled with it, twitching his arm up and down. ‘He talked about it so much, I feel I’m coming home.’

  There was a pause. The English couple, no doubt, were trying to think of something interesting to say about their first impression of Pakistan. The airport offered them a grey concrete interior, a crowd of men and the shuttered cubicle of a Habib Bank. And heat.

  ‘Hot, isn’t it,’ said Mr Manley pleasantly.

  3

  Mohammed wore gymhoes. The reason for his silence as he passed from room to room, dusting, arranging, tidying up her mess, lay in his stealthy rubber soles. Lay also in his deference; his humble desire not to disturb, which of course disturbed Christine more. She reclined on her sun-couch, cocking her head sideways. She was a woman of leisure but she was not at ease.

  Like the Camero
n furniture, Mohammed came with the house. For two weeks she had lived with his attentions. Anything she did could be bettered by him; besides, it would offend him to take matters out of his hands. Yesterday she had picked some sprays of bougainvillaea from the garden; going into the kitchen she had met him, already arranging sprays of bougainvillaea in a glass of water, tinted pink. He had the feminine touch.

  ‘But darling, you’ve always hated housework,’ Donald had said last night. They were eating supper. ‘You always said it was so demeaning, scrubbing away and nobody noticing. So thanklessly circular, you said.’

  ‘I just feel silly sitting around. Lifting my feet while he sweeps the bit under them.’

  ‘But you always said –’ He stopped. The door was ajar; Mohammed stood in the kitchen, waiting to collect the empty plates. In his white uniform he could almost be felt.

  ‘He can’t understand English,’ hissed Christine. ‘Not that well.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  ‘Can’t we ever talk? For two years?’

  Donald took his last mouthful. So did she. When he had finished chewing he cleared his throat. ‘Mohammed.’

  Plates were swiftly lifted. Mohammed emerged with a bowl of orange stuff. He was a slender young man, girlish and beautiful. He served them and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  ‘Wages for Housewives,’ said Donald in a low voice. ‘He’s only doing what those ghastly friends of yours were always going on about.’

  ‘Don’t be simplistic.’

  ‘They were ghastly. They all had such bad skin.’

  ‘Don’t be sexist.’

  ‘If only they ever laughed. They weren’t good for you.’

  ‘Anyway I wasn’t just a housewife. I had a job.’

  ‘Wages for Housewives.’ Donald chuckled, spooning on the cream.

  ‘Perhaps you should marry Mohammed. That Rosemary woman said all the Pathans are gay. Wives are just to have sons by.’

  ‘Shh.’

  Christine’s dress stuck to her. She rearranged herself on the sun-couch. This should be the life. When Mohammed had retired for his afternoon nap she would strip down to her bikini, if she could bear to move out of the shade. He was upstairs. The window creaked as he opened it to air the bedroom. Now he would be making the bed upon which she and Donald had lain. She thought of last night; what Donald called That Department had these last months become something they were trying, by an unspoken pact, to treat casually. After all they had been married three years.