The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: A Novel Read online

  The phone rang. It was Adam Ainslie, one of her protégés at the BBC.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No. I need somebody to unscrew my percolator. I may be reduced to many things, but not to instant coffee.” Dorothy’s joints ached. She thought: I need new hands. Maybe I could fly to France and get them fitted.

  “Shall I come round?” he asked, overbrightly.

  “Don’t be silly. All the way from Fulham?”

  She thought: I need a servant. After all, my parents had them. Sod socialism.

  “Can I send you a video?” asked Adam. “It’s only a rough cut, but I’d love your opinion.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a program I’ve made about what happens to people after they’ve been on a chat show. You know, fifteen minutes of fame and all that.”

  Dorothy’s heart sank. Outside, the queue shuffled forward. “Too Big to Wipe,” she said.

  “What?”

  She seemed to have spoken out loud. The last time in New York—years ago, when was it?—she had switched on Jerry Springer. Those were his guests: Too Big to Wipe.

  “I’d really appreciate your input,” said Adam. “I owe everything to you. A lot of us do.”

  He was flattering her, of course. But she had given Adam his first job and he remained loyal. She would watch his awful video and try to be kind.

  It took Dorothy half an hour to get the damn Jiffy Bag open. Adam had trussed it up with that sort of tape they used, in films, to gag prisoners. She scrabbled at it with her fingernails. On the PM program there was an item about woodlands. Apparently they were too thick and dark. The government had decided that the countryside was now a leisure facility and that woods were too alarming for its citizens—sorry, customers—particularly ethnic minorities who weren’t used to them, and after consultation with the community was putting in place a scheme to make them more user-friendly. Trees would be cleared to create more open, glade-type environments with seating, disabled access and leisure facilities.

  “I’m seventy-four years old, Laszlo,” Dorothy said. “I can no longer be surprised by anything. Maybe those who have suffered stress disorders caused by overpowering vegetation have been claiming for counseling. Maybe, once those messy trees have been cleared away, those too big to wipe will sue the relevant agency for making the seating too discriminatingly small for their enormous bottoms.”

  She often spoke aloud to her dead sweetheart. It was one of the consolations of living alone. The relationship had been doomed but in her imagination Laszlo was forever hers, leaping to help her in his polite Hungarian way.

  “Help me to wrench off this blasted tape,” Dorothy said. “Help me to survive.”

  Life was full of incomprehensible instructions. The manual for her video recorder was twenty pages long, in tiny print that only an ant could read. It no doubt catered for possibilities undreamed of by those who, until then, had been content with their existence. The funny thing was that the more choice there was, the more powerless one felt.

  “Am I just a batty old woman, Laszlo? Given the choice, would you have tired of me by now?”

  Dorothy finally extracted the video from its Jiffy Bag. She slotted it into the machine, poured herself a whisky, and sat down in front of the TV. Adam, her surrogate son, was a charming young man. She owed him an honest opinion.

  A picture bloomed on the screen. It was the Taj Mahal.

  Dorothy gazed at the TV. She couldn’t see the connection with chat shows, but then many connections escaped her nowadays. She could watch ads in the cinema and have no idea what they were going on about, not a clue.

  The sun was sinking—no, it was rising. That dewy, pearly light … it was the dawn. The marble mausoleum glowed, radiant. The camera panned around to the Yamuna River; submerged in it, up to their necks, stood water buffalo. Sitar music played.

  “Welcome to India,” said a voice. “A land of timeless beauty.”

  “Was that a joke?” said Dorothy on the phone. “If so, it was in very poor taste.”

  “Sorry,” said Adam. “I sent the wrong tape. It was meant for my parents.”

  Dorothy seemed extraordinarily upset. He could see it could be construed as tactless, to send an old lady an ad for a retirement home, but where was her sense of humor? Dorothy had never been easy, but age was clearly worsening her temper.

  Adam was standing at the window, poised for action. In his street there was severe parking congestion. His own car, like several others, was double-parked. At any moment one of his neighbors might emerge from a house and drive off, in which case Adam had to be ready to leap out and grab the space before anybody else got it. Some people, to avoid losing a space, never moved their cars at all and had resorted to public transport.

  “Send the tape back,” he said, “and I’ll send you the other one.”

  “Why don’t you come round for supper?” asked Dorothy. “Haven’t seen you for a while. Then we can do it in person.”

  “I’d love to sometime—oh, blast, must rush.” Outside, a car was pulling out. Adam slammed down the receiver and ran out of the house.

  He meant to phone Dorothy back, he really did. But then Sergio came home with some squid he had bought for their dinner party and they had started hunting for the recipe they had torn out of the Independent.

  Adam was fond of Dorothy; there was something intransigent about her strong plain face and gravel voice. During his days at the BBC she had been an inspiring boss and he owed her a great deal. In general, however, she had not been popular with her colleagues—too autocratic; too demanding, in others, of the standards she set for herself. She had been regarded with respect rather than love, and when he had told a fellow trainee “I’m a friend of Dorothy’s” the chap had presumed he was gay and asked him out for a drink. Adam was gay, of course, but he hadn’t meant it like that. Dorothy was good with gay men—maybe because, in common with many fag hags, her personal life seemed to have been a failure. She had subsumed it in her work.

  Adam still valued Dorothy’s opinion. That was why he had sent her the tape. But he also did it out of kindness, to make her feel needed. Over the years a subtle change had taken place in their relationship. Once she had been his mentor; he had been flattered to be asked to Dorothy’s dinner parties in her book-lined flat with its Howard Hodgkin painting above the fireplace. Once he had met a Labor cabinet minister there. But now she had retired; the dinner parties had long since ceased and when he visited her it was out of a sense of duty. He was even starting to humor her, for her fine, clear mind had become somewhat muddled—what had she blurted out? Something about being too big to wipe? She shouldn’t live alone; with nobody to listen to them, her thoughts became confused. Age had shifted the balance between them. Dorothy was a proud woman; if she had suspected that he was patronizing her, she would have been horrified.

  His own dinner party consisted of Brazilian friends of Sergio’s—dull but good-looking, like most of Sergio’s pals. Adam’s attention wandered.

  Suddenly he remembered the videotape. He had promised to phone Dorothy. Shit! He had also promised to send the tape to his parents, who were thinking about a possible retirement home. His father and mother lived in Devon. They were a game old couple, always off on some jaunt or other in their beige windcheaters, bird-watching in the Hebrides or driving to Portugal in their camper van. Recently, however, life had dealt them a series of blows. Their village shop had closed down, which meant they had to drive to Okehampton to do their shopping—no bloody buses, of course—and recently his father had crashed the van. “Eyesight on the blink,” he said. Neither of them, to be honest, was fit to drive anymore, and this had left them marooned in the middle of nowhere, suddenly shunted into dependency. Their neighbor, a farmer, had lost his stock in the foot-and-mouth crisis and had decided to sell up. People were sloughing off their responsibilities and decamping to warmer climes where the living was easy. No more leaky roofs! No more chores! Adam had heard abo
ut this retirement place in India, a country that had happy memories for his parents. He had written off for the details.

  Adam was thinking about this as he chewed the squid (somewhat rubbery). He was also wondering how long his relationship with Sergio was going to last. He thought: Those cheekbones are beginning to wear thin. Funny how a lover’s friends suddenly made you see them clearly. Adam’s sister, a frequent traveler along the bumpy road to love, said that relationships based on sex lasted exactly two years.

  He also thought: This Indian place might make a good documentary. While ruminating on this, Adam drank a great deal of Chilean Merlot. He forgot about the documentary and it was to be three more years before he plucked up the courage to leave his lover. But he remembered to get the video back and send it to his parents.

  Who put their house on the market and prepared to uproot their lives, for that was the kind of people they were.

  Dorothy had her dream again. She was submerged in the gully behind her house. This time she bumped against the bulk of a water buffalo; she grabbed onto it and heaved herself up. Now she seemed to be sitting astride its head. It reared up from the water, lifting her with it, the water falling off her in streams. And then it shrugged her off and she was drowning.

  She woke, drenched with sweat. It was three o’clock. She waited for the images to dissolve and leave her safe. “It’ll all come out in the wash,” her mother had said, though it didn’t, did it? Her mother had lied. Dorothy willed herself to think of humdrum things: tea at Patisserie Valerie in Marylebone High Street; the Today program with Jim Naughtie’s soothing Scots voice. This slowed her fluttering heart.

  Her throat was dry. She pushed back the duvet and carefully, achingly, got out of bed. Her bones felt like chalk, dry and squeaky as they rubbed together; one day they must break. Even walking to the kitchen made her breathless. She leaned against the fridge. Outside a taxi passed, its sign illuminated. She thought: I should tell Adam about India. He’s closer to me than anyone.

  This thought depressed her. Adam was a busy young man; weeks went by without his phoning her. Oh, he sometimes dropped in for a cup of tea when he was editing down in Soho, but Dorothy knew, in her heart, that she came first with nobody.

  The kitchen was dark. Dorothy hadn’t switched on the lamp; it would be too much of a jolt. She stood there, drinking a glass of water. Across the Marylebone Road stood an office block. Its lobby was illuminated. At night a security guard sat there, a young Indian man. He talked for hours on the phone, swirling around on his swivel chair. When she wore her spectacles she could see him quite clearly. Every night he sat there, her unwitting companion during the small hours. But she, in the darkness, remained invisible.

  Pauline had crippling period pains. She was going through the menopause, a journey that neither of the men in her life could share. It was a tumultuous voyage. She bled, heavily and erratically. The cramps were fierce, as if nature was kicking her in the stomach as a final punishment: Even if you COULD have had children, now you can’t. She had hot flushes, her face turning brick-red like her father’s. At work people looked at her curiously as she pulled at the neck of her blouse, fanning herself. Nights were the worst. She woke drenched in sweat, her heart pounding with nameless dread. She feared her own mortality. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. For this flight was taking her to a destination that filled her with foreboding: old age, a foreign country from which nobody returned.

  She couldn’t confide in Ravi. Like many doctors he was breezily dismissive of the ailments, unless life-threatening, of those he loved. They were drifting apart—literally, in fact, when her night sweats forced him to abandon their bed and sleep in his study. Pauline suspected that he went back to work; sometimes, when she got up to get a drink of water, she saw a strip of light beneath the door. She was an outcast, she and her fluttering heart; she was alone among the insomniacs in this huge city.

  It was early September. Ravi’s study was being taken over by Ravison business—a new filing cabinet, piles of folders, Post-it notes stuck to the framed photo of his class at St. Ignatius Boys’ School, Delhi. There had been a lot of inquiries, not just about The Marigold but about the possibilities of other homes around the world—South Africa, Cyprus—prospects mentioned in the publicity material.

  Ravi said: “See—people want to get the hell out of this country.”

  “Don’t put it like that!” Britain was like her father; only she was allowed to slag either of them off. Underneath it all, Ravi was still a foreigner.

  Ravi was sorting through “Fitness to Fly” doctors’ certificates. Eighteen clients, so far, had signed up for The Marigold. The rooms were nearly filled. Pauline knew their names because she was organizing their travel arrangements: Mrs. Evelyn Greenslade, a lady from Chichester, who wrote in longhand; Mr. and Mrs. Ainslie from Beaworthy, Devon. They sounded genteel and, judging by the addresses, well-heeled. Plans for state assistance had long been abandoned as unworkable; this was a purely private enterprise. One of their customers had even inquired about shipping out her antique furniture; that was the sort of person they were attracting. Some of them would have already been installed by the time Pauline flew out with her father at the end of the month.

  Why had her father changed his mind? Pauline never found out. Fully recovered from his operation, he seemed to be looking forward to his new life in Bangalore. “Raring to go,” he said. He had had his immunizations; he had even sorted out some lightweight clothes from his travels in the tropics and crowed over the fact that they still fit him. Norman’s imminent departure had changed Ravi’s attitude toward his father-in-law; he had become more tolerant of the old boy, almost fond. The day before, he had even managed a mild joke, about buying a new saucepan.

  Pauline’s own feelings were mixed. In her present state, the flight itself filled her with panic. What happened if one of her copious periods suddenly began? She pictured the charnel house it would create in the British Airways toilet. Would there be Tampax in India? She had always been curious about Ravi’s home country, but this voyage back to his roots was not the one she had envisaged. She was going to leave her father in a strange land, in the company of people he had never met. It was like taking a child to boarding school—in this case, halfway across the earth—and leaving him there, the new boy in class. She would walk away, eyes swimming. She pictured him behind her, waving his stick in farewell … a small figure, growing smaller.

  Pauline eased her way downstairs. She had wedged a Kotex between her legs; the plastic shifted. Her father sat in the lounge, reading the “Deaths” column in the Daily Telegraph. He liked to sit there with his morning coffee, totting up the suddenlys and peacefullys.

  She paused for a moment, looking at the blotches on the top of his head. “Good day today?” She indicated the paper.

  “Pretty good.” He pointed with his pencil. “Eight of them older than me. Seventy-nine … eighty-two. Only a couple younger and they’re suddenlys. Probably poofters with AIDS.”

  “Dad!” Norman only totted up men. When it came to mortality, women didn’t count. “Could be car crashes,” she said. “Could be anything.”

  It was Saturday. Pauline should be going to the supermarket, but she didn’t feel like moving. There was a silence. She wanted to tell her father so much but she didn’t know where to begin. And he wasn’t going to start, not after fifty-one years.

  “Got punkawallah in the crossword,” he said. “Chaps who fan you, in India.”

  “I wouldn’t mind one of those.” She didn’t say for my hot flushes. Though only too frank about sex, Norman was embarrassed by women’s intimate arrangements. She said: “Remember, you can always come home.”

  “Not on your nelly.”

  “The other people sound very nice,” Pauline said. “There’s a civil servant and somebody who worked in the BBC. A Dorothy Miller. Mostly women, of course.” She thought: They stay alive longer than men.

  Suddenly her eyes filled with
tears. These damn mood swings. Now that her father was leaving, his possessions already had the power to move her—his slippers in particular. She would have to throw away the piece of paper she had pinned by the front door: Checklist: Teeth. Fly. Bus Pass. Keys.

  “Another old biddy left in Casualty,” Norman said, showing her the paper. “Here, on the front page.” He started to chortle. “Remember what’s-her-face, the one who got your hubby into trouble?”

  “Muriel Donnelly.”

  “Wouldn’t let darkies touch her.” He coughed his smoker’s cough. “Ha! Catch her going to India.”

  Pauline laughed. “I think we can safely say that she won’t be joining you.”

  Ravi came into the room. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  Pauline told him.

  “Nothing funny about racism,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t be such a prig,” she replied. “You have to admit it would be funny if an old bat like her, who can’t stand darkies, suddenly found herself surrounded by a thousand million of them.”

  When Ignorance is shattered, Light overflows, Wisdom arises, the Meditator becomes fully delivered and freed from the bondages of cycles of Birth, Rebirth, Decay and Death … Herein lies the sole object and the very purpose of Meditation.

  VEN. DR. RASTRAPAL MAHATHERA

  When the Queen Mum died, Muriel put up the flags—three of them, stuck in a vase in her window. She had removed them from her Diana shrine in her lounge. Diana was a storybook princess, of course—beautiful, doomed, a deer fleeing the hounds according to that Earl Spencer. The Queen Mum, however, was the real thing—royal to her bones rather than a beguiling traitor. She was special, the most special mum in the world. Muriel’s son Keith made her feel like that. He made her feel like royalty.

  The last time Keith visited he had admired the Union Jacks. “It’s to set an example,” Muriel had said, indicating the flats opposite. “To that lot.”