A Lovesong for India (26 page)

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Authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

BOOK: A Lovesong for India
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Frances was staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dry, her face was set. She said, ‘You can’t send me back with him because I won’t go.’
‘Who’s sending you back?’
‘I haven’t heard you say stay.’
Brigitte was using her towel to wipe away the attendant’s tears. She told her, ‘You’ll find another job. Anyone would like to have you in their home.’
The attendant praised Brigitte for her kindness. She went on to explain that she was not weeping for herself but for the others, the old men whom no one would ever again want to employ. She herself had a son and a daughter, both of whom did not want her to work any more. She took the towel wet with her own tears and gave Brigitte a fresh one.
‘You don’t need to feel sorry for the whole world,’ Frances said. ‘And you heard her – she has a son and a daughter who care for her.’
‘Of course I want you to stay,’ Brigitte said. ‘I don’t know what gave you the idea I don’t. Shall we go back now?’
‘I don’t want to see him.’
‘I mean go back to the hotel. He’s all right. He’s having another helping of chocolate soufflé.’ She found a fifty-dollar bill in her purse and put it in the tactful little saucer. ‘That’s too much,’ Frances said outside, though she herself, usually more careful, overtipped the valet who whistled up a cab for them.
 
One evening a few weeks later Shoki gave Brigitte a lovely surprise. He came to her suite dressed up in a high-collared jacket of raw silk – Indian, but he had had it made in Beverly Hills. ‘I showed them exactly what to do, how to cut it – you really like it?’
‘Love it, love it; love you,’ and she kissed his cheek in the beautiful way of friendship they had with each other.
He had been invited to a charity premiere and he asked her to come along. He assured her his host had taken a table for twelve.
‘Ralph?’
‘No, someone else, another friend.’ There was sure to be room, someone or other always dropped out.
‘What about Frankie?’
‘Of course; let’s take Frankie.’
Frances said she was waiting for a call but might join them later. Her call came exactly when she was expecting it. Marshall telephoned the same time every evening. It was always when he was home from the office or a board meeting and was having his martini by the fireplace in the smaller drawing room (called the library, though they had never had many books). She imagined him wearing slippers and maybe his velvet housecoat; or if he was going out, he might have begun to dress.
‘Isn’t tonight the Hospital Benefit?’ When he yawned and said he didn’t feel like going, she urged, ‘Marshall, you have to. You’re on the board.’
‘I guess I have to. But to turn up there by myself – ’ He always left such sentences unfinished. She waited; perhaps tonight he would say more. Instead he became more irritated. ‘Marie can’t find any of my dress shirts – do you think she drinks?’
‘Marie! After all this time!’
‘Who knows? Servants need supervision. Someone to make them toe the line.’ Perhaps suspecting that she had begun to preen herself, he said, ‘I’ll send from the office to buy some new ones. What about you? You want any of your stuff sent out there?’
She hesitated; it was true she was running short of the underclothes that were specially made for her by a Swiss lady in New York. But the subject of her underclothes was not one she ever intruded on her husband, so she murmured, ‘I’m all right for now.’
‘For now? What’s that supposed to mean?’ She was silent, and then he almost asked, though grudgingly, what she was waiting to hear: ‘Are you intending to stay out there forever or what?’
He sounded so put out – so fed up – and it was her fault. She said, ‘What can I do, Marshall? Brigitte just likes it better here.’
‘She thinks she does. She’s from New York. She was born here like the rest of us, why would she want to be in that joke place out there? Where is she, by the way?’
‘She’s gone out. It’s a premiere. A big event. She wants me to join her later. Do you think I should?’
‘You should do what you want, not what she wants. Though why anyone would want to go to a thing like that. “A Premiere. A Big Event.” Tcha. You’d be better off at the benefit with me.’
‘Marshall? You know my dresser? In the last drawer there are some bits and pieces I might need. If it’s not too much trouble. Just some bras. And girdles.’
‘I didn’t know you wore girdles.’
‘They look like panties but actually they’re tummy control.’ She was glad he couldn’t see her face – it was the most intimate exchange they had had in years. ‘Marie can pack them.’
‘If she’s not too drunk.’
‘Marie is practically a teetotaller.’
‘You’re the easiest person in the world to fool,’ he said.
 
Shoki had been right and there were two empty places at his host’s table. This host was a powerful studio head but a far more modern type than Louis had been. He was from the Midwest and had been to some good schools in the east; still in his thirties, he was well groomed, well informed,
smart
. The guests at his table were there for their fame, their money or their youth and beauty. Brigitte’s celebrity was in the past but that gave her an aura of historical tradition, and she kept having to raise her cheek for the tribute offered to her by other guests. Each table was ornamented by someone like Shoki, with no claim whatsoever to celebrity. Some were girls, others young men or almost boys, some were very lively, some totally silent – it didn’t seem to matter as long as they were visibly there and known to be attached to a powerful member at the table. Shoki and his host hardly acknowledged one another, except that from time to time the older man’s eyes stabbed towards the younger, maybe just in an instinctive gesture of checking on the security of possession. He could be entirely relaxed – Shoki gave all his attention to Brigitte next to him and to the matron on his other side, a former star. He was lightheartedly laughing and making them laugh.
But there
was
tension – not emanating from their table but from elsewhere. Her eyes roaming around the room, Brigitte soon discovered Ralph. He was craning in their direction and even half rose in his chair as though intending to leave his place and make his way towards theirs. But it was impossible – the room was packed, each table crowded and the spaces between them thronged with guests still trying to find their place or changing it for a more desirable one, while the servers weaved and dodged among them with their platters and wine bottles.
Although without an invitation card, Frances looked too distinguished not to be let in. But once inside, she had no idea which way to turn to locate Brigitte among this crowd of strangers, strange beings who all knew or knew of one another. She stood there, dazed by the din and glitter. Then she heard her name called: ‘Are you all right?’
It was Ralph. He settled her into an empty chair beside him and tried to revive her with wine. She preferred water. ‘For my aspirin,’ she said, taking her pill box out of her evening purse.
He laughed. ‘Are you sure that’s what it is?’
‘It may be Disprin. For my headache. It’s so terribly noisy. How can anyone enjoy being in such a noisy place?’
‘At least one doesn’t have to hear what’s going on in one’s own head. They’re over there. No, you’re looking in the wrong direction.’
The reason it took her so long to find Brigitte’s table was that all the eighty-four tables crammed into that space appeared very much the same. Everyone there sat as in a burnished cast of wealth, of costly ornament. It was she, Frances, who was out of place. Although her hair too was professionally dyed, it had a discreet touch of silver; and her jewellery was not like that of others, women and some men, who displayed diamonds and rubies and pearls of a size and quantity that, if this had been any other place, would have been taken for paste. And maybe it was paste, she thought; it couldn’t be safe to walk around loaded with such immeasurable riches.
‘They’re waiting for me,’ she told Ralph.
‘I’ve been trying to get through myself, but there’s such a crush. Maybe after they’ve served the dessert. Why didn’t you come with them?’
‘I was on the phone with my husband. He wants me to come back to New York.’ Again looking around the room, she thought of Marshall at his fundraiser. He too would be with the powerful and rich, but his would be not only physically less brilliant but much more glum than these surrounding her, who were laughing, chatting, shouting and outshouting one another as though placed on a stage to impersonate characters having a festive time.
‘Brigitte doesn’t want to leave. But he wants both of us. They’ve been having sex together.’ She found it difficult to say – the words, that is; to herself she still thought of it as ‘sleeping together’. ‘It’s been going on for years. I don’t blame her for not wanting to come live with us. She doesn’t even like Marshall.’
‘No. Not the way she likes Shoki. As a friend, that is. They’re friends.’
‘Yes, he’s my friend too. But I really think I must go home. Of course Marshall will be angry if I come without her. But he’s angry at me anyway. It’s just that he needs someone with him where he can be any mood he wants. That’s the only way he feels comfortable.’
Dessert had been served. A master of ceremonies tapped a microphone. Speeches were about to start. Ralph suggested they should try and squeeze through the crowd to the other table. He led the way, and when Shoki looked up, he saw them cleaving a path towards them. Shoki told Brigitte that it was very hot inside and maybe they should try to catch some fresh air? She got up at once and he took her elbow to guide her. Their host rose in his chair, but they did not appear to see him, or to hear him when he called after them.
Unimaginably, outside the noisy room there was an empty terrace hovering over an expanse of ocean and moonless sky. Although a crowd of brilliant figures could be seen agitating inside, no sound reached through the double glazing of the windows. Two faces were pressed against the glass, trying to peer out into the darkness. Shoki said, ‘There’s Ralph.’
‘Yes, and Frankie.’
They sighed as though something was difficult for them. But it wasn’t. Nothing was difficult for them. Shoki knew a way down from the terrace to the beach and soon he and Brigitte were walking there, their hands lightly linked. He told her about Bombay, where he had also walked on the beach, but it was not the same. For one thing, the sun was too hot, and then, always, there was Bombay – right there on the beach with the coconut sellers, the boy acrobats, and others seeking money for food; and beyond, the whole city of Bombay with its traffic, its slums, its huge heavy Victorian buildings pressing down on the earth and the human spirit. He didn’t have to explain much to Brigitte, because somehow it was how she felt about New York, where everything was just as oppressive. But here, now, the ocean was very calm and very dark and all that could be seen of it were the white fringes of its waves gliding into the sand. There was absolutely nothing, no world at all between water and sky, and it was inconceivable that, with such fullness available, anyone could be troubled about anything – apartments, desires, attachments, anything.
THE LAST DECADES
 
Death of an English Hero
 
This happened in 1970. His name was Paul Lord, but various people knew him by various other names. Fortunately, when he was found, he had his British passport on him, otherwise it might have been difficult to identify a body found in a broken-down guesthouse in the bazaar of an insignificant Indian border town. It was during a sweltering summer, and in that part of the world bodies have to be disposed of on the same day; so that by the time his next of kin had been informed, Paul had already been cremated.
The reports on the manner of his death were unclear. Some said he had been shot in the head, others that he was stabbed in the chest. There were no witnesses; nothing could be proved or revised since the body was long since cremated. There were also conflicting reports whether he had been killed where he was found lying on the bed, or whether his body had been carried there afterwards. Everyone agreed there were no signs of struggle in the room. The proprietor of the derelict little guest house swore he had seen and heard nothing; the only other occupant (a long-distance truck driver) had been dead drunk and remained in a stupor even after the police arrived and tried to slap him awake.

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