BUY FROM AMAZON

The residents were eating breakfast.

"Listen to this, girls." Madge Rheinhart adjusted her spectacles and read aloud from the "Daily Mail": "In a bid to control the London drugs epidemic, armed police are being recruited to patrol school playgrounds."
"I read that yesterday," said somebody.
"It's yesterday's paper."
"Actually it's three days old," said another woman, whose name Evelyn hadn’t caught.
"Aren’t you glad we’ve got away from all that?"
"Good grief, Coopers marmalade!"
The bearer put it on the table: a pot of Cooper's Coarse Cut Marmalade, complete with saucer and teaspoon. There was a silence.
"Where did you buy it, dear?"
"A shop in Lady Curzon Street, it had Marmite too. Cost an arm and a leg."
"Still, one’s pension goes a long way here."
"What did you say about the schools?"
"Oh do pay attention, Stella!"

Madge Rheinhart rolled her eyes. She was a bossy, good-humoured woman. Her husband, apparently, had owned half Kensington. Today she wore tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt saying STARLIGHT EXPRESS. Her spectacles hung around her neck on a diamanté chain. Evelyn wished she had thought of this; her own glasses hung on a sort of bootlace. Evelyn wasn't a vain woman - her nails were her only weakness - but she admired pzazz in others.
Jean Ainslie leaned across from the next table. "Doug and I've been reading the Indian papers, haven't we darling?"
"Dull as ditchwater," said Douglas. "Full of cement tenders."
Evelyn smiled. She liked Douglas because he had been kind to her on the plane.
"Anyway, they don't have the crossword," he said.
This was a source of some grievance. Norman Purse was the only person who managed to buy the “Daily Telegraph” on a regular basis. This was because he knew where to go - a source he kept secret - and set off smartly after breakfast. Evelyn had seen him striding down Brigade Road, waving away the beggars with his walking stick. Not only did he hog the papers all day - sometimes he managed to buy the “Times” too - but he always filled in the crossword, triumphantly scrawling in biro so nobody could rub it out. Worse still, it was often incomplete; this made it doubly annoying, especially when the clues he missed were easy ones. Even Evelyn could have solved “Kentish town famous for its oysters (10)”.

He was out now, buying the paper. Breakfast was being served by Jimmy the bearer, an elderly man in turban and stained white jacket. He was very slow, and only brought out one item at a time. Evelyn watched him cross the room carrying a bottle of ketchup on a tray; he carried it with care, as if it might explode. Still, they were in no hurry. Cereal was available, plus omelettes or hard-boiled eggs. Evelyn had once tried the sausages, but it was not an experience she cared to repeat. The dining room was gloomy, Indian buildings being constructed to keep out the sun, and some rebellious souls took their tea out onto the veranda.

Fifteen residents were already installed, and more were expected in the next few weeks. Evelyn couldn't remember all their names and was inclined to cling to those with whom she had made acquaintance in the first few days: the Ainslies, Madge Rheinhart who everyone knew because she organized things, Stella Englefield who had buried two husbands and was somewhat deaf. Who was going to sit with whom at meals? Friendships had been forged; territories staked out. It reminded Evelyn of boarding school, a period in her life which she remembered with painful clarity. Madge's efforts to move people around at dinner had been firmly resisted by those who had found congenial companions and were determined to stick with them.

This morning Evelyn had taken pity on Muriel Donnelly, the latest arrival, and had joined her at a table for two next to the toilets.
"They try to do an English breakfast,” said Evelyn. “But it's not the same, of course.”
"Milk's funny,” said Muriel Donnelly.
"It's boiled. I think it's from buffaloes. The Ainslies are very adventurous - look, they're eating little puffy things filled with curry. When in Rome and all that."
"I go to Spain for my holidays,” said Muriel. “My son's got a villa."
"How nice," replied Evelyn.
"It's not hot like this."
"It's the humidity, you see." Evelyn enjoyed being the expert. "Before the monsoon, apparently, it's insufferable. Now it's getting better and it should be very pleasant all winter."

The ceiling fan creaked. At the next table, Madge anchored an airmail letter with the tea pot.
"There are plans, apparently, to open another retirement hotel in Ooty,” said Evelyn. “That's up in the hills where it's cooler. The British used to move there in the summer months. Apparently it's just like East Grinstead.”
Dunroamin was, too. Sealed into their compound the residents lived in a world which was, in many ways, more familiar than the England they had left behind. It was an England of Catherine Cookson paperbacks and clicking knitting needles, of Kraft Dairylea portions and a certain Proustian recall. Now the summer was over the mali was planting out English annuals - marigolds and cosmea - widely spaced in damp depressions of earth. Evelyn itched to get her hands on the flowerbeds; gardeners here knew nothing about colour and mass.

Outside the walls, India clamoured. So many people, such need and desperation. Evelyn had only ventured out a few times; she found the experience disorientating. The moment she stepped through the gate beggars stirred and clambered to their feet. Skeletal dogs nosed through heaps of rubbish. Even the holy cows, wandering between the cars, were cruelly thin. And then there was the legless young man, sitting on his trolley in the midst of the exhaust smoke.

"We can go for a walk later, if you'd like that," said Evelyn. "It's all very different, I must say. I mean, in England people have got so much, yet they're becoming rather rude, don't you find? Here they've got nothing at all yet they're very polite. How are you? They ask. Where do you come from? Oh they pester you but in the nicest way."
Muriel didn't appear to be listening. She was probably suffering from jet-lag; after all, for her it must still be the middle of the night. Somebody had mentioned that she had been left on a hospital trolley for three days. Oh well, thought Evelyn, at least she's got her legs. India, she was discovering, made one thankful for small mercies.
"I met some charming schoolchildren,” Evelyn said. “White socks, so neat and clean, and they called me aunty.”
Muriel pushed away her plate. Her face was the colour of putty.
"Are you all right, dear?" asked Evelyn.
"Got a pain in my guts."
"You poor thing." Jean Ainslie leaned over from her table. "Probably Delhi Belly. We've all had it."
Evelyn scraped back her chair and stood up. "Come along. I'll take you to the nurse." She reached for Muriel's arm.
"I can manage."
Muriel was a stubborn old thing. A Cockney, of course. They were an independent bunch.
"When I went to the nurse with tummy trouble," said Jean Ainslie, "she insisted on looking at my feet."

* * *

Evelyn left Muriel with the nurse – aka Mrs Cowasjee, the manager’s wife - and walked into the garden. It was already hot. The mali, holding a dribbling hosepipe, squatted in the flowerbed. Round his waist was tucked a chequered dhoti. She had once owned a summer frock made out of the same material - D H Evans, if she remembered correctly. Up in the tree, rooks cawed. A man stood at the gate. "Memsahib!" he called out, hoarse with his secret. His bicycle was laden with bundles. "Memsahib! You want t-shirts? Slacks? Good price, madam!"
Evelyn feebly raised her hand in a gesture of both greeting and dismissal. Maybe she should buy a t-shirt and look like Madge; she already felt sapped of energy, however, and it was only ten o'clock in the morning. The heat exhausted her. The need out there, the vastness of it, drained her. In a moment of rebellion, staggering in its boldness, she had decided to embark on a new life. Was it a sign of despair, a recognition of how little she was needed? Brick by brick she had created a family. Like the walls of this garden they should have shielded her from the terrors of the world outside. One by one, however, the bricks had been removed and she was left alone in a foreign country.

Up in the nameless tree the rooks bounced from branch to branch. If only she could believe what Beverley had said: that those birds had once been people, that this was not the end. Deep in her heart she had never believed the Christian thing, she had realized this in recent years. Nobody calling himself God could let what happened happen. Maybe Indians, to whom tragedies happened on an incomprehensible scale, had the sense to hold nobody responsible. For lives so desperate, so pitifully short, there must be a comfort in knowing that theirs was just a journey through the animal kingdom. No wonder they looked so resigned - serene, even. Maybe the limbless beggar, to whom she had timidly given a rupee the day before, believed that next time round he would return as a rook, hopping across the lawn on strong, springy legs.

Evelyn stood on the path, trying to work this out. She should have listened to her daughter, who had had gone on about her holy man. The trouble was, Theresa was inclined to lecture and Evelyn had drifted off. She also had an uncomfortable feeling that Theresa was seeking some emotional nourishment she had been denied at home. Evelyn herself had never really spoken to an Indian. Until recently the only ones she had met had been behind the counter at the post office or punching her ticket on the train to London. They were in a position of servitude. Once, the British had ruled this place. The Raj, however, like her certainties, had long since crumbled. Now it was she herself who was the ethnic minority. In this sprawling city there were millions of Indians and she hadn't the faintest idea what went on in their heads. Maybe they possessed a spiritual belief that made sense of the senseless; that was the only way they managed to survive. It was all most confusing.

Hugh's laugh boomed in her head. Brace up, old girl! How she envied the Ainslies, striding off hand-in-hand to explore the unknown! Evelyn had to make her own journey, with no companions except these near-strangers who sat on the veranda reading paperback novels with a magnifying glass. Some of them were already dozing. Creepers snaked up the wooden pillars of the hotel and smothered the roof tiles. It was like a scene from the Sleeping Beauty. The old building was crumbling; soon nature would engulf it and in years to come there would just be a pile of rubble. No, even this would have been scavenged; nothing lay around for long. It would be as if she and her fellow residents had never existed at all.

Norman, too, was asleep. He had returned from his mission; the newspaper lay on his lap. Evelyn crossed the lawn. Outside in the street, cars hooted. From the servants' quarters came the sound of a radio - warbling Indian singing, eerily high.

Evelyn approached Norman. A fly, attracted by a ketchup stain on his jacket, buzzed around his chest. His tie, scattered with ash, was askew.
Evelyn stepped nearer. Norman’s purple hands lay on the “Daily Telegraph”. It was open at the Deaths page. He seemed to have underlined some of the words. Evelyn put on her spectacles. “Peacefully”, she read, “after a long illness.”
Evelyn looked around; nobody was watching. With great care, she eased the paper out, from under the weight of his hands. He stirred; a phlegmy sound came from his throat. She waited.

He flung his head back and started snoring - loud snores that made his body shudder. She knew the sound only too well from her nights next door. His mouth hung open, revealing the plastic gums of his dentures.
Evelyn’s heart beat faster; this was the most lawless thing she had done for years. Grabbing the newspaper, she hurried away. It was not until she reached the lobby that she burst into giggles.

* * *

It wasn't what she had expected, the nurse's room. Muriel had imagined a clinical place smelling of Dettol. Hospitals, for obvious reasons, filled her with dread.

This wasn’t like that at all. Mrs Cowasjee lived with her husband in the annex, a brick extension built onto the side of the hotel. She ushered Muriel into a room that smelt like church. A joss-stick smoked in a brass holder. The shelving unit was filled with ornaments - china animals, plastic flowers - and a booklet lay on the table: “Foresight Horoscopes: Only God Knows Better”. A fountain tinkled into a shell-shaped bowl, complete with cherub. In a funny way it reminded Muriel of her own front room. There was even a shrine, like her husband's to the Virgin Mary. This one, illuminated by fairy lights, held a figurine of a fat little man with an elephant's head. A candle flickered in front of it.
"What's that?" she asked.
"He is Ganesh, the god of prosperity and success," said Mrs Cowasjee.
"Why's he got an elephant's head?"
She shrugged. "He’s the son of Shiva and Parvati."
That seemed to explain it. "Do you say prayers to him?"
Mrs Cowasjee nodded. Muriel stifled a giggle. Fancy worshipping an elephant!
"We have many gods,” said Mrs Cowasjee. "Millions. In my country anything can be holy. You see, God is everywhere."

Mrs Coowasjee was a handsome, middle-aged woman wrapped in a mauve sari. No nurse's uniform, nothing like that. Muriel had thought that all Indians were the same colour but Mrs Cowasjee’s skin was paler than her husband’s, like milkier coffee. There was a smudge of crimson in the parting of her hair. It reminded Muriel of her own wounds and the chain of events that had brought her across the world to this exotic boudoir.
"I got a pain in my stomach," she said. "And diarrohea."
"Sit down, dear, and take off your shoes.”
Muriel, mildly surprised, sat down in an armchair. She peeled off her stockings and removed her shoes.
Mrs Cowasjee seated herself opposite. She stared at Muriel's feet. There was a silence.
"Hai Raba!” she said. "Your feet are in a terrible state."
Muriel nodded. “It’s the bunions.”
Mrs Cowasjee drew her chair nearer. She lifted up Muriel's right foot and rested it on her lap.
"See the bones here, and here? They are quite deformed. And the corns here, where your shoes have rubbed. Really, Mrs Donnelly, you should have looked after yourself better. Have you never visited a chiropodist?"
Muriel shook her head.
"If you take care of your feet," said Mrs Cowasjee, "they will take care of you."
"Used to be a cleaner," said Muriel. "On my feet all day. That's when I got my varicose veins. My husband had beautiful feet. So did his brother Lenny. That's because they were so poor, see, they didn't have any shoes when they were little."
"Indians have beautiful feet for the same reason," said Mrs Cowasjee.
Her own peeped out from her hem - slim and brown, in bewelled flip-flops. Next to them Muriel's feet looked swollen and blotchy - deformed, even. Muriel had never compared herself to an Indian before.
"I too come from a poor family," said Mrs Cowasjee. "When I met my husband, it was love at first sight." She sighed. In the corner, the fountain tinkled. "My family are Hindus, and not high caste. The law forbids the caste system but of course it still continues as strongly as ever.”
"Same where I come from," said Muriel, with feeling. “Same in this place. I'm a fish out of bloody water.”
"His family, it is very prosperous. They're Parsees. They are like your Jews, they do very well for themselves." Mrs Cowasjee sighed again. In the lava lamp, the orange blob rose to the top. "I was looking forward to a peaceful old age but it hasn't happened like that."
"Not with me either," said Muriel. She had had to organize this all by herself, with the help of her neighbour Winnie. Tickets, packing, the renting of her flat to Winnie’s niece, who had promised to move out if Muriel decided to return to Peckham. Not a word from her son, her light-of-her-life, her Keith. But she had done it. After all, she had her own pressing need for coming here.
Muriel’s foot, like a lump of uncooked meat, still lay in Mrs Cowasjee's lap. It looked as if it belonged to somebody else. They both gazed at it.
"Oh yes, it was a love match," said Mrs Cowasjee. "Then."
In the lamp, the blob slowly descended. Watching it made Muriel’s stomach sink.
"You see, my husband is a weak man," said Mrs Cowasjee.
"So was mine. People took advantage of him. Then he lost his job and sat about all day watching telly." Muriel stopped. She shouldn't be saying all this to a foreigner. “About my tummy – “
"The main problem, in this country, is burning soles."
Souls? "What? In the bonfires?" Muriel knew that widows flung themselves on their husband's funeral pyres. She had seen it on the TV. It seemed a daft idea to her.
"No, dear, I'm talking about feet,” said Mrs Cowasjee. “In the temples you have to take off your shoes, as a mark of respect, and the floor can be very hot. It damages the skin."
Muriel gazed at the shelf of knick-knacks. Amongst them she spotted a Charles and Diana mug. It was the same one that she had, with the wedding photograph printed on it. In my country, anything can he holy. Prince Charles...an elephant...She thought of her cat, buried in her son's garden in Chigwell. Maybe she could put a candle in front of Lenny’s photograph, like Mrs Cowasjee had done. For a moment, Muriel felt at home. Just now it was that woman at breakfast, Evelyn with her posh voice, who seemed the foreigner.
"Shall I scrape those corns now?" asked Mrs Cowasjee.
"What about my tummy?"
Mrs Cowasjee lowered Muriel's foot to the floor. "Drink plenty of plain tea," she said abruptly. "With cardamon and ginger. I'll tell the cook."
"That all?"
"If it continues I'll call for Doctor Rama."

Mrs Cowasjee had lost interest. She seemed to be a moody woman; during breakfast Muriel had heard her shouting at her husband.
Muriel pulled on her hold-ups, easing them over the barely-healed wound on her shin. Mrs Cowasjee seemed not to have noticed it. A funny sort of nurse, Muriel thought. And how could she do her job properly when she was swaddled in chiffon?
Muriel eased her feet into her shoes. They were beige courts, made of imitation leather that made her feet sweat. They were also too tight; her bunions throbbed.
From his niche, the elephant god watched her labours. He had a pot belly and a startled expression, as if somebody had goosed him. Maybe I should ask him to make my tummy better, thought Muriel. She felt a giggle rising, like a burp.
Mrs Cowasjee followed her gaze. "We pray to Ganesh before an important undertaking. We are needing his blessing, you see, to remove any obstacles in our path."
"You really believe all that?"
"If it happens, it happens." She shrugged. "It's our karma."
Well, if it makes you feel calmer good luck to you, thought Muriel. She got to her feet, steadying herself on the arm of the chair. Taking a last look at the elephant, she thought: I know what I would pray for.

I would pray to find my son.

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