Hot Water Man (14 page)

Donald stood still. ‘Adopt?'

‘It's a scheme I have. I keep you in touch with his or her progress. You donate twenty-five rupees a month. That covers feed, ointment and lice powder.'

‘Ah.' He paused. ‘A donkey.'

‘That's the way we tick along. I've applied for money, of course, but . . .' She lowered her voice. ‘. . . don't want the donks to hear. But all they want to give it to is the blessed humans. Priority number one, they say. Silly asses.'

Donald started to laugh. ‘Asses – donkeys . . .'

But she was looking beyond him. ‘Emmanuel!'

He came running up. She pointed to the wall near the office. ‘Who knocked those bricks off? It wasn't like this yesterday.'

‘Please memsahib, I am hearing this noise in the night. The dog is shouting. So I shoot my shotgun into the air.'

‘And they went?'

He nodded. ‘I listen to the car.'

She sighed, and turned to Donald. ‘Sometimes I wish dear Manny would aim a little lower.'

Emmanuel went off and started unloading the feed. ‘Actually, if it was only them we wouldn't worry. Most of them are too clueless to break into a paper bag. But see those hills?' Donald nodded. ‘The wild Baluch. How long have you been here, Ronald?'

‘A month.'

‘You'll hear all sorts of stories about them.'

He was going to say that he already had, from Grandad. But he did not know how to introduce this and she went on: ‘Horse-obsessed. Rather a romantic bunch but a filthy nuisance. When I was a gel we'd make up all sorts of games about them.'

‘You've been here since then?'

‘More years than you could remember, I daresay.' She touched his arm. ‘So nice to see a fresh young English face. It takes me back. This place used to be full of boys like you. Now there're just a few old tabbies like me.'

Through the broken wall he looked at the ridge. It lay many miles away, he knew this, and Afghanistan lay the other side, but in this deceptive light it seemed to be close behind the wall.

On that unsettled border even the British could not control the wild Baluch and Pathan, but had had to settle for political agents roaming huge areas. He had always found that romantic. Bang-bang, he shouted in the shrubbery, when he was a boy, while from the kitchen the wireless murmured. Baluchi territory then was the big grey sky, and the washing flapping. But out here it had never been a game.

‘Funny you should say Baluchis . . .'

‘Seven, eight . . .' Carrots fell into a tin bowl. ‘We're fighters, this little team, Ronald. And those loathsome Yanks won't win either. Fifteen, sixteen . . .'

She straightened up, with a sigh, and tucked her blouse into her slacks. ‘I shall go into the office and check the medicines.'

He followed her. ‘What Yanks?'

‘Haven't I told you our latest saga?'

Inside the office it was even stuffier. She looked so fresh; with her matt white skin she seemed inviolate to heat. His shirt stuck to him, front and back now.

‘We will stand firm,' she said. ‘I rent this land from the Government of Sind. They will bulldoze us over my dead body.' She started opening cupboards and checking bottles.

‘Who are they?'

‘I don't know, Ronald, and I don't care to know. Some ghastly conundrum – no, conglomerate. Faceless international money-men, no doubt. Not like you or I, Ronald. If necessary my faithful servants and myself will man the barricades. I can handle a gun. I'm not senile yet.'

He imagined her crouched in the office, barrel pointing through the window, eyes narrowed under her dotty boater. It seemed so wonderfully English, this place. Crumbling walls erected against the mutinous natives one side and mid-Atlantic mediocracy the other. Holding out, holding on.

‘That's what they're after.' She pointed through the window, down to the right. Leaning over, he could see the bushes. ‘The shrine with the warm springs. Did I tell you about it?'

He nodded.

‘They're turning it – correction, they're
trying
to turn it, over my dead body – into some vast – what do they call it in the letter? A Leisure Complex. I presume they're trying to say hotel.'

Donald paused, his hand on the windowsill. Studying the tacked-on mesh, he did not turn round.

‘You mean that shrine is Ginntho Pir?' He kept his voice conversational.

‘That's right. What's Manny done with that iodine?'

He had not realized. Ginntho Pir was the proposed Translux site. There were no signs to tell him. In a few days he would have known, because Duke was planning to bring him here on a visit.

There was a silence, broken by the clunk of bottles as she moved them, and the whirr of the table fan behind him. He gazed at the windowsill. Dead flies lay with their legs in the air. He tried to remember Duke's words.
She's an old dame, Don, one of these recluse-types. Must be crazy to be out here. We've gotten her this beautiful site a couple miles outside town, piped water, bigger too. The works.

He did not know how he could speak to her. What had she called his face – frank and open? He turned round. ‘Here, do let me help. And, by the way, what does one do about this adoption scheme?'

There was no
shade to speak of out at Ginntho Pir, under that gauzy blue sky. Duke had parked his automobile on the verge, beside the highway that led from Karachi. He sat inside, the engine and the air-conditioner running. You had to keep the one going for the benefit of the other and today, boy did you need the other. Through the window stood some thorn bushes, furred with dust. Buses and rickshaws passed this way. They parked down the road behind him, where the path led up to the shrine and the old mausoleum.

It was a small place, kind of shabby and kind of likeable. There was no part you could call a village, as such; just a few huts the other side of the mound. This side, the pathway up to the shrine was lined with tea stalls, food stalls and men selling religious offerings. Around them, the scrub. It was real insanitary, with its excrement and scavenging dogs. These people had to use whatever place they could find, on account of there being no toilet facilities. He remembered Walter V. Hirschman, Translux Chief Executive, stepping round the place and lifting his feet. And that was way back in December when the odours were not so apparent.

Today, Tuesday, Duke had the windows closed. He could not hear the sounds outside because of his cassette playing. It was one of his Nashville tapes.

‘You're swe-e-et as blueberry pie,

You've broken my heart, my Rosalie . . .'

Back home they teased him about these tunes, calling him sentimental. His boys were reared in the rock‘n' roll generation. But this old country-and-western it spoke to him, straight to the heart. Through three continents he had grunted along with the words, driving down a hundred freeways.

He would not think about her hair. Instead he fixed his concentration on the dashboard clock. 3.30. Soon Don would be here with Mr Chowdry, Under-Manager of the Lahore Translux. From this position Duke could see the highway leading back toward the city, straight as a ribbon but wobbling in the heat.

He was looking forward to showing Don the place. Don had this enthusiasm. You wouldn't think it first time you met him; seemed that his wife did all the talking. But just get him on to his favourite subjects. In fact Don knew more about this place, from his old books, than most of the Pakistani businessmen and sub-contractors Duke had spoken to, and more than Duke himself but that wouldn't be so hard. When he was at their home for dinner Don had gotten out these tomes. He had spent a long time thumbing through and reading stuff out, the bearer waiting with the liquor and Don not noticing. They were these travellers' tales, when the British were the real explorers, riding on horseback hundreds of miles in this heat to chart the frontiers and manage this place. Don had read out about Ginntho Pir and the history of the name, how it had changed from some old Hindu word when the place was India. No doubt he would be informed of more facts today. He, Duke, wanted to know; in this respect – in fact in every respect – he was uneducated. He remembered one sentence:
The Sind Desert is a land of sepulchres and dust
and somesuch, full of
holy shams and holy humbugs.
And some more about dating the tombs and shrines and how they were scattered everywhere, but in this region of intense heat,
dreary aspect
, sure that was it, and shifting river-beds, it was impossible even for the British to chart all the antiquities. See, this place shifted; you never got quite where you wanted. He himself was realizing this. Then something about the warm springs being a remarkable feature, but the big Moghul-type mausoleum (in better repair, for sure, when the book was written) and the small new shrine being nothing so special, architecture-wise. You saw wayside shrines in all these parts, whitewashed tombs with rags stuck on sticks. Sometimes little buildings around them for the important guys. No, it was the hot springs and this particular
pir
who was unique. Seemed that the belief here was more exceptional than the surroundings.

Duke opened his cold box and took out a can of Coke. He pulled the tab; it hissed. 3.45 and still the road was empty. You couldn't trust the cold drinks up in those stalls there. People had gotten dysentery from them. Or visitors thought they would, so they brought their own. And then there were the beggars and the staring; worse for a female, of course. That was the trouble with this place, Karachi. They had their one or two monuments: fine. They had their beach: fine. Period. You saw them and then what? You could hardly take a stroll out into the desert. Not even in the more fertile land upcountry because it would be somebody's little plot and you were tramping on their corn. There was nowhere just to sit and relax, with a drink you could trust, with somebody serving you who spoke your language. It wasn't open to people. As he told the tourism guy, how could a country get itself up off its ass, well he hadn't put it like that. How could a country develop, if when folks came they just wanted to do what business they'd come for and hightail it out of there? Christine Manley, she said the same thing but in a different way. You couldn't really get into a country, not really understand it and want to stay, if all you could do was sit in your automobile and drink your own Coke.

He slid in another cassette.

‘It's okay by me, it's ok-a-ay . . .'

He tipped the can. Icy, it pressed against his lips. He drank from the sharp hole.
Ok-a-ay by me.
Okay, was it? How was she? How could either of them be okay, since Saturday night? Say he was under the anaesthetic, like Minnie. Say he dreamed. If only he had.

Far down the highway a blob shimmered. As it drew nearer it whitened: the Cameron car. It was Don he wanted to see. He kidded himself that he just wanted old history. Any other day he would want it. But Don worked in the next room to hers. Through the wall today he must have heard the rattle of her typing. Did it ever pause? Mr Chowdry he had met before – a nice guy, but there were no questions he wanted to ask Mr Chowdry. Like what was she wearing this morning. Had she twisted up her hair or did it lie like a raven's wing against her cheek? Her cheek had lain on his chest. Had she acted different on Monday? He could not bear her to have to act anything. He would give anything in the world for it not to have happened.

The car drew nearer. Duke switched off the engine. He snapped shut the cold box. He could not be devious; he did not know the method. He would just ask Don a straight question, like was she in the office today? He would bring up her name casually. But he did not know these techniques. Long ago, perhaps, when he was a young man. No, he guessed not even then. He had always said things direct, but then there had been nothing to hide.

The Cameron car stopped on the other side of the road. The driver climbed out and held open the back door. Duke reached forward to eject his cassette, then stopped. Mr Chowdry stepped out, and then Shamime.

He could not move. His tape played on with twangy guitars. She was saying something to the driver, nodding her head and indicating her wristwatch. She was wearing traditional shalwar pyjamas, dark-blue and plain as if she was in mourning. She had a dark dupatta wrapped around her face. She was walking towards his car.

He fumbled with the door catch. His fingers had gone flabby. Big useless hands. He ejected the tape, climbed outside and managed to greet her. He shook hands with Mr Chowdry.

‘I'm so sorry about our colleague,' said Mr Chowdry. She was a dark blur beside him.

‘He hadn't come back from lunch,' said the blur. Duke turned. Her voice was bright but muffled oy the dupatta. ‘Apparently he phoned Mary and said he'd be late. Mary forgot to remind him we'd switched it to today.'

Mr Chowdry waved it away with his hand. ‘It is not important. Miss Fazli kindly consented to be my escort.'

In fact it was not too important, that part of it. Mr Chowdry's visit was purely a courtesy call; after all there was nothing much to see at this point. Besides, Translux was a turn-key operation; once built and ready for occupation the hotel was out of their hands. Individual managements then took them over. ‘And you ride off into the sunset,' Shamime had once said, smiling.

‘Let's start this way, with the tomb and shrine,' said Duke and they crossed the highway. Why did she hold the dupatta across her mouth – to protect herself from something? Only the dust?

He started leading them the wrong way, down towards the water – himself, Duke, who forty times had paced this site with architects and engineers.

‘Pardon me.' They retraced their tracks between the bushes. He held the thorns aside for his guests to pass. He wanted his hands to be scratched. More than anything he needed to speak to her alone. They arrived at the pathway that sloped uphill. She was walking behind them. She seemed so withheld, swathed darkly and following them like a village wife. He had tried to phone her these past two days but it was always her sister or mother who answered; she had never been at home. And no way could he speak on something so personal by phoning her at the office. Had her mother told her he'd phoned? He felt adolescent, waiting at home for his own phone to ring; jumpy, wandering about the rooms. He felt very old.