Hot Water Man (23 page)

She stood back, staring at the mirror. It was a changed woman who stared at itself, clapping a hand to its mouth. Trim, pretty, utterly British. She had a shape – waist, hips. She looked like some of the girls from her class at school – girls she used to see pushing prams along Mill Hill Parade. Her mother would be proud of her now with that Peter Pan collar – white next to the face, as Mummy had repeated, was indeed flattering.

She put on some sandals and stood up, smoothing down her skirt. Unlike her ethnic muslins it looked as good as new. She had bought some lipstick from the Intercontinental Drug Store. She made up her face. On the floor lay her old clothes, shed skins from which had emerged this Young Conservative. A new recruit, hatched from a slum bazaar. She peered closer in the mirror. The pretty face smiled at itself – faintly freckled, floury with powder, eyebrows raised.

As she closed the door Mohammed emerged from the guest bedroom. Something, just a flicker, passed across his face. Either admiration or amusement, gone too quick to tell.

‘This okay?' She blushed. She felt awkward, being a woman and drawing attention to the fact when so many identical Mohammeds jostled her in the street and put their hands up the crotch of her jeans.

He pointed to his head. ‘I think . . . I see Memsahib Smythe.'

She was thinking how to reply to this when there was the noise of an engine in the drive. She ran downstairs, followed by the bearer. It was Donald.

‘Didn't I say I was coming back for lunch today?'

He spoke in the stagey way they talked when Mohammed was around. Mohammed must have remembered because the table was laid.

‘You've done something to yourself,' said Donald. ‘Good Lord.'

‘Wait till I brush my hair.'

‘I'm most impressed.' He paused. ‘Goodness. Yes.' He gazed again. ‘Good Lord.'

It was nice to see him alert. He had seemed preoccupied these last few days. It was probably something to do with his work, which he knew she would not understand. Nowadays his job spread into far more of his life than it had done at Crouch End.

They sat down to eat.

‘I'm awfully glad you're going,' he said.

‘What?' She stiffened. She had not told him, of course. There was no point, yet. But she had written the time and the place in her diary. Had he looked?

‘I've been feeling it's time you got down to something,' he said.

She hesitated, and then let out her breath. ‘So have I. That's why I've done it. It's the only thing I seem qualified for, and I must do something here.'

‘It foxed me, that dress, till I remembered it's Tuesday.'

She paused, a bean hanging from her fork. ‘What?'

‘Tuesday. The day for the fair Brits.'

‘Ah. The B.W.A.'

There was a silence as her mind worked. This was tricky. She had presumed not actually to deceive him. Her absence should not have been missed because he was supposed to be at the office. To put it into words was so much more committing, for herself as well as for him.

Instead of speaking she grunted. This could be taken as an assent.

‘What did your mother say in her letter?' she asked, a diversionary tactic.

‘Let me see. Granny's had a date for her hip.'

‘Marvellous. When?' All of a sudden she was interested in Gran.

‘They're operating late August.' He relapsed into silence.

‘It wasn't this place that gave her arthritis was it?' she asked, keen to continue this.

‘Everyone gets it when they're old. But she suffered, you know, being out here. She didn't talk about it, not to me. But she suffered, Chrissy. Like not being able to have any more children after my father was born. They should've sent her back to England to have the baby.' He gazed at a radish, cut out with fancy petals. ‘You know, I often think about them. Her and Grandad.'

‘I know you do.'

‘But I've usually imagined him. I've never imagined her. What it must have been like to come to India, a journey taking weeks, and marry somebody you hardly knew. And there was no one else around, no family. Just this man.'

She laughed. ‘Like you.'

He paused. ‘Whatever you feel, or find out about him, there's nothing much you can do. You've met this man on leave; he's looking for a wife and he's only got a few months to find one. You meet him over tea at someone's house, that's what Granny did, at her friend Aggy's. He seems rather dashing, sort of restive and manly amongst the dainty cucumber sandwiches. He's tanned, he's in charge of a whole battalion out East. You can't get to know him well, you couldn't then, you'd always see him in company. Then you're sailing out and that's that.' He put the radish into his mouth. Mohammed, waiting for this, whisked away the plates. ‘And whatever misgivings you felt, you wouldn't talk about them – people didn't, did they, marriage was marriage, you didn't analyse and dissect and criticize . . .'

This sounded heartfelt. She let it pass.

‘And the hardship,' he said, ‘and the illness, and you'd expect to lose at least one child even in my grandmother's day. And the heat – no air-conditioners . . .'

‘And the boredom.'

‘Perhaps. I doubt it. They had their circuit – Mrs Gracie was telling me about family life – and their occupations.'

This could lead back to the B.W.A. She gazed at her yellow lap, thinking how to change the subject. After lunch, would he try to give her a lift to the B.W.A.? Then she heard his voice.

‘You know, I loved Grandad a lot.'

‘I know. I always liked the way you admired him.'

‘You thought he was a pompous old fool, didn't you.'

‘Of course not,' she lied. ‘Anyway I hardly knew him. He died before we got married, remember.'

‘How do you remember him?'

‘Tut-tutting at me in the garden when I was wearing my red bikini.'

‘Ah, that bikini.'

‘When I was swotting for my ‘A' levels behind your shed. He thought my bikini was a portent of social disintegration. He was very upright, wasn't he. Rather old-fashioned standards, even then. It was easy to sneer at him but actually I rather liked it. In retrospect anyway. It made him so solid, like a grandfather should be. I'd never known mine so he did instead.'

Donald did not reply.

‘I thought he was very straight and honest,' she said, ‘when people were proud to be that. A pillar of the Empire. He brought you up strictly and you're rather like him in some ways.' She stopped. ‘Goodness, what's the matter? I mean, you look incorruptible. I'm sure that's why they sent you out here. You must have inherited it from him.'

He still looked startled. ‘Inherited what?'

‘Your integrity. That frank open gaze, the same blue eyes, as if he had nothing to hide.'

To her relief Donald could not have driven her to the B.W.A. anyway; he had an appointment straight after lunch and she made a delaying excuse. She kissed him goodbye. Today she felt tender towards him, partly because he had not forced her to lie, or to decide not to do so, and partly because he had talked so thoughtfully. Recently so pompous, today he had seemed humble and uncertain. As if for once open to change. Besides, they had talked. Usually their meals were eaten in silence, broken only by hushed bickering. She had presumed they would have more to talk about here, in Pakistan, but it had been just the same as usual.

Half an hour later she was sitting in a rickshaw. She unclicked her compact. In the powdery circle of mirror her face jogged, already beaded with sweat. Despite herself she had been flattered at Donald's reaction to the dress. In fact, in a secret, niggling way she was flattered by this whole business. What would Roz say? In the Tube, Roz plastered ‘This Degrades Women' stickers over midriffs of underwear advertisements. She herself had not; she had just trooped along, half-giggling behind her gloves. Now she was out here, in fact, the whole thing seemed dwindled and rather amusing though she had not been disloyal enough to say this to Donald. This place certainly gave it a new perspective. Roz's insistence on calling Rick her ‘comrade and co-parent' seemed quaint when in this city women walked around draped like furniture.

She would not mention this outing to Roz. What the hell. The wind tossed her hair. She smiled. Out here she was free. Under the tassels the verges bounced past. Part of the reason she had not told Donald, of course, was that he would mock her. After all she had always gone on about women being exploited for their looks. And in this case, exploited for the colour of their skin, too. And she could hardly say she was being used when she had so readily agreed. Still, these were only trial shots. She was committing herself to nothing, and indeed nothing might come from them. It was just a jaunt, an exploration. She could not lounge about all day writing air letters. And here, when it came to jobs, one did not have the luxury of choice.

She was nearly an hour late for her appointment. The studio lay in one of the many commercial suburbs and the driver kept getting lost. He would stop to ask people who bent down to get a good look at her. Just down this way, they gestured. Everything was just down this way, just one minute, just one mile. People always wanted to be helpful by saying the thing that would please. Donald, sometimes amused and sometimes aggravated, complained about this in the office. It is ready directly, they said. Directly after directly, stretching into the mists of the endlessly possible.

Of course she need not have worried. Mr Pereira, a mild, polite man, did not seem to realize she was late. As at Sultan Rahim's, here she sipped sweet tea and chatted to him about the climate, yes indeed it was most humid but not so humid as upcountry, Karachi being blessed by the sea breezes. She wondered if he even knew about her appointment. He himself had cousins in Hainault, Essex, a very pleasant part he believed – his cousin and his family, they owned a small newsagent's business, she herself was perhaps acquainted with this Hainault? In fact, until now she had never known how to pronounce Hainault; no doubt Mr Pereira had got it right. He himself had never visited Britain. The British people, at his cousin's they could purchase their household requirements also, the groceries and soap powders, his cousin's shop remaining open until the late hours of the evening. She replied that such places were a boon for people who worked all day, increasingly so, as the British shopkeepers were too lazy and unimaginative to extend their opening hours beyond five-thirty p.m. to suit the changing circumstances of society. In fact, she added, it was the Asians who had become essential in the liberation of the British women, releasing them from the tyranny of trying to shop during their working hours and thus enabling them to carry out two jobs, one at work and one in the home. As in fact her husband's firm was doing in this country, helping to establish supermarkets where everything was to be found swiftly under one roof, thus liberating the Pakistani housewife from the picturesque though lengthy daily grind of shopping at six different stalls. He replied that his cousin's business was becoming most prosperous and that now his cousin was hoping to purchase the lease on adjoining property, with residential units above to rent to the persons who worked in the surrounding commercial area. Himself he hoped to visit Britian in the near future, he had heard that it was most pleasant at this time of the year, resembling the winter months in Karachi. She agreed that indeed June and July would be the best time to visit Hainault, Essex.

Minutes ticked by. She gazed out of the window. The sign opposite said:
Dr Ravi's Revitalization Clinic.
It was like sitting in Sultan's office, and sitting in Superad. She could not tell whether this leisured politeness was due to her presence, an English woman, or whether Pakistanis always worked like this.

She cleared her throat. ‘Mr Khan, from the Superad Agency, sent me here, I think I mentioned it in our telephone call. Just for some trial shots, I think, for their files.'

She paused for him to register this and perhaps to be impressed. After all, he could not have many British models coming to this bare, shabby studio little larger than a cupboard. He seemed unsurprised by this, either because he had been informed and did not think it noteworthy or because he had not been informed at all. Nobody reacted quite as she presumed. You arrived expecting something you had built up in your mind and then it melted away. The studio did not have the benefits of air-conditioning; in this heat she too gave up trying to find the answers.

‘I'm a bit hot,' she said. ‘Shall I just powder my nose?'

At this he rose from his seat and started fiddling about with the equipment. There was a basin in the corner, and a mirror. She re-applied her lipstick. Her aunt Midge used to say: ‘Horses sweat and men perspire but women only glow.' She was sweating. She gazed into the cracked glass. She did not resemble a model. Her hair stuck to her forehead in squiggles like question marks.

She climbed on to a stool. Behind her hung a white sheet. She felt ludicrous up there. In the unaccustomed short skirt she had to arrange her legs; she kept them pressed together but slanting sideways and crossed at the ankle as the Queen was supposed to do. She should have worn this dress for the office photo; what an easy way to please Donald. Why did she not bother to please him any more?

He was standing beside her, tilting her head. ‘You permit me?'

She wanted to say: in England I would never have been a model, even if I'd wanted to. I am neither sufficiently lovely nor sufficiently professional. But here the standards are different.

‘And . . . just so.' Hand on her ankle, he moved her legs slightly more to the side.

She kept herself rigid, staring at the left-hand wall. An advertisement hung there; no doubt one of his own photos. It showed a Pakistani girl with permed hair. She was sitting on a car bonnet as those girls did at the Earl's Court Show; this girl however was decently clothed.
Our Brake Linings Are Your Life.
Would an English face like her own project even more reassurance about the quality and proven safety of the commodity? The girl was dressed in a trouser-suit, western-style. This made her more advanced. Modern expectations might be troublesome in a woman but when it came to a product, that was a different matter. Shamime had mentioned that only tarts, girls from lower-middle-class homes and non-Muslims modelled for a living – the sort of girls who became air-hostesses.