Hot Water Man (6 page)

Sure, I've worked with Muslims. Eighteen months in Kuwait I lived out of a suitcase, I left my family back home, did I miss them, but now the Kuwait Translux is a hotel all nations can be proud to enter. When that happens my job's done. I like it out here. I like the heat; I like to sweat it out. My wife calls me a puritan and that way she's correct. I like it tough; the more I sweat the more I achieve. There's something about the air here and the big dry spaces; the potential. The American West was like this once. I come from the West; there are still the big wide spaces but now they're yellow with corn. We've farmed them and made them function.

And I respect your Islam. It's a clean religion. No mumbo-jumbo, no incense and plaster figurines cluttering up your heart. I step inside your mosques and I see water faucets and white tiles, and in your holiest place what do I see? A blankness. A niche. I'm a religious man myself. Baptist born and bred. Our chapels are bare too. Our God speaks direct to us; we've always been God-fearers as you yourselves are – a spare, fighting religion, nothing soft and easy about it. It's the same hot white sun up there and the same God; we're not so different from you, we believe in plain living, in rigour and denial. I've seen your Ramadans, with simple men flagging from thirst; fasting in the heat as they lay the highways across Saudi. It's always the simple men.

‘It's not tea leaves, you know.'

‘Uh?'

‘You're staring into it so intently,' said Shamime. ‘And it's only milk. Do you want me to read your future? You'd have to believe me because I'm brown. There are some advantages. Can I sit down? I came here to see a client but he hasn't turned up.' She sat down on the other side of the table. ‘So unreliable. You must find us maddening.'

Duke mumbled something polite. He was sitting in the 24-hour Coffee Shop at the Intercontinental. Only place you could get a glass of milk in Karachi.

‘I enjoyed that party last night,' she went on. ‘That sweetie British Council couple, straight out of Somerset Maugham. I hadn't really talked to you before. I see you coming into the office and disappearing into Frank's room, now Donald's room. I suppose it's not really my department.'

‘It's nobody's department yet. I mean to say, nothing's happening.'

‘Still?'

‘I won't trouble you with it.'

‘Go on.' She leant forward, chin resting in her hands. In this light her skin was greeny-brown. She was wearing a multicoloured blouse; she looked like a dusky butterfly. Each time he met her she unnerved him. ‘Bore me.'

‘We have the site, we have the plans drawn up, the tourist board is right behind our project one hundred per cent. It's just what this place needs, a leisure centre just a half-hour from the city. We've done the soil tests, we've ordered the materials, we've fixed the tenders for the electrics – yesterday I completed that.' He stopped. He could not discuss cement contracts with this girl with a jewel in her nose. ‘You've nothing to drink.'

‘Know what I crave? An ice cream.' She lifted up the menu. The sleeve fell back from her arm.

Duke took a menu.
Tempt Yourself
, it said.
Our Ice Creams Are Full of Eastern Promise.

‘I mustn't,' he said.

Shamime was gazing at the menu. Today her hair was loose. She pushed a strand behind her ear. ‘Sheik Charmer,' she read. ‘Mango Ripple Water-Ice Drenched in Sun-Kissed Orange Sauce.'

‘I'm dieting,' he said. ‘I'm watching my weight.'

She smiled over the rim of her menu. ‘I'm not.' Idly she scratched her arm; the bangles clinked. ‘I'll have a Knickerbocker Glory. I'll be American.' She read out: ‘Veiled Mysteries. Can You Resist Our Surprise Dessert? Go on. I'll feel so greedy all alone. Try a Monsoon Mousse. They're out of sight.'

He controlled himself. ‘I'll join you in another glass of milk.'

Her ice arrived, heaped up in a tall glass. She dipped her spoon into it. Duke did not really want this second glass of milk but he must be polite. He thought of the kitchen back home, when the boys were younger. The freeze box was always crammed with those big family tubs – Strawberry, Rum ‘n' Raisin. Chester had his own tub of Pistachio because that was his favourite. When Minnie came back with the groceries the boys would crowd round, jumping up like puppies.

Shamime was licking a blob from her finger.
Turkissed Delight: Smooth Dark Chocolate
. . . He and Duke Jnr, his eldest; they had a weakness for chocolate. The Hershey Bars the two of them got through. He'd always kept a supply in the glove compartment of the Buick. Age three, Duke Jnr knew. No flies on Duke Jnr.

‘Go on,' said Shamime. She was holding out the spoon. ‘I've saved you the cherry.' She leant over; he opened his mouth.

‘So what happens next?'

Duke stopped. ‘Happens?'

‘Or doesn't happen. You've got the equipment . . .' She took another mouthful. ‘You've got the site.'

‘Sure we've got the land, though we haven't signed the contract yet. That's just a formality. But we're still waiting for the planning permission to come through. It should be a formality too. Trouble is, seems to be something holding us up. There's big money involved. Things can be made difficult. Like you know, there's power fighting going on – these politician guys have their fingers in all kinds of pies. And you know how unsettled it is now, up at the top. There's people being replaced for no reason. One word in an ear and overnight it's all changed.'

‘Whose ear? Who's doing your whispering?'

‘Pardon me?'

‘Who's your fixer?'

‘Ma'am, I have no fixer.'

‘Oh Duke, don't look so stiff.' She laughed. ‘You know what I mean. The man who knows the right people. Heavens, you didn't arrive here yesterday. And haven't you been out in the Gulf?'

‘Sure. Kuwait.'

‘Well, you built a hotel. Don't tell me that got set up without a crate or two of Scotch.'

‘Ma'am, it did not.' He moved in his seat. The Coffee Shop was styled in laminates, all easy-wipe. Tables screwed to the floor, plastic seating soldered firmly in place. Solid American workmanship.

Shamime pushed back her hair. That greeny brow. When she moved, her blouse changed colour; it was made of some thin, shifting stuff. It disturbed him. You could not pin anyone down in this shifting country, they trickled like water through your fingers. ‘Sure I know what happens,' he said. ‘Some guy's car gets its import licence, some other guy gets an air-conditioner permission through, things are made easier for someone close to the top.'

‘You have to know the right people.'

‘Sure. I know the right people. They walk through this hotel lobby each day. They're in the Boat Club and the Sind Club. I know them but not, with respect, the way you mean.'

‘I'll have a word with Bobby.'

‘Bobby?'

‘My uncle.'

That was the minister. ‘No sir.'

‘He's an awful ninny but he'll do anything for me. And he likes his tipple.'

‘Ma'am, I don't like to offend, but . . .'

‘Just tell me exactly what needs to be done, so I can tell him.'

‘I won't. Thank you all the same.' He looked down.
Tempting, Tempting
said the menu. ‘Myself, I don't work like that. Nope.'

Shamime looked amused. She scraped out her glass. She had the most delicate hands he had ever seen.

‘Tell me about your father,' she said.

‘My father? You want to know about him?'

‘I want to know about you.'

Duke paused. ‘He owned a laundromat. He was a religious man. He was honest. He worked his way up in the business till he had a place of his own. Nothing fancy – eight front-loaders, nickels in the slot. We had an apartment above it. My mother came downstairs for the service washes.'

‘Service?'

‘The customer left the clothes and she loaded them. Plenty of working wives did that and collected them in the evening. My mother took a pride in it. They called it the cleanest laundromat in Topeka. Something you don't need here, a laundromat.'

‘You mean because of the dhobies?'

‘You live with your parents?'

She nodded.

‘I guess you have plenty of servants.'

She started to count her red fingernails. ‘. . . six, seven . . .' She gave up. ‘They were proud of you? They gave you such an aristocratic name.'

He nodded. ‘My father was a lay preacher, a Baptist. Say, you don't want to listen to this.'

‘I do want to listen to this. It's fascinating.'

‘He preached in the chapel around the corner, evenings. He was a well-respected man. The family came from Scotland, way back.'

‘Washing the clothes clean by day and the souls clean by night. Tough job.'

Duke laughed. ‘Hadn't struck me like that.'

‘And you worked your way out of that, through college. America, land of opportunity. Newspaper-sellers give birth to Presidents.'

Was she laughing at him? He rubbed his nose.

She paused. ‘And your wife?'

‘Minnie? She worked as a stenographer the first place I went to. An engineering corporation. We met at the dance.'

Shamime was lighting a cigarette. Duke felt awkward. He could see no reason why she should want to talk to him; besides, shouldn't she be back at work? She took her job so casually, yet she ran rings around them at Cameron's, she was so smart.

The conversation came to an end. He had not talked like this for some time; not personal talk. Since Minnie left he had spent his days trying to make himself understood down the telephone and trying to contact government agencies. He was a man of action not words. Besides, nobody talked much about the past here because they came from all over the world. Even the Pakistanis – most of them came from India, their past was over there beyond the closed border. Shamime stood up, her black hair swinging.

‘You haven't forgotten tomorrow? The beach.'

He shook his head, and she left. Tomorrow was Minnie's day. Minnie was taking it badly; she had kept saying, ‘It's the end of an era.' She read books on subjects like that – coming to terms with middle-age, growing kids, her digestive tract. Here in Pakistan you accepted things; you had to. But in the States all the wives read these books, dense pages of print to consolidate their anxieties. New publications announced new topics for self-doubt. He was proud of her command of the terms but worried that she seemed to need them. Surely a hug could solve most everything. I wish you were here, he thought. He would book a call tonight, to reassure her. He had spent so long telling her it made no difference and that thousands of women a year had it done that he had not stopped to wonder if he himself minded.

He walked past the tables. Young people sat around. Shamime was so young; he was old enough to be her father. She had scraped out her ice cream like a child.

Christine Manley sat there, writing postcards. She looked sunburnt; kind of flushed.

‘You been doing some sightseeing?' he asked.

She paused. ‘I've seen some sights,' she said, with a little smile.

There was so much for her to see. Like Shamime, her era was just beginning. She would have babies.
The end of an era
, Minnie had said. He felt old and confused. It must be that darned contract.

Cameron Chambers was
built of heavy stone, brown as liver. It inspired confidence. Constructed in 1890 it was Karachi's finest monument to Indian Gothic. It was Bradford Central Railway Station; it was Leeds Town Hall. Then you looked again at the straw blinds and those dusty palms. Strong convictions had built it; it might have stood there for centuries and it could last for centuries more. Donald considered it just right. It belonged. New stuff rose up all around – the I.B.M. building, the Habib Bank skyscraper – but they looked bland and flimsy. They paid lip service to the country, with their plywood Moghul arches, but they were imports. That Cameron's itself had supplied their paints and plastics was business, and business was in the head, not the heart.

Adam Cameron had been a Scot and a strong Methodist, a man of character. He had built up his company from a corner shop and in the 1880s brought it out East. In common with several other British concerns, Cameron's became a name connected with the subcontinent. In those days they manufactured soaps, paints, mosquito repellents and Cameron's Tonic Wine, based on a secret glycero-phosphate formula. Old Man Cameron was the best advertisement for his own pick-me-up; his bewhiskered face was printed upon every bottle. Despite the beard there was some resemblance, in Donald's mind, to Duke Hanson. The same straight gaze; frontiersmen both, men of belief. In the old days the Tonic Wine had been sold in Britain too. From his childhood Donald remembered the Brinton corner shop (always behind the times) whose wall had carried the metal plaque beside the Bovril and Lipton's Tea. Rusted with age, it showed the famous face and a scrolled list of all the ailments from which the drinker would gain immediate relief. Production had stopped in 1950 and the only plaque he had recently seen was upon the kitchen wall of one of Christine's friends. ‘For Nervous Spasms,' she had said, laughing, ‘Lassitude and Wind.'

Cameron's had manufactured and sold through the big emporiums: the Army and Navy of Calcutta, Bentalls of Bombay. Much of their trade had been with the army – shirt stiffeners in particular. Donald's own grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Manley, had no doubt appeared more formidable thanks to Cameron's Hot Season Starch.
Don't Let the Troops Droop.

But the starch had gone and with it the British. India had changed; this part was Pakistan now. Cameron's had changed. It was Cameron Chemicals now and had expanded into plastics and fertilizer, with its own pharmaceutical division. It had other international interests. There were branches in Australia and Hong Kong. They were the important ones now. Even Bombay branch was larger than this. Here in Pakistan the English had been squeezed out; nowadays, with the government's policy of native managers and nationalization, Donald himself was the only European and he was not the top dog – only Sales Manager, with a Pakistani Director and Chairman above him. In his office hung the old photographs, rows of faces as at school; behind them the blurred sepia arches of Cameron Chambers. Each year the white faces were reduced in number, and now there was only one.