Hot Water Man (7 page)

And Cameron Chambers had been taken over as government offices. Ten years ago Cameron's had moved to Adamjee Plaza, a functional block with a rubber plant in the foyer and rows of rusting windows. Cameron Chemicals occupied four floors. By leaning back in his chair Donald could glimpse one turret of the old building several streets away. It pointed into the blue sky. Otherwise it was obscured by newly-erected office blocks on the same lines as Adamjee Plaza, 1950s style and already shabby. Opposite his window was a hoarding attached to one of these buildings. Upon it was painted a large oriental lady's face, cocked coyly and holding up a bar of Tibet Soap. Manufactured, it said below, by the Karachi Sanitary Corporation. In idle moments he caught her eye. She seemed to be asking him a question.

It was noon. Outside the buildings looked blanched in the heat. Inside there was the rattle and hum of the air-conditioner. Saturday; in a few moments the office would be closing down for the weekend. Back home Mohammed would be finishing his morning duties and retiring to his quarters; Saturdays he left out cold cuts. He himself ought to be returning home and making love to Christine. The unusual time of day, siesta hour, might make the whole thing more spontaneous than usual.

A tap on the door. Mr Samir came in.

‘Figures, Mr Manley, for the fertilizer plant.'

‘Ah, thank you.' Part of him wished to be called Donald. After all, Mr Samir was his second-in-command. Yet this formality flattered him too. With the exception of Shamime he was treated with grave respect by all his staff, most of whom had double his age and experience.

Mr Samir took a seat while Donald flicked through the papers. Should he perhaps set the precedent by calling him Ayub? A new fertilizer factory had recently been opened upcountry, in Upper Sind.

‘Do you know what Shamime told me yesterday?' said Donald. ‘That the British are to blame for this state of affairs.'

‘I am sorry?'

‘That our – that British canals were responsible for the salinity of this whole province. Something about the drainage leaving a salt sediment.'

‘I am most surprised.' Mr Samir frowned, probably not because of the facts but because he disapproved of Shamime. ‘I think that it was a most barren region before the British arrived. I think that it is due to the British that there is any sort of fertility at all.'

There was silence; but a relaxed one, as it was the end of the week.

‘What was my predecessor like? The famous Mr Smythe?' Perhaps Mr Samir had called him Frank. Donald could not bear it if he had.

‘A very charming gentleman. Most athletic and respected. Something of a sportsman, as was his lady wife.'

‘She was chairman of the British Wives' Association, wasn't she?'

‘She was most active in those spheres. Mrs Manley, she belongs to the Association?'

Donald paused. ‘She hasn't quite got around to it yet.' He refrained from mentioning Christine's vow never to set foot in the place.
I came to Pakistan
, she had said,
not Tunbridge Wells.

‘It is primarily for the kiddies, I believe,' said Mr Samir. ‘There is swimming pool and social facilities, and kiddies' parties. That was told to me by Mrs Smythe.'

‘Well, that counts us out,' he gave a little laugh, ‘so far.'

‘We have a saying: there is no time that is better than next year. You have no doubt seen that this applies to business. Above all, perhaps, in the case of offspring.'

Donald rubbed his nose. With a little smile he asked: ‘How many do you have, er, Ayub? Your wife told me once.'

‘More than sufficient, you might say. Three boys and two girls.' Mr Samir cast his eyes down, perhaps out of modesty. This small man, in his shiny suit, had produced five children.

They both gave another little laugh. Donald turned his attention to the fertilizer figures. The factory in Sukkur produced 1,200 tons of nitrogen-based compounds per month. He, Donald, was responsible for the selling and distribution of enough soil enricher for 500 square miles of otherwise barren desert. Remaining, apparently, unable to fertilize his wife.

He looked at his watch and closed the file. ‘Half-past twelve. Um, Ayub, do you know where Fotheringay Road is? I've been searching all over the place. People keep giving me the wrong directions. I don't think anyone knows, but they don't seem to care to say so.' Mr Samir stroked his bald head. ‘It's where my grandfather lived. Somewhere near the old Military Lines.'

‘The majority of them have been knocked down. You have asked me this before. And then the names have been changed.'

‘That's what makes it so tricky. Sorry to go on about it. My wife and I drove round last weekend. No one seems to make any maps.' Not adding: the British were the last who did.

‘The city has multiplied so much and so fast. Each year the maps must be changed.' He shrugged, like an Italian waiter saying the restaurant is closed. ‘So we have no maps.'

Indeed, in Frank Smythe's business address book, written in that familiar, confident hand, most of the places said Behind this, or Opposite that, or Two Blocks from the Paradise Picture House. There were so few street names. No doubt it had all made sense to Frank.

Mr Samir had excused himself and left. In a few moments he returned.

‘I had a little brainwave,' he said. ‘Our eldest peon has been living in that district for many years. I have asked him your question and he has come up with the answer. He thinks it might be now named Ajazuddin Road.'

When the office closed Donald drove off. He would have one last try before he went home. Though interested during their first couple of searches, Christine now presumed 56 Fotheringay Road to be extinct and had rather fallen off in her support. At some point she had seemed to stop searching with him and start looking at him instead. In recent months she had grown so swiftly critical of what he did. Unfortunately, a change of country did not seem to be altering that. She probably thought that his anxiety for roots stemmed from some basic lack of identity. No doubt at some point she would want to talk this through.

He slowed down behind a donkey cart. Other cars hooted their horns and swerved to pass. The driving here alarmed him. This was the main business street, once called Inverarity Street and now re-named I.I. Chundrigar Road. It was filled with exhaust fumes and hectic Toyota taxis. At every crossroads policemen stood on plinths, waving their batons and swivelling as if they were conducting an orchestra.

Was he weak, to look back to this city's past and prefer the crumbling buildings sagging between the office blocks? Christine, artistic and romantic, preferred them too, but then muddled it all up with Raj Oppression, British Imperialism, all that stuff. That made it difficult to talk. Clichés kept popping up and blocking the conversation, her expression changed, her pupils shrank when she talked like that.

Cameron Chambers loomed up on his left. Solid dark stone. Above the door had been fixed a placard saying
Government of Sind: Division 3.
However, above each first-floor window was still carved the double C, knotted with stone foliage; the building could not rub away its old identity so easily. It was a landmark; in an address book you would write
Two Blocks from
. . . Once he had overheard a man say: ‘We will make a rendezvous outside see-see.' It had taken him a moment to realize, with a twitch of loyalty, that the man meant C.C.

On the pavement, scribes were packing up their typewriters; the offices were closed now for the weekend. During the week men would squat there dictating letters and petitions to be delivered inside. Within the building, no doubt, those letters would be piled up from years back, wedged in dusty corners. Bureaucratic red tape was something you had to come to terms with, here. He was discovering this, his cabinets silting up with official forms; Duke, too, appeared to be suffering considerable difficulties in getting his Translux off the ground. Doubtless Christine would blame this, too, on the British.

He slowed down behind a bus. It belched fumes; men clung to its sides, their clothes flapping. It looked like some extinct beast burdened with wings. His heart beat faster in this detective search. Wisps of half-remembered conversations hung most strangely around these foreign streets. One or two things, like those horse-driven tongas, were similar enough to click together with the past. But most of the city had changed too much to be recognizable. This had made him more determined, much to Christine's surprise. But he could at least do this for his grandfather. He had loved Grandad but he had never said so; he had been too self-conscious for that. He felt guilty for all the times he had not listened, and for being up in London when Grandad had died and asked for him. When he had arrived it was too late.

Of course it was too late now. Much good this would do anyone. But then the rituals at a funeral did not help the dead one, did they? It was the living who were eased.

He knew some facts, having copied them into a notebook before he arrived in Karachi. Prior to Independence Grandad had served in Quetta, Karachi, then Cawnpore and somewhere outside Allahabad in what was to become India. Granny had come out to Karachi; they had married here in the church. He himself had visited it, of course. The place looked neglected now; children played ball games in the dust of the compound.

It was Karachi that Grandad had mentioned most often. ‘Happened on my Karachi tour,' he would say. But Donald was so young then, lying on the hearthrug and counting the tiles on the gas-fire surround. Karachi was the caged pinkish glow in the fire, somewhere far off. What else had Grandad said? It had mostly dissolved. We presume that when we speak we communicate; we have to believe this, otherwise what would we do? Donald could remember some chuckles about this or that, colonel somebody coming a cropper. He could not even distinguish if the setting was army quarters in India or England, where Grandad served for the last few years, they sounded so similar. The same talk, if he could remember any of it, and the same jokes.

He drove down past the cantonment station, with its tea houses and the squalid hotels where the hippies stayed. This was the sort of place Christine liked, its fruit stalls black with flies. Around it lay the old residential quarter, or what was left of it. This area, with its station, Anglican church and Military Lines, was where the British used to live if they did not live in Clifton, a mile away. One thing he did remember was Granny complaining that the shunting trains used to keep her awake.

Meadow Road. The name was carved in a corner wall. This sounded familiar but then he had searched along here before. At a junction stood the newer, metal sign: Ajazuddin Road.

He must have passed it on several occasions; due to the name he had not driven that way. It was another wide street, with old bungalows on either side. Built by the British for themselves, they had now been taken over: the brass plaques said
Alliance Française
and
Dubai Commercial Division.
These buildings looked mellow compared to his own raw house in K12. Ahead, the road curved round a corner.

He slowed down. Now he was here he hardly dared arrive. What would he do: ring the bell and ask to look around? There were no cars about. Chowkidars, seated at the gates, watched him without interest. Little did they know. These large trees were younger then, mere saplings when Grandad had walked this street fifty years ago. Otherwise it must have been the same. Grandad would recognize it now, house for house.

And so what?
Christine would say. She was always there, a hum in his head.
Look at what's happening, not at what happened.
He drove round the corner.

The street stopped abruptly. The houses had been demolished.

Donald halted the car and gazed through the windscreen. Ahead of him lay bulldozers and rubble. The stench was strong; he wound up the window. A milky creek ran under the road. The whole place was one vast building site. In front of him, a banner drooped from a half-completed block:
Ahmed Prestige Apartments.
On the ground floor were the empty concrete boxes where the shops would be. Electrical wires hung, knotted, from their ceilings.
Coming Soon: Orient Photocopy.
Beyond this, stretches of vacant dust, more construction in progress and further still the highway leading to K12 Housing Society. Scaffolding stuck up into the treacherous blue sky.

Donald sat still, the engine running. He waited for his breathing to settle. Christine had been right, of course; it was foolish to have hoped. Overhead buzzards drifted. In front of him the road was blocked with a row of oil drums.

He turned the car and drove back slowly. Black birds stood around in the street as if they owned it. He wanted to rev up and run them down. At the junction he turned left and then stopped the car.

He looked at those carved letters: Meadow Road. He switched off the engine. Meadow Road. Was it just because he had seen it five minutes earlier, and several times before that, or was it an older memory? He gazed at the cracked pavement, trying to concentrate. At this moment it sounded so very familiar.

Above him a tree had shed black pods. Must be a tamarind. The pods lay scattered; some were squashed. Ahead lay the sleepy afternoon street. Meadow . . . Fields. (A most unmeadowy road.) Something was stirring. He closed his eyes. In the clenched blackness he tried to remember. Deep within his head it was echoing.

Afternoons in the lounge, stuffy upholstery, stuffy as this car interior, and sunlight outside. Fields . . . Gracie Fields . . . Forces' Favourites.
Forces' Favourites?
He screwed up his face.

It did not work. He opened his eyes and gazed at the dashboard dials, all at O. He had got nowhere. It was nothing useful. He had just remembered the wireless programmes. It was simply the old breath of his childhood air. Sounds and cooking smells coming from the kitchen.

He started the car and crawled along, glancing at the gatepost plates.
New Zealand High Commission . . . Maj. A. D. Khalid (Retd).
Some were almost illegible; they held the mild, impersonal interest of old tombstones. The lettering on number 17 was painted on to a glass panel set into the post; it had partly peeled off. He read: 17A
Mrs I. B. Gracie.