The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Read Free Page B

lit, just the ceiling bulb, which cast a pitiless glare like that of an operating theater. Norman, the cuckoo in the nest, sat in a haze of cigarette smoke, watching TV.
    Ravi let himself in. He had made up his mind: he would phone Sonny and tell him to keep mum about tonight’s conversation. The living-room door was ajar; he glimpsed a pair of veined ankles in bedroom slippers. Tiptoeing past, he dumped the bag of mangoes in the kitchen. A burnt smell still lingered.
    As furtive as a teenager, Ravi crept up the stairs. Even his study felt polluted now; he was certain that Norman masturbated in it. The bedroom was his only refuge.
    Ravi sat down on the bed. Royal Thistle Hotel. He didn’t know the number. The phone book was downstairs in the living room.
    I hate him, thought Ravi. Why can’t he just go gentle into that good night? Why can’t we just throw him into the care of the community like we do schizophrenics and psychopaths? Why can’t we leave him to stagger round the streets of London, stealing ladies’ knickers off washing-lines? He could get arrested for lewd behavior. Why don’t the old know when to give up the whole damn business and call it a day? “Hope I die before I get old.” Who sang that, the Kinks? Why didn’t I have a misspent youth?
    Ravi reached for the receiver, to dial directory inquiries. As he did so, the phone rang.
    It was Sonny’s voice, shaking with excitement. “Listen, man,” he said. “I’ve got a hell of an idea.”
    P auline’s job as a travel agent had shaped her theory about love. Sexual attraction is triggered by the unknown. A foreign destination quickens the pulse. Even the anticipation of this made her customers fidgety, watching her with bright eyes as she downloaded hotel availabilities on her computer. She imagined them stepping into an unknown city, as alert as foxes sniffing the air.
    Within a week, however, the senses became blunted and routines established (Why isn’t there any grapefruit? We had some yesterday); what was thrilling became mundane (Not another ruin) . She had experienced this herself, often enough. It was a speeded-up version of love’s exhilaration, so soon dulled by domesticity.
    In fact, Ravi was the domesticated one. It was he who dug the garden and did most of the cooking; it was his way of unwinding from work. He liked things just so—soft lights, real napkins—a sense of style that had been sorely tested in recent weeks. Any taste, she had learned from him. Left to herself, she would be as slovenly as her father.
    The trouble was, Ravi had ceased to surprise her. No doubt this was mutual, though he was too well-mannered to say. The beach onto which she had once run, whooping for joy, had reverted to a strip of sand. She wasn’t exactly bored; Ravi was an intelligent man and his beauty still had the power to startle her—fastidious profile, graying wings of hair. It was simply that, during a long marriage, a holiday mentality was hard to sustain.
    Ravi wasn’t an adventurous man. She put this down to his job. At work he coped with the victims of chance, its random brutality. Many years ago she had tried to get close to him by reading books about Hinduism. “Surely it’s all about predestination?” she said. “If somebody’s going to be knocked down by a lorry, that’s their karma.” Ravi had looked at her, puzzled, as if she were talking a foreign language. He wasn’t an Indian Indian at all. He was a doctor.
    Hence her astonishment the next evening. She went straight from work to the restaurant. It made her uneasy, not to check in at home first; her father, like a dog, should not be left alone all day. But Ravi was insistent—seven-thirty prompt—and things were strained between them; she felt obliged to obey.
    Sonny sat beside a bubbling aquarium. He was talking on his mobile phone. His shirt was strained across his chest. “Every button doing its duty,” her mother would have said. Black hairs sprouted from the gaps.