A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘No, dear,’ Lottie said. ‘My husband was in the refrigeration business but he had money in Broadway shows – what they call an angel and that’s exactly what he was: an angel. He was a wonderful human being and Magda takes after him completely, bless her.’

  Ellie said, ‘I can see she doesn’t take after you.’ That made Lottie laugh, though as usual at the mention of her late husband she had become tearful. ‘I mean like she doesn’t look like you,’ Ellie went on, not because she felt she had been tactless but to be more explicit. It was true that mother and daughter, though both large, could not have been more different. Magda was dark and chunky, muscular, whereas Lottie was soft, fat, pastel.

  ‘No, she’s dark like her daddy. I’m the only blonde in the family. The one thing Magda has from me, unfortunately, is a weight problem. We should both go to that place in Florida again, darling, I’ll treat you for Christmas and we can get rid of some of this,’ she said, playfully poking herself in both hips. But aware of her daughter’s mounting impatience, she said, ‘Well, I guess I should be going and leave you two girls to talk about your business.’

  ‘Why don’t you eat with us?’

  This invitation came from Ellie, and after waiting a fraction too long for Magda to second it, Lottie gathered herself for departure. ‘Thank you, dears, but I’d better go see my sister Hannah or she’ll start feeling sorry for herself. I tell her, we all have to face it, being on our own, it comes to all of us in the end.’

  ‘But she’s got Robert living with her,’ Ellie said.

  ‘Oh, you know Robert? She knows Robert?’ Lottie asked Magda and continued: ‘These days he’s working very late at the studio and anyway he has his own life to lead – young people do, they should.’ She finished pinning on her little hat and said to Ellie, ‘I hope you’ll come visit with me, if you can spare a little time. I know you have a very busy schedule.’

  ‘I’ve got lots of time. When should I come?’

  Ellie spent most of her days at Robert’s house. She drifted there slowly, stopped on the way to look into boutique windows – there were several selling funky antique clothing, with fringes and trailing skirts and pointed satin shoes, the kind she might have liked to own if she thought about clothes or had money to buy them (later, when she did have money, that was what she bought, not second-hand but made specially for her by designers). She hopped over the sidewalk on one leg and in the same way up the stoop to the restored Federal entrance of Robert’s house.

  It was always Fred who let her in, and one day he said, ‘He’s been asking for you.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Says he needs you upstairs.’

  ‘Oh my God. How do I look?’

  ‘Same,’ Fred said.

  Nervously smoothing her cotton frock, she went upstairs. Robert was working at the piano, but he nodded for her to stay and finally he told her to sing something he pointed out to her. She got it wrong a couple of times. ‘Oh shit,’ she said, but he was patient and told her to try again, and then again. When she did get it right, it was like nothing on this earth.

  He took his hands off the piano keys and shut his eyes, indicating fatigue. When he opened them again and saw her still standing there, he said, ‘Thanks, that’s all.’ She didn’t move, so he said ‘Thank you’ again, more sharply.

  ‘She’s thrown me out,’ Ellie said. He didn’t react, so she continued: ‘Because of you. She said I wasn’t to come and see you and I said I’ll come and see you till I’m dead.’ She corrected herself: ‘Even after I’m dead.’

  That made him laugh, if not quite in amusement. But next moment he drew in his breath and then blew it out again, as if trying to blow something away. She continued undeterred: ‘I’ve got nowhere to stay.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘I could stay here.’ He exclaimed in a way that made her urge: ‘You’re not here at night so it wouldn’t be all that horrible for you. I could sleep on that thing there – look,’ she said, nimbly getting on his chaise longue. ‘It’s quite OK for me, I can almost stretch out.’

  ‘For heaven’s sakes! And with shoes on! Have you any idea what I paid for that fabric?’

  She got up. ‘I could stay with Fred,’ she offered. ‘Not in his room but in the kitchen. Why not? I’m very clean.’

  ‘Don’t you have any friends?’

  ‘Only you and her. If you are my friend. And she’s thrown me out, so where am I?’

  ‘I could give you money for a hotel.’

  ‘All right.’

  She sat with her hands patiently folded, while he got his chequebook out. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Ellie.’

  ‘I think I knew that – your other name?’

  ‘Ellie Sprigge.’ He was about to write it when she asked him to make the cheque out to ‘Cash’ because she didn’t have an account. ‘Do you think I ought to change my name? For the stage? So they don’t make up rhymes like Ellie Sprigge is a pig, or worse, like they did at school.’

  ‘Sprigge is perfect. Part spring, part sprig.’

  ‘Is that how you think of me?’

  ‘What makes you think I think of you at all?’

  He gave her the cheque, which was for a large amount; money was the one thing Robert was generous with. She hid it in her knickers, and when he told her to leave, she did, not wanting to push her luck any further that day. Usually she walked everywhere, always having plenty of time on her hands, but now she treated herself to a bus-ride uptown. She felt it was time to follow up on the invitation Magda’s mother had extended to her.

  Lottie’s apartment was on a high floor, with plenty of light and air, and the rugs were white and the furniture white and gold. Lottie loved company and nowadays didn’t have anywhere near enough. And it was a special treat for her to have a friend of Magda’s interested in seeing all her photos. She brought out albums that started from the day of Magda’s birth: Ellie peered in eagerly, but all she saw was Magda and Lottie and Sid and their friends, and just once – ‘There’s Robert, my nephew.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That skinny boy behind Magda – looking as usual like no one’s good enough for him.’

  Ellie had seen enough; she leaned back and asked, ‘Is that what he’s like?’

  ‘From day one. He’d come to Magda’s birthday parties, too grand to play any of the games, just went off by himself to try out our piano and tell us it was out of tune. I’m not saying it wasn’t, but imagine – the chutzpah, from a boy of six. But it was his mother’s fault, and even today she’s still treating him like he’s God. You should see her apartment, it’s a regular shrine for him – ’

  ‘I’d like to. See her apartment.’

  ‘You’d hate it. She’s got no taste at all.’

  ‘I want to get to know all Magda’s family. I think it’s very nice to have a family.’

  ‘Now isn’t that sweet: from a young girl like you. That’s really touching. I’m touched.’

  When Robert came home, he found Ellie sitting between his aunt Lottie and his mother, who had taken out her albums of photographs of himself. Ellie looked up from her study of four-year-old Robert on the beach with bucket and spade; she locked eyes with the adult Robert, whose expression was as knowing and alert as the child’s. But anything could be read into her eyes: were they amused, triumphant, submissive, rueful, or really just blank?

  Robert’s mother Hannah was very particular whom she received in her home, but she continued to allow Ellie’s visits. Ellie was no trouble at all. She asked for nothing and received nothing – Hannah did not serve between meals – and she seemed perfectly happy being allowed to sit there and look at Hannah’s photograph albums. Hannah was no conversationalist, and Ellie’s visits mostly passed in silence between them, except for questions and answers about Robert’s age in one of the photographs, or its location. The ambience of the apartment was as sombre as Hannah herself – in this as in all else a contrast to Lotti
e’s apartment, where Ellie visited immediately afterwards. Lottie was lavish with refreshments, and Ellie made up for her abstinence in the other home. Lottie was also lavish with her conversation, but here Ellie drew less sustenance than from the few crumbs of information she received from the other sister.

  When her husband Sid was still alive, he and Lottie used to laugh about Hannah and her massive furniture and silver bowls and ugly paintings that she presided over so meticulously. They also mocked the dull parties she and her banker husband held in there for their banker friends, with stolid food prepared by their German cook – so different from their own entertainments, to which actresses came. But now the memory of those parties made her apartment seem all the emptier to Lottie, and she was glad to have her sister only two blocks away. Sometimes she stuck it out alone till almost ten o’clock; but however late she came, Hannah never said, as she would have done not so long ago, ‘What a time to visit people – I was just going to bed.’

  ‘What, Robert’s not home yet?’ Lottie asked on one such evening, arriving past everyone’s bedtime.

  ‘He’s working very late these days. And it’s going to be even later once they go into rehearsal. The price of fame,’ she smugly sighed.

  ‘Same with Magda. I worry myself sick about her working so hard and not looking after herself. In a way, I’m glad that girl’s with her – at least she’s someone around the place and she’s very devoted to Magda, so that’s something.’

  ‘She’s very devoted to Robert too. He’s her idol – she’s said it to me not once but every day.’

  ‘She comes to see you every day?’

  ‘I don’t mind it. She doesn’t say much, poor thing.’

  ‘No, she’s not very interesting. It’s really kind of Magda to let her stay. She’s not her type of person at all, when you think of the sort of fascinating people Magda knows. I think that’s your phone. Who’s calling you so late?’

  ‘It must be Robert.’

  It was; and when she returned from answering, Hannah reported, ‘He said not to wait up for him. He always calls when he’s working late. He’s so thoughtful. Sometimes he can’t get away till three or four in the morning – but he always comes home; he doesn’t like to stay in the studio. Naturally, this is his home; all his things are here.’

  ‘Well, you’re lucky he’s not married,’ Lottie said, but with a sigh.

  ‘Oh, a man like Robert could never marry,’ Hannah assured her. Lottie stared at her in surprise, but Hannah went on calmly: ‘Look at him – home at all hours, who would stand for that? His work is who he’s married to.’

  ‘I guess it’s the same with Magda. It’s a shame . . . No, not for them, what do they care – for you and me! I’d kill for it,’ she said. ‘A little grandchild, just like Magda, a little girl with bangs and fat legs, running up and down.’

  ‘You could always adopt one.’ Hannah defended herself against Lottie’s angry cry: ‘There are so many orphans looking for good homes, it would be an act of charity.’

  ‘I want my own. Mine and Sid’s.’ She began to cry. Hannah stared into space, betraying no feelings, one way or another.

  When Magda discovered that Ellie had failed to show up for most of her auditions, Ellie said it was because of him: Robert. She explained how he didn’t want her to audition for anyone else because he needed her. When Magda challenged the truth of this, she clamped up. Her face became like a little fist and she said in a dead voice, ‘Aren’t we going to eat?’

  Magda knew she would have to confront Robert. She phoned him and said grimly that she wished to speak to him about her client, Ellie Sprigge.

  Robert was surprised. ‘But you threw her out.’

  ‘I threw her out?’

  She said she was coming to talk to him in his studio. There was nowhere else private enough for what she had to say to him. She didn’t like going there; too many things went on in the house that she wanted to know nothing about. For instance, this Fred who opened the door, besides being the butler, whose lover was he – the architect on the first floor, the two antique-dealers on the second, or Robert’s? But it was none of her business, she told herself, when Fred had taken her upstairs and shut the door to leave her alone with Robert; her business was Ellie. To show how uninhibited she was by Robert and his surroundings – his Steinway grand stood on a Persian carpet woven with flowers and yellow tigers – she took off her coat and flung it on his chaise longue (Robert hung it up). She sat down opposite him, square, aggressive, with her legs apart in a posture she knew to be distasteful to him.

  She didn’t care – it was in reaction to her childhood, when she had cared too much. Every time she had been taken to play with Robert, her mother had adorned her beautifully, in taffeta and bows; but as soon as they got there, Magda knew she was dressed all wrong, especially compared with Robert, who looked elegant, debonair, even then in his boy’s shirt and shorts. Sometimes his mother Hannah would point out to her sister Lottie that a particular frock was too short for someone with Magda’s legs, and wasn’t it time the dentist did something about the child’s teeth? Although these suggestions may have been well meant, they infuriated Lottie, and often it ended with Magda being snatched by the hand and marched away in the middle of her game with Robert. Aware of the cause of their retreat, Magda was overcome with shame at her own ugliness; and while they were still going down in the elevator, she tore the ribbon out of her hair, stamped it under her ankle-strap shoe and burst into tears. These tears made her mother kneel down and put her arms around Magda; and they stayed like that even after the elevator doors opened and people in the lobby stared in at the two of them entwined in this embrace.

  Now, in his studio, it wasn’t long before Robert believed Magda’s passionate assertion that she had not told Ellie to leave. But when he proved that Ellie had also lied about the auditions, Magda accused him: ‘You raised her hopes. You promised her things.’

  ‘I said I might call for you if I need you; I never said don’t go to other auditions.’

  ‘That’s what she said you said. Why would she make up such a thing, just like that, out of the air?’

  ‘Because she’s a little liar,’ smiled Robert.

  He stopped smiling at the flash of fire that emanated from his cousin. He knew passion when he saw it, and respected it. But Magda herself felt she had given away too much. She pulled herself together – literally: she closed her legs and also adjusted the neckline of her two-piece. She said, ‘There’s no need for you to communicate with any client of mine except through me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Robert. ‘That’s why I told her she mustn’t come here any more. I’ve given orders not to let her in.’

  ‘You have what!’ Her legs opened again, showing her underclothes. ‘I can’t believe this – that anyone would be so hurtful to her. So all right,’ she overrode anything he might try to say, ‘she cut her auditions, she made a fool of me. And she fooled you that I’d thrown her out and she had nowhere to stay. But why did she do it? Because she trusted you; she thought you’d do everything for her.’

  ‘Well, maybe I could do something,’ said Robert. ‘She’s good, you know.’

  ‘You think you’re the only one who can recognise talent when they see it? Don’t forget it’s I who found her and sent her to you in the first place. Only to have you kick her out of the house – ’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about her. She’ll find her way back in very quickly.’

  In fact, while they were talking in the studio upstairs, Ellie was in the basement kitchen with Fred, eating a piece of his lemon-chocolate cake. She and Fred had become friends – fellow-conspirators, really, after she had persuaded him to disregard orders and let her into the house. ‘I’m not going upstairs,’ she assured him. ‘I just want to be with you.’

  He had begun to enjoy her company. They spoke of all sorts of personal matters. Fred was only a few years older than Ellie, but he had been in the city since he was fifteen, so he knew a lot
more than she did. He had arrived with just a few dollars in his pocket after paying his fare on the Greyhound bus. That money was still on his conscience for he had stolen it out of his mother’s welfare cheque: for her own good, he told Ellie, so she could be rid of him, for she had enough problems without a teenage son who was beginning to get into police trouble.

  Ellie was very understanding, and she also told him more about herself than she had told Magda, or Robert, or anyone. Ellie hadn’t stolen money from her parents, they had freely given it to her, as much as they could scrape together. To pay for the ticket to New York, her mother had sold a little brooch with a ruby in it. It was very hard for them to send her away, but they had to, because of her singing teacher. ‘I was in love with him,’ she told Fred, who was very interested and asked what was he like.

  ‘He was old,’ she said. ‘And he was homo and he wore a toupee.’ They both giggled. Then she said, ‘I’d have died for him. I nearly did. I took pills and had to be pumped out in the hospital, it was horrible.’

  Fred gave her another piece of his cake. She ate it, leaning with one elbow on the kitchen table. ‘It’s funny. I don’t even think of him now, and if I do, it’s only to laugh.’

  They both laughed again, then were silent, thinking of very serious subjects. She said, ‘Maybe it’s nothing to do with a person really, the way you feel about him.’

  ‘You don’t want to start feeling about him,’ Fred said, jerking his head towards the studio upstairs.

  She laughed again, drily, like a much older person. ‘You don’t actually get to choose, do you . . . What’s he like, then?’ she said, licking crumbs off her fingers.

  ‘He’s very kind,’ Fred said. ‘Very considerate.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Cold as ice,’ Fred said.

  She shut her eyes; her two thin eyelash fringes glistened with one tear each. ‘They always are. The other one the same. Maybe it’s got something to do with being an artist.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Fred said. ‘Then give me someone who’s not but can truly love and care for me.’