A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘Give the child time,’ she told herself when no word came from Patty for three days. On the fourth day she asked herself how much time was there – she was seventy-five years old and how much longer did she have to wait for the recognition of her son’s true talent? At last she picked up the phone and dialled Patty’s number – her secret private number that she had entrusted to her. Patty was terribly pleased to hear her: a lovely surprise, she said. She appeared to be in a busy place – in a restaurant, a creative meeting? Madame knew Patty’s days to be full of events, of exciting people. Nevertheless, Patty called across the noise, ‘We have to talk. About the play.’ Madame offered to walk across the Park again, but ‘No,’ Patty said, ‘I’ll come to you. When will he be home?’ It was with Theo, it appeared, she wished to talk.

  She arrived unannounced – on the spur of the moment, of her moment – carrying flowers and his play. It was a rainy day and the flowers were wet, and so were her cheeks, dewy like her eyes. At her entrance, waves of excitement displaced the air, and the seismic change penetrated the closed door of Theo’s study. He appeared; she held out his play. ‘I love it of course,’ she said without fervour. ‘But there’s a lot we need to discuss.’

  Taking his play from her, he stood looking puzzled. Madame began to explain; she was embarrassed and too slow for Patty, who took over: ‘I’ve been making Madame’s life a misery till she got it for me. I think she had to steal it.’ She laughed and Theo twisted his lips into a smile.

  ‘I thought it was so perfect for her,’ Madame apologised. Theo said, ‘You mean, as a starring vehicle.’ He appeared amused not angry, so that Madame lowered her eyes as one who had been unexpectedly forgiven.

  ‘God, no,’ Patty said. ‘You’re the star.’ He pretended to believe she meant it, he put his hand on his heart and bowed his head.

  ‘But these are for you!’ Patty exclaimed, handing over her flowers to Madame, who inhaled them. She said tulips were her favourites; these were particularly gorgeous, tall and upright, scentless, shining like prima donnas.

  ‘All right.’ Theo spoke as though something had been settled in his mind, a situation accepted. ‘How about some tea,’ he ordered Eileen, who went out into the kitchen. By now Patty was ensconced in a corner of their sofa; her legs were crossed, she was wearing knee-high leather boots.

  ‘So you like it,’ Theo said. ‘It wasn’t much of a hit, you know. Rather a damp squib, in fact, though that may have been the audience. The subscribers in these theatre clubs are never less than a hundred years old and the seats much too hard for their ancient buttocks.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of a club,’ Patty said. ‘But it would have to be a different play. I want it to be different. I want it for me. You hate me for saying that.’

  Madame, her arms full of flowers, was watching them. Their presence together was thrilling. He was standing, his elbow propped on the mantelpiece; she looking up at him from the sofa. They were a scene, a play, the eternal duel, man and woman.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be putting those in water,’ Theo suggested, making his mother exclaim, ‘Poor thirsty darlings!’ She tore herself away and joined Eileen in the kitchen. But once there, she left the flowers lying on the table and herself sank on to a chair, exhausted with hope.

  ‘Eileen, it may happen. They’ll work together.’

  When Eileen carried in the tea, they were as Madame had left them. Eileen had always admired her husband’s personality. Although not very tall, he had the bearing of someone in a position to look down on whatever he chose to notice. However, Patty, looking up at him as he stood above her leaning against the mantelpiece, was not submissive. On the contrary, there was something challenging, even masterful in the way she sat with her legs crossed in leather boots; nor did she seem shy of stating her opinions.

  That night, getting into the twin bed next to Eileen’s, Theo stated his opinion of Patty’s opinions. He wished she did not have any. He said he wished it could be as in the past when actresses were discovered working in a laundromat. It had been easier to deal with them then than it was now when they had all been to college and been given ideas about their own intelligence.

  Eileen never disputed with him, but she knew he was always ready to listen to her, so she said what Madame had told her – that his play would benefit if the principal role was performed by a star like Patty. He replied that he preferred success on his own merits, not on the meretricious attractions of an actress. ‘You’re right, of course,’ Eileen said, as though she considered the subject closed. She knew it wasn’t – that he would be lying awake for a long time, turning over in his mind whatever had passed between him and Patty. She said goodnight affectionately and lay with her back to him, not wishing to appear to be spying on him in his secret thoughts.

  Theo enjoyed his daily routine – the hours spent in the deep plush soothing executive armchairs of a hushed screening room, often alone, sometimes with a producer and his minions seated at a respectful distance behind him. Then afterwards in his study offloading the contents of his mind on to his computer, alone and with the door shut – a door of a solid wood used only in the older apartments, through which no sound could penetrate. He never heard the telephone, and anyway knew that Eileen would be dealing with all his calls, professional ones for invitations he didn’t want to accept, personal ones for lovers he no longer wanted to see.

  But now, when he emerged from his study, he began for the first time to ask: ‘Any calls I ought to know about?’

  ‘None, dear.’ She added humorously, ‘Unless you’re dying to go to the Paramount premiere on Thursday?’

  He groaned, she smiled, they sat down to their meal and she chatted to him about her day’s doings.

  Madame also began to listen for the telephone, and when it rang, she came hurrying to ask, ‘Who was it?’

  Eileen told her, but it was never what Madame wanted to hear. Until one day Eileen said, ‘Just someone selling something. So irritating, but poor things, they’re only trying to make a living.’ Two red spots had appeared on her cheekbones: Eileen was a very poor liar.

  Madame said, ‘If it’s Patty, he’d want to talk to her.’

  ‘I don’t think we should be disturbing him, do you,’ Eileen said, the spots on her cheeks a deeper red.

  ‘I’ll tell him. It’s important.’ Madame strode to the study door and raised a knuckle to knock.

  Before she could do so, Eileen had come up behind her and seized her hand. ‘I told her he’s busy. He’s doing his work.’

  ‘That’s not his work,’ Madame said. ‘His work is with her. They have to talk.’

  Eileen released her, but at the same time she said, ‘Please don’t disturb him.’ She spoke quietly, but herself a very self-controlled person, it was not difficult for her, when necessary, to exert control over others. Madame turned from the door, she went to her room, she lay down on the bed, she felt defeated.

  It was past noon by the time she emerged, and Theo and Eileen were together at the end of a companionable lunch. He had a screening at two, and before he left, Eileen said, ‘I think I’m in the mood to make my famous blanquette de veau for supper.’ And clearing away the dishes, ‘Will you be home, do you think?’

  He mused, ‘Tonight, hmm . . . Well, there’s the NYU prizegiving but I think I’m entitled to give it a miss. Yes, I believe I’ll be home.’

  Madame followed him into the entrance hall; she helped him into his fur-collared overcoat; it was one of her privileges. She gazed into his face; she told him, ‘Patty called. She wants to see you.’

  Eileen came out. ‘Oh goody, you’re still here . . . I wanted to ask you: about the wine? With the veal?’

  He decided the question and she returned to her tasks. He left but stopped on the threshold and came back again. He told his mother: ‘Would you call her and tell her I’ll drop in after my screening? About five? Five thirty?’

  She lived as he had suspected – like the messy students he had avoided, though on a di
fferent scale. There were many people, none of whom knew who he was or why he had come. Worst of all, she too stared at him. ‘What’s it about, sweetheart?’ But the next moment: ‘God yes! I’ve been thinking about you! We must talk! If you can find somewhere to sit.’

  There was actually very little furniture in the room, which seemed to function as a place of exercise or yoga. She herself was crosslegged on the floor, where he refused to join her, though she assured him that it was very good for the back. Instead he removed a teddy bear – did she have a child or was it hers to play with? – and lowered himself on to a seat. Telephones were ringing in the floors above where there was a lot of activity. She called, ‘No calls! Except if it’s Robyn!’

  ‘Robyn’s my agent,’ she explained. ‘She wanted to meet you but I said no, so it’s just you and I. She’s a terrific agent though, I’d die without her.’ She was snacking out of some little bowls, and now she stretched one up to him, but he held up his hand in refusal so she went on eating by herself.

  She said she wanted him to rewrite the part of the girl in his play to suit her, not as she had been but as she was now. She looked up at him from where she sat, not quite at his feet but nearly: without make-up, her hair loose, in jeans and polo shirt, her pearl earrings her only mark of status. She admitted that she may once have been like his little piano student but now she was – well, she said, smiling, snacking some more, while waiting for him to finish the sentence for her.

  ‘A very famous film star,’ he said, twisting his mouth into his sardonic smile.

  ‘No. That’s not me. I said no calls,’ she said to the young man who had entered with a telephone. ‘It’s Robyn,’ he said, and she took it and cried into it: ‘Angel! But of course I want to talk to you!’

  ‘I’m Simon,’ the young man told Theo. He was dressed exactly like Patty except he wore only one earring. He stood in front of Theo, examining him quite boldly. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ He shut one eye: ‘Something stronger?’ It may have been just his style, but his attitude and tone were distasteful to Theo, for whom such familiarity was overfamiliarity.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ Patty said into the phone before handing it back to Simon. He lingered – he picked up one of the empty bowls: ‘Should I get you some more yum-yum?’

  ‘No, but you should bugger off,’ Patty said pleasantly, making him depart with another wink at Theo, who chose not to see it.

  ‘Simon is English. He used to be with the Duke of Something and now he’s with me. Not what you think. Everything you think about me is wrong.’

  ‘So tell me what I should think.’ He spoke in the slightly flirtatious manner he instinctively adopted towards any woman with whom he expected to commit adultery.

  ‘You confuse me with the idiotic parts that Robyn and everyone gets for me because they think they are me. Maybe once upon a time years ago but now . . . ’

  ‘Now?’ he smiled, maybe patronising, but she was serious.

  ‘I’m twenty-eight years old. I’ve been married twice, both times to bastards. I have to support an entire gang who can’t stand each other. All they have in common is me. The same with my parents: my mother has to have very expensive spa treatments, so-called, and my father likes to take his young girlfriends on world cruises, and guess who pays. I’m not complaining – OK, that’s my life, but I don’t want anyone to think I’m a fourteen-year-old dumb showpiece. I don’t want you to think that.’

  He moved in – not yet physically, but speaking in a warm, sincere voice. ‘I want to know you as you really are. That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Well, what else! What else are you here for? Did you think it was for sex?’ Her tone made him draw back, thrown off his usually very stable centre. She shrugged. ‘Of course, it might happen, who knows. Though what idea could you have about someone like me? Only from books.’

  Irascible by nature, he was himself surprised by his mildly facetious response: ‘In the course of a not uneventful career, I have met one or two women. I might even say more than one or two . . . Plus I’ve been married for fifteen years.’

  ‘Not to someone like me.’

  He laughed at that, and it made her say, ‘I like the way you laugh – as if you haven’t done it for a hundred years.’ Now it was she who moved closer – actually, physically, to trace a finger along his high white brow. ‘But it would be interesting to know what goes on behind this.’

  Again mistaking the stage they had reached, he came forward with his lips poised towards hers. She took her finger from his forehead to push it against his chest. ‘Let’s have a first draft first, OK? And proceed from there.’ Her finger was like a lily stalk, but it felt like steel against his chest to hold him back.

  It was late when he left, long past the time when Eileen would have been serving her stew. Walking home across the Park, Theo was impassioned. Snowflakes were falling; he raised his face to them, looked up at the veiled moon. When he was halfway home, he turned back. Patty’s household was wide awake and she herself still in the room where he had left her – no longer on the floor but in a chair, with Simon kneeling in front of her, holding one of her feet to massage it.

  She didn’t seem surprised when Theo returned; people were always coming back to her. She laughed at his appearance – snowflakes on his fur collar, his cheeks flushed with cold and excitement. She said, ‘Take his coat, Simon’; to Theo she said as before, ‘If you can find somewhere to sit.’ Simon offered him the place on the floor where he had been kneeling. Theo, who knew how to deal with impudence, turned his back to let Simon divest him of his majestic overcoat.

  Now Theo sat close to Patty and talked ardently. Ideas surged in him, and she received them. Simon walked in and out, so did several others of her staff. She gave orders, took calls on her phone, she put on horn-rimmed spectacles to check a bill in which she pointed out some errors – all without relaxing her attention on Theo. He took her hand and kissed it. How right she was! It was not some little piano student but a woman like her both he and the play needed – one whom only she could help him to create.

  ‘Let me stay with you,’ he said.

  ‘What, tonight?’

  ‘And every night.’

  He had said this often before, but not as now. Icicles melted from around his heart; love and adoration flooded him. But he accepted it when she told him she had things she couldn’t get out of. ‘Come tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Or the day after. It’s going to be fun.’ Usually, at this time of departure, he had no difficulty taking a woman in his arms and looking into her eyes with promise. Here the whole air was filled with promise, and for a moment he was tempted to kneel in the place on the floor that Simon had offered him.

  His elation lasted, even though the next day she couldn’t see him, nor the day after. Before finishing his weekly column, he had opened a new file on his computer and begun work on his play. Now when he emerged for meals, the expression on his face made Eileen uneasy. It was the same as when he started on a new affair from which she would ultimately have to rescue him. Also, as happened at such times, she woke up at night to find him missing. But this time when she went down to the study, she found him working – though not as usual sitting upright at his computer with a small smile, as one vanquishing an enemy with ease. Now he appeared to be engaged in a struggle with himself, his hands deep inside his hair, making it stand up in anguish or ecstasy. She quickly shut the door before he could be aware of her intrusion.

  Her mother-in-law was standing outside, a column of fire in her scarlet dressing gown. She laid a finger on her lips. ‘He’s working,’ she said.

  ‘At two in the morning? He ought to be asleep.’

  ‘Poets never sleep,’ Madame informed her with a smile.

  Eileen tightened her mouth to prevent any disloyal word from escaping.

  Another time Eileen found him pacing the study, muttering to himself. She told him, ‘They called from the office.’ She hardly recognised the face he turned to her nor the way in which
he said, ‘Tell them to go to hell, would you.’ She complied in her own way – the same she used with women who had to be got rid of. The next day the call was more urgent, but when she told him, he waved her away dismissively: ‘Tell them to get what’s-his-name.’ This was the second-string critic, who had never before been allowed to stand in for Theo.

  Madame Sybille called Patty. ‘He’s working.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Patty said.

  ‘He’s up all night. He’s stopped sleeping. And eating,’ she added, not quite truthfully but it seemed right.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Patty.

  One night Madame concocted a special drink of coffee, hot milk, brandy and a dash of vermouth. When Eileen was in bed and presumably asleep, she carried it in to him. She found him slumped over his desk in exhaustion and she was proud of him. She peered at his computer but saw only the flickering logo of its pause. The printer was turned off, with sheets scattered from it all over the desk and the floor. ‘Drink this, son,’ she whispered into his ear and he half woke to take it from her.

  She said, ‘She called.’

  It may have been the drink that roused him completely. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked when you would have something to show her.’

  He gave her the empty glass and she tiptoed out with it. Next day she telephoned Patty: ‘He says he’s almost ready to read to you.’ Patty said she was excited.

  Madame brought the same drink to him every night. Usually she found him asleep, and before waking him, she surreptitiously counted the number of sheets scattered from the printer. When she gave him the drink, she always said, ‘She wants you to read to her.’ But after emptying the glass, he slumped back on to the desk. She kissed the top of his head and went out with the empty glass.