A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  But sooner or later, Brigitte knew, Marshall would create the opportunity of being alone with her. He might give the impression of being unwieldy, but he was also subtle, at least in mental calculation. By next morning he had discovered the arrangement that his wife and sister-in-law had made with Shoki for their morning meal together. By the time Frances woke up, he was fully dressed and on the point of going out.

  ‘I need fresh air,’ he told her. ‘A stroll by the ocean.’ He didn’t usually tell her his plans, so she didn’t think it worth mentioning how far they actually were from the ocean. ‘How’s your headache?’ he said. ‘You had a headache. You’d better stay in bed and rest.’

  ‘Who is he anyway? Your little friend?’ was his first question to Brigitte. After opening the door to him, she had gone back to bed and he sat by the side of it, the vast hotel bed with the padded satin backrest.

  ‘He’s a prince. From one of those old Indian princely families. What do they call them? Maharajas.’ She had only just thought of this but it made sense.

  ‘Yes, and look at you: a Maharani.’

  She did look royal, leaning against her pillows, one side of her silken nightie slipped down from her broad shoulder – divine even, a goddess emerging out of a flood of rumpled shiny satin sheets. He murmured to her in a voice that had gone thick, so that she knew soon he would be climbing in next to her, and she would let him. It had happened before in their many years together as in-laws, and the only thing surprising to her was that it should still be happening.

  ‘Frankie will be here any minute,’ she said afterwards to Marshall, who showed every indication of staying right where he was next to her.

  ‘My wife has a headache and I advised her to rest.’ But he was good-natured about letting her push him out of bed and smirked a bit as he climbed back into his trousers.

  Then he became practical. He said he wanted her to return with them to New York – why wait? Everything was ready for her arrival.

  ‘Oh, you bought it, did you? The apartment Frankie was talking about?’

  ‘You don’t need an apartment. We have one. It’s enormous. It’s big. Much too big for just two people now that the kids are – where are they?’

  ‘In Hong Kong.’

  ‘Yes and Buenos Aires. What are Frances and I supposed to do rattling around by ourselves in a place that size? It’s ridiculous.’ He frowned at the impracticality of it, and she laughed at his impudence.

  ‘So you and I would be like this every day of our lives from now on?’

  ‘It makes perfect sense. We shouldn’t be wasting time, having to commute from one apartment to another, secret rendezvous and all that nonsense.’ He spoke with the decision of a man of business, the chairman of the board. She smiled a bit, but she said, ‘You really have to leave now.’

  He took his time about it, strolled around the suite, stood at a window to frown at the city of Los Angeles and its giant billboards. ‘I don’t know how you can live in a place like this. No climate. No history.’

  ‘I didn’t know you cared about history.’

  ‘Only my own. Grandmothers and so on. Great-grandmothers. New York.’

  ‘What about Poland and Russia?’

  ‘That’s too far back. By the way, I saw him this morning – your princely friend.’

  ‘He has a room in the hotel.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have spent the night in it. I’m just guessing of course – but he looked like someone sneaking in after a night on the tiles.’

  ‘What would you know about tiles, Marshall?’

  ‘Nothing. And I won’t have to, if we make this arrangement I mentioned to you. No sneaking out, or back in.’

  On his third and last evening in Los Angeles, Marshall hired a limousine to take his two ladies to dinner. The restaurant he had chosen was one known to other East Coast bankers and to West Coast attorneys from old-established family firms. It was very different from the ones Brigitte usually went to, but she didn’t mind; it was Frances who said, ‘Why do we have to come here? We might as well have stayed in New York.’

  Brigitte was surprised; she had never heard a note of rebellion from Frances in the face of any decision made by Marshall. And what was also surprising was that Marshall did not wither her with one of his looks but concentrated on reading the menu.

  ‘Don’t you hate it?’ Frances asked her sister. ‘I hate it.’ She was actually sulking, and still Marshall continued to read the menu.

  The restaurant was a fantasy of an opulent New York eating place recreated by earlier settlers in the Californian desert. It was dark with antique lamps throwing insufficient light and thick carpets and velvet drapes shutting out the rest of it. There was a buffet table overloaded with silver dishes and with giant fruits and flowers that appeared to be a replica of those in the varnished still-lifes on the walls.

  ‘Lobster,’ Marshall said, returning the menu to the waiter. This waiter was no out-of-work actor but an elderly professional, Italian or Swiss, who had been with the restaurant for over forty years and would soon be mourning its closing. He hovered over Frances, who was unable to make a choice of dishes, but when Marshall said, ‘You could have the lobster too,’ she quickly ordered a green salad with a light dressing.

  ‘You know what?’ she said to Brigitte. ‘He’s let that apartment go. And it would have been so perfect for you! Now where are you supposed to live in New York? In another hotel? Then you might as well stay in Beverly Hills – I should think you’d want to stay here. My goodness, who wouldn’t. And I don’t suppose it’s occurred to anyone that I’d like to be near my sister. That I’m sick of having her live at the opposite end of the world.’

  ‘Not the world, darling,’ Brigitte said. ‘Just the country.’

  ‘Frances has always been a dunce in geography,’ Marshall said. He tried to sound playful but was too saturnine. He had tucked his table napkin under his chin and was expertly excavating the meat from a lobster claw. He ate and drank the way he had done throughout his life and would continue till he could do so no more. It was natural for a man like him to be companioned by a handsome woman, even by two of them.

  These two were no longer discussing the pros and cons of living in New York or Los Angeles but whether Shoki was a prince. Brigitte had raised the question and Frances had taken it up with such pleasure that Marshall felt he had at once to squash it. He said, ‘They don’t have princes any more. They’ve been abolished. They’re all democratic now, whatever that might mean. And they’re all poor. No more jewels and elephants.’

  ‘Money’s got nothing to do with it,’ Frances said. ‘Anyone can have money. Anyone. But look at the graceful way he moves.’

  ‘And the delicate way he eats.’

  Marshall wiped the butter from his chin. He said, ‘It’s time I took you two back to New York.’

  ‘I found a lovely apartment for Brigitte and you let it go.’

  Brigitte felt Marshall nudge her knee under the table. She was used to this gesture from him, though today it was another kind of plea. She denied it in her usual way, by moving her knee out of his reach. But she said, ‘Why don’t you tell her your grand plan?’

  ‘It’s simple common sense,’ Marshall said, losing no ounce of authority. ‘Our apartment is big enough for ten people, let alone three.’

  After a moment of shock, ‘You’re completely insane,’ Frances told him. She turned on her sister. ‘And you listened to him? You sat and listened and didn’t say a word to me?’

  She pushed back her chair, rushed from the table. No one looked up from their plates; even when she stumbled against their chairs, the diners carried on dining. The waiters too kept their eyes lowered, so did the maitre d’ while guiding her towards the ladies’ room, where he opened and held the door for her.

  ‘Ah, the pièce de résistance,’ Marshall said as their waiter came towards them bearing the chocolate soufflé. The critical moment of its departure from the oven had now been reached and it rose ab
ove its dish in a splendidly browned dome.

  Brigitte said, ‘You are a fool, Marshall.’

  ‘Today is not my lucky day,’ Marshall said. ‘She calls me crazy, you call me a fool. Why fool? How fool? She’s always telling me how she misses you, and you I guess miss her. Sisters, after all . . . I wonder how they get it to this consistency; I suppose that’s why it has to be ordered in advance.’

  Brigitte too was enjoying every bit of the soufflé, but she said, ‘I’m going to see how she’s doing.’

  ‘Explain it to her – how it’s best for everyone.’

  ‘Best for you.’ Under the table she moved her knee further away. ‘I’ll explain that to her; after all these years maybe she ought to know.’

  ‘Did you ever tell Louis?’

  ‘Tell on you? He’d have laughed. He knew how I wouldn’t give you the time of day.’

  ‘Sometimes you give it to me. The time of day.’ Over the table his lips curved in a smile, under it his knee went in pursuit of hers.

  ‘I’d better go. This table is not big enough for you and me.’

  ‘But the apartment is enormous, as I keep saying. Have a second helping, be a devil. Well, I will then,’ he said and was already digging his spoon in when she left.

  A tiny old oriental attendant welcomed Brigitte into her pink kingdom. Brigitte could see Frances’s elegant shoes and ankles under a stall so she took an adjoining one. She said, ‘It’s me.’

  ‘I know. I can see your feet, and I wish you wouldn’t wear those kinds of teenage sandals.’ Frances’s voice was steady; she had not been crying but she had been thinking, and now she announced her decision. ‘I’m not going back with him. I’m staying with you.’ But when Brigitte said nothing, Frances’s voice was less firm. ‘I’m staying with you and Shoki.’ She pulled the lever in her stall and went out.

  Brigitte lingered inside; she could hear the excited birdlike voice of the attendant communicating with Frances in what sounded like Chinese but could not have been for Frances was able to respond. When Brigitte emerged, the attendant addressed her in the same birdsong, offering fragrant soap and towel. Frances was already wiping her hands on hers, and since neither of them spoke, the little attendant took over the conversation. They gathered that she was distressed about her job, which she had held for twenty years, and now they had been informed by the management that the restaurant was closing. Suddenly she was crying; tiny tears ran down her wizened cheeks, slightly rouged. Brigitte made comforting noises at her.

  Frances was staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dry, her face was set. She said, ‘You can’t send me back with him because I won’t go.’

  ‘Who’s sending you back?’

  ‘I haven’t heard you say stay.’

  Brigitte was using her towel to wipe away the attendant’s tears. She told her, ‘You’ll find another job. Anyone would like to have you in their home.’

  The attendant praised Brigitte for her kindness. She went on to explain that she was not weeping for herself but for the others, the old men whom no one would ever again want to employ. She herself had a son and a daughter, both of whom did not want her to work any more. She took the towel wet with her own tears and gave Brigitte a fresh one.

  ‘You don’t need to feel sorry for the whole world,’ Frances said. ‘And you heard her – she has a son and a daughter who care for her.’

  ‘Of course I want you to stay,’ Brigitte said. ‘I don’t know what gave you the idea I don’t. Shall we go back now?’

  ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘I mean go back to the hotel. He’s all right. He’s having another helping of chocolate soufflé.’ She found a fifty-dollar bill in her purse and put it in the tactful little saucer. ‘That’s too much,’ Frances said outside, though she herself, usually more careful, overtipped the valet who whistled up a cab for them.

  One evening a few weeks later Shoki gave Brigitte a lovely surprise. He came to her suite dressed up in a high-collared jacket of raw silk – Indian, but he had had it made in Beverly Hills. ‘I showed them exactly what to do, how to cut it – you really like it?’

  ‘Love it, love it; love you,’ and she kissed his cheek in the beautiful way of friendship they had with each other.

  He had been invited to a charity premiere and he asked her to come along. He assured her his host had taken a table for twelve.

  ‘Ralph?’

  ‘No, someone else, another friend.’ There was sure to be room, someone or other always dropped out.

  ‘What about Frankie?’

  ‘Of course; let’s take Frankie.’

  Frances said she was waiting for a call but might join them later. Her call came exactly when she was expecting it. Marshall telephoned the same time every evening. It was always when he was home from the office or a board meeting and was having his martini by the fireplace in the smaller drawing room (called the library, though they had never had many books). She imagined him wearing slippers and maybe his velvet housecoat; or if he was going out, he might have begun to dress.

  ‘Isn’t tonight the Hospital Benefit?’ When he yawned and said he didn’t feel like going, she urged, ‘Marshall, you have to. You’re on the board.’

  ‘I guess I have to. But to turn up there by myself – ’ He always left such sentences unfinished. She waited; perhaps tonight he would say more. Instead he became more irritated. ‘Marie can’t find any of my dress shirts – do you think she drinks?’

  ‘Marie! After all this time!’

  ‘Who knows? Servants need supervision. Someone to make them toe the line.’ Perhaps suspecting that she had begun to preen herself, he said, ‘I’ll send from the office to buy some new ones. What about you? You want any of your stuff sent out there?’

  She hesitated; it was true she was running short of the underclothes that were specially made for her by a Swiss lady in New York. But the subject of her underclothes was not one she ever intruded on her husband, so she murmured, ‘I’m all right for now.’

  ‘For now? What’s that supposed to mean?’ She was silent, and then he almost asked, though grudgingly, what she was waiting to hear: ‘Are you intending to stay out there forever or what?’

  He sounded so put out – so fed up – and it was her fault. She said, ‘What can I do, Marshall? Brigitte just likes it better here.’

  ‘She thinks she does. She’s from New York. She was born here like the rest of us, why would she want to be in that joke place out there? Where is she, by the way?’

  ‘She’s gone out. It’s a premiere. A big event. She wants me to join her later. Do you think I should?’

  ‘You should do what you want, not what she wants. Though why anyone would want to go to a thing like that. “A Premiere. A Big Event.” Tcha. You’d be better off at the benefit with me.’

  ‘Marshall? You know my dresser? In the last drawer there are some bits and pieces I might need. If it’s not too much trouble. Just some bras. And girdles.’

  ‘I didn’t know you wore girdles.’

  ‘They look like panties but actually they’re tummy control.’ She was glad he couldn’t see her face – it was the most intimate exchange they had had in years. ‘Marie can pack them.’

  ‘If she’s not too drunk.’

  ‘Marie is practically a teetotaller.’

  ‘You’re the easiest person in the world to fool,’ he said.

  Shoki had been right and there were two empty places at his host’s table. This host was a powerful studio head but a far more modern type than Louis had been. He was from the Midwest and had been to some good schools in the east; still in his thirties, he was well groomed, well informed, smart. The guests at his table were there for their fame, their money or their youth and beauty. Brigitte’s celebrity was in the past but that gave her an aura of historical tradition, and she kept having to raise her cheek for the tribute offered to her by other guests. Each table was ornamented by someone like Shoki, with no claim whatsoever to celebrity. Some w
ere girls, others young men or almost boys, some were very lively, some totally silent – it didn’t seem to matter as long as they were visibly there and known to be attached to a powerful member at the table. Shoki and his host hardly acknowledged one another, except that from time to time the older man’s eyes stabbed towards the younger, maybe just in an instinctive gesture of checking on the security of possession. He could be entirely relaxed – Shoki gave all his attention to Brigitte next to him and to the matron on his other side, a former star. He was lightheartedly laughing and making them laugh.

  But there was tension – not emanating from their table but from elsewhere. Her eyes roaming around the room, Brigitte soon discovered Ralph. He was craning in their direction and even half rose in his chair as though intending to leave his place and make his way towards theirs. But it was impossible – the room was packed, each table crowded and the spaces between them thronged with guests still trying to find their place or changing it for a more desirable one, while the servers weaved and dodged among them with their platters and wine bottles.

  Although without an invitation card, Frances looked too distinguished not to be let in. But once inside, she had no idea which way to turn to locate Brigitte among this crowd of strangers, strange beings who all knew or knew of one another. She stood there, dazed by the din and glitter. Then she heard her name called: ‘Are you all right?’

  It was Ralph. He settled her into an empty chair beside him and tried to revive her with wine. She preferred water. ‘For my aspirin,’ she said, taking her pill box out of her evening purse.