Free The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach Page A

knew their names because she was organizing their travel arrangements: Mrs. Evelyn Greenslade, a lady from Chichester, who wrote in longhand; Mr. and Mrs. Ainslie from Beaworthy, Devon. They sounded genteel and, judging by the addresses, well-heeled. Plans for state assistance had long been abandoned as unworkable; this was a purely private enterprise. One of their customers had even inquired about shipping out her antique furniture; that was the sort of person they were attracting. Some of them would have already been installed by the time Pauline flew out with her father at the end of the month.
    Why had her father changed his mind? Pauline never found out. Fully recovered from his operation, he seemed to be looking forward to his new life in Bangalore. “Raring to go,” he said. He had had his immunizations; he had even sorted out some lightweight clothes from his travels in the tropics and crowed over the fact that they still fit him. Norman’s imminent departure had changed Ravi’s attitude toward his father-in-law; he had become more tolerant of the old boy, almost fond. The day before, he had even managed a mild joke, about buying a new saucepan.
    Pauline’s own feelings were mixed. In her present state, the flight itself filled her with panic. What happened if one of her copious periods suddenly began? She pictured the charnel house it would create in the British Airways toilet. Would there be Tampax in India? She had always been curious about Ravi’s home country, but this voyage back to his roots was not the one she had envisaged. She was going to leave her father in a strange land, in the company of people he had never met. It was like taking a child to boarding school—in this case, halfway across the earth—and leaving him there, the new boy in class. She would walk away, eyes swimming. She pictured him behind her, waving his stick in farewell … a small figure, growing smaller.
    Pauline eased her way downstairs. She had wedged a Kotex between her legs; the plastic shifted. Her father sat in the lounge, reading the “Deaths” column in the Daily Telegraph . He liked to sit there with his morning coffee, totting up the suddenly s and peacefully s.
    She paused for a moment, looking at the blotches on the top of his head. “Good day today?” She indicated the paper.
    “Pretty good.” He pointed with his pencil. “Eight of them older than me. Seventy-nine … eighty-two. Only a couple younger and they’re suddenly s. Probably poofters with AIDS.”
    “Dad!” Norman only totted up men. When it came to mortality, women didn’t count. “Could be car crashes,” she said. “Could be anything.”
    It was Saturday. Pauline should be going to the supermarket, but she didn’t feel like moving. There was a silence. She wanted to tell her father so much but she didn’t know where to begin. And he wasn’t going to start, not after fifty-one years.
    “Got punkawallah in the crossword,” he said. “Chaps who fan you, in India.”
    “I wouldn’t mind one of those.” She didn’t say for my hot flushes . Though only too frank about sex, Norman was embarrassed by women’s intimate arrangements. She said: “Remember, you can always come home.”
    “Not on your nelly.”
    “The other people sound very nice,” Pauline said. “There’s a civil servant and somebody who worked in the BBC. A Dorothy Miller. Mostly women, of course.” She thought: They stay alive longer than men.
    Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. These damn mood swings. Now that her father was leaving, his possessions already had the power to move her—his slippers in particular. She would have to throw away the piece of paper she had pinned by the front door: Checklist: Teeth. Fly. Bus Pass. Keys.
    “Another old biddy left in Casualty,” Norman said, showing her the paper. “Here, on the front page.” He started to chortle. “Remember what’s-her-face, the one who got your hubby into trouble?”
    “Muriel