Free My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey Page B

said my name, or so I thought. The rain was loud and the storm water roaring along the deep drains and I had that feeling of alienation, of disconnectedness, one gets when talking in the middle of a set in Ronnie Scott’s. But there was no mistaking the sodden tweed trousers protruding below the plastic.
    Mr Chubb?
    Miss Wode-Douglass.
    In the shouted conversation that ensued, he made me understand that the Sikh had refused him entrance to the hotel.
    You could have telephoned me.
    I tried. You had instructed the operator not to disturb you.
    Of course I had made no such request. This could only have been Slater’s doing, and for the first time I appreciated how unbearable a busybody he was.
    I escorted my peculiar friend back across Jalan Treacher to the gleaming canopy of the hotel. Here, under the watchful eye of the turbaned doorman, I shook out my umbrella and waited while Christopher Chubb carefully removed the plastic bag and, much as he had with the manuscript’s protective wrapper, fastidiously refolded it for later use. For all this great care, his ancient suit was sodden.
    The doorman was waiting, ready for us. Memsahib, he said, I am so sorry, this man cannot come into the hotel.
    He is my guest.
    Yes, I am sorry. It is forbidden.
    I was not ignorant of the role of Sikhs as warriors, but I am English and it is sometimes forgotten that we are fearsome warriors as well. Please get out of my way, I said.
    If need be I would have struck his testicles with my umbrella and doubtless he saw my face, which has always, so my father said, betrayed my intentions as clearly as a traffic light.
    It is forbidden, he said, but I was a hateful imperialist with an angry, goaty face. He stepped aside to let us in.
    As Chubb and I crossed the foyer, both of us literally dripping wet, we had similar encounters with three other members of staff, each of whom retreated before my obvious resolve. So it was with no small sense of triumph that I brought my guest to the sixth floor and escorted him into my room.
    I had barely closed the door behind us when the phone rang.
    You are being very foolish, said John Slater.
    I hung up but he called right back.
    Don’t you think you should listen to my story, Micks?
    No.
    Darling, you do expect me to pay for your room?
    That really did anger me and I was quickly on the brink of that dizzy precipice from which I might launch into delicious actions I would later regret. However, I had learned a thing or two since I slapped my father’s face in the Café Royal. John, I said, I will meet you in The Pub at five o’clock.
    I then took the phone off the hook and double-locked and chained the door. With that achieved I could consider my wretched guest: a monk hunched inside his hairy suit.
    I’m so pleased you could come, I said, but even while escorting him to the window, where two chairs faced eachother across the breakfast trolley, I became aware of an odour. It was reminiscent of cabbage, cheese, apricot jam, and something unidentifiable but decidedly local. It was, not to be too polite about it, a repulsive smell, produced by adding water to a well-loved suit. A dab of Vicks at the nostrils might have masked it, but I had nothing mentholated, merely a slightly hysterical response to alien smells.
    I’m so sorry about your suit, I said.
    Been through worse, Mem.
    Then I recalled the batik I’d bought on Batu Road. I had intended it as a gift for my friend Annabelle but now donated it to Christopher Chubb. Give me your suit, I said.
    He backed away, holding out his palms as if to keep me away. No, no, so old already.
    I suppose I wrinkled my nose. I do believe I may have opened the window. Whatever I did, it is hardly to my credit that he was made to understand.
    Very, very sorry, he said.
    I was mortified on his behalf but there was no choice but to fill out the dry-cleaning list.
    It stinks, isn’t it?
    I’m sorry the batik isn’t nicer, I said, signing my name to the chit.
    My suit