Read Online Hot Water Man by Deborah Moggach - Free Book Online

many do you have, er, Ayub? Your wife told me once.’
    â€˜More than sufficient, you might say. Three boys and two girls.’ Mr Samir cast his eyes down, perhaps out of modesty. This small man, in his shiny suit, had produced five children.
    They both gave another little laugh. Donald turned his attention to the fertilizer figures. The factory in Sukkur produced 1,200 tons of nitrogen-based compounds per month. He, Donald, was responsible for the selling and distribution of enough soil enricher for 500 square miles of otherwise barren desert. Remaining, apparently, unable to fertilize his wife.
    He looked at his watch and closed the file. ‘Half-past twelve. Um, Ayub, do you know where Fotheringay Road is? I’ve been searching all over the place. People keep giving me the wrong directions. I don’t think anyone knows, but they don’t seem to care to say so.’ Mr Samir stroked his bald head. ‘It’s where my grandfather lived. Somewhere near the old Military Lines.’
    â€˜The majority of them have been knocked down. You have asked me this before. And then the names have been changed.’
    â€˜That’s what makes it so tricky. Sorry to go on about it. My wife and I drove round last weekend. No one seems to make any maps.’ Not adding: the British were the last who did.
    â€˜The city has multiplied so much and so fast. Each year the maps must be changed.’ He shrugged, like an Italian waiter saying the restaurant is closed. ‘So we have no maps.’
    Indeed, in Frank Smythe’s business address book, written in that familiar, confident hand, most of the places said Behind this, or Opposite that, or Two Blocks from the Paradise Picture House. There were so few street names. No doubt it had all made sense to Frank.
    Mr Samir had excused himself and left. In a few moments he returned.
    â€˜I had a little brainwave,’ he said. ‘Our eldest peon has been living in that district for many years. I have asked him your question and he has come up with the answer. He thinks it might be now named Ajazuddin Road.’
    When the office closed Donald drove off. He would have one last try before he went home. Though interested during their first couple of searches, Christine now presumed 56 Fotheringay Road to be extinct and had rather fallen off in her support. At some point she had seemed to stop searching with him and start looking at him instead. In recent months she had grown so swiftly critical of what he did. Unfortunately, a change of country did not seem to be altering that. She probably thought that his anxiety for roots stemmed from some basic lack of identity. No doubt at some point she would want to talk this through.
    He slowed down behind a donkey cart. Other cars hooted their horns and swerved to pass. The driving here alarmed him. This was the main business street, once called Inverarity Street and now re-named I.I. Chundrigar Road. It was filled with exhaust fumes and hectic Toyota taxis. At every crossroads policemen stood on plinths, waving their batons and swivelling as if they were conducting an orchestra.
    Was he weak, to look back to this city’s past and prefer the crumbling buildings sagging between the office blocks? Christine, artistic and romantic, preferred them too, but then muddled it all up with Raj Oppression, British Imperialism, all that stuff. That made it difficult to talk. Clichés kept popping up and blocking the conversation, her expression changed, her pupils shrank when she talked like that.
    Cameron Chambers loomed up on his left. Solid dark stone. Above the door had been fixed a placard saying
Government of Sind: Division 3.
However, above each first-floor window was still carved the double C, knotted with stone foliage; the building could not rub away its old identity so easily. It was a landmark; in an address book you would write
Two Blocks from
. . . Once he had overheard a man say: ‘We will make a