The Moors Last Sigh

confessed, with an odd combination of girlishness and defiance. ‘Finally, somebody to curl up with, and gossip through the night with a bottle of rum and a couple of packs of ciggies. My bloody sisters were never any fucking use.’
    What nights? When? And in Mynah’s digs there wasn’t enough room for a spare chair, let alone an extra mattress: so where had this ‘curling up’ occurred? ‘I hear you’ve been hanging your tongue out, by the way,’ my sister’s voice said in my ear, and was it just the hyper-sensitivity of love or was I actually being warned off? ‘Little bro, let me give you a tip: no chance. Go hunt a different chicky. This one prefers hens.’
    I did not know what to make of these telephone calls, particularly as Uma’s telephone in Baroda was never answered. At the shoot of a Baby Softo television commercial, amid the gurgles of seven well-talcumed babies, I was so distracted by my inner wranglings that I neglected the simple task I had been given – that is, to make sure, with the help of a stop-watch, that the powerful klieg-lights were never on the babies for more than one minute in five – and was jerked from my reverie only by the wrath of the camera crew, the shrieks of mothers, and the wails of the babies as they began, bubbling and blistering, to fry. I fled in shame and confusion from the studio and found Uma sitting on the doorstep, waiting for me. ‘Let’s go for dosa, yaar,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’
    And of course over lunch she showed me that everything had a perfectly reasonable explanation. ‘I wanted to know you,’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears, ‘I wanted to amaze you with how hard I had tried to learn everything there is to know. Also I want to be close to your blood family, close as blood, or closer even. Now you must know that our poor Minnie is a little bothered-up by God; out of friendship I asked her questions and she, poor holy dear, got the wrong end of the stick. Me a nun! Don’t kid me, mister. And that Devil line was just a joke. I meant, if Minnie is on the God squad then you and me and everybody normal is on the Devil’s team, isn’t it?’ And all the while my face cradled in her hands, her hands caressing mine as they had at our first meeting; her face suffused with such love, such pain at having been doubted … and Mynah? – I persisted, though it felt like an act of appalling cruelty to continue to interrogate so loving, so devoted a creature. ‘Of course I came to see her. For her sake I joined in her fight. And because I can sing, I sang. So what?’ And curling up ? ‘O goodness. If you want to know who is the lady’s lady, you complete ignoramus, look at your tough-guy sis, not me. Sharing a bed is nothing, in college we girls do it all the time. But curling up is your Philomina’s wet dream, excuse me for being frank. Yes, frankly, I am pretty angry. I try to make friends and you all accuse me of being a holy roller and a liar and even fucking your sister. What are you people that you act so nasty? Why can’t you see that I have done everything for love?’ The big splashy tears were bouncing off her empty plate. Misery had not affected her healthy appetite.
    ‘Stop, please stop,’ I begged, apologising. ‘I’ll never – never again …’
    Her smile burst through her tears, so bright that I almost expected a rainbow.
    ‘Maybe it’s time’, she breathed, ‘that I proved to you that I am hetero as hell.’

    And she was seen with Abraham Zogoiby himself, wolfing club sandwiches by the poolside at the Willingdon Club before losing gracefully to the old man at golf. ‘She was a wonder, that Uma of yours,’ he told me years later, high in his I. M. Pei Eden. ‘So knowledgeable, so original, and staring so intently with those swimming-pool eyes. Never seen anything like them since I first gazed upon your mother’s own face. God knows how much I babbled on! My own children had no interest – you, for example, my only son! – and an old man must talk to someone. I would have employed her on the spot but she said she had to prioritise her art. And Jesus Christ, the tits on her. Tits the size of your head.’ He cackled disgustingly and made a perfunctory apology without troubling to put the faintest trace of sincerity into his voice. ‘What to tell you, boy, women have been my lifetime weakness.’ Then suddenly a great cloud did pass across his face. ‘We both lost your beloved mother because we