The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach Page B

transformed—look, our lettuce comes from Kenya, our Raleigh bikes are made in Korea, our sneakers in Taiwan—”
    “I’ve never had any sneakers,” said Evelyn.
    “That’s the new global economy.”
    “Perhaps I should get some; they’re supposed to be so comfortable.”
    “I remember talking to a chap who was harvesting the next field—remember that huge field at the end of the garden? Stonking great combine harvester. Said he had a flat in Eilat, for the scuba diving, harvested in Sussex and Israel and Saudi, traveled all over the world. Chap who drove the tractor came from Poland—”
    “What are you talking about, dear?”
    Christopher had stopped, with a little sigh. While she was pruning her forsythia, it seemed, the world had been transformed.
    Beverley gazed at the doctor’s photo. “Honest, I’d go there myself if I was old.”
    She left. Evelyn stood at the window and watched her manicurist scuttling through the rain. Beverley opened the car door. Faint sounds of yapping came from the interior; it was her West Highland terrier, Mischief. Beverley flung her case into the backseat. Then she drove away, the loose exhaust pipe rattling.
    Evelyn stood there, watching the rain lash the rhododendrons. How strange, she thought; if I went to India, which I can’t possibly imagine doing, it would be Beverley whom I would miss the most.

 
We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.
     
S AYINGS OF THE B UDDHA
     
     
    D orothy Miller lived in a block of flats next to Madame Tussaud’s. Outside, day and night, traffic roared down the Marylebone Road. Dorothy had always been a poor sleeper. Lying in bed, she listened to the cars passing in waves, rising, then subsiding.
    Through the wall, however, was silence. The waxworks stood, mute in their celebrity. Dorothy hadn’t been in there in years but she sensed their presence, keeping watch with her through the night. Queens and murderers, mistresses and presidents, their selves had long since died but their replicas remained, forever poised—a hand raised, eyes gazing nowhere. During the war they had been stored in an adjacent building. One night, in a bombing raid, the roof was blown off; when the rescue teams arrived they had stared, appalled, at the heap of limbs.
    Dorothy lived alone. She thought: If these flats were bombed, people would rescue their photo albums before they rescued me. She was used to this sensation. Sometimes, in fact, she got a certain satisfaction from it. After all, she had had an interesting life, as interesting as that led by many of the effigies next door. Sometimes, half-asleep, she imagined them stirring themselves and stretching their limbs; she imagined them ageing.
    Some of them, in fact, she had met during her career; some she had featured in programs. Dorothy had worked at the BBC, in current affairs. She had traveled widely and been involved in some of the history on the other side of the wall. It was many years now, however, since she had retired. Arthritis confined her to the flat, sometimes for days at a time. It was on the ground floor. Each day, outside her kitchen, a queue formed for the waxworks—students, Japanese tourists. As she brewed her coffee the people gazed through the window. They peered closer, unnerving her, until one day she realized: Of course they’re not looking at me. They’re inspecting their own reflections in the glass.
    Increasing years, of course, render us invisible as if in preparation for our eventual disappearance. Dorothy had never been a head-turner but she had always been smartly dressed—a sophisticated woman who had never married though there were rumors of an affair with an actor, himself married, now long since dead. Inquiries about her private life were not welcome; in fact, nobody would think of attempting to make them.
    In recent years chronic pain had made her short-tempered. What was happening to the world? Had she