“An antidepressant?”
“Whatever. It keeps massive anxiety away. I want to feel normal.”
“It’s more normal to experience anxiety than it is to be blank.”
“What I feel most of the time is dread,” she said. “As though some catastrophe is about to befall me.”
“It has. Do you remember what you told me your father did to you?”
“Why shouldn’t I remember that? I don’t hate him. He was having a terrible time. It’s not your family.”
“At college once you told me how much you loved him. ‘He’s so tender,’ you said.”
She said, “Is that so strange? He always kissed and petted me. He’d lose his temper and call us stupid, but he was never not a fond father.” She was lying back on the pillow. “You wanted me to be a feminist and gave me those books. It was new then. You remember that woman—Fiona? She was one of the organisers against my father. I saw her on the picket line and then at college. She was hugely fat with her breasts wobbling everywhere, wearing dungarees and big earrings.”
“She was on TV last night, defending a bill to keep people without trial.”
“Is she thin? Jamal, did you want me to be a different kind of woman?”
I said, “We were a dissenting generation. People like your father—we called them capitalists then—we hated on principle. In other European cities, people like us were kidnapping and killing capitalists.”
“You didn’t want to do that. You couldn’t kill anyone.”
I said, “I was always furious with my parents, my father in particular. It seemed odd to me that you loved your parents without any hatred.”
We were silent; I thought she’d fallen asleep. “Jamal,” she said, “earlier this evening my brother told me what my father did to you. Why didn’t you say anything to me? I told you everything, but you didn’t reciprocate.”
“How could I have added to your troubles?” I went on, “When you were in India, I was frantic missing you. My first thought in the morning was: Will this be the day she rings? It was a terrible separation. For a while it broke me.”
She ran her hands over her face and through her hair. “No, no, Jamal! You’re saying I didn’t think of you? I even wrote you letters—you remember those thin blue airmail letters?—which I never posted. I loved London, but how could I go back there after the strike?
“My nightmares weren’t about my father raping me night after night but about that screaming mob outside the factory, students like us hurling lumps of wood and bricks. They reduced my dad to despair. He was a hardworking man expelled from Africa, trying to make everything all right for his family.” She went on: “I went to America with Mustaq for a fresh start. I worked in fashion, designing clothes. That was my family trade.”
We lay there without speaking for a while. Occasionally, we heard laughter and voices in the yard; otherwise there was silence.
“I knew, Jamal, you didn’t want to marry me. You were just beginning to move into the world; you were assured and energetic, keen to get on. In India I was going mad, I can’t tell you how mad. What I needed was stability, a husband. I couldn’t do that with you.”
“Did you get a husband?”
“I found a good man, probably too good. It was impossible to do him wrong without hurting. But Mustaq was keen on him, and paid for everything. He set him up in business.”
She spoke more of her children, work, daily life. I stayed awake for as long as I could, listening for her words, then her breath, thinking of Wolf, Valentin and our life together, and of what Ajita and I might want from each other tomorrow; and I thought of the presence standing between us, her father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was late morning when I made it downstairs. Ajita had long left my bed.
Wearing a tracksuit, Mustaq was sitting at the table with his computer, eating strawberries and melon with his fingers. A couple of people sat at the other end of the table in silence, looking as though they’d just walked out of an explosion.
Mustaq poured me some juice. “I won’t speak too loudly,” he said. “It was a good night for me too. I haven’t been to bed. I called my trainer at four and got him to drive up for an early-morning session. Then I told my manager to prepare my studio. I haven’t enjoyed playing music for years. You know, Dad hated me playing the piano. One time, when I was at school, he had my keyboards removed and dumped. Do you think that could have inhibited me later?”
“Very likely.”
“Our conversation yesterday turned me on, Jamal. I have a nutritionist and a life coach. Now I have you to inspire me.”
“You do?”
“The great new bands are British, and they sing in English. Help me to write again, friend, about my childhood and my father. There aren’t that many rock stars whose fathers have been murdered. Where should I begin?”
“With whatever occurs to you.”
“Okay, thanks.” He began to type, saying, “It begins with you—walking into our house one day, looking at my sister with extreme happiness and smiling across at shy me, as if you understood everything about me, and whatever I did was okay.”
I poured coffee inside me but couldn’t keep any food down. Leaving Mustaq to gesticulate and hum at the computer screen, I walked across the fields for an hour, and then waited for lunch.
Champagne was brought round. Repeatedly lifting a glass might well have exhausted the last of my strength, but there were many places to lie down. That dreamy afternoon it occurred to me, as my eyes flickered, that to lie on a chaise longue at Mustaq’s, while others talked and drank, or played cards and listened to music, as gentle staff moved among you with trays of this and that, was the most perfect condition anyone could inhabit.
“Why hasn’t this occurred to me before?” I said. “That this is what money is for?” I had opened my eyes and noticed Henry standing above me, grinning. “This is what we’ve been expostulating about for years, my friend. Capitalism unfurled. Here it is, and here we are. This is the life!”
He bent down to kiss me. “Take it easy! Nothing’s ever that good!”
“Don’t say that!”
“Couldn’t George have afforded anything cheaper?” This was Miriam, rattling over me, laughing and chattering. For a moment she lay down beside me, her face close to mine, whispering frantically in my ear, “Oh, thank you so much, Brother, for bringing me here. You’ve changed my life completely and forever in the last year. You’ve been kinder to me than Father ever was. I had to let you know that, and now you know it.”
She kissed me and went to join Ajita, who had just got up. Watching my sister cross the room, in a long-sleeved tee-shirt, tight embroidered jeans and high heels, I realised how much weight she’d lost, at least three stone. Her face was almost gaunt and heavily lined, but now it was no longer studded with nuts and bolts, her eyes appeared larger, and her face shone with enthusiasm. She seemed to have retired from motherhood to become a man’s woman, or “partner.” Adopting some of Valerie’s grandiosity, she now liked to begin her sentences with phrases like “As the girlfriend of a leading theatrical producer…”
Henry sat with me. “You didn’t tell me Ajita would be so beautiful.”
“Is she the most beautiful of my girlfriends?”
“She might well turn out to be, but it’s still early days for you. Why don’t we go for a stroll?”
“I’m well embedded here.”
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “It isn’t a secret I want to keep.” He put his arm around me. “Show me where to go.”
I followed him. At the door of the kitchen we put on Wellington boots. Outside, I laughed as he stared at the sculptures. Before he could say anything, I said, “They’re Alan’s art.”
I noticed, beside another barn, a studio made of glass and new wood. The doors were open and I could see two drawing boards; on the floor there were pieces of cut and uncut metal, some of them painted—Alan’s workshop.
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��That looks good,” I said. “Maybe I should suggest the architect to Mum and Billie. They’re looking to get a studio built in their garden. Did they tell you?”
“Yes, I heard about it,” said Henry.
Miriam had taken him to lunch with Billie and Mum not long ago; and Henry had taken the two older women to the opera on another occasion, when he had been offered tickets. Far from being the anticipated and necessary wedge between parent and child, Henry, the new lover, characteristically failed Miriam—to her irritation. He not only liked Mum and Billie and shared their interest in the visual arts, he didn’t take Miriam’s complaints seriously. “Oh, she’s far better than most mothers,” he’d say. “You can talk to her about anything! You should have met my mother, a woman whose hysteria and depression could have infected Europe!”
Now Henry said to me, “I saw a woman last night, at Kama Sutra, a place we’ve started to go to. It was dark. She attracted me, I have to admit. But I couldn’t stop thinking that I recognised her. She was wearing heels and a mask and some other skimpy stuff. She was thinner than I remembered, but it was her posture, her hair that reminded me of Josephine.”
I sighed. “My Josephine?”
“Jamal, I had no idea what she was doing there, whether it was her first time or whether she was a regular.”
Josephine had always had a leisurely walk, daydreaming as she went, swinging her arms. I had often wondered, How can anyone walk so slowly and still move forward? We would go separately to parties, so as not to have to walk at different speeds.
I said, “It’s quite a change for Josephine, to go to a place like that. But most of her friends are just people she feels sorry for, and her boyfriend dumped her. At least that’s what I guessed. He was around for a while, then seemed to disappear. I asked Rafi, who said she found him boring.”
Henry said, “I went into a bit of a panic. Miriam was busy. I lost my excitement. I knew it would be a big deal for you—for anyone. I followed her from room to room. She seemed completely distracted.”
“Did you talk to her?” He shook his head. “Did she recognise you or Miriam?”
“God, no. Even I haven’t spoken to anyone about it. I tell Miriam everything and hope for the same from her. But this was private.”
Like most people in the house, I’d been drinking since before lunch. There had been coke too, brought around by the staff with drinks, which sobered me up briefly and enabled me to keep on drinking. The wind was fresh and the day was clear. I was beginning to take to the countryside. I had a joint in my pocket, which Henry and I smoked as we trod across the fields. By the time Henry had finished, I was pretty gone, feeling as sad and empty as I had when Ajita, Valentin and Wolf all left me.
He said, “I guess there’s no going back now—if you ever thought about that. And I suspect you did.”
“Yes, I did. My wife still fascinates me.”
“Jamal, I’m worrying about you!”
“You’re a good friend, but don’t let it spoil your day. I guess I should be looking after her. It’s what she always wanted, but she made sure I failed at it, over and over.”
“Will you say something to her?”
“I doubt it. All I heard was that she was speed-dating.”
He laughed. “Thank Christ you never worked as a therapist with couples.”
“It’s lucrative work, I hear. Plenty of demand.”
Henry said, “Mind you, what am I saying? A cursory glance at the early analysts and their disciples and colleagues will show what a bunch of perverts, suicides and nutters they were, apart from Freud. Completely human, then. But at least they knew one true thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You either love or fall sick.”
That night most of us were too coked up to eat much, but Miriam and Henry were hungry, and I sat with them and Ajita at supper. Henry hardly noticed that he was being served by uniformed staff, but Miriam insisted on helping with the washing up.
That Saturday evening, in one of the barns a low stage had been constructed. The staff had set up lights and brought in numerous instruments. Crates of wine and beer as well as bottles of vodka and tequila were placed at the bottom of the stage. People sat around on chairs, and those, like me, who found it difficult to stay upright lay on cushions on the floor.
However close to unconsciousness I might be, I didn’t want to miss Charlie Hero playing an acoustic version of “Kill for Dada,” which he’d first recorded in the 70s with the Condemned.
Alan pushed Mustaq forward. There was much applause and excitement. Mustaq didn’t want to play, but he would obey Alan. So Mustaq, now becoming George, sat at the piano. He was quiet for a moment and then began to doodle, waiting to see what might come. When the notes took shape, they became a terrifyingly honest and personal account of Neil Young’s “Helpless,” as good as the version of that song I preferred, sung by k. d. lang. I was beginning to see why the former Mushy Peas was a famous pop star.
Ajita, now in a little denim skirt, joined him for the chorus with a tambourine, swaying and laughing. When she pulled me up to join her, even I couldn’t resist. My dance moves hadn’t evolved since the 70s. The difference between then and now was the ghost standing between us, her father.
Later, after Ajita and I had smooched—“Smooch, my darling, is a word I haven’t used for some time”—Karim and Charlie harmonised on “Let’s Dance,” Karim playing some groovy bass, and Karen throwing her thong and then her Manolos at him. I think I saw her later with a servant, trying to retrieve a Manolo from a tangle of wires behind the stage.
Ajita had danced with Henry and Miriam, and we shared a bottle of champagne on the lawn as we smoked and cooled down. Then we went back to hear Mustaq play “Everyone Has Their Heart Torn Apart, Sometime,” which he dedicated to me, its only begetter.
Don’t ask me when, but the party turned into a rock’n’roll session with anyone who could play anything jamming, and Mustaq beating the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. Henry couldn’t wait to get naked, dancing as though swatting away killer bees, as if he’d wasted the 60s and needed to catch up. Miriam danced next to the speakers in bra and pants, wanting everyone to see her tattoos. She’d shown them to Ajita, explaining the idea and provenance of each one. Ajita, appalled and fascinated, had seemed to think, by the end, that her life would be improved by the addition of a “tat.”
I can remember watching Mustaq help his sister out of the room and upstairs, and seeing a haunted, exhausted look on her face, one I’d never seen before. I cannot recall what time the staff carried me up to bed. Apparently, they were busy with bodies all night. I know I couldn’t even spark up my lighter to hold it aloft.
“It was a major catastrophe,” Mustaq laughed, the next day.
I do remember getting up to pee an hour or so after I’d passed out and seeing, as I walked past Karen’s door, her and Karim Amir fucking. At least I thought it was Karen, and maybe it was Karim. Someone else was asleep on the floor at the end of the bed, or maybe they weren’t asleep, because there was moaning from elsewhere in the room.
I stood there a moment, took a quick shower, cleaned my teeth and the blood out of my nose, and went in there with them, falling into a pit of bodies. I can remember sitting propped up against a wall naked, smoking and talking with Karim about South London and the Three Tuns in Beckenham High Street, which now apparently had a Bowie plaque but not a Charlie Hero one.
Charlie himself was going at someone, perhaps one of the waitresses from the town. I can even remember, with some gratitude, Charlie caressing my back from behind when it was my turn, though I’d rather he hadn’t said, “Go on, old fella, ’ave it,” as I knew he was certainly posher than both Karim and me.
The next day, when Karen and I left for London, Ajita was standing in the yard, waving to us. She would stay in the country for a few more days before going to Mustaq’s London house.
While Karen sat in the car, Ajita and I embraced and promised to phone each other later.
Then she kissed me on the mouth; I could feel her tongue waiting for me. She pinched and tickled me, as she used to.
“Why are you laughing?”
“You,” she said. “It can’t only be a hangover. You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost. But then I guess you have.”
Karen was gunning the engine irritably and banging her hands on the steering wheel.
As soon as I got in she said, “At least you have the decency to leave with me.”
“What?”
“I know how tricky you are. I sleep with the door open and I saw that woman sneaking out of your room, the first night. You were quick. Busy weekend, eh?”
“Karen, you are crazy.”
“You waited for her all that time and now don’t you like her?”
“You can’t go back.”
“And you don’t want to go forward?”
“I wish we didn’t have to leave this house.”
“You get any rest?”
“Rest?” I said. “I’m ready for rehab.”
“Excellent.”
I asked her not to give me her account of the previous night; I didn’t want to recall it. She said she’d pin her lips, which was unusual for her, but she giggled a little. “Impotent, eh?”
Mostly, though, she was worrying about Karim and whether he would get in touch again. If he was going to appear on I’m a Celebrity…, he’d be in demand from other females, and she wanted to make the most of him before this.
However much you dislike the country, you drive back into the city on a Sunday night after a weekend away and your heart sinks: the dirt, the roughness, the closeness of everyone and everything, so much so that you can almost believe you like leaving London.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On Sunday mornings most of the population of Britain, teenagers aside, can be found in the park, strolling, jogging, walking the dog. On Sundays, Rafi and I played football with other fathers—actors, film directors, novelists—and their sons, ranging in age from five to twelve. The wives and girlfriends sat on benches on the touchline, drinking lattes, distracting their girls and helping the boys with their boots and laces.
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