“I found my first analyst then, after we came back from Pakistan. You’d be reluctant to recall it, but I was in a mess.”
“We both were, thanks. You and Dad trotted off together like long-lost lovers, expecting me to spend every minute with the boring, well-behaved women, like I was in purdah.”
“A position you rightly refused.”
“I was channelling Dad this afternoon and remembered that the last words he said to me were, ‘No one will ever marry a whore like you.’ Wasn’t he right?”
“He didn’t say no one would ever love you,” I said. “My analyst was a Pakistani, you know, with a cute accent, like Dad’s. I was lucky to meet him when I did. Otherwise I’d have ruined my life before it started.”
She said, “I could have done with someone to save my life. Why didn’t you send me there?”
“It was my thing.”
“He converted you?”
“Something like that. To a life of enquiry, perhaps.”
She said, “Josephine used to wonder whether you were gay.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“She did come to me one time, at a family Christmas, got me in a corner and asked me if you were that way. My instinct was to give the cow a backhander—for being so unobservant. Then I nearly told her, ‘He’s my brother, and a woman with your problems is enough to make Casanova gay.’ But I zipped it—for you.”
“Thank you, my dear.” I went on: “She had this bizarre theory that because I liked her arse I was gay.”
“Even a sexual dyslexic like her can see you’re not a boy-bummer.”
I said, “No, I’m a married man with a married mind. There was a film premiere we went to, a few months ago, even though Josephine and I weren’t together. Miriam, she looked great in her heels and black dress and red wrap, with bare legs. All evening I wanted to fuck her. For a while I wasn’t bored.”
“She’s a striking woman, being so tall.”
“Yes, I used to think one didn’t so much go down on her as go up on her.”
“You can be sulky and moody, but you’re also nervous and very evasive, Jamal.”
“Am I still?”
“Look at your bitten nails and the way your eyelashes flap.”
“They do?”
“But you got on by not throwing everything away like me. You knew there was a future.” She was tickling me. “Now, you therapists are always talking about sex. Maybe you should see some for once. It’ll be good for you to hang out at the Sootie.”
I said, “I never knew whether you were glad Josephine and I separated.”
“I quite liked her, mainly because she liked you. Loved you, I mean. She never stopped loving you, Jamal, though you must have tested her hard.”
“Don’t remind me of that, Miriam.”
We embraced; I told her I had to go. Wearily I walked to the Cross Keys to have a look at my parallel man, Wolf. While I was in Venice, Bushy had phoned to say he’d popped into the pub several times to see how Wolf was doing. Now I was wondering whether they might have been getting on too well.
Bushy was smoking at the bar. Wolf was in the cellar, changing the barrels. After my trip to Venice, the place looked less salubrious than I remembered it. Maybe it was time to find a new local.
Bushy indicated the Harridan. “That’s a smile on her gob. She’s happy with ’im,” he said.
“How come?”
Wolf was physically strong and hardworking. When men tumbled onto the stage, or tried to dance with the girls, Wolf would pull them off and have them outside in seconds. The girls liked him, he involved himself in their problems, but he wasn’t “up an’ all over ’em. He don’t touch ’em. I think he’s got someone.”
“One of the girls here?”
“No, he after something bigger. I’ll find out soon as I can.”
Wolf came up out of the cellar and saw me. He wore a tight white tee-shirt and looked fit and toned, as though he’d been exercising. Unfortunately his jeans were too big, his belt just about holding them up.
He was subdued, and didn’t shake my hand. Not that he appeared to be unhappy. He had requested one big thing and received a smaller thing—a job. It was, as Bushy put it, “a hopeful opening,” into which Wolf had moved.
Wolf said, “Let’s speak. Not here.” He added, “What’s with these jeans? Why are they so big?”
“They’re knockoffs,” I said. “Blame my sister.”
He took me up to the room in which he slept, a small dressing room for the girls containing a mirror and dressing table covered with discarded thongs and spangled bras. There was a single mattress under a rattling window covered with a soiled piece of net curtain. Through a tear in the curtain I could see, on the corner, tall Somalians, their busted Primeras lined up on the street outside the cab office.
He said, “These African boys are busy up West all night. They take me with them. You’ve dumped me far out here.”
“What have you got going in town?”
He shrugged. “Ventures.”
As we talked, one of the girls—an Eastern European—came in to fix her hair. Before leaving she changed her thong: naked, she bent forward and dragged the cheeks of her backside open. “Check me being clean, Wolfie, if that’s good,” she said.
Having inspected her, he kissed her on the arse. “Juicy as ever, Lucy.”
She looked at me. “Punter here?”
“I’m a pal of Wolf’s.”
“Sir, you like show?”
“I did the first time I saw it.”
“Next time I make it extra-spicy for you special.”
After she’d gone, Wolf said, “She likes you, didn’t you notice? You still look decent for your age. But you wouldn’t go for a girl like that, would you?” I shrugged. He said, “You know that when I go to any city I want to be with the lowest, the whores, hustlers, criminals. To me these are the finest people. You and I are similar like that.”
“In what way?”
“You must have something like that in you, spending every day with the mentally diseased.”
“The sane are much worse. As you know, calling someone sane isn’t much of a compliment.” I said, “Wolf, I want to know about Val,” and sat down with the joint Miriam had given me as I left.
Wolf told me that he and Valentin had been looking for an excuse to leave London for a while. They’d even considered taking me with them, but decided I should finish at university. I wondered whether I might have been tempted to accompany them. Probably I would have.
In the South of France, Valentin worked in casinos. He was well paid and respected enough to be trusted to train the new recruits. He considered this work to be worthless, but he kept himself together, cycling for miles across the mountains on icy roads.
Wolf said, “Back in his sparse room, he read those huge philosophical books, like a madman always with the Bible, trying to find the truth.” At night, when he left work, women, rich and poor, old and young, would be waiting for him. They wanted to sleep with him. Once they’d done that, they wanted to help him. “They wanted to send him to doctors, to find him a drug to make him well. But he refused. He wanted to be one of the lost ones. He never found a place. We should remember him a moment.”
Wolf bowed his head. I did so too, recalling Valentin earnestly advising me to take up his diet, which was Heinz tomato soup, two slices of bread with margarine spread on them, and an apple—twice a day. He’d sometimes walk five miles across London, wearing only tennis shoes, rather than taking the tube—an even more mephitic hole then—though most people used it for free, easily sneaking past the somnolent staff. Valentin’s ambition had always been to reduce his desire to almost zero; there would be no excess of pleasure. But where did a lifetime of self-punishment get him?
I opened my eyes. Wolf had been looking at me. I got to my feet, not entirely sure where I was.
“But you must still sit down.”
His fists were clenched. But I was heading for th
e door, wherever that might be. God knows what Miriam had dropped into that joint. She liked a mixture of hash and grass and menthol tobacco, an unpredictable blend. Not only was I feeling paranoid, I seemed to be viewing Wolf down the wrong end of a telescope, an excellent way to shrink him.
He got up too, grasped me by the shoulders and pushed me down again. He drew his hand back, as if to strike me. He was easily more powerful than me, but not as angry. For a moment I thought I’d let him beat me up, as if that would be a solution.
“I haven’t finished with you,” he said, sitting in a chair opposite me. “There’s an odour that chases me in my dreams, dragging me into that dirty night. What do garages smell of? Oil, petrol, wood, rubber. I can see how angry you were with that father. You were trembling.”
“I was afraid.”
“You didn’t appear to be. We were there to give him a warning, and suddenly you had a knife. What are you going to do with that? I keep thinking. Only the business, surely? No one said anything about knives, not me, not Val. Where did you get that idea from? Why didn’t you ask us first?”
“I was a young fool. Friend, you should have taken care of me a bit. I was like your little brother, and you let me go ahead with a wild and stupid scheme.”
“Are you going to cry? Will you kiss my feet and beg forgiveness? What you did made me see—right in front of my eyes—a dying man. If we’d been caught, I’d have done a lot of time.” He went on, “Now you say you regret it. If you could take back that night, you would. But there’s one thing you have never said. One thing I want to hear you say.”
“What is that?”
He said, “That you got it wrong and deserved to be punished. You thought it was noble to save the girl. You should have gone to the police. You should have talked with her more. I don’t know what you should have done. You’re the person who is supposed to know what to do in such situations.”
He was still staring steadily at me. I said, “I didn’t know how to listen. I misunderstood Ajita. I acted too soon and stole her initiative. But what can we do?”
“This,” he said. “We could both apologise to the family. To the girl. So she knows what went on, so she can have—what’s that stupid word they use?—closure, yes. You think about that.”
I said, “I am not convinced that an apology will cause more good than harm.”
“I am,” he said. “You consider it and get back to me. Otherwise I’ve been thinking it’s something I should do myself—on your behalf.” He paused. “Got something to say?”
“Yes,” I said. “Unlike some famous procrastinators I could name, I took action and killed the man. You will only ever be a minor villain. What a shame you never did anything so brave or honourable. Any fucker can be innocent. I’m way ahead of you, man, and always will be. Have some fucking respect!”
“You’re mad.”
I got up. He got up. I went downstairs. He followed me. Wolf returned to work at the other end of the bar, and I stood with Bushy, who was passing over various items from inside his coat to some local characters. Wolf had turned up the music; I watched the naked grinders opening and closing their legs for the devoted regulars. Behind the stage, the different coloured lights Wolf had rigged up were pulsating. I ordered a double vodka and drank it quickly. I ordered another.
When Bushy was alone, I said, “What news of the Hand?”
He shrugged. “Lisa’s a socialist worker with a lot of people to visit. My guess is the Hand’s in one of their houses. What am I going to do—search everywhere for it?”
“Why should you?”
“Because I feel sorry for ’im, a good un, with that crazy daughter.”
I asked, “How’s the dreaming?”
“Dr. Shrinky, my friend, your advice has been on my mind. I nearly ready to come out. I been rehearsing at Miriam’s, in front of the kids. Your boy Rafi there one day thought I was deep and boom. Henry says I’m good enough for the Sootie. Miriam must have told you—it’s next week.”
“No, but she has now.”
“Made up your mind ’bout what you wanna wear?” I shrugged. Another customer approached Bushy, who looked across towards Wolf; he, in his turn, nodded cooperatively. Bushy said, “Wolfie’s not so bad after all. He’s just like us, on the hustle. He lets me sell what I like, as long as I give him a good bit.”
“I better go,” I said.
“See you at the Sootie, then,” said Bushy. “I’ll take you all there. Don’t be nervous.”
The walk home was further than I could cope with in one go, so I popped into the Bush Hall, a small ballroom next to the mosque on the Uxbridge Road where Rafi, as a child, had appeared in a carol service. I wanted to catch the end of M. Ward’s set. He was a sombre singer-songwriter Henry’s son had recommended, whose melancholic version of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” never failed to move me. Ward was accompanied by a bass player, a girl drummer and another guitarist. The place was only three quarters full; I hadn’t had so much personal space at a concert in years.
I left, cheerful, after an exquisite version of Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I had too much to think about. I was anxious and not sleeping. I had said I would visit the Sootie, and it would be difficult to avoid; Miriam would insist. But there was no way I’d let her dress me.
At the end of the Shepherd’s Bush Road, going towards Olympia, was a circus shop where I took Rafi to buy his bling. Next door there was a sex shop, with dummies in the window clothed in what looked like 70s punk gear, now worn by the middle class at play, perversion as style. I went in and had a quick look around, but had no idea what was suitable dress for watching Bushy strum the banjo while others copulated.
I went outside. “Goddess, can you come with me?” I pleaded on the phone.
“It’s a strange request,” she said, between clients.
“You must have heard weirder. I’m a bit stuck here and a little embarrassed.”
“Oh, you poor dear. I’ll have to ask Madame. We can’t go behind her back.”
Madame seemed to think it was okay, as I was a “good, clean, respectable customer.” The Goddess, who would offer her body but not the intimacy of her name to anyone, met me by the tube station and we walked along to the shop. I guessed she was wearing her college clothes: jeans, a black polo-neck sweater, black boots.
Asking her to help was a good idea. She went straight to the black guy who ran the place and he showed her the gear. Knowing that I didn’t want anyone to see much of my body, and would only wear black and nothing too tight, she had me try on various items.
“Any silk or lace?”
“No thanks, Goddess. Think of me as a repressed Englishman.”
I posed around half-naked in a corner of the shop until I was well covered up in rubber and some sort of sticky plastic. Apart from my face, the only part of my body anyone would see would be my arms.
We were coming out of the shop with the stuff in anonymous bags when the Goddess touched my arm. I was saying I wished the clothes were rentable, as they were expensive and I was broke. She was laughing and telling me I’d like “the scene” and would want to return, “knowing your taste.”
She said, “Someone’s looking at you.”
“What?”
“Over there.” I assumed it was Wolf, the hellhound on my trail, clearly getting madder. It wouldn’t be long before the police picked him up, and then we’d both be done for. The Goddess said, “There she is.”
It was one of my patients, hurrying away. She was very paranoid, often telling me she’d seen me in different parts of the country, places I’d never visited. Now that she’d actually seen me, and coming out of a sex shop too, what would it do to her?
I took the Goddess for a drink, and she asked me what I did. I told her we both sold our time for money and were in the “intimacy with strangers” business. In fact, I said, I had never counted the number of times I had been compared, by my patients, to a prostitute.
“Perhaps we are both rubbish dumps. People put into us what they don’t want to understand. We’re supposed to carry it for them.”
She was fascinated and horrified by what I did. “Who wants to know what’s in there?” she said, tapping her head. “If you start poking about, who knows what you’ll find?”
“It comes out anyway,” I replied. “You live it out, in your body, in your actions, in your choice…of career. What we all need, as my friend Henry says, are more words and less action.”
She seemed horrified. But when we parted, the Goddess gave me a plastic bag. “Open it,” she said.
It contained a half-mask with gold eye sockets, made of turquoise, blue and purple feathers, with silver and blue stars sewn into it.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Yes, good luck!” She kissed me on the nose.
Having got the gear together, on the appointed night I went over to Henry’s with the stuff in a bag. Miriam would get changed at home; Bushy would bring her over and then drive us all to the Caramel Sootie.
It took me ten minutes to get ready and another two minutes to fight hopelessly with my hair, while wondering that if everything that gives pleasure is unhealthy, immoral or forbidden, would the evening be enough of each?
Henry was in his boxers, having shaved his genitals, flinging things down and stamping drunkenly around in front of a mirror while listening to Don Giovanni.
I was happy sitting in his chair, drinking, and smoking one of the joints Miriam had made for him. But the joint tired me, and I went to the bathroom for a little dab of speed to keep me going for the night. I was soon unaware of what I was wearing, but whenever Henry looked at me, he giggled.
“If only your patients could see you,” he said. “You look too good to have got that together yourself. Who helped you?”
“A friend.”
He was looking at me. “How come I tell you everything and you tell me nothing?”
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