by Frank Kusy
‘No, we’re alright,’ said Betsy happily. ‘Mrs Caitlin’s bringing us a pheasant.’
I stopped in my tracks. ‘A pheasant?’
‘Yes, she asked us: “Do you like pheasants?” And I said, “Yes, I love pheasant.” So she leant up close and said: “Don’t put it about, but I’ve got a dozen pheasants. In the deep freeze. They’re really meant for the Jews Home, but you can have them. I can carve ‘em.” Wasn’t that nice of her?’
This sounded a bit too nice, so I decided to investigate. And found elderly Mrs Caitlin making the same hushed offer of pheasants to Miss Sherring in the dining room.
‘What’s this about pheasants?’ I said loudly, and Mrs Caitlin looked up startled and realised she was in trouble.
‘Okay, you can have a pheasant too,’ she said rather too quickly, then tottered off in a huff.
A few minutes later, she was back again. ‘Look, about those pheasants,’ she muttered conspiratorially. ‘My daughter just called. She used the pheasants for a party. You’re out of luck with the pheasants. But I’ve just thought...I’ve got a whole pig.’
‘A...whole...pig,’ I echoed flatly.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Caitlin with an air of supreme confidence. ‘You can have that. But on the strict understanding that you don’t let it get out I’m giving it you.’
There was a pause as I stared her down, and then she relented.
‘On second thoughts,’ she said, ‘let’s play it safe. I’ll just give you a leg.’
*
Outside of the home, I had to admit it, my social life was close to zero.
While important world events like Michael Jackson’s Thriller album being released and Bob Marley getting his own postage stamp in Jamaica played out around me, I was popping one more 50 pence coin into the gas meter of my cold, dingy flat and tuning in to Dallas, Cheers, and The Sale of the Century on the three measly channels of my rented television.
Once a week, I would drag myself down the local Leisure Centre and play badminton. Once a month or so I would make a similarly dispirited visit to the Battersea Arts Centre and hop up and down to a punk or New Romantic band. But the friends I shared these rare activities with were not real friends, I felt little in common with them.
So I began to attend more Buddhist meetings.
The first local meetings I went to took place in the house of a tall, craggy-faced individual called Nick. I wasn’t very impressed by Nick to start with; he talked too much and had a slightly patronising attitude that I found irritating. But then he told me something that did impress me. He had a helicopter.
‘A helicopter?’ I said, amazed. ‘Did you chant for that?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t chant for “stuff” any more. I chant for enlightenment.’
‘Enlightenment?’ I said, feeling slightly provocative. ‘How’s that better than getting “stuff”?’
Nick eyed me warily. Then he told me his story.
‘When I first started chanting,’ he said, ‘I imagined that enlightenment was this cosmic thing involving floating around on clouds, appearing anywhere at will in the universe etcetera. Sadly, I soon realised it wasn’t about this at all. Instead, it appeared to about getting the things one wanted, so I spent a while chanting to fulfil my desires. Later on, it changed again, and I was told to chant about getting rid of my difficulties, which was yet another interpretation of enlightenment. Finally, in the last chunk of my practice, through reading the guidance of our mentor in Japan, Daisaku Ikeda, enlightenment has come to seem much more to do with achieving an unshakeable, indomitable life-state – where nothing can rock or disturb me.’
There was a brief pause as Nick nodded sagely to himself and I absorbed his words of wisdom.
Then I said: ‘So, how did you get the helicopter?’
Poor Nick. He really did have his work cut out with me. The Jesuits had trained me well. I knew all the awkward, rhetorical questions like ‘Why is God?’ ‘How tall was Jesus?’ and ‘How many angels do dance on the head of a pin?’ All that was required was for me to pretend to be stupid and see how far I could go before Nick lost his precious indomitable life state and went for my throat.
But he surprised me.
‘I was a lot like you when I started into this Buddhism,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘But then I met Richard Causton, the leader of our small Nichiren movement in the U.K. Dick is great. I never respected any guy – especially one in a position of authority – before. He changed my mind. You should meet him.’
‘There’s a lot of “shoulds” coming my way,’ I said, sidestepping Nick with practised ease. ‘I thought there were no rules in this Buddhism, but all I’m hearing is: I should chant more, I should go on courses and to more meetings, I should get a Gohonzon...’
‘Oh, you should definitely get a Gohonzon,’ interrupted Nick. ‘And there’s only one rule in Buddhism – to respect Life.’
‘Is that why that girl in the meeting chanted for her dad to die?’ I enquired rather sarcastically. ‘Who told her to do that?’
Nick’s face twitched. I could see his halo beginning to slip.
‘Dick gave her that guidance,’ he said with ill-disguised annoyance. ‘And it was the right thing to do. If you hadn’t been out of the room having a crafty fag, you would have heard the rest of that experience. “Hell is in the heart of a man who hates his father”, she quoted from Nichiren’s writings, and she’d been hating her father for over 20 years. But, in the course of a month’s chanting she came to realise that the only person suffering from that hatred was herself. Her father was quite unaware of her suffering. And when she commenced dialogue with him and learned his point of view she stopped wanting him to die. They are now learning to be friends.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said, suitably chastened. ‘But...and I’m really sorry to bring this up again...what about that helicopter?’
Yes, I really was that shallow in those days. Having grown up in near poverty, I was pretty much obsessed with making money. My whole childhood had been spent trading rare pennies and then stamps with geeks in mackintoshes. Then I had spent my whole adolescence and most of my early youth chasing down the best-paid jobs, even though I had little or no ability to do any of them. Now, I was hoping, Buddhism would be the fast track to lots of lolly. I could have whatever I chanted for, right?
‘Well, not quite,’ said Nick when I posed the question. ‘It’s not just a matter of chanting for things. You have to take some action as well.’
I asked him what kind of action, and he put me to work making little plasticine pigs.
‘There you go,’ he said, showing me the thriving cottage industry going on in his garden shed. ‘I wholesale thousands of these little critters out to big shops. That’s how I got the helicopter.’
I was rubbish at making little plasticine pigs. Their ears kept dropping off and the more I tried to make them stand up, the more they fell over. I tried to tell Nick I wasn’t gifted in the plasticine pig making department, but he was not sympathetic.
‘You haven’t got much patience, have you, Frank?’ he said. ‘Keep at it!’
‘Those pigs don’t like me,’ I told him miserably. ‘What else have you got?’
Nick grinned. ‘I’ve got cats. You like cats, don’t you? Yes, why don’t you try cats instead?’
What I did to those poor little plasticine pussies was an abomination. One of them stared accusingly at me through two horribly mismatched eyes while another fell off the table and raised its twisted paws up from the floor in an attitude of mute supplication. ‘Put us out of our misery!’ it seemed to cry. ‘Don’t maim and disfigure us anymore!’
But then, on the 8th of May 1983, I got my Gohonzon and plasticine pets were the least of my worries.
My whole life was about to be turned upside down.
Chapter 11
Devils and Bingo Balls
I suppose, in the end, my decision to become a bona fide Buddhist owed as much to surviving six months
in the most gruelling job I had ever had than to any external pressure from other Buddhists. Old Bill, Bertie, Matron, Mr Parker, I would have fled from them all had it not been for the calming influence of this weird and wonderful chanting that threw up solutions whereas previously I would only have seen problems. Yes, it was time for me to stop ducking and diving around life, and to commit myself to something that confronted it head on. No longer could I only keep myself going at the old people’s home by telling myself: ‘This isn’t forever. I can get out any time I want.’ Now, for better or worse, I was in for the long haul.
But if I had abandoned my flippant attitude towards Buddhism and had finally come to take it seriously, I had not counted upon the reaction of my hard-line Catholic mother.
‘What have you got against Jesus?’ she wept when I told her the good news of my conversion. ‘He died to redeem our sins. How can you abandon Him?
‘I haven’t got a problem with Jesus,’ I replied, still scarred from my school days. ‘Just all those priests He keeps employing!’
A feeling of excitement, mixed with more than a twinge of trepidation, seized me as the bald Japanese priest bowed and handed me my small devotional scroll in the Richmond Centre. ‘Wow, I’ve got my very own gohonzon,’ I thought to myself. ‘Now, what do I do with it?’
The first thing I did with it was arrange a small enshrinement ceremony back at my flat in Clapham. Brenda was there, and so was her sister Anna, and so was Nick, despite my murderous designs on his garden shed animals. As incense was lit, and my tiny bell tinnily intoned in the background, Anna removed my scroll from its envelope, carefully unrolled it and hung it even more carefully on a hook inside the cheap wooden altar or butsudan I had purchased earlier. ‘Congratulations, and good to see you again my long time karmic friend,’ wrote Brenda on the envelope. ‘Continue chanting no matter what,’ added Anna under that. ‘Remember, winter never fails to turn into spring.’
Then, when the crisp white scroll with the bold black lettering was correctly positioned, we all chanted for a bit and closed the door on it.
I was officially a Buddhist.
Three days later, I had reason to be very thankful for that. Without warning, in the middle of the morning, the door to my office in the home flew open and Mr Parker, accompanied by Mr French, the Committee Treasurer, charged in.
‘Don’t say anything,’ muttered the red-faced Chairman, jabbing a key into the safe and pulling out the cash box. ‘Don’t say a word.’
My mind went into free fall. What on earth was happening here? Had I done something wrong?
I watched in dumb silence as Mr Parker flicked through all the pocket money envelopes I had earlier collected from the post office. Then I saw him pause and pick out one of them.
‘So it’s true,’ he murmured as he opened it up. ‘Been nicking money off my mum, have you, Mr Kusy? How long has this been going on?’
To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. I stared at Mrs Duff’s pocket money envelope – turned upside down and devoid of contents – in total disbelief.
‘I...I don’t understand,’ I stuttered helplessly. ‘I’m sure the money was there when I put it in the safe.’
‘Well, it’s not there now,’ said the grim-faced Chairman. ‘No, I’ve got you bang to rights, Mr Kusy. You’re going down for this.’
And before I could stop him, he marched over and began frisking me, digging his rough, dirty-nailed fingers into my pockets one by one, then patting me down as though I was some kind of drug smuggler. In the background I could see timid Mr French shrugging as if to say ‘I’m sorry, but what can I do?’
As shock gave way to embarrassment, I pushed my assailant away. ‘Get off of me!’ I cried unhappily. ‘I haven’t got your money. There’s been a mistake!’
‘Oh, there’s been a mistake alright,’ puffed Mr Parker. ‘And you’re the one who made it. So the cash isn’t on you, have you spent it already? I see you got a new car!’
Light began to dawn. I had given up on the helicopter idea for the time being, but I had been chanting to afford a car. It would be nice, I reasoned, to run my mum down to the coast at weekends, or simply to do errands from the home that were taking up a lot of time on foot. And then Greg, another Buddhist friend of mine, had rung and offered me his car – a very nice Ford Cortina – for next to nothing because he was moving to Spain. ‘What luck!’ I had thought at the time and drove it straight to the home to show it off to everybody. But I had been surprised by their reaction. Only John Gray had showed any interest – all the rest of the staff just looked sullen and resentful.
‘Of course, how stupid of me,’ I thought, giving myself a mental slap. ‘None of them will ever have money to buy a car. I’ve made enemies here. And one of them has set me up for a fall. Now, who could it be?’
‘I got the car cheap from a friend!’ I protested to the Chairman as my mind began feverishly ticking off potential candidates. ‘I did not steal money from your mother to fund it!’
Mr Parker had that look on his face again. The conflicted one. Part of him, I could see, wanted to believe me. But the greater part just couldn’t.
‘Okay, Mr Kusy,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll do you a deal. I’m going to walk out this office now, and I’m going to walk back in again in ten minutes. If the money’s back by then, I’ll just accept your resignation. If it’s not, well, it’s the police station for you, young feller me lad. You just made my shit list. Congratulations.’
I clung, white knuckled with rage, to my desk as he made his exit. Then I ran out of the home and banged on the bonnet of my new car so hard that I nearly broke my wrist. ‘Who hates me this much to do this to me?’ I wept in frustration. ‘Who would be so mean?’
I raised my numb hand to my face and as I did so, I heard a faint sound to my left. And looking through the thin pane of ground floor window glass that separated us I saw Mr Bragg. He was laughing at me.
They say it’s better the Devil you know, rather than the one you don’t, but it didn’t feel like it. This particular Devil was holding all the cards. Wiping the tears from my eyes, and trying to fight down the urge to commit some very un-Buddhist violence, I strode back into the home and started to chant. And from the depths of my subconscious, as I began to master the turmoil of my tortured mind, an idea came up that was so simple and so cunning that I began to smile.
‘Can I have a quick word with you?’ I summoned the smug-faced handyman. ‘In private.’
I waited till he had sat down in my office, and then closed the door.
‘Why?’ I said quietly. ‘And how?’
Mr Bragg’s eyes darted left and right. He was looking for a trap. Then, having satisfied himself that nobody could possibly be in earshot, he went off on his rant.
‘You think you’re “it”, don’t you, laddy? Before you came, I had everybody – Matron, Parker, the whole Committee wrapped round my little finger. I knew Douglas Bader, I did. Yes, Dougie and me went way back. I was with him when he was sent to Colditz and told everyone he’d be “a plain, bloody nuisance to the Germans”. Now, I’m being a plain, bloody nuisance to you! You didn’t know I’d waxed all your keys, did you? Or that I’d have time to get in your safe and get Parker’s silly old mother’s cash while you were showing someone else your stupid car. And the best thing is, there’s nothing you can do about it. Aye, laddy, your days here are well and truly over.’
I looked at my watch. The ten minutes were nearly up.
‘Yes, it does look like it,’ I said with a sigh. ‘The Chairman will be back in a few seconds, if you want to gloat.’
Mr Bragg’s eyes widened with anticipation. Here was an unexpected bonus, a ringside seat to my humiliation. It was more than he could have hoped for.
Moments later, bang on cue, Mr Parker and Mr French swept in. They looked curiously at the grinning, expectant handyman, and then they looked at me.
‘Okay, Mr Kusy,’ said the scowling Chairman. ‘Which is to be: the cash or the co
p shop?’
I waited a moment to let the excited thump in my chest die down. ‘Neither, actually. I think you might like to hear this.’
Three pairs of eyes trained down to my waist as I withdrew the Sony Walkman from my pocket. And then Mr Bragg gasped as he guessed what was coming next.
‘...Before you came,’ intoned my trusty recording device, ‘I had everybody – Matron, Parker, the whole Committee wrapped round my little finger...’
The silence when the Walkman clicked off was deafening. A pin could have dropped in Calais and we would have heard it.
Then the Chairman rounded on Mr Bragg.
‘Wrapped me round your finger, is it?’ he said with a snarl. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, you jumped up excuse for a caretaker? I bent over backwards to get you your buggering contracts of employment – yes, I know it was you behind that – and this is how you repay me? By stealing my “silly” old mum’s money and making a fool of me with Mr Kusy? You cum ‘ere, I’m going to tear you a new one!’
Mr Bragg may have been pals with WWII flying-ace-with-no-legs Douglas Bader. He may also have faced down the Germans in Colditz. But nothing could have prepared him for the human pit bull that was Mr Parker. With a short grunt of rage, the Chairman lifted the hapless handyman off the ground by his boiler suit lapels, banged his head repeatedly against the wall, then frogmarched him into the street and deposited him on the pavement with a well-directed kick to the posterior.
‘I should report you to the police,’ he said, dusting off his hands. ‘But you’re not worth it. Scum is scum, and you’re the worst kind. Now, sod off out of my home and never come back!’
*
‘How do you fancy helping me run the Bingo?’ said John Gray as he came upon me slumped on my desk. ‘I’ve just heard what happened. You need a distraction.’
My head was not exactly in the right place for bingo. An hour had gone by since the culprit had been caught and my reputation had been restored. But even though Mr Parker had shaken my hand and apologised profusely, I was still depressed by the sheer unfairness of the incident. After all I had tried to do for the home – I was now slaving away up to 60 hours a week – how could he even have suspected me?