‘Yeah, maybe, but we can’t follow them,’ I said casually.
‘Why not?’
‘Obviously we can’t wear rubber and safety-pins and all. What would we look like? Sure, Charlie.’
‘Why not, Karim? Why not, man?’
‘It’s not us.’
‘But we’ve got to change. What are you saying? We shouldn’t keep up? That suburban boys like us always know where it’s at?’
‘It would be artificial,’ I said. ‘We’re not like them. We don’t hate the way they do. We’ve got no reason to. We’re not from the estates. We haven’t been through what they have.’
He turned on me with one of his nastiest looks.
‘You’re not going anywhere, Karim. You’re not doing anything with your life because as usual you’re facing in the wrong direction and going the wrong way. But don’t try and drag me down with you. I don’t need your discouragement! Don’t think I’m going to end up like you!’
‘Like me?’ I could hardly speak. ‘What am I that you hate so much?’ I managed to say.
But Charlie was looking across the street and not at me. Four kids from the Nashville, two girls and two boys, were piling into a car. They whooped and abused passers-by and fired water-pistols. The next thing I saw was Charlie sprinting through the traffic towards them. He dodged behind a bus and I thought he’d been knocked down. When he re-emerged he was ripping his shirt off – it was my shirt, too. At first I thought he was using it to wave at people, but then he bundled it up and threw it at a police car. Seconds later he’d leapt into car with the kids, his bare torso on someone’s lap on the front seat. And the car took off up the North End Road before he’d got the door shut. Charlie was away to new adventures. I walked home.
A few days later Eva made an announcement. ‘Karim,’ she said. ‘Let’s start working together again. It’s time. Ring Uncle Ted.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘At last.’
But there was one thing she wanted to do first. She had to give a flat-warming party. There was a theory of parties she said she wanted to try out. You invited people you thought would dislike each other and you watched them get along swingingly. For some reason I didn’t believe her when she said this; I wasn’t convinced that she was being straight. But whatever she was up to – and it was something – she spent days ticking and marking the party guest list, a thick, creamy piece of paper she kept with her at all times. She was unusually secretive about the whole thing and had intricate conversations with God-knows-who on the phone, and certainly wouldn’t speak to Dad and me about what she was doing.
What I did know was that Shadwell was involved. It was his contacts she was using. They were conspirators. She flirted with him, used him, led him on and asked him favours. It bothered me, but Dad was unworried. He patronized Shadwell; he wasn’t threatened. He took it for granted that people would fall in love with Eva.
But it was affecting Dad. For instance, he wanted to invite his meditation group to the party. Yet Eva insisted that no more than two of them come. She didn’t want the new smooth crowd to think she was mixing with a bunch of basket-weavers from Bromley. So Chogyam-Jones and Fruitbat came, arriving an hour early, when Eva was still shaving her legs in the bath in the kitchen. Eva tolerated them since they paid for Dad’s thoughts and therefore her dinner, but when they went into the bedroom to chant I heard her say to Dad, as she put on her yellow silk blouse for that brilliant evening, ‘The future shouldn’t contain too much of the past.’ Later, just as the party was starting and Eva was discussing the origin of the word ‘bohemian’ with Dad, Fruitbat pulled out a handy pad and asked if she could write down something that Dad had said. The Buddha of suburbia nodded regally, while Eva looked as if she wanted to cut off Fruitbat’s eyelids with a pair of scissors.
When this eagerly awaited party actually happened, it had been going forty minutes before Dad and I realized that we knew virtually no one there. Shadwell seemed to know everyone. He was standing at the door, greeting people as they came in, simpering and giggling and asking them how so-and-so was. He was being totally homosexual too, except that even that was a pose, a ruse, a way of self-presentation. And he was, as always, a picture of health, dressed in black rags and black boots and twitching maniacally. His face was white, his skin scrofulous, his teeth decaying.
Since I’d been living in the flat, Shadwell had been coming to see Eva at least once a week, during the day, when Dad was at the office. He and Eva went out on long walks together, or to the cinema at the ICA to see Scorsese films and exhibitions of dirty nappies. Eva made no effort to have us talk to each other, Shadwell and I; in fact I felt she wanted to discourage conversation. Whenever I saw her and Shadwell together they always looked pretty intense, as if they’d just had a fight or shared a lot of secrets.
Now, as the party fodder turned up in their glittering clothes, I began to see that Eva was using the evening not as a celebration but as her launch into London. She’d invited every theatre and film person she’d run into over the past few years, and a lot she hadn’t. Many were Shadwell’s acquaintances, people he’d met only once or twice. Every third-rate actor, assistant film director, weekend writer, part-time producer and their friends, if they had friends, slid on to our premises. As my darling new mother (whom I loved) moved radiantly about the room introducing Derek, who had just directed Equus at the Contact Theatre, to Bryan, who was a freelance journalist specializing in film, or Karen, who was a secretary at a literary agency, to Robert, who was a designer; as she spoke of the new Dylan album and what Riverside Studios was doing, I saw she wanted to scour that suburban stigma right off her body. She didn’t realize it was in the blood and not on the skin; she didn’t see there could be nothing more suburban than suburbanites repudiating themselves.
It was a relief when at last I saw someone I knew. From the window I spotted Jamila getting out of a cab, accompanied by a Japanese woman and Changez. I was delighted to see my friend’s happy pudding face again, blinking up at the collapsing mansion in which our flat was located. As I caught his eye I realized how much I wanted to hold him in my arms again, and squeeze his rolls of fat. Except that I hadn’t seen him since he lay on his camp-bed and watched me sleeping naked with his beloved wife, the woman I’d always characterized to him as ‘sister’.
I’d spoken frequently to Jamila on the phone, of course, and apparently Changez – solid, stable, unshakeable Changez – had turned quite mad after the naked-on-the-bed incident. He’d railed at Jamila and accused her of adultery, incest, betrayal, whoredom, deceit, lesbianism, husband-hatred, frigidity, lying and callousness, as well as the usual things.
Jamila was equally fine and fierce that day, explaining just who her damn body belonged to. And anyway, it was none of his business: didn’t he have a regular fuck? He could shove his hypocrisy up his fat arse! Changez, being at heart a traditional Muslim, explained the teachings of the Koran on this subject to her, and then, when words were not sufficient to convince her, he tried to give her a whack. But Jamila was not whackable. She gave Changez a considerable backhander across his wobbling chops, which shut his mouth for a fortnight, during which he miserably carried his bruised jaw to his camp-bed – that raft in a storm – and didn’t speak.
Now he shook hands with me and we held each other. I was slightly worried, I must admit, that he would knife me.
‘How are you, Changez?’
‘Looking good, looking good.’
‘Yes?’
Without any hesitation he said, ‘Let’s not beat around any bushes. How can I forgive you for screwing my wife? Is that a nice thing to do to a friend, eh?’
I was ready for him.
‘I’ve known Jammie all my life, yaar. Long-standing arrangement. She was always mine in so far as she was anyone’s, and she’s never been anyone’s and never will be anyone’s, you know. She’s her own person.’
His sad face trembled as he shook his sincere, hurt head and sat down.
‘You dece
ived me. It was a blow against the centre of my life. I couldn’t take it. It was too much for me – it hit me hard, in the guts, Karim.’
What can you say when friends admit such hurt without vindictiveness or bitterness? I didn’t ever want to aim a blow against the centre of his life.
‘How are you two getting along anyway?’ I asked, shifting the subject. I sat down beside him and we opened a Heineken each. Changez was thoughtful and serious.
‘I’ve got to be realistic about adjustment. It’s unusual for me, an Indian man, vis-à-vis the things that go on around my wife. Jamila makes me do shopping and washing and cleaning. And she has become friends with Shinko.’
‘Shinko?’
He indicated the Japanese woman who had arrived with him. I looked at her; I did recognize her. Then it occurred to me who Shinko was – his prostitute friend, with whom he conjured Harold Robbins’s positions. I was amazed. I could hardly speak, but I could snigger, for there they were, Changez’s wife and his whore, chatting together about modern dance with Fruitbat.
I was puzzled. ‘Is Shinko a friend of Jamila’s, then?’
‘Only recently, you complete cunt. Jamila made up her mind she didn’t have sufficient women friends, so she went to call on Shinko’s house. You told her about Shinko, after all, for no reason, gratis, thank you very much, I’ll do the same for you some day. It was bloody embarrassing at first and all, I can tell you, as these two girls sat there right in front of my nose, but the girls it didn’t phase out at all.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Nothing! What could I do? They were instant friends! They were discussing all the subjects usually kept under the pillow. The penis here, the vagina there, the man on top, the woman here, there and everywhere. I just have to put up with all the humiliations that fall on my head in this great country! It’s been difficult, too, since Anwar-saab has become insanely mad.’
‘What are you on about, Changez? I don’t know anything about this.’
He sat back, regarded me coolly and shrugged complacently.
‘But what subject do you know about?’
‘Eh?’
‘You never go there, yaar, just as you avoid me now.’
‘I see.’
‘It makes you sad,’ he said.
I nodded. It was true that I hadn’t been to see Jeeta or Anwar for a long time, what with the moving and my depression and everything, and wanting to start a new life in London and know the city.
‘Don’t leave your own people behind, Karim.’
Before I had a chance to leave my own people and find out exactly how Anwar had gone insanely mad, Eva came over to me.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Changez. ‘Get up,’ she said to me.
‘I’m all right here,’ I said.
She tugged me to my feet. ‘God, Karim, won’t you do anything for yourself?’ Her eyes were bright with the thrill of things. As she talked she didn’t stop looking around the room. ‘Karim, darling, your big moment in life has arrived. There’s someone here dying to meet you again, meet you properly. A man who will help you.’
She led me through the throng. ‘By the way,’ she murmured in my ear. ‘Don’t say anything arrogant or appear too egotistical.’
I was annoyed with her dragging me away from Changez. ‘Why not?’ I said.
‘Let him talk,’ she said.
She’d mentioned someone who would help me, but I saw only Shadwell ahead of me. ‘Oh no,’ I said, and tried to pull away. But she continued to haul me forward like a mother with a naughty child. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s your chance. Talk about the theatre.’
Shadwell didn’t require much encouragement. It was easy to see that he was clever and well read, but he was also boring. Like many spectacular bores, his thoughts were catalogued and indexed. When I asked him a question he’d say, ‘The answer to that is – in fact the several answers to that are … A.’ And you’d get point A followed by points Β and C, and on the one hand F, and on the other foot G, until you could see the whole alphabet stretching ahead, each letter a Sahara in itself to be crawled across. He was talking about the theatre and the writers he liked: Arden, Bond, Orton, Osborne, Wesker, each suffocated just by being in his mouth for a minute. I kept trying to get back to Changez’s lugubrious face, which reclined morosely in his good hand as the guests filled the air around him with cultivated noises. I saw Changez’s eyes fall caressingly on his wife’s form and then rest on his prostitute’s grooving hips as the two of them got down to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Then, spontaneously, Changez pushed himself up and danced with them, lifting each foot ponderously from the floor like a performing elephant, and sticking his elbows out as if he’d been asked, in a drama class, to be a flamingo. I wanted to dance with him and celebrate the renewal of our friendship. I crept away from Shadwell. But I caught Eva’s eye. She glared at me.
‘I can see you want to get away,’ said Shadwell, ‘to much more charismatic folk. But Eva tells me you’re interested in acting.’
‘Yes, for a long time, I suppose.’
‘Well, are you or aren’t you? Am I to be interested in you or not?’
‘Yes, if you’re interested.’
‘Good, I am interested. I’d like you to do something for me. They’ve given me a theatre for a season. Will you come along and do a piece for me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, yes, I will.’
After the guests had gone, at three in the morning, as we sat among the debris and Chogyam and Fruitbat threw rubbish into plastic bags, I wanted to discuss Shadwell with Eva. I said he was boring as hell. Eva was already irritable; this Madame Verdurin of West London felt Dad and I hadn’t appreciated the quality of her guests. ‘Whose intelligence did you engage with this evening, Karim? You two behaved as if we were still in the sticks. And it is wicked, Karim, to mind Shadwell being dull. It’s a misfortune, not a fault, like being born with a nose like a turnip.’
‘She’s changed her tune,’ I said to Dad. But he wasn’t listening. He watched Eva all the time. Now he felt playful: he kept tickling the cushion next to him and saying, ‘Come here, come here, little Eva, and let me tell you a secret.’ They still played sickening games that I couldn’t avoid, like putting sperm on each other’s nose and calling one another Merkin and Muffin, for God’s sake. Chogyam turned to Dad. ‘What is your view on this matter of boredom?’
Dad cleared his throat and said that boring people were deliberately boring. It was a personality choice, and responsibility couldn’t be avoided by saying they were like turnips. Bores wanted to narcotize you so you wouldn’t be sensitive to them.
‘Anyway,’ Eva whispered, sitting beside Dad now and cradling his drowsy head as she looked up at me. ‘Shadwell has a real theatre and for some reason he likes you. Let’s see if we can land you a theatre job, eh? Is that what you want?’
I didn’t know what to say. This was a chance, but I was frightened of taking it, frightened of exposing myself and failing. Unlike Charlie’s, my will wasn’t stronger than my misgivings.
‘Make up your mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you, Creamy, in any way you want.’
Over the next few weeks, with Eva directing me – which she loved – I prepared a Sam Shepard speech from The Mad Dog Blues for my audition with Shadwell. I’d never worked so hard at anything in my life; nor, once I’d started, had I wanted anything so badly. The speech began: ‘I was on a Greyhound bus out of Carlsbad heading for Loving, New Mexico. Back to see my dad. After ten years. All duded out in a double-breasted suit with my shoes all shined. The driver calls “Loving” and I get off the bus …’
I knew what I was doing; I was thoroughly prepared; but that didn’t mean that when the day came I wasn’t in a state of nervous collapse. ‘Are you familiar with The Mad Dog Blues?’ I asked Shadwell, sure he would never have heard of it.
He was sitting in the front row of his theatre watching me, a notebook balanced on the leg of his rancid trousers. He nodded. ‘Shepa
rd is my man. And there are not many boys who would not want to be him, because A he is attractive, Β he can write and act, C he can play the drums and D he is a wild boy and rebel.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now do The Mad Dog Blues for me, please. Brilliantly.’
Shadwell’s theatre was a small wooden building like a large hut, in suburban North London. It had a tiny foyer but a wide stage, proper lights and about two hundred seats. They produced plays like French without Tears, the latest Ayckbourn or Frayn, or a panto. It was primarily an amateur place, but they did do three professional productions a year, mostly of plays on the school curriculum like The Royal Hunt of the Sun.
When I finished, Shadwell started to applaud with the tips of his fingers, as if scared his hands would give each other a disease. He climbed up on stage. ‘Thank you, Karim.’
‘You liked it, yeah?’ I asked, out of breath.
‘So much so that I want you to do it again.’
‘What? Again? But I reckon that was my best shot, Mr Shadwell.’
He ignored me. He had an idea. ‘Only this time two extra things will occur: A, a wasp will be buzzing around your head. And B, the wasp wants to sting you. Your motivation – and all actors love a bit of motivation – is to brush, push, fight it away, OK?’
‘I’m not sure Sam Shepard would approve of this wasp business,’ I said confidently. ‘He really wouldn’t.’
Shadwell turned and peered exaggeratedly into every cranny of the deserted theatre. ‘But he’s not fucking here, unless I’ve gone blind.’
And he went and sat down again, waiting for me to begin. I felt a complete wanker, waving at that wasp. But I wanted the part, whatever the part was. I couldn’t face going back to that flat in West Kensington not knowing what to do with my life and having to be pleasant, and not being respected by anyone.
When I’d done with Shepard and the wasp, Shadwell put his arm round me. ‘Well done! You deserve a coffee. Come on.’
The Buddha of Suburbia Page 16