‘Shouldn’t they – I mean, we – talk about it, Allie?’
‘Talk about it? God, no.’ Clearly he was on to a subject he liked. ‘They should shut up and get on with their lives. At least the blacks have a history of slavery. The Indians were kicked out of Uganda. There was reason for bitterness. But no one put people like you and me in camps, and no one will. We can’t be lumped in with them, thank God. We should be just as grateful we haven’t got white skin either. I don’t like the look of white skin, it –’
‘Allie, I visited a dentist the other day who –’
‘Creamy, let’s put your teeth aside for a minute and –’
‘Allie–’
‘Let me say that we come from privilege. We can’t pretend we’re some kind of shitted-on oppressed people. Let’s just make the best of ourselves.’ He looked at me like a Sunday school teacher telling you not to let yourself down. I liked him now; I wanted to know him; but the things he was saying were strange. ‘So congratulations, big brother. A soap opera, that’s something to crow about. Television’s the only medium I like.’
I screwed up my face.
‘Karim, I hate the theatre even more than I hate opera. It’s so –’ He searched for the wrong word. ‘So make-believe. But listen, Creamy, there’s something you should know about Mum.’
I looked at him as if he were going to say she had cancer or something. ‘Since their divorce came through she’s been seeing a man. Jimmy. It’s been going on for four months or so. It’s a big shock, OK, I know that. But we just have to accept it and not take the piss, if that’s possible.’
‘Allie–’
He sat there all cool. ‘Don’t ask me a lot of bloody questions, Karim. I can’t tell you about him because I haven’t met him and I’m not allowed to.’
‘Why not?’
‘And nor are you, OK? He’s seen pictures of us aged ten or something, but no older. Jimmy doesn’t know Mum’s exact age. She thinks he’d be shocked and put off to discover she had sons as old as us. So we have to keep a pretty absent profile.’
‘Christ, Allie.’
‘There you are.’
I sighed. ‘Good for her. She deserves it.’
‘Jimmy’s OK. He’s respectable, he’s employed, he doesn’t put his prick around.’ Then this admiring look came over him again, and he shook his head and whistled. ‘A soap opera, eh? That’s class.’
‘You know,’ I said. ‘After Mum and Dad broke up, everything went crazy. I didn’t know where I was.’
He was looking at me. I felt guilty that I’d never discussed his feelings about this. ‘Don’t talk about it now,’ he said. ‘I can’t take it either. I know too well what you mean.’
He smiled reassuringly.
‘All right,’ I said.
Then he leaned towards me and said venomously, ‘I don’t see Dad. When I miss him I speak to him on the phone. I don’t have much time for people who run away from their wife and kids. I don’t blame you for going with him – you were young. But Dad was selfish. And what about him giving up his job? Don’t you think he’s insane? He’ll have no money. Eva will have to support him. Therefore Eva will have to support Mum. Isn’t that grotesque? And Mum hates her. We’ll all be parasites on her!’
‘Allie–’
‘What will he be doing, St Francis of Assisi, discussing life, death and marriage – on which he’s a world expert – with idiots who’ll think he’s a pompous old bore? God, Karim, what happens to people when they start to get old?’
‘Don’t you understand anything?’
‘Understand what?’
‘Oh, Allie, how stupid can you be? Don’t you see the way things happen?’
He looked hurt and deflated then: it wasn’t difficult to do that to him, he was so unsure of himself. I couldn’t think how to apologize and return to our former understanding.
He murmured, ‘But I’ve not looked at it from another point of view.’
Just then I heard a key in the door. A new sound, yet it was a noise I’d heard every day for years when Mum came home from the shop to get our tea. It was her now. I went out and hugged her. She was pleased to see me, but not that pleased, once she’d ascertained that I hadn’t been killed, and had a job. She was in a hurry. ‘A friend’s coining round later,’ she said without a blush, as Allie and I winked at each other. While she showered and dressed, we dusted and vacuumed the front room. ‘Better do the stairs, too,’ Allie said.
Mum spent ages preparing herself, and Allie told her what jewellery to wear, and the right shoes and everything. This was a woman who never used to have more than one bath a week. When we first moved into the house, in the late-1950s, there wasn’t even a bathroom. Dad used to sit with his knees up in a tin tub in the front room, and Allie and I ran to and fro with jugs of water heated on the stove.
Now Allie and I hung around the house as long as possible to torment Mum with the idea that Jimmy might turn up and see that we were both about forty years old. She was saying, ‘Haven’t you two lads got anywhere to go?’ when the front door bell rang. Poor Mum froze. I never thought she’d go as far as this, but she said, ‘You two go out the back door.’ She almost shoved us out into the garden and locked the door behind us. Allie and I hung around giggling and throwing a tennis ball at each other. Then we went round to the front of the house and peeped through the black outlined squares of the ‘Georgian’ windows she’d had installed, making the front of the house resemble a crossword puzzle.
And there was Jimmy, our father’s replacement, sitting on the sofa with Mum. He was a pale man and an Englishman. This was a surprise: somehow I’d expected an Indian to be sitting with her, and when there wasn’t I felt disappointed in her, as if she’d let us down. She must have had enough of Indians. Jimmy was in his late thirties, earnest, and dressed plainly in a grey suit. He was lower middle class like us, but handsome and clever-looking: the sort who’d know the names of all the actors in Vincent Minnelli films, and would go on television quizzes to prove it. Mum was opening a present he’d brought when she looked up and saw her two sons peering through the net curtains at her. She blushed and panicked, but in seconds she collected her dignity and ignored us. We slunk off.
I didn’t want to go home right away, so Allie took me to a new club in Covent Garden designed by a friend of his. How London had moved on in ten months. No hippies or punks: instead, everyone was smartly dressed, and the men had short hair, white shirts and baggy trousers held up by braces. It was like being in a room full of George Orwell lookalikes, except that Orwell would have eschewed earrings. Allie told me they were fashion designers, photographers, graphic artists, shop designers and so on, young and talented. Allie’s girlfriend was a model, a thin black girl who said nothing except that being in a soap opera could only lead to better things. I looked around for someone to pick up, but was so lonely I knew they’d smell it on me. I wasn’t indifferent enough for seduction.
I said goodbye to Allie and went back to the Fish’s. I sat there in his cavernous flat for a while; I walked around; I listened to a Captain Beefheart track, ‘Dropout Boogie’, until it drove me mad; I sat down again; and then I went out.
I drifted around the late streets for an hour, until I got lost and hailed a cab. I told the driver to take me to South London, but first, hurrying now, I got him to drive me back to the flat. He waited while I went in and searched the Fish’s place for a gift for Changez and Jamila. I would make up with them. I did love them; I would show them how much by giving them a huge tablecloth belonging to the Fish. On the way I stopped off to get an Indian take-away to extra-appease them, in case they were still cross with me about anything. We drove past Princess Jeeta’s shop, which at night was grilled, barred and shuttered. I thought of her lying upstairs asleep. Thank God I have an interesting life, I said to myself.
At the commune I rang the bell, and after five minutes Changez came to the door. Behind him the place was silent, and there was no sign of naked political disc
ussion. Changez held a baby in his arms.
‘It’s one-thirty in the morning, yaar,’ was what he said in greeting, after all this time. He turned back into the house, and I followed him, feeling like a dog about to be kicked. In the shabby living room, with its filing cabinets and old sofa, I saw to my relief that Changez was unchanged, and I wouldn’t have to take any shit from him. He hadn’t become bourgeois and self-respecting. There was jam on his nose, he wore the bulging boiler suit with books poking from numerous pockets, and, I suspected, looking at him closely, he was developing full female breasts. ‘Here’s a present,’ I said, offering the tablecloth. ‘All the way from America.’
‘Shhh …’ he replied, indicating the baby buried in blankets. ‘This is the daughter of the house, Leila Kollontai, and she’s asleep at last. Our baby. Top naughty.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Is take-away in the offing?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Dal and all? Kebabs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘From the top curry house on the corner?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But they become cold dramatically. Open, open!’
‘Wait.’
I flapped the tablecloth and started to remove various papers, dirty plates and a head of Lenin from the table. But Changez was eager to get at the food, and insisted we fling the Fish’s tablecloth on top of everything else. ‘Hungry, eh?’ I said, as he sat down and plucked the slithery leaking cartons from the bag.
‘I’m on bloody dole, Karim. Full-time I am eating potatoes. If I’m not dodgy they’ll find me a job. How can I work and look after Leila Kollontai?’
‘Where is everyone else?’
‘Mr Simon the father is away in America. He’s been long gone, lecturing on the history of the future. He’s a big man, yaar, though you didn’t appreciate.’
‘And Jamila?’ I said hesitantly. ‘I’ve missed her.’
‘She’s here, intact and all, upstairs. But she won’t be happy to talk to you, no, no, no, no. She’ll be happy to barbecue your balls and eat them with peas. Are you remaining long?’
‘Bubble, you fat fucker, what are you talking about? It’s me, Creamy Jeans, your only friend, and I’ve come all the way to the swamp of South London to see you.’
He shook his head, handed me Leila Kollontai, who had a plump face and olive skin, and ripped the lids from the cartons. He started to press lumps of spinach into his mouth with his fingers, after sprinkling red chilli powder over it. Changez didn’t like any food he could taste.
I said, airily, ‘I’ve been in America, putting on political theatre.’ I went into what I’d been doing, and boasted about the parties I’d been to, the people I’d met and the magazines I’d been interviewed for. He ignored me and filled his bulging face. As I went on, he said suddenly, ‘You’re in bloody shit, Karim. And what are you going to do about it? Jammie won’t forgive you for not putting your face in it at the demonstration. That’s the thing you should be worried about, yaar.’
I was stung. We fell silent. Changez seemed uninterested in anything I had to say. I was forced to ask him about himself. ‘You must be pleased, eh, now Simon’s away and you’ve got Jamila to yourself full-time. Any progress?’
‘We are all progressing. There is another woman coining in close here.’
‘Where?’
‘No, no. Jamila’s friend, you fool.’
‘Jamila’s got a woman friend? Am I hearing you right?’ I said.
‘Loud and clear. Jammie loves two people, that’s all. It’s simple to grasp. She loves Simon, but he’s not here. She loves Joanna, and Joanna is here. She has told me.’
I stared at him in wonderment. How could he have had any idea, when he kicked off from Bombay, of the convoluted involvements ahead of him? ‘How d’you feel about this?’
‘Eh?’ He was uncomfortable. It was as if he wanted no more said; the subject was closed. This was how he squared things in his mind, and it was good enough for him. ‘Me? Precisely what questions are you asking?’ And he could have added, ‘If you insist on asking such questions.’
I said, ‘I am asking how you, Changez, you with your background of prejudice against practically the whole world, are coping with being married to a lesbian.’
The question shook him more than I had the sense to see it would. He fought for words. At last he said, from beneath his eyebrows, ‘I’m not, am I?’
Now I was confused. ‘I don’t bloody know,’ I said. ‘I thought you said they loved each other.’
‘Yes, love! I am all for love,’ he declared. ‘All in this house are trying to love each other!’
‘Good.’
‘Aren’t you all for love?’ he asked, as if wishing firmly to establish this common ground.
‘Yes.’
‘So, then?’ he said. ‘Whatever Jamila does is all right by me. I am not a tyrant fascist, as you know. I have no prejudice except against Pakistanis, which is normal. So what is your point, Karim? What are you labouring to –’
Just then the door opened and Jamila came in. She looked thinner and older, her cheeks were slightly hollow and her eyes more lined, but there was something quicker, lighter and less serious in her now; she seemed to laugh more easily. She sang a reggae song and danced a few steps towards Leila and back. Jamila was accompanied by a woman who looked nineteen but I guessed was older, in her late twenties. She had a fresh, open face, with good skin. Her short hair was streaked with blue, and she wore a red and black workman’s shirt and jeans. As Jamila pirouetted the woman laughed and clapped her hands. She was introduced to me as Joanna, and she smiled at me and then stared, making me wonder what I’d done.
‘Hallo, Karim,’ Jamila said, and moved away as I rose to hold her. She took Leila Kollontai and asked if the baby had been all right. She kissed and rocked her. As Jammie and Changez talked I became aware of a new tone between them. I listened carefully. What was it? It was gentle respect; they were speaking to each other without condescension or suspicion, as equals. How things had changed!
Meanwhile, Joanna was saying to me, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’
‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
‘No, you’re right. But I’m sure we’ve seen each other somewhere.’ Puzzled, she continued to look at me.
‘He’s a big famous actor,’ Jamila put in. ‘Aren’t you, dear?’
Joanna punched the air. ‘That’s it. I saw the play you were in. I loved it, too. You were great in it. Really funny.’ She turned to Changez. ‘You liked it too, didn’t you? I remember you persuaded me to go and see it. You said it was accurate.’
‘No, I don’t think I liked it as much as I said,’ Changez murmured. ‘What I remember of it has left little permanent trace in my memory. It was white people’s thing, wasn’t it, Jammie?’ And Changez looked at Jamila as if for approval, but she was breast-feeding the kid.
Fortunately, Joanna wasn’t put off by that fat bastard, Changez. ‘I admired your performance,’ she said.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a film-maker,’ she said. ‘Jamila and I are making a documentary together.’ Then she turned to Changez. ‘We should crash, Jammie and I’, she said. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was grapefruit and toast for breakfast again.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Changez, with an ebullient face but darting, worried eyes. ‘Don’t you worry, there will be, for you and Jamila at nine on the dot.’
‘Thank you.’
Joanna kissed Changez then. When she’d turned away, he wiped his cheek. Jamila gave Leila Kollontai to Changez and, offering Joanna her hand, she went off. I watched them go before turning to Changez. He wouldn’t look at me now. He was angry; he was staring and shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘You make me think about too many things.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Go upstairs and sleep in the room at the end of the hall. I must change Leila. She has mucked herself.’
I felt too tired to
walk upstairs, so when Changez went out I lay down behind the sofa, pulling a blanket over me. The floor was hard; I couldn’t sleep. The world was swaying about like a hammock with my body on it. I counted my breaths and became aware of the rise and fall of my stomach, the hiss of my breath in my nostrils, my forehead relaxing. But, as in many of my meditation attempts, I was soon thinking of sex and other things. How stolidly contented Changez seemed at last. There was no vacillation in his love; it was true, it was absolute, he knew what he felt. And Jamila seemed content to be loved in this way. She could do what she wanted and Changez would always put her first; he loved her more than he loved himself.
I awoke cold and cramped, not sure where I was. Instead of getting up I stayed on the floor. I could hear voices. It was Changez and Jamila, who’d obviously come back into the room and had been talking for a while as Jamila tried to put Leila to sleep. They had plenty to say to each other, as they discussed Leila’s wind, the house, the date of Simon’s return – and where he’d sleep – and Joanna’s documentary.
I went back to sleep. When I woke up again Jamila was getting ready for bed. ‘I’m going up,’ she said. ‘Get some sleep yourself, sweetie. Oh, and Leila is out of nappies.’
‘Yes, the little naughty has made her clothes all filthy, too. I’ll wash them first thing tomorrow at the laundrette.’
‘And mine? There’s just a few things. And Joanna’s leggings? Could you –’
‘Leave me in complete control. Colonel Changez.’
‘Thank you,’ Jamila said. ‘Colonel Changez.’
‘Main thing is, I’m mighty bloody glad you’re eating well,’ Changez said. His voice was high and strained; he was talking quickly, as if he thought the moment he shut his mouth she’d go away. ‘I’m giving you only healthy food from now on. Jamila, think: there will be top grapefruit and special warm bread for breakfast. Top fresh sardines for lunch with fresh bread, followed by pears and soft cheese –’
He bored her, he knew he bored her, but he couldn’t stop. She tried to interrupt. ‘Changez, I – ’
‘Auntie Jeeta is selling good food now, since I converted her to new lines.’ His voice rose. ‘She is old-fashioned, but I am saying follow the latest trends which I am discovering in magazines. She is becoming enthusiastic with my guidance. She walks naughty Leila in the park while I organize shop!’ He was almost yelling. ‘I am installing mirrors for the detection of criminals!’
The Buddha of Suburbia Page 32