‘I’ve read that.’
‘And your father now, he is showing regressive behaviour. He is becoming childlike, you know. Not really senility, approaching senility.’
‘Senility?’
‘Having said that, his behaviour has always been very easy to manage in the community. He is very pliant. He is stable, at the moment. I don’t see things changing for a while. As he gets older, little by little there will be more brewing concerns, of course.’
‘Brewing concerns, of course?’
‘Well, the disease …’ He looked at his watch, and Dad stood up. ‘It affects the intellectual functions. He will be more prone to developing dementia-like problems. Given his kind of illness, people do age faster that way. Intellectually, mentally. Anyway, I’ll see him in six months.’
Before I knew it, I was shaking Dr Patel’s hand and the consultation was ending in the way important meetings with doctors tend to: with more questions raised than answered. Not that I had time to fully formulate the questions in my mind, as I had to head back to London straight after the appointment, to interview a major recording artist about a new album I hadn’t listened to yet, in a five-star hotel suite that had been hired especially for the occasion, a mountain of untouched food and drink sitting on a table between us. Indeed, it was only towards the end of that interview, some time after the record company PR executive had claimed, ludicrously, that the major recording artist in question was ‘very excited’ to meet me, just before the major recording artist had got my name and publication wrong for the third time, that I realized what I should have asked Dr Patel. Was there a way I could find out how Dad was first diagnosed? How much of Dad’s behaviour was his personality, how much was schizophrenia, how much was incipient senility and how much was due to the side-effects of his medication? Before I knew it, I was being shuffled out of the hotel room, having forgotten to ask the major recording artist in question the vital intrusive questions newspaper interviewers always save for the end of interviews.
9. Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)
Back to the mid-eighties now, when we have moved back into 60 Prosser Street after the council-sponsored renovation, when Rajah is picking his options at school, Bindi is working up to her CSEs, Puli is studying for her O-levels, and when, on a Sunday evening, while my siblings have been driven to their respective corners of the house by the crap telly, I am in the living room with my parents, bent over a two-tiered coffee table, the tip of my tongue protruding from my lips with the effort of concentration.
The living room, like the rest of the house, has been transformed by the Indian builders. The old orange and brown floral wallpaper has been replaced with smooth magnolia-painted plaster. Artex meringue effects dance around a fluorescent strip light, where once a bare bulb hung forlornly from a peeling ceiling. And I’m kneeling on a brand new wall-to-wall brown and white carpet, the brown bits of which disguise the extent of the incipient cockroach problem, which has taken the place of the rodent problem, and the white bits of which look as if someone has had an accident with a bag of chapatti atta.
The coffee table is as new as everything else. The family had yomped off to buy it at the opening of a new MFI store on the Bilston Road, where Johnny Briggs, the actor famous for playing Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street, had been hired for the official opening. We queued up with the rest of Wolverhampton for an autograph afterwards, and dissected our first ever brush with celebrity on the bus home, Bindi saying he looked smaller than he did on telly, Puli saying he looked older than he did on telly, and me clutching the flatpack at the front of the bus, trying to forget I’d heard him say ‘Thanks, darlin” as I trundled off with a signed photo. Typical. Even Mike Baldwin thought I looked like a girl.
Rajah helped Chacha assemble the table at home – it’s ironic that we have a coffee table and yet Mum doesn’t allow Nescafé in the house because she regards it as a narcotic – and this evening I have my most beloved item of stationery spread out over it, a folder given out by Barclays Bank to new customers. Some might regard it as a cheap piece of PVC-coated tat, barely up to its prescribed task of holding bank statements, but to my mind, with its flaps, compartments, and cool wipeaway memo pad, it is an object of considerable sophistication. I use it as a kind of Filofax, a personal filing system for my collection of misheard pop lyrics (which has expanded now into songs by Prince, Simply Red, and U2), my copy of the Wolverhampton Grammar School prospectus (given to me by my headmaster, who called in Mum and Puli – for translation – to suggest I was entered for the 11-plus entrance examination), my secret diary, and, in the main bit of the folder, my bank-related stationery.
However, this stationery isn’t from Barclays Bank, telling me that my balance stands at £29, as it did the year before, and the year before that. All this financial literature – there’s no way of saying this without it sounding odd – relates to the bank I’ve set up in my spare time.
Why have I set up a bank in my spare time, when other boys my age dream of becoming fighter pilots and marrying Daisy Duke, when my own brother’s stated ambition – voiced out loud during a school careers lesson – is of becoming a member of Miami Vice? Well, I suppose I could blame the entrepreneurial streak that runs through Indian culture: we seem to fantasize about setting up businesses in the way other races fantasize about becoming pop stars and footballers. But this would be dishonest. I’m playing at bank manager because of my ongoing saviour complex. You see, Mum had recently returned from her annual pilgrimage to the tea-leaf reader on Stratton Street with news that one of her children was going to ‘work with money’, and as maths was my best subject, and as the only person we knew who worked with money was a cousin who worked in a bank, and as I can no more imagine a life away from my family than imagine a life foraging for porcupines in the Amazon, it was collectively concluded that this meant I was going to work as a bank clerk in town. And in preparation for fulfilling this destiny, between homework and the factory and playing with friends, I’ve … set up a bank.
Everything is in place. There is a logo: the radiation warning sign, with green triangles instead of yellow ones. There is a name: because young boys and Asian entrepreneurs love nothing more than plastering their monicker over things, I’ve called it: Sanghera Building Society. And knowing the way to attract funds is to offer the public interest-bearing accounts, I’ve compiled a leaflet outlining the rates offered by SBS – explaining over a page of foolscap how, if you deposit two pence, you will get one pence interest after three months, how if you deposit three pence, you will get two pence interest after three months, and so on. To add authenticity to the documentation, I’ve spent the evening copying out some small print from a bank advert in the Radio Times on to the back of each sheet of paper. Rates may vary: correct at time of going to press. Interest is calculated on the total amount held for as long as this balance is maintained and is to be added on 31 December. Written mortgage details available on request. Not that I know what a mortgage is.
All I need now is some cash on deposit.
My first cold call is Mum, who is sitting at her sewing-machine assembling heavy maroon velvet curtains for the new Tudor-effect windows. She is wearing a foam neck brace, to lessen the pains in her neck and shoulders that started when she began at the factory, and the lenses in her tortoiseshell glasses are thicker than they used to be. She presses the bright red ‘OFF’ button on her sewing-machine to hear me out and at the end of the sales patter asks whether SBS is just a way of getting extra pocket money. Satisfied it isn’t, and reassured it’s a stepping-stone in the direction of me fulfilling my destiny and saving the family from poverty and misery, she pinches my cheek, and pulls a 10 pence piece out from the pocket of the white slip she wears underneath her suits.
Ker-ching!
Flushed with success, I repeat the pitch to Dad, who, as ever, is watching Channel 4 on the still-new colour TV, and who, at the end of my spiel, looks back at me with such incredulity that for a moment it seem
s he doesn’t even recognize me. Eventually, I get the predictable: ‘Ask your mum.’ Sometimes I think this would be his response if I asked him his name.
‘Mum, can you tell Dad why I want some money.’
‘Just give your son some money, will you,’ she instructs Dad wearily, biting a section of thread with her teeth. ‘He’s set up a bank.’
Dad does as instructed: puts his hand into his trouser pocket and pulls out what he calls ‘ek shelleng’ – one shilling, or five pence.
Wicked.
On to my siblings.
Rajah is going to be a challenge. Not easily parted with his cash and reluctant to indulge me in my whimsies, I am, furthermore, almost never allowed into his bedroom. The only time he lets me in willingly is when he wants help with something, such as painting Adidas symbols on to the tracksuits given to us by Shindo bua, or programming his ZX Spectrum 48k+, a task for which he will allow me to sit at the end of his bed, from where I will recite lines of code from the Sinclair User’s Manual. Just getting near his door is going to take the stealth of Pussy or Lucky.* One mis-step and he’ll be storming out, chucking me, topknot first, down the stairs.
I pad as softly as I can down the corridor to his room, which, like the bathroom and the inside loo, is a new addition to the house, allowing him access to his bedroom without having to walk through the room I still share with my parents. At night the thing to look out for is the bucket, which Mum brings up so there is something upstairs to wee into, but in the day, the main thing to watch out for is the creaking floorboard.
Pad.
Pad.
Pause.
Pad.
Pad.
Pause.
I manage to get to the mahogany-effect door without being detected, close enough to be able to hear ‘Part-Time Lover’ by Stevie Wonder playing on his radio. I push the silver-effect handle down gently so as not to produce a squeak and manage to open the door a couple of inches without being noticed: a first. It’s only a small gap, but the view is still tantalizing. The only things of interest in my room are my desk, my picture of a Lotus Esprit, a map of the world and a solitary poster of Prince, which Mum is forever threatening to pull down because she says he looks like a witch and it gives her nightmares. But every inch of Rajah’s room is fascinating. Apart from the Michael Jackson wallpaper, I can see the ZX Spectrum on the old kitchen cupboard that functions as his desk; his martial arts equipment on the floor – pads and gloves and robes – his cool Puma Dallas trainers next to it (where does he get the money from?); and a set of weights which, another nudge of the door reveals, he is using. Rajah’s interest in bodybuilding and martial arts is the closest any of us have got to sportiness. Puli once attained third place in the sack race, with the aid of a freak back wind on the annual school sports day at Woden Juniors, and Bindi was, according to family legend, once seen catching a netball and passing it without dropping it, but that’s it. Due to the fact that I have no co-ordination, and still can’t tie my own topknot and therefore am still not willing to submerge my head under water, I’m now one of only three kids in my class who can’t swim.
Watching Rajah pump iron, with his back to me, I decide there’s no point trying to be subtle. I’ve got to take my chance while I can. Flinging the door open, and waving a leaflet in his direction, I blurt my pitch as quickly as I can.
‘I’ve just started a b–’
‘Gerrout!’
‘Do you want to open an acc–’
‘Gerrout!’
‘Just two p–’
‘Gerrout! Mooooooooom! Sathnam’s in my roooooom!’
He lunges at me. A dead arm. My turn to yelp for parental intervention.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Moooooooom!’
A weary and muffled cry from downstairs. ‘Oi! You two! Hat-jao!’
I leg it out of the room, down the corridor, past the top of the stairs, and into my sisters’ bedroom, knowing he won’t follow me there. He never goes there. And neither should I, really: with Puli revising for her O-levels, and my sisters constantly at each other’s throats over cupboard space, or bedroom space, or household chores, or something or other, it’s best to keep out of the way. But this time they barely notice me coming in, so I stand next to the radiator – the central heating system has transformed my life, for I can now dry my hair by inserting it between the filaments like ham in a sandwich, and watch telly in the armchair as it dries – and appraise the situation.
Bindi is kneeling at her single bed, reading Jackie, a magazine with a puzzling lack of pop music coverage. Puli is sitting at her desk – a dressing-table with the mirror removed, in the tidier part of the room, poring over an impossibly hefty textbook. There are no posters in this room: only pictures of the Gurus, though I know the inside of Bindi’s wardrobe door is smothered with stickers from Smash Hits. In the corner, in front of the window, is our maroon telephone, another new addition to the house, and on Puli’s side of the room, a set of recent birthday cards, Blu-tacked to the wall, a calendar featuring Guru Nanak and advertising Gainda Drapers, and her Halina camera, in its box.
Catching my breath, I approach Bindi, and, in a voice kept low so as not to disturb Puli, make my pitch, taking care to mention that Mum and Dad have already invested a grand total of 15 pence, reassuring her I will pay the interest, and reciting the small print that I don’t understand, but which I’ve learnt off by heart. Because she is loaded (she got £10 for her birthday from our parents and grandparents) she gives me 20 pence – just to make me go away, she says – and flushed with cash, pound signs rolling in front of my eyes, I cross the invisible but heavily policed boundary that demarks Puli’s bit of the room from Bindi’s.
I know I shouldn’t cross the line. Mum has told me to leave Puli alone as she revises; you can almost feel the atmosphere get heavier as you approach, and I can see from the careful way in which she has arranged her books and pens around her that she is tense. But I risk it anyway.
‘Um.’ A stage whisper. ‘Will you give me some money for my … bank?’
‘I’m trying to work.’
‘Just ten pence.’
‘Look, I’m trying to work.’
‘How about five pence?’
‘I haven’t got time for your pathetic games …’
‘Five pence … I can see it there.’ I point at her desk. ‘That’s a quarter, or just 25 per cent, of what Bindi gave me.’
‘Look. LEAVE. ME. ALONE.’
‘Four pence?’ I do the Indian yes/no headroll together with the comedy Indian accent that used to make her laugh. ‘Very generous rate of interest, Auntiji!’
It doesn’t make her laugh. There’s that flash of something in her eyes and with one arm still curled around her textbook, she grabs the sheaf of paper from my hand, screws it up and throws it towards Bindi.
‘Think you’re so clever, don’t you.’ I scrabble across the floor for my notes. ‘Always sucking up to Mum.’
‘No I’m not!’
My eyes prickling with tears, I run out of the room, slide down the stairs – it’s quicker than running – to my mother’s side, where I receive absolutely no sympathy whatsoever.
‘She’s trying to study for her exams.’
Sniffling back at the coffee table, I straighten out my papers, pull my secret diary out of the most secret pouch of my Barclays folder, and underneath observations such as ‘I think I love Debra Jones’ and ‘I think Debra Jones is going out with Errol actually’, I scrawl: ‘I hate Puli.’ But the self-pity and anger dissipate the instant I realize I’m 35 pence richer. And evaluating my fledgling bank’s new financial position I make a decision more in tune with the ways of high finance than I realize: I do a runner and blow the bank’s funds on a finger doughnut from Mrs Burgess’s shop.
Another evening, some time later. At least, I think it’s later. It must be summer, as I’m wearing a tight yellow T-shirt, and it must be late evening, as the street lights are flickering into life as I ride home on the racer I�
�ve inherited from Rajah. I don’t know where I’ve been. Maybe I’ve popped into the factory after school, or I’ve been kept in by Mr Burgess, who has turned out not to be scary at all and is giving me extra tuition for the 11-plus, or I’ve been standing against the wall next to Sunita, the girl from number 70 who I love almost as much as Debra Jones, but who, unfortunately, has a crush on my brother.
The gold necklace Mum has made for me from her own wedding jewellery, and which she says will, in turn, be used to make jewellery for my bride when I get married a zillion years in the future, is flicking against my chin as I ride, and I’m out of breath as I wheel into the back yard. When I skid to a stop outside the kitchen, just in front of the living room window where Mum’s sewing-machine stands, I can tell something’s up. The kitchen windows, normally open while supper is being prepared, are closed, and there’s no hint of the clashing and clanking that usually accompanies mealtimes. My suspicions intensify in the kitchen, where the connecting door to the living room is shut, Pussy and Lucky have licked their bowl clean, even of the breadcrumbs Mum mixes into their Whiskas to save money – they haven’t been fed – and I can make out a voice that is somehow familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
Removing my Hi-Tec trainers, I push the door to find Bindi and Rajah leaning against it. They move over, revealing an odd scene. Mum is standing, a chuni over her head, arms folded, underneath the mirror. Dad is sitting in his armchair, his eyes more bloodshot than normal, looking at his feet. In the corner opposite, next to the door leading up to the stairs, cowering, is Puli. And in the middle of the room, the voice: the father from the family next door, clean-shaven, but sporting a turban. He is towering over the two boys from next door, his sons, who are sitting on our settee – one is moustachioed, the other not, and both are around eighteen years old and tall – taller than me, even sitting down.
The Boy with the Topknot Page 14