Meatspace
Page 26
‘Double date?’ he says, looking at Hayley.
‘We’ll see, Dad. We’ll have to see about that.’
He walks out of the door. I follow him. I close the door behind me. It’s just him and me in the communal area. He looks back at me. ‘I don’t need the money,’ he says. ‘I think you need to take some time, think about things. Use that money to buy you some time.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say. ‘Are we okay?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, we’re not. I’ll tell you something about Aziz, that you never ever got right in any of those blogs. Something you forgot. And in your book too. I read your book. I never told you but I read it. And you know what you missed? Aziz was never good with the ladies. He tried. Oh, he tried. He could talk to any man in the world, about anything. And everyone was his best friend. But with girls, he would go silent, and he would go giggly and he could not get a word out. He was shy. Not that you’d know because all you saw was loud Aziz. There was a shy Aziz too. He was a sweet boy. He was such a sweet boy. Anyway, son, we are going to spend more time together. Proper time. You and me. We could go for a walk. We could go on holiday. Not always dinner. Not always the same place. And you’re going to talk, too. You never talk. So I just keep on talking about nothing, about girls, because that’s the only thing I have going on. Because you sit there, wishing you were somewhere else. I’m your dad, beta. You have to tell me things. You’re broken up with Rach, fine, that’s sad, she’s a nice girl. Talk to me. You’re upset about a bad review in the Telegraph, that’s annoying. Talk to me. I have a Google Alert set up on my son’s name. I love him. I’m proud of him. He should know that.’
I’m crying.
Dad wipes a tear from his face.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say.
‘This other Kitab, Aziz, this new girl – they get your attention, your interactions. What do I get? One dinner a week? Come on, beta. There’s only you and me. Let’s make a change.’
I make a weird noise, a horse neigh. I’ve never heard it before. Dad walks over to me and he cuddles me. I cuddle him back. We stand there for a few moments. I can feel him drying his eyes. I wipe my tears into his jacket.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I have a hot date tonight. Don’t ruin my clothes.’
‘You should get going then, Dad.’
He lets go of me, wipes something off my cheek, pats it and goes to leave. He stops, facing the door. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It will be hard work, but as long as that’s enough, we’ll be fine.’
He opens the door and is gone.
*
Dad has left the building. I walk back into the flat and it’s just Hayley and me. She walks over to me, her arms folded, and buries her nose in my armpit. I giggle. It’s ticklish.
‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’
Hayley nods. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I do. Do you want to go for a walk?’
I grin. That’s exactly what I want to do. I take my phone out of my pocket and leave it on the counter. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’ We walk towards the door.
History:
Writing tips – Google
Get motivated to write – Google
10 essential tips for writing – Book
Writers handbook – Book
I choose meatspace. I start waking up early, eating properly, spending a minimum of 4 hours a day out of my flat. I allow myself an hour of internet 3 times a day. I build a routine, something I’ve sorely lacked.
I find a job copywriting for an ad firm near me. They let me work from home. I choose to hot desk with them. I get up early each morning and I sit at my desk and write for 3 hours before I have to be at work. The feeling of being surrounded by people again, on coffee rounds, talking about Game of Thrones, standing over each other’s desks and picking apart the finer details of full stops, punchier headlines and puns – it feels electric.
The sounds of my alarm clock barely register over the heavy purrs of Hayley as she lies next to me. I take my laptop into the other room and start writing. It feels forced, then it feels easy, then it feels like the worst thing I could be doing but I’m getting it done.
I get the occasional email from Kitab 2. He asks for me to provide him a reference to reapply to school with. He’s doing an English Literature degree in Bangalore, much to his father’s disdain and wants to write a novel based on his week in London. I reply that I’m happy to. He’s grown on me. My mentor.
I see Dad regularly. He moves into a flat nearby, out of my childhood home. We sell most of the contents and he sets himself up with an Ikea catalogue-style place. Near me, he sees me more often and he’s able to enjoy what he describes as ‘the carnival atmosphere’ of where I live. We go for walks, to the cinema, sometimes to concerts – old Bollywood song evenings where we sit on cushions, sip red wine and listen to the songs of Dad’s for ever ago. He tells me stories about Mum. I tell him stories about Aziz, ones he has never heard.
My news channels become just that, news channels. I close my Facebook account and sign up for a new email address. Before I delete my Facebook account, I do a search for my name and find a third Kitab Balasubramanyam. His avatar is a photo of his torso. We’re growing in legion. I’m not so much a ‘me’ anymore. Time for me to leave. I click delete.
I open the fridge, trying to make a cheese and something sandwich. I notice there are no chutneys. Just a jar of Branston pickle. Perfect, I mouth to myself.
Hayley spends a lot of time at my flat. She doesn’t like her flatmates much. A collection of different herbal teas comes with her, filling one of my cupboards up with box after box.
One afternoon, Dad is over and I’m showing him how to make roast potatoes. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beers and he looks at me.
‘How is the second novel coming?’ he asks.
I tell him all about it. I talk him through the plot. He asks questions, I make up answers to disguise the fact I haven’t thought of that yet. He gets me to define my audience. He laughs at the right bits, he gasps at others.
We talk for 30 minutes about the book and during a natural lull he puts his elbows on the table. ‘I’d like to see those books, the ones you and Aziz wrote,’ he says. ‘It would be nice to read my 2 sons’ adventures.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sure.’ I go and get them. We spend the rest of the evening acting out the stories in Aziz’s voice and gestures, remembering how he relayed details with his entire body. It feels good to talk about him like he’s not there anymore.
As we remember him, he feels more alive to me than he has done in years.
I’m walking down the high street and a car passes, music blaring. It stands out because it’s not grime or hip-hop like it usually is in this area. It’s a song from the 80s. It’s by Elvis Costello. It sparks a memory. Aziz and I are riding bikes through my old neighbourhood. The roads are empty because it’s the middle of the day. The sun is shining and I’m wearing a t-shirt with Shaquille O’Neal on it. Aziz is wearing a Clash t-shirt Dad hates. Because they’re loud and obnoxious, according to him. And probably have lots of tattoos.
He’s going faster and faster and encouraging me to keep up. I feign a lack of fitness but it’s because I’m scared of speed. Aziz lifts his hands off the handlebars to the sky. He is graceful and in command of that bike. He is practically flying. He turns round to me and I’m close enough to see him wink. He steadies himself and then brakes suddenly swinging the bike round to face me. He starts bellowing at the top of his voice, semi in tune, I join him when I know the words. It’s our favourite song, a tape we found amongst Mum’s things, ‘Shipbuilding’ by Elvis Costello recorded over and over again on one side of a blank C-90 tape … both Aziz and me, with all the will in the world,
‘Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls.’
Some memories will for ever be 3-dimensional.
Aziz vs the True Death
Acknowledgements:
ābhāra #1: wife Katie for the ‘two brain’ theory, for making me laugh more than anyone and for teddy dog.
ābhāra #2: my agent Jamie Coleman from Greene & Heaton, for being a hard taskmaster, good egg, giver of notes, calming navigator and curer of ‘Second Novel Syndrome’.
ābhāra #3: Scott Pack, Rachel Faulkner, Cicely Aspinall and everyone at The Friday Project for making the book possible and for letting us send some meat into space.
ābhāra #4: Nick Dogg, the Sophisticated Party Robot for designing the book cover, spending dedicated hours cutting up small pieces of meat and creating something so disgusting and beautiful and fitting and for making the lapsed vegetarian in me feel sad. Chris Lawson for the photography.
ābhāra #5: first reader James Smythe for telling me it was okay; Gavin and everyone at Quartet Books for unending support; Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe and Mark Bray for instructing me on tattoos; my uncle Mukesh and my dad Jitu who unwittingly provide me with a lot of material; Josie Long, for giving me The Golden Game, and for once doing a project called 100 Days to Make Me a Better Person, where some of the writing I did seeded ideas for characters in this book; Riz Ahmed for asking me about my line between fiction and non-fiction; Georgina Ruffhead and Gemma Addy from David Higham Associates; my honey Sathnam, for the walk and the ice-cream; Katherine Woodfine, Hannah Davies, Anna McKerrow and Will White for WriBooWiBoo.
ābhāra #6: Gautam Malkani, Teju Cole, Nerm Chauhan, Kunal Anand, Suze Azzopardi, Niven Govinden, Stuart Evers, Lee Rourke, Anjali Bhatia, Katherine Solomon, Chimène Suleyman, Rupa Bhatti, Joe Pickering, Krupa and Leena Shukla, Salena Godden, Lucy MacNab, Alan and Mary, Anita Rani, Evie Wyld, Mimi and Bobby Etherington, and Rukhsana Yasmin for various words and acts of kindness and support over the years.
And, finally, an ābhāra to Rob Lingham for that night in the pub when we found your internet doppelganger, The Boy with the Bow Tie Tattoo.
Shout out Arts Emergency and Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
The writing of this book was supported in part by Arts Council England and the Authors’ Foundation.
The Friday Project
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This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014
Copyright © Nikesh Shukla 2014
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Nikesh Shukla asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
FIRST EDITION
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007565078
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007565085
Version: [2014-06-18]
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