One morning he was persuaded to drop in at the corner pharmacy and pick up some supplies for the baby. When he returned there was a hurt, schoolboyish look on his face that I had never seen before, and he was pressing his hand against his cheek.
‘She hit me,’ he said plaintively.
‘Hai! Allah-tobah! Darling!’ cried my mother, fussing. ‘Who hit you? Are you injured? Show me, let me see.’
‘I did nothing,’ he said, standing there in the hall with the pharmacy bag in his other hand and a face as pink as Mecir’s rubber gloves. ‘I just went in with your list. The girl seemed very helpful. I asked for baby compound, Johnson’s powder, teething jelly, and she brought them out. Then I asked did she have any nipples, and she slapped my face.’
My mother was appalled. ‘Just for that?’ And Certainly-Mary backed her up. ‘What is this nonsense?’ she wanted to know. ‘I have been in that chemist’s shock, and they have flenty nickels, different sizes, all on view.’
Durré and Muneeza could not contain themselves. They were rolling round on the floor, laughing and kicking their legs in the air.
‘You both shut your face at once,’ my mother ordered. ‘A madwoman has hit your father. Where is the comedy?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Durré gasped. ‘You just went up to that girl and said,’ and here she fell apart again, stamping her feet and holding her stomach, ‘ “have you got any nipples?” ’
My father grew thunderous, empurpled. Durré controlled herself. ‘But Abba,’ she said, at length, ‘here they call them teats.’
Now my mother’s and Mary’s hands flew to their mouths, and even my father looked shocked. ‘But how shameless!’ my mother said. ‘The same word as for what’s on your bosoms?’ She coloured, and stuck out her tongue for shame.
‘These English,’ sighed Certainly-Mary. ‘But aren’t they the limit? Certainly-yes; they are.’
I remember this story with delight, because it was the only time I ever saw my father so discomfited, and the incident became legendary and the girl in the pharmacy was installed as the object of our great veneration. (Durré and I went in there just to take a look at her – she was a plain, short girl of about seventeen, with large, unavoidable breasts – but she caught us whispering and glared so fiercely that we fled.) And also because in the general hilarity I was able to conceal the shaming truth that I, who had been in England for so long, would have made the same mistake as Abba did.
It wasn’t just Certainly-Mary and my parents who had trouble with the English language. My schoolfellows tittered when in my Bombay way I said ‘brought-up’ for upbringing (as in ‘where was your brought-up?’) and ‘thrice’ for three times and ‘quarter-plate’ for side-plate and ‘macaroni’ for pasta in general. As for learning the difference between nipples and teats, I really hadn’t had any opportunities to increase my word power in that area at all.
5
So I was a little jealous of Certainly-Mary when Mixed-Up came to call. He rang our bell, his body quivering with deference in an old suit grown too loose, the trousers tightly gathered by a belt; he had taken off his rubber gloves and there were roses in his hand. My father opened the door and gave him a withering look. Being a snob, Abba was not pleased that the flat lacked a separate service entrance, so that even a porter had to be treated as a member of the same universe as himself.
‘Mary,’ Mixed-Up managed, licking his lips and pushing back his floppy white hair. ‘I, to see Miss Mary, come, am.’
‘Wait on,’ Abba said, and shut the door in his face.
Certainly-Mary spent all her afternoons off with old Mixed-Up from then on, even though that first date was not a complete success. He took her ‘up West’ to show her the visitors’ London she had never seen, but at the top of an up escalator at Piccadilly Circus, while Mecir was painfully enunciating the words on the posters she couldn’t read – Unzip a banana, and Idris when I’s dri – she got her sari stuck in the jaws of the machine, and as the escalator pulled at the garment it began to unwind. She was forced to spin round and round like a top, and screamed at the top of her voice, ‘O BAAP! BAAPU-RÉ! BAAP-RÉ-BAAP-RÉ-BAAP!’ It was Mixed-Up who saved her by pushing the emergency stop button before the sari was completely unwound and she was exposed in her petticoat for all the world to see.
‘O, courter!’ she wept on his shoulder. ‘O, no more escaleater, courter, nevermore, surely not!’
My own amorous longings were aimed at Durré’s best friend, a Polish girl called Rozalia, who had a holiday job at Faiman’s shoe shop on Oxford Street. I pursued her pathetically throughout the holidays and, on and off, for the next two years. She would let me have lunch with her sometimes and buy her a Coke and a sandwich, and once she came with me to stand on the terraces at White Hart Lane to watch Jimmy Greaves’s first game for the Spurs. ‘Come on you whoi-oites,’ we both shouted dutifully. ‘Come on you Lily-whoites.’ After that she even invited me into the back room at Faiman’s, where she kissed me twice and let me touch her breast, but that was as far as I got.
And then there was my sort-of-cousin Chandni, whose mother’s sister had married my mother’s brother, though they had since split up. Chandni was eighteen months older than me, and so sexy it made you sick. She was training to be an Indian classical dancer, Odissi as well as Natyam, but in the meantime she dressed in tight black jeans and a clinging black polo-neck jumper and took me, now and then, to hang out at Bunjie’s, where she knew most of the folk-music crowd that frequented the place, and where she answered to the name of Moonlight, which is what chandni means. I chain-smoked with the folkies and then went to the toilet to throw up.
Chandni was the stuff of obsessions. She was a teenage dream, the Moon River come to Earth like the Goddess Ganga, dolled up in slinky black. But for her I was just the young greenhorn cousin to whom she was being nice because he hadn’t learned his way around.
She-E-rry, won’t you come out tonight? yodelled the Four Seasons. I knew exactly how they felt. Come, come, come out toni-yi-yight. And while you’re at it, love me do.
6
They went for walks in Kensington Gardens. ‘Pan,’ Mixed-Up said, pointing at a statue. ‘Los’ boy. Nev’ grew up.’ They went to Barkers and Pontings and Derry & Toms and picked out furniture and curtains for imaginary homes. They cruised supermarkets and chose little delicacies to eat. In Mecir’s cramped lounge they sipped what he called ‘chimpanzee tea’ and toasted crumpets in front of an electric bar fire.
Thanks to Mixed-Up, Mary was at last able to watch television. She liked children’s programmes best, especially The Flintstones. Once, giggling at her daring, Mary confided to Mixed Up that Fred and Wilma reminded her of her Sahib and Begum Sahiba upstairs; at which the courter, matching her audaciousness, pointed first at Certainly-Mary and then at himself, grinned a wide gappy smile and said, ‘Rubble.’
Later, on the news, a vulpine Englishman with a thin moustache and mad eyes declaimed a warning about immigrants, and Certainly-Mary flapped her hand at the set: ‘Khali-pili bom marta,’ she objected, and then, for her host’s benefit translated: ‘For nothing he is shouting shouting. Bad life! Switch it off.’
They were often interrupted by the Maharajas of B— and P—, who came downstairs to escape their wives and ring other women from the call-box in the porter’s room.
‘Oh, baby, forget that guy,’ said sporty Prince P—, who seemed to spend all his days in tennis whites, and whose plump gold Rolex was almost lost in the thick hair on his arm. ‘I’ll show you a better time than him, baby; step into my world.’
The Maharaja of B— was older, uglier, more matter-of-fact. ‘Yes, bring all appliances. Room is booked in name of Mr Douglas Home. Six forty-five to seven fifteen. You have printed rate card? Please. Also a two-foot ruler, must be wooden. Frilly apron, plus.’
This is what has lasted in my memory of Waverley House, this seething mass of bad marriages, booze, philanderers and unfulfilled young lusts; of the Maharaja of P— roaring a
way towards London’s casinoland every night, in a red sports car with fitted blondes, and of the Maharaja of B— skulking off to Kensington High Street wearing dark glasses in the dark, and a coat with the collar turned up even though it was high summer; and at the heart of our little universe were Certainly-Mary and her courter, drinking chimpanzee tea and singing along with the national anthem of Bedrock.
But they were not really like Barney and Betty Rubble at all. They were formal, polite. They were … courtly. He courted her, and, like a coy, ringleted ingénue with a fan, she inclined her head, and entertained his suit.
7
I spent one half-term weekend in 1963 at the home in Beccles, Suffolk of Field Marshal Sir Charles Lutwidge-Dodgson, an old India hand and a family friend who was supporting my application for British citizenship. ‘The Dodo’, as he was known, invited me down by myself, saying he wanted to get to know me better.
He was a huge man whose skin had started hanging too loosely on his face, a giant living in a tiny thatched cottage and forever bumping his head. No wonder he was irascible at times; he was in Hell, a Gulliver trapped in that rose-garden Lilliput of croquet hoops, church bells, sepia photographs and old battle-trumpets.
The weekend was fitful and awkward until the Dodo asked if I played chess. Slightly awestruck at the prospect of playing a Field Marshal, I nodded; and ninety minutes later, to my amazement, won the game.
I went into the kitchen, strutting somewhat, planning to boast a little to the old soldier’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs Liddell. But as soon as I entered she said: ‘Don’t tell me. You never went and won?’
‘Yes,’ I said, affecting nonchalance. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I did.’
‘Gawd,’ said Mrs Liddell. ‘Now there’ll be hell to pay. You go back in there and ask him for another game, and this time make sure you lose.’
I did as I was told, but was never invited to Beccles again.
Still, the defeat of the Dodo gave me new confidence at the chessboard, so when I returned to Waverley House after finishing my O levels, and was at once invited to play a game by Mixed-Up (Mary had told him about my victory in the Battle of Beccles with great pride and some hyperbole), I said: ‘Sure, I don’t mind.’ How long could it take to thrash the old duffer, after all?
There followed a massacre royal. Mixed-Up did not just beat me; he had me for breakfast, over easy. I couldn’t believe it – the canny opening, the fluency of his combination play, the force of his attacks, my own impossibly cramped, strangled positions – and asked for a second game. This time he tucked into me even more heartily. I sat broken in my chair at the end, close to tears. Big girls don’t cry, I reminded myself, but the song went on playing in my head: That’s just an alibi.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, humiliation weighing down every syllable. ‘The devil in disguise?’
Mixed-Up gave his big, silly grin. ‘Grand Master,’ he said. ‘Long time. Before head.’
‘You’re a Grand Master,’ I repeated, still in a daze. Then in a moment of horror I remembered that I had seen the name Mecir in books of classic games. ‘Nimzo-Indian,’ I said aloud. He beamed and nodded furiously.
‘That Mecir?’ I asked wonderingly.
‘That,’ he said. There was saliva dribbling out of a corner of his sloppy old mouth. This ruined old man was in the books. He was in the books. And even with his mind turned to rubble he could still wipe the floor with me.
‘Now play lady,’ he grinned. I didn’t get it. ‘Mary lady,’ he said. ‘Yes yes certainly.’
She was pouring tea, waiting for my answer. ‘Aya, you can’t play,’ I said, bewildered.
‘Learning, baba,’ she said. ‘What is it, na? Only a game.’
And then she, too, beat me senseless, and with the black pieces, at that. It was not the greatest day of my life.
8
From 100 Most Instructive Chess Games by Robert Reshevsky, 1961:
M. Mecir – M. Najdorf
Dallas 1950, Nimzo-Indian Defense
The attack of a tactician can be troublesome to meet – that of a strategist even more so. Whereas the tactician’s threats may be unmistakable, the strategist confuses the issue by keeping things in abeyance. He threatens to threaten!
Take this game for instance: Mecir posts a Knight at Q6 to get a grip on the center. Then he establishes a passed Pawn on one wing to occupy his opponent on the Queen side. Finally he stirs up the position on the King-side. What does the poor bewildered opponent do? How can he defend everything at once? Where will the blow fall?
Watch Mecir keep Najdorf on the run, as he shifts the attack from side to side!
Chess had become their private language. Old Mixed-Up, lost as he was for words, retained, on the chessboard, much of the articulacy and subtlety which had vanished from his speech. As Certainly-Mary gained in skill – and she had learned with astonishing speed, I thought bitterly, for someone who couldn’t read or write or pronounce the letter p – she was better able to understand, and respond to, the wit of the reduced maestro with whom she had so unexpectedly forged a bond.
He taught her with great patience, showing-not-telling, repeating openings and combinations and endgame techniques over and over until she began to see the meaning in the patterns. When they played, he handicapped himself, he told her her best moves and demonstrated their consequences, drawing her, step by step, into the infinite possibilities of the game.
Such was their courtship. ‘It is like an adventure, baba,’ Mary once tried to explain to me. ‘It is like going with him to his country, you know? What a place, baap-ré! Beautiful and dangerous and funny and full of fuzzles. For me it is a big-big discovery. What to tell you? I go for the game. It is a wonder.’
I understood, then, how far things had gone between them. Certainly-Mary had never married, and had made it clear to old Mixed-Up that it was too late to start any of that monkey business at her age. The courter was a widower, and had grown-up children somewhere, lost long ago behind the ever-higher walls of Eastern Europe. But in the game of chess they had found a form of flirtation, an endless renewal that precluded the possibility of boredom, a courtly wonderland of the ageing heart.
What would the Dodo have made of it all? No doubt it would have scandalised him to see chess, chess of all games, the great formalisation of war, transformed into an art of love.
As for me: my defeats by Certainly-Mary and her courter ushered in further humiliations. Durré and Muneeza went down with the mumps, and so, finally, in spite of my mother’s efforts to segregate us, did I. I lay terrified in bed while the doctor warned me not to stand up and move around if I could possibly help it. ‘If you do,’ he said, ‘your parents won’t need to punish you. You will have punished yourself quite enough.’
I spent the following few weeks tormented day and night by visions of grotesquely swollen testicles and a subsequent life of limp impotence – finished before I’d even started, it wasn’t fair! – which were made much worse by my sisters’ quick recovery and incessant gibes. But in the end I was lucky; the illness didn’t spread to the deep South. ‘Think how happy your hundred and one girlfriends will be, bhai,’ sneered Durré, who knew all about my continued failures in the Rozalia and Chandni departments.
On the radio, people were always singing about the joys of being sixteen years old. I wondered where they were, all those boys and girls of my age having the time of their lives. Were they driving around America in Studebaker convertibles? They certainly weren’t in my neighbourhood. London, W8 was Sam Cooke country that summer. Another Saturday night … There might be a mop-top love-song stuck at number one, but I was down with lonely Sam in the lower depths of the charts, how-I-wishing I had someone, etc., and generally feeling in a pretty goddamn dreadful way.
9
‘Baba, come quick.’
It was late at night when Aya Mary shook me awake. After many urgent hisses, she managed to drag me out of sleep and pull me, pajama’ed and yawning, down the hall. On t
he landing outside our flat was Mixed-Up the courter, huddled up against a wall, weeping. He had a black eye and there was dried blood on his mouth.
‘What happened?’ I asked Mary, shocked.
‘Men,’ wailed Mixed-Up. ‘Threaten. Beat.’
He had been in his lounge earlier that evening when the sporting Maharaja of P— burst in to say, ‘If anybody comes looking for me, okay, any tough-guy type guys, okay, I am out, okay? Oh you tea. Don’t let them go upstairs, okay? Big tip, okay?’
A short time later, the old Maharaja of B— also arrived in Mecir’s lounge, looking distressed.
‘Suno, listen on,’ said the Maharaja of B—. ‘You don’t know where I am, samajh liya? Understood? Some low persons may inquire. You don’t know. I am abroad, achha? On extended travels abroad. Do your job, porter. Handsome recompense.’
Late at night two tough-guy types did indeed turn up. It seemed the hairy Prince P— had gambling debts. ‘Out,’ Mixed-Up grinned in his sweetest way. The tough-guy types nodded, slowly. They had long hair and thick lips like Mick Jagger’s. ‘He’s a busy gent. We should of made an appointment,’ said the first type to the second. ‘Didn’t I tell you we should of called?’
‘You did,’ agreed the second type. ‘Got to do these things right, you said, he’s royalty. And you was right, my son, I put my hand up, I was dead wrong. I put my hand up to that.’
‘Let’s leave our card,’ said the first type. ‘Then he’ll know to expect us.’
‘Ideal,’ said the second type, and smashed his fist into old Mixed-Up’s mouth. ‘You tell him,’ the second type said, and struck the old man in the eye. ‘When he’s in. You mention it.’
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