‘All right then. Close down at half ten if no one comes,’ Gokul said while leaving. He said that to me. It meant he was leaving me in charge. This made Jagan furious; he did not know of my lunch with the Swamis a fortnight ago, no one did. He got into his dog mood as soon as the boss left.
‘Jagan, you can be boss if you want. But don’t make a martyr of yourself,’ I said. But Jagan didn’t answer. He did what the boss did when not busy - polish spotless wine glasses with a napkin. ‘I’ll even call you Mr Jagan if you like, Mr Jagan.’
Jagan still didn’t answer. He polished. By ten the remaining guests - one Indian fellow with a white woman twice his age and two Englishmen at another table - asked for their bills. I left it to Jagan to present them so that he could pocket the tip. By quarter past ten the place was howling with silence
‘Shall we close down, Mr Jagan?’
‘Gokul said half ten and you heard,’ Jagan snapped.
‘Who’s going to come now on a frozen Monday night?’
‘Gokul said wait. I wait. You go, if your backside is too tired of sitting on it doing nothing. I wait.’ Jagan knew very well I wouldn’t go. Son of a bitch.
‘Half past ten, Jagan-ji!’ I shouted twenty minutes later.
‘Not quite, Posh Balls.’
At exactly sixty seconds after ten thirty I went to turn the Open/Closed sign at the door. But before I got there, four hefty-looking young men in windcheaters pushed their way in.
‘Trouble!’ hissed Jagan in Hindi. ‘Say we are closed.’
‘I am afraid we are closed,’ I said. But the men brushed me aside and sat down. ‘We are closed,’ I repeated.
‘No, you are not, mate,’ one fellow said. He was six foot four with the head of a Spanish bull.
‘Closed for night,’ Jagan squeaked feebly.
‘It said Open so we came in,’ the giant said.
‘I was about to turn the sign.’
‘You were late, mate. Weren’t you?’ said another fellow. ‘Now, bring us the menu, boy. We are hungry.’ He tapped his tummy.
‘I said we are closed. Can’t you hear?’ I raised my voice even though I was afraid.
‘We ‘eard. But you didn’t ‘ear us - we are hungry,’ the third man said.
‘Blimey. I’m starvin.’ Bring the menu, boy.’
‘I don’t want no fuckin’ menu. I want chicken vindaloo, mixed veg and a pinta lager.’
‘Make it four pints.’
‘And four vindaloos and four lamb curries and four … ’
‘First papadoms. Eight papadoms.’
‘Let’s not have any trouble,’ I said calmly but firmly.
‘Who wants trouble? Not us. It said Open. So we came in. Now you say you are closed. That ain’t fair. Come off it.’
‘And we are hungry. Ain’t fair at all.’ I was caught. What was I to do? I looked at Jagan.
‘Fuckin Indian Magic. Want to see my magic?’ The giant leaped to his feet. He’s going to hit me, I thought and stepped back. But he didn’t. Instead he pulled the tablecloth from underneath the empty flower vase and an ashtray on the next table. He did so with a fast flick of his hand. The vase and the ashtray fell on the carpet. ‘Want to see more magic?’ the man snarled, and turned around and pulled the cloth from another table with the same clumsy result.
‘Give over, Dave. Watch and learn,’ said the fourth chap who had not yet said a single word. He stood up and performed his friend’s trick with complete success. The others clapped as he took a bow. Then the other two also stood up. Sweat broke over me - they were going to wreck the place.
‘All right. Sit down. I’ll bring you the menu,’ I said.
‘That’s better. And you there, Gungadin. Four lagers. Pints,’ the failed magician yelled at Jagan. He went and bolted the restaurant door. ‘Now you are really closed.’
And trapped.
‘All your fault, Posh Balls. Letting them in.’
‘I wanted to shut the fucking place down early. But you wouldn’t let me because of your chilli.’
Ranji had come upstairs. ‘Not the time to bicker. Time to unite,’ he said. ‘What if the English bastards don’t pay and eat like pigs?’
‘I’m washing hands’ said Jagan.
They ate like pigs and drank twelve pints of lager. The bill came to a staggering twelve pounds. I said to Jagan to go and take it and collect the tip, but he refused. I had to deliver it myself, on a plate with a bunch of toothpicks and fennel seeds. Before I could place the plate on the table, the giant picked up the toothpicks and harpooned my hand down, the toothpicks sticking out of the skin of my hand like porcupine quills. A sharp pain shot through my arm. ‘Pay and leave,’ I yelled, pulling out the needle-sharp sticks from my hand.
‘Let’s share the bill,’ he said to his friends. He folded the bill and tore it in two. He then folded the two pieces and tore them in four. ‘Let’s share the bill,’ he repeated and gave his friends a piece each. All four of them put their quarter in their mouths and chewed it up and spat it in my face in one go like a volley of grapeshot.
‘BASTARDS!’
The giant leaped to his feet again and this time he did hit out. He hit me in the face with such force it sent me crashing against the wall.
‘Jagan, dial 999.’
‘You don’t want no trouble, do you?’ the giant said. He picked up his beer mug, held it in the air and looked towards the bar with mirrors. ‘Such a nice looking place.’ Then things happened fast. Two of the ruffians jumped at me. One of them held me, the other twisted my right arm behind my back. He twisted it very hard and I screamed in pain. I must have been heard in the street - but no one came to look.
‘Call the police, Jagan.’
‘Oi, Gungadin. Touch the phone and I’ll break his arm.’
‘And we’ll smash up everything. You ‘ear?’
‘Let go and get out,’ I howled.
‘If you call the fuzz after we are gone, we’ll come back another night and fuck up your faces.’ The son of a whore pulled out a flick-knife and flashed it in my face.
‘Go. Just go.’
They went. They went laughing. Anyone in the street would have said they were coming from a great party.
‘All your fault, Posh Balls,’ Jagan barked at me as he bolted the door behind them - his voice had come back.
‘Shut up, Chilli Arse!’ Ranji shouted. I ran to the phone.
‘Don’t call the police,’ Jagan shouted.
‘Oh, shut up, you idiot.’ I telephoned Mr Swami. I got Mrs Swami. ‘Sorry, Mrs Swami, but.’
Within minutes Mr Swami was at the Magic, his face puffed up as I had never seen before, and sweating. He had come in a taxi. Two minutes after him, arrived Lord Rameshwar.
‘Told you take precaution from Teddy Boys and Mods and Rockers. Worst Englishmen ever born in England,’ he said. Mr Swami was speechless. But he nodded his head.
‘Only twelve pounds. Never mind,’ he finally said.
‘Do you mean to say you are not going to do anything about it, Mr Swami?’ I gawped at him.
‘Do what?’
‘Phone the police.’
‘What police doing? Ask Rameshwar what police doing.’
‘Police always doing the same thing. Taking detail. That’s what police doing. Happening daily to others,’ Rameshwar said.
‘So what do we do?’ I asked. Mr Gokul Swami patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Go wash face with cold water. Isswelling a bit.’ There was real concern in his voice. I immediately felt the pain begin to go. I could have done anything for him.
‘Hooligan criminals. Something about English race I don’t understand,’ Lord Rameshwar said.
‘At least inform the police, sir.’
‘Not worth. Only twelve pounds ten.’
‘Not even that, sir. We gave them food from the garbage cans half-eaten by other customers. English pigs not know difference,’ Ranji said. ‘And I mix my spit with it.’
Flu knocked Mr Swami out of
action for what turned out to be a nerve-wracking week. We lived in mortal fear. Lord Rameshwar stood in for the boss. The first thing he did was to go and buy an old sword from a junk shop. It cost five bob with the scabbard. He stood it behind the counter - out of sight but within easy reach. He eyed customers suspiciously, smiling at the same time. He enjoyed sitting on the boss’s stool.
We were calm again, but only on the surface. Underneath it, everybody was shitting in their pants. I arranged with my friends Bish, Tariq and Walia to come and sit through the evenings. Bish was the karate man, Tariq was the muscle man and Walia was the handyman. They were fed in return. I was not a little surprised when Acting Boss gave green light to this arrangement much to the delight of the Magnificent Three. It was temporary anyway, and they stopped coming the night Prohit came back.
The next afternoon I went and called on our boss. Mrs Swami opened the door and led me upstairs to their bedroom. It smelled of a Hindu temple and a hospital ward - of flowers and fruit, agarbati incense and medicine. ‘Mr Swami is a child,’ she told me. ‘When ill, he becomes smaller than a child. His fever is higher than yours. His pulse is faster than yours. His tongue is whiter than yours. He is dying. He is dying for attention. Mr Swami want mother, Raavi. Not wife.’
‘Issweetness, finally, all women are mothers and all men little boys. Finally.’
‘And finally Mr Swami is littler than all little boys.’ Mrs Swami went downstairs. Ten minutes later she returned with two cups and Veena. Veena was done up again. She had brought a watercolour she had just painted of an empty street.
‘What do you think?’ her father asked me.
‘I think it’s got a lot to it, sir. Something forlorn and poetic,’ I heard myself say. I drank my tea quickly, feeling uncomfortable – Veena’s presence made me so.
‘Prize for you, Apple of My Eye.’ Mr Swami took a pound note from under his pillow and held it out to Veena. ‘Take.’ Veena thought for a second and looked at me with those eyes of hers. Next instant she snatched the pound note from her father’s hand and broke out in giggles. She laughed loudly and ran downstairs. The girl is mad, I said to myself.
‘You spoil her too much, ji.’
‘Issweetness, money is for what? To make children happy. And another thing. You isselebrate when patient get out of bed. Raavi, you take them to cinema, Issweetness and Veena. Go see Issummer Holiday. Best film. Maybe I come too.’
‘You get well first, sir.’ I stood up.
‘What, you leaving a dying man? Heartless, I call it. Only Indian would do this to Indian.’ Boss joked and coughed.
On my way to the tube I felt glad I had gone to see the boss. It had put him in a good mood. It had raised my spirits as well. But my spirits sank as I put my hand in my coat pocket. There was something crisp in it - a pound note. It was not mine. I turned back. I knew what I was going to do. If seen by Mrs Swami, I would say I had left something behind. If not, I would push the note through the letter box. I was not seen.
At last the weather changed. The snow melted. The days Became longer, the air lighter and the light clearer. A bus ride in London became a thing of joy. Every day I took the Number 2 or 2A to Victoria and walked from there. Sometimes at three, Ranji and I walked all the way to Hyde Park and hired deckchairs at sixpence apiece and sat in them and watched the world go by. Now and again people spoke to us. But strictly speaking, only girls, certain in the knowledge that we were bound to make a killing one day, but sometimes men, usually English gentlemen.
‘Homos. Public-school types. Place teeming with them.’
Once Ranji and I met there one Sunday afternoon. We ran into two young things from Holland. They weren’t exactly beauties, but we didn’t mind - we were starved. Their English was worse than Ranji’s. This put him in sparkling form. When asked what we did, I said we were studying nuclear physics at Oxford and had come down to London for the day to see a film. Oxford and nuclear physics!
‘E is equal of MC square?’ one girl said, rolling her eyes.
‘E is equal of MC square,’ I confirmed.
‘Then what you do?’
‘Then we go back to our countries and make atom bombs.’
‘He to India, me to Pakistan, and then we throw them at each other,’ Ranji said.
They told us they had been here a whole week and hadn’t met one boy they liked. Tomorrow, they were going back to ‘Aamsterdaam’. Ranji was heart-broken.
‘What about this evening? Mutiny on the Bounty in Victoria?’
‘Maybe. But what are your names, please?’ Ah. I apologised and introduced ourselves. They were Astrid and Helen. We agreed to meet at a pub by the station at seven. They turned up and we all had half a pint each - there wasn’t time for another drink. But Ranji insisted on a second - for courage. As a result we were a little late and tragedy nearly struck, for we almost didn’t get in - all of SWI had turned up to see Marlon Brando. However, tragedy did strike as we went in: there weren’t four empty seats in a row anywhere. There was one lot of three and that was it. It posed an ugly question: which one of us - Ranji or me - would sit on his own? Both of us volunteered, gentlemen that we were, hoping the other would refuse. Then Ranji said, ‘We sit half, half time.’ King Solomon himself couldn’t have done better. Even Holland agreed, laughing like mad.
‘You first.’ They chose me. Ranji gave me a jab in the side. It meant any one of the hundred and one things that had begun to make me quiver with anticipation. Alas, not a single one of them happened. Nothing happened at all. Well, not till just before half time. Then that which did happen, far surpassed anything I could have even imagined. All three of us had been sighing audibly throughout. First I kissed Astrid - her first because she was sighing more. Then I put my right hand around Helen and kissed her. Helen was hungry. Our kiss lingered as my hand went inside her coat. But Astrid tugged at me and I placed my left hand on her thigh. A minute later it was inside her skirt, edging its way to the danger zone. I was thus fully engaged, on two fronts as it were, when the lights came on, and then tragedy struck again. It was worse than tragedy. I turned my head around to look for Ranji and my heart stopped beating - SOB Jagan and SOB Prohit sat in the row behind us! I had been seen with two ‘English girls’ in a cinema hall and I had been seen kissing them, both of them! - a sizzling scandal. The boss would know all about it first thing tomorrow. God alone knew what spice would be added to the story, if it needed any more spice. Net result?
But if I had been seen, I had also seen. Two hefty women sat between them. They were heavily made-up and, this was the sixty-four thousand dollar thing, they were Black. I did not have to be a Sherlock Holmes to deduce who they were. I stood up from my seat to let it be known that I knew. Our eyes met. I signed a pact with them – don’t tell on me and it is vice versa. Then the SOBs lowered their heads in shame.
Ranji came up with four ice-cream cones and peanuts. I could have told him the score and sent him back. But I didn’t - we had made a deal. It was a long film. But it was spellbinding - Brando, though foppish, was brilliant. After the God Save the Queen, I looked for Ranji and the girls in the crowd in the foyer but I couldn’t see them. I dashed outside and found Ranji standing under a lamp post, grinning.
‘Where are they? What happened? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. Nothing happen. That is the matter.’
‘But?’ My heart sank - I had guessed.
‘I had to do what I had to do. Halfway, I put my hand on her titties on my left. Slap. Time is passing. So near the end I try my hand on the right. Slap slap from right and left. Then they stand and go. Finish. God Save the Queen.
News of Magic Number Two was out. There rose feverish speculation about who would run it.
‘Gokul taking on double-time headache,’ Jagan said.
‘He will have to play real magic to be at two places at the same time. But how? That’s what worry me,’ Prohit said. Both of them nursed hopes of being put in charge there. But somehow they suspected I was in
the way. Ranji kept me posted:
‘Jagan saying Posh Balls come only yesterday not knowing how to wipe his nose properly. What he knows of life? How many noughts and crosses he done with it? And Prohit saying “but he got degree”. Upon this Jagan spit - Indian degree not worth the arse-paper of Gents it written on. Then they both say “let’s give him push in river”. So don’t go near the Thames.’
The day Ranji told me all this, a Sunday, I was summoned to the boss’s house. I arrived to find that a heated debate was taking place between my boss and his friend, with Sweetness as umpire. They, too, were talking about me.
‘You know you are buying a headache buying that place,’ fretted Lord Rameshwar.
‘You yourself brought me the news of it.’
‘All right, I brought you the news because it was going news. But I didn’t say buy it, a headache.’
‘What are you talking, Rameshwar?’
‘I am talking of headaches. Why do you want Number Two? That is question number one I am asking.’
‘Isstupid question. Move on to question number two.’
‘Question number two is, is the boy smart enough to run it?’
‘Ask him. Why I call him here.’
‘I don’t know, sir. Honestly. And as I told you, I want to go to university.’
‘At least he is honest,’ Mrs Swami sweetly chipped in.
‘Who wants honesty, Gokul? Is no good for business.’
‘So you want me to have someone dishonest to run it?’
‘No, you fool. He must be a mixture.’
‘Of honesty and dishonesty?’
‘No, no, no, you fool. What’s the matter with you today? The other thing is open eyes, closed mouth.’
‘But Raavi has got it. He is educated. And look how he speak English - as good as the local MP. Really, Rameshwar. Some time you don’t use eyes and ears for reasons God gave them to you. Sometime I don’t know which end you express opinion.’
‘Shame is, Gokul, you always listen from the wrong end.’ The umpire intervened. Sternly.
‘You two. Stop acting children. The matter is serious.’
Indian Magic Page 9