Something to Tell You (26 page)

Karen squashed Alan and the lord into her car; I drove the lord’s motor back, tearing up the lanes.

At the house, people were talking in the living room, but most had moved to what Alan referred to as the “Brian Jones” pool. It was fashionable for rich people like Mustaq to buy art and photography. The corridor between the pool and the changing area was full of decent photographs, including one of a woman standing up to piss against a bridge.

Around the pool, people were smoking; others were dancing, or swimming naked. Those vile bodies had cost a fortune to maintain and were made to be exhibited. Charlie Hero was in good shape; even his scars glowed, and the slim bolt through his cock brought out its veiny contours.

Other friends of Alan and Mustaq had turned up by now, dancers, hairdressers, make-up artists, camp young black men, angelic boys, some in overtight or shiny clothing, others keen to show off their nipple clips. Some of these characters looked as though they hadn’t seen daylight for some years. Few women would get laid tonight, I thought. This might be my chance to see whether I really was still uninterested, or whether I’d just been through a discouraging time.

Charlie had attached his iPod to the pool sound system, and suddenly a record came on from my youth, the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic?”, so full of musical sunshine and optimism that Karim and I both began to laugh, glancing at one another and laughing again. Like him, I’d been a little too young to be independently active at that time, but the mid-60s were where I was formed, and what did any of that love mean now, in these dirty days?

I swam a little, looking out for Ajita, but couldn’t see her. While I dried off, Karim, his earnest brown eyes peering out from between the parentheses of his hair, offered me some coke. Although I fancied it, I wanted to sleep tonight. I smoked a joint, then someone gave me a double espresso and a chunk of chocolate. I took a diazepam and decided to go to bed, a relatively early night but with plenty to think about.

I was lying down, wondering what I’d listen to on my iPod—words can go so far, and then there is music—when there was a knock on the door.

“Hello,” I called.

“Can I come in?”

It was Ajita in a satin dressing gown. She came over and sat on the edge of the bed.

I took her hand. “So you found me, then.”

“At last,” she said. “Just you and me. Now we have some time together. All night, I hope. Will you stay awake? Do you want to hear me now?”

“Of course,” I replied. “It’s you I’ve been waiting for.”

She took my hand. “Earlier today, I believed I saw you from the pool. Then I thought, No, it’s a ghost and I’ve gone mad. In New York, Mustaq asked me if I wanted to see you again, but said he couldn’t guarantee that you’d show up. But you did. Was that for me? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Your American accent is charming.”

“Oh, don’t say that. I’ve been trying to get rid of it and seem more Indian again, particularly since Indians have become so hip.”

“Yes, there can’t be one of them who hasn’t written a novel.”

“And it’s embarrassing to be American when people my colour are under such constant suspicion. Going through airports is a nightmare for all of us, even for Mustaq. We all feel a step away from Guantánamo. Orange doesn’t suit me.”

“Nor most people.”

“It’s been so bad I’m thinking of staying in London for a while. I loved London, when you would take me about. I haven’t been back since. I couldn’t bear to see it again.” Her hand was on my shoulder. “You don’t need to get up, Jamal. Don’t do anything. We don’t need more light on. I’ll pull the curtains.” She said, “I know you’re there, and that’s all I need. Mustaq told me what he knew of your story, and I have read your books.”

“Did you tell him your story?”

“What d’you mean, mine?” I said nothing. She went on, “Jamal, you’re the person who really knows me. You were always my true love,” she said. “Even my husband knew that. He used to say, ‘There is someone else stopping us from being close.’” She leaned over me, kissing me on each cheek and on the lips, pressing her fingers through my hair. “You’ve hardly changed. Your hair’s grey, but it still stands on end, like a fluffy chick. You’re a little lined and no longer all skin and bone. But you’re distinguished-looking, a man who’s lived an important life.”

“Christ, no!”

She said, “I was watching you at supper. You’re even more good-looking than I remembered. What an attractive, smart man, he is, I thought. One who has been loved and wanted.”

“That is a kind thing to say. If it is true, it means a lot. I will try to be more grateful.”

“I think you probably are,” she said. “Who was the woman sitting opposite me? We were introduced, but I didn’t catch her name. She was observing you like a hawk, when she wasn’t glaring at me. Was she one of your wives?”

“I have been married, but just the once, unusually. Not to her, though. I am still married—or rather, not yet divorced. But I did go out with the woman you’re talking about—Karen—after you went away.”

“Was it a successful love?”

“Not from her point of view. I was still getting over you, I guess. It took a long time—probably because I always thought you’d be coming back in a little while.”

She was quiet. “Jamal?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t say it’s too late. We’re not old. Or am I too far gone for you? Look.” She stood up and opened her dressing gown, then let it drop to the floor. “This is me. Where I am.”

I looked at her, both familiar and unfamiliar now. “What would your husband say?” I said quietly, before regretting it.

She put her gown on again and lay down on the bed. I stood up and took off my clothes.

While she looked at me, I said, “I don’t know what I want to happen between us. It’s been a long time. All we can do is give it space.”

“There is still time, we have that. I will wait for you, as you waited for me.” She pulled the sheets over her. “How I need to sleep with someone again. After years of trying to get my daughter out of my bed, she will no longer keep me company. My husband and I have our own rooms, in fact our own countries now. So to spend a night with a man…It moves me so.”

We lay there in the dark, not touching. Certainly people of our age, unless they are narcissists, wouldn’t want anyone to see their bodies. I’d seen Ajita in the pool, of course. Her flesh hadn’t aged badly, but she seemed to have shrunk into herself, as though she wanted to make herself smaller, like a younger actress playing the part of an older woman.

“Yes,” she said, “I know I am like an old woman now. I could see that in your eyes. My sexual charm, beauty—all gone.”

“Mine, too. I was just thinking of how much we loved to sunbathe in your garden at the side of the house. You were almost black. Now no one does that. You remember how I had to pretend to be Mushy Peas’s best friend?”

“What I want is that the four of us—you, me, Wolf and Valentin—meet again. Can you organise a reunion?”

“They disappeared soon after you did—to make their fortunes in France.”

“How did they do?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“What a shame,” she said. “In New York I buy furniture, or clothes. I give something to charity every day, and I buy something new every day. It’s a simple system—in and out.

“I walk in the park, visit friends, and when my brother’s on tour or doing a TV show I design the costumes. It’s a lot of work, a proper job. I do yoga, Kabbalah, anything that doesn’t involve touching. If I don’t feel fabulous within a few weeks, I try something else. All suicides kill others too, I am aware of that, so there is no way out for me. In the end my doctor gave me something—”

“An antidepressant?”

“Whatever. It keeps massive anxiety away. I want to feel normal.”

“It’s more normal to experience anxiety than it is to be blank.”

“What I feel most of the time is dread,” she said. “As though some catastrophe is about to befall me.”

“It has. Do you remember what you told me your father did to you?”

“Why shouldn’t I remember that? I don’t hate him. He was having a terrible time. It’s not your family.”

“At college once you told me how much you loved him. ‘He’s so tender,’ you said.”

She said, “Is that so strange? He always kissed and petted me. He’d lose his temper and call us stupid, but he was never not a fond father.” She was lying back on the pillow. “You wanted me to be a feminist and gave me those books. It was new then. You remember that woman—Fiona? She was one of the organisers against my father. I saw her on the picket line and then at college. She was hugely fat with her breasts wobbling everywhere, wearing dungarees and big earrings.”

“She was on TV last night, defending a bill to keep people without trial.”

“Is she thin? Jamal, did you want me to be a different kind of woman?”

I said, “We were a dissenting generation. People like your father—we called them capitalists then—we hated on principle. In other European cities, people like us were kidnapping and killing capitalists.”

“You didn’t want to do that. You couldn’t kill anyone.”

I said, “I was always furious with my parents, my father in particular. It seemed odd to me that you loved your parents without any hatred.”

We were silent; I thought she’d fallen asleep. “Jamal,” she said, “earlier this evening my brother told me what my father did to you. Why didn’t you say anything to me? I told you everything, but you didn’t reciprocate.”

“How could I have added to your troubles?” I went on, “When you were in India, I was frantic missing you. My first thought in the morning was: Will this be the day she rings? It was a terrible separation. For a while it broke me.”

She ran her hands over her face and through her hair. “No, no, Jamal! You’re saying I didn’t think of you? I even wrote you letters—you remember those thin blue airmail letters?—which I never posted. I loved London, but how could I go back there after the strike?

“My nightmares weren’t about my father raping me night after night but about that screaming mob outside the factory, students like us hurling lumps of wood and bricks. They reduced my dad to despair. He was a hardworking man expelled from Africa, trying to make everything all right for his family.” She went on: “I went to America with Mustaq for a fresh start. I worked in fashion, designing clothes. That was my family trade.”

We lay there without speaking for a while. Occasionally, we heard laughter and voices in the yard; otherwise there was silence.

“I knew, Jamal, you didn’t want to marry me. You were just beginning to move into the world; you were assured and energetic, keen to get on. In India I was going mad, I can’t tell you how mad. What I needed was stability, a husband. I couldn’t do that with you.”

“Did you get a husband?”

“I found a good man, probably too good. It was impossible to do him wrong without hurting. But Mustaq was keen on him, and paid for everything. He set him up in business.”

She spoke more of her children, work, daily life. I stayed awake for as long as I could, listening for her words, then her breath, thinking of Wolf, Valentin and our life together, and of what Ajita and I might want from each other tomorrow; and I thought of the presence standing between us, her father.

It was late morning when I made it downstairs. Ajita had long left my bed.

Wearing a tracksuit, Mustaq was sitting at the table with his computer, eating strawberries and melon with his fingers. A couple of people sat at the other end of the table in silence, looking as though they’d just walked out of an explosion.

Mustaq poured me some juice. “I won’t speak too loudly,” he said. “It was a good night for me too. I haven’t been to bed. I called my trainer at four and got him to drive up for an early-morning session. Then I told my manager to prepare my studio. I haven’t enjoyed playing music for years. You know, Dad hated me playing the piano. One time, when I was at school, he had my keyboards removed and dumped. Do you think that could have inhibited me later?”

“Very likely.”

“Our conversation yesterday turned me on, Jamal. I have a nutritionist and a life coach. Now I have you to inspire me.”

“You do?”

“The great new bands are British, and they sing in English. Help me to write again, friend, about my childhood and my father. There aren’t that many rock stars whose fathers have been murdered. Where should I begin?”

“With whatever occurs to you.”

“Okay, thanks.” He began to type, saying, “It begins with you—walking into our house one day, looking at my sister with extreme happiness and smiling across at shy me, as if you understood everything about me, and whatever I did was okay.”

I poured coffee inside me but couldn’t keep any food down. Leaving Mustaq to gesticulate and hum at the computer screen, I walked across the fields for an hour, and then waited for lunch.

Champagne was brought round. Repeatedly lifting a glass might well have exhausted the last of my strength, but there were many places to lie down. That dreamy afternoon it occurred to me, as my eyes flickered, that to lie on a chaise longue at Mustaq’s, while others talked and drank, or played cards and listened to music, as gentle staff moved among you with trays of this and that, was the most perfect condition anyone could inhabit.

“Why hasn’t this occurred to me before?” I said. “That this is what money is for?” I had opened my eyes and noticed Henry standing above me, grinning. “This is what we’ve been expostulating about for years, my friend. Capitalism unfurled. Here it is, and here we are. This is the life!”

He bent down to kiss me. “Take it easy! Nothing’s ever that good!”

“Don’t say that!”

“Couldn’t George have afforded anything cheaper?” This was Miriam, rattling over me, laughing and chattering. For a moment she lay down beside me, her face close to mine, whispering frantically in my ear, “Oh, thank you so much, Brother, for bringing me here. You’ve changed my life completely and forever in the last year. You’ve been kinder to me than Father ever was. I had to let you know that, and now you know it.”

She kissed me and went to join Ajita, who had just got up. Watching my sister cross the room, in a long-sleeved tee-shirt, tight embroidered jeans and high heels, I realised how much weight she’d lost, at least three stone. Her face was almost gaunt and heavily lined, but now it was no longer studded with nuts and bolts, her eyes appeared larger, and her face shone with enthusiasm. She seemed to have retired from motherhood to become a man’s woman, or “partner.” Adopting some of Valerie’s grandiosity, she now liked to begin her sentences with phrases like “As the girlfriend of a leading theatrical producer…”

Henry sat with me. “You didn’t tell me Ajita would be so beautiful.”

“Is she the most beautiful of my girlfriends?”

“She might well turn out to be, but it’s still early days for you. Why don’t we go for a stroll?”

“I’m well embedded here.”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “It isn’t a secret I want to keep.” He put his arm around me. “Show me where to go.”

I followed him. At the door of the kitchen we put on Wellington boots. Outside, I laughed as he stared at the sculptures. Before he could say anything, I said, “They’re Alan’s art.”

I noticed, beside another barn, a studio made of glass and new wood. The doors were open and I could see two drawing boards; on the floor there were pieces of cut and uncut metal, some of them painted—Alan’s workshop.

“That looks good,” I said. “Maybe I should suggest the architect to Mum and Billie. They’re looking to get a studio built in their garden. Did they tell you?”

“Yes, I heard about it,” said Henry.

Miriam had taken him to lunch with Billie and Mum not long ago; and Henry had taken the two older women to the opera on another occasion, when he had been offered tickets. Far from being the anticipated and necessary wedge between parent and child, Henry, the new lover, characteristically failed Miriam—to her irritation. He not only liked Mum and Billie and shared their interest in the visual arts, he didn’t take Miriam’s complaints seriously. “Oh, she’s far better than most mothers,” he’d say. “You can talk to her about anything! You should have met my mother, a woman whose hysteria and depression could have infected Europe!”

Now Henry said to me, “I saw a woman last night, at Kama Sutra, a place we’ve started to go to. It was dark. She attracted me, I have to admit. But I couldn’t stop thinking that I recognised her. She was wearing heels and a mask and some other skimpy stuff. She was thinner than I remembered, but it was her posture, her hair that reminded me of Josephine.”

I sighed. “My Josephine?”

“Jamal, I had no idea what she was doing there, whether it was her first time or whether she was a regular.”

Josephine had always had a leisurely walk, daydreaming as she went, swinging her arms. I had often wondered, How can anyone walk so slowly and still move forward? We would go separately to parties, so as not to have to walk at different speeds.

I said, “It’s quite a change for Josephine, to go to a place like that. But most of her friends are just people she feels sorry for, and her boyfriend dumped her. At least that’s what I guessed. He was around for a while, then seemed to disappear. I asked Rafi, who said she found him boring.”

Henry said, “I went into a bit of a panic. Miriam was busy. I lost my excitement. I knew it would be a big deal for you—for anyone. I followed her from room to room. She seemed completely distracted.”

“Did you talk to her?” He shook his head. “Did she recognise you or Miriam?”

“God, no. Even I haven’t spoken to anyone about it. I tell Miriam everything and hope for the same from her. But this was private.”

Like most people in the house, I’d been drinking since before lunch. There had been coke too, brought around by the staff with drinks, which sobered me up briefly and enabled me to keep on drinking. The wind was fresh and the day was clear. I was beginning to take to the countryside. I had a joint in my pocket, which Henry and I smoked as we trod across the fields. By the time Henry had finished, I was pretty gone, feeling as sad and empty as I had when Ajita, Valentin and Wolf all left me.

He said, “I guess there’s no going back now—if you ever thought about that. And I suspect you did.”

“Yes, I did. My wife still fascinates me.”

“Jamal, I’m worrying about you!”

“You’re a good friend, but don’t let it spoil your day. I guess I should be looking after her. It’s what she always wanted, but she made sure I failed at it, over and over.”

“Will you say something to her?”

“I doubt it. All I heard was that she was speed-dating.”

He laughed. “Thank Christ you never worked as a therapist with couples.”

“It’s lucrative work, I hear. Plenty of demand.”

Henry said, “Mind you, what am I saying? A cursory glance at the early analysts and their disciples and colleagues will show what a bunch of perverts, suicides and nutters they were, apart from Freud. Completely human, then. But at least they knew one true thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You either love or fall sick.”

That night most of us were too coked up to eat much, but Miriam and Henry were hungry, and I sat with them and Ajita at supper. Henry hardly noticed that he was being served by uniformed staff, but Miriam insisted on helping with the washing up.

That Saturday evening, in one of the barns a low stage had been constructed. The staff had set up lights and brought in numerous instruments. Crates of wine and beer as well as bottles of vodka and tequila were placed at the bottom of the stage. People sat around on chairs, and those, like me, who found it difficult to stay upright lay on cushions on the floor.

However close to unconsciousness I might be, I didn’t want to miss Charlie Hero playing an acoustic version of “Kill for Dada,” which he’d first recorded in the 70s with the Condemned.

Alan pushed Mustaq forward. There was much applause and excitement. Mustaq didn’t want to play, but he would obey Alan. So Mustaq, now becoming George, sat at the piano. He was quiet for a moment and then began to doodle, waiting to see what might come. When the notes took shape, they became a terrifyingly honest and personal account of Neil Young’s “Helpless,” as good as the version of that song I preferred, sung by k. d. lang. I was beginning to see why the former Mushy Peas was a famous pop star.

Ajita, now in a little denim skirt, joined him for the chorus with a tambourine, swaying and laughing. When she pulled me up to join her, even I couldn’t resist. My dance moves hadn’t evolved since the 70s. The difference between then and now was the ghost standing between us, her father.

Later, after Ajita and I had smooched—“
Smooch,
my darling, is a word I haven’t used for some time”—Karim and Charlie harmonised on “Let’s Dance,” Karim playing some groovy bass, and Karen throwing her thong and then her Manolos at him. I think I saw her later with a servant, trying to retrieve a Manolo from a tangle of wires behind the stage.

Ajita had danced with Henry and Miriam, and we shared a bottle of champagne on the lawn as we smoked and cooled down. Then we went back to hear Mustaq play “Everyone Has Their Heart Torn Apart, Sometime,” which he dedicated to me, its only begetter.

Don’t ask me when, but the party turned into a rock’n’roll session with anyone who could play anything jamming, and Mustaq beating the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. Henry couldn’t wait to get naked, dancing as though swatting away killer bees, as if he’d wasted the 60s and needed to catch up. Miriam danced next to the speakers in bra and pants, wanting everyone to see her tattoos. She’d shown them to Ajita, explaining the idea and provenance of each one. Ajita, appalled and fascinated, had seemed to think, by the end, that her life would be improved by the addition of a “tat.”

I can remember watching Mustaq help his sister out of the room and upstairs, and seeing a haunted, exhausted look on her face, one I’d never seen before. I cannot recall what time the staff carried me up to bed. Apparently, they were busy with bodies all night. I know I couldn’t even spark up my lighter to hold it aloft.

“It was a major catastrophe,” Mustaq laughed, the next day.

I do remember getting up to pee an hour or so after I’d passed out and seeing, as I walked past Karen’s door, her and Karim Amir fucking. At least I thought it was Karen, and maybe it was Karim. Someone else was asleep on the floor at the end of the bed, or maybe they weren’t asleep, because there was moaning from elsewhere in the room.

I stood there a moment, took a quick shower, cleaned my teeth and the blood out of my nose, and went in there with them, falling into a pit of bodies. I can remember sitting propped up against a wall naked, smoking and talking with Karim about South London and the Three Tuns in Beckenham High Street, which now apparently had a Bowie plaque but not a Charlie Hero one.

Charlie himself was going at someone, perhaps one of the waitresses from the town. I can even remember, with some gratitude, Charlie caressing my back from behind when it was my turn, though I’d rather he hadn’t said, “Go on, old fella, ’ave it,” as I knew he was certainly posher than both Karim and me.

The next day, when Karen and I left for London, Ajita was standing in the yard, waving to us. She would stay in the country for a few more days before going to Mustaq’s London house.

While Karen sat in the car, Ajita and I embraced and promised to phone each other later. Then she kissed me on the mouth; I could feel her tongue waiting for me. She pinched and tickled me, as she used to.

“Why are you laughing?”

“You,” she said. “It can’t only be a hangover. You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost. But then I guess you have.”

Karen was gunning the engine irritably and banging her hands on the steering wheel.

As soon as I got in she said, “At least you have the decency to leave with me.”

“What?”

“I know how tricky you are. I sleep with the door open and I saw that woman sneaking out of your room, the first night. You were quick. Busy weekend, eh?”

“Karen, you are crazy.”

“You waited for her all that time and now don’t you like her?”

“You can’t go back.”

“And you don’t want to go forward?”

“I wish we didn’t have to leave this house.”

“You get any rest?”

“Rest?” I said. “I’m ready for rehab.”

“Excellent.”

I asked her not to give me her account of the previous night; I didn’t want to recall it. She said she’d pin her lips, which was unusual for her, but she giggled a little. “Impotent, eh?”

Mostly, though, she was worrying about Karim and whether he would get in touch again. If he was going to appear on
I’m a Celebrity…,
he’d be in demand from other females, and she wanted to make the most of him before this.

However much you dislike the country, you drive back into the city on a Sunday night after a weekend away and your heart sinks: the dirt, the roughness, the closeness of everyone and everything, so much so that you can almost believe you like leaving London.