Something to Tell You (10 page)

Finally, I was forced to do the right thing. I would throw myself on his mercy and take the consequences. One morning, after making up my mind, I told Tahir Hussein the truth. How would the analysis ever work if I repressed such a momentous event? So Tahir heard about the physical symptoms, the shaking and paranoia. He heard about the dreams of the dying eyes staring at me. He heard about Wolf, Valentin, Ajita. He heard about the death.

“What do you think?” I asked.

He said, simply, straightaway, that some people deserve a whack on the head. I’d done the world a service, offing this pig who was bad beyond belief. It didn’t stop me being a human being. It was only a “little” murder. He didn’t seem to think I was going to make a habit of it, or go professional.

What a relief it was to have my secret safely hidden in the open! Tahir was worried about my temptation to confess and then be caught, my need to be punished, as well as the temptation to have everyone know me. To conceal is to reveal. Most murderers, he said, actively lead the police to the scene of the crime, so preoccupied are they with their victims. Raskolnikov not only returns to the crime scene, but wishes to rent a room in the “house of murder.”

Tahir was the only person I told. I was desperate at the time, and now Tahir is dead, along with the secret which will never be uncovered, the secret which had been turning my soul septic, until I couldn’t proceed alone. After Tahir, with my two other analysts, I kept it to myself. It wouldn’t reflect well on my career prospects.

I had said to Tahir, a year after I’d started seeing him, that his profession was one I fancied for myself. How come? I was aware, from an early age, when I met people on the street with Mother, that I wanted to hear their gossip. This was the route, I saw later, to the deepest things about them. Not necessarily to their secrets, though this was part of it, but to what had formed and haunted them within the organisation of the family.

Soon, however, the everyday conversations that characterised life in the suburbs were not enough. I wanted the serious stuff, the “depths.” I’d come to Nietzsche and Freud through Schopenhauer, whose two-volume
The World as Will and Idea
had so entertained me at university. There I copied out the following passage: “The sexual passion is the kernel of the will to live. Indeed, one might say man is concrete sexual desire; for his origin is an act of copulation and his wish of wishes is an act of copulation, and this tendency alone perpetuates and holds together his whole phenomenal existence. Sexual passion is the most perfect manifestation of the will to live.”

I had seen myself as someone who was always about to become an artist, a writer, movie director, photographer, or even (fallback position) an academic. I had written books, songs, poetry, but they never seemed to be the meaning I sought. Not that you could make a living writing haikus. I had always been impressed by people who knew a lot. The one thing Mother and I did do together was watch quiz shows on TV.
University Challenge
was our favourite, and she’d say, “You should know all this. These people aren’t as bright as you, and look at their clothes!”

None of the careers I’d considered excited me. Yet, unconsciously, something had been stirring within. Being with Dad in Pakistan, catastrophic and depressing as it had been in many ways, had instilled something like a public-school ethos in me. The sense of the family, of its history and achievement—my uncles had been journalists, sportsmen, army generals, doctors—along with the expectation of effortless success had, I was discovering now, been both exhilarating and intimidating. I wasn’t only a “Paki.” Suddenly, unlike Miriam, I had a name and a place, as well as the responsibility which went with it.

I began to see that not only was I intelligent, but that I had to find a way to use my mind. This was something to do with “family honour,” an idea which formerly I’d have found absurd. It was Tahir who brought everything together for me. It took me a long time to bring it up with him; I was afraid he’d think I wanted to take his place.

But at last I did. “What do you think?” I said. “Could I do it?”

“You’ll be as excellent as any of us,” he said.

During the first year of my work with Tahir, I saw little of Mother and Miriam. I went to some trouble to avoid them. Both their arguments and their intimacy, without a father, I saw now, to desire them both in different ways, and to keep them apart, made me overwrought.

But when Miriam said we should go there for Christmas lunch, I wasn’t able to disagree. Anyway, I wanted to see Miriam’s first child, a cute baby provided by a cabdriver whose fare, one night, she’d been unable to afford. By now she was living at the top of a council block with the child and another on the way, her only adult company being a violent man. She was stoned most of the time, with interludes on a psychiatric ward. Later she moved to the outskirts of London, arguing that she couldn’t be high up, as the voices yelled “Jump, jump!” “But never quite loudly enough,” Mum remarked.

Over dessert they asked me if I was intending to remain at the library, perhaps becoming an exhibit. I said “not indefinitely”; I knew now what I wanted to do. I would become an analyst, a shrink, a head doctor. I floated this with as much seriousness as I could gather, but I had to bat away numerous irritating remarks. “He needs a head doctor,” Miriam muttered. Mother: “You’re the one who needs it.” Miriam: “Actually, Mother, if you bothered to look within, you’d see it was you.” Mother: “You look inside yourself, dear.” Miriam: “After all, you made us…” On and on.

When this tailed off, I continued. While the
Devil’s Dictionary
definition of a doctor is “One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well,” the word
doctor,
as Josephine could have told you, inevitably went down well with most people. As I spoke, explaining the training, the theory, the practice, the income, the interest, the words, to my surprise, did seem to have authority. They were surprised, I guessed, partly by my determination and engagement. I knew they thought of me—I thought it myself—as passive and repressed, without much will or desire.

But now, rather than feeling only partly present, as I did before—my life as an interruption to them—I seemed to have some weight. I was able to be their equal and, to my dismay, it seemed to diminish them, render them a little pathetic even, as though I had been reducing my own stature all my life, to keep Mum and Miriam big. Unlike either of them, I seemed to know what I was about, where I was going. My crime was my spur. I would spend my life paying off that early debt. I was happy to do it.

“You will be doing good then?” Miriam said.

“Maybe a little.”

“That’s nice.” She wasn’t being sarcastic. Her other selves were almost always hidden beneath her aggression, her general
stroppiness,
which was a good, accurate word to describe her. “You can help
me,
then, can’t you?”

They were looking at me almost pleadingly. “You both know,” I said, “no doctor can treat a member of his own family.”

A year into my training, when I was beginning to work with juveniles, we heard that Father had died. After leaving Pakistan, Miriam and I didn’t see him again. Did we mourn him? I’d have wanted him to know I’d found a vocation. Whether he’d have appreciated it, I doubted. However, I was strong enough by then to have ridden his disapproval. I was on my own, but I knew, at last, what I was doing.

That night, after I left the house, walking the familiar streets from which I thought I’d never escape, a boy semi-defeated by something he didn’t understand, I was in a hurry to get back to my complete edition of Freud, the patients I would start seeing, the conferences I’d attend, the books I’d write. I wanted to be useful, to have done something.

Even then, at a moment of such hope, when the future was something I wanted, I would hear the dead man’s words echoing in my ears: “What do you want of me?”

Straight out I said to Miriam, “You know I’m a gossip trollop and must have it immediately.”

“You and Henry sound so similar to one another,” she said. “But he’s like Tigger, and you were never so outgoing. Or have you changed?”

I said, “Now it’s you who is beginning to sound like him.”

“Oh God, we’re all dissolving into one another!” she said.

Evening, and Miriam was in her kitchen when I arrived. Kids on bikes doing wheelies in the front yard. Other boys and girls distributed around the house with their friends; a teenage boy in front of the television at the other end of the room, one hand in a minger’s chest, the other on the TV remote. Bushy perched barefoot on a chair, stuffing money into his socks before putting them on again. Then he threw his keys in the air, caught them, and went off to pick up a paying customer.

At her place, Miriam seemed distracted or preoccupied, as she had been as a young woman, wishing she were elsewhere, wondering where the pleasure was. However, I noticed she was looking at me as I fiddled in her kitchen, preparing pasta for myself.

“So?” I said. “How much did you enjoy seeing Henry? Did you stay long at my place?”

“Here it is,” she said. She had on her most serious, if not tragic face, which disconcerted me. But it was too late now. “Did you set this up on purpose?”

“Henry asked me to get some dope from you. That’s all I did.”

“Don’t come in!” she screamed into the rest of the house, before shutting the kitchen door and jamming a chair under the handle, a rare cry for privacy. “What happened? Henry wanted the dope, but he doesn’t even know how to make his own joints. While I was rolling a few, teaching him, he said, ‘It’s the most useful thing I’ve learned for years.’ You know how he talks, for England and for his own benefit, as if he expects to be listened to. Even I had to shut up. That’s authority for you. I get hot just thinking of it.”

“What did he say?”

“I was telling him from the off I was poor. I said I’ve never had nothing, not for want of trying. I’m no good at anything but the small stuff, so don’t think I’m a catch, but I might inherit a bit.

“He said he lived with his wife, Valerie, in luxury, for ten years. There were houses, cars, parties, holidays. They were friends with famous artists, politicians, actors who stayed in their houses, drank their champagne, swam in their pools. When she needed more money, she’d sell a painting.”

“Henry did some excellent work during those years.”

“Without making much money, he claims. It was she who supported him. His nose was in her trough. Well, as he talked about it, he became more and more upset, calling it ‘an untrue life.’ I didn’t know what to do. In his mind he’s a crazy man. You spend the day with such people.”

“It was all talk?”

“I gave him the joint. It’s special stuff. I knew it would draw out the subject for him.” Now Miriam came and sat next to me, lowering her voice. “I’ll tell you how he seduced me into love.”

“Love already?”

Henry had asked Bushy to drive them to his flat by the river at Hammersmith where he lived on the first floor. I often went there: the living room had a long window overlooking the Thames and the trees on the towpath opposite. The other three flats in the house were occupied by ageing theatre queens with whom Henry was always arguing, either about the dustbins or the number of rent boys or, more likely, young actors, stamping up and down the stairs. Or they’d have long discussions on the landing about productions at the Royal Court in the mid-1960s.

Apart from the large living room, Henry’s place was composed of a number of small and medium-sized rooms filled randomly with theatre memorabilia as well as the “artworks” he’d begun to make himself in the last few years. Sitting on worn carpets were his “sculptures” made of wire and plaster, or of egg-boxes mixed with Polyfilla; on the walls, among the broken mirrors, posters and sketches for costumes from numerous shows, were his drawings and watercolours.

Like a lot of people, he was prouder of his hobbies than he was of his work. His son, Sam, had told the Mule Woman, indeed any woman who passed through, that if you praised Henry’s photography you were in with him, if that’s what you wanted. In fact, the Mule Woman had been so in love with the idea of living near the river, which she watched constantly, that she attempted to dust a little, soon realising it would take a team of people several days to make an impression. Nevertheless, she’d honoured the pictures and received some kindness in return.

Henry had a large armchair by the window, and a radio on a table next to it. Here he read newspapers, poetry, plays and Dostoevsky, while watching the river. He liked to claim that at night he could see, among the trees, his gay friends participating in open-air orgies.

Miriam said, “I liked the pad. The history of his life everywhere, awards, photographs of him with that famous French actress, Brigitte Bardot.”

“Jeanne Moreau.”

Miriam said, “We wanted to get the sex done with straightaway. Both of us were starving for physical love. He was like some madwoman, talking about how his body would disgust anyone who saw it. He wouldn’t take his clothes off. He actually put his jumper on. You know I’m used to odd things, but it got bizarre, lying naked in bed with a completely dressed stranger who wouldn’t stop telling me how frightened he was. Anyway, you don’t need to hear about it.”

“Why not?”

“It might make you sad about yourself.” I laughed. At times she sounded as sentimental as Rafi, who would say, “Oh, Dad, I don’t want you to feel sad.” Now she went on, “Well, after the love, he got this book out. We were on the vodka, smoking another joint. He made me read to him. She was called Sonya.”

“From Uncle Vanya? The last speech?”

“He put a chair in the middle of the room and watched how I sat. He had the cheek to give me instructions.”

“What did he say?”

“He made me do it slower. He told me when to look at the book and when to look up. At the same time he wanted me to do it naturally, as if I were at home. The speech was about work and the angels and the heavens, full of emoting. Too much about work for my liking. He got very involved in it, dashing about here and there. I had no idea he could be so light on his feet.”

Now and again over the years, I’d sat in on Henry’s rehearsals for both his modern and classical work. I’d particularly liked his workshops with ordinary people and his appreciation of what he called “naive” acting, which, he said, had its own beauty. “Bring me only the worst actors. What could be more depressing than talent?” he’d say. “I hope never to meet anyone talented again!”

If, when he was doing a production, there was an actor he couldn’t get along with, he’d ask me to come in and have a look at them, and Henry and I would talk in the bar later. Henry was different at work; I’d heard he’d been a bully, particularly with women, but he seemed to have grown out of that. In the rehearsal room, I was impressed by his assurance and intense concentration, by his concern for the actors and his interest in their ideas, as well as his firmness when he wanted something. I saw that this was where he was meant to be, what he was alive for. But it also made me wonder why this self, so alert and vibrant, was separated from the anxious, daily self which I knew.

Miriam said, “He told me he might record me saying the speech for television. Was he lying or just winding me up? I’m used to that stuff from men. Married men always adored me.”

“They did?”

“I swallowed everything.”

“Indeed.”

“I don’t even mind him lying, but—”

“Henry wouldn’t do that. He is supposed to be making a documentary about acting. If you’re not careful he’ll put you in it.”

“Really? I’ll have to get my hair done and cover my tattoos. I wish I had some money.”

A few years back I introduced Henry to one of my ex-girlfriends, Karen Pearl, sometimes fondly referred to as “the TV Bitch.” About eighteen months ago, she had agreed to produce a documentary that Henry wanted to make. But instead of shooting it over a ten-day period, as most people would, Henry had decided he would make his film “over a couple of years,” with his own camera, while doing other things, like teaching, travelling and lecturing—his “retirement” activity, though he hadn’t retired, of course.

Karen wanted celebrities in the documentary, by which she meant soap stars, while Henry wanted talented, well-known actors with whom he’d worked before, as well as amateurs attempting pieces from the classical repertoire.

Henry had become annoyed with me for putting the two of them together in the first place, and Karen claimed his obduracy was helping to bankrupt her, though even he can’t have been the sole cause. She’d invited me to one of her pop things recently, in a warehouse full of barely dressed and over-made-up semi-children. She’d turned into Hattie Jacques in the
Carry On
films: matronly, patronising, foolishly grand.

She was fond of the juice, and as furiously difficult in her persistence as Henry. One of the first to produce makeover programmes—gardens, houses, women—things hadn’t gone her way for a while; everyone was doing it now. The company she had started had recently been fired from a series they were making. Therefore I didn’t think Karen would be too pleased with Henry’s new but touching idea to have his girlfriend recite Sonya’s speech in its entirety on television. I could see many battles ahead.

Miriam said, “Bushy got me home. I felt like I was lying on a cushion of air. It’s been years since I’ve had any real love. I kept singing. I wanted to hear a song by Enya.”

“Oh, bad luck.” Before she could slap me, I said, “Will you see him again?”

“Only if you tell me why he likes me.”

“You’re likeable.”

She said, “Why don’t you have a lover? I know you miss Josephine.”

“I get lonely. But, as my first analyst used to say, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ve had my satori.’”

She said, “It was the one before Karen, Ajita, who was always your true love.”

“She was?”

“How many times did I meet her? Two or three? That was enough for me to tell. She was lovely, and uncomplicated. She gave me that jewellery too. Why didn’t you stay together?”

“Things fell apart.”

“What really went on between you two? Maybe it will still work out. Why don’t you search for her?”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“Didn’t someone get killed?”

“They did.”

“When will I hear the whole story?”

I said, “She’s been on my mind a lot. It’s that time of year, the anniversary, when I saw her for the last time. I always sit and think of her, and feel damned dark, dark, dark.”

“Jamal, try and find her. She’s probably living nearby. Like you, she will have been with other people, but I’ve got a feeling there’s something between you.”

“What if there isn’t? Wouldn’t that be worse? To me it’s Pandora’s box.”

“You won’t know until you find out.”

“Listen,” I went on, avoiding the subject. “Miriam, you can go to Henry’s when you want, but his son is sometimes there. I’ll put my flat at your disposal. I will have two keys cut. Use the place when you want, when I am not working in the evenings, or at weekends. If Maria is there, send her out.”

I noticed that Bushy had come in; he was standing there, nodding at Miriam. Earlier I’d noticed, but not really taken in the fact, that she was wearing make-up as well as perfume.

“Jamal, I have to go. Henry is taking me to a club for a drink.”

“Excellent,” I said. She was passing her hand repeatedly over her face. “What’s wrong?”

“But I don’t want this. I hate to go out. I have my people, the children, Bushy. Henry unsettles me. Perhaps he will ruin me, and I have ruined my life too often. Do I have to go?”

“Yes.”

Behind us, Bushy cleared his throat. I said, “Miriam, it is like the old days. You about to go out into the night and me about to go to bed.”

“I would invite you to come,” she said. “But Henry wants to see me alone.”

“I am working on my book. It’s the thing which interests me most now.”

In the last ten years I had published two books of case studies,
Six Characters in Search of a Cure
and
The Reader of Signs
. In each volume I took a number of individuals and discussed my sessions with them, musing, as the stories unfolded, on the nature of “everyday illnesses” or symptoms: fears, obsessions, inhibitions, phobias, addictions. This was normal, everyday stuff any reader would recognise: symptoms around which whole lives are organised and on which, sometimes, they founder.

To my surprise, as well as that of the publishers, my books were successful and translated into five languages. As well as being an attempt to revive Freud’s idea of the case study as a mixture of literature, speculation and theory, it was a way of explaining analysis to a new generation, a way of showing how it could succeed as well as fail. Therefore it was partly about how people hate the thought of giving up their symptoms—forfeiting one’s illnesses is a big risk, since they work as cures for other conflicts.

I had avoided technical language and discovered that these accounts of distress naturally had the structure, organisation and narrative push of stories. They were, in fact, character studies, in which the subjects were collages of real patients, along with fragments of myself and other parts which were invented. They were the closest I’d come, and it was pretty close, to writing fiction. It was a form, a relatively free one, unlike that of the academic article, where I could say what I needed to, musing on my daily work and on the thinking of others, poets, philosophers, analysts.

I wasn’t inexperienced as a scribbler. I had a contract for another book, and it was my intention to write one: I needed the money. But this material about Ajita, which was emerging spontaneously and taking up most of my writing time, seemed different. I imagined my account of her, seemingly random and chaotic, would be not unlike that of a psychoanalytic session: a mixture of dreams, wishes, interruptions, disputes, fantasies, resistances, memories from different periods, and an attempt to find a way through it all. To what? I was trying to find out.