Something to Tell You (19 page)

“Next week?” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, hastening to add that, though I might seem a bit short of money at the moment, I’d had it before and soon would again, once I started back at work. It wouldn’t take someone as smart as me long to make real money.

I have to say I didn’t begin by wanting to deceive Najma with these spidery nonsense nets. She had taken it for granted that I was already wealthy, and would become even wealthier in the near future, like her male cousins. She’d been to Britain often, but had little idea of what it was really like. Most people, in fact, seemed to think that Miriam and I were rich. If we weren’t, we must have been stupid or mentally weak. One time I saw a young servant of Yasir’s wearing my shoes, then a pair of my suit trousers.

When I remonstrated with him, he just grinned. “But you are rich,” he said in strange English.

“Get that stuff off,” I said. “I’m going to tell Yasir.”

He acted like I’d hit him. “Please, I beg you, no, no,” he pleaded. “He sack me.”

Off he went in my gear. What could I do? He earned almost nothing. Miriam, being generous and ingenious, found a way to fund him while benefiting us. She got him to bring us joints, which we’d smoke on the roof. Not long after, I discovered from Najma that Papa was referring to us as
“les enfants terribles.”
His own children!

Not that we weren’t looking into him too, eager to get the lowdown. I knew little about his romantic life, whether he had anyone or not. It seemed unlikely. He had his routine, his worries and his books.

There was, though, his second wife. Miriam and I went to her office, where she worked as the editor of a woman’s magazine. She was very cool, small with fine features, polite, curious and intelligent. She had an English upper-class accent with the head-wagging Indian lilt I’d liked since meeting Ajita. I could see Miriam getting a crush on her. But she wasn’t for a moment emotionally engaged with us. She didn’t talk about Papa or our lives without him. After our visit, Miriam phoned a couple of times but was told she was away.

Things began to go bad. One time I was in the library and Najma was waiting outside as she always did. I went to her, checked for prying eyes, and kissed her shiny lips a little and began to touch her, but she was cold and pushed me away. She was silent for a while, letting me take in her hurt, before beginning to abuse me in Urdu. Her father, in a rage, came in. They talked a lot in Urdu too. I got out of there. It was breaking down.

It turned out that Najma had gone to Miriam and confessed to her. We were in love, we were going to marry, we were off to London, New York, Hollywood, in a Merc, or was it a Jag?

Miriam calmly told her to forget it, Jamal was marrying no one. He’s not even a student; he’s got the degree, but so does every bum and semi-fool in London Town. Forget the Jag, the fucker might be able to drive but he hasn’t taken his test, they wouldn’t let him on the road in England. If he’s intending to marry, she finished off, he hasn’t mentioned it to me, and he mentions everything to me, otherwise I slap him.

I was in a rage with Miriam. Why did she do this? She liked the girl, she said. She felt sorry for her being subjected to my lies and stupid stories. But what was she doing herself?

It was taken for granted that I’d accompany Papa during the day (I was learning a lot), just as he took it for granted that Miriam would stay at the house with the other women. But, apparently, she had stopped doing this. Instead, she had taken to driving off in Uncle Yasir’s car, often with her head uncovered. When asked where she’d been, she’d reply, “sightseeing.” I had some idea of what these sights might be when she told me that her favourite thing in Karachi was to go to the beach and there, under a palm tree, split open a coconut and pour half a bottle of gin into it.

Most of the sightseeing she did was from within the arms of one of our cousins’ fiancés, an airline pilot who had a beach hut. He and our cousin were to be married later that year, but the pilot was taking the opportunity to get to know the further reaches of the family. He and Miriam had also been meeting in rooms in the hotel I’d visited with Najma, where he knew the manager.

They’d been spotted. Gossip was one of the few things that moved urgently in Karachi. He’d taken it for granted that English girls were easy, and when he ran into Miriam, he knew he was right. I’d been wondering how she knew so many little things about the country. Of course our cousin went crazy, and threatened to stab Miriam. Miriam was outnumbered; I refused to help her.

Miriam had thought we could live in Pakistan a while, get a job, save a bit, hang out on the beach and deal hash, and so on. But in little less than a month, the whole thing had become impossible. We were too alien; there was no way we could fit in. There were American and British wives living there, but they had gone native, wearing the clothes, doing the accent, trying to learn the language in order to speak to the servants.

Outside, if Miriam wasn’t covered, she was jeered and hissed at. They even pinched her. She picked up fruit from stalls and threw it at people. I was terrified she’d get into a fistfight or worse. I kept my head down, but Miriam, being a modern woman of the most extreme kind, fucked them all up. Our grandmother, the Princess, had already gone to her, placed her hand on her forehead and said, “I’m going to recite a small prayer which will drive out the devil and the evil spirits which possess you. Satan be off! Give us victory over those who disbelieve!” The following morning she had two sheep slaughtered. The meat was distributed among the poor, who were asked to pray for Miriam’s quick recovery.

It all blew up at Papa’s flat one morning when I heard a commotion in the sitting room. There were raised voices. Then I heard what sounded like a large object being thrown across the floor. I guessed the large object might be Papa. When I ran in, followed by the servant, Miriam was sitting on Papa, rather as she used to sit on me, screaming at him. He was trying to protect his face as well as trying to strike her. She was strong and difficult to pull off. There was something she wanted to tell him.

“He’s been abusing me!” she said as we held her, trying to pin her arms behind her back. Papa was dusting himself down. Then I saw that she had spat at him, that her spittle was on his face. He took his handkerchief and cleaned himself.

She said, “He says I kiss the arse of whitey! He calls me ‘a rotten girl’ and a dirty slut who can’t behave! Yet he left us there in London! He abandoned us! What could be worse than that!”

“Get out,” cried Papa in a weak voice. He went into another room and shut the door.

It was the last time we saw him.

Dad must have spoken to Yasir. When we got back to his house, we were informed that we were leaving later, around one in the morning. We were not given any choice. The servants were already packing our bags. No one said goodbye or waved. We weren’t allowed to say goodbye to the girls.

The funny thing was, we spotted Miriam’s lover, the pilot, going through the crew lane in the airport. Later, during the flight, he came to collect her. Apparently she “guided the plane.” A packed 747 with Miriam at the wheel, sitting on the pilot’s knee with, no doubt, her hand in his fly.

Mother had wanted us to see Father “in his own environment.” She thought it would be informative. It was. We could no longer idealise him. In most ways he was worse off than us. He couldn’t save us, nor us him. He couldn’t be the father we had wanted him to be. If I wanted a father, I’d have to find a better one.

By the time we returned to London, Miriam and I weren’t speaking. I hated her and didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t want to be the little brother anymore. Usually I’m quite passive, if not evasive. I go along with things to see what’s happening, not wanting to make things worse by tossing my chilies into the stew. But I had said to Miriam, as we left Papa’s, that she had ruined the whole trip.

“No wonder Papa thinks you’re an idiot and a bitch,” I explained. “You can’t control yourself for five minutes! These people have their own way of life, and you just pissed all over it! There can be few people in this world who are more selfish than you!”

She was so sullen and freaked, traumatised, I supposed, that she couldn’t even hit me. It occurred to me that she’d either damage herself in some way or go back on the smack.

We rode back into London on the tube. The little houses and neat gardens sitting there in the cold looked staid, cute, prim. Saying nothing, hating everything, we both had furious eyes. This was our land, and it was where we had to live. All we could do now was get on with our lives—or not. At Victoria Station the two of us parted without speaking. I went home to Mum, and Miriam went to stay with someone who had a council flat in North Kensington.

I knew that, whatever happened, I needed to get a job. Luckily, I had a friend from university who was working in the British Library, and he said he could get me something there.

The one person I didn’t expect to see again was Najma, but she did turn up a year later in Britain and rang Mother, asking for me. For a moment, in my confusion and with Mum’s lack of clarity—“an Indian girl phoned”—I thought it was Ajita. I began to cry with relief. She hadn’t forgotten me, she was coming back.

Najma had married a Pakistani who came here to study engineering, and the two of them were living in Watford with twins. I went out to see them a few times.

One kid had a fever, and the other was perhaps a little backward. The couple had been racially harassed, knew no one and the husband was out all day. Najma would cook for me; she knew I loved her food, and we’d sit together, chastely, while she talked of everything she missed “back home.” Exiled, she continued to curse the West for its immorality while blaming it for failing to dispense its wealth to her family with the alacrity her fantasies demanded.

I took the husband out for a drink and had to listen to him complaining about the excessive price of prostitutes in Britain.

I could only say that Britain might turn out to be more expensive than he thought.

Henry had been getting into trouble, and the trouble was spreading, drawing us all in.

On my answering machine there was a message from his daughter, Lisa. Soon there were two messages. She didn’t want to see me, she had to see me. As insistent as the rest of her family, like them she expected to get her way. I was busy with patients and with Rafi, but being stupidly curious, I invited her for tea.

I’d always enjoyed hearing of her adventures from Henry, and over the years I’d run into her occasionally, usually with her brother. As a child she’d always been surrounded by artistic and political people, picketing the
Sunday Times
building at Wapping in 1986 and staying at Greenham Common at the weekends. She’d had an expensive education before going to Sussex University to read sociology.

With such a pedigree, how could she do anything else but drop out just before her finals in order to live in a tree situated on the route of a proposed motorway? Henry could hardly object. Hadn’t he taken her to march with E. P. Thompson and Bruce Kent against nuclear weapons? Nevertheless, when she did climb down from the tree, Henry took it for granted she’d return to “ordinary” life. He or Valerie would ring one of their friends, and her career would begin.

But she became a social worker at the lowest level, visiting mad, old alcoholic men and women on her bicycle, refusing to “section” people because it entailed forcibly taking them into psychiatric care. She left home to live on a druggie single-mother estate. Her flat was at the top of the block, with an extensive view over Richmond Park, and she filled it with Palestinians and other refugees. On occasions she threw paint at McDonald’s or raided shops for pornography, filling up bags with the stuff. “I hope it’s going to the unemployed,” murmured Henry.

These actions weren’t considered far-out among the bohemian young, for whom unconventional behaviour was compulsory. Henry considered her a successful extension of himself. But he did worry, saying, “My daughter is still the sort of person who might seek a position as a human shield. How come she took the sins of the world on her shoulders? Where did this guilt and masochism come from? As long as her fury is directed at herself, everyone’s fine. When it’s coming towards you, you better watch out!”

She showed up at my place on a bicycle, fresh from her allotment. Her hair was halfway down her back, and it was thick and dramatic, unkempt, of course, which spoke to me of a repudiated femininity. Not that I thought she was a lesbian, though she’d tried to be, I’d heard, and failed, as so many do.

She seemed to be carrying three rucksacks and resembled a vertical snail. Her fingernails were dirty, her boots muddy and her all-natural clothing was coming apart. She wore no make-up or decoration. The veins in her face were broken from the harsh weather she liked to endure, and she looked weary, as though she’d been digging for weeks.

It didn’t seem long ago, in February 2003, that she and I and Henry had walked together to Hyde Park on the antiwar march, attended by two million. Now, two years later, we were in the middle of a rotten, long conflict, which hadn’t improved her temper, nor anyone’s. While I made her a nettle tea, we agreed that we lived in a country led by a neurotic chained to an evangelical, imperialistic lunatic. She must have been the only Marxist left in the West, but I liked her passion. That seemed to be the last agreement we were to have.

She said, “The other day I went to see Henry. It was about lunchtime. Sam was in a state because he’d had to move out. You know why.”

I was leaning forward. “I heard the story.”

“And, childishly, Henry refused to give him his things back. The clothes Sam could do without, but the computer had his work on it. I said I’d fetch it for him, whatever it took. I wanted to see Henry.”

She had been let into Henry’s house by one of the other tenants, who were scared of women like her. Henry left his flat unlocked, as the Mule Woman had discovered. To find him, Lisa followed the fetid smell.

“He was more or less unconscious. He had been sick, the basin was full of it. He might have died. I found fetish clothes on the floor and other objects. There was a leather mask. I said to him, ‘What’s this?’”

“And?”

“He said, ‘For the last few centuries these masks have been used for celebratory dances associated with major social rituals.’” I had to put my hand in my mouth and bite it to stop myself laughing. She said, “Yes, another of his jokes, and I hate jokes now. He’d been clubbing. When I asked him what he’d been taking, he said E and Viagra—together!”

Henry was in no state to get up. He said Bushy would bring Miriam around later, and she’d help him.

Lisa said, “Seeing him there groaning, I thought it would have been easier to raise the
Titanic
than get Henry up.” She looked at me reproach-fully. “I sat down next to the ruin of my father.”

“How ruined was he?”

Apparently Valerie had said Karen had been on to her, arguing that if Henry didn’t finish the actors’ documentary, the project would be abandoned. Not only that, but she, Karen, already in financial trouble herself, would be personally liable. Valerie told Lisa that Henry had been turning down other work too, apart from teaching, claiming that he had “retired” and had “nothing left to say.”

Lisa said, “I asked if he wanted a doctor.”

“Was he really unwell?”

“When he was able to put some words together, he was in good spirits. Perhaps it was the drugs. I’ve never polluted my body with that shit, so I wouldn’t know. Have you?” I said nothing. “But,” she went on, “you know he’s had a heart attack. He almost died. How come your sister’s letting him take amphetamines? Does she want to kill him?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Henry’s stubborn, isn’t he? He makes his own rules. We like that about him.”

She said, “I think I’ve met your sister at some event or other. I’ve got nothing against her. But let me ask you this. What are they doing together?”

“Miriam is, of course, a Muslim single mother with a history of abuse. She has few taboos, and she sees straight to the centre of things. Your dad—a free, single man—loves that about her.”

Lisa was sitting on the edge of my analytic couch, waiting for these banalities to pass before she went into her rehearsed rap.

“We know better than anyone how to take care of him, while your family has been negligent.” She seemed to hesitate there but I knew she’d hardly started. “But why would you worry about our little problems? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about the dreadful dilemmas of film stars and celebrities. Didn’t they call you, in a newspaper, therapist to the stars?”

I said, “You know it’s not like that, though I have to admit that I’ve used my work to be with people who interest me. Just this morning I was wondering whether Kate Moss might like to see me. How could anyone not envy me that? Anyhow, I didn’t see the thing in the newspaper. Did you?”

“Of course not.”

Over the years several sportsmen had approached me. Having gone to the trouble to learn about their bodies, they assumed their minds could also be trained to obedience. It was when this didn’t work—when, as it were, they became curious about the mind-body relation—that they asked for help.

The incident Lisa was referring to involved a footballer I saw a few times. He had been followed to my place; photographs of him at my door, with half of Maria’s head behind him, had appeared in the papers. His unhappiness was mocked all over. He was called mad.

She said, “The little difficulties of the famous must be hell. But my father has stopped seeing his old friends. They bored him for years, apparently. These people are famous and high up in their field. But they are not pierced. He has resigned from two boards. As for those places he and Miriam go to together—”

“Places?”

“Fetish clubs. They are squalid and the people there riddled with disease. You think the women who go there want to be doing that? It’s rape, their husbands forcing them to have sex with dozens of people.”

Which of Lear’s daughters was she? I wondered how long I’d be able to resist the pleasure of giving her a little verbal slap.

“You’re worrying about your father,” I said. “He’s changed a little. Everything will calm down.”

“Fuck that patronising analyst quackery.”

Her mother’s tongue had been passed on like an heirloom.

I said, “Quackery?”

She was looking at the postcard of Freud I kept on my desk, sent to me by an enthusiastic patient. “Freud’s been discredited over and over. Patient envy—” She stopped. “Penis envy, I mean. Jesus.”

Despite herself, she laughed.

“What a lot of fallacious cock, you mean?” I said, laughing too.

“Jamal, my father loves you. He even listens to you. Valerie too. But my father is not in a good way, and you must take some responsibility.”

That word.
Responsibility.
When I watched Miriam on her TV “agonies,” it was the most used word, apart from
I
. Owning your acts. Seeing yourself as an actor rather than a victim. I am all for responsibility; who wouldn’t be? We are all responsible for ourselves. But what are our selves? Where do they begin and how far do they extend?

“Yes,” I said. “He is responsible for what he does. Not me. Certainly not you. Him. Just him. You and I,” I said, getting up and moving towards the door, “are irrelevant here. We must be happy for them both and for the joy they give one another. Let’s hope they marry—or at least live together.”

“Marry? Live together! Are you insane? Those two? Where did you get such an idea from? Is it likely?!”

I was being mischievous. She irritated me; I could only inflame her.

I said, “I like to see others contented.”

She was already gathering her things. She asked me if I minded her taking something home. It was the teabag I’d used earlier, which she wanted to put in her “compost” box. She squeezed it out before dropping it in a pocket of her rucksack.

At the door she said, “I will not let my father be destroyed.”

There was mud on the floor from her boots. She also “forgot” one of her rucksacks. My patients often left umbrellas and coats, as well as change, lighters, condoms, Tampaxes and other stuff which dropped out of their pockets onto my couch. It was a form of payment as well as of relationship. I knew Lisa would be back.

She returned two days later.

“Thank you for putting up with me,” she said, as though I’d had a choice. She sat on the couch, dragging her skirt up over her boots, another colourful thing, ethnic, like me. She was watching me looking at her legs and smiled. “Did you know Valerie’s got an Ingres drawing on her bedroom wall? It’s lost in a mess of other stuff, some valuable things, family photographs and so on, but it’s there. That’s insouciance for you. You have any idea what it’s worth?” I said nothing as she looked at me. “Valerie says you’re a sphinx without a secret. Aren’t you the one who is ‘supposed to know’?” She paused. “You nodded then, but tell me, how do you sustain that stillness, Jamal? The way you’re just there. Did you learn it?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“You never fidget, your hands don’t fuss, your brown eyes are steady. They’re soft but merciless. And that little Gioconda smile of yours, which seems to know everything as you hear everything…It’s enough to convince a girl you could hear her soul murmuring. I bet all your patients want to be like you.” She was smiling at me. “I could sit with you for a long time, surrounded by books, CDs and these lovely pictures.”

“They’re all by friends.”

“The sketches?”

“My wife, Josephine.”

“And your son’s work too. So many photographs of him! Unlike my mother’s friends, you’re not showing off your wealth or power.” Silence. “You’re not supposed to give advice,” she said. “You shamans don’t even like to admit you can cure—if indeed you can.”

I said, “The difference between therapy and analysis is that in therapy the therapist thinks he knows what’s good for you. In analysis you discover that for yourself.”

“What would you say if you had a patient who was destroying himself?”

“I would warn him.”

She said, “Jamal, please, will you see me? As a patient, I mean.”

I told her there were good analysts I could recommend, but I couldn’t see her. I would phone her with suggestions. If she was in a hurry, I could find a couple of phone numbers right now.

She said, “Why are you refusing to help me? I took your two books from Mother’s house and read them. I’ve studied your essays on the Internet. Like all good artists, you make me believe you are writing for only me.” She went on: “Will you answer this? What happens when you feel that the conversations you have are the wrong conversations with the wrong people?”

I noticed that, while I was looking through my address book, finding a pen and paper, she had put her feet up on the couch and lain down.

“Lisa.”

“But I have to tell you what happened.”

“What happened when?”

“When I called Henry and we agreed to have dinner at that place near Riverside Studios. She was there when I arrived.”

“Who?”

“Your beloved sister. She’s uninvited, but never mind, she starts to talk. Capricorn rising, or was it falling? Wizards she has known. Belly-dancing lessons. Posh Spice as a goldfish. Botox and how to get it cheap.
Big Brother.
On and on. A talking tabloid. He listens to every word. I think: How does he know what
Big Brother
is? She records it for him. How sweet! Then you know what he does?”

“What?”

“He shows me the tickets he’s got for the Rolling Stones.”

“Did he say whether he got me one?”

“What is Dad doing—regressing to another adolescence? She has stolen him. He missed my childhood, having better people to be with. But in the past two years we were lunching once a week. Now he doesn’t see me, doesn’t need my advice. When I do get him to lunch, that woman’s there! He apologises, sees what I’m saying. He agrees to meet me. But he talks about her again, her arthritic hands, her agony. He says this awful thing: ‘But Miriam has liberated me from my horrible bourgeois upbringing. Almost everything I believed was stupid, wrong, sterile!’”