Something to Tell You (28 page)

No other country has anything quite like a London basement. You turn sharply off the street and clamber down slippery and narrow steps into an echoey chamber, go through a door and find yourself separate from the clamour, underneath the city, where everything is cooler. It is like crossing a border from a maelstrom into an easy country.

I was in a dark, narrow hallway with several doors off it. I said to Madame Jenny, who had let me in, “I had a feeling that the Goddess might need help with her homework.”

“She does, dear, she does.” She took my coat. “How are you, Doctor? We haven’t seen you for a while. We even got you a Christmas card. Do you still want it?”

“I’d be delighted.”

The turbulent turn of the century—from the nineteenth to the twentieth—had been giving the Goddess some difficulty. In my view she spent too long on her essays and in the end got muddled and upset. Madame Jenny was proud of all her girls and was chuffed when I called them “intellectuals.” “Yes,” she said, “the girls in other places are not so bright as ours.”

“Nor as sexy.”

As I walked through the hallway, Madame Jenny said, “She’s expecting you.” I had phoned earlier, of course; like me, they only worked by appointment. “Otherwise it’s a madhouse rather than a whorehouse.”

“Here she is, sir,” said Madame Jenny, leading me into the room.

It was fittingly dim, the walls painted maroon. I held the Goddess for a moment, kissing her blond ringlets and stroking her face.

I paid her and said, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, Goddess.”

“Where have you been? I hope you haven’t been seeing any other tarts.”

“I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

“How do you want me?” she asked, thrusting out a hip and showing me the end of her tongue.

I contemplated the wall, which was covered in costumes on hangers; on the other wall were the whips. I asked her to dress as an air hostess. My father, of course, had spent a lot of time on planes, which seemed exotic to me then. Once he gave me a BOAC shoulder bag.

She asked, “Which airline?”

“British Airways, I think.”

“Patriotic as ever.”

She went off with the costume. Sex was niche marketing at its best. At least they didn’t stick the prices on the wall, as they did in some establishments, on brightly coloured pieces of paper, charging separately for “hand,” “oral,” “position,” “69” and my favourite, “complete.” I recalled that apparently, in the old days, brothels liked to feature a one-legged woman. I did have, a while ago, a patient who masturbated over his mother’s prosthetic leg. But I wasn’t here to think about work.

I removed my Converse All Stars, my trousers and my shorts. It was a little cold to take off my shirt. While I waited, hoping the Viagra and the painkillers were kicking in, I almost fell asleep, so contented did I feel, here where no one could reach me. I couldn’t think of a better way to squander time and money.

She returned, telling me that for her M.A. she was “doing” decadence and apocalypse, always a turn-of-the-century preoccupation, along with calls for a “return to the family.” Unfortunately, this millennium, our fears had turned out to be realities. It had been worse than we imagined.

Not that I could take in everything she said, as she was trussing my balls with a stocking, the house speciality—“tighter! tighter!”—and securing a vibrator to my dick with another one. No one could ever say she wasn’t good at what she did. She knew that, at my age, I needed all the stimulation I could get. Then she secured me to the bed with handcuffs. In the corner of the room was a cross to which you could also be tied, but I preferred the bed. I was keen to try most perversions, provided you could sit down for them.

She sat on me, flinging her hair across my face. She showed me her breasts, of which she was proud. They were “au naturel,” as she put it, which was unusual here and had become, in contemporary sexual life, something of a boon. “Enjoy them,” she said. “They’re yours.” She stood on the bed above me, bending forward, showing me her legs and butt, one of my favourite outlooks, I had to admit, along with the sight of the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge.

Untying me, she ordered me to kiss and lick her cunt and arsehole. I didn’t require much encouragement. This was where I loved to be and felt at home, as it were, with my face in the posterior of a whore, “a window on the world.” I wondered how many others had been in the same position with her today. Perhaps the only advantage of being older was that it took me a while to become aroused, and once so, it took me a long time to come.

Not that it mattered to me. I fucked her until I was tired, kissing her neck and ear and cheek, and she kissed the corners of my mouth. We adjusted easily to one another’s rhythm; mercifully forgoing a show, she made the quiet and slightly surprised noises of normal lovemaking. When I did eventually come—it was hard work; I felt as if I’d shoved a heavy train through a long tunnel—she raked my back with her nails.

We lay together. The Goddess was kissing my neck, cheeks and lips with her own full lips. I stroked and kissed her, as she told me I was a gentleman. She lay on me; I liked to feel the weight of her body, wondering not about the anonymity or dehumanisation that Lisa had talked about, but the abstract tenderness, which was more disturbing. The bewildering thing about anonymous sex was, as a lot of adults knew, not the alienation but, on the contrary, the intimacy and strong feeling. I can remember Dad reading Harold Robbins’s
Never Love a Stranger.
Only love strangers, more like…At least I had seen, a few years ago, that I was a naturally promiscuous person. I had realised this late, but not too late. Then something Paul Goodman had written came into my mind: “There is no sex without love, or its refusal.”

I considered Josephine walking around the Kama Sutra club, like a figure from Dante’s
Purgatory.
Ravenous, insatiable, perhaps bewildered, but pursuing something: the human desire to embody and manifest itself.
Even then she doesn’t hurry. I still love her grace.
I thought of my sister and best friend playing with the bodies of anonymous others. I felt as mystified as ever about the multiplicity and importance of human desire, and of how destructive and fulfilling it could be, with, often, the destructiveness sponsoring the achievement.

Josephine’s presence at Kama Sutra had surprised me: usually anxious and persecuted by unwanted thoughts, she kept away from extreme situations. Safety and stability suited her. She was ultrahygienic, too, with a cat’s narcissism, forever examining her body and rubbing unguents into it, like someone polishing the shell of a car with no engine. I had come to dread the trauma of sex with her. Her orders—
faster, slower, harder, softer, more, less, in between, up, down
—could only ever preclude abandonment. The need for love and its ultimate refusal—endless torment. I was angry with her anyway, as the relationship had successfully frustrated me for more time than I wanted to misuse. I put it to her once, “Are you sure love is supposed to be this kind of work?” She had not realised, and perhaps never would, how funny sex could be. Ajita and I used to laugh and laugh.

Yet now something must have moved in Josephine. I was curious to know what it was, but it was probably too late for me to find out. I had always thought she would make some kind of progress, though not with me.

“You’re not asleep?” asked the Goddess.

“Not quite.”

I thought: with a whore you pay for the right not to speak, not to have to give the most valuable thing—your words—to the woman.

She said, “You’re an eager, good little fucker—for an Englishman.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, mostly to myself. “Wanna hear a joke?”

“Oh yes!”

Her bright face was near mine, listening. All I wanted was to make her laugh. It occurred to me that I wanted my wife to be a whore, and my whores to be my partners.

I said, “A prostitute and a psychoanalyst spend the afternoon together. At the end each turns to the other and says, ‘That’s three hundred pounds, please!’”

She almost laughed. With the Goddess, what was almost as moving as the sex was the way, at the end, she removed the condom and cleaned your prick with a Kleenex—the care she took. Most whores didn’t bother with that; once you’d come, they wanted you out of there. It was a lazy Sunday, though, a quiet day for hookers. Any whore would tell you—and I saw two as patients—that Monday was their busiest day. After a weekend with their family, how many men couldn’t wait to rejoin their favourite paid slut?

I kissed her goodbye and tipped Madame Jenny, who was—as madams are everywhere in the world tonight—watching television while filling in a crossword. “Here, darlin’,” she said, handing me my Christmas card.

I swaggered out like a cowboy, sniffing my pussy fingers, full of laughter and disgrace.

I was also scared, but without knowing why.

In the car, when he was driving me back home after lunch, Bushy said, “Doctor, I hope you don’t mind me saying this to yer now, but Bushy’s got a funny feeling.”

“Is it affecting your driving?”

“Na. It’s about you.”

“Me?”

“Sir, I have to tell you—you’re being well looked at. Perceived. You know.”

“Perceived, you say. Perceived by whom?”

“A man.”

“A man? What sort of perceiving man? What are you talking about, Bushy?”

“I got this feeling—a freshness, a tingle—in me nose, which don’t betray me.”

“Go on, tell me about it.” As he was about to open his mouth, I said, “Hold on, Bushy. Are you absolutely certain I really need to know this stuff?”

Bushy was examining his nose in the mirror, running his nicotine finger down the centre of it. “Nothing strange about me today is there, boss?” He turned round. “Look into my face. At my…nose.”

I peered into a coarse landscape of blackheads, whiteheads, redheads, broken capillaries and holes. “All in order.”

“Yeah, right.” He went on, “I was saying, this guy who’s perceiving you—I reckon he might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Very, very much so,” Bushy said, with some relish.

I had been enjoying the journey. Bushy knew the route I preferred, knew I liked to see what was happening in the Harvey Nichols window, keeping left at the Knightsbridge junction and swinging past Harrods until the V & A came into view on the right, and I could see what the latest exhibition was. The V & A was a place I’d go to relax sometimes. Being in a building—perhaps in any beautiful building which wasn’t a shop—where you could stroll about looking at art, enabled me to have good thoughts, even if I had Josephine with me: we liked to go there often.

After the V & A there wasn’t anything of much interest until we reached Gloucester Road. If I had the time, I’d get Bushy to drop me off outside the Gloucester Road bookshop, a secondhand place just up from the tube. I could spend half an hour in the basement there, and then go to Coffee Republic next door to read. My excitement and appetite for books—and the ideas they contained—hadn’t modified over the years. My shoulder bag was always weighed down with the numerous volumes I couldn’t wait to get inside me.

Like many taxi drivers, Bushy considered a journey an opportunity to express himself to a captive audience, but we’d been around enough together for him to know I wouldn’t listen or reply.

He said, “You’re off on one, I know. But I think you need to know this stuff. A man without this knowledge inside him could suffer consequences.”

“Is that right?”

It was a while before I could turn my brain round to concentrate on what he was saying, if anything. I was still thinking of what Karen had said over lunch.

Almost first thing in the morning, she had rung to invite me to the Ivy. There was some strange news she just had to give me. A reputation for listening to others can ruin your life. You can begin to feel like the village whore or, worse, a priest. But I hated to turn down an invitation to the Ivy.

Usually lunch there took too much time out of the day, as it was thirty-five minutes away by tube or car. However, on Mondays I had a patient who came to my door, gave me a cheque and shuffled away, head down, buying my time but not my presence. This gave me an extra hour. Bushy had turned out to be free; he drove me up to the Charing Cross Road and would pick me up later.

I was on time, and had a good nosy around the restaurant as I waited to be shown to the table. One of the assets of the Ivy was that the room was ideal: everyone could see everyone else without seeming intrusive. Today there was a good mixture of pop stars, actors, media executives, TV comedians and a couple of writers.

Karen had downed most of a bottle of wine by the time I arrived. I ordered a cappuccino and began to hear about Karen’s husband, Rob; their girls; and Rob’s girlfriend, Ruby, who had been to Disneyland while we were at Mustaq’s.

“I think I might have told you they were all at Disneyland, Jamal, but you won’t remember.”

“Won’t I?”

“You were pretty much out of it at George’s. I haven’t seen you that way for years.”

“Oh, Christ, I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. I don’t much like to be drunk now.”

“Despite that, Jamal, you do tend to remember the details of a lot of things. They just cling to the underside of your sticky head.” She went on: “Now, this girl Ruby is at the LSE doing political science. She plays in a women’s football team, and makes documentaries about asylum seekers in her spare time. She wants to be a film director. Maybe she will be. She’s completely uninhibited and hip when it comes to sex. I asked him one time, What can she do that I can’t? A stupid question, don’t you think? Well, she takes her girlfriends along to join my husband in bed, a story which flustered me for days.”

“You wanted to be the friend?”

“How can I compete with this Ruby?”

“What else?”

“My youngest girl mentioned that Ruby was putting on weight. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. The other daughter then said, ‘It’s not fat, it’s a bump.’” Karen’s eyes must have either narrowed or widened here, and rapidly. “‘A bump?’ I asked. ‘A bump? Did you really say that? We’re fucked. That’s it. He’s never coming back now. Give me a minute, I have to take two of my pills.’ Pour me a drink, darling Jamal.”

I emptied the bottle for her. She leaned across the table and said to me, “The bastard’s starting again. Maybe he didn’t like it the first time. Now he’s going to be happy. The girls and I, and the family life we had for years, mean nothing to him. I have to admit that we imagined for ages that one day he’d walk back in through the door he went out of.”

“The girls are growing up,” I said. “You’ll have to find new things to do.”

She looked around the restaurant helplessly. “There are no men available, you know that. I won’t go with some urine-stained git on Viagra. And the girls, they’re teenage trouble, seeing their first boyfriends, they’re on the phone even more than me. They don’t want to see me bringing some bastard his tea on a tray.”

Not having time to look at the menu, I had one glass of champagne and ordered my favourites, the potted shrimps to start, followed by the fish cakes with chips. I didn’t notice what Karen was eating, but it wasn’t much.

I mentioned Henrietta, an acquaintance of ours, who made no secret of her liking for men and sex. I said, “Think how much pleasure she has. Far more than either of us. Men are in and out of her place all night, and she’s got three daughters.”

Karen said, “Henrietta? She’s got a big house. There are still men walking around in there lost, unable to find the front door. Anyhow, the other day she was sleeping with some political fool. She woke up, went downstairs and looked at his phone. He had messages from eight other women. He was no Adonis, of course.”

“She makes sure she gets what she needs.”

“You know what she said to me the other day? She’d trade it all in for someone who just wants to be with her. Oh, Jamal, what’s wrong with an alpha female like me apart from the fact that I’m old, fat and alcoholic? Who’s going to care for me, listen to me, make love to me?”

“You’re humiliated, you poor thing.”

She was sobbing. “Was I ever like Ruby? I was never that brilliant. There were always more intelligent and beautiful women in London.”

Karen had eaten little, but we did share a dessert. I despatched a double espresso. “What about Karim?”

“I didn’t hear from him, obviously. I called him a few times. He said he was busy preparing for his appearance on
I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here.
”

“Have you thought of getting a therapist?”

“Don’t fucking say that to me!” she said wildly, as though we were still a couple. “Can’t we go to a hotel this afternoon? I’ll do anything you want.”

I got up and kissed her. “I have to work.”

She said, “It’s okay for you, you’ve got your girl back. Ajita,” she said slowly and with some scorn. “Are you dating her again? George told me she’s installed herself at his place. She came for a few days but now just refuses to go home. He doesn’t know what to do with her. She’s making him crazy.”

“Really?”

“Is that because of your influence?” She was holding my hand tightly. “Jamal, don’t you ever think about our son?”

“Sorry?”

“The one you wanted me to get rid of.”

She wouldn’t let me extricate myself. “Karen, please,” I said.

“What age would he be today, so big and strong and handsome?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”

“He could be having lunch with us! The parents of a murdered child are still its parents. I am absolutely certain you would have wanted more children!”

I was late already. When I managed to get away from her, she was looking around the restaurant for another table to join. Bushy was outside with the other drivers, and we took off, the car fragrant with air freshener.

After all this, and the champagne, I wanted to nap, but hearing of Bushy’s suspicions, I said, “Okay, let me have it. What’s going on with this perceiving man?”

“Yesterday, right, I’m parked up the street waiting to pick Miriam up from lunch with you when I noticed this bloke nosin’ yer from a car. An oldish man, kinda strange looking, well built. Your manor’s full of weirdos, but when I came back he was still there. Then he followed us—I know because I took an odd route especially. He’s been having a good look at you. You wouldn’t mess with him—”

“Maybe it’s one of my patients,” I said. “Or a patient’s spouse. When people start therapy, they sometimes separate from their partners, and the therapist is blamed. I’ve had people throw bricks through my window.”

I didn’t mention the fact that for a while Josephine would stand outside the flat when I was seeing patients, convinced I was having affairs with them. I could hear her yelling: “You’re not allowed to touch them, you know! You’ll be reported and struck—if not struck off!” I did also have a psychotic therapist colleague—not a patient but someone I’d attended conferences with—who began, after the publication of my first book, to stand outside my door handing out a written statement to my patients, saying what a phoney I was.

“Maybe,” Bushy said. “A man without a stalker is a nobody. But this one could be like that song—you know the one.”

“Which one? What are you saying?”

“‘Psycho Killer.’”

He started to sing it.

I said, “Right, right. Because?”

“Because he’s not spontaneous. We should check him out—now.”

“How can I check him out?”

Bushy told me what he required me to do and then said, “It would be to yer advantage.”

“Bushy, I have to see a patient now.”

“Shrinky, I’m insisting you better do what Bushy says.”

I did what he said. He dropped me at the corner of my street, and I walked to my flat with him driving behind. My patient was waiting outside the building.

After she’d gone, I phoned Bushy. “So?”

“When you came along the street as per advised, our character hid—sliding down in the car. I think it’s a rented motor. I’ll check him out and let you know what’s what.”

“You’re going to a lot of trouble, Bushy.”

“I’m worried. Miriam ordered me to keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t want her to know about this. She’ll get in a flap and start casting spells.”

I woke at four in the morning, wondering who was out there watching me. I wondered whether Mustaq had employed someone to keep an eye on me. He was the only person who had the money, as well as the motive, to do that. But what would he hope to see? Occasionally I’d go to the window and look out, but I saw no one.

My first patient was at seven the next morning: an Old Etonian in his fifties whose relationships with women had been wretched.
Haunted by the idea that he will find the one who will complete him, therefore rejecting all others as wrong. The founding myth of heterosexuality: completion, the ultimate fulfillment.

My second patient was at eight: a woman who had been phobic about drinking water since childhood, after hearing a story about a dead bird in a water tank. Reaching the stage when she was unable to drink anything she thought had contaminated water in it, her life was being gradually annulled, until it was almost impossible for her to be with others socially.

At nine I had some toast and made another pot of coffee. I rang Bushy. “How’s my stalker?”

“Boss, as I speculated, it is a rented car. I followed him all the way into Kent. I thought we were going to end up in damned Dover. He kipped in a deserted street near a park.”

“Which part of Kent?”

He named the street, and I knew it, though not well. That part of Kent was close to the city and not far from the coast, and had plenty of the sort of houses favoured by criminals and pop stars. The street he mentioned was in the area where I’d grown up. That puzzled me. Why would he go there? Then it occurred to me that the street was closer to Ajita’s than to my old house. If it was one of Mustaq’s men, why would he sleep in a car there?

I asked, “What should we do?”

“I can’t bring him in and ask him questions meself,” Busy said. “I’d have to get geezers. That would cost yer.”

“I don’t want men,” I said. “I can’t afford it and I can’t get involved in anything lunatic.”

He could only laugh at my naivety. “You might already be up to the throat in the lunatic, Jamal. I reckon he’ll make his moves in the next twenty-four hours. He can’t hang around much longer. He’s perceived what he wants to perceive.”

There was a silence, then I said, “It sounds as though I’ll have to start taking this seriously. What we need is a photo.”

“I can do that.”

Bushy borrowed my Polaroid camera and later dropped by with the picture he’d taken. It was difficult to make out who it was, as Bushy was no Richard Avedon. Someone was asleep in a car. I could see a shoulder and an ear, but had no notion who they might belong to.

“I can’t wait anymore,” I said to Bushy on the phone. “I’m going to approach this guy. If I know him and he’s not scary, I’ll take him into the flat and try to talk to him. If I raise the blind, you come in.”