Something to Tell You (32 page)

“Indeed.”

He tapped the side of his nose. “You an’ me, eh—pals!”

Luckily, before this humiliation, I’d have a break. Ajita and I had finally decided to go away.

The holiday was Mustaq’s birthday present to her. For a long time Ajita had wanted to go to Venice, and she asked me to accompany her. She was nervous about my response, imagining I would refuse her, that I was still angry about the way she’d deserted me after her father died. Or worse, that I was disappointed with her now she had reappeared. It was more likely, of course, that I had disappointed her.

I could only make three nights away, but I told her I would be delighted. She and I had been talking on the phone regularly—about her brother, my work and what there was for her to see in London—but we’d met only once in the city since finding one another again. I was nervous. During the weekend we spent at Mustaq’s, I’d felt as though she were already interviewing me for a position as her lover, a situation I was incapable of fulfilling with her, or anyone, while Josephine was still on my mind. Perhaps Mustaq was keen to help Ajita find someone, for both their sakes. He often looked irritated with her.

Mustaq’s secretary booked two rooms in the Danieli. Ajita came to the flat to pick me up on the way to the airport. There were two taxis, one for us and the other for her luggage. She made coffee while I finished packing. “You know, I’ve never seen anywhere you’ve lived as an adult,” she said. “Does it smell of toast all the time? It needs work, this flat, it’s coming apart. If you don’t do it, it’ll lose value. I’ll find a builder for you.”

She asked permission before opening drawers, looking in cupboards, picking up things and asking where I’d got them. She wanted to see Josephine’s drawings, as well as photographs of her and of Rafi, which she looked at for a long time.

“A happy family, all of you quite pleased to be together,” she said. “We seem to know each other, you and I, and yet we’re strangers. Who are you really, Mr. K?”

Now the shock of our meeting again had worn off, we were easier with each other. She was less of the care-laden older woman and more as she had been at university, laughing and enthusiastic, expecting the best of the world, despite everything. I, perhaps, was less suspicious.

Having tea in the Danieli is lovely; the view is one of the most calming I have seen. Arm in arm, Ajita and I went on boat trips, consulted guidebooks, visited the Lido and looked at Tiepolos and Tintorettos in deserted churches. It was cold; she wore a fur coat, fur hat and boots, but the sun was bright in the morning. It was the most peace I’d experienced in a long time.

Ajita insisted on buying me new clothes, dressing me up and parading me around expensive shops, informing me my wardrobe needed “help.” We found watches with pictures, on the face, of Nixon meeting Elvis in 1970: Presley in his big collar and huge belt phase, with much bling. Ajita bought me one, as I had, as she put it, “lost the last one.” It was true I hadn’t obtained a new watch; I had the time on my phone, and in my consulting room there was a clock on the shelf above the couch. She got one for Mustaq too, more amused than I by our identical watches.

In the afternoon, when she napped, I wrote in her room and read Tanizaki for the first time, amazed by his view of the tenacity of desire, particularly in the old, whom it can still grasp by the throat, refusing to let them go.

Uncharacteristically, Ajita had brought some grass with her. Not wanting to get kicked out of the hotel, we smoked out of the windows of café toilets, like schoolkids.

“This is fun, Ajita.”

“Isn’t it? As soon as I stopped leading a conventional life, I cheered up. At home, after a smoke, I dance like a madwoman.”

“You mean home in Soho?”

“Yes. My temporary new home in London. The place I’ve absconded to, like the teenage runaway I nearly became.”

We giggled about how well we got on, saying that if we’d stayed together, we’d have married, divorced and become friends like this. I told her about Josephine, and how much there still was between us, saying that the furious disputes I had with her were the ones I preferred.

When I asked Ajita about Mark, her husband, she said he was a good man and a decent liberal American. I guessed his days were numbered.

She said, “Mark and I married when Mustaq was worried about me, when his music career was starting. At the same time, Mark worked hard to build up the business. He manufactured clothes in the Far East, where he spent a lot of time. I brought up the kids in a good apartment in Central Manhattan. One day they were gone. My husband was in L.A., in our other place. I knew I had to return to London, which I’d avoided for years. There was too much there—it was an unhealed wound. But I had to restart my life.”

On the last morning, we were to have brunch in Harry’s Bar. Coming down to the lobby, Ajita cried out: it was under a foot of greasy water. It was not a tsunami; the sea was slowly rising. This happened three times a month.

We were given galoshes and clambered out of the hotel. St. Mark’s was a trembling lake. Submerged tables and chairs stood in the street like objects in an installation, with drowned pigeons bobbing around them. Tourists squeezed past one another on trestles; shopkeepers attempted to pump out their premises. I looked out past the bursting waves towards the Lido, wondering how hobbling Byron swam so far. Even as a kid I wouldn’t have been able to do half that distance.

We waded to Harry’s, and after we’d downed too many Bellinis, I was about to reach across the table to take her hand. I wanted to tell Ajita how easy we seemed with each other. Perhaps something might develop between us. We had one night left; couldn’t we try more kisses and conversation, and see where they took us?

“Ajita—”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” she said, “but I need to! I’ve been meaning to tell you—I’ve met someone.” She was laughing. “I just knew it would happen in London, my lucky city. It’s extremely early days.”

“I see.”

“He’s tender and makes me feel beautiful. That’s all I’m saying—certainly not his name. I can hardly say it to myself, let alone to you or my husband. It was you, though, Jamal, who gave me the confidence.”

Disappointment winded me. She had returned and I had let her go. At least age had taught me that the pain would not last, that I would even feel relieved.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “What a great thing to happen.”

“Do you really think so?” She was watching me. “We’ll see. I can’t tell you any more about it,” she said. “It might be bad luck, and I’ll make a fool of myself. Don’t think it’s only pleasure.”

“Why not?”

“For the first time, I’ve been talking about Dad. He’s interested, this man, in what happened to Papa.”

“That’s good.”

“You know, Jamal, I noticed an odd thing.”

“Where?”

“Mustaq’s people—who have been investigating the matter—found a press picture of Dad driving into his workplace the day he was murdered. We’ve studied it on a computer. We are almost certain he is wearing the watch you gave to Mustaq. Isn’t that strange? What happened?”

“I wish I could remember,” I said. “I was really knocked over by the abuse story. I do recall your dad coming to my house once, on his way home, asking if I wanted a lift to yours—to see Mustaq.”

“He touched you then?”

“I thought he liked me. A lot of people seemed to fancy me. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“I know it was a long time ago, but Mustaq and I aren’t going to give up on trying to find out the truth about Dad.” She was looking at me. “You okay?”

“It’s still difficult for me to think about that time.”

She grasped my hand, which I’d omitted to withdraw properly, and kissed it. “It was me! I made you so unhappy, Jamal! I was unfaithful! I haven’t faced that properly.”

“How could you know what you were doing?”

“Can’t you forgive me?”

“Yes.” I called the waiter. “Let’s just drink to you—to your return, and to your happiness.”

“Thank you, darling.”

I said, I hope without sarcasm, “Your new man doesn’t object to you going away with me?”

“He knows what a valuable friend you are now.”

“I can’t wait to meet him. Can we get together with him when we’re back home?”

“I’m not sure about that. We’ll see. Don’t make me go too fast.”

We drank a lot that day, and my hope increased that though I, the eternal vacillator, didn’t feel capable of claiming her, she might claim me, by inviting me to her room. Then her boyfriend called. Her face seemed to open, and she laughed, hurrying outside the hotel to speak to him.

I left her to it, once more forfeiting love for a novel. Unable to concentrate, I called Rafi on his mobile. He was watching
The Simpsons
and was too busy to gossip. “Phone back in a year,” he suggested.

I put my coat on and walked those lugubrious, echoing Venetian alleys, passages, bridges and archways for more than three hours.

“So?” said my sister, almost as soon as I walked in the following night, on my way to visit Wolf at the Cross Keys. Kids and corpulent neighbours drifted in and out of the kitchen as usual, cats jumped out of windows, and there was always a stinking, dribble-jawed dog farting on any chair you wanted to sit on.

“What so?”

“Don’t fuck with me!” she said, suddenly attempting to throw me on the ground. The two of us struggled; I fought her off—no, I didn’t, I couldn’t—and the dogs barked.

“Bitch, maybe one day I’ll be stronger than you,” I said, getting up. I wasn’t too pleased about being attacked and thrown down by her. No one would want unnecessary contact with Miriam’s floor.

We stood apart, out of breath, hair and laughter over her face. I was convinced she’d dislocated my shoulder again. For a while my differences with Miriam usually ended with my arm in a sling. Kids stepped around us disapprovingly, talking about eBay.

Miriam said, “You and Ajita. Is it on?” In Venice I’d bought Miriam a black-and-white carnival mask to wear on “the scene.” She kissed me and said, “Henry and I have been frantic for it to work out between you two. He told me you were keen on her again.”

“Who’s asking you two meddlers? You know these things take a lot of time with me.”

“Time? When you met her, the Beatles were still together.”

“They weren’t, actually.”

I took off my sweater and tee-shirt. She fetched a clean blanket, spreading it out on the sofa. I lay down, and she stroked, tickled and scratched my back, something she knew I loved. I turned round and she did the same on my stomach, her nails raking my bulging stomach, not as grand as Henry’s “waterbed” but heading that way.

I was drifting off when she said, “You staying for supper? I’m making some dhal, and Henry’s coming by later. I’ve hardly seen him. There’s a crisis: Valerie’s been insisting that he go over there all the time.”

“He goes?”

“I guess you don’t know this, but Lisa went into the house when there was no one home and stole a hand from her mother’s bedroom wall.”

“A what?”

“I dunno. A
hand
.”

“What was a hand doing on the wall?”

“It’s a picture, for fuck’s sake. A famous drawing by some old guy. She’s hidden it and won’t give it back. Bushy’s been trying to help Henry find it. But she’s a cunnin’ one.”

“What,” I sighed, “is she intending to do with this hand?”

“Apart from trying to make her family crazy, you mean? Who knows? It’s like a hostage.”

I was mystified by the story of the stolen hand but didn’t want to hear any more about Lisa.

I said, “Bushy wants me to come to the Sootie.”

“I noticed you two have become pretty close, talking together outside on the street rather than in my kitchen. Still, I’ve never seen him so excited. Is it true you’re giving him the inspiration to play live again?”

“I may be the fuel, but he has to be the rocket. I said I would have to ask you, but wouldn’t it spoil your evening to have your brother hanging around that fuckery the Sootie as, you know, a spare prick?”

I got up and put my tee-shirt on.

She was laughing. “Oh no, don’t worry about me and Henry. We know how to take care of ourselves. Looks like you’re going to have to come, bro.” She pinched my cheek and poked me in the stomach. “I can’t wait to see what you’ll wear. You want me to help you choose something unsuitable?”

“No fear.”

“Have you done anything like this before?”

“Not even in the privacy of my own bedroom. There’s no reason why you would have noticed, but analysts and therapists always dress oddly, the men looking uncomfortable in the sort of jackets that provincial academics wear while the women resemble wealthy hippies, in bolts of velvet with flowing scarves.”

“I can’t wait to see you at the Sootie,” she said. “I’m so going to laugh my big tits off. You’ve always been timid, a mincing little thing.”

“Thank you.”

“Actually, you’ve got better,” she said. “You were shy and quiet before, terrified of people, mooching in your room for days, not talking, miserable. In Karachi your nickname was Sad Sack. But you did change—when you went to live in that house in London.”

“I found my first analyst then, after we came back from Pakistan. You’d be reluctant to recall it, but I was in a mess.”

“We both were, thanks. You and Dad trotted off together like long-lost lovers, expecting me to spend every minute with the boring, well-behaved women, like I was in purdah.”

“A position you rightly refused.”

“I was channelling Dad this afternoon and remembered that the last words he said to me were, ‘No one will ever marry a whore like you.’ Wasn’t he right?”

“He didn’t say no one would ever love you,” I said. “My analyst was a Pakistani, you know, with a cute accent, like Dad’s. I was lucky to meet him when I did. Otherwise I’d have ruined my life before it started.”

She said, “I could have done with someone to save my life. Why didn’t you send me there?”

“It was my thing.”

“He converted you?”

“Something like that. To a life of enquiry, perhaps.”

She said, “Josephine used to wonder whether you were gay.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“She did come to me one time, at a family Christmas, got me in a corner and asked me if you were that way. My instinct was to give the cow a backhander—for being so unobservant. Then I nearly told her, ‘He’s my brother, and a woman with your problems is enough to make Casanova gay.’ But I zipped it—for you.”

“Thank you, my dear.” I went on: “She had this bizarre theory that because I liked her arse I was gay.”

“Even a sexual dyslexic like her can see you’re not a boy-bummer.”

I said, “No, I’m a married man with a married mind. There was a film premiere we went to, a few months ago, even though Josephine and I weren’t together. Miriam, she looked great in her heels and black dress and red wrap, with bare legs. All evening I wanted to fuck her. For a while I wasn’t bored.”

“She’s a striking woman, being so tall.”

“Yes, I used to think one didn’t so much go down on her as go up on her.”

“You can be sulky and moody, but you’re also nervous and very evasive, Jamal.”

“Am I still?”

“Look at your bitten nails and the way your eyelashes flap.”

“They do?”

“But you got on by not throwing everything away like me. You knew there was a future.” She was tickling me. “Now, you therapists are always talking about sex. Maybe you should see some for once. It’ll be good for you to hang out at the Sootie.”

I said, “I never knew whether you were glad Josephine and I separated.”

“I quite liked her, mainly because she liked you. Loved you, I mean. She never stopped loving you, Jamal, though you must have tested her hard.”

“Don’t remind me of that, Miriam.”

We embraced; I told her I had to go. Wearily I walked to the Cross Keys to have a look at my parallel man, Wolf. While I was in Venice, Bushy had phoned to say he’d popped into the pub several times to see how Wolf was doing. Now I was wondering whether they might have been getting on too well.

Bushy was smoking at the bar. Wolf was in the cellar, changing the barrels. After my trip to Venice, the place looked less salubrious than I remembered it. Maybe it was time to find a new local.

Bushy indicated the Harridan. “That’s a smile on her gob. She’s happy with ’im,” he said.

“How come?”

Wolf was physically strong and hardworking. When men tumbled onto the stage, or tried to dance with the girls, Wolf would pull them off and have them outside in seconds. The girls liked him, he involved himself in their problems, but he wasn’t “up an’ all over ’em. He don’t touch ’em. I think he’s got someone.”

“One of the girls here?”

“No, he after something bigger. I’ll find out soon as I can.”

Wolf came up out of the cellar and saw me. He wore a tight white tee-shirt and looked fit and toned, as though he’d been exercising. Unfortunately his jeans were too big, his belt just about holding them up.

He was subdued, and didn’t shake my hand. Not that he appeared to be unhappy. He had requested one big thing and received a smaller thing—a job. It was, as Bushy put it, “a hopeful opening,” into which Wolf had moved.

Wolf said, “Let’s speak. Not here.” He added, “What’s with these jeans? Why are they so big?”

“They’re knockoffs,” I said. “Blame my sister.”

He took me up to the room in which he slept, a small dressing room for the girls containing a mirror and dressing table covered with discarded thongs and spangled bras. There was a single mattress under a rattling window covered with a soiled piece of net curtain. Through a tear in the curtain I could see, on the corner, tall Somalians, their busted Primeras lined up on the street outside the cab office.

He said, “These African boys are busy up West all night. They take me with them. You’ve dumped me far out here.”

“What have you got going in town?”

He shrugged. “Ventures.”

As we talked, one of the girls—an Eastern European—came in to fix her hair. Before leaving she changed her thong: naked, she bent forward and dragged the cheeks of her backside open. “Check me being clean, Wolfie, if that’s good,” she said.

Having inspected her, he kissed her on the arse. “Juicy as ever, Lucy.”

She looked at me. “Punter here?”

“I’m a pal of Wolf’s.”

“Sir, you like show?”

“I did the first time I saw it.”

“Next time I make it extra-spicy for you special.”

After she’d gone, Wolf said, “She likes you, didn’t you notice? You still look decent for your age. But you wouldn’t go for a girl like that, would you?” I shrugged. He said, “You know that when I go to any city I want to be with the lowest, the whores, hustlers, criminals. To me these are the finest people. You and I are similar like that.”

“In what way?”

“You must have something like that in you, spending every day with the mentally diseased.”

“The sane are much worse. As you know, calling someone sane isn’t much of a compliment.” I said, “Wolf, I want to know about Val,” and sat down with the joint Miriam had given me as I left.

Wolf told me that he and Valentin had been looking for an excuse to leave London for a while. They’d even considered taking me with them, but decided I should finish at university. I wondered whether I might have been tempted to accompany them. Probably I would have.

In the South of France, Valentin worked in casinos. He was well paid and respected enough to be trusted to train the new recruits. He considered this work to be worthless, but he kept himself together, cycling for miles across the mountains on icy roads.

Wolf said, “Back in his sparse room, he read those huge philosophical books, like a madman always with the Bible, trying to find the truth.” At night, when he left work, women, rich and poor, old and young, would be waiting for him. They wanted to sleep with him. Once they’d done that, they wanted to help him. “They wanted to send him to doctors, to find him a drug to make him well. But he refused. He wanted to be one of the lost ones. He never found a place. We should remember him a moment.”

Wolf bowed his head. I did so too, recalling Valentin earnestly advising me to take up his diet, which was Heinz tomato soup, two slices of bread with margarine spread on them, and an apple—twice a day. He’d sometimes walk five miles across London, wearing only tennis shoes, rather than taking the tube—an even more mephitic hole then—though most people used it for free, easily sneaking past the somnolent staff. Valentin’s ambition had always been to reduce his desire to almost zero; there would be no excess of pleasure. But where did a lifetime of self-punishment get him?

I opened my eyes. Wolf had been looking at me. I got to my feet, not entirely sure where I was.

“But you must still sit down.”

His fists were clenched. But I was heading for the door, wherever that might be. God knows what Miriam had dropped into that joint. She liked a mixture of hash and grass and menthol tobacco, an unpredictable blend. Not only was I feeling paranoid, I seemed to be viewing Wolf down the wrong end of a telescope, an excellent way to shrink him.

He got up too, grasped me by the shoulders and pushed me down again. He drew his hand back, as if to strike me. He was easily more powerful than me, but not as angry. For a moment I thought I’d let him beat me up, as if that would be a solution.

“I haven’t finished with you,” he said, sitting in a chair opposite me. “There’s an odour that chases me in my dreams, dragging me into that dirty night. What do garages smell of? Oil, petrol, wood, rubber. I can see how angry you were with that father. You were trembling.”

“I was afraid.”

“You didn’t appear to be. We were there to give him a warning, and suddenly you had a knife. What are you going to do with that? I keep thinking. Only the business, surely? No one said anything about knives, not me, not Val. Where did you get that idea from? Why didn’t you ask us first?”

“I was a young fool. Friend, you should have taken care of me a bit. I was like your little brother, and you let me go ahead with a wild and stupid scheme.”

“Are you going to cry? Will you kiss my feet and beg forgiveness? What you did made me see—right in front of my eyes—a dying man. If we’d been caught, I’d have done a lot of time.” He went on, “Now you say you regret it. If you could take back that night, you would. But there’s one thing you have never said. One thing I want to hear you say.”

“What is that?”

He said, “That you got it wrong and deserved to be punished. You thought it was noble to save the girl. You should have gone to the police. You should have talked with her more. I don’t know what you should have done. You’re the person who is supposed to know what to do in such situations.”

He was still staring steadily at me. I said, “I didn’t know how to listen. I misunderstood Ajita. I acted too soon and stole her initiative. But what can we do?”

“This,” he said. “We could both apologise to the family. To the girl. So she knows what went on, so she can have—what’s that stupid word they use?—closure, yes. You think about that.”