Something to Tell You (6 page)

When I was with my grandfather, I more or less passed for white. Sometimes people asked if I were “Mediterranean”; otherwise, there were few Asian people where we lived. Most whites considered Asians to be “inferior,” less intelligent, less everything good. Not that we were called Asian then. Officially, as it were, we were called “immigrants,” I think. Later, for political reasons, we were “blacks.” But we always considered ourselves to be Indians. In Britain we are still called Asians, though we’re no more Asian than the English are European. It was a long time before we became known as Muslims, a new imprimatur, and then for political reasons.

Being so far the only dark-skinned student in the philosophy class, I thought Ajita and I would be a fine fit. She was thin and small, with a compact, boyish body not unlike mine. Her hair was long and dark, and she wore expensive clothes with jewellery, handbags and high heels. She might have been Indian, but she dressed like an Italian girl, sprinkled with gold. She loved Fiorucci, whose shop was near Harrods. Every Saturday she went shopping with her female cousins.

Ajita was no wild girl, feminist, hippy or mod. I could imagine her running a business. But it didn’t take me long to grasp from her sighs, helpless looks and moody pouts that she would have trouble with metaphysics. I thought I could help her with that, along with epistemology, ontology, hermeneutics, methodology, logic and, maybe, some other things, but not as much as I thought she could help me.

I was starting to become fond of money, too, having learned from the media what good use pop stars put it to. Ajita’s family appeared wealthy to me, while we’d always struggled. If Mum bought us a present, we knew what an effort it represented, and we tried to use it for longer than its interest merited. Apparently my father, in Pakistan, had a driver, a cook, a guard. But he gave us nothing; it didn’t occur to him.

Now Ajita went off to fetch some records, and on this, my first day with her, I strolled about the spaces, trying them out, like I was about to buy the place and have it redecorated. Her father and brother were not there, but I could smell onions frying in oil and spices, and then I glimpsed a nose and a brown eye, which must have belonged to her beaky aunt, who was side-on to an almost closed door.

Ajita said with sudden nervousness, as she put the music on, “If anyone asks, say you’re a friend of my brother. You’ve come to see him.”

“What is your brother’s name?” Ajita muttered something. “What?” I said, not catching it. “What did you say?”

“He’s called Mustaq. Some of us call him Mushy—or Mushy Peas. I think you’re going to like each other a lot. You want to like him too, don’t you? He is so much needing to be liked right now.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You don’t have to whisper. She is not speaking English.”

“But my family is similar,” I said eagerly. “Many of my aunts and cousins come to London in the summer. The rest have never left Pakistan.”

“Haven’t you been there?”

“Dad has been inviting us, and Mum thinks Miriam and I should go. But Miriam can hardly get to the end of the street without tearing it up. You’ll see, when you meet her. Ajita, can’t you and I go to Pakistan together?”

“Not unless we’re married.”

“Already?”

“They’re very old-fashioned there. Anyway, my mother is busy finding me a husband in India. My brother takes the piss. ‘How is your lovely new hubby doing?’ he asks. Come, Jamal, you want to step out with me, my new friend?”

We danced to her favourite disco records, watching one another’s feet, holding hands and touching each other’s hair. Later, after we’d kissed and I didn’t know what to do next—it seemed too soon to go further, like eating all the chocolates at once—I said, “Do you want to see
Last Tango in Paris
or go for a drive to Keston Ponds for a walk? Or we could go to my house. It’s ten minutes away.”

“Your house.”

As we went, I hung out of the window, hoping people I knew would see me in the car with a girl. But they were at work, or at college or school. At least Ajita wanted to see my house; she wanted to know me. I needed Miriam, too, to know I had a real girlfriend, to see me as a grown-up, not a baby brother.

Yet I was nervous of them meeting. Not that I knew whether my sister was at home. Her bedroom door was always closed, and I was forbidden, on pain of having my berries come into unwilling contact with a cheese grater, to press against it in any way. Often, the only way to find out whether Miriam was in was to get down on your knees and try to smell roll-ups, dope or joss sticks drifting out from under her door. If I was feeling brave, after she’d left the house, I’d nip in, take a couple of records from their covers—
Blood on the Tracks
and
Blue
and
Split
were my favourites, but I liked Miles too—and listen to them in my room, over and over, until I believed I had them inside me.

You might also find in Miriam’s room a college lecturer, a couple of neighbourhood boys, a pickup or her latest girlfriend. If Miriam was indeed there, she’d be in bed until Mother returned from work at five. Mother worked, at that time, in a bakery, wearing a kooky little white hat. We always had plenty to eat at home, even if it was a little stale.

That day Ajita and I didn’t get as far as my house but stopped in a quiet street nearby, where we kissed in her car, something we liked a lot and were unable to stop doing, as though we were glued together.

It wasn’t until the following morning that we drove to some woods not far away, near my old school, and made love for the first time, though her jeans and boots were so tight we thought for a while we’d never get them off without seeking help. Then we did it in the car in a secluded street near her house.

Something important had started. She was all mine, almost. She was not my first girlfriend, but she was my first love.

My girl and I began to see one another all the time; mostly in London, at college or in Soho. Or we would meet at a bus stop near my house and drive into the city together.

I don’t think I’ve ever stopped seeing London like a small boy. The London I liked was the city of exiles, refugees and immigrants, those for whom the metropolis was extraterrestrial and the English codes unbreakable, people who didn’t have a place and didn’t know who they were. The city from the point of view of my father.

My best friend, Valentin, was Bulgarian and his other best mate, Wolf, was German. Neither of them resembled the average student; they weren’t overgrown public school boys. Wolf was ten years older than me, and Valentin at least five. My father had numerous older brothers, who I idealised. I figured Dad always had someone to look after him, and that’s what I wanted for myself.

Wolf, who was neither employed nor a student, was renting a room in the same house as Valentin. That’s how they had met, and how I got to know him. Wolf wore a Bogart raincoat, black brogues and black leather gloves. The only time he seemed to take off his gloves was when he played tennis on the council courts on Brook Green, not far from where I live now, and where I take Rafi for his tennis lessons with a lithe South African.

Valentin and I would sit on benches outside the pub opposite and laugh as Wolf trounced someone. Wolf didn’t find himself, or the rest of the world, absurd and risible, as Valentin and I did. It would have been too much had we all been like that.

We were amused by the fact that Wolf carried a smart, smooth leather briefcase, which he opened, with a key, against his chest so no one could see in. What did he keep in there? Guns, money, drugs, knives, paperclips? Having half-opened it, he then glanced about suspiciously, to ensure no one was watching, which they were, of course, now that he had engaged their curiosity.

Wolf and Valentin both had rooms in a dank boardinghouse on Gwendwr Road, off North End Road in West London, owned by an old widow. Valentin, who read Kierkegaard and Simone Weil for what he described as “pleasure,” liked to say, winking towards the widow, “Raskolnikov would have felt at home here.”

“Everyone feels at home here,” she’d reply as we laughed.

We’d sit around the kitchen table to debate philosophy, talk about sport, drink beer and smoke weed. There was curling lino and the smell of gas and cat piss. There was an iron stove and oilcloths on the spavined tables. The armchairs were greasy, the sofas seemingly bottomless. The toilets didn’t always flush, the windows didn’t close and it was usually cold; as the oil heaters smelled but didn’t heat, we got used to wearing our coats indoors.

A favourite conversation with Valentin concerned moral absolutes and ideas he’d found in Balzac, Nietzsche, Turgenev and Dostoevsky about nihilism and murder, and how or when it might be legitimate to rid the world of the weak, stupid or evil in order that others might flourish. Who had the right to kill? It was, after all, only the most perversely pacifistic who could not accept killing in any circumstances. To supplement this speculation, Valentin and Wolf watched crime or Sylvester Stallone movies on TV; they’d never miss anything with Steve McQueen in it. “Career guidance,” I called them. Ajita would lie around with us, before running away squealing, “Too many electric chairs!”

“That’s where he’s going to be sitting,” I’d murmur to Valentin, nodding at Wolf, Valentin looking sharp in his dark suit, bow tie and shiny shoes, ready to go to the casino where he worked at night. That must have been where I got my black-suit style from, now I think about it. Val was Eastern European, educated to be a Commie; he had good manners and was worldly, way beyond Western hippy frippery.

Wolf was an adventurer, and his stories—of spanking air hostesses and waitresses, and of fucking Playboy bunnies—never failed to pick me up. I admired his boys’-own style: smuggling diamonds out of South Africa up his arse; seeing Idi Amin and Kim Philby—together—in Tripoli, before being arrested, suspected of being American. Running drugs into Mexico, and being poisoned by a dirty needle when visiting a doctor; discussing the quality of brothels in Ipanema, Brazil. He was a man often suspected of not being a criminal but, worse, a cop!

Like a lot of gangsters, he had a smear—more than that, a large patch—of psychosis. He wasn’t neurotic like me, or most people I knew, but supernormal, rational, intense, convincing, great at lying. He’d be up early in the morning making breakfast for everyone. Or we’d find him doing press-ups and lifting weights. Extra-organised: he loved making plans and getting everyone involved.

In contrast, Valentin liked to be amused. He was attractive; you’d say he was elegant or chic, particularly if he was wearing a dark polo shirt and black jacket. But he was Kierkegaard dark; being so wounded, he lacked Wolf’s endearing self-belief, boastfulness and earnestness.

How I loved being with the unassailable men. Me, the eager little kid, they would patronise as I tried to please them with jokes, tough talk and a swaggering walk. Often Wolf and Valentin spoke in French or German, but so what? I was used to being surrounded by people whose language I didn’t understand.

When Father was in London—he visited at least twice a year and stayed some weeks—it was only occasionally that he would see Miriam and me alone. His many male friends, his “chumchas,” speaking Urdu and Punjabi, in suits or salwar kameez, drinking and telling political jokes, were always with him, in the service flats near Marble Arch or Bayswater which Dad rented.

Sometimes he would take just us out to lunch, and talk politics. He was left-wing, probably a Communist, an anti-imperialist—naturally—and also a supporter of Mao, the Vietcong and students. In India, as a child, Father explained, being the son of a rich landowner, he had felt as alienated from the Indian masses in the villages as he did in any English village. But, having been bullied by
his
father, an army colonel, he’d always felt some identification with those who were called, in those days, the “downtrodden.”

On the evenings of these visits, when Miriam and I would be thinking of returning to the suburbs on the train (or at least I would; she’d often go to parties in London, staying in the city for a couple of days), Dad’s girlfriends, amazing beauties with brains, would turn up.

I was happy to see Father, whether he was alone or not, but Miriam, either on speed or trancs or both, could feel very disappointed. She had imagined the two of them sitting together for hours, exchanging their secrets and their despair. Her father would want to know her; how could he not be fascinated? His kind words would stop her “acting out.” Not only had he not protected her from racism, it was he who had flung her into it, according to her.

So she waited for Dad to speak, to tell her how proud he was of her. But he was incapable of this kind of relationship with a girl. After leaving him, we’d drift down the King’s Road together, and I would ask her questions I already knew the answers to. “What did Dad say?” “Nothing.” “Really?” “Absolutely nothing.” “Did you tell him you were pregnant?” “Nope.” “Did he ask what you were doing?” “Yes.” “What did you say?” “Nothing much.”

My parents met when Dad was at the LSE, studying international relations. A friend of Mum’s, Billie, had taken her to a dance there, thinking Mum would “get along” better with an intellectual than she did with the local boys. They all went for a meal at the India Club in the Strand. Mum said she’d never met anyone who could talk like Dad, who could so enthrall you with his stories.

She didn’t talk often about him, but if you poked her hard enough at the right time, she might suddenly burst out with something like “Oh, Jamal, you’re so much like him.” “In what way?” “Oh, you know. Dismissive. A man capable of jaw-dropping rudeness and imperious demands. A man used to having servants, or turning women into them. A man who could make you feel stupid and dull.” On other occasions she’d say, “You’ll never know what a fine man your father was when young and sober. Good-looking and intelligent, he had that more-than-witty thing. What do they call it? Class. He had that: he had glamour.” Looking at me, she said, “You don’t entirely lack his arrogance, as I’m sure people will tell you in the future. But unlike you, he absolutely knew he had it. And you know what, he didn’t give a damn!

“I was dazzled,” she said, making me wonder whether she still loved him. She added this wonderful thing, “He was a like a light shining in your eyes. Heaven knows why he was interested in me. I was a suburban girl and always felt sort of low-wattage in front of him. When he wasn’t kissing me, he’d take me to restaurants to meet his brothers and friends. I preferred Pakistanis to English people. I liked their food and their good manners. I was never one of those feminists, I couldn’t afford to be, but I took exception when they expected me to cook and wash up, and stay in the kitchen. But my parents never said a bad word about your dad. I’d told them he was an Indian prince.”

While Dad was studying in London, his eight brothers removed the rest of the family from India to Pakistan, imagining the new country—brutally sliced from the old one like an afterthought, as the British vandal fled, taking a last swipe—would be a new beginning. During this time, although Dad was living in the London suburbs with the family he had made, he began to feel he had no home, as well as no vocation.

As Mum said, “The suburbs weren’t to be his place. We were living in my parents’ house; we’d got engaged; we were married; we made babies. But he was still in transit. What was he doing? Sitting in the pub. Playing cricket out in Kent, wherever he could get a game.

“He would never stop talking to me about politics, sport, his family, while I was feeding you both. In the end I’d say to him ‘This is wasted on me, write it down! Put it in a column!’ He did; he began to write for papers in India and Pakistan. He realised he had to be there, that he wanted to be involved. He was ready to work. He wanted to participate.”

So he went back to the subcontinent. There was no official parting but Mum suspected “something had upset him.”

At home, sitting in front of the TV eating Vesta curries, the closest we came to the subcontinent, we kept him with us by saying things like “Dad wouldn’t like you doing that” or “Dad would laugh at that.” He became a made-up father, a collage assembled from bits of the real one. Each of us had our own notion or fantasy of him, while he stood in the shadows, like Orson Welles in
The Third Man,
always about to step into our lives—we hoped. If Mother referred to him as “that man” or “your damned father,” this at least kept him in the network. But he could be used for unpleasant purposes.

One time, irate with Mother, Miriam said to her, “You say Dad was an alcoholic and could be badly behaved, insulting and cutting, but he’s had a successful life. Where did taking care ever get anyone?” “I wouldn’t call him successful,” Mum replied. “Deserting your family isn’t successful.” Then Miriam said, “Dad had to leave you.” “What do you mean?” “Because you’re so nasty, stupid and fascistic!”—which made Mother put her hands around Miriam’s throat. When they fought physically, I would run out of the house and sit in the shed in the park, smoking, dreaming of the future and moaning to myself, “There must be some way out of here…”

I had always been unsure of what job I’d get. Dad rarely gave us instructions or prohibitions. You could say he refused to give Miriam his ideas of how he wanted her to be. He gave me more, often pulling me to him and kissing my cheeks, ruffling my hair, physically demonstrating his adoration and telling me I worried too much about everything. I could persuade him to buy me clothes and books; I knew how to get round him. It was passionate and always tender, our love. I guess Miriam had our mother, and sometimes I had Father, but I did feel guilty that he seemed to like me more.

There was another thing he gave me, for which I never thanked him. One time I went alone to Dad’s hotel and, waiting for the lift at his floor, I saw a woman, small and plainly dressed, as if for an interview, in her mid-thirties—not one of the amazing ones. Dad’s door hadn’t yet shut, and pushing into the room, I saw he was asleep or passed out. The smell of her perfume remained.

I rushed downstairs and into the street, calling her. She hesitated before stopping. I thought she might flee, but although surprised by me, she didn’t. Nervous and disappointed, chipped and gin-soaked, like a Jean Rhys heroine in worn-out shoes, she joined me for a drink in the pub across the road, where I asked her one question and then another, until I had her story, told in a low, croaky voice.

When the conversation ran down, I had the cheek to put an adolescent’s direct enquiry: How much did she charge? She laughed and offered me a price. Naturally I had nothing like that kind of money on me, nor did I have anywhere to take her. I couldn’t compete with Dad. Perhaps if I’d had more nerve, I might have enquired about a family discount. Nevertheless, I retained a passion for whores—as they say in the commercials, when in doubt use a professional—though, as with ordinary girls, you were always waiting for the right one, for the one you liked, or who liked you.

Father had once said to me that he’d wanted to be a doctor, like his own father, and wouldn’t object if that’s what I did. Unlike a lot of the early Freudians, who had been physicians, I had no aptitude for biology or chemistry, but I discovered that that didn’t prevent me becoming a surgeon of the soul. “Whatever you do,” Dad said in his backhandedly well-intentioned way, “don’t let me down and turn out to be a bloody fool.” I guess being an analyst solved a lot of problems for me, at least giving me the opportunity to spend time with people who made me think about what a human being was.

Ajita and I were able to see a lot of each other because her aunt had been told that college was a nine-to-five job, with occasional evening lectures. Her father was rarely home; he came back from his factory at ten at night and left early in the morning, six days a week. On Sunday the family visited relatives in Wembley, where Ajita danced with her cousins in their bedroom.