The Buddha of Suburbia

CHAPTER NINE

The flat in West Kensington was really only three large, formerly elegant rooms, with ceilings so high that I often gaped at the room’s proportions, as if I were in a derelict cathedral. But the ceiling was the most interesting part of the flat. The toilet was up the hall, with a broken window through which the wind whipped directly up your arse. The place had belonged to a Polish woman, who’d lived there as a child and then rented it to students for the past fifteen years. When she died Eva bought it as it was, furniture included. The rooms had ancient crusty mouldings and an iron-handled bell-pull for calling servants from the basement, now inhabited by Thin Lizzy’s road manager, a man who had the misfortune, so Eva informed me, to have hair growing out of his shoulders. The sad walls, from which all colour had faded, were covered by dark cracked mirrors and big sooty paintings which disappeared one by one when we were out, though there were no other signs of burglary. Most puzzling of all was the fact that Eva wasn’t perturbed by their disappearance. ‘Hey, I think another picture’s disappeared, Eva,’ I’d say. ‘Oh yes, space for other things,’ she’d reply. Eventually she admitted to us that Charlie was stealing them to sell and we were not to mention it. ‘At least he has initiative,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t Jean Genet a thief?’

Within the three large rooms were partitions that made up other, smaller rooms, and the kitchen, which contained the bath. It was like a student flat, a wretched and dirty gaff with lino on the floor and large white dried flowers waving from the marble fireplace. The rooms’ great spaces were interrupted by busted brown furniture. There wasn’t even a bed for me; I slept on the sofa in the front room. Charlie, who also had nowhere to go, sometimes slept on the floor beside me.

Dad stood looking at the flat in disgust. Eva hadn’t let him see it before; she just bought it quickly when we sold the house in Beckenham and had to get out. ‘Oh my God,’ Dad groaned, ‘how have we come to live in such filth?’

He wouldn’t even sit down, in case a spider jumped out of an armchair. Eva had to cover a chair in stapled-together plastic bags before it was hygienic enough for his arse. But Eva was happy. ‘I can really do something with this.’ she kept saying, striding around, as Dad turned pale; and there in the centre of the room she held him and kissed him again and again in case he lost his nerve and faith in her and longed to be with Mum. ‘What d’you think?’ said Dad, turning to me, his other worry. ‘I love it,’ I said, which pleased him. ‘But will it be good for him?’ he asked Eva. Eva said yes. ‘I’ll look after him,’ she added, with a smile.

The city blew the windows of my brain wide open. But being in a place so bright, fast and brilliant made you vertiginous with possibility: it didn’t necessarily help you grasp those possibilities. I still had no idea what I was going to do. I felt directionless and lost in the crowd. I couldn’t yet see how the city worked, but I began to find out.

West Kensington itself was made up of rows of five-storey peeling stucco houses broken up into bed-sits that were mostly occupied by foreign students, itinerants and poor people who’d lived there for years. The District line dived into the earth half-way along the Barons Court Road, to which it ran parallel, the trains heading for Charing Cross and then out into the East End, from where Uncle Ted had originally come. Unlike the suburbs, where no one of note – except H. G. Wells – had lived, here you couldn’t get away from VIPs. Gandhi himself once had a room in West Kensington, and the notorious landlord Rachman kept a flat for the young Mandy Rice-Davies in the next street; Christine Keeler came for tea. IRA bombers stayed in tiny rooms and met in Hammersmith pubs, singing ‘Arms for the IRA’ at closing time. Mesrine had had a room by the tube station.

So this was London at last, and nothing gave me more pleasure than strolling around my new possession all day. London seemed like a house with five thousand rooms, all different; the kick was to work out how they connected, and eventually to walk through all of them. Towards Hammersmith was the river and its pubs, full of hollering middle-class voices; and there were the secluded gardens which fringed the river along Lower Mall and the shaded stroll along the towpath to Barnes. This part of West London seemed like the country to me, with none of the disadvantages, no cows or farmers.

Nearby was expensive Kensington, where rich ladies shopped, and a walk from that was Earls Court, with its baby-faced male and female whores arguing and shoving each other in the pubs; there were transvesrites and addicts and many disoriented people and con-merchants. There were small hotels smelling of spunk and disinfectant, Australian travel agents, all-night shops run by dwarfish Bengalis, leather bars with fat moustached queens exchanging secret signals outside, and roaming strangers with no money and searching eyes. In Kensington nobody looked at you. In Earls Court everybody did, wondering what they could wrench from you.

But West Kensington was an area in between, where people stayed before moving up, or remained only because they were stuck. It was quieter, with few shops, not one of them interesting, and restaurants which opened with optimistic flourishes and invitations but where, after a few weeks, you could see the desolate owner standing in the doorway wondering where he’d gone wrong; his eyes told you the area wasn’t going to revive in his lifetime. But Eva ignored all such eyes: this was where she reckoned she could do something. ‘This place is going places,’ she predicted, as we talked sitting around a paraffin heater, the sole source of warmth at the time, the top of which was draped with Dad’s drying underpants.

Around the corner from the flat was a roaring famous bar and house of fights and dope called the Nashville. The front of it had oak beams and curved glass in the shape of a Wurlitzer jukebox. Every night the new groups blew West Kensington into the air.

As Eva had known, the location of the flat would always be a draw for Charlie, and when he turned up one evening to eat and sleep I said, ‘Let’s go to the Nashville.’

He looked at me warily and then nodded. He seemed keen enough to go, to investigate the latest bands and see what was happening in music. But there was a heaviness in his response. Later he tried to change his mind by saying to me, ‘Don’t you want to go somewhere quieter than that, where we can talk?’ Charlie had avoided concerts and gigs for months. He was afraid of finding the London bands too good, as if he’d see a young group with such talent and promise that his own brittle hopes and aspirations would be exploded in a terrifying second of illumination and self-knowledge. Myself, I went to the Nashville every night and reckoned that Charlie’s glory in South London was the most he’d ever get. In London the kids looked fabulous; they dressed and walked and talked like little gods. We could have been from Bombay. We’d never catch up.

Predictably, I had to pay for Charlie. I did it willingly because I still loved his company so much, but I had little money. As property prices in London were moving upwards, Eva’s shrewd plan was to decorate the flat as we had the last house, sell at a profit, and move on. But she was still meditating for hours and waiting for the voice of the flat to inform her of its favoured colour scheme. When word came, Ted and I would obey, and we’d get paid. Until then I was broke and Ted was left at home reminiscing with Mum about the war and trying to stop Jean from drinking.

Charlie was soon drunk. We were sitting in the small, side bar in the Nashville. I noticed that he was starting to smell. He didn’t change his clothes too often, and when he did he just picked up whatever was around him – Eva’s jumpers, Dad’s waistcoats, and always my shirts, which he borrowed and I never saw again. He’d crash some party, see a better shirt in the closet, change into it, and leave mine behind. I’d started locking my shirts in a desk drawer every night, except that now I’d lost the key with all my Ben Shermans in there.

I’d been looking forward to telling Charlie how depressed and lonely I’d been since we moved to London. But before I’d managed a single moan, Charlie pre-empted me. ‘I am suicidal,’ he announced grandly, as if he were pregnant. He said he was circling in that round of despair where you don’t care one iota what happens to you or anyone else.

A famous footballer with a famous perm was sitting next to Charlie listening to this. The Perm was soon taking pity on Charlie, as people tended to, and Charlie was asking him about the pressures of fame as if it were something that concerned him from day to day. ‘What d’you do,’ Charlie said, ‘when the reporters won’t leave you alone? When they’re outside the window every morning?’ ‘It’s all worth it,’ the Perm replied. ‘Sometimes I run out on to the pitch with an erection, I’m so excited.’

He bought Charlie, but not me, drinks. I wanted to get away from the Perm and talk to Charlie, but Charlie wasn’t going anywhere. Luckily I’d had some speed earlier: when I was on blues I could get through anything. All the same I felt disappointed. Then, just as someone mentioned the band were preparing to go on next door, my luck changed. I saw Charlie suddenly jerk forward and vomit in the footballer’s lap, before collapsing backwards off his stool. The Perm got excited. After all, he did have a pond consisting of Charlie’s last Chinese meal steaming in his crotch. He’d told us earlier that he was planning on taking a woman to Tramp that night. Anyway, the Perm leapt up and booted Charlie a couple of times in the ear with those famous feet until the heavies pulled him away. I managed to heave Charlie into the main bar and prop him up against a wall. He was half unconscious and trying to stop himself crying. He knew what things had come to.

‘Take it easy,’ I told him. ‘Keep away from people tonight.’

‘I feel better, OK?’

‘Good.’

‘For the moment.’

‘OK.’

I relaxed and looked around the dark room, at the end of which was a small stage with a drum-kit and mike-stand on it. Maybe I was just a provincial or something, but I began to see that I was among the strangest audience I’d seen in that place. There were the usual long-hairs and burned-out heads hanging at the back in velvet trousers or dirty jeans, patchwork boots and sheepskin coats, discussing bus fares to Fez, Barclay James Harvest and bread. That was the usual clientèle, the stoned inhabitants of local squats and basements.

But at the front of the place, near the stage, there were about thirty kids in ripped black clothes. And the clothes were full of safety-pins. Their hair was uniformly black, and cut short, seriously short, or if long it was spiky and rigid, sticking up and out and sideways, like a handful of needles, rather than hanging down. A hurricane would not have dislodged those styles. The girls were in rubber and leather and wore skin-tight skirts and holed black stockings, with white face-slap and bright-red lipstick. They snarled and bit people. Accompanying these kids were what appeared to be three extravagant South American transvestites in dresses, rouge and lipstick, one of whom had a used tampon on a piece of string around her neck. Charlie stirred restlessly as he leaned there. He hugged himself in self-pity as we took in this alien race dressed with an abandonment and originality we’d never imagined possible. I began to understand what London meant and what class of outrage we had to deal with. It certainly put us in proportion.

‘What is this shit?’ Charlie said. He was dismissive, but he was slightly breathless too; there was awe in his voice.

‘Be cool, Charlie,’ I said, continuing to examine the audience.

‘Be cool? I’m fucked. I just got kicked in the balls by a footballer.’

‘He’s a famous footballer.’

‘And look at the stage,’ Charlie said. ‘What rubbish is this? Why have you brought me out for this?’

‘D’you wanna go, then?’

‘Yes. All this is making me feel sick.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Lean on my shoulder and we’ll get you out of here. I don’t like the look of it either. It’s too weird.’

‘Yeah, much too weird.’

‘It’s too much.’

‘Yeah.’

But before we could move the band shambled on, young kids in clothes similar to the audience. The fans suddenly started to bounce up and down. As they pumped into the air and threw themselves sideways they screamed and spat at the band until the singer, a skinny little kid with carroty hair, dripped with saliva. He seemed to expect this, and merely abused the audience back, spitting at them, skidding over on to his arse once, and drinking and slouching around the stage as if he were in his living room. His purpose was not to be charismatic; he would be himself in whatever mundane way it took. The little kid wanted to be an anti-star, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It must have been worse for Charlie.

‘He’s an idiot,’ Charlie said.

‘Yeah.’

‘And I bet they can’t play either. Look at those instruments. Where did they get them, a jumble sale?’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘Unprofessional,’ he said.

When the shambolic group finally started up, the music was thrashed out. It was more aggressive than anything I’d heard since early Who. This was no peace and love; here were no drum solos or effeminate synthesizers. Not a squeeze of anything ‘progressive’ or ‘experimental’ came from these pallid, vicious little council estate kids with hedgehog hair, howling about anarchy and hatred. No song lasted more than three minutes, and after each the carrot-haired kid cursed us to death. He seemed to be yelling directly at Charlie and me. I could feel Charlie getting tense beside me. I knew London was killing us as I heard, ‘Fuck off, all you smelly old hippies! You fucking slags! You ugly fart-breaths! Fuck off to hell!’ he shouted at us.

I didn’t look at Charlie again, until the end. As the lights came up I saw he was standing up straight and alert, with cubes of dried vomit decorating his cheeks.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

We were numb; we didn’t want to speak for fear of returning to our banal selves again. The wild kids bundled out. Charlie and I elbowed our way through the crowd. Then he stopped.

‘What is it, Charlie?’

‘I’ve got to get backstage and talk to those guys.’

I snorted. ‘Why would they want to talk to you?’

I thought he’d hit me; but he took it well.

‘Yeah, there’s no reason why they should like me,’ he said. ‘If I saw me coming into the dressing room I’d have myself kicked out.’

We walked around West Kensington eating saveloy and chips drenched in vinegar and saturated with salt. People gathered in groups outside the burger place; others went to buy cigarettes from the Indian shop on the corner and then stood at the bus stop. In the pubs the bar staff put the chairs upside down on the tables and shouted, ‘Hurry up now, please, thank you.’ Outside the pub people argued about where to go next. The city at night intimidated me: the piss-heads, bums, derelicts and dealers shouted and looked for fights. Police vans cruised, and sometimes the law leapt out on to the street to grab kids by the hair and smash their heads against walls. The wrecked kids pissed into doorways.

Charlie was excited. ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he said as we strolled. ‘That’s fucking it.’ His voice was squeaky with rapture. ‘The sixties have been given notice tonight. Those kids we saw have assassinated all hope. They’re the fucking future.’

‘Yeah, maybe, but we can’t follow them,’ I said casually.

‘Why not?’

‘Obviously we can’t wear rubber and safety-pins and all. What would we look like? Sure, Charlie.’

‘Why not, Karim? Why not, man?’

‘It’s not us.’

‘But we’ve got to change. What are you saying? We shouldn’t keep up? That suburban boys like us always know where it’s at?’

‘It would be artificial,’ I said. ‘We’re not like them. We don’t hate the way they do. We’ve got no reason to. We’re not from the estates. We haven’t been through what they have.’

He turned on me with one of his nastiest looks.

‘You’re not going anywhere, Karim. You’re not doing anything with your life because as usual you’re facing in the wrong direction and going the wrong way. But don’t try and drag me down with you. I don’t need your discouragement! Don’t think I’m going to end up like you!’

‘Like me?’ I could hardly speak. ‘What am I that you hate so much?’ I managed to say.

But Charlie was looking across the street and not at me. Four kids from the Nashville, two girls and two boys, were piling into a car. They whooped and abused passers-by and fired water-pistols. The next thing I saw was Charlie sprinting through the traffic towards them. He dodged behind a bus and I thought he’d been knocked down. When he re-emerged he was ripping his shirt off – it was my shirt, too. At first I thought he was using it to wave at people, but then he bundled it up and threw it at a police car. Seconds later he’d leapt into car with the kids, his bare torso on someone’s lap on the front seat. And the car took off up the North End Road before he’d got the door shut. Charlie was away to new adventures. I walked home.

A few days later Eva made an announcement. ‘Karim,’ she said. ‘Let’s start working together again. It’s time. Ring Uncle Ted.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘At last.’

But there was one thing she wanted to do first. She had to give a flat-warming party. There was a theory of parties she said she wanted to try out. You invited people you thought would dislike each other and you watched them get along swingingly. For some reason I didn’t believe her when she said this; I wasn’t convinced that she was being straight. But whatever she was up to – and it was something – she spent days ticking and marking the party guest list, a thick, creamy piece of paper she kept with her at all times. She was unusually secretive about the whole thing and had intricate conversations with God-knows-who on the phone, and certainly wouldn’t speak to Dad and me about what she was doing.

What I did know was that Shadwell was involved. It was his contacts she was using. They were conspirators. She flirted with him, used him, led him on and asked him favours. It bothered me, but Dad was unworried. He patronized Shadwell; he wasn’t threatened. He took it for granted that people would fall in love with Eva.

But it was affecting Dad. For instance, he wanted to invite his meditation group to the party. Yet Eva insisted that no more than two of them come. She didn’t want the new smooth crowd to think she was mixing with a bunch of basket-weavers from Bromley. So Chogyam-Jones and Fruitbat came, arriving an hour early, when Eva was still shaving her legs in the bath in the kitchen. Eva tolerated them since they paid for Dad’s thoughts and therefore her dinner, but when they went into the bedroom to chant I heard her say to Dad, as she put on her yellow silk blouse for that brilliant evening, ‘The future shouldn’t contain too much of the past.’ Later, just as the party was starting and Eva was discussing the origin of the word ‘bohemian’ with Dad, Fruitbat pulled out a handy pad and asked if she could write down something that Dad had said. The Buddha of suburbia nodded regally, while Eva looked as if she wanted to cut off Fruitbat’s eyelids with a pair of scissors.

When this eagerly awaited party actually happened, it had been going forty minutes before Dad and I realized that we knew virtually no one there. Shadwell seemed to know everyone. He was standing at the door, greeting people as they came in, simpering and giggling and asking them how so-and-so was. He was being totally homosexual too, except that even that was a pose, a ruse, a way of self-presentation. And he was, as always, a picture of health, dressed in black rags and black boots and twitching maniacally. His face was white, his skin scrofulous, his teeth decaying.

Since I’d been living in the flat, Shadwell had been coming to see Eva at least once a week, during the day, when Dad was at the office. He and Eva went out on long walks together, or to the cinema at the ICA to see Scorsese films and exhibitions of dirty nappies. Eva made no effort to have us talk to each other, Shadwell and I; in fact I felt she wanted to discourage conversation. Whenever I saw her and Shadwell together they always looked pretty intense, as if they’d just had a fight or shared a lot of secrets.

Now, as the party fodder turned up in their glittering clothes, I began to see that Eva was using the evening not as a celebration but as her launch into London. She’d invited every theatre and film person she’d run into over the past few years, and a lot she hadn’t. Many were Shadwell’s acquaintances, people he’d met only once or twice. Every third-rate actor, assistant film director, weekend writer, part-time producer and their friends, if they had friends, slid on to our premises. As my darling new mother (whom I loved) moved radiantly about the room introducing Derek, who had just directed Equus at the Contact Theatre, to Bryan, who was a freelance journalist specializing in film, or Karen, who was a secretary at a literary agency, to Robert, who was a designer; as she spoke of the new Dylan album and what Riverside Studios was doing, I saw she wanted to scour that suburban stigma right off her body. She didn’t realize it was in the blood and not on the skin; she didn’t see there could be nothing more suburban than suburbanites repudiating themselves.

It was a relief when at last I saw someone I knew. From the window I spotted Jamila getting out of a cab, accompanied by a Japanese woman and Changez. I was delighted to see my friend’s happy pudding face again, blinking up at the collapsing mansion in which our flat was located. As I caught his eye I realized how much I wanted to hold him in my arms again, and squeeze his rolls of fat. Except that I hadn’t seen him since he lay on his camp-bed and watched me sleeping naked with his beloved wife, the woman I’d always characterized to him as ‘sister’.

I’d spoken frequently to Jamila on the phone, of course, and apparently Changez – solid, stable, unshakeable Changez – had turned quite mad after the naked-on-the-bed incident. He’d railed at Jamila and accused her of adultery, incest, betrayal, whoredom, deceit, lesbianism, husband-hatred, frigidity, lying and callousness, as well as the usual things.

Jamila was equally fine and fierce that day, explaining just who her damn body belonged to. And anyway, it was none of his business: didn’t he have a regular fuck? He could shove his hypocrisy up his fat arse! Changez, being at heart a traditional Muslim, explained the teachings of the Koran on this subject to her, and then, when words were not sufficient to convince her, he tried to give her a whack. But Jamila was not whackable. She gave Changez a considerable backhander across his wobbling chops, which shut his mouth for a fortnight, during which he miserably carried his bruised jaw to his camp-bed – that raft in a storm – and didn’t speak.

Now he shook hands with me and we held each other. I was slightly worried, I must admit, that he would knife me.

‘How are you, Changez?’

‘Looking good, looking good.’

‘Yes?’

Without any hesitation he said, ‘Let’s not beat around any bushes. How can I forgive you for screwing my wife? Is that a nice thing to do to a friend, eh?’

I was ready for him.

‘I’ve known Jammie all my life, yaar. Long-standing arrangement. She was always mine in so far as she was anyone’s, and she’s never been anyone’s and never will be anyone’s, you know. She’s her own person.’

His sad face trembled as he shook his sincere, hurt head and sat down.

‘You deceived me. It was a blow against the centre of my life. I couldn’t take it. It was too much for me – it hit me hard, in the guts, Karim.’

What can you say when friends admit such hurt without vindictiveness or bitterness? I didn’t ever want to aim a blow against the centre of his life.

‘How are you two getting along anyway?’ I asked, shifting the subject. I sat down beside him and we opened a Heineken each. Changez was thoughtful and serious.

‘I’ve got to be realistic about adjustment. It’s unusual for me, an Indian man, vis-à-vis the things that go on around my wife. Jamila makes me do shopping and washing and cleaning. And she has become friends with Shinko.’

‘Shinko?’

He indicated the Japanese woman who had arrived with him. I looked at her; I did recognize her. Then it occurred to me who Shinko was – his prostitute friend, with whom he conjured Harold Robbins’s positions. I was amazed. I could hardly speak, but I could snigger, for there they were, Changez’s wife and his whore, chatting together about modern dance with Fruitbat.

I was puzzled. ‘Is Shinko a friend of Jamila’s, then?’

‘Only recently, you complete cunt. Jamila made up her mind she didn’t have sufficient women friends, so she went to call on Shinko’s house. You told her about Shinko, after all, for no reason, gratis, thank you very much, I’ll do the same for you some day. It was bloody embarrassing at first and all, I can tell you, as these two girls sat there right in front of my nose, but the girls it didn’t phase out at all.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘Nothing! What could I do? They were instant friends! They were discussing all the subjects usually kept under the pillow. The penis here, the vagina there, the man on top, the woman here, there and everywhere. I just have to put up with all the humiliations that fall on my head in this great country! It’s been difficult, too, since Anwar-saab has become insanely mad.’

‘What are you on about, Changez? I don’t know anything about this.’

He sat back, regarded me coolly and shrugged complacently.

‘But what subject do you know about?’

‘Eh?’

‘You never go there, yaar, just as you avoid me now.’

‘I see.’

‘It makes you sad,’ he said.

I nodded. It was true that I hadn’t been to see Jeeta or Anwar for a long time, what with the moving and my depression and everything, and wanting to start a new life in London and know the city.

‘Don’t leave your own people behind, Karim.’

Before I had a chance to leave my own people and find out exactly how Anwar had gone insanely mad, Eva came over to me.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to Changez. ‘Get up,’ she said to me.

‘I’m all right here,’ I said.

She tugged me to my feet. ‘God, Karim, won’t you do anything for yourself?’ Her eyes were bright with the thrill of things. As she talked she didn’t stop looking around the room. ‘Karim, darling, your big moment in life has arrived. There’s someone here dying to meet you again, meet you properly. A man who will help you.’

She led me through the throng. ‘By the way,’ she murmured in my ear. ‘Don’t say anything arrogant or appear too egotistical.’

I was annoyed with her dragging me away from Changez. ‘Why not?’ I said.

‘Let him talk,’ she said.

She’d mentioned someone who would help me, but I saw only Shadwell ahead of me. ‘Oh no,’ I said, and tried to pull away. But she continued to haul me forward like a mother with a naughty child. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s your chance. Talk about the theatre.’

Shadwell didn’t require much encouragement. It was easy to see that he was clever and well read, but he was also boring. Like many spectacular bores, his thoughts were catalogued and indexed. When I asked him a question he’d say, ‘The answer to that is – in fact the several answers to that are … A.’ And you’d get point A followed by points Β and C, and on the one hand F, and on the other foot G, until you could see the whole alphabet stretching ahead, each letter a Sahara in itself to be crawled across. He was talking about the theatre and the writers he liked: Arden, Bond, Orton, Osborne, Wesker, each suffocated just by being in his mouth for a minute. I kept trying to get back to Changez’s lugubrious face, which reclined morosely in his good hand as the guests filled the air around him with cultivated noises. I saw Changez’s eyes fall caressingly on his wife’s form and then rest on his prostitute’s grooving hips as the two of them got down to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Then, spontaneously, Changez pushed himself up and danced with them, lifting each foot ponderously from the floor like a performing elephant, and sticking his elbows out as if he’d been asked, in a drama class, to be a flamingo. I wanted to dance with him and celebrate the renewal of our friendship. I crept away from Shadwell. But I caught Eva’s eye. She glared at me.

‘I can see you want to get away,’ said Shadwell, ‘to much more charismatic folk. But Eva tells me you’re interested in acting.’

‘Yes, for a long time, I suppose.’

‘Well, are you or aren’t you? Am I to be interested in you or not?’

‘Yes, if you’re interested.’

‘Good, I am interested. I’d like you to do something for me. They’ve given me a theatre for a season. Will you come along and do a piece for me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, yes, I will.’

After the guests had gone, at three in the morning, as we sat among the debris and Chogyam and Fruitbat threw rubbish into plastic bags, I wanted to discuss Shadwell with Eva. I said he was boring as hell. Eva was already irritable; this Madame Verdurin of West London felt Dad and I hadn’t appreciated the quality of her guests. ‘Whose intelligence did you engage with this evening, Karim? You two behaved as if we were still in the sticks. And it is wicked, Karim, to mind Shadwell being dull. It’s a misfortune, not a fault, like being born with a nose like a turnip.’

‘She’s changed her tune,’ I said to Dad. But he wasn’t listening. He watched Eva all the time. Now he felt playful: he kept tickling the cushion next to him and saying, ‘Come here, come here, little Eva, and let me tell you a secret.’ They still played sickening games that I couldn’t avoid, like putting sperm on each other’s nose and calling one another Merkin and Muffin, for God’s sake. Chogyam turned to Dad. ‘What is your view on this matter of boredom?’

Dad cleared his throat and said that boring people were deliberately boring. It was a personality choice, and responsibility couldn’t be avoided by saying they were like turnips. Bores wanted to narcotize you so you wouldn’t be sensitive to them.

‘Anyway,’ Eva whispered, sitting beside Dad now and cradling his drowsy head as she looked up at me. ‘Shadwell has a real theatre and for some reason he likes you. Let’s see if we can land you a theatre job, eh? Is that what you want?’

I didn’t know what to say. This was a chance, but I was frightened of taking it, frightened of exposing myself and failing. Unlike Charlie’s, my will wasn’t stronger than my misgivings.

‘Make up your mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you, Creamy, in any way you want.’

Over the next few weeks, with Eva directing me – which she loved – I prepared a Sam Shepard speech from The Mad Dog Blues for my audition with Shadwell. I’d never worked so hard at anything in my life; nor, once I’d started, had I wanted anything so badly. The speech began: ‘I was on a Greyhound bus out of Carlsbad heading for Loving, New Mexico. Back to see my dad. After ten years. All duded out in a double-breasted suit with my shoes all shined. The driver calls “Loving” and I get off the bus …’

I knew what I was doing; I was thoroughly prepared; but that didn’t mean that when the day came I wasn’t in a state of nervous collapse. ‘Are you familiar with The Mad Dog Blues?’ I asked Shadwell, sure he would never have heard of it.

He was sitting in the front row of his theatre watching me, a notebook balanced on the leg of his rancid trousers. He nodded. ‘Shepard is my man. And there are not many boys who would not want to be him, because A he is attractive, Β he can write and act, C he can play the drums and D he is a wild boy and rebel.’

‘Yes.’

‘Now do The Mad Dog Blues for me, please. Brilliantly.’

Shadwell’s theatre was a small wooden building like a large hut, in suburban North London. It had a tiny foyer but a wide stage, proper lights and about two hundred seats. They produced plays like French without Tears, the latest Ayckbourn or Frayn, or a panto. It was primarily an amateur place, but they did do three professional productions a year, mostly of plays on the school curriculum like The Royal Hunt of the Sun.

When I finished, Shadwell started to applaud with the tips of his fingers, as if scared his hands would give each other a disease. He climbed up on stage. ‘Thank you, Karim.’

‘You liked it, yeah?’ I asked, out of breath.

‘So much so that I want you to do it again.’

‘What? Again? But I reckon that was my best shot, Mr Shadwell.’

He ignored me. He had an idea. ‘Only this time two extra things will occur: A, a wasp will be buzzing around your head. And B, the wasp wants to sting you. Your motivation – and all actors love a bit of motivation – is to brush, push, fight it away, OK?’

‘I’m not sure Sam Shepard would approve of this wasp business,’ I said confidently. ‘He really wouldn’t.’

Shadwell turned and peered exaggeratedly into every cranny of the deserted theatre. ‘But he’s not fucking here, unless I’ve gone blind.’

And he went and sat down again, waiting for me to begin. I felt a complete wanker, waving at that wasp. But I wanted the part, whatever the part was. I couldn’t face going back to that flat in West Kensington not knowing what to do with my life and having to be pleasant, and not being respected by anyone.

When I’d done with Shepard and the wasp, Shadwell put his arm round me. ‘Well done! You deserve a coffee. Come on.’

He took me to a lorry driver’s café next door. I felt elated, especially when he said, ‘I’m looking for an actor just like you.’

My head rang with cheering bells. We sat down with our coffee. Shadwell put his elbow out half-way across the table in a puddle of tea, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand, and stared at me.

‘Really?’ I said enthusiastically. ‘An actor like me in what way?’

‘An actor who’ll fit the part.’

‘What part?’ I asked.

He looked at me impatiently. ‘The part in the book.’

I could be very direct at times. ‘What book?’

‘The book I asked you to read, Karim.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘I told Eva to tell you.’

‘But Eva didn’t tell me anything. I would have remembered.’

‘Oh Christ. Oh God, I’m going mad. Karim, what the hell is that woman playing at?’ And he held his head in his hands.

‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘At least tell me what the book is. Maybe I can buy it today.’

‘Stop being so rational,’ he said. ‘It’s The Jungle Book. Kipling. You know it, of course.’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen the film.’

‘I’m sure.’

He could be a snooty bastard, old Shadwell, that was for sure. But I was going to keep myself under control whatever he said. Then his attitude changed completely. Instead of talking about the job he said some words to me in Punjabi or Urdu and looked as if he wanted to get into a big conversation about Ray or Tagore or something. To tell the truth, when he spoke it sounded like he was gargling.

‘Well?’ he said. He rattled off some more words. ‘You don’t understand?’

‘No, not really.’

What could I say? I couldn’t win. I knew he’d hate me for it.

‘Your own language!’

‘Yeah, well, I get a bit. The dirty words. I know when I’m being called a camel’s rectum.’

‘Of course. But your father speaks, doesn’t he? He must do.’

Of course he speaks, I felt like saying. He speaks out of his mouth, unlike you, you fucking cunt bastard shithead.

‘Yes, but not to me,’ I said. ‘It would be stupid. We wouldn’t know what he was on about. Things are difficult enough as it is.’

Shadwell persisted. There seemed no way he was ever going to get off this subject.

‘You’ve never been there, I suppose.’

‘Where?’

Why was he being so bloody aggressive about it?

‘You know where. Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Goa, the Punjab. You’ve never had that dust in your nostrils?’

‘Never in my nostrils, no.’

‘You must go,’ he said, as if nobody had ever been there but him.

‘I will, OK?’

‘Yes, take a rucksack and see India, if it’s the last thing you do in your life.’

‘Right, Mr Shadwell.’

He lived in his own mind, he really did. He shook his head then and did a series of short barks in his throat. This was him laughing, I was certain. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’ he went. He said, ‘What a breed of people two hundred years of imperialism has given birth to. If the pioneers from the East India Company could see you. What puzzlement there’d be. Everyone looks at you, I’m sure, and thinks: an Indian boy, how exotic, how interesting, what stories of aunties and elephants we’ll hear now from him. And you’re from Orpington.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh God, what a strange world. The immigrant is the Everyman of the twentieth century. Yes?’

‘Mr Shadwell –’ I started.

‘Eva can be a very difficult woman, you know.’

‘Yeah?’

I breathed more easily now he’d changed the subject. ‘The best women always are,’ he went on. ‘But she didn’t give you the book. She’s trying to protect you from your destiny, which is to be a half-caste in England. That must be complicated for you to accept – belonging nowhere, wanted nowhere. Racism. Do you find it difficult? Please tell me.’

He looked at me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said defensively. ‘Let’s talk about acting.’

‘Don’t you know?’ he persisted. ‘Don’t you really?’

I couldn’t answer his questions. I could barely speak at all; the muscles in my face seemed to have gone rigid. I was shaking with embarrassment that he could talk to me in this way at all, as if he knew me, as if he had the right to question me. Fortunately he didn’t wait for any reply.

He said, ‘When I saw more of Eva than I do now, she was often unstable. Highly strung, we call it. Yes? She’s been around, Eva, and she’s seen a lot. One morning we woke up in Tangier, where I was visiting Paul Bowles – a famous homosexual writer – and she was suffocating. All her hair had dropped out in the night and she was choking on it.’

I just looked at him.

‘Incredible, eh?’

‘Incredible. It must have been psychological.’ And I almost added that my hair would probably fall out if I had to spend too much time with him.

‘But I don’t want to talk about the past,’ I said.

‘Don’t you?’

This stuff about him and Eva was really making me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to know about it.

‘OK,’ he said at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Happy with your father, is she?’

Christ, he was a nippy little questioner. He could have slain people with his questioning, except that he never listened to the answers. He didn’t want answers but only the pleasure of his own voice.

‘Let’s hope it lasts, eh?’ he said. ‘Sceptical, eh?’

I shrugged. But now I had something to say. Off I went.

‘I was in the Cubs. I remember it well. The Jungle Book is Baloo and Bagheera and all that, isn’t it?’

‘Correct. Ten out of ten. And?’

‘And?’

‘And Mowgli.’

‘Oh yes, Mowgli.’

Shadwell searched my face for comment, a flinch or little sneer perhaps. ‘You’re just right for him,’ he continued. ‘In fact, you are Mowgli. You’re dark-skinned, you’re small and wiry, and you’ll be sweet but wholesome in the costume. Not too pornographic, I hope. Certain critics will go for you. Oh yes. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’

He jumped up as two young women carrying scripts came into the café. Shadwell embraced them, and they kissed him, apparently without revulsion. They talked to him with respect. This was my first indication of how desperate actors can get.

‘I’ve found my Mowgli,’ Shadwell told them, pointing down at me. ‘I’ve found my little Mowgli at last. An unknown actor, just right and ready to break through.’

‘Hallo,’ one of the women said to me. ‘I’m Roberta,’ said the other.

‘Hallo,’ I said.

‘Isn’t he terrific?’ Shadwell said.

The two women examined me. I was just perfect. I’d done it. I’d got a job.