The Buddha of Suburbia

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was while watching Pyke as he rehearsed in his familiar blue tracksuit, the tight bottoms of which hugged his arse like a cushion cover and outlined his little dick as he moved around the room, that I first began to suspect I’d been seriously let down. That prick, which had fucked me up the arse while Marlene cheered us on as if we were all-in wrestlers – and while Eleanor fixed herself a drink – had virtually ruptured me. Now, I began to be certain, the fucker was fucking me in other ways. I would look into it.

I watched him closely. He was a good director, because he liked other people, even when they were difficult. (He saw difficult people as puzzles to be solved.) Actors liked him because he knew that even they could discover for themselves the right way through a part if he gave them room. This flattered them, and actors love flattery. Pyke never got angry or shoved you in a direction you didn’t want to go; his manipulations were subtle and effective. All the same, these were painful days for me. The others, especially Carol, often became angry, because I was slower and more stupid than they were. ‘Karim’s got all the right qualifications for an actor,’ Carol said. ‘No technique, no experience, no presence.’

So Pyke had to go over every line and move of the first scene with me. My greatest fear was that when the final script was delivered Lawrence and Pyke would have allowed me only a small part, and I’d be hanging around back-stage like a spare prick. But when Louise delivered the play I saw to my surprise that I had a cracker of a part. I couldn’t wait to exhibit it.

What a strange business this acting is, Pyke said; you are trying to convince people that you’re someone else, that this is not-me. The way to do it is this, he said: when in character, playing not-me, you have to be yourself. To make your not-self real you have to steal from your authentic self. A false stroke, a wrong note, anything pretended, and to the audience you are as obvious as a Catholic naked in a mosque. The closer you play to yourself the better. Paradox of paradoxes: to be someone else successfully you must be yourself! This I learned!

We went north in winter, touring the play around studio theatres and arts centres. We stayed in freezing hotels where the owners regarded their guests as little more than burglars, sleeping in unheated rooms with toilets up the hall, places without telephones where they refused to serve breakfast after eight. ‘The way the English sleep and eat is enough to make you want to emigrate to Italy,’ Eleanor said every day at breakfast. For Carol, all that mattered was playing in London; the north was Siberia, the people animals.

I was playing an immigrant fresh from a small Indian town. I insisted on assembling the costume myself: I knew I could do something apt. I wore high white platform boots, wide cherry flares that stuck to my arse like sweetpaper and flapped around my ankles, and a spotted shirt with a wide ‘Concorde’ collar flattened over my jacket lapels.

At the first performance, in front of an audience of twenty, as soon as I walked out on stage, farting with fear, there was laughter, uncertain at first, then from the belly as they took me in. As I continued, gusts of pleasure lifted me. I was a wretched and comic character. The other actors had the loaded lines, the many-syllabled political analysis, the flame-throwing attacks on pusillanimous Labour governments, but it was me the audience warmed to. They laughed at my jokes, which concerned the sexual ambition and humiliation of an Indian in England. Unfortunately, my major scenes were with Carol, who, after the first performance, started to look not-nicely across the stage at me. After the third performance, in the dressing room, she yelled, ‘I can’t act with this person – he’s a pratt, not an actor!’ And she ran to ring Pyke in London.

Matthew had driven back to London that afternoon. He’d gone all the way from Manchester to London to sleep with a brilliant woman barrister who’d defended bombers and freedom fighters. ‘This is a superb opportunity, Karim,’ he told me. ‘After all, I’ve got the hang of the police, but the formal law, that pillar of our society, I want it beside me, on my very pillow.’ And off he sped, leaving us to audiences and rain.

Perhaps Pyke was in bed discussing the fate of the Bradford Eight or the Leeds Six when Carol rang him. I imagined him being careful in his love-making with the barrister; he’d think of everything – champagne, hash, flowers – to ensure she thought highly and passionately of him. And now Carol was saying persuasively down the phone that I seemed to be in a different play to the others, a farce, perhaps. But, like most talented people who are successful with the public, Pyke was blessed with a vulgar streak. He supported me. ‘Karim is the key to this play,’ he told Carol.

When we arrived in London after visiting ten cities, we started to re-rehearse and prepare for previews at an arts centre in West London, not far from Eva’s flat. It was a fashionable place, where the latest in international dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre was displayed. It was run by two highly strung aesthetes who had a purity and severity of taste that made Pyke look rococo in comparison. I sat around with them in the restaurant, eating bean-shoots and listening to talk of the new dance and an innovative form called ‘performance’. I saw one ‘performance’. This involved a man in a boiler suit pulling a piece of Camembert across a vast floor by a piece of string. Behind him two boys in black played guitars. It was called Cheesepiece. After, I heard people say, ‘I liked the original image.’ It was all an education. I’d never heard such venom expressed on subjects which I’d only ever considered lightly. To the aesthetes, as with Pyke (but much worse), the performance of an actor or the particular skill of a writer whose work I’d seen with Eleanor and thought of as ‘promising’ or ‘a bit jejune’, was as important as earthquakes or marriages. ‘May they die of cancer,’ they said of these authors. I also imagined they’d want to get together with Pyke and discuss Stanislavsky and Artaud and all, but they hated each other’s guts. The two aesthetes barely mentioned the man whose show was rehearsing in their theatre, except in terms like ‘that man who irons his jeans’ or ‘Caliban’. The two aesthetes were assisted by a fleet of exquisitely dressed middle-class girls whose fathers were television tycoons. It was an odd set-up: this was the subsidized theatre, and these were radical people, but it was as if everyone – the people who worked there, journalists, fans of the company, other directors and actors – wanted the answer to only one question: Is this play going to be successful or not?

To escape the mounting tension and anxiety, one Sunday morning I went to visit Changez at his new place. They were great people, the vegetarians, but I was nervous of how they would react when they found that Changez was a fat, useless bum, and that they would have to carry him.

At first I didn’t recognize him. It was partly the environment in which he was now living. Old Bubble was sitting in the all-pine communal kitchen surrounded by plants and piles of radical newspapers. On the wall were posters advertising demonstrations against South Africa and Rhodesia, meetings, and holidays in Cuba and Albania. Changez had had his hair cut; his Flaubert moustache had been plucked from under his nose; and he was wearing a large grey boiler suit buttoned up to the throat. ‘You look like a motor-mechanic,’ I said. He beamed back at me. Among other things he was pleased that the assault case against him had been dropped, once it was certain that Anwar had died of a heart attack. ‘I’m going to make the most of my life now, yaar,’ he said.

Sitting at the table with Changez were Simon and a young, fair-haired girl, Sophie, who was eating muffins. She’d just returned from selling anarchist newspapers outside a factory.

When Changez offered, to my surprise, to go out to the shops for milk, I asked them how he was doing, whether everything was all right. Was he coping? I was aware that my tone of voice indicated that I thought of Changez as a minor mental patient. But Simon and Sophie liked Changez. Sophie referred to him once as a ‘disabled immigrant’, which, I suppose, the Dildo Killer was. Maybe this gave him credence in the house. He’d obviously had the sense not to talk at length about being from a family who owned racehorses. And he must have cut the many stories he used to tell me about the number of servants he’d been through, and his analysis of the qualities he reckoned were essential in a good servant, cook and sweeper.

‘I love the communal life, Karim,’ Changez said, when we went for a walk later that day. ‘The family atmosphere is here without nagging aunties. Except for the meetings, yaar. They have them every five minutes. We have to sit time after time and discuss this thing and that thing, the garden, the cooking, the condition of England, the condition of Chile, the condition of Czechoslovakia. This is democracy gone berserk, yaar. Still, it’s bloody amazing and everything, the nudity you see daily.’

‘What nudity?’

‘Full nudity. Complete nudity.’

‘What kind of full and complete nudity?’

‘There are five girls here, and only Simon and I representing the gentlemen’s side. And the girls, on the communist principle of having no shame to hide, go completely without clothes, their breasts without brassieres! Their bushes without concealment!’

‘Christ –’

‘But I can’t stay there –’

‘What, after all that? Why not, Bubble? Look what I’ve fixed you up with! Think of the breasts without brassieres over breakfast!’

‘Karim, it breaks my heart, yaar. But Jamila has started to yell with this nice boy, Simon. They are in the next room. Every night I hear them shaking the bed around. It blasts my bloody ears to Kingdom Coming.’

‘That was bound to happen one day, Changez. I’ll buy you some ear plugs if you like.’ And I giggled to myself at the thought of Changez listening to the love of his life being shafted next door night after night. ‘Or why don’t you change rooms?’

He shook his head. ‘I like to be near her. I like to hear her moving around. I am familiar with every sound she makes. At this moment she is sitting down. At that moment she is reading. I like to know.’

‘You know, Changez, love can be very much like stupidity.’

‘Love is love, and it is eternal. You don’t have romantic love in the West any more. You just sing about it on the radio. No one really loves, here.’

‘What about Eva and Dad?’ I countered jauntily. ‘That’s romantic, isn’t it?’

‘That’s adultery. That’s pure evil.’

‘Oh, I see.’

I was pleased to find Changez so cheerful. He seemed glad to have escaped lethargy into this new life, a life I’d never have imagined suiting him.

As we loafed around I saw how derelict and poor this end of the city – South London – really was, compared with the London I was living in. Here the unemployed were walking the streets with nowhere else to go, the men in dirty coats and the women in old shoes without stockings. As we walked and looked Changez talked of how much he liked English people, how polite and considerate they were. ‘They’re gentlemen. Especially the women. They don’t try to do you down all the time like the Indians do.’

These gentlemen had unhealthy faces; their skin was grey. The housing estates looked like makeshift prison camps; dogs ran around; rubbish blew about; there was graffiti. Small trees had been planted with protective wire netting around them, but they’d all been snapped off anyway. The shops sold only inadequate and badly made clothes. Everything looked cheap and shabby, the worse for trying to be flash. Changez must have been thinking the same things as me. He said, ‘Perhaps I feel at home here because it reminds me of Calcutta.’

When I said it was time for me to go, Changez’s mood changed. From broodiness he snapped into businesslike attack, as if he’d worked out in advance what he wanted to say, and now was the time to deliver it.

‘Now, tell me, Karim, you’re not using my own character in your play, are you?’

‘No, Changez. I told you already.’

‘Yes, you laid your word of honour on the line.’

‘Yes, I did. Right?’

He thought for a few seconds. ‘But what does it stand for, ultimately, your word of honour?’

‘Everything, man, every fucking thing, for God’s sake! Christ, Changez, you’re becoming fucking self-righteous, aren’t you?’

He looked at me sternly, as if he didn’t believe me, the bastard, and off he went to waddle around South London.

A few days later, after we’d started previewing the play in London, Jamila rang to tell me that Changez had been attacked under a railway bridge when coming back from a Shinko session. It was a typical South London winter evening – silent, dark, cold, foggy, damp – when this gang jumped out on Changez and called him a Paki, not realizing he was Indian. They planted their feet all over him and started to carve the initials of the National Front into his stomach with a razor blade. They fled because Changez let off the siren of his Muslim warrior’s call, which could be heard in Buenos Aires. Naturally he was shocked; shit-scared and shaken up, Jamila said. But he hadn’t been slow to take advantage of the kindness shown him by everyone. Sophie was now bringing him his breakfast in bed, and he’d been let off various cooking and washing-up duties. The police, who were getting sick of Changez, had suggested that he’d laid down under the railway bridge and inflicted the wound on himself, to discredit them.

The attack on Changez angered me, and I asked Jamila if I could do anything. Yes; these attacks were happening all the time. I should come with Jamila and her friends on a march the following Saturday. The National Front were parading through a nearby Asian district. There would be a fascist rally in the Town Hall; Asian shops would be attacked and lives threatened. Local people were scared. We couldn’t stop it: we could only march and make our voices heard. I said I’d be there.

I hadn’t been sleeping with Eleanor more than once a week recently. Nothing had been said, but she’d cooled towards me. I wasn’t alarmed; after rehearsing I liked to go home and be frightened alone. I prepared myself for the opening by walking around the flat as Changez, not caricaturing him but getting behind his peculiar eyeballs. Robert de Niro would have been proud of me.

I took it for granted that Eleanor spent the evenings at parties with her friends. She often invited me, too, but I’d noticed that after a couple of hours with her crowd I felt heavy and listless, life had offered these people its lips, but as they dragged from party to party, seeing the same faces and saying the same things night after night, I saw it was the kiss of death; I saw how much was enervated and useless in them. What passion or desire or hunger did they have as they lounged in their London living rooms? I told my political adviser, Sergeant Monty, that the ruling class weren’t worth hating. He disagreed. ‘Their complacency makes them worse,’ he argued.

When I rang Eleanor and told her we should join the others in confronting the fascists, her attitude was strange, especially considering what had happened to Gene. She vacillated all over the place. On the one hand there was this shopping to do in Sainsbur’s; on the other hand there was that person to visit in hospital. ‘I’ll see you at the demo, love,’ she concluded. ‘My head’s a little messed up.’ I put the phone down.

I knew what to do. I was supposed to be meeting Jamila, Changez, Simon, Sophie and the others at the house that morning. So what? I’d be late. I wouldn’t miss the march; I’d just go straight there.

I waited an hour and caught the tube northwards, towards Pyke’s. I went into the front garden of the house opposite his, sat down on a log and watched Pyke’s house through a hole in the hedge. Time passed. It was getting late. I’d have to take a cab to the march. That would be OK, as long as Jamila didn’t catch me getting out of a taxi. After three hours of waiting I saw Eleanor approach Pyke’s house. What a genius I was: how right I’d been! Eleanor rang the bell and Pyke answered immediately. Not a kiss, or a stroke, or a smile – only the door shutting behind her. Then nothing. What did I expect? I stared at the closed door. What was I to do? This was something I hadn’t thought about. The march and demonstration would be in full swing. Perhaps Pyke and Eleanor would be going on it. I’d wait for them; maybe declare myself, say I was passing, and get a lift to the march with them.

I waited another three hours. They must have been having a late lunch. It started to get dark. When Eleanor emerged I followed her to the tube and got into the carriage behind her, sitting opposite her in the train. She looked pretty surprised when she glanced up and saw me sitting there. ‘What are you doing on the Bakerloo Line?’ she asked.

Well, I wasn’t in a defensive mood. I went and sat right next to her. Straight out, I asked her what she’d been doing at Pyke’s, instead of throwing her body in front of fascists.

She threw back her hair, looked around the train as if for an escape and said she could say the same about me. She wouldn’t look at me, but she wasn’t defensive. ‘Pyke attracts me,’ she said. ‘He’s an exciting man. You may not have noticed, but there’s so few of those around.’

‘Will you carry on sleeping with him?’

‘Yes, yes, whenever he asks me.’

‘How long’s it been going on?’

‘Since that time … since that time we went over there for supper and you and Pyke did that stuff to each other.’

She rested her cheek against mine. The sweetness of her skin and entire aroma practically made me pass out.

‘Oh, love,’ I said.

She said, ‘I want you to be with me, Karim, and I’ve done a lot for you. But I can’t have people – men – telling me what to do. If Pyke wants me to be with him, then I must follow my desire. There’s so much for him to teach me. And please, please, don’t ever follow me around again.’

The doors of the train were closing, but I managed to nip through them. As I walked up the platform I resolved to break with Eleanor. I would have to see her every day at the theatre, but I’d never address her as a lover again. It was over, then, my first real love affair. There would be others. She preferred Pyke. Sweet Gene, her black lover, London’s best mime, who emptied bed-pans in hospital soaps, killed himself because every day, by a look, a remark, an attitude, the English told him they hated him; they never let him forget they thought him a nigger, a slave, a lower being. And we pursued English roses as we pursued England; by possessing these prizes, this kindness and beauty, we stared defiantly into the eye of the Empire and all its self-regard – into the eye of Hairy Back, into the eye of the Great Fucking Dane. We became part of England and yet proudly stood outside it. But to be truly free we had to free ourselves of all bitterness and resentment, too. How was this possible when bitterness and resentment were generated afresh every day?

I’d send Eleanor a dignified note. Then I’d have to fall out of love with her. That was the rough part. Everything in life is organized around people falling in love with each other. Falling is easy; but no one tells you how to fall out of love. I didn’t know where to begin.

For the rest of the day I wandered around Soho and sat through about ten porn films. For a week after that I must have gone into some kind of weird depression and sulk and social incapacity, because I cared nothing for what should have been the greatest evening of my life – the opening of the play.

In these days before the opening I didn’t talk to the other actors. The intimacy Pyke had engendered now seemed like a drug which had temporarily given us the impression of affection and support but had now worn off, returning only in occasional flashbacks, like LSD. I took direction from Pyke but I didn’t get in his car again. I’d admired him so much, his talent, daring and freedom from convention, but now I was confused. Hadn’t he betrayed me? Or perhaps he was helping to educate me in the way the world worked. I didn’t know. Anyway, Eleanor must have told him what had happened between us because he kept away from me and was merely polite. Marlene wrote to me once, saying, ‘Where are you, sweetheart? Won’t you come see me again, sweet Karim?’ I didn’t reply. I was sick of theatre people and the whole play; I was turning numb. What happened to me didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes I felt angry, but most of the time I felt nothing; I’d never felt so much nothing before.

The dressing rooms were full of flowers and cards, and there were more kisses in an hour than in the whole of Paris in a day. There were TV and radio interviews, and a journalist asked me what the main events of my life had been. I was photographed several times beside barbed-wire. (I noticed that photographers seemed to love barbed-wire.) I was living intensely in my mind, trying to keep my eyes off Eleanor, trying not to hate the other actors too much.

Then, suddenly, this was it, the night of nights, and I was on stage alone in the full glare of the lights, with four hundred white English people looking at me. I do know that lines that sounded overfamiliar and meaningless to me, and came out of my mouth with all the resonance of, ‘Hallo, how are you today?’ were invested with life and meaning by the audience, so much so that the evening was a triumph and I was – I have this on good authority, that of the critics – hilarious and honest. At last.

After the show I drank off a pint of Guinness in the dressing room and dragged myself out into the foyer. There I saw, right in front of me, a strange and unusual sight, especially as I’d invited no one to the opening.

If I’d been in a film I would have rubbed my eyes to indicate that I didn’t believe what I was seeing. Mum and Dad were talking to each other and smiling. It’s not what you expect of your parents. There, among the punk sophisticates and bow-ties and shiny shoes and bare-backed women, was Mum, wearing a blue and white dress, blue hat and brown sandals. Standing nearby was my brother, little Allie. All I could think was how small and shy my mum and dad looked, how grey-haired and fragile they were, and how the distance they were standing apart looked unnatural. You go all your life thinking of your parents as these crushing protective monsters with infinite power over you, and then there’s a day when you turn round, catch them unexpectedly, and they’re just weak, nervous people trying to get by with each other.

Eva came over to me with a drink and said, ‘Yes, it’s a happy sight, isn’t it.’ Eva and I stood there together and she talked about the play. ‘It was about this country,’ she said. ‘About how callous and bereft of grace we’ve become. It blew away the self-myth of tolerant, decent England. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.That’s how I knew it was good. I judge all art by its effect on my neck.’

‘I’m glad it did that, Eva,’ I said. I could see she was in a bad state. I didn’t know what to say. Anyway, Shadwell was lurking nearby, waiting for her to finish with me. And all the time Eva’s eyes wouldn’t keep still – not that they ever moved anywhere near Mum and Dad, though that would be their natural resting place. There they would devour. When she turned back to Shadwell he smiled at me and started to speak. ‘I am ravished but resistant because …’ he began. I looked at Mum and Dad once more. ‘They still love each other, can’t you see that?’ I said to Eva. Or perhaps I didn’t say it; perhaps I just thought it. Sometimes you can’t tell when you’ve said something or just had it in your head.

I moved away, and found Terry standing at the bar with a woman who didn’t look like the rest of the scented and parading first-nighters. Terry didn’t introduce me to her. He didn’t want to acknowledge her. He didn’t shake my hand. So she said, ‘I’m Yvonne, a friend of Matthew Pyke, and a police officer based in North London. Sergeant Monty and I’ – and she giggled – ‘were just discussing police procedures.’

‘Were you, Terry?’ I hadn’t seen Terry looking like this before, this upset; he kept shaking his head as if he had water in his ears. He wouldn’t look at me. I was worried about him. I touched the side of his head. ‘What’s wrong, Monty?’

‘Don’t call me that, you cunt. I’m not Monty. I am Terry and I am disturbed. I’ll tell you what it is. I wish it had been me on that stage. It could have been me. I deserved it, OK? But it was you. OK? So why am I playing a rucking policeman?’

I moved away from him. He’d feel better tomorrow. But that wasn’t the end of it. ‘Hey, hey, where are you going?’ he said. He was following me. ‘There’s something for you to do,’ he said. ‘Will you do it? You said you would.’

Forcibly, he led me to one side, away from everyone, so we wouldn’t be overheard. He held my arm. He was hurting me. My arm was going numb. I didn’t move away.

‘It’s now,’ he said. ‘We’re giving you the call.’

‘Not tonight,’ I said.

‘Not tonight? Why not tonight? What’s tonight to you? A big deal?’

I shrugged. ‘All right.’

I said I’d do it if I could. I knew what he was on about. I wasn’t about to be a coward. I knew who to hate. He said, ‘The Party requires funds right now. Go to two people and ask them for money.’

‘How much?’ I said.

‘We’ll leave that to you.’

I sniggered. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ he shouted. ‘Just watch all that fucking lip!’ Then he laughed and looked mockingly at me. This was a different Terry. ‘As much as you can get.’

‘So it’s a test?’

‘Hundreds,’ he said. ‘We want hundreds of pounds. Ask them. Push them. Rip them off. Steal their furniture. They can afford it. Get what you can. OK?’

‘Yes.’

I walked away. I’d had enough. But he took my arm again, the same arm. ‘Where the fuck are you going now?’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Don’t bring me down.’

He was angry, but I never got angry. I didn’t care what happened.

‘But how can you get the money if you don’t know the names of the parties involved?’

‘OK. What are the names?’ I asked.

He jerked me around again until I was facing the wall. I could no longer see my parents; I could only see the wall and Terry. His teeth were clenched. ‘It’s class war,’ he said.

‘I know that.’

His voice dropped. ‘Pyke is one. Eleanor is the other.’

I was astonished. ‘But they’re my friends.’

‘Yeah, so they should be friendly.’

‘Terry, no.’

‘Yes, Karim.’

He turned away and looked around the crowded restaurant area. ‘A nice bunch of people. Drink?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

I nodded.

‘See you then, Karim.’

‘Yeah.’

We separated. I walked about. I knew a lot of people but I hardly recognized them. Unfortunately, within a minute, I found myself standing in front of the one person I wanted to avoid – Changez. There would be debts to pay now. I was for it. I’d been so nervous about this that a couple of days earlier I’d tried to stop him coming, saying to Jamila, ‘I don’t think Changez will enjoy this evening.’ ‘In that case I must bring him,’ she said, characteristically. Now Changez embraced me and slammed me on the back. ‘Very good plays and top playing,’ he said.

I looked at him suspiciously. I didn’t feel at all well. I wanted to be somewhere else. I don’t know why, I felt this was some kind of snide trick. I was for it. They were out to get me tonight.

‘Yeah, you look happy, Changez. What’s brought on this ecstasy?’

‘But surely you will have guessed, my Jamila is expecting.’ I looked at him blankly. ‘We are having a baby.’

‘Your baby?’

‘You bloody fool, how could that be without sexual intercourse? You know very well I haven’t had the extent of that privilege.’

‘Exactly, dear Prudence. That’s what I thought.’

‘So by Simon she is expecting. But we will all share in it.’

‘A communal baby?’

Changez grunted his agreement. ‘Belonging to the entire family of friends. I’ve never been so happy.’

That was enough for me, thank you very much. I would piss off, go home. But before I could, Changez reached out his thick paw, the good hand. And I jumped back. Here we go, he’s going to smash me, I thought, a fellow Indian in the foyer of a white theatre!

‘Come a little closer, top actor,’ he said. ‘And listen to my criticism. I am glad in your part you kept it fundamentally autobiographical and didn’t try the leap of invention into my character. You realized clearly that I am not a person who could be successfully impersonated. Your word of honour is honourable after all. Good.’

I was glad to see Jamila beside me; I hoped she’d change the subject. But who was that with her? Surely it was Simon? What had happened to his face? One of Simon’s eyes was bandaged; the cheek below it was dressed; and half his head was wrapped in lint. Jamila looked grave, even when I congratulated her twice on the baby. She just eyed me steadily, as if I were some kind of criminal rapist. What was her fucking problem, that’s what I wanted to know.

‘What’s your problem?’

‘You weren’t there,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe it. You just didn’t show up.’

Where wasn’t I?

‘Where?’ I said.

‘Do I have to remind you? At the demonstration, Karim.’

‘I couldn’t make it, Jammie. I was rehearsing. How was it? I hear it was effective and everything.’

‘Other people from the cast of your play were there. Simon’s a friend of Tracey’s. She was there, right at the front.’

She looked at Simon. I looked at Simon. It was impossible to say what expression he had on his face, as so much of his face was a goner at the moment.

‘That’s how it was. A bottle in the face. Where are you going as a person, Karim?’

‘Over there,’ I said.

I was leaving, I was getting out, when Mum came up to me. She smiled and I kissed her. ‘I love you so much,’ she said.

‘Wasn’t I good, eh, Mum?’

‘You weren’t in a loin-cloth as usual,’ she said. ‘At least they let you wear your own clothes. But you’re not an Indian. You’ve never been to India. You’d get diarrhoea the minute you stepped off that plane, I know you would.’

‘Why don’t you say it a bit louder,’ I said. ‘Aren’t I part Indian?’

‘What about me?’ Mum said. ‘Who gave birth to you? You’re an Englishman, I’m glad to say.’

‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’m an actor. It’s a job.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘Be what you are.’

‘Oh yeah.’

She looked across at Dad, who was now with Eva. Eva was talking angrily to him. Dad looked sheepish, but he took it; he didn’t answer back. He saw us and lowered his eyes. ‘She’s giving him a thick ear,’ Mum said. ‘Silly old cow – it’ll do no good with a stubborn arse like him.’

‘Go to the Ladies and blow your nose,’ I said.

‘I better,’ she said.

At the door I stood on a chair and overlooked the crowd of potential skeletons. In eighty years the lot of us would be dead. We lived, having no choice, as if that were not so, as if we were not alone, as if there would not come a moment when each of us would see that our lives were over, that we were driving without brakes towards a brick wall. Eva and Dad were still talking; Ted and Jean were talking; Marlene and Tracey were talking; Changez and Simon and Allie were talking; and none of them had much need for me now. Out I went.

In comparison with their fetid arses and poisonous talk, the night air was mild as milk. I opened my leather jacket and unbuttoned my fly and let my prick feel the wind. I walked towards the shitty river Thames, that tide of turds polluted with jerks who lived on boats and men who liked rowing. I got into this invigorating walking rhythm for a while, until I realized I was being followed by some kind of little creature whom I spotted a few yards behind me, walking calmly along with her hands in her pockets. I didn’t give a fuck.

I wanted to think about Eleanor, and how painful it was to see her every day when all I wanted was to be back with her. I know I had hoped that my indifference would revive her interest in me, that she missed me and would ask me back to her place for more steamed cabbage and a last kiss of her thighs. But in my letter I’d asked her to keep away from me; that’s exactly what she was doing, and it didn’t seem to bother her. Perhaps I would try and talk to her one last time.

My curiosity about the person behind me was too much to bear, so further along the river I concealed myself in a pub doorway and jumped out, half naked, on the creature, shouting, ‘Who are you? Why are you following me!’ When I let her go she was unperturbed, unafraid and smiling.

‘I admired your performance,’ she said as we walked along. ‘You made me laugh. I just wanted to tell you. And you have the nicest face. Those lips. Wow.’

‘Yeah? You like me?’

‘Yes, and I wanted to be with you a few minutes. You don’t mind me following you, do you? I could see you wanted to leave. You looked terrified. Angry. What a state: phew. You don’t want to be alone now, do you?’

‘Don’t worry about anything – it’s good to have a friend.’

God, I sounded a fool. But she took my arm and we walked along the river, past William Morris’s house and towards Hogarth’s Tomb.

‘It’s odd that someone else had the same idea as me,’ said the woman, whose name was Hilary.

‘What idea?’

‘To follow you,’ she said.

I turned, and saw Heater standing there, not making any effort to conceal himself. I greeted him with a scream which rose from my stomach and flew across the air like a jet. Janov himself would have applauded.

‘What d’you want, Heater! Why don’t you fuck off and die of cancer, you fat, ugly, pseudy cunt?’

He adjusted his position so that he stood solidly with his feet apart, his weight evenly distributed. He was ready for me. He wanted to fight.

‘I’m coming for you, Paki cunt! I don’t like ya! An’ you lot have been playing with my Eleanor. You an’ that Pyke.’

Hilary took my hand. She was calm. ‘Why don’t we just run?’ she said.

‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘OΚ.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

I ran towards Heater and mounted him by stepping on his knee, grabbing him by the lapels and using the velocity to bounce my forehead against his nose in the way I’d been taught at school. Thank God for education. He wheeled away, holding his nose on to his face. Then Hilary and I were running and shouting; we were holding each other and kissing, and it seemed that blood was everywhere; it was just pouring off us. I’d forgotten that Heater had learned at school never to go anywhere without razor-blades sewn into the back of his lapels.