“How have you changed?”
“I guess you’ll find out soon enough,” she replied, leaning over and kissing me on the cheek.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was a long table; I guessed that thirty people could sit around it. There were half that number present, but more Londoners kept arriving, driving up for the evening or weekend and coming in to eat.
Karen was sitting opposite Ajita, and she talked continuously, as she did when nervous. This didn’t prevent her trying to get a good look at Ajita.
Omar Ali came and sat beside me. Charlie and Karim were further down the table, with people I didn’t know. Knighthoods—that prosthetic for the middle-aged—were being discussed, and whether it was a good idea to accept one. Then the subject was whether Karim should appear on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here!
Charlie argued against it, saying Johnny Rotten had lost more than his mystique by appearing. But as Karim, after acting in British soaps, had been living in America for years, mostly playing either torturers or the tortured in bad movies, he didn’t have any mystique to lose. Charlie had, of course, already said no, and was unsure whether to regret it or not.
Meanwhile, I turned to Ajita. When, years ago, Ajita was about to masturbate me—one of our favourite pastimes—she would rub her tongue on the palm of her hand as a preparation for the work ahead, a gesture I found unconscionably exciting. Later, when we were in a class together, we’d make the gesture to one another, and giggle. Now, when she turned to me, I repeated the sign. For a moment there was no recognition, before she began to laugh, and gave me her own demonstration of the long-lost lick of love.
After supper, but while most people were taking coffee and beginning on the brandy, Mustaq joined me. “Come,” he said. “Can we talk a little?”
Mustaq and I went upstairs to a large room with a long window over-looking his land. While Mustaq gave instructions to the staff, I noticed that there were, on a side table, numerous photographs. Looking closer I realised they weren’t what I expected: George with Elton John, George with Bill Clinton and Dolce and Gabbana, the stuff everyone had in their house. No, they were family photographs, pieces of frozen time which seemed, at that moment of the uncanny, to freeze me. As I picked one up, I noticed Mustaq looking at me.
“That’s Mother.” He came over. “Did you meet her?”
“She was in India when Ajita and I were together. I wish I had met her.”
“She’s still alive, and still beautiful, though lashingly bad-tempered,” he said. “She’s been here a couple of times.”
Less than a year after her first husband’s murder, their mother had remarried in India, to the rich executive she’d been having an affair with. She often came to London, where they had a flat in Knightsbridge. She was one of those foreign women floating about Harrods and Harvey Nichols for consumables unavailable in the Third World. Did she ever go back to the house in Kent? No; she didn’t like it the first time. She didn’t suffer from nostalgia, either.
Another photograph: one I’d never expected to see again. It was me, in Mushy Peas’s bedroom in the mid-70s, before our wrestle, I guessed. I had some kind of embarrassed smirk on my face, but at least I had plenty of dark hair. I supposed that Mustaq had displayed the photograph just for me.
“Yes, you,” he said. “Fresh young meat, eh?”
“I wish I’d made more of it.”
He picked up another picture. “Him—you cannot see.”
It was Ajita I noticed first in the photograph, a little younger than when I first met her; she was standing arm-in-arm with the father I had murdered, a massive dose of adrenaline in the heart stunning him.
I could feel Mustaq looking at me as I recalled that night in the garage, trying to picture the father’s face and compare it to what I had in front of me. I had no photographs of Ajita, or of Wolf or Valentin. The only photograph I had was one of the father, cut from the newspaper, which I hadn’t seen for years, and which must have been thrown out when Mother moved.
“Do you miss him?” I asked.
Mustaq replaced the picture. “He would have hated all that I am. I can’t imagine him having supper with Alan. But maybe he’d have appreciated my wealth and success.”
“That normally brings people around.”
“Are you pleased to see my sister?”
“Thank you, Mustaq. Yes—delighted, though we haven’t spoken much yet.”
“You’ve certainly been looking at one another.”
“Indeed. Is she with her husband and children?”
“I took them all to dinner in New York. When I told her I had seen you in London, and that you were coming to the country for the weekend, she came to life. She phoned me continuously, and began to move very quickly. Though she hates to leave the house, she brought no one with her. I suspect she might be ready for an encounter. Jamal, you lucky guy, you’re all she’s been waiting for.”
“I’d better not let her down.”
Mustaq lifted my wrist and looked at it, stroking my arm ironically. “You’ve taken the watch off. What I want now is information. I know it was a long time ago, but how in God’s name did you really get that thing?”
I reached into my pocket and drew out the watch. I couldn’t look at it now without wishing I could wind it back until before the moment it was given to me. My attempted good deed had brought more hell into my life than I could handle. Mustaq’s father was a ghost who still wouldn’t take his hands from my throat and, I feared, never would. The one thing you can never kill is a name. I wanted to cry out, Will the dead never leave us alone?
I gave it to him and sighed. “You can take it.”
He looked surprised. “It’s not mine, really.”
“Nor mine, I guess. Please.”
He removed his own watch and replaced it with his father’s. Tapping it, he said, “Thank you. I have to ask you this. Why did you deny that it was my father’s?”
“I wasn’t able to say how I got it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a painful subject, Mustaq, going back a long time.”
“Painful for you or for me?”
“I will tell you. It may change your view of your father.”
“You don’t know what my view is. I don’t know what my view is. And I am almost an adult.”
“Okay.” I said. “Now?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. Think how many years I’ve waited.”
The others were coming upstairs and quickly picking glasses of champagne from silver trays. Mustaq followed me across the room to a quieter spot, where we sat down together. The story took only a moment to make up.
I said, “This was not long before he died. I was at your house with your sister when your father came home. I couldn’t let on that I was her boyfriend, so I said I was waiting for you. He laughed and told me I was wasting time.”
“He said that a lot.”
“He wanted me to help him with a box of papers he couldn’t carry himself. Upstairs in your bedroom, in that small dressing room just off it, full of suitcases, he took off the watch. He told me it was valuable, it was a gift, he was giving it to me. I said I didn’t want it, but he insisted on stuffing it into my pocket. I noticed his trousers were open. He was touching himself. He took hold of me and forced me to caress him. Then we brought the box downstairs. That’s all,” I said. “I’m sorry I had to tell you.” While he was thinking, I said, “Mustaq, did he touch you?”
“No! Me—never. Why are you saying that? He didn’t go that way. He hated homos!” He stood up suddenly and stared out of the window. “For fuck’s sake—why are you telling me this! I have to consider it all now!” He was staring at me; his tone became absurdly gracious. “And I have to apologise to you. On behalf of my family, I am sorry for what my father did to you.”
“Will you speak to Ajita about it?”
“She’s fragile. She has a lot of depression, at least two weeks a month she is almost catatonic, and I re
ally worry about her.” Then he said, “Do you know whether he did this to anyone else?” I said nothing. “Jamal, in your professional experience, do people who do these things do them to others?”
“My answer will be of no use to you. It depends on the subject’s history. Often, people do it for a particular period in their lives, after a separation or when they are depressed, and never again. I think we’re talking about a version of incest rather than paedophilia. They are different.”
He wasn’t listening. “The damned filthy man, with his bloody secrets. Do you hate him?”
“Me? No. It did disturb me. It shook me up. I guess it might have helped me in the direction I was going—to analysis. It spoiled my week but not my life.”
“Now I’m suffocating!” he said. I noticed his hands were on his own throat, as though he was trying to strangle himself. “I need to get out. I must walk freely for a bit.”
I watched him hurry out of the room. Alan went to him, but Mustaq brushed him aside. Alan looked at me and shrugged. I took another glass of champagne and wondered where Ajita was.
She wasn’t outside. From the window I could see Mustaq in the illuminated grounds, pacing, his arms thrashing. After a while he seemed to make up his mind about something and disappeared into another part of the house.
“Look,” he said, when he reappeared. He was tapping his arm.
“What is it?”
“I’ve already had an allergic reaction to the watch. My wrist is red and a little swollen. There’s a…throbbing!” I looked closely but could see nothing. He took the watch off and put it in his pocket. He said, “I went to Ajita’s room and opened up to her. I couldn’t stop myself. I told her what you said about our father. I wanted her to know. I asked what she thought. You’re lucky.”
“In what way?”
“She believed you, saying you were always a trustworthy person, with no reason to make up a story about our father.”
He went on, “The weird thing was: I thought it would devastate her, to learn Father was like that. Wouldn’t such knowledge do that to a person? To me it was an explosion. I watched her closely, and she didn’t seem shocked or even surprised.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sorry?”
I said, “What sort of man was your father?”
“He was strict. I think I mean stern. There was always reason to be afraid of him. But he wasn’t religious and never prayed. He’d have despised those mad mullahs and extreme Islam fascist wallahs. When Papa was alive, intelligent people thought superstition was dying out. Of course he hated the whites, particularly after his experience with the documentary. They were tricky, and their racism was deep.
“But there was a barrier between him and me. Since before I was eleven I suspected I might be gay.”
“You did?”
“The other boys called me a fat Paki bummer. I guess that just about clarified everything. One of our cousins told Papa I wanted to be a dancer or hairdresser. Papa had already noticed I had a weak handshake. So his response—that fags should be killed—made it obvious that this was not only unacceptable but a crime.
“I expect you know it, but I was in love with you and couldn’t wait for you to visit. I wondered what you wanted me to wear, what you wanted me to be. I read all those books thinking you might decide to test me on them. At the same time, whenever I was alone with Papa—only when we watched cricket or boxing together—I asked his advice about women. ‘How do you get a girl to be nice to you? Should you kiss her on the first date? What about marriage, should you bring it up sooner or later?’ I knew he liked to talk about such things. The stupid, indirect shit the straights have to go through. What’s it laughably called—seduction? At least it made my father feel like a big man.”
“But never enough of one?”
“How could he be? All the time we lived in that house he was anxious about keeping the factory going. He said his only ambition outside work was to walk across Africa. But the strike made him so crazy he started to do weird stuff.”
“What sort?”
“I’d hear him walking about at night. Doors banging, groans, shouts even—”
“Do you know why?”
“He was drinking. Staggering around blotto. He’d drink half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s when he came home after work, and finish the rest by morning. When I opened my door in the morning, he’d be on the floor. I was scared to come out of my room. Ajita and I had to pull off his dressing gown and pyjamas and drag him into the shower. It was hard for her, she had to do everything.” He wiped his eyes. “Did she tell you about it?”
“A little.”
“I’d throw the bottle away before I went to school. No wonder all I learned was how to masturbate. It was worse for Ajita.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Ajita adored her father, Jamal. I’ve never seen two closer people. As a girl she’d wait by the door for him to come home. In the evenings, while Mum was cooking, she’d oil and comb his hair, walk on his back, wash him in the bath. He’d tell her stories about India and Africa. I’m telling you, I was left out. When he was killed, I’ve never seen anyone more devastated. She hardly spoke for three months.”
“And your mother had already gone away.”
“Yes.”
“Had she left your father?”
He said, “No one said that. But how could she be with him? She considered him a failure. He thought if he made enough money she’d come back. One day, according to Father, we’d be free of anxiety, because we’d be rich. Before then he had no time for anything else, for sport, culture, nature—love, even. He didn’t know what we were doing at school.” He leaned towards me. “I had a voodoo doll—of Father—which I stuck little nails into. I was convinced I’d killed him!”
“You wanted all the credit.”
“If he were alive today, he would disapprove of everything about me. I have to be glad he’s dead—which is difficult…”
I said, “You remember when you asked me to go away with you?”
“Oh, Jamal, I’m so embarrassed!”
“Why don’t we run away?” Mustaq said to me the next time I went to the house. Last time we’d wrestled; now he told me there was something he just had to show me in his bedroom. “What is it?” I asked. “My haircut,” he replied. “David Jones would be proud of you,” I said.
He was standing close to me, as he liked to, touching, if not rubbing, my arm. “I know where my father keeps his money. He’s got thick wads of it in an envelope under his socks.”
“What for?”
“He often says we may need to leave in a hurry again. The racists might come for us.”
“You’re the one who wants to leave in a hurry. But why?”
“It’s not much good here, is it?”
He said this with such sadness I’d have kissed him if I hadn’t feared he’d kiss me.
“Why with me?” I asked.
“You’re the most exciting person I’ve met.”
“Look,” I said, startled, “let me give you something—
I went to my college bag. Apart from books on philosophy, I was carrying music magazines, a couple of novels and an anthology of Beat poets. I gave them to him.
“Feed your head, man,” I said. “I know you already have music, but I’ll drop more books and mags off tomorrow. You know what you want to do when you grow up?”
“A fashion designer,” he said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Like who? Your sister?”
“She knows already.”
“Your father, then. I think I will tell him.” I pretended to move off.
He grabbed me, “Don’t do that. Keep quiet, please! I’ll do anything for you—”
“Only joking,” I said. “Why are you so afraid? Does he hurt you?”
In the weeks after this conversation, I took a lot of stuff to Mustaq. He read so quickly and gratefully I was soon ransacking my bedroom for books I’d bought in London. It gave
me a reason to visit Ajita, to sit around in her house, but Mustaq was so pleased by everything I took him I began to see that helping others was a pleasure.
“Jamal,” he said now, “I am unbelievably angry with Papa. He did an inexcusable thing, and tried to give you a watch in exchange!”
He went on, “But I am not innocent. I have sinned too. I will think of it when I want to hit Papa in the face.”
“What did you do?”
Mustaq was approaching the top of his arc as a drama queen, being both amused and almost rigid with self-pity at the same time, as he compulsively rubbed his eyes and caressed his forehead, his voice an urgent whisper.
“The night Father was killed I was having sex for the first time. One of my cousins, sleeping in the next room, came in to initiate me. I was ashamed it had taken me so long. She thought I should see a pussy, which I was curious about. It did nothing for me, and was like trying to force a slug into a slot machine. Of course I felt guilty. Of all possible nights…why did it have to be that one?
“Ajita and I talked about going home that evening. But she was too tired to make the journey. If we’d returned, we might have caught the murderers at their work. We might have saved Dad. We might even have been killed.”
“Yes.”
“I lost my virginity at last, but not really. Apart from with you, I hadn’t felt a passion for anyone yet. That didn’t happen until later, when we were in India, and the very, very bad thing occurred.”
“What was it?”
“I fell in love with a composer, a songwriter, older than me, in his mid-twenties, well dressed, good-looking, elegant. Jamal, note this: he knew how to be. He made music for films, discos, fashion shows. Really he was a genius. Far more talented than me, writing music as easily as others speak. Like some heterosexuals, he liked being admired by a gay man. I was his groupie, and he enjoyed my questions, my fascination with him. But it went too far…” He went on, “I loved him so much I married his sister.”
“Great idea.”