Something to Tell You

  Henry had brought the piece round to me for discussion. It was strong polemical writing, penned in a fury, and was given half a page in a liberal Sunday paper by the editor, a friend of Valerie’s. What surprised Henry was the number of friends and colleagues who rang to say how much they admired his stand and what he’d said.

  After the piece appeared, he was asked onto Newsnight; he spoke on the radio and wrote again to the paper. He had plenty to say, and found that people considered him intelligent and eloquent. He’d taught, but he’d never much talked about politics, or even the theatre, in public, because he feared losing his temper and saying something insulting or crazy. I told him he was respected because he wasn’t some penny-a-line hack or raddled politician. I hated to say the word, it had become so devalued by pomposity and contempt, but Henry was an intellectual, and doing what they were supposed to do.

  I said to Lisa, “A lot of people admire your father. If we’re in a war, he’s rebelling with his words.”

  “Great, he’s telling everyone he’s against the war. How brave. He’s leaving a party he should never have joined.” She was speaking quickly. “Why doesn’t he actually support the insurgents in Iraq, and the bombers and resisters around the world? Why doesn’t he accept the idea of the struggle moving to Britain? Everyone says—even the government—that the response is coming, that we’re going to get it here, in London. Blair has brought retribution on himself and on us. Even one of your politicians, Robin Cook, said we’d have been better advised bringing peace to Palestine than war to Iraq.

  “Why doesn’t Dad say that our corruption and materialism are so decadent that we have actively earned all that we have coming?” She was shaking her head, as though to clear her mind of fury. At last she said, “I’m sick of what I have to say. Why don’t you tell me what you are doing at the moment?”

  “I was just writing, for months,” I said. “About a girl. But going nowhere, you know.” She seemed to nod. “Then I found a subject. It emerged. Or it was there all the time. Guilt.”

  “Yes?”

  “The notion of. How it works. Or what it does. The Greeks. Dostoevsky. Freud. Nietzsche. “There is no feast without cruelty,” Nietzsche writes. Guilt and responsibility. Conscience. All the important things.”

  “Why such a subject? Do you have a lot on your mind?”

  “Well, yes. It’s difficult to escape. Among other things I had an argument with my son.”

  I told her about it. The previous Sunday, Rafi had reluctantly come to spend the day with me. I was lying on the sofa reading the paper; we were listening to music; Rafi was on the floor, sitting at my feet. He’d been sitting there sullenly, playing with one of his lighted machines. Occasionally he gave me the finger or, if I was lucky, two fingers. When he walked past me, he liked to give me a shove, pretending it was an accident. Was I like this? Probably. Miriam certainly was. Being a good parent means bearing this, up to a point.

  Now he began to pinch me, hard. I was either ignoring him or paying him too much attention. I told him to stop, several times, but he was enjoying it, giggling and smirking. “You can’t take it, eh?” he said. “Weak man. I’m never coming here again, you haven’t even got Sky. We have to go to the pub or to your sister’s to watch football. It’s shit here. Can’t you get a girlfriend?” Pinch, pinch.

  I drew back my foot and kicked him on the top of his head, hard. He didn’t make a sound, his head just dropped. He looked up at me, his brown eyes uncomprehending, as if he’d suffered the most tragic betrayal possible. “My head is numb,” he said. He got up and screamed. “I can’t feel my head!”

  He ran to lock himself in the bathroom. He was hurt, but not enough to forget his mobile. He phoned his mother many times. When I got him out of there, he spent the rest of the day in a cupboard, and I had to stand outside, begging him to come out, muttering to myself, “Once, you little fucker, for years I gave up my sexuality to be with you, now be nice to me!”

  In the end, I left him to it and went back to the newspapers. That evening, when he went home, I saw he’d pissed in the cupboard. He informed Josephine I’d stamped on his head, trying to kill him.

  I rang Josephine to apologise and explain, anticipating a thrashing. I told her the boy had learned what fathers can do, what monsters they might turn into, when pushed. He had sought my limit and had found it. I said I was ashamed; at the same time I was defensive. She was sympathetic. Since she had been working—and she was sure this was the reason—he had attacked her on a few occasions, pulling her hair and frightening her. Other times he ran away into the street, not returning for an hour, giving her a fright. Now that he was becoming difficult, we had to stand together. If she and I were to speak again—and we both wanted to, I was sure of it—he had to be the conduit; we could only love one another through him.

  It gratified me, this solidarity. I had been rendered sleepless by hurting him. But he had a strong ego. He didn’t bear grudges; he was too interested in the world. The next time I saw him he was trying to learn to play his electric guitar, which I had to tune for him. Meanwhile he wanted me to hear the new music he liked, which he played through his computer while giving me little glances to gauge my approval.

  Lisa said, “And here’s me—still arguing with my father.”

  I said, “Lisa, why don’t you cheer me up by reading to me?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I want to hear the poem. Now you’ve dragged me all this fucking way in the rain, you might as well do something for me.”

  She spat out her cigarette, ground it into the floor and began to read without enthusiasm or emphasis; her face twitched and her tongue flicked. After about ten minutes she stopped.

  I thanked her and said, “Haven’t you published before? I have some vague memory of you saying you had.”

  At Oxford, I seemed to recall, she read English and wrote a thesis on “Madness and Women’s Poetry.”

  “Yes, in student papers. No one noticed.”

  I said, “You want me to show these to someone?”

  “Suppose they want to publish them? I can’t be an artist.”

  “You might be one already.”

  “My parents are snobs. So-called artists came to the house all the time. I refuse to worm my way into Mummy and Daddy’s affections that way.”

  “Loving you has to be difficult?”

  “Why not? They didn’t even want me to become a social worker. And when I became one, they took no interest, they never asked me about my cases.”

  I said, “Use a pseudonym.”

  “For my cases?”

  “I didn’t mean that, but it’s a good thought.” I sighed and stood up. “I’m going.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve asked too much of you. I’m interested in what you think. I can’t find anyone to talk to—someone who hears me right. I dream of the sea, over and over.”

  “You want a child?”

  “Shit, you foolish man, I hope not. You’ve gone too far.”

  I was laughing and I could see she wanted to kiss me, and I let her, tasting this stranger standing in front of me with her tongue in the front of my mouth. When she pushed her body against mine and I reached for her breast, I wondered if I might respond, if there might be something there. She slid down my body. I let her blow me, which I considered some recompense for my doomed shoes.

  She said, “I didn’t think the poem would be enough for you. We’re both lonely. Sleep here, you can smell the river and hear the rain.”

  “Not tonight.”

  She got up. “I’m not young or pretty enough for you.”

  “And vice versa.”

  She dropped the writing pad in a large plastic bag and gave it to me. I had opened the door when she said, “Take this as well.” I guessed it was the Hand, wrapped in several layers of newspaper, still in its frame. I shoved it into the side of the bag.

  The rain fell like nails. The sludge had thickened. Lisa’s was the only shed now lighted
, and it was a desolate place. I wondered whether the bag might be porous in some way, thus destroying the Hand.

  With mud sucking at my feet and my trousers soaked up to the knee, I was trudging across a waterlogged allotment in the dark, hauling a masterpiece and some poems in a Tesco carrier. It was also the night Henry was accompanying Bushy to his second gig, a private party. A rich man was entertaining some business associates with a bunch of hookers. Henry had been afraid Bushy would play too much of the “mad stuff,” which he had been sure to warn him against.

  Bushy wanted to do the gig without my help, but they’d suggested I join them. Earlier, I’d considered getting a cab and going over for a drink, but I would resemble a drowned jackass. By the time I’d walked home, I was exhausted.

  I woke up at two. At three I unwrapped the Hand and looked at it, placing it here and there in the room. It wasn’t large, about 14 by 16 inches, and on grey paper, luminous with intelligence, tenderness and beauty. Ingres, for one, hadn’t been wasting his time. I placed it on the mantelpiece next to the whore’s Christmas card.

  Just before I went to bed, I checked my phone. There was a peculiar message from Bushy, who should have had better things to do that night. “Info arrived,” it said.

  Next morning Wolf came to collect his washing, which he’d put in my machine. He came in and out of my place as though we were close friends. I should have stopped it; but I’d thought he wouldn’t return. He had said he didn’t like to visit me, since the first thing you saw, on entering the hall, was yourself, in the coffin of a full-length mirror.

  It wasn’t until almost lunchtime, when I was in the middle of a particularly troublesome case—a woman had taken to punching herself, like the guy in Fight Club—that I realised the Hand had gone.

  Wolf, of course, had some instinct for these things. He’d have known it was a good picture; how good, I’m not sure. I rang him and wondered whether he might be intending to return it anytime soon.

  Even as I put the phone down, he was cackling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I had been intending to ring Henry to say I’d got the Hand for him. He would be relieved, and we would continue with our friendship as normal. Now it was my duty to explain that I had indeed retrieved the picture—and had spent some time helping his daughter, at Valerie’s request. Except that there had been a glitch.

  I explained, “The Hand has been taken from my flat by a psychotic patient.”

  “Taken? You say taken?”

  “Yes, taken. Sorry about that, pal.”

  “Taken for good?”

  “Maybe. How would I know? Do the mad explain their long-term intentions?”

  “Taken by which madman, for God’s sake?” He began to yell. “Who was it?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “Are you serious? You are telling me there is a lunatic running about London with my wife’s best Ingres stuffed in his backpack?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you let them? Is this your rebellion—your hatred—of me? You’ve finally turned, have you?”

  “Certainly the Hand has been severed.”

  “Is it coming back?”

  “Who knows? As Lenin might have said,” I added, “one step forward, two steps back.”

  The noises on the other end of the line were extraordinary. I turned off the phone.

  After I’d finished for the day, Henry came by. We had argued often, and sulked and disputed vigorously, enjoying much of it, but not all. Both of us relished a good rumble, though we had never fallen out. Now I didn’t want to hear another word about the Hand.

  I must have come to the door with some leery belligerence, because he laid his hand on my shoulder and said quickly, “Don’t worry, cool it, I’m not going to bring it up. There are more important things than pencil marks on a piece of paper.”

  We strolled past the line of busy pubs, with drinkers sitting outside in the sun, towards the bridge at Barnes and then back along the towpath towards Hammersmith Bridge. On the opposite side of the river path was a deserted bird sanctuary with a bench on a bank high above it. We sat there for a while.

  “I wanted to see you. I’d have joined you last night,” I said, “if I hadn’t been dealing with your family.”

  “I’m grateful for that,” he said. “It was fun. There was a panic early on because the man holding the party phoned to call it off. As always in life, there weren’t enough girls. But being in the agent business, I could be of assistance.”

  “You?”

  “Bushy called in at the Cross Keys, and he came along to the party with three Eastern European grinders who were more than willing to have money put their way. But what do you know, they were accompanied by their manager—a Mr. Wolf.”

  “Big Bad?”

  “You know him. Mr. Wolf stayed for the evening, feeling his charges needed security. He was extremely pleased by the way it went.”

  “In what way?”

  “He had a briefcase full of charlie, and there were plenty of takers. Soon the girls and the guys were lost in a blizzard of it. If I hadn’t called a halt to the whole thing around three, I think we’d still be there.”

  “How was Bushy?”

  “He wasn’t convinced he could play without you on hand. I had to tell him he was helping me out, that he was a staff member rather than a star. That seemed to do it.

  “But he was—for reasons he wouldn’t elaborate—wearing a white plaster on his nose, which made him resemble Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. At one point, his face turned red and his eyes started to pulsate. I don’t think anyone noticed until he started shutting one eye and letting the other pop and bulge. One of the girls went into a hyperventilation and had to be taken out and slapped, but she was a write-off for the rest of the night.” Henry went on, “Wolf’s one of your oldest friends, if not the oldest, and I’d never met him before.”

  “What did he say?”

  “As the evening went on, he told me about Valentin and Ajita and her father’s factory. I’d forgotten that you’d been involved in that. I remember reading about it at the time. I’d say that Wolf’s rather obsessed with you, isn’t he? He wants to meet up with me to talk more. Would that be okay?”

  “No.”

  “I did hear about the unsolved murder and the whole three-years-in-a-Syrian-jail thing. Don’t look so worried, none of us is clean.”

  Henry finished his drink. He was going to Miriam’s. One of the dogs was sick; she needed him there. Miriam was on her own more than she liked to admit. The children, teenagers now, stayed where they could, often with friends. One of the sweeter boys, needing to escape, had even gone to stay with Mum and Billie in the suburbs.

  I saw a lot of Miriam, particularly as she had the Sky football package I hadn’t got round to renting, but I would never sleep under her roof. She was still more than capable of “insane” behaviour: screaming, rolling around on the floor, punching the wall. At times, in her house, I could feel as though I’d been lobbed through the looking-glass and whirled back into my childhood.

  I did think of accompanying Henry, but Bushy had called me earlier. “I got the information,” he repeated. “I’m waiting for you.”

  I wondered whether it was a good idea for us to discuss this in Wolf’s workplace. But Bushy wasn’t concerned. He had other business on at the same time.

  Henry and I parted, and I walked along to Hammersmith bus station and caught a bus inside the shopping centre. It was slow progress, particularly along the Uxbridge Road. The bus, low and long, was noisy with kids playing music on their phones. It stank, with every nation seemingly represented, and I wondered if anyone would have been able to identify the city just from the inhabitants of the bus.

  Bushy, without a wrap on his nose, was at a table in the corner. Wolf, working tonight, was at the other end of the bar. The Harridan brought me over a vodka. She wanted to sit down, but I told her Bushy and I were in a meeting.

  I said, “You and Wolf had
a good night, I hear.”

  “Shrinky, you’re right,” Bushy said. “That man jus’ don’t keep still.”

  Bushy moved his chair closer to me, whispering; two old men in a pub, talking.

  I asked, “What information are you referring to?”

  He glanced around and then at me. “Don’t yer know? I bin researching around for you. Listen.”

  Bushy told me chucking-out time at the Cross Keys was still 10:30. It opened at midday and was always busy, particularly in the early evening, but it closed before most of the other local pubs. Like other dubious local businesses—minicab offices, porno shops, lap-dancing clubs and corner shops which sold alcohol out of hours—the Harridan paid off the local police but didn’t want unruly behaviour to draw unnecessary attention. At closing time, one of the Africans would drive Wolf up West.

  I learned from Bushy that, in Soho, Wolf had been working as a doorman at a fashionable club, Satori. As a natural hustler, in ten days he’d soon discovered that such work was lucrative, mainly because of the tips the door staff earned from the clamorous photographers who moved from club to club around the West End all night, earning top sums for the right picture. The photographers needed to know who was in the club—which footballer, soap star, pop singer or movie actor, the price of whose fame was a transparent life—and whether they were coked-up, drunk, copulating or all three.

  This information was passed rapidly through the club’s ecosystem, beginning with the bathroom attendants—the Africans whose night’s work it was to clean the toilets, offer towels to the celebs, clean up their shit and pick up meagre tips. They appeared to be almost invisible but were quite aware of who was smoking or snorting what. Aboveground, the bar staff, security and managers were part of this chain of associates: every drink, pass or glance was intensively monitored by numerous unnoticed eyes. Wolf and his pals also had access to the club’s CCTV system, selling the right piece of tape to the right Net dealer.