He said, ‘I love you more than enthing.’
There was a pause.
‘You’ve got to go,’ said Moshe. So he went.
9
Nana’s dentist was called Mr Gottlieb.
Mr Gottlieb practised on Cavendish Square. This might make him sound like an upper-class dentist. And he was an upper-class dentist. His practice was located next to Harley Street. But Nana did not go to Mr Gottlieb because of his location.
Mr Gottlieb had begun as a small little NHS dentist in Edgware. Then he had become an upper-class central- London private dentist. But he had said he would keep Nana on. He would keep her on because he was a family friend. It was a favour to Nana’s Papa.
In Mr Gottlieb’s waiting room there was a fish tank and a selection of magazines. Nana picked up a copy of Take a
Break from 1998. Take a Break was sticky. Nana ignored this. She started to read Take a Break. Very quickly, she started to cry.
Nana had begun to read a true story about a woman called Mandy who fell in love with a man called Alan. It turned out that Alan had motor neurone disease. This true story made Nana cry. It made her cry because, in defiance of death, Alan and Mandy had decided that they would have a child. A child would be a way of remembering Alan. And this story culminated with a deathbed scene.
I showed him an envelope. I pulled out a certificate.
‘It’s a star,’ I said. ‘It’s named after you and James.’
It was called the Alan and James Wilson star.
Alan smiled. ‘You’ll tell him all about me, won’t you?’ he asked.
I nodded.
I held his hand as he slipped away.
He was 48. James was 14 weeks old.
Then Mr Gottlieb walked in while Nana was loudly weeping, beside the mute and tropical fish.
Mr Gottlieb said, ‘Nina.’ He said, ‘Nina.’ Nana looked up at him and pushed at her face with the back of her wrist. She said, ‘No it’s. It’s.’ Mr Gottlieb said, ‘Are you okay?’ And she said, ‘Yeh I’m, I’m fine.’ Mr Gottlieb said, ‘And your father?’ And because Nana was distraught, she did not remember that Mr Gottlieb was unaware of the recent history of Papa’s illness. She cried. She wept. She tried to speak. She tried to say something like, ‘I’m scared that he’ll die.’ But weeping is not a good time to speak. It does not help you if you want to speak clearly.
Mr Gottlieb was tactful. He did not want to upset Nana any more. He did not want to press her for gory details. If Nana wanted to carry on with life as normal, then she should be allowed to do this. It was natural, he thought, that Nana should be distraught.
I do not think you should blame Mr Gottlieb too much for his assumption that Papa had died.
‘Why don’t you go home?’ said Mr Gottlieb. Yes, he sent the bereaved girl home. There was no place for teeth, thought Mr Gottlieb, in the presence of death.
He was not an ideological maniac, Mr Gottlieb. He did not overvalue a sparkling smile.
10
I am going to interrupt this story for a moment.
In 1975, Andy Warhol wrote The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). Well, he did not write it. He dictated it. Anyway, one of the things he wrote or dictated was this:
Sex is a nostalgia for when you used to want it, sometimes.
Sex is nostalgia for sex.
And I think that’s true. I think that sometimes it is true. For example, after Stacey and Henderson had broken up, Stacey met a boy she liked called Kwame. Kwame was at Middlesex University, doing a degree in Environmental Theory. Kwame was interesting. He chatted to her about fish in the North Sea. The North Sea was very polluted. This caused a lot of problems for North Sea fish. Unfortunately, however, Kwame was a smallish boy who wore silver wire- rimmed glasses. So Stacey, who was a girl with a taste for size and cool, was not particularly attracted by Kwame. But she had sex with Kwame anyway. She liked him. And she thought that sex was what she liked doing with boys she was fond of. It was what she did with Henderson.
Sex, for Stacey, was nostalgia for sex.
11
This was not just a distraction. This was not just meant to cheer you up, at the saddest point in my story. I had a more important reason.
In a very similar way to Andy and Stacey and Kwame, a few days after Nana left, Anjali was in bed with Moshe. They were nearly falling asleep.
Perhaps this surprises you. Perhaps you are surprised that Moshe and Anjali are still together.
Perhaps you think that if someone leaves a menage a trois, the relationship of the two people left behind might become uncomfortable. It would be all too obvious that they were not naturally a couple. They were just the remnants of a three. And this would put a lot of strain on the couple.
This is right in a way, I think. But it ignores one crucial detail. No one wants to admit to being two-thirds of a three. It is embarrassing. Although there is a lot of strain on the couple, neither is going to admit this. Neither is going to admit that this relationship is tricky. They both have their reasons for keeping schtum.
But what are these reasons?
Well, they can be best described in a sex scene. Yes, a sex scene. Perhaps you are getting tired of sex scenes. Let me reassure you. This is the last sex scene in this book. And it is a pleasant sex scene. Unlike many other sex scenes in this book, there is no need for it to be anatomical. It is just a nostalgic sex scene. And anyway, a nostalgic sex scene is not really a sex scene. It is not a great act of coitus.
So. Anjali was in bed with Moshe.
There was a very simple reason why Moshe was keeping schtum. It was this. He was not convinced that Anjali was an out-and-out heterosexual girl. That was why Moshe was keeping schtum. Bewildered and confused by recent developments, he had decided to wait and see.
And I am sure that Moshe was right. From a practical point of view, it was the correct course of action. Anjali was not at all sure that she was an out-and-out heterosexual girl. But she was kind. She could not explain to Moshe that Moshe was not her boyfriend. It would have made, worried Anjali, the menage seem so insincere. And Anjali also had another reason. She was lonely. She missed Nana a lot. And if you are lonely, it is much more relaxing having a person to sleep with than having no one at all.
That was why Moshe and Anjali were still together. Those were the reasons for not discussing the oddness of their relationship.
And I think there was something else too. Although Moshe and Anjali had not been happy in the menage, in fact they had been very disconsolate, that is no reason why they might not be happy as a couple. Feelings can change very quickly in a new situation. For example, I think that it is natural for two people, who have suddenly become a couple, to think that it could work out. It is natural for them to be hopeful.
People have an instinct to normalise. They are naturally optimistic, I think.
And they were both optimistic, Anjali and Moshe. After all, they liked each other. So it was possible, they thought, in secret, that they could be a couple. It was unlikely, but it was possible.
But why was this a sex scene?
Because while I have been explaining what Moshe and Anjali were feeling, they have been touching each other, quietly.
12
A week or two later, Nana and Moshe were walking up Hatton Garden, in the rain. Hatton Garden is the jewellery street in London. It is also a very Jewish street. And this is, obviously, coincidental. I rather hate Snoop Doggy Dogg, who argued once for the philological jew in jewellery. The jew in jewellery is just a phonetic coincidence.