Whenever they had these truth sessions Dad took care to take advantage of Ted. ‘He can talk and work at the same time, can’t he?’ said Dad as Ted, sometimes in tears, inserted rawl-plugs into brick as he made a shelf for Dad’s Oriental books, or sanded a door, or tiled the bathroom in exchange for Dad listening to him from an aluminium garden chair. ‘Don’t commit suicide until you’ve finished that floor, Ted,’ he’d say.
Tonight Dad didn’t linger over Gin and Tonic. The room was still and silent. Dad went into a silence too, looking straight ahead of him. At first it was a little silence. But on and on it went, becoming a big silence: nothing was followed by nothing, which was followed quite soon by more nothing as he sat there, his eyes fixed but full of care. My head started to sweat. Bubbles of laughter rose in my throat. I wondered if he were going to con them and sit there for an hour in silence (perhaps just popping out one mystical phrase such as, ‘Dried excrement sits on the pigeon’s head’) before putting his car coat on and tramping off back to his wife, having brought the Chislehurst bourgeoisie to an exquisite understanding of their inner emptiness. Would he dare?
At last he started out on his rap, accompanying it this time with a rattling orchestra of hissing, pausing and gazing at the audience. And he hissed and paused and gazed at the audience so quietly the poor bastards had to lean forward to hear. But there was no slacking; their ears were open.
‘In our offices and places of work we love to tell others what to do. We denigrate them. We compare their work unfavourably with our own. We are always in competition. We show off and gossip. Our dream is of being well treated and we dream of treating others badly …’
Behind Dad the door slowly opened. A couple stood there – a tall young man with short, spiky hair dyed white. He wore silver shoes and a shiny silver jacket. He looked like a spaceman. The girl with him was dowdy in comparison. She was about seventeen, wearing a long hippie smock, a skirt that trailed to the ground, and hair to her waist. The door closed and they were gone; no one was disturbed. Everyone listened to Dad, apart from Jean, who tossed her hair about as if to keep him away. When she glanced at Ted for a sign of support she received none: he was absorbed too.
Like a stage-manager pleased that his production is going well and knowing there is no more to be done, I slipped out of the room through the french windows. The last words I heard were, ‘We must find an entirely new way of being alive.’
It was Dad’s presence that extracted the noise from people’s heads, rather than anything in particular he said. The peace and calm and confidence he exuded made me feel as if I were composed of air and light as I drifted through Carl and Marianne’s silent, perfumed rooms, sometimes sitting down and staring into the distance, other times just strolling around. I became more intensely aware of both sounds and silence; everything looked sharper. There were some camellias in an art nouveau vase, and I found myself staring at them in wonderment. Dad’s repose and concentration had helped me find a new and surprising appreciation of the trees in the garden as I looked at objects without association or analysis. The tree was form and colour, not leaves and branches. But, slowly, the freshness of things began to fade; my mind speeded up again and thoughts crowded in. Dad had been effective and I was pleased. Yet the enchantment wasn’t over: there was something else – a voice. And the voice was speaking poetry to me as I stood there, in Carl and Marianne’s hall. Every word was distinct, because my mind was so empty, so clear. It went:
‘ ’Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be?
Ο wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise? because ’tis light?
Did we lie downe, because ’twas night?
Love which in spight of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despight of light keepe us together.’
It was a rich, male voice, which came, not from above me, as I first thought – I was not being directly addressed by an angel – but from one side. I followed it until I came to a conservatory where I could see the boy with the silver hair sitting with the girl on a swing seat. He was talking to her – no, he was reading to her, from a small leather-bound book he held in one hand – and leaning into her face, as if to press the words into her. She sat impassively, smelling of patchouli, twice pulling a strand of hair out of her eyes while he went on:
‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies …’
The girl, bored to death, became more lively and nudged him when she saw me, always the voyeur, peeping at them.
‘Sorry,’ I said, turning away.
‘Karim, why are you ignoring me?’
I could see now it was Charlie.
‘I’m not. I mean, I don’t want to. Why have you gone silver?’
‘To have more fun.’
‘Charlie, I haven’t seen you for ages. What have you been doing? I’ve been worried and everything, about you.’
‘No reason to worry, little one. I’ve been preparing for the rest of my life. And everything.’
This fascinated me.
‘Yeah? What kind of thing is the rest of your life going to be? D’you know already?’
‘When I look into the future I see three things. Success. Success –’
‘And success,’ the girl added, wearily.
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Right on, man.’
The girl looked at me wryly. ‘Little one,’ she giggled. Then she nuzzled her lips in his ear. ‘Charlie, can’t you read to me some more?’
So Charlie started up again, reading to both of us, but I didn’t feel too good by now. To be honest, I felt a fool. I needed a fast dose of God’s head-medicine right now, but I didn’t want to leave Charlie. Why had he gone silver? Were we entering a new hair era that I’d completely failed to notice?
I forced myself back into the living room. Dad’s gig consisted of half an hour’s sibilant instruction plus questions, half an hour’s yoga and some meditation. At the end, when everyone had got up and they were chatting sleepily, Auntie Jean said hallo, pretty curtly. I could see she wanted to leave, but at the same time she had her eyes fixed on a relieved and smiling Dad at the other side of the room. He had Eva beside him, and several people wanted more information about his teaching. Two of them asked if he’d go to their house and hold sessions there. Eva had become proprietorial, leading him away from bores while he nodded regally.
Before I left, Helen and I exchanged addresses and phone numbers. Charlie and the girl were arguing in the hall. Charlie wanted to take her home but she insisted on going her own way, the little fool. ‘But why don’t you want me?’ he said. ‘I really want you. I love you now.’
What was he being so uncool for? Yet I wondered if, when the day came that I wanted someone and they didn’t want me, I’d be able to remain indifferent. I snorted in derision in his direction and waited outside for Dad and Eva.
So there it was. Helen loved me futilely, and I loved Charlie futilely, and he loved Miss Patchouli futilely, and no doubt she loved some other fucker futilely. The only unfutilely loving couple were God and Eva. I had a bad time just sitting in the car with them, with Eva putting her arms around Dad everywhere. Dad had to raise one authoritative finger to warn her away – which she bit. And I sat there like a good son, pretending not to exist.
Was Dad really in love with Eva? It was difficult for me to accept that he was, our world seemed so immutable. But hadn’t he gone public? At the end of the gig he had given Eva a smacking kiss that sounded as if he were sucking an orange, and he’d told her he could never had done it without her. And she’d had her hand in his hair while Carl and Marianne were in their hands-together praying position, and Ted and Jean just stood there watching, in their stupid coats, like under-cover police. What was wrong with Dad?