Via the record library Jamila soon turned on to Bessie and Sarah and Dinah and Ella, whose records she’d bring round to our place and play to Dad. They’d sit side by side on his bed, waving their arms and singing along. Miss Cutmore had also told her about equality, fraternity and the other one, I forget what it is, so in her purse Jammie always carried a photograph of Angela Davis, and she wore black clothes and had a truculent attitude to schoolteachers. For months it was Soledad this and Soledad that. Yeah, sometimes we were French, Jammie and I, and other times we went black American. The thing was, we were supposed to be English, but to the English we were always wogs and nigs and Pakis and the rest of it.
Compared to Jammie I was, as a militant, a real shaker and trembler. If people spat at me I practically thanked them for not making me chew the moss between the paving stones. But Jamila had a PhD in physical retribution. Once a greaser rode past us on an old bicycle and said, as if asking the time, ‘Eat shit, Pakis.’ Jammie sprinted through the traffic before throwing the bastard off his bike and tugging out some of his hair, like someone weeding an overgrown garden.
Now, today, Auntie Jeeta was serving a customer in the shop, putting bread and oranges and tins of tomatoes into a brown-paper bag. Jamila wasn’t acknowledging me at all, so I waited by Auntie Jeeta, whose miserable face must, I was sure, have driven away thousands of customers over the years, none of them realizing she was a princess whose brothers carried guns.
‘How’s your back, Auntie Jeeta?’ I asked.
‘Bent like a hairpin with worries,’ she said.
‘How could you worry, Auntie Jeeta, with a thriving business like this?’
‘Hey, never mind my mouldy things. Take Jamila on one of your walks. Please, will you do that for me?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Here’s a samosa, Fire Eater. Extra hot for naughty boys.’
‘Where’s Uncle Anwar?’ She gave me a plaintive look. ‘And who’s Prime Minister?’ I added.
Off Jamila and I went, tearing through Penge. She really walked, Jamila, and when she wanted to cross the road she just strode through the traffic, expecting cars to stop or slow down for her, which they did. Eventually she asked her favourite question of all time. ‘What have you got to tell, Creamy? What stories?’
Facts she wanted, and good stories, the worse the better – stories of embarrassment and humiliation and failure, mucky and semen-stained, otherwise she would walk away or something, like an unsatisfied theatre-goer. But this time I was prepared. Spot-on stories were waiting like drinks for the thirsty.
I told her all about Dad and Eva, about Auntie Jean’s temper and how she pressed down on my shoulders, which made me fart. I told her about trances, and praying advertising executives, and attempts in Beckenham to find the Way on garden benches. And I told her nothing about Great Danes and me. Whenever I asked her what she thought I should do about Dad and Mum and Eva, or whether I should run away from home again, or even whether we should flee together to London and get work as waiters, she laughed louder.
‘Don’t you see it’s fucking serious?’ I told her. ‘Dad shouldn’t hurt Mum, should he? She doesn’t deserve it.’
‘No, she doesn’t. But the deed has been done, right, in that Beckenham garden, while you were watching in your usual position, on your knees, right? Oh, Creamy, you do get in some stupid situations. And you do realize it’s absolutely characteristic of you, don’t you?’
Now she was laughing at me so hard she had to stop and bend forward for breath, with her hands on her thighs. I went on. ‘But shouldn’t Dad restrain himself, you know, and think about us, his family? Put us first?’
It was talking about it now for the first time that made me realize how unhappy the whole thing was making me. Our whole family was in tatters and no one was talking about it.
‘Sometimes you can be so bourgeois, Creamy Jeans. Families aren’t sacred, especially to Indian men, who talk about nothing else and act otherwise.’
‘Your dad’s not like that,’ I said.
She was always putting me down. I couldn’t take it today. She was so powerful, Jammie, so in control and certain what to do about everything.
‘And he loves her. You said your dad loves Eva.’
‘Yes, I s’pose I did say that. I think he loves her. He hasn’t exactly said it all over the place.’
‘Well, Creamy, love should have its way, shouldn’t it? Don’t ya believe in love?’
‘Yes, OK, OK, theoretically. For God’s sake, Jammie!’
Before I knew it, we were passing a public toilet beside the park and her hand was pulling on mine. As she rugged me towards it and I inhaled the urine, shit and disinfectant cocktail I associated with love, I just had to stop and think. I didn’t believe in monogamy or anything old like that, but my mind was still on Charlie and I couldn’t think of anyone else, not even Jammie.
It was unusual, I knew, the way I wanted to sleep with boys as well as girls. I liked strong bodies and the backs of boys’ necks. I liked being handled by men, their fists pulling me; and I liked objects – the ends of brushes, pens, fingers – up my arse. But I liked cunts and breasts, all of women’s softness, long smooth legs and the way women dressed. I felt it would be heart-breaking to have to choose one or the other, like having to decide between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I never liked to think much about the whole thing in case I turned out to be a pervert and needed to have treatment, hormones, or electric shocks through my brain. When I did think about it I considered myself lucky that I could go to parties and go home with anyone from either sex – not that I went to many parties, none at all really, but if I did, I could, you know, trade either way. But my main love at the moment was my Charlie, and even more important than that, it was Mum and Dad and Eva. How could I think about anything else?
I had the brilliant idea of saying, ‘And what’s your news, Jammie? Tell me.’
She paused. It worked remarkably well. ‘Let’s take another turn around the block,’ she said. ‘It’s seriousness squared, Creamy Jeans. I don’t know what’s happening to me. No jokes, all right?’
She started at the beginning.
Under the influence of Angela Davis, Jamila had started exercising every day, learning karate and judo, getting up early to stretch and run and do press-ups. She bowled along like a dream, Jamila; she could have run on snow and left no footsteps. She was preparing for the guerrilla war she knew would be necessary when the whites finally turned on the blacks and Asians and tried to force us into gas chambers or push us into leaky boats.
This wasn’t as ludicrous as it sounded. The area in which Jamila lived was closer to London than our suburbs, and far poorer. It was full of neo-fascist groups, thugs who had their own pubs and clubs and shops. On Saturdays they’d be out in the High Street selling their newspapers and pamphlets. They also operated outside the schools and colleges and football grounds, like Millwall and Crystal Palace. At night they roamed the streets, beating Asians and shoving shit and burning rags through their letter-boxes. Frequently the mean, white, hating faces had public meetings and the Union Jacks were paraded through the streets, protected by the police. There was no evidence that these people would go away – no evidence that their power would diminish rather than increase. The lives of Anwar and Jeeta and Jamila were pervaded by fear of violence. I’m sure it was something they thought about every day. Jeeta kept buckets of water around her bed in case the shop was firebombed in the night. Many of Jamila’s attitudes were inspired by the possibility that a white group might kill one of us one day.