Jamila said nothing and Helen was eager to talk about Charlie, a subject on which she was obviously preparing for an advanced degree. Jamila wasn’t even contemptuous, as she abstractedly poured pints of bitter into herself. She’d met Charlie a couple of times at our house and wasn’t thrilled by him, to say the least. ‘Vanity, thy name is Charlie’, was her conclusion. Charlie made no effort with her. Why should he? Jamila was no use to him and he didn’t want to fuck her. Jamila saw right through old Charlie: she said there was iron ambition under the crushed-velvet idealism which was still the style of the age.
Helen gladly confirmed that not only was Charlie a little star at our school but he was illuminating other schools too, especially girls’ schools. There were girls who followed Mustn’t Grumble from gig to gig just to be near the boy, recording these concerts on reel-to-reel tape-recorders. Rare photographs of Charlie were passed around until they were in tatters. Apparently he’d been offered a record contract which the Fish had turned down, saying they weren’t good enough yet. When they did get good they’d be one of the biggest bands in the world, the Fish predicted. I wondered if Charlie really knew this, felt this, or whether his life as he lived it from day to day was as fucked-up and perplexed as everyone else’s.
Later that night, with Jammie and Helen behind me, I rapped on the door of Dad’s room. There was no response.
‘Perhaps he’s still on another level,’ said Helen. I looked at Jammie and wondered if she, like me, could hear Dad snoring. Obviously: because she banged loudly and impatiently on the door until Dad opened it, his hair standing on end, looking surprised to see us. We sat around his bed and he went into one of the formidable silences which I now accepted as the concomitant of wisdom.
‘We live in an age of doubt and uncertainty. The old religions under which people lived for ninety-nine point nine per cent of human history have decayed or are irrelevant. Our problem is secularism. We have replaced our spiritual values and wisdom with materialism. And now everyone is wandering around asking how to live. Sometimes desperate people even turn to me.’
‘Uncle, please –’
Dad raised his index finger a fraction of an inch and Jamila was reluctantly silent.
‘I’ve decided this.’
We were all concentrating so much that I almost giggled.
‘I believe happiness is only possible if you follow your feeling, your intuition, your real desires. Only unhappiness is gained by acting in accordance with duty, or obligation, or guilt, or the desire to please others. You must accept happiness when you can, not selfishly, but remembering you are a part of the world, of others, not separate from them. Should people pursue their own happiness at the expense of others? Or should they be unhappy so others can be happy? There’s no one who hasn’t had to confront this problem.’
He paused for breath and looked at us. I knew he was thinking of Eva as he said all this. I suddenly felt desolate and bereft, realizing he would leave us. And I didn’t want him to leave, because I loved him so much.
‘So, if you punish yourself through self-denial in the puritan way, in the English Christian way, there will only be resentment and more unhappiness.’ Now he looked only at Jamila. ‘People ask for advice all the time. They ask for advice when they should try to be more aware of what is happening.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Jamila.
It was midnight when we took her home. Her head was bowed as she went in. I asked her if she’d made her decision.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, starting up the stairs to the flat where her parents, her tormentors, were lying awake in separate rooms, one trying to die, the other no doubt wishing for death. The meter in the hall which regulated the lights was ticking loudly. Helen and I stared at Jamila’s face in the gloom for a due as to what she was going to do. Then she turned, was shrouded in darkness, and went up to bed.
Helen said Jamila would marry the boy. I said no, she’d turn him down. But it was impossible to tell.
Helen and I climbed into Anerley Park and lay down on our backs on the grass by the swings, and looked at the sky, and pulled our clothes down. It was a good fuck, but hurried, as Hairy Back would be getting anxious. I wondered if we were both thinking of Charlie as we did it.
CHAPTER SIX
The man walking towards England, towards our curious eyes, and towards the warm winter overcoat that I held in my hands, was not Flaubert the writer, though he had a similar grey moustache, two double chins, and not much hair. Not-Flaubert was smaller than me, about the same size as Princess Jeeta. But unlike her – and the exact shape of her body was difficult to determine because of her roomy salwar kamiz – Changez had a stomach that rode out before him, with a dark-red stringy knitted jumper stretched over it. The hair that God had left him was sparse, dry and vertical, as if he brushed it forward every morning. With his good hand he shoved a trolley loaded with two rotting suitcases, which were saved from instant disintegration only by thin string and fraying pyjama cord.
When Not-Flaubert spotted his name on the piece of cardboard I was holding, he simply stopped pushing the trolley, left it standing among the shoving airport crowd and walked towards Jeeta and his wife-to-be, Jamila.
Helen had agreed to help us out on this day of days, and she and I rescued the trolley and staggered around, heaving Changez’s junk into the back of the big Rover. Helen wouldn’t hold on to anything properly in case mosquitoes jumped out of the suitcases and gave her malaria. Not-Flaubert stood by us, not getting into the car until, sanctioned by his regal nodding approval, I finally locked the boot, ensuring his sacred suitcases were safe from dacoits and thuggees.
‘Maybe he’s used to servants,’ I said to Helen in a loud voice, as I held the door open for him to slide in next to Jeeta and Jamila. Helen and I got in front. This was a delicious moment of revenge for me, because the Rover belonged to Helen’s dad, Hairy Back. Had he known that four Pakis were resting their dark arses on his deep leather seats, ready to be driven by his daughter, who had only recently been fucked by one of them, he wouldn’t have been a contented man.
The actual wedding was to be held the next day, and then Changez and Jamila would stay at the Ritz for a couple of nights. Today there would be a small party to welcome Changez to England.
Anwar was standing anxiously at the window of Paradise Stores as the Rover turned into the street, stopping outside the library. Anwar had even changed his suit; he was wearing a late 1950s job, as opposed to the usual early 1950s number. The suit was pinned and tucked all over, for he was bony now. His nose and cheekbones protruded as never before, and he was paler than Helen, so pale that no one could possibly call him a darkie or black bastard, though they might legitimately have used the word bastard. He was weak and found it difficult to pick up his feet as he walked. He moved as if he had bags of sugar tied to his ankles. And when Changez embraced him in the street I thought I heard Anwar’s bones cracking. Then he shook Changez’s hand twice and pinched his cheeks. This effort seemed to tire Anwar.
Anwar had been extraordinarily exuberant about Changez’s arrival. Perhaps it was something to do with his not having a son and now having gained one; or perhaps he was pleased about his victory over the women. Whatever the extent of his self-inflicted frailty, I’d never seen him as good-tempered as he had been recently, or as nervously loquacious. Words weren’t his natural medium, but these days, when I went to help out in the shop, he inevitably took me aside – blackmailing me with samosas, sherbet fountains and the opportunity not to work – for an extended ear-bashing. I’m convinced he drew me aside, away from Jeeta and Jamila, into the store-room, where we sat on wooden boxes like skiving factory workers, because he was ashamed, or at least bashful, about his unsweet victory. Recently Princess Jeeta and Jamila had been in funereal moods, not for a second allowing Anwar to enjoy the pleasure of his tyranny. So all he could do, poor bastard, was celebrate it with me. Would they never understand the fruits of his wisdom?