But Changez looked so alone – and close up I could see bits of bristle sticking out of his badly shaved face – that even I couldn’t laugh at him in my usual way. And he spoke to me so kindly, and with such innocent enthusiasm, that I felt like saying to Jamila, Hey, he’s not so bad!
‘Will you take me on the road here to see one or two things that I might like to see?’
‘Sure, whenever you like,’ I replied.
‘I also like to watch cricket. We can go perhaps to Lords. I have brought my own binoculars.’
‘Excellent.’
‘And visit bookshops? I hear there are many establishments in the Charing Cross Road.’
‘Yes. What do you like to read?’
‘The classics,’ he said firmly. I saw that he had a pompous side to him, so certain he seemed in taste and judgement. ‘You like classics too?’
‘You don’t mean that Greek shit? Virgil or Dante or Homo or something?’
‘P. G. Wodehouse and Conan Doyle for me! Can you take me to Sherlock Holmes’s house in Baker Street? I also like the Saint and Mickey Spillane. And Westerns! Anything with Randolph Scott in it! Or Gary Cooper! Or John Wayne!’
I said, to test him, ‘There’s lots of things we can do. And we can take Jamila with us.’
Without glancing at her, but filling his mouth with rice and peas until his cheeks bulged – he really was a greedy gobbler – he said, ‘That would be much fun.’
‘So you two pricks are big mates now,’ Jamila hissed at me later. Anwar had reclaimed Changez and was patiently explaining to him about the shop, the wholesaler and the financial position. Changez stood there looking out of the window and scratching his arse, completely ignoring his father-in-law, who had no choice but to carry on with his explanation. As Anwar was talking Changez turned to him and said, ‘I thought it would be much more freezing in England than this.’
Anwar was bewildered and irritated by this non sequitur.
‘But I was speaking about the price of vegetables,’ said Anwar.
‘What for?’ asked Changez in bewilderment. ‘I am mainly a meat-eater.’
Anwar said nothing to this, but dismay, confusion and anger passed over his face. And he glanced down at Changez’s duff hand again as if to reconfirm that his brother had really sent over a cripple as a husband for his only daughter.
‘Changez seems all right to me,’ I told Jamila. ‘Likes books. Doesn’t seem an overwhelming-sexual-urges type.’
‘How do you know, clever dick? Why don’t you marry him, then? You like men, after all.’
‘Because you wanted to marry him.’
‘I don’t “want” anything but to live my life in peace.’
‘You made your choice, Jammie.’
She was furious with me.
‘Ah, pah! Whatever happens I’ll be relying on you for support and concern.’
Thank God, I thought, as just then Dad turned up at the party. He’d come straight from work, and he wore his best bespoke Burton’s suit, a yellow waistcoat with a watch on a chain (a present from Mum), and a striped tie in pink and blue with a knot as fat as a bar of soap. He looked like a budgerigar. Dad’s hair was shining too, as he liked to put olive oil on it, convinced that this lubrication of the scalp banished baldness. Unfortunately, if you got too close to him you were tempted to look around for the source of the odour – perhaps there was an overdressed salad in the vicinity? But lately he’d been concealing this whiff with his favourite aftershave, Rampage. Dad was plumper than he’d ever been. He was turning into a porky little Buddha, but compared to everyone else in the room he was life itself, vibrant, irreverent and laughing. Beside him, Anwar had become an old man. Dad was also being magnanimous today; he reminded me of a smooth politician visiting a shabby constituency, smiling, kissing babies, shaking hands with relish – and departing as soon as he decently could.
Helen kept saying, ‘Take me away from here, Karim,’ and really getting on my nerves, so soon Dad and Helen and I went downstairs.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Helen. ‘What are you so fed up about?’
‘One of Anwar’s relatives was behaving weirdly towards me,’ she said.
Apparently, whenever she’d gone close to this man he’d shooed her away, recoiling from her and muttering, ‘Pork, pork, pork, VD, VD, white woman, white woman.’ Apart from this, she was angry with Jamila for marrying Changez, the sight of whom made her feel ill. I told her to go to San Francisco.
Downstairs in the shop Anwar was now showing Changez around. As Anwar pointed and explained and waved at tins and packets and bottles and brushes, Changez nodded like a bright but naughty schoolboy humouring the eager curator of a museum but taking nothing in. Changez didn’t seem ready to take over the running of Paradise Stores. Spotting me leaving, he hurried over and took my hand.
‘Remember, bookshops, bookshops!’
He was sweating, and the way he held on to me indicated that he didn’t want to be left alone.
‘And please,’ he said, ‘call me by my nickname – Bubble.’
‘Bubble?’
‘Bubble. Yes, and yours?’
‘Creamy.’
‘Goodbye, Creamy.’
‘Goodbye, Bubble.’
Outside, Helen had the Rover roaring and the radio on. I heard my favourite lines from Abbey Road: ‘Soon we’ll be away from here, step on the gas and wipe that tear away.’ To my surprise Eva’s car was also parked outside the library. And Dad was holding the door open. He was buoyant today, but also edgy and more authoritative than I’d seen him for ages, when mostly he’d been gloomy and sulky. It was as if he’d made up his mind about something yet was not sure if it was the right thing to do. So instead of being relaxed and content, he was tenser and less tolerant than ever.
‘Get in,’ he said, pointing to the back seat of Eva’s car.
‘What for? Where are we going?’
‘Just get in. I’m your dad, aren’t I? Haven’t I always taken care of you?’
‘No. And it’s like I’m being taken prisoner. I said I’d be with Helen this evening.’
‘But don’t you want to be with Eva? You like Eva. And Charlie’s waiting at home. He really wants to discuss one or two things with you.’
Eva smiled at me from the driver’s seat. ‘Kiss, kiss,’ she said. I knew I was going to be deceived. They’re so stupid, grown-ups, thinking you can’t see through every fucking thing they do.
I went to Helen and told her that something heavy was happening, I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had to leave her now. She kissed me and drove away. All day I’d felt calm, though aware that everything in Jamila’s life had changed; and now, on the same day, if I was right about the looks on the two faces in the car with me, the same thing was going to happen to me. I waved at Helen’s car, I don’t know why. But I never saw her again. I liked her, we were starting to go out, then all this happened and I never saw her again.
Sitting behind Eva and Dad in the car, watching their hands constantly fluttering towards each other, you didn’t have to be a genius to see they were a couple. Here before me were two people in love, oh yes. And as Eva drove, Dad didn’t take his eyes from her face.
This woman I barely knew, Eva, had stolen my father. But what did I really think of her? I hadn’t even looked at her properly.
This new part of my life wasn’t a woman who would seem attractive straight-on in a passport photograph. She had no conventional beauty, her features were not exquisitely proportioned and her face was a bit chubby. But she was lovely because the round face with the straight dyed-blonde hair, which fell over her forehead and into her eyes, was open. Her face was constantly in motion, and this was the source of her beauty. Her face registered the slightest feeling, concealing little. Sometimes she became childlike and you could see her at eight or seventeen or twenty-five. The different ages of her life seemed to exist simultaneously, as if she could move from age to age according to how she felt. There was no cold maturity about her, thank Christ. She could be pretty serious and honest, though, explaining hurt and pain as if we were all openly human like her, and not sere wed-up and secretive and tricky. That time she’d told me how lonely and abandoned she felt when she was with her husband, those confessional words, ‘lonely and abandoned’, which usually would have me cringing all over the place, made me shiver.