‘Please,’ Eva begged, ‘don’t be so rude as to not let your father finish what he’s started.’
‘Right on,’ Charlie said.
Dad said, and it must have cost him a lot to say so little after he’d been put down by me, ‘I’ve decided I want to be with Eva.’
And they all turned and looked at me compassionately. ‘What about us?’ I asked.
‘Yes, you’ll be provided for financially and we’ll see each other whenever you like. You love Eva and Charlie. Think, you’re gaining a family.’
‘And Mum? Is she gaining a family?’
Dad got up and put his jacket on. ‘I’m going to speak to her right now.’
As we sat there, Dad went home to end our lives together. Eva and Charlie and I had a drink and talked about other things. I don’t know what. I said I had to piss, but I ran out of the house and walked around the streets wondering what the fuck to do and trying to imagine what Dad was saying to Mum and how she was taking it. Then I got into a phone-box and made a reverse charges call to Auntie Jean, who was drunk and abusive as usual. So I just said what I intended to say and put the phone down. ‘You might have to get over here, Auntie Jean. God – I mean, Dad – has decided to live with Eva.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Life goes on tediously, nothing happens for months, and then one day everything, and I mean everything, goes fucking wild and berserk. When I got home Mum and Dad were in their bedroom together and poor little Allie was outside banging on the door like a five-year-old. I pulled him away and tried to get him upstairs in case he was traumatized for life, but he kicked me in the balls.
Almost immediately the heart-ambulance arrived: Auntie Jean and Uncle Ted. While Uncle Ted sat outside in the car Jean charged straight into the bedroom, pushing me aside as I tried to protect my parents’ privacy. She shouted orders at me.
Within forty minutes Mum was ready to leave. Auntie Jean had packed for her while I packed for Allie. They assumed I’d go to Chislehurst with them, but I said I’d turn up later on my bike; I’d make my own arrangements. I knew I’d be going nowhere near them. What could be worse than moving to Chislehurst? Even for two days I wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of Auntie Jean first thing in the morning, without her make-up on, her face blank as an egg, as she had prunes, kippers and cigarettes for breakfast and made me drink Typhoo tea. I knew she’d abuse Dad all day too. As it was, Allie was crying and yelling, ‘Bugger off, you Buddhist bastard!’ as he left with Mum and Jean.
So the three of them bundled out, their faces full of tears and fear and pain and anger and shouting. Dad yelled at them, ‘Where are you all going? What are you leaving the house for? Just stay here!’ but Jean just told him to shut his big gob.
The house was silent, as if no one had been there. Dad, who had been sitting on the stairs with his head in his hands, went into action. He wanted to get out too. He stuffed his shoes and ties and books into every plastic bag I could find before stopping himself, as he realized it was undignified to disfigure the house before deserting it.
‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Let’s take nothing, eh?’
I liked that idea: it seemed aristocratic to me, just walking out empty-handed as if we were above all objects.
Eventually Dad phoned Eva to say the coast was clear. She came tentatively into the house, as warm and gentle as anything, and she took Dad out to the car. Then she asked me what I was going to do and I had to say I wanted to go with her. She didn’t flinch as I expected her to. She just said, ‘OΚ, get your things, it’ll be lovely to have you. We’re all going to have a terrific time together, you know that, don’t you?’
So I got about twenty records, ten packets of tea, Tropic of Cancer and On the Road, and the plays of Tennessee Williams, and off I went to live with Eva. And Charlie.
That night Eva put me in her clean little spare room. Before getting into bed I went into the large bathroom beside her bedroom, where I hadn’t been before. The bath was in the centre of the room, with an old-fashioned brass spigot. There were candles around the edge of it and an old aluminium bucket beside it. And on the oak shelves were rows of lipsticks and blushers, eye-make-up removers, cleansers, moisturizers, hair-sprays, creamy soaps for soft skin, sensitive skin and normal skin; soaps in exotic wrappings and pretty boxes; there were sweet-peas in a jam-jar and an egg-cup, rose-petals in Wedgwood saucers; there were bottles of perfume, cotton wool, conditioners, hair-bands, hair-slides and shampoos. It was confusing: such self-attention repelled me, and yet it represented a world of sensuality, of smell and touch, of indulgence and feeling, which aroused me like an unexpected caress as I undressed, lit the candles and got into the bath in this room of Eva’s.
Later that night she came into my room in her kimono, bringing me a glass of champagne and carrying a book. I told her she looked happy and luminous, which made her look even more happy and luminous. Compliments were useful tools of the friendship trade, I told myself, but in her case it was true. She said, ‘Thank you for saying that. I haven’t been happy for a long time but now I think I’m going to be.’
‘What’s that book?’ I said.
‘I’m going to read to you,’ she said, ‘to help you appreciate the sound of good prose. And because you’ll be reading to me in the next few months when I’m cooking and doing chores. You’ve got a good voice. Your dad said you’ve mentioned being an actor.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s think about that, then.’
Eva sat down on the edge of the bed and read me The Selfish Giant, dramatizing all the characters and imitating a smug vicar at the sentimental end of the story. She didn’t try overhard, she just wanted to let. me know I was secure with her, that the break-up of my parents’ marriage wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened, and that she had enough love to cover us all. She was strong and confident now. She read for a long time, and I had the bonus of knowing my father was waiting impatiently to fuck her again on this night of nights which was really their honeymoon. I thanked her gratefully, and she said, ‘But you’re beautiful, and the beautiful should be given everything they want.’
‘Hey, what about the ugly ones?’
‘The ugly ones.’ She poked her tongue out. ‘It’s their fault if they’re ugly. They’re to be blamed, not pitied.’
I laughed at this, but it made me think of where Charlie may have inherited some of his cruelty. When Eva had gone and I lay for the first time in the same house as Charlie and Eva and my father, I thought about the difference between the interesting people and the nice people. And how they can’t always be identical. The interesting people you wanted to be with – their minds were unusual, you saw things freshly with them and all was not deadness and repetition. I longed to know what Eva made of things, what she thought of Jamila, say, and the marriage of Changez. I wanted her opinion. Eva could be snobby, that was obvious, but if I saw something, or heard a piece of music, or visited a place, I wouldn’t be content until Eva had made me see it in a certain way. She came at things from an angle; she made connections. Then there were the nice people who weren’t interesting, and you didn’t want to know what they thought of anything. Like Mum, they were good and meek and deserved more love. But it was the interesting ones, like Eva with her hard, taking edge, who ended up with everything, and in bed with my father.
When Dad moved in with Eva, and Jamila and Changez moved into their flat, there were five places for me to stay: with Mum at Auntie Jean’s; at our now empty house; with Dad and Eva; with Anwar and Jeeta; or with Changez and Jamila. I finally stopped going to school when Charlie did, and Eva arranged for me to go to a college where I could finish my A levels. This college seemed as if it was going to be the best thing that happened to me.