Lately, Heater had been taken up by a polymath theatre director with an interest in the deprived. Heater met Abbado and (once) Calvino at his house, where the polymath encouraged Heater to speak of knife fights, Glasgow poverty and general loucheness and violence. After dinner, Heater would open the windows and let in the stench of the real world. And Heater gave these satisfactions, as he knew he had to, like Clapton having to play ‘Layla’ every time he performed. But Heater got through the slashings quickly in order to bring up Beethoven’s late quartets and something which bothered him in Huysmans.
One night Heater was at the Press night of La Bohème at Covent Garden, and Eleanor and I were sunk into her sofa all snug, watching television and drinking. This suited me: to be with just her, asking questions about the people whose houses we visited. They had histories, these top-drawers, and she told them as stories. Someone’s grandfather had had an argument with Lytton Strachey; someone else’s father was a Labour peer who’d had an affair with a Conservative MP’s wife; some other fortunate whore was an actress in a soon-to-be released film that everyone was going to a premiere of in Curzon Street. Someone else had written a novel about their former lover, and it was transparent who it was.
It must have been obvious that I wasn’t listening to her today, though, because she turned to me and said, ‘Hey, funny face, give me a kiss.’ That got my attention. ‘It’s been so long for me, Karim, you know, I can hardly remember what lips feel like.’
‘Like this.’ I said.
It felt hot and wonderful, and we must have kissed for half an hour. I’m not exactly sure how long it lasted, because I soon paid no attention to what in my book should have been the kiss of a lifetime. I was thinking of other things. Oh yes, I was overwhelmed by angry thoughts, which pushed themselves to the front of my mind, not so much numbing my lips as detaching them from me, as if they were a pair of glasses, for instance.
In the past few weeks circumstances had made me discover what an ignoramus I was. Lately I’d been fortunate, and my life had changed quickly, but I’d reflected little on it. When I did think of myself in comparison with those in Eleanor’s crowd, I became aware that I knew nothing; I was empty, an intellectual void. I didn’t even know who Cromwell was, for God’s sake. I knew nothing about zoology, geology, astronomy, languages, mathematics, physics.
Most of the kids I grew up with left school at sixteen, and they’d be in insurance now, or working as car-mechanics, or managers (radio and TV dept) in department stores. And I’d walked out of college without thinking twice about it, despite my father’s admonitions. In the suburbs education wasn’t considered a particular advantage, and certainly couldn’t be seen as worthwhile in itself. Getting into business young was more important. But now I was among people who wrote books as naturally as we played football. What infuriated me – what made me loathe both them and myself – was their confidence and knowledge. The easy talk of art, theatre, architecture, travel; the languages, the vocabulary, knowing the way round a whole culture – it was invaluable and irreplaceable capital.
At my school they taught you a bit of French, but anyone who attempted to pronounce a word correctly was laughed down. On a trip to Calais we attacked a Frog behind a restaurant. By this ignorance we knew ourselves to be superior to the public-school kids, with their puky uniforms and leather briefcases, and Mummy and Daddy waiting outside in the car to pick them up. We were rougher; we disrupted all lessons; we were fighters; we never carried no effeminate briefcases since we never did no homework. We were proud of never learning anything except the names of footballers, the personnel of rock groups and the lyrics of ‘I am the Walrus’. What idiots we were! How misinformed! Why didn’t we understand that we were happily condemning ourselves to being nothing better than motor-mechanics? Why couldn’t we see that? For Eleanor’s crowd hard words and sophisticated ideas were in the air they breathed from birth, and this language was the currency that bought you the best of what the world could offer. But for us it could only ever be a second language, consciously acquired.
And where I could have been telling Eleanor about the time I got fucked by Hairy Back’s Great Dane, it was her stories that had primacy, her stories that connected to an entire established world. It was as if I felt my past wasn’t important enough, wasn’t as substantial as hers, so I’d thrown it away. I never talked about Mum and Dad, or the suburbs, though I did talk about Charlie. Charlie was kudos. And once I practically stopped talking at all, my voice choking in my throat, when Eleanor said my accent was cute.
‘What accent?’ I managed to say.
‘The way you talk, it’s great.’
‘But what way do I talk?’
She looked at me impatiently, as if I were playing some ridiculous game, until she saw I was serious.
‘You’ve got a street voice, Karim. You’re from South London – so that’s how you speak. It’s like cockney, only not so raw. It’s not unusual. It’s different to my voice, of course.’
Of course.
At that moment I resolved to lose my accent: whatever it was, it would go. I would speak like her. It wasn’t difficult. I’d left my world; I had to, to get on. Not that I wanted to go back. I still craved adventure and the dreams I’d desired that night when I had my epiphany on Eva’s toilet in Beckenham. But somehow I knew also that I was getting into deep water.
After the kiss, when I stood in the darkened room and looked out on the street, my knees gave way.
‘Eleanor, I won’t be able to cycle home,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve lost the use of my legs.’
She said, softly, ‘I can’t sleep with you tonight, baby, my head’s all messed up, you’ve no idea. It’s somewhere else and it’s full of voices and songs and bad stuff. And I’m too much trouble for you. You know why, don’t you?’
‘Please tell me.’
She turned away. ‘Another time. Or ask anyone. I’m sure they’ll be happy to tell you, Karim.’
She kissed me goodnight at the door. I was not sad to go. I knew I’d be seeing her every day.
When we’d found the characters we wanted to play, Pyke had us present them to the rest of the group. Eleanor’s was an upper-class English woman in her sixties who’d grown up in the Indian Raj, someone who believed herself to be part of Britain’s greatness but was declining with it and becoming, to her consternation, sexually curious just as Britain became so. Eleanor did it brilliantly. When she acted she lost her hair-twiddling self-consciousness and became still, drawing us towards her as a low-voiced story-teller, adding just enough satirical top-spin to keep us guessing as to her attitude towards the character.
She finished to general approval and theatrical kisses. It was my turn. I got up and did Anwar. It was a monologue, saying who he was, what he was like, followed by an imitation of him raving in the street. I slipped into it easily, as I’d rehearsed so much at Eleanor’s. I thought my work was as good as anyone’s in the group, and for the first time I didn’t feel myself to be lagging behind everyone else.
After tea we sat around to discuss the characters. For some reason, perhaps because she looked puzzled, Pyke said to Tracey, ‘Why don’t you tell us what you thought of Karim’s character?’
Now although Tracey was hesitant, she did feel strongly. She was dignified and serious, not fashionable like a lot of middle-class kids who fancied themselves as actors. Tracey was respectable in the best surburban way, honest and kind and unpretentious, and she dressed like a secretary; but she was also bothered by things: she worried about what it meant to be a black woman. She seemed shy and ill at ease in the world, doing her best to disappear from a room without actually walking out. Yet when I saw her at a party with only black people present, she was completely different – extrovert, passionate, and dancing wildly. She’d been brought up by her mother, who worked as a cleaning woman. By some odd coincidence Tracey’s mother was scrubbing the steps of a house near our rehearsal room one morning when we were exercising in the park. Pyke had invited her to talk to the group during her lunch-break.