The sky was passing at a tremendous rate. I looked at him in his clean white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. His arms were thin and his face had a mean and pinched look; he ran a lot. The soul music I insisted he played was turned up. He especially liked Smokey Robinson’s ‘Going to a Go Go’, and when he liked something he wanted it again and again. But he hadn’t known the Robinson tune before. I was thinking he wasn’t as cool as he should have been when he pulled something so fucking cool I nearly froze to death and overheated at the same time.
There I was, talking away, saying, ‘But you’ve been so kind to me already, Matthew, just giving me this job. Perhaps you don’t realize what it means.’
‘What d’you mean, don’t realize?’ he said, sharply.
‘It’s changed my life. Without you plucking me from nowhere I’d still be decorating houses.’
He grunted. ‘Fuck that. That’s not kind – it’s just a job. Now, your present, that’s really kind. Or, rather: who your present is. Who. Who.’
‘Who?’ We were starting to sound like a fucking owl chorus. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Marlene.’
‘Your wife’s name is Marlene, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. If you want her, she’s yours. She wants you.’
‘Me? Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘She wants me? For what?’
‘She says you’re the kind of innocent boy that André Gide would have gone for. And, I s’pose, as Gide is no longer alive, you’ll have to be satisfied with her, eh?’
I wasn’t flattered.
‘Matthew,’ I said, ‘I’ve never been so flattered in my life. It’s incredible.’
‘Yeah?’ He smiled at me. ‘From me to you, friend. A gift. A token of appreciation.’
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I knew I couldn’t leave it there: I might find myself in an awkward spot in the future. Yet it wouldn’t look too good if I turned down Pyke’s gift. Actors all over the world would give their legs just to talk to him for five minutes, and here I was being invited to fuck his wife. I knew this was privilege. I knew the quality of what I was being given. I was full of appreciation, oh yes. But I had to be very careful. At the same time, in a part of me, in my cock to be precise, I was involved in his offer.
I said at last, ‘You should know, Matthew, that I’m going out with Eleanor. I’m really keen on her. And she on me, I reckon.’
‘Sure, I know that, Karim. I told Eleanor to go for you.’
‘Yeah?’
He glanced at me and nodded.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Pleasure. You’re very good for her. Calming. She was depressed for a long time after her last boyfriend knocked himself off in that terrible way.’
‘Was she?’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
‘Yeah, man, I would.’
‘Just awful,’ he said. ‘And what a man he was.’
‘I know.’
‘Handsome, talented, charismatic. Did you know him?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I’m glad you two are together,’ Pyke said, smiling at me.
I was devastated by this information about Eleanor. I considered what Pyke had just said, trying to fit it around what I knew of Eleanor and some of the things she’d told me about the past. Did her last boyfriend kill himself in some dreadful way? What way? When did it happen? Why hadn’t she told me? Why hadn’t anyone else told me? What was going on? I was about to ask Pyke about all this but it was too late for that. Pyke would think me an idiot for lying.
And Pyke wouldn’t stop talking, though I only half heard him. The car had stopped outside West Kensington tube. The commuters piled out of the exit in a mass and virtually ran home. Now Pyke was writing something on a pad on his knee.
‘Bring Eleanor along on Saturday. We’re having some people round for supper. It’ll be nice to see you both. I’m sure we can really get into something good.’
‘I’m sure we can, too,’ I said.
I struggled out of the car with Pyke’s address in my hand.
When I got to the house, which was half ripped up since Ted had started work on it, Dad was sitting writing: he was working on a book about his childhood in India. Later he’d be doing a meditation class in a local hall. Eva was out. Sometimes I dreaded seeing Dad. If you weren’t in the mood for him, or able to fend him off, his personality could club you down. He could start pinching your cheeks and tweaking your nose and stuff he thought was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Or he’d pull up his jumper and slap out a tune on his bare stomach, urging you to guess whether it was ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ or ‘The Mighty Quinn’ in the Manfred Mann version. I swear he examined his pregnant gut five times a day, patting his belly, squeezing his tyres, discussing them with Eva as if they were the ninth wonder of the world, or trying to persuade her to bite them.
‘Indian men have lower centres of gravity than Accidental men,’ he claimed. ‘We are more centred. We live from the correct place – the stomach. From the guts, not from the head.’
Eva endured it all; it made her laugh. But he wasn’t my boyfriend. I’d also begun to see Dad not as my father but as a separate person with characteristics that were contingent. He was part of the world now, not the source of it; in one way, to my distress, he was just another individual. And ever since Eva had been working so hard, I’d begun to wonder at Dad’s helplessness. He didn’t know how to make a bed or how to wash and iron his clothes. He couldn’t cook; he didn’t even know how to make tea or coffee.
Recently, when I was lying down learning my lines, I’d asked Dad to make me some tea and toast. When eventually I followed him into the kitchen I saw that he’d cut open the teabag with scissors and poured the loose tea into a cup. He handled a piece of bread as if it were a rare object he’d obtained on an archaeological dig. Women had always looked after him, and he’d exploited them. I despised him for it now. I began to think that the admiration I’d had for him as a kid was baseless. What could he do? What qualities did he have? Why had he treated Mum as he had? I no longer wanted to be like him. I was angry. He’d let me down in some way.
‘Come here, gloomy face,’ he said to me now. ‘How’s the show?’
‘Good.’
He started going on.
‘Yes, but make sure they don’t neglect you. Listen to me! Tell them you want the lead part or nothing. You can’t climb down – you’ve already climbed up as a leading Mowgli actor in the theatre! You are the product of my number-one seed, aren’t you?’
I imitated him. ‘Number-one seed, number-one seed.’ Then I said, ‘Why don’t you stop talking so much fucking crap, you wanker.’ And went out.
I went to the Nashville, which was quiet at this time of day. I had a couple of pints of Ruddles and a bag of chicken-flavoured crisps, and sat there wondering why pubs had to be so gloomy, full of dark wood and heavy uncomfortable furniture, and lit by such crummy lighting you could barely see five yards through the poisoned air. I thought about Eleanor and kept wanting to cry out of pity for her. I also knew that if I sat in the pub long enough the feeling would pass. Eleanor obviously didn’t want to talk about her last boyfriend, even if he had killed himself in some terrible way. She’d certainly never mentioned it directly to me. I’d been shut out of an important area of her life. It made me doubt how keen she really was on me.
In my life I was generally getting into some weird things; solid ground was moving beneath me. Take supper. I looked at the piece of paper on which Pyke had written his address. The word ‘supper’ itself confused and irritated me. They called everything by the wrong name, these London people. Dinner was lunch, tea was supper, breakfast was brunch, afters was pudding.