I had to discuss things with my friends. It would help me straighten out my head. But when, anxiously, I told Eva of the invitation to Pyke’s (but not about his ‘gift’), she had no insight into my fears and confusion. She thought it was a terrific chance. She knew precisely how elevated Pyke was, and she regarded me admiringly as if I’d won a swimming cup. ‘You must invite Matthew over here some time in the next couple of weeks,’ was her response. Next, I rang Jamila. She would be a different proposition. I was beginning to see how scared I was of her, of her ‘sexuality’, as they called fucking these days; of the power of her feelings and the strength of her opinions. Passion was at a premium in South London. ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘What d’you think?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Creamy. You always do what you want anyway. You listen to no one. But myself, I couldn’t go to his place. I’m worried that they’re taking you over, these people. You’re moving away from the real world.’
‘What real world? There is no real world, is there?’
She said patiently, ‘Yes, the world of ordinary people and the shit they have to deal with – unemployment, bad housing, boredom. Soon you won’t understand anything about the essential stuff.’
‘But Jammie, they’re shit-hot powerful people and all.’ Then I made a mistake. ‘Aren’t you even curious to find out how the rich and successful live?’
She snorted and started laughing. ‘I’m less interested in home furnishings than you, dear. And I don’t want to be anywhere near those people, to be honest. Now, when are you coming to see us? I’ve got a big pot of real hot dal here that’s going uneaten. Even Changez I won’t let near it – I’m saving it for you, my old lover.’
‘Thanks, Jammie,’ I said.
On Friday night, at the end of the week’s workshop, Pyke put his arms around Eleanor and me as we were leaving, kissed us both and said, ‘See you tomorrow then, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘See you then.’
‘We’re looking forward to it,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ I replied.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sensational, I thought, looking across the carriage of the Bakerloo Line train at my face reflected in the opposite window. You little god. My feet danced and my fingers did the hand-jive to imaginary music – the Velvettes, ‘He was Really Saying Something’ – as the tube train rushed beneath my favourite city, my playground, my home. My baby was humming too. We’d changed at Piccadilly and were heading north-west, to Brainyville, London, a place as remote to me as Marseilles. What reason had I had to go to St John’s Wood before? I looked fit and well; it must have been the vegetables. The press-ups and ‘I must, I must increase my bust’ exercises which Eva had recommended were also achieving their aim of sharpening my profile and increasing my confidence. I’d had a haircut at Sassoon in Sloane Street and my balls, recently talcum-powdered, were as fragrantly dusted and tasty as Turkish Delight. But my clothes were too big as usual, mainly because I was wearing one of Dad’s dark-blue jackets and one of his Bond Street ties over a Ronettes T-shirt, with, obviously, no collar, and a pink jumper of Eva’s on top of this. I was nervy, too, shaken up, I must admit, after Heater had threatened me with a carving knife in Eleanor’s flat about an hour earlier, saying, ‘You look after that woman, eh? If anything happens to her I’ll kill ya!’
Eleanor sat beside me in a black suit and dark-red silk shirt with a high collar. She’d put her hair up, but a couple of ringlets had escaped, just right for me to slip my finger through. ‘I’ve never seen you looking so beautiful,’ I told her. I meant it. I couldn’t stop kissing her face. I just wanted to hold her all day and stroke her, tickle her, play with her.
Up we strolled to the mansion, cheerful and excited. The house Pyke shared with Marlene had to be a four-storey place in a quiet street, with a recently watered front garden smothered in flowers, and two sports cars outside, the black and the blue. Then there was the incriminating basement in which lived the nanny who looked after Pyke’s thirteen-year-old son by his first marriage.
I’d been briefed up to the hilt on all this by Terry, who investigated the crimes of the rich middle class with the vigour of a political Maigret. Terry was now employed; the call had come. He was playing a police sergeant in a police-station drama. This proved ideologically uncomfortable, since he’d always claimed the police were the fascist instrument of class rule. But now, as a policeman, he was pulling a ton of money, much more than I was, more than anyone else in the commune in which he lived, and he was constantly getting recognized in the street. He was also asked to open firework displays, judge play competitions and appear on celebrity game shows. In the street it was like walking around with Charlie, the way people called out to him and turned and stared, except that Terry’s fans didn’t know him as Terry Tapley, but as Sergeant Monty. These ironies made Sergeant Monty especially virulent about Pyke, the man who’d denied him the only job he’d really wanted.
Terry had taken me to a political meeting recently, after which, in the pub, a girl had spoken about life after the revolution. ‘People will be reading Shakespeare on the bus and learning the clarinet!’ she’d cried. Her commitment and hope impressed me; I wanted to do something myself. But Terry didn’t think I was ready. He gave me a small task first. ‘Keep an eye on Pyke for us,’ he said, ‘as you’re so well in with him. His type are good for cash. There might be something up that street you can do one day. We’ll let you know. But this time just look around – see what we might take him for when the time comes to call him in politically. In the short term you can help us by meeting his son.’
‘Meeting his son? OK, Sergeant Monty.’
He went to slap my face.
‘Don’t call me that. And ask the boy – in front of all the guests – which school he goes to. And if it isn’t one of the most expensive and exclusive in England, in the whole of the Western world for that matter, I’ll change my name to Disraeli.’
‘OK, Sergeant Monty – I mean, Disraeli. But I can’t believe you’re right about this. Pyke’s radical, man.’
Terry snorted and laughed scornfully. ‘Don’t tell me about these fucking radicals. They’re just liberals’ – practically the worst thing, in his view, anybody could be. ‘And their only use is in giving money to our party.’
It was the servant, a deferential Irish girl, who let us in. She brought Eleanor and me champagne and disappeared into the kitchen – to make ‘supper’, I presumed. She left us sitting nervously on the leather sofa. Pyke and Marlene were ‘dressing’, we’d been told. ‘Undressing, more like,’ I murmured. There was no one else there. The house was eerily quiet. Where the hell was everyone?
‘Isn’t it brilliant that Pyke’s asked us over,’ Eleanor said. ‘D’you think it’s supposed to be a secret? He doesn’t usually hang out with actors, does he? I don’t think he’s invited anyone else from the cast, has he?’
‘No.’
‘Why us, then?’
‘Because he loves us so much.’
‘Well, whatever happens, we mustn’t deny each other experience,’ she said, in a haughty way, as if my whole purpose in life were to try and deny Eleanor experience. And she looked at me as if she wanted to press a hard grain of rice down the end of my penis.
‘What experience?’ I said, getting up and pacing around. She wouldn’t reply, but sat there, smoking away. ‘What experience?’ I repeated. Now she was ruining my whole evening and I was getting more and more nervous. I seemed to know nothing, not even the facts of my girlfriend’s life. ‘Maybe the sort of experience you had with your last boyfriend? The one you loved so much. Is that what you mean?’
‘Please don’t talk about him,’ she said softly. ‘He’s bloody dead.’