When they lowered the coffin into the earth, and there seemed no crueller thing than life itself, Jamila staggered to one side, as if one leg had given way, fainting and almost collapsing on to the disappearing box. Changez, who had not taken his eyes from his wife all day, was instantly beside her, his feet plunging ankle-deep into mud, but with his arms around his wife at last, their bodies together, an ecstatic look on his face and, down below, I noticed, an erection. Rather inappropriate for a funeral, I thought, especially when you’d murdered the victim.
That night, when Jamila had put her mother to bed – and Jeeta had wanted to start work right away on reorganizing Paradise Stores – I raided the shop downstairs for the Newcastle Brown ale the three of us had recently taken to, and lugged the thick bottles upstairs to the flat. The place still contained, naturally, Anwar’s possessions, as if he were away somewhere and would soon return. Pathetic possessions they were, too: slippers, cigarettes, stained waistcoats and several paintings of sunsets that Anwar thought were masterpieces and had left to me.
The three of us were tired but we weren’t ready for sleep. Besides, Jamila and I had to look after the constantly weeping Changez, whom we referred to privately as the Dildo Killer. Outwardly the Dildo Killer was the most upset of us all – being the least English, I suppose – even though the victim, Anwar, had hated him and had got himself killed trying to reduce Changez’s brain to mashed potato. Looking at Changez’s regularly puckering and shuddering face, I could see that really it was Jamila he was upset about. The old man he was glad to be rid of. Changez was only terrified that Jamila would blame him for whacking her dad over the head and therefore love him less than she did already.
Jamila herself was quieter than usual, which made me nervous, because I had to do all the talking, but she was dignified and contained, vulnerable without crying everywhere. Her father had died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn’t even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he’d carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day she was gone, replaced by a foreigner, an unco-operative woman he didn’t know how to speak to. Being so confused, so weak, so in love, he chose strength and drove her away from himself. The last years he spent wondering where she’d gone, and slowly came to realize that she would never return, and that the husband he’d chosen for her was an idiot.
Wearing an inside-out sweatshirt and jeans once more, lying back on the rough orange sofa, Jamila put a bottle of Brown to her lips. Changez and I passed a bottle between us. Big Muslim he was, drinking on the day of a funeral. It was only with these two that I felt part of a family. The three of us were bound together by ties stronger than personality, and stronger than the liking or disliking of each other.
Jamila spoke slowly and thoughtfully. I wondered if she’d taken a couple of Valium. ‘All of this has made me think about what I want in my life. I’ve been tired for a while of the way things have been. I’ve been conservative in a way that doesn’t suit me. I’m leaving the flat. It’s being returned to the landlord unless you’ – she glanced at the Dildo Killer – ‘want to pay the rent. I want to live somewhere else.’
The Killer looked terrified. He was being abandoned. He looked frantically between his two friends. His face was appalled. This, then, was how things happened. A few simple words were exchanged, and ever after it would all be different. One day you were in clover in your camp-bed, the next in shit up to your neck. She was being straightforward, Jamila, and the straightforward was not a method I preferred for myself. Changez had never accustomed himself to it either.
‘Elsewhere where?’ he managed to say.
‘I want to try and live in another way. I’ve felt isolated.’
‘I am there daily.’
‘Changez, I want to live communally with a bunch of people – friends – in a large house they’ve bought in Peckham.’
She slid her hand over his as she broke the news. It was the first time I’d seen her touch her husband voluntarily.
‘Jammie, what about Changez?’ I asked.
‘What would you like to do?’ she asked him.
‘Go with you. Go together, eh? Husband and wife, always together, despite our difficult characters, eh?’
‘No.’ She shook her head firmly, but with some sadness. ‘Not necessarily.’
I butted in. ‘Changez won’t be able to survive alone, Jammie. And I’m going on tour soon. What’ll happen to him, d’you think?’
She looked forcefully at both of us, but she addressed Changez.
‘But that’s for you to think about. Why don’t you go back to your family in Bombay? They have a house there, you’ve told me. There is space, there are servants, chauffeurs.’
‘But you are my wife.’
‘Only legally,’ she said gently.
‘You will always be my wife. The legal is nothing, I understand that. But in my heart you are my Jamila.’
‘Yes, well, Changez, you know it’s never been like that.’
‘I’m not going back,’ he said flatly. ‘Never. You won’t make me.’
‘I wouldn’t make you do anything. You must do what suits you.’
Changez was less of a fool than I’d imagined. He’d observed his Jamila for a long time. He knew what to say. ‘This is too Western for me,’ he said. I thought for a moment he was even going to use the word ‘Eurocentric’ but he decided to keep it up his sleeve. ‘Here, in this capitalism of the feelings no one cares for another person. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes it is so,’ Jamila admitted.
‘Everyone is left to rot alone. No one will pick up another person when they are right down. This industrial system here is too hard for me. So I go down. All right,’ he said loudly. ‘I will try to make it alone.’
‘What is it you really want, then?’ she asked him.
He hesitated. He looked at her imploringly.
She said quickly, fatally, perhaps without thinking it through: ‘Would you like to come with me?’
He nodded, unable to believe his hairy ears.
‘Are you sure that’s possible?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Of course it’s possible,’ he said.
‘Changez –’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Excellent.’
‘But I haven’t thought about it.’
‘We’ll talk it over in time,’ he said.
‘But I’m not sure, Changez.’
‘Jamila.’
‘We won’t be husband and wife – you know that’ll never happen, don’t you?’ she said. ‘In this house you’ll have to take part in the communal life of the place.’
‘I think he’ll be superb communally, ol’ Changez,’ I said, since the Dildo Killer was weeping again, this time with relief. ‘He’ll help with washing the people’s plates. He’s a whizz with crockery and cutlery.’
She was stuck with him now. There was no way out. She said: ‘But you’ll have to pay your way, Changez. That’s how I don’t see it happening. My father paid the rent on our flat, but those days are gone. You’ll have to support yourself.’ And she added tentatively, ‘You might have to work.’
This was too much. Changez looked at me anxiously.
‘Exciting, huh?’ I said.
We sat there, talking it over. He would go with her. She couldn’t get out of it now.
As I watched Jamila I thought what a terrific person she’d become. She was low today, and she was often scornful of me anyway, the supercilious bitch, but I couldn’t help seeing that there was in her a great depth of will, of delight in the world, and much energy for love. Her feminism, the sense of self and fight it engendered, the schemes and plans she had, the relationships – which she desired to take this form and not that form – the things she had made herself know, and all the understanding this gave, seemed to illuminate her tonight as she went forward, an Indian woman, to live a useful life in white England.