When I said it was time for me to go, Changez’s mood changed. From broodiness he snapped into businesslike attack, as if he’d worked out in advance what he wanted to say, and now was the time to deliver it.
‘Now, tell me, Karim, you’re not using my own character in your play, are you?’
‘No, Changez. I told you already.’
‘Yes, you laid your word of honour on the line.’
‘Yes, I did. Right?’
He thought for a few seconds. ‘But what does it stand for, ultimately, your word of honour?’
‘Everything, man, every fucking thing, for God’s sake! Christ, Changez, you’re becoming fucking self-righteous, aren’t you?’
He looked at me sternly, as if he didn’t believe me, the bastard, and off he went to waddle around South London.
A few days later, after we’d started previewing the play in London, Jamila rang to tell me that Changez had been attacked under a railway bridge when coming back from a Shinko session. It was a typical South London winter evening – silent, dark, cold, foggy, damp – when this gang jumped out on Changez and called him a Paki, not realizing he was Indian. They planted their feet all over him and started to carve the initials of the National Front into his stomach with a razor blade. They fled because Changez let off the siren of his Muslim warrior’s call, which could be heard in Buenos Aires. Naturally he was shocked; shit-scared and shaken up, Jamila said. But he hadn’t been slow to take advantage of the kindness shown him by everyone. Sophie was now bringing him his breakfast in bed, and he’d been let off various cooking and washing-up duties. The police, who were getting sick of Changez, had suggested that he’d laid down under the railway bridge and inflicted the wound on himself, to discredit them.
The attack on Changez angered me, and I asked Jamila if I could do anything. Yes; these attacks were happening all the time. I should come with Jamila and her friends on a march the following Saturday. The National Front were parading through a nearby Asian district. There would be a fascist rally in the Town Hall; Asian shops would be attacked and lives threatened. Local people were scared. We couldn’t stop it: we could only march and make our voices heard. I said I’d be there.
I hadn’t been sleeping with Eleanor more than once a week recently. Nothing had been said, but she’d cooled towards me. I wasn’t alarmed; after rehearsing I liked to go home and be frightened alone. I prepared myself for the opening by walking around the flat as Changez, not caricaturing him but getting behind his peculiar eyeballs. Robert de Niro would have been proud of me.
I took it for granted that Eleanor spent the evenings at parties with her friends. She often invited me, too, but I’d noticed that after a couple of hours with her crowd I felt heavy and listless, life had offered these people its lips, but as they dragged from party to party, seeing the same faces and saying the same things night after night, I saw it was the kiss of death; I saw how much was enervated and useless in them. What passion or desire or hunger did they have as they lounged in their London living rooms? I told my political adviser, Sergeant Monty, that the ruling class weren’t worth hating. He disagreed. ‘Their complacency makes them worse,’ he argued.
When I rang Eleanor and told her we should join the others in confronting the fascists, her attitude was strange, especially considering what had happened to Gene. She vacillated all over the place. On the one hand there was this shopping to do in Sainsbur’s; on the other hand there was that person to visit in hospital. ‘I’ll see you at the demo, love,’ she concluded. ‘My head’s a little messed up.’ I put the phone down.
I knew what to do. I was supposed to be meeting Jamila, Changez, Simon, Sophie and the others at the house that morning. So what? I’d be late. I wouldn’t miss the march; I’d just go straight there.
I waited an hour and caught the tube northwards, towards Pyke’s. I went into the front garden of the house opposite his, sat down on a log and watched Pyke’s house through a hole in the hedge. Time passed. It was getting late. I’d have to take a cab to the march. That would be OK, as long as Jamila didn’t catch me getting out of a taxi. After three hours of waiting I saw Eleanor approach Pyke’s house. What a genius I was: how right I’d been! Eleanor rang the bell and Pyke answered immediately. Not a kiss, or a stroke, or a smile – only the door shutting behind her. Then nothing. What did I expect? I stared at the closed door. What was I to do? This was something I hadn’t thought about. The march and demonstration would be in full swing. Perhaps Pyke and Eleanor would be going on it. I’d wait for them; maybe declare myself, say I was passing, and get a lift to the march with them.
I waited another three hours. They must have been having a late lunch. It started to get dark. When Eleanor emerged I followed her to the tube and got into the carriage behind her, sitting opposite her in the train. She looked pretty surprised when she glanced up and saw me sitting there. ‘What are you doing on the Bakerloo Line?’ she asked.
Well, I wasn’t in a defensive mood. I went and sat right next to her. Straight out, I asked her what she’d been doing at Pyke’s, instead of throwing her body in front of fascists.
She threw back her hair, looked around the train as if for an escape and said she could say the same about me. She wouldn’t look at me, but she wasn’t defensive. ‘Pyke attracts me,’ she said. ‘He’s an exciting man. You may not have noticed, but there’s so few of those around.’
‘Will you carry on sleeping with him?’
‘Yes, yes, whenever he asks me.’
‘How long’s it been going on?’
‘Since that time … since that time we went over there for supper and you and Pyke did that stuff to each other.’
She rested her cheek against mine. The sweetness of her skin and entire aroma practically made me pass out.
‘Oh, love,’ I said.
She said, ‘I want you to be with me, Karim, and I’ve done a lot for you. But I can’t have people – men – telling me what to do. If Pyke wants me to be with him, then I must follow my desire. There’s so much for him to teach me. And please, please, don’t ever follow me around again.’
The doors of the train were closing, but I managed to nip through them. As I walked up the platform I resolved to break with Eleanor. I would have to see her every day at the theatre, but I’d never address her as a lover again. It was over, then, my first real love affair. There would be others. She preferred Pyke. Sweet Gene, her black lover, London’s best mime, who emptied bed-pans in hospital soaps, killed himself because every day, by a look, a remark, an attitude, the English told him they hated him; they never let him forget they thought him a nigger, a slave, a lower being. And we pursued English roses as we pursued England; by possessing these prizes, this kindness and beauty, we stared defiantly into the eye of the Empire and all its self-regard – into the eye of Hairy Back, into the eye of the Great Fucking Dane. We became part of England and yet proudly stood outside it. But to be truly free we had to free ourselves of all bitterness and resentment, too. How was this possible when bitterness and resentment were generated afresh every day?
I’d send Eleanor a dignified note. Then I’d have to fall out of love with her. That was the rough part. Everything in life is organized around people falling in love with each other. Falling is easy; but no one tells you how to fall out of love. I didn’t know where to begin.
For the rest of the day I wandered around Soho and sat through about ten porn films. For a week after that I must have gone into some kind of weird depression and sulk and social incapacity, because I cared nothing for what should have been the greatest evening of my life – the opening of the play.