After the show we went out into the restaurant area, where looks would linger on us. People pointed us out to each other. They bought us drinks; they felt privileged to meet us. They required us urgently at their parties, to spice them up. We went to them, turning up at midnight with our arms full of beer and wine. Once there we were offered drugs. I had sex with several women; all that was easier now. I got an agent, too. I was offered a small part in a television film, playing a taxi-driver. I had some money to play with. One night Pyke came by and asked us if we wanted to take the show to New York. There’d been an offer from a small but prestigious theatre there. Did we really want to go? ‘Let me know if you can be bothered,’ he said casually. ‘It’s up to you all.’
Pyke gave us some notes after the show, and then I asked him if I could visit him that weekend. He smiled and patted my arse. ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
‘Sit down,’ he said when I got there, ready to ask him for money. An old woman in a pink nylon housecoat came into the room with a duster. ‘Later, Mavis,’ he said.
‘Matthew –’ I began.
‘Sit down while I take a shower,’ he said. ‘Are you in a big hurry?’ And he went out again, leaving me alone in that room with the cunt sculpture. As before, I wandered around. I thought maybe I would steal something and Terry could sell it for the Party. Or it could be a kind of trophy. I looked at vases and picked up paperweights, but I had no idea what they were worth. I was about to put a paperweight in my pocket when Marlene came in, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her hands and arms were spotted with paint. She was decorating. Her flesh was sickly white now, I noticed. How had I kissed and licked it?
‘It’s you,’ she said. She showed little of last time’s enthusiasm. Presumably she’d gone off me. These people could go up and down. ‘What are you up to?’ she said. She came over to me. She brightened then. ‘Give us a kiss, Karim.’ She bent forward and closed her eyes. I kissed her lips lightly. She didn’t open her eyes. ‘That’s not a kiss. When I’m kissed I want to stay kissed,’ she said. Her tongue was in my mouth; her mouth was moving on mine; her hands were over me.
‘Leave him alone, for Christ’s sake, can’t you?’ said Pyke, coming back into the room. ‘Where’s that sandalwood body shampoo I like?’
She stood up. ‘How should I know? I’m not vain. I’m not a fucking man. I don’t use it.’
Pyke went through Marlene’s bag; he went through various drawers, pulling things out. Marlene watched him, standing with her hands on her hips. She waited till he was at the door again before shouting at him, ‘Why are you so arrogant? Don’t talk to me as if I were some floozie actress. Why should I leave my Karim alone? You go out with his girlfriend.’
Pyke stood there and said, ‘You can fuck him. I don’t care. You know I don’t care. Do exactly what you like, Marlene.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Marlene. ‘Fuck freedom, too. Stick it up your arse.’
‘Anyway, she’s not his girlfriend,’ said Pyke.
‘She’s not his girlfriend?’ Marlene turned to me. ‘Is it true?’ She turned to Pyke. ‘What have you done?’ Pyke said nothing. ‘He’s broken it up, has he, Karim?’
‘Yep,’ I said. I got up. Marlene and Pyke looked at each other with hatred. I said, ‘Matthew, I’ve just dropped by to ask you something. It’s a small thing. It won’t take long. Can we deal with it now?’
‘I’ll leave you two boys alone, then,’ said Marlene, sarcastically.
‘Where’s my body shampoo?’ Pyke asked. ‘Really, where is it?’
‘Fuck off,’ Marlene said, going out.
‘Well, well,’ said Pyke to me, relaxing.
I asked him for the money. I told him what it was for. I asked him for three hundred pounds. ‘For politics?’ he asked. ‘For the Party, is that it? Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You?’
‘Yes.’
‘My, my, Karim. I must have made a mistake about you.’
I tried to be jaunty. ‘Maybe you did.’
He looked at me seriously and with kindness, as if he were really seeing me. ‘I didn’t mean to put you down. I just didn’t realize you were so committed.’
‘I’m not, really,’ I said. ‘They just asked me to ask you.’
He fetched his cheque book. ‘I bet they didn’t tell you to say that.’ He picked up his pen. ‘So you’re their postman. You’re a vulnerable kid. Don’t let them use you. Take a cheque.’
He was charming. He gave me a cheque for five hundred pounds. I could have talked to him all day, gossiping and chatting as we used to in his car. But once I’d got the money I left; he didn’t particularly want me there and I didn’t want to get into anything with Marlene. When I was going out the front door she ran down the stairs and called out, ‘Karim, Karim,’ and I heard Pyke say to her, ‘He can’t get away from you quick enough,’ as I banged the door behind me.
I couldn’t bring myself to visit Eleanor’s flat again. So I asked her for money one night at the theatre. I found it hard to talk to her now. It was made more difficult because, while I put it to her, explaining this was business not love, she busied herself with things, with the many objects she had with her in the dressing room: books, cassettes, make-up, photographs, cards, letters, clothes. And she tried on a couple of hats, too, for God’s sake. She did all this because she didn’t want to face me, to sit and look straight at me now. But I also felt that she’d shut me out of her mind. I meant little to her; I hadn’t been an important failure.
Not that I liked her much, either; but I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to be pushed aside, dropped, discarded. Yet I had been. There it was. There was nothing I could do. So I just told her what I wanted. She nodded and held up a book. ‘Have you read this?’ she said. I didn’t even look at it. I didn’t want to get into books now. I asked her again for some money. It would help the Party; and they would change the things that needed changing.
She said, finally, ‘No, I will not give you five hundred pounds.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve been thinking about Gene.’
‘You’re always thinking about Gene and –’
‘Yes. So? Why not?’
‘Forget it, Eleanor,’ I said. ‘Let’s stick to this.’
‘Gene was –’
I banged my hand on the table. I was getting fed up. And a line from Bob Dylan kept running through my head: ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’.
‘The Party. They need money. That’s all it is. Nothing else. Nothing about Gene. Nothing about us.’
She insisted. ‘I’m saying something. You’re not listening to me.’
‘You’re rich, aren’t you? Spread it around, darling.’
‘You scornful bastard,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we have a good time, you and I?’
‘Yes, all right. I enjoyed myself. We went to the theatre. We screwed. And you went out with Pyke.’
She smiled at me then, and she said, This is the point. They are not a Party for black people. They are an all-honky thing, if you want to know. I’m not giving a bean to that kind of apartheid thing.’
‘All right,’ I said, getting up. ‘Thanks anyway.’
‘Karim.’ She looked at me. She wanted to say something kind, so she said, ‘Don’t get bitter.’
On my day off I went to see Terry. He and his mates were squatting a house in Brixton. I got off the tube and walked north, as he’d instructed me, under the railway bridge I’d passed over on the train with Uncle Ted the time he slashed the seats; the time he said ‘them blacks’. It was the same line my father travelled on to work all those years, with his blue dictionary in his briefcase.