I promised. He shook his head at me. ‘You won’t like it, I’m telling you now.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So on Charlie’s money, with a gram of coke as a leaving present and his warning on my mind, I flew back to London. I was glad to be doing it: I missed my parents and Eva. Though I spoke to them on the phone, I wanted to see their faces again. I wanted to argue with Dad. Eva had hinted that significant events were going to take place. ‘What are they?’ I asked her all the time. ‘I can’t tell you unless you’re here,’ she said, teasingly. I had no idea what she was talking about.
On the flight to London I had a painful toothache, and on my first day in England I arranged to go to the dentist. I walked around Chelsea, happy to be back in London, relieved to rest my eyes on something old again. It was beautiful around Cheyne Walk, those little houses smothered in flowers with blue plaques on the front wall. It was terrific as long as you didn’t have to hear the voices of the people who lived there.
As the dentist’s nurse led me to the dentist’s chair and I nodded at him in greeting, he said, in a South African accent, ‘Does he speak English?’
‘A few words,’ I said.
I walked around Central London and saw that the town was being ripped apart; the rotten was being replaced by the new, and the new was ugly. The gift of creating beauty had been lost somewhere. The ugliness was in the people, too. Londoners seemed to hate each other.
I met Terry for a drink while he was rehearsing more episodes of his Sergeant Monty series. He barely had time to see me, what with picketing and demonstrating and supporting various strikes. When we did talk it was about the state of the country.
‘You may have noticed, Karim, that England’s had it. It’s coming apart. Resistance has brought it to a standstill. The Government were defeated in the vote last night. There’ll be an election. The chickens are coming home to die. It’s either us or the rise of the Right.’
Terry had predicted the last forty crises out of twenty, but the bitter, fractured country was in turmoiclass="underline" there were strikes, marches, wage-claims. ‘We’ve got to seize control,’ he said. ‘The people want strength and a new direction.’ He thought there was going to be a revolution; he cared about nothing else.
The next day I talked to the producers and casting people of the soap opera I was being considered for. I had to see them in an office they’d rented for the week in Soho. But I didn’t want to talk to them, even if I’d flown from America to do so. Pyke had taken care with his art or craft – nothing shoddy got on stage; his whole life was tied up with the quality of what he did. But five minutes told me that these were trashy, jumped-up people in fluffy sweaters. They spoke as if they were working on something by Sophocles. Then they asked me to run around the office in an improvisation set in a fish and chip shop – an argument over a piece of cod which led to boiling fat being tipped over someone’s arm – with a couple of hack actors who’d already been cast. They were boring people; I’d be with them for months if I got the job.
At last I got away. I went back to the Fish’s flat, which I was borrowing, an impersonal but comfortable place a bit like an hotel. I was sitting there, wondering whether I should pack up my things and move permanently to New York to work for Charlie, when the phone rang. My agent said, ‘Good news. They’ve rung to say you’ve got the part.’
‘That’s good,’ I said.
‘It’s the best,’ she replied.
But it took two days for the meaning of the offer to sink in. What was it exactly? I was being given a part in a new soap opera which would tangle with the latest contemporary issues: they meant abortions and racist attacks, the stuff that people lived through but that never got on TV. If I accepted the offer I’d play the rebellious student son of an Indian shopkeeper. Millions watched those things. I would have a lot of money. I would be recognized all over the country. My life would change overnight.
When I was certain I’d got the job, and had accepted the part, I decided to visit Dad and Eva with the news. I thought for an hour about what to wear, and inspected myself from several angles in four mirrors before, during and after dressing casually but not roughly. I didn’t want to look like a bank teller, but neither did I want to expose the remains of my unhappiness and depression. I wore a black cashmere sweater, grey cords – this was lush, thick corduroy, which hung properly and didn’t crease – and black American loafers.
Outside Dad and Eva’s house a couple were getting out of a taxi. A young man with spiky hair was carrying several black cases of photographic equipment and a large lamp. He was accompanied by a smart, middle-aged woman in an expensive beige mac. To the woman’s irritation the photographer gesticulated at me as I walked up the steps and rang Eva’s bell. The man called out a question. ‘Are you Charlie Hero’s manager?’
‘His brother,’ I replied.
Eva came to the door. She was confused for a moment by the three of us arriving at once. And she didn’t recognize me at first: I must have changed, but I didn’t know how. I felt older, I knew that. Eva told me to wait in the hall a minute. So there I stood, leafing through the mail and thinking it had been a mistake to leave America. I’d turn down the soap opera job and go back. When she’d shaken hands with the other two visitors and sat them in the flat, she came to me, arms outstretched, and kissed and hugged me.
‘It’s good to see you again, Eva. You’ve no idea how much I missed you,’ I said.
‘Why are you talking like this?’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten how to talk to your own family?’
‘I’m feeling a little strange, Eva.’
‘All right, love, I understand.’
‘I know you do. That’s why I came back.’
‘Your dad will be pleased to see you,’ she said. ‘He misses you more than any of us miss each other. Do you see? It breaks his heart for you to be away. I tell him Charlie is taking care of you.’
‘Does that reassure him?’
‘No. Is Charlie a heroin addict?’
‘How can you ask these questions, Eva?’
‘Tell me on the nose.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Eva, what’s going on? Who are these ridiculous people?’
She lowered her voice. ‘Not now. I’m being interviewed about the flat for Furnishings magazine. I want to sell this place and move on. They’re taking photographs and talking to me. Why did you have to come today of all days?’
‘Which day would you have preferred?’
‘Stop it,’ she warned me. ‘You’re our prodigal son. Don’t spoil it.’
She led me into the room where I used to sleep on the floor. The photographer was unpacking his cases. I was shocked by Dad’s appearance as he got up to embrace me. ‘Hallo, boy,’ he said. He wore a thick white collar around his neck, which pressed his chins up around his jaw. ‘My neck is paining me no bloody end,’ he explained, grimacing. ‘This sanitary towel takes the weight off my brains. They push down on my spine.’
I thought of how, when I was a kid, Dad always out-ran me as we charged across the park towards the swimming pool. When we wrestled on the floor he always pinned me down, sitting on my chest and making me say I’d obey him always. Now he couldn’t move without flinching. I’d become the powerful one; I couldn’t fight him – and I wanted to fight him – without destroying him in one blow. It was a saddening disappointment.
In contrast, Eva looked fresh and businesslike, in a short skirt, black stockings and flat shoes. Her hair was expensively cut and dyed, her scent was lovely. There was nothing suburban about her; she’d risen above herself to become a glorious middle-aged woman, clever and graceful. Yes, I’d always loved her, and not always as a stepmother, either. I’d been passionate about her, and still was.