Eva took me into the kitchen to show me some soup-bowls. She’d also bought a Titian print of a young man with long hair who looked like Charlie when he was at school. Long-stemmed tulips and daffodils sat in jugs on the table. ‘I’m so happy.’ Eva told me as she showed me things. ‘But I’m in a hurry. They’ve got to do something about death. It’s ridiculous to die so young. I want to live to be one hundred and fifty. It’s only now that I’m getting anywhere.’
Later, I sat down with Dad. His flesh was heavy, marked, and fatty now, the upper half of his face composed of flaccid pouches sewn together in a sort of tier under the eyes, unfolding one by one like an Italian terrace down his cheeks.
‘You’ve told me nothing of what’s happening in your life,’ he said. I wanted to stagger him with my soap opera news. But when I want to stagger people I usually can’t; staggered is the last thing they are. ‘I’m in a soap opera,’ I said, in Changez’s voice. ‘Top pay. Top job. Top person.’
‘Don’t always laugh in my face like an idiot,’ Dad said.
‘But I’m not. I wasn’t.’
‘You’re still a liar too, I see.’
‘Dad –’
‘At least you’re doing something visible at last and not bumming,’ he said.
I flushed with anger and humiliation. No, no, no, I wanted to shout. We’re misunderstanding each other again! But it was impossible to clarify. Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your mature self, to react in this considered way rather than that elemental way, to breathe evenly from the bottom of your stomach and to see your parents as equals, but within five minutes your intentions are blown to hell, and you’re babbling and screaming in rage like an angry child.
I could barely speak, until Dad asked me the question which was so difficult for him and yet was the only thing in the world he wanted to know.
‘How’s your mum?’ he said.
I told him she was well, better than I’d seen her for years, good-tempered and active and optimistic and all. ‘Good God,’ he said quickly. ‘How can that possibly be? She was always the world’s sweetest but most miserable woman.’
‘Yes, but she’s seeing someone – a man – now.’
‘A man? What kind of a man? Are you sure?’
He couldn’t stop asking questions. ‘Who is he? What’s he like? How old is he? What does he do?’
I chose my words carefully. I had to, since I’d noticed that Eva was behind Dad, in the doorway. She stood there casually, as if we were discussing our favourite films. She hadn’t the taste to turn away. She wanted to know exactly what was going on. She didn’t want any secrets within her domain.
Mum’s boyfriend was not remarkable, I said to Dad. At least, he was no Beethoven. But he was young and he cared for her. Dad couldn’t believe it was so simple; none of it satisfied him. He said, ‘D’you think – of course, you don’t know this, how could you, it’s none of your business, it’s none of mine, but you might have guessed, or heard it from Allie or from her, especially with your great big nose poking into other people’s businesses non-stop – do you think he’s kissing her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yeah, I’m sure of it. And he’s injected her with new life, he really has. It’s terrific, eh?’
This practically assassinated him there and then. ‘Nothing will ever be the same again,’ he said.
‘How could it be?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, and he turned his face away. Then he saw Eva. He was afraid of her, I could see.
‘My love,’ he said.
‘What are you doing, Haroon?’ she said angrily. ‘How can you even think like this?’
‘I’m not thinking like it,’ Dad said.
‘Stupid, it’s stupid to regret anything.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do, you see. And you won’t even acknowledge it.’
‘Please, Eva, not now.’
He sat there trying not to mind her, but the resentment was going deep. All the same, I was surprised by him. Was it only now, after all this time, that he realized the decision to leave our mother was irrevocable? Perhaps only now could he believe it wasn’t a joke or game or experiment, that Mum wasn’t waiting at home for him with curry and chapatis in the oven and the electric blanket on.
That evening I said I’d take Dad, Eva, Allie and his girlfriend out to dinner to celebrate my new job and Dad giving up his. ‘What a good idea,’ said Eva. ‘Maybe I’ll make an announcement, too.’
I rang Jammie at the commune and invited her and Changez to join us. Changez took the phone from her and said he’d come out if he could but wasn’t sure about Jamila, because of naughty Leila. And anyway, they’d been out at the polling booths all day, working for the Labour Party at the election.
We got dressed up, and Eva persuaded Dad into his Nehru jacket, collarless and buttoned up to the throat like a Beatle jacket, only longer. The waiters would think he was an ambassador or a prince, or something. She was so proud of him, too, and kept picking stray hairs off his trousers, and the more bad-tempered he looked, because of everything being wrong, the more she kissed him. We took a taxi to the most expensive place I knew, in Soho. I paid for everything with the money I’d got by trading in the ticket to New York.
The restaurant was on three floors, with duck-egg blue walls, a piano and a blond boy in evening dress playing it. The people were dazzling; they were rich; they were loud. Eva, to her pleasure, knew four people there, and a middle-aged queen with a red face and potbelly said, ‘Here’s my address, Eva. Come to dinner on Sunday and see my four Labradors. Have you heard of so-and-so?’ he added, mentioning a famous film director. ‘He’ll be there. And he’s looking for someone to do up his place in France.’
Eva talked to him about her work and the job she was currently doing, designing and decorating a country house. She and Ted would have to stay in a cottage in the grounds for a while. It was the biggest thing they’d been asked to do. She was going to employ several people to help her, but they would only be self-aware types, she said. ‘Self-aware but not self-conscious, I hope,’ said the queen.
Inevitably, little Allie knew some other people there, three models, and they came over to our table. We had a small party, and by the end of it everyone in the place seemed to have been told I was going to be on television, and who was going to be the next Prime Minister. It was the latter that made them especially ecstatic. It was good to see Dad and Allie together again. Dad made a special effort with him and kept kissing him and asking him questions, but Allie kept his distance; he was very confused and he’d never liked Eva.
To my relief, at midnight Changez turned up in his boiler suit, along with Shinko. Changez embraced Dad and me and Allie, and showed us photographs of Leila. She couldn’t have had a more indulgent uncle than Changez. ‘If only you’d brought Jamila,’ I said. Shinko was very attentive to Changez. She spoke of his care for Leila and his work on Princess Jeeta’s shop, while he ignored her and brayed his loud opinions on the arrangement of items in a shop – the exact location of sweets in relation to bread – even as she praised him to others.
He ate massively, ol’ Changez, and I encouraged him to have two helpings of coconut ice-cream, which he ate as if it were about to be taken from him. ‘Have anything you like,’ I said to all of them. ‘D’you want dessert, d’you want coffee?’ I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure. I wanted to do more of this. It was as if I’d suddenly discovered something I was good at, and I wanted to practise it nonstop.