‘Your father looks like a magician,’ she said. She smiled at me and took two quick sidesteps into the circle of my privacy so she was beside me. Her sudden presence surprised and aroused me. It was only a minor surprise on the Richter surprise scale, a number three and a half, say, but it registered. At that moment my eyes were on God. Did he look like a magician, a wonder-maker?
He was certainly exotic, probably the only man in southern England at that moment (apart, possibly, from George Harrison) wearing a red and gold waistcoat and Indian pyjamas. He was also graceful, a front-room Nureyev beside the other pasty-faced Arbuckles with their tight drip-dry shirts glued to their guts and John Collier grey trousers with the crotch all sagging and creased. Perhaps Daddio really was a magician, having transformed himself by the bootlaces (as he put it) from being an Indian in the Civil Service who was always cleaning his teeth with Monkey Brand black toothpowder manufactured by Nogi & Co. of Bombay, into the wise adviser he now appeared to be. Sexy Sadie! Now he was the centre of the room. If they could see him in Whitehall!
He was talking to Eva, and she had casually laid her hand on his arm. The gesture cried out. Yes, it shouted, we are together, we touch each other without inhibition in front of strangers. Confused, I turned away, to the matter of Helen.
‘Well?’ she said gently.
She desired me.
I knew this because I had evolved a cast-iron method of determining desire. The method said she desired me because I had no interest in her. Whenever I did find someone attractive it was guaranteed by the corrupt laws which govern the universe that the person would find me repellent, or just too small. This law also guaranteed that when I was with someone like Helen, whom I didn’t desire, the chances were they would look at me as she was looking at me now, with a wicked smile and an interest in squeezing my mickey, the thing I wanted most in the world from others, provided I found them attractive, which in her case I didn’t.
My father, the great sage, from whose lips instruction fell like rain in Seattle, had never spoken to me about sex. When, to test his liberalism, I demanded he tell me the facts of life (which the school had already informed me of, though I continued to get the words uterus, scrotum and vulva mixed up), he murmured only, ‘You can always tell when a woman is ready for sex. Oh yes. Her ears get hot.’
I looked keenly at Helen’s ears. I even reached out and pinched one of them lightly, for scientific confirmation. Warmish!
Oh, Charlie. My heart yearned for his hot ears against my chest. But he had neither phoned since our last love-making nor bothered to turn up here. He’d been away from school, too, cutting a demo tape with his band. The pain of being without the bastard, the cold turkey I was enduring, was alleviated only by the thought that he would seek more wisdom from my father tonight. But so far there was no sign of him.
Eva and Marianne were starting to organize the room. The candle industry was stimulated, Venetian blinds were lowered, Indian sandalwood stinkers were ignited and put in flowerpots, and a small carpet was put down for the Buddha of suburbia to fly on. Eva bowed to him and handed him a daffodil. God smiled at people recognized from last time. He seemed confident and calm, easier than before, doing less and allowing the admirers to illuminate him with the respect that Eva must have been encouraging in her friends.
Then Uncle Ted and Auntie Jean walked in.
CHAPTER THREE
There they were – two normal unhappy alcoholics, her in pink high heels, him in a double-breasted suit, dressed for a wedding, almost innocently walking into a party. They were Mum’s tall sister Jean and her husband, Ted, who had a central heating business called Peter’s Heaters. And they were clapped in the eyeballs by their brother-in-law, known as Harry, lowering himself into a yogic trance in front of their neighbours. Jean fought for words, perhaps the only thing she had ever fought for. Eva’s finger went to her lips. Jean’s mouth closed slowly, like Tower Bridge. Ted’s eyes scoured the room for a clue that would explain what was going on. He saw me and I nodded at him. He was disconcerted, but not angry, unlike Auntie Jean.
‘What’s Harry doing?’ he mouthed.
Ted and Jean never called Dad by his Indian name, Haroon Amir. He was always ‘Harry’ to them, and they spoke of him as Harry to other people. It was bad enough his being an Indian in the first place, without having an awkward name too. They’d called Dad Harry from the first time they’d met him, and there was nothing Dad could do about it. So he called them ‘Gin and Tonic’.
Uncle Ted and I were great mates. Sometimes he took me on central heating jobs with him. I got paid for doing the heavy work. We ate corned-beef sandwiches and drank tea from our thermos flask. He gave me sporting tips and took me to the Catford dog track and Epsom Downs. He talked to me about pigeon racing. Ever since I was tiny I’d loved Uncle Ted, because he knew about the things other boys’ fathers knew about, and Dad, to my frustration, didn’t: fishing and air rifles, aeroplanes, and how to eat winkles.
My mind was rapidly working as I tried to sort out how it was that Ted and Jean had turned up here, like characters from an Ealing Comedy walking into an Antonioni film. They were from Chislehurst too, but worlds away from Carl and Marianne. I concentrated until things started to get clear in my mind. How had all this happened? I began to see. What I saw didn’t cheer me.
Poor Mum must have fallen into such unhappiness that she’d spilled out Dad’s original guru exploit in Beckenham to her sister. Jean would have been apopleptic with outrage at her sister’s weakness in allowing it to happen. Jean would have hated Mum for it.
When God had announced – or, rather, got me to announce, just a few hours before – that he was making a comeback as a visionary, Mum would have rung her young sister. Jean would have tautened, turning into the steely scheming knife she really was. Into action she went. She must have told Mum she knew Carl and Marianne. Their radiators had perhaps been installed by Peter’s Heaters. And Ted and Jean did live in a newish house nearby. That would be the only way a couple like Carl and Marianne would know Ted and Jean. Otherwise Carl and Marianne, with their books and records and trips to India, with their ‘culture’, would be anathema to Ted and Jean, who measured people only in terms of power and money. The rest was showing off, an attempt to pull a fast one. For Ted and Jean, Tommy Steele – whose parents lived round the corner-was culture, entertainment, show business.
Meanwhile, Eva had no idea who Ted and Jean were. She just waved irritably at these late and oddly respectable intruders.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ she hissed.
Ted and Jean looked at each other as if they’d been asked to swallow matchsticks.
‘Yes, you,’ Eva added. She could be sharp, old Eva.
There was no choice. Ted and Jean slid slowly to the floor. It must have been years since Auntie Jean had been anywhere near the ground, except when she fell over drunk. They certainly couldn’t have expected the evening to be this devout, with everyone sitting admiringly around Dad. We would be in big trouble later, no doubt about that.
God was about to start. Helen went and sat down with the others on the floor. I stood behind the bar and watched. Dad looked over the crowd and smiled, until he discovered himself smiling at Ted and Jean. His expression didn’t change for a moment.
Despite calling Ted and Jean Gin and Tonic, he didn’t dislike Jean and he did like Ted, who liked him in return. Ted often discussed his ‘little personal difficulties’ with Dad, for although it was perplexing for Ted that Dad had no money, Ted sensed that Dad understood life, that Dad was wise. So Ted told Dad about Jean’s heavy drinking, or her affair with a young local councillor, or how his life was beginning to seem futile, or how unsatisfied he felt.