The movie was A Bout de Souffle. 16 mm, grey and white. Old Fords and boulevards. Turn-ups and handkerchiefs. Kisses and cigarettes. Clara loved it (Beautiful Belmondo! Beautiful Seberg! Beautiful Paris!), Neena found it too French, and Alsana couldn’t understand what the bloody thing was about. ‘Two young people running around France talking nonsense, killing policemen, stealing vehicles, never wearing bras. If that’s European cinema, give me Bollywood every day of the week. Now, ladies, shall we get down to business?’
Neena went and collected the teas and plonked them on the little table.
‘So what’s all this about a conspiracy of Chaffinches? Sounds like Hitchcock.’
Alsana explained in shorthand the situation.
Neena reached into a bag for her Consulates, lit one up and exhaled minty smoke. ‘Auntie, they just sound like a perfectly nice middle-class family who are helping Millat with his studies. Is that what you dragged me from work for? I mean, it’s hardly Jonestown, now, is it?’
‘No,’ said Clara cautiously, ‘no, of course not – but all your auntie is saying is that Millat and Irie spend such a lot of time over there, so we’d just like to know a bit more about what they’re like, you know. That’s natural enough, isn’t it?’
Alsana objected. ‘That is not all I’m saying. I am saying these people are taking my son away from me! Birds with teeth! They’re Englishifying him completely! They’re deliberately leading him away from his culture and his family and his religion-’
‘Since when have you given two shits about his religion!’
‘You, Niece-of-Shame, you don’t know how I sweat blood for that boy, you don’t know about-’
‘Well, if I don’t know anything about anything, why the bloody hell have you brought me here? I’ve got other fucking things to do, you know.’ Neena snatched her bag and made to stand up. ‘Sorry about this, Clara. I don’t know why this always has to happen. I’ll see you soon…’
‘Sit down,’ hissed Alsana, grabbing her by the arm. ‘Sit down, all right, point made, Miss Clever Lesbian. Look, we need you, OK? Sit down, apology, apology. OK? Better.’
‘All right,’ said Neena, viciously stubbing out her fag on a serviette. ‘But I’m going to speak my mind and for once just shut that chasm of a mouth while I do it. OK? OK. Right. Now, you just said Irie’s doing tremendous in school, and if Millat’s not doing so well, it’s no great mystery – he doesn’t do any work. At least somebody’s trying to help him. And if he’s seeing too much of these people, I’m sure that’s his choice, not theirs. It’s not exactly Happy Land in your house at the moment, is it? He’s running away from himself and he’s looking for something as far away from the Iqbals as possible.’
‘Ah ha! But they live two roads away!’ cried Alsana triumphantly.
‘No, Auntie. Conceptually far away from you. Being an Iqbal is occasionally a little suffocating, you know? He’s using this other family as a refuge. They’re probably a good influence or something.’
‘Or something,’ said Alsana ominously.
‘What are you afraid of, Alsi? He’s second generation – you always say it yourself – you need to let them go their own way. Yes, and look what happened to me, blah blah blah – I may be Niece-of-Shame to you, Alsi, but I earn a good living out of my shoes.’ Alsana looked dubiously at the knee-length black boots that Neena had designed, made and was wearing. ‘And I live a pretty good life – you know, I live by principles. I’m just saying. He’s already having a war with uncle Samad. He doesn’t need one with you as well.’
Alsana grumbled into her blackberry tea.
‘If you want to worry about something, Auntie, worry about these KEVIN people he hangs around with. They’re insane. And there’s bloody loads of them. All the ones you wouldn’t expect. Mo, you know, the butcher – yes, you know – the Hussein-Ishmaels – Ardashir’s side of the family. Right, well, he’s one. And bloody Shiva, from the restaurant – he’s converted!’
‘Good for him,’ said Alsana tartly.
‘But it’s nothing to do with Islam proper, Alsi. They’re a political group. And some politics. One of the little bastards told me and Maxine we were going to roast in the pits of hell. Apparently we are the lowest forms of life, lower than the slugs. I gave his ball-bag a 360-degree twist. Those are the people you need to worry about.’
Alsana shook her head and waved Neena off with a hand. ‘Can’t you understand? I worry about my son being taken away from me. I have lost one already. Six years I have not seen Magid. Six years. And I see these people, these Chaffinches – and they spend more time with Millat than I do. Can you understand that, at least?’
Neena sighed, fiddled with a button on her top, and then, seeing the tears forming in her auntie’s eyes, conceded a silent nod.
‘Millat and Irie often go round there for dinner,’ said Clara quietly. ‘And Alsana, well, your auntie and I were wondering… if once you could go with them – you look young, and you seem young, and you could go and-’
‘Report back,’ finished Neena, rolling her eyes. ‘Infiltrate the enemy. That poor family – they’ve no idea who they’re messing with, have they? They’re under surveillance and they don’t even know it. It’s like the bloody Thirty-nine Steps.’
‘Niece-of-Shame: yes or no?’
Neena groaned. ‘Yes, Auntie. Yes, if I must.’
‘Much appreciated,’ said Alsana, finishing her tea.
Now, it wasn’t that Joyce was a homophobe. She liked gay men. And they liked her. She had even inadvertently amassed a little gay fan club in university, a group of men who saw her as a kind of Barbra Streisand/Bette Davis/Joan Baez hybrid and met once a month to cook her dinner and admire her dress sense. So Joyce couldn’t be homophobic. But gay women… something confused Joyce about gay women. It wasn’t that she disliked them. She just couldn’t comprehend them. Joyce understood why men would love men; she had devoted her life to loving men, so she knew how it felt. But the idea of women loving women was so far from Joyce’s cognitive understanding of the world that she couldn’t process it. The idea of them. She just didn’t get it. God knows, she’d made the effort. During the seventies she dutifully read The Well of Loneliness and Our Bodies Ourselves (which had a small chapter); more recently she had read and watched Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, but none of it did her any good. She wasn’t offended by it. She just couldn’t see the point. So when Neena turned up for dinner, arm in arm with Maxine, Joyce just sat staring at the two of them over the starter (pulses on rye bread), utterly fixated. She was rendered dumbstruck for the first twenty minutes, leaving the rest of the family to go through the Chalfen routine minus her own vital bit-part. It was a little like being hypnotized or sitting in a dense cloud, and through the mist she heard snippets of dinner conversation continuing without her.