“That’s okay,” I tell him. “These words are part of the language you’re studying. A lot of great writers have used the vulgar vernacular. This is interesting. What are you trying to say? That you’re very tired?”
Zeng sighs. “Yes. Last night my host family were arguing about some such thing. They were very drunk.”
“He rents a room from a family who rent the room from someone else,” Yumi says. “Illegal. And with very low people. Uneducated.”
“They are not so bad,” Zeng says. “But now I am very, very…fucking.”
“No,” Wit says. “You are fucked off.”
“That means angry,” I say.
“He is…perhaps…fucked up?” Wit suggests helpfully.
“He could say that. But that implies something other than tiredness. He could just say-I am fucked.”
Zeng chuckles. “Yes, it’s true. I am fucked.”
“So many of these bad words in English,” Wit says. “In German, there are many words for you. Du, dich, dir, Sie, Ihnen, ihr and euch. In English, there’s only one word for you. But many bad words.”
“Not so many bad words,” I say. “But lots of different meanings to the bad words.”
“Yes,” Gen says. “Such as-I do not give a fuck.”
Yumi gasps. Vanessa titters. Wit stokes his chin in contemplation.
“Means-I do not care,” Gen says loftily.
“Or you could call someone a useless fuck,” I say.
“Means he is not very good at making love?” Yumi says.
“No, no,” I say, blushing furiously. “It just means he’s a useless person.”
“Eskimos have fifty different words for snow,” Wit observes. “The English have fifty different words for fuck.”
“Fuck my old boots,” I say.
Frowns around the table.
“What is this-fuck old boots?” Wit says.
“It’s an expression of surprise,” I explain. “Like fuck a duck.”
“Sex with a…beast?” Zeng says. “Like in yellow films? Love with a duck?”
“We don’t call them yellow films. That’s a Chinese expression. Here we call pornography blue films.”
“Wah!”
“No, fuck a duck’s another exclamation of surprise.”
“Like-fuck all?” Wit asks.
“No, that means-nothing.”
“Fuck all means-nothing?”
“That’s right. You’re thinking of fuck me.”
“In the steakhouse where I work,” Wit says, “there were these bad men. Very drunk.”
“Mmm,” Vanessa says. “Very English, no?”
“They were unhappy with their bill and called for the manager,” Wit continues. “Then they threatened to kick the fuck out of him! And called him fuck face!”
“That’s very bad,” I say.
“What is this expression-to fuck someone’s ass off?” Gen says, as if he’s enquiring about some arcane point of etymology. “Is it sex-how to say?-in the rear? Sex-how to say?-up the anal way? That you are a back door man?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with that. It just means sex that’s done with a degree of enthusiasm. You see?” I tell them. “The great thing about English-the reason you are studying English rather than Chinese or Spanish or French-is that it’s an endlessly flexible language.”
“But English is a strange language,” Wit insists. “What is this funny book-Roger’s Thesaurus?”
“Roget’s Thesaurus,” I say.
“Yes, yes. It’s not a dictionary. It’s a book of synonyms, yes? No book like that exists in my country.”
“I think a book like Roget’s Thesaurus is unique to English. That’s why so many English words find their way into other languages. You can do what you like with it.”
“Excuse me, please,” Zeng says, getting up to go. “I must fuck off.”
“He is leaving!” Gen says triumphantly. “Zeng has to leave for General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen.”
“He must fuck off to work,” Wit enunciates carefully, like a professor of phonetics concluding a particularly tricky tutorial. “Or the fuckers will give him the fucking sack.”
And soon more of them are slipping away. Gen to the kitchen of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Brewer Street, Wit to that grim old-fashioned red-plush steakhouse on Shaftesbury Avenue where the bad men go, Vanessa to some smitten English boy at the bar who is going to take her dancing.
Soon there’s only Yumi and me at our table in the Eamon de Valera and I’m finally speechless as I feel the effects of two pints of Guinness and her shining brown eyes.
“I like you, you’re nice,” she says.
Fucking hell.
6
M Y GRANDMOTHER IS TELLING some big shot from the BBC that she is eighty-seven and still has all her own teeth. My mother looks wonderful in a long red dress, her hair piled on top of her head, and she seems very happy as she smiles and moves among the guests, checking that everyone is okay.
I am hovering on the edge of the evening, trying to overcome the quiet panic that I always feel at parties, fighting the fear that there will be no one for me to talk to. But after a while even I start to relax. It feels like a special night.
It’s true that the guests are a very mixed bunch. The guffawing sports journalists with their Liverpool and Estuary and Irish accents seem to belong at a different gathering from the garrulous, well-spoken girls from television. The authors with their acres of corduroy and denim seem strangely subdued next to the leering late-night DJs with their big cigars. My nan, as frail as a sparrow in her floral party dress, seems to come from a different century from the man in Armani from the BBC.
But it is surprising how well people from different worlds can get on when there is goodwill in the air and expensive alcohol in their bloodstreams and good sushi being offered around. And there is real affection for my father in this room.
I told my mother that he had no real friends, but I was wrong. I feel that these people are all genuinely proud to know my dad. I sense that they admire and like him. They are honored to be here and excited about surprising him on his birthday. I feel proud of him, glad that he’s my father.
They have come from the four corners of the city to celebrate my father’s birthday. There are brash, beefy men who knew him from his years on the sports pages of national news-papers. There are youthful middle-aged men in colored spectacles, and loud girls in combat boots who know him from his appearances on their radio and television shows. There are people from his publishing house, sympathetic critics, important booksellers, talk show hosts, fellow writers, all these friends, colleagues and allies who have aided and abetted my dad’s brilliant career.
The party is around our indoor swimming pool. We are in here because it is the only room in the house big enough to hide almost a hundred people. They are milling around the pool, taking drinks and satay and tamaki rolls from the waiters, making jokes about going for a dip. But this is a good place for a celebration.
The bright fluorescent lights make the party feel like it’s being held in some kind of giant spotlight. The swimming pool shimmers turquoise and gold, the light catching the silver trays of the white-suited caterers as they move among guests holding twinkling flutes of champagne. A special night for a special man.
“He’s coming!” my mother announces and the main lights go out. But the room is still not quite dark because there are spotlights in the swimming pool, shimmering under water like yellow ghosts. Someone hits another switch and the room is suddenly pitch black.
Guests giggle and murmur in the darkness as we listen to my father’s Mercedes purring on the street. After a while the engine dies and soon there is the sound of his key in the door. There are another couple of self-conscious laughs which are urgently shushed. We wait for my father in complete darkness and total silence. Nothing happens. We wait some more. Still nothing happens. Nobody speaks. And then the door to the pool room finally opens.