During their marriage, he’d had affairs-which were mostly emotional-and eventually left. This caused her pain, but she swallowed her hatred, seeing it made little difference in the end. All she had to do was hang on. If he refused to take her calls, maybe he was on holiday, she waited for him to return. When he was hungry, he went to her to eat; when he needed advice or an opinion, he asked her; and, of course, they had the children.
Henry knew how pleased she was when Sam returned to live with her, particularly as the daughter, Lisa, had always been perverse and obstructive. She despised them for their wealth, privilege and social ease, claiming they knew only rich people, apart from their numerous employees: cleaners, builders, gardeners, nannies, au pairs. As a social worker, Lisa had seen the lower world and identified with it; she refused money from her mother, and hardly saw her. One time she even gave up social work to become a cleaner in small “dole” hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, but was fired for complaining about the conditions and wages, and for trying to organise union activity.
Lisa’s ambition had always been to go down, to be poor, the one thing it had never occurred to anyone in the family to be. Unlike the real poor, she was able to go to her mother and receive a cheque for ten thousand pounds, if necessary, and never have to pay it back. In fact, her parents would have been delighted that she had come to them, asking for help, and indeed a couple of years ago she did do this. The cheque, for at least five thousand pounds, she forwarded to a Palestinian refugee organisation, saying to her mother, “But other people aren’t given money! It separates me from others. Why are you afraid of equality?”
Henry and Lisa weren’t speaking much at the moment. He was left-wing, and getting more so as London became more vulgarly wealthy, but she only sneered at him, saying it was “superficial.” Henry had got himself into a bate about Sam leaving. He refused to admit the kid had gone for good; he wouldn’t let him collect his things. Sam wanted his computer, his clothes and his iPod, but when he came to get them, Henry had locked the stuff away, saying the kid could only have them if he lived in the house. The boy refused, not surprisingly, and threatened to come back and smash whatever it required to get his things. Henry didn’t mind the boy’s threats and the constant phone calls from his mother, since it meant he was still in contact with Sam.
I have to say I’m not sure why Henry was behaving like a spurned lover, since he was hardly at home. When I went to Miriam’s now, Henry would often be there, cooking, washing up, sitting around, talking to Miriam’s kids and their friends, who’d never seen or heard anything like him. At the moment, during the day, he had a group of film students he’d been working with, and he continued teaching whoever was around him. He was a good teacher, knowing more than enough about culture, politics and history, scattering ideas, names and movements. He did have a tendency to become irate at his students’ ignorance, as though he thought they should know everything already. But although he was an egotist, he wasn’t a narcissist.
When Henry had a new experience, he became evangelical about it, as though no one had done such a thing before. He reiterated that the club he and Miriam attended was “the most democratic place” he’d been. “Fucking is a social event, after all. You can get to meet all types.”
“Like at the National Theatre?” I enquired.
He said, “More so! Hairdressers go there, bank employees, shopkeepers, van drivers, people who live in cheap housing outside the city. From one point of view, it is absurd and banal. From another, we all know that the highest and lowest people will risk their sanity, property, marriages and reputations for the satisfaction they require. We know, too, that this world of crazy desire is one our children will enter. How odd it is to think that such madness is at the centre of human life.”
He said he and Miriam weren’t bored with one another, and they still made love normally. It wasn’t as though they’d gone as far as they could with one another. Some men, when it came to sex, thought that there should be, ideally, another man present (usually a best friend) to satisfy the woman if they were incapable of it. But I knew Miriam was one of those competent women who had learned how to ensure they were both satisfied.
One time they dressed up at my place, like a couple of teenagers preparing to go to a party: loud music by the Rolling Stones-“Hey, shouldn’t we go and see them, aren’t they coming to town?”-and lots of water. I have to say it was an endearing sight: Henry in tight PVC trousers and an armless leather vest and heavy boots, Miriam in a short skirt, high heels and suspenders, a diaphanous baby-doll thing on top.
“This won’t stay on for long,” she said.
I couldn’t help myself and said, “I hope it’s dark in there.”
“The fucking cure,” Henry had called it, as they made their way to Bushy’s cab.
“Why don’t you come with us?” asked Miriam.
“Yes,” said Henry. “I’m sure you won’t meet any of your patients there. These people are having their therapy tonight!”
“I will come,” I said. “Not tonight, but another time. Would that be okay?”
“Yes,” said Miriam, kissing me.
When they were gone, I missed their noise and hope. The flat seemed empty. There I was, rereading a book, hiding my penis between its covers!
I sat down to write. It was time for me to describe, to myself, what happened the night I could bear no more and finally decided to take action. I needed to go back there, as I knew I would always have to, over and over again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wolf, Valentin and I were sitting in a borrowed car, parked beside the garage.
I had become a void. Nothing spoke within me.
I may have wondered whether the clocks had stopped, but we had been there at least two hours that evening, suspended in the silence, not moving, hardly breathing, but smoking, sighing, whispering and twitching, and all the cocaine gone, as it always is.
The longer we waited, the more agitated I became. I was even hoping that Ajita’s father wouldn’t come home, that he’d be with his mistress, if he had one, rather than have to “meet with” the three of us. Yes, it would be a grand night for him to visit this imaginary woman, since his son and daughter (my beloved) were staying with friends in Wembley.
Two nights previously Wolf had said to me, “What’s up, my friend? You’re looking gloomy again.”
“So would you, if someone was fucking with your woman.”
“You believe it’s still going on? Is it really true? But who could it be, man? When does she see him?”
“I can’t tell you. She begged me not to talk about it. It’s deadly serious, Wolf.”
“You do know who it is?”
“I do now. I found out, at last.”
“Yeah? You’ve got to tell us, your buddies, your pals,” Wolf said. “She’s a great girl. She comes to the house. She cooks for us. We really love her. If you weren’t with her, I’d make a move on her-like that.” He snapped his fingers.
They persuaded me to go to the pub, where I recounted what she had told me.
“Jesus, that’s serious,” said Wolf.
I said, “I can’t have her go through this one more night. We’ve got to do something. If this was a film, we’d just go in and shoot him up. It would be a pleasure.”
“You’re right. We should teach that father a lesson,” Wolf said. “Give him a little polite warning. It’s easy to do.”