She was so sullen and freaked, traumatised, I supposed, that she couldn’t even hit me. It occurred to me that she’d either damage herself in some way or go back on the smack.
We rode back into London on the tube. The little houses and neat gardens sitting there in the cold looked staid, cute, prim. Saying nothing, hating everything, we both had furious eyes. This was our land, and it was where we had to live. All we could do now was get on with our lives-or not. At Victoria Station the two of us parted without speaking. I went home to Mum, and Miriam went to stay with someone who had a council flat in North Kensington.
I knew that, whatever happened, I needed to get a job. Luckily, I had a friend from university who was working in the British Library, and he said he could get me something there.
The one person I didn’t expect to see again was Najma, but she did turn up a year later in Britain and rang Mother, asking for me. For a moment, in my confusion and with Mum’s lack of clarity-“an Indian girl phoned”-I thought it was Ajita. I began to cry with relief. She hadn’t forgotten me, she was coming back.
Najma had married a Pakistani who came here to study engineering, and the two of them were living in Watford with twins. I went out to see them a few times.
One kid had a fever, and the other was perhaps a little backward. The couple had been racially harassed, knew no one and the husband was out all day. Najma would cook for me; she knew I loved her food, and we’d sit together, chastely, while she talked of everything she missed “back home.” Exiled, she continued to curse the West for its immorality while blaming it for failing to dispense its wealth to her family with the alacrity her fantasies demanded.
I took the husband out for a drink and had to listen to him complaining about the excessive price of prostitutes in Britain.
I could only say that Britain might turn out to be more expensive than he thought.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Henry had been getting into trouble, and the trouble was spreading, drawing us all in.
On my answering machine there was a message from his daughter, Lisa. Soon there were two messages. She didn’t want to see me, she had to see me. As insistent as the rest of her family, like them she expected to get her way. I was busy with patients and with Rafi, but being stupidly curious, I invited her for tea.
I’d always enjoyed hearing of her adventures from Henry, and over the years I’d run into her occasionally, usually with her brother. As a child she’d always been surrounded by artistic and political people, picketing the Sunday Times building at Wapping in 1986 and staying at Greenham Common at the weekends. She’d had an expensive education before going to Sussex University to read sociology.
With such a pedigree, how could she do anything else but drop out just before her finals in order to live in a tree situated on the route of a proposed motorway? Henry could hardly object. Hadn’t he taken her to march with E. P. Thompson and Bruce Kent against nuclear weapons? Nevertheless, when she did climb down from the tree, Henry took it for granted she’d return to “ordinary” life. He or Valerie would ring one of their friends, and her career would begin.
But she became a social worker at the lowest level, visiting mad, old alcoholic men and women on her bicycle, refusing to “section” people because it entailed forcibly taking them into psychiatric care. She left home to live on a druggie single-mother estate. Her flat was at the top of the block, with an extensive view over Richmond Park, and she filled it with Palestinians and other refugees. On occasions she threw paint at McDonald’s or raided shops for pornography, filling up bags with the stuff. “I hope it’s going to the unemployed,” murmured Henry.
These actions weren’t considered far-out among the bohemian young, for whom unconventional behaviour was compulsory. Henry considered her a successful extension of himself. But he did worry, saying, “My daughter is still the sort of person who might seek a position as a human shield. How come she took the sins of the world on her shoulders? Where did this guilt and masochism come from? As long as her fury is directed at herself, everyone’s fine. When it’s coming towards you, you better watch out!”
She showed up at my place on a bicycle, fresh from her allotment. Her hair was halfway down her back, and it was thick and dramatic, unkempt, of course, which spoke to me of a repudiated femininity. Not that I thought she was a lesbian, though she’d tried to be, I’d heard, and failed, as so many do.
She seemed to be carrying three rucksacks and resembled a vertical snail. Her fingernails were dirty, her boots muddy and her all-natural clothing was coming apart. She wore no make-up or decoration. The veins in her face were broken from the harsh weather she liked to endure, and she looked weary, as though she’d been digging for weeks.
It didn’t seem long ago, in February 2003, that she and I and Henry had walked together to Hyde Park on the antiwar march, attended by two million. Now, two years later, we were in the middle of a rotten, long conflict, which hadn’t improved her temper, nor anyone’s. While I made her a nettle tea, we agreed that we lived in a country led by a neurotic chained to an evangelical, imperialistic lunatic. She must have been the only Marxist left in the West, but I liked her passion. That seemed to be the last agreement we were to have.
She said, “The other day I went to see Henry. It was about lunchtime. Sam was in a state because he’d had to move out. You know why.”
I was leaning forward. “I heard the story.”
“And, childishly, Henry refused to give him his things back. The clothes Sam could do without, but the computer had his work on it. I said I’d fetch it for him, whatever it took. I wanted to see Henry.”
She had been let into Henry’s house by one of the other tenants, who were scared of women like her. Henry left his flat unlocked, as the Mule Woman had discovered. To find him, Lisa followed the fetid smell.
“He was more or less unconscious. He had been sick, the basin was full of it. He might have died. I found fetish clothes on the floor and other objects. There was a leather mask. I said to him, ‘What’s this?’”
“And?”
“He said, ‘For the last few centuries these masks have been used for celebratory dances associated with major social rituals.’” I had to put my hand in my mouth and bite it to stop myself laughing. She said, “Yes, another of his jokes, and I hate jokes now. He’d been clubbing. When I asked him what he’d been taking, he said E and Viagra-together!”
Henry was in no state to get up. He said Bushy would bring Miriam around later, and she’d help him.
Lisa said, “Seeing him there groaning, I thought it would have been easier to raise the Titanic than get Henry up.” She looked at me reproach-fully. “I sat down next to the ruin of my father.”
“How ruined was he?”
Apparently Valerie had said Karen had been on to her, arguing that if Henry didn’t finish the actors’ documentary, the project would be abandoned. Not only that, but she, Karen, already in financial trouble herself, would be personally liable. Valerie told Lisa that Henry had been turning down other work too, apart from teaching, claiming that he had “retired” and had “nothing left to say.”
Lisa said, “I asked if he wanted a doctor.”
“Was he really unwell?”
“When he was able to put some words together, he was in good spirits. Perhaps it was the drugs. I’ve never polluted my body with that shit, so I wouldn’t know. Have you?” I said nothing. “But,” she went on, “you know he’s had a heart attack. He almost died. How come your sister’s letting him take amphetamines? Does she want to kill him?”