She knew, too, that she was ugly and stupid and rank and worthless, and no man could get his head around her, but she couldn’t stomach any more rejection and she must not be insulted by Lisa again. After feeling loved for the first time in her life, she wasn’t strong enough to survive Lisa’s hatred.
At the other end of the phone, Henry didn’t know where he was, but he knew what he wanted, which was for her not to be hurt and for them to be together, continuing the life they had started. He started to weep and beg but he couldn’t make himself clear and the phone line went dead.
A little later I was watching the Champions League on TV, as well as taking some of this in, while waiting for Rafi to find his shoes and re-prepare his hair, when Henry came in, looking wild, as though he’d got caught in a storm.
He was in Miriam’s arms right away, and they were sobbing, apologising, squeezing each other’s buttocks and Henry wailing, “But I will never reject you, never! You know that! You are my sweet, my soul, my sausage! For you I would become an outlaw from everyone-from my entire family! How could you think I would let you down when I want us to marry!”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up-”
“No, no-”
Rafi came in and looked at them, amazed.
It wasn’t long before the two of them were making phone calls, working out where they’d go that night to “play.”
“By the way,” said Henry to me, patting his pockets as I was leaving, “I found the tickets for the Stones. We’re definitely going!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Despite my sympathy for Henry’s suffering, I had to say, “What could be more gratifying to a man than to have two women fighting over him? It would be worse if they got along!”
He was shocked. “No pleasure without a price willingly paid? I hate to admit that you are right, but maybe you have a point,” he said, with some relief. “And at my age! All Lotharios cause chaos. None of them make a smoother world! These are the knock-ons of desire! As long as the women don’t go too far, how can I complain? Most people are far too well behaved,” he said confidently. “They go to their graves wondering whether they should have caused more harm to others, knowing they should. Jamal, thank you for your support! I’m sorry I brought such chaos to your sister’s life.”
Even though she had taken him back, he had been devastated by Miriam’s dismissal of him and was determined to bind her to him even more closely. That was why he wanted the Stones outing to be a success. Turned on by the Stones’ decadence-only a quarter century too late-Henry was more excited than I’d seen him for a while. He was ringing me all day. If I was with a patient, he’d talk to Maria, though she barely understood a word. She liked Puccini.
Henry had obtained the tickets from a costume designer he knew, who was now working with the group. The band was due to play the Astoria in Tottenham Court Road. I had seen the Stones with Ajita and Mustaq, but I knew Henry had never seen them before, though he claimed to have been “near” Hyde Park when Jagger wore an Ossie Clark dress, the first gig after Brian Jones died.
Marianne Faithfull had been in one of the productions he’d assisted on, as a young man in the late 60s, and they were still friends, difficult though she could be, like any diva. But Henry had always been a little snobbish about rock’n’roll, unable to make up his mind whether it was tat or the revolution. He hated to dance, disliked anything too loud and was ambivalent about the joys of “vulgarity,” until now, when he knew Miriam would be impressed. She was.
Henry had mislaid the tickets, found them, lost them, and finally found them. At last, when the day came, Miriam and Henry spent the afternoon in Camden market, buying black clothes. We all had our most impressive gear on, with comfortable shoes. Bushy drove Henry, me and Miriam up there, dropping us off in Soho Square. Soho was always crowded now, but tonight it was rammed.
“At the risk of sounding like someone’s aunt, can I say, do we really have to join that queue?” said Henry as we approached the line. “Don’t we have good tickets? Isn’t there a special entrance?”
“That is the special entrance.”
Crowds were already queuing around the block. Along the lines, numerous touts were buying and selling tickets. The atmosphere was vital, almost violent and riotous, in a way that theatre or opera never is. As Henry noted, “It’s not like this at my shows!”
Even after so many years, audiences were mad for the Stones, the essential London group, playing at home in a small venue. Scores of photographers strained behind barriers, snapping at soap stars in blinding bling. Miriam had to point out these people to Henry, as well as identifying the children of rock’n’rollers we’d worshipped in the 60s, now comprising a new dynasty, and resembling in their “social capital” the great noble families of the ancien régime.
Inside, on the way to the bar, I ran into the Mule Woman. Accompanied by a good-looking boy, she was wearing little black-rimmed glasses, like a model who’d become a librarian. We kissed on the cheek, and she asked about Henry. “He’s just the same,” I said. “Would you like to have supper with the two of us next week?”
She agreed, but before we could arrange it there was a roar: the band was about to come onstage. People rushed to their places.
Although they had been doing those tunes for thirty years, the Stones didn’t make their boredom obvious; they knew how to put on a good show, particularly Keef. Miriam’s rapture was enough for Henry, who was entranced by the excitement and the audience as much as by the band. (In the theatre he liked to sit at the back, keeping an eye on the audience. He claimed the women caressed themselves-their arms, legs and faces-as they watched. “How gentle they are with themselves,” he said. “I wonder if this is how their mothers caressed them as babies.”) At the Stones, the fact that he could sit down at a table at the front of the balcony was one of the main attractions. Despite the state of her knees, Miriam seemed temporarily resuscitated, and danced when they played “Street Fighting Man.”
As we were leaving, and with Bushy parked up behind Centre Point, Henry’s friend caught up with us and suggested we go to Claridge’s, where Mick had a suite and was “entertaining.” Tom Stoppard, an acquaintance of Henry’s, had suggested Henry might enjoy Mick. Bushy drove us there.
As we got closer, Miriam’s enthusiasm seemed to drain away; she started saying she’d be “out of her depth.” Having never been in the same room as a “knight of the realm” before-should she call him “Sir”?-she tried to get Bushy to take her home.
“What a lot of nonsense you talk, Miriam,” said Henry. “I won’t put up with it. Once you get there, you will see that Mick’s cool,” he said, as if he knew. “He’s a real person, like us. He’s not like-”
“Who?”
“Ozzy Osbourne.”
Henry and I wouldn’t go in without her, and we both said we’d do the talking. In the glittering lobby, PR girls and hangers-on clip-clopped about. Bushy had found a raggedy peaked cap in the boot of the car and insisted on accompanying us upstairs in the mirrored lift, putting on a deferential manner and nodding confidentially at Jagger’s security, while tapping his nose as if he had a secret inside it that he was trying to draw attention to. Bushy wanted to be considered “staff” in order to catch a glimpse of Mick, who he worshipped as a fellow bluesman.
There he was, Jagger, fit and lithe, and looking like a man who had seen everything and understood a lot of it. He had come out to greet his guests at the door, alongside his tall girlfriend. Inside, as we started to drink, Jagger ate, checked his email and looked at the newspapers, chatted to friends and to his daughter Jade. Henry was hungry by now and couldn’t believe Jagger was sitting there eating without offering him anything. In the end, Jagger cheerfully ordered Henry some sandwiches, which he scoffed gratefully.