Mick was glad to see Miriam’s tattoos. She claimed to have been influenced by Tattoo You. After, she was happy out on the balcony, looking across the city, chatting to a posh girl who turned out to be a Scientologist. While you could be sure that one of the things the wealthy and poor had in common was an interest in superstition, even Miriam couldn’t bring herself to worship someone called Ron.
We sat in a small circle discussing Blair, Bush, Clinton, about which Henry had much to say, though Jagger was more discreet. It was late for me, I told Jagger, who said he rarely went to bed before four but always had eight hours’ sleep. Jagger and Henry had a conversation about sleeping pills, Jagger being cautious about the whole thing, not wanting “to get addicted.” People continued to come and go as though this was what smart London did, drift in and out of each other’s apartments at one in the morning.
As one would with a rock god, I had an informative discussion with Jagger about good private schools in West London. When I decided to leave and was looking for my coat, a man I didn’t quite recognise who’d come in towards the end of the evening was brought across to me by Jagger.
“He wants to meet you,” said Mick, explaining that they were cricket pals, going to test matches around the world together. George knew everything about Indian cricket.
I was close enough to the modern world to recognise that this fellow, George Cage, was a songwriter and performer. To me he looked kind of shiny, with the sheen of health, success and vacuity which comfort and sycophancy gives people. Miriam, who had by now come in, seemed to know who George was and was thrilled. “My daughter likes you,” she told him cheerfully.
“That’s good,” he said. “Usually it’s the mothers.”
I said I had to go, I’d get a cab on the street. I noticed that George kept looking at me, and at last, when I was fetching my coat, he came over and asked me to show him my arm.
“This might seem odd to you, but something is making me quite curious,” he said. “Can I see that?”
He wanted to look at my watch.
I showed it to him. It was an old, heavy watch on a silver bracelet strap, with wide hands under thick, scratched glass. A watch with clear figures and the date, everything a man who needed to orient himself could require.
He bent over to study it. He wanted me to take it off so he could look at the back. I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse.
He put his glasses on and studied it. When he returned it, he said, “Can I ask where you got that?”
“I’ve had it a long time,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“My father had one similar.”
“I don’t think they’re expensive. What did he do?”
“He had a factory. He was a businessman. In South London.”
I held his gaze. “Mustaq?” I said. He nodded. I said, “Ajita’s your sister?”
“That’s right.”
“My God,” I said. “Is she okay?”
“Oh yes. Did you think she wouldn’t be? She is living in New York with her two children. Or at least one of them. The other is at college.” He took out his phone and looked at it. “I’m going to ring her later. Would you like me to tell her I saw you?”
“Please.”
“A shock, eh?”
“Certainly.”
He said, “I’m going out dancing. Nowhere smart-awful dives, mainly. Would you like to join me? Perhaps we could talk. My driver will take you home.”
I told him that my work meant I started early in the morning. Then I asked, “Mustaq, how did the music stuff happen? Actually, I can remember you singing to me.”
“I am sorry. After my father died, when my sister and I were in India, in my uncle’s house, I stayed indoors for two years, learning the drums, tabla, guitar, piano. Anything that made a noise. Anything that Dad would have disliked. That’s how I was one of the first people to mix jazz, rock, Bollywood film tunes and Indian classical music.
“You know, I’d always wanted to be a young American, and in New York I found other boys to perform with. I loved being onstage and was never afraid. But you must be too tired to talk now.”
As I listened to him, I became aware that he was exactly as he had been, except that all his gestures were slightly exaggerated, as though he were a camp actor playing himself too seriously.
He said, taking out his BlackBerry, “Could I see you again? Would it be all right if I took your number?”
“Of course.”
Despite his graceful formality, before we left he took my arm once more, gently, as though he were going to stroke it, and put his face to the face of the watch, twice looking up quizzically at me. He may have amused me, but I recalled, from the time we’d wrestled, his tenacity.
On the way home in the car I said, “It was uncanny seeing Mustaq-or George Cage, as he’s called-again.”
“He was certainly giving you the eye,” said Henry. “I’d say he was freaked. Did you two have a passion for each other?”
“I preferred his sister.”
Miriam murmured, “He preferred you.”
“And still does,” Henry said, giggling.
I asked Miriam about George Cage. I’d heard of him, but he’d come to prominence when I was losing interest in pop and preferred the mid-period, chaotic, electric Miles.
“He and his boyfriend are always in the tabloids. How come you know him?” she asked.
“Miriam, his family lived close to us, across the park in Bickley. Have you forgotten I went out with his sister, Ajita?”
“Of course,” she said. “I knew I’d met him before.”
“I don’t think you did,” I said, recalling how ambivalent I’d felt about it at the time.
“Oh yes, I remember it-subliminally,” she insisted. “I trust myself in that intuitive area.”
“Were you really glad to see him?” Henry asked. “You both looked as though you’d been hit with bricks.”
“I will see him again, if he asks me. Will you come?”
Miriam turned and poked her finger at me. “Didn’t I instruct you, Brother, to look for the Indian girl?”
“Not that I followed your advice.”
“Somewhere she knew, and heard you. You better watch out-long-lost love is coming in your direction.”
“She might be right,” said Henry.
As Henry and Miriam snogged in the backseat, Miriam saying what a great night it had been, I wondered about Mustaq and how strange it was not only to see him at Jagger’s but in this new incarnation.
Even as I wondered what he wanted from me, and what I was getting back into, I knew I was going where I had to go.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I wasn’t convinced, however, that I would hear from George Cage again. I imagined that, like most celebrities, his life had become a matter of keeping people away. Meanwhile, there were questions which had been going through my mind. Did Ajita want to see me? And did I want to see her?
George Cage had his secretary call me a week later, inviting me to a drinks party. Although it wouldn’t just be the two of us, I realised George was trying to talk to me about the past. I could have refused to meet Mustaq-as I still thought of him-but I had been thinking about his father, whose face had appeared in several of my dreams recently. The dead man not only names his murderer, he whispers it throughout eternity, waiting to be heard.
Nor had Ajita disappeared from my life, as I’d thought she had. She was alive in the real world, existing outside my mind. Really, she was the one I wanted to connect with again. Once more it seemed pressing. I needed her brother’s help in some way. Perhaps some sort of resolution might be possible.
I agreed to go over, asking if it was okay if I brought a friend. I’m happy going to places I haven’t been before if Henry is with me.