While Omar Ali and Henry were arguing, I noticed that Mustaq, the practised party host, was moving among the guests, introducing people, keeping an eye on things. Not that he had forgotten about me. I became aware that one of my purposes there was to be present when Mustaq told Alan-something I imagined he must have known already-that he and I had been brought up in the same neighbourhood, and that I’d known his father and sister.
Alan didn’t seem fascinated and drifted away. But Mustaq told me he wanted to continue, leading me into a neat sitting room and shutting the door.
As he uncorked more champagne, I said, “Does Ajita ever come to London?”
“Would you like to see her?”
“I would.”
“I think she and her husband are planning to come later this year. What’s that look-is it scepticism?”
I said, “It means opening a door I tried to close a long time ago.”
“Why close it in the first place?”
“I was in love with your sister, but one day she went away for good.”
“I can see why you’d want to reject that,” he said. “It was only recently that I was able to get interested in the past. Because of my ‘pop’ name and fair skin, I haven’t been mistaken for a Paki for years-not unlike Freddie Mercury, another who ‘disappeared’ into fame.
“I never talked about the factory and the strike, even when it was brought up by journalists. I didn’t try to hide it, but I never advertised it. I just said it had been a ‘bad time’ and anyhow I’d been young. Weren’t all those pop boys, like Bowie, trying to reinvent themselves?”
I asked, “Now you want to go back?”
“Did you ever see the factory while the strike was on?”
“I remember Ajita being taken inside-in the back of your father’s car.”
“He made me do that, a few times. I would cry and shit myself before we set out. It was terrifying, the screams, bricks, lumps of wood flung at us.”
“Why did he do it?”
“We were supposed to take over the business when the time was right, so he wanted us to know what went on in the real world.” Mustaq got up. “I want to talk more, but I must get back to the party.” I thought he was going to shake my hand, but he wanted to look at my wrist. “You’ve taken the watch off.”
“I don’t wear it all the time.”
“I’m not going to let this go,” he said.
“It is obviously important to you.”
“I’m thinking about my father a lot. I tried to be someone without a childhood. But there’s something I need to get to the bottom of. He was murdered, after all, and no one was punished for it. Didn’t you keep up with the case?”
“I tried to, but I wasn’t aware of any outcome.”
“There was no closure. He was just another Paki, and the strike was causing a nuisance to the politicians.”
I said, “I thought some men were arrested.”
“It was the wrong men, of course. The killers are still out there. But not for much longer.” He was leading me to the door, where Henry was waiting for me to join him for a curry. Mustaq said, “The men who were picked up were nowhere near our house. So who was it? Why would they do it? What would be the motive?” Then he said, “I have a place in Wiltshire. Not an English country house-my crib is comfortable and warm. Will you come? We will have time to talk.” He looked at Henry. “Will you both come?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “We will.”
I said, “Mustaq, will you give Ajita my number?”
“Of course. But she will be as nervous of speaking to you as you are of her. Please-will you go easy on her?”
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Oh, my darling Jamal, it’s been so long, kiss me and kiss me again.”
“Better keep your hands on the wheel, Karen.”
“I can drive one-handed. You know there’s a lot I can do one-handed.”
I said, “I didn’t know you were coming to George’s this weekend.”
“You didn’t? But I haven’t been out for absolutely ages.”
“You’ve been hiding at home?”
She said, “Things haven’t been good. They’ve been bloody rotten and down on me. Can’t we stop for a drink?”
“No.”
“Just a little one in a country pub?”
“It’s a different decade now, I’m afraid.”
“Haven’t we become too sensible?”
“The world has, but I’m sure you haven’t. It’s terrific to see you, Karen.”
“Is it? Is it really, Jamal?”
Karen was driving me to Mustaq’s.
Miriam had become determined to live her own life, even though she still felt guilty about leaving the kids and the house. Nonetheless, she and Henry were looking for the opportunity to get away together. As there was a club they were reluctant to miss on Friday night, they would come to the country after lunch on Saturday morning. I could have waited for them or gone down on the train.
It was a surprise then, when my old girlfriend Karen Pearl, the “TV Bitch,” offered me a lift. I wasn’t aware that she knew Mustaq, but it turned out that over the years he had appeared several times on her TV shows. Now and again she went to his house to recuperate from her life.
She turned up outside my place in a tiny red car, which roared when she pressed the accelerator. She’d asked her husband to buy it as compensation for leaving her, which he considered a more than fair exchange. If I was already anxious about seeing Mustaq and answering his inevitable questions, being squashed in a small space with Karen while being hurled down the motorway certainly made me breathe more rapidly.
“I am delighted and totally chuffed to be getting away,” she said. “You?”
I felt unnaturally close to the road; Karen played loud music, mostly ABBA, and, for my benefit, Gladys Knight as well as the Supremes, while smoking the entire time, as we always used to. Twice she opened the roof to demonstrate how it worked.
“Groovy top.”
“Isn’t it? We’re so old now, Jamal. My two girls are growing up,” she said. “It’s all slammed doors and lost mobile phones. But we have a grand girly time-like being back at boarding school. Otherwise, contrary to your corrupt view of me, I don’t have much of a laugh these days. Tom”-her ex-husband-“has taken the girls, along with his more or less teenage girlfriend, to Disneyland, Paris. As they are all of the same mental age, they’ll have a great time.”
“You having anyone?”
“I’m an untouchable,” she said. “This will make you laugh-I know exactly the kind of thing which will appeal to you.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, a few weeks ago I thought I’d give myself a treat. I tried it on with a potential toy boy. I’d heard that’s what all the old girls were doing. I strong-armed this moody, well-built kid into a ruinously expensive hotel room. There was champagne, drugs and what you used to describe as my vast arse, in silk red panties, all ready. And the boy so fit and sweet-”
“Famous?”
“On his way there. At the moment, an extra-a speaking extra, mind, but words rather than sentences-from a soap opera. At some cost to the little dignity I have left, I removed a good deal of my clothing, presenting said panties in what I considered to be a provocative way.”
“Oh wow.”
“He sat on the edge of the bed holding my hand, looking, I think, at how withered it was. Either that or my nail varnish had hypnotised him. Within half an hour he was on the tube home. I sat there for a while crying-”
“Oh, Karen-”
“Ready for my overdose, Mr. DeMille. Then I went home and got into bed with the girls. Oh, Jamal, think of all the nights you and I wasted not making love.”