The Harridan was the woman Bushy had been “going with” for a while, an upstairs room being used for their trysts. Now, while she was trying to persuade him to stay with her in her beach hut in Whitstable-“Oh, Bushy, dear, let’s get far away from all this, I have a place by the sea!”-he wanted to let her know he was less wholehearted than his initial passion might have led her to believe.
The women who were waiting to perform sat inside a wooden pen beside the bar, doing their make-up, abusing or flirting with the men who leaned over the side to talk to them. Now, one of them was shaving her legs. I liked strippers of any age, the rougher the better. I could watch them for hours while wondering, each time, whether the outcome might be different, like watching the replay of a football match, where one had the strange experience of knowing more than the players. Such squalid privacy was dying out in London, particularly as, with the development of CCTV-encouraged by a blind home secretary-everyone now watched everyone else, as though the whole country were under suspicion.
I’d taken Henry to the Cross Keys a couple of times, but he didn’t like it. “Even Christopher Marlowe would have given this greasy strip a miss,” he complained. “Shit, I think I’ve got spit and spunk up to my ankles! Doesn’t the zoo stink bother you? The only thing to be said for it is that one gets to learn something about contemporary fashions in pubic hair-who has, and has not, for instance, mown the lawn-an opportunity not to be sniffed at, as it were.”
The Cross Keys was a market where Bushy did many transactions, selling jackets, drugs, cigarettes, phones. I’d also seen him buying stuff. Various shuffling characters, some of them Korean or Chinese, would approach him, concealing something-usually bootleg DVDs-under their coats, or carrying suitcases.
“Wolf came into the flat. I talked to him.”
“What did he say? You don’t look good, man,” said Bushy, sitting at his usual table. “You ain’t shaved in a while. An’ I got a sensitive nose. Is it the vodka you still on?”
“It was pressed on me by my son.”
“Jeez, and him such a decent, bright kid too!”
I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the pub mirrors and gave myself a nod. I looked no worse than anyone else on the premises.
I said to Bushy, “I know Wolf from the old days, when I was a student. He’s come back because he wants to blackmail me.” I hesitated before saying, “He’s got something on me.”
“What sort of something?”
“I won’t tell you.”
“One of those no-details things. Shit, it could be filthy.” I had impressed him at last. “Bushy don’t need to know whether you done a person or not. You’re a man of integrity and dignity, and I don’t care how many people you’ve offed. We’re family, Jamal,” he said. “I hate to see a good doctor like you in trouble. You’re a gentleman and a scholar, but where will it get you these days, financially? Those books have put you in a dreamworld.”
“Have they really?”
I was wondering if he was right when he said, “You know I can say something like that without meaning nothing by it.”
I said, “Bushy, I’ve been thinking about this and don’t know what to do. I can’t go to the police. Wolf’s after money, and he has a lot of power over my good name, such as it is. The other day I was offered a weekly column on a national newspaper. Unlike a lot of people, I do, regrettably, need my reputation, otherwise I’d have few patients and no income. It’s a big deal for me, and decent money. So, you see, I am inclined to give him some money.”
Across the bar, a young Indian woman squatted down and spread her legs, her genitalia looking as though they were pinned together by a silver ring. She turned over and showed three old men-unshaven toothless grotesques who occupied the same position all day most days-the shrivelled eye of her anus, the gentlemen leaning forward with their hands on the edge of the stage, as though to examine a rare object which had turned up after a long time.
Considering Wolf, I was reminded of that time at school when all through the lunch break the bully who used to be your best friend has been following you, and is now approaching. You’re in the cloakroom; everyone else has returned to their classrooms; the school is temporarily quiet. He is stepping slowly towards you with a smile on his face, and what do you do? Fight and suffer more damage, or roll up in a ball and beg for mercy? I was tempted by the “rolling up in a ball position”-to let Wolf speak, and allow everything to come down which could come down, at least for the pleasure of seeing where it fell.
To be punished, in other words. Wouldn’t I be in a similar position to Ajita’s father when his life was collapsing before he died, a man about to lose everything? Except that, unlike him, I would be playing with degrees of suicide. What gains would there be, except in fantasy? If I were one of my own patients, I’d recommend a longer-term strategy of silence and cunning. Perhaps the only way to not be eaten by a wolf is to cling to its back. But would it get me anywhere in the end?
Bushy said, “Don’t give him nothing. I’m sayin’ you’ll never escape it. Can you inform me of this, though, boss? The thing you didn’t do but are in trouble about…Were there any other witnesses?”
“One. He’s dead.”
“Good.”
I hadn’t enjoyed hearing that Valentin had killed himself.
Bushy said, “Is the dude coming to see you again?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Let’s see what he say when you turn him down. If he gets nasty, I’ll be right outside your house. Measure ’im artfully-otherwise we can’t deal with him.” Then Bushy said to me, “I’m not saying you might not have to off him. That’s the only way to deal with some of these people. I can’t do him myself, mind.” He shuddered. “There’s blokes here who might be able to manage the job.”
“How much might it cost?”
“I’ll look into it for yer.”
I’d already lied to Mustaq about his father. Now this new matter was hurting me. I needed to discuss it. But I didn’t want to worry Miriam, and it was a matter too explosively intimate for my present relationship with Josephine. The only other candidate was Henry, a gossip: there was little he’d keep from the general discourse. It wouldn’t occur to him that I was in any real danger. With him, my secret would go no further than West London, which was too far for me.
I said, “But maybe I can charm him.” Bushy raised his long eyebrow at me. “Or offer him something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll let you know what he says.”
I finished my drink and was about to tell Bushy that I needed to get going when he put his hand on my arm and said, looking round the place, “Boss, there’s a little thing I want to ask you-”
“Yes?” I said. “If there’s anything I can do in return.”
“I wouldn’t come to you for nothing, you’re a professional man with ultra-high standards. But I been having these dreams. They keep coming back. They’re tripartite.”
“Sorry?”
“In threes. You want me to sit down?”
“You’re going to tell me the dream now?”
“Why not?”
“Okay,” I said. “Do it wherever you feel comfortable. It’s the words that count, not the seating.”
All societies, like all lives, are sewn together by the needle of exchange, and I was amused by the idea of being a dream-dealer, interpreting dreams in exchange for detective work, though under these conditions I’d have to say his work was probably of a higher standard than mine. I had never heard a dream-that daily dose of madness-in such peculiar circumstances. Though parts of it disappeared in the uproar of a dispute over whether a customer had put twenty pence or a pound coin in a stripper’s beer glass, I was able to take his associations too, and attempt an interpretation.