‘I don’t think – ’ began Poppy Burt-Jones, trying to force her voice above the hoo-hah, then, raising it several decibels, ‘I DON’T THINK IT IS VERY NICE TO – ’ and here her voice slipped back to normal as the class registered the angry tone and quietened down. ‘I don’t think it is very nice to make fun of somebody else’s culture.’
The orchestra, unaware that this is what they had been doing, but aware that this was the most heinous crime in the Manor School rule book, looked to their collective feet.
‘Do you? Do you? How would you like it, Sophie, if someone made fun of Queen?’
Sophie, a vaguely retarded twelve-year-old covered from head to toe in that particular rock band’s paraphernalia, glared over a pair of bottle-top spectacles.
‘Wouldn’t like it, Miss.’
‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’
‘No, Miss.’
‘Because Freddie Mercury is from your culture.’
Samad had heard the rumours that ran through the rank and file of the Palace waiters to the effect that this Mercury character was in actual fact a very light-skin Persian called Farookh, whom the head chef remembered from school in Panchgani, near Bombay. But who wished to split hairs? Not wanting to stop the lovely Burt-Jones while she was in something of a flow, Samad kept the information to himself.
‘Sometimes we find other people’s music strange because their culture is different from ours,’ said Miss Burt-Jones solemnly. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally good, now does it?’
‘NO, MISS.’
‘And we can learn about each other through each other’s culture, can’t we?’
‘YES, MISS.’
For example, what music do you like, Millat?’
Millat thought for a moment, swung his saxophone to his side and began fingering it like a guitar. ‘Bo-orn to ruuun! Da da da da daaa! Bruce Springsteen, Miss! Da da da da daaa! Baby, we were bo-orn-’
‘Umm, nothing – nothing else? Something you listen to at home, maybe?’
Millat’s face fell, troubled that his answer did not seem to be the right one. He looked over at his father, who was gesticulating wildly behind the teacher, trying to convey the jerky head and hand movements of bharata natyam, the form of dance Alsana had once enjoyed before sadness weighted her heart, and babies tied down her hands and feet.
‘Thriiiii-ller!’ sang Millat, full throated, believing he had caught his father’s gist. ‘Thriii-ller night! Michael Jackson, Miss! Michael Jackson!’
Samad put his head in his hands. Miss Burt-Jones looked queerly at the small child standing on a chair, gyrating and grabbing his crotch before her. ‘OK, thank you, Millat. Thank you for sharing… that.’
Millat grinned. ‘No problem, Miss.’
While the children queued up to exchange twenty pence for two dry digestives and a cup of tasteless squash, Samad followed the light foot of Poppy Burt-Jones like a predator – into the music cupboard, a tiny room, windowless, with no means of escape, and full of instruments, filing cabinets overbrimming with sheetmusic, and a scent Samad had thought hers but now identified as the maturing leather of violin cases mixed with the mellowing odour of cat-gut.
‘This,’ said Samad, spotting a desk beneath a mountain of paper, ‘is where you work?’
Poppy blushed. ‘Tiny, isn’t it? Music budgets get cut every year until this year there was nothing left to cut from. It’s got to the point where they’re putting desks in cupboards and calling them offices. If it wasn’t for the GLC, there wouldn’t even be a desk.’
‘It is certainly small,’ said Samad, scanning the room desperately for some spot where he might stand that would put her out of arm’s reach. ‘One might almost say, claustrophobic.’
‘I know, it’s awful – but won’t you sit down?’
Samad looked for the chair she might be referring to.
‘Oh God! I’m sorry! It’s here.’ She swept paper, books and rubbish on to the floor with one hand, revealing a perilous-looking stool. ‘I made it – but it’s pretty safe.’
‘You excel in carpentry?’ inquired Samad, searching once again for more good reasons to commit a bad sin. ‘An artisan as well as a musician?’
‘No, no, no – I went to a few night classes – nothing special. I made that and a foot stool, and the foot stool broke. I’m no – do you know I can’t think of a single carpenter!’
‘There is always Jesus.’
‘But I can’t very well say “I’m no Jesus”… I mean, obviously I’m not, but for other reasons.’
Samad took his wobbly seat as Poppy Burt-Jones went to sit behind her desk. ‘Meaning you are not a good person?’
Samad saw that he had flustered her with the accidental solemnity of the question; she drew her fingers through her fringe, fiddled with a small tortoiseshell button on her blouse, laughed shakily. ‘I like to think I’m not all bad.’
‘And that is enough?’
‘Well… I…’
‘Oh my dear, I apologize…’ began Samad. ‘I was not being serious, Miss Burt-Jones.’
‘Well… Let’s say I’m no Mr Chippendale – that’ll do.’
‘Yes,’ said Samad kindly, thinking to himself that she had far better legs than a Queen Anne chair, ‘that will do.’
‘Now: where were we?’
Samad leant a little over the desk, to face her. ‘Were we somewhere, Miss Burt-Jones?’
(He used his eyes; he remembered people used to say that it was his eyes – that new boy in Delhi, Samad Miah, they said, he has eyes to die for.)
‘I was looking – looking – I was looking for my notes – where are my notes?’
She began rifling through the catastrophe of her desk, and Samad leant back once more on his stool, taking what little satisfaction he could from the fact that her fingers, if he was not mistaken, appeared to be trembling. Had there been a moment, just then? He was fifty-seven – it was a good ten years since he’d had a moment – he was not at all sure he would recognize a moment if one came along. You old man, he told himself as he dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, you old fool. Leave now – leave before you drown in your own guilty excrescence (for he was sweating like a pig), leave before you make it worse. But was it possible? Was it possible that this past month – the month that he had been squeezing and spilling, praying and begging, making deals and thinking, thinking always about her – that she had been thinking of him?
‘Oh! While I’m looking… I remember there was something I wanted to ask you.’
Yes! said the anthropomorphized voice that had taken up residence in Samad’s right testicle. Whatever the question the answer is yes yes yes. Yes, we will make love upon this very table, yes, we will burn for it, and yes, Miss Burt-Jones, yes, the answer is inevitably, inescapably, YES. Yet somehow, out there where conversation continued, in the rational world four feet above his ball-bag, the answer turned out to be – ‘Wednesday.’
Poppy laughed. ‘No, I don’t mean what day it is – I don’t look that ditsy do I? No, I meant what day is it; I mean, for Muslims. Only I saw Magid was in some kind of costume, and when I asked him what it was for he wouldn’t speak. I was terribly worried that I’d offended him somehow.’
Samad frowned. It is odious to be reminded of one’s children when one is calculating the exact shade and rigidity of a nipple that could so assert itself through bra and shirt.
‘Magid? Please do not worry yourself about Magid. I am sure he was not offended.’
‘So I was right,’ said Poppy gleefully. ‘Is it like a type of, I don’t know, vocal fasting?’