I tell you, I feel tired and dirty, but I was told no baths allowed for a few days, so I’ll

stay dirty.
Yesterday morning I was crying a lot and the woman asked me to give an address in case of
emergencies and I made one up. I had to undress and get in a white smock and they took my
temperature and blood pressure five times. Then a nurse pushed me in a wheelchair into a
green room where I met the doctor. He called us all ‘ladies’ and told jokes. I could see some
people getting annoyed. He was Indian, unfortunately, and he looked at me strangely as if to
say, ‘What are you doing here?’ But maybe it was just my imagination. I had to lie on a table
and they put a needle or two into my left arm. Heat rushed over my face and I tried to speak.
The next thing I know I’m in the recovery room with a nurse saying, ‘Wake up, dear, it’s all
over.’ The doctor poked me in the stomach and said, ‘Fine.’ I found myself feeling aggressive.
‘Do you do this all the time?’ I asked. He said he did nothing else. They woke us at six and there
were several awkward-looking, sleepy boyfriends outside. I got the bus and went back to the
squat. * A few months later we got kicked out and I had to go back to Ma’s place. So I’m back
here now, writing this with my foot up on the table, reckoning I look like a painter. I sip water
with a slice of lemon in it. I’m at Ma’s kitchen table and there are herbs growing in pots around
me. At least the place is clean, though it’s shabby and all falling apart. There are photographs
of Ma’s women friends from the Labour Party and the Women’s Support Group and there is
Blake’s picture of Newton next to drawings by her kids from school. There are books
everywhere, on the Alexander Method and the Suzuki Method and all the other methods in
the world. And then there’s her boyfriend. Yes, the radical (ha!) television writer and well-
known toss-pot Howard Coleman sits opposite me as I record him with my biro. He’s reading
one of his scripts, smoking and slowly turning the pages, but the awful thing is, he keeps
giggling at them. Thank Christ Ma should be back any minute now from the Catholic girls’
school where she teaches. It’s Howard who asked me to write this diary, who said write down
some of the things that happen. My half-sister Nadia is about to come over from Pakistan to
stay with us. Get it all down, he said. If you could see Howard now like I can, you’d really laugh.
I mean it. He’s about forty-three and he’s got on a squeaky leather jacket and jeans with the
arse round his knees and these trainers with soles that look like mattresses. He looks like he’s
never bought anything new. Or if he has, when he gets it back from the shop, he throws it on
the floor, empties the dustbin over it and walks up and down on it in a pair of dirty Dr Martens.
For him dirty clothes are a political act. But this is the coup. Howard’s smoking a roll-up. He’s
got this tin, his fag papers and the stubby yellow fingers with which he rolls, licks, fiddles, taps,
lights, extinguishes and relights all day. This rigmarole goes on when he’s in bed with Ma,
presumably on her chest. I’ve gone in there in the morning for a snoop and found his ashtray
by the bed, condom on top. Christ, he’s nodding at me as I write! It’s because he’s so keen on
ordinary riff-raff expressing itself, especially no-hoper girls like me. One day we’re writing, the
next we’re on the barricades. Every Friday Howard comes over to see Ma. To your credit,
Howard the hero, you always take her somewhere a bit jazzy, maybe to the latest club (a big
deal for a poverty-stricken teacher). When you get back you undo her bra and hoick your
hands up her jumper and she warms hers down your trousers. I’ve walked in on this! Soon
after this teenage game, mother and lover go to bed and rattle the room for half an hour. I
light a candle, turn off the radio and lie there, ears flapping. It’s strange, hearing your ma doing
it. There are momentous cries and gasps and grunts, as if Howard’s trying to bang a nail into a
brick wall. Ma sounds like she’s having an operation. Sometimes I feel like running in with the
first-aid kit. Does this Friday thing sound remarkable or not? It’s only Fridays he will see Ma. If
Howard has to collect an award for his writing or go to a smart dinner with a critic he won’t
come to see us until the next Friday. Saturdays are definitely out! * We’re on the ninth floor. I
say to Howard: ‘Hey, clever boots. Tear your eyes away from yourself a minute. Look out the
window.’ The estate looks like a building site. There’s planks and window frames everywhere –
poles, cement mixers, sand, grit, men with mouths and disintegrating brick underfoot. ‘So?’ he
says. ‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it? Nadia will think we’re right trash.’ ‘My little Nina,’ he says. This is
how he talks to me. ‘Yes, my big Howard?’ ‘Why be ashamed of what you are?’ ‘Because
compared with Nadia we’re not much, are we?’ ‘I’m much. You’re much. Now get on with your
writing.’ He touches my face with his finger. ‘You’re excited, aren’t you? This is a big thing for
you.’ It is, I suppose. All my life I’ve been this only child living here in a council place with Ma,
the drama teacher. I was an only child, that is, until I was eleven, when Ma says she has a
surprise for me, one of the nicest I’ve ever had. I have a half-sister the same age, living in
another country. ‘Your father had a wife in India,’ Ma says, wincing every time she says father.
‘They married when they were fifteen, which is the custom over there. When he decided to
leave me because I was too strong a woman for him, he went right back to India and right back
to Wifey. That’s when I discovered I was pregnant with you. His other daughter Nadia was
conceived a few days later but she was actually born the day after you. Imagine that, darling.
Since then I’ve discovered that he’s even got two other daughters as well!’ I don’t give my
same-age half-sister in another country another thought except to dislike her in general for
suddenly deciding to exist. Until one night, suddenly, I write to Dad and ask if he’ll send her to
stay with us. I get up and go down the lift and out in the street and post the letter before I
change my mind. That night was one of my worst and I wanted Nadia to save me. * On some
Friday afternoons, if I’m not busy writing ten-page hate letters to DJs, Howard does
imagination exercises with me. I have to lie on my back on the floor, imagine things like mad
and describe them. It’s so sixties. But then I’ve heard him say of people: ‘Oh, she had a
wonderful sixties!’ ‘Nina,’ he says during one of these gigs, ‘you’ve got to work out this
relationship with your sister. I want you to describe Nadia.’ I zap through my head’s TV
channels – Howard squatting beside me, hand on my forehead, sending loving signals. A girl
materialises sitting under a palm tree, reading a Brontë novel and drinking yogurt. I see a girl
being cuddled by my father. He tells stories of tigers and elephants and rickshaw wallahs. I see
… ‘I can’t see any more!’ Because I can’t visualise Nadia, I have to see her. * So. This is how it
all comes about. Ma and I are sitting at breakfast, Ma chewing her vegetarian cheese. She’s
dressed for work in a long, baggy, purple pinafore dress with black stockings and a black band
in her hair, and she looks like a 1950s teenager. Recently Ma’s gone blonde and she keeps
looking in the mirror. Me still in my T-shirt and pants. Ma tense about work as usual, talking
about school for hours on the phone last night to friends. She tries to interest me in child
abuse, incest and its relation to the GCSE. I say how much I hate eating, how boring it is and
how I’d like to do it once a week and forget about it. ‘But the palate is a sensitive organ,’ Ma
says. ‘You should cultivate yours instead of –’ ‘Just stop talking if you’ve got to fucking lecture.’
The mail arrives. Ma cuts open an airmail letter. She reads it twice. I know it’s from Dad. I
snatch it out of her hand and walk round the room taking it in. Dear You Both, It’s a good idea.
Nadia will be arriving on the 5th. Please meet her at the airport. So generous of you to offer.
Look after her, she is the most precious thing in the entire world to me. Much love. At the
bottom Nadia has written: ‘Looking forward to seeing you both soon.’ Hummmm… Ma pours
herself more coffee and considers everything. She has these terrible coffee jags. Her stomach
must be like distressed leather. She is determined to be businesslike, not emotional. She says I
have to cancel the visit. ‘It’s simple. Just write a little note and say there’s been a
misunderstanding.’ And this is how I react: ‘I don’t believe it! Why? No way! But why?’ Christ,
don’t I deserve to die, though God knows I’ve tried to die enough times. ‘Because, Nina, I’m
not at all prepared for this. I really don’t know that I want to see this sister of yours. She
symbolises my betrayal by your father.’ I clear the table of our sugar-free jam (no additives).
‘Symbolises?’ I say. ‘But she’s a person.’ Ma gets on her raincoat and collects last night’s
marking. You look very plain, I’m about to say. She kisses me on the head. The girls at school
adore her. There, she’s a star. But I’m very severe. Get this: ‘Ma. Nadia’s coming. Or I’m going.
I’m walking right out that door and it’ll be junk and prostitution just like the old days.’ S h e d r
o p s h e r b a g. S h e s i t s d o w n. S h e s l a m s h e r c a r k e y s o n t h e t a b l e. ‘ N i n a , I b
e g y o u.’ 2 Heathrow. Three hours we’ve been here, Ma and I, burying our faces in doughnuts.
People pour from the exit like released prisoners to walk the gauntlet of jumping relatives and
chauffeurs holding cards: Welcome Ngogi of Nigeria. But no Nadia. ‘My day off,’ Ma says, ‘and I
spend it in an airport.’ But then. It’s her. Here she comes now. It is her! I know it is! I jump up
and down waving like mad! Yes, yes, no, yes! At last! My sister! My mirror. We both hug Nadia,
and Ma suddenly cries and her nose runs and she can’t control her mouth. I cry too and I don’t
even know who the hell I’m squashing so close to me. Until I sneak a good look at the girl. You.
Every day I’ve woken up trying to see your face, and now you’re here, your head jerking
nervously, saying little, with us drenching you. I can see you’re someone I know nothing about.
You make me very nervous. You’re smaller than me. Less pretty, if I can say that. Bigger nose.
Darker, of course, with a glorious slab of hair like a piece of chocolate attached to your back. I
imagined, I don’t know why (pure prejudice, I suppose), that you’d be wearing the national
dress, the baggy pants, the long top and light scarf flung all over. But you have on FU jeans and
a faded blue sweatshirt – you look as if you live in Enfield. We’ll fix that. * Nadia sits in the
front of the car. Ma glances at her whenever she can. She has to ask how Nadia’s father is. ‘Oh
yes,’ Nadia replies. ‘Dad. The same as usual, thank you. No change really, Debbie.’ ‘But we
rarely see him,’ Ma says. ‘I see,’ Nadia says at last. ‘So we don’t,’ Ma says, her voice rising,
‘actually know what “same as usual” means.’ Nadia looks out of the window at green and grey
old England. I don’t want Ma getting in one of her resentful states. After this not another peep
for about a decade and then road euphoria just bursts from Nadia. ‘What good roads you have
here! So smooth, so wide, so long!’ ‘Yes, they go all over,’ I say. ‘Wow. All over.’ Christ, don’t
they even have fucking roads over there? Nadia whispers. We lean towards her to hear about
her dear father’s health. How often the old man pisses now, running for the pot clutching his
crotch. The sad state of his old gums and his obnoxious breath. Ma and I watch this sweetie
compulsively, wondering who she is: so close to us and made from my substance, and yet so
other, telling us about Dad with an outrageous intimacy we can never share. We arrive home,
and she says in an accent as thick as treacle (which makes me hoot to myself when I first hear
it): ‘I’m so tired now. If I could rest for a little while.’ ‘Sleep in my bed!’ I cry. Earlier I’d said to
Ma I’d never give it up. But the moment my sister walks across the estate with us and finally
stands there in our flat above the building site, drinking in all the oddness, picking up Ma’s
method books and her opera programmes, I melt, I melt. I’ll have to kip in the living room from
now on. But I’d kip in the toilet for her. ‘In return for your bed,’ she says, ‘let me, I must, yes,
give you something.’ She pulls a rug from her suitcase and presents it to Ma. ‘This is from Dad.’
Ma puts it on the floor, studies it and then treads on it. And to me? I’ve always been a fan of
crêpe paper and wrapped in it is the Pakistani dress I’m wearing now (with open-toed sandals
– handmade). It’s gorgeous: yellow and green, threaded with gold, thin summer material. I’m
due a trip to the dole office any minute now and I’m bracing myself for the looks I’ll get in this
gear. I’ll keep you informed. * I write this outside my room waiting for Nadia to wake. Every
fifteen minutes I tap lightly on the door like a worried nurse. ‘Are you awake?’ I whisper. And:
‘Sister, sister.’ I adore these new words. ‘Do you want anything?’ I think I’m in love. At last.
Ma’s gone out to take back her library books, leaving me to it. Ma’s all heart, I expect you can
see that. She’s good and gentle and can’t understand unkindness and violence. She thinks
everyone’s just waiting to be brought round to decency. ‘This way we’ll change the world a
little bit,’ she’d say, holding my hand and knocking on doors at elections. But she’s lived on the
edge of a nervous breakdown for as long as I can remember. She’s had boyfriends before
Howard but none of them lasted. Most of them were married because she was on this
liberated kick of using men. There was one middle-class Labour Party smoothie I called
Chubbie. ‘Are you married?’ I’d hiss when Ma went out of the room, sitting next to him and
fingering his nylon tie. ‘Yes.’ ‘You have to admit it, don’t you? Where’s your wife, then? She
knows you’re here? Get what you want this afternoon?’ You could see the men fleeing when
they saw the deep needy well that Ma is, crying out to be filled with their love. And this
monster kid with green hair glaring at them. Howard’s too selfish and arrogant to be
frightened of my ma’s demands. He just ignores them. * What a job it is, walking round in this
Paki gear! I stop off at the chemist’s to grab my drugs, my trancs. Jeanette, my friend on the
estate, used to my eccentrities – the coonskin hat with the long rabbit tail, for example –
comes along with me. The chemist woman in the white coat says to Jeanette, nodding at me
when I hand over my script: ‘Does she speak English?’ * Becoming enthralled by this new me
now, exotic and interior. With the scarf over my head I step into the Community Centre and
look like a lost woman with village ways and chickens in the garden. In a second, the
communists and worthies are all over me. I mumble into my scarf. They give me leaflets and
phone numbers. I’m oppressed, you see, beaten up, pig-ignorant with an arranged marriage
and certain suttee ahead. But I get fed up and have a game of darts, a game of snooker and a
couple of beers with a nice lesbian. Home again I make my Nadia some pasta with red pepper,
grated carrot, cheese and parsley. I run out to buy a bottle of white wine. Chasing along I see
some kids on a passing bus. They eyeball me from the top deck, one of them black. They make
a special journey down to the platform where the little monkeys swing on the pole and throw
racial abuse from their gobs. ‘Curry breath, curry breath, curry breath!’ The bus rushes on. I’m
flummoxed. * She emerges at last, my Nadia, sleepy, creased around the eyes and dark. She
sits at the table, eyelashes barely apart, not ready for small talk. I bring her the food and a
glass of wine which she refuses with an upraised hand. I press my eyes into her, but she
doesn’t look at me. To puncture the silence I play her a jazz record – Wynton Marsalis’s first. I
ask her how she likes the record and she says nothing. Probably doesn’t do much for her on
first hearing. I watch her eating. She will not be interfered with. She leaves most of the food
and sits. I hand her a pair of black Levi 501s with the button fly. Plus a large cashmere polo-
neck (stolen) and a black leather jacket. ‘Try them on.’ She looks puzzled. ‘It’s the look I want
you to have. You can wear any of my clothes.’ Still she doesn’t move. I give her a little shove
into the bedroom and shut the door. She should be so lucky. That’s my best damn jacket. I
wait. She comes out not wearing the clothes. ‘Nina, I don’t think so.’ I know how to get things
done. I push her back in. She comes out, backwards, hands over her face. ‘Show me, please.’
She spins round, arms out, hair jumping. ‘Well?’ ‘The black suits your hair,’ I manage to say.
What a vast improvement on me, is all I can think. Stunning she is, dangerous, vulnerable,
superior, with a jewel in her nose. ‘But doesn’t it … doesn’t it make me look a little rough?’ ‘Oh
yes! Now we’re all ready to go. For a walk, yes? To see the sights and everything.’ ‘Is it safe?’
‘Of course not. But I’ve got this.’ I show her. ‘Oh, God, Nina. You would.’ Oh, this worries and
ruins me. Already she has made up her mind about me and I haven’t started on my excuses.
‘Have you used it?’ ‘Only twice. Once on a racist in a pub. Once on some mugger who asked if I
could spare him some jewellery.’ Her face becomes determined. She looks away. ‘I’m training
to be a doctor, you see. My life is set against human harm.’ She walks towards the door. I pack
the switch-blade. * Daddy, these are the sights I show my sister. I tow her out of the flat and
along the walkway. She sees the wind blaring through the busted windows. She catches her
breath at the humming bad smells. Trapped dogs bark. She sees that one idiot’s got on his
door: Dont burglar me theres nothin to steel ive got rid of it all. She sees that some pig’s
sprayed on the wall: Nina’s a slag dog. I push the lift button. I’ve just about got her out of the
building when the worst thing happens. There’s three boys, ten or eleven years old, climbing
out through a door they’ve kicked in. Neighbours stand and grumble. The kids’ve got a fat TV, a
microwave oven and someone’s favourite trainers under a little arm. The kid drops the
trainers. ‘Hey,’ he says to Nadia (it’s her first day here). Nadia stiffens. ‘Hey, won’t yer pick
them up for me?’ She looks at me. I’m humming a tune. The tune is ‘Just My Imagination’. I’m
not scared of the little jerks. It’s the bad impression that breaks my heart. Nadia picks up the
trainers. ‘Just tuck them right in there,’ the little kid says, exposing his armpit. ‘Won’t they be a
little large for you?’ Nadia says. ‘Eat shit.’ Soon we’re out of there and into the air. We make
for South Africa Road and the General Smuts pub. Kids play football behind wire. The old
women in thick overcoats look like lagged boilers on little feet. They huff and shove carts full of
chocolate and cat food. I’m all tense now and ready to say anything. I feel such a need to say
everything in the hope of explaining all that I give a guided tour of my heart and days. I explain
(I can’t help myself): this happened here, that happened there. I got pregnant in that squat. I
bought bad smack from that geezer in the yellow T-shirt and straw hat. I got attacked there
and legged it through that park. I stole pens from that shop, dropping them into my
motorcycle helmet. (A motorcycle helmet is very good for shoplifting, if you’re interested.)
Standing on that corner I cared for nothing and no one and couldn’t walk on or stay where I
was or go back. My gears had stopped engaging with my motor. Then I had a nervous
breakdown. Without comment she listens and nods and shakes her head sometimes. Is anyone
in? I take her arm and move my cheek close to hers. ‘I tell you this stuff which I haven’t told
anyone before. I want us to know each other inside out.’ She stops there in the street and
covers her face with her hands. ‘But my father told me of such gorgeous places!’ ‘Nadia, what
d’you mean?’ ‘And you show me filth!’ she cries. She touches my arm. ‘Oh, Nina, it would be so
lovely if you could make the effort to show me something attractive.’ Something attractive.
We’ll have to get the bus and go east, to Holland Park and round Ladbroke Grove. This is now
honeyed London for the rich. Here there are La restaurants, wine bars, bookshops, estate
agents more prolific than doctors, and attractive people in black, few of them ageing. Here
there are health food shops where you buy tofu, nuts, live-culture yogurt and organic
toothpaste. Here the sweet little black kids practise on steel drums under the motorway for
the Carnival and old blacks sit out in the open on orange boxes shouting. Here the dope
dealers in Versace suits travel in from the suburbs on commuter trains, carrying briefcases,
trying to sell slummers bits of old car tyre to smoke. And there are more stars than beggars.
For example? Van Morrison in a big overcoat is hurrying towards somewhere in a nervous
mood. ‘Hiya, Van! Van? Won’t ya even say hello!’ I scream across the street. At my words Van
the Man accelerates like a dog with a winklepicker up its anus. She looks tired so I take her into
Julie’s Bar where they have the newspapers and we sit on well-woven cushions on long
benches. Christ only know how much they have the cheek to charge for a cup of tea. Nadia
looks better now. We sit there all friendly and she starts off. ‘How often have you met our
father?’ ‘I see him every two or three years. When he comes on business, he makes it his
business to see me.’ ‘That’s nice of him.’ ‘Yes, that’s what he thinks. Can you tell me
something, Nadia?’ I move closer to her. ‘When he’d get home, our father, what would he tell
you about me?’ If only I wouldn’t tempt everything so. But you know me: can’t live on life with
slack in it. ‘Oh, he was worried, worried, worried.’ ‘Christ. Worried three times.’ ‘He said you …
no.’ ‘He said what?’ ‘No, no, he didn’t say it.’ ‘Yes, he did, Nadia.’ She sits there looking at
badly dressed television producers in linen suits with her gob firmly closed. ‘Tell me what my
father said or I’ll pour this pot of tea over my head.’ I pick up the teapot and open the lid for
pouring-over-the-head convenience. Nadia says nothing; in fact she looks away. So what
choice do I have but to let go a stream of tea over the top of my noddle? It drips down my face
and off my chin. It’s pretty scalding, I can tell you. ‘He said, all right, he said you were like a
wild animal!’ ‘Like a wild animal?’ I say. ‘Yes. And sometimes he wished he could shoot you to
put you out of your misery.’ She looks straight ahead of her. ‘You asked for it. You made me
say it.’ ‘The bastard. His own daughter.’ She holds my hand. For the first time, she looks at me,
with wide-open eyes and urgent mouth. ‘It’s terrible, just terrible there in the house. Nina, I
had to get away! And I’m in love with someone! Someone who’s indifferent to me!’ ‘And?’ And
nothing. She says no more except: ‘It’s too cruel, too cruel.’ I glance around. Now this is exactly
the kind of place suitable for doing a runner from. You could be out the door, halfway up the
street and on the tube before they’d blink. I’m about to suggest it to Nadia, but, as I’ve already
told her about my smack addiction, my two abortions and poured a pot of tea over my head, I
wouldn’t want her to get a bad impression of me. ‘I hope,’ I say to her, ‘I hope to God we can
be friends as well as relations.’ * Well, what a bastard my dad turned out to be! Wild animal!
He’s no angel himself. How could he say that? I was always on my best behaviour and always
covered my wrists and arms. Now I can’t stop thinking about him. It makes me cry. This is how
he used to arrive at our place, my daddy, in the days when he used to visit us. First there’s a
whole day’s terror and anticipation and getting ready. When Ma and I are exhausted, having
practically cleaned the flat with our tongues, a black taxi slides over the horizon of the estate,
rarer than an ambulance, with presents cheering on the back seat: champagne, bicycles,
dresses that don’t fit, books, dreams in boxes. Dad glows in a £3,000 suit and silk tie.
Neighbours lean over the balconies to pleasure their eyeballs on the prince. It takes two or
three of them working in shifts to hump the loot upstairs. Then we’re off in the taxi, speeding
to restaurants with menus in French where Dad knows the manager. Dad tells us stories of
extreme religion and hilarious corruption and when Ma catches herself laughing she bites her
lip hard – why? I suppose she finds herself flying to the magnet of his charm once more. After
the grub we go to see a big show and Mum and Dad hold hands. All of these shows are written,
on the later occasions, by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This is all the best of life, except that, when
Dad has gone and we have to slot back into our lives, we don’t always feel like it. We’re pretty
uncomfortable, looking at each other and shuffling our ordinary feet once more in the
mundane. Why does he always have to be leaving us? After one of these occasions I go out,
missing him. When alone, I talk to him. At five in the morning I get back. At eight Ma comes
into my room and stands there, a woman alone and everything like that, in fury and despair.
‘Are you involved in drugs and prostitution?’ I’d been going with guys for money. At the
massage parlour you do as little as you can. None of them has disgusted me, and we have a
laugh with them. Ma finds out because I’ve always got so much money. She knows the state of
things. She stands over me. ‘Yes.’ No escape. I just say it. Yes, yes, yes. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Yes, that is my life at the moment. Can I go back to sleep now? I’m expected at work at
twelve.’ ‘Don’t call it work, Nina. There are other words.’ She goes. Before her car has failed to
start in the courtyard, I’ve run to the bathroom, filled the sink, taken Ma’s lousy leg razor and
jabbed into my wrists, first one, then the other, under water, digging for veins. (You should try
it sometime; it’s more difficult than you think: skin tough, throat contracting with vomit acid
sour disgust.) The nerves in my hands went and they had to operate and everyone was
annoyed that I’d caused such trouble. Weeks later I vary the trick and swallow thirty pills and
fly myself to a Surrey mental hospital where I do puzzles, make baskets and am fucked
regularly for medicinal reasons by the art therapist who has a long nail on his little finger.
Suicide is one way of saying you’re sorry. * With Nadia to the Tower of London, the
Monument, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and something cultured with a lot of wigs at the
National Theatre. Nadia keeps me from confession by small talk which wears into my shell like
sugar into a tooth. Ma sullen but doing a workmanlike hospitality job. Difficult to get Nadia out
of her room most of the time. Hours she spends in the bathroom every day experimenting with
make-up. And then Howard the hero decides to show up. * Ma not home yet. Early evening.
Guess what? Nadia is sitting across the room on the sofa with Howard. This is their first
meeting and they’re practically on each other’s laps. (I almost wrote lips.) All afternoon I’ve
had to witness this meeting of minds. They’re on politics. The words that ping off the walls are:
pluralism, democracy, theocracy and Benazir! Howard’s senses are on their toes! The little turd
can’t believe the same body (in a black cashmere sweater and black leather jacket) can contain
such intelligence, such beauty, and yet jingle so brightly with facts about the Third World!
There in her bangles and perfume I see her speak to him as she hasn’t spoken to me once –
gesticulating! ‘Howard. I say this to you from my heart, it is a corrupt country! Even the
revolutionaries are corrupt! No one has any hope!’ In return he asks, surfacing through the
Niagara of her conversation: ‘Nadia, can I show you something? Videos of the TV stuff I’ve
written?’ She can’t wait. None of us has seen her come in. Ma is here now, coat on, bags in her
hands, looking at Nadia and Howard sitting so close their elbows keep knocking together.
‘Hello,’ she says to Howard, eventually. ‘Hiya,’ to Nadia. Ma has bought herself some flowers,
which she has under her arm – carnations. Howard doesn’t get up to kiss her. He’s touching no
one but Nadia and he’s very pleased with himself. Nadia nods at Ma but her eyes rush back to
Howard the hero. Nadia says to Howard: ‘The West doesn’t care if we’re an undemocratic
country.’ ‘I’m exhausted,’ Ma says. ‘Well,’ I say to her. ‘Hello, anyway.’ Ma and I unpack the
shopping in the kitchen. Howard calls through to Ma, asking her school questions which she
ignores. The damage has been done. Oh yes. Nadia has virtually ignored Ma in her own house.
Howard, I can see, is pretty uncomfortable at this. He is about to lift himself out of the seat
when Nadia puts her hand on his arm and asks him: ‘How do you create?’ ‘How do I create?’
How does Howard create? With four word-kisses she has induced in Howard a Nelson’s
Column of excitement. ‘How do you create?’ is the last thing you should ever ask one of these
guys. ‘They get along well, don’t they?’ Ma says, watching them through the crack of the door.
I lean against the fridge. ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ ‘No reason,’ she says. ‘Except that this is my
home. Everything I do outside here is a waste of time and no one thanks me for it and no one
cares for me, and now I’m excluded from my own flat!’ ‘Hey, Ma, don’t get –’ ‘Pour me a
bloody whisky, will you?’ I pour her one right away. ‘Your supper’s in the oven, Ma.’ I give her
the whisky. My ma cups her hands round the glass. Always been a struggle for her. Her dad in
the army; white trash. She had to fight to learn. ‘It’s fish pie. And I did the washing and
ironing.’ ‘You’ve always been good in that way, I’ll give you that. Even when you were sick
you’d do the cooking. I’d come home and there it would be. I’d eat it alone and leave the rest
outside your door. It was like feeding a hamster. You can be nice.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Only your
niceness has to live among so many other wild elements. Women that I know. Their children
are the same. A tragedy or a disappointment. Their passions are too strong. It is our era in
England. I only wish, I only wish you could have some kind of career or something.’ I watch her
and she turns away to look at Howard all snug with the sister I brought here. Sad Ma is, and
gentle. I could take her in my arms to console her now for what I am, but I don’t want to
indulge her. A strange question occurs to me. ‘Ma, why do you keep Howard on?’ She sits on
the kitchen stool and sips her drink. She looks at the lino for about three minutes, without
saying anything, gathering herself up, punching her fist against her leg, like someone who’s
just swallowed a depth charge. Howard’s explaining voice drifts through to us. Ma gets up and
kick-slams the door. ‘Because I love him even if he doesn’t love me!’ Her tumbler smashes on
the floor and glass skids around our feet. ‘Because I need sex and why shouldn’t I! Because I’m
lonely, I’m lonely, okay, and I need someone bright to talk to! D’you think I can talk to you?
D’you think you’d ever be interested in me for one minute?’ ‘Ma –’ ‘You’ve never cared for
me! And then you brought Nadia here against my wishes to be all sweet and hypercritical and
remind me of all the terrible past and the struggle of being alone for so long!’ * Ma sobbing in
her room. Howard in with her. Nadia and me sit together at the two ends of the sofa. My ears
are scarlet with the hearing of Ma’s plain sorrow through the walls. ‘Yes, I care for you,’
Howard’s voice rises. ‘I love you, baby. And I love Nina, too. Both of you.’ ‘I don’t know,
Howard. You don’t ever show it.’ ‘But I’m blocked as a human being!’ I say to Nadia: ‘Men are
pretty selfish bastards who don’t understand us. That’s all I know.’ ‘Howard’s an interesting
type,’ she says coolly. ‘Very open-minded in an artistic way.’ I’m getting protective in my old
age and very pissed off. ‘He’s my mother’s boyfriend and long-standing lover.’ ‘Yes, I know
that.’ ‘So lay off him. Please, Nadia. Please understand.’ ‘What are you, of all people, accusing
me of?’ I’m not too keen on this ‘of all people’ business. But get this. ‘I thought you advanced
Western people believed in the free intermingling of the sexes?’ ‘Yes, we do. We intermingle
all the time.’ ‘What then, Nina, is your point?’ ‘It’s him,’ I explain, moving in. ‘He has all the
weaknesses. One kind word from a woman and he thinks they want to sleep with him. Two
kind words and he thinks he’s the only man in the world. It’s a form of mental illness, of
delusion. I wouldn’t tangle with that deluded man if I were you!’ All right! A few days later.
Here I am slouching at Howard’s place. Howard’s hole, or ‘sock’ as he calls it, is a red-brick
mansion block with public-school, stately dark oak corridors, off Kensington High Street. Things
have been getting grimmer and grimmer. Nadia stays in her room or else goes out and pops
her little camera at ‘history’. Ma goes to every meeting she hears of. I’m just about ready for
artery road. I’ve just done you a favour. I could have described every moment of us sitting
through Howard’s television oeuvre (which I always thought meant egg). But no – on to the
juicy bits! There they are in front of me, Howard and Nadia cheek to cheek, within breath-
inhaling distance of each other, going through the script. Earlier this morning we went
shopping in Covent Garden. Nadia wanted my advice on what clothes to buy. So we went for a
couple of sharp dogtooth jackets, distinctly city, fine brown and white wool, the jacket caught
in at the waist with a black leather belt; short panelled skirt; white silk polo-neck shirt; plus
black pillbox, suede gloves, high heels. If she likes something, if she wants it, she buys it. The
rich. Nadia bought me a linen jacket. Maybe I’m sighing too much. They glance at me with
undelight. ‘I can take Nadia home if you like,’ Howard says. ‘I’ll take care of my sister,’ I say.
‘But I’m out for a stroll now. I’ll be back at any time.’ I stroll towards a café in Rotting Hill. I
head up through Holland Park, past the blue sloping roof of the Commonwealth Institute (or
Nigger’s Corner as we used to call it) in which on a school trip I pissed into a wastepaper
basket. Past modern nannies – young women like me with dyed black hair – walking dogs and
kids. The park’s full of hip kids from Holland Park School, smoking on the grass; black guys with
flat-tops and muscles; yuppies skimming frisbees and stuff; white boys playing Madonna and
Prince. There are cruising turd-burglars with active eyes, and the usual London liggers, hang-
gliders and no-goodies waiting to sign on. I feel outside everything, so up I go, through the
flower-verged alley at the end of the park, where the fudge-packers used to line up at night for
fucking. On the wall it says: Gay solidarity is class solidarity. Outside the café is a police van
with grilles over the windows full of little piggies giggling with their helmets off. It’s a common
sight around here, but the streets are a little quieter than usual. I walk past an Asian
policewoman standing in the street who says hello to me. ‘Auntie Tom,’ I whisper and go into
the café. In this place they play the latest calypso and soca and the new Eric Satie recording. A
white Rasta sits at the table with me. He pays for my tea. I have chilli with a baked potato and
grated cheese, with tomato salad on the side, followed by Polish cheesecake. People in the
café are more subdued than normal; all the pigs making everyone nervous. But what a nice guy
the Rasta is. Even nicer, he takes my hand under the table and drops something in my palm. A
chunky chocolate lozenge of dope. ‘Hey. I’d like to buy some of this,’ I say, wrapping my
swooning nostrils round it. ‘Sweetheart, it’s all I’ve got,’ he says. ‘You take it. My last lump of
blow.’ He leaves. I watch him go. As he walks across the street in his jumble-sale clothes, his
hair jabbing out from his head like tiny bedsprings, the police get out of their van and stop him.
He waves his arms at them. The van unpacks. There’s about six of them surrounding him.
There’s an argument. He’s giving them some heavy lip. They search him. One of them is pulling
his hair. Everyone in the café is watching. I pop the dope into my mouth and swallow it. Yum
yum. I go out into the street now. I don’t care. My friend shouts across to me: ‘They’re planting
me. I’ve got nothing.’ I tell the bastard pigs to leave him alone. ‘It’s true! The man’s got
nothing!’ I give them a good shouting at. One of them comes at me. ‘You wanna be arrested
too!’ he says, shoving me in the chest. ‘I don’t mind,’ I say. And I don’t, really. Ma would visit
me. Some kids gather round, watching the rumpus. They look really straggly and pathetic and
dignified and individual and defiant at the same time. I feel sorry for us all. The pigs pull my
friend into the van. It’s the last I ever see of him. He’s got two years of trouble ahead of him, I
know. When I get back from my walk they’re sitting on Howard’s Habitat sofa. Something is
definitely going on, and it ain’t cultural. They’re too far apart for comfort. Beadily I shove my
aerial into the air and take the temperature. Yeah, can’t I just smell humming dodginess in the
atmosphere? ‘Come on,’ I say to Nadia. ‘Ma will be waiting.’ ‘Yes, that’s true,’ Howard says,
getting up. ‘Give her my love.’ I give him one of my looks. ‘All of it or just a touch?’ * We’re on
the bus, sitting there nice and quiet, the bus going along past the shops and people and the
dole office when these bad things start to happen that I can’t explain. The seats in front of me,
the entire top deck of the bus in fact, keeps rising up. I turn my head to the window expecting
that the street at least will be anchored to the earth, but it’s not. The whole street is throwing
itself up at my head and heaving about and bending like a high rise in a tornado. The shops are
dashing at me, at an angle. The world has turned into a monster. For God’s sake, nothing will
keep still, but I’ve made up my mind to have it out. So I tie myself to the seat by my fists and
say to Nadia, at least I think I say, ‘You kiss him?’ She looks straight ahead as if she’s been
importuned by a beggar. I’m about to be hurled out of the bus, I know. But I go right ahead.
‘Nadia. You did, right? You did.’ ‘But it’s not important.’ Wasn’t I right? Can’t I sniff a kiss in the
air at a hundred yards? ‘Kissing’s not important?’ ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not, Nina. It’s just
affection. That’s normal. But Howard and I have much to say to each other.’ She seems
depressed suddenly. ‘He knows I’m in love with somebody.’ ‘I’m not against talking. But it’s
possible to talk without r-r-rubbing your tongues against each other’s tonsils.’ ‘You have a
crude way of putting things,’ she replies, turning sharply to me and rising up to the roof of the
bus. ‘It’s a shame you’ll never understand passion.’ I am crude, yeah. And I’m about to be
crushed into the corner of the bus by two hundred brown balloons. Oh, sister. ‘Are you feeling
sick?’ she says, getting up. The next thing I know we’re stumbling off the moving bus and I lie
down on an unusual piece of damp pavement outside the Albert Hall. The sky swings above
me. Nadia’s face hovers over mine like ectoplasm. Then she has her hand flat on my forehead
in a doctory way. I give it a good hard slap. ‘Why are you crying?’ If our father could see us
now. ‘Your bad behaviour with Howard makes me cry for my ma.’ ‘Bad behaviour? Wait till I
tell my father –’ ‘Our father –’ ‘About you.’ ‘What will you say?’ ‘I’ll tell him you’ve been a
prostitute and a drug addict.’ ‘Would you say that, Nadia?’ ‘No,’ she says, eventually. ‘I
suppose not.’ She offers me her hand and I take it. ‘It’s time I went home,’ she says. ‘Me, too,’ I
say. 3 It’s not Friday, but Howard comes with us to Heathrow. Nadia flicks through fashion
magazines, looking at clothes she won’t be able to buy now. Her pride and dignity today is
monstrous. Howard hands me a pile of books and writing pads and about twelve pens. ‘Don’t
they have pens over there?’ I say. ‘It’s a Third World country,’ he says. ‘They lack the basic
necessities.’ Nadia slaps his arm. ‘Howard, of course we have pens, you stupid idiot!’ ‘I was
joking,’ he says. ‘They’re for me.’ He tries to stuff them all into the top pocket of his jacket.
They spill on the floor. ‘I’m writing something that might interest you all.’ ‘Everything you write
interests us,’ Nadia says. ‘Not necessarily,’ Ma says. ‘But this is especially … relevant,’ he says.
Ma takes me aside: ‘If you must go, do write, Nina. And don’t tell your father one thing about
me!’ Nadia distracts everyone by raising her arms and putting her head back and shouting out
in the middle of the airport: ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to go!’ * My room, this cell, this safe,
bare box stuck on the side of my father’s house, has a stone floor and whitewashed walls. It
has a single bed, my open suitcase, no wardrobe, no music. Not a frill in the grill. On everything
there’s a veil of khaki dust waiting to irritate my nostrils. The window is tiny, just twice the size
of my head. So it’s pretty gloomy here. Next door there’s a smaller room with an amateur
shower, a sink and a hole in the ground over which you have to get used to squatting if you
want to piss and shit. Despite my moans, all this suits me fine. In fact, I requested this room. At
first Dad wanted Nadia and me to share. But here I’m out of everyone’s way, especially my two
other half-sisters: Gloomie and Moonie I call them. I wake up and the air is hot, hot, hot, and
the noise and petrol fumes rise around me. I kick into my jeans and pull my Keith Haring T-shirt
on. Once, on the King’s Road, two separate people came up to me and said: ‘Is that a Keith
Haring T-shirt?’ Outside, the sun wants to burn you up. The light is different too: you can really
see things. I put my shades on. These are cool shades. There aren’t many women you see in
shades here. The driver is revving up one of Dad’s three cars outside my room. I open the door
of a car and jump in, except that it’s like throwing your arse into a fire, and I jiggle around, the
driver laughing, his teeth jutting as if he never saw anything funny before. ‘Drive me,’ I say.
‘Drive me somewhere in all this sunlight. Please. Please.’ I touch him and he pulls away from
me. Well, he is rather handsome. ‘These cars don’t need to be revved. Drive!’ He turns the
wheel back and forth, pretending to drive and hit the horn. He’s youngish and thin – they all
look undernourished here – and he always teases me. ‘You stupid bugger.’ See, ain’t I just
getting the knack of speaking to servants? It’s taken me at least a week to erase my natural
politeness to the poor. ‘Get going! Get us out of this drive!’ ‘No shoes, no shoes, Nina!’ He’s
pointing at my feet. ‘No bananas, no pineapples,’ I say. ‘No job for you either, Lulu. You’ll be
down the Job Centre if you don’t shift it.’ Off we go then, the few yards to the end of the drive.
The guard at the gate waves. I turn to look back and there you are standing on the porch of
your house in your pyjamas, face covered with shaving cream, a piece of white sheet wrapped
around your head because you’ve just oiled your hair. Your arms are waving not goodbye.
Gloomie, my suddenly acquired sister, runs out behind you and shakes her fists, the dogs
barking in their cage, the chickens screaming in theirs. Ha, ha. We drive slowly through the
estate on which Dad lives with all the other army and navy and air force people: big houses
and big bungalows set back from the road, with sprinklers on the lawn, some with swimming
pools, all with guards. We move out on to the Superhighway, among the painted trucks,
gaudier than Chinese dolls, a sparrow among peacocks. What a crappy road and no fun, like
driving on the moon. Dad says the builders steal the materials, flog them and then there’s not
enough left to finish the road. So they just stop and leave whole stretches incomplete. The
thing about this place is that there’s always something happening. Good or bad it’s a
happening place. And I’m thinking this, how cheerful I am and everything, when bouncing
along in the opposite direction is a taxi, an old yellow and black Morris Minor stuck together
with sellotape. It’s swerving in and out of the traffic very fast until the driver loses it, and the
taxi bangs the back of the car in front, glances off another and shoots off across the
Superhighway and is coming straight for us. I can see the driver’s face when Lulu finally brakes.
Three feet from us the taxi flies into a wall that runs alongside the road. The two men keep
travelling, and their heads crushed into their chests pull their bodies through the windscreen
and out into the morning air. They look like Christmas puddings. Lulu accelerates. I grab him
and scream at him to stop but we go faster and faster. ‘Damn dead,’ he says, when I’ve
finished clawing him. ‘A wild country. This kind of thing happen in England, yes?’ ‘Yes, I
suppose so.’ Eventually I persuade him to stop and I get out of the car. * I’m alone in the
bazaar, handling jewellery and carpets and pots and I’m confused. I know I have to get people
presents. Especially Howard the hero who’s paying for this. Ah, there’s just the thing: a cage
the size of a big paint tin, with three chickens inside. The owner sees me looking. He jerks a
chicken out, decapitates it on a block and holds it up to my face, feathers flying into my hair. I
walk away and dodge a legless brat on a four-wheeled trolley made out of a door, who hurls
herself at me and then disappears through an alley and across the sewers. Everywhere the sick
and the uncured, and I’m just about ready for lunch when everyone starts running. They’re
jumping out of the road and pulling their kids away. There is a tidal wave of activity, generated
by three big covered trucks full of soldiers crashing through the bazaar, the men standing still
and nonchalant with rifles in the back. I’m half knocked to hell by some prick tossed off a bike.
I am tiptoeing my way out along the edge of a fucking sewer, shit lapping against my shoes.
I’ve just about had enough of this country, I’m just about to call for South Africa Road, when –
‘Lulu,’ I shout. ‘Lulu.’ ‘I take care of you,’ he says. ‘Sorry for touching.’ He takes me back to the
car. Fat, black buffalo snort and shift in the mud. I don’t like these animals being everywhere,
chickens and dogs and stuff, with sores and bleeding and threats and fear. ‘You know?’ I say.
‘I’m lonely. There’s no one I can talk to. No one to laugh with here, Lulu. And I think they hate
me, my family. Does your family hate you?’ * I stretch and bend and twist in the front garden
in T-shirt and shorts. I pull sheets of air into my lungs. I open my eyes a moment and the world
amazes me, its brightness. A servant is watching me, peeping round a tree. ‘Hey, peeper!’ I
call, and carry on. When I look again, I notice the cook and the sweeper have joined him and
they shake and trill. ‘What am I doing?’ I say. ‘Giving a concert?’ In the morning papers I notice
that potential wives are advertised as being ‘virtuous and fair-skinned’. Why would I want to
be unvirtuous and brown? But I do, I do! I take a shower in my room and stroll across to the
house. I stand outside your room, Dad, where the men always meet in the early evenings. I
look through the wire mesh of the screen door and there you are, my father for all these years.
And this is what you were doing while I sat in the back of the class at my school in Shepherd’s
Bush, pregnant, wondering why you didn’t love me. In the morning when I’m having my
breakfast we meet in the living room by the bar and you ride on your exercise bicycle. You
pant and look at me now and again, your stringy body sways and tightens, but you say fuck all.
If I speak, you don’t hear. You’re one of those old-fashioned romantic men for whom women
aren’t really there unless you decide we are. Now you lie on your bed and pluck up food with
one hand and read an American comic with the other. A servant, a young boy, presses one of
those fat vibrating electric instruments you see advertised in the Observer Magazine on to
your short legs. You look up and see me. The sight of me angers you. You wave furiously for
me to come in. No. Not yet. I walk on. * In the women’s area of the house, where visitors
rarely visit, Dad’s wife sits sewing. ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I think I’ll have a piece of sugar cane.’ I want to
ask the names of the other pieces of fruit on the table, but Wifey is crabby inside and out,
doesn’t speak English and disapproves of me in all languages. She has two servants with her,
squatting there watching Indian movies on the video. An old woman who was once, I can see, a
screen goddess, now sweeps the floor on her knees with a handful of twigs. Accidentally,
sitting there swinging my leg, I touch her back with my foot, leaving a dusty mark on her
clothes. ‘Imagine,’ I say to Wifey. I slip the sugar cane into my mouth. The squirting juice
bounces off my taste buds. I gob out the sucked detritus and chuck it in front of the screen
goddess’s twigs. You can really enjoy talking to someone who doesn’t understand you.
‘Imagine my dad leaving my ma for you! And you don’t ever leave that seat there. Except once
a month you go to the bank to check up on your jewellery.’ Wifey keeps all her possessions on
the floor around her. She is definitely mad. But I like the mad here: they just wander around
the place with everyone else and no one bothers you and people give you food. ‘You look like a
bag lady. D’you know what a bag lady is?’ Moonie comes into the room. She’s obviously heard
every word I’ve said. She starts to yell at me. Wifey’s beaky nozzle turns to me with interest
now. Something’s happening that’s even more interesting than TV. They want to crush me. I
think they like me here for that reason. If you could see, Ma, what they’re doing to me just
because you met a man at a dance in the Old Kent Road and his French letter burst as you lay
in front of a gas fire with your legs up! ‘You took the car when we had to go out to work!’ yells
Moonie. ‘You forced the driver to take you! We had to sack him!’ ‘Why sack him?’ ‘He’s
naughty! Naughty! You said he drives you badly! Nearly killed! You’re always causing trouble,
Nina, doing some stupid thing, some very stupid thing!’ Gloomie and Moonie are older than
Nadia and me. Both have been married, kicked around by husbands arranged by Dad, and
separated. That was their small chance in life. Now they’ve come back to Daddy. Now they’re
secretaries. Now they’re blaming me for everything. ‘By the way. Here.’ I reach into my pocket.
‘Take this.’ Moonie’s eyes bulge at my open palm. Her eyes quieten her mouth. She starts fatly
towards me. She sways. She comes on. Her hand snatches at the lipstick. ‘Now you’ll be able to
come out with me. We’ll go to the Holiday Inn.’ ‘Yes, but you’ve been naughty.’ She is
distracted by the lipstick. ‘What colour is it?’ ‘Can’t you leave her alone for God’s sake? Always
picking on her!’ This is Nadia coming into the room after work. She throws herself into a chair.
‘I’m so tired.’ To the servant she says: ‘Bring me some tea.’ At me she smiles. ‘Hello, Nina.
Good day? You were doing some exercises, I hear. They rang me at work to tell me.’ ‘Yes,
Nadia.’ ‘Oh, sister, they have such priorities.’ For the others I am ‘cousin’. From the start
there’s been embarrassment about how I am to be described. Usually, if it’s Moonie or
Gloomie they say: ‘This is our distant cousin from England.’ It amuses me to see my father deal
with this. He can’t bring himself to say either ‘cousin’ or ‘daughter’ so he just says Nina and
leaves it. But of course everyone knows I am his illegitimate daughter. But Nadia is the real
‘daughter’ here. ‘Nadia is an impressive person,’ my father says, on my first day here, making it
clear that I am diminished, the sort with dirt under her nails. Yes, she is clever, soon to be
doctor, life-saver. Looking at her now she seems less small than she did in London. I’d say she
has enough dignity for the entire government. ‘They tear-gassed the hospital.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The
clever police. Some people were demonstrating outside. The police broke it up. When they
chased the demonstrators inside they tear-gassed them! What a day! What a country! I must
wash my face.’ She goes out. ‘See, see!’ Moonie trills. ‘She is better than you! Yes, yes, yes!’ ‘I
expect so. It’s not difficult.’ ‘We know she is better than you for certain!’ * I walk out of all this
and into my father’s room. It’s like moving from one play to another. What is happening on
this set? The room is perfumed with incense from a green coiled creation which burns outside
the doors, causing mosquitoes to drop dead. Advanced telephones connect him to Paris,
Dubai, London. On the video is an American movie. Five youths rape a woman. Father – what
do I call him, Dad? – sits on the edge of the bed with his little legs sticking out. The servant
teases father’s feet into his socks. ‘You’ll get sunstroke,’ he says, as if he’s known me all my life
and has the right to be high-handed. ‘Cavorting naked in the garden.’ ‘Naked is it now?’ ‘We
had to sack the driver, too. Sit down.’ I sit in the row of chairs beside him. It’s like visiting
someone in hospital. He lies on his side in his favourite mocking-me-for-sport position. ‘Now –’
The lights go out. The TV goes off. I shut my eyes and laugh. Power cut. Father bounces up and
down on the bed. ‘Fuck this motherfucking country!’ The servant rushes for candles and lights
them. As it’s Friday I sit here and think of Ma and Howard meeting today for food, talk and sex.
I think Howard’s not so bad after all, and even slightly good-looking. He’s never deliberately
hurt Ma. He has other women – but that’s only vanity, a weakness, not a crime – and he sees
her only on Friday, but he hasn’t undermined her. What more can you expect from men? Ma
loves him a lot – from the first moment, she says; she couldn’t help herself. She’s still trusting
and open, despite everything. Never happen to me. Dad turns to me: ‘What do you do in
England for God’s sake?’ ‘Nadia has already given you a full report, hasn’t she?’ A full report?
For two days I gaped through the window lipreading desperately as nose to nose, whispering
and giggling, eyebrows shooting up, jaws dropping like guillotines, hands rubbing, Father and
Nadia conducted my prosecution. The two rotund salt and pepper pots, Moonie and Gloomie,
guarded the separate entrances to this room. ‘Yes, but I want the full confession from your
mouth.’ He loves to tease. But he is a dangerous person. Tell him something and soon
everyone knows about it. ‘Confess to what?’ ‘That you just roam around here and there. You
do fuck all full time, in other words.’ ‘Everyone in England does fuck all except for the yuppies.’
‘And do you go with one boy or with many?’ I say nothing. ‘But your mother has a boy, yes?
Some dud writer, complete failure and playboy with unnatural eyebrows that cross in the
middle?’ ‘Is that how Nadia described the man she tried to –’ ‘What?’ ‘Be rather close friends
with?’ The servant has a pair of scissors. He trims Father’s hair, he snips in Father’s ear, he
investigates Father’s nostrils with the clipping steel shafts. He attaches a tea-cloth to Father’s
collar, lathers Father’s face, sharpens the razor on the strop and shaves Father clean and
reddish. ‘Not necessarily,’ says Father, spitting foam. ‘I use my imagination. Nadia says
eyebrows and I see bushes.’ He says to his servant and indicates me: ‘An Englisher born and
bred, eh?’ The servant falls about with the open razor. ‘But you belong with us,’ Dad says.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll put you on the right track. But first there must be a strict course of discipline.’
* The room is full of dressed-up people sitting around Dad’s bed looking at him lying there in
his best clothes. Dad yells out cheerful slanders about the tax evaders, bribe-takers and
general scum-bags who can’t make it this evening. Father obviously a most popular man here.
It’s better to be entertaining than good. Ma would be drinking bleach by now. At last Dad gives
the order they’ve been waiting for. ‘Bring the booze.’ The servant unlocks the cabinet and
brings out the whisky. ‘Give everyone a drink except Nina. She has to get used to the pure way
of life!’ he says, and everyone laughs at me. The people here are tractor dealers (my first
tractor dealer!), journalists, landowners and a newspaper tycoon aged thirty-one who
inherited a bunch of papers. He’s immensely cultured and massively fat. I suggest you look at
him from the front and tell me if he doesn’t look like a flounder. I look up to see my sister
standing at the window of Dad’s room, straining her heart’s wet eyes at the Flounder who
doesn’t want to marry her because he already has the most pleasant life there is in the world.
Now here’s a message for you fuckers back home. The men here invite Nadia and me to their
houses, take us to their club, play tennis with us. They’re chauvinistic as hell, but they put on a
great show. They’re funny and spend money and take you to their farms and show you their
guns and kill a snake in front of your eyes. They flirt and want to poke their things in you, but
they don’t expect it. Billy slides into the room in his puffy baseball jacket and pink plimsolls and
patched jeans. He stands there and puts his hands in his pockets and takes them out again.
‘Hey, Billy, have a drink.’ ‘OK. Thanks … Yeah. OK.’ ‘Don’t be shy,’ Dad says. ‘Nina’s not shy.’ So
the entire room looks at shy Billy and Billy looks at the ground. ‘No, well, I could do with a
drink. Just one. Thanks.’ The servant gets Billy a drink. Someone says to someone else: ‘He
looks better since he had that break in Lahore.’ ‘It did him the whole world of damn good.’
‘Terrible what happened to the boy.’ ‘Yes. Yes. Ghastly rotten.’ Billy comes and sits next to me.
Their loud talking goes on. ‘I’ve heard about you,’ he says under the talking. ‘They talk about
you nonstop.’ ‘Goody.’ ‘Yeah. Juicy Fruit?’ he says. * He sits down on the bed and I open my
case and give him all my tapes. ‘Latest stuff from England.’ He goes through them eagerly. ‘You
can’t get any of this stuff here. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.’ He looks
at me. ‘Can I? Can I borrow them? Would you mind, you know?’ I nod. ‘My room is on top of
the house. I’ll never be far away.’ Oh, kiss me now! Though I can see that’s a little premature,
especially in a country where they cut off your arms or something for adultery. I like your black
jeans. ‘What’s your accent?’ I say. ‘Canadian.’ He gets up. No, don’t leave now. Not yet.
‘Wanna ride?’ he says. * In the drive the chauffeurs smoke and talk. They stop talking. They
watch us. Billy puts his baseball cap on my head and touches my hair. ‘Billy, push the bike out
into the street so no one hears us leave.’ I ask him about himself. His mother was Canadian.
She died. His father was Pakistani, though Billy was brought up in Vancouver. I turn and
Moonie is yelling at me. ‘Nina, Nina, it’s late. Your father must see you now about a strict
discipline business he has to discuss!’ ‘Billy, keep going.’ He just keeps pushing the bike,
oblivious of Moonie. He glances at me now and again, as if he can’t believe his luck. I can’t
believe mine, baby! ‘So Pop and I came home to live. Home. This place isn’t my home. But he
always wanted to come home.’ We push the bike up the street till we get to the main road.
‘This country was a shock after Vancouver,’ he says. ‘Same for me.’ ‘Yeah?’ He gets sharp. ‘But
I’d been brought here to live. How can you ever understand what that’s like?’ ‘I can’t. All right,
I fucking can’t.’ He goes on. ‘We were converting a house in ’Pindi, Pop and me. Digging the
foundations, plastering the walls, doing the plumbing …’ We get on the bike and I hold him.
‘Out by the beach, Billy.’ ‘Yeah. But it’s not simple. You know the cops stop couples and ask to
see their wedding certificates.’ It’s true but fuck it. Slowly, stately, the two beige outlaws ride
through the city of open fires. I shout an Aretha Franklin song into the night. Men squat by
busted cars. Wild maimed pye-dogs run in our path. Traffic careers through dust, past hotels
and airline buildings, past students squatting beside traffic lights to read, near where there are
terrorist explosions and roads melt like plastic. To the beach without showing our wedding
certificate. It’s more a desert than a beach. There’s just sand: no shops, no hotels, no ice-
creamers, no tattooists. Utterly dark. Your eyes search for a light in panic, for safety. But the
curtains of the world are well and truly pulled here. I guide Billy to the Flounder’s beach hut.
Hut – this place is bigger than Ma’s flat. We push against the back door and we’re in the large
living room. Billy and I dance about and chuck open the shutters. Enter moonlight and the
beach as Billy continues his Dad rap. ‘Pop asked me to drill some holes in the kitchen. But I had
to empty the wheelbarrow. So he did the drilling. He hit a cable or something. Anyway, he’s
dead, isn’t he?’ We kiss for a long time, about forty minutes. There’s not a lot you can do in
kissing; half an hour of someone’s tongue in your mouth could seem an eternity, but what
there is to do, we do. I take off all my clothes and listen to the sea and almost cry for missing
South Africa Road so. But at least there is the light friction of our lips together, barely touching.
Harder. I pull the strong bulk of his head towards mine, pressing my tongue to the corner of his
mouth. Soon I pass through the mouth’s parting to trace the inside curve of his lips. Suddenly
his tongue fills my mouth, invading me, and I clench it with my teeth. Oh, oh, oh. As he
withdraws I follow him, sliding my tongue into the oven of his gob and lie there on the bench
by the open shutters overlooking the Arabian Sea, connected by tongue and saliva, my fingers
in his ears and hair, his finger inside my body, our bodies dissolving until we forget ourselves
and think of nothing, thank fuck. * It’s still dark and no more than ninety minutes have passed,
when I hear a car pulling up outside the hut. I shake Billy awake, push him off me and pull him
across the hut and into the kitchen. The fucking door’s warped and won’t shut so we just lie
down on the floor next to each other. I clam Billy up with my hand over his gob. There’s a shit
smell right next to my nose. I start to giggle. I stuff Billy’s fingers into my mouth. He’s laughing
all over the place too. But we shut up sharpish when a couple come into the hut and start to
move around. For some reason I imagine we’re going to be shot. The man says: ‘Curious,
indeed. My sister must have left the shutters open last time she came here.’ The other person
says it’s lovely, the moonlight and so on. Then there’s no talking. I can’t see a sausage but my
ears are at full stretch. Yes, kissing noises. Nadia says: ‘Here’s the condoms, Bubble!’ My sister
and the Flounder! Well. The Flounder lights a lantern. Yes, there they are now, I can see them:
she’s trying to pull his long shirt over his head, and he’s resisting. ‘Just my bottoms!’ he
squeals. ‘My stomach! Oh, my God!’ I’m not surprised he’s ashamed, looking in this low light at
the size of the balcony over his toy shop. I hear my name. Nadia starts to tell the Flounder – or
‘Bubble’ as she keeps calling him – how the Family Planning in London gave me condoms. The
Flounder’s clucking with disapproval and lying on the bench by the window looking like a
hippo, with my sister squatting over his guts, rising and sitting, sighing and exclaiming
sometimes, almost in surprise. They chat away quite naturally, fucking and gossiping and the
Flounder talks about me. Am I promiscuous, he wants to know. Do I do it with just anyone?
How is my father going to discipline me now he’s got his hands on me? Billy shifts about. He
could easily be believing this shit. I wish I had some paper and a pen to write him a note. I kiss
him gently instead. When I kiss him I get a renewal of this strange sensation that I’ve never felt
before today: I feel it’s Billy I’m kissing, not just his lips or body, but some inside thing, as if his
skin is just a representative of all of him, his past and his blood. Amour has never been this
personal for me before! Nadia and the Flounder are getting hotter. She keeps asking Bubble
why they can’t do this every day. He says, yes, yes, yes, and won’t you tickle my balls? I
wonder how she’ll find them. Then the Flounder shudders and Nadia, moving in rhythm like
someone doing a slow dance, has to stop. ‘Bubble!’ she says and slaps him, as if he’s a naughty
child that’s just thrown up. A long fart escapes Bubble’s behind. ‘Oh, Bubble,’ she says, and
falls on to him, holding him closer. Soon he is asleep. Nadia unstraddles him and moves to a
chair and has a little cry as she sits looking at him. She only wants to be held and kissed and
touched. I feel like going to her myself. * When I wake up it’s daylight and they’re sitting there
together, talking about their favourite subject. The Flounder is smoking and she is trying to
masturbate him. ‘So why did she come here with you?’ he is asking. Billy opens his eyes and
doesn’t know where he is. Then he sighs. I agree with him. What a place to be, what a thing to
be doing! (But then, come to think of it, you always find me in the kitchen at parties.) ‘Nina just
asked me one day at breakfast. I had no choice and this man, Howard –’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the
Flounder laughs. ‘You said he was handsome.’ ‘I only said he had nice hair,’ she says. But I’m in
sympathy with the Flounder here, finding this compliment a little gratuitous. The Flounder gets
up. He’s ready to go. And so is Billy. ‘I can’t stand much more of this,’ he says. Nadia suddenly
jerks her head towards us. For a moment I think she’s seen us. But the Flounder distracts her. I
hear the tinkle of the car keys and the Flounder says: ‘Here, put your panties on. Wouldn’t
want to leave your panties here on the floor. But let me kiss them first! I kiss them!’ There are
sucky kissing noises. Billy is twitching badly and drumming his heels on the floor. Nadia looks at
the Flounder with his face buried in a handful of white cotton. ‘And,’ he says with a muffled
voice, ‘I’m getting lead in my pencil again, Nadia. Let us lie down, my pretty one.’ The Flounder
takes her hand enthusiastically and jerks it towards his dingdong. She smacks him away. She’s
not looking too pleased. ‘I’ve got my pants on, you bloody fool!’ Nadia says harshly. ‘That pair
of knickers you’ve sunk your nose in must belong to another woman you’ve had here!’ ‘What!
But I’ve had no other woman here!’ The Flounder glares at her furiously. He examines the
panties, as if hoping to find a name inside. ‘Marks & Spencers. How strange. I feel sick now.’
‘Marks & Spencers! Fuck this!’ says Billy, forcing my hands off his face. ‘My arms and legs are
going to fucking drop off in a minute!’ So up gets Billy. He combs his hair and turns up the
collar of his shirt and then strolls into the living room singing a couple of choruses from The
The. I get up and follow him, just in time to see Nadia open her mouth and let off a huge
scream at the sight of us. The Flounder, who has no bottoms on, gives a frightened yelp and
drops my pants which I pick up and, quite naturally, put on. I’m calm and completely resigned
to the worst. Anyway, I’ve got my arm round Billy. ‘Hi, everyone,’ Billy says. ‘We were just
asleep in the other room. Don’t worry, we didn’t hear anything, not about the condoms or
Nina’s character or the panties or anything. Not a thing. How about a cup of tea or
something?’ * I get off Billy’s bike midday. ‘Baby,’ he says. ‘Happy,’ I say, wearing his checked
shirt, tail out. Across the lawn with its sprinkler I set off for Dad’s club, a sun-loved white
palace set in flowers. White-uniformed bearers humble as undertakers set down trays of
foaming yogurt. I could do with a proper drink myself. Colonels with generals and ladies with
perms, fans and crossed legs sit in cane chairs. I wish I’d slept more. The old man. There you
are, blazer and slacks, turning the pages of The Times on an oak lectern overlooking the
gardens. You look up. Well, well, well, say your eyes, not a dull day now. Her to play with. You
take me into the dining room. It’s chill and smart and the tables have thick white cloths on
them and silver cutlery. The men move chairs for the elegant thin women, and the waiters
take the jackets of the plump men. I notice there are no young people here. ‘Fill your plate,’
you say, kindly. ‘And come and sit with me. Bring me something too. A little meat and some
dhal.’ I cover the plate with food from the copper pots at the buffet in the centre of the room
and take it to you. And here we sit, father and daughter, all friendly and everything. ‘How are
you today, Daddy?’ I say, touching your cheek. Around us the sedate upper class fill their guts.
You haven’t heard me. I say once more, gently: ‘How are you today?’ ‘You fucking bitch,’ you
say. You push away your food and light a cigarette. ‘Goody,’ I say, going a little cold. ‘Now we
know where we are with each other.’ ‘Where the fuck were you last night?’ you enquire of me.
You go on: ‘You just fucked off and told no one. I was demented with worry. My blood
pressure was through the roof. Anything could have happened to you.’ ‘It did.’ ‘That bloody
boy’s insane.’ ‘But Billy’s pretty.’ ‘No, he’s ugly like you. And a big pain in the arse.’ ‘Dad.’ ‘No,
don’t interrupt! A half-caste wastrel, a belong-nowhere, a problem to everyone, wandering
around the face of the earth with no home like a stupidmistake-mongrel dog that no one
wants and everyone kicks in the backside.’ For those of you curious about the menu, I am
drinking tear soup. ‘You left us,’ I say. I am shaking. You are shaking. ‘Years ago, just look at it,
you fucked us and left us and fucked off and never came back and never sent us money and
instead made us sit through fucking Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.’ Someone comes over, a
smart judge who helped hang the Prime Minister. We all shake hands. Christ, I can’t stop
crying all over the place. * It’s dusk and I’m sitting upstairs in a deckchair outside Billy’s room
on the roof. Billy’s sitting on a pillow. We’re wearing cut-off jeans and drinking iced water and
reading old English newspapers that we pass between us. Our washing is hanging up on a piece
of string we’ve tied between the corner of the room and the television aerial. The door to the
room is open and we’re listening again and again to ‘Who’s Loving You’ – very loud – because
it’s our favourite record. Billy keeps saying: ‘Let’s hear it again, one mo’ time, you know.’ We’re
like an old couple sitting on a concrete patio in Shepherd’s Bush, until we get up and dance
with no shoes on and laugh and gasp because the roof burns our feet so we have to go inside
to make love again. Billy goes in to take a shower and I watch him go. I don’t like being
separated from him. I hear the shower start and I sit down and throw the papers aside. I go
downstairs to Nadia’s room and knock on her door. Wifey is sitting there and Moonie is behind
her. ‘She’s not in,’ Moonie says. ‘Come in,’ Nadia says, opening her door, I go in and sit on the
stool by the dressing table. It’s a pretty room. There is pink everywhere and her things are all
laid out neatly and she sits on the bed brushing her hair and it shines. I tell her we should have
a bit of a talk. She smiles at me. She’s prepared to make an effort, I can see that, though it
surprises me. She did go pretty berserk the other day, when we came out of the kitchen, trying
to punch me and everything. ‘It was an accident,’ I tell her now. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘But what
impression d’you think it made on the man I want to marry?’ ‘Blame me. Say I’m just a sicko
Westerner. Say I’m mad.’ ‘It’s the whole family it reflects on,’ she says. She goes to a drawer
and opens it. She takes out an envelope and gives it to me. ‘It’s a present for you,’ she says
kindly. When I slip my finger into the flap of the envelope she puts her hand over mine.
‘Please. It’s a surprise for later.’ Billy is standing on the roof in his underpants. I fetch a towel
and dry his hair and legs and he holds me and we move a little together to imaginary music.
When I remember the envelope Nadia gave me, I open it and find a shiny folder inside. It’s a
ticket to London. I’d given my ticket home to my father for safe-keeping, an open ticket I can
use any time. I can see that Nadia’s been to the airline and specified the date, and booked the
flight. I’m to leave tomorrow morning. I go to my dad and ask him what it’s all about. He just
looks at me and I realise I’m to go. 4 Hello, reader. As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I,
Howard, have written this Nina and Nadia stuff in my sock, without leaving the country, sitting
right here on my spreading arse and listening to John Coltrane. (And rolling cigarettes.) Do you
think Nina could have managed phrases like ‘an accent as thick as treacle’ and ‘But the curtains
are well and truly pulled here’ and especially ‘Oh, oh, oh’? With her education? So all along, it’s
been me, pulling faces, speaking in tongues, posing and making an attempt on the truth
through lies. And also, I just wanted to be Nina. The days Deborah and I have spent beating on
her head, trying to twist her the right way round, read this, study dancing, here’s a book about
Balanchine and the rest of it. What does she make of all this force feeding? So I became her,
entered her. Sorry. Nina in fact has been back a week, though it wasn’t until yesterday that I
heard from her when she phoned to tell me that I am a bastard and that she had to see me. I
leave straightaway. * At Nina’s place. There she is, sitting at the kitchen table with her foot up
on the table by her ashtray in the posture of a painter. Deborah not back from school. ‘You
look superb,’ I tell her. She doesn’t recoil in repulsion when I kiss her. ‘Do I look superb?’ She is
interested. ‘Yeah. Tanned. Fit. Rested.’ ‘Oh, is that all?’ She looks hard at me. ‘I thought for a
moment you were going to say something interesting. Like I’d changed or something. Like
something had happened.’ We walk through the estate, Friday afternoon. How she walks
above it all now, as if she’s already left! She tells me everything in a soft voice: her father, the
servants, the boy Billy, the kiss, the panties. She says: ‘I was devastated to leave Billy in that
country on his own. What will he do? What will happen to that boy? I sent him a pack of tapes.
I sent him some videos. But he’ll be so lonely.’ She is upset. The three of us have supper and
Deborah tries to talk about school while Nina ignores her. It’s just like the old days. But Nina
ignores Deborah not out of cruelty but because she is elsewhere. Deborah is thinking that
probably Nina has left her for good. I am worried that Debbie will expect more from me. The
next day I fly to my desk, put on an early Miles Davis tape and let it all go, tip it out, what Nina
said, how she looked, what we did, and I write (and later cross out) how I like to put my little
finger up Deborah’s arse when we’re fucking and how she does the same to me, when she can
comfortably reach. I shove it all down shamelessly (and add bits) because it’s my job to write
down the things that happen round here and because I have a rule about no material being
sacred. What does that make me? I once was in a cinema when the recently uncovered spy
Anthony Blunt came in with a friend. The entire cinema (but not me) stood up and chanted
‘Out, out, out’ until the old queen got up and left. I feel like that old spy, a dirty betrayer with a
loudspeaker, doing what I have to. I offer this story to you, Deborah and Nina, to make of it
what you will, before I send it to the publisher. Dear Howard, How very kind of you to leave
your story on my kitchen table casually saying, ‘I think you should read this before I publish it.’
I was pleased: I gave you an extra kiss, thinking that at last you wanted me to share your work
(I almost wrote world). I could not believe you opened the story with an account of an
abortion. As you know I know, it’s lifted in its entirety from a letter written to you by your last
girlfriend, Julie. You were conveniently in New York when she was having the abortion so that
she had to spit out all the bits of her broken heart in a letter, and you put it into the story
pretending it was written by my daughter. The story does also concern me, our ‘relationship’
and even where we put our fingers. Your portrait of me as a miserable whiner let down by
men would have desperately depressed me, but I’ve learned that unfeeling, blood-sucking
men like you need to reduce women to manageable clichés, even to destroy them, for the sake
of control. I am only sorry it’s taken me this long to realise what a low, corrupt and exploitative
individual you are, who never deserved the love we both offered you. You have torn me apart.
I hope the same thing happens to you one day. Please never attempt to get in touch again.
Deborah Someone bangs on the door of the flat. I’ve been alone all day. I’m not expecting
anyone, and how did whoever it is get into the building in the first place? ‘Let me in, let me in!’
Nina calls out. I open up and she’s standing there soaked through with a sports bag full of
things and a couple of plastic bags under her arm. ‘Moving in?’ I say. ‘You should be so lucky,’
she says, barging past me. ‘I’m on me way somewhere and I thought I’d pop by to borrow
some money.’ She comes into the kitchen. It’s gloomy and the rain hammers into the
courtyard outside. But Nina’s cheerful, happy to be back in England and she has no illusions
about her father now. Apparently he was rough with her, called her a half-caste and so on.
‘Well, Howard, you’re in the shit, aren’t you?’ Nina says. ‘Ma’s pissed off no end with you,
man. She’s crying all over the shop. I couldn’t stand it. I’ve moved out. You can die of a broken
heart, you know. And you can kill someone that way too.’ ‘Don’t talk about it,’ I say, breaking
up the ice with a hammer and dropping it into the glasses. ‘She wrote me a pissed-off letter.
Wanna read it?’ ‘It’s private, Howard.’ ‘Read it, for Christ’s sake, Nina,’ I say, shoving it at her.
She reads it and I walk round the kitchen looking at her. I stand behind her a long time. I can’t
stop looking at her today. She puts it down without emotion. She’s not sentimental; she’s
always practical about things, because she knows what cunts people are. ‘You’ve ripped Ma off
before. She’ll get over it, and no one reads the shit you write anyway except a lot of middle-
class wankers. As long as you get paid and as long as you give me some of it you’re all right
with me.’ I was right. I knew she’d be flattered. I give her some money and she gathers up her
things. I don’t want her to go. ‘Where are you off to?’ ‘Oh, a friend’s place in Hackney.
Someone I was in the loony bin with. I’ll be living there. Oh, and Billy will be joining me.’ She
smiles broadly. ‘I’m happy.’ ‘Wow. That’s good. You and Billy.’ ‘Yeah, ain’t it just!’ She gets up
and throws back the rest of the whisky. ‘Be seeing ya!’ ‘Don’t go yet.’ ‘Got to.’ At the door she
says: ‘Good luck with the writing and everything.’ I walk to the lift with her. We go down
together. I go out to the front door of the building. As she goes out into the street running with
sheets of rain, I say: ‘I’ll come with you to the corner,’ and walk with her, even though I’m not
dressed for it. At the corner I can’t let her go and I accompany her to the bus stop. I wait with
her for fifteen minutes in my shirt and slippers. I’m soaked through holding all her bags but I
think you can make too much of these things. ‘Don’t go,’ I keep saying inside my head.Then the
bus arrives and she takes her bags from me and gets on and I stand there watching her but she
won’t look at me because she is thinking of Billy. The bus moves off and I watch until it
disappears and then I go inside the flat and take off my clothes and have a bath. Later. I write
down the things she said but the place still smells of her.