Joseph Anton: A Memoir (78 page)

And here, right on cue, was Helen Hammington, singing the same old song. If the house was blown the cost of the protection would be tripled, she said. “But in the final analysis, and on the basis that it’s at your request, Joe, and as long as you understand that it’s irreversible, we are prepared to go ahead with your plan to remove the protection team, and the choice of Frank Bishop as your man has been approved.” That part, at least, was reasonably constructive. But from that point on things took a turn for the worse. “We don’t want Elizabeth’s name to be on this anthology of yours,” she said. “That, to be frank, horrifies us. Can it be changed, even now? Can it be blotted out?” He said, if you want a public scandal, that’s how to create one. “She could be followed,” said Paul Topper, the new guy. “If I was told that Elizabeth was living with you I could find you in one or two weeks using one or two men.” He tried to remain cool. He pointed out that when the protection started he had had a wife, whose name was very well known, whose picture had been on the front pages of every newspaper, and yet she had come and gone freely from his various bolt-holes, and the police had not thought it a problem. So now he had a fiancée whose name was not very widely known, whose photograph had never been published. It was unreasonable to turn her into a problem.

Then he said a whole lot more. He said, “All I am asking is that this British family be allowed to lead its life and raise its child.” And he also said, “You can’t ask people not to be the people they are and not to do the work they do. You can’t expect Elizabeth not to put her name on her own work, and you must accept that our child is going to be born, and will grow up, and have friends, and go to school; he will have a right to a livable life.”

“All this,” Helen said, “is being discussed at very high levels of the Home Office.”

On May 24, 1997, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the “official candidate” in the Iranian presidential election, was heavily defeated by the “moderate,” “reform” candidate Mohammad Khatami. On CNN young Iranian women were demanding freedom of thought and a better future for their children. Would they get it? Would he? Would the new people in Iran and England finally solve the problem? Khatami seemed to be positioning himself as a Gorbachev figure, who could provide reform from within the existing system. That might well be inadequate, as
glasnost
and
perestroika
had been. He found it hard to be too excited about Khatami. There had been too many false dawns.

On Tuesday, May 27, Elizabeth went to see her gynecologist, Mr. Smith, at 4
P.M.
As soon as she got home, around a quarter past six in the evening, very rapid contractions began. He alerted the protection team and grabbed the bag that had been packed and ready in their bedroom for over a week and they were driven to the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, where they were given an empty corner room, Room 407, which was, they were told, where Princess Diana had had both her babies. Labor progressed rapidly. Elizabeth wanted to try to do it without drugs, and, with her usual determination, managed it, though the demands of childbirth made her uncharacteristically cranky. Between contractions she ordered him to massage her back but the instant they began he wasn’t allowed to touch her and she wanted him out of her field of vision. At one point she exclaimed comically at a midwife named Eileen, “Your perfume makes me sick, I hate it!” Eileen very sweetly and uncomplainingly went away to wash and change.

He looked at the time and suddenly thought,
He’s going to be born at midnight
. But in the event the boy arrived eight minutes early. At eight minutes to midnight Milan Luca West Rushdie was born, seven pounds, nine ounces, with huge feet and hands, and a full head of hair. Labor had taken just five and a half hours from start to finish. This boy had wanted to get out, and here he was, slippery on his mother’s stomach,
the long grayish umbilical cord looped loosely around his neck and shoulders. His father took off his shirt and held him against his chest.

Welcome, Milan
, he told his son.
This is the world, with all its joy and horror, and it waits for you. Be happy in it. Be lucky. You are our new love
.

Elizabeth called Carol and he called Zafar. The next day, Milan’s first day of life, he was visited by his brother, and by his “extra uncles,” Alan Yentob (who canceled his schedule at the BBC to come to the hospital) and Martin Amis, who came with Isabel, their daughter, Fernanda, and Martin’s son Jacob. It was a sunny day.

The Special Branch officers were excited, too. “It’s our first baby,” they said. Nobody had ever become a parent before while under their protection. This was Milan’s first “first”: He was the “A” Squad Baby.

He had been helping Bill Buford put together a special “India issue” of
The New Yorker
and a special group photograph of Indian writers had been arranged. He found himself in an Islington studio with Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Ardashir Vakil, Rohinton Mistry, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, and Romesh Gunesekera (nobody was sure why a Sri Lankan writer had been included, but oh well, Romesh was a nice fellow and a good writer). The photographer was Max Vadukul and it wasn’t an easy picture for him to take. As Bill wrote afterward, Vadukul had been “desperate to herd an edgy group into his frame. The results are illuminating. In the pile of pictures [Vadukul took] there are variations on a theme of muted panic. There are looks of self-consciousness, of curiosity, of giddiness.” He himself remembered the group as pretty good-natured on the whole, even though Rohinton Mistry (mildly) and Ardu Vakil (more stridently) took Amit Chaudhuri to task for the stereotypical views about the Parsi community Amit had expressed in a review of one of Rohinton’s books. Amit was the only one of the eleven writers who didn’t come to the lunch afterward, at Granita restaurant on Upper Street, scene of the legendary Blair-Brown leadership pact. He told Bill afterward, “I realized I didn’t belong in that group. Not my sort of people.” Years later in an interview with Amitava
Kumar, Arundhati Roy felt they hadn’t been her sort of people either. She “chuckled,” she told Kumar, when remembering that day: “I think everybody was being a bit spiky with everybody else. There were muted arguments, sulks, and mutterings. There was brittle politeness. Everybody was a little uncomfortable.… Anyway, I don’t think anybody in that photograph felt they really belonged in the same ‘group’ as the next person.” He remembered her as having been pretty friendly and happy to be there with the rest of them. But that was probably a mistake.

A few days after the photo session he went to the launch party for
The God of Small Things
because he had enjoyed meeting its author and wanted to help her celebrate her big moment. He found Miss Roy in an icier mood. That morning a review of her novel had appeared in
The New Yorker
, written by John Updike, and it was a largely positive review, not quite ten out of ten but eight and a half, perhaps. Anyway, an excellent review for a first novel in an important place, written by a giant of American letters. “Did you see it?” he asked her. “You must be very pleased.” Miss Roy shrugged prettily. “Yes, I saw it,” she said. “So what?” That was surprising and, in a way, impressive. But, “No, Arundhati, that’s too cool,” he told her. “A wonderful thing is happening to you. Your first novel is having a magnificent success. There is nothing quite like first success. You should enjoy it. Don’t be so cool.” She looked him straight in the eye. “I am pretty cool,” she said, and turned away.

After an effusive introduction from her publisher, Stuart Proffitt, she gave a long, gloomy reading and Robert McCrum, who was happily recovering from his stroke, whispered, “Five out of ten.” In the car home the protection officer Paul Topper said, “I’d been thinking of buying the book after her publisher’s speech but then she read from it and I thought, perhaps not.”

Elizabeth and Milan came home from the hospital and Caroline Michel came over, bringing “your second baby,” the finished copy of the
Vintage Book of Indian Writing
(later published in the United States as
Mirrorwork
). Outside the bubble of the protection, the news of Milan’s
birth was breaking. The
Evening Standard
ran the story, including Milan’s name. The police were still very worried about Elizabeth’s name getting into the papers and were working hard to prevent it. For the time being her name did not appear. He was taken back to the spy fortress where Mr. Afternoon and Mr. Morning were worried about Elizabeth and Milan too. But, they said, a “specific threat” had been “disrupted.” No more details. He remembered the
bloody great fist
and hoped it had done its work well. Did this mean he no longer had to worry about the assassination plan? “We didn’t say that,” Mr. Afternoon demurred. “There are still strong reasons for concern,” Mr. Morning confirmed.
Can you tell me what those reasons are?
“No,” said Mr. Afternoon.
I see. No, you say
. “That is correct,” Mr. Morning said. “But the specific threat that we became aware of at the time of your Danish trip,” Mr. Afternoon said, “that threat has been frustrated.”
Oh, you mean there actually
was
a specific threat in Copenhagen?
“There was,” said Mr. Afternoon.
Then why didn’t you tell me?
“Source protection,” said Mr. Morning. “We couldn’t have you telling the media that you knew.” Given the choice between protecting him and the source, the spies had chosen the source.

Meanwhile the
Daily Insult
was preparing to run stories about the increased cost to the nation of Milan’s birth. (There was no such increase.) He braced himself for
RUSHDIE BABY COSTS TAXPAYERS A FORTUNE
. But a different story ran instead:
RUSHDIE HOLDS BBC TO RANSOM
. He was apparently prejudicing the
Midnight’s Children
project by making ridiculously high financial demands. The figures quoted were more than double what he was being paid. He instructed his lawyers to pursue the
Insult
, and after some weeks its bosses caved in and apologized in print.

They went to Marylebone registry office and no sooner had they registered his birth and name than Elizabeth broke down completely because his surname was not hyphenated, not West-Rushdie but plain Rushdie. Only a day earlier she had told him how nice it was to tell everyone his name was Milan Rushdie, so he was caught completely off guard. They had discussed the question of the surname many times and had, he thought, agreed on it months ago. She now said she had suppressed her true feelings because “you wouldn’t have liked it.” For
the rest of the day she was inconsolable and distraught. The next day was Friday the thirteenth and she was still angry, miserable, accusatory. “What a good job we are making of destroying the great happiness we have been given,” he wrote in his journal. He was shaken and wretchedly upset. That so levelheaded a woman should have gone into so complete an emotional meltdown suggested that it was about much more than what it seemed to be about. This near-hysterical Elizabeth was not the woman he had known for seven years. All the uncertainty, fear and anxiety she had bottled up seemed to be pouring out of her. The missing hyphen was just a MacGuffin—the pretext that had unleashed the real, hidden story of how she felt.

She had a pinched nerve and was suddenly in great pain. She ignored all his pleas that she see a doctor until the pain got so bad that she literally couldn’t move. Tension was crackling between them and he said, too sharply, “This is your way of dealing with pain. You tell anyone who wants to help you to shut up and get out of your sight.” She shouted back at him, furious, “Are you going to criticize the way I gave birth?”
Oh, no, no
, he thought.
No, we shouldn’t be doing this
. A serious rift had grown up between them just when they should have been closer than ever.

On Father’s Day he was given a card: an outline of Zafar’s hand, eighteen years old, and inside it an outline of Milan’s hand, aged eighteen days. It became one of his most prized possessions. And after that Elizabeth and he made up their quarrel.

Zafar was eighteen years old. “My pride in this young fellow is absolute,” he wrote in his journal. “He has grown into a fine, honest, brave young man. The essential sweetness with which he was born, his gentleness, his calm, that is still there, unscathed. He has a genuine gift for life. He has greeted Milan’s birth with grace and, it seems, genuine interest. And we still have a relationship good enough for him to trust me with his private feelings—an intimacy my father and I failed to maintain. Will he earn his university place? His destiny is in his own hands. But at least he knows, has always known, that he is deeply loved. My adult son.”

The birthday boy came over in the morning and was given his birthday present—a car radio—and a letter telling him of his father’s
pride in him, in his courage and grace. He read it and said, moved, “
That’s
very nice.”

He wrote and talked, argued and fought. Nothing changed. Well, the government did change. He had an excellent meeting with Derek Fatchett, now Robin Cook’s understudy at the Foreign Office, and there was a big difference in mood from the old Tory days. “We will push the case hard,” Fatchett promised, and he said he would help with the Indian travel ban, he would help with British Airways, he would, in general, help. Suddenly he felt the government was on his side. Who could say what a difference that might make? The new regime in Iran wasn’t making promising noises. A birthday message came in from the new “moderate” president, Khatami: “Salman Rushdie will die soon.”

Laurie Anderson had called to ask if he had a text about fire. She was curating an evening of performances to raise money to build a children’s hospital for the charity War Child, and she had an amazing fire video and needed words to go with it. He edited together passages from the “London’s burning” part of
The Satanic Verses
. Laurie had persuaded Brian Eno to record several loops of sound, which she was going to mix from a little desk in the wings while he read. There was no time to rehearse anything so he just went out on stage and started reading with the fire video flaming behind him and Laurie mixing the Enomusic, the sound swelling and fading without warning, and he had to ride those waves like a surfer or skateboard daredevil, his own voice rising and falling, gleaming the cube. It was one of the most enjoyable things he had ever done. Zafar came to watch him with a girl called Melissa, the first time he had heard his dad read, and afterward he said, “You stuttered a couple of times and you move around too much; it’s distracting,” but he seemed to have liked it, on the whole.