Something to Tell You (11 page)

I walked around to the front of the house with Miriam. I noticed Bushy was carrying what looked like Miriam’s overnight bag. Before getting in my own car, I kissed her and watched as Bushy opened the rear door for her, waiting as she struggled, suppressing various “old woman” noises, to get herself comfortable.

Then, as she went to her pleasure, she waved and called out, “See you later, Brother.”

My lover was crying, shaking. I’d never seen her in such a state.

Ajita and I were putting our towels out, scanning the sky for clouds, when she broke down, weeping hard. It was some time before she admitted that something serious was bothering her. Her father was having trouble at his factory, the place he wanted her to run with him when she graduated. She had even hypothesised about whether she and I might manage it together, when her father retired.

There had been a television documentary about the factory, which as it happened, I had watched with Mum, not realising it was about her family.

A few months previously, her father had been approached by a director who told him the putative “doc” would be a sympathetic look at the lives of the Ugandan Asians, people who had come here with little but who were already pushing up, socially; a bright story about an immigrant’s progress. Ajita’s father had liked the director, with whom he had many talks about cricket, India and the politics of the Third World. However, it turned out that the director was a sort of double agent, as a lot of them were said to be. He was an upper-class, Cambridge-educated Communist, a clever, successful renegade who hated his own class and background.

In the documentary, there were many shots inside the factory and interviews with the workers. Ajita’s father had cooperated; he was flattered to be involved. But the Cambridge Communist had exposed Ajita’s father as a merciless exploiter of his own people, as an archcapitalist and greedy villain. Ajita’s father had tried to contact the man and remonstrate with him. But now the Commie wouldn’t speak to him. Ajita’s father couldn’t understand how anyone could behave so perfidiously. It was “typically English,” from his point of view—as well as being what he described as “Marxist colonialism.”

The factory workers had, of course, seen the programme and had become more difficult, complaining openly now and even threatening strike action. In Africa or India, of course, they’d have been fired or beaten up. Ajita said to me, “Why can’t they just work? Surely in this political climate they’re lucky to have jobs.” This must have been what her father had told her.

I made it clear to Ajita that, when it came to such things, I was on the side of the workers; that was my instinct and my belief, passed on to me by my own father. Somewhat self-righteously, I told her I was also a supporter of Rock Against Racism, formed after Eric Clapton made a racist speech from the stage in Birmingham. “Come on, Eric,” went the original letter in
Melody Maker
. “Own up. Half your music’s black. You’re rock’s biggest colonist.” But Ajita wasn’t about to become a leftist. She said nothing; she wasn’t taking anything in.

My hope was that, despite our differences, we would return to our indolent life, financed by the great exploiter, her father. The longer the old man was at work, harassed though we might be, the more time I had to eat his food, drink his beer and fuck his daughter. Other than when it concerned race, politics didn’t fascinate me. People were always on strike in the 1970s; it was the only consolation for having to work. The lights crashed almost every week. You’d hear a huge ironic cheer going round the neighbourhood pubs and dance halls, before you could grab the girls and the candles came out. Or there were food or petrol shortages, along with some sort of national crisis with ministers resigning and governments surviving on the edge. Then there’d be an IRA bomb: among other things, they liked blowing up pubs, as well as Hammersmith Bridge, which was attacked twice. The wrong people were soon beaten, forced to confess and locked up. We were used to it.

But this crisis at the factory was upsetting Ajita so much she didn’t want to make love. “Don’t touch me, Jamal,” she said, turning away from me. “I can’t do this anymore. I feel too bad.” It was the first time she’d refused me, the first shadow over our infatuation.

She wouldn’t be comforted. To distract ourselves, we drove into college and were sitting quietly in the bar with Valentin. I liked being there, the men looking at her. She was a standout girl. I had my little gang now; I felt protected.

One of the most active student groups was the Iranian exiles. Every lunchtime they’d leaflet the bar with horrific pictures of the victims of the shah’s secret police, SAVAK, an organisation supported by the US, ever the dictator’s friend and financier. I would speak to the young leftists who wanted our support; they claimed they would use the mosques to organise the people. Once the rebellion had started, the Left would take over.

The other active college group, always busy and looking for trouble, and related to the Anti-Nazi League, was the SWP, the Socialist Workers Party. A student in our philosophy class came over to hand us some of their leaflets. Like Marxism itself, he wasn’t ready to go away but drew up a stool and talked urgently to Valentin about a meeting.

The Trots were always trying to convert him, which was peculiar since he’d been brought up in a Communist state from which he’d gone to some trouble to flee, arguing that Marxist ideology had devastated his country. Despite the Trots’ arguments that the system had “gone wrong” after being hijacked by Stalinists, Valentin couldn’t be convinced. He told me he found these guys amusing or “almost mad,” but he often listened to them, having nothing better to do.

Valentin seemed contemptuous of almost all human effort or enterprise, as if it were beneath him. Certainly, he considered me beneath him, which was perhaps why I was so keen to impress him. When once I asked him to help me with my logic, he just said, “Oh, I mastered all this months ago.” Then, when we’d go to the King’s Road on Friday and Saturday nights to pick up women, he’d usually score and I’d always have to get the last train home. I guess, when he “gave” me Ajita, it was another patronising act.

I noticed that after glancing at the leaflet she had been given, Ajita then reread it several times, which surprised me as she’d never been keen on either reading or politics.

The Trot jabbed at the leaflet. “That factory owner there, the one we’re concerned with…” He drew his finger across his throat and opened his mouth and rolled his eyes like a distressed figure in a Bacon painting.

“Right on, man,” I said dismissively.

A little panicked voice said, “Jamal…” Ajita was whispering in my ear. She wanted to go for a walk along the river, at the Embankment.

I grasped, through her sobs, that the factory referred to in the Trotskyite leaflet, where the students were asked to protest, was her father’s.

For three years Ajita’s family had had it good, the father building the business, the mother with the children, money to spend. The kids were settling in; they liked England. But it seemed now that England wouldn’t admit them after all. Ajita’s father was used to running things and to having power, but recently he had become afraid of having it wrenched from him. Profits weren’t great; he’d had to keep wages down. The whole business was in danger of collapse. He’d be left with enormous debts and might be made bankrupt. What would they do then—go on the dole like everyone else in England?

The strike, which began soon after the documentary was broadcast, was led by a tiny Bengali woman. This brave, defiant figure had become a hero to other women, to the Left as a whole. She had everything going for her: race, gender, class, size. The numbers on the picket line were increasing every day. The factory wasn’t far from London and was near a tube station. Actors from the RSC and the movies were supporting the picket before the workers went into work in the morning. A Labour minister had visited. The dispute was becoming a cause célèbre.

There were a few West Indian workers, but mainly the employees were Asian: a mixture of Kenyan Indian, Pakistani and Bengali; older women, students and some men, overseen by white managers. Ajita told me that, contrary to popular opinion, the workers were not peasants but were educated and politicised. They wanted to start a union, but Ajita’s father wouldn’t negotiate with a union. The workers were Asian like him; he understood their family life, their religion, their food. He didn’t see why they needed a white-led union pressurising him. He didn’t pay well, but he didn’t pay worse than anyone else.

Ajita’s father had become furious and defensive. He’d fired several of the socialist jihadis and refused to reinstate them. Accused of attempting to bring the Third World to England, he replied that this was racism. According to Ajita, he was being picked on. “Do you think I’m the only exploiter in this country?” he’d say. Britain wouldn’t yield to him; he couldn’t get his way. But there was nowhere else for him to go. All his money was in the factory. Not that he was unsupported: Conservative politicians talked of “anarchy” and the “rule of law.”

The afternoon after she cried in the pub we drove back to the suburbs. Ajita went home to study. Instead of joining her, I went to my house to read in my bedroom and listen to music. I went to bed around nine. Being a student, I wasn’t used to getting up early: usually I caught the train to London after the rush hour, around ten.

But early the next morning, without telling Ajita, and while Mum and Miriam were still asleep, I went to the factory. Or, rather, to the demo.

Coming out of the tube station, the first thing I saw was a large banner saying,
ONLY SLAVES CANNOT WITHDRAW THEIR LABOUR
. By eight o’clock the gathering at the gates was considerable. There must have been three hundred people, and they were noisy, almost riotously angry. The crowd seemed to be composed of sacked Asian workers from the factory, students from different radical groups and scores of other sympathisers, along with photographers and journalists. All of these people were surrounded by what looked like legions of police.

The besieged factory, as far as I could see from the gate, was made up of two long, low buildings, which looked as though they’d been constructed from cardboard and asbestos. When I talked to the workers, they complained that, amongst other things, the place was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

I heard about the heavy stacks of cloth, for cutting, which the workers had to move around. The sewing machines were unsafe; the needles broke constantly, scoring the fingers of the employees. Bits of fabric seemed to fly through the air; everyone had blocked noses; no one breathed properly. There was an accident on the premises at least once a month. The workers were allowed only two weeks’ holiday a year, but not in the summer, when there was more work to do. The washrooms and toilets were filthy; women were paid less than men; pregnant women were sacked; one woman said the white bosses forced the female workers to have sex with them.

The crowd increased in size and noise. I noticed that the protesters were carrying stones, bricks and lumps of wood. Then, suddenly, the bus carrying the scabs was coming through, its windows covered in chicken wire. I was amazed to see it race recklessly through the crowd as a hail of missiles rained down on it. Using their truncheons, the police tried to shove us back, but people broke through to spit and thump at the bus.

Right behind the bus was an expensive car, and I noticed Ajita’s father driving.

I recognised him because I’d seen him one time at the house, when he returned suddenly “to find some papers” but really, it seemed to me, to watch a boxing match on TV. Looking at Ajita’s face that day, as he opened the door and strode into the room where we were sitting with our feet up on the glass-topped coffee table, eating Smith’s crisps and grooving to the Fatback Band, I realised she was scared of him. This wasn’t just nerves; I thought she might faint.

Luckily, Mustaq was at home, sitting in a corner peeping at me over the cover of
Young Americans
as usual, and Ajita was able, as planned, to introduce me as his friend. If only that had been enough. To show how consanguineous we really were, I had to spend the afternoon in Mustaq’s bedroom. Ajita had often asked me to “speak to” her brother, about whom she was worried. Their father was too “distracted” to pay him much attention. He lacked fatherly guidance and example; he was girlish and knew nothing about football.

That day the kid was delighted to have me to himself. Did he make the most of it! He took my picture, before presenting his “special” things: a train set, his
Peanuts
annual, his Snoopy stickers, a voodoo doll he’d carved himself from driftwood, complete with pins and numbers scrawled on it in black marker pen, his drum kit and acoustic guitar. There was also an ancient packet of condoms, a flick-knife and a picture of a female cousin in a bikini at the seaside.

Then he asked me to wrestle with him.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Why would I agree to that? I thought it would shut him up. The blood drained from my head when slowly he began to remove all his clothes, apart from his pants.

I wasn’t into the wrestling thing, particularly when I saw how up for it he was, jiggling and jogging on his toes and smacking one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand—bam, bam, bam! Although he had a lot of loose blubber on him, it didn’t stop him looking like a tough, kicky little fucker.

He came at me like a bear, his teeth exposed, his arms out, and he embraced me straightaway and held me. He threw me off the bed, picked me up and tossed me around the room, eventually sitting on me, tickling me and kissing my cheeks. When I tried to get up, he forced his hands down the front of my trousers. I couldn’t shout out for fear of his father banging through the door with a shotgun. On top of me, Mustaq was wiggling his hips and coming on like a teenage trannie or vamp; he wanted to suck me off with his father and sister a few yards away.

It was a relief when he jumped across to the piano and started singing one of his own songs, called, apparently, “Everyone Has Their Heart Torn Apart, Sometime.”

“Listen, listen,” he said. “Tell me what you think!”

“Great, great song, man,” I said. “I like the ‘sometime.’”

“You really think so?”

“You should record it, man, and send it in somewhere.”

In my haste to get away, I stumbled over the edge of the bed and, being forced for a moment to look under it, noticed a sea of half-eaten chocolate bars, bright sweet wrappers, and rotting Easter eggs.