“SO, NO MAN in your life, then?”
They sat companionably over coffee and a fragrant Muscat. She had attacked her treacle tart and cinnamon ice-cream with a childlike concentration.
“Mnn, nursery puddings,” she had sighed in artless satisfaction as she finally put down her spoon.
It was very easy between them. Russell felt as relaxed as if he’d known her forever. Yet he didn’t know the first thing about her.
She lived in Stockwell, it turned out, with two cats called Beatrice and Benedick.
“Why…?”
“Because they’re always teasing each other.”
He looked blank.
“As You Like It?”
“Ah…”
She was that into Shakespeare? He adjusted his view of her once more.
“But they love each other really. At least, I hope they do. You can never be sure, can you?”
He was disconcerted by her direct stare.
They had agreed to meet in the National Theatre restaurant, which seemed a reasonable halfway point between them.
Now she pouted coquettishly. “Does there have to be a man?”
“You’re not…”
“No, no,” she laughed, “I’m just pretty self-contained I suppose. And you?”
Once again she held his gaze. With her almond-shaped eyes, he thought she had a look of a cat herself.
“Was married but it didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry. And you weren’t close to your father?”
“No, there were…well, issues.”
“Sad. My family’s very close. I thought Jews were close?”
He bridled, despite himself. She looked at him thoughtfully, her head on one side.
“You know, I really liked your East End proposal. It’s…it’s really quite moving.”
“It is?”
“Sure. The father you never really knew, the vanished world in which he grew up, all that, it really makes it all come alive, you know. Draws the viewer in. Makes me want to know more about you, about your background.”
He shifted in his chair. Was this a come-on, he wondered. She steadily held his gaze. No giveaway there.
“Well it feels a bit, you know, solipsistic.”
“No, viewers really love this, to get a little glimpse of what’s burning away behind the presenter’s mask.”
“Not sure anything’s burning,” he said uneasily.
“Oooh, I’m getting a whiff of scorch marks,” she said softly.
He stared out of the picture windows. White fairy lights were strung out along the river, their reflection twinkling in the black water. He wondered what she would say if he told her about the boys outside the mosque.
“I went into a church there. It was beautiful, but it had been vandalized. There was graffiti saying ‘Christian scum.’”
“How awful. Do they know who did it?”
“Just youths. Apparently.”
“Ah.”
She looked down at the table. There was a pause.
“Apparently the vicar was beaten up too.”
She shook her head.
“I think we want this film to be very positive, don’t we. We want to create…a certain atmosphere. Poignant buildings, streets of memories, nostalgia for transient worlds, that kind of thing. We don’t want to get sidetracked.”
“Absolutely not,” he said fervently. He decided not to tell her about the beer and those other youths.
“Hope you won’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but, well, can you tell me about Judaism? I’ve always wanted to find out.”
He was taken aback.
“What do you know?” he parried.
“Well nothing at all, actually. I’ve never met a Jewish person, you know, that I could actually speak to about it. Where I came from in Pakistan there just weren’t any. Now I hear them talked about all the time. I just wonder why, and why it’s so difficult to get any of them to talk about it. And now there’s you.”
It turned out she had been educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Bristol University. Her parents had sent her to Britain when she was eight.
“They sent you here alone?”
“They admired Britain, wanted me to have a British education. They’re very open-minded. They’ve had to be. My mum is Hindu, my dad’s a Muslim.”
Was such a thing possible in Pakistan, he wondered.
“Sounds very dangerous for them. How come they’re still there, that they’ve survived at all?”
She shrugged.
“They’ve always had periodic attacks and scares. My dad was beaten up; they’ve been threatened many times. But they’re very obstinate. They love Pakistan, it’s home to both of them and they don’t see why they should be driven out by fanatics. They’ve had to move around a bit, but basically they were determined to stay put. For me, though, they wanted something different. They wanted me to look outwards, not in.”
He thought of his own wedding with Alice, that cursory, slightly shamefaced affair in a drab register office. As if a camera had clicked, he saw a clear image of his father’s face. To his shock, he saw him weeping. No, that didn’t happen. Couldn’t have.
“So how did this work between your parents?”
“Wasn’t a problem. Dad practiced his Muslim stuff and she did her Hindu thing. They are very respectful and tolerant of each other. I grew up with both traditions.”
“So what does that make you?”
When she laughed, her whole face lit up.
“Well nothing, really. I don’t think I believe in anything, not in the religious way. But I suppose it’s why I’m interested in religion. It doesn’t have to divide people, and yet it does.”
She twirled her spoon thoughtfully.
“What’s now called Pakistan was once the center of the ancient Vedic civilization. That turned into Hinduism. Now it’s a Muslim country. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest. What bothers me is that people kill each other over it.”
“Well you’re a long way away from all that now.”
She waved her spoon at the restaurant. It had been empty when they arrived, but had now filled up with people spilling out from seeing the plays, clutching their programs and talking quietly to each other. The women had stylishly bobbed hair, much of it unselfconsciously grey or white, and had clearly dressed up. Most of the men were wearing ties, although there were some corduroy trousers and a certain amount of tweed.
“This is what I love,” she said quietly. “The English middle class. Order, tolerance, self-restraint. No hysteria, no extremism, no violence. People like you take all this for granted. But for me, well, it’s precious beyond price.”
It was true he had taken it for granted, even despised it as the mark of a privileged establishment. But that was before Eliachim of York had come into his life, before he had begun to see that for the Jews of Britain nothing could be taken for granted. Before he had begun to feel different from the rest.
“But is it home?” he asked. “Is it where you feel you belong? Or is that still Pakistan?”
He had never wondered about such a thing before. She looked at him keenly.
“Home? I just don’t think about it. Pakistan is where my family still is. Here is where my life is. The word doesn’t really mean anything to me. What does it matter, anyway? I suppose I feel myself to be a citizen of the world. Home is where I feel comfortable, where my friends and loved ones are. But that can be different places at the same time, can’t it?”
He stared at her as if she had just performed a magic trick. What, indeed, did it matter? There was no reason at all why it should. He could slough off his past, the stuff with his father, all the baggage about where he belonged. Damia was offering him nothing less than his freedom.
He realized he fancied her rotten.
“I really like you, you know,” he said to her as they emerged onto Waterloo Bridge. She reached up and kissed him on both cheeks. He pulled her closer and kissed her deeply on the mouth.
“When can I see you again?” he said thickly.
“New Broadcasting House, three o’clock tomorrow to discuss the East End idea, remember?” she said gaily. “I’ve got a really good feeling about this proposal. I think they’re going to absolutely love it.”
Then she kissed him again, this time on the mouth.
“You still haven’t told me about you Jews, you know,” she said. “I won’t let you off the hook.”
Hunching into her jacket she turned towards Stockwell and walked off into the night.