Neel Mukherjee - A Life Apart

‘Yes, I do. It looks very splendid,’ Ritwik half-lied, getting into the soft and yielding passenger seat, which hugged his bottom so eagerly.

‘I like, too. Come, we go.’

Before the car started rolling, Ritwik took in Saeed briefly. He wore a shiny blue Umbro top, a thick golden chain around his neck, the links heavy and gleaming even in the halogen-lit night of south London streets, a similar bracelet around his right wrist, and rings, chunky molars of metal, on practically every finger of both his hands: he could have been a magpie’s secret dumping ground. The impression was confirmed when Saeed smiled and showed a brief gleam of gold in the region behind his canines.

New to London, Ritwik was eager to figure out how the gargantuan beast was pieced together in its parts by looking out of the window and have Saeed give an intermittent commentary on the different areas of London through which they would be passing. That thought was killed quite early on when, driving down Effra Road, Ritwik noticed the road sign, turned to Saeed and said, ‘Look, Effra Road. Do you think the river Effra flowed through this area once?’ Saeed briefly turned his head towards Ritwik, then carried on driving, not bothering to reply. His silence seemed to have drawn some conclusions. Ritwik regretted saying such an incongruous thing but couldn’t shake off thoughts of Walter Raleigh sailing the river four hundred years ago down this very road, who knows, which now ended with the jostle and tumble of McDonald’s, Ritzy cinema, Pizza Hut and Barclays.

‘Mr Haq say I take care of you, OK?’ Saeed said after a longish silence during which Ritwik studiously looked out, willing Saeed to say at least the names of the areas he was driving him through, but no such luck. After the blankness, which followed the misjudged statement about Effra river, he didn’t dare ask Saeed the simple question, ‘What’s this place called?’ Anyway, what did he expect, a history and psychogeography of the various layers of London?

‘What Mr Haq say, we do, OK? He say I look after you, give you best job, not construction site job.’

Ritwik didn’t have a clue where he was being taken. Mr Haq had reassured him that he was going to be in safe hands. Saeed was a trusted old hand at helping him out with things, both a troubleshooter and a facilitator, Ritwik wasn’t to worry at all, after all, he, Shahid Haq, was like his elder brother, wasn’t he? And he needed a job, didn’t he, an underground job where they didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask for numbers or bank accounts or other official things, just gave you cash in hand at the end of the day and that was it. Ritwik was looking for that kind of thing because the official type would be difficult to find immediately, he could start doing this over the summer and then Shahid Haq would try and find something else for him, was that OK for now?

Ritwik had nodded to everything Mr Haq had said, although what the ‘this’ he would be doing over summer was never explained clearly, except for wispy comments about helping out in a friend’s farm in Hertfordshire. Ritwik didn’t object to fruit-picking, did he? No, of course not, fruit-picking, how wonderful, how how. . rustic, how pastoral. It was typical of Ritwik to think first of Virgil’s Georgics at that point rather than hard details of location, hours of work, pay, duration of employment. If he noticed how consummately Mr Haq had read his situation — the unrevealed, messy business of black employment, lack of permits and illegal stay — he didn’t raise the issues with Mr Haq; images of bee-loud glades and nectarines and curious peaches reaching themselves into his hands were too much in the foreground to worry about insoluble and irreversible problems. Well, irreversible in a few months’ time.

At last Ritwik gathered enough courage to ask, ‘Do you know the name of this area we’re driving through?’ when they crossed a bridge beside which stood a huge abandoned brick building on the further bank, to their right, with white columns at the four corners, resembling an upturned table. The river was dark and oily, the bridge on their immediate left festooned with lights. For a very brief moment, if he kept his head turned left, it looked like a deserted toy town. But only for a moment. If he turned his head to the right, it shifted to an industrial wasteland where shadows stalked the dark outlines of buildings, all spooky warehouses and silent wharves.

Saeed shrugged. Either he didn’t know, or he didn’t understand the question, or he couldn’t be bothered to make small talk. The dark blue night was fading to a lighter shade around them almost imperceptibly: Ritwik could see inside the car more clearly now. That, and smell Saeed’s fetid breath.

‘Where are you from?’ Ritwik asked. This was going to be his final attempt.

‘London.’

‘You mean, originally?’

Silence. ‘London. East London.’

Ritwik knew he was lying. He dropped the matter and concentrated on the view smoothly slipping past. Row after row of detached white houses, grand and elegant. There was a big walled garden along the entire stretch of the road.

‘Buckin Ham Palace,’ Saeed said.

‘That? On the right?’

Once again, no answer: conversation was going to happen strictly on Saeed’s terms.

Suddenly there was a spacious roundabout, with monuments and victory arches, a hint of a large expanse of green, which soon broadened out to what Ritwik considered the countryside, yet along the other side of the green-bisected road, there was a series of swish, ritzy hotels, Hilton, Park, Dorchester.

‘Rich place. Is called Park Lane. Rich people and rich foreigners here,’ Saeed said, being surprisingly chatty.

‘Is that Hyde Park?’ Ritwik asked.

Saeed nodded, driving past another arch and into a long road. Instantly, the scenery changed, like a swift, rumbling movement of theatre backdrop ushering in a new time, a new place. The shops, cafés, restaurants, juice bars, grocery stores, takeaways were almost without exception Arabic — Lebanese, Egyptian, Middle Eastern.

‘Edgware Road,’ Saeed said, laconic as always, but there seemed to be a trace of light somewhere in his tone, almost a joy, an ease.

‘You are Muslim?’ Saeed asked as they drove down this stretch of well-heeled garishness, the shop signs too big, the lettering too flash, the sound of new money a whisper too loud. They all aimed for a type of conspicuous affluence and hit it, ever so slightly awry, by being vulgar.

‘No.’ Ritwik could guess where this was going.

‘What you then? Christian?’

‘No, no. Actually, I have no religion.’ He felt slightly ashamed to say this. ‘I was brought up in a Hindu family but I went to a Catholic school.’

‘So you Hindi and Christian?’

‘No, neither.’

Saeed absorbed this in silence as Ritwik felt disapproval wrapping around him but this could have been inside his head. He attempted to turn it around by asking Saeed questions instead.

‘So you are Muslim then?’

‘Yes. I am from Libya. You know?’ It seemed that Edgware Road had liberated Saeed into a new honesty and openness, even a pride, about his origins.

‘Yes, I mean no, I know of it, but I’ve never been there. Is it a nice place?’

‘Beautiful. My country is beautiful. You go one day?’

‘Yes, I would like to.’ Pause. ‘So why did you come to England?’

Saeed didn’t reply, which was just as well. He shouldn’t have asked that double-edged sword of a question.

Instead, Saeed said, ‘All this shops, all Arabic. From Iran, Lebanon, Egypt. They all speak my language.’ It seemed that, away from Libya, Saeed had found a corner of wet, vast London, which approximated what he was at ease with.