Adam Thirlwell - Politics

Moshe went back downstairs, down past the bar, out past the bouncers, then swivelled round into the Chinese restaurant beneath the Clinic.

At this point in the story it is important to be clear about Anjali’s sexuality. There might be some confusion concerning Anjali’s sexuality. She had been fitted at the Marie Stopes Clinic with a trendy version of the coil called Marina. She had at least one ex-boyfriend. This normally implies heterosexual orientation. She also had an ex-girlfriend. This normally implies homosexual orientation.

Well, Anjali was variable. She was an equable girl. Anjali could be interested in anyone. But basically, she was more gay than straight.

There, I’ve said it.

3

Back upstairs in the Clinic, while Moshe ordered Chinese, Nana and Anjali were dancing. Without anyone else to dance with, they were dancing as a couple. And it was fun being a pretend couple. It was being particularly fun, at this moment, for Nana. Nana was holding Anjali, lightly, her hand enjoying Anjali’s strangeness. Anjali was totally beautiful, thought Nana. She had style. This was a whole new style.

But while Nana was musing on style, more pragmatic concerns were occupying Anjali. Anjali needed to piss. She shouted, ‘Come to the loos with me? We could look for Moshe.’ And Nana said yes. But Moshe was not there. And there was only one loo free. So pragmatic Anjali held Nana by the hand and took her in. As Anjali sat down backwards she pushed her knickers with her trousers and indifferent bored lascivious Nana saw a tuft, a stain of darker pubic hair. Anjali sat forward, grinning. Nana leaned her shoulder on the wall. The bass vibrations made her skin fuzz. She tried to pretend that she couldn’t hear Anjali, sibilant, pissing. How it fanned out and then trickled. She looked at Anjali and Anjali was smiling at a vanishing point beyond the multicolour graffiti. Then Anjali stood up, holding in her stomach as she zipped up her trousers. She took Nana by the hand and pulled her out the loos. A girl with a wonky bulging nose and a pierced left eyebrow, a silver hoop through its corner, raised the other eyebrow, happily.

Concurrently Moshe, unloved and unlovable, was moving his mouth to the chopsticks and the chopsticks to his mouth, slurping a chilli beef chow mein. He shook out drops of extra-dark soy sauce from the bottle’s red plastic cap. It was not a perfect night. There was an electric technicolor picture of a Chinese seascape in front of him, whose waves seemed to be moving for ever. He tried not to think. He read the menu’s little blurb, sardonic, unamused — ‘We trust you will enjoy them as much as we Did in collecting, testing and choosing the Best for you.’ He didn’t quite know why he was really down here, in a Chinese at one in the morning. He wasn’t even hungry.

Moshe decided to go back in. But on the door the bouncers were amazed. No one who left got back in for free. You had to pay again. You had to pay extra now it was past eleven. So Moshe walked away, distressed, suddenly imagining ludicrous scenes of untold intimacy between his friends, the tenderness of each tendresse. He shuffled back over. He gave the bouncers their fifteen exorbitant quid. Then Moshe loped upstairs.

It turned out that his visions were not so ludicrous.

In the bar, Nana and Anjali were talking to a girl. Now, when I say girl I mean girl. She was, thought Moshe, seventeen at most. It was just that she had managed to look like she was a kiddy thirty-five. Her name was Verity. Verity was dressed in a pornographic combo of shirt and skew- whiff tie that was only, she said to bemused Moshe, a jumper. It was one of Bella Freud’s tie jumpers. It was the whole trompe l’ il thing.

Verity was in fashion.

She explained to Moshe that her jumper was all very this season, what with Clements Ribeiro for Cacharel as well. Clements was doing these T-shirts pinned with costume jewellery and blouses with strings of pearls, trousers with chain belts, that kind of thing. It was a sort of homage to Chanel, she said. Nana said, ‘Like, like Elsa Schiaparelli,’ and Verity smiled happily.

I do like Nana. You know what she thought of Elsa Schiaparelli. But here she was, being polite. She was kind to this lonely girl.

Nana said, ‘Thass cool.’

But Moshe did not think that this was cool. And I know what you are thinking. You are thinking he was jealous. And you are right. But Moshe was not only jealous. He was also sad. Moshe had a thing about girls like Verity. To understand this, you need to understand where Moshe came from.

Moshe had grown up on Ribblesdale Avenue in Friern Barnet. Many of you will not have heard of Friern Barnet. It is a hinterland, a suburb, an area of north North London. It is unusual because it is an in-between place. Sometimes, Moshe described Friern Barnet as Hampstead. This was a lie. At other times, he described it as Highgate. It is not Highgate either. Friern Barnet is Whetstone, Southgate, Palmers Green. These are less celebrated areas of London, but they are the ones that surround Friern Barnet. The enigma I am trying to identify is this. Friern Barnet was not quite rich, it was not quite dazzling, but it was in the area of richness.

Moshe had seen posh girls. He had seen them on buses. He had seen them on the 43, going into town from Highgate and Muswell Hill. He knew them. And these young posh girls made Moshe feel an unexpected emotion. Moshe romanticised girls like Verity. They made him sad. They were so young and yet so grown up. He saw in them a tragic ruined innocence.

‘You know a disturbing thing,’ mused Nana to Verity. ‘All my style icons are men.’ Then she asked Moshe where he had got to. He said he was going to buy champagne. Anjali started laughing because Moshe was really too. Just. So sweet. He said, ‘Ohs just wandering round. I’m getting champagne for us.’

At the bar, with all the anxious boys and girls, clutching their twenty-pound notes rolled up in miniature batons, Moshe felt lonely. The bar was too small for everyone. Even Moshe felt hemmed in, and Moshe was not huge. It was chaos. But Moshe persisted, because he was lonely and melancholy, and a lonesome and melancholy Moshe was unfortunately prone to theatrical gestures. The cheapest champagne cost sixty-five pounds. He paid it. Of course he paid it. He took a glass for Verity.

In an appropriated nook by a bay window, with red leather sticky seats, she was telling Anjali, and Anjali’s gorgeous friend, the sad story of her life.

‘My mum died’, she said, ‘two yearz ago and that was just really unsettling. Bis been really really good since I started this, this therpy, I’ve been doing it a couple years now and I just feel this calmness?’

It was all too true. Verity was a tragedy. Moshe was right.

4

Then, however, Moshe’s evening got worse.

Verity said, ‘Oh look I’ve, I’ve got a spare pill. We could all. Dyou wan some?’ She said, ‘I’ve got a couple spare. You can have them for a fiver each.’ And Moshe said, ‘Oh no no no no no, we no no. Very bad for depression, that cauzes depression.’ Verity looked at him. ‘They’ve done studies,’ he said.

Moshe suddenly regretted feeling kindly thoughts about Verity.

Nana said, ‘Wha yeah.’ She said to Anjali, ‘Why don we just take a half?’ Then she turned to Verity. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Can you really?’ she said. ‘Yeah,’ said Verity. ‘I’d love you to.’ Nana unwrapped the clingfilm and put it on the table then snapped the pill carefully, cleanly, and dabbed a half on Anjali’s tongue so Anjali grinned while Nana tapped the other half inside her smiley mouth.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll was never Moshe’s career choice.

He said, ‘Dyou wan water? I’ll get you water. You need water.’ He told the dangerous girls all about the machinations of immoral nightclub owners, who turn off the water supply in clubs and sell overpriced miniature bottles of Evian. This was a matter of life and death. The dangerous girls smiled at him. He said, ‘Look you musn’t drink alchol. Leave it um getting you water.’