Adam Thirlwell - Politics

Devdas was Anjali’s favourite film. She enjoyed the Bollywood endings. She liked their tragedy. She liked their garish style.

Maybe I need to be more accurate here. Anjali was, finally, not so different from her mother. She thought she was, but she was not. They were both in love with the idea of the perfect couple. It was just that her mother recognised only married couples as couples. Whereas Anjali would not limit the term in this way. That was the true difference between them. Because they were romantic, Anjali loved Bollywood endings. Because she was a romantic, Anjali’s mother disliked Bollywood endings.

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Nana was aware that Anjali felt left out of a couple. She was aware that Anjali felt like an accessory to the romance of Nana and Moshe. And Nana was not a girl who liked people to feel left out. She wanted everyone to be happy. She was not a selfish girl. She was a heroine.

Nana huddled her knees up, perching. She leaned in towards Anjali, and this made the duvet get stuck between them, so Nana had to push herself up slightly to get back near Anjali, close. Then Anjali turned her face. And Nana looked at Anjali’s brown eyes. Then Nana’s face dipped down, slowly.

Nana kissed her, a tiny suck or bite on her lips, then let her be. There was a silent confusion.

Why was there a confusion? It was not that unusual for Nana and Anjali to exchange little girly kisses. So why was this confusing?

It was confusing because every other time Nana and Anjali had kissed, Moshe had been there. But it was not until Nana kissed Anjali, this tiny suck or bite on her lips, that she realised that all their other kisses had been supervised kisses. She did not realise until it was too late.

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Moshe was not in his living room in Finsbury because he was in the gym provided by the Cally Pool instead. He was rehearsing. He was toning his actor’s body.

His career was taking off. He had been offered a lead at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. He was playing Slobodan Milosevic in a new play called Peacekeeping Force by Richard Norton-Taylor, based on the early transcripts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Moshe rather liked his role as Slobodan Milosevic. Slobodan was a moaner. He could identify with Slobodan. Slobodan was a comic genius. He had a gift for repetition. As Moshe lifted a thirty-kilo shoulder press for at least fifteen reps, he remembered the lines of his favourite monologue from Peacekeeping Force .

‘As I have to get up at seven, I am ready by eight for transport and I get back, at the earliest, at six, so from six to eight thirty is the only time in which I can use the telephone, which means that I won’t be able to use my two hours of fresh air per day, which is the right of every detainee, and the guards also complain of not having enough fresh air.’

It might not be obvious why, as the lead in a courtroom drama, Moshe’s priority was weight training. But there was an explanation. I am a little ashamed to tell you, but I will tell you. Moshe was getting excited. He was imagining profiles in Sunday magazines. He was imagining more photo shoots in Hello! and jHolal. But he did not know if he had the body for a photo shoot. He was not a toned and bulging sight. Nervous and vain, Moshe was getting fit on the Caledonian Road.

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Meanwhile, at the scuzzier end of Finsbury, Nana was thinking about Anjali’s smell. Anjali smelt like Nana but different. On the other hand, she smelt more like Nana than Moshe.

She could compare their smells because Anjali and Nana were very close together.

Anjali was holding Nana’s face with the palms of her hands. Her first uncertain kiss had made contact with Nana’s bottom lip and the top of her chin. Then Anjali kissed her again. She swerved her arm round Nana’s neck, with her fingers splayed tautly open. Then she closed her hand and touched Nana’s lips with her tongue.

They paused.

In this pause, a woman in the audience of Trisha asked the erotic dancer’s boyfriend why he objected — now that he had got what he wanted. Trisha agreed that this was the issue. This was the crux of the matter.

But Anjali and Nana had stopped watching Trisha. They had more important things to think about.

If an average heterosexual or homosexual couple has sex, it is rare for the sex to follow on immediately from their first kiss. It would be impolite to have sex so soon. There should be a wait. This wait signifies that it was not just sex that the twosome was after.

But Nana and Anjali were not an average couple. They were a secret couple.

When a clandestine couple kisses, it is much more likely that sex will immediately follow. This is because there is much more uncertainty for a clandestine couple. There is much more risk. Once you have kissed secretly, it is very difficult not to have sex. It would be impolite not to have sex. You have to show that you are serious about each other.

But Nana and Anjali were not even an average clandestine couple. They were only inadvertently clandestine. This made sex even more socially fraught. They had just kissed in secret — so they had to be passionate. They had just kissed in secret by accident — so they were still just good friends.

They paused again.

Then Anjali stretched herself out, elongating Nana above her. Beneath Anjali there was something that felt like a magazine or outsize book in the puffy duvet. She ignored it. While Nana thought to herself that this was lesbian sex. She was going to have lesbian sex. It was something she had to remember. The room was pale blue. She was going to have lesbian sex.

Nana was a novice in these matters.

The fashions sported by each participant in this particular variant on the sex act were as follows. Nana wears Moshe’s Southwark Playhouse 1998 season T-shirt, daringly on its own. Anjali wears an MS white G-string and an MS white satin padded bra (because yes, Anjali was mildly unhappy with her smallish breasts) beneath a pale cream French Connection shift dress.

These are not redundant specifics. Not all of them.

Nana had two worries. Her main worry was Moshe. She was worried how she would tell him, how she would explain this. She did not really know how she was going to explain it.

That was her main worry. But it was such a genuine worry that she tried to ignore it. That worry was unsolv- able. Instead she concentrated on her second worry. The second was more practical. Nana was scared that she was about to let Anjali down. She wanted this to be erotic, but erotic was not Nana’s forte. Nana was afraid of sex, she was afraid of another disappointment.

In order to hide from Anjali the fact that she was worried, Nana relinquished foreplay. Relinquishing foreplay, she thought, would be a way of appearing to be on heat. Only neutral and familiar lovers obeyed the rituals of touching and kissing. Lovers like Nana and Anjali were passionate, ferocious.

Nana dragged her hand up Anjali’s right thigh and pushed it in under her G-string. And Anjali was wet, she was wet! Nana lightly lightly touched Anjali, she used her fingers on her, and Anjali held her wrist and lifted her away.

Nana was chastened and sad. She was only a learner. But she was also, she thought, very keen. But she did not need to be worried. Anjali was not complaining. She was calming her new playmate down. For a while, everything was slow and nondescript. They slowly kissed.

But then, with Anjali’s hand stroking and rubbing and entirely using Nana, a new sexual crisis developed. Nana, pleased with her progress, was becoming very excited. She was repeating to herself the word delirious. It was exotic. It was true sex, she thought. So she repeated her first sexual gesture. Nana dragged her hand up Anjali’s right thigh and pushed it in up under Anjali’s G-string.