Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

“At the risk of sounding like someone’s aunt, can I say, do we really have to join that queue?” said Henry as we approached the line. “Don’t we have good tickets? Isn’t there a special entrance?”

“That is the special entrance.”

Crowds were already queuing around the block. Along the lines, numerous touts were buying and selling tickets. The atmosphere was vital, almost violent and riotous, in a way that theatre or opera never is. As Henry noted, “It’s not like this at my shows!”

Even after so many years, audiences were mad for the Stones, the essential London group, playing at home in a small venue. Scores of photographers strained behind barriers, snapping at soap stars in blinding bling. Miriam had to point out these people to Henry, as well as identifying the children of rock’n’rollers we’d worshipped in the 60s, now comprising a new dynasty, and resembling in their “social capital” the great noble families of the ancien régime.

Inside, on the way to the bar, I ran into the Mule Woman. Accompanied by a good-looking boy, she was wearing little black-rimmed glasses, like a model who’d become a librarian. We kissed on the cheek, and she asked about Henry. “He’s just the same,” I said. “Would you like to have supper with the two of us next week?”

She agreed, but before we could arrange it there was a roar: the band was about to come onstage. People rushed to their places.

Although they had been doing those tunes for thirty years, the Stones didn’t make their boredom obvious; they knew how to put on a good show, particularly Keef. Miriam’s rapture was enough for Henry, who was entranced by the excitement and the audience as much as by the band. (In the theatre he liked to sit at the back, keeping an eye on the audience. He claimed the women caressed themselves-their arms, legs and faces-as they watched. “How gentle they are with themselves,” he said. “I wonder if this is how their mothers caressed them as babies.”) At the Stones, the fact that he could sit down at a table at the front of the balcony was one of the main attractions. Despite the state of her knees, Miriam seemed temporarily resuscitated, and danced when they played “Street Fighting Man.”

As we were leaving, and with Bushy parked up behind Centre Point, Henry’s friend caught up with us and suggested we go to Claridge’s, where Mick had a suite and was “entertaining.” Tom Stoppard, an acquaintance of Henry’s, had suggested Henry might enjoy Mick. Bushy drove us there.

As we got closer, Miriam’s enthusiasm seemed to drain away; she started saying she’d be “out of her depth.” Having never been in the same room as a “knight of the realm” before-should she call him “Sir”?-she tried to get Bushy to take her home.

“What a lot of nonsense you talk, Miriam,” said Henry. “I won’t put up with it. Once you get there, you will see that Mick’s cool,” he said, as if he knew. “He’s a real person, like us. He’s not like-”

“Who?”

“Ozzy Osbourne.”

Henry and I wouldn’t go in without her, and we both said we’d do the talking. In the glittering lobby, PR girls and hangers-on clip-clopped about. Bushy had found a raggedy peaked cap in the boot of the car and insisted on accompanying us upstairs in the mirrored lift, putting on a deferential manner and nodding confidentially at Jagger’s security, while tapping his nose as if he had a secret inside it that he was trying to draw attention to. Bushy wanted to be considered “staff” in order to catch a glimpse of Mick, who he worshipped as a fellow bluesman.

There he was, Jagger, fit and lithe, and looking like a man who had seen everything and understood a lot of it. He had come out to greet his guests at the door, alongside his tall girlfriend. Inside, as we started to drink, Jagger ate, checked his email and looked at the newspapers, chatted to friends and to his daughter Jade. Henry was hungry by now and couldn’t believe Jagger was sitting there eating without offering him anything. In the end, Jagger cheerfully ordered Henry some sandwiches, which he scoffed gratefully.

Mick was glad to see Miriam’s tattoos. She claimed to have been influenced by Tattoo You. After, she was happy out on the balcony, looking across the city, chatting to a posh girl who turned out to be a Scientologist. While you could be sure that one of the things the wealthy and poor had in common was an interest in superstition, even Miriam couldn’t bring herself to worship someone called Ron.

We sat in a small circle discussing Blair, Bush, Clinton, about which Henry had much to say, though Jagger was more discreet. It was late for me, I told Jagger, who said he rarely went to bed before four but always had eight hours’ sleep. Jagger and Henry had a conversation about sleeping pills, Jagger being cautious about the whole thing, not wanting “to get addicted.” People continued to come and go as though this was what smart London did, drift in and out of each other’s apartments at one in the morning.

As one would with a rock god, I had an informative discussion with Jagger about good private schools in West London. When I decided to leave and was looking for my coat, a man I didn’t quite recognise who’d come in towards the end of the evening was brought across to me by Jagger.

“He wants to meet you,” said Mick, explaining that they were cricket pals, going to test matches around the world together. George knew everything about Indian cricket.

I was close enough to the modern world to recognise that this fellow, George Cage, was a songwriter and performer. To me he looked kind of shiny, with the sheen of health, success and vacuity which comfort and sycophancy gives people. Miriam, who had by now come in, seemed to know who George was and was thrilled. “My daughter likes you,” she told him cheerfully.

“That’s good,” he said. “Usually it’s the mothers.”

I said I had to go, I’d get a cab on the street. I noticed that George kept looking at me, and at last, when I was fetching my coat, he came over and asked me to show him my arm.

“This might seem odd to you, but something is making me quite curious,” he said. “Can I see that?”

He wanted to look at my watch.

I showed it to him. It was an old, heavy watch on a silver bracelet strap, with wide hands under thick, scratched glass. A watch with clear figures and the date, everything a man who needed to orient himself could require.

He bent over to study it. He wanted me to take it off so he could look at the back. I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse.

He put his glasses on and studied it. When he returned it, he said, “Can I ask where you got that?”

“I’ve had it a long time,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“My father had one similar.”

“I don’t think they’re expensive. What did he do?”

“He had a factory. He was a businessman. In South London.”

I held his gaze. “Mustaq?” I said. He nodded. I said, “Ajita’s your sister?”

“That’s right.”

“My God,” I said. “Is she okay?”

“Oh yes. Did you think she wouldn’t be? She is living in New York with her two children. Or at least one of them. The other is at college.” He took out his phone and looked at it. “I’m going to ring her later. Would you like me to tell her I saw you?”

“Please.”

“A shock, eh?”

“Certainly.”

He said, “I’m going out dancing. Nowhere smart-awful dives, mainly. Would you like to join me? Perhaps we could talk. My driver will take you home.”

I told him that my work meant I started early in the morning. Then I asked, “Mustaq, how did the music stuff happen? Actually, I can remember you singing to me.”

“I am sorry. After my father died, when my sister and I were in India, in my uncle’s house, I stayed indoors for two years, learning the drums, tabla, guitar, piano. Anything that made a noise. Anything that Dad would have disliked. That’s how I was one of the first people to mix jazz, rock, Bollywood film tunes and Indian classical music.