Mum wept with pride at my Mowgli. Jean, who hadn't wept since the
death of Humphrey Bogart, laughed a great deal and was good-tempered
and drunk.
'I thought it would be more amateur,' she kept saying, obviously
surprised that I could be involved in anything that wasn't a total
failure. 'But it was really professional ! And fancy meeting all
those television actors !'
The key to impressing Mum and Auntie Jean, and the best way to keep
their tongues off the risible subject of my loin-cloth, which
inevitably had them quaking with laughter, was to introduce them to
the actors afterwards, telling them which sit-coms and police
programmes they'd seen them in. After dinner we went dancing in a
night club in the West End. I'd never seen Mum dance before, but she
slipped out of her sandals and danced with Auntie Jean to the Jackson
Five. It was a grand evening.
However I imagined that the praise I received that night was merely
to be a preview of the steaming sauna of appreciation that I'd
receive after the first night. So after the opening I ran out of the
dressing room to where Dad, in his red waistcoat, was waiting with
all the others. None of them looked particularly cheerful. We walked
up the street to a restaurant nearby, and still no one spoke to me.
'Well, Dad,' I asked, ' how did you enjoy yourself ? Aren't you
glad I didn't become a doctor ?'
Like a fool, I'd forgotten that dad thought honesty a virtue. He was
a compassionate man, Dad, but never at the expense of drawing
attention to his own opinions.
'Bloody half-cocked business,' he said. 'that bloody fucker Mr
Kipling pretending to whity he knew something about India ! And
an awful performance by my boy looking like a Black and White
Minstrel !'
Eva restrained dad. 'Karim was assured', she said firmly, patting my
arm.
Fortunatley, Changez had chuckled all through the show. 'Good
entertainment, ' he said. 'take me again, eh ?'
before we sat down in the restaurant Jamila took me aside and kissed
me on the mouth. I felt Changez's eyes on me.
'You looked wonderful,' she said, as if she were speaking to a
ten-year-old after a school play. 'So innocent and young, showing off
your pretty body, so thin and perfectly formed. But no doubt about
it, the play is completely neo-fascist-'
'Jammie—'
'And it was disgusting, the accent and the shit you ha smeared over
you. You were just pandering to prejudices--'
'Jammie—'
'And clichés about Indians. And the accent—my god, how could you
do it ? I expect you're ashamed, aren't you ?
'I am, actually .'
But she didn't pity me ; she mimicked my accent in the play.
'Actually, you've got no morality, have you ? You'll get it
later, I expect, when you can afford it.'
'You're going too far, Jamila,' I said, and turned my back on her. I
went and sat with Changez.
The only then significant event of the evening was something that
happened between Eva and Shadwell at the far end of the restaurant,
beside the toilet. Shadwell was leaning back against the wall and Eva
was angry with him, making hard gestures with her fists. Many bitter
shades of disgust and pain and dejection passed over his face. At one
point Eva turned and gesticulated towards me, as if she were taking
him to task for something he'd done to me. Yes, Shadwell had let her
down. But I knew that nothing would ever discourage him ; he'd
never give up wanting to be a director, and he'd never be any good.
So that was it. The Jungle Book was not mentioned again by any of
them, as if they weren't ready to see me as an actor but preferred me
in my old rôle as a useless boy. Yet the play did good business,
especially with schools, and I started to relax on stage, and to
enjoy acting. I sent up the accent and made the audience laugh by
suddenly relapsing into cockney at odd times.
The Buddha
of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi, chapter 10, pp. 156-157
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