The Buddha of Brewer Street

Madame Lin walked across the room to stand silhouetted against the window, where she lit a cigarette and took the smoke down to the bottom of her lungs.

‘So the Lama is dead,’ she repeated.

‘Gone. Wiped away,’ Mo enthused.

‘No, that’s where you are wrong. Simply because he was an enemy you underestimate him.’

‘But there is nothing left to underestimate.’ He struggled to hide his exasperation, and was not altogether successful.

‘In life he was significant. Yet in death he is a still greater uncertainty. And we have enough uncertainty in China today to satisfy even the keenest sceptic. Which is why young men like you are in such a hurry, Mo.’

Her tone was chiding and he wasn’t entirely sure what she was getting at. Time to get back to the matter in hand. ‘You are suggesting he is more of a threat to us dead?’

‘While he lived we knew where he was, what he was up to. Our eyes were always upon him. But how can we follow him now?’

‘You can’t believe in the absurdity of rebirth?’ Mo was aghast. His training at the Foreign Affairs Institute in Beijing had been most specific on the point.

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what millions of Tibetans think, and they believe he will come back to lead them. A new Lama. Like a Messiah. While they are waiting they will make trouble. And when he returns, whoever he may be, they’ll make even more trouble. The wind blows cold from those mountains.’

‘Then we must remain alert, Ambassador.’

She turned on him. ‘The question, Mo, is whether you will remain at all.’

‘Ambassador?’

‘You take me for a fool. That I cannot tolerate.’

He began to protest. She cut him short.

‘You steal antiques and artefacts from the Embassy, Mo. My Embassy.’

Thick cigarette smoke hung in the air, creating an atmosphere that was suddenly clinging and intensely claustrophobic. ‘Ambassador, I can assure you …’

‘You can assure me of nothing. I know, Mo. About how you’ve been moving antiques around the Embassy. To hide them. Sending them off to your cousin in Amsterdam and having them copied. Then selling the original, and returning the fake to the Embassy.’

She was by the fireplace now, with Mo still protesting.

‘Not true. Not true …’

As though to prove her point she picked up an earthenware cocoon vase from the mantelpiece, covered in devils’ eyes and subtle whorls and the encrustations of age. She held it shoulder-high for his inspection. ‘How old would you say, Mo? One thousand? Two thousand? Han dynasty, I think. Yes, two thousand years old.’

Then with remarkable dexterity for a woman of her age she lobbed it across the room in his direction. In alarm Mo reached out and snatched it from the air, juggling desperately with it for a few tangled moments. But he couldn’t hold it. It fell. And smashed to fragments.

‘Not even two thousand days, Mo. But a very effective copy, nonetheless. Your cousin is to be congratulated.’

Across the vast space which seemed to separate them their eyes met and locked, and a change came over Mo. The cringing of previous moments was replaced by something altogether more substantial. If the game was up, he decided, there was little point in continuing to be horsewhipped by a woman. ‘Ambassador, I believe that is the first compliment you have ever paid me or my family.’

She ignored his impudence. ‘Why, Mo? Why all this dishonesty?’

He shrugged. ‘Only three pieces have gone. The first went to pay your predecessor’s gambling debts.’ His tone had an edge of disdain.

‘You never told me he gambled,’ she accused.

‘As you would not expect me to gossip to your successor about you.’

‘And the second piece? What became of that?’

‘It went to pay the outstanding bills on the refurbishment of your Residence.’

‘But why? The budget has been exceeded?’

‘No, simply not paid by the Foreign Ministry. Our budgets are months behind. I thought it wise to pay the bills and fix your leaking roof. And equally prudent not to tell you about it.’

She nodded. The Chinese economy was in chaos and Embassy expenses were beginning to fall ever farther down the list of Foreign Ministry priorities. The Residence was tired, unkempt, in need of refurbishment. What Mo said made sense. Her tone grew more emollient.

‘And the third, Mo? The third piece went for what purpose, please?’

He knew she would come to that. He had carefully dragged his Ambassadors into his little game, paying some of their debts and soiling them by association. But he knew it wouldn’t hide his own activities. Mo was one of the brightest and best-qualified young diplomats of his generation. Fudan University before the Foreign Affairs Institute. Every step of his career accompanied by commendations and acclaim. That’s why many years earlier than he might have expected he’d ended up in London, one of the most prized of foreign postings. But he and the other staff might just as well have been posted to a warehouse in Ulan Bator. Of London itself they knew and saw practically nothing. They weren’t allowed to touch. They lived almost entirely within the Embassy walls. They ate in the Embassy’s canteen, worked beneath the Embassy’s harsh lights and slept in the Embassy’s unwelcoming and lonely beds. The cockroaches here were almost as big as in their old university dorms. And their greatest excitement – oh revolutionary joy! – proved to be a communal bus trip to Brighton. Windy, rain-splattered Brighton. Next year they had been promised Bognor.

Even as the secretaries fluttered at the prospect of Bognor, Mo felt sick with frustration. And his sickness grew. One day he had been permitted (after first reporting to Security) to walk to the Chinese pharmacy in Shaftesbury Avenue so that he might pick up some herbs for the Ambassador. Just down from the pharmacy he had found a young man and his dog, wrapped in a blanket in a doorway. A beggar in the midst of plenty. Proof before his eyes of the Western disease. Except that in his bowl the young man and his dog had made more money in a morning than Mo could spare in a week. A Chinese diplomat, yet he couldn’t even look an English beggar in the eye.

It could have been worse, of course. Mo was already on the ladder of privilege which, as he climbed, would eventually bring him advantage and reward. Yes, eventually. He’d just decided it would make sense to short-circuit the system a little. To grab some of the benefits before he was too old to enjoy them. Certainly before he was as old as Madame Lin. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. So he said nothing, simply returning her stare defiantly. Why should he incriminate himself? But in spite of his silence, she knew.

‘I see. You had touched forbidden fruit and decided to taste it for yourself.’

‘What do you propose to do?’

‘The rules say I should send you back to Beijing.’

He flinched. ‘Where the People’s Republic will show its gratitude by taking me to a football stadium, placing me on my knees in front of the crowd and blowing my brains out through my ears.’

‘You have broken the rules.’

‘As did your predecessor,’ he protested with vehemence. ‘But I doubt that he will be kneeling beside me. There are privileges that accompany rank, even in the People’s Republic.’

‘Perhaps particularly in the People’s Republic.’

Mo started. The prospect of being done to death permitted a measure of cynicism. But he hadn’t expected Madame Lin to reciprocate.

‘Simply because I am an Ambassador does not make me blind, Mo. And simply because I am old does not make me forget.’

‘Forget what?’

‘That I too was once young. A Red Guard. We shot people too, during the terror of the Cultural Revolution. We shot people who had done much less than you. Some who had done nothing at all. We made mistakes far worse than yours.’ She paused. ‘There has been too much shooting.’

His heart stuttered in hope and disbelief. An old woman, an old revolutionary, come to repentance? ‘What do you intend to do with me?’

‘Mo, you are no older than my own daughter. You are a fool in some matters, like politics. But you are adventurous. And adaptable. Such qualities will be necessary in the difficult times ahead.’

‘So … what do you intend?’ he repeated.

She left him hanging for a few pain-filled moments, like a fish impaled on a hook. ‘I intend that you should notice the gap on my mantelpiece, Mo. Where there should be something very old.’ She reeled him in. ‘Perhaps your cousin can fill it for me.’

They came together to remember him in many corners of the globe. Particularly in Tibet, before the baton charges and electric prods of the People’s Armed Police forced them to flee. Around the world they gathered in small groups, and in vast crowds, the high and the humble, monarchs and those who were merely mortal, to give thanks for the life of Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

On the mountainside in McLeod Ganj, in front of the steps that led to the temple of the Naingyal Monastery, they built a great brass chorten, a tomb which they covered in gold leaf and decorated with many precious stones. And above it they built a canopy of blue, yellow, white, red and green, the symbolic colours of the sky, the earth, water, fire and air. And the body of the Dalai Lama was taken from its cave and prepared by embalmers in the ancient tradition, washing the eviscerated body in milk and rubbing it with salt. The face and hands were also covered in gold leaf and the body, wrapped in brocade robes, was placed in its position of meditation within the chorten.

A small window was left in the side of the chorten so that the body might never leave his followers’ sight.

The monks, led by the abbot of Namgyal, began to chant the protector rights, praying that his teachings might be preserved and the body might be safeguarded, and also that the reincarnation would be swift. The national flag of Tibet that in normal times flew above the monastery was hauled down and would not be raised again until many weeks of mourning were complete.

And when gifts had been bestowed upon those monks and craftsmen who had laboured to build the chorten, the ordinary people came to offer their own prayers and tears, and to make prostrations, giving thanks for his life and many works. And across his empty throne they placed a mountain of white prayer scarves.

Then they waited for his return.

THREE

More than three years had passed since the death of the Lama. Years of emptiness and anticipation for those who were waiting in the hope, or in the fear, that he would come again.

It was spring. Violent. Unpredictable. The ageing sash windows were locked against the dampness but as always they leaked and rattled. All winter long she had nagged her husband to fix them, concerned that the chill winds would get into the child’s chest. To no avail; he was always so busy. By the time the task had grabbed his attention it would be high summer. ‘There, I told you not to bother,’ he would say, looking up from his tea and laughing at her. ‘I was born in a mud hut up a mountain and you go on about a few draughts. The child needs a bit of fresh air. You worry too much.’ In less defensive moments he had promised that one day they would move into a larger place where she could have room not only for herself but maybe even for another baby, somewhere away from the noise and the traffic. One day, he promised, but for the moment she must be content. The laundry business on the ground floor was still no better than struggling, not a time yet for taking great leaps. She was impatient, at times angry. This was not a part of town to set up a family, and in her opinion it was scarcely a part of town to set up a cleaning business either, not with the condition of some of the clothes and bed linen that were brought in. Only this morning she had repaired one of Sophie’s costumes. It had clearly been slashed with a razor. Yet Sophie had merely given her that bold, brash, sad smile of hers and made some excuse about another day, another downer. Do your best, Sophie had asked, and she had done, but the best in this place, like the windows, was never good enough.

She should have fixed the windows herself. Never too late. It only needed a few twists of paper to be forced into the gaps. So she found a roll of brown wrapping paper in the back of the cupboard and began cutting it into pieces. ‘Paper. Paper,’ she said to the child, encouraging him to repeat the sound, but as yet he had shown no inclination to talk, even at two years of age. He preferred to sit and watch her, as he was doing now, his eyes bright and aware, and exceptionally dark, even for an Oriental. ‘Paper, paper,’ she repeated, but he merely chuckled and tried to bite the head off his Teletubby.

‘You’re stubborn. You get that from your father,’ she chided, opening the window. From the narrow street below came the clatter of the open-air market. Customers complaining. Car horns blaring. Traders tossing argument and optimism back and forth to get themselves through their long days.

It took her back to her own childhood, when some of her first recollections were of wandering with her own mother through the local market in search of fresh meat and vegetables, and sorting out a little of the freshest gossip while they were about it. That was thirty years ago. Now, down below her, the cries of the market had reached such a pitch that a stranger might think a full-blown quarrel was about to erupt, yet it was nothing more than the hard-handed humour of the street. Just like her childhood.

Except the market of her childhood was now many thousands of miles away. It didn’t have hookers like Sophie. And it hadn’t sold King Edwards by the pound.

Beds, beds, and still more beds.

Once he’d had guest beds, granny’s bed, bunk beds, beds to bounce on and crawl under and pretend were Wild West forts or Spanish galleons. He’d even once had a water bed, but Elinor had thought that pretentious. He’d had more than enough of every kind of bed, when he’d lived in Holland Park. Whole tribes of children would arrive and promptly disappear into the wonderland of the attic or the wilderness of the basement, far enough away to let their mothers chat in peace and let Goodfellowe get on with his paperwork. Good days. But now he had nothing but his own bed and all he could stretch to for guests, even for Sam, was that cantankerous pull-out thing which called itself a sofa.

And still she couldn’t be bothered to clear up after herself, the miserable little madam. But what could he expect of a seventeen-year-old daughter?

The path from relative comfort to adversity had been nothing if not swift, forced out of Holland Park by the effects of AFD Syndrome – Acute Financial Dysfunction Syndrome. (He’d actually heard the phrase used, some psycho-babble given as evidence before the Social Services Select Committee; what bollocks.) That hadn’t been his only problem, of course. He’d also failed a breathalyser test which had reduced him to finding living quarters (he couldn’t call it home) within a reasonable bicycle ride of Westminster. He’d chosen Gerrard Street. Or, more accurately, Gerrard Street had chosen him. The rent and other expenses came to a thousand a year less than his parliamentary housing allowance, but the Chinese landlord hadn’t batted an eyelid when he asked for a receipt for the full amount. The additional thousand meant he could keep Elinor in her nursing home. Parliamentary allowances didn’t run to full-time psychiatric care for wives nor, come to that, did they run to a boarding school education for a seventeen-year-old. But what choice did he have? At least without a car he couldn’t fiddle his mileage allowance, unlike others.

Sam hadn’t found it easy. A small garret studio with a platform for the bed stuck up in the open eaves could never pass as a family home and wasn’t particularly comfortable, but at least she found it convenient for the clubs and galleries when she came to London. She’d been coming up more frequently in recent weeks, often with her friend Edwina, and he was always glad to see her. Even if she didn’t clear up after herself.

Goodfellowe started throwing the bedclothes into a slightly less rumpled pile and wrestling with the mattress mechanism. A year ago he and Sam had scarcely been able to talk, their conversations sheathed in the mutual embarrassment and misunderstanding which filled the gap between puberty and parenthood. Nowadays the embarrassment was all his. She was growing fast, almost too fast for Goodfellowe, with a lack of self-consciousness that had him averting his eyes and left her underwear strewn over his floor. As he gathered up the sheets and threw them onto the laundry pile, he found himself hoping that her lack of self-consciousness didn’t also mean a lack of self-restraint. He knew he should offer her paternal advice, even more so as she lacked a mother’s influence, but somehow whenever he ventured onto this particular field his words deserted him and the good intentions froze. His attempts were never less than clumsy and ultimately always proved unsuccessful. ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ she had once consoled him; ‘fathers are always the last to know.’

Yesterday she had arrived unexpectedly with a bundle of brochures and magazines under her arm. ‘Got to choose my university for next year,’ she had declared. Heavens, was it that time already? Growing up too fast! He wasn’t ready for this. But at least she had wanted his advice – or, if he were honest, his approval of her choice. University of London, by preference. Best history-of-art courses in the country.

‘And it will be near you,’ she had smiled, turning him as soft and as malleable as wax. ‘And Bryan.’

‘Who the hell’s Bryan?’ he had demanded.

‘Oh, just a boy I like. Nothing too serious yet. If it gets serious I’ll introduce you.’

‘What’s “serious”?’ he had enquired.

‘Backpacking in Umbria, maybe. Or at least driving lessons. He’s suggested it. Got a BMW 3-series. Black. Convertible. With a six-stack Kenwood CD.’

He wasn’t sure whether he was being teased. ‘You can’t take driving lessons in a car like that.’

‘Got any better suggestions?’

He had not. He still had several months to go on his ban and had long ago sold his own car. He lapsed into silence, speculating on what other lessons teenagers learnt in a black, 3-series BMW with endless stereo, and whether it made a difference if the soft top was up or down.

She was on the verge of independence and he had no choice but to accept it. University. Separate holidays. Separate lives, for the most part. He could only be grateful that she shared some of her time and came to stay with him, a friend as well as a daughter – even if it did mean him scrabbling around dealing with dirty linen instead of matters of state. Although on reflection perhaps there wasn’t all that much difference.

He threw a bundle of university brochures to one side and tried to fold the bed back into the sofa. But it was stuck, complaining, something in the way. A magazine had become wedged in a spring. It turned out to be a copy of Metropolitan, a publication that, in the language of the shout line, ‘Makes Young Women Turn On and Turn Over’. It made him feel uncomfortable. He’d never read one before, hadn’t realized it carried items like … He sat down – no, sank would be a better description – onto the bed. This was clearly going to be one of those growing-up sessions that fathers had to endure when they discovered what truly took their daughters’ interests. Like ‘Male Lust – Inside the Mind of the Man Inside You’. And ‘Bonking Your Way to Greater Brain Power’. The illustrations for ‘Nifty Ways to Naughty Nights’ were particularly vivid.

He leafed through the pages, becoming involved in it rather more than he had intended. The photographs of the models were about as close as he got to female flesh nowadays, and he found himself making the most of it. Then, to his intense embarrassment, it dawned on him that any one of these full-figured and flawless young women could have been Sam. In pursuit of her interest in art she had posed for life classes, taken her clothes off for strangers, still did for all he knew, and although he had tried to be as dispassionate and as analytical about it as she was, he had failed. He knew what he felt about these young women, their bodies barely covered, their all too evident sexual attractions, and it served only to remind him what other men felt about Sam.

He hurried on. Through the advice of the agony aunt (‘His Wife Doesn’t Understand Me’), past the breast-enlargement advertisements (‘the implant with impact …’), skipping over the tarot readings and astrology charts until finally he was done. Nothing left but the classified ads. He was about to toss the magazine to one side when he noticed she had marked one of the ads. Ringed it in ink.

The Unplanned Pregnancy Advice Clinic.

It took a little time for the thought to take hold. It was almost as if he were standing on the deck of a great liner which at first trembled then, very slowly, started to sink. The deck began to tilt and the familiar furniture to shift. He found himself scrabbling for his footing, his uncertainty turning by stages to confusion and then to fear. Little Sam. Pregnant? Suddenly he saw a life with so much promise, overflowing with such potential, now on the brink of – what?

Ruin. His daughter. Just another social statistic. Of course! That’s why she’d been coming to London so frequently. Not to see him but to attend a bloody … a bloody bun club! He’d been a fool, felt deceived. But he also felt responsible. All those parental conversations he had tried to launch before retreating in embarrassment. That had been his part of the deal and he had failed. He had owed her more than that. Now she was paying the price, not only for her own weakness but for his, too. His fault. More guilt.

And after the guilt came panic. What to do? He didn’t know, had no idea. He’d never been a grandfather before.

And who was the father? Bryan? Bryan! He’d kill bloody Bryan-the-little-bastard. Or whoever. Perhaps it wasn’t Bryan. Still more panic. No, he wanted it to be Bryan, he didn’t want a whole list of suspects.

Little Sam!

He swore, most vividly, but it didn’t help. And outside he thought he could hear a Black Dog braying, waiting for him. So, lacking any other inspiration and ignoring the fact that it was still only eleven o’clock, Goodfellowe rose unsteadily from the bed and fixed himself a drink.

A different bed, still more makeshift than the first. Little more than a mass of complaining springs, no mattress, supported by four short and rusting iron legs. It was to the legs that they had tied her.

Sherab should never have returned to Tibet. Such trips always involved risk. She was only a functionary, not a mighty maker of decisions, no more than a manager of Potala Travel in McLeod Ganj. But she handled all the travel arrangements for the Dalai Lama’s office and anyone with those sort of connections becamea subject of interest to the Chinese. A target. Yet her mother was gravely ill; it might be a final chance for Sherab to see her. She had no choice.

Luck had not travelled with her. Sherab was riding in the back of a vegetable lorry along an ancient Khampa trade route, avoiding the main roads which were heavily patrolled, but every mile took her further east, to where the Chinese presence was most evident and oppressive, drawing her deeper into danger. Her head was covered to protect her from the swirling dust of the high plateau and the stench of burnt diesel, so she did not see the Chinese patrol at the side of the road. They weren’t looking for her and had little interest other than in liberating a few vegetables to accompany the yak broth they were brewing, but they became suspicious when they found Sherab hiding in the back, covered, and grew still more interested when they found the money belt packed tight with the savings she had intended for her mother. This was no ordinary peasant, concealed behind sacks, and with such soft hands. They could read fear in her eyes, and fear spelled guilt. Anyway, if she wasn’t guilty of something they would have to hand back the money pouch. So she had been apprehended, and Sherab’s life was squandered for an armful of vegetables.