Shaila

This month we bring you an early look at Farrukh Dhondy’s unpublished collection of contemporary monologues with Shakespearean allusions. Written for both the armchair and the stage, they are to be performed by female actors.

A London drawing room in modern, rich, designer and opulently impersonal taste. There is a huge couch upholstered in thick, rich carpet-textured multicoloured fabric, a computer on a metal-topped table, a grand TV set and a door to the landing outside. Another unadorned arch leads to the bedroom beyond.

Shaila, in her 30s, Indian, with an English accent without a tinge of acquired falseness, paces the floor, seemingly speaking to herself, but in fact speaking to the mobile phone which rests on a table.

SHAILA

So where the fuck are you? What? Nine hundred and fifty K? What’s this, chicken feeding time? You said they were Arabs! They don’t understand numbers that don’t end in ten zeroes. It’s you, isn’t it Fred, making a quick buck, you fucking ponce?…Yeah sure I can talk, I’m talking—you’re the one that’s taking the rake-offs. Now, my little toy boy, if you want that commission you get your skates on—though it might be a bit wobbly bending down to kiss arse with wheels under your pimpy moccasins—and get me those Arab clients to view the flat!

What? Nah nah nah! You fucking knew it was close to the American embassy when you described it as “in prime diplomatic London”. Yes, of course, I know people don’t want to take the risk but there is no risk really is there—it’s your job to persuade them!

No, I can’t take a 40 percent hit. I know the fucking idea is down. I’m the girl who pulled it down, remember? But that’s capitalism, this is my personal property, my lifeline—it’s all I’ve got left. OK, cool...the others? Nine. Yeah? And, doll, you’re not the only estate agent in town, so kiss the ass of the princess of Sub-prime and go thy way, thy fate has made thee a whole—an arse-hole.

She fiddles with the phone on the table, switching it off. She paces and gets herself a glass and pours herself a drink and gulps it down. The house phone rings. She automatically picks up the mobile and then realises and darts for the house phone.

Yes, hi Daddy! Yes, this is me. Dad, it’s Shaila, who else would call you “daddy” I am your only daughter! Well yes, he would but you disowned him remember? Have you called him? Are you still being stupid? Of course he is...no I am not the only thing you’ve got. You’ve got him too and all this is silly, just silly, daddy!

What? Identity theft? You mustn’t believe everything you read...yeah yeah fine...no, no. No! That was another bank. My company isn’t paying anyone millions of pounds. Yes of course they’re crooks, bastards, wankers...no sorry, of course I haven’t learnt to swear! No dad (Mimics Indian Accents) “I am not telling any lies I am truthfully saying none of the directors is getting one bloody pence.” Is that what you called about? What about Jassi? I have been hanging around the phone for some news but...Dad, don’t start that. I don’t want to know. Look she’s your granddaughter, you can’t have turned into stone. What’s wrong with you? No, he didn’t, but I can’t argue. Actually, you should get off the phone. I am waiting for him to ring. I can’t stand it. No, no. Is that all you think of? I don’t want to hear it.

No, nothing in Swiss! Okay, okay, I know you always told me “never trust agents or brokers,” but now I am one and have to trust myself—well somewhat! No, I don’t think God brought about the crash...No, Dad I actually know some of the people who did bring it about...because I was there! Yes, I know you love me and that helps...

The mobile phone rings.

Dad, I’ll speak to you later. Yes, I might just do that. Yes, I can pay the phone bills, I’ll call, bye, bye, bye...

She picks up the phone.

Hi! No Fred, no dinner to talk it over. You’re an estate agent and I may be bankrupt but I haven’t fallen that low.

She clicks the phone off. She paces and pours another drink. She turns to the audience.

The day of the middleman is done. Dad was right, never trust brokers and agents. Go to the forums where people gather, sell direct, abolish money, go back to barter—or maybe that comes later. All this stuff about proximity to the American embassy. It’s crap. Yeah, sure there are massive fortifications and bollards and gunmen on the streets, but that’s always made me feel safe. In fact, you can hear the police helicopters all night hovering—not exactly what the scumbag of an estate agent would have told you, but I tell you because—because I like to tell the truth—Hey, hold on, don’t all rush! I said I like to, I didn’t say I always do—but the truth is that I was talking to Hillary, in New York, just the other week and she assures me they are going to move the embassy from here and take it where it can be protected, so the price of this here town flat in Mayfair is going to shoot right up.

Come on, there must be some Russians, Arabs, Lithuanian arms dealers, anyone who wants to buy a state-of-the-art, two-bedroom flat in the heart of London out there? I don’t want to make a profit. It’s worth two, or was the day before yesterday. And this is prime location,  near the park? No? An easy walk to Selfridges? Hah, now I’m talking? It’s bound to soar again. I can even fix for a bond for the whole amount to re-buy at this selling price in two years’ time. You can’t lose. If it goes higher, don’t cash the bond, keep the equity. You’re not bound, only I’m bound to buy it back. So? Any takers? No…This is not an auction. That’s not the way to do it. One to one, that’s how I was taught to do business in the City.

She takes a drink of water, finds it’s not what she wants, pours herself a neat vodka and drinks it and addresses the audience. 

And that’s how he came to me. He had nowhere else to go and I knew that. It’s partly how I got into this mess and, of course, through having a sense of humour, which the British courts have unfortunately lost.

She draws up a stool and sits down stage front.

I knew him as Tony, Mr Venables. I hated him. We’d been at parties and stuffy occasions together when I avoided him and he me. I knew he was a shipping magnate of sorts. And, of course, I followed the whole story about his ships. He doesn’t make an appointment. He just barges in. No pin stripes, no tie. Open collar, linen trousers, soft leather designer shoes.

“Come and have a drink at my club. Want to talk to you as a friend,” he says.

“Friend? Qu est ce que c’est? Like the mongoose and snake? Hunh. Or friends like water and phosphoroussss? Can you hear the hissssss?”

We first really came across each other, or crossed swords, when we were debating on the opposite sides of a Confederation of British Industry conference. I wasn’t ready for the raking. I thought this was a gentleman’s club, with emphasis perhaps on the last syllable, but still. He began his talk with: “What’s the difference between vultures and bankers? Answer: Vultures wait till you’re dead.” That was his little unfunny joke. And he looked at me each time he thought he’d scored. Here he was, as I pointed out when I began to speak, biting the hand that fed his oily, rusty, corrupt, sinking industry. Okay, all’s fair in love and debate: But! This guy seemed to have something personal.

How did he show it? Well, when the chancellor of the exchequer appointed me special advisor on transport industry loans—okay, they wanted an Asian face on the team for racially correct reasons—it was this same steamboat Tony who led a delegation to the deputy minister to say I was a light-weight and the merchant marine industry had no faith in my experience or expertise.  Of course, the minister laughed it off, diplomatically, but the time-servers in the ministry the uncivil servants, passed the damning petition round and sniggered.

Tony made sure that the petition reached the newspapers. There were articles in TheSpectator and The Telegraph and TheSunday Mail questioning my competence and the fact that I had an off-shore account which they’d dug up. And, of course, the Asian woman card—a hint that it would have helped if I was a one-legged lesbian also—and perhaps I was all of those because Asian women of my age don’t go for a career do they? They all get well-married by arrangement and have three and a half kids and a spanking new Toyota. And why didn’t I have these? The hubby and kids, not the Toyota—and I replied that I had nieces who were very, very dear to me, and why have children anyway? I told The Guardian in some women-who-work-and-climb-the-male-ladder feature they ran, why make babies? For the au pair to bring up and risk importing some Polish temptress into the house so she can run away with hubby to the Cayman Islands, while I am out there earning money at fiduciary conferences? I couldn’t of course, didn’t want to tell them of the genetic disease in the family and how it had passed to my niece and I couldn’t risk having children and didn’t want to look for a man who didn’t want any either. See it’s hard. And I am quite happy to be called—they only hint mind you—a lesbian. It adds to the mystery.

So after those leaked reports I sent an email to our Tony telling him that he was a sneaky jerk and that he should pick on someone his own size. Sure, I did of course say that the ministry was thinking, owing to a paper I was going to circulate for discussion, of an additional tax on foreign registered shipping, and I don’t know why, the guy’s paranoid—he took that to be a piece of blackmail. He photocopied the email and sent it round to a hundred prominent people, including my own bank’s board. The accompanying blurb virtually said “look whom the chancellor has employed, some illiterate Asian bitch who can’t string together a grammatical sentence without jargon and doesn’t know where to put her apostrophes or how to spell ‘recession!’”

So, to put no sharper a point on it, Tony wasn’t a friend. Or perhaps he thought that the public insults and the open libel and slander had made us one unit. Comrades, Ying and Yang, Heads and Tails, but joined at the lip. He wished! “Why is a ‘banker’ not spelt with a ‘w?’—“Because he has no resources of his own!”

So what did he want from me? Was I going to rake over those copied emails? Shouldn’t one take it on the chin and move on? Hey, a girl has her dignity.

“You sure your club will let a woman in?”

“I’m offering you a drink, not membership,” he says, “But you know Shaila, I am for getting rid of all that nonsense. Of course women should have associate membership...” Get the drift?

“This is informal,” he says when I get to his club. “I wouldn’t ask if it was only a favour, but I need a loan.”

“I read the papers,” I say, “You need more than a loan. You need a few stiff drinks before you talk about it. Didn’t they just threaten to shoot a member of your crew?”

“Rumours. Yes, they’ve been in touch, the kidnappers, but I can’t really talk about it. I believe nothing. The Foreign Office is handling it but I tell you something in confidence, I’ve got a mercenary company, tough guys who know that territory standing by in Saudi. A last resort if nothing gives, because, of course, I feel responsible for the crew. Fuck the money.” He could have won an Oscar!

Everyone in the world knew that his tanker had been requisitioned by Sudanese pirates. What everyone didn’t know was that the insurance company was refusing to pay because they suspected double dealing and journalists sympathetic to the insurers in the Gulf were playing the game of digging dirt on Tony’s company—it was registered in the Gulf—and there were strong hints around the City that Tony’s friends or Tony himself had hired the pirates to hold up and board the ship and take the crew hostage in order to trigger the insurance claim. Child’s play. Insurance scam. Somali gunmen and a boat—easy to hire.

“The clock’s ticking. If the FO gets no joy, I’ll send the lads in.”

“And risk the lives of your crew?”

“This outfit, my dear, run by Mushroom Jake is called Sea-Rambo and they’ve been working for any government you can name. You think that couple got off by paying ransom money? Jake went in with his boys and killed a few. They can get my crew off. It’s a risk, but then driving in London when it snows is a risk.”

“So why do you want the money? To pay mercenaries to fight pirates? That’s a vastly sensible use of my investors’ dosh? All I’ve got to say to them is let’s give Tony a few million, it’s live action, folks!”

“Not exactly. Well, just some of it. The rest will pay you.”

“Er...me? You and me?”

I understood the language, the implications—of course, I am a broker-banker.

“You haven’t mentioned figures yet, but when you say ‘some’ then you want to use the rest for...us? I am saying ‘no’ if you have a tape recorder on your phone—‘no, no, no, no bribes, backhanders, fees, nothing, hear me?—now tell me how, pray?”

“You see Shaila, no one else would understand this, but you being Indian, you’ll appreciate it. I want the rest of the loan for a lavish wedding for my best friend and comrade Bassdeo.”

“You mean the Brokeback Prince?”

“The very same.”

“Why do you have to pay for his wedding, his father’s

loaded.”

“Not for this wedding he isn’t. He won’t pay up. I thought you said you read the papers.”

“Sure, that black model, what’s her name? Portina?”

“That’s the one. He’s got to match her humongous earnings and the truth is that Bass may be a prince and all that, but his fortune would turn church mice into lemmings climbing up the winding stairs and jumping off the belfries.”

“I think I know the game,” I say.

“Yeah, I’m sure you do. Castle in Scotland hired for the week, helicopters to fly in the celebrity guests, Hello! magazine picture exclusive, catering by The Fat Duck and the Indian newspapers falling over each other to compare the cost of the wedding to the cost of the Titanic etc.”

“And this Bassdeo’s reputedly treacherous friendship is enough to get you to risk your neck to the tune of a few million pounds?”

“We are grown-ups, Shaila,” he says. “Let’s not be naive. I can repay you the day after the wedding with knobs on. You know that!”

“How do I know that?”

“Come on, darling, you’re Indian!”

“You keep saying that. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You want me to spell it out?”

“Yeah, my Braille is a bit deficient.”

“You know the score. Spend one, two million on the wedding, invite the great sheikhs of industry and commerce and football and the stars of the film world and then chalk up the cash in wedding presents to, shall we say, five, six million, 12 even? Voila! You’ve converted your ill-gotten or hard-earned black money on which you pay no tax into white declarable cash, tax-free! Out comes the metal trunk from under the bed and the illegal money therein is transformed into legal tender like water into wine at the wedding feast.  It doesn’t matter if footballer X or Sheikh-Your-money-Y hasn’t coughed up a rotten bean, as long as you can add fake names who have chequebooks attached to the guest list, the gifts can be Himalayan. I’ll get the names and prove the bank accounts, leave that to me. Even hire the Arabs.

Look, I tell you Bassdeo did the same for his dad last time round. He bought ten no-count paintings from Indian so-called artists and he auctioned them in Dubai. He bought them originally for 10,000 rupees each. Then he sold them at auction to himself, or guys raising their hands for him in bids, for one million rupees, two million, ten million. That converted a cool nine million for each painting from black money to white money, because he had receipts for the sale of the paintings now—real assets, real profits and tax free because it’s Dubai! Gentlemen of the jury, I give you The Indian Gene! And I give you the worst actress in the world, Shaila Patel,” he says. Then he turns to me, “You know those tricks and 50 tricks like them, don’t you?”

“You’ve told me enough to send your Prince Badass...”

“Bassdeo,” he says

“Yeah, Mr Marrying Kind, to break rocks in the hilly parts of India. I know the finance minister’s daughter and she knows the anti-fraud cops. She takes the bribes and distributes them.”

“You wouldn’t do that. We’re all in the boy scouts together. That’s why I came to you for the deal. You get the money back the day after the wedding. Deal?”

“Now my turn,” I said, “What makes you think that my bank will buy all that bullshit about society weddings, black money into white, gifts from sheikhs, dodging Indian income tax etc, etc? And what kind of security could they have for this fair castle-in-the-air loan?

“I wasn’t talking about the bank, Shaila. I was talking about you personally and your dodgy friends who everyone knows are on the lookout for ways of converting black into white so they can spend it. Especially if it’s tax free as wedding gifts can be. Your Indian and Arab capitalist contacts.”

“I don’t have any dodgy friends,” I said.

“I’m being silly,” he says, making a sad face. “Of course, you don’t. I just wanted to put the opportunity your way.”

“Generous as always. Nothing to do with paying the mercenaries to release your boat!”

“Come on, there’s that too—which father wouldn’t look after his babies?—sorry, shall I say ‘which aunt wouldn’t look after her nieces?’”

So he reads The Guardian?

“I’ll have to think about it. Cards on the table, if I say QED—Quite Easily Done, then am I admitting that I have dodgy friends or stowed away millions? Will I find myself in the newspapers like I did last time?”

“Shaila!” he says, “That’s below the belt. That time it was purely professional. This is....”

“Ah! Professional? To send emails to my bosses and friends pointing to fucking apostrophes in the wrong place.”

“Sorry, sorry, an error of judgement. Who was I to attack you?” He got all humble, a whole Heap of Uriah.” My mistake. Like trying to shit upwards—I should have known it sticks, or only comes back.”

“Nice turn of phrase. How much do you want?”

“I don’t want to scare you, it’s a tidy sum—but all returnable the day of the wedding.”

“And what guarantee do I have? What’s the collateral?”

“My business, my ships? This can’t fail.”

“Ah, so you anticipated the Somali pirates?”

“Of course, I did. Some bastards on board are probably working with them. Can’t get the staff nowadays!”

“Didn’t anticipate that, then. So what’s your tanker worth to me? The Somalis may blow it up if you don’t give them the ransom they are demanding. Then where am I?”

“The insurance is twice as valuable.”

Shaila gets up and laughs as though she is in the presence of Tony right there. Then she talks as though addressing him.

You fucking idiot. What do you think I do for a living, pick daisies? I am from the insurance world. I know what’s floating about and what’s near sinking and hello! The story is, your Honour, that Tony here insured his ships and had them boarded by mercenaries.

She turns again to the Judge we can imagine overseeing the court.

He’s cool about it. Not at all startled. The rumours are everywhere.

“They’ve got to prove it, haven’t they. Or pay up for loss of income while it’s held. The cargo indemnity.”

“Of course, of course. British justice and all that! So I and my partners in this little loan wait around for you to be proved innocent and make your claims in court for the blowing up of your ship and maybe for conspiracy to murder your crew. Tony. Tony, Tony, we gotta do better than that.”

“My houses don’t belong to me. She, the bitch, the whore, took the Cheyney Walk dump in the divorce settlement, and the pile in Hertfordshire is mortgaged as high as the development noose round its neck.”

“You are a real enterprising businessman. You come to me and say, ‘Give me several million pounds, mortgage your life and reputation to your friends against thin air.’ Nice One, me ole son! You didn’t come to milk my udders, you came to pull my leg.”

“Look upon it as an unusual proposition, a friendly one.”

“Ah, unenforceable in a court of law, yeah?”

“No, that’s not what I am after, make it enforceable. Get your Indian lawyer friends to dream up some watertight scam. Look you don’t want to miss this opportunity.”

I just grinned. “Don’t I?” I liked to watch him squirm. There was nowhere else he could go.

She gets up and pours herself another drink. The lights fade down and up.

I called him the next day and told him it couldn’t be done. He called my office ten times and they finally told him that I wasn’t there. That I was at home, that I had taken compassionate leave and not because of the credit crunch that had brought the company to its knees. No, I hadn’t been fired. Why would they fire me? After all, I had been solely responsible for buying the failed subsidiaries of the South African and Mexican banks. If you want to fail, fail big—or they won’t bail you out.

I don’t know how he wheedled my home number out of the firm’s switchboard, but he started calling me.

“Tony, please, there’s no way I can do this deal. And no! I am not coming to the office. I have personal problems. No, not financial,” I said. “Fuck the financial, it’s family business. I can’t talk.”

“Of course you can talk. We’ve all got family problems; where there’s a family, there’s a problem—definition, mathematical assumption. Maybe we can meet and swop problems, maybe I can even help!”

“This is not a joke,” I said. “My niece is in severe trouble. She has genetic blood cancer and if she doesn’t get a transplant in the next few weeks, she’ll die.”

Yeah, he said he was sorry. And he would bring me a drink but wouldn’t discuss the deal and maybe his friend the best oncologist in the USA could help. He mentioned the name, which I recognised.

I said he should come over.

Now I had been in touch with my parties, just to suss them out without mentioning names, and they understood that there could be no legal undertaking for the kind of deal and they couldn’t really demand legal collateral because their money was in black too, you know, under-the-bed, undeclared incomes from various Indo-Middle East schemes and, in the case of the Big Indian and Pakistani politicians, the millions they had made from corruption and kept in other people’s names. It had to be laundered and it had to be done through trust. And they trusted me—well as far as anyone in that world trusts their own shadow.

He brings me flowers and a bottle of Claret. I invite him in. He says he’s brought his friend’s phone number and we should perhaps wait a few hours before America wakes up to phone. There’s not much to tell him about my niece so I turn the matter to his deal.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” he says. “I take it you won’t do that for me. Now let’s get to your personal problem.”

“I want to take my mind off it,” I say, “I don’t want to stand by as her life leaks away. So talk. I’ve made some enquiries.”

“Oh really?” he asks. “I’ve nosed around myself.”

“And what have you sniffed?”

“That you are so respected. They’ll take your word because I know and they know you’ve fixed huge deals, Shaila. Your company’s legit dealings may have failed, but your private, let’s say enterprising ones are up and running.”

These were worrying days for me. I wasn’t thinking of business, I was thinking of Jassi. “That was then, this is now,” is what I said. He didn’t allude to the deal again, but left me the surgeon’s phone number. I called the surgeon and then called my brother. He had to get the girl to the US. I would pay. But how?

My brother was despondent. He said they wanted human bone marrow from a very particular blood type and they had scoured the databases of the world for it. He would send the papers to the guy in the States. How would he afford it. I said he should leave that to me, not knowing what I’d do. But maybe...just maybe...

She points her finger at the audience.

The stage lights fade to black.

In the dark, the phone rings.