Z: Plot Summary and Spoiler

The Londoner's Practical Guide to Dating
Plot Summary (Spoiler!)

Part One: Dating

32 year old Jeyaratnam Paul (JP) is a charismatic, multi-ethnic
Londoner: Head of Business Affairs for the London office of Parallax
Pictures, and a trans-Atlantic success with the ladies.

Recently returned to London after a four year sojourn in California
(Business School at UCLA followed by two years with Parallax HQ), JP is
struck by London's impoverished dating culture - in stark contrast with
the highly developed dating mores found in most US cities where
formalised dating is an integral part of the social landscape - and
decides to do something about it.

Not content with the piecemeal reform of personal example, JP sets
about writing a book "The Londoner's Practical Guide to Dating" (LPGD).
The book is part self-help guide for date-disenfranchised London men,
part socio-cultural analysis of why the British are so rubbish at
romance, and (mainly) an excuse for JP and his closest male friends -
American investment banker, Tyson Dean and English book editor Simon
French - to carry out much "field work" wherein they discover that the
project is something of a passport into the beds and hearts of a large
contingent of sophisticated London women, surprised and grateful for
these rare London men armed with emotional nuance and the first clue to
the mysteries of courtship and romance.

The first third of the novel alternates between a humorous chronicle of
the boys' research, and the theories of dating that JP outlines in
LPGD, the chapter headings of which include: "Why Can't the English
teach their children how to date: Fulham musical chairs and other
British mating rituals"; "A Game of You: Rules of Engagement"; "Why
there is no such thing as a Good Chat-up Line" and "Sons of Monkeys:
Social Darwinism and Dating."

In the course of these adventures, we meet Angel Lee, a beautiful
British-Oriental intern at Parallax who is gradually falling for JP's
studied charms; are amused as JP stylishly pursues his Ghanaian
masseuse, Ophelia Jones; cheer as the reserved and "chronically single"
Simon French embraces JP's philosophy and finds true love with
barrister Kate Hyde; and, most significantly, observe with a mixture of
fascination and horror as JP embarks on a covert and ill-advised affair
with Noor al Rashid - a woman whose high maintenance brand of beauty is
sustainable only because her ominous and unpredictable husband, Kemal,
is a multi-millionaire whose dollars of questionable origin are now
being ploughed into Parallax's movies.

Through the main story of JP's dating "research", we learn a little of
his past and family, in particular we meet and are entranced by his
less showy but no less attractive younger sister LP, also a London
resident, and read correspondence between the siblings Paul and their
formidable parents: English psychologist mother, Elizabeth and Indian
surgeon father, Unmish, both of whom live in far away Kuala Lumpur: a
distance that suits JP perfectly, not least because of a long and deep
running feud with his Father, a serious man whose vocation of surgery
has little respect for the frivolities of JP's professional or personal
life..

We also follow, through a series of interludes, an apparently
unconnected sub-plot set far away from the smooth urbanity of dating
London - in the thick of AIDS and poverty in South Africa. Where the
half-Nigerian, half-British Director of Policy for the Cape Town
Institute for AIDS Orphans, Thandie Eslan (MD, Oxon; PhD, Georgetown),
is facing a rather different dating problem: How to convince scared and
ignorant male AIDS sufferers that their best hope for survival is to
admit their illness and seek drug treatment rather than experimenting
with the awful folk "remedy" of raping a virgin.

We are told that Thandie, a woman impressive in every sense, is our
nemesis, and learn that she is JP's great lost love, from his
undergraduate, pre-LA, pre-compulsive dating days.

Part Two: Death

JP's happy London life of easy love is interrupted by the unexpected
death of his Father. JP&;amp; LP immediately head to Malaysia where
they attempt to console their devastated Mother. At the funeral, the
siblings Paul speak movingly of the course and certainty of their
parents' love for one another - a life long constancy quite at odds
with JP's own high-variation, low commitment dating diet.

The contrast is made explicit by a well meaning uncle who, after the
funeral, takes JP aside to give counsel, and express the hope that the
loss of his father might prompt JP to embrace adulthood and finally
settle down. We also learn of the cause of the schism between father
and son: Thandie.

In the days after the funeral, the siblings and their mother discuss
the dead doctor. JP's bottled resentment spills out. Partly it's all
the usual father-son stuff. JPs never felt valued or engaged by his
father. Dr. Paul's surgeon detachment extended a little too far into
his personal life, and whilst he unquestionably loved all his family
deeply, it was only with his wife and daughter that he could truly
relax into unconditional love. With JP there was always a distance -
one borne out of concern - concern that JP was weak, was superficial,
was too easily hurt and discouraged. What was a well intentioned
attempt to instil toughness in the boy backfired and created instead a
child forever questing for the withheld approval and love of his
larger-than-life father.

Specifically, Dr. Paul never took JP's career seriously, didn't even
watch movies was a long running sore. Career for Dr. Paul was saving
lives: that was a vocation. Movies were so much fantasy. Despite JP's
early success, first in London then in LA, Dr. P was never really into
it.

The real death blow to JP's relationship with his father, however, was
Thandie. JP was so excited to tell his father about her. Here was a
girl who, like Dr. Paul, was doing work that really mattered. A Doctor,
like his father, but one with even broader and wider ambitions - even
when at Oxford, Thandie always wanted to do her PhD in development,
always wanted to take her ambitions back to Africa, always wanted to
save the world.

JP was so proud when he showed his father her photo. "This is my
girl-friend, the doctor". It had honestly never occurred to him that
his father was a racist. Not until the old man handed the photograph
back, his face flat like he was suffering from a mild stroke. "She's
black" he said, expressionless. For all of Dr. Paul's own liberalism in
marrying a white woman, the traditional Hindu in him could not accept a
half-African daughter-in-law and he had opposed the match with
unrelentingly ruthlessness, which combined with JP's own deep rooted
fear of intimacy and commitment, was a key contributing cause to JP and
Thandie's break up.

This forced review of his past and reminder of his "familial
responsibilities" - to provide his Mother with grandchildren to fill
the void left by his Father's death - sit ill with JP: Still conflicted
about his own feelings for his father and not ready to either grieve
properly or admit that his world has changed, JP pleas work as an
excuse and flees back to London, where he attempts to re-claim his old
life. But the centre seems determined not to hold. JP's dating now
looks increasingly desperate, and the affair with Noor seems to be
spinning out of control: she has grown bored with him, and he responds
by becoming obsessive about her.

JP finds himself battling lonely, sleepless nights with alcohol and
drugs. Tyson and Simon attempt to keep JP's spirits high by proposing
continued research excursions for the book; but the growing chasm
between the light, know-it-all advice of LPGD (which continues to be
interspersed through the narrative) and the dark depression which is
engulfing JP's life, is now a source of ironic bathos, rather than
simple comedy.

JP's despair becomes obvious to all at the premier of a new Parallax
film, attended by Kemal and Noor. JP, drunk too soon, is dangerously
explicit in his attention towards Noor- embarrassing his bosses and
raising Kemal's suspicions. JP leaves the party, drunk, driving too
fast and with Angel Lee by his side. He takes her home and quite
viscously vents his frustration by indulging in violent,
quasi-consensual and unprotected sex - after which she fleas, bruised,
scared and confused. JP alone, is woken at 4 am by a ring of the door
bell. Unthinkingly, JP answers- still naked and sticky - and is greeted
by two large Arabs who, with the minimum of fuss or explanation, beat
him to a messy pulp. Kemal Al Rashid, it turns out, has a simple way of
dealing with men whom he suspects of fucking his wife.

Discovered the next morning by a horrified LP, and taken to hospital
where he is gradually pieced back together, JP receives a missive from
Parallax. Faced with a harassment complaint from Angel, JP's
increasingly obvious alcoholism, and the need to keep Kemal happy,
Parallax decides that they have to distance themselves from their
one-time golden boy. JP is offered a generous redundancy package. Only
just able to wield a pen through the splints and casts, JP signs
it.

As the LPGD could have told him, being made redundant is a severe
downer when trying to impress the ladies.

Part Three: Redemption

Unemployed, emotionally numb, physically broken, and having lost both
Noor and Angel; JP's life is now a far cry from the glossy fantasy
which he enjoyed at the start of the novel. Just as we are wondering
what else can go wrong, suddenly, unexpectedly, something appears to go
right?. the 'phone rings again?.

It's Thandie. She's in town, for one weekend only, back from South
Africa for a conference on AIDS. She's heard about his father's death.
And she'd love to see him.

This reunion becomes, in JP's pain-killer addled mind, his one hope of
salvation. He seizes upon it as his big, last chance to put his life in
order. To stop running, right the past, fall in love and live happily
ever after - in the kind of certainty and maturity that his parents
had.

As JP remembers, we learn the full story of him and Thandie. Of how as
undergraduates at Oxford, their hybrid blood bayed out to each other's
with an unprecedented heat, of how they came together, not much more
than children, but somehow with a mythic sense of destiny. How they
bestrode Oxford together as a golden couple, so protected in their own
young love that they became a magnet for happiness, a shining sun for
those around them. And then how, outside Oxford, the real world
intruded. A real world where both their fathers opposed their union; a
real world where race, careers, families, geography, and their own
pasts and neuroses intruded unapologetically into the hitherto
perfectly sealed bubble of their love.

We also learn the full story of what happened when confronted with Dr.
Paul's racism. JP was so proud when he showed his father her photo.
"This is my girl-friend, the doctor". It had honestly never occurred to
him that his father was a racist. Not until the old man handed the
photograph back, his face flat like he was suffering from a mild
stroke. "She's black" he said, expressionless. So much we knew already.
But now, when JP remembers this moment, he's most ashamed of his
answer: "But her mother's White".

Dr. Paul made his position very clear. JP could date who he wanted, but
no black daughter in law would ever be welcome in the Paul family. If
JP went that way he would be outcast, no longer son, straight and
simple. The accusations of hypocrite didn't please Dr. Paul any. A
Mexican stand-off was reached. JP refused to end things with Thandie,
but had no immediate plans to marry her anyway. For a while father and
son simply avoided this topic. Over time the avoidance became the
mainstay of their discourse.

JP's fear of equality, true commitment and hence true vulnerability
pre-date his loss of Thandie And in fact were key causes of the loss.
Proud and excited though he was of her, he never could bring himself to
totally commit, never even to say "I love you". For a while, Thandie
stomached this, telling herself that he would grow up, would sort
himself out. But then she learnt of Dr. Paul's implacable opposition to
her. She confronts JP, trying to understand, trying to force him to
take a stand, to take a position, for her and for their love.

But as much as JP disagrees with his father on moral and philosophical
grounds, he is still the father JP has spent his whole life seeking
approval from; and to defy him and take a stand completely against him
is more than JP can do.

He tried to walk an impossible middle line between hurting lover and
embittered and scared father. It's too narrow and too impossible a
line. He withdraws from both relationships. Unable to look at either
his lover or his father without seeing the hurt each of their existence
causes the other. Thandie senses his withdrawal, and interprets it as
further evidence of his ill-preparedness for what she had hopped would
be the greatest love of all. She decides she can no longer entrust her
happiness in a man too scared to love her and too uncertain about his
own place in the world to stand up against his father.

She tries to make him understand why. He gets angry they fight. She
leaves. The next night she calms down and comes back to try and end
things better. He's having sex with a stranger he picked up in a bar.
She leaves. JP never took responsibility for this - blaming his father,
so that two relationships died that night, not one. Then Thandie moved
to DC for her doctorate, grad; then he's in LA, then she's in South
Africa. Five years have passed.

This time he'll get it right.

But of course, he'll get it right in traditional JP way. Nothing must
be left to chance - the perfect date must be crafted. All the skills
and stratagems, plans and plots, theories and training of his dating
years must now be put to their ultimate test. The author of LPGD must
apply everything he knows to win back his true love.

Twenty four hours of intense preparation later - eagerly abetted by
Tyson, Simon and LP, all a little nervous, but glad to see JP with his
old energy again - and all is in order for Thandie. The flat is
divinely decorated, the MP3 player is perfectly programmed, the home
baked amuse bouche is bouncy; the car that picks them up and takes them
to the perfect restaurant is pristine. All in all, full offerings are
made to the gods of dating, and Barry White's hymns of love are
sung?

And Barry smiles in his heaven and Thandie and JP connect like never
before. And it is like never before, for JP is now the man without
fear. He opens himself completely to her, begs forgiveness for his past
inadequacies and gently, never too pushily, but with powerful
conviction, proclaims himself to be ready to risk all with her.

The perfect meal ends up back at JP's flat, where to perfect
candle-light and perfect tunes; Thandie &;amp; JP make perfect love.
And, looking in her eyes, as they come in perfect symmetry - he manages
to say that which he's never said before "I? love? you?" So pleased and
proud of himself for managing to say it is JP, that he doesn't even
notice that Thandie doesn't say it back.

The next day, JP wakes to an empty flat and a note:

"JP - Had to leave early to make flight. You looked so peaceful I
didn't want to wake you. Thank you for a special night. A much better
ending than our last, "last" night?something that I had long felt
needed to be put right. I'll choose to remember this one; when I choose
to remember.

Take care of yourself. Good-bye - Thadie."

JP realises, with mounting panic that Thandie's expectations and
experience of the night were completely at odds with his own. He was
looking to change his life. She was in town for one weekend only and
was looking up an old boyfriend to achieve closure. How could he have
missed that? He'd even written about this exact problem in the LPGD:
"Cardinal Mistakes of Dating # 7 - Failing to control
expectation?"

JP rushes to the airport hoping to catch Thandie. On the way out he
bumps into his postman who hands him his mail, which he stuffs into his
jacket. At the airport he realises that he has missed her, lost her. He
sits in an airport chair and starts to cry. Children look at him.

Recovering after a time, JP starts to make his way back to London. On
the platform of the Heathrow Express, he notices the pile of post in
his pocket and idly opens some of it. One letter stops him dead. He
gets up and heads back to the airport and buys a ticket on the next
flight to Cape Town. Then he buys a lap-top with which, first in the
departure lounge, and then on the long flight to Africa, he writes and
sends a series of emails: to all his recent lovers: Noor, Angel,
Ophelia; to Tyson and Simon, to LP and to his mother, and increasingly
to anyone who will read them. And to his father, who almost certainly
won't.

All the missives are similar. They are good-byes and they are also
apologies. And they all contain the same piece of news. The piece of
news that was in that morning's letter: When JP was hospitalised after
his beating, the hospital - noting evidence of recent violent sex, and
several open wounds - administered an HIV test. The letter was to say
there was a problem with the results and would he come back in three
days for a re-test?

Knowing his risk category, JP assumes the worst. He has AIDS. In some
way this revelation makes perfect sense to him. Gripped in fatality,
his over-riding urge is to find Thandie and tell her. To warn her that
she is at risk also. His, entirely deranged, hope is that this will
some way bind them together. That he will get another chance, to know
commitment and true love for the rest of his (he suspects short)
life.

JP gets to South Africa, and after some misadventures, tracks Thandie
down and turns up at her Centre, highly agitated, entirely drunk and
very loudly announces that they are both dying of AIDS, followed
rapidly by a proposal of marriage.

Thandie deals with JP like she deals with all the other angry, scared,
drunk and horny AIDS sufferers she encounters everyday. She has him
forcibly restrained and sedated by big strong orderlies. JP finds
himself strapped to a hospice bed, and the last thing he sees before
the drugs kick in and he falls unconscious is Thandie walking
away.

When he wakes up she's by his side. She's had him retested. He doesn't
have HIV. The first test must have been a false-positive. She explains
to him that this is not uncommon. She doesn't have HIV either. Given
her close contact with so many sufferers, she's tested every two
months. Relieved, if somewhat deflated, JP agrees to behave if he's
untied.

Thandie and JP go for a long drive together, out of Cape Town down to
the coast. On the way they talk. Or rather she talks and he, unusually
for JP, listens. She explains why they didn't work out. Why they
failed, why he failed her. And why they don't get a second chance, at
least not with each other, but maybe they do with other people. That
the most we can hope for is to take all that we learn from heart-break,
and pour it into the next time.

They talk more, as they drive down winding coastal roads, and against
the beauty of the South African landscape, the ex-lovers explore what
love is: a condition where someone else's happiness is more important
than yours. And what falling in love is: the realisation that you've
met someone with whom that might be possible. And that being in love
is: the daily testing of that hypothesis and on more days than not,
finding that it still holds true. Thandie and JP fell in love. But they
failed that test of being in love. And they aren't in love now.

JP begins to understand. He feels something happen to his heart. It
hurts like hell, but he realises that it's not breaking. It's growing.
The pair arrives at the Cape of Good hope, and climb up the hill to
watch the sunset. Thandie shows JP the point, due South of the Cape
where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. Where East quite meets West
and where Africa meets Europe: the point of the world where people like
Thandie and JP come from, the flowing, fluid, changing land that they
must balance on. JP stands at the Cape of Good Hope, quite literally
the end of the world, and as he takes in the view with a new, wide
vision, and allows the ocean air to fill his lungs and oxygenate his
blood, pumped through an enlarged heart, JP grows up.

JP leaves Thandie and Africa with closure and with self-knowledge, with
a clean bill of health and a wider conception of his world. He has a
book to re-write, friends and family to reclaim. And a life to live. On
the plane he finds himself having a real, non-flirty, non-calculated
conversation with a pretty girl sitting next to him. He starts to
introduce himself as JP, but stops and corrects himself: "I'm
Jeyaratnam Paul"

"That's such a pretty name - is there a story behind it?"