Hanif Kureishi - Gabriel's Gift

‘Yes, but if I tell Mum that you are a rotten and cruel au pair who watches television all the time, you will be straight back in Bronchitis pulling turnips out of the frozen ground with your broken old teeth. Mum’s very protective of me. Right?’

There was a silence. When Gabriel looked at Hannah from his position atop the books, he saw she was afraid. He had made his statement without thinking, and, somehow, it had worked; he had turned the key to Hannah.

‘No, no,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t tell that.’

‘Well, we’ll see.’

‘See?’

‘How you behave. Meanwhile, I think I’ll have something to eat. Help me down, please.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she moaned, holding her arms out for him to jump into. ‘Anything you want to eat, my boy darling?’

‘A peanut butter sandwich,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t forget the jam, the honey and a milkshake on the side.’

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Right away coming down. Is that a vanilla or strawberry shake?’

‘One of each.’

‘One of everything, coming up just now, no delay, number one. Is there anything else?’

He thought about it. ‘How about pecan pie and custard. You can have a little, too, Hannah.’

‘Can I?’

He nodded nobly.

‘Thank you.’ she said. ‘You won’t tell, will you?’

‘I haven’t yet decided what to do with you, Hannah. Some of your behaviour can get a little weird at times. Child abuse is a very serious matter in this country. The jails are bursting with weeping au pairs but there’s room for just one more!’

She moaned gently and scuttled off to fetch his food.

Hannah had just brought him a hot chocolate; he was lying in bed working on the story for his film and saying the dialogue aloud, when his mother came in that night. She had her compassionate face on, what he called her ‘starving children in Africa’ look.

‘Oh Gabriel, you’re talking to yourself again! I have to tell you that I have been worried about you.’ She was stroking his forehead and caressing his cheeks. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Eh … working on my film.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘I’m enjoying it.’

‘When you actually make it, can I help you with the costumes?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘I think I’d love that,’ she said. He noticed that Hannah’s considerable shadow was listening at the door. How’s Hannah?’ his mother whispered.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I feel guilty leaving you with her all the time. Does she respect you?’

Gabriel hesitated. Through the crack of the door he could see one of her eyes, hovering.

‘I like her now,’ he said. ‘She looks after me very well.’

The eye blinked several times and become watery.

‘Good,’ said his mother. ‘By the way, you haven’t had any contact with spiritualists, have you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Archie.’ She said his name with care. ‘My dead son. The voices speaking inside you. All that. You told me about it. It … made me uneasy.’

‘Everyone has voices,’ he said, ‘but people conceal them from other people. People conceal a lot from other people. I guess it was just my ‘magination.’

‘You don’t hear from these voices all that often, do you?’

‘No. Not all that often. We like to keep in touch when necessary.’

‘You must be lonely.’

‘Sometimes. What about you?’

‘Am I lonely? I don’t know. D’you think I am?’

‘A little.’

He wondered if she’d say anything about having seen Dad. It was odd how secretive parents could be, while at the same time demanding to know everything about their children.

He said, ‘Anything interesting happen today?’

‘Same as usual,’ she said.

For a moment he wondered whether seeing his parents together had been a hallucination. Yet he felt sure it hadn’t been. ‘Anyone odd come in?’

She hesitated. ‘Like who?’

‘George.’

‘No.’

‘Does George like you?’

‘He likes the idea of an older woman. He thinks there’s a lot I can teach him. Maybe there is. He listens to me.’ She said proudly, ‘He tells me I’m wise.’

‘He flatters you. But he’d really want someone more his own age, wouldn’t he? Do you think much about Dad?’

‘A little. But it’s best if we forget all that and think of the future.’

‘Dad said something to me.’

‘What?’

‘That underneath everything … he loved you.’

‘No —’

‘He did!’

She said, ‘He hasn’t said that to me for a long time. Was he drunk?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

He noticed she had a strange expression on her face, of pleasure, dismay and embarrassment.

He asked, ‘D’you think you might see him … in the near future?’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about that man, I really don’t.’

He didn’t ask her anything else.

A couple of weeks later, after school, he was surprised not to find Hannah waiting on the corner. These days she was never late. He was expecting news of an important phone call — a call that, in anticipation, made him feel both afraid and excited. He needed to know whether she’d taken it.

He had begun to walk home when he saw his father hurrying across the road, carrying his guitar and record bag, and talking into a mobile phone. Twice Gabriel had been supposed to see him recently but Dad had cancelled. ‘Something’ had come up; he was ‘working’.

‘I rang Hannah and told her I’ll walk you back.’ said Dad, turning the phone off. ‘Then I’m off to South London to teach.’

‘You’re crossing the river?’

‘It’s got to be done. I’m getting all over the place and I’m enthusiastic about certain bridges and houses, funny streets, Spitalfields, Brick Lane, the City — like a tourist. When I’m out there I feel fragile, like an old man now, as if I could be easily knocked over. Yet it’s as if I’m seeing it again for the first time in years. Things are turning from grey into colour. I’ll let you know how the weather is down south. Afterwards, I’m going to a music shop with someone who wants to buy a guitar.’

Along with masseurs, drug dealers, accountants, personal trainers, language teachers, whores, manicurists, therapists, interior decorators and numerous other dependants and pseudo-servants, Dad had found a place at the table of the rich. He gave them music as others provided trousers, well-trimmed fingernails or a set of accounts. If wealth was to ‘drip down’, as people had been told it inevitably did, it would find its level through Rex.

Dad loved the way his new work was developing, apart from the best-paid job of all, which he liked to claim he’d taken only out of curiosity. He had started to help a bunch of rich ‘City boys’ who had a band called Boom that played at parties and friends’ weddings. Dad’s responsibility was to teach them to massacre great songs and instruct them in the Chuck Berry walks, Pete Townshend whirls and Keith Richards gestures they had previously confined to their bedrooms. The worst part was attending the gigs, the first of which had taken place in the country, in a tent, with the guests in evening dress and muddy patent-leather shoes. Nevertheless, Gabriel knew that however much Dad complained, he must have enjoyed the champagne, food, respect and other inevitable perks. Next time, Gabriel would go along. Dad thought he would enjoy it.

Dad was still puzzled by the fact that, although nobody wanted him to play for them, quite a few people, it was turning out, wanted to learn from him. Fortunately, what he enjoyed most of all — and he knew this straight away — was working with young people. For reasons he didn’t himself understand, he could give them the attention they couldn’t get from their parents. Today he was on the way to see a pupil recommended by Carlo, an anorexic ex-girlfriend of Carlo’s who was learning to play bass, though she could hardly lift it, and her father who was starting the guitar.