Hanif Kureishi: Gabriel's Gift

A few days later, Gabriel and Zak took the completed portrait to Speedy’s apartment, where Hannah greeted them at the door.

‘How are you doing here, Hannah?’ Gabriel asked her.

‘Fridge always full. Mr Speedy good to me,’ she said. ‘He sending me to learn English lessons. But dog is dirty.’

‘That’s the right way round,’ said Gabriel.

Speedy was waiting in another room. Gabriel had flung a sheet over the picture. He and Zak put it on an easel and Hannah was appointed to pull the sheet down. This was the moment.

‘OΚ, Speedy!’ called Gabriel. As Speedy hurried out, looking around wildly, Gabriel cried, ‘Go — Hannah!’

‘Yaaa!’ she cried.

There it was.

The real Speedy had his hands over his face; he was trembling and giggling like a girl about to receive her exam results. He put his hands down, went quiet and looked at the picture for a long time. Then he walked round it, as if expecting to see something on the back. They all waited for him to speak.

At last he said, ‘But my legs aren’t quite touching the floor.’

‘No,’ said Gabriel. ‘But … they don’t … they’re not always in direct contact with the earth.’

‘No … but you could have —’

‘Could have what? Made them longer? The thing is, you seem to fly above it all,’ said Gabriel. ‘To me, you skim, right?’

‘Yeah. Right. I am a bit of a skimmer, now you mention it.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Perceptive.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you, Gabriel. Hannah — champers!’

‘Wha?’

Gabriel sighed.

They drank champagne and shook hands.

The portrait would be framed and taken to the restaurant the next day.

To celebrate, Speedy would hold a dinner party for Gabriel. ‘Should I invite your parents?’ he asked.

‘You should,’ Gabriel answered. ‘But let’s try and find a date when they’re doing something else.’

Speedy was laughing. ‘You are foresighted,’ he said. ‘You’ll go far.’

A few months later the family moved to a new house, not far away. Dad was doing well and Mum was working for Speedy, but it was still only a cottage with a kitchen extension, and a room with a big window where Dad could receive his pupils. The river was near, just across the motorway, and the back of the house overlooked a park. Gabriel had a bigger bedroom than before, with Lester’s framed picture — the original: the copies he had gladly destroyed — above the fireplace.

Christine and Rex argued over curtains and wall colours. They had thrown out most of their old furniture and bickered and disputed up and down the Golbourne Road, looking for better old furniture.

Dad often relapsed, falling back into the familiar abyss of paranoia, anger and despair — his ‘bunker’ — if anything painful occurred. But he couldn’t sit in it for long, as he had to teach. Even if he found himself inexplicably hating some of his students, working always changed his mood. He said it had been years since anyone had asked him the sort of questions his students did. Every day he had to think hard, which he found a pleasure.

Mum and Dad were in a hurry now, relatively; there were places they had to be. Dad travelled to colleges and theatres around the country, giving ‘workshops’ and watching how people learned, even as he taught. He kept saying he wanted to write a manual called How to Listen — or What Your Ears Are Good For — for which he made notes constantly. Neither Gabriel nor Mum was convinced that Dad would ever complete this tome, but they wouldn’t bet against it either.

At home the phone rang often; Dad’s pupils came to the house, mostly after school and at weekends. Dad talked continuously about his students and worried over their progress; however, it was Mum who made him think about where he wanted to take his pupils, musically. He couldn’t ‘improvise’ for ever. A little harshly, she also advised him not to play his own compositions — ‘and here’s an example from my own work’ — to his guitar students. Not that he gave up writing music: he was planning to produce his opera with students, when he had time to finish it. He was, at the moment, thinking about the soundtrack to Gabriel’s film.

Mum and Dad were both working but went out more than they ever had. At first Jake gave them tickets, as he was invited everywhere but was too busy to go. Mum loved dressing up and, besides Jake’s invitations, persuaded Dad to go to the theatres and galleries, concerts, exhibitions and restaurants recommended in the newspapers. If Dad was busy, she took Gabriel.

Mum and Dad argued, but they seemed to be ‘for’ one another in a way they had never been before. The two of them were together in a restaurant when Dad got down on one knee. Mum thought he’d dropped a dry-cleaning ticket, but he was proposing. When she was able to stop laughing, she agreed to marry him.

A few weeks later, on the way to the registry office with Gabriel in his best clothes, she kept saying, ‘But I’m not sure, I’m not sure.’

‘Nor am I,’ said Dad.

‘We’ll never get there without killing one another!’ said Mum.

‘Shut up both of you.’ said Gabriel. ‘You deserve one another.’

The wedding was attended by friends, relatives and Hannah, with a party thrown by Speedy in a room at Splitz. Everyone who mattered was there, apart from Archie, who came in spirit. Zak was amazed and furious with envy. There weren’t many kids who got to attend their parents’ wedding. Speedy had set up some instruments on a dais, and Dad and his friends played tunes from the old days, everyone dancing until the morning.

When the summer came, Gabriel found himself behind a camera for the first time. He and Zak were about to start shooting the movie’s first scene, set in the local market. Ramona was weeping with fear in the clothes Mum had chosen for her, including a pair of high-heeled strappy sandals. Hannah was an extra, shopping in the background and smiling at the camera, as if people back home could see her through it. Carlo was doing the sound, and a couple of Dad’s other pupils were helping with the lights and equipment. Gabriel would edit the film at Jake’s house, on his equipment, with Jake overseeing everything.

At last Gabriel looked through the camera and saw the first scene as he had imagined it. He had rehearsed; the light was ideal and everything was in place.

Archie was calm within, steady and encouraging.

This was the only kind of magic Gabriel wanted, a shared dream, turning stories into pictures. Soon the images would be on film; not long afterwards, others would be able to see what he had been carrying in his mind, these past few months, and he wouldn’t be alone any more.

He checked that everyone around him was ready and raised his arm.

‘Turn over!’ he said. ‘Turn over! And — action!’

Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels (including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and most recently Something to Tell You ), story collections ( Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, The Body ), plays (including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me ), and screenplays (including My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic and Venus ). Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at his Heart .