Hanif Kureishi: Gabriel's Gift

She was watching him. ‘Those clothes — to me give.’

‘What will you do with them?’

‘Wash.’

‘Hannah …’

‘No, you mama says — three days too long without washing clothes. Every day you change clothes — she has ordered.’

‘You know it takes me a few days to start feeling comfortable in anything. Thinking about new clothes makes me feel tired. And I haven’t got a girlfriend at the moment.’

‘Here!’

He put on a dressing gown and handed her his clothes. ‘Still, as Dad says, never wear anything that is actually stiff. Hannah, he’s a funny guy.’

‘He is?’

‘You should hear him. You’ll understand when you meet him some time.’

‘You mama say, he is fool.’

‘What? She’s a fool to say that.’

Scowling, Hannah fetched clean towels.

He locked the door, bathed quickly and went to his room to do more ‘homework’. When Hannah had checked on him and gone back to watch television, he crept into his mother’s room. He picked up the art books from the floor, and looked and thought, afraid he might cry.

He had no idea what time his mother would come home; he had given up waiting for the hiss and rustle of her clothing, the trail of her perfume, the swing, fall and tickle of her hair, and her arms around him, pulling him into her. Samuel Beckett, whose play he had seen at school, produced by the local college, had been on to something: waiting was hard, wearing work, probably the worst torture of all, turning people into both victims and murderers in their minds.

Since his father had left and she had got a job, Mum had changed in other ways. For a start she had acquired a new wardrobe.

Late at night, when she came in to kiss him, she would wear a big fur-collared overcoat, jewellery and high heels. She would be accompanied by a symphony of new smells: the night air of unfamiliar parts of the city — he believed he could smell the East End on her at times, as well as aftershave, alcohol and marijuana. She had even, late in the evening, brought men he hadn’t met into the house. Loud music would be played, bottles would be emptied, and there’d be dancing. In the morning she’d forget who he was and call him ‘Sugar’.

Now, back in his bedroom, lying in the dark, he heard the door open slowly. He was afraid; it had been too strange a day already.

‘Gabriel …’ whispered Hannah. ‘Are you in this world?’

‘At the moment.’

‘Something to tell.’

‘Mum’s going to be even later?’

‘Your dadda has ringed.’

‘Dad? It was him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t he want to speak to me?’

‘He offer a message to say he will pick you up tomorrow.’

‘He’s coming here?’

‘He taking you to him place.’

‘To his house for the night? Is it that Mum’s given permission?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say what has happened to him? Is he all right?’

‘No. No more enquiry. Pack your vest and underpant.’

It would be the first time he had stayed with his father. Gabriel had been hoping for this.

‘Sleep well,’ said Hannah. ‘Peace for me, tomorrow then.’

‘Get lost.’

‘What?’

‘An English expression: may you get lost in sweet dreams.’

‘I get. Thanks. Get lost to you and God bless you fresh cheeks all night.’

‘And all your fresh cheeks, Hannah.’

After school the next day Gabriel was waiting at the living-room window with Hannah behind him. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them his father was at the gate.

‘Yes!’ Gabriel shouted. ‘Yes, yes!’ He turned to Hannah. ‘See, he did come.’

‘No noise,’ said Hannah. She was watching Dad warily.

Even though he knew Gabriel’s mother was out at work, Dad didn’t come into the house but stood on the step with his back to the door, tapping his foot as Gabriel packed his drawing things and art books into his rucksack.

Dad was unshaven, wore dark glasses and had his woollen hat pulled down. Gabriel remembered Mum saying to him, ‘Careful: people will take you for a burglar. A police record is the only recording you’re going to make!’

‘I’ll burgle your arse in a minute!’ he had replied, grabbing her.

On good days he would be affectionate, always touching, kissing and hugging. But Mum said he was clumsy, and didn’t know how to touch.

Under his hat Dad was balding; the hair he did have was pulled back by a rubber band he picked up off the street. The rest was straggly and frizzy. His jeans were ripped — ‘ventilation’ he called it — and he wore plimsolls, which gave him ‘uplift’. His idea of dressing up was to pull a fresh pair from a number of similar boxes he kept in the cellar.

‘Let’s get going,’ Dad said, hurrying Gabriel away from the house.

Hannah stood at the window, mouthing, ‘Get lost!’

Gabriel said, ‘I’ve been excited all day. Two houses instead of one. I’ll be like other kids now.’

Gabriel was thinking of children whose absent parent felt so guilty they became eternally indulgent, and couldn’t stop giving them presents.

‘It’s a kind of flat, not a house,’ said Dad.

To Gabriel’s surprise they didn’t go straight to Dad’s place, but to the V&A in South Kensington, walking around the old jars and pots in an agitated silence that Dad called ‘meditative’.

Gabriel was used to his father taking him to see the latest work — the strangest stuff — by young artists working in squats, lofts and abandoned garages. Gabriel had looked at heads made of blood, hair and old skin; he had seen dissected animals, and strange photographs of body-parts. The only canvas he saw was Tracy Emin’s tent. Gabriel had learned that anything could be art. His father had no shame about knocking on the door of young artists he admired, and going in for ‘a chat’, since he knew they had been keen to talk about their work. Today, however, he wasn’t feeling ‘inquisitive’.

Gabriel had started to draw seriously two years before, when his father hardly worked and was at home much of the time. There were no artists in the family, but perhaps Gabriel had turned to art and making films because it wasn’t something Dad had ever thought of doing.

Unlike most musicians, Dad could read music as well as play several instruments pretty well. The house had been full of guitars; Dad also used to have a saxophone, a piano and a drum kit. At one time, in a garage near by, he had started to build his own harpsichord.

From the age of fourteen, Dad had played in many longhaired, short-haired and now, mostly, bald bands. He could play in any style, and sing in only one. Gabriel’s mother called him Johnny-about-to-be-famous. Dad was smart enough to know that by his age you had either become successful, rich and pursued by lawyers, stalkers and the press, as some of his former friends had been, or you found something else to do. ‘Something else’, of course, was an admission of failure; ‘something else’ was the end.

Worse than this, according to Mum, was to play pool in the pub every day with other ‘superannuated long-hairs in dirty jeans’, saying how the latest ‘beep-beep’ music wasn’t a patch on Jimi’s or Eric’s. This group of has-beens, who, as Gabriel once quipped, could hardly manage ‘joined-up talking’, only left the pub to attend AA meetings. Mum, who remembered being at the centre of the rock scene, wouldn’t have these bums in the house. At night Dad went to his mates’ houses to drink, jam and smoke dope.

At least Dad had never stopped loving music. It was just that he didn’t get paid for it.

He still played live with these friends, in pubs or at parties and weddings, where no one listened and middle-aged people danced without moving their bodies. Not long ago they had been invited to play in a hotel while the guests had supper. It was a pretentious place but seventies music had been requested. Gabriel had gone along to help set up, as most of the band were in such bad shape they could barely lift their instruments.