Hanif Kureishi - Midnight All Day

It was Aurelia’s husband who let her in and fetched her a glass of champagne, while Marcia looked around. The party was being held on the ground floor of the house, and Marcia recognised several writers. The other guests seemed to be critics, academics, psychoanalysts and publishers.

The effort of getting there had made her tense. She drank two glasses of champagne quickly and attached herself to Aurelia’s husband, the only person, apart from Aurelia, she knew.

‘Do you want to be introduced as a teacher, or as a writer?’ he said. ‘Or neither?’

‘Neither, at the moment.’ She took his arm. ‘Because I am neither one nor the other.’

‘Keeping your options open, eh?’ he said.

He introduced her to several people, and they talked as a group. The main topic was the royal family, a subject she was surprised to hear intellectuals taking an interest in. It was like being at the school.

She liked Aurelia’s husband, who nodded and smiled occasionally; she liked being afraid of him. He understood other people and what their wishes were. Nothing would shock him.

He was a little shocked later on, in the conservatory, when she reached up to kiss him. She was saying, ‘Please, please, only this …’ when, across the room, she saw the headmaster of her school, and his wife, talking to a female writer.

Aurelia’s husband gently detached her.

‘I apologise‚’ she said.

‘Accepted. I’m flattered.’

‘Hallo, Marcia‚’ said the headmaster. ‘I hear you’ve been very helpful to Aurelia.’

She didn’t like the headmaster seeing her drunk and embarrassed.

‘Yes‚’ she said.

‘Aurelia’s going to come to the school and see what we do. She’s going to talk to the older pupils.’ He lowered his mouth to her ear. ‘She has given me a complete set of her books. Signed.’

She wanted to say, ‘They’re all signed, you stupid cunt.’

She left the house and walked a little. Then she went back and traversed the party. People were leaving. Others were talking intensely. Nobody paid her any attention.

*

Sandor was lying on his bed with his hand over his eyes. She sat beside him.

‘I’ve come to say I won’t be coming so often now. Not that I’ve ever really come often, except recently. But … it will be even less.’

He nodded. He was watching her. Sometimes he took in what she said.

She went on, ‘The reason, if you want to know the reason —’

‘Why not?’ he said. He sat up. ‘I’d get you something … but, I’m so ashamed, there’s nothing here.’

‘There’s never anything here.’

‘I’ll take you out for a drink.’

‘I’ve had enough to drink.’ She said, ‘Sandor, this is hateful. There’s a phrase that kept coming into my mind at the party. I came to tell it to you. Sucking stones. That’s it. We look to the old things and to the old places, for sustenance. That’s where we found it before. Even when there’s nothing there we go on. But we have to find new things, otherwise we are sucking stones. To me, this’ — she indicated the room — ‘is arid, impoverished, dead.’

His eyes followed her gesture around the room as she condemned it.

‘But I’m trying‚’ he said. ‘Things are going to look up, I know they are.’

She kissed him. ‘Bye. See you.’

She cried in the car. It wasn’t his fault. She’d go back another day.

She was late home. Her husband was asleep in his girlfriend’s arms, his hand on her stomach. On the floor was an empty bottle of wine and dirty plates; the TV was loud.

She carried the record from the deck, scratched it with her fingernail, and replaced it in its cover. She roused the couple, thanked them, pushed the record under her husband’s arm, and got them out.

She started up the stairs but stopped halfway, took another step, and went down again. She returned to the living room and put on her overcoat. She went out onto the small concrete patio behind the house. It was dark and silent. The cold shocked her into wakefulness. She removed her coat. She wanted the cold to punish her.

Early in the morning, during the summer holidays, she sometimes danced out here, with Alec watching her, to parts of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

Now she put the kitchen light on and laid a square of bricks. She went back into the house and collected her files. She carried them outside and opened them. She burned her stories; she burned the play, and the first few chapters of the novel. There was a lot of it and it made a nice fire. It took a long time. She was shivering and stank of smoke and ash. She swept up. She ran a bath and lay in it until the water was tepid.

Alec had got into her bed and was asleep. She put her notebook on the bedside table. She would keep it with her, using it as a journal. But otherwise she would stop writing for a while; at least six months, to begin with. She was clear that this wasn’t masochism or a suicide. Perhaps her dream of writing had been a kind of possession, or addiction. She was aware that you could get addicted to the good things, too. She was making a space. It was an important emptiness, one she would not fill with other intoxications. She might, she knew, turn into her mother, sucking stones at the TV night after night, terrified by excitement.

After a time there might be new things.

Morgan’s lover’s husband held out his hand.

‘Hallo, at last‚’ he said. ‘I enjoyed watching you standing across the road. I was delighted when, after some consideration, you made up your mind to speak with me. Will you sit down?’

‘Morgan‚’ said Morgan.

‘Eric.’

Morgan nodded, dropped his car keys on the table and sat down on the edge of a chair.

The two men looked at one another.

Eric said, ‘Are you drinking?’

‘In a while — maybe.’

Eric called for another bottle. There were two already on the table.

‘You don’t mind if I do?’

‘Feel free.’

‘I do now.’

Eric finished his bottle and replaced it on the table with his fingers around the neck. Morgan saw Eric’s thin gold wedding ring. Caroline would always drop hers in a dish on the table in Morgan’s hall, and replace it when she left.

Eric had said on the phone, ‘Is that Morgan?’

‘Yes‚’ Morgan replied. ‘Who —’

The voice went on, ‘Are you Caroline’s boyfriend?’

‘But who is this asking?’ said Morgan. ‘Who are you?’

‘The man she lives with. Eric. Her husband. Okay?’

‘Right. I see.’

‘Good. You see.’

Eric had said ‘please’ on the phone. ‘Please meet me. Please.’

‘Why?’ Morgan had said. ‘Why should I?’

‘There are some things I need to know.’

Eric named a café and the time. It was later that day. He would be there. He would wait.

Morgan rang Caroline. She was in meetings, as Eric must have known. Morgan deliberated all day but it wasn’t until the last moment, pacing up and down his front room when he was already late, that he walked out of the house, got in his car and stood across the road from the café.

Although Caroline had described Eric’s parents, his inarticulate furies, the way his head hung when he felt low and even, as Morgan laughed, the way he scratched his backside, Eric had been a shadow man, an unfocused dark figure that had lain across their life since they had met. And while Morgan knew things about him that he didn’t need to know, he had little idea of what Eric knew of him. He had yet to find out what Caroline might have recently told him. The last few days had been the craziest of Morgan’s life.

The waitress brought Eric a beer. Morgan was about to order one for himself but changed his mind and asked for water.