Zadie Smith - NW

Behind here it’s nothing but bleedin’ foxes, says Hanwell, sadly.

It’s really an epidemic. That is, they were always there, in the same numbers as they are now, but now it is called an epidemic. A recent headline in The Standard , NORTHWEST FOX EPIDEMIC, and a photograph of a man kneeling in a garden surrounded by the corpses of foxes he’d shot. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Dozens and dozens! says Leah, and that’s how we live now, defending our own little patch, it didn’t used to be like that, but everything’s changed, hasn’t it, that’s what they say, everything’s changed. Colin Hanwell tries to listen. Really he isn’t very interested in foxes and what they might symbolize.

Well, I can see how they got that impression, says Hanwell.

What?

I say I can see how they would have got that idea, the way you carry on.

What?

If you tell me you’re happy, says Hanwell, you’re happy and there’s an end to it.

The talk turns to other matters. You never get your own pillowcase back from laundry. The really important things is that Chef Maureen accepts your frozen wheat-free lasagnas, that you might be allowed to eat these while others have their dietary requirements ignored and as a consequence shit blood and have convulsions and contract hiccups that never stop. Yes, concedes Leah, yes, Dad, perhaps. Perhaps shitting blood is worse than symbols and sadness and the global situation. You can’t speak to doctors like that, whispers Hanwell, you might be overheard, you never know when they’ll come by. You just have to pray that they do.

Leah begins to feel she is in control and that she might shape what remains of this meeting to her own satisfaction. She starts to make her father say things, directing him, moving his arms and manipulating his expressions, first innocently, and then with deliberation, so he says I love you, you know. And then: Love, you know I’ve always loved you. And: I love you don’t worry it’s nice here. And even: I can see a light. After a while he looks strange doing it and Leah feels ashamed and stops. And still he stays, and by doing so holds out the delicious possibility of madness, such a lovely indulgence. If she didn’t have this everyday life to go to with its admin and rent and husband and work she could go mad! Why not go mad!

And remember to lock the gate with the water pressure where the gas is hot in the oven of the plug to switch it off when you leave it using only red onions and a pinch of cinnamon then getting back before you need to use a minicab— without drinking, advises Hanwell.

She can’t make him come any closer. Yet his hand seems to be in her hand and his cheek is on hers and Leah kisses his hand and feels his tear in her ear because he was always such a sentimental old fool. She presses his hand between her hands. They are autumn dry. She can feel the pulpy bruise of the persistent wound, in the center of his hand, still not healed because at a certain age these things stop healing. It is purple and fills now with blood, scraped so lightly, so insignificantly, months and months ago, on the edge of the games table in the community room. The skin fell away. They rolled it back and taped it in place. But for all of that last year it stayed purple and full of blood.

Leah says, Dad! Don’t go!

Hanwell says, Do I have to go somewhere?

Michel says, Computer’s free!

A great hill straddles NW, rising in Hampstead, West Hampstead, Kilburn, Willesden, Brondesbury, Cricklewood. It is no stranger to the world of letters. The Woman in White walks up one side to meet the highwayman Jack Sheppard on the other. Sometimes Dickens himself comes this far west and north for a pint or to bury someone. Look, there, on the library carpet between Science Fiction and Local History: a knotted condom filled with sperm. Once this was all farm and field with country villas nodding at each other along the ridge of this hill. Train stations have replaced them, at half-mile intervals.

It’s a little more than a month since the girl came to the door — late May. The horse chestnuts look fine in their bushy fullness, though everyone knows they have blight. Leah is on one side of the Brondesbury ridge, climbing in the glare, unaware of who or what rises to meet her. She is so surprised she resorts to a reflex emotion: contempt. Cuts her eyes at the girl the way kids used to do at school. Coming so late and so close to Shar’s face it is a gesture more violent than intended. If Michel were here! Michel is not here. Leah attempts a last second side-step, hoping to pass by. A little hand grabs her wrist.

— OI. YOU.

Her head is uncovered. Thick black hair falls free everywhere. In between its cloaking folds, Leah spies a catastrophic purple yellow black eye. Water weeps out of it, tears or something else involuntary. Leah tries to speak but only stutters.

— What you want from me? What you want me to say? I robbed you? I’m an addict. I stole your money. All right? ALL RIGHT?

— Let me help, maybe I can… there are places that… that help.

Leah cringes at her own voice. How feeble it is! Like a child pleading.

— I aint got your money, yeah? I’ve got a problem. Do you understand me? I AINT GOT NOTHING FOR YOU. I don’t need you and your bredrin fuckin with me every fuckin day. Pointin, shoutin. I can’t take no more of it to be honest with you. What you want from me? Want me on my knees?

— No, I… Can I help you, somehow? Can I do something?

Shar releases, shrugs and turns, wobbles, almost falls. Her eyes roll up in her pretty head. Leah puts out a hand to steady her. Shar pushes it roughly aside.

— Take my number. Please. I’ll write it on this. I work with, I’m connected to, a lot of charities, through work, you know, that could maybe…

Leah pushes a crumpled envelope into Shar’s pocket. Shar puts her finger in Leah’s face.

— Can’t take no more. Can’t take it.

Leah watches her stumble over the peak and down.

On the 98, a woman sits opposite with a baby girl on her lap. She presents a pack of illustrated cards to the child for the purposes of stimulation. Elephant. Mouse. Teacup. Sun. Meadow, with moo cows. The child is particularly stimulated by the card with a human face. It is the only card for which she reaches out, giggling. Clever Lucia! Her fat fingers claw at it. Then she reaches up to her mother’s face with the same violence. No, Lucia! The child threatens tears. Some things are people, explains her mother, and some things are images and some things are soft and some things are hard. Leah looks out the window. The rain is relentless. The planes are back in the sky. Work is work. Time has ceased being uncanny. It is just time again. She has taken some literature from work, from the literature cupboard. Professional organizations offering professional help. This is “as much as you can do.” Now it is time for the addict “to make their own decisions.” Because “nobody can force anyone else to get the help they need.” Everyone says the same things. Everyone says the same things in the same way. Leah gets off at Willesden Lane and starts walking quickly but the bus pulls up beside her and stalls. She has the lower deck as an audience as she doubles up over a hedge outside of a church. Vomit that is mostly water, indistinguishable from the rain. This church of her childhood, in which she was a Saturday Brownie, has been converted into luxury apartments, each with its own section of jaunty stained-glass window. Outside, a gathering of sporty little cars parked where once there was a small graveyard. The bus lumbers off in the direction of the high road. She straightens up, wipes her mouth with her scarf. Walks briskly with one hand gripping an inadequate umbrella and rain trickling down her right sleeve. Number 37. She flicks through the leaflets quickly like a good girl at a post-box checking the postage is sound before pushing them through.