Zadie Smith - NW

— and just trying to help, but I’ll get no thanks for it. I can’t tell if you’re even listening to me. Anyway. It’s your life.

— What d’you want with a shrine anyway?

— What d’you mean by that, a shrine? Her Ladyship? Oh, I don’t bother myself about her. She’s perfectly harmless. It’s says Anglican on the door and it’s been Anglican for a thousand years. That’s good enough for me. People from the colonies, and the Russiany lot, they’re superstitious, and who can blame them? They’ve had a terrible time. Who am I to deprive a person of their comforts?

Pauline looks pointedly toward their old estate, full of people from the colonies and the Russiany lot. Today, as it has been almost all days since the sun began, the foghorn girl is out, locked in debate with whoever is on the end of her handless device. You disrespecting me? Don’t disrespect me! Whatever else is to be said of her, she is of unmistakable Irish descent. Short criminal forehead, widely set eyes. There is a special contempt Pauline reserves for the fallen members of her own tribe.

— Not even the virgin could help the likes of her. Well, hello Edward, dear!

— All right there Mrs. H!

— Oh, it’s good to see you, Ned. How are you love? You’re looking well, considering. Not still smoking the dope, I hope.

–’Fraid so, ’fraid so. I like the flavor.

— It’ll rob you of your ambition.

— I’ve only got the one ambition anyway.

— And what would that be?

— Marrying you, of course. Can’t rob me of that now can it?

— Oh go on with you.

Quite happy, really quite happy, and the sun thins out and purples and arranges itself in strips behind the aquamarine of the minaret and what breeze there is ripples the flag of St. George, on top of the old estate, hung from a satellite dish in preparation for the football. Maybe it doesn’t matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself. Moored to the shore she set out from, as almost all women were, once.

— Leah love, that’s your phone.

Look at that: the fence on the right side almost completely done for. The ivy from the estate invades the gaps and smothers anything Michel tries to grow, apart from the apple tree itself, which grows despite them all, unaided. She writes to the council, they don’t listen, Ned never writes, nor Gloria, they live communally but she is the only one who thinks communally and oh Christ that poor homeless worm livid in the sun. Like foreskin moving forward and back, forward and back, over itself. Nobody loves me everybody hates me because I’m a wriggly worm. But who is this

this voice

so quiet

and so violent, right in her ear, and she thinks she must have misheard, she thinks she must be going crazy, she thinks

— Excuse me?

— You hear me? Don’t be coming round this place.

— Excuse me? How did you get this number?

— That girl is my business. Don’t be coming round this place pushing shit through the door, you hear me? Watch for me. I know you. You come here again you best watch for me.

— Who is this?

— Fuckin dyke cunt.

The worm grinds its middle together, having nothing else. Flagstone to the left of it, flagstone to the right.

— and then in Poundland the very same box — same brand, mind — is only two forty-nine! But if you shop in these places you’re simply a fool to yourself, and that’s all there is to be said. Leah love? Leah? Leah? Who was that? On the phone? You feeling all right?

A wife’s honor must be defended. It is a primal thing, he explains, referencing the great apes in a documentary. As female ape defends baby ape so male ape protects his female. Michel is very happy in his anger, they are drawn together under its canopy. It is the nicest time they’ve had together in months. She sits at the kitchen table clutching herself while he walks up and down waving his arms in the air like a great ape. She is a good ape, too; she wants to contribute to the greater happiness of her ape family. It is this perfectly decent desire that makes her say:

— I think so. I think it was him. It’s hard to tell from a voice. Look, it’s almost twenty years since I knew him at all well. But I would say: yes. If you’re asking me for a hundred percent, then no, I can’t say it like that but my first thought was yes that’s him, that’s Nathan.

So little happens in this corner of NW. When there is a drama it’s natural enough that one should want to place oneself in the picture, right at the center. It sounded like him. It really did. She tells Michel. She tells Michel all of it bar one word.

On the way back from the chain supermarket where they shop, though it closed down the local grocer and pays slave wages, with new bags though they should take old bags, leaving with broccoli from Kenya and tomatoes from Chile and unfair coffee and sugary crap and the wrong newspaper.

They are not good people. They do not even have the integrity to be the sort of people who don’t worry about being good people. They worry all the time. They are stuck in the middle again. They buy always Pinot Grigio or Chardonnay because these are the only words they know that relate to wine. They are attending a dinner party and for this you need to bring a bottle of wine. This much they have learned. They do not purchase ethical things because they can’t afford them Michel claims and Leah says, no, it’s because you can’t be bothered. Privately she thinks: you want to be rich like them but you can’t be bothered with their morals, whereas I am more interested in their morals than their money, and this thought, this opposition, makes her feel good. Marriage as the art of invidious comparison. And shit that’s him in the phone box and if she had thought about it for more than a split second she would never have said:

— Shit that’s him in the phone box.

— That’s him?

— Yes, but — no, I don’t know. No. I thought. Doesn’t matter. Forget it.

— Leah, you just said it was him. Is it or isn’t it?

Very quickly Michel is out of earshot and over there, squaring up for another invidious comparison: his compact, well-proportioned dancer’s frame against a tall muscled threat, who turns, and turns out not to be Nathan, who is surely the other boy she saw with Shar, though maybe not. The cap, the hooded top, the low jeans, it’s a uniform — they look the same. From where Leah stands anyway it is still all dumb show, hand gestures and primal frowns, and of course some awful potential news story that explains everything except the misery and the particulars: one youth knifed another youth, on Kilburn High Road. They had names and ages and it’s terribly sad, an indictment of something or another and also not good for house prices. Leah cannot breathe for fear. She is running to catch up, Olive clattering along beside her, and while she runs she finds herself noticing something that should not matter: she looks older than both of them. The boy is a boy and Michel is a man but they look the same age.

— I don’t know what you’re chattin about bruv but you BEST NOT STEP TO ME.

— Michel — please. Leave it, please.

— Tell your mans to step back off me.

— Don’t call my house again, OK? Leave my wife alone! You understand me?

— What the fuck are you chattin’ about? You want some?

They bump chests like primates; Michel is knocked back in an ignoble stumble to the pavement, landing next to his ridiculous dog, who licks him in his ear. Now his opponent towers over him and draws his foot back, preparing for a penalty kick. Leah inserts herself between the two of them, stretching out her hands to separate them, an imploring woman in an ancient story.