Zadie Smith - NW

Leah keeps her phone to her ear, smiles and nods, gives her address. She mimes a cup of tea. But Shar is looking at the apple blossom. She wipes tears from her face with the fabric of her grubby t-shirt. Her belly-button is a tight knot flush with her stomach, a button sewn in a divan. Leah recites her own phone number.

— Done.

She turns to the sideboard, picks up the kettle with her free hand, fumbling it because she expected it to be empty. A little water spills. She replaces the kettle on its stand, and remains where she is, her back to her guest. There is no natural place to sit or stand. In front of her, on the long windowsill that stretches the room, some of the things of her life — photos, knick-knacks, some of her father’s ashes, vases, plants, herbs. In the window’s reflection Shar is bringing her little feet up to the seat of her chair, holding her ankles. The emergency was less awkward, more natural than this. This is not the country for making a stranger tea. They smile at each other in the glass. There is goodwill. There is nothing to say.

— I’ll get cups.

Leah is naming all her actions. She opens the cupboard. It is full of cups; cups on cups on cups.

— Nice place.

Leah turns too quickly, makes irrelevant motions with her hands.

— Not ours — we rent — ours is just this — there’s two flats upstairs. Shared garden. It’s council, so…

Leah pours out the tea as Shar looks around. Bottom lip out, head nodding gently. Appreciative, like an estate agent. Now she comes to Leah. What’s to see? Wrinkled checked flannel shirt, raggedy jean shorts, freckled legs, bare feet — someone absurd, maybe, a slacker, a lady of leisure. Leah crosses her arms across her abdomen.

— Nice for council. Lot of bedrooms and that?

The lip stays low. It slurs her speech a little. Something is wrong with Shar’s face, Leah notices, and is embarrassed by noticing, and looks away.

— Two. The second’s a box. We sort of use it as…

Shar meanwhile burrows for something else entirely; she’s slower than Leah, but she’s there now, they’re in the same place. She points her finger in Leah’s face.

— Wait — you went Brayton ?

She bounces on her chair. Elated. But this must be wrong.

— I swear when you was on the phone I was thinking: I know you. You went Brayton!

Leah perches her backside on the counter and gives her dates. Shar is impatient with chronology. She wants to know if Leah remembers when the science wing flooded, the time Jake Fowler had his head placed in a vise. In relation to these coordinates, like moon landings and the deaths of presidents, they position their own times.

— Two years below you, innit. What’s your name again?

Leah struggles with the stiff lid of a biscuit tin.

— Leah. Hanwell.

— Leah. You went Brayton. Still see anyone?

Leah lists her names, with their potted biographies. Shar beats a rhythm on the table-top with her fingers.

— Have you been married long?

— Too long.

— Do you want me to call someone? Your husband?

— Nah… nah… he’s over there. Ain’t seen him in two years. Abusive. Violent. Had issues. Had a lot of problems, in his head and that. Broke my arm, broke my collarbone, broke my knee, broke my fuckin face. Tell you the truth—

The next is said in a light aside, with a little hiccupping laugh, and is incomprehensible.

— Used to rape me and everything… it was crazy. Oh well.

Shar slides off her chair and walks toward the back door. Looks out on the garden, the parched yellow lawn.

— I’m so sorry.

— Ain’t your fault! Is what it is.

The feeling of feeling absurd. Leah puts her hands in her pockets. The kettle clicks.

— Truthfully, Layer, I’d be lying if I said it’s been easy. It’s been hard. But. Got away, you know? I’m alive. Three kids! Youngest is seven. So, some good came, you get me?

Leah nods at the kettle.

— Got kids?

— No. A dog, Olive. She’s at my mate Nat’s house right now. Natalie Blake? Actually in school she was Keisha. Natalie De Angelis now. In my year. Used to have a big afro puff like—

Leah mimes an atomic mushroom behind her own head. Shar frowns.

— Yeah. Up herself. Coconut. Thought she was all that.

A look of blank contempt passes over Shar’s face. Leah talks into it.

— She’s got kids. Lives just over there, in the posh bit, on the park. She’s a lawyer now. Barrister. What’s the difference? Maybe there isn’t one. They’ve two kids. The kids love Olive, the dog’s called Olive.

She is just saying sentences, one after the other, they don’t stop.

— I’m pregnant, actually.

Shar leans against the glass of the door. Closes one eye, focusing on Leah’s stomach.

— Oh it’s early. Very. Actually I found out this morning.

Actually actually actually. Shar takes the revelation in her stride.

— Boy?

— No, I mean — I haven’t got that far.

Leah blushes, not having intended to speak of this delicate, unfinished thing.

— Does your mans know?

— I took the test this morning. Then you came.

— Pray for a girl. Boys are hell.

Shar has a dark look. She grins satanically. Around each tooth the gum is black. She walks back to Leah and presses her hands flat against Leah’s stomach.

— Let me feel. I can tell things. Don’t matter how early. Come here. Not gonna hurt you. It’s like a gift. My mum was the same way. Come here.

She reaches for Leah and pulls her forward. Leah lets her. Shar places her hands back where they were.

— Gonna be a girl, definite. Scorpio, too, proper trouble. A runner.

Leah laughs. She feels a heat rising between the girl’s sweaty hands and her own clammy stomach.

— Like an athlete?

— Nah… the kind who runs away. You’ll need one eye on her, all the time.

Shar’s hands drop, her face glazes over once more with boredom. She starts talking of things. All things are equal. Leah or tea or rape or bedroom or heart attack or school or who had a baby.

— That school…. it was rubbish but them people who went there…. quite a few people did all right, didn’t they? Like, Calvin — remember Calvin?

Leah pours out the tea, nodding fiercely. She does not remember Calvin.

— He’s got a gym on the Finchley Road.

Leah spins her spoon in her tea, a drink she never takes, especially in this weather. She has pressed the bag too hard. The leaves break their borders and swarm.

— Not running it— owns it. I go past there sometimes. Never thought little Calvin would get his shit together — he was always with Jermaine and Louie and Michael. Them lot was trouble… I don’t see none of them. Don’t need the drama. Still see Nathan Bogle. Used to see Tommy and James Haven but I aint seen them recent. Not for time.

Shar keeps talking. The kitchen slants and Leah steadies herself with a hand to the sideboard.

— Sorry, what?

Shar frowns, she speaks round the lit fag in her mouth.

— I said, can I have that tea?

Together they look like old friends on a winter’s night, holding their mugs with both hands. The door is open, every window is open. No air moves. Leah takes her shirt in hand and shakes it free of her skin. A vent opens, air scoots through. The sweat pooled beneath each breast leaves its shameful trace on the cotton.

— I used to know… I mean…

Leah presses on with this phony hesitation and looks deep into her mug, but Shar isn’t interested, she’s knocking on the glass of the door, speaking over her.

— Yeah you looked different in school, definitely. You’re better now innit. You was all ginger and bony. All long.