Zadie Smith: NW

— Were we too old? Were you lonely?

— Mum, please.

— I only mean you’d have a better understanding of human nature. Now, any news? On that front?

— On what front?

— On the grandma front. On the ticking clock front.

— Still ticking.

— Ah, well. Don’t worry too much, love. It’ll happen when it happens. Now is Michael there? Can I speak with him?

• • •

Between Pauline and Michel there exists nothing but mistrust and misunderstanding except in this blessed alignment, once rare, now more frequent, in which Leah has been an idiot and this fact forms a coalition between natural enemies. Pauline excited and pink and sweary. Michel exercising his little store of hard-won colloquialisms, treasure of any migrant: at the end of the day, know what I mean, and if that wasn’t enough, and I says to him, and I was like, that’s a good one, I’ll have to remember that one.

— Unbelievable. Wish I’d been there, Pauline, let me tell you. I wish I had been there.

To avoid listening to this conversation Leah steps into the garden. Ned from upstairs is in her hammock, which is communal and so not her hammock. Ned partaking of the herb under the apple tree. Lion hair graying now, gathered in an ignoble elastic band. An ancient Leica rests on his stomach, awaiting the sunset over NW, for the sunsets in this part of the world are strangely vivid. Leah walks up to the tree and makes the victory sign.

— Buy your own.

— Quit.

— Evidently.

Ned places a smoke between her splayed fingers. She takes it in hard, harsh against the throat.

— Pace yourself. From Afghanistan. Psychotropic!

— I’m a big girl.

— Six twenty-three today. It’s getting longer and longer.

— Until it gets shorter.

— Whoah.

Almost anything Leah says to Ned, no matter how factual or obvious, he finds philosophy in it. A serious smoker, time congeals around him. Simple things take on a stretched-out significance. It seems to Leah that he has been twenty-eight since they met, ten years ago.

— Hey, did your visitor return?

— Nope.

It goes against the grain of Ned’s optimistic nature. Leah watches him fail to find a story that will fit.

— On time. Real beauty.

Leah looks up. The sky has gone pink. The Heathrow flight paths streak white against it. In the kitchen, Michel is enjoying himself.

— That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that one. Jesus Christ himself!

The young Sikh is bored. His turban leaks sweat. He looks down at his father’s counter where a pocketful of change is trying to add up to ten Rothmans. A cheap fan whirrs pointlessly. Leah is also bored, watching Michel squeeze pastries that will never please him, that will never be as good as they were in France. This is because they are made in the back of a sweetshop, off Willesden Lane. Real croissants may be purchased from the organic market, on a Sunday, in the playground of Leah’s old school. Today is Tuesday. From her new neighbours Leah has learned that Quinton Primary is a good enough place to buy a croissant but not a good enough place to send your children. Olive hoovers up the crumbs from the sweetshop floor. Olive is somewhat French, like Michel. Her grandfather was a champion in Paris. Unlike Michel she is not fussy about croissant. Orange and white, with silky Restoration ears. Ridiculous, adored.

— and need to see a proper doctor. A clinic. We keep trying. And nothing. You’re thirty-five this year.

Said Frenchly: nussing. Once they were the same age. Now Leah is aging in dog years. Her thirty-five is seven times his, and seven times more important, so important he has to keep reminding her of the numbers, in case she forgets.

— We can’t afford clinics. What clinic?

The small figure at the counter turns. She smiles at Leah first before anything else — out of the instinct that pairs recognition with happiness — and then a moment later, remembering, bites her lip and puts her hand to the door, making the little bell ring.

— That’s her. That was her. Buying the fags.

Leah expects a clean escape. Shar is out of luck. They both are. An elderly woman of dimension heads in as Shar attempts to leave. They do the awkward doorway dance. Michel is quick and bold and can’t be stopped.

— Thief! You’re a thief! Where’s our money?

Leah grips the finger that’s pointing and pulls it down. Each red freckle has flared and a flush is working up her neck, flooding her face. Shar stops dancing. Shoulder-charges the old dear out the way. Runs.

Leah believes in objectivity in the bedroom:

Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been times when the woman has feared that she loves the man more than he loves her. He has always denied this. He can’t deny that he is more beautiful. It is easier for him to be beautiful. His skin is very dark and ages more slowly. He has good West African bone structure. Here is a man lying across a bed, naked. Brigitte Bardot in Contempt lay on a bed, naked. If only the man were like Brigitte Bardot, who never had children, preferring animals. Then again, she became inflexible in other areas. The woman tries to talk to the man who is her husband about the desperate girl who came to the door. What does it means to say the girl lied? Is it a lie to say she was desperate? She was desperate enough to come to the door. The husband can’t understand the woman’s preoccupation. Of course, he is missing a vital piece of information. There is no way for him to follow the submerged, feminine logic. He can only try to listen as she speaks. I just want to know if I did the right thing, says the woman, I just can’t work out if I

But here the man stops her to say

— the plug for the thing on your side? Mine’s gone. But there’s nothing to do. It’s the usual. A crackhead. A thief. It’s not so interesting. Come here, and

When they met, the man and the woman, the physical attraction was immediate and overwhelming. This is still the case. Because of this unusual, acute attraction, their chronology is peculiar. The physical came first, always.

Before he spoke to her he had already washed her hair, twice.

They had sex before either knew the other’s surname.

They had anal sex before they had vaginal sex.

They had dozens of sexual partners before they married each other. Dance floor romances, Ibiza flings. The nineties, ecstatic decade! They were married though they needn’t have married, and though both had sworn they never would be. It is hard to explain — in that game of musical chairs — why they should have stopped, finally, at each other. Kindness, as a quality, had something to do with it. Many things were easy to find on those dance floors, but kindness was rare. Her husband was kinder than any man Leah Hanwell had ever known, aside from her father. And then of course they had been surprised by their own conventionality. The marriage pleased Pauline. It calmed the anxieties of Michel’s family. It was pleasing to please their families. Beyond this, the proper names “wife” and “husband” had a power neither party had expected. If it was voodoo, they were grateful for it. It allowed them to stop dancing round chairs without ever admitting they were tired of it.

Things moved quickly.

They had one pregnancy before they married, two months into their relationship, which they terminated.

They were married before they were friends, which is another way of saying:

Their marriage was the occasion of their friendship.

They were married before they noticed many small differences in background, aspiration, education, ambition. There is a difference between the ambitions of the poor of the city and the poor of the country, for example.