Zadie Smith - NW

89. Time slows down

A Polish waitress moved discreetly round the table, seeking the vegetarians. Frank spoke, a lot, and indiscriminately, lurching from topic to topic. Where she had once seen only obnoxious entitlement Natalie now saw anxiety running straight and true beneath everything. Was it possible she made him nervous? Yet all she was doing was sitting here quietly, looking at her plate. “Your hair’s different. Real? That your butter? Have you seen James Percy? Tenant, now. On the first try. You look good, Blake. You look great. Honestly, I thought you’d be gone by the time I got here. What have you been doing for a year? Here’s my confession through a mouthful of bread: I’ve been skiing. Listen, I also fitted in the law conversion. I’m not totally the waste of space you think I am.” “I don’t think you’re a waste of space.” “Yes, you do. No, I’ll have the beef, please. But what’s up with you?” Natalie Blake had not been skiing. She’d been working in a shoe shop in Brent Cross shopping center, saving money, living with her parents in Caldwell, and dreaming of winning the Mansfield scholarship, which had actually—

An apologetic Dr. Singh materialized, displacing the turbaned worthy of Natalie’s imagination with a petite shaven-headed woman in her thirties, a purple sink blouse peeping out from between the folds of her gown. She sat down. The Judge finished. The applause sounded like braying.

90. Difficulties with context

Natalie Blake turned from flirting with Francesco De Angelis to listing all her academic achievements to Dr. Singh. Dr. Singh looked tired. She poured some water into Natalie’s glass: “And what do you do for fun?” Frank leaned over: “No time for fun — sista’s a slave to the wage.” Surely meant as a joke, if a cack-handed one, and Natalie tried to laugh, but saw how Polly blushed and Jonathan looked down at the table. Frank tried to rescue himself by making a wider, sociological point. “Of course, we’re an endangered species around here.” He looked out across the room with one hand to his brow. “Wait: there’s another one over there. That’s about six of us all told. Numbers are low.” He was drunk, and making a fool of himself. She felt for him deeply. That “us” sounded strange in his mouth — unnatural. He didn’t even know how to be the thing he was. Why would he? She was so busy congratulating herself on being able to empathize with and correctly analyze the curious plight of Francesco De Angelis that it took her a moment to realize Dr. Singh was frowning at both of them.

“We have a very effective diversity scheme here,” said Dr. Singh primly and turned to speak to the blonde girl on her left.

91. Wednesday 12:45 p.m.: Advocacy

Four students and an instructor took their places at the top of the classroom. Appellant and respondent were given Happy Family names: Mr. Fortune the Money Launderer. Mr. Torch the Arsonist. At this point Natalie Blake was forced to leave the room and seek out the toilets, to deal with her hair. The weather was unseasonably warm, she had not planned for it. Sweat leaked from the roots of her weave, fuzzing it up, and the more she thought about this the more it happened. Ambitious though she was, she was still an NW girl at heart, and could not ignore the coming crisis. She hurried down the hall. In the toilets she filled the sink with cold water, held her hair back and put her face in it. By the time she returned the only free seat was next to Francesco De Angelis. Had he kept it for her? The invention of love, part three. As she sat down, she felt his hand on her knee. Above the table he passed her a pencil.

“Sorry about the other night, Blake. Sometimes I’m an idiot. Often.”

This was a phenomenon previously unknown to Natalie Blake: a man spontaneously recognizing an error and apologizing for it. Much later in their lives it occurred to Natalie Blake that her husband’s candor might be only another consequence of his unusual privilege. But this afternoon she was simply disarmed by it, and grateful.

“Best be quick, you’ve missed a load.” He began whispering the Agreed Facts in her ear, over-confidently and with enough bluff and extraneous commentary that she had to edit him in real time as she scribbled the information down, making bullet points of the grounds for appeal. “And now here comes the Junior Counsel. That’s it — you’re up to date.” The Junior Counsel rose. Natalie turned to look at Frank in profile. He was really the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Broad, imposing. His eyes a shade lighter than his skin. She turned back to examine the Junior Counsel. He looked pre-pubescent. His presentation was awkward; he barely moved his eyes from a thick sheaf of A4 paper and twice called the female instructor “Your Lordship.”

92. Post Prandial

“Where are we? Why am I here?”

“Marylebone. London doesn’t begin and end on the Kilburn High Road.”

“I’ve got my room in the Inn.”

“Mary’s argument.”

“Frank, take me back. I don’t know where I am.”

“Good to be uncertain sometimes.”

“We’ve got moot in the morning. Mate, that food was so bad . And too much wine. You go home, too.”

“I am home. I live just here.”

“No one lives here.”

“O ye of little faith. It’s my grandmother’s. Why don’t you just try to enjoy yourself for once?”

93. Simpatica

The only thing in the fridge was a large pink box from Fortnum & Mason. Inside were four rows of macaroons, in tasteful pastel shades. Natalie Blake brought these over to where Frank sat, shipwrecked on the kitchen “island.” White space in all directions. He took the box from her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Blake, try to relax.”

“Can’t relax in a yard like this.”

“Inverted snobbery.”

“I’m so hungry. That food was nasty. Feed me.”

“Afterward.”

He carried her upstairs, past paintings and lithographs, family photographs and a fainting couch in the hall. They went into a little attic room at the very top of the flat. The bed sat right under the eaves; she kept knocking her elbow against a bookshelf. Law tomes, Tolkien, a lot of 80’s horror paperbacks, memoirs of businessmen and politicians. She spotted a solitary friend, The Fire Next Time.

“You read this?”

“I think he knew my grandmother in Paris.”

“It’s a good book.”

“I’ll believe you, Junior Counsel.”

94. The pleasures of naming

Perhaps sex isn’t of the body at all. Perhaps it is a function of language. The gestures themselves are limited — there are only so many places for so many things to go — and Rodney was in no way deficient technically. He was silent. Whereas all Frank’s silly, uncontrolled, unselfconscious, embarrassing storytelling found its purpose here, in a bedroom.

95. Post-coital

“He was from Trinidad, he lived in South London, he worked for the trains. She says ‘driver’ for effect — not true. A guard. Later he worked in an office somewhere. She met him in a park. I never knew him. Harris. Really I should be ‘Frank Harris.’ He’s dead. That’s it.”

Even naked he blustered. Natalie Blake maneuvered until she was on top and looked into his eyes. Boyish expressions of vulnerability, pride and fear were all still perfectly visible in the adult face. It was of course these qualities that compelled her. “Back to Milan pregnant with me. It was the Seventies. Then Puglia. Then England for school. It’s not a problem, it was a great way to grow up. I loved my school.” An only child. A storied family, rich though not as rich as they once were. “Once upon a time every decent family in Italy had a De Angelis gas oven…” No-one had known what to do with his hair. No spoken English. Dangerously pretty. Eight years old.