Zadie Smith - NW

At RSN Associates the law burst from broken box files, it lined the hallways, bathroom and kitchen. This chaos was unavoidable, but it was also to some extent an aesthetic, slightly exaggerated by the tenants, and intended to signify selflessness, sincerity. Natalie saw how her clients found the chaos comforting, just as the fake Queen Anne sofas and painted foxhounds of Middle Temple reassured another type of client. If you worked here it could only be for the love of the law. Only real do-gooders could possibly be this poor. Clients were directed to Jimmy’s Suit Warehouse in Cricklewood for court dates. Wins were celebrated in-house, with cheap plonk, pita bread and hummus. When an RSN solicitor came to see you in your cell, they arrived by bus.

128. “On the front line”

Now and then, in court or in police stations, Natalie bumped into corporate solicitors she knew from university. Sometimes she spoke with them on the phone. They usually made a show of over-praising her legal ethics, strong moral character and indifference to money. Sometimes they finished with a back-handed compliment, implying that the streets where Natalie had been raised, and now returned to work, were, in their minds, a hopeless sort of place, analogous to a war zone.

129. Return

The commute was “killing” her. Sometimes a simple choice of vocabulary can gain traction in the world. “Killing” became the premise for a return to NW. “And what about my commute?” protested Frank De Angelis. “Jubilee line,” said his wife Natalie Blake, “Kilburn to Canary Wharf.” Carefully she drew up a contract, negotiated a mortgage, split the deposit in half. All for a Kilburn flat that her husband could have bought outright without blinking. When the deal went through Natalie bought a bottle of cava to celebrate. He was still at work at six when she picked up the keys, and still there at eight — and then the inevitable nine-forty-five phone call: “Sorry — all nighter. Go on without me, if you want.” Motto of a marriage. Natalie Blake called Leah Hanwell: “Want to see me carry myself over the threshold?”

130. Re-entry

Leah turned the key in the stiff lock. Natalie crept in behind her, into adult life. Notable for its silence and privacy. The electricity was still unconnected. A clear moon lit the bare white walls. Natalie was ashamed to find herself momentarily disappointed: after camping in Frank’s place all these months, this looked small. Leah did a circuit of the lounge and whistled. She was working from an older scale of measurement: twice the size of a Caldwell double.

“What’s that out there?”

“Downstairs’ roof. It’s not a balcony, the agent said you can’t—”

Leah went through the sash windows and on to the ivy-covered ledge. Natalie followed. They smoked a joint. In the driveway below a fat fox sat brazen as a cat, looking up at them.

“Your ivy,” said Leah, touching it, “your brick, your window, your wall, your light-bulb, your gutter pipe.”

“I share it with the bank.”

“Still. That fox is with child.”

Natalie thumbed the cork out. It bounced off the wall and dropped away into the dark. She took a messy swig. Leah leaned forward and wiped her friend’s chin: “Cava socialist.” Now watch Natalie recalibrate the conversation. It is a feminine art. She places herself halfway up a slope that has at its peak Frank’s friends, all those single young men with their incomprehensible Christmas bonuses. She found it pleasing to describe this world to Leah, who knew almost nothing of it. Chelsea, Earls Court, West Hampstead. Lofts and mansion flats unsullied by children or women, empty of furniture, fringed by ghettos.

“Correction: there’s always one big brown leather sofa, a huge fridge and a TV as big as this flat. And an enormous sound system. They’re not home till two a.m. ‘Entertaining clients.’ In strip clubs, usually. It all just sits empty. Five bedrooms. One bed.”

Lean flicked the end of a joint toward the fox: “Parasites.”

Natalie was suddenly stricken by something she thought of as “conscience.” “A lot of them are OK,” she said, quickly, “nice, I mean, individually. They’re funny. And they do work hard. Next time we have a dinner you should come.”

“Oh, Nat. Everybody’s nice. Everybody works hard. Everybody’s a friend of Frank’s. What’s that got to do with anything?”

131. Revisit

People were ill.

“You remember Mrs. Iqbal? Small woman, always a bit snooty with me. Breast cancer.”

People died.

“You must remember him, he lived in Locke. Tuesday he dropped dead. Ambulance took half an hour.”

People were shameful.

“Baby born two weeks ago, and they haven’t let me in yet. We don’t even know how many kids are in there. They don’t register them.”

People didn’t know they were born.

“Guess how much for eggs in that market. Organic. Guess!”

People were seen.

“I seen Pauline. Leah’s working for the council now. She always had such big ambitions for that child. Funny how things turn out. In a way you’ve done quite a bit better than her, really.”

People were unseen.

“He’s upstairs with Tommy. He spends all his time with him now. They only come out of that room to go and charm the ladies. Jayden and Tommy spend all their time and money charming the ladies. That’s all your brother thinks about. He needs to get himself a job, that’s what I keep telling him.”

People were not people but merely an effect of language. You could conjure them up and kill them in a sentence.

“Owen Cafferty.”

“Mum, I don’t remember him.”

“Owen Cafferty. Owen Cafferty! He did all the catering for church. Mustache. Owen Cafferty!”

“OK, vaguely, yes. Why?”

“Dead.”

Everything was the same in the flat, yet there was a new feeling of lack. A new awareness. And lo they saw their nakedness and were ashamed. On the table Marcia laid out a fan of credit cards. As Marcia talked her daughter through the chaotic history of each card Natalie made notes as best she could. She had been brought in for an emergency consultation. She did not really know why she was taking notes. The only useful thing would be to sign a large check. This she couldn’t do, in her present circumstance. She couldn’t bear to ask Frank. What difference did it make if she turned figures into words?

“I’ll tell you what I really need,” said Marcia, “I need Jayden to get up out of here and get married, so he can run his own household, and your sister’s little ones don’t have to be sleeping in the room with their mother. That’s what I need.”

“Oh, Mum… Jayden’s not going to ever get… Jayden’s not interested in women, he—”

“Please don’t start up that nonsense again, Keisha. Jayden’s the only one of you takes care of me at all. This is how we live. Cheryl can’t help anybody. She can’t hardly help herself. Number three on the way. Of course I love these kids. But this is how we’re living like, Keisha, to be truthful. Hand to mouth. This is it.”

People were living like this. Living like that. Living like this.

132. Domestic

“I can’t stand them living like that!” cried Natalie Blake.

“You’re making unnecessary drama,” said Frank.

133. E pluribus unum

Certainly exceptional to be taken back into the Middle Temple fold but Natalie Blake was in many ways an exceptional candidate, and several tenants at the set thought of her, informally, as their own protégé, despite having really only a glancing knowledge of her. Something about Natalie inspired patronage, as if by helping her you helped an unseen multitude.

134. Paranoia