Zadie Smith - NW

People spoke. People sang. And did those feet, in ancient times. Natalie was forced to come and go as each of her children kicked up a fuss. Finally the curtain opened and the coffin disappeared. Dusty Springfield. There are things you can only learn about people after they’re dead. As the congregation filed out, Leah stood in the doorway with her mother. She wore a terrible long black skirt and blouse that someone must have lent her. Natalie could hear well-meaning strangers burdening Leah with long, irrelevant memories. Story-telling. “Thank you for coming,” said Leah, mechanically, as each passed by. She looked very pale. No siblings. No cousins. Only Michel to help.

“Oh, Lee,” exclaimed Natalie Blake, when it was her turn, and wept and held her good friend Leah Hanwell very tightly. If only someone could have forced Natalie Blake to attend a funeral every day of her life!

176. Oblivion

The Cranley Estate, Camden. More N than NW. A skinny man who called himself “JJ” and looked not unlike her uncle Jeffrey. And an Iranian girl, with an equally unlikely moniker: “Honey.” They were in their early twenties, disasters. Natalie Blake assumed crack, but it could easily have been meth or something else again. Honey had one tooth missing. Their living room barely deserved the name. Nasty, filthy futon, TV on the whole time. The whole place stank of weed. They were sat on beanbags, barely conscious, watching Deal or No Deal. They did not appear nervous. JJ said: Chill here first for a bit. I just got in and I’m bushed. He did not indicate a chair. Ever accommodating, Natalie Blake found a spot on the floor between the two of them.

She tried to concentrate on the show, having never seen it before. Her phone kept beeping with texts from work. JJ had an elaborate conspiracy theory about the order of the boxes. The only thing to do was to accept the joint and let the weed take her. Quite soon she lost track of time. At some point the TV watching finished and JJ started playing a videogame: goblins and swords and elves talking nonsense. Natalie excused herself to go to the loo. She opened the wrong door, saw a leg, heard a cry. That’s Kelvin, said JJ, he’s crashing here right now. He works nights.

The toilet seat was see-through plexi with a goldfish print. The water out of the tap was brown. Head and Shoulders. Radox. Both empty.

Natalie wandered back in. JJ was busy speaking to the screen. Tell me where the friggin’ grain store is. An enigmatic peasant woman smiled back at him. Natalie tried to make conversation. Had he ever done anything like this before? A few times, he said, when there’s fuck all else to do. They’re usually mad ugly though and I kick them out before they get in the door. Oh, said Natalie. She waited. Nothing. Honey, bored, turned to her guest. What you do Keisha? You seem nice girl. I’m a hairdresser, said Natalie Blake. Oh! Listen, she does hair. That’s nice. I am from Iran. JJ made a face: Axis of Evil! Honey smacked him, but with affection. She stroked Natalie’s face. You believe in auras, Keisha?

More weed was rolled, and smoked. At some point Natalie remembered that Frank was also working late. She texted Anna and bribed her with time-and-a-half rate to stay till eleven and put the children to bed. JJ arrived at a castle where he was set a new list of tasks. Honey started wondering aloud about some MDMA powder she’d left in a gum wrapper somewhere. Natalie said: I don’t think this is going to really happen, is it? JJ said: Probably not, to be honest with you.

177. Envy

Leah wished Natalie Blake would speak at a charity auction for a young black women’s collective Leah had helped fund. She kept going on about it. But the hall they’d managed to rent for the occasion was south of the river.

“I don’t go south,” protested Natalie Blake.

“It’s a really good cause,” insisted Leah Hanwell.

Natalie Blake thanked Leah for her introduction and stood in front of the podium. She gave a speech about time management, identifying goals, working hard, respecting oneself and one’s partner, and the importance of a good education. “Anything purely based on physicality is doomed to failure,” she read. “To survive, your ambitions should be in the same direction.” One day she would probably find herself having to say something of this kind to Leah. Not right now, but some day. She would water it down, of course. Poor Leah.

In between the top of page two and the beginning of page three she must have been reading out loud and making sense, there must have appeared to be an unbroken continuity — no one in the audience was looking at her like she was crazy — yet she found her mind traveling to obscene tableaux. She wondered what Leah and Michel, who always seemed to have their hands on each other, did in the privacy of their bedroom. Orifices, positions, climaxes. “And it was by refusing to set myself artificial limits,” explained Natalie Blake to the collective of young black women, “that I was able to reach my full potential.”

178. Beehive

The lovely voice came through the speakers in the park café. Natalie Blake and her friend Leah Hanwell had long ago agreed that this voice sounded like London — especially its Northern and North Western zones — as if its owner were patron saint of their neighborhoods. Is a voice something you can own? Natalie’s daughter and many other children were bouncing up and down and dancing to the song as their parents discreetly nodded their heads. The sun was out. Unfortunately Leah Hanwell was habitually late and soon the song had finished and Naomi was screaming about something and Spike had woken up and Leah had missed a perfectly staged demonstration of the joy of life — of family life in particular. “She’s really depressed,” said Natalie to Frank as they waited. “She thinks I can’t see it. I see it. Completely stuck. Stasis. She can’t seem to dig herself out of this hole she’s in.” But as soon as she’d said it the possibility confronted her that this judgment had merely arisen from the song, was really only a final verse Natalie herself had added on the spur of the moment, and that by saying it out loud she had made herself ridiculous. Frank looked up from his paper and caught her face arrested in its state of calamity. “Leah and Michel are happy-as-Larry,” he said.

• • •

Some time later Natalie saw the singer interviewed on the television: “When I was growing up, I didn’t think I was anything special, I thought everybody could sing.” Her voice was the same miracle Natalie had once heard, through a pub window, in Camden. But the woman who did or didn’t own it had all but disappeared. Natalie stared at the knock-kneed girl-child, hardly there, almost nothing.

179. Aphorism

What a difficult thing a gift is for a woman! She’ll punish herself for receiving it.

180. All the mod cons

Charming Primrose Hill. After much negotiation on e-mail, a daytime assignation was agreed: three o’clock. The woman opened the front door and said Phew! Weave, dressing gown, heels, beautiful, unmistakeably African. Her main objective was curling an arm around Natalie Blake and getting her into the giant house before anyone saw. Sartorially, Natalie kept to the same theme: gold hoops, denim skirt, suede boots with tassels, the hair bobble with the black and white dice, and her work clothes in a rucksack on her back. Catching herself in a huge gilt mirror in the hall she found herself convincing. At this point she was determined. At least they were attractive. Natalie Blake still believed that attraction was what mattered.

Farrow and Ball Utopia Green (matte) in the hall. African wall sculpture. Modern minimalist pieces. A gold record framed. A picture of Marley framed. Front page of a newspaper framed. A sort of horrible “good taste” everywhere. Natalie Blake looked up and saw the husband or boyfriend at the top of the stairs. He was especially handsome, with a shaved head, finely shaped. Good-looking couple, they looked like each other. Like something from an advert for American life insurance. He smiled at Natalie and showed a lot of dentistry, luminous and perfectly straight. Silky dressing gown. Cheesy. We’re so pleased you’re here, Keisha, we weren’t sure you were for real. Can you believe she’s for real? Too good to be true. Come up here Sista so I can really take you in. Soul music playing upstairs. 2009 limited-edition Bloom baby highchair, like a space station, levitating in the kitchen. MacBook Air open on the kitchen table. An older Mac closed on the stairs. He stretched out his hand. Beautiful crib you got, said Natalie Blake. You’re beautiful, he said. Natalie felt his wife or girlfriend’s hand on her backside.