Hanif Kureishi - The Last Word

‘Although they’re still pursued and admired, like ageing popstars, by crazies and eccentrics, what they dream of is returning to active dictating and torturing. What good is an unemployed dictator with time on his hands? Once they’ve talked about traitors and spies, and how badly they were let down by their own side, they start to argue with each other. The problem is, if they fall out, they won’t have much company. But they lack self-knowledge, and, one day, it all comes down. .’

‘How?’

‘One of them finds he is beginning to fall in love with a young waitress in the cafe they go to.’

Julia said, ‘Is she beautiful?’

‘And kind and young. Like you.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Listen: he never comes in without bringing her poetry books and little wooden figures, and she is flattered.’

‘Any girl would be if a man did that.’

‘He seems kind and sensitive, our dictator, though he has three unmentioned wives already.’

‘Did he eat them?’

‘They would be tasty,’ Harry said. ‘And usually, such a gorgeous girl — the waitress we’re talking about is Spanish, dark; there are no English people for miles—’

‘Really?’

‘You’ll see, Julia. I’ll show you London.’

‘Would you?’

‘Well, parts of it.’

‘Please, Harry, don’t make a promise if you don’t mean it. I take your meanings for truth.’

‘Never a good idea,’ he said. ‘Now, usually, in the dictator’s world such a juicy girl would be raped and her family burned alive, just for starters, to keep them on their toes. But with this particular beauty, one day, while paying the bill, he was unable to resist — he whispers to her, asking her out to the cinema.

‘But one of the other dictators notices what’s going on. He is jealous because he likes the lovely waitress more than a bit too. And he knows the waitress will never go out with the first dictator if she finds out who he is. Who would want to go on a date with a mass murderer — a man who has personally tortured some of his victims?’

‘Yuck. Not even me.’

‘But, in fact, he has been pretending to be a journalist, an artist even. .’

‘She believes him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happens? Does she go with him?’

‘They do go out together.’

‘Don’t tell me she sleeps with him on the first date?’

‘Would you?’

She shrugged. ‘If I wanted him. You’ve got to find some fun around here.’

He went on, ‘They have a good night out. He is mature, polite and gentlemanly. He gives her a sweet kiss on the lips. Something stirs. She begins to feel fondly towards him. Meanwhile, the other dictator is plotting to show her a newspaper article about the first dictator—’

‘And? Do the two dictators fall out?’

‘But another dictator enters the picture. .’

At that moment the door opened and a tragic-looking woman with a swollen eye, which was turning blue, hobbled into the room and stared about distractedly, as if she’d never seen it before. Harry looked up and realised he had seen her before — last night, of course. But somewhere else too. What was this house called, Déjà Vu?

‘You’re late, Mum,’ said Julia.

‘Morning, sir,’ said the woman to Harry, almost curtseying, but also appearing to shiver. ‘Roof.’

‘Sorry?’ said Harry, looking upwards. ‘Damp?’

‘Ruth,’ said Julia. ‘My mum.’

Ruth said, ‘Would it be all right, sir, if you gave us a lift to the house? We all overslept due to illness. Mrs Azam can be very harsh and vile.’

‘She can?’ said Harry.

‘She slapped my Julia.’

‘Where?’

‘Kitchen. I had to physically stop my Scott going down there. After all we’ve done, years upon years of all sorts of things, long before she was here, treating us like servants, she reduced our wages and said, “I know you don’t know what’s going on out there beyond the haystack, but these are hard times.” You should see their champagne bill. She an’ Sir get through three bottles a night. What can you do, if you want to work?’

Harry continued to blink at the woman until he could assemble all the information he had and place her. Julia’s mother Ruth worked in the house for Liana and Mamoon; she had served him supper not long ago.

‘No problem,’ he said uneasily.

The mother left and he was finishing his food as quickly as he could when Julia said, ‘They like you, Sir and Her. I hear them talking. They don’t even notice me.’

‘What do they say about me?’

‘He caught your description.’

‘What description?’

‘On the phone. When you called him Saddam Hussein and said he had a face like a soiled arse.’

‘Ah. Did he comment on it?’

‘He repeated it slowly, like he was taking it in. Then he said something like, you’d never be a novelist, and the biographer is the vulture — no, sorry, what was it? — the undertaker, of the literature world.’

‘Thanks, Julia.’

‘Who was that you spoke to? Was it your girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Alice Jane Jackson.’

Julia said, ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she? Liana has heard she is. Is it true she’s coming to see us?’

‘Yes. No. Perhaps. She looks at magazines and chews her hair. She’s not keen on literary people and their talky talk, their going on about reviews and prizes and stuff. She doesn’t think I should have taken on the book. Negative, eh, but at least she’s protective.’

‘Harry, trust me, I can help you more than you know. I can keep you informed.’

‘You can?’

‘I catch onto a lot of things, going about.’ Here she hesitated. ‘I think I might have something, and could find it. Some writing of Mamoon’s I got hold of. Notebooks. They would be useful.’

‘How did you get them?’

‘It was a couple of years ago. I found them in the barn when Mamoon asked me to tidy up.’

‘There’s a lot of damp stuff in there, packed away, rotting. Apart from me, no one’s looked at it. Why did you take and read private material?’

She tapped her nose and grinned. ‘I wanted to learn something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Flicking through, I saw my name in one of them. And my mum and Scott.’

‘I see. Why?’ She said nothing. He said, ‘Can I look at them?’

‘I think so. Sure.’

‘You’re so cute.’ He kissed her head and said, ‘Please keep me up to date when necessary.’

She kissed him on the lips. ‘Keep me satisfied.’

‘Will do. I’m your man.’

‘Are you, Harry? I’m so pleased. I can’t believe it.’

‘It’s just a saying, Julia, not a contract.’

Julia’s mother climbed up into the front of Harry’s 4 × 4 with her bag on her lap. Julia got in the back and put her headphones on. Ruth said, ‘Is it all right, please sir, if we pick up Whynne, me sister? She’s helping us out today.’

‘Of course, Ruth,’ he said. ‘The more the merrier on this fine warm day in the country with the sun coming out and it not raining yet.’

‘Thank you ever so much for coming to our house. You like Julia, my daughter, sir?’

‘She’s kind and affectionate. You’ve done a good job there.’

‘Thank you, sir. I take that as a high compliment, coming from you. A man so high, a doctor even. You do prescriptions?’

‘Only philosophical ones.’

‘I have a son too.’

‘You are twice blessed. What does he do?’

‘He frightens people.’

‘Professionally?’

She gurgled. ‘Scares the frigging daylights out of them.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Security. Don’t they have that in London?’

‘Yes, we have so much of it we’re frightened all the time.’