Hanif Kureishi - The Last Word

Julia said, ‘Does any part of him dampen?’

‘Yes, that’s the question. You’re absolutely spot on and right, I must increase my power over him.’

‘You have to, miss.’

‘Otherwise he will become bored and very dangerous, as he did with Peggy and Marion. In my country we women are very forceful and recognise there’s only one way to keep a man — and that is to satisfy him. I will leave him with not a drop of juice or scrap of energy even to say hello to another woman.’

Liana would make sure that everyone knew that she could use her ‘wiles and guiles’, to turn her husband on — that very night. ‘Then the gossiping village dagger-tongues of those who think my husband doesn’t desire me will be zipped shut forever.’

‘Good shot, Julia,’ confirmed Harry. ‘Dangerous, but subtle. I can’t wait to see what sort of wiles and guiles Liana has in mind. She can have no better helper than you. Let’s hope this little plan doesn’t backfire.’

Now Harry stubbed out his cigarette and poured Mamoon another drink. He said, ‘Liana, with Julia’s kind help, is going to some trouble to please you. It goes without saying that the ideal woman you refer to — a man’s woman — needs to be kept occupied by the man.’

‘You will be thrilled to hear that I increased Liana’s allowance last month.’

‘What did you allow her?’

‘It is true that a man has to catch a woman by the ears, by talking to her and, occasionally, even listening. But this time I got her head. I seem to have bought her a wig.’

‘She certainly needs to be walked out, and shown off. Otherwise it is like keeping a Velázquez in a cupboard. Be nice: get her some new titties for Christmas. She’d love the attention.’

Mamoon laughed. ‘Dear boy, your prick is so hard you can barely walk straight. But I can barely walk at all — you know why. Besides, my blood has cooled at last.’ He went on to say that he had a good friend in Paris, a wonderful poet older than him. ‘Think of two old men sitting in a cafe, watching the world die. He is either weaker or more persistent than me, but he is still playing the game of love. He said the other day that the only thing to be said for ageing is that you don’t come quickly, if at all.’

Mamoon said that his friend’s eyes would suddenly focus; he would stand up and follow a woman down the street, quoting Stendhal as he went: ‘Beauty is the promise of happiness. .’ Mamoon’s friend set the women up in apartments, made love to them — at least at the beginning — and paid for them to study to become lawyers. It broke down when the women found someone richer and younger. One day he was apprehended by the police on a balcony, this old man, trying to look in on one of his lovelies who was with another man.

‘Then — Harry — he comes crying to me — no better therapist when it comes to comforting the lovelorn.’

‘You envy him?’

‘My friend might need to learn, as I think you will, when it’s too late, that rather than a big bang, the whimper of a companionate marriage, an agape , a warm conversation, could be the model union, and the target of all love. Kind, nurturing, even-keeled, dispassionate — such a love will make for contented days when one can think freely. Plus: one’s supper will be on the table when one wants it.’

‘Parental, or pseudo-sibling, rather than adult?’

‘Why say it would not be adult?’

‘There’s no sex.’

Mamoon knocked back his vodka. ‘I have to acknowledge, you might be on to something.’ Harry smiled, pleased to have interested Mamoon at last. ‘You’re almost, but not quite, the fool I like to take you for.’

Harry leaned forward. ‘You put your penis on the page.’

Mamoon looked at him quizzically. ‘Sorry?’

‘Mamoon, you made your women into fictional characters rather than loved them as real people.’

‘Think what you’d achieve, Harry,’ said Mamoon sorrowfully, ‘if you didn’t always go too far.’

‘It’s only when I go too far that I think I’m getting somewhere,’ said Harry.

Mamoon had just closed his eyes when there was a cry from elsewhere in the house. ‘I’m alive and ready to boogie! Prepare, people!’

‘Boys, she’s coming!’ trilled Julia.

Mamoon came to, and reached for his stick. ‘It better be worth it.’

Supported at the elbow by Julia, Liana stepped carefully down the stairs. At some physical cost, Mamoon turned around to see his wife. Harry didn’t know whether it was the style Mamoon’s wife had selected for his birthday, or the fact that she appeared to be wearing all of his money at once, which made Mamoon resemble a man about to have an electric fire dropped into his bath.

‘Help me,’ he said to Harry, raising his arms. ‘Please, help me up — my bottom half has gone.’

There was a swish and a sizzle: Harry thought the world would catch fire. Liana was crossing her legs.

‘If this doesn’t do it, nothing will,’ she leaned across and whispered to Harry in the car, tugging her skirt down.

He said, ‘I’m getting a twitch in the trousers myself.’

‘I’m looking forward to tonight. I so much want to touch him.’

‘May you have many soft orgasms.’

‘I will do, later,’ she said. ‘Just between us, I come easily, sometimes two or three times in a row — if I like the man. If I don’t, it’s just the once. Does sex make life worth living? Didn’t you say, the other day, “Our lives are only as good as our orgasms?”’

He giggled. ‘I hope so.’

He glanced at Liana again, and complimented her on her short A-line leather skirt, sheer top, and what he recognised as Louboutin pumps with heels. As for her handbag, he had to admit he had always been a fan of leopard print; he wore pyjama bottoms in the same colour.

‘Stop and park — it’s here,’ she said to Harry at last. ‘Mamoon,’ she said loudly. ‘Please listen, we’re getting out.’

‘Here?’ Mamoon was peering anxiously out of the window. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘It can’t be. Drive on, boy!’

‘No, no,’ she said, getting down from the car and going round to let Mamoon out. ‘I’m serious.’

Harry was surprised, too, that the dinner was to be held in the back room of a standard Indian restaurant with seventies ersatz-colonial decor. It was certainly a shock for Mamoon, who began to quiver like a pensioner about to be left in a care home.

‘You said you won’t travel, and it’s our own Pottapatti, where we used to moon over one another for hours, talking about our childhoods, the colour we wanted the library to be, the future and what we would do together. You know you love the food here, habibi darling,’ pleaded Liana, caressing his hands, while trying to prise them from the seat he was holding onto.

‘I do?’

‘You said the keema was God’s ambrosia. There’s plenty to drink, and look — there are our friends!’

‘I hate those bastards—’

‘Don’t be silly. They’ve read your books. Let’s be grateful for the royalties.’

‘My publisher sent them free copies.’

Harry and Liana had some trouble hauling Mamoon out of the car and onto the premises, particularly as he had to stop to stare at Liana in disbelief, while she informed him for the first time that it would be particularly kind if he made ‘just a little speech’, later on.

‘Speech? Here?’

‘Please, darling, just for a moment, a few kind words for your dear friends. You just have to put your Nelson Mandela face on. That comes easily to you.’

As Mamoon intuited — ‘Oh God, it’s going to be like one of Charcot’s Tuesday lectures’ — a succession of somewhat withered, demented people soon arrived. Mamoon, sitting low in his chair at the table, and uninclined, if not unable to get up, greeted the line of undead with the indifference of a billionaire Indian contemplating his servants. A wealthy American couple from London who’d always admired Mamoon’s work and wanted to meet ‘the great man’ had also been invited by Liana, to provide ‘variety’. Despite the woman’s outpouring of praise over his last book, on Australia, which she described as a stellar classic of the ‘personal journalism’ genre, without the American exhibitionism, Mamoon did not want to speak to them.