Hanif Kureishi - The Last Word

‘But I am getting tired of that, habibi , I need something more as a woman. Both the girls have gone towards more life! Please — let’s jump in Harry’s car and go with them! Let’s run away!’

At first these disputes had made Harry anxious, and he wanted them to be over. Now they were just another country noise. He left them to it and took a calming turn around the orchard, though he believed he could even hear their voices from there. But, more importantly, as he walked out of the door, he’d turned for a moment. While Liana, standing at the sink with her arms crossed, continued to berate Mamoon from a distance, he saw Julia go to him and kiss him just once respectfully on the cheek. For a moment he held her elbows, and his eyes seemed to be wet. It was the only time Harry had seen them touch.

He and Julia drove away up the track, and he thought he’d never return to the house. In the mirror he watched Liana waving, gesticulating and covering her face; he believed she would cry all day. Something had altered in her, and there was a black shadow around her aura.

‘How am I looking?’ said Julia.

‘Alice cut your hair well. And you’ve been working hard on your body.’

‘I like you to admire my breasts. I can’t bear for us not to be skin to skin.’

He said, ‘I saw Ruth watching us go from the upstairs window. She didn’t wave. Is she pleased for you?’

‘She knows I can’t stay here.’

‘Will she talk to me about Mamoon?’

‘I don’t know.’ She said, ‘The notebooks I brought for you. The ones by Mamoon about us as a family with him.’

‘Yes—’

‘Were they of use?’

He said, ‘Put the Little Richard song on.’

‘Which one?’

‘“I’m in Love Again”. It’s my favourite.’

They were bouncing their heads. He looked at her. ‘Perhaps we could stop on the way. A snog and a feel on the hard shoulder, followed by a quick lunch in the Little Chef?’

‘You know how to show a girl a good time.’

He said, ‘The notebooks really were of use, Julia. They opened it up. You did me a favour there.’

She said, ‘I’m still not happy.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t pull my hair or whoop me hard enough.’

‘I’m a softie, you know that. I love you too much.’

‘Thank you. I was dying,’ she said. ‘I would have died there. Now you’ll never get rid of me.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Somehow I think you’re right.’

‘Ah-ha!’ said Rob.

Harry was sitting in his almost empty study, hunched over a desk, when Rob appeared at the door like a genie, somehow having sneaked into the new house.

‘I like your fresh look, Harry: the short hair suits you. It’s given you a new brutality and determination. And I like the new place. Can I move in?’

Harry had sold his flat and paid Alice’s debts; the couple were now renting a house from a friend who was away. It was large, but closer to Acton than anyone would want to be. Eventually he and Alice would have to make more suitable arrangements, but Harry couldn’t see how they would be able to do it. He was far into it, but hadn’t finished the book. His present circumstances were confusing and disorienting. He believed all he could do was continue to work.

‘It’s a relief to have caught you at your desk,’ said Rob. ‘I came straight here after discussing you this morning. My poor colleague Lotte, now recovering, told me that a couple of months ago, after running into you, she invited you over. I was impressed by the transport detail.’

Harry whispered urgently, ‘Keep it down — the women are in the house preparing for the birth of my bloody children. What transport detail?’

‘After a party, she was kind enough to invite you in. But, Lotte noticed, you kept a taxi waiting outside, so you could make a quick escape. That hurt her.’

‘She was living in Queen’s Park.’

‘And you cruelly blamed her for that?’

‘I only went that distance because she’d been wearing a yellow dress I loved. She wanted me to see her breasts, and wore a perfume I liked. I have the ability to attribute supernatural qualities to unremarkable women.’

‘She is not unremarkable, but one of the best when it comes to intelligence and beauty, with the legs of Venus. This might surprise you, but you make her laugh and think like no one else. But Mamoon’s been ringing her, and is now hassling me, insisting on seeing you.’

Harry laughed. ‘When I left three weeks ago he was opening champagne and cheering.’

‘Please go and talk to him tonight.’

‘Psychologically I’m on the edge. And I’m in the middle of a paragraph about his mother.’

‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Does he have something specific to say to me?’

Rob said, ‘It’s been harrowing. He’s been having awful death dreams. He has beautiful gifts for both of you, and he wants to talk honestly.’

‘It would be the first time.’ Harry said, ‘If it’s important, and there’s some material he has, I can drive down in a few days.’

‘He needs both of you to go. Alice in particular.’

‘Why?’

‘Mamoon says the country is a sedative for her agitated temperament, the only place she relaxes. Learn to give a woman what she needs. Look at me — I have no one, and it’s dark and desolate at night, when I blub alone.’

Harry looked hard at Rob. ‘Alice is busy expecting twins.’

Rob said, ‘You’re not grasping the gravity, dude. Liana has also been ringing me — Miss Lonelyhearts here — to say Mamoon’s becoming savage.’

‘How?’

‘He pulled her hair. She scratched him. She screamed in his face. He even wept in despair.’

‘They deserve each other.’

‘I’m not sure they do.’

‘Sorry?’

Rob sat on Harry’s papers on the desk, took Harry’s hands, caressed them and then put them to his lips and kissed them. No one in publishing had done this to him before.

‘Beautiful man, Mamoon has always been concerned with the almost impossible task of using real words to describe invisible things. You and I know that language is the only enchantment. Alternative magic — spells, crystals, lamp-rubbing — is a lovely futility. Now Mamoon has developed an old-man crush on Alice. Unlike his wife, she hears him, and he her. He’s never touched her, you know that. She is the tasty bait.’

‘Why don’t I lift you up with my little finger and hurl you through the window?’

‘Instead, think of everything he might spit out while he’s biting on her. Notice how you fail to spot the opportunities here.’

‘I’m not yet a pimp.’

Rob picked up handfuls of recent novels, flung them against the wall and cried out, ‘You’re not even looking at me! But I’m telling you something, Woodworm.’

‘Is that what he calls me?’

Rob said, ‘I’m here to discuss what you did to one of the world’s greatest artists. And the naked flame.’

‘Naked flame?’

Rob told Harry that at home a few days ago, Mamoon, having usefully occupied himself examining his own faeces — something older people like to do — and looking forward to a relaxing evening with a new translation of The Odyssey and an as yet unwatched DVD of the Australian fast bowlers Lillee and Thomson, heard musical noises, interspersed with yelps. This did not agree with him. How he wished he could have stopped his ears. He called out for help, but Ruth was at her place, halfway through a bottle of her boss’s vodka. Clutching his stick, Mamoon opened the door to his library. It might as well have been the door to hell.

For at least a week Liana had been restless. While Mamoon worked, she’d languished in bed, getting up at night to read, send emails, and roam the house. She had begun to sing and dance, talking to herself in Italian, a certain sign of madness, Mamoon believed.