Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

They were looking at me almost pleadingly. “You both know,” I said, “no doctor can treat a member of his own family.”

A year into my training, when I was beginning to work with juveniles, we heard that Father had died. After leaving Pakistan, Miriam and I didn’t see him again. Did we mourn him? I’d have wanted him to know I’d found a vocation. Whether he’d have appreciated it, I doubted. However, I was strong enough by then to have ridden his disapproval. I was on my own, but I knew, at last, what I was doing.

That night, after I left the house, walking the familiar streets from which I thought I’d never escape, a boy semi-defeated by something he didn’t understand, I was in a hurry to get back to my complete edition of Freud, the patients I would start seeing, the conferences I’d attend, the books I’d write. I wanted to be useful, to have done something.

Even then, at a moment of such hope, when the future was something I wanted, I would hear the dead man’s words echoing in my ears: “What do you want of me?”

Straight out I said to Miriam, “You know I’m a gossip trollop and must have it immediately.”

“You and Henry sound so similar to one another,” she said. “But he’s like Tigger, and you were never so outgoing. Or have you changed?”

I said, “Now it’s you who is beginning to sound like him.”

“Oh God, we’re all dissolving into one another!” she said.

Evening, and Miriam was in her kitchen when I arrived. Kids on bikes doing wheelies in the front yard. Other boys and girls distributed around the house with their friends; a teenage boy in front of the television at the other end of the room, one hand in a minger’s chest, the other on the TV remote. Bushy perched barefoot on a chair, stuffing money into his socks before putting them on again. Then he threw his keys in the air, caught them, and went off to pick up a paying customer.

At her place, Miriam seemed distracted or preoccupied, as she had been as a young woman, wishing she were elsewhere, wondering where the pleasure was. However, I noticed she was looking at me as I fiddled in her kitchen, preparing pasta for myself.

“So?” I said. “How much did you enjoy seeing Henry? Did you stay long at my place?”

“Here it is,” she said. She had on her most serious, if not tragic face, which disconcerted me. But it was too late now. “Did you set this up on purpose?”

“Henry asked me to get some dope from you. That’s all I did.”

“Don’t come in!” she screamed into the rest of the house, before shutting the kitchen door and jamming a chair under the handle, a rare cry for privacy. “What happened? Henry wanted the dope, but he doesn’t even know how to make his own joints. While I was rolling a few, teaching him, he said, ‘It’s the most useful thing I’ve learned for years.’ You know how he talks, for England and for his own benefit, as if he expects to be listened to. Even I had to shut up. That’s authority for you. I get hot just thinking of it.”

“What did he say?”

“I was telling him from the off I was poor. I said I’ve never had nothing, not for want of trying. I’m no good at anything but the small stuff, so don’t think I’m a catch, but I might inherit a bit.

“He said he lived with his wife, Valerie, in luxury, for ten years. There were houses, cars, parties, holidays. They were friends with famous artists, politicians, actors who stayed in their houses, drank their champagne, swam in their pools. When she needed more money, she’d sell a painting.”

“Henry did some excellent work during those years.”

“Without making much money, he claims. It was she who supported him. His nose was in her trough. Well, as he talked about it, he became more and more upset, calling it ‘an untrue life.’ I didn’t know what to do. In his mind he’s a crazy man. You spend the day with such people.”

“It was all talk?”

“I gave him the joint. It’s special stuff. I knew it would draw out the subject for him.” Now Miriam came and sat next to me, lowering her voice. “I’ll tell you how he seduced me into love.”

“Love already?”

Henry had asked Bushy to drive them to his flat by the river at Hammersmith where he lived on the first floor. I often went there: the living room had a long window overlooking the Thames and the trees on the towpath opposite. The other three flats in the house were occupied by ageing theatre queens with whom Henry was always arguing, either about the dustbins or the number of rent boys or, more likely, young actors, stamping up and down the stairs. Or they’d have long discussions on the landing about productions at the Royal Court in the mid-1960s.

Apart from the large living room, Henry’s place was composed of a number of small and medium-sized rooms filled randomly with theatre memorabilia as well as the “artworks” he’d begun to make himself in the last few years. Sitting on worn carpets were his “sculptures” made of wire and plaster, or of egg-boxes mixed with Polyfilla; on the walls, among the broken mirrors, posters and sketches for costumes from numerous shows, were his drawings and watercolours.

Like a lot of people, he was prouder of his hobbies than he was of his work. His son, Sam, had told the Mule Woman, indeed any woman who passed through, that if you praised Henry’s photography you were in with him, if that’s what you wanted. In fact, the Mule Woman had been so in love with the idea of living near the river, which she watched constantly, that she attempted to dust a little, soon realising it would take a team of people several days to make an impression. Nevertheless, she’d honoured the pictures and received some kindness in return.

Henry had a large armchair by the window, and a radio on a table next to it. Here he read newspapers, poetry, plays and Dostoevsky, while watching the river. He liked to claim that at night he could see, among the trees, his gay friends participating in open-air orgies.

Miriam said, “I liked the pad. The history of his life everywhere, awards, photographs of him with that famous French actress, Brigitte Bardot.”

“Jeanne Moreau.”

Miriam said, “We wanted to get the sex done with straightaway. Both of us were starving for physical love. He was like some madwoman, talking about how his body would disgust anyone who saw it. He wouldn’t take his clothes off. He actually put his jumper on. You know I’m used to odd things, but it got bizarre, lying naked in bed with a completely dressed stranger who wouldn’t stop telling me how frightened he was. Anyway, you don’t need to hear about it.”

“Why not?”

“It might make you sad about yourself.” I laughed. At times she sounded as sentimental as Rafi, who would say, “Oh, Dad, I don’t want you to feel sad.” Now she went on, “Well, after the love, he got this book out. We were on the vodka, smoking another joint. He made me read to him. She was called Sonya.”

“From Uncle Vanya? The last speech?”

“He put a chair in the middle of the room and watched how I sat. He had the cheek to give me instructions.”

“What did he say?”

“He made me do it slower. He told me when to look at the book and when to look up. At the same time he wanted me to do it naturally, as if I were at home. The speech was about work and the angels and the heavens, full of emoting. Too much about work for my liking. He got very involved in it, dashing about here and there. I had no idea he could be so light on his feet.”

Now and again over the years, I’d sat in on Henry’s rehearsals for both his modern and classical work. I’d particularly liked his workshops with ordinary people and his appreciation of what he called “naive” acting, which, he said, had its own beauty. “Bring me only the worst actors. What could be more depressing than talent?” he’d say. “I hope never to meet anyone talented again!”