Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

I walked around to the front of the house with Miriam. I noticed Bushy was carrying what looked like Miriam’s overnight bag. Before getting in my own car, I kissed her and watched as Bushy opened the rear door for her, waiting as she struggled, suppressing various “old woman” noises, to get herself comfortable.

Then, as she went to her pleasure, she waved and called out, “See you later, Brother.”

My lover was crying, shaking. I’d never seen her in such a state.

Ajita and I were putting our towels out, scanning the sky for clouds, when she broke down, weeping hard. It was some time before she admitted that something serious was bothering her. Her father was having trouble at his factory, the place he wanted her to run with him when she graduated. She had even hypothesised about whether she and I might manage it together, when her father retired.

There had been a television documentary about the factory, which as it happened, I had watched with Mum, not realising it was about her family.

A few months previously, her father had been approached by a director who told him the putative “doc” would be a sympathetic look at the lives of the Ugandan Asians, people who had come here with little but who were already pushing up, socially; a bright story about an immigrant’s progress. Ajita’s father had liked the director, with whom he had many talks about cricket, India and the politics of the Third World. However, it turned out that the director was a sort of double agent, as a lot of them were said to be. He was an upper-class, Cambridge-educated Communist, a clever, successful renegade who hated his own class and background.

In the documentary, there were many shots inside the factory and interviews with the workers. Ajita’s father had cooperated; he was flattered to be involved. But the Cambridge Communist had exposed Ajita’s father as a merciless exploiter of his own people, as an archcapitalist and greedy villain. Ajita’s father had tried to contact the man and remonstrate with him. But now the Commie wouldn’t speak to him. Ajita’s father couldn’t understand how anyone could behave so perfidiously. It was “typically English,” from his point of view-as well as being what he described as “Marxist colonialism.”

The factory workers had, of course, seen the programme and had become more difficult, complaining openly now and even threatening strike action. In Africa or India, of course, they’d have been fired or beaten up. Ajita said to me, “Why can’t they just work? Surely in this political climate they’re lucky to have jobs.” This must have been what her father had told her.

I made it clear to Ajita that, when it came to such things, I was on the side of the workers; that was my instinct and my belief, passed on to me by my own father. Somewhat self-righteously, I told her I was also a supporter of Rock Against Racism, formed after Eric Clapton made a racist speech from the stage in Birmingham. “Come on, Eric,” went the original letter in Melody Maker. “Own up. Half your music’s black. You’re rock’s biggest colonist.” But Ajita wasn’t about to become a leftist. She said nothing; she wasn’t taking anything in.

My hope was that, despite our differences, we would return to our indolent life, financed by the great exploiter, her father. The longer the old man was at work, harassed though we might be, the more time I had to eat his food, drink his beer and fuck his daughter. Other than when it concerned race, politics didn’t fascinate me. People were always on strike in the 1970s; it was the only consolation for having to work. The lights crashed almost every week. You’d hear a huge ironic cheer going round the neighbourhood pubs and dance halls, before you could grab the girls and the candles came out. Or there were food or petrol shortages, along with some sort of national crisis with ministers resigning and governments surviving on the edge. Then there’d be an IRA bomb: among other things, they liked blowing up pubs, as well as Hammersmith Bridge, which was attacked twice. The wrong people were soon beaten, forced to confess and locked up. We were used to it.

But this crisis at the factory was upsetting Ajita so much she didn’t want to make love. “Don’t touch me, Jamal,” she said, turning away from me. “I can’t do this anymore. I feel too bad.” It was the first time she’d refused me, the first shadow over our infatuation.

She wouldn’t be comforted. To distract ourselves, we drove into college and were sitting quietly in the bar with Valentin. I liked being there, the men looking at her. She was a standout girl. I had my little gang now; I felt protected.

One of the most active student groups was the Iranian exiles. Every lunchtime they’d leaflet the bar with horrific pictures of the victims of the shah’s secret police, SAVAK, an organisation supported by the US, ever the dictator’s friend and financier. I would speak to the young leftists who wanted our support; they claimed they would use the mosques to organise the people. Once the rebellion had started, the Left would take over.

The other active college group, always busy and looking for trouble, and related to the Anti-Nazi League, was the SWP, the Socialist Workers Party. A student in our philosophy class came over to hand us some of their leaflets. Like Marxism itself, he wasn’t ready to go away but drew up a stool and talked urgently to Valentin about a meeting.

The Trots were always trying to convert him, which was peculiar since he’d been brought up in a Communist state from which he’d gone to some trouble to flee, arguing that Marxist ideology had devastated his country. Despite the Trots’ arguments that the system had “gone wrong” after being hijacked by Stalinists, Valentin couldn’t be convinced. He told me he found these guys amusing or “almost mad,” but he often listened to them, having nothing better to do.

Valentin seemed contemptuous of almost all human effort or enterprise, as if it were beneath him. Certainly, he considered me beneath him, which was perhaps why I was so keen to impress him. When once I asked him to help me with my logic, he just said, “Oh, I mastered all this months ago.” Then, when we’d go to the King’s Road on Friday and Saturday nights to pick up women, he’d usually score and I’d always have to get the last train home. I guess, when he “gave” me Ajita, it was another patronising act.

I noticed that after glancing at the leaflet she had been given, Ajita then reread it several times, which surprised me as she’d never been keen on either reading or politics.

The Trot jabbed at the leaflet. “That factory owner there, the one we’re concerned with…” He drew his finger across his throat and opened his mouth and rolled his eyes like a distressed figure in a Bacon painting.

“Right on, man,” I said dismissively.

A little panicked voice said, “Jamal…” Ajita was whispering in my ear. She wanted to go for a walk along the river, at the Embankment.

I grasped, through her sobs, that the factory referred to in the Trotskyite leaflet, where the students were asked to protest, was her father’s.

For three years Ajita’s family had had it good, the father building the business, the mother with the children, money to spend. The kids were settling in; they liked England. But it seemed now that England wouldn’t admit them after all. Ajita’s father was used to running things and to having power, but recently he had become afraid of having it wrenched from him. Profits weren’t great; he’d had to keep wages down. The whole business was in danger of collapse. He’d be left with enormous debts and might be made bankrupt. What would they do then-go on the dole like everyone else in England?