Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

To my surprise, he read everything I gave him, talked about it and asked for more. I gave him Tropic of Cancer and Quiet Days in Clichy, and he wrote me a note, saying he’d never before come across such Surreal poetry, madness and stupidity in one book. (Then he began to read Céline.) I gave Mustaq my own worn copy of Lou Reed’s Transformer because I knew it too well, but continued to hear its dirty, decadent Bowie-sound every time I visited.

I liked to show off to him, to stir him up in an older-sibling, know-it-all, impressive way, as my sister did with me. If I’d wondered whether I could scandalise or even corrupt him, I soon saw he was more adventurous than me.

He did, from time to time, attempt a grope, and he was always changing his clothes in front of me-“All I want is to know if you like me in stripes” “Only if they’re embedded in your arse”-but he was a decent ally in the house, providing I talked to him. It was like having an annoying kid brother. He even stuck a photograph of me on the wall, beside boxers and actors and one of Bailey’s early pictures of Jagger, when Mick looked like a surly teenage mod.

Every time I saw him, Mustaq invited me to a gig or movie. I always refused, until he hit on the irresistible thing: three tickets for the Stones at Earl’s Court. We were sitting at the back and the tiny figures onstage resembled little puppets. It was like watching TV, except you couldn’t change channels. Ajita and I snogged while Mustaq was enthralled, leaning forward in his Mick Jagger tee-shirt. At the end, he said, “I want to be looked at like that. I want to do that every day of my life! Jamal, tell me, do you think I could achieve it?”

“Your father would be delighted,” I said.

The day their father came home early, he took no notice of me, but I did get a good look at him. He didn’t return to work, but lay on the sofa with a huge whisky, staring at the television and smoking continuously. He was tall, thin, severe-looking and almost bald. His face was brown, creased and pockmarked, as if a bomb had exploded near him.

Even though the 60s were over and feminism had become assertive, the old men still had, and were expected to have, most of the power. Fathers were substantial men; they had too much authority to get on the floor with the children. They were remote; they scared you. This man laughed with Ajita a couple of times, but he didn’t smile. He appeared to have no charm. I’d say he was terrifying. While I wanted Ajita to be my wife, I didn’t want to be related to her father.

Standing in the picket line as the car rushed through the factory gates, I also glimpsed Ajita in the backseat, crouching down, with her hands over her ears, or was it her head? What was she doing there? Why hadn’t she told me?

I shouted out and waved, but it was no use. The spectacle didn’t last long. People began to drift away.

“What an odd sight,” I said aloud.

“What do you mean?” said two students beside me, exhilarated by their activity.

“A handful of working-class Asians being abused by a bunch of white middle-class students.” I added, for good measure, “I bet your fathers are all doctors.”

They looked at one another and at me. “Whose side are you on?” they asked.

Later, Ajita came into college. We’d both seen the demonstration that morning, but neither of us mentioned it. I had a lot of questions. Do you love someone whatever they do, or does your love modify as your view of them changes, as you learn more about them? Love doesn’t keep still, there are always things you have to take in. Bored at home, I had craved the unknown, an experimental life, and that’s what I was getting, more than I could have imagined.

That night I was lying on my bed; Mother was downstairs watching TV; Miriam had gone to see Joan Armatrading at the Hammersmith Odeon. I was wondering what Ajita was doing at that exact moment. She must, I guessed, have been worrying about the strike. Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t the only source of her troubled manner.

For the first time I thought: Ajita is being unfaithful to me. Don’t all lovers worry about this? If you want someone, isn’t it obvious that someone else will want them too, as their desirability increases? But the second it occurred to me, the idea seemed more than a fantasy. What was puzzling me about her at the moment? I had intuited that she was hiding something from me. What was her strange mood about? Yes, concealment!

Soon the secret would not be concealed. I’d ask her about it when I saw her. I had to know everything.

Until recently Mother would go to Miriam’s house for birthdays and Christmas. She would fall asleep in an armchair, wake up with a dog dribbling in her lap and have Bushy take her home with her head “banging.” But now she never visited. It was “tiring,” she said, to which Miriam retorted, “Well, you’ll have to watch me on television like everyone else.”

Although it was difficult to prise Miriam from her neighbourhood, and she didn’t feel safe going far without some sort of entourage, Bushy and I insisted that every three months or so Miriam and I have lunch with Mother. It was usually at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, where all elderly women went with their sons and which she considered her “club.” Mother also enjoyed a sedate tea at Fortnum’s, though Miriam had been turned away for being “inappropriately dressed.” I guess they’d never seen so many tattoos on a woman before. Mother felt Miriam had embarrassed her, and Miriam had seethed and cursed, Mother having called her “adolescent.”

Mum, after leaving the bakery, worked in the offices of a big company until she retired in her mid-fifties. She had been decently paid and received a pension. Once Miriam and I had both left home, Mother’s life continued in the same way for years. The old-woman walk to the shop trailing her wheeled basket; continuous TV soap operas, Coronation Street and Emmerdale; a stroll in the park if it wasn’t too windy; a worrying doctor’s appointment; a visit from a friend who’d only discuss her dead husband, the deaths of her nearby friends and neighbours, and their replacement by young, noisy families.

She had always made it clear that her life was a sacrifice-to us. Without such a burden she would be kicking up her legs in Paris, as she sometimes put it. Like a true hysteric, she preferred death to sex, and often insisted she was “waiting to die.” In fact, she’d add, with much sighing and many pathetic looks, she was “pining” for death; she was “ready.” As she’d spent her life hiding, or playing dead, Miriam and I can hardly be blamed for having taken our eyes off her. One day we realised that, far from hurrying towards the grave in the hope of finding that which she’d lacked in the world, she had made a revolution in her life. Now, wherever she went, Billie was with her.

As far as I was aware, Mother had devoted little time or attention to sexual passion. After Father, she never took up with another man. On a handful of occasions she stayed out all night, pretending to be with a friend. Miriam and I smirked and guessed she’d been with someone we called Mr. Invisible. Sometimes we found programmes for dance shows or theatre plays, as well as catalogues for art shows, but no one ever came to the house.

I should have realised something was stirring in Mother when one day she said she wanted to go to the cinema, to “a place called the ICA.” Did I know where it was? I had to admit I had spent some of my youth there, looking at shows, movies and girls in the bar. Mother could only admit how little she knew me or where I’d got to, but she was pleased I’d learned how to get about the city.

Now she wanted to see a film about a painter. When I looked it up in Time Out, it turned out to be Andrei Rublev. I had to warn her that a three-hour black-and-white film in Russian might be too much for us, but she was adamant. We were the only two in the cinema, and I thought how wonderful this city is that a man and his mother can sit in a building between Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament watching such a great work.