Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

Miriam said at last, “You sit there all Zen and beaming and I can’t stand it.”

“What can’t you stand about it?”

“You not saying anything! If you ever do that analyst’s shit with me, I’ll wring your neck.”

“Maybe I was quiet, but I was enjoying myself. What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you try out the loving-a-girl thing yourself?”

“You think I enjoyed it? Anyhow, those girls weren’t in their seventies, they had bodies. Mother is pissing away the family money. A studio…Sculpture. A box at the opera. Jesus-mostly all they do is drink.”

“The money’s hers,” I said. “It’s a pretty good thing those old girls have got going. What a decent way to go at the end, the two of them occupied and adoring one another.”

“Why doesn’t she want to give us anything? I’ve got a new man to feed now! He will take it for granted I will look after him!”

“Did you tell her about Henry?”

“She will think he’s the same as the others. To her they’re all no-good scum. But what about the grandchildren she now ignores?”

“We’re adults,” I said, tiring already of having to be the adult. “Soon the children will be. They can make their own way.”

“You’ve always been down on me, you and Mother.”

I said, “But I am the one with reason to complain, if you want to hear about it. When you were at home, Mother was arguing with you. When you were out, you made sure she was worrying about you. What room was there for me?”

“I had awful problems,” she said. “Made much worse by the fact you thought I’d lived a worthless life. You with your books and long-word talk, quoting poetry and pop songs, mocking me for my craziness. You do it less now, but you were always a sneery show-off! In Pakistan you didn’t back me up at all.”

“Fuck off.”

“Now you-”

She was holding my arm. I grabbed her other hand. I may be a talking specialist, but no one could argue with the fact that a cuff across the face would improve my sister’s temper, except she seemed to think a punch would advance mine.

In the traffic, Bushy slammed the brakes on and turned round. “You two-stop! No fighting in the car. That’s what I say to the children.”

Miriam was trying to hit me, but I’d grabbed her wrists, thereby increasing the danger that she’d head-butt me. After the cars behind us began to hoot, Bushy was driving with one hand and was in our faces yelling while trying to push us apart with the other.

“Any more of this and I’m going to stop the car right here and throw you both the fuck out! Jesus-you’re worse than kids!”

To calm herself down, Miriam decided to stop off at Henry’s flat. She wasn’t intending to go in and “bother” him, but stand outside and look up at his windows, “to think about him being in there not patronising me-not treating me like shit-unlike you and Mother and her bitch girlfriend!”

I could see Bushy’s eyes in the mirror. I shrugged; I’d long known it wasn’t worth arguing with Miriam. He parked the car not far from the river, we walked to Henry’s, and after watching Miriam stand there for a while, looking up, Bushy said, “Go on, Juliet, up you go! I’ll come back later,” and off we went.

Maybe Mother’s adventure had inspired her; maybe Mother was more of a model for Miriam than either of them could have admitted. Certainly in the next few weeks, Miriam’s relationship with Henry became more serious; and because of what happened, I got to know more about it than I might have wanted.

Miriam and Henry had begun to use my spare room for their assignations. About once a week they went to the theatre or cinema, but the room was where they ended up in the evening if I was out with friends, lecturing, or just walking about the city, thinking about my patients.

They had requested a cupboard they could lock, where they kept scarves, whips, other clothes, amyl nitrate, vibrators, videos, condoms, and two metal tea infusers. I wondered whether these last two were being used as nipple clamps, or did Henry and Miriam enjoy a cup of orange pekoe when they finished?

This new development was because there had been a crisis at Henry’s place. He had been caught.

He and I had dinner at least once a week, always in Indian restaurants in the area, often ones we hadn’t visited before. This was a passion not only for Indian cooking but for the “complete” restaurant decor of flocked wallpaper, illuminated pictures of waterfalls or the Taj Mahal, and the waiters in black suits and bow ties. Strolling about London, I’d look out for such places, which, like pubs, were gradually being replaced by swisher surroundings.

I had been expounding the idea that Indian restaurants (rarely owned by Indians but by Bangladeshis) reproduced the colonial experience for the British masses. I informed Henry, as we sat down, “This was what it was like for your forefathers, Henry, being served by deferential, respectful Indians dressed as servants. Here you can feel like a king, as indeed you do.”

He liked the theory but didn’t want to be a colonialist when it came to his supper. His view didn’t soften when I said the experience was “Disneyfied,” by which I meant that the real relations of production were concealed. The owners were not the white British, of course, but the Bangladeshis, from the world’s poorest country. It also made him uneasy, but didn’t disturb him as much, when I told him the waiters had deserted their own countries for the West. Henry said they were entitled to our riches after what their forefathers had been through during the colonial period.

In the restaurant he talked to the waiters of Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein, of the waiters’ homesickness and their belief that God would save them, or at least calm them; their use of religion as therapy. He even said he was thinking of converting to Islam, except that the pleasure of blasphemy would be an intolerable temptation for him.

After we’d ordered, Henry said, “To us it’s these guys’ faith rather than their social position which makes them appear infantile. But they’re also lucky. These God stories really keep everything together. Surely they’re better than antidepressants. There’s more despair in godless societies than there is in the god-ridden ones. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t.”

“You couldn’t agree with that because, unlike me, you are a fortunate man.”

“I am?”

“You listen to women all day, for a living, as they idealise and adore you. I used to think of you as a ‘collector of sighs.’”

He went on: “I am, of course, at the age when my death demands I consider it constantly. I’ve noticed that living doesn’t get any easier. But also, like a lot of old men, I think a lot about pleasure. Other people are always disturbing; that’s the point of them. But if they’re actors, I can get them to play a part in my scenarios. Insofar as that is true, I’ve always been in flight from my passions. I thought I’d get addicted. I’ve tried to find substitutes. But I like to believe I am still capable of love.”

Henry had always admitted that he’d been afraid to enjoy a full sexual life. Almost phobic, he had kept away from it for a long time, partly out of guilt, after leaving the children, when he had finally realised how absurd it was to try to live with Valerie.

He said, “I remember, years ago, an actress I was seeing said to me she’d been invited to visit an old man, someone distinguished. His wife was dying in the next room. He begged the actress to show him her breasts, to let him kiss them. We both thought this pretty low behaviour. Now I’ve become that man.

“The most significant postwar innovation, apart from the Rolling Stones and their ilk, was the pill, divorcing sex from reproduction, making sex the number one form of entertainment. But-some irony here-you mustn’t forget that in my heyday the women were not only hairy, they wore boots. They wore boilersuits. They had short, spiky hair and big hooped earrings. They worked as roadsweepers and builders. It was said to be a historical phase, man. They were right. Those women now work for Blair.