Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

“You didn’t want to do that. You couldn’t kill anyone.”

I said, “I was always furious with my parents, my father in particular. It seemed odd to me that you loved your parents without any hatred.”

We were silent; I thought she’d fallen asleep. “Jamal,” she said, “earlier this evening my brother told me what my father did to you. Why didn’t you say anything to me? I told you everything, but you didn’t reciprocate.”

“How could I have added to your troubles?” I went on, “When you were in India, I was frantic missing you. My first thought in the morning was: Will this be the day she rings? It was a terrible separation. For a while it broke me.”

She ran her hands over her face and through her hair. “No, no, Jamal! You’re saying I didn’t think of you? I even wrote you letters-you remember those thin blue airmail letters?-which I never posted. I loved London, but how could I go back there after the strike?

“My nightmares weren’t about my father raping me night after night but about that screaming mob outside the factory, students like us hurling lumps of wood and bricks. They reduced my dad to despair. He was a hardworking man expelled from Africa, trying to make everything all right for his family.” She went on: “I went to America with Mustaq for a fresh start. I worked in fashion, designing clothes. That was my family trade.”

We lay there without speaking for a while. Occasionally, we heard laughter and voices in the yard; otherwise there was silence.

“I knew, Jamal, you didn’t want to marry me. You were just beginning to move into the world; you were assured and energetic, keen to get on. In India I was going mad, I can’t tell you how mad. What I needed was stability, a husband. I couldn’t do that with you.”

“Did you get a husband?”

“I found a good man, probably too good. It was impossible to do him wrong without hurting. But Mustaq was keen on him, and paid for everything. He set him up in business.”

She spoke more of her children, work, daily life. I stayed awake for as long as I could, listening for her words, then her breath, thinking of Wolf, Valentin and our life together, and of what Ajita and I might want from each other tomorrow; and I thought of the presence standing between us, her father.

It was late morning when I made it downstairs. Ajita had long left my bed.

Wearing a tracksuit, Mustaq was sitting at the table with his computer, eating strawberries and melon with his fingers. A couple of people sat at the other end of the table in silence, looking as though they’d just walked out of an explosion.

Mustaq poured me some juice. “I won’t speak too loudly,” he said. “It was a good night for me too. I haven’t been to bed. I called my trainer at four and got him to drive up for an early-morning session. Then I told my manager to prepare my studio. I haven’t enjoyed playing music for years. You know, Dad hated me playing the piano. One time, when I was at school, he had my keyboards removed and dumped. Do you think that could have inhibited me later?”

“Very likely.”

“Our conversation yesterday turned me on, Jamal. I have a nutritionist and a life coach. Now I have you to inspire me.”

“You do?”

“The great new bands are British, and they sing in English. Help me to write again, friend, about my childhood and my father. There aren’t that many rock stars whose fathers have been murdered. Where should I begin?”

“With whatever occurs to you.”

“Okay, thanks.” He began to type, saying, “It begins with you-walking into our house one day, looking at my sister with extreme happiness and smiling across at shy me, as if you understood everything about me, and whatever I did was okay.”

I poured coffee inside me but couldn’t keep any food down. Leaving Mustaq to gesticulate and hum at the computer screen, I walked across the fields for an hour, and then waited for lunch.

Champagne was brought round. Repeatedly lifting a glass might well have exhausted the last of my strength, but there were many places to lie down. That dreamy afternoon it occurred to me, as my eyes flickered, that to lie on a chaise longue at Mustaq’s, while others talked and drank, or played cards and listened to music, as gentle staff moved among you with trays of this and that, was the most perfect condition anyone could inhabit.

“Why hasn’t this occurred to me before?” I said. “That this is what money is for?” I had opened my eyes and noticed Henry standing above me, grinning. “This is what we’ve been expostulating about for years, my friend. Capitalism unfurled. Here it is, and here we are. This is the life!”

He bent down to kiss me. “Take it easy! Nothing’s ever that good!”

“Don’t say that!”

“Couldn’t George have afforded anything cheaper?” This was Miriam, rattling over me, laughing and chattering. For a moment she lay down beside me, her face close to mine, whispering frantically in my ear, “Oh, thank you so much, Brother, for bringing me here. You’ve changed my life completely and forever in the last year. You’ve been kinder to me than Father ever was. I had to let you know that, and now you know it.”

She kissed me and went to join Ajita, who had just got up. Watching my sister cross the room, in a long-sleeved tee-shirt, tight embroidered jeans and high heels, I realised how much weight she’d lost, at least three stone. Her face was almost gaunt and heavily lined, but now it was no longer studded with nuts and bolts, her eyes appeared larger, and her face shone with enthusiasm. She seemed to have retired from motherhood to become a man’s woman, or “partner.” Adopting some of Valerie’s grandiosity, she now liked to begin her sentences with phrases like “As the girlfriend of a leading theatrical producer…”

Henry sat with me. “You didn’t tell me Ajita would be so beautiful.”

“Is she the most beautiful of my girlfriends?”

“She might well turn out to be, but it’s still early days for you. Why don’t we go for a stroll?”

“I’m well embedded here.”

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said. “It isn’t a secret I want to keep.” He put his arm around me. “Show me where to go.”

I followed him. At the door of the kitchen we put on Wellington boots. Outside, I laughed as he stared at the sculptures. Before he could say anything, I said, “They’re Alan’s art.”

I noticed, beside another barn, a studio made of glass and new wood. The doors were open and I could see two drawing boards; on the floor there were pieces of cut and uncut metal, some of them painted-Alan’s workshop.

“That looks good,” I said. “Maybe I should suggest the architect to Mum and Billie. They’re looking to get a studio built in their garden. Did they tell you?”

“Yes, I heard about it,” said Henry.

Miriam had taken him to lunch with Billie and Mum not long ago; and Henry had taken the two older women to the opera on another occasion, when he had been offered tickets. Far from being the anticipated and necessary wedge between parent and child, Henry, the new lover, characteristically failed Miriam-to her irritation. He not only liked Mum and Billie and shared their interest in the visual arts, he didn’t take Miriam’s complaints seriously. “Oh, she’s far better than most mothers,” he’d say. “You can talk to her about anything! You should have met my mother, a woman whose hysteria and depression could have infected Europe!”

Now Henry said to me, “I saw a woman last night, at Kama Sutra, a place we’ve started to go to. It was dark. She attracted me, I have to admit. But I couldn’t stop thinking that I recognised her. She was wearing heels and a mask and some other skimpy stuff. She was thinner than I remembered, but it was her posture, her hair that reminded me of Josephine.”