Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

To her credit, Josephine had warned me that her “new man” would be at the house. Now Rafi opened the front door, saying nothing for once, but his eyes darted about nervously. His mother must have told him to keep quiet. This wasn’t a meeting I welcomed, but I supposed that the reality of this guy-whatever it was-would keep my paranoia down.

I followed Rafi downstairs, whispering, “Many are the trials of being an adult, my son.”

“But it’s all your fault, Dad.”

Eliot was sitting at the table Josephine and I had bought on the Shepherd’s Bush Road, before all the shops became estate agents and mobile-phone dealers. He was drinking from my Ryan Giggs mug and correcting my son’s homework with a pencil.

Inevitably I had imagined a tall, charismatic god, but Eliot had longish greying hair, an open-necked shirt, an old worn jacket, academic wear. He was boss-eyed too, looking in at least two directions at once, which must have amused Rafi, as well as being useful at parties.

He was a fuzzy, badly photocopied version of me, more or less the same age, width and height, except with more of a concerned “hospital” look, though maybe I had that at times. A phrase occurred to me: “sullen charm.” It took me a while to recognise its origin. Years ago I’d been so described by an interviewer, who might as well have added “sulky,” “opinionated” and “self-absorbed.”

I thought: The place of the dead is soon taken by identical others-as at some of the movie award ceremonies I’d had the misfortune to attend with Henry, where if you left your seat, bow-tied students would steal into your place so as not to reveal an absence to the cameras. Eliot had stolen from me all I didn’t want, and it felt like theft.

I was looking at Eliot and looking at her, wondering what there was between them. Maybe she had found what she wanted: a psychologist and, through him, twenty-four-hour care, like marrying a doctor.

I didn’t want to hang around. I declined tea, extracted a shot of vodka I’d left in the fridge a few days earlier, asked about the university department where he worked and shook his hand.

Leaving, I turned to see him wiping sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. My shadow would always darken his life; I would be his ghost. Wouldn’t she always love me? My son’s face could only remind him of me. What, he could only wonder, was he getting into?

“What do you think?” Rafi asked, as he accompanied me to the front gate.

“He’s brave, but I don’t envy him,” I said. “Being in your own family is hard enough. Joining someone else’s is scary work.”

“Is he a different kind of psycho-thing to you?”

“He’s only a psychologist. One of those people who says it’s all biology, or all in the brain. I bet he talks about animals without realising you can find an animal to justify any intellectual position. What do you want? Snakes? Donkeys? Insects? Except that there is no animal capable of being grief-stricken, for years, like man.”

“They know nothing,” said Rafi supportively, adding for good measure, “Fuckers. Don’t worry about him, Dad. You should hear him talk. I’m snoring. He says all your stuff-it’s only specu-…Specu-”

“Speculation?”

“Yes. Speculation,” he said in a Jamaican accent. “An’ it’s all been dissed.”

“Yes?”

“Discredited. Years ago.”

I said, “Probably the only true psychologists these days are advertisers.”

“I have to tell you, Dad, we’re going on holiday together. To Malaysia.”

“You are?”

“Him, me, Mum and his two daughters. I’ve got two new older sisters-even if we’re not related and they’re teenagers!”

“He’s got money, has he?”

“You’ll be paying quite a bit towards it, Mum says. Does that hurt you?”

“It’s beginning to.”

“I’ll tell Mum I don’t want to go.”

“I’ll be here when you get back, exactly the same. I have Miriam and Henry and other friends.”

“Mum says, when we go away, will you feed the cat? I hate it when you’re sad,” he said, resting his head against my shoulder and nuzzling into me, as he did as a child. “But Eliot does have an Arsenal season ticket.”

“This fucking boyfriend too? Is that what she advertises for?”

“It’s very bad luck, Dad. T, those Gooners are everywhere.”

After I had told Ajita this, she said, “I’m glad you’ve spoken to me. We thought we liked each other, but were really only interested in other people. Do you want to carry on seeing me?”

I said yes, but like her, really wasn’t sure about it.

I had no idea how soon it would be necessary for us urgently to talk.

It was when Rafi, Josephine and Eliot went on holiday that I rang Karen. I emailed her occasionally, but it had been a while since I’d heard from her. It turned out she was alone too. Her daughters had gone to stay with their father and Ruby, along with the twins Ruby had just given birth to.

We were in Sheekey’s. She looked tired, and she was wearing a wrap on her head.

“You’re not drinking,” I said.

“Order whatever you want,” she said. “I’m paying and I don’t care.”

“Antibiotics?” I said.

“You know,” she said, “I was invited on a date. It must have been around the last time I saw you-”

“You were going to meet that guy.”

“Yes.”

“I went to meet him. Just before, getting ready, I was in the shower, luxuriating with my favourite French bath gel, Stendhal it’s called. As my hand moved across my breast, I felt something that didn’t move like the rest. I tried to find it again, but couldn’t.

“We had supper at the Wolsey. He’s talking, I’m talking. But all the time there’s this other text running through my head: Breasts change all the time. They’re more fluid than people think. They get bigger, smaller, rounder by the hour depending on men’s hands, babies, menstruation. But no one will ever touch me again.

“I have my checkups once a year. I worship my doctor. He’s South African, he likes women, our bodies, our breasts.

“At the end of the dinner, the date and I take separate cabs, he’s going somewhere else for drinks, he invites me but I’m too spaced to go. The last thing he wants to hear about is my lump. That’s going to make him hard and wanting me, right?

“The next day my hand seems to hit it, sort of smack into it.

“I froze. It was the end of me being what I still hadn’t become-desirable. Like Hepburn or Binoche. Just give me a chance, I’d think to myself, a moment, a week, a year, and I’ll get there. In fact, I’m more mature, smarter in every way. Less afraid of everything.”

“Why wouldn’t it be a cyst?”

“Exactly. Why not? Mammograms are full of them and they mean nothing. The mammogrammists send you off for further tests-sonograms, nonograms. Then more doctors mash you with cold plates or warm, humming probes and peer into scopes and monitors-and it’s nothing.

“Fool I might be, but I did the responsible thing and made an appointment with the doctor-hero. When he asked if I’d come for any reason, I said no, just a regular checkup. My man likes to see ‘his women’ every six months, but I managed to make it once a year. I didn’t want to determine his observations, give him an agenda. If he found something during the usual routine, well, okay. If not, what is there to talk about?

“He did the right breast, then the left. Slender, cool fingers. His touch is elegant, not arousing. You feel like a piano being stroked by a genius. Do they study it?

“Both hands on my left breast. Suddenly I couldn’t hear and I couldn’t breathe. But it was important to act natural. If he wanted to get me into the cancer thing, then he’d have to do his own damn work.