Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

‘So death cures worry?’

‘Yes. To avoid worrying, contemplate your own death and nothing else.’

‘Ah.’

‘I have noticed that people will say, “Oh, well, you are young,” to a young person who, whilst they will be accepting of the fact that they are younger than the old and decrepit fossil who is calling them young, will nonetheless not be accepting of the fact that they themselves are young.’

‘Yeah, how come?’

‘Because the younger person will be the oldest they have ever been. And he or she will be conscious that they are one year older than they were the previous year, and that the tally is always rising. A 25-year-old, for example, who appears a mere child to a 50- or 60-year-old, and to whom the latter will feel impelled to issue a constant reminder of the former’s youth, is nonetheless older than a 21-year-old.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And owing to youth’s fickleness, the 21-year-old is also considerably younger-feeling than the 25-year-old and will be keen to remind them of their age difference.’

‘OK, yeah.’

‘But in turn the 21-year-old is a fair bit older than an 18-year-old who will consider the 21-year-old to be old and wise, even. And maddeningly an 18-year-old will feel adult responsibility and decision-making falling upon his shoulders and will himself look back on being 15 or 16 as being young and easy.’

‘Years counting for more when you are young because as a fraction of your total life they are big, innit?’

‘Indeed so. Similarly, a 15-year-old will look back on being eight as some magic time, never to be recaptured. Likewise an eight-year-old will look back on being five as a perfect childhood bubble.’

‘Numbers confuse us, too, though, yeah?’

‘Yes, we are entranced by numbers and their supposed significance. A person reaching 30 will feel they have become old partly because the number seems offensively aged to them.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yet it is just the turn of a digit. Likewise 40, 50, 60. It hurts a person to reach these supposed “milestones” because they feel that they must be old to have reached them. But if 30 is old, then what is 60?’

‘Yeah, and what is 60 if you are 90?’

‘Young by comparison, dear boy. In experience turning 60 must necessarily come with the feeling of “old”, but in fact the key word is, and can only be, “older”.

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘And that applies whether at 18 or 30 or 50 or 65. Also at 76 or 89 or 91 or 111…’

‘Yeah, true.’

‘To wit, one is never young.’

‘Common sense might have it that a person upset by turning 40 should spend more time with 60-year-olds.’

‘How so?’

‘Because by doing this he will feel young again, much younger than the 60-year-olds he now surrounds himself with and who keep telling him how young he is. They will flatter his ego and give him the sense that time is on his side once more.’

‘Indeed so.’

‘Similarly, anyone downcast by turning 60 should spend time with 80-year-olds, and those disheartened by turning 80 should immediately hang out with 100-year-olds. Likewise, 100-year-olds should speed into the company of any 120-year-olds still living. In such a way all those depressed by the ageing process will find new vim and vigour by associating with people older than them, who in turn will envy them their comparative youth, and remark upon it, and indeed at the mere hint or suggestion of the word “youth”, the downhearted person will come back to life again. But it is not so.’

‘How so is it not so?’

‘Because it is homogeneity which assures us vim and vigour, and not difference; it is homogeneity which emboldens us, more so than associating with those for whom we feel pity, or hope to use to get one over on for our own benefit and in such an unsightly way.’

‘How so is it unsightly if we get a little fillip from the misfortunes, I mean, the ageing, of others?’

‘Oh, but it is. Consider this: the entry of a group of six-foot men into a room immediately fills all who observe them with pleasure at their six-footedness. The inclusion of a five-foot-ten or below man amongst them spoils the impression. Similarly, a group of blondes is all the more lovely if they are indeed wholly and completely a group of blondes and there isn’t a non-blonde amongst them.’

‘Blondes are just so.’

‘In any social gathering one might expect to find several blondes. They should immediately form friendships and spend time together and people will observe them and feel happiness at their blondeness because nature loves homogeneity and a wholesome homogenous impression gives joy to those outside the group whether they care to admit it or not.’

‘Fantastic, so.’

‘At the same time, and to get to the real heart of the matter, spending time with others of the same ilk will encourage a person to match them or go beyond them and see what is possible for themselves. The “if they can do it, so can I” approach. Thus normalising their own experience of being six foot or 40 years old or blonde. Those people who are tall will maintain posture and dress appropriately in the company of similarly tall people. Those persons reaching 40 years old will share advice and wisdom appropriate for their age range and no other. And blondes will maintain their hair colour and discuss fashion advice and act in ways suitable to blonde-haired people by hanging out with their blonde friends in a blonde cohort.’

‘So brilliant.’

‘People tend to think that groupthink is a universally bad thing and that we perpetually need new voices and new attitudes to stop it from happening.’

‘What’s that? You’ve bought a new hat or something? Let me turn this thing on.’

‘They suppose that groupthink is a negative concept that describes what happens when humans form a group and think for the purposes of that group and in the manner of that group.’

‘Yes, it certainly looks like a man.’

‘But there is no alternative. Either one comes in and changes the group to make everyone think like you—’

‘And I like you!’

‘—or you surrender to the group and change yourself to suit it.’

‘Never surrender!’

‘But a group would never get anything done if everyone actually thought differently, because then there would be no consensus.’

‘No? There’s one every ten years, I think.’

‘So by reaching an accord—’

‘Yes, lovely plane, they should never have discontinued it.’

‘—with regularity, you get a thinking style and a way of doing things, and even a way of behaving and speaking, that is distinctive and unanimous. And hence companies and organisations tend towards a united state.’

‘Have you? You know, I’ve never been.’

‘But it’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s completely natural.’

‘Really? It looks more like a wig to me.’

‘And so we shouldn’t rail against the human condition when these things are inherent.’

‘No, not a thing, old chap.’

It is a gaudy display, something I might expect to see in the window of our local high street bakery, a family business seemingly unmoved by the spirit of regeneration in this area. But they look pretty: rows of biscuits shaped as witches, skeletons and pumpkins, painted with thick icing swirls and laid out on an enormous foil party tray covered with orange tissue paper. The doorbell rings. ‘Go on then,’ I say to Jamie, smiling but not able to look him directly in the eyes.

The smell of baking fills the kitchen, softening for once its steely decor. In the early stages of Jamie’s illness, the sharp lines of our new flat had provided a certain comfort. They had prompted me to clean more often than I would normally, which helped counter my belief that an unpleasant odour now flowed through our lives like a contaminated river. I would continue cleaning until I felt I was stemming its course. Still, I imagined I carried the odour on me, out into the world. Some days I was sick with worry that I must fill other spaces with it: the open-plan office, friends’ houses, darkened cinemas, even pristine white gallery spaces that you would hope might be a refuge.