Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

If he didn’t sit with his friends — and he wouldn’t; he was cold, while they were hot with enthusiasm — where else was there? How did you get to others? After all, it wasn’t only him, or his circle, who was like this. It was his ex-wife’s father, his own sister and her boyfriend, who sat around with cans and bottles, fighting and weeping. Or they had been cured but had become addicted to the cure, as tedious off the stuff as they had been on it.

Francine had taken her drink and gone to join a group. He noticed she continued to watch him, knowing he might shrug her off and leave. He didn’t see why this would matter to her.

Brett was content to think of the North African, wondering whether something about the man had influenced him. Like the taxi driver, Brett seemed to be in a world where everyone resembled him but spoke in a foreign language. If the man stayed in England, he would always struggle to understand it, never quite connecting.

He had helped Brett; why shouldn’t Brett help him? Brett imagined himself turning up at the man’s house, offering to do anything. But what might he do? Wash up, or read to the children? Take them all to the cinema? Why shouldn’t he do it, now he felt better? The man might be too shy or suspicious for such things, yet surely he had to stop work for lunch or supper? Brett could listen to him. It would be a way of starting again, or returning to a state of teenage curiosity, when you might take any path that presented itself, seeing where it led.

Brett got down from the stool.

‘No you don’t.’ Francine came over and put her tongue in his mouth. ‘You take me home. You’ve been coming on to me all night.’

He didn’t mind taking her home. He had come to dislike his own street and thought he should move to another district. Apart from the fact a change would do him good, living near by was a woman he passed often, an ex-barmaid. If she recognised him, which he doubted, she never acknowledged him. She had four children by different fathers and the youngest was his, he knew it. He had stayed with her one night after a party, four years ago. When he made the calculation, it added up. A drinking acquaintance pointed it out. ‘Look at that kid. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were the father.’

He had gone to the playground to watch the child. It was true; she had his own mother’s hair and eyes. He had seen the woman shout at the girl. He didn’t like passing his only daughter on the street.

In the car, Francine was drinking from a bottle of wine.

‘Haven’t you had enough yet?’ he said. ‘Can’t you just stop?’

‘Tonight I’m going the whole way.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s a fatuous question.’

‘But I would like to know, really.’

She started to cry, talking all the while. She didn’t think to spare him her misery; perhaps it didn’t occur to her that he would be concerned.

The North African man drove strangers night after night, despised or invisible amongst abhorrent fools who had so much of everything, they could afford to piss it away.

At Francine’s block of flats, he helped her upstairs. He put the lights on and led her to bed. She thrashed about, as if the mattress were a runaway horse she had to master.

He turned his back, but she couldn’t remove her clothes. He got her into her pyjamas and kissed her on the side of the head.

‘Good night, Francine.’

‘Don’t leave me! You’re staying, aren’t you? I —’

She was clawing at his chest. She was an awful colour. He ran for the washing-up bowl and held it by her face.

‘Is this it? Is this it?’ she kept saying. ‘Is it now, tonight?’

‘Is it what, Francine?’

‘Death! Is he here? Has William Burroughs come to call?’

‘Not tonight, sweetheart. Lie back.’

Her vomit splattered the walls; it went over his jacket, his shoes, trousers and shirt, and in his hair.

At the end, she did lie back, exhausted. He removed her soiled pyjamas and put her into a dressing gown.

He was sitting there. She extended her arms to him. ‘Come on, Brett.’

‘You’re pretty sick, Francine.’

‘I’ve finished. There’s nothing left. You can do what you want to me.’ She was shivering, but she opened her dressing gown. ‘That’s something no one ever says no to!’

‘What difference would it make?’

‘Who cares about that! Fetch yourself a drink and settle down. I’ve always liked you.’

‘Have you?’

‘Don’t you know that? Despite your problems, you’re bright and you can be sweet. Won’t you tell me what you are on tonight, Brett?’

He shook his head and put a glass of water to her lips. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘There must be someone else you’re going to. That’s a rotten thing to do to a woman.’

He thought for a time.

‘There is no woman. It’s a taxi driver.’

‘Christ!’

‘Yes.’

‘The one who fished you out? You won’t know where he is.’

‘I’ll go to the cab office and wait. They know me there. Hell, understand what I want.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Good talk.’

She said, ‘You enjoyed sleeping with me last time.’

‘What last time? There wasn’t any last time.’

‘Don’t pretend to be a fool when you’re not. Get in.’

She was patting the bed.

He walked to the door and shut it behind him. She was still talking, to him, to anyone and no one.

‘There’s someone I’ve got to find,’ he said.

It is nearly Christmas and Rick is getting quite drunk at a party in a friend’s clothes shop.

It is a vast shop in a smart area of west London, and tonight the girls who work there have got dressed up in shiny black dresses, white velvet bunny ears and high shoes. When Rick and Daniel arrived, the girls were holding trays of champagne, mulled wine and mince pies. Has there ever been anything so inviting?

The girls helped Rick’s son Daniel out of his pushchair, removed his little red coat and showed him to the children’s room where remote-controlled electric toys buzzed across the floor. There was a small seesaw; several other local children were already playing. Rick sat on the floor and Daniel, though it was late for him, chased the electric toys, flung a ping-pong ball through the open window and dismantled a doll’s house, not understanding that all the inviting objects were for sale.

Rick had begun drinking an hour earlier. On the way to the party they had stopped at a bar in the area where Rick used to go when he was single. There, Daniel, who is two and a half, had climbed right up onto a furry stool next to his father, sitting in a line with the other early-evening drinkers.

‘I’m training him up,’ Rick said to the barmaid. ‘Please, Daniel, ask her for a beer.’

‘Blow-blow,’ said Daniel.

‘Sorry?’ said Rick.

Daniel held up a book of matches. ‘Blow-blow.’

Rick opened it and lit a match. ‘Again,’ Daniel said, the moment he blew it out. He extinguished two match books like this, filling the ashtray. As each match illuminated the boy’s face, his cheeks filled and his lips puckered. When the light died, the boy’s laughter rang out around the fashionably gloomy bar.

‘Ready, steady, blow-blow!’

‘Blow-bloody-blow,’ murmured a sullen drinker.

‘Got something to say?’ said Rick, slipping from the stool.

The man grunted.

Rick persuaded the kid to get into his raincoat and put on his hat with the peak and ear-flaps, securing it under his chin. He slung the bag full of nappies, juice, numerous snacks, wipes and toys over his shoulder, and they went out into the night and teeming rain.