Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘A great kid,’ laughed Andrea. ‘Where did you get him?’

Mal sighed and described to Andrea what it had been like seeing his unwanted son for the first time. He told her what had happened since, and how things stood between them.

They filled Wallace with ice-cream and chocolate. When an argument developed about candyfloss and he used Mal’s phone to ring his mother and began weeping, Mal had to tell Andrea that Wallace was hungry.

They parted and Mal took the boy for fish and chips. In the hotel, Wallace refused a bath but at least got into his pyjamas. Mal set him up in front of the TV, where he became instantly absorbed. Mal would be able to slip the bottle of whisky into his pocket and open the door.

‘What are you doing?’ The boy was staring at him in panic.

‘I’m going downstairs to have a word with Andrea.’

‘No!’

‘I won’t be long. You’ll be fine.’

Mal shut the door before the boy could say anything else. He put his ear to the keyhole but heard only the commercials, which, no doubt, Wallace was mouthing the words to.

Andrea was waiting. They walked quickly through the part of town Mal was familiar with, past clubbers and those looking for restaurants, into a more dilapidated area called the Old Town. He was surprised to see working fishermen preparing to take their boats out for the night. Behind this, the streets narrowed; the close houses seemed to lean across the lanes and almost touch at the top. There were red lights in some of the windows here. She pointed at a house. ‘You could score here.’

They entered a pub that seemed full of rough, tattooed late adolescents, most of whom looked like addicts. She went round the place, greeting those she knew. They were pleased to see her, but she was not like them.

Outside again, she said, pointing, ‘We could put the camera there and the actors could run into that alley. We could follow them — that way!’

He turned, needing to see and feel what she did. He noticed there was a sort of silence or poverty — of inactivity or emptiness, he would have said — which you didn’t find in London.

She told him, ‘The people here think London’s a stew full of foreigners. They hardly go there.’

‘It’s about time we declared independence.’

Mal’s legs ached but he went on, pursuing and, at times, questioning her enthusiasm. At last they stood in a cobbled square where the streets seemed to lead in all directions. Mal heard a shout and Wallace came rushing towards them, wearing his pyjamas, football gloves and trainers.

‘I followed you!’

Mal wanted to pick him up but the shivering boy was too heavy.

‘All this way?’

‘You tried to leave me!’

‘You were safe in the hotel.’ He crouched down and embraced Wallace, kissing his petrified hair.

‘Someone was going to steal me!’

‘No!’

Andrea took off her sweater and tied it around his neck. Holding hands, they ran back. In the hotel lounge, Andrea ordered hot chocolate and crisps for him.

‘You two.’ She was laughing. ‘You look exactly the same.’

‘We do?’ said Wallace.

‘How could you be anything but father and son?’

Mal and Wallace were looking at one another. Mal said to him, ‘I would never leave you for long. We were only trying to figure out how to make Andrea’s movie.’

Wallace asked, ‘What’s it about? You’re not going to run away from me again, are you?’

‘I’m too tired. In fact, I’m exhausted and broken.’

Mal fetched drinks for himself and Andrea.

Andrea said, ‘The story is this. I was nearly grown-up but not quite when my mum and dad said they couldn’t live together any more. From then on, I would have to move between them.’

‘Like a parcel, like me,’ said Wallace. ‘You don’t want to be posted everywhere all the time.’

‘It was worse than that,’ she said. ‘The film is called Ten Days and is set around the time I was sent to stay with Dad — quite near here — for a holiday. Mum wanted to be with another man, you see, which Dad guessed. When I arrived, I found that my poor father couldn’t get out of bed for fear of falling over. All he moved was his arm, to drink. I would sit with him, listening to his stories or watching films. While he was asleep, or passed out, I’d roam about the town on my own, making friends with the locals. Kids always complain there’s nothing to do in such places. We found plenty to do, oh yes.’

Wallace nudged his father.

‘She was so bad.’

‘The baddest, me. Back home, when I was asked what Dad and I did on our hols, they worked out that Dad had gone crazy. I was never allowed to see him again.’

‘In your whole life?’

‘He liked drink and they thought it made him a sick person, a fuck-up.’

‘She swore!’

‘Dad died a month later. They didn’t tell me properly. I heard about his death from a relative. I ran away from home to attend the funeral and I stayed down here a few more days, meeting his friends and sleeping in a tent in the woods. I got into more big trouble at home. I didn’t like my new stepfather and came down here to live.’

‘It was naughty to run away.’ He asked, ‘Did you see your dad’s dead body?’

‘Not in life.’ Andrea took a notebook from her rucksack and wrote, ‘“Goes to see dead body of father in morgue”. In the film, she will, now.’

‘Dad looks normal to you,’ said Wallace. ‘But he was in trouble once. He ran away too and he drank cider. He was a burglar, and he had rainbow hair. Didn’t you, Dad?’

‘Wow,’ said Andrea. ‘He doesn’t look like that kind of guy now.’

Wallace said, ‘Will you still let him work for you?’

‘What d’you think?’

‘I think you should let him. But only if you put me in the film.’

‘There might be a small part for you. Have you acted before? Tell you what, I’ll pretend to hit you and you have to react. Remember, the action is in the reaction. The camera and the people will be looking at you. Stand up.’

She pretended to hit him a few times. Wallace was sufficiently histrionic on the floor.

Wallace let Andrea kiss him goodnight. Mal accompanied Wallace upstairs and got into bed beside him. Mal’s young son often slept between Mal and his wife, but Mal had never slept beside his first son. Wallace fell asleep almost immediately, his comforter twitching in his mouth. He was still filthy; no water had passed over him on this trip.

Mal cuddled Wallace but couldn’t sleep. He listened to the sea through the open balcony door. He got up, dressed and went out, locking the door from the outside. On the street it was dark and windy, but there were plenty of people about. The sea was further out than he thought, but he got there.

He realised that he seemed to breathe more easily with so much space around him. He wanted to drift along the beach, following the lights and voices to a crowded bar, to drink and talk with strangers, to find out whether their lives were worse or better than his. But Mal could still see the hotel and what he guessed was their room, the sleeping child just beyond the open balcony door. He couldn’t lose that patch of light in the distance.

Mal noticed a group of kids not far away, older than students, listening to a boom-box and passing around plastic bottles of cider. Mal went over to one of them and said, ‘Can I dance here?’

‘Everyone needs to feel free,’ said the kid, who appeared to have been in a fight. Mal hesitated. The dance he had last been familiar with was ‘the pogo’. ‘Feel free,’ repeated the boy.

Mal offered him a swig of whisky from the bottle he had brought out. ‘It’s been a long time though.’

The boy left him. Mal moved closer to the music and began to shuffle; he jerked his body and shook his head. He was hopping. He began to pogo, alone of course, jumping up towards the sky with his arms out for as long as he could, until he fell over in the wet shingle, getting soaked to the skin.