Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘It will ’ot you up. Don’t you … dance?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? We always danced like this.’ He shut his eyes and nodded his head as if attempting to bang in a nail with his forehead.

She kicked off her shoes.

‘We dance like this. I’ll illustrate you.’ She looked at him. ‘Take it off.’

‘What?’

‘This stupid thing.’

She pulled off his scarf. She shoved the chairs against the wall and put on a Chopin waltz, took his hand and placed her other hand on his back. He looked down at her dancing feet even as he trod on them, but she didn’t object. Gently but firmly she turned and turned him across the room, until he was dizzy, her hair tickling his face. Whenever he glanced up she was looking into his eyes. Each time they crossed the room she trotted back, pulling him, amused. She seemed determined that he should learn, certain that this would benefit him.

‘You require some practice,’ she said at last. He fell back into his chair, blowing and laughing. ‘But after a week, who knows, we could be having you work as a gigolo!’

*

It was midnight. Celestine came naked out of the bathroom smoking a cigarette. She got into bed and lay beside him. He thought of a time in New York when the company sent a white limousine to the airport. Once inside it, drinking whisky and watching TV as the limo passed over the East River towards Manhattan, he wanted nothing more than for his friends to see him.

She was on him vigorously and the earth was moving: either that, or the two single beds, on the juncture of which he was lying, were separating. He stuck out his arms to secure them, but with each lurch his head was being forced down into the fissure. He felt as if his ears were going to be torn off. The two of them were about to crash through onto the floor.

He rolled her over onto one bed. Then he sat up and showed her what would have happened. She started to laugh, she couldn’t stop.

*

The gas meter ticked; she was dozing. He had never lain beside a lovelier face. He thought of what Nicola might have sought that night with Celestine’s father. Affection, attention, serious talk, honesty, distraction. Did he give her that now? Could they give it to one another, and with a kid on the way?

Celestine was nudging him and trying to say something in his ear.

‘You want what?’ he said. Then, ‘Surely … no … no.’

‘Bill, yes.’

He liked to think he was willing to try anything. A black eye would certainly send a convincing message to her father. She smiled when he raised his hand.

‘I deserve to be hurt.’

‘No one deserves that.’

‘But you see … I do.’

That night, in that freezing room, he did everything she asked, for as long as she wanted. He praised her beauty and her intelligence. He had never kissed anyone for so long, until he forgot where he was, or who they both were, until there was nothing they wanted, and there was only the most satisfactory peace.

He got up and dressed. He was shivering. He wanted to wash, he smelled of her, but he wasn’t prepared for a cold bath.

‘Why are you leaving?’ She leaped up and held him. ‘Stay, stay, I haven’t finished with you yet.’

He put on his coat and went into the living room. Without looking back he hurried out and down the stairs. He pulled the front door, anticipating the fresh damp night air. But the door held. He had forgotten: the door was locked. He stood there.

Upstairs she was wrapped in a fur coat, looking out of the window.

‘The key,’ he said.

‘Old man,’ she said, laughing. ‘You are.’

She accompanied him barefoot down the stairs. While she unlocked the door he mumbled, ‘Will you tell your father I saw you?’

‘But why?’

He touched her face. She drew back. ‘You should put something on that,’ he said. ‘I met him once. He knows my wife.’

‘I rarely see him now,’ she said.

She was holding out her arms. They danced a few steps across the hall. He was better at it now. He went out into the street. Several cabs passed him but he didn’t hail them. He kept walking. There was comfort in the rain. He put his head back and looked up into the sky. He had some impression that happiness was beyond him and everything was coming down, and that life could not be grasped but only lived.

I tell you, I feel tired and dirty, but I was told no baths allowed for a few days, so I’ll stay dirty. Yesterday morning I was crying a lot and the woman asked me to give an address in case of emergencies and I made one up. I had to undress and get in a white smock and they took my temperature and blood pressure five times. Then a nurse pushed me in a wheelchair into a green room where I met the doctor. He called us all ‘ladies’ and told jokes. I could see some people getting annoyed. He was Indian, unfortunately, and he looked at me strangely as if to say, ‘What are you doing here?’ But maybe it was just my imagination.

I had to lie on a table and they put a needle or two into my left arm. Heat rushed over my face and I tried to speak. The next thing I know I’m in the recovery room with a nurse saying, ‘Wake up, dear, it’s all over.’ The doctor poked me in the stomach and said, ‘Fine.’ I found myself feeling aggressive. ‘Do you do this all the time?’ I asked. He said he did nothing else.

They woke us at six and there were several awkward-looking, sleepy boyfriends outside. I got the bus and went back to the squat.

*

A few months later we got kicked out and I had to go back to Ma’s place. So I’m back here now, writing this with my foot up on the table, reckoning I look like a painter. I sip water with a slice of lemon in it. I’m at Ma’s kitchen table and there are herbs growing in pots around me. At least the place is clean, though it’s shabby and all falling apart. There are photographs of Ma’s women friends from the Labour Party and the Women’s Support Group and there is Blake’s picture of Newton next to drawings by her kids from school. There are books everywhere, on the Alexander Method and the Suzuki Method and all the other methods in the world. And then there’s her boyfriend.

Yes, the radical (ha!) television writer and well-known toss-pot Howard Coleman sits opposite me as I record him with my biro. He’s reading one of his scripts, smoking and slowly turning the pages, but the awful thing is, he keeps giggling at them. Thank Christ Ma should be back any minute now from the Catholic girls’ school where she teaches.

It’s Howard who asked me to write this diary, who said write down some of the things that happen. My half-sister Nadia is about to come over from Pakistan to stay with us. Get it all down, he said.

If you could see Howard now like I can, you’d really laugh. I mean it. He’s about forty-three and he’s got on a squeaky leather jacket and jeans with the arse round his knees and these trainers with soles that look like mattresses. He looks like he’s never bought anything new. Or if he has, when he gets it back from the shop, he throws it on the floor, empties the dustbin over it and walks up and down on it in a pair of dirty Dr Martens. For him dirty clothes are a political act.

But this is the coup. Howard’s smoking a roll-up. He’s got this tin, his fag papers and the stubby yellow fingers with which he rolls, licks, fiddles, taps, lights, extinguishes and relights all day. This rigmarole goes on when he’s in bed with Ma, presumably on her chest. I’ve gone in there in the morning for a snoop and found his ashtray by the bed, condom on top.

Christ, he’s nodding at me as I write! It’s because he’s so keen on ordinary riff-raff expressing itself, especially no-hoper girls like me. One day we’re writing, the next we’re on the barricades.