Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

I interrupted him, ‘You certainly wanted to know that woman this evening.’

‘What? How quiet it is! Shall we hear some music?’

He was right. Neither the city nor the country was quiet like the suburbs, the silence of people holding their breath.

Dad was holding up a record he had borrowed from the library. ‘You will know this, but not well enough, I guarantee you.’

Beethoven’s Fifth was an odd choice of background music, but how could I sneer? Without his enthusiasm, my life would never have been filled with music. Mother had been a church pianist, and she’d taken us to the ballet, usually The Nutcracker , or the Bolshoi when they visited London. Mum and Dad sometimes went ballroom dancing; I loved it when they dressed up. Out of such minute inspirations I have found meaning sufficient for a life.

Dad said, ‘Do you think I’ll be able to go in that pub again?’

‘If you apologise.’

‘Better leave it a few weeks. I don’t know what overcame me. That woman’s not a Jewess, is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Usually she’s happy to hear about my aches and pains, and who else is, at our age?’

‘Where d’you ache?’

‘It’s the walk to and from the station — sometimes I just can’t make it. I have to stop and lean against something.’

I said, ‘I’ve been learning massage.’

‘Ah.’ He put his feet in my lap. I squeezed his feet, ankles, and calves; he wasn’t looking at me now. He said, ‘Your hands are strong. You’re not a plumber, are you?’

‘I’ve told you what I do. I have the theatre, and now I’m helping to set up a teaching foundation, a studio for the young.’

He whispered, ‘Are you homosexual?’

‘I am, yes. Never seen a cock I didn’t like. You?’

‘Queer? It would have shown up by now, wouldn’t it? But I’ve never done much about my female interests.’

‘You’ve never been unfaithful?’

‘I’ve always liked women.’

I asked, ‘Do they like you?’

‘The local secretaries are friendly. Not that you can do anything. I can’t afford a “professional”.’

‘How often do you go to the pub?’

‘I’ve started popping in after work. My Billy has gone.’

‘For good?’

‘After university he’ll come running back to me, I can assure you of that. Around this time of night I’d always be talking to him. There’s a lot you can put in a kid, without his knowing it. My wife doesn’t have a word to say to me. She doesn’t like to do anything for me, either.’

‘Sexually?’

‘She might look large to you, but in the flesh she is even larger, and she crushes me like a gnat in bed. I can honestly say we haven’t had it off for eighteen years.’

‘Since Billy was born?’

He said, letting me caress him, ‘She never had much enthusiasm for it. Now she is indifferent … frozen … almost dead.’

I said, ‘People are more scared of their own passion than of anything else. But it’s a grim deprivation she’s made you endure.’

He nodded. ‘You dirty homos have a good time, I bet, looking at one another in toilets and that …’

‘People like to think so. But I’ve lived alone for five years.’

He said, ‘I am hoping she will die before me, then I might have a chance … We ordinary types carry on in these hateful situations for the single reason of the children and you’ll never have that.’

‘You’re right.’

He indicated photographs of me and my brother. ‘Without those babies, there is nothing for me. It is ridiculous to try to live for yourself alone.’

‘Don’t I know it? Unless one can find others to live for.’

‘I hope you do!’ he said. ‘But it can never be the same as your own.’

If the mortification of fidelity imperils love, there’s always the consolation of children. I had been Dad’s girl, his servant, his worshipper; my faith had kept him alive. It was a cult of personality he had set up, with my brother and me as his mirrors.

Now Mother opened the door — not so wide that she could see us, or us her — and announced that she was going to bed.

‘Good night,’ I called.

Dad was right about kids. But what could I do about it? I had bought an old factory at my own expense and had converted it into a theatre studio, a place where young people could work with established artists. I spent so much time in this building that I had moved my office there. It was where I would head when I left here, to sit in the café, seeing who would turn up and what they wanted from me, if anything. I was gradually divesting myself, as I aged, of all I’d accumulated. One of Father’s favourite works was Tolstoy’s ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’

I said, ‘With or without children, you are still a man. There are things you want that children cannot provide.’

He said, ‘We all, in this street, are devoted to hobbies.’

‘The women, too?’

‘They sew, or whatever. There’s never an idle moment. My son has written a beautiful essay on the use of time.’

He sipped his tea; the Beethoven, which was on repeat, boomed away. He seemed content to let me work on his legs. Since he didn’t want me to stop, I asked him to lie on the floor. With characteristic eagerness, he removed his dressing gown and then his pyjama top; I massaged every part of him, murmuring ‘Dad, Dad’ under my breath. When at last he stood up, I was ready with his warm dressing gown, which I had placed on the radiator.

*

It was late, but not too late to leave. It was never too late to leave the suburbs, but Dad invited me to stay. I agreed, though it hadn’t occurred to me that he would suggest I sleep in my old room, in my bed.

He accompanied me upstairs and in I went, stepping over record sleeves, magazines, clothes, books. My piano I was most glad to see. I can still play a little, but my passion was writing the songs that were scrawled in notebooks on top of the piano. Not that I would be able to look at them. When I began to work in the theatre, I didn’t show my songs to anyone, and eventually I came to believe they were a waste of time.

Standing there shivering, I had to tell myself the truth: my secret wasn’t that I hadn’t propagated but that I’d wanted to be an artist, not just a producer. If I chose, I could blame my parents for this: they had seen themselves as spectators, in the background of life. But I was the one who’d lacked the guts — to fail, to succeed, to engage with the whole undignified, insane attempt at originality. I had only ever been a handmaiden, first to Dad and then to others — the artists I’d supported — and how could I have imagined that that would be sufficient?

My bed was narrow. Through the thin wall, I could hear my father snoring; I knew whenever he turned over in bed. It was true that I had never heard them making love. Somehow, between them, they had transformed the notion of physical love into a ridiculous idea. Why would people want to do something so awkward with their limbs?

I couldn’t hear Mother. She didn’t snore, but she could sigh for England. I got up and went to the top of the stairs. By the kitchen light I could see her in her dressing gown, stockings around her ankles, trudging along the hall and into each room, wringing her hands as she went, muttering back to the ghosts clamouring within her skull.

She stood still to scratch and tear at her exploded arms. During the day, she kept them covered because of her ‘eczema’. Now I watched while flakes of skin fell onto the carpet, as though she were converting herself into dust. She dispersed the shreds of her body with her delicately pointed dancer’s foot.

As a child — even as a young man — I would never have approached Mother in this state. She had always made it clear that the uproar and demands of two boys were too much for her. Naturally, she couldn’t wish for us to die, so she died herself, inside.