Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘Hello, my dear,’ Max said, when he appeared in the kitchen in shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt which he now realised only just covered his stomach when he stood up. ‘Let’s go onto the terrace. I’d like you to see it.’

It was unusual now for him to invite Maggie to the house because she irritated Max’s wife with, as Lucy put it, her ‘soppy self-righteousness and earnestness’. Lucy might well go on to say more maddening things like, ‘And as for that weird thing the three of you seemed to have had together, can you explain what in God’s name that was about?’

What indeed? However, Lucy was away filming; Max, she and the rest of the family would meet up tomorrow at the place they’d bought in Suffolk.

Max led Maggie up the stairs and onto the terrace, which stretched out across the top of the kitchen. There was a view of the garden, with a shed at the end, where the boys rehearsed their band and watched movies with their friends. Beyond that was the bowling green and the local park. It was spring, the blossom was out; so far it was the nicest day of the year.

They sat at the table and Marta, a young woman with dyed red hair, appeared again with a tray on which there was coffee and two glasses of grappa.

He said, ‘This is where I’m intending to spend the summer months.’

Maggie put her head back, attempting to catch the sun on her face. ‘What doing?’

‘Writing poetry, drawing, learning to paint. Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve got nothing better to do. But for years I was too tangled up to be creative.’

‘You were? How?’

He indicated the house and terrace. ‘It’s all nearly finished. I did it myself.’

‘The building?’

‘Of course not. The organisation of it.’

‘You seem to have a horde of people working here.’

‘It takes two girls to keep the house and kids in order, and the Polish builders are installing a sauna.’

‘Where are those naughty boys?’

He had briefly seen two of his sons — aged fourteen and fifteen — that morning in the kitchen with a bunch of their friends, who’d slept over.

‘The younger ones are with their grandparents, and the big ones seem to have disappeared to Niketown to spend my money,’ he said. ‘They’ll be back later. We’re going up the road to watch Chelsea at home tonight.’

Maggie asked, ‘Why? Are you a Chelsea supporter?’

He hummed a Chelsea song. ‘We all are. Season ticket.’

‘But you used to be Fulham.’

‘I was Fulham, sort of,’ he admitted. ‘Mainly because of what I read about Johnny Haynes as a kid.’

He had intended to ask Maggie how she was, knowing she would complain about the hours, the wages, the clients, the government and the local council. She’d been a social worker since they’d been together, when he was beginning to make documentaries, and her work was demanding and difficult. He’d always said that she didn’t appear to be quite cut out for it, becoming over-involved and allowing it to exhaust and infuriate her, but she called it ‘passion’.

He just said, ‘What was it you wanted to ask me?’

‘Max, for a while I’ve thought I should change my life.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘I knew you’d be delighted.’

‘Change it in what way?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘Now I’m intrigued.’

‘Good.’ She said, ‘What’s really up with you?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m still happily bored.’

‘Depressed?’

‘A man who is tired of suffering is tired of life. But you won’t hear me complain.’

Five years ago Max sold his television company to a big media conglomerate. Having set it up during the time he was with Maggie to promote investigative journalism on television, he and his colleagues had made programmes about political and business corruption, ‘covering shadiness of all shades’. Later, after the company made a satirical political comedy series which achieved big ratings, they made other clever funnies. As he became more of an executive than artist, he sold the company well at a good time. For a while he’d loved having his pockets full of money, buying whatever he wanted, shopping with the kids. Apart from watching football, it was the thing they most liked doing as a family.

He’d done little paying work since, but had ‘run the house’ and attended to the children while his wife established herself as a producer. ‘I’m a feminist house-husband,’ he liked to boast. ‘All I do is support women, and has the sisterhood been grateful?’

‘Right-ho!’ he said now. He and Maggie touched glasses and downed the grappa.

‘Do you always drink at this time?’

‘Marta seems to think so.’

As they left the house, Maggie asked to see the rooms where he worked, smiling when she saw the birchwood ladder-backed chair Joe had restored as a present for Max when they first met.

She reached into her bag and said, ‘Joe sent this.’ It was a flat wooden paperknife decorated with carved symbols.

‘It’s lovely, thanks,’ he said, putting it on his desk. ‘I must find something to give him too.’

He pointed at the long white wall, against which leaned numerous frames covered in brown paper. ‘Like everyone else, I’ve begun to collect art and photographs,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t until recently that materialism made any sense to me. Now I think, this is mine , mine, and I’ve earned it.’

He and Maggie strolled up the road to where his new black Volkswagen convertible was parked. The restaurant was ten minutes’ walk away but Max was keen to show off the car.

He regarded her: like him, she was in her mid-fifties, and usually wore walking or what he considered ‘climbing’ and wet-weather clothes, with boots. She spent more time outside than him, and was tanned and lined, with greying hair that she might have cut herself, and no make-up. In his view, with this Patti Smith look, she appeared older than him now, but as Lucy said, if you think someone your age seems worn out, take it for granted you look twice as bad.

She said, ‘My God, it’s so wealthy here. But the foreigners I’ve noticed — they’re all employees and cheap labour, aren’t they?’

‘At this time of day they would be,’ he said. ‘Nannies, au pairs, cleaners, builders. What did you expect? Amazing to think, Maggie, of how London’s cleaned up since we were students. Can you remember how filthy it was then, graffiti, squats, and the tube an even more filthy pit than now, and no one paying for anything?’

‘Today it’s all control,’ she said.

‘It would be pretty to think so. But my kids are nervous on the street. Up the road there’s an estate where the wild boys see us as rich pickings.’

‘Only the very obedient survive, isn’t that right?’

‘How is it where you are?’

She and Joe still lived in a village in Somerset. When the commune had failed, they’d moved into a low-rent collapsing cottage which they had renovated.

‘You wouldn’t believe the poverty down there. It’s another country, which means it’s dull, and my work is repetitive, mostly with old women,’ she said. ‘That’s part of what I want to talk about.’

They sat in the car and Max put on a Clash CD. ‘Did we ever see them?’ he asked as ‘London Calling’ started. ‘I’m not sure we did, though we saw most of the other bands then.’ He went on, ‘Now, when I think about it, what a little paradise it was when we were together. The Health Service, unemployment benefit, cheap housing, the BBC, subsidised theatre. Mum and Dad didn’t pay a penny for my education, and if you came from a respectable but ordinary background, you believed you could get out and live differently to your parents. All that went when Thatcher came to power.’