Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

He was able to pull away from Maggie and Joe, but only at the cost of wishing for death — his own and theirs — when they left London with the child. He and Maggie had believed they’d never stop loving one another, but that hadn’t been the case at all, fortunately. He had recovered, as everyone knew he would, and what remained?

Now Maggie and Max were eating. ‘Don’t you think,’ she said, ‘hasn’t it occurred to you lately, what a conventional age we are living in now? I mean, of coercive ideals, the tyranny of the closed?’

‘I thought the biggest change in our time is the huge progress in social freedom. Can’t people be whoever they want? Lesbianism, transvestism, domination, bipolar — isn’t it all just lifestyle?’

She said, ‘The other day I was reading something on Sartre and De Beauvoir. About what a stupid emotional mess they’d made, fucking around with others’ lives. The suggestion was that if they’d been nice clean obedient workers maybe they would have been worth listening to. Couldn’t you say the same about Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ginsberg or scores of other artists? “The deadly grip of the commonplace”, we used to call it. All the experiments have failed and we must return to the norm.’

He said, ‘You still want to experiment with your own life?’

‘I try to live as I need to.’ She leaned towards him. ‘Between you and me, don’t you have your … interests?’

‘I’m well done with that. It’s too costly a pleasure.’

‘Is that permanent now — the glasses?’ she said, looking at his reading glasses which were on a gold chain around his neck.

‘Yes. Does it lead you to believe I’ve become a man without self-respect? I love middle age, when you no longer care how you look or how you might appear to others. Men take it less hard than women, don’t you think?’

Maggie had been beautiful as a girl of twenty, gentle, generous and scholarship-clever, from a square and functional family. Feminism and the ‘assertiveness’ workshops made her less of a pushover, and after a while she lost her charm to ideology, becoming opinionated, angry. Almost everyone let her down, not wanting sufficiently to alter everything, to make the sacrifice which guaranteed sincerity. She excised all flirtatiousness and play from her character, implying that her mood wouldn’t improve until the world did. She was the only person he knew who lamented the collapse of the Berlin Wall, believing communism hadn’t been given enough time. ‘Think of capitalism, it’s been around for centuries!’

‘You look better at the moment,’ she said now. ‘Your eyes are clearer, you’re less of a smug little fatty.’

‘I’ve lost a stone. It’s my greatest achievement. All I want now is to get the kids through school without any of us disintegrating. Nothing need be more complicated than that.’

‘It does,’ she said. ‘You might have noticed, it’s terrible when the kids turn ten and they have to push away from you. You learn they don’t actually want your company, that it’s a long hard divorce and you’ll need to make other arrangements for yourself.’

‘For me realism is the true thing.’

‘Is it really? Then what I’m going to ask will make you even more irritable,’ she said.

‘I’m pretty chilled now.’

‘I could tell you were in therapy when you started taking an interest in my dreams.’

He said, ‘I was too angry all the time so I had that part excised from my personality.’

‘It was the attractive bit.’

‘Mags, please, lately I’ve been having these horrifying dreams, a series of them. My uncle’s dying in bed.’

‘Which uncle?’

‘You know, the lively, intelligent, funny one. He’s long dead of course.’

‘That’s part of you,’ she said. ‘It’s going. You’re letting it go. You’re driving it out.’

‘I’m not sure that’s exactly it,’ he said.

They were finishing the bottle. He was becoming tired and would have made an excuse, returned home and napped — which was how he liked to spend the afternoon — if he hadn’t been curious about her request. But they drank coffee and drove to Richmond Park, about half an hour away.

He had parked the car and they had begun to walk when she said, ‘Max I want you to loan me ten thousand pounds to help me start up in London. I know it won’t last me long, but it’ll be better than nothing. When — or whether — I’ll ever be able to pay it back is another matter.’

He sighed. ‘That’s a big whack. Will it be enough for you?’

‘I’m hoping to last five years in London. Despite the stupid expense there are still cheap cultural activities, aren’t there?’

‘They’ll pass an afternoon.’

‘Joe thinks it’s all stupidity, consumerism and self-hatred down here, but he will visit me and I’ll go home when I need to. Otherwise I’ll explore — places and people.’

‘Is Joe all right about that? Or is he still as indifferent to everyone as he used to be?’

‘As always, he’ll be happy for me to live as I wish. I drive him mad with my frustration and he’s never wanted to be my jailer. The kids will come down too. My son has already climbed the front of the Houses of Parliament in that recent protest. They’re at the right age for the city.’

Max said, ‘It’s always seemed odd to me that you live with someone who lacks the ability to make conversation.’

‘Why do we have to communicate verbally when we are already in tune?’

‘What was the communication when you said you were going to ask me for money?’ He was looking at her. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’

‘I will tell him when I know what’s going on.’

‘I wouldn’t risk the relationship,’ he said. ‘Lucy and I know a lot of middle-aged women trying to hunt down men on the net and it’s a pathetic business.’

‘Don’t lecture me. But I do often think, why the hell didn’t I choose more solvent men?’ They walked past some people who were planting trees. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked. ‘Go on, please say.’

‘I was thinking, what if I took that shovel and smashed it over your head?’

She was laughing. ‘I knew that. See, we still have the same thoughts.’

He stopped and said, ‘Can I hold you?’

‘Here, why?’

‘Just to see. Or to try to remember.’ He took her in his arms and put his face in her hair and neck. He kissed her face, ran his hands across her back, up her thighs, and he looked at her hands.

‘Anything else you want to touch or see?’ she asked. ‘My breasts, genitals?’

‘No, no.’ He went on, ‘Ten grand’s a lot of money. You’ll never pay it back. I’ll have to give it to you.’

‘You won’t even notice.’ She went on, ‘I’m so bored by everything. I even prefer America. At least they can vote for Obama or Hillary. A black or a woman. What do we have? Boris Johnson. A character from P. G. Wodehouse.’

‘No better man to run London, then. I’m thinking of voting for him. Anything for a change.’

‘Oh God. Have you changed so much?’

‘I like to think I’m capable of revising my views. It would be as daft to believe the same things over the years as it would be to wear the same clothes.’

‘For instance?’

‘The Falklands. Thatcher was right there, fighting the fascist Galtieri. And then taking on the trade unions, the whole country held to ransom by a few fundamentalist Lefties who wouldn’t grow up.’

She stiffened. ‘Oh Jesus, Max, all those years of struggle to end up recanting, and for what? Just to look like a turncoat?’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work, socialism, communism, the whole idea was fucked. It’s the biggest disappointment of our lives, but don’t we have to take it like men?’