Hanif Kureishi: Collected Stories

She said, ‘By the way, you carrying your chequebook?’

‘You want the money now?’

‘Once it’s done you won’t think about it again. Then we can talk about less painful things.’

‘But I haven’t thought it through. What would Lucy say?’

‘Lucy?’

‘What if I discovered she’d donated ten grand to some indigent ex?’

‘Is that what I am to you?’

‘The wife’s not going to be working long hours on a film set for you to take a free dab because you fancy a change of location. She’s the breadwinner in our family.’

‘This is doing my head in,’ she said. ‘Let me sit down.’ They sat on the grass, leaning against a tree. ‘Max, I never asked for her money.’

‘She and I are together. We don’t just go with any stranger who takes our fancy for five minutes. Sex is easy but love is difficult. It’s very serious.’ He went on, ‘And it’s not as though the money is for something essential like a cancer operation or plastic surgery.’

‘No, it’s more important than that. What happened to play, to wildness and experiment?’ She got up and he followed her; they walked to the tea-house and ate scones.

She said, ‘Do you think you’re envious?’

‘Of what?’

‘All you’ve done is criticise everything I believe in. But I’m not an old woman yet, Max. I haven’t given up, as you appear to have, or become complacent. Feminism taught me that women are capable of deep passion, aliveness and exploration. We can burn on until the end of the night whether we win or lose.’

‘How could I not envy you that spirit, though it sounds forced?’ Then he said, ‘Freud recommends efficient sublimation as the only way forward. You divert yourself, usefully, for life. There’s a bit of passion left over, which is tragic, but you have to live with the frustration. It’s character-building.’

‘What pompous cobblers,’ she said. ‘Are you saying no?’

‘I don’t fucking know, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Why is it that most of one’s middle age is spent arguing? I wanted to enjoy a pleasant lunch and all you’ve done is ruin my bloody day and probably my night. You know I suffer from anxiety. I’m going to have to take a pill.’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up and stop being so evasive as usual.’

‘But I really can’t answer you, my dear. I have to think about it. There are so many other priorities than your self-fulfilment.’

She said, ‘I don’t like to mention it, but didn’t I support you while you developed your career?’

‘I walked and fed and changed and paid for your wonderful son every day,’ he replied.

‘But why shouldn’t you have? Whose job is it to bring up the children?’

Max drove them back to the house, where he made tea in the kitchen. There were four boys in the garden, wearing only boxer shorts and flip-flops, lifting weights, kicking a ball, pushing one another around.

‘A bunch of chavs and pikeys chased us down the road,’ one of the boys said. ‘That’s why we’re sweating.’ He said to Maggie, ‘There’s a council estate across the street.’

Max said, ‘What did you do to provoke them?’

‘The lowlifes threatened us with a shank. They said, “We know where you live”, and Jack said, “We know where you live, in a disgusting council flat with a pit bull eating the sofa and your mother a crack whore.”’

Max said, ‘Maggie will sort them out. She’s a social worker.’

‘Chavs and pikeys,’ she said. ‘Are those the latest descriptions?’

He got up and said suddenly, ‘You not only wanted feminism, which was an excellent thing, but you attacked all authority, particularly that of fathers, preferring equality. You made sure that authority died, but there was no equality, only chaos, and that’s why we’re in a mess. Take responsibility for something at last, Maggie. Not everything is capitalism’s fault.’

‘Isn’t it? This society has become more and more unequal under Blair, the rich taking it all, buying art up and everything else. And the authority you so idealise, Max, was usually corrupt, exploitative and cruel. Why can’t each individual have authority? We’re not all children.’

The children watched the adults pointing and yelling at one another, and, before they’d stopped, asked for money to go out and buy a video game and pizza. Max handed over some cash.

‘How fortunate and spoiled they are,’ he said to her. ‘With none of the worry we had about the future.’

‘Is that good for them?’ she asked.

He shrugged. His eldest son patted him on the stomach. ‘When’s it due, Dad?’ he said.

‘You see, a dad is a derided thing,’ Max said to Maggie.

‘Joe isn’t.’

‘I think I’ll fetch some nice wine from the cellar. But have a look at this. It’s for Joe.’

He handed her a tiny oil painting, about the size of a packet of cigarettes: a nude woman.

‘That’s nice.’

He was in the cellar for a while, looking for a wine which might please her. On the way back he passed his jacket, hanging over the back of a chair. He took his chequebook from the pocket and located a pen. When he returned to the kitchen she wasn’t there, but had taken her things and gone.

As he opened the wine he wondered whether they’d be able to forgive one another, and whether they’d see one another again.

Until at last he was able to identify himself clearly, I couldn’t recognise the voice on the phone.

‘Who?’ I said again. ‘I’m afraid I can’t hear you. My children are rehearsing their group upstairs.’

‘It’s Phillip,’ he whispered. ‘For God’s sake! Your old friend, Phillip Heath.’

‘Ah.’

‘Fred, are you shocked?’

‘It’s good to hear your voice,’ I said cautiously. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘I am still abroad.’

Abroad: it had been a long time since I’d heard that word which was how, when I was a kid, the English referred to the rest of the world.

Over the past fifteen years Phillip had dropped me a postcard every couple of years or so to say he was working in this or that school, or moving apartments. But I couldn’t recall the last time we had actually spoken.

On his last postcard, however, a couple of months ago, he had added, ‘have been a bit under the weather, old boy’. Then Fiona, my university girlfriend, who had remained in closer touch with him, rang to say Phillip had been operated on for throat cancer.

He sounded croaky and weak on the phone, but said he was recovering. He had been ‘thinking things over’ and was keen for me to visit him where he was living alone in Italy, near Lake Como. We could walk together. There were no Muslims, he joked, only hordes of elderly locals walking their dogs. It was old white Europe, where money and glamour had long been replaced by decay and dullness, but not, unfortunately, by decadence. Why didn’t I stay in his spare room?

‘That’s a kind offer,’ I said.

‘But when exactly can you pop over? I beg you to be definite. Who else can I talk to about things?’

‘Things?’

‘One’s life, I mean, such as it is.’

I promised to look at my diary and phone him in a few days. ‘This is sudden for me,’ I explained. ‘I have teenage children. I teach too — you were my example there, friend.’

‘I’m far too weak for that, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Fred, I will wait to hear from you. Please, though, if you want to see my smiling face again better not leave it too long. Dying’s an awful trouble and nuisance.’

I wasn’t sure when I’d last seen Phillip, but it had been towards the end of the eighties, though the substance of the relationship had been in the middle of that decade, which was when my ‘success’ began and our friendship — the friendship of him, Fiona and me — had been at its most intense.