Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘She said she wasn’t sure what they were going to do, but she thought she’d return to London with the girls as the grandparents were becoming irritable. I was relieved until she said she was intending to set up home with the therapist. He was waiting for her — making his arrangements. I hated to think of it, Eric, this stranger making “arrangements” to replace me in my family.’

‘Christ, Jake, this is heavy. This is bad news, a punch in the gut. Don’t talk so fast, you’ll give yourself indigestion.’

‘That’s the least of it,’ he said. ‘Julie reassured me by saying this man got on well with children. But they couldn’t move in together until the house was sold, as the therapist didn’t have any money. His practice was small. He’s younger than her, just starting out.’

‘You were going to be forced out of your own house?’

‘Yes, can you believe it? Where would I put everything?’

‘This conversation took place in France?’

‘Didn’t I say? In an old house, a couple of hundred years at least. I was there to ask if the girls would be able to attend their grandmother’s funeral, but Julie refused, saying I might abduct them. She said she’d already informed the French and British police that I might attempt something with them! I was forbidden to be alone in their company as if I had suddenly become a monster. How did I become evil overnight? The girls kept asking when they were going home. But I couldn’t tell them the truth.

‘And then there, with the bewildered maternal grandparents looking on, my previously silent youngest daughter took her violin from its little case and sawed out a squeaky tune for us. By the end tears were pouring down my face. When I left they watched me from the window, crying out “Daddy, Daddy!”

‘I returned to England, saw mother into her grave, and went back to work. I sold the Audi A5 and bought a second-hand Astra, hired lawyers and, to help pay them, took a lodger, a girl who would also clean the place because I had fears about neglect — of the place, and of myself. My wife had also emptied our joint bank account. Do you have one?’

‘Now you mention it, I do. Thanks for bringing it up.’

‘Julie came back to London — and to the house — to pick up some of her clothes. When she arrived she discovered the lodger, a young Czech girl.

‘I said Julie’s personality has become strange and unnatural. That is madness, I guess. But to give you an illustration, in the house she begins to abuse this poor girl when she discovers a bed in her former study. She starts to cry out that I’m a scum and an alcoholic and a paedophile — as well as a thief and the rest of it. She was loud. The girl is horrified and also looks at me with a very nervous curiosity.

‘But what do you say — “I’m not a paedophile alcoholic”? It’s nuts for me to have to hear this, I can’t begin to defend myself except to say, “Please, please try to control yourself.”’

Jake was looking at Eric. ‘Are you thinking there must be something crazy about that Jake, he must have chosen badly? Are you? Are you? How come he didn’t notice he’d married a mad woman? How could anyone miss such a thing? But she has never behaved like this before! Perhaps it’s called regression. Anyway, she had hidden it well.

‘Julie was horrified that the girl was in her room. I could tell she was going to spit on her! I asked the girl to get out, I would deal with it. Julie picked up handfuls of things at random and flew out of the house. I could see her from the window, scattering clothes in the street, trying to carry too much at once.’

There was a silence. ‘Well, thank God,’ said Eric. ‘You needed time to think.’ Jake sighed. Eric said, ‘Those prawns looked good. But I enjoyed my salad, oddly enough, and I’ve always considered eating salad to be a form of failure.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Eric said, ‘What happened after, Jake?’

‘Come.’

Jake wanted to smoke, so the two men put on their coats and stood outside under the café awning, watching people rush through the rain.

Jake said, ‘Obviously there was information I needed to have, so I sought out as many of her friends as I could find. It shook me, as some were violently rude. One said, “I hope the girls hate you when they’re older.” What had she been telling them about me?

‘But there was one friend of hers I was able to get through to. Let me add that having been made crazy and almost violent and suicidal, I had to make a huge effort to pretend to be sane. If I gave anyone the idea that circumstances had made me totally crazy, the whole catastrophe would appear to be down to my craziness. Crazy, eh?

‘Julie’s friend admitted Julie was in London, spending time with the therapist, working out what to do. Apparently it had been going on for some time. Julie had said to me on a couple of occasions, “You’re having an affair,” and wouldn’t tolerate my denials. The deeper truth became obvious.

‘I rang Julie, hoping to contact the reasonable side of her, and delivered a monologue to the answering machine saying we should meet and talk honestly.

‘That evening I came home and she was there, Julie, asleep in my — our — bed, can you believe it? My heart pounded. I thought, she’s back, her old self, the past eradicated.

‘When I got closer I saw she was not asleep, but drugged, perhaps on tranqs or painkillers, I don’t know what, with an untreated cut on her forehead. She didn’t take illegal drugs. Did she want to kill herself, or did she want to sleep?

‘I carried her to the toilet, made her sick and put her back to bed. I lay next to her. I took her in my arms and kissed and caressed her. I looked at her breasts and touched them, remembering how I loved them. The aureoles, is that how you say it? The aureoles were smiling at me.’

‘Were they really?’

‘I thought of how I had nursed Mum as she shrank to her bald head and bones in that hospital bed.

‘I thought of the fine and funny times Julie and I and the girls had had as a family.

‘When Julie woke up she tried to speak. Her voice was cracked, frail. “Things are not good, Jake,” she said.

“‘Why aren’t you with your darling lover?”’ I asked her.

‘She turned her head away and wept. All I could do was guess the lover had kind of backed out. Who wouldn’t have been delighted? Who wants a filthy corrupt therapist around his children? A man who can fuck his own patient can fuck anyone!’

‘Yes.’

‘But I kept my mouth shut while she cried, the woman I still love and have wanted more than any other.’

Eric said, ‘Didn’t you think of asking her to go back to you?’

‘I love and hate her, but I don’t know if she wants any more of me now. At last she confirmed the therapist had left her. But there was something else. She said that the therapist’s wife, who was pregnant —’

‘Did Julie know that?’

‘I’m not sure. I tend to doubt it. Anyway, when the pregnant Jungian’s wife was told about the affair, she went to the balcony, threw herself over head first, and died.’

‘Oh God,’ said Eric, rubbing his eyes and forehead. ‘This is getting too much. I can hardly believe it.’

‘You’re telling me. Yes, he had lost his child after depriving me of mine.’ Jake began to laugh. ‘People keep telling me to have therapy,’ he said. ‘That’s surely a joke!’ Then he said, ‘After this the man refused to see Julie so she went and waited outside his door.

She slept there all night on the step like a dog until she almost froze. In the morning, when he came out, she pursued him, he pushed her over and she tripped and hit her poor head. He tried to run away. She started to shout and he called the police.