Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

I’ve just done you a favour. I could have described every moment of us sitting through Howard’s television oeuvre (which I always thought meant egg ). But no — on to the juicy bits!

There they are in front of me, Howard and Nadia cheek to cheek, within breath-inhaling distance of each other, going through the script.

Earlier this morning we went shopping in Covent Garden. Nadia wanted my advice on what clothes to buy. So we went for a couple of sharp dogtooth jackets, distinctly city, fine brown and white wool, the jacket caught in at the waist with a black leather belt; short panelled skirt; white silk polo-neck shirt; plus black pillbox, suede gloves, high heels. If she likes something, if she wants it, she buys it. The rich. Nadia bought me a linen jacket.

Maybe I’m sighing too much. They glance at me with undelight.

‘I can take Nadia home if you like,’ Howard says.

‘I’ll take care of my sister,’ I say. ‘But I’m out for a stroll now. I’ll be back at any time.’

I stroll towards a café in Rotting Hill. I head up through Holland Park, past the blue sloping roof of the Commonwealth Institute (or Nigger’s Corner as we used to call it) in which on a school trip I pissed into a wastepaper basket. Past modern nannies — young women like me with dyed black hair — walking dogs and kids.

The park’s full of hip kids from Holland Park School, smoking on the grass; black guys with flat-tops and muscles; yuppies skimming frisbees and stuff; white boys playing Madonna and Prince. There are cruising turd-burglars with active eyes, and the usual London liggers, hang-gliders and no-goodies waiting to sign on. I feel outside everything, so up I go, through the flower-verged alley at the end of the park, where the fudge-packers used to line up at night for fucking. On the wall it says: Gay solidarity is class solidarity .

Outside the café is a police van with grilles over the windows full of little piggies giggling with their helmets off. It’s a common sight around here, but the streets are a little quieter than usual. I walk past an Asian policewoman standing in the street who says hello to me. ‘Auntie Tom,’ I whisper and go into the café.

In this place they play the latest calypso and soca and the new Eric Satie recording. A white Rasta sits at the table with me. He pays for my tea. I have chilli with a baked potato and grated cheese, with tomato salad on the side, followed by Polish cheesecake. People in the café are more subdued than normal; all the pigs making everyone nervous. But what a nice guy the Rasta is. Even nicer, he takes my hand under the table and drops something in my palm. A chunky chocolate lozenge of dope.

‘Hey. I’d like to buy some of this,’ I say, wrapping my swooning nostrils round it.

‘Sweetheart, it’s all I’ve got,’ he says. ‘You take it. My last lump of blow.’

He leaves. I watch him go. As he walks across the street in his jumble-sale clothes, his hair jabbing out from his head like tiny bedsprings, the police get out of their van and stop him. He waves his arms at them. The van unpacks. There’s about six of them surrounding him. There’s an argument. He’s giving them some heavy lip. They search him. One of them is pulling his hair. Everyone in the café is watching. I pop the dope into my mouth and swallow it. Yum yum.

I go out into the street now. I don’t care. My friend shouts across to me: ‘They’re planting me. I’ve got nothing.’

I tell the bastard pigs to leave him alone. ‘It’s true! The man’s got nothing!’ I give them a good shouting at. One of them comes at me.

‘You wanna be arrested too!’ he says, shoving me in the chest.

‘I don’t mind,’ I say. And I don’t, really. Ma would visit me.

Some kids gather round, watching the rumpus. They look really straggly and pathetic and dignified and individual and defiant at the same time. I feel sorry for us all. The pigs pull my friend into the van. It’s the last I ever see of him. He’s got two years of trouble ahead of him, I know.

When I get back from my walk they’re sitting on Howard’s Habitat sofa. Something is definitely going on, and it ain’t cultural. They’re too far apart for comfort. Beadily I shove my aerial into the air and take the temperature. Yeah, can’t I just smell humming dodginess in the atmosphere?

‘Come on,’ I say to Nadia. ‘Ma will be waiting.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Howard says, getting up. ‘Give her my love.’

I give him one of my looks. ‘All of it or just a touch?’

*

We’re on the bus, sitting there nice and quiet, the bus going along past the shops and people and the dole office when these bad things start to happen that I can’t explain. The seats in front of me, the entire top deck of the bus in fact, keeps rising up. I turn my head to the window expecting that the street at least will be anchored to the earth, but it’s not. The whole street is throwing itself up at my head and heaving about and bending like a high rise in a tornado. The shops are dashing at me, at an angle. The world has turned into a monster. For God’s sake, nothing will keep still, but I’ve made up my mind to have it out. So I tie myself to the seat by my fists and say to Nadia, at least I think I say, ‘You kiss him?’

She looks straight ahead as if she’s been importuned by a beggar. I’m about to be hurled out of the bus, I know. But I go right ahead.

‘Nadia. You did, right? You did.’

‘But it’s not important.’

Wasn’t I right? Can’t I sniff a kiss in the air at a hundred yards?

‘Kissing’s not important?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not, Nina. It’s just affection. That’s normal. But Howard and I have much to say to each other.’ She seems depressed suddenly. ‘He knows I’m in love with somebody.’

‘I’m not against talking. But it’s possible to talk without r-r-rubbing your tongues against each other’s tonsils.’

‘You have a crude way of putting things,’ she replies, turning sharply to me and rising up to the roof of the bus. ‘It’s a shame you’ll never understand passion.’

I am crude, yeah. And I’m about to be crushed into the corner of the bus by two hundred brown balloons. Oh, sister.

‘Are you feeling sick?’ she says, getting up.

The next thing I know we’re stumbling off the moving bus and I lie down on an unusual piece of damp pavement outside the Albert Hall. The sky swings above me. Nadia’s face hovers over mine like ectoplasm. Then she has her hand flat on my forehead in a doctory way. I give it a good hard slap.

‘Why are you crying?’

If our father could see us now.

‘Your bad behaviour with Howard makes me cry for my ma.’

‘Bad behaviour? Wait till I tell my father —’

‘Our father —’

‘About you.’

‘What will you say?’

‘I’ll tell him you’ve been a prostitute and a drug addict.’

‘Would you say that, Nadia?’

‘No,’ she says, eventually. ‘I suppose not.’

She offers me her hand and I take it.

‘It’s time I went home,’ she says.

‘Me, too,’ I say.

It’s not Friday, but Howard comes with us to Heathrow. Nadia flicks through fashion magazines, looking at clothes she won’t be able to buy now. Her pride and dignity today is monstrous. Howard hands me a pile of books and writing pads and about twelve pens.

‘Don’t they have pens over there?’ I say.

‘It’s a Third World country,’ he says. ‘They lack the basic necessities.’

Nadia slaps his arm. ‘Howard, of course we have pens, you stupid idiot!’

‘I was joking,’ he says. ‘They’re for me.’ He tries to stuff them all into the top pocket of his jacket. They spill on the floor. ‘I’m writing something that might interest you all.’