Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

At eight, those who’d stayed up all night, and those who’d just risen, would gather on the beach for a swim. It had been a warm spring and was now a blazing, humid summer, the hottest of recent times, it was said. The sea was deliciously tepid.

When Rocco, a thin dark-haired man of about thirty, strolled down to the sea in his carpet slippers and cut-off Levi’s, he met several people he knew, including Bodger, a local GP who struck most people, at first, as being unpleasant.

Stout, with a large close-cropped head, big nose, no neck and a loud voice, Bodger didn’t appear to be an advertisement for medicine. But after they had met him, people began to think of his face as kind and amiable, even charming. He would greet everyone and discuss their medical and even psychological complaints in the pub or on the street. It was said that people took him their symptoms to give him the pleasure of attempting to cure them. The barbecues he held, at unusual and splendid locations, were famous. But he was ashamed of his own kindness, since it led him into difficulties. He liked to be curt.

‘I’ve got a question for you,’ said Rocco, as they made their way across the mud flats. ‘Suppose you fell in love. You lived with the woman for a couple of years and then — as happens — stopped loving her, and felt your curiosity was exhausted. What would you do?’

‘Get out, I’d say, and move on.’

‘Suppose she was on her own and had nowhere to go, and had no job or money?’

‘I’d give her the money.’

‘You’ve got it, have you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Remember, this is an intelligent woman we’re talking about.’

‘Which intelligent woman?’ Bodger enquired, although he had already guessed.

Bodger swam vigorously according to his routine; Rocco stood in the waves and then floated on his back.

They dressed at the base of the cliffs, Bodger shaking sand from his shoes. Rocco picked up the papers he’d brought with him, an old copy of the New York Review of Books and the Racing Post .

‘It’s a nightmare living with someone you don’t love, but I wouldn’t worry about it,’ advised the doctor, in his ‘minor ailments’ voice. ‘Suppose you move on to another woman and find she’s the same? Then you’ll feel worse.’

They went to a vegetarian café nearby, where they were regulars. The owner always brought Bodger his own mug and a glass of iced water. Bodger enjoyed his toast, honey and coffee. The swimming gave him an appetite.

Unfortunately, Rocco craved almond croissants, which he’d once had in a café in London; every morning he’d raise his hand and ask the manager to bring him some. Of course, in their town they’d never seen such things, and each request annoyed the manager more. Bodger could see that one day Rocco would get a kick up his arse. He wished he had the nerve to make such enjoyable trouble.

‘I love this view.’ Bodger craned to look past Rocco at the sea. Rocco was rubbing his eyes. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

‘I must tell someone. Things with Lisa are bad.’ Rocco ignored the fact that Bodger was drumming his fingers on his unopened newspaper. ‘I’ve lived with her two years. I loved her more than my life. And now I don’t. Maybe I never loved her. Maybe I was deluded.Perhaps I am deluded about everything. How can people lead sensible lives while others are a mess? You know what Kierkegaard said? Our lives can only be lived forward and only understood backwards. Living a life and understanding it occupy different dimensions. Experience overwhelms before it can be processed.’

‘Kierkegaard! I’ve been intending to read him. Is he great?’

‘Perhaps I enjoyed stealing her from her husband. What?’

‘Which book of his should I start with?’

Rocco said, ‘She was always up for sex, and I was always hard. We fucked so often we practically made electricity.’

Bodger leaned forward. ‘What was that like?’

‘We wanted to leave London. The people. The pollution. The expense. We came here … to get a bit of land, grow stuff, you know.’

‘The dope?’

‘Don’t be fatuous. Vegetables. Except we haven’t got them in yet.’

‘It’s a little late.’

‘Maybe you or your friend Vance would have started a business and a family and all that. But this town is getting me down. And Lisa is always … always … about the place. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘I wouldn’t leave a beautiful woman like that.’

‘Even if you didn’t love her?’

‘Not her. Romance doesn’t last. But respect and co-operation do. I’m a doctor. I recommend endurance.’

‘If I wanted to test my endurance I’d go to the gym like that idiot Vance. I think I’ve got Alzheimer’s disease.’

The doctor laid his hand on Rocco’s forehead. It was damp. Rocco seemed to be sweating alcohol. Bodger was about to inform him that his T-shirt was inside out and back to front, but he remembered that when his friend’s shirts became too offensive he reversed them.

‘I don’t think so. Does she love you?’

Rocco sighed. ‘She thinks she’s one of those magazine independent women, but without me she’d be all over the place. She’s useless really. What can she do? She has irritating ways.’

‘Like what?’ said Bodger with interest.

Rocco tried to think of a specific illustration that wasn’t petty. He couldn’t tell Bodger he hated the way she poked him in the stomach while trying to talk to him; or the way she blew in his nostrils and ears when they were having sex; or the way she applied for jobs she’d never get, and then claimed he didn’t encourage her; how she always had a cold and insisted, when taking her temperature, that insertion of the thermometer up the backside was the only way to obtain a legitimate reading; or how she was always losing money, keys, letters, even her shoes, and falling off her bicycle. Or how she’d take up French or singing, but give up after a few weeks, and then say she was useless.

Rocco said, ‘What can you do when you’re with a person you dislike, but move on to another person you dislike? Isn’t that called hope? I’m off.’

‘Where?’

‘Back to London. New people, new everything. Except we’ve got no money, nothing.’

Bodger said, ‘You’re intelligent, that’s the problem.’

Rocco was biting his nails. ‘I miss the smell of the tube, the crowds in Soho at night, men mending the road outside your window at eight in the morning, people pissing into your basement, repulsive homunculi in ill-fitting trousers shouting at strangers. In the city anything can turn up. There’s less time to think there. My mind won’t shut up, Bodger.’

The doctor collected his things. ‘Nor will my patients.’

‘Don’t mention this, because I’m not telling her yet.’ Rocco pulled out a letter. ‘Yesterday this arrived. It fell open — accidentally. Her husband’s not well.’

Bodger leant over to look at it, but stopped himself. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Aren’t you going to show it to her?’

‘She’ll get upset and I won’t be able to leave her for ages.’

‘But you took her away from her husband, for God’s sake. Marry her now, Rocco, please!’

‘That’s a good idea, when I can’t bear the girl and couldn’t fuck her with my eyes closed.’

Bodger paid, as he always did, and the two friends walked along the top of the cliff. When they parted Bodger told Rocco how he wished he had a woman like Lisa, and that he didn’t understand why she would live with Rocco and not with him.