Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘Yes, it’s like having a third parent. You don’t have to keep telling me you don’t like it. What made you decide on here?’

I wanted to turn round and say, ‘I decided —’

‘I saw it in a brochure,’ she said.

‘You told me you’d been here as a child.’

‘Yes, the brochure reminded me. I went to lots of places as a child, with my mother.’

‘Your mad mother.’ In the mirror I saw him put his arm around her and lay his hand on her breast.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Just us now,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad I came.’

*

I am hungry.

At last I unstick my ear from the wall, shake my head as if to clear it, go downstairs, and have supper in the bar crowded with the local lushes, who prefer this hotel to the pubs.

I eat with my back to the room, a book in front of me, wondering where Florence and her husband are sitting and what they are saying; like someone sitting in Plato’s cave, trying to read the shadows. Halfway through the meal, having resolved to face them at last, I rise suddenly, change my seat and turn around. They are not there.

As I order another drink, the plump girl behind the bar smiles at me. ‘We thought you were waiting for some lucky person who didn’t turn up.’

‘There’s no lucky person, but it’s not so bad.’

I take my drink and walk about, though I do not know where I am going. Waitresses tear in and out of the hot dining room, so smart, inhibited and nervous, lacking the London arrogance and beauty. Middle-aged women with painted faces and bright dresses, and satisfied men in suits and ties, who do not question their right to be here — this being their world — are beginning to leave the dining room, holding glasses. For a moment they stand on this piece of earth, as it moves on imperceptibly, and they gurgle and chuckle with happiness.

Optimistically I follow a couple into one of the sitting rooms, where they will have more drinks and coffee. I collapse into a high-backed sofa.

After a time I recognise the voice I am listening to. Florence and her husband have come in and are sitting behind me. They start to play Scrabble. I am close enough to smell her.

‘I liked the fish,’ she is saying. ‘The vegetables were just right. Not overcooked and not raw.’

I have been thinking of how proud I was that I had hooked a married woman.

‘Florence,’ he says. ‘It’s your turn. Are you sure you’re concentrating?’

When I started with Florence I wanted to be discreet as well as wanting to show off. I hoped to run into people I knew; I was convinced my friends were gossiping about me. I had never had an adventure like this. If it failed, I would walk away unscathed.

‘We don’t eat enough fish,’ she says.

Certainly, I did not think about what her husband might be like, or why she married him. To me she made him irrelevant. It was only us.

He says, ‘You don’t like to kiss me when I’ve eaten meat.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she says.

‘Kiss me now,’ he says.

‘Let’s save it.’

‘Let’s not.’

‘Archie —’

Her voice sounds forced and dull, as if she is about to weep. How long do I intend to sit here? My mind whirls; I have forgotten who I am. I imagine catastrophes and punishments everywhere. I suppose it was to cure myself of such painful furies that I become depressed so often. When I am depressed I shut everything down, living in a tiny part of myself, in my sexuality or ambition to be an actor. Otherwise, I kill myself off. I have talked to Florence about these things — about ‘melancholy’ as she puts it — and she understands it: the first person I have known who does.

I realise that if I peep around the arm of the sofa I can see Florence from the side, perched on a stool. I move a little; now she is in full view, wearing a tight white top, cream bags and white sandals.

Oddly, I am behaving as if this man has stolen my woman. In fact it is I who have purloined his, and if he finds out, he could easily become annoyed and perhaps violent. But I gaze and gaze at her, at the way she puts her right hand across her face and rests the back of her hand on her cheek with her fingers beneath her eye; a gesture she must have made as a child, and will probably make as an old woman.

If Archie is a ruling presence in our lives, he is an invisible one; and if she behaves a little, let’s say, obscurely, at times, it is because she lives behind a wall I can only listen at. She is free during the day but likes to account for where she is. He would have been more than satisfied with ‘I spent the afternoon at the Tate,’ and could endure with less about its Giacomettis. When we separate at the end of each meeting she often becomes agitated and upset.

I assumed that I did not care enough about her to worry about her husband. It never occurred to me that she and I would live together, for instance; we would continue casually until we fell out. Nevertheless, watching her now, I am not ready for that. I want her to want me, and me alone. I must play the lead and not be a mere walk-on.

The barmaid comes and picks up my glass. ‘Can I get you something else?’

‘No thanks,’ I say in a low voice.

I notice that Florence raises her head a little.

‘Did you enjoy your meal?’ says the barmaid.

‘Yes. Particularly the fish. The vegetables were just right. Not overcooked and not raw.’ Then I say, ‘When does the bar close?’

‘Thursday!’ she says, and laughs.

Without looking at Florence or her husband, I follow her out of the room and lean tiredly across the bar.

‘What are you doing down here?’ She says this as if she’s certain that it is not my kind of place.

‘Only relaxing,’ I say.

She lowers her voice. ‘We all hate it down here. Relaxing’s all there is to do. You’ll get plenty of it.’

‘What do you like to do?’

‘We used to play Russian roulette with cars. Driving across crossroads, hoping that nothing is coming the other way. That sort of thing.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Martha.’

She puts my drink down. I tell her my room number.

‘That’s all right,’ she says. Martha leans towards me. ‘Listen —’ she says.

‘Yes?’

Florence’s husband sits heavily on the stool beside me and shifts about on it, as if he is trying to screw it into the floor. I scuttle along a little.

He turns to me. ‘All right if I sit down?’

‘Why not?’

He orders a cigar. ‘And a brandy,’ he says to Martha. He looks at me before I can turn my back. ‘Anything for you?’

I start to get up. ‘I’m just off.’

‘Something I said?’ He says, ‘I saw you in the train.’

‘Really? Oh yes. Was that your wife?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is she going to join us?’

‘How do I know? Do you want me to ring the room?’

‘I don’t want you to do anything.’

‘Have a brandy.’ He lays his hand on my shoulder. ‘I say, barmaid — a brandy for this young man!’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Right.’

‘Do you like brandy?’ she says to me, kindly.

‘Very much,’ I say.

He drags his tie off and stuffs it in his jacket pocket.

‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘We’re on bloody holiday. Let’s make the most of it! Can I ask your name?’

*

I met Florence nearly a year ago in a screening room, where we were the only people viewing a film made by a mutual friend. She lay almost on her back in the wide seat, groaning, laughing and snorting throughout the film. At the end — before the end, in fact — she started talking about the performances. I invited her for a drink. After leaving university, she was an actress for a couple of years. ‘It was a cattle-market, darling. Couldn’t stand being compared to other people.’