Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

She says, ‘I hate to admit it, but I imagined in some superstitious way that marriage would solve my problems and make me feel secure.’ When I laugh she looks at me hard. ‘This raises a question that we both have to ask.’

‘What is that?’

She glances at her son and says softly, ‘Why do you and I go with people who won’t give us enough?’

I say nothing for a time. Then follows the joke which is not a joke, but which makes us laugh freely for the first time since we met again. I have been reading an account by a contemporary author of his break-up with his partner. It is relentless, and, probably because it rings true, has been taken exception to. Playfully I tell Florence that surely divorce is an underestimated pleasure. People speak of the violence of separation, but what of the delight? What could be more refreshing than never having to sleep in the same bed as that rebarbative body, and hear those familiar complaints? Such a moment of deliverance would be one to hug to yourself for ever, like losing one’s virginity, or becoming a millionaire.

I stand at the door of the teahouse to watch her walk back across the park, under the trees; she carries a white umbrella, treading so lightly she barely disturbs the rain drops on the grass, her son running ahead of her. I am certain I can hear laughter hanging in the air like an ethereal jinn.

The next time I see her she comes at me quickly, kissing me on both cheeks and saying she wants to tell me something.

We take the kids to a pub with a garden. I have started to like her shaven-headed boy, Ben, having at first not known how to speak to him. ‘Like a human being,’ I decide, is the best method. We put my son on a coat on the ground and he bustles about on his hands and bandy legs, nose down, arse sticking out. Ben chases him and hides; the baby’s laugh makes us all laugh. Others’ pleasure in him increases mine. It has taken a while, but I am getting used to serving and enjoying him, rather than seeing what I want as the important thing.

‘Rob, I’ve got a job,’ she says. ‘I wrote to them and went in and auditioned. It’s a pub theatre, a basement smelling of beer and damp. There’s no money, only a cut of the box office. But it’s good work. It is great work!’

She is playing the mother in The Glass Menagerie . By coincidence, the pub is at the end of my street. I tell her I am delighted.

‘You will come and see me, won’t you?’

‘But yes.’

‘I often wonder if you’re still upset about that holiday.’

We have never discussed it, but now she is in the mood.

‘I’ve thought about it a thousand times. I wish Archie hadn’t come.’

I laugh. It is too late; how could it matter now? ‘I mean, I wish I hadn’t brought him. Sitting in that stationary train with you scowling was the worst moment of my life. But I had thought I was going mad. I had been looking forward to the holiday. The night before we were to leave, Archie asked again if I wanted him to come. He could feel how troubled I was. As I packed I realised that if we went away together my marriage would shatter. You were about to go to America. Your film would make you successful. Women would want you. I knew you didn’t really want me.’

This is hard. But I understand that Archie is too self-absorbed to be disturbed by her. He asks for and takes everything. He does not see her as a problem he has to solve, as I do. She has done the sensible thing, finding a man she cannot make mad.

She goes on, ‘I required Archie’s strength and security more than passion — or love. That was love, to me. He asked, too, if I were having an affair.’

‘To prove that you weren’t, you invited him to come.’

She puts her hand on my arm. ‘I’ll do anything now. Say the word.’

I cannot think of anything I want her to do.

For a few weeks I do not see her. We are both rehearsing. One Saturday, my wife Helen is pushing the kid in a trolley in the supermarket as I wander about with a basket. Florence comes round a corner and we begin talking at once. She is enjoying the rehearsals. The director does not push her far enough — ‘Rob, I can do much more!’ — but he will not be with her on stage, where she feels ‘queenlike’. ‘Anyhow, we’ve become friends,’ she says meaningfully.

Archie does not like her acting; he does not want strangers looking at her, but he is wise enough to let her follow her wishes. She has got an agent; she is seeking more work. She believes she will make it.

After our spouses have packed away their groceries, Archie comes over and we are introduced again. He is large; his hair sticks out, his face is ruddy and his eyebrows look like a patch of corn from which a heavy creature has recently risen. Helen looks across suspiciously. Florence and I are standing close to one another; perhaps one of us is touching the other.

At home I go into my room, hoping Helen will not knock. I suspect she won’t ask me who Florence is. She will want to know so much that she won’t want to find out.

Without having seen the production, I rouse myself to invite several people from the film and theatre world to see Florence’s play. Drinking in the pub beforehand, I can see that to the director’s surprise the theatre will be full; he is wondering where all these smart people in deluxe loafers have come from, scattered amongst the customary drinkers with their elbows on the beer-splashed bar, watching football on television with their heads craned up, as if looking for an astronomical wonder. I become apprehensive myself, questioning my confidence in Florence and wondering how much of it is gratitude for her encouragement of me. Even if I have put away my judgement, what does it matter? I seem to have known her for so long that she is not to be evaluated or criticised but is just a fact of my life. The last time we met in the teahouse she told me that eighteen months ago she had a benign lump removed from behind her ear. The fear that it will return has given her a new fervency.

The bell rings. We go through a door marked ‘Theatre and Toilets’ and gropingly make our way down the steep, worn stairs into a cellar, converted into a small theatre. The programme is a single sheet, handed to us by the director as we go in. The room smells musty, and despite the dark the place is shoddy; there is a pillar in front of me I could rest my cheek on. Outside I hear car alarms, and from upstairs the sound of cheering men. But in this small room the silence is charged by concentration and the hope of some home-made magnificence. For the first time in years I am reminded of the purity and intensity of the theatre.

When I get out at the interval I notice Archie pulling himself up the stairs behind me. At the top, panting, he takes my arm to steady himself. I buy a drink, and, in order to be alone, go and stand outside the pub. I am afraid that if my friends, the ‘important’ people, remain after the interval it is because I would disapprove if they left; and if they praise Florence to me, it is only because they would have guessed the ulterior connection. The depth and passion Florence has on stage is clear to me. But I know that what an artist finds interesting about their own work, the part they consider original and penetrating, will not necessarily compel an audience, who might not even notice it, but only attend to the story.

Archie’s head pokes around the pub door. His eyes find me and he comes out. I notice he has his son, Ben, with him.

‘Hallo, Rob, where’s Matt?’ says Ben.

‘Matt’s my son,’ I explain to Archie. ‘He’s in bed, I hope.’

‘You happen to know one another?’ Archie says.

I tug at Ben’s baseball cap. ‘We bump into one another in the park.’

‘In the teahouse,’ says the boy. ‘He and Mummy love to talk.’ He looks at me. ‘She would love to act in a film you were in. So would I. I’m going to be an actor. The boys at school think you’re the best.’