“Has Eliot been around?” I asked.
“Course.”
“What does he do?”
“What does he do when?”
“When he’s in the house.”
“He sits around with Mum. Jealous?”
“Yes. But the torments of jealousy will not, I am glad to say, give you in particular a miss. Why should they?” I asked. “But apart from that?”
Rafi said, “He watches TV, eats pot noodles, reads the paper and sits in the garden and smokes.”
“Like everyone else, then.”
“What?” he said, as the music crashed in. “What?” Then, for a moment, he took out his earplugs and said, “Mustaq-that singer guy. He showed me some chords and told me about what he wants to do, stuff about Pakis and suiciders and paranoia, like Springsteen’s doing in the US. He wants to invite me to his studio when he’s recording, to show me how everything works. You’ll take me there, won’t you?”
The day had exhausted me. I dropped off Karen and then Rafi. But when Rafi rang the bell and Josephine opened the door, she smiled at me and waved. I started to drive away.
But instead of going home, I parked the car and rang Ajita to get her thoughts on the day.
She was giggling. “It was funny,” she said. “I walked in the garden with Rafi. I have to tell you, he kept looking at me and he said, ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes. You’re really nice-looking.’ He’s got that twinkle, you know. He’s going to be a dog like you.”
I was amused and proud, but irritated too and even envious. I left the car and went back to the house, where Rafi let me in before returning to the TV.
Josephine was coming out of the bathroom, pulling a towel around her lower half. She let me look at her-she’d kept her shape, there was nothing loose on her-before covering herself.
“You’re back,” she said cheerfully.
I followed her downstairs. She fetched me a beer and cut me a slice of her homemade chocolate cake. Rafi scrutinised us before going into his room to play a game.
We were discussing her insomnia, aching neck, bad knees and bumpy skin, among other interesting things, when the doorbell rang.
“Hasn’t he got a key?” I said.
“Not yet.”
I pulled her onto my knee. “I’m never going to let you go,” I said, putting my hand between her legs.
“But you did.”
“I was a fool.” I kissed her mouth, and felt her respond. Her fingers were on my back. Once Josephine touched you, you stayed touched. “Can we have lunch tomorrow?”
Eliot rang the bell again. Rafi, of course, wouldn’t move a centimetre unless it was in his immediate interest. Josephine was beginning to panic. She said quickly, “But it’ll be rushed.”
“What can we do?”
“Will you take me to dinner?”
“Yes,” I said. “I was going to ask you if you’d come with me to see Hussein Nassar.”
In my local Indian restaurant, as we ate our dhal and rice, an Indian Elvis impersonator, Hussein Nassar-known as the King’s Jukebox-would be re-acting the whole of the 1968 NBC comeback special.
“We can’t miss that,” I said. “Don’t think Muslims aren’t making a significant contribution to cultural life here. And there is a lot I want to tell you.”
“Have you been surviving?
“Only just.”
She said, “Thanks for emailing me those pieces you’ve written.”
“I’m thinking of putting them together as a book.”
“It’s about time you published another one.”
I said, “Can we go through them?”
“I’d like that,” she said. “I’ll try to look smart for you.”
I said, “Tomorrow, then.” I agreed to pick her up at seven-thirty. I kissed her again, I couldn’t stop myself, and murmured, as the bell rang again and she pushed me away, “It takes three to tango.”
Upstairs, Rafi’s door was open and he was peering through, evidently amazed that not only were his parents speaking to one another but that they were intending, clandestinely, to go out together. When I went past, he gave me a shy thumbs-up.
Eliot was waiting at the door, looking in the other direction. “Hi,” he said.
“Hello, Eliot, how are you?”
“Fine, fine.”
“Good holiday?”
“Lovely.”
“Decent weather?”
“Warm but not hot.”
When he passed me and I turned back, I saw Rafi’s face was at the window, and we winked at each other and rolled our eyes.
Before going to see Miriam later, I walked up to the Cross Keys for the last time.
In a few weeks the Harridan would be gone-to the sea, no doubt. Though the lucifugous strip venue was usually full, it would be closed down and reopened as a gastro-pub. The girls were in a panic, not knowing if they’d find other work; they considered themselves to be dancers-performers, even-and not whores. But they were too rough for the new lap-dancing clubs, which were using only young Czech, Polish and Russian girls.
I sat at the bar with a newspaper, watching the intense delirium of the men who stared at Lucy. In her break, we went upstairs to Wolf’s old room, all his possessions having been removed by Bushy. To help Lucy with her English, I read to her, as I’d got into the habit of doing recently-but would do no more-passages from my favourite stuff: Elizabethan poetry, bits of Civilisation and Its Discontents, Dr. Seuss.
Not that she grasped much of it, but it made us both laugh, lying there happily misunderstanding each other.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I am no longer young, and not yet old. I have reached the age of wondering how I will live, and what I will do, with my remaining time and desire. I know at least that I need to work, that I want to read and think and write, and to eat and talk with friends and colleagues.
Rafi will soon be an adult; I want to travel with him and his mother-if I can raise their interest-to the places I have loved, showing them Italian churches, and having dinner in Rome. We could see Indian cities, bookshops in Paris, canals in Hertfordshire, waterfalls in Brazil, museums in Barcelona.
I am not, I feel certain, finished with love, either in its benign or its disorderly form, nor it with me.
I shake myself and get up. I have been sitting dreamily in my chair for a long time. The bell has rung at least twice. Maria must have gone to the market.
I go to the door and let the patient in. He takes off his coat and shoes, and lies down on the couch. I sit just behind his head, where I can hear him without being seen. For a while he says nothing.
I empty my mind, aware only of my breathing and of his, as we both wait for the stranger inside him to begin speaking.
Hanif Kureishi
