Intimacy

by Hanif Kureishi

  Susan cut me out too, keeping the babies and the competence to herself, her female friends and her mother. It has only been in the past few months that I’ve made myself useful. And only recently that I have fallen in love with him, which happened as it did with Nina, as an accumulation of amazement. His outlines became clearer and there seemed more and more to him, as door after door opened on wonder and pleasure, until I was captivated, cheered, moved. His smile; his laughter; his imitations of a cross face, of a funny face, of a sad face, delight me, as do his kindness and concern for me.

  Now the boy and I talk ceaselessly. His questions – where does the light go at night, what do spiders eat, why do women have ‘bosoms’, where do people go when they die, and why do they have eyebrows? – are incessant. Where will he get the answers when I’m not here? If I tear myself from the boys, don’t I tear them too?

  When Victor left home his younger son threw Victor’s belongings out of the window before sticking a broken bottle in his arm. He wouldn’t have Victor visit him in the hospital. He wouldn’t reply to Victor’s letters. The other son lived alone in the family house when his mother went away. One night Victor found the boy lying on a sleeping bag in the hall, the only room in the house he used. All the lights in the house had blown or fused. He fed himself by candlelight, eating baked beans from the can. Old newspapers were piled up. The boy was unwashed, his clothes soiled. Surely Victor and his wife had taught the boy to clean himself? But, having had his world broken by his father’s assault on happiness, the boy could barely speak or move. Victor is still repairing the damage.

  I am leaving this woman alone with two young children. She will have to care for them, predominantly, herself. My presence, however baleful, has perhaps reassured her. Now she will work, buy their clothes, feed them, tend them when they are sick. I’m sure she will ask herself, if she hasn’t already, what men are for. Do they serve any useful function these days? They impregnate the women. Later, they might occasionally send money over. What else could fathers be? It wasn’t a question Dad had to ask himself. Being a father wasn’t a question then. He was there to impose himself, to guide, exert discipline, and enjoy his children. We had to appreciate who he was, and see things as he did. If we grew up to be like him, only better qualified, we would be lucky. He was a good man. He didn’t flee, though perhaps he considered it.

  I pull the blanket from the back of the sofa and lay it across my son.

  Sometimes the boy kicks and punches me, or rakes my face with his nails, and tries to bite me. He calls me ‘a great big bully’. If I scold him, he sobs. If I become angry he stops himself breathing and can only gasp, as if I have taken his life. I feel guilty then, unable to bear the notion that the man he loves most has turned against him. We need one another, bully and boy. If I am away for a few days, travelling or idling somewhere, and I see children of my sons’ age on the street or in a restaurant, I feel the panic of separation, and can’t understand why I am not with my own sons. On my return I can see how they have changed. I don’t want to miss a moment of them. Not only for the sake of their future, but for now, this moment, which is all there is.

  It is always them I think of before I fall asleep. And I am leaving.

  Yet the children are more agitated than usual when Susan and I are together with them, as if our furies are infectious and they are weeping on our behalf. Perhaps if we continued to live together they would dream of running away. Susan wanted to send the younger boy to ‘see someone’. I said, when the parents go mad, they send their children to psychiatrists.

  ‘It’s you who has gone mad,’ she said. ‘Your theories are insane.’

  Cheerio, bitch.

  But there is something else I have to face.

  When I leave I want her to vanish too. There may be little love, but jealousy remains. I want to live my life but don’t want her to live hers. When this is done – and eighteen months, say, have passed, as they surely will – there may be another man in this house. He might be sitting where I am now. My sons, if they have a nightmare, will go to him. Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They’ll sit on anyone’s knee.

  The man will kiss and hold them when they wake up. He might put them to bed and talk to them until they sleep. He might have a northern accent. He might encourage them to support Arsenal. Or perhaps he will become impatient and flick the back of their heads. By then I could be an outsider, sitting in the car waiting for them to come out of the house. And the boy won’t remember this night. Neither of them will remember their parents together. They will remember none of this and I will never forget it. She will always know them better than than I will.

  Still, I hope she ends up with someone rich. Not that there will be a queue, I hope. Nevertheless, the most grotesque people get laid, and even married. As Joe Orton says, ‘Marriage excludes no one the freaks roll-call.’

  The therapist kept saying, you are leaving the children too, don’t fool yourself about that. I wanted to shout, no, no, it’s her! But we had the children together, which was an assumption of trust and security, that I will break.

  At times I feel sorry for the children, having to stay here with her. I can clear out, but they can’t.

  The boy is sleeping soundly. I love hearing his dreams, and discussing them with him. Susan sneers at my pretentiousness.

  I should sleep now. But I would rather not go to bed. There are few things more desolate than undressing in the dark beside a woman who won’t wake up for you.

  Often, at the thought of going home, blood will rise into my head, pressing into my ears and eyes, until I feel my skull is bulging like an overinflated tyre. I might go to some filthy bar and hold on to a chair, or to someone’s house where I could get a grip on the host’s wife. One night I arrived late at a dinner party. As usual the women were talking about work and the men about children. I took my place and saw nothing for it but to drink. Things looked up when a middle-aged acquaintance laid his finely coiffured head on the table. His wife, whom he’d left, was refusing to let him see their children, and was, he believed, turning them against him. She was also refusing to sell the house in which his money was tied up. They were going to court. And the acquaintance, with his new young girlfriend at his side, was saying he doubted whether it had been worth it.

  The girlfriend replied that he had let the children wreck their romance. It was him she wanted, not the children he’d had with a woman he didn’t love. Around the table, other sombre men whose last glimpse of their wives had been at the door of the divorce court, nodded, grumbled and shook their heads. Then the woman got up and left. I should have run after her. My wet-eyed acquaintance said he had given up most of what he had had for her. But when, after a couple of months, they realized that they didn’t much like one another, and, in fact, she had tried to tear one of his ears off, there was no way back – no way back to anything solid.

  All that for a fuck, I muttered. The other men laughed. But I concluded, having just seen how the little minx fondled the house cat as her lover wept, what a fuck it must have been. A discussion followed, around the table, on the ethics of such a dilemma. But I could only think that there are some fucks for which a person would have their partner and children drown in a freezing sea. My kingdom for a come. Women, I’ve noticed, are particularly tenacious in this respect. When they want someone there’s no stopping them.

  My son, there may be a time when I will explain some of these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.

  Holding the back of his head with one hand, and supporting his back with the other – his eyes are closed and his mouth open – I carry him to bed. But as I am about to lay him down I have a strange feeling. Sometimes you look into a mirror and can’t always remember what age you are. Somehow you expect to see a twelve-year-old, or an eighteen-year-old, looking back at you. Now I feel as if I am looking at myself. He is me; I am him; both of us part of one another, but separate in the
world. For now it is myself I am carrying in my arms.

  I lay him down and cover him up.

  I wonder when I will sleep beside him again, if ever. He has a vicious kick and a tendency, at unexpected moments, to vomit in my hair. But he can pat and stroke my face like a lover. His affectionate words and little voice are God’s breath to me.

  I creep down the stairs. I put my jacket on. I find my keys. I get to the door and open it. I step out of the house. It is dark and cold. The fresh wind sweeps through me. It invigorates me.

  Go. You must go.

  I am kicking over the traces.

  You could go into the dark and fear that you will never emerge.

  This must be the death hour, the lowest part of the night. Barely a living thing is moving, including me.

  Outside, the dark leaves on the trees flap in the wind like hundreds of long green tongues, the branches knocking at me.

  I will roll a joint, if I can. This grass smells obnoxious. Like a damp bonfire, Susan says, particularly if I smoke it without tobacco.

  I like watching the plants grow at the back of the garden. When I get home in the evening after a few drinks, and there is nothing for it but to shut the front door, and I know I have to remain under this roof until the morning, as if I am under some kind of house arrest, one of the few things I do like is to go out into the garden. There I spray away at my dope plants, with my youngest boy, packed into his Babygro and felt shoes, tugging and pulling at the hose pipe behind me.

  Occasionally I strip off a few leaves, wrap them in newspaper and dry them on the boiler. I have Ecstasy, LSD and an old bottle of amyl nitrate in the fridge. For a while I’d take the ‘E’ every day, starting after breakfast. It made me feel worse, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop. I have always preferred to take drugs in the straightest situations, at supper with my parents, for instance. I still do the occasional parent-teacher evening, in my latest favourite suit, on acid. The annual nativity, I find, is always improved by a tab of Purple Haze. It is the secrecy I enjoy, and perhaps the challenge.

  Nina used to tease me, saying my attitude towards drugs belonged in another era. It is true that when I was growing up, drugs were fuel for a journey into the self. They also connected me with a more dangerous and defiant world, and even a literary one: De Quincey, Baudelaire, Huxley. For Nina they mean sordidness, prison, and overdoses. It was her fear of needles that had kept her safe, if she is safe.

  I’ve decided to forget the pinstripe suit. It’ll get crumpled in my bag and there’s nowhere to hang it over there. The Lennon picture is a definite. But I must find a photograph of the children to take with me.

  I go to Susan’s desk, which is covered in her papers. Hoping to find evidence of some recent betrayal for which I can reproach her and then walk out, I snatch up her wallet and open it. I find only a picture of us with our arms around one another.

  In the drawers there are packets of photographs. I select one of my eldest boy a few days old. I am bathing him in the hospital, his head lying in my hand. My face is grave with concentration as I splash his ribs and screwed-up face for the first time. It was Karen I was seeing then. I waved goodbye to Susan in the hospital, picked up the champagne her father had left us, and drank it in bed with Karen. Susan mentioned it the other day.

  ‘I will never forget that you left the hospital without kissing me. Our first child, and you didn’t kiss me. Still, at least you love the children. When you go away.’

  ‘Go away?’

  ‘Travel. The children ask for you all the time. The first thing they say in the morning is, “Is Daddy coming home today?”’

  I put the photograph in my pocket.

  For old times’ sake I glance through her journal. It’s dusty; she doesn’t keep it regularly, but only writes down the things she wants me to read. I glance over the passage in which she wrote, three years ago, of her lover, wondering if she should visit him in Rome. I could see through her lies and told her I would be glad if she went. I was always looking for opportunities to leave her.

  I return to my position on the sofa. I will smoke more of this, though it makes me feel I have been handed over for public accusation.

  ‘There you are.’

  I look up. I look away. I look back again. Susan is at the bottom of the stairs in her white T-shirt and white slippers, her face creased and puffy.

  She looks so white I could write on her.

  *

  Once, coming home at four, having walked back from some teenage party, I found Mother downstairs in her floor-length stained dressing gown. Scattered on the floor were photographs of her as a young woman. In those old prints she was gawky and keen, with hair as long as mine, sandals, and a flowered dress. She was posed with men who had partings and ties, none of them Father.

  Susan must have been watching me staring into space. For how long, I wonder?

  I liked taking Nina to restaurants and parties, to openings and exhibitions. I would sit and watch her looking at the pictures. I took pleasure in her pleasure as I led her around London. I wouldn’t have gone out otherwise. Our hands were always on one another. Wherever we were, she was my refuge, my pocket of light. But these new pleasures extracted her from a familiar world and pushed her into an intimidating one. I overwhelmed her at times. There was too much of me, I know that. We want love but we don’t want to lose ourselves.

  *

  Asif was marking papers, surrounded by his alphabetically arranged books on philosophy, education and child development. On his desk were pictures of his wife and children. When he saw me this afternoon at his study door, with Najma standing concernedly behind me, he was alarmed. Perhaps I looked strained, or worse.

  ‘The children are well?’ was the first thing he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  He was relieved.

  We shook hands then.

  ‘And yours?’ I say.

  ‘Thank God, yes.’

  Najma said with a challenge in her eyes, ‘And Susan?’

  ‘Fine. She’s fine.’

  Asif looked at me enquiringly. I didn’t like disturbing his peace. I didn’t even know why I had come. I had been walking the streets since morning. Then I hailed a cab and told the driver Asif’s address. Perhaps because Victor is a recent convert to hedonism I required the other view.

  I said, ‘Can I speak to you?’

  Najma left us reluctantly and Asif exchanged his slippers for his outdoor shoes. I realised that he is getting fuller, and with his waistcoat pulled tight across his stomach, he looks older, more dignified and substantial.

  We walked in his garden. I noticed he kept looking up towards the conservatory where Najma was reading in a wicker chair. I fancied she was already condemning me.

  I said, ‘The house is full of poison. Susan wants me to be kind. I can’t be kind. We can do nothing for one another. It is a fact. I have decided to leave.’

  Asif said, ‘All couples fall out. Even Najma and –’

  I said, laughing suddenly, ‘But I remember.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Over the omelettes at breakfast. Before we went down to the pool – on holiday in Italy last year. Susan and I were civil to one another for hours at a stretch. But you two. The silences. The resentment. You couldn’t wait to get to that café where you and I could play table football alone.’

  ‘Fair enough. She and I disagree … at times.’ Then he said, ‘It is easy to turn away too soon. Why be hasty? See what happens. I beg you to wait a year.’

  ‘I can’t wait another week. In fact I am off in the morning.’

  ‘Surely not? But a year is nothing at our age. Is it because of the girl?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t see her. I’ve lost her.’

  ‘Don’t – you are shivering.’ He put his arm around me. He said, ‘But you are following her in some way?’

  ‘If I could see the hair on her neck again, I could move outwards from that point. That would be the start, you see, of a new attitude.’<
br />
  ‘Her hair?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s only that I didn’t realize men of our age could get so romantic.’

  I said, ‘Asif, no age is excluded from strong feeling.’

  He snorted. ‘What a pity you ever met her!’

  ‘Why do you insist on finding this risible?’

  ‘Perhaps I hate to see a man I respect, who is brave and dedicated in some ways – and stubborn in others – blown about by such passions. But I suppose, unlike most people, you can afford to follow your pleasures. And follow them you do.’

  ‘Yes. But don’t think I don’t know that there are more important things to think about – the international political situation, and all.’

  My sarcasm silences him.

  His children run about. They ask for my boys. I say they are at home. Other children’s voices rise up from nearby gardens. Kids come to the side gate.

  If only I could sit here contentedly in the middle of my life as children seem to in theirs, without constantly worrying about the state of things, tomorrow, next week, next year. But since the age of fourteen, when I conspired against my parents, not fleeing as I intended to, but biding my time and preparing, knowing one day I would be ready, I have required the future as a goal. I’ve needed something to happen every day that showed a kind of progress or accumulation. I can’t bear it when things go slack, when there isn’t sufficient intensity. But I would welcome a quiet period. I am hoping for that, in the long run.

  He said, ‘You’re very distracted. I know you like to look after yourself, but you haven’t even shaved. Leaving aside your girlfriend’s hair for a moment, your own looks as if you’ve been combing it vertically.’