The Last Gift

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘Is he that scary?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Don’t you think so? I think Laura’s scared of him. Sometimes when I see them together I feel sure that she is literally frightened of him, I mean physically frightened of him. Mum didn’t say, but I think he hits her.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘You can ask Mum when she comes. They said they’d like to come down next weekend.’

  Nick was at the window, looking out for them when they arrived on Saturday afternoon. They saw the Volvo drive slowly past looking for a parking space. They went out on the pavement to meet them and Anna saw Beverley next door at her window. She waved to her. Beverley waved back but did not move, evidently curious to know what was going on out there.

  Nick put his arm around her shoulder and drew her near, possessing her. Then when his parents were on the pavement and walking towards them, he left her to hurry towards them. Jill had brought them a beautiful blue vase. To go with your door, my dear, she said to Anna as she hugged her.

  ‘Did you notice the colour of the front door, Ralph? Did it remind you of anything?’ Jill asked, glancing at Anna with a knowing smile. Anna had told Jill some time ago that the blue reminded her of the colours of the doors in Tunis that Ralph had described the first time she met them. Ralph looked slightly alarmed at the questions, not sure what he was being tested on. ‘Didn’t the colour remind you of Tunis?’ Jill asked, nodding at him, helping him out.

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes indeed,’ Ralph said without conviction, distracted. Anna thought he looked weary, sagging a little inside his blazer, and without his usual decorous sparkle. Jill’s smile faltered slightly, and Ralph took the prod and visibly straightened himself. Jill asked Anna to show her round the house, and Anna laughed and said that would only take a minute. When they were in the upstairs back room, Jill paused suddenly as if she was about to say something, and then shook her head and smiled.

  That evening Jill and Ralph took them out to dinner at an expensive restaurant, which they had already researched and where they had booked a table. Ralph could not resist telling them about the restaurant’s renown and how fortunate they were to get a table at such short notice. The prices were, of course, ridiculous, but the fare was apparently exceptional. He gave the wine list a cursory glance and signalled for the wine waiter. He ordered something in an undertone, and from the waiter’s slight bow Anna guessed it was something very expensive. She heard the date 1954. In recent times Ralph’s baronial manner had begun to irritate her, and she thought they were in for another long evening. After everyone was well settled and he was reasonably watered, Ralph began to talk about Laura and Anthony. Anna had wondered if that was what was bothering him earlier.

  ‘Laura was such an energetic and fearless child,’ he said. ‘It made you wonder where she got it from. Of course, she will have got some of her steel from her mother. They are, on her side, descended from a line of forge masters, so it is reasonable to expect that some of that iron will have found its way into the ancestral veins. She would not have much of that kind of thing from our side of the family. We were slothful prelates, good for nothing much but observing the norm and making God’s word sound pompous. You have seen our beloved Digby at work with your own eyes, Anna.

  ‘Her fearlessness was like one of those questing children in Blake, who go wandering into the dark night and lie with lions and serpents without any knowledge of terror. She learned everything so easily and so swiftly, unaware at first of these skills that came to her so naturally. This was as true of physical skills as it was of school work. She learned to swim in minutes and a few days afterwards she was darting about in the water like a little seal. From a young age she could climb a tree with perfect poise, and come safely down again. To her teachers or to the parents of her little friends it must have seemed like recklessness, and I can imagine they had to keep a sharp eye on her in case she got the other children into a scrape. But she was not reckless. Sometimes she misjudged her strength, or the strength of what she had pitted herself against. I don’t know where the line is between recklessness and boldness, but at worst she was somewhere on that line. You saw this in the way she chose her ambitions. At first she was going to be a trapeze artiste, then a pilot, then a bridge builder and finally an architect. They were all achievable ambitions, finally bringing her down to earth, designing houses rather than flying through the air.

  ‘Then she went to university and changed. We did not see it immediately, or only saw small things of no importance but we slowly realised she was losing that sureness of touch. It was like watching a batsman misjudging the length of a ball and playing and missing repeatedly, or a footballer failing to control a string of passes from his team mates. I don’t mean that she became clumsy. Her judgement no longer seemed natural and assured. She was quarrelsome and aggressive with people in shops and restaurants. She was vehement in her opinions, and she was reckless now when she had not been before, driving too fast, crossing the road dangerously, walking too near the edge of the cliff.’

  Ralph glanced at Jill for a moment, perhaps to check that he was not exaggerating. She nodded, and Anna discerned something slightly impatient in the gesture, as if she thought that Ralph was exaggerating and Laura was not like that at all, and above all that she wished Ralph would hurry on with the story so they could talk about something else. Anna wished he would too, pick up speed and get it over with, and so she did not mind making Jill party to this line of thought. Something in his voice was grating on her more than usual, and she was not sure if it was its magisterial tone or its warm egotism. He looked at Nick and finally at Anna, his face still sombre but his eyes beginning to sparkle with the wine. He took a sip, anticipating no interruption, and Anna marvelled at his assurance that his audience would remain obedient. He continued:

  ‘It was meeting men that changed her, I think. Jill and I have talked about these things so much over the years. It’s what parents do among themselves, talk endlessly about their children, and after all that talking, it may be that their conclusions become a summary of their conversations. So when I say it was meeting men that changed her, that may well be one of those glib summaries. In any case, she chose men who were a challenge to her, men who made her do risky things. I expect she was a challenge to them too. I expect she provoked them. She told us some of this herself, drinking binges, risky scrapes in the countryside, and perhaps she told you other things that she did not tell us, Nick. That would only be natural.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me much about anything,’ Nick said shortly. Perhaps he too was getting edgy.

  ‘We only really knew one of the men before Anthony,’ Ralph said, looking away from Nick’s unhelpful interruption. ‘His name was Justin, and she was with him for a long time, a big gangly young man with a huge appetite. I hope I am not being too cruel in describing him that way. An awkward, shy chap, very good mannered. They went everywhere together, travelling, riding, climbing, skiing. Even when they came visiting us, within hours they were off on a long hike to somewhere. Maybe they tired each other out, because after they finished their studies – and architects study for a long time – they went their separate ways as if they had planned it that way all along.

  ‘It was then she found Anthony, when she went to work in his practice, and from the beginning I suspected that he was more than she could handle. If anything was to come out of it, she was going to have to say aye to him whenever he demanded it, and he seemed the kind of man who would demand it frequently. Well, to my surprise she seemed willing enough to do that and the fearless child became the junior partner in a dubious enterprise. I don’t call it dubious because I think it is all over between them and that therefore it is permissible to say what I think about their relationship. I don’t know if it is all over, despite these recent horrors. For all I know, once these bruises have healed, they will get back together so they can inflict new ones on each other. I say dubious because their partnership seemed to me to be conten
tious and unequal from the beginning.’

  Jill shifted in her chair, and Anna hoped she would say something, change the subject, rap the table impatiently, but she knew that no one was likely to interrupt Ralph when he was this settled. He took another sip of wine while they waited for him to continue.

  ‘Why is Anthony such an angry and bitter man? I have often wondered this. Maybe it is his nature. Some people are just made unreasonable and awkward. Maybe it was his upbringing. He grew up in a violent house in Rhodesia. I believe his father was a restless and disappointed man, quite out of control with anger and drink. Perhaps unavoidably Anthony imbibed some of that bitter brew and now lives his life in a rage. Anyway, there they are, the two of them, Anthony and our Laura, and they have spent nearly ten years pummelling each other, with poor Laura coming off very much the worse. Anthony is so full of rage that he is fearless, and he will never know how to stop his violence on her. This is the drama we have been watching with increasing helplessness over the years, and in recent times I have started to fear the worst.’

  Ralph fell silent for a moment, and something about his tone made Anna think that he was composing himself for another chapter. The food arrived just then and created enough confusion for Ralph’s spell to be broken. After the waiters left, Jill said: ‘Right, now you’ve got that off your chest, Ralph, let us wish them both well and leave them to it. Come, let us have a toast for Nick and Anna.’

  ‘Nick and Anna,’ Ralph said, always game for a toast at any time. It must have taken years of persistent practice for Ralph to have schooled his family into such submission, Anna thought. Rage and caprice were not the only ways to acquire an ascendancy, and Ralph had done it with his gently astute ramblings. As she listened to him, she felt a silent rage building up in her. Stop bullying us with your soft-spoken smugness. She imagined that in her absence she too would be the subject of one of his exhaustive analyses.

  Many more toasts were drunk before the end of the evening, and they were all a little drunk as they walked along the waterfront towards Jill’s and Ralph’s hotel. The night was clear and cold, bright with stars. Ralph claimed Anna’s arm as soon as they left the restaurant, his other hand stroking her captive arm. She chafed against his caress but resisted pulling her arm away. As they walked on the promenade, he started to recite ‘The Solitary Reaper’, pitching his voice towards the sea as if multitudes were gathered there to listen to him. A couple walking by grinned at him and he waved cheerfully back at them:

  Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

  And sings a melancholy strain;

  O listen! for the vale profound

  Is overflowing with the sound.

  No nightingale did ever chaunt

  More welcome notes to weary bands

  Of travellers in some shady haunt

  Among Arabian sands:

  When he finished the poem, he patted Anna’s belly and said, ‘When you give us a little jungle bunny we’ll give him a Wordsworth lullaby every night.’ Anna winced slightly and Ralph tightened his hold, chuckling to himself. They walked on in silence for a while, then Ralph said: ‘I’m sorry to hear about your father. It must be terrible to find out something like that.’

  Anna recoiled from his words and from his touch, pulling away from him instantly. She took a step away and stared at Ralph with angry disgust. He looked back at her with astonishment, and when he made to speak, she raised her left hand to silence him. She turned to walk on, striding to catch up with the others, and he walked beside her without speaking. At first when he said he was sorry about her father, she thought he meant about his illness. It was the first time he had ever volunteered anything about her father. Her family never came up in conversation with Ralph and Jill, maybe as an exaggerated show of sensitivity after that first Easter weekend at their house. But Nick must have told them about the woman her father abandoned. What Ralph was referring to was that her father was a bigamist.

  Jill looked back and must have noticed that they were walking apart and were not speaking, because she looked back again twice. When they were still a few paces from them, Ralph said softly: ‘Anna, what did I do wrong? I meant to offer sympathy. I did not mean any harm. I am most terribly sorry to have intruded.’

  He briefly touched Anna’s arm, looking perplexed and hurt. She nodded to let the moment pass and restrained herself from saying anything. She returned his touch, not wanting to hurt him with her annoyance, not after they had come all this way to see them and had tried so hard to be warm. She did not think they liked her, and she could not make herself like them, not even Jill who had shown her kindness. She thought it was a kindness offered in shame to disguise their distaste.

  She had thought of her father as they walked along the waterfront and Ralph recited Wordsworth. It was not because her father recited Wordsworth to her, nor could she remember ever walking along the sea with him on a dark cold night bright with stars, nor was it that Ralph’s fumbling caresses reminded her of paternal affection. It was his voice reciting that made her think of him. She wished for his voice. She wished he was there walking beside her and talking to her about something he had read or describing once again the limitless corruption of the powerful, or telling her one of the stories he used to tell her as a child, something with archly wise and cunning animals.

  When the moment came to part, she kissed Jill first, and then Ralph embraced her firmly as they kissed goodnight. She saw in his eyes that he was still perplexed about what had happened earlier and she felt sorry to have hurt him.

  Nick and Anna started to argue as soon as they got in that night, and the argument went on for hours, accusations going back and forth in some relentless logic, fuelled by another bottle of wine. Much of what they said was familiar, but some of it was not, as they broke new ground in their animosities. In the days that followed, they hardly spoke to each other, and Anna knew that they were approaching the end. She found their sullen antagonisms exhausting. He was going away to another conference in Oxford at the end of the week, and she thought she would use that time to think clearly about what she wanted to do with herself. School was about to start in a couple of weeks and she needed to get herself organised for her new post. She had truly had enough.

  Then when the end came, it was less complicated than she anticipated. She went to school on Thursday afternoon to attend a pre-term staff meeting, and afterwards she planned to put some new pictures on the classroom walls. She had not done so before because the room was not hers, but now that she was no longer the supply teacher, she would make the room more congenial to her. The poster of Byron in Albanian costume was going to have to come down and possibly the one of Sydney Harbour, not because she had any great animosity towards either, but because she wanted images that were less grand. Perhaps a glinting stream running through a wood, or a tree-lined city street, or even a map of the world.

  Nick was to take the train to Oxford on the same day, to be there for the first session on Friday morning. He was not due back until Sunday evening, so she had the whole weekend to herself. On her way home she considered what she could cook herself for dinner and decided that nothing they had at home appealed. She dropped her bags off in the house and drove to Sainsbury’s. She had keys for the car but she rarely got to drive it, so the car and the late shopping on a Thursday evening had a feeling of doing something improper or adventurous, and she did not mind if that sounded pitiable. The traffic was heavy and it took a while to get to the supermarket, but she felt content and unrushed. She bought some bream and asparagus, and a piece of beef for the next day. She also bought two expensive bottles of wine. When she got back home she put the shopping in the fridge and went to sit in the garden in the fading light. She got lost there in her own thoughts for a while, the events of the day, her last conversation with her mother, Nick at his conference. Julia would be there, of course. She felt a stab of pain at the thought, somewhere in the region of her heart, and she wondered at the absurdities of the body’s biology. What did th
e heart have to do with it? That was not where feelings resided, and yet she felt a thud in her heart as she thought of Nick and Julia making love. She went back inside and opened one of the bottles of wine, and then went upstairs to change.

  It took her a moment to register the noise, and then she recalled she had heard it before while she was downstairs but it had been too faint to distinguish. Now she realised it was her mobile phone alerting her to a message. She hurried downstairs and found her handbag in the living room where she had left it. When she found her mobile it was switched off, and there was no message. She heard the noise again, fainter this time. It must be Nick’s. He must have left his mobile somewhere upstairs. When she got back upstairs she saw it on the desk in the study and she did not hesitate. She opened the phone and read the text: thinking of you since I opened my eyes cant wait to hold you tonight luv you ju xxxx. She closed the phone and went to change out of her work clothes. Then sitting on the bed half-naked, she sipped her wine while a slow rush of heat spread through her body. After a moment she went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet while her body emptied itself.

  She had thought herself ready for this news but she had not expected to feel this paralysis and terror. She forced herself downstairs, but she found the idea of the bream nauseating. Perhaps she would make herself something simple with toast. She poured herself another glass of wine and sat down, astonished by how her body was betraying her so unexpectedly. After a while she forced herself to think about what needed to be done. She had convinced herself she wanted an end to things as they were between them, and now there was an end approaching. She went back to the kitchen, put the oven on, put away the clean dishes on the draining board, washed the asparagus, and wrapped the bream in foil. The oven light clicked off, so she put the fish in and went upstairs to draw the curtains. There were practical things for her to think about, and although she had given some vague thought to where she would live and so on, now suddenly she was confronted with threatening hints of chaos and disorder. She felt herself retreating, perhaps she should wait to see how serious this was. Must keep moving. Perhaps strip the bed and put clean sheets on, get rid of his smell, but the labour of it was too arduous just then and the smell of him was everywhere.