Gabriel's Gift

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘You have to settle in a very deep part of yourself when you play the blues.’

  ‘Right. I see.’

  Gabriel opened his sketchbook and started to draw. Sometimes when he copied something he altered the original picture; this time he cheered up the blue guitarist, giving him sight and pleasure in what he was doing.

  There was a loud banging on the wall.

  ‘Turn it off!’ shouted someone.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Gabriel.

  ‘Turn it off!’

  ‘They’re madmen,’ said Dad. ‘The room next door. Unusual place, full of mad characters.’

  ‘We’re praying!’

  Gabriel said, ‘From the sixties?’

  ‘Whenever,’ said his father. ‘They’re not going to last into the next century.’ He shouted, ‘Pray on, mothers!’

  Dad’s face was starting to churn. When the banging happened again Gabriel became apprehensive. At home his father had thrown plates, books and records around, though nothing too valuable; he could sulk for days, or walk around the streets in a fury for hours. He could take five steps up the road and find someone to argue with. Had he been a woman, he might have been called hysterical. Instead, he was deemed ‘moody’, which, because of its ‘artistic’ overtones, unfortunately suited him. Whenever it was said, he turned up his collar and looked for a mirror, a move Gabriel liked to imitate for his mother’s benefit, saying, ‘The James Dean of Hammersmith.’ It always amused her.

  Yet his father had, with Gabriel, almost always been his best self. Gabriel was the one thing he’d been consistently proud of.

  Dad threw his guitar down, removed his shoe, and smashed at the wall with it.

  ‘Leave us alone!’ he yelled, hopping up and down. ‘If you want to discuss it, meet me in the corridor, motherfucker!’

  ‘Go to hell!’ the neighbour called.

  ‘And you, and you! See me outside!’

  Gabriel tried to distract his father.

  ‘Look at what I’ve done!’

  He was holding up his sketchbook.

  His father sat with his head in his hands. At last he studied the picture and smiled.

  ‘Beautiful. You’re getting better and better. Let’s get out of this dump.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Maybe we should watch TV, eh? A couple of hours of stupidity might calm us down. My nerves are twanging like piano wires.’

  ‘I wish I’d brought some videos.’

  For years they’d watched films together. The Graduate was one of their favourites, with a soundtrack they liked. Performance, too – kept in a plain cover – Gabriel was allowed to watch, when Mum wasn’t around. The Godfather they had seen repeatedly, and most of Woody Allen, particularly Play It Again, Sam. Summer with Monika, My Life as a Dog and anything by Laurel and Hardy, as well as Tarkovsky, they knew backwards. Gabriel could repeat the dialogue as it played and used to run the films, with the sound down, as he did his homework. If each frame of a film told a story, he had to watch them repeatedly, until he knew them. Then he started to imagine the scene with his own characters in them, speaking his dialogue.

  Gabriel glanced around the room, wondering whether the TV and video were concealed in a cupboard.

  ‘Where is the telly?’

  ‘Downstairs. There’s no TV in this room. That would be an extra. Extras are out. Extras are well out.’

  In a smoke-filled room on the ground floor, they watched a programme about a garden make-over, joining a handful of preoccupied foreign men staring up at the television, which was padlocked to an iron arm extending from the wall.

  It wasn’t long before Gabriel’s neck began to ache from looking up.

  ‘Boring,’ Gabriel was about to say, when he noticed that his father wasn’t even looking at the screen but, like the other men, seemed to have become uncontactable.

  A man wearing a long white robe and slippers that curled at the end like question marks came to the door.

  ‘Phone.’

  ‘Dad.’ Gabriel nudged his father, who looked blankly at the hooded-eyed man.

  ‘Phone,’ the man repeated.

  ‘Who is it?’ Dad turned to Gabriel, ‘Not that I know anyone!’

  ‘Maybe it’s Mum,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘What would she want? To check up on you? You’re all right here, aren’t you? Haven’t I been looking after you?’

  ‘Yes.’ said Gabriel.

  The man said, ‘Lester.’

  Dad stood up. ‘Lester? Did you say Lester?’

  ‘Yes. I think I did say that name several times.’

  Dad gripped Gabriel’s arm.

  ‘Gabriel boy, it’s Lester – Lester Jones on the phone to us – right now!’

  Gabriel followed his father to the door and watched him flapping up the hall. His ‘war wound’, which, oddly enough, he had actually acquired when with Lester, had miraculously mended.

  From the door, Gabriel scrutinized his father talking animatedly to Lester. He noticed that the man who had called Dad to the phone had not gone away but was also watching his father, from the other end of the hall.

  Dad finished talking and replaced the receiver.

  ‘Gabriel –’ he began.

  The man in the curly slippers went to Dad, grabbed him by the shoulders, pushed him against the wall and wagged his finger at him. As the man addressed him, Dad struggled and knocked his ear. When someone else went past, the man let him go.

  For a moment they stood there, snarling at one another. Gabriel was about to attack the man with his fists and feet; Dad ordered him to stay where he was.

  ‘Don’t mention any of this to Mum.’ White-faced and shaking, Dad was pushing Gabriel away. ‘It’ll only make her worry. Promise?’

  ‘O?. But what did he want?’

  ‘Forget it! Listen: we’ve been stroked. I knew we would be. It was Lester on the phone! Lester – speaking to me!’

  If Dad was mellow, he would talk of the time he had toured the world, playing bass for Lester Jones in the Leather Pigs, more than twenty-five years ago.

  He would open a shoe box full of photographs and pictures cut from magazines and newspapers, of him and Lester together. At that time Lester was one of the world’s biggest pop stars, idolized and followed by millions of fans in dozens of countries, his songs and style imitated by many other groups. Like most pop heroes, Lester contained the essential ingredients of both tenderness and violence, and was neither completely boy nor girl, changing continuously as he expressed and lost himself in various disguises.

  In this world before Gabriel was born, people did stranger things than they seemed to now. It amused Dad to boast of ‘going to bed in Memphis and waking up in San Francisco’. He had worn a silver suit open at the front to reveal a shaggy chest on which a heavy medallion bounced. He had padded shoulders on which his curly hair rested – so luxuriant that Gabriel wondered where he had obtained the wig – and dark eye shadow, applied only ‘approximately’, as well as what looked like his grandmother’s earrings. On his feet, fatefully, Dad wore boots with platform soles.

  Mum, who had just left art school, helped with the costumes. That was how she and Dad had met, she on her knees, measuring Dad’s inside leg for a pair of red satin trousers though he’d only requested a spangled waistcoat.

  It was the platform soles, those Eiffel Towers of footwear with flashing lights in the heel, that had proved calamitous. Lester and the Leather Pigs were playing a gig in the north of Finland. It was dark on stage, and Rex, becoming overexcited as a woman in the audience bared her chest, essayed an ill-advised shimmy. Normally, when performing, he didn’t stir at all; Lester did more than enough of that for the whole band.

  Suddenly Rex twisted his ankle. As he struggled to maintain his balance, he saw Lester smiling at him, imagining that Rex was dancing. Rex crashed down from his platform boots to find himself grovelling on the floor of the stage like an injured insect. Craggy roadies immediately ran to him. But instead of rushing
him to hospital, they attempted to reinstate Rex so that he could complete the gig, propped up like a shattered ornament between a couple of speakers.

  It was discovered that Rex’s leg and ankle were broken. The roadies suggested that for the rest of the tour Rex be held up in a harness, suspended from the ceiling, not unlike a puppet. Rex objected to this humiliation; while the band completed the tour, he made his way home.

  By the time Rex had mended, Lester had moved on to a style of music involving flatter shoes, funkier tunes and darker hair. When Rex begged Lester to let him rejoin him Lester insisted he wanted a different sound and less hirsute musicians. Rex volunteered to shave his body, but he never worked with Lester again.

  Dad had first gone to gigs as a teenager. It wasn’t long before he was playing live himself. He loved the fear and anticipation of walking on stage with a band, and the noise of the crowd and their adoration. He liked seeing different cities and concert halls. He began to understand the need of actors to perform; he knew, too, that they never did the same thing every night. He believed the audience understood that what he was playing was different, or difficult, or ironic, or was just what was required in the circumstances.

  After a good gig there were parties and backstage foolishness. Dad said that then you were your own drug, and the intoxication lasted several hours, though it wasn’t long before you had to repeat it. It was a ‘sailor’s’ existence that Dad thought would be his life, insulated from the steep complications of the everyday world, like having to prepare food or form relationships that could survive daylight.

  Following the accident he did, after a year, go on the road with Charlie Hero, a follower of Lester Jones whose music resembled Jones’s. But Dad was getting older. In the bands he played with, though he was often the most accomplished musician, he was made to stand at the side of the stage, in shadow, where he got cold and had to wear thick socks; he was kept out of the videos for being too ugly, and eventually out of the bands altogether.

  Before the accident Dad had been known as Free-standing Fred. Unlike many musicians, he rarely drank or used stimulants. But after it he was known as Restless Rex. People said he could never stand unaided again, without a drink in his hand.

  After the phone call from Lester, Dad bought some beers to celebrate. They hurried up the stairs once more and lay down together in the single bed.

  ‘I like a hard bed,’ said Dad.

  ‘Good for our backs.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Dad, your ear is bleeding.’ Gabriel fetched a wet towel and bathed his father’s ear. ‘Now keep still.’

  ‘That really was Lester Jones. He’s been receiving my correspondence.’

  ‘You write to him?’

  ‘Always have. His manager and I once spent a night in jail together. I keep Lester informed about what’s going on in the real world and so on.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were writing to him.’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I go to cafés with the other old men, and just write anything. Children only see a small part of their parents.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gabriel. ‘Will I be shocked by you? Should I see a psychiatrist?’

  ‘I’ve witnessed it, pal. When the parents go mad, they rush their kids onto the couch. Isn’t that what happened to Zak?’

  ‘Yeah, when his old man came out – over Sunday lunch – Zak was sent to a suit who asked him dirty questions and told him to express himself.’

  ‘Did he express himself?’

  ‘So much so that his mother stopped him going and told the psychiatrist to see a psychiatrist. She had thought it would make Zak good, not rebellious.’

  Dad was laughing.

  ‘Luckily for you, we can’t afford that funny stuff. And you’re a beautiful kid, Angel.’ He went on, ‘Lester’s been commissioned to work on his autobiography. The only problem is, his head is riddled with holes. All I’ve lost is my hair. Lester needs to be reminded of what close mates we were, and how I helped him make those records. That’s partly my guitar sound on there. It was me who told him to be bold. “Go further,” I said all the time. “Be as mad as you can be.” He always reminded me of Orson Welles.’

  ‘Sorry? Is that the younger Welles or the older? When are you going to see him?’

  ‘When are we going, you mean?’

  ‘You’re taking me?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be at school.’

  Dad hesitated. ‘You’ve had more than enough education. Lester is more important than algebra. Promise you won’t tell Mum.’ Dad started to roll a joint. ‘Don’t tell her anything about me, except that there’s some kicking life in your old dad yet.’

  Two years ago the three of them had gone to see Lester perform in a football stadium. He, Mum and Dad spent the day searching through boxes in order to dress up in ‘Lester’ gear, seventies clothes, glitter and make-up, applied by Mum. Of course, Lester walked on stage wearing a dark suit, although he did wear high heels with it. Gabriel had been pained to see his father among the ticket touts and pushing hysterical crowd, ankle-deep in the rubbish on the floor, surrounded by people wearing T-shirts with Lester’s face on, knowing Dad could have been rocking on stage.

  ‘Dad, can you tell me who that man was?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘The one who held you against the wall. What does he want?’

  ‘Don’t ask. He wants … only money. He was good enough to lend me something a few days ago, when I was cycling for the company. I thought I’d be able to pay him back.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘I think we’ll be all right now.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Lester will take care of us. I’m certain of it. I’ll be out of here in a few weeks. Maybe in a few days. It’s going to be the high life for us! I’m thinking of taking you to New York for a bit.’

  ‘New York!’

  ‘We’re going into the pleasure zone! Now, let’s get into this bed.’

  Gabriel and his father undressed to their underwear and got into the tiny bed. As a child Gabriel had loved sleeping wedged between his parents; they had had to repeatedly replace him in his own cold bed. Now he wished he had his own bed, for with a burp, fart and a rug, his father pulled the eiderdown over himself, not realizing Gabriel was left with only a thin sheet to cover him.

  His father was excited, wondering aloud whether Lester might give him a job in the new band he was taking on the road; or perhaps he might want to hear one of Dad’s recent songs, or even write one with him. He became dreamy, Dad, when he’d had a smoke.

  Dad then started to imagine the kind of flat – in a mansion block, with a porter – he would buy with the money from this enterprise.

  ‘What I want, one day,’ said his father, ‘is for you and me to live together again.’

  ‘You mean you’re thinking of coming home?’

  ‘Why? Does Mum keep saying she wants me to?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Right. What I do want is my own place and to come home from a gig somewhere, knowing you’re there sometimes, my son. I can’t wait for that.’

  Gabriel tried to encourage his father away from these speculations by bringing the subject round to music.

  Dad was soon ‘monologuing’ about the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors; about soul music, and Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and the Supremes. He talked of how the lyrics and the music worked together and of the work’s cultural and political context.

  When at last his father fell asleep, still muttering about why the brass on one record was better than on another, Gabriel was able to relax at last. He thought about painting, and about Degas, and then Degas’s girls. He couldn’t sleep with an erection. He masturbated quickly – taking care not to splash his father – and slipped from the bed.

  He heard doors slamming in the depths of the
house; someone laughed for a long time; he thought he heard a window break and a rat scratching behind the skirting board; he saw, under the newspaper, the corner of a crumpled pornographic magazine and read the words ‘beyond blue’. He thought of two boys whose mothers were dead, Lennon and McCartney, in Paul’s front room, writing songs all afternoon, with guitars in their laps, wanting to be the best. He whispered to Archie, but even he didn’t respond.

  All sleeping; all safe. But not Gabriel, not tonight, with so much to think about.

  He opened the window, finished Dad’s joint and threw it down to the street, watching the little sparks scatter and expire in the darkness.

  Sitting on the windowsill, next to Dad’s milk and trainers, and looking out over West London, he took out his sketchbook and pencils and drew his sleeping, open-mouthed father, with little snores, like bubbles, emerging from his mouth into the cold room. Meanwhile, in this city, not far away, Lester Jones was living and breathing, with Rex on his mind. Tomorrow he would see them both.

  Chapter Three

  Gabriel awoke alone, pulled aside the filthy net curtains and rubbed a clear space in the window. The weather was bright and clear.

  He guessed that Dad had risen early to wash and shave before the queues started outside the bathrooms. The door opened and Dad came into the room with tea and cold toast, which Gabriel ate quickly, sitting on the bed.

  Gabriel had almost forgotten the numerous laboured groans, coughs, splutterings and self-aimed muttered criticisms it took to get his father started in the morning. Then Gabriel packed his things while Dad snipped at his sideburns with blunt scissors in a cloudy mirror. Gabriel noticed that his father’s hands were trembling. Dad’s euphoria of the previous night had been replaced by anxiety – he kept pulling at his nose and ears and sticking his tongue out like a lizard.

  Staring in the mirror he said suddenly, ‘Look, I’ve got acne too. Here, under my nose, a crop of it. I’ve almost retired and I’ve got more acne than you.’

  Dad was making Gabriel tense. ‘It’s like we’re going to visit a King or Prince,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, except that Lester has achieved his position because of his own work, rather than everyone else’s. To think, that a person could live like him.’