The Friendly Ones

by Philip Hensher

  They had reached the point of nodding and smiling when they left the house at the same time as another household. Most of them nodded and smiled back. Some of them pretended not to see – well, there were always going to be the friendly ones and the ones who looked away. Even to the friendly ones they hadn’t quite managed to introduce themselves, however, and Nazia wondered whether it was because of that that the friendliness appeared to be dying away as the weeks passed. Once she caught the husband in the older couple pausing as he unlocked his car, staring for a good twenty seconds at their house with a cross frown. He shook his head, a performance of disapproval, before getting into his car.

  The mother of the teenagers was leaving the house at the same time as Sharif one morning. She was unlocking her car, sleepless worry on her face, and came across to the little wall that separated her front garden from Sharif and Nazia’s. It was perhaps her standing there that made him see all of a sudden the cause of the disapproval: the grass on her side of the wall was trimmed neatly short. But on their side, they had done nothing to the grass or to the garden since they had moved in, now three months ago, and it was long and unruly. The mother of the teenagers gestured downwards.

  ‘We shall have to do something about it,’ Sharif said. ‘It’s getting a little out of hand.’

  ‘I think people sometimes forget,’ the woman said, ‘that it isn’t like choosing an ugly wallpaper for your own house. It can have an impact on your neighbours in a direct way. The weeds!’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Sharif said. ‘Well, yes, I do see. I am sorry. I’ll do something about it immediately.’

  ‘There is so much to do when you first move into a house,’ the woman said, in a conciliatory way. Perhaps she was one of the friendly ones, after all.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Sharif said. He might have said something now about the noise that came from her children’s bedroom. He raised his briefcase – brown, leather, soft, the same briefcase he had had for years, since he was a PhD student – to show her that he had something to do and somewhere to go. ‘I think we’re getting there. If you could recommend the name of a gardener …’

  ‘A gardener?’

  ‘… that would be – I’m not a gardener, I admit.’

  ‘Most of us do our gardening ourselves,’ the woman said.

  That evening, he mentioned it to Nazia, and she thought that the important thing was to cut the grass in the front and the back garden. It was an expense, but they might need to buy a lawnmower. It was irritating, having just had all the expenses of buying a car, but the alternative was to have the utter disapproval of their neighbours for ever. Where to buy it from? Did Cole Brothers sell them? Or was it those places called garden centres? Sharif enquired from his colleagues in the engineering faculty, and discovered where garden centres could be found, what the different lawnmower models were, and how to decide between them – he liked the sound of a lightweight Flymo – and how to keep your lawn green and neat. It turned out that his English colleagues were all enthusiasts, and knowledgeable. ‘Mind you,’ Dr Smithers said, ‘you won’t have to buy yourself a hosepipe to water the lawn just yet, not this year. They’re talking about a ban on that and asking you to reuse bathwater. Have you thought about a strimmer, to tidy up the edges?’

  The lawnmower was a big success. Nazia and Aisha came out to the front porch to watch Sharif hard at work. He had read the manual carefully, at the dinner table, making little frowns and pencil marks in the margin. Then he came out and opened the garage door. The boxed-up mower was opened, and the parts laid out. Sharif checked them carefully against the instructions, ticking each one off, and then set to work. He was not sentimental about the tools in his toolbox; he had not brought the household tools from Dacca, and these were almost as new as the lawnmower. In an hour, the lawnmower was assembled. He placed the lightweight mower on the edge of the front lawn, and returned to the garage to plug it in. The device started immediately, cutting smoothly. He experimented, swinging the mower to left and right in widening half-circles, but then decided that the best way was the old-fashioned way of walking up and down in parallel stripes. It was fascinating to Nazia and Aisha to watch him at work with his sleeves rolled up. He explained about the cord of the electric mower; he had been told that there was a risk of running over it, unplanned, and severing the connection dangerously. He went over the lawn twice, as he had been advised; once lightly, and then more aggressively. There was that beautiful smell, the odour of cut grass that he remembered from home, from Dacca. It was like the smell that arose when the rains first fell on grass, but one that could be made, not one that must be waited for. The rule, Dr Smithers had said, was not to try to cut more than a third of the length of each blade of grass with each mowing. The mowing took twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes again. At the end, the lawn was heavily strewn with cut grass, and now Sharif went back to the garage to fetch the rake.

  The wife who lived opposite had been watching too, and now she came across, smiling. ‘My husband will be ever so pleased,’ she said. ‘He’s been wondering for weeks – when are those new people going to do something about the grass?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nazia said. ‘We were continually putting it off.’

  ‘Much longer than that, and you would have had to cut it with a scythe. That’s what my husband said. I suppose the next thing you’ll be wanting to do is perhaps weed the flowerbeds,’ the woman said, her smile dropping. ‘Or maybe you’ll pay someone to do that for you.’ So she had discussed it with the mother of the teenagers. Now she turned away and bustled back to her house without introducing herself. The flowerbeds in the front were not as trim as they could be; some of those plants had no right to be there at all. And Sharif was quite enthusiastic, now, about the garden: he went down to the garden centre the very same afternoon, saying he was going to plant some tulips. But the season was wrong, and he would have to come back after September, he learnt. Nazia had managed to get back into the house and into her bedroom, closing the door behind her, before she started to cry. It was the tone of the woman’s voice that had done it.

  Aisha’s birthday was in June, four weeks before her school broke up for the summer holidays. It had not occurred to either of them that what they needed was a holiday. Nazia’s babies would be born in July. Mandy, her midwife, had observed with a jollity that must have been meant as encouragement that she was having twins, how about that? She had distinctly felt two skulls and two bottoms. In Bangladesh, they would probably have gone to the village for a month to show the children off. Aisha’s holiday suggestion of Spain (her classmates’ preferred destination) would have to start next year. This year, they were going to stay at home in an unplanned way, and perhaps drive out during the day, to see the countryside. Nazia might be able to manage a birthday party for Aisha, to say thank you to all her friends who had been inviting her along almost from the beginning.

  But Aisha at first was not very willing. They were astonished. Of course she must have a birthday party! But they had made the suggestion at the dinner table, and Aisha in response gestured downwards, at her plate. ‘Oh, Mummy,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything more boring. I really don’t want to have a birthday party. Just me and you two and maybe Caroline – she could come to the pictures or something.’

  But there had to be a party! There were so many debts, and so many people had been so kind to Aisha that they had to be asked back. Nazia promised Aisha that she would absolutely definitely not have the twins in the middle of the party. She could see that that would be a worry to poor Aisha. Sharif reassured her that no grown-ups would come, no one from the engineering department, no one from Manchester, no one apart from as many friends as she wanted to ask.

  ‘Eight,’ Aisha said. ‘You have eight friends to a party.’

  She spoke promptly, and now that it was agreed upon, she began on the instructions. Her thoughts and memories came haphazardly, and over the next day or two Nazia kept reaching for the pad of paper to make notes of what an En
glish birthday party consisted of.

  ‘Chipolatas,’ Aisha said.

  ‘Chipolatas, what are they? I never heard of them.’

  ‘Sausages, cooked but cold,’ Aisha said. ‘You have to have chipolatas! And a gift bag and –’

  Nazia was unsure, but she went on: ‘And a birthday cake? Surely you want a birthday cake?’

  ‘Yes, a nice one with a theme, or perhaps just with icing, very very lovely, with roses on the top. Then you give people a slice and they take it home in a paper napkin. You don’t eat it there.’

  ‘Yes, I know!’ Nazia said, triumphant. She knew perfectly well: at every party Aisha had been to, she had emerged from the throng bearing a slice of cake wrapped in a napkin, tenderly, like a present, the gift bag dangling negligently from a finger.

  ‘And you get to play games,’ Aisha said. ‘But they aren’t the games that you play in the playground or normal games or anything like that. They’re pass-the-parcel with a present inside.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know,’ Nazia said.

  ‘But at Charlotte’s there was a present on every layer so everyone got something, that was lovely,’ Aisha said. ‘And her dad taking the needle off the gramophone. We haven’t got a gramophone! How are we going to play pass the parcel? And the gift bag. In the gift bag you have to have –’

  ‘We will arrange it all,’ Nazia said. ‘And what other games?’

  ‘Hide and seek, maybe, and musical chairs, and once we played consequences, but you need pens and paper for that. And then there’s birthday tea with chipolatas and vol-au-vents and – and – and … There might be a magician but he was rubbish, he was boring, I don’t care about him. Oh, Mummy, what am I going to wear? I need a new party dress.’

  ‘All in good time,’ Nazia said. ‘You’re sure about the magician? Was that at Susan’s party? We could find a different one.’

  ‘No, I don’t want a magician, it was boring. I could see the bird up his sleeve from the beginning.’

  And in fact it was a great success. It was from that afternoon that Nazia’s great friendship with Sally Mottishead started, her first English friendship. They were so nervous. Sharif had been persuaded into buying a gramophone for the occasion – coming so soon after the lawnmower, he needed some persuading – and of course they had had to buy five records, too. There was Mozart and Beethoven and The Carnival of the Animals and some more classical music played on a Moog synthesizer and the Beatles. And two pop singles, too, Demis Roussos and Elton John with Kiki Dee singing ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’, which they could have with the Beatles if the girls wanted to dance. It was so hot the day of Aisha’s party! The ice-cream was going to stay in the freezer right until the last moment, and Nazia had made a red raspberry jelly rabbit on a bed of green chopped-up jelly (lime) for grass. Sharif had been astonished when he saw that, the night before. Where on earth had she got that idea from? The answer was 100 Ideas for Children’s Parties, bought from Hartley Seed’s the week before. It had been full of wonderful suggestions. Chipolatas turned out to be sausages made out of pork. Aisha had insisted. Chipolatas were delicious and the sine qua non, as Sharif put it, when they discussed it later. Well, they would serve sausages made out of pork, and Aisha’s grandfather would turn in his grave. ‘I’m going to eat one,’ Sharif said dauntlessly. ‘I think I had pork in the canteen once without really noticing.’ And there was a schedule of games to play, and a table where presents and cards could be deposited. Aisha was standing at the window saying, ‘It’s three o’clock, it’s three o’clock, I told them to come early, I know no one’s going to come at all,’ when a purple Astra drew up and out popped little Caroline, and Julie, who lived only three doors away from Aisha’s best friend; they didn’t much like Julie really. Caroline’s mother came out too, to say hello to Aisha’s mummy and daddy – it was so nice for them to meet properly! And Caroline and Julie were through the door and exclaiming at Aisha’s and their own party dresses just as a second car was pulling up in the close, negotiating its way past Caroline’s mummy manoeuvring out. Aisha had gone for a very pretty sort of aquamarine, with a butterfly pattern on it, and white sling-backs. This second car must be Susan. Already Aisha was showing off, and they could hear Elton John and Kiki Dee starting up on the new gramophone. Their house was charming, Susan’s mummy was saying, as she came up the path, with Susan almost running ahead, and, my goodness, when are you due? This summer, everyone told them, was the most glorious anyone could remember, and all the little girls who came to Aisha’s birthday party would remember it for ever. It was the social climax at the end of term. Sharif and Nazia stood there smiling as the parents came up the path with their little girls, being friendly, and in Nazia’s case aching terribly about her swollen ankles and legs. The party was right in every single detail: she was quite sure about that after lengthy study and consultation. Both she and Sharif were wonderfully excited, too, about the surprise presents they were giving their lovely daughter. They were sure she would love them: a junior chemistry set and a harmonium, on which she was going to love to play those old tunes she had always enjoyed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1.

  Most of the university’s buildings were clustered around the inner parts of the western suburbs. The central buildings formed a plaza, or piazza, on either side of a dual carriageway; the stately red-brick palace that was the oldest part, the 1950s expansions of library, student union and Arts Tower, with its famous modernist paternoster lift. For most of the faculties, however, the mansions of the Victorian rich had been acquired – very few people since the Second World War had been able to envisage living on that kind of scale, and the houses had often been very good value for money – and restructured into offices, teaching rooms, research facilities. The music faculty was up a very grand road in Broomhill, the former billiard room now an electronics studio and recording space. The engineering faculty had been placed in an immense blackened mansion, the interior parcelled out and opened up, a substantial modern extension replacing the conservatory for more practical purposes of demonstration and experiment. The garden had, it was said, once been six acres. The university had not seen the need for its engineers to stroll about in a leisurely manner between classes, more’s the pity (this was Sharif’s colleague Steve Smithers’s view). Instead they had got their new lecture hall and workshop space built, a little car park, and the rest of the land had been flattened into a pitch and handed over to the university’s sportsmen. Lectures at the back of the building were often conducted to the musical accompaniment of whistles, shrieks, cries of pain and yelled profanity, as a football match took its impassioned course.

  Sharif loved the faculty. It was a magical place for him, the fantastical ornamental building that had loved his mind. It might have forgotten him when it had sent him back with a doctorate, but had not: it had sent out a modest sort of request and welcomed him back with a morose, abrupt greeting that was how Yorkshire engineers expressed joy. Welcomed him back with a readership and, three years later, a professorship. The promotion had recognized his introductory book on material science with Roy Burns and, true, was offered in order to compete with a formal approach from Imperial. But it needn’t have happened. There had been a point, a year in, when the head of department had called him in and said that students had been complaining that he was too abrasive, that he seemed to turn everything into an argument, that he never said, ‘I see what you mean.’ Sharif was more worried that he would be sacked than expectant of promotion to professor. He was very young for the title, he believed, and now he had a place in the car park.

  The place in the car park was by the steel-mesh fence circling the football pitch. He parked the blue Ford Capri and locked it. There were some boys kicking a ball about on the pitch. There was no adult in charge. It was half past eight in the morning. Had the boys of the neighbourhood just found a way in? It was no concern of his. He turned and walked towards the faculty. A teenage boy’s raucous voice called out behind him: ‘Look at
that Paki!’ it shouted. ‘Look at that fooking Paki with his fooking car! Paki Paki Paki!’ Sharif walked on. He would not turn.

  He had heard the word before. When he was a PhD student here, he had heard himself and Aisha referred to as ‘the Pakis over the newsagent’ by the butcher opposite. He had paid no attention and he paid no attention now. He went into the faculty. The pigeon holes were in the same room as the faculty secretary, Mrs Browning, who was frowning at her electric typewriter and gave only a cursory response to his ‘Good morning.’

  ‘The children on the sports pitch,’ Sharif said.

  ‘The …’ Mrs Browning said. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – I was miles away trying to work out what this word’s supposed to be. If only everyone had such neat handwriting as you do, Sharif. What was that you were asking?’

  ‘Do you know there are children on the sports pitch? Isn’t it just for university use?’

  ‘It’s some sort of social-welfare idea they’ve had,’ Mrs Browning said. ‘I’m actually ahead of you there. I thought, That’s not right, and phoned up the central admin. They’ve allowed three schools to make use of it during the week. Do you think that could be “Nonterriers”, is that a word?’