On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  ‘She’s dead!’

  Howard looked at his wife and felt only slightly alarmed. Everybody he truly loved was right here with him in this garden. Kiki came very close to him and hoarsely repeated her message.

  ‘Who – Kiki, who’s dead?’

  ‘Carlene! Carlene Kipps. Michael – that was him, the son, on the phone.’

  ‘How on earth did they get this number?’ asked Howard obtusely.

  ‘I don’t know . . . I suppose my office gave . . . I can’t believe this is happening. I saw her two weeks ago! She’s being buried here, in London. In Kensal Green Cemetery. The funeral’s on Friday.’

  Howard’s brow contracted.

  ‘Funeral? But . . . we’re not going, surely.’

  ‘YES, we’re going!’ shouted Kiki and began to cry, alerting her children, who now came over. Howard held his wife in his arms.

  ‘OK, OK, OK, we’re going, we’re going. Darling, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you . . .’ Howard stopped talking and kissed her temple. Physically, it was the closest he’d been to her in an age.

  Only a mile down the hill, in leafy Queen’s Park, the numb practicalities that follow a death were being attended to. An hour before Michael phoned Kiki, the Kipps family had been asked to step into Monty’s study – Victoria, Michael and Amelia, Michael’s fiancée. The tone of the request girded them for yet more distressing news. It was a week earlier, in Amherst, that they had discovered the cause of Carlene Kipps’s death: an aggressive cancer she had told her family nothing about. In her suitcases they found painkillers, of the kind only hospitals prescribe. The family did not yet know who had prescribed these; Michael was spending a good deal of his time shouting down the phone at doctors. It was easier to do this than to wonder why his mother, who must have known she was dying, had felt the need to hide the fact from the people who loved her most. In trepidation the young people came into the room and arranged themselves on Monty’s badly sprung Edwardian furniture. The blinds were shut. A floral-tiled fireplace with a small log fire was the only light in the room. Monty looked tired. His pug eyes were stained red, and his unbuttoned, dirty waistcoat hung either side of his belly.

  ‘Michael,’ said Monty, and passed his son a small envelope. Michael took it from him.

  ‘All we can assume,’ said Monty, as Michael drew a single piece of folded notepaper from it, ‘is that your mother’s illness had already gone some way towards affecting her mind. That was found in her side table. What do you make of it?’

  Over her fiancé’s shoulder, Amelia craned to read what was written there and, when she did, let out a little gasp.

  ‘Well, first, there’s no way this is legally binding,’ said Michael at once.

  ‘It’s written in pencil!’ Amelia blurted out.

  ‘Nobody thinks it’s legally binding,’ said Monty, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s hardly the point. The point is: what does it mean?’

  ‘She would never have written this,’ said Michael solidly. ‘Who says this is her handwriting? I don’t think it is.’

  ‘What does it say?’ said Victoria and began to cry again, as she had been doing almost hourly for four days.

  ‘To whom it may concern,’ began Amelia, wide-eyed as a child and employing a babyish whisper. ‘Upon my death I leave my Jean Hyp – Hyp – I can never say that name! – painting of Maîtresse Er – Erzu . . .’

  ‘We know which bloody painting it is!’ snapped Michael. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ he added.

  ‘. . . to Mrs Kiki Belsey!’ announced Amelia as if these were the most remarkable words she’d ever been called upon to say out loud. ‘And it’s signed by Mrs Kipps!’

  ‘She didn’t write that,’ said Michael again. ‘No way. She never would do something like that. Sorry. No way. That woman obviously had some power over Mum that we weren’t aware of – she must have had her eye on that painting for a while – we know she’d been in the house. No, sorry, this is completely out of order,’ concluded Michael, although his argument had neatly double-backed on itself.

  ‘She bedevilled Mrs Kipps’s mind!’ yelped Amelia, whose innocent imagination was infected by some of the more gaudy episodes in the Bible.

  ‘Shut up, Ammy,’ muttered Michael. He turned the note over as if its blank side might offer a clue to its provenance.

  ‘This is a family matter, Amelia,’ said Monty severely. ‘And you are not yet family. It would be preferable if you kept your comments to yourself.’

  Amelia held on to the cross at her throat and lowered her eyes. Victoria rose up from her armchair and snatched the paper from her brother. ‘This is Mum’s handwriting. Absolutely.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Monty, sensibly. ‘I don’t think there is any question of that.’

  ‘Look, that painting is worth, what? About three hundred grand? Sterling?’ said Michael, for the Kippses, unlike the Belseys, had no horror of talking frankly about money. ‘Now there is absolutely no way, no way she would have let this fall out of the family . . . and what confirms it for me is that she’d already sort of mentioned, pretty recently –’

  ‘Giving it to us!’ squeaked Amelia. ‘As a wedding present!’

  ‘As it happens, she had,’ agreed Michael. ‘Now you’re telling me she left the most valuable painting in the house to practically a stranger? To Kiki Belsey? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Wasn’t there any other letter, anything else?’ asked Victoria bewilderedly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Monty. He passed a hand over his shiny pate. ‘I can’t understand it.’

  Michael whacked the arm of the chaise he sat upon. ‘Thinking of that woman taking advantage of somebody as ill as Mum – it’s disgusting.’

  ‘Michael – the question is how should we deal with this?’

  And now the practical hats of the Kippses were put on. The women in the room were not offered hats and instinctively sat back in their chairs as Michael and his father leaned forward with their elbows on their knees.

  ‘Do you think Kiki Belsey knows about this . . . note?’ said Michael, barely allowing the last word the credence of its own existence.

  ‘This is what we don’t know. She’s certainly made no claims. As yet.’

  ‘Whether she knows or not,’ flashed Victoria, ‘she can’t prove a thing, right? I mean she has no written evidence that would stand up in court or whatever. This is our birthright, for fuckssake.’ Victoria allowed sobs to take her again. Her tears were petulant. It was the first time death in any form had ever forced its way into the pleasant confines of her life. Running alongside the genuine misery and loss was livid disbelief. In every other walk of life when the Kippses were hurt they were given access to recourse: Monty had fought three different libel cases; Michael and Victoria had been brought up to fiercely defend their faith and their politics. But this – this could not be fought. Secular liberals were one thing; death was another.

  ‘I don’t want that language, Victoria,’ said Monty strongly. ‘You’ll respect this house and your family.’

  ‘Apparently I respect my family more than Mum did – she doesn’t even mention us.’ She brandished the note and, in the process, dropped it. It floated listlessly to the carpet.

  ‘Your mother,’ said Monty, and stopped, shedding the first tear his children had yet seen since this began. To this tear Michael was unequal: his head fell back against the cushions; he let out a shrill, agonized croak and began to weep angry choking tears himself.

  ‘Your mother,’ tried Monty again, ‘was a devoted wife to me and a beautiful mother to you. But she was very sick at the end – the Lord alone knows how she bore it. And this,’ he said, retrieving the note from the floor, ‘is a symptom of sickness.’

  ‘Amen!’ said Amelia and clutched her fiancé.

  ‘Ammy, please,’ growled Michael, pushing her off. Amelia hid her head in his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry to have shown it to you,’ said Monty, folding the paper in half. ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘No
one thinks it means anything,’ snapped Michael, wiping his face with a handkerchief Amelia had thought to produce. ‘Just burn the thing and forget about it.’

  Finally the word was out there. A log popped loudly, as if the fire were listening and hungry for new fuel. Victoria opened her mouth but said nothing.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Monty. He scrunched up the note in his fist and tossed it lightly into the flames. ‘Although we should invite her to the funeral, I think. Mrs Belsey.’

  ‘Why!’ cried Amelia. ‘She’s nasty – I saw her that time in the station and she looked right through me like I didn’t even exist! She’s uppity. And she’s practically a Rastafarian!’

  Monty frowned. It was becoming clear that Amelia was not the quietest of quiet Christian girls.

  ‘Ammy has a point. Why should we?’ said Michael.

  ‘Clearly, in some way your mother felt close to Mrs Belsey. She’d been left alone a lot in the last few months, by all of us.’ Upon hearing this obvious truth, everyone found a spot on the floor to focus on. ‘She made this friend. Whatever we think of it, we should respect it. We should invite her. It’s only decent. Are we agreed? I don’t suppose she’ll be able to make it anyway.’

  A few minutes later the children filed out again, feeling a degree more confused as to the true character of the person whose obituary was to appear in tomorrow morning’s Times: Lady Kipps, loving wife of Sir Montague Kipps, devoted mother of Victoria and Michael, Windrush passenger, tireless church worker, patron of the arts.

  2

  Through the grubby windows of their minicab, the Belseys watched Hampstead morph into West Hampstead, West Hampstead into Willesden. At every railway bridge, a little more graffiti; on each street, fewer trees, and in their branches, more fluttering plastic bags. An acceleration of establishments selling fried chicken, until, in Willesden Green, it seemed every other shop sign made reference to poultry. Written in a giant, death-defying font above the train-tracks, a message: YOUR MUM RANG. In different circumstances this would have amused.

  ‘It gets kind of . . . more crappy down here,’ ventured Zora, in the new, quiet voice she had assumed for this death. ‘Aren’t they rich? I thought they were rich.’

  ‘It’s their home,’ said Jerome simply. ‘They love it here. They’ve always lived here. They’re not pretentious. That’s what I was always trying to explain.’

  Howard rapped the thick glass side window with his wedding ring. ‘Don’t be fooled. There’re some bloody grand houses around here. Besides, men like Monty like being the big fish in a small pond.’

  ‘Howard,’ said Kiki in such a tone that nothing further was said until Winchester Lane, where their journey ended. The car pulled up beside a little English country church, torn from its village surroundings and dropped into this urban suburb, or so it seemed to the Belsey children. In fact it was the countryside that had receded. Only a hundred years earlier, a mere five hundred souls had lived in this parish of sheep fields and orchards, land that they rented from an Oxford college, which institution still counts much of Willesden Green among its possessions. This was a country church. Standing in the pebbled forecourt under the bare branches of a cherry tree, Howard could almost imagine the busy main road completely vanished and in its place paddocks, hedgerows and eglantine, cobbled lanes.

  A crowd was gathering. It pooled around the First World War memorial, a simple pillar with an illegible inscription, every single word smoothed into the recess of its own stone. Most people were wearing black, but there were many, like the Belseys, who were not. A wiry little man, in a street cleaner’s orange tabard, was running two identical white bull terriers up and over the small mound of remaining garden between the vicarage and the church. He did not seem to be of the party. People looked after him disapprovingly; some tuts were heard. He continued to throw his stick. The two terriers persisted in bringing it back, their jaws clamped round it at either end, forming a new, perfectly coordinated eight-legged beast.

  ‘Every kind of person,’ whispered Jerome, because everybody was whispering. ‘You can tell she knew every type of person. Can you imagine a funeral – any event – this mixed, back home?’

  The Belseys looked around themselves and saw the truth of this. Every age, every colour and several faiths; people dressed very finely – hats and handbags, pearls and rings – and people who were clearly of a different world again, in jeans and baseball caps, saris and duffle coats. And among them – joyfully – Erskine Jegede! It was not appropriate to whoop and wave; Levi was sent over to fetch him. He came over doing his bull’s stomp, dressed in natty racing-green tweed and brandishing an umbrella like a cane. All that was missing was the monocle. Looking at him now, Kiki could not work out why she hadn’t noticed it before. Despite Erskine’s more dandified stylings, sartorially, Monty and Erskine were a match.

  ‘Ersk, thank God you’re here,’ said Howard, hugging his friend. ‘But how come? I thought you were in Paris for Christmas.’

  ‘I was – we were staying at the Crillon – what a hotel that is, that hotel is a beautiful place – and I got a phone call from Brockes, Lord Brockes,’ added Erskine breezily. ‘But Howard, you know I’ve known our friend Monty for a very long time. Either he was the first Negro at Oxford or I was – we can never agree on that. But even if we haven’t always seen eye to eye, he is civilized and I am civilized. So here I am.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kiki in rather an emotional way and took hold of Erskine’s hand.

  ‘And of course Caroline insisted,’ continued Erskine mischievously, nodding to his wife’s lean form across the way. She was standing in the archway of the church, engaged in conversation with a famous black British newscaster. Erskine looked mock-fondly after her. ‘She is an awesome woman, my wife. She is the only woman I know who can power-broke at a funeral.’ Here Erskine turned the volume down on his big Nigerian laugh. ‘Anybody who’s anybody will be there,’ he said, badly impersonating his wife’s Atlanta twang, ‘though I fear there aren’t as many somebodies here as she had hoped. Half these people I have never seen before in my life. But there we are. In Nigeria we weep at funerals – in Atlanta apparently they network. It’s marvellous! Actually, I’m rather surprised to see you here. I thought you and Sir Monty were drawing swords for January.’ Erskine’s umbrella turned into a rapier. ‘So says the college grapevine. Yes, Howard. Don’t tell me you’re not here for your own ulterior motives, eh? Eh? But have I said the wrong thing?’ asked Erskine as Kiki’s hand dropped from his own.

  ‘Umm . . . I guess Mom and Carlene were pretty close,’ murmured Jerome.

  Erskine held a hand dramatically to his breast. ‘But you should have stopped me speaking out of turn! Kiki – I had no idea you even knew the lady. Now I am very embarrassed.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Kiki, but looked at him coldly. Erskine was paralysed by social friction of any kind. He looked now as if he were in physical pain.

  It was Zora who came to his rescue. ‘Hey, Dad – isn’t that Zia Malmud? Weren’t you guys at school with him?’

  Zia Malmud, cultural commentator, ex-socialist, anti-war campaigner, essayist, occasional poet, thorn in the side of the present government and regular TV presence, or, as Howard succinctly put it, ‘typical rent-a-quote wanker’, was standing by the monument, smoking his trademark pipe. Howard and Erskine quickly made their way through the crowd to say hello to their fellow Oxonian. Kiki watched them go. She saw vulgar relief paint itself in broad strokes all over Howard’s face. It was the first time since they arrived at this funeral that he had been able to cease twitching, fiddling in his pockets, messing with his hair. For here was Zia Malmud, in and of himself nothing directly to do with the idea of death, and therefore able to bring welcome news of another world outside of this funeral, Howard’s world: the world of conversation, debate, enemies, newspapers, universities. Tell me anything but don’t talk of death. But the only duty you have at a funeral is to accept that somebody has died! Kiki turned away.

>   ‘You know,’ she said in frustration, to no child in particular, ‘I’m getting really tired of listening to Erskine bad-mouth Caroline like that. All these men ever do is talk about their wives with contempt. With contempt. I am so sick of it!’

  ‘Oh, Mom, he doesn’t mean it,’ said Zora wearily, as once again she was called upon to explain how the world works to her mother. ‘Erskine loves Caroline. They’ve been married for ever.’

  Kiki restrained herself. Instead she opened her purse and began searching through it for her lip-gloss. Levi, who had resorted to kicking pebbles in his boredom, asked her who the guy with all the big gold chains was, with the guide dog. The Mayor, Kiki ventured, but couldn’t be sure. The Mayor of London? Kiki muttered assent but now turned again, getting up on tiptoe so she might see over the heads of the crowd. She was looking for Monty. She was curious about him. She wanted to see what a man who had so worshipped his wife looked like once he was deprived of her. Levi continued to badger her: Of the whole city? Like the New York Mayor? Maybe not, agreed Kiki tetchily, maybe the mayor of just this area.

  ‘Seriously . . . this is weird,’ said Levi, and yanked his stiff shirt collar from his neck with a hooked finger. It was Levi’s first funeral, but he meant more than that. It did seem a surreal gathering, what with the strange class mix (noticeable even to as American a boy as Levi) and the complete lack of privacy that the two-foot perimeter brick wall afforded. Cars and buses went by incessantly; noisy schoolchildren smoked, pointed and whispered; a group of Muslim women, in full hijab, floated by like apparitions.