On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  Now Harold looked up at Howard. The older man was already crying. His hands shook with emotion. He struggled to get up from his chair and, when he did, embraced his son delicately around his middle, for Howard towered above him, now more than ever. Over his father’s shoulder. Howard read the little notes resting on the mantelpiece, written on scraps of paper in a faltering hand.

  Gone to Ed’s for my haircut. Back soon.

  To the Co-op to return kettle. Back in 15 mins.

  Gone shopping for nails. Back in 20 mins.

  ‘I’ll make the tea, then. Put these in a vase,’ said Carol shyly behind them, and went off to the kitchen.

  Howard put his hands on Harold’s. He felt the little rough patches of psoriasis. He felt the ancient wedding ring embedded in skin.

  ‘Dad, sit down.’

  ‘Sit down? How can I sit down?’

  ‘Just . . .’ said Howard, pressing him back softly into his chair and taking the sofa for himself. ‘Just, sit down.’

  ‘Are the family with you?’

  Howard shook his head. Harold assumed his vanquished position, hands in lap, head bowed, eyes closed.

  ‘Who’s that woman?’ asked Howard. ‘That’s not the nurse, surely. Who are those notes for?’

  Harold sighed profoundly. ‘You didn’t bring the family. Well . . . there it is. They didn’t want to come, I’m sure . . .’

  ‘Harry, that woman in there – who is that?’

  ‘Carol?’ repeated Harold, his face the usual mix of perplexity and persecution. ‘But that’s Carol.’

  ‘Right. And who’s Carol?’

  ‘She’s just a lady who comes by. What does it matter?’

  Howard sighed and sat down on the green sofa. The moment his head connected with the velvet he felt like he’d been sitting here with Harry these forty years, the both of them still tied up in the terrible incommunicable grief of Joan’s death. For they fell into the same patterns at once, as if Howard had never gone to university (against Harry’s advice), never left this piss-poor country, never married outside his colour and nation. He’d never gone anywhere or done anything. He was still a butcher’s son and it was still just the two of them, still making do, squabbling in a railway cottage in Dalston. Two Englishmen stranded together with nothing in common except a dead woman they had both loved.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Carol,’ said Harry anxiously. ‘You’re here! I want to talk about that! You’re here.’

  ‘I’m just asking you who she is!’

  Now Harold was exasperated. He was a little deaf and when troubled his voice could suddenly get very loud, without his realizing it. ‘She’s church-GOING. Pops round few times a week for tea. Just looks in, SEE IF I’M ALL RIGHT. Nice woman. Now, but how are you?’ he said, adopting an anxiously jovial smile. ‘That’s what we’re all wanting to know, aren’t we? How’s New York?’

  Howard clenched his jaw. ‘We pay for a nurse, Harry.’

  ‘What, son?’

  ‘I said we pay for a nurse. Why do you let these bloody people in? They’re just bloody proselytizers.’

  Harold rubbed his hand over his forehead. It took almost nothing to work him into a state of physical and mental panic, the kind normal people suffer when they can’t find their child and then a policeman comes to the door.

  ‘Prosler-what? What are you SAYING?’

  ‘Christian nutters – pushing their crap on you.’

  ‘But she doesn’t mean anything by it! She’s just a nice woman! Besides, I didn’t like the nurse! She was a harpy – mean and bony. Bit feminist, you know. She wasn’t nice to me, son. She was unhinged . . .’ A few tears, here. Wiping them sloppily with the sleeve of his cardigan. ‘But I stopped the service – last year I stopped it. Your Kiki did it for me. It’s in me little book. You ain’t paying for it. There’s no . . . no . . . bugger, WHAT IS THE NAME OF IT? Debit . . . my mind goes . . . debit . . .’

  ‘Direct debit,’ supplied Howard, raising his own voice and hating himself now. ‘It’s not the bloody money, is it, Dad? It’s about a standard of care.’

  ‘I care for meself!’ And then, under his breath, ‘I bloody have to. . .’

  So how long was that? Eight minutes? Harry on the edge of his seat, pleading, and always pleading with the wrong words. Howard already incensed, looking at the rose in the ceiling. A stranger could come in now and think them both completely insane. And neither man would be able to give an account of why what had just happened had happened, or at least no account that would be shorter than sitting down with the stranger and taking them through an oral history – with slides – of the past fifty-seven years, day by day. They didn’t mean it to be like this. But it was like this. Both had other intentions. Howard had knocked on the door eight minutes ago filled with hope, his heart loosened by music, his mind stunned and opened by the appalling proximity of death. He was a big malleable ball of potential change, waiting on the doorstep. Eight minutes ago. But once inside, everything was the same as it had always been. He didn’t mean to be so aggressive, or to raise his voice or to pick fights. He meant to be kind and tolerant. Equally, four years ago, Harry surely hadn’t meant to tell his only son that you couldn’t expect black people to develop mentally like white people do. He had meant to say: I love you, I love my grandchildren, please stay another day.

  ‘Here you are,’ sang Carol, and put two unappetizing milky teas before the Belseys. ‘No, I won’t stay. I’ll be going.’

  Harold wiped yet another tear away. ‘Carol, don’t go! This is my son. Howard, I’ve told you about him.’

  ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Carol, but she did not look charmed and now Howard regretted having spoken so loudly.

  ‘Dr Howard Belsey.’

  ‘Doctor!’ cried Carol, without smiling. She crossed her arms across her chest, waiting to be impressed.

  ‘No, no . . . not medical,’ clarified Harold and looked defeated. ‘He didn’t have the patience for medical.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Carol, ‘we can’t all save lives. Nice, though. Nice to meet you, Howard. Next week, Harry. May the good Lord go with you. Otherwise known as, don’t do nothing I wouldn’t. Now you won’t, will you?’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing!’

  They laughed – Harry still wiping tears – and walked to the front door together, continuing with these banal little English catchphrases that never failed to drive Howard up the bleeding wall. His childhood had been shot through with this meaningless noise, just so many substitutes for real conversation. Brass monkeys out there. Don’t mind if I do. I don’t fancy yours much. And on. And on. This was what he had been running from when he escaped to Oxford and every year since Oxford. Half-lived life. The unexamined life is not worth living. That had been Howard’s callow teenage dictum. Nobody tells you, at seventeen, that examining it will be half the trouble.

  ‘Now: how much do you want to put on it as a reserve?’ asked the man on the television. ‘Forty quid?’

  Howard wandered into the golden-yellow galley kitchen to pour his tea down the sink and make an instant coffee. He hunted in the cupboards for a biscuit (when did he ever eat biscuits? Only here! Only with this man!) and found a couple of HobNobs. He filled his cup and heard Harold settling back into his chair. Howard turned round in the tiny space allowed him and knocked something off the sideboard with his elbow. A book. He picked it up and brought it through.

  ‘This yours?’

  He could hear his own accent climbing down the class ladder a few rungs to where it used to be.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell . . . look at him. He is a right ponce,’ said Harold, referring to the television. He tuned in to Howard: ‘I dunno. What is it?’

  ‘A book. Unbelievably.’

  ‘A book? One of mine?’ said Harold blithely, as if this room housed half the Bodleian rather than three A–Zs of varying sizes and a free Koran that had come in the post. It was a hardback royal blue library book that had been relieved of its dust jacket.
Howard looked at the spine.

  ‘A Room with a View. Forster.’ Howard smiled sadly. ‘Can’t stand Forster. Enjoying it?’

  Harold screwed up his face in distaste. ‘Ooh, no, not mine. Carol’s I should think. She’s always got a book on the go.’

  ‘Not such a bad idea.’

  ‘What’s that, son?’

  ‘I said it’s not such a bad idea. Reading something – every now and then.’

  ‘No doubt, no doubt . . . that was always more your mum, though, weren’t it? Always had a book in her hand. Walked into a lamp-post once reading a book in the street,’ said Harold, a story Howard had heard and heard and heard, as he had heard the bit that came next and came now. ‘Spose that’s where you got it from . . . Oh, blimey, look at this big tart. Look at him! I mean, purple and pink? He’s not serious, though, is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him – whatsisname . . . he’s a bloody fool. Wouldn’t know an antique if it was being shoved up his arse . . . But it was funny yesterday ’cause he was doing the bit where you guess the price the thing’ll go for before it goes – I mean, it’s mostly tat, I wouldn’t give you ten bob for most of it, if I’m honest, and we had better stuff than that just knocking around me mum’s house . . . never gave it a first thought never mind a second, but there you are . . . I’ve forgotten what I was on about now . . . oh, yeah, so it’s usually couples or mother and daughter that he gets on, but yesterday he’s got these two women – like bloody buses, both of ’em huge, hair very short, dressed like blokes of course, like they do, ugly as sin and looking to buy some military stuff, medals and that, ’cos they were in the bloody army, weren’t they, and they’re holding hands, oh dear . . . I was laughing, oh, dear . . .’ And here Harold chuckled mirthfully. ‘And you could tell he didn’t know what to say . . . I mean, he’s not exactly kosher himself, now is he?’ Harold laughed some more, and then grew serious, noting, possibly, the lack of laughter elsewhere in the room. ‘But then there’s always been that aspect in the army, hasn’t there? I mean, that’s the main place you find them, the women . . . I spose it must suit them more, mentally . . . as it were,’ said Harold, this last being his only verbal pretension. Now, Howard, as it were . . . He’d started using it when Howard came home for the summer after his first year in Oxford.

  ‘Them?’ asked Howard, putting his HobNob down.

  ‘You what, son? Look, you’ve broken your biscuit. Should have brought a saucer for crumbs.’

  ‘Them. I was just wondering who “they” are.’

  ‘Oh, now Howard, don’t get angry about nothing. You’re always so angry!’

  ‘No,’ said Howard, in a tone of pedantic insistence, ‘I’m just trying to understand the point of the story you just told me. Are you trying to explain to me that the women were lesbians?’

  Harold’s face creased into the picture of distressed aesthetic sensitivity, as if Howard had just put his foot through The Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa. A painting Harold loves. When Howard was having his first pieces of criticism printed in the sorts of papers Harold never buys, a customer of Harold’s had shown the butcher a cutting of his son writing enthusiastically about Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista. Harold closed the shop and went down the road with a handful of twopence to use the phone. ‘Shit in a jar? Why can’t you write about somefing lovely, like The Mona Lisa? Your mum would be so proud of that. Shit in a jar? ’

  ‘There’s no need for that, Howard,’ said Harold soothingly now. ‘It’s just my way of talking – I ain’t seen you in so long, just happy to see you, aren’t I, just trying to find something to say, you know . . .’

  Howard, with what he considered to be superhuman effort, said nothing further.

  Together they watched Countdown. Harold passed his son a little white pad on which to do his calculations. Howard scored well through the word round, doing better than both the contestants of the show. Meanwhile Harold struggled. His highest was a five-letter word. But in the numbers round, the power changed hands. There are always a few things our parents know about us that nobody else does. Harold Belsey was the only person who knew that when it came to the manipulation of numbers, Dr Howard Belsey, M.A., Ph.D., was a mere child. Even the most basic of multiplications required a calculator. He had been able to hide this for more than twenty years in seven different universities. But in Harold’s living room the truth would out.

  ‘One hundred and fifty-six,’ announced Harold, which was the target amount. ‘What you got, son?’

  ‘A hundred and . . . No, I’m nowhere. Nothing.’

  ‘Got you, Professor!’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ agreed Harold, nodding as the contestant on the television explained her rather convoluted ‘workings out’. ‘ ’Course you can do it that way, love, but mine’s a damn sight prettier.’

  Howard laid down his pen and pressed his hands to his temples.

  ‘You all right, Howard? You’ve had a face like a smacked arse since you got in here. Everything all right at home?’

  Howard looked up at his father and decided to do something he never did. Tell him the truth. He expected nothing from this course of action. He was talking to the wallpaper as much as to this man.

  ‘No, it’s not all right.’

  ‘No? What’s the matter? Oh, God, no one’s dead, are they, son? I couldn’t stand it if anyone’s dead!’

  ‘No one’s dead,’ said Howard.

  ‘Bloody out with it, then – you’ll give me a heart attack.’

  ‘Kiki and me . . .’ said Howard using a grammar older than his marriage, ‘we’re . . . not good. Actually, Harry, I think we’re finished.’ Howard put his hands over his eyes.

  ‘Now that can’t be right,’ said Harold cautiously. ‘You’ve been married – what is it now? Twenty-eight years – summink like that?’

  ‘Thirty, actually.’

  ‘There you are, then. It don’t just fall apart, just like that, does it?’

  ‘It does when you . . .’ Howard released an involuntary moan as he took his hands from his eyes. ‘It’s got too hard. You can’t carry on when it gets this hard. When you can’t even talk to someone . . . You’ve just lost what there was. That’s how I feel now. I can’t believe it’s happening.’

  Harold now closed his eyes. His face contorted like a quiz-show contestant’s. Losing women was his specialist subject. He did not speak for a while.

  ‘ ’Cos she wants to finish it or you do?’ he said finally.

  ‘Because she wants to,’ confirmed Howard, and found that he was comforted by the simplicity of his father’s questions. ‘And . . . because I can’t find enough reasons to stop her wanting to.’

  And now Howard succumbed to his heritage – easy, quick-flowing tears.

  ‘There, son. It’s better out than in, isn’t it,’ said Harold quietly. Howard laughed softly at this phrase: so old, so familiar, so utterly useless. Harold reached forward and touched his son’s knee. Then he leaned back in his chair and picked up his remote control.

  ‘She found a black fella, I spose. It was always going to happen, though. It’s in their nature.’

  He turned the channel to the news. Howard stood up.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said frankly, wiping his tears with his shirtsleeve and laughing grimly. ‘I never fucking learn.’ He picked up his coat and put it on. ‘See you, Harry. Let’s leave it a bit longer next time, eh?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ whimpered Harold, his face stricken by the calamity of it. ‘What are you saying? We’re having a nice time, ain’t we?’

  Howard stared at him, disbelievingly.

  ‘No. Son, please. Oh, come on and stay a bit longer. I’ve said the wrong thing, have I? I’ve said the wrong thing. Then let’s sort it! You’re always in a rush. Rush ’ere, rush there. People these days think they can outrun death. It’s just time.’

  Harry just wanted Howard to sit down, start again. There were four more hours of quality viewing lined up before bedtime – an
tique shows and property shows and travel shows and game shows – all of which he and his son might watch together in silent companionship, occasionally commenting on this presenter’s overbite, another’s small hands or sexual preference. And this would all be another way of saying: It’s good to see you. It’s been too long. We’re family. But Howard couldn’t do this when he was sixteen and he couldn’t do it now. He just did not believe, as his father did, that time is how you spend your love. And so, to avoid a conversation about an Australian soap actress, Howard moved into the kitchen to wash up his cup and a few other things in the sink. Ten minutes later he left.

  4

  The Victorians were terrific cemetery designers. In London we used to have seven, ‘The Magnificent Seven’: Kensal Green (1833), Norwood (1838), Highgate (1839), Abney Park (1840), Brompton (1840), Nunhead (1840) and Tower Hamlets (1841). Rangy pleasure gardens in the daytime, necropolises by night, they crawled with ivy and sprung daffodils from their rich mulch. Some have been built over; others are in an appalling state of disrepair. Kensal Green survives. Seventy-seven acres, two hundred and fifty thousand souls. Space for Anglican Dissenters, Muslims, the Russian Orthodox, one famous Zoroastrian and, next door in St Mary’s, the Catholics. Here are angels without their heads, Celtic crosses missing their extremities, a few sphinxes toppled over into the mud. It is what La Cimetière du Père Lachaise would look like if nobody knew it was there or went to visit it. In the 1830s Kensal Green was a peaceful spot, north-west of the city, where the great and the good might find their final rest. Now, on all sides, this ‘country’ cemetery greets the city: flats on one side, offices on the other, the railway trains vibrate the flowers in their cheap plastic pots, and the chapel cowers under the gas holder, a mammoth drum stripped of its skin.