Collected Stories (37 page)

As her mother poured juice for them, her hands shook, and it splashed on the table.

‘It’s very quiet,’ he said, to the mother. ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’

She looked perplexed but thought for a few moments.

‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘What does anyone do? I used to cook for the men but running around after them got me down.’

Nicole got up and went out of the room. There was a silence. Her mother was watching him. He noticed that there appeared to be purplish bruises under her skin.

She said, ‘Do you care about her?’

He liked the question.

‘Very much,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

She looked down. She said, ‘Will you look after her?’

‘Yes. I promise.’

She nodded. ‘That’s all I wanted to know. I’ll make your dinner.’

While she cooked, Nicole and Majid waited in the lounge. He said that, like him, she seemed only to sit on the edge of the furniture. She sat back self-consciously. He started to pace about, full of things to say.

Her mother was intelligent and dignified, he said, which must have been where Nicole inherited her grace. But the place, though it wasn’t sordid, was desolate.

‘Sordid? Desolate? Not so loud! What are you talking about?’

‘You said your mother was selfish. That she always put herself, and her men friends in particular, before her children.’

‘I did say –’

‘Well, I had been expecting a woman who cosseted herself. But I’ve never been in a colder house.’ He indicated the room. ‘No mementoes, no family photographs, not one picture. Everything personal has been erased. There is nothing she has made, or chosen to reflect –’

‘You only do what interests you,’ Nicole said. ‘You work, sit on boards, eat, travel and talk. “Only do what gives you pleasure,” you say to me constantly.’

‘I’m a sixties kid,’ he said. ‘It was a romantic age.’

‘Majid, the majority can’t live such luxurious lives. They never did. Your sixties is a great big myth.’

‘It isn’t the lack of opulence which disturbs me, but the poverty of imagination. It makes me think of what culture means –’

‘It means showing off and snobbery –’

‘Not that aspect of it. Or the decorative. But as indispensable human expression, as a way of saying, “Here there is pleasure, desire, life! This is what people have made!”’

He had said before that literature, indeed, all culture, was a celebration of life, if not a declaration of love for things.

‘Being here,’ he continued, ‘it isn’t people’s greed and selfishness that surprises me. But how little people ask of life. What meagre demands they make, and the trouble they go to, to curb their hunger for experience.’

‘It might surprise you,’ she said, ‘because you know successful egotistical people who do what they love. But most people don’t do much of anything most of the time. They only want to get by another day.’

‘Is that so?’ He thought about this and said that every day he awoke ebulliently and full of schemes. There was a lot he wanted, of the world and of other people. He added, ‘And of you.’

But he understood sterility because despite all the ‘culture’ he and his second wife had shared, his six years with her had been arid. Now he had this love, and he knew it was love because of the bleakness that preceded it, which had enabled him to see what was possible.

She kissed him. ‘Precious, precious,’ she said.

She pointed to the bolted door she had mentioned to him. She wanted to go downstairs. But her mother was calling them.

They sat down in the kitchen, where two places had been laid. Nicole and her mother saw him looking at the food.

‘Seems a bit funny giving Indian food to an Indian,’ the mother said. ‘I didn’t know what you eat.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said.

She added, ‘I thought you’d be more Indian, like.’

He waggled his head. ‘I’ll try to be.’ There was a silence. He said to her, ‘It was my birthday yesterday.’

‘Really?’ said the mother.

She and her daughter looked at one another and laughed.

While he and Nicole ate, the mother, who was very thin, sat and smoked. Sometimes she seemed to be watching them and other times fell into a kind of reverie. She was even-tempered and seemed prepared to sit there all day. He found himself seeking the fury in her, but she looked more resigned than anything, reminding him of himself in certain moods: without hope or desire, all curiosity suppressed in the gloom and agitated muddle of her mind.

After a time she said to Nicole, ‘What are you doing with yourself? How’s work?’

‘Work? I’ve given up the job. Didn’t I tell you?’

‘At the television programme?’

‘Yes.’

‘What for? It was a lovely job!’

Nicole said, ‘It wore me out for nothing. I’m getting the strength to do what I want, not what I think I ought to do.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ her mother said. ‘You stay in bed all day?’

‘We only do that sometimes,’ Majid murmured.

Her mother said, ‘I can’t believe you gave up such a job! I can’t even get work in a shop. They said I wasn’t experienced enough. I said, what experience do you need to sell bread rolls?’

In a low voice Nicole talked of what she’d been promising herself – to draw, dance, study philosophy, get healthy. She would follow what interested her. Then she caught his eye, having been reminded of one of the strange theories that puzzled and alarmed her. He maintained that it wasn’t teaching she craved, but a teacher, someone to help and guide her; perhaps a kind of husband. She found herself smiling at how he brought everything back to them.

‘Must be lovely,’ her mother said. ‘Just doing what you want.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Nicole said.

After lunch, in the lounge, Nicole pulled the brass bolt and he accompanied her down a dark flight of stairs. This was the basement where she and her brother and sister used to sleep, Nicole wearing a knitted hat and scarf, as her mother would heat only the front room. The damp room opened on to a small garden where the children had to urinate if the bolt was across. Beyond there were fields.

Late at night they would listen to the yells and crashes upstairs. If one of her mother’s boyfriends – whichever man it was who had taken her father’s place – had neglected to bolt the door, Nicole would put on her overcoat and wellington boots, and creep upstairs. The boots were required because of overturned ashtrays and broken glass. She would ensure her mother hadn’t been cut or beaten, and try to persuade everyone to go to bed. One morning there had been indentations in the wall, along with the remains of hair and blood, where her mother’s head had been banged against it. A few times the police came.

Majid watched as Nicole went through files containing old school books, magazines, photographs. She opened several sacks and hunted through them for some clothes she wanted to take back to London. This would take some time. He decided to go upstairs and wait for her. As he went, he passed the mother.

He walked about, wondering where in the house, when Nicole was ten, her father had hanged himself. He hadn’t been able to ask. He thought of what it would be like to be living an ordinary life, and the next day your husband is self-murdered, leaving you with three children.

On returning he paused at the top of the stairs. They were talking; no – arguing. The mother’s voice, soft and contained earlier, had gained a furious edge. The house seemed transparent. He could hear them, just as her mother must have heard him.

‘If he’s asked you,’ she was saying. ‘And if he means it, you should say yes. And if you’re jealous of his bloody kids, have some with him. That’ll keep him to you. He’s well off and brainy, he can have anyone. D’you know what he sees in you, apart from sex?’

‘He says he loves me.’

‘You’re not having me on? Does he support you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

Quietly Majid sat down on the top step. Nicole was struggling to maintain the dignity and sense she’d determined on that morning.

The mother said, ‘If you stop working you might end up with nothing. Like I did. Better make sure he don’t run off with someone younger and prettier.’

‘Why should he do that?’ Nicole said sullenly.

‘He’s done it already.’

‘When?’

‘Idiot, with you.’

‘Yes, yes, he has.’

‘Men are terrible beasts.’

‘Yes, yes.’

Her mother said, ‘If it’s getting you down, you can always stay here… for a while.’ She hesitated. ‘It won’t be like before. I won’t bother you.’

‘I might do that. Can I?’

‘You’ll always be my baby.’

Nicole must have been pulling boxes around; her breathing became heavier.

‘Nicole don’t make a mess in my house. It’ll be me who’ll have to clear everything up. What are you looking for?’

‘I had a picture of Father.’

‘I didn’t know you had one.’

‘Yes.’ Shortly after, Nicole said, ‘Here it is.’

He imagined them standing together, examining it.

‘Before he did it,’ said the mother, ‘he said he’d show us, teach us a lesson. And he did.’

She sounded as if she were proud of her husband.

Upstairs Nicole packed her clothes in a bag, then went back to find something in a cupboard; after this, there were other things she wanted.

‘I must do this,’ she said, hurrying around.

He realised that she might want to stay, that she might make him go back alone. He put on his coat. In the hall he waited restlessly.

The mother said to him, ‘You’re in a hurry.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there something you have to get home for?’

He nodded. ‘Lots of things.’

‘You don’t like it here, I can tell.’

He said nothing.

To his relief he saw Nicole emerge and put her scarf on. They kissed her mother and walked quickly back where they’d come. The bus arrived; and then they waited for the train, stamping their feet. As it pulled away, she took out her book. He looked at her; there were some things he wanted to ask, but she had put herself beyond his reach.

Near their house they stopped off to buy newspapers and magazines. Then they bought bread, pasta, hummus, yogurt, wine, water, juice, florentines. They unpacked it on the kitchen table, on which were piled books and CDs, invitations and birthday cards, with his children’s toys scattered underneath. It was only then they realised she’d left the bag of clothes somewhere, probably on the train. Tears came to her eyes before she realised the clothes didn’t matter; she didn’t even want them, and he said she could buy more.

He sat at the table with the papers and asked her what music she was in the mood for, or if she didn’t care. She shook her head and went to shower. Then she walked about naked, before spreading a towel on the floor and sitting on it to massage cream into her legs, sighing and humming as she did so. He started to prepare their supper, all the while watching her, which was one of his preferred occupations. Soon they would eat. After, they would take tea and wine to bed; lying there for hours, they would go over everything, knowing they would wake up with one another.