Something to Tell You

by Hanif Kureishi

  “Right on, man,” I said dismissively.

  A little panicked voice said, “Jamal…” Ajita was whispering in my ear. She wanted to go for a walk along the river, at the Embankment.

  I grasped, through her sobs, that the factory referred to in the Trotskyite leaflet, where the students were asked to protest, was her father’s.

  For three years Ajita’s family had had it good, the father building the business, the mother with the children, money to spend. The kids were settling in; they liked England. But it seemed now that England wouldn’t admit them after all. Ajita’s father was used to running things and to having power, but recently he had become afraid of having it wrenched from him. Profits weren’t great; he’d had to keep wages down. The whole business was in danger of collapse. He’d be left with enormous debts and might be made bankrupt. What would they do then—go on the dole like everyone else in England?

  The strike, which began soon after the documentary was broadcast, was led by a tiny Bengali woman. This brave, defiant figure had become a hero to other women, to the Left as a whole. She had everything going for her: race, gender, class, size. The numbers on the picket line were increasing every day. The factory wasn’t far from London and was near a tube station. Actors from the RSC and the movies were supporting the picket before the workers went into work in the morning. A Labour minister had visited. The dispute was becoming a cause célèbre.

  There were a few West Indian workers, but mainly the employees were Asian: a mixture of Kenyan Indian, Pakistani and Bengali; older women, students and some men, overseen by white managers. Ajita told me that, contrary to popular opinion, the workers were not peasants but were educated and politicised. They wanted to start a union, but Ajita’s father wouldn’t negotiate with a union. The workers were Asian like him; he understood their family life, their religion, their food. He didn’t see why they needed a white-led union pressurising him. He didn’t pay well, but he didn’t pay worse than anyone else.

  Ajita’s father had become furious and defensive. He’d fired several of the socialist jihadis and refused to reinstate them. Accused of attempting to bring the Third World to England, he replied that this was racism. According to Ajita, he was being picked on. “Do you think I’m the only exploiter in this country?” he’d say. Britain wouldn’t yield to him; he couldn’t get his way. But there was nowhere else for him to go. All his money was in the factory. Not that he was unsupported: Conservative politicians talked of “anarchy” and the “rule of law.”

  The afternoon after she cried in the pub we drove back to the suburbs. Ajita went home to study. Instead of joining her, I went to my house to read in my bedroom and listen to music. I went to bed around nine. Being a student, I wasn’t used to getting up early: usually I caught the train to London after the rush hour, around ten.

  But early the next morning, without telling Ajita, and while Mum and Miriam were still asleep, I went to the factory. Or, rather, to the demo.

  Coming out of the tube station, the first thing I saw was a large banner saying, ONLY SLAVES CANNOT WITHDRAW THEIR LABOUR. By eight o’clock the gathering at the gates was considerable. There must have been three hundred people, and they were noisy, almost riotously angry. The crowd seemed to be composed of sacked Asian workers from the factory, students from different radical groups and scores of other sympathisers, along with photographers and journalists. All of these people were surrounded by what looked like legions of police.

  The besieged factory, as far as I could see from the gate, was made up of two long, low buildings, which looked as though they’d been constructed from cardboard and asbestos. When I talked to the workers, they complained that, amongst other things, the place was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

  I heard about the heavy stacks of cloth, for cutting, which the workers had to move around. The sewing machines were unsafe; the needles broke constantly, scoring the fingers of the employees. Bits of fabric seemed to fly through the air; everyone had blocked noses; no one breathed properly. There was an accident on the premises at least once a month. The workers were allowed only two weeks’ holiday a year, but not in the summer, when there was more work to do. The washrooms and toilets were filthy; women were paid less than men; pregnant women were sacked; one woman said the white bosses forced the female workers to have sex with them.

  The crowd increased in size and noise. I noticed that the protesters were carrying stones, bricks and lumps of wood. Then, suddenly, the bus carrying the scabs was coming through, its windows covered in chicken wire. I was amazed to see it race recklessly through the crowd as a hail of missiles rained down on it. Using their truncheons, the police tried to shove us back, but people broke through to spit and thump at the bus.

  Right behind the bus was an expensive car, and I noticed Ajita’s father driving.

  I recognised him because I’d seen him one time at the house, when he returned suddenly “to find some papers” but really, it seemed to me, to watch a boxing match on TV. Looking at Ajita’s face that day, as he opened the door and strode into the room where we were sitting with our feet up on the glass-topped coffee table, eating Smith’s crisps and grooving to the Fatback Band, I realised she was scared of him. This wasn’t just nerves; I thought she might faint.

  Luckily, Mustaq was at home, sitting in a corner peeping at me over the cover of Young Americans as usual, and Ajita was able, as planned, to introduce me as his friend. If only that had been enough. To show how consanguineous we really were, I had to spend the afternoon in Mustaq’s bedroom. Ajita had often asked me to “speak to” her brother, about whom she was worried. Their father was too “distracted” to pay him much attention. He lacked fatherly guidance and example; he was girlish and knew nothing about football.

  That day the kid was delighted to have me to himself. Did he make the most of it! He took my picture, before presenting his “special” things: a train set, his Peanuts annual, his Snoopy stickers, a voodoo doll he’d carved himself from driftwood, complete with pins and numbers scrawled on it in black marker pen, his drum kit and acoustic guitar. There was also an ancient packet of condoms, a flick-knife and a picture of a female cousin in a bikini at the seaside.

  Then he asked me to wrestle with him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Why would I agree to that? I thought it would shut him up. The blood drained from my head when slowly he began to remove all his clothes, apart from his pants.

  I wasn’t into the wrestling thing, particularly when I saw how up for it he was, jiggling and jogging on his toes and smacking one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand—bam, bam, bam! Although he had a lot of loose blubber on him, it didn’t stop him looking like a tough, kicky little fucker.

  He came at me like a bear, his teeth exposed, his arms out, and he embraced me straightaway and held me. He threw me off the bed, picked me up and tossed me around the room, eventually sitting on me, tickling me and kissing my cheeks. When I tried to get up, he forced his hands down the front of my trousers. I couldn’t shout out for fear of his father banging through the door with a shotgun. On top of me, Mustaq was wiggling his hips and coming on like a teenage trannie or vamp; he wanted to suck me off with his father and sister a few yards away.

  It was a relief when he jumped across to the piano and started singing one of his own songs, called, apparently, “Everyone Has Their Heart Torn Apart, Sometime.”

  “Listen, listen,” he said. “Tell me what you think!”

  “Great, great song, man,” I said. “I like the ‘sometime.’”

  “You really think so?”

  “You should record it, man, and send it in somewhere.”

  In my haste to get away, I stumbled over the edge of the bed and, being forced for a moment to look under it, noticed a sea of half-eaten chocolate bars, bright sweet wrappers, and rotting Easter eggs.

  I just about got out of there intact, cursing his whole family.

  “Come back soo
n,” Mustaq whispered.

  “Nice time?” said Ajita, smiling. “I’m so happy you two really get on!”

  I was so in love with her. The rest of the family I could have done away with.

  I didn’t tell Ajita what her brother had attempted with me, but next time I took some books and magazines, mainly “outlaw” American stuff that I thought he wouldn’t have known about, Rechy, Himes, Algren, even Burroughs, all of which I handed over on condition he didn’t fondle me. “Fathers like boys who read,” I told him. “They think books are only a good thing. They have no idea how dangerous they can be.”

  To my surprise, he read everything I gave him, talked about it and asked for more. I gave him Tropic of Cancer and Quiet Days in Clichy, and he wrote me a note, saying he’d never before come across such Surreal poetry, madness and stupidity in one book. (Then he began to read Céline.) I gave Mustaq my own worn copy of Lou Reed’s Transformer because I knew it too well, but continued to hear its dirty, decadent Bowie-sound every time I visited.

  I liked to show off to him, to stir him up in an older-sibling, know-it-all, impressive way, as my sister did with me. If I’d wondered whether I could scandalise or even corrupt him, I soon saw he was more adventurous than me.

  He did, from time to time, attempt a grope, and he was always changing his clothes in front of me—“All I want is to know if you like me in stripes” “Only if they’re embedded in your arse”—but he was a decent ally in the house, providing I talked to him. It was like having an annoying kid brother. He even stuck a photograph of me on the wall, beside boxers and actors and one of Bailey’s early pictures of Jagger, when Mick looked like a surly teenage mod.

  Every time I saw him, Mustaq invited me to a gig or movie. I always refused, until he hit on the irresistible thing: three tickets for the Stones at Earl’s Court. We were sitting at the back and the tiny figures onstage resembled little puppets. It was like watching TV, except you couldn’t change channels. Ajita and I snogged while Mustaq was enthralled, leaning forward in his Mick Jagger tee-shirt. At the end, he said, “I want to be looked at like that. I want to do that every day of my life! Jamal, tell me, do you think I could achieve it?”

  “Your father would be delighted,” I said.

  The day their father came home early, he took no notice of me, but I did get a good look at him. He didn’t return to work, but lay on the sofa with a huge whisky, staring at the television and smoking continuously. He was tall, thin, severe-looking and almost bald. His face was brown, creased and pockmarked, as if a bomb had exploded near him.

  Even though the 60s were over and feminism had become assertive, the old men still had, and were expected to have, most of the power. Fathers were substantial men; they had too much authority to get on the floor with the children. They were remote; they scared you. This man laughed with Ajita a couple of times, but he didn’t smile. He appeared to have no charm. I’d say he was terrifying. While I wanted Ajita to be my wife, I didn’t want to be related to her father.

  Standing in the picket line as the car rushed through the factory gates, I also glimpsed Ajita in the backseat, crouching down, with her hands over her ears, or was it her head? What was she doing there? Why hadn’t she told me?

  I shouted out and waved, but it was no use. The spectacle didn’t last long. People began to drift away.

  “What an odd sight,” I said aloud.

  “What do you mean?” said two students beside me, exhilarated by their activity.

  “A handful of working-class Asians being abused by a bunch of white middle-class students.” I added, for good measure, “I bet your fathers are all doctors.”

  They looked at one another and at me. “Whose side are you on?” they asked.

  Later, Ajita came into college. We’d both seen the demonstration that morning, but neither of us mentioned it. I had a lot of questions. Do you love someone whatever they do, or does your love modify as your view of them changes, as you learn more about them? Love doesn’t keep still, there are always things you have to take in. Bored at home, I had craved the unknown, an experimental life, and that’s what I was getting, more than I could have imagined.

  That night I was lying on my bed; Mother was downstairs watching TV; Miriam had gone to see Joan Armatrading at the Hammersmith Odeon. I was wondering what Ajita was doing at that exact moment. She must, I guessed, have been worrying about the strike. Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t the only source of her troubled manner.

  For the first time I thought: Ajita is being unfaithful to me. Don’t all lovers worry about this? If you want someone, isn’t it obvious that someone else will want them too, as their desirability increases? But the second it occurred to me, the idea seemed more than a fantasy. What was puzzling me about her at the moment? I had intuited that she was hiding something from me. What was her strange mood about? Yes, concealment!

  Soon the secret would not be concealed. I’d ask her about it when I saw her. I had to know everything.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Until recently Mother would go to Miriam’s house for birthdays and Christmas. She would fall asleep in an armchair, wake up with a dog dribbling in her lap and have Bushy take her home with her head “banging.” But now she never visited. It was “tiring,” she said, to which Miriam retorted, “Well, you’ll have to watch me on television like everyone else.”

  Although it was difficult to prise Miriam from her neighbourhood, and she didn’t feel safe going far without some sort of entourage, Bushy and I insisted that every three months or so Miriam and I have lunch with Mother. It was usually at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, where all elderly women went with their sons and which she considered her “club.” Mother also enjoyed a sedate tea at Fortnum’s, though Miriam had been turned away for being “inappropriately dressed.” I guess they’d never seen so many tattoos on a woman before. Mother felt Miriam had embarrassed her, and Miriam had seethed and cursed, Mother having called her “adolescent.”

  Mum, after leaving the bakery, worked in the offices of a big company until she retired in her mid-fifties. She had been decently paid and received a pension. Once Miriam and I had both left home, Mother’s life continued in the same way for years. The old-woman walk to the shop trailing her wheeled basket; continuous TV soap operas, Coronation Street and Emmerdale; a stroll in the park if it wasn’t too windy; a worrying doctor’s appointment; a visit from a friend who’d only discuss her dead husband, the deaths of her nearby friends and neighbours, and their replacement by young, noisy families.

  She had always made it clear that her life was a sacrifice—to us. Without such a burden she would be kicking up her legs in Paris, as she sometimes put it. Like a true hysteric, she preferred death to sex, and often insisted she was “waiting to die.” In fact, she’d add, with much sighing and many pathetic looks, she was “pining” for death; she was “ready.” As she’d spent her life hiding, or playing dead, Miriam and I can hardly be blamed for having taken our eyes off her. One day we realised that, far from hurrying towards the grave in the hope of finding that which she’d lacked in the world, she had made a revolution in her life. Now, wherever she went, Billie was with her.

  As far as I was aware, Mother had devoted little time or attention to sexual passion. After Father, she never took up with another man. On a handful of occasions she stayed out all night, pretending to be with a friend. Miriam and I smirked and guessed she’d been with someone we called Mr. Invisible. Sometimes we found programmes for dance shows or theatre plays, as well as catalogues for art shows, but no one ever came to the house.

  I should have realised something was stirring in Mother when one day she said she wanted to go to the cinema, to “a place called the ICA.” Did I know where it was? I had to admit I had spent some of my youth there, looking at shows, movies and girls in the bar. Mother could only admit how little she knew me or where I’d got to, but she was pleased I’d learned how to get about the city.

  Now she wanted to see a film abou
t a painter. When I looked it up in Time Out, it turned out to be Andrei Rublev. I had to warn her that a three-hour black-and-white film in Russian might be too much for us, but she was adamant. We were the only two in the cinema, and I thought how wonderful this city is that a man and his mother can sit in a building between Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament watching such a great work.

  That was about three years ago. Since around that time, Mother had been living with Billie, a woman of the same age whom she’d known since she was eight. Mother had always seen a lot of Billie, and I’d talk to her when she came to the house. “You prefer her to me,” Mother said once. “She lives more in the world” was my reply, or something like it. What I couldn’t say to Mother was that, as a teenager, and even younger, I’d fancied Billie. She was aware of her body; she moved well, she was sensual.

  For years after Miriam and I had gone, Mother talked about selling the family house and buying a small “granny” flat. It was what we expected her to do, as she liked to sit in the same place and do the same things every day, something I’d never understood until I read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where Freud describes such repetition as “daemonic” and characterises it, simply, as “death.” And she did put the house on the market, and she did, to our surprise, sell it.

  Miriam refused to visit the house for the last time. It was painful to have to pick up our toys, school reports and books, and remove them to London. I had to throw a lot of things away (and I love to clear out), but each loss was a blow. I think Mother thought we’d be more sentimental about the house itself; we’d grown up there, but for us it had no sentient life.

  What Mother then did was go and live with Billie, telling us the flat she wanted wasn’t “ready.” Billie still lived in the house she’d grown up in, a huge place near the Common, a house I hadn’t visited for years but one I remembered as being full of drawings, paintings, sculptures and cats. Billie was “Mr. Invisible.”