Gabriel's Gift

by Hanif Kureishi

  He was tense and tired; the events of the past two days had so excited and overwhelmed him. he felt he had passed through two birthdays at once without any cake.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘Mum. The woman who lives here. Where?’

  ‘Work,’ said Hannah. ‘To get you food to eat, lazybones.’

  ‘I forgot,’ said Gabriel. ‘Is she coming early or late?’

  ‘Late.’

  He still hadn’t become used to her not being there. However, he didn’t want to sit around missing her. He had things to do.

  Telling Hannah he had some schoolwork, he went up to Mum’s room and looked for the clothes and make-up they’d worn at Lester’s gig. He couldn’t find the clothes, but he did find a musty old kimono, not unlike the one Lester had been wearing. It wasn’t exactly winter wear, and he had to put on a T-shirt underneath, but he resembled Lester more than he had done earlier. Then he went into his own room to play Lester’s records and study the picture. He drew Lester and wrote in his sketchbook all he could remember of what he had said, things like, ‘If I know where I’m going, how can I get lost on the way?’

  He made drawings to illustrate these sayings. He knew it wasn’t sufficient to worship Lester, like those fans who thought they could procure Lester’s powers by copying his hair colour. If Gabriel was to achieve anything himself it would take more than hair dye. He had to follow Lester’s example and go his own way.

  He awoke with her hair tickling his face. She had always done that when he was a baby, shaking the spray of her hair over him and laughing and making him crazy.

  ‘How was it?’ she said.

  Coming to, he realized he could hear music from downstairs. Mum had brought her ‘friends’ back to the house. Her hair smelt as if it had been dipped in cigarette smoke.

  ‘How was what?’

  He was not too sleepy to be unable to use the classic ‘adolescent’ defence: ignorance, denial and untruth.

  ‘You know what. Your time at Dad’s place.’

  She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled back the covers and went to tickle him.

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ he said. ‘Mum!’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘Just something I found.’

  ‘You were always one for dressing up. Now tell me what happened.’

  He said as neutrally as he could, ‘I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Has he got things organized over there?’

  ‘Not exactly organized.’

  ‘No. So – things are not good?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ parried Gabriel.

  ‘What’s Dad going to do, then?’

  ‘You know Dad. He’s got a few contacts.’

  Mum snorted and laughed. ‘With the barmen in the Nashville? There was a job in the off-licence down the road. They know him there. I thought he might as well take their money before giving it back to them. But would he do it?’ She was looking at him. ‘Was Dad drinking?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘You know I’ve given up.’

  ‘Him, you little fool!’ She pretended to slap his face. ‘Don’t joke about that subject.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And if he does anything like that with you around, I’ll stop him seeing you.’

  Gabriel was listening for Archie, but he had made himself incommunicado.

  After the experience of dealing with these interrogations from his parents, Gabriel wondered whether he might be qualified for work as a diplomat. Zak’s parents had recently separated and Gabriel had heard about the trials of being a divorce ‘go-between’. Generally, the code among the children, when the burning light of their parents’ curiosity was turned on them, was not unlike that of criminals dealing with the police: ‘Say nothing; give nothing away – it’ll only be used against you.’

  The last thing parents wanted was the truth; a child could be punished for telling it. He was learning, but the situation was relatively new to him.

  He found himself saying, ‘That’s not all Dad is. Lester was pleased to see him.’

  She said, ‘Lester who? Lester Jones?’

  ‘He gave me a picture he’d done.’

  ‘Lester hasn’t seen Dad for years. Are you making up stories? I remember when you told the teacher at school that I’d fallen into a volcano.’

  ‘Hadn’t you?’

  ‘Sort of. Gabriel, how do you know Lester was pleased? Don’t tell me you both went.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where was Lester staying then?’

  Gabriel began to describe the almost invisible hotel but Mum wasn’t listening; she was looking closely at him.

  ‘I know you’ve seen Lester,’ she said. ‘You’ve still got some of my eye shadow on. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Green’s our colour, I think.’

  ‘Not that vulgar green.’ She said, ‘Nothing will come of any of it.’

  ‘Maybe. But he said I’m talented.’

  ‘Show business people always talk such shit. They said it about your father once. Funky fingers. Butter fingers more like.’

  ‘I didn’t get the impression,’ said Gabriel with the pomposity of a headmaster, ‘that he was only trying to be kind.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you. What picture are you talking about? Show it to me. It doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Christine!’ A voice called from downstairs. ‘We want some more!’

  Gabriel said, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A friend. I should go.’

  Gabriel got out of bed and unrolled the picture. He held it out for her and she looked at it for a long time.

  ‘It is by him. Where are you going to keep it?’

  ‘Dad really likes it. It’ll cheer up his room.’

  ‘Does it need cheering up?

  ‘He hasn’t even got a picture of Archie.’

  ‘Hasn’t he? I’m not sure he even thinks about Archie now.’

  Gabriel said, ‘The walls are so greasy at Dad’s place I doubt whether anything will stick to them.’

  ‘You can’t put it there, then. Oh no, no, no.’

  ‘But I’ll frame it first.’

  ‘You said it’s bleak over there, didn’t you?’

  ‘Christine!’ called a different voice.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Another friend.’

  ‘Mum, couldn’t you go round to Dad’s and do some dusting?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said sarcastically. ‘First thing in the morning. He’s got plenty of time on his hands, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see him?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘He’s in bad shape.’ She said nothing. ‘I think he wants to see you.’

  She said, ‘He’s not working, is he?

  ‘Not at the moment. He’s busy … thinking.’

  She pretended to choke. ‘He’s what?’

  Gabriel repeated, ‘Thinking things over.’

  ‘Thinking! Ha, ha, ha!’ She was laughing hard. She repeated the word several times. ‘Thinking!’ Each time she said it she howled unnaturally.

  At last she picked up the picture. ‘I’m going to borrow this.’

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘I want to show it to my friends, d’you have any objection?’

  ‘Dad’s helping me think what to do with it.’

  ‘I bet he is,’ she said. ‘What suggestions does he have?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘He won’t be doing anything with it tonight, surely. Nor ever, if I have my way.’

  ‘What?’

  She said, ‘Please let them look.’

  ‘As long as they don’t breathe on it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, these characters are hardly alive at all.’

  She took the picture and swept from the room.

  Gabriel put on his slippers and hurried out beh
ind her.

  It was almost dark in the living room but Gabriel could see that his mother’s two friends were emptying bottles down their throats and the front of their shirts as rapidly as they could.

  The door to the little kitchen was open; Hannah’s flickering black and white television illuminated the outline of her solid peasant frame wrapped in a blanket.

  The two men were arguing.

  ‘The thing is –’ one of them was saying.

  ‘That’s not the case at all,’ the other was saying. ‘In fact you are talking complete crap –’

  ‘I’m going to convince you, George.’ said the other, offering his fist. ‘Sit still and hear me out now,’

  Like a teacher addressing a group of school kids, Mum held the picture out.

  ‘Look – you bums. Look at this. This is by Lester Jones, the pop star. I used to know him. I designed him a pair of flocked trousers. We called it his “Indian Restaurant” period.’

  ‘But listen –’ said the man called George.

  ‘I know exactly what you’re going to say,’ said the other. ‘And if you say it, I’ll fight to the death not to have to hear it –’

  Mum snapped the music off, cleared the ashtrays and glasses off the table, and laid the picture out.

  She pointed at Gabriel.

  ‘This is him, my son.’

  One of the men said, ‘I’d forgotten you’d said you had one of those.’

  The other said, ‘What the hell is he wearing?’

  Mum said, ‘A kimono Never mind that. Now, Gabriel, Lester Jones drew this for you, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Not entirely, Mum. Dad’s an old friend of Lester’s. Lester told me that Dad was one of the best musicians he played with. Dad created his sound, really. Lester had started the picture already and when Dad and I turned up –’

  ‘All right, all right. You’re not giving a lecture at the Tate Gallery. Did you know, Lester Jones had me once,’ she said. ‘Years ago. I think he wanted to go out with me.’

  ‘You should have married him,’ one of the men said.

  ‘At least I wouldn’t have to buy my own drinks!’

  ‘And you wouldn’t be hanging around with us,’ said the other man.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘look at it, you two.’

  Trying to be obedient, the two men attempted to focus on the picture, one of them busily rubbing his eyes for a clearer view.

  After a time one of them said, ‘What is it?’

  The other replied, ‘Never mind that –’

  ‘He should stick to singing.’

  ‘Look at it, for Christ’s sake,’ said Mum. ‘That’s all I’m asking you to do.’

  One man elbowed the other, to shut him up. They gazed at the picture mournfully, saying nothing until the glowing ash from one man’s cigarette dropped, like a desiccated leaf, onto the paper. Gabriel, who had been watching, leapt forward, flicking it away before it could mark the picture. The ash flew into the other man’s lap.

  He regretted it; the picture would have made a pretty conflagration. The fire might have caught him too. Mum would have had to put him out, wrapping him in sheets like a mummy. He would have had many restful weeks in bed. Why was it so pleasurable to think of destroying the most valuable things?

  ‘OΚ,’ said his mother. ‘That’s enough! Another time!’ She turned to the men. ‘He’s talented, you know.’

  ‘Lester can sing, no doubt about that. “Ha, ha said the clown!”’

  ‘That’s not him,’ said the other man. Gabriel could smell the ash smouldering in the front of the man’s trousers. ‘That’s –’

  Mum said, ‘No, I mean Gabriel!’

  ‘Who?’ said the man with the burning trousers. By now his eyes were wide and he was holding his crotch with one hand and flapping in it with the other.

  ‘This boy – this boy right in front of you!’

  The men looked at Gabriel the apparition. Usually, when his mother became angry, Gabriel and his father grew afraid. But these men were unmoved and looked at her vacantly. They seemed to have taken something, not only alcohol, that made them not understand what was going on. This mystified Gabriel; he knew something about drugs – every kid did these days – but he still didn’t know why anyone would want to do this to themselves.

  She turned to Gabriel: ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. Show them how talented you are! Will you draw us? Yes, all of us – here, now! Go and get your crayons and stuff. What a good idea!’

  ‘I don’t feel like it, Mum. I’m tired and I’ve got school tomorrow! I should be in bed!’

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve ever said that! Don’t be sulky.’

  ‘Couldn’t I just sing “Consider Yourself”?’

  ‘What for? We’ve got music here. Too good for us, are you, now that Lester has praised you?’

  ‘Go on.’ said one of the men.

  The other man laughed. ‘Get a job, lad!’

  Gabriel went upstairs and fetched his things.

  When he came back he settled down in corner of the room, and soon his mother and her fuzzy-eyed friends, drinking, yelling and retiring to the bathroom to do something secret, seemed to forget him.

  He drew quickly, as he liked to now, in crayon, rubbing the colours together with his finger, to give the impression of the smoke-smudged room. For some reason the scene reminded him of an artist he liked, Toulouse-Lautrec, who had, by the age of sixteen, completed fifty paintings and three hundred drawings. Once Gabriel had recalled this, Lautrec’s was the style he worked in.

  After a time his mother remembered him. ‘Let’s have a look! Is it good?’

  She carried the sketchbook across the room and turned on a reading light.

  For some time she studied the picture of the tired, middle-aged, black-stockinged woman pulling her skirts up, while corpulent, self-important men in tight waistcoats looked on condescendingly.

  Standing next to her, Gabriel noticed she wasn’t wearing the Indian ring Dad had given her. It wasn’t a wedding ring – as bourgeois as tradesmen in every other way, they weren’t of a generation that got married. Dad had bought it the day he took Mum to the Taj Mahal: ‘Not the restaurant, the building in India,’ it gave him pleasure to explain. Gabriel had never seen her without it before.

  He was about to mention this when one of the men said, ‘The tension is killing us – let’s have a look!’

  He went to Gabriel’s mother, put his arm around her and lifted her arse. Gabriel didn’t like the way he touched her, but couldn’t wait to see what the man made of the picture.

  The man laughed and turned back to Gabriel. ‘Couldn’t you have made me more handsome, you little devil? I look like a wild boar!’

  ‘I wonder why!’ said the other man.

  ‘Look at what he’s done with you!’ said the first. ‘Microwaved pizza comes to mind!’

  His mother took the picture, folded it up, and put it on the table.

  ‘Aren’t you going to bed, Mum?’ Gabriel said.

  ‘Yes, yes, soon.’

  She accompanied Gabriel upstairs to bed, forgetting to kiss him because she was thinking hard about something else.

  ‘Dad wouldn’t like these people,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘It’s none of his business. Nothing is, now.’

  Much later the front door slammed. A man’s voice echoed up the street; then a bottle smashed. She went into her room and everything was quiet again.

  Hearing a whimpering noise, Gabriel went out onto the landing. Her door was open.

  She was sitting up on the high bed wearing nothing but her knickers and one shoe. Mum must have been weary; she could hardly sit up. One of her arms, pressing against the bed, kept giving way Her other hand was between her thighs.

  Gabriel heard a voice but couldn’t tell, at first, where it was coming from. At last he realized that one of the men was sitting on the floor with his head on his chest, singing to himself and trying to take his shirt off.

  Gabriel encourage
d him to stand up.

  ‘That’s George’s,’ slurred the man, pointing at the bed. ‘I will climb up there in a bit and conquer. First I want the toilet.’

  ‘This way,’ said Gabriel. ‘Give me your shirt.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. You aren’t, by any chance, a shirt-lifter?’

  ‘No.’

  Before the man knew where he was, Gabriel had led him downstairs, opened the front door and pushed him out onto the freezing street. He quickly locked the door behind him and turned the lights off.

  Watching the man unbutton his fly in the middle of the road, Gabriel shouted through the letter box. ‘It’s an outside toilet! There, on the left! Don’t forget to flush it! Mind that car behind you!’

  He had never seen Mum this drunk. As she subsided Gabriel saw she was about to drop down onto the floor. He climbed the ladder, put his arms around her and dragged her heavy body further onto the bed. She didn’t seem to notice him pulling her into her pyjama jacket but as he did up the buttons she started to kiss him and call him ‘darling’.

  ‘But it’s Gabriel,’ he said.

  Her mouth was open; she was already breathing heavily.

  He could have drawn her. Not that he needed to fetch his sketchbook; it was a scene he would remember.

  Gabriel covered her up and kissed her goodnight.

  Chapter Six

  Next morning Gabriel was up before his mother, preparing for school while Hannah soldered the scrambled eggs to the side of the frying pan and torched the toast.

  ‘How’s the picture?’

  Dad was already on the phone. From where he stood, Gabriel could see a man’s shirt hanging over the back of a chair.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Finished with it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Mum see it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How come?’

  Gabriel said, ‘She’s nosy. She finds things.’

  ‘Yes.’ said Dad. ‘Did she like it?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Dad asked. ‘Did you mention Lester?’

  ‘Yes. Is that OK? She was impressed by that, Dad.’

  ‘I’m sure. You didn’t tell her anything bad about me?’

  ‘Like what? No.’

  Dad sighed. ‘You’re keeping the picture safe? Is it right there beside you?’