Gabriel's Gift

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘I’ll tell him when I’m ready, then.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Speedy was watching him. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘What?’ Gabriel said, ‘I was thinking that if I were taking photographs at the moment I’d only photograph people in close-up. I’d be so close I’d only get part of their ear, the tip of their nose or a patch of skin. I wouldn’t be able to get all of them in. Why’s that?’ he asked, confident that Speedy would know the answer.

  ‘You’re too close to your parents. You can’t see them – they’re on top of you.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘When it comes to other people, it’s always difficult to get the distance right.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now you’ve got something to think about. D’you want a taxi?’

  ‘Yes, I’d better get home.’

  When he went into the house, Gabriel heard an unearthly noise. Thinking someone was being slaughtered, he ran into the kitchen. Hannah was weeping.

  ‘Hannah! Has someone died? Tell me what’s wrong!’

  She didn’t want to talk. He made her a cup of tea, gave her some cake and eventually she gave way.

  ‘It’s worse than dead! Your mama and dadda are again together as one! Your father is carrying his things here.’

  It was true. Every few days Dad would ‘accidentally’ leave something in the house, ‘until next time’. The place was beginning to resemble its former condition.

  Gabriel explained, ‘It’s only a trial period.’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘To see how it goes.’

  ‘Suppose it goes too good?’

  Mum had explained to Gabriel that she couldn’t help having reservations about Dad. It wasn’t that she doubted he had ‘progressed in his growth’, it was whether any couple could eliminate the years of habit that had accumulated between them. She was, after all – and she hated to admit this – used to regarding Dad as a ‘bit of a fool’. There was the habit of disliking him; the habit of calling him lazy; the habit of trying to push him to do things; the habit of considering him a failure. He, too, had his own way of seeing her, as a petty nag, for instance, with a conventional mind.

  There was a lot for his parents to get over; it would be big work for both of them.

  Gabriel liked to think he was nudging things along by informing Mum that the mother of one of Dad’s pupils was so interested in him she had decided to take up music. When Dad asked, ‘What instrument are you thinking of learning?’ she replied, ‘Oh, anything that involves four hands.’ She had even begun to give Dad gifts.

  ‘What sort of gifts?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Oh, just little things.’ Gabriel said, helpfully.

  ‘Little things, eh?’ She hummed to herself but said no more. He knew she had taken it in when she bought Dad a new bag in which to carry his files, music and books.

  Now Hannah went on, ‘I know they won’t want me here any more.’

  ‘There’s always someone left out, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s me!’

  ‘Why don’t you want to go home?’

  ‘I don’t! I don’t! First Communists – now gangsters!’

  He fetched her a drink and said, ‘I’ll talk to Mum about it, if you want. She might be able to help fix you up with something else – people even better than us.’

  ‘Would you? Oh Master Gabriel, I’d be so grateful!’

  This time she kissed him.

  His parents were back late. As Gabriel worked, he could hear them murmuring in the kitchen below. He was intending to go down and talk to them, but their voices grew more raucous, with sudden hushes followed by mysterious lulls. Soon, the teacups in the cupboards started to rattle. The windows would be next; a love-storm was approaching.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gabriel was deputed to accompany his father to his old room. Dad hadn’t been there for a few days. He’d been staying ‘at home’.

  After they’d climbed the stairs and pushed the door, Dad stood there sniffing and looking contemptuously at the familiar detritus. He took a few steps.

  ‘I don’t even want to touch my own things. I’d just as soon leave them. Everything seems coated in grease. Mum wants me to keep this place in case things don’t work out between us. But I think they will. She seems to be into it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  Mum had, Gabriel knew, been out with George. He could tell that George had rung because of the speed with which she’d dressed and got out of the door. The night this happened Dad had rung from the other side of London, where he was working. Gabriel had said she was at work, but Dad had already tried there. Dad kept ringing, until Gabriel went to bed and put the answering machine on. She came home late but alone, and, when he crept to her door and looked through, she was staring at the ceiling miserably. That was the end, he guessed. He knew for certain it was over when she abandoned Italian and started to wonder whether it was too late for her to become a primary school teacher.

  Now Dad said, ‘Even if things don’t work out and she asks me to leave again, I’ll never live in this room again. I’d sleep on the street or stay with a student, if it came to it. There were times in here,’ he sighed, ‘when I felt everything had been taken away and I had nothing to live for. That time after we’d been to Speedy’s, and I’d sold him the picture … It was an all-time low, in my opinion. I hope nothing like this ever happens to you, Angel. It certainly reduces a man.’

  ‘Yeah. Dad, let’s get started.’

  ‘Right.’

  The first thing Dad did was remove the picture of the chair Gabriel had given him. Dad folded it up neatly and put it in his inside pocket.

  ‘Now,’ he said in a conspiratorial voice. ‘This is how we’re going to get the stuff out.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Dad explained that as he wasn’t quite up to date with the rent, and didn’t intend to be, they had to make an ‘alternative exit’.

  They gathered everything up, took it downstairs and, while Gabriel acted as look-out, carried it out through the back door of the house in rubbish bags. They regained the street by a side entrance. The van, driven by the old pal of Dad’s who’d taken his possessions in the other direction, arrived just as someone came out and saw them.

  They collected Dad’s other things from his friend’s garage. By the afternoon, his father’s clothes, guitars and other instruments, Grateful Dead posters and books were back home. Hannah was asked to help; she shed a tear as each object was returned to its old place. The house seemed crowded and Dad’s cheerfulness was tiring.

  ‘I’m glad to be back here and in charge of everything again.’ he declared, slapping Mum on the arse.

  ‘I’ve never liked being whacked like an old donkey.’

  ‘Come on, Fluffy,’ he said. ‘You’re not an old donkey, you’re my wife.’

  ‘Wife? We’re not married.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready.’

  ‘That’s right. Like most men you’re too immature.’

  ‘It’s only that you don’t have a sense of humour.’

  ‘That’s because you never say anything amusing.’

  ‘Christine, other people laugh at my jokes.’

  ‘Give me their names and addresses. They’re just being polite, Rex.’

  ‘Why would they be?’

  ‘To get away from you as soon as possible. Or they’re your students, fawning over you –’

  ‘That’s respect. Now, listen –’

  She said, ‘I think I’m getting a migraine –’

  As Gabriel went to the door and out into the street, he could hear their voices growing quieter and quieter behind him. This story of his parents was one he thought he might turn into a film, in the future. If only he didn’t have to live through it first.

  He went to call on Zak, who said, ‘Hey, where have you been all this time? Come in, come in!’

  Gabriel almost fell through the door. ‘It’s good to be here. Fuck, I s
hould have come before.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Oh, God, I’ve had enormous parent stuff going on.’ sighed Gabriel.

  Zak knew from experience what galling work this could be. Every time his parents went out, Zak feared they’d come back with more of what he called ‘steps’. He had stepsisters, stepbrothers and step-uncles all over London, as well as half, quarter and one-eighth brothers and sisters, the mementoes of repudiated parental passion. Sometimes he wondered who in their circle he wasn’t related to. His mother, for instance, had just had a baby with a friend of her husband’s, a man she no longer saw.

  ‘Explains everything,’ Zak said. ‘Wounded, eh? Me too.’

  They picked their way through the house. The expensive furniture was at odd angles, and there was a goldfish bowl in the middle of the floor, as if the contents of the house had only that morning been brought in by the removal men.

  ‘Everything’s always upside-down when the feng shui guy’s visited,’ explained Zak. ‘I’m telling you, the parents have exploded.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Blown up! They’re only human beings anyway. They don’t know anything, the bastards.’

  ‘Mine are back together.’

  ‘In the same house? The same bed?’ Zak was looking at him in fascination. ‘How come? Are they doing it for you?’

  ‘Sorry? Did that happen to you?’

  ‘Course. My mother said, “If you didn’t exist I’d never have to talk to that madman, your father, ever again.”’

  ‘She married him.’

  ‘I did point that out,’ said Zak.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That’s when the psychiatrist opened his door and asked me whether I’d had any interesting dreams and sexual fantasies and I told him the thing about the fish.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ said Gabriel. ‘Would you like your parents to live together?’

  ‘That’s unlikely now, with my dad a queen and all. The kids at school never stop going on about poofs.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s bad. Still, it’s worse to think that we’re going to turn out like our parents, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about that,’ said Zak. ‘Christ, that’s a hell to look forward to. Never marry, I say!’

  ‘Never marry!’

  ‘Just screw and work!’

  ‘Screw and work!’

  Zak’s place was three times bigger than Gabriel’s, with a conservatory overlooking the garden. Gabriel fetched his easel and Zak worked on the script; they both liked the company. At last Gabriel told him that he’d received his first commission, painting Speedy. As Zak was intrigued, later that day Gabriel went home to his room, retrieved the painting of Speedy, and showed Zak what he’d done so far.

  Zak stood back from the painting and announced, at last, that the picture was coming up a treat. Speedy looked like a pink poodle who’d won a prize. Gabriel should paint him with a rosette on his chest, or even on his fly.

  Later, as Zak read Gabriel the latest version of the script and Gabriel made drawings and notes, a girl walked in, as girls do. Ramona was the sixteen-year-old friend of one of Zak’s ‘steps’. She looked as though she could have been one of Degas’s dancers. As Gabriel would never be able to address her sanely, he consulted Archie, his own agony aunt.

  Archie told Gabriel to close his mouth and be lulling, seductive, kind. He reminded him of something Jake said. ‘If you become a director, not only will you have the opportunity to speak at inordinate length about the awfulness of other directors, the book you’ve read and the films you’ve made, while people listen, because they have to, you will also get girls. Quite a lot of women like cameras, you will find.’

  Gabriel informed Ramona, ‘We’re making a short film, in the summer. How would you like to be in it – or at least audition?’

  Her beautiful lips guarded the tongue of an asp. ‘How do you know I want to be an actress? Do I look like an exhibitionist? Show me the story and I’ll give it my fullest consideration.’

  ‘Your fullest consideration, eh?’

  ‘That’s right. It better be good.’

  Gabriel was staring at her. When she left, she kissed him on the cheek.

  That night Gabriel and Zak worked on the script until late, writing, making shot lists and acting out various scenes, as well as trying out possible music. When Gabriel felt tempted to dismiss their work as frivolity, as being not-quite-adult, he thought of Lester on his hands and knees on the floor, as serious as anything about a picture and a few words.

  In the morning, as Gabriel and his father breakfasted together, Dad tried to discuss his students, which was difficult, as Hannah felt impelled to produce a show. She’d get on her knees and scrub like a martyr at the feet of Christ, occasionally looking up at her employer with imploring eyes. Gabriel had never known her to clean either under or inside anything but now you could have snacked on any surface or licked any crevice. Nevertheless, Dad felt uncomfortable: although he was used to his wife working in front of him, anyone else made him feel guilty. He had remained an egalitarian in theory.

  ‘Thank you, Hannah,’ he’d say, a phrase he’d heard the upper classes use in films, hoping that this would somehow make her disappear. But she merely took it as gratitude, to which she soon became addicted, following Dad around with a basket full of cleaning equipment, in the hope of more praise.

  When Mum came home Gabriel went to her privately and said, without degrading exaggeration, that Hannah had looked after him well enough but that she was no longer as she had been.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mum. ‘We’re really crammed in here now. She’ll have to leave.’

  ‘Can’t you find her something else?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got an idea. Let me make a call.’

  Then she asked Hannah to put her best clothes on. As she and nervous Hannah were leaving, Mum mentioned to Gabriel that Speedy was looking for a housekeeper. It was to his apartment that they were going.

  ‘Good,’ said Gabriel, nodding at Hannah. ‘Mr Speedy. I would recommend him, for certain things.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Mum. ‘How come?’

  ‘I’ve known him for ages. Dad introduced us.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘We were just hanging around there. And … I’m painting him.’

  He had persuaded her not to let Speedy have her copy of Lester’s picture, saying he had to have it for himself. She’d agreed, but didn’t know what he was doing with Speedy.

  Now she stopped and said, ‘You’re doing what?’

  He had been afraid of telling her, he didn’t know why. It was as if he didn’t believe he was entitled to a private life, or that you could keep anything from your parents.

  He said, ‘He looks good, in my opinion. It’s coming out pretty well. I’m using a lot of pink and –’

  ‘You’ve done a picture of Speedy already?’

  ‘Only a little one. It’s nearly finished.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At Zak’s. Why are you surprised?’

  ‘Nothing, er, funny, occurred?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘How strange.’

  ‘Not really.’

  She was looking at him. ‘These things are up to you, I suppose. I don’t see why you shouldn’t paint Speedy if you feel like it. But why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were at work.’

  ‘I see.’ She said, ‘You’re a strong-willed and independent little guy now. That’s good. That’s how it should be.’ She opened the door. ‘Come along, Hannah. I’m going to sort you out now.’

  Mum was still shaking her head.

  When they returned, Hannah looked pleased and started to pack her things. Speedy needed help; he would take her on straight away.

  Mum said, ‘It’ll mostly involve looking after his yoga mat, I’d imagine.’

  ‘And feeding his dog.’

  ‘You’ve been to his flat?’ Mum asked.r />
  ‘Oh yes. Don’t you trust me, Mum?’

  ‘I don’t think I have to,’ she said. ‘I know from experience you’d never do anything you didn’t want to do. Where are you off to now?’

  ‘Zak’s – to work on the film.’

  ‘Go – go, son, and live.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’

  Gabriel went to Zak’s to look at the picture. Sometimes he sat in front of it an hour at a time, studying his work. He couldn’t say the picture was finished but he knew he was so bored with it that he couldn’t see it any longer through his own eyes.

  ‘I think it’s done,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t do any more.’

  Zak helped Gabriel carry it home. Gabriel needed Zak to be there when he showed it to Mum and Dad; he thought they might be less harsh and surprised in the presence of someone else.

  Mum and Zak sat at the table talking while Gabriel prepared the picture. Mum had always liked Zak and loved to gossip with him, particularly about his peculiar family life, which she enjoyed comparing to her own.

  Gabriel then went upstairs to his father, who was writing up one of his ‘cases’, as he called them. Gabriel had noticed that Dad liked to be called Dr Bunch by his new students. ‘Like “Count” Basie or Dr Feelgood?’ Gabriel had said. ‘I suppose so,’ replied Dad, sharply.

  Gabriel said, ‘Dad, I want you to see something. A picture I’ve done. It’s not that great, but it’s OK. I like painting but I’d rather make films.’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ said Dad. ‘Whatever you want to do creatively is all right by me. What’s the picture of?’

  ‘Speedy.’

  ‘My friend Speedy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  Gabriel took his father to see it. Zak and Mum were standing there.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Gabriel.

  Dad looked at it, taking his glasses off, putting them back on, and stepping closer and then backwards.

  As Speedy would have liked to have been a star, Gabriel had done the picture in the shape of a wide-screen film frame. It was narrow, a blurred speedy squint or glimpse. In the background, even more blurred, was the busy diner, with footballers, rock stars and waiters rushing through. Lester’s picture was in the background, hanging on the wall.