Love in a Blue Time

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘Everyone in England does fuck all except for the yuppies.’

  ‘And do you go with one boy or with many?’ I say nothing. ‘But your mother has a boy, yes? Some dud writer, complete failure and playboy with unnatural eyebrows that cross in the middle?’

  ‘Is that how Nadia described the man she tried to –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be rather close friends with?’

  The servant has a pair of scissors. He trims Father’s hair, he snips in Father’s ear, he investigates Father’s nostrils with the clipping steel shafts. He attaches a tea-cloth to Father’s collar, lathers Father’s face, sharpens the razor on the strop and shaves Father dean and reddish.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ says Father, spitting foam. ‘I use my imagination. Nadia says eyebrows and I see bushes.’

  He says to his servant and indicates me: ‘An Englisher born and bred, eh?’

  The servant falls about with the open razor.

  ‘But you belong with us,’ Dad says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put you on the right track. But first there must be a strict course of discipline.’

  *

  The room is full of dressed-up people sitting around Dad’s bed looking at him lying there in his best clothes. Dad yells out cheerful slanders about the tax evaders, bribe-takers and general scumbags who can’t make it this evening. Father obviously a most popular man here. It’s better to be entertaining than good. Ma would be drinking bleach by now.

  At last Dad gives the order they’ve been waiting for.

  ‘Bring the booze.’

  The servant unlocks the cabinet and brings out the whisky.

  ‘Give everyone a drink except Nina. She has to get used to the pure way of life!’ he says, and everyone laughs at me.

  The people here are tractor dealers (my first tractor dealer!), journalists, landowners and a newspaper tycoon aged thirty-one who inherited a bunch of papers. He’s immensely cultured and massively fat. I suggest you look at him from the front and tell me if he doesn’t look like a flounder. I look up to see my sister standing at the window of Dad’s room, straining her heart’s wet eyes at the Flounder who doesn’t want to marry her because he already has the most pleasant life there is in the world.

  Now here’s a message for you fuckers back home. The men here invite Nadia and me to their houses, take us to their club, play tennis with us. They’re chauvinistic as hell, but they put on a great show. They’re funny and spend money and take you to their farms and show you their guns and kill a snake in front of your eyes. They flirt and want to poke their things in you, but they don’t expect it.

  Billy slides into the room in his puffy baseball jacket and pink plimsolls and patched jeans. He stands there and puts his hands in his pockets and takes them out again.

  ‘Hey, Billy, have a drink.’

  ‘OK. Thanks … Yeah. OK.’

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ Dad says. ‘Nina’s not shy.’

  So the entire room looks at shy Billy and Billy looks at the ground.

  ‘No, well, I could do with a drink. Just one. Thanks.’

  The servant gets Billy a drink. Someone says to someone else: ‘He looks better since he had that break in Lahore.’

  ‘It did him the whole world of damn good.’

  ‘Terrible what happened to the boy.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Ghastly rotten.’

  Billy comes and sits next to me. Their loud talking goes on.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ he says under the talking. ‘They talk about you non-stop.’

  ‘Goody.’

  ‘Yeah. Juicy Fruit?’ he says.

  *

  He sits down on the bed and I open my case and give him all my tapes.

  ‘Latest stuff from England.’

  He goes through them eagerly. ‘You can’t get any of this stuff here. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.’ He looks at me. ‘Can I? Can I borrow them? Would you mind, you know?’ I nod. ‘My room is on top of the house. I’ll never be far away.’

  Oh, kiss me now! Though I can see that’s a little premature, especially in a country where they cut off your arms or something for adultery. I like your black jeans.

  ‘What’s your accent?’ I say.

  ‘Canadian.’ He gets up. No, don’t leave now. Not yet. ‘Wanna ride?’ he says.

  *

  In the drive the chauffeurs smoke and talk. They stop talking. They watch us. Billy puts his baseball cap on my head and touches my hair.

  ‘Billy, push the bike out into the street so no one hears us leave.’

  I ask him about himself. His mother was Canadian. She died. His father was Pakistani, though Billy was brought up in Vancouver. I turn and Moonie is yelling at me. ‘Nina, Nina, it’s late. Your father must see you now about a strict discipline business he has to discuss!’

  ‘Billy, keep going.’

  He just keeps pushing the bike, oblivious of Moonie. He glances at me now and again, as if he can’t believe his luck. I can’t believe mine, baby!

  ‘So Pop and I came home to live. Home. This place isn’t my home. But he always wanted to come home.’

  We push the bike up the street till we get to the main road.

  ‘This country was a shock after Vancouver,’ he says.

  ‘Same for me.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He gets sharp. ‘But I’d been brought here to live. How can you ever understand what that’s like?’

  ‘I can’t. All right, I fucking can’t.’

  He goes on. ‘We were converting a house in ‘Pindi, Pop and me. Digging the foundations, plastering the walls, doing the plumbing …’

  We get on the bike and I hold him.

  ‘Out by the beach, Billy.’

  ‘Yeah. But it’s not simple. You know the cops stop couples and ask to see their wedding certificates.’

  It’s true but fuck it. Slowly, stately, the two beige outlaws ride through the city of open fires. I shout an Aretha Franklin song into the night. Men squat by busted cars. Wild maimed pye-dogs run in our path. Traffic careers through dust, past hotels and airline buildings, past students squatting beside traffic lights to read, near where there are terrorist explosions and roads melt like plastic.

  To the beach without showing our wedding certificate. It’s more a desert than a beach. There’s just sand: no shops, no hotels, no ice-creamers, no tattooists. Utterly dark. Your eyes search for a light in panic, for safety. But the curtains of the world are well and truly pulled here.

  I guide Billy to the Flounder’s beach hut. Hut – this place is bigger than Ma’s flat. We push against the back door and we’re in the large living room. Billy and I dance about and chuck open the shutters. Enter moonlight and the beach as Billy continues his Dad rap.

  ‘Pop asked me to drill some holes in the kitchen. But I had to empty the wheelbarrow. So he did the drilling. He hit a cable or something. Anyway, he’s dead, isn’t he?’

  We kiss for a long time, about forty minutes. There’s not a lot you can do in kissing; half an hour of someone’s tongue in your mouth could seem an eternity, but what there is to do, we do. I take off all my clothes and listen to the sea and almost cry for missing South Africa Road so. But at least there is the light friction of our lips together, barely touching. Harder. I pull the strong bulk of his head towards mine, pressing my tongue to the corner of his mouth. Soon I pass through the mouth’s parting to trace the inside curve of his lips. Suddenly his tongue fills my mouth, invading me, and I clench it with my teeth. Oh, oh, oh. As he withdraws I follow him, sliding my tongue into the oven of his gob and lie there on the bench by the open shutters overlooking the Arabian Sea, connected by tongue and saliva, my fingers in his ears and hair, his finger inside my body, our bodies dissolving until we forget ourselves and think of nothing, thank fuck.

  *

  It’s still dark and no more than ninety minutes have passed, when I hear a car pulling up outside the hut. I shake Billy awake, push him off me and pull him across the hut and into the ki
tchen. The fucking door’s warped and won’t shut so we just lie down on the floor next to each other. I clam Billy up with my hand over his gob. There’s a shit smell right next to my nose. I start to giggle. I stuff Billy’s fingers into my mouth. He’s laughing all over the place too. But we shut up sharpish when a couple come into the hut and start to move around. For some reason I imagine we’re going to be shot.

  The man says: ‘Curious, indeed. My sister must have left the shutters open last time she came here.’

  The other person says it’s lovely, the moonlight and so on. Then there’s no talking. I can’t see a sausage but my ears are at full stretch. Yes, kissing noises.

  Nadia says: ‘Here’s the condoms, Bubble!’

  My sister and the Flounder! Well. The Flounder lights a lantern. Yes, there they are now, I can see them: she’s trying to pull his long shirt over his head, and he’s resisting.

  ‘Just my bottoms!’ he squeals. ‘My stomach! Oh, my God!’

  I’m not surprised he’s ashamed, looking in this low light at the size of the balcony over his toy shop.

  I hear my name. Nadia starts to tell the Flounder – or ‘Bubble’ as she keeps calling him – how the Family Planning in London gave me condoms. The Flounder’s clucking with disapproval and lying on the bench by the window looking like a hippo, with my sister squatting over his guts, rising and sitting, sighing and exclaiming sometimes, almost in surprise. They chat away quite naturally, fucking and gossiping and the Flounder talks about me. Am I promiscuous, he wants to know. Do I do it with just anyone? How is my father going to discipline me now he’s got his hands on me? Billy shifts about. He could easily be believing this shit. I wish I had some paper and a pen to write him a note. I kiss him gently instead. When I kiss him I get a renewal of this strange sensation that I’ve never felt before today: I feel it’s Billy I’m kissing, not just his lips or body, but some inside thing, as if his skin is just a representative of all of him, his past and his blood. Amour has never been this personal for me before!

  Nadia and the Flounder are getting hotter. She keeps asking Bubble why they can’t do this every day. He says, yes, yes, yes, and won’t you tickle my balls? I wonder how she’ll find them. Then the Flounder shudders and Nadia, moving in rhythm like someone doing a slow dance, has to stop. ‘Bubble!’ she says and slaps him, as if he’s a naughty child that’s just thrown up. A long fart escapes Bubble’s behind. ‘Oh, Bubble,’ she says, and falls on to him, holding him closer.

  Soon he is asleep. Nadia unstraddles him and moves to a chair and has a little cry as she sits looking at him. She only wants to be held and kissed and touched. I feel like going to her myself.

  *

  When I wake up it’s daylight and they’re sitting there together, talking about their favourite subject. The Flounder is smoking and she is trying to masturbate him.

  ‘So why did she come here with you?’ he is asking. Billy opens his eyes and doesn’t know where he is. Then he sighs. I agree with him. What a place to be, what a thing to be doing! (But then, come to think of it, you always find me in the kitchen at parties.)

  ‘Nina just asked me one day at breakfast. I had no choke and this man, Howard –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the Flounder laughs. ‘You said he was handsome.’

  ‘I only said he had nice hair.’ she says.

  But I’m in sympathy with the Flounder here, finding this compliment a little gratuitous. The Flounder gets up. He’s ready to go.

  And so is Billy. ‘I can’t stand much more of this,’ he says. Nadia suddenly jerks her head towards us. For a moment I think she’s seen us. But the Flounder distracts her.

  I hear the tinkle of the car keys and the Flounder says: ‘Here, put your panties on. Wouldn’t want to leave your panties here on the floor. But let me kiss them first! I kiss them!’

  There are sucky kissing noises. Billy is twitching badly and drumming his heels on the floor. Nadia looks at the Flounder with his face buried in a handful of white cotton.

  ‘And,’ he says with a muffled voice, ‘I’m getting lead in my pencil again, Nadia. Let us lie down, my pretty one.’

  The Flounder takes her hand enthusiastically and jerks it towards his ding-dong. She smacks him away. She’s not looking too pleased.

  ‘I’ve got my pants on, you bloody fool!’ Nadia says harshly. ‘That pair of knickers you’ve sunk your nose in must belong to another woman you’ve had here!’

  ‘What! But I’ve had no other woman here!’ The Flounder glares at her furiously. He examines the panties, as if hoping to find a name inside. ‘Marks & Spencers. How strange. I feel sick now.’

  ‘Marks & Spencers! Fuck this!’ says Billy, forcing my hands off his face. ‘My arms and legs are going to fucking drop off in a minute!’

  So up gets Billy. He combs his hair and turns up the collar of his shirt and then strolls into the living room singing a couple of choruses from The The. I get up and follow him, just in time to see Nadia open her mouth and let off a huge scream at the sight of us. The Flounder, who has no bottoms on, gives a frightened yelp and drops my pants which I pick up and, quite naturally, put on. I’m calm and completely resigned to the worst. Anyway, I’ve got my arm round Billy.

  ‘Hi, everyone,’ Billy says. ‘We were just asleep in the other room. Don’t worry, we didn’t hear anything, not about the condoms or Nina’s character or the panties or anything. Not a thing. How about a cup of tea or something?’

  *

  I get off Billy’s bike midday. ‘Baby,’ he says.

  ‘Happy,’ I say, wearing his checked shirt, tail out. Across the lawn with its sprinkler I set off for Dad’s club, a sun-loved white palace set in flowers.

  White-uniformed bearers humble as undertakers set down trays of foaming yogurt. I could do with a proper drink myself. Colonels with generals and ladies with perms, fans and crossed legs sit in cane chairs. I wish I’d slept more.

  The old man. There you are, blazer and slacks, turning the pages of The Times on an oak lectern overlooking the gardens. You look up. Well, well, well, say your eyes, not a dull day now. Her to play with.

  You take me into the dining room. It’s chill and smart and the tables have thick white cloths on them and silver cutlery. The men move chairs for the elegant thin women, and the waiters take the jackets of the plump men. I notice there are no young people here.

  ‘Fill your plate,’ you say, kindly. ‘And come and sit with me. Bring me something too. A little meat and some dhal.’

  I cover the plate with food from the copper pots at the buffet in the centre of the room and take it to you. And here we sit, father and daughter, all friendly and everything.

  ‘How are you today, Daddy?’ I say, touching your cheek.

  Around us the sedate upper class fill their guts. You haven’t heard me. I say once more, gently: ‘How are you today?’

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ you say. You push away your food and light a cigarette.

  ‘Goody,’ I say, going a little cold. ‘Now we know where we are with each other.’

  ‘Where the fuck were you last night?’ you inquire of me. You go on: ‘You just fucked off and told no one. I was demented with worry. My blood pressure was through the roof. Anything could have happened to you.’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘That bloody boy’s insane.’

  ‘But Billy’s pretty.’

  ‘No, he’s ugly like you. And a big pain in the arse.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘No, don’t interrupt! A half-caste wastrel, a belong-nowhere, a problem to everyone, wandering around the face of the earth with no home like a stupid-mistake-mongrel dog that no one wants and everyone kicks in the backside.’

  For those of you curious about the menu, I am drinking tear soup.

  ‘You left us,’ I say. I am shaking. You are shaking. ‘Years ago, just look at it, you fucked us and left us and fucked off and never came back and never sent us money and instead made us sit through fucking Jesus Christ Super
star and Evita.’

  Someone comes over, a smart judge who helped hang the Prime Minister. We all shake hands. Christ, I can’t stop crying all over the place.

  *

  It’s dusk and I’m sitting upstairs in a deckchair outside Billy’s room on the roof. Billy’s sitting on a pillow. We’re wearing cut-off jeans and drinking iced water and reading old English newspapers that we pass between us. Our washing is hanging up on a piece of string we’ve tied between the corner of the room and the television aerial. The door to the room is open and we’re listening again and again to ‘Who’s Loving You’ – very loud – because it’s our favourite record. Billy keeps saying: ‘Let’s hear it again, one mo’ time, you know.’ We’re like an old couple sitting on a concrete patio in Shepherd’s Bush, until we get up and dance with no shoes on and laugh and gasp because the roof burns our feet so we have to go inside to make love again.

  Billy goes in to take a shower and I watch him go. I don’t like being separated from him. I hear the shower start and I sit down and throw the papers aside. I go downstairs to Nadia’s room and knock on her door. Wifey is sitting there and Moonie is behind her.

  ‘She’s not in,’ Moonie says.

  ‘Come in,’ Nadia says, opening her door, I go in and sit on the stool by the dressing table. It’s a pretty room. There is pink everywhere and her things are all laid out neatly and she sits on the bed brushing her hair and it shines. I tell her we should have a bit of a talk. She smiles at me. She’s prepared to make an effort, I can see that, though it surprises me. She did go pretty berserk the other day, when we came out of the kitchen, trying to punch me and everything.

  ‘It was an accident,’ I tell her now.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘But what impression d’you think it made on the man I want to marry?’

  ‘Blame me. Say I’m just a sicko Westerner. Say I’m mad.’

  ‘It’s the whole family it reflects on,’ she says.

  She goes to a drawer and opens it. She takes out an envelope and gives it to me.

  ‘It’s a present for you,’ she says kindly. When I slip my finger into the flap of the envelope she puts her hand over mine. ‘Please. It’s a surprise for later.’