Free Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi

of the real one. Each of us had our own notion or fantasy of him, while he stood in the shadows, like Orson Welles in The Third Man, always about to step into our lives—we hoped. If Mother referred to him as “that man” or “your damned father,” this at least kept him in the network. But he could be used for unpleasant purposes.
    One time, irate with Mother, Miriam said to her, “You say Dad was an alcoholic and could be badly behaved, insulting and cutting, but he’s had a successful life. Where did taking care ever get anyone?” “I wouldn’t call him successful,” Mum replied. “Deserting your family isn’t successful.” Then Miriam said, “Dad had to leave you.” “What do you mean?” “Because you’re so nasty, stupid and fascistic!”—which made Mother put her hands around Miriam’s throat. When they fought physically, I would run out of the house and sit in the shed in the park, smoking, dreaming of the future and moaning to myself, “There must be some way out of here…”
    I had always been unsure of what job I’d get. Dad rarely gave us instructions or prohibitions. You could say he refused to give Miriam his ideas of how he wanted her to be. He gave me more, often pulling me to him and kissing my cheeks, ruffling my hair, physically demonstrating his adoration and telling me I worried too much about everything. I could persuade him to buy me clothes and books; I knew how to get round him. It was passionate and always tender, our love. I guess Miriam had our mother, and sometimes I had Father, but I did feel guilty that he seemed to like me more.
    There was another thing he gave me, for which I never thanked him. One time I went alone to Dad’s hotel and, waiting for the lift at his floor, I saw a woman, small and plainly dressed, as if for an interview, in her mid-thirties—not one of the amazing ones. Dad’s door hadn’t yet shut, and pushing into the room, I saw he was asleep or passed out. The smell of her perfume remained.
    I rushed downstairs and into the street, calling her. She hesitated before stopping. I thought she might flee, but although surprised by me, she didn’t. Nervous and disappointed, chipped and gin-soaked, like a Jean Rhys heroine in worn-out shoes, she joined me for a drink in the pub across the road, where I asked her one question and then another, until I had her story, told in a low, croaky voice.
    When the conversation ran down, I had the cheek to put an adolescent’s direct enquiry: How much did she charge? She laughed and offered me a price. Naturally I had nothing like that kind of money on me, nor did I have anywhere to take her. I couldn’t compete with Dad. Perhaps if I’d had more nerve, I might have enquired about a family discount. Nevertheless, I retained a passion for whores—as they say in the commercials, when in doubt use a professional—though, as with ordinary girls, you were always waiting for the right one, for the one you liked, or who liked you.
    Father had once said to me that he’d wanted to be a doctor, like his own father, and wouldn’t object if that’s what I did. Unlike a lot of the early Freudians, who had been physicians, I had no aptitude for biology or chemistry, but I discovered that that didn’t prevent me becoming a surgeon of the soul. “Whatever you do,” Dad said in his backhandedly well-intentioned way, “don’t let me down and turn out to be a bloody fool.” I guess being an analyst solved a lot of problems for me, at least giving me the opportunity to spend time with people who made me think about what a human being was.
     

    Ajita and I were able to see a lot of each other because her aunt had been told that college was a nine-to-five job, with occasional evening lectures. Her father was rarely home; he came back from his factory at ten at night and left early in the morning, six days a week. On Sunday the family visited relatives in Wembley, where Ajita danced with her cousins in their bedroom.
    What