Free The Book of Other People by Zadie Smith

reconstitute the lives and thoughts of dead and soon-to-be-dead men, though they may regularly screen the phone calls of their own mothers. I am of that generation. I will do anything for my family except see them.
    It was 1956, as mentioned above. There was nothing but the sun, and Hanwell and the sun. Lying in a patch of long grass, Hanwell dreamed a conversation:
     
    HANWELL SNR: ( lying beside Hanwell ) So you found me, then.
     
    HANWELL: Yes, Alf. Wasn’t I meant to?
     
    HANWELL SNR: Now, look: have a smoke - don’t get ahead of yourself.
     
    HANWELL: ( taking a Senior Service from its packet ) Thank you.
     
    HANWELL SNR: So, boy. How are you? I’m doing all right for myself, as you can see.
     
    HANWELL: Ah, yes, indeed, and even so. Thus is it much liketh the great novel by George Eliot -
     
    HANWELL SNR: Oh, don’t talk guff, boy. You always do that - pretend you’re something you’re not and never have been. You never did read any of that. Anyone’d think you’d been up to the university, talking like I don’t know what.
     
    HANWELL: ( sadly ) We couldn’t afford the uniform for the grammar. I passed the eleven-plus, but we couldn’t afford it.
    HANWELL SNR: ( laughing till he cries ) Still telling that old chestnut? Dear, oh dear. Bit antique that story, isn’t it? I’d rather call a spade a spade, let everything come up roses. Well, whatever floats your boat, Hanwell, I’m sure.
     
    HANWELL: ( sung ) I put a chestnut in a boat . . . I rowed it with a spade . . . A rose I gave my love that day.
     
    HANWELL SNR: You’ve gone soft.
     
    ‘Whose bike is this?’
    Hanwell sat up and was greeted - not with any particular surprise, although with a little sheepishness - and offered the first chips out of the fryer, which he accepted.
    ‘I’ve a little fold-up table somewhere here . . .’
    Hanwell watched Hanwell Snr struggle with the household bric-a-brac and shabby furniture piled up in the back of the van. A tall lamp with a tasselled shade and a coat stand lay across each other: a coat of arms for the house of Hanwell. The ambulance driver, Bunty, who might have kept things clean for him, had died the year before - her money had bought this little concern. Maybe she had cooked him his greens, too, and watched his drink, and it was only now that the ghastly bloat took hold, and the blood vessels broke and dispersed beneath the skin of the nose and cheeks, and the orange whiskers grew wild and laced with grey. It was a shock. Historically, Hanwell Snr was physically superior to Hanwell: Sit on my back - go on, sit on it! You won’t break me! Usually said to a lady, and then when she was settled like the Buddha he’d do a press-up or two, sometimes five. Now he turned, holding the little table upside down against his vast belly, and this soft thing, more than all the rest, announced him as a man deserted by women.
    ‘There we are’ - his great arse pressed on the tabletop; the cast-iron legs sunk deep into the lawn - ‘I don’t believe in standing and eating.’
    He brought out two little stools, and Hanwell sat on the one handed to him. For a time, Hanwell Snr made his own reluctance to sit appear quite natural, busying himself with the hot oil and dismissing certain chips as not fit to be thrown in the fryer if his only son was to eat them. When the fuss of frying was over, Hanwell realized the obvious: his father couldn’t stand to look at him. They remained looking out on the meadow beyond the green, Hanwell Snr leaning against the van, despite his beliefs, with his sweaty cone of newspaper and chewing each chip a long time. He looked across Hanwell if Hanwell spoke, but never at him.
    Of their conversation, Hanwell could retain practically nothing, finding it quite as unreal as their dream talk earlier. While Hanwell silently pursued a series of unlikely but longed-for confessions ( Well, son, the thing is . . . To tell you the truth, I regret terribly . . .), in the real, thick