The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi Read Free Book Online Page B

of alcohol. But it could only make them duller, she believed. How many people was she? How many people could we be?
    Harry didn’t know what he thought about any of this. He did remember, though, that most nights, at the end of her life, she crept into his bedroom, and he slept in her arms, almost like a young lover, until morning. Was that love, or madness? Later, a friend of his mother’s said: Harry, you are very much like her; of high intelligence, you can understand anything. Both of you are bright but brittle – and you’ll go down under the slightest knock, worrying and fearing failure.
    When he was twelve, she died. It seemed that after she was gone he was alone for ten years. He had to get up in the dark, feed himself and cycle to school without his mother offering him a pear, cutting the crusts from his sandwiches or running after him with books and football boots. His identical brothers, four years older, were at Latymer, while he was at St Paul’s. Where the other boys had much more of their mother, he was forced, too early, into independence. And the twins had always had one another: they bickered, disputed and had bloody fist fights around the house, but there was barely a moment when they were not in resentful or eager contact with each other, almost, but not quite a closed circle.
    Harry cared for himself by reading in his room, while playing his siblings’ records and tapes, and speaking constantly to his mother in his mind. The family had disposed of her other clothes, but when Harry took over her wardrobe for himself, many of her shoes remained at the back of the cupboard. It occurred to him to lie with his ear on the carpet and speak to them. Harry would make films in his mind of her choosing them and putting them on; he would wonder where she had gone in each pair, who she had been with, and what they had talked about.
    He saw now that the idea of isolation he had had about himself was only partly true, a myth he’d made. He was motherless, and his father might have been at work, or attending to the house, or dating. But his brothers had never been awkward or shy. At school they were rugby and soccer stars who earned money modelling and later formed a band, the Ha-Ha Fish, playing at the opening of hip shops in Carnaby Street and the sticky back rooms of Camden pubs in front of school friends. They said if he learned bass, he could perform with them, and so he did.
    A teenage girl with a mass of dark hair, in a short skirt, T-shirt and black tights, opened a bedroom door to see a little boy, younger than her, sitting on his bed blinking over a book, scratching and twisting with anxiety, a plate of food untouched. Harry’s brothers’ pals, and their numerous girl friends, were in the house constantly, and from the beginning the boy was the object of much pity and attention from young women. There’s nothing like a blond motherless child to bring the girls running with kisses, sweets and more. Who would want to give that up? The twins began to refer to the pretty little pasha’s ‘harem’, the girls who were keen to assist him with his homework, cook for him, select his clothes and cut his hair, and accompany him to the cinema, the shops and other treats at the weekend and during holidays.
    A girl beginning to move away from her parents and wanting to grow up can be persuaded into appalling acts of love. Once Harry hit thirteen and began to sweat and shower, a relay of fragrant teenagers were kissing, petting and spending the night with him on sleepovers. The motherless boy hated to sleep alone; sometimes he crashed on the floor in one of his brothers’ rooms. Soon he learned that numerous girls were susceptible to his pleas for them to care for him. He needed to replace one woman with a horde of other women. From the age of fourteen he was seducing more of them than those amateurs his brothers. It would cheer his father up, when he came home, to find the house garlanded with girls in flower.