The Last Gift Read online

  The dream came back to Anna for the first two nights in their new house. She had not had it for a while, not for two or three weeks. Before that, it came every night for days on end and lasted for hours. After some days it stopped, then started again following an unpredictable pause. The dream was of a house. She lived in part of the house and the rest of it was derelict, with sagging roof beams and creaking, half-rotten wooden windows. There was someone else in the house, not someone she saw but who was there in the vicinity, just out of the frame. It was not Nick, or it wasn’t most of the time. Sometimes, after she woke up, she thought it must have been Nick, and at other times that it was one or other of the several men she had known. It was not a house she recognised, even as a picture. Everything about it was unfamiliar. The ruined part was barnlike and empty, and visible from every part of the rest of the house. In a strange, unsettling way, she felt she was always visible to the dereliction as well, as if it was something living. That part of the house was brown, not a real colour but more like a colour of exhaustion. The paintwork was peeling, and its beams and bannisters leaned slightly from age and fatigue. Its dereliction was malign, watchful, accusing.

  The dream sprawled for hours, and in it she was ridden with guilt. She climbed narrow stairs and forced open dusty doors on rusty hinges to have a look at the work that needed to be done. She explained their plans to someone who remained invisible, who listened without reply. She explained what was needed to be done, when they might be able to do it, about a builder she knew who would do a good job, or a carpenter who would offer them a good price. It was all lies, for she knew no builders or carpenters, and even in the dream she was aware of that, that she was lying to whoever was there listening to her. And even if she did know builders and carpenters and could have them for a good price, she knew that they would not be able to rid the house of its malign decay or relieve her of her guilt. In the dream she knew the cause of her guilt and pain, when awake she was not sure. She imagined it was to do with the repair of the house, that it was her responsibility to see to it and she had failed to. But she could not be sure if this was the reason for the insistent feeling of wrongness she felt in the dream. She could not be sure that some suffering or pain had not occurred in that derelict house, or was not even occurring at that moment. Nick never fully appeared in the dream, although he was there sometimes, she was sure of that, maybe. Nor was Nick the invisible person she sought to explain herself to. She did not know who that was, or why she had to explain herself to her or him.

  Nick was distressed by the dream when she first told him. She did not tell him at once but only when the dream became recurrent. She was not sure why she delayed telling him, if it was simply that the right moment did not come up, or if the feeling of the dream was too painful, the sense of guilt too real, or if she thought he would laugh at her concern about its meaning. It was how they were together, laughing at each other whenever one of them became solemn about life’s tragedies (the words spoken with a comically downcast face). They liked to keep things light between them, and it gave Anna a mature sense of proportion that she could refuse to see her pain as exceptional. She laughed at life’s tragedies to avoid the lure of solemn self-importance, which is what she thought a sense of the tragic implied. She thought Nick’s laughter was similar but with its own difference. His was to do with wanting to seem relaxed, to seem a man of sophisticated temperament who had no need for self-pity, officer class, although that did not stop him from being full of himself about his work.

  Anyway, she did not tell him about the dream immediately. The dream was both sinister and squalid, both threatening to her and implicating her in a nameless wrongdoing, and while she was in it she was frightened in some place deep inside her, and felt smothered by a darkening stench that was slowly filling up the house. Perhaps she did not tell Nick at once because she wanted to have a better understanding of all these feelings before she recounted it, because she feared he would make light of it all, or even mock it, refusing to take it seriously.

  It was her feeling of guilt that most troubled him. ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked. ‘What do you have to feel guilty about? Is it about your dad? And why a house? Why do you feel bad about a house?’

  ‘I don’t know if dreams work like that,’ she said, letting his question about Ba pass. ‘I don’t think you dream about things that bother you as themselves. Or that dreams are always about things that bother you in some concrete way. You know, that if you’re worrying about a house, you dream about a house.’

  Nick made a scorning face. ‘Thank you for clearing that up for me,’ he said.

  That was the end of that conversation. She had wanted to go on to say something about the uncanniness of the dream, its extreme unlikeliness and how disturbing its menace was, but she had seen that her quibble had irritated him and she did not pursue the subject. He could be a pig when the mood was on him. So she was not sure now if she would tell him that the dream had come back since they moved. It was probably to do with the move anyway, and would go away of its own accord, and take whatever it meant with it.

  Nick had gone to work first thing, to take the books they had brought down to his office. In the weeks he had been commuting he had only taken a few essential books, and had often found himself short of a text or two when he needed it. It would be good to have all his books within reach again. He said he would not be long, but she thought he would. It didn’t matter, she wanted to unpack the boxes. She hated having her things hidden away. Back by lunchtime, he said, but she thought not. He liked that kind of thing – organising his space for maximum effect. She imagined that the books would be arranged to a system, by theme, then alphabetical by author within the theme, century by century. Then a couple of journals would be thrown on the desk, and the pens would be left like that, and the right pictures would be pinned on the board. So that when you walked into his office you would think, here is a serious academic. He did that with his study space at home, when there was only her to impress. But then maybe it was more than a desire to impress, that it was his idea of himself, so that even if there was no one to see he would still want to sustain the air of a scholar.

  Just before he left in the morning he said he had received a text from his mother, inviting them to spend the Easter weekend with them. Anna did not say anything, but the thought made her wince inside. He did not like it when she said anything critical of visits to his parents’, but what she thought and did not say was oh fuck no, not Easter weekend again. The first time she went visiting Nick’s parents was an Easter weekend, soon after she met him, which was just before the school vacation. She was then in her third year of teaching, working in a school in King’s Lane, which because of the quirks of zoning boundaries fell in Wandsworth Borough even though it was a stone’s throw away from Brixton. As a result it was popular with parents because its catchment area excluded the black rowdies from the high-rise estates, who had to go to school in the neighbouring Lambeth Borough. She went to a party given by one of the teachers she worked with who lived in Wandsworth. Nick, who lived in the same apartment block, was a friend. He was tall but not very, strong-looking but not huge, athletic, his light-brown eyes shining with intelligence. His smile was so full that it seemed as if he was about to burst into laughter. When they were introduced, she saw the interest in those eyes. It was not something she could miss. Then when they began to talk, they sparked each other off and everything they said seemed unbelievably funny and witty. She was seduced and could not wait to have him, and she knew from the way their bodies swayed towards each other and their hands hovered that she would not have to wait for long. She was unattached and he was getting over a relationship, so there were no complications. In fact, everything happened so fast that after a few days she was more or less living in his flat every weekend. He wanted her to move in straight away, but she said no, let’s not rush.

  He was planning to spend the Easter weekend with his parents, and he said to Anna, ‘Why not come? There
’s room. Shall I ring and ask?’

  ‘I’ve promised to go and see my mum and dad in Norwich, and I was thinking of doing that over Easter,’ she said, (making the effort to say mum and dad rather than Ma and Ba). But Anna knew that Nick wanted her to go, and she herself was curious, so she said, ‘I suppose I could go to Norwich before the weekend and come over to you afterwards.’

  Perfect, he said. When he rang his parents and told them about Anna, they said bring her too. We’d love to meet her. They were to arrive on Saturday in time for dinner and then go to the service on Sunday morning, which if Anna wished to attend she was welcome, then go home for lunch afterwards. Nick’s sister and her partner would also be there, although they would only come for the day.

  That was more than two years ago, long before Ba’s collapse and illness. When she arrived in Norwich a couple of days before Easter, as she had promised her mother, she was wearing a low-cut top and she saw a shade of disapproval pass over her father’s eyes. She had known he would do that, but she was determined not to be forced to dress like a prude just because he preferred that. It had been a battle between them ever since she started university. When she wore anything tight, or short or revealing, he disapproved. In the early days he just ordered her back upstairs to change, and she did that a few times to avoid a fight. What will anybody think if they see you like that? he said. That we have not brought you up to have self-respect. In the end he got tired of the bad feeling these encounters aroused and he tried to ignore her, looking hurt that she took no notice of his instruction. It had been different when she was younger. She could do no wrong then. But when she grew into a young woman, he became a tyrant about self-respect, or tried to but she always fought back. Finally he retreated from her and tried not to see the things he disapproved of.

  She remembered how her mother kissed her and held her out at arm’s length, praising her appearance and complimenting her clothes, good old Ma. Somehow, Ba steeled himself and came over to kiss her as well. She put her arm in his and led him back to the living room, knowing he would be unable to resist her affection. She talked with him about her teaching work and about her plans, and about the children and how precocious some of them were. He listened without saying much, smiling, and after a while seemed to forget about her top. When she had persuaded him (and herself) that she was taking life seriously and was working hard at her career, she went to the kitchen where her mother was preparing dinner and told her about Nick. She did not tell her father about her boyfriends any more. He thought she had too many of them. Why not wait until you find the right one? Then he always asked: Is the boy English? What did he expect? A Greek god? She had never let him meet any of her boyfriends after the first one. His name was Martin, that first one, and Ba met him when they came to collect her after her first term at university. As they parted, she had kissed him, and Ba had not spoken a word all the way home. Then when Martin phoned her over the holidays, he came out to the hallway every few minutes to try and hurry her off the phone. Is this what we sent you to university for? To turn you into a proper English girl? Well, they didn’t send her to university, she sent herself, with her own efforts and talent. After that she just made sure he never got to meet any of her boyfriends, and after a while she did not bother to tell him about them either.

  Her mother made no comment about Nick; she wanted to tell Anna about her latest feud with Dr Mendez concerning some digestive difficulties she was having. Anna herself was in perfect health and nothing about her body surprised her or caused her unexpected distress. When she felt unwell, she knew why, more or less. She could not really take the difficulties her mother was having with her bowels seriously and she listened out of politeness. Dr Mendez was dismissive about her mother’s problems and Ma was distraught that she could not persuade the doctor.

  ‘What a foul bitch that woman is! You should ask for a second opinion,’ Anna said.

  ‘I don’t know how you get a second opinion,’ Maryam said. ‘She says there is nothing to have an opinion about.’

  ‘It’s your body,’ Anna said, uttering one of the wisdoms of the time. She thought her mother Maryam looked perplexed at this idea. She could not understand why her mother allowed herself to be intimidated by the doctor. She could see her sitting quietly while the bitch doctor said to her, Women of your age are absurd hypochondriacs. Go home and make yourself a cup of tea. Or maybe that was not what was really happening, and her mother just got the wrong end of the stick, or did not explain herself properly or just needed to protest a little more, to be more stubborn. She sat with her parents for a while after dinner, Ma chatting and Ba listening without saying much, gathered together in some place of his own. She used to feel excluded by their intimacy at times, but now she understood it for what it was. They were adrift, out of their depth, lonely together. They had done this deliberately, she thought, cut themselves off, living timorous lives, expecting slights and disregard. She could not wait to leave the next day. She remembered how when they came home for the vacation, Jamal and she used to whisper to each other: Welcome back to the morgue. The next day, she took the train from Norwich to Chichester, where Nick’s parents lived, feeling like a traitor.

  That miserly gene surfaced quite unexpectedly. She said that to him once and he looked so surprised and then so pensive that she thought she may have hurt him. She only meant to tease him, but she had forgotten that he had once told her that his father was a mean man. She knew he had turned miserly to help them save because Hanna was coming, and he had turned out to be better at it than she had expected. She was only pretending pique and irritation, because she too took to their frugal style. It made her feel grown-up, capable of denying herself, and made their life together seem purposeful.

  When Hanna was a baby, he treated her like an object that could easily break, cupping her whole tiny body in his hands as he lifted her. When they put her on a mat on the floor, he made a nest for her with cushions and blankets so she would not roll over. When she made an irritated noise, he looked alarmed, and sometimes repeated the noise as if to tell her that he felt it too, whatever it was. As soon as he came home from work, he asked if she was awake and if he could hold her. Then he lay her on his thighs, and rocked his legs from side to side while he twittered and sang to her, and she gurgled and chuckled as if she had never seen the like. If she cried at night, he said bring her here, and he lay her down between them on the bed. Maryam could not suppress the feeling that this was wrong, that they were spoiling her. She remembered being told in the antenatal clinic that you should let babies cry, but he would not have that. Let the poor thing cry on its own as if there was no one here who wanted her? He rocked her and tutted at her and made silly noises until she stopped. And if she did not, he fretted and tried one thing after another until she gave up and whimpered and fell asleep. Hanna drew a tenderness and patience out of him that she could not have guessed at. By the time Jamal came, the overwhelming astonishment of their first baby’s perfection had diminished a little but then Jamal came with surprises of his own. He turned out to be such a silent and accommodating baby that Maryam became concerned. It took him a long time to learn to walk or to speak. Leave him alone, Abbas said. He’s thinking. Look at that frown, that’s a thinker’s frown. Hanna had learned to speak at an early age, and she chattered at Jamal for hours and made him part of her games while he lay on a mat or in his rocker and frowned contentedly. Forbearing. That was the word Abbas gave her for him. A forbearing little man.

  As they grew older, Abbas tried to be a little more firm, less chuckles and kisses and more direction and instruction. You have to learn to look after yourselves. You don’t want people to make fun of you. Life here is not a holiday. It made her laugh, some of it, because to her it seemed so transparently a pretence, an exaggeration. He could not keep up his strict act all the time and there were many moments when he could not resist his old mischief. He took too many things as his responsibility, his duty by them, and she wanted to say to him: play with
them, laugh with them, do not fear for them so much. Then they grew older and became teenagers and wanted to do things their own way, which was not always his. But even before then, she knew that Abbas was retreating more and more to solitary places where he could not be reached. Sometimes his face turned sour and his eyes glowed with what she could only think of as pain. It was as if the children brought something back to him that he had learned not to think about. When she asked him, he looked surprised or pretended to look surprised, and said that there was so much to worry about with children. He smiled apologetically as he said that, and she did not press him. The children found his silences daunting, she knew that. The silences made them afraid of him. She did not think he always understood that, and he was hurt by their withdrawal and took it to be a kind of rejection. Yes, perhaps he was right, there was so much to worry about with children.