The Friendly Ones
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‘It’s the book you should give someone who thinks they don’t like novels … Here is surely a future prizewinner that is easy to read and impossible to forget’ Melissa Katsoulis, The TimesThe things history will do at the bidding of loveOn a warm Sunday afternoon, Nazia and Sharif are preparing for a family barbecue. They are in the house in Sheffield that will do for the rest of their lives. In the garden next door is a retired doctor, whose four children have long since left home. When the shadow of death passes over Nazia and Sharif’s party, Doctor Spinster’s actions are going to bring the two families together, for decades to come.The Friendly Ones is about two families. In it, people with very different histories can fit together, and redeem each other. One is a large and loosely connected family who have come to England from the subcontinent in fits and starts, brought to England by education, and economic possibilities. Or driven away from their native country by war, murder, crime and brutal oppression – things their new neighbours know nothing about. At the heart of their story is betrayal and public shame. The secret wound that overshadows the Spinsters, their neighbours next door, is of a different kind: Leo, the eldest son, running away from Oxford University aged eighteen. How do you put these things right, in England, now?Spanning decades and with a big and beautifully drawn cast of characters all making their different ways towards lives that make sense, The Friendly Ones, Philip Hensher’s moving and timely new novel, shows what a nation is made of; how the legacies of our history can be mastered by the decision to know something about people who are not like us.
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what would I tell you that the walls had told me?
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‘Cough, Raja, cough,’ Omith said. Raja made flapping motions with his arms; he was trying to cough. Omith hit him on the back, gently and then harder. There was no response. The caterers had been starting to cook the meat, but now were watching with curiosity. It must look as if Raja and Omith were fighting, but now Omith remembered something from school. He got behind Raja – he cursed himself for not remembering, not paying attention – and his hands joined together in a double fist, pulled heavily into the pit of Raja’s stomach. Mummy was running towards them, and, strangely, the old man from next door, climbing nimbly over the fence. Omith was punching into the stomach. So this is how your brother dies, he heard his mind horribly saying, and Mummy screaming, and knowing that nothing was happening, that he was just punching into the stomach and Raja was making an awful choked skriking noise, a noise of a throat in mud, and twitching and flailing, and then quite suddenly Raja went limp, his head falling to one side.
The old man from next door was quite calm. ‘Put him down,’ he said. ‘There, on his back. Go and bring me a sharp knife – there must be one at the barbecue. Wipe it. Go on. And a pen,’ he said, turning to Aisha as her brother ran. ‘Just a biro would do. Take everything out, just the tube. Quick – good.’ Omith was back already, with a steak knife. The old man took it from him, running his finger along the blade. He knelt down, muttering, ‘I’m a doctor,’ in some kind of response to all this screaming, and reached out his hand for Aisha’s pen. She had found one in her bag, a new one, and tried with shaking hand to take off the lid, the stopper, to pull out the ink tube. The old man’s hand was patient, but steady, demanding; it was in that horizontal calm waiting that his professional standing was apparent. Aisha finally succeeded, and handed it to him. Before they could quite understand what he was doing, he had placed the tube in his shirt pocket, and with his left hand felt urgently at Raja’s throat. His hand stopped; held; and with a single gesture the other hand cut between his second and third fingers, into Raja’s throat. Raja made no movement as his flesh was sliced. The biro was taken from the upper pocket, and the old man – the doctor – plunged it firmly into the incision. There was a sound of whistling; you could feel the air re-inflating Raja. But Aisha was already leading her mother away to a little crowd of comforters. The flurry of action was over. The old man reached out, and pulled himself up with the aid of Omith.
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