Collected Stories. Hanif Kureishi by Hanif Kureishi

Author:Hanif Kureishi [Kureishi, Hanif]
Language: zho
Format: epub
Tags: #genre
ISBN: 9780571249824
Amazon: 0571249825
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Umbrella

The minute they arrived at the adventure playground, Roger’s two sons charged up a long ramp and were soon clinging to the steel netting that hung from a high beam. Satisfied that it would take them some time to extricate themselves, Roger sat on a bench and turned to the sports section of his newspaper. He had always found it relaxing to read reports of football matches he had not seen.

Then it started to rain.

His sons, aged four and five and a half, had refused to put on their coats when he picked them up from the au pair half an hour before. Coats made them look ‘fat’, they claimed, and Roger had had to carry them under his arm.

The older boy was dressed in a thin, tight-fitting green outfit and a cardboard cap with a feather in it: he was either Robin Hood or Peter Pan. The younger wore a plastic holster with two silver guns, a plastic dagger and a sword, blue wellington boots, jeans with the fly open, and a chequered neckerchief which he pulled over his mouth. ‘Cowboys don’t wear raincoats,’ he said, through a mouthful of cloth.

The boys frequently refused Roger’s commands, though he could not say that their stubbornness and pluck annoyed him. It did, however, cause him trouble with his wife, from whom he had separated a year previously. Only that morning she had said on the phone, ‘You are a weak and inadequate disciplinarian. You only want their favour.’

For as long as he could, Roger pretended it was not raining, but when his newspaper began to go soggy and everyone else had left the playground, he called the boys over.

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