by Luke Brown
When she agreed to the interview and photo request it was clear to me there had been a terrible mistake. While White Jesus does feature cultural articles, they are often next to photos of girls in their underwear, often just one piece of their underwear. I was concerned about her meeting with our house photographer, due round after my interview, who considered himself to be a boundary-pushing conceptual artist. I hoped he would remember it was a book interview and not try to persuade her to take her clothes off, or pose provocatively on a merry-go-round, or underneath a live swan, or wearing a unicorn horn, or with ice cream on her face, holding an antique pistol, or a serrated blade to a child’s throat, or doing a handstand in a loose dress, on rollerblades, or smoking a Cuban cigar in a wheelbarrow, in a short plaid skirt, wrapped in a butcher’s apron covered in gore, or attached to a radiator with cable ties, or joke-shop nails, or actual nails, or any other of his signature moves, but I didn’t put it past him. I wished I could hang around to keep an eye on him but I had to work in the shop that afternoon.
*
I had not prepared well for the interview with Emily Nardini. On the night before, the magazine had held their January awards ceremony in a warehouse in Bethnal Green. The magazine likes to position itself in strict opposition to the penitent mood of January, the temporary veganism and abstinence. It is catered by the owner’s mate who runs a series of Satanic burger joints done out in apocalyptic Gilbert & George-style stained glass. There are mounds of ‘murdered yogi’ burgers, pitchers of rum cocktails, envelopes full of chisel and big thick Es the size of Scrabble tiles being passed around. Such things once had appeal, but these days I would rather have skipped it – except it was politic to make an appearance. Jonathan, the advertising director, is a man I met in the previous millennium at what was then called the London College of Printing. I would only cautiously describe Jonathan as a friend, for reasons you will come to understand, and last week he had casually mentioned to me that Stev’n was talking about cutting my books page, in favour of a legal highs column. I had not been reassured by Jonathan’s reassurance that if this did happen I would be the first choice to write the legal highs column, that Stev’n had a great respect for my ability to enjoy narcotics, and I would probably be paid more money for it. At the party I intended to catch Stev’n when he was flying on a cocktail of empathogens and subtly implant within him an association between my books page and euphoria. But in the end I spent most of the night talking to a woman a few years older than me, the managing director of a clothing company who advertised with us, about who our favourite character in Middlemarch was – Dorothea, obviously, not the feckless millennial she ends up with – in between accepting bumps of cocaine from the corner of her credit card and downing martinis from the free bar. You wouldn’t know from looking at me, but I’ve got a real thing about the nineteenth-century novel. I know my freedoms dwarf those of its heroines, but that doesn’t stop me identifying with women anxious to see if their saviour will arrive.
The managing director and I were surprised to be having a conversation about Victorian novels in a crowd of 25-year-olds dancing to grime, spilling cocktails and taking dabs of MDMA; and I wondered if she might be interested in me, if she had space in her flat, if she wanted a child, if we could come to a civilised arrangement we could reasonably name ‘love’.
I woke up fully clothed, with oily hands. The more vivid details of my journey home struggled to arrange themselves into sequence: falling off my bike repeatedly, making emergency repairs, giving all my money to a homeless man after a bin jumped out at me and I rode up a lamp post. I was due at Emily Nardini’s in forty-five minutes. I did not have time to remove the oil from my hands, have a shower or charge my phone – just to pull up the address on my laptop and draw a map on my arm of how to get to her house from the Tube stop. I grabbed my voice recorder, splashed some water on my face and ran out of the house, forgetting to take with me the list of questions I had prepared to ask her.
*
I had been giddy and happy on the Overground; one or two of the many martinis I had poured into myself must have remained active. When I changed to the Tube, however, and started to think about the photographer, I began to feel hot and panicky. I could not work out whether the way the light was flickering in the carriage was a malfunction inside or outside me. I am not a man who drinks in the mornings, but it was clear to me that in this case not drinking was more irresponsible. The only pubs open at this time are Wetherspoons and I didn’t like my chances of finding one in Holland Park, so when I rose into daylight I quickly nipped into an off-licence.
Holland Park: that address had thrown me. The protagonists of her novels are always impoverished runaways, cleaners, waitresses, hotel staff, hairdressers, writers or even less employable artists, all roughly the same age as Nardini, living in a room of their own, bed, upright chair, no room for books or bag.
The street I was led to by the map on my arm was a quiet, tree-lined curve of tall white buildings. Outside her door I opened a can of Coke, took a swig and replaced it with an inch of whisky from the little bottle I had just bought. Then I rang the door and waited.
*
I was surprised by how friendly she looked, how cheerfully she held out her hand. More than the intervening years, it was the unexpected range of expression that made her look so different from her photograph. Her beauty was still there, but it was warmer and less intimidating when she smiled. She was only very pretty, terrestrial, made up with eyeliner and mascara.
I held out my hand and she withdrew hers.
‘Oh, shit, yes,’ I said.
‘Have you been fixing cars?’ she asked.
‘Tinkering with my ute,’ I said, in an Australian accent. I make bad jokes when I’m nervous. She didn’t smile so I reverted to British English. ‘A bike, actually.’ I looked at my hands. ‘It’s very hard to get off.’
‘The bike?’ she asked.
‘It was very hard to stay on the bike last night.’
‘You are the journalist, aren’t you?’
‘Um. I am here to do the interview.’
She weighed me up for a few seconds. ‘Aha,’ she said. ‘Well, we’re up here.’ Her Glaswegian accent was carefully enunciated, like a regional Radio 4 presenter’s; I imagined her planing the edges off it, like I had done with mine, sliver by sliver, to wedge between where we had been and where we now wanted admittance. In a dark blue skirt or dress, a grey jumper and black winter tights, Emily was wearing no shoes, and on the balls of her feet she led me to a set of stairs.
‘We’re right at the top,’ she said, turning back to scrutinise me again. Then she headed up and I followed her.
*
On the way up the stairs I tripped on a step and had to grab her arm so I didn’t fall over.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, righting myself.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, but she justifiably sounded wary. ‘Perhaps you need a cup of tea to go with your Coca-Cola?’
‘I just tripped. Yes, a cup of tea would be nice.’
I followed her through the door, which opened into a wide hallway of polished wood with long corridors at right angles to each other. On one side of each corridor fitted mahogany bookshelves stretched to the end.
‘There’s a camera attached to the front door,’ she said. ‘What was that I saw you pouring into your Coke? Rum?’
‘Oh, shit.’ I put the can down on the side. ‘Whisky, actually.’
‘Are you an alcoholic?’ She asked this in the tone she might have used to ask if I came from London. I followed her down the length of a corridor and into a kitchen, shiny, clean, light: a piece with the flat.
‘No. That was an emergency drink.’
‘That sounds like the sort of thing an alcoholic would say.’
‘A minor alcoholic, though. A major alcoholic would accuse you of being a witch and burst into tears before he asked you to pray with him.’
She pressed her lips together to suppress what could ha
ve been amusement or irritation. ‘Are you drunk now?’
‘Not at all. Sorry – I just had to defer a hangover for a couple more hours.’
‘Did you consider not getting drunk last night?’ she asked calmly, filling the kettle. ‘Considering this engagement of ours?’
‘It was our awards party, I had to go. They’re planning to cut my books page, you see. I’d planned to buttonhole the editor and convince him of the value of it before he replaces it with… I don’t know… a page of weird genitals that look like vegetables, or weird vegetables that look like genitals, I don’t know, I can’t think like he does.’
I was speaking too quickly. I was pacing back and forth in the kitchen, forcing myself not to pick up the can of Coke.
She watched me walk from one side of the room to the other. ‘So, if I understand correctly, you’re saying your getting smashed last night was… in service of literary journalism?’
‘Exactly. I’m very sorry not to turn up completely sober.’
She took two mugs from a cupboard. ‘I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. There have been times too when I haven’t turned up completely sober.’
‘You’re welcome to some whisky, if you’d like.’
‘No thanks. Not a whisky girl. Any Italian genes overrode the Scottish ones there. And I’m not an anything girl at the moment.’
‘I’m sorry if I seem glib about the booze,’ I said. ‘I suppose I charged in here like a bull in a china shop.’
‘You charged in here sheepishly. And then you fell over.’
I laughed, and then she smiled with a little less froideur than before, and for the first time I felt like the interview might be something other than a disaster.
‘How come you’ve invited me over, anyway?’ I asked. ‘I thought you avoided this stuff.’
*
Desperate times. She’d been too aloof, needed to be more realistic. Said her agent. Said her editor. Said her new agent. Said her new editor. She had to show willing this time. Even though no one cared about novels any more, especially her novels.
I disagreed. She shrugged. The kettle clicked off and she turned to make two mugs of tea. I stepped out of the kitchen back into the hallway.
‘Mind if I look at your books?’
‘They’re mostly my boyfriend’s, but yes, feel free. It’s mostly art books on this side. All the fiction is round the corner. There’s a little room I use to write in which holds the few books that have stuck to me.’
I walked out into the corridor. The art books had been arranged alphabetically, and I noticed the classical taste of the contemporary choices. I looked for Emin, Lucas, the Chapmans – no. Round the corner the fiction began. Whoever she lived with was a big reader with excellent taste. I carried on down the corridor, attracted by the light I could see from the room at the end. It was a long room with two enormous sets of windows that filled it with light and showed the top branches of the tree outside. The walls were covered in paintings, there was a dining table at one side of it, and a living-room area formed by two dark red sofas in an L-shape. Hardbacks were piled in a stack in one corner of the room with spines I recognised as recent arrivals to the shop. There was a photo of a middle-aged woman on the mantelpiece, the sort of woman who belonged in this room. Six of our living room could have fitted inside this one, and I wondered how much the flat had cost when it was bought. I wondered how much it cost now. I observed myself wondering and hated myself for being so dull. A pair of black Chelsea boots faced the corner like a dunce.
‘Sugar?’ shouted Emily from the kitchen.
I walked back and said no thanks. I watched her remove a teabag from one mug and dunk it in the other. ‘Your boyfriend’s a big reader too.’
‘Oh, yeah. A lot of the books are actually his ex’s. She was in the business until – well, that’s his business. I’ve always been too peripatetic until recently to keep hold of my books. I end up buying the same favourites four or five times.’ She handed me a tea. ‘Probably easiest to do this in my room. The living room’s too distracting. You just want to appreciate it. I don’t allow myself in there when I have work to do.’
She led me back down the corridor and opened a door. The first thing I saw was a double bed and I thought hopefully that perhaps I had misheard her about the boyfriend, and she was only a lodger.
‘It was the guest bedroom before I took it over,’ she explained. ‘Supposed to be for his daughter but she never stays over, not now I’m here.’
She turned sharply away from me as she said that, and I didn’t ask any further.
It was a big enough room for the bed, a wardrobe, a neat desk in one corner and a sofa facing it. A white Ikea Billy bookcase like the three I had crammed into my room was out of keeping with the display furniture of the corridors, and stuffed full of paperbacks, unalphabetised. Two piles of books were stacked next to it, Jenga towers a couple of moves away from collapsing. There was a plastic crate of CDs on the floor next to an integrated stereo of nineties vintage, the type of thing you bought in Argos, and which proudly advertised its Megabass. The contrast between the room and the style of the rest of the flat made it seem like an installation: a young person’s room in a shared house, inside the grand surroundings of a public gallery. Outside the window were neat strips of neighbours’ gardens, a small and ancient-looking church, a little plot of gravestones. She turned the desk chair around to the sofa and gestured to it.
‘Thanks for agreeing to do the interview,’ I said, sitting down. ‘You may have been surprised to find out we even had a books page.’
‘I’m not sure I’ve seen the magazine.’
‘Well, there’s no reason why you should have. Perhaps you’d have browsed through a copy waiting in a hairdresser’s. There are approximately seventy pages of adverts before you reach the contents page.’
Emily flopped back onto the sofa as if the news had exhausted her. ‘My publicist was keen to emphasise the quality of the books coverage. That did make me suspicious.’
‘That’s nice of her. She might have been stressing the contrast. There’s a toxic level of irony in much of the content. Though I don’t know if that’s the word, actually. I don’t know if the photos of the models on the toilet are ironic. Or the high-school-massacre fashion shoots. I think they’re just corrupt.’
‘Why do you write for such awful-sounding people?’
‘I haven’t had much success offering myself elsewhere.’
‘I begin to worry where I fit in here.’
‘You’re my choice. I’m the magazine’s gravitas. Stop raising your eyebrows.’
‘I was looking at your wrist. Is that a map?’
‘It is, yes.’ I pulled my sleeve up further and showed her how to get to her house from the Tube stop. ‘If we end up becoming mates, I could have it done as a tattoo as a souvenir of today.’
‘That would be original. You probably have a “bad tatts” section in the magazine.’
‘Let’s not talk about that. It’s three times the length of my book section.’
I put the recorder on the table.
‘So, shall we begin? Emily, tell me about your body art.’
*
We spoke for about an hour and a half. Her careful vowels serrated at the edges when she became disdainful. There was no getting away from it: she was bitter about the world’s indifference to her and the trouble it took to write a book. She knew no one asked her to; she knew she was angry and had no right to be: ‘How do we redeem this interview from me moaning on about how crap the world is?’
So I asked her the question I was most interested in, the one I knew to be the most vulgar. ‘How much of what has happened to your characters is based on what has happened to you?’
‘Perhaps you could be specific,’ she said quietly.
*
Emily, are you on the edge? Emily, are your parents dead too? Emily, do you believe love is impossible? Do you believe love is the only hope? Were you married once, for o
nly two weeks? What is it like to live for so long in poverty? What is it about Paris, why do you keep running there? Couldn’t you ever have decided to be happier? Is that what you have done now? Or have you always been happy? Have you tricked us? Why did you never mention this flat? Who is this man you live with? Are you writing about him now? Have you chosen comfort over love? Do you think I am an idiot? Am I like the rest of the men in your novels? Are we all so transparently hungry? Are we all so gauche? So vain and inconsequential? Are we the problem? Are we your problem? Are you laughing at me? Could you ever love someone like me? What has he got that I haven’t? Is it money? Or something else?
*
The London Review of Haircuts
An outgrown fringe, half-tied behind, is slipping back across her face. She pushes it back, like the childish thoughts of smoky rooms and loud music we hope lie behind those dark eyes, the same brown as her hair. She doesn’t look the way she does entirely by accident, and she would like to test the power and reach of those looks again while they still belong to a young woman.