A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

  The reading and interview went very well. Leona Alwin combined erudition with a wonderful sense of humour, talking about her work and the work of others with real insight. You seemed dazzled by her and, as the lights came up, you turned to me with the sort of enthusiasm that I hadn’t seen on your face in a long time.

  ‘Isn’t she terrific?’ you said, and I nodded in agreement as you took my hand. We walked across the courtyard towards the reception being held in the registry building. Once inside, we sipped champagne, waiting for an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the guest of honour. Out of the blue you reached forward to kiss me and it wasn’t just a peck, it was a real kiss, our lips parted and as your tongue entered my mouth I felt a warmth spreading through my body that reminded me how I had never wanted a man as much as I continued to want you. When you pulled away, you had a mischievous expression on your face. You leaned in and I thought you were going to kiss me again but no, you simply whispered in my ear:

  ‘Let’s go somewhere and fuck.’

  My eyes opened wide in surprise and I put a hand to my mouth to stop myself from laughing aloud, but the idea, the spontaneity of it, aroused me instantly. I looked around at the increasingly busy room. ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘We’d be caught.’

  ‘So what?’ you said, taking me by the hand and leading me down a corridor, where we tried a few doors, all of which were locked. I glanced back in case we were being followed but no one was going to leave the main party while Leona was still holding court. We turned the corner into a dead end with just two office doors, one on either side. I tried one and you tried the other but neither would open.

  ‘Out of luck,’ you said.

  I looked at you, grabbed your arm, and smiled.

  ‘What?’ you asked.

  I stepped back into the corner and you raised an eyebrow. I didn’t know what I was doing, it was terribly risky because there were about a hundred people gathered at the end of the hallway, but I knew that I had to have you right then or I would go mad.

  ‘Here?’ you asked.

  ‘Here,’ I said, and you came towards me and pressed me against the wall, reaching under my dress to pull my underwear down as you unzipped your trousers. It was only a matter of seconds before you were inside me and, as we fucked, we looked into each other’s eyes and your hand wrapped itself lightly around my throat, your thumb pressing hard against my carotid artery. When we came, we came together. It was intense and sexy and when we were done we stared at each other, our lust somehow amplified now rather than quenched. A few moments later, we tidied our clothing and returned to the party, giggling like teenagers.

  The first person we met as we walked through the doors was Leona Alwin herself and, although I would have liked to go to the bathroom to clean up before talking to her, there was no way we could just ignore her. I introduced myself, embarrassed by what I was sure was the smell of sex that enveloped us, but she didn’t appear to notice it. Instead she seemed overjoyed to meet me.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘You wrote that wonderful novel!’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ I said. ‘And very generous. Your endorsement was really helpful.’

  ‘I’m sure it did very little,’ she said, waving my gratitude away. ‘Good work will always out, that’s what I believe. It was one of the finest debuts I’d read in years.’

  ‘It’s really admirable that someone of your stature is so interested in the work of new writers,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I try to keep up,’ she replied. ‘I can’t bear ageing novelists who refuse to bother with the young. Most of them seem to think that they’re the only ones worth reading, you see, and that literature as we know it will come to an end when they publish their final book. Well, the men do, certainly. Can you imagine a seventy-five-year-old white Englishman with twenty novels under his belt reading a debut by a twenty-eight-year-old black girl of Caribbean descent? It would never happen. They’d much rather tell the world that they’re re-reading all of Henry James in chronological order and finding him a little smug.’ She turned to you then, Maurice, and I knew by the way you were standing that you were waiting for her to recognize you.

  ‘Lovely to see you again, Leona,’ you said, reaching forward, and, I think, surprising her by kissing her on both cheeks. ‘That was a wonderful talk.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Mr …?’

  ‘It’s Maurice,’ you told her then, rearing back a little, and the expression on your face changed as quickly as it had when I had stood at the end of the corridor and invited you to fuck me. ‘Maurice Swift.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to meet you too, Mr Swift. Are you Edith’s boyfriend? Oh no, her husband. I can see your wedding rings. How long have you been married? You must be very proud of her!’

  You stared at her and said nothing for a few moments. I could see the horror of what was about to happen but couldn’t think of any way to prevent it.

  ‘We met at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago,’ you said.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Leona, touching your arm and looking quite embarrassed. ‘You’re a writer too, then? I didn’t realize.’

  ‘I’m Maurice Swift,’ you repeated, your tone making it clear that you could not have been more astonished if she’d said that she’d never heard of William Shakespeare.

  ‘My husband wrote Two Germans,’ I said, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she’d never heard of it.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. And how is it doing for you?’

  ‘It was published eleven years ago,’ you said.

  ‘Oh, of course it was. I remember now.’ She wasn’t very good at lying. ‘You must forgive me, Mr Swift. I’m as old as the hills. There are days when I can barely even remember the titles of my own books.’

  ‘No, that’s not true,’ you said coldly. ‘I heard you in there. You’re completely on the ball. You’ve just never heard of me or my books, that’s all. It’s fine, I don’t care. There’s no particular reason why you should have.’

  Leona smiled awkwardly and turned back to me, asking me how my next book was coming along, and I offered a few platitudes, but the conversation was ruined. I wanted to leave, to deal with whatever mood you would be in now and just get past it. I suspect Leona wanted to get out of there too for she quickly moved on to someone else and we were left alone again, the rush of our recent sex vanished now, instead replaced by the humiliation that had been rained down on you.

  ‘Shall we go?’ you asked, and I nodded, draining my glass and rushing to catch up with you as you led the way out of the door.

  Do you remember what happened when we got home, Maurice? You’ll say that I’m exaggerating but I remember it clearly. We barely spoke in the taxi but once we were in the front door and up the stairs you pulled me to you and started kissing me again. But there was none of the romance of earlier; instead you spun me around, pulling my underwear down roughly, and before I could make any protest you were inside me again. I cried out but you forced your way deeper into my body, and I held myself up, telling myself that this was what I wanted, this kind of passion, this kind of impulsiveness, even though it seemed as if the desire we’d felt earlier had been replaced now by cruelty and spite. As if you weren’t fucking me at all, but punishing me.

  ‘Twice in one night,’ you said when you were finished, smiling at me. ‘Who said romance is dead?’

  I turned around to face you, trying to smile, desperately wanting to look as if I’d enjoyed it so that I could convince myself that I had. And then my legs seemed to give way beneath me and I slid down to the floor, where I stayed for a few minutes while you went into the kitchen to pour yourself a beer.

  4. December

  When my mother broke her arm slipping on some ice, we decided to go to my family after all, instead of yours, for Christmas and I got the impression that you were relieved about that. Although I knew that your parents had never particularly liked me – your m
other blamed our miscarriages on my writing, telling you time and again that you should not ‘let’ me work, while your father refused to accept that I was English, insisting that my skin colour meant I was an immigrant, regardless of the fact that I was born in Hackney – I was willing to put up with their outdated gender stereotypes and casual racism if it meant not having to be around my sister. But eventually my conscience got the better of me and I knew that I couldn’t leave my mother to cater for herself, Rebecca and the boys without some help, particularly when I had barely seen her since September.

  The smell of pigeon peas, plantain, cush cush and candied yams that drifted through the air brought me instantly back to my childhood. My parents had arrived in England from the Caribbean in the early 1960s and, when we were kids, the whole family returned there once every couple of years to see the relatives they’d left behind. I felt out of place there, though, more at home in England, which was the only home I’d ever known, despite the fact that the children in school, and even some of the teachers, had no hesitation in using racial epithets against me.

  We went into the living room with glasses of wine and I made my way over to the shelf by Mum’s reading chair, where she kept her library books, and as I scanned the titles I was surprised to see a copy of The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal.

  ‘Look,’ I said, holding up the cover, and you glanced over and smiled.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was your sort of thing, Amoya,’ you said, turning to my mother. ‘All that boy-on-boy action.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t realize that it would be so full of sex when I borrowed it,’ she replied. ‘But I’m rather enjoying all the rudeness. Now that Henry’s gone, reading about sex is the closest I ever get to it. Speaking of which, you know that Rebecca is bringing Arjan with her, yes?’

  ‘I didn’t know it for a fact,’ I replied. ‘But I guessed she would. Have you met him yet?’

  ‘I have,’ she replied cautiously, for she loved Robert just as much as I did and didn’t want to appear disloyal. ‘It’s very difficult to know what to say, isn’t it? None of this is his fault, after all, and he does seem like a very nice man.’

  ‘Where’s he from?’ you asked, for you hadn’t come with me the day I’d visited him and Rebecca and had shown scant interest in him in the meantime. ‘India or somewhere?’

  ‘Eastern Europe, I think. Latvia or Estonia. One of those places.’

  ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘He’s an actor. Or trying to be. He’s younger than Rebecca, though, which should come as no surprise. And very good-looking.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to cheat on your husband and then leave him,’ you said, ‘I suppose there’s no point doing it for someone old and ugly.’

  Afterwards, we all tried to blame the argument on what Mum delicately referred to as Arjan’s not quite perfect grasp of English, but of course there was much more to it than that.

  Rebecca, Arjan and the boys arrived laden with Christmas presents. Too many, I thought, as if she was trying to prove something through her generosity. Damien and Edward both had new phones, which seemed ridiculous, considering they were only nine and seven years old, and she had bought me one of my favourite perfumes but had forgotten to remove the Heathrow duty-free sticker from beneath the box.

  ‘If I’m honest,’ said my sister, sitting back in the armchair with a glass of champagne, ‘I would have preferred to stay at home this year instead of coming here.’

  ‘Well, you could still go back,’ I told her. ‘The roads will be quiet at this time of day and we could always do you up a doggy-bag.’

  ‘My schedule has been simply crazy,’ she continued, ignoring me. ‘Two weeks ago, I was actually in three different countries over three different days. Absolutely exhausting.’

  ‘Which countries?’ I asked. ‘England, Scotland and Wales?’

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘England, France and Italy, if you really want to know.’

  ‘I’m not sure England counts, dear,’ said Mum. ‘I mean, you do live here, after all.’

  ‘Of course it counts. It’s a country, isn’t it?’

  ‘So, tell us a little about yourself, Arjan,’ you said, turning to him, and I could see that you were uncertain whether to be on his side yet or not. He was ten years younger than my sister, who had only recently turned thirty-eight, and very handsome with a muscular frame and beautiful skin. Of course, that also made him six years younger than you.

  ‘What would you like to know?’ he asked politely.

  ‘You want to be an actor, is that right?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Arjan, shaking his head.

  ‘That’s what we were told.’

  ‘I don’t want to be an actor,’ he said. ‘I am an actor.’

  ‘Right,’ you said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve been acting all my adult life.’

  ‘And are you in something at the moment?’

  ‘Not right now, no.’

  ‘Resting, I suppose,’ you said, nodding your head. ‘I hear a lot of actors do that. Well, it’s not as if you have to wait on tables, is it? Not with the money Rebecca earns.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t take any money from Rebecca,’ he replied with a certain dignity. ‘I get enough work to pay my way.’

  ‘Arjan has just been cast in a major new television series,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s going to play a serial rapist who dismembers his victims afterwards and dines on their internal organs. So who knows where that will lead?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to work in film or the theatre?’ you asked, an edge coming into your tone now.

  ‘I’m happy to take whatever work comes my way,’ said Arjan, taking no obvious offence from your condescension. ‘Maybe I’ll get some film work in the future but that doesn’t happen for everyone. As long as I get to keep acting, I don’t mind.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m sure you didn’t grow up hoping to be a serial rapist. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it?’

  ‘Anthony Hopkins played something like that in The Silence of the Lambs, didn’t he?’ I asked. ‘And he won an Oscar for it. What was he called again?’

  ‘Hannibal Lecter,’ said Mum. ‘Hannibal the Cannibal.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep after watching that,’ said Rebecca with a shudder.

  ‘Actually, I played Laertes for six months once,’ said Arjan.

  ‘Really?’ you replied, raising an eyebrow as if you didn’t believe him. ‘In whose Hamlet?’

  Arjan frowned, clearly confused by the question. ‘Shakespeare’s,’ he said.

  ‘No, I meant who played Hamlet?’ you said with a derisive sigh, and when he named the actor you shook your head and claimed that you’d never heard of him, even though I knew you had. We’d watched him in a mini-series not so long before and both thought he was rather good.

  ‘I’ve done some other classical theatre too,’ said Arjan. ‘I played Perkin Warbeck at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and Bonario in Volpone at the Edinburgh Festival. And last year I played McCann in The Birthday Party, although I didn’t get great reviews for that.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ you asked, smirking. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘The critics said I was too young for the part. It’s meant for a much older man. Someone your age, I think.’

  I was taking a drink of my wine when he said this and almost snorted it out when I saw the expression on your face.

  ‘Well, I’m not an actor,’ you said, after a lengthy pause. ‘I prefer to create the words, not just stand on a stage and parrot them like a … like a …’ You struggled to finish the simile.

  ‘Like a parrot?’ suggested Rebecca, delighted by how her lover had scored such an easy victory over you.

  ‘Actually, I read your novel,’ continued Arjan, and it seemed that he’d built up his confidence now. We both looked up to see which one of us he was talking to.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to.’

  ‘I didn’t read it because I was mee
ting you today. I’d already read it before I met Rebecca. Maybe two years ago? I liked it very much.’

  ‘What did you like about it exactly?’ you asked, and I turned to look at you, surprised by the question. Were you trying to catch him out in a lie, was that it?

  ‘I liked the story,’ he replied. ‘I liked the characters. And I liked the way it was written.’

  ‘Could you be a little more specific?’ you asked, and I felt my stomach sink, certain that, having given such a bland response, the chances were that he couldn’t be. ‘You see, it’s always helpful for a writer to know which passages particularly impressed a reader. We’re such bad judges of our own work.’

  He looked at you silently for a few moments and I could see that he knew you were trying to take him down a peg or two. You held each other’s gaze before he turned back to me, placing his wine glass down on the table.

  ‘The moment where the girl takes her uncle’s car,’ he said. ‘And she’s been drinking and crashes into a ditch. The doors, they were …’ He thought about it. ‘What’s the word? They couldn’t open the doors because they were squashed between two trees, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I liked the tension in that scene. And when she climbed into the back seat to escape. I did something like that myself once. Took my uncle’s car, I mean, without him knowing. And I was in a crash. The girl I was with, a girl I liked very much, she was badly injured. And she never forgave me.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked.

  ‘The windscreen smashed and hundreds of slivers of glass went into her face. She needed a lot of surgery.’

  ‘And did it work?’ I asked. ‘The surgery, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, but there were still some scars. Anyway, I liked this passage very much. You write about fear very well.’