by Sam Taylor
... water torture used by the Chinese. That vicious circle of temptation, seduction and remorse which the two of us kept repeating, like a famished dog chasing its tail . . . well, there was certainly something purgatorial about it. What got to me in the end, though, was the pain in her eyes. By continuing to love her, I was turning my sweetheart into the most miserable wretch on earth, and for a few weeks after we finally stopped seeing each other, the thought that I had thereby ended her agony was enough of a consolation to keep the blackness at bay.
Soon, however, the sleepless nights, the unrelieved banality and futility of the days, the haunting knowledge that she was living her life, with another man, only two or three miles from where I stood, howling for the want of her, became too much. I saw that I had escaped purgatory only to find myself in Hell.
Finally, in early May, I decided to make a clean break. Those weeks of transition - the quitting of my job and room, the packing of my belongings, the muted farewells to the few people I could still call friends - are, in my recollection, characterised by a kind of numbness. The one person (other than Angelina) who loved me, I did not even call; the thought of contacting Ivan again, only to tell him that I was leaving the country, was too sad to contemplate. Of the sensations of spring undoubtedly blossoming around me, I recall nothing. In my memory, all is grey. I felt no emotion at all - no pain, no relief, no hope or fear - as I junked the remains of my life in London and booked passage on a ship to Australia. It was as though I had shed a skin, and a new creature -colder, less sensitive - had been born to take my place.
The voyage lasted nearly a month and consisted, for me, of little more than continual nausea. I shared a cabin with ten other male passengers, most of them the lowest dregs of humanity; the air in that small, windowless room was almost unbreathable. To pay for my passage, I was obliged to work as a waiter in the staff canteen. The ceaseless . . .
... so much so that, after four or five months I was able to get through whole hours without being flooded by memories of her face and voice. Slowly the physical ache I had felt since our last parting began to ease, and I found myself drawn to other women.
The good weather helped. It was October by then - a time that, in England, would have been filled with pathos and remembrance, walking down the same leaf-carpeted avenues I had walked with her, breathing the same misty, smoke-scented air. Living in the southern hemisphere, I was spared such painful reminders. In Melbourne, the trees were budding, early flowers blossoming. It was true I had paid for my flight south by suffering two winters in a row, but at least I had avoided autumn; and, nursed through the anniversary of my joy by the soft distractions of spring, I felt as though time had somehow been accelerated, the healing process miraculously quickened.
The first woman with whom I had an affaire on that side of the globe was a secretary at the post office. Her name was Catherine Lewis: she was older than me and, though no beauty, had a pleasantly voluptuous body and a freeingly modern attitude towards sex. I remember with fondness our sticky bouts in the store cupboard after hours, her skirts riding up those hot, fleshy thighs and the sigh of entry to that other world, where one glimpses eternity even though one cannot remain there more than a few seconds. In some ways, the essential sameness of that moment, with Catherine and with Angelina, was a comfort to me. It suggested to me that what I had fallen in love with was the act of love itself, and that I need not pine for ever in the shadow of one particular passion.
It did not take me long to realise that this was wishful thinking. For, though I told myself that I enjoyed Catherine’s light-heartedness in regard to our lovemaking, there was also something in it that left me feeling empty and cheated. To hear her say briskly, in her flat, nasal accent, only a few seconds after orgasm, ‘Well, that was very nice, Martin. Thank you - I enjoyed that’, was disillusioning in the worst sense; I felt like the ladder to heaven had been pulled from beneath me, and that I must fall all the faster from those Olympian heights . . .
... trips with my new friends to the beach or the theatre, and many warm evenings passed in the bars of the old town, drinking the local beer among the wide-shouldered, red-faced natives. For the first time in more than a year, I felt happy; not happy in the same way I had felt with Angelina, of course, but at least not miserable, not aching with loneliness and regret. It was a shallow kind of existence, I freely admit, but at the time that was, I think, exactly what I needed. Perhaps, had I continued like that for another decade or so, I might eventually have been able to spend a night alone without being overwhelmed by sudden surges of panic and sadness. Perhaps I might, now, still be working in the sorting office, just a regular young suntanned Australian, winking at my colleagues and repeating the national mantra of ‘No worries’. Alas, it was not to be.
It was early autumn in Australia - the fourth of April 1893 to be precise - when I first heard, through a prostitute I knew, that a young British aristocrat called Ogilvy was frequenting the place where she worked. She told me about him as a matter of curiosity, not because he was young or rich or handsome - a surprising number of her clients were thus - but because he had the unusual habit of sobbing at the moment of ejaculation. In spite of her natural hard-heartedness, she was moved by the sight of this and would often stay with him for half an hour or so afterwards, stroking his hair and whispering sweet consolatory nothings into his ear.
I explained that I would be greatly interested to meet this gentleman, and she divulged to me the date and time of his next rendezvous. Thus it was that two evenings later, I was sitting in the salon, smoking a pipe and caressing one of the girls, when a tall, well-dressed Englishman walked in. I recognised him instantly, despite his shockingly changed state. His skin had turned grey, his body obese, and he had grown a ragged beard which concealed the natural handsomeness of his face. Worst of all, however, were his eyes, which were hollow-looking and bloodshot. I did not engage him in conversation then: it was apparent, despite his politeness, that he had only one thing on his mind. But later, seeing him ‘by chance’ in the street, I invited him to take a drink with me in a . . .
... excitement and confusion into which this threw me can readily be imagined. The news that Angelina was no longer married - that she was free - was so unexpected and glorious that the surge of hope it produced inside me was almost unbearable. At the same time, however, I was naturally disturbed by Ogilvy’s dark hints about her behaviour. His judgment was not unclouded, of course, and - given that she had rejected him - he had every reason to spread slander about her. But I had seen enough of poor Angelina’s nocturnal adventures myself to be concerned on her behalf, and I hadn’t entirely forgotten the story that Ivan Dawes had told me about her. Could it, after all, be true? I had, while in love with her, dismissed it as his invention, designed solely to keep me away from her - after all, she herself had told me the story of her past - but now the old doubts and fears came back to haunt me, and I no longer knew whom or what to believe.
One thing was certain: I had to return to England. Nothing could be resolved by my remaining in Melbourne. I had to find Angelina and talk to her. I had to discover the truth and - perhaps, perhaps, o suspenseful heart - reclaim the great love of my life.
He finished the story and put it down on the bed. He felt excited and afraid, though it was difficult to pinpoint the reason for either emotion. The story, for all its melodrama and artificiality, for all its missing pages, had stirred something inside him. The events and emotions it described, though patently fictional, were also disturbingly familiar.
When James tried to analyse the story, however, he became confused. Several of the images it contained corresponded almost exactly to certain memories, or hallucinations, that had come to him in recent days. The pink stain in the flesh of the apple; the jealous girl who had thrown all the clothes from the wardrobe; the night-time encounter with a policeman. He had remembered these events, and then he had read about them in this story. But how was that possible? Where did he fit into this myster
y? James felt as if the solution to this puzzle was standing there, clear and unconcealed, directly before his eyes, but that, perhaps because it was so close, so obvious, he could not see it. He thought of a detective story he had read once, by Edgar Allan Poe, in which a letter, for which the police had spent weeks methodically searching the culprit’s house, had been pinned to the wall, in plain sight, the whole time. James wondered if the solution to his mystery could be just as self-evident. What am I missing? he thought. What is it that I am failing to see?
I must admit I felt like laughing, watching the contortions that disfigured James’s face during these moments, feeling the thought-processes in his mind twist themselves into ever-more complex labyrinths. But I didn’t. After all, I knew how he felt. I had experienced the same torture once myself.
He spent the rest of the day in the bedroom, sifting through the contents of the wardrobe. There were lecture notes, drafts of stories and poems. There was a vinyl copy of 16 Lovers Lane by The Go-Betweens. There was a well-thumbed copy of the Borges book, Labyrinths, translated into English (it fell open at the story ‘Funes the Memorious’, which James read all the way through, shivering when he noticed the words ‘MEMORY IS HELL’ handwritten in the margin). And, most significantly of all, there were snapshots of Ian Dayton, Graham Oliver, Lisa Silverton, Anna Valere, taken in this house, the back garden, this very room; as soon as James saw their faces, he recalled their names; he remembered them. There were also several photographs of a plump, pale-faced girl who had, he knew instantly, been in love with him. As he studied each object, or tried on the clothes, memories swarmed around him. Dozens of them, hundreds of them; a dust storm of memories. But, to James’s dismay, he found not one single mention of his name in any of the notebooks; not one photograph of his face. It’s unbelievable, he thought: I remember all these faces, these names, these jackets and shirts - they fit me; they fit the holes in my memory - and yet I am not here anywhere. It was as though he had been erased from history.
But then another thought occurred to him. It was a simple idea, and yet it seemed to change everything. James had, until this moment, been working on the assumption that the clothes and photographs and notebooks belonged to Malcolm Trewvey. But, James thought, what if they are not his . . . what if they are mine? That would explain why James’s face was in none of the photographs - because James would have taken them. That would explain why his name was not in any of the notebooks - because to him, he would not be James Purdew, but me, myself, I. That would explain the presence of 16 Lovers Lane: it was his copy; the copy he had thought lost.
But if that was true, then what did Malcolm Trewvey have to do with all this? Who was he? James held his face in his hands. He was dizzy and exhausted, and the light in the bedroom was fading. Outside it was nearly dusk. He hadn’t eaten since early morning, and he felt suddenly weak with hunger. Unseeingly he walked downstairs. The telephone in the hallway started ringing again. He wondered who it could be, the person at the other end, trying so desperately, so patiently, to get through.
James went to his bedroom and, about to draw the curtains, looked out of the window. What did he see? The branches of the chestnut tree, moving in the wind; the shadow of the parked van on the pavement; lit-up windows in the houses across the road; all of this stained dark blue; and, too close to see clearly, a face. At first he thought it was someone else’s face - his face - but after a moment’s shock he realised it was his own reflection. He took a step back and focused on this mirror image. Strange, he thought, I almost look like . . .
And then, suddenly, he understood. ‘Of course,’ he whispered, ‘it all fits!’ That was why he had received letters addressed to Malcolm Trewvey. That was why Graham Oliver hated him. That was why he sympathised so powerfully with Martin Thwaite in Confessions of a Killer. That was why he remembered the song, ‘21 Love Street’. He had written the story! He had written the song! He was Martin Thwaite! He was Malcolm Trewvey! Stunned, James remembered the only time he had ever seen Malcolm Trewvey’s face: it had been outside the sex shop and . . . their eyes had met in mirrored glass. He had been looking at his own reflection.
For a few moments he was as though hypnotised; he saw and heard nothing. Then his ears picked up again on the vibration of the telephone’s ringing. The sound sparked off another thought: If I am Malcolm Trewvey, then the person at the other end must be . . . Anna Valere. This, he told himself, was what he’d been waiting for. This was the meaning of it all: the purpose, the secret, the grail.
He took a hacksaw from the toolbox in his bedroom and began sawing the wooden telephone box, the back-and-forth moan of the metal teeth in time with the desultory ringing of the phone. But this was too slow, he realised: she might hang up before he had opened the box. Remembering the axe he had seen in the shed, he ran outside. The garden was dark and for a while he got lost. All the time he prayed to the person at the other end not to hang up. When, eventually, he found the shed, he picked up the axe and ran all the way back to the telephone. He stood in front of the white box, his vision swimming and his lungs wheezing. For a moment all he could hear was the sound of his strained breathing, and he thought the phone must have stopped ringing. Finally he managed to catch and hold his breath, and to listen.
Brrrnnnggg. Brrrnnnggg.
Triumphant, he swung the axe head over his shoulder and brought it down on the wooden box. It collapsed in a mess of splinters and nails and the receiver fell from the hook. It dangled there at the end of the coiled wire. He threw the axe to the floor and put the receiver to his ear. ‘Hello?’ he said. At first there was silence, and James’s heart sank, but then a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’
James was about to say ‘Anna?’ when the woman announced, in a cold, mechanical voice, ‘I am calling on behalf of Malcolm Trewvey. He wishes to speak to you.’
James was too confused to speak. Malcolm Trewvey?
‘He would like to call round tomorrow morning,’ the woman continued. ‘Could you confirm that you will be on the premises at nine o’clock?’
‘Yes,’ James managed to gasp. The woman said, ‘Good, Mr Trewvey will see you then,’ and hung up.
James poured himself a glass of wine and tried to calm his flying thoughts. Malcolm Trewvey was coming to see him. The man whom he had followed and spied upon, whose guilty secret he had tried to discover, now wished to speak to James. What could it mean? With a chill, he remembered that strange footnote to the story about the life of Tomas Ryal: the man who had accused the philosopher of murdering his fellow student had been called M. Trewvey. James began to worry that he had misunderstood the situation all along. Perhaps it was not he who had been following Malcolm Trewvey, but vice versa? Perhaps it was not Malcolm Trewvey who possessed a guilty secret, but James Purdew?
He lay awake in bed for several minutes, listening to the noises. Buzz buzz. Bang bang. He had slept badly and his head hurt. Bang bang. Buzz buzz. He put on a dressing gown and walked to the hallway. Buzz buzz. Bang bang. There was someone at the door. James looked at his watch: it was 8.59. Barely able to breathe for the fear that filled his chest, he opened the door.
A middle-aged man stood there. He looked ordinary, insignificant. ‘Hello,’ said the man.
‘Hello,’ said James.
‘My name is Malcolm Trewvey,’ said the man.
‘What?’ said James.
‘My name is Malcolm Trewvey,’ repeated the man. ‘My secretary telephoned you yesterday evening, I believe. I’m a member of the Scrabble Club of Great Britain.’
‘What?’ said James.
‘The Scrabble Club of Great Britain,’ repeated the man. ‘I live at number 12 Lough Street. I was talking to the postman yesterday and he said he thought he’d delivered some letters addressed to me at number 21. And I said, “Oh really? How odd.” And then it occurred to me that I hadn’t received my letters recently.’
‘What?’ said James.
‘My letters. The Scrabble Club of Great Britain sends participating
members nine letters each month, chosen at random of course, by a computer, you know, and each member then has to ring up with their highest-scoring word. It’s very exciting. You can win all sorts of prizes. They call it Red Letter Day, although the letters aren’t actually red. But anyway, I haven’t received mine recently. So I put two and two together, and I rang the Scrabble Club of Great Britain’s headquarters in London, and I asked them to check the details they have for me: my name and address and so on. And guess what? They had me down as 21 Lough Street. Someone must have got their numbers muddled up. Scrabbled, so to speak!’ The man laughed.
‘What?’ said James.
‘So . . . I was wondering, have you received any letters for me? Addressed to Malcolm Trewvey?’
The man stood smiling, hopefully.
‘No,’ said James.
And he closed the door.
James sat in the white armchair all morning. He did not eat. He did not move. He did nothing but breathe and stare into space. Not for the first time, he felt like a detective in someone else’s mystery; a detective who, instead of steadily tracking down the solution, finds himself further and further away from it with every chapter.
Someone should write a true-to-life detective story, James thought bleakly; an existential mystery in which the answer is not to be found, clear and logical, at the book’s end, but only to be glimpsed, or half-grasped, at various moments during its narrative; to be sensed throughout, like a nagging tune that you cannot quite remember, but never defined, never seen whole; to shift its shape and position and meaning with each passing day; to be sometimes forgotten completely, other times obsessed over, but never truly understood; not to be something walked towards but endlessly around.