by James Lasdun
‘So she was being complimentary then.’
‘Your tutor? Definitely.’
‘Well, anyway, she was certainly extremely interested in – what you said: the combination of brutality and tenderness.’
It appeared this old professor of his had come to consider herself not only his academic instructor but also his tutor in matters of erotic technique. On breaking off the affair (which she did after a few weeks, as brusquely as she’d started it) she assured Marco she’d taught him an infallible method for arousing women, and guaranteed him limitless success with future lovers if he applied it.
‘I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? She was this sophisticated woman who seemed to know everything there was to know about sex, while I was this nineteen-year-old … faun.’
He fell silent.
‘Did you try it out?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. A couple of times, with girls my age.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it worked, sort of. Or anyway, no one objected. But I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt pretty awful. I made a conscious decision never to use it again, and I didn’t. It was ancient history by the time I met Julia.’
I asked him what, precisely, ‘it’ was. An uncomfortable look appeared on his face, but then he nodded in that defiantly reasonable way of his, as if to assure me I had every right to ask.
‘I suppose you could call it a sort of stylised sexual aggressiveness … Or not aggressiveness, more just a kind of play-acting of confidence. Brutish confidence. You know the way gangsters in movies say: “I got this”, when they’re volunteering to take care of some tricky situation? That was pretty much the mental attitude behind it.’
‘I got this?’
He nodded.
‘Yeah. As in, you don’t have to worry, I’ll make this happen, for both of us. Anyway, you ask if Renata Shenker’s lawyers are likely to find other women to corroborate Julia’s story, and the answer is, I hope not, but I’m a little afraid one of those girls might look back and decide it wasn’t all as harmless as they thought at the time. Actually, I’m more than a little afraid. I’m having serious cold sweats about it.’
I wasn’t sure what to make of this story. It seemed believable enough, but it smacked also of pre-emptive defence; calculated insinuation. I wondered if Marco’s real motive for telling it was to plant the suggestion that he, too, had been victimised in his turn; sexually manipulated by a person in power. If so, did that mean he was moving towards an admission of guilt concerning Julia, and coaching me to present his excuses for him if and when I ever got around to writing about him?
That same afternoon he took me into one of the small rooms off the corridor on the second floor of his house. It was a sort of junk room, piled high with photographic equipment and dusty old computer parts. Opening the drawer of a metal file cabinet, he lifted a stack of dog-eared papers.
‘See that?’
I peered in, and flinched back.
It was a gun, a handgun, black and blocky, with a square barrel and curved indentations along the handle.
‘Jesus, Marco!’
My shock seemed to please him. He gave a grim smile.
‘I got it when I first moved here. The neighbourhood was rougher then. There were a lot of break-ins. Joan made me buy it.’ Joan was his ex-wife, Alicia’s mother. ‘It’s a Glock, which is what the cops here carry. Needless to say I never had any use for it, till now.’
‘You’re planning to shoot someone?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Who?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘Julia?’
‘Yeah, right, I’m going to smuggle it onto a plane and shoot her through her letter box. No, dummy, guess!’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He glared at me.
‘I think you’re being obtuse.’
I was. I’d guessed what he meant but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I’d known only one person in my life who’d killed himself, a school friend who’d jumped from a building. He’d led a fairly desperate existence from the age of fifteen when, for reasons he never discussed, he walked out of his parents’ comfortable home in Highgate and moved into a squalid bedsit where he lived like some Dickensian waif, betting on horses (for which he had a certain gift), eating tinned soup and trying to keep up with his homework. Uncomplaining, unassuming, introverted to the point of not being able to look even his friends in the eye, he’d come to embody my idea of what it was to be ‘a suicide’, which was to say someone about whom the surprising thing (at least in hindsight) wasn’t that he killed himself, but that he kept going for as long as he did. Marco, secure on the foundations of his happy and privileged upbringing, hale and vigorous even under the stress of his resurgent ordeal, could not have been less like him. I knew rationally that there were plenty of different reasons why people killed themselves, but I couldn’t take him seriously as a candidate for that particular act. He was too vivid even in his dejection; too solidly anchored in life.
‘Marco,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘I mean, come on!’
‘What?’
‘You have a daughter …’
‘It’d be for her sake, mainly, if I do it,’ he said.
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘My sake too, obviously. I don’t have the temperament to live as a pariah. I’m too attached to the things I’d lose. I like working. I like being on panels and juries. I like being invited to dinner parties at people’s houses. I like having an intelligent, glamorous girlfriend. I like knowing my daughter and her friends feel comfortable around me. I care what the world thinks of me. Maybe too much, but that’s the way I am. I don’t have your appreciation for solitude, or the wilderness.’
It was an eloquent speech, and it touched me, but at the same time its very eloquence affirmed my sense of his fundamental robustness.
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But still …’
He stood close, eyeing me fiercely from under the sharp angle of his brow. I knew he was waiting for me to be properly appalled – for his sake; not just his daughter’s – at what he was contemplating. I couldn’t bring myself to oblige him, though. There seemed to me something maudlin about the situation, melodramatic, that shouldn’t be indulged. And I couldn’t help feeling that slight pressure again; a not-so-subtle attempt to reinforce his image in my mind as a figure of tragic honour and pathos, and to lay claim to the role of victim in this story. I didn’t necessarily dispute either point, but I didn’t like the feeling of being coerced.
‘I’m sure you’ll win this battle, Marco,’ I said.
He slid the drawer shut and turned away with a look of such unmistakable hurt that I felt at once ashamed of my coldness, and spent the rest of the day trying to make up for it.
4
But I was right about him winning the battle, even though it came about for reasons so unexpected as to seem absurd; farcical almost.
I was already in London, at my mother’s hospital bedside, while this next set of events was occurring. As I say, I had more pressing things on my mind than Marco’s troubles, and Marco was tactful enough to keep his distance. I heard nothing from him, in fact, until this particular chapter was over. He sent me an email: ‘Just to let you know, Renata Shenker backed down. No need to write back, but I thought you’d want to be told. Hope you’re bearing up okay. M’.
I was curious, naturally, and despite the drama unfolding in my own life, I emailed back to arrange a call.
He kept his tone carefully restrained when we spoke, but I could tell he was jubilant; revelling again in the joy of victory. Even the roundabout way he told me the story had something transparently gleeful about it. He’d obviously enjoyed himself thinking of the juiciest way to recount it.
‘Have you heard of Hanna Reitsch?’ he began.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She was an aviator. First woman to fly a helicopter. First woman to compete in the world gliding championships. Huge celebrity in
her lifetime. Kennedy invited her to the White House. Nehru flew in a glider with her over New Delhi. In the sixties she lived in Ghana where she had an affair with Nkrumah. Died in ’seventy-nine. Anyway, Julia turns out to have been a big fan of hers, and it seems she wanted to write a book about her. This was after her TV career had gone belly up. Ditto her return to radio. She’d had a spell as partner in some short-lived gallery, then I think a brief debacle in PR, and then some time in the nineties she decided she was a writer. She did some magazine articles, fluff mostly, but then she got interested in this Hanna Reitsch woman, and started researching a biography. You’re sure you don’t know the name?’
‘It does ring a faint bell.’
‘You never saw that Carlo Ponti movie Operation Crossbow?’
‘No.’
‘Or Hitler: The Last Ten Days?’
‘Nope.’
‘How about Downfall?’
‘With Bruno Ganz? Yes. Oh, right.’ It came back to me: ‘She was Hitler’s test pilot.’
‘Bingo. So Julia fires off a proposal for this book. The proposal gets read by a friend of hers who used to read for a publisher back in the nineties. Our investigator tracked this woman down and she told him about this proposal and the report she’d written on it. He found copies of both in the publisher’s archives in Croydon. They make fascinating reading. It seems this new heroine of Julia’s was an unrepentant Nazi – Kennedy and the rest notwithstanding. She wore the Iron Cross with diamonds that Hitler gave her, to her dying day. In her last interview she said, quote: “I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism.”’
‘Julia didn’t know that?’
‘Oh, she knew it. That’s the point. She appears to have found the woman’s, uh, constancy altogether admirable. She positively gushes about it. Let me read you the last paragraph of her proposal: “I want to tell the tale of this heroic woman whose physical courage and astonishing technical skills were matched only by her refusal to betray her own principles. She was no more reluctant to acknowledge her belief in National Socialism, than she was to test-pilot a V-1 Flying Bomb; no more afraid of denouncing modern-day Germany as a ‘Land of bankers’, than she’d been to fly General von Greim out of the bunker under enemy fire in order to deliver the Führer’s last commands to the Luftwaffe. I hope to write a book that will do justice to this brave, stubborn, uncompromising, altogether extraordinary individual.”’
‘Christ,’ I said.
‘Unbelievable, right? Our old friend Julia Gault, a Nazi sympathiser!’
I chafed a bit at that.
‘Well, as you said, it’s the constancy she’s admiring, not the principles themselves.’
‘I don’t know,’ Marco replied, suavely enough. ‘She clearly has no problem with that phrase, “Land of bankers”, which you have to admit has a certain Julius Streicher-esque ring to it …’
‘But I mean, didn’t you tell us when you came to visit that she was even further to the left than you?’
‘That was when she was young. People adapt their politics to their circumstances. She certainly wouldn’t be the first unhappy person to get lost in these particular woods.’
‘You don’t think it’s all just clumsy wording?’
‘Doesn’t matter what I think, does it? What matters is what Renata Shenker thought when we brought it to her attention, and clearly she thought it was more than clumsy.’
‘Well, Renata’s husband was a camp survivor,’ I said. Then I realised I’d been a little slow on the uptake. ‘Oh, but you factored that in. I see.’
‘We did think it might weigh in our favour. But even Julia’s reader friend seems to have been shocked. Listen to her report. Here’s what she says: “… I have to confess I fear my old chum might have gone off the deep end with this idea …”’
‘Okay, it’s badly expressed,’ I said, ‘but I still think it’s obvious what she’s trying to say. She’s admiring the woman’s stubbornness, not her actual beliefs …’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Either way it did the trick.’
I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to quarrel with Marco, and I wasn’t even sure why I was defending Julia in the first place. I had to admit I found her interest in this Überfrau from the Third Reich depressing, regardless of where her sympathies precisely lay. But I suppose I wanted the fight between her and Marco to be about what happened or didn’t happen in that Belfast hotel room. I didn’t want to see her brought down by some stupid smear, even if it turned out to be deserved. Also, I didn’t like the thought of dear old Renata Shenker being, effectively, blackmailed.
Marco must have taken my silence for disapproval.
‘Look, all we did was send Renata a copy of both documents with a note saying she might be interested in taking a look. For all I know she was grateful to have had it brought to light before she went ahead and published. Might have been embarrassing for her if it came out after …’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’d have kept it decently under wraps,’ I said.
‘Now, now! Nobody threatened her. We certainly didn’t force her to dump the book.’
‘I’d say it was a foregone conclusion, given who she was married to. Not to mention the Whitethorne Press being a major publisher of Holocaust memoirs.’
He chuckled.
‘What can I tell you? We turned out to have the more powerful victim card, and we were damned if we weren’t going to play it. But don’t forget it was Julia who created it in the first place.’
‘Yes. And her so-called friend who put it in your hands.’
‘The reader? Ex-friend, I should have said. One of many ex-friends, it would seem. She seems to have a gift for alienating people, poor Julia.’
Yes, poor Julia, I thought. Nothing seemed to work out for her. I felt sorry for her in spite of everything. Her voice on Marco’s answering machine echoed in my ears, distress and rage blended in it indistinguishably: I want you to know you haven’t succeeded in silencing me … It seemed to me that whatever force was impelling her forward in this course of action, whether it was a real thirst for justice, or a deluded sense of injury, or just the pure malice and greed Marco believed it to be, she was clearly powerless in its grip, and clearly suffering.
‘How did she react?’
‘Julia? No idea. Not my concern. My position at this point is that Julia Gault can rot in hell.’
‘Well, I’m glad it’s finally over,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. We’ll celebrate again when you’re back.’
I got off the phone, confused and dissatisfied, and thoroughly perplexed by my own lurching sympathies.
5
That was where things had stood when I met Renata at my mother’s funeral a week later.
Needless to say, she hadn’t been remotely ‘grateful’ at having her author’s misstep of twenty years back brought to her attention (or, more accurately, shoved in her face). I suspected she’d have pressed ahead with the book if it hadn’t been for the thought of her dear departed Otto turning in his grave. I don’t think she was afraid of public opinion, but she’d been devoted to her husband; they’d built the Whitethorne Press together, and it was surely the case that he wouldn’t have wanted her mixed up with an admirer of some member of Hitler’s inner circle. I pictured her in that little office I’d visited in my twenties, sighing heavily amid the stacks of manuscripts as she weighed her options and made her reluctant decision to ditch Julia’s ill-fated memoir. Well, Sir Alec Rosedale had judged his opponent nicely. But he was known for that, of course.
I saw him at the funeral and again, later, at the reception we gave at my mother’s house. He and Gabriella were standing at the back of the drawing room by the old Dutch spinet my father had rescued from a burning building during the War, talking with a group of other elderly people.
My instinct was to avoid him if I could. Not that I’d taken Renata’s side against him – I was trying to maintain a scrupulous neutrality – but on a personal level it would
have felt treacherous to have a friendly conversation with him, having just parted from her.
But Gabriella spotted me, her angular, well-preserved, carefully made-up features lighting up in an oddly excited smile. She tugged at her husband’s arm and he too smiled when he recognised me – less dramatically, but still with an odd eagerness, as if we were much better acquainted than we really were.
Detaching themselves from their group, they squeezed through the packed room towards me. There was no possibility of avoiding them.
After offering their condolences, they brought the subject around to Marco, telling me how pleased they were that he and I had become such good friends, and how deeply touched Marco had been by my support.
Gabriella did most of the talking. Even though she’d spent most of her long life outside the world of fashion, she was still invested, in my eyes, with the glamour from her distant past as a runway model. Her firm, balletic gestures and severe upright carriage were impossible not to notice, as she stood before me, wafting a strong scent of roses. She wore a tailored jacket of ruched black chiffon with a large emerald brooch that brought out the grassy green of her eyes; the same colour that glinted, in certain lights, among the browner hues of her son’s. Her voice had the trace of a Milanese accent, its liquid sibilants and refined vowels giving it a sort of furtive, corrupted, beguiling sensuality.
‘Marco says you’ve been a brick, an absolute saviour. He speaks of you often. I can’t tell you how grateful we are. Of course, we all feel very sad for this crazy woman, don’t we, Alec? And I hope she’s getting the psychological help she so obviously needs. But as a mother, I can tell you there were times when I wanted to go to her house and strangle her!’
Alec stood beside her, nodding at intervals, frail-looking with his wisps of spun-sugar hair and shrivelled pink cheeks, but with a gleam of alert intelligence in his eyes. His wren-like face had always had something impish about it, I remembered; an air of mischievous innocence that, from the research I’d done on him for my unwritten book about these characters from my parents’ world, belied a ferocious legal mind and a willingness to go to unusual lengths to win a case. Perhaps because I knew this, I had an odd feeling that under the appearance of a fragile old man conserving his energies by letting his younger wife do the talking, the reality was closer to that of some discreetly powerful sovereign carefully monitoring an ambassador to whom he had entrusted a precise and delicate task.