by Ian Mcewan
We were shown into Tom Maschler’s grand office or library on the first floor of a Georgian mansion overlooking the square. When the publisher came in, almost at a run, I was the one who handed over the novel. He tossed it on the desk behind him, kissed me wetly on both cheeks and pumped Tom’s hand, congratulated him, guided him towards a chair and began to interrogate him, barely waiting for an answer to one question before starting the next. What was he living on, when were we getting married, had he read Russell Hoban, did he realise that the elusive Pynchon had sat in that same chair the day before, did he know Martin, son of Kingsley, would we like to meet Madhur Jaffrey? Maschler reminded me of an Italian tennis coach who once came to our school and in an afternoon of impatient jovial instruction rebuilt my backhand. The publisher was lean and brown, hungry for information, and pleasantly agitated, as though perpetually suspended on the edge of a joke, or a revolutionary new idea that might come to him through a chance remark.
I was grateful to be ignored and wandered up to the far end of the room and stood looking at the wintry trees in Bedford Square. I heard Tom, my Tom, say that he lived by his teaching, that he hadn’t yet read One Hundred Years of Solitude or Jonathan Miller’s book on McLuhan but intended to, and that no, he had no clear idea of his next novel. He skipped the question about marriage, agreed that Roth was a genius and Portnoy’s Complaint a masterpiece, and that the English translations of Neruda’s sonnets were exceptional. Tom, like me, knew no Spanish and was in no position to judge. Neither of us had read Roth’s novel at that point. His answers were guarded, even pedestrian, and I sympathised – we were the innocent country cousins, overwhelmed by the range and speed of Maschler’s references, and it seemed only right after ten minutes that we should be dismissed. We were too dull. He came with us to the top of the stairs. As he said goodbye he said he might have taken us to lunch at his favourite Greek place in Charlotte Street, but he didn’t believe in lunch. We found ourselves back on the pavement, a little dazed, and as we walked on spent a good while discussing whether the meeting had ‘gone well’. Tom thought on balance it had, and I agreed, though I actually thought it hadn’t.
But it didn’t matter, the novel, the terrible novel, was delivered, we were about to part, it was Christmas, and we ought to be celebrating. We wandered south, into Trafalgar Square, passing on the way the National Portrait Gallery and, like a couple of thirty years’ standing, we reminisced about our first meeting there – did we both think it was going to be a one-night affair, could we have guessed what would follow? Then we doubled back and went to Sheekey’s and managed to get in without a booking. I was wary of drinking. I had to go home and pack, get to Liverpool Street for a five o’clock train, and prepare to throw off my role as secret agent of the State and become a dutiful daughter, the one who was sleekly rising through the ranks of the Department of Health and Social Security.
But well ahead of the Dover sole, an ice bucket arrived followed by a bottle of champagne, and down it went, and before the next one came Tom reached across the table for my hand and told me he had a secret to confess and though he didn’t want to trouble me with it just before we separated, he wouldn’t sleep unless he told me. It was this. He didn’t have an idea, not even a scrap of an idea, for another novel and he doubted that he ever would. From the Somerset Levels – we referred to it as ‘the Levels’ – was a fluke, he had blundered into it by accident when he thought he was writing a short story about something else. And the other day, walking past Brighton Pavilion, an inconsequential line of Spenser had come to mind – Put in porphyry and marble do appear – Spenser in Rome, reflecting on its past. But perhaps it needn’t only be Rome. Tom found himself beginning to map out an article about poetry’s relation to the city, the city through the centuries. Academic writing was supposed to be behind him, there had been times when his thesis had driven him to despair. But nostalgia was creeping in – nostalgia for the quiet integrity of scholarship, its exacting protocols, and above all, for the loveliness of Spenser’s verse. He knew it so well, the warmth beneath its formality – this was a world he could inhabit. The idea for the article was original and bold, it was exciting, it crossed the boundaries of disparate disciplines. Geology, town planning, archaeology. There was an editor of a specialist journal who would be delighted to have something from him. Two days before, Tom had found himself wondering about a teaching job he had heard was going at Bristol university. The MA in international relations had been a diversion. Perhaps fiction was too. His future lay in teaching and academic research. How fraudulent he had felt at Bedford Square just now, how constrained during the conversation. It was a real possibility that he would never write another novel again, or even a story. How could he admit such a thing to Maschler, the most respected publisher of fiction in town?
Or to me. I disengaged my hand. This was my first free Monday in months but I was back at work for the Sweet Tooth cause. I told Tom it was a well-known fact that writers felt emptied out at the end of their labours. As if I knew a thing about it, I told him that there was nothing incompatible about writing the occasional scholarly essay and writing novels. I cast about for an example of a celebrated writer who did just that, but couldn’t think of one. The second bottle arrived and I embarked on a celebration of Tom’s work. It was the unusual psychological slant of his stories, their strange intimacy in combination with his worldly essays on the East German uprising and the Great Train Robbery, it was that breadth of interest that marked him out, and was the reason why the Foundation was so proud to have an association with him, why the name of T.H. Haley was conjured in literary circles, and why two of its most important figures, Hamilton and Maschler, wanted him to write for them.
Tom was watching me throughout this performance with his little smile – it sometimes infuriated me – of tolerant scepticism.
‘You told me you couldn’t write and teach. Would you be happy on an assistant lecturer’s salary? Eight hundred pounds a year? That’s assuming you get a job.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.’
‘The other night you told me you might write an article for Index on Censorship about the Romanian security service. What’s it called?’
‘The DSS. But it’s really about poetry.’
‘I thought it was about torture.’
‘Incidentally.’
‘You said it might even become a short story.’
He brightened a little. ‘It might. I’m meeting my poet friend Traian again next week. I can’t do anything without his say-so.’
I said, ‘No reason why you shouldn’t write the Spenser essay too. You have all this freedom and that’s what the Foundation wants for you. You can do anything you like.’
After that he seemed to lose interest and wanted to change the subject. So we talked about the things that everybody was talking about – the government’s energy-conserving three-day week, due to start on New Year’s Eve, yesterday’s doubling of the price of oil, the several explosions round town in pubs and shops, ‘Christmas presents’ from the Provisional IRA. We discussed why people seemed strangely happy conserving energy, doing things by candlelight, as though adversity had restored purpose to existence. At least, it was easy enough to think so as we finished the second bottle.
It was almost four when we said our goodbyes outside Leicester Square Tube station. We embraced and kissed, caressed by a warming breeze wafting up the subway steps. Then he set off on a mind-clearing walk to Victoria station while I headed to Camden to pack my clothes and meagre Christmas presents, blearily aware there was no chance of making my train and that I would be late for Christmas Eve dinner, an occasion to which my mother gave selfless days of preparation. She wouldn’t be pleased.
I took the six thirty, got in just before nine, and walked from the station, crossing the river then following by a clear half-moon the semi-rural path along it, past dark boats tethered to the bank, inhaling air icy and pure, blown in across East Anglia from Siberia. The taste of
it reminded me of my adolescence, its boredom and longing, and all our little rebellions tamed or undone by the desire to please certain teachers with dazzling essays. Oh, the elated disappointment of an A minus, as keen as a cold wind from the north! The path curved below the rugger pitches of the boys’ school, and the spire, my father’s spire, creamily lit, rose up across the expanse. I cut away from the river to cross the pitches, passed the changing rooms that used to smell to me of all that was sourly fascinating about boys, and got into the cathedral close by an old oak door that never used to be locked. It pleased me that it was unlocked now, still squeaked on its hinge. It took me by surprise, this walk across an ancient past. Four or five years – nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown-up and how unchanged I was.
I don’t know why my heart beat harder as I went towards the house. As I came closer I slowed. I’d forgotten just how immense it was and it amazed me now that I could ever have taken this pale-red brick Queen Anne palace for granted. I advanced between the bare forms of cut-back rose shrubs and box hedging rising from beds framed by massive slabs of York paving. I rang, or pulled, the bell and to my astonishment the door opened almost immediately and there was the Bishop, with a grey jacket on over his purple clerical shirt and dog collar. He would be conducting a midnight service later. He must have been crossing the hall when I rang, for answering the door was something that would never occur to him. He was a big man, with a vague and kindly face, and a boyish though entirely white forelock that he was always brushing aside. People used to say that he resembled a benign tabby cat. As he processed in stately manner through his fifties, his gut had swelled, which seemed to suit his slow self-absorbed air. My sister and I used to mock him behind his back and sometimes were even bitter, not because we disliked him – far from it – but because we could never get his attention, or never for long. To him our lives were distant foolish things. He didn’t know that sometimes Lucy and I fought over him in our teens. We longed to have him for ourselves, if only for ten minutes in his study, and we each suspected the other was the more favoured. Her tangle with drugs, pregnancy and the law had permitted her many such privileged minutes. When I’d heard about them on the phone, despite all my concern for her, I felt a twinge of the old jealousy. When would it be my turn?
It was now.
‘Serena!’ He said my name with a kindly, falling tone, with just a hint of mock surprise, and put his arms about me. I dropped my bag at my feet and let myself be enfolded, and as I pressed my face into his shirt and caught the familiar scent of Imperial Leather soap, and of church – of lavender wax – I started to cry. I don’t know why, it just came from nowhere and I turned to water. I don’t cry easily and I was as surprised as he was. But there was nothing I could do about it. This was the copious hopeless sort of crying you might hear from a tired child. I think it was his voice, the way he said my name, that set me off.
Instantly, I felt his body tense, even though he continued to hold me. He murmured, ‘Shall I fetch your mother?’
I thought I knew what he was thinking – that now it was the turn of his older daughter to be pregnant or lost to some other modern disaster, and that whatever womanly mess was now soaking his freshly ironed purple shirt was better managed by a woman. He needed to hand the matter over and continue to his study to look over his Christmas Day sermon before dinner.
But I didn’t want him to let go of me. I clung to him. If only I could have thought of a crime, I would have begged him to summon down the magic cathedral powers to forgive me.
I said, ‘No, no. It’s all right, Daddy. It’s just, I’m so happy to be back, to be … here.’
I felt him relax. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t happiness at all. I couldn’t have said precisely what it was. It had something to do with my walk from the station, and with coming away from my London life. Relief perhaps, but with a harsher element, something like remorse, or even despair. Later I persuaded myself that drinking at lunchtime had softened me up.
This moment on the doorstep could not have lasted more than thirty seconds. I got a grip of myself, picked up my bag and stepped inside, apologised to the Bishop, who was still regarding me warily. Then he patted my shoulder and resumed his route across the hall to his study and I went into the cloakroom – easily the size of my Camden bedsit – to douse my red and swollen eyes with cold water. I didn’t want an interrogation by my mother. As I went to find her I was aware of all that used to suffocate me and now seemed comforting – the smell of roasting meat, the carpeted warmth, the gleam of oak, mahogany, silver and glass, and my mother’s spare, tasteful arrangements in vases of bare hazel and dogwood branches, minimally sprayed with silver paint to denote a light frost. When Lucy was fifteen and trying, like me, to be a sophisticated adult she came in one Christmas evening and gestured at the branches and exclaimed, ‘How positively Protestant!’
She earned herself the sourest look I ever saw the Bishop give. He rarely stooped to reprimands but this time he said coldly, ‘You’ll rephrase that, young lady, or go to your room.’
Listening to Lucy intone contritely something like, ‘Mummy, the decorations are truly wonderful,’ gave me the giggles and I decided that I had better be the one who left the room. ‘Positively Protestant’ became an insurrectionary catchphrase for us two, but always muttered well out of the Bishop’s hearing.
There were five of us at dinner. Lucy had come across town with her long-haired Irish boyfriend, six-foot-six Luke, who worked for the city council as a parks gardener and was an active member of the recently formed Troops Out movement. As soon as I knew this I made a quick decision not to be drawn into argument. It was easy enough because he was pleasant and funny, despite a phoney American drawl, and later, after dinner, we found common ground in a discussion, almost an outraged celebration, of loyalist atrocities, of which I knew almost as many as he did. At one point during the meal the Bishop, who had no interest in politics, leaned across and enquired mildly whether Luke would be expecting a massacre of the Catholic minority if he had his way and the army was to withdraw. Luke replied that he thought the British army had never done much for the Catholics in the north, who would be able to take care of themselves.
‘Ah,’ my father replied, pretending to be reassured. ‘A bloodbath all round then.’
Luke was confused. He didn’t know if he was being mocked. In fact he wasn’t. The Bishop was merely being polite and now was moving the conversation on. The reason he wouldn’t be drawn into political or even theological debate was because he was indifferent to other people’s opinions and felt no urge to engage with or oppose them.
It turned out to have suited my mother’s schedule to serve up a roast dinner at ten o’ clock and she was pleased to have me home. She still took pride in my job and the independent existence she had always wanted for me. I had boned up once more on my supposed department in order to be able to answer her questions. A good while back I’d discovered that nearly all the girls at work had told their parents exactly who they worked for, on the understanding that they wouldn’t press for details. In my case my cover story had been elaborate and well researched and I had told too many unnecessary white lies. It was too late to go back. If my mother had known the truth, she would have told Lucy, who might never speak to me again. And I wouldn’t have wanted Luke to know what I did. So I bored myself for a few minutes while I described departmental views on reforming the social-security system, wishing that my mother would find it as dull as the Bishop and Lucy did and would stop prompting me with bright new questions.
It was one of the blessings of our family life, and perhaps of Anglicanism in general, that we were never expected to go to church to hear or see our fa
ther officiate. It was of no interest to him whether we were there or not. I hadn’t been since I was seventeen. I don’t think Lucy had been since she was twelve. Because this was his busy time of year, he stood abruptly just before dessert and wished us all a happy Christmas and excused himself. From where I sat, it looked like my tears had left no stain on the ecclesiastical shirt. Five minutes later we heard the familiar swish of his cassock as he passed the dining room on his way to the front door. I had grown up with the ordinariness of his daily business, but now, returning home after an absence, from my London preoccupations, it seemed exotic to have a father who dabbled routinely in the supernatural, who went out to work in a beautiful stone temple late at night, house keys in his pocket, to thank or praise or beseech a god on our behalf.
My mother went upstairs to a small spare bedroom known as the wrapping room to see to the last of her presents while Lucy, Luke and I cleared away and washed the dishes. Lucy tuned the kitchen radio to John Peel’s show and we toiled away to the kind of progressive rock I hadn’t heard since Cambridge. It no longer moved me. Where once it had been the call sign of a freemasonry of the liberated young and promised a new world, now it had shrunk into mere songs, mostly about lost love, sometimes about the open road. These were striving musicians like any others, keen for advancement in a crowded scene. Peel’s informed ramblings between the tracks suggested as much. Even a couple of pub rock songs failed to stir me. It must be, I thought as I scrubbed at my mother’s baking dishes, that I was getting old. Twenty-three next birthday. Then my sister asked if I wanted to go for a stroll round the close with her and Luke. They wanted to smoke and the Bishop wouldn’t tolerate it in the house, at least, not from family – an eccentric position in those days, and an oppressive one, we thought.