by Luke Brown
At the very moment I landed, we heard Belinda and Amanda’s voices. I dived into a cubicle and locked the door.
‘The cheek of it,’ said Belinda. ‘Well done Katy for spotting him.’
‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Hasn’t he done enough? Oh, hello, Olivia. Are you all right? You look flushed.’
‘Hello, Amanda. Don’t mind me. What’s happening? It sounds dramatic.’
‘Ah, nothing for you to worry about,’ said Belinda. ‘Have we been introduced?’
‘Belinda, this is Olivia Klein, who reviews for the Guardian,’ began Amanda, and I listened to Belinda ask if she was reviewing My Biggest Lie. ‘That’s gone to our lead reviewer,’ said Olivia. Undaunted, Belinda suggested she could interview James Cockburn about putting the book together.
None of this calmed my mood. I had not thought about James doing interviews, but realised now that he might be all over the weekend papers.
Their voices trailed off. I’d never felt as nervous as this. It was shameful for me to be anywhere near this building – so what if it was my book being launched? I’d let Cockburn take that away from me, knowing that he was right – I’d written a passable novel that would sell in large numbers only if it was written by someone else. I hadn’t missed out. Not having my name on the cover of my book wasn’t the worst thing at all. The worst thing was having let Cockburn convince me that Craig wouldn’t mind, that he’d be very much amused, that what we were doing was creating a perfect tribute to his anarchic personality. But this was not our own special memorial for him. However we put it to ourselves, what we were doing was fucking him. He was dead and we were desecrating his memory, trying to make sure that the way he lived on would be forever false. It wasn’t a private funeral but a private execution; we were about to finish killing him once and for all. The very least I owed Craig was to be here to witness it.
It was not my first time in the women’s toilets. The sharing of cocaine is a pleasant excuse to challenge unnecessary gender segregation. I don’t need to say that this was not one of those enjoyably intimate occasions. I heard the door go. Had Olivia deserted me? I waited another minute and was about to make a run for it when the door went again, Olivia called ‘Quick!’ and I scuttled out to meet her. ‘It won’t be long till the speeches,’ she said. ‘You’ll be safe in the middle of a row. I’ve got nothing to do with this any more.’ She turned and walked away without looking back.
I came out at the end of a crowded room laid out with chairs in front of a small super-lit stage. There were TV cameras set up to either side. There might have been eight hundred people in the room. I saw Belinda at one side of the stage talking to Alejandro, and steered myself around to the other side of the crowd where she wouldn’t be able to see me. I looked out for Amanda, but couldn’t see her. This was ridiculous. What was I doing? Lauren Laverne was talking into a TV camera on one side of the room. I began to spot faces I knew. There was only a second or two for me to freeze and try to imagine what I would say to them and then my former colleagues were saying hello to me, surprising me with their smiles, by asking me how I was doing, by saying how pleased they were to see me. They were indignant about the way I had disappeared. I sent you text after text! I apologised (unless I tell you otherwise I am always apologising) and took a couple of numbers again on my new phone, gave away my new number. I took a glass of wine from a passing tray, helped myself to a canapé. That such simple remembered actions were still possible felt incredible to me.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the warm reception. I knew most people were polite and forgiving. But I had expected to detect the bad flavour of myself in the way they breathed next to me, expected their revulsion to be impossible to bear. Perhaps I could bear it. Once, in a clap clinic, the week after Sarah and I came properly together, I had been made to ring one by one the six women I had slept with in the last six months to tell them I might have chlamydia. It turned out I didn’t have chlamydia, or anything else, but encouraged by a male nurse with a shaved head I made my telephone confessions and waited to hear what a bastard I was. They were all so kind, so grateful. I had assumed I had given it to each of them and it was only afterwards I realised they had all assumed they had given it to me.
I sipped my wine and took another canapé. I was beginning to feel like I belonged there, and then I was forced to duck and pretend to tie a shoelace as Amanda walked past. ‘Take your seats please, everyone, speeches in five,’ she called.
I stood up again and looked around. There she was, my pen pal, Amy Casares, talking to James Cockburn. She turned and saw me; I watched her slow, red carnivorous smile. James was leaning into her, flirtatious, and hadn’t seen me. Amy, as you may know, is an astonishingly attractive woman. She has the hair of a Scandinavian, skin that has advertised moisturisers. She wears immaculate dresses casually, gives them the slightest suggestion of a messed-up sheet.
I saw she was about to call out to me and hurried over so she wouldn’t draw attention my way. It could only be a matter of minutes now before I was spotted and removed from the premises.
I charged into her, put my head in her blonde curls and squeezed her tightly. When I opened my eyes I could see James over her shoulder. I was pleased to see him looking worried. I hadn’t told him I was coming.
‘Liam!’ she said. ‘You’re looking so well. Considering, obviously. I’m so sorry about your dad. James was just saying how sad he was you couldn’t make it.’
‘Oh, really,’ I said, smiling at James. ‘No, I came here to surprise him.’ James looked around warily.
‘But how are you?’ Amy said. ‘It must have been such a shock.’
‘I’m fine. We can talk about it later. It’s so nice to see you.’
‘You too. I’m so surprised at this book,’ she said. In the shock of meeting so many old faces, I hadn’t even spotted the book table but now I followed her eyes to a pyramid of black-and-gold hardbacks. Even from quite far away I could spot the rubbery S&M supermatt finish on the black, a void rejecting the light of the chandelier above while the foil titles glittered in fool’s gold.
‘So that’s them,’ I said and James nodded sombrely.
‘I can’t wait to read it,’ Amy continued. ‘He must have written it round about the time I was in Buenos Aires with him. I never really believed he was writing a novel then.’
‘You might be in for a big surprise. Hey, James?’
‘I was just saying that we can’t say for certain exactly when he wrote it,’ said James. ‘Only when he gave it to Alejandro, and he’s only really guessing from memory.’
‘Weird he gave it to Alejandro,’ said Amy. ‘He was always so private about his writing. He wasn’t a sharer at all.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ said James. ‘Who knows – we may even find another novel!’
‘I’m sure we won’t,’ I said.
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Amy.
‘Just a feeling,’ I said, looking at James.
Take your seats, please came over the microphone. Amanda was standing on stage now. I moved so Cockburn’s tall body was between us. It could only be seconds now until my discovery. Other people in the crowd were looking at me as they went past to find a seat, not all of them in a friendly way.
Alejandro arrived and made himself smile. ‘Liam! Amy! Cockshop! Let’s all sit down.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ said James heavily. He walked away from us. He wouldn’t want Belinda to blame him for my presence here. I had been wondering for weeks now how much she knew of the novel’s provenance. She might not have wanted to ask many questions, even if she had doubts.
Amy took my arm and guided me into the second row from the front, right in the middle, with Alejandro to one side and Amy to the other. A few heads turned to look at me. ‘What on earth are they staring at?’ said Amy. ‘You’re very brave coming here, Liam. Ignore those fucking idiots.’
She said this fiercely enough to snap some heads back round to facing the sta
ge.
Belinda was walking up the steps now, the cameramen swinging around to follow her. She reached the top of the stage, stood in front of the mike and looked out.
In that instant she saw me and drew her head back involuntarily. She looked away. Then she looked back and stared hard into my eyes for the longest time before inclining her head towards the back of the room, to the exit. I stayed still, kept her gaze. She couldn’t throw me out without causing at least a disturbance, at worst a scandal. The cameras were on and who knew what I might have shouted if I’d been pulled out.
That was the last time she looked at me during her five-minute speech. It was consummately professional, warm, grave, intimate and always correct. How touched she was to see so many people who loved Craig Bennett’s writing gathered together. How sad that this was the last time we could welcome one of his novels into the world (unless we’re very lucky!). How wrong it is to have to do this without him here with us.
I wasn’t listening hard to her. She stood on the stage in front of a black curtain, the kind of curtain you had in small theatres like this. There had been a similar one in the community hall where we’d held Dad’s service. We put the head of the coffin down on the edge of the stage and pushed it along to the centre, squeaking against the boards. Belinda held Craig’s book in the air; he came in a smaller container.
Towards the end of Belinda’s speech, one of the cameramen came in closer to her. I looked behind me. There were familiar faces, book journalists, publishers, rock stars with author wives: the biggest book crowd I had been part of since Craig’s last party. The look on so many of their faces, confident of being in a gathering with a noble end: reading.
Such awful complacency. I hated them. There is nothing noble about reading novels. It is an escape, a throwing-off, an evasion. We are not good people.
Belinda finished and we all clapped. She didn’t look once in my direction on her way down. Then James appeared on the right of the stage and made his way up the stairs.
‘Here we go,’ muttered Alejandro. Amy reached over and squeezed my hand.
Standing in front of the microphone, James stared out at the crowd. He put a hand in his hair and swept it back. A chunk of it stood up dramatically and slowly wilted. He coughed. He stared out again. The cameras trained on him made the silence longer. His hair continued to wilt until he swept his hand back through it again. We waited for him to speak, growing more awkward. To my right, the bouncer who had denied me entrance was standing at the end of the aisle, keeping an eye on me, looking more bored than threatening.
‘I didn’t speak at Craig’s funeral,’ James began. ‘I’d only just got out of hospital after having fallen out of a window during the London Book Fair.’ (Titters from the crowd.) ‘I suppose that is amusing,’ he carried on, sardonically, disdainfully. ‘You all heard the gossip, I suspect.’ James looked from side to side at the crowd then raised his hand to his mouth and stage-whispered, ‘I was pushed. By Craig, of course. Because he was sleeping with my wife.’ James now smiled broadly. ‘He wasn’t sleeping with my wife.’ Now he frowned. ‘In fact, he never even tried to. We were most offended. My wife is a beautiful woman.’ (More titters from the crowd.) ‘The funniest reason I heard to explain why Craig pushed me out of the window was that he was angry about how much we were paying him. How marvellous that journalists think this is how the publishing industry works. Everyone here in the trade knows in which case it would be Craig’s agent who pushed me out of the window. Hello, Suzy, thanks for coming.’ I followed the direction of his gaze and saw Suzy Carling for the first time in six months. She wasn’t laughing but the crowd were loving the showman publishing, and the TV cameras would too. James paused to let the laughter die down and continued. ‘Craig himself was always amazed at how much money his books brought him. I wasn’t – he was brilliant, he made people want to read his books: what you paid for what you received was piffling. But I remember him saying, “I will never complain about the money I get paid from publishing books in case they realise how much they’re paying me.” I liked that they’re. I’m not sure he realised that I was “one of them”. He seemed to think sometimes that we were both getting away with the same great scam. I loved that about him. He was generous enough to think that his writing was a very small gift he could offer. Writers don’t normally continue to think like that after they’ve had a big success. Of course, most are never lucky enough to. It is rare that talent is rewarded with money.
‘No, Craig’s tastes never became more expensive. We’d still get through quite a lot of money together in the pub when he came to London, don’t get me wrong. But the rest of the time he was quiet, at home in Wales, trying to live the simple life, perhaps failing as much as he succeeded. All of you here who knew Craig knew his gentleness, knew it through his concern for you. If he liked you, he was concerned. When we argued it was because he was trying to look after me, because he was trying to stop me from falling over. Many of you may remember times he put himself in the way of your fall. No, he was not a pusher but a catcher.’
‘Well, that’s true at least,’ muttered Alejandro.
‘He was not a pusher but a catcher,’ repeated James sonorously, then laughed at himself. The tone of his voice was changing. He was trying to be jokey, cheerful, professional, but a revulsion was showing through, attacking his usual persona. He looked over at us and smiled again. ‘Make of that what you will.’ He straightened up again and paused. He suddenly looked stricken. ‘He is not around to catch us any more.’
I wondered to what extent he had planned to look like this at this point of his speech, how staged his presentation was. A month ago I had stood in front of the same sort of curtains, making a speech for Dad. Afterwards so many people came up to me and said how moved they had been. I had regretted it every day since, its fluency, its easy humour, cheap sentiment and professionalism. I had treated the occasion like another book launch. My sisters watching me in the front row. My simplifications. An excuse for a public-speaking contest. A brick wall spray-painted with a stickman.
James looked to be learning about that. His face contorted with disgust.
‘The next time I decide to do something stupid – more stupid even than falling out of a window – I will not have Craig to prevent me. Except, because he is not here, and will never be here again, I will have to remember him, what he loved about us and what we loved about him. So perhaps he will still protect me. It is one way to keep him alive, to keep me alive. And when I need a reminder of what he was like, or want to share Craig with someone who never met him, I will turn to the books.
‘This is why we are here today. There is one more book to read. In a while we will be hearing from this, an extract chosen by Craig’s sister Helen, who sadly can’t be here with us today as she’s expecting a baby this month. Craig’s agent Suzy Carling will read the extract, and a message from Helen. I want to thank Suzy and Helen, who together with myself are Craig’s literary executors. I want to thank them for choosing to work again with Craig’s long-term publisher Eliot, Quinn – we’ll have to hope that in his travels across the world Craig has left many more manuscripts lying around. Who knows what he might have left behind in a carrier bag in one of his eighty-four favourite bars? I will certainly be heading to one of them when I leave here tonight.’ James looked up at me and his face fell. ‘Sadly,’ he went on, ‘I think we may have already had more luck than we have deserved in finding this book.
‘Before I talk about what this book contains, I – I was going to say something in my speech now about another man who loved Craig. I’ve decided instead, on the spur of the moment, to talk about two other men who loved Craig and who both played an integral part in bringing us this novel – a novel I know you will want to buy and take home with you today.’
James had looked steadily towards Alejandro and me as he spoke, and the audience were turning as one to follow the direction of his gaze. I say as one, but there was a notable exception, Belinda, who was starin
g at the side of James’ head as if, if she concentrated hard enough, she could burn a hole in it. James was careful never to turn once in her direction.
‘The reason why I had only planned to speak of one of these men,’ said James, ‘is because I didn’t think the other one would turn up. Specifically, I didn’t think he would turn up because the bouncers on the door were given strict orders not to admit him.’ James smiled and the crowd laughed, assuming he was joking. ‘You think I’m joking but I’m not. What’s more, Belinda told me earlier that the bouncer carried out these orders and turned this man away. This is a man, I can tell you, who loves Craig so much I have learned he climbed through the window of the ladies’ toilets to be here. I’m talking about my friend and colleague Liam Wilson, who, having seen Craig Bennett have the heart attack that killed him, blamed himself for this, quit his job and moved to Buenos Aires. It was in this city we assume that Craig had written this novel My Biggest Lie, which we’re all here for today, perhaps at the same age as Liam, just a few years before he won the Booker Prize with his first published novel Talking to Pedro.
‘It was Liam himself who tracked down Craig’s best friend from those days. He joins us here tonight, Alejandro Montenegro. Without Liam introducing me to him at a memorable dinner in Buenos Aires three months ago, we would not be here tonight.
‘That is a story for another time. I’ve said Liam feels in some way responsible for the way Craig died. I’m not going to tell Liam not to blame himself – I won’t insult him that way – if he wants to blame himself, it’s for him to decide how long he should do this for and for him to go into why he does. I wish he had done something different that night that would have meant Craig was still alive, but I’m not sure what that something is, or that I would have done it. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone could have done something different. We have to remember that it was Craig who made the biggest mistake, and that is why he is not here. I want to thank Liam for being his friend on the night when my own stupid mistake meant I could not. I want to thank Liam for caring about Craig’s life when it was gone, for wanting to preserve it. Thank you, Liam.’