‘Have you had far to come?’ she asked, in the lowered voice of someone trying to break away from the main conversation without derailing it. It was such a conventional piece of politeness that I almost laughed.
‘Brixton,’ I replied defiantly.
‘Oh, we’re practically neighbours,’ she said. ‘The best side of the city, whatever the North London mafia say. It’s so green and leafy.’
I had to admit that there wasn’t much greenery in Alma Road, apart from cannabis plants on the window ledges, but I agreed with her in principle.
‘I read your opening chapters,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘Nice of you to bother.’
‘I like the way you write. It’s very . . . energetic.’
‘Thank you. I wish I could find the energy to finish it.’
‘Owen says you’ve thrown in your degree. That’s brave.’
‘I don’t know about brave. Feckless, more like.’
She smiled. ‘Well, I’ve always thought you can have too much feck.’ Her eyes shone with suppressed laughter. She excused herself to attend to the meal and the rest of us moved into the dining room, which looked onto a tree-choked garden. One side of the French windows was darkened by a dense creeper, one tendril of which had breached the frame and was snaking up the inside wall. A constellation of different-sized candles cast sympathetic shadows across an old wooden refectory table, much marked and gouged, and set with a miscellaneous collection of china and tarnished cutlery. I remembered the huge fuss my mother used to make over mismatching crockery on the rare occasions we had people to dinner, and thought how easy and confident the Goddards’ hospitality was in comparison.
The food was similarly unfussy and generous: a large casserole of lamb and some garlicky potatoes, which tasted incredible to my palate, traumatised by weeks of exposure to tinned soup and ravioli. I imagined what it must be like to be married to a presentable woman like Diana, who could discuss modern poetry and cook lamb shanks.
Now they were comparing notes on a production of Pinter’s Old Times which all except me had seen. Even Ravi Amos, who lived in Geneva and was only in London for a week, had seen it. From the way he was talking, it appeared that he was personally acquainted with the playwright, the director and all three actors. In fact everyone at the table seemed to be related to or friends with everybody significant in the arts. This impression was no doubt false, generated by the paranoia which often accompanies a sense of social inferiority, but it made me wary of being too free with my views. Owen kept trying to bring me in, valiantly tossing out one lifebelt after another. ‘Do you get to the theatre much?’ or ‘Are you a Pinter fan, Christopher?’ he would say, when I had made no contribution to the debate for some time. I dimly remembered Gerald appearing as some kind of half-wit in a school production of The Homecoming, but could hardly offer that up to the company.
‘I’m not that familiar with his work,’ I replied.
‘I never let a thing like that interfere with my opinions,’ said Leila. ‘I used to review fiction for a women’s magazine and I found I wrote much more persuasively when I hadn’t read the books.’
‘You don’t think that’s going to make you any friends at this table, do you Leila?’ Owen said, laughing. ‘This is what we’re up against, Ravi.’
‘I never read my reviews,’ the Great Novelist replied loftily.
Leila shrugged, with the air of someone for whom the making of friends or enemies is a matter of supreme indifference. I felt a grudging admiration for her refusal to curry favour.
Diana was urging me to accept a third helping, but everyone else had finished and Leila had produced her cigarettes and was tapping the packet impatiently.
‘You say “used to review”,’ Ravi Amos said, fixing Leila with his sternest look. ‘What is it you do now?’
‘I’m just a hack,’ she replied, leaning into one of the candles to light up.
‘A fashion editor,’ Diana admonished. ‘A very successful one.’
That figures, I thought, glancing at Leila’s hideously unflattering get-up.
Fashion. They were off again, another ocean of opinion rising to swamp me. Even Owen seemed to know something of the players and jargon from this arcane world, although he sounded slightly less assured than on the subject of poetry or drama. Evidently he was one of those polymaths who made it his business to be able to converse on any subject, on any level.
Diana began to gather plates. ‘Delicious, as always. You cook like an angel, my dear,’ Ravi Amos said, resting a smooth brown hand on Diana’s bottom as she leant across the table. I wondered whether it was Great Novelists or just homosexuals who were permitted this sort of liberty with other men’s wives.
On her third return trip to the kitchen, Owen stood up to help, but as he was still involved in a three-way debate about hemlines and feminism, and I was nearer the door, I took the empty potato dish from him and followed Diana out. She had her back to me, bending down to take something out of the oven as I came in.
‘Christopher’s a bit out of his depth,’ she said, without turning round. ‘Shall I go and rescue him?’
I froze. It must have occurred to me that my flounderings had been noticed, and yet to hear it stated so plainly was mortifying. I suppose a gentleman – like Owen – would have retreated silently, pretending not to have heard. But I wasn’t a gentleman, and this was the first time I’d had the advantage all night, so I decided to punish her a little.
‘No, let him drown,’ I said. She started violently, losing her grip on the hot dish of lemon meringue pie, which she’d been holding between two tea towels, so that it pitched forward onto the floor with a hard jolt, sending the whole meringue top sliding onto the tiles.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, looking from the devastated pudding to me and blushing deeply. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise it was you. It must have sounded . . .’
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you jump,’ I said, though I had, of course, but not with this in mind.
Diana looked sheepish for a moment and then began to giggle. ‘Oh serves me right. Now what are we going to do for pudding? Do you think I could get away with calling this a lemon flan?’ She looked doubtfully at the remains in the dish, streaked with foamy egg-white. ‘No. Better go straight to coffee.’
‘Don’t do that!’ I said, guilty now for my part in the mishap, and not wanting the full details offered up to the others in explanation. I seized a spatula and a fish slice from a rack of utensils and very carefully eased them under the meringue crust, lifting it in one piece and repositioning it on the pie. ‘No one will ever know,’ I promised, passing her the dish between the dropped tea towels.
‘Oh I can’t. That floor’s not even clean,’ Diana protested. There was a pause. ‘Can I?’
‘Of course you can. It’ll be fine,’ I insisted, sensing weakness.
‘Ravi’s unbelievably fastidious. He’d have a fit.’
‘Well I won’t tell him if you don’t.’ Suddenly it was imperative that I bound her to me with this trivial secret.
She caved in. ‘Come on then.’
I followed behind, carrying the cream.
Ravi’s taxi came at eleven. He took Leila with him since they were both going north of the river. He had been a disappointment, if I was honest: bombastic and smug, a result, no doubt, of his pronouncements having gone uncontested for too long. There were moments when I caught a glimpse of normality through chinks in his celebrity armour, but they were few; the consciousness of what was due to him as a Great Novelist was a barrier unbreachable from either side. At one point he described someone – a hostile reviewer, despite his earlier claim never to read reviews – as a jumped-up Arab, and we had all flinched, but only Leila had challenged him. A bracing exchange of political views followed, which both seemed to enjoy.
As soon as the taxi pulled away, I said I too had to be going. I’d made up my mind not to leave be
fore Leila, as I was pretty sure she’d found me dismal company and would waste no time airing her opinion once I was gone.
‘But I’ve just poured you a Scotch,’ Owen protested, so we spent the next half an hour drinking one of his peaty single malts and discussing Ravi Amos, Leila and the curious working practices at Kenway & Luff. To my surprise, Diana made no mention of the lemon meringue pie incident. It was still our little secret.
Leila, as I had gathered from their earlier conversation, was an old university friend of Diana’s. ‘You’re surely not the same age,’ I said, drink making me outspoken. ‘She looks about ten years older than you.’ Diana shook her head dismissively, but I could tell she was pleased.
‘Did you like her?’ she asked. ‘Most men find her terrifying.’
‘I thought she was very entertaining,’ I said. I knew better than to run down their friends.
‘Yes, Leila’s always good value,’ Owen said. ‘Because she’ll speak her mind without worrying what sort of impression she makes. She genuinely doesn’t care.’
‘Herman Kenway’s like that,’ said Diana.
‘Hmm,’ I said, remembering his bad-tempered outburst. I still hadn’t decided whether I thought such lordly disregard for others was brave and admirable or just plain rude.
In the course of conversation it emerged that Owen didn’t have nearly as much editorial independence as I’d assumed. Although his opinion of a manuscript counted for a lot, it was Mr Kenway who had the last word on everything.
‘It helps to have the support of other people in the building,’ he explained. ‘When a manuscript has approval from all departments, Herman’s unlikely to veto it. He hasn’t time to read everything, for a start, though he comes pretty close. I’ve decided he must get by on about two hours’ sleep.’
‘That’s probably why he’s so grumpy,’ said Diana.
‘Diana used to be his secretary,’ Owen told me. ‘That’s how we met. For some reason she was the only woman in the building he never shouted at. He reduces his current secretary to tears at least once a week.’
‘I don’t cry easily,’ Diana said.
‘But you made him cry,’ Owen reminded her. ‘When you told him you were leaving to have the twins.’
‘He was probably thinking of the cost of maternity pay,’ she replied.
‘Herman’s infamously stingy,’ Owen said, a revelation that didn’t fill me with joy. It was far nicer to imagine one’s potential publisher to be open-handed. Extravagant, even.
‘Speaking of the twins,’ Diana said, pushing herself up. ‘I’ll just check they’re all right.’
I thought this might be a gentle hint that my departure was overdue, and the sleep-deprived parents of young children were being kept from their bed, so I stood up too, determined not to stay a moment longer. Owen went off in search of a copy of Maiden Castle which he had promised to lend me at our first meeting, and I made my way unsteadily into the hall, wondering whether drink-driving laws applied to cyclists.
Diana was at the top of the stairs, beckoning urgently. ‘Oh, Christopher, come and look at this,’ she said. I clambered over the back end of the rocking horse and joined her. Asleep on the landing, in a nest of teddy bears and fluffy toys, were two identical little girls, curled towards each other like inverted commas. ‘They must have been listening in,’ said Diana, crouching beside them, stroking their blonde curls, and gently removing their thumbs from their mouths. They stirred slightly at this interference, and their lips continued to make faint sucking motions.
‘What are they called?’ I asked in a whisper.
‘Teeny and Sandy,’ Diana replied. Later I could only remember that it was something daft, like Pinky and Perky, which was how I always referred to them in the future.
Owen appeared at the bottom of the stairs, brandishing Maiden Castle. ‘Did you ever get round to reading The Magenta Staircase?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ I confessed. ‘I was busy brushing up on Ravi Amos.’
‘It was very nice to meet you, Christopher,’ Diana said, offering me her cool hand once more. ‘You must come again.’
‘No. You two must come to me,’ I said, impulsively, realising even as I spoke how impossible that would be. I lived in one room with an unmade bed in one corner, no dining chairs, nothing to eat off or with, and a shared kitchen I had hardly used because I couldn’t cook. I was ashamed of myself for caring. Leila wouldn’t. She would make people sit on the floor and drink out of mugs, and serve them noodles from the Chinese takeaway, and not give a damn.
‘Keep writing,’ was Owen’s parting shot. ‘I won’t badger you, but if you get stuck and need help, give me a call.’ What a knack he had for saying exactly the right thing.
15
I HAVE NO memory of the journey home, but when I woke the next day it was lunchtime and the room was rank with warm, stale air. On the bedside cabinet there was a bottle of jellied milk, which I’d forgotten to put in the fridge, and two flies were cruising round at head height, butting the window and fizzing madly. The floor was strewn with unwashed clothes; the open drawers of the chest disgorged still more. The pages of my novel-in-progress were pegged to the desk by an overflowing ashtray. I remembered my impulsive offer of the night before to play host, and wondered what other inanities had fallen from my lips.
Overlaying the stale smell was something more sinister: I eventually traced it to a pair of trainers under the bed. These I consigned to the bin. The place was a tip. I couldn’t work in it. Instead I decided to go out and clear my head with some fresh Brixton air. The sight of Gerald’s bicycle in the hallway, leaning drunkenly against the wall, gave me the idea to ride over to Dulwich with a thank-you note and a bunch of flowers for Diana, to make good my omission of the night before.
There was a florist in the village just around the corner from the Goddards’ street. Using a significant proportion of my dwindling reserves of cash, I bought a bunch of white roses, hoping that these, unlike the wine, didn’t advertise some breach of taste obvious to all but me. The florist obligingly provided me with a tiny card, on which there was just enough room to write:
Thanks for a lovely evening.
Lemon meringue pie a triumph.
Chris
I had no intention of calling in; I would leave them on the doorstep to be discovered, as if I’d been just passing through, too pressed to stop. However, as I turned into the street, there was Diana, not twenty yards away, a twin hanging on each hand. In the time it took me to wonder whether I could cycle past unnoticed, she turned and saw me.
‘Hello,’ she said, a faint question mark hanging over the greeting, as I brought the bike to a halt beside them. She was wearing a pink dress, and her hair was in the same twisted-up and clipped style as the night before, but today she had on a pair of large headmistressy spectacles which made her delicate features look quite plain. In the presence of her children she wasn’t nearly so poised and intimidating. All mothers are vulnerable, I suppose.
‘I brought you these,’ I said, freeing the wrapped bunch of flowers from the rack on the rear mudguard and thrusting it at her. ‘To say thanks for yesterday. I was just passing,’ I added lamely.
‘How nice of you,’ she said, accepting them and peeping through a gap in the paper. ‘Roses. Lovely.’
‘Well, it was a very nice evening.’
‘Yes. I enjoyed it. I felt a bit the worse for wear this morning, though. I couldn’t put my lenses in.’ Her hand fluttered to her glasses. Aha, I thought. She has her vanity, then.
Pinky and Perky looked up at me suspiciously from beneath matching yellow baseball caps. ‘Who’s that man?’ one of them asked loudly, without taking her eyes off me.
‘Is he coming to play?’ the other wanted to know.
‘His name is Christopher. He’s a friend of Daddy’s,’ Diana replied. I noticed that she used the same ultra-polite tone for four-year-olds and Great Novelists alike.
‘Would you like to come in? Not to play, nec
essarily, but for a cup of tea. There’s some lemon meringue pie that needs finishing.’
We exchanged conspiratorial smiles.
‘In that case . . .’ I said, forgetting that I was supposed to be just passing.
The twins, who were growing tired of this pavement chit-chat going on above their heads, began to tug their mother along the path.
‘I spoke to Leila this morning,’ Diana said over her shoulder, allowing herself to be towed towards the door. ‘She thought you were charming. You’ve made quite a conquest there.’
I replied with a sardonic look, wondering what possible motive Diana could have for peddling such a lie. I had said and done nothing to impress Leila, and she hadn’t shown the slightest tendency to be charmed. I put it down to Goddard politeness taken to absurd extremes.
Inside the house, all traces of the dinner party had been cleared away and replaced with the colourful clutter of children’s toys. Now that the rocking horse was divested of coats I could see that there was something sinister in its blank eyes and flared nostrils. It had the sort of expression that would have given me nightmares when I was a child.
Pinky and Perky scrambled under its belly and up the stairs, and appeared a moment later dragging a plastic toy-box which made it no further than the landing before they upended it and began squabbling over the contents.
I followed Diana into the kitchen where she was simultaneously making tea and smashing the ends of the roses with the back of a cleaver, with the practised air of someone used to receiving flowers. The bouquets from Leila and Ravi Amos had been divided and arranged, and I found myself considering by what process a person might graduate from owning only one set of cutlery to owning four vases. It was little details like this that spoke most clearly of the decade of maturity that separated me from the Goddards and their kind. I began to notice more of these features that had escaped me yesterday: a row of wellington boots by the back door, ranged in order of size, with fairy-tale neatness; and hanging from a hook a floral apron – a proper Stepford Wives affair with ruffles at the shoulders.
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