While in synopsis Taxiing teeters on the edge of the maudlin, in Madigan’s elegant, pared-back telling there is no room for sentimentality. Rather, on closing its covers, the reader feels both troubled and reassured that all stories, as well as the lives they tell, endure in memory even as they end.
º When Taxiing was published in July 2014, Madigan insisted on granting his first publicity interview to Hawdon. The resultant profile piece, ‘One More Time Around the Block’, was published in Good Weekend on 2 August 2014.
Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 501-502.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Why did it upset me so deeply that my ex-wife wanted to date the would-be-biographer of my never-was father? Really, what was it to me? Why did I feel so betrayed? At one level, possibly the deepest, it confirmed suspicions I had long harboured about both Nat and Gil. Nat, that her attraction to me had been intimately entangled with the identity of my father. And Gil, that his striving for literary acclaim would always win out, no matter the cost. Did I ever truly believe that he didn’t want his biography written?
No amount of analysis and insight could end my ruminations. It seemed there was no place within me where this stuff could settle. The same questions kept tumbling round. Why did I feel Gil had betrayed me? Because I had honoured our agreement only for him to break it? Wasn’t that only a betrayal of himself? Why did I care?
For a while things were strained with Noah and Sunday. I felt they, too, had betrayed me, which of course they hadn’t. Noah hadn’t even joined the dots, and Sunday had been motivated by a desire to protect rather than deceive. For their sake, I tried not to pry. Tried but failed. Over the next few months, I gleaned from Noah’s unguarded asides that Sinclair was spending more and more time at Munro Street. He even had a desk set up in Nat’s room, where he worked on the book. I couldn’t bear thinking of him in my grandparents’ bedroom, writing a book celebrating the man who, in their minds, had betrayed them with the publication of The Falling Part. The fearful symmetry of that arrangement was, for me, a desecration.
I had never spoken to Rosalia on the phone before. I wasn’t sure if she had been crying, but her accent was stronger than I remembered and I struggled to catch what she was telling me. ‘The interview, it had finished, and he came off the stage and was still, you know, talking with the people, and then he needed to sit and they, what, got him a chair and then … That’s when it happened. His face, one whole side, the left … it, you know, melted. Droopied. It dropped. Drooped. He couldn’t speak. It was terrible, Miguel. Really, really terrible.’
She couldn’t talk after that – she had to go. But nor could he, I gathered. They were still in Edinburgh, where Gil had been a guest at the Edinburgh Festival. Rosalia wrote me a long email once Gil had been discharged from hospital and flown back to London. The doctors said that for his age his recovery was remarkable. The palsy in his face was lessening each day and he could already eat unassisted. The words were returning. He still couldn’t walk though, and movement in his left arm was restricted.
Rosalia blamed herself for allowing him to go to the festival. A week earlier he had been doing publicity in New York and before that he’d done the rounds in LA. Rosalia thought Reuben had been pushing him too hard. He had even been making arrangements for a pre-Christmas visit to Australia. ‘Maybe he is the one driving the taxi that becomes the hearse?’ she suggested. ‘Gilberto cannot refuse him. This is his problem. Your father is dying of guilt.’
I doubted that. From where I stood, the view distant but clear, Gil and Reuben were using each other – reciprocal exploitation being the key to love between the ambitious. Both knew this was Gil’s last shot at landing the Nobel whale.
I was surprised how much the news of Gil’s stroke affected me. For days after, I found myself thinking about him whenever my mind drifted from its appointed task. His absence in my life was, I realised, a strange kind of presence, one I was not yet ready to lose. I talked to Mum about it on the phone and she confessed to still missing Gil – the charming man she had agreed to marry, rather than the selfish one she found herself married to. ‘Some people,’ she said, ‘receive more forgiveness than they deserve, and Gil’s definitely one of them.’ Thinking about it later, I decided it wasn’t so much that I forgave him, as that his neglect of me was central to my childhood, and was, in a perverse way, something for which I was now nostalgic.
I decided I wanted to see him before he died; that I would spend the money on visiting him now rather than attending his funeral after the sword had fallen.
A month or so earlier, Natalie had emailed to tell me she was planning to take the kids to Europe in December. Noah would be finished high school in a year’s time and this, she thought, was her last chance to take them back to Montaperto, her parents’ village in Sicily. She wanted to know if I had any objections.
How could I? Sunday had been hammering me for years about us never going overseas, regularly reciting the international itineraries of her classmates. When Sunday was two, Nat, along with Nino and Maria, had taken the kids to Italy and, with her parents staying on in Montaperto, they had stopped in London on the way home and spent a weekend with Gil. I didn’t go because Nino and Maria were funding the whole thing, and Nat and I decided it would be easier for everyone if I stayed home. Sunday, of course, can’t remember any of it, Noah only snatches.
Perhaps it was the precedent of that earlier trip, of Nat taking them to London by herself, that allowed me to overlook the obvious possibility that Sinclair would be with them. I hadn’t known that when I rang Nat to propose a London rendezvous, possibly even for Christmas, so I could take the kids to see their grandfather. The line went quiet.
‘Ah, we’ll be in Montaperto for Christmas. My aunty’s insisted.’ There was another pause, then, clearing her throat, she said, ‘Sinclair’s coming with us … You knew that, right?’
Blushing, even though I was alone, I lied and said I’d been told but had forgotten. She then went on about how Sinclair would be doing some last-minute interviews with people willing to talk now that Gil had taken down the barricades.
‘He’d love to interview you, you know. Gil wants your side of the story told. Any chance?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I’m happy staying out of it.’
‘Reuben’s agreed.’
‘I’m sure he has.’
Once I knew their itinerary – Rome, Venice, Sicily, London – I planned my own based on avoiding the possibility of an awkward encounter. I resented not being able to take Noah and Sunday to see their grandfather, and had built up in my mind what we might have done together – a trip to the Cotswolds and Stroud – so the loss seemed so much greater. Nat had suggested we do a handover in London after Christmas, but I couldn’t stand the idea of Sinclair slinking round in the background, sniffing out Gil’s surviving friends, staking out his little kingdom. And the truth was, I couldn’t afford to take the kids where I wanted, and they would have ended up spending a week with me visiting a stroke victim, which was unlikely to raise my stocks on the trading floor of the preferred-parent market. Nat, I knew, would take them at least once to see their grandfather, and my being absent from their reunion with my absent father seemed weirdly appropriate.
Despite the intervening decades and all that had changed, I kept thinking about my trip in ’76: Gil’s failure to show at the airport, him leaving me to care for his mother. It all seemed so long ago, and yet how quickly Gil had been recast from the role of middle-aged son to that of decrepit elderly parent. I realised that in an instant – an aeon – that would be me. Past and present, I thought, were currents in the same body of water, the invisible fluid through which we drift and float and ultimately drown.
Rosalia had wanted me to stay with them, in her old flat in the refitted stables, but I booked myself in to a nearby B & B instead. I didn’t want to find myself trapped with Gil as I had once been with his mother.
; As always, I was nervous at the prospect of seeing him. When we had spoken on the phone, I’d heard his slurred speech and noticed how slow he was in formulating his responses. I didn’t want to see him so reduced. All my life he had been a symbol of success, someone who had made the world yield to his will. It didn’t seem right that someone like that could be struck by their own internal lightning.
The Hampstead house was an imposing triple-storey terrace. Solid brick and glassy-eyed, it loomed above me as I walked the flagstone path from the street. I hesitated before knocking on the glossy blue door.
Rosalia seemed shocked to see me, even though we had made the arrangement only the night before. Her hair had gone greyer and her eyes looked tired. Once she was past the surprise of my being there, her whole face smiled. She hugged me tightly, holding on longer than was usual.
‘Miguel, you are here! It is so nice to see you. You will make Gilberto very happy.’
The warmth of her welcome had a perverse effect on me. Until then I had only been anxious about seeing Gil. Now, walking behind her down the broad hallway, I felt dread. If I could have turned around and left without causing a scene or upsetting anyone, I would have. Suddenly, I didn’t want to see him. Why would I? Why was I still playing the loyal son?
‘He is in the conservatory, sunning himself like a lizard,’ Rosalia said. I thought of Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe visiting the wheelchair-bound General Sternwood in The Big Sleep. I was expecting Gil to be sporting a knee rug, the room to be festooned with exotic plants.
The damp, milky light seeping through the windows wouldn’t have woken a skink from its cold-blooded slumber, and there wasn’t a plant in sight, just a vase of irises on a mantelpiece. Gil was sitting by the fire. What was left of his hair was completely white. He lifted his gaze from a book propped open on his stomach, which dropped to the floor as he made to stand. Rosalia rushed to his aid. I wondered if he’d had another stroke and could no longer speak.
‘Gil,’ I said, moving towards him.
He shuffled unsteadily in my direction, Rosalia hovering beside him. His mouth opened and then, as if on delay, he said, ‘So good to see you, Mick.’ The enunciation of each word took enormous effort. I shook his hand and guided him back to his chair.
‘This is a cosy spot you’ve got yourself.’
Gil nodded and gave a lopsided smile.
Rosalia disappeared into the kitchen to make some morning tea, leaving us to each other.
Gil stared at me, his green eyes like lily pads submerged beneath a film of tears. His mouth grimaced. I waited for the words. Nothing came. His lips sagged again and I turned to the fire and pretended my hands were cold and needed warming. Imagining the questions he would once have asked, I said, ‘My plane was delayed in Singapore for four hours. I didn’t sleep the whole flight. And now the jet lag’s got me. I’ve been wide awake since three.’ Without his prompts and exchanges my offerings sounded desperate, banal. I realised the degree to which he had always guided our conversations, his curiosity drawing me out, his anecdotes diverting us from all the things we could never say.
Leaning forward in his seat as if to lever out the words trapped inside him, he stammered, ‘I … I … I’m sorry.’
Taking this as a cover-all comment on the past fifty years, or maybe more specifically for having engineered the coming together of my wife and his biographer, I was about to make some conciliatory, minimising remark when he added, ‘But I’m not much company anymore.’ Exhausted from the effort, he collapsed back into the chair.
Rosalia bustled back into the room, carrying a teapot, crockery and cakes on a tray. ‘Is he behaving himself?’ she asked, placing the tray on the coffee table.
‘Beyond reproach,’ I said, leaning in to receive my cup of tea. ‘Dominating the conversation, of course. What can you expect? Famous people – they’re all the same.’
Rosalia laughed and, handing Gil a cup with a sipping spout on it, joined in. ‘Si, un gallo real en un tejado. How do you say ... a real rooster on a rooftop. No?’
‘Exactly! Always crowing.’
Gil chuckled as he tried to drink. A mouthful of tea got caught in his gullet. He made a gurgling, choking sound. His face went red, purple. Then blue. Rushing from her chair, Rosalia thrust his torso forward and pounded her fists on his back. Not knowing how to help, I crouched in front of him, checking his face for signs of life. The gurgling stopped. He began to cough. Between spasms, he vomited a stream of milky tea into the cup of my outstretched hands. Sucking in some air, gulping at it, he sat back up. Rosalia stopped hitting him. She used her sleeve to wipe away the strand of drool dangling from his lips. Gil closed his eyes as he breathed, regularly now, as if savouring every draught.
The tea was dripping through my fingers onto the carpet. I carried it to the kitchen like it was a bomb. Washing my hands in the sink, I wet a dishcloth for the floor and grabbed a towel for my father’s face. As I re-entered the conservatory, Rosalia was kissing him tenderly on the cheek. I handed her the towel and dabbed the carpet with the cloth. ‘Miguel, no. Please, no. I will fix it later.’ Seeing that I was upsetting her sense of propriety, I stopped.
‘Is he okay?’
Propped on the arm of Gil’s chair, Rosalia tamed his straying hairs as she calmly stroked his head. Correcting my mistake of acting as if he weren’t there, she gently redirected my question. ‘How are you, Gilberto?’
Still swimming, his eyes now gleamed, smiled. His mouth contorted as it searched for words. His first utterance was a croak. Clearing his throat, he tried again. ‘They always said my drinking problem would kill me.’
I left soon after that, the fumes of Gil’s humour still clinging to me. The choking fit had left him totally depleted, and Rosalia said he would probably sleep the rest of the day. She invited me to stay around, but I could see she was distracted. Besides, I had things to do in London, so we agreed that I would return for lunch the following day.
‘He’ll be so disappointed,’ she said, seeing me off. ‘He was like a little boy before his birthday, waiting for you to arrive. The excitement was too much. Tomorrow, hopefully, he will be calming down. The words will come easier.’
Although this proved to be true, there was never a time that week when our conversation really flowed. Having not yet acquired his knack for turning experiences and memories into stories, I stumbled for something to say to fill the silences between us, often resorting to easy one-liners in the hope of making him smile.
When I spoke of work, I could see him straining to recapture his old curiosity. That source of his charisma had long since waned, worn down by people trying to impress him. He had never pretended an interest in teaching and found it impossible to pantomime one now. He did, however, want to know everything I could remember about the Ian Fairweather retrospective, and relished hearing about Noah and Sunday.
Out of desperation, I recounted my embarrassing misfire with Caroline. The old intensity returned to his eyes. Suddenly his words arrived with less effort – still delayed, but less mangled. ‘This is the problem with equality,’ he said, ‘nobody’s willing to lead. I know nowadays you can dance free-form, but romance remains a waltz – someone has to take the lead.’
I thought of Caroline, who I had been trying to forget, and of Nat, and felt confident neither would ever want to follow my lead. Maybe me, theirs, though I doubted that’s what Gil had in mind. This was an aspect of life he had expertise in, so I couldn’t dismiss his advice out of hand. After all, he had dated and slept with many more women my age than I had.
‘I’m not sure about that,’ I said, meaning that I was, but didn’t want to say it. ‘I think I just misread her.’
‘Confidence is an …’ Suddenly his mouth returned to stone. He took another run at it. ‘Confidence is an aphro- …’
‘-disiac?’
‘Yes!’
‘And arrogance?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that!’
The day before I was due
to leave was a bad one for Gil. He ate hardly anything at lunch and afterwards sat slumped in his chair, fighting but failing to stave off sleep. I wondered how Sinclair Hughes would represent these and all the other days of ordinary domestic dullness that had made up the majority of my father’s life. I suspected they would be viewed as if from a jet, at speed from a thousand feet, with the narrative only landing on the narrow strips of drama and achievement that might hold the reader’s interest: a new dalliance, the publication of another book, a weekend away in Prague, the breakup of a marriage. These, though, are the seasonings of a life, not the meal of it. For the most part, Gil’s days had been spent doing more or less what he was doing now, sitting in a chair. Admittedly it was usually at a desk, with a typewriter or computer in front of him, his fingers tapping out a record of his imaginings. But the truth was, if people wanted to experience vicariously the central experience of Gil’s life, they would need to dwell in the tedium and grind of that daily labour.
Watching him sleep in the chair, head lolling, mouth slightly open, I realised that the challenge for biography was the same as for memory. How much harder was it for me to recall Gil’s absence in my childhood than to recollect the thrill of that one luminous trip to Sydney? One was like listening to silence, the other like dancing to jazz.
Rosalia brought me a cup of coffee and drank one herself. We talked, but her attention remained on Gil. Every time his breathing faltered or changed in pitch or tone, she looked to check he was all right.
‘And how are you?’ I asked. ‘I worry you’re doing too much. Is anyone helping you? He has money, you know. You could pay for a nurse.’
Rosalia looked offended. ‘No, Gilberto is cared for by love, not money. That would be like … what? … him going with a prostitute. Never. I am his wife!’
Relatively Famous Page 21