by John Purcell
‘What it says. There’s a ton of great new writing out there, and Liam thinks writers like you denigrate it without reading a page.’
‘There isn’t much truth to that accusation. Besides, he probably reads as much of my writing as I read of his.’
‘You’re wrong there. Liam reads everything. He’ll eat you alive if you give him a hint of that shit. Really, it won’t take much, a drop of elitist blood in the water and you’ll be dinner.’
‘Still, he can’t be that bright, if writing what he writes satisfies him.’
‘Fuck you, Max.’
He was being awful. There was so much anger in him. I hadn’t expected it. I thought he would have moved on. He seemed to have moved on. There had been no contact.
‘Do you still write this shit down?’ asked Max.
‘If you mean my diary, yes.’
‘Do you ever re-read the bits about us?’
‘No. I don’t look back.’
‘You got it all wrong, you know. You’re going to get this wrong, too, if you think it worthy of recording,’ he said, pressing the tip of his index finger against the tabletop. ‘I read it, you know. All of it. That’s how I found out how corrupt you really are. You aren’t honest enough to record the truth. Aren’t smart enough, either. All the great diarists have an unworldly capacity for revelation. They hit on universal truths almost by accident. You write fiction. You rely on tropes and clichés. Your psychological assessments were way off. Your worries and concerns. Your childish hopes and dreams. Fantasies. And you wrote terrible things about me. But at least that was interesting. Reading a fictional Max, with fictional motives and anxieties.’
‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about the past.’
‘And then you also wrote in detail about fucking Liam. Like it was an erotic novel. So much detail. Why would you do that?’
‘I got off on it,’ I said, wanting to land something on him.
‘The sex scenes in the Jack Cade books are just as banal; I bet you write them, too.’
I said nothing.
‘I tormented myself for a week before I got the courage to confront you and throw you out. I got to observe you that whole week knowing what I’d learnt. It changed you in my eyes. I knew where you’d been, could see what you were seeing. You behaved atrociously towards me. You revelled in the deception. Got off on it. Lied to my face. Day in, day out. Not only to me, to Liam, to your work, to your friends, to yourself in the diary.’
Even though I was angry at the way he was treating me, I deserved every word of it. The tears started to fall so I put my sunglasses back on and pulled my hoodie over my cap.
It was a beautiful setting for a horrible fucking conversation. All around us people were chatting; the kids paddling in the fountain were shrieking with delight.
‘And I fucked you after I knew. That was the worst bit. That’s the bit I regret. I shouldn’t have. But I loved you so much and it was ending. Everything we’d shared up until that moment had been intact till then. As soon as I fucked you knowing that Liam had probably fucked you that morning, or afternoon, or both, all of our past years crumbled to dust.’
My shoulders were shaking. I raised my hand to my mouth in order to smother any noises I might make.
‘I read some this morning, to remind myself.’
‘You made a copy of my diary?’
‘Yes, and I read it to remind me what you’re really like.’ He handed me his handkerchief. ‘Because try as I might, even after all this time, and after all I know of you, I can’t stop loving you.’
I looked at his face hopefully, but found only animosity in his eyes. His jaw was clenched and he spoke the next words as though spitting out poison.
‘I hate you and love you in the same breath. Reading it reminds me to hate the more.’
I had done all of this to a man who loved me. If he were a changed man, I had changed him.
But the diary wasn’t the whole story. Diaries never are.
We sat in silence for a long time. I wiped my eyes and eventually stopped crying. I couldn’t look at him, so behind my sunglasses I closed my eyes.
I was the first to speak. ‘How much does the magazine need?’
‘Are you going to invest? Is that what you’re suggesting?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Because I’d rather close it than take money you’ve made writing that shit with him.’
‘How much do you need?’
‘I know you can fix it. I know that. But I don’t want you to fix it like that. Do you understand? All I need is for you to get Liam to agree to talk about race and racism in Britain.’
‘He won’t do it. It’s too risky. Popular writers stay out of politics.’
‘I’ve been researching black writing in Britain and I’ve interviewed a number of literary authors, most of whom struggle to make ends meet. I really need to get the perspective of a successful black writer.’
‘Perhaps part of his success is due to not discussing his race.’
‘His hero, Mark Harden, is black!’
‘Don’t you think that’s awesome enough? He’s got white readers all around the world invested in and cheering for a black man. That’s political, don’t you think? That’s a bloody achievement.’
‘But I want him to say as much.’
My phone rang. I searched in my gym bag and dug it out. It was Liam.
‘Sorry, I have to take this.’
I walked quickly away from the table to the far corner. I took a very deep breath and answered, hoping to mask all that I was feeling. ‘Hi, what do you think?’
‘Whatever you said to her last night worked. She’s not going to leave me.’
‘Oh, Gail, right. Good. I meant the manuscript.’
I turned and looked back across at Max. He was reading again.
‘I emailed a response ages ago. What have you been doing?’
‘I’m having coffee with Max.’
‘Oh, fuck. How did that come about?’
‘Long story. So is the manuscript money?’
‘Yep, it’s money. I’m going to finish it tomorrow. But it’s money. No doubt. Whose is it?’
‘One of Julia’s finds.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. She’ll be happy to hear you think it’s good.’
‘I’m meeting her later. I’ll let her know,’ said Liam.
‘You’re meeting her?’
‘Yeah, we’re having dinner. Her suggestion.’
‘Without me?’
‘Yep, she wanted it that way. Says you hate her. Do you?’
‘Of course I hate her – she’s inhuman.’
‘I’ll say you said, hi, then.’
‘Don’t you fucking dare. And don’t mention the manuscript. I want the cred on this one. She’s still my boss.’
‘Why the fuck do you bother with all that? You don’t need to be on the payroll there.’
‘I like causing trouble. Delete the manuscript when you’re done. I wasn’t meant to show anyone. I have to go.’
‘Hey, do you know it’s been at least three weeks since we last fucked? I miss you.’
‘It can’t be that long.’
‘It is. I’m counting. What happened to every Thursday? You need to find time for me. I miss you. I want you.’
‘We need to talk, Liam.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘It is. But we need to discuss this face to face.’
‘Shit, Amy, tell me now.’
‘No. Goodbye. I have to get back to Max.’
I pressed end.
When I looked towards the table, Max was gone. My backpack was slung over the chair. I hurried over to it before the bomb squad arrived to blow it up.
Chapter 23
Publish This
Helen had spent the day scanning Malcolm’s work. It was taking longer than she expected, partly because there was so much material, and partly because she kept finding writing she had forgotten about. There was so much u
npublished writing. Good writing, too. Sketches, poems, essays and short stories. A few abandoned novels. She was falling in love with him all over again. Here was a writer’s life. She had been moving chronologically, and in doing so she was watching him grow and develop. There were things in the young Malcolm that she hadn’t realised she missed. A recklessness that was gone from the present Malcolm. He once wrote without a thought for the consequences. She now recalled how often Malcolm’s writing had hurt her. She was hurt again by some of it. But she could see beyond that to the work itself. The wife might shed a tear and wish the words unwritten, but the reader in her appreciated Malcolm’s honesty. It was a clearer record of their relationship than anything in her miscellany.
Helen had always sought to obfuscate the episodes she’d taken from life. While Malcolm would transcribe experience with a boldness that horrified her at times, she would dismantle a scene from life, break it into pieces, find what was universal in it, then reassemble it using imagined elements. His was the more effective method, but also the more difficult for those close to him to read.
‘Helen.’
Helen didn’t respond at first to the voice from the door of her office. She was reading. It was the original version of a scene in one of Malcolm’s most admired novels, Not Lost, about the disintegration of a marriage. This original version was the record of one of Helen and Malcolm’s arguments. Helen vaguely remembered reading it before. Back in the days when they read every word that either of them wrote. She’d been more resilient then. But it struck her powerfully now, because she had forgotten their arguments. She’d thought they’d had very few, but this page was awakening other memories and now she recalled that in the seventies, when Daniel was a child and they were still rather social, there had been arguments – bitter arguments.
‘Mother,’ said Daniel, from the door.
Helen lay the page down. She felt exposed. Caught in a private moment with the past. The habit of her mind to rewrite the facts of the past disturbed her as much as her inattention to the present. The mind strove for equilibrium, sorting memory as it saw fit, even against her own wishes.
Daniel touched her on the shoulder. ‘I don’t wish to intrude, but are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, Daniel. These are your father’s original manuscripts, notes and miscellany. I’m trying to make a digital record of them. But the scanner is slow and there are thousands of pages.’
‘What will you do with the originals?’
‘Protect them.’
‘How will you do that?’ asked Daniel, picking up a manila folder and opening it. It contained the foolscap pages covered with pencilled paragraphs he remembered well from his childhood. The pages that were in the office, the room he wasn’t allowed to enter. Which he did when unobserved. He’d sit at his mother’s desk and pretend to use the typewriter. Pretend he was like them. Sometimes pretending to smoke using a pencil. He was far more interested in his mother’s typewriters and then bulky word processors than his father’s foolscap pads. He never read anything he found in there. The words didn’t interest him, but the hours they’d spend away from him did.
‘I don’t know what I’ll do with them, Daniel.’
‘Would anyone buy them?’
‘I’m not going to sell your father’s literary legacy.’
‘Then what are you doing this for?’
‘I woke early one morning to discover him putting his work through a paper shredder.’
‘Did he say why he was doing that?’
‘I didn’t ask. I threw all of the papers I could find into boxes and dragged them in here. Then I hid the paper shredder. His behaviour lately has been very odd. Have you not noticed?’
‘I don’t know either of you well enough to judge whether you’re acting oddly or quite normally.’
Helen couldn’t find a reply to that.
‘What about your papers?’ Daniel asked.
‘Most are digitised and on hard drives. But I do have the manuscripts I worked on with editors over the years. My letters, as well.’
‘Did you or Malcolm keep diaries?’
‘No, though now I wish we had.’
‘Malcolm’s papers will be worth much more if he wins the Booker.’
‘I’m not looking for a buyer. Besides, he’s not going to win the Booker. Since 2014 it’s been open to the Americans. But none has won yet. They’ll award it to one of them. More newsworthy.’
‘You don’t believe the winner is chosen according to merit?’
‘Do you?’
Daniel wandered over to the bookcase to Helen’s left, then to the windows beyond the desk. ‘This is a lovely office. From your desk I bet you can see out over the park. You might be in the country.’
Helen was watching her son’s movements with interest. He was clearly agitated; his gestures were jerky and quite random, as were his thoughts. But his face was bright and cheerful. Which ran contrary to her expectations after the previous night’s revelations. That Geraldine had taken a lover wasn’t much of a surprise to Helen. She and Daniel had been unsuited from the outset. And their age difference and diverging interests had made rupture inevitable. Malcolm had said as much the first time Daniel had introduced her to them. And this knowledge had caused them both to be more reserved towards her than they already would have been.
‘Are you still set on moving to London? I don’t think you’ve thought this through,’ said Helen, stopping her work. ‘How will you see the boys?’
‘I’ll fly up on weekends.’
‘Can you really afford to do that? And where would you stay? Hotels? More money.’
‘I’ll need to rent a flat.’
‘I don’t think you’ve thought about this at all.’
‘I have. I have. I can’t stay in Edinburgh. I can’t. I’ll see her everywhere. It isn’t like London where I could move a few streets away and never see her again. It’s like a small town. And her family is everywhere. Her friends. It’s impossible.’
‘So is leaving your boys, Daniel! You need to think of them. A long-term plan. From nursery school to university. They’re so young. You need to brave it out, for them.’
‘I know what I must do. There are many musts in my head, not all of them achievable. When I think of the boys I think of her and when I think of her I think of him. And I can’t allow myself to think of him. I don’t have a long-term plan because there is no long term. I can’t think long term.’
‘Then what are you going to do now? Today. Tomorrow. Next week?’
‘I don’t know. I’d move into the flat below. But Amy is very comfortable down there. She’s entrenched. You won’t get her out easily.’
‘She can go tomorrow if you’d like to move down there. I think she’s done what she came to do. She’s promised to make her recommendations to me this evening. I’m expecting her any minute now.’
‘I don’t want her to leave, at least not yet. She’s at odds with the life you and Malcolm have made for yourselves. She’s doing you both good.’
‘How do you come to that conclusion? You said earlier you don’t know us.’
‘She’s chaos. You’re order. You need each other.’
Helen thought about this for a while. Her life didn’t feel ordered.
‘I heard you help Amy downstairs last night. Was she very drunk?’
‘She was and she wasn’t. I found her trying to enter the basement of your neighbour across the road, but then she was quite lucid in her speech.’
‘She drinks too much. Malcolm and I can’t keep up with her. She has the capacity of a problem drinker. Personally, I don’t know what to make of her. She behaves in a manner that’s alien to me. She lives like a gypsy and yet she has more money than the Queen.’
‘Self-destructive, perhaps?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how her mind works. She’s clearly bright and astonishingly beautiful – more so now after we’ve been giving her regular meals – but she sullies both these attributes c
ontinuously by the choices she makes.’
‘So she’s self-destructive, as I suggested.’
Helen placed another page on the scanner.
‘I heard you both go downstairs late last night but I didn’t hear you return,’ she said. This had just occurred to her.
‘We talked. She didn’t want to be alone.’
‘I saw her leave early this morning. She looked like she was going to the gym. But she never returned. An hour ago I received an email saying she’d been waylaid by friends and was on her way home.’
‘Did she write – home?’
‘No, I don’t think she did.’
‘Be careful, Helen.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Amy, she’s probably only healthy in small doses. Too much Amy could be toxic.’
‘Only for some.’
Chapter 24
Because You Owe Me
After Max disappeared, I sat for a while at the table watching the children play in the fountain. The sun was hot and lovely. I took off my cap and hoodie and thought about taking off my trainers and putting on my sandals, but remembering the dress I’d thrown in, I decided to change. I took myself off to the bathrooms.
Afterwards, I did what I had wanted to do when I first entered the garden: I went over to the fountain and sat with my feet in the water. The pool was shallow and the water was warm. The sun was directly overhead. Soon I was lying back with my eyes closed. The sun had warmed the stone beneath me. Now I was being warmed from above and below, within and without. In a sundress, in the sun, I was beginning to feel myself again. The horrors of the night, Gail’s anguish, Daniel’s desperation, and the trials of the day, Max’s cruel retribution, were dissipating.
With my eyes closed I listened to all of the voices around me. The children talking and laughing, the couples taking selfies, the students who sat on the grass behind me. They were speaking in Italian. The noises melded together forming a comforting backdrop to my thoughts, which were of nothing and everything. Free form. One moment of Helen’s writing, then Max’s slender hands, the next of my parents who had emailed to say they were going to visit Antarctica and inviting friends to join them, which by default included me. Iceland, yes. Antarctica, no. Then I wondered why I never visit the places I dream of visiting. I’ve never been to Norway, nor even Greece. Or further afield. I haven’t travelled. I’m not a traveller. I like London. I’m a Londoner. I’ve never set foot in Wales, even. Never been to Land’s End.