The Girl On the Page

by John Purcell

  ‘Which worries me. Until recently I’ve had one reader in mind, Malcolm. I never needed to spell anything out for him. My preferred readers need to know as much as he does. They have to bring something to the table. If you come empty-handed or empty-headed to my novels they shrivel up and die. Just read some of the more recent reviews on Amazon. One-star reviews because readers don’t know what’s going on. But this new book bulges with unnecessary explanations, grotesque foreshadowing, detailed descriptions of things that need no descriptions. It’s almost two hundred thousand words. The second version is half that. The third almost a novella.’

  ‘Couldn’t this new book serve as a bridge to your other writing?’ said Amy, pushing away thoughts of her own version of the book.

  ‘Imagine if it’s all the things you say it is. Imagine if the world declares it the best thing I’ve ever written. My magnum opus. Imagine if my whole life’s work gets eclipsed by this novel, which is at its heart a cynical grab for cash. Something I wrote in a moment of weakness.’

  ‘Books aren’t written in a moment. You wrote this over months and months. You knew what you were doing and you did it extremely well. This book isn’t one of Helen Owen’s best, but it’s a far sight better than most writers writing today could write. That’s a fact. I know authors who would kill to publish this under their name.’

  ‘So you think I should publish it?’ asked Helen, smiling.

  This stopped Amy. She had just been enthusiastically imagining a future where the book was published and didn’t harm Helen’s reputation, when the last few weeks she had been thinking to herself, Fuck the house, Helen. Rent a shitty little flat and keep producing brilliant work.

  ‘No.’

  Helen’s heart sank. She had been buying into Amy’s vision. She could imagine herself as Umberto Eco, publishing her The Name of the Rose to rapturous global applause. He kept his reputation, kept publishing serious work in semiotics, because everything he did was drenched in irony. Foucault’s Pendulum wasn’t a richly plotted thriller, a precursor to The Da Vinci Code, it was literature.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Helen. And smiled again. She rarely swore and enjoyed her transgressions. ‘I thought I was going to publish my Name of the Rose.’

  ‘Max hates that book with a passion. And books like The Shadow of the Wind, The Poisonwood Bible, Atonement and The Life of Pi. They sell millions of copies and get mistaken for literature. He hates that.’

  ‘I’m with Max. So what do we do now?’

  ‘I’ll meet with Julia tomorrow and offer her version three.’

  ‘You said Julia wouldn’t recognise it for what it is.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. You keep talking to me like I’m one of them, so I’ve been thinking I’m one of them. I know you’ve got three complete versions of the novel. But they haven’t got a clue. If I take version three in and tell them it’s version one, they’ll have no reason to doubt that claim.’

  ‘And if Julia rejects it?’

  ‘Julia will hate it because it’s brilliant. She sent me in to talk you out of being brilliant. I was meant to turn you into something acceptable, that they could sell in the supermarkets. So by delivering version three I will have failed her. But so what? I’m on team Helen, not team Julia.’

  Helen smiled sadly. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  Amy waited for her to say something else.

  ‘Should I give Julia anything? The way you talk about her . . . She sounds horrible.’

  ‘I know, I know, but she’ll think she’ll have the book her predecessor paid two million pounds for at auction. That means something to her.’

  ‘But she won’t have it.’

  ‘But she’ll think she has. Version three will get the royal treatment. It will be their lead title for Mother’s Day. Though they may decide to hold onto it for next Christmas.’

  ‘What will happen if I give them nothing?’

  ‘Vikram Seth failed to deliver A Suitable Girl and came to some arrangement with Penguin. I don’t think he gave the entire million-pound advance back. But he gave them something, I think. You never get to know all the details of these kinds of things. The worst-case scenario for you would be M&R demanding the full amount plus interest. Initially, Julia seemed reluctant to do this, because throwing you and Malcolm out onto the street would be a bad look. Now that Malcolm’s Instafamous it would be even more difficult for them. But it’s two million pounds. It isn’t lunch money and this isn’t Julia’s mess; she has deniability. This happened before the merger, before she was in the job. This is someone else’s legacy. She can blame Maxine Snedden for signing the deal.’

  Helen covered her face with her hands.

  ‘So I go in with version three?’ Amy asked.

  Helen thought long and hard and finally nodded. Then she removed her hands from her face and looked at Amy.

  ‘How did it all come to this?’

  ‘You did what few literary authors have been able to do. You wrote a bona fide blockbuster.’

  Chapter 26

  I Think They Cleared Your Desk

  Amy: Can I book a meeting with you tomorrow? Around 3 pm?

  Julia: Do you still work here? You haven’t been in the office for weeks.

  Amy: Yes, I have. I’ve just been avoiding you.

  Julia: Are you sure? I’ll have to run that past HR. I think they cleared

  your desk.

  Amy: Haha. I need to chat about Helen Owen.

  Julia: I’m out of the office tomorrow. Can we meet next week?

  Amy: You haven’t got time for me until next week?

  Julia: Unfortunately, no. Shall we say 2.30 pm Thursday?

  Amy: Okay.

  Chapter 27

  You Wouldn’t Say That

  Amy stared at the screen. And then took the glass of wine Malcolm was handing her. She took a sip and scrolled through the short exchange with Julia.

  What was she playing at? One moment she was desperate for news of Helen’s book, the next she couldn’t care less. And why was she so perky?

  ‘Is something amiss?’ asked Malcolm. He sat at the kitchen table facing Amy, who was sitting on a barstool. Helen was putting together a plate of olives, bread and cheese.

  ‘Everything is amiss, Malcolm. Especially your use of “amiss”.’

  ‘What is amiss about my use of “amiss”?’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Not if I had anything to do with it. I’d replace it with “wrong”. “Is something wrong?” I’d have you say.’

  ‘But if I’m me, an older literary chap, mightn’t I say “amiss”?’

  ‘Most likely, but why risk alienating the reader by using a word they’re not familiar with? Especially when there’s nothing to gain and a lot to lose.’

  ‘What’s there to lose?’

  ‘The reader could close the book. And that would be that. The you in the book is terminated over one word in one hundred thousand.’

  ‘Where’s Daniel?’ asked Helen, interrupting.

  ‘He went out. Said he’d be back for dinner,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Shall we go into the front room?’ suggested Helen, who was already making her way to the hall carrying the plate of nibbles.

  ‘Amy, Trevor says I’m a meme.’ He was following her down the corridor.

  ‘I know! You’re Instafamous. There was a crazy quote of yours in the window of Waterstones. Something about a blood clot.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. That’s what Trevor said. Stuff I said on radio is being used.’

  ‘I bought all of your competitors while I was there, the other longlisters. I’m going to try and read them all.’

  ‘Can you lend them to me afterwards? I haven’t read of any of them, yet. I mean, I know Coetzee. Disgrace was good. But I don’t really know any of the others. A.L. Kennedy sounds familiar, but I’m not sure I’ve read him or her. I feel so out of it.’

  ‘We can read them together,’ Amy
said as she sat down in the front room. ‘All three of us. We’ll have our own Booker.’

  ‘I’d better win that.’

  ‘Shoo-in.’

  ‘Have you told him?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Told me what?’ asked Malcolm, sitting.

  Chapter 28

  This Is My Inheritance

  Daniel was lying on the sofa bed in his father’s office listening to Neil Young’s On the Beach. He hadn’t heard the album for forty years, at least. He had forgotten it existed.

  Only minutes before he had been idly flicking through Malcolm’s LP collection and scoffing. Jazz, folk, sixties and seventies rock’n’roll – some artists he knew but most he didn’t. He’d always been repulsed by his father’s choices. Back then he’d preferred ABBA, Boney M and the Grease soundtrack to the stuff his dad played. Then he spotted the cover of On the Beach and memories flooded back to him. He stared at it and recalled doing the same as a child. It had been so strange to him then. An outdoor table and chairs on a sandy beach, replete with fringe-edged yellow umbrella, beside a buried fifties Cadillac, with only its fins and brakelight visible, like the tip of an iceberg. In the background stands a man looking out to sea. It was still strange now. And it annoyed him. It was purposefully eccentric and implied meaning it just didn’t contain. Like so much of the culture Malcolm enjoyed. It seemed designed to make you feel stupid if you didn’t get it, or didn’t pretend to get it, which is what Daniel suspected most people did.

  On the Beach had been one of his father’s favourites. At least he remembered seeing the album sleeve on top of the record player often. But he couldn’t remember anything of the music.

  That’s why he had removed the disc from the sleeve and had popped the record on the turntable. But he found he didn’t remember the music at all.

  As he lay on the sofa listening to it, he felt more and more disheartened. For some reason he thought by playing the album he’d unlock some key to his past. Something to fill the ever-deepening void he felt within him. Staying with Helen and Malcolm had focused his attention on the life he’d shared with them as a child. They were asking him to look again. To reassess. But instead of changing his views, he seemed only to confirm them.

  He remembered Malcolm would only ever play his music when Helen was out. This was something he’d never questioned until now. But it meant she hadn’t shared his taste in music either. And though his father really enjoyed music, he had to wait for an opportunity to play it.

  Daniel had always supposed it was because Malcolm, when not sleeping, was either writing or reading, and he required complete silence for both. But it was because Helen was always there with them.

  And those days when he would hear the music were the days when it was just him and his dad at home. But apart from the music, he couldn’t recall anything they did together that was different from all the other days.

  The silence of all the other days. That is what he remembered most clearly from his childhood. Living in dread of disturbing Helen and Malcolm. He closed his eyes and once again felt the oppressive weight of that silence. Children are not silent. And they shouldn’t be expected to be silent. He would never think of asking his own boys to be silent all day. And yet his parents had yelled at him for making the slightest sound. Then they would send him out to play with the other boys.

  An exile for art’s sake.

  Malcolm entered the room. ‘You remember this, do you?’ he asked Daniel.

  Daniel opened his eyes and looked at his father. ‘What?’ he asked, contrasting the man before him with the man of his memories. The Malcolm standing in the room was softer, more reasonable and gentler than the man he remembered. As though all the hard edges had been worn off over time.

  ‘The music. Why are you playing it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was flicking through all that fucking Bob Dylan you have and then I spotted this,’ he said, lifting the album sleeve off the bed. ‘Something about the cover art. I think I remember you playing it.’

  ‘I used to. Side two, really. I rarely played side one.’

  Daniel sat up, reached across to the turntable and flipped the disc. He heard the scratching needle and, sitting back down, listened intently as the music started.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, lying back on the sofa. ‘I remember this. Jesus. When were you into it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometime in the seventies. That was when I made friends with some of the Californians at university. They would have introduced me to Neil Young.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. It has to be forty years, but I remember the sound so clearly.’

  ‘I used to listen to it if your mother was out, just after I put you to bed. You never seemed to mind.’

  ‘I remember you playing it pretty loud.’

  ‘I couldn’t play it loud, the neighbours would come knocking. You remember what that was like, don’t you?’

  ‘I remember lying in bed with the lights off listening to the mournful guitar and sad drums.’

  Malcolm didn’t say anything. He walked to the chair at the desk and sat down. They listened for a few minutes as the song ended and the next began.

  ‘It’s bleak, Malcolm.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Well, it’s not ABBA, is it?’

  ‘I’ve never thought of it as dark.’

  ‘Well, it is. It’s damned depressing.’

  ‘There’s an optimism in the lyrics, isn’t there? Things are shit, but we’ll get through it.’

  ‘It’s not very convincing,’ said Daniel, and he reached over and turned it off. ‘Makes me want to slit my wrists.’

  Malcolm smiled grimly but didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m not built like you,’ said Daniel, sitting up. ‘You have no fear of the dark. You stare into the void for kicks. The music you listen to is depressing. The books you read are depressing. The books you write are depressing.’

  ‘Some say A Hundred Ways is quite funny.’

  ‘If you’re the Grim Reaper, maybe. It’s fucking awful. It’s darker than anything you’ve ever written.’

  Malcolm stared hard at his son.

  Daniel put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know how you two do it. This fucking life is hard enough without holding every speck of it up to the light for examination. Don’t you ever wish you could turn your head off for good?’

  ‘Never,’ said Malcolm, though without much conviction.

  ‘You must have such a high capacity for pain. I don’t. I have no capacity for pain. None. I have to be so cautious. Everything in this life frightens me.’

  Malcolm felt as though his son had punched him in the stomach. He could barely breathe, but knew he must say something.

  ‘You just need time to adjust, Daniel,’ he said, but it was more of a whisper.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘You need time to adjust.’

  ‘Adjust to what?’ asked Daniel, standing. ‘Geraldine leaving?’

  Malcolm nodded. He wanted so much to take the pain away from his son.

  ‘I’ll never adjust to that. There’s no adjusting.’

  Malcolm stood, intending to try to embrace his son, to give him some comfort, but he took longer to rise than he expected and the moment had passed. Daniel had already left the room.

  Chapter 29

  Sorry, but It’s Too Hot in Here for Clothes

  Liam answered the door wearing shorts and only shorts.

  ‘Sorry, but it’s too hot in here for clothes.’

  He gave me a chaste kiss on the lips and then turned back down the short passage to the living room. I hadn’t seen him near-naked for a month or so. It wasn’t the way I wanted this meeting to go. He was every bit as fit now as he’d been when a soldier. Probably more so, having gained weight and muscle as he aged. I have seen pictures of the nineteen-year-old soldier; he looked like a boy. Liam was all man now.

  All the windows were open, but there was only a faint breeze. Looking around I coul
dn’t fail to notice the place was a mess. I was trying to remember how long it had been since I had been there.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a pigsty. I haven’t had time to clean up,’ he said, following my gaze.

  ‘Gail hasn’t been here in a while, either?’

  ‘She won’t come here anymore. We’ve got ourselves a townhouse in Holland Park.’

  ‘When the fuck did that happen?’

  ‘The day after we had dinner. She insisted on me buying a house suitable for raising a family. She’s sick of being stuck in Surrey.’

  ‘So you just bought a place?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, no. Gail had been working on it for ages. She just forgot to tell me her plans.’

  ‘Are you sure? Perhaps you were just half listening to her?’

  ‘Probs.’

  ‘Probs?’

  ‘Yeah, probs.’

  ‘Are you going to get me a drink?’

  ‘It’s just gone two and we haven’t done any work yet.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to work. Get me a fucking drink.’

  ‘You have a problem, you know. Don’t fuck all this up by becoming an alcoholic.’

  ‘Become? I’ve been a high-functioning alcoholic for years.’

  He went into the kitchen and asked, raising his voice, ‘Yeah, but you’re not high-functioning at the moment are you?’

  ‘Who says?’ I said, rounding on him where he stood in the kitchen opening a bottle of Moët.

  ‘Julia. She’s ready to sack you over this Helen Owen thing. She just needs an excuse. Rock up to work drunk again and she’ll turf you out.’

  ‘She’s chicken shit.’

  The cork popped and hit the ceiling, causing me to jump.

  ‘Well, if you give her a chance, she’ll fuck you over. Seriously. Listen to me.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  He poured out two glasses and walked up to me, almost barging through me, his arm touching my shoulder as he walked back into the living room. He stood holding out a full glass to me.

  ‘You reading that?’ I said, taking the glass and pointing at the copy of Ian McGuire’s The North Water lying open, pages down.