by John Purcell
Helen had asked Daniel to speak to Geraldine. To work out arrangements for access to the boys, to make the transition as easy as possible for them. He might have crossed the park now and had that chat. She was there. He was there. The boys were running around like madmen. They’d be happy to see him, he assumed.
But there was no crossing the expanse of greyish-green grass. There was no discussing the future. He would be playing a part. Speaking words he must say but would mean nothing. Such words would only prolong the deception.
She would speak from the heart. She always had. She probably always would.
She believed in things. In the soul. In love. In hope. In forgiveness. In a life beyond.
He watched her retie her hair as she turned to face the breeze. Wisps of rebellious hair corralled into a hair tie.
He was on the wrong side of the glass. Life was on her side. He was sure of it.
He was being left behind again. But he would do nothing to prevent it. The thought of crossing the field exhausted him. Geraldine’s gaze would be turned upon him. The joy of the boys on seeing him would be too great a weight and would crush him. This was what life at its core was for him. It was overwhelming. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He hadn’t forged his own life. He wasn’t fit for the challenges. The resentment that had sustained him for so many years, and had given his life purpose, was gone. He had made peace with the past and was now empty.
He sat on the ground, being sure to keep out of sight, the boot pressing ever harder against his stomach. They’d have to go back inside before he could think of getting back to his car unnoticed. He made himself as comfortable as possible. He was prepared for a long wait.
Chapter 42
Max’s Notes II
The time I spent with Malcolm this morning was stranger than our first interview. He was distracted. Very upset that his son Daniel had driven back to Edinburgh without him. He said they had talked of doing the drive together. He was confused at being abandoned by him. He spoke of being all alone now. Though Helen had let me in and I could hear her on the phone in her office.
I don’t know how to approach this story. Malcolm is not cooperating at all. Not strictly true. He seems not to realise what I’m trying to do. I make every effort to alert him to the fact that my visit isn’t a social one, that I’m here to interview him, but he manages to confuse this after a few minutes of talk.
When I try to bring the conversation around to his work he evades me by discussing politics – he is obsessed with Trump. He says the world deserves him and hopes he wins. I don’t know whether he’s serious or not, but I suspect he is.
Malcolm did say something, which I record here verbatim.
‘My fear, and I feel it strongly in myself, is forgetting higher thinking. The memory isn’t infallible, it needs to be reminded of such things, it needs someone reading the lines in the dark, a prompter. I can read or watch or listen all day long to contemporary literature and media and never hear one whispered line from the dark. Higher thought is silenced not by arguments but by forgetting, or worse, never knowing.’
When I asked him what he meant by higher thought, he stood up and went to the shelf behind me. He took down an old Penguin paperback edition of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. He handed it to me and said, ‘There’s some in there. I just don’t remember where, exactly. It’s been a long time since I knew such things.’
I flicked through the pages of the thick book and saw that a passage had been underlined. I showed it to him. ‘I bought it second-hand,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t me. I look after my books. I’m only a custodian, after all.’
I said it was quite pertinent to his career and read it to him.
Quote: ‘I am not decrying the life of the true artist. I am exalting it. I say, it is out of the reach of any but choice organisations – natures framed to love perfection and to labour for it; ready, like all true lovers, to endure, to wait, to say, I am not yet worthy, but she – Art, my mistress – is worthy, and I will live to merit her. An honourable life? Yes. But the honour comes from the inward vocation and the hard-won achievement: there is no honour in donning the life as a livery.’
After I read it, Malcolm surprised me by saying, after a pregnant pause, ‘I don’t even know what that means. I have now forgotten more things than I can hope to know in the future.’
He is perplexing. Not what I expected at all. I have re-read A Hundred Ways over the last couple of days and the book sparkles with wit and humour. His satire hits its mark. It’s dark and uncomfortable, too, but has a good heart. Which is important. But Malcolm himself has no spark at all.
‘Do you believe in genius?’ I asked at one point, despairing at his lack of clarity. ‘Enough to marry her,’ he answered. I liked that. It wasn’t an answer I expected but it was good all the same.
He went on to talk about the difference between his writing and Helen’s writing. They were representatives of two great opposing literary traditions, he said. The ‘is’ tradition and the ‘ought’ tradition.
This confused me, so I asked him to clarify.
He said that writers like George Eliot and Jane Austen were examples of the ‘ought’ tradition. They were always writing about how we ought to live. And Helen was the daughter of that line. Her writing sought change. While Malcolm was the son of the ‘is’ tradition. So he was at pains to describe the world as he found it.
I asked which two authors represented his lineage.
He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Thackeray and Fielding.’
*
After I left Malcolm, and started on my walk to the tube, I found Helen walking just ahead of me. I caught her up.
‘I’m very worried about Malcolm,’ she said, almost straight away.
I told her he seemed a little distracted and a touch depressed, but that I was not a good judge as I had only just met him. She asked if he had anything to say about her. I said he was very proud of her. Much more comfortable discussing her work than his own. She told me about her new book, about the trouble it had given her, and Malcolm’s opinion of it. This was the book Amy had been working on. Helen had been conflicted about it, she told me.
‘May I read it?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘It isn’t literary,’ she said.
We parted at the high street. She was off to the supermarket. Before she left I asked about Amy.
‘We haven’t seen her,’ she said.
*
Is this what genius looks like? Is this how it continues to produce well into old age?
I have met and interviewed many writers; they wear their writing in some obvious way. Even if only in their transient enthusiasms – as when they are in the midst of research. But Helen and Malcolm travel incognito. Unrecognisable. Nice, educated people, but nothing extraordinary.
But their work burns. They have genius.
I just looked up a line by Matisse I thought was ‘Live as the bourgeois, burn in your art’ and discovered I had misremembered it and misattributed it. The author of the advice/rule was Flaubert in a letter: Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres. The translation Google offered was, ‘Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.’
My line is better.
Chapter 43
Sometimes It’s Hard to Let Go
I was asleep on the floor in the corner of my empty studio when the front door opened and the estate agent, Gerald, walked in accompanied by the two new owners.
There have been better moments in my life.
I shouldn’t have been there. The new owners were well within their rights to be put out. We’d exchanged contracts; it was no longer my studio.
Gerald said something to the new owners that I couldn’t make out and ushered them back into the hall. Then he came over and crouched beside me. I was sitting up and wiping the drool from the corner of my mouth by this stage.
‘Sometimes it’s hard to let go,’ he said, as if finding the previous owner sleeping rough on the floor of their sold studio was a common occurrence.
I went with it. It seemed a good option, in the circumstances.
‘I’ll miss this place so much, Gerald,’ I lied, getting to my feet. ‘After the removal men left I gave the place a thorough clean and then I just couldn’t leave. I must have fallen asleep.’
‘They say that moving is one of the most stressful things we do in life. You were probably more exhausted than you thought.’
Gerald was a good agent; he’d got me a great price for the studio, but he wasn’t too bright. Which was fine with me. He did what he did well and looked good doing it. That’s enough in this world. More than enough.
Having sold the place, I’d been living there to sort through my crap and either throw it out or pack stuff up. But I could easily have hired someone to clear it out. I was really avoiding Helen and Malcolm and Max. Mostly Max.
I left Gerald’s side and walked quickly into the bathroom, checked my face in the mirror, pulled my hair back in a ponytail. I still looked like I’d slept on the floor.
‘Amy,’ said Gerald from the other room, ‘I came over about seven last night to check everything was in order for this morning. You weren’t here then. And the power was off.’
‘I was taking the last bits and pieces to my new place,’ I said, making it up as I went along. ‘I came back around nine.’
I returned to a puzzled Gerald and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Sorry about this. Apologise for me, won’t you?’ And with that I got the fuck out of there.
I had ended up sleeping on the floor of my studio because I’m a drunk. No other explanation will do. And I’m cool with that. It’s me. It’s what I do. But I had intended doing something completely different. After sorting the studio out, I had intended heading straight to Helen and Malcolm’s place. It was my fault Julia had Helen’s manuscript, and I wanted to tell her. She had said no digital copies and I’d ignored her.
But on my way I stopped off at the Regency for a drink. To fortify myself. One drink became two. And even though I wasn’t looking very glamorous in my cleaning gear – faded, paint-speckled jeans, stinky T-shirt, ugly grey sweatshirt and old trainers, all of which I had commandeered from Max years ago – I was invited to join in on a game of pool. Then dinner was ordered. More drinks. A bit of flirting. Then the boys’ girlfriends turned up. More drinks. Jealous words. A bit of a fight. More drinks. Then the pub closed and I staggered out onto the street friendless.
Once I opened the door of my studio I knew I had made a mistake. I should’ve left immediately. But I was tired and drunk and I really couldn’t face the stairs, the street, the search for a cab, the talk with the receptionist at some hotel, the going up the lift to my floor, the working out how to open the hotel room door, the pulling back of the tightly tucked-in sheets and then the undressing and the climbing into bed. So I lay down on the bare floor. Just to rest a while.
The floor wasn’t very comfortable but I slept soundly enough for a time. In the middle of the night I woke shivering. I looked around confused, then pieced things together. I was sleeping on the floor, in my studio. I sat up and checked the time on my phone. Four.
I felt stiff and sore and nauseous and drunk. I sat up and leant against the wall. There were no curtains on the windows. The yellow glow of London lit the room. I checked my phone. A message from Daniel. I’m sorry, it said. I replied, For what? And one from tattoo boy, which was a surprise.
Josh hadn’t been ignoring me after all; he’d been in Greece. A writers’ retreat. No internet, no phones, no TV. He’d finished a novel he’d been writing for years. Could I help him get it published? He added a link to a Google doc.
I crawled into the very clean bathroom and threw up into the toilet. I rested my head on the edge of the bowl. I felt much better. I flushed, then switched on the heat lamp. No electricity. I sat on the loo. No toilet paper. I flushed again and pulled up my jeans.
I took myself off to the corner of the room and sat on the ground.
For the briefest of moments I thought some gold had fallen into my lap, a writer who could replace Liam in work and pleasure, but my hopes were quickly dashed. Josh was talentless. The novel was atrocious. It wasn’t a novel, really. More a collection of thoughts, none of them interesting. And worse, they were poorly expressed. It was embarrassing.
Then I wondered if it was just literature. Maybe he was an artist. Maybe he was inventing some new form of expression. I read on. Nope. It was shit. But just to be on the safe side, I emailed it to Max with the question Is this avant-garde or just shit? I’m drunk and can’t tell.
If it was literature then that was something to work with; if it was shit, and I was pretty sure it was shit, then seeing him again just wasn’t an option.
I lay down again and rested my head on my arm. I opened the video Liam had taken of me sucking his cock. I stared at the screen. I wished I had the video Daniel had taken. I wanted to watch that again. I should have sent it to myself before deleting it. Now it was gone. Liam was gone. I’d never experience that again. At least I had this little video. I replayed it again and again. I just wished I could see more of Liam in the video. I should have taken the camera from him and filmed him.
I wondered what Max would make of the video. I was tempted to send it to him. He said he’d never be with me again. Maybe I could torment him. Maybe he’d change his mind if he saw me at work. Liam had intimidated the hell out of him. And Max had left me because he had discovered I was fucking Liam.
Sending him the video was an idiot idea. I was still drunk. How would Max watching a video of me sucking and fucking Liam help me in any way? I watched the video a few more times, trying to get myself off, but only ended up frustrated, sore and angry. I watched the video one more time, deleted it and then fell asleep.
Only to be awakened by the new owners.
Chapter 44
One Hundred Per Cent behind the Book
Helen read the email again. She had to be careful with correspondence from people she didn’t know. The English language was changing rapidly. Familiar words were being given new meanings. Some were losing their meaning altogether.
This email was from Julia O’Farrell, Publishing Director at Morris and Robinson. The woman she had spoken to on the phone. The woman who had sent Amy.
At first glance the email was an invitation to visit the M&R offices to meet ‘the team’ and to discuss their plans ‘moving forward’. But Julia had been unable to resist repeating much that had been agreed to by Helen over the phone. She seemed to think there was some doubt. To counter that doubt Julia assured Helen again that the team was one hundred per cent behind the book in its current form. And further, she rejected the suggestion that the manuscript required extensive rewrites. Julia wrote this as though Helen had been involved in such discussions. She hadn’t been. It was the first she had heard of extensive rewrites. She assumed Amy had been in contact with Julia. But Amy had said nothing of rewrites to her.
The email was meant to be reassuring but it had the opposite effect on Helen. Julia’s smiling tone was disheartening. To read that Julia had ‘socialised’ very early cover treatments with ‘key stakeholders’ just depressed her.
She didn’t like thinking about an office full of people busily making plans concerning that book. She didn’t want to be shown a range of draft covers, she didn’t want to agree on a title, she didn’t want to read through the copy edits, she didn’t want to have her photo taken for the publicity department. Or want to be paraded around the country, visiting bookshop after bookshop, library after library, festival after festival. She didn’t want to meet her new readers. She didn’t want anyone to say anything pleasant about the book.
She thought with horror of being made to go on The One Show or having to talk about the book on radio. All the extra duties that modern publishing required hadn’t even enter
ed into her deliberations about the book. She had been so focused on whether to publish or not, whether to keep the money or return it, she hadn’t considered what agreeing to publish entailed.
She wrote, Dear Julia, and then paused. She wondered if she should talk to Amy before replying. But couldn’t see what that would change.
The pain she felt when she thought of Malcolm, the man she had relied upon her whole adult life for good advice, was sharp and made her wince. Her eyebrows knitted together and she raised her hand to her brow, rubbing it roughly to ease the pain.
‘Where are you, Malcolm?’ she asked in a whisper.
Then quickly typed: Do what you like with the book. I don’t care anymore.
And pressed ‘Send’.
Chapter 45
Max’s Notes III
I am getting nowhere with Malcolm. He is very patient and has allocated two hours every morning for me. But none of my questions are being answered in a way that is useful for my piece. He spoke about his childhood at length this morning. But I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was fabricating much of it. Why he should do so I have no idea. He will not speak at length about A Hundred Ways. I saw it was in the bestsellers lists and told him so. He didn’t seem to think that was a good thing. The trouble is, Malcolm is so obliging, so pleasant, so easygoing. I find it hard to press him for more details. With other authors it’s hard to get beyond what they want to tell me, their agenda, to get at what I want to hear. But with Malcolm, it’s different; he causes me to doubt myself.
I am here to interview a potential Booker winner, a man who has gone silent just when he was becoming interesting. Dozens of journalists would kill for the opportunity and I am failing.