by John Purcell
I tried a few things to get him talking. I asked if he believed, like Will Self, that the novel was dead. He retorted, ‘Was it ever alive?’ There was no smile on his lips. I prompted him. He said, ‘The novel has never held a position of importance in society. This importance is a fantasy of novelists, their publishers, their critics and their most earnest admirers. Even amongst the privileged minority who read regularly, the novel is regarded as a form of entertainment only. As entertainment, the novel is very much alive. More novels are being read today than at any time in our history. They’re just not the kind of novels I, or Mr Self, would choose to read.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘There’s uphill reading and downhill reading. As you can imagine, uphill reading requires more effort. Downhill, less so. Readers will do both in their reading lives. Most will tend to favour downhill reading. It’s thrilling to race headlong through a book. Uphill reading is more taxing and requires a certain amount of humility. We need to accept that we won’t always enjoy or even understand all we read. It can be a hard slog at times. The ego takes a battering. But the rewards are great.’
I brought up the Nobel Prize. I told him Helen Owen was being listed on the betting sites as a chance. He didn’t think she was eligible this year. I assured him she was. And told him she was considered the best chance the UK has, ahead of A.S. Byatt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan.
And he said, ‘I like when they give it to a writer no one has ever heard of. That always makes me chuckle.’
‘Why do you think you’re never seen as a chance for the Nobel, Malcolm?’
‘I don’t know why. I don’t even know the criteria. I remember looking at the list of past winners and being unable to make much sense of it. I’d read many of them but at a glance I couldn’t discern any unifying characteristics. And many great writers are missing from that list, which defeats the purpose, I think, if the purpose is to promote and honour literature. If someone is on the list they’re literature and if they’re not, they’re not. It’s reductive. Imagine not reading Leo Tolstoy or Willa Cather because they didn’t win the Nobel. I’m sure it happens. People are drawn to these lists like life rafts. Lists make it easy for people who haven’t got the time or the wit to discover great writing on their own. But we’re talking about literature, anyway. No one can agree on what it is. How can you begin to work out who to honour when we can’t agree what it is we’re all trying to do? What I think is literature will differ greatly from what you think is literature.’
‘Are there any certainties? You mentioned Tolstoy. Can we say with conviction that War and Peace is literature?’
‘You and I might. But many years ago I overheard a man in a bookshop saying he preferred the abridged version to the unabridged.’
‘Shakespeare then. Surely everyone can agree that Shakespeare’s plays are great literature.’
Malcolm gave this a moment’s thought and then said, ‘Tolstoy didn’t think much of Shakespeare.’
Chapter 46
Malcolm Taylor Is Here
‘Hello? Am I speaking to Helen Owen?’
‘Who is this?’
‘Marty Raymond. You don’t know me. I live in Brixton, in the flat you once lived in.’
‘Yes?’
‘Malcolm Taylor is here.’
‘What?’
‘He’s been here a couple of hours. He said he missed the old place and asked if he could step in for a moment. I knew who he was. When we moved in the estate agent said you both had lived here for many years. I’ve just read A Hundred Ways.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘We chatted for a bit while he went from room to room but he said he wanted a minute alone in the room where you both wrote together. It’s now our spare room. He’s in there just sitting on the end of the bed staring out of the window. He seems reluctant to leave.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about. He can stay as long as necessary. I just thought I should let you know.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I googled Malcolm and found his agent’s email and reached out. Someone called Zoe rang and gave me your number.’
‘Thank you very much for taking the trouble to let me know. Malcolm hasn’t been himself lately. I’ll come and fetch him.’
‘See you soon.’
Helen hung up. Feeling unsteady, she made her way quickly into the front room and sat on the sofa. She stared at the carpet. Her mind had gone blank. She felt numb. After a while, she lay back on the sofa and closed her eyes.
She took a few deep breaths. And moaned involuntarily.
He’d gone back to the flat. He was in their room. Their writing room. Had he lost his mind?
Since Daniel and Amy had gone, the house had been quiet. It had been awful. She and Malcolm were rarely together in the same room for more than a minute. The longest they were together was for the nightly news bulletin. But that wasn’t together; neither ever spoke. The horrors of the US election played out in silence. Even meals were being arranged separately.
He seemed to blame her for Daniel’s departure. But hadn’t said as much. All she got from him were pleasantries. Nothing more. He went to bed before her, woke before her. He made her tea in the morning and gin and tonics in the evening. He brought back meals from Waitrose. He spent hours with Max in his office and then hours out of the house by himself. She found him once in the park and had walked off rapidly before being seen.
They hadn’t spoken about her book. They hadn’t spoken about the house. They hadn’t spoken about Daniel. They hadn’t spoken about their relationship. They hadn’t spoken about him.
She was in the dark about Malcolm. Didn’t know if Daniel had spoken to him in the way he had spoken to her. She didn’t know what he and Max were speaking of when they met. She didn’t know if he was writing. She didn’t know what he was thinking. She knew he was depressed, listless, thin-skinned, exhausted and frailer than he had ever been. She also knew the doctor would be no help.
Now this. She didn’t want to fetch him. They would have to travel back together. The silence then would be too painful. But she had no one to call. It was the cold truth. She had made Malcolm her world. With him, she hadn’t needed anything. Without him, there was nothing. Nothing.
The young man who called would be waiting. Malcolm was her problem. Not his. She had to get up. She had to call a cab. She had to get going.
After calling for a cab, she went into the kitchen for a glass of water and thought she heard music coming from downstairs. She knocked loudly on the door to the flat. No reply. She opened it. The music wasn’t very loud at all, but it was on. She walked down the stairs.
‘Amy?’ she called when she reached the final step. There was no one in the room. She went to the bathroom door. The shower was on. ‘Amy?’
‘Helen?’ came the reply from within the bathroom. ‘I’ll be out in a sec.’
*
They sat in the cab together barely saying a word.
Helen had been grateful and relieved when Amy had said she would come with her to pick up Malcolm. She had hugged her warmly and kissed her cheek. But now, as they drew ever closer to Brixton, Helen felt physically sick.
He was in their writing room. He was making a point whether he knew it or not. She had disrupted fifty years of continuity. She had been the one to break a shared train of thought. Not him.
And now she couldn’t even recall the moment when she had discussed the move with Malcolm. She couldn’t remember his reaction. Perhaps he hadn’t reacted. His silence had been approval enough for her at the time.
She had been offered more money for one book than she received for the others combined. Of course he was happy for her. Of course he would want to share in her good luck. Of course he would come with her. Of course she hadn’t given him a thought.
The cab passed row after row of apartment blocks but then slowed and turned through a gate and drove down a n
arrow lane into a larger square before stopping at Helen’s request near the entrance to a five-storey building. Helen looked out of the window at the charmless block and shivered at the sight of it. So many years had gone by stranded within its solid brick, prison-like walls. A lifetime.
She paid the cab driver and got out.
Amy was already out of the cab and looking around. They were in the middle of some estate. She had no idea which building Helen and Malcolm had lived in. She certainly didn’t recognise the area. She had never spent much time in Brixton. A couple of trips to the markets with Max and occasional dinners with Liam had been the extent of it. The area certainly didn’t look like Helen and Malcolm at all. She couldn’t fathom the idea of them living in this estate for so long. She couldn’t picture Daniel living here either. It was all so out of character. National treasures didn’t live like this.
‘It’s better now than it was,’ said Helen, reading Amy’s thoughts.
‘I can’t believe you lived here,’ she replied, frankly.
‘It was all I could afford at the time. It was just after university. I shared the flat with a couple of girlfriends. Before I met Malcolm. Girls on their own in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. But they all gave up the fight. Went home. I stayed on. Made ends meet. I was doing well. And then I met Malcolm. He moved in with me. I got pregnant and as we both wanted to write full-time, this was all we were able to afford for many years to come.’ She stopped talking and looked around. She assumed most of her old neighbours were still here. It was all so familiar but removed. ‘We were novelists; our income was never secure.’
Helen looked up at the building again and it seemed at once familiar and strange. In the past, while writing a book, she might travel to the proposed setting of a newly conceived novel. She’d walk the streets, sit in tearooms, visit the local church or post office, catch the local buses, talk to the older residents. Then she would take these experiences back to her room and revisit all she had seen through the prism of fiction. The setting could occupy her imagination for years. Normally she would never revisit these places. But on occasion, by accident, many years later she might return and the strangest feeling would come over her. It was as though she were uncovering repressed memories or a past life. She’d recall conversations and actions on the corner of certain streets that felt so real she was left confused as to what was true. Like being woken mid-dream.
Now the estate felt like the setting of an old novel pushing itself to the front of her mind. Malcolm and Daniel were like vivid characters. She remembered important scenes – birthdays, fights, celebrations – and certain conversations, some mundane, some life-changing. It didn’t seem like one of her more interesting novels.
Amy was real. She was with her now. Helen reached out, touched her shoulder and said, ‘In the seventies and eighties it was considered a rough area, but it wasn’t really. There’s always more good than bad in places like this. There was a strong sense of community. We all looked out for each other. While Daniel was growing up, he never lacked friends.’
They entered the brick building to their right and Amy followed Helen up two dimly lit flights of stairs. The walls were newly painted but the stained concrete stairs revealed years of varied and unsavoury use. It was all so squalid, Helen could see plainly now. She was compelled to explain it all to Amy, who looked more and more out of place with her expensive shoes, thousand-pound jeans and perfect face. And Daniel’s complaints seemed more justified now. What had they been doing here?
She stopped at a nondescript door and said, ‘I think Daniel still thinks we chose this life. That we could have written more successful novels if we’d tried. I suppose it was confusing for him. Everyone used to visit us here. Even people he saw on television. He’d see our photos in the newspaper and occasionally, we’d be on television, too. People on television didn’t have to live like us, surely?’
‘But Daniel was right.’
‘How so?’
‘You could have written a more successful novel if you’d tried.’
Helen looked to see if Amy was smiling or not. She wasn’t. There was a sharpness to Helen’s tone when she said, ‘I wrote that by not trying.’
She knocked on the door.
The door opened and a man with a pleasant smile said, ‘Thank you for coming, Helen. I’m Marty. Come in.’
Helen felt distinctly ill at ease crossing the threshold. The flat claimed her immediately. Gripped her tightly with vivid memories. All she wanted to do was run.
Amy stepped in behind Helen and returned Marty’s smile.
‘I’m Helen’s friend Amy,’ she said, looking around the flat. The flat wasn’t what she’d expected. It was bright, clean and quite modern.
‘You’ve painted and had new floors put in,’ Helen said.
‘We didn’t, the landlord did, then put up the rent. A lot of the flats are being renovated and sold off. We’re concerned the landlord might want to sell this, too. Two doors down went for five hundred thousand pounds, can you believe it?’
Helen gave him a look of surprise.
‘It’s true!’
Helen headed to the spare room without waiting for an invitation. Marty said nothing. She stopped at the door and looked in. Malcolm was still seated on the end of the bed as Marty had described on the phone. The last thing she wanted to do was go in. She looked back down the hall at Amy and held out her hand. Amy took it in hers. They went in together.
‘They’ve cut down the plane tree,’ said Malcolm, before he even looked at Amy and Helen.
‘Yes, they have,’ replied Helen.
‘It’s a shame. There’s no privacy.’
‘There never was in winter, either, remember.’
He turned his head slightly and looked at both women. Then turned back to the window.
‘This is where Helen and I wrote our best work, Amy. The room seems small now. Much smaller than I remember it being. I wonder how we fitted all the books in here and the two desks. But we did.’
‘The whole flat looks smaller now. I think it’s the new floors,’ said Helen.
‘They shouldn’t have changed a thing.’
Helen glanced at Amy. She didn’t know what to make of Malcolm’s behaviour.
‘We need to go now, Malcolm,’ said Helen. ‘Marty has been very patient.’
‘This place makes sense to me still. Even though it’s changed. It’s more mine than anywhere else on this earth. The books I have read here, the books I’ve written. The conversations. The love. Daniel as a boy. All mine. And these walls, this small space, so meaningless and mean, are mine. We might have chosen other paths. But we didn’t. Money didn’t matter as much as the work we were doing. And the work was good. It’s still good. And they all came to visit us here. They didn’t judge us because our circumstances were ordinary. They judged our conversation, our writing, our hospitality.’
‘We need to go, Malcolm. This isn’t our flat any longer.’
‘Amy, can you imagine us here? Sitting across from each other?’
‘Only because I’ve seen the photo in your office. But I doubt I could otherwise. It’s a very small room. None of this seems like you.’
‘Because you met me there. That place is insidious. It compromises me. To you I am that comfortable house, that uniform street, I am the pristine Waitrose, the litter-free park, the graffiti-free high street. That’s who I look like now. Like a middle-class tosspot. Like a kindly grandfather. Like a retired doctor. But this is me. Brixton is me. The estate is me. These neglected streets. That other place is nothing. It’s ill-gotten, it’s corrupt, it’s a lie. Do you think I could have written A Hundred Ways there? No way. Not now. I’m grubby now. Complicit in the deception. I didn’t protest. I didn’t chain myself to this flat. I didn’t make my objections to the move known. I went unwillingly but in silence. I’m corrupt, too. I’ll never write another honest book.’
‘Stop talking, Malcolm. It’s done. This isn’t your home anymore. You’re n
ot a child. You shouldn’t be here. Get off that bed and come with us now.’
‘The thing is, Amy, I thought she was happy here. Or if not happy – none of us is ever happy – committed to the place, attached to it, connected in ways that are indescribable. Rooted. We’d done everything here. It isn’t a palace, but it was ours. Little did I know what was going on in her head. I should have known better. I should’ve read the signs. I didn’t know she desired such things. I just didn’t know.’
‘It’s not terrible to want nice things, Malcolm,’ said Amy, noticing Helen’s tears. ‘It’s not a crime to want to be rewarded for your work. You two have worked hard all your lives; you deserve the spoils. You do. You both do.’
‘It’s ugly. It’s little. It’s sad to want such things. It gets in the way of what we’re doing. She knew that, too. She knew it. We were free, intellectually free, as long as we stayed here. Nobody owned us. Nobody could say a thing about our choices. I worked when I wanted to. That was the luxury our life here bought. Writing always came first. My teaching and my critical work were all cast aside when inspiration struck. She never had to work at all. Because we weren’t burdened by mortgage repayments or high rent. We were free. We were immune from their influence. Those idiots. Those fools. Those parasites. She knew that. We were free.’
Helen left the room. Amy heard whispered voices and the front door of the flat open and close.
Marty came to the door of the spare room.
‘Can I stay the night here, Marty?’ asked Malcolm.
‘Umm . . .’
‘That won’t be necessary, Marty,’ said Amy, ‘Malcolm is coming with me.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’re going to show me your Brixton.’
Malcolm stood up. Amy had said the right thing.
‘Thank you, Marty. You’ve been very patient with me. I appreciate it. I do.’
He stuck out his hand and shook Marty’s.
‘Would you mind signing my copy of A Hundred Ways?’ asked Marty.