My jaw dropped. 'You mean to tell me you stole the cutlery of the Marquis de Sade?' I asked, appalled. 'Do you have any idea how valuable this stuff is?' The carvings on the bone-handled fish-knives, in particular, were outrageous.
'What can I tell you?' shrugged Randy, 'I'm the black sheep of the family. Only Mama loves me, even though she won't introduce me to her friends.'
'You don't look like her.'
'That's good. I guess I'm more like my pa.'
'Which one of her husbands is that?'
'The one she didn't marry,' he replied thoughtfully.
Just then, the door buzzer went and we both flew into a panic, shovelling the knives and forks back into the canteen like a pair of kids caught smoking dope in their bedroom. Randy stowed the case and signalled the all-clear, and I answered the door to find myself looking at a very frail elderly man in a ratty cardigan, holding a ficus tree almost as tall as himself.
'I want you should give this to Mary,' he said, shouting at the top of his voice. 'I don't want it no more. It ain't the plant, it's the money.'
'I – what? Wait.' I held up my hand. I didn't want him to repeat what he had said. He was extremely deaf and possibly half-blind, for he seemed to be addressing a spot several feet above my head.
'The tree, it's full of money,' he bellowed. 'I don't want it no more.'
I looked back at Randy, who was hiding behind the couch. He gave a puzzled 'Wassamatta?' look.
'I want you should give this to Mary,' the old man repeated. I felt like asking him why he hadn't used his keys like everyone else. 'I'm not crazy or nothing. You're looking at me like I'm crazy.'
'I'm sorry, I don't mean to,' I apologised. 'I'll give her the plant.' I wanted him to put it down before he fell down.
'It's her damn plant anyway. She lends her plants to people. I'm in her Thursday night group. Every week since my wife died. Exploring The Senses. I told her I was depressed and she gave me the plant, but she stuck money in the pot, like this way I won't think it's charity or a handout or nothin', but I saw through her, so I'm bringing it back. There's sixty dollars there and you can tell her I ain't touched a damn penny.' He thrust the battered tree into my arms and started off for the stairs. How he ever got up them in the first place I'll never know.
'An' tell her from me,' he yelled, looking back over his shoulder, 'that's a great plant she has there. Tell her it did the trick.'
Much to my relief, Randy left at midnight. He was staying at his ex-girlfriend's mother's house in Queens. From the way he was talking, I had a suspicion that he might be sleeping with her. He promised me the cutlery would only remain in the apartment for a few days, but I knew that someone with eyes like a starving boa constrictor would be capable of telling anything to anyone.
I put the ficus in with the other plants, made myself a coffee and sat by the window for a while. The room seemed oddly silent now. For the first time in ages I thought about sharing my life with someone. No-one in particular, just someone.
On Thursday I called the police again, with no luck. Miss Amity was due home the next evening, and I dreaded to think what I would say to her. I played back her messages; the usual assortment of normality-impaired individuals, someone asking her about selling a speedboat – she seemed to be acting as the middleman in a deal – someone else wanting to know if you could put a copyright on planets and sell them as brand-names.
Someone had also been in the apartment. I could smell cigar smoke. There was a squashed-out butt in the sink, and a pair of half-empty coffee cups beside the sofa. Worse still, it looked to me as though they had made love on the bed. The covers were rumpled and the room smelled stale and faintly perfumy. There was a time, just a few days ago, when the discovery would have shocked me, but my accumulated indirect knowledge of Miss Amity told me something about these new occupants. That, trapped perhaps in loveless relationships, they had fallen for each other and were unable to meet anywhere else, so she had allowed them to use the apartment for their trysts.
When Miss Amity called, I told her my suspicions.
'Damn,' she cried, 'that filthy whore has been dragging her johns in again. I warned you about Sheryl-Ann. Once I came home and found some poor businessman tied naked to a chair with duct-tape. It took hours to get it all off because he was so hairy. A nice man. I had to lend him cab fare because she took his wallet. His wife couldn't see they had a problem. Listen, I must tell you my news. Barbara has a date. Aren't you pleased for her?'
She never waited for you to catch up. 'Who are we talking about now?'
'Oh, Charles! The girl in your office. I fixed her up with my cousin Joel. He owns a chain of hardware stores. Is two a chain? He's taking her dancing. Isn't that great? Do you like mariachi music?'
She seemed to be moving in circles around me, making waves, brushing against the lives of others. This was beyond my experience. 'I'm very glad for her,' I replied. 'How did you -'
'If somebody calls about a speedboat, don't talk to them. I checked it out, and I get the feeling it was not acquired legally, if you know what I mean.'
I took Friday afternoon off. I was so nervous about Miss Amity coming home, I wanted some time to myself to figure out how to handle it. She called from the hospital at four to say she was just leaving. At half-past, there was another call.
'Guess what?' shouted Donald, out of breath. 'We found the dog.'
I leapt out of the armchair. 'My God, Miss Amity's due back any minute. Where is he?'
'In your building. He's been there the whole time. Mrs Beckerman's been looking after him. He stays with her whenever Mary goes out of town.'
'Why on earth didn't she bring him back?'
'I guess she thought she was meant to look after him, what with Mary in the hospital. She called me to ask when Mary was getting out. Ground floor, apartment 1b. Go get 'im.'
'Donald, you are a lifesaver.'
'So buy me a drink sometime, Mr Snooty Englishman.'
'Tomorrow,' I promised. 'Tomorrow night.'
'Deal.'
The other line rang. I switched across and answered. 'Hello?'
'It's me, Mary. I stopped to get some groceries on the way. Listen, I can't get in. I don't seem to have my keys. You will be there, won't you?'
'Of course. I'm looking forward to meeting you.'
'Did you get the dog back from Mrs Beckerman?'
'You mean – you knew?'
'That you'd lost him? Of course I knew. From the moment you performed that ridiculous impersonation over the phone.'
'But if you knew, you must have had an idea where Bolivar had gone.'
'Well, of course,' she replied.
'Then why didn't you tell me?'
'I would have thought that was obvious. I wanted you to spend some time with Donald. Charles, I have something to tell you. I was talking to your mother earlier and -'
'My mother? My mother in England?'
'You have another?'
'How did you get her number?'
'Barbara found it in your address book. She's seeing Joel Saturday. I hope they get on. They're the same height; it's a start. I called your mother because I wanted to ask her something, that's all. She thinks an awful lot of you. We talked for quite a while, her and me, and one thing led to another, and I accidentally let slip -'
The other line rang.
'There's another call.'
'I have a feeling that'll be her now. Don't be mad.'
'Hold on.'
I gingerly switched to the other line.
'Mary Amity tells me you're gay,' said my mother. I nearly dropped the phone. Regaining my composure, I switched lines back.
'I didn't mean to out you,' said Miss Amity apologetically, 'I wasn't sure you even knew yourself, but it was obvious to me. Families. We shock and disappoint each other, but there's still love. Look at Randy. Pour a drink. Brandy is good. Talk to your ma, don't fight, just run with it, she's fine. I'll be there soon.'
I talked to my mother.
I waited for Mary.
But Mary Amity never arrived. We never did meet.
She hadn't been in the hospital for a hip operation. The doctors had removed a tumour. She didn't want to worry people. In the cab she developed a cramp and asked the driver to take her back. She died a few minutes after being readmitted. She was the only person who ever got my name right.
I no longer work at the bank. I have an apartment of my own now, a modest place in Brooklyn. Two floors up, with four rooms, one bull terrier and far too many sets of keys.
LEARNING TO LET GO
Everyone has a story to tell, he reminded himself. Whether it really happened, to them or to someone else, is irrelevant. What's important is that they believe some part of it, no matter how small. The most ludicrous and unlikely narrative might yield a telling detail that could lodge in a person's mind forever.
Harold Masters smiled at the thought and was nearly killed as he stepped off the kerb on the corner of Museum Street. The passing van bounced across a crevice in the tarmac andsoaked his trousers, but the doctor barely noticed. He raised his umbrella enough to see a few feet ahead and launched himself perilously into the homegoing traffic, his head clouded with doubts and dreams. Why were his pupils so inattentive? Was he a poor storyteller? How could he be bad at the one thing he loved? Perhaps he lacked the showmanship to keep their interest alive. Why could they create no histories for themselves, even false ones?
Fact and fiction, fiction and fact.
What was the old Hollywood maxim? Nobody knows anything. Not strictly true, he thought. Everyone has some practical knowledge, how to replace a lightbulb, how to fill a tank with petrol. But it was true that most information came second-hand, even with the much-vaunted advent of electronic global communication. You couldn't believe what you saw on the news or read in the papers, not entirely, because it was written with a subtle political, commercial or demographic slant, so why, he wondered, should you believe what you read in a washing machine manual or see on a computer screen? A taxi hooted as he hailed it, the vehicle's wing mirror catching at his coat as he jumped up on to the opposite kerb.
Dr Harold Masters, at the end of the twentieth century:
Insect-spindled, grey, dry, disillusioned, unsatisfied, argumentative (especially with his wife, whom he was due to meet on the 18 40 p.m. train from Paddington this evening), hopeful, childish, academic, isolated, impatient, forty-four years old and losing touch with the world outside, especially students (he and Jane had two of their own – Lara, currently at Exeter University, and Tyler, currently no more than a series of puzzling postcards from Nepal).
Dr Harold Masters, collector of tales, fables, legends, limericks, jokes and ghost stories, Professor of Oral History, off to the coast with his wife and best friend to deliver a lecture on fact and fiction, was firmly convinced that he could persuade anyone to tell a story. Not just something prosaic and blunted with repetition, how granny lost the cat or the time the car broke down, but a fantastic tale spun from the air, plotted in the mouth and shaped by hand gestures. All it took, he told himself and his pupils, was a little imagination and a willingness to suspend belief. Peregrine Summerfield disagreed with him, of course, but then the art historian was a disagreeable man at the best of times, and had grown worse since his girlfriend had left him. He made an interesting conversational adversary, though, and Masters looked forward to seeing him tonight.
Thank God we persuaded him to come out and spend the weekend with us, he thought as he left his taxi and walked on to the concourse at Paddington Station. Peregrine had suggested cooking dinner for the doctor and his wife this weekend, but his house doubled as his studio and was cluttered with half-filled tubes of paint, brushes glued into cups of turpentine, bits of old newspaper, pots of cloudy water and stacks of unfinished canvasses. Besides, they were bound to argue about something in the course of the evening, and at least this way they would be on neutral ground. Or rather, running over it, for they had arranged to meet in the dining car of the train.
Masters spent too long in the station bookshop quizzing one of the shelf stackers on her reading habits, and nearly forgot to keep an eye on the time. Luckily the dining carriagewas situated right at the platform entrance, and he was able to climb aboard without having to gallop down the platform.
'Darling, how nice of you to be on time for once.' Jane, his wife, kissed him carefully. 'I felt sure you'd miss it again. Perry's not made it yet, either. I bribed the waiter to open up the bar and got you a sherry. God, you're soaked. I thought you were going to get a taxi. Do you want me to put that down for you?' She pointed to his dripping briefcase.
'Um, no, actually, I've something to show you.' Masters seated himself and dug inside, removing a handful of yellowed pages sealed in a clear plastic envelope. 'Thought you'd beinterested in seeing this. I might include it in the lecture.'
Jane had hoped for a little social interaction with her husband before he plunged back into his ink-and-paper world. Concealing her disappointment, she accepted the package and slipped the pages from their cover. She was good at masking her emotions. She'd had plenty of practice. 'What's it supposed to be?'
'It was found in a desk drawer in a Dublin newspaper office when they were clearing out the building. Miles passed it to me for verification.'
With practised ease, Jane slipped the yellow pills into her cupped hand and washed them down with her sherry. 'You really want me to look at this now?'
'Go on, before Perry gets here,' pleaded Masters. He was like an irritating schoolboy sometimes; he would hover over her, driving her mad if she didn't read it straightaway. Reluctantly, she perused the battered pages.
'Obviously it's meant to be a missing chapter from Brain Stoker's Dracula, revealing the fate of Jonathan Harker. But if it was real, it would have to be part of an earlier draft.' Jane tapped the pages level. 'The quality of the writing is different, too coarse. It wouldn't fit with the finished version of the book at all.' She studied the pages again. 'It's a fake. I think it's pretty unlikely that Bram Stoker would write about oral sex, don't you? The ink and the paper look convincingly old, though.'
'Damn.' Masters accepted the pages back. 'You saw through it without even reading it properly. Miles went to the trouble of using genuine hundred-year-old ink, too. It's his entry for a new course we're starting called "Hidden Histories".'
'Did you really expect me to believe it was the genuine article?'
'Well, I suppose so,' he admitted sheepishly.
'Honestly, you and Miles are as bad as each other.'
'Well, I believed it,' he moped. 'But then, I always believe the stories I'm told.'
Jane smiled across the top of her glass. 'Of course you do. Remember how convinced you were that the Hitler diaries were real?'
'I wanted them to be real. To learn about the inside of that man's brain, didn't you?'
'No, Harold, I didn't.' She looked out of the window. 'We're moving. I hope Perry got on board.'
'Jesus, that was a close thing. I wasn't expecting it to leave on time.' Peregrine Summerfield was standing beside them, attempting to tug his wet tweed jacket away from his body while a waiter pulled ineffectually at a sleeve.
'Perry, you're getting water over everything.'
'I was trying to choose a paperback. Nearly missed it. On Hallowe'en, too, that would have been an omen, eh? It's pissing down outside. Hallo, darling.' He kissed Jane. 'The tube smelled like an animal sanctuary, all wet hair and coats. Anyone ordered me a drink? What have you got there?' He pointed at the plastic-coated pages on the table as he sat down beside Masters' wife.
'Something for my lecture on fact and fiction.'
'Oh?' Summerfield thudded down into his chair and eagerly accepted a drink from Jane, carefully guiding the sherry glass over his beard.
'Yes, it purports to be – well, it's actually – '
'Jane, you're looking bloody gorgeous, as ever,' Summerfield interrupted
, 'beats me how you do it on a shitty night like this. What's on the menu apart from their god-awful watery vegetables, I wonder? Let's see if we can get one of these pimply louts to open some wine, shall we?'
He made a beckoning gesture at Masters. 'Come on, then, I know you're dying to tell someone about your talk tomorrow. What have you got planned for these poor students?'
'I thought I'd talk about how fact and fiction have switched places since the war.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, you have to look at the history of storytelling. For me, one of the most important dates in the last century was the 28th of December, eighteen hundred and eighty-one.'
Summerfield gave a shrug. 'Why?'
'On that day the first public building was illuminated with electricity for the first time ever, at the Savoy Theatre.' Masters leaned forward conspiratorially. 'Just think of it. With the click of a switch, twelve hundred electric lamps cast darkness from the room. The myths and mysteries of the past were thrown aside by the bright, cold light of scientific reason. No more shadows. No more hidden fears. No more cautionary tales of bogeymen and ghouls. And in the week of the winter solstice! As if man was determined to prove the dominance of light over darkness!
'Fiction once involved the telling of tales by candlelight. With electricity to help us separate fact from fiction, everything was clearly designated. Before the advent of television life was simpler. You went to work, you came home, you listened to the radio, you read a book; it was hard to mix your home life with your fantasy life. Now, though, the lines are blurred. People have phoney job titles and meaningless career descriptions. They spend their days lying to each other about what they do for a living, trying to make their work sound more interesting than it is, then they go home and watch gritty, realistic soap operas on TV. No wonder their kids are confused about what's real and what isn't. People write to soap stars as if they were real characters. And with so many companies spoon feeding us entertainment, no wonder we're losing the power to create our own fantasies. No wonder that we're not believed even when we've achieved the fantastic. Inexplicable mysteries occur every day, in every life. It's how we choose to read them that defines us as individuals.'
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