The Last Word

Three

A week later, Harry moved into a little upstairs room at the front of Mamoon and Liana’s house.

The night of Harry’s last supper in Mayfair, a gurgling Rob in his cups had quoted a sentence from Plum Wodehouse’s Uncle Dynamite, ‘The stoutest man will quail at the prospect of having the veil torn from his past, unless that past is one of exceptional purity.’

Not that Harry could be put off. He had prepared for the veil-tearing task ahead by rereading Mamoon, going to the gym to work out with an orange-toned trainer, and keenly seeking the advice of his father, a psychiatrist, about the mind contest ahead. At the top of his list of imperatives was the one from Rob which informed Harry that he was to approach silkily from the side, charming and working Liana, the gatekeeper, until she knelt before him with the key to Mamoon on a velvet pillow.

‘Turn it on, dude, as previously stated. The full beam, innit — as you did so fruitfully with my weepy assistant Lotte, now in three-times-a-week therapy, poor thing.’ Rob went on, ‘She’ll seem deranged to you, the wife, but she worked hard to find the right person to frame the husband, hassling every agent and publisher in London. I guided her to you.’

‘What clinched it?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I guess my potential and writing style. Possibly, my intellect.’

Rob said, ‘Her first two choices dropped out after meeting Mamoon. One of them he called an “amateur”.’

‘And the other?’

‘“Excrement”. You were the cheapest of the decent, available ones, and, from her point of view, probably the most naïve. She thinks she can intimidate you into a hagiography.’

‘Ah.’

‘We’ll let her believe that, pal, before taking them down — all the way to Chinatown. It’ll be a long game of intrigue and deception. Remember, his vanity will be quite a force. Let it be your lever and use it against him.’

For the first few days, after breakfast, and when Mamoon had walked with his eyes down to his work room across the yard, Harry sat at the kitchen table with Liana and made sure, while adopting his therapist’s face, to enquire about her hatred of her sister, her spiritual beliefs, why men had always adored her, why she preferred tea to coffee in the afternoon, the temperaments of her numerous dogs and cats as well as that of her parapsychologist, and wondering, with her, whether she should ditch yoga and take up Pilates. But their main concern was whether it would be possible for her to lose five pounds from her ass. In London, she said, all the women were anorexic and in the country they were all obese.

He learned that Liana’s mother had been an English teacher, and an expert on Ariosto and Tasso; her grandmother had written for De Sica and Visconti. But when she brought over a box and began to offer him photographs of herself as a child — ‘that little child is still in me, Harry, wanting to be loved’ — he saw his empathic face had worked too well. Somehow he had convinced Liana that as well as researching a book about her husband, which would include a lot of material about her, he was also an odd-job man. ‘Please, darling, such a tall strong blond boy, with — oh, wow — thick legs and fine arms, would you accompany me to the supermarket, if you don’t mind, just five minutes, otherwise we won’t eat or drink a thing tonight.’

He was to carry the stuff to the car, and then into the house. His work had also come to involve hauling boxes of books around the place, fetching firewood from the barn, putting down poison for rats, making the fire in the library, and removing half-eaten mice from the front step, as well as numerous other domestic chores that the two women from the village, who came in five mornings a week — sometimes accompanied by the slow-moving daughter of one of them — didn’t have the time or strength to do. As he wasn’t staying in a hotel, Harry knew, encouraged by Alice, that he just had to muck in and ‘embed’ himself.

His therapeutic charm offensive, and the fact she had little company, had made Liana indecently adhesive. The wisest thing for him to do, he figured after a few days — while he surveyed the material he might begin to look at — was to have breakfast at six thirty. After, he’d scoot off to do ‘research’ before experiencing the couple in their dressing gowns and hearing Mamoon complain about his eggs, the temperature of the toast, the fatal burden of being a writer with nothing left to say, and only blindness, incontinence, impotence, bad reviews, death and obscurity ahead of him.

After breakfast Liana would be busy instructing and harrying the staff, including two people who came to work in the garden, which gave Harry the opportunity to escape to the barn to which she had handed him the key, saying, ‘There, tesoro, now go — find him.’

He found, as he barged open the creaky door, that the place hadn’t been opened for some time, and was semi-derelict. Scattered around were unwanted books, discarded coats, busted furniture, mouse and bird mess, a pool table, boxes full of drafts of novels, and, most valuably, Mamoon’s first wife Peggy’s diaries in a wooden crate. Carefully, he lifted them out and wiped them with a cloth. Then he scrubbed down a table, found an unbroken chair, fixed up a light, and plunged in.

Mamoon had lived a long time, and written a lot: plays and adaptations of classics set in the Third World, essays, novels, some poetry. Harry’s work would be immense, and his most significant resource was Mamoon himself. Harry was intending to conduct detailed and serious interviews with him. He would hear it from the horse’s mouth; Mamoon’s view would be the coup. However, when Harry approached his subject and opened his mouth to ask him if he might spare a moment to answer a few questions, far from being co-operative, Mamoon hurried on, as if past a tabloid reporter. The fourth morning, after breakfast, when Harry had worked out that Mamoon would be crossing the yard to his study fifty metres away, he made sure to be lurking behind a tree, smoking. Spotting his prey, Harry suddenly dashed out. ‘Sir, sir—’ he began.

Mamoon put his head down and thrust his arms out, and beetled on.

Liana shot out of the kitchen. ‘What do you think you are doing? Never approach Mamoon when he is in the zone!’

‘When will he speak to me?’

‘He is deeply committed to you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I have to work on him. He has to be softened.’

‘Will you do that?’

‘Believe in me, darling boy. I will take you there. We will reach his marrow.’

While he waited to approach Mamoon’s marrow, Harry was at least pleased to see that the most accurate source of information about Mamoon’s early years as a writer were the journals which Peggy had kept from the beginning of their relationship. There were eleven volumes piled before him, in such tiny writing that Harry had to squint over them with a magnifying glass and ruler. They were also beautiful: Peggy had used numerous different coloured inks, writing at various angles across the page. Between the pages there were flowers, notes from Mamoon, an outline of his hand, cuttings from newspapers, Polaroids of her cats, lists, and postcards from friends. Since he had agreed not to remove or copy the diaries, which would soon be sent to America, Harry had to hurry through them, making notes as he went.

He had already begun to think of the young couple’s relationship in terms of chapters: the callow scholarship-winning Indian, down from Cambridge and living in London; the budding author also working as a journalist; the writer begins to make his name with an amusing and well observed novel about his father and the old man’s scoundrel poker-playing friends; he and Peggy marry and travel; he and Peggy settle down in the house, where Mamoon begins to write the long family novels set in colonial India that he would be remembered for, as well as sharp essays about power and empire, along with extensive profiles and interviews with dictators and the Third-World crazies created at the collapse of colonialism.

In the late morning Liana would bring Harry his coffee, along with half a baguette and some sardines. A woman of Rome, who had spent time in India with Mamoon, Liana wore bright shawls, vibrating bangles and heavy rings, along with wellington boots in various colours for tramping through the mud and rain, which was, Harry was learning, what people who lived in the country appeared to do a good deal of the time. Her overcoats — often in fur, and fashionably spattered with mud, creating a Jackson Pollock effect — looked expensive.

‘How’s darling misery-guts Peggy?’ Liana asked Harry, patting the pile of diaries and sitting right next to him. ‘Is she drunk again?’

Harry, from an academic family, had always been capable of hard work, of bearing a large load of necessary boredom. However, he was finding the diaries both alarming and monotonous, particularly the later pages where Peggy enjoyed describing her numerous symptoms: brain-splitting migraines, stomach aches, her fear of cancer, and her regret. There had been an abortion; she had allowed Mamoon to mistreat her. She had turned away; she hadn’t insisted sufficiently; she had been weak with a strong man. She had been masochistic, even. Her OCD, her desire to slit her wrists and so on, would be interleaved with, ‘I love my solitude, but fear I’ll go mad. I love to read but it’s not enough. Here, in the country in the winter, when it is dark at three, things can get very dark with me. I drink, and fall over and wake up on the floor in my own vomit. If Mamoon saw me, he would be appalled. But he disappeared on a book tour, where he meets only sycophants and pussy, as he puts it. Now he is sleeping with one of the women — Marion — on another continent. Kindly, he informed me she is the first woman who truly knows how to satisfy his renewed appetite. I never quite achieved that, apparently. He loves her soft body, her mouth on his cock, and the way, since the word “no” doesn’t agree with him, she is ready for him whenever he wants her.’

‘Didn’t you read them?’ Harry asked as Liana looked at a photograph of Mamoon he had found.

‘I wish I could have known him then,’ she said. ‘I could have saved him. But grazie a Dio, why would I read them?’

Liana sounded like Mamoon, but he didn’t sound like her. With her Indian-inflected English in an Italian accent, Liana had a loud abrupt voice, like the wind tearing at your hair, particularly when offended, and there was usually something offending her. Even her emails were loud.

‘Curiosity?’ he said.

‘I am living the damn dream here.’

Before Mamoon she’d had two miscarriages, a fierce marriage and a divorce. Alone in a small flat in Rome, near the Tiber, ten minutes from the Piazza del Popolo, she went to discos, loved to drink, made love when she could—

‘With whom?’ he said, making a note.

She held his arm and whisperingly told him that she worshipped all forms of sexual expression. But dressing up and dancing could make her light up the city with erotic love. At that time she liked younger men.

‘Of which age?’

‘Late twenties, tesoro. They are still playful then, and their bodies are lovely, and still firm. Their minds are almost grown up.’

At night she sat at her window reading Turgenev and thought she was done with serious passion. Then, by chance, one day the maestro was generous enough to stroll into the little English bookshop she managed. She recognised him right away and was ecstatic. His books were her truth, and he was her kismet. Though she was shy, and had hair like a witch’s web, she could do nothing but beg for his signature, for him to touch her book with his actual hands — the ones that held the pen of genius. He wrote down his number.

She informed him, the second time she saw him, as they strolled in the sunshine in his favourite place, the Villa Borghese, that she had fallen in love with his primal creative power. He was relieved. He was parched. He took her to dinner. She wore her blue lace skirt. She had never had a dark man. They made love with their eyes. He played the man part well, and invited her to his bed. Though he was a little older than she was used to, what could she do but open herself to him? She was pleased that he was not just a talker like some clever men. In her experience intellectuals were not sufficiently devoted to sex, with weak erections and watery, even frothy semen. But Mamoon undressed her slowly, he knew how to look at her body and let her show herself to him; he knew what to say about a woman. He kissed and caressed her feet, and had her at least three times.

In the morning he kissed her coffee mouth. He said he loved that taste on her, of bitter black coffee. She had happily stayed in his arms ever since.

‘God didn’t grant me children, Harry, but He granted me Mamoon when I thought it might be too late! For a time, I could come just by thinking of him. Can’t we throw Peggy and her diaries away and live the life of the living? I am Tolstoy’s wife: it is like running an estate, this place!’

‘Did Mamoon read the diaries?’

‘Why, are they so shocking?’ She said, ‘He wasted his life attending to that poor woman who killed herself just to spite him. Why would he want to fritter away another moment on such a spoilt and sullen creature?’

‘He acknowledges in interviews that the two of them worked together on his manuscripts. She was the only person who wasn’t afraid to edit him.’

‘See how kind he is, praising her when we know the truth — that it was obviously all his work!’

Harry said, ‘Perhaps she was like the Beatles with George Martin — impossible to subtract from the work.’

‘Please, stop these stupid distractions. You know we are in need of a career boost up. I can tell you, to help the finances even more, I am going to write my own book. If I let you see some of it, you can offer advice.’

‘I’d love to. But Liana, I must speak to Mamoon if I’m to make a picture of him alive, here and now. Otherwise I think I will pack right up and go home at the weekend.’

‘Acha, tonight then,’ she said.

They would have a proper supper and Harry would join them.

At seven thirty a bell was rung downstairs. Harry left his work. He learned that Liana liked the round supper table by the window to be properly laid with crisp napkins, shining cutlery, candles, and the best champagne and wine. She was in jeans and a V-neck jumper, and Mamoon wore a fresh shirt. When Harry entered, Liana glared disapprovingly at his raggedy T-shirt, which he would be sure never to wear again, or would perhaps incinerate. Their housekeeper, Ruth, who had veined arms and a grey, bitter mouth, and was wearing black with a white apron, served them silently. Her sister was cooking.

Harry had heard from Rob that being merely a literature lover, Liana had had inflated ideas about Mamoon’s standing and wealth, with little notion of what the life of a professional writer was like. She’d been shocked by how modest an income his books actually generated. A small but lofty reputation didn’t translate into cash. Her accountants had told her that unless things improved, the couple would, in the near future, have to sell the house and land and move somewhere smaller. ‘Perhaps to the lowest of the low, Harry — even a bungalow!’

It became clear that Liana had convinced herself that the solution to this was for Mamoon to become, as she put it, ‘a brand’. Harry was amused to learn that Mamoon, who said little at supper, appearing to park his mind somewhere more congenial and with a better outlook, wasn’t sure what being a brand entailed.

‘Brand, did you say, darling habibi? Would I have to become like Heinz ketchup or a Mont Blanc pen?’

‘Not ketchup, no, but more like brand Picasso,’ she said. ‘Or Roald Dahl. Crowds of people are in and out of that dismal little shed every five minutes, paying through the nostrils.’ When Mamoon pointed out that Dahl was long dead, Liana said, ‘Never mind that — he is alive in people’s minds. We must sell you better so you are similarly alive.’ She nodded at Harry. ‘This biography will be a good start. Don’t we quite like nice Harry?’

‘The boy has a powerful forehand.’

‘Mamoon, I have to remind you over and over that you haven’t been fairly remunerated for your genius. I go to meetings with our accountants and I can tell you, they may not have read your books, but they have looked at your figures and sighed.’ She took his hand, kissed it, and rubbed it against her neck. ‘Darling, an essay on Tagore won’t repair the jacuzzi.’

Mamoon winced and leaned forward. ‘We have a jacuzzi?’

At least Liana was trying — to sell the film rights to his books; to use Mamoon’s contacts to set up a cookery programme for herself; and to persuade him to give a lucrative lecture tour in the US. She was also intending to ‘pen’, as she put it, a novel about a beautiful, Italian woman who falls in love with a genius. Harry would, he’d been informed, help her with this task. Who these days, apart from old-fashioned Mamoon, bothered to write their own novels, any more than they designed their own houses? Would Harry read what she’d done so far and make suggestions?

Harry got up and went out into the yard for a smoke. Liana followed him, saying, ‘Why did you make that distasteful face in my house? Mamoon lives in a dream world! If I didn’t protect him, he’d be broke. Don’t forget you’re here to show the world what an artist is.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

‘You know, Harry, I get a little tired of you sniffing around listening, suddenly coming up with a sly question about what happened whenever and why. Let me ask you a question. How many bedrooms were there in the house you grew up in?’ When he hesitated she went on, ‘There you are. You can’t remember. Five? Six?’

‘It was a Norman Shaw house, in Bedford Park, in Chiswick, West London. They were a bit run down. Dad sold it when I went up to Cambridge. Silly really, as those houses are worth millions now and film stars live there.’

‘But your father was a surgeon.’

‘He was a doctor, and became a psychiatrist, working first in an asylum and then in a hospital.’

‘Salaud — never mind that! Mamoon and I have had to work like dogs to achieve all that we have, while you were brought up in the top one per cent of the world’s population. In another time, Harry, you’d have become a politician, a diplomat, an economist or a banker. What went wrong?’

‘It’s all gone right. We were brought up to feel at ease with mad people. Dad would invite his former patients over to the house. Some stayed with us. Dad encouraged us to follow them into their delusion, which he called their story, the narrative which held them together. What was called their madness was really their writing.’

‘What has this got to do with my husband?’ she said.

At one time, he explained, while the Left was railing against imperialism and American influence, and often supporting Third-World fascists, Mamoon interviewed and wrote about powerful politicians, dictators and bearded mass murderers who had, on occasion, personally beheaded their enemies that morning — men who wrote their ‘novels’ in the blood of the people. Mamoon understood this to be a form of story-telling, the making of history by writing. His voice was cool, never judgemental but morally firm. He understood the need for dictators, prophets and kings, and our love for them. ‘And anyway, Liana,’ Harry went on, ‘while we’re talking about my family, my long dead mother ran a bookshop for a time.’

‘Oh you poor thing. Do you miss her?’

‘Every day.’

‘Do you speak to her?’

‘Yes. How do you know that?’

She shrugged. ‘The hills are a radio. There are voices everywhere. This house is an ear. Did you hear Mamoon speaking at night?’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘I think you will.’

‘That would be better than nothing,’ he said.