The Last Word

Thirty

At a literary party, Harry felt flat and not at all like talking. Leaning against a wall, drinking and watching seemed a more agreeable idea, until he saw Lotte. She had been Rob’s assistant, had left for a while, travelled and had therapy, before going back to work with Rob, this time as an editor, looking after Mamoon’s collected essays. Harry was glad to see her, though he wondered if she might be annoyed with him after the Queen’s Park incident. She only laughed and said that Rob had exaggerated. She was glad to see Harry and had nothing arranged for later. Might they have supper together?

After two years of serious writing, Harry had time, indeed whole long nights of time, on his hands. He suspected he might have plenty to say to Lotte now. Having worked harder than he had ever worked before, he had at last stopped, and was waiting for Liana to read and sanction the biography, while wondering whether he’d accept the next job Rob had offered him.

He needed the money. The twins had been an event. They were born prematurely, and one of them almost died, remaining in hospital for a month. Alice and Julia were drained. When Alice did go out, it was with other mothers and au pairs, and the women talked about sleep as addicts talked about dope.

Harry’s father had liked being a father, as did Harry’s brothers, and Harry found that he took to it. He walked for miles across London, pushing the boys in their huge buggy. As their engine, umbilical and life-support, he existed now, mostly, to serve them, as they became flirts and celebrities, getting presents everywhere they went. He loved his boys’ mouths, their flesh, the smell of their hair — which might often conceal pieces of broccoli or corn — as he’d loved those of women.

Alice, whose company he’d quite enjoyed once, a long time ago, was only a tense mother, as if she had gained a burden she’d never be free from. Harry’s father, in his louche suit at his London club, and always the optimist, had said with a satirical giggle that Harry would become familiar, as at no other time in his life, with the parks and museums of London, while becoming increasingly unfamiliar with his partner and his friends. There were few lonelinesses like that of the new father, as Harry suddenly found himself in places and with people he would otherwise have avoided. It would, his father suspected, be at least five years before Alice emerged from the orgy of motherhood, and only then with considerable persuasion from Harry. The boys, wailing fascist phalluses in nappies, would be the only little pricks she wanted. He would have to wait, if he had the patience. When, after this advice, Harry was told by his father to plod off, his father slipped him £20, as he always did on these occasions, as if he were paying off a tradesman, murmuring, ‘Dear boy, do be sure you have female cover. And do make sure, next time, only to go with women who have had good fathers.’ Harry thanked him. His father went on, ‘And, otherwise, with a woman, be sure to find out what was done to her, because before long she’ll be doing the same to you. Ha, ha. .’

‘I wish you’d said that earlier.’

‘It only just occurred to me where you were going wrong. Glad to be of help.’

Harry’s priority and pride, his other child, had been the book. Working twelve hours a day for months, he had completed a decent draft in a cafe around the corner from where they were still living. After delivering it, Harry found that Rob as editor was arbitrary and sadistic. The manuscript was scribbled over with remarks like, ‘This is shit’, ‘rubbish’ or ‘improve a million times’. At first Harry argued with Rob over the changes and cuts, though the stress was awful; then he gave in, and went along with it, but he felt worse: humiliated and bullied. Alice urged him to change what needed changing, and resist the rest. Harry saw how authors could get a reputation for being difficult.

After shoving Harry head first through a grinder, Rob pronounced the biography lively and authoritative, predicting it would be a little success. It was sold into several languages and Harry would front a television documentary on Mamoon. The publication date had been provisionally set. Rob had instructed Harry to send the book to both Mamoon and Liana, which was the condition he had agreed. Harry knew that Mamoon wouldn’t even have a secret peep, but Liana would read it, and would not want for opinions. Harry believed he could hear her pencil violently scratching from here.

While he’d been waiting, he spent time with Julia, who in her time off had become part of a London Harry didn’t know, London as an international city of students, refugees and drifters. Her friends were Brazilian, Angolan, Somali, Indian, and when she took him out, he was introduced to night buses, dark new bars and cheap food, crawling around the city in the early hours. He liked being on a bus at four in the morning, when you could see the city and what a wonder it was. He and Julia had the compatibility of fond ex-lovers, and she continued to be devoted to him; he had never seen such love before, resembling madness in its irrational fidelity.

Lotte took his hand, and whispered, ‘I’m going to take you out of this dull party. Don’t worry, you’ll like it much better where we’re going. You need to hear what I’m going to say.’

She took his hand, led him through Berwick Street Market, around a corner into a narrow street, and through a black, broken door into a semi-derelict eighteenth-century house. They went up the carpetless stairs and into a large undecorated, peeling room with a sloping floor. An exhausted book reviewer and a minor poet sat at a wobbly table, served by a woman who might have been painted by Lucian Freud. After Lotte had kissed the staff and the patrons, he and she sat close; he stroked her hair while she poured talk into his ear.

Lotte had driven down for lunch with Mamoon and Liana. Mamoon was still weak and distressed after the serious stroke he’d had three months ago, but his speech had improved. He’d even said, ‘Death had been avoiding me, but I know that he wants me now, since I have been receiving Lifetime Achievement awards most days.’

Lotte said, ‘I don’t think you went to see Mamoon, did you?’

‘I had to feel free to make him up.’

‘He was, as Rob might have told you, in an uncreative state for a while. He hated being flat on his back, and became even more depressed. Liana got him moving. But there’s some excellent news: despite his physical setbacks, he’s finished a short new book, his first for a long time. You put an idea in his head.’

Harry said the only thing he remembered was nodding across at Liana in the kitchen once, and saying the novel had always been concerned with marriage, and that perhaps Mamoon had been doing research without knowing it. Mamoon looked almost interested, but of course didn’t say anything. ‘Is it about that?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’ve concentrated on the early and middle life. Once he marries Liana they just stay home not having sex and bickering, like everyone else. The literary public won’t eat that up.’

Lotte said she wanted to show Harry something. She took him back to the flat she’d recently moved into, near Goodge Street. Most of her things were still packed up and her bed was in the middle of the room. She lit candles. As there was nowhere else to sit, they lay down, in their clothes, drinking brandy.

She asked him what he was doing, and he told her he was making notes to start work on another book, about psychosis and his mother. His father had said Harry’s mother was liable to fall for mouth-merchants of all varieties. He’d given Harry letters from one of the writers he’d referred to. Harry had pictured some local Vargas Llosa, but this character was living in a dingy flat in a council block.

‘Surrounded by piles of mouldering paper, he was a conman full of swanky talk and a mile of continuous bullshit. He said Mum was an enthusiastic and flexible lover, but she talked too much and couldn’t listen. One time she grabbed him by the hair and smacked his face against her knee. She wouldn’t let him alone, until he had to cover the windows. He was surprised I turned out so reasonable, and tried to touch me for a few quid. I should have learned, shouldn’t I, that biography is a process of disillusionment.’

‘What will you do?’

‘There have been too many fathers and old men. It is the time for mad mothers. I want to get into women’s minds, rather than their bodies. Except for you.’

They drank some more, before she patted a slim manuscript perched on a pile of books. ‘This is what we’ve been talking about. Mamoon’s latest.’

She put it in his hand. He looked at it and noted the title, A Last Passion, and then handed it back. He was tired of Mamoon. He asked her to whisper him the story, briefly.

‘Are you sure?’

He said, ‘He kept saying I was nothing. He wanted me to feel like nothing. He mocked and almost destroyed me. There were times when I thought I’d lose my mind. Then I had two babies, and I couldn’t get out of bed for weeks. I thought something was going to fall on me, and I had a stomach and bowel infection. My mother and Peggy as ghosts wouldn’t stop talking. I could have murdered the world. Our help Julia was kindness itself. Dad fixed me up with a therapist.’

‘Where was Alice?’

‘She just drifted away, leaving the kids with Julia so she could visit friends. Otherwise she’d go to bed early with a headache and shut the door behind her. She had better things to think about than me. Since I’m a kid who brought himself up, I did the same again. I forced myself to get out of bed, and wrote Mamoon out of me. Pass the brandy: I’m free of him, Lotte. Cheers!’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ She was looking at him. ‘The new book is unusual for Mamoon. It concerns a young admirer who comes to stay with an older man, a writer, and begins to write a book about him. So, the old writer secretly writes about the younger man as the younger one writes about him. Unusually for Mamoon, it’s pretty funny. It’s a love story.’

‘What does the old guy say about the young guy?’

‘Harry, it mostly concerns the older man’s love for a younger woman, the hot but cold, vanilla-haired wife of the acolyte, whom he describes as having the stillness of a Modigliani. Displaying at least five of the eight fatal symptoms of love, he adores and mythologises her, as one does.’

Harry told her Lotte was going too fast. How did this encounter happen?

She said the old man and the girl began spending time together, having intense and honest talks, while the young man, who was in something of a panic about the biography, read diaries and papers in the old man’s house.

The book was sad, Lotte said, because the old man had fallen in love with the girl. He became angry when she remained in what he saw as a wretched relationship with the young man. This guy had tried to titillate and distract the old man with a pack of lies about women he’d slept with. How the inane kid loved to boast about his potency! Five women in one day, he even claimed. No wonder he was known as Fizzy Pants!

‘The writer advises her to break with the horny punk. When she falls pregnant the writer is the only person she wants to tell. For a while she doesn’t even inform the young man, the actual father. The old man takes the pregnancy seriously. They discuss it a lot.’

‘Discuss it in what way?’

‘He struggles over whether he should advise her to have an abortion. It’s an anguish for him, perhaps because he regrets the child he and his then girlfriend aborted years before.’

Harry suddenly said, ‘So what? What is going on? Why the hell does he get involved?’

Lotte shrugged. ‘Inevitably the old man says the girl should reconsider.’

‘Jesus! The arrogance of the man! I could slap him!’

‘But the old man has to hit the young idiot with a stick.’ She went on, ‘The old man says he has lived a long time, and in his own paternal way he wants to know that the young woman he loves has thought these things through properly.’

‘As if anybody ever does.’

‘The old man says the young man can only have catastrophic loves, for which he takes no responsibility.’

Harry said, ‘What a stupid old man. I hope the novel states that clearly.’

‘Oddly enough, it doesn’t.’

‘She has the kid?’ She nodded. He said, ‘Nice story. I hope that’s it.’ She looked as though it wasn’t. ‘Why doesn’t it stop there? How can there be more? More of what?’

He went to the window, threw it open, and sat on the ledge, gulping down the night air. Outside, London was humming. They could go back into Soho and drink and dance to jazz music. Why was he bothered about what she said? Why did he have to listen? Couldn’t he climb out and never return?