The Last Word

Thirty-one

‘Although it’s not far down, and you’d probably only break your ankles, you’re making me nervous,’ said Lotte. ‘Come back, darling.’

‘Why?’

‘To hear the end.’ Her voice behind him said, ‘You’d think that would be the lot, wouldn’t you? But in his eighth decade, and in what the old man calls his “mid-life crisis” or the “Eros of his old age” — she has had a child, and her boyfriend is deep in his book — he persuades the young woman to begin to meet up with him in London.’

He turned to her. ‘To do what?’

‘What do you think?’

‘How would I know?’

‘I’m asking you, Harry—’

‘What, Lotte?’

‘To please come and sit next to me.’

He did so; she kissed him on the mouth; she embraced him, and told him that Mamoon had set it up delicately, with his old precision — a lonely couple hurrying to meet in a friend’s almost empty, unheated flat in Victoria. He — the character — was shocked by how relieved and delighted he was to see this woman, his human feeling coming back. How alienated, he says, is the older adult from his desire! He buys her gifts, and loves just to look at her, his new muse. Never out of a tracksuit now, she dresses for him. He likes to see her take her shoes off and she’s happy to oblige.

Harry said, ‘But why is she happy to oblige?’

‘A woman who is really wanted by a man is going to find him difficult to resist. How often in a life are any of us so adored? He says that Count Sascha Kolowrat, when dying, had Marlene Dietrich visit him, and pull up her skirt.’

‘This woman does that for the old man?’

‘Why not? She lies naked in front of the fire as he looks at her. She poses, like an artist’s model, while he looks on. She shows him herself. Just this, for them, is electric. He longs to express himself, this word-master, without words. To just “be” with another person. Like a contented baby with the mother.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘He had loved her. It hadn’t occurred to him that after a while they wouldn’t have anything to say. He is done with her, and wants to separate, but he doesn’t know how to do it because it’ll be expensive and will make her mad, suicidal even. She is obliviously contented, shopping in London, while he is having a sort of breakdown.’

‘Why? What sort?’

‘He was vulnerable, since he could not return to his daily routine, the prison which held him together. He asked himself repeatedly, even at this stage of his life, how can we rid ourselves of old, dead selves and make new ones?

‘He calls the two of them Prospero and Miranda, and she attends to him like a good daughter. She draws him, they make tea and talk intimately about their lives, their partners, and the future. They have to.’

‘What sort of future could this couple have?’

Lotte said, ‘This blank girl, a piece of fluffy erotic nothing, who seems to absent herself from herself, can help him prepare for his death. He knows she is evasive, silly and insipid, but she is sincere, at least, with a couple of years’ real beauty left. And he believes he has wasted his time infuriating people, and giving them little, for which he is now tearing himself apart. Like a lot of people, he believes, in his imagination, that he is a murderer.

‘The old man had been struck by a story he’d heard about Ingmar Bergman, who, when dying, sat through his own films in chronological order. Mamoon admired this, and wanted to say, in a last gasp of integrity, what it was to be old, what it meant to look unflinchingly at one’s life. He was amazed by how labile the past is, and how one rewrites it, and writes over it, continuously.’

Lotte went on, ‘The girl with the vanilla hair encourages him to talk through his work, and about the people he’d loved. She even helps him write to the people he has regrets about.’

‘Like who?’

‘A woman living in America, I think, to whom he owes some kind of explanation or apology. There is going on, in that room, between the older man and the younger woman, a play of reparation and atonement. It’s rather wonderful, Harry. He writes about his own sexuality, and that of his father, with a new curiosity and insight, as if he has found a new subject, even at his age. It’s the warmest, most moving thing he’s done since the early work.’

‘I’m sure. Jesus, I’ll go mad.’ He was silent for a time. ‘Can you tell me, please, what’s in it for the young woman?’

‘A sort of education, a more complex way of seeing the world. For the first time she gets a sense of the whole of someone’s life. She begins to read. He has started to write again. One person can develop another, you know. There with her in the room, as they sit by the fire together, he dictates some of the book to her.’

Harry said, ‘They keep this secret?’

‘This necessity is private.’ She said, ‘I suspect some of this concerns you.’

She asked him what he thought. He kissed her and lay back. ‘I don’t know yet.’ He said, ‘Was he keen for me to know what it was about?’

‘Oh yes. He suspected you would try not to read the book.’

‘Was he eager for you and me to meet again and for you to tell me this?’

She nodded. He sat up, looked for his bag and told her she’d done her job. ‘Is that why you invited me here? Is that all you want from me? Shall I just fuck off now?’

‘I wanted to see you again.’ She took his hands. ‘So no, please don’t cry or fuck off.’

‘You want more?’

She kissed his hair, his forehead, his nose, his mouth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes. I could look at you, and look at you. Lots.’

‘And me at you,’ he sighed. ‘Love is the only damn thing. It catches you when you’re not ready.’

‘Rob told me you’re single, but still living in the house.’

He said, ‘I’m reading a bit, thinking about dead mothers. But I’m always optimistic in Paris; everything looks better from there. Shall we go for a few days?’

In the morning Harry and Lotte went to a cafe for breakfast. He walked with her to work. When they kissed and parted, she said, ‘I’ve an idea as to what you should do about Mamoon and Liana.’