The Last Word

Six

A few nights later, having removed his boots upstairs, Harry snuck out of Mamoon’s house like an errant teenager, quietly closing the door behind him.

He breathed in: the evening air was a whisky shot; the music in his car was soon rocking, and he sang as he ripped through the lanes. It was true: his genitals were deaf to reason. But wasn’t it rather that his reason had become deaf to the cry of his genitals? Hadn’t his mother said, ‘Take love where you find it, little boy, and consider yourself lucky’? But it wasn’t just a cry of lust: he was quivering and insomniac. He was finding it impossible to spend the whole night in the house of cries.

He had read through most of Mamoon’s early relationship with Peggy, and had begun on the part where Mamoon, whilst travelling, first saw his ‘luscious’ Colombian lover Marion. What vertigo she had given him: Mamoon had found a woman who had challenged, desired and infuriated him.

Meanwhile, Peggy, who in her diaries was suffering more than even she liked — perhaps bringing forward her own death — had continued to come to Harry, usually in the guise of his mother. Something about the past hadn’t been settled or organised; the story wasn’t complete. This ghost of a mother had begun to ask him questions about who he was and who he truly loved. Was he capable of love? Could he truly be with anyone? ‘Why are you talking to me?’ he shouted. She was frightening him. ‘Please, I beg you, leave me alone.’

And so, when Mamoon and Liana had retired, Harry once more went for a drink with the locals. He waited for Julia to hurry through the door and slide in beside him, a block of warmth and scent. Though she had eagerly invited him to see her again, and he saw her in the house, emptying the dishwasher and ironing, he had sworn to himself that he would eschew her. But now they would spend the night together. Delighted to be of service, he would smack her with a hairbrush as she requested, sleep in her arms, and leave early in the morning before anyone was awake.

But in the morning he was still tired; he had been up late talking to her, and this time he overslept. He could hear people moving around the house. He looked for his clothes and phone, and noticed, on a desk, along with copies of Closer magazine, several atlases, anthologies of poetry and books on myth. He was creeping down the stairs and trying to reach the front door without being heard when Julia’s arm shot out from behind the living-room door.

‘Five more minutes with me,’ she begged. ‘Just five. Look—’

She must have risen early to tidy up. The curtains billowed: the beer cans had vanished, the ashtrays were emptied, and the furniture returned to its place. In the front room, filled with a monumental TV, a sofa, some low chairs and a table, Harry quickly ate the bacon and eggs Julia had insisted on cooking for him. She sat opposite, drinking her favourite strong country cider — cloudy, with bits in it — eating a profiterole, and smoking a cigarette.

‘What is that doing there?’ Harry indicated the flag of St George above the mantelpiece. He noticed, on the mantelpiece itself, three bottles of the champagne Mamoon and Liana drank, and a big chunk of fine cheese next to it. There was also an old, passport-sized photograph of Mamoon leaning against a Toby jug.

‘My brother Scott the Skin is with the National Party. We’re British stock. Aren’t you?’

‘Julia, haven’t you noticed — I apologise for talking about it too much — but I am writing a book about an Indian.’

‘Shut up. The old man’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘By the way, were his parents and brother coloured too?’

‘Oh yes. The whole family. Black as night.’

‘But he isn’t Somalian and he’s always giving the Muslims a criticism, they say.’

‘Yes, I guess.’

‘Do you really like Muslims?’

He said, ‘The world’s full of people with unusual beliefs, Julia. Scientologists, Rastafarians, Catholics, Moonies, Mormons, Baptists, Tories, dentists, captains of industry — every madness has its cheerleader. The asylums and parliament are crammed full of delusionists, and only a madman would want to eliminate them. My father had the right idea. Begin from an assumption of insanity and then laugh, where possible.’

‘Scott says they think we’re unclean filth who’ll burn in hell. He says, where’s our country gone? Who took it away?’

‘But the country’s much nicer now. Everyone’s broke, but it’s stable, unlike everywhere else in Europe. And there’s less hate around than there used to be.’ He said, ‘Talking of unusual beliefs, when I finished my last book and was waiting for a good idea, I went down to South London and researched a long story on the new skinheads. They’re all huff and puff. A bunch of Widow Twankeys pissing in the wind.’

She put her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh. . Jesus, zip it up and put it away. The local town, where I bet you’ve never been, is full of Poles and Muslims. White workers like us no one cares about. There’s a mosque in a house they watch, the lads. The boys set fires to scare the towel-heads and black crows. They follow them and hit them. That’ll teach ’em to try and blow us up.’

He got up. ‘Thanks, but I’d better go write a book.’

‘Please, Harry, I like you so much. I’m not like them. I don’t go round hating. Are you trying to cliché me?’

‘Don’t give me reason to.’

‘Good, you lover boy. Now, five more minutes.’ She asked, ‘If you like the writer’s work so much, give me one of his stories.’

‘Now?’

‘While I finish my roll.’

While she held it up and took a tiny nibble, Harry said, ‘Mamoon’s last big work, a novella, Afternoons with the Dictator, was a top piece of comic satire about a raggedy bunch of five overthrown Third World dictators meeting in a cafe on the Edgware Road for tea. It was adapted as an opera at the Barbican and one weekend at the beginning of this job, Mamoon sent me, as a test, I suppose, to see it. It was all stilts, inflated uniforms and industrial music. I liked it, but it would have killed him to see it. According to him, the world needs no exaggeration.’

‘What’s in the story?’

‘These dictators — men who would roast your dachshund or drink your eyeballs in soup — walk about with their shopping in plastic bags; they play cards; they drink. At first their talk is mostly banal, about how the lifts in their buildings don’t work, or what a nuisance it is to get your army uniform adjusted for a good price, particularly when you’re getting fat sitting on the sofa watching Big Brother. Not only that, they cannot watch Newsnight without anxiety, and they complain about how the money they stole from the populace doesn’t go as far as people think in these straitened, inflationary times.

‘Although they’re still pursued and admired, like ageing popstars, by crazies and eccentrics, what they dream of is returning to active dictating and torturing. What good is an unemployed dictator with time on his hands? Once they’ve talked about traitors and spies, and how badly they were let down by their own side, they start to argue with each other. The problem is, if they fall out, they won’t have much company. But they lack self-knowledge, and, one day, it all comes down. .’

‘How?’

‘One of them finds he is beginning to fall in love with a young waitress in the cafe they go to.’

Julia said, ‘Is she beautiful?’

‘And kind and young. Like you.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Listen: he never comes in without bringing her poetry books and little wooden figures, and she is flattered.’

‘Any girl would be if a man did that.’

‘He seems kind and sensitive, our dictator, though he has three unmentioned wives already.’

‘Did he eat them?’

‘They would be tasty,’ Harry said. ‘And usually, such a gorgeous girl — the waitress we’re talking about is Spanish, dark; there are no English people for miles—’

‘Really?’

‘You’ll see, Julia. I’ll show you London.’

‘Would you?’

‘Well, parts of it.’

‘Please, Harry, don’t make a promise if you don’t mean it. I take your meanings for truth.’

‘Never a good idea,’ he said. ‘Now, usually, in the dictator’s world such a juicy girl would be raped and her family burned alive, just for starters, to keep them on their toes. But with this particular beauty, one day, while paying the bill, he was unable to resist — he whispers to her, asking her out to the cinema.

‘But one of the other dictators notices what’s going on. He is jealous because he likes the lovely waitress more than a bit too. And he knows the waitress will never go out with the first dictator if she finds out who he is. Who would want to go on a date with a mass murderer — a man who has personally tortured some of his victims?’

‘Yuck. Not even me.’

‘But, in fact, he has been pretending to be a journalist, an artist even. .’

‘She believes him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happens? Does she go with him?’

‘They do go out together.’

‘Don’t tell me she sleeps with him on the first date?’

‘Would you?’

She shrugged. ‘If I wanted him. You’ve got to find some fun around here.’

He went on, ‘They have a good night out. He is mature, polite and gentlemanly. He gives her a sweet kiss on the lips. Something stirs. She begins to feel fondly towards him. Meanwhile, the other dictator is plotting to show her a newspaper article about the first dictator—’

‘And? Do the two dictators fall out?’

‘But another dictator enters the picture. .’

At that moment the door opened and a tragic-looking woman with a swollen eye, which was turning blue, hobbled into the room and stared about distractedly, as if she’d never seen it before. Harry looked up and realised he had seen her before — last night, of course. But somewhere else too. What was this house called, Déjà Vu?

‘You’re late, Mum,’ said Julia.

‘Morning, sir,’ said the woman to Harry, almost curtseying, but also appearing to shiver. ‘Roof.’

‘Sorry?’ said Harry, looking upwards. ‘Damp?’

‘Ruth,’ said Julia. ‘My mum.’

Ruth said, ‘Would it be all right, sir, if you gave us a lift to the house? We all overslept due to illness. Mrs Azam can be very harsh and vile.’

‘She can?’ said Harry.

‘She slapped my Julia.’

‘Where?’

‘Kitchen. I had to physically stop my Scott going down there. After all we’ve done, years upon years of all sorts of things, long before she was here, treating us like servants, she reduced our wages and said, “I know you don’t know what’s going on out there beyond the haystack, but these are hard times.” You should see their champagne bill. She an’ Sir get through three bottles a night. What can you do, if you want to work?’

Harry continued to blink at the woman until he could assemble all the information he had and place her. Julia’s mother Ruth worked in the house for Liana and Mamoon; she had served him supper not long ago.

‘No problem,’ he said uneasily.

The mother left and he was finishing his food as quickly as he could when Julia said, ‘They like you, Sir and Her. I hear them talking. They don’t even notice me.’

‘What do they say about me?’

‘He caught your description.’

‘What description?’

‘On the phone. When you called him Saddam Hussein and said he had a face like a soiled arse.’

‘Ah. Did he comment on it?’

‘He repeated it slowly, like he was taking it in. Then he said something like, you’d never be a novelist, and the biographer is the vulture — no, sorry, what was it? — the undertaker, of the literature world.’

‘Thanks, Julia.’

‘Who was that you spoke to? Was it your girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Alice Jane Jackson.’

Julia said, ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she? Liana has heard she is. Is it true she’s coming to see us?’

‘Yes. No. Perhaps. She looks at magazines and chews her hair. She’s not keen on literary people and their talky talk, their going on about reviews and prizes and stuff. She doesn’t think I should have taken on the book. Negative, eh, but at least she’s protective.’

‘Harry, trust me, I can help you more than you know. I can keep you informed.’

‘You can?’

‘I catch onto a lot of things, going about.’ Here she hesitated. ‘I think I might have something, and could find it. Some writing of Mamoon’s I got hold of. Notebooks. They would be useful.’

‘How did you get them?’

‘It was a couple of years ago. I found them in the barn when Mamoon asked me to tidy up.’

‘There’s a lot of damp stuff in there, packed away, rotting. Apart from me, no one’s looked at it. Why did you take and read private material?’

She tapped her nose and grinned. ‘I wanted to learn something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Flicking through, I saw my name in one of them. And my mum and Scott.’

‘I see. Why?’ She said nothing. He said, ‘Can I look at them?’

‘I think so. Sure.’

‘You’re so cute.’ He kissed her head and said, ‘Please keep me up to date when necessary.’

She kissed him on the lips. ‘Keep me satisfied.’

‘Will do. I’m your man.’

‘Are you, Harry? I’m so pleased. I can’t believe it.’

‘It’s just a saying, Julia, not a contract.’

Julia’s mother climbed up into the front of Harry’s 4 × 4 with her bag on her lap. Julia got in the back and put her headphones on. Ruth said, ‘Is it all right, please sir, if we pick up Whynne, me sister? She’s helping us out today.’

‘Of course, Ruth,’ he said. ‘The more the merrier on this fine warm day in the country with the sun coming out and it not raining yet.’

‘Thank you ever so much for coming to our house. You like Julia, my daughter, sir?’

‘She’s kind and affectionate. You’ve done a good job there.’

‘Thank you, sir. I take that as a high compliment, coming from you. A man so high, a doctor even. You do prescriptions?’

‘Only philosophical ones.’

‘I have a son too.’

‘You are twice blessed. What does he do?’

‘He frightens people.’

‘Professionally?’

She gurgled. ‘Scares the frigging daylights out of them.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Security. Don’t they have that in London?’

‘Yes, we have so much of it we’re frightened all the time.’

‘Good job you’re down here. He’s lucky, my son.’

‘In what way?’

She said, ‘To have work which suits him.’

‘You can’t say fairer than that, Ruth. Clearly a fulfilled life lies ahead of him despite these hard times.’

‘Have you met him?’

‘I don’t think I’ve had that privilege.’

‘You will.’ She went on, ‘Do you think he could work up in London one day?’

‘Why not?’

‘Would you help him, if you could? You must know people who need security.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I’d be ever so grateful. These children had no proper father. The men down here are no good.’

‘Apparently men everywhere are no good, Ruth. But ambition in a young man is a wonderful thing.’

Far from living, as Harry had imagined, in flower-strewn Aga-heated cottages in the verdant enchanted English countryside, the part of the town Julia’s mother directed him to was composed of run-down ugly council houses — many of them boarded up, seemingly abandoned — and shabby graffitied streets. The people looked pasty-faced, slow-moving, ill-kempt, both dozy and violent. Clearly the fathers had scarpered, or been driven out by unemployment, or by the women. Harry seemed to have discovered an island run by teenagers: a semi-violent English poverty and hopelessness unrelieved by years of government investment. You wouldn’t leave your car here, let alone your family.

When the sister emerged, she also sat in silence, her lunch in a plastic box on her knee. To avoid any unnecessary enquiries, Harry dropped off the women halfway up the track. Looking up, as he handed Ruth the £20 loan she had solicited for ‘expenses’, he had the impression, though he couldn’t be sure from such a distance, that Mamoon was standing at his bedroom window, adjusting his collar, his hooded eyes seeming to lift and sparkle with mischievous interest.

Harry hurried into the kitchen to make coffee. Liana looked at him, but said nothing. Soon after, Ruth, her sister, and Julia arrived and began pulling up the carpets and plunging their arms into the toilets. Harry would go to the barn and continue work, for another day, on Peggy’s letters and diaries.

But he went to his room first, to change. While he was doing so, he heard a knock on the door.