The Last Word Read online

  ‘Why have you been unable to work?’

  Mamoon said, ‘I can listen to Bach, just about, and Schubert I can bear, because I am melancholic. Everything else depresses me – Beethoven, and particularly over-cheerful Mozart, chirruping away. The other day, when I pretended to dismiss Forster and Orwell, your little face looked upset. You still like to be impressed. In my teens and twenties, and even in my thirties, I loved to read, and could get absorbed in a particular writer for weeks, reading all their work, everything. Now I’ve forgotten it, and, besides, it’s all gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Consider them, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Powell, Anthony Burgess, William Golding, Henry Green, Graham Greene—’

  ‘No, not that Greene. No – never.’

  ‘Good, plucky of you. But otherwise – unread, unreadable, discarded, departed, a mountain of words washed into the sea and not coming back. Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise, these days, no sooner has someone been sodomised by a close relative than they think they can write a memoir. The game’s up.’

  Harry said, ‘Some of your books will remain.’

  ‘They will?’

  ‘Probably about four—’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘No, three big pieces. The first novel and a couple of long stories, which are top-drawer lasters. And, probably, the early essay on Ibsen’s and Strindberg’s women.’

  ‘So much?’ Mamoon said. ‘It’s done, and it’s too late. I shouldn’t complain. What is there left for me? How many older artists have made significant works?’

  ‘But sir, that was the true meaning of your dream: the desire to fail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To infuriate your father, who never let you go with his expectations.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Harry said, ‘To renounce work and women’s love for a pointless equilibrium or retirement is a destructive self-betrayal. The way you describe yourself is a far more limited narrative than anything I might say about you in my book. And look what happens to Lear. He allows others, indeed encourages them, to humiliate him. Surely a man can remain vital and alive if he feels strong.’

  ‘How does he do that?’

  ‘I have to say, sir, that while I’ve been here, I’ve learned something. You taught me that it’s frustration which makes creativity possible. You wrestle with the material, and become inventive, even visionary.’

  Mamoon was holding his head. ‘You give me vertigo as well as lumbago. All I think is that I must continue, making words which will then be forgotten. I want that; I can do that. At the same time, it’s not enough. There must be something else.’

  ‘What is it – that something else?’

  ‘I don’t know. I will think now. This conversation has drained me.’

  Harry helped him up. Not long after, Harry watched from the kitchen window, as Mamoon, in his slippers and stripy dressing gown, eagerly padded out to his barn with Alice. He was, Harry noted, resembling more and more the ever demanding question mark he had seemed to become. A moment later the barn door banged closed. It was the very place Liana – and everyone else – was forbidden to enter. All Liana was able to see of Mamoon, through the window, was the top of his head, which remained throughout the day in the same position. ‘The king is in his counting house,’ Liana liked to say. If she needed him urgently, she had to phone, though with the attendant fear that he would let the call run onto voicemail while he was whistling a tune by Stéphane Grappelli. Mamoon’s room was, Rob had said, full of generous gifts presented by perverted power freaks, kleptomaniacs and crazed killer dictators. Mamoon, it was said, had never met a dictator whose arse he didn’t want to kiss. But Alice was the only other person Harry had known to enter the room since he’d arrived.

  Ninety minutes later, when he heard the dogs barking, Harry returned to the window, with Julia sweeping around his feet, to see Mamoon come back to the house looking cheerful and taller, like an inverted exclamation mark.

  ‘She’s got the head of Jean Seberg and the hands of Sviatoslav Richter,’ panted Mamoon. ‘With every caress I felt myself becoming a genius.’

  Alice clapped her hands. ‘I made him more creative!’

  Mamoon said, ‘If only I were sixty-five again . . . Harry, you’re a lucky man.’

  Fifteen

  ‘I swear, this is the first refreshing night’s sleep I’ve had here,’ Harry said when he and Alice woke up the next day and were making love. She was the only woman he liked to look at first thing in the morning; kissing her then was what he was born to do. ‘Thank God you came, and you’re with me. Didn’t the noise madden you?’

  ‘What noise?’

  ‘The animals outside. The screaming foxes trapped by Tories.’

  ‘That’s just the country, Harry. They are natural sounds. But there is another noise.’

  ‘What is it? Where?’

  ‘Why are you so jumpy? Has something disturbed you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m disturbed all the time here. I think Mum is calling to me through the walls. Dead mothers talk even more than live ones.’

  ‘What does she say?’

  ‘She asks me what I’m doing here.’

  ‘That’s what mothers are supposed to do.’

  He said, ‘Keep holding my penis.’

  ‘Just a minute. Come,’ she called. ‘Oh big, big wow. Wow.’

  The door opened and Julia came in bearing a breakfast tray.

  ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ Julia said, placing the tray on the low table at the end of the bed. Harry shrank under the sheets. It was the only time his penis had contracted in Julia’s presence. ‘And sir. Sorry it’s me – Mum’s not well. She had a fall onto her knee.’

  ‘Not a push? I’m sorry to hear that, Julia. I hope she recovers soon.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Can I pour the tea for you?’

  ‘That would be perfect, my dear.’

  ‘There’s toast and eggs downstairs. I’ll run your bath for you, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alice. When Julia had gone, she whispered, ‘Is it like P. G. Wodehouse every day?’

  ‘Oh yes. I haven’t lifted a finger all the time I’ve been here. I’ve found the indolence utterly enervating.’

  Alice and Harry went down to join Liana, while Julia and her mother moved slowly around them waving rags and squirting unguents. Although Alice had asked Julia for an ironing board, Julia had somehow found their clothes and elected to do Alice and Harry’s washing and ironing, explaining that not only would she be offended if Alice did the work herself, but she even might lose her job.

  ‘I beg you, Alice ma’am, it’s my only livelihood,’ she said, ‘since they closed the abattoir.’

  The closing of the abattoir had generated many knock-ons in the area, most of them deleterious. Working for Liana and Mamoon at the weekends, Julia had also put in some hours at the abattoir during the week, in order to increase her earnings. Now, since she was aware that Liana was becoming fed up with her, not only did she take care of her and Mamoon, she cleaned and tidied Harry and Alice’s room and bathroom, and organised Harry’s papers, notebooks and stationery. Harry felt slightly oppressed by Julia’s ever-presence, but there was nothing he could do about that, nor about the way her eye watched over him and Alice from a suitable vantage point, usually near the skirting board.

  After the long weekend, Alice realised she was owed some annual leave and decided to stay on instead of fleeing back to the city, as she had said she would. She had become almost romantic about the place, despite the fact that, as Harry complained, it took an hour to buy milk and you had to wear wellingtons most of the time, if not rainwear and a vest. Alice said now that she loved Mamoon and Liana, who felt like parents to her, and that spending this intimate time with Harry – witnessing his anguish and hearing him worry, the exposure of his need – was one of the best things to have happened to their relatio
nship.

  While Harry worked, Alice helped Mamoon choose his clothes, before taking him on drives and walks, where she was beginning a series of photographs of him in the countryside, leaning against trees, ‘for the book’.

  ‘I thought he hated being photographed?’

  ‘Not by me. He listens to a woman,’ Alice said later, when they took a canoe down the balmy little river. Alice sat sedately in the front in nautical stripes and a floppy hat, steering occasionally by dipping her paddle into the water like someone stirring their tea. ‘I feel he wants to understand and help me.’

  ‘Help you what?’

  ‘Live more successfully.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘To have more pleasure.’

  Earlier that morning he had watched her walking ahead of him, in the sunshine, slow, dreamy, sensual, almost vacant and outside time, a creature in another dimension, and he thought, guiltily, that that, for him, was a woman: always other, and a provocation. Now he handed her a peach from a basket at his feet, and watched her bite into it, the juice running down her chin.

  ‘What a beautiful pussy you are . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear you say he listened and was interested,’ said Harry, handing her a napkin. ‘Friends of his I’ve interviewed say he’s self-absorbed. He had a tantrum the other night because a tomato was too cold.’

  ‘I’d hate it if he had a tantrum. I wouldn’t know what to do. I’d probably just cry. How did Liana deal with it?’

  ‘“Cold, habibi? Oh dear,” she said, picking up the relevant tomato, sticking it up her dress and placing it between her thighs. “A cold tomato. That must be the worst thing in the world. Why don’t I warm it up for you? Is that better?” When she replaced it on the plate he took a bite. “That is indeed better, memsahib,” he said. “You know I need to spare my teeth.”’

  Alice, for whom vulgarity and humour were a portal to madness, said, ‘There’s nothing in it for him with the men. With the women he really gives us the gaze. He makes anarchic jokes and hums the songs by Dido I’ve introduced him to.’

  ‘Dido?’

  ‘The Stéphane Grappelli was getting me down.’

  ‘Me too. But he hums Dido? The two of you listen to White Flag?’

  ‘He la-la’s along. It’ll be Tracey Thorn next and then I’ll slowly manoeuvre him all the way to Amy Winehouse. What would you say, Julia? Does he listen to you?’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said Julia, who was waiting at the little jetty with an armful of towels. Harry and Alice had learned that you merely had to say her name for her to materialise, like a spirit. ‘He doesn’t treat me like a servant. He never has, since I was little. He sits there and talks to me about what’s in the paper when he reads them in the morning, asking me who the people are.’

  ‘You see,’ said Alice, moving towards Julia and being helped up the bank. ‘Go to him, Harry, and talk. Take your chance. I wagged my finger and said, “Harry’s getting insomnia and depression. Do not upset my partner, Mr Writer, or you’ll find that things will not go well.”’

  ‘Did that go down a treat?’

  ‘He will give more to you now. He seemed to be bubbling over, earlier, and may say you can meet the other woman.’

  ‘Marion?’

  ‘Now, go,’ she said. ‘I want to spend some time with Julia.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We have similar backgrounds. And similar interests. Come on, my dear,’ she said to her. ‘Let’s get together. Let’s talk about men, babies and how fat we were as children. Let’s frighten Harry and then go shopping with Liana this afternoon. I want to buy perfume. And perhaps later we could dance in the barn.’

  Harry said, ‘Can’t I come with you?’

  ‘Of course not. You have important things to do.’

  Sixteen

  ‘Would it be possible for us to chat a little today?’ whispered Harry, pleased to have found Mamoon in the library.

  To Harry’s surprise, Mamoon said, ‘Yes, why not, I am keen,’ though he did glance at Harry’s clipboard as if it were his death certificate. ‘Do you have any exciting questions for once?’

  ‘I wondered if you might feel invigorated after your morning massage?’

  ‘My skin is singing. And you have put me in the unfortunate position of having to think about you, something I’ve been reluctant to do.’

  ‘Think about me in what way?’

  ‘You’re surprised.’

  ‘Gobsmacked, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Mamoon said, ‘Your fascination with the female body isn’t unnatural or unusual. In fact the body of the young woman is the world’s most significant object, admired and desired by homosexuals, of course, as well as by other women, babies, lesbians, children, fashion designers and men. No wonder Muslims hide the woman like a filthy picture, while their fundamentalists remind us that female sexuality is the biggest problem of all. For these people the woman is already a whore. They’re right to be so concerned,’ he went on. ‘The young female body is at the centre of the world, and usually at the centre of most elections – abortion, single mothers, maternity leave, prostitution, incest, abuse, the hijab . . . The woman is where we all come from, and where we all want to go. The woman’s body makes knowledge disappear. It’s amazing that anyone has time to think about philosophy, literature, psychology or history. Women know it too, which is why they hurry on the street. No beautiful woman is a slow walker.’

  ‘When did you first get interested in this?’ Harry asked him, adjusting his digital recorder but not pressing ‘record’ yet.

  ‘I can remember as a young man in Madras reading something by Bertrand Russell, who was famous for knowing everything, and a huge passion of mine then.

  ‘He wrote somewhere of his emotional life being “irrational”. By God, he disapproved of the “irrational”. Russell’s loves, hates, desires – the entire bodily caboodle, and all the greatest philosopher in the world could say was that it was “irrational”. It made me want to say my say, as if the whole thing still required explaining, to hunt down these irrational people, the ones so powerful in the world, and hear their speech.’

  ‘What is the cure, sir?’

  ‘Halt your naughty finger before I crush it. Do not record this: it is between us. You ask for the cure – I presume the cure for excessive appetite?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mamoon laughed. ‘All religions have concerned themselves with the weaning of individuals from their desire. Who, after all, can live with their own wanting? Let’s think about endurance, as the Stoics would have it. I like to read Seneca, who says it can be borne. Or self-knowledge, as Plato preferred it, which might dissipate it. But appetite is all we have and we cannot or should not be cured of it. I’m no Freudian, yet no one can deny that desire is the motor of our existence, as it is for any child who wants to go on living. As your enthusiasm indicates, it is usually out of control and it is tied to madness, unfortunately, because the object – the woman in mind – can only be elusive, and will evade one. She will, naturally, have other preoccupations, other lives. This will create jealousy, the belief that the other has what we don’t have. Proust made a mint out of this simple idea. Still, more desire, less punishment, I say.’

  Harry said, ‘You mention Bertrand Russell and his horror of disorientation.’

  ‘So?’

  Harry glanced at the clipboard, noticed a question and looked up at Mamoon. ‘Isn’t it the case that when you met Marion for the first time you experienced a physical connection you’d never had with anyone? That you experienced, at that time, a large bout of irrationality which de-centred you?’

  ‘You are creating a history for me, one that is parallel to my life. But why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘Obviously, I need to do that. Would you approve? Can I say that, sir?’

  ‘That would be up to Marion. But darling Alice with her massages and photographs – and how lucky you are there – has convinced me
to be more co-operative with you.’

  ‘She puts my case?’

  ‘She is kind, you know, and has pleaded for you. She has thought about my suffering, too, which will be over quicker if I let you in more. Go to Marion and see. I am so looking forward to her giving you a flea in your ear, as she has done to other snoopers. One begging scribbler she tipped a bottle of ink over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You will see – ha – she is chilli hot!’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t marry her?’

  Mamoon laughed and said, ‘It would be true to say there are occasions when certain pleasures can be so strong that you might have to rethink your life entirely, as a way of taking them in – or avoiding them.’

  Harry said, ‘Pleasure can knock you right off your feet, it is true. Do you mean that a series of orgasms can be a new beginning?’

  Mamoon got up. ‘Whatever Marion says, I will always be the stranger in your book.’

  ‘Thanks for your blessing, sir,’ said Harry. ‘A final question, one which has just occurred to me, I don’t know why. Do you regret not having children?’

  ‘Not having children has been the one bright spot in my life so far,’ said Mamoon. ‘Now, pack your bags and fuck off out of my damn sight. I need peace again.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You will thank me a thousand more times,’ he said, giggling. ‘Particularly when you sneak back here with your soul bleeding. I can’t wait.’

  Seventeen

  After almost ten days, Alice and Harry went back to London. Lotte, from Rob’s office, had sent Harry airline tickets and a busy itinerary for the next few weeks. Rob also wanted Harry to push on with the book; he needed to see at least a couple of chapters by the end of the month.

  Harry was relieved to get out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of Mamoon’s place. In town, he and his father and brothers watched Chelsea and ate; afterwards, their father liked it when they took part, as a family, in the local pub quiz. The prize could have been £10 million, it was taken so seriously by the men. The twins were good at sport and music, and their father had science covered. Harry did literature. They came second and were not happy, Father castigating them as if he’d just received a unpleasant letter from the school head.