The Last Word Page 16

  Harry got away from Rob, and hid a bit. At last Alice, who’d been shopping for two days, came to the station with the car stacked with gifts. After tea, they drove to Mamoon’s.

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ said Alice. ‘I haven’t heard about the trip in detail. Did you get what you wanted?’

  ‘I might have a story. Let me talk it through. There’s some kind of centre to the book. Similar events to the ones Marion described occur in two of Mamoon’s later novels. One of his guilt-filled terrorists likes the same stuff, degrading the woman with other men and so on. Mamoon describes him as “moral filth”, which confirms it for me.’

  She asked if that was enough, and he told her that ‘the Marion time’ had been a crucial period for Mamoon. After temporising over the matter for weeks, Mamoon deserted Marion in America to return to Peggy and help her die. She had begged him; she had no one else, apart from Ruth, who’d supervised the house for years and was her only friend nearby. A nurse came in every day, and Julia, a girl then, not yet a teenager, ran errands. But it was lonely.

  Peggy had also made it clear, at Ruth’s urging, that a Mamoon no-show would ensure that he forfeited the property, which was in her name. His belongings would be dumped in the yard and the house would go to her sister. Mamoon owned nothing. He’d never had to think where he should live, or what he should have for supper. Peggy was maternal, at least. She’d enabled him to become an artist. What was marriage but sex plus property – property being the thing here.

  So, corpse-tied, Mamoon slunk back. It was toxic; a fateful, blackmailing wrench for him and an interrruption of the new life he was exploring. He had promised Marion he would go back to her. He thought and thought about her, but he didn’t return, and he didn’t ask her to join him. He let it go – for a bit. And then for longer . . .

  Peggy’s diaries were sparse here, unsurprisingly, but she noted how kind Mamoon was, when pushed. She had been alone too much, and now couldn’t bear it. The moment he walked back in through the door her heart leapt. He had come home, her prince. She praised and thanked him, her husband, a thousand times. He put down his bag. She had him where she wanted him.

  While she rested and slept, he sat with her and wrote at the desk across the room – and he kept on writing: fiction, diaries, and notes on his life. Harry told Alice he’d discovered several of Mamoon’s scruffy notebooks among Peggy’s things in the barn, which he was going through. These notes, given to him, in fact, by Julia, were a fascinating insight into his method, as Mamoon served her: the description of a body shrinking into death, her hands, her mouth, how he washed her, and her suffering and humiliation. Also – his memories of India, political and philosophical ideas, characters, ideas for essays, and so on. For a time he became a zombie, to survive. He had stopped loving her a long time ago, and she knew it.

  Mamoon confessed that Peggy’s whole being made him ill. Her voice turned his stomach; the way she pulled at him made him cringe. The terror was that she wouldn’t die. The combination of hate and duty did him in: he was out of control, passionately unhappy, half mad, drinking, wondering why he was so loyal to her. Shouldn’t he have stayed with Marion and let Peggy down?

  Peggy did die. He went into his room, eating and weeping at his desk, crying for Marion too, with whom he had also broken – at least in his mind. So: he was done with her, too. But what did it mean to be ‘done’ with so many people? Who, or what, was left?

  He wrote about the hell within him with a new honesty and seriousness. This was when he became an ‘authentic’ artist. He was no longer standing to one side of himself, but said everything straight out. Harry said that no one described death as well as him, and how the mourning, isolation and deprivation made him mad.

  Harry said, ‘Mamoon saw no one for eighteen months.’

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘Except – except what he describes as “his new family”. And he writes a lot about them in the journal I have.’

  ‘What? Who do you mean when you say family?’

  With Peggy gone, Harry explained, it was the local woman, Ruth, attending to him. Because Mamoon couldn’t cope, and Peggy had insisted on it, Ruth moved into the house with her children, Julia and Scott, who was a teenager. He’d known the kids for years, of course. Peggy had always been aware how cruel Ruth was as a mother. So, when she was a child, Julia lived there for weeks on end during the holidays, hanging out with Peggy, making cakes, taking care of the animals, seeing the place as her home.

  But now Mamoon became fond of them in a more adult, responsible way. He had never wanted crying babies or whinging toddlers. But now, to his surprise, he found he liked being a paternal figure. He enjoyed having authority and being relied on. The children taught him that the inside of his head wasn’t the only interesting thing in the world.

  He discovered that he could be good fun, joking around as his parents did with him. But he was solicitous too; he saw what the kids needed as they got older. They ate together and watched sport and movies. The kids were used to seeing him sitting on the sofa scribbling in the notebooks. Ruth asked him if he wanted some peace. But no, he found he liked the everyday noises and the voices.

  He even had a swimming pool dug for them and their friends, the locals, who came over to splash around. He drove Julia to school. She was moany, sullen, excitable, but perhaps he pitied her, or even liked her. He talked to her as he thought – his usual free association, about politics, his childhood, reading and writing – and she listened. He wrote a story and read it to her. He and Scott boxed together in the garden. Scott built bikes, and played with engines. When Scott was in big trouble with some of the locals, Mamoon went round and faced them down. Ruth kissed his feet.

  Julia was the one Mamoon adored more and more. Appalled by her ignorance growing up in the country, he paid for her to have piano lessons, and to attend dance and art classes. He started to teach her Greek, and – quite mad this – made her read Homer and the Bible. He bought her classical records and sat with her while she listened to Mahler, and he was pleased when she wept, since it showed ‘sensitivity’. He promised he’d send her to college, but it didn’t happen. ‘I guess because he was with Liana by then,’ said Harry. ‘But I suspect he never stopped paying for her.’

  ‘Why would he do this?’ Alice said abruptly, ‘Oh no, he wasn’t going with Ruth, was he?’

  ‘He might have been. I don’t know yet. Though she wasn’t as far gone as she is now, she was drinking, and capable of violent despair.

  Ruth was not entirely awful, or a halfwit, then. She was mightily enthusiastic at that point. She wanted everything, of course: love, the house, a future . . . She thought she might get it if she served Mamoon. Then she made a mistake: she was not entirely self-serving. Maybe she understood what he really needed. Perhaps she cared for him. Harry said he thought she did. Maybe even now.

  ‘What happened?’ Alice asked.

  Ruth had told Mamoon that enough was enough. There was no money coming in. He had to clean himself up and get on with his career. ‘My mother’, said Harry, ‘gave herself to her demons. They devoured her.’ But Mamoon resisted: he got up, he shaved off his long beard. Ruth cut his hair and kissed him. Instead of continuing to lay out his clothes for him every day, she packed his suitcase, and shoved him off to London to see his agent and his publisher. Meanwhile, he gave the family money, allowing them all to stay in the house while he was away. They loved it there: the space, the quiet, the isolation, and Julia regularly began to sit in that lovely library, leafing through books on art.

  That was where the notebooks finished.

  Harry told her that he’d worked out from Mamoon’s friends that under Ruth’s instruction Mamoon headed for London, where he found people talking about the new Britain made by immigration, and a younger generation who wrote about multiculturalism, ethnicity and identity. Mamoon had never thought about his identity. He had always been who he was. That was, conceivably, his problem. In London he couldn’t find anyone
new to get along with, and his friends bored him. He tried to pick up women, but the charm was intermittent; he was too old and didactic, too needy, out of practice.

  Because he couldn’t go back defeated, he pushed on. He travelled in Europe – Prague, Vienna, Madrid, Budapest, Ljubljana, Trieste – writing in hotel rooms, sitting in cafes alone with the newspaper and a notebook, as alienated as he had been as a student in Britain. He got on a train to Rome.

  One day he found, at last, a woman, and brought her back – Liana. It was instant, magnetic, their attraction for one another. Their excitement was high.

  Now, you can imagine it, Harry went on. Liana charging around Prospects House, amazed by everything she had married into, shouting, brightening the place up, throwing things out, putting up new curtains until everything was transformed. A new woman, a new world. An opening out. Ruth, Julia and Scott became ‘servants’ or ‘staff’ again. Mamoon had written ahead, instructing them to return to their house. Mamoon was no longer the surrogate father. He just dropped the family; everything was different. Mamoon was not a great explainer.

  Scott was devastated, but what could he say? He still came to work in the garden, and did all the odd jobs. He slashed his legs until they ran with blood. He chased and beat the father of a Somali immigrant family with a cosh. But Mamoon continued to see Scott and listen to him; he was interested and firm, giving him guidance, but no money.

  Liana, even today, had little idea of the family drama which took place before she arrived. Mamoon knew she would be too jealous. She would never have allowed the family to work at the house. ‘No woman would, frankly,’ said Harry.

  ‘But Harry, what you’re doing is forcing her to see all this – you’re pushing it in Liana’s face.’

  He said, ‘Alice, I promise, this book will introduce her to things she had no idea about.’

  ‘But Liana is happy. Why disturb her? This is much too dangerous, Harry. I’ve said it all along.’

  Harry told her that there was a peaceful passage coming up since, for a time at least, back in the house with his new wife, Mamoon was cheerful and optimistic. He wrote well and was happy to be alive.

  ‘Only for a time?’

  ‘Is he cheerful now, or is he restless again?’

  ‘How would I know? Oh God,’ she went on. ‘This book is going to give them nightmares. He’ll blame her. He can be tough, vicious even. Can’t we forget it and just be friends with them?’

  ‘I’m not being paid to be a friend.’

  ‘But they’re my friends now. They’ve done nothing but treat me with affection and kindness.’

  ‘Alice, I am warning you – keep your distance.’

  ‘What’s made you so brutal, Harry? I’m not staying long, but thank God I brought them some lovely things.’

  Alice had been rushing around in London, finding tablecloths, glasses, cutlery, good vodka, earrings, hazelnut cake, and a print of a pig for Liana. After Alice and Harry had driven into the yard, and lugged the swag into the house, Alice made a fuss of the dogs. Eventually she and Liana sat down to gossip while examining the presents.

  Mamoon didn’t come out. Through the window Harry saw the old man watching the news. He was, after all, just a man, and not merely a narrative. Mamoon just nodded when Harry appeared in the doorway.

  ‘All well, sir?’ said Harry, striding in with a bottle.

  ‘All it takes to cheer me is a bright smile from Alice, and my favourite vodka, as you well know.’

  ‘Let me thank you for your kind assistance, sir, with Marion.’

  ‘Yes, my spirits rather dropped when I noticed that you seemed cheerful. Is she well?’

  ‘Formidable, but frail.’

  ‘Ah. She was full of life, before.’

  ‘Mamoon, she told me everything.’

  ‘Everything, eh? Did that take long?’

  ‘She showed me some letters and told me how much she loved and admired you as a man and writer. She said you were generous with your time and affection. It was the bitterest moment of her life when you came back here.’

  ‘I feel a but coming at me between the teeth of a rabid dog.’

  ‘She said your life changed when you were with her. You refound your sexuality, and developed it. Mamoon, sir, she described events which involved other men, as well as her female friends.’

  He laughed. ‘Casanova claimed that Dante forgot to include boredom in his description of hell. As you might have heard during your research, I suffer from ennui as an illness, and this can make us sadists. I do recall Marion attempted some feeble tricks to keep me interested. I blame her for nothing. Say what you like about me, Sherlock, but I will question you severely if you condemn her for this nonsense.’

  ‘When you were writing she kept a diary. She’s working on a book about her adventures with you.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘You had no idea?’

  ‘If every semi-literate fabulator scribbles away non-stop why would it be my concern – or yours, for that matter?’

  Harry said, ‘She says there’s a publisher willing to take it if she tells all. I guess’, he went on, ‘the only way to stop her would be for you to talk to her. To persuade her. I am sure she would love to hear your voice.’

  It took a lot to make Mamoon spark up, but this information made his eyes dart about. He composed himself before saying, in his slow sonorous voice, ‘As the genius Nietzsche told us, “The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned again and again, and you with it, you dust of dust.”’ He looked at Harry. ‘And you are dust of dust.’

  He pulled himself up out of the chair and left the room.

  Harry went to Alice upstairs and shut the door behind them.

  Twenty

  Harry sat close to Alice and confessed how mad and discouraged this part of Mamoon’s story was making him. It was true, you couldn’t just say anyone was a sexual sadist. Mamoon, predictably, was already hostile, and Marion wouldn’t let him quote from the letters – not that they confirmed much. Unless there was more than Marion’s allegations to go on, he would have to drop the material and write a bland book.

  ‘I will pull out of the project if I can’t do the sort of intimate, psychological portrait we’ve talked about,’ he said. ‘The archaeology of a whole man. He speaks; they all speak. I can’t bear the idea of just being mediocre, Alice. I would rather die than be ordinary.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘You could go to him and ask if Marion told the truth.’

  She looked horrified. ‘Why would he tell me, Harry?’

  ‘The old fool flatters himself he can seduce you. Haven’t you been prancing in the woods with him?’

  ‘Not prancing, no. He can’t walk far. As we go, we discuss the nature of love and art.’

  Harry said, ‘Let’s turn it around. If you can persuade the old man to own up, you will help me out, and indeed the family we will have. Our future together could be secured.’

  She was biting her nails. ‘Why are you pulling me into this, Harry?’

  She didn’t want to be put in the position of having to ‘trick’ Mamoon, as she put it. He trusted her; she liked him, and it was awful when Harry became so insistent and domineering.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘We’re in financial trouble. Won’t you do this small thing for me?’

  Before supper Harry nodded at Alice. She went downstairs to Mamoon and gave him the scarf, cuff links and tie she knew would cheer him up. She offered him her arm, and suggested they take a stroll. She had her phone with her, to use as a recorder. Harry had briefed her about the numerous acts she was to ask Mamoon about. There was quite a number of stories; she’d been shocked to hear them, and didn’t believe Mamoon would do such things. ‘Are you absolutely sure about this?’ she kept saying.

  ‘Just be certain to remember them all. I’ll be interested to hear what his attitude to this part of his past is.’

  They were gone a long time. When Alice returned with Mamoon
, she couldn’t look at Harry, but she did hand him her phone which he took upstairs and plugged into his computer. He heard her playfully asking Mamoon if he’d been as macho as she’d heard. Had he ever used his power and position for sexual advancement? Was he as dominant as he appeared? The old man grunted and laughed. She said there were some ‘sexual excitements’ she wanted to try herself, if she could talk Harry into them. Had Mamoon tried, she wondered, any of the following?

  Vaguely Mamoon confirmed, or at least didn’t deny, much of what she asked. In truth, he said, Marion had had many strong wishes, and had turned out, to his regret, to be too demanding for him. Female passion was a whirlwind: he couldn’t devote himself to a woman; he needed time to ponder and write. Come to think of it, he preferred art to life. Once he’d met Liana everything had seemed easier. As a defence against unwanted excitement, marriage was a prophylactic he would recommend to anyone.

  Alice sat on the bed watching him while Harry listened to the recording, nodding and making notes.

  ‘Don’t I look pale?’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘Pale is your colour.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’

  She asked Harry to go outside. He followed her into the nearest field, walking quickly. She was white and shaking. Her eyes were dilated.

  She hit Harry several times and shouted, ‘Why did you make me talk dirty to a stranger? I kept thinking he was enjoying it in some obscene way. And when I’d turned the phone off, guess what, I had a panic attack – violent palpitations, like being hit in the chest with a rock. I had to lie down on the ground.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re never sorry!’

  He said, ‘What can I do? This is maddening! You did offer to help me on this project. I never said it would be easy.’

  She said, ‘Mamoon stroked my forehead until I felt better. He was worried that the things he was telling me would make me mad and ill.’