The Last Word Page 5

  A girl beginning to move away from her parents and wanting to grow up can be persuaded into appalling acts of love. Once Harry hit thirteen and began to sweat and shower, a relay of fragrant teenagers were kissing, petting and spending the night with him on sleepovers. The motherless boy hated to sleep alone; sometimes he crashed on the floor in one of his brothers’ rooms. Soon he learned that numerous girls were susceptible to his pleas for them to care for him. He needed to replace one woman with a horde of other women. From the age of fourteen he was seducing more of them than those amateurs his brothers. It would cheer his father up, when he came home, to find the house garlanded with girls in flower. ‘St Trinian’s’, he called it, or ‘the Kingdom of Pubescent Girls’. He made sure to warn Harry that he’d be envied – hated, he meant – for his gifts, charm and ease, as he got older, and that he should conceal but not suppress his virtues. Harry didn’t then understand what his father meant.

  His father had a superb library: philosophy, psychology, fiction, art. That was that, for Harry; he developed himself there. Not that he didn’t miss his mother; he was still angry with her, to say the least, which was how she remained alive and active in his mind. What he didn’t want was her sitting at the end of his bed when he was alone in the country.

  Now he sped through the dark winding lanes, and then ran from the car. Soon he was at the warm bar of a busy pub, and others were turning to him, the stranger, the curiosity that everyone seemed to know about. People gathered round. Apparently the locals – farmers and ageing rock stars who lived in the big houses, and their fans who lived in smaller places – were keen to hear about ‘the writer’.

  Was it true Mamoon had no friends? Was he cruel to his wife, violent even? Was he a devil-worshipper? More importantly, was he really broke? And wasn’t it true that he had certainly made the most of the country which had welcomed him, and where his talent had been allowed to flourish? Hadn’t he complained too much? Had he ever been sufficiently grateful?

  Nothing can be still while it lives in the minds of others, including, of course, a character and reputation. It didn’t take long, Harry saw, for a personality to enlarge and inflate, as the subject became what others preferred him to be. Like Harry’s mother, Mamoon had travelled beyond and above himself, a process Harry himself was now correcting but also abetting, in his own way. What was a person then, but a self which travelled between private fantasy and public creation?

  Hadn’t Mamoon been in that place for Harry when he read and reread Mamoon’s interviews, profiles and essays in Playboy, Rolling Stone and Esquire as a young man? That Mamoon had willingly journeyed into the darkness of the contemporary world itself, and returned with testimony, witness and thought, revealed an intrepid man who was a conquistador, determined to expose and explain the harshest truths. Wasn’t he the first to track, in the dark cities of northern Britain, the change in the Muslim community from socialist anti-racism to a radicalism built around a new worldwide form, a reactionary idea of Islam? His essay ‘The Axe of Ideology’ had been crucial. Didn’t his analysis then go further, as he followed the trajectory of Islam from a form of liberation theology to a death cult demanding sacrifice, built around obedience to the law of the Absolute father?

  Where was Harry in this now? Like Mamoon, Harry couldn’t just hold up the mirror; he had to explain why he was there, and what this man meant. His words had to keep the writer alive in the history of literature, however much he might want to kill him personally.

  Glad to be out of the house, and to have alcohol in him, Harry felt more buoyant. The less he said to the locals the more he’d enjoy his evening. He did make the mistake of suggesting, to the irritation of those around him, and at the risk of appearing superior, that a good way to make contact with a writer might be to pass one’s eyes over his sentences. After this faux pas he thought it best to settle himself in a secluded corner of the bar where he could keep a look out for the local interest: the ardent young wife of a farmer bored by dipping sheep in antiseptic, or dragging on the udders of recalcitrant animals; or perhaps the partner of a long-distance lorry driver eternally delayed by a French strike.

  Then he looked up; it was dim in the pub, but he saw what he wanted. His instinct had been correct. The skin game was on. He finished his drink. Before fetching another one, he went into the toilet, popped some money into the condom machine and pushed the button for plain rubbers. The girl who had been smiling and flicking her long hair at him appeared to be younger than he’d wanted. He didn’t need a scandal. But she had sent her friends away. Sensibly, she was standing up. She would lead him.

  He was keen to follow this siren, even into a crepuscular corridor which led to the pub’s back room, an undecorated and unheated grave fragrant with urine and worse, as if the toilet was parked under a table. The drinkers were here. A hairy man with the face of a pit bull, wearing only boxer shorts and tattoos, played pool under a flickering striplight. A couple of Medusas, pulling on chained dogs, waited, squinted and cursed. Harry was afraid. He went to the girl.

  They sat close together. When, quite soon, the words ran out, she licked her fingers and extinguished the candles on the table, rubbing hot wax into his hands, and onto his arms. She was plain and lovely, and not too young at all, a dramatically dark-haired busty girl in her mid-twenties or perhaps older, with black eyes, her thick legs packed into a tight, if not straining miniskirt. She introduced herself as Julia. He followed her out, and indicated his car.

  They drove for half an hour, until she told him to stop in a wide street of old council houses. It was otherwise quiet in the misty rain, but dogs barked.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  But Harry wondered if he might be getting too old for the dispiriting adventure that seemed to inevitably accompany the need for human contact. Did he want to creep half drunk into a damp-walled council house at midnight in the countryside, particularly since, as the girl hauled him along the dim downstairs corridor, he glimpsed, through an open door, a scene of Hogarthian dissipation.

  A late middle-aged woman with her shirt open and arms in the air and three older rough men in clothes they must have slept in for weeks were dancing. They punched their arms in the air, and shouted with drunken violence.

  Julia would not let him linger. She jerked him away. Soon he was two floors up in an attic room, perhaps deluded, but certainly crammed into a single bed clinging to a thin pillow and what appeared, now, to be a fat-faced proletarian girl in her early twenties. Still, once she’d finished her cigarette, and – if he hurried – before she lit another one, he’d have her again, this time on her knees on the floor, clearing a space amongst the cups and clothes, while regarding the underwear hanging from the mirror.

  Not that anything important could be achieved without inconvenience, if not suffering; and he was happy to see she was more than he’d imagined. As was often the case, he feared he might become afraid and lost in his own mind, and might begin to dwell, once more, on the fact that he and his brothers could have made their mother crazy. His father had said, not long ago, ‘There’s no ambivalence: children make their parents die. The three of you were much too much for her.’ Thinking of this, Harry required a night’s comfort and companionship. A girl is an umbilical cord, a lifeline to reality. His mother wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone.

  Despite the thud of music and the occasional shock of abrupt yells from elsewhere in the house, he relaxed. As she stroked him and he kissed her hair, he could consider how things were going with the book. There had at last been progress; Harry believed he’d been asking the right questions. He’d pressed on.

  That afternoon, passing the library on his way back from the barn, he’d spotted his foe through the window. The old man was halfway up a ladder searching for a book, and appeared particularly vulnerable. Harry, with a burst of spontaneous confidence, and, by now, a certain amount of desperation, had hurried into the house. ‘There you are, sir,’ he said, and peppered Mamoon with queries until eve
n he became curious about himself.

  The writer had, at last, come gingerly down the ladder, made himself comfortable in a chair and said almost mournfully, ‘I must give you more, dear man. You seem upset, and even angry, now.’

  Mamoon talked about his father with respect and affection; his mother he hardly mentioned, but when pushed was kind. As for his siblings, again Mamoon talked of how much he liked them, having supported one through college in America. The sister he hadn’t spoken to for thirty years he said nothing about. ‘It’s not an interesting dispute.’ About Peggy he didn’t add much, claiming he’d repressed the details but that it was ‘all in the diaries’.

  ‘What’s your view of it now?’ Harry asked. ‘Of her. Your lover.’

  ‘You know, Harry, I loved her for a long time,’ Mamoon said. ‘But, once intelligent and attractive, the poor woman became increasingly distressed. She made herself so very ill with the drinking. She was even unwashed at times. Born for disappointment, she only wanted what I couldn’t give. The drink made her aggressive – mostly with herself.’

  Harry said, ‘Would a more ruthless man have removed her?’

  ‘How could even a more ruthless man have removed her from her own house? I could have moved somewhere else. But there is a lot I love here – the quiet to write. The long story, the novel, is an old-fashioned and, people say, defunct form. Perhaps it resembles oil painting, in that its creation is labour-intensive and enjoins an iron discipline, patience and forbearance. It is all I can do. As for Peggy, you can’t just let people down, dammit. That’s the hell of compassion. But I did think, next time I must marry a real woman.’

  ‘As opposed to?’

  ‘A case history.’

  ‘You are compassionate, sir. That is well known,’ said Harry. ‘But did you go with other women?’

  ‘Much less than you might like to imagine.’

  ‘Didn’t you say that no one has been truly married until they’ve committed adultery?’

  ‘I hope so.’ Mamoon went on, ‘She and I always worked together on my manuscripts. That was our intimacy and the purpose of our conversations.’

  ‘It was your love for one another?’

  ‘Many artists have had a muse. The idea confuses idiotic people as to art’s origins. They want to believe it springs from a single pure source. It has been said that my work hasn’t been up to much since Peggy died.’

  ‘Do you agree with that?’

  Mamoon shrugged and began to head for the door. ‘I work on, when I can. What the hell else could I do all day – talk to you? An artist, you must remember, is at his best in his art.’

  This was duller than the much gossiped idea of a diabolic intransigent Indian driving devoted women mad. Rob’s late-night calls – he hollered into the phone, saying everything at least twice and with exclamation marks: ‘What have you got on him? What have you got? You got it yet? Make sure you tell me!’ – were making Harry so anguished he was beginning to wonder whether he could write a first book at all about a man about whom there would be many books, eventually. And if he didn’t have the book, he explained to Julia now, he wouldn’t have a career. His brothers were doing nicely, but could be very damning, while he, Harry, would be nothing.

  Harry awoke when the light came up and peered about the dark blue-walled room he had landed in.

  Stroking and smelling the lovely, plain woman beside him, he then recalled a lashing rant he’d received from Liana the previous afternoon, just after he’d spoken to Mamoon. She had dashed from the kitchen and into a field where he believed he was safe, reclining for a breather with a notebook in the shade of an old apple tree.

  ‘Why did you insult Mamoon so?’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ He sat up. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Wasn’t it something about your father being a real man – and an example to you – because he had had three sons and brought them up alone?’

  ‘Dad educated us. He called it his only duty. It’s commendable. I want to do the same, Liana.’

  Liana stared at him. ‘How almost impossible it must be for you to imagine what it was like for a shy, precocious Indian boy to come here and not only make a life, but a triumphant one, among such strangers, enemies even – certainly amongst people who didn’t encourage him. He showed people his stories and they literally said to him, “Why would you think anyone could be interested in these bloody Indians!”’

  ‘How could I not understand that?’

  ‘Do I need to remind you repeatedly that you have flown through life on a magic carpet of privilege? The world has always been the private garden of tall, blond, good-looking men who can stroll anywhere and ask for anything.’ She went on, ‘And never forget that whatever Mamoon and I are like, and however snobbish you think we are, if we’d failed, we’d have been left with nothing. How many so-called coloured writers were there before my husband? People didn’t even believe the blacks could spell Tchaikovsky!’

  He was considering what sort of lesson this might be when he said goodbye to Julia early the next morning.

  She put her arms around his neck and said, ‘It’s like being struck by lightning. I’ve fallen in love. I will love you now, Harry, and never let you go. Do you remember my name?’

  ‘Julia. Is that right?’

  ‘I won’t forget yours. I could have kissed you when I poured the Earl Grey.’

  ‘What Earl Grey?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? The first time in the garden at Mamoon’s. You sat there looking so beautiful and worried. I wanted you then. I’ve seen you in the yard. I know you’ve been concentrating. Your mind always seems to be somewhere else. But something eternal passed between us. Didn’t you feel it?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘It was you.’

  ‘Yes. I’m confused. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘You don’t remember? I offered you a digestive biscuit and a Jaffa.’

  ‘I would never forget a Jaffa. But I must have been wondering if I’d ever be able to write the book.’

  She whispered, ‘Your penis is my dog. I love the taste of you in my mouth.

  ‘Bon appétit.’

  He was surprised but gratified by her love. He guessed he was a novelty in the town, where the gene pool was limited; the ecstasy would soon wear off. He would enjoy it while it lasted.

  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 agai
n, 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.