Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (18 page)

But I could never understand those guys who worked so hard to promote
themselves
. It had nothing to do with the albums they made, they just wanted to go on TV and talk about their own crass little view of the world. Anything to give their ego a boost.

I’m not like that. I’ll only talk about the music.”

“So it’s going to be a book about your music?” This wasn’t looking good.

“No,” he said slowly, “no it’s not. Not at all. I’m going to tell my life story and sure, music’s a big part of it, but I’m going to

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include everything that’s happened right up to this very minute and beyond. The first thing you have to understand is the reason I’m doing this book. I’m not doing it to make money. I’m not doing it to try and restore my career. I’m doing it for Sean. I planned it long before he died but now that he’s gone, somehow it’s even more important that I set the record straight for him.

When I tell you the story of my life, Lee, I’m going to be talking to Sean. No”—he held up his hand as he sensed the barrage of questions I was about to unleash—“let me finish. What I was about to say was that I know what you want me to include in the book—the full story about that girl who died in my bed. Well, you’ll get that but now I also want to include the outcome of this investigation. I owe it to Sean to deal with his murder and, if possible, write about the person responsible for his death. So, Lee”—

he turned to me and fixed me with a penetrating look—“we’re going to work out who the killers were, you and I. We’re going to be partners in obstruction and we’re going to beat Detective Morrison at his own game. For my son,” he said and he opened a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets. “This is Sean,” he said, handing me a photograph in a wooden frame.

I was reeling from the thrill of what he’d said—not about our obstruction but the fact that he’d promised I’d get the full story of the girl in his bed fourteen years ago. To cover my distraction I took the photograph he handed to me and pretended to study it.

But then I looked closer, because the image of Sean Marriott took my breath away.When I’d seen him dragged upon the beach, his face had been a bloated mess and I’d turned away quickly.

Now I could see what it had been like before. He had the innocent look of a choirboy with shiny hair cropped short but flopping from a side parting in a slight wave over his forehead. His features were small—a perfect little straight nose, a rosebud

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mouth with a larger, sensual lower lip, a delicate chin—except for his eyes, which were large and almond-shaped. He looked like a softer, gentler version of his father. I couldn’t see anything of the drama of his mother’s looks in him.

I handed the picture back to Shotgun, still feeling uneasy. It was understandable that he would want to dedicate the book to his son but it sounded like he wanted to do more than that. He had talked about setting the record straight for Sean. It sounded like he had something he wanted to get off his chest. Had he killed the groupie and was he going to confess via his autobiography?

I snapped to attention. More paranoid notions.This was what happened when I allowed my mind to wander off on its own like an errant child. I came up with the most absurd fantasies and it always got me into trouble.

“Where would you be most comfortable working?” I said to change the subject and get things moving.

“Well, where would you?” he said. “I spend most of my time indoors in that room we were in last time you were here.The one with all the books.”

“That would be perfect,” I said, “so long as you’re comfortable there.”

But when we were settled on one of the enormous sofas, a pitcher of water and two glasses on the coffee table before us as if we were about to speak at a conference, instead of talking about himself, he began to show an enormous amount of interest in me.

“Where do you live? London? Yes? Whereabouts? Ah, Notting Hill. That’s where Angie lives although she’s not a Notting Hill type as I remember them. She’d be better off in Mayfair or Belgravia or somewhere where rich businesspeople hang out. Why do you live in Notting Hill?”

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I told him about the house on Blenheim Crescent where I had lived virtually all my life, about the fire that had nearly destroyed it. I told him about my parents’ separation and my mother’s commitment to the Phillionaire. In fact I prattled on and on and on because—and I would only realize this much later—he made me feel as if he had never been so interested in anyone in his entire life. It’s a gift and he had it in spades. He made me feel—

and I know there must be a way to describe this that sounds less of a cliché but right now I can’t think of it—he made me feel
special
. And maybe I’m flattering myself but I do believe it was genuine.

“And are you married,” he said, “do you have any children?

You’re not wearing a wedding ring, I see, but then sometimes people don’t.”

And that’s when I noticed that he was. He saw me looking at it.

“I never took it off after she left. After all, we’re not divorced.

I am still married to her.” He saw my look of surprise. “You didn’t know that? She doesn’t wear hers anymore,” he said sadly. “At least she wasn’t wearing it at Sean’s funeral. Anyway”—he stood up and stretched—“now I’ve brought that up I suppose I’d better let you turn the spotlight on me although I’d much rather go on hearing about you. Do you know, I crave the company of English people? There are things I love about the Americans—their confidence, their energy, their friendliness—but God I miss the English sense of irony. I say things and Americans look at me blankly.

They just don’t get it.They just don’t do self-deprecation the way we do. They think we’re running ourselves down and that’s very un-American. We are, of course, but that’s part of the fun. And the saddest thing is,” the haunted look I’d grown used to seeing crossed his face again, “because he grew up here, my own son was American. I loved him but we were so different. He was one of

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the people who looked at me blankly. So,” he turned to me and his smile was forced and pathetically bright, “how does this work?

Where do you start?”

“May I use a tape recorder?” I said, rummaging around in the bag of notebooks I’d brought with me and producing my trusty little Aiwa.

He looked startled. “Must you?”

“It really helps,” I said. “Speeds things up. Saves me scribbling away all the time and asking you to repeat yourself every five minutes. After a while you won’t notice it, honest.”

He was silent for quite a long time. Then he said: “Okay. But I’m going to have to ask you to leave the tapes here. I don’t want them leaving the house.”

I was appalled. “But I’m going to need to transcribe them. It takes hours sometimes.”

“You can do that here,” he said quickly. “We’ll set you up with a workspace somewhere in the house. Lord knows, I’ve a ton of empty rooms. And then you can take the transcripts away with you.”

He sounded paranoid. There was no other word for it. I thought about telling him that journalists all over the world walked away from interviewees with tapes full of “off the record”

revelations that would destroy their careers if they were revealed.

I thought about explaining that without corroboration none of it could be used. But presumably he knew all about that.Whatever he was going to talk about into the tape recorder must be seriously incriminating.

“What will be on the tapes,” I said, “will be going in the book eventually and everyone will know it then.”

“And by then I’ll be ready,” was his enigmatic reply. “Now, where do you want me to start?”

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“It’s your book,” I reminded him, “but the beginning is as good a place as any.”

At first I thought he’d fallen asleep. Because when he finally began to speak, he talked with his eyes closed and after a while I realized he wanted to pretend I wasn’t even there. Whenever I shifted my position or interrupted him in any way, he opened his eyes and stared at me for a second as if he’d forgotten who I was. Normally I prompt my subject in the direction I want the story to go but I also know that at the beginning when someone is clearly delving into their memory and coming up with whatever they find there, it’s best to let them keep going.

Especially if the material was as unexpected as Shotgun’s life promised to be. After about five minutes I closed my eyes too and just sat beside him, silently listening as the story of his early years unraveled.

“The real problem of my life was that I was born upper class and I just didn’t get it. As I told you, we lived at Mallaby on the edge of the Yorkshire moors and it was pretty much on the edge of nowhere and that was fine with me. I suppose I had what you’d call a privileged childhood but if you tried to describe it to an American today, I doubt they’d see it that way. It was the fifties and we had no washing machine, no dishwasher, no central heating. And here’s something that will no doubt astound you, we didn’t have a television. Nobody did. It was pretty barbaric by today’s standards.”

I was fascinated by his account of his childhood, how he went to the local school and roamed the moors with the farm children.

But his parents were “landed gentry,” his father’s family had owned vast spreads of Yorkshire for centuries, and in the claustrophobic and rarefied existence within the walls of Mallaby “castle” he was cared for by a succession of nannies and only saw his parents for twenty minutes every day.

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He opened his eyes and turned to me. “I haven’t thought about all this stuff in years. It’s amazing it’s all coming back so easily. I suppose it’s because it’s truly a part of me.We can go into all the background details you need later, okay? What the house was like, my pets, whatever you need. I was an only child, by the way.What about you?”

I nodded to indicate that I was too, but I didn’t say anything.

Much as I had basked in the attention he had paid me, I needed him to keep going about himself.

He closed his eyes again.

“In my parents’ eyes my life was already more or less mapped out. I’d be sent to prep school, then Harrow, and then university.

And along the way I’d find a suitable bride, the daughter of people just like them. I’d meet her at York Races or out foxhunting or grouse shooting and I’d woo her at a debutantes’ ball—and she’d probably turn out to be someone I’d known since I was five years old.

“And I did go to prep school and Harrow and I was about to go up to Trinity, Cambridge. But I never made it because I met the girl I was going to marry and it wasn’t a girl from one of the families who’d been there since the time of William the Con-queror.

“It was Angie.”

I waited for him to continue but he didn’t.

Suddenly he stood up and I was jolted out of the virtual reverie into which I had fallen, mesmerized by the sound of his voice.

“I’m afraid that’s all I’m going to give you for today. I’ve changed my mind.”

I must have frowned in disappointment because he reached out and touched my shoulder to placate me.

“Talking about Angie is going to be painful,” he said, looking

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me straight in the eye, “and I think I need to sift through everything I have to tell you first. Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to hold anything back. Far from it. But I keep thinking about Sean and then I start to feel emotional and we can’t have that. Upper-class Brit with a lump in his throat and all that.That would be letting the side down. My mother would turn in her grave.”

“Well, could you show me where I can transcribe the tapes?” I said. I felt a little uncomfortable seeing him so disturbed. What would happen as he probed deeper into his past? On the one hand I felt he was being far too tough on himself by insisting on tackling the book while he was still grieving, but on the other I was anxious to get to work. “If I could set up the workspace you mentioned, then maybe I can go straight there each time we finish a session.”

“Great idea!” He seemed relieved to have a practical task to perform. “Come with me.”

He led me out into the hall and up the Jacobean staircase. At the far end of the gallery he opened a door and I found myself in a small wood-paneled room. There didn’t appear to be any windows and the only light came from a computer screen glowing in the corner.

“Sean set this up for me,” Shotgun said, switching on an Angle-poise lamp. “I know he thought of me as being hopelessly out of touch and he insisted way back when that I become computer literate. I’m really glad he did. He had a laptop over in his room above the stables and we e-mailed each other. I suppose it says everything about the state of our father-son relationship.We lived within yards of each other but communicated by e-mail. Anyway, will this work for you?”

I thanked him and set about familiarizing myself with his computer and starting a file for the transcriptions.

It didn’t take me long to transcribe the small section of the

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tape he had recorded and when I’d finished, I stepped out onto the gallery and tried to figure where he’d gone. I wanted to say good-bye and fix a time for the next session.

Across the gallery a door was open and coming from the room was Shotgun’s voice punctuated at intervals by the plaintive sound of an acoustic guitar.

“Went to bed last night, found the blues in my bed
Woke up this mornin’ about half past four
Those blues they were a-knockin’ on my front door.”

It wasn’t really singing, I thought to myself, it was more like moaning. I listened as he continued the song, marveling at the way he could transform his cultured British accent into the voice of a downtrodden sharecropper from the American South with such conviction.