My immediate concern was that I couldn’t go to Brighton that weekend because Tom was in Cambridge, and then
travelling on to see my sister. He didn’t want me to come to hear him read. It would ‘destroy’ him to know that I was in the audience. I had a letter from him the following Monday. I lingered over the salutation –
My darling one
. He said he was glad I hadn’t been there. The event had been a disaster. Martin Amis was pleasant, and perfectly indifferent on the question of the running order. So Tom took top billing and let Martin go first as the warm-up act. A mistake. Amis read from his novel called
The Rachel Papers
. It was obscene, cruel and very funny – so funny that he had to pause now and then to let the audience recover. When he was done and Tom came out on stage to take his turn, the applause kept on and on, and Tom had to turn back into the darkness of the wings. People were still groaning and wiping their eyes as he finally made it to the lectern to introduce ‘my three thousand words of buboes, pus and death’. During his reading some of the audience left, even before father and daughter had slipped into unconsciousness. People probably needed to catch last trains, but Tom found his confidence undermined, his voice became thin, he stumbled over simple words, missed out a line and had to go back. He felt the whole room resenting him for undoing the merriment. The audience applauded at the end because they were glad the torment was over. Afterwards in the bar, he congratulated Amis, who did not return the compliment. Instead he bought Tom a triple scotch.
There was also good news. He’d had a productive January. His article on persecuted Romanian poets had been accepted by
Index on Censorship
, and he’d finished a first draft of his monograph on Spenser and town planning. The story I helped with, ‘Probable Adultery’, turned down by the
New Review
, had been accepted by
Bananas
magazine and, of course, there was the new novel, the secret he would not share.
Three days into the general election campaign I received a summons from Max. It was not possible for us to go on avoiding each other. Peter Nutting wanted a progress report
on all the Sweet Tooth cases. Max had no choice but to see me. We’d barely spoken since his late-night visit. We had passed in the corridor, muttered our ‘good morning’s, taken care to sit far apart in the canteen. I’d thought a lot about the things he’d said. He’d probably spoken the truth that night. It was likely the Service had let me in with a poor degree because I was Tony’s candidate, likely they followed me for a while before losing interest. By sending me, harmless me, Tony may have wanted, as a farewell gesture, to show his old employers that he was harmless too. Or, as I liked to think, he loved me, and thought of me as his gift to the Service, his way of making amends.
I’d been hoping that Max would go back to his fiancée and that we could continue as before. And that’s how it seemed for the first quarter of an hour, as I got in behind the desk and gave an account of the Haley novella, the Romanian poets,
New Review, Bananas
and the Spenser essay.
‘He’s being talked about,’ I said in conclusion. ‘He’s the coming man.’
Max scowled. ‘I would have thought it would be all over between you by now.’
I said nothing.
‘I’ve heard he gets about. Something of a swordsman.’
‘Max,’ I said quietly. ‘Let’s stick to business.’
‘Tell me more about his novel.’
So I told him about the excitement in the publishing house, newspaper comment on the rush to meet the Austen Prize deadline, the rumour that David Hockney would design the cover.
‘You still haven’t told me what it’s about.’
I wanted praise from upstairs as much as he did. But even more I wanted to get at Max for insulting Tom. ‘It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever read. Post-nuclear, civilisation regressed to savagery, father and daughter travel from the West Country to London looking for the girl’s mother, they don’t find her, catch bubonic plague and die. It’s really beautiful.’
He was looking at me closely. ‘As I remember it, this is just the kind of thing Nutting can’t bear. Oh, and by the way. He and Tapp have got something for you. Have they been in touch?’
‘No, they haven’t. But, Max, we agreed we couldn’t interfere with our writers.’
‘Well, why are you so pleased?’
‘He’s a wonderful writer. It’s very exciting.’
I was close to adding that we were in love. But Tom and I were secretive. In the spirit of the times, we’d made no plans to present ourselves to each other’s parents. We’d made a declaration under the sky on the shingle somewhere between Brighton and Hove and it remained simple and pure.
What became clear in this short meeting with Max was that something had tilted, or shifted. That night before Christmas he’d forfeited some power along with dignity and I sensed he was aware of that, and he knew that I knew. I couldn’t quite restrain the cockiness in my tone, he couldn’t quite stop himself from sounding abject one moment and over-emphatic the next. I wanted to ask him about his intended, the medical woman he’d rejected for me. Had she taken him back or moved on? Either way, it was a humiliation and I knew enough, even in my elated state, not to ask.
There was a silence. Max had given up on the dark suits – I’d noticed this from across the canteen a few days before – and reverted to bristling Harris tweed and, a sickly new development, a knitted tie of mustard yellow against a check Viyella shirt. My guess was that no one, no woman, was guiding his taste. He was staring at his hands spread out palms down on the desk. He took a deep breath that whistled audibly through his nostrils.
‘I now know this. We have ten projects, including Haley. Respected journalists and academics. I don’t know the names, but I’ve an idea of the books they’re taking time off to write.
One is about how UK and US plant biology is making the Green Revolution across the rice-growing countries of the Third World, another is a biography of Tom Paine, then there’s going to be an account, first ever, of a detention camp in East Berlin, Special Camp Number Three, used by the Soviets in the years after the war to murder social democrats and children as well as Nazis, and now enlarged by the East German authorities to detain and psychologically torture dissidents or anyone they fancy. There’ll be a book about the political disasters of post-colonial Africa, a new translation of the poetry of Akhmatova, and a survey of European utopias of the seventeenth century. We’ll have a monograph on Trotsky at the head of the Red Army, and a couple more I don’t remember.’
At last he looked up from his hands and his eyes were pale and hard.
‘So, how the fuck is your T.H. Haley and his little fantasy world gone to shit adding to the sum of what we know or care about?’
I’d never heard him swear, and I flinched, as though he’d thrown something in my face. I’d never liked
From the Somerset Levels
but I liked it now. Usually I would have waited to be dismissed. I got to my feet and pushed the chair under the desk and began to edge out of the room. I would have left with a smart parting line but my mind was a blank. I was almost through the door when I glanced back at him sitting upright at his desk in the apex of his tiny room and saw on his face a look of pain or sorrow, a strange grimace, like a mask, and I heard him say in a low voice, ‘Serena, please don’t go.’
I could sense it welling up, another terrible scene. I had to get out. I went quickly down the corridor and when he called after me, I increased my pace, fleeing not only the mess of his emotions but my own unreasonable guilt. Before I reached my desk downstairs by way of the creaking lift I reminded myself that I belonged, I was loved and nothing Max said could touch me now and I owed him nothing.
Within minutes I was usefully immersed in the atmosphere of gloom and self-blame in Chas Mount’s office, crosschecking dates and facts on a pessimistic memo the desk officer was sending up the chain of command. ‘Notes on recent failures’. I hardly thought about Max for the rest of that day.
Which was as well, because it was Friday afternoon and Tom and I were meeting in a Soho pub at lunchtime the next day. He was coming up to see Ian Hamilton in the Pillars of Hercules in Greek Street. The magazine was due to be launched in April with mostly taxpayers’ money – the Arts Council rather than the Secret Vote. Already there’d been some grumbling in the press about the proposed price of 75p for ‘something we’ve already paid for’, as one newspaper put it. The editor wanted some minor changes to the talking-ape story, which at last had a title – ‘Her Second Novel’. Tom thought he might be interested in the Spenser essay or offer him some reviewing. There was to be no payment for articles, but Tom was convinced that this was going to be the most prestigious publication to appear in. The arrangement was that I would turn up an hour after him and then we’d have what was described to me as a ‘chip-oriented pub lunch’.
On Saturday morning I tidied my room, went to the launderette, ironed clothes for the following week and washed and dried my hair. I was impatient to see Tom and left the house early and was walking up the stairs at Leicester Square Tube station almost an hour ahead of time. I thought I’d browse among the second-hand books on Charing Cross Road. But I was too restless. I stood in front of shelves, taking nothing in, then I moved on to another shop and did the same. I went into Foyles with the vague idea of finding a present for Tom among the new paperbacks, but I couldn’t focus. I was desperate to see him. I cut through Manette Street, which goes along the north of Foyles and passes under a building, with the bar of the
Pillars of Hercules on its left. This brief tunnel, probably the remains of an old coaching courtyard, emerges into Greek Street. Right on the corner is a window with heavy wooden glazing bars. Through it I glimpsed Tom from an oblique angle, sitting right by the window, distorted by the old glass, leaning forward to talk to someone out of my view. I could have gone and tapped on a pane. But, of course, I didn’t want to distract him from his important meeting. It was foolish to arrive so early. I should have wandered off for a while. At the very least, I should have gone in by the main door on Greek Street. Then he would have seen me and I would have witnessed nothing. But I turned back and went into the pub by a side entrance in the covered passageway.
I passed through the peppermint scent emanating from the gents’ lavatory and pushed open another door. There was a man standing alone at the near end of the bar with a cigarette in one hand and a scotch in the other. He turned to look at me and I knew instantly that it was Ian Hamilton. I’d seen his picture in the hostile diary pieces. But wasn’t he supposed to be with Tom? Hamilton was watching me with a neutral, almost friendly look, and a lop-sided smile that didn’t part his lips. Just as Tom had described, he had the strong-jawed look of an old-fashioned movie star, the villain with a heart of gold in a black-and-white romance. He seemed to be waiting for me to approach. I looked through the blue-ish smoky light towards the raised corner seat by the window. Tom was sitting with a woman whose back was to me. She looked familiar. He was holding her hand across the table and his head was inclined, nearly touching hers as he listened. Impossible. I stared hard, trying to resolve the scene into sense, into something innocent. But there it was, Max’s silly improbable cliché,
swordsman
. It had got under my skin like a burrowing parasite and released its neurotoxins into my bloodstream. It had altered my behaviour and brought me here early to see for myself.
Hamilton came over and stood by me, following the line of my gaze.
‘She’s a writer too. Commercial stuff. But not bad in fact. Nor is he. She’s just lost her father.’
He said it lightly, knowing full well that I wouldn’t believe him. It was tribal, one man covering for another.
I said, ‘They seem to be old friends.’
‘What’ll you have?’
When I said I’d have a glass of lemonade he appeared to wince. He went to the bar and I stepped back behind one of the half-screens that were a feature of the pub, allowing drinkers to stand in privacy to talk. I was tempted to slip out of the side door, stay out of Tom’s reach all weekend, let him sweat while I nursed my turmoil. Could it really be so crude, Tom’s bit on the side? I peeped round the screen and the tableau of betrayal was unchanged, she still spoke, he still gripped her hand and listened tenderly as he dipped his head towards hers. It was so monstrous it was almost funny. I couldn’t feel anything yet, no anger or panic or sorrow, and I didn’t even feel numb. Horrible clarity was all I could claim.
Ian Hamilton brought me my drink, a very large glass of straw-yellow white wine. Exactly what I needed.
‘Get this down you.’
He was watching me with wry concern as I drank, and then he asked me what I did. I explained that I worked for an arts foundation. Instantly, his eyelids looked heavy with boredom. But he heard me out and then he had an idea.
‘You need to put money into a new magazine. I suppose that’s why you’re here, to bring me the cash.’
I said we only did individual artists.
‘This way I’ll be letting you back fifty individual artists.’
I said, ‘Perhaps I could look at your business plan.’
‘
Business
plan?’
It was just a phrase I’d heard and I guessed correctly that it would close down the conversation.
Hamilton nodded in Tom’s direction. ‘Here’s your man.’
I stepped out from the shelter of the screen. Over in the corner Tom was already on his feet and the woman was reaching for her coat from the seat beside her. She stood too and turned. She was three stone lighter, hair straightened and almost touching her shoulders, her tight black jeans were tucked into calf-length boots, her face was longer and thinner, beautiful in fact, but instantly recognisable. Shirley Shilling, my old friend. The moment I saw her, she saw me. In the brief second that our eyes met, she began to raise a hand in greeting then let it drop hopelessly to her side, as if to acknowledge that there was too much to explain and she was in no mood for it. She went quickly out of the front entrance. Tom was coming towards me, smiling loopily and I, like an idiot, forced a smile back, aware that Hamilton at my side, now lighting another cigarette, was watching us. There was something in his manner that imposed restraint. He was cool, so we would have to be too. I was obliged to pretend that I didn’t care.