The Last Word

  ‘Liana, what do you usually do here?’

  ‘I look after you. I’m a carer.’

  ‘Yes, you’re a wife.’

  ‘But are you a husband?’

  ‘Now look here, Liana, if you’ve woken up in one of your moods, you can jolly well go back to bed, after you’ve made my coffee and brought me two boiled eggs, please.’

  ‘Mamoon, you need to ask yourself some serious questions. All that time alone in your study hasn’t been good for your sanity. You’ve even been singing to yourself in your sleep.’

  ‘Singing? In my study I am working – and only for you. Who in reality puts this damn food on the table?’

  ‘All you’re doing is pleasuring yourself, Mamoon.’

  ‘You say that now, after all this time, when you know quite well that it is what I do, who I am—’

  ‘But I am getting tired of that, habibi, I need something more as a woman. Both the girls have gone towards more life! Please – let’s jump in Harry’s car and go with them! Let’s run away!’

  At first these disputes had made Harry anxious, and he wanted them to be over. Now they were just another country noise. He left them to it and took a calming turn around the orchard, though he believed he could even hear their voices from there. But, more importantly, as he walked out of the door, he’d turned for a moment. While Liana, standing at the sink with her arms crossed, continued to berate Mamoon from a distance, he saw Julia go to him and kiss him just once respectfully on the cheek. For a moment he held her elbows, and his eyes seemed to be wet. It was the only time Harry had seen them touch.

  He and Julia drove away up the track, and he thought he’d never return to the house. In the mirror he watched Liana waving, gesticulating and covering her face; he believed she would cry all day. Something had altered in her, and there was a black shadow around her aura.

  ‘How am I looking?’ said Julia.

  ‘Alice cut your hair well. And you’ve been working hard on your body.’

  ‘I like you to admire my breasts. I can’t bear for us not to be skin to skin.’

  He said, ‘I saw Ruth watching us go from the upstairs window. She didn’t wave. Is she pleased for you?’

  ‘She knows I can’t stay here.’

  ‘Will she talk to me about Mamoon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She said, ‘The notebooks I brought for you. The ones by Mamoon about us as a family with him.’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Were they of use?’

  He said, ‘Put the Little Richard song on.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘“I’m in Love Again”. It’s my favourite.’

  They were bouncing their heads. He looked at her. ‘Perhaps we could stop on the way. A snog and a feel on the hard shoulder, followed by a quick lunch in the Little Chef?’

  ‘You know how to show a girl a good time.’

  He said, ‘The notebooks really were of use, Julia. They opened it up. You did me a favour there.’

  She said, ‘I’m still not happy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t pull my hair or whoop me hard enough.’

  ‘I’m a softie, you know that. I love you too much.’

  ‘Thank you. I was dying,’ she said. ‘I would have died there. Now you’ll never get rid of me.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Somehow I think you’re right.’

  Twenty-six

  ‘Ah-ha!’ said Rob.

  Harry was sitting in his almost empty study, hunched over a desk, when Rob appeared at the door like a genie, somehow having sneaked into the new house.

  ‘I like your fresh look, Harry: the short hair suits you. It’s given you a new brutality and determination. And I like the new place. Can I move in?’

  Harry had sold his flat and paid Alice’s debts; the couple were now renting a house from a friend who was away. It was large, but closer to Acton than anyone would want to be. Eventually he and Alice would have to make more suitable arrangements, but Harry couldn’t see how they would be able to do it. He was far into it, but hadn’t finished the book. His present circumstances were confusing and disorienting. He believed all he could do was continue to work.

  ‘It’s a relief to have caught you at your desk,’ said Rob. ‘I came straight here after discussing you this morning. My poor colleague Lotte, now recovering, told me that a couple of months ago, after running into you, she invited you over. I was impressed by the transport detail.’

  Harry whispered urgently, ‘Keep it down – the women are in the house preparing for the birth of my bloody children. What transport detail?’

  ‘After a party, she was kind enough to invite you in. But, Lotte noticed, you kept a taxi waiting outside, so you could make a quick escape. That hurt her.’

  ‘She was living in Queen’s Park.’

  ‘And you cruelly blamed her for that?’

  ‘I only went that distance because she’d been wearing a yellow dress I loved. She wanted me to see her breasts, and wore a perfume I liked. I have the ability to attribute supernatural qualities to unremarkable women.’

  ‘She is not unremarkable, but one of the best when it comes to intelligence and beauty, with the legs of Venus. This might surprise you, but you make her laugh and think like no one else. But Mamoon’s been ringing her, and is now hassling me, insisting on seeing you.’

  Harry laughed. ‘When I left three weeks ago he was opening champagne and cheering.’

  ‘Please go and talk to him tonight.’

  ‘Psychologically I’m on the edge. And I’m in the middle of a paragraph about his mother.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Does he have something specific to say to me?’

  Rob said, ‘It’s been harrowing. He’s been having awful death dreams. He has beautiful gifts for both of you, and he wants to talk honestly.’

  ‘It would be the first time.’ Harry said, ‘If it’s important, and there’s some material he has, I can drive down in a few days.’

  ‘He needs both of you to go. Alice in particular.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mamoon says the country is a sedative for her agitated temperament, the only place she relaxes. Learn to give a woman what she needs. Look at me – I have no one, and it’s dark and desolate at night, when I blub alone.’

  Harry looked hard at Rob. ‘Alice is busy expecting twins.’

  Rob said, ‘You’re not grasping the gravity, dude. Liana has also been ringing me – Miss Lonelyhearts here – to say Mamoon’s becoming savage.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He pulled her hair. She scratched him. She screamed in his face. He even wept in despair.’

  ‘They deserve each other.’

  ‘I’m not sure they do.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Rob sat on Harry’s papers on the desk, took Harry’s hands, caressed them and then put them to his lips and kissed them. No one in publishing had done this to him before.

  ‘Beautiful man, Mamoon has always been concerned with the almost impossible task of using real words to describe invisible things. You and I know that language is the only enchantment. Alternative magic – spells, crystals, lamp-rubbing – is a lovely futility. Now Mamoon has developed an old-man crush on Alice. Unlike his wife, she hears him, and he her. He’s never touched her, you know that. She is the tasty bait.’

  ‘Why don’t I lift you up with my little finger and hurl you through the window?’

  ‘Instead, think of everything he might spit out while he’s biting on her. Notice how you fail to spot the opportunities here.’

  ‘I’m not yet a pimp.’

  Rob picked up handfuls of recent novels, flung them against the wall and cried out, ‘You’re not even looking at me! But I’m telling you something, Woodworm.’

  ‘Is that what he calls me?’

  Rob said, ‘I’m here to discuss what you did to one of the world’s greatest artists. And the naked flame.’

  ‘Naked flame?’

&nbs
p; Rob told Harry that at home a few days ago, Mamoon, having usefully occupied himself examining his own faeces – something older people like to do – and looking forward to a relaxing evening with a new translation of The Odyssey and an as yet unwatched DVD of the Australian fast bowlers Lillee and Thomson, heard musical noises, interspersed with yelps. This did not agree with him. How he wished he could have stopped his ears. He called out for help, but Ruth was at her place, halfway through a bottle of her boss’s vodka. Clutching his stick, Mamoon opened the door to his library. It might as well have been the door to hell.

  For at least a week Liana had been restless. While Mamoon worked, she’d languished in bed, getting up at night to read, send emails, and roam the house. She had begun to sing and dance, talking to herself in Italian, a certain sign of madness, Mamoon believed.

  Now he opened the door to find her ‘whooshing up’: leaping ethereally in a loose white nightgown, her breasts exposed, with a glazed look of blissful happiness on her livid white face, a goddess or a butterfly. When he asked what was going on she was unable to stop, though she did stare briefly at the interrupter, but without recognition.

  He moved towards her and noticed between them on the floor a plate of candles. She bent over to pick it up. Her loose hair fell into the flames and suddenly caught ablaze. In a moment she was a human sparkler, a halo of consuming fire around her face. As she danced wildly, the flames spread to papers on the table; the wind blew them onto his favourite Venetian carpet, which also began to burn. A blanket started to smoke. A book began to smoulder.

  The old man hobbled to the table, lifted up a huge vase and poured the contents over the poor, hysterical woman, putting her out. He scurried into the kitchen for more water, which he threw across his beloved room – now gradually igniting – before it all went up. He scuttled back and forth, exhausted, weeping, pouring, cursing.

  Mamoon held her at last, wrapping her in cool, damp things until her convulsions stopped. She was singed in places, and would have to cut off her hair, but she was not badly hurt. He comforted her, gave her downers and put her to bed. He sat with her, scratching in his notebook on a new piece. For a time she didn’t cook or attend to the place. When one of the spaniels caught a duck and killed it on the lawn, she refused to get up to help, and it made Mamoon sick to look at the bloody smears and innards across the grass. Scott had to be called for.

  ‘You know Scott does the dirty work without complaint,’ said Rob. In a terrible black rage and depression, Mamoon had made him throw away the burned carpet. ‘And, you know what? Scott rescued the carpet. He scraped it off and cleaned it up as well as he could, and said Julia could have it. She will give it to you, and you will keep it on your study wall to remind you of the months you spent falling through the decades, being forced to confront wonders and secrets, until you grew up.’

  Mamoon had been having dizzy spells. He’d been falling down. Only Ruth had been picking him up and taking care of him, bringing him food and tea. As Harry might imagine, her corpse-like, Mrs Danvers visage horrified him. ‘You wouldn’t want her coming at you with clippers and cutting your toenails, would you?

  ‘Mamoon hates the phone, but he has started calling me. He is frightened that Liana has gone mad, that it will always be his destiny to be trapped in the countryside with a lunatic. It has become a death drive competition: which of them, remaining sane, will send the other one mad first. They provoke and curse one another continuously. So: good morning, Harry. This is where you come in.’ Harry asked if it was his fault. It was. ‘Yes, Liana has been mumbling about your influence. She hasn’t quite given the game away. But Mamoon has become convinced you’ve put a spell on her.’

  ‘How would I do that?’

  ‘I know exactly how. That stuff you gave her. Those fragments of utopia: the magic mushrooms and other things. Are you going to deny it?’

  Harry put his hand to his face. ‘Oh Jesus, Rob.’

  ‘The woman has been bombed out of her skull. What were you playing at?’ Rob shook his head gravely and went on, ‘The old man’s got something else heavy on you.’ Rob leaned forward and whispered right into Harry’s ear. ‘Can Alice and Julia hear us?’

  ‘How do I know? They’re sorting out some clothes. Is there more? Is it worse?’

  ‘It’s her: Julia. She’s the thing here, and the question of convention – the convention being ridiculous, but it exists, nonetheless.’ Harry nodded slowly. ‘I see you humbled. It is admirable, of course, from one point of view, that you had the nerve to go with his staff right under his nose. Dangerous, but Mamoon would never let on.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He is fond of you. But never push him. You don’t want anyone blabbing across the literary world that you behaved like a beast in his house.’

  ‘Rob, I swear, I crept about like a ghost.’

  ‘Ha ha – when you weren’t depressed, you were baiting him, cunt-teasing and provoking his wife. You even turned her against him. You screwed his staff while consuming large amounts of his booze, eating his wife’s food, stealing his notebooks, slapping him around the head, and accusing him of being a sadomasochist. What is ghostlike about that? You’ll be discredited, you’ll never get a job anywhere. You might have to give him something – see?’

  There was a silence. Rob seemed to believe understanding was coming to Harry like the slow but inevitable action of a tranquilliser; and, while it enveloped Harry and smoked his brain, Rob stroked his author’s arm.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Rob. ‘Think, think. Think hard. You’re my sweetie.’

  Alice came in holding her phone. She went to Rob and kissed him. ‘Liana has been texting me. Mamoon even rang and said he’s been making preparations.’

  ‘For what?’ said Harry.

  ‘Our arrival. It would be lovely to go down in the morning. I miss the openness, the views, and the water. We don’t even have to stay the night, if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Darling, are you absolutely sure you want to?’

  ‘You said there was still one person you hadn’t spoken to for the book. And you know my conversations with Mamoon give me strength.’

  Harry looked at Rob and sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there.’

  ‘You won’t regret it,’ said Rob. ‘You’re not quite done yet.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  Twenty-seven

  They arrived in the morning, dropping Julia off at her mother’s on the way.

  Harry had wondered if Liana did really want them there. But when they walked in they saw that she had gone to some trouble to make a fine early lunch of seafood pasta and avocado and mozzarella salad. As always, the table looked welcoming. Liana ran out and embraced them.

  The conversation was cheerful and diverting; Mamoon was witty, but he only discussed what he’d been watching on TV. After, while Mamoon and Alice continued to sit in their places, discussing their all-time top five favourite puddings, as well as the places and circumstances in which they had consumed them, Mamoon said he had left a ‘special gift’ upstairs for Harry. ‘Go: you’ll be pleased. Keep it,’ said Mamoon.

  Harry went upstairs to continue with his work, and found his gift on the bed, in a folder: a four-page handwritten early short story of Mamoon’s. Not long afterwards, having removed her wig, Liana came to the door wearing a Nepalese woollen hat to cover her singed hair, and asked if she could sit with him. Unusually, she didn’t chatter or boast, but put out her tongue.

  ‘Look at the purple colour of that! Have you seen the circles of hell under my eyes? You heard I caught fire, didn’t you?’

  Liana had been in astral torment, traipsing about all night like the miserable undead, with her skin shrinking and her bones aching. She had been satisfying herself too much, four times a day on occasion. She had worn away her finger tip in those soft folds, and thought she might rub herself out. But it was hopeless. ‘The world is flying around and around in my mind. What can I do to st
op it? Even Mamoon insisted you come back. It is the only thing we have agreed on lately.’

  ‘Why did he want us here?’

  ‘To smash our isolation.’ She put her head on Harry’s shoulder. ‘Won’t you walk with me? Despite all your trickery and determination, I’ve always believed you’ve a kind heart and love women. You listened to me for free.’

  She was keen to show him how the walled garden was developing, and eager to have him see the carp and goldfish in the pond. She insisted on taking him behind the barns and via the swimming pool, which they had opened properly at last. It was early autumn, but it had been unseasonably warm, and the day was spectacular.

  ‘I expect we’ll find Mamoon there,’ she said. ‘You know, though he has hurt me more than anyone else, I still love to turn a corner and see him.’

  ‘I thought he rarely goes into that part of the garden.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how strangely he’s been behaving.’

  Mamoon had become interested in their pool. Uncharacteristically, he had even forfeited a day’s work to oversee and scrutinise its cleaning by Ruth and Scott, ensuring that it was heated to a temperature he approved of, not something Mamoon would normally attend to himself. Even more unusually, Scott had been ordered to drive Mamoon into town to buy food and wine, as well as garden furniture, loungers and towels, Mamoon insisting that Scott get them to the house immediately. Liana was cheered by this, wondering if Mamoon was beginning to forget the burden of his work.

  As they walked, Harry and Liana saw bare-chested Scott with a fishing net, dragging leaves from the pool. Beyond him was the increasingly large figure of Alice, in sunglasses, white bra and pants – she was admirably reckless like that – lowering herself into the water.

  Mamoon sat close by, clapping his hands, encouraging her to go in. ‘Is it correct temperature?’ he was saying. ‘Surely it is! Go down! Good. Lower. That’s it . . .’

  He stood up to watch her swim a couple of slow, elegant lengths.