It was a handkerchief.
She dabbed her mouth and caught the waitress’s eye.
‘Die Rechnung, bitte, Hannah. Danke sehr.’
The waitress answered, also in German, and brought a small docket with a sweet rolling on top of it.
Dido looked at me, shook her head and went back to work.
Once this customer had gone, a silence settled on the room, pinned into place by the occasional clink of the sugar tongs and then, half a minute later, by an unguarded slurp. The second woman in the room was short, flat-chested, and wasn’t wearing glasses to read the Telegraph.
There is absolutely nothing in the papers; and Peter’s paper [the Telegraph] just a load of rubbish, absolutely worthless – one could get a lot of cans of drink, for the money.
I ordered a toasted tea-cake and settled down. I had thought carefully about which diary to bring with me. A volume from the 1960s, when Laura was on the toilet half the time? The 1970s, when she was overwhelmed by her love for ninety-nine-year-old Dame Harriette? The 1980s, after E’s death, when, disorientated and alone, she contemplates suicide? The 1990s, when she is possibly mad? Any one of them might make her lunge at me. I’d chosen one from 1959:
am so on fire with inspiration at the day, deep, deep feeling of magic and a frenzy of enthusiasm & exaltation, as if I would burst. Really lived today, wide awake, observing people and things. Practically swore to my sisters I’d BE A WRITER.
It was the tail end of the only time she was truly happy. So many ‘happy memories;– of laughter & health & passionate, crazy love’. She was living in Cambridge in ‘the fugitive bliss’ of Miss Ramsey’s house on Castle Hill, visiting Whiters and E regularly, and working on her third novel about John Gielgud, which she called ‘the histoire’:
After tea, finished chapter of histoire. Mozart piano was on (K.333) whilst I wrote a little c-feel when Val has met John in the park. C. feels physically so exciting – sent my heart beating at a terrific rate, really uncomfortable, until I have written it down & the discomfort subsides, & I feel happy and elated.
Staring at the second woman in the tea room, it occurred to me that I didn’t know the first thing about Laura Francis. Why couldn’t this petite lady with good eyesight and worried politics be the tall, myopic, 42B, embittered Sun reader of the diaries? There was nothing illogical about that. The petite woman might have written herself as Laura Francis precisely because she was not Laura Francis. The diaries were a way for her to let her inner Laura Francis exist – the equivalent of a stockbroker wearing his mini-skirts in the attic. All the best biographical subjects are like this to some degree. Just when you’ve got them trussed up in your biographical turkey pan, they do something unexpected, offhand – such as turning out to have no sense of causality (my first subject, the homeless Stuart), or anecdote (my second, the mathematical prodigy Simon), or rising, Christ-like, from the dead – and you realise that you’re as far away from success as you ever were. You’re back to scrabbling around the turkey yard.
There is something very appealing about this constant failure of biography: you set out to capture; you think for a second that you have, and have therefore made the world of interesting characters a slightly tidier place; and then you discover you’ve made a mess of the job – and it is a relief. You are less destructive because your tidying has been unsuccessful.
Perhaps this woman reading the newspaper had come along to today’s meeting knowing that I would never suspect her, so that she could get a good look at me and assess what was her best next move. Perhaps the young man was part of an insightful experiment devised by the department of sociology to publicise a forged diary, released into the world via the ‘skip method’. As soon as one allowed for any unravelling in the truthfulness of Laura Francis, there was nothing to stop her entire story falling to pieces. All I had to rely on was the assumption that when people wrote they were Laura Francis, they meant it.
Without a glance in my direction, the second woman got up and left.
Three Japanese women came in and sat down in a sigh of giggles. An old man, sunk inside a jacket that had been sewn on when he was young and massive, settled by jolts next to the cake stand.
When I had first used my computer to creep up to Laura’s bungalow, 150 miles away, I was shocked to find her standing behind the window staring back at me: a freakishly outsized woman in an off-white, almost grey toga. She was watching the Google camera car go by as it filmed her house.
She had her head chopped off.
It was only when I recovered my nerve and got closer that I realised it was her curtains, not her, in the window. They had fallen off the rail in a way that resembled clothing. What I had thought was her decapitated neck was the top of the window frame.
At 4.37, seven minutes late, the door chimes jangled and I started up from my daydream, grabbing for my digital voice recorder. A glint of light reflected by the door glass dazzled me, and for a second I saw the headless giantess again, stepping towards me. Then the angle of reflection changed and reality came back.
It was the boy with the ponytail going out.
I know Hugh, the second-hand-bookstall man in the market square; he’s there every Tuesday and Thursday. As Dido and I walked away from Auntie’s, we stopped to speak to him – during the 1990s Laura repeatedly mentions buying books from Hugh. It seemed obvious that he would immediately know who I was talking about: the tall woman with glasses who bought, let’s see, a book about Rose West twelve years ago. It would have been Hugh’s Tuesday stand, because it was a paperback.
‘Not just that, of course – lots of books,’ I added. ‘She’s very tall. Hair reddy-brown, or would have been reddy-brown when she was younger. Oh, I know! She also bought an Enid Blyton children’s book in 1979. Were you here in 1979?’
I showed him the diary from 1959. ‘She had handwriting like this.’
Hugh is an amiable but busy man. He shuffled the hardback he was carrying into a packing box, smiled and moved along the trestle table.
Dido was too tired to go on, and sagged off home. It was better for me to appear at Laura’s house on my own. Dido and Richard had found her, but I was the one who’d spent five years thinking of her as a friend.
I arrived at her estate with ten minutes to spare. It is a large place, with coiling streets and unfenced front gardens that give it an American bonhomie. Contented suburban noises drifted through the summer air after the morning rain, the edges plucked off by the surrounding roofs and trees: somebody strimming grass with what sounded like a large bee; children playing football, but no sounds of the kicks or a ball; a radio playing swing music, mingled with the sweet smell of a barbecue; the soft tink! tink! tink! of a hammer mending a piece of metallic machinery. Several of the bungalows at the start of Laura’s road had their garage doors open, with shining cars inside and tools hanging obediently from hooks along one wall – but there was no one visible. It was a safe, self-confident street.
At 5.29 I gripped my voice recorder in the palm of my hand with my finger over the record button and began the walk to the bungalow.
Laura’s semi-detached bungalow was towards the end of the cul-de-sac, and exactly as Google had pictured it: tight and grubby. The side door was still ajar, with several empty tins of cat food scattered outside as well as a saucepan, a pink fake-crystal vase, and a paperweight in the shape of an owl. Through an adjoining window I could make out a small kitchen. The overhead grill on the gas stove had a thin grey blanket resting over it; by squinting my eyes I could see that it was a swag of cobwebs and dust. Tins, books, egg cartons, ready-meal packs, a frying pan, boxes and plates were piled on top of the sink and the sideboard to a height of three feet – and the cobweb blanket had leaped across and swarmed over this too, as far as the opposite wall.
Leaves and plastic packaging rustled about my feet.
The subject of my previous book had been a messy person too. I felt disappointed. I didn’t want to have to use the same imagery again.
/> I heard a man’s voice from the neighbouring house, and turning round saw a friendly, round face staring back at me from the door of his bungalow, which also led into his kitchen.
‘Is this Laura Francis’s house?’ I called. ‘Do you know where she’s gone? I wrote her a letter, I’ve come to do an interview …’
‘Yes, mate. Laura Francis? Of course I know where she is. Everybody round here knows Laura Francis.’
‘Can you tell me where she is?’
‘Where she is?’ the man looked amused. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘No, I’ve never met her before, I’ve just …’
‘She’s standing behind you.’
29 Hello! Are you Laura Francis?
Transcribed, with some editing and additions for clarity, from the digital voice recorder I’d hidden in my jacket pocket.
Hello! Are you Laura Francis?
Are you Alex?
Hello! Hello!
Hello! You know, I was just thinking about you. I feel I’ve been very impolite not to reply to your card. I’ve been living with my mother.
Ahhhhhh, right, right.
Yes, yes.
Um …?
Well!
Do you mind if I come in, or …?
Yes, ah, I’m afraid the place is in a terrible state.
That’s all right. I’m used … I don’t mind … oh!
Well, Alex, um, okay, well …
(A NOTE on her voice: It is, during greetings and polite small talk, high-pitched, often rising in the middle or at the end of sentences, as if she is talking kindly to a cat. When she is talking to a cat (she looks after two) it is higher still. As conversation progresses, it gets deeper.)
Um, where shall I sit?
Why don’t you sit here?
But that doesn’t leave you any place to sit.
Oh, it doesn’t matter.
Where are you going to sit?
I’ll sit here.
Where should I put this?
There.
And this?
There. I think I’m one of these hoarders.
I think you are, yes.
I find things at charity shops.
But you’re not as bad as some of them.
Yes, yes.
There was one the other night, wasn’t there? His went right up to the ceiling.
Oh, that man with the newspapers. BBC2.
And he crawled along. You know how he crawled along! You’ve got a few feet left before you match him.
Yes, ha, ha, yes.
He was magnificent.
He was an intelligent man.
So, um, gosh, so this is your, um, this is your bungalow.
Yes, Alex, that’s right.
That’s right. So, let’s see, how do I begin? Do you have any idea why I’m here?
No.
Well, it’s a … it’s a very odd story, this. I don’t quite know how to begin. Okay, what happened is, a friend of mine – this was about 2001 – was just, came across this skip, and I don’t know if you know, or how it happened, but a load of your diaries were thrown in the skip.
Oh yes.
Did you know about this?
No, I didn’t actually.
Well, there were quite a lot of them, and I wanted to find out who I should return them to. Anyway, I had to look through. I didn’t read very much at all. And I assumed you were dead. And I looked at them to try to find out who you were because you hadn’t put your name on, and I thought this is quite intriguing, but I wonder who this person is. I didn’t read very much … but while I was looking to find out how to get the books back to you or your heirs I thought this would be an interesting subject for a book …
Oh, hmm, heh, heh, aaah …
And then when I discovered you were alive, I thought I’d better come and speak to you and wondered whether this was even conceivable as a possibility. I know it comes … I don’t know quite how to say … it’s such a weird thing to bring up. But as a result of this friend of mine finding all these books thrown out, I thought … a book based on your private diaries.
I’d cooperate in anything you wanted to know, yes.
Gosh!
Yes, I’m just on one at the moment actually. I was writing about you. Now let me see. Here it is. ‘I’d intended to go to the bank this afternoon, written the cheque. But I am gnashing’ – you know, because it was raining. ‘So I just had four walls instead. It isn’t even a shower, just going on and on, so I thought I’d sort out the mail. Thought I’d have the opportunity. As I expected, that Masters man has not given up. But he sent a card and said he’ll be at Auntie’s tea rooms on Tuesday or Friday, but unfortunately he hasn’t put a date on the card. It could be a fortnight ago or it could be tomorrow. I don’t really like people coming to the house because it’s in such a state. I expect he’s been to see the bungalow because he seems so interested. If he has a car, which I’ve no doubt he has, he almost certainly has been and he may even have seen me for all I know’.
How extraordinary! How extraordinary though, how extraordinary. So in principle it’s not a thing you’d object to? One thing I didn’t expect was that you would be so unflustered, take it utterly in your stride, I’d thought, gosh, I’m going to have to approach this very, very delicately.
No.
During this first interview, Laura showed me a collection of drawings she’d done as an art student at Camberwell, aged twenty-three. This one is a self-portrait.
I’d add to that, that I would not want to publish anything you hadn’t seen. I’d want to do it with your cooperation.
I’ve really done very little. It’s all been a disappointment, my life, yes …
Would you say your diaries represent you?
Well I think so, yes.
I know people who write diaries and they only write them when they’re furious and they’re not by nature furious people.
I think some of the things I put in my diaries were really cruel actually, really bitter.
Yes, some of them.
Yes, uncensored.
To me as a biographer it’s a goldmine. Someone writing without any attempt to hide their thoughts.
I didn’t want to deceive anybody. I just put what I really thought.
It doesn’t bother you that I’ve read that, and …
No, it doesn’t bother me. There’s no point in writing it down if nobody ever reads it.
But you weren’t writing for anyone?
Oh no, I was doing it for myself.
How much time do you spend writing?
An hour and a half a day?
What happens when you finish one?
It just sits around.
So when you finish a diary do you look back to it?
No, just go on to the next one.
You didn’t throw them out yourself, did you?
No, certainly not!
But you had no sense of these diaries having gone missing?
There have been so many. They’ve all really rather gone astray.
Where are your other diaries? You must have written thousands. Someone who can lose their diaries with such ease as you can seems to have the wrong spirit for a hoarder.
Well, hehe, hehe, hmmmm … I don’t really know what’s happened to them. There might be some in the garage.
You’re not worried about them?
Well, it’s not much use worrying about them, if they’ve gone.
But don’t you want to preserve what you write?
It’s more of a compulsion really. I just enjoy writing. I enjoy the sound of the words. I’ve done it since I was about twelve. I just like the feeling of the pen on the page.
And if one day you stopped doing it, what would you feel?
I wouldn’t quite feel myself.
Tell me about your mother.
Ohhhhh, ooooohhhh, well, she’s had a very happy life. A lot happier than mine. Went up to Cambridge, met my dad and they got married and were very happy and then came the war and m
y mum went to live at Whitefield.
Tell me about Whitefield.
I think it got burned down. Yes, it would seem I was a very lucky person. One would think I had a silver spoon in my mouth, but that just didn’t happen.
Do you play the piano still?
Whitefield House, from the back
I broke my wrist a few years back, and I stopped playing.
Do you draw ever?
No.
Just the diaries left?
Yes.
In your early diaries you drew a face – always the same face, a sort of Shakespearean character …
Oh, John Gielgud. Yes, I wondered where that box of books had got to. I couldn’t find them when I left.
Well, they went to me!
Yes, I was very keen on John Gielgud when I was younger. I was always drawing him.
Page after page of John Gielgud!
Yes. I can’t bear the man now.
What made you go off him?
I met him at Trinity bookshop. He was signing his book and I went to say ‘Hello’ and he just cut me dead. Didn’t want to meet me. He just looked at me as if I was somebody he didn’t like.
Do you think you’re happy now?
Happy’s a bit much. I’m not miserable the way I was before.
When did that change?
Since I’ve been living here. Since I got older. You just come to terms with things. I wish I hadn’t done this, I wish I hadn’t done that, but there’s nothing much I can do about that now.
Does there come a point when regrets stop?
There’s not much point in regrets, is there? I’ve got on better here than I expected. I spend my day writing and reading. I always get three papers a day: the Mail, the Mirror and the Express. All the medical articles in the Tuesday papers. I want to improve my knowledge about how things are progressing. You must be a nice person if my cat puts up with you.
If we were to do this book, do you not worry about the fact that people would read all the stuff in your diaries?
Noooo, I don’t think so, no.