Augustus Fate’s author photos depicted him as a giant in a black cape. In real life, he was a few inches shorter than me. He was wearing a navy jumper with holes in it, a pair of brown corduroys and sandals, displaying a row of large, gnarled toes.
‘Mr Lancia!’ His voice possessed the maturity of the snow-soaked oaks that curled over his cottage. ‘Do come in.’
The cottage was delightfully strange: perfect article fodder. There were little tables carved from wood stumps. Tree branches framed a window, forming a curtain rail, from which hung two orange sheets patterned with sequins. There were so many candles, it was surely a hazard, what with so much wood and paper teasing flame, but I liked the atmosphere of eerie romance they created.
Clapping his hands, Fate declared that he would fetch some tea for us. I listened to him clattering in the kitchen and smiled, warming myself by the open fire. I felt at ease, as though I was in the home of a kindly uncle I had known for years. I can do this, I thought, I can actually do this.
I wanted to post some sort of faux-casual update on Twitter, the sort that always fucked me off when I stumbled across them in my newsfeed: ‘Some news! I am thrilled to announce …’ Now it was my turn for revenge. My tweet this morning, ‘Off to meet the big man,’ had already prompted an orgy of retweets.
I’d read somewhere that Fate had never been online, that he typed all of his correspondence on an Olivetti. I pulled my 11mobile from my pocket: no reception. I snapped a few surreptitious photos. The walls were lined with bookcases, crammed so tight that the spines visibly strained. There were books on every subject, from every century: Dickens and Eliot, Hitler and Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx, Plato and Virgil. There were books in piles on the floor which propped up tables. Books laid in circles which served as stools, with cushions balanced on the top. Suddenly one of the cushions came to life. As she stretched, the flick of her verbose tail sent a book-tier tumbling to the floor. I was quickly reassembling them when Augustus came back in.
‘Causing chaos already?’ he remarked, setting the tray down.
‘Well – no – your cat—’
‘As though Dorothea would do such a thing.’ Suddenly his weathered face was taut, his eyes steel. ‘Apologise. At once.’
‘Dorothea – I’m truly sorry.’ I was already editing this moment out of the article. ‘I—’ Then I saw that his head was tipped back, his mouth rich and wet with laughter. I forced a laugh too, relieved, but on guard now.
He patted the sofa and I sat down on the opposite end. I opened my rucksack and pulled out my iPad.
‘No, no,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s a rule. My rule. No journalists are allowed to write things down while I speak. If you do, you’ll only half listen.’
My grin faded when he failed to mirror it.
‘I have a terrible memory.’
‘You think my answers will be so very dull that you’ll forget them?’ More laughter. This time it grated. ‘I promise to provide you with unforgettable answers.’
‘I might not be fully accurate …’ 12
‘Your subjectivity is inevitable anyway. Misquotations are fine. I don’t want people to know me too well. Come away from my cottage with me in your mind like a mist, rather than as a sharply defined creature.’
‘OK. Well … I’m really chuffed to be here, Mr Fate.’
‘Chuffed?’ We both winced.
‘I’ve wanted to meet you for just over a decade now, since I was fifteen. You were booked to speak at the Southbank Centre. A coachful of us turned up with our teachers. Glossop Inn was on the GCSE syllabus at the time. We waited for hours. One of the boys even sobbed and threatened to slit his wrists with his compass.’ It was a slight exaggeration.
‘Ah.’ Augustus lifted his chin. ‘I’m afraid I’m a recluse. That means I have no interest in talking to people.’
‘Why did you agree to give a reading in the first place, then?’
‘They should never have asked me,’ Augustus said. ‘If you invite a recluse to give a talk, you can’t possibly expect him to turn up.’
I laughed.
‘Well, you’ll be glad to hear that Timothy’s compass was too blunt for the task.’
‘Timothy? He sounds like a pseudonym for a certain Mr Lancia.’ Augustus raised a hirsute eyebrow as I nodded uneasily, playing along. Then he confessed: ‘I find meeting people rather difficult. Every time I encounter someone, I feel a nagging urge to put them in one of my books – and there simply isn’t room for everyone. My head buzzes with all the possibilities. What might happen to them, I wonder, if I was to turn them into a murderer, or a detective, or put them into the middle of the Arctic.’ He drew out a handkerchief, and wiped his forehead. I 13felt a little sorry for him: perhaps this was as much a strain for him as it was for me.
He reached for one of his hardbacks and pulled out a dog-eared typescript which had been tucked into the inside cover.
‘Your thesis is very eloquent, Jaime.’
I could hear the echo of Professor Millhauser in his voice.
‘To be honest, I didn’t expect you to read it – I thought one of your organisers would be sifting through the entries …’
‘Oh no. It was I who dictated that an essay had to be submitted. I thought it was better than asking my readers to write an arse-licking piece on why they’re my number one fan, with a tongue most suited to the task.’
He looked pleased when I laughed.
‘So, Jaime, how did you come to hear of this competition?’
‘I saw it online.’
His expression seemed expectant, and so I continued:
‘I often doomscroll, to help send me off to sleep – in theory, at least. To be honest, I hate that I do it, but it did lead me to the person who then alerted me to the competition … So it’s not all bad.’
‘And why do you hate that you spend so much time on the internet?’ he demanded.
‘Well, there was that brief Edenic period where it looked as though we were all going to connect and help each other, but now it just feels like the Silicon Valley geeks are the authors of our lives. And I hate the mob mentality, the pitchfork mania, all that …’ I trailed off, swallowing.
‘I see. You still haven’t answered my question properly, though. How did you come to hear of the competition?’
‘Right, right – I’m sorry. So, one night I decided to visit a 14suicide forum – it was a way of researching my thesis. Authors seem to avoid suicide as a plot device, don’t you think? They prefer the deus ex machina, the glorious death, dictated by Fate or God or whatever. The Russian authors had no qualms about throwing their heroines under trains or young men hanging themselves, but I found it harder to find examples of suicides in Western literature …’
‘Well, that’s absurd.’ Augustus crossed his arms. ‘Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Lily Bart in The House of Mirth and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides – to name a few …’
‘Of course, there are some. But I’m talking about the ratio of suicides to natural deaths …’
‘But this is true in life, no?’
‘Of course, but there’s such drama to suicide – it’s a wonder that it’s still underrepresented … In any case, that’s how I met Rachel.’
‘So, when you joined this forum – you stated that you were a student seeking help?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Oh.’ Augustus looked pleased. ‘You masqueraded as a depressive?’
‘I told them that it was my wish to end my life by throwing myself on to a funeral pyre, in the manner of Dido in The Aeneid. It impressed some of them.’ I felt sheepish at the memory. ‘Rachel saw right through me. She sent me an email telling me to get the hell off the site. And then I emailed her back and asked her why she felt that her depression was more profound than mine and why her choice of death – hanging – was so superior. We started chatting, and she turned out to be one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever connected with.’ I broke off, feeling the sting at the back of my eyes. 15
‘You care very deeply for her?’ Augustus’s tone was that of a caress.
‘I’ve never met her,’ I admitted, my eyes fixed on the carpet. ‘But I guess that’s why we could open up to each other. It was as though we’d known each other all our lives. And then, one day, the emails stopped. I’ve been checking the headlines in her home town every day, thinking she’s gone missing or something, but I can’t find anything.’ I sat up, formalising my tone. ‘But enough about me. I’m here to interview you.’
My mouth was thick with thirst. The tea tray sat on a pile of books, carrying a quaint teapot and two delicate cups, decorated with a Japanese sashiko pattern.
‘Shall I serve?’ I asked.
‘Not yet, not yet.’ Augustus shook his head. ‘I can assure you that this will be the finest cup of tea you’ve ever tasted. It’s called Grand Kuding and it’s an extremely rare tisane, strained from holly leaves. I have augmented it with a few medicinal herbs of my own from Bardsey Island.’
‘Your birthplace.’ I decided to show off my research.
‘Indeed. It takes a little longer to brew than your average cup of Earl Grey.’
The grandfather clock warned me that it was now half past six. I had only been allotted an hour to interview Augustus and I had already wasted a third of my quota.
‘Bored?’ Augustus remarked, making me jump.
‘Not at all! I just – I’m dying to hear about your new book, Thomas Turridge.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not going to be published.’ Augustus sighed.
‘But – isn’t the new novel the whole point of this interview?’
‘I handed the book in and my publishers complimented it so excessively that I knew something was wrong. My editor 16confessed that my adolescent narrator did not convince – he was “too knowing for his years”. She asked if I could “tweak” it, and so I have withdrawn the book for the time being.’
‘But everything you write is genius,’ I cried, and in that moment I actually sounded sincere.
‘What genius do you see in my books, exactly?’ Augustus narrowed his eyes.
‘They transport me into other worlds. I don’t like novels that are strictly contemporary, observational – I have enough of real life in real life.’
‘Oh, so you think I write escapism, do you?’
‘I don’t think that it has to be a pejorative term,’ I replied hastily. ‘We spend twenty-four hours a day stewing in our thoughts, hopes and insecurities. Our minds are forever scurrying on the wheel of thought and dream. Who wouldn’t want to escape that?’
‘Do you, Jaime? Do you want to escape?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Sometimes I don’t like my life very much.’ I felt both vulnerable and irritated at feeling vulnerable. It felt like the confession had been extracted from me. ‘But this is a good moment,’ I added quietly.
‘I think that the tea is nearly ready,’ Augustus announced.
It was unlike anything I had seen before: jet-black and as dense as ink. I sniffed it surreptitiously. It smelt like midnight.
‘It contains Scapania undulata, river startip,’ he said. ‘Very beneficial for relaxation.’
Little balls floated in my cup before fading into black.
‘So when can your readers expect Thomas Turridge to be ready?’ I asked, taking a sip and hiding a wince at its bitterness.
Augustus, who had raised his cup to his lips, set it back down on his saucer with a sigh. 17
‘I intend to spend several more years on it. As I said, my adolescent narrator refuses to obey me. In that respect,’ he gave a wry smile, ‘he truly is adolescent.’
‘Perhaps you should stop being a recluse for a week and visit some schools. Let their adolescence seep into you.’
‘I abhor modern teenagers. They have no idea of where to place an apostrophe and believe that a smiley face can symbolise the exquisite complexity of a heart. They will only pollute me.’
‘You could go online, do some research.’
‘I lack a modem. I have no wish to connect.’
‘I’d love to be a teenager again. Just for the simplicity of it all. I think your teen years are still a time of innocence. You don’t understand people. You see girls as sex objects, adults as enemies. Things are black and white. I feel fragmented now. As though I am so many different selves with different people …’ I trailed off, noticing that Fate’s attention had wandered. It was clear that when it came to my life, Augustus was happy to dissect me, collecting data for his novels. But when it came to the cerebral and the literary, he wanted to talk and me to listen; he wanted to be the guru, and for me to be his disciple. I felt a sense of disappointment grey over me. Perhaps this would be the slant of my piece: how we seek out our idols in the hope that they will espy something special in us, and elevate us to their rarefied level. They, meanwhile, need confirmation that they are worthy of worship. Meeting an idol involves an inevitable crash, as the concrete splats into grey shit around their pedestal.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if the character won’t obey you, maybe it’s best to let them take on a life of their own?’
‘But what a ridiculous concept,’ Augustus shook his head 18sternly, and set his cup down. Judging by the copious splash in his saucer, he had hardly touched his tea. ‘Do you know what Nabokov said about Forster? He said – and I quote him word for word – It was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathises with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. Characters cannot get out of hand. Nabokov saw his own characters as galley slaves. That is as it should be.’
I was definitely back with Millhauser now. Fate seemed determined to show me how sharp the whip of his IQ was. I stared down into my teacup, swirling the last dregs of black liquid.
‘Rachel,’ Augustus said, his voice softening.
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s an interesting name. Of course, if you look back through history, Rachels have never come off well. Jacob’s wife – the biblical Rachel, the original Rachel – was cursed unknowingly by her own husband when she stole her father’s idols, and then died in childbirth. The Rachel of Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers – her name is virtually an anagram of his narcissistic narrator, Charles, who can only bear to love her as an idealised caricature. He learns that she shits; his love dies. Who else? My Cousin Rachel, Du Maurier. A possible murderer, as I recall. No, Rachels do not fare well … But your Rachel? She may surprise you yet.’
I downed my cup and asked tersely if I could use the toilet.
‘Aristotle says that every character has a superobjective. I wonder what yours is, Jaime?’ Most of the candles had burnt down to a stub; the room was becoming more shadow than light. 19
‘It could be love, perhaps? And yet you chose to fall in love with a woman whom you have never met. A fear of intimacy, then? Perhaps Rachel was, in effect, your erotic muse. Perhaps you are no different from Charles.’
In a flat voice, I asked once again if I could excuse myself. Fate relented with a faint sneer on his face.
The stairs were rickety, rearing up ahead of me like a set of leering teeth. Upstairs, I discovered that the cottage was larger than I had realised. The hallway, covered in a bumpy plum carpet, veered off in three directions. I paused, then followed his instructions: Turn left, second door on your right. Inside the bathroom, I examined my unhappy expression in the mirror. Aristotle says that every character has a superobjective. From now on, whenever he asked me about Rachel, I would make up a story. The thought of him stealing my lies and weaving them into his prose, confident all the while that he was turning life into art, made me smile: now I had a secret weapon. But I felt sad that I had to fight at all. I had wanted him to like me; I had wanted to like him.
The thought of going back downstairs exhausted me. I flushed the toilet, slipped into the hall, and wandered further down the corridor. There were a number of doors leading off; the house had the feel of a warren. The handle of the furthest door was an ornate, beakish curl. The door opened into an old-fashioned bedroom, a four-poster in the centre, its pillars leaning drunkenly, so that the lace drapes were muddled and doubled. As I entered the room, I became aware of a blackness fogging the periphery of my vision. My body whispered that it would be quite happy to slip between the covers and take a nap. 20
It was only then that I noticed that there was someone lying on the bed. I immediately cried out in apology, but the room stayed silent. When I lifted the veils, I saw a young woman. Her hair was in a bun, stray wisps coiled around her face. Her ears had multiple piercings, but she was dressed in a black satin dress that was more suited to a Victorian wake. Something scuttled across her cheek and I jumped; a spider had found a home on her lashes and skin. I leant down over her purplish lips. Against my cheek, I felt the slightest flutter of breath, like the last trill of smoke from a dying fire.
‘What the hell …’ I whispered. Why would Fate leave this door unlocked? Was it all a macabre set piece? The woman a hired actress, displayed so that my experience might become legend, so that a thousand blogs might speculate about the Mysterious Woman in Black in Fate’s Spare Room? I stared down at the still of her lashes, hoping that her face might convulse with laughter. Then, as my eyes travelled down to her hands, my smile died. They were crossed over her chest, more bone than flesh, and there was a terrible twitch in her joints, as though she was locked in a nightmare, or tapping a helpless Morse code. A catheter had been inserted into one hand, and a thin ribbon of tubing looped down the bed, disappearing under a door into an adjoining room.
I became conscious that my name was being called. I left the room in a daze, closing the door gently behind me, and then hurried down to meet Fate.
‘Lost, were you? It’s a jungle up there, with all those doors and that ocean of carpeting.’ I no longer took his sneer personally, now I knew what he was trying to hide. He held my gaze for too long and then looked away abruptly. Perhaps it was guilt. It wouldn’t stop me ringing the police. 21
‘Feeling OK?’ His tone was unnaturally jovial.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, though the blackness was returning, lapping at the edges of my consciousness. For a moment his face was a blur of storm clouds.
‘You look as though you ought to drink more tea – it will make you feel better, Jaime.’ He clapped his hand on my shoulder, his expression suddenly tender. I thought then that I had misunderstood him, seen him through the fractured prism of my fears. My heart reminded me of Forster’s dictum: Only connect. I opened my mouth to speak of superobjectives – the word now an olive branch between us – when the world tilted, the blackness fluttering around me like paper birds. My body slid to the floor. I heard a distant mew; fur caressed my ear-tip. I felt the ooze of my bladder involuntarily spilling its contents. His face a moon above me. My saucer in shards on the floor. I called out for Rachel, told her I was losing the fight. And then he had me. 22