Harvey sits in his room, terrified. Like all people with anxiety disorders, he has read about the flight or fight response; about the amygdala and the hippocampus; about how the primeval evolutionary function implanted in us, designed to adrenalize the body when faced with a lion or a woolly mammoth, still squats in the brain like a blind, nervous toad, unable to see any difference between a woolly mammoth and a traffic jam, or a recalcitrant boss, or a computer malfunction: or, in this particular case, the possibility of illicit sex with a nineteen-year-old.
It’s so useless, he thinks, the fucking flight or fight thing. If he listened to his body, now, it would mean either getting up and running away from the hotel screaming ‘Help me! Help me! I might be able to have sex with a beautiful young woman! Aaaarggh!’ or, alternatively, going up to the top floor, where Lark is waiting for him, and beating the shit out of her. Neither is a truly useful strategy for coping with the situation.
It was decided, after the initial meeting with Lark and her people, that the way forward with the autobiography was that there should be a series of conversations between the singer and her ghostwriter, which Harvey would record and make notes from, and then flesh out into Story of a Songbird. The first one was earlier this evening. It took place in a sushi restaurant on Madison and 97th. Harvey took his Dictaphone and his gold leather notebook. He also wore the black jacket from his one suit. He angsted about this for a while – should he really wear the jacket from his funereal robes? And why is he wearing it anyway? It’s not a date, after all: not a fucking date – but after a while he just put it on. Stella called just before he went out the door; he didn’t pick up.
At the restaurant, Lark, who had not dressed up – she was wearing jeans and a loose tartan shirt – told her story. She had been born in Belfast, but had been brought to London as a child. She had been a late birth for Michaela – an attempt, Harvey inferred, to save a fading marriage to Lark’s father, who had already left the family house by the time she was born. Her father, who she’d seen irregularly after he left, died when she was twelve. As well as an actor, he had been a good amateur classical pianist and maybe this is where she got her interest in music. It was fortunate that Harvey had brought his Dictaphone to pick up these and other titbits from her life as concentration was diffi-cult. The sushi, in particular, was an issue. Every time she brought a new piece up to her face, he became distracted by the idea that the raw pink fish flesh could seem, to a mind that might be led that way, like a little tongue fluttering across her mouth. Plus, knowledge of the behaviour of Japanese salarymen kept on urging Harvey’s Tourette’s head to shout, ‘Hey! What don’t you get on the table naked and let me chopstick this stuff off you!?’
He managed to control this urge. He did not control, however, his gaze. At first he would hardly look at her at all. He was too convinced his eyes would be see-through: too convinced, as well, that her beauty would rush in through them, like rapids flooding his heart. He had to protect it, this fragile place where his love – his exhausted, infiltrated, love – for Stella lived. But over the course of the meal he forgot about this need; and a cocktail of the natural body language of interview, three bottles of sake and Lark’s blankness – it was as if he could stare at her all day and she might not pick up any agenda from it – brought his vision forward. As she talked, itemizing her life like a shopping list, he luxuriated in his licence to look. It was a liberation, for Harvey, not to look scurrilously, not to snatch secret glances. And as he looked, he let himself go. He let her beauty do its work. He let her beauty off the leash and allowed it to engender in him a deep, misplaced sense of peace.
On the way back to the hotel, Harvey felt that this was OK: that he had been granted an amnesty of sorts. Some climate confusion meant that the late August Manhattan air was colder than it should be, and he felt it as a slap, bringing him out of a trance. It allowed him to rebuild his defences, which he took to be unbreached. He could walk side by side with Lark, and look at her profile, and talk to her, and even play with the idea that this tableau, a man and a woman walking on a summer’s night with Central Park on their right and Fifth Avenue on their left, might cause some onlookers to think – the ones who were not thinking ‘nice to see a dad out with his daughter’ – that they were lovers. He allowed himself to think, from behind a wall of what he considered to be ten-inch-thick self-awareness, ‘Ah, in another life …’ This is what the monogamous are often agonizing about: not the sex they did not have, but the lives. Harvey absorbed this thought, though, with equanimity. As they approached the Sangster, a sentimental smile sat on his face like a meniscus of untroubled mercury.
And then she said: ‘What floor did you say you were on?’
‘The eighth. It’s nice, but there’s no view. And – well, I never seem to get a view when I’m in this city …’
‘Come up to mine.’
She said it straight, with no hint of anything. They were standing just outside the lobby. Harvey felt his smile fade, and his anxiety levels shoot up. They don’t build, his anxiety levels, they are faster than a supercar: they go from 0 to 100 in under half a second.
‘Sorry?’
‘Come up to my room. It’s on the twenty-second floor. 2214. It’s got an amazing view …’
‘Yeah. You said that actually, when we first talked …’
‘I know. I remember.’
Harvey nodded. He looked away.
‘Well, OK, I will – at some point.’
‘Come now. Mum’s out with Josh. She won’t be back for at least another hour; probably two. They’re having an affair.’
Which is why he sits now, in his room, his skin tingling with sweat and his stomach churning like it’s trying to make bile butter. He had made some ambiguous excuse about needing to go back to his room first – implying that, second, he would indeed be coming up to her room. She had said fine. They had shared a silent lift together, and he had got out at the eighth floor. He had looked back at her and she had looked straight at him, but he could not read it. He had no sense of what was going on inside Lark. He could see her but could not feel anything coming off her. It was as if she was looking out at the world from behind reinforced glass.
He does not, of course, think that Lark is interested in him physically, but he knows there are thousands of reasons why women sleep with men that have nothing to do with the male version of attraction. Women, sexually, have much more subtext. Perhaps she is doing it to get back at her mother for having this affair; perhaps she is impressed by the Eli Gold connection, although she has not mentioned it since their first meeting; perhaps she liked how he appeared to be listening raptly to her in the restaurant; perhaps she is just bored, and wishes to flex her beauty. It might be none of these reasons. She may indeed not even want to sleep with him at all.
Not that it would make things any easier for Harvey if Lark had said, in the same neutral way that she said everything else, ‘I want you to come up to my room because I want you to fuck me.’ Well: it would be easier in one way; insofar as Harvey would then not be facing the twin possibilities of rejection and humiliation – and, no doubt, removal from his first proper job for ages – along with the more direct ones of guilt, shame and destruction of his family life.
Harvey wonders how the other men – the ones for whom ending relationships is weightless; the ones who live close to the man-bone – would be in this situation. Is adultery also weightless for them? These sexual chances that tot up so apprehensively in the libido’s memory – how unmanly is it not to seize them with both hands? To try and calm himself down, he starts a game of chess on his iPhone, but his thought process is so frazzled that even by his standards the game is short. Within seconds Ting! Tiny wins. He tries a mantra. I would really like to have sex with Lark, but if I don’t have sex with Lark, it’s not the end of the world. It does not engender even a flash of peace. He tries it the other way. I would really like to stay faithful to Stella, but if I don’t stay faithful to Stella, it’s not the end of the world. He is considering that this second way does not quite work – the mantras are impulse controllers: they are meant to deflect desire, not duty – when he realizes how deeply, even though he has never said it before, he has internalized this idea, that he has always taken it for granted that infidelity to Stella would indeed be the end of the world. For the first time, his mind rises up against it. I am ill, he thinks, ill with attachment, ill with what time does, ill with love. Lark will give me a respite, won’t she? A holiday from it all; a moment’s health.
It comes to him that he knows who will provide the answer, at least as regards what a real man would do. It is too late to call, but he opens the Sony Vaio, and calls up Bunce’s Facebook page. He types into the Instant Message box:
Bunce. Are you up?
A second later it comes back:
I was just thinking about you. Thinking about sending you something.
I probably shouldn’t but fuck it.
Whatever, yes. Do. Bunce: listen.
What?
He takes a deep breath and puts his fingers to the keyboard:
A woman – a young, very attractive woman – has just invited me up to her room. What should I do? And I know what you would normally say, but think about it for a second. You’re married. I think that through all your big male bullshit you love your wife. I think even you would think twice. So. I love my wife. I really love my wife. But I’m fucked up. I’m fucked up about it all. What should I do?
He presses return. The reply does not come instantly. Bunce is doing what he asked: thinking about it. Harvey reads what he’s written. It is a mess. It does not express how he feels at this moment, except in regards to being a mess. Then, these words appear in his inbox:
Yeah. It’s a tough one. But here’s the thing, Harv. Who do you want to be on your deathbed? John fucking Betjeman? Or Eli fucking Gold?
* * *
Last Saturday, Mommy arranged for Elaine to take me to the zoo. This was weird, because me and Elaine haven’t done anything like that for ages, not since Daddy got ill. Because we spend all the time at the hospital. But also maybe because Daddy is gonna die soon, but nobody knows when it is and Mommy really wants me to be there when it happens, so, suddenly, it’s like no daytrips, no play dates, and defi nitely no sleepovers at Jada’s. Also the zoo; the zoo! Not like a museum, or a monument, or a music recital, or anything. I love those things, of course, but still, I really really really love animals.
And here’s the really amazing thing: she called Jada’s mom, and arranged for her to come, too! And Mommy never does anything like that. She never calls any of the other moms at the school herself, she always gets Elaine to do it. And she doesn’t really like Jada. I know that’s the truth. She would never say so, but every time I tell her about something Jada said or a TV show or a movie she’s told me about, Mommy does that face that looks a bit like someone’s pinched her.
And it is true that Jada never talks about books. I sometimes try and tell her about them but she always goes bor-ing! And does a big fake yawn. So I can see why Mommy doesn’t like her. But the other thing is that Jada’s mom doesn’t like her going out with me when Elaine’s so old! That’s what she said, that she thought it was a bit weird that my nanny was so old and she had her own ideas about why my mom had hired someone over sixty. I don’t know what that was about, and neither did Jada. But the point is, she thinks that Elaine might, I dunno, forget where we are, or fall over and break a bone in her skeleton or something while she’s looking after us. It’s crazy, she’s not that old.
So that’s why it’s so AMAZING that Mommy sorted out a play date with her. And we had such a great time. We saw the lions and the zebras and the elephants; we saw the penguins being fed fish from buckets; and there was a monkey who was touching his winky-wonk over and over again! It was so funny! Although it looked a bit sore. And Elaine let us have an popsicle each – I had a Tangle Twister – and a bag of Toxic Waste to share. The sun was shining and Jada wasn’t too yeah, yeah about it – she wasn’t yeah, yeah about it at all – and even Elaine seemed to smile more than usual. I wish Jada’s mom had seen her. She looked young: like, fifty.
After the zoo, we took Jada home. And then we went to the hospital. I thought we were just going in to spend a couple of hours in Daddy’s room as usual before going home for dinner but then when we got there Mommy was waiting outside his door, standing next to John the security man. I got a weird feeling in my tummy when I saw her there, ’cos I thought: oh no, Daddy’s died, and I wasn’t there! But then she smiled, and opened her arms, and I ran into them, and she gave me the biggest hug.
I started to say ‘What’s going on …?’ but she shushed me and held my hand and we started to walk along the corridor. We went past the little room that Dr Ghundkhali had taken us into that day, and then into another room. Mommy gave me a little smile, and then opened the door. It was quite a big room, although not as big as Daddy’s. There was a window that looked out on all the skyscrapers. And there were two beds in there. One was bigger than the other. By the side of that one, there was a table, with a whole load of books on it, all by Daddy. And then there was a small bed. On that one, someone had put loads of my toys. I think it was meant to be all my favourite snuggle toys, but it wasn’t. It did have my Baby Born and Dilip my kangaroo and Becky Boo who’s a monkey that talks and I love all of them but then after them it just had loads of teddies and stuff that I don’t even have names for any more, not since I was like six or something. Next to the bed was a little pink table, and on that was a frame with lots of little shiny jewels on it, and in that frame was a photo of Aristotle. Next to that was my Nintendo DS Lite, and Mommy’s copy of Mirror, Mirror with all the crossed-out bits in it.
I turned to look at Mommy. She was smiling but it looked like she’d been smiling the whole time I’d been looking at the beds and the toys and stuff and now her smile was maybe hurting or something.
‘Are we living here now?’ I said.
‘Well, darling. Yes. I suppose you could say that. Just for a bit.’
‘How long?’
She stopped smiling when I said that.
‘Darling … I don’t know how long …’
I got it then. Whenever Mommy says she doesn’t know how long we’re going to have to do something, she means: until Daddy dies.
‘Oh,’ I said. I sat down on the bed.
‘Don’t you like it?’ she said. ‘We brought all your favourite toys.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘We didn’t? Elaine?’ She was standing outside the room, but she came in when Mommy called her. ‘I thought I asked you to make sure we brought all Colette’s favourite toys?’
‘Well, I …’ said Elaine: she looked a bit upset, ‘… you know, Colette changes her mind quite a lot about which ones are her favourites.’
‘I don’t!’ I said. ‘And besides – I don’t want to live here anyway!’
‘You won’t be living here, darling. You’ll still be going back home some of the time. It just means that you can sleep here … now …’
‘But I don’t want to sleep here!’
She came over and sat down on my bed. She moved Becky Boo out of the way. She did a little nod, to Elaine, and Elaine went out of the room. She took my hand and put it in her hand. Her hand felt colder than I thought it would be because it’s always quite hot in the hospital.
‘Darling … you know we had that little chat with Dr Ghundkhali the other day?’
I nodded. I could feel that I wanted to cry. I was trying not to.
‘Well, I’ve been speaking to him again … and: well, you remember he said that Daddy now … had something wrong with his lungs?’
‘A lung infection. That’s what he said. I remember.’
‘Yes. Well, it hasn’t got better.’
This made my tummy feel tight.
‘But we spoke to him! We told him off! We said he mustn’t let Daddy die!’
She squeezed my hand harder. ‘I know darling. And he isn’t doing … they have treated him. But it hasn’t worked.’
‘What do you mean it hasn’t worked!’
‘It hasn’t worked! The lung infection hasn’t gone away.’ She shook her head and looked very sad. ‘I don’t know what else to tell you.’
I sat down on the bed next to her.
‘Don’t cry, Mommy,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘I …’
And then she did cry, really a lot. It felt really weird to see her cry.
She did cry before, when Daddy went into the hospital the first time, but this time it was much more. When she started she was just sniffling, but after a bit her mouth opened wide and even though no noise was coming out of it it was like she was screaming. Her mouth went all down at the sides of her face and she looked sort of younger, and much, much older at the same time. She put her hands up and covered her eyes, but she was crying so much that her tears came through the lines that your fingers make when you hold them together.
I held her hand and said, ‘It’s all right, Mommy. It’s all right.’ I said this even though it made me feel really strange inside that she was crying. Especially the way she was crying. I’ve seen grown-ups cry in the movies and they don’t cry like that: they have a little tear and maybe they smile when they’re doing it and they still look like grownups. Mommy was crying so much it was like she wasn’t a grown-up any more.
I thought she might hug me or something when I said ‘it’s all right’ but she just carried on crying. I didn’t want to look at her after a while, so I looked away. Then Mommy said something, but I couldn’t hear it at first.
‘Pardon, Mommy?’ I said, turning back. She did a big sniff. Her shoulders stopped shaking so much.
‘I said …’ She did a big gulp, ‘… does that mean you will stay here at nights now? Please? Until …?’
‘Daddy dies?’
Her face went again then, all crumpled like a piece of paper you scrunch up.
‘Yes! Yes! Christ, Colette, why do you always have to be so literal! Why do you always have to f-wording spell everything out!’ Then she put her hand up to her mouth. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I shouldn’t have shouted. Or said that word.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it before.’
‘Seen it? What do you mean?’
‘In here,’ I said, picking up Mirror, Mirror. ‘It’s one of the words you crossed out.’
She took the book away from me. ‘But when have you been reading it? When I’m not there?’
‘Only once or twice. That time when you went to heat up Cuddles in the microwave, and once me and Jada found it in your bedroom.’ She looked a bit shocked about it, so I said: ‘I was only trying to show her what an important and clever book it is. Because she’s always saying books are boring.’
‘Right …’ She had stopped crying now. She put the book back down by the side of the bed. Then she picked it up again, and put it in her lap. ‘Well, it’s a bad word.’
‘Why does Daddy use it in his book then?’
She made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘OK, can we talk about this some other time? Just don’t use it for now. And don’t look it up on the internet.’
I nodded. Even though I already had.
‘So: Colette. Please. Would you please agree to staying here, and sleeping in this bed, until – well, yes, perhaps, you’re right: perhaps we just need to say it out loud – until Daddy dies.’
I looked at her. Her eyes were so red and wet. I felt really sorry for her.
‘No,’ I said.
* * *
RW: So your suicide note …
EG: Yes?
RW: Can I read it to you?
EG: Can I stop you?
[pause]
RW: Reading to Mr Gold case document R45/103. ‘I have – of late, but whereof I know not, lost all my mirth.’ Period. And it’s signed, EG.
[pause]
RW: I said earlier on that Larry Barnett might think your note valuable as it’s an original piece of writing from a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Of course, it’s not …
EG: I guess not.
RW: It seems odd to me that you didn’t want to write more.
EG: I have writer’s block. I’ve had it for a few years.
[pause]
RW: Are you serious?
EG: Deadly. I have writer’s block. That means I cannot write like I used to. Why would I want the last thing written by me to be substandard?
RW: So you chose instead to quote something that obviously is not substandard …?
[pause: sound of eg sighing]
EG: Not really, Commissioner. It’s all more complicated than that. And at the same time, not. I did have a longer and more explanatory note planned. But when it came to it, that’s what I felt like saying.
[pause]
RW: It does put the quote into an interesting new context, of course. I suppose it’s art, in that sense. Conceptual. Like an installation. You’ve done a bit of that recently, haven’t you?
EG: Yes.
RW: I saw the Butter Mountain thing. I liked it.
EG: Thanks.
RW: A way through writer’s block? A way of still creating, without words?
EG: I really don’t have time for this, Commissioner.
RW: Did you think of you and your wife’s suicide as a kind of art?
EG: No, of course not.
RW: But you thought it would be beautiful. You wanted symmetry. Which is of course the basic component of beauty … conventional beauty …
[pause]
RW: Would you call yourself a perfectionist, Mr Gold?
EG: Not really.
RW: Well, I would. A writer – a great writer – who won’t even put his own words on a suicide note in case it falls short of his standards? I’d call that a perfectionist.
EG: My suicide note is –
RW: A lot of great writers – great artists – great men – are perfectionists, aren’t they? They have to have perfection around them. They have to have symmetry. Like … you know that bit in Bellow’s last book where the Uncle guy says that even though his wife was fantastic and beautiful he had to leave her because he could never get over the fact that her breasts were slightly too far apart?
EG: Saul Bellow has written two books since More Die of Heartbreak.
RW: He has? Do excuse me.
EG: And – Jesus, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, here now – it’s not Saul speaking. It’s his character. Uncle Benn. That’s what you people always get wrong, don’t you? You always think that whatever’s in the book is exactly what the author thinks.
RW: Yes, of course. Uncle Benn. I remember now. Who is – correct me if I’m wrong – a great man, though, no? In his field.
[pause]
RW: I’m not talking just about the fact that if you’re a great man, you’ve gotta leave women. I mean, we all know that. That’s part of the deal. I mean, you, you’re a cast-iron Great Man. You own the patent. So you should know. But it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, just now, I read in the paper – can you believe this – Stephen Hawking – you know, the guy in the chair? The superbrain physics guy with the computerized voice-box thing? He’s just left his wife. I mean, the guy can’t even walk: but he’s managed to get up somehow and leave his fucking wife. It’s in your Great Man DNA.
[pause: more sighing]
EG: So what are you talking about, Commissioner? I’d love to know.
RW: I’m talking about how that connects to their work. Sometimes great artists – when they’re with the wrong women – they get stymied, don’t they? Their mojo goes. They need someone new to get the creative juices going. Like … I don’t know … I’m sure you could come up with an example better than me. Picasso! He was all washed up, wasn’t he, by the end of his first marriage – hadn’t done anything good for years – then he starts fucking Marie-Thérèse Walter and bang – he’s painting masterpieces like there’s no tomorrow.
[pause]
EG: First, psychoanalysis. Then, high literature. Now, high art! My, my. How long did you spend mugging up for this interview, Commissioner?
RW: How long have you have had writer’s block, Eli?
EG: Three years.
RW: And you and Pauline were married how long?
EG: Seven.
RW: And how long would you say it was before the marriage became … imperfect?
EG: Did I say it had?
RW: Well. They all do.
* * *
It is, indeed, a wonderful view of Manhattan from Suite 2214. It is an even better view than his father, if he could, would see from his hospital room. The view from Mount Sinai is beautiful, but it is across Central Park, which means it only really works during the day, and, looking through Lark’s window, he realizes that the truly archetypal vista of Manhattan is at night. For all the force of the other images – the steam rising from the manholes one; the crisp, bright, walking-through-a-flea-market-in-Greenwich-Village one; even the City of Man from the Brooklyn Bridge one – it is this one – the skyscrapers attempting to outglitter the stars – that most chimes with the Platonic Idea of New York City.
It may be the case, though, that it just happens to chime most with Harvey at this moment, a moment he is desperately trying to lose himself within. If, as Dr Xu and many others believe, the secret of happiness is to live in the moment, then Harvey is certainly doing his best. He is trying to use the view, and the romantic whoosh it might generate, to shut out the future: to shut out any sense of consequence.
He turns to see Lark looking at the view, too, her profile unnecessarily well lit by the refracted city lights. Sometimes, in Harvey’s tortured sexual aesthetic, young women are too young – some young women just look like young girls, and absurdly subject though he is to the tyranny of soft skin and unlined eyes, he is not attracted to youth per se. His obsession with ageing is mechanical – it is to do with skin, with the sliding of the soft machine, not some Nabokovian need for innocence, or childlikeness. But Lark, although clearly not old, has something unyoung about her; there is something in her impassivity which translates as maturity, even wisdom. She turns to him with her blue-blank eyes and he feels this to be true.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Some people think that only natural things can be beautiful. But man-made things can be, too.’
‘Yes,’ says Harvey. He glances away from her, because he cannot take her gaze and what it might imply. The clock on the bedside table, glowing red, says 11.15. He wonders what time Michaela might be coming back.
‘Harvey …’
He hears, through the deadpan intonation, some hint of a cue. Like a whip crack, he switches his attention back to Lark.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a reason I wanted you to come up.’
He feels his anxiety rise past an unprecedented level at this confirmation. Why should desire, he thinks, induce such fear? Why should getting what I want scare me so much? She looks down, reaching up a hand to the buttons of her tartan shirt. Behind her, at the corner of the far wall, Harvey sees the black edge of a grand piano, a wall-mounted Bang & Olufsen, a set of lacquered boxes, a fireplace with faux-quartz logs, and an oak cabinet containing row upon row of old books: Of Human Bondage, The Scarlet Letter, Jude The Obscure, What Maisie Knew. He even sees, on the sage velvet seating area, the first edition of Solomon’s Testament, next to the mock-up cover of Lark: Story of a Songbird. Lark shifts towards him, an angel in this hotel heaven.
He moves his face closer to hers. When she looks up his lips are open and ready and his need to kiss her is so strong that only a very tiny part of him is worried about his breath. A blur of silver juts in front of his eyes. He backs away.
‘What’s that?’ he says.
‘It’s a dongle,’ she says. ‘For a computer.’
‘Right …’
‘It’s got some of my songs on it. Five of them.’
‘OK …’
She proffers the dongle again, like she might offer a suspicious cat a piece of fish. Harvey stares at her. He realizes that that is why she has just reached up a hand to her shirt: to take the dongle from her breast pocket.
‘It’s so stupid,’ she continues. ‘You were right. Of course you can’t write my autobiography without hearing my songs. You can’t know who I am without my songs. My songs are me.’
It is the most animated Harvey has seen her. She continues to hold out the dongle. In its tremulous gravitas, her attitude is reminiscent of a mother handing over her child for safekeeping. He looks out of the window. New York seems suddenly drained of glamour, just a bundle of corporate towers that leave their lights on all night.
He looks at Lark. Her face is blithe, blank and clear as a white wall; but then her eyes, betraying some fear, move away from his face to check the door behind. Harvey realizes that she is worried her mother may come in and catch her doing this: breaking the embargo. He breathes a deep sigh, of sadness but also of relief. God has passed from him his cup of delicious poison. He nods, and from her hands he takes the dongle, registering that this flash of her fingers across his will be the only time he will touch her flesh tonight, or any other night.
Later, much later, Harvey Gold is sitting in his own room, naked, staring at his laptop computer. He has masturbated many times for a man of his age. Next to him are five empty miniatures of various spirits. It is, as we know, part of Harvey’s unmanliness that he does not like alcohol, but he can swallow it like medicine when he needs it to act on him like medicine. He has taken it now in order to make him sleep, but that has not worked as yet – first he has to sit through the drink making him drunk.
When he had initially got back to the room, the relief was still with him. The lack of anything happening between him and Lark allowed him to call Stella back, and to tell her he loved her without compunction. In truth, he could have come back from Room 2214 having impregnated Lark and it would nevertheless be absolutely the case that he loved Stella, but I love you was still easier to say having not done so. Four hours later, however, he awoke with a heart-stopping start, and, sensing anxiety spread over him like some awful spiritual dandruff, headed for the minibar. Now all he feels is furious and old and mad and drunk and sick and excluded forever from paradise.
On the side of the computer, in a USB port, is the silver dongle. On the screen is a new Word file, titled Lark: Story of a Songbird. He has written the opening paragraph of the first draft of her autobiography:
My name is Lark. Actually, Samantha Spigot. I’m a 19-year-old singer. At the time of writing, I’ve done nothing special or interesting in my life so far. By the time this book comes out, though, I’ll be a star. My face will be all over magazines and TV and what cunts who aren’t funny call the interweb. This is nothing to do with my songs. It’s to do with my face, which is beautiful. People will want to see my face and so they ascribe talent to it. Other people will back the desire to see that face with money, which is why you will have seen it everywhere. It will in fact be the reason you will have bought this book. But shame on you. Shame on me. Shame on all of us.
He wrote this at the height of his drunkenness, a drunkenness which has now fallen – as it does quickly with Harvey: the window in which he is actually drunk, as in whirling and uninhibited, is very small – into a scratchy, dizzy nausea. Surprisingly, he has rewritten it a couple of times, making a few judicious edits. He has attached it to an email, cc’d to Alan, Michaela and Josh, entitled Lark: Autobiography Intro … and then, in the body of the text, written ‘hi guys. this is kind of the way I’m thinking of going with this. all comments appreciated. H’ His thumb dallies over the track pad, ready to click send.
He can’t see any reason not to click, even though he is sober enough now to remember that he does, actually, need this job – he needs the money, and, more than that, he needs the work: he needs something to employ and distract his mind away from bad rumination. But he does not want to write Lark’s autobiography. It is not just bitterness: even in the face of all this belittlement, some tiny shred of self-esteem clings to his ego like a determined embryo to the walls of a threatened womb. He is Eli Gold’s son, and should not be writing the life story of someone who has not yet had a life.
His thumb hovers again. The child’s cry, it’s not fair, sounds again like a bell deep in his being. But because Harvey, despite everything, is a good man – or at least, trying to be good – or at least, someone who has picked up enough from people around him to know what goodness is and feel that he should aspire to it – because of this, he is alive to other unfairnesses, even ones which might not be targeted at him: even ones which might be emanating from him. So, before clicking on send, he thinks, ‘OK. Just one. I’ll listen to one …’ and he opens the MP3 files on the dongle, which is entitled, simply, Songs.
He highlights the first file, called Astray.mp3, and double-clicks. Some acoustic guitars, and then some words: the usual string of pop words, love words – heart, hand, hope, sun, rain, you, me. They don’t really matter, the words. Even through the travel speakers, it is clear: the song is beautiful. Lark’s voice is beautiful. The flat nothing of her sat-nav tone is transformed, through the alchemy of music, into a glorious breath instrument. This music will be beautiful, he realizes, long after Lark is not. And then another revelation comes to him: Lark has Asperger’s. Or something like it – she is, in the modern idiom, on the spectrum. That explains the voice, the blankness, the complete failure to understand how the invitation to her room may have been misinterpreted, and why something about her manner has always seemed familiar to him. She is like his son. She is like Jamie.
Except in one respect, made clear by this song. She has a talent. She has an extraordinary talent, which Harvey cannot but feel is provoked in some way by whatever her place is on the spectrum. His finger goes back to the track pad on his computer. He highlights the paragraph entitled Lark: Story of a Songbird, and clicks delete. It goes, revealing only the white of the unwritten-on page, and he bursts, suddenly, into tears: not small dignified sobs, nor the pleasurable trickle-down-the-cheek inspired by sad films or sad songs – so much liquid pours from his eyes and nose he thinks he might dehydrate. It runs in rivulets along the corrugated lines his face makes as it contorts in a series of huge silent howls. He does not know what is making him cry, whether it is the music, or the blank white page, or his exile from the young female body, or his dying father, or his poor, unexceptional boy. The song shifts from its sweet verse to its even lovelier chorus, a deeply touching, tender melody, and even though he is still crying, he feels every follicle on his flesh goose-pimpling. He looks down to see that even the greying hair around his pubis is standing on end.