Trevor Melville had been Malcolm’s agent for more than forty years. He was now in his nineties and lived in an aged-care home in Richmond. His room was well situated, with a spectacular view of the park and the river, but he was largely bedridden. And yet he continued to look after Malcolm’s affairs.
Malcolm had never been the most lucrative of his clients, but he was Trevor’s favourite. He admired Malcolm and his work, which was something he couldn’t say of all his clients. He and Malcolm couldn’t be said to be friends, which Trevor regretted but understood. Malcolm didn’t have friends. He had Helen. He needed no one else.
Malcolm had begun to be a regular visitor of late, which Trevor appreciated, as visitors were becoming rare. His client list was made up largely of estates now. One by one his authors had died off. Just as his friends had done.
So a couple of hours with Malcolm was something to look forward to. But he did worry about the regularity of the visits. There were two possible reasons for them. Malcolm knew something about Trevor’s health that he himself did not know, or Malcolm and Helen were having problems. Neither possibility was particularly attractive.
In a life spent among artists, or ‘creatives’ as Trevor had heard they were called now, the longevity of Helen and Malcolm’s alliance had been unusual. It raised many questions among his other clients and friends, none of whom had succeeded in coupling for more than a decade at a stretch. His own life was a record of depressingly regular cycles of lust, love, boredom, irritation and loss. He had enjoyed one great love. A relationship that fitted none of his normal patterns and lasted more than twenty years till the object of his affections had died. But this love had been more pain than pleasure. And was never made public.
Malcolm and Helen’s partnership was something Trevor envied. In the seventies, when both writers had been at their most productive, Trevor had been a regular visitor to the flat in Brixton. He was attracted to the atmosphere of their home. Beyond the obvious accoutrements of writers – the newspapers, books and ash – there was conviction. Doubt did not visit the flat often, except in relation to their son, Daniel. In everything else, both Helen and Malcolm knew what they were about. They had direction and confidence. There was nothing they would not discuss. Their lively debates were instructive to each other and to those, like Trevor, who witnessed them, and sometimes partook in them. He never saw, nor did he imagine there to be, when he was absent, ugly, hateful disputes. The couple were companions in mind and body.
This was why he’d prefer that Malcolm was visiting him now because he thought him close to death. He’d prefer death to disillusionment.
‘I’ve been writing,’ said Malcolm, soon after arriving at Trevor’s bedside.
The sun was shining through Trevor’s large window, warming Malcolm’s back. Behind him, Trevor could see the stately progression of a former foreign secretary across the luxurious green of the lawn on his way to the river, where it was his custom to sit in the afternoon, when the weather was fine. The former foreign secretary was accompanied and assisted and almost eclipsed by a burly male nurse, Usman, who, being of heroic proportions, was very popular with residents and management. He would lift Trevor and others as though they were small children. His great strength took the anxiety out of any necessary physical activity, something to be appreciated when even the most ordinary of human tasks could appear as difficult and as perilous as walking a tightrope across a canyon.
Their progress across the lawn was glacial and Usman had time to notice Trevor watching. He waved and smiled pleasantly. Trevor returned the gestures and Malcolm turned round in his seat.
‘Is that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought he was dead.’
‘He’s younger than I am.’
‘Tories are never young.’
Trevor laughed. ‘But you’re right. It’s easier to assume all my near contemporaries are dead. Each obituary of a contemporary I read now is, to me, having thought them dead already, a record of a miraculous rebirth and a second death.’ He paused briefly and then added, as though it had just occurred to him, ‘No one bothers to talk about the second time Lazarus died.’
Trevor lifted a tumbler of water from his tray table and drank. His movements were unhurried and precise. He placed it down empty. Malcolm leant forward and refilled it.
‘Perhaps Lazarus didn’t die the second time,’ Trevor continued. ‘Perhaps he lives still. But it’s unlikely to have gone unrecorded. A second death is much more likely.’
‘Lazarus is overkill,’ said Malcolm, emphatically. ‘Conquering death once in a story is enough. John had to go and add another, in case we didn’t get the point.’
Malcolm stood up and shifted his chair slightly so he could more easily turn to look out at the view.
‘I’ve always thought it strange,’ said Trevor, ‘that the synoptic gospels fail to mention the miracle of Lazarus. I would have thought the occasion worth noting down by all of those present. It isn’t every day that a man raises another man from the dead. Matthew, Mark and Luke must have stepped out for a cigarette break and missed it.’
Now it was Malcolm’s turn to laugh.
‘What have you been writing?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know. Pages that have words on them. They come easily. But not like they did before.’
Trevor waited for Malcolm to continue.
‘This damned Booker thing. It’s unsettling. Why that book? Really, Trevor, of all my books to choose! What if it were to win?’
‘It won’t win. Trust me. Don’t worry.’
‘But imagine if it did. It would make a lot of sense in one way. It would confirm the thesis of the book. But such recognition would also underline my failure to do what I set out to do.’
‘I hate that book.’
‘And you’re right to. So why is it getting this attention?’
‘They’re children playing with Daddy’s loaded gun.’
‘Do they know it’s a gun?’ asked Malcolm, eyebrows raised.
‘No. But they know it’s not meant to be touched. It’s forbidden, thus attractive.’
‘Perhaps we’re out of touch,’ mused Malcolm, scratching his ear. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. What’s shocking to us might not be shocking to the young. Do you mind if I open the window slightly?’
Trevor nodded. He knew the place had an odour. Bleach, lemon and death. He could no longer smell it, but it had been overpowering when he first arrived.
‘The work of the Marquis de Sade still has the power to shock,’ said Malcolm from the window, ‘but most books that were shocking in their day are now merely interesting historical curiosities.’ He paused. ‘I can’t think of an example now.’
‘Darkness is nothing to the blind. Your book is powerful. The Booker judges recognise this aspect, but not the nature of the power. That’s all. It’s everything you want it to be. Ugly, hateful and dull.’
Malcolm laughed again.
‘And I read that Helen has offended every woman on earth with her speech,’ said Trevor, consciously steering the conversation away from A Hundred Ways, a book he wished he had never read. His only defence against it was disdain. But it wasn’t very effective. He thought of the book now as some sort of disease, like syphilis – a disease you catch while doing something pleasurable.
‘I don’t want to talk about Helen,’ said Malcolm.
‘That’s unlike you.’
‘Really? I wouldn’t know.’
‘Tell me about the new book, then.’
‘I can’t. It’s darker still. Darker than anything I’ve written. Darker than I thought possible. I can’t shake it, either. It sits upon me like a blanket wherever I am, blocking all light. There’s no hope. No redemption. Nothing.’
‘Can’t wait to read it,’ said Trevor in a monotone.
Malcolm smiled grimly. ‘Try writing it.’