Usman had no difficulty carrying a very dapper-looking Trevor from the car to the front room. Malcolm watched Usman as he had always watched powerful men, with envy. On these occasions, he always recalled the brief moments when he had felt powerful. They were rare, for he’d never tested himself in sporting endeavours. He’d never fought another person. Overall his life had been largely devoid of any physical accomplishment.
Once, when Daniel was still a boy, a friend had offered them his cottage in Cornwall for the weekend. It had been very cold and the stove burnt through a lot of wood. Malcolm found himself being sent out by Helen to chop wood, to keep them all warm. He’d never chopped wood before and stumbled in his initial attempts, but soon found a rhythm and enjoyed the satisfaction that came with successful physical work. The axe coming down on the blocks, with the weight of his body behind it, splitting the log and sending the two pieces flying, was like nothing in his experience. He always returned inside with an armful of wood, flushed with pride.
Watching Usman carrying in the collapsed wheelchair, holding it in front of him with one outstretched arm, evidently so it wouldn’t scratch the doorframe or the walls, impressed him deeply and made him yearn for such strength. For Usman’s strength was like Amy’s beauty: it gave him a confidence he probably didn’t know he had, and had an effect on others that it wasn’t necessary for him to appreciate. He lifted Trevor from the sofa into the chair. Then straightened his bow tie and made him comfortable.
‘I will come back for Mr Melville at ten,’ said Usman as he turned to leave.
Malcolm followed him out to the front door. It had reached thirty degrees Celsius that day and was still very warm.
‘Thank you, Usman.’
‘Even though I told him it was hot, he insisted on wearing the tuxedo. It is too large for him but he wouldn’t wear anything else.’
‘It’s fine. We’re celebrating tonight. He always was one for spectacle.’
‘Congratulations, Mr Taylor. Mr Melville told me of your good fortune.’
‘Thank you, Usman, see you at ten.’
Malcolm closed the door. He stood for a moment and listened to the house. Silence. He walked past the front room into the kitchen. There was no sign of dinner being made but there were three bottles of red on the counter. They hadn’t been there before. He checked his watch. It was six.
‘Malcolm?’ shouted Trevor from the front room. ‘Are you there?’
‘Sorry, Trevor, I’m coming.’
Malcolm walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up them.
‘Daniel!’ he shouted. ‘Helen!’
He waited for a response. When none came he walked back to the front room.
‘Would you like a drink, Trevor?’
‘Isn’t anyone here? Have I got the wrong night?’
‘We’d both have the wrong night in that case. No, I spoke to Daniel as he was going out to Waitrose. He was planning to make dinner with Helen. He’s come back; there’s wine on the counter. But I don’t know where they are now.’
‘If the worst comes to the worst we can order Indian and get right royally drunk.’
‘That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?’ said Malcolm, with a short laugh. ‘I’ll get us drinks at least.’
When he reached the kitchen the door to the flat was opening.
‘Amy, at least you’re here.’
‘Why, where’s Helen?’
‘I don’t know. But Trevor has arrived in a tuxedo and we have no dinner for him.’
‘I’m no help with that. I can’t cook. Hopeless. But I can organise takeaway if that’s a help.’
‘Thanks, I’ll give them another fifteen minutes. Trevor normally eats at six; he’ll be dead by seven.’
‘Malcolm, a friend of mine – actually, an ex-boyfriend – popped by to see me this afternoon. He’s still downstairs, would you mind if he joined us tonight?’
‘As there’s no dinner made, there’s no chance of him upsetting any plans, so why not?’
‘Thanks, I’ll let him know.’
She disappeared downstairs.
*
Daniel and Helen were making their way down the stairs when Daniel remembered something. He stopped and looked up at Helen, who was a few feet behind him.
‘I forgot. I did a bit of research for you. Apparently the British Library bought Graham Swift’s papers for a hundred grand a few years ago. It’s not much, but maybe they’d do the same for Malcolm’s papers and yours, too, of course. It could help save the house.’
‘Graham is in a different league, Daniel. Booker winners always are. I doubt whether the British Library would be interested in our work. I was thinking a private collector or library. And I wasn’t thinking of so much money.’
‘I’ll contact the British Library for you. It doesn’t hurt to enquire.’
‘Thank you.’
Laughter could be heard coming from below.
‘It sounds like the party has started without us.’
‘What is the time?’
‘Half six.’
‘I don’t think I’m up to this.’
‘Neither am I.’
*
Amy was uncomfortable. Malcolm and Trevor had welcomed Max with warmth and generosity but she knew his real purpose. She had presented Max as a friend. He wasn’t a friend. Not anymore. By letting him in, she was betraying Malcolm and Helen. And herself. Just as she had once betrayed Max.
She stood by the bookcase and sipped her champagne. It was done now.
And she knew Max was adept at making friends. He opened the conversation with, ‘I thought the Booker was an award for fiction. There’s not an untrue word in A Hundred Ways. How is it eligible?’ Obviously rehearsed, but forgivable because entertaining. Trevor took the bait and soon they were deep in discussion.
This ability of Max’s was self-taught, not instinctive. He had been a shy, introverted boy who had been ignored at school. Invisible even to bullies. His reading had isolated him from his peers. He formed obsessions with long-forgotten writers of the first half of the twentieth century and collected them in cheap second-hand paperbacks. His bedroom in his parents’ house was stacked with hundreds of them by the time he left school, all read, few digested. He entered university a walking anachronism. A confusion of moral archaisms, political phantoms and artistic dead ends.
He caught Amy’s eye in their first year of university by his absence. She would see him in lectures and hear him speak weirdly and often brilliantly in tutorials, but would never find him in the bars or cafes. He never attended the parties or the gatherings. When she did see him on campus, he was with mature students or lecturers.
To Amy he was aloof, interesting, out of reach. He was unlike the other boy-men. He wasn’t loud and boisterous, he wasn’t drunk or dishevelled. He spoke with confidence in tutorials but not aggressively, and not because he liked the sound of his own voice. And he dressed unusually. He was a little middle-aged man at nineteen. He modelled himself on writers of the forties and always wore a suit, even in summer.
Amy had thought him gay until one evening at the gathering of one of her friends, he appeared. He sat beside her and delighted her with wonderful nonsense. And it became clear that as she had been observing him, he had been observing her. He remembered things she had said in tutorials, remembered the books she admired and those she hated. He had even read part of the novel she had been writing and sharing with friends. Which embarrassed her at first, but then, when his views on it were critical and correct, caused her to burn with indignant rage. He cooled her temper with the help of his self-effacing humour when describing his own attempts at fiction. Then, quite surprisingly, he’d kissed her.
Soon after their first kiss, Max started writing for the student paper and was forced to interview his subjects. The work opened him up to the world. He read contemporary writers to review them and through them discovered how to speak to his peers. But he was never one of them. He took on a role, which still hadn’t entirely left him, of observer, of commentator. The relationship he had with his peers was like that between an embedded war correspondent and the troops.
And Max never mentioned the first thing most men commented on: Amy’s beauty. He saw it, but it wasn’t what interested him. He appreciated her beauty. He was attracted to her beauty, he said. But he was far more interested in the strength of her will, which marked her out in a crowd. She was determined to get into publishing and showed it by topping all her subjects. And she was a voracious reader. Reading biographies of famous editors, publishers and even histories of publishing houses. And then there was the fiction. Books that Max disdained, she’d fly through. The latest bestsellers. The zeitgeist books of the last fifty years. And they’d all end up filled with notes in the margins and Post-it notes protruding from the pages. She dissected them, examined them, discovered their secrets. And then she would argue with him. He would make her read Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game or Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and she would break his heart by drawing his attention to their inadequacies. And then would take him to task for his outdated thinking, tease him for his unrealistic ambitions, and ridicule his obsession with the idea of a golden age of writing, which she said had only ever existed in the minds of an elite few.
Their passion for each other was born out of these intellectual tussles. Neither had met with such sustained and well-argued opposition before. Each was flattered by the potency of the other. Their intimacy grew as their indefensible prejudices fell. Delighted, they returned again and again to the fray, their minds afire with perfectly phrased arguments and sharp rebuttals until the heat of their words was lost in the conflagration of their bodies.
When they moved in together, they might be found entwined in bed, him reading Dorothy Richardson, she reading Georges Simenon. They were both fascinated by the dichotomy of publishing, each representing a warring party. She was intrigued by writers whose work appealed to millions upon millions of people and who seemed to speak for a particular epoch. He by those who spoke for all but reached only a few.
Daniel and Helen appeared at the door. Trevor, Malcolm and Max were oblivious to the change, so engrossed were they in their discussion about Boris Johnson. Max had worked for him briefly as a researcher when Johnson had been editor of The Spectator. Malcolm thought him a dangerous buffoon, but Max and Trevor demurred.
After Daniel went off to get drinks, Amy, who had been listening but was taking no part in the discussion, drifted over towards Helen, who was still hovering by the door.
‘Are you all right, Helen?’ she asked.
‘I’ve heard from M&R again. Lawyers.’
‘Julia is avoiding me. She hasn’t been in the office. I don’t understand what she’s up to, but it’s not good.’
‘Who is that man?’ asked Helen.
‘Max. He’s my ex. He popped over this afternoon.’
‘He seems a strange choice for you.’
‘I did say ex.’
Helen said nothing.
‘Have I told you I’m selling my studio?’
Helen shook her head.
‘I was wondering if I might rent the flat on a more permanent basis.’
‘There is no permanent anymore, Amy.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. At least until . . . then.’
‘Daniel was thinking of doing the same.’
‘Oh, then forget what I said. Daniel is family.’
‘But I want him to return to Edinburgh. He needs to be near his boys. They need their father.’
‘You’re right, they do.’
Helen placed her hand on Amy’s wrist and drew her nearer. In a near-whisper she said, ‘A neighbour knocked on our door this afternoon. Vanessa. I know her to smile and wave to; she has three little children. She’s a pleasant enough woman and spoke up reluctantly. I’d say her strong Christian feeling compelled her to come.’ Helen smiled grimly. ‘She seemed to think a prostitute was working from this address and wanted to warn us. She said she knew we’d recently taken in a lodger and thought, as we’re an elderly couple, we might be being taken for a ride.’
Now it was time for Amy to smile grimly.
‘Last night she saw a white woman with a black man in front of our house. She said they had oral sex on the pavement and intercourse on the bonnet of a car. She was very particular about these details. Do you know anything about this? Is this part of the trouble you warned me about when I asked you to stay?’
Amy thought she might die on the spot. It was one thing to catch Daniel masturbating at the window and quite another to hear Helen speak to her about oral sex and intercourse.
‘What did you tell her?’ was all Amy could manage to say.
‘I told her it was unlikely to be a prostitute. And more likely to be someone who’d had too much to drink. She took this explanation well and with great composure fled. The whole thing was mortifying for both of us. But once she’d gone, I couldn’t help laughing.’
‘I’m so sorry, Helen.’
‘I’m no one to you, not family, not really a friend, and as a feminist I should keep my mouth shut – your body is yours to do with what you will – but I suspect a darker reason for your behaviour.’
‘I drink too much and do silly things.’
‘On the street in front of our house?’
‘It was 4 am and lasted no more than five minutes.’
‘What lasted only five minutes?’ asked Daniel, as he handed his mother a G&T.
‘The phone call I had with Prince Harry,’ said Amy, without missing a beat.
‘You know Prince Harry?’
‘Not well. We met at a party and danced together. He asked for my number.’
‘I’m sure he did,’ said Daniel.
‘And he called you?’ asked Helen.
‘Yes, but as I said, it lasted no more than five minutes. It would appear I bored him. Never heard from him again.’ They were looking at her open-mouthed. ‘Never really fancied redheads, anyway.’
Max came over and introduced himself to Helen and Daniel. Trevor called out that he was starving. And after a brief discussion, it was decided to order Indian, as it was Trevor’s favourite.
*
Amy and Daniel were out on the street; they were walking to pick up the Indian. Delivery would have taken an hour and as it was only a five-minute walk away, Amy had decided to pick it up. Daniel couldn’t resist the chance to be alone with her so had followed her out.
‘How warm it still is!’ said Amy. ‘It’s lovely.’
‘That Max is a ponce.’
‘Said the ponce.’
‘Am I a ponce?’
‘No, not really, ponces usually have an ounce of self-belief.’
‘So I’m pathetic?’
‘Exactly.’
They turned the corner and caught sight of the park. In the evening light, the trees were prematurely golden.
‘Don’t take it to heart. Helen just said a neighbour came over today to warn her that her lodger might be a prostitute.’
Daniel laughed. ‘You do act the whore, Amy.’
‘Show me then.’
‘What?’ asked Daniel, instantly aroused. What was she suggesting? He looked across at the park. He had read about dogging. It was still light. There was no telling what Amy might do next.
‘Me being a whore. I know you filmed it. That’s how I saw you in the dark window. The light from your phone’s screen lit your face.’
‘You want to see it?’
‘Of course!’
Daniel took out his phone and started the video. He held it up for Amy to see.
‘Oh, shame it’s so dark. You can hardly tell it’s me,’ she said, taking the phone from him. ‘I’m such a slut! Now I’m on my knees. So sordid. But look at me go!’
Daniel was unsure what to say to that. He adjusted his cock, which had grown hard and pressed uncomfortably against his trousers.
‘He’s a big guy. He really pounds you hard,’ said Daniel, hoping Amy was thinking what he was thinking.
‘He would break your neck if he knew about this. But god, he’s a gorgeous specimen.’
Amy watched to the end as they walked in silence.
‘Have you watched this today?’ asked Amy.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, quietly.
‘Did you jerk off again?’
They were waiting for traffic to clear before crossing the high street. The Indian looked busy.
She crossed before him and he looked at her bare legs, the hem of her very short dress rising in the wind. He crossed soon after and Amy repeated the question as she handed back the phone.
‘A couple of times,’ Daniel said, hoping that the revelation would lead to more intimacy.
‘Well, I’m glad you got something out of it. Wait here.’
As Amy entered the crowded shop, Daniel walked to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the high street. A group of young men were smoking outside the King’s Head. Through the window next to them, he could see the large screen showing the football. A lot of green.
Bored, he looked at his phone and checked his emails. Nothing. His wife was still his wife according to Facebook. He wondered when her status would change or he would be unfriended. He flicked through her photos. There were very few of them together. If he was in a photo it was because he was with the boys. He closed down Facebook: he couldn’t bear to see pictures of the boys. Everything was fine, if he pretended the boys didn’t exist. The boys complicated matters. He’d been dumped before. She was much younger than he was. He’d been surprised that she had loved him. That she had agreed to marry him. He’d been very fortunate. But she was always going to leave him. They always did, in the end. He hadn’t factored in the boys. The boys were something completely unexpected. Losing them was impossible. So he drove them from his mind.
While playing with his phone it suddenly occurred to him what Amy had been doing. He was such an idiot. He opened his videos. Gone. Deleted.
He was an idiot.
Amy came out and handed him the two bags containing dinner. They recrossed the high street.
‘You deleted it?’
‘Of course I did.’
They walked back in silence.
*
After Usman had come for Trevor, Helen and Malcolm remained seated in the front room chatting to Max, whose company they really seemed to enjoy. He had always had an old head, and tonight it had really paid off. He was familiar with Helen and Malcolm’s work, and had read their peers and even their influences. But it was his interest in novels about writing and writers that had them talking. Max mentioned Gissing in passing. Malcolm had been fascinated with George Gissing’s New Grub Street as a young man, and had only recently re-read it. He had found so many parallels with his experience of the writing life. He knew the characters, had lived some of their trials. Then Max revealed he was considering writing a book about these kinds of books. Malcolm and Helen suggested a few: Balzac’s Lost Illusions, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, John Irving’s The World According to Garp. They then debated whether to include Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, which was about a singer, and Theodore Dreiser’s The Genius, about a painter. Weren’t they just ways for the author to mask their interest in themselves? asked Malcolm.
While Trevor was with them, the conversation was more inclusive, but now Daniel and Amy were left out of this discussion. Daniel took himself off to bed but Amy felt she had to stay. She was too lazy to walk into the kitchen to open another bottle of champagne, so she poured herself a glass of whisky from the bottle on the coffee table.
She was only half listening to their conversation. Max’s close proximity, the sound of his voice, the intensity and eloquence of his speech, took Amy back. She was transported to their flat. The nights when there would be a group of people – usually writers, students and artists – talking and drinking into the small hours of the morning. She remembered being front and centre in many of these discussions – being very outspoken and full of ideas. Everything had been important, then. She’d been as passionate about ideas and books and literature as Max. And passionate about Max, too. Such nights would fire her up. She would sometimes get so worked up she’d throw everyone out so she could drag Max to bed and ravish him.
Amy realised she had nodded off. Malcolm was standing and saying good night to Max. Helen, still seated, was looking straight at Amy.
‘Are you still with us?’ she asked.
‘Just.’
‘It’s after twelve. Time for bed,’ said Malcolm.
‘Amy, I left my bag downstairs,’ said Max.
‘Thank you for celebrating with me. Good night,’ said Malcolm.
‘Nice to meet you, Max. Be sure to drop in again,’ said Helen and followed Malcolm out.
Amy knew how drunk she was when she tried to navigate the stairs to the flat. She judged herself to be drunker than she ever remembered being on those steps. Drunker than the night she’d fucked Daniel.
Parts of her passage down were obscured from her. Her brain no longer seemed committed to full consciousness. One moment she had trouble with her heels. The next she was barefoot.
Max was talking. She couldn’t focus on him now. Moving from the sofa in the front room to the bottom of the stairs had been too much for her. All she could focus on was climbing into bed. She saw the bed. But needed to pee, so made her way unsteadily to the bathroom.
*
‘What time is it?’ Amy asked, rolling onto her side.
Max was seated on the bed fully clothed with his laptop on his lap. The bathroom light was still on. She could smell bleach.
‘Four.’
‘Why are you still here?’ It all felt so familiar. As if no time had passed.
‘I was worried about you. You vomited and . . .’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said quietly over his words.
‘… then went into a bit of a stupor. I thought you might vomit again. I didn’t want you to go the way of Jimi Hendrix, so I stayed.’
‘Thank you, Max.’
‘You’d do the same for me,’ he said, closing his laptop. ‘At least I hope you would.’
‘I would, you know I would,’ she said, reaching out and touching his hand briefly, before bringing hers back under the covers. He was here in her room, almost in her bed. How natural it felt.
‘Here, drink this,’ he said, giving her a glass of water. She lifted herself to one elbow and drank the whole glass.
‘I have to pee.’ She jumped up and ran to the bathroom. She was still in the dress she’d worn last night. She took it off and sat on the loo. Then she went to the sink and washed out her mouth with mouthwash. She checked her hair. Disaster. She took off her underwear and threw on her bathrobe. Then she switched off the light and ran back to bed. As she got under the covers she cleverly disrobed in one clean movement.
Max had opened his laptop again. He half closed it on Amy reappearing.
‘Feel a bit better?’ he asked.
She nodded. It was like old times. He was so normal. Max how she remembered him. She used to wake in the middle of the night to find him working. She learnt her bad sleeping habits from him.
‘Writing down notes on last night?’ she asked, snuggling into the duvet.
‘More trying to frame the story. The marriage is interesting, isn’t it? And their son, what an oddball.’
‘Be kind to them.’
‘I’m in love with them both already.’ He clapped the laptop shut and looked as though he was going to get up, but then leant closer to Amy. She thought he was going to kiss her, like he used to, but he stopped short and said quietly, looking her in the eye, ‘You have to stop this.’
‘What?’
‘This. Your drinking. It has to stop.’
‘What do you know about it? We haven’t seen each other in years.’
‘People talk. Besides, anyone can see you drink too much. You had more than your fair share of three bottles of champagne over dinner and then sat on the couch and had two very large whiskies. You don’t even like whisky. Or you didn’t. Who knows, now?’
‘I was celebrating Malcolm’s success.’
‘When you nodded off upstairs Helen said something, too.’
‘What?’
‘That you drink too much.’
Amy rolled over, turning away from Max.
‘They both care about you, Amy. I can tell. And it’s a wonderful thing to be loved by such people.’
She said nothing.
‘People are worried about you.’
‘They can fuck off.’
‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’
She didn’t answer him.
‘Look, I’m going to go.’ He got off the bed and put his laptop back in the bag. ‘Malcolm has agreed to do the interview, so I’ll be back later today. Thank you for getting me in the door.’
She said nothing.
‘They’re both great. I understand why you’re staying here. I would if I could.’
Max stood at the end of the bed and watched Amy to see if she would say anything. Nothing came so he walked through the lounge area to the front door.
‘Max.’
He couldn’t be sure he heard his name or whether he just wished to hear it.
‘Max.’
He went back to the bed.
‘Max, don’t go. You needn’t go. Sleep here. I know I’m a mess. It’s all right.’
He crouched down by the bed and brought his face in line with hers.
‘I can’t.’
‘Kiss me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You loved me once.’
‘I did. But I can’t stay.’
‘Kiss me, Max. Just once.’
‘No. You’re not mine anymore.’
She reached out and took hold of his hand.
‘Stay with me, please. I want to be with you.’
‘As much as I would like to, I can’t. And I won’t. We’re both different people now. We’ll never be as we were.’
She let go of his hand.
He closed the street door quietly behind him.