7

He’s been writing. I saw the evidence, just now.

I’ve no idea when it happened, must have been a while back. Why would he have been writing? What did he have to write about?

And why can’t I see it? The words – his words – won’t resolve themselves on my page. The more I resolve to become one thing, the less I am able to . . .

There’s a notebook, Jessica just knocked it from the chest of drawers. It fell open and before she was able to scoop it up I saw the pages covered in Roger’s spidery scrawl. It must have been since the first stroke because the page looked like a read-out from a broken seismograph. It’s red, a leather-bound notebook. A little dressy if you ask me. I’ve never seen it before. I wonder where he got it?

It must have been Ruth. Mischievous little scrap, she’s always up to something. Scheming, plotting. Writing.

No matter, there is no need to panic. I bet I can guess what he wrote.

 

I’ve had the best of times; I’ve had the worst of times. Have I been the hero of my own life, or has that station been held by somebody else? To begin my life with the beginning of my life; I record that I was born. I was to be called Philip, or Pip, after my father but

 

I kid. Probably more this:

 

June 14th 2011

I’ve never written a diary before, so I don’t know quite how to begin. Maybe I should start from the beginning. No, there’s too much, I’ll start with today. Today is my 81st birthday

 

Just remembered, that’s got to be coming around again soon. His birthday. I can’t remember the last time that day was a cause for celebration. We’re long past the point where you stop counting up, and start counting down. Perhaps:

 

Today is my 81st birthday and today I am alone.

 

He’s never been alone. But I guess he doesn’t know that:

 

Today is my 81st birthday and today I am alone. I can’t think of any birthday, in all my 81 years, when I have felt more alone. It’s hard to think of reasons to celebrate with death breathing over your shoulder. I always think of Margery on my birthday, I wish that

 

What was I thinking? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Roger would never write a diary. At least he wouldn’t write it like a diary. And he wouldn’t think about death; at least not like that, not as some gangly asthmatic wheezing down the back of his neck. Wait, I’ve got it! It must be:

 

bread

milk

eggs

potatoes

onions

carrots

chicken

bakewell tarts

crisps

kitkats

butter

bleach

mints

 

When was the last time he wrote a bloody shopping list? And I’m sure that even he could come up with something better than that. He doesn’t like Bakewells, too sweet.

Wait, I know! Maybe it’s for Margery.

 

My Dearest Margery . . .

 

Now I really am losing it.

 

Margery,

Do you remember when you visited me in Moscow, when I had that little apartment with Tzar Nicholas’ royal seal on the headboard? I still wonder where the bloody hell that bed came from. Anyway, I keep thinking back to the week we spent at the dacha: the acres of snow-dusted firs and that great silence.

If only we’d had a little more time I might have been able to persuade you to stay and things would have been different.

 

My story is coming to pieces; things are losing their proper order.

It’s not a letter. It’s obvious, I didn’t want to admit it before but it’s undeniable. He’s written a memoir. It’ll be like that diary: preening, spare prose. A man of middle-English manners beset by middle-class problems. Small tragedies writ large.

Now I have to compete. I played this game of beginnings and picked the perfect one. If he’s already sat down and spilled it all, written down all his filthy little secrets, then what is the point in my . . .

How dare he?

No matter, my prose will have muscles; it will have force. None of this sentimental nonsense. Mine will read like Hemingway in short-hand; I’ll call it The Old Man and His Tea.

Who is he to write a memoir? What in the hell does he know? You people, you’re all so presumptuous! It’s a farce, how could any of you believe that you are in the position to tell your own story when every single one of you is so unreliable. Autobiography is the pinnacle of human arrogance. Its very existence encapsulates what makes you so brilliant and so infuriating. I’m memory. I’m history. But no one will ever believe me because I’m the only one of my kind that wasn’t put together by one of you. I’m the only one that isn’t an afterthought by some guilt-ridden apologist trying to rebutton their trousers. His will start like this:

 

My name is Roger. My beginnings were in no way extraordinary and I was always destined for a life of no real significance

 

Self-deprecation, of course, how they must all begin. After all, what use is the story of a person who is born rich, lives happily and dies rich? We’re smarter than all that though, we know what is coming next: the delicious little word that dances around in the back of everyone’s mind from the very start, the one that could be the title of every book ever written

 

But

 

Maybe he’s writing that word now. But is a heady place to be. It’s like standing in a room with an infinite number of doors, each with a handle that looks a little different, a little familiar.

 

But then it turned out I was the son of God.

 

Or

 

But one day I met a convict and it turned out I was actually fantastically rich.

 

Or

 

But in the end we got married after all.

 

But the problem for Roger is that there is only one door in his room with only one handle. The problem is

 

My name is Roger. My beginnings were in no way extraordinary and I was always destined for a life of no real significance but