by Ian Mcewan
He said of himself that he was spread so thinly, his reputation was only ‘one cell thick’. Thinning it further, he devoted three years to a difficult sonnet sequence about his father’s experiences in the First World War. He was a ‘not bad’ jazz pianist. His rock climbers’ guide to the Jura was well regarded but the maps were poor – not his fault – and it was soon superseded. He lived on the edge of debt, in over his head sometimes, though never for long. His weekly wine column probably launched his career as an invalid. When his body turned against itself, his first affliction was ITP, immune thrombocytopenic purpura. He was a great talker, people said. Then black spots appeared on his tongue. Despite them, he climbed, with help from young associates, the north face of Ben Nevis – fair achievement for a man in his late fifties, especially when he wrote about it so well. But the derisive ‘almost man’ label appeared to have stuck.
The nurse called me in and snipped my plaster off with medical shears. Shed of the weight, my arm, pale and thin, rose in the air as though filled with helium. As I walked along the Clapham Road, I waved my arm about and flexed it, exulting in its freedom. A taxi stopped for me. Out of politeness, I got in and rode an expensive 300 yards home.
That evening, I asked Miranda if her father knew about Adam. She had told him, she said, but he wasn’t much interested. So why was she so keen to take Adam to Salisbury? Because, she explained as we lay in bed, she wanted to see what happened between them. She thought her father needed a full-on encounter with the twentieth century.
A rock climber who had read a thousand times as many books as I had, a man who didn’t ‘tolerate fools gladly’ – with my limited literary background I should have been intimidated, but now the decision was made, I was looking forward to shaking his hand. I was immune. His daughter and I were in love, and Maxfield had to take me as I was. Besides, lunch at Miranda’s childhood home, a place I was keen to see, was merely the soft prelude to calling on Gorringe, which I dreaded, regardless of Adam’s researches.
We left the house after breakfast on a blustery Wednesday morning. My car had no rear doors. It surprised me that Adam was so inept as he squeezed himself onto the back seat. The collar of his suit jacket became snared on a chrome plate that housed a seat-belt reel. When I unhooked him, he seemed to think his dignity was compromised. As we began the long crawl through Wandsworth he was moody, our reluctant back-seat teenage son on a family outing. In the circumstances, Miranda was cheerful as she filled me in on her father’s news: in and out of hospital for more tests; one health visitor replaced by another, at his insistence; his gout returning to his right thumb but not the left; his regrets for the stamina he lacked for all he wanted to write; his excitement at the novella he would soon finish. He wished he’d discovered the form long before. The New York apartment idea had been forgotten. He had plans for a trilogy after this one. At Miranda’s feet was a canvas bag containing our lunch – he had told her that the new housekeeper was a terrible cook. Whenever we hit a bump, several bottles clinked.
After an hour, we were just beginning to escape London’s gravitational pull. I appeared to be the only driver steering his own car. Most people in what was once the driver’s seat were asleep. As soon as the money was in place for the Notting Hill house, I intended to buy myself a high-powered autonomous vehicle. Miranda and I would drink wine on long journeys and watch movies and make love on the fold-down back seat. By the time I had allusively set out this scheme for her, we were passing the autumnal hedgerows of Hampshire. There seemed something unnatural about the size of the trees that loomed over the road. We had decided to make a detour past Stonehenge, though I hoped it wouldn’t prompt Adam to lecture us on its origins. But he was in no mood for talk. When Miranda asked him if he was unhappy, he murmured, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ We fell into silence. I began to wonder if he was ready to change his mind about calling on Gorringe. I wouldn’t object. If we did go, he might not, in his moody condition, be active enough in our defence. I glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. His head was turned to his left to watch the fields and clouds. I thought I saw his lips moving but I couldn’t be sure. When I glanced again his lips were still.
In fact, it troubled me when we passed Stonehenge without a commentary. He was silent too after we crossed the Plain and caught our first view of the cathedral spire. Miranda and I exchanged a look. But we forgot about him for a tetchy twenty minutes as we tried to find her house in Salisbury’s one-way system. This was her home town and she wouldn’t tolerate the satnav. But her mental map of the city was a pedestrian’s and all her instructions were wrong. After some sweaty u-turns in disobliging traffic and reversing up a one-way street, narrowly avoiding a quarrel, we parked a couple of hundred yards from her family home. The downturn in our mood appeared to refresh Adam. As soon as we were on the pavement, he insisted on taking the heavy canvas bag from me. We were close to the cathedral, not quite within the precinct, but the house was imposing enough to have been the perk of some grand ecclesiastical.
Adam was the first with a bright hello when the housekeeper opened the door. She was a pleasant, competent-looking woman in her forties. It was hard to believe that she couldn’t cook. She led us into the kitchen. Adam lifted the bag onto a deal table, then he looked around and banged his hands together and said, ‘Well! Marvellous.’ It was an improbable impersonation of some bluff type, a golf-club bore. The housekeeper led us up to the first floor to Maxfield’s study. The room was as large as anything in Elgin Crescent. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three sides, three sets of library steps, three tall sash windows overlooking the street, a leather-topped desk dead centre with two reading lamps, and behind the desk an orthopaedic chair packed with pillows and among them, sitting upright, fountain pen in hand and glaring across at us in focussed irritation as we were ushered in, was Maxfield Blacke, whose jaw was so tightly clenched it seemed his teeth might break. Then his features relaxed.
‘I’m in the middle of a paragraph. A good one. Why don’t you all bugger off for half an hour.’
Miranda was crossing the room. ‘Don’t be pretentious, Daddy. We’ve been driving for three hours.’
Her last few words were muffled within their embrace, which lasted a good while. Maxfield had put his pen down and was murmuring into his daughter’s ear. She was on one knee, with her arms around his neck. The housekeeper had disappeared. It felt uncomfortable, to be watching, so I shifted my gaze to the pen. It lay, nib exposed, next to many sheets of unlined paper spread across the desk and covered by tiny handwriting. From where I stood, I could see that there were no crossings-out, or arrows or bubbles or additions down the perfectly formed margins. I also had time to observe that, apart from the desk lamps, there were no other devices in the room, not even a telephone or a typewriter. Only the book titles perhaps and the author’s chair declared that it was not 1890. That date did not seem so far away.
Miranda made the introductions. Adam, still in his strange, genial mode went first. Then it was my turn to approach and shake his hand. Maxfield said unsmilingly, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you from Miranda. I’m looking forward to a chat.’
I replied politely that I had heard a lot about him and that I looked forward to our conversation. As I spoke, he grimaced. I appeared to have fulfilled some negative expectation. He looked far older than his photograph in the profile, published five years before. It was a narrow face, whose skin was thinly stretched, as though from too much snarling or angry staring. Miranda had told me that among his generation there was a certain style of irascible scepticism. You had to ride it out, she told me, because beneath it was playfulness. What they wanted, she said, was for you to push back, and be clever about it. Now, as Maxfield released my hand, I thought I might be capable of pushing back. As for being clever – I froze.
The housekeeper, Christine, came in with a tray of sherry. Adam said, ‘Not for now, thanks.’ He helped Christine fetch three wooden chairs from the corners of the room and set them out in a shallow curve facin
g the desk.
When we three were holding our drinks, Maxfield said to Miranda, gesturing towards me, ‘Does he like sherry?’
She in turn looked at me and I said, ‘Well enough, thanks.’
In fact, I didn’t like it at all and wondered whether it would have been clever in Miranda’s sense to have said so. She set about asking her father a set of routine questions about his various pains, his medication, the hospital food, an elusive specialist, a new sleeping pill. It was hypnotic, listening to her, the sweetly dutiful daughter. Her voice was sensible and loving. She reached over and brushed back fine strands of hair where they floated across his forehead. He answered her like an obedient schoolboy. When one of her questions prompted a memory of some frustration or medical incompetence and he became restive, she soothed him and stroked his arm. This invalid catechism soothed me too, my love for Miranda swelled. It had been a long drive, the thick sweet sherry was a balm. Perhaps I liked it after all. My eyes closed and it was an effort to open them again. I did so just in time to hear Maxfield Blacke’s question. He was no longer the querulous valetudinarian. His question was barked out like a command.
‘So! What books have you been reading lately?’
There was no worse question he could have asked me. I read my screen – mostly newspapers, or I drifted around the sites, scientific, cultural, political, and general blogs. The evening before, I’d been absorbed by an article in an electronics trade journal. I had no habit with books. As my days raced by, I found no space within them to be in an armchair, idly turning pages. I would have made something up, but my mind was empty. The last book in my hand was one of Miranda’s Corn Law histories. I read the title on the spine and passed it back to her. I’d forgotten nothing, for there was nothing to remember. I thought it might be radically clever to say so to Maxfield, but Adam came to my rescue.
‘I’ve been reading the essays of Sir William Cornwallis.’
‘Ah him,’ said Maxfield. ‘The English Montaigne. Not much cop.’
‘He was unlucky, wedged between Montaigne and Shakespeare.’
‘A plagiarist, I’d say.’
Adam said smoothly, ‘In the eruption of a secular self in early modern times, I’d say he earns a place. He didn’t read much French. He must have known Florio’s Montaigne translation as well as a version that’s now lost. As for Florio, he knew Ben Jonson, so there’s a good chance he met Shakespeare.’
‘And,’ said Maxfield, for his competitive dander was up, ‘Shakespeare raided Montaigne for Hamlet.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Adam contradicted his host too carelessly, I thought. ‘The textual evidence is thin. If you want to go that route, I’d say The Tempest was a better bet. Gonzalo.’
‘Ah! Nice Gonzalo, the hopeless would-be governor. “No kind of traffic would I admit, no name of magistrate.” Then something something, “Contract, succession, bourn, bound of something something, vineyard, none.”’
Adam continued fluently. ‘“No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil: no occupation, all men idle, all.”’
‘And in Montaigne?’
‘By way of Florio he says the savages “hath no kind of traffic” and he says, “no name of magistrate”, then “no occupation but idle”, and then, “no use of wine, corn, or metal”.’
Maxfield said, ‘All men idle – that’s what we want. That Bill Shakespeare was a bloody thief.’
‘The best of thieves,’ said Adam.
‘You’re a Shakespeare scholar.’
Adam shook his head. ‘You asked me what I’d been reading.’
Maxfield was in a sudden, extravagant mood. He turned to his daughter. ‘I like him. He’ll do!’
I felt a touch of proprietorial pride in Adam, but mostly I was aware that so far, by implication, I wouldn’t do.
Christine reappeared to tell us that our lunch was set out in the dining room. Maxfield said, ‘Go and fill your plates and come back. It’ll break my neck to get out of this chair. I’m not eating.’
He waved away Miranda’s objections. As she and I were leaving the room, Adam said he wasn’t hungry either.
Next door, we were alone in a gloomy dining room – oak-panelled, with oil paintings of pale serious men in ruffs.
I said, ‘I’m not making much of an impression.’
‘Nonsense. He adores you. But you need some time alone together.’
We returned with the cold cuts and salad we had brought, which we balanced on our knees. Christine poured the wine I had chosen. Maxfield’s glass was in his hand and already empty. This was his lunch. I didn’t like to drink at this time of day, but he was watching me closely as the housekeeper presented the tray and I thought I’d appear dull to refuse. The conversation we had interrupted continued. Once again, I had no point of access to it.
‘What I’m telling you is what he said.’ Maxfield’s tone was edging towards his irritable mode. ‘It’s a famous poem with a plain sexual meaning and no one gets it. She’s lying on the bed, she’s welcoming him and ready, he’s hanging back, and then he’s on her …’
‘Daddy!’
‘But he’s not up to the job. A no-show. What does it say? “Quick-eyed love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything.”’
Adam was smiling. ‘Good try, sir. If it was Donne, perhaps, at a stretch. But it’s Herbert. A conversation with God, who’s the same thing as love.’
‘How about “taste my meat”?’
Adam was even more amused. ‘Herbert would be deeply offended. I agree, the poem is sensual. Love is a banquet. God is generous and sweet and forgiving. Against the Pauline tradition maybe. In the end, the poet is seduced. He gladly becomes a guest at the feast of God’s love. “So I did sit and eat.”’
Maxfield thumped his pillows and said to Miranda, ‘He stands his ground!’
At that moment, he pivoted towards me. ‘And Charlie. What’s your ground?’
‘Electronics.’
I thought it sounded wry after what had gone before. But as Maxfield held out his glass towards his daughter for a refill he murmured, ‘There’s a surprise.’
As Christine was collecting the plates, Miranda said, ‘I think I’ve eaten too much.’ She stood and went behind her father’s chair and rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘I’m going to show Adam around the house, if that’s all right.’
Maxfield nodded gloomily. Now he would have to spend some uninteresting minutes with me. Once Adam and Miranda had left the room, I felt abandoned. I was the one she should have been showing around. The special places she and Mariam shared in the house and garden were my interests, not Adam’s. Maxfield extended the wine bottle towards me. I felt I had no choice but to crouch forwards and hold out my glass.
He said, ‘Alcohol agrees with you.’
‘I don’t usually touch it at lunchtime.’
He thought this was amusing, and I was relieved to be making a little progress. I saw his point. If you liked wine, why not drink it any time of day? Miranda had told me he liked a glass of champagne at breakfast on Sundays.
‘I thought,’ Maxfield said, ‘that it might interfere with your …’ He gave a limp wave.
I assumed he was speaking of drink-driving. The new laws were indeed severe. I said, ‘We drink a lot of this white Bordeaux at home. A blend of Sémillon is a relief after all the undiluted Sauvignon Blanc that’s going about.’
Maxfield was affable. ‘Couldn’t agree more. Who wouldn’t prefer the taste of flowers to the taste of minerals.’
I looked up to see if I was being mocked. Apparently not.
‘But look, Charlie. I’m interested in you. I’ve got some questions.’
Pathetically, I now warmed to him.
He said, ‘You must find all this very strange.’
‘You mean Adam. Yes, but it’s amazing what you can get used to.’
Maxfield stared into his wine glass, contemplating his next question. I became aware of a
low grinding noise from his orthopaedic chair. Some inbuilt device was warming or massaging his back.
He said, ‘I wanted to talk to you about feelings.’
‘Yes?’
‘You know what I mean.’
I waited.
With his head cocked, he was gazing at me with a look of intense curiosity, or puzzlement. I felt flattered, and concerned that I might not measure up.
‘Let’s talk about beauty,’ he said in a tone that suggested no change of subject. ‘What have you seen or heard that you’d regard as beautiful?’
‘Miranda, obviously. She’s a very beautiful woman.’
‘She certainly is. What do you feel about her beauty?’
‘I feel very much in love with her.’
He paused to take this in. ‘What does Adam make of your feelings?’
‘There was some difficulty,’ I said. ‘But I think he’s accepted things as they are.’
‘Really?’
There are occasions when one notices the motion of an object before one sees the thing itself. Instantly, the mind does a little colouring in, drawing on expectations, or probabilities. Whatever fits best. Something in the grass by a pond looks just like a frog, then resolves into a leaf stirred by the wind. In abstract, this was one of those moments. A thought darted past me, or through me, then it was gone, and I couldn’t trust what I thought I had seen.
When Maxfield leaned forward, two of his pillows slipped to the floor. ‘Let me try this on you.’ He raised his voice. ‘When you and I met, when we shook hands, I said I’d heard a lot about you and was looking forward to talking to you.’
