by Paul Thomas
Halfway through Sophie’s sixth underwater handstand, Brigit decides she’s done her duty. I wrench my eyes away and fixate on an unremarkable rhododendron. I know she’s watching me, waiting for me to look at her, but I’m not wearing sunglasses and, as we know, the eyes are windows to the soul.
She murmurs, ‘I guess it’s now or never,’ swings her legs off the recliner and goes to the edge of the pool, hooking a casual finger under her swimsuit to adjust the fit. Without bending at the knees, she reaches down to test the water.
‘Come on, Mum,’ cries Sophie. ‘It’s really warm.’
Brigit poises on tiptoe, then disappears in a fluid, streamlined movement. When she surfaces at the far end of the pool Sophie says, ‘Whoa! Awesome dive, Mum.’
Brigit insists that I stick around until Alan gets home — ‘He’ll blame me if you don’t’ — so I use the PC in the games room to email Tania: ‘What’s happening? I’ll be here for another hour or so. If I don’t hear back, I’ll call you after 7.’
At 5.30 twelve-year-old Luke appears, flushed from cricket practice. To put off doing his homework he challenges me to pool: best of three. When I win the decider with a fluky ricochet he shakes hands and thanks me for not letting him win; it bugs him when his father does that. I check the email but there’s no reply.
And here’s Alan, contemporary as ever in baggy cream linen trousers, a black silk T-shirt and black loafers without socks. He punches me lightly on the shoulder and kisses his wife with gusto. Alan reminds me of those European actors who slum it for the money playing terrorists and criminal freaks in Hollywood blow-’em-ups but really belong in wordy little arthouse films about mad love. He’s slightly taller and slightly younger than me, with longish, expensively cut greying hair and a thin, interestingly lined face. Within two minutes of walking in the door he’s telling us about his new best friend, a B-list director from LA who’s shooting his latest ad. As he talks, he gets two bottles of Becks out of the fridge, flips off the tops and hands one to me. I’m ready to move on — one’s always served quality wine in this house, no matter how mundane the circumstances — but Alan is the sort of host who thinks for his guests. Now he’s decided I’ll stay for a barbecue. Brigit suggests I’ve probably got a better offer.
‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘The lady writer. A hottie in more ways than one, I hear. You don’t have to comment on that, mate — Bridgie can fill me in when you’ve gone.’
She shakes her head. ‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Yeah, right. So what are you up to tonight, Max?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I haven’t connected with Tania yet.’
‘Give her a call and get her over. She’s not a vego, is she?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Food’s the least of your worries,’ says Brigit, who’s taking it easy in jeans and a white T-shirt and showing off her painted toenails. ‘Tania doesn’t like dated rock music and she doesn’t drink.’
‘She smoke dope?’ Alan asks me.
‘Yeah.’
He shrugs. ‘Well, that’s a couple of things we’ve got in common.’
I’m interested in Brigit’s reaction to this but she avoids my eye.
Still nothing from Tania. I wonder if she was thrown by the name on my email — colefamily@ … — and deleted it unread, suspecting a virus or a saliva-flecked denunciation from some sunken-eyed morals campaigner: ‘You’ll have to answer to God for this filth and I pray that in this instance He is not merciful.’
Out in the courtyard I explain that when Tania’s on a roll, she doesn’t take email breaks. Brigit asks what sort of hours I’m putting in these days; less than Tania, I say. Alan has changed into shorts and a ‘Free Tibet’ T-shirt. Why here, I wonder, why now? There’s nothing I can do about it. He asks why I don’t just ring Tania. If she’s on a roll, I say, she won’t thank me for it.
‘Mate,’ he says, ‘you sound a bit pussy-whipped.’
‘One way of putting it,’ says Brigit.
Alan fetches a bottle of pinot noir from a celebrated boutique vineyard. For what it cost, I’d get four bottles of the Aussie quaffer I live on. He starts the barbecue to cook burgers for the kids. When Brigit goes inside he tells me he’s almost finished Submission.
I wait.
‘Pretty out there.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘but is it any good?’
‘The critics seem to think so.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, you know, it’s edgy stuff. Makes you think.’
‘What about?’
‘How liberated we really are.’ He deftly flips the burgers. ‘How we let other people’s concepts of what’s normal fuck us up. How couples keep sexual secrets from each other.’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s been done before.’
‘Everything’s been done before,’ he says. ‘The trick is to package it so the market thinks it’s brand new.’
‘Trick being the operative word.’
He shrugs, dismissing my quibble as other-worldly. ‘That’s real life in the big city, Max. So what’s she like?’
‘Well, you know how you should always distinguish between the writer and the work?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘In her case, you can make an exception.’
Alan looks up from the burgers, eyebrows arched. ‘Way to go, Max. I thought you’d lost a bit of weight.’
At 7.05 I ring Tania but get the answerphone. Ditto at 7.25, 7.45 and 8. We don’t often go two nights in a row without getting together but this wouldn’t be a first. Perhaps she’s soaking in an aromatic bubble-bath with the new Dellasandro novel, a 900-page behemoth that has trampled over several reviewers who took it on without adequate firepower.
I finally accept the invitation to dinner, which is a far cry from the traditional barbecue fare of blood and charcoal. Alan grills marinated chicken breasts to go with Brigit’s risotto; more fine wine is produced, which he and I swill while Brigit sips like a kitten. We talk about politics and world affairs — or rather, Alan does. He has the full set of liberal opinions buttressed by hours of selective downloading and, like most know-it-alls with a point of view, tends to take it personally when others aren’t swayed by his arguments. Over the years I’ve discovered that the best way of dealing with white liberal guilt in full flood is to nod thoughtfully and help myself to the wine.
When I first met Alan almost thirty years ago he was a conservative of the instinctive, private-school variety. When I remind him of this his counter-punch is to accuse me of turning into a reactionary. I’m certainly more mainstream nowadays but it’s all relative. When I was twenty I was, as Alan would say, ‘out there’.
If I had one wish it would be for more talent, so I envy hardly anyone who isn’t a writer. But I envy Alan. Life has worked out well for him. He’s highly paid to do what he enjoys doing. You may wonder what a man of the left is doing working in such a quintessentially capitalist industry as advertising but Alan and his ilk differentiate between creative small c capitalism — in which everyone has a good time and no one gets hurt — and exploitative big C Capitalism, which scours the globe leaving scorched earth and broken lives in its wake. I’m not sure where this leaves ultra-liberals whose superannuation funds invest in big C Capitalist companies.
You may question whether advertising is a worthy profession for someone who considers himself an idealist, given that it cynically panders to our vanities and exploits our weaknesses, but Alan doesn’t, which in itself is enviable. He can enthuse about an advertising slogan as if it was the purest poetry ever written, thus ‘Oh, what a feeling’ rates up there with ‘Of one whose hand, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe’. He can find a television ad for instant coffee as magical as Fellini Satyricon. How I envy him his conviction that everything he does is brilliant, his incapacity for dispassionate comparison. In this respect he reminds me of Tania.
Speaking of whom … I excuse myself to try again.
> ‘This is Tania. I’m either too busy or having too good a time to answer the phone so leave a message …’
She’ll be in bed now, Dellasandro bookmarked, toys stowed away, sleeping the quicksand sleep into which happy toilers sink.
Things have also worked out well for Alan in the procreation department. Some of the children I encounter are, frankly, monsters. I look at the parents — mild-mannered, reasonable people in the main and not particularly unsightly — and wonder where the fuck did these surly goblins spring from? Occasionally it works the other way round and a couple of turnips bewilderingly produce a charmer just to buck the trend. Sophie and Luke, however, are everything a parent could wish for — bright, lively, attractive, loving. I don’t advertise this but I’ve witnessed scenes in this house that brought a lump to my throat and made me realise what I’ve missed out on. However, I walked away from the whole idea of family many years ago and it’s too late to turn back now.
Most of all I envy him Brigit. In all the time I’ve known them, I’ve never seen her berate him or put him down. I’ve never heard her be disloyal. I’ve never seen her light up for another man, and a few have tried to find the switch. She gives the impression that she wouldn’t swap places with any woman.
At 10.10 Alan puts on The Doors. At 10.15 Brigit begins clearing the table. I struggle to my feet.
‘Relax, Max,’ she says. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury.’
Alan remains seated, rolling a joint. He doesn’t do much around the house but that’s the deal.
When the dishes are done, Brigit comes in to say good-night. Alan gives vague undertakings about what he and I will and won’t do and for how long, which she breezily disregards: ‘Just spare me the self-pity when the alarm goes off.’
She blows me a kiss from the doorway and is gone and suddenly I feel tired, sated and ready to be alone. An hour or so later Alan deposits me in one of the plush cabs his firm uses and sends me across town to my empty flat.
three
The limo driver has an immigrant pallor and his sixty-year-old hair has turned a colour I can’t name. Thankfully he’s not a talker but every so often I catch his eye in the rear-view mirror, prompting a baleful mock-smile. He doesn’t know me but he doesn’t like me: why is that? What does it take to be disliked at first sight? Has it got something to do with the state I’m in and the fumes wafting off me? Perhaps he’s an AA zealot who has hauled himself out of the gutter and now despises anyone who takes a drink. But if that was it, his face would be squeezed into a killjoy frown and he’d struggle to hold his tongue. This fake smile brims with informed contempt. It’s the sort of smile you give an enemy when you’re sure you’ve got the upper hand.
He pulls up outside my place. ‘Here we are then, Mr Napier. It’s all taken care of.’
The accent is prole English. Our eyes meet again and there’s a chink in the booze haze. Our paths have crossed before, deep in the past. He made the connection the moment I slumped onto his back seat — having the passenger’s name would have helped — and has been waiting for me to catch up.
The smile lingers. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
‘I know it was a long time ago.’
‘Yeah, but I never forget a face,’ he says. ‘Even when the years have taken their toll.’
Cheeky cunt. ‘Well, we’ve all been through some changes. For instance, I don’t imagine your hair’s always been that colour.’
‘No, it was red — like my politics. They haven’t changed. Can’t say the same for you, though. I heard you on the radio a while ago: you’re a proper little Tory these days, aren’t you?’
Now it all comes back. Like many of the pointless episodes and embarrassments that clutter my memory, it dates from the seventies. In my capacity as student activist I took part in a futile attempt to build bridges between the new left — the sons and daughters of the middle class who’d been radicalised by the Vietnam War — and the uppity wing of the trade union movement. The lack of such an alliance had scuppered the May 1968 student uprising in Paris — or so the theory went — and we were determined not to make the same mistake.
A few meetings were held in scruffy, smoky union offices in Karangahape Road. The delegations didn’t have much in common: they had blunt faces and alarming accents — Jock, Geordie, Scouse, Brummie; we had soft hands and hair down to our shoulders. For us, peace and nuclear disarmament was the big picture but their involvement in those causes was strictly tactical. Their hearts belonged to Moscow, and the USSR wasn’t in the Cold War to make up the numbers. On the home front, that meant undermining the economy even though it was the closest thing to socialism this side of Cuba. Their leader was a union secretary called Willie Smaile who wore National Health spectacles and never raised his voice but could silence that tumult of strangled vowels by clearing his throat. Even then it was easy to picture Willie, come the revolution, signing off on lists of enemies of the people and anti-social elements. And if I’d thought about it, it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine my driver, a union apparatchik then, ensconced in the bowels of the state security apparatus where the lists were drawn up. Our group, a raucous debating society of idealists, anarchists and dilettantes, would have been among the first intake at the re-education camps — if we were lucky.
‘So I’m not big on political correctness,’ I say. ‘So shoot me. Anyway, what’s an old Bolshevik doing driving a limo?’
‘Basic rule of warfare, Mr Napier: know your enemy.’
‘I thought the war was over and your lot lost. Consigned to the dustbin of history and all that.’
‘Well, that’s where your lot and my lot differ,’ he says. ‘We understand the difference between fashion and history.’
‘Speaking of history, what’s Willie up to these days? Running a blackjack table at the casino, perhaps?’
‘Willie’s retired. I hear he plays a lot of bowls.’
I get out of the car. He winds down the window, his secret policeman’s smile on full beam. ‘As they say, Mr Napier: we know where you live.’
This blast from the past has brought me back to life. When you start drinking at noon, the day tends to disintegrate, and half an hour ago I was a mess with a three-bottle flush; now I’m thinking it’s only midnight when all’s said and done. Midnight is late to some people but I’m not one of them, not when there’s half a bottle of Spanish brandy in a kitchen cupboard and, if I’m not mistaken, a scattering of refugee cigarettes lying low in the study.
I have emails from Tania and my agent in London. Tania’s was sent mid-afternoon, before mine to her. It says, ‘Can’t make it tonight but we need to talk. I’ll be in touch. T.’
We need to talk, do we? Maybe she’s hit the wall with the Dellasandro book and wants to offload it. Not very likely. I can’t imagine Tania admitting to anyone, least of all another writer, that she doesn’t have the intellectual grunt to take on the big boys. Maybe she’s scored one of those writers’ residencies or fellowships they dish out and wants to know how I’d feel about her A) Getting it instead of me, and B) Taking off to Europe or the States for a year. The answers are A) Pissed off, and B) Pissed off.
I open the message from Shelley, my agent, with a tremor of wishful anticipation. Even after all these years I haven’t quite stopped believing in fairytales — I don’t think anyone in this game ever does — so I still dare to hope it might be the big break. Something like: ‘Darling, Hope you’ve got a bottle of bubbly in the fridge because I’ve got fab news. You know how I’ve been banging on to our people in New York for ages now to get your stuff in front of one of the heavy hitters? Well, they’ve finally delivered — in the form of Lorna Duff at Goldman, no less. AND SHE LOVES IT!!!! To cut to the chase, she’s preparing an offer for US rights to the entire oeuvre. She hasn’t indicated a figure yet but as one of our guys put it, “Lorna only deals in telephone numbers.”’
Or: ‘My dear, Do you have a current passport? The reason I ask is that Jeff Dravitz at Shining Path Pictu
res wants you to get your arse up to LA ASAP to talk about your screenplay. You’d probably given up on it — it must be three or four years, yeah? — but as I’ve always told you, nothing happens quickly in that industry. Six years from first draft to screen isn’t unusual. What’s especially brill about this is that Dravitz is a player: if he gets on board a project, it flies. We haven’t talked money yet but SPP’s going rate for a first-time screenplay is in the mid six figures.’
Or even: ‘Max, old thing, deep in the forest something finally stirred! In the Midst of Life has been shortlisted for the Haile Selassie Award, which I’m reliably informed is the Horn of Africa’s richest and most prestigious literary prize. Meanwhile your French publishers — remember them? — have been in touch to say they plan to bring out a new quality-format edition of your earlier stuff with some real marketing muscle — and euros — behind it. I always said you were going to be big in France, non? It’s taken a little longer than I expected but better late than never.’
This is what Shelley has to say:
Max, After a great deal of thought and much soul-searching, I’ve come reluctantly but firmly to the view that it’s time for us to go our separate ways. The stark fact of the matter is that the relationship isn’t working for either of us: I can no longer get fired up at the prospect of handling your work and you’re not getting the kind of outcomes in terms of advances, TLC and marketing push that you’re obviously looking for. You need an agent who believes in you, who’s passionate about your work and will go out and fight for it. I’m no longer that agent.
If you’re thinking that this comes as a complete bolt from the blue, let me gently remind you that I’ve expressed reservations about various aspects of your recent books and indeed questioned the whole idea of When All Else Fails, which never made sense to me on artistic or commercial grounds. If you’re thinking you had no idea my concerns were ever more than peripheral, I’d have to say that’s because you don’t listen too well. While we’re on that subject, the fact is that you invariably react negatively to any comment or criticism, however constructive, from any source. The reason you’ve been less than well served by your editors over the years is that they get fed up with you carrying on as if the slightest alteration amounts to desecration and eventually cease to care. And if you’re now thinking that this amounts to kicking a man when he’s down, then I’m forced to say that’s entirely in character: your propensity for self-pity and elaborate self-justification in the face of setbacks has always stopped you from learning from them.
