by Ian Mcewan
There was also good news. He’d had a productive January. His article on persecuted Romanian poets had been accepted by Index on Censorship, and he’d finished a first draft of his monograph on Spenser and town planning. The story I helped with, ‘Probable Adultery’, turned down by the New Review, had been accepted by Bananas magazine and, of course, there was the new novel, the secret he would not share.
Three days into the general election campaign I received a summons from Max. It was not possible for us to go on avoiding each other. Peter Nutting wanted a progress report on all the Sweet Tooth cases. Max had no choice but to see me. We’d barely spoken since his late-night visit. We had passed in the corridor, muttered our ‘good morning’s, taken care to sit far apart in the canteen. I’d thought a lot about the things he’d said. He’d probably spoken the truth that night. It was likely the Service had let me in with a poor degree because I was Tony’s candidate, likely they followed me for a while before losing interest. By sending me, harmless me, Tony may have wanted, as a farewell gesture, to show his old employers that he was harmless too. Or, as I liked to think, he loved me, and thought of me as his gift to the Service, his way of making amends.
I’d been hoping that Max would go back to his fiancée and that we could continue as before. And that’s how it seemed for the first quarter of an hour, as I got in behind the desk and gave an account of the Haley novella, the Romanian poets, New Review, Bananas and the Spenser essay.
‘He’s being talked about,’ I said in conclusion. ‘He’s the coming man.’
Max scowled. ‘I would have thought it would be all over between you by now.’
I said nothing.
‘I’ve heard he gets about. Something of a swordsman.’
‘Max,’ I said quietly. ‘Let’s stick to business.’
‘Tell me more about his novel.’
So I told him about the excitement in the publishing house, newspaper comment on the rush to meet the Austen Prize deadline, the rumour that David Hockney would design the cover.
‘You still haven’t told me what it’s about.’
I wanted praise from upstairs as much as he did. But even more I wanted to get at Max for insulting Tom. ‘It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever read. Post-nuclear, civilisation regressed to savagery, father and daughter travel from the West Country to London looking for the girl’s mother, they don’t find her, catch bubonic plague and die. It’s really beautiful.’
He was looking at me closely. ‘As I remember it, this is just the kind of thing Nutting can’t bear. Oh, and by the way. He and Tapp have got something for you. Have they been in touch?’
‘No, they haven’t. But, Max, we agreed we couldn’t interfere with our writers.’
‘Well, why are you so pleased?’
‘He’s a wonderful writer. It’s very exciting.’
I was close to adding that we were in love. But Tom and I were secretive. In the spirit of the times, we’d made no plans to present ourselves to each other’s parents. We’d made a declaration under the sky on the shingle somewhere between Brighton and Hove and it remained simple and pure.
What became clear in this short meeting with Max was that something had tilted, or shifted. That night before Christmas he’d forfeited some power along with dignity and I sensed he was aware of that, and he knew that I knew. I couldn’t quite restrain the cockiness in my tone, he couldn’t quite stop himself from sounding abject one moment and over-emphatic the next. I wanted to ask him about his intended, the medical woman he’d rejected for me. Had she taken him back or moved on? Either way, it was a humiliation and I knew enough, even in my elated state, not to ask.
There was a silence. Max had given up on the dark suits – I’d noticed this from across the canteen a few days before – and reverted to bristling Harris tweed and, a sickly new development, a knitted tie of mustard yellow against a check Viyella shirt. My guess was that no one, no woman, was guiding his taste. He was staring at his hands spread out palms down on the desk. He took a deep breath that whistled audibly through his nostrils.
‘I now know this. We have ten projects, including Haley. Respected journalists and academics. I don’t know the names, but I’ve an idea of the books they’re taking time off to write. One is about how UK and US plant biology is making the Green Revolution across the rice-growing countries of the Third World, another is a biography of Tom Paine, then there’s going to be an account, first ever, of a detention camp in East Berlin, Special Camp Number Three, used by the Soviets in the years after the war to murder social democrats and children as well as Nazis, and now enlarged by the East German authorities to detain and psychologically torture dissidents or anyone they fancy. There’ll be a book about the political disasters of post-colonial Africa, a new translation of the poetry of Akhmatova, and a survey of European utopias of the seventeenth century. We’ll have a monograph on Trotsky at the head of the Red Army, and a couple more I don’t remember.’
At last he looked up from his hands and his eyes were pale and hard.
‘So, how the fuck is your T.H. Haley and his little fantasy world gone to shit adding to the sum of what we know or care about?’
I’d never heard him swear, and I flinched, as though he’d thrown something in my face. I’d never liked From the Somerset Levels but I liked it now. Usually I would have waited to be dismissed. I got to my feet and pushed the chair under the desk and began to edge out of the room. I would have left with a smart parting line but my mind was a blank. I was almost through the door when I glanced back at him sitting upright at his desk in the apex of his tiny room and saw on his face a look of pain or sorrow, a strange grimace, like a mask, and I heard him say in a low voice, ‘Serena, please don’t go.’
I could sense it welling up, another terrible scene. I had to get out. I went quickly down the corridor and when he called after me, I increased my pace, fleeing not only the mess of his emotions but my own unreasonable guilt. Before I reached my desk downstairs by way of the creaking lift I reminded myself that I belonged, I was loved and nothing Max said could touch me now and I owed him nothing.
Within minutes I was usefully immersed in the atmosphere of gloom and self-blame in Chas Mount’s office, crosschecking dates and facts on a pessimistic memo the desk officer was sending up the chain of command. ‘Notes on recent failures’. I hardly thought about Max for the rest of that day.
Which was as well, because it was Friday afternoon and Tom and I were meeting in a Soho pub at lunchtime the next day. He was coming up to see Ian Hamilton in the Pillars of Hercules in Greek Street. The magazine was due to be launched in April with mostly taxpayers’ money – the Arts Council rather than the Secret Vote. Already there’d been some grumbling in the press about the proposed price of 75p for ‘something we’ve already paid for’, as one newspaper put it. The editor wanted some minor changes to the talking-ape story, which at last had a title – ‘Her Second Novel’. Tom thought he might be interested in the Spenser essay or offer him some reviewing. There was to be no payment for articles, but Tom was convinced that this was going to be the most prestigious publication to appear in. The arrangement was that I would turn up an hour after him and then we’d have what was described to me as a ‘chip-oriented pub lunch’.
On Saturday morning I tidied my room, went to the launderette, ironed clothes for the following week and washed and dried my hair. I was impatient to see Tom and left the house early and was walking up the stairs at Leicester Square Tube station almost an hour ahead of time. I thought I’d browse among the second-hand books on Charing Cross Road. But I was too restless. I stood in front of shelves, taking nothing in, then I moved on to another shop and did the same. I went into Foyles with the vague idea of finding a present for Tom among the new paperbacks, but I couldn’t focus. I was desperate to see him. I cut through Manette Street, which goes along the north of Foyles and passes under a building, with the bar of the Pillars of Hercules on its left. This brief tunnel, probably the remains of an
old coaching courtyard, emerges into Greek Street. Right on the corner is a window with heavy wooden glazing bars. Through it I glimpsed Tom from an oblique angle, sitting right by the window, distorted by the old glass, leaning forward to talk to someone out of my view. I could have gone and tapped on a pane. But, of course, I didn’t want to distract him from his important meeting. It was foolish to arrive so early. I should have wandered off for a while. At the very least, I should have gone in by the main door on Greek Street. Then he would have seen me and I would have witnessed nothing. But I turned back and went into the pub by a side entrance in the covered passageway.
I passed through the peppermint scent emanating from the gents’ lavatory and pushed open another door. There was a man standing alone at the near end of the bar with a cigarette in one hand and a scotch in the other. He turned to look at me and I knew instantly that it was Ian Hamilton. I’d seen his picture in the hostile diary pieces. But wasn’t he supposed to be with Tom? Hamilton was watching me with a neutral, almost friendly look, and a lop-sided smile that didn’t part his lips. Just as Tom had described, he had the strong-jawed look of an old-fashioned movie star, the villain with a heart of gold in a black-and-white romance. He seemed to be waiting for me to approach. I looked through the blue-ish smoky light towards the raised corner seat by the window. Tom was sitting with a woman whose back was to me. She looked familiar. He was holding her hand across the table and his head was inclined, nearly touching hers as he listened. Impossible. I stared hard, trying to resolve the scene into sense, into something innocent. But there it was, Max’s silly improbable cliché, swordsman. It had got under my skin like a burrowing parasite and released its neurotoxins into my bloodstream. It had altered my behaviour and brought me here early to see for myself.
Hamilton came over and stood by me, following the line of my gaze.
‘She’s a writer too. Commercial stuff. But not bad in fact. Nor is he. She’s just lost her father.’
He said it lightly, knowing full well that I wouldn’t believe him. It was tribal, one man covering for another.
I said, ‘They seem to be old friends.’
‘What’ll you have?’
When I said I’d have a glass of lemonade he appeared to wince. He went to the bar and I stepped back behind one of the half-screens that were a feature of the pub, allowing drinkers to stand in privacy to talk. I was tempted to slip out of the side door, stay out of Tom’s reach all weekend, let him sweat while I nursed my turmoil. Could it really be so crude, Tom’s bit on the side? I peeped round the screen and the tableau of betrayal was unchanged, she still spoke, he still gripped her hand and listened tenderly as he dipped his head towards hers. It was so monstrous it was almost funny. I couldn’t feel anything yet, no anger or panic or sorrow, and I didn’t even feel numb. Horrible clarity was all I could claim.
Ian Hamilton brought me my drink, a very large glass of straw-yellow white wine. Exactly what I needed.
‘Get this down you.’
He was watching me with wry concern as I drank, and then he asked me what I did. I explained that I worked for an arts foundation. Instantly, his eyelids looked heavy with boredom. But he heard me out and then he had an idea.
‘You need to put money into a new magazine. I suppose that’s why you’re here, to bring me the cash.’
I said we only did individual artists.
‘This way I’ll be letting you back fifty individual artists.’
I said, ‘Perhaps I could look at your business plan.’
‘Business plan?’
It was just a phrase I’d heard and I guessed correctly that it would close down the conversation.
Hamilton nodded in Tom’s direction. ‘Here’s your man.’
I stepped out from the shelter of the screen. Over in the corner Tom was already on his feet and the woman was reaching for her coat from the seat beside her. She stood too and turned. She was three stone lighter, hair straightened and almost touching her shoulders, her tight black jeans were tucked into calf-length boots, her face was longer and thinner, beautiful in fact, but instantly recognisable. Shirley Shilling, my old friend. The moment I saw her, she saw me. In the brief second that our eyes met, she began to raise a hand in greeting then let it drop hopelessly to her side, as if to acknowledge that there was too much to explain and she was in no mood for it. She went quickly out of the front entrance. Tom was coming towards me, smiling loopily and I, like an idiot, forced a smile back, aware that Hamilton at my side, now lighting another cigarette, was watching us. There was something in his manner that imposed restraint. He was cool, so we would have to be too. I was obliged to pretend that I didn’t care.
So the three of us stood at the bar for a long time drinking. The men talked books and gossiped about writers, particularly the poet Robert Lowell, a friend of Hamilton and possibly going mad; and football, on which Tom was weak, but adept at making good use of the two or three things he knew. It didn’t occur to anyone to sit down. Tom ordered pork pies with a round of drinks but Hamilton didn’t touch his, and later used his plate and then the pie itself as an ashtray. I assumed that Tom, like me, dreaded leaving the conversation, for then we would have to have a row. After my second glass I chipped in occasionally, but mostly I pretended to listen while I thought about Shirley. So much change! She had made it as a writer, so no real coincidence in her meeting Tom in the Pillars of Hercules – he had told me it was already established as the New Review’s office extension, anteroom and canteen, and in preparation for the launch dozens of writers came through. She had shed her decency along with the fat. She’d shown no surprise at finding me here, so she must have known my connection to Tom. When the time came for me to be angry she’d get more than her share. I’d give her hell.
But I felt nothing now. The pub closed and we followed Hamilton through the afternoon gloom to Muriel’s, a tiny dark drinking club where men of a certain age with jowly ruined faces were perched on stools at the bar, pronouncing loudly on international affairs.
As we came in one said loudly, ‘China? Fuck off. China!’
We made a huddle on three velvet armchairs in a corner. Tom and Ian had reached that point in a drinking session when the conversation patrols endlessly the tiny perimeters of a minor detail. They were talking about Larkin, about some lines at the end of ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, one of the poems Tom had made me read. They were disagreeing, though without much passion, about an ‘arrow shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain’. Hamilton thought the lines were perfectly clear. The train journey was over, the just-married couples were released to go their ways, into London, into their separate fates. Tom less laconically said the lines were dark, touched with foreboding, the elements were negative – a sense of falling, wet, lost, somewhere. He used the word ‘liquescence’ and Hamilton said drily, ‘Liquescence, eh?’ Then they went around again, finding clever ways to make the same points, though I sensed that the older man may have merely been sounding Tom out for his judgement or agility in argument. I don’t think Hamilton cared either way.
I wasn’t listening all the time. The men ignored me and I was beginning to feel a bit of a writer’s moll as well as a fool. I made a mental list of my possessions in the Brighton flat – I might not be going there again. A hairdryer, underwear, a couple of summer frocks and a swimsuit, nothing I’d seriously miss. I was persuading myself that leaving Tom would lift from me the burden of honesty. I could go with my secret intact. We were drinking brandy with coffee at this point. I didn’t mind parting from Tom. I’d forget him quickly and find someone else, someone better. It was all just fine, I could take care of myself, I’d spend my time well, dedicate myself to work, read Olivia Manning’s Balkan trilogy, which I had lined up by my bed, use the Bishop’s twenty-pound note to take a week’s holiday in spring and be an interesting single woman in a small Mediterranean hotel.
We stopped drinking at six and went down into the street and walked in freezing rain towards Soho Square. Hamilton
was due to give a reading at the Poetry Society in Earls Court that evening. He shook Tom’s hand, embraced me, and then we watched him hurry away, nothing in his gait to suggest the kind of afternoon he’d had. And then Tom and I were alone, not sure which direction to walk in. Now it begins, I thought, and at that moment, revived by the cold rain in my face, and understanding the true measure of my loss and Tom’s treachery, I was overcome with sudden desolation and couldn’t move. A great black weight was on me and my feet were heavy and numb. I stood looking across the square towards Oxford Street. Some chanting Hare Krishna types, shaven-head dupes with tambourines, were filing back into their headquarters. Dodging their god’s rain. I detested every last one of them.
‘Serena, darling, what’s the matter?’
He stood unsteadily before me, pissed, but no less good an actor for that, his face puckered with theatrical concern.
I could see us clearly, as though from a window two flights up, with the view distorted by black-edged raindrops. A couple of Soho drunks about to have a row on the filthy slick pavement. I would have preferred to walk away, for the outcome was obvious. But I still couldn’t move.
Instead, I started off the scene, and spoke through a weary sigh. ‘You’re having an affair with my friend.’
I sounded so plaintive and childish, and stupid too, as though an affair with a stranger would have been just fine. He was looking at me in amazement, and a fine show of being baffled. I could have hit him.
‘What are you …?’ Then, a clumsy imitation of a man struck by a brilliant idea.
‘Shirley Shilling! Oh God, Serena. Do you really think that? I should have explained. I met her at the Cambridge reading. She was with Martin Amis. I didn’t know until today that you once worked in the same office somewhere. Then you and I started talking with Ian and I forgot all about it. Her father’s just died and she’s devastated. She would have come over but she was too upset …’
