The Executor

by Blake Morrison

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Blake Morrison

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Love’s Alphabet

  Epigraph

  Contents

  Anon

  Bed

  Couple

  Dawn

  Etiquette

  Frank

  Gorse

  Hair

  Illicit

  Jealousy

  Knave

  Lies

  Mirror

  Nostalgia

  Outsider

  Paying

  Questions

  Rules

  Shower

  Thanatos

  Unwanted

  Vodka

  Wardrobe

  X-rated

  Yo-yo

  Zero

  Copyright

  About the Book

  What matters most: marriage or friendship? fidelity or art? the wishes of the living or the talents of the dead?

  Matt Holmes finds himself considering these questions sooner than anticipated when his friend, the poet Robert Pope, dies unexpectedly. Rob had invited Matt to become his literary executor at their annual boozy lunch, pointing out that, at age sixty, he was likely to be around for some time yet. And Matt, having played devotee and apprentice to ‘the bow-tie poet’ for so long, hadn’t the heart (or the gumption) to deny him.

  Now, after a frosty welcome from his widow, Matt sits at Rob’s rosewood desk and ponders his friend’s motives. He has never understood Rob’s conventional life with Jill, who seems to have no interest in her late husband’s work. But he soon finds himself in an ethical minefield, making shocking and scabrous discoveries that overturn everything he thought he knew about his friend. As Jill gets to work in the back garden, Matt is forced to weigh up the merits of art and truth. Should he conceal what he has found or share it? After all, it’s not just Rob’s reputation that could be transformed forever…

  Bestselling poet and novelist Blake Morrison creates a biting portrait of competitive male friendship, sexual obsession and the fragile transactions of married life. The Executor innovatively interweaves poetry and prose to form a gripping literary detective story.

  About the Author

  Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of the bestselling memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me (‘the must-read book of the year’ – Tony Parsons). He also wrote a study of the disturbing child murder, the Bulger case, As If. His acclaimed recent novels include South of the River and The Last Weekend. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist, and Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University. He lives in South London.

  ALSO BY BLAKE MORRISON

  FICTION

  The Justification of Johann Gutenberg

  South of the River

  The Last Weekend

  NON-FICTION

  And When Did You Last See Your Father?

  As If

  Too True

  Things My Mother Never Told Me

  POETRY

  Dark Glasses

  The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper

  Selected Poems

  Pendle Witches

  A Discoverie of Witches

  This Poem …

  Shingle Street

  PLAYS

  The Cracked Pot

  Oedipus/Antigone

  We Are Three Sisters

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Yellow House

  For Kathy

  It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs should not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing room, or the factions of a camp.

  Samuel Johnson, The Idler (29 March 1760)

  I care not though I were to live but one day and one night if only my fame and deeds live after me.

  Cúchulainn

  1

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s some ask.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much work,’ Rob said.

  ‘I don’t mind the work – it just feels so morbid.’

  ‘Don’t be soppy.’

  We were eating at Archie’s in Soho, a restaurant that’s more like a club, very intimate, an upper room with a dozen tables and a small bar with high stools. The floorboards stretch from one end of the room to the other, and we were sitting near the door to the kitchen: every time one of the waiters walked past, the table wobbled. During our mains I’d slipped a table mat under one leg, without success. There was no way round it. We were on shaky ground.

  ‘I know it’s an imposition …’ he said.

  ‘I just hate the thought. You’re my friend.’

  ‘Which is why I’m asking.’

  ‘Friend’ was true. But our contact had dwindled to an annual lunch and occasional emails. The lunch was always timed for late November – just far ahead enough of Christmas to avoid groups of office workers wearing party hats and eating turkey. And the emails we exchanged were jokey, not like the serious stuff today.

  ‘It’s not that you’re ill,’ I said.

  ‘Just thinking ahead. My dad died at sixty-one.’

  ‘We’re all living longer these days.’

  ‘Except those with bad genes. Even if I add five years to his, my prospects aren’t good.’

  ‘Come on. You’re only what …?’

  ‘Fifty-nine.’

  I knew that. Both our birthdays fell in May, his fourteen years before mine. But I didn’t want him thinking of me as an acolyte. Christ, I hadn’t even read his last collection.

  ‘I’m surprised you think I’m qualified,’ I said. If I was going to do this, I deserved to hear him spell it out.

  ‘You’ve known me longer than anyone else.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘My parents are dead, my sister doesn’t count, and no one from school has ever read me.’

  ‘You must know other poets.’

  ‘None I can trust not to fuck up.’

  ‘Or Jill. How is Jill?’

  ‘Jill’s fine – but she won’t want to do it.’

  Fine is how Jill always was, or how he always said she was: steady, loyal, more mindful of his needs than of her own. Or perhaps none of those things, just not a subject for discussion.

  ‘Dessert?’

  ‘Nah. Just a coffee.’

  ‘More wine?’ he said, dangling the empty bottle by the neck.

  ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Just a glass then?’

  ‘I’ve work to get back to.’

  ‘Small or large?’

  ‘Well, if we’re going to bother at all …’

  He waved to the waiter, who cleared our plates and went to fetch two glasses.

  ‘No need to decide now, if you want to think about it. There won’t be much you’ve not seen. The las
t collection cleaned me out.’

  ‘But there’ll be other stuff to come.’

  ‘Little worth keeping gets written in old age.’

  ‘Stop pretending to be geriatric.’

  ‘I feel geriatric.’

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  And he didn’t. There was a boyish glint in his eye. I’d never quite understood what it signified – irony, mischief, an appreciation of life’s little absurdities – but it shone as brightly as ever. His hair, despite a few grey hints, was exuberant: the Frizzy Guy I’d heard him being called in Brandon the year I’d gone there to study, or rather to write. I’d envied him then – for his knowledge, his energy, his independence. Despite his gloominess, I envied him still.

  ‘OK, I’m not old, but I’m realistic. I peaked in my forties and now I’m past it. The reviewers of my last book said as much. Including the one on your pages.’

  ‘He’s always harsh,’ I said.

  ‘Pity you gave it to him, then.’

  ‘Leonie commissions the poetry reviews.’

  ‘I’m not complaining. He made some good points. Fuck, I agreed with him. That’s the problem. Thanks, and could we have the bill, please?’

  The waiter’s arrival distracted him and allowed me to change the subject. I still remembered some of the adjectives the review had used – ‘tired’, ‘hollow’, ‘pompous’, ‘antiquated’, ‘devoid of life and conviction’. I’d felt bad when we ran the piece, all the more so because Leonie had consulted me before sending the book out – was Marcus Downe the right reviewer? Why not? I’d said, half distracted by a picture caption I was writing, but not so distracted that I couldn’t foresee the possible outcome. At least Marcus’s reviews were long and prominently displayed – that would be my defence if Rob brought it up again, along with the argument (diametrically opposed) that book reviews don’t count for much these days. But reviews mattered to Rob, and it was no use pretending that to allocate 1,500 words to his new collection was a mark of respect when 1,200 of those words were devoted to demolishing him. I’d sent a warning email the day before the piece appeared; he didn’t reply. That was six months ago. When he finally got in touch to suggest lunch (‘the annual ritual’, as he called it), I wondered if his purpose was to berate me. Well, I was right that he had an agenda. But not the one I’d been expecting. Far from banishing me to the wilderness, he wanted to anoint me as his disciple.

  ‘Do I have to sign anything?’ I said.

  ‘I just nominate you.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘As far as I know. My solicitor’s dealing with the will.’

  ‘You’ve made a will?’

  ‘Haven’t you? You’ve two kids, for Chrissake.’

  ‘Three soon – Marie’s four months pregnant.’

  ‘Get a move on then. That’s a lot of dependants. You don’t want to leave them in the shit.’

  He didn’t offer congratulations and I didn’t tell him that we knew it was a girl. The subject of children, like the subject of Jill, was one we usually skirted round. I can’t recall him expressing a particular aversion to kids when we first met, in Brandon, no more so than was average for a determinedly single man, for whom the prospect of getting a woman pregnant was a routine terror, not to be assuaged by her whispering Don’t bother, I hate the feel of those things, I’m on the pill. When he returned to England and married Jill in his early forties (the registry office ceremony taking place on the day his second collection came out), I wondered if they might have children; she was younger than him, after all. But nothing happened. And went on not happening. A fertility problem? Or a decision jointly arrived at that a life without children suited them best, what with her career in the charity sector and his as a poet needing solitude? We never talked about it, but the latter seemed more likely, given how at ease with his life he seemed and how incurious about my kids, to the point of never remembering their gender or names. There are people who say they don’t have dogs because they lack the time to look after them properly. I could imagine Rob making a similar case against kids, and Jill – loyal, selfless Jill – going along with it, whatever her true feelings.

  ‘I’m serious, Matt. It’s irresponsible otherwise. I hope you’ve taken out life insurance too. You never know. That’s why I’m asking if you’ll –’

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’

  ‘Last word, promise: if you die before me, I’ll do the same for you.’

  ‘What, get it all out there – the unpublished stories, the abandoned novels, the letters and diaries?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Rob. No one gives a toss about my work. There’s nothing to give a toss about.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he said, signalling a reminder to the waiter: where the fuck was our bill? It was touching if he really believed that despite my having a ten-to-six, five-day-a-week job to do, two small children to bring up, and an elderly parent to visit as often as could be managed, I still had the time and energy to write something worthwhile.

  ‘My turn,’ he said, as always, when the bill finally arrived, and ‘Give it here, the paper will cover it,’ I replied, as always, laying my credit card on the plate without even looking at the amount. In the early days, the paper had covered our lunches. Newspapers were more affluent then, and expense claims less closely monitored. Besides, Rob was a name, and wrote the odd review for us, so treating him to lunch seemed appropriate, all the more so since I received a monthly salary, and he, for all his renown, was a freelance writer, what’s worse a poet, dependent for his living on the money he scraped together from readings, talks, bits of teaching and occasional book reviews. We never talked about it (pride would have prevented him from pleading penury), but these days he probably earned less than ever. If he’d known it was me paying, not the paper, he’d have felt humiliated. But I doubt it occurred to him. The fact that our circulation was in freefall, that twenty-odd members of staff had just been laid off, and that those of us remaining had been forced to take a salary cut – none of this would have reached his ears, or his eyrie, despite it being widely reported, or if it had, would not have struck him as having any connection with our lunch.

  ‘You must write something for us,’ I said, punching in the code for my credit card, as the waiter stood there with a smile he probably hoped would bring a tip, despite the 12.5 per cent service charge already added to the bill.

  ‘Last time you were probably the only person who looked at the piece.’

  ‘Rubbish. There’s a team who monitor page traffic. OK, it’s not like we’re the news pages, but people do read reviews.’

  ‘The online stuff, maybe – for the comments by groupies or trolls. At least your guy had some discrimination.’

  ‘My guy?’

  ‘The one who pissed on my book. He meant what he said and he put his name to it. Fair enough.’

  We were back to that review. It had hurt him even more than I thought.

  ‘It’s the assassins hiding behind pseudonyms I object to. They stick the knife in, then disappear into the night. That’s why I avoid the Internet. It’s a haven for cowards and thugs.’

  I took the receipt from the waiter and stuck it in my wallet. Had he been listening? Did he realise Rob was a well-known poet? Or did he see him as just another grumpy old man? Even I felt embarrassed hearing him bang on.

  ‘I’m not blaming anyone,’ Rob said, seeing my expression.

  ‘I had my moment. No one wants to hear poems by white, middle-aged, middle-class Englishmen any more. We’re dinosaurs. Doubly disadvantaged – male and pale. Quite right too. We ruled the roost for too long. I wouldn’t listen to someone like me either. You have to have content – a story – and I don’t.’

  ‘Everyone has a story,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe. But the point of a poem is to hold back, not spill the beans, so readers keep finding more. Freedom of expression includes the right not to reveal anything … Sorry, I’m boring you, we need
to go.’

  ‘Nice scarf,’ I said, as we retrieved our coats from the cloakroom halfway down the stairs.

  It was navy blue, with small red foxes across it.

  ‘I’ve had it for years. Treated myself. It was either foxes or squirrels. A small shop in one of those arcades off Piccadilly used to sell them. I came across it by chance. Old Italian guy. He had a photo of Princess Di in his window. She once bought a tie there. For Charles, I suppose.’

  ‘Or Dodi Fayed. Silk’s more for a lover than a husband, wouldn’t you say?’

  He shrugged and led the way downstairs.

  ‘So, how are you spending Christmas?’ I said.

  ‘Quietly, at home. Sounds like someone’s death notice, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No family coming?’

  ‘We might see Jill’s brother at some point. But we don’t really get on.’

  Certainly, Rob didn’t. I could remember him describing Jill’s brother as an orang-utan.

  ‘At least he’s sane,’ he said. ‘Unlike my sister.’

  ‘She’s no better, then?’

  ‘The last I heard she was living in Sydney. On the streets, probably. Who the fuck are all these people? London gets more crowded every time I come in. Which way are you going?’

  The air was cold. He tied his scarf tighter. Since his sudden move to Hadingfield ten years ago, he’d adopted the pose of a baffled provincial, unable to keep up.

  ‘I go right, you go left,’ I said, hugging him. ‘Same place next year?’

  ‘If I’m still here.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Better meet sooner, then. Let’s fix a date once the Christmas madness is over.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, and probably meant it, just as I meant it. But we both immediately forgot about it. At any rate I did.

  ‘Being an editor’s like being a Sherpa,’ my about-to-be boss Leonie said during my job interview eight years ago, ‘we do all the work and they get all the glory.’ By ‘they’ she meant reviewers, though in relation to the authors whose books they appraise, most of them feel like Sherpas too. Still, I’d had some experience of editing by then and took the point. There’s a lot of baggage to carry and a lot of dull slog. And at the end, we’re anonymous, backroom girls and boys known to those in the business – authors, agents, publishers, fellow journos – but not to the world beyond. The only byline is the reviewer’s, even if, as often happens, we’ve virtually written the piece ourselves. It was a shock to discover how sloppily some writers write, not least famous ones. No doubt they’re too busy getting on with their own stuff to think a mere book review or arts feature is worth losing sleep over, though I’ve heard publishers’ editors complain that even with novels and memoirs it’s left to them to tidy the prose. For us it can be more like building a new house than tidying. Only a few writers send in good copy – and say what you like about Rob, he was one of them.