‘She thinks you said no because you’re repressed.’
He laughed. ‘It worked then. Her self-esteem’s intact.’
‘I doubt it. Kirsten’s used to men wanting to fuck her. You disappointed her.’
‘And you? Do you want to fuck her?’
‘I did.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I mean I wanted to, but she wasn’t having it.’
‘She’d have been the same with me.’
‘No, she thinks you’re a genius.’
‘More fool her.’
‘Plus, you’re a prof.’
‘Ah yes, the teacher–pupil dynamic. The exchange of old minds and young bodies. It’s the first rule: don’t fuck your students. I learned the hard way.’
He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t push him. We walked on a few yards in silence, till a ball came bouncing past us, then a dog bounding after it into the lake, then a woman striding quickly who smiled and said ‘Silly animal’ as she passed us, though it was said with pride, and once the dog had retrieved the ball, and shook itself dry on the shore, and dropped the ball in front of her, she threw it straight back in the lake, fifty yards further ahead.
‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,’ Rob said. ‘Pure crap. If I have to read another fresher essay on how the alliterative “l”s in Yeats’s poem mimic the sound of water I’ll kill myself.’
We walked on past the lake towards the little maple forest at the edge of campus.
‘Whose woods these are I think I know,’ he said. ‘Now that is writing. By one of my namesakes – Robert, I mean, not Pope. There are quite a few of us – Frost, Burns, Browning, Lowell, Zimmerman. But to friends I’m Rob, OK? How’s yours by the way?’
‘My what?’
‘Your writing – how’s it going?’
‘Badly,’ I said, an answer I’d not have given my classmates, all of whom were relentlessly upbeat about their progress, as were our tutors, who’d drummed it into us in the first week that we had to be ‘sensitive’ to each other’s efforts, and who led the way by tempering the mildest hint of criticism with bucketloads of praise, so that when Kirsten, for example, submitted a Magical Realist fable about a woman giving birth to seventeen giant yellow chipmunks, the suggestion that she might be over-indebted to García Márquez or Angela Carter was swiftly passed over in order that we focus on the ‘verisimilitude’ with which she’d depicted the chipmunks. My own fiction had been treated as respectfully as everyone else’s, perhaps more respectfully because of my status as a foreigner. But I wasn’t happy with it and needed to understand where I was going wrong.
‘Now you see why I prefer teaching Swift and Pope,’ Rob said. ‘They understand you’ve got to be savage. All this happy-clappy stuff will get you nowhere. Writers need constant discouragement. You should study The Dunciad. Come to my seminar. We’re discussing it next week.’
‘I’m not really into poetry.’
‘Well, come the week after. Thursday afternoon. We’re discussing Rasselas.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Try? I expect to see you there. You have read Rasselas?’
I hadn’t read it, but after we parted, outside the Arts Building, I walked back to the library and found a copy, one of seven sitting on a shelf marked 824.63, all in pristine condition and only a couple of them previously taken out, which I found odd, given that Rob’s seminar group consisted, so he’d told me, of twelve students (‘which with me makes thirteen, though I’ve never been unlucky enough for everyone to be present at the same time’). But even with postgraduate teaching there was a pressure on staff to stick to texts in the Norton Anthology, so perhaps it wasn’t so strange.
Rasselas made a deep impression on me. I’d never have admitted as much to my creative writing tutors, for whom only texts published since 1960, and ideally 1980, could serve as models. Not that they were ill-read. Both of them had studied Eng Lit. And from the little I’d read of their work (Seth Erden was a bearded short-story writer in his thirties, and Henry Glisson a novelist in his late fifties), both were more old-school than their professed classroom embrace of postmodernity would suggest. If I’d alluded to Rasselas, metafictionally, they’d have been respectful – but not if I’d said I planned to use it as a model for my own work. Even I knew that sounded daft. But the moment I read it – or rather, from the day I sat in on Rob’s class and heard him talk about it – the thing seemed unavoidable. I fell under Dr Johnson’s spell by falling under Rob’s.
I felt nervous turning up. I’d not seen him since our walk and wondered how serious the invitation had been. Because the departmental noticeboard offered no clue as to where the seminar was taking place, I had to ask the office administrator, who gave me the room number, but then became suspicious and more or less told me I couldn’t attend: it was too late to enrol – as a creative writing student I wasn’t entitled to enrol – and sitting in on classes unless you were enrolled was contrary to college policy; even if it was true, as I claimed, that Professor Pope had invited me, he would need to seek permission from the head of department, Professor Jacobs, and as far as she knew, in her capacity as his assistant, a post which placed herself and Professor Jacobs in daily liaison (I tried not to smile at the word), such permission had been neither sought nor granted.
‘Fuck all that,’ Rob said, when I filled him in while hovering nervously outside Room B64. ‘You passed the test. You made it. Come and meet the zombies.’
They weren’t zombies, just painfully earnest, their contributions framed either in the structuralist discourse of the day or in a quasi-Christian idiom that probed the moral standing (saint? sinner? both?) of each character. Rob’s approach gave neither sect any comfort. He was brisk, rude and interested only in Johnson’s language, to the exclusion of any discussion of character, structure, narrative, symbol, etc. The students might not have taken it from a fellow American. But Rob’s Englishness let him off the hook. In the midst of denunciation his voice would soften as he paused on a phrase, whether Johnson’s or an unconnected-yet-pertinent writer’s, and said it over, lovingly, two or three times. Lovingly: that’s the point. It was his love of great literature that made him intolerant of writers who fell short. Even the slowest in the class could see that.
He’d introduced me as ‘an interloper from the creative writing school – let’s see if we can teach him a thing or two’. I sat in a chair to his left. Only once, when asked, did I speak, or rather mumble. But at the end, he suggested we go for a drink. Most of the students were still there, gathering up their stuff, and I wondered what they made of us. Did they think we were gay? It occurred to me that I’d missed the point about Rob’s rejection of Kirsten; maybe he was gay.
Outside the big cities, most Americans eat dinner absurdly early, and after a couple of Happy Hour drinks in a pub just off campus Rob and I did the same. Maybe he’d talked enough about books for one day. Or the cocktails made him indiscreet. Or he felt I was someone he could trust. Whatever the reason, he got on to sex.
‘It’s nothing to boast of, but I was a virgin when I went to university,’ he said. ‘I’d grown up in a tiny village and been to a single-sex school. The idea that a girl might talk to me, let alone allow me to touch her, was extraordinary. After three years in London doing my degree, then three more not getting on with my doctorate, I could still count my sexual experiences on one hand. My main memory is how awkward it was waking up with someone next morning: she’d make you tea, or you’d make her tea, and you’d find a way past the embarrassment and maybe have sex again, but when you next met up the spark would be gone, for her if not for you, and you’d wonder what the point had been, which was sad if not a dagger through the heart. I guess we were learning the difference between love and sex. I tried to write about it at the time, but the poems were no good.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m writing a different kind of poetry.’
�
�I meant …’
‘Oh, my love life. It isn’t hard to meet women in a place like this. I’ve had a few relationships. But nothing serious. And I don’t go anywhere near the students. It’s the first rule, as I say: don’t fuck students – unless you’re a student. When I was in Tennessee … no, it’s too long a story, I’ll tell you another time. Shall we get the check?’
I’m sure he said ‘check’ rather than ‘bill’, and that he paid for us both, not only that night but on all the others in Brandon. When, years later, we began our habit of having lunch once a year in Soho, I didn’t begrudge doing the same: not only was I the higher earner, I owed him. Intellectually as well as financially: I learned far more from Rob than from my writing tutors. I even said as much, in the solitary interview I gave, for the Eastern Daily Press, when my novel came out. Rob wouldn’t have seen it, but he knew. And I like to think I didn’t disappoint him when I later started working as a literary journalist. Though he affected to despise the press, he depended on it. And though I never felt used, I played my part in giving him work and keeping him visible at a time, in his fifties, when he thought he was slipping from view.
3
Leonie sends her kids to private school, which, as she says, means paying a fortune for them to have longer holidays. She likes to get away in early July, before the state schools break up. Others on the paper (not only those who are parents) do the same. It’s a quieter time at the office. You feel the change in various ways – the empty desks, the lack of queues in nearby sandwich bars, the appearance of features that would normally be deemed too slight or whimsical to publish. But it’s a busy period for those of us left behind, especially me, with many publishers bringing out their lead fiction titles. I ought to enjoy the added responsibility. But I don’t like feeling under pressure. And with the fallout from Mabel, the new baby – broken nights, visits to the doctor, extra school runs, Marie feeling tired and crotchety – I felt it especially that summer. We’d booked to go to Majorca for two weeks, along with my mother. When Leonie returned for what she called ‘the handover’, on the Thursday before our Saturday flight from Stansted, it came as a huge relief.
‘Don’t ever have teenagers,’ she said.
‘Jack already behaves like one,’ I said.
‘Well, don’t ever take them to Italy. Not another boring church, Mum. Actually, this is the Sistine Chapel, sweetie, famous for the artwork on its ceiling by Michelangelo, the greatest artist of the Renaissance. Whatever. Both of them are doing art GCSE. You’d think they’d be interested. But all the ice creams and pizzas in the world weren’t enough to get them onside. I hate you, Mum, Carmel told me every morning. At least her resentment took the form of words. Douglas just grunted. Heigh-ho, how’s it been here?’
I showed her that week’s pages, already put to bed, and updated her on the next: most of the reviews had come in, with several more held over through lack of space, so she wouldn’t be short of copy. I hoped she might tell me to take the Friday off, and perhaps she would have done, but she was rushing to the morning conference. I’d found the obligation to attend it – when nothing of relevance to Books came up and the pages were waiting to be worked on – the worst aspect of deputising for her. But Leonie enjoyed going. It made her feel part of the team. And, she claimed, helped prevent Books from becoming a backwater.
She emerged round 12.30, just as I was nipping out to buy a sandwich.
‘Anything new?’
‘Nah, it’s like I’ve never been away. The migrant crisis. There’s no other story. Sad to hear your friend popped it, though.’
‘What?’
‘Robert Pope. Surely you heard.’
‘Rob’s dead?’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you were friends.’
‘We are … we were. What happened?’
‘No idea. Talk to Tony. He asked me were we doing anything. Maybe you’d like to.’
Rob dead? I got up and headed to the Gents. It was only ten yards away but took forever, as though I were wading against a fast-flowing stream. Rob dead? A large mirror hung over the washbasins. I studied my face to see what I was feeling. It gave nothing back. I wasn’t conscious of feeling anything. But my hands gripped the side of the basin and I stood there for several minutes before heading back outside.
Tony is our obits editor, formerly foreign editor till they appointed someone younger. Obits was considered a demotion, almost as bad as redundancy, but Tony loves the job and has brought a new gravitas to the pages.
‘Do you have a moment?’ I said.
He must have noticed how shaky I looked, because he stood up and ushered me into the lobby by the lifts, away from his colleagues at their keyboards.
‘Yes, Leonie said you knew him well,’ he said, when I explained.
‘What happened?’
‘Heart attack, I believe.’
‘Right. Good. Not good, obviously, but with it being so sudden I wondered if …’
‘Definitely not suicide. The chap who called me was keen to emphasise that. Louis someone.’
‘Louis de Vries. He’s Rob’s agent.’
‘He died on Tuesday, apparently, but his wife didn’t call till last night. It often happens that way when it’s unexpected. The relatives are in shock and need a day by themselves, as a family, till they make it public.’
‘Rob didn’t have family. Just his wife. No kids.’
‘This Louis chap mentioned a sister. They’re trying to track her down.’
‘She lives in Australia. She and Rob didn’t get on.’
‘We have an obit on the stocks,’ Tony said. ‘Might need refreshing. I’ll send it over. Leonie thought you might want to do something on the books pages.’
‘This week’s have already gone to bed. It’d have to wait till Saturday week.’
‘Speak to Rachel, then.’ Rachel is, or was, our features editor. ‘She might let you write something for Saturday.’
‘Me?’
‘As a friend.’
Not just as a friend, as his literary executor. But I wasn’t getting into that.
‘It might be better to get a poet,’ I said.
‘Well, see what she says,’ he said and touched me on the arm. ‘My condolences. He obviously meant a lot to you.’
Though it was surprising to hear an obits editor offer consolatory platitudes, I felt better for his touch. I left the building, rather than return to my desk, and bought a crayfish-and-rocket wrap from the nearest sandwich bar, and took it to the park, where I sat on the bench and thought about Rob, and of times I’d spent with him. It was a sunny July day. Tuesday had been sunny, too, not the sort of day for someone to die on, least of all Rob, who had liked the sun – the open air anyway – when we were in Brandon. I remembered walking with him through woods, along riverbanks, on ridge-trails, him talking and me listening, master–pupil, each with our literary ambitions, still years from achieving them, but with him leading the way. He was hard to keep up with: I was always one step behind. Latterly, he’d seemed less fit, with a sedentary paunch. In fact, when we came back to England (with me, for once, leading the way) the walking had ceased. The furthest we went was to a pub or restaurant, where his only exercise would be waving his arms while he talked. Still, he always looked well, not a man heading for a coronary. Heading for: it was impossible not to think that way; not to survey the past for signs of why he’d ended where he had, short of a future.
I called Marie, at home, but her phone went straight to voicemail; she’d be at the toddler group. I didn’t leave a message. In retrospect, I felt relieved she hadn’t picked up. She’d disliked Rob, not just for who he was but for belonging to a time before I knew her. Any sympathy she offered would fall short. Only an acknowledgement of his greatness and of my privilege in knowing him would suffice. I was feeling hagiographical as well as grief-struck.
A young couple carrying Harrods bags asked in broken English if the bench was free and I shuffled up to make room. I could have moved to the
grass, where office workers lay sunbathing in the heat or sat gossiping in the shade. But a bench seemed more dignified and if I sat upright I wouldn’t collapse. No one died was a mantra I used to calm myself with in the middle of crises. A shunt in the car, a flood bringing down a ceiling, the childminder crying off at the last minute: so be it, I’ll cope, no one died. The mantra didn’t work this time. Someone had.
I thought back to my last meeting with Rob, at the end of the previous year. The subject matter had been sombre: given the executor business, how could it not be? But he didn’t look ill and there’d been room for banter. What of the time before that, same venue, same time of year? He’d brought a proof copy of his new collection – his final collection, as it turned out – and pressed it on me: ‘Read it, no one else will.’ Self-disparagement was a trait of his, always (as Marie said) with a touch of vanity: he did himself down in order for his listeners to praise him. Which I did, of course, albeit joshingly. ‘As long as posterity reads you.’ ‘Posterity!’ he snarled. ‘What has posterity ever done for the living?’ But he was anxious that his work survive him. Why else appoint an executor?
That job was now down to me. Was writing a piece for the paper a good way to start? Rachel might propose it when I saw her. And Leonie would certainly encourage it: she was always pushing for books-related articles to go on the feature pages. I was in shock. But if I didn’t write something, who would? There were no poets I could think of who’d been close to him. Didn’t I owe it to Rob?
Then again, was a piece written in haste any way to pay tribute? There’d surely be better opportunities for me to honour his memory.
The Executor Page 4
