by Luke Brown
Amy next to me began to clap and slowly the room followed, the whole room, until a wave of noise sweeping over me was like something cracking, tightening, splitting, a sound I heard and feared like it was the sound of my heart bursting. I put my head down and waited for it to finish.
‘Similarly,’ began Cockburn, ‘I want to thank Alejandro Montenegro, all the way from Argentina because of his love for Craig.’ At this, Amy reached over me and took Alejandro’s hand. It was a nice gesture of solidarity, which had the effect of locking me down in my seat like the bar on a rollercoaster. That’s what it felt like too, like being on the Big One on Blackpool Pleasure Beach, slowly cranking your way to a height from which only disaster could be conceived.
‘I have heard wonderful tales, from Craig, from Alejandro, from their friend Amy, about the closeness of their bond. They grew up in Australia together before Craig followed Alejandro to his family’s home in Argentina. Alejandro was the first reader of this novel, twenty years ago. A manuscript we can only guess whether was ever sent to publishers.’
‘I’m sure he would have mentioned that,’ whispered Amy across me to Alejandro.
Alejandro looked down at his feet.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me if it was sent to publishers and turned down,’ said James. ‘Not because it’s not good: it’s wonderful. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was rejected, because publishers make mistakes. It is our job to make mistakes, to have the courage to get it wrong so that sometimes we have the courage to get it right.’ James was really beginning to choke up now. ‘I have a confession to make,’ he said decisively, ‘about this book.’
This is the moment when the cart reached the top of the hill and teetered on the summit. Now he would not meet my eye. Now he was looking at Belinda and she would not meet his. I made my conclusion about her complicity. I wondered if she had known from the start or only discovered when it was too late. It had been easy at first for us to pretend we were not doing the appalling thing we were doing. Now James wanted to confess. And now was the end of all our careers, perhaps even our liberty.
The human seatbelt keeping me from fleeing grew tighter. ‘Ow!’ said Amy to Alejandro. ‘You’re squeezing me too hard.’ He let go, and I picked my escape route, preparing to haul myself past all the knees to the aisle – and run. ‘What in God’s name is he doing?’ asked Alejandro, turning to me, pressing down with his hand on my knees as if predicting my impulse to flight.
‘What’s wrong with you two?’ asked Amy.
I looked up imploringly at James and he continued. ‘My confession is this, and it’s not a good confession for a publisher to make. The thing is, I haven’t, to this day, accepted what losing Craig means. Or that there’s no bringing him back.’ He held up the book, stark gold capitals on sex-shop black. ‘My Biggest Lie … This, after all, is only paper and ink. This, after all, is nothing.’
And with that he walked suddenly down the stairs, still holding the book, and strode with his long quick step to the back of the hall, where he disappeared through the door. A confused and excited murmuring broke out throughout the room. Belinda made her way up the steps and back to the microphone.
‘Thank you, James,’ she said, letting out her breath more quickly than she’d intended. ‘We are now going to welcome Suzy Carling to the stage, to read a short extract from My Biggest Lie by Craig Bennett, chosen by his sister Helen Edwards.’
‘Are you all right?’ Amy asked me. ‘You’re both acting very strange.’
‘I’m going,’ I said to her, ‘this is too weird.’
‘You’re staying,’ said Alejandro, holding on to my arm. ‘This is your launch. Our launch. You need to listen to this.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Amy.
People were looking round at us, shushing. Suzy Carling made her way to the stage in a black dress and heels. She surveyed the room before she spoke, her eyes resting on me. There was no anger in the look, just calculation, the assessment a predator makes of its prey.
‘Thank you all for coming. I’m going to read you an email from Helen Edwards, Craig’s sister, about why she wanted me to read this particular extract.’
She unfolded a piece of paper and read.
‘“I’ve chosen this extract for its simplicity, for its calm and optimism, for it’s compassion for people: the facets of Craig’s character everyone liked to ignore. This is Craig at his best, the Craig I know.”
‘He was a great man,’ said Suzy. ‘I miss him.’ She opened the book, turned the thick, creamy paper to the right part. Then she started to read.
Falling in love was not what he had thought falling in love was like. The other times had been something else, different in kind and degree … After they had kissed goodbye and she had gone through to catch her plane, he walked in circles around the concourse, hungrily spinning new sights before his eyes, filling himself up with the world he was now at home in, its new language, his new palate. He sat down, giddy, and looked up at the atrium. He breathed in the air. Then he stood and went outside to the taxi queue.
On the way back to the centre, he told the taxi driver that he had fallen in love. The taxi driver laughed. You are lucky, he said. Craig asked the taxi driver about his wife, whether he had any children. The taxi driver told him about his son and daughter, 18 and 21, the son working in an office, the daughter at university studying science. He was proud of his children. ‘And your wife?’ asked Craig. The taxi driver seemed not to hear him and told him instead about the area where he lived, Barracas, a poor, working-class area, but not a slum, a proud working-class area, a place famous for its protests. Craig didn’t ask again about the driver’s wife, you didn’t do that here, but suddenly the driver was telling Craig about the night she disappeared in 1978. I think about her in a room, alone with those animals, and how I was not there to help her. She was from a different world to me, a university lecturer. She was out of my league, I thought. I don’t know why she liked me but she did. A miracle. I asked her to dance with me at a milonga. She would not accept the way things are in this filthy country. It is where the children get their brains. My son was a baby when she went, my daughter was three years old. She would never have left them. I was terrified they would come and take me, but, shamefully, they were not even interested. I say shamefully but I am not ashamed I can be here for my children.
It was the first time since Craig had arrived in Buenos Aires that a stranger had told him a story like this, though he may have met many other people who could have. There were awful stories everywhere. The driver told him about his mother-in-law, her illnesses and her passion, the marches she attended and invited him to attend with her. I have to drive, you know? he said. I have to work for my children. But I go with her when I can.
Craig listened and tried to imagine the taxi driver’s sadness, his guilt, the way it had felt to be terrorised like he had been. He felt bad about being happy himself, until he realised he had to be happy, it was the only fair thing, because nothing had happened to the woman he loved.
A kid ran in front of the taxi, stooped to pick up a rolling football, and ran off. The taxi driver beeped his horn, opened his wallet and showed Craig two photos, a young woman smiling with a baby, a gawky teenage boy grinning as a girl put his arm round him. The taxi driver wasn’t in either photo – but he had taken them, he had looked, he was the invisible part.
‘Thank you,’ said Suzy Carling, putting down the book and walking back to her seat. Alejandro had been quietly crying. I felt nothing. Amy turned round and looked at me, her eyes dry, glittering, inquisitive. Was there something in the reading, some detail, that had awoken her to its untruth? I would have to go and see her tomorrow, confess and beg her to keep quiet.
Alejandro let out a big sigh. ‘Schmaltz,’ he said, but he looked sad, sad the way schmaltz makes us when it reminds us how we’ve been tenderised to it. Belinda made a final exhortation for us to buy the book and we stood. The middle of the row, having afforded a protecti
on earlier, now penned me in.
‘I’m going to go and talk to his agent,’ said Amy, ‘and pick up a copy of this weird book.’
‘Before you go,’ I started, but she had found a space and slipped through into the aisle. The way she marched to the book stall made me feverish. The bouncer who had not let me in was still waiting in the aisle for me, but he was suddenly pushed back by a crowd of agents, editors and journalists heading our way. Being thrown out was a delightful idea. I looked over to the drinks table, miles away, the clean white table cloth, the endless rows of golden wine.
‘Get ready to do some serious lying,’ Alejandro whispered to me. ‘I’m going to try to get thrown out,’ I told him. But it was too late. They were upon us.
It seemed to go on for ever. The questions, the optimistic insinuations. Journalists suggested the most outrageous turns of events, hoping we would be taken aback and reveal their truth, yet they suggested nothing as outrageous as what was actually happening. Nor was it the journalists who set my teeth most on edge, for whom making our story consistent was most frightening. It was worse with my friends, the colleagues and rivals I’d always liked and admired; they were harder to lie to not just because I didn’t want to lie to them but because they knew what they were talking about, how incredible it was for an unheard-of novel by Craig Bennett to appear overnight. In our tribute to Craig, our enormous fuck-you to Craig, James and I had consigned ourselves to either a lifetime of lying or a lifetime of disgrace. The two things I had fled to Buenos Aires to try to cure myself of.
I thought the bouncer would never come for me, but after the fiftieth question I found myself with a strong arm round my shoulder, being marched towards the back of the room. I didn’t even notice who he was until I was already well away from the pack. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave now,’ he said.
‘That’s OK,’ I said, leaning into him like a tired girlfriend. ‘Are you going to beat me up?’ I asked as he led me into a corridor away from the party.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘There’s a part of me that thinks I probably deserve it.’
‘A little guy like you? Mate, you don’t deserve nothing.’
And with that he opened a fire door and pushed me outside. I was round the corner from the front entrance, but he pointed me in the other direction. ‘You’re going to walk that way and I’m going to stand here and make sure you do.’
I nodded and held out my hand. He looked at it and pointed in the direction I was supposed to be going. I smiled. He didn’t. It was a satisfying exchange for both of us. ‘Bye bye then,’ I said. I thanked him and went.
Chapter 25
Ifound James upstairs in the Academy, sitting at a table in the corner using my novel as a bar mat for a whisky. The bar wasn’t very busy. A handsome man who looked like he’d been sleeping in his suit was telling the barmaid about his day at work: ‘And so I told the designers, if you want to play around with coke then do it at the Christmas party under controlled conditions and not on my fucking front cover.’ The barmaid started to tell him a story in return about a cocktail she’d invented last night which used a cooked sausage as a stirrer.
I’d suspected James was going to be here, but I would have come anyway. Craig had brought me here on the night he died. Here, in the middle of my despair, he had filled me temporarily with the greatest of optimism. I walked over to James and sat down.
‘He was sitting, staring gloomily at a glass of whisky, when the boy who had killed his friend walked in.’
James looked up and took a deliberate sip. ‘Not a bad first line. Hemingwayesque? Graham Greene? Is the “gloomily” essential? What’s the next line?’
‘The boy looked at him and tried to contain his anger – seriously, what the fuck was that speech? I’ve had Lauren Laverne trying to interview me for The Culture Show. My phone’s been ringing non-stop. You’ve put me in the news.’
‘That seems a little melodramatic and implausible now as a work of fiction.’
‘It has become implausible. What are we going to do about that? The whole point is for it to not be implausible. And now we have a subplot about a disgraced editor who was with Craig on the day he died and who subsequently discovered his long-lost novel. And who then broke in through the girls’ toilets to his book launch! Christ.’
‘But what a great story.’
‘Do you mean that?’ And in that instant I realised he did. I put a cigarette in my mouth, put it back in my packet. I tried to say something and couldn’t. ‘You did it deliberately,’ I eventually managed, ‘for publicity.’
‘I did it for you.’
‘It hasn’t helped me. You’ve just transferred the responsibility for this monstrosity from you to me. You arsehole. Don’t think I won’t bring you down when we get caught. Don’t think Alejandro won’t support my side of the story, how you stole my novel.’
James gulped down the rest of his whisky. ‘Liam, listen mate. What’s all this? Don’t think like that. I don’t think like that. What we did was a terrible idea, OK, I know, I realised that on stage. I’m sorry. We should never have done it. I wanted to confess. I came this close.’
‘Can you imagine what would have become of our careers, of our lives, if you had done?’
‘I did imagine,’ he sighed. ‘I imagined quickly and accurately and I changed my mind. What you said about me doing it for publicity, it wasn’t like that. I did it for you, Liam. I didn’t expect to see you, I wasn’t allowed to invite you, and then having to do a speech for your novel and not mention you – it was obscene. It was your night. I had to say something. It was an awful thing to take your night away from you.’
‘That’s the least awful thing. It was never my night. Be consistent. Remember how you convinced me? You don’t even believe what you’re saying.’
‘I do believe what I’m saying. I always believe what I’m saying.’
‘That’s the fucking problem.’
‘Liam, Liam, I just wanted to credit you.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have persuaded me to forge someone else’s book.’
‘Shhh,’ he said, looking around him.
It was pointless for me to try to make him confess his motives. He didn’t know them himself. His promotional reflexes were so instinctual they occurred to him as morals. I could never rely on him as a friend, still less, as I had tried to, as a father figure. But I’m not convinced you can rely on most friends or fathers either, and for better or worse I was bound to him.
‘Please let’s not argue,’ he said. ‘Get a drink, won’t you? After all, this for us is Craig’s wake. Let’s raise a glass to him. Go on, my card’s behind the bar.’
It was not a very funereal drink. I ordered a bottle of the house champagne, the same type I remember sharing with Craig on his last visit here. It was our launch night, after all.
‘Would you like me to pop the cork?’ the barmaid asked.
‘No, please stay alive,’ I said.
She looked at me funnily and left the cork in. What fragile hearts we have. What pathetic excuses I had allowed mine while I had pretended Sarah’s wasn’t beating.
I carried over the ice-bucket and our two flutes. James nodded. I banged the bottle down on the table like a call to business, twisted off the cork and we watched the foam rise from the neck before I poured two glasses.
‘To Craig, our friend,’ said James. We clinked. ‘Angie, come over here and drink a glass for Craig,’ he called to the barmaid.
It wasn’t long before we had finished the bottle and another was popping. Enough was never enough. This is what I’d learned from James, from life, and this is what would kill me, like Craig, like Dad, if I didn’t unlearn it. I looked at my phone to check the time, noticing the many missed calls I had accrued from unknown numbers. I had to be somewhere else in an hour.
While I scrolled through these numbers, I heard James answer his phone – ‘Clara, how are you? Of course, we’re in the Academy, bring the gang.
Yes, yes, I’m with Liam. Come down.’
‘Was that Clara Pembroke?’ I asked, when he had put the phone down. ‘The literary editor of the Sunday Times?’
‘It was. She’s coming down with some of the crowd from earlier.’ He was excited. He had completely forgotten why I had been angry with him.
‘I told you I’m not giving any interviews about this,’ I said, putting on my jacket. ‘You need to keep these people away from me, they are all yours now.’
I wanted to tell him to stick the money too, whatever that was going to be, however he was going to sneak it through the company’s books. But I was implicated too far already, and I needed the cash.
‘Enjoy yourself, I’m off,’ I said, picking up his copy of My Biggest Lie. I wanted that for later.
‘Liam, don’t go away like that,’ he pleaded. ‘You do understand, don’t you? We have to forgive each other.’
‘If I ever forgive myself, I’ll forgive you too,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think I ever will.’
With that I walked away. But I made the mistake at the door of looking back into the room before I climbed down the stairs. James was standing up, looking at me miserably. Craig was dead. We’d made sure of that. I remembered my friend who had tried to save me when I didn’t deserve it and walked back to James and hugged him.
‘We’ve done such an awful stupid thing,’ he said.
‘You never know, we might get away with it until retirement age. And if we don’t it will be a relief to tell the truth. Of course we’d probably have to go to prison. Where better to write our memoirs?’
He managed a faint smile at that. ‘I’ll find a way to destroy the company’s manuscript accidentally,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ll burn down the offices. Except there’s a copy with the agent. Perhaps I’ll burn down her offices.’ He looked excited now.
