Sonata of the Dead

by Conrad Williams

  ‘A writers’ group?’

  ‘Yeah. But a closed group. We didn’t advertise for members. At least we didn’t when I was involved. How did you find out about it?’

  ‘I saw something at his parents’ house, something written on a calendar. So Martin fancied himself as a writer? Is there anything he didn’t fancy himself at?’

  Taft raised his glass to his lips and gave a guilty start at finding it empty. ‘Nothing wrong, is there, in having a broad range of interests?’

  ‘No, of course not. But karate, writing, guitar, photography… These are subjects that demand a great deal of commitment and practice. How did he find the time?’

  ‘He wasn’t working last time I spoke to him.’

  ‘Money… how did he pay for all his classes?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he still lived at home maybe he tapped his folk for a couple of quid. I only charged him a fiver for half an hour.’

  ‘He had a nice guitar,’ I said. ‘Not that I’m an expert in these matters.’

  ‘He did, yes,’ Taft agreed. ‘A Fender Custom Shop Strat.’

  ‘How much would one of those go for, normally?’

  ‘Couple of thousand, new. But he could have picked it up second hand for, what? Under a grand, say?’

  ‘Still a hefty outlay for a novice.’

  ‘He was all right, actually,’ Taft said. ‘He wasn’t going to win any shredding competitions, but he showed some flair playing lead. He practised regularly. He was coming on, you know.’

  ‘I suppose the guitar could have been a gift,’ I admitted. ‘His parents aren’t short of a bob or two.’

  ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘And anyway, it seems to me you’re tackling this the wrong way. He was killed, after all.’

  I ignored that. ‘Why did you leave this writers’ group?’

  Another pause. I felt he was delving for the answer most likely to shut me up, rather than the truth.

  ‘I was interested in songwriting,’ he said. ‘Nobody else was. No point in hanging around for feedback when everyone else was interested in fiction.’

  ‘Where did you hold your meetings? Pub? Library?’

  ‘No. They were always at a different venue every time. The location always had to have some kind of literary connection. The last one I went to was in St Leonard’s Terrace, where Bram Stoker lived. We met and talked on the street for a little while. Swapped pieces of work. News. And then home.’

  ‘Each to their own,’ I said. ‘Any idea where they’ll meet next?’

  ‘Why should I? I’m not a part of their setup any more. Other than Martin I had no contact with the others.’

  ‘Who were the others?’ I felt like going back to Alex Turner’s flat and marching him over here to show him how an interview ought to go. Taft might not be completely transparent but at least he was talking to me. And he poured me a drink. Register that, Turner, you arsehole.

  ‘Other than Martin… I don’t know,’ he said. He’d magicked a plectrum from somewhere and he twisted and turned it between his fingers. ‘We decided not to share names. Real names. The writing was the thing. Not the writer.’

  Christ. ‘What about Sarah Sorrell?’ I persisted. ‘Or Sarah Peart?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of those women.’

  ‘It’s just one woman. Did you ever see someone with Martin?’

  ‘No. He came to Accelerants meetings alone. You kind of had to. It was… kind of necessary.’

  I really wanted another drink but it was important I faced the coming days with a clear head if I was going to make inroads and beat Mawker to the early worms. ‘Refill?’ I suggested.

  With Taft gone I gave his living room another look. He obviously lived for his music. As well as the CDs, his shelves were laden with well cared for LPs. A tower of scarily expensive-looking hi-fi separates – Naim, Cambridge Audio, Denon – was flanked by two mighty speakers that looked as if they’d tear off the whole face of the building if they were turned to full whack. They made my shitty little radio look like something found in a fossil bed. Like me, he didn’t seem to possess a TV. There was nothing on show – diary, journal, photo album – I might snoop through as there had been in Martin Gower’s bedroom. And still, despite his insistence to the contrary, I couldn’t help but play the cruel game: Sarah might have been here once, with Martin. She might have been sitting where I was sitting. She might have talked about her sad, tragic father, who crumbled when she needed him most.

  I’m different now, Sarah. I’m a changed man.

  Yeah, right, Dad. You’re only ever half a bottle away from falling asleep on the floor with your pants pissed, begging Becs to come back to you. Only her. You pursue me to keep your claws in her. She’s dead. I’m gone. You’re lost.

  ‘No. No, that’s not it.’

  ‘Say again?’ Taft said, as he returned to the room, my vodka in his fist. I took it and downed it and thanked him. I told him I had to go. I’d been on my feet all day. I couldn’t believe that only the previous evening I’d been standing on derelict ground in Enfield staring down at pieces of Martin Gower.

  I gave him my phone number and lurched for the door. I was tired to the bones and the drink seemed to have replaced the marrow within. I was sure something else was trying to rise from the spot on the sofa that I’d been occupying; some sooty presence, my slow shadow. A ghost.

  I walked north through Mayfair until I hit Oxford Street. Sleet was in the air. First week of April and bloody winter still hanging on, or eager to make an early comeback. I could feel the cold move keenly in the livid, resculpted flesh on my left cheek. I stared at the buses and taxis as they shuttled east and west; all the shadows hunched behind those windows ghosted with condensation. Going home from somewhere; coming home to someone. Drifting.

  Finally, the feeling that I was being followed went away. I couldn’t understand why I’d invented such ugly invective from the mouth of a girl who had once loved me – and still did… I firmly believed that, or at least firmly held on to the hope of it. As a child she could not go to sleep until she had kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my lips, and recited a litany of reassuring exchanges: night-night, sweet dreams, sleep well, I love you…

  I shook off the claustrophobia of those pampered, preening streets, where every other car was some precision-tuned penis replacement made in Germany, and every shop sold its own weight in silk or silver. I crossed the busy main drag and cut down Holles Street past Cavendish Square and then tiredness blocked the route out and the next thing I knew I was waking up on my sofa and Mengele was looking at me with an expression of feline disgust. I sat in the dark, looking out of the window at the Marylebone rooftops, and strange lights hung in the sky and it was only when I stood up to take a closer look that I realised it was the reflection of my tears in the glass.

  6

  I drank coffee and dressed against the chill. Frost had settled in the night, sealing cars and casting weird leaf patterns in the surfaces of puddles. No phone calls in the night. No visits from Mawker or any of his minions. Or maybe the telephone and the door had been rocking non-stop and I was too tuckered out to hear anything. It comes on me like that sometimes, fatigue. Oblivion at the end of a brutal sequence of late nights: my body’s totting-up process. Pushing myself too far, too hard. Drinking too much, eating unhealthily or not at all. Shallow sleep or the endless, harrowing nights when I can’t rest and all there is to do is listen to the couple next door argue or fuck, or watch the lights of the jets winking as they enter or leave Heathrow.

  I opened the laptop and searched for her but she wasn’t there. I knew her well enough, before social networking became the all-consuming monster, to know she would despise it. I remember she had been damning of any kind of look-at-me behaviour while at school. I tried to think of some of the friends she’d had but couldn’t remember their names. I tried Martin Gower, but his Facebook page had been deactivated.

  Though the sleet had not lasted long, freezing fog had fixed what had fall
en into place with lethal glue. The main street had been gritted but all the smaller roads were glassy and treacherous. I skated and cartwheeled down to Marylebone Road and checked my phone as I did so, in a stunning act of accident defiance. There had been no messages from Craig Taft in the night; I willed them to come: Joel? It’s Craig Taft. I know where the next Accelerants meeting will take place. Joel? Craig. About Sarah. I said I didn’t know who she is. Well, I was lying. I know who she is, Joel. And I know where she’s staying. Joel? About Sarah. She’s dead, man. She’s dead. She’s dead.

  ‘She’s dead if she comes round mine with a gob on her again.’ The woman jostled me as she pushed past, multitasking like a Swiss army knife: pushing a buggy filled with snot and pastry, vaping, jawing on her Nokia. A memory of Sarah in her buggy, and me getting used to pushing it, getting on and off buses, learning which Tube stations to avoid, understanding the cruel physics of trying to enter narrow shop doorways with wide wheels. I remember, at the start, how stressed I got; I couldn’t understand the cool, urbane mums; how they glided around as if they were pushing little more before them than the warm air from their smiling mouths. And I remember Sarah picked up on this – she can’t have been much older than three – and she reached back and patted my hand, and said: ‘It’s okay, Daddy. Look, here’s a green Mini car.’

  She lifted a load off me with that, and I realised it was no big deal. I was one of the many cretins pushing a buggy around a buggy-unfriendly city. There was no reason to let myself get annoyed about it. How annoyed could you allow yourself to be with a beautiful little girl in your charge?

  Once off the ice I marched into the library and said hello to the woman behind the loans desk.

  ‘Do you have any writing groups meet here?’ I asked.

  ‘Writing groups? Do you mean like reading groups?’

  ‘Exactly like that. Only not reading. Writing.’

  ‘We have a couple of reading groups,’ she persisted. ‘One meets every other Thursday, the other meets on the first of every month. Except for New Year’s Day.’

  ‘Right. Do you have any writing groups?’

  ‘We have writers who live locally, who come and do readings. Do you mean like that?’

  ‘I don’t mean like that,’ I said. ‘What I’m looking for is a group of people who write. Who get together from time to time to do writing. Creative writing. In a group.’

  ‘We don’t have anything like that,’ the librarian said. ‘Were you looking to set something up, perhaps?’

  ‘Any ideas where I might find a group like that?’ I asked. I wasn’t holding out much hope. She seemed to find the concept of creative writing as impenetrable as I did the Dewey Decimal System.

  ‘Creative writing?’ she said. ‘You might try the universities. They all seem to have a course these days. But I guess that’s not quite what you’re after. How about… hang on.’

  She collared one of her colleagues, a raven-haired woman wearing a fitted cardigan with a tissue balled up one sleeve. She was carrying a stack of books with the studied indifference of a waiter carrying mountains of crockery. ‘Gill, this gentleman is looking for a creative writing group. Any ideas?’

  ‘You could try the British Museum,’ Gill said.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘You’re not mixing up creative writing with Archaeological Studies of Ancient Greece?’ I smiled my best disarming smile, but the pair of them rightly gave me a look that would have put lesser mortals in the grave.

  ‘Would there be anything else?’ she asked.

  I thanked her and left, wondering after all whether a reading group was really all that different to a writing group. I had no idea. Presumably they both had the same priorities at heart. Presumably it was all about story. Did it work, did it not work? Did it entertain? Did it bore you rigid?

  Though it was cold I decided to walk, at least until my feet turned to chunks of stiff wood. I reached the museum by mid-morning. I went inside and spoke to a guy on reception who confirmed that yes, there was a creative writing class that met regularly in one of the museum offices every Monday night. And not only that, but the co-ordinator was in right now.

  ‘Could I speak to him? Her?’

  ‘Him. Doctor Louis Ferguson. He’s a lecturer at UCL. I’ll take you up.’

  He led me to the lift. We went up in silence to the second floor and he led me along a carpeted corridor flanked with wood panelling and unidentified portraits. We stopped outside a door bearing a plaque containing a mystifying combination of numbers and letters. He gestured grandly and I knocked.

  ‘Come!’ said a withered voice.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ the receptionist said.

  I went inside. I thought for a moment that I had entered an empty office, and that I had been the victim of a pointless prank executed by a staff member who had a gift for projecting his voice. But then I saw how the pattern on a gaily upholstered armchair appeared to move, and a figure emerged from the pattern like someone who had given much of his life to the rare pursuit of total domestic camouflage.

  ‘We aren’t meeting now, are we?’ he asked, looking at his watch.

  ‘If you’re free,’ I said.

  ‘We’re meeting in twenty minutes. That’s why I came in here early. To fix my head and relax first.’

  ‘What is the meeting about?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean you don’t know? Did you not receive the email?’ He was unfolding from the chair and I was put in mind of spiders with long legs emerging from tunnels of silk. He was very tall, perhaps as much as six foot four, but he was painfully thin. I guessed I probably weighed much more than he did, and I was giving away the best part of ten inches.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I felt hollow, scraped out from too little sleep, and I didn’t want to maintain this pointless bluff. I had no patience for it. ‘I don’t work here. I’m here to talk to you about your writers’ group.’

  He sat up straight. I noticed crumbs of pastry glued to a fledgling salt-and-pepper beard. ‘You want to sign up?’

  ‘Well no, not really.’

  ‘A good thing, I’m afraid. The Knackers Yard is oversubscribed as it is, and anyway, you’re a little too young for us.’

  ‘The Knackers Yard?’

  ‘I know, I know, it’s something of a demeaning, self-defeating name we’ve given ourselves, but well, it’s meant to be ironic. We’re all over sixty-five, but afire, still, with ambition.’

  ‘I wanted to ask your advice,’ I said. ‘About writers’ groups in general. Do you have a minute?’

  He consulted his watch again. ‘I have fifteen,’ he said. ‘What is it you want to know?’ He gestured to a chair.

  ‘The Knackers Yard,’ I said, sitting down. ‘Do all writers’ groups have names?’

  He bowed his lips. ‘I expect so, but I imagine it isn’t crucial. I like telling my friends I’m off to the Knackers Yard.’

  I bet he did. I bet it never wore thin. For him. I imagined his friends and colleagues with fixed grins.

  ‘I suppose it lends everything a more professional air,’ he went on. ‘It gives you some focus, and you treat the two hours with some respect, with purpose. It codifies the whole thing.’

  ‘What do you do, over that two hours?’

  ‘It depends if anybody has submitted work for review. We might have a couple of WIPs to consider—’

  ‘Whips?’

  ‘Sorry. Works in progress. Members like to get feedback from their peers.’

  ‘Really? Isn’t that a bit too tempting? I mean, you know, you might read something and like the idea. Pinch it for yourself?’

  He seemed genuinely shocked, and insulted. He narrowed his gimlet eyes at me. ‘There is no magpieing in my group,’ he said. ‘Nor have I seen any in the industry in the thirty years I’ve been active.’

  ‘You’re published then?’

  ‘Not these days, but back in the late eighties and early nineties I had three novels published by Fourth Estate.’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s quite some break,’ I said. ‘What happened? Did you retire?’

  He smiled at me. I knew that kind of smile very well. If you could transcribe it into words it would say: Aw bless, you fucking idiot.

  ‘A writer never retires. You can never not be a writer.’

  ‘Really? I don’t understand. Shelve the typewriter. Throw away the pencil sharpener. Watch TV. Make bread.’

  ‘I’m writing all the time. Even when, especially when, I’m doing something else. You don’t switch off. It’s pointless even to try.’

  ‘You must be fun to live with,’ I joked, but it wiped the smile off his face.

  ‘I used to be married,’ he said. ‘But she was only ever the other woman.’

  ‘You chose your writing over your wife?’

  ‘Substitute the word “work” for “writing” and you’ll agree that isn’t such an uncommon occurrence. Anyway, I didn’t choose one way or another. The choice was taken out of my hands. It chose me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I had a sense of the conversation sliding away from me; it was not unusual. ‘I’m here to talk about creative writing. Not marital fuck-ups.’

  ‘It’s all grist for the mill,’ he said, but he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

  ‘Anything else you get up to, other than peer appraisal?’

  ‘We sometimes have a guest speaker. We can’t pay, but we’ll cover travel expenses, and take them out for a curry. Bottle of wine. You know… writers, agents, editors and the like. Or we’ll talk about publishing trends, or recommend books to each other. And we’ll always begin and end with a writing exercise.’

  ‘A packed two hours, then?’

  He nodded. ‘Oh yes. We frequently go over. Sometimes the cleaners have to kick us out. If we’ve got a second wind we’ll pop to the Museum Tavern across the road and continue over a nightcap.’

  ‘What kind of writing exercises?’

  ‘Well, it differs at the end of the night, but we always start with five solid minutes of automatic writing.’