I breezed up Brixton Hill and strode confidently through the maze of streets that led to Jake’s estate. He lived on the ground floor of an ex-council block. I pressed the buzzer and waited.
“Hey, come on in, mystery man,” Jake said, appearing at the door, arms outstretched.
“How are you?”
His flat smelt faintly musty, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in months. Old papers cluttered the hallway and piles of books threatened to collapse and spill across the wooden floors, a detail that reminded me of Crace’s palazzo before I had cleaned it. Jake poured me a glass of wine, but I could tell he had something serious to say.
“So what was with all the silent treatment?”
“I know,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “I’m really sorry, mate. It’s just that…it’s been really difficult.”
“I heard from my dad that the job, the teaching thing, fell through. When I heard that, I thought you might come back to London.”
“I did think about it. Can you believe the little fucker got a girl pregnant—the maid’s daughter? The family sent him off to New York.”
“So you’ve been in Venice since then?”
I nodded and took a gulp of wine.
“Doing what?”
“Mainly just working on the book, you know.” I wasn’t lying. I made an effort not to lie.
“How’s it going? Pleased with it?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. It’s coming on.”
“So it must be pretty pricey—Venice, I mean. Did you get another job?”
“Yeah, sort of as a personal assistant to an old writer. Odd jobs, clearing, tidying. Gives me lots of time to do my own stuff, you know.”
“Great, great,” said Jake. “Anyone I would have heard of?”
“No, shouldn’t think so. Not exactly a household name.”
“So what brings you back to London? Thought you’d said you’d never come back. In fact, from the way you acted, I thought—”
“Yeah, I know,” I interrupted. I didn’t really want to be reminded about the past. “I was a little…overexcited, I suppose.”
“You can say that again. Jesus, you were far out.”
I looked at my glass and ran a finger around its rim. I felt Jake’s eyes on me, as if he was trying to assess me.
“So you were about to say—what brings you back?”
“Oh, I’m just doing a spot of research for this writer. He’s interested in genealogy.”
“Yeah?”
“In his family history,” I added. “He wants me to find his birth certificate, trace his grandparents, follow the line back into the past—”
“Okay. Sounds interesting.”
“So how have you been? How’s the job?”
“Madness, real madness,” he said, laughing. “I get pissed every night of the week and meet the most gorgeous creatures you’ve ever seen. Legs up to their armpits. Blonds. Best job in the world.”
I could tell Jake was fooling himself. At university, he had nurtured grand ambitions to write about politics and social change; at heart he was an idealist, and I suspected that his job on a newspaper diary sniffing around for snippets of gossip about C-list celebrities fell far short of his own expectations.
“What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?” I asked.
“Erm, have to see. Why?”
“It’s just that I’ve never seen where you work. I’d love to see where it all happens—you in the center of things…”
I think that made Jake feel good.
“You can come into the building, if you like. We can go to the high-class, ultra-glamorous house restaurant, aka the canteen.”
Both of us laughed weakly.
“That sounds great,” I said. “Just one more thing—does your newspaper have a cuttings library?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It’s just that I thought it might help me with my research.”
“You’re welcome to use it if you like. I can call down and tell them that you’re doing some freelancing for me. No problem.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The cutting was as thin and yellow as Crace’s skin. It was dated 8 August 1967 and was from the London Evening News.
WRITER FINDS TENANT DEAD
Bestselling novelist Gordon Crace, author of The Debating Society,discovered the body of his tenant, 20-year-old aspiring writer Christopher Davidson, in his Central London home yesterday. It appears Mr. Davidson took his own life.
“I came back from the British Library and found Chris dead in the kitchen,” said Mr. Crace, whose first novel was a worldwide sensation. “It was such a shock. I knew he had been depressed but never expected this.”
Mr. Davidson rented a room in the novelist’s mews house in Bloomsbury. The two men met at Winterborne Abbey, the public school in Dorset where Mr. Crace taught English. Mr. Davidson was a former pupil.
It is thought that after trying his hand at novel writing, Mr. Davidson met with little success. Mr. Crace, meanwhile, is hugely successful. It’s estimated The Debating Societyhas sold close to half a million copies, and a producer has recently acquired the film rights. Police have confirmed that the inquest will be held at some point in the next few months.
It was obvious what the reporter was trying to imply, but I suppose the laws of libel prevented the press from talking openly about the relationship. Crace’s file was not as thick as I had expected, containing only a handful of cuts. Most of them were brief news items and reviews. I searched through them, looking for the reports of the inquest, but nothing seemed to cover it. There was one announcing Crace’s retirement from writing, which contained the quote I had picked up from the internet and then a brief snippet about how he had settled in Venice. It was as though for the last thirty or so years Crace had ceased to exist. As I read through them looking for clues, I felt like I was researching the life of a dead man.
I asked the librarian, who was so short that his head only just appeared over the top of the wooden counter, for the file on Christopher Davidson and waited by the notice board for it to arrive.
“There you go,” I heard someone say behind me. “Excuse me, here is your—”
The librarian handed me a buff-colored envelope with the word “DEAD” stamped in red at the top right-hand corner. It was so thin that I expected it to contain nothing, but after teasing open its rim, I saw that the envelope contained two small cuts—the one I had already read and a report on the inquest, also from the London Evening News, dated 4 December 1967.
WRITER’S SUICIDE BLAMED ON FAILURE
A suicide note found by the body of aspiring writer 20-year-old Christopher Davidson revealed that he took his own life after suffering from a prolonged spell of writer’s block, an inquest heard today.
The tenant of bestselling author Gordon Crace could not cope with the success of his landlord. The two men lived together at 7 Thanet Mews, Bloomsbury, where it’s said that Mr. Davidson rented a room. The 20-year-old took an overdose of sleeping pills, washed down with alcohol, in the early hours of 7 August. Mr. Crace, 36, found the body and rang the police.
The coroner heard that after arriving at the scene, the police discovered a typewritten suicide note by Mr. Davidson, who had been dead for several hours, saying that he couldn’t carry on any longer as his writing career had not turned out as planned.
Psychiatrist Herbert Jennings explained to the coroner the devastating effects of writer’s block and how it could, in extreme circumstances, lead to suicide.
The court also heard from Gordon Crace himself, who gave evidence about his tenant’s state of mind leading up to the death. Although he knew Mr. Davidson had suffered from low spirits, on the day of 6 August he appeared to be in a positive frame of mind.
“I left him at the kitchen table by the typewriter,” said Mr. Crace. “He told me that he was going to try and bash out a story. He had really high hopes for it. Of course, I had always encouraged him in his writing and really had fait
h that he would produce a fine novel. I never expected him to do anything like this.”
The two men met when Mr. Crace was a teacher at Winterborne Abbey School, Dorset. They had lived in Bloomsbury for two years.
Verdict: suicide.
I photocopied the cuts and dropped the envelopes back into the returns tray. The fragmentary shards of Crace’s life were beginning to fall into some kind of shape.
At last I had something tangible to go on, something with substance. I walked down the cobbled mews, imagining myself to be Crace. He had moved into this street when he was thirty-four, only thirteen years older than I, yet it was hard to think of him as a young man. The photograph that accompanied the item on the inquest showed him to be quite a handsome figure: strong features, a fine head of brown hair, almost a Romantic face. I took out the photocopied sheet and stared at the picture once more, running my finger around the image like a curious child toying with a dead insect. I squinted at the photograph and then looked up and down the street, trying to picture his life here.
The street was undeniably pretty, with clusters of flowers and tubs sporting lush foliage outside each door. Crace’s life here, I imagined, was relaxed, cultured. After a morning at his desk, he would come out onto the street and perhaps walk down to the pub at the end of the mews where he would read the paper and enjoy a beer and a sandwich. Sometimes he would chat with one of his neighbors, converse not about literature or anything like that but just local gossip. Occasionally Chris would join him for a bite of lunch, but often he told Crace that he felt he had to work through as he was finding it difficult to get anything on paper. Crace told him just to relax, not to think so hard about what he wanted to achieve, just throw any old thing down, bash anything out; he could always worry about the style later.
In the afternoons Crace usually glanced over the pages he had produced that day, correcting and rewriting. But he rarely did more than two thousand words a day. Before he went to bed, he always made sure he had the next scene in his head, yet he adored the unexpectedness of his characters, the sense that they were alive, that no matter how much he tried to get a fix on them they would always shift a little, warning him not to take them for granted, to tell him that they were independent. It was an odd feeling, like talking to the dead.
Chris often asked him how he did it, and honestly he couldn’t tell him. The younger man occasionally got angry, lashed out in a silly way, accusing him of keeping back information on purpose so that he would fail. It wasn’t like that at all, Crace told him. By this point Chris had usually consumed half a bottle of whiskey or vodka. That was when the rows would start—nasty, drunken arguments that usually culminated in Chris storming out and threatening to go off with someone younger, not some pervert who was only interested in young boys.
Is that what happened between the two of them? Maybe, maybe not, but at least I felt a sense that I was beginning to somehow know them a little more. Of course, while this kind of inquiry, this biographical empathy, was important, I had to be able to back up my insights with facts, with evidence. That was what I was short on.
I stood outside their house, number 7, and noted a description of it in my notebook. It was a two-story building with a front facade painted licorice gray and wisteria climbing to the right of the door. I stepped back a few paces to try and snatch a glimpse through the top window but couldn’t see anything inside. With my camera I took a couple of images of the house; I had bought slide film because I wanted the photographs to be of good enough quality so I could use them in the book. Just as I pressed the shutter a second time and still as I was peering through the viewfinder of the camera, I saw the front door begin to open. I pushed the camera down out of sight, looked around me to see if I could run or hide, but instantly realized this would be not only foolish but impossible.
“Excuse me, young man. Can you tell me exactly what you are doing?”
The voice was female, fruity and theatrical, exactly like the woman now standing before me. She was in her late fifties or early sixties and had coated her moon-shape face in guano-white makeup and ringed her tired eyes in heavy circles of kohl. Brightly colored feathers—oranges and purples that winked in the autumn sunshine—stuck out of her excessively back-combed hair, giving her the look of a rather large, silly tropical bird.
“I say, come here, closer. Don’t pretend—I saw you and your camera. What are you, one of these paparazzi?”
I walked toward her, more than a little afraid. I could see that the walls of her hallway and staircase were lined with black-and-white pictures of her in various poses and roles.
“Come on, show me.”
I moved the camera from behind my back and gave her an apologetic look. I had to take a gamble, hoping that she did not know Crace. If word were to get back to him about my inquiries, my project—my future—was over.
“I’m just doing some research…about someone who used to live here,” I said somewhat feebly.
“So you’re not from one of the tabloids? What a terrible shame. I thought you might be on the point of reviving my fatally depressed, if not comatic—if that really is a word—career.”
As I laughed, my mood lightened. I realized the sheer stupidity, the futility, of my earlier attempt at literary ventriloquism. I would really have to get a grip on myself. I knew I couldn’t allow myself to get lost like that.
“So are you going to explain yourself or are you just going to stand there like a deaf mute?”
“Oh, sorry, of course,” I said. “I’m doing some research on behalf on Gordon Crace, a man who used to live in this house. You probably don’t know him, but—”
“That’s where you are wrong, you see. You shouldn’t presume to tell people—”
“Excuse me, did you say you knew him?” My voice sounded weak, cracked. “How?”
“Now I’ve got your interest, haven’t I?” Her eyes glinted in a slightly deranged way. She clearly enjoyed the game, the tease, the pretense. “Don’t look so worried, I don’t know him personally, of course, if that’s what you mean, but his name, you see. It was only a few months back I think that—”
“Yes?”
“That somebody else came knocking on my door. A lady biographer—”
The bitch. So she had started, had she?
“Lavinia Maddon? Was that her name?”
“Yes, now you say it, I think it was. But what’s all the bother? What do you care? And more to the point, what are you going to do with those pictures?”
I lowered my voice to a conspirational whisper. I could tell she liked life elevated to the realms of the dramatic.
“You see, Mrs.—?”
“Miss—Miss Jennifer Johnson.”
She looked at me hoping that I would recognize her name, her head turning and gesturing toward the portraits on the walls. I nodded and pretended to know who she was—or had been.
“You see, my employer, Mr. Crace, the writer, is extremely worried about people sniffing around about his past. He’s against this biography and wants to go to any lengths to prevent it. So this lady, this Lavinia Maddon, is working on something totally against his will, and he wants to try and stop it. Muckraking, he calls it.”
“Yes, I see. But why the photographs? Why the pictures?”
“Oh, that’s purely sentimental. He has very fond memories of this house and just wanted me to take a few snaps for his own use. So you’ve no need to worry there. But can I ask, did this lady ask you any questions? What exactly did she want?”
She paused as she might once have done in some second-rate play or television series, her eyes focusing on some distant point on the horizon, a swollen finger rising to her fat red lips.
“I remember she asked if I knew Crace, knew what had happened back then. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she mentioned something about a suicide. I think she was trying to spare my feelings, but I eventually got it out of her. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest if some silly queen topped himself in my kitche
n. She asked if she could have a look around. She seemed well spoken and decent enough, had a good address if I seem to remember, so I thought why not? It was nice to have the company, in fact. You know, once I had friends clamoring around me. Now it’s—”
“What else? I mean, did you give her anything? Did she find anything?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. She had a little notebook, a tiny little thing, and a darling sweet gold pencil, and she just wrote a few jottings down and then left. Haven’t heard anything from her since. I hope I haven’t gotten her into trouble; she was awfully nice to me. Bought me a bottle of gin. Such a sweet touch, I thought. You won’t be angry with her, will you?”
“No, not at all. I just wanted to assess the situation, to see how far things had gone, that’s all. I may have to see her though. Just to make things clear.”
“But you won’t mention my name, will you? Please tell me you won’t.”
“Of course not, Miss Johnson. But if I need to come back here, perhaps to have a look around, would that be all right?”
“I don’t see why not. You could come in now, if you like. Have a little drink…”
I told her that I was in a rush and that I might return later. I took down her telephone number, and I left her standing there in front of all those photographs of her multiple, past, imagined roles, images that were possibly even more real than the woman herself.
Watching. Standing outside, watching. Always watching and waiting. The house was tall and grand with a stucco facade, one of those wedding-cake buildings with two fluted columns flanking either side of the entrance. On the first floor was a balcony on which one of the residents had placed two bay trees. In the middle of the square, to its western end, stood a tennis court surrounded by trees and shrubs, yet another symbol of the gilded life that had been denied me. Not for much longer, though. I was determined to shape my future for the better.
The Lying Tongue Page 11
