‘That’s very kind of her. But I’ve just had one short story published.’
‘He’s got potential,’ Macy said, her unaccustomed praise surprising him. ‘Naive. But good.’
‘I’m sure he is. I think it’s healthy to have a creative hobby. Macy paints, of course.’
‘It’s not a hobby, Daddy.’
‘Languages. That’s what I wanted her to do. She has a natural linguistic ability, did you know that? She should have gone to Rome. Improved her Italian. But no. She wanted to come here to London. Play around with her paints at my expense.’
‘You just can’t take me seriously, can you?’
‘Well, you surely don’t expect to make a career out of all that abstract stuff? All that random throwing of paint. I mean it’s just not art.’
Macy rose from her chair, threw down her napkin and walked off, just avoiding the waiter who had turned up with three plates balanced on his arms.
‘Gone to the powder room,’ Collingwood said, his gaze following his daughter’s direction, as he tucked in his napkin, sat back to let the waiter serve him. ‘So like her mother. Highly strung. Hope you have what it takes to keep her in check, Edward. Well, do you?’
Edward had cut off a nice piece of calves’ liver and was tempted to pop it in his mouth, try to chew himself out of a response. But politeness forced him to put down his fork. The dead eye of Macy’s unattended fish observed him accusingly.
‘I really like her work, sir.’
Collingwood grunted. ‘That’s not what I asked. Do you have what it takes?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you’d better find out. Or she’ll run circles round you. Her mother was the same. Got to keep her on a tight leash. Keep her under control. Or you’ll be the one to suffer. Mark my words, boy. Just mark my words.’
This time Edward did let his fork complete its journey to his mouth, chomped down on the tender, juicy organ, praying that Macy would return. Which she did. Red-eyed and trembling. She remained standing, gulped down a glass of wine.
‘Come on, Eddie. We’re leaving.’
Collingwood cocked an eyebrow at him, as if to say: ‘Well, have you got what it takes?’
Edward stood up, tried but failed to button his jacket. ‘I’m sorry, sir. But I must leave. Thank you for…’
Macy grabbed his arm and led him away.
Outside, he took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, tried to keep up with her as they walked towards Berwick Street. The pubs were full, forcing sweaty-faced customers out on to the pavements with their pints. Jazz music filtered up into the street from a basement club. The smell of thick, sweet coffee. There was a definite pulse to the evening, a noisy, frantic, sexual beat. He tried to take Macy’s hand but she pulled away.
‘Why didn’t you support me in there?’ she snarled.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘It was all about you and your father. What could I do?’
‘You could have stuck up for me, that’s what. Just like I did for you.’
‘What did you do for me?’
‘I said your work was good.’
‘So did I. But you’d rushed off in a tantrum before you heard me.’
‘Yeah, sure you did.’
He stopped walking, stood looking at her. Her face had twisted into an angry-red ugliness. In that moment, he hated her. He felt it right down to the core. A deep, all-consuming hatred. Yet when she turned and walked away from him, he never wanted her so much.
CHAPTER NINE
Tokyo, Japan • 2003
He awoke. Slowly. Very slowly. Dragging himself out of the fuzzy pit of his subconscious. Gripping the dark edge of exit with his fingers, then trying to struggle up on his elbows. He could see over the rim. The slatted blinds were half-open casting a dull light into the room and a striped shadow on to the floor. But he couldn’t recognise where he was. Panic. His legs scrambled to find a grip, to push himself up and out. He must be in a ward. That was always the default mode. ‘If I do not know where I am, I must be in hospital.’ But at least he was alive. His mouth felt terribly dry. He shifted his head. His neck hurt. There was a desk. A dead computer. A sink. A magazine on the floor. Tokyo Art Lover. His head clearing now. The veil of death and illness disappearing. He lifted off the blanket, noticed he was without jacket, tie or shoes. Collar and cuffs unbuttoned. He then raised himself to a sitting position on the couch. The cushion on which he had lain was dusted with flecks of dried skin. Another layer of him had died, shed itself while he slept.
‘I will get up,’ he thought. ‘I will go over to the sink, splash water on my face, drink from that tumbler, and return here to read that bloody magazine. Find out what she said. That shall be the order of events to remember. I will now get up.’
But he couldn’t find his cane. He slid over to the edge of the couch where an armrest afforded some leverage. He managed to hoist himself to his feet, then in a half-crouch followed the ledge of the desk, hand-over-hand against the wall with its diplomas and degrees until he reached the sink. He splashed water on his face. So convenient to have a sink in an office. So typical of a Japanese university to ensure this comfort for its staff. He must remember to install one in his own study. He could have a drink of water anytime. Or make some tea. Or rack up some phlegm as he was doing now, spit out the green-yellow gunge and wash it down the plughole. Just like that. So undistinguished for a man of his stature. There was a handtowel too with a little university crest embroidered into one corner. A glass of cool water. Just the slightest taste of fluoride. He dabbed his lips. He could stand up straight now. And there was his cane. In the umbrella stand by the sink. He moved over to the window, played impatiently with all the different lengths and loops of cord until he managed to shift the blinds halfway up and on a slight tilt. Then there was light. He had an easier task with the lever to open the lower half of the window, let in some much needed air. Gulped in a breath, then looked around the room, knowing there was something else to do. He massaged the heel of his palm into the tightness in his neck. That felt good. Ah yes, the magazine. Where was the damn magazine? He eventually found it hidden away under the blanket. Then he had to get up again, fetch his glasses from his jacket slotted into a hanger on the back of the door. So much moving about. He sat down behind Jerome’s desk quite breathless.
He thumbed through the pages until he found the article. It was one of those interviews with the page split in two between the English and the Japanese translation. And there was Macy. “The abstract expressionist Macy Collingwood.” In Tokyo for a retrospective sponsored by some high class department store. Looking pretty smug about it too. Silver hair still thick and lush. He could see that even from the photograph. She had fattened out a little, gone a bit jowly and sun-dried but she looked healthy. Faded denim shirt. That Native American jewellery with those little turquoise pebbles setting off her colouring nicely. She had turned ethnic. Or Californian. Or vegetarian. Or whatever it was the Yanks did these days to keep so damn fit. He nervously scanned the text, looking for any mention of his name. There it was.
Interviewer: “I understand you first met Edward Strathairn in London in the early 1950s. Could you tell me something about that first meeting and if the two of you were part of a wider circle of artists and writers of the time?” He could imagine her laughing at that. Throwing her head back the same way she did the first time he saw her in the queue outside Westminster.
“Yes, I first met Eddie back then. But no, there wasn’t a clique or anything like that. All the real writers were in Paris. Camus, Sartre, Beckett, de Beauvoir. It was just a coincidence Eddie and I got to know each other. To be honest, I can’t even remember where and how we met. He was just starting out at the time.”
Interviewer: “And did you influence his work in any way?”
“His first published story was about me. ‘Roller Girl’. Something like that. Stupid title really. I doubt if it is available anywhere. So, ye
s, you could definitely say I influenced his early work.”
The sexless interrogator continued: “And what about Sir Edward? What kind of influence did he have on your work?”
“None whatsoever.”
Edward flinched at that. Not at the truth of it but at such assuredness. She still did those Jackson Pollock lookalikes. There was one propped up beside her in the photograph, resting right up beside her scuffed leather boot, which probably spent most of the day looped up in a stirrup or engaged in some other West Coast outdoor hobby. Macy might have moved right across America after her mother died but she had never moved on from abstract expressionism. She had stayed exactly where she was, let all the fads come and go until they came round to her again. That was Macy. Immutable. And unforgiving.
He read on, fearful of what she might have said next. But thankfully the interviewer had moved on to her more recent work.
He heard the door open. Jerome’s face in the gap, eyes narrowed in a scan of the room.
‘Still alive then?’
‘Just a short nap.’
‘A bit more than that, Eddie,’ Jerome said, still lingering in the doorway. ‘I was worried sick about you.’
‘What are you talking about? I feel fine. Quite invigorated.’ He performed a half-swivel in the chair to show off his vitality.
‘Relieved to hear it. But you had a real nasty turn there.’
‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘No.’
‘During the question and answer session. I think you had a dizzy spell or something. You kind of half-fainted. We had to drag you up here. The nurse even came. Temperature. Blood pressure. All that sort of thing. Perfectly normal as it happens. In the end, we just let you sleep.’
‘For how long?’
Jerome looked at his watch. ‘Must be two hours. You still don’t remember?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a bout of tiredness. Or jet lag. Or that bullet train. Travel is very energy-sapping at our age, don’t you think? Anyway, as I said, I feel fine now.’
He rocked back and forward in his chair as Jerome moved over to a filing cabinet, began to drag open drawers. Dusk outside. The crisp voices of the young crossing the campus. Final lectures to attend. Tutorials. He had read all about Tokyo teenagers. Ginza coffee shops. Snatched hours in love hotels. Sumo on TV. Pornography on the Internet. Hooked on computer games. No plots of revolution for this generation.
‘Got them,’ Jerome announced, placing three small boxes on the desk. Grey cardboard containers, stapled at the corners to form their loose rectangular shapes. Jerome plucked off the lids, laid out the photographs in an orderly fashion on the desk. Like cards stacked for a game of patience. Edward noticed the slight shaking of the hands as Jerome positioned the prints. He had an overwhelming urge to touch him then, to place an arm around his shoulder, to ask him so many questions. Has your life been a happy one, Jerome? Did you find love? Are you frightened of death? Does anything have any meaning for you these days? Are you angry? Are you bitter? Are you simply waiting for the end? Do you know what happened to Sumiko? But instead, he looked along the line of photos.
‘There are so many of them.’
‘Well, I always was a bit obsessive with the camera. Still am.’
‘Never owned one.’
‘Never owned a camera? How in hell’s name do you remember anything?’
‘I write it down.’
‘What do you mean? In a journal?’
‘No. In my novels.’
‘Thought that was all fiction.’
‘The narrative is. But the feelings underneath are real.’
Jerome turned to face him. ‘Photographs are my memories,’ he declared. ‘They are my narrative. Without them I have nothing. Zilch. Nada.’
‘Are you telling me if you hadn’t taken these, you wouldn’t remember any of this?’ Edward swept his hand over the desk.
‘Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Jerome folded his arms, leaned back against the desk in what must have been his practised lecture mode. ‘I’ll tell you something, Eddie. I don’t know about you but it’s not death that scares the shit out of me. It’s the fear of forgetting. If we knew we could carry our memories to wherever we go next, then there would be nothing to fear. It’s just the thought that all this life might be forgotten totally, that’s what frightens me. And therefore the photographs. Problem is…’ He laughed, a watery, almost sobbing kind of laugh. ‘I can never remember where I put them.’
Jerome had laid out the prints in chronological order in three columns, each according to the year on the lids of their respective boxes. 1956, 1957, 1958. Good strong, black and white images, still quite glossy despite their age. Jerome had a way with contrast, with composition, always fussing with his posers to position them just right. A lot of the usual tourist shots, friends larking about, but also the occasional artistic effort. There was one of construction workers, padding around in cloth boots on the iron skeleton of a high-rise building, heads wrapped in towelled bandanas, skinny arms sinewy with muscle, lips clinging aggressively to cigarettes. Hods, wheelbarrows, mixer. A homage to the new Tokyo, to the new concrete skyline.
‘I like this one,’ Edward said of the photo.
‘Yeah. Me too. That one was published. National Geographic.’
‘Impressive. And this one too. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.’
‘The Imperial’s gone, I’m afraid. I mean there’s still a hotel there by that name but all the Frank Lloyd stuff’s been dismantled. Too many earthquakes, too many bombs. Probably wouldn’t have lasted another tremor. So they took it down, re-assembled parts of it somewhere. Nagoya, I think.’
Edward liked what they were doing. Just the two of them. Picking out photos, chatting easy, a laugh about this one, glassy-eyed over that one. He had forgotten what this could be like. Remembering a shared past. All the more precious as the end approached for both of them. Exciting too, as he waited for the shots of Sumiko to emerge. And there she was. In her kimono. Standing in the crook of his arm, head rested against his shoulder, head tilted to the camera, the shyest of smiles. In the background, the Giant Buddha statue looking serenely down at them, heavy-lidded eyes closing out the obvious non-Buddhist attachment being displayed in front of it. She wouldn’t have liked the outward display of affection either. Tense in his arms, leaning in against his clasp just to please him.
‘Yeah, that was a great day,’ Jerome said, peering over his shoulder. ‘The three of us, down by the sea in Kamakura. That was the first time I met her. I remember us walking along the beach together. Trying to find Kawabata’s house.’
‘That’s right. She loved his books.’
‘She hurt her ankle and we had to carry her back. A goddamn pity. She so much wanted to see the great man’s house.’
Edward looked again at the photograph. ‘Is that the only one of her from that day?’
Jerome picked up the print, squinted at it. ‘Yeah, that was it.’
And that was the end of the matter. Sumiko had pressed herself into their minds for an instant, before disappearing again. Like a curious butterfly. Edward was desperate to talk more about their day together, to resurrect her memory in shared conversation, perhaps even to ask to keep the print, but a shadow passed over the window, distracting him. The bony swoosh and creak of a broad span disturbing the air. He saw a large crow swoop down across the yard to perch on the edge of a metal bin by the library. It was a monster of a bird. Arrogant. Fearless. It dipped its head into the bin opening, a few tugs, then flew off with a tied-up plastic bag in its beak. By the time Edward had returned his attention to the room, Jerome was already packing the photographs back into their boxes.
CHAPTER TEN
Brighton, England • 1953
From his deckchair at the tip of the West Pier, Edward could just make out the noise from the beach. The laughter and shrieks of children pl
aying in the waves. The musical grind of a merry-go-round. Seagulls screeching in delight at the potential for scraps. He closed his eyes and opened them again, the sheer breadth of the horizon forcing his gaze to widen from its usual scope of narrow city streets. The sun bounced off the water, bleaching the Regency facades of the grand hotels along the esplanade. Pleasure boats ferried day trippers over to the Palace Pier. The wooden planks scraped rough and sandy under his bare feet, the slats between them the ideal trap for halfpennies dropped from over-excited hands. Aldous sat beside him, sunk deep into the canvas – panama hat, white suit, thin gloves, sunglasses, concealing him mummy-like from the ageing glare of the rays. Macy off somewhere to fetch cones of ice cream along with Aldous’ nephew – a twenty-year-old youth from Manchester called Robert. Their joyous little party grateful for the opportunity to escape to Brighton from a London steaming and stifling in the heat.
‘I think it is time The Londinium received another contribution from you,’ Aldous said, his thin lips oily and pink-white with cream.
‘I have some ideas.’
‘Well, just make sure they don’t amount to some emotional gush. Given your situation with that girl.’
‘Her name’s Macy. As you well know. And my situation with her is perfectly fine.’
‘Well, she seems to have reeled you in very nicely. Running hot and cold as she does.’
‘She makes me very happy,’
‘Then you are very lucky, Edward. The state of happiness is only possible when you are young. It requires a certain innocence. A certain naivety. When you get to my age, one has become too world-weary, too cynical, to experience happiness. Or should I say “a state of happiness”. I may experience a moment of happiness as I do now, in the company of my friend on this noble structure, jutting into the ocean like the erect penis of this wonderful town…’
‘Channel. This is the English Channel. Not an ocean.’
‘Please do not interrupt. As I was saying, I may experience happiness as I do now, but only for an instant, before the sense of hopelessness sinks in and destroys it. Whereas you, Edward, with your heart, belly – and may I add your loins – full of hope, can extend these moments of happiness into a state of being. A state of being that may last days. Weeks even. I envy you.’
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