The Truth

by Michael Palin

  ‘So, quite suddenly, at the grand old age of fifty-nine and a half, I found myself footloose and fancy free. Like a lot of Tories who got the push in ’97 I picked up a few directorships, dabbled in hedge funds – all sorts of wickedness – and also went back to my first love, which was poodling round the globe. Every now and then our paths would cross, usually in some bar or at a friend’s place. Hamish avoided embassies like the plague. He sort of went native, but he always knew exactly what he was doing.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Helping people everyone else ignored, basically. And making a fair nuisance of himself in the process.’

  ‘Which he’s still doing.’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  Rex looked across at Krystyna. This time it was more than a glance – an unhurried look of unmistakable warmth. He lightly, affectionately, took her hand and with the other summoned a waiter from the shadows.

  ‘Stay for a bite with us?’ he said.

  It was the touch of her hand as much as the ‘us’ that hit Mabbut hard.

  ‘No, I won’t. Thank you.’

  He pushed back his chair and stood up. Aware he’d done so rather too quickly, Mabbut took care placing it neatly beneath the table. Anything to avoid looking at Krystyna.

  Rex too stood, and held out his hand.

  ‘I’m glad we’ve met.’

  Mabbut nodded. He wanted to speak, but found himself unable to. The two men shook hands and Mabbut turned, his eyes passing over Krystyna’s without engaging. He located the exit and walked down the mirrored corridor that led him to the entrance. He pulled hard at the heavy black door, like a man trying to escape a fire. Only when he pushed did the door swing open and release him into the street.

  And it was there, on the corner of Furness Gardens and Fulham Road, that a tsunami of self-pity swept over him. Tears came: pathetic, unbidden and unstoppable. Two special constables strolled by and, seeing him, looked quickly away.

  The 43 bus dropped him on the corner of Lodge Street, a five-minute walk from the house.

  Mabbut fumbled for his keys – far too many on the ring – and pushed open the front door. The hallway was dark, but he could see a sliver of light beneath the kitchen door and hear voices. He switched on the hall light and clattered about a bit hanging his coat up, but he still made Jay and Shiraj jump apart when he entered the kitchen. It seemed innocent enough. They were just close, not doing anything.

  Jay was all brittle brightness.

  ‘Hello, Dad. We’ve just made some food.’

  ‘Sausages?’

  Shiraj looked at Jay, concerned until he saw her break into a smile.

  ‘I promise, Dad, I’ll get some tomorrow. Great big thick, beefy-venison-pork-sage, everything you like. But you can cook them.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘Have something now. Shiraj has made carrot and yogurt soup, and it’s delicious.’

  ‘No, I’ve already eaten,’ Mabbut lied. ‘And I’ve some work to do.’

  He looked from Jay to Shiraj. Shiraj put his hand to his heart.

  ‘Thank you, sir, for allowing me into your home.’

  Mabbut nodded.

  ‘Goodnight, all.’

  ‘Dad?’

  Jay’s voice made him jump. He was at his writing table, in a halo of halogen, bent over his work, miles away from the world.

  ‘Hi, love. How are you?’

  She came across to him. He felt her arms resting lightly on his shoulder.

  ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

  Without turning, he reached for her hand.

  ‘I saw your mother tonight.’

  ‘I know. She called.’

  ‘Met him. Tyrannosaurus Rex.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘I liked him . . . yes, I liked him.’

  Then something gave again, and for the second time that evening emotion got the better of him.

  ‘I liked him, Jay. That’s the bloody trouble! I liked him.’

  Mabbut raised both hands up to hers.

  ‘Oh, shit!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I really am.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. She’s happy. He’s a nice guy. You’re happy. He’s a nice guy. I’ll get over it.’

  It took him two or three deep breaths before he regained control.

  His daughter squeezed his shoulders, and they were silent for a while. When he’d composed himself Mabbut leant forward and adjusted the screen in front of him.

  ‘This your novel, Dad?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just some info on someone.’

  Jay peered at the screen.

  ‘Hamish Melville.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Of course, Dad. I’m not completely stupid.’

  ‘I thought he’d be a little out of your age range.’

  ‘Melville? He was a hero at school. Fighting the big boys. Siding with the locals. Tramping off into the middle of nowhere. He won a Year Six debate for who they’d most like to see running the country. Why are you looking him up?’

  ‘Someone . . . someone’s asked me to write a book about him.’

  ‘A book about Hamish Melville?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow! That’s fantastic, Dad. Are they going to pay you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Quite a lot.’

  ‘Are you going to do it?’

  Mabbut leant back, rubbed his eyes and stared at the screen.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. I keep telling myself that all I really want to do is write my novel. That’s what’s new and exciting. Then I talk to you and Shiraj and even bloody Rex and the whole thing suddenly seems . . . I don’t know . . . intriguing.’

  ‘Intriguing?’

  Mabbut grinned and shook his head.

  ‘The publishing company’s keen, but I don’t trust them. And Melville hates journalists.’

  He gave a bleak smile.

  ‘Bad man wants book written. Good man doesn’t want book written. It’s the sort of thing that makes the ears prick up.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly . . . You. Sam. The family. It’s a tight deadline and would mean my going away again. If I do it properly.’

  Mabbut sighed.

  ‘I’ve been away too long, too often. Your mother’s right. I’ve been bad at being a father and bad at being a husband. I’ve got to put some time in. Make some repairs.’

  Jay squeezed his hand and giggled.

  ‘Dad, you sound like the Odd Job Man.’

  Despite himself, Mabbut laughed at this. The Odd Job Man was a part of family folklore, a character they’d met on holiday in the Lake District who had a compulsive need to fix things. He was constantly under tables and up small ladders, taking perfectly efficient things apart and putting them back together again. One day his wife revealed that he was having treatment for the condition in Preston, but long before that his place in the pantheon of Mabbut family heroes was assured.

  ‘Seriously, you’re like Sam.’

  Mabbut frowned. ‘Me? Like Sam?’

  ‘You’re both really good at what you do, but you’re always the last to see it.’

  He smiled. ‘Have we got a picture of him?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘No, the Odd Job Man. I’d like to see him again.’

  ‘I’ll have a look. There must be one somewhere.’

  And they both laughed at the memory. A shared laugh. Unreserved, and for a moment at least, infectious.

  Mabbut lay awake into the small hours. Another sleepless night that had started with too much unhealthy imagining of Krystyna with Rex began to refocus around Melville, the book and something Shiraj had said. Something about too many good people making up stories, as if it were a waste of their talents. Mabbut knew he could do the book and do it bloody well. So what, exactly, was stopping him? Was it just the suspiciously large amount of money he was being offered?

  He sat up, switched
on the light. Then he switched it off again. He could think more clearly in the dark.

  When it really came down to it, what was bugging him about the Melville book was not its subject, but the crass way Ron Latham was approaching it – thinking he could achieve anything with his chequebook. Melville was a sophisticated operator. This project would need intelligence rather than wads of cash to find the man behind the smokescreens.

  As Mabbut chased these thoughts around his head he became more and more convinced that things could be different if he were to take the initiative in the hunt for Melville. He knew about tenacity. He’d won an award for it once. He also knew that the way to crack a story was not unlike the way detectives approach a crime. To catch Melville one would have to use Melville’s own tactics. Go underground. Work below the radar. If he were free to do it his way, then he could make the book work.

  The alarm clock showed 2.30 when Mabbut finally gave up the struggle to sleep and, pulling on the dressing gown Krystyna had given him for the last birthday they’d spent together, he sat down at his computer to plot a guerrilla strategy.

  Over the next two hours he tried to pick out the likely trouble spots that Melville might be drawn to, bearing in mind the issues on which the man was known to hold strong views. There was no shortage of ideas. If it was indigenous people threatened by ‘development’ that attracted him, then Melville could be almost anywhere in the world. In Papua New Guinea 312 local tribes, some as yet uncontacted, were sitting on resources that the Indonesian government, backed up by their army, was determined to extract. In Botswana the Kalahari Bushmen were being denied access to their wells, or simply been driven off their land to make way for a three-billion-dollar diamond mine. There were issues over oil extraction in the Peruvian jungle, titanium in Kenya, copper smelting in India, diamonds in Zimbabwe, hydroelectric schemes in Brazil, even beauty spots in Shropshire threatened by coal mining. Mabbut scanned endless websites which tracked revelations about global greed: Forest Watch, Tribal Information Forum, Freedom to Know, Hate Oil, Leave Us Alone, Protect Or Die, Godwatch, the Danish Women’s Environmental Action Group. By dawn his eyes were stinging but a plan of action was beginning to form in his mind.

  He showered and made himself an early breakfast. Toast, a bowl of fruit and strong coffee. He took his second cup upstairs. There was no sound from either of the other two bedrooms. Pushing his door to, he sat at his desk and dialled Silla’s number.

  She sounded husky and defensive.

  ‘Silla Caldwell.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  For some reason this led to a prolonged attack of coughing at the other end.

  ‘Now you tell me. Latham’s just left on a plane to Sydney, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. All I need is travel expenses and for Ron to stay in Sydney for as long as possible.’

  TEN

  Sam Mabbut was tall, and took after his mother in looks, with jet-black hair and strong cheekbones. Girls loved him, not so much for his cheekbones as for the soft, shy sadness of his eyes. He had a slightly wavering voice which he saw as a drawback and others saw as distinctive. Though Sam had an uncomfortable relationship with his father, he was glad to have been born the son of a writer and took this obligation seriously. For the last year Sam and two other young men had been writing plays and poems under the collective name of No Hope Theatre, and it was their latest work that was being given its world premiere in a private room above the Dark Lady pub in Chiswell Street. All the family had turned out, including, Mabbut noticed, both mother and father.

  Krystyna may have been here out of maternal affection, but Mabbut was here out of duty and guilt. He had little time for No Hope’s repertoire, but if he was going to be wrapped up in the Melville project, this might be his last chance of seeing his awkward, prickly son for a while.

  ‘Arse,’ intoned a voice from the blackness, pretty much on the dot of 8.30. ‘Arse that illuminates the world.’ A chord rang out. A single key-light hit Sam’s curled up figure as it lay whimpering on the floor. Fake shit fell from the ceiling on to the audience. For what seemed an interminable amount of time, Sam’s character engaged with various threatening figures, both verbally and visually. It was a bravura performance but Mabbut found that his mind kept wandering and, despite his best efforts, his eyes gently closing.

  In the second half fan heaters were turned on as the action of Arse transported the audience to a Turkish gaol. Mabbut felt uncomfortable for Shiraj, but the boy was watching with rapt attention, his fingers locked in Jay’s.

  At the end Mabbut had a moment or two with his son. Sam, who had an awkward habit of never opening a conversation, flicked the hair from his eyes and gave his father an ironic or possibly just uncertain smile.

  ‘You were great. But occasionally . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything, Dad. I know you don’t do polemic.’

  ‘You stick to your guns. I admire that. You don’t try to please everybody.’

  Sam nodded towards the departing audience.

  ‘We seemed to please most people here.’

  With Sam, free speech was a one-way thing. The truth was that, apart from one or two loners lured up from the bar by the title, ninety per cent of Arse’s audience consisted of friends and family of the cast.

  At that moment Krystyna, obviously in a hurry, squeezed between them. She kissed her son with an unequivocal warmth that irritated Mabbut. As if she were the only one who understood him.

  ‘Fantastic! You boys are so good. Meet you downstairs?’

  She cupped Sam’s pale cheeks in both hands, kissed him again and with a wave turned and headed for the door. Mabbut watched her go, then gave his son a brief hug.

  ‘Must get together soon. I’ll think of something. Give you a call.’

  He caught up with Krystyna as she hurried down the stairs. A cold draught blew in from the half-open fire exit.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  She paused, looked rather severely at him for a moment, then as he held the door open, walked past him into the bar.

  ‘White wine spritzer?’

  As if he needed to ask. It had been her drink of choice for thirty years. He’d rather hoped that Rex might have educated her palate. The bar was crowded and noisy, as these places always were.

  He put the drink in front of her and pulled up a stool. For a moment it felt like old times; it was something they always used to do, and he smiled at the memory. They had once made each other happy.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She pointed accusingly at his glass as if it might be evidence of infidelity.

  ‘A large Scotch.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since I saw Arse.’

  ‘It was great.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Sam and the boys told me they wrote it in a week.’

  ‘Felt like it,’ he said, irritated less by her opinion than by her assumption of inside information.

  ‘It was strong stuff.’

  ‘It was repulsive. Be honest.’

  Krystyna shrugged. ‘What were you expecting, Mary Poppins?’

  ‘I don’t see why I should have to take responsibility for the Armenian genocide, that’s all.’

  ‘Not you. Us.’

  ‘No Rex tonight?’

  ‘He’s at the Mansion House.’

  ‘Underground station?’

  ‘No. The Mansion House. For the Lord Mayor’s Dinner.’

  Krystyna sipped her spritzer, but having established a points victory, she softened.

  ‘It was good of you to come last night. I know it can’t have been easy for you. To meet Rex.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What am I supposed to say, Krys? That he’s a better man than me?’

  Surprisingly, Krystyna put out her hand and touched his arm.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. He’s different, that’s all.’

  ‘Rich, witty, well connected . . .’

&nbs
p; She shook her head dismissively. Mabbut smiled.

  ‘And that’s just me.’

  She laughed, a quick, defenceless laugh. Such a rare thing between them these past few years. It was like striking a match in a darkened room.

  ‘I wanted to let you know, I’ve taken on a book. Something I didn’t tell you about. It’s well paid, but it does mean I shall be away travelling again.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  Krystyna looked at him carefully.

  ‘What are you trying to say, Keith?’

  ‘Come back.’

  She shook her head and looked away.

  ‘Come back. Before it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We both know it won’t work.’

  ‘Only one of us knows.’

  ‘Keith, I am saying this once and for all. We parted for good. We agreed. Rex wants to marry me. I want to marry him. If you respect me, let me go. We can still be friends. And he likes you. He got on well with you.’

  Mabbut finished the whisky in one fierce gulp and thumped his glass down on the table.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not taking that bait. If you want an endorsement from me, forget it. He’s yours, not mine. He may love me like a brother, but to tell you the truth, I’d be happier if I never saw him again in my life.’

  ELEVEN

  In retrospect, it had been a foolish thing to say, thought Mabbut, as Rex approached, shook his hand and settled himself at the table of a discreet Italian restaurant on the corner of Horseferry Road.

  It had taken a few days for Silla to sort out the details with Latham. She had, she said, managed quite cleverly to present her client’s indecision, bordering on ingratitude, as nothing more than a weighing up of two major offers, without, of course, admitting that not a cent had been committed to the novel by any publisher. They had then moved on to Mabbut’s concerns over research and his insistence that he be able to plan his own moves. Latham had argued that he was paying and it was up to him to call the tune. He had already begun to assemble a team of bright young graduates to help with research. Silla got him to agree that they would remain London-based, leaving Mabbut free to track down Melville abroad. Latham replied that he personally would lead the team and make relevant enquiries as to Melville’s movements, ensuring that Mabbut had somewhere to start. Mabbut had told Silla that this was absolutely not acceptable, whereupon she finally blew up, gave him a lecture about gratitude, opportunity, unselfishness and other priorities. The contract was finally signed at her office late one evening over a takeaway curry.