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The Truth

Page 26

by Michael Palin


  ‘You don’t need to do this. It’s madness.’

  ‘I’ve never done the conventional thing in my life. Despite everything I’ve told you, I still do value honesty above everything else. If I can’t be a good man I can at least be an honest man. You can tell the world my story and I won’t be around to get in your way. But someone very like me may get to read it one day. A retired Brazilian rubber planter, perhaps, or a Tibetan monk, though my preference is for an ancient Swedish fur trapper.’

  His laughter was cut short by another grimace of pain.

  So hard had Mabbut been concentrating on Melville’s words that he hadn’t heard the soft swish of the door opening. He looked round. It was Ursula. She said nothing, but looked at her father. He seemed calm now. At peace.

  ‘Mr Mabbut,’ she said softly, ‘time to go.’

  There was a pause.

  Melville held out his hand to Mabbut.

  ‘I’m sorry I let you down. But don’t you let me down, Keith. Promise me that.’

  Mabbut reached across and grasped the long, thin, surprisingly powerful hand. He felt it tighten as Melville looked up at him. Mabbut stared back into those piercingly, irresistibly clear blue eyes.

  ‘I’ll try my best.’

  Behind him, Mabbut heard Ursula clear her throat. He stood as she pulled the door open for him.

  ‘Might we meet again?’

  Melville pulled a last bright smile from somewhere, and shook his head emphatically.

  ‘No. Goodbye, Keith.’

  Neither said much as Mabbut and Ursula took the lift back down to reception. She offered him coffee, but he could see she was keen to get back to work. They shook hands.

  ‘My father was fond of you.’

  Mabbut couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Eventually.’

  ‘He said he wished he’d met you a lot earlier.’

  ‘I’m glad we met at all.’

  She picked up a package from the desk.

  ‘He told me to give you this. They’re transcripts. Something he and I have been working on together. But he asked that you open them only in the event of his death.’

  ‘He’s not really going to die, is he?’

  Ursula nodded.

  ‘Around the end of September, if all goes well.’

  Mabbut walked out into the increasingly busy streets. He sat down at a café across the road, choosing a table from which he could still see the white stuccoed front of the clinic. As he raised his eyes to the decorated frames of the dormer windows on the fifth floor, he had to shade them from the sun. Beside him, in a concrete culvert, the Tepla trickled down from the mountains. The bells on the red-hatted horses tinkled as carriages passed by. Mabbut reached for the bulky brown envelope and slipped it into his bag.

  TWELVE

  Two months later Mabbut was in his workroom wondering whether he should have a second coffee. It was one of those early autumn days that seemed to suit London well. The night had been cool and clear and there had been a light mist when he’d first sat down to write. He’d established a productive daily routine and was deep in the creation of an attack from the Isterians in the land of volcanoes. His decision to abandon the pseudo-archaic language he’d invented for his characters had proved crucial and Albana was now moving forward by leaps and bounds. His daughter Jay, now much recovered, had a place at Goldsmiths and was living back at Reserton Road. Sam had a small part in the new series of Doctor Who. Krystyna was still with Rex but was finding not having to earn a living deeply unsatisfying and was looking for some new challenge on which to expend her energies. Mabbut had just turned fifty-seven, and in all respects his life had slipped into a remarkably orderly pattern.

  The phone beside him rang.

  It was a voice he hadn’t heard for months.

  ‘Silla! How are you?’

  ‘Keith, I’m so sorry.’

  She sounded strained and far away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Hamish Melville. It’s so dreadful.’

  Mabbut started. His mouth was so dry that for a moment he couldn’t reply.

  ‘Haven’t you seen the news?’

  ‘No.’

  He flicked over to the BBC home page. The story was just breaking.

  ‘Apparently it was the steering.’

  Melville had been involved in an accident. His car had plunged off a coastal road in a remote part of southern Argentina.

  ‘He was on his own, apparently. Must have lost control. They’re looking for another vehicle that was seen on the same road earlier in the day.’

  A helicopter had been deployed, but this was the storm season and the authorities were saying it might be difficult to find the body.

  ‘Apparently he was working down there, on some land rights issue. I suppose that’s the way he would have wanted it . . .’

  Mabbut found himself both tense and detached.

  ‘Keith. Are you there?’

  ‘Thanks, Silla, I’m sorry, I’m just in shock.’

  ‘There’ll be a memorial, I suppose.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Look, I know it’s none of my business, dear boy, but since the book went belly up, how have you been keeping?’

  ‘Oh . . . I’m fine, thanks, Sill. I get by.’

  She sounded relieved.

  ‘Well, see you around, dear boy. I do miss you.’

  As the news broke, the media tried to do what they could with background on Melville, but there was precious little to go on. What was above and beyond doubt was that a brilliant if unorthodox man had paid the price for a life of tireless travel across the world, defending the rights of those whose voices might never have been heard.

  Shortly after midday, Mabbut returned to the Capital Storage Company in St John’s Wood and removed a strongbox. In it lay the package that Ursula had given him nearly three months earlier. He took it back to Reserton Road, and opened it at his desk. There were three sealed envelopes inside. Two of them contained micro-cassette tapes. In the third, a longer envelope, was a letter. The same old Foreign Office heading, smartly struck through with a red pen. Beneath it, in sweeping italic hand, was the message:

  For the book they never published, and the book that lies ahead.

  Hamish

  Stapled to it was a cheque for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. It had been post-dated to 19 September. The day of his death.

  Hamish Melville’s body was never found. He was given a posthumous knighthood by the Queen and a hall was named after him at the University of Strathclyde. Two years later Melville: The True Story of a Legend became the most successful self-published work of all time.

  The company that issued it, Slow Books, run by Keith Mabbut and his ex-wife, Krystyna Naismith, was set up with £120,000 capital from an anonymous investor.

  Their next book, The First Men, volume one of The Albana Trilogy, was published three years later, to universally lukewarm reviews.

  At the last count it had sold eight and a half million copies worldwide.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author gratefully acknowledges the help of all at TransIndus, and Wendy and Billy Stove in Lerwick.

  Also by Michael Palin:

  Fiction

  Hemingway’s Chair

  Non-Fiction

  Around the World in 80 Days

  Pole to Pole

  Full Circle

  Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure

  Sahara

  Himalaya

  New Europe

  The Python Years: Diaries 1969–1979

  Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980–1988

  Copyright

  A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook

  First published in Great Britain in 2012

  by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

  This ebook first published in 2012

  by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

  Copyright © 2012 Michael Palin

&
nbsp; The right of Michael Palin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 0 297 86023 5

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

 

 

 


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