‘I wondered,’ Celia said. ‘You must have known Mummy quite well, I suppose.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Arthur said. ‘Very well. I saw her every week, at least.’
‘I wanted to ask …’ Celia began. ‘Arthur, I wanted to ask. When you found that Mummy was going to have a baby, was going to have me, do you remember who it was that she said the father was? Do you know at all?’
‘Is that it?’ Arthur said, after a moment.
‘Is that what?’
‘Is that why you’ve come to find me?’ Arthur said.
‘I wanted to see you,’ Celia said unconvincingly. ‘But I wanted to know the answer, too. Is that really so surprising? Why did you think I would come?’
‘I don’t know,’ Arthur said. ‘I couldn’t have guessed. You’d best ask your mother.’
‘Mummy says she can’t remember. But I don’t believe it. How can that be true?’
‘It’s not for me to say anything,’ Arthur said primly. He had never given the question a moment’s thought.
‘So you do know. Or you know something. I asked Uncle Duncan and he won’t say, and Mummy won’t. It’s so terribly important to me. No one else is around. Mummy’s friends – there were a pair called Katy and Bella, Uncle Duncan said, but they’d long disappeared by the time Mummy had me. And there were people she worked with, but she’d never have said anything to them. I never thought of Mummy as someone without friends, but there just doesn’t seem to be anyone who would have known. It’s so terribly important.’
‘You haven’t considered possibility that she’s not hiding it from you. She maybe just can’t remember. I never met your father. He wasn’t important. I certainly never met him.’
‘But you do know something, you do. Please. It’s so terribly important to me. Wouldn’t it be important to you?’
Arthur paused. ‘Why is it important?’
‘To know where you came from. To know what caused me. You can understand that.’
‘I can understand people wanting to know what they’ve caused. But do you ever know what caused you? How would you know?’
‘I would just know,’ Celia said. They looked at each other, both curiously tranquil. Celia’s face was firm with the determination not to express desperation; Arthur looked at the woman with interest. For the first time in years, he wondered what it must be like to feel like this. Where had he come from? What had caused him? The mother and father – dead now. His sisters; the books he had read. He looked at Celia, and for a fleeting moment saw not her dark father, but her mother, Dommie. He wanted, just for a second, to see Dommie again.
‘He was Syrian,’ Arthur said. ‘He was a student. That’s all I know. I don’t think there is anything else to know. I don’t suppose he even knows that you exist, or ever did know. Dommie wanted it that way. She’s not keeping anything from you.’
‘I see,’ Celia said. She looked a little tearful. ‘Look – it’s been wonderful to see you. You were so much a part of – oh, I don’t know. I had such a happy childhood. I just thought. Well, you’ve been really a help, I know. And now I’d better go. Do you think I can get a taxi on the street here?’
‘The U-Bahn’s just around the corner,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s very safe. Are you sure you won’t have another cup of tea? They aren’t expecting me back at café just yet, I don’t suppose.’
‘No, I must go,’ Celia said. ‘You’ve been wonderful. I’ll tell Mummy I’ve seen you – you’ll send her your love, will you?’
‘I will,’ Arthur said.
It seemed as if the beautiful woman in the fur-collared coat was going to be Yusuf’s only customer of the afternoon. The idea of an elegant Turkish tearoom was just not catching on. He went to the plate-glass front window and gazed out. The snow was thinning a little, and as he watched, the door of the apartment block opposite opened, and the woman stepped out. She turned about, to left and right, and, as if at a command, a yellow-brown taxi drew to a halt, and she stepped in. Yusuf reflected that she must have left her package of books with that nice English Philip opposite. Or perhaps, rather, with that nice English Arthur. It was interesting that he had, it seemed, changed his name at some point. Yusuf looked forward to Florian coming back, in order to tell him the interesting news. Florian always liked gossip, if there was any hint of the disgraceful about it. There was a veiled radiance in the air behind the snow, as if the sun were trying to break through before the snow had quite finished. Yusuf stepped out into the street to enjoy the quiet of snow falling under the bright-lit clouds. Somewhere, not so far away, someone was playing a CD with a window open, despite the snow. It was a familiar piece of music, the old-fashioned sound an orchestra might make for rich ladies and gentlemen to dance to, in the old-fashioned times. Yusuf knew it from somewhere: he could not name it, however. He stood in the falling snow, and it fell onto his upheld face through the shine of light in the air. He was not quite sure where the music was coming from, from what bright direction.
Battersea-Charmilles-Murray Hill
August 2013
Final Note
There is, indeed, a London bookshop devoted to gay literature, which has been in existence for thirty-five years. I have been a customer of Gay’s the Word in Marchmont Street all my adult life. Happily, unlike Duncan’s shop, it is still going strong, and no one in this book bears any resemblance to anyone who works or who has worked in the real shop. I did not investigate its history, and this imaginary story only coincides with reality in the broadest outlines. The same is true of the Bauhaus sequence, where I have changed the order of events and happily combined real historical figures with imaginary ones. Where real people play a part in this novel, from St Perpetua to my friend Paul Bailey, they are always referred to by their real names.
Diesseitig bin ich gar
nicht fassbar
denn ich wohne grad
so gut bei den Toten
wie bei
den Ungeborenen
etwas naher
dem Herzen der Schöpfung
als üblich
und noch lange
nicht nähe genug.
Also by Philip Hensher
FICTION
Other Lulus
Kitchen Venom
Pleasured
The Bedroom of the Mister’s Wife
The Mulberry Empire
The Fit
The Northern Clemency
King of the Badgers
Scenes from Early Life
NON-FICTION
The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting
About the Author
Philip Hensher has written nine novels, including The Mulberry Empire, the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, King of the Badgers and Scenes from Early Life, which won the Ondaatje Prize in 2012. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Bath Spa and lives in South London and Geneva.
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
Copyright © Philip Hensher 2014
Philip Hensher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in
any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Cover drawing by Norman Arlott
Source ISBN: 9780007459575
Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007459582
Version: 2014-05-22
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