Fictional Lives (3 page)
Authors: Hugh Fleetwood
What Maisie hadn’t presumably foreseen was that that ghost could not be laid; and that it would go on beckoning and beckoning, whispering ‘there is a way’, until Tina Courtland followed….
Still, she told herself finally, she did have one more chance. She hadn’t, yet, met Margaret Brandon—who had been away in the country since she had arrived, and with whom she had an appointment tomorrow morning. Perhaps Margaret Brandon would tell her something she hadn’t known; tell her that thing she wanted to know. Perhaps Margaret Brandon would provide her with the means to exorcise her devil….
*
What kind of means she wasn’t certain, and really, when she went to Chester Street at eleven o’clock next day, she held no great hopes that this last and most important interview would help her any more than the others had. But a minute after
she had been let into the house, and was talking to the woman, her spirits started to rise at last. Not because she believed, having met her, that Mrs Brandon would tell her anything she didn’t already know, but because she immediately felt that the woman herself might be the clue she had been searching for.
She was all wrong. Wrong, according to Tina, in a general way, and wrong, especially, as the wife of Joseph Brandon. She didn’t fit into the portrait, as it had been painted so far, in any way. Tina had heard that she had been a dancer before she had married the writer, and was the daughter of an English father, who had been a diplomat, and an Austrian mother. She had been expecting someone bright, practical, perhaps not too intelligent, with a few rather carelessly worn remnants of a former prettiness. What she was confronted with was a bleak, freezingly beautiful woman in her late forties, who seemed to have just stepped out of the pages of some fashion magazine. She had blonde hair that was cut with elaborate simplicity. She had a face that was as stretched and painted as a canvas. She had a body that was slim as a seventeen-year-old girl’s. And she wore a beige silk dress, beige high-heeled shoes, and a single gold chain around her neck that were almost parodies of elegance. As a dummy she would have been wonderful; as a person she was terrifying. There was nothing natural about her; nothing. Not the way she spoke—in a low, soft, expressionless voice—not the way she moved—as if performing in a drawing-room comedy—not even the way she looked; with eyes that, instead of noting, with amusement or disdain, the contrast between herself and the tall, broad-shouldered, blue-trousered and blue-shirted woman facing her, gazed emptily into space. She was the sort of woman whom Tina always wanted to grab and shake until she fell to bits; or whom she wanted to grab and kiss, until the man-made façade collapsed, and revealed a woman who, precisely because she
was so man-made, was in the most profound despair, and was only longing to be released from the hell in which she lived. But though, once or twice, when she had been younger, she had done just this (and on one occasion actually had released, as she liked to think, the woman within) now she was too old or too tired to contemplate such a move. And so, having taken note of her desire, she simply concentrated on the task in hand; which was first to try to understand how, knowing what she knew of him, and of his work, a man like Joseph Brandon could have married a creature like this; and second, to try to see the way she could use Margaret Brandon as a pin with which to bore through the castle wall of her late husband’s impregnability.
She concentrated for an hour, which was as long as the interview lasted. She concentrated while Margaret Brandon offered her coffee, while Margaret Brandon, in her expressionless voice, said all the things that everyone else had said about Joseph Brandon—that he was a man of great integrity and good humour, that he was a man who believed (though he never said so as such; he disliked making grand statements) that art alone could tell the truth about the world, could reconcile man to the miseries of existence, and reveal to man the wonders of existence, and that he was a man who believed that the great, the only important thing was to
live
—and she concentrated while Margaret Brandon took her to the study where her husband had worked, and showed her round the house. (Which, so shocked had Tina been before, she had hardly noticed till now; but which, when she did take it in, shocked her almost as much as its mistress, to which it was, in its way, similar. A beige, beautifully furnished, very elegant and utterly lifeless place that wouldn’t do at all as a background to the image she had already formed of Joseph Brandon). But concentrate though she did, feel steadily more certain though she did that Mrs Brandon was the proof of
something rotten in the writer, and feel correspondingly ever more relieved that she had at last found some proof, by the time she left the house she had still neither understood, nor seen in what way she could make use of her finding.
There was something more she had to learn, she told herself as she walked slowly through the hot dusty streets towards her hotel. She had seen in Margaret Brandon the symptoms of a disease. Now she had to discover the nature of the disease itself. To discover it, and label it—and thus make sure that her present conviction that Joseph Brandon had indeed been rotten didn’t slowly fade away; leaving her only with the suspicion that her reaction to his widow had been nothing more than some mixture of jealousy and resentment, and a priggish feeling that it was unsuitable for a great and famous author to be married to a doll, and live in luxury better suited to a banker.
Which wasn’t true, she thought, as she reached her hotel. There
had
been a flaw in Brandon, and she
would
find out what it had been; and she would set it down in her book for all the world to read. And then she would be safe forever.
*
She had had to wait for years to get this far; she only had to wait one more day to reach her destination.
Before she did, however, she learned something else which affected her profoundly; something which Christopher revealed to her when he came into her office the following morning.
‘What,’ the publisher said, ‘did you make of Margaret?’
Tina looked at the tall thin man—of whom she was, in spite of his sex, very fond—and wondered whether he was a friend of the widow, and whether she should be diplomatic. But never having been one for diplomacy, and in any case catching a note in Christopher’s voice which suggested that he didn’t make very much of her himself, she shrugged and
said, ‘I thought she was one of the most appalling people I have ever met in my life.’
Christopher laughed. ‘I guessed you might not approve.’ He paused, and glanced briefly at his hands. ‘Though it’s a shame you never met her when she was younger, before they were married. She was quite different then. I think you would have liked her then.’
‘Different how?’
‘Oh, fatter—well anyway plumper—more of a mess, more fun, more natural, more lively, and—’ he paused again, and smiled shyly, ‘I don’t know whether you’ll approve of me saying this, but if she’s beautiful today, in a rather scary way, she was
pretty
when she was young.’
Tina now laughed. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I have nothing against pretty women.’
She laughed, and she appeared to take Christopher’s comments lightly. But within, this revelation made her tremble. Margaret Brandon
had
once been as she had imagined that she would be. So Brandon hadn’t married a monster; he had
created
a monster. Oh, it was terrible, she thought; and made her all the more determined to expose the man.
‘And the house?’ she said. ‘I thought that was pretty awful, too.’
Again Christopher smiled shyly. ‘I’m afraid that was Joe’s doing as well. He bought it when he first started making a lot of money. He told me that when he’d been a boy he’d seen a photograph of Chester Street, and had thought that one day he would like to live there. He had a thing about eighteenth-century elegance. I could never see how it fitted in with the rest of his character.’ He nodded at Tina, and smiled for the last time. ‘I’m hoping that’s what you’re going to explain to us all.’
‘I will if I can,’ Tina said with passion. ‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘I never worry about you,’ her publisher murmured—and then held out a bulky package he’d been carrying. ‘I don’t know if these will help you at all. Margaret rang up yesterday after you’d left her and said she’d forgotten to give them to you. She found them after Joe’s death. They’re diaries or something, apparently. I sent a messenger round for them.’
‘Have you read them?’ Tina asked, more than ever trying to appear calm, and more than ever trembling within; trembling now with the sense—with the certainty—that here, in this brown paper package, she would find what she wanted to know.
‘Me?’ Christopher seemed shocked. ‘Good heavens, no. I don’t want to poach on your territory.’ He looked at his watch. ‘But I must leave you now. I have a meeting at ten-thirty.’ He laid the package on the desk. ‘Happy reading.’
‘Thank you,’ Tina said, still making an effort to appear unconcerned.
‘Oh, and while I remember.’ Christopher paused at the door. ‘Pat said to ask you if you could come to dinner with us next Tuesday—today week.’
‘Thank you,’ Tina said again, only wishing at the moment that the man would go, so she could open that package. ‘I’d like that.’
And she would have liked it, for she was as fond of Christopher’s wife as she was of him. But she didn’t go to dinner the following Tuesday. In fact she returned to Italy that very evening.
*
Inside the package were three large notebooks.
On the corner of one was written 1953–1963; on the corner of the second 1963–1973; on the corner of the third 1973——.
She started at the beginning.
June 24, 1953.
Yesterday I arrived in London for the first time and
immediately
if absurdly felt I had come home. I also decided, as I stepped off the plane, that I would in future keep a sort of diary. I say a sort because my novels, I guess, are my real diary. But here I shall keep a record of the undigested facts of my life; or the undigestible facts.
So—here goes.
There followed a brief passage of Brandon’s first impression of the city; which Tina skimmed through quickly. For even as she had read these opening words, her eye had been caught by something further down that first page.
In the evening Dick, and a young editor called Christopher something (I didn’t catch his name), took me to dinner in an Italian restaurant. We were joined by two compatriots of mine: Charles McDonald, a pompous old fool who didn’t impress me one bit, in spite of his reputation; and a fellow Southerner, Tina Courtland, whose book I haven’t read yet but who impressed me greatly. She is a tall, solid girl of around twenty-five, I’d guess, with a handsome man’s face, crew-cut blonde hair, an earnest manner and a voice that tends to get weepy when she becomes intense—which is often. She is clearly unaffected by the success that first novel of hers has had, and even seems scornful of it. She was also unaffected and seemingly scornful of Dick’s attempts to be ‘gentlemanly’ with her. But I’m not a gentleman so we got on well—at least until the end of the dinner.
They had got on well; and Tina clearly remembered that evening, and the young Alabaman she was never to meet again. His grey eyes that were too cool for his warm manner, had, when they caught hers, acknowledged a kind of kinship with her; and his tall solid body and handsome man’s face, that had made both Dick and Christopher seem very slight, and
shadowy, had made her feel that she had found, in him, a twin.
I guess by then we had both drunk too much, and I was also tired after my flight. Anyway, we started getting aggressive with each other, and also, as one tends to when drunk and tired, started making deep pronouncements about life and art etc. etc. First of all we just sort of sparred with each other—but then when Tina C. solemnly stated, in her weepiest voice, that ‘The history of the world is the history of crime, and the writer’s task as I see it is to denounce crime’, the fun really started. (Dick gave us both a look that implied we were country folk going on about country matters.) To begin with I laughed, then I knocked over my glass, and then I made
my
solemn statement. Which was (more or less): ‘You may be right about the history of the world being the history of crime, but if you are, the writer’s task as
I
see it is to celebrate crime. Without crime there would be no progress, there would be no justice, there would certainly be no art, there would, paradoxically, be no
check
on crime, and above all the human race would no longer exist.’ At which Dick murmured ‘Oh come now’, Christopher looked amused, and Tina began to scream. She accused me of being a fool, she accused me of hating life, she accused me of every goddam thing she could think of, and finally she accused me of being a man. And when I murmured in my pleasantest fashion that I guessed as a woman she dissociated herself from history—and not only from history, but also from reality—because if she didn’t she must certainly be a party to crime, she burst into tears, told me, yes, dissociate herself from history and reality was exactly what she did, because they were
man’s
history and reality, gave me a look which proved she didn’t believe what she said, and then ran out
of the restaurant so fast she knocked over a little old waiter who I’m sure still doesn’t know what hit him.
Well, I guess I won’t be seeing her again, though I’m sorry, because I did like her, and would like to continue my argument with her. That is get her to admit that she’s wrong and I’m right. Which, fifteen hours and a good sleep later, I know I am. Denounce crime, my ass! Maybe I put it wrong when I said I reckon a writer should celebrate crime. Maybe what I should have said is that if her original premise is correct (which I think it is, though it depends on the angle you view things from; you could put it the other way round, and say the history of the world is the history of man’s struggle
against
crime), and if therefore we are all a party to crime (because of course, as she virtually acknowledged with that look she gave me, she doesn’t think for a moment that even if she is a woman she can dissociate herself from history and reality; though if she doesn’t acknowledge it
openly
she’ll end up retiring to the countryside with some girl-friend, raising chickens and growing vegetables instead of writing books), the writer’s task is to describe the state of history and reality as it is now—to be in fact historians of the present—and let readers draw their own conclusions.
What I also should have said, I guess, is that if, once again, it is true that the history of the world is the history of crime, and we are all therefore parties to crime, it is the writer’s task, the writer’s duty—if he is to be an accurate historian—to know what he is writing about. To be, in other words, a criminal. To do willingly and consciously—not just, as is normal, unwillingly and unconsciously—what he believes to be wrong. If I can’t write about love, if I have never loved—and I can’t—I can’t, by the same token, write about murder if I have never murdered. And I defy anyone to name a great work of literature that doesn’t deal with
either love or murder; generally both. By that I am not claiming that every great writer of the past has killed someone; but I am claiming that some (whether in war or by ‘accident’) have, that those who have not have missed the ultimate greatness they are capable of (the greatness that comes from knowing every corner of themselves, of the world, of life and death; the greatness of taking the whole world in and creating it anew; and the greatness to which I aspire, and which for me is the reason I want to live and write—ah to
be
the world, to be God—how else could I bear my existence!), and above all that I myself, while I have every intention of being ‘good’ (indulging in my love of life) have also every intention of being ‘wicked’. (Indulging in my love of death.) Even up to and including murdering someone. For—to use a rather banal image—the love of life and the love of death are the twin motors on the ship of existence, and while I am here I wish to travel as far as I possibly can on that ship in exploration of the earth. To explore it, as I say, in order to re-create (no goddam it—
create
)
it.
There, Tina Courtland! As we used to say—put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
