Forgotten Life (22 page)

Clement dropped the letter on the blanket and began to weep. Again Joseph was saying that he had misunderstood and misconstructed his own story. What exactly he meant by that, Clement could not yet comprehend. Some of his tears were for his own lack of comprehension.

When Clement awoke next morning, Sheila had already left the bedroom. He could see that the sun beyond the curtains had resumed its unexpected reign over Rawlinson Road. Making a mental check of his anatomy, he discovered that he was in moderate good health; the pain in his left leg and the slight tremor in his right forearm were distractions of long standing, and not to be considered.

It was Sunday – a week since they left the madhouse in Boston.

He dressed and came downstairs slowly, seeming to float in the dimness, for Sheila had drawn the curtains over the long window on the landing in order to keep out the heat, creating unfocused semi-shadows on the striped wallpaper. From Sheila's room came the steady click of her word-processor: Kerinth was being reborn and he did not disturb her. His mind was still full of yesterday's worrying experience.

As he was about to descend to the hall, a sound at the front door attracted his attention. Accelerating his step, he was in time to see a glint of daylight and fingers at the letterbox, as a piece of paper was pushed through. The paper dropped to the doormat. Even as he hastened forward to pick it up, Clement recognized it as a copy of the vindictive review of
War Lord of Kerinth
, cut from the
Guardian
, which had greeted them on their return from Boston.

At once, Clement unlocked the front door and flung it open. He
ran down the steps and the path to the street. He could see the traffic trundling by on the Banbury Road. On Rawlinson Road, no one was in sight. He went out on the pavement and stared this way and that, clutching the review. He looked into next door, beyond Mrs Farrer's pseudoacacia. Had someone just disappeared down the sideway? He was convinced that the horrible John Farrer had struck again. Why wasn't the little bugger in church, praying forgiveness for his sins?

His savage glare at the Farrer roses failed to wither them. Retreating to his own territory, he went slowly inside, shaking with anger, and closed the door behind him.

There were voices in the kitchen. Two of Michelin's friends had come round to take coffee and Maison Blanc cakes with her. They greeted Clement politely when he entered the room.

Michelin was wearing lipstick for once. This was a detail Clement only later realized he had observed.

He helped himself to a bowl of mixed Shreddies and All-Bran and took it out to eat at the garden table, away from the chatter of the ladies. After a little while, Michelin came out with a cup of coffee for him. He smiled at her and then made himself read the adverse review.

‘… What is disturbing about such fantasies is that they present arrant impossibilities as if they were fact, thus stepping up the power of the drug. In the silly world of Kerinth, a dead race comes back from a million years ago and interferes with present-day activities whenever the plot demands it.

‘None of the characters is surprised at this remarkable phenomenon, because the effect the author is aiming at is sedation rather than enquiry.'

This extract contained several mistakes. Its general air of condescension was also a mistake, in Clement's eyes. He screwed the scrap of paper up and heeled it into a flower bed, so that Sheila would not see and be disturbed by it again. The sheer malice prompting someone to push this idle squib through the door nearly made him sick.

He imagined doing many violent things to Farrer until the savagery of his thoughts frightened him, and he resorted mentally to Mrs Emerova.

‘If it was that little bugger next door, what does he know about it? He's no literary critic. Who's he to agree or disagree with the prick in the
Guardian
, whoever he is?'

‘How do you know it is the person next door? Why so close?'

‘What's that to do with it? He'd destroy my wife's work if he possibly could. I know her books have no stylistic excellence. She's no Nabokov and doesn't pretend to be, but they bring her peace of mind and happiness, and delight others, and here's this little bit of dirt …'

‘Does all this hostility mask your own dislike of Sheila's books?'

‘Really, you say the silliest things. I'm happy if Sheila's happy. This little cretin next door can have no real valid opinion of his own. Who's he to judge what the Kerinth novels are worth? He's only a sodding little insurance agent. Don't you agree that this was a low and vindictive thing to do?'

‘Mightn't there be another way of looking at it? A friend meaning well? After all, the review goes on to say that Green Mouth is mistress of her craft, so it is possible, isn't it, that someone else might carelessly think of it as rather a favourable review?'

‘Look, he hates the novels simply because they are written in the house next door. He hates them because sometimes Sheila types on a manual in her bikini by the swimming pool, and he can see her at it if he stands on a chair in their spare room and cranes his head out of the window. He hates them because there aren't any insurance agents on Kerinth. He just hates the thought of creative activity. He even came round once to complain that the sound of the word-processor kept him awake at night. He hates them because they've got wrap-around picture jackets with bronzed people on not at all resembling his own little contorted frame.

‘He hates the novels because they are extremely successful. He hates them because you can buy them in airports all over the world, and in Papua New Guinea. Not for any literary reasons. He knows
bugger all about literature. He can't tell the difference between Tolstoi and Trotsky. He probably thinks Gorky is a Park. Who's he, after all, to defend literary standards? All right, he's seen Frank Delaney and Melvyn Bragg on television, but that's as far as it goes. He takes the
Reader's Digest
. Do we comment on his fancy insurance policies? Who's he to comment on Sheila's prose? Besides, I always check her grammar for her.

‘He hates Sheila and me simply because we are happier than he is, and much richer. He hates us because we've got a villa outside Marbella. He hates us because we have the house repainted every four years. He hates us because we've installed Victorian fireplaces. He hates us because we have parties. What if a guest once slung a bottle over the wall and smashed one of his cloches? Didn't we go round next day with a bottle of wine to apologize? When's he ever come round here with anything? He hates Sheila because she's bigger than his little mouse of a wife and wears fashionable clothes. He hates her because she gets her photo in Blackwell's shop window. He hates her no doubt because he secretly desires her. Some hope!

‘He hates other people's success. He hates me. I don't have a thing against him. He's just a little shit who ought to be squashed.'

‘And do you see yourself doing that?'

‘Often.'

The interior dialogue went some way towards cooling Clement's temper. Draining his coffee, he looked at his watch. He might as well go along to his room in college and work on
Adaptability
; he liked the silences Sunday brought, with Arthur presumably off taking his nubile little wife out in their Zastava Caribbean to have lunch in Burford or Henley. He felt perfectly well this morning, although the traumatic visitation from his brother remained vivid in his mind. The bar of soap still revolved. He made a resolve not to go over to Acton alone next time.

Before leaving the house, he went upstairs to say hello to Sheila.

Sheila, in her role as Green Mouth, had taken over all the first floor of the house. Of the two front rooms, bedrooms under a
previous ownership, one served as a sort of library-lounge-art gallery, while the other was her study – her Room, more simply. It was the powerhouse of Kerinth.

A secretary, who had a small room of her own at the rear of the house, also worked in Sheila's study. The study was dressed in cream. Being in it was rather like being in a huge meringue. The walls were cream, the long heavy curtains were cream. Even the Chinese carpet on the floor was cream, with brilliant green edges. Her desk was also cream. The chairs in the room were upholstered in cream, as was the large Victorian sofa, on which green cushions were piled.

The secretary, Mrs Florence Flowerbury, also sat at a cream desk, half-concealed behind a four-panel cream screen.

Seeing Clement enter, Mrs Flowerbury half-rose and gave him a gracious smile. ‘Here we are, you see, Dr Winter. How are you?'

It was her little joke that she stuck to Sheila – in a phrase she had once used – ‘through thick and thin', though very little thin had affected the Green Mouth career.

‘I didn't expect to see you here on a Sunday, Mrs Flowerbury.'

‘A lot of work to catch up with, Dr Winter. I wouldn't do it for everyone' – said with a sweet smile towards Sheila.

The general effect of being in a clotted cream factory was mitigated by a brilliantly painted panel on the rear wall of the room, executed somewhat in the manner of Douanier Rousseau. Amid riotous foliage, lifesize
mazooms
and
crichts
, the owl-like inhabitants of Vinto, Kerinth's moon, gazed down with huge cat eyes on their creator.

Their creator, evidently not yet entirely back to Earth after the adulation heaped on her in Boston, wore one of her striking green embroidered robes. She was working at her word-processor. On a corner of the sofa lay Green Mouth, the lizard-like doll and companion of Sheila's childhood, much worn by years of infantile caresses, from which Sheila had taken her trade name. The doll was her secret talisman, without which she could not write. It was clear she meant business now. Her somewhat heavy face was set in lines of
concentration as she sat, elbow on desk, considerable cheek resting on fist, peering into the screen of her purring word-processor for inspiration.

‘I must get out into the garden,' she said, absent-mindedly.

On her desk she had gathered, conventionally enough, a series of objects of problematic relationship. They lay strewn beside a photograph, framed in silver, of the Winters' dead child, who, staring as if deep in thought at a toy ambulance from which protruded the legs and feet of a doll, formed a striking little figure in a short-skirted dress and picture hat. The surrounding objects included a small bell from a Mexican church; a matchbox advertising a restaurant in Bath; a postcard view of the Potala Palace in Lhasa; a block of Duplo Lego; an Italian miniature scent bottle without stopper; a netsuke of a man and woman copulating, gift of an admirer in New York; and a smooth stone, streaked with wafer-thin evidence of bygone geological events, which had been picked up on a distant seashore. It might have appeared – say to an interviewer who came to talk to Sheila Winter in her home – that these items presented some kind of methodical reminder to the author of the so-called real world, necessary while she ventured into the realms of her imagination; but from their casual disposition, and the way in which most of them were half-buried in paper or scribbled notes, or other vital adjuncts of her profession, it seemed they had accumulated merely through an idle acquisitive instinct. Sheila was a conventional woman.

As her husband came closer, she glanced up and smiled.

‘How are you feeling, darling? I was up early this morning. I had an idea.'

‘You must have thought me out of my mind yesterday. It's ridiculous to say that Joseph's flat is haunted, but there he was.' He went to her side, and she took hold of his hand. ‘There he was. It was a real shock. He was washing his hands in the kitchen. I can't tell you the effect of it all. The hand-washing seemed to be going on for ever … You aren't about to tell me I imagined it all, are you?'

Sheila half-smiled. She stood up and held his face between her hands. ‘You old silly! “There's nothing but thinking makes it so.” Isn't that what you've often told me? It's real to you, so it's real to me.'

‘Well, it was most extraordinary. Joseph definitely spoke to me. “Everything worked out all right.” It's a genuine message from the Beyond, isn't it? How are you feeling? Are you entirely over your jet-lag yet?'

Even as he asked the question, he wondered if Joseph's supposed appearance had not been a product of his own jet-lag.

‘That reminds me. Mrs Flowerbury, we must ring the Boston committee and thank them for their hospitality.' She seated herself again on her cream chair, her mind slipping back to her work. ‘I suddenly had a marvellous idea as I was in the shower. An image. It must have been something to do with the milkman. He was delivering yesterday with a new van. When I was a child in the country, the milkman used to go on his rounds with a horse and cart.'

‘Good, yes, well, I'm just off. I didn't mean to disturb you. Don't forget it's drinks with the Fender-Lieversohns this evening.'

‘Good. I had the image of three hooded men galloping at full stretch along a shore. The tide had retreated, leaving miles of sodden sand reflecting the blue sky. Some way out to sea was a small island, volcanic, with smoke rising in a plume from it. A wonderful opening. A wonderful cover. I felt I had to write it down. We'll see where it takes me. Keep your fingers crossed.'

‘That's fine. Remember, you don't need to work on a Sunday, nor do I. I must get the booze for the party from Bottoms Up tomorrow. Well, they'll deliver as usual, of course.'

‘Don't forget to order plenty of glasses. I thought this time I'd make more of the
Rajjimi
, give them a bigger role in events.'

‘I like your
Rajjimi
. Don't overwork.'

‘I'm supposed to be Sunday-lunching with Maureen. I might just put her off. She'll understand.'

He kissed her and they stroked each other's faces.

He did like the
Rajjimi
, he reflected as he went downstairs past
Sheila's pictures, among the soothing shadows, hearing the keyboard of the word-processor already beginning to click. The Golden Age of Kerinth lay far behind it. The planet had once been ruled by a noble and powerful race, the
Rajjimi
. It had disappeared. A quarter of a million years (and not a million years, as the man had said in his
Guardian
review) of barbarism had elapsed before Kerinth became – at least in part – civilized again. The ruling
Rajjimi
materialized to the new rulers of the planet, appearing like apparitions from the dead, to advise, to counsel, to warn. Some of the new rulers heeded them, others deliberately flouted the ghostly advice.