Ghostwritten (39 page)

Tim chuckled and took off his glasses. Both pairs. He leant back on his squeaky chair and placed his fingertips together as though in prayer. ‘Are autobiographies supposed to be factual? Would you like the straight answer or the convoluted one?’

‘Straight.’

‘Then, from the publishing point of view, the answer is “God forfend.”’

‘I’ll try the convoluted answer.’

‘The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting.’

Very Tim Cavendish. Profundity on the hoof. Or has he said it a hundred times before?

‘Look at it this way. Alfred is the ingredients, the book is the meal, but you, Marco, you are the cook! Squeeze out the juice! I’m glad to hear there’s still some left in the old boy. Ghosts are welcome. And for God’s sake, play up the Jarman–Bacon connection when you get to that. Encourage him to namedrop. Stroke his udders. Alfred’s not famous in his own right, at least, outside Old Compton Street he isn’t, so we’re going to have to Boswellise him. The ear of postwar-twentieth-century London. That kind of thing. He knew Edward Heath, too, didn’t he? And he was a pal of Albert Schweitzer.’

‘It doesn’t seem very honest. I’m not writing what really happened.’

‘Honest! God bless you, Marco! This is not the world of Peter Rabbit and his woodland friends. Pepys, Boswell, Johnson, Swift, all freeloading frauds to a man.’

‘At least they were their own freeloading frauds. Ghostwriters do the freeloading for other frauds.’

Tim chuckled up to the ceiling. ‘We’re all ghostwriters, my boy. And it’s not just our memories. Our actions, too. We all think we’re in control of our own lives, but really they’re pre-ghostwritten by forces around us.’

‘So where does that leave us?’

‘How well does the thing read?’ A classic Cavendish answer in a question’s clothing. The intercom on Tim’s desk crackled. ‘It’s your brother on the line, Mr Cavendish.’ Mrs Whelan, Tim’s secretary, is the most indifferent woman in London. Her indifference is as dent-proof as fog. ‘Are you here or are you still in Bermuda?’

‘Which one, Mrs Whelan? Nipper Cavendish or Denholme Cavendish?’

‘I dare say it’s your elder brother, Mr Cavendish.’

Tim sighed. ‘Sorry, Marco. This is going to be protracted sibling stuff. Why don’t you drop in next week after I’ve had a chance to read this lot? Oh, and I know this is Herod calling Thatcher a bit insensitive but you really need to change your shirt. And there’s something white stuck in your hair. And a last word of advice, I tell this to anyone who’s trying to get a book finished, steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.’

I downed the rest of the whisky and slunk off, closing the door quietly behind me on Tim’s ‘Hello, Denny, how marvellous to hear from you, I was going to get in touch this very afternoon about your kind little loan . . .’

‘Goodbye, Mrs Whelan.’ To Caesar that which is Caesar’s, to God that which is God’s, and to the Secretary that which is the Secretary’s.

Mrs Whelan’s sigh would drain a fresh salad of all colour.

‘Marco!’

I’d wandered into Leicester Square, drawn by the knapsacked European poon, the lights and colours, and a vague plan to see if there were any new remainders to be found in the mazes under Henry Pordes Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. Warm, late afternoon. Leicester Square is the centre of the maze. Nothing to do but put off getting out again. Teenagers in baseball caps and knee-length shorts swerved by on skateboards. I thought of the word ‘centrifugal’, and decided it was one of my favourite words. Youths from the Far East, Europe, North America, wherever, drifting around hoping to find Cool London. Ah, that Cockney leprechaun is forever beyond the launderette on the corner. I watched the merry-go-round for a few revolutions. A sprog was smiling every time he bobbed past his gran and somehow it made my heart ache so much that I felt like crying or smashing something. I wanted Poppy and India to be here, now, right now. I’d buy us ice creams, and if India’s fell off, she could have mine. Then I heard my name and looked up. Iannos was waving a falafel at me from his Greek Snack Bar between the Swiss Centre and the Prince Charles Cinema, where you can see nine-month-old movies for £2.50, by the way. Katy’s scrambled eggs had long since vacated my stomach, and a falafel would be perfect.

‘Iannos!’

‘Marco, my son! How’s The Music of Chance?’

‘Fine, mate. Everything as it should be. Petty arguments about nothing, bitching, still porking one another’s girlfriends when we’re not porking one another. Did you buy the new Synth from Roger?’

‘Dodgy Rodgy? Yep. I play it in my uncle’s restaurant every night. Only problem is that I have to pretend I’m Turkish.’

‘Since when can you speak Turkish?’

‘That’s the problem. I have to pretend I’m an autistic, Turkish, keyboard-playing prodigy. Gets you down, man. Like being in
Tommy
and
The King and I
on the same stage. When’s The Music of Chance playing again?’

‘When is it not playing?’

‘Bollocks, man. How’s Poppy?’

‘Ah, Poppy’s fine, thanks,’

‘And her beautiful little daughter?’

‘India. India’s fine . . .’

Iannos looked at me thoughtfully.

‘What’s that look supposed to mean then?’

‘Ah, nothing . . . I can’t chat, but why don’t you come in and sit down? I think there’s a seat at the back. Cup o’tea?’

‘I’d love one. Thanks, Iannos. Thanks a lot.’

Iannos’s little snack bar was full of bodies and loud bits of sentences. The only free seat in the cramped place was opposite a woman slightly older than me. She was reading a book called
The Infinite Tether – You and Out of Body Experiences,
by Dwight Silverwind. I asked if I could take the seat, and she nodded without looking up. I tried not to stare but there was nothing else to look at. Her auburn hair – dyed – was in gypsy ringlets, and between her fingers, eyebrows and ear-lobes she was wearing at least a dozen rings. Her clothes were tie-dyed. Probably purchased when she’d gone trekking in Nepal. Landslid breast. She burns incense, does aromatherapy and describes herself as not exactly telepathic, but definitely empathic. She’s into pre-Raphaelite art, and works part-time in a commercial picture library. I’m not knocking these things, and I know I come over as arrogant. But I do know my Londoners.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ I sipped my tea with a cocked little finger, ‘but I couldn’t help noticing the title of your book.’ Her eyes were calm, and faintly pleased – good. ‘It looks engrossing. Is there a connection with alternative healing? That’s my field, you see.’

‘Is that a fact, now?’ Nice voice, rusky with sprinkled sugar. She was amused by my come-on and faintly flattered but not going to show it – too much. ‘Dwight Silverwind is one of the leading authorities on out-of-body experiences, or spiritwalking, as the Navaho Indians call it. Dwight’s a very special friend of mine. He’s my Life Coach. Look. This is Dwight.’ On the inside cover of the jacket was a wispy white smiling man with preposterous braces. A Yank, at fifty paces. ‘In this book, Dwight describes transcending the limits of the corporeal body.’

‘Oh. Is it easy?’ Probably easier than transcending his dress sense.

‘No. It requires a lot of mental training, to unknot and cast free the moorings that society ties us down to its own reality conceits. Also, it depends on the individual’s alpha emanations. I’m quite high alpha, you’re more gamma.’

‘Beg pardon?’ I detected large deposits of vanity. Vanity is the softest of bedrocks to sink shafts into.

‘I could tell when you sat down. Your emanations are more gamma than alpha.’

‘You tell without a urine sample?’ I almost said ‘sperm sample’, but chickened out.

She acted a laugh. This was going well. ‘I’m Nancy Yoakam. Holistic Therapist. Here’s my card.’ And here was Nancy Yoakam’s hand, lingering on my side of the table.

‘I’m Marco. I like your name, if I may say so. You should be from Nashville.’

‘I’m from Glastonbury. You know. King Arthur and the rock festival. Very pleased to meet you, Marco.’ Gaze into my eyes . . . You are sinking into a deeeeep sleeeeeep. Okay. But I’m a bit too old for her to be adopting that Children’s TV presenter voice. She probably thinks I’m younger, most women do. That’s not vanity, it’s having Latin American genes in the pool. ‘You see, I’m a person watcher. I like to sit and read people. To trained eyes, humans transmit their innermost secrets. I see your fingers are ringless – tell me Marco, is there no special somebody in your life?’

Direct. ‘A girlfriend, you mean?’

‘Yes, let’s suppose I do mean a girlfriend.’

‘I see several women concurrently.’

Taking me in her stride. Eyebrow theatrically arched. Nancy did not get sprung from the Lego box yesterday. ‘Oh, how nice for you. A Juan Quixote. Doesn’t that get rather complicated?’

‘Well, it would do, but I always tell a women when I first meet her that I see other women too. Like I’m telling you now. So if they don’t want to handle that, they can stop before they start. I don’t lie to people.’

Nancy Yoakam put down Dwight Silverwind, still open but face down, and thumbed her lips coquettishly. ‘If you ask me, that’s a very sophisticated way of luring women.’

‘I don’t mean it to be. Why do you say so?’

‘It sends out a challenge, “You could be the one to change me, you could be the one to make me believe in love again.” Dwight calls it the “Bird with the Broken Wing Syndrome”.’

Iannos brought me my tea, and tutted at me like a wily peasant. I thanked him and ignored him.

‘Never thought of that. Maybe you’re right, Nancy.’ Always a pleasure to discover insight in a vacuum. ‘I don’t not believe in love. I just think it follows its own rather perverse rules of conduct, which I cannot fathom. Actually, I’ve been in love twice, which I think is rather a lot. Excuse me if I devour this falafel, would you? I’m ravenous.’

‘Go ahead. Why do you think we met today, Marco? Why you, why here, why now? Would you like to hear what I think it was?’

‘Blind chance?’

‘When we say chance, we mean “emanations”. Dwight would say that your gamma was drawn to my alpha. The north magnetic pole is drawn to the south in an identical way.’

Dwight was beginning to piss me off. I sat down because my mate Iannos offered me a free falafel. I sat where I did because there was nowhere else to sit. If Nancy Yoakam had been a bloke I would have been halfway to the door already. She had an interesting mind – possibly – but all this New Age tosh was daubed over it. However, there was a free shag on my dick’s radar, so I stayed and sat through ‘How Crystal Healing Can Change Your Life’. Amethyst is good for depression. Nancy’s best friends were minerals. By the time I got her phone number I was no longer even interested in phoning her.

What’s wrong with me?

When I was a kid and every female an unexplored continent, my heart would gasp in the wind and all colours held new truths.

Now look at me. I shag women like I wash my shirts. More often, some weeks.

Marco at sixteen and Marco at thirty are as different as Tierra del Fuego and Kennington.

No good, Marco my boy, no good at all. If you think about it too much you’re lost.

Poppy and I had an argument a few weeks ago, which she ended by saying, ‘You know, Marco, you’re not stupid, but for someone so intelligent you can be pretty goddamned blind.’

I’d had no idea whatsoever how to respond, so I made some stupid joke. I forget what.

Time to head back.

I live in The New Moon. My pad is an attic conversion on the top floor of the pub. It’s easy to find – if the weather’s good go to St Katherine’s Docks and keep walking along the river, or just get any bus bound for The Isle of Dogs, and get off at the university. The pub’s almost next door to Wapping Tube Station. I wound up there quite by accident, of course. The Music of Chance had a gig there last winter. One of our occasional guest vocalists, Sally Leggs, introduced me to Ed and Sylv, who run the place. The gig went down well, Sally being a kind of local celebrity, and when we were chatting afterwards Ed mentioned they were looking for a lodger again.

‘What happened to the last one?’ I asked. ‘Did a runner?’

‘No,’ said Sylv, ‘you may as well know now. It happened almost twelve months ago. It was in the papers and we were on the
News at Ten.
Terrorists were using an old forgotten air-raid shelter under our beer cellar as a bomb factory. One night there was an accident, and about five bombs blew up simultaneously. Right under where you’re sitting. Hence the refit, and the name change. Used to be The Old Moon.’

I almost giggled. But I could tell by everyone’s faces that every word was true.

‘Fuck,’ I said, feeling ashamed, ‘that’s bad luck.’

People stared inwards.

‘Still,’ I blundered on the way I do, ‘something that freaky isn’t likely to happen for another couple of centuries, is it?’

Bigmouth strikes again.

Saturday is market day in Old Moon Road, so The New Moon was packed wall to wall with noise, smoke, grumbling, bags of vegetables and antiques. Moya was playing darts with her new boyfriend, a squaddie called Ryan. Moya and I had done the wild thing one scratchy night. It hadn’t been such a good idea.

Sylv was doing her shift with Derek, the part-timer. ‘Marco, a man called Digger was on the phone asking for you earlier. I gave him your number upstairs.’

Oh, no. ‘Really? What did he want?’ As if I didn’t know.

‘Wouldn’t say. But I think it’s just as well his name isn’t Slasher.’

Sylv is not a very well woman. Her eyelids are raw pink and on her worst days they’re red and cracked. One of the regulars, Mrs Entwhistle, told me that Sylv had lost the baby she was carrying on the night of the bomb. How do people pull themselves through things like that? I go to pieces just opening my credit-card bills. But people do survive, all around us. The world runs on strangers coping. And Sylv’s been smiling a bit more recently. If that had happened to me, I’d have to sell up – if I had anything to sell up – and go and live in County Cork. But Sylv’s family owned The Old Moon for generations and so she’s staying put in The New Moon. When there’s a lot of customers I lend a hand, especially if I’m a little behind on the rent.