The Good Liar (9 page)

‘The Jacobite rebellions? What were they exactly?’

‘The revolt against William of Orange and Protestantism and the

fight to restore the house of Stuart to the throne. What’s interesting is how he goes down in folk history. He was known as Bonnie Dundee to the Jacobites, but the Presbyterians called him Bluidy Clavers because he exacted bloody retribution against their communities.

He was a major influence on the Fifteen and the Forty- Five.’

‘What were they?’

Stephen reflects that Roy seems to be feigning interest quite

efficiently.

‘The two Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Both crushed by the

English. Graham was killed earlier, in 1689 in a battle that his troops actually won. That victory and Graham were vital shapers of the

later rebellions. But Graham’s death was a critical fault line in

them too.’

Roy says, ‘What’s the point of this work? What’s the purpose?’

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‘Three things really. How John Graham shaped the rebellions.

Then there’s how the mythology and demonology have persisted.

And lastly, what Graham was actually like behind it all. What drove him? What were the actual facts? Was he such a charismatic leader

or a cruel criminal?’

‘The myth and the man?’

‘Exactly. That’s the key theme. For instance, a myth persisted at

the time that Graham had made a pact with the Devil and was

immune to lead shot. According to that, he was killed by a silver

button from his own uniform penetrating his heart. That’s just one

of the legends. Whereas perhaps the most important point really is

that, had he survived, the Fifteen might have gone very differently, with his presence and expertise. It could have meant a very different Britain.’

Stephen is surprised how gratifyingly fluent the patter is. Rather

more fluent than his stuttering research has proved. Maybe he can

do this, after all.

‘So why’s this Gerald giving you a hard time? You seem to know

your stuff.’

‘It’s mainly technical. He wants me to speed up the validation of

sources and data and to begin building a structure. It’s fine really.’

‘And what’s in it for you?’

‘With luck, a published paper that’s accepted after peer review

and changes things, however minutely. With even better luck, a new

historical perspective on the period.’

‘I mean, where does it get you?’

‘Oh, nowhere really, apart from being a major part of my PhD.

Any published works will go out under Gerald’s name as my

supervisor.’

‘Sounds dodgy. You want my advice, look after number one. You

don’t want this Gerald stealing your glory.’

‘My world doesn’t work like that. Academics are connected and

work on reputation. If I do a good job it’ll get round and I’ll stand a better chance of securing a good academic position.’

‘You want to watch yourself. Life’s not a rehearsal. You want to

go out there and grab what you want.’

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They have arrived at the garden centre. Stephen fusses about Roy,

rushing around the car and trying solicitously to help him out of

the passenger seat, but Roy is having none of it. Having extricated himself from the vehicle, he looks at Stephen sternly. But their tacit if fragile pact of cordiality holds and he forces a smile.

Stephen pushes the trolley while Roy examines the plants

expertly, pondering the labels carefully, feeling leaves, fingering soil.

They move together from stand to stand, Roy peering while Ste-

phen looks on, waiting for conversation that does not come.

Eventually Roy, maintaining his equable tone, says, ‘Why don’t

you clear off and let me get on with this? I can manage on my own.

I can see you’re bored and you’re as much use to me as a chocolate

teapot.’

Stephen goes inside to contemplate uncomprehendingly twine,

slug pellets, multicoloured reels of hose and garden lights, while

Roy continues with his task, examining plants intently before selecting one in particular, transporting it in a shuffle to the trolley that is filling, and moving to the next stand. Stephen will be summoned

eventually to wheel the teetering mass of greenery to the tills and then to load the car.

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1

‘A holiday,’ exclaims Betty.

‘Oh yes,’ replies Roy with enthusiasm. ‘I could do with a bit of

sun on my back. Spain? Portugal?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says, ‘I need something to stimulate my

brain. I thought a city break. And I’m paying, I insist.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ says Roy, not entirely convincingly. ‘New

York, then. The Big Apple. All those museums. A Broadway show.’

She laughs. ‘I may be a woman of means, Roy, but I don’t think

my budget will stretch that far. Not if we’re to do it in style.’

‘Very well, then. Barcelona.’

‘I was thinking more central Europe. Prague, Budapest, Vienna

perhaps.’

‘All right, then.’

It is not what he would necessarily wish for, but she who pays the

piper . . . And a break will set him up nicely for the summer. There is a chance that there may even be a spot of spring sun. She browses the internet while he sits with his paper and gives his monosyllabic responses to her bright suggestions.

In the end, it is Berlin. He makes a late counter- bid for Rome, or Venice, or even Bruges. But Berlin it is to be. The city of the

thousand- year Reich, of Kristallnacht, Frederick the Great, Check-

point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. There’ll be enough history

there to last them a lifetime.

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2

On a blissful spring morning they walk out of their smart, ultra-

modern hotel and into the middle of it all. Unter den Linden rolls

away before them towards the Brandenburg Gate, if they can ignore

the sundry hawkers and beggars jabbering at them desperately in

various forms of German. Roy, despite his years, is still imposing

and a glare is all it takes. He wraps his big arm protectively around Betty’s shoulder and she smiles.

‘It’s all here,’ he says, waving his other arm expansively.

It is Berlin as imagined, constructed on a heroic scale to convey

the new national confidence of the late nineteenth century, broad,

masculine, frightening, in grey stone. The street, however, is gashed along its sternum as the U- Bahn line is brought to this part of what was once East Berlin. Berlin is being rebuilt and the horizon is dominated by cranes. A new paradigm of German confidence is being

constructed here, the technocratic new alongside the imperial old.

They spend three hours in the Deutsches Historisches Museum,

which is not exactly how Roy had envisaged it: Betty peering at each exhibit with exaggerated interest while he tags along with an

ill- disguised bored impatience to which she seems happily oblivi-

ous. Well, she used to an academic, he reflects as he looks at his

watch, and he will shortly be able to sit down to a decent beer.

But no: after a lunch of greasy bratwurst, smeared in garish mus-

tard, bought from a street seller – a surprise, this, for Roy, given Betty’s dainty elegance – they are off again. They take the S- Bahn train and the bus to Charlottenburg to look at the palace and walk

awhile in the Tiergarten district under budding chestnut trees, taking peeks at the large, silent villas protected by sophisticated security systems that line the genteel wide streets.

‘I wonder what it must have been like to live here, in the

nineteenth century,’ she says, ‘or the early twentieth. Or the

1930s. The decadence, the forced fun, the glittering soirées. All that wealth, that confidence. Little did they know what was to become

of them.’

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‘Oh yes,’ he says, bored and sardonic at the same time. He is sur-

prised by her energy and that light in her eyes. He thinks of himself as fit for his age but finds his limbs are weary, and craves the privacy of his hotel room and a quiet nap. He can do without this too, all

this enthusiasm. He has lived a life long and eventful enough to

know exactly how it was and needs no visual cues. He begins to

wish he had never agreed to this trip.

‘Oh dear,’ says Betty, and his attention returns to the present.

‘You look bored. And tired. Have we overdone it?’

‘A little, maybe,’ he replies with a tolerant smile.

‘Let’s get you back to the hotel, then, shall we?’

She locates a cab and he dozes as their voluble driver, against the backdrop of talk radio, rails against the fools on the roads as he

accelerates and brakes erratically. It is all the fault of reunification and Europe, he says, these people flooding here from the East. Roy

feels fragile and hears his heart beating. He can almost imagine

himself in another age.

He gets his nap, but there is no time for a leisurely dinner as Betty has fluttered her eyelashes at the concierge and obtained tickets for the Berlin Philharmonic that evening. Roy sits with ill- disguised bad temper in the opulent new- fangled hall and, just, bears the flum-mery and the cacophony of the event: the pomposity of the

orchestra and its strutting conductor, and the fat complacent patrons in Hugo Boss with their jewel- bestrewn elegant, thin accessory

wives. The exaggerated finesse of the quiet passages and the fierce attack of the crescendos all meld into one discordant mess in his

ears.

At the door of the hotel he says, ‘I think I’ll take a turn before

retiring, Betty. I’ve had that nap and unless I get a bit of fresh air I rather think I won’t be able to sleep tonight.’

Betty says, ‘All right. I know all about lost sleep. Shall I come

with you?’

‘Oh no,’ he replies, perhaps a tad too quickly. ‘That won’t be

necessary. I’ll only be a minute or so. You get off to bed.’

And so they say their goodnights and she goes to her room.

*

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Four hours later, he subsides with relief under the feather duvet in his room. He should know better at his age, he says to himself,

partly with a chuckle and partly with an edge of self- pity. But there’s no fool like an old fool. He is €500 lighter, for no benefit. He knows where the bad parts of this city are and to enliven his trip he had gone back to the streets near the Ku’damm. Old businesses had died

here and new ones sprouted. Plus ça change. After a floor show that in his youth would have been described as exotic he found himself

at two in the morning in a soulless, smelly hotel room with a woman he had picked up, unable to perform. Earlier she had been hesitant

but had said, when he was insistent, ‘OK, Grandpa,’ led him to this room and tied him up as he had specified. It was not surprising that he was not up to the task, since it must have been some ten years

since he had last been able to bring himself to the point, but he had anticipated some buzz, some illusion of excitement. It was, however, simply fatiguing, in an unpleasant way.

It came as a mild shock, which in earlier times might have been

an amusing diversion, that the woman was in fact a man. This

became apparent only after his failure. ‘I thought you realized,

Grandpa,’ he said, but at that point Roy dropped off, to find on waking, aching, dry- mouthed and nauseous, that his wallet was empty.

Fortunately his binds were untied.

This would not have happened to him even ten years ago. At least

he had thought to leave most of his cash and all of his cards and

other valuables in his room safe and secrete his hotel keycard under the orthotic insole in his shoe, but he had to admit he had lost much of his street- sharpness. He gathered up his trousers, pulled them on and made as quick an exit as his arthritic bones would allow.

Fortunately, he was able to hail a cab outside the KaDeWe depart-

ment store, and the driver clearly regarded him as respectable

enough. The car sped through sleek night streets and, despite his

experience, Roy still felt a shimmer of excitement. He was living, or approximating living, again. There was the potential for a minor

incident back at the hotel, but he was able to prevail upon the night porter to pay the fare temporarily, claiming, with reasonable credibility, absent- minded dotage.

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3

It has been an unseasonably hot day in Berlin for April. Betty and

Roy are sitting on the terrace of a restaurant in Hackescher Markt, at one time a bustling market near Alexanderplatz and now a bustling hub of eateries. They have strolled through the Hackescher

Höfe, once a labyrinthine arrangement of grey tenement blocks

lowering over small courtyards with squalid little shops but now a

trendy, multicoloured retail haven, with funky shops and green

communal areas. Here, Betty has bought gifts to take back with her.

Roy has had no such need.

She sips her sharp green tinder- dry Riesling while he eagerly

quaffs Pilsner beer from a large glass that is almost a jug. He examines the remains of his pork knuckle for potential remnants of fatty flesh that he may yet be able to harvest. Pink and garish, with startling white bone, it resembles the aftermath of an autopsy. He picks but has to content himself with a few elastic strands of pork fat and the odd tangy ribbon of sauerkraut, such has been the efficacy of