The Holiday (57 page)

Above the fireplace was a Victorian watercolour. It was a beautiful, restful landscape, all fading light and muted shades of colour, painted by a highly thought-of artist who had lived in the village at the turn of the century. Oddly enough, it had been the first present he had bought himself with his first advance from his publisher. Whenever Theo saw it, he said it represented the lesser-spotted St James’s underbelly of sentimentality. It also provoked him to make fun of Mark’s inability to spend the money he earned. ‘You are useless with money,’ he would say. ‘You don’t have a clue what it can do for you.’

‘That’s because I don’t have the imagination for it,’ he would protest.

‘Rubbish! It’s guilt. You spent so many years lecturing the world on the perils of capitalism you can’t bring yourself to enjoy it.’

Swivelling his seat, Mark switched his gaze to the blank screen of his computer. It reminded him that he hadn’t got round to checking his e-mails. He decided that as they had made it this far without his attention, they could wait a while longer.

His tea finished, it was time to get started on some work. What with all the visitors and interruptions he had had, he hadn’t had a chance to get anything written, and when he didn’t write he got twitchy. And twitchy was bad. Twitchy encouraged doubts to rise to the surface of his brain, nagging little maggots of anxiety that crawled around hinting that he was way off-course with the plot, the narrative, the dialogue.

He set out his things.

Notepad.

Pens.

Pencils.

Next he inserted a CD into the hi-fi, switched it on, reread the last few pages of what he had written and held the fountain pen poised over the blank page.

And that was as far as he got.

Two hours later, and discounting the words, ‘Chapter Forty-Eight’, not another word had appeared on the page.

Everything was in order, just as it should be: the ambience was right, the tools were right, so what the hell was the problem?

He had no answer.

He changed the CD. Replaced U2’s The
Joshua
Tree with Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and sat down again, pen poised.

Nothing.

He resharpened his pencils, fitted a new ink cartridge into his pen, ripped out the top page of the A4 pad of paper — well, it might be jinxed — reheaded it, gave Bob Dylan his marching orders and slipped in his lucky CD, REM’s
Up
— fingers crossed, it had always worked well for him in the past.

But still nothing.

The page was blank.

And remained so for the rest of that day and the following week.

It was a disaster.

How could this have happened? How could that old enemy of every author, the dreaded writer’s block, have worked such a perfect number on him? No matter what he did, there was a complete absence of creative thought going on inside his head. Nothing would come to him. He was all out of words and ideas. It was a catastrophe.

Uncannily he recalled his thoughts while sitting in Theo’s garden at the start of his visit, when he had laughed at himself for being so wrapped up in the futility of ritual and joked that he would get so used to writing with a musical backdrop of cicadas that he wouldn’t be able to work without it.

No more than coincidence, he told himself firmly. Don’t give it another thought.

But without the collusion of his book to work on, he knew that he was being forced into a corner. His brain was denying him the one thing he had used as a defence mechanism to ward off the terror of that night when Niall’s father had tried to shoot Izzy. By focusing his thoughts on the plot of his book, continually readjusting pages of dialogue in his mind, mentally checking that every I was dotted and every T crossed, that no stone of narrative was unturned, it had, until now, successfully kept him busy. Kept him from dwelling on Izzy ... what she meant to him. Without that vital weapon of defence, he was now at the mercy of his imagination. He had started having long-drawn-out dream sequences in which he was repeatedly trying to save Izzy from being shot. He usually managed to wake himself before the real terror set in, but in the early hours of this morning he had woken in a sweat-drenched tangle of sheets, screaming Izzy’s name — he hadn’t reached her in time and she was dying.

Now, as he stood in the kitchen making himself some breakfast, he shuddered at the rawness of the memory. He slapped two pieces of buttered toast together and went outside to the small garden that overlooked the cliff edge and the sea. He listened to the screech of seagulls wheeling overhead and watched a group descend on the rooftops of his neighbours’ houses. On the other side of the low wooden fence, he heard his immediate neighbour open his back door. Bill Watkins was a sprightly octogenarian who, notoriously, was as deaf as a post, but after a brief exchange of smiles while the old man threw a bag of rubbish into his dustbin, Mark turned away embarrassed, convinced that Bill must have heard him screaming like a banshee through the wall.

So what’s next on the agenda of madness? he asked himself.

Another week of being unable to write?

More nightmares?

Or are you going to do something about it?

I could ring Theo and talk it over with him, he answered the contentious voice of his conscience.

Yeah, and you could be as evasive with him as you always are.

In the end, though, he did ring Theo. But his own problems were pushed aside when Theo said, ‘What a coincidence, I was going to call you. But I’m afraid it’s not — ’

‘You’re not coming over, are you?’ interrupted Mark, slipping effortlessly into their usual line of derogatory banter and finding some relief in it.

‘No, you’re quite safe. But it saddens me to tell you that poor old Thomas Zika died in his sleep last night.’

‘I’m sorry, Theo. He didn’t have any family left, did he? Who will arrange the funeral?’

‘Oh, I will see to that. It is to be a very small affair. My parents are flying over. They were very fond of him. As I was.’

Me too, thought Mark, when later he put down the phone and remembered how protective he had felt towards Thomas on the day of Anna’s memorial service. He felt sad. Sad because Thomas had lived so very long and never truly had what he wanted in life. He had contented himself to love Theo’s grandmother from afar, but wouldn’t he have preferred to be married to her? Why had he been so prepared to compromise his own wishes and desires? Why hadn’t he pursued Anna more determinedly?

These thoughts stayed with him for the rest of that day — another day of not being able to write — and he knew it was no coincidence that whenever he pictured Thomas Zika in that restaurant, unable to feed himself, he transferred himself into Thomas’s place. Would he end up the same, never knowing what it might have been like with Izzy, never taking that risk to find out just how fulfilling a life they might have shared?

He ran a tired hand over his jaw, pressed the heels of his palms against his closed eyes, imagining all too clearly the solitary games of chess that awaited him.

And what if his current mental state continued and he could never write again?

It was a terrifying thought.

Previously his writing had been his point of reference. It had compensated in some way for not having a relationship, but now he had neither.

So what or who are you afraid of? asked the voice that had questioned him in the garden earlier that morning.

He suddenly smiled to himself, thinking of Izzy and how she had admitted to hearing voices in her head.

Going upstairs to his study, he realised that he had actually thought of her without it hurting. It was progress. It made him wonder if he could face looking at the photographs he had just had developed. He hadn’t looked at them yet, unsure whether he wanted to be reminded so vividly of what he had jettisoned. His fingers hesitated over the package on his desk, but he rejected the temptation. Not yet. It was too soon.

He sat down and toyed with the idea of sneaking up on his notepad and seeing if he could get some words written.

But fear of failing again made him switch on his computer to check his e-mails instead. There were the usual messages from his publisher keeping him informed of stuff they thought he gave a monkey’s for; a message from his father who had recently joined the ranks of the Silver Surfers and now spent an obsessive number of hours browsing the Internet; a note from Lionel asking if he could drop round with some chapters from the steamy pen of Shona Mercy for him to read — top-shelf eroticism was not what Mark needed right now — and lastly, and this one had him leaning forward in his seat, a message from Bones, who was just back from a brief working secondment in California. His message said that on his return to work at the clinic, he had been shown the newspapers regarding Mark’s latest exploits — a colleague had kept them for him thinking he might be interested.

Five minutes later as he was dialling Bones’s home number, Mark was aware of yet another voice banging on inside his head.

It was Dolly-Babe, jangling her bangles and telling him Bones’s e-mail was a SIGN.

Yeah, he thought, a sign that I’m desperate.

‘It’s not a bad time to call, is it?’ he asked, when Bones picked up.

‘Hello, Mark. Now, would that be bad in the sense of — ’

‘Don’t you ever cut yourself some slack?’

‘Just a little joke. You know, I was thinking of having an answerphone message that said: “Sorry, none of my multiple personalities are here to listen to you, but I’ll deal with you just as soon as I’ve found myself.”’

‘I wouldn’t bother.’

‘So, what can I do for you? I was wondering when I’d hear from you.’

‘Why do you assume I want something?’

‘Well, for one thing it’s nearly midnight and for another you’ve recently flirted with death again. Not once, but twice. How am I doing?’

‘You’re slipping, you missed out on the girl.’

‘On the contrary, I was saving her. And that wasn’t meant to be a pun on your fine heroic deeds. Now tell me everything. It’s late, so no games of mental hide and seek. Do that and I’ll put the phone down on you.’

He did as Bones instructed.

When he fell quiet, Bones said, ‘Good. So where shall we dive in first?’

‘Anywhere you like. Why I can’t write. Why I’ve started having nightmares about the shooting and why I told the woman I love to get the hell out of it and leave me alone because she’d be better off without me, that I’d only bring her bad luck.’

There was a long pause, during which Mark half expected to hear the familiar, almost reassuring rustle of a sweet wrapper. ‘Well?’ he said irritably. ‘I thought there were to be no games.’

‘Mm ... There’s a word I’m looking for. A word that covers your last point. Now what is it? It begins with a C. Help me, Mark, you’re the one who’s good with words.’

‘Hell! I didn’t think I’d have to play Twenty Questions!’

‘Come on. You can do it.’

‘Okay, how about Conditioning?’

‘No.’

‘Convergent thinking?’

‘No. And that’s two words. I said one.’

‘Causal attribution?’

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘God, not one of Freud’s old cookies, Castration anxiety?’

‘Now you’re just showing off. No, the word I was thinking of begins with a C, followed by an R, an A and finally a P.’

‘Crap?’

‘Yes. Your head must be full of it, Mark, if you’re arrogant enough to think that the world revolves around your petty little actions. How many times do I have to tell you, it is not your job to save mankind from itself?’

‘But — ’

‘No buts, this is where I get tough with you. You’ve phoned me at this ridiculously late hour, not to seek my advice but to have me confirm and sanction what was already in your mind, hoping I’d give you the necessary permission and blessing to go ahead. Don’t interrupt, I haven’t finished! It’s bloody obvious why you’re having nightmares and even more obvious why you can’t write, even to a swollen-headed fool like you. But, as usual, you’re deliberately hiding from the truth. I bet you’ve even told yourself you don’t deserve this lucky break. I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And after everything I’ve taught you, you still come up with a hare-brained thought such as that! Will you never learn? By the way, you say that you love this woman, have you by any chance been brave enough to tell her you love her?’

‘Er ... not in so many words.’

‘I thought not. The same old Mark. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared of a committed relationship. But I notice you didn’t use the word in the past tense, which means that subconsciously you haven’t consigned the relationship to the wastepaper basket, so I would suggest that you do something about it. Go and tell her that you love her. I guarantee your nightmares will stop and your writing will flow. If I’m wrong I shan’t charge you for this consultation. How’s that?’

‘Oh, go suck a Murraymint!’

‘That’s my boy!’

‘But what if she doesn’t love me? She’s never actually said she does.’

‘That’s a risk you’ll just have to take. My guess is she’s worth the gamble. Or would you rather you never found out? Now listen to me, and listen well.’

‘You’re not going to start whistling one of your bloody awful tunes, are you?’

‘I was tempted a few minutes ago, Genesis’s ‘Throwing It All Away’ struck me as fitting. But, no, I was going to ask if you consider yourself to be a success in bed with this woman?’

Mark laughed, then winced. His chest still wasn’t up to it. ‘If you really want to know, I’d say we were a corona of excellence.’

Bones laughed too. ‘I said you were good with words, Mark. I like that. You see her as the heavenly body and you as the halo of light. A sparkling image on which to end our conversation. Keep me posted, won’t you? Think happy thoughts, Mark. Goodnight.’