The Kings of Eternity (11 page)

“That was a necessary white lie,” he said.

“You won’t find out much about me from people on the island,” Langham said. “Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

The man placed his finger-tips together and contemplated them. “That’s what I’m discovering, Mr Langham. You’re something of an enigma.”

“I’m a forty year-old middle-class English writer who enjoys his privacy,” he said. “Like most people. End of story.”

The man regarded him. There was something nerveless about his stare, and unsettling. “Oh, I think you’re a little more interesting than that, actually.”

Langham took a sip of wine to calm his nerves. He smiled. “Well, you’re welcome to dig, but I don’t think you’ll find anyone to help you.”

“The discoveries I’ve made so far have been less through talking to people,” he said, “than by analysing your books. Did you know that there are certain textual similarities between your work and that of other writers?”

Langham fought to maintain an outward air of calm, while inside he was rattled. He smiled again, aware that it must appear forced. “‘Certain textual similarities’ is a rather long-winded way of hinting at plagiarism, isn’t it?”

The man stood, picked up the book, and moved across to where he’d left his bag. His beer had arrived, and he remained standing while he chugged it down. Then he returned to Langham’s table. He deployed his movements in a way that was, Langham thought, calculated to annoy.

“Whatever you might like to call it, Mr Langham, I’d like to talk to you about it at length. Would this afternoon at your villa be convenient?”

“It would not. I’m very busy at the moment.”

The man considered his fingers. His repulsive nails were tiny and embedded in the surrounding flesh. “The thing is, Mr Langham, if I were to do a feature on you for the
Mail
, the editor would rather I use the term ‘plagiarism’ than ‘certain textual similarities’.”

A hand reached into Langham’s chest and squeezed.

The man said, “Which afternoon would be convenient for you?”

“I’ll be working every day for the next week. Perhaps some time after that.”

The man nodded and stood. “I’ll be in touch.” He retrieved his hold-all and moved from the taverna, slouching along the waterfront and disappearing behind a line of buildings. Langham wondered if, out of sight, he was rubbing his hands at his little victory, or if such lavish gestures were not part of his repertoire. Perhaps he would be smiling quietly to himself.

He drained his wine and ordered another. He could not finish the little of his meal that remained, and his hand, as it took up the refilled glass, was shaking.

He returned to his villa and sat on the sofa overlooking the sea, contemplating what the journalist had said and wondering how much he might have discovered. If the unearthing of ‘certain textual similarities’ was all he had come up with, then Langham could rest easy.

The danger was that he might have used the textual similarities as a starting point and come up with much, much more.

Later that afternoon he concentrated on his work, then cooked himself a meal and retired early. He slept badly, the little sleep that he did manage inhabited by menacing spectres from the past.

In the morning his writing went slowly; every line seemed forced and unoriginal and he cursed the bastard Englishman for having such an effect on his work. By twelve he’d completed his four page quota, with a small sense of achievement at having done so against the odds, and then set off for the village to phone his agent.

He was dreading the thought of encountering the journalist again, but there was no sign of him as he entered the taverna and slipped into the phone booth.

Five minutes later he was through to London.

He was aware of his thudding heart. Let her be what she claims to be, he thought. Dear God, he could not go through all the pain again.

“Pryce, did you turn up anything on the artist?”

“Daniel, just a sec. How’s things? You’ll be delighted to know that it’s pouring down at this end.” Langham heard the distant rattle of a keyboard. Then, “Ah... here it is.

“I’ve got a bit of biographical information, in case you wanted it. Born 1960 in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Attended-”

“I know all that from an exhibition pamphlet I picked up.”

“Did you also know that she’s divorced, and that her husband was an alcoholic who beat her up? I bet that wasn’t in the pamphlet.”

“No. No, you’re right,” Langham said, at once shocked, and relieved that this information tended to corroborate Caroline’s story. “Look, did you find out if she’s written any books, articles?”

“Nothing,” Pryce said. “No books, articles, critical theory. She was interviewed in the
Guardian
a couple of years ago, and in a northern arts magazine around the same time. But that’s about it.”

“Any idea if she might have written under a pseudonym?”

“I checked that,” Pryce said, “but came up with nothing.”

They chatted for a further minute or two, and then Langham hung up.

He sat at his table in the shade and ordered lunch in an expansive mood. Let the fat journalist do his worst - at least Caroline Platt was the genuine article. He looked forward to their next meeting.

He managed to finish his lunch this time without being accosted. Later, taking the path through the pines, he considered what his agent had told him about Caroline’s abusive, alcoholic husband. He wondered if that might account for the melancholy he sometimes encountered behind her eyes.

He stopped by her villa again and knocked on the door. There was no reply, and he wondered if she was in her studio.

He moved around the house and approached the out-building. The door was open and he paused beside it, hoping to catch a glimpse of the artist at work.

There was no sign of Caroline within. He was about to close the door when he saw the canvas. It was at the far side of the studio, placed on an easel - evidently a work in progress. He stepped into the studio and approached the easel.

What struck him about the painting was its complete antithesis to every other one he had seen by Caroline Platt. Where the others were bright and optimistic, full of life, this one was dark and foreboding. It showed a big, darkened room in tones of blue and black, and, just discernible in one corner, the shadowy figure of a cowering girl or woman. The suggestion of loneliness, fear and despair was shocking.

He moved from the easel and regarded other works racked against the wall; many were similar to those he’d seen in the exhibition, but occasionally he came across darker, more despairing pictures: a storm scene with a lost figure in the mid-ground; a long, grim street with a little girl in silhouette at the far end; an almost wholly black canvas with the image of a women, falling.

He wondered if she had painted these in reaction to the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband; if these were her way of coming to terms, years later, with a period of her life she had been unable or unwilling to commit to canvas at the time?

He left the studio and hurried to his villa. He made himself a coffee and settled down to go though the pages he had written that morning. He preferred this afternoon shift. The first draft was always fraught with the fear that he would not achieve what he intended; the rewrite was an opportunity to improve, cut and tighten up, with none of the difficulty of original creation.

At six he finished work, then made a few notes about tomorrow morning’s scene. He was about to slip the manuscript book into the drawer of the table on the patio, and then considered the journalist. He carried the book into the villa and locked it in the top drawer of his desk, instead.

He poured himself a beer, and was just about to prepare his evening meal when he heard a tap at the open door, and a second later a voice call out, “Hello in there... Daniel, are you home?”

“In the kitchen. Come in.”

She appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb, smiling in at him. She looked, he thought, tired and drawn; her face was pale, her eyes sunken. Had she just recovered from her migraine, and dragged herself out of bed after three days?

He hoped she hadn’t noticed his reaction.

“Caroline. Were you at home? I stopped by...”

“I just got back,” she said. “I had to fly to London. Last minute thing. Business. Just got back, and to be honest I’m jaded. London really takes it out of me.”

“What a host I am! Sit down.”

He pulled out a kitchen chair and she sat down.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“I’d love one, Daniel.”

He poured her a juice with ice cubes and set it beside her on the table. “Look,” he said, on inspiration. “I’m just about to cook. Why don’t you join me?”

“You wouldn’t mind? I’m not interrupting?”

“Work’s done for the day. This is the time I unwind. Leisurely meal, a beer on the sofa while watching the sun go down, the stars come out...”

“Sounds like a perfect evening.”

“I’m afraid I’m no
cordon bleu
chef, but I’m international - I do a decent Spanish omelette and Greek salad.”

“Lovely. Is there anything I can do?”

“Just sit there and talk to me. This doesn’t take five minutes.”

They chatted while he cooked; smalltalk, life in London, her business trip, the exhibition. He wanted to ask her about the dark paintings he had seen in her studio, but judged that this was not the time.

“Enough of me,” she said. “What of life on the island while I’ve been away? Anything scandalous to report?”

“On Kallithéa?” he laughed. “And as if I’d notice!”

“No more encounters with your journalist friend?”

“Yesterday,” he said. “I was having lunch and he came up and asked me to sign one of my books. He asked for an interview.”

“And I hope you told him where to stick his interview?”

Langham nodded, feigning concentration on the tricky process of sliding the completed omelette from the pan and onto a plate. “There we are. Shall we eat outside?”

She helped him carry the things through to the patio table, the journalist forgotten. They ate and chatted while the sun slipped down the sky, and Langham contrasted this meal with the thousands of others he’d taken alone over the years.

“I called round today. Your studio was open. I couldn’t help notice the painting on the easel. The girl in the room.”

She nodded. “And? What did you think?”

“To be honest, I found it quite shocking. In contrast to your other work... Well, the work I’ve seen at the exhibition seems to symbolise the person I know. Those other, darker paintings...”

“You saw the others?”

He felt his face heat up. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t help looking.”

“Not at all. I’m flattered that you’re interested.”

“They’re very dark pieces, very pessimistic.”

She shrugged. “We all have our dark, hidden places, Daniel. Our secrets.”

He nodded. “Yes, I suppose we do.”

“It helps, being creative. You can explore these things, work them out.”

“What do they symbolise? Or can’t you talk about that?”

“No, that’s okay. Well... my husband, the landscape gardener I told you about... It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven, and unfortunately it took me ten years to work that out.”

And she told him her story, the marriage, the alcoholism, the abuse... and he listened with a deepening respect for this strange and powerful woman, respect and admiration for how she had survived and prospered.

They finished the meal and he poured her another orange juice. He suggested they sit on the sofa and watch the embers of the sun on the horizon. They sat side by side and talked while the sun disappeared and the stars came out, twinkling, above the darkening ocean.

“Did I tell you, Mr Langham, that I own first editions of every one of your novels?”

He looked at her, relieved at her admission. “A serious collector.”

“A serious reader. I discovered your first novel just after I left my husband. You can’t imagine what a good companion a great book is in times like that. I read your first three books one after the other, and they helped. They possessed a reality, the characters were suffering so much... I know it sounds corny, but I felt as if I wasn’t alone.”

“Thank you,” he said. He paused, then went on, “When you came to Kallithéa, was it because...?”

“Because I knew you lived here and wanted to meet you?” She shook her head. “No, not at all. The biographical bits on the backs of your books don’t give that much away. Born in ‘59 and lives in Greece, and that’s it. So when I came house hunting and found the villa - and then learned that my neighbour would be the famous novelist... well, I had to have the place.”

“And when you met me you were disappointed.” He smiled. “Readers assume that writers will be intellectual, conversationally brilliant. But it doesn’t work like that. Writing’s something you do over a long time, and you make many mistakes and wrong-turnings. In real life I’m pretty slow on the uptake and know nothing of the real world.”

Caroline laughed. “But you’re a good person, Daniel. That’s what I expected from the author who wrote the books. Or rather, that’s what I hoped.”

They were silent for a time. Her hand lay on the cushion between them, and more than anything Langham wanted to reach out and cover it with his.

“I asked you this before, but you didn’t want to tell me,” she said now. “And if you still don’t want to talk about it, then that’s fine. But... your books seem so full of pain, love affairs that never work, lonely men... They must reflect your life, Daniel.”

So he told her, in fair trade for the story of her failed marriage, something of his own life, but altered, the details changed, out of necessity. It was the essential truth, a reasonable account of the pain he’d suffered, but rendered with the legerdemain of a novelist.

He told her about Sam, and how she had inadvertently taken her own life, about Tara and the other failed affairs in between.

“My God,” she said, “you’re only forty, and you’ve experienced so much! No wonder you hide yourself away these days.”

He changed the subject, pointing at the stars. “Orion,” he said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”