The Truth (24 page)

Much of Mabbut’s time was spent at various libraries and learned societies such as the Asiatic, the South American and the Royal Geographical, getting himself up to speed on the world through which Melville moved so energetically. He’d become a regular on eco-websites. Wendy Lu was helpful, checking and cross-checking all the facts and supplying information.

There were opaque areas. Apart from the stories about his short, sharp marriage to Zena Carlsson, Mabbut could find disappointingly little evidence of women in Melville’s life. Charley Murray hinted at a healthy interest in the opposite sex but not much more. One source mentioned rumours of a royal liaison but the trail led nowhere.

It had been equally difficult to unearth much detail as to how Melville financed his worldwide operations. Those who knew him gave the impression that he had never been short of funds. Mabbut had the names of some good contacts in the City, but this was the world of old money where handshakes were more important than written records and it was almost impossible to get enough material to use. When he had pressed Wendy Lu to ask Melville for more information on possible backers and supporters, she had assured him that Melville’s costs were ‘on a Third World scale’ and that those who worked for him were more interested in principle than price. One of Mabbut’s own contacts in the financial world had,
under the strictest confidence, spent many hours at Companies House before concluding that if Melville had money, it wasn’t in a UK account. Which, for an international operator living abroad for eleven months of the year, seemed more sensible than sinister. Even Rex, when asked, drew a blank on Melville’s arrangements.

For Mabbut it was just good to be a journalist again, using his old skills to decode a challenging subject in a ridiculously short time, and by and large the book moved forward at a steady pace. And as he pursued his research into the real life of Melville, his own life began to take a clearer shape. Forced to confront someone else’s motivations he was better able to face his own. Self-defence was no longer eating away at his confidence. Pride, however tentative, was seeping back into his life.

Krystyna seemed to notice this. For the first time in almost two years she was the one who got in touch with him, rather than the other way round. They went together to the opening of Sam’s new play. Initially it seemed to confirm all his worst prejudices. The play was set in a prison and involved a group of gay men who were approaching the day of their release. But once Mabbut had got the central idea that none of them wanted to leave and that the action revolved around their various strategies for staying, he realised, with considerable pleasure, that his son had real talent. For comedy, of all things.

Jay was still with Shiraj. Whether it was through love or pity or love and pity he wasn’t sure, but she spent most of her time with the boy and Mabbut got on well enough with him. Shiraj was a serious character, and once he’d got over the embarrassment of living with an unmarried girl in her father’s home he became good company, forever wanting to engage Mabbut in kitchen-table debates. Mabbut, in turn, took a certain amount of pride in being able to extend a helping hand to the persecuted. And he had never seen his daughter happier.

For himself Mabbut had never thought of happiness as a natural state. To him it was just the postponement of unhappiness. But now he was beginning to think rather differently. By accepting a looser, more general definition of the word, meaning things being not too bad for a significant amount of time, happiness was perhaps
not such a far-fetched proposition after all. So, bit by bit, as the book crept forward and winter faded into spring, Mabbut came to accept the unfamiliar feeling of being, by and large, predominantly, content.

TWO

T
he last day of April was a Saturday, but Mabbut, as a point of pride, turned in the disk and a crisp hard copy of
Melville: The Real Life of a Legend
one day early, on the last working day of the week. The hard copy had been Silla’s idea.

‘I know it’s old fashioned, but I still think publishers like to see a book that actually looks like a book.’

‘Not Ron Latham’s style, I wouldn’t have thought.’

‘You’d be surprised. Ron’s more impressed by tradition than you’d think.’

Mabbut raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, here’s to Hamish.’

The book had gone off to Urgent that morning and Mabbut and Silla were celebrating in Goldings, to which Silla remained loyal despite its almost perverse lack of glamour and its clientele of office workers and exhausted Oxford Street shoppers. Mabbut asked her about this and Silla admitted that with some of her clients she might have to go a little more upmarket.

‘But not the ones I like.’

She raised her glass of house Cava with such genuine warmth that Mabbut felt an unaccustomed sense of closeness to this fierce, erratic, indomitable woman, who’d guided his own erratic career with such loyalty.

‘To Hamish. And to you, Keith.’

Their glasses clinked. Two men from the postal depot next door, in to collect a takeaway, looked round. Celebration was a rare event at Goldings, especially at lunchtime.

‘And to you, Sill. For everything.’

They clinked again.

To Mabbut’s regret, the comely Croatian waitress had moved on, as they do, and in her place was an English girl. Quite chubby, straight hair, thick mascara. Hint of a West Country accent. She took their order abstractedly, staring out of the window, as if that was where the real world began.

Silla’s mobile rang. She picked it up and Mabbut reconciled himself to staring into space for a few minutes. But with a brief look at the caller’s name, Silla switched it off and dropped it into her bag.

‘I don’t want to be disturbed.’

He’d never known her do this before. From the moment she’d given up smoking, the mobile had become Silla’s digital substitute; rarely, if ever, out of her hands.

‘It might be Latham,’ he said. ‘Wanting to know if we’d like the money in twenties or fifties.’

Normally he’d have expected an earthy laugh in response, but Silla looked surprisingly serious. She leant back and stared briefly out of the window, before turning her eyes on him.

‘You know, dear boy, that I don’t do bullshit with you, so you have to believe me when I say that this is one of those moments when this whole shitty business seems worthwhile.’

For the first time in a long while, Mabbut really looked at Silla. At her broad prison-warder’s shoulders, the inverted triangle of holiday sunburn running down to a well-chosen cashmere sweater; her wide, round face, her hair taut at the forehead and descending in a skilfully dyed auburn mane. Though her skin-tones were Scandinavian, everything else reminded Mabbut, suddenly, of the Gyara village and the women who lived below the sacred hill.

‘I’ve had so many bad days, you know, Keith. I mean genuinely bad days when I had to sell crap to people. They know it’s crap and I know it’s crap but neither of us can admit it because we all need the money. So when something like this comes along, totally out of left field, you have to thank whoever’s up there for showing you there
can
be good days too.’

‘I never thought of you as having bad days, Sill. I thought that was just me.’

Silla threw her head back and gave a bark of laughter.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Listen to the pair of us. Les Misérables!’

Two portions of pasta arrived. Silla brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes and called for two glasses of red wine.

‘Large or small, madam?’

‘Enormous!’

She took two rapid forkfuls of pasta, dabbed at her mouth and pushed the bowl to one side.

‘Believe it or not, Keith, when I started out, all those years ago, I genuinely thought I could change things. That I wouldn’t be one of those “See you Monday”, lunch-at-the-club sort of agents. That I would go out there and find new authors. Go to universities and schools even. Visit writers’ groups. Find someone who had something fresh and original to say and help them say it. So that’s what I did. I went out and looked and listened. But no matter what I did or who I found there was always this undercurrent of disapproval. Why did I think it was more important to go to Newcastle to meet a new author when I should be at a book launch at the Savile Club? Especially as the author I was going to see had just completed three years for armed robbery.’

Another hoot of laughter. The wine arrived. Silla took a sip and let out a satisfied sigh.

‘Mmm! Same old shit . . . I had to put up with all sorts of weird stuff in those days, Keith. That I was having affairs with all these boys – and girls. That I was on some mission to corrupt the purity of the English language. At talent meetings I’d be treated as if I was someone on work experience. Then came Abigail Morris, do you remember her?’

‘
Counting the Dead
?’

‘Still one of the best books about the drug scene. True and honest. No bullshit. A one-hit wonder as it turned out, but still a wonder. One hundred K in hardback, two hundred K in trade paperback; film options, foreign sales. And all at once I was taken seriously. Given a partnership at Nathan Bowles and a nice fat expense account. Suddenly everything seemed so easy. Why go bowling up to Glasgow on a wet Saturday evening when they could come to you? I did pretty well. I had a good table manner. I gave a good lunch.’

Mabbut looked around at Goldings and grinned approvingly.

‘The money came in. Good money. I bought a flat in Marble Arch, hired a chauffeur to take me shopping in Sloane Street. And I didn’t really notice that the so-called authors I was bringing in were people just like myself. Successful people, leading the same successful lives. And, as you know, there was and is an insatiable appetite for the lives of the successful. How they dress, where they eat, who they fuck and where they go on holiday. None of which is very interesting.’

She took a gulp of wine.

‘But being the nice sociable gal I am I listened to them and I
encouraged
them and the next thing I know I’m the celebrity publishers’ darling. The first port of call for overpaid footballers, models and chefs. And I’m persuaded, not that I took much persuading, to leave the agency and set up on my own. “Silla Caldwell Associates”.’

She shook her head.

‘No, I didn’t know why I needed the “Associates” either. I think it meant my mother. Anyway, along came the nineties and the economy went belly up and suddenly everyone was reining in, looking after number one, and of course it was only the big boys who had the money to ride it out.’

Silla drank again, swallowed and winced.

‘Those were the days before you knew me, Keith. And if you’d known me then you’d probably have been ever so polite and raced off in the other direction. I was a loudmouth drunk and I lost the will to give. I just took whatever was offered and that included authors.’

She threw back her head.

‘Anyway, out of the blue came Sir Galahad, Ronald Arthur Latham.’

‘Ron
Latham
?’

‘The same. He was going up, I was going down. We met on the stairs.’

She held his gaze. Her eyes were defiant and apologetic at the same time.

‘Don’t look so shocked, Keith. This is a story with a happy ending. Remember?’

She clinked his glass.

‘Ronald had his golfing stars and a budget to bring them in, but he didn’t know how to deal with celebrities “from the wider world”. He wanted to learn from me, and he was the first person in a long time who’d wanted to do that. We spent a lot of time together. We got on pretty well but ultimately we weren’t the right gender for each other, and he was far too ambitious to want to come home at night and watch television. But I saw something of the younger me in him and I was happy to see him succeed. In return, he looked after me. Got me back on my feet. We did business together every now and then. Thanks to him I was able to keep the brass plaque and the chauffeur, and I began to look around as I had in the old days, to find things that other people didn’t. Which is how I met you. I’d read your newspaper articles. I thought you could write. Remember? After the arsenic leak story. I knew then that you had something else in you.’

‘So you put Ron Latham up to this?’

Silla shook her head emphatically.

‘Ronald, for all his big talk, is one of nature’s conservatives. I’ve been on to him for years to do something with some class. I’ve suggested subjects but at the last minute he always plays safe. Then out of the blue, this Melville idea comes up. And stubborn as he can be, I knew that, at last, some of what I’d been banging on about had finally got through.’

‘So what prompted the Damascene conversion?’

‘Because he’s done bloody well with his golfers’ memoirs. He’s made a lot of money but I think now he wants “his place in history”. I know what you think of Ronald, but he’s not that bad. He lacks charm because he lacks confidence, especially around people like you.’

‘Like
me
? A hack for hire?’

‘You’ve been to university. You’ve taught a creative writing course. He’s always been embarrassed by what he thinks of as his lack of education.’

‘Hardly seems to have done him much harm.’

‘That’s why I give him credit. I know you hate everything he stands for, but he’s come good now.’