Beneath the Earth (8 page)

‘It comes for us all, doesn't it?' she said.

‘What does?' I asked.

‘Death.'

‘I suppose so,' I replied. ‘It might be your turn next.'

‘Or yours,' she said. ‘
Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour
. Matthew. Chapter 25. Verse 13.'

‘That's a cheerful thought,' I said.

‘I suppose you'll be selling the house now?' she asked anxiously.

‘I hadn't given it much thought,' I said. ‘I'll have to speak to Audrey, of course. It belongs to both of us.'

‘You won't be letting it out, will you?'

‘I don't know,' I replied. ‘As I said, that is a conversation which has yet to take place.'

‘Do you remember William Hart, Mrs Hart's son from number thirteen?'

‘I do,' I said. ‘Vividly.' William Hart was a tough little bastard who had bloodied my nose on more than one occasion during my formative years and, at my tenth birthday party, had threatened to urinate in my ear if I didn't give him my brand-new Spirograph. He had a dog, an incredibly violent mongrel that answered to the name of Princess Margaret-Rose, who was mortal enemies with my own dog, Chester, although they did, of course, occasionally fornicate with each other. Not too different to humans in that regard, I suppose.

‘Well, when she died, William rented the house out.' She glanced around in case she might be overheard and lowered her voice as she pulled me so close that I could see the dusty moustache that rested above her upper lip. ‘To a Pakistani family, if you please,' she told me. ‘They're very nice, of course. I'd have nothing bad to say about any of them but still. You wouldn't do something like that, would you?'

‘When Audrey and I decide,' I assured her, ‘you will be the first to know.'

‘Thank you,' she said, apparently relieved by this assur ance. ‘Of course I'm not racist,' she added. ‘You know that, Pierce, don't you?'

‘I do, of course.'

‘I just don't like Pakistani people. Or Indians. Or Sri Lankans. Or anyone from that part of the world, if I'm honest.'

‘I understand,' I said, although I didn't.

‘You know, he's one of them now.'

‘Who's one of what?' I asked, confused.

‘William Hart,' she told me. ‘He's one of them.'

‘He's a Pakistani?' I asked. ‘How on earth did he manage that?'

‘No, don't be ridiculous,' she said, slapping my arm and laughing. ‘How could that ever happen? No, he's a homosexual.' She lowered her voice even more so it was almost a whisper. ‘Don't say anything. It wouldn't be fair on him.'

Arthur had come to the end of his song by now and I could see him walking towards me with two glasses of champagne in his hands, a curious choice I thought for a wake.

‘Mrs Burton,' he said, smiling at her. ‘I can't believe you're still alive.'

‘Oh you!' she said, blushing like a schoolgirl.

‘Mrs Burton was just telling me that William Hart is a Pakistani now,' I said.

Arthur frowned and scratched his face, as if he felt there was a joke in there somewhere but he couldn't get to the bottom of it.

‘I'll love you and leave you,' said Mrs Burton, holding my right hand in her left, and Arthur's left hand in her right, so we formed an unholy fellowship. ‘I'm sorry for your loss, both of you.'

I felt irritated. Where was Arthur's loss? The mother of a boy he had known many years ago had died; I failed to see how he was an immediate representative of grief.

‘Audrey looks well,' he said when it was just the two of us again. ‘For her age, I mean.'

‘She's two years younger than you.'

‘Do you know what you're going to do with the house?' he asked.

‘Not you as well.'

He shrugged. ‘It's a fairly common question at these affairs, isn't it? I never know what to say at them.'

‘And so you descend into cliché. What a surprise.'

He raised an eyebrow and waited a long time before speaking again, sipping his champagne and looking around the room, hoping to be recognized. There was a nineteen-year-old boy, bespectacled, clearly a student, working behind the bar and he settled his eyes on him. Superman's X-ray beams could not have penetrated any deeper. There was a good chance that sooner or later the boy would approach him, which would give him a chance to refuse a photo.

‘Are you familiar with the German word
micschetellfeiffer
?' he asked me after a moment.

‘I am,' I said. ‘It means
a collection of German-sounding syllables rolled together that have absolutely no meaning at all but sound authentic to a person of below average intelligence
.'

‘Not quite,' he replied. ‘Perhaps in some of the more remote Bavarian regions, that's how they define it. But in general it's a term used for a man who has not succeeded in his goals, perhaps through no fault of his own, but who resents those who have and so looks down his nose at them, making sarcastic observations and assuming that the target of his resentment is too stupid to understand him.'

‘Incredible how so much can be said by so little,' I replied. ‘Those Germans, eh?'

‘And the word for the unwitting recipient of so much jealousy and approbation is known as a
kelshtving
.' He smiled at me and I felt a corrosive mixture of anger, envy and humiliation course through my veins.

‘I suppose you're telling me that you're the
kelshtving
,' I said. ‘And I'm the
micschetellfeiffer
.'

‘I'm not telling you anything of the sort,' said Arthur with a shrug. ‘I'm simply talking with an old friend at the funeral of his mother.' He glanced at his watch. ‘But unfortunately, like Mrs Burton, I too will have to love you and leave you. My desk awaits me. My fountain pen is pulsating with anticipation. My blank white pages are moist with the knowledge that soon they will be filled. Perhaps we'll see each other soon?'

‘Would you like to go outside and compare penis sizes?' I asked. ‘Just for old time's sake, I mean?'

He frowned and shook his head.

‘Some other time then?'

‘Probably not,' he said.

He made his way out the door just as Audrey came over, her face a little drawn from the emotion of the day.

‘Was that Arthur leaving?' she asked. She looked disappointed and for a moment I thought she was going to start crying. ‘I should have said goodbye. We underestimated him, didn't we? What he said by the graveside … Mother would have been very moved.'

‘Well he's probably still out in the car park if you want to run after him,' I said. ‘You can pick up where you left off in the Burlington.'

‘Shut up. I confided in him earlier that I'd argued with Mother the night she died and that I've been feeling rotten about it ever since.'

‘You were always arguing,' I pointed out. ‘It would only be news if you'd ended things on good terms.'

‘But it was over something so stupid.'

‘Really? What was it, a soap opera? A recipe? A knitting pattern?'

‘Yes, Pierce, it was a combination of all those things because while you've been over there in Germany getting yourself in trouble with the law for shagging cows, that's
all
Mother and I ever discussed. Recipes, knitting patterns and
Coronation Street
.'

I ignored the first part of her speech; far too much of my life had already been spent offering a perfectly sensible explanation for something that others insist on seeing in the most perverted manner. ‘Well aren't you going to tell me?' I asked finally.

‘Tell you what?'

‘What it was that you were arguing about.'

‘I told you. It was something stupid. Something unimportant.'

‘Can you be a little clearer?'

‘Fine,' she said with a deep put-upon sigh. ‘We were arguing over you.'

‘Over me?'

‘Well, not so much over you as over your book.'

‘What book?'

‘
The Dying Game
.'

‘Oh, that book.' I felt a little surprised. No one had uttered those three words to me for many years. ‘What about it?'

‘She said that Arthur had been to see her once and they'd got into a conversation about it and she'd said that she thought it was quite good actually and he'd said no, it wasn't quite good at all, it was
very
good, but that you hadn't stuck with it because you had expected the world to be handed to you on the day it was published. He said that if you'd been a little less arrogant, then things might have gone differently for you. You mightn't have ended up screwing cattle in Tittmoning.'

‘I haven't ended up anywhere yet,' I said quietly.

‘Anyway, I said that it was for the best, that there was only pain and torture associated with that world, a constant feeling of under-appreciation, and she said that she'd said something similar to Arthur and he told her that the only way to survive it was to put on a front, to present yourself as a genius. That if you did that, then others might take you seriously too. Just wear them down. Then you could lead the life you wanted to lead.'

‘Deep,' I said, draining my champagne and deciding to make like a Scotsman and get a drink for each hand. ‘He should put that in his next book.'

‘Perhaps he will,' she said sharply. ‘It's more than you'll do though, isn't it?'

I returned to Tittmoning the following week and over the course of a busy two days reacquainted myself with Bess, Carla, Daphne, Jezebel, Rachel, Shirley, Kate, Arabella, Madonna and – yes, I admit it – Kurt. They seemed pleased enough to see me although, to be fair, cattle, like members of the Royal Family, don't tend to go in for outward displays of affection. On the flight across, I glanced at the books my fellow travellers were holding, convinced that one of them would be reading Arthur's novel and that this would provide some sort of poetic ending to my trip, but I was disappointed. Although in fairness, very few of them were reading books at all. At least not as I understand the term. And certainly nothing by Arthur. Or by me. Not that that was a surprise as I'd been out of print for many years. But still it made me happy that no one was reading his work. So far, after all, he'd only published a single book, which was something that we had in common. And even if people were paying attention to it there was nothing to say that he would ever write another one. Or, if he did, that it would be accepted for publication. Or, if it was, that it would get good reviews. Or, if it should, that it would catch on with the public. Or, if it happened to, that it would stand the test of time. He would be exactly where I was, flying into Salzburg airport, looking forward to getting back into my lederhosen and refamiliarizing myself with the comforting smells of unpasteurized milk.

Perhaps I would even be the boss of him then. Perhaps I would show him the ropes and introduce him to my friends in Der Glockenspiel pub and he would be my sidekick, a boy who didn't define me by ridiculous and unsubstantiated rumours. Here comes Arthur, the locals would say as he wandered down the road. He was never supposed to achieve anything in life but somehow, against all the odds, he made a brief success once, failed to capitalize on it, but became a man who has learned to reconcile failure with an unremittingly positive attitude towards the world.

Or – as they say in Germany – a
schleinermetzenmann.

The straining sound of a crane's jib being extended. The thump of hammers, steel against steel. The shriek of the soldering irons. The insistent pounding of last night's champagne behind her eyes. Agatha inched her foot back a little in the bed, hoping to make contact with Archie's leg, but he wasn't there and the sheets were cool to the touch. A terrible sinking feeling in her stomach. She sat up, turned and examined his pillow, her fingers moving lightly across the satin. It was slightly distressed but not terribly so. Had he come to bed at all? Had he come to bed
here
?

She rose, naked, unsteady on her feet, and stepped over towards the window, parting the curtains slightly to look across the harbour. She longed to see the streets of London, the rain spooling in the gaps between the cobblestones, the filth choking the gutters. Instead, over there was the cool blue tide of Sydney Cove as it flowed towards Circular Quay and over here were hundreds of black-smeared workmen engaged on one interminable task: building their terrible bridge.

It had not been her idea to travel so far from England, that was all down to Archie. She would have preferred to stay at home but everyone in their circle had undertaken an Empire Tour at some point in their lives and they'd never even travelled outside England together. It didn't look good.

‘Isn't it just for honeymooners?' she asked him, reluctant to leave their child and her writing for so long. ‘Couldn't we just take a week by the lakes instead?'

‘We couldn't afford an Empire Tour when we got married,' he told her. ‘Not on my salary alone. But now? Things are different, aren't they? Your little books are selling. My business is growing. All that money just sitting in the bank, waiting for someone to do something frivolous with it.'

‘But does it really make sense to squander our savings when we're both perfectly content here in England?'

‘You might be content,' he said, settling down with a cigarette, a gin and tonic and a Dorothy L. Sayers, a novelist he read whenever he was in a passive-aggressive mood. ‘I need some fun.'

There was nothing she could say to that. She knew that Archie had been bored ever since he left the air force and began working in business, that all-encompassing but ill-defined term. Occasionally she would ask him what it was that he actually did every day and he would reply, ‘Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that, it brings in the shekels, doesn't it?' And she had to admit that it did. He was doing quite well for himself now, far better than he ever had when he was a pilot. Although not as well as she. She was, to use a vulgarity that Archie adored, coining it in. And still he was bored. A distance had grown between them.