Fictional Lives (5 page)

Well, she told herself: she would see.

*

See she did; though not till two years had passed.

In the first seven months of those two years Tina wrote, at great speed and with remarkably little effort—it was just a chore she had to complete—what she had come to think of as her novel. A novel of which the prinicpal character was an adventurous, spirited young man who had grown up in the backwoods of Alabama, who had become an adventurous world-famous author, who—in the words of some dean of a college in Michigan, when conferring upon him an honorary degree—had ‘told of the world as it is, and had shown that it is possible to live in this world with courage, nobility, grace and integrity’, and who was, frankly, the sort of person his creator would have wished to be if she had been born a man.

In the following fourteen months she saw her book go into proof, be publicized by a very enthusiastic Christopher, be published to enormous critical acclaim (‘A magnificent biography’. ‘A wonderful achievement’. ‘A great biography, and a great work of art’. ‘Tina Courtland’s Life of Joseph Brandon is one of the major publishing events of the last ten years; perhaps the major publishing event since Miss Courtland’s last book appeared. Cool, brilliantly written, and entirely honest, it tells us, as all great biographies do, and all biographies should,
not only of one man’s life, but of the lives of all of us’.), and be tipped to receive prizes as best biography of the year on both sides of the Atlantic.

And in the last three months of those two years she allowed herself to be bullied by Maisie into going to London and New York to give interviews and make television appearances (and allowed herself furthermore, in spite of a constant longing to be back in her home in Italy, to have a good time); she wondered continually (especially after she did return home) when she would hear from Margaret Brandon; and she was made very nervous by an amused telephone call from Christopher, who told her he had, as it happened, met Margaret at a party a few days before, and had been asked by her for Tina Courtland’s address.

‘I am going to Italy for a holiday,’ the woman had said. ‘I would like to pay her a visit.’

‘What was she like?’ Tina asked.

‘Like? The same as ever, of course. Only more so possibly. There used to be an occasional expression on her face. Now there’s no trace of one, ever.’

‘Did she mention the book?’

‘Not really. She just murmured that she was glad you’d had such a great success with it.’

‘Oh,’ Tina said; and then ‘Did she tell you exactly when she’d be coming?’

‘To you?’ Christopher laughed. ‘No. But she’s leaving for Italy tomorrow. I expect she’ll get in touch.’

*

Margaret Brandon didn’t get in touch, however; she simply drove up unannounced one afternoon, in a hired car.

Tina, who had thought that she might do just that, was, as ever, working in the garden when she heard the car coming up the long stony road to the house; and guessed immediately who the visitor was. And though she had been so nervous when
she had received Christopher’s call, as she brushed her hands on her trousers and went up to greet the woman, she realized that now the meeting itself was upon her, she no longer was.

In fact, she realized, she was only curious; and glad that this last scene was about to be played.

Physically Margaret Brandon hadn’t changed at all; unless, as Christopher had said, she seemed even more perfectly embalmed than she had been two years ago. Yet as Tina accompanied her into the house, she had the feeling that there was a purpose about that slim, beautifully dressed body that she didn’t remember from their previous meeting. Then the woman had been like an exquisite objet d’art; a hard polished thing drained of all life, and useless except for the relaxation it might, to admirers of such objects, give to the eye. Now, while she
was
more brilliant, more finished, more, in her way, perfect than ever, she had an air of having found some sense in her very hardness. It was as if a diamond, that had always been worn in a ring, had, after a final polish, suddenly become aware that it could, if it wished to, cut.

The explanation for this unexpected air of purpose was, Tina had no doubt, that she had come here to say something; something about the book.

She started, however, as she accepted a glass of wine, by murmuring—for the third time since she had arrived—that she was so sorry just to drop in like this, but she had been passing and had been given the address by Christopher. She went on to assure Tina she wouldn’t keep her from her work in the garden for very long—she was on her way to visit her sister-in-law, who was staying about thirty miles away—and to tell her how beautiful she found the house, how tranquil it was up here, and how she envied her. And she concluded her warm-up, so to speak, by recounting everything she had done since she had arrived in Italy.

But then, as she took a seat, lowered her eyes, and paused
before delivering whatever speech she had prepared, something strange happened. Which was that Tina, who had been nervous while waiting for the woman, and merely curious for the last few minutes, now all at once became terrified, and realized she didn’t want to hear that speech. For just as she had been certain, before she had read them, of what Brandon’s diaries would reveal, now she was certain of what Brandon’s widow was going to say. She was going to say—Tina
knew
—that she had trusted Tina, as a woman and as a writer, and that Tina had betrayed her. That even if she hadn’t been aware of it at the time, or felt capable of taking the responsibility, she had, ultimately, handed over her husband’s diaries in the hope that Tina would have the strength and courage to disclose their contents to the world. And finally, that being now so very desperate, so very aware that this was her last chance—or finding, simply, that with Brandon two years dead
she
now had the courage, and could take the responsibility—she had decided to publish the diaries (of which she had presumably made photocopies) herself; and so be free of the lies and deceptions in which her marriage had involved her. The lies and deceptions that had been bred by her refusal to acknowledge what she had always suspected or perhaps always, within her, known. The lies and deceptions that had caused her to become the frozen, stone-like creature that she was today….

And if that were to happen, Tina thought, not only would that foulness be released into the world, but she herself would, more than ever, be caught up in the ensuing scandal.

So terrified was she by this prospect, and by her conviction that this was the speech Margaret Brandon was preparing to make, that even as the woman murmured ‘I read your book about Joe,’ she interrupted her with a forced laugh, said ‘Oh before we talk about that I’d like you to meet my friend,’ and, not caring how extraordinary her behaviour must appear,
rushed to the door and shouted for Maisie—who was upstairs writing an article for some medical journal—to come down. And though as she hovered in the hallway she thought that perhaps she had made matters worse—for if Margaret Brandon made her speech in front of Maisie it would be not only appalling, but humiliating—she also thought that she didn’t care. She just had to put it off for as long as possible; and she couldn’t be alone if it weren’t possible to put it off altogether.

But when she returned into the living room with Maisie, something stranger still than her being overcome with terror happened; something truly amazing. As Margaret Brandon looked at her—and showed she had noted that terror—an expression came into her eyes….

For a moment Tina was too confused to know what she was saying, as she introduced Maisie. She must have been mistaken, she told herself. There couldn’t have been an expression—not in
those
eyes. It was impossible. Absolutely impossible. And certainly not such an expression as the one she had seen. An expression of pity, and understanding, and the most terrible resignation.

*

But there had been; and she was to see it again, just ten minutes later. She was to see it as she and Maisie walked Margaret Brandon to her car, as Margaret Brandon thanked them for their hospitality and told them yet again how much she envied them their home, and as Margaret Brandon returned once more, as Tina knew at last she must, to the subject of the book.

She returned to the subject of the book; but she didn’t say what she had come to say, and had been on the point of saying earlier. No—all she said now, with pity, understanding, and the most terrible resignation not only in her eyes, but in her voice too, was this: that she had thought the biography very well written, that she expected Tina must be very proud of it—and
that she had wanted to come here in person ‘To thank you, Tina, for telling the truth.’

Then, for a moment, Tina felt more than confused. She felt—along with an immense sense of gratitude, and an even more immense sense of awe at the sacrifice that was being made on her behalf—a chill come over her. A chill that threatened to make her—as the news of Brandon’s death, two years ago, had threatened to make her—faint. It was the same chill that had frozen the woman in front of her; and it was a chill that was caused by the idea that in those words the whole of Joseph Brandon’s horror had, after all, been revealed to her.

No, she wanted to scream. Not that. Please not that.
That
I cannot bear.

But bear it she did; as, she realized a minute later, after Margaret Brandon had climbed into her car, given a last tired smile—a smile of total defeat—and started the motor, she would be able to bear even her return to the world. A return made inevitable, as she had feared it would be, and saw now was, by that revelation of horror. In fact, she thought, giving a wave of farewell to her visitor, with the example of that wonderful woman before her, there would be nothing
henceforth
she couldn’t bear.

H
E
WAS TEMPTED
, since it came from abroad, not to open it. Precisely because it came from abroad, he did open it.

And therein, he was to think later, lay the seeds of the whole affair.

*

Andrew Stairs was a big bouncing boy of a man—forty-five years and three months old the day the letter arrived—with a smooth red cherubic face and the manner of a clumsy good-natured puppy, and he distrusted all things foreign as much as he was fascinated by them. The distrust was due to his loving his own country to such an extent that whatever was not British he considered corrupt, barbarous or at any rate in some way inferior; the fascination to the fact that—however unwilling he might be to admit it—even he was aware, and acknowledged, that though Britain was an island, islands were hardly more isolated from the rest of the world than any other place, that what went on, for better or worse (normally for worse) in the rest of the world had an effect on the life of islands, and above all, that corruption and barbarity had an attraction—for him—that integrity and civilization simply couldn’t match. Of course he didn’t imagine that Britain was without corruption or barbarity, and when he heard or came across instances of either he was both ashamed and distressed. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that such lapses were lapses from the norm; vile blemishes on an otherwise perfect portrait. Whereas abroad—the lapse was the norm; the portrait itself was vile. And therefore, having more practice, in this field at
least foreigners were better; their sins were altogether more vivid, more brightly-coloured, more—unfortunately—splendid.

This mixture of distrust and fascination coloured not only the way he thought; it had also given shape to his career. (And thereby had become, to a large degree, the central feature of his existence.)

He was a writer. He was successful. He was happy to be both a writer and successful, and his stories were always, essentially, the same. (Partly because having found a recipe that was popular he saw no reason to change the dish he served; and partly because however many times he did serve it, and regardless of the fact that it was popular, he still liked it himself.) They were always set in the English countryside, were always peopled by characters who were products of that countryside—who had, after generations, come to resemble the fields and hills that surrounded them, the trees that protected them, the winds that blew upon them—and always, in one way or another, described how these characters were affected—invariably disastrously—by the arrival in their midst of a foreigner. (Only once had there been a ‘happy ending’, but it hadn’t really been convincing, and the book had been the least successful, in critical and popular opinion alike, of all his works.) They were, in short, gentle rustic tragedies; and they pretended to be nothing more.

Yet though he was happy with his career, and with his life as a writer, he wasn’t entirely satisfied by either. Two things in particular troubled him.

The first—and less serious—source of dissatisfaction was the fact that his books were sometimes accused of encouraging racial prejudice; or prejudice of all kinds. It was a charge he refuted utterly—he believed he helped to explain the causes of prejudice; a necessary pre-requisite if it were to be stamped out—but it did, nevertheless, hurt.

The second thing that troubled him was, however, a graver
concern; and it was that he had never, not even for a day trip to Calais, been abroad. And while he longed to—to see the vile portrait first hand, to experience the sensation of being a foreigner himself, and to push back the boundaries of his consciousness (and thereby give his work a greater scope?)—he was afraid. He didn’t, ridiculous though he knew it was, dare to leave his beloved island. Not, at any rate, alone. And so far he had never met anyone with whom he could have travelled who would have been both protective, but would also have stood aside and allowed him to feel the full heat of the flames upon his face. What he wanted was a Virgil who would lead him through Hell—but a Virgil who would only hold his hand, and not try to stand between the fires of Hell and the vision of Andrew Stairs. Someone, in other words, who would not interpret, explain, or otherwise attempt to be a medium.

His wife, in the fifteen years of their marriage, had often volunteered to be such a guide, and tried to convince him that she could give him both support and freedom. But he had always had to refuse. For so similar were they in outlook he wouldn’t have been able to help seeing things through her eyes most of the time. Furthermore, though she went abroad herself occasionally and always returned unscathed, he didn’t want her to be exposed to any danger; as, he was sure, she would have been exposed if she had gone with him. Because once in a while she might have seen things through
his
eyes; and seen, in spite of her previous travels, what she had never seen before. Seen, that is, too much.

His being so troubled, his longing so much to go abroad, and his searching, if only in the back of his mind, for some ideal travelling companion, were probably the reasons why, having opened that letter with its foreign—US—stamp, and having read it two or three times, he did something he had seldom done before to a ‘fan’ letter coming, as they sometimes came, from overseas. Which was reply to it.

Though possibly it wasn’t for any of the above reasons that he took this unusual step, but just because it arrived on a bright sunny morning which happened to be the fourth of May; which also happened to be the second anniversary of Jill’s death. (She had been killed in a road accident; in a head-on collision with another car; driven, ironically, by another writer. A man whom Andrew detested. An American….) And thinking of her—and being charmed by the tone of his unknown correspondent; who was, he gathered, a twenty-three-year-old girl who had just graduated from Berkeley—he realized how very much he still missed his wife, how lonely he was, and how he should try, now, to put aside his mourning and form some new relationship.

Not that he imagined for a moment—even if his motives for replying were that he was lonely, and that to continue mourning Jill was not only fruitless but wrong—that Lucinda Grey, as the Californian girl signed herself, would be the person with whom he would form a relationship. The idea of marrying or having any sort of rapport with a foreigner was inconceivable to him. How could creatures who were nurtured in different soils, and shaped by different winds, ever really have anything in common apart, perhaps, from a mutual dislike of their native soils and winds? They couldn’t; and dislike of one’s own land, of one’s own self (for to him the person
was
the country) was not a satisfactory basis for a relationship. One might just as well expect a cat to mate with a dog. Oh certainly they were both animals, both needed food and drink, both needed shelter and protection from the elements. But apart from that there was, frankly, nothing. (He would admit that there were exceptions to this general rule; but very few. Far fewer than most people would have claimed.)

I am merely, he told himself, as he wrote his own letter, being polite. Responding to kindness with kindness. And
accepting 
the notion that I must start being more sociable, meeting new people, putting out, however tentatively, feelers.

He could tell himself what he liked; and did. Nevertheless, rendered defenceless by his very inability to imagine that Lucinda Grey could ever be anything other than unknown, and by his very conviction that feelers should be extended only in one’s own country, by September of that year the unthinkable had happened. Andrew Stairs had fallen in love.

It was, he thought, as he stood in the small flat he had taken as a pied-à-terre in London (taken, two months before, ostensibly as part of his campaign to be more sociable, but actually because he had started to realize, alone in his cottage in Sussex, the danger he was in; and had thought London might save him from it) more than unthinkable. It was insane. He
couldn’t
be in love. Not with someone he had never met. Not with someone who hadn’t been born and bred in England. He couldn’t be.

But he was.

He wasn’t sure, even now, what had caused the collapse.

That first letter
had
been charming, and inriguing; there had been a lightness about it, a lack of earnestness, and a pleasant touch of irony that would have been remarkable coming from a fifty-year-old. Coming as it did from a twenty-three-year-old, it was so remarkable that it bordered on—but did not cross the border of—archness. However, it had been nothing more than remarkable, and in the past he had, once or twice, received other remarkable letters; to which he had also replied. But that had been the end of the matter; and he hadn’t come even to like his correspondents, let alone to love them.

He supposed the trouble had started with the second letter; that had been written and sent before his reply to the first had been received. Because whereas the first, while telling him very little of the writer, had been filled mainly with gentle, generally complimentary remarks about his books—together with one
or two less complimentary remarks on his apparent racism—the second had hardly mentioned his work, and had been filled with casual chatter about the character and the day to day life of Lucinda Grey; as if Andrew Stairs were an old friend, and would be interested in such things. The wonder was—he was. He couldn’t help himself. Once more it was probably the tone of the piece more than the actual words which caught him. But he found himself fascinated by Lucinda’s passing comments on some new film she had seen, on the number of times she washed her hair, on the temporary work she was doing in a hospital while trying to decide what to do with her recently received degree in modern languages; and rivetted by the story of her family. Her mother, she said, had been a poor, sad, alcoholic little woman of Scottish descent, who had worked all her life as a waitress, and who had once—her brief moment of glory?—had an affair, or anyway gone to bed with, a wealthy, childless businessman. A baby—Lucinda herself—had been born as a result of this affair, and the businessman had set up a trust fund for the education of his daughter. Shortly after he had done so, he had had a stroke, and died; leaving the remainder of his money to some distant cousin. The result was that Lucinda had been educated at some of the most expensive if not the best schools in the States, had been, nevertheless, penniless throughout her youth, and had been given a rare insight into the worlds of the almost entirely dispossessed, and of the almost entirely possessing.

Andrew didn’t necessarily believe this tale—it sounded to him a little too much like a fantasy; though whether of a rich girl or a poor girl he wasn’t certain—but he was enthralled nevertheless; and moved to write again himself. If only, he told himself, to comment on the parallels that Lucinda chose to see between his books and her own life. ‘I used to feel,’ she wrote, ‘that I was one of your “foreigners”; only doubly so. I was a foreigner in the moneyed world of my school-fellows, and
came to hate their arrogance, their smugness, and above all their, in general, strange lack of vitality (as if they lived both figuratively and literally off the blood of others, were therefore both more dependent on others and more frightened of others than those others were on them and of them, and thought their best defence against such dependence and fear was an almost total retreat into passivity and the most rigid conformity); and I was a foreigner in the poor and mostly uneducated world of my mother and her few friends, and came to hate their submissiveness, their, deep-down,
approval
of the way things were and of their own misery, and above all their lack of rage. (If not against the world, at least against themselves.) What was more, what
is
more, again like one of your foreigners, whenever anyone “loved” me—my mother, two (so far) men—or even became friendly with me, I tended to confuse them, and bring disasters on them. (My mother virtually killed herself with drink; towards the end—she died five years ago—I’m convinced she realized why I used to get mad at her, wanted, or maybe tried to feel the rage I wished she would feel, but by then no longer had the strength; and the two men both destroyed themselves within a year of our meeting. One became a heroin addict; the other burned himself alive. They were both, before the relationship started, on the surface at least self-confident, intelligent boys of “good” families. My fault? No, theirs obviously; a part of them was already searching for foreignness. They found it in me; but they couldn’t cope with it when they did find it.)

‘Maybe I’m romanticising, trying to make myself more interesting than I am. If that is the case you can put it down to youth, or inexperience, or—whatever you like!’

A passage from the third letter read: ‘You said you have never been abroad, want to, but are frightened. Maybe you should come to the States. I’ll be your guide!’

From the fourth letter: ‘I’m tall and blond, since you ask;
but I’m not going to send you a photograph. You can imagine me as you please, if you please.’

From the fifth: ‘I’ve never felt that foreign countries are corrupt and barbarous. Though to be honest, in strictly political terms, in 96 per cent of cases I guess I do. Even your old island, with its monarchy, the empty, pompous (somehow
lying
)
voices of your politicians and so-called upper classes, and the grey dispiriting lack of
joy
I’ve found in most Englishmen and women I’ve met, strikes me, who’s never been there!, as being in, and being, a pretty sorry state. (Notwithstanding the fact that we’re no slouches here when it comes to corruption and barbarity.) What I have felt, however, is that foreign countries are like different, so far unexplored, and possibly inaccessible areas of my self. My conscious self—my conscious reality, let’s say—is American. But behind that there are whole other continents, climates, mountains, deserts—whole other realities—that affect my conscious self, have gone to make up my conscious self (as if America were merely a crust that had formed on the surface of a pool), and are all part of my total being.