Ghosting (29 page)

At some point in 1998 it became clear that money was in short supply. This was quite a shock since there had always seemed to be more than enough. Indeed those of us who had observed Tiger's extravagant lifestyle over many years had supposed that there was wealth without limit. But it appeared we were wrong. There had
been times in the past when he had cried hard up, but no one ever believed him because his protestations were always at odds with what we saw—supreme spending and splurging. He was quite open about it and loved talking about his latest acquisitions. “Wait till you see what I bought!” he would say as he showed off the latest painting or Oriental rug. “And look at this piece of lapis—it's the biggest piece ever! It cost
a fortune!”
And so, although a certain mystery hung over his financial affairs, we assumed that the money would go on for ever. But it turned out that the debts had been growing for some time.

At first he was bullish. What were they so worried about? They'd get their money. There had been financial crises before, hadn't there? Just leave it to him—he would sort it. But somehow we knew this was more serious. The details were never fully disclosed; just vague references to cash flow problems and the need to recapitalise the company. To this end a financial backer was sought. This was the obvious way forward, Tiger said. He was in any case fed up with being a one-man band—what he needed was a financial partner, a kindred spirit. And so, letters, dozens of them, were sent off to potential investors, and though they read like investment opportunities I thought of them as just fancy begging letters. Perhaps Tiger knew this too, but nothing was ever said. As each envelope was sealed he said he had a good feeling about it—this one surely would bring a positive response, he just knew it. I felt sorry for him, but if ever I said so, he bridled. “Never underestimate me,” he began, the grim warning before the tirade. “People have made that mistake before and have lived to regret it. I enjoy a fight. I will not be beaten. If they think they can destroy me—just let them try. No one is a match for …” and at this point
he would begin to talk about himself in the third person, as if he were sending another man into battle, hailing the man's reputation for fearlessness, praising his defiance, extolling his name—his own name—again and again. Arthur Scargill used to do this during the miners’ strike. (“As long as Arthur Scargill's in charge, the miners will secure a victory. Make no mistake, Arthur Scargill's a fighter. There will be no defeat under Arthur Scargill….”)

I was spending much more time in London now. N-H's work took him there for quite long stretches and I wanted to be with him as much as possible. Tiger seemed pleased that I was able to be in London more, and he made the magnificent library in the new palace available for me as an office. A lot of letters had to be written and he liked having me on hand to do them. When I wasn't writing letters or doing research for the interviews I worked on the column and other journalistic bits and pieces. Because of his other worries Tiger said it was important for him to keep busy on the creative front. He accepted everything that was offered—the
New Statesman
diary, commissions from the
Observer,
the
Sunday Telegraph,
the
Jewish Chronicle,
the
Tablet
and so on. There were also regular approaches from the tabloids for “rapid reaction” pieces: three hundred and fifty words by midday on some topical crisis, sensational divorce settlement or tragic event. And sometimes I did book reviews, though I wasn't allowed to write what I really thought. The thrust of the piece was determined by Tiger's connection with the author—

“We
have
to say we like it. We
cant
not say it's good.”

“What, even if it's not good?”

“Even if it's not good. Why make enemies?”

Perhaps this is not very different from the way a lot of reviewing
works. And since there was often a thank you card from a grateful author, this was vindication enough.

“You see how she loved it? I told you, it's much better to write a nice review.”

Reading over the different articles now, I am able to recall my particular state of mind as the deadlines approached. Just from a single phrase it is possible to tell whether I felt confident or discouraged, rebellious or simply desperate. I can even detect the odd personal crisis. I can as good as hear the thud of my own heart.

The small spaces between the newspaper articles were filled with wild thoughts, all of them variations on the theme of breaking free. But how best to go about it? And could I afford it? I considered my mental state, my bank balance, my home life, my blood pressure—this last, bafflingly, being the lowest you could have without being in a semi-permanent faint. At home I judged it was best not to complain too much, and so I began to pretend that everything was fine, that things had improved. But they hadn't, and I had shamefully embarked on yet another level of pretence, this time with the man I loved. In fact, the largest area of my consciousness was still occupied by Tiger, and it included, ironically, the Tiger of my own invention, a protean chameleon-like creature who rhapsodised over the stuff he believed he had created, a man upon whom I had ghosted beliefs and opinions he didn't hold, feelings that he didn't feel. And it was the keenest irony that we were both ensnared by the same myth.

Some assignments were completely weird. At the beginning of 1998 Tiger gave lunch to an agent who represented a high-profile society girl. He worked his magic on her and by the end of lunch there was a deal on the table: Tiger would publish the society girl's
story. When he told me about it, he was hardly able to contain his excitement and immediately plunged into his Harlem Globetrotter routine: this would be the biggest
coup
ever, she was such a babe, she was hip, she was cool, she was right at the heart of the British social scene, rubbing shoulders with aristocrats and rock stars alike. Bounce, bounce, bounce, and now—wait for it—the goal! This book was a once-in-a-lifetime chance: it would attract more publicity than all the other books put together, it was a surefire winner.

“And who will write it?” I asked as the ball dropped through the net.

“
We
will!” he said. “It's so easy—let me tell you how we will do it. I am going to interview her; I have arranged to do three sessions of two hours. And there are
thousands
of newspaper cuttings. So with the tapes and the cuttings we have all we need to write the book. There's no problem!”

But there was a big problem. I didn't want to do it, and this time I told him so. I could not bring myself to be interested in this girl, I said—she represented everything that was trivial in the world, she was no more than a glamour girl flitting from party to party, a sugar mouse, a modeller of designer frocks, a freeloading lightweight, famous just for being famous, irredeemably superficial. Why was such a person exalted? And why did we have to add to the glorification?

“You are so highbrow,” Tiger said, spitting his contempt. This was a most terrible charge: being highbrow belonged on the same spectrum of iniquity as coughing or menstruating.

“And she's so dim,” I spat back.

“Actually”
—he elongated the actually, as if he'd just unearthed
the vital clue, the incriminating evidence—“you're completely wrong. This girl is the smartest around. You could learn a thing or two from her.”

And so the interviews took place and the book was started. It was a bizarre project with multiple layers of identity issues: I was impersonating Tiger who in turn was impersonating the society girl whose intimate first-person story he had contracted to tell and under whose name it would appear as an autobiography. It felt more than a little mad.

Most of the time my approach to the situation, and how to change it, was not in the least rational or methodical. I just became used to a feeling of mild desperation, which sometimes got better, sometimes worse, and I simply kept going, trying not to think about it too much or talk about it at home. Home was increasingly in London—far away from the fresh sea breezes of St. Andrews and my little sanctuary in the garden. I was spinning in Tiger's orbit, navigated this way or that by the latest enthusiasm, each one laid aside after a while to make way for the next. Sometimes it seemed as if I scarcely lived in the world at all, except maybe at one or more removes. Leaving the Soho building one night after work I turned onto Regent Street where there was a man wearing a sandwich board that exhorted sinners to abandon sex and turn to God. He was walking ahead of me, though with difficulty, for the board was long and he himself quite short. The bottom edge clipped his heels with every step—a pitiful sight that brought tears to my eyes. Was
he
just doing a job, I wondered, or did he actually believe in what he was doing?

The ghost-writer is aptly named. Real ghosts, if we accept such a thing, are constrained to live in a world they no longer properly belong to. They are suspended in limbo, unable to move on. There is something disquieting about them: they are the spectres at the feast, they never seem to sleep, their presence disturbs. Writer ghosts are much the same. They upset those who are in the world, reminding them of things they would rather ignore. They spoil the party, they can appear at inconvenient moments, and their energy lingers for a long time.

When I was in St. Andrews, hundreds of miles from London, I was an absent presence in Tiger's life, a ghostly creature he could summon at will. Did I even exist at all? Most people would have doubted it—just as with a “real” ghost. After all, much of the evidence was purely anecdotal and therefore prone to construction and interpretation. In the early days, at a launch party for one of Tiger's books, I got talking to a magazine editor, a commanding force on London's literary gossip circuit, who said he had heard that Tiger was helped by “some woman up in Scotland;” adding, surreally, that since no one had ever met her she probably didn't exist. The strangeness of this encounter appealed to me, and in any case I was still at the stage of finding it restful to hide behind someone else. It seemed to be a natural continuation of the translation work, and in fact I felt this for many years. Concealing your identity can actually be a strange sort of liberation; it can even be self-affirming, since eventually you work out who you really are by living who you are not.

In later years, when I was spending more and more time working in the London palace, I still remained a shadowy spirit. Famous people regularly turned up to lunch or to be interviewed. I would have loved to meet some of them—particularly those
whose books I had read or whose biographies I had researched— but as soon as the doorbell rang I knew it was time for me to disappear. “Make yourself rare!” Tiger would say.

For a while Tiger continued to perform breathtaking juggling acts with money, all the while firing off more scatter-shot letters. Surely one would hit the target? But time went on, and no outside investor came forward. The bank, keen to protect its own interests, applied more pressure. It was a gloomy time.

The Bank: gradually, these two little words came to symbolise all that was wrong with the world. They were shorthand for ruination and disaster, they fuelled resentment and a feeling of persecution, they were the reason for everything and nothing. They stopped books being published, they cancelled parties, they plagued every conversation and spoiled the fun. Phone calls with his girls, normally a wellspring of happiness, consisted of fractured, plaintive talk—“Beloved, if only I could! I would love to. But, you know, the Bank …” Letters from the Bank arrived every week, and from time to time a middle-aged man with a briefcase and a double-breasted suit would visit in person. In the days and hours before his arrival a pall of darkness was draped over the building, but the minute he had gone the light would come flooding back. “I charmed him,” Tiger always said. “I had him eating out of my hand. He
loves me!”
And he would grin as if the past few months had been a stupid misunderstanding or a trick of the imagination. For a day or two he went on a spree, and his spirits lifted, shored up by bright hopes and whistles in the dark. But the stay of execution soon expired, and it was back to “But, you know, the Bank.”