The Back of His Head (6 page)

That's what I try to remind the others on the occasions that something comes up from a past they seem to remember in far greater detail than ever I can—I, who, unlike them, actually shared his house and life, who was actually
present
at the times they talk about. I've had to reprimand each of them more than once: Julian least, perhaps, since he had least to do with the Master as a young man, coming somewhat later to the scene as he did: although, of course, he's as susceptible to suggestion as the next man.

Remember what Raymond brought us! I reminded them all, and still remind them. Remember when we were waiting, remember when it happened—remember Stockholm! Remember when we were
together
, is what I meant, when we had a sense of purpose in our lives, a sense of meaning and magic. Because, dear Lord, there's no doubting he brought us some wonderful times, an excitement we'd never have known ourselves without him. What would we
be
without him? I often ask, and I don't just mean the four of us on the Trust. He was a gift to us all, a gift to everyone.

For myself, I know I made too much of him when he was younger, despite our difficulties—
because
of our difficulties, in truth,
because
of them. Nothing is simple, nothing straightforward. I used to love him more when those things happened that I found so hard, sometimes so
wrong
, but that was when he meant more and more to me. The two went together, the pain and the love. They were the one thing.

By the time I was a young man I thought of him not as a mere human being but almost as an incandescence—and it still doesn't seem a completely extraordinary thing to confess that to you. He could do no wrong—even when he did. He was Raymond, he was the Master. He transformed everything he touched, everyone he touched. I knew to let him do it, because he was who he was. Some people make their own rules, and others are there to obey them. That's just how it is. One simply submits to the greater force. One submits to a force of nature.

And all of this now, it seems, a long lifetime ago. Somehow, he has gone, and the excitement and unpredictability he always brought have gone with him: here I am, somehow, left policing the theft of an
ashtray
. A glance up from my desk here in the Chicken Coop and I see the roof of the Residence beyond and below my office window, its distinctive tiles flecked with yellow-green moss, its guttering slumped along the bargeboard and hanging from its ties like a row of grubby hammocks. This is the sort of thing I think of now, and the question of how to pay Val, the sole remaining full-time gardening lady, and the others I am obliged to think of as well—the Butts, most obviously, both of them pensioners now and thus to some degree self-sufficient, both of them (I have to admit) kept on for sentiment's sake as much as anything else. Each requires a notional salary of sorts, not to mention the Chicken Coop building to go on living in: more expense, more expense and more decisions.

In the Blue Room this evening I put away these thoughts as I watch the sunlight leave it, its glow fading from the walls and from the Medal and from the Citation below it. The sherry glass is crystal, Waterford, of course, and one of the many treasures from Raymond's parents' estate at Hamilton Downs, while the sherry is Amontillado: the music, that Vivaldi castrato piece I've mentioned earlier as the
nonpariel
on the other side of a Geminiani Concerto Grosso disc.

Finally, opened across my thigh, and worn from the habit of use, Raymond's third novel
Flatland
, with its imperishable opening sentences:
July. No green left. The pines, the pistachio trees, the palmettos and the cork-oaks black against the rust of the earth
—I don't need to read the words since I have so much of the Master's work by heart: but I adore the simple
fact
of the book, the feel of the
work
and the
use
in it, the embodied thought in my hand as I raise it and let the words on the page meet yet again the words in my head. Such
economy
, and yet such pungency of expression: almost nothing between the reader and the world that is realised upon the page.
I want the words to disappear
, he used to say, and here he has all but made them do that, in a passage of extraordinary delicacy and originality and authenticity.

His book is here tonight not so much to be read as simply to
be
, to reassure, to
give to the moment
as the extraordinary voice of the boy builds and soars and takes me with it to that other world the old man told me about and promised me and so very nearly took me to, and which so surely exists and is where he dwells now. Here it comes, here it comes at last, as the sun winks, and the evening falls, and the glass tips, and the words reassure, and the music climbs to heaven in the pretty mouth of the butchered, ruined boy.

Extraordinary, extraordinary—the insoluble puzzle at the heart of beauty, the Master used to say,
the killing in the middle of it
. That is what he showed me: that, I think, was his especial, demanding gift, the knowledge in those traditional words the Italians used to say:

Evviva il coltellino!

Long live the little knife!

Actually, if you want to know the truth, Patrick, what I usually did first thing in the morning was, I'd wipe the old man's arse for him. That's what I usually did. You told me, just the facts, you'd sort them out yourself, well, there you go, there's the first fact for you to sort out! Make something out of
that
—go on! Every morning I'd check him, and that's what I'd have to do because sometimes the poor old bastard'd cacked himself in the night, not every night but most nights he did. I'd clean up the bedding and I'd clean him up, too, and I'd do everything else you'd expect me to do. If they get Parkinson's they get bunged up, see, so I'd give him a couple of the old senna pods at night, about 7:00, and exactly twelve hours later it's
ba-boom
, stand back, know what I mean? Full or empty he'd go off right on time, you could use him to set the Atomic Clock. So I always had to be there.
Close sport
, that's what we call it in the weight room, it means looking out for someone when they're lifting, in case of a fail? Anyway, sometimes I'd get a bit generous with the senna pod and then it'd be like I say, a lot of work for me when I turned up, I'd put him on the throne for the big moment at 7:00 a.m. Bombing Dresden, he used to call it. You'd hear him through the wall,
bombs away
—

Well,
there's
some facts for you to sort out! Dare you to start it off like
that
, this Raymond Lawrence book you're going to write! Anyway, I've been looking through the other questions you left me and I'll have a go at them, I can't guarantee anything but I'll have a crack at them for you anyway. If you're such a great sorter you can tidy me up the way I used to tidy him up the last five years! There you go—you asked how long I worked at the Raymond Lawrence residence, it was ten years. The first five I wasn't living-in, I'd cycle over twice a day and sort him out when he wasn't too bad, the last five I was his live-in semi-pro nurse and his body-servant as well—since he got worse, poor old bastard, that's when I had to do more and more for him. Know what I mean, body-servant? The story is, see, I messed up my exams at uni and then I went off overseas, usual thing, know what I mean? And when I come back I need something to do, and Barry at the gym, he says to me, try Bailey's, and it turns out a lot of the body and weights guys go there to get work lifting old people. Bailey's Care they're called. You don't just lift and turn, you have to do a course first, you have to learn how to inject on oranges and that, and I tell you what, some of it got me a bit rattled—like, putting in rectal thermometers, you ever tried putting one of those in?
You know what you can do with your rectal thermometer
—just joking, guess you had to be there. Some of the stuff I was meant to learn, though, it just went right over my head first off, medication and that—tell you the truth, I didn't even much like injecting the orange, first time round! But I got on top of it all in the end, no trouble.

Anyway, that's how I met Mr Peter Orr, after I'd done the training course. Bailey's give me his number—you know,
your first potential client, don't stuff it up
—and I ring this Peter Orr, and he says to me,
are you able to lift and turn
? Sounds like a dance move, eh? But I'm like, no problem, bring it on. Then he says,
what're you studying
? And I tell him the truth, I tell him I hadn't really studied anything worth mentioning but the main subject I'd
enrolled
for was Geography.
Geography
? he says, even on the phone you could hear him wrinkling up his nose. You mean colouring-in? he says. Well, I think there's a bit more to it than that, I told him, but really for all I know, that might've been all there actually was to GEOG 114 Environment and Resources, just colouring in different countries and trying not to shade over the border into Nicaragua, know what I mean? But I hadn't been to any of the classes so there's no way I could tell what GEOG 114 was really about, was there? All I knew was what one of my mates told me who was doing it, and that was
orthographic lifting
. Something to do with the weather, apparently, that's what he reckoned. So there you go. Orthographic lifting.

And I told him that, Mr Orr, I said maybe I'd have done a bit better if I'd shown up even just the once. Oh, I
see
, you didn't
pass
, he says. I didn't realise. And then he says, we were looking for someone with literary interests, preferably a graduate. A
graduate
! I told him, I laughed out loud when he said that—I mean, me a graduate, did I look like a graduate to you the other day? I can lift and turn, I told him, but I'm not a graduate, I haven't passed anything. Oh, and I can inject. I didn't tell him I never even showed up for the exams. Why would you?

Anyway, he said he'd see me, and I can tell you what, he changed his mind about me when I turned up in his doorway, this Mr Peter Orr. He's a funny weird skinny bent-over prick, by the way, quite tall—guess you know that—do you? I thought if the job involved lifting and turning I might as well wear just a singlet for the interview, singlet and jeans, know what I mean? What the hell, if he didn't like it he didn't like it and if he didn't want me he didn't want me. That was my position. I didn't know the house he told me to come to was anything special. There was this woman there bent over working, you know, the way women do over flowers, and it turned out, that was Val Underwood. There was a team of them, all women, they kept an eye on the garden—you could see it'd had a hell of a lot of work put into it, you could see that, it's a great garden—and Val was the youngest but not really young. So I call out, Mr Orr in? and she straightens up. She had pretty good tits. That was good, I like that. I'm Thom, I told her, and I spelled it out for her, T-H-O-M. You like a Bounty Bar? I had a spare one on me. So we stood there and we shared a Bounty Bar and that was how I met this really nice lady, which is what she is. Old Val.

I guess you don't really want to know about this stuff but it's what happened so there you go. The point is, she took me round the back of the house and up to the Chicken Coop, up behind the main house. They reckon they call it the Chicken Coop because there really was a chicken coop there once but they've built that second house on it now, know the one I mean? Looks out over the roof of the one where Mr Lawrence used to live? Curtains and a lav and bedrooms and so on. Up there's where Mr Orr's got his office. So I'm standing in front of this open door and he does this bullshit thing where people know you're there and they go on scribbling just to let you know they're Mr Big Shot and you don't amount to Jack Shit pardon my French? Anyway, he looks up when he's good and ready, and that's when he does this big double take and he forgets he can even write! Mr Ham, he says to me, you could see him looking me over. All the time I hadn't spent colouring-in at GEOG 114 I'd spent in the gym lifting weights, so there was definitely something for him to look at—well, you've seen it all so you know. I don't make out I've got much else.

And so—big laugh—turns out I wasn't wasting my time doing all those cycles after all, because he offers me the job on the spot! Forget the Geography, he says to me in that funny little flirty voice he's got—know what I mean? Like he's always walking away around a corner from you all the time, like he's talking to you over his shoulder?
Come on
, I'd like to tell him sometimes,
spit it out, say what you bloody well mean
. No need to ask if
you
can lift and turn, he's telling me, and I half thought he'd get me to lift
him
up and turn
him
round just to see! So, anyway, then he tells me who it actually is I'm supposed to be lifting and turning, and I just laugh out loud at him. Raymond
Lawrence
? I said to him, you're kidding me! And I was, like, shaking my head—the Nobel Prize-winner, after all the stir when he won! Like I told Mr Orr, I'm not into books that much, but how could you get away from the racket when the news came out, d'you remember it?—can't be anyone who doesn't, you heard about it till you wanted a rest. Bloody Raymond Lawrence! Well, I'm not a reader like I say, but even I sat there and watched a couple of interviews on the box at the time, and I wondered what it'd be like, to become as famous as that, world-famous overnight, even if it was late in your life like it was for him, near the end, before he got really sick, I mean, and then of course I thought of the money side of things as well—I mean, you would, you would think of that, wouldn't you? You would think of the money?

I'll tell you what really made me think, though, it's this, it's how you start from nothing and end up with something, I mean something really big. What I mean is, he sits there for years making stuff up in his head, he just pulls it out his bum for all I know. And it gets printed and so on, it gets published and that, but it's still not
real
—d'you see what I mean? But everyone wants to know him, that's the thing, it's like it's magic dust or something. I'll bet you not everyone who was after him like that'd even read the books, I'll bet not half—less—all the same, everyone wants a bit of the action. I mean,
you
do, Patrick, you're one of them, Christ, you're paying me to spill the beans on him, you said you wanted
every detail however small
—that's what you told me. You're paying me to spill my guts, and what're you going to do when I do?—you're going to make it into another bloody book! A book about his books! Then I suppose someone'll do a book on
your
book! And it'll all have come out of nothing—know what I mean when I say that? What's
inside
the book is still—you know—not real.
That's
what I can't get over. And all the time he's just a poor old cocksucker, Mr Lawrence, I mean, at the bottom of it all he's just what we all are,
ordinary
, I've seen everything when I was training and he was, you know, average like the rest of us—except of course he was in worse shape, poor bastard, the way he'd switch off and on like he did, you'd never knew where you were with him, you never knew whether he was alive or dead sometimes. Switching and twitching, that's what I'd call it, just one poor old bastard slowly winding down and never bloody still, it'd give me the tomtits sometimes watching him when he was asleep,
twitch twitch twitch
. This was later on, of course, right near the end, he wasn't like that at the start—whoops!
Shit
—

An extraordinary entry in the Visitor Book this morning:
A mausoleum to Art, a monument to Death
.

Who could write such a terrible thing, who could even think it? I struggle with the signature, but it's scribbled, compressed, crouched over, turned in on itself as are the eight words that precede it: their letters lie curved on the page like dead wasps.
Who could it be?

The initials to the right show Julian to have been the tour guide, but when I ring him he has no explanation. A Japanese tour bus, he says. I don't think they really knew where they were, they spent most of their time taking photos of each other out in the garden. But this isn't what an Asian would write, I tell him. And I'm sure the signature's deliberately disguised. But why would anyone go to the trouble? he asks. Well, then, how d'you explain it? I ask him back—but of course he can't. Someone having a bad day? he suggests. That's just silly, I tell him.

It stays with me, this message, as I turn to this week's emails and letters.
Someone is playing silly buggers
—one of Raymond's phrases. But who, who is it? And why?

In the envelopes today, just the usual stuff, some addressed to Raymond himself, as usual, and written as if he were still with us. Not everything that arrives here at Cannon Rise is bleak and dispiriting, of course: much of it is from scholars all over the world—almost as soon as the initial excitement about the award died down, the requests from the academics, as I've said, began.

For them, though, the Master had no more time than he had for literary folk in general.
Piss off
, he would actually write on the bottom of the letters that came requesting access to his manuscripts and for interviews, and often he'd post them back before I could intervene. On a request for a meeting
with a view to a possible biography
he wrote a dreadful limerick about a young girl from the Azores. One about a young man from Uppingham replied to an early request to make a documentary of his life. Whenever the phone rang near him he would almost always ignore it, but sometimes he'd lift the receiver and engage with the caller in what he called his cleft-palate voice. At other times he would feign idiocy or an obscure foreign accent.
Hold the line, I'll just get him
, was another ruse, followed by the dangling of the receiver on its cord and, for the unfortunate caller, a long, fruitless silence till the penny dropped—or in fact didn't.