The Biographer (33 page)

Would I still be oblivious of him,too? This new question struck her as so confronting it verged on the unthinkable.

Mischa made a noncommittal noise. He remained in the same position, immobile. She thought, he is unusually tense tonight.

'Is it a good thing, though, Mischa? Overall?'

Because this was you, wasn't it?

It was you, Mischa, who set this in motion.You said yes to the biography.You didn't clear it first with your dealers. More to the point, you didn't say anything to me. It was your doing alone.Was that because you knew that if I heard about it I would put the kibosh on the idea?

Did you set it in motion knowingly, and on my account?

He said, 'I'd rather hear what you think, Mrs Smith. Overall.'

Greer searched for the invisible shadows imprinted on the walls of the bedroom. The previous occupants of this house must have had secrets, must have had their big secrets too, for which they had been accountable. She was convinced of that. But then, they had little or no choice in the matter.

She thought, there is an opening. A glimmer in darkness, a crack in a wall. I have been handed a choice.

'I think – no, that's not right, Mischa –'

'Yes?'

The single syllable was laconic, but she knew he was one hundred per cent on the case. He lay beside her, still motionless,waiting.

She tried to gather her thoughts. They were undisciplined, swarming all over
the place. She thought, there are changes afoot in my life. In our lives. He
knows that.

'I know it's a good thing.'

'How are you feeling?'

The surprising question rebounded. He had hardly ever asked a question like that. This time she answered without pause for reflection.

'I feel relief.'

He moved against her. She felt the tension go out of him, his breath on her face. She rested her head against his chest.He traced her cheekbones with his finger.They were wet.

She said,'Other things too, Mischa. Lots of other things. I don't think I know how to describe them yet.'

'I don't have to kill him, then?'

'Him?'

'The biographer.'

She waited until afterwards, until he fell deeply asleep – it was not a long wait – before she got up and went into her study. From a pigeonhole in her desk she took out a sheet of writing paper.

21st April 2006
I've heard the tape of your meeting with Tony Corbino. I've seen your photograph,Will.And now I hear the news from Charlie and Josie – the first time I've heard their voices in twenty-five years – that you and Rebecca may be on your way here.

What can I say to you,Will? And to you, Rebecca? Because it's your business now too. I know you are engaged to be married.

Your attitude to me is understandable. It is entirely justified.

The question is, why? Why did I do what I did?

I trust that this diary, which I am going to give you in the hope that you may bring yourselves to read it, will go some way towards answering that question. I think I knew all along, from the day of the biographer's arrival, and perhaps subconsciously very much earlier, that one day I was going to give it to you.

You may not wish to read it, and I should warn you that it will not be an easy read. Nor do I emerge from it with any credit.

What is written here does not in any way excuse, but I hope that it may, however baldly and inadequately, explain what must otherwise seem inexplicable. Perhaps the one virtue it does have is honesty, although there are limits to that which will not be lost on you.

If you reach the end you will have some insight into the young woman I was (not much older than you are now).To what extent I am still that person is not for me to say.

Whether it hit you like a thunderbolt, as it did me, or whether it grew on you more slowly and flowered, the experience of being in love must have changed the two of you profoundly.

I can only hope that this may help you both, not to forgive the unforgiveable, but in some way to understand.

She lingered over the last sentence, as if to imbue it with some miraculous power, before folding the page in half and placing it inside the front cover of the diary.

Greer came into the kitchen dressed in jeans again and a loose cotton shirt. It was going to be another balmy day. She could already hear bees.The beams of light that lay across Mischa's breakfast debris on the table had more warmth in them. He had slept well, so deeply he had hardly moved all night. He had got up early, whistling. She had slept too, but fitfully.

She threw open the north windows.The creeper on the south wall of Rollo and Guy's house opposite was greener today, the stones nearly hidden. The light breeze was drenched with wisteria. She gulped the perfume like a narcotic, drawing it deep into her lungs.

Then she heard a murmur of distant voices and saw them. There were three young people standing at the east end of the lawn, by the low wall at the precipice of the valley, grouped around Guy's telescope.

Two of the three had their backs to her. She did not know them, but she knew
who they were instantly, without a moment's doubt. The third person was no
surprise. It was Tony, positioning the telescope so the girl could see across
the valley to the lookout tower on the far ridge.

Greer stood at the window and watched them,hypnotised by the three figures.Tony was leading the other two away now. He was opening the gate to the right of Rollo's chapel. He must be going to take them along the winding path across the slope of the hill, the path that led down to the swimming pool and on to the little walled cemetery.

She would have known Will from his walk, more of a saunter, which was Charlie's loose-limbed walk, even if his photograph had not imprinted itself on her mind. He was swinging the young woman's hand. Rebecca was tall too, taller than Tony, with her wavy hair caught in a band and tumbling down her back.

The three figures disappeared from sight down the path. Greer stared at the small patch of ground behind the gate, where they had briefly been and then vanished. She stood at the window, transfixed.

They had been here, on this land, only a short distance from where she stood. It was as if a magician had waved his wand and magically they had come into her world, just as Rollo said yesterday. Then he had waved it again and they were gone.

Were they really here? Had she seen them at all, or was it a hallucination, a dream glimpsed and then irretrievably lost? She had set eyes on Jean-Claude that day, only to find herself unable to recall any detail of his face. But Jean-Claude was no figment of her imagination. He was real, he was a character in her story, and he had passed on the secret. Tony was around to verify that.

What if they never come back?

She felt herself disabled by the thought. Suppose they had been spirited away
by a pied piper, young and charismatic like them, but blond-haired and full
of guile? She fought a blind urge to chase after them, foolishly calling out
her son's name. She fought against the rising panic of bereavement.

Tony has no reason to spirit them away. On the contrary, he has every reason to see this to its conclusion, since he engineered it. Of that I have no doubt.

She turned away from the window with its vista of emptiness, crossed the room, then ran down the steps and into her study. She breathed in the deep, calming breaths, the method Marlene had once taught her, in a time of
extremis
, and she had never forgotten.

She pulled out the diary and unfolded the sheet of paper she had written last night. She read it through once, folded it and replaced it inside the front cover.

Then she opened the diary at the last page.There was one more piece of information she had to impart, an urgent postscript. Although it was of fundamental importance she had been unaware of it until just then when, standing at the window and feeling bereft of something she had never had, she discovered it for the first time.

22nd April 2006
I should not presume to say what I am about to tell you,Will, but I find that I can't help it. I am unable to leave this, my first communication with you (could first imply second?) without telling you this, one single thing that rises up and overpowers all my other inglorious feelings.

There is no evidence I can give you for what I am about to say,I know that.And there is no point in denying that in the years since you were born I have been fortunate and often very happy.

But there are certain things so deeply buried that one is unaware of them until a trigger, a person, or an experience, unlocks them. I already knew this, of course, because the events in this diary are themselves the consequence of one of those cataclysmic discoveries.

And now I have found another, and it is almost beyond belief to me that I did not know this before.

There was a love requited, and a love given away. I cannot deny that,Will. But please try to believe this. It is also true to say that I have missed you for every day of your life.

I am indebted to the Sesti family of Castello di Argiano, Montalcino – the physical model for my otherwise entirely fictional Castello di Monte Leccio. Sarah, Giuseppe, Elisa, Cosimo, Petroc, and the late Orlando, submitted – always graciously – to endless interrogation, and I thank them all, not only for their time and patience but also for their generous hospitality and joie de vivre.

Other friends contributed in many ways. An early discussion about biography with
David Marr over a long lunch was extraordinarily fruitful in kick-starting
the imaginative process. A major part of the book was completed over an idyllic
summer at Kathy van Praag's house. Long sections were written in the tranquil
Sydney refuge of Jeremy Steele's shed. I am grateful also to Helen and Ross
Edwards, Pamela Traynor and Christopher Bowen, and Kristin and David Williamson,
who generously provided further writing retreats at the beach and in the mountains.
I could not have taken advantage of any of these without the help of the marvellous
McLennans – Jane,Andrew and Tara – and of Eva Buczak.And once again, Robin de Crespigny and Sophia Turkiewicz read
the work in progress – an unstinting support.

The novel was signed off at Casa Moorehead in Porto Ercole. My gratitude to Caroline Moorehead and Anne Chisholm for three perfect weeks of productive conviviality.

At the all-important business end, thanks – anything but perfunctory – to my agent, Sophie Hamley, and at Random House to Meredith Curnow, Roberta Ivers, Catherine Hill, Jessica Dettmann and Judy Jamieson-Green. You were all a delight to work with.

There are certain friends with whom you don't have to pretend

Lou, a freelance journalist, leaves New York after the breakup of a long relationship. Taking refuge in Mim's North London house, the nerve-centre for a group of old university friends, she becomes drawn into an escalating series of personal dramas.

Days Like These
is about women behaving badly. It is about love and loyalty, deceit and disaster, and the onset of moral choices. In a world where you can touch most things, what – and who – is untouchable?

Told with wit, humour and sophistication
Days Like These
tests the bonds between friends.

'A tremendous first novel possessing real charm, a kind of freshness and guilelessness
that is very potent - and a toughness and reality that I genuinely applaud.'

William Boyd