The School of Night: A Novel (24 page)

And it finally explains that otherwise inexplicable peculiarity of language in
As You Like It
: ‘When a man’s words are misunderstood, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.’ How can anyone be
more
dead? One is either dead or one isn’t. Comparatives don’t come into the matter at all. Unless, of course, one is universally thought to be dead, while in fact continuing to live and write under another’s identity. The dead man’s fingers are holding the pen that signs the living name.

Banquo, the Marlowe figure in
Macbeth
, dies but does not stop acting; in fact he is more potent in his presence after his death than before it. Now he really does terrify the king.

And lastly it explains the desolation of the tragedies, though explain is here surely not the right word. Some things can never be explained. For what could be more desolating than to live a life as someone else, in disguise, displaced hundreds of miles from your country and your lovers; or to be the greatest writer of your time, perhaps of any time, and for no one but you and a few secret confidants, in another country, to know it? This is the desolation of being no one with no real body. This is hell, to know you are not out of it.

9

On this one particular day I simply kept walking. It was as though I needed to connect up the Tower of London with Hampton Court, as though to tread with my own feet the path between those two centres of power might in some way complete the circuitry, free the years that were flowing round my mind’s topography.

And that was the only reason, I swear, that I found myself standing opposite Thames Ditton. I stared for a moment as I realised where I was, and then I took the photograph of Sally from my pocket. A fisherman was sitting on the towpath, his silently squirming yellow bowl of maggots at his side, a bright circle of yellow discontent, an antinomian inversion of the sun. Twenty feet away a heron stalked and stared into the water. Its manic watery eyes reminded me, with sudden vividness, of Becky Southgate. I started walking. As I passed Hampton Court I saw the geometric topiary behind the wrought-iron gates: that’s a king’s way with nature for you – discipline it into the pattern that most pleases you. There were red and yellow roses, like the ones that once grew on my grandfather’s wall. By then King Henry was already trophied with the badges of his regal disease.

And twenty minutes later I was knocking on Sally’s door.

‘What do you do, Sean?’ she asked me as she made coffee. ‘You don’t live with Dominique any more; you don’t live with anyone any more. You have no woman, you have no children. What do you actually do with all your time? Or have you just become my husband’s eyes and ears at the Pavilion?’ She brought the coffee over to the table.

‘Who do you think wrote Shakespeare, Sally?’

‘I would have guessed Shakespeare, but I suppose that’s far too easy.’

‘Yes, that is too easy. One advantage of living alone and mostly at night, without children or women to take up your time, is that you can get into focus things other people stay blind to. A dead man wrote his works for him, I’m pretty sure of that now.’

‘Isn’t it a bit difficult, though, writing things from underground?’

‘The dead sometimes control the living, or didn’t you know that?’

‘Well, they don’t control me, Sean. And the living don’t either. Not in that way; not even Dan, just in case that’s what you’ve been thinking. I know a lot of people do think it. And they’re wrong.’

We walked into the village talking. I carried her bags of groceries as we came back. Everything seemed easy and intimate as if all the years between us had simply fallen away. I suppose that’s why I did it.

‘No,’ she said and lifted my hand gently from her breast, where I had just placed it.

‘Dan wanted me to come, you know.’

‘Maybe he did. I want you to come too, Sean, but not that way. My husband may not be the faithful type, but I am, all the same. I live here on the proceeds of his various endeavours. You know, it surprises me more and more that you and Dan ever became friends.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you just take whatever life gives you and Dan never takes anything life gives him. Whatever life gives him, he takes something else instead.’ I must have looked sad. She reached across and stroked my cheek. ‘Those are my children playing upstairs as well as his, you know. And that’s the greatest single compliment life ever pays you, Sean.’

‘What?’

‘A child’s trust. I don’t want to have to start lying to anyone. I certainly don’t want to have to start lying to him. And neither should you. Anyway, you had your chance.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. What a lovely tan you’ve got.’

That night I went to the Oasis again. Found someone with blonde hair and Sally’s build. White flesh in the darkness, a whiteness going deeper down through the well inside me than I knew was possible. I hadn’t realised before that I went that deep. All paid for with Dan’s money.

*   *   *

The next day I read this one line in Marlowe: ‘See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.’ Sacraments. I had been raised on them, after all, those threads providing a link to sacred possibilities. Transubstantiation of man and matter. I had never resolved to do without them and I suddenly felt their absence acutely. I walked through the streets to the place I had noticed so many times before during my wanderings. I entered the little church on Cadogan Street and knelt in prayer for ten or fifteen minutes. When a small priest entered silently to tend the altar, I stopped him as he stepped back down into the nave.

‘Could I speak with you? I need to talk to a priest.’

‘Is this something you need to do now?’ The hair was cropped and beneath it the large eyes looked intently, with a mild smile, but an intelligent one. I would have said he was about sixty; I would have also said he was a little tired.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it has to be now.’

He led me up the stairs to his room and once we were settled I said, ‘I’ve been committing someone else’s sins.’ The priest seemed to bethink himself for a moment, then the smile returned as he spoke. ‘They’re seldom original, I suppose. I can’t think of a newly minted one in thirty–five years of hearing confession. Goodness can always take one by surprise with its freshness, but sin I suspect was ever a little hackneyed. Or second-hand if you prefer it.’ My eyes had been straying around the room. There were tiny crosses wedged into gaps in the bookshelves, icons, reproductions of Romanesque ivories: Christ in agony; Christ in glory; saints luminous in their aureoles. My sense of urgency made me lean forward in my chair.

‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean that I took over someone else’s sins, accepted them as a gift. Took them on as a job, accepted them as a career. I didn’t even decide to commit these sins, I simply inherited them.’

‘The sins of the fathers, you know, are…’

‘Not my father. He had one set of sins, but not these. These sins belonged to someone else. Someone closer to me than my father ever was. And I took on his sins as easily as putting on his overcoat.’

‘And are you still…’ He faltered.

‘I’m afraid that I’ll only stop if the opportunity disappears.’

‘Are you sorry for these sins? You were the agent, after all, if not perhaps the instigator.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. But I’d be sorry if the sins were to go too. I’d miss them, I can tell you. One in particular.’

‘You’re not unique in that, of course.’ He had crossed his hands neatly in his lap. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘St Augustine would often sit for hours lamenting the sins he’d failed to commit. They can undoubtedly seem most welcoming, in retrospect. But it is a necessary part of the act of penance to make a firm act of amendment. You must resolve not to sin again, even though the resolve may prove frail.’

And I did so resolve, receiving the words of absolution before I stepped back on to London’s streets half an hour later, temporarily shriven and cleansed. The burden of sin had been lifted from me. For the moment anyway.

10

I was writing, silently, fluently, for everything was now in place. My thesis was finally ready for expression. I wanted to speak to Stefan again, to explain the distance I’d travelled since we’d last discussed these things. I was thinking that I might phone him and suggest we meet somewhere. Just the two of us. Without Kate; I couldn’t face that. There was a knock on my door and then Jess came in.

‘It’s Charles Leggatt,’ he said. ‘You’d better do what you can to get him out, Mr Tallow, or there’ll be a fight down there. Not that it would be much of a fight: given the state Charlie’s in, he’d be lucky to hit the floor.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He told Eric Johnson that’ – here Jess paused to make sure he’d remembered the words precisely – ‘that the act of sexual congress with his wife was like coition with a dead fish.’

‘I’m surprised he phrased it so delicately.’

‘He didn’t the second time.’

‘Coition with whose wife? Charlie’s or Eric’s?’

‘Eric’s, I’m afraid, though Charlie’s so drunk it’s hard to tell.’

By the time I arrived down there, Eric Johnson was already attempting to manhandle Charlie from his bar stool, but Charlie was resisting with liquid and inebriate manoeuvres of his arms and legs. Eric saw me approaching.

‘Just get this creep out, will you, before I deck him.’ And somehow I managed to reach my arm around Charlie and speak sufficiently soothing words to charm him into going downstairs with me. Once I had him outside on the pavement and we were making our erratic way towards Markham Square, I relaxed.

‘Why did you have to insult the man’s wife, Charlie?’

‘I merely pointed out that making the two-backed beast with that particular lady was as pleasurable as coupling with a dead fish. I happen to know of what I speak.’

‘You’ve had a dead fish then, have you, Charlie?’ He stopped and stared at me with the exaggerated dignity of the truly drunk. The end of his red tie had somehow ended up stuck into the top pocket of his suit.

‘Yes, since you ask, I have. A rather sizeable old trout, as I recall.’

‘Was that with or without the boiled potatoes?’ Charlie was lapsing backwards. I just managed to catch him before lapse turned to lurch.

‘Did you see the wretched woman?’ he said, permitting my supportive arm to grasp him round the back once more. ‘With her gimcrack gewgaws over her tits, which she was flashing, Sean, let’s be serious about this. A woman does not have to be quite so décolleté these days, unless she’s a professional. There are plenty of alternative necklines for the bar-room attire of the fashionable floozie.’ He stopped and turned to me with great solemnity. ‘Am I getting old or are their breasts getting bigger?’

‘That’s not an either/or, is it – logically speaking?’ Charlie’s face brightened under the street lamp.

‘You mean, I could be getting older
and
their breasts could be getting bigger?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘So there is a God after all.’

We arrived at his flat. I helped him down the steps to the basement and, after much fumbling with his key, he finally let himself in.

‘Will you be all right, Charlie?’

‘I’ll be all right, and I’m indebted to you. An Aristos amongst the baying hordes of Demos. Good night, sweet prince, and hordes of angels choir thee to thy rest. That’s not right, is it?’

‘Near enough.’

*   *   *

And then one day the telephone rang. It was Dan.

‘You’ll have to get out, Sean.’

‘How do you mean, get out?’

‘By tomorrow the bailiffs will be in. Grab everything you can, cash, anything, and go.’

‘But I don’t understand…’

‘The whole thing’s gone down, my friend. I’ve gambled the entire company on this deal. You’ll probably be reading about it in the papers over the next few days. Gerry’s already in jail, where I have no intention of joining him. Which is why I’m getting out of this fucking country by the back door. Pronto. They’ve gone insane. Six months ago we were heroes; now we’re criminals. But I can’t stop what’s going to happen at that end, and it will happen quickly, believe me. Legally speaking, unless you’ve been very stupid, you don’t exist. Keep it that way. Don’t hang around long enough for them to find you. Take whatever you can and then vanish. And keep well away from any investigations. I’ll be lying low for a while myself. Nobody’s going to know where I am. Or who. Do me one favour, will you, Sean?’

‘What is it?’

‘Stick a few hundred in little Jenny’s hand. With my fondest regards.’

Then the phone went dead. For five minutes I sat there staring down at the road and its metal snake-back of traffic. Then I packed my notebooks and my clothes into my two bags and put the black steel box in there too. I walked downstairs with all the insouciance I could muster and a large brown envelope in my hand. I went round each till in turn and methodically extracted half the notes, making a great show of counting them and scribbling figures on to the envelope. When I’d collected everything I thought I could get away with, short of attracting unwelcome attention, I went and found Jenny. She was leaning against a wall in the kitchen, smoking.

‘Jenny, could I see you outside for a moment please?’ I said, in my most authoritative voice. She stepped out to join me and smiled, as though I’d finally had the sense to realise what I’d been missing all these months.

I pressed two hundred pounds into her hand. She stared down at it for a moment, then she looked back up at me.

‘I can come up later. What time would you…’

‘Daniel Pagett sends you his love,’ I said and walked off.

Five minutes later I left the building, carrying two bags. For the first time in months I noticed Dan’s Porsche in the courtyard, covered from roof to bumper in a fine layer of dust. How angry he’d have been if he’d known, but it didn’t seem to matter too much now. With my grandfather’s snooker cue angled jauntily over my shoulder, I set off up the King’s Road in search of a new home.