How to Disappear (17 page)

Maruma is beginning to discover that a man who buys an island buys a kingdom, and that kingship is a trap. A king is not a free man, as Eigg's previous owner discovered. A trap but not a mistake. We may choose inconveniently or unwisely – for ourselves or for others – but we never choose incorrectly. We always gravitate to what we need to realise our particular natures. I think I'll phone Maruma again. But not from here, not from Eigg. I don't mind waiting for a while, for quite a long while very often. So much of my life has been spent waiting, because I don't see that there's any alternative if you are trying to achieve something. You get on with other things of course, but in your heart you are still waiting. For love, for success, for a cheque, for an answer, an acceptance, a telephone call, an email, a response, yes, a response, often that's all one is waiting for, a human response…But there comes a point when if you hang around any longer you're a berk.

So Luca and I packed our bags, said our good-byes, and caught the train from Mallaig to Glasgow. It was now, on the 16.10 train, that I had that freakish surprise. I found myself reading the actual obituary of Bapsy Pavry.

‘Are you all right?' enquired Luca.

‘I think so.'

‘You look as though you've seen a ghost.'

No – the ghost was the obituary I'd read before. The precognition one. This was the real one – even more startling. It really was shocking to find that obituary exactly as I'd envisaged it, staring at me on the return train to Glasgow. Bapsy showing up again without warning. Maybe Maruma will unexpectedly enter my life in the future, from an oblique angle, when it might take me a little time to register who the hell he is. I hope so.

In Glasgow we booked a suite for the night at the Central Hotel, a Victorian behemoth put up over the Central Railway Station and refitted in the 1930 s with giant sofas and beds. Several huge rooms opened into each other before opening into a bathroom whose high Cunard curves disappeared in a blaze of white. Our sitting-room windows looked down on to the bustle of the station concourse which the double glazing transformed into a lively silent film. Viewed from the cushions of our gallery sofa, trains came and went in a bizarre silence. Luca wanted to snooze, so I took myself off to the health club in the basement and slotted myself into the sauna with one of the hotel waiters. He told me that the hotel had seen better days and that Laurel and Hardy, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Churchill, the Kennedys and the Beach Boys had all stayed there. ‘What about Cernuda?' I asked.

The heat hissed around his perplexity. He'd never heard of Cernuda. Few people have. I've never ‘done' Glasgow. I'd like to one day. On this occasion it struck me as far more exciting than Edinburgh and soon after the Eigg jaunt I tried to arrange a visit to Glasgow in pursuit of Cernuda. He was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville in 1902. The first volume of his to make a mark was
Forbidden Pleasures
in 1931. Thereafter surrealism and classicism found a fruitful rapprochement in the work of a man who believed that ‘he who knows love wants nothing else'. At the beginning of 1938 Cernuda left Spain to go on a lecture tour of England – and he never returned to his homeland. The triumph of Franco and the outbreak of the Second World War persuaded him to stay on as lecturer in Spanish studies at Glasgow University where he had gone in January 1939. He remained there until his move to Cambridge in 1944, London in 1945, the USA in 1947, and Mexico in 1952. Controversy surrounds his death in Mexico City in 1963 – some say it was a heart attack, others suicide after a rewarding love affair turned sour. The corollary of love eliminating all other needs is that when love goes you are left with nothing.

I rang the head of Hispanic Studies in the University of Glasgow, Professor Gareth Walters, to enquire whether any of Cernuda's colleagues might still be alive and he suggested I write to Neil McKinlay who was working on a study of Cernuda. Mr McKinlay said that Cernuda ‘was very reclusive and loathed Glasgow intensely' but one of the Spaniard's colleagues, Ivy McClelland, was still alive. So I wrote to her. A letter came back – but from Professor Walters. ‘Ivy does not feel she would have much to tell you about Cernuda as he was a very reserved person. She doubts it would be worthwhile for you to make a special visit to Glasgow to speak to her about him, but she will be willing to speak to you on the phone if you wish.' When I did ring her the phrases ‘nothing to say', ‘he was very reserved' went round and round, not a single personal observation of the man, let alone an anecdote. The page on which I was going to record my conversation with Ivy McClelland has one word on it: ‘Nothing'.

A man by the name of Ian Gibson, writing to me on another matter in 1997, suggested I contact Rafael Martinez Nadal, a friend both of Lorca and Cernuda. Rafael lived in Hampstead, Mr Gibson said, and was very knowledgeable and approachable and in the telephone book. When I rang I learned that Mr Martinez Nadal was at his house in Madrid but would be back soon and I should write to him. I wrote a letter to the Hampstead address and was afterwards myself in Herefordshire – the South of France – St Petersburg – my father died – and there was no reply to my letter. Rafael Martinez Nadal died in 2001, aged 97.

Luca said ‘I'm not going to Venice.'

‘Copycat.'

‘That's right. You convinced me. Next time I do a story I want to go somewhere hot. With brothels.'

‘Try Mexico.'

‘Definitely.'

In the end I think it was Nicaragua he went to – and never returned.

At least things were moving again. And we hadn't given up on Maruma altogether. Back in London, I tried the Maruma Centre repeatedly, with much the same result as before. He's running away while pretending not to run away; that's what this sort of person does unfortunately. Like old Monty did with Bapsy. Maruma's receptionist was always patient and good-natured. Occasionally she laughed and he was always unavailable: in a meeting, arriving later, anything to avoid confrontation. Until one day, right in the middle of her spiel, Maruma interrupted her and came on the line.

‘Oh – you'll speak to me?'

‘Yes.'

‘About Eigg?'

‘There are so many things going on at the moment, Duncan.'

You see, he's so damn nice. That's the other big problem with his kind – they're so damn nice. One is stymied by their niceness.

‘What happens next, Maruma?'

‘Long story.' I hear him inhale deeply on a fag.

‘Well, what about the Lodge being turned into a health clinic?'

‘There is shit energy there.'

‘In the Lodge?'

‘Yes.'

I'm surprised. I thought there was lovely energy there.

‘Perhaps we will do hotel.'

Another go at the fag.

‘And the proposed distillery? That would be popular.

Fire-water.'

‘What?'

‘The red indians called alcohol fire-water.'

‘…You see, I have to clean up so many misunderstandings caused by the press and I must especially clean them up with the people of Eigg.'

‘Coz you're never there.'

‘Yes, they cannot find out what person I am.'

This is the nub of it, isn't it. Why is communication such an act of bravery? Why do we hide the truth that is in our hearts? Oh, the truth! No arrangement ever came about by telling the truth. People often prefer to die than to tell the truth, hoping that a more acceptable truth will arrive in the future, one that they can admit to. But truth is really all that matters because the great thing is to be able to look someone in the eye. The truth is nakedness now. The truth is active. And not telling the truth is what paralyses everything.

‘So why don't you go there and reveal yourself?' I ask.

Sigh.

‘Do you have money problems?'

‘I have no money problems.'

‘Do you love the island?'

‘Yes, I fell in love with it when I saw it from above.'

‘And from below?'

‘Below?'

‘Is it too much for you on the ground?'

‘I don't understand,' he says.

He's choking. I feel awful really, goading him on.

‘Are you afraid of Eigg now?'

‘No, not afraid. But I don't want to play the landlord.'

‘Unless you play the landlord, nothing will happen.'

‘What would you like to do with Eigg?'

‘Me?'

He's asking me. There
is
something enchanting about him.

‘Yes, Duncan, you. You seem very interested. So have you got any ideas what to do with it?' I hear him light another cigarette – in Stuttgart.

‘Well, yes, actually. I do have some ideas.'

‘Which you believe in?'

‘I said ideas. Not beliefs.'

I don't have beliefs. Beliefs are dead things. I want to know things, not believe things. I have some ideas I could propose, that's all.

‘We must talk more about this, face to face, on Eigg.'

Oh dear, we've been here before.

‘Definitely. Yes. When will you visit it next?' I enquire flatly.

‘Soon I hope. Maybe at the end of the month.'

‘Or at the beginning of next?'

‘Yes.'

So the islanders waited and waited. I didn't wait, no siree, not any more. But they had no choice. They waited. Ends of months and beginnings of months came and went. And they waited for their lover to answer their appeals, to call, to speak, to visit. And still they waited, unable to move forwards or to have closure or to grasp what on earth was going on, fettered by his remoteness and his refusal and his silence. They never saw any more of Maruma. He never returned. Then one day the island was put up for sale. And the islanders raised the money to buy it for themselves. They need never wait for a lover again.

A
t the end of the nineteen-seventies I was living in the small town of Hay-on-Wye writing a book. Several times a week it was necessary to escape Hay's delightful, gossipy confines, and one of my jaunts took me to New Quay. This is not to be confused with Newquay in Cornwall, surf capital of Britain; and it not often is because New Quay is an obscure fishing village on the west coast of Wales. Its brightly painted cottages have storm porches of coloured glass and are built in terraces on cliffs of black rock. Beneath them, coves of pebbles alternate with loops of dull sand. In the season, not very well-off holidaymakers occupy its few modest hotels and boarding houses.

It was not the season. It was chilly and damp and the sky was a monotonous grey. At lunchtime, after meandering New Quay's little streets, I entered a pub called the Dolau Inn not far from the sulky, flapping water. There was a mere handful of customers inside and, having ordered a pint, I nodded at a character sitting on a high stool at the end of the bar and eventually exchanged a few words with him. He was getting on in years and bald, with a trim grey beard, and dressed spotlessly in yachting clothes: sailcloth trousers with knife-edge creases, a navy-blue jersey, slip-on deck shoes. One thing struck me in particular: his nails, perfectly manicured, were white from base to tip. His hands looked as though they'd never touched even so much as a tiller (an erroneous impression, it turned out). In these simple surroundings his curiosity lay chiefly in the air he had of an extreme refinement tinged with exoticism.

He was also a nervous fellow and our conversation, such as it was, never flowed. He held his head down bashfully and from time to time, when speaking, cast blue lugubrious eyes upwards from beneath a lowered brow. The voice, issuing from slightly pursed lips, was fastidious but not affected, and his manner of expression had that casual charm which suggests a great deal and is utterly unrevealing.

I told him that I'd abandoned London the previous year after coming unstuck. He said he'd done the same thing but long, long ago and hadn't been back, ‘except briefly during the Suez crisis.'

‘Why did you leave?'

‘Because I'd had enough!'

He fingered the beer mat to distract himself from this sudden show of temperament.

‘So why did you return during the Suez crisis?'

‘I'd had some experience of that part of the world. I think they thought I could help.'

‘And could you?'

‘Could anyone?'

Shuffling about for a change of subject, I mentioned that I was reading Joseph Conrad and rereading the early novels of Evelyn Waugh. The beer mat did a couple of rapid twirls. He said he used to love Conrad. I said that I thought that the more serious Waugh's tone became, the worse his writing was. My companion nodded. When I advanced the idea that although well-endowed as a writer, Waugh's later work was undermined by the progressive narrowing of his sympathies, the old man uttered an extraordinary remark.

‘He wasn't well-endowed in the other sense, I'm afraid.' How on earth had that gear-change come about? He could see I was taken aback; but having quipped, he remained silent, staring at his Cinzano on the rocks, as though he'd surprised himself too. Could his reference to Waugh's private parts have been a way of making a pass? I thought I'd find out and asked ‘What do you mean exactly?', at which he waffled something in a low tone which I simply didn't grasp and courteously excused himself, saying he had to get back for lunch. We shook hands, he said good-bye to the landlord, with whom he was on easy polite terms (the landlord called him Mr Graham), slid away in those perfect clothes, and that was that.

A few months later I was having dinner with a friend of mine, Nick Jones-Evans, at his house. Nick lives in Presteigne on the Welsh Marches forty minutes north of Hay. His family used to own property in New Quay and he spoke of some arcane leasehold arrangement concerning a chapel there. So I mentioned my visit and particularly of my meeting with the funny old gent.