Sweet Tooth (26 page)

His story (I made my phantom Nutting go on to say) inherited from Samuel Beckett a dispensation in which the human condition was a man lying alone at the end of things, bound only to himself, without hope, sucking on a pebble. A man who knows nothing of the difficulties of public administration in a democracy, of delivering good governance to millions of demanding, entitled, free-thinking individuals, who cares nothing for how far we have come in a mere five hundred years from a cruel, impoverished past.

On the other hand … what was good about it? It would annoy them all, especially Max, and for that alone it was glorious. It would annoy him even as it confirmed his view
that taking on a novelist was a mistake. Paradoxically, it would strengthen Sweet Tooth by showing how free this writer was of his paymasters.
From the Somerset Levels
was the incarnation of the ghost that was haunting every headline, a peep over the edge of the abyss, the dramatised worst case – London become Herat, Delhi, São Paulo. But what did I really think about it? It had depressed me, it was so dark, so entirely without hope. He should have spared the child at least, given the reader a little faith in the future. I suspected my phantom Nutting might be right – there was something modish in this pessimism, it was merely an aesthetic, a literary mask or attitude. It wasn’t really Tom, or it was only the smallest part of him, and therefore it was insincere. I didn’t like it at all. And T.H. Haley would be seen as my choice and I’d be held responsible. Another black mark.

I stared across the room at his typewriter and the empty coffee cup beside it, and I considered. Might the man I was having an affair with prove incapable of fulfilling the moment of his earliest promise, like the woman with the ape at her back? If his best work was already behind him, I would have made an embarrassing error of judgement. That would be the accusation, but the truth was he’d been handed to me on a plate, in a file. I’d fallen for the stories and then the man. It was an arranged marriage, a marriage made on the fifth floor, and it was too late, I was the bride who couldn’t run away. However disappointed I was, I would stick by him, or with him, and not only out of self-interest. For of
course
I still believed in him. A couple of weak stories were not going to dislodge my conviction that he was an original voice, a brilliant mind – and my wonderful lover. He was my project, my case, my mission. His art, my work and our affair were one. If he failed, I failed. Simple then – we would flourish together.

It was almost six o’clock. Tom was still out, the pages of his novel were convincingly spread around the typewriter and
the pleasures of the evening lay ahead of us. I ran a heavily scented bath. The bathroom was five feet by four (we had measured it) and featured a space-saving hipbath in which you lowered yourself into the water and sat or crouched on a ledge in the manner of Michelangelo’s
Il Penseroso
. And so I crouched and stewed and thought some more. One benign possibility was that this editor, Hamilton, if he was as sharp as Tom made out, was likely to turn both pieces down and give good reasons. In which case I should say nothing and wait. Which was the whole idea, to set him free with money, stay out of the way and hope for the best. And yet … and yet, I believed myself to be a good reader. I was convinced he was making a mistake, this monochrome pessimism didn’t serve his talent, didn’t permit him the witty reversals of, say, the false-vicar story or the ambiguities of a man making passionate love to a wife he knows to be a crook. I thought Tom liked me enough to listen. Then again, my instructions were clear. I should fight my interfering impulses.

Twenty minutes later I was drying myself by the bath, nothing resolved, thoughts still turning, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. He tapped on the door and came into my steamy boudoir and we embraced without speaking. I felt the cold street air in the folds of his coat. Perfect timing. I was naked, fragrant and ready. He led me to the bedroom, everything was fine, all troublesome questions fell away. An hour or so later we were dressed for the evening, drinking our Chablis and listening to ‘My Funny Valentine’ by Chet Baker, a man who sang like a woman. If there was bebop in his trumpet solo it was mild and tender. I thought I could even begin to like jazz. We chinked glasses and kissed, then Tom turned away from me and went with his wine to stand by the card table, looking down for some minutes at his work. He lifted one page after the other, searched the pile for a certain passage, found it and picked up a pencil to make a mark. He was frowning as he turned the carriage
with slow meaningful clicks of the mechanism to read the sheet in the typewriter. When he looked up at me I was nervous.

He said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Something good?’

‘I’ll tell you at dinner.’

He came over to me and we kissed again. He had yet to put on his jacket and he was wearing one of the three shirts he’d had made in Jermyn Street. They were identical, of fine white Egyptian cotton, cut generously around the shoulders and arms to give him a vaguely piratical look. He’d told me that all men should have a ‘library’ of white shirts. I wasn’t sure about the styling, but I liked the feel of him beneath the cotton, and I liked the way he was adapting to the money. The hi-fi, the restaurants, the Globetrotter suitcases, an electric typewriter on the way – he was shrugging off the student life, doing it with style, without guilt. In those months before Christmas he also had his teaching money. He was flush, and good to be around. He bought me presents – a silk jacket, perfume, a soft leather briefcase for work, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, novels by Ford Madox Ford, all in hardback. He also paid for my return railfare, which was well over a pound. At the weekends I forgot my scrimping London life, my pitiable food hoard in one corner of the fridge, and counting out the change in the mornings for my Tube fare and lunch.

We finished the bottle and fairly rolled down Queen’s Road, past the Clock Tower and into the Lanes, pausing only for Tom to give directions to an Indian couple carrying a baby with a harelip. The narrow streets had a forlorn out-of-season air, salty-damp and deserted, the cobbles treacherously slick. In a good-humoured, teasing way, Tom was interrogating me about my ‘other’ writers supported by the Foundation. We’d been through this a few times and it was almost a routine. He was indulging sexual as well as writerly jealousy or competitiveness.

‘Just tell me this. Are they mostly young?’

‘Mostly immortal.’

‘Come on. You can tell me. Are they famous oldsters? Anthony Burgess? John Braine? Any women?’

‘What use are women to me?’

‘Do they get more money than I do? You can tell me that.’

‘Everyone gets at least twice what you get.’

‘Serena!’

‘OK. Everyone gets the same.’

‘As me.’

‘As you.’

‘Am I the only one unpublished?’

‘That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Have you fucked any of them?’

‘Quite a few.’

‘And you’re still working through the list?’

‘You know I am.’

He laughed and pulled me into the doorway of a jeweller’s shop to kiss me. He was one of those men who are occasionally turned on by the idea of his lover making love to another man. In certain moods it aroused him, the daydream of being a cuckold, even though the reality would have sickened or wounded or enraged him. Clearly, the origin of Carder’s fantasy about his mannequin. I didn’t understand it at all but I had learned how to play along. Sometimes, when we made love, he would prompt me in whispers and I would oblige by telling him about the man I was seeing and what I did for him. Tom preferred him to be a writer, and the less probable, the more status-laden, the greater his exquisite agony. Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, pipe-smoking Günter Grass, I went with the best. Or his best. Even at the time, I realised that a deliberate and shared fantasy was usefully diluting my own necessary untruths. It wasn’t easy talking about the work I did for the Foundation with a man I was so close to. My appeal to confidentiality was one way out, this vaguely humorous
erotic dream was another. But neither was enough. This was the little dark stain on my happiness.

Of course we knew very well the reason for our warm welcome at Wheeler’s, for the nodding enquiries after Miss Serena’s week, Mr Tom’s health, our appetites, for the snappish drawing out of chairs, and napkins laid across our laps, but it also made us so very happy, and almost convinced us that we really were admired and respected, and far more so than the rest of the dull and ageing crowd. Back then, apart from a few pop stars, the young had not yet got their hands on the money. So the diners’ frowns that stalked us to our table also heightened our pleasure. We were so special. If only they’d known they were paying for our meal with their taxes. If only Tom could know. Within a minute, while others who were there before us had nothing, we had our champagne, and soon after that the silver dish and its cargo of ice, and shells containing the glistening cowpats of briny viscera that we dared not cease pretending to like. The trick was to knock them back without tasting them. We knocked back the champagne too and called for a top-up. As on previous occasions we reminded ourselves to order a bottle next time. We could save so much money.

In the restaurant’s moist warmth Tom had removed his jacket. He reached across the table to put his hand on mine. Candlelight deepened the green of his eyes, and touched his pallor with a faint, healthy tint of brownish-pink. Head as always slightly tipped to one side, lips as usual parted and tensed, not to speak so much as to anticipate my words or speak them with me. Just then, already tipsy, I thought I’d never seen a man more beautiful. I forgave him his tailored pirate’s shirt. Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those. The first had been in the White Tower. This was far more powerful. Like Sebastian Morel in ‘Pawnography’, I was tumbling through dimensionless space, even as I sat
smiling demurely in a Brighton fish restaurant. But always, at the furthest edges of thought, was that tiny stain. I generally tried to ignore it, and I was so excited I often succeeded. Then, like a woman who slips over the edge of a cliff and makes a lunge for a tuft of grass that will never hold her weight, so I remembered yet again that Tom did not know who I was and what I really did and that I should tell him now.
Last chance! Go on, tell him now
. But it was too late. The truth was too weighty, it would destroy us. He would hate me forever. I was over the cliff edge and could never get back. I could remind myself of the benefits I had brought into his life, the artistic freedom that came with me, but the fact was that if I was to go on seeing him, I would have to keep telling him these off-white lies.

His hand moved up towards my wrist and tightened. The waiter arrived to refill our glasses.

Tom said, ‘So this is just the moment to tell you.’ He raised his glass, obediently I raised mine. ‘You know I’ve been writing this stuff for Ian Hamilton. It turned out there was one piece that kept growing and I realised I was drifting into the short novel that I’ve been thinking about for a year. I was so excited and I wanted to tell you, I wanted to show it to you. But I didn’t dare, in case it didn’t work. I finished a draft last week, photocopied some of it and sent it to this publisher everyone’s been telling me about. Tom Mischler. No, Maschler. His letter came this morning. I didn’t expect such a quick reply. I didn’t open it until this afternoon when I was out of the house. Serena, he wants it! Urgently. He wants a final draft by Christmas.’

My arm was aching from holding out my glass. I said, ‘Tom, this is fantastic news. Congratulations! To you!’

We drank deeply. He said, ‘It’s sort of dark. Set in the near future, everything’s collapsed. A bit like Ballard. But I think you’ll like it.’

‘How does it end? Do things get better?’

He smiled at me indulgently. ‘Of course not.’

‘How marvellous.’

The menu came and we ordered Dover sole and a red rather than a white wine, a hearty rioja, to demonstrate that we were free spirits. Tom talked more about his novel, and about his new editor, publisher of Heller, Roth, Marquez. I was wondering how I’d break the news to Max. An anti-capitalist dystopia. While other Sweet Tooth writers handed in their non-fiction versions of
Animal Farm
. But at least my man was a creative force who went his own way. And so would I, once I’d been sacked.

Preposterous. This was a time for celebration, for there was nothing I could do about Tom’s story, which we were now referring to as ‘the novella’. So we drank and ate and talked and raised our glasses to this or that good outcome. Towards the end of the evening, when there were only half a dozen diners left and our waiters were yawning and hovering, Tom said in a tone of mock reproach, ‘I’m always telling you about poems and novels, but you never tell me anything about maths. It’s time you did.’

‘I wasn’t much good,’ I said. ‘I’ve put it all behind me.’

‘Not good enough. I want you to tell me something … something interesting, no, counter-intuitive, paradoxical. You owe me a good maths story.’

Nothing in maths had ever seemed counter-intuitive to me. Either I understood it, or I didn’t, and from Cambridge onwards, it was mostly the latter. But I liked a challenge. I said, ‘Give me a few minutes.’ So Tom talked about his new electric typewriter and how fast he would be able to work. Then I remembered.

‘This was going the rounds among Cambridge mathematicians when I was there. I don’t think anyone’s written on it yet. It’s about probability and it’s in the form of a question. It comes from an American game show called
Let’s Make a Deal
. The host a few years ago was a man called Monty Hall. Let’s suppose you’re on Monty’s show as a contestant. Facing you are three closed boxes, one, two and three, and inside
one of the boxes, you don’t know which, is a wonderful prize – let’s say a …’

‘Beautiful girl gives you a fat pension.’

‘Exactly. Monty knows which box your pension is in and you don’t. You make a choice. Let’s say you choose box one, but we don’t open it yet. Then Monty, who knows where the pension is, opens a box he knows to be empty. Let’s say it’s box three. So you know your fat pension for life is either in box one, the one you chose, or it’s in box two. Now Monty offers you the chance of changing to box two or staying where you are. Where is your pension more likely to be? Should you move or stay where you are?’