This is the Life (25 page)

I panicked. Fire! I felt like shouting. Fire! I lost my head. I felt like ringing up the fire brigade to go to Colford Square on the double, to send up a ladder to the study window and aim their hoses at the pile of papers smouldering in the hearth. Maybe something could be salvaged, a few brown-rimmed, heat-curled pages, a few scorched-off sentences, even. Maybe …

I rubbed my face. Why? Why? Why should Donovan do this, why should he commit this arson? It was horrific: a masterpiece of jurisprudence and political philosophy rubbed out, reduced to ashes. It was a catastrophe, a disaster. I could not understand what had led him to commit this folly. And the actual gesture of incinerating the manuscript – that was far too theatrical a thing for Donovan to do. Desperately I reviewed the previous six months, checking and rechecking his actions, his words. Not a clue. There was not a single reason that I could find to explain what had happened. What had I missed? What had I missed?

Then I saw a glimmer of hope: the disc, the software which stored the book: perhaps that was still in existence. Yes; he would hardly have burned the disc; or would he? And maybe this phrase he had used about throwing the book on the fire – maybe that was just a figure of speech?

I stopped thinking about it. Disc or no disc, figure of speech or not, it made no difference. I saw that. What mattered was that the book was not coming out. And that was the matter.

There followed a period of waiting. I set about my work in the usual fashion and waited. Precisely what I was waiting for I did not know; but I lived in the expectation that something would come along, that eventually some beam of light would stray in my direction. In the event, nothing happened, nothing became clearer – if anything, things became more obscure. No new facts turned up. My firm received a cheque from Donovan for my services – there was no accompanying note – but that was not what I had in mind. I was just waiting for things to turn around, as per usual. Then one day it dawned on me, not dramatically but in a dull, tired way, that nothing was going to turn around. That was it. There was no more to come. The End, as they say in films, had been reached; somewhere, in a scene I had not witnessed, the cowboy had ridden off into the sunset.

This was in April. I stored away the
Donovan v. Donovan
file in my office and, at home, made a package of my abortive
thesis and put it back where I had found it, in an old box in the attic.

Unfortunately, not everything ended there. For a while I went about my work with reasonable efficiency, but then, as I have said, things took a turn for the worse. First of all, lethargy crept in. All day I would trudge around the office in a state of exhaustion and apathy, struggling to fight off sleep at my desk. Then, in the evening, when I returned to my flat, I would be restless. I would sit down on the sofa to read and end up by throwing down the book or newspaper in irritation; television became unwatchable, and the nights – the nights became an ordeal of insomnia. Insomnia! What an affliction! In the middle of the night I would look over the edge of my bed at my radio-dock and calculate with horror that, even if I fell asleep
immediately
, I would get at most three hours’ sleep. For feverish hours I smouldered in my bed until, at last, I heard the birds singing outside and saw the curtain lighten with the dawn. And while I steamed under my duvet, my imagination, too, would start overheating. In my terrible half-sleep, vague fantasies and wild notions would take hold of my fuming brain, exhausting and distressing reveries populated by Donovan and Mr Donovan, by Arabella and Susan and Oliver Owen. And so it went on, this awful pattern of sleepless nights and listless days.

It did not take me long to work out something about what was going on: I may be uncomprehending but I am not stupid. I knew what the trouble was – Donovan. I had tried to forget about him, to put the whole thing behind me, but I had been unable to. I thought that time would clarify, I thought that time would heal. But I was wrong, time did nothing of the sort. Time stood still, time took time off, so that weeks later nothing had moved on, and I was still asking myself, Why had Donovan burned the book? What had led him to it? Arabella? His father? His divorce? Something else? Something had gone on, something big – but what? What had gone on?

I could not work it out. I had clues to work on, I had strands – I had Donovan’s breakdown, his break-up, his journal, the
introduction to his new book, I had my researches, I had Donovan senior, I had the sudden divorce – but they had me tied up in knots. My leads led me nowhere. And there was something else: surely it could not end this way? What about all that momentum I had discerned, that inexorable drama? What had happened to that? Was it all to come to this – to nothing?

No, I decided. It was impossible that the Donovan adventure could just dematerialize. I had missed what had really happened, somewhere along the line I had missed a trick. And it was at that point that I decided to straighten things out once and for all, that I picked up my pen and embarked on this narrative. I would set it all out clearly, I determined. I would replay it. That would be enough – was not description supposed to be revelation? – to pick out whatever it was that I had missed. That should do it, I thought.

So, here I am then. It is 9 July 1989, and I have done what I set out to do. I have looked back on the last year and related everything there was to it. All the facts of the matter have been set out and now, at last, I am in a position to understand what has been going on. Now all I have to do is read carefully what I have written and, if everything goes according to plan, hey presto – all, or at least enough, will be revealed.

I read everything that I had written, every word; and then I read it again, carefully, like a lawyer, satisfying myself that nothing had escaped me. I read the small print and I read between the lines. Then I closed my eyes, sat back in my chair, and waited. I waited for revelations, dénouements, clarifications, answers.

Nothing happened.

Imagine watching a film on television, a thriller maybe, something which really has you riveted to your sofa. The final reel is approaching, and the action is on the point of that tangy resolution you get in the best films. Out of the blue, your screen goes snowy. So you follow your usual routine: you bang the television, you check the aerial, you fine-tune the channel. You do everything you have always done. Then excitedly you resume your position on the sofa – there is still time to catch the ending – and hit the
on
button. More snow.

Imagine the fury that you feel at that fraudulent moment: that is how I felt. Cheated. All that writing, all that time off work, all for nothing.

I smoked an angry cigarette. Then I resolutely got to my feet. The time had come for action. If answers were not going to surface, then I would have to retrieve them myself. I knew how to get at them, with that sharp little screwdriver of a query,
Why?
It was time to go into the geneses, rationales and determinants of what had happened, to look at causes, not effects. It was time to open up the television.

Then, almost as soon as I had made that determination, I
became discouraged. There was no point in fooling myself any further, this
why
business was clearly not my strength. My knowledge of psychology and the inward workings of humans was on a par with my knowledge of television interiors, and the mysteries of the Donovan story loomed before me like an electronic thicket of encoders, circuits and image orthicons. I was out of my depth. Why Donovan had married Arabella, why she had left him, why he had suddenly acceded to the divorce – I passed on those questions. Donovan’s dumbstruck collapse in court – what was I supposed to do about that, look it up in medical text-books? Look under
a
for aphony? What about the last time I saw him, on the golf course, the time he wept: who did I call in on that one? Why he burned his book? How should I know?
Why
should I know?

Yes, this is the problem with whys: ask why once and you never stop asking why. Why this always leads to why that, and everything unscrews and comes apart. This is exactly what happened that day. I fell into a line of questioning which dismantled everything: why was it I was so hung up on Donovan? What skin was it off my nose what happened to him? Why was I unable to work any more? Why – really – was I writing this stuff? It did not end there (as I have said, it is a slippery slope) – why had the fates conspired to deprive me of my tenancy at 6 Essex Court? Why was I a solicitor? Why should I care about my career? Why should I care about anything any more?

I could not see what was going on any more. My mind started blooping and rolling, like a man lost in a cathode-ray blizzard. I lost the picture completely.

Suddenly I felt terrible.

Then the telephone sounded (I had just put it back on its hook) and when I picked it up I uttered my first word for a week and a half.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Thank God you’re in,’ a female voice said.

The last time I had spoken to Susan Northey was – let me work this out – 22 November 1988.

‘Where have you been?’ she said impatiently. ‘You’ve had everybody worried.’

‘Susan,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

Susan said, ‘I got a phone call this morning from your secretary – Jane? They’re trying to get hold of you at work. She thought maybe I knew where you were. She told me you’d gone off on some frolic with a woman.’

‘It’s June,’ I said. ‘Not Jane, June.’

Susan said, ‘You’re wanted at work, Jimmy.’ She paused. ‘Jimmy?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know,’ I said.

Susan waited before speaking again. Then she said, ‘Look, are you all right?’

I reassured her that I was. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m in good shape. How about you? How are you, Suzy?’

Susan sounded decisive. ‘Look, stay there, I’m on my way.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Really, I’m fine. I’m just getting away from things for a while, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.’

Susan hung up half-way through my protests.

I did not want to see Susan, not right at that moment. She would demand explanations from me and what was I going to tell her? Also, I had just finished reading these pages and – I have admitted it – I was in a bad way. It was not easy, re-living those ups and downs, those hopes dashed left, right and centre. It had pretty much wiped me out. I was in no mood for company.

Later, the door-buzzer rang. I stayed put on the sofa. Then the buzzer sounded again and I dragged myself to my feet. Through the spy-hole I saw a gigantic face: Susan.

When I opened the door I stood around uncertainly – what was I supposed to do, give her a kiss?

Susan walked past me into the living-room. ‘My God,’ she said. She gesticulated at the mess. ‘What’s all this about?’

I went to make coffee. From the kitchen I could see through to the living-room. Susan was doing some tidying up. She had opened a window and now was plumping up cushions,
emptying ashtrays and picking up, with the very tips of her fingers, buckets of chicken bones, pizza cartons and silver curry containers. I felt a dull glow of affection. Susan.

‘Jimmy,’ Susan said softly after we had sat in silence for a moment, drinks in hand. ‘What’s the matter? Hmm? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s nothing, Suzy,’ I said. ‘It’s just that …’ I discontinued my sentence. I was exhausted, I just could not come out with the words.

‘Tell me, Jimmy.’ She was still looking at me with her bright grey eyes. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered.

I looked at Susan. Perhaps I had not properly appreciated her, I thought. Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, I would see her in a new light. So I looked at her again.

There was nothing new there. It is true that, sitting next to me for the first time in seven months, she had a sheen and freshness about her. But otherwise she looked just the same to me. She looked just as she had always done. She sat there with her serious grey eyes, giving off the same old sad, brave emanations.

‘I’ve been working too hard,’ I said. ‘I just needed a bit of time off. Suzy, it’s that simple. There’s nothing funny going on – I’m not having an affair or a nervous breakdown or anything. I don’t know what they’re getting so worked up about at the office.’

She looked at me sceptically – and tenderly. She was not sitting very far away from me on the sofa. I sensed her breathing body near by, within range of my arms.

I said, ‘Shouldn’t you be back at work now?’

At that moment a breeze snared up the curtain in the open window and Susan stood up to free it. While she did this she explained that she had taken the afternoon off. Although she was still at the office equipment company in Hounslow, they had promoted her, so now she worked flexihours. She could come and go pretty much as she pleased. Even so, she told me, she was trying to get away. She would be looking for
something new in the autumn round of jobs. Maybe something in advertising, or PR. What did I think?

I was happy that the conversation had taken this turn. That sounded promising, I said. Her new seniority would stand her in good stead on the job market, I said.

‘I definitely want something else by the new year,’ Susan said. ‘I want to start the nineties on a good note.’ She crunched a crisp – I had brought out a bowl of crisps and a pack of beers – and said, after a pause, ‘You know, it’s funny, isn’t it, how little fuss they’re making about the eighties coming to an end. You wouldn’t think we were coming up to the end of a decade. A decade, Jimmy! You’d have thought there’d be a bigger fuss about it.’