The letter comes two days later: Dan’s appointment is in mid-January, three weeks away. These neurologists need their Christmas break, like anyone else.
After the poetry and before the novels, James F. Saunders wrote short stories. These usually described everyday events, but were supposed to be loaded with unspoken meaning and import like the stories of his hero, the Upstart. He sent them off to competitions and won nothing. Even the university magazine couldn’t find space for one. He made the mistake of reading a few last month, and they induced only bafflement and horror.
When he embarked on the now-abandoned Cormorant, his ambition, and indeed his sworn obligation, was to create a concise and concentrated gem with not one superfluous word (the bespectacled Exile taught him that). A sprawling, self-indulgent book was, he believed, an unforgivable arrogance, a spit in the eye of art and humanity. That belief hasn’t changed.
He nurses a cold coffee in the tearoom and silently admits that Mike’s emails score highly for conciseness. Tailored for an attention-deficient world. The patronising, conciliatory tone of the last deserves an abrupt and violent reply, but James finds he wants to keep the exchange rolling.
Dear Mike,
Let me educate you a little on the subject of literature. Literature can shine a light on our most secret and intimate thoughts, feelings and motives. It can pose moral puzzles of great complexity, explore the implications of social or technological change, engender empathy and understanding for those in different circumstances, and expose bullshit. Since literature spread beyond a privileged elite and trickled its way deep into the living matter of civilisation, the human race has become wiser, more sympathetic and more generous, and people have lived richer, more fulfilling lives. There is further to go. That’s the business I’m in. Merry Christmas.
P.S. As for your bus — ars longa: developing genuine skill and expertise takes time. I’ve spent ten years learning to write. What have you learned to do?
The Merry Ladies are ready to close for Christmas, and encourage James out the door. He tucks the precious laptop under his arm.
12. Family history
‘I never the see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us.’
If all goes well, Invergarry to Basildon is a ten-hour journey: an hour’s drive in the van, train to Edinburgh, train to London, tube, train again. All does go well. As the Intercity races down the Vale of Mowbray, Brenda looks east towards the bleak rampart of the Moors and thinks of James. Is he thinking of her too? (In fact he is in York, duffle-coated, waiting for the bus to Coventry, pondering Henry Miller’s admiration for Hamsun; her train passes within a hundred yards.) At Basildon station, she throws her rucksack into the boot of the ageing Jag.
‘Is that whisky I hear clinking?’ her dad calls through the open window. He leans across and gives her a beery bear-hug. ‘Brennie.’ He’s looking more and more like Grandad.
‘Hi Dad.’
Mike’s Audi is already in the driveway — thank god. Mum has thrown the front door open, letting all the heat out. The TV is blaring. The flashing Father Christmas is climbing the drainpipe.
Brenda’s mum is smiling so broadly that she seems about to cry. They embrace silently and a tear is indeed transferred from mother’s cheek to daughter’s. Brenda sighs.
‘Mum, what are you crying for? You saw me six weeks ago.’
‘I’ll cry if I want to.’
‘Let’s get inside and close the door.’
‘You look well, Brennie.’ Then she adds, with a sudden, inspired gasp, ‘You haven’t met someone, have you?’
Natalie is well aware that Dan finds staying with her mum awkward. It’s a small house with thin walls, and Mum isn’t very good at giving them space. Last year, she forgot to lock the bathroom door and Dan walked in on her perched on the loo, wearing nothing but a towel turban. Barnstaple is a three-hour drive from Reading and she insists they stay at least one night. Dan insists they stay at most one night, so one night it is.
Dan looks tired in the car — they share the driving — but he’s on good form when they arrive. They’ve decided not to mention his appointment. They’ll tell her if she notices anything and asks, but she doesn’t. Nor does she mention the dreaded having of babies. In fact, she seems to forget Nat and Dan’s circumstances and the lives they lead in Reading, and talks instead about the local gossip, about family overseas, and about the past. She’s put on another few pounds, and her arms are going flabby. Her parsnips are still heavenly, though.
Poor Mum. Who would she be, what life would she be leading, if Dad hadn’t died? She reminds Natalie of a child in a playground game who’s ‘out’ right at the start, and just waits glumly by the wall while the other girls play on. She’s misinterpreted the rules: she could have rejoined if she wanted to.
Several glasses of wine later, Natalie closes the flimsy door silently but firmly and lowers herself onto the sofa bed that takes up most of the tiny spare room.
‘Thanks, love,’ she whispers in the darkness.
‘For what?’
They hear her mum cough, and the stairs creak. Natalie snuggles up to Dan, slides a hand down his stomach and onto his boxers.
‘What are you doing?’ he breathes.
‘Nothing.’ His dick swells — poor thing can’t help it.
‘Nat. Your mum?’
‘We can be quiet.’
Her mum is still moving around in the next room. But Natalie is thirty-one years old and has every right to fuck her husband. If Mum has a problem with it, she should finally see about getting herself a boyfriend. A dance class. The internet. Life goes on.
They have sex with the volume switched off. She gets a bit carried away, but the sofa bed doesn’t creak. It’s like being a teenager again.
‘Shit doesn’t just happen, actually,’ preaches Richard Saunders, father of James F. This is one of his most infuriating catchphrases. He’s arguing with his cousin, Joe, visiting from Cork.
‘Jaysus, Richard, what made you such a hard-hearted man?’ These disagreements on the interpretation of the family history are an annual tradition. As are the childhood reminiscences which Richard intends as a lesson for his no-hoper son.
‘In the fifties,’ he begins, as always, ‘one of our favourite games was to take a paper bag — we didn’t have polythene ones — and catch as many wasps as we could, one by one, until they were roaring like a jet engine. Then you’d twist the top and hide it in someone’s desk at the start of a lesson—’
‘Or how about the chickens’ feet?’ suggests Uncle Joe, playing along. ‘When you came to stay with us on the farm, if my mother killed a chicken she’d give us boys the feet to play with. You could make them open and close by pulling the tendons, like little wires.’
‘We did a lot with a little in those days, didn’t we?’ says Richard. ‘Now it’s all video games and iPods.’ They both look at James.
‘Is it?’ says James. Who, apart from Dad, calls them polythene bags? ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t have kids.’
‘Fortunate,’ retorts his father under his breath, ‘given the circumstances.’