We left the house after breakfast on a blustery Wednesday morning. My car had no rear doors. It surprised me that Adam was so inept as he squeezed himself onto the back seat. The collar of his suit jacket became snared on a chrome plate that housed a seat-belt reel. When I unhooked him, he seemed to think his dignity was compromised. As we began the long crawl through Wandsworth he was moody, our reluctant back-seat teenage son on a family outing. In the circumstances, Miranda was cheerful as she filled me in on her father’s news: in and out of hospital for more tests; one health visitor replaced by another, at his insistence; his gout returning to his right thumb but not the left; his regrets for the stamina he lacked for all he wanted to write; his excitement at the novella he would soon finish. He wished he’d discovered the form long before. The New York apartment idea had been forgotten. He had plans for a trilogy after this one. At Miranda’s feet was a canvas bag containing our lunch – he had told her that the new housekeeper was a terrible cook. Whenever we hit a bump, several bottles clinked.
After an hour, we were just beginning to escape London’s gravitational pull. I appeared to be the only driver steering his own car. Most people in what was once the driver’s seat were asleep. As soon as the money was in place for the Notting Hill house, I intended to buy myself a high-powered autonomous vehicle. Miranda and I would drink wine on long journeys and watch movies and make love on the fold-down back seat. By the time I had allusively set out this scheme for her, we were passing the autumnal hedgerows of Hampshire. There seemed something unnatural about the size of the trees that loomed over the road. We had decided to make a detour past Stonehenge, though I hoped it wouldn’t prompt Adam to lecture us on its origins. But he was in no mood for talk. When Miranda asked him if he was unhappy, he murmured, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ We fell into silence. I began to wonder if he was ready to change his mind about calling on Gorringe. I wouldn’t object. If we did go, he might not, in his moody condition, be active enough in our defence. I glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. His head was turned to his left to watch the fields and clouds. I thought I saw his lips moving but I couldn’t be sure. When I glanced again his lips were still.
In fact, it troubled me when we passed Stonehenge without a commentary. He was silent too after we crossed the Plain and caught our first view of the cathedral spire. Miranda and I exchanged a look. But we forgot about him for a tetchy twenty minutes as we tried to find her house in Salisbury’s one-way system. This was her home town and she wouldn’t tolerate the satnav. But her mental map of the city was a pedestrian’s and all her instructions were wrong. After some sweaty u-turns in disobliging traffic and reversing up a one-way street, narrowly avoiding a quarrel, we parked a couple of hundred yards from her family home. The downturn in our mood appeared to refresh Adam. As soon as we were on the pavement, he insisted on taking the heavy canvas bag from me. We were close to the cathedral, not quite within the precinct, but the house was imposing enough to have been the perk of some grand ecclesiastical.
Adam was the first with a bright hello when the housekeeper opened the door. She was a pleasant, competent-looking woman in her forties. It was hard to believe that she couldn’t cook. She led us into the kitchen. Adam lifted the bag onto a deal table, then he looked around and banged his hands together and said, ‘Well! Marvellous.’ It was an improbable impersonation of some bluff type, a golf-club bore. The housekeeper led us up to the first floor to Maxfield’s study. The room was as large as anything in Elgin Crescent. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three sides, three sets of library steps, three tall sash windows overlooking the street, a leather-topped desk dead centre with two reading lamps, and behind the desk an orthopaedic chair packed with pillows and among them, sitting upright, fountain pen in hand and glaring across at us in focussed irritation as we were ushered in, was Maxfield Blacke, whose jaw was so tightly clenched it seemed his teeth might break. Then his features relaxed.
‘I’m in the middle of a paragraph. A good one. Why don’t you all bugger off for half an hour.’
Miranda was crossing the room. ‘Don’t be pretentious, Daddy. We’ve been driving for three hours.’
Her last few words were muffled within their embrace, which lasted a good while. Maxfield had put his pen down and was murmuring into his daughter’s ear. She was on one knee, with her arms around his neck. The housekeeper had disappeared. It felt uncomfortable, to be watching, so I shifted my gaze to the pen. It lay, nib exposed, next to many sheets of unlined paper spread across the desk and covered by tiny handwriting. From where I stood, I could see that there were no crossings-out, or arrows or bubbles or additions down the perfectly formed margins. I also had time to observe that, apart from the desk lamps, there were no other devices in the room, not even a telephone or a typewriter. Only the book titles perhaps and the author’s chair declared that it was not 1890. That date did not seem so far away.
Miranda made the introductions. Adam, still in his strange, genial mode went first. Then it was my turn to approach and shake his hand. Maxfield said unsmilingly, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you from Miranda. I’m looking forward to a chat.’
I replied politely that I had heard a lot about him and that I looked forward to our conversation. As I spoke, he grimaced. I appeared to have fulfilled some negative expectation. He looked far older than his photograph in the profile, published five years before. It was a narrow face, whose skin was thinly stretched, as though from too much snarling or angry staring. Miranda had told me that among his generation there was a certain style of irascible scepticism. You had to ride it out, she told me, because beneath it was playfulness. What they wanted, she said, was for you to push back, and be clever about it. Now, as Maxfield released my hand, I thought I might be capable of pushing back. As for being clever – I froze.
The housekeeper, Christine, came in with a tray of sherry. Adam said, ‘Not for now, thanks.’ He helped Christine fetch three wooden chairs from the corners of the room and set them out in a shallow curve facing the desk.
When we three were holding our drinks, Maxfield said to Miranda, gesturing towards me, ‘Does he like sherry?’
She in turn looked at me and I said, ‘Well enough, thanks.’
In fact, I didn’t like it at all and wondered whether it would have been clever in Miranda’s sense to have said so. She set about asking her father a set of routine questions about his various pains, his medication, the hospital food, an elusive specialist, a new sleeping pill. It was hypnotic, listening to her, the sweetly dutiful daughter. Her voice was sensible and loving. She reached over and brushed back fine strands of hair where they floated across his forehead. He answered her like an obedient schoolboy. When one of her questions prompted a memory of some frustration or medical incompetence and he became restive, she soothed him and stroked his arm. This invalid catechism soothed me too, my love for Miranda swelled. It had been a long drive, the thick sweet sherry was a balm. Perhaps I liked it after all. My eyes closed and it was an effort to open them again. I did so just in time to hear Maxfield Blacke’s question. He was no longer the querulous valetudinarian. His question was barked out like a command.
‘So! What books have you been reading lately?’
There was no worse question he could have asked me. I read my screen – mostly newspapers, or I drifted around the sites, scientific, cultural, political, and general blogs. The evening before, I’d been absorbed by an article in an electronics trade journal. I had no habit with books. As my days raced by, I found no space within them to be in an armchair, idly turning pages. I would have made something up, but my mind was empty. The last book in my hand was one of Miranda’s Corn Law histories. I read the title on the spine and passed it back to her. I’d forgotten nothing, for there was nothing to remember. I thought it might be radically clever to say so to Maxfield, but Adam came to my rescue.