Desperate for an explanation, Marion wrote to Mamoon often; she rang repeatedly. Then, unusually, Mamoon did pick up the phone, as he might do occasionally if he happened to be sitting near it. He said he was surprised to hear from her; he informed her that of course it was too late. Everything between them had died some time ago. Hadn’t it been obvious to her? She had nothing that he wanted. You had to fail people at the right time, he said, memorably. As a good deal of her past and all of her future suddenly dissolved, Marion screamed and raged. Mamoon said she’d cooked up ridiculous fantasies, and shouldn’t contact him again; he was a happily married man and that was that, for him. He put the receiver down.
Harry watched her weep again, and flail at a cushion on her sofa. He was embarrassed and uncomfortable; he’d wanted to write an informative book celebrating a good writer, not lead an elderly woman through a psychodrama towards a nervous breakdown.
This initial conversation with Marion had already taken up most of one day, and he needed to think through what she had said. He returned to his hotel, checked his tape and made notes.
He called Alice to let her know how exhausted he was. To his surprise, he found that she had been with Liana and Mamoon all weekend.
‘You’re there now?’ he asked.
‘Yes. He knew you were going away, so they invited me down,’ she said.
‘Cunning.’
‘Kind, in my condition. I need rest, and I needed to bring some ties, shirts and other things for Mamoon.’
‘Did he like them?’
‘He was delighted. He wants to update his look.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘Anyhow, they love my company, and I find it restful here. Mamoon wants to regain his strength; we’ve been taking long walks.’
‘You have? Talking about what?’
‘It’s just chatter. It’s amazing, Harry, I can say anything to him and he doesn’t judge but always has something intelligent to say. His brain is massive. It’s so good for me to relax here, particularly now I’m so anxious.’
‘Why don’t you write down what he says when you get back to our room?’
‘Whatever for? You know I believe in living in the moment. It’s a private conversation about everything.’
‘What is everything?’
‘Life, fathers, art, politics, sex.’
‘Does he know anything about that?’
‘He has thought deeply, Harry, more than the average man, you know that, and everything he says is interesting, which is why you study him. He’s psychoanalysing me and looking into my problems with debt. I’m terrified he’ll find me superficial or narcissistic, as your father did the last time we went to the house.’
‘My father did what, Alice?’
‘Your voice has gone castrato. Don’t be oversensitive on that subject.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You said you never take women to meet your father.’
‘They have to be very special. It was a big thing for me, Alice.’
‘I was having palpitations. Surely you remember, after we’d sat down, how he looked around the table, banged it with both hands and said, “Tell me, what are your views of the financial crisis?”’
‘What were they?’
‘I was so intimidated I had a panic attack, which was why I fled to the loo to splash my face with cold water. It was like suddenly being on television.’
‘I know you prefer invisibility.’
‘Was it always like that at home?’
‘He’s very democratic, Dad, he listens to every idiot. That’s his job. He certainly didn’t find you superficial. He said you’d come far. And I know for sure that Mamoon will hang on your every word. I thought you didn’t like old men.’
‘You know how my mind scatters at the sight of a novel, but I’ve started one of Mamoon’s books.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Don’t worry, there’s no chance of me becoming an intellectual. Do you prefer me stupid? Do you feel threatened?’
‘Darling, writing this book is doing my head in. India was difficult. I’m exhausted.’
‘Mamoon has been very sympathetic to you.’
‘He has?’
‘He’s desperately hoping Marion isn’t misleading you too much.’
‘What did he say about her?’
‘That not one word she says is true. He hopes, for your sake, that you aren’t taken in.’ She went on, ‘You know, I’m beginning to understand how brave Mamoon has been, attacking those corduroy-wearing Maoists when it was fashionable to be one. He broke the cult of silence. Wasn’t your dad a Maoist?’
Harry laughed. ‘Did Mamoon say that? I’ll have it out with him.’
‘No, please don’t, otherwise I won’t tell you what else he said.’
‘Why, what else did he say?’
‘He said his friends and acquaintances were as hypnotised by Marxism as some people are by fundamentalism. Everything they did was calculated to “benefit” the working class. And didn’t it turn out that Marxism was hardly a system which sponsored the freedoms they’re suddenly so keen on?’
‘Yes, he wrote a lovely essay about it, “The Superstitions of the Secular”.’
‘But that was incredibly foresighted of him, wasn’t it?’
Harry snorted. ‘Mamoon has always thought everything’s a lot of rot, and that anyone who believed anything was a deluded idiot. You can’t go wrong if you start off as a cynic.’
‘Are you still a socialist? He said you were.’
‘He did? A liberal democrat, Alice, and no more harmful than a glass of sparkling water with a slice of lemon.’
Alice asked, ‘What does your father think of Mamoon?’
Harry thought for a moment before saying, ‘Dad considers Britain’s finest post-war achievement, apart from the NHS, to be a multiracial society. Yet Mamoon wanted to be an Englishman, just when they were becoming obsolete, when the mongrels were taking over. Dad considers him deluded for never speaking about the contagion of British racism, particularly in the seventies, when it was at its most virulent. Mamoon liked to pretend it had never happened to him. He was also a risible snob, according to Dad, for identifying himself with a defunct class. At least, later, he criticised the Islamists, those heroes of the seventh century.’
Alice said, ‘You know, Mamoon said this lovely thing about me — I could become an artist.’
‘An artist?’
‘Why not? Perhaps one day, when our future child is asleep in his Moses basket, I’ll start to draw seriously. Mamoon says that if I find it difficult to speak, I should express myself more in other ways.’
‘Good idea.’
‘Mamoon’s wicked, too,’ she went on. ‘I shouldn’t repeat this: apparently a fan asked him how he created, with which pen or computer, and he replied that he liked to insert his finger into his arse in the morning and write directly onto the bathroom wall.’
Harry said, ‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve told you a thousand times.’
Harry asked, ‘How’s Liana?’
‘I haven’t seen much of her. She’s been gardening, then she rushed to London for a manicure. She saw her beloved psychic, and met someone else on business.’
‘How long was she there?’
‘Just three nights, I think.’
Harry immediately rang Julia, who claimed to have been tracking things. It was all eating and talk between Mamoon and Alice, she said. They sat up for hours in the late evening, by candlelight; next door Julia was reading Mamoon on the divan, his voice in one room, his words in another. She drifted off contentedly, dreaming of him. In the morning she was under a blanket. She couldn’t recall everything Mamoon and Alice had said; how important could a few murmurs be?
Harry said, ‘It wasn’t important! Just talk, you say! Talking is the most dangerous form of intercourse!’