‘She was living in Queen’s Park.’
‘And you cruelly blamed her for that?’
‘I only went that distance because she’d been wearing a yellow dress I loved. She wanted me to see her breasts, and wore a perfume I liked. I have the ability to attribute supernatural qualities to unremarkable women.’
‘She is not unremarkable, but one of the best when it comes to intelligence and beauty, with the legs of Venus. This might surprise you, but you make her laugh and think like no one else. But Mamoon’s been ringing her, and is now hassling me, insisting on seeing you.’
Harry laughed. ‘When I left three weeks ago he was opening champagne and cheering.’
‘Please go and talk to him tonight.’
‘Psychologically I’m on the edge. And I’m in the middle of a paragraph about his mother.’
‘Tomorrow morning?’
‘Does he have something specific to say to me?’
Rob said, ‘It’s been harrowing. He’s been having awful death dreams. He has beautiful gifts for both of you, and he wants to talk honestly.’
‘It would be the first time.’ Harry said, ‘If it’s important, and there’s some material he has, I can drive down in a few days.’
‘He needs both of you to go. Alice in particular.’
‘Why?’
‘Mamoon says the country is a sedative for her agitated temperament, the only place she relaxes. Learn to give a woman what she needs. Look at me — I have no one, and it’s dark and desolate at night, when I blub alone.’
Harry looked hard at Rob. ‘Alice is busy expecting twins.’
Rob said, ‘You’re not grasping the gravity, dude. Liana has also been ringing me — Miss Lonelyhearts here — to say Mamoon’s becoming savage.’
‘How?’
‘He pulled her hair. She scratched him. She screamed in his face. He even wept in despair.’
‘They deserve each other.’
‘I’m not sure they do.’
‘Sorry?’
Rob sat on Harry’s papers on the desk, took Harry’s hands, caressed them and then put them to his lips and kissed them. No one in publishing had done this to him before.
‘Beautiful man, Mamoon has always been concerned with the almost impossible task of using real words to describe invisible things. You and I know that language is the only enchantment. Alternative magic — spells, crystals, lamp-rubbing — is a lovely futility. Now Mamoon has developed an old-man crush on Alice. Unlike his wife, she hears him, and he her. He’s never touched her, you know that. She is the tasty bait.’
‘Why don’t I lift you up with my little finger and hurl you through the window?’
‘Instead, think of everything he might spit out while he’s biting on her. Notice how you fail to spot the opportunities here.’
‘I’m not yet a pimp.’
Rob picked up handfuls of recent novels, flung them against the wall and cried out, ‘You’re not even looking at me! But I’m telling you something, Woodworm.’
‘Is that what he calls me?’
Rob said, ‘I’m here to discuss what you did to one of the world’s greatest artists. And the naked flame.’
‘Naked flame?’
Rob told Harry that at home a few days ago, Mamoon, having usefully occupied himself examining his own faeces — something older people like to do — and looking forward to a relaxing evening with a new translation of The Odyssey and an as yet unwatched DVD of the Australian fast bowlers Lillee and Thomson, heard musical noises, interspersed with yelps. This did not agree with him. How he wished he could have stopped his ears. He called out for help, but Ruth was at her place, halfway through a bottle of her boss’s vodka. Clutching his stick, Mamoon opened the door to his library. It might as well have been the door to hell.
For at least a week Liana had been restless. While Mamoon worked, she’d languished in bed, getting up at night to read, send emails, and roam the house. She had begun to sing and dance, talking to herself in Italian, a certain sign of madness, Mamoon believed.
Now he opened the door to find her ‘whooshing up’: leaping ethereally in a loose white nightgown, her breasts exposed, with a glazed look of blissful happiness on her livid white face, a goddess or a butterfly. When he asked what was going on she was unable to stop, though she did stare briefly at the interrupter, but without recognition.
He moved towards her and noticed between them on the floor a plate of candles. She bent over to pick it up. Her loose hair fell into the flames and suddenly caught ablaze. In a moment she was a human sparkler, a halo of consuming fire around her face. As she danced wildly, the flames spread to papers on the table; the wind blew them onto his favourite Venetian carpet, which also began to burn. A blanket started to smoke. A book began to smoulder.
The old man hobbled to the table, lifted up a huge vase and poured the contents over the poor, hysterical woman, putting her out. He scurried into the kitchen for more water, which he threw across his beloved room — now gradually igniting — before it all went up. He scuttled back and forth, exhausted, weeping, pouring, cursing.
Mamoon held her at last, wrapping her in cool, damp things until her convulsions stopped. She was singed in places, and would have to cut off her hair, but she was not badly hurt. He comforted her, gave her downers and put her to bed. He sat with her, scratching in his notebook on a new piece. For a time she didn’t cook or attend to the place. When one of the spaniels caught a duck and killed it on the lawn, she refused to get up to help, and it made Mamoon sick to look at the bloody smears and innards across the grass. Scott had to be called for.
‘You know Scott does the dirty work without complaint,’ said Rob. In a terrible black rage and depression, Mamoon had made him throw away the burned carpet. ‘And, you know what? Scott rescued the carpet. He scraped it off and cleaned it up as well as he could, and said Julia could have it. She will give it to you, and you will keep it on your study wall to remind you of the months you spent falling through the decades, being forced to confront wonders and secrets, until you grew up.’
Mamoon had been having dizzy spells. He’d been falling down. Only Ruth had been picking him up and taking care of him, bringing him food and tea. As Harry might imagine, her corpse-like, Mrs Danvers visage horrified him. ‘You wouldn’t want her coming at you with clippers and cutting your toenails, would you?
‘Mamoon hates the phone, but he has started calling me. He is frightened that Liana has gone mad, that it will always be his destiny to be trapped in the countryside with a lunatic. It has become a death drive competition: which of them, remaining sane, will send the other one mad first. They provoke and curse one another continuously. So: good morning, Harry. This is where you come in.’ Harry asked if it was his fault. It was. ‘Yes, Liana has been mumbling about your influence. She hasn’t quite given the game away. But Mamoon has become convinced you’ve put a spell on her.’
‘How would I do that?’
‘I know exactly how. That stuff you gave her. Those fragments of utopia: the magic mushrooms and other things. Are you going to deny it?’
Harry put his hand to his face. ‘Oh Jesus, Rob.’
‘The woman has been bombed out of her skull. What were you playing at?’ Rob shook his head gravely and went on, ‘The old man’s got something else heavy on you.’ Rob leaned forward and whispered right into Harry’s ear. ‘Can Alice and Julia hear us?’
‘How do I know? They’re sorting out some clothes. Is there more? Is it worse?’
‘It’s her: Julia. She’s the thing here, and the question of convention — the convention being ridiculous, but it exists, nonetheless.’ Harry nodded slowly. ‘I see you humbled. It is admirable, of course, from one point of view, that you had the nerve to go with his staff right under his nose. Dangerous, but Mamoon would never let on.’