‘Why? What sort?’
‘He was vulnerable, since he could not return to his daily routine, the prison which held him together. He asked himself repeatedly, even at this stage of his life, how can we rid ourselves of old, dead selves and make new ones?
‘He calls the two of them Prospero and Miranda, and she attends to him like a good daughter. She draws him, they make tea and talk intimately about their lives, their partners, and the future. They have to.’
‘What sort of future could this couple have?’
Lotte said, ‘This blank girl, a piece of fluffy erotic nothing, who seems to absent herself from herself, can help him prepare for his death. He knows she is evasive, silly and insipid, but she is sincere, at least, with a couple of years’ real beauty left. And he believes he has wasted his time infuriating people, and giving them little, for which he is now tearing himself apart. Like a lot of people, he believes, in his imagination, that he is a murderer.
‘The old man had been struck by a story he’d heard about Ingmar Bergman, who, when dying, sat through his own films in chronological order. Mamoon admired this, and wanted to say, in a last gasp of integrity, what it was to be old, what it meant to look unflinchingly at one’s life. He was amazed by how labile the past is, and how one rewrites it, and writes over it, continuously.’
Lotte went on, ‘The girl with the vanilla hair encourages him to talk through his work, and about the people he’d loved. She even helps him write to the people he has regrets about.’
‘Like who?’
‘A woman living in America, I think, to whom he owes some kind of explanation or apology. There is going on, in that room, between the older man and the younger woman, a play of reparation and atonement. It’s rather wonderful, Harry. He writes about his own sexuality, and that of his father, with a new curiosity and insight, as if he has found a new subject, even at his age. It’s the warmest, most moving thing he’s done since the early work.’
‘I’m sure. Jesus, I’ll go mad.’ He was silent for a time. ‘Can you tell me, please, what’s in it for the young woman?’
‘A sort of education, a more complex way of seeing the world. For the first time she gets a sense of the whole of someone’s life. She begins to read. He has started to write again. One person can develop another, you know. There with her in the room, as they sit by the fire together, he dictates some of the book to her.’
Harry said, ‘They keep this secret?’
‘This necessity is private.’ She said, ‘I suspect some of this concerns you.’
She asked him what he thought. He kissed her and lay back. ‘I don’t know yet.’ He said, ‘Was he keen for me to know what it was about?’
‘Oh yes. He suspected you would try not to read the book.’
‘Was he eager for you and me to meet again and for you to tell me this?’
She nodded. He sat up, looked for his bag and told her she’d done her job. ‘Is that why you invited me here? Is that all you want from me? Shall I just fuck off now?’
‘I wanted to see you again.’ She took his hands. ‘So no, please don’t cry or fuck off.’
‘You want more?’
She kissed his hair, his forehead, his nose, his mouth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes. I could look at you, and look at you. Lots.’
‘And me at you,’ he sighed. ‘Love is the only damn thing. It catches you when you’re not ready.’
‘Rob told me you’re single, but still living in the house.’
He said, ‘I’m reading a bit, thinking about dead mothers. But I’m always optimistic in Paris; everything looks better from there. Shall we go for a few days?’
In the morning Harry and Lotte went to a cafe for breakfast. He walked with her to work. When they kissed and parted, she said, ‘I’ve an idea as to what you should do about Mamoon and Liana.’
Thirty-two
Travelling with the kids was a major operation, and such manoeuvres had to be planned in advance. But they intended to turn this trip around in twenty-four hours, as Lotte had suggested to Harry. Alice was known for her list-making, Julia was recognised in the family for her ability to pack things in the car, while Harry would complain, confuse and eat all the sandwiches before they started out. Having been consulted, Rob considered it an excellent idea for them to ‘complete the process’, and by the late afternoon they were gaily bowling down the motorway, the kids vomiting.
Liana heard the car and came out into the yard with the dogs to greet them, standing on the spot where Harry had first seen her when he arrived afraid and excited with Rob, that first Sunday afternoon. Where once Mamoon’s temper and Liana’s will had kept everything alive, the house and gardens were beginning to look as if the original wilderness would return. Mamoon wouldn’t use his writing room again; Scott was growing weed in the greenhouse, and renting the former ‘archive’ barn as a repairs workshop. The yard was scattered with semi-dismantled cars and metal parts. Scott himself stood there dirt-smeared and bare-chested, idly knocking a monkey-wrench against an oil can, with two of his gang beside him.
Julia greeted her brother, and then went to look for Ruth, to console her. A couple of weeks back, one night, a male friend of Ruth’s — perhaps a paramour — had attacked another of her friends in the house, stabbing him with a broken bottle, almost murdering him. There had been blood and despair; there would be a court case and prison. Before his second stroke, Ruth had gone to Mamoon, the patriarch, and begged for help, consolation and wisdom, but he only gave her a look of pity that said, ‘How can anyone live like you?’
Liana had had an operation to remove a growth; her eyes, behind thick glasses, were tired, and she wore no make-up or jewellery, just jeans and a too large sweater. She’d never been so thin or so sad, she said, or so happy to see her friends and the ‘grandchildren’ she adored.
After his strokes and heart failure, as well as weeks in hospital, Mamoon had stubbornly insisted on being at home, and, despite her own weakness, Liana was determined to look after him. She had had Scott bring a bed into the library, where Mamoon, propped up and surrounded by roses, could see out into the garden, watching Liana as she worked.
Ruth and her sister Whynne bathed and changed Mamoon; Scott moved him about, and Liana sat and whispered poetry into him, books from his childhood, Alice in Wonderland, parts of Dickens, stories from the Thousand and One Nights, the sports news and, his favourite, the Song of Songs — ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine; he feeds among the lilies. Thou art beautiful, my love’ — because he said he liked to hear her voice, to know someone was there.
Alice was keen to see Mamoon. She missed the stillness, and sense of distance and space, you got at Prospects House; she missed Liana’s cooking and the energetic talk. All the same, she had been uneasy about going; she had rung Liana often and knew how unwell Mamoon was, yet she was still shocked and upset to see him. She wanted to keep on good terms with Liana, and perhaps work with her in the future. But Liana was too wretched, preoccupied and weepy to think about that. She was delighted to have them there.
Insisting that Mamoon had become very fond of him, Liana asked Harry to sit with him. And Harry did sit there, wondering about the relation between his book and the man, even holding the old man’s hand. Harry missed their combative conversations; nobody had been so tough on him, or made him think so hard. At one point, when Harry wiped saliva from Mamoon’s mouth, and dared to take out his phone and photograph him, Mamoon looked directly at him and said, ‘How long can you stay, Latif? Did you bring your homework? Is the story finished?’