‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Maurice. ‘I mean, the image of two fat old men writhing around on top of each other, tugging at each other’s limp old cocks, would rather make me want to throw up.’
‘Dash might be a fool,’ said Gore, rising from his chair now and making his way towards the door, shocked to realize that he was more susceptible to insults than he had imagined. Better men than Maurice had abused him over the decades and he’d never given a tuppenny damn before. ‘And Ackermann might have been a fool too, for all I know. But I’m not. So do me the courtesy of remembering that when you reconstruct the events of last night in whatever medium you choose, portraying yourself as the innocent victim of an old man’s lecherous advances.’
Maurice said nothing, simply stared at him as if he’d grown tired of this entire conversation.
‘I’ve known a lot of whores in my life,’ added Gore, running his hand along the red bathrobe that hung on the bedroom door before stepping outside into the corridor. ‘Both men and women. And in general, I’ve always found them to be good company, with a highly evolved sense of honour. A whore will never cheat you, they have too much integrity for that. But you, Mr Swift, you give the profession a bad name.’ He shuddered as he glanced around the room, unwilling to look the boy in the eye for fear of what he might see there, disinterest being the worst horror. ‘I’ll be out on the terrace in a few minutes to wave you both off. I’m looking forward to saying goodbye.’
‘So?’ asked Howard when they were alone later, sipping cocktails on the terrace, enjoying the eternally rewarding view of the sea. The sailboat and the boys were back – none of them had drowned after all – and this time they had brought some girls with them. They were screaming in delight and desire as they dived from the deck into the water and scrambled up the ladder to do it all over again, pulling up their ill-fitting trunks as they went, a glimpse of white backside occasionally visible against their tanned skin. ‘What did you make of him? Handsome, yes?’
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Gore.
‘And Dash is crazy about him.’
‘Besotted.’
‘Do you think he’ll make it?’
‘As a writer?’ He thought about it and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine a literary world of the future, one that he would no longer be a part of. ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment,’ he said. ‘The boy will be an extraordinary success.’
‘Good for him,’ said Howard.
‘One thing,’ said Gore. ‘The bed in the guest room. The one that Maurice slept in last night. We’ve had it for so many years. I think it might be time we got rid of it, don’t you? Invested in something new?’
PART II
THE TRIBESMAN
‘When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.’
– Anatole France
1. September
It was the early autumn of 2000 and we were marking our fifth wedding anniversary by going out to dinner. We’d only recently arrived in Norwich and were still unfamiliar with the city but you’d done a little research and reserved a table at a restaurant in Tombland that, you told me, had received a positive review in a local newspaper. You looked very handsome that night, I remember, wearing a dark blue jacket with a crisp white shirt underneath, the two top buttons open to reveal a glimpse of your chest. You’d spent the afternoon at the gym and your face had a glow that reminded me of why I’d always found you so irresistible.
I had only been to East Anglia once, when I interviewed for the job, but you had been three times, first to give a talk to the creative-writing students at the university where I would now be working and, later, to take part in a couple of literary festivals.
‘Milk-fed calf’s intestines with the mother’s milk inside,’ you said, taking great delight in reading out a rather distasteful item from the menu.
‘They don’t go out of their way to make it sound appetizing, do they?’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Could be worth a try.’
‘I think I’ll have the sea bream,’ I said.
‘Coward.’
A candle flickered on the table between us and, after we ordered our meals and the wine arrived, you unexpectedly mentioned that you loved me. I could see the flame reflecting in your iris and your eyes appeared so moist that, for a moment, I thought you were going to shed a tear. I’d only ever seen you cry once, after our fourth miscarriage, when we started to realize that things were never going to work out for us on that front.
Of course, you wanted children very badly. You were clear about that from the start and it was something that made you extremely attractive to me. I did too, although perhaps not with the same intensity of feeling. I suppose I’d always assumed that I’d have them one day and so it had been simply a question of when, not if. Only when I began to understand that it was unlikely to happen did I begin to feel cheated. The miscarriages became increasingly traumatic to me then, four lives mercilessly evicted without warning from what my gynaecologist referred to as my inhospitable womb.
‘Are you excited about the job?’ you asked me after our main courses had been brought, devoured and taken away again and we’d decided to order another bottle of wine.
‘I’m a little nervous,’ I admitted.
‘Of what?’
‘Of the students. That they might consider me a fraud.’
‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘Because I’ve only published one novel.’
‘Which is one more than all of them combined.’
‘I know, but still. It’s important to me that they don’t feel they’ve wasted their time and money, that if they’d only come a year or two earlier they would have been taught by someone with more experience.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have you. You’re famous, Edith, after all.’
‘I’m hardly famous,’ I said dismissively, although it was true, I was a little bit famous because my debut had been such an unexpected success, both critically and commercially. It had even been adapted for television. But I had never taught on a creative-writing course before, nor had I been a student on one, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. I’d only applied for the job because it had been three years since the publication of Fear and, even though I was making good progress on my second book, it wasn’t coming together quite as quickly as I’d hoped. I thought a stint in academia, where I would be involved in writing every day but not glued to my computer from morning till night, might help me. And you had been very positive about the idea, putting up no objections to our relocating from London for a year. We could sublet the flat, you said. With the rents in Norwich being cheaper, we might even make some money out of the deal.
‘They might be arrogant,’ I continued, returning to my concerns about the students. ‘Particularly the boys.’
‘Now you’re just being sexist.’
‘No, I’m being realistic. I’m only thirty-one. Chances are that some will be close in age to me. They might feel resentful.’
‘I think you’re worrying over nothing,’ you said, dismissing my anxieties with a wave of your hand. ‘You have to go in on day one with confidence, that’s all. Accept that you’ve achieved more than they have and that they’re there to learn from you. Ignore any condescension.’