A Closed Book Read online

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Look, John, it’s perfectly true I was never the most gregarious, never what you’d call the most clubbable, of authors. Even so, I was visible enough, I was seen around. I won prizes – the Booker, of course, for Sitting at the Feet – at one time there was even vague talk of the Nobel. Not that I lent credence to that. Still, I wasn’t a recluse, I was invited to literary dos, I was happy to give interviews if asked nicely. Well, didn’t you ever think, during the past four years, I wonder what on earth’s become of old so-and-so?’

  ‘I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. Sure, I read a lot, but I’m not what you’d call a literary type. I mean, I’ve never consciously followed a writer’s career, even a writer I like. If I gave any thought to it at all, I suppose I must have assumed you were at work on some great slab of a novel which was taking you longer than usual. But, actually, I didn’t give it any thought. I’m just rationalizing things after the event. It wasn’t anything that specially preoccupied me.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I’m pleased to hear that. I suppose. It’s true, even when you’re as famous as I was, if you drop out of circulation, people forget you ever existed. It’s hard. Then again, I can’t deny it’s the way I wanted it to be, so I really don’t have any grounds for complaint.’

  *

  ‘It is hard, though.’

  *

  ‘Anyway, à nos oignons, as the witty French say. Where was I? In a Sri Lankan hospital, I think. Well, the one good thing about losing both your eyes is of course that you never have to see what you look like without them. It’s a bit like that old crack about the Eiffel Tower. When it was erected, someone, one of the Goncourt brothers, I suspect, remarked that he enjoyed looking out over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower because it was the one vantage point in the city from which he was spared the sight of the bloody thing itself. I, thank God, was spared the sight of my own sightlessness. Except that I still had my fingers, I hadn’t lost them, and I could feel those criss-crossing scars and those “bubbles”, as you so vividly described them, and those two matching holes in my face, those two empty sockets. And I made a resolution after my accident that I wouldn’t inflict my face on anyone else ever again. For a while I even thought of staying on in Sri Lanka. Like a leper. But that, you know, turned out to be far more complicated than returning home. A matter of credit cards, bank accounts, direct debits, all that sort of trivia.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘So what I did instead was creep back into Britain about a year later. I travelled the long way round, by boat, and I arrived in the dead of winter. I made certain of arriving in winter, so that I wouldn’t look too incongruous all wrapped up and swathed about as I was. I came down here to the Cotswolds – I bought this house several years ago as a weekend retreat – I chose it specifically because it was so isolated, though I didn’t know then just how handy that isolation would turn out to be – I came down here, as I say, and I went to ground. No newspapers. No wireless. No television. Nothing. The world could go hang for all I cared.’

  ‘You never go out?’

  ‘Would you go out? How would you like to hear children screaming as you walk by? No, I tell a lie. Children don’t scream. They’re hardier little creatures than that. They tug at their mothers’ coat-tails and they shout, “Mummy, Mummy, look at the funny man! Look at the man with no face!” And their mortified mothers try to shush them up. Try most of the time. All that, I have heard.’

  ‘Did you ever consider plastic surgery?’

  ‘Did I ever consider plastic surgery? My dear John, what you’re looking at is the product of plastic surgery. All of this – this, this and this – even this, look at it, give it a tug, go on, do – all of this is after, not before. My face may resemble a jigsaw puzzle now, but at least only two of the pieces are actually missing.’

  ‘And you say you’ve remained here, indoors, ever since?’

  ‘No. No, it’s true, I used to go out. In the evening. In those days, though, I had a friend. Charles. He was an Oxford don. I ought to say, a former Oxford don. He lived in Chipping Campden. That, as you may or may not know, is a small town about thirty miles from here.’

  ‘I do know Chipping Campden.’

  ‘Well, my friend Charles lived in Chipping Campden and once, occasionally twice, a week, he’d drive over and dine with me. Then, after dark, he’d take me out for a stroll. Always after dark. It’s for that reason I always long for summer to come to an end.’

  ‘Sorry, for what reason?’

  ‘In winter, you see, it’s dark by – when? – by four o’clock? In summer we had to wait until at least nine or ten and even then there was a fairly good chance of meeting someone else out walking. And I couldn’t cover my face up quite so plausibly, of course, on a balmy summer evening. I tell you, John, some of the worst moments of my existence have been hot summer nights when I’ve been out for a stroll. People may not say anything, but I can hear them. I can hear the way their conversation falters and then falls eerily quiet and then starts up again when they imagine they’re out of earshot, but they’re not, you see. It’s always just that crucial little bit too soon. Do you know, I’ve actually heard cars slowing down – slowing down – presumably so their gawping occupants can get a better look at me. And dogs. There are dogs that actually bark at me.’

  ‘You know, you probably won’t believe me, but it isn’t honestly that bad. I can’t help feeling you’re over –’

  ‘I know how bad it is.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever think of having a dog yourself? You know, one of those – what are they called? – seeing-eye dogs? They’re Labradors usually.’

  ‘Can’t abide the nasty slavering beasts. Never could. I detest barking. To me a barking dog sounds just like some asthmatic old buffer coughing up his guts. And dogs work for the police.’

  ‘They what?’

  ‘You’ve never heard of a police cat, have you?’

  ‘Hah. Well no, I guess not.’

  ‘I’m basically a cat person. I had one once, a Siamese. No longer, though. My face would give even a cat the willies. But to return to Charles. Poor fellow died on me last year. And now I have no one. No one but an illiterate housekeeper who cooks for me and keeps the place reasonably neat. Or so I thought. Till you let slip how grubby it was.’

  ‘Now look, sorry, but there you’re being a bit unfair, both to me and your housekeeper. I didn’t say the house, the room, was dirty. Just that it clearly hasn’t been painted in some years. Anyway, I like it the way it is.’

  ‘Enough to come and stay and help me write my book?’

  *

  ‘Well, I don’t really know. What exactly would that entail?’

  ‘You’d have to live here, of course. Seven days a week, if you’re so minded. Five, if you preferred to return to London for two days out of every seven. And, by the way, those two days wouldn’t have to be Saturday and Sunday. As I’m sure you must realize, weekends have no meaning for me.’

  ‘I meant the nature of the work itself. You said earlier you wanted to “borrow” my eyes?’

  ‘Yes. What I intend to write is – for want of a better word, I suppose I’ll have to call it my autobiography. In any event, whatever it precisely is, it’ll be my last book. My testament, if you like. And what I need from you, or whoever, is actually, physically, to write the bloody thing for me. Now I know I must strike you as a cantankerous old bugger. That was certainly my reputation in what is laughingly referred to as London’s literary world. But I’m not such a fogey as all that. In my study, for example – that’s the door to it on your right – I have what I think is called a state-of-the-art word processor. I purchased it only a couple of weeks before I flew to Sri Lanka.’

  ‘Really? Now I’d have put you down as a pen-and-ink sort of writer.’

  ‘Well, as it happens, old man, not quite, not quite. I’ve actually been known to use a typewriter, believe it or not. But it’s quite true, I always had the i
mpression that with a computer writing precedes thinking rather than the other way about.’

  ‘So why did you buy one?’

  ‘You might say I got it on prescription. I was having problems with posture. Or overusing one of my finger muscles, I don’t recall. The upshot, anyway, was that my doctor prescribed a word processor. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t got the hang of it when the calamity struck.’

  ‘I’m afraid to have to tell you, but it’s no longer state-of-the-art.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It must be quite a crock by now.’

  ‘Why, that’s nonsense. It’s only four years old.’

  ‘Only four years? You don’t seem to realize, but computer technology advances so quickly a new model’s out of date the day you buy it.’

  ‘You don’t say? What an extraordinary way to run a business.’

  ‘I assure you.’

  ‘Fair enough. You must know best. It only goes to show how time has stood still for me. But not to worry, I’ll have the very latest machine bought for the job. What’s more important than the writing, though, is the preparation.’

  ‘The preparation?’

  ‘Tell me, John, have you ever watched a child, by that I mean an infant, a baby, pointing its finger at something?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I particularly have.’

  ‘Aha, you see. If you were to work with me, that’s just the sort of observation I’d need from you. Anyway, the principal difference between an adult and a child pointing a finger is that the adult first notices something of interest to him then points at it so that others, his friends, his companions, whoever, can share in that interest. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, with a child, the process is reversed. It points its finger at the outside world more or less indiscriminately. And then, and only then, does it look to see what it might happen to be pointing at. And since for a child the whole world constitutes a source of discovery, it’s invariably and inevitably something interesting that it finds in its field of vision. Interesting to the child, at least.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, though I can’t say I’ve ever noticed it.’

  ‘I take it, then, you have no children of your own?’

  ‘Uh, no. I’m not married.’

  ‘Good. That’s to say, it’s good in the sense that it’s good for me. If you do decide to take the job.’

  ‘But you still haven’t explained.’

  ‘Explained?’

  ‘Pointing the finger?’

  ‘I resemble that child, John. I cannot point my finger at anything specific. I can only point it indiscriminately and then send you – let’s say you, for the sake of the argument – then send you off to see what it is I’ve pointed at. To see and then report back to me.’

  ‘Yes, I get you. You’d be sending me off to places you’ve known at different periods of your life, is that it? Your childhood haunts, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe. In fact, certainly.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It sounded as though you were about to add something?’

  ‘It’s true, I was. You must understand, John, I have no interest in writing a conventional autobiography. You’re familiar with the kind of thing, I’m sure. “I was born blah blah blah.” “I went to school blah blah blah.” “When I went up to Oxford, little did my tutor realize blah blah blah.” Ideally, I see this book as a summation, a summa summarum, of all my thoughts, my ideas, my thematic preoccupations. The autobiography, if you like, of my soul, of my inner life. Or at least as much as my outer life. I loathe those autobiographies that offer the reader nothing more than what you might call the minutes of a life. Minutes, you know? Like the minutes taken down at a board meeting?’

  ‘Yes, I got that.’

  ‘Ah, forgive me, John. I’m so used to not being got.’

  ‘That’s all right. May I ask, though, do you have a title for it?’

  ‘A tentative title. Truth and Consequences.’

  ‘Oh yes, I like that. Very, very much.’

  ‘Do you? I myself am not entirely convinced.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘Strikes me it’s a trifle pretentious.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. No, not at all. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, you should keep it.’

  ‘For a while I toyed with The Death of the Reader – I trust you get the pun? – but I liked that even less. Well, we’ll see. So what about it, John? Does the chance of working with me on this new book appeal to you?’

  ‘Well, I –’

  ‘I won’t pretend I’m an easy man to get along with. But doubtless you’ve already gathered that?’

  *

  ‘Well? Is it yes or no? Or maybe you’d like time to think it over?’

  ‘Uh, we haven’t actually spoken about –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, about money.’

  ‘You mean remuneration? You’re quite right, we haven’t. Well, John, I’ll tell you, I’m a rich man. Not, as they say nowadays, seriously rich but quite rich enough not to have to worry about mundane money matters. We’ll discuss the question in detail once you’ve actually said yes, but off the top of my head – what’s left of my head, that is – I’d be prepared – yes, I’d be prepared to pay you, say, three thousand a month. If that seems reasonable?’

  ‘That seems extremely generous.’

  ‘Then let’s say three thousand pounds a month. Plus of course board and lodging for as long as it’s necessary. A year ought to do it, if we buckle down to the job. Plus, naturally, a modest percentage of all moneys accruing to me from the book itself. I mean, royalties, translation rights, subsidiary rights, serialization rights, book club sales and all the rest of it. Normally, I do rather well by my writing.’

  ‘Then – yes. Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’m very pleased, John. And now you must call me Paul. You eventually will, so why keep up the formalities in the meantime?’

  ‘Very well – Paul.’

  ‘There’s one more thing. Minor, but I want you to know exactly what you’re getting into.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t expect you, and indeed I wouldn’t want you, to be nursemaid to me. As I say, my housekeeper – she’s a Mrs Kilbride, by the way. Glaswegian, poor dear. Well, Mrs Kilbride cleans and cooks for me, and I make various arrangements about meals when she has her days off. So you needn’t worry about that.’

  ‘Actually, I enjoy cooking. And I’m not bad. I’d be glad to make the odd supper for the two of us if you’ll let me. Frankly, living alone, I don’t often get the chance.’

  ‘Well. Well, I must say that would be a delightful bonus. Poor Mrs Kilbride does her very best, I imagine, but I’m afraid her repertoire is woefully limited. But only when you fancy it, you understand. I shall be working you quite hard during the day.’

  ‘Cooking isn’t work for me.’

  ‘So much the better. Anyway, what I started to say was that there are one or two chores, domestic chores, which I’ll have to call on you for. Fear not. Nothing too demanding.’

  ‘I can’t see that that would be a problem.’

  ‘For example, I still enjoy my walks in the evening, and since Charles’s death these have had to be frustratingly curtailed – to the point where I’m beginning to feel I’m under house arrest. I hope you wouldn’t mind taking his place?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I’m sure I’ll feel like a walk myself.’

  ‘There’s nothing to it. To walking a blind man, I mean. You just gently take my arm and let me know when we reach the edge of the pavement, or when there are steps to go up or down, anything that might trip me up.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘The other chore … Now this is slightly humiliating.’

  *

  ‘I have a fear of the dark, John. I have a terrific fear of the dark.’

  ‘A fear of the dark?’

  ‘I know, I know. It makes no s
ense for a blind man to be afraid of the dark. But there you are and there it is. I’ve always been claustrophobic. I feel claustrophobic in the universe.’

  ‘Wow. That is claustrophobic.’

  ‘It’s no laughing matter.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Even on a, shall I say, on a non-existential level, my claustrophobia has posed all sorts of problems for me. I was never able to take the Tube, for example, and lifts – well, lifts were always a nightmare. Because sometimes you just have to take them, don’t you? In New York, for example. But, you know, even in New York, I recall once having to walk up twelve flights of stairs in some friend’s apartment block because the lift – the elevator – looked to me just like a coffin that someone had stood upright. I’d always have to insist on being given the lower floors in hotels, I’d always keep the curtains slightly ajar when I was sleeping in a strange bed so there wouldn’t be any risk of my waking up in the night in total darkness.’

  ‘And nothing has changed since you lost your sight?’

  ‘If anything, it’s worse. The point is, John, I’ll expect you to behave in this house just as though I could see. This is most important. The lights should be switched on at exactly the same time as they would be in a normal household. Even if I should be sitting in here by myself, the light has to be on. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of sitting alone in the dark. I always put the light on in the evening when I come into a room and you must too, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Most particularly the bathroom light.’

  ‘The bathroom?’

  ‘Yes, the bathroom. I shall have to ask you – it’s another little chore I must mention – but I’ll have to ask you to keep an eye on the bathroom light for me. I hope you won’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all, but –’

  ‘The thing is, I have this habit. I sing in the bath. I really do. And I’m going to surprise you here, if I’m not mistaken, because what I sing are popular songs. Not pop songs, you understand, God forbid, but, well, songs from a bygone era, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, that sort of thing. I have a vast collection of these songs inside my head. Here, intact, in my memory. And I really couldn’t endure the idea of soaping myself in a bathtub while chortling “You’re the Top” or “Cheek to Cheek” or “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” – in the dark. In pitch darkness, you understand. I just couldn’t endure it.’