Beneath the Earth (6 page)

‘I really don't think anyone recognizes you,' I said, looking around at the bar, which was defined by its overwhelming indifference to our presence. Three young men, likely strangers to literature, were watching a football match on the television, their tabletop littered with glasses and empty crisp packets. A few old men were seated silently at the bar, contemplating the ruins of their lives. A woman was typing on a MacBook Air while drinking gin after gin after gin.

‘You have no idea what it's like to be watched all the time, darling,' said Arthur. ‘It's a wonder I'm not a recluse in some luxury hotel suite.'

‘Can you stop calling me darling, please?'

‘Of course, Mulligan. You see, one doesn't write for fame or glory but sometimes that's what happens. Consider a packhorse wandering into an untilled field and …' He stopped and reconsidered the beginnings of his analogy before shaking his head. ‘No, forget that,' he said. ‘It won't work. By the way, did you read what Robertson wrote about Clive?'

‘Yes,' I said. (Naturally, I hadn't; nor did I have any idea who either Robertson or Clive were. Nor did I care.) ‘Let's not talk about it. Look, the reason I came to your reading—'

‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘It was fine.'

‘Just fine?'

‘It was very good.'

‘What was wrong with it?'

‘Nothing was wrong with it. The audience seemed to enjoy it.'

‘You were part of the audience.'

‘Well yes,' I admitted. ‘In a manner of speaking.'

‘You were sitting among them.'

‘But you invited me.'

‘And you came.'

‘Because I needed to see you.'

‘The woman behind me. With the MacBook Air,' he said, leaning forward. ‘If she comes over, tell her that we're old friends who haven't seen each other in a long time and—'

‘Well, that's actually true,' I pointed out.

‘She's probably writing a book,' he said. ‘She'll ask me to read it. There's no way that I will but I don't want to disappoint her.'

‘I don't think she's even aware of us,' I said.

‘Perhaps she's shy.' He turned and looked at her, flashing a set of very white teeth. ‘I don't bite,' he shouted, causing every head in the place to turn in his direction. ‘My prose does, yes. But I do not.'

He turned back to me with a shrug, as if to say that it was no easy thing being as brilliant as him.

‘Did you read my novel?' he asked me.

‘I did,' I said.

‘And what did you think of it?'

‘I thought the reviews were a little cruel, to be honest. I didn't think it was as bad as they made out.'

His face darkened a little and he took a long drink from his pint. ‘I never read reviews,' he said.

‘Then why do all the good ones show up on your Facebook page?'

‘I couldn't tell you,' he said. ‘Someone is probably hacking my account.'

‘Does it hurt?' I asked.

‘Does what hurt? Being hacked? I imagine my phone is being hacked, you know. Bloody tabloids. They hate all of us' – he made inverted comma symbols in the air – ‘“celebrities”.'

‘Bad reviews,' I said. ‘Do you find them depressing?'

‘It's better than getting no reviews, I suppose.'

I felt a stab of pain in my chest; that was unkind of him.

‘Most reviews are written out of professional jealousy,' he continued, apparently oblivious to my discomfort. ‘The so-called journalists who write them know that I'm the best thing in this town and they hate me for it. The only reviews I read are the ones published in the French papers. They value literature in France. Not like here. But look, darling Mulligan, it is good to see you again after all these years. We've gotten older, haven't we? You've changed so much. I don't think I would have known you if you'd walked past me on the street. You used to have such a boyish complexion.'

‘When I was a boy, I suppose,' I agreed. ‘And I'm glad you've decided to accept what happened with your hair. The shaved look suits you. I'd shave this mop off if I could. It takes so much upkeep.'

‘But it helps to cover up the wrinkles on your forehead,' he said. ‘And your acne cleared up too, I see. God, you were just plagued by that as a teenager, weren't you? Remember how you could never get a girlfriend?'

I nodded – this was a painful memory – and glanced at my watch.

‘Do you have someplace to be?' he asked.

‘No, I was just checking the time.'

‘What time is it? I never wear a watch. I can't bear to feel trapped by an artificial conceit.'

‘I'm not sure time is an artificial conceit,' I said. ‘The sun goes round the earth, the day grows steadily brighter, then darker. It's not complicated. And it's almost nine o'clock.'

‘The sun doesn't go round the earth, darling,' he said. ‘Strike that, reverse it, as Mr Wonka said. But I'm sure you just misspoke. Anyway, look, I haven't said how sorry I was to hear of your mother's death.' He reached across and took both my hands in his. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss them. ‘I'm so very, very sorry,' he said, looking me directly in the eyes.

‘Thank you.'

‘Natural causes, was it?'

‘Yes, thankfully. She died in her sleep.'

‘Not murdered then?'

I stared at him, uncertain that I had heard him correctly.

‘No,' I said, shaking my head. ‘Why on earth would she have been murdered?'

‘No reason. But there are so many disturbed individuals abroad these days. I'm always nervous of some
Catcher in the Rye
-wielding maniac approaching me in a dark alley late at night and wanting to connect his narrative to mine in some homicidal way. I have no desire to be a martyr to art. When I think of what happened to John …' He shook his head, pained to the core.

‘John who?'

‘John Lennon.'

‘You call him John?' I asked. ‘Were you friends? Weren't you nine when he died?'

‘There's a connection, you know? It's hard to explain to someone who isn't an artist. Any more.'

‘Thanks,' I said.

‘Trust me,' he replied. ‘You're better off out of it.'

‘Am I? That's good to know.'

‘Anyway, I'm sure it won't come to that. The chances of me being murdered are slim.'

‘Oh I don't know about that.'

‘Really?' He looked up, apparently pleased by the idea.

‘Anyway,' I said. ‘The evening my mother died, we opened her will.'

‘Was there a codicil?' he asked. ‘I've always loved the word
codicil
. Someday I plan to write a novel called
The Codicil of Agnès Fontaine
. I have no idea what it will be about but it's a magnificent title, don't you think? Promise me you won't breathe a word of it to anyone.'

‘I promise,' I said. ‘I've already forgotten it.'

‘Thank you, darling. So am I to assume that your mother left me something?'

‘No. Why would she do that?'

‘It seemed like a natural deduction from the way the conversation was going, that's all. And you must remember, your mother and I were very close when I was a child. I stayed in touch with her all those years while you were off inter-railing around Europe or whatever it is that you were doing. In many ways, she was more of a mother to me than my father ever was.'

This was not as bizarre a statement as it might sound. Arthur's mother died when he was a baby and in her absence his father had been left to play both parental roles. A hugely accomplished transvestite, very popular within both the club scene and the more progressive elements of the media, Arthur's father switched between genders every seven days, being a father to his son one week and a mother to him the next. He was a strong believer that a child needed both parents. And he was a magnificent father, as far I recall, taking him to soccer matches and letting him stay up late on school nights, but really an atrocious mother. She suffocated him.

‘That's nice of you to say, Arthur,' I said. ‘I know she was very fond of you.'

‘Don't you hate the way
fond
as a synonym for
foolish
has become arcane?' he asked me.

‘I didn't know that it ever was.'

‘Oh yes. You find it throughout Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. Ben, Kit, Will, John – they all used it. Anyway, I'm not surprised. I suppose I was like the son she never had.'

‘Well, she had me.'

‘I visited her book club once, did she tell you that?'

‘No.'

‘Such elegant ladies. Powdered and perfumed. All of a certain age, of course, but still bristling with sexuality. I had offers, you know.'

‘I'd rather not hear about them, thanks.'

A roar went up from the football table and then there was much placing of heads in hands while one sole traitor to their cause – wearing different colours to his comrades, I noticed – stood up and pointed at the screen, shouting ‘Get in!' over and over at the top of his voice.

‘In her will, she asked that you say a few words over her grave. Nothing too … elaborate, mind you. Or lengthy.'

‘Did she specify that?'

‘No, that was me. But I think it's what she meant.'

‘I would be honoured,' he said, bowing his head slowly. ‘When does the dreadful event take place?'

‘Tuesday morning.'

He finished off the rest of his drink and nodded. ‘Email me the details and I'll be there. Until then, mon semblable, mon frère, I bid you adieu.' And with that, he was gone, sweeping through the door, his black cloak flaring out behind him like Dracula off on a night-hunt.

‘Tosser,' I muttered under my breath.

Naturally, my sister was appalled at the idea of Arthur even attending the funeral, let alone speaking at it. ‘I heard him on the radio a couple of weeks ago,' she told me, ‘saying how he'd spent years trying
not
to write because he knew how painful it would be. And I don't think he meant for readers. I'd never heard such nonsense.'

‘Have you read his novel?' I asked.

‘Yes,' she said.

‘And what did you think?'

‘Oh, it's terrible,' she said. ‘Absolutely ghastly. So wildly overwritten that it's almost a parody of itself. It never simply rains; the clouds dissolve in the glaucous firmament, weeping their lachrymosity upon the heads of the aberrant populace. No one is ever happy, instead they feel a warmth building inside their coccyx and rising through their alimentary canal as a sensation of well-being extends its octopus-like tentacles through the capillaries producing a sensation close to orgasm.'

‘Thank you, Audrey,' I said. ‘I'd rather not hear you use that word.'

‘Does the idea of my having orgasms frighten you, Pierce?'

‘It does if I'm in the room. Now can we move on, please? There's nothing to be done. I've asked Arthur, and more importantly Mother asked Arthur, so we should do what she wanted.'

‘Can we give him a time limit at least?'

‘I've told him to keep it short.' I took a sip from my coffee and recalled something, a bad memory rising from the mausoleum. ‘Didn't you take Arthur to your Debs?' I asked after a moment. ‘This person you so despise. Didn't you go out with each other for a while?'

‘We did not go out with each other,' she said, turning on me. ‘We did nothing of the sort. Yes, I invited him to my Debs but only because Steven Slipton broke his leg the previous week and couldn't come.'

‘Slipton,' I said, recalling a tall, rather handsome young man who looked a little like Richard Harris in his prime. ‘I always thought that was a funny name.'

‘Ironically, he broke his leg after he—'

‘Slipped somewhere, yes. I guessed. Still, you asked Arthur. Of the other two million or so penis-enabled humans in Ireland, you went after him.'

‘I'm not proud of it,' she admitted, sitting down and offering the closest thing to a smile I had seen since she'd discovered Mother dead in her bed, a copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
clutched in her stiffening hands. She would never discover how it turned out now.

‘You loved him,' I said. ‘You loved Arthur. You wanted to undress him and do dirty things with his naked body.'

‘Actually, I did,' she said. ‘After the Debs. Out the back of the Burlington car park.'

‘Oh Christ,' I said, putting my cup down. ‘I was kidding. You don't mean that you actually had sex with him?'

‘Of course I had sex with him,' she said. ‘It was my Debs. It would have been rude not to. And you can say whatever you like, you and he were inseparable when you were children.'

‘That was a long time ago. Before he became an insufferable ass.'

‘He told me that you used to compare penis sizes.'

‘What is his obsession with that? That never happened.'

‘He told me he won too.'

I rolled my eyes.

‘Which,' she added, ‘speaking from first-hand experience does not say very much about you.'

‘I'll have you know that there's a certain milkmaid in Tittmoning who could contest that opinion. She's told me many times that I have nothing to worry about, that I'm perfectly average.'

‘Well lucky her. And if you don't want to hear about my orgasms, I don't want to hear about your perfectly average penis.'

‘You brought it up,' I pointed out.

‘Did I? You pervert, Pierce. I'm your sister.'

‘That's not what I meant and you know it.'

‘Nothing can happen between us, you realize that, don't you? We'd have three-headed children.'

‘Oh shut up.'

She sniggered and looked out the window where her dog, Frisky, was living up to his name by attempting to mate with a bougainvillea. Perhaps aware that he was being watched, he stopped his rutting momentarily, hung his head in a this-is-what-I'm-reduced-to-since-you-won't-get-me-a-bitch-of-my-own way, and got back to it. He looked like he was having fun, at least.