Fictional Lives (4 page)

Tina laid the notebook down and now, more than just trembling within, felt that her whole body was shaking. Not because she was embarrassed or upset by her recollection of the way that evening, all those years ago, had ended (lots of evenings had ended in a similar fashion when she had been young, and her fight with Brandon had in no way affected the impression she had received of him earlier that night), nor because these words she had read seemed to be a voice, literally from beyond the grave, that was speaking personally to her. Nor even—taken by themselves—because of the rantings about murder. She had heard others saying similar things, and
generally
understood them to be the longings of people, as writers often were, who felt themselves to be mere observers of life, mere sitters on the bank, and who yearned for some more active involvement in the world; some chance of being down there in the stream, swimming with everyone else.

No, what really made her shake was a combination of joy, and, unexpectedly, an almost hysterical fear. The joy was occasioned by her now even greater certainty that if she read on she would indeed reach her destination; would indeed discover the nature of Joseph Brandon’s disease; would indeed be able to cast him out. The fear was occasioned by a premonition that in reaching that destination she was going to have to travel much further than she had ever wanted to go; that her discovery would not be—as she had always, when she had vaguely thought about it, imagined it would be—of some essentially minor ailment (some chronic eczema, as it were, of Brandon’s soul) but of a disease so horrible, so contagious, that her very contact with it would put her in mortal danger; and that far from being able to cast out the carrier of this disease, she would find herself forced into isolation with him, without the possibility of feeling any joy whatsoever.

Such a premonition could, she thought, have been dismissed as pure fancy on her part (she didn’t really think Brandon had gone round mugging old women, raping little girls, stabbing people for fun, did she?), if it weren’t for two pieces of evidence she already had. One was the undisputed, well-publicized fact that throughout his life, though he had been based in England since 1953, Brandon had travelled continually; and travelled, more often than not, to countries in the grip of war or revolution. South America, Africa, the Far East—he had spent time in all these places, and even if friends, colleagues, and newspaper reports hadn’t told Tina exactly when and where, she would have been able to tell from the novels; nearly all of which had wars and revolutions as their backgrounds, and
nearly all of which, in one way or another, described the effect of the horrors of war and revolution on some uncommitted observer; or on someone who found himself in their midst by accident; or once—in the last, most successful, and in Tina’s mind best book—on someone who had gone to a theatre of war (the Lebanon, in this instance) ostensibly in order to write articles condemning the conflict, but in fact because possessed by a lust for horror….

There were passages in two or three of the books where the uncommitted observer, at the instant of realizing he could remain uncommitted no longer, found himself obliged to perpetrate the very crimes he had come to believe he must fight against; and in that book set in the Lebanon, a passage where the blood-hungry journalist is obliged to gratify his lust; and is destroyed in part by his at last first-hand knowledge of the nature of horror, and in part by his awareness that, even though he now entirely understands it and abhors it, he is more than ever consumed by a love of horror….

Critics had always praised Brandon’s perception, his ‘deep insight into human psychology.’ But what, Tina now thought, if that perception, that insight, had been achieved by the perpetration,
by
Brandon
himself,
of the crimes he pinned on his characters. She knew, after all, that in many instances he had befriended revolutionaries, and been in the front line of battles. He had always claimed, in the interviews she had read, that he had never once carried a gun, or gone into any of those battles armed. He had always gone strictly as an observer. But what if, what if….

The second piece of evidence that made her think her
premonition
was justified, and that she would read things in those notebooks she didn’t after all want to read—a piece of evidence she had already realized was significant, but now, in the light of what Christopher had said, became doubly so—was, of course, Margaret Brandon herself.

Because since everyone had insisted—and she had read a great many letters which substantiated these reports—that the couple had always gotten on extremely well, there was nothing to suggest that the writer had ever mistreated his wife. Nor was there much likelihood that they had been sexually incompatible; some of those letters had been quite explicit, and Margaret, yesterday, in her soft expressionless voice, had mentioned—in the same tone she had used to describe the provenance of some of their furniture—that she supposed one of the most difficult things for her to accept in Joe’s sudden death was that she had been deprived not only of a husband, but also of a lover. So, if Brandon had not mistreated her, if she had been satisfied sexually, what
had
transformed Margaret from a plump, lively and pretty girl into the taut frozen object that she was today? Not finding herself married to a world-famous author, surely. Nor even finding herself with money—because she had also mentioned that her family had been reasonably well off. So, what then?

Ah, Tina thought, what but knowledge could have wrought such a change. And not knowledge of something unimportant. Knowledge of something too dreadful to know. Knowledge of the character of the man she was married to, and presumably loved. Knowledge of the character, if not of the deeds, that would be revealed by these notebooks.

She stared at them now, as they lay on the desk before her, and for a while was tempted to throw them in the waste-paper basket; or better, to go out, borrow a match from one of the secretaries in the building, and set fire to them.

But after a few minutes, and after having done something she hadn’t done for eight years—which was smoke a cigarette; she went up to Christopher’s office to beg one from him, saying that she had remembered she couldn’t write without smoking—she had relaxed enough to realize that, even if she didn’t read all the notebooks, she must at least read enough
to be sure that she wasn’t simply indulging in fantasies; that she did have reason to fear.

It took her another hour though to summon up the courage actually to do it; actually to expose herself.

She opened the second volume; and flicked through it until she saw a heading marked ‘Congo’.

She read that for ten minutes; then she opened the third volume and read under the heading marked ‘Vietnam’.

Fifty minutes later, still so white—she caught sight of herself in a mirror—she looked like a ghost, still unable to hear the traffic or the clacking of typewriters, and still so rigid with shock—a shock that was all the greater for being caused by something she had expected to happen—that she felt she was tearing her muscles with every step she took, she went once again to Christopher’s office. But this time, instead of asking him for a cigarette, she told him shortly that Maisie had just phoned and said she had had a fall, that she was very sorry but she must return to Italy immediately, and that she had gathered, she believed, quite enough material to be getting on with. She would start work on the book itself soon, she said, would keep him informed as to her progress, and would return to London at a later date if she found it necessary.

And then, after she had brushed aside, with more briskness than she intended, Christopher’s offers of assistance—‘or at least a glass of brandy’—she returned briefly to her own office, picked up her large shoulder bag, picked up a larger bag containing all her notes, all Brandon’s letters and papers, and the three volumes of diaries, and left the building; only pausing by the reception desk long enough to leave a message for Christopher that he should send her, as soon as possible, all Brandon’s published work, and that she was, once again, sorry.

She took a taxi to the Alitalia offices and booked herself a seat on a flight to Pisa; she returned to her hotel and told the
reception clerk she would be leaving that evening. And finally she went to her room and sat there; waiting….

*

She waited for four hours; during which she read and re-read in her mind those pages of Joseph Brandon’s diaries, realized that she had been right in thinking that, having read them, it would be impossible for her to feel any joy at all, and told herself over and over again that while, God knows, she had already learned far too much about the man—much much more than she had ever hoped or feared she would learn about him—she was well aware that what she
had
learned was but the tip of a colossal iceberg, and that if she were to pick up the notebooks again and read them all the way through, she would discover such a quantity of horror, such a depth of horror, that it would make what she had discovered so far seem almost trivial. At the end of four hours, though it wasn’t time for her plane, she took the underground to the airport.

Because she couldn’t help feeling that unless she did make a move right then, she might never be able to go home.

*

She remained in a state of shock for a week; telling a first concerned, and then really worried Maisie, that London had proved too much for her. But at the end of a week, assisted by the familiarity of her small and comfortable little house, by the warm, wonderful late September weather, by the necessity of having to take off Maisie’s hands the details of the approaching grape-picking, and above all by Maisie’s presence, and the renewed realization of how much she loved, and was loved by, her gentle, sandy-coloured friend, she started to pull herself together; started to prepare herself for the decision she knew must be made.

And three days later she was ready.

She had, she thought, four choices.

One was to write to Christopher, tell him that she couldn’t
do the book, and send him back all the material she had—including the diaries.

The second was to tell Christopher that she couldn’t do the book, and send him back everything except the diaries.

The third was to write a full exposure of Joseph Brandon; an exposure based upon the diaries, and an exposure that would cause a sensation.

And the last was to destroy the diaries, pretend she had never seen them, and write a biography that was, in effect, a work of fiction.

She went through them all in turn.

The first she had to reject because though in a way it would be the easiest thing to do, she was convinced (a) that if she didn’t undertake the task Margaret Brandon wouldn’t, as she had stated, and because of her husband’s instructions, allow anyone else to, (b) that the woman’s handing over to her of the notebooks had been a saying, in essence, ‘Here, they’re your responsibility; I don’t know what to do with them,’ and it was the least she could do for the poor abused creature to accept this responsibility, and (c) that in view of that message at the start of those notebooks, addressed personally to her, she was somehow bound to make the decision regarding their eventual publication or otherwise.

The idea of returning to Christopher all the material except the diaries she had to reject for the same reasons.

Which left her with just two alternatives: to reveal, or not to reveal….

*

If only, she told herself (she was watering the garden at the time), she could have asked Maisie for advice. But she couldn’t, she realized. Partly because if she had deferred to Maisie’s judgement on most matters since she had given up her career, now she felt she
had
to make up her own mind and trust her
instinct; and partly because if she did tell Maisie, she knew what her friend would say: ‘Publish and be damned.’

Which, she finally admitted to herself, as she gazed towards the setting sun—and thus, almost by default, reached her decision—she didn’t want to do. Neither publish, nor be damned. And while, in a way, she knew she should reveal the facts of Brandon’s life (for deep down she still believed what she had so solemnly declared all those years ago: that it was the writer’s task to denounce crime), she also knew that if she did force herself to read through those diaries, if she were to reveal to herself—let alone to the world—the full horror of the man (a horror she was more than ever sure she had glimpsed but a fraction of) she would indeed be damned. For aside from the scandal the book would cause—a scandal that would inevitably drag her back into the world—what she would learn would even more inevitably drag her, drive her back to the world. She would, by her very indignation, by her very feeling of outrage, and above all by the sense that her life itself, and her love of Maisie, were threatened, be forced out of retirement; be forced once again, and then again and again, to take up her pen, and write.

And she
couldn’t
go through all that again, she nearly cried out loud. All right, she would admit that it was weak of her, wrong of her. She would admit that one couldn’t, as long as one lived, retire. She would admit that she was dishonest in trying to dissociate herself from history, from reality—for of course women
were
just as responsible as men for the state of that history, for the state of that reality. She would even admit that her life here with Maisie was, in a way, a fiction, a pretended withdrawal from something that couldn’t be withdrawn from. She would admit anything you like—but she would not go back to the world. For she did find it ugly and squalid and tedious; and would find it so much more ugly and squalid if
she were to return to it via Joseph Brandon’s notebooks, that it would, she was sure, destroy her.

Oh, she thought: that she had never admired that man. Or at least that Margaret Brandon had never given her those notebooks.

But as she said the woman’s name to herself, and started to walk slowly back to the house, she couldn’t help wondering if the decision she had taken—taken, ultimately, to save herself—was the one Margaret Brandon had wanted her to take; and what, in the end, the woman would make of that decision.