Ghostwritten (39 page)

“Goodbye, Mrs. Whelan.” To Caesar that which is Caesar’s, to God that which is God’s, and to the secretary that which is the secretary’s.

Mrs. Whelan’s sigh would drain a fresh salad of all color.

“Marco!”

I’d wandered into Leicester Square, drawn by the knapsacked European girls, the lights and colors, and a vague plan to see if there were any new remainders to be found in the mazes under Henry Pourdes Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. Warm, late afternoon.
Leicester Square is the center of the maze. Nothing to do but put off getting out again. Teenagers in baseball caps and knee-length shorts swerved by on skateboards. I thought of the word “centrifugal,” and decided it was one of my favorite words. Youths from the Far East, Europe, North America, wherever, drifting around hoping to find Cool London. Ah, that Cockney leprechaun is forever beyond the launderette on the corner. I watched the merry-go-round for a few revolutions. A sprog was smiling every time he bobbed past his gran and somehow it made my heart ache so much that I felt like crying or smashing something. I wanted Poppy and India to be here, now, right now. I’d buy us ice creams, and if India’s fell off, she could have mine. Then I heard my name and looked up. Iannos was waving a falafel at me from his Greek Snack Bar between the Swiss Center and the Prince Charles Cinema, where you can see nine-month-old movies for £2.50, by the way. Katy’s scrambled eggs had long since vacated my stomach, and a falafel would be perfect.

“Iannos!”

“Marco, my son! How’s The Music of Chance?”

“Fine, mate. Everything as it should be. Petty arguments about nothing, bitching, still porking one another’s girlfriends when we’re not porking one another. Did you buy the new synth from Roger?”

“Dodgy Rodgy? Yep. I play it in my uncle’s restaurant every night. Only problem is that I have to pretend I’m Turkish.”

“Since when can you speak Turkish?”

“That’s the problem. I have to pretend I’m an autistic Turkish keyboard-playing prodigy. Gets you down, man. Like being in
Tommy
and
The King and I
on the same stage. When’s The Music of Chance playing again?”

“When is it not playing?”

“Bollocks, man. How’s Poppy?”

“Ah, Poppy’s fine, thanks.”

“And her beautiful little daughter?”

“India. India’s fine.…”

Iannos looked at me thoughtfully.

“What’s that look supposed to mean then?”

“Ah, nothing … I can’t chat, but why don’t you come in and sit down? I think there’s a seat at the back. Cup o’tea?”

“I’d love one. Thanks, Iannos. Thanks a lot.”

Iannos’s little snack bar was full of bodies and loud bits of sentences. The only free seat in the cramped place was opposite a woman slightly older than me. She was reading a book called
The Infinite Tether—You and Out-of-Body Experiences
, by Dwight Silver-wind. I asked if I could take the seat, and she nodded without looking up. I tried not to stare but there was nothing else to look at. Her auburn hair—dyed—was in gypsy ringlets, and between her fingers, eyebrows, and earlobes she was wearing at least a dozen rings. Her clothes were tie-dyed. Probably purchased when she’d gone trekking in Nepal. Landslid breast. She burns incense, does aromatherapy and describes herself as not exactly telepathic, but definitely empathic. She’s into pre-Raphaelite art, and works part-time in a commercial picture library. I’m not knocking these things, and I know I come over as arrogant. But I do know my Londoners.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” I said, sipping my tea with a cocked little finger, “but I couldn’t help noticing the title of your book.” Her eyes were calm, and faintly pleased—good. “It looks engrossing. Is there a connection with alternative healing? That’s my field, you see.”

“Is that a fact, now?” Nice voice, rusky with sprinkled sugar. She was amused by my come-on and faintly flattered but not going to show it—too much. “Dwight Silverwind is one of the leading authorities on out-of-body experiences, or spiritwalking, as the Navaho Indians call it. Dwight’s a very special friend of mine. He’s my Life Coach. Look. This is Dwight.” On the inside cover of the jacket was a wispy white smiling man with preposterous braces. A Yank, at fifty paces. “In this book, Dwight describes transcending the limits of the corporeal body.”

“Oh. Is it easy?” Probably easier than transcending his dress sense.

“No. It requires a lot of mental training, to unknot and cast free the moorings that society uses to tie us down to its own reality
conceits. Also, it depends on the individual’s alpha emanations. I’m quite high alpha, you’re more gamma.”

“Beg pardon?” I detected large deposits of vanity. Vanity is the softest of bedrocks to sink shafts into.

“I could tell when you sat down. Your emanations are more gamma than alpha.”

“You tell without a urine sample?” I almost said “sperm sample,” but chickened out.

She acted a laugh. This was going well. “I’m Nancy Yoakam. Holistic therapist. Here’s my card.” And here was Nancy Yoakam’s hand, lingering on my side of the table.

“I’m Marco. I like your name, if I may say so. You should be from Nashville.”

“I’m from Glastonbury. You know. King Arthur and the rock festival. Very pleased to meet you, Marco.” Gaze into my eyes.… You are sinking into a deeeeep sleeeeeep. Okay. But I’m a bit too old for her to be adopting that children’s TV presenter voice. She probably thinks I’m younger, most women do. That’s not vanity, it’s having Latin American genes in the pool. “You see, I’m a person watcher. I like to sit and read people. To trained eyes, humans transmit their innermost secrets. I see your fingers are ringless—tell me Marco, is there no special somebody in your life?”

Direct. “A girlfriend, you mean?”

“Yes, let’s suppose I do mean a girlfriend.”

“I see several women concurrently.”

Taking me in her stride. Eyebrow theatrically arched. Nancy did not get sprung from the Lego box yesterday. “Oh, how nice for you. A Juan Quixote. Doesn’t that get rather complicated?”

“Well, it would do, but I always tell a woman when I first meet her that I see other women too. Like I’m telling you now. So if they don’t want to handle that, they can stop before they start. I don’t lie to people.”

Nancy Yoakam put down Dwight Silverwind, still open but face down, and thumbed her lips coquettishly. “If you ask me, that’s a very sophisticated way of luring women.”

“I don’t mean it to be. Why do you say so?”

“It sends out a challenge: ‘You could be the one to change me, you could be the one to make me believe in love again.’ Dwight calls it the ‘Bird with the Broken Wing Syndrome.’ ”

Iannos brought me my tea, and tutted at me like a wily peasant. I thanked him and ignored him.

“Never thought of that. Maybe you’re right, Nancy.” Always a pleasure to discover insight in a vacuum. “I don’t not believe in love. I just think it follows its own rather perverse rules of conduct, which I cannot fathom. Actually, I’ve been in love twice, which I think is rather a lot. Excuse me if I devour this falafel, would you? I’m ravenous.”

“Go ahead. Why do you think we met today, Marco? Why you, why here, why now? Would you like to hear what I think it was?”

“Blind chance?”

“When we say chance, we mean ’emanations.’ Dwight would say that your gamma was drawn to my alpha. The north magnetic pole is drawn to the south in an identical way.”

Dwight was beginning to piss me off. I sat down because my mate Iannos offered me a free falafel. I sat where I did because there was nowhere else to sit. If Nancy Yoakam had been a bloke I would have been halfway to the door already. She had an interesting mind—possibly—but all this New Age tosh was daubed over it. However, there was a free shag on my dick’s radar, so I stayed and sat through “How Crystal Healing Can Change Your Life.” Amethyst is good for depression. Nancy’s best friends were minerals. By the time I got her phone number I was no longer even interested in phoning her.

What’s wrong with me?

When I was a kid and every female an unexplored continent, my heart would gasp in the wind and all colors held new truths.

Now look at me. I shag women like I wash my shirts. More often, some weeks.

Marco at sixteen and Marco at thirty are as different as Tierra del Fuego and Kennington.

No good, Marco my boy, no good at all. If you think about it too much you’re lost.

•  •  •

Poppy and I had an argument a few weeks ago, which she ended by saying, “You know, Marco, you’re not stupid, but for someone so intelligent you can be pretty goddamned blind.”

I’d had no idea whatsoever how to respond, so I made some stupid joke. I forget what.

Time to head back.

I live in The New Moon. My pad is an attic conversion on the top floor of the pub. It’s easy to find—if the weather’s good go to St. Katherine’s Docks and keep walking along the river, or just get any bus bound for the Isle of Dogs, and get off at the university. The pub’s almost next door to Wapping tube station. I wound up there quite by accident, of course. The Music of Chance had a gig there last winter. One of our occasional guest vocalists, Sally Leggs, introduced me to Ed and Sylv, who run the place. The gig went down well, Sally being a kind of local celebrity, and when we were chatting afterwards Ed mentioned they were looking for a lodger again.

“What happened to the last one?” I asked. “Did a runner?”

“No,” said Sylv, “you may as well know now. It happened almost twelve months ago. It was in the papers and we were on the
News at Ten
. Terrorists were using an old forgotten air-raid shelter under our beer cellar as a bomb factory. One night there was an accident, and about five bombs blew up simultaneously. Right under where you’re sitting. Hence the refit, and the name change. Used to be The Old Moon.”

I almost giggled. But I could tell by everyone’s faces that every word was true.

“Fuck,” I said, feeling ashamed, “that’s bad luck.”

People stared inwards.

“Still,” I blundered on the way I do, “something that freaky isn’t likely to happen for another couple of centuries, is it?”

Bigmouth strikes again.

Saturday is market day in Old Moon Road, so The New Moon was packed wall to wall with noise, smoke, grumbling, bags of vegetables, and antiques. Moya was playing darts with her new boy-friend,
a squaddie called Ryan. Moya and I had done the wild thing one scratchy night. It hadn’t been such a good idea.

Sylv was doing her shift with Derek, the part-timer. “Marco, a man called Digger was on the phone asking for you earlier. I gave him your number upstairs.”

Oh, no. “Really? What did he want?” As if I didn’t know.

“Wouldn’t say. But I think it’s just as well his name isn’t Slasher.”

Sylv is not a very well woman. Her eyelids are raw pink and on her worst days they’re red and cracked. One of the regulars, Mrs. Entwhistle, told me that Sylv had lost the baby she was carrying on the night of the bomb. How do people pull themselves through things like that? I go to pieces just opening my credit card bills. But people do survive, all around us. The world runs on strangers coping. And Sylv’s been smiling a bit more recently. If that had happened to me, I’d have to sell up—if I had anything to sell up—and go and live in County Cork. But Sylv’s family owned The Old Moon for generations and so she’s staying put in The New Moon. When there are a lot of customers I lend a hand, especially if I’m a little behind on the rent.

There are four flights of stairs between the bar and my room. It’s a stiff climb, and the stairwell can be quite spooky at night, and sometimes in the daytime, too. The building goes back centuries. From my window there’s a fine view over the Thames, as it curves around towards Greenwich and becomes an estuary. Upstream you can see Tower Bridge. It was a clear evening, and I could see streetlights coming on as far away as Denmark Hill and Dulwich.

If I did ever go to live in County Cork, I’d be on a boat back within a fortnight.

I opened the door to my room and my heart went into contractions when I saw the answerphone winking. Surely not Digger. He said I wouldn’t have to pay him back until the following Tuesday. My dole check comes on Monday, and I’ll be able to persuade Barry to give me £30 for this leather jacket of Roy’s. Four messages.

But first I bit the bullet and opened the letter from the credit
card company. If they type my name and address in uppercase, it’s just a statement. If they use lowercase letters, I’m in trouble. This was uppercase.

Even so, it hurt. Where had this money gone? A shoe shop, restaurants, music equipment, a modem. There was a nice little bit at the bottom saying that my credit limit had been extended by £300! Are these people stupid?

Nope. They’re not remotely stupid.

Next hurdle on the Marco Steeplechase: the answer machine.

“Marco, this is Wendy. I know I promised not to call for a while, but I couldn’t resist. I’m sorry. Well, I’m fine. I got that place at St. Martin’s. I thought you’d like to know. I told my boss today that I was quitting. Like you said I should, I just told him. Straight out. No beating around the bush. I told him, and that was that. I know you said we should have a cooling-off period, but if you wanted to celebrate with me, I could get a cheap bottle of champagne in and I’d cook you whatever you wanted. So if you’re interested, phone me. Okay? Wendy. Ti amo, bellissima. Ciao.”

Ah, poor kid. She’ll get over me at art college, and learn her gender endings. One down, three possible Diggers to go.

“Ah, Marco, sorry to bother you, this is Tim Cavendish. We’re having a slight family crisis. It appears that my brother’s law firm in Hong Kong has gone down the tubes. It’s all a bit of a mess … there’s the Chinese police, asset freezing, and whatnot.… Erm, why don’t you drop in middle of next week and we’ll see how this might affect my ability to run Alfred’s book.… Erm, terribly sorry about this. ’Bye.”

Digger would have been better.

“Marco, this is Rob. I’m leaving the band to go and shack up with Maxine in San Francisco. ’Bye.”

No problem; Rob leaves the band once a month. And I can stop trying to write songs that feature handbells. Last hurdle, God,
please don’t let it be Digger. If he can’t contact me he can’t threaten me.