Lion Heart (40 page)

I moored the boat at the quayside and went straight to the bakery, through an archway. I remembered some pastries my father had bought for us. Particularly, I recalled the scent of a lemon cake. It’s of course a truism that childhood scents can be evocative. I was dehydrated after my long boat trip, and bought two large bottles of water to go with the cake. I had brought some writing paper and a pen. I wrote a message just as my father had done, and I threw it overboard in one of the bottles as I passed through the entrance to the bay on the voyage homewards, followed by the diminishing tones of bells. I kept on going beyond the harbour of Chorio and anchored near the chapel of Agia Marina on its small island. It was dusk, the tangible, gilded, classical dusk. I stripped off and swam right round the island. I sang
Mamma Mia!
tunes untunefully, and mostly under water, to fulfil at least part of my promise to Noor.

The note in the bottle read:
It is not about something. It is the thing itself
.

I am home now with Cathérine as I write. She is pregnant. For the past few months I have been helping her in
Parola
, her bookshop, and my French is pretty good.

In my mind, she and Noor have merged. I haven’t been able to tell Cathérine that Noor was my lover. It seems my life, which has been marked by deception, is continuing along that path. Cathérine does not know that we had planned to be married. She knows only that Noor was kidnapped and abused in Cairo and committed suicide. Unknowingly, Cathérine colludes in this deception because she is well up on the subject of rape, and embraces sympathetically evidence of its awfulness. She sees it as a rebuff to the rational mind. Like Haneen, she studied at the Sorbonne and those beautiful courtyards – where young students sit with their lovers, kissing carnivorously, and where the spirits of Diderot and Voltaire and Rousseau keep watch – have formed her. I could say something similar about Oxford’s effect on me; it’s the sense that there exists something ultimately worthwhile, something that will overcome obstacles and outlive all the madness and depravity.

Cathérine is very happy to be pregnant. Harry didn’t feel they were ready for parenthood. It was possibly their only major disagreement. I see that Harry and I are becoming fused in Cathérine’s eyes. She sometimes calls me Harry by mistake, but I don’t mind, although I feel a little guilty that I am living his life and spending his money. And also because I love his Cathérine so profoundly. She has suggested that, if our baby is a girl, she should be called Noor, and if it is a boy, he should be called Harry. I think it is a wonderful idea.

My discovery of the missing portion of the True Cross has led to many invitations to speak all over the world. In a small way I have become known. Some people want to believe that this is the cross on which Jesus was actually crucified. It suggests to me that the longing to escape death and to make sense of a life will always be with us.

I enjoy being in the bookshop and I make a good cup of coffee or a pot of Dammann Frères tea for the customers. I have learned how to do latte art, and my favourite motif is of a lion couchant, although sometimes I do an open book. An increasing number of the customers emerging from the old houses they have bought in the nearby towns and deserted villages in the hills are British. Some of them know of me and my find. They don’t say it, but I get the impression that coming for a chat and a latte, or an exotic tea, is the most exciting thing that happens to them on any given day.

Every second week I take the train to London for meetings with Lord Huntingdon. He has twice had Cathérine and me to stay in the country. The first time, Venetia looked appraisingly at Cathérine for a long moment, but they got on well. Despite his Europhobia, Huntingdon says he finds her very charming. I think he means sexy. It is true that she has a very natural and evident sensuality.

From home I provide content for Huntingdon’s website and I write speeches for him. (We have brought much needed attention to the plight of the plucky little mackerel.) I see that our meetings are important to Huntingdon; he is increasingly fond of me. I told him recently of my father’s letter and what he had said.

‘I believe he meant it, Richard. He struggled with his problems for those last ten years, but he told me often that he had wasted his life. He was a dear man. He never really got over the drugs business in college. He was a lovely man, very human. You are very like him in some ways.’

I wonder what it is about me that so many people have seen qualities in me I am not sure I possess. Although I am well on the way to finishing my book, it will be too late for Stephen Feuchtwanger. He died a few months ago, and was buried in Wolvercote, not far from his friend Isaiah Berlin. A thousand people came for the funeral. I was one of them.

For myself I have two ambitions: one is to be a good father and the second is to live by writing. Both are forms of immortality. Perhaps the only two that are available.

Acknowledgements

John Gillingham is the master biographer of Richard I, and his books and papers have been my guide. Any mistakes in my book are certainly not his. The Bodleian Library has been more than helpful, and I particularly want to thank Christopher Fletcher, Keeper of Western Manuscripts. I would also like to thank Professor Robert Taylor of the University of Toronto who helped me cheerfully with some translations from and to Occitan. Selina Hastings was generous with her knowledge.

At Bloomsbury I have been helped and warmly encouraged by my editor, Michael Fishwick. Anna Simpson has been gently but firmly effective in putting this book together and Mary Tomlinson has read and corrected my manuscript with great diligence, as she has done for at least four of my novels. I am now something of a Bloomsbury veteran, and I am ever grateful to Katie Bond, Nigel Newton, Alexandra Pringle, David Ward, Kathleen Farrar and Trâm-Anh Doan, as well as to more recent arrivals, especially Laura Brooke, publicist.

My agent, James Gill, is way more than an agent: he has a frighteningly complete knowledge of European languages and is a fierce ally. I owe him a great deal.

A Note on the Author

Justin Cartwright’s novels include the Booker-shortlisted
In Every Face I Meet
, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner
Leading the Cheers
, the acclaimed
White Lightning
, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award,
The Promise of Happiness
, selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club and winner of the 2005 Hawthornden Prize,
The Song Before It Is Sung
,
To Heaven By Water
and, most recently,
Other People’s Money
, winner of the Spears novel of the year. Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and lives in London.

@justincartwrig1

By the Same Author

Interior

In Every Face I Meet

Masai Dreaming

Leading the Cheers

Half in Love

White Lightning

The Promise of Happiness

This Secret Garden

The Song Before It Is Sung

To Heaven by Water

Other People’s Money

Also available by Justin Cartwright

Other People's Money

 

 

 

 

‘Urgently topical fiction with its finger on the pulse of earth-shaking events ... Cartwright's fiction has an uncanny habit of catching the zeitgeist in nets of fine-meshed tragi-comic steel'
Independent

 

The Trevelyan family is in grave trouble. Their private bank of Tubal & Co. is in on the verge of collapsing. It's not the first time in its three-hundred-and-forty-year history, but it may be the last. A sale is under way, and a number of important facts need to be kept hidden, not only from the public, but also from Julian Trevelyan-Tubal's deeply traditional father, Sir Harry, who is incapacitated in the family villa in Antibes. Great families, great fortunes and even greater secrets collide in this gripping, satirical and acutely observed story of our time.

 

‘Wise, droll and beautiful fiction' David Mitchell, author of
Cloud Atlas

 

‘Composed with a superb eye and supremely well written'
Daily Telegraph

 

‘What a great read this is. Cartwright assembles a wonderful cast of characters in this masterpiece ... A treat from start to triumphant finish'
Observer

 

‘Cartwright's subtle and pacy comedy of manners finds its humour and humanity in the shades of moral grey that define all its main characters'
Daily Mail

To Heaven By Water

A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

David Cross is surrounded by secrets. When his wife Nancy was alive he kept secrets from her and now that she is dead, he must hide his new happiness from his children, Lucy and Ed. But they too have their troubles: Ed’s marriage is in trouble, Lucy is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend, and both worry that their father will find a new partner.

To Heaven by Water
is a touching and hilarious portrait of a family trying to come to terms with loss in their own way.

‘His storytelling powers are so fluent and persuasive,

the quality of his observation so fine’

Daily Telegraph

‘A delicately patterned novel about the heroic search for happiness and its ultimate fragility. The comfortable middle-class setting and faintly fairytale ending belie a portrait of family life in which concealment and compromise are never far away. Quietly moving’

Financial Times

‘A high-class piece of literary entertainment’

Spectator

The Promise of Happiness

The Richard & Judy bestseller

Winner of the Hawthornden Prize 2005

Charles Judd wanders across a wild Cornish beach, contemplating the turns his life has taken. At home, his wife Daphne struggles hopelessly with the latest fish recipe. Two of their children are keeping it all together – just. The third, the prodigal daughter Juliet, is being released from prison in New York after a sentence for art theft. This is the day, on the face of it so ordinary, on which Justin Cartwright’s explosive novel opens, as all five members of the family try to come to terms with the return of Juliet, and their deepest thoughts and darkest secrets are laid bare.