Well, they were in love.
Gillespie snorted. Not by the end. He was infatuated for a while. Gillespie looked to one side. She left him when he was at his most exposed. She wouldn’t listen to what he wanted to tell her, go where he wanted to take her, you know? When he ended up homeless she wouldn’t take him in. If not for her he might still be around today. She holds a lot of responsibility for what happened to Vernon.
Well, she speaks of him with real affection.
Ach, I’m sure she does, y’know. Shame we can’t hear Vernon’s side of the story, eh?
Alex Hargreaves sat back and inspected Robert Gillespie. He needed money, that much was obvious.
Maybe you could work with me on this. I’d pay, of course.
Be your gopher you mean, your vassal? Come under your benign stewardship?
Having taken the wrong tack Alex backtracked with a smile. Not at all, not at all, we could collaborate on this. Exhibitions, publications, re-issues. The time is absolutely right. This will be good for you, a springboard on to other things, get you some contacts. You collaborated on a lot of things. I am sure you’re sitting on stuff that would be of interest to a lot of people. Photos, tapes, essays, he paused, videos, a longer pause that had Rob’s eyes narrowing questioningly, writing. You know how to get access to one set of people, I know another. Alex Hargreaves smiled ironically at the term, but still it was the most appropriate one he could find. There’s a synergy.
Oh, synergy, aye, Gillespie said with a smirk.
There are other people who will want to get involved in this. I have yet to speak to Crane’s parents but I imagine they would have a lot of interesting biographical information and work and an interest in …
Gillespie was staring at him, pint half way up to his mouth.
Now don’t you go bothering people’s old folk. Show a little bit of respect for people’s losses.
If I don’t someone will, sooner or later. Don’t you want to get back into it? You used to be someone, to a degree, right?
Robert Gillespie was staring at him again. No, he says. I was always no one, no one and nothing. We always have been.
Don’t take it personally. I’m just saying. Maybe it’s time to claim some of what is rightfully yours. You have a legacy, Robert Gillespie.
It was time to go home. He had that dinner party coming up, if he missed it Karen would be furious and besides he wanted to see Dominic, get moving on getting some representation, getting the new work out there. He could tell that Robert Gillespie, for all his apparent hostility, would prove to be manageable. He decided to try to make it all the way back to London without stopping; he felt wired, alive, as though sleep was a distant concern, something other people needed. He put Crane’s CD on, skipped forward a couple of tracks, and set off
.
Belinda Carlisle? He remembered this from when he was a kid. Crane was a strange man. He could remember some of the words and found he was singing quietly along.
You come around
I am waiting in my room
When the night comes down
Checking his phone he found that the combination of flooding and a third day of disturbances in the capital, Woolwich this time, meant there was a heightened security situation, something he hoped would be at least partially resolved by the time he got there.
I look outside
The street’s full of kids
,
Taking over the night
During the drive his mind went racing and leaping ahead of itself. So Paula had one part of the book, that was accessible, outsourcing the work to Gillespie would eventually yield the other two, Nick’s he had, the couple in New Zealand would eventually get back to him, and as long as he had the final section he thought he could retro-engineer a missing part. He was a highly skilled
pasticheur
if nothing else.
We start to dance in each other’s arms
We are safe now and we can’t be harmed
Spinning up into the starry sky
I know this world can be paradise
.
New Zealand may literally be the other side of the world but to him distance was nothing, time was nothing. He will get on a plane if he needs to meet them, persuade them. He will persuade them. He can persuade anyone.
Sometimes when I get down
You come running from across town
And you make me see
And you help me hear
What your voice says to me
We are starting to understand
Our life is part of some greater plan
All the fear that I felt before
I just don’t feel it anymore
It seemed as though this single track had been playing for a long time and he slowly became aware that a few lines were repeating again and again.
All the fear that I felt before
I just don’t feel it anymore
Is it stuck or is this intentional? Is it changing, the vocal getting a little faster and higher each time, the sound of the crackle of the vinyl growing slower and louder, like a rent opening up in the fabric of the night, silvered around the edge, full of stars?
He decided, even if it was stuck, not to stop it, not to skip. His hands stayed on the wheel, the road unfurling.
The voice was slowing now, growing deeper, the crackle sharpening, a bright scar across the gently coagulating skin of the sound.
I just don’t feel it anymore
His left eye started watering again. Irritating, blurring his vision of the road ahead, his head suddenly heavy as he felt the edge of the seat belt cutting into his neck, aware that he was leaning forward, almost as if he were going to topple over, the oscillation, the slow expansions and contractions of the sound, silently depressurising the car, pulling him in atom by atom.
Suddenly, elastically, the song snapped back into the tune, playing normally.
Baby, baby, when I see your face
Earth and Heaven are a single place
Love is what gives our life worth
Life in heaven is our life on earth
Earth and Heaven are a single place
Alex sat back in his seat, suddenly exhausted, his left eye repeatedly closing, shaking his head to keep himself awake. These shifts from hyper alert to sudden chronic, mountainous fatigue were a side effect of the Deveretol no doubt; there are always side effects. He has perhaps been taking them in the wrong doses and irregularly, so preoccupied he sometimes went a day or two without any then took several at a time. Was this the effect of the drug or of not taking the drug, he wondered, these little gaps in memory, skewed perception. He should come off them, but then December, January, were like a living death. He won’t go back to that.
The track seems to have looped back around again, the voice dubbed out and echoey.
The street’s full of kids, taking over the night
Interrupted by a news report coming in, trouble in Woolwich leaping the river, spreading out to Newham.
Earth and Heaven
Disturbances in other major cities.
There’s a service station coming up.
Are a single place
He told the car to pull in at the next available stop.
HeavenHeavenHeavenHeaven
No sooner had he parked than he found himself clambering out of the front of the car in order to crash out on the back seat, everything a blur in the sodium lights, the sound of the cars racing past.
HeavenHeavenHeavenHeaven
So tired, functioning on automatic, it felt as though hands were guiding him, lifting him, laying him down and pushing darkness in upon him. At the last moment he resisted slightly, shaking his head, his arms coming feebly up in protest, but it was too late, and a few seconds later he was deep asleep. His dreams were vivid and disturbing, lit in a harsh green light, dreams of stone and water, sacrifice, ancient rites and lores, deep time, the great beyond.
Waking early Monday morning on the inflatable bed in his study his eye was itching more intensely, there was a slight pain behind his left ear, a tender patch of skin on the crown of his head, discomforts hard to separate out from his general dehydration, the hangover from the dinner party two nights before that seemed to be persisting. All Sunday Karen had worn an accusatory look and he knew why, this sudden announcement of a finished work, this time he had spent away. It would be hard to make her understand and he had resolved to avoid her, sleep in here on the pretext that he was working away intensely. He had even ordered some more Deveretol online so that he could keep a stash in there with him and he wouldn’t have to bump into her in the bathroom, give her an opportunity to accost him.
He would certainly be exposed at some point but that didn’t matter, what mattered was impact. He had a theoretical armoury to justify things anyway, the same one he’d deployed for the attacks on
Gilligan’s Century
and which he could refine and extend, in a way retroactively legitimating his actions there, turning what had looked like excuses into something more sustained and dignified, yes, a
practice
. Something about literary ready-mades and problematising the notion of authorship, exposing the nexus of privilege and web of interests that allowed someone like himself to publish a work that the actual author would never, due to his background and temperament and so on, have had the cultural capital to achieve. Oh yes he had all the angles covered in advance. This is what you want too, isn’t it, Vernon? This is why you found me.
Yes, impact. His fingers continued to flicker over the touch-screen. Even a week, even a day away from his online life and he had the sense that he had disappeared, six months was unconscionable. What had he been doing?
He felt he was engaged in his own resurrection, needed something sensational to break off the crust of dead time, the indifference, the belatedness that he feared now clung to him, first novel done, mediocre reception, moment passed, Alex Hargreaves, old news, the world moved on. More than ever now to be is to be perceived. Isn’t that right, Vernon? Yes, he saw how Vernon would allow him to live again, how they would give each other life.
This book, he said, is mine. His neck was stiff and he twisted it around, felt as though something were pivoting in the left side of his head, some weight there scraping against the inside of his skull. He closed his right eye and saw a small dot in the centre of his vision, opened it again and noticed it now, like the after image of a flash or the cluster of dimly glowing pixels on old TV screens he vaguely remembered from his childhood. He imagined something, some receiver in the back of his head spraying static against his retina.
Coffee. As he moved about the house his thumbs flickered constantly over his phone sending out tweets, updates, messages, links, while his mind was on other things, the phone a part of his autonomic system, some elemental synchronisation between the two, checking and re-checking noodl, seeing Sarah Peake out on there on the periphery of his network and glowing faintly. She existed, had an online life, was active through that email address but had still not got back to him. What could he do but wait, piece together what he had so far?
A ping. Gillespie finally, finally responding to one of his emails.
Have parts two and three of V. C. 96 1–5.
He smiled, the edges of his mouth cutting into his face, which felt swollen and stiff, sent an immediate text back;
send them to me,
received an immediate reply;
they don’t leave my hands till we have talked money.
He smiled, Robert Gillespie in his cardigan and ShoeZone trainers, with his paunch and his bad back trying to be a sharp operator. Before he could make any realistic offers he needed some sense from Dominic of what kind of advance they might be talking about and so he fired off a message, got one back almost instantly. Say what you like about Dominic, he was professional.
I won’t settle for less than six-figures.
Alex checked his online accounts. There was a reasonable amount still floating around in the fund his parents had set up for him that Karen never looked at, probably didn’t even know about and which, besides, was his money.
Make your pitch, he texted back. He expected Gillespie to go high and was amused to have him ask for five grand. They haggled a little, purely for the sake of form before Alex agreed. He needed to see the work and told Gillespie to scan and email the pages to him, so he could start to get them across to Dominic and work up a précis of the book, the sooner the better. He needed to maintain momentum. He would transfer the money into an account of Gillespie’s choosing as soon as the original manuscript was in his hands.
When the scanned pages arrived he ran them through a programme that converted them to a workable text file. The first three parts, 60,000 words, just dropped into his lap like that. This was the way to do it. He uploaded it to Spread, set it on maximum speed and held his tablet up in front of the laptop screen so he could absorb the novel and keep one eye on his networks, immediately noting that @dominicator had mentioned how pleased he was to be representing Alex Hargreaves’ new novel
Eminent Domain
. He found that he was also texting Paula Adonor on his phone with his free hand. Paula had what was, he believed, the fourth section, meaning, inconveniently, that the climax was away in New Zealand.
That was if it hadn’t been lost of course, destroyed, accidentally thrown away. Even if it had he would certainly be able to construct some kind of plausible climax to the book from the four fifths of the plot that he would have lain out for him. So that would be more time-consuming, but that could be figured out as he went along.
Now for Paula Adonor’s section. She had been slow getting back to him over the last few days but had finally agreed to meet up in Deptford. Hopefully this would be the last time he had to go out there.
She would not give it to him.
A drop, suddenly, a plunging that brought his right hand up to the side of head, put his front teeth into his lower lip on the Soft Rail home from meeting Paula Adonor.