The Fahrenheit Twins (26 page)

‘See if you can make it to the toilet first,’ suggested Ildiko. Standing there cradling her squirrel mug, she looked calm and happy. She always enjoyed seeing her old room again, to remind herself why she now led a life of rumpled minimalism.

‘I puked on your parents’ hallway carpet,’ said Morpheus, remembering suddenly.

‘Don’t worry, it fits right in,’ said Ildiko. ‘Besides, they’re over the moon about their new cichlids.’

Morph pictured Mr and Mrs Fleps sitting in their front room, Pavarotti forgotten as they stared in a trance-like state of devotion at their latest imported fish. He chortled and allowed himself to slump back onto the quilt.

‘You look cute on this big bed,’ said Ildiko, tugging the covers out from under him, tucking him back in.

‘I feel like … like death warmed up,’ he groaned, but this evidently wasn’t a Hungarian turn of phrase, because she replied,

‘I don’t think that’s something my parents have in the house. How about a bowl of chicken soup?’

‘Just … coffee, thanks.’

‘How about a cup of tea, in a squirrel mug? Expensive English tea, bought by my daredevil dad on the black market in 1977. Maturing in the tin ever since, just waiting for you to come along.’

He closed his eyes wearily. ‘My band has left me,’ he said, in a voice from the Hadean depths.

By evening, Morpheus was up and about, if a little shaky. In the same room with the benignly attentive Mr and Mrs Fleps, the over-friendly German shepherd and the successfully integrated tropical fish, he spoke on the telephone with Cerberus.

‘Slayer have
had
it,’ enthused Cerb in his strong Ayrshire accent. ‘They’re old men. We’re gonna murder them all across Europe.’

‘What about me?’ said Morph.

‘We’ll save the death blow for you. Catch up with us when you can. Meet you in Gomorrah!’ Cerb was raving, high on adrenaline. He was about to go onstage in Bratislava, and sounded as though he was surfing on a huge tidal wave of adulation – or as if he’d succumbed to a cocaine pusher.

‘How are they coping?’ asked Ildiko when Morph hung up.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘OK, I think.’

Morph was hungry by now, but reluctant to endure a three-course meal under the watchful gaze of Ildiko’s parents, the dog, two of El Greco’s saints, and the stuffed head of a fox.

‘I’ll take you out for a snack,’ whispered Ildiko, reassuring her parents that ‘Miklós’ needed some fresh air.

They left the house, blinded by the porch lights and stumbling hesitantly until they found their footing on the moonlit main street. Morph’s legs functioned like newly purchased equipment, not yet broken in. He looked up at the sky, clearer here than in the city. The patterns of the stars were unrecognisable, nothing like the ones above his own parents’ house in Ayrshire.

At the end of the street was a grocery store, closed, and a tavern called the Blaha. They went in and seated themselves at a table, thereby doubling the number of serious diners instantly, although there were half a dozen folk drinking beer and wine. A trio of local musicians – guitar, accordion and drums – were playing restrained renditions of pop standards. Observing Morph and Ildiko’s arrival, they judged that the demographics of the Taverna Blaha had changed sufficiently to justify a switch from Abba to U2. A cat-eyed girl Ildiko had gone to school with wandered over to take the order.

‘Somloi Galuska,’ said Ildiko, without looking at the menu.

‘Bacskai Rostelyos,’ said Morph, after some deliberation.

‘Are you sure?’ Ildiko whispered to him. ‘So soon after chucking up?’

‘Mind over matter,’ he smirked.

The band played U2 until the food arrived, then slimmed down to a duo for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Morpheus watched Ildiko spoon her vanilla cream cake into her perfect mouth; Ildiko watched Morpheus devour his roast beef in tomato sauce. The clientele of the Taverna Blaha kept a casual eye on Ildiko Fleps and her long-haired boyfriend from Scotland, England.

‘Does it bother your parents,’ he said in between mouthfuls, ‘that we’re not married?’

‘Of course it bothers them, you idiot,’ she said, and licked the icing sugar off her fingers.

‘Then let’s get married,’ he said.

A cheer went up from among the middle-aged folk at the bar. There was a scattering of applause. Morpheus figured they must be showing their appreciation for the musicians.

‘Idiot, idiot, idiot,’ smiled Ildiko, shaking her head. ‘Come on, let’s dance.’ And she pulled him to his feet.

‘I’m still woozy from the drugs,’ he hissed in her ear as she pulled him close to her. The accordionist played a tremulous fanfare.

‘I’ll hold you up till the roast beef takes effect,’ she whispered back.

The band, complemented to the full trio once more, launched into a slow waltz version of ‘Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’.

‘I can’t dance to this sort of thing,’ Morph murmured anxiously into her hair.

‘Just hold me tight,’ she said, directly into the ear that was the less deafened of the two. ‘Close your eyes, and pretend we’re in bed together.’

They shuffled around on the polished floor of the Taverna Blaha for a while. An elderly man tapped an aluminium ashtray gently on the bar, one-two-three, one-two-three, to help the drummer keep time. The accordionist carried the tune, allowing the bald, moustachioed guitarist to attempt a few power chords of Dire Straits intensity.

Meanwhile in a Slovakian city far, far away, a death metal band was blistering its way through its demonic repertoire. Hordes of demented fans were synchronising their movements with every leap and lunge on stage. A drummer who might be mistaken for Morpheus was flailing away behind his fearsome armoury, putting the boot into the bass drum, bashing the Christ out of the cymbals. Close to the speakers, the noise would be titanic. Outside the venue, it would be a muffled din. Half a mile down the road, no trace.

In the Taverna Blaha, the noise levels were rising slightly. The waitress was clearing plates from the tables. Sleet clattered against the windows. The band played on, and Morph and Ildiko were still dancing. Morph kept his eyes focused on the oscillations of Ildiko’s feet, willing himself not to kick his fiancée’s toes. He was doing pretty well for a beginner.

The strain of playing ‘Loch Lomond’ in waltz tempo was beginning to show on the musicians, though. The accordionist leaned over to the guitarist and whispered something in his ear. Two sets of grey moustache nodded in unison, and the music metamorphosed smoothly into an old pop hit by Fonograf Ensemble. Ildiko leaned into Morph’s chest and muffled her giggles in his shirt. He squeezed her tight, flexing the muscles of his powerful forearms against her warm back. He stopped looking down at his feet, rested his cheek on her shoulder instead, and kept moving.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s it, you’ve got it.’

TABITHA WARREN

Dear Sir
,

Further to your obituary of Tabitha Warren on the
3
^rd
of
November, I believe I was the last journalist to interview her before
her death. On the basis of our meeting, I wrote a feature article for
the
Independent
which, thanks to some heavy pleading by Jack
Warren, was never published. If it
had
been published, the inaccurate
picture of Tabitha’s last years, as reproduced in your obituary, would
never have gained currency
.

The ‘authorised version’ of events is that Tabitha’s last book was
Cat’s Paw
, and that she saw no need to add to her body of work,
having achieved everything she’d ever hoped for – including, it must
be said, extravagant wealth. You yourself repeated the oft-quoted
story
of how she once burned a twenty-pound note over a restaurant
candle, sighing that in the time it took the money to burn, twice that
amount would have accrued in royalties
.

In all honesty I wasn’t a fan of hers when I was assigned to the
interview. My taste in fiction was more ‘literary’and, despite Tabitha
Warren’s supposed cross-over appeal, I personally found her
oeuvre
lightweight. Her endless series of novels featuring angst-ridden
animals as narrators struck me as entertaining but gimmicky –
Watership Down
with Kafka pretensions, as I would put it in the
article. But my editor thought she was the bee’s knees and, besides,
there was a rumour that another book was about to emerge from
what was affectionately known in the trade as ‘the warren’.
(‘Affectionately’, not because Tabitha and her husband were well-liked, but because of the amount of revenue and media hype a new
addition to the Tabitha Warren franchise was sure to generate.)

Conscientious as always, I forced myself to re-read the most
universally
well-received of all her novels – her debut
, A Dog’s Life.
I
admired the way the disintegration of Neil and Catherine’s
relationship
is observed through the innocent eyes of their Jack Russell, but
even in the most heart-tugging passages, I was nagged by a sense
that
the alienness of the dog’s perspective is a cop-out, a failure of the
author to take responsibility for her own cluelessness about human
motivation. This failure cripples all her books; for all her cleverness,
we know perfectly well that they are not written by cats, dogs,
dolphins,
rats, and all the other zoological protagonists she worked her
way through, but by a woman who never quite got the hang of being
human. It was this basic contradiction that I was interested in
addressing when I went to interview her
.

Security was tight, even by the standards of paranoid best-selling
authors. I was driven to her mansion in a limousine with darkened
windows, and was chattered at constantly by Tabitha’s agent, just in
case I was managing somehow to plot the route. I was made to sign a
document promising I would not ask questions calling ‘undue’
attention
to Mrs Warren’s advanced age, her physical appearance or her
relationship with her husband. I was to use a notepad, not a tape
recorder – although any fabrications would be pursued vigorously
through the courts if need be. Photographs were
verboten,
as was
any discussion of the Warrens’ legal battles with their disgruntled
children
.

‘
Tabitha and Jack are sick to death of distorted journalism,’ the
agent told me, narrowing her eyes meaningfully as we drove through
Devonshire to our secret destination. ‘If they see yet another article
along the lines of, ‘crazy old Tabitha Warren living in her lonely
mansion with only her pets to love’, they’ll hit the roof.
’

I signed the document, but when I finally arrived at the
Warrens’ house, I couldn’t help thinking that if the Warrens were
going to hit the roof, at least their roof was A-listed by English
Heritage, decorated with Elizabethan turrets, and an awfully long
way off the ground
.

Still, my initial impression of Tabitha was more favourable than
I expected. She seemed embarrassed, even upset, by the fuss that was
being made around her. She had come out to meet me as soon as the
car pulled up, greeted me with a smile, and suggested, ‘Shall we do it
here, in the sun?’ But her agent and her husband immediately hustled
us inside. Then the agent took ages to leave, scolding me for all
sorts of things she was convinced I was scheming to write. Then her
husband took over, claiming that his arrangement with the
Independent
was that he and Tabitha be interviewed together. He
stood next to the chair where she was sitting, his huge mottled hand
hooked over her tiny shoulder, a lugubrious hulk in a truly horrid
double-breasted suit
.

When I insisted on speaking to Tabitha alone, he backed down
but still didn’t grant us full privacy. Minutes after he’d left the room, I
could hear him in the adjacent study, pretending to be sorting fan
mail
.

‘
What a welcome,’ I said ruefully, deciding on impulse to test
out Tabitha’s erudition. ‘I feel like Charlotte Corday
.’