The Fahrenheit Twins (27 page)

‘
Oh, stab away my dear,’ she said, without missing a beat. ‘As
long as your knife is clean
.’

She grinned. Her face was a mask of wrinkles underneath her
expensive bob of jet-black hair, but she looked elegant and striking.
The author shot that HarperCollins kept using on the backs of her
books might have been taken twenty years before, but she was still
giving it a run for its money. Her body was in good shape, too; slim,
and clad in black leggings under a loose peasant dress – designer
peasant, made by ritzy French couturiers
.

‘
Anyway,’ she continued, leaning forward to whisper, ‘it’s not
you
they’re worried about, it’s
me.
They’re all afraid I’ll
disgrace
myself.’ And she widened her big green eyes theatrically
.

The first ten, fifteen minutes of the interview went pretty much
the way interviews with Tabitha Warren were wont to go. She rabbited
on (if you’ll excuse the expression) about how she felt that she
could really put herself inside the minds of animals, and how she
thought there must be a bit of that in all of us, or her work wouldn’t
have attracted such a big readership. While she spoke, a variety of
subdued, pampered-looking pets wandered in and out of the room –
a Persian cat, a Siamese, a mammoth sheepdog, and, yes, a Jack
Russell. They sat at her feet and allowed themselves to be patted for a
while, then dawdled out again. Their claws ticked on the great
expanse of polished mahogany floor. Through the French windows I
could see the limousine parked outside, its driver reading a
newspaper,
waiting for me to finish. Tabitha’s agent was out there somewhere,
too, exploring the immaculate gardens in the company of her
mobile phone
.

I told Tabitha I’d heard rumours that she’d written a new book.
Her face lit up for a moment, but then a loudish thump sounded
from the study, and she went glum
.

‘No,’ she said
. ‘Cat’s Paw
was the last. Thirteen novels is quite
a pile. I ask myself, does the world really need another book by me?
’

‘
Many people would think so
.’

‘
There is only so much one can do, don’t you think?
’

‘
Within a narrow field, yes
.’

Her eyes twinkled in pain, but it didn’t seem to have its origin
in my remark. She fidgeted in her armchair, drawing her knees up to
her chin, a curiously childish posture for a woman of seventy-odd
.

Suddenly there was a telephone trill from inside the study. Jack
Warren answered it, and, after a distinctly audible ‘Yes?’, lowered his
voice to a murmur. It was a strange kind of murmur, though: not a
considerate murmur, or an adulterous murmur. An agitated murmur,
the sound of a man called unexpectedly to account for some
unforgivable
sin. Tabitha and I both noticed it; our interpretation was identical
and we knew that it was
.

Instantly, she leaned forward in her chair, her chin slipping
between her knees
.

‘
It’s one of the children, you can bet on it,’ she said. ‘He
should’ve let the machine handle it
.’

I didn’t know how to take this. If I’d been a tabloid hack, I suppose
I would have seized my chance, asked her about the family
strife, the daughters’ accusations that Jack kept Tabitha a prisoner in
her own house, that he’d had a harem of mistresses over the years,
that she had no say in the running of her business affairs. But all I
could think to ask was
,

‘
Have you ever thought of writing something totally different?
’

She slid down off her chair, squatted on the floor in front of me.
The sheepdog sidled up to her, squatting down too
.

‘
Oh, I have, I
have,’
she said
.

She was an unsettling sight, sending a chill down my spine even
now as I recall it: an old, old woman with thin limbs wreathed in
black cotton, rocking on her haunches, never for an instant taking her
eyes off me
.

‘
Is it fear of disappointing your fans that stops you trying it?’ I
suggested
.

The question bounced off her like a ball of wool. I might just as
well have asked her about the temperature on Mars or the latest
football
score from Sicily
.

‘
You don’t understand,’ she whispered, her big eyes animated
and furtive. ‘I’ve already
written
it. All this palaver I come out with
in interviews, of “There’s nothing more to say” – it’s all lies. I have to
lie, you see
.’

‘Who makes you lie?
’

She tipped her head in the direction of the study. Her black
fringe fell in front of her eyes
.

‘
But why?’ I said, feeling out of my depth. ‘Is this new book
about him?
’

She shook her head vigorously, like a child. Her little black
mane swept back and forth
.

‘
So why doesn’t he want it published?
’

‘
I don’t
know,’
she whined softly. ‘Who can guess what goes
through his head?
’

Before I could think of anything else to say, she was crawling across
the floor, heading for an antique bureau, talking all the way there
.

‘
My earlier novels are no good, no good at all. False, fake, cowardly.
The mind in them isn’t an animal mind. It’s a human mind dressed
up in animal clothes. A human voice with a slight animal accent
.’

I was surprised by this last phrase. It was sparkier and more
impressive than anything I’d read in her work. In fact, it eroded my
condescension towards her and I was moved to treat her as a big
grown-up writer – at the same time as I was watching her crawl on all fours
.

‘
Uh … well, that’s an unavoidable problem, surely,’ I tried to
reassure her, ‘with anthropomorphism?
’

She’d found what she was looking for, hidden under the bureau.
It was a sheet of paper, soiled with house dust and dog hair
.

‘
Here,’ she said, sliding along the polished wood towards me.
‘This is my new book. I keep bits of it stashed everywhere, so he
won’t find it. Don’t read it now, there may not be time. But take it;
keep it safe
.’

Blushing and awkward, I folded the handwritten text into a
smaller square and slipped it into my jacket
.

‘
It’s called
The Window Is Not Open,’
she said. ‘It’s a tale
told by a cat
.’

‘
Oh yes?’ I said as brightly as I could, but something in my
voice must have betrayed my disappointment
.

‘
No, no, not like
Cat’s Paw,’
she whispered intensely. ‘This one
really is told by a cat. Unadulterated. No human interference. Pure
cat. A book that cats themselves would read, if cats
could
read
.’

‘
Have you tried reading it aloud to yours?
’

She glared at me chidingly, clambering, backwards, into her armchair
again
.

‘
You’re making fun of me, dear, but I don’t care. What I’ve given
you will convince you. Of course I’ve had to make a compromise,
writing it in English. But that’s the only compromise I’ve made
.’

I had to struggle to keep a straight face, even though, later when I
got to read her illicit scribblings, I realised she was quite right. This is
the extract that nestled in my jacket pocket: (Please note that I have
no
idea if this was the beginning of the book, the end, or from the middle)

Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse? Not mouse.

Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse? Not mouse.

Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse. Come, mouse. Come. Yessss!

Mouse is mine now. In my mouth, warm pulse. On my tongue, heart beat. Come mouse. Come to my house. My house full of mouses, a place for play. This is the way: the grass, the hard ground, the window. Inside my house, my master. Are you big enough for him? Don’t break yet, be alive. Alive for him. My master’s giant hand will touch all of me in master love. His hand, stroking me, like too many tongues.

But the window is not open. The window is not open. Mouse in mouth, warm pulse, heart beat, but the window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open.

Sitting there in Tabitha Warren’s swanky front room, I was suddenly
aware of an acrid smell. Tabitha was squatting on her armchair
,
a faraway look in her
eyes as her husband hurried in from the study
.

Jack Warren glanced first at Tabitha, then at me, then at the door
to the outside, an unmistakable signal that the interview was over.
He took up his former position at Tabitha’s side, laying his hand on
her shoulder in a gesture (I now thought) of protectiveness and
sorrow. Whatever he had just endured on the telephone had knocked
the sheen of composure off his face, adding red rims to his eyelids
,
disordering
his thin grey hair. The smell was pungent now, attracting the
sheepdog, who padded up to Tabitha’s chair and sniffed around it
.

‘
My wife is very tired,’ he said, to get me moving
.

Tabitha twisted her head and looked up at him, following the
length of his arm all the way up to his pained face
.

‘
Oh but I’m not a bit tired, Jack,’ she protested mildly
.

‘
Nevertheless, darling,’ he sighed, stroking her hair. ‘Nevertheless
…’

I got up and, for courtesy’s sake, crossed over to the pair of them
and, rather formally, shook their hands. Jack Warren’s was warm and
dry, if somewhat weak; Tabitha’s was clammy, an eager squeeze with
a hint of nails that needed cutting. Her parting words to me were:

‘
Remember, dear: all I’ve achieved so far has been just
…
toying. The best is yet to come
.’

I feel that perhaps
these
should be immortalised as Tabitha Warren’s
last words, rather than the ones you quoted in your obituary –
supposedly
overheard by one of the nurses who cared for her in the final phases
of her
dementia. These bitter remarks that she reputedly made about her
husband
– a man who was no longer around to defend himself – don’t
sound much like Tabitha Warren’s voice to me, and I would question
the
journalistic ethics of quoting them. After all, more reliable sources
than
this (suspiciously nameless) nurse insist that in all the lonely months
and years after her beloved Jack’s death, Tabitha never spoke again
.