Authors: Nicci French
'There are no problems,' said Kim sardonically, 'only opportunities.'
'That's what you tell your patients, is it? Then the biggest opportunity of all is this thing at the ICA tomorrow evening, part of their "Angry Old Men" season; Alan Martello in conversation with Lizzie Judd. You know, the academic who made her name with that book called
Sitting Uncomfortably,
that attack on C. S. Lewis and Roald Dahl and other children's writers that got into the newspapers. She's a carnivore.'
'Are you going along?'
'Of course. It's like a bullfight, isn't it? People say you should see at least one in your life. I don't know whether Alan will be in his chivalrous gentleman mode or his shocking truth-teller mode, but both will be disastrous.'
'Don't worry, Jane, people will have a good time. It'll be like a modern version of bear baiting, just the sort of thing Alan enjoys.'
'It won't be much fun for the daughter-in-law of the bear.'
Kim had met a man, I learnt over squid. His name was Andreas. He was six years younger than her and a musician. He was small and handsome and sentimental, and their first date had lasted for an entire weekend, broken off only when Kim had been called out of bed to make home visits. I'd always envied Kim's sex life; the variety, the excitement, the sheer numbers. One of her more interesting qualities as a friend was her willingness to talk about what she actually did in bed with these men. I had always had so little with which to reciprocate. I ventured a feeble question about whether it might turn out to be serious and she waved me away as she always did.
'Do you miss Claud?' she asked over cheese.
What could I say? I knew that Kim wouldn't hold my confusion against me.
'I miss a bit of my life, but, then again, I wanted to be free of that old intimacy. Maybe I'm a bit scared by what I've done but I'm excited as well somehow.' I paused to gather my thoughts. 'I feel that something huge is going on in my life, but that I'm in the wrong place at the moment. I almost wish I could tag along with the police, be involved. I feel like I've got to do something to find out how Natalie died. I need to know what happened.'
'But it must have been that old boyfriend, mustn't it?'
'You mean Luke?'
'Yes, and the police have got him.'
'They're talking to him.'
'There you are then. Luke got her pregnant, they had some row, he killed her, maybe by mistake. And buried her.'
'In Alan's and Martha's garden. Right by the house.'
'People don't do logical things when they've killed somebody. Did I ever tell you about the patient of mine who killed his wife? He dismembered the body and sent the bits off to branches of Barclays Bank all over the world.'
'That sounds quite clever.'
'Except that he put his address on the customs declaration.'
'Why?'
'His psychiatrist said that he wanted to be caught.'
'Is that story true?'
'Of course it is. Anyway, I don't see that the improbability lets Luke off the hook any more than anybody else. Somebody must have buried her there.'
'Yes,' I admitted. 'It makes everyone less likely.'
They always say that if you started public hangings again, they would attract hordes. The ICA was packed out. The audience was mostly young. Television cameras were being set up near the stage, and a large man wearing round wire-framed glasses like Bertolt Brecht's was wandering around the stage with a clipboard. I squeezed along the row towards the two empty seats in the middle. Theo still hadn't arrived. The man sitting in the seat next to mine was almost invisible in a large tweed overcoat. I stepped on his foot and tripped over a plastic bag on the floor.
'Sorry,' I said irritably, and he nodded briefly, before going back to his ceiling-gazing.
Theo arrived. In his black suit, carrying a briefcase, he looked formal and out of place. He kissed me on the cheek, and whispered:
'I've just been with Alan. He's drunk.'
'Drunk?' I squawked.
'Arseholed.'
'What do you mean, he's
drunk?
He's due on stage in about one minute.'
'He can still talk,' Theo said. 'Ms Judd will have a hard time stopping him.'
I moaned. Why had I come?
A minute or two after eight, Lizzie Judd walked purposefully onto the stage, a severely beautiful woman in a slim grey suit. Her blonde hair was swept back from her face, she wore no jewellery or make-up, and she wasn't carrying any notes. She sat down in one of the two chairs, and poured herself a glass of water. Then Alan bounded onto the stage, as if he were making an entrance on a chat show.
'What is he wearing, Theo?' I whispered.
I knew the answer. A velvet smoking jacket he sometimes wore in the evening at home. On his grizzled head was a black fedora. He reminded me of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster I had had on the wall of one of my student bedsits. I felt a rush of emotion for this undignified, truculent old man. Not many people clapped, though the man beside me was one of them. Alan sat heavily on the empty chair next to Lizzie Judd. He had a large tumbler in his hand three-quarters full of something whisky-coloured. He sipped from it and his eyes swept the hall.
Lizzie Judd expressed her ('and I'm sure the audience's') sympathy over the discovery of Natalie's body. She gave a brisk account of
The Town Drain
('anti-romantic... tradition of comic realism... lower-middle class... essentially male'). She referred to the, much less well-known, successors in a sentence, and concluded that the long publishing silence was doubtless something we would get on to later.
'Mr Martello,' Lizzie Judd began.
'Call me Alan,' Alan interrupted.
'All right, Alan. John Updike has said that mere is no need to write funny novels. What would you say to that?'
'Who's John Updike?' Alan said.
Lizzie Judd looked a little startled.
'I'm sorry?'
'Is he American?'
'Yes, he is.'
'Well then.'
'Is that your answer?'
Alan was lying back in his chair when she said this (I noticed that his socks were different colours). He sat up slowly, sipped some whisky, and leant towards his interrogator.
'Look, Lizzie, I wrote a fucking good novel. A
fucking
good novel. Have you got a copy of it here? No?' He turned to the audience. 'Has anybody got one?' There was no response. 'All of you, open your copies of
The Town Drain
at the copyright page and you'll see that it has been reprinted year after year after year. It seems to make people laugh. Why should I care what some pofaced American says?'
Lizzie Judd was icily calm.
'Perhaps we should move on,' she said. 'Your novels have recently received some feminist criticisms.'
Alan snorted.
'I'm sorry?' she asked.
'No, it's all right, go on.'
'It has been said that women feature in your work either as shrews or as big-breasted objects of the sexual attention of your heroes. Even some of your admirers have said that, forty-five years on, the sexism of your novels remains a problem.'
Alan took a large gulp of whisky, which prevented him from speaking for a surprisingly long time.
'Why should that be a problem?' he asked after his final swallow. 'I'm glad that they still seem sexy. Is there anything wrong with finding large-breasted women sexy? Jolly good thing.'
I put my head into my hands. There was a suppressed giggle beside me. Not from Theo, from the man on my other side.
Alan had paused, apparently enjoying the embarrassed silence. Judd remained expectantly silent.
'I was only joking, Lizzie. I'm not supposed to talk about things like breasts, am I? It's not allowed. Are you saying I hate women, Lizzie, love?'
'Why should you think I'm saying that?'
'That's what people like you say. Are we talking about me or are we talking about my books, Lizzie? I love women. I like fucking. Or at least I used to, when I could manage it. Is that what you want to hear? Now, shall we talk about my book?'
My head was between my knees now and I began to consider blocking my ears. I heard a shuffling sound. Was he standing up?
'I wrote that novel from my heart.' A fist banged against a chest. Hugely amplified by the radio microphone he was wearing, it sounded like a battering ram against a castle gate. 'And I wrote it when I was very young, and I don't give a fuck about people who use the book to argue about what Alan Martello thinks about women. I'm bored, bored, fucking bored with discussions which say that one novel is better than another because it's
nicer.
'
There was an agitated murmur in the audience. I looked up to find myself at the centre of a forest of raised arms. Lizzie Judd pointed at a young woman sitting to one side.
'Would you say then that morality has nothing to do with literary merit?'
'Oh fuck off,' Alan said. 'This isn't the Oxford fucking Union, is it? I thought we were here to talk about my books. Or are we going to talk about sex? Lizzie, do you want to tell us what you do in bed and with whom, if anyone?'
There were shouts now from different parts of the auditorium. Lizzie Judd remained calm as she called for quiet like a tennis umpire.
'Mr Martello, do you want to continue with this discussion?'
Alan raised his glass, as if in a bizarrely inappropriate attempt at a toast.
'
I'm
all right,' he said.
Hands waved in the air. A pale and slender young man stood up, his scarf was wrapped around his neck so many times I could hardly see his face.
'I'm a man too, Mr Martello,' he said.
'Yes?' said Alan dubiously.
'But I'm not of your generation,' the man continued in a quavering voice. 'I think women have often been damaged by the affection you say you have for them, by the predatory sexuality that you portray with approval. Is the world ever going to change if people like you, with a voice that others listen to, maintain your chauvinism dressed up as the writer's freedom?'
Murmurs of agreement rippled round the theatre. The TV lights shone hotly down. Alan was sweating; Lizzie Judd looked immaculately cool.
'You pompous pillock,' said Alan, slurring his words now. 'If women are relying on you to defend them, they must be in trouble. You're just encouraging them to be victims. Crying harassment and rape and all that at the drop of a hat. Bloody hell.'
A female cry of 'Bastard' came from the back of the auditorium. Lizzie Judd remained alarmingly cool.
'This is your position on the issue of rape, is it, Mr Martello?'
Alan finished his whisky, and put his glass down, slightly missing the table so that it fell and shattered on the stage.
'Don't mind that,' he said. 'Balls! Women like strong men and a bit of violence. Only complain afterwards. Make 'em feel better to complain. Don't like to admit they like rutting like sows. I've never heard a woman complain. We're not supposed to say that, are we? Not politically correct, is it?'
'This is your position as a respected novelist, is it?' Lizzie Judd asked, showing some signs of alarm at what she was unleashing.
'I'm not a fucking respected novelist,' Alan shouted thickly. 'I haven't finished a fucking novel for thirty years. But yes, we're not social workers. We work in a world where ordinary men are killers, where women want to be fucked or want to be raped and don't know the difference. It's the world of the fucking imagination.'
'Some people might say that there is a continuum between the abusive fantasies that are dramatised in fiction such as yours and the actual violence suffered by women.'
Alan stood up unsteadily.
'You want to see a continuum? I'll show you a fucking continuum.'
Like a toppling tree he fell down on Lizzie Judd, put a hand on her breast and kissed her noisily on her startled mouth. Her microphone must have been close to her face because the smacking kiss echoed loudly around the auditorium. I had several impressions simultaneously. Cameras rolling. Shouts from the crowd. People jumping up and running forward. Alan being pulled off Lizzie Judd. He shook somebody off and began to shout:
'You think I don't know about rape? My daughter was raped and murdered and the man who did it has been released. He claimed his fucking right to silence, he wouldn't answer any questions and the police let the rapist and murderer go. Now you can fucking crucify me.'
Alan continued to shout unintelligibly and flap around until he was restrained by several members of the audience that now filled much of the stage. Theo ran forward and fought his way through the crowd to his father. Lizzie Judd was being helped to her feet, her hair in disarray, her face smeared with lipstick. She was holding her eye. I alone stayed in my chair. I felt incapable of movement.
'Jesus Christ,' I said aloud. 'What a complete fucking disaster.'
'It wasn't so bad.'
I looked round, startled. It was the man next to me.
'Hang on a minute. I've just watched my father-in-law defend rape and assault a famous feminist in front of a paying audience. That's bad enough for me.'
'I was just trying to say...'
'Just go away.'
He went and I was left alone.
Fourteen
Neville Chamberlain Comprehensive School in Sparkhill. A disaster in grey concrete. Probably no more than twenty years old, already stained with moisture, like underarm sweat. An East German police interrogation centre dropped into a world of towerblocks, crouching red-brick houses and bypasses. I'd left home in the dark and now, as I parked outside, it was still before eight. No one was about.
The steamed-up, rapidly cooling interior of the car was depressing. I had nothing to read except an
A-Z,
so I crossed the road to a tiny cafe opposite the main school gate. I ordered a mug of mahogany-coloured tea, fried egg, bacon and grilled tomato. Almost all the tables were occupied by men in donkey jackets and the air was smoky and steamy. I looked at the front page of the
Sun
being read by the man opposite me. I wondered if there would be anything in the press about Alan's fiasco.