Transit(18)

We were hurrying up and down the undulating pavements, turning left and right and left again, while every so often Lauren glanced at the slim watch she wore on her wrist. The light from the street lamps gilded the dense black foliage above our heads. A few drops of rain had started to fall: they made a smacking sound on the leaves. We ought to be all right, Lauren said, looking again at her watch. It was lucky I was a fast walker: with some authors – no offence intended – that wasn’t always the case. I should have a few minutes just to settle in and get the introductions over with: the others, she had been told, were waiting for me in the green room.

We had arrived at an institutional-looking building in the town centre whose doors stood open so that a square of electric light extended out into the street from the crowded lobby. Lauren stopped at the threshold and pointed inside. The green room was the second door on the left, she said: she was sure I would find it without difficulty. She herself had to go to the hotel to collect another author. She took a small umbrella out of her bag. You never want to be without one of these here, she said. She hoped the event would go well: they usually seemed to. The festival drew very enthusiastic audiences. I suppose, she added, somewhat doubtfully, there’s not that much else here to do.

When I pushed open the heavy wooden door to the green room I was instantly engulfed in heat and noise. People sat eating and drinking at round tables; a group of four men sat at one, and when the door closed heavily behind me they all turned their heads to look. One of them got up, and came forward with his hand extended. He introduced himself as the person who would be chairing our event. He was much younger than I had expected him to be, very lean and slight, but when we shook hands his grip was almost violently firm.

I apologised for being late, and he said that it didn’t matter at all. In fact, there’d been a problem with the electrics in the tent: there was a lot of rain earlier in the day, apparently, and something had got wet that shouldn’t have, or at least that was his understanding of it; anyway, whatever it was, it had sounded pretty fatal. But they said they were fixing it now – all it meant was that the event would take place a quarter of an hour later than scheduled. He and the others were having a drink while they waited. He sensed it wasn’t quite the done thing – a bit like the crew of a jumbo jet drinking before take-off – but it hadn’t seemed to worry the others at all, and they were the ones who people had come to see. Frankly, he said, this lot won’t take much chairing: one question sets them off for hours.

We had reached the table and everyone stood up and shook hands, then sat back down again. There was a bottle of wine on the table and four glasses; the Chair went off to get a fifth, after offering me his seat. I had met one of the men around the table before; the other two I didn’t know. The man I knew was called Julian. He was big and fleshy and strangely childlike, like a giant boy. He had a loud voice and a manner which looked always to be on the verge of some clumsiness or mishap but which in fact was rapidly and pointedly satirical, so that you’d been accurately mocked before you even realised you’d been seen. I had been struck before by the energy and readiness of this facility in him, which always seemed to be held at boiling point, waiting to receive and reduce its object. An aura of discomfort hung faintly around his big body, which he moved often as though to dispel it, crossing and recrossing his heavy legs, lunging forwards over the table, turning this way and that in his chair.

He was telling the others about another festival where he had recently made an appearance, to read from the memoir he had written about his childhood. The book described growing up as the child of his stepfather, his father having abandoned his mother while she was pregnant, before he was even born. ‘So at least it was nothing personal,’ he said, and paused for the others to laugh. After the reading, a man had approached him from the audience and, drawing him to one side, had made the astonishing claim that he himself was the true father, Julian’s biological parent. Julian wrinkled his nose.

‘He was that smelly,’ he said, ‘you had to pray that it wasn’t true.’

This man claimed that he had documents at home that proved the relationship; he spoke of Julian’s mother and his fondness for her and the happy times they’d had together. While he was speaking, a second man had come from the audience and, tapping Julian on the other arm, had made exactly the same claim. They were positively crawling out of the woodwork, Julian said. It was like Mamma Mia!, except in Sunderland in the rain.

‘It’s not a very well-known festival,’ he added, to me. ‘I don’t think you’d like it.’

He’d become a bit of a festival tart, he went on: to be honest he’d go to the opening of an envelope, especially if the envelope had his name on it. He just couldn’t get enough of it, the attention.

‘It’s like my mum on her two weeks in Lanzarote,’ he said. ‘Soak up every bit of it while you’ve got the chance. None of your gradual, even tanning – I’m wanting to get positively barbecued. If this is my moment in the sun, I intend to gorge on it.’

He cupped his hands around a large chunk of air, and opening his mouth wide, crammed it in.

I noticed that the Chair glanced at me frequently while Julian spoke, as if he were anxious I might react badly to something that was being said. He had a small, handsome, slightly furtive face and bright bead-like eyes. His black hair was thick and clipped very short, so that it almost looked like an animal’s fur. After a while he leaned forward and touched my arm and asked if I had met either of the other writers – Julian and Louis – before. Louis sat on Julian’s right. He had straggling, shoulder-length, greasy-looking hair and his face was thick with stubble. His torn leather jacket and stained jeans made so obvious a contrast with Julian’s luxurious navy suit and mauve silk cravat that his appearance seemed, despite his attitude of slouching indifference, premeditated and deliberate. He watched Julian closely, and whenever he smiled at something Julian said, he disclosed an uneven row of large brown teeth. The person on Julian’s other side was a much younger, angelic-looking boy whose flax-coloured hair hung in ringlets around his face. I had missed his name when the introductions were being made: I guessed that he was Julian’s boyfriend. His pink bow-like mouth curled up at each corner, as did his round, blue, unblinking eyes. He wore a dark blue tight-fitting coat that was buttoned up all the way to the throat and he kept his hands plunged in the pockets, as if he were cold. Presently he turned and leaning into Julian’s ear said something to him, before getting up to leave.