A Ladder to the Sky(49)

‘Well, I might see you later, Maurice,’ he said.

‘Unlikely,’ you replied. ‘After my talk, we’re catching the next train back to London.’

‘Probably for the best,’ he replied, before waving a hand in the air as he turned his back on us. ‘Goodbye, my boy. I daresay we won’t meet again.’

I watched him as he walked away and felt torn between laughter and confusion.

‘Cantankerous old swine,’ you muttered. ‘He was in love with me once.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘It does happen.’

‘Well I, of all people, know that,’ I said, smiling at you. ‘You let him down easily, I hope?’

‘It’s all so long ago, I can barely remember. Anyway, what time is it? Let’s take a walk around the site. I wouldn’t mind having a look in the bookshop.’

I nodded, following you as you stepped outside. Dash Hardy died shortly afterwards, didn’t he? I remember reading about it in the newspaper over breakfast one morning and feeling shocked that someone who had sat with me so recently could have hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment. You read the article too but said nothing about it, although you were rather quiet throughout the day, as I recall.

One month in, and Norwich was proving a positive experience. My initial fears about teaching creative writing had dissipated as the students seemed both respectful and hard-working. Only one, a Polish girl named Maja, gave me reason for concern. Due to visa difficulties, she’d arrived late on campus, missing the first two weeks of class, and it seemed that she was struggling to fit in. She was working on a novel that had the most bizarre premise – Adolf Hitler solving crimes in post-First World War Germany – and any critical comments made of her work left her in a state of fury. At the same time, she was making little attempt to engage with the work of her classmates, and so I took her aside, asking whether I could help in some way, but she seemed offended by my question and I quickly backed off. I confided in you and your first instinct was to ask me how her English was.

‘Her English is perfect,’ I told you. ‘There’s no issue there at all.’

‘I only ask because, if she’s struggling with the language, then maybe she feels she can’t contribute as much as the others.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what it is, if I’m honest. She just seems to hate everyone, me included. I don’t know why.’

I wanted to discuss this further with you, to seek your advice, because I suspected that there was trouble brewing with Maja, but you were reading a novel that had been shortlisted the previous autumn for The Prize and I could tell that you were growing increasingly enraged by it. It was a long novel, more than five hundred pages, and I knew that the author, Douglas Sherman, had published his first book the same year that you’d published Two Germans. I remember you telling me how you’d enjoyed touring together in the early days, two handsome young novelists with assured futures, the literary world falling over itself to embrace you both. But since then, Douglas had published four more novels, each one better received than the previous one, and his stature had grown considerably while you, of course, were flailing.

‘I don’t know why you keep reading that,’ I said. ‘It’s masochistic behaviour.’

‘Because I never don’t finish a novel once I’ve started it,’ you replied. ‘It’s a rule of mine.’

‘Not me,’ I said, collapsing on to the sofa and glancing towards the pile of class scripts sitting on the coffee table but making no effort to reach out for one. ‘Life’s too short. As far as I’m concerned, a writer gets one hundred pages and, if they can’t keep my attention during that time, I move on.’

‘Ridiculous,’ you said.

‘Don’t call me ridiculous.’

‘I wasn’t calling you ridiculous. I was calling that policy ridiculous. You can’t say you’ve read a novel unless you’ve read it cover to cover. Yes, perhaps you’ll be bored at the start but what if it gets better and suddenly everything that went before falls into place?’

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘But I still think it’s a mistake, considering your history.’

‘You make it sound like we were lovers.’

‘Particularly when you’re feeling so—’

‘When I’m feeling so what?’ you asked, putting the book aside and staring at me. You parted your legs a little and gripped the sides of the armchair and an image of Lincoln on the Mall came into my mind.

‘When you’re feeling so lost,’ I said.

‘What makes you think I feel lost?’

‘Don’t let’s do this,’ I said, looking past you and through the front window, where a black-and-white cat had climbed on to the mantel and was staring in at me. He raised a paw and pressed it against the glass and, for one surreal moment, I thought he was beckoning me to him, like one of those maneki-nekos that sit in the windows of Chinese restaurants.

‘Do let’s,’ you said, enunciating each word. ‘Go on, Edith, tell me why you think I feel lost.’

‘Because you’re not writing.’

‘We’ve been over this.’

‘Which is why I said that we should talk about something else.’