Nicci French - The Memory Game

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.’