Gill Alderman - The Memory Palace

His mistress, merry and flushed, opened the door.

‘Guy! Good heavens!’ she said. ‘It isn’t Tuesday is it?’

‘Jesus Christ, Sandy,’ he said, irritably. ‘I’m not a dental appointment. And it’s Monday.’

‘Well, what do you want to do? I’ve a kitchen full of summer students – my American ladies. We’ve just opened a few bottles.’

‘I want to come in,’ he said, and did so. ‘Next, I want –’ He kissed her.

‘I don’t suppose they’ll miss me for a while,’ she said. ‘Mary’s showing them the video.’

‘Not blue movies in the suburbs!’

‘Really, Guy. It’s a record of their stay. They leave tomorrow.’

Sandy’s waspish mood began to fail her. Guy was stroking as much of her as he could reach, in the narrow hall.

They went up to the bedroom. The worn teddy which Sandy kept on her pillow annoyed him: a dumb and idiotic rival – which had been in bed with her many more times than he. He shoved it and it fell on the floor.

‘You brute,’ said Sandy. ‘Aah, mmm.’ Afterwards, he told her he was on his way to Dover, to the ferry. ‘“Prelude”,’ she said, ‘That’s what I like – as if you didn’t know.’ She got up and he slept. In the morning, she was there again beside him, ready to hit the button of the alarm before it shrilled.

‘Six fifteen, my God,’ she said, yawning. ‘I didn’t get rid of them until two. You’ve had a fine sleep, anyway.’

‘I needed it. I’ve been working hard. Ow!’

He massaged his hands.

‘What is it?’

‘They ache. It’s worst when I wake.’

‘Poor chap! Have you been using your PC a lot?’

‘I don’t write in longhand!’

‘That’s what it is, then. RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury – like a sports injury. You’ve over-strained the tendons. The holiday will help – unless you start using the laptop.’

‘I didn’t bring it, just paper and pens. I might do some real writing, in my own hand.’

‘Instead of Times?’

‘New York actually. In the early days I did write everything in longhand. Then I typed it. It was the only way I could make sense of myself.’

‘Unbelievable,’ she said. She was a lot younger than he and knew him only as a best-selling phenomenon, comfortably placed, and comfortably off – once, he had driven her through Maidford Halse, the Hantonshire village he had lived in for nearly thirty years, and she had glimpsed his house, bulky and solid with accrued respectability, across shady lawns.

‘I won the Christminster Prize for my first novel, Jack’s Tank – the story of a National Service recruit. It’s out of print now –’

‘I didn’t know – never guessed. What happened? What turned you into a Fantasisr?’

‘Sex,’ he said, and she laughed, but with some puzzlement. ‘A mortgage and a growing family – as you’ll find out yourself one day, when I’m history – or experience.’

Telling this white lie was easier than attempting the convoluted tale of his past misdemeanours and haunting loves.

‘Couldn’t you have gone on with the serious stuff as well as the Mythologies? ’

‘Authors of Eng Lit are supremely selfish,’ he told her. ‘Successful pulp novelists can afford to be generous to their families, and their mistresses into the bargain. Look at you: what paid for your abortion and the weekend at Le Manoir afterwards?’

‘Koschei’s Envy , I suppose. That was the last, wasn’t it?’

‘I finished The Making of Koschei before I drove here last night.’

Sandy looked into his face.

‘Does it matter what tale you tell,’ she said, ‘as long as you have the power to overwhelm your reader’s senses and hold him in your grip – for as long as the story lasts?’

‘In theory, no; in terms of monetary reward, yes. Tell me, Sandy, do you give your students in-bed tutorials? Must I write a dissertation before I get my oats?’

He embraced and fucked her vigorously, quite certain that he demonstrated much more ardour and skill than a younger man; lay relaxed and satisfied across her and played with wisps of her titian hair (the colour was natural, unlike his wife’s).

‘You should get some Chinese balls,’ she said, dreamily.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Her comment startled him. He was not sure if she was joking, or criticizing his performance in some obscure female way.

‘Chain of thought,’ said Sandy. ‘Like these, look.’ She leaned from the bed and took from the bookshelf a small, cloth-covered box which she opened to disclose two silver balls resting on red velvet. ‘They keep your fingers supple, a kind of physiotherapy. Like this: roll them about on the flats of your hands. Might help your aches. Avis Dane swears by them. She’s a pianist and she uses hers every day to exercise her hands.’

The balls rang softly as they travelled round her outstretched palms.

‘Bells too!’ said Guy. ‘Very dubious, one of these pseudo-scientific cures. I bet it has its origins in magic – or is an urban myth, like the Child Who Was Kidnapped At Disneyland, or the Phantom Hitch-hiker.’

He tried to imitate her, bending and tilting his hands so that the balls rotated. It was hopeless. One after the other they slid off and landed with dull chimes on the bed.

‘There’s a lot of alternative medicine about – it works, too,’ said Sandy doggedly. ‘I take evening primrose oil for PMT. I suppose it’s a New Age thing – but real enough, not gypsy stuff.’

‘I used to know a gypsy well,’ he said, half to himself.

‘Mm?’

Unwise to tell; and again, too complicated. Besides, he was sleepy.

‘Oh, nothing, thinking ahead,’ he said, pulling Sandy down beside him. She was warm; she was short and tucked neatly inside his embrace, like his wife – but was without Jilly’s middle-aged creases and sags, smooth, taut-limbed. Poor Jilly, away in the States being mauled by art-lovers. Her carvings were more exciting than she, these days – shouldn’t have had another child, so late. Could he remember Helen’s body? She had been – what? Years ago. Perfection, exact of proportion, well-endowed by Dame Nature or by one of those dead mother-goddesses she’d revered. He was on his way to see her. Possibly. And Dominic, their son. He slept and dreamed of a boy and a man, who both looked like himself; they fished in a bran tub and caught Christmas tree baubles and silver bells. Then he had to run: something huge and clanking rushed past him – he had to catch a train! He had to catch up with someone! ‘Helen! Wait for meeee!’ he cried, but his mouth was sewn shut with black thread. He jumped awake.

‘– time?’ he asked.

‘Seven.’

‘I’ll never catch that ferry now.’

‘Yes you will. You still have four hours.’

Sandy, in her dressing gown, made breakfast for them. It was her kind of breakfast with yoghurt, muesli and freshly squeezed juice; usually, he delighted in the differences between her way of life and his own. Today, they irritated him. That Garfield poster above the fridge. Why on earth? – she was a bright girl. They had said goodbye lightly, and left a great deal unsaid.

Coming to, he saw his fellow passengers about him, heard their incessant chatter and the magnified voices booming from the television overhead. He sat upright to massage his hands, imagining the strained tendons chafing in their narrow sockets. RSI. What a bugger, what a hollow laugh: he had a fashionable complaint. Last night he had needed sex; now he needed a drink.

Guy Kester Parados, author (BA Christminster, Caster Cathedral School and Fawley College, born Alfrick-on-Severn 1941, married Jillian Meddowes, sculptor, 1962, six legitimate children and four illegitimate excluding two abortions and one miscarriage), went to the Camargue Lounge. Under his left arm he carried a copy of the Independent and two books, A Year in Provence and the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdu . He wore jeans and an Armani tee-shirt. A linen jacket was slung across his shoulder. He was about six feet tall, with thick grey hair, grey or blue eyes, and was clean-shaven. He might have been any age between forty and fifty, although he was two months short of his forty-ninth birthday. He had no peculiar distinguishing marks and kept himself fit by playing cricket and by taking long country walks; had, in any case, no hereditary tendency to fat.