Nicholas Royle - First Novel

There will be a period of time spent figuring out what to do, trying to see Grace and trying to get back in touch with Helen. Neither will return my messages. I’ll walk the streets. I’ll see Dog Man without his dog, looking lost, bewildered, but still leaning forward. I’ll work on my novel, but it won’t come. Everything I try will seem forced. I’ll turn to my author’s copies of Rites . I’ll flick through each one, noticing that I no longer seem to have a copy with a folded corner. A picture will enter my mind of Helen at Lumb Bank handing me her copy for me to sign.

I’ll spend hours looking at my other books — the white-spined Picadors, the orange and green Penguins — taking them off the shelf, blowing off the dust, smelling the pages, putting them back. I’ll take the remnants of Veronica’s collection and distribute them among the charity shops in the village as I become increasingly aware of a need to get away somewhere, somewhere different, a long way away. Eventually I’ll book a flight to New York.

Landing at JFK in the early afternoon, I’ll jump in a cab to Brooklyn and I’ll notice that most of the houses we pass have pumpkins outside them, often as many as two or three sitting on different steps, all elaborately carved. I’ll be wearing a simple dark jacket and white T-shirt and I’ll wonder if it will be enough to keep me warm. I’ll either walk around Park Slope hoping to catch sight of either him or her and if I do I’ll follow them home and inveigle my way into their house, or I’ll hang around the Community Bookstore on 7th Avenue, their local bookshop, their favourite one apparently, which will have a Halloween-themed window display with plastic spiders and fake cobwebs, and maybe one or both of them will bob in and I’ll introduce myself. I’ve come all this way, I’ll say, and they’ll have to invite me back. He’ll be politely affable in a reserved kind of way and she’ll be more outgoing, friendlier. She’ll be wearing the black and white striped cardigan and the dangly earrings that I’ll recognise from the magazine articles; he’ll look relaxed in a grey zip-up cotton jacket over a soft brown shirt tucked into belted black jeans. His eyes will be hidden behind aviator-style sunglasses; hers will shine like opals from their deep settings. They’ll walk with me back to their house, which will have a pumpkin with an evil-looking grin sitting on the stoop, and we’ll go in and I’ll find myself standing in the living room with the olive-green leather sofa and the shiny round coffee table stacked with books. The stacks will look slightly less neat than in the photographs. Conjunctions 49: A Writers’ Aviary will still be there, although it will have migrated to the left-hand pile. Joe Brainard’s The Nancy Book will be lying open, as if in the middle of being read. Paul will mutter something about having to make a call. He will shake my hand and withdraw to another room and Siri will smile and lead me to her study on the fourth floor.

Standing in front of Siri’s desk, with its silver Apple laptop, assorted knick-knacks of sentimental value and a half-full bottle of San Pellegrino (but no glass — does she swig it from the bottle?), I’ll find my eye drawn to the shelves above, to the top right, but there’ll be no sign of the orange-spined book previously spotted in the Writers’ Rooms picture. Perhaps she is reading it, I’ll think to myself. Perhaps it’s lying on her nightstand.

I have one of these, you know, I’ll say to her, resting my hands on the back of her Herman Miller Aeron chair. Really? she’ll say. Yes, did you know that Geoff Dyer, Alain de Botton and Francesca Simon all have one as well? She’ll say, I didn’t know that. I’ll ask her what she’s working on and she’ll tell me a little about the memoir she’s writing, The Shaking Woman . She’ll tell me about her mother and her migraines. I’ll say it sounds fascinating, that it explains a lot about The Blindfold . I’ll tell her what I thought of The Blindfold . I’ll tell her about the strange déjà vu experience I had while reading it. She will look at the floor and then up at me and say, I am delighted by your déjà vu experience because when I set out to write the novel, many years ago now, I was guided only by the thought that I wanted to write an uncanny book — unheimlich , as Freud said — and your reading falls squarely into that category.

And then either she’ll ask me what I’m working on or she won’t, and if she does, I’ll tell her I’m working on a novel but that it’s taken a funny turn and is threatening to fall apart. It’s beginning to remind me, I’ll tell her, of a first novel by David Pirie called Mystery Story , which held my attention all the way through and remained plausible, indeed strangely compelling, spellbinding in fact, and then right near the end the action shifted to America and it just seemed to go off-key somehow. Pirie must have thought so himself, too, because twenty-one years later he published another novel and on the jacket it said, This is his first novel.

There will be a silence and I will say that I should go, they must be busy. She will escort me downstairs and as we pass what I imagine to be Paul’s study I will hear the low murmur of a one-sided conversation. Siri will smile at me in the hallway and I will thank her for her kindness. She will hold out her hand and I will hold it briefly in mine.

Outside, the sky will have darkened a shade as afternoon edges towards evening. On the streets, a lot of people will be in Halloween costume. There will be zombies and vampires and Dead Barbies and people wearing red plastic horns and carrying tridents with flashing lights inside them. It will still be a little early for trick-or-treating, but people will be getting in the mood.

As I approach Bergen Street subway station, I will notice a man in a devil mask coming directly towards me. I’ll think he might be drunk and that it would be wise to get out of his way. Being unable to see his eyes will mean I can’t be sure of his intentions. His mask will be red with strong black markings and two small rubber horns. He’ll open his arms and force me to enter into his embrace. Still I won’t know if he’s intoxicated or murderous. I’ll sniff for alcohol fumes creeping out from behind the mask but all I’ll be able to smell will be the man’s sulphurous cologne. I’ll feel something cold in my stomach and then hot — and then, as he releases me and steps back, cold once more. There will be blood pulsing out of a wound in my stomach rapidly turning my white T-shirt red.

I will collapse to my knees, remembering the last line of a short story by Daphne du Maurier. Oh God , I’ll think, what a bloody silly way to die .

Or I’ll keep on going and pass through the tunnel under Didsbury Road and I’ll slip across the narrow waist of the Green Pastures housing estate and get back on to the path that runs downhill through a small patch of woodland until the school playing fields are revealed on one side and the golf course on the other. Down at the bottom will be the river, where I’ll turn left. It won’t be especially high, but the combed fringe of vegetation on both banks will reveal that it has been higher. On the far side, in a sandbank, I’ll notice a number of holes like tiny caves: nests for sand martins, which will have flown south at the end of summer. I will approach the first pylon and pass under the power cables. Shortly after the path turns to the left, I will leave it, going to the right, towards the river itself, using a small tree as my landmark. The tree will have seemed bigger in the dark. Something — a dog, the wind — will have moved the fallen branch so that the corner of gabardine is once again visible. I’ll check the path in both directions. Either there’ll be a man walking an Alsatian or there won’t be. When the coast is clear I’ll move a few yards away from the body and take a tentative first step into the brambles. I’ll take long strides towards the river, thorns catching in my jeans, until I’m beyond a line level with the body, then I’ll turn right. I’ll sting myself on a nettle and curse quietly.