I saw Edward about once a month. I would get the train or drive to Villefranche, though sometimes he would have reason to be in Antibes and we would meet at M. Englert’s. Only once or twice did he come to our flat; the presence of children, even signs of their existence such as toys or the push-chair in the hall, discomforted him. As often with people who have an ambition in life, the whole business of families was irrelevant. Nor did Eudoxie ever show any interest in children though she was, I was told, hospitable and charming when Chantal and Catherine occasionally took them over to Villefranche for an afternoon.

  It was at first strange for me to sit in the room where I had seen Tyrrel with his head in his hands. The house was larger than appeared from outside and had a balcony, shielded by the extension from the steps that went down the side of the garden. Edward and I would talk on the balcony in the evenings, looking across the bay to the white buildings of Villefranche. He had put on weight and was fuller in the face. I suppose I was, too, but the journey from youth to early middle age is barely perceptible from within. Anyway, it seemed appropriate that he should put on mote weight than I did since he was more prosperous. Chantal and I were far from hard-up thanks to her father and we lived in an apartment we could never otherwise have afforded, but we were not in the same league as Edward and Eudoxie. Edward’s royalties were huge and it is possible that Eudoxie also benefited from a share of Tyrrel’s. Several of Edward’s books were filmed and he wrote a couple of the scripts himself. They were highly acclaimed but they lacked the almost chaotic energy and fantasy that informed his novels. Despite exotic photography and apparently arbitrary cutting, they were like watered-down versions of the books. He did no more scripts after those two, saying that a film was necessarily a group production rather than the work of an individual and, in any case, was really made in the cutting-room. Certainly, the scripts lacked the peculiarly strong stamp of individuality we used to think of as his.

  Our talks became less literary with the years. I imagine this was in part a natural waning of youthful enthusiasm; like other passions, that for things of the mind rarely survives the avalanche of success or, in my case, the accumulation of domestic responsibilities. It was Conrad, I think, who wrote about how good it was, how free, to be young and to have nothing, and I can almost believe it. But to be old and have nothing benefits no one; the silting up of arteries with money and property is not always the malign process that some people think, and the daily accretion of detail, the one-damn-thing-after-another of it all, is more a part of life than all the great themes.

  The other reason our talks became less literary was what was happening to Edward. It was not so much that he was distracted by success or circumstance as that a deadliness invaded the very heart of his genius and spread from there to occupy every part of his life, so that in time there was almost nothing for him to oppose it with. In his very struggles to free himself, it was becoming him. As the years passed, I sensed that our talks became more important. This was not because of what was said, since their content was increasingly insubstantial, but because they took place regularly and because I had known him in his early days, before it all started. I was his only contact with his former life, I alone survived his success; nothing else of his past, of himself - really nothing, by the end remained to him.

  I was touched and grateful that he appeared so to value our talks but I didn’t ask myself why. I accepted them as sessions of mutual reassurance and comfort while in the background his reputation as another Tyrrel blossomed. That had a momentum of its own, seemingly no more to do with him than with me, which in a sense was the case. In the curious way of the media, Edward’s self-rationed appearances on radio and television were taken as evidence for rather than against his-having adopted Tyrrel’s reclusive mantle, and he was never introduced without being said to have come out of seclusion especially for that programme.

  I remember little of what we used to discuss. Local politics featured, since Chantal’s father was involved and it was a neutral and untaxing subject about which we could be indignant and scornful without being challenged to act. World politics was a more regular subject, as it often is among people for whom the personal is either impoverished or for some reason to be avoided. I have noticed that a preoccupation with current affairs sometimes develops among mentally active people who feel that life is slipping away from them or passing them by. I don’t think Edward felt this and I know I didn’t at that time but we both nevertheless avoided the personal. I’m not sure why; perhaps Edward’s reluctance to talk about himself affected me or perhaps we both avoided that of which we sensed there was no ultimate resolution, dissatisfaction being more a matter of temperament than circumstance. Not that Edward ever had any serious political enthusiasms. He had not the nature of an enthusiast, he did not love to hate and his manner was always sceptical, even where his words were not. More even than before, he gave his opinions in inverted commas, which made it sound as if he did not trust the words he used.

  I have clearer memories of the circumstances of our talks than of the subjects. Barbecues on the balcony with the moon on the water, lunches in the garden beneath the shade of the olive trees, sometimes a wood fire in Edward’s study and always wine, plenty of wine, and afterwards whisky. He drank a lot but my own increase prevented me from noticing quite how much he was taking. He had continued to smoke cigars ever since that morning we had met at M. Englert’s after Tyrrel’s death. They might even have been Tyrrel’s cigars to start with; whether they were or not, he smoked them with the same careless compulsion, discarding them before the end.

  One of the occasions that stands out was an evening on the balcony. The sun had set, leaving a clear but fading light. Eudoxie was gardening - she was a keen gardener and often used to work in the cool of the evening - and Edward had gone inside to get another bottle of whisky. I could hear him moving about downstairs as I sat smoking one of his cigars and watching Eudoxie. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt which showed up in the fading light. Her hair was loose and hung over her face as she bent to do something to a plant. She had to keep pushing it back with one hand, which reminded me of the first time I saw her with Tyrrel and brought me to reflect upon how lucky she was to be one of those women who seem ageless. Chantal, of course, had had motherhood to contend with but even without that would have been as obviously in early middle age as I was. Even Catherine, whom I still tended to think of as never being more than twelve, was now more woman than girl. But Eudoxie remained as vital and as elusive as ever.

  She straightened and turned to face the house, raising one hand as if to shade her eyes. There was really no need and I think she had probably reached to pat her hair and had simply not lowered her hand. In her other she held a trowel. She was looking at the big window of Edward’s study. I could no longer hear him moving but I could hear the sounds of a typewriter. It was neither loud nor particularly rapid but it was regular, as if the typist used only two fingers but was quite practised. Edward had mentioned that he typed now rather than wrote. I thought it odd that he should leave me and work, but who was I to question the ways of great writers? My once passionate belief that art transcended social obligation had settled into a habit of thought every bit as unreflecting as any convention. The sounds could not have lasted very long because I remember I had not finished my cigar when they stopped and Edward reappeared. Eudoxie was bending over the plants again.

  I told Edward he shouldn’t worry about me but should carry on with his work if he wanted; I was happy with the whisky and the view.

  He looked puzzled. ‘I could hear you typing,’ I added. He stood with the bottle in his hand. ‘Just now?’

  ‘When you were downstairs. Eudoxie could, too. At least, she was staring at you in the study.’

  He glanced at her, not exactly fearfully but as a sailor might glance at clouds. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said quietly. ‘But you do type your stuff now, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been trying it.’ He put the bottle on the table and sat heavily in the wicker chair. For a while he sat and stared as if he were alone. His features had sagged of late and his belly bulged over the top of his trousers but he was still a handsome man. When he brooded, as now, it was easy to imagine him as a Henry VIII, unpredictable, capable equally of impulsive generosity or quiet vindictiveness, according to the heaviness within.

  ‘It has taken the place of the writing noise,’ he said eventually. ‘It wasn’t me typing but I was thinking about it. It started when I changed to the typewriter. You are the only person apart from Eudoxie who knows about this.’ His blue eyes rested vacantly upon mine.

  ‘Does it help to type? Do you feel you write better?’

  ‘I cannot write at all. Whatever I do comes out nonsense. It doesn’t like me leaving the pen.’

  ‘Perhaps you should try a word processor.’

  He shook his head, opened the bottle and poured.

  I regretted the flippancy of my remark because I very much wanted to know more but I had been puzzled by his words and a little frightened by his manner. It was like being with someone who had identified in himself the symptoms of fatal illness and you wish to jolly him out of it, while suspecting he might be right. I did not then know how completely the writing had taken possession of him and when he spoke of ‘it’ not wanting him to forsake the pen I feared he was displaying symptoms of a nervous condition. It was also about that time that I began to suspect that he was profoundly lacking in self-awareness. At first I thought this odd in a writer but now I am not so sure; if you study their books as I do you will often see what they do not. The effect of Edward’s unselfconsciousness, if I can call it that, was to create the illusion of quiet decisiveness, determination, sureness of purpose. It also suggested an incipient brutality which I think some people found attractive. Yet at the same time it somehow made one feel for him as if he were a child in this world. We might all have felt more for him if we had had any idea of the emptiness, destruction and terror concealed beneath his heavy immobility, his measured tones, and his apparently attentive blue eyes.

  He did actually get a word processor though I know he never wrote a book on it. What was taken to be his reluctance to embrace new technology became a part of the mythology and it was sometimes contrasted with the way in which he was always abreast or ahead of literary fashion. No one had any idea then that the word processor represented a desperate attempt to escape his fate; it was regarded as his one concession to modernity. His surroundings, notwithstanding the luxury of the view, remained spartan. He and Eudoxie occupied that house as if they had never properly unpacked and I think that was how he came to view his place in the world. The walls were as bare as his Kennington flat, there was little furniture, no television and no sound system. Presumably there must have been a number of Tyrrel’s effects but I never saw any. I gathered that Eudoxie looked after everything connected with the property. How she viewed her place in the world, none can know.

  I discovered the word processor by accident. Whether my remark had influenced Edward, I have no idea; he had said nothing about getting one. It was a Saturday and Chantal and I had taken the children for lunch with cousins of hers in Villefranche. Parents with young children are not often welcome - at least, there is usually more genuine pleasure at their departure than their arrival - but these cousins had enough children for two more to make little difference. From their house we could make out Edward’s across the bay as two white rectangles, one horizontal and one vertical, with red roofs and windows that caught the sun. The green Cap was dotted with many larger white and red shapes but there was none more famous. Edward had recently removed the name from outside the house because of the number of thesis-hunters who found their way up the steps or along the lane. On that Saturday afternoon we thought we could call on him. I was wary of doing so unannounced but Chantal thought it all right provided we left the children with her cousins.

  We walked round the bay and up the lane as when we had followed Tyrrel and Eudoxie all those years before, so we arrived at the front of the house without having seen into the garden. The door was answered by Eudoxie, wearing only a red towel. Her skin was darker than I had thought and for a moment we all three stared at each other. She was surprised and perhaps momentarily irritated; something crossed her face. However, it left no trace behind and she was immediately polite and welcoming. She paid more attention to Chantal than to me but that was not uncommon. She led us through the house and up to the balcony, calling out our arrival as we went. We reached the balcony in time to see Catherine covering her nakedness in a red towel like Eudoxie’s. She had obviously been lying on it near to Edward who sat in a wicker chair reading a paper. His feet were bare and he wore khaki drill trousers, a white shirt unbuttoned to the waist and a khaki hat which shielded his eyes. The two women must have lain naked at his feet, sunbathing.

  I think Chantal and I were too surprised to be embarrassed. We stared for a moment and then I said that we hadn’t known Catherine would be there, and yielded to my English instinct for apology. I knew that both my talent for stating the obvious and my impulse to apologize irritated Chantal but I couldn’t help it at that moment; I thought that that accounted for her taciturnity during the tea that ensued. Catherine said nothing and went inside to dress but Eudoxie remained, the towel wrapped precariously around her. She was spirited and friendly and, as always when she laughed, I could not help noticing how her small white teeth filled her mouth. They were so even and so many that it was as if they had been manufactured and assembled rather than grown. They were not unattractive, rather the reverse; I always wanted to touch them. Anyway, Chantal thawed under Eudoxie’s attention and when Eudoxie took her by the hand and said she wanted to show her the wallflowers in the garden she laughed and got to her feet with something like youthful alacrity.

  Edward had not put down his paper. He had smiled greetings and had unconcernedly let the chatter happen around him, like so much froth and foam around a rock. When we were alone he said: ‘Your girls with the cousins?’

  I nodded and he resumed reading. It was a companionable silence after all the fuss. There seemed to be nothing to say.

  ‘Drop of whisky?’ he asked after a while.

  I offered to fetch it from downstairs. As I passed his and Eudoxie’s bedroom I caught sight of Catherine dressing. She was wearing white knickers and bra and was pulling on a green skirt. Our eyes met before she looked down to fasten the skirt at her waist. Her glance was as unembarrassed as it was uninterested and it was only then that she at last became, for me, no longer Chantal’s little sister but a part of the great half-known world of womanhood. Of course, it was years since she had been anything else so far as Chantal was concerned but I did not appreciate that at the time.

  I found the whisky and was about to go back upstairs with it when I was attracted into Edward’s darkened study by a green glow. I am not a very perceptive person and perhaps for that reason I feel I have to take an interest in everything. I am, to use the old word, nosy, and cannot pass an open door without looking in. I had not expected to see Catherine in Edward’s bedroom but could not resist a glance to see what was there. Nor could I resist his study. The curtains were still drawn and the glow came from a computer screen. This was the first I knew of Edward’s transition. It was an Amstrad, not a very sophisticated one even by the standards of the day but more than adequate for all that a novelist was likely to need. On the desk beside it was Tyrrel’s manuscript, which was still unknown to me. My attention was anyway drawn to the screen. Reproduced there was the malignant gibberish which I later knew to be that of the manuscript, but at the time I thought that either there was something wrong with the software or that Edward did not know what he was doing.

  I had been there only a moment when Eudoxie appeared. She stood in the doorway with an expression of intense concentration, staring at the screen. Then she looked at me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t touched anything. I saw the light and wondered what it was.’

  She came over and stood close enough for her bare shoulder to touch my arm. She took no interest in me but simply stared at the screen. I felt that if her towel had fallen about her feet she would not have moved.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to make any sense,’ I said.

  She switched it off. ‘The others are upstairs.’

  After we had left, Chantal didn’t say anything about Catherine. I knew that Catherine knew Edward and Eudoxie, of course, because she sometimes visited with Chantal, but I had no idea she saw them alone. Eventually I mentioned it.

  ‘She’s always thrown herself at him,’ said Chantal. ‘Are they having an affair?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Her tone was offhand, as if the subject were familiar to us both.

  We - or rather, Chantal - saw more of Eudoxie after that. They became friends. Eudoxie would come over to Antibes and they would go shopping, or they would lunch, and some afternoons Chantal would go over to Cap Ferrat. Now and again Eudoxie would just drop in for coffee, bringing something for the children, whom she charmed. I don’t know whether Catherine continued to visit Cap Ferrat; she ceased to feature in anyone’s conversation. Later I discovered that she was having an affair with one of my married colleagues from the lyc�e. When I told Chantal she nodded, as if we were both familiar with that, too.

  ‘Yes, it’s time she put a stop to that. It’s been going on since she was seventeen. He’s far too old and he’ll never leave his wife. I’ve told her, Eudoxie’s told her, but she doesn’t listen. She’ll have to find out the hard way.’

  ‘She’s in love with him, then?’

  ‘She thinks she is.’

  I do not pretend to understand these matters but I was pleased that Chantal was seeing more of Eudoxie because it appeared to cheer her. She had become tense and taciturn, particularly with me, and for no reason that she would vouchsafe. She would make such remarks as, ‘The trouble with you is you don’t want anything,’ but when I tried to find out what it was I was supposed to want she would become annoyed. Living with someone who appears to bear a permanent grudge is hard, especially when your ignorance of the cause is held against you, and failure to understand the other party is a charge against which there is no possibility of defence. Indeed, it is hard not to give way to resentment when you feel that you, too, may be misunderstood, or that your wife understands herself no better than she thinks you do. Physical relations between us virtually ceased.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8