His confidence was broken. It was as if another Columbus had set out to discover new worlds and landed on Rockall. The bleakness of where he found himself spread like a blight into the lives around him. He didn’t blame Maggi for leaving him. If he could have found the way to do it, he would have parted with himself. He made a half-hearted attempt at it by leaving Skye and coming back to Glasgow. But he brought his dead ambition with him, like a corpse in a suitcase. He unpacked it with his clothes and had sat staring at it for years, willing it to breathe again.
But the book of short stories he had published five years later merely reaffirmed where he thought he was – trapped in a fantasy of his own making. They could have sold more copies of In Places at the Time if he had gone round the houses with them. He almost did.
He knew his reaction to his own failure was exaggerated but he couldn’t control it. Since his teens he had invested almost all his hopes in being a writer, and the high of his brief initial success had been so intense that he couldn’t adjust to the experience of coming down. He seemed to have spent the time since the failure of Winter in August in a kind of unsuccessful psychological rehab. Even sitting here with Dan Galbraith, he still couldn’t believe that what he had thought was an infinity of promise had contracted by now to waiting for a letter, which still hadn’t come. His future, he was thinking, had reduced itself to the contents of an envelope.
‘Sometimes,’ Dan was saying, ‘I wish I had achieved half of what you have.’
‘Do yourself a favour,’ he said. ‘Don’t.’
‘You’ve written something,’ Dan said. ‘Me? I’ve reached the dizzy heights of being a sub-editor. Your books’ll be there when you’ve gone.’
Where would they be? Recycled into toilet-tissue? If they survived, they would be like some of the more egregious tombstones you sometimes saw in cemeteries – proclaiming not the importance of the people who lay under them, just their misguided sense of that importance. And very seldom read.
The truth, he realised again, was that other people’s assumptions about his success were, in a strange way, what hurt him most of all. They were such a contradiction of what he felt was the truth about himself that they made a performance of much of his life. He sometimes felt he was going around pretending to be somebody else.
Even his invitation to come here tonight had been partly related to the mistaken sense of him that people had when they knew of the books. He had been friendly with Dan for years and he would have been glad to come anyway. But he was also aware that Dan had been especially keen for him to be there because he was the nearest thing Dan could get to a half-baked local celebrity. Hence the speech. It was the equivalent of getting somebody who was known slightly for being known slightly to cut the ribbon at the opening of the supermarket.
‘And what have I achieved?’ Dan was saying.
He looked round the tastefully furnished room, saw the attractiveness of Dan’s wife and two daughters.
‘Look around you,’ he said.
‘I know, I know,’ Dan said. ‘I’m grateful for what I’ve got. I’m very proud of my family. But all I’ve managed to be is a sub-editor on a paper. I still envy you the legacy of words you’re leaving.’
Some bequest to the nation, he was thinking. Still, maybe they could use it as a warning to others on the folly of misguided ambition. He heard fake laughter somewhere, not so much a laugh as a shout with bells on.
He traced it to the man who had come in with her. He was sitting in a chair, gesticulating wildly at someone or something. It was hard to tell which, since his focus didn’t seem too precise.
‘All the same,’ Dan said. ‘You could have written a lot more. If you hadn’t been such a madman.’
‘Comes with the territory, I suppose. A sane writer’s probably an oxymoron. Anyway, journalism’s writing. Although I’m not even a real journalist. I just write a column. But I’m not knocking it. I need it. I’ve got into the habit of eating.’
‘What about the poetry? You never try to publish any of that?’
‘I don’t write poetry. Who are we kidding? I write daft verses. Light verse, my man.’ He said it with a BBC accent, or what had once been a BBC accent. ‘So light, if you breathe on it too heavily you could blow it away. The only place I might get it published would be on a greetings card.’
She had crossed the room to the windmill in the chair. She seemed to be trying to reason with him, which couldn’t be an easy trick. They were obviously going to be leaving soon. He had missed his chance to connect seriously with her. When he had done the thing with the gin and tonic, it had felt dramatic and peremptory. Now it felt stupid. What was that supposed to achieve? I’m the drink-delivery man. Boldness was what was needed.
She had partly succeeded in calming the man down. He had gone into muttering mode. Now she was talking to Sylvia, who had been hovering – hostess in a state of mild alarm. Sylvia brought her a piece of paper and a pen, and began to use her mobile. It was taxi time.
She was writing something. He had hoped it would be a love letter to him but it was too short for that. Dan rose and went to talk to Sylvia. Putting the pen down, she started to walk. He was taken aback by how exciting it was to know that he was the one she was coming towards. She came and stood beside him, her back to the wall, and so close that her dress overlapped on his outstretched trouser leg. She sighed. ‘I’m going to have to leave soon,’ she said. ‘He’s just a friend. He asked me to partner him tonight. But I’ll have to see he gets back safely to his place.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said and put his hand under her dress.
He thought: What the hell am I doing? Get the handcuffs ready.
She thought: Ooh. No. That can’t be what I thought it was. It is. It is.
In the time it took her to believe the incredible, what she thought would have been her response was displaced by pure sensation. His hand was resting at the top of her calf. The hand didn’t feel aggressive. It felt as gentle as a bird nestling there. It was less threat than plea. By not rejecting him immediately, she became part of a conspiracy of two against the rest. She found that she was enjoying the conspiracy. She had wanted him to make some kind of move all night. Well, he had certainly done that. They were standing in a busy room sharing a secret intimacy.
Not having been arrested, he began to stroke her calf gently. She wanted to talk casually, about anything, she decided. She felt it was a way of adding to the clandestine sensation.
‘I still think you made up that stuff about Snarl,’ she said.
‘Only the name. Sadly enough,’ he said.
‘And Bruce?’
‘Bruce was real. Probably realer than most of us. Although this feels quite real.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘The weather’s been pretty mixed, eh?’
‘I see they’ve had rain in California.’
‘This is a lovely way to spend an evening.’
‘I feel as if I could sing that.’
‘Feel free.’
Sylvia was signalling over.
‘Why do taxis always come at the wrong time?’ she said. ‘I have to go. No, don’t get up. I want to remember you this way. But I do think you should leave now.’
His hand gently squeezed the back of her calf and then was gone.
‘Here,’ she said, giving him the piece of paper she had written on. ‘I was wondering whether to give you this. Now I’m sure. I’m going to check that article sometime for lies.’