Lou burst out laughing again.

  ‘And there’s a war story for you,’ Myrtle told us.

  Lou shook his head. There was quite a long pause and in that silence I felt the war and all that it meant. I also had the strange, unwholesome feeling that Lou felt slightly upstaged by his grandmother’s story. He bluntly stated, ‘We have a tortoise now, Gran.’ He went on to tell the story of Lamborghini’s arrival and the painting of the slogan upon its shell.

  When Lou told his grandmother he’d been to Mass, she appeared more delighted to hear it than she was about he and Aoife getting married.

  We departed, leaving his gran to go next door as we scarpered up the road. He looked at me and he twirled his fingertip next to his temple. ‘She’s going barmy, the old girl. The myth of the missing Luftwaffe sock.’

  I said, ‘I thought it was a great story.’

  His eyes flared at me and then he went quiet for a while. After a bit at my side, as we walked, he used both hands and widened the top of the plastic bag, for me to peer down at the large potatoes, studded with small buds. ‘Mark that, boyo; half a dozen big fellas and a slab of cheddar. I couldn’t nab all her butter but I took a good dollop wrapped in greaseproof paper. Now we needn’t waste any good drink money on bloody food.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, oven potatoes. I’ll do them. You scoop them out then butter and salt them after an hour in the oven. Food of the Gods.’

  At one of the corner shops we bought a full-sized Ballantine’s whisky with its slightly rectangular-shaped bottle, twenty cans of Guinness, a carton of Embassy Regal and a box of Christmas crackers.

  Back in Conrad Flats, Lou started in on the whisky with water immediately – to spite me mentioning his excessive spirit drinking earlier, I believed.

  I cleaned the tatties under the icy tap water, corked the buds out, then got them in the oven. Yet Lou soon complained that the whisky hurt his stomach so I suggested that old classic of mixing it with milk. He tried this but rapidly changed over to Guinness without comment. Then he sat in the light from the living-room windows, legs crossed, smoking as he read my story. It was probably just his position by the wide window and that broad skyline view which gave me the illusion he was having a dramatic experience.

  I was nervous of his judgement and every five minutes which went by marked by his utter silence turned me to gloom. I grated cheese, then, when the potatoes were three-quarters done, I halved and gutted them, burning my fingers nervously. I mashed the potato using cheddar, salt and butter then re-stuffed the skins with the mix and put them back in the oven.

  When I went through to the living room, holding a dishcloth, I was surprised to see he had – apparently quite some time before – finished reading my work. The typed pages were placed neatly on the floor and he was smoking, looking out over the view with his feet up on the windowsill.

  ‘Well, well, Cunningham.’ His voice had an odd edge to it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m disappointed.’

  ‘Oh, well. Thanks. Merry Christmas to you too.’

  ‘Oh now. Come on. Sit and have a Guinness and we’ll pull a Christmas cracker together. There’s nothing wrong with it as a story. Frisson of mystery. Just a slight matter of surface style.’

  ‘Surface style?’

  ‘Touch of pompous diction, weird use of commas. I like the story. A sort of greasy cafe, egg and chips of Huysmans and Borges. You have that almost in your pocket. You need to be sure you have a piece of writing, not a piece of publishing, and there’s a very clear difference between the two. Most of what we have around us today is just publishing, not writing. The manuscripts of Kafka, Elegy for the Madonna Fiammetta. Adolphe. Those are pieces of writing, Cunningham. Not of publishing. I’ll tell you what I would want to express in any writing I did.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I want to express nothing other than the perpetual motion of the book’s own style.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘From the first word to the last, the book must be inevitable.’

  ‘Novels where you can’t imagine a word changed?’

  ‘It’s almost more to do with conception, style meeting subject, so each sentence is its own inevitability. Then you move on to another, until you have a chain of inevitabilities.’

  I said, ‘Yes. But life isn’t like that. Life is awkward, full of eddies and baggy bits, and irrelevancies.’

  Lou said, ‘How do you get that into a novel? Half of art is trying to crowbar in the vagueness of this life. None of us are good enough.’

  ‘Who is good enough, then? Could we not just study them, and learn from them?’

  ‘If it was that easy everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they? It’s what’s inside you that makes what’s on the page, boyo. That’s the spiritual snag. As well as style, when we write, we’re searching for virtue inside each of us and sometimes we don’t find it. Every great writer is a great sensibility.’ His voice became soft as if all the cigarettes had strained it. ‘I don’t want to just write a bloody novel, Cunningham. You’ve got to influence the form.’

  ‘Influence the form?’

  ‘Change the way novels in the English language can be written and change what they can do. If you don’t change the form, what are you but a bloody Sunday painter? Is that all you want to be in the end, Cunningham? A Sunday painter, like Sartre says. What was it old Poundy told us all us writers are: we’re all either inventors, masters or diluters. Is that what you want to be, boyo: a diluter?’

  From the telephone in the living room I phoned my parents to wish them a happy Christmas and thank them for the shoes. It was a rather stiff conversation since they weren’t happy I’d remained in London, and also Lou was sitting smugly on the sofa listening to everything.

  At three in the afternoon we both heckled and shouted at Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with great gusto while we ate our potatoes. The Langhams battered their ceiling with their golf clubs. ‘And Merry Christmas to you too. Cunts,’ Lou bellowed downwards. With his stomach lined he was able to recommence his work on the whisky and I took some with water as well.

  ‘See. We’re both diluters,’ I mentioned.

  Eventually he faltered and vanished to the bathroom. I thought he was being sick but he returned with the large bottle of Milk of Magnesia I had used as correcting fluid and he simply alternated between a large swig from this blue bottle then a drag of whisky.

  We’d disposed of the whisky and it was onward with the Guinness, ‘Summer (The First Time)’ blasting out up the corridor at steady intervals. Each time one of us went to the toilet, the floor jumped again with golf-club thumps below.

  ‘Our failures,’ I told partly Lou and partly the ceiling. ‘Nearly all our failures are usually failures of imagination.’

  ‘Yes, that is true.’ White flakes were caked all around his lips.

  ‘Wars. Like your gran was saying. Wars are failures of imagination. Like Ethiopia. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” That’s a failure of the imagination already. They do not know it’s fucking Christmas.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘So. A sacrifice to imagination.’

  Lou said, ‘You’re not going to flash the whole of Brentford now, are you? They’d settle for a good moon of a pale Scottish arse. Hopefully you’ll bring down Santa’s sledge if he’s running late. Bloody hell. Crikey. Steady on, you lunatic.’

  I’d picked up the pages of my story and I grabbed one of the rickety-backed dining chairs, dragging it over, scattering a few of Lily’s play bricks. I jumped up on the chair. At Conrad Flats only the two narrow panes along the top of the wooden window frames opened. They were the originals from the sixties. The top gap had been taped closed with clear Sellotape. ‘It’s taped.’

  ‘Oh yeah; I did, to keep the draughts out. Tear it away, boyo. Never mind the draughts; get the first draft out.’

  I turned the handle and tugged, so with a suck the dampened tape ripped away and the window opened. The frozen air hit my face and then I began to feed the carefully typed pages of my story out the open window, high above Bollo Lane.

  Lou leaped up and yelled, ‘Yes! Cunningham, the sky’s the limit, when it comes to your abilities.’

  Sheet after sheet writhed in the lift of air sliding up the frontage of Almayer House, but the pages were suddenly grabbed and rushed southward, jerking stupidly from side to side as I fed out paper after paper. With slight intervals a pattern to their descent materialised.

  ‘I thought your work was in its decline, boyo, but it’s really soaring with a second wind now.’ His face right against the window, he watched with a delighted intent.

  At first, as the pages turned you could distinguish which sides had typed text, but eventually they just became curved papers, fluttering away towards Gunnersbury Park while one squadron descended in among the works by Acton Lane junction.

  16

  Aoife and me. Together in the corner of a pub which I’d never been in before, up beyond Acton Town station. Just the two of us, drinking strong draught Löwenbräu, which was then a new and fashionable drink in Britain. Pints for me, half pints for her, which she lifted daintily in fingers with coloured nails.

  Aoife had come back with Lily on New Year’s Eve and I’d found it hard to conceal my happiness. Then, after a week or so, Lou had taken me aside with an air of seriousness and for a moment I believed I was in trouble.

  ‘Listen.’

  I clenched my teeth. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You need to take Aoife out to a local one night.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You need to take Aoife out one night for a few drinks.’

  ‘Why can’t we all go out one afternoon and take Lily?’

  ‘Nah. I’ll stay here, look after Lil and you go out with the wife, have a few drinks and a laugh – you know. The bright lights of Acton put a sparkle in any girl’s eye. Cheer her up, Cunningham, and that’s an order.’

  ‘I’ll try. I am Scottish.’

  ‘Have a laugh. Just the two of you,’ and he playfully punched my shoulder.

  *

  So one Monday afternoon when the giros had been cashed, he’d suddenly sprung it on Aoife that she and I should go out to the pub that evening. She had looked surprised and hesitant.

  ‘You need a break. Go,’ he’d ordered.

  She finally shrugged and agreed, I got the feeling, mainly not to insult me. When she went to get ready, Lou became restless after fifteen minutes. ‘Bloody hell. She’s having a bath! Aren’t you the golden boy?’ He seemed to think it was funny but after an hour he became furious about how long women took to get ready, then he just as suddenly calmed down again.

  Aoife appeared in the front room where we were watching the news, her head tilted over to one side, putting in earrings. ‘Blimey, Cunningham. Changed my mind; I’ll go out with her instead,’ and he reached a privileged hand that touched the back of her burgundy tights.

  She smiled down at him through her ghosting of make-up.

  ‘Okay; look after my beautiful wife.’

  ‘I will.’

  Aoife asked, ‘Will we bring anything back, from the Burper?’

  ‘No. Get drunk and don’t dare return till the back of eleven.’

  ‘I can’t drink for that long.’

  ‘Cunningham will teach you.’

  So there we were in a pub, other than The Five or Six Bells, which she didn’t want to go to for good reason – we would ignite a forest fire of gossip had the two of us sat in the saloon bar there.

  ‘He’s drinking too much.’

  ‘Yes, I think he is. I told him to stick to beer.’

  ‘Good. He listens to you. He won’t listen to me.’ She frowned. ‘He doesn’t seem to want to get a job, though.’

  ‘Nope. He talks about us writing books all the time but when I suggest we do it, he just ends up in the pub and takes me with him. I know what’s going on. He has, eh, quite strong opinions about books. He’s terrified that if he writes something it won’t live up to his own high standards. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can understand how he feels?’

  ‘But it’s a fear he has to get over by writing something.’

  ‘I agree. I wrote something when you were away.’

  ‘Oh goodness. That’s wonderful.’

  ‘Lou sort of made me throw it out the window.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I did it to encourage him. I can more or less remember it word for word. I could rewrite it at any time.’

  ‘Oh well.’ She looked down at the table and then shook her head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Watch him, Douglas. Sometimes I’ve noticed – with myself – that he likes to keep you on a leash. He was very jealous about me modelling, even in that short time before we knew I was pregnant. I could have modelled for months after and brought in good money but he wouldn’t let me. Even when he got very ill.’

  ‘What do you mean, jealous?’

  ‘Not jealous. That makes it sound as if what I did was important or I have some kind of talent. I don’t. Partly it was cause I earned more than him when he was hall portering. Mainly it was because I was out all day with men around me, sometimes shooting for catalogues and with a lot of my clothes coming off and on. I couldn’t win with Lou and work. He was unhappy if I was doing catalogues and magazines, cause of the male photographers, but he thought the catwalk was stuck up, and then when I had a chance to do a television furniture advert, lounging on a sofa and getting on Anglia telly for hundreds of pounds, he told me it was too downmarket. Have you ever thought— Oh, nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve thought that when I was modelling a bit— How to say it? Lou’s life is about words, and reading books. A model is the opposite of words. I become just part of an image – a world without words, it’s all about seeing. You can be part of a crappy image, but you could be part of a great image which is a model’s job. I think some modelling can make you part of art. You know, some very good Vogue stuff. Herbert List and Walde Huth?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about fashion designers.’

  ‘No. Walde Huth was a photographer. A lady. They were great photographers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Sounds very grand, coming from me, who did Debenhams and Littlewoods catalogues, but you dream of getting to work with great photographers.’

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ll show you some of them. In books.’ She tisked her lips. ‘But my books are up folks’ house at home.’ She’d dropped the definite article in the way that Northerners do. She humped her shoulders and because she was drunk, tutted to herself.

  ‘I know nothing about photography. I read too much.’

  ‘But it’s a whole world. I have to go to the toilet; this stuff makes me pee and I shouldn’t have wore this skirt.’

  When she came back, she’d redone her lipstick but looked pensive. She sat forward and put both her arms straight, hands resting on her knees so the big metallic wrist bangles suddenly clunked down, and she leaned toward me as if about to lecture a child. ‘I’m thinking of going back to work. Doing some modelling again.’

  I nodded. ‘Good. Great. So you should.’

  ‘Need to go see the agencies cause they took me off the books. I told them to when I was pregnant.’

  ‘Well, you should work again.’

  ‘Don’t think Lou wants me to, though. He said once, when I was pregnant, that he was happy, cause it trapped me with him, otherwise I’d never stay with him. Isn’t that not a horrid thing to say?’

  The question wasn’t rhetorical, it required an answer and she scrunched up her nose so it made a Japanese house of wrinkles in the midst of her forehead.

  ‘Aoife, I think someone with your looks needs to understand it makes men react. You could be with any man.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly.’

  ‘I mean it. And Lou is very handsome, but he’s just like us all. Insecure.’ Suddenly I said, ‘What were you like when you were younger, back home?’

  ‘Me? Insecure too. Shy, lanky, ugly duckling. I didn’t know what life was so I didn’t know how to go about planning for it or even enjoying it. My parents were very religious, so me and Attracta were always brought up with the church. Talking about Ireland like we were Irish but we weren’t. Our parents are Irish, but we grew up English. That’s what happens. Like Lou thinks he’s Welsh but he’s a right Londoner. Do you know where we went every year for our holidays with our folks?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Leeds. There’s a big Irish community in Leeds and we’d go there. Who goes to Leeds on holiday every year?’ She nodded firmly. ‘We bloody did.’

  I laughed. ‘Were you and Abby mates from young? Were you both so pretty?’

  ‘We were actually awful little fat chubs cause our parents shovelled three meals a day in us. And we were the only Catholic girls of that age in the village, the three of us. My sister, Abby and me went to the Catholic school in town, so our parents took turns driving us. It was sad for my sister cause people thought me and Abby were the sisters. Abby had braces and big curly hair; then, in nineteen eighty-one, we decided we were New Romantics or something and cut it all off. My dad went potty.’

  ‘Were your parents strict?’

  ‘Very. I remember once when I was little, the Monsignor came to our house for dinner because my parents did so much volunteer work for the church, and my father said to me, “Now, Aoife, you tell the Monsignor what we always say before dinner” – meaning the prayer, with grace – but I said to the Monsignor what my father really always did say, “Go easy on the butter, everyone.”’

  I burst out laughing.

  ‘I could tell the Monsignor was trying not to laugh but Dad was furious and he smacked me on my knickers afterwards, he was so sure I was being deliberate.’ She shrugged, then lifted and sipped from her drink. ‘I’m not that witty.’