‘Of course.’
‘Which means that I might have to be critical as well as complimentary. I hope you can understand that. I just don’t want you to read it one day and feel that I’ve been duplicitous.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything less,’ I said. ‘I daresay not every word I’ve written over the years has been perfect, after all.’
‘I’ve been doing some work on Two Germans, you see,’ he continued. ‘Reading back over old reviews and some of the subsequent commentary. I suppose you’re aware of the criticisms of the book.’
‘Vaguely,’ I said. ‘Which, in particular?’
‘Well, there are those who feel that you took advantage of Erich Ackermann. Seduced his story from him as a way to build your own career.’
I nodded. I’d heard that one before, of course, many times, and had a stock answer. ‘Erich’s actions were his own to account for,’ I said. ‘For whatever reason, he chose me as his confidant and never once suggested that our conversations were supposed to remain private. I was free to use them in any way I chose. You must remember that when Erich and I originally met I knew nothing about what had happened during the war. I had never even heard the name of Oskar Gött. I simply made the man’s acquaintance and one thing, as they say, led to another. It wasn’t a set-up. I can hardly be blamed if he revealed things to me that, later on, he came to regret saying.’
His trusty notebook was out again and he was scribbling away.
‘So you felt no guilt about what happened to him?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly, no,’ I said, frowning. ‘Why, do you think I should have?’
‘There are those who say that you deliberately targeted Ackermann. And that if it hadn’t been that story, then it would have been another. That he was doomed from the moment he met you. Is that unfair?’
‘Totally unfair,’ I said, feeling a little unsettled by the accusatory tone he was taking. ‘He was a grown man, after all. He could have walked away from me at any time but he chose not to. The fact was, Erich Ackermann was in love with me.’
He stopped writing for a moment and looked up.
‘He told you this?’ he asked.
‘Not in so many words, no,’ I admitted. ‘But it was obvious. He wasn’t very good at hiding it. The poor man had tied himself up in emotional knots over so many decades, cutting off any potential romantic attachments, that when the dam broke, so to speak, he was absolutely incapable of dealing with the subsequent psychological trauma. But I never led him on, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘Sorry, Maurice,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to get to the heart of the story, that’s all.’
He took off his jacket now, revealing a T-shirt featuring a band that my son Daniel had loved. I stared at the familiar faces that had once adorned a poster in my son’s room.
‘You like them?’ I asked, pointing down at the image.
He glanced down and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why, do you?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I’m a little too old for bands like that. But my son did.’
He said nothing for a few moments. ‘How intimate can I be with my questions?’ he asked at last.
‘You can ask me anything you like. I don’t mind.’
‘All right. Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘No,’ I said, surprised that he should be interested in my personal instead of my professional life.
‘Are you gay?’
‘No. Why, have I done something to give you the impression that I am?’
‘It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, you understand,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to understand you better as a person so I can more clearly contextualize your work.’
‘Well, I suppose if I’m anything, I’m straight,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t feel an enormous pull in any direction these days. I never really did, if I’m honest. I was never a terribly sexual person, not even when I was your age. Perhaps I’m missing a certain hormone, I don’t know, but it was just something that was never very important to me. Are you driven by sex, Theo?’
He blushed a little and I felt pleased to be able to discombobulate him, for he had been too in control of today’s meeting for my liking.
‘Well, I mean I like it,’ he said. ‘When I can get it, that is.’
‘And do you have a girlfriend?’
‘No.’
‘A boyfriend?’
‘No.’
‘All right.’ I smiled at him, wondering whether he was going to give me anything else, but it seemed that he was determined to stick to his role as interlocutor.
‘Anyway,’ I said finally, ‘I’m pretty certain that that part of my life is behind me. Can I just say,’ I added after a moment, not wanting to scare him away, ‘just so there’s no confusion, I haven’t invited you here in order to seduce you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘What?’ he said, looking at me now with an expression of such surprise on his face that I realized he hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’m misreading things. I was worried that you thought I was agreeing to these meetings for some unsavoury reason. That I’ve only taken an interest in you because I want to form a romantic attachment. I just want to reassure you that nothing could be further from the truth.’
‘I honestly hadn’t even considered it,’ he said. ‘Not for a moment.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘How embarrassing. For me, I mean.’
‘I mean, if you are interested in me in that way—’
‘I’m genuinely not. It’s the furthest thing from my mind, I promise you. I was simply concerned that’s what you thought and wanted to set your mind at rest. I can see that all I’ve achieved is the opposite. Let’s talk about something else. I think I’ve made rather a fool of myself.’
‘It’s okay.’
He looked as if he wanted the ground to open up beneath him and I cursed my own stupidity. Was I going to lose him now? I couldn’t risk anything like that. He needed to finish his thesis and it needed to become a book. For that to happen, I needed to focus. I decided it was time to give him something. A small morsel to stimulate his appetite.
‘Actually,’ I said at last, ‘if you don’t mind, I’d like to confide something in you.’
‘Really?’ he asked, looking up hopefully.
‘Yes. Something for your thesis. Something I’ve never really talked about before.’
He turned another page in his notebook, his pen hovering over the paper. His eagerness was endearing.
‘I want to be honest with you, you see,’ I continued. ‘And I agree with you that it’s important that your thesis is a work of true integrity. Especially if it’s to become the basis of a full book. You’re still planning on that, I hope?’
‘Well, yes. But that’s a long way—’
‘Good. I want to tell you something about Dash Hardy.’
‘The American writer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think I read somewhere that he was a mentor to you, is that right? When you were starting out, I mean.’
‘I’m not quite sure that I’d describe him in those terms,’ I replied, ‘although he probably would have. But, to be fair, yes, he was very generous towards me. Have you read any of his books, Theo?’
‘No, I’ve never got around to them,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Are they worth reading?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, one or two maybe. But there are so many books out there in the world that I wouldn’t bother if I were you. You won’t find anything particularly interesting in them. Not today. They’re very much of their time. I met Dash many years ago, not long after I met Erich Ackermann, as it happens. Our paths crossed in the Prado in Madrid and, like Erich, he was entranced by me. They were both homosexuals, of course, but very different types. Where Erich was content just to stare at me across the dining tables of Europe, fantasizing about a relationship that would never come to fruition, Dash came straight out and told me what he wanted on the day that we met. He wasn’t looking for romance, he said, he didn’t want a lifelong companion or someone to show up on his arm at parties. He just wanted to fuck me. Really, I admired his forthrightness. And so I let him. The very night that we met, in fact, but never again after that. I drifted towards him after I parted from Erich because he had a higher profile in the States but, in retrospect, I think I may have treated him unkindly. You see, when we met, he just desired me, so the sex was probably not that interesting, but after that he fell in love, desperately in love, and the moment he did I made sure to deny him everything he wanted. I would barely let him put his arms around me and certainly never let him in my bed again. The poor man went around in a state of such abject misery that one day, having grown tired of him following me around like a bewildered puppy, I announced that I’d grown bored of him and didn’t want to see him ever again. It was just after we’d spent an evening at Gore Vidal’s house on the Amalfi Coast, in fact. I broke the bad news to him while we were driving back down the mountain. Actually, I waited until we got close to the bottom in case he drove us over a cliff. Gore wasn’t my biggest fan, I should say. He felt that I was just using Dash to get a good American publisher and that, once I had what I wanted, I would walk away.’