‘Sorry.’
‘Maybe you’re trying too hard. Maybe if you ease up a little …’
‘If I ease up a little, what? Suddenly she’ll appear and everything will be the way it was before it stopped being that way?’
‘Stop straining for special effects, Max. Just go for ordinary memories with no frills.’
‘Can we do straight memories now?’ says Max, ‘like regular people?’
‘Let’s try,’ says his mind.
10 Frank Sinatra, Doris Day
February 1997. The lights of the Albert Bridge are beads of hope strung across the night. Max and Lola both have songs in their heads: Max’s song is the Frank Sinatra version of ‘My One and Only Love’. Lola’s is the Doris Day ‘If I Give My Heart to You’. They’re both thinking a lot and not talking much as they walk along the Embankment towards the Chelsea Bridge. After a while Lola says, ‘I think I should tell you about Basil Meissen-Potts.’
‘Fragile, is he?’ says Max. In his mind stamping heavily upon the Meissen-Pottsery of the unknown Basil.
‘Not at all,’ says Lola. ‘He’s a black belt and a demon cricketer. His main thing is being a QC.’
‘Why do you need to tell me about him?’
‘Well, Daddy and Mummy rather expect me to marry him. Not that I want to.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘All the same, he’s part of a kind of life that I’m accustomed to, and it isn’t something one walks away from lightly. I’ll follow my heart wherever it takes me but it’s got to be the real thing.’ She and Max have so far used the word love only in connection with spooky stories, Monteverdi, rain, the Albert Bridge, and so on.
‘Are you the real thing?’ says Max’s mind.
‘How real can I be, for Christ’s sake?’ says Max. ‘Some mornings when I wake up I’m not even there.’
‘I wonder how long the light bulbs on the Albert Bridge last,’ says Lola.
‘They can always get new ones as the old ones burn out,’ says Max. ‘It’ll never go dark.’
11 Blighter’s Rock No
February 1997. When Max isn’t with Lola and also when he is, he’s looking for Page One. This is a bit like trying to retrieve a coin that’s fallen down a grating. Is that it, that faint gleam in the darkness? Not sure. He lowers weighted strings and chewing gum and brings up bottle caps.
‘Blighter’s rock?’ says Max’s mind.
‘I am not rocked,’ says Max. He avoids the proper name of that condition in which writers are unable to write. ‘My ideas aren’t the usual thing and they don’t come easy.’ His last novel, Any That You Can Not Put Downe, published in 1993, was about a man’s pursuit of the ghost of a woman who put a curse on him. His two previous novels, Turn Down An Empty Glass and Ten Thousand Several Doors, were published five and seven years ago respectively. For each of these Max received a twenty-thousand-pound advance. None of the three has yet earned back that advance. Fortunately Charlotte Prickles, Lollipop Lady was a commercial success when it came out in 1994, and his juvenile backlist is healthy. So Max can afford to write another novel. If he can think of one.
‘I’m starting to get a kind of flavour,’ says his mind.
‘What kind of flavour?’
‘Dark, shadowy, sad, full of loss.’
‘I’m tasting it,’ says Max. ‘It’s very disturbing.’
‘But it’s your kind of thing, no?’
‘Yes, but it scares me.’
‘Scared is good, isn’t it?’
‘Not this kind,’ says Max. ‘It’s not the normal kind of writing panic. It’s full of regret.’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t know and I’m afraid to find out.’
12 When Claude Met Lula Mae
February 1997. A Sunday afternoon. Max and Lola in the National Gallery, standing in front of Claude’s Landscape with Psyche outside of the Palace of Cupid. ‘Poor Psyche!’ says Lola.
‘If she hadn’t lit that lamp to sneak a peek at Cupid he wouldn’t have flown away,’ says Max. ‘But she wasn’t content to be kept in the dark.’
‘No one likes to be kept in the dark,’ says Lola. ‘Now she’s lost her love and there’s darkness all around her.’
‘Consequences of…’ says Max. He’s picking up a scent, a fragrance.
‘Of what?’ says Lola.
‘Magnolia blossoms?’ says Max. He turns to see a young woman looking at the same picture. A homecoming-queen kind of beauty and he can tell by the hang of her face that she’s American.
‘Clawed!’ she says. ‘You can’t beat him for atmosphere.’
‘Clowed,’ says Max.
‘But in Casablanca it’s Clawed Rains who says, “Round up the usual suspects,”’ says the homecoming queen.
‘In the National Gallery it’s Clowed,’ says Max.
‘I’ll keep that in mind. I’m Lula Mae Flowers.’
‘Max Lesser.’ Handshake. ‘This is Lola Bessington.’
‘Hi,’ says Lula Mae to Lola. To Max she says, ‘You here for a visit?’
‘I live here. You?’
‘I work here as of last week, Everest Technology Sales, transferred from Austin. What do you do?’
‘Write,’ says Max. ‘Novels.’
‘What have you written?’
‘Any That You Can Not Put Downe was the most recent. Not published in the States.’
‘You’re an H. P. Lovecraft fan! How about that! So far from home!’ She speaks with exclamation marks.
‘I think I’ve seen enough of this one,’ says Lola to Max. ‘I’ll move on to the next room.’ To Lula Mae she says, ‘Nice meeting you.’
‘Likewise,’ says Lula Mae.
‘I hope you enjoy London,’ says Max to her as he follows Lola.
‘Do my best. Maybe our paths will cross again.’
‘You never know,’ says Max as he watches the sweet primeval motion of her going-away view.
‘I never noticed till now that your eyes are on stalks,’ says Lola.
‘Retractable,’ says Max.
‘I think Lula Mae Magnolia Blossom has gone,’ says Lola, ‘and I want to get back to the Claweds.’ She leads the way to A Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba. ‘There’s the ship waiting to take her away into the early morning with fair weather and favouring winds. It looks as if it’s happening on a stage, I can almost hear the rollers creaking as the waves lap at the shore. How many filters of unreality are there between the real Queen of Sheba and this one!’
‘Unreality is part of reality,’ says Max.
13 When Max’s Mind Met Lula Mae
February 1997. Still that Sunday. ‘No,’ says Max’s mind.
‘What no?’ says Max.
‘You’re not going to have a go at that sweet primeval motion.’
‘You sound as if I have a go at anything that moves,’ says Max.
‘So you won’t be looking up Everest Technology in the phone book?’
‘Give me a break. She’s a little bit of home, and naturally if I bump into her we’ll have a coffee or something.’
‘A little bit of home! What, now you’re from Texas?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I certainly do. Coffee or something! You’ve got a real thing going with Lola, so what do you want with Lula Mae? As if I didn’t know.’
‘Maybe I’m not ready for This-Is-It.’