I wondered what was moving at this moment in Gerard David’s mystic wood at the Johan de Witthuis, I wondered what was rising from the pinky dawn water between the beach and the Island Tamaraca. I’d told Melanie about everything but Medusa.
Looking at the Sleeping Gipsy, I said, ‘What do you think is going to happen in that picture?’
‘First tell me what you think.’
‘I think the gipsy is in a dream. The lion isn’t in the dream so the gipsy is safe for the moment. But if the gipsy wakes up or the lion falls asleep there could be big trouble.’
‘You’ll notice’, said Melanie, ‘that the gipsy’s got a lute or a mandolin.’
‘Yes, I notice that.’
‘Well, this gipsy’s been busking around for a while and she’s tired of doing it alone. Her birth sign is Leo so she’s put an ad in Time Out: “MUSICAL LEO SEEKS PARTNER.” The lion answered and they’ve arranged to meet by the river but he’s late and she’s fallen asleep waiting for him.’
‘The question is’, I said, ‘has he got any talent?’
‘If not he can always get by on his looks,’ she said.
We ate our fish and chips and drank our beer contentedly; our windows were golden in the night. From the front window I looked down on the Saturday night North End Road and saw Gom Yawncher go unsteadily past with a bottle in his hand. He was singing:
Yessir, I can boogie
but I need that certain song –
I can boogie, boogie-woogie
all night long.
Yes, I thought, maybe I’ve got that certain song now. She was so beautiful, there was in the air such bright promise of nights following nights. I walked around the room taking in the herness of it, looking at book titles, picking up small objects. On the drawing table next to the typewriter was an A4 folder. Eurydice and Orpheus, it said.
‘Eurydice and Orpheus!’ I said.
‘Yes. I’d rather you didn’t look at it.’
‘You’re writing something.’
‘Yes.’
‘For yourself? Off your own bat?’
‘For Classique. It’s the one Sol wanted you to do and you turned down.’
‘He didn’t waste any time, did he,’ I said.
‘There’s no mandatory waiting period before someone else has a go, is there? Especially as you’d already wasted whatever time there was to waste.’
‘Sol told me to give it my best upmarket thinking. Are you thinking upmarket?’
‘For four thousand quid I’ll think however he likes. It’s a commercial proposition.’
‘And you’re a commercial person?’ As I said that I told myself there was no reason why Sol shouldn’t offer her the same money he’d offered me; looking at it with strict objectivity and grinding my teeth a little I accepted that all those years of speech-ballooning hadn’t made me worth any more than the rankest beginner. And the novels, after all, counted for nothing.
‘I’m no more commercial than you are,’ she said. ‘I’m just doing what you’ve been doing with your comic-writing all these years — I’m buying time.’
‘You’re working on a novel.’
‘Don’t worry, it isn’t catching.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, you recoiled so violently that I thought I’d better reassure you.’
‘Reassure me that there’s no danger of my writing a novel.’
‘That isn’t what I meant but if that’s how you choose to take it then all right.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m being stupid.’
‘You said it, I didn’t,’ she said.
‘I wonder if we could possibly wind back the evening to where we were just before I saw that Eurydice and Orpheus folder?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Now the gipsy’s wondering whether the lion really is a lion or maybe just two very small blokes in a lion suit.’
‘Two very small blokes,’ I said to my face in the mirror as I brushed my teeth alone at home, ‘and no boogie-woogie for either of them.’
17 Where Do We Go from Here?
‘Veuve Clicquot,’ said Hilary Forthryte to the waiter. She was a vivid-looking woman with long dark hair and she was wearing a Ralph Lauren safari outfit with very expensive boots. Sitting next to her was a small gimlet-eyed bearded man in a leather jacket. ‘My partner Ivor Dreft,’ she said. ‘We thought it might be a good idea for him to be in at the beginning of this.’
The skylight in the top-floor dining-room of L’Escargot let in a better class of daylight than was available in the street; the people in the room all looked as if they were in full colour in a Sunday supplement. Youth and beauty, talent and fame were all around me.
‘Hilary!’ said an immense bearded man, also in safari clothes. He kissed Forthryte on the mouth and during the kiss they both said, ‘Umm-mmhh!’ When they’d done that he made signs of professional recognition to Kraken, Fallok, and Dreft and nodded pleasantly to me. You may be nobody, said his look, but you might have money or influence and what does it cost me to nod pleasantly. ‘Are we going to see you on Sunday?’ he said to Forthryte.
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ she said, and immediately I imagined a great coruscation of youth and beauty, talent and fame. ‘Ferdy Phyvemill,’ she said, ‘Herman Orff.’
‘Hi,’ said Phyvemill, getting the better grip and crunching my hand.
‘I’ve got your Lost Incas of the City on tape,’ I said. ‘I’ve watched it four times so far.’
‘Piracy,’ said Phyvemill. ‘Send me money. Are you in the business?’
‘Herman’s working on a Channel 4 film with us,’ said Forthryte while I manifested humility.
‘Doing what?’ said Phyvemill.
‘Speech balloons,’ I said.
‘Herman’s a writer,’ said Forthryte.
Phyvemill withdrew his earlier pleasant nod. ‘Watch him,’ he said to Kraken, made his farewells, and hulked off.
‘His last picture was a disaster,’ said Kraken.
‘It grossed $50 million last year,’ said Dreft.
‘Plus it came top at Cannes and kept a lot of people in work for almost two years,’ said Forthryte.
‘Most of them were shooting documentaries on Ferdy Phyvemill at work on his film,’ said Kraken.
‘Was that The Secret History of the Mongols?’I said.
‘More like the secret history of the Brits,’ said Fallok. ‘The only Mongols were the extras, the horses, and the porters.’
‘Here’s to Eurydice and Orpheus,’ said Forthryte as the waiter filled our glasses.
‘It’s entirely correct that you should name them in that order,’ said Kraken, ‘Eurydice being the whole of which Orpheus is the part.’
‘Would you say that she’s the sea in which the blind and voyaging head of Orpheus swims?’ I said.
Everybody looked at me with a strange look.
‘I have said precisely that,’ said Kraken, ‘in that scene in Codename Orpheus in which Eurydice is the sea that Orpheus swims in. Is it possible that you have forgotten that image and the sound of her singing?’
‘Actually I haven’t seen the film,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ said Kraken.
‘I haven’t wanted to know any modern versions of the story,’ I said. ‘I like my ideas to come to me out of ignorance.’
‘And what ideas have come to you out of your ignorance so far?’ said Kraken. ‘How do you propose to take hold of our theme?’
At that moment the waiter appeared with our starters. I’d ordered grapefruit but I found on my plate the sliced-off top of the head of Orpheus. It was inverted like a bowl from which I was about to spoon up the brain.