The Fahrenheit Twins Page 20

  Conscientious as always, I forced myself to re-read the most universally well-received of all her novels – her debut, A Dog’s Life. I admired the way the disintegration of Neil and Catherine’s relationship is observed through the innocent eyes of their Jack Russell, but even in the most heart-tugging passages, I was nagged by a sense that the alienness of the dog’s perspective is a cop-out, a failure of the author to take responsibility for her own cluelessness about human motivation. This failure cripples all her books; for all her cleverness, we know perfectly well that they are not written by cats, dogs, dolphins, rats, and all the other zoological protagonists she worked her way through, but by a woman who never quite got the hang of being human. It was this basic contradiction that I was interested in addressing when I went to interview her.

  Security was tight, even by the standards of paranoid best-selling authors. I was driven to her mansion in a limousine with darkened windows, and was chattered at constantly by Tabitha’s agent, just in case I was managing somehow to plot the route. I was made to sign a document promising I would not ask questions calling ‘undue’ attention to Mrs Warren’s advanced age, her physical appearance or her relationship with her husband. I was to use a notepad, not a tape recorder – although any fabrications would be pursued vigorously through the courts if need be. Photographs were verboten, as was any discussion of the Warrens’ legal battles with their disgruntled children.

  ‘Tabitha and Jack are sick to death of distorted journalism,’ the agent told me, narrowing her eyes meaningfully as we drove through Devonshire to our secret destination. ‘If they see yet another article along the lines of, ‘crazy old Tabitha Warren living in her lonely mansion with only her pets to love’, they’ll hit the roof.’

  I signed the document, but when I finally arrived at the Warrens’ house, I couldn’t help thinking that if the Warrens were going to hit the roof, at least their roof was A-listed by English Heritage, decorated with Elizabethan turrets, and an awfully long way off the ground.

  Still, my initial impression of Tabitha was more favourable than I expected. She seemed embarrassed, even upset, by the fuss that was being made around her. She had come out to meet me as soon as the car pulled up, greeted me with a smile, and suggested,‘Shall we do it here, in the sun?’ But her agent and her husband immediately hustled us inside. Then the agent took ages to leave, scolding me for all sorts of things she was convinced I was scheming to write. Then her husband took over, claiming that his arrangement with the Independent was that he and Tabitha be interviewed together. He stood next to the chair where she was sitting, his huge mottled hand hooked over her tiny shoulder, a lugubrious hulk in a truly horrid double-breasted suit.

  When I insisted on speaking to Tabitha alone, he backed down but still didn’t grant us full privacy. Minutes after he’d left the room, I could hear him in the adjacent study, pretending to be sorting fan mail.

  ‘What a welcome,’ I said ruefully, deciding on impulse to test out Tabitha’s erudition. ‘I feel like Charlotte Corday.’

  ‘Oh, stab away my dear,’ she said, without missing a beat. ‘As long as your knife is clean.’

  She grinned. Her face was a mask of wrinkles underneath her expensive bob of jet-black hair, but she looked elegant and striking. The author shot that HarperCollins kept using on the backs of her books might have been taken twenty years before, but she was still giving it a run for its money. Her body was in good shape, too; slim, and clad in black leggings under a loose peasant dress – designer peasant, made by ritzy French couturiers.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, leaning forward to whisper, ‘it’s not you they’re worried about, it’s me. They’re all afraid I’ll disgrace myself.’ And she widened her big green eyes theatrically.

  The first ten, fifteen minutes of the interview went pretty much the way interviews with Tabitha Warren were wont to go. She rabbited on (if you’ll excuse the expression) about how she felt that she could really put herself inside the minds of animals, and how she thought there must be a bit of that in all of us, or her work wouldn’t have attracted such a big readership. While she spoke, a variety of subdued, pampered – ooking pets wandered in and out of the room –a Persian cat, a Siamese, a mammoth sheepdog, and, yes, a Jack Russell. They sat at her feet and allowed themselves to be patted for a while, then dawdled out again. Their claws ticked on the great expanse of polished mahogany floor. Through the French windows I could see the limousine parked outside, its driver reading a newspaper, waiting for me to finish. Tabitha’s agent was out there somewhere, too, exploring the immaculate gardens in the company of her mobile phone.

  I told Tabitha I’d heard rumours that she’d written a new book. Her face lit up for a moment, but then a loudish thump sounded from the study, and she went glum.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Cat’s Paw was the last. Thirteen novels is quite a pile. I ask myself, does the world really need another book by me?’

  ‘Many people would think so.’

  ‘There is only so much one can do, don’t you think?’

  ‘Within a narrow field, yes.’

  Her eyes twinkled in pain, but it didn’t seem to have its origin in my remark. She fidgeted in her armchair, drawing her knees up to her chin, a curiously childish posture for a woman of seventy-odd.

  Suddenly there was a telephone trill from inside the study. Jack Warren answered it, and, after a distinctly audible ‘Yes?’, lowered his voice to a murmur. It was a strange kind of murmur, though: not a considerate murmur, or an adulterous murmur. An agitated murmur, the sound of a man called unexpectedly to account for some unforgivable sin. Tabitha and I both noticed it; our interpretation was identical and we knew that it was.

  Instantly, she leaned forward in her chair, her chin slipping between her knees.

  ‘It’s one of the children, you can bet on it’ she said. ‘He should’ve let the machine handle it.’

  I didn’t know how to take this. If I’d been a tabloid hack, I suppose I would have seized my chance, asked her about the family strife, the daughters’ accusations that Jack kept Tabitha a prisoner in her own house, that he’d had a harem of mistresses over the years, that she had no say in the running of her business affairs. But all I could think to ask was,

  ‘Have you ever thought of writing something totally different?’

  She slid down off her chair, squatted on the floor in front of me. The sheepdog sidled up to her, squatting down too.

  ‘Oh, I have, I have,’she said.

  She was an unsettling sight, sending a chill down my spine even now as I recall it: an old, old woman with thin limbs wreathed in black cotton, rocking on her haunches, never for an instant taking her eyes off me.

  ‘Is it fear of disappointing your fans that stops you trying it?’ I suggested.

  The question bounced off her like a ball of wool. I might just as well have asked her about the temperature on Mars or the latest football score from Sicily.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered, her big eyes animated and furtive. ‘I’ve already written it. All this palaver I come out with in interviews, of “There’s nothing more to say” — it’s all lies. I have to lie, you see.’

  ‘Who makes you lie?’

  She tipped her head in the direction of the study. Her black fringe fell in front of her eyes.

  ‘But why?’ I said, feeling out of my depth. ‘Is this new book about him?’

  She shook her head vigorously, like a child. Her little black mane swept back and forth.

  ‘So why doesn’t he want it published?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whined softly. ‘Who can guess what goes through his head?’

  Before I could think of anything else to say, she was crawling across the floor, heading for an antique bureau, talking all the way there.

  ‘My earlier novels are no good, no good at all. False, fake, cowardly. The mind in them isn’t an animal mind. It’s a human mind dressed up in animal clothes. A human voice with a slight animal acce
nt.’

  I was surprised by this last phrase. It was sparkier and more impressive than anything I’d read in her work. In fact, it eroded my condescension towards her and I was moved to treat her as a big grownup writer – at the same time as I was watching her crawl on all fours.

  ‘Uh … well, that’s an unavoidable problem, surely,’ I tried to reassure her, ‘with anthropomorphism?’

  She’d found what she was looking for, hidden under the bureau. It was a sheet of paper, soiled with house dust and dog hair.

  ‘Here,’ she said, sliding along the polished wood towards me. ‘This is my new book. I keep bits of it stashed everywhere, so he won’t find it. Don’t read it now, there may not be time. But take it; keep it safe.’

  Blushing and awkward, I folded the handwritten text into a smaller square and slipped it into my jacket.

  ‘It’s called The Window Is Not Open,’ she said. ‘It’s a tale told by a cat.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said as brightly as I could, but something in my voice must have betrayed my disappointment.

  ‘No, no, not like Cat’s Paw,’she whispered intensely. ‘This one really is told by a cat. Unadulterated. No human interference. Pure.cat. A book that cats themselves would read, if cats could read.’

  ‘Have you tried reading it aloud to yours?’

  She glared at me chidingly, clambering, backwards, into her armchair again.

  ‘You’re making fun of me, dear, but I don’t care. What I’ve given you will convince you. Of course I’ve had to make a compromise, writing it in English. But that’s the only compromise I’ve made.’

  I had to struggle to keep a straight face, even though, later when I got to read her illicit scribblings, I realised she was quite right. This is the extract that nestled in my jacket pocket: (Please note that I have no idea if this was the beginning of the book, the end, or from the middle)

  Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse? Not mouse.

  Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse? Not mouse.

  Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Time before, here a mouse was. Grass rustle. Mouse? Mouse. Come, mouse. Come. Yessss!

  Mouse is mine now. In my mouth, warm pulse. On my tongue, heart beat. Come mouse. Come to my house. My house full of mouses, a place for play. This is the way: the grass, the hard ground, the window. Inside my house, my master. Are you big enough for him? Don’t break yet, be alive. Alive for him. My master’s giant hand will touch all of me in master love. His hand, stroking me, like too many tongues.

  But the window is not open. The window is not open. Mouse in mouth, warm pulse, heart beat, but the window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open. The window is not open.

  Sitting there in Tabitha Warren’s swanky front room, I was suddenly aware of an acrid smell. Tabitha was squatting on her armchair, a faraway look in her eyes as her husband hurried in from the study.

  Jack Warren glanced first at Tabitha, then at me, then at the door to the outside, an unmistakable signal that the interview was over. He took up his former position at Tabitha’s side, laying his hand on her shoulder in a gesture (I now thought) of protectiveness and sorrow. Whatever he had just endured on the telephone had knocked the sheen of composure off his face, adding red rims to his eyelids, disordering his thin grey hair. The smell was pungent now, attracting the sheepdog, who padded up to Tabitha’s chair and sniffed around it.

  ‘My wife is very tired,’ he said, to get me moving.

  Tabitha twisted her head and looked up at him, following the length of his arm all the way up to his pained face.

  ‘Oh but I’m not a bit tired, Jack,’ she protested mildly.

  ‘Nevertheless, darling,’ he sighed, stroking her hair. ‘Nevertheless …’

  I got up and, for courtesy’s sake, crossed over to the pair of them and, rather formally, shook their hands. Jack Warren’s was warm and dry, if somewhat weak;Tabitha’s was clammy, an eager squeeze with a hint of nails that needed cutting. Her parting words to me were:

  ‘Remember, dear: all I’ve achieved so far has been just … toying. The best is yet to come.’

  I feel that perhaps these should be immortalised as Tabitha Warren’s last words, rather than the ones you quoted in your obituary – supposedly overheard by one of the nurses who cared for her in the final phases of her dementia. These bitter remarks that she reputedly made about her husband – a man who was no longer around to defend himself – don’t sound much like Tabitha Warren’s voice to me, and I would question the journalistic ethics of quoting them. After all, more reliable sources than this (suspiciously nameless) nurse insist that in all the lonely months and years after her beloved Jack’s death, Tabitha never spoke again.

  Yours, etc

  VANILLA-BRIGHT LIKE EMINEM

  Don, son of people no longer living, husband of Alice, father of Drew and Aleesha, is very, very close to experiencing the happiest moment of his life.

  It’s 10.03 according to his watch, and he is travelling down through the Scottish highlands to Inverness, tired and ever-so-slightly anxious in case he falls asleep between now and when the train reaches the station, and misses his cue to say to Alice, Drew and Aleesha: ‘OK, this is Inverness, let’s move it.’ His wife and children are dozing, worn out by sightseeing; the responsibility rests on his shoulders. He doesn’t know that the train terminates in Inverness and that everyone will be told by loudspeakers to get out; he imagines it rolling smoothly on, ferrying them farther south, stealthily leaving their pre-booked bed & breakfast behind. This is his first visit to Scotland; the film in his camera has only two shots left; there’s no Diet Coke on the refreshment trolley; his wife’s head sags forward, giving her a double chin; big raindrops skid silently against the thick glass of the train windows.

  Don and his family have occupied the table seating on both sides of the central aisle: eight seats in all, for four people. He reassures himself that this is OK: the train isn’t very full. Plus, he and his family are big people: Americans, head-and-shoulders above most of the other passengers. Drew, just turned fifteen, is five-eleven; Don is six-two. Both of them have hands like boxers. Three hours ago, on the way down to breakfast in an overheated hotel near Dunrobin Castle, Drew had a little blow-out and said ‘Fuck you, Dad’, but they’ve made up since then, and Don is two minutes away from the big moment.

  Alice and Aleesha are across the aisle, slumped opposite each other, their sports bags
propped in the window seats, too bulky for the overhead baggage rack. Aleesha, still a child at thirteen despite her budding breasts and chapped white nail polish, has snoozed off in the middle of reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Her thin arm dangles in the aisle, bracelets of chewed multi-coloured cotton hooped around her knobbly wrist. Her mother is dreaming uneasily, digging her head into the back of the seat as if registering her frustration with its pitiless design. Alice is forty, and hates being forty. Every month, three days before her period, she starts complaining about her body and its worsening imperfections, and Don has to tell her whatever she wants to hear, which takes some guessing.

  The happiest moment of his life so far, besides the one he’s about to experience, was when he saw Alice waiting for him outside what was then still called Kentucky Fried Chicken, and she smiled at him, and they both knew they were going to drive straight to Ben and Lisa’s empty beach house and make love to each other for the first time. Those three days at Ben and Lisa’s place were magnificent, and he felt such joy in bed with Alice, getting to know her in that way, but her smile when he approached her – that smile of welcome and anticipation and conviction that she was doing the right thing — that was a more memorable thrill than anything they did afterwards. Standing in that doorway under an icon of Colonel Sanders, she was wearing a little black dress with a tan raincoat loosely buckled over it: very French, or so he thought then, never having been to France but having seen movies set there. (He and Alice finally visited Paris in ‘97, but were kind of distracted by arguments with the kids about the Louvre versus Eurodisney.) Today his wife is wearing a khaki-coloured T-shirt and a loose flannel shirt over that: drab, utilitarian travelling gear.