‘Where was your father found after the second heart attack?’
‘At the bottom of the stairs.’
‘He would have known by then that the journal was missing, that he was on the brink of exposure and the end of his world,’ said the man. ‘So easy to throw himself on the unyielding marble and leave it all in his favourite son’s hands.’
This silenced Javier. He sat with the pressure building in his mind, the floor of his memory creaking under the old weight.
‘This is how consciousness works. It’s slow. Scaling the high-security walls of denial is painstaking,’ said the voice. ‘But we do not have the luxury of time. Tell me why you think your father wanted you to read these journals?’
‘He didn’t. The letter made that clear.’
‘What did it make clear?’ said the voice sharply. ‘Do you seriously imagine he expected you, a detective, to put the letter away and carry on with the rest of your life?’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, Javier, I’ll say it for you. That letter is telling you to read the journals. And why did he want that?’
‘So that … so that I could share the pain of his tormented life?’
‘Is that a line from a movie? Something nice and sentimental from Hollywood, perhaps?’ said the voice. ‘I won’t tolerate that stuff in here, Javier. Now tell me why — I’m sounding like your father with Salgado now — tell me why he wanted you to read the journals?’
‘So that I could learn to hate him?’
‘You are so pathetically needy, Javier,’ he said. ‘Why did he praise your police skills so highly and tell you they would be useful in finding the missing journal?’
Javier fought hard against the idea that had just entered his head. Even now he clung on. It was all he had left. It was one of the few things that sustained him. His father’s love of forty-three years. Even the love of a monster was hard to give up.
‘Some help for you Javier,’ he said. ‘I won’t read it all … just the pertinent bits. Are you ready?’
7th April 1963, NY
On the way to NY Salgado proposes that prior to the showing of the final Falcon nude I should publish my journals. I choke with appalled hilarity at the prospect. What a fantastic undoing that would be. I laugh in great hiccuping gulps. It is Mercedes who’s put him up to this. I’ve seen them hatching their plans and M. has unnerved me on a number of occasions by wafting past as I jot my dysenteric jottings. (She has a pair of very supple and silent gold sandals — I shall have to scatter nutshells to catch her out.) I give Salgado an emphatic no, which tweaks his fascination.
31st December 1963, Tangier
I have been careless and it has changed everything. M. and I were in the studio yesterday. The children were playing in the street below, so excited about their game that they didn’t wait to get on to the soft sand of the beach. Javier, desperate to keep up, fell and hit his head. His face was covered in blood. I ran from the studio and threw him into the car and took him straight to the hospital where they put a few stitches in his head. By the time I returned to the studio I could see that everything had changed.
So what is actually different? We are still man and wife, we still live in the same house, we are still having the New Year’s Eve party tonight.
When I returned from the hospital M. did not immediately ask after Javier, who was at home with the maid. She was on the verandah looking at me as if I was a lone wolf across an ice field. I walked towards her, telling her about Javier, as if auditioning. She manoeuvred around me back into the room. I said he was at home and wanted to see her. She practically ran for the door. We drove back in a frosty silence, with Paco and Manuela fighting in the back. She went upstairs and I to my study.
I am still here now, twenty-four hours later, watching her shadow on the ceiling of Javier’s room. It is already dark. It is only a matter of hours before the guests arrive for dinner. Later we will go to the boat and watch the British fireworks display in the port. I am nearly paralysed with sadness. I watch her shadow, which has enlarged because she is holding Javier. They come to the window and look into the dark patio and the inkier blackness of the fig tree. I have tears in my eyes because I know that she is saying goodbye to Javier, that she will be my wife at this party and then no more. She is going and in going she will betray me. I shall go to my room now and put on my white dinner jacket.
5th January 1964, Tangier
I am ruined with fatigue but I have to bring myself to the page, my pristine confessional. This is what my journal has become. I vomit and the ghastly nausea of my existence subsides. On the evening of the party I was dressing. She went straight to the bathroom as if to hide. She waited for me to leave before putting on her evening dress. I went to check the children. She didn’t come down until the guests arrived. My eyes followed her as she mingled, occasionally our glances clashed and we’d switch away. Dinner was loud and boisterous, but I experienced it as a child under the table. After the meal we gathered in the hall while the women put on their coats and Javier suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs. M. carried him back up to bed with his face buried in her neck. We left the house in a crowd, M. on Salgado’s arm. Champagne corks popped as we arrived at the yacht. The fireworks happened. The guests began to leave.
I said to Ramon that I wanted to take the boat out and asked him to put it to M. ‘She’d do anything for you,’ I said. ‘But she can easily talk me out of it.’ The three of us put out an hour later. It was flat and cold and a half-moon added to the chill. We drank champagne at the wheel with M. wrapped in a coat of Arctic fox. The stillness out there was terrible. Then the wind got up from nowhere and Ramon, who was drunk, went down below. I turned the boat back towards Tangier.
Finally M. said: ‘I’m leaving you … you know that now, don’t you?’ I asked her how she’d found the diaries. She’d persuaded Javier to tell her where I kept them. Her face was very close to mine as she spoke and she added: ‘Your secret is between us.’ If I thought about it, even for a moment, I would not be able to go through with it, so I rapped her with my knuckles on her solar plexus and she doubled up over my arm. I shoved her hard, firing her backwards to the rail, which hit her below the buttock. She vaulted over and, like a comic turn, her feet flipped into the darkness. The splash was inaudible. I didn’t look back. The sea grew before me and there was quite a storm blowing as we came into Tangier. As we entered the port I called to M. and Salgado to come up oh deck. Salgado appeared bleary-eyed. I told him to wake M. and he went back down. In seconds he was back saying she
