The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

He seemed, however, more or less to have given up on this attempt: instead of making any more calculations, he simply sat there, sucking on his pencil and looking at the pages of arithmetic with sightless, unfocused eyes.

‘But, Roger,’ I began, gently, ‘Crispin is your friend, after all. He won’t hold us to this, will he?’

At these words, after a short pause in which to digest them, Roger leaped up and began to pace the room.

‘Are you a halfwit?’ he barked, after a minute or two. ‘Don’t you understand anything? We signed a piece of paper. The City has a code of conduct for this sort of thing. Dictum meum pactum – “My word is my bond”. He’s going to take everything he can off us, you fool! Down to the last farthing. He’s in this up to his neck as well, you know. He will have lost a fortune today. An absolute bloody fortune. So he’s not going to let us wriggle out of this one.’

There was a longer silence, during which I took in the enormity of what he was telling me, and its possible consequences: all our plans come to nothing, and ahead of me the prospect of weeks, or months, not merely of poverty but debt – for Roger had persuaded me to commit to this ludicrous wager even more money than I actually had to my credit in a bank account. And when my mind began to dwell on that fact, I started to feel towards him something which, until now, I had never allowed myself to feel: indignation – pure, boiling, seething indignation.

‘No, you’re the halfwit,’ I said to him – in a measured tone, at first: but when he looked across at me in disbelief, my voice started to rise. ‘You idiot, Roger! How could you have done this? More to the point, how can I have been so trusting? Why did I listen to you? Why have I let you treat me this way for months, doing everything at your behest, running around at your beck and call as if I were your mistress? I was so impressed by you, so in awe of you, and now … now this! You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t even know what you were talking about. You’re a fraud, that’s what you are. What our American cousins would call a phoney. And here I’ve been, hanging on your every word, believing everything you tell me – giving away half of my favourite books because you despise the authors, throwing away most of my own poems because you treated them with such … cold, calculated disdain. And yet you’re a fraud, pure and simple! To think that I listened to you, to think that I took you seriously! When you weren’t making a spectacle of us both in the theatre, you were trying to tell me that the Christian faith was bunkum and we should all be sacrificing goats in the middle of a stone circle instead – you even told me that you were going to put a curse on your sister, for pity’s sake! Well, who do you think you are, exactly? A guru, a magician? A cross between Leavis, Midas and Gandalf? I’m afraid it won’t wash any more, Roger – it just won’t wash. You’ve dazzled me for long enough. The truth is that I can see through you now. My eyes have been opened. I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least – although it’s been a heavy price to pay, a very heavy price. Well, one lives and learns.’

I picked up my coat from the bed and started putting it on again, intending to leave; but I was halted by some words of Roger’s, spoken in a low, insistent, chilling monotone.

‘I did put a curse on my sister,’ he said.

I paused, with my arm halfway into a sleeve.

‘Pardon?’

By way of reply, Roger walked over to the mantelpiece, and picked up a letter. It was written on two sheets of blue notepaper, folded in half. He handed it to me, and stood over me while I was reading it.

It was from his mother. I cannot remember much of what it said, but I do remember the thrust, which was to let Roger know that his sister was distraught, after losing her baby in a miscarriage a few days earlier.

‘So?’ I said, handing back the letter, and finishing the business of putting my coat on.

‘I did that,’ he said.

I looked at him for a moment, to see if he was being serious. Apparently, he was. ‘Don’t be ludicrous,’ I said, and made for the door.

Roger grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me back.

‘It’s true, I tell you. That was what I asked her for.’

‘Asked her? Asked who?’

‘The Goddess.’

I was in no mood to hear this. Whether what he said was true or not (or whether he believed it or not – which perhaps was more to the point), I wanted to leave.

‘Enjoy your festival tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘I’m going home.’

I tried to shake myself free from his grip, but it became tighter. I looked into his eyes and was amazed to see that there were tears welling up in them.

‘Don’t go, Harold,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go.’

Before I really knew what was happening, he had drawn me closer to him, and was kissing me on the mouth. I tried to pull away but his embrace was stronger than I would have thought possible.

‘So much,’ he was whispering, as the bristles of his beard brushed coarsely against my lips, ‘so much we haven’t done. So much still to do …’

I could feel his erection growing against my own crotch. With one final return of strength, I wrenched myself free and pushed him away with all the force I could muster. In fact it was enough to throw him off his feet and into the fireplace, where he knocked over the electric fire (fortunately unlit) and ended up half-sitting, half-lying, and rubbing his head where it had inadvertently cracked against the Victorian tiling. It crossed my mind for a moment that I might actually have caused him some injury, but such was my fury that, instead of rushing to his aid, I fumbled with the latch on his door, pulled it open as quickly as I could, and was gone without bothering to close it, and without so much as a backward glance.

*

There is not much more to tell.

I did not see Roger again for more than a year after that. A short, businesslike note arrived from him on the Monday morning, informing me that Crispin Lambert was demanding the payment of a large sum of money. I scraped the sum together (borrowing most of it from my parents) and sent it off to him as soon as I could. After that, things went very quiet. I heard that Roger had left his jobbing firm, and no longer worked on the Exchange