‘New paragraph. I heard him out and I told him quite firmly, “I’ve always thought of you as Martin’s father, so the taboo is still there and I can’t pretend it isn’t. Sorry to disappoint, but there we are.” He was a perfect gent about it, as I said. Then we watched the news and he played some jazz, you rang, and I went to bed (I was already ailing from the Parfait Amour).
‘We’re coming to the last bit. God, this – this calligraphy’s positively gruesome. So bad luck, mate. Rather confusing, no? Still – not the milkman! exclamation mark. Not the milkman. Just the wanker from Hell. Yours, Phoebe Phelps. PS. It broke my heart to hear about poor dear Myfanwy. You must feel so horribly guilty…
‘Dot dot dot. The end.’
They sat for a time in silence.
‘Elena, which one is lying? Was he lying? Or is she lying?’
‘…Most likely they’re both lying. He lied to get her into bed. Which he no doubt did anyway, without lying, without exerting himself in any way. She lied about that. And now she’s lying about this.’
He waved his bandaged hand in the air. ‘Wait. Give me a moment to…’ Just then the dishwasher churned into life. ‘You know, some of this is plausible – the stuff about 1948. Okay, circumstantially plausible. But psychologically plausible too.’
Elena was sceptically considering him. He went on,
‘See, Mum always admired and respected Philip. I’ve been looking at the Letters. Kingsley’s. She’d dress up – she needed some persuasion but she’d dress up in sort of babydoll outfits, and Kingsley took photos and sent them to Hell. Hull. No. Leicester. Oh yeah. And Mum woke up once saying she dreamt Philip was kissing her. I don’t know. The jolly Hogmanay rings true. Kingsley wouldn’t have minded that much. If at all.’
‘Because he was drunk.’
‘No – because he was queer. Kingsley was a bit gay for Larkin. And you know how that works. Like Hitch approving of me sleeping with any girl he’d slept with.’
‘…Why does Phoebe have it in for you?’
‘Hull hath no fury…There’re others like that,’ he vacantly continued. ‘Hull is other people. Don Juan in Hull. The road to Hull is paved with good intentions.’
‘Did you ever scorn her?’
‘Phoebe? Turn her down, you mean? No.’ Certainly not. Are you kidding? But then of course he remembered – the stairwell, the bathroom, the swollen breasts. ‘Yes I did. Once. Very late on. After it was over.’
‘Well there’s that. And there was Lily. You’re not seeing the obvious with Lily. You confine Phoebe for a night alone with your father, while you go off to Durham to rescue an ex. Jesus. And don’t tell me she didn’t reward you. No need to ask. In general, though, your conscience is clear.’
‘More or less. Over the five years. But I did end it – to get married to someone else.’
‘Was there any overlap?’
‘No. There would’ve been if I hadn’t turned her down. That one time.’
‘All right.’ Elena gave a shiver of dismissal. ‘What this shows, at most, is the lengths your father would go to for the chance of a fuck. Now you get this straight.’ And her glass came down on the tabletop, like a gavel. ‘I’m serious, Mart. This girl knows you and thinks she can toy with your head. Like you’re a lab rat. Don’t let her.’
He raised his palms and said, ‘I’ll try.’
‘You’ll try? Listen. Ask your mother! Ring her tomorrow and ask her.’
‘I can’t ask her over the phone.’ Or in person, he thought. ‘Nah. Mum didn’t have a go at adultery for another ten years. And it never sat well with her. She was a country girl. She was twenty. No. The idea of her being uh, consoled by Larkin with Nicolas sniffling in his cot. No, I don’t believe that part for a moment.’
‘Promise? Do you realise that not once’ve you…You always call him Dad. But you haven’t done that once tonight. You’ve called him Kingsley.’
‘Is that so?’ He shifted in his chair. ‘And what about his father, Larkin’s, that filthy old fascist Sydney? I’m giving myself cold sweats just imagining the horror of being a Larkin male. You’d have to look quite like him too. Imagine that.’
‘There you are then. You’re the spit of your father. Identico.’ Those were her words. But now she was frowning and gazing at him – with her aesthetic eye, her genealogical eye, feature by feature (and Elena, in speaking of cousins and old family friends, had been heard to say such things as She’s got her grandmother’s lower lip or He has his great-uncle’s earlobes). ‘No. It’s her you look like. Your mother.’
The hidden work of uneventful days
I felt its concussive magnitude: September 11 looked set to be the most consequential event of my lifetime. But what did it mean? What was it for?
‘The main items of evidence’, said Christopher on the phone from DC, ‘are the fatwas issued by Bin Laden in ’96 and ’98. And both are blue streaks of religious parrotshit, with a few more or less intelligible grievances listed here and there.’
I said, ‘From now on Osama should let the intellectuals state his case. What the fuck is going on with the American left?’
‘Yes I know. What does it like about a doctrine that’s – let’s think – racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal?’
‘Maybe the Marxists like its hard line on usury. Christ, let’s have some light relief. Tell me about Vidal and Chomsky. I know Gore, but you know them both.’
‘Mm, well, Gore’s got this side to him. Remember that guff about FDR being in on Pearl Harbor? If a conspiracy theory traduces America, then Gore’ll subscribe to it. With Gore it’s just a fatuous posture. With Noam, I’m sorry to say, it’s heartfelt. He just doesn’t like America. As he sees it, it’s been a sordid disaster starting with Columbus. He thinks America’s just a bad idea.’
‘A bad idea? We can argue about the practice, but it’s
