Absolute Zero Cool (3 page)

‘I’m parched for a drink,’ the guy says.

‘It won’t be long now,’ she says. ‘It’ll soon be over.’ She speaks to me without looking in my direction. ‘Karlsson, I’d like you to take Mr Tiernan down to theatre at three forty-five.’

‘Let’s hope nothing funny happens on the way,’ I say. But she’s not listening.

•

He lounges back in the chair, tapping his lower lip with the butt of a pencil.

‘You’re still calling me Karlsson,’ he says.

‘Technically speaking,’ I say, ‘it’s the other characters who call you Karlsson.’

‘So have them call me Billy.’

‘I could do that, yeah. Except if you become Billy, you’re not Karlsson anymore.’

‘I’m not Karlsson anymore.’

‘Not to me, or you. But if the other characters start calling you Billy, they’ll expect to see someone who looks like a Billy. And I’d have to go through the whole bloody thing changing your appearance every time it’s mentioned. Your hair, your eyes, the way you walk . . .’

‘Are we doing this,’ he says, ‘or are we doing this?’

I’m none too keen on his tone.

‘No disrespect, Billy, but I’m doing you a favour here. Okay? And if we’re going to do this on top of my own stuff, we can’t be farting around worrying about every tiny detail.

‘What you need to do,’ I say, ‘is think of yourself as an actor. Yeah? Make like the story’s a Mike Leigh movie, or one of those Dogme flicks, and you’re contributing to Karlsson as he goes along, inventing dialogue for him, little tics and quirks. Making him you, eventually, but being subtle about it. How’s that sound?’

He takes a while to consider.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll give it a whirl.’

‘Glad to hear it. Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m thinking of leaving out the Pope-Camus stuff.’

‘What Pope-Camus stuff?’

‘The goalkeepers bit.’

He shakes his head. ‘I forget that one,’ he says. ‘What’d I say there?’

•

Albert Camus and Pope John Paul II were both goalkeepers in their youth. I like to imagine them at either end of a stadium, punting the ball back and forth while hooligans riot on the terraces.

As former goalies, Camus and Pope John Paul II may or may not have sniggered knowingly when they read about James Joyce’s ambition to be both keeper and crucifier of his nation’s conscience.

As for me, I was born. Later I learned to read, then write. Since then it’s been mostly books. Books and masturbation.

Writing and masturbation have in common temporary relief and the illusion of achievement. Many great writers have been avid onanists, and many avid onanists have been great writers. Often the only difference, as a point of refinement, is whether the wanking or writing comes first.

Me, I write some, I tug some, I go to bed. Only a barbarian would wank first, then write.

My line for today comes from the Danish novelist, Isak Dinesen: I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.

•

Jonathan Williams is a jovial Welshman, albeit one who is a dead ringer for every kindly English professor you’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie.

‘No,’ he says, ‘I didn’t give the Karlsson story to anyone.’ His voice booms down the phone. ‘I wouldn’t do that without your permission.’

‘Not even for a reader’s report?’

‘Not so far as I recall. And I believe I would have remembered,’ he laughs, ‘a reader’s report on that particular gem.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Why?’ he says. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Not a problem per se.’ I tell him I’ve taken a sabbatical, six weeks at the artists’ retreat, and about Billy’s idea of bringing Karlsson to life. ‘I’m just wondering where he got his hands on the story.’

‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ he says, ‘but he certainly didn’t get it from me.’

Jonathan is no longer my agent, but being a gentleman he asks how things are going. I tell him my editor at Harcourt is banging on about the deadline.

‘Forget about him,’ he urges. ‘Get it right, that’s the most important thing. In ten years’ time, no one will care if you got it in by deadline or not.’

Sage words.

He says, ‘If you don’t mind me asking . . .’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Did you apply for Arts Council funding, towards the cost of the artists’ retreat?’

‘I did, yeah, but no joy. Apparently comedy crime doesn’t qualify.’

‘I don’t suppose you used the Karlsson story as part of your application,’ he says.

‘I did, actually. They needed to see a couple of samples of my work, and Karlsson was just lying there doing nothing.’

‘That’s probably it,’ he says. ‘Someone at the Arts Council read the story and passed it on to your friend Billy. Utterly unethical, of course, but there you are.’

‘And there’s no way of finding out who might have read it?’

‘Probably not. Those assessments are anonymous, so there’s no chance of canvassing. But I can make some discreet enquiries, if you’d like.’

‘No, you’re grand.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘The rights issue, I mean. If there’s any doubt at any point down the line, I’ll tell anyone who wants to know I read it in its original form and you’re the sole author.’

‘Thanks, Jonathan.’

‘Don’t mention it. Oh, and be sure to tell Anna I was asking for her when you see her next. Lovely woman, isn’t she?’

Anna MacKerrig, daughter to Lord Lawrence MacKerrig, whose Scots-Presbyterian sense of noblesse oblige was fundamental to the establishing of the Sligo artists’ retreat some twenty years ago.

‘I haven’t actually met her yet,’ I say, ‘but I’ll certainly pass that on when I see her.’

‘Very good. Well, I’ll talk to— Oh, I knew there was a reason I rang.’

‘Yes?’

‘The Big O,’ he says. ‘An Italian publisher has made an offer. The money is little more than a token gesture, of course, but . . .’

‘No, that’s grand, we’ll take it. It’d be nice to see it in Italian.’

‘Wouldn’t it just?’ He chuckles. ‘Maybe the advance will pay for a weekend in Rome.’

Maybe. If I swim there.

‘Talk soon,’ he says, and is gone again.

‘Y’know,’ Billy says, ‘I don’t think I should want to be a writer. I can see why you had it in there, to suggest Karlsson has some kind of depth. But now . . .’

‘You’ve changed your mind since you’ve met me.’

I’m joking, but he nods. ‘What I’m thinking,’ he says, ‘is that Karlsson wanting to be a writer, to be creative, that’ll clash with him wanting to blow up the hospital.’

‘The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.’

‘Hmmmm,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure, if we want people to like me, that I should be throwing out nihilist sound bites. All that Year Zero stuff doesn’t play too well in the ’burbs.’

‘How about this?’ I say. ‘You want to be a writer at the start, except all you get are rejection letters. Then you get sour and decide to blow up the hospital.’

‘Too narcissistic,’ he says. ‘Only a writer could be that self-absorbed.’

‘But blowing up a hospital, that’s not narcissistic at all.’

‘It’s an attention-grabber, sure. But you’re the one who left me so’s I need to do something drastic.’

‘Leave me out of it, Billy. The hospital’s your idea.’

‘I didn’t start out like this, man. If you’d have asked me way back when, I’d have told you my dream was to skipper a charter yacht in the Greek islands.’

‘A hospital porter? Skippering yachts in the Aegean?’

His eyes narrow. ‘What,’ he says, ‘the plebs aren’t allowed to dream?’

‘The plebs can dream whatever they want, Billy, but this isn’t Mills and fucking Boon. Maybe if your dream was plausible, y’know . . .’

‘A plausible dream?’

‘Call it an achievable fantasy. Like, you can want whatever you want, and good luck in the cup, but if it doesn’t play ball with the story’s logic then it doesn’t go in.’

‘That’s a bit limiting, isn’t it?’

‘You can’t have unicorns in outer space, Billy.’

He grins. ‘You could if they had specially designed helmets.’

‘Fine. You want unicorns on Mars, hospital porters skippering yachts, we can do it all. But no one’s going to buy it.’

‘What you’re saying is, you’re not good enough to make it convincing.’ A faint shrug. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re still slotting your fiction in around your day job, taking sabbaticals for rewrites.’

‘Maybe it is. So maybe we should forget this whole thing so I can go back to actually enjoying what I write.’

He gets up. ‘Let’s take a break,’ he says. ‘We’re obviously not going to get anything constructive done today.’ He rolls a cigarette from my makings, lights up. ‘One more thing,’ he says, exhaling. ‘You can’t go threatening to pull the plug. You’re either doing this or you’re not, and if you’re not fully committed then it isn’t going to work. The start should be the easy bit. If you’re finding it hard going now, it’ll be a nightmare when we get into the endgame.’

He’s right, but somehow apologising feels a step too far.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I won’t be here tomorrow. We’re taking Rosie to see Debs’s parents.’

‘No worries.’

‘I won’t be back until Sunday evening.’

‘See you Monday morning, so.’

‘Monday, yeah.’

Debs is standing inside the chalet’s patio doors with Rosie humped over her shoulder, patting the little girl’s back to bring up wind. I put the manuscript and coffee mugs on the counter and hunch down to meet Rosie’s gaze, but she’s glassy-eyed, blissed out after a long feed.

‘Y’know,’ Debs says, ‘it’s just as well no one else can see what I can see. I’d hate for anyone to think my husband was a mentaller who needs to put in a couple of hours talking to his characters to get set up for the day.’

‘Want me to take her?’

‘Good timing.’ She hands Rosie across, sniffing her as she goes. ‘I think she has nappy issues. And change her baby-gro, will you? Put her little kimono outfit on.’

‘The white one?’

‘No, the pink one, the one your mother bought her. She’s cute in pink.’

‘Hey boopster,’ I croon, rubbing Rosie’s back. She burps up a little creamy sick that dribbles down onto my shoulder. ‘That’s my girl,’ I say.

•

I have some sympathy for Orpheus. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to cellars, basements, caves and catacombs. There is, surely, a Freudian frisson to my fascination with vaults, crypts and bunkers. It occurs to me to wonder, on my regular perambulations through the hospital’s cavernous underground car park, if my pseudo-gynaecological expeditions mask a benign desire to regain the original comfort of the womb or a more malign instinct to pierce and penetrate. Do I descend to the netherworld to liberate Eurydice, or to ensure my presumptive gaze annihilates her hope forever?

Orpheus had the good fortune to be created, by Apollonius Rhodius, an artist of sublime skill. In the original mythology, he is a valued member of the Argonauts who rescues his beloved wife from oblivion.

He subsequently had the misfortune to be redrafted by Virgil, Plato and Ovid, who between them not only contrive a tragedy from our hero’s brave harrowing of hell, but in the process render Orpheus an ineffective coward who extinguished Eurydice.

Their justification was that Orpheus lacked a true commitment to his wife. In other words, they believed he should want to die in order to be with Eurydice forever, rather than simply resurrecting her from death.

Thus, as his love was not true, Orpheus was punished by the ever-mocking gods.

In the dark corners of my netherworld, prowling the shadows of the hospital’s caverns, I wonder if any mortal should be expected to have the courage of the gods’ convictions, who have all of eternity in which to debate the theoretical pros and cons of the ultimate in self-sacrifice.

Later, over dinner and a nice glass of red, I tease out the subtleties.

‘So you’re asking,’ Cassie says, ‘if I’d rather be rescued from hell or have you come join me?’

‘That’s pretty much it, yeah.’

‘Hard to say, really.’ She forks home some pasta and chews, considering. ‘We couldn’t just swap places?’

‘I don’t think Orpheus was offered that option.’

‘Typical. I’m betting it was a bloke who wrote that story.’

‘Actually there was more than one writer. But they were all blokes, yeah.’

‘There’s a shocker. So would you?’ she says.

‘Would I what?’

‘Swap places with me.’

‘That wouldn’t make any sense. Better I stayed alive and tried to get you out, no?’