The Editor's Wife (24 page)

She left, dragging the laundry sack behind her. I couldn't help her carry it to the car as she'd left me no trousers.

As soon as I had my clothes back I did go to the doctor. I told him about my lethargy and the panic attack
in Sainsbury's, and he prescribed antidepressants. When I got back to my room – a little dazed and breathless from the outing – I made the mistake of reading the list of side effects. Dry mouth, dizziness, shortness of breath, constipation, headache, nausea, visual disturbance, haemorrhage, coma. I decided my symptoms weren't so bad after all, and put the pills in the back of a drawer, unsampled.

I suppose it must have been the subject of depression which triggered thoughts of Lawrence Canning. I pulled the copy of
The Magenta Staircase
from its place among my few hardbacks, and settled down on my bed.

It had taken him five years to write, and thirty-five years to live the story he told, and it took me just seven hours to read. When I finished it was dark outside, a frozen moon had risen in the sky and I was completely drained, and calm. Although he had described a descent into madness and the blackest pit of despair, it was not a depressing book. On the contrary, the brilliance of his mind shone through every line, so that the final impression was one of unquenchable hope, and the transcendent beauty to be found in even the dusty corners of existence. For the first time in my life, I understood what people meant when they talked of the healing power of art. Through his wisdom and vision I felt myself reconnected to the world, part of that vast communion of human souls, dead and alive. My one regret was that I had missed the chance to tell him myself what a difference he'd made.

I suppose that Epiphany marked the beginning of my recovery.

With it came fresh problems. There was the small matter of my book. Owen now had the only copy of my manuscript. I half wondered whether he had already destroyed it out of spite, but I was unwilling to believe him capable of such a petty act. On the other hand, he no doubt had once been unable to imagine me capable of sleeping with his wife. I couldn't bring myself to write and ask him for it back, in case the reminder of my existence triggered a vitriolic paper-shredding spree.

I dreamed up various plans for its retrieval, including breaking into the offices of Kenway & Luff, but before I could act on any of them it arrived in the post, securely packaged in bubble wrap and brown paper, but with no accompanying note.

The sight of it recalled the heady optimism of those early days of Owen's patronage. I flipped idly through the pages, noticing faint pencil marks in the margins: ticks, exclamation marks and the occasional comment:
Ha ha
or
Successful? Yes
. This brought on a fresh wave of loneliness, so I shut the manuscript away in the drawer with the antidepressants, and forgot about it. I assumed naively that Owen's reputation and influence were vast, that the publishing community was small and closed, and that news of my treachery would have spread and my name and work would be untouchable. It didn't occur to me then that a married man might not necessarily want to broadcast his wife's infidelity.

I would have liked to reciprocate by returning the Goddards' £2,000 but the fact was I'd already spent a thousand of it, and repaying half struck me as a rather tepid gesture. Besides, I needed the rest to live on. But it was always my intention to honour what I now saw as a debt, as soon as I possibly could.

Once I had begun the business of getting over this episode, I had to face the future as a matter of urgency. I had only ever intended my hand-to-mouth existence to be a temporary measure, until I was a successful, feted author, but since that was clearly not going to happen, I needed to act decisively. I had no useful qualifications, apart from two-thirds of a maths degree, and so, somewhat to my amazement, I found myself writing to the Admissions Officer at my old university to ask if I could reapply to sit my third year, and take my finals. This strategy had the added advantage that it would give me six months' grace: it was only April and the new academic year started in late September. To my relief my old tutor interceded for me and I was accepted.

In the meantime I had to get away from London. The noise and overcrowding and the sleepless streets, which had once seemed so invigorating, were now, in my newly lonely state, repellent and slightly menacing.

With some of my remaining money I bought a Eurorail pass: once that was paid for I reckoned I could live as cheaply abroad as at home: more cheaply in fact, since the rent on my Brixton room was higher than the pittance I expected to spend on the occasional camping pitch. I
bought a new tent, sleeping bag and rucksack, rather than make any borrowing approaches to Gerald, who was now, according to Mum, lodging in Beckenham with an elderly alcoholic called June. He had found her drunk on a park bench one day when he was out for a run, had taken her home and never left.

I packed up my few books, tapes, leftover clothes, manuscript and the picture of the St Ives fishermen which I'd never got round to hanging, and deposited them with Mum and Dad. They were so pleased that I had decided to resume my degree that they gave me £100 – a fortune by their standards, and the only handout I had ever received from them. As well as this I had nearly £700 left of Owen and Diana's money and the £120 deposit from the bedsit.

‘You will phone occasionally to let us know you're OK,' Mum said, in the interval between holding out the money and actually letting go of it, so that my acceptance had a contractual air to it. ‘I realise letters are out of the question.'

I confessed that this was the case. ‘But I will ring. Now and then.'

I set no date for my return, and had no itinerary. I chose my destinations on a whim, standing on the concourse of the Gare du Nord, staring up at the international departure board, dizzy with choice. Rome, Barcelona, Salzburg, Frankfurt, Istanbul. I had no preferences: I aimed for anywhere, and sometimes changed my mind and alighted at a station on the way if I liked the
name, without always being sure which country I was in. To save money, or if I couldn't find anywhere suitable to stay, I would make my way to the railway station late in the evening, catch whatever train was passing through, and sleep where I sat. If I was lucky I might have a compartment to myself and I could stretch out, using my backpack as a pillow.

I criss-crossed Europe haphazardly, like a fly on a windowpane. As I became more confident in this peripatetic way of life, I began to observe that I wasn't alone. Everywhere I went other people like me were making similar pilgrimages, and if given the slightest encouragement were keen to share their experiences, their food, and occasionally their beds.

When my meanderings brought me to Florence, I thought the city warranted some investigation, so I took the unusual step of paying for a minute pitch at the crowded campsite at the Piazza di Michelangelo, overlooking the city. I was parched after a long, dusty walk up the hill in the heat of the afternoon, so when I'd rigged up the tent and had my first satisfactory shower in some days, I went to the terrace bar for some shade and a bottle of water.

The place resembled an international students' union: everyone was young and scruffy, apart from a few donnish types in socks and sandals, who reminded me of the denizens of the Powys Society, and there was a background buzz of chatter in several languages. Columns of rippling smoke rose from parked cigarettes; the smell of dope took
me back to the stairwell of the Brixton house. In one corner four Chinese girls were playing a noisy game of mah-jongg. Above the clatter of tiles came occasional cries of ‘Pung' and ‘Kong'.

I paid for my bottle of San Pellegrino and found an empty table – empty apart from a glass of water, a canvas bag covered in graffiti, and a splayed hardback, which I realised as I sat down was
The Amazement of Dr Oberon
by Ravi Amos. From the back cover his ever-young photograph smiled up at me. I looked around for the owner, but no likely candidate suggested themselves. I couldn't stop myself flipping the book over to the Acknowledgements.
I am grateful for the light touch of my editor, Owen Goddard
 . . . Even at this distance his printed name could find me out. I was simultaneously pondering this coincidence, and wondering whether there wasn't something characteristically self-regarding in Ravi Amos's vote of thanks, when I realised someone was standing at my elbow.

It was a girl with blonde pigtails and a beaded headband. She was wearing shorts, and a black vest stretched tightly across her nipples, which were level with and pointing at my forehead. Something in her appearance – her recklessly sunburned shoulders, perhaps – persuaded me that she was English.

‘Sorry,' I said, moving across so she could reclaim her seat, and pushing the book towards her. ‘I wasn't trying to nick it. I was just being nosey.'

‘You can have it if you want,' she said as she sat down. ‘I can't get into it.'

‘Already read it. It's not his best, but you've got to stick with it – at least till page sixty.'

‘Hmm. Does it make sense after that?'

‘Yes, but if it doesn't you can always come to my tent and I'll give you a seminar on it.'

‘Ha ha.' She took a swig of her drink and looked surprised to find it already empty.

‘Have some of mine,' I said, handing her the unopened bottle. ‘I haven't slobbered in it.'

‘I'd rather have a beer.'

I bought some beers and we stayed there at the table for the rest of the evening, and had those authentic Italian pizzas with not much on top that you can tear like wet cardboard. I was staring at her so intently all this time that I missed the sunset, but never mind. At about midnight she got up and pulled me to my feet and said, ‘Come on. Time for that seminar,' and we picked our way back down the slope to my tent, with the lights of Florence scattered below.

The relief of that first careless fuck since Zoe. Just skin on gorgeous skin and none of the emotional mauling that goes with being in love.

In the morning she was going on to meet friends in Rome, and before she left she produced a laundry marker and asked me to sign her canvas bag. ‘I'm going to embroider it all when I get home,' she said. Now that I looked at it more closely I could see that as well as CND symbols and doodles were quite a number of other ‘signatures'. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be part of this hedonistic
tapestry, so I drew a heart and wrote ‘Gerald' in great looping letters across the flap.

Once I'd seen how easy it was, I had variations of that encounter in campsites all over Europe. I'm not saying that backpackers are a particularly promiscuous breed, or that I had a special knack for picking up women. But with everyone constantly arriving, departing, packing up and moving on, it is mutually understood that a slow and satisfying pursuit is a luxury that has to be sacrificed.

One evening in August, almost seven months since I had said goodbye to Diana, I had a revelation. I was sitting in a campsite in Interlaken, drinking a cold beer and watching the paragliders drifting down like bright confetti from the mountains. I could see the pinkish-gold snow on top of the Jungfrau, and the black shark's fin of the Eiger against the sky: it was an awesome sight – nature at its most ostentatious. There had been a thunderstorm earlier in the day but the grass was dry now, and warm underfoot. From the café came the hiss of meat being grilled over a barbecue; presently I caught its smoky, caramel scent. Somewhere a radio was playing faintly: Mozart's Horn Concerto. Its jaunty notes rode the breeze like butterflies. As I registered all these separate but somehow complementary sense impressions, I realised that something inside me had changed. I felt good. Not wonderful, or ecstatic, but calmly comfortably fine, as
though the scales had tipped at last and I was more happy than sad.

The next day I made my contractual monthly phone call home and learned from Mum that Owen and Diana had been killed in a road accident in Greece three weeks earlier. They'd been riding a moped along a cliff road and collided with a truck. It had made a couple of lines in the
Daily Telegraph
. It was a pure fluke that she'd noticed it, she said, but with me being abroad, items about foreign holiday tragedies tended to catch her eye.

IN SEPTEMBER I
returned to York to complete the final year of my degree. I found it difficult to settle back into student life: all my friends had left, and I no longer had any appetite for the sort of competitive drinking and partying that was so much a part of the culture, and which I'd once enjoyed. Although I was only a few years older than the other third years I felt antiquated in comparison. It was as if my experiences in London had turned my spirit prematurely grey. They, in turn, mistook my world-weariness for condescension, and avoided me.

I have made it sound as though I was a hermit: this wasn't the case. My housemates were friendly, there was company if I wanted it, and I had casual girlfriends, though I always seemed to go for the sort that I knew I couldn't feel much for, and who wouldn't get too attached to me.
The deep, serious, soulful types I avoided, especially if I was attracted.

I worked doggedly rather than enthusiastically at my studies. This time around I found myself temperamentally well suited to maths. Its cold, predictable certainties were reassuring, beautiful even. It was so much easier than writing fiction: there was no need to strive for originality or wit or the music of a perfectly turned sentence. On the contrary those qualities would have been serious impediments to accuracy, and accuracy was all.

One remarkable thing happened that year. At the end of my first term I received a letter, forwarded from the bed-sit via Gleneldon Road, from a firm called Swift & Deckle, offering to publish
The Night Wanderer.
The signatory was Vincent Lesser, a name I recalled, after my initial mystification, as the former colleague to whom Owen had proposed sending (and evidently sent) a copy of the manuscript.