Ghosting (16 page)

It is 1994 and we are off to France once again. This time we are going there to write a novel. The publication of several non-fiction books has brought Tiger a sense of fulfilment, but there has been no lasting contentment. As the ancients knew and understood, pleasure is transient: it comes, it is savoured, and it goes. Descartes thought that the secret of happiness was to be satisfied with what you know you can have, and not to hanker after something you can't have. But Tiger differs from both the ancients and Descartes in his belief that almost anything is attainable provided you pay for it, and that by setting the sights high the chances of pleasure being permanent are correspondingly high.

And so, from one moment to the next, anything can happen. A moment ago a sixth volume of interviews was published, attended by a good deal of media interest, favourable reviews, and another round of newspaper profiles. In the
Daily Telegraph
Allan Massie described Tiger as “masterly and sympathetic, the most self-effacing of interviewers and yet able to speak as an equal.” Robert Kee called him “a magician interviewer of the highest order.” William Trevor wrote: “Making real people real at second hand isn't as easy as it seems … it's the subtlety of interrogation that ensures these portraits emerge.” Tiger purred with pleasure. Everything
was well in the world. The next moment we are writing a novel and the landscape has changed.
Sic transit gloria mundi.

Tiger is convinced that the way ahead “for us” lies in a different sort of publication. Interviews, newspaper articles, book reviews are all very well, but
the real test
is the novel. He lowers his voice at this point, enunciating each word slowly, a sure sign of scarcely being able to contain his excitement, elongating the word
real
to a disturbing length. He is captivated by the idea. This is not a whim. I know the difference between a whim and a serious proposition. This is a serious proposition. He will not be dissuaded. The tiger is not for turning. I feel the familiar panic pitching its tent somewhere in my lower abdomen.

“We need to evolve,” he says.

I do not demur.

How to write a novel? How to write someone else's novel? These two questions seem absolutely central. I wonder how I have arrived at this point without actually meaning to.

“What sort of novel are we thinking about?” I ask.

We are in the British Airways Executive Lounge at London Gatwick airport en route to France. The writing will be done in France. According to Tiger, France is the best place in the world to create a work of literature. Evidently we will have everything we need: the best food, the finest wine, a high-tech music system, a studio to work in, the fresh Dordogne air.

“We are thinking about a beautiful novel, very beautiful,” he says, and he looks somewhere into the middle distance, smiling rapturously, already transported by the sheer imagined beauty of it. “And it will have a beautiful cover. We will make sure of that.” He taps out the last six words on the table.

“But what genre are we talking about? Are we thinking of a romantic novel? A thriller?” (These conversations are always conducted in the first person plural. The idiosyncratic use of pronouns is part of the charade and has become second nature.)

“It will be thrilling, oh yes. And also romantic.
Very
romantic. Oh, yes.”

“So, a love story then?”

“But of course! It has to be a love story. People associate me with love. I
am famous
for love. Isn't it?”

In certain circumstances, the plural pronoun would switch abruptly to the singular, from
we
to
I,
from
us
to
me.
There is always a compelling reason for the shift. In this instance, the snag is that people do not associate
me
with love. Unlike Tiger, I am not famous for love.

There is a long pause. The matter might have ended there, but for my need to establish the broad nature of the project. I have to ask some more. Tiger is almost certainly concentrating on the finished product, beautifully bound and wrapped in a seductive dust-jacket. My concern is how the finished product will be arrived at.

“What sort of love story do we have in mind?” I ask, as if we are discussing wallpaper or home furnishings and he has to pick one from a limited range. “Is the love requited or unrequited?”

“Definitely requited. Oh yes, very requited.”

“And who are the characters?”

Even by our standards this is becoming an odd exchange.

“Sweetie,” he says, the tone long-suffering, humouring an imbecile. He takes hold of my hand in a kindness-to-dumb-animals sort of way. “It
has
to be the love between a man and a woman. Do you think I could write about
poofters?
No, it has to be a man and a woman—a beautiful woman and very sexy. There will be
lots of sex, but very distinguished. We will do the sex beautifully. Isn't it?”

“Long? Short?” I'm feeling desperate now.

He strokes his chin, weighing up the possibilities.

“Not too long, not too short.”

“And do we have a story line? Do we have any idea of what it is
about
?”

“Of course, beloved! I have thought of
everything
He squeals the last word in a spasm of exuberance. “Let me tell you the idea. It is very simple. There is a man … he is like me somewhat… he is married … he falls in love with a woman … there is a
huge
passion … and then … well, we will see what happens after that, isn't it?”

There is another pause while I weigh things up. Then:

“Does he tell his wife? About the huge passion, I mean.”

“Darling, are you
mad
?” Tiger points a finger to his temple and screws it from side to side. “Why would he tell her? Why would he hurt her?”

We had several more discussions just like that one. None went beyond the man/woman/huge passion rudiments. At first I was filled with a sense of the impossibility of proceeding on the basis of such vague guidelines. But before long I realised that vagueness is a blessing in its way. While “Married man falls in love with beautiful woman” is not exactly an original story line or a detailed synopsis, it could easily be worse. For example, it could be: “Married woman falls in love with young army captain in Moscow, has huge passion, cannot live with the consequences, throws herself under a train.” Or perhaps: “Colonial police officer in West Africa, married to a Roman
Catholic, falls in love with young widow, has huge passion, compounds adultery with sacrilege, commits suicide.” You have to look on the bright side. Much better to be given just the bare bones to flesh out in any way that seems possible and plausible. Less is more.

Tiger talked a lot about
passion
and
poetry
—the two main elements that would underpin the book. He used the word
poetic
sweepingly in the way others might say
beautiful
or
fine.
To call something poetic was the highest accolade. It could apply to paintings, furniture, faces, conversations, encounters and many other things besides, notably sex. Passion on the other hand was a softening word for just one thing—sex. Over the years we had discussed sex many times, very often in the context of films we had seen, and he gave the impression that he favoured a kind of idealised romantic love with an overlay of crude fucking. I could sense danger ahead.

There is a great deal of nonsense talked about writing novels. The common assumption is that it is easy: we all have a novel in us, so they say. People talk carelessly about their intention to “write it all down one day.” They encourage others with the same recklessness. They hear a funny/tragic/bizarre story in the pub one day and in no time at all they are saying that it would “make a good novel.” As if the only way to give validity to a chunk of real life is to wrap it up in a novel. As if it were the simplest thing in the world. Where did this illusion spring from? It is a job to write a novel. And now it is my job.

Two days passed without a single word being written. I gave way to an assortment of displacement activities—sending faxes to my
children, rescuing a trapped honey bee, filing my fingernails—together with the modern equivalent of pencil sharpening: setting up the laptop, adjusting the chair, getting the ergonomics right. There was too much glare from the sun so the desk had to be moved. Perhaps an extra cushion would prevent backache? And iced tea would surely help things along nicely. But you can fool yourself only for so long. You can put things off only for so long. As it says in the Stone Garden in Kyoto:
You are here. This is now.
I stared at my blank computer screen and it stared back blankly.

How to proceed? Write what you know, they always say. But what did I know? Suddenly I knew nothing. In a bid to avert panic I decided to make a list of things in my favour. The list was not long but it was a start:

• I have written a lot already (just not a novel).
  

• I have read lots of novels.
  

For the first of these to count as an advantage you have to believe that all writing comes from the same place. I'm not sure that I do believe that. Writing prose is not writing fiction. The most I could hope for was that the experience of writing journalism, literary pieces, book reviews, and so on would act as some sort of training ground for writing a novel.

As for reading a lot, there is, sadly, no causal connection between the fact of having read fiction and the ability to write fiction. I know this at an instinctive level, and I think perhaps I have always known it; but this did not prevent me gathering together dozens of novels and taking them to France in my suitcase. It was an eclectic heap, selected from my shelves of paperbacks at home. I did this partly in the hope of discovering how to write a novel, and partly because I
thought the systematic approach might compensate for lack of inspiration. The next two days were spent dipping into books by Penelope Fitzgerald, Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Beryl Bainbridge, Alison Lurie, Anne Fine, Jennifer Johnstone. At the end of the second day I realised that I had been reading only women writers, surely a foolish exercise if I was to learn to write like a man. For the next two days, fighting off a slight feeling of frenzy, I read William Trevor, John Updike, Ian McEwan, Tim Parks, John Banville.

Spending days on end re-reading my favourite authors would normally be my idea of supreme happiness. But if you approach it as a technical exercise, it can remove most of the pleasure. I selected chapters at random, sometimes reading them several times, unpicking the prose, analysing the method, looking for clues as to how something was done—the way in which suspense, or perhaps interior monologue, was created, how one perspective suddenly turned into another without the seams showing. Gradually I became aware of different techniques and stylistic devices. When you are reading for pleasure and interest (the best way), you are aware of the good quality of the writing without necessarily noticing how it is being achieved. It's enough that it is there, and you are grateful for it. If the writer is skilled, the nuts and bolts don't show. How is the passing of time conveyed, for example? How to get to the flashback, how to jump forward in time? Is it merely to do with verb tenses? Or is there something more ingenious at work?