Fictional Lives Read online

  Crossly, Lucinda fired back: ‘In one of your books you say “I distrust people who claim to be citizens of the world, and to love all mankind. They tend to be people who are at home nowhere, not even with themselves, and to like no one in particular—least of all themselves.” And I’m with you there. But you go to the opposite extreme. Caring for yourself first might be healthy and good; to care only for yourself strikes me as being as unhealthy and bad as hating yourself. For by your own token, if you do care for your own little part of the world to the exclusion of all else—those other parts might well become infected and diseased, and destroy you.

  ‘One last point. By writing you say you want to improve yourself/your country. But why not widen your scope, and take on the whole world? For aside from the fact that it isn’t too big, and that—if you’ll excuse the misquote—“no island is an island”, you wouldn’t at all be renouncing life; you would be living more intensely, more fully. And your books would be correspondingly more intense, more full.’

  To this Andrew could give but one reply; and he gave it, in a single sheet of paper. ‘You may well be right. But I am afraid, I am afraid—and the answer must still be no.’

  And there, for the next few months, the matter rested. No further word passed between the English writer and the American girl. What Lucinda did with herself Andrew had no idea; what he did was spend two or three days a week in London, meeting as many new people as he could, and the rest of the time in his cottage. He worked. He read. He listened to music. He had friends come to stay with him; he went to stay with friends. Yet through all this period, and though he did get to know several new people whom he liked—becoming particularly fond of an austere reserved woman who was a Labour councillor in Manchester—he could not forget his unknown mistress, as he had come to think of her. In fact, as the weeks went by, from being in love with her he became obsessed with her. He imagined that she was the most beautiful—in every sense of the word—girl in the world. He imagined that she would be the guide to Hell he had been searching for; the one person who would both allow him to see all the sights, and keep him safe. He imagined that she would be the exception to his rule; that she would be the one person who could live in a foreign country, and be loved, without bringing destruction upon her lover. He imagined even that with her by his side he would be able to take on the entire world, would be able to cope with it; and would, as a result, and as she had suggested, be able to write a book that really summed the whole thing up; that would, possibly, be an infinitesimally small step in improving the whole sorry business; and would, in any case, be better than anything he had done so far. He thought of her by day, when he worked; he thought of her at night, as he lay in bed. And the more he thought of her the more wonderful she became in his imagination, until she had almost ceased to be a real human being at all. She had become a vision, an ideal, a goddess. She no longer, in his mind, ate, or slept, laughed or talked; she simply hovered above him leading him on, blinding him with her light.

  He fought against such nonsense, telling himself that she was just a perfectly ordinary girl who probably had bad breath, a moral squint, and an emotional hunch-back, to whom he would hardly be able to talk if they did meet, and with whom he had nothing at all in common; and telling his friends about his postal affair as it were just a huge joke. But while, when he did tell himself these things, and laughed with his friends, he succeeded in demolishing the image of Lucinda Grey for five minutes, after those five minutes had passed he realized his obsession had grown still greater. He re-read her letters constantly, trying to convince himself that there was nothing special about them, that they didn’t suggest anything special about their writer, and that they were no more than the reasonably intelligent outpourings of some literary groupie, and he looked repeatedly at photographs of Jill, reminding himself that theirs had been a real love—that of two adults who could give themselves to each other without fear that their gift would be mishandled or abused—and repeating to himself that he had only become involved with Lucinda because he was lonely, and loneliness was not to be confused with love.

  But it was all no use…. Finally, at the end of March, he could fight no longer. All right, he told himself, he was mad. All right, he was likely to be disillusioned. All right, he was playing with fire. Nevertheless, he was in love; and he was going to do something about it. Something practical, such as—

  He was never to know what—if he hadn’t, the day after making this resolution, received a phone call from an old friend—he would have done. Though he suspected, even then, it would have been nothing. Because he still didn’t want to go to the States himself, he didn’t want Lucinda to come to England in case she should prove less than ideal, and he could see no other alternative. But he did, one late March evening, receive a phone call from an old friend; and that changed everything.

  The name of this friend was Fraser; and he was not only an old friend, and a good friend (his oldest, and best; though they didn’t see each other very often, and hadn’t been in touch at all for over nine months) but was also a person who played a particular part in the life of Andrew Stairs.

  He was a tall, dark, impeccably dressed man with the sort of clipped British voice that many foreigners thought was the typical British voice, but which many Englishmen—or anyway Andrew, and most of their mutual friends—realized was the voice of an unhappy, at times nearly unbalanced man (it was too clipped; and almost imperceptibly hesitant); and just as Andrew ‘Stayed in England’ so Fraser ‘Travelled’.

  ‘Looking for love,’ he would invariably say, when asked why he spent most of his adult life travelling through jungles, icy wastes, or the slums of big and foreign cities; and also invariably add, with an ironic laugh, ‘donchyeknow.’ But there again, while the laugh and the expression might have fooled most foreigners and some Englishmen, it did not fool Fraser’s friends; who knew that what he had said was the literal truth. The antithesis of Andrew, he searched the earth looking for the ideal companion with whom he could go, and stay forever, home. So far—aged forty-four, with three marriages, innumerable affairs, and five books about his travels behind him—he hadn’t found his ideal; and was more and more prepared to admit it was likely he never would. But he hadn’t yet abandoned hope; and knew that until he did—which would come either with his death, or be the cause of his death—he was bound, or doomed, to go on searching.

  The particularity of his friendship with Andrew was due not to their diametrically opposed life-styles (that indeed was the explanation of why they were friendly at all; each admired, and envied—though also, if without rancour, pitied and despised—the other’s chosen way), nor even to his sincere profession that Andrew’s books were among the few modern works he unreservedly liked (a profession that Andrew, with equal sincerity, made with regard to Fraser’s books). No, what made it so special was this: Fraser provided Andrew with background material for his novels. If the stay at home novelist had, as his outsider, a literal foreigner (which he did in half his books), and if, for example, he decided that this character were to be Indian, then he would wait till Fraser was in England, invite him to the cottage for a few days, and spend hours—sometimes as many as seven at a stretch—listening as that clipped desperate voice described not just in great detail, but in memorable, and evocative detail, the light, the atmosphere, the smell of the city, or even the village, from which the fictional man or woman came. He would tell Andrew what it was like to buy stamps in a post-office; what the noise-scape of the chosen place was like; what the precise colour of the sky was at dawn. And the—to Andrew—miraculous thing was (which was part of the reason why he admired the man’s books), so totally could Fraser lose himself in these details, so entirely could he become the thing he was describing, that he not only saw, heard, smelled all the things he told of from an Indian point of view—there was no suggestion of the English observer abroad—but also told of them as no Indian that Andrew had ever met had been able to. Possibly because those Indians had b
een too familiar with their native sights and sounds to be completely aware of them; or possibly because Fraser knew himself better—in Andrew’s opinion—than anyone else in the world. In India, that is, he knew himself as an Indian. Just as in Mongolia, he knew himself as a Mongolian. There was, in fact, only one part of himself that Fraser did not know; only one country he could not describe. That country was England; and it was his lack of insight with regard to England alone that made his self-knowledge less than total. (And explained also, to Andrew’s way of thinking, the desperation in his voice.)

  The phone call that Fraser made that evening towards the end of March was, therefore, the phone call not only of a friend, but also of an already established envoy; of a minister, so to speak, of foreign affairs; and it changed everything because after the man had mentioned that he was going to be in England for a month, and after he had asked if he might come and stay in the country for a long weekend, he said that his next trip was to be Alaska and the Aleutian Islands—but that he was going via San Francisco….

  And the second he heard this Andrew knew he had found the solution to his problem.

  ‘Would you,’ he said, without the slightest hesitation, ‘do me a favour when you’re in San Francisco?’

  ‘Course I would,’ came the reply—as nearly without hesitation as Fraser could manage. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well you see,’ Andrew said; and went on to tell his fellow writer about the affair he had been having by post, and to ask him if he would mind calling Lucinda, meeting her, and then sending the most complete report possible about the girl. ‘You can give her,’ he added, ‘the most complete report possible about me, too.’

  ‘I shall do both, willingly,’ Fraser said; and then changed the subject by asking Andrew when it would be convenient for him to come to the cottage. ‘Shan’t be alone, of course,’ he clipped. ‘Chinese girl.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Andrew—who didn’t want the subject changed just yet—insisted.

  ‘Mind? Course I don’t. Be delighted to. Glad you asked me.’

  ‘I’m,’ Andrew said, ‘glad you’re going.’

  And so he was—for he could think of no one whose report he would sooner have had, or whose report he would sooner have trusted—and so he remained for the next few days. He was more than glad; he was overjoyed, and came to think of Fraser’s intervention as little short of divine. But after those few days had passed, and the weekend of Fraser’s visit approached, doubts entered his mind; and his joy became shadowed by fear.

  The doubts and fears were not occasioned by any sudden lack of faith in Fraser’s report on Lucinda; that he knew would be honest, and absolutely reliable. They were rather occasioned by a sudden lack of faith in Fraser himself—and even a certain lack of faith in Lucinda. The latter he was, after he had thought about it for a while, almost able to dismiss—after all, how could he, or why should he, have faith in someone he didn’t know—but the lack of faith in Fraser was a more serious concern; and one that grew more profound the more he thought about it.

  What if, Andrew couldn’t help asking himself, Lucinda is the rare creature I imagine her to be? What if she is a person of true beauty; a person of total integrity? Of course it was extremely unlikely; total integrity in this world was, for all practical purposes, impossible; and anyone possessing it would be more than rare; they would indeed be ideal. But just suppose for a moment—she were? Mightn’t Fraser, who was searching the world for such a person, fall in love with her himself? Or better, mustn’t Fraser, given his character, fall in love with her himself? Yes, Andrew answered himself miserably; he must. And maybe Lucinda, when she met him….

  People who knew Fraser only slightly, or not at all—those who thought him typically British, and were fooled by his irony—claimed to find the effect he had on women incomprehensible. ‘How could anyone,’ Andrew had often been asked, ‘fall in love with such an absurdity? He’s a throwback; he’s a caricature; he is the most negative, sexless man on the face of this earth.’ But Andrew, who had more than once seen Fraser’s first meeting with a woman he had subsequently become involved with, believed he understood perfectly. For one thing, when Fraser was attracted to someone he immediately, if without being conscious of it, revealed that his British veneer was but the thinnest of disguises, and wasn’t at all to be taken seriously; for another he gave the impression—the correct impression—that just as he could immerse himself in and become a foreign country, so he could, and was more than willing to, immerse himself in and become a ‘foreign’ person (which complete abdication was unnerving; if only because it denoted a courage that was appalling); and for yet another he gave the (again correct?) impression that beneath his thin disguise there was not really a person at all, but simply a void; a black hole of terrifying proportions.

  Once Andrew had tried to explain the matter to some wondering woman. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘if Fraser didn’t give himself away, he would be sucked down and disappear into his own darkness. By becoming someone else he manages to save himself—at least for as long as the affair lasts. Unfortunately none of the women who have accepted him completely have ever managed to save themselves.’

  Some—and how terrifyingly similar, Andrew reflected now, their fates sounded to those of Lucinda’s two lovers—had taken to drink; some had joined strange cults. Several, he knew, had had total breakdowns; several more had killed themselves….

  ‘Only then, when they have been destroyed, when a sacrifice, if you like, has been made to the pit, does Fraser re-emerge; and start to look again for the woman who will be able to accept him, yet have the strength not to fall into the darkness. Or better perhaps, for the woman who will make him accept himself; and by doing so, give him the strength to resist that fall.’

  As he had tried to uproot the obsession that Lucinda had become, so now Andrew tried to uproot his doubts and fears regarding Fraser. But just as he had failed with the one, so he failed with the other; and by the Friday when Fraser was due to arrive at the cottage, doubts and fears had turned to panic; and a near certainty that what he had foreseen would happen.

  The most ridiculous, yet disturbing aspect of the matter was that while now he had come to the conclusion that Fraser was the last person on earth he should send on this mission, he was still certain—more than ever certain—that Fraser was the only person on earth he could send. Because the man was going to San Francisco anyway, which seemed as if destiny had singled him out for the task. Because Fraser was his oldest and closest friend (it had been Fraser who had introduced him to Jill; Fraser the person he had called when Jill had been killed), and in such circumstances one could only rely on the oldest and closest of friends. And because there was the indisputable fact that if Lucinda were the ideal creature for whom he had been searching, Fraser alone would be sure to recognize her.

  Yet though he knew he could ask no one else, as Andrew bumped, blushed and blundered through the weekend—he was continually dropping things, knocking things over, saying things he didn’t mean to say, and generally giving even more of an impression of a red and gauche (if good-natured) schoolboy than he normally did—his panic grew to such an extent that he was more than once tempted to tell Fraser that everything was off, that he had changed his mind, that Lucinda had gone away, that—that Fraser wasn’t to go to see her. (Apart from anything else, he couldn’t help thinking, surely Lucinda, if she had a grain of sense, would prefer the dark demonic travel writer, with his core of blackness, to a clumsy, maladroit forty-five-year-old adolescent….)

  Fraser realized that Andrew was disturbed about something, and he might have guessed about what (for having remarked, with a smile, the evening of his arrival, ‘I hope I don’t find your beloved Californian too attractive’—and having noted the manic laughter with which his words were greeted—he was very careful thereafter to mention Lucinda, and his forthcoming examination of her, only with the greatest seriousness); but since the novelist didn’t mention his fears to him, he pret
ended to take the blushes and clumsiness as signs only of love. ‘I never believed I would see the day,’ he said gravely, ‘that Andrew Stairs sighed for a foreigner.’

  If only, Andrew thought, he had the courage to go to America himself. But he didn’t; and if he had managed to force himself into going, he would have been so nervous—nervous of the country, nervous of the continent, nervous of just being abroad, alone—that even if Lucinda had been more wonderful that he dreamed he wouldn’t have been able to see that wonder, and would have lost her forever. No—he couldn’t go abroad until after he had found his travelling companion; and the only way to find her was to put his trust in Fraser.

  But—Oh God, he thought for the hundredth time. Oh God. Just suppose….

  His panic reached a climax on the Monday morning, as his guests were preparing to leave; when Fraser, taking him aside for a moment, asked him what he thought of the Chinese girl (whom Andrew, so distraught had he been, and so preoccupied with Fraser, had hardly been aware of), told him that he himself didn’t think too much of her (she was sweet enough; but she only hovered and never—wisely, Andrew felt—landed), and confessed that he was going through a particularly bad time at the moment. (He was more and more often tempted, he said, simply to curl up in a corner somewhere and fall asleep, forever. He also, at times, came near to hating Andrew, so much did he envy him his cottage, his peace, his acceptance of himself.) But after he had listened to this cry of despair, after he had tried, as best he could, to reassure Fraser that he would eventually find what he was looking for, and when he still, in spite of the near hysteria that that cry and its implications had induced in him, hadn’t countermanded his orders regarding Lucinda, Andrew realized that the worst was over; and that from now on, though his fears would remain with him, he could only sit back, wait, and leave matters in the hands of the gods.