Felix in the Underworld Read online

‘Not Gavin’s.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘No. That was the whole point of it. It turned out not to be his child at all!’

  ‘Sounds familiar.’

  ‘So PROD stopped chasing him and he’s in the clear now and he’s got his job back. He’s in your business, actually.’

  ‘You mean he’s a novelist?’

  ‘Not as grand as you. He drives around selling books. Well, delivering them to bookshops. For Epsilon Books. I think people have to pay to be published by them.’ She looked at him, deeply concerned. ‘You did answer PROD’s letter, didn’t you? It doesn’t do not to answer.’

  ‘I told you I wrote and said it wasn’t my child either.’

  ‘Of course. You told them a few more porkies.’

  ‘Miriam,’ he started.

  ‘Mirry.’

  ‘All right. Mirry, I don’t know what you’ve told PROD, but now you’ve got to tell them you’ve made a mistake. You are utterly and completely mistaken. Of course, if you’re really in trouble, I could help you out. To a certain extent. I wouldn’t mind doing that. What do you say?’

  ‘I’m not in trouble, Felix, and I don’t want you to be either. But you’ve got to face up to the truth. You’ve only got to look at Ian to tell you what that is.’

  He looked at Ian. The child had finished drawing and returned to his mother. She looked at the menu he had decorated and handed it to Felix. It was a distorted child’s vision of himself, his hair standing on end, his spectacles askew and his shoelaces undone. Under it was a single word, Dad.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Is this where it was?’

  The summer had vanished ten days after it arrived. Now the wind whipped up froth on the heavy sea, loaded with rubbish. The beach was empty except for elderly couples, their raincoats blown flat against their bodies, calling after wet dogs who bounded off to sniff and clamber on each other. The mess of the short summer – bottles, Coke cans, cardboard plates from takeaways, and the wrapping of contraceptives – lingered among the hillocks of sand. Two men walked along the beach: one with thinning hair disturbed by the wind, lifting to expose bald patches; the other square, short and dark, broad-shouldered and Celtic. They were Felix and Huw Hotchkiss, head of Media Studies and one-time county player of rugby football. Huw was a man who smelled, Felix remembered, of old leather chairs. With his fingers he made a square like a viewfinder and squinted through it, as though planning a shot of the damp breakwater and the litter-strewn sand.

  ‘“Exterior. Empty beach. Day. Grey sky. Rain. Sound. Laughter. Party chatter. Dissolve to exterior breakwater and beach. Night. There is a party in progress. Huw is barbecuing a chop. Anne Morsom is wearing a necklace of sausages. Assorted students and hangers on are eating, laying out food or getting laid behind the breakwater.” It’s all visual. You can do that sort of thing on film. Caxton’s dead and buried. The age of the book is over.’

  ‘Do you remember that party?’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘Was there a lilo put there, do you remember?’

  ‘A lilo? Oh, you mean an airbed.’ The Welshman in Media Studies sometimes pretended he could only understand American – the language of the visual arts. ‘Oh, loads of them. Those that didn’t bring a steak, or a bottle of red, brought an airbed. It’s good to see you, boyo!’ Huw put his arm around Felix and squeezed his shoulder painfully. They hadn’t met since Anne’s funeral and when Huw was embarrassed he became very Welsh, called people boyo and either embraced them or punched them hard in the ribs. In moments of extreme embarrassment he had been known to bring even women down with a flying rugby tackle.

  ‘It’s good to see you too.’ Felix was lying again; he had avoided all contact with Huw for years. The strange Miriam had forced him into a meeting with the man who now said, ‘We both lost her, didn’t we?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Anne.’

  ‘I understand that, Felix. I understand that completely. She was a beautiful girl and we couldn’t keep her.’

  ‘I want to ask you about another woman.’

  ‘You’ve found someone new? Oh, I’m sincerely happy. From the bottom of my heart I’m happy for you, boyo. I won’t take this one from you, I promise.’

  ‘I haven’t found her. She’s found me. And, as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to her.’

  ‘You’re bitter about me, boyo.’ Huw looked hurt. ‘I can hear the note of bitterness in your voice. But I say this from the bottom of my heart. I wish you every happiness.’

  ‘Do you remember anyone called Miriam? Or Mirry?’ Felix was determined to concentrate on the question he had to ask.

  ‘There were so many girls about. Students. Friends of students. Wannabe students. We had a whole crowd from central casting. It was a big scene, Felix. A big, vibrant scene in the picture. What was she like?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘What’s she like now?’

  ‘Either someone from a travelling circus or a quiet, serene-looking secretary.’

  ‘Make up your mind!’ Huw laughed.

  ‘Whatever she looks like, her name’s Miriam Bowker. What I want to know is, was I on a – whatever you call it – an airbed with her at any time during the party?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you think you were?’

  ‘From what I remember I was on an airbed making love.’

  ‘With this circus person?’

  ‘No, with my wife.’

  ‘You couldn’t have been, I’m sorry to have to tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I was. There now. Bloody hell, I’ve hurt your feelings!’ Huw punched Felix on the upper arm.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Do you remember anyone called Gavin Piercey?’

  ‘Piercey? Bloody pain in the backside!’

  ‘You remember him?’

  ‘Extra-mural. He used to turn up at my class on the Moving Image until I discovered he only wanted to be an accountant on a film unit and I chucked him out. Have you come across him lately?’

  ‘Quite lately, yes.’

  Gavin had rung him the evening of Miriam’s lunch. She and Ian had left without trouble when he had given them money for their fare and a ‘spot of cash for gas bills and boring things like that’. She had promised to have a word with Ken Savage at PROD and calm him down: ‘I think he fancies me just a little does our Ken.’ When Felix put them in a taxi for the station, Ian had looked at him and said, ‘Thanks for a great meal, Dad.’

  Gavin’s call came while Felix was watching an adaptation of Vanity Fair. The persistent, always slightly hurt voice said, ‘I’m so glad you hit it off with Mirry and Ian. I hear you gave them lunch and helped them out. It’ll be a new interest in life for you, won’t it, Felix? See you at your next event.’ Felix was about to say he didn’t want to see or hear from Gavin again, ever, when the phone clicked and he was left alone with Becky Sharp. Now he stood on the beach with Hotchkiss, staring at the scene of whatever crime he had committed. ‘She says I gave her a child.’

  ‘Who says that?’

  ‘This woman, Miriam.’ And Felix winced as his arm was punched again. ‘I’m happy for you, boyo! It’s great news.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It’s the future, Felix. You’ll push yourself out into the years to come.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been done at the party. Not with anyone except Anne, that is. Dammit, my mother was there.’

  ‘So far as I remember your mother was paddling in the sea with a couple of queens. Later on she was dancing with both of them. How can you be sure what happened?’

  ‘I suppose I can’t.’

  ‘We were drunk on youth and love and Carafino red. That’s what we were, boyo. You know, come to think of it, Anne never gave either of us a child.’

  ‘No.’ Felix had a horrible suspicion that there were tears in the Welshman’s eyes. Then Huw burst out laughing, punched him in the stomach this time, and shouted, ‘I’m happy for you, Felix. Since
rely happy.’ Then he vaulted over the breakwater and ran away fast across the sand as though he were carrying a ball and scoring a try at Cardiff Arms Park.

  It was a sunny day and Felix smelled once again the sickly sweet, disinfected air of hospital corridors. But this time he was in the Evening Star Rest and Retirement Home, seven miles to the west of Coldsands. He was following Miss Iona Wellbeloved, the perpetually anxious head of the establishment, down a corridor in which the sunlight dappled the linoleum and burnished a vase of plastic daffodils. Miss Wellbeloved knocked and opened the door to a small bright room where his mother lay, propping up the mountain of bedclothes and smiling perpetually. ‘I’ll leave you two alone together, although I’m afraid, Felix, you still won’t find her exactly chatty.’

  He sat by the bed and took his mother’s hand but got no answering squeeze.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as usual hopelessly, ‘how are you, Mum?

  ‘Treating you reasonably, are they? I believe Out of Season’s doing quite well. I’ve been on a book tour. Did I tell you that?

  ‘Mum, I’ve been meaning to ask you this. You remember being at a barbecue on the beach? A party given by Huw Hotchkiss? Please listen, Mum. Do your best. It’s important. Do you remember a girl hanging about there called Miriam Bowker? Please can you hear what I’m saying?’

  There was still no reply, but Felix tried anyway. ‘I need to know. Urgently. Was I ever on a lilo with Miriam Bowker?’

  Mrs Morsom smiled and kept her counsel, as she had for six years. On the way out Miss Wellbeloved asked Felix if he had ever considered termination.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘For your mother. We don’t see much hope of a change. Of course I’d have to have a word with Dr Cheeseman.’

  ‘Please don’t!’ Felix was positive. ‘I get the feeling that, most of the time, she’s secretly happy.’

  Later he travelled to London for a book signing in Millstream’s, Covent Garden. In his pocket was a letter he had received that morning from PROD. It ran:

  Dear Mr Morsom

  Your letter dated 25th May has been noted and will be dealt with by our Mr Savage on his return from paternity leave. Meanwhile, I have to inform you that your liability for the infant Ian Bowker has been reassessed at £25,000.

  I should warn you that failure to pay any sum due to PROD will result in immediate court proceedings.

  With all good wishes

  Yours sincerely

  Placidity Jones pp. K. Savage

  Brenda Bodkin, driven by Terry, the rep, met Felix at Victoria. She was, he thought, looking radiantly beautiful that morning and smelling of freshly baked bread. Her nails were less bitten than usual and her hair lit up Terry’s dingy car like sunshine. However she was in a brisk and businesslike mood which forbade any reference to the distant prospect of abroad or of translating his desire from fiction to fact. Instead he sat brooding on the evil Gavin, the scheming Mirry and the senseless injustice of PROD.

  ‘You’re not listening!’ Brenda had been giving him the Out of Season sales figures.

  ‘No. Are they good?’

  ‘All right, that’s what they are. Perfectly all right. Anyway, what are you looking so miserable about?’

  Terry was listening to a Meatloaf tape and Felix lowered his voice under the sound of the music. He needed someone to confide in.

  ‘About a woman.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Brenda shouted above the music.

  ‘A woman’s causing me terrible trouble.’

  ‘I’m not causing you trouble. I’m telling you your sales figures and you’re not even listening! You’re not going on about our getting out of the country to do it, are you? Because if you do, I probably shan’t.’

  ‘It’s not you. It’s another woman.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Brenda’s voice was like a chill blast of winter. ‘I thought I was the only woman in your life.’

  ‘Well, you’re not, worse luck.’

  ‘What’s this other woman done to you then?’ Brenda was looking out of the window, making it clear that she had very little interest in the matter.

  ‘She claims to have had my child.’

  ‘She what? Brenda turned to look at him.

  ‘She says this solemn little boy she has is mine.’

  ‘So naturally you did it with her?’

  ‘It’s just possible. Years ago. On the beach. Well, there was a lilo under the breakwater. The trouble is I simply can’t remember.’

  Winter had given way to spring and now Brenda was smiling. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘there’ve been so many?’

  ‘Well’ – he decided there was no harm in letting her think so – ‘perhaps.’

  ‘Bloody hell! You old devil.’ Terry cornered with panache, the Astra bucked and rocked and they were thrown together. He felt the warmth of her tartan-trousered thigh against his and she didn’t move away. ‘At least we’ve got something we can grab hold of, publicity-wise.’

  ‘You think I need this sort of publicity?’

  ‘Of course you do! You know, the trouble with you, Felix, as a promotable author, you’re not colourful. That’s why your sales figures are all right but not spectacular. You’re a nice chap, Felix. As an author you’re perfectly acceptable. You don’t smell. You don’t get drunk. You don’t chase your publicist round the room. You ask politely. You talk nicely to punters at book signings. But let’s face it, Felix, you are monochrome. It seems that nothing has ever happened to you.’

  ‘People have been saying that lately.’

  ‘People are right. Take Helena Corduroy.’

  ‘I’d rather not!’ Felix remembered the formidable historical novelist with whom he’d once shared a literary lunch where she read from her Age of the Troubadors for forty-five minutes.

  ‘Wicked, Felix. Wicked!’ Brenda was laughing now, her hand on his thigh. ‘When Helena’s husband went off with another man she got the centrespread in the Meteor and bang on to the bestseller list.’

  ‘Nothing to do with her book?’

  ‘Of course not! Her books are terrible. And Tim Gosshawk. Remember him? Gosshawk’s Gardening was dull as ditch-water. Had up for gross indecency on Wimbledon Common and he made it to number five in the non-fiction.’

  ‘It sounds like a hard path to success.’

  ‘You betcha! But worth the slog. “Famous Novelist’s Love-Child”: I think Lucasta Frisby on the Meteor would be very interested.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it was love exactly.’

  ‘Novelist’s child of lust. Even better. And I’ll tell you what -’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When we’ve got the Meteor, we’ll go to Dublin. Together.’

  ‘I thought we were going anyway?’

  ‘Well, perhaps, yes. Perhaps we are.’ She lit a cigarette holding it, as always, like a magic wand with the tips of her bitten fingers. ‘Seeing that you’ve become more colourful, I’ll ring Lucasta.’

  ‘Just hold on a minute’ – Felix, like Queen Elizabeth I, was a strong believer in the politics of prevarication – ‘just till I get a few things sorted out.’

  ‘All right then. ’ Brenda smiled at him. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’ And they held hands all the way round Trafalgar Square.

  When he came up, as Felix knew he would, in the queue outside Millstream’s in Covent Garden, Gavin wasn’t carrying a book. Instead he was holding a brown envelope which contained, he said, a message Miriam had asked him to deliver. Felix took it, stuffed it into his pocket and said, with extremely hard feelings, ‘Do you want a book signed?’

  ‘No thanks, Felix. I’ve bought one of yours already. I’m afraid I can’t sub you any more although I do realize that you need the money.’

  ‘Then, if you’d just move along. There are other people waiting.’

  In fact Felix’s customers were standing patiently. Behind them, at the end of a row of shops, a pale girl was collecting money in a bowler hat for a man who stood in chains and was only prepared to li
berate himself when the hat was loaded. Gavin spoke to Felix as though they were alone in a room.

  ‘I wanted to warn you. Be careful of those bloodsuckers at PROD. They’re not fools, those bloodsuckers aren’t.’ Gavin was smiling. ‘And they’ll chase you without mercy, they will. Unforgiving, they are, if they think you let down a child. Also they duff you up in custody.’

  ‘As you know to your cost.’

  ‘To my cost. Yes. Indeed.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got no intention of being banged up in a cell.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it.’

  ‘Which child was it you failed to support?’ As Felix asked the question he suspected what the answer must be.

  ‘It was young Ian. I’m sure you know that by now?’ Gavin’s attention had been caught by the chained man. ‘If he gets out of that lot I’ll suspect some sort of trickery.’

  ‘Of course. You’re Ian’s father.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not. Mirry thought I was. She thought that for a long time until I went through it with her. Then she agreed it must have been you. It was the only answer.’

  ‘The only answer for you!’ In his anger Felix felt a wild moment of relief, as at the climax of love. Unaccustomed to rage, he found the sensation intoxicating and heard his voice as though it were someone else calling in the distance, ‘You bastard! I’m going through all this just to get you off the hook? Is that what you’re saying? Let me tell you something. Prison’s too good for you! Get out of my life, do you hear me? You can drop dead, Gavin, for all I care. Drop bloody well dead!’

  Gavin, smiling, turned to join the crowd round the chained man and Felix heard a sharp command, ‘Sign this, will you, with some message of respect for an older wordsmith. Il miglior fabbro or some such brown-nosing inscription.’ Gavin’s place had been taken by that uncoordinated daddy-long-legs of an elderly author, Sir Ernest Thessaley, who had paused outside the bookshop on his way to the Sheridan Club and was interested enough to ask, ‘Was that the fellow you’re planning to kill?’ and, as he took the signed copy of Out of Season, ‘Have I contributed, in some small way, to the price put upon his head?’

  On his way home in the train Felix opened the brown envelope. In it he found further photographs of Ian, his latest school report, and a sprig of brown seaweed. Such a piece, he remembered, used to hang outside the back door of his parents’ house at Coldsands in order, by its occasional dampness, to foretell the state of the weather. As a bored child he would pinch and pop its dried pimples. This present of seaweed was attached to a card which showed the silhouettes of a pierrot and pierrette kissing in front of a yellow dinner-plate of a moon. On it Miriam had scrawled in green ink ‘A memento of our great occasion. I took it home from the breakwater.’