guilt novel – both perpetrator and victim version . . .’ He was still droning on.
‘What are you driving at, Gerard?’
‘Oh come on, you’re not going to play devil’s advocate on this one, are you? You don’t believe in the centrality of the literary tradition in this country any more than I do, now do you?’
‘S’pose not.’
‘You probably buy two or three of the big prize-winning novels every year and then possibly, just possibly, get round to reading one of them a year or so later. As for anything else, you might skim some thrillers that have been made into TV dramas – or vice versa – or scan something issue-based, or nibble at a plot that hinges on an unusual sexual position, the blurb for which happens to have caught your eye – ‘
‘But, Gerard’ – despite myself I was rising to it – ‘just because we don’t read that much, aren’t absorbed in it, it doesn’t mean that important literary production isn’t going on – ‘
‘Not that old chestnut!’ he snorted. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that there may be thousands of unbelievably good manuscripts rotting away in attic rooms, only missing out on publication because of the diffidence of their authors or the formulaic, sales-driven narrow-mindedness of publishers, eh?’
‘No, Gerard, I wasn’t going to argue that – ‘
‘It’s like the old joke about LA, that there aren’t any waiters in the whole town, just movie stars “resting”. I suppose all these bus boys and girls’ – he flicked a hand towards the epicene character who had been ministering to our meal – ‘are great novelists hanging out to get more material.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’
‘Excuse me?’ It was the waiter, a lanky blond who had been dangling in the mid-distance. ‘Did you want anything else?’
‘No, no.’ Gerard started shaking his head – but then broke off. ‘Actually, now that you’re here, would you mind if I asked you a question?’
‘Oh Gerard,’ I groaned, ‘leave the poor boy alone.’
‘No, not at all, anything to be of service.’ He was bending down towards us, service inscribed all over his soft-skinned face.
‘Tell me then, are you happy working here or do you harbour any other ambition?’ Gerard put the question as straightforwardly as he could but his plump mouth was twisted with irony.
The waiter thought for a while. I observed his flat fingers, nails bitten to the quick, and his thin nose coped with blue veins at the nostrils’ flare. His hair was tied back in a pony-tail and fastened with a thick rubber band.
‘Do you mind?’ he said at length, pulling half-out one of the free chairs.
‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘of course not.’ He sat down and instantly we all became intimates, our three brows forming a tight triangle over the cruets. The waiter put up his hands vertically, holding them like parentheses into which he would insert qualifying words.
‘Well,’ a self-deprecatory cough, ‘it’s not that I mind working here – because I don’t, but I write a little and I suppose I would like to be published some day.’
I wanted to hoot, to crow, to snort derision, but contented myself with a ‘Ha!’.
‘Now come on, wait a minute.’ Gerard was adding his bracketing hands to the manual quorum. ‘OK, this guy is a writer but who’s to say what he’s doing is good, or original?’
‘Gerard! You’re being rude – ‘
‘No, really, it doesn’t matter, I don’t mind. He’s got a point.’ His secret out, the waiter was more self-possessed. ‘I write – that’s true. I think the ideas are good. I think the prose is good. But I can’t tell if it hangs together.’
‘Well, tell us a bit about it. If you can, quote some from memory.’ I lit a cigarette and tilted back in my chair.
‘It’s complex. We know that Eric Gill was something more than an ordinary sexual experimenter. According to his own journal he even had sex with his dog. I’m writing a narrative from the point of view of Gill’s dog. The book is called Fanny Gill or I was Eric Gill’s Canine Lover.’ Gerard and I were giggling before he’d finished; and the waiter smiled with us.
‘That’s very funny,’ I said, ‘I especially like the play on – ‘
‘Fanny Hill, yeah. Well, I’ve tried to style it like an eighteenth-century picaresque narrative. You know, with the dog growing up in the country, being introduced to the Gill household by a canine pander. Her loss of virginity and so on.’
‘Can you give us a little gobbet then?’ asked Gerard. He was still smiling but no longer ironically. The waiter sat back and struck a pose. With his scraped-back hair and long face, he reminded me of some Regency actor-manager.
‘Then one night, as I turned and tossed in my basket, the yeasty smell of biscuit and the matted ordure in my coat blanketing my prone form, I became aware of a draught of turpentine, mixed with the lavender of the night air.
‘My master the artist and stone carver, stood over me.
“Come Fanny,” he called, slapping his square-cut hands against his smock, “there’s a good little doggie.” I trotted after him, out into the darkness. He strode ahead, whilst I meandered in his wake, twisting in the smelly skeins betwixt owl pellet and fox stool. “Come on now!” He was sharp and imperious. A tunnel of light opened up in the darkness. “Come in!” he snapped again, and I obeyed – poor beast – unaware that I had just taken my last stroll as an innocent bitch.’
Later, when we had paid the bill and were walking up Bow Street towards Long Acre, for no reason that I could think of I took Gerard’s arm. I’d never touched him before. His body was surprisingly firm, but tinged with dampness like a thick carpet in an old house. I said, trying to purge the triumph from my tone, ‘That was really rather good – now wasn’t it?’
‘Humph! S’pose so, but it was a “gay” novel, not in the mainstream of any literary tradition.’
‘How can you say that?’ I was incredulous. ‘There was nothing obviously gay about it.’
‘Really, Geraldine. The idea of using the dog as a sexual object was an allegory for the love that dare not speak its name, only wuffle. Anyway, he himself – the waiter, that is – was an obvious poof.’
We walked on in silence for a while. It was one of those flat, cold London days. The steely air wavered over the bonnets of cars, as if they were some kind of automotive mirage, ready to dissolve into the tarmac desert.
We normally parted at the mouth of the short road that leads to Covent Garden Piazza. I would stand, watching Gerard’s retreating overcoat as he moved past the fire – eaters, the jugglers, the stand-up comedians; and on across the parade ground of flagstones with its manoeuvring battalions of Benelux au pair girls. But on this occasion I wouldn’t let him go.
‘Do you have to get back to the office? Is there actually anything pressing for you to do?’
He seemed startled and turning to present the oblong sincerity of his face to me – he almost wrenched my arm. ‘Erm . . . well, no. S’pose not.’
‘How about a coffee then?’
‘Oh all right.’
I was sure he had meant this admission to sound cool, unconcerned, but it had come out as pathetic. Despite all his confident, wordy pronouncements, I was beginning to suspect that Gerard’s work might be as meaningless as my own.
As we strolled, still coupled, down Long Acre, the commercial day was getting into its post-prandial lack of swing. The opulent stores with their displays of flash goods belied what was really going on.
‘The