The Immaculate Read online

  Jack looked momentarily surprised, then broke into a wide, bashful grin. “Is it really that obvious?” he said.

  2

  SEAFOOD

  He and Gail had met nine months earlier.

  It had been May. May 16th, to be precise. A Friday. Two days after Jack had delivered the final proofs of Splinter Kiss to Cormorant and was subsequently in the process of taking what he’d thought would be a fully-deserved week off. To Jack the idea of a week off seemed blissful. It meant no toiling for hours over a word processor, no frying his brains as he searched his thesaurus for the exact word or phrase he was looking for (the one that normally he would pluck from his mental vocabulary with ease, but which today, because he needed it, had decided to play hide-and-seek), no feeling inadequate because he couldn’t capture the atmosphere of a particular setting or the essence of a particular character, no feeling guilty because he was making tea, doing some housework, doing some “research,” doing everything but starting writing.

  A week off. Paradise. But it was only Friday and already he was getting itchy fingers. He’d already convinced himself that sitting at his word processor was okay so long as he didn’t do any serious work. He could catch up with his correspondence, jot some notes for a short story, or even mull over some ideas for the next novel so long as he didn’t actually start it. What he’d planned to do with the week was sleep late, grab some much-needed fresh air and exercise, leisurely scour the secondhand bookshops, read, socialise . . . but after only two days he found to his profound astonishment that this simply wasn’t enough.

  What’s wrong with me? he thought. Why can’t I relax? He told himself that writing was his relaxation, that words were his toys and he needed to play with them. Yet he knew this wasn’t the answer. Sometimes, occasionally, the act of writing was exhilarating, but more often than not it was stressful, frustrating, tortuous. For Jack the joy came not in the process of building words, cementing one to the next, but in the final construction, the finished product. His old A-level English tutor, Mr. Wild, had once described novels as temples, and whilst Jack found this analogy a little pompous he also saw the sense in it. Certainly the words of his own books, taken by themselves, were simply the bricks, the framework. What was important was the emotion, the meaning, contained within.

  So what did that make him? A literary masochist, flagellating himself with his own inadequacies? The thought depressed him. Perhaps if he could deflect some of his intensity into another area . . . a new girlfriend maybe? But no. Jack had always found relationships hard. He was far too secretive and selfish, far too protective of his space and his time, the domain of his life. He liked his life and he liked himself and he didn’t want anyone intruding. After Carol the last thing he needed was someone telling him he had hang-ups just because they perceived him differently from the way he perceived himself.

  On Friday, May 16th 2003, this was his state of mind. He got out of bed at 8:42 after promising himself he’d sleep in until at least nine. He made himself some breakfast—a bowl of muesli, wholewheat toast with honey and his obligatory cup of tea—and sat, unshaven and tousle-haired, watching breakfast TV on Channel 4.

  The post arrived at 8:55. Jack put down his tea and scampered eagerly to the door. He wondered if all writers did this. Certainly the ones he knew did. He scooped up his mail—five letters, about average since he’d “become famous.” There were times in the early days when he’d receive nothing of interest for weeks. He’d get to the stage where he’d think there was a countrywide conspiracy against him, when even a rejection slip would be welcome. On the board above his desk was a postcard a friend had sent him. On it was a cartoon of a seriously twitchy man, and below the cartoon the words: I’m not paranoid—I know they’re out to get me!

  His post bag was good this morning. It contained a fan letter from a forty-seven-year-old man in Chesterfield, a letter from his agent, a magazine he subscribed to, a letter from a contemporary who wanted to sell a werewolf anthology and wondered if he’d contribute, and a satisfyingly healthy bank statement. Jack read through it all as he finished his tea, then showered, shaved, dressed and congratulated himself on not having had a cigarette yet. He made his way to his study, sat behind his desk and switched his machine on before he even realised what he was doing.

  “Relax, Stone, for God’s sake. You’re a bloody workaholic,” he said out loud. He’d just have a quick dabble, just half an hour’s tidying up and then he’d do something else. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed Frank Dawson’s number. Most of his friends were at work but Frank might be home.

  After five rings Frank’s answering machine cut in: “Tough shit, I’m out. You know what to do.” Jack grinned. “Hi, Frank,” he said, “this is Jack. I’ve just delivered a new book and I’m going stir-crazy trying to relax. Do you fancy lunch at Alfred’s? If so, I’ll meet you there at one. I’m off to haunt a few bookshops first. Bye.”

  He pushed his chair back, the castors making grooves in the rug he’d bought in Islamabad eleven years ago. He looked out of the window that was to the right of his desk. His top-floor flat in Crouch End was spacious and full of light. From his window he could see the houses across the street, the wide road, the roofs of cars. His street, indeed much of the area, was quiet, residential, relatively clean, at least by London standards.

  It was a beautiful spring morning, the sky so blue that it made Jack’s eyes ache to look at it. A few wispy clouds drifted past, the occasional one greying at the edges like sponges that still retained a little moisture. It was not a day for staying indoors when one didn’t have to. Just twenty minutes, Jack thought, and then he’d go out.

  Forty-five minutes later he looked at his watch and swore. He’d decided to do some light editing on an unsold short story and then maybe print it off to send somewhere, but he’d become increasingly bogged down in the narrative. “Bugger you!” he growled at the screen, and decided to abandon what he’d thought would be a pleasant task, maybe to return to it later. He collected together the miscellany he always carried with him—credit card, phone, spectacles, cigarettes, notepad and pen, cash, a novel to read—and distributed them among the many pockets of his bulky brown leather jacket. Outside the house he patted his car, a red Mini Cooper, as if it were a pet. He left it where it was, though—driving was too much of a hassle during the day—and strolled to Archway, his nearest tube station.

  At this time of year the underground was hot and crowded with tourists. It was irritating having to step over rucksacks and around suitcases, and Jack felt gloomy at the thought that it would become increasingly unbearable over the next three months. He found a seat and sat down and took out the book he was reading, James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia. Sometimes, when he told fans he didn’t read horror and fantasy exclusively they seemed disappointed, as if he’d exhibited disloyalty to his genre. In truth, though, Jack found that most books were simply amalgams of separate genres—horror novels often contained elements of crime and romance, mainstream novels were often fantasy packaged as literature. Jack felt lucky that the “uniqueness and innovation” of his own work had been seen by the press, the fans and his publisher as a positive aspect from the word go. So many writers he knew complained that their publishers tried to pigeonhole them, balked at the proposal of even the slightest change in direction. For some of his colleagues writing a book had become almost a group project, a clinical exercise in producing the ultimate saleable commodity. Hallelujah for publishers like Cormorant, Jack thought. His editor there, Patricia Stephens, believed that a novel should be just what its name implied: something that was new and fresh and challenging.

  By the time the tube arrived at Tottenham Court Road it was packed. Jack got off, scowling at people who stood there as if they had no idea why he was trying to push past them. The tube station smelled of stale breath and sour bodies. Everyone was hurrying as if London’s entire population were late for appointments. Jack’s clothes felt stuffed with damp warmth; he grasped the co
llar of his jacket in both hands and flapped it, trying to generate some air. At the bottom of the escalators, squatting on the floor, a man with sandals and a mop of dark hair was playing a didgeridoo. The sound was primitive and threatening and somehow delicious. Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up; he loved it when music did that to him. He fished in his pocket and was about to drop a fifty-pence piece into the shoebox by the man’s right foot when he noticed that tucked into the shoebox’s corner were half a dozen CDs, each with the same brown inlay card.

  “Are these of you playing?” Jack asked.

  The man glanced up, eyebrows becoming lost in his tangled fringe. Jack was sorry the music had to stop for the man to answer his question. A thread of spittle gleamed briefly between the mouthpiece of the instrument and the man’s lips before snapping.

  “Yes, friend,” the man said, his voice soft and with no trace of an accent.

  “How much are they?”

  “Eight pounds.”

  Jack considered for only a second. “Go on then,” he said, and pulled the money from his pocket. When he ascended the escalator, people looked at him as if he were mad. It had crossed Jack’s mind that the CD might be blank, but then he thought that surely there were now too many people with Discmans for the didgeridoo player to risk such a swindle. Besides that, he wanted to believe that anyone who could coax such emotion from a musical instrument had to be possessed of integrity and nobility. The music began again behind him: an evocative, ancient sound. Jack shuddered and hurried up the steps into the sunshine and bustle of Oxford Street.

  He lost the next two hours in the smell and sight and feel of books. Jack loved new books for their glossy covers and their smell of fresh ink, he loved old books for their sense of resilience and history, their musty lived-in odour, their browning pages, lovingly thumbed. His flat was full of books. They were crammed into every niche, into every available space. His study was simply four walls of books, multi-coloured spines towering to the ceiling. Even in the bathroom there were books, piled in the small alcove behind the toilet. The hallway in his flat, already narrow, had been narrowed even further by the installation of a long bookcase. There were small piles of books, still waiting to be sorted, in the most unlikely places: in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, on top of the TV, beside his shoes in the wardrobe.

  Though Jack loved his books, his only regret at owning so many was that he would never have time to read them all. Someday, he often promised himself, I’ll read all these. Yet Jack reckoned that for every three books he bought he probably read one. He glanced at his purchases for that day, which he’d assembled in a big yellow plastic Strange Worlds bag. Six new books, two of which were hardbacks, and eight secondhand; he dreaded to think how much money he’d spent. His love of books went back a long way, to a time when losing himself in fiction had been the only escape from his childhood.

  As he travelled the two stops from Leicester Square, where his wanderings had taken him, to Green Park, Jack thought of his last girlfriend, Carol. She’d never understood his fascination with books. Every time he dragged her into a secondhand bookshop she would curl her face into a grimace and exclaim, “How can you buy these dirty old things? You don’t know where they’ve been.” Jack could not remember how he and Carol had ever got together. They had had nothing in common. He supposed the attraction must have been physical. He hadn’t realised how much she was grinding down his spirit, expressing disapproval of every aspect of his lifestyle, until their relationship ended one terrible and glorious Monday morning. That was the closest Jack had ever come to hitting a woman. In the end he had hit the wall instead, denting it and bruising his knuckles. He had called her a “neurotic witch” (not exactly the most scathing put-down in the world, but it had made him feel good at the time), and she had simply consolidated her hatred of all that was Jack Stone: his appearance, his profession, his choice of friends and decor and restaurants and books and art and entertainment and music and politics. He was a worm, she said, a slimeball, a sick pervert who wrote and read what was nothing but pornography in disguise. That had got Jack mad, but the insult which had made him clench his fist and punch the wall was so obviously an attempt to goad him that he should have treated it with contempt. She told him he was crap in bed, that she’d always been repulsed by his sexual advances, that she had faked every orgasm she’d ever had with him and had wanted to wash herself each time he touched her skin.

  Jack got off the tube and realised that his stomach was churning unpleasantly. Carol had really screwed him up. For months afterwards he had constantly felt on the edge of fever or neurosis, had suffered from headaches and sore throats and mouth ulcers. He had never seen her again, had not called her and she had not called him. It was almost fourteen months since they had finished, yet even now Jack would sometimes see a woman in the street or on the tube who, for a split-second, looked like Carol, and his heart would leap almost in panic, his mouth would go dry, he would begin to sweat.

  Alfred’s, where Jack had suggested Frank meet him for lunch, was a small pizzeria just round the corner from Berkeley Street. As with most of Jack’s favourite restaurants, the decor was sparse, even shabby, but the food delicious. The clientele was mostly young and dressed casually. Many of them carried sports bags or folders or files, denoting their status as students. On the walls were framed black and white photographs of famous boxers. The chef, a stereotypical fat Italian with a heavy moustache, could be seen cooking in a large open-plan kitchen at the far end of the room, spinning pizza crusts with the panache of a circus performer.

  The place was crowded when Jack arrived, but fortunately a couple stood up to leave just as he came in. He sat down, placing his bag of books on the floor by his chair. He was thankful to relieve himself of the weight; the biceps of both arms were aching as a result of swapping the bag from hand to hand. When the waitress arrived Jack ordered a mineral water and asked her to leave an extra menu. He called Frank at home and on his mobile and got his voice mail both times, and then, feeling guilty but telling himself he had no reason to, he took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He’d been trying to cut down on booze, cigarettes, sugar, salt and animal fat since he’d turned thirty, nearly three years ago, but his intentions were stronger than his will power. Still, he didn’t do too badly; this was his first cigarette of the day and he’d ordered mineral water instead of beer or wine to drink. He narrowed his eyes against the smoke that drifted in front of his face and watched the chef chopping a capsicum, his knife a silver blur.

  “I’ll just wait another five minutes,” Jack said when the waitress came over for his order. “I kind of half-arranged to meet someone. They may not turn up, but . . . well . . . you know, they might.” He forced a smile, admonishing himself silently for feeling he had to explain. He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out, and toyed with the condiments in the middle of the table. As well as pepper and salt there was a larger shaker containing dried chili seeds and a small bowl of parmesan cheese. He glanced up at the door each time it opened. It was twenty-three minutes past one.

  When the waitress next came within earshot, Jack leaned forward and said, “I’ll order now, please. I don’t think my friend is going to turn up.” She nodded, and reached for the pad and pen tucked into her belt. When she had left, Jack leaned over and rooted in his bag, pulling out four secondhand books. He had wanted to wait until he was home before looking properly at what he’d bought, but if Frank wasn’t going to show he needed something to occupy his mind while he ate.

  His first course arrived, mushrooms in garlic and tomato sauce. Jack added pepper, chili and parmesan cheese and ate them slowly. Whilst he waited for his main course, chicken in cream and herbs with tagliatelle, he looked through the rest of his books. The two hardbacks were by genre contemporaries whose work he admired, the new paperbacks by writers he’d never read before. One was a collection of stories by a twenty-two-year-old science-fiction writer whom everyone was raving about. Jack was
flicking through this, looking at the names of the stories, reading the first paragraphs of each, when a dark shape moved in front of him, blocking the light from the window.

  He looked up, expecting to see Frank. A woman stood there. She was wearing a blue and orange skirt, a white T-shirt and a blue cardigan. She was looking at him quizzically, as if she knew him from somewhere but could not place where. On the rare occasions when Jack had been recognised he’d felt awkward and uncomfortable, but now he was willing the woman to say, “Excuse me, but aren’t you Jack Stone, the writer?”

  Not that he’d have anything interesting to say back. “Yes, I am,” he’d admit modestly, and she’d maybe gush for twenty seconds or so about how she’d read all his books and thought they were brilliant. He would go pink and his smile would become fixed and he’d say, “Thanks very much. It’s very nice of you to say so.” Then maybe there’d be a pregnant pause and she would say, “Well . . . it’s been good to meet you. I’ll look out for the next one.” And she would walk away, leaving Jack floundering frustratedly for witticisms that would come to him the instant she was out of earshot.

  “Is anyone sitting here?” the woman said, pointing at the empty chair opposite him.

  “Er . . . no,” he said. “I was waiting for a friend, but it doesn’t look as though he’s coming.”

  “Would you mind if I joined you then? I’m not usually so pushy, but it’s the only free seat in the place and I’ve been on my feet all morning.”

  Jack half-stood and flapped at the seat as though scattering seeds. “Er . . . no. I mean, yes. I mean . . . oh, hell. Please sit down.”