Beneath the Earth Read online

  We sat in silence as the streets went by. I was looking forward to a few sandwiches and a lot of alcohol.

  ‘Are you a little jealous of Arthur?’ she asked after a moment, and I turned to look at her in surprise. ‘I mean yes, quite clearly, he’s a total knob. But I wondered, and I’m not trying to be cruel, but do you feel envious of him? Do you look at his life and think that it might have been you?’

  ‘Why on earth would I think that?’ I asked, appalled.

  ‘Surely the answer to that question is obvious too.’

  I never talk about The Dead Game, my only published novel that came out to widespread indifference almost twelve years ago. Looking back, I can see that it wasn’t a particularly good book but then again I was young when I wrote it and I don’t believe that I got a very fair deal. My editor, Timothy Haynes, took the book on after practically every other publishing house in the UK had turned it down. It wasn’t the first time any of them had heard from me either. There’d been three earlier novels, all of which had been rejected, but I’d tried something different with The Dead Game and somehow I’d landed a contract. Three months before my novel was published, however, Timothy left the house to work for a film production company and no one, as they say, ‘owned’ me any more. I was passed over to Henrietta, an editor who already had bad blood with Timothy due to their recent divorce and his decision to commence intimate sexual relations with her sister, and over the course of a single lunch together, where she went through the manuscript page by page, she uttered the phrase ‘Honestly, I don’t know what Tim was thinking’ on at least thirty-eight occasions and I’m pretty sure she was referring to my book and not their marital issues.

  ‘Look, it’s not dreadful,’ she said as we finished up, one of the better reviews that I would ultimately receive. She reached a hand across the table and placed it on mine, as if she was telling me that I might have terminal cancer but then again I might not. ‘There’s a lot of people out there who like this sort of thing. Although I’m not sure it will even be to their taste. But I could be proved wrong. I’ve been wrong about men before, after all. Anyway, it’s in the schedule, so we’ll go ahead and put it out there and wait and see what happens.’

  Rarely has a young writer received such rapturous support from their editor and when the book was published and widely available in at least half a dozen shops, it sank without trace, an indignity that coincided with Henrietta’s refusal to answer my calls or emails. I was hurt and angry; I felt humiliated. Audrey was supportive, Mother a little less so, and Father died in the middle of the farrago, which was bloody typical of him. Finally, I decided that I would not be put off and wrote The Living Game, an ill-advised sequel, which was returned to me with a form letter from Henrietta’s assistant, telling me that it wasn’t quite right for their list and that debuts weren’t doing very well at the moment.

  I’m not a debut, I told her in a furious reply. You published my first novel only last year, you bunch of worthless fuckers.

  They didn’t reply to that, so I called round to see whether something could be done to salvage the book but I wasn’t even allowed on to the elevators and that was the end of that, which was the point when I decided to go travelling. I’d had it with publishing, resolved never to write another word, and while living in Tittmoning with my cows I realized that the reason my writing career hadn’t worked out was because essentially I simply wasn’t very good. Although I had one thing that a lot of disappointed novelists lack: an ability to recognize my outstanding lack of talent. This insight made my life a lot easier and somehow I got over my failure and became quite happy in my new role as Tittmoning’s leading kuhliebhabermann, but I won’t pretend that it didn’t sting when I heard that Arthur, my old childhood friend Arthur, big-dicked Arthur, had sold a novel to a far more prestigious publishing house than mine and that there was a lot of buzz within the industry about it. (For some reason, I had kept up my subscription to The Bookseller website and even though I genuinely don’t care what goes on in the literary world any more, I visit it a few times every day just to keep abreast of developments.)

  What did Arthur have that I didn’t have, I asked myself? Certainly not talent. On that score, we were each other’s equals.

  The galling thing was that I knew immediately that things would go right for him in the way that they had gone wrong for me, and when his book was published I could see in every half-assed sentence and overwritten metaphor that he was essentially a conman and all those fuckers in the publishing houses and all those cunts in the media and those bastard bitches in their book clubs sitting around talking about character development and narrative arc and empathy would just lap it up because they’d all be too fucking stupid to recognize a case of the emperor’s new clothes when they saw it. They’d latch on to his worthless piece-of-shit novel and proclaim it a work of genius and the media would flock to Arthur and call him the voice of a new generation or some other tired old cliché and I’d have to spend the rest of my life listening to his cunting voice on the radio talking about the shit he produced and pretending to be self-deprecating when it was obvious to everyone that he believed they should just give him the Nobel Prize right away and save everyone a lot of time and trouble and I’d be left, like I’d always been, alone with nothing and no one and no talent and no future and no girlfriend and no media campaign and no prizes and no reason to wear a tuxedo ever and no one thinking I’d done well for myself and no one envying me and everyone who knew me when I was a kid saying hasn’t Arthur achieved a lot and what’s this I hear about Pierce getting involved in some scandal in Germany with a herd of cattle? And now Mother was dead on top of everything and it seemed that even she thought he could write a better eulogy than me, the author of The Dead Game, who Time Out had once called ‘possibly a novelist to keep an eye on in the future in case he produces something more interesting’. Fuck that shit.

  ‘No,’ I said to Audrey, looking at her as if I’d never been asked anything so stupid in my entire life. ‘Why on earth would I be jealous of Arthur?’

  The wake ended with a song, Arthur singing a piece he had composed for the occasion called ‘The Bride of Battlerea’ on a bizarre instrument called a Chinese erhu, a long-necked monstrosity that resembled a pooper-scooper, with two pegs at the top and a set of strings hanging down into a sound-box. Why he chose this title is anyone’s guess, for there is no such place and if there is – which there isn’t – Mother did not come from there. But there isn’t anyway, so it makes no difference. Although it would be unfair of me not to admit that his voice was at least passable. There were even one or two people who appeared to be wiping tears from their eyes.

  Mrs Burton, our next-door neighbour while I was growing up, laid a hand on my elbow as she spoke to me. I hadn’t been able to look her in the eye for many years for her bedroom was on the other side of the wall to mine and when I was fourteen she took me aside on the street and said that she could hear everything I was doing in there when I went to bed, that I was a filthy little so-and-so and if I didn’t stop I’d go blind and she’d tell my mother the reason why. It made me happy to see how wrinkled her face had become.

  ‘It comes for us all, doesn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘What does?’ I asked.

  ‘Death.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘It might be your turn next.’

  ‘Or yours,’ she said. ‘Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour. Matthew. Chapter 25. Verse 13.’

  ‘That’s a cheerful thought,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be selling the house now?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘I hadn’t given it much thought,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to speak to Audrey, of course. It belongs to both of us.’

  ‘You won’t be letting it out, will you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘As I said, that is a conversation which has yet to take place.’

  ‘Do you remember William Hart, Mrs Hart’s son from number thir
teen?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Vividly.’ William Hart was a tough little bastard who had bloodied my nose on more than one occasion during my formative years and, at my tenth birthday party, had threatened to urinate in my ear if I didn’t give him my brand-new Spirograph. He had a dog, an incredibly violent mongrel that answered to the name of Princess Margaret-Rose, who was mortal enemies with my own dog, Chester, although they did, of course, occasionally fornicate with each other. Not too different to humans in that regard, I suppose.

  ‘Well, when she died, William rented the house out.’ She glanced around in case she might be overheard and lowered her voice as she pulled me so close that I could see the dusty moustache that rested above her upper lip. ‘To a Pakistani family, if you please,’ she told me. ‘They’re very nice, of course. I’d have nothing bad to say about any of them but still. You wouldn’t do something like that, would you?’

  ‘When Audrey and I decide,’ I assured her, ‘you will be the first to know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, apparently relieved by this assur ance. ‘Of course I’m not racist,’ she added. ‘You know that, Pierce, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, of course.’

  ‘I just don’t like Pakistani people. Or Indians. Or Sri Lankans. Or anyone from that part of the world, if I’m honest.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, although I didn’t.

  ‘You know, he’s one of them now.’

  ‘Who’s one of what?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘William Hart,’ she told me. ‘He’s one of them.’

  ‘He’s a Pakistani?’ I asked. ‘How on earth did he manage that?’

  ‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, slapping my arm and laughing. ‘How could that ever happen? No, he’s a homosexual.’ She lowered her voice even more so it was almost a whisper. ‘Don’t say anything. It wouldn’t be fair on him.’

  Arthur had come to the end of his song by now and I could see him walking towards me with two glasses of champagne in his hands, a curious choice I thought for a wake.

  ‘Mrs Burton,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I can’t believe you’re still alive.’

  ‘Oh you!’ she said, blushing like a schoolgirl.

  ‘Mrs Burton was just telling me that William Hart is a Pakistani now,’ I said.

  Arthur frowned and scratched his face, as if he felt there was a joke in there somewhere but he couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

  ‘I’ll love you and leave you,’ said Mrs Burton, holding my right hand in her left, and Arthur’s left hand in her right, so we formed an unholy fellowship. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, both of you.’

  I felt irritated. Where was Arthur’s loss? The mother of a boy he had known many years ago had died; I failed to see how he was an immediate representative of grief.

  ‘Audrey looks well,’ he said when it was just the two of us again. ‘For her age, I mean.’

  ‘She’s two years younger than you.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re going to do with the house?’ he asked.

  ‘Not you as well.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a fairly common question at these affairs, isn’t it? I never know what to say at them.’

  ‘And so you descend into cliché. What a surprise.’

  He raised an eyebrow and waited a long time before speaking again, sipping his champagne and looking around the room, hoping to be recognized. There was a nineteen-year-old boy, bespectacled, clearly a student, working behind the bar and he settled his eyes on him. Superman’s X-ray beams could not have penetrated any deeper. There was a good chance that sooner or later the boy would approach him, which would give him a chance to refuse a photo.

  ‘Are you familiar with the German word micschetellfeiffer?’ he asked me after a moment.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘It means a collection of German-sounding syllables rolled together that have absolutely no meaning at all but sound authentic to a person of below average intelligence.’

  ‘Not quite,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps in some of the more remote Bavarian regions, that’s how they define it. But in general it’s a term used for a man who has not succeeded in his goals, perhaps through no fault of his own, but who resents those who have and so looks down his nose at them, making sarcastic observations and assuming that the target of his resentment is too stupid to understand him.’

  ‘Incredible how so much can be said by so little,’ I replied. ‘Those Germans, eh?’

  ‘And the word for the unwitting recipient of so much jealousy and approbation is known as a kelshtving.’ He smiled at me and I felt a corrosive mixture of anger, envy and humiliation course through my veins.

  ‘I suppose you’re telling me that you’re the kelshtving,’ I said. ‘And I’m the micschetellfeiffer.’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything of the sort,’ said Arthur with a shrug. ‘I’m simply talking with an old friend at the funeral of his mother.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But unfortunately, like Mrs Burton, I too will have to love you and leave you. My desk awaits me. My fountain pen is pulsating with anticipation. My blank white pages are moist with the knowledge that soon they will be filled. Perhaps we’ll see each other soon?’

  ‘Would you like to go outside and compare penis sizes?’ I asked. ‘Just for old time’s sake, I mean?’

  He frowned and shook his head.

  ‘Some other time then?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he said.

  He made his way out the door just as Audrey came over, her face a little drawn from the emotion of the day.

  ‘Was that Arthur leaving?’ she asked. She looked disappointed and for a moment I thought she was going to start crying. ‘I should have said goodbye. We underestimated him, didn’t we? What he said by the graveside … Mother would have been very moved.’

  ‘Well he’s probably still out in the car park if you want to run after him,’ I said. ‘You can pick up where you left off in the Burlington.’

  ‘Shut up. I confided in him earlier that I’d argued with Mother the night she died and that I’ve been feeling rotten about it ever since.’

  ‘You were always arguing,’ I pointed out. ‘It would only be news if you’d ended things on good terms.’

  ‘But it was over something so stupid.’

  ‘Really? What was it, a soap opera? A recipe? A knitting pattern?’

  ‘Yes, Pierce, it was a combination of all those things because while you’ve been over there in Germany getting yourself in trouble with the law for shagging cows, that’s all Mother and I ever discussed. Recipes, knitting patterns and Coronation Street.’

  I ignored the first part of her speech; far too much of my life had already been spent offering a perfectly sensible explanation for something that others insist on seeing in the most perverted manner. ‘Well aren’t you going to tell me?’ I asked finally.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘What it was that you were arguing about.’

  ‘I told you. It was something stupid. Something unimportant.’

  ‘Can you be a little clearer?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said with a deep put-upon sigh. ‘We were arguing over you.’

  ‘Over me?’

  ‘Well, not so much over you as over your book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The Dying Game.’

  ‘Oh, that book.’ I felt a little surprised. No one had uttered those three words to me for many years. ‘What about it?’

  ‘She said that Arthur had been to see her once and they’d got into a conversation about it and she’d said that she thought it was quite good actually and he’d said no, it wasn’t quite good at all, it was very good, but that you hadn’t stuck with it because you had expected the world to be handed to you on the day it was published. He said that if you’d been a little less arrogant, then things might have gone differently for you. You mightn’t have ended up screwing cattle in Tittmoning.’

  ‘I haven’t ended up anywhere yet,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Anywa
y, I said that it was for the best, that there was only pain and torture associated with that world, a constant feeling of under-appreciation, and she said that she’d said something similar to Arthur and he told her that the only way to survive it was to put on a front, to present yourself as a genius. That if you did that, then others might take you seriously too. Just wear them down. Then you could lead the life you wanted to lead.’

  ‘Deep,’ I said, draining my champagne and deciding to make like a Scotsman and get a drink for each hand. ‘He should put that in his next book.’

  ‘Perhaps he will,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s more than you’ll do though, isn’t it?’

  I returned to Tittmoning the following week and over the course of a busy two days reacquainted myself with Bess, Carla, Daphne, Jezebel, Rachel, Shirley, Kate, Arabella, Madonna and – yes, I admit it – Kurt. They seemed pleased enough to see me although, to be fair, cattle, like members of the Royal Family, don’t tend to go in for outward displays of affection. On the flight across, I glanced at the books my fellow travellers were holding, convinced that one of them would be reading Arthur’s novel and that this would provide some sort of poetic ending to my trip, but I was disappointed. Although in fairness, very few of them were reading books at all. At least not as I understand the term. And certainly nothing by Arthur. Or by me. Not that that was a surprise as I’d been out of print for many years. But still it made me happy that no one was reading his work. So far, after all, he’d only published a single book, which was something that we had in common. And even if people were paying attention to it there was nothing to say that he would ever write another one. Or, if he did, that it would be accepted for publication. Or, if it was, that it would get good reviews. Or, if it should, that it would catch on with the public. Or, if it happened to, that it would stand the test of time. He would be exactly where I was, flying into Salzburg airport, looking forward to getting back into my lederhosen and refamiliarizing myself with the comforting smells of unpasteurized milk.

  Perhaps I would even be the boss of him then. Perhaps I would show him the ropes and introduce him to my friends in Der Glockenspiel pub and he would be my sidekick, a boy who didn’t define me by ridiculous and unsubstantiated rumours. Here comes Arthur, the locals would say as he wandered down the road. He was never supposed to achieve anything in life but somehow, against all the odds, he made a brief success once, failed to capitalize on it, but became a man who has learned to reconcile failure with an unremittingly positive attitude towards the world.