A Closed Book Read Free

the Feet
– at one time there was even vague talk of the Nobel. Not that I lent credence to
that
. Still, I wasn’t a recluse, I was invited to literary dos, I was happy to give interviews if asked nicely. Well, didn’t you ever think, during the past four years, I wonder what on earth’s become of old so-and-so?’
    ‘I’m not sure I know how to answer that question. Sure, I read a lot, but I’m not what you’d call a literary type. I mean, I’ve never consciously followed a writer’s career, even a writer I like. If I gave any thought to it at all, I suppose I must have assumed you were at work on some great slab of a novel which was taking you longer than usual. But, actually, I didn’t give it any thought. I’m just rationalizing things after the event. It wasn’t anything that specially preoccupied me.’
    ‘Well, I suppose I’m pleased to hear that. I suppose. It’s true, even when you’re as famous as I was, if you drop out of circulation, people forget you ever existed. It’s hard. Then again, I can’t deny it’s the way I wanted it to be, so I really don’t have any grounds for complaint.’
    *
    ‘It
is
hard, though.’
    *
    ‘Anyway,
à nos oignons
, as the witty French say. Where was I? In a Sri Lankan hospital, I think. Well, the one good thing about losing both your eyes is of course that you never have to see what you look like without them. It’s a bit like that old crack about the Eiffel Tower. When it was erected, someone, one of the Goncourt brothers, I suspect, remarked that he enjoyed looking out over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower because it was the one vantage point in the city from which he was spared the sight of the bloody thing itself. I, thank God, was spared the sight of my own sightlessness. Except that I still had my fingers, I hadn’t lost them, and I could feel those criss-crossing scars and those “bubbles”, as you so vividly described them, and those two matching holes in my face, those two empty sockets. And I made a resolution after my accident that I wouldn’t inflict my face on anyone else ever again. For a while I even thought of staying on inSri Lanka. Like a leper. But that, you know, turned out to be far more complicated than returning home. A matter of credit cards, bank accounts, direct debits, all that sort of trivia.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    ‘So what I did instead was creep back into Britain about a year later. I travelled the long way round, by boat, and I arrived in the dead of winter. I made certain of arriving in winter, so that I wouldn’t look too incongruous all wrapped up and swathed about as I was. I came down here to the Cotswolds – I bought this house several years ago as a weekend retreat – I chose it specifically because it was so isolated, though I didn’t know then just how handy that isolation would turn out to be – I came down here, as I say, and I went to ground. No newspapers. No wireless. No television. Nothing. The world could go hang for all I cared.’
    ‘You never go out?’
    ‘Would
you
go out? How would
you
like to hear children screaming as you walk by? No, I tell a lie. Children don’t scream. They’re hardier little creatures than that. They tug at their mothers’ coat-tails and they shout, “Mummy, Mummy, look at the funny man! Look at the man with no face!” And their mortified mothers try to shush them up. Try
most
of the time. All that, I have heard.’
    ‘Did you ever consider plastic surgery?’
    ‘Did I ever consider plastic surgery? My dear John, what you’re looking at is the product of plastic surgery. All of this – this, this and this – even this, look at it, give it a tug, go on, do – all of this is
after
, not
before
. My face may resemble a jigsaw puzzle now, but at least only two of the pieces are actually missing.’
    ‘And you say you’ve remained here, indoors, ever since?’
    ‘No. No, it’s true, I used to go out. In the evening. In those days, though, I had a friend.