top of this a pale blue hooded windbreaker, disappearing for a while as she tugged it over her head, her pale face emerging at last with a frown. Her short dark hair stuck up in Medusa-like spikes.
It was she who had proposed a walk. She said I looked as though I needed one, which was true enough. She found me her husband’s windproof jacket, which fitted perfectly, and a pair of waterproof boots belonging to the house, and together we stepped out into the blustery Atlantic air. We followed the path around the edge of the lawn and climbed up onto the dunes. To our right was the pond, with a jetty, and next to that a rowboat that had been hauled above the reed beds and laid upside down. To our left was the gray ocean. Ahead of us, bare white sand stretched for a couple of miles, and when I looked behind, the picture was the same, except that a policeman in an overcoat was following about fifty yards distant.
“You must get sick of this,” I said, nodding to our escort.
“It’s been going on so long I’ve stopped noticing.”
We pressed on into the wind. Close up, the beach didn’t look so idyllic. Strange pieces of broken plastic, lumps of tar, a dark blue canvas shoe stiff with salt, a wooden cable drum, dead birds, skeletons, and bits of bone—it was like walking along the side of a six-lane highway. The big waves came in with a roar and receded like passing trucks.
“So,” said Ruth, “how bad is it?”
“You haven’t read it?”
“Not all of it.”
“Well,” I said, politely, “it needs some work.”
“How much?”
The words “Hiroshima” and “nineteen forty-five” floated briefly into my mind. “It’s fixable,” I said, which I suppose it was: even Hiroshima was fixed eventually. “It’s the deadline that’s the trouble. We absolutely have to do it in four weeks, and that’s less than two days for each chapter.”
“Four weeks!” She had a deep, rather dirty laugh. “You’ll never get him to sit still for as long as that!”
“He doesn’t have to write it, as such. That’s what I’m being paid for. He just has to talk to me.”
She had pulled up her hood. I couldn’t see her face; only the sharp white tip of her nose was visible. Everyone said she was smarter than her husband and that she’d loved their life at the top even more than he had. If there was an official visit to some foreign country, she usually went with him: she refused to be left at home. You only had to watch them on TV together to see how she bathed in his success. Adam and Ruth Lang: the Power and the Glory. Now she stopped and turned to face the ocean, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. Along the beach, as if playing Grandma’s footsteps, the policeman also stopped.
“You were my idea,” she said.
I swayed in the wind. I almost fell over. “I was?”
“Yes. You were the one who wrote Christy’s book for him.”
It took me a moment to work out who she meant. Christy Costello. I hadn’t thought of him in a long while. He was my first bestseller. The intimate memoirs of a seventies rock star. Drink, drugs, girls, a near-fatal car crash, surgery, and finally rehab and redemp in the arms of a good woman. It had everything. You could give it at Christmas to your grungy teenager or your churchgoing granny, and each would be equally happy. It sold three hundred thousand copies in hardcover in the UK alone.
“You know Christy ?” It seemed so unlikely.
“We stayed at his house on Mustique last winter. I read his memoirs. They were by the bed.”
“Now I’m embarrassed.”
“No. Why? They were brilliant, in a horrible kind of a way. Listening to his scrambled stories over dinner and then seeing how you’d turned them into something resembling a life—I said to Adam then: ‘This is the man you need to write your book.’”
I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, I hope your husband’s recollections aren’t quite as hazy as Christy’s.”
“Don’t count on it.” She
It was she who had proposed a walk. She said I looked as though I needed one, which was true enough. She found me her husband’s windproof jacket, which fitted perfectly, and a pair of waterproof boots belonging to the house, and together we stepped out into the blustery Atlantic air. We followed the path around the edge of the lawn and climbed up onto the dunes. To our right was the pond, with a jetty, and next to that a rowboat that had been hauled above the reed beds and laid upside down. To our left was the gray ocean. Ahead of us, bare white sand stretched for a couple of miles, and when I looked behind, the picture was the same, except that a policeman in an overcoat was following about fifty yards distant.
“You must get sick of this,” I said, nodding to our escort.
“It’s been going on so long I’ve stopped noticing.”
We pressed on into the wind. Close up, the beach didn’t look so idyllic. Strange pieces of broken plastic, lumps of tar, a dark blue canvas shoe stiff with salt, a wooden cable drum, dead birds, skeletons, and bits of bone—it was like walking along the side of a six-lane highway. The big waves came in with a roar and receded like passing trucks.
“So,” said Ruth, “how bad is it?”
“You haven’t read it?”
“Not all of it.”
“Well,” I said, politely, “it needs some work.”
“How much?”
The words “Hiroshima” and “nineteen forty-five” floated briefly into my mind. “It’s fixable,” I said, which I suppose it was: even Hiroshima was fixed eventually. “It’s the deadline that’s the trouble. We absolutely have to do it in four weeks, and that’s less than two days for each chapter.”
“Four weeks!” She had a deep, rather dirty laugh. “You’ll never get him to sit still for as long as that!”
“He doesn’t have to write it, as such. That’s what I’m being paid for. He just has to talk to me.”
She had pulled up her hood. I couldn’t see her face; only the sharp white tip of her nose was visible. Everyone said she was smarter than her husband and that she’d loved their life at the top even more than he had. If there was an official visit to some foreign country, she usually went with him: she refused to be left at home. You only had to watch them on TV together to see how she bathed in his success. Adam and Ruth Lang: the Power and the Glory. Now she stopped and turned to face the ocean, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. Along the beach, as if playing Grandma’s footsteps, the policeman also stopped.
“You were my idea,” she said.
I swayed in the wind. I almost fell over. “I was?”
“Yes. You were the one who wrote Christy’s book for him.”
It took me a moment to work out who she meant. Christy Costello. I hadn’t thought of him in a long while. He was my first bestseller. The intimate memoirs of a seventies rock star. Drink, drugs, girls, a near-fatal car crash, surgery, and finally rehab and redemp in the arms of a good woman. It had everything. You could give it at Christmas to your grungy teenager or your churchgoing granny, and each would be equally happy. It sold three hundred thousand copies in hardcover in the UK alone.
“You know Christy ?” It seemed so unlikely.
“We stayed at his house on Mustique last winter. I read his memoirs. They were by the bed.”
“Now I’m embarrassed.”
“No. Why? They were brilliant, in a horrible kind of a way. Listening to his scrambled stories over dinner and then seeing how you’d turned them into something resembling a life—I said to Adam then: ‘This is the man you need to write your book.’”
I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, I hope your husband’s recollections aren’t quite as hazy as Christy’s.”
“Don’t count on it.” She
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