Читать книгу Reacher Said Nothing - Andy Martin - Страница 16

That got him going. We finished the toast and went into his office at the back of the apartment. No Central Park (couldn’t afford to spend all his time looking through the window like the boy in the Manhattan apartment). We sat down. Lee sat in front of his desk with the desktop computer on. It was there, waiting for him. It was already switched on. The desk is metal. Riveted. Silver. Huge. Solid. On a bunch of shelves to the right, mugs with pens. And a magnifying lens. On the left – a collection of his own books in hardcover.

The first thing he did was light a cigarette. (Second thing was take a mighty drag.)

‘Look, Lee, I’m going to just shut up now. This is like going into church for me. I feel I should be quiet. Anyway, I don’t want to put you off your stroke.’

‘It’s not a problem.’

Lee was sitting in front of the screen of his new computer. An almost empty screen. It didn’t even have a page on it. Nothing. I was sitting on this kind of couch a couple of yards behind him. Just perched on the edge of it, not really lying down or anything.

‘It’s reverse Freudian,’ Lee said. ‘You’re on the couch and you’re analysing me.’

I said nothing.

He flexed his fingers. ‘Naturally I’m going to start, like all good writers, by … checking my email!’

He cast an eye over some kind of gmail list. ‘I’m just going to email the editor with the title suggestion. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not.’ He pressed the return key and I heard the whoosh sound as the email was sent. ‘They like to get it out of the way if possible. We’ll see what she says.’

Then he told me the title. Make Me.

‘I don’t know, it’s not definite. Popped into my head last night. But I like it. It’s got something. Sounds like Reacher all right. Playground machismo. And then there’s that meaning to do with being under surveillance, making someone, identifying them, tailing them. And maybe a little bit erotic or romantic too.’

He hadn’t really written anything yet. Then he turned to me in his chair.

‘This isn’t the first draft, you know.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What is it then?’

‘It’s the only draft!’

Right then he sounded more like Jack Reacher than Lee Child. ‘I don’t want to improve it. When I’ve written something, that is the way it has to stay. That’s how I was that particular year. You can’t change it. It’s like one of those old photos you come across. From the seventies, say. And you have this terrible seventies haircut and giant lapels on your jacket. It’s ridiculous – but it’s there. It is what it is. Honesty demands you own up to it and leave it alone.’

He still hadn’t written anything.

‘I reckon around ninety working days. Should finish it around mid-March – mid-April if I slack.’

He still hadn’t begun.

‘And remember, I’m not making this up. Reacher is real. He exists. This is what he is up to, right now. That’s why I can’t change anything – this is just the way it is.’

I was a couple of yards behind him and slightly to the right. I could see over his shoulder. I didn’t want to get any closer. It was already ridiculous. Lee told me that he had cut his nails earlier that day. He hated it when his fingernails clacked against the keyboard.

He lit another cigarette and took a deep drag and blew out a lot of smoke then put the cigarette in the ashtray.

‘I was thinking – you have a high risk of dying from secondary smoke inhalation here.’

Martin said nothing.

I was thinking: the smoke is all part of it. Like a magic show. Smoke and mirrors. And, quite contrary to standard Magic Circle practice, the magician was tweaking aside the curtain and saying, OK, come on through and let me show you exactly how I saw the lady in two, and over here is my disappearing elephant, and so on. Everyone wants to know how it’s done. And now I was about to find out.

So, I’m behind him. And he is there in front of the computer. I’m trying to keep quiet. Like a mouse, if not quite a fly-on-the-wall.

‘I’m opening a file here. Microsoft Word doc … Now I move it to the middle of the screen.’

He was talking me through it, like some kind of surgical operation. ‘I always use Arial. To begin with anyway. And ten-point. So I get more on the page. But I crank it up to 150 per cent to save my eyes.’

It’s 2.26 in the afternoon. September 1, 2014. Lee is on the verge of something momentous. At the moment it’s a blank page. The file doesn’t have a name.

‘Then I have to turn off all these red lines … Do not check spelling. Or grammar. I am going to let Microsoft tell me what grammar is?’

It’s a huge screen (27-inch). Virgin. Tabula rasa. ‘Single line space. I like to see a lot of text on the page. I don’t want to spend all my time scrolling up and down.’

He has put his tortoiseshell glasses on. Lit another cigarette. Put it down again. Finally he starts typing. He types:

CHAPTER ONE.