Читать книгу Coyote Fork - James Wilson - Страница 6

2

DEATH COINCIDENCE. That, I discovered, after a quick trawl through the web, is what it’s called. I hadn’t heard of it before—but in the far-off days when these things were thought worthy of serious investigation, the Society for Psychical Research apparently considered it the category of apparition for which there was the strongest evidence. Your brother—as far as you know—is away in India, serving the Raj. One day, out of the blue, you see him in Piccadilly. Next morning there’s a telegram, telling you that—at that precise moment—he was on his deathbed in Rawalpindi.

I’d never had the slightest interest in the paranormal. To me, it had always had an air of depressing seediness. All those specters and visions and disembodied voices spouting platitudes seemed so tawdry and third-rate, so completely lacking in artistic vision—as if the mountebanks peddling them couldn’t even muster the energy to come up with something a bit more original and vivid. Why should they bother? The sad failures they preyed on probably wouldn’t know the difference.

And it wasn’t just vulgar and ugly, but philosophically repellent, too. A paranormal experience was, by definition, unverifiable. X could claim to have seen a ghost on the staircase, and you could stand in exactly the same spot and see nothing, and X could still say, Well, I saw it. It made nonsense of a world in which some things were true and some weren’t, and you could demonstrate the difference. If that wasn’t the real world, then my whole life, my whole career, had been built on sand.

Oh, poor diddums. You always said, “I’ll only believe it if I see it with my own eyes.” Well, you did see this, didn’t you? Anne’s voice sounding in my head—but nothing supernatural about it: after sharing her bed for a year, and her profession for thirty, I knew what she’d say in pretty much any situation.

It was true: I had seen something. But was it really Anne appearing at the instant of her death? If it was, I had to admit that it would have been completely in character: she could never resist the whiff of greasepaint, the flamboyant gesture, the dramatic exit. But that wasn’t enough, on its own, to convince me. Much more likely, surely, that it had been a genuine coincidence, the outcome of a bizarre—but ultimately explicable—motorway collision between a number of unconnected vehicles? Or else simply a random hallucination completely out of the blue?

I reached for my laptop. I hadn’t checked my emails for three days—telling myself that I needed to concentrate on the job in hand, and there wouldn’t be anything that couldn’t wait. Now I opened my account and searched for messages from Anne Grainger.

There were seven. The most recent had been sent only yesterday morning:

Rob, Rob, why don’t you answer my calls? I’m being threatened. Email isn’t safe. I need to talk to you. PLEASE phone.

I hit myself, chest, thighs, temple, until my knuckles hurt. The pain relieved the unbearableness of it, gave me a temporary semblance of self-control. I grabbed the phone and called Graham back. He’d left the office, but I managed to reach him on his mobile.

“What actually happened? Can you tell me?”

“Brian—her, you know—he found her in her study. She’d taken a lot of pills. And most of a bottle of Macallan.”

He paused. I knew why: he was wrestling with the urge to add, Only the best for Anne. Even when she’s killing herself. But it was too soon. Give him a couple of weeks.

“It might have been an accident,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like it.”

“Had anything happened? Anything more, I mean? After I left?”

“Yes. Didn’t you hear? No, I suppose you didn’t. It wasn’t just the tweets. The bastards managed to hack into her emails.”

“Oh, God.”

“And then blazoned the most unflattering bits all over Twitter. Cue shit-storm. Bigot. Bitch. Homophobe. Imagine: all the stupidest things you’ve said over the years, mercilessly laid out for everyone to see. It’s no wonder she topped herself, poor love. I’d have probably done the same.”

After we’d rung off, I lay on the bed. The moment I closed my eyes, my mind became a kind of dovecote, full of the flutter of arriving and departing memories. Virginal Anne in my room at university, maneuvering her inexperienced body closer, her foot against mine telling me what she still couldn’t bring herself to say. Anne beating me to the editorship of the student paper, It’s probably just because I’m a woman, but the pride in her face inextinguishable. Anne the professional, the long cavalcade of scoops and awards.

So you were jealous of me, is that it?

Anne on her wedding day, emerging from the church on the arm of film-star-handsome Brian Grainger. The moment, as she ducked the confetti, that her eye caught mine, as if to say, Look what I’ve got, and an arctic blast went through me.

Or is it just that you’re a coward? Thought it wouldn’t do your career any good to be associated with a pariah like me?

Anne reinvented in middle-age: rediscovering her childhood Anglicanism, transforming herself into the champion of traditional values—all those angry columns; all those bare-knuckle grudge-matches on Newsnight and Channel 4—against the progressive tide. Anne fighting the takeover of the paper. And then Anne the wounded animal, cornered by the mob.

Yes, OK: jealousy was part of it. Mixed with my concern for her—I can’t deny it—there was a splinter of schadenfreude. It was awful, what she’d been through—but hadn’t she at least partly brought it on herself? Her over-confidence, her conviction that people admired her outspokenness, had made her too strident. You can’t publicly go on the attack like that, and not expect a backlash. It’s the equivalent of lobbing lighted matches at a petrol-soaked rag.

Over the past few weeks, I had to admit, I’d found the whole gruesome spectacle too painful to follow. Now I opened my laptop again and forced myself to look, starting with Anne’s original article from nine months ago:

Colleagues have warned me that this will be the longest suicide note in history. They’re wrong, at least, about the longest bit. Because—in a striking example of the very thing I shall be talking about—I’ve been given just 450 words to explain my objections to the sale of this newspaper to Evan Bone.

The Daily Post was founded 183 years ago. Since then, it has been an essential part of our national life. On some issues it has taken an editorial position that, in hindsight, turned out to be wrong. But it has always had a position, reached after serious consideration of all the facts. It has always upheld the values of truthfulness, free speech, and reasoned debate. The list of its contributors reads like a roll-call of the finest writers and thinkers of the past two centuries.

But even the Post is not immune to the effects of the technological revolution. Like other newspapers, it has suffered a sharp decline in circulation and advertising revenue. So it is to be sold. And who is the buyer? A man who, apart from his deep pockets, has absolutely no qualifications for the job. Indeed, he is part of the problem that brought us to this crisis in the first place. Selling him the Post is like handing over a wounded wildebeest to the lion that inflicted the fatal injury.

Evan Bone is known for one thing, and one thing only: founding the social media platform Global Village. A cursory glance at a Global Village news feed will tell you how interested he is in truthfulness. So how about free speech? He claims his company is committed to “being an inclusive environment where people with alternative views feel safe sharing their opinions.” But that doesn’t appear to include people like me, who dissent from the company’s modish progressive party line. Two years ago Bone fired one of his Vice-Presidents for opposing the legalization of gay marriage in California. So the rule seems to be: You can believe whatever you like, as long as it’s what I believe.

And, don’t forget, a company like Global Village is not just one voice among many. It is a window through which its members view the world. What they see—for all the corporate flimflam about democracy and openness—is ultimately determined by Evan Bone and his lackeys. Their policy is not to argue, but to silence. So a view they deem unacceptable will—for the billions of Global Villagers, and the readers of Bone’s growing stable of newspapers—simply cease to exist.

And what about the high-quality writing? Global Village is pouring millions of dollars into developing a piece of AI that mimics our ability to tell stories. So you can look forward to a newspaper written entirely by a computer.

It’s still not too late, if enough people create enough of a fuss, for the owners to re-think. If they don’t, and the sale goes ahead, you will never read a critical article like this in The Daily Post again.

And I see I’ve gone over my word limit. Under the new Stalinist regime, that, I’m sure, won’t be allowed either.

Corporate flimflam. Lackeys. Stalinist regime. Yes, that kind of language was a fatal miscalculation. How would I have done it? “No one can fail to admire Evan Bone’s extraordinary vision and enterprise. But the qualities that have made Global Village one of the most successful companies on the planet are not necessarily the same as those required to run a newspaper . . .”

Except you didn’t say even that, did you? You were too scared you might get the treatment I got.

I steeled myself to search Twitter for #AGrainger.

@Pugwash #toxichate Now we see @AGrainger in her true colors. This isn’t about free speech, it’s about hate and homophobia pure and simple

@Cuff17 #toxichate @AGrainger you are a bigot no other word for it. this is 21st century no place for hate Time you & others were called out & made to pay

It was like witnessing some long-drawn-out gladiatorial combat. Anne parries, saying she isn’t homophobic and has a lot of gay friends. None of them, I note, goes to her defense.

Neither did you, did you?

And then her many-headed adversary renews its attack:

@Pugwash #toxichate More horseshit from @AGrainger the old “some of my best friends are gay” gag She must think were stupid or something

@Guesswho24 #toxichate @AGrainger 1. Clever that. See what she did? Now she’s the victim, and the LGBTQ+ community are the oppressors.

@Guesswho24 #toxichate @AGrainger 2. How did that happen?

@Jiminy #toxichate @AGrainger You don’t fool anyone you hatefilled old bitch Dont worry youve got it coming

More parrying. Anne calls Evan Bone the Angel of Death. His fanatical supporters claim to be progressive, but they are the virtual SS. There are more reproaches to her friends and colleagues for abandoning her. Then the end-game.

@Guesswho24 #toxichate 1. Surprise surprise So much for “its just about freedom of speech”

@Guesswho24 #toxichate 2. Heres an email showing what @AGrainger really thinks about gay marriage: xbyth889

For two millennia, “marriage” has been defined as a lifelong relationship, ordained by God, between a man and a woman. How do Cameron and co. think they can just unilaterally, with the wave of a wand, make it mean something else?

@Skinky #toxichate @AGrainger You lying cunt

@Redcuff #toxichate @AGrainger Anyone got a chainsaw

I closed the computer and sat there, my fingers on the lid, anchoring myself-by the slenderest thread—to my own life.

So that was what had finally done for her: a years-old email to me, chiding me for my pusillanimity over the issue of gay marriage, my conniving at the Orwellian abuse of language. A fist grabbed my guts and squeezed. For all that I’d found her tone off-putting, I could, I should, have gone to her defense. Anne and I may have disagreed, but nothing can justify this obscene invasion of privacy.

It was, of course, chastening to acknowledge how craven, how mean-spirited, I had been. But it was also, in some way, a relief. I’d kept my distance from Anne to avoid having to face up to my own weakness. And then—just at the moment when I was at my most fraught and disorientated—a guilty memory of her had wormed free of my unconscious and materialized in front of me. Simple. Obvious. It made perfect psychological sense. No other-worldly element required.

I got up and walked round the motel room, feeling the walls. There were no mysterious panels, no hidden trapdoors: just solid breezeblock, skimmed over with a thin coat of plaster. I went to the window and looked out. A family of four were getting into their people carrier, ready for the next stage of their vacation. The younger daughter was crying about something, struggling as her mother strapped her into the child-seat. On the sidewalk behind them, crowds of young people hurried to work, just as they did every morning.

Yes, that must have been it: my uneasy conscience playing tricks on me. Which meant that—after a brief absence without leave—the universe could now go back to normal, doing its thing according to the laws of physics. There was no magic, either black or white. So I should simply ignore what had happened, return to London as planned, cobble together the piece I’d been contracted to write—and then accept the logic of my own pessimism and take up fly-fishing or golf. I would carry the burden of Anne’s death for the rest of my days. But, beyond that, nothing was required of me.

I switched on the TV and searched for a music station. Bach would have suited my mood, but all I could find was 70s cheese. But even cheese was a welcome change, a reminder that I was back in the real world. I turned it up loud, then shaved and had a shower. When I came out, below the furniture-shaking bass beat, I heard my phone whimpering.

“Rob?” Graham again. “Why are you listening to the late great Mr. Barry White?”

“Sorry.” I silenced the TV.

“I’ve just got home,” he said. “To find a card waiting for me. From Anne. She must have posted it just before. . . Anyway, I’ll read it to you. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Rob. I can’t get through. I don’t trust email. Tell him to look into Carter Ramirez.’”

Outside in the street I heard brakes screeching, and the banal clang of a van door.

“Did you get that?” said Graham. “Carter as in President Jimmy. Ramirez spelt, R-A-M-I-R-E-Z. Mean anything to you? Rob? You still there?”