Monday 5th December

Fail to declare a stick (5)

Some 24 hours later, Phil, back from Amsterdam, picks up various text-messages and voice-mails and deigns to call round at my bachelor gaff in Osney with Marie-Claire in tow.

I explain patiently that I have done his dirty work for him and determined that his young ex-wife has not, after all, been drowned. I exaggerate the gruesomeness of the experience a little for effect but I figure he deserves it – why is he swanning off around Europe while an escalating manhunt for Hattie is taking place? Shouldn’t he be out with a torch, inching his way across Hampstead Heath or Green Park, searching desperately for clues? Failing that, surely some form of “thank you, Alex” would not go amiss?

“The odds against it being Hattie must have been ten thousand to one,” Phil says blithely, when I have completed my tale. “I’ve no idea why they thought it might be her.”

“Well, possibly because she loved walking down by the Serpentine. You used to walk there with her yourself!”

Marie-Claire cuffs Phil playfully about the ear.

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“I’m sorry, M-C, I’d completely forgotten …”

It turns out that Phil has taken to squiring his latest squeeze around exactly the same haunts as he had frequented with his wife in years gone by. I must admit I’d credited him with a little more style and originality than that. And, as for taking a lovely name like Marie-Claire and reducing it to the bare initials, well, I can only apologise on his behalf.

“Yes, M-C and I were in Hyde Park only a couple of weeks ago when we went to the Schoenberg at the Festival Hall. I was hoping to pick up a few ideas for our Stones gig.”

“Schoenberg? Are you sure you wouldn’t like GDP to have a crack at the Second String Quartet? Is ‘Gimme Shelter’ no longer a big enough challenge for you?”

“There are a few sides to me even you don’t know, Alex. For instance, did you know I once planned to be a lawyer?”

“Yes, I can imagine a career in conveyancing would have paid a little better than academe.”

“I figured I could represent all those stroppy rock stars. Punks’ attorney Phil, that’s me! Punks’ attorney Phil!”

“Yes, yes, I got it the first time. Instead you became D.Phil Phil. But Schoenberg?”

“It was my idea,” Marie-Claire says. “I was just trying to pretend I had these high-brow musical tastes. And it seems to have worked!”

The two lovebirds chuckle merrily together and I resist the temptation to improvise a sick-bucket from one of their crash helmets. Why do most women have such unbelievably poor taste in men? What would a ridiculously beautiful young woman like Marie-Claire see in Phil? OK, he’s tall, slim, good looking (in a conventional sort of way) and one of the brightest young academics in his field, holding down one of Oxford’s top jobs. OK, his family’s loaded and he’s got a full head of hair, but apart from all that? Is it too much to ask that a sensitive, intelligent young lady should see the subtler merits of one such as myself? Or indeed, specifically, me? It doesn’t help that I’m a couple of inches shorter than most of the women I fancy and that my shiny pate is balding fast, almost as rapidly as my “career” is going downhill, but these things are mere superficialities. In a better world, in a juster world …

But this is the only world I’ve got, for the next few weeks at least, so I laugh along with my friends.

“What seems to have worked?” I hardly dare to ask.

Phil and Marie-Claire exchange glances.

“We-ell …” says Phil evasively. Marie-Claire picks up the baton to save him further embarrassment.

“We’re getting married.”

“Married!?”

“Er, yes. Is that such an odd thing to do?” Marie-Claire titters nervously.

A second feels like a lifetime as my vocal cords have turned to spaghetti.

“Well, congratulations!” I splutter at last. My words hang icily in the air. “That’s splendid news! When’s the happy day?”

“We’ll probably just creep away somewhere,” Phil says.

“Oh no, we won’t,” Marie-Claire corrects him. “We’ll certainly have a bit of a do, possibly on the 30^th.”

“The 30^th?” I gulp. “The 30^th of December?”

“Sure, why not? Just a quiet affair, as Phil has been married before.”

“I thought he still was!”

“What, to Hattie?” Phil laughs uneasily. “No, no, the paperwork came through, months back – you remember?”

“You don’t think the timing is a little …” I try desperately to find the mot juste.

“You mean, what with Hattie having gone missing? Well, that does have something to do with it, actually.”

“In what way?”

“It’s the kids, you see. Charlie and Xan. They need a proper home.”

“They’ve got a proper home, haven’t they?! I remind him. “Auntie Liz is looking after them just fine. Besides, you keep telling me that Hattie will be back any day now.”

“I’m sure she will. But what if she isn’t? I’m their father after all. Trouble is, Hattie’s family doesn’t see it that way, so there may have to be a court hearing and it would really help if I could demonstrate that there is a stable family situation that the kids would move into. Just until Hattie reappears.”

“You mean there’s a custody battle?”

“You could call it that.”

“That’s not the reason for getting married,” Marie-Claire assures me. “It’s just the reason for getting married now.”

“It always was one of Phil’s favourite institutions,” I note sweetly.

“If at first you don’t succeed …” Phil smiles forbiddingly. “Anyway, we’d appreciate it if a Russian prince could be prevailed upon to …”

“Yes, please, Prince Alexy …”

“Yes, yes, very funny.”

“Just to say a few words?” Phil suggests. “Probably not the same few words as last time.”

“As best man, you mean?”

“I don’t think you’d need a title as such, but …”

“I did mention my slight problem with 30^th December, didn’t I?”

Phil looks at me blankly.

“You can’t get time off work on a Friday? Don’t worry, the college is shut between Christmas and the New Year.”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I did mention it, but you seem to have forgotten.”

“You’ll have to remind me.”

“The small problem that I might be dead on December 30^th!”

Marie-Claire seems suitably alarmed but Phil treats it all as a big joke.

“Ah yes, the Witch of Endor. How silly of me to forget. What time of day are you expecting to peg out? We could schedule an early start, make sure you fit it in OK before your untimely demise ….”

“Well, thank you for your sympathy, Phil. That’s what friends are for, I guess.”

“Come on, Alex. You can’t possibly believe any of that nonsense, can you? All that Mystic Meg stuff? I could ask Ozzie, if you like. But something like this might be just the thing to distract you from such maudlin thoughts. Then on New Year’s Eve, you can say ‘gosh, I’m still alive, and that was quite a good bash last night, wasn’t it?’”

“We’d really appreciate it,” adds Marie-Claire.

What can a poor boy do?

“Is it going to be some kind of ghastly vegan affair?”

“Yes,” says Phil.

“No, it certainly isn’t,” says Marie-Claire. “It will be a carnival of carnivoraciousness. Plus some veggie-burgers for the groom.”

The two lovebirds wait hopefully for my verdict.

“In that case, OK. You know how I love the sound of my own voice. And there are forty-seven skeletons in Phil’s closet that still need airing …”

“It’s lucky I’ve brought my chequebook,” says Phil. “Those skeletons need to remain securely buried!”

“So where are you thinking of having this ‘bit of a do’?”

“I’ve given it some thought,” says Marie-Claire. “The Alington Room’s a possibility, I guess. But it’s all a bit fuddy-duddy and conventional. I’ve decided we should hire one of those houseboat restaurants on the Thames…”

“You mean, actually out on the river?”

“Yes, the Thames,” Phil confirms. “I thought you would have heard of it.”

“But the Thames is …”

“The Thames is what?”

I struggle to find the words to express an appropriate level of trepidation.

“Put it this way: if you feared drowning on a certain day, would you book a seat on the Titanic?”

“Alex, this isn’t the Atlantic we’re talking about. It’s the Thames or, rather, the Isis as it dribbles its way past this fair city. It’s hardly more than a puddle in places.”

“Have you seen the Isis this week? If all this rain persists, the levee will break long before Christmas. There will be plenty enough water to drown in. You’ll have to make some other plan! If I’m to be Best Man, you’ll need to stay firmly on dry land.”

Phil and Marie-Claire take their leave and I put on Act II of Before the Dawn for what seems like the 50^th time since the package arrived from Amazon. Already I know every lilt, nuance and swirl of this reworked version of the Ninth Wave suite. This is definitely the music I want to drown by.

And in the evening Dad and I watch Mr Turner on Film4.  The movie focuses on the last 25 years of JMW Turner’s life, long after he painted Univ and the High St, the picture that adorns my bedroom wall. It is a film that seems intent on realizing Turner’s worst fears that new technology, i.e. the camera, would render the visual arts redundant. Who knows what digital trickery lies behind those sumptuous and Turneresque film sequences? It is apt that Turner dies as a result of a bug contracted while attending the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851, the very year that Osney Island was colonised.

Friday 25th November

Enthusiastic wolf ravaged his avian prey (8)

Hello, Earth! If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  If I publish a daily blog and no one reads it, have I made any sort of splash?  If I compiled a secret diary in a Bohairic dialect and concealed it in the most inaccessible of cubby-holes (like the stone pot of Finest Astrakhan Caviar that was finally fished out of Felix Yusupov’s Univ rooms in 1940, according to Ozzie), it would be no more unread than this. My blog is just a click or two away for every internet user on the planet and yet, to all intents and purposes, invisible (however many tags and links I diligently add), hidden in plain sight. So be it. If it is to be my solitary meditation in my last days … well, world, you had your chance!

Hello, Earth! Today sees the release, at long last, of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, her triple live CD. The centrepiece is The Ninth Wave (from Hounds of Love), a beautiful and haunting 7-track song-cycle meditating on drowning. This prog rock classic is based on the 1850 painting of the same name by Ivan Aivazovsky, often reckoned to be the most beautiful artwork in St Petersburg. As our Kate says: it is “about a person who is alone in the water for the night. It’s about their past, present and future coming to keep them awake, to stop them drowning, to stop them going to sleep until the morning comes.”  In the accompanying video to the ‘Hello, Earth’ section, we see her deep under water, one hand reaching up and out towards a lightning-scarred sky.  I am reaching out too …

 

Around 6.30 in the evening, I am settling down to a good healthy plateful of pie and stodge when there is a knock on the front door. Dad’s forgotten his key again, I think, but the rat-a-tat seems a little too decisive for Dad. So I park my plate on a pile of half-read Guardians and answer the door. A tall, lupine man in a sheepskin coat confronts me.

“Detective Inspector Hunt, Metropolitan Police.” He flashes a laminated card at me. “Would you be Mr Alan Alexander Hogg?”

A thousand thoughts clatter across my synapses. That bastard Lebedev has told the police that I have ‘confessed’ to drink-driving – how dare he? But how would they even know about my accident? Surely the AA were under no obligation to tell them?

I confirm that I am A.A. Hogg and usher DI Hunt into the back room. My extensive collection of home-made CDs is right in his eyeline.

“That’s a lot of music you have there, Mr Hogg,” he says, perhaps to unbreak the ice. “You do realize that it is illegal to make copies of CDs you do not own?”

“I … I …”

“However, I have not come to talk to you about that. I’d like to ask you a few questions about a lady called Mrs Harriet Sherborne.”

“Ah, Hattie, yes!” This comes as something of a relief in the circumstances, but only momentarily.

“Hattie? Was that some kind of nickname?”

“No, just the name that all her friends know her by. Is there any news?”

“No news at all, Mr Hogg. That is why I have come to Oxford. It seemed possible that her husband – ex-husband, whatever he is – could offer us a few leads.”

“And did he?”

DI Hunt sighs disdainfully.

“To be frank, I’m not sure Dr Sherborne is taking it at all seriously. ‘Hattie’s just gone walkabout,’ he says. ‘She’ll be back in a day or two.’ That was the gist of his response. Gave me your name, actually. And your address …”

Well, thanks for that, Phil. You’re a pal.

“… so, since I was in Oxford anyway, I just thought I’d pay you a visit and see if you could shed any light on the matter.

“I … I don’t think I can, officer.”

Officer! I’ve clearly been watching far too much American 60s TV.

“When did you last see Mrs Sherborne, sir?”

“Ah, let me see … I think it must have been round about last Easter. Ages ago.”

“And how did she seem on that occasion?”

“She was … fine.”

“Fine? Perhaps you could elaborate?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Look, she’d been through a pretty hard time. I think she was finally coming to terms with the fact that her marriage was over. But with no money, no job …”

“Would you say that she was in good health?”

“She was a lot thinner than she once was. It crossed my mind that she was not eating properly.”

“How thin? Anorexic?”

“No, no, she was still …”

“Still what, sir?”

“Well, an attractive young woman. In perfectly good health, I’d say.”

“And how would you describe your own relationship with Mrs Sherborne?”

“She was – is – just a friend. Phil Sherborne and I are very close and she is or was his wife. I always got on well with Hattie.”

“And you know nothing about her disappearance? Why did you see her last Easter? She and Dr Sherborne were long since separated, I believe. Was he aware of your meeting?”

“I don’t recall. Perhaps he wasn’t. I was in London and I had a few hours to spare after visiting some friends, so I called by on the off-chance. She just happened to be in.”

There is a short pause while Inspector Bucket writes all this down.

“Did you stay at her house while you were in London?”

“I think I may have stopped over, yes. Look, I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate …”

“I’m just trying to put together some sort of picture, Mr Hogg. Just doing my job. I somehow get the feeling that you are not telling me the full story. Have you had any contact with Mrs Sherborne or her family over the last few weeks?”

“I … I did have a chat with her sister last Saturday.”

“You gave her a call?”

“I went to see her. And the children. Look, I’m very concerned. All her friends are.”

“As are we, Mr Hogg. As are we …”

 

Bucket of the Yard leaves and I consume the rest of my pie’n’stodge in silence. The interview has left me a little disoriented. I make a mental note to house my CD collection in a slightly more discreet fashion. How does he know I haven’t made copies of CDs that I already own anyway?

It seems clear that the Met are treating Hattie’s disappearance as a possible murder case. They have evidently been watching too much American TV themselves. To me it is inconceivable that anyone could have wanted to harm Hattie. I don’t think she had an enemy in all the world. Not enough friends when she needed them, perhaps, but no enemies.

So, what did go on last Easter, you ask? It was quite an emotional weekend, in fact. I was just coming out of a relationship with a very strange girl called Alice (aren’t all Alices strange?) and Hattie was still at a pretty low ebb. We’d had a chicken-and-egg curry at the Star of India round the corner from Hattie’s flat and I’d insisted on singing ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ most of the way back, until a modicum of physical violence persuaded me that enough was enough.

The children had been parked at her sister’s place for the night and we just carried on chatting, as you do. There wasn’t much booze in the house and after finishing up what was left of the John Smith’s, we got on to a bottle of Madeira that she and Phil had brought back from a holiday on the island. Neither of us had ever tasted Madeira, so we decided to test it out and the sweet, syrupy stuff really hit the mark after a heavy Indian.

I did most of the drinking and Hattie did most of the talking. Not just about Phil and her broken marriage, but also about her parents whom I hadn’t seen since her wedding day. They run a chain of coffee-houses in Sydney and are way too busy even to chat on Skype, Hattie grumbled. But she got plenty of moral and practical support from her sister, I suggested? Hattie just looked at me darkly, as if I would never quite understand.

Hattie’s musical tastes have always been pretty limited but we played Adèle, the Eagles, Mumford and Sons, even some Carpenters. I knew I’d had a few too many because I found myself singing along even less tunelessly to the dangerously prescient lyrics of ‘A Song for You’:

And when my life is over, remember when we were together,
We were alone and I was singing this song for you.

It’s never easy to get that last line to fit the tune, is it? (The air-sax solo that follows is rather easier.) We were sat on the floor, swigging directly from this bottle of Madeira and somehow we got to holding hands and I think Hattie put her head on my shoulder. I have a vague memory that at some point, we turned to each other and kind of deliquesced together. For a moment she was the most beautiful woman in the whole world and it seemed somehow ridiculous that I should be inhabiting the same floorspace as her. And then she was kissing me, or I was kissing her, I’m not quite sure which. And then … and then?

I honestly have no idea. The next thing I remember is waking with a throbbing head and being conscious of the confined space in which I was lying, Hattie’s single bed hardly being big enough to contain the two of us. That moment of recognition, that anagnorisis, will be with me for ever. After so many years of vague wondering, there I was, pressed against Hattie’s naked back. A quick audit of the numerous points of physical contact suggested that both of us were indeed naked. I remember edging an inch or two back lest my morning glory should arouse Hattie prematurely from her slumbers. My mouth was as dry as the Atacama Desert and the rhythm section in my skull seemed to have been taking lessons from John Bonham. If only I’d had JB’s drinking capacity too, I might not have felt half so bad. I remembered the empty bottle of Madeira and it crossed my mind that it might have been drugged, that my memory failure was Rohypnol-related. But the truth was surely more mundane – I had simply drunk too much.

I listened to Hattie’s slightly jittery breathing for twenty minutes before my need for a pee became overwhelming. I extracted myself from the crook of Hattie’s legs as delicately as I could, pulled on my trousers (from the suspiciously neat pile of my clothes) and stumbled off to the communal bathroom on the first floor landing. I sluiced some approximation of life back into my tongue and throat and tiptoed back to Hattie’s bedroom.

I found Hattie awake, sitting up in bed, her hair glistening slightly in the shards of light that criss-crossed the room from the tatty ill-hung curtains. She drew the bedclothes tight across her chest and gazed at me with what felt like unspoken, unfathomable reproach.

“I’m sorry, I …” I started, trying to cover all possibilities.

Hattie patted the space on the bed next to her and I sat down obediently next to her.

“It’s OK, Alex. It’s really OK.”

“I think we may have had a little too much Madeira,” I suggested after an uneasy pause.

“You did, you mean!”

“OK, I had too much Madeira. I can only apologise for whatever may or may not have occurred.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, I … God, is that the time?”

I looked in alarm at my wrist-watch which seemed to have survived whatever disrobings and fumblings took place in the early hours of the morning.

“It’s half-past seven,” Hattie observed helpfully.

“Yes, I know. It’s just that I’m due to give some kid an A-level tutorial at nine-thirty. In Oxford.”

Hattie digested this information for a moment or two.

“And you couldn’t just ring up and cancel it?”

“I don’t think I have a number with me.”

“I see. Very well, you must go.”

 

Remembering this, a few months on, it all seems spineless and feeble. I did what Hattie said, putting the rest of my clothes on in front of her, stuffing my pants into my trouser pockets as I went. Hattie watched my performance from the sanctuary of her bed and I swear I saw the hint of a tear in her left eye.

“I think we should forget this ever happened, Alex.”

“I seem to have forgotten most of it already!”

This was meant as a joke but I’m not sure it came across that way. As I tied my shoelaces, I couldn’t help but notice that the duvet had slipped slightly and a greater expanse of milky-white skin was exposed. Was that the hint of an areola? It was hard to be sure in that dawn-light.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Please stop apologising, Alex!”

 

And those may have been the last words spoken between us. Perhaps I said something about being in touch, I’m not sure. But to my shame I left her there and ran off to some paltry cramming exercise with the dim-witted son of a hedge fund manager. Bizarrely, having apologised for my late arrival, I had to give the dullard back a practice essay on John Donne’s poetry in which he had attempted to disentangle the sublime imagery of ‘The Sunne Rising’ – go chide late schoolteachers, indeed!

I did not get in touch that day, or the next. Perhaps I took Hattie’s request to forget the whole thing too seriously or perhaps I lacked the confidence to pick up the ball and run with it. Hattie was still technically married to Phil, after all (the divorce had not quite gone through), and there were two small children to consider. Hattie had sworn that she would never set foot in Oxford again for fear of running into her feckless husband (whom she still loved desperately, I am sure) and I was no fan of London or the journey to and fro.

I meant to give her a call but as the days turned into weeks, it became too embarrassing to do so. So I never got to find out what happened that night. I imagine that I fell into some sort of alcoholic stupor at some point and Hattie had somehow managed to pull off my clothes and put me to bed. But that is not the only thing I imagine …