Oh Marina Girl

Episode 39

What d’you mean, “everything”?’ “I mean everything: Your tragedies are mine.” “What d’you mean?” “I’ve just told you that I knew Lisa in the biblical sense – what d’you think I mean?”

It took me a moment to digest the inference of this taunt and a moment longer for me to react to it.

I sprung to my feet and lunged at him for a second time, regaining consciousness to find myself crumpled in a heap with blood dripping from my nose and mouth and a metaphorical sledgehammer lodged in my head.

I became aware of his voice talking in a detached monotone that sounded as if he was reciting a text he’d rehearsed from memory like a second-rate actor who’d rote-learned lines written in a foreign language.

“…I blamed myself for driving you away and recoiled from any further attempts at self-discovery,” he was saying, as if explaining himself to himself as much as to me, “but I found myself driven by an irrational need for your approval; a need which magnified during the protracted period of your failure to respond to my words.

“This lack of any feedback unsettled me more than a negative rejoinder might have done.

“I could only conclude that you deemed my writing unworthy of acknowledgement.

“But I felt my words deserved that at least, so that, once I’d resigned myself to the notion that no reaction was forthcoming, I flew here to demand one in person.

“When I arrived at your apartment, straight from the airport, you’d already left for work and, once I’d introduced myself, Lisa invited me in to share the pot of tea she’d just brewed.

“I couldn’t help but notice that I’d interrupted her reading and so I offered to leave and return that evening, but she insisted that I stay. She was like that, wasn’t she?

“She had that effortless ability to put people at ease in any given social situation. I always envied her that.

“She told me all about you. In retrospect, I suspect that I’d fallen in love with her right there and then.

“I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the feelings I was feeling then, but she seemed to breathe life into me, like an author who creates a fictional character with such skill that he seems alive to the reader – like the way you once wrote to me that you had to keep reminding yourself that Tom Sawyer was fictional and that each time you remembered this fact, you felt as though you’d lost a friend –”

“– Hence this Guy Fall character adopting Mark Twain as a namesake?” I interrupted, it only just dawning on me.

Liam nodded. “You revealed your weakness for pseudonyms some time ago – what better pseudonym to give my messenger, not Will’s, than that adopted by the author of our shared favourite fictional character of our distant, innocent childhood?

“And what better pseudonyms to precipitate this meeting than variations of the ‘I am not he’ anagram adopted by your good, or should that be bad, self ?”

When this offhand remark met with nothing other than silence and an expression of perplexed puzzlement from myself, Liam sighed impatiently and, as if speaking to a dim-witted child, said, “I am Toni Mahe. And Noa…”

“You murdered Craig Liddell?” I asked incredulously.

“Who else could it have been?” “But why?” I asked, still uncomprehending.

“As a means to an end. To start the ball rolling. That and the fact that – not that you even noticed – but, years ago, he did a hatchet job on A Halo Ring Rim.

“I’ve been nurturing my wrath ever since, so, when the opportunity presented itself, Liddell elected himself as the perfect candidate to draw your attention – and I did a hatchet job on him. As I said: sometimes extremes are necessary.

“As soon as Original Harm was published, I recognised it as an unsubtle plagiarised parody of A Halo Ring Rim, and that you were the author writing under a pseudonym.

“So I adopted the nom de plume Toni Mahe to do the dirty deed, with the intention of gaining your attention, forgetting just how slow on the uptake you can be at times.”

This latter remark was imparted with a tone of almost wistful affection, which somehow made it all the more menacing.

“Then, later, I thought I’d give you a second chance to put the pieces of the puzzle together, so I phoned your crossword puzzle colleague using the pseudonym Noah Time and, finally, we began to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion.

“Anyway, to get back to what I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Lisa fleshed me out and I suspect she did the same to you.

“That evening, as I returned to meet you – Lisa and I had arranged it as a surprise for you – I found myself hesitating in the hallway outside your door with my fist raised, ready, but somehow unable, to knock. I finally realised why our correspondence had come to an end. With Lisa fleshing you out, why would you ever have need of me?

“As you said yourself a few moments ago, you felt you’d outgrown the need for me. Lisa had usurped me. As I stood there, I understood this and so I turned on my heels and hailed a taxi to the airport.

“When I reached home there was a letter waiting for me from Lisa wondering what had happened to me and whether or not I thought that she should inform you of my visit.

“I instructed her not to. I told her that your correspondence with me had concluded, thanked her for her hospitality and wished her a happy future with you.

“She responded by thanking me for my kind words, wished me well and, as far as I was concerned, that was that. I returned to my studies and tried to forget all about you and Lisa.

“Then, about a year later, I received a letter from her which made me feel like a character in a book who’d been reassigned a different identity and pitched headfirst into the midst of a plot he no longer recognised.”

She was like that, wasn’t she? In retrospect, I suspect that I’d fallen in love with her right there and then...