Caroline Wallace, a journalist specialising in book reviews and the occasional travel piece, is asked, or rather told, to go to Dublin to interview Desmond FitzMaurice, a once famous playwright and foreign correspondent, in order to revive interest in his now forgotten work. Fitzmaurice is nearly 90, and so there is no time to be lost. She will listen to his reminiscences and with luck fashion a major article. There is no reason why she should not do this. All she leaves in London is a house in Notting Hill which she shares with her partner of ten years who has never suggested marriage. She is over 40, so time here is also of the essence. One day she will give up her job and write a proper book. This assignment, she thinks, will be her last.
If all this sounds familiar that is because it is. Many novels and short stories have been fashioned around this theme. If Caroline had been more of a reader she would have encountered it more than once. Nevertheless, as a professional, and one who intends her future book to be a survey of 20th-century fiction, she is resigned to seeing it through. She knows nothing of Desmond FitzMaurice apart from his name, which is no longer news. She reckons she could fit it all in to a couple of days and then get back to Notting Hill.
The nightmare that awaits her in Dublin takes some time to unfold but is heralded by the rudeness of the woman — Mrs FitzMaurice — who seems disinclined to admit her to the house. FitzMaurice himself is courtly and absent-minded, able to switch from frailty to briskness and intent on taking Caroline out to dinner. He has a lifetime’s tape recordings which he is anxious for her to hear. The rude woman appears from time to time to pour out drinks. There is a taxi permanently on hand, driven by a man who had known FitzMaurice in the war. Occasionally a handful of notes is passed over. Otherwise there is no exchange.
What FitzMaurice has to say, at some length, is not what the journalist has come to hear, nothing about his work but a great deal about his two wives and his dead mistress. Caroline is obliged to listen to his collection of tapes, to which he adds increasingly random comments. It is a commonplace that old people live in the past, and it is certainly true that early memories survive, strangely intact. What is also true is that such memories are largely incommunicable. This may account for the fact that FitzMaurice is a major bore and his disclosures without context. He considers them to be compelling, and intends to keep the journalist in his presence indefinitely.
The present reader felt a certain disloyal reaction more than once in the course of this very short novel. It is brought to a climax by an accident which is not fully explained. Even then, with an ambulance at the door, FitzMaurice is still disposed to reminisce. This is well done. But Caroline’s decision to walk out is felt with some relief. It is only when the last page is reached that one realises how carefully it has been managed. The style, which is curiously without texture, does little to serve the author’s purpose. But perhaps this colourless prose is in fact part of the plot. If so, it works.
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