Against the backdrop of a world in flux at the start of a new century, Arctic Summer from Booker Prize-winning author of The Promise, Damon Galgut, portrays the life of British writer E. M. Forster: his inner turmoil, his search for love and the story behind one of the greatest novels in English, A Passage to India.
“ON ONE OF THE FIRST DAYS, Masood had begun to speak in a suggestive, nudging tone about a waitress at the hotel. It had been slow to dawn that what was being intimated was that he, Morgan, might like to approach her. An astonishing notion, after everything that had happened.
“Do you remember that conversation we had?” he asked. “I mean in the O and C Club, just before Christmas?”
A small frown appeared between Masood’s eyes. He nodded slightly, it might have been in confusion.
“I’m not sure whether you understood me properly then. I don’t think I made my meaning clear.”
“I did understand you,” Masood told him.
A silence opened up between them. They were in Tesserete, in the room they were sharing, and the waters of the lake were visible from the window. Morgan looked out on the grey, moving surface, rather than at the face of his friend. “Please allow me to speak,” he said.
“Yes, please, speak, speak.”
“When I say that I love you, I don’t mean it in some passing way. I mean that I would like to spend my life with you. Not close to you, or parallel to you, but with you. I mean…,” he trailed off, his meaning slipping away from him.
“You are always with me, Morgan.”
“No, I’m not saying it correctly.” He made a gesture with his hands, of helplessness and frustration. “What I want,” he began bravely, “I mean to say…I want…”
What he wanted hung between them both, unsayable.
“I do understand,” Masood said, a little crossly. “But it is not possible. Please believe me, if it were possible, I would give this to you. But I cannot.”
Morgan looked down at his fingers. They seemed like something separate to him, pale and curious and segmented. He imagined them as he often saw them, holding a pen, setting words down in a line across the page, and the thought came to him that they would never hold another human body. Not in the way that he wanted.
“Yes,” he said.
More softly, Masood went on. “I have known…I have understood… for some time, my dear. I was afraid at first, but then…” Now it was his turn to run dry. He shrugged his big shoulders, and blew through his moustache in a vexed way. “You are my very best friend, Morgan,” he said at last. “I don’t want that to disappear.”
“No, of course not.”
There was a strained silence, before Masood stretched and yawned ostentatiously, and said, “Now I think we should go for a walk. I need to build up an appetite before dinner.”
So what mattered most was put away between them, and not mentioned again. The remaining days of their trip were spent in contented companionship, unbroken by any high emotion – unless it was Masood’s seduction of the rather ugly waitress, which he only half-concealed from his friend.”
Extracted from Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut, out now.
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Extract: The Promise by Damon Galgut