At which reasonable request she stumped away in what could only be termed a huff, but I loved her as much as I was capable of loving any woman which, as far as I could go, was a notion sufficiently distant for me to realise I was a human being after all, for which I was truly grateful.
In the armchair — very conducive to dozing — I muttered my favourite mantra:
Then, to give my itching fingers some encouragement I scribbled: “It’s my ambition to produce a novel which is a complete failure, the narrative to be a mish-mash of disconnections, non sequiturs, puns, splashes of word play, well laced with the mustard of magic realism, but no logic, only cut up stories, a page here and there with the prose backwards and therefore unintelligible, until the poor bloody reader, should one remain, has to rewrite it in his mind from the bottom right of the page diagonally back to the top left corner, only to wonder, on arrival, why he hadn’t thrown the book out of the window or down the latrine, since none of it made enough sense to keep him sane.
“A long part of the novel will be a dream of consciousness swamp, a demoniacal demotic screed without capital letters or punctuation, and as for separate paragraphs, why should the reader be allowed to break off for coffee. How dare he want to? Let him go on spitting tacks till the end of the section, where he won’t be any wiser about the progress of the story, and in no way entertained.
“In the core of the book I’ll tell of a wild party on the quayside of Trieste, where I was at the end of the War, the guests of honour being Dorothy Woolf and her girlfriend Virginia Richardson, D.H. Joyce and Jimmy Lawrence, Aldous Mansfield and Kate Huxley, together known as the Cul de Sac Kids. They skinny-dip blind drunk in the Adriatic, to be pulled out and saved from death by d’Annunzio’s fascist Legionaires on their way to liberate Fiume. Our revellers are not so dead, however, because after a few flagons of fiery Chianti they take taxis to Duodino Castle and drag Rilke out of his den so that he can read his latest elegy, then chase him through the rose garden, till he pricks himself on a thorn and expires from blood poisoning.
“The longer the novel — at least six hundred pages — and the greater its failure, the more will it be regarded, such contempt for the reader being no more than they deserve. Factories of academics will keep themselves on eight-hour shifts for half a century at least, analysing a novel that many might buy but only masochists finish reading.
“But can I do it? Do I have it in me to bring off such a fraudulent work? Is there enough energy and anti-talent in my head? Do I have the genius to believe that such an enormous literary trash-bin of a novel is the road to immortality and possible redemption? — before going on to write a novel people might enjoy, love me for, and forget in a fortnight? Would it not be better and more pleasurable to cure my angst by going to the Black Crikey for a rocket polishing from Polly Peacham, and set myself on course to write another Sidney Blood in clear English?”
I was saved from my asinine burblings by a ring of the doorbell and, before Mabel could stir from washing up the breakfast things I was off to find out who was about to Porlock me, wondering whether it was my long lost daughter.
“Beg to report, sir, Sergeant Straw come to give further details of the expedition to Greece.”
Not for the first time had my sanity been saved by the bell. “Come in, Sergeant.”
“Make it Bill, sir. We’ve known each other such a long time.”
There was no getting away from his military bearing, and while leading a way into the living room I again regretted that such a fine figure hadn’t found his way into my platoon during the War. “You arrived just in time, Straw. I want you to write a novel for me.”
He gave the usual British infantryman’s half smile when asked to do something he thought he had little chance of bringing off, but would do it all the same, an attitude which lost me many of my best men. “You flatter me, Major Blaskin. I’ll do it, of course, but is that coffee I smell?”
I called Mabel, to bring a pot and two cups into my study. “Now, what about my erring son Michael?”
“I wrote a despatch about that from near Thebes, but I suppose the postal donkey’s still light-footing it over the Alps, and it’ll take another fortnight to get here. Unfortunately you didn’t provide the expedition with a wireless truck to have the report sent back in Morse. Anyway, Michael was all right when we got back this morning, though I expect he’s being tortured in Moggerhanger’s cellar at the moment.”
Mabel, aware of his arrival, carried in the tall silver pot and my best Meissen cupware. “I know I mentioned a novel, Sergeant Straw, but don’t try to frighten me about Michael’s present situation.”
“It’s only my sense of humour, sir. You know what sergeants are. Biscuits go well with coffee.”
I watched him go through a packet of the best custard creams while telling into the hand-held tape recorder all that had happened on the Mainland. “So you abandoned Michael at Moggerhanger’s gate, when he needed you most?”
He belched, allowable in the sergeant’s mess, such a ripe tone it was hard to believe this was his first breakfast. “No, sir. I might even say I left him an my part in a spirit of self-sacrifice. I did think of going in with him, because then I might have talked Moggerhanger into giving me some work, which I sorely need. But I know that while Michael’s got a lot of explaining to do, he talks much better on his own. So I left him to it. I only hope he gets me mentioned in Moggerhanger’s despatches for all the help I gave.”
“And what, exactly”—I leaned back in my chair — “could you do in the way of employment for the exalted robber-baron Lord Moggerhanger?”
“Let’s put it this way, sir. I’m an all-round man — who’s as thin as a rake. I’ve done everything, though I left off robbery with violence after coming out of the army. I like to threaten violence these days rather than use it, but you have to be prepared to use it, and when you do, go in without hesitation. I can do that a treat, as I did in Greece for Michael, and don’t know of any time it hasn’t worked. But violence for its own sake, that’s not me, sir. If somebody owes money, or has information that wouldn’t do a certain person any good if it was revealed, they expect a man of substantial build and an ugly face to get it out of them. But when they see an ex-soldier to his finger tips like me, with rolled umbrella, and respectably dressed, they think I might have cut the privates off a few of the enemy in my time, and really get the shakes, for fear I do it to them. Ah yes, they do whatever is needed, without any violence from me. I will say one thing, though, I’ve never threatened to get money out of a person I knew to be poor. Not in my line, sir. I did petty thieving in my young days, and indulged in smuggling now and again for a bit of ready cash, as Michael will tell you, and I’ve even pulled off the odd confidence trick. What I like most of all, though, is driving a getaway car, but the trouble is the model’s more like a tea-caddy on wheels to give me much of a thrill. Anything swish would be too conspicuous. All the same, whoever’s on my tail, I lose them, and don’t hurt pedestrians, either.”
He gave that self-glorifying laugh so designed to captivate and impress a sedentary tale spinner like me, ending with: “I tell you, sir, Michael and me have done some dodgy work in our time.”
“You’re so bright and smart, Straw, I simply can’t understand why you haven’t gone higher in life.”