Getting back to Upper Mayhem, it felt as if I’d been away for six months, though it was scarcely a week, and all I wanted now was time to relax, so the apparition of a dead-scruffy Delphick, with his black but greying beard, ponytail straggling back from his balding head, a tiny red bead of an earring in his left ear, his sallow skin, and missing tooth when he tried to smile because he knew I’d got his number, his woollen jersey splattered with what I would not like to say, and his anorak torn at one elbow — the sight of him sitting at my table made me aggressive, and think it a pity Bill wasn’t with me, who would have had him on jankers in no time.
Sensing my anger, he said cheerily: “Welcome home. I hope you appreciate me coming to see you. It was a little out of my way, but I thought you deserved the privilege of my presence.”
Dismal leapt to the table and, with a few sweeps of his tongue — he hadn’t eaten since breakfast — lapped up all that was on Delphick’s plate, which so distressed him he aimed a kick at Dismal’s arse. Consequently, while Dismal made a good job of savaging the offending foot, I got hold of Delphick by the throat to pull him outside where there’d be more space for my other arm to swing, and get going on him in such a way that he would never write any more poems. But Delphick was no light weight, so I only got him as far as the door, till soft-hearted Clegg pulled my favourite dog clear.
“How did you get my address?” I stood a little way off, for fear that what he had eaten of the lunch would shoot over me.
“Ettie,” he squarked. “Your old girlfriend. She told me.”
“You lying git.” I pushed him away. It couldn’t have been her. She loathed him more than I did, because he’d tricked her out of ten quid once, when she was sweating for her living in a transport café on the Great North Road. The sort to rob or betray anyone, he had the effrontery to sit brooding over his empty plate.
“It’s terrible what the world’s come to,” he said. “There’s no generosity anymore. I’m a left wing idealist, I am, and try to live accordingly, but it’s all dog eat dog nowadays, and every man for himself.” With which I agreed, seeing his fairly new trainers now half in rags. “I’m also England’s best poet,” he went on, “but it took half an hour’s pleading with Mr Clegg last night before he let me stay over. It was already dark, so where would I have gone? I’d have fallen into a dyke and drowned. I wasn’t only on my uppers when I got here, I was nearly on my hands and knees as well. I was worn out after pushing my pet panda for twenty miles down the A1. Then I thought of my old friend Michael Cullen, who I’d known for fourteen years.”
“Thirteen.”
“‘He’ll be sure to give me bed and board till my feet heal and I’m ready to go on the road again.’ A kind old lady dropped me here from the A1, otherwise I’d have died of exhaustion on the hard shoulder. Luckily it was in the right direction because I’m on my way to read in Cambridge. I’m beginning to think it’s better to thumb lifts on minor roads. People who drive on main roads and dual carriageways are callous and uncharitable. They’re always in such a hurry I wish they would go to hell as they zoom by; while drivers on minor roads are more human, because they’re closer to where they live, don’t go so fast, which means they notice more, and are kind enough to stop and help a poet who’s doing the best he can to help himself. So when I was lying flat-out and fucked-up on the hard shoulder this woman thought I’d had an accident and stopped for me, and it was good that she did, because in another hour I’d have been close to death. Imagine my obituary in the Guardian, and me not alive to read it.”
He started to cry. “And then you set your savage dog on me, and want to throw me out. That’s the absolute end. Oh where are the Good Samaritans of yesteryear?” He stopped crying, and took a grubby note pad from his pocket. “I must work that into a poem.”
“Just pack up,” I said, as brutally as the words would come, “and get out of this house before I brain you.”
I expected argument, but he grinned. “I don’t have brains, only heart, and feeling, and there’s no flesh on them.”
My own failing was that I liked stories, even when they were fantasies, which as much as anything showed something of a man’s character, but I knew of Delphick’s depredations, and whatever he spouted to disprove them was unacceptable, though because he could be entertaining I decided not to boot the fraud out until first thing in the morning.
“If you expect to be helped by decent people,” I said, “why do you travel the country looking like a tramp, with that ridiculous dummy panda in your pram? You’ve got a very snug house at Doggerel Bank, and a lot of smart clothes donated by well-wishers. I know, because I was at your place once, the time I came for refuge, and you threw me out. All I wanted was to hide for a few days because Moggerhanger was after my guts. You actually phoned and told him where I was,” which memory led me to wonder where in the garden I’d bury him if I did him as he deserved. “I ought to kill you for that.”
He started to cry again. “Go on, then, do it. I’d thank you for the trouble as soon as I got to heaven. I have such a hard and miserable life you’d be doing me a favour.”
“It was as blatant a case of betrayal,” I reminded him, “as I’d ever encountered. Didn’t you at least feel guilty about it? I wouldn’t know where to shove my face if I’d done anything like that, and here you are, claiming my hospitality.”
From snivelling he turned smug. “I would have felt guilty except that Moggerhanger forgot to pay me for the information. But since your memory’s so good, don’t you remember how you took that lovely admiring popsy Frances Malham away from me. And you married her!”
“Your life wasn’t at stake, as mine might have been at Doggerel Bank. Killing would be too good for you.” Clegg came in from the garden, washed his hands at the sink, and put the kettle on for tea. “We’ll have some of that plum cake left over from Christmas,” I said. “I fancy a slice.”
“Can’t do,” he replied. “Our guest found it last night, and before I could stop him he’d gobbled the lot.”
“And you want to know why I don’t stay too long at Doggerel Bank?” Delphick said, a clumsy diversion to keep my hands from his throat. “You would want to know, wouldn’t you? You were about to ask, weren’t you? You don’t know what being a poet means, do you? You don’t even read poetry, do you? You probably never read anything at all, do you? You must be the biggest philistine since the Dark Ages.”
This last assumption got to my craw, and even Clegg jumped at my shout that I’d smash his ugly face in if he didn’t belt up. “Get on with some straight talking, or we’ll hold you down and let Dismal eat your dirty feet off. He’d love to. Look how he’s salivating.”
He clicked back into gear, unstoppable. “Doggerel Bank’s all very well, but I have to get away from it when I think that the world’s starting to forget what a great poet I am, and that’s not good for ordinary people such as you. When I push my panda wagon down the Great North Road thousands of motorists see us, and it heartens me no end, though I do feel a bit disappointed when I go into a service station and the red carpet’s not rolled out.”
Clegg passed mugs of tea. “But why go to London?” he said. “I imagine it’s easier to write poetry among the baa-lambs and daffodils.”
“You do, do you? I can think of better things to inspire me. I know what words are worth, I do, mate. Have you ever seen a tree when it’s got Dutch Elm disease? Or a lamb that rattles when it runs away because it’s got a claggy bottom? Have you ever seen a daffodil that’s brown and dying? I go spare. I get stir crazy. So I hop it to London for a week. I show my face there now and again, because I meet other poets. They’re contemptuous of me, but at least they know me, and I know them. Oh yes, I know them all right, scribbling and competing with one another, reading each other’s poems and reviewing each other’s books. But I like to listen to their gossip and poet-talk, and get the gen on who sleeps with who. I don’t stay long though, because I don’t have to live there for mutual support. London’s a life-raft they think might stop them sinking without trace. I don’t need it, so get back to Doggerel Bank after a day or two, before I choke. Usually there’s a couple of performances to do first, but this time I’ve got a gig in Cambridge, and I’m on my way there. I’ll meet lots of lovely young girl students, all very fresh and naive, who think a bloke like me is God, especially after I’ve read my poems. They come up to my panda and ask if they can kiss it, and when I sit him on my knee as an encore and make as if he’s reading a poem it brings the house down.”