Mine about to begin.
THE SHAME OF MY ACTIONS
London, October 1979
I SAW HER ONCE AGAIN.
It was almost sixty years later, the autumn of 1979. Mrs. Thatcher had come to power a few months earlier and there was a sense that civilization as we knew it was about to come to an end. My eighty-first birthday had been reported in the newspapers and I received a letter from a literary society, informing me that I was to be presented with a misshapen piece of bronze cast inside a block of wood with a silver pen emerging from its crown but it was mine only if I was willing to don a tuxedo, attend a dinner, deliver a short speech and an even shorter reading, and generally make myself available for a day or two to the press.
“But why can’t I say no?” I asked Leavitt, my publisher, thirty-two years old, all braces and Brylcreemed hair, who was insisting that I accept the invitation; he had inherited me two books earlier when Davies, my long-term editor and friend, passed away.
“Well, it would be very rude, for one thing,” he said, speaking to me as if I were an infant who needed chastising for refusing to come downstairs and say hello to the guests, sing a song or two. “The prize is rarely awarded. In fact you would be only the fourth recipient.”
“And the other three are all dead,” I remarked, looking at the names of those writers—two poets and a novelist—who had received it before. “That’s what happens when you start accepting awards like this. There’s nothing left to play for any more. And so you die.”
“You’re not going to die, Tristan.”
“I’m eighty-one,” I pointed out. “I admire your positivity but even you, Leavitt, have to admit that there’s a very real possibility.”
But the pleas went on and I found myself too exhausted to say no—resistance itself might have killed me—so I showed up and sat at a top table, surrounded by bright young things who made charming conversation and told me how much they admired me but how they were trying for a very different effect with their work, although, of course, it was vital for young people to continue to read those who had gone before.
The society furnished me with seven extra tickets for the event, which I thought was a bit inconsiderate as they knew that I had spent my life as a single man and had no family at all, not even a nephew or niece to keep me company and collect my letters after I passed away. I considered sending them back, or distributing them at a nearby university where I offer occasional talks, but in the end I offered them to certain loyal people who had looked after my business interests over the years—agents, publicists and so on, most of whom had long since retired—and they seemed only too happy to give up an evening to spend time celebrating me, a throwback of sorts to when we were all on the cutting edge of things together.
“Who would you like to sit next to you at the dinner?” a secretary asked, calling me up in the middle of the morning; a great disturbance as I write between the hours of eight and two.
“Prince Charles,” I said, without giving it much thought. I had met him once at a garden party and he’d rather impressed me with some off-the-cuff remarks about Orwell and poverty, but that was about as far as our acquaintance went.
“Oh,” said the secretary, sounding a little put out. “I don’t think he’s on the guest list.”
“Well, then, I shall leave that in your capable hands,” I replied, hanging up the phone and then taking it off its cradle for the rest of the day.
In the end a young man was placed to my left—he had recently been named the greatest young writer in the world, or some such thing, on the basis of a short novel and a collection of stories. He had flowing blond locks and reminded me a little of Sylvia Carter in her prime. As he spoke, he waved a cigarette about and blew smoke in my face. I found him almost unbearable.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, reaching under the table for a bag from Foyles of Charing Cross Road. “I bought some of your books earlier. Would you mind signing them?”
“Not at all,” I said. “To whom should I make them out?”
“Why, to me, of course,” he said, grinning, delighted with himself. I was certain that a night devoted to me was simply a ruse designed to ensure his presence at the party.
“And who might you be?” I asked politely.
Books duly signed, bag returned to the safety of the under-table, he winked at me and placed a hand on my forearm.
“I read you at uni,” he confided in such a careful tone that it was rather like he was admitting to an unhealthy interest in young girls of school-going age. “I must admit I hadn’t heard of you until then. But I thought some of your books were bloody good.”
“Thank you. And the others? Not so ‘bloody good’?”
He winced and considered it. “Look, it’s not for me to say,” he said, scattering ash over his prawn cocktail before proceeding to tell me of the various flaws they contained, how it was all very well to place such and such in a certain context, but throw in a complication like this or that and the whole house of cards fell down. “But look, we wouldn’t have the literature of today if the last few generations hadn’t been there to lay down such solid foundations. You deserve high praise for that at least.”
“But I’m still here,” I pointed out, a ghost at my own table.
“But of course you are,” he said, as if he were confirming the fact for me; as if I had asked the question in order to reassure myself because of some ongoing dementia, an uncertainty about my continued existence.
Anyway, the point is that I went along and speeches were made, photographs taken, books signed. There was a telegram from Harold Wilson, who claimed to be an admirer but misspelled my name. (He addressed me as “Mr. Sandler.”) Another from John Lennon.
“You fought in the Great War?” a journalist from The Guardian asked me in a long interview to coincide with the presentation of the prize.
“I didn’t think it was all that great,” I pointed out. “In fact, if memory serves, it was bloody awful.”
“Yes, of course,” said the journalist, laughing uncomfortably. “Only you’ve never written about it, have you?”
“Haven’t I?”
“Not explicitly, at least,” he said, his face taking on an expression of panic, as if he had suddenly realized that he might have forgotten some major work along the way.
“I suppose it depends on one’s definition of explicit,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it any number of times. On the surface, occasionally. A little buried, at other times. But it’s been there, hasn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree? Or do I delude myself?”
“No, of course not. I only meant—”
“Unless I’ve failed utterly in my work, that is. Perhaps I haven’t made my intentions clear at all. Perhaps my entire writing career has been a busted flush.”
“No, Mr. Sadler, of course not. I think you misunderstood me. It’s clear that the Great War plays a significant part in your—”
At eighty-one, one has to find one’s fun where one can.
I stayed in a hotel in London on the night of the dinner, having left the city some fifteen years earlier and retired, as they say, to the country. Despite numerous requests from old friends to linger in the bars of London with them until the small hours and put my health and life expectancy at peril, I said my goodbyes at a respectable hour and made my way back to the West End, looking forward to a decent night’s sleep and the early train home. And so it was with some surprise that I heard one of the porters calling out to me as I passed the reception desk.