Thank you for your letter of the 17th inst.
I regret to inforn you that we do not have vacancies for subs at this moment in time. However, we have placed your letter on file and you will be notified if a position opens up in the near future.
Computer literacy and a familiarity with Quark will be a big plus factor.
Yours faithfully,
Mr J.B. de Beer
(Personnel Manager)
Even as it confirmed my worst fears about declining standards, this dismissive missive brought me down to earth. I was a man of sober habits, and the first draughts of invention had gone straight to my head.
On Spilkin’s advice I turned, somewhat chastened, to Mrs Mavrokordatos. She immediately placed her establishment at my disposal for the inaugural championship. I had never intended to broach the question of sponsorship or exploit the special privileges I enjoyed as a regular customer, but to my delight she herself proposed a finger supper, for organizers and competitors, a simple spread that took my own conservative tastes into account: cubes of sweetmilk cheese on Salty Cracks, sandwiches in triangles, hard-boiled eggs. I was grateful. But I also made the point that I had become more adventurous in my eating habits over time. With Merle’s encouragement, my public-service proofreading had evolved into a field study of national cuisines, and I no longer thought of Mrs Mavrokordatos’s menu as a dyspeptic hotchpotch. I was dipping into it myself occasionally. A couple of dolmades and other delicacies, served up with a pinch of Attic salt, would therefore not go amiss at our event. Delighted in turn.
‘Mavrokordatos’ was singularly apt: she had a heart the size of a barn. (I must say I’m pleased she wasn’t a Mavrokephalos, of whom there are several in the Book, chiefly in the Emmarentia area.)
The name for my championship came to me soon after: ‘The Proofreader’s Derby.’ I liked the connotations: laurels contested fiercely in a sporting spirit and a homely setting.
*
I acquired the trophy — and I’m not ashamed to admit it — at Bernstein’s Second Time Lucky. Electroplated nickel silver, black with tarnish, and ‘Bernie’ gave it to me for a song, or I should not have managed. It was a magnificent specimen, a loving cup, all of three feet tall from the scuffed green baize on the bottom of the Bakelite drum to the slim fingertip of the figurine on the lid, a little woman en pointe, with one arm trailing behind her like a lame wing and the other gesturing heavenwards. More suited perhaps to holding the diaphanous shell of a reading-lamp, or to perching on the radiator of a vintage car, like a goddess on the entablature of a Roman temple, than to turning somersaults and doing backflips. The balancing-beam at a stretch. For she was a gymnast of the old school and suitably, if featurelessly, naked.
Two tins of Brasso (the Silvo isn’t nearly as good) later, I bore the trophy to the Café in a laundry bag. Caused quite a stir when I set it up on the table. ‘Ladies and gentlemen: the floating trophy for “The Proofreader’s Derby”.’
‘Breathtaking,’ said Spilkin. I had set the trophy down so that the engraving on the bowl was facing Merle, but he had an unerring eye for what he wasn’t supposed to see, as if years of gazing through optical instruments had taught him to see round corners. He hooked a little finger into one of the handles and turned the cup towards him. ‘Transvaal Gymnastics Union. Senior Ladies — Overall Champion.’
‘Bernie says it could be ground off. But it would cost more than the trophy’s worth.’
‘Keep it. It adds character. You can always put “National Proofreading Champion” or whatever on the other side. “Donated by Aubrey Tearle.”’
‘That’s what I thought. More or less.’ There was the link with lexical gymnastics too, but not everyone would see that.
‘What’s this?’ Spilkin had spotted the row of little holes at regular intervals around the drum. It had been encircled by thumbnail shields of silver engraved with the names of the winners, but I had clipped off the rivets with a pair of pliers the night before. The shields, still filigreed with oxide, were in a Gee’s Linctus tin in my pocket and now I tipped them out on the table top.
Lily, Rose, Myrtle. How had names so fragrant become so stale? Was it because girls were no longer named after flowers but chemical compounds, vitamins, large muscle groups?
Spilkin spread them out, and then chose one and drew it towards him with a godlike forefinger. ‘Daphne Willis ~ 1928.’ Whether it was that the gesture awakened in the bones of his hands some memory of all the games that had been played at this table, or that the shields spread out on the inlaid chequerboard were like tokens in a board game, or that the backgammon draughtsmen clicking on a neighbouring table sounded a familiar rhythm, he sensed an opportunity for play. ‘Willis. A learner among wilis.’
‘Which Willie refers?’ Mevrouw Bonsma asked, deflating into a chair.
‘Villi, Mevrouw. The ghosts of girls abandoned by their lovers.’
‘Basta! Thank you, Tearle.’ She hummed an air from Puccini and performed a pas seul with two sturdy fingers.
Spilkin stirred the shields thoughtfully, unintentionally upstaging Mevrouw Bonsma. ‘You try one, Merle.’
‘You’re good with names,’ I put in.
‘What a lovely name. Almost an echo.’
‘That’s close.’ I looked over her shoulder. ‘She has left in a confusing echo. Five letters.’
‘Chloe,’ said Spilkin like a shot.
‘Chloe Mulrooney, to be precise, 1933.’
‘Biscuits?’
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a Dymphna.’ Merle might have been turning over her own fragile girlhood in her fingers.
Erica. I care for her. Easy as pie.
‘My turn.’
‘Aubrey! What’s wrong with your finger?’
‘Brasso.’ It was black to the second joint. ‘I was up half the night cleaning this thing.’
‘Don’t go native on us, Tearle.’
‘You can’t walk around like that. People will think … I’m not sure what they’ll think.’
‘They’ll think he’s got a finger in the wrong pie,’ said Spilkin. ‘Mulrooney. Or mulberry.’
Macaroony. Macaroni. Merle was unpacking her handbag. Spilkin raked the shields over to his side of the table as if he had won them fair and square. A pair of bluntnosed scissors, made for the nursery. A season ticket for the bus. Where did she go by bus? She had a daughter in the northern suburbs somewhere, Illovo or thereabouts, and grandchildren she sometimes babysat. Jason (the leader of the Argonauts) and Kerry (a county in the Republic of Ireland). A packet of Romany Creams. A book of horoscopes. A cardboard box full of Johnson and Johnson earbuds: little blue and white dumb-bells. Tissues. And now finally what she was looking for: a bottle of acetone. She tipped some of it onto a pad of tissue paper and dabbed at my finger. It made no difference whatsoever. But it was so long since anyone had touched me tenderly that it brought a lump to my throat. What the rhinopharyngealists might call a tracheal clonus.
At Merle’s suggestion, Mrs Mavrokordatos put the trophy on a shelf behind the counter, in pride of place above the coffee cups, where it was to remain in anticipation of the joyous day when I would present it to the first deserving winner. It was a shame I wouldn’t be able to compete myself, but there seemed to be no way around it.
*
In its own way, governed by its own laws, ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ kept growing. Although I spent a good part of each day at home and each evening at the Europa working on it, I was no nearer finishing. As fast as I eliminated entries from the System of Records, new ones took their place. Standards were slipping. Where once one had been obliged to scour the world minutely for eligible corrigenda, now every printed surface was flyblown with them. My research assistants heaped fuel on the fire.