A London lawcourt sentenced a man to several years’ imprisonment because, not for the first time, he had been found guilty of getting money by false pretences. Handcuffed to a policeman he was driven to the yard of a London gaol; there the cuff round the policeman’s wrist was unlocked before being attached to a warder’s. At that moment our man broke free and ran through the yard gateway which was still open. In the road outside a taxi stood at traffic lights which were about to change. Our man leapt in giving the name of an expensive hotel. The cab accelerated. He was free.
Though the paper did not say so I suspect this sequence took less than a minute and he entered the taxi with pursuers close behind. If they saw the taxi drive off the story is certainly from days before taxis had radios. Not till later that afternoon had the driver reason to think anything was wrong.
Our man’s position was this: he was penniless with the police in pursuit of him and a right hand he must keep in his pocket to hide the handcuffs locked to its wrist. He was being driven without luggage to the Ritz or Dorchester or Royal Hilton by someone who would expect payment. If he jumped out at lights before reaching the hotel the driver also would start chasing him. His only advantage was a voice and manner which persuaded folk he was rich.
On the way to the hotel he asked if the driver had other business that day. The driver said no. Our man said, good, in that case he would hire the cab for the afternoon, but first they must have lunch. They entered the hotel where our man told the cabby (who probably wore the peaked cap worn by most London cabbies and chauffeurs in those days) to sit down in the foyer lounge. He then went to the reception counter, gave a false but impressive name, booked a room for the week and explained that his luggage would arrive from abroad later that afternoon. He was very particular in ordering a room facing the quiet side of the hotel and in arranging that a hot-water bottle be put in his bed at 11.30 exactly, since he would soon be going out and might return late. Meanwhile he ordered for himself and his driver a snack lunch of sandwiches and champagne to be served in the foyer lounge, also a racing newspaper. The waiter who served the champagne would also naturally pour the first glass so our man was able to eat and drink with his left hand only. He asked the cabby to look through the paper and tell him what races were on that afternoon. The fact that he asked others to do everything for him must have made him a more convincing member of the British officer class. He decided to be driven to Epsom or Ascot or Goodwood — I cannot remember the racecourse, perhaps the report I read failed to mention it. On the journey there he borrowed money from the driver, saying he would cash a cheque later, and in the crowd at the races he managed to lose the driver in a way that seemed accidental.
But the police knew his methods of work and had phoned hotels until they found the one where he had booked a room. His order of a racing paper gave a clue to his destination. When two plain-clothes policemen suddenly grabbed him in the crowd he played his last trick. Pulling his right hand from his pocket he waved the cuff locked to his wrist in the air by its chain and in commanding tones shouted to everyone around, “I am a police officer! Help! Help me arrest these criminals!”
The trick did not work. Our man was again brought to court where a judge added more time to his first jail sentence. The taxi driver, appearing as witness, said his day with the swindler had been one of the pleasantest in his life.
Were I writing this story as fiction I might imagine the driver saying that but would leave it out. Such details are too sentimental for convincing fiction.
The whole incident tells a lot about the British class system but hints at something greater. Sooner or later most of us find life a desperate effort to postpone meeting the foe who will one day catch and shut us up forever. I prefer the reckless and witty hero of this short story to more famous confidence men who are sometimes praised, sometimes blamed but always celebrated in longer newspaper articles, and official biographies, and history books.
I hope he thoroughly enjoyed his last taste of champagne.
A LIKELY STORY OUTSIDE A DOMESTIC SETTING
“Listen, you owe me an explanation. We’ve had such great times together — you’re beautiful — you know I love you — and now you don’t want to see me again. Why? Why?”
“Jings, you take everything very seriously.”
A LIKELY STORY WITHIN A DOMESTIC SETTING
“Fuck who you like but the rent is overdue and the electricity is going to be cut off and we’ve no food and the baby is hungry.”
“Our love once meant much more to me than money so I’m not giving you any.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dr Philip Hobsbaum helped write the poem near the end of Five Letters From An Eastern Empire. A third of Logopandocy is edited from pamphlets Sir Thomas Urquhart published when imprisoned in the Tower of London, with additional phrases from the Earl of Clarendon, John Milton, Edward Philips, John Aubrey and Malcolm Hood; also some Greek neologisms devised by Janet Sisson. Tina Reid let parts of her letters be used in Prometheus. A Likely Story Outside A Domestic Setting is from a reminiscence by Jim Hutcheson, and half of the story within one from a poem by Fred Humble. Both the Axletree stories and Five Letters are decorative expansions of what Kafka outlined perfectly in The City Coat of Arms and The Great Wall of China.
Illustrations in this book are drawn from work by Paul Klee, Michelangelo, Raphael, Piranesi, G. Glover, W. Blake, Ε. Η. Shepherd and a Japanese artist whose name has no agreed phonetic equivalent in Roman type. Doreen and Russel Logan kindly allowed their portraits to be used in the scurrilous context of the last two likely stories.
The complicated parts of the book were made possible by the exact typing of Donald Goodbrand Saunders and Scott Pearson, by the free use of John McInespie’s photocopying machine, by the bibliographic skill of Jim Hutcheson, and the patience of
John Hewer, the typesetter.
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT COMPLETED BY DOUGLAS GIFFORD
The notion of writing a story book struck me at the age of nine or maybe earlier because for what seemed a long time I meant to astonish the reading public by getting it published before I was twelve. Unluckily everything I wrote before the age of sixteen was obviously the work of a child or pretentious adolescent. I knew this by comparing it with Hans Andersen’s tales. These were as fantastic as I wanted my own to be, but contained pains and losses too strong to be doubted. ‘The Star’ was my first story which did not seem silly when compared with (for instance) Andersen’s ‘Drop of Ditch water’.
It was also the first story written in a gust of what felt like inspiration. The critic Leavis suggests that inspiration is unconscious memory — that well-made writing only comes without effort when authors instinctively adapt work by earlier writers. Two decades passed before I noticed ‘The Star’ had been inspired by H. G. Wells’s story ‘The Crystal Egg’, in which the henpecked owner of a seedy little curio shop finds consolation in a lens which allows glimpses of life on another planet. He dies while hiding it from potential purchasers and his rapacious wife. My (unconscious) imagination easily turned this poor man into a lonely child in a bleak Glasgow tenement, his wife into a teacher. I then lived in what I thought was a middle-class tenement and had mainly friendly teachers, but felt a more painful life than mine more likely to interest readers. One advantage ‘The Star’ has over ‘The Crystal Egg’ is terseness. My tale of an obscure hero trying to keep a magic gift was hardly two pages; Wells used about a dozen. I did not know how my tale would end before describing the teacher demand the magic gift. It resembled one of those coloured glass balls Scots children call bools or jinkies, English children call marbles. Had I made the teacher treat it as that the reader might suppose all the magic was in the boy’s imagination and therefore unreal. Since every human invention, religion and institution was first imagined I disliked stories that reduced imagination to delusion so was pleased and astonished to find three last sentences that left the star as real as the teacher. I suspect they were inspired by the endings of ‘The Little Match Girl’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’.