what a carve up

It was purely by chance that I found myself writing a book about the Winshaws. The story of how it all came about is quite complicated and can probably wait. Sufficient to say that if it had not been for an entirely accidental meeting on a railway journey from London to Sheffield in the month of June, 1982, I would never have become their official historian and my life would have taken a very different turn. An amusing vindication, when you think about it, of the theories outlined in my first novel, Accidents Will Happen. But I doubt if many people remember that far back. The 1980s were not a good time for me, on the whole. Perhaps it had been a mistake to accept the Winshaw commission in the first place; perhaps I should have carried on writing fiction in the hope that one day I would be able to make a living at it. After all, my second novel had attracted a certain amount of attention, and there had at least been a few isolated moments of glory – such as the week when I’d been featured in a regular Sunday newspaper article, usually devoted to vastly more famous writers, entitled ‘The First Story I Ever Wrote’. (You had to supply a sample of something you had written when you were very young, along with a photograph of yourself as a child. The overall effect was rather cute. I’ve still got the cutting somewhere.) But my financial situation remained desperate – the general public persisting in a steely indifference to the products of my imagination – and so I had sound economic reasons for trying my luck with Tabitha Winshaw and her peculiarly generous offer. The terms of this offer were as follows. It seemed that in the seclusion of her long-term inmate’s quarters at the Hatchjaw-Bassett Institute for the Actively Insane, Miss Winshaw, then aged seventy-six and by all accounts madder than ever, had taken it into her sad, confused head that the time was ripe for the history of her glorious family to be laid before the world. In the face of implacable opposition from her relatives, and drawing only upon her own far from inconsiderable resources, she had set up a trust fund for this purpose and enlisted the services of the Peacock Press, a discreetly operated private concern which specialized in the publication (for a small fee) of military memoirs, family chronicles and the reminiscences of minor public figures. They, for their part, were entrusted with the task of finding a suitable writer, of proven experience and ability, who was to be paid an annual, five-figure salary throughout the entire period of research and composition, conditional upon a progress report – or a ‘significant portion’ of completed manuscript – being presented to the publishers and forwarded for Tabitha’s inspection every year. Otherwise, it seemed that time and money were no object. She wanted the best, the most thorough, the most honest and most up-to-date history that it was possible to compile. There was no deadline for final submission. The story of how I came to be offered this job is, as I mentioned, a long and complicated one, and must wait its turn; but once the offer was made, I had little hesitation in accepting it. The prospect of a regular income was itself too much to resist, but I was also, if truth be told, in no hurry to start writing another work of fiction. So it seemed like the perfect arrangement. I bought my flat in Battersea (property was cheaper in those days) and set to work with some eagerness. Inspired by the very novelty of the enterprise, I wrote the first two thirds of the book in a couple of years, delving deep into the Winshaws’ early history and recording everything that I found there with absolute candour: for it was quite obvious to me, from the very beginning, that I was essentially dealing with a family of criminals, whose wealth and prestige were founded upon every manner of swindling, forgery, larceny, robbery, thievery, trickery, jiggery-pokery, hanky-panky, plundering, looting, sacking, misappropriation, spoliation and embezzlement. Not that the Winshaws’ activities were openly criminal, or indeed ever recognized as such by polite society: in fact, as far as I could determine, there was only one convicted felon in the family. (I refer, of course, to Matthew’s great uncle, Joshua Winshaw, universally acknowledged as the most brilliant pickpocket and burglar of his time – the most celebrated of his achievements being, as you will scarcely need to be reminded, his audacious visit to the country home of a rival family, the Kenways of Britteridge: where, during the course of a public guided tour in the company of seventeen tourists, he succeeded – quite unnoticed – in pilfering a Louis XV grandfather clock worth tens of thousands of pounds.) But because every penny of the Winshaw fortune – dating right back to the seventeenth century, when Alexander Winshaw first made it his business to corner a lucrative portion of the burgeoning slave trade – could be said to have derived, by some route or other, from the shameless exploitation of persons weaker than themselves, I felt that the word ‘criminal’ fitted the bill well enough, and that I was performing a useful service by bringing this fact to the attention of the public, while staying scrupulously within the bounds of my commission. There came a point, however, somewhere in the mid 1980s, when I realized that I had lost nearly all enthusiasm for the project. For one thing there was my father’s death. I hadn’t been in close contact with my parents for a number of years, but the days of my childhood – a calm, happy and untroubled childhood – had formed bonds of empathy and affection between us which made the fact of our physical separation irrelevant. My father was only sixty-one when he died and his loss affected me deeply. I spent several months in the Midlands, doing whatever I could to comfort my mother, and when I returned to London and the Winshaws it was with unmistakable feelings of distaste. In another two or three years’ time I was to abandon work on the book altogether, but before that happened a significant change had taken place in the nature of my research. I had by now reached the final chapters, in which I was to have the honour and the duty of celebrating the achievements of those members of the family who still had the good fortune to be with us: and it was here that I began to meet with serious opposition, not only from my own conscience, but from the Winshaws themselves. Some of them, it grieves me to say, became unaccountably shy in the face of my inquiries, and even began to show a scarcely befitting modesty when I invited them to discuss the details of their glittering careers. Thus it became something of a pattern for my interviews to break up amid scenes of what can only be described as unpleasantness. Thomas Winshaw threw me out on to the street when I asked him to disclose the precise nature of his involvement with the Westland Helicopters incident which had resulted in the resignation of two cabinet ministers in 1986. Henry Winshaw attempted to throw my manuscript on to the fire at the Heartland Club, when he discovered that it drew attention to some minor discrepancies between the socialist programme upon which he had first risen to power, and his subsequent role (for which he will perhaps be better remembered) as a prominent spokesman for the extreme right and, above all, one of the key figures behind the clandestine dismantling of the National Health Service. And I sometimes wonder, even now, whether it was entirely by coincidence that I happened to be assaulted in the street late one night as I walked back to my flat, only two days after a meeting with Mark Winshaw during which I had pressed him – perhaps a little too forcibly – for further information about his post as ‘sales co-ordinator’ for the Vanguard Import and Export Company, and the real reasons for his frequent visits to the Middle East throughout the bloodiest years of the Iraq–Iran war. The more I saw of these wretched, lying, thieving, self-advancing Winshaws, the less I liked them, and the more difficult it became for me to preserve the tone of the official historian. And the less I was able to get access to solid and demonstrable facts, the more I had to bring my imagination to bear on the narrative, fleshing out incidents of which I had been able to learn only the shadowy outline, speculating on matters of psychological motivation, even inventing conversations. (Yes, inventing: I won’t fight shy of the word, even if I’d fought shy of the thing itself for nearly five years by then.) And so, out of my loathing for these people came a rebirth of my literary personality, and out of this rebirth came a change of perspective, a change of emphasis, an irreversible change in the whole character of the work. It began to take on the aspect of a voyage of discovery, a dogged, fearless expedition into the darkest corners and most secret recesses of the family history. Which meant, as I soon came to realize only too well, that I would never be able to rest, would never consider my journey at an end, until I had uncovered the answer to one fundamental question: was Tabitha Winshaw really mad, or was there a vestige of truth in her belief that Lawrence had, in some devious and obscure way, been responsible for his brother’s death? Not surprisingly, this was another subject on which the family was reluctant to give me anything in the way of concrete information. Early in 1987, I was lucky enough to be granted an interview with Mortimer and Rebecca at a hotel in Belgravia. I found them by far the most approachable and helpful of the Winshaws, and this in spite of Rebecca’s serious ill-health: it is largely to them that I owe what little knowledge I have of the events surrounding Mortimer’s fiftieth birthday party. Lawrence had died a couple of years earlier and they now, as Rebecca had once fearfully predicted, found themselves in possession of Winshaw Towers, although they spent as little time there as possible. In any case, she too passed away within a few months of my visit; and shortly afterwards Mortimer returned, a broken man, to live out his last days in the family seat which he had always so heartily detested. My investigations became ever more sporadic and desultory, until one day they stopped altogether. I forget the exact date, but it was on the same day that my mother came down to stay with me. She arrived one evening and we went out for a meal at a Chinese restaurant in Battersea and then she drove straight back home again the same night. After that I didn’t go out or talk to anyone for two, perhaps three years. ∗ On Saturday morning I settled down to continue work on the manuscript. As I suspected, it was in a serious mess. Parts of it read like a novel and parts of it read like a history, while in the closing pages it assumed a tone of hostility towards the family which was quite unnerving. Worse still, it didn’t even have a proper ending, but simply broke off with the most tantalizing abruptness. When I finally rose from my desk, then, late in the afternoon of that hot, sweaty, summer Saturday, the obstacles which stood between me and the book’s completion had at least taken on a certain starkness and clarity. I would have to decide once and for all whether to present it as a work of fact or fiction, and I would have to renew my efforts to delve into the mystery of Tabitha’s illness. On Monday morning, I took three decisive steps: – I made two copies of the manuscript, and sent one of them to the editor who had once been responsible for publishing my novels. – I sent another copy to the Peacock Press, in the hope that it would either earn me another instalment of salary (which I hadn’t been paid for three years) or alternatively so horrify Tabitha, when she saw it, that she would cancel our arrangement and release me from the contract altogether. – I placed the following advertisement in the personal columns of the major newspapers: INFORMATION WANTED Writer, compiling official records of the Winshaws of Yorkshire, seeks information on all aspects of the family history. In particular, would like to hear from anyone (witnesses, former servants, concerned parties, etc.) who can shed light on the events of September 16, 1961, and related incidents. SERIOUS RESPONDENTS ONLY, please contact Mr M. Owen, c/o The Peacock Press, Vanity House, 116 Providence Street, London W7. And that, for the time being, was all I could do. My burst of energy had in any case turned out to be temporary, and I spent the next few days mostly slumped in front of the television, sometimes watching Kenneth Connor scuttle in fear from the beautiful Shirley Eaton, sometimes watching the news. I became familiar with the face of Saddam Hussein, and started to learn why he had recently become so famous: how he had announced his intention of absorbing Kuwait into his own country, claiming that according to historical precedent it had always been an ‘integral part of Iraq’; and how Kuwait had appealed to the United Nations for military support, which had been promised by both the American President, Mr Bush, and his friend the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. I learned of the British and American hostages or ‘guests’ who were being detained in hotels in Iraq and Kuwait. I saw frequent re-runs of the scene where Saddam Hussein brought these hostages before the television cameras and put his arms around the flinching, unwilling child. Fiona dropped by two or three times. We drank cool drinks together and talked, but something about my manner must have put her off, because she usually left to go to bed early. She told me she was having trouble getting to sleep. Sometimes, lying hotly awake at night, I could hear her dry, irritable cough. The walls in our building were not thick. 2 At first there was little sign that my strategy would bear fruit. But then suddenly, after two or three weeks, I got telephone calls from both publishers and managed to fix up two appointments for the same day: the Peacock Press in the afternoon, and, in the morning, the rather more prestigious firm which had once been pleased to consider me one of their most promising young writers. (Long years ago.) It was a small but well-respected imprint which had run its business, for most of the century, from a Georgian terrace in Camden, although recently it had been swallowed up by an American conglomerate and relocated to the seventh floor of a tower block near Victoria. Something like half of the personnel had survived the change: among them the fiction editor, a forty-year-old Oxford graduate called Patrick Mills. I arranged to meet him shortly before lunch, at around eleven-thirty. It should have been a simple enough journey. First of all I had to walk to the tube station, which meant going through the park, across the Albert Bridge, past the fortress-like homes of the super-rich on Cheyne Walk, up Royal Hospital Road and into Sloane Square. I stopped only once, to get myself some chocolate (a Marathon and a Twix, if memory serves). It was another viciously hot morning, and there was no escaping the palls of thick black smog which issued from the backsides of cars, trucks, lorries and buses, hanging heavy in the air and all but forcing me to hold my breath whenever I had to cross the road at a busy junction. But then, when I arrived at the station and rode down on the escalator, as soon as the platform came into view I could see that it was absolutely packed. There was some fault with the service and there couldn’t have been a train for about fifteen minutes. Even though the line at Sloane Square isn’t deep, the steady downward motion of the escalator made me feel like Orpheus descending to the underworld, confronted by this throng of pale and sad-looking people, the sunlight which I’d just left behind already a distant memory. … perque leves populos simulacraque functa sepulchro … Four minutes later a District Line train arrived, every inch of every carriage filled with sweating, hunched, compacted bodies. I didn’t even try to get on, but in the pandemonium of people fighting past each other I managed to manoeuvre my way to the front of the platform in readiness for the next train. It came after a couple of minutes, a Circle Line train this time, just as full as the last one. When the doors opened and a few red-faced passengers had forced their way out through the waiting crowd, I squeezed inside and took my first mouthful of the foul, stagnant air: you could tell, just from that one taste, that it had already been in and out of the lungs of every person in the carriage, a hundred times or more. More people piled in behind me and I found myself squashed between this young, gangly office worker – he had a single-breasted suit and a pasty complexion – and the glass partition which separated us from the seated passengers. Normally I would have preferred to stand with my nose up against the partition, but when I tried it that way I found there was a huge slimy patch, exactly at face-level, an accumulation of sweat and grease off the back of the earlier passengers’ heads where they had been rubbing up against the glass, so I had no choice but to turn round and stare eyeball-to-eyeball at this corporate lawyer or swaps dealer or whatever he was. We were pushed up even closer after the doors closed, on the third or fourth attempt, because the people who had been standing half in and half out of the train now had to cram themselves inside with the rest of us, and from then on his pallid, pimply skin was almost touching mine, and we were breathing hot breath into each other’s faces. The train shunted into motion and half the people who were standing lost their balance, including a builder’s labourer who was pressed against my left shoulder and was wearing nothing on top except a pale blue vest. He apologized for nearly falling on top of me and then he reached up to hang on to one of the roof-straps, so I suddenly found that my nose was right inside his moist, gingery armpit. As unobtrusively as I could I put my fingers up to my nostrils and started breathing through my mouth. But I consoled myself, thinking, Never mind, I’m only going as far as Victoria, one stop, that’s all it is, it’ll be over in a couple of minutes. But the train was already slowing down, and when it finally came to a standstill in the pitch dark of the tunnel I reckoned that it had only travelled three or four hundred yards. As soon as it stopped you could feel the atmosphere grow tense. We can’t have been there for more than a minute, perhaps, or a minute and a half, but already it seemed like an eternity, and when the train started crawling forward there was visible relief on all our faces. But it turned out to be short-lived. After only a few seconds the brakes came on again, and this time, as the train shuddered to a decisive halt, it was with a terrible sense of finality. At once everything seemed very quiet, except for the hiss of a personal stereo further up the carriage, which grew louder as the passenger in question took her headphones off to listen for announcements. In no time at all the air had grown unbearably warm and clammy: I could feel the uneaten chocolate bars turning to liquid in my pocket. We looked around anxiously at each other – some passengers raising despairing eyebrows, others tutting or swearing under their breath – and anyone who was carrying a newspaper or a business document started using it as a fan. I tried to look on the bright side. If I were to faint – which seemed entirely possible – then there was no chance of falling over and sustaining an injury, because there was nowhere to fall. Similarly, there was little danger of death by hypothermia. It was true that the charms of my neighbour’s armpit might begin to pall after an hour or two: but then again perhaps, like a mature cheese, it would improve upon acquaintance. I looked around at the other passengers and wondered who would be the first to crack. There were several possible candidates: a rather frail and wizened old man who was clinging weakly to a pole; a slightly plump woman who for some reason was wearing a thick woollen jumper and had already gone purple in the face; and a tall, asthmatic guy with an earring and a Rolex who was taking regular gulps from his inhaler. I shifted my weight, closed my eyes and counted to one hundred very slowly. In the process, I noticed the level of noise in the carriage increasing perceptibly: people were beginning to talk to one another, and the woman in the woollen jumper had started moaning softly to herself, saying Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God – when suddenly, the lights in the carriage went out, and we were thrown into total darkness. A few feet away from me a woman let out a little scream, and there was a fresh round of exclamations and complaints. It was a scary feeling, not only being immobilized but now completely unable to see, although at least I had the compensation that I was no longer required to stare at City Slicker’s blackheads. But I could sense fear, now, fear all around me whereas before there had only been boredom and discomfort. There was desperation in the air, and before it proved contagious I decided to beat a retreat, as far as possible, into the privacy of my own mind. To start with, I tried telling myself that the situation could be worse: but there were surprisingly few scenarios which bore this out – a rat on the loose in the carriage, perhaps, or a busker spontaneously whipping out his guitar and treating us all to a few rousing choruses of ‘Imagine’. No, I would have to try harder than that. Next I attempted to construct an erotic fantasy, based on the premise that the body I was pressed up against belonged not to some spotty stockbroker but to Kathleen Turner, wearing a thin, almost transparent silk blouse and an unbelievably short, unbelievably tight mini-skirt. I imagined the firm, ample contours of her chest and buttocks, the look of hooded, unwilling desire in her eyes, her pelvis beginning unconsciously to grind against mine – and all at once, to my horror, I was getting an erection, and my whole body went taut with panic as I tried to pull away from the businessman whose crotch was already in direct contact with mine. But it didn’t work: in fact, unless I was very much mistaken, now he was getting an erection, which either meant that he was trying the same trick as me, or I was giving out the wrong signals and was about to find myself in very serious trouble. Just at that moment, thank God, the lights flickered back on, and a muted cheer went up around the carriage. The speaker system also crackled into life, and we heard the laconic drawl of a London Underground guard who, without actually apologizing for the delay, explained that the train was experiencing ‘operating difficulties’ which would be rectified as soon as possible. It wasn’t the most satisfying of explanations, but at least we no longer felt quite so irredeemably alone and abandoned, and now as long as nobody tried leading us into prayer or starting a singalong to keep our spirits up, I felt that I could cope with a few more minutes. The guy with the inhaler was looking worse and worse, though. I’m sorry, he said, as his breathing began to get faster and more frantic, I don’t think I can take much more of this, and the man next to him started making reassuring noises but I could sense the silent resentment of the other passengers at the thought that they might soon have to deal with the problem of someone fainting or having a fit or something. At the same time I could also sense something else, something quite different: a strong, sickly, meaty sort of smell which was now beginning to establish itself above the competing bouquets of sweat and body odour. Its source quickly became apparent as the lanky businessman next to me squeezed open his briefcase and took out a paper bag with the logo of a well-known fast food chain on it. I watched him in amazement and thought, He isn’t going to do this, he can’t be going to do this, but yes, with the merest grunt of apology – ‘It’ll go cold otherwise’ – he opened his gaping jaws and crammed in a great big mouthful of this damp, lukewarm cheeseburger and started chomping on it greedily, every chew making a sound like wet fish being slapped together and a steady dribble of mayonnaise appearing at the corners of his mouth. There was no question of being able to look away or block my ears: I could see every shred of lettuce and knob of gristle being caught between his teeth, could hear whenever the gummy mixture of cheese and masticated bread got stuck to the roof of his mouth and had to be dislodged with a probing tongue. Then things started to go a bit hazy, the carriage was getting darker and the floor was giving way beneath my feet and I could hear someone say, Watch out, he’s going!, and the last thing I can remember thinking was, Poor guy, it’s no wonder, with asthma like that: and then nothing, no memory at all of what happened next, just blackness and emptiness for I don’t know how long. ∗ ‘You look a bit done in,’ said Patrick, once we’d sat down. ‘Well, it’s just that I haven’t been out much lately. I’d forgotten what it’s like.’ Apparently the train had started up again just two or three minutes after I’d fainted, and then the businessman, the asthmatic and the woman in the woollen jumper had between them taken me to a First Aid room at Victoria station, where I slowly recovered with the help of a lie-down and a strong cup of tea. It was nearly midday by the time I arrived at Patrick’s office. ‘Bit of a sticky journey, I suppose, on a day like this?’ He nodded sympathetically. ‘You could probably do with a drink.’ ‘I could, now that you mention it.’ ‘Me too. Unfortunately my budget doesn’t run to that sort of thing any more. I can get you a glass of water if you like.’ Patrick looked even more depressed than I remembered him from our last meeting, and his new surroundings were made to match. It was a tiny office, done out in an impersonal beige, with a smoked-glass window offering a partial view of a car park and a brick wall. I had expected there to be posters advertising the latest books but the walls were in fact quite bare, apart from a large and glossy calendar supplied by a rival firm, which hung in the dead centre of one wall directly behind Patrick’s head. His face had always been long and lugubrious, but I’d never seen his eyes looking so sleepy before, or his lips set in such a resigned, melancholy pucker. For all that, I think he was quite pleased to see me, and as he fetched two plastic beakers full of water and set them down on his desk, he managed to summon the ghost of a smile. ‘Well, Michael,’ he said, settling into his chair, ‘to say that you’ve been keeping a low profile these last few years would be putting it mildly.’ ‘Well, I’ve been working,’ I lied. ‘As you can see.’ We both looked at my typescript, which lay on the desk between us. ‘Have you read it?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve read it,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve read it all right.’ He fell silent. ‘And …?’ ‘Tell me something, Michael: can you remember when we last saw each other?’ I could, as it happened. But before I had the chance to answer, he said: ‘I’ll tell you. It was April the 14th, 1982.’ ‘Eight years ago,’ I said. ‘Fancy that.’ ‘Eight years, five months, seven days. That’s a long time, in anybody’s book.’ ‘It certainly is.’ ‘We’d just published your second novel. You were getting excellent reviews.’ ‘Was I?’ ‘Magazine profiles. Newspaper interviews.’ ‘But no sales.’ ‘Oh, but the sales would have come, Michael. The sales would have come. If only you’d –’ ‘– stuck at it.’ ‘Stuck at it, exactly.’ He took a long sip from his beaker of water. ‘Not long after that, you wrote me a letter. I don’t suppose you can remember what you said in that letter?’ I remembered only too well. But before I could get a word in, he said: ‘You told me that you wouldn’t be writing any more novels for a while, because you’d been commissioned to write an important non-fiction book, by another publisher. A rival publisher. Whose name, I think it’s true to say, you never disclosed.’ I nodded, waiting to see what he was driving at. ‘I wrote you two or three letters subsequently. You never replied.’ ‘Well, you know how it is, when you’re … wrapped up in something.’ ‘I could have pushed it. I could have chivvied you along. I could have come down on you like a ton of bricks. But I chose not to. I decided to wait in the background, and see what developed. It’s one of the most important parts of my job, you see, being prepared to just wait in the background, and see what develops. There are times when you can tell you need to do something like that, simply by instinct. Especially when you’re dealing with a writer you’ve taken a personal interest in. One that you feel close to.’ He fell silent and gave me what can only have been intended as a meaningful look. Not knowing what it meant, I ignored it and shifted slightly in my chair. ‘I felt very close to you, back then, Michael. I discovered you. I pulled you out of the slush pile. In fact – and correct me if I’m being fanciful here – you would have had grounds, in those days, for looking on me not just as your editor, but as your friend.’ I felt no inclination to correct him on that point, but couldn’t make up my mind whether to nod or shake my head, and so did neither. ‘Michael,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘allow me one favour.’ ‘You’ve got it.’ ‘Allow me, for one moment, to speak as your friend, and not as your editor.’ I shrugged. ‘Feel free.’ ‘OK, then. Speaking as your friend, and not as your editor – and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way – may I just say – in a spirit of constructive criticism, and personal interest – that you look fucking terrible.’ I stared back at him. ‘Michael, you look as though you’ve aged about twenty years.’ I struggled for words. ‘What … Are you saying that I look old?’ ‘The thing is that you always used to look so young. Back then, you always looked ten years younger than you really were, and now you look ten years older than you really are.’ I thought about this for a moment, and wondered whether to point out that in that case, allowing for the eight years which had gone by in the meantime, I should really have been looking as though I’d aged about thirty years. But instead I just sat there, my mouth opening and shutting like a land-locked fish. ‘So what happened?’ said Patrick. ‘What’s been going on?’ ‘Well, I don’t know … I don’t really know where to begin.’ Patrick got up at this point, but I carried on talking. ‘The 1980s weren’t a good time for me, on the whole. I suppose they weren’t for a lot of people.’ He had opened a cupboard, and seemed to be staring at the inside of the door. ‘My father died a few years ago, and that hit me quite hard, and then – well, as you probably know, ever since I split up with Verity, I haven’t had much –’ ‘Do I look older?’ Patrick asked suddenly. I realized that he was peering into a mirror. ‘What? No, not really.’ ‘I feel it.’ He sat down again, with an exaggerated flop. ‘It suddenly seems all such a long time ago, you showing up in my office, full of youthful promise.’ ‘Well, as I was saying, so much has happened since then: first there was my father dying, which was all a bit of a blow, and then –’ ‘I hate this job, you know. I really hate what it’s become.’ ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ I waited for him to elaborate, but there was just a heavy pause. ‘Anyway, and then, as you know, since Verity and I broke up, I haven’t been all that successful when it comes to –’ ‘I mean, it’s just not the same job any more. The whole business has changed out of all recognition. We get all our instructions from America and nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to anything I say at editorial meetings. Nobody gives a tinker’s fuck about fiction any more, not real fiction, and the only kind of … values anybody seems to care about are the ones that can be added up on a balance sheet.’ He poured himself another beakerful and took a deep swig, as if it was neat whisky. ‘Now, here – here’s something that’ll make you laugh. This’ll really crease you up, this will. I read a new novel the other day, in typescript. Do you want to guess who it was by?’ ‘All right, tell me.’ ‘A friend of yours. Someone you know a lot about.’ ‘I give up.’ ‘Hilary Winshaw.’ Once again I found myself at a loss for words. ‘Oh yes, they’re all at it now, you know. It’s not enough to be stinking rich, land yourself one of the most powerful jobs in television and have two million readers paying good money every week to find out about the dry rot in your skirting-board: these people want fucking immortality! They want their names in the British Library catalogue, they want their six presentation copies, they want to be able to slot that handsome hardback volume between the Shakespeare and the Tolstoy on their living-room bookshelf. And they’re going to get it. They’re going to get it because people like me know only too well that even if we decide we’ve found the new Dostoevsky, we’re still not going to sell half as many copies as we would of any old crap written by some bloke who reads the weather on the fucking television!’ His voice rose almost to a shout on the last word. Then he sat back and ran his hands through his hair. ‘So what’s it like then, her book?’ I asked, after he had had time to calm down a bit. ‘Oh, it’s the usual sort of rubbish. Lots of media people being dynamic and ruthless. Sex every forty pages. Cheap tricks, mechanical plot, lousy dialogue, could have been written by a computer. Probably was written by a computer. Empty, hollow, materialistic, meretricious. Enough to make any civilized person heave, really.’ He stared ruefully into space. ‘And the worst of it is they didn’t even accept my bid. Somebody tipped me by ten grand. Bastards. I just know it’s going to be the hit of the spring season.’ There appeared to be no easy way of breaking the ensuing silence. Patrick’s eyes were popped out like a frog’s as he looked straight past me, and he seemed to have completely forgotten that I was in the room. ‘Look,’ I said at last, making a big show of glancing at my watch. ‘I really have to go and keep another appointment quite soon. If you could just give me a few pointers about the stuff I sent you …’ Patrick’s eyes slowly turned in my direction and came into focus. A dreamy, rueful grin spread over his face. I don’t think he had heard me. ‘Then again, maybe none of this matters,’ he said. ‘Maybe there are more important things going on in the world and my little problems don’t count for much at all. Perhaps we’ll be at war soon, anyway.’ ‘At war?’ ‘Well, it’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it? Britain and France sending more troops to Saudi Arabia. On Sunday we expel all those people from the Iraqi Embassy. And now the Ayatollah’s joining in and calling for a holy war against the United States.’ He shuddered. ‘I’m telling you, the implications of this situation look pretty grim from where I’m sitting.’ ‘You mean that as soon as the fighting starts, Israel is going to get involved and before we know it relationships in the Middle East will be even worse. And then if the United Nations breaks up under the strain, the whole Cold War situation is wide open again and we could be looking at the possibility of a limited nuclear war?’ Patrick’s glance expressed pity at my naivety. ‘That’s hardly my point,’ he said. ‘The thing is that if we don’t get a biography of Saddam Hussein into the shops in the next three or four months, we’re going to get crapped on by every publisher in town.’ He looked up at me with a sudden desperate gleam in his eye. ‘Maybe you could do one for us. What do you say? Six weeks’ research, six weeks’ writing. Twenty thousand upfront if we keep all the overseas and serial rights.’ ‘Patrick, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’ I got up, paced the room a couple of times and then looked him square in the face. ‘I can’t believe you’re the same person I had all those discussions with eight years ago. All that stuff about the – permanence of great literature; the need to look beyond the horizons of the merely contemporary. I mean, what’s the business doing to you these days?’ I could see that I’d caught his attention at last and, from the way his face was rapidly falling, that my message had a chance of getting through. So I decided to press the point home. ‘You used to have such faith in literature, Patrick. I’ve never known faith like it. I used to sit in this chair listening to you talk and it was like a – like a revelation. You taught me about the eternal verities. The values which transcend generations and centuries, and which are encoded in the great imaginative works of every culture.’ I couldn’t keep this bullshit up for much longer, that was for sure. ‘You taught me to forget about everyday truths, ephemeral truths, truths that seem significant one day and irrelevant the next. You made me see that there’s a higher truth than any of that. Fiction, Patrick.’ I thumped the manuscript which was still lying on his desk. ‘Fiction – that’s what’s important. That’s what you and I believed in once, and that’s what I’ve returned to now. I thought you of all people would understand that.’ He was silent for a little while, and when he spoke again, his voice quivered with emotion. ‘You’re right, Michael. I’m sorry, really I am. You came here to get my opinion about something you’ve written, something you feel very deeply about, and all I can talk about is my own problems.’ He waved me back to my chair. ‘Come on, sit down. Let’s talk about your book.’ Determined to retain my advantage, I held my hand up in a gesture of deprecation and said: ‘Perhaps it’s not such a good time. I have this other appointment, and you maybe need a little longer to think before you can reach a decision, so why don’t we –’ ‘I’ve already reached a decision about your book, Michael.’ I sat down immediately. ‘You have?’ ‘Oh yes. I wouldn’t have called you in here if I hadn’t.’ Neither of us spoke for a few seconds. Then I said: ‘Well?’ Patrick leaned back in his chair and smiled teasingly. ‘I think you’d better tell me a little bit about it first. The background. Why you’ve written a book about the Winshaws. Why you’ve written a book about them which seems to have started out as a history and turned into a novel. What on earth gave you the idea?’ I answered these questions truthfully, precisely and at some length. After which, neither of us spoke for a few seconds. Then I said: ‘Well?’ ‘Well … I hardly need to tell you that we have a serious problem with this book, Michael. It’s flagrantly libellous.’ ‘That’s not a problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll change everything: names, locations, timings, the lot. This is just a beginning, you see, it’s just a basis. I can cover my tracks, make the whole thing practically unrecognizable. This is just the start.’ ‘Hmm.’ Patrick put his forefingers together and laid them thoughtfully against his mouth. ‘Well, what does that leave us with, exactly? That leaves us with a book which is scurrilous, scandal-seeking, vindictive in tone, obviously written out of feelings of malice and even, in parts – if you don’t mind me saying this – a little shallow.’ I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So you’ll publish it?’ ‘I think so. Subject to your carrying out the necessary revisions, and, of course, providing it with some sort of ending.’ ‘Absolutely. I’m working on that at the moment, and I expect to come up with something … soon. Very soon.’ In my exhilaration I felt a sudden rush of warmth towards Patrick. ‘You know, I was sure that this book was perfect for the market right now, but I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear you say this. I was worried, you know, with it being so different from my other novels –’ ‘Oh, not that different,’ he said, with a wave of his hand. ‘You don’t think so?’ ‘There’s a definite stylistic link between this stuff and your last book, for instance. I could recognize your voice immediately. In many ways, this has the same strengths, and the …’ ‘… and the what?’ I asked, after he’d tailed off. ‘Pardon?’ ‘You were about to say something. The same strengths, and …?’ ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. Really.’ ‘The same weaknesses, that’s what you were about to say. Isn’t it? The same strengths, and the same weaknesses.’ ‘Well yes, if you must know.’ ‘And what does that mean?’ ‘Oh, we don’t want to bother about that now.’ ‘Come on, Patrick, tell me.’ ‘Well …’ He got up and walked to the window. The car park and the brick wall didn’t seem to inspire him. ‘I don’t suppose you can remember, can you, what we talked about the last time we met? That last conversation we had, all those years ago?’ I remembered it vividly. ‘Not offhand, no.’ ‘We talked a lot about your work. We talked a lot about your previous work, and your future work, and your work in progress, and I ventured to make a small criticism which seemed to upset you, to a certain extent. I don’t suppose you can remember what it was?’ I could almost remember his exact words. ‘Can’t put my finger on it, I’m afraid.’ ‘I suggested … well I suggested, to be frank, that there was a certain element of passion lacking from your writing. You don’t remember that?’ ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’ ‘Not that this suggestion in itself would have caused you to take offence. But I did also go on to suggest – and here I really was being a bit presumptuous, I suppose – that the explanation for this might lie in the fact that there was also a certain element of passion lacking in – well, how shall I put this? – your life. For want of a better word.’ He watched me carefully: carefully enough to be able to say, ‘You do remember, don’t you?’ I stared back at him until my indignation got the better of me. ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ I spluttered. ‘This book is full of passion. Full of anger, anyway. If it communicates anything at all, it’s how much I hate these people, how evil they are, how much they’ve spoiled everything, with their vested interests and their influence and their privilege and their stranglehold on all the centres of power; how they’ve got us all cornered, how they’ve pretty well carved up the whole bloody country between them. You don’t know what it was like, Patrick, having to surround myself with that family for so many years; day after day with no one but the Winshaws for company. Why do you think the book turned out like that? Because writing it all down, trying to put down the truth about them, was the only thing that stopped me from wanting to kill them. Which somebody should do one of these days, incidentally.’ ‘All right then, let me put it another –’ ‘So how you can say there’s no passion in it beats me, I must say.’ ‘Well, perhaps “passion” is the wrong word.’ He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘In fact it wasn’t even the word that I used when we first had this conversation. To be absolutely blunt, Michael, I pointed out that there was an absence of sex in your work – sex was the very word I used, now I come to think of it – and I then went on to speculate whether this might mean – might mean, I go no further than that – that there was also, and equally, a parallel and … concomitant absence of … sex … in your … Let me put this another way: there’s no sexual dimension to your writing at the moment, Michael, and I only wondered if this might possibly be because there is no – or at least not much – sexual dimension to your … to your life. As it stands.’ ‘I see.’ I stood up. ‘Patrick, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you were the kind of editor who told authors to put sex in their books just to help the sales along.’ ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. Not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that there’s a crucial aspect of your characters’ experience which is simply not finding expression here. You’re avoiding it. You’re pussyfooting around it. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were afraid of it.’ ‘I’m not staying here to listen to any more of this,’ I said, making for the door. ‘Michael?’ I turned. ‘I’ll get a contract in the post for you tonight.’ ‘Thank you,’ I said, and was about to leave, when something made me stop and say: ‘You hit a bit of a nerve, you know, when you went on about … an element, being lacking in my life.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Good sex scenes are very difficult to write, anyway.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Thanks, all the same.’ Another afterthought. ‘We must have lunch together soon, like in the old days.’ ‘The firm won’t let me buy lunch for authors any more,’ said Patrick. ‘But still, if you know somewhere cheap, we could always go Dutch.’ He was pouring himself more water as I left.