R.J. Lynch's Blog, page 12

The mess that is a writer’s mind

Where does stuff come from? I mean, the stuff we write. I’ve written elsewhere about my puzzlement when I saw the first line of Zappa’s Mam’s a Slapper; what raised the question this time was a memory from sixty years ago that came back when I met by chance someone I hadn’t seen for almost that long.

In A Just and Upright Man, I wrote this passage:

It was simply the most modern and comfortable house Kate had ever been in. She knew Mistress Wortley to be a widow, and in Kate’s experience widows were always in want of money. There was no sign of that here.

Though the hovels of the poor – hovels like the one Kate lived in – had no floor coverings at all, she was familiar with the floor cloths better off people had. Sheets of canvas drenched in linseed oil and pigment, they gave some pattern and colour but, most of all, they kept the feet clear of the cold stone flags or beaten earth that constituted the floor of most houses. Here, though, were no floor cloths. This floor was smooth surfaced terracotta tiles, swept clean by one of the three servants who looked after this one woman’s every need; and on the tiles lay rugs of woven wool in intricate and brightly coloured designs. Kate stared in wonder.

‘I see you are looking at my rugs, Katherine. You are perhaps wondering why they are not on the wall, as you might have seen in, let us say, the Rectory?’

Kate nodded, though in truth she had never been further into the Rectory than the scullery, and the only hangings there were copper pots and pans.

‘This is the latest fashion, Katherine. Everyone in London is doing it. Hangings are coming off walls and going onto floors. And, see: the blue and yellow wallpaper. I had it delivered by James Wheeley in London. They sent their own men all this way to hang it, for I could not trust the local workmen. It is the newest thing. Would you really cover such a bright and beautiful paper in wall hangings?’

Kate was almost lost for words at such elegance. ‘No, miss.’

‘The people of Ryton do not know what beauty can exist in our world. Beauty is to be found only in Mayfair. And, of course, Paris, Rome, Venice.’

‘Lady Isabella goes every summer to Harrogate. We pray in church for her safe return.’

‘Yes, I can see that a provincial soul might warm to Harrogate. For me, Bath is not entirely without its compensations. And now, tell me. Why do you want to learn to read and write?’

All right, the main object of that scene was the same as the main object of all scenes – to move the story forward. There was something else though; I wanted to show that on the one hand we had Mistress Wortley, a widow of means with a high opinion of her own worldly sophistication and on the other was Kate whose idea of the unattainable would be a visit to Harrogate, 50 miles to the south and a day’s ride in the stagecoaches of the time. (Lady Isabella, by the way, is the rector’s wife). A little later, Mistress Wortley uses the word “provincial” again:

Kate’s reading was progressing well, and the time for her sixth lesson was here.

‘You are glum, child,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘What troubles you?’

‘The Overseers of the Poor came to see me,’ said Kate. ‘They wanted to know why I was learning to read when we are receiving money from the parish because my father is ill. They say this must be my last lesson, and I must be put to work.’

‘They say that, do they? And you? Do you want this to be your last lesson?’

‘No, Miss. I mean Mistress Wortley. But…’

‘Then it shall not be. You may leave the Overseers of the Poor to me. I shall send them about their business. Now take the old vellum sheet you will find on the table and cover it in the first four letters of the alphabet while I work at my sewing.’

Kate could not prevent herself from looking up from her exercise to watch the widow’s fine work with the needle. ‘That is beautiful cloth, Mistress Wortley. What is it you are making?’

‘A frock for my sister’s son. She has not had my good fortune in avoiding the more sordid aspects of matrimony, and she has three children already after only five years of marriage. The boy is three and I promised to make something for him to wear on Sundays when better weather arrives. But attend to your own work and not to mine. You will not form letters a lady would be proud of unless you pay attention to what you are doing.’

Kate bent her head to the vellum.

‘You are right about the stuff, though,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘This is the finest cotton, from Galilee. The French have the Levant trade to themselves. They bribe the merchants in Egypt, and it is the Egyptians who buy and sell the cotton from the Holy Land. The most tiresome thing about being at war was having to buy cotton from the Americas and the Indies. Such coarse stuff.’

Kate smiled. She revered Mistress Wortley as a woman of great kindness and she loved hearing her talk about Society, fashion and the world beyond Ryton, but Kate was a girl of common sense and she knew that, sometimes, Mistress Wortley spoke the most complete tripe. Kate loved to tease. But how would her benefactress respond to being teased? Casually, she said, ‘Lady Isabella has fine cotton petticoats. I believe the cloth comes from Manchester, though I do not rightly know where Manchester is. But Rosina told our mam…’

‘Katherine!’

‘Mistress Wortley, I am sorry. Rosina told my mother…’

‘Katherine!’

‘Rosina told Mother that the cotton was from the Indies. Though I don’t rightly know where the Indies are, either.’

‘They are far from here,’ said Mistress Wortley, folding her sewing and putting it aside. ‘And I can see that colonial cotton spun by some Manchester jade as she sings to keep her six starving children quiet might be very fitting for ladies who holiday in Harrogate. One would not wish to see such provincials challenged by anything of excessive quality. Show me the vellum. You are doing well, Kate. I shall not let the Overseers of the Poor come between you and your wish to read. Take this book in your hand. Now. Let us see what you can make of the first sentence.’

Kate “doesn’t rightly know where the Indies are” and it’s clear that Mistress Wortley is no better informed, but she isn’t going to admit it. She is very conscious of the way Kate looks up to her for her broader knowledge of the world. And that brings me back to the question: where does this come from?

In 1954 I was in my first year at grammar school. I went into a shop to buy a chocolate bar (it would have been about three pence at the time, and by that I mean old pence which were worth less than half of the present coin, and you’d need about thirty of those to buy the same piece of confectionery). The mother of one of my schoolfriends from the year before (he had not passed the 11+ and was therefore not with me at grammar school) was explaining to the two women behind the counter (one of whom was my mother) that the behaviour of Italian men – their whistling after women and groping of female behinds – was something that anyone who had been to Italy would expect and think nothing of. “If it becomes too much, you simply give them an earful in Italian and they back away immediately. Mamma’s boys, the lot of them.”

My mother said nothing but I knew from the look on her face that she was not impressed. I hadn’t thought of that incident until the meeting I described at the beginning of this post, for the man I met after a gap of almost 60 years was the son of the woman in the shop who could tell Italian men off in their own tongue. The scene came back to me and I said, ‘What had your mother been doing in Italy?’

‘Italy? I don’t think she was ever there.’

‘But she spoke Italian.’

‘Is this the beginning of dementia? Or are you confusing my mother with someone else? She didn’t speak a word of anything but English. She might say “Pardon my French” when she swore, but that was about the extent of it.

I laughed it off and turned the conversation to other things but I had the answer to my question. Mistress Wortley got her snobbery from Terry Malin’s mother. A writer’s mind is a fermenting hodgepodge of memories (some of which are false), quotations, sudden insights, old fights and old friendships, and things we may have read so many years ago that we have forgotten them. If we are lucky, they come together to form the soil in which something new can grow.

I’ll leave with one last extract from A Just and Upright Man. It comes immediately after the first one I quoted, which ended when Mistress Wortley asked Kate why she wanted to read and write and I think it shows very well the widow’s view of the correctness of the social order as it existed in north-east England in the seventeen sixties. And I know exactly where her ideas of what constitutes correct speech came from – they came from my primary school teachers, more than 200 years later:

‘Miss, I want to better myself. I want to read the bible for myself, instead of hearing only what someone else thinks is important. And I’d like to know what’s going on in the world.’

‘Very well. Estimable wishes, so long as you do not think to rise above your station. But reading and writing are not enough. You must also learn to speak.’

‘Speak, Miss? But, Miss, I speak every day. I am speaking to you now.’

‘That is not speaking. You have much to learn. For now, let us content ourselves with but a few simple rules. You must not say us when you mean me. You must not say our Mam, but my mother. Or, better still, simply Mother. You will not call people Man, whatever sex they may be. And never, ever, shall you address someone as pet. Is that clear? There will be more to learn, when you have mastered this. I shall call you Katherine. You will call me Mistress Wortley, or Ma’am. And now, let us begin.’

 

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

I almost abandoned this book right at the start, because at the very beginning of the book a man hits his wife and then beats her into a coma. It didn’t take the beating to make me want to turn away – the single blow was enough. Hitting a woman is an unacceptable, unforgivable offence. Looking back, I’m horrified by the thought of what I would have missed. There have been a few great moments in my reading life – times when I read something that changed my view of what makes a good book. Wind in the Willows when I was eight. Children of the New Forest two years later. It thinned out after that but in 1985 there was Every Day is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel and in 1996 I was stunned by John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure. Unravelling Oliver brought the same sense of shock as the Lanchester book and the same certainty that here was a writer to follow as I had got with that first novel by Hilary Mantel. This is a tour de force. The story is convincing, the motivations are assured, the author is in control of her material from start to finish. A stupendous read. If you read only one book this year, make it this one.

 

A new review for Zappa’s Mam’s a Slapper

I did enjoy reading this :-). And I understand her reservations about the blurb.

5  stars Compulsive With a Strong Voice






ByLiarbyrd “Liarbyrd”on April 13, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
Billy’s voice is incredibly strong and pulls the reader in immediately. Compelling isn’t the right word. Compulsive. I couldn’t stop reading. I enjoyed this book completely and I want more.

I think the blurb does the book a disservice. This is a story about Billy’s rough childhood and teen years, how he got to prison and how photography saved him from a life of petty crime. The blurb makes it sound like this is a story about a grown man struggling to care for a small child. Dillon only enters the picture in the last 10% of the book. This is a story all about Billy’s coming of age.

 

An Honest Man by John Lynch — a free story to download

I’d managed to book myself into the wrong hotel. There are two Fairmonts but I didn’t know that till we drove past the one I’d always stayed in and I said, “Shouldn’t we have made a U-turn there?”, wondering if I’d got myself caught up in a Moslem Brotherhood kidnapping. We sorted out what had happened and I started tapping out messages on my Blackberry telling people I wasn’t going to be where they expected and hoping it wasn’t going to cause too much trouble.

It’s a good hotel, even better than the one I usually stay in, though it’s the same price, 170 dollars US a night so long as you agree the non-refundable advance payment which saves fifty dollars a night but also meant I wasn’t going to be able to switch hotels in the morning.

The porter had shown me the room with great pride, lingering on the special features. He’d shown me the bathroom’s sliding doors you could open “so you can watch television while you take a shower or a bath” but I’ve seen those panels before, in places like Tanzania, and really they’re there so that light from the outside windows can filter in because it doesn’t matter how much you’re paying for the room in Dar, or how luxurious the hotel, you’re still going to get power cuts and it can take a while for the generators to kick in. It doesn’t matter here, either.

You prefer to shower in the evening or early morning, when there is no light outside the windows? Don’t, is my advice. You don’t want to be caught without light when you’re all soaped up.

Look out of the window and there’s the river, broad and slow-moving at this point and older than civilisation which, as the locals will tell you, began here. A view worth paying for. Closer than the river are buildings that once were grand, or intended to be grand, and on the roofs the shattered debris of development unfinished when the money ran out, or one more riot, one more civil war discouraged the landlord or simply made it pointless to go on spending. Every roof has people scavenging through its little pile of rubble, looking for anything that might be of use.

What am I doing here you’ll be wondering. It’s money, of course. They haven’t had any for so long but now it’s here, brought by the new stability or what looks like stability because how can you tell? There was a Portuguese contractor in Mozambique, the most beautiful country on the continent if you want my opinion. I asked him, “This peace. Will it last?” And he said, “This is Africa. There are no guarantees. But, for the time being, the sun is shining”. It’s shining here now. Development banks, governments, wealthy co-religionists who like what’s happening here, all pouring in dollars for roads, airports, hospitals, schools. And the politicians, and the people who own the politicians, they want some of that money. Not to build schools with, though. Their children are educated in Britain and the USA. They don’t care how bad the schools here are.

My employers want a share of the money, too, which is why they’re prepared to buy my Business Class ticket and pay for my five star hotel. They don’t speak the language and they need someone who does. They fear for their safety and they need someone who doesn’t. It isn’t violence they’re afraid of, or not just violence; they haven’t forgotten what happened in Iran when the new masters told visiting businessmen, “We think you charged too much on this contract. We want thirty per cent of those millions back and we’re keeping you here till your company pays up”.

It’s all far easier than you probably imagine. Britain has its Bribery Act, the US passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and there’s the OECD’s Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. That keeps the liberals happy – the people who believe that buying Fairtrade coffee actually helps subsistence-level farmers. I wish they could hear what people in Kenya say about that, though actually I don’t because they wouldn’t listen.

Still, it’s easy. You’re a conduit by which politicians and officials divert into their own bank accounts, wherever in the world those may be, some of the money meant to make poor people’s futures brighter. That means, if you’re selling something, there has to be a difference between the amount on the invoice and the sum you want to see in your bank account when the dust has settled. It also means, if the money was given to build a new bridge and the politician’s greatest need is for guns, that a little creativity goes into drafting the invoice and the shipping documents. Of course, someone’s likely to notice the difference between what it says on the Bills of Lading and what’s in the containers, but the someone has needs too – to pay his rent, feed his family, buy medicines for his mother and get his children into school. He’s cheaply bought.

Finding the person, establishing his need and fixing the price; that’s my area of expertise.

And then there are those who can’t be bought. The idealists. The honest men. It was because of one of those that I was in this island of luxury in a waste land of poverty.

I’d liked Ahmad when I’d first met him, back when we were fixing up this deal. I had him down as a pragmatist, which is what you want when you’re doing this kind of business. A few months went by while we got the gear ready to ship because you can’t stockpile this sort of stuff and the manufacturers can be almost as difficult as the funding agencies if they figure out what you’re doing. We’d had a letter of credit from the start; letters of credit are almost as good as cash because they aren’t contracts to exchange money for goods – the bank that issues them undertakes to give you money in return for documents of title. So long as the documents say what the L/C says they should, it doesn’t actually matter what’s in the vessel’s hold, but if the LC says all documents must bear a picture of the tattoo on your grandmother’s left buttock then you’d better get Granny to raise her skirt because if you don’t comply you won’t be paid. In theory, an international convention allows you to get an unreasonable term changed but I’d like to see you try.

So there we were, all ready to load a shipment worth twenty-five million dollars on which we would make five million, when my boss demanded my presence in his office. He’d had a phone call from a journalist. “My informant says you’re shipping guns in contravention of a UN resolution.” Of course, he wasn’t prepared to name his source but our chairman also chairs a couple of other companies, one of which is among the biggest manufacturers on the planet. In case you haven’t already worked this out, it isn’t a thirst for freedom of the press and an informed readership that says what gets into the papers – it’s advertising revenue. A threat that I don’t suppose was veiled got the story spiked and gave us the whistle-blower’s name. Ahmad.

‘You know this fucker,’ said my boss. ‘Find out what his game is. Ask how much he wants.’

So here I was, to do just that.

Revolving restaurants have had their day and personally I’d prefer to decide where to eat on the quality of the food but Ahmad was the man of the moment and this was his choice. They have a good wine list but he said all he wanted was water so I did the same. That choice bothered me; he hadn’t had a problem with alcohol last time we’d met. Had he been faking then? Was he now? Or was I looking at a changed man? The best way to get an answer is to ask the question. His answer was indirect. ‘Are you a believer?’

I said, ‘There is no God but God.’ It’s the standard answer to that question and it always gets a smile because of course they know that I’m not.

‘Would you like what happens in this country to happen in yours?’

‘I’d like the climate.’

‘I’m not talking about climate. We have two kinds of people: the fabulously rich and the poor. There is no middle ground here. No middle class. Think of a young guy with a good job in management. You think he takes his family out for a meal? A burger even, or a pizza? You think they go to the movies?’

‘I know they do.’

‘Yes, sure. Maybe once every three or four months. Because they don’t have money. Public education here stinks, so you save so your children can go to a decent school. Public health is even worse because there isn’t any. So he buys cover for his wife and himself and his children and after he’s paid for it he has nothing left. He’s poor. He’s a graduate and a manager and he’s poor. What do you think it’s like for a labourer? A gardener? A security guard? This is a peaceful country, but when the present is hopeless and there’s no hope that the future will be better you look at the alternatives.’

‘Have you seen what’s happening in Iraq?’

‘Not that kind of alternative. Banning half the population from any kind of education because it happens to be female won’t solve any problems. What we want is fairness. Starting with allowing the money we were given to build hospitals and pay doctors to be used for that purpose and not for what you want to do with it.’

‘It’s too late to change now. You should have said this six months ago.’

‘I didn’t know my wife had cancer six months ago.’

Suddenly I felt on firmer ground. ‘You should have come to us. We can get her into one of our hospitals. As a private patient. Paid for by us.’ Even as I said it I saw the problem. His share of the bribe was more than enough to pay for his wife’s care. It was a double illness. She’d got cancer and he’d developed a conscience.

He shook his head.

‘We’ll bring you over, too. Hotel near the hospital. Get the kids into school there.’

Another shake of the head. ‘That helps me. It does nothing for anyone else.’

I was irritated. ‘Ahmad, if you want to help people, stand for office.’

The head was still shaking. ‘It’s no good, John. I’m not going to help you.’

When the British still ruled Hong Kong, the old hands had a bit of verbal copperplate for new arrivals about the corruption that was everywhere on the island (and still is). “You can get on the bus. You can walk beside the bus. But whatever you do, don’t try to stand in front of the bus.” What Ahmad was telling me was that he was going to stand in front.

I called the waiter. ‘Bring me a double Macallan, please. No ice.’

‘Anything in it, sir? Dry ginger?’

I shook my head. There was plenty of water on the table; I’d add a little of that.

Ahmad’s smile was weary. ‘You’ve given up, then? Not going to try to persuade me?’

‘I know a lost cause when I see one.’

‘So. What shall we talk about? Football?’

I have no interest in the game but I joined in his discussion of the English Premiership. We finished eating and I said, ‘You know I can’t protect you? What good will your being dead do your wife?’

‘If anything happens to me, a file will go to every newspaper office in the West.’

‘Mhm.’

‘You should make sure your masters know that.’

‘Oh, I will. I want a coffee. But first, I need the men’s room.’ I didn’t, but I did need to send an SMS.

When I came back to the table, I dawdled over a double espresso and another large Scotch to give my contact time to get into position. Then I asked for the bill.

We didn’t talk in the elevator because we weren’t alone. Two men in five thousand dollar suits that prevented their consumption of a hundred poor men’s calories from making them look gross. They nodded at me; Ahmad was beneath their notice. Nor, when we reached the street, did they glance at the milling crowd of men in ragged jellabiyas, women covered in black, children scrabbling in the dust. Inured to the poverty of others from earliest childhood, they didn’t ignore so much as simply fail to notice them. I looked into the shadow of the colonnaded sidewalk on the other side. The only thing noticeable about the two men sitting at one of the tables outside the cheap cafe was that they weighed three times as much as the other customers, and all of it muscle. And suits; they wore suits.

I used my phone to call my driver. To Ahmad I said, ‘Can I give you a lift home?’

‘That’s all right. I’ll walk.’

‘You live locally?’

‘I’ll walk, John.’

‘Okay.’ When we shook hands I made sure that we were sideways on to the street. As Ahmad moved away I saw the two men get up from their table and start to follow him. He didn’t once look back. Poor Ahmad was not made for this life he had embarked on.

Back at the hotel I bought a Cohiba and another Scotch in the bar. A waiter offered me a newspaper. My whisky and cigar cost more than he earned in a month; if he resented me or the affluence he saw every day it didn’t show on his smiling face. Possibly he was glad just to have a job. And the poor sometimes raise themselves; the man who built one of the largest conglomerates in the world began life as a road sweeper and, when his daughter married, the daughters of the richest men in the country boasted about their invitations.

I had a visitor at breakfast the following morning. He’d changed his suit and his shirt but there was no disguising the muscular bulk. He placed a laptop bag beside the table, sat opposite me and accepted a coffee.

I said, ‘All done?’

‘All done.’

‘His widow won’t talk?’

He stared at me, his brown eyes betraying no emotion. ‘There is no widow. His children are orphans now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘She saw us. You didn’t want any loose ends.‘

‘That’s right. I didn’t. Perhaps you could trace the grandparents? If they’re still alive? An anonymous donation…?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘And his press releases?’

He nodded towards the laptop bag. ‘In hand.’

‘Thank you.’

When he got up to go, he left the bag behind. I took it to my room. There was no password. I found Ahmad’s little batch file without difficulty. His plan had been simple; if he did not fire up the laptop for 36 hours, his great mass of emails would be transmitted automatically. I deleted the lot. It was a nice laptop. I’d take it home, securely wipe the hard disk, reload Windows and give it to the kids.

And then I thought, no. You can’t do that. It isn’t yours. Company money paid for this. Wipe the disk, yes. Reload Windows, yes. But then you give it to IT and let them do what they want with it. The world needs honesty and honest men are hard to find.

The journey to the airport was slow, my limo bogged down by tuktuks, men carrying impossible loads on ancient bicycles and cars that had been on the road for too many years. I tipped the porter who carried my bag to the Business Class check-in counter about five times as much as was normal. A man as prosperously suited as the two in the elevator the night before said, ‘You foreign visitors spoil these people. What are you trying to achieve? Did not your own Jesus say, “The poor you have always with you”?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He did. But, sometimes, you want to reduce their number.’

Return to Free Stories 

 

A Flyer for Sharon Wright: Butterfly

I’ve been making flyers for the upcoming litfests at the London Book Fair on 17 April 2015 and Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival on 23 April 2015. This is the one I’ve made in A5 size for Sharon Wright: Butterfly:

A5’s a bit small for the screen, so here’s the text:

Sharon Wright: Butterfly

By

John Lynch

 No-one gives Sharon a chance. Except Sharon.

In Sharon’s deprived childhood, Buggy was Top Cat – the one everyone went in fear of. Buggy ruled the roost and Buggy’s girlfriend could be the Number One female. So she married him. Of all the mistakes she could have made, that was the biggest. But mistakes don’t have to be final

All Sharon wants is a better life – a husband who takes care of her, the kind of food they have in magazines, and civilized conversation. Is it her fault that she is in the middle of a plot involving two hitmen? Well, yes, actually. It is. But Sharon is a survivor who makes her sure-footed way in a man’s world. And when she woos Jackie Gough she does it the way a female mantis might, knowing that when she is sated she may kill him. Until then she lets him think they are equal partners and will share the money she sets him up to steal. Poor Jackie.

ISBN (Paperback) 978-1-910194-10-2

ISBN (eBook) 978-1-910194-08-9

What John Lynch has to say about Sharon Wright: Butterfly

It takes a long time to write a book. By the time I’d finished Sharon Wright: Butterfly I knew my star character so well we were on snogging terms – except that snogging Sharon would be a risky thing to do. Jackie Gough tries it, and realises too late that the dumb blonde is no more dumb than she is blonde.

My sympathies are with Sharon. She’s born in a rundown place into a family that doesn’t care. Because she’s female, she’s expected to accept that her place will always be second to a man’s. She learns to hide her intelligence, but hiding it is not giving it up. She’s surrounded by South London criminals and assorted lowlife who would kill her without a second thought if they thought she posed a threat. And still she survives.

(Or does she?)

 A word about the cover

When the book was done, I trawled Getty Images till I found a face and when I did it was “Beam me up, Spotty!” There she was! Her! The woman I’d got to know so well in a year of living side by side in the same little room (the one I write in). My Shazza. Then Scarlett Rugers McKenzie, an Australian book designer of genius, took the pic and made exactly the cover I wanted.

You can find more about Sharon Wright: Butterfly here.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Two hours on the train to Birmingham to see the Saturday matinee performance of Arcadia. Two hours back, with a last ditch struggle to board a crowded train. It was a wet and windy day when other pursuits offered: staying indoors with the latest Charles Cumming and a pot of tippy Assam would probably have been favourite. So; was Arcadia worth the effort?

I’ve never really been a Stoppard fan — he’s a bit Rab Butler, a little “too clever by half”. And this is England, where “clever” is not always a compliment. The performances were mixed — some good, some a little newbie. It isn’t everyone who can make a play about entropy and hold people’s attention (yes, I know there was a lot more, but that’s what I’m left with this morning).

I suppose it was worth the trouble. But only just.

Offcuts (4)

The wine was okay although I think I’ll save the other bottle for a warm summer evening that beckons the diner outside. Today I’m going to the New Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham to see Arcadia by Tom Stoppard and that’s quite a schlep from here so, as I promised to post today the passage that followed from the one I posted yesterday, I’d better get on with it. To recap, these offcuts are passages that, when I wrote them, I expected to appear in the final, published, novel but which for one reason or another did not last the course.  When we left it yesterday, Ted was being interrogated by a chat show host about the events in Ephesus that resulted in the death at his hands of two Turks. Now, as they say, read on…

They’re waiting for him when he comes back from viewing the mosaics, though how he was supposed to look at mosaics in the dark is beyond him. He doesn’t like what he sees.

Max is sitting on a fallen pillar, his head in his hands. One of the two men stands silently, a gun trained on Max; the other is shouting at him. The woman sits a little apart, looking away towards where the sea is, though she certainly can’t see it.

‘Ridiculous,’ the man is shouting. He’s shouting in French, though it’s clear from the taxi ride that Max speaks Turkish. Later, Ted will wish he’d noticed that. ‘For two of the finest artefacts ever found in this country, you want to pay me twenty thousand francs. Twenty thousand francs! You insult me, you insult my merchandise, you insult my country!’

He makes a show of noticing Ted’s approach. ‘And what about you, Monsieur? Do you have money? Or must we kill both of you? Eh? And keep the heads and the twenty thousand francs?’

The gunman has brought his pistol round to point squarely at Ted’s chest. A terrible mistake.

‘Yes,’ says Ted, opening his leather bag. ‘I have money. Calm down.’ And he reaches into the bag, slips the safety off his gun, brings it out and shoots the man holding the revolver. Straight through the heart. Dead.

Instant turmoil. The man demanding money is backing away, screaming in panic. Screaming in Turkish which, unfortunately, Ted does not understand. Ted’s shooting arm is held straight out. It swings in a graceful arc, coming to rest on the screaming man, who now holds out his arms in supplication. That he is begging for his life is clear.

Maxim is on his feet, holding out both hands towards Ted. ‘Ted. No. You don’t understand. It was just…’

But Ted has pulled the trigger and the screaming man is silenced. In the centre of his forehead is a neat hole. The one in the back of his head is somewhat less immaculate.

‘You’d done the wrong thing?’ says Dolan.

‘By their lights, maybe. Not by mine. You point a gun at me, you’d better know I’ll shoot you if I get the chance.’

‘Which is what you told Max.’

‘Sure is. And Ibrahim, when he identified himself.’

‘How did you get back to the boat?’

‘Same way as we’d come. In the taxi.’

‘Wasn’t the driver scared?’

‘Shaking like a leaf.’

Ted sits in front this time, his gun pressed into the driver’s ribs. It is now completely dark outside and the headlights on the dusty white road pick out no more people than on the way in. Max and the woman are in the back.

‘Why are we taking her?’ asks Ted.

Max is trembling almost as badly as the driver. Feeling good as he is, Ted still doesn’t fail to notice that the woman’s manner suggests anger and contempt more than fear.

‘Because I’m what you came for,’ she says.

‘What?’

Max is trying to shut her up but she’s in no mood to listen to him. ‘You thought it was the heads, maybe? Worthless bits of stone? You thought they brought you all this way for that? It was for me. Imbecile.’

Ted says, ‘And who are they?’

To the woman, the question isn’t worth bothering with. Max simply shakes his head.

‘Suppose,’ says Ted, ‘I leave the pair of you here and sail off without you. How would you deal with that? How would you explain the two bodies back there when the sun comes up tomorrow?’

Max shakes his head. ‘Ibrahim would not let you.’

‘Ibrahim? Ibrahim is with you?’

Max looks very tired. ‘We put him into your boat. You had hired someone else.’

Ted remembers. ‘That’s right. I had.’

‘And he was suddenly unavailable. And Ibrahim came to see you.’

‘You sent him? For what? For this?’

‘Don’t get angry, please, Ted.’

‘Angry? I’m fucking furious. You…’

‘Ted. When you are angry you are even more dangerous than when you are calm. Listen to me, please. The DGSE identified you as a prospect. We saw you as someone we could work with.’

The woman snorts. Ted looks at her. She says, ‘We, the man says. We.’

‘Isabelle,’ Max starts, but she’s in no mood for interruptions.

‘Maxim is not “We,” Monsieur Bailey,’ she says. I am “We.” Ibrahim is “We.” Maxim is a dilettante, an amateur. A jolly war with the Free French and he thinks himself a master spy. Maxim is someone we use to arrange things.’

The taxi is approaching the harbour. ‘So,’ Ted says. ‘Since you are the real thing, tell me what I need to know.’

‘You need to know nothing,’ she spits. ‘You are a bigger fool than Max.’ She speaks in quick Turkish to the driver, who stops the car with a jerk. ‘We will walk from here,’ she says.

As they walk away, Ted turns to look back at the driver. He is mopping his brow, his shoulders heaving. Ted could swear there are tears on his cheeks. Ted points his gun at the front near-side tyre and blows a hole in it. The woman curses him beneath her breath.

Ibrahim’s eyes rest unblinking on Ted as Isabelle speaks to him in rapid Arabic. How old is Ibrahim? Ted has never asked himself the question before. Could be twenty, could be forty. The friendly, slightly obsequious smile Ted is used to is no longer in place, but nor is there any unfriendliness. In the tales of cowboys and Indians Ted read as a child, the braves’ faces were often described as impassive, but impassive would be the wrong word here. Ibrahim isn’t hostile and he isn’t sympathetic. He is merely absorbing information, juggling plans, improvising.

In his melodically accented French, he says to Ted, ‘We had better go now, Monsieur. They will be looking for us in the morning and we should be far from here.’

There is a light in the immigration and customs men’s cabin, but no-one comes out to watch the boat slip quietly out of the bay.

‘They are concerned with people coming into the country,’ Ibrahim says. ‘Not with those who leave. They may pay a heavy price tomorrow.’

In open water, Ted gives the boat more power. He does not need to be told that Istanbul is off the itinerary. The boat moves south, a strong wake trailing behind as they leave Turkish for Greek waters and head for the open Mediterranean. Max is silent. He will not speak another word to Ted during the voyage.

Through the long night, Ted keeps the strap of the leather bag with the gun in it wrapped around his wrist. Ibrahim offers to take over at the helm, but Ted has no interest in sleep. He does not want to be left to swim home. The Arab brews coffee and the two men drink it companionably side by side as the boat cuts through the warm, dark water. Ted offers Ibrahim a cigarette, lights one for himself.

‘You feel betrayed?’ Ibrahim asks.

‘By you?’

‘Of course.’

Ted shrugs.

‘Betrayal is what I do,’ says Ibrahim. ‘I am an Arab, and I work for the country that oppresses my people.’

‘You are a spy?’

‘I do not like that word.’

‘The woman. Isabelle. Why is she so important?’

‘You have heard her story, I think.’

‘Oh, yes, I have heard her story.’

‘It will serve. Our stories become the truth. Until we need new ones.’

‘How can you live like that?’

Ibrahim looks at him and smiles.

‘You think I am the same?’ asks Ted.

‘Do you say you are not?’

It is a few hours later, with the sun rising towards its zenith and the day hot on their faces. Ted asks Ibrahim, ‘Why did they do it like this? Why all the nonsense with the heads? Why not just sail in, pick her up and get out?’

Ibrahim smiles. ‘To complicate. They must complicate. What you suggest is simple and these people do not like simple. They make problems where no problem exists. So they ask, how will you react if they say you come to Turkey to pick up a passenger? You will want to know who she is, and why they want her. No, no, they think. Monsieur Bailey is a criminal, so we give him something a criminal will understand. Theft. The stealing of things that can be sold.’

‘Why did they need me at all? They must have boats of their own.’

‘Something might go wrong. Turkey is a friendly country. You must not be seen to kidnap people from a friendly country. Maxim is a freelance and disposable.’

‘But you’re here.’

‘I am an Arab and therefore also disposable. Also the Turks are proud people. Proud as only a country that has had a great empire and now is nothing can be proud. You are an English. You will understand that, I think.’

‘What will happen to these two now?’

‘Monsieur Maxim, he will be in trouble. This was his plan. Now two Turkish men are dead, and they were ours. They will never use him again. The money they pay him they will cease to pay him. He will be unhappy. He will blame you. You should watch out for him.’

‘And Isabelle?’

‘What did she do? Nothing.’

‘And me?’

Ibrahim smiles. ‘You will be all right, Monsieur. I will see to it.’

Offcuts (3)

Now that I’m in the mood after Offcuts and Offcuts (2), here is another passage that was once part of When the Darkness Comes but is so no longer. I didn’t have a problem with it; it was simply that the book had become so damn long, bits of it had to go and I chose those that could be considered self-contained.

Ted loves sailing, if being driven by a powerful motor can be called sailing. Maxim makes omelettes for lunch; they drink mineral water with them, because Ted has a no alcohol while at sea rule. They spend the evening in Mgarr Harbour on Gozo, where Ibrahim stays on the boat while Ted and Maxim dine ashore on Spagetti ai Frutta di Mare. The Gozo wine is good, though Maxim the Frenchman refuses to say so, the night is peaceful and they breakfast next morning on bread, coffee and sweet cakes.

The second day they dock at Crete; and after a late breakfast and an early lunch on shore they turn north and start picking their way between the islands that dot the whole waterway. As the afternoon sun begins to descend towards the sea, Maxim suggests stopping for the night in Kusadasi.

‘You want to reach Istanbul tomorrow?’ asks Ted.

‘We do not have time to arrive there today. And it is a busy harbour. Not the best place to navigate in the dark. And you have never seen Ephesus, I think.’

‘I won’t now. Ephesus Harbour is dry. The town is miles from the sea.’

Maxim glances at him. ‘I thought you did not know this area.’

‘I can read a chart.’

‘There are taxis.’

Ted shrugs. As far as he’s concerned, they’re here for the pleasure of the trip.

Customs come aboard and make a perfunctory examination. A polite man in an Immigration Officer’s shirt and an old pair of yellow trousers, gathered at the ankles, checks their passports. Then, once again, Ted and Maxim go ashore while Ibrahim stays with the boat.

Ted suspects that Maxim thinks him a fool, but he is not a complete idiot. Before leaving the boat, he takes the gun from its hiding place and slips it into the little leather handbag in which he carries his passport and some of his money. He wraps the strap negligently around his left wrist, carrying it as though it had no importance at all.

The Frenchman, too, carries a bag — in his case, a crocodile document case.

As Maxim said, there are taxis. This one is clearly waiting for them.

They go through some polite business about seating arrangements, but Ted makes sure Max sits up front with the driver, where he can see them both. He slips his hand into his leather bag and sees the driver’s eyes on him in the rear view mirror. Ted makes a show of taking out his passport and examining the sticker the Immigration man has put there. The driver looks away. He says something briefly to Maxim. Maxim, as briefly, replies. The conversation is not in French, and Ted does not understand it.

It isn’t far to Ephesus, but the road is poor and the journey takes half an hour. They see almost no-one on the way.

They park just outside the town and walk in. Ted, manoeuvring to keep himself on the right hand of the other two, sees Maxim smile.

‘Once,’ says Maxim, ‘there were three hundred and fifty thousand people here. How many people in your home town, Ted?’

‘About the same.’

‘And now look at it.’

‘Newcastle?’

‘Ephesus. This is what you get from living at a crossroads. You are lucky, you English, to be stuck out on a bunch of islands no-one wants. Did you know Paul wrote to the Corinthians from here?’

Ted is looking at the Odeon, a ruin of burnt clay with steep terraces and surrounded by clapped out buildings. ‘Looks like Roker Park to me.’

‘They have earthquakes here,’ says Max. ‘Many earthquakes. The Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You know what is there now? One pillar. Two, maybe. A few stones scattered. Grass. Scrub. Nothing.’

‘So why are we here?’

‘The Hittites were here. The Greeks were here. The Romans were here. This was the second most important city in the Byzantine Empire. Paul lived here, John lived here. They claim the Virgin Mary lived here, after her Son was put to death.’

‘But why are we here?’

‘Do you know they have camel wrestling in Ephesus? Still, today?’

‘Have we come to watch?’

‘No, no. The wrestling is in winter.’

‘Men wrestle camels?’

‘They would be killed, Ted. No, no, the camels wrestle. Male camels. They make a big show of it. Dress the camels up. Music. A march through the streets. They find a female in heat and parade her in front of two males. Then the males wrestle for the right to mount her.’

‘Ah. It’s more like Newcastle than I thought.’

‘And they spit, and piss backwards. So getting close is not a good idea.’

‘Even more like home. Why are we here, Maxim?’

‘I thought I might take a look at some antiquities while we are in Turkey.’

‘Antiquities.’

‘You can pick up a head, or a carving, for a good price. Sell it in Paris for three, four times what we pay the locals.’

‘Is that legal?’

‘Do you care?’

‘I’d like to know.’

‘It is completely legal, so long as one has a certificate issued by a museum.’

‘Which, of course, we will.’

Max smiled. ‘This is the State Agora.’

‘Not very impressive.’

‘Two thousand years ago, it would have been a bustling courtyard. There were porticoes down two sides like cloisters, with columns supporting terra cotta roofs.’

‘The columns seem to have collapsed.’ Ted waits for Max to mention the three people, two men and a woman, sitting in the gathering dark on broken stone shafts. They give every appearance of waiting for someone.

Max points away from the three. ‘That is the Street of Curetes. It leads to the Fountain of Trajan, which you can still see though it’s dry, and the Temple of Hadrian. Nice friezes. And the street has some lovely mosaics. Why don’t you take a walk down there while I talk to my friends?’

‘You don’t want me with you?’

Max smiles. ‘Don’t miss the mosaics. They’re worth the detour.’

That passage is followed by the one I reproduced in Offcuts (2) but we return to Turkkey here:

‘What do you want to do?’ asks Dolan when my glass has been refilled. ‘Do you want to finish the story? In whatever time you’ve got left? Or are you ready to go? Let that poor girl up? Face the music?’

I steady myself with a swig of champagne. The poor girl can fend for herself. Facing the music is the last thing on my mind.

‘It was all about the woman,’ I say.

‘Woman?’

‘When we reached Ephesus, remember? There were two men and a woman waiting for Max. It was all about the woman. The antiquities were a smokescreen. The idea was that we’d bring back a couple of stone heads. They had the museum certificates all ready for us. I was to believe that the certificates were fakes and the heads were hugely valuable. And they’d persuade me to bring the woman along for the ride home. But, actually, the heads were just heads, bits of stone. It was the woman they wanted to get out.’

‘They?’

‘The DGSE. Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure. The General Directorate for External Security.’

‘French Intelligence?’

‘If intelligence is the word we’re looking for. Never overestimate these guys, Barry. If you want to know how bright a country’s intelligence services are, form a view on the average IQ of their ordinary police force. Chances are, the IQ of the secret guys won’t be more than eighty per cent of that. What you do get, even more than with the police, is every kind of psychosis, every shade of mental infirmity, every possible form of delusion. And all the sociopathic and just plain barmy behaviour that goes with those things. And, above all else, a conviction that only they are in the know, only they have the big picture, and everyone else must help make their loony plans come true.’

‘So who was this woman?’

‘An employee of the DGSE.’

‘A French spy.’

‘If you want to give her that much glamour. She was no Mata Hari, believe me. The rather plump, rather plain French mistress of a Turkish diplomat who must have needed his eyes testing. And his sense of smell. She’d been happily sending back information about Turkey’s plans for whatever it is Turkey makes plans about, and they’d cottoned on to her. The Frogs needed to get her out before she disappeared.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I don’t.’

Dolan sighs. ‘As I said before, it’s your time you’re wasting.’

‘Did you ever think of becoming a teacher, Barry?’

‘Why are you doing this? You’re dying, as you keep telling us, and still you fence with me as though you had all the time in the world.’

‘Yes, all right. I know all this because this is what Maxim and Ibrahim told me after I’d shot the two Turks.’

‘You shot the two Turks.’

‘So when I say I don’t know it, what I mean is it was told to me by people whose word was hardly reliable. Intelligence people.’

‘Ibrahim and Max were with French intelligence.’

‘Are you going to repeat everything I say? See, I’ve spent a large part of my life among criminals. And, by and large, criminals didn’t lie to me. They shot at me, they tried to rob me, but they rarely lied to me. They knew what they wanted, they said what it was and they went after it. But then I got involved with people whose job was keeping the world safe for democracy and they never said a true word if they could say a false one.’

‘Tell me why you shot the two Turks.’

‘Well, that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.’

There’s more, but it’s dinner time and I am about to open a bottle of rosé vinho verde (how can a wine be pink and green at the same time?) which is something I’ve never tried before — it came in a bin ends surprise case from Vineyards Direct — so I’ll leave this here and post the rest — probably tomorrow — as Offcuts (4).

 

 

Hawkesbury Upton Literary Festival

It’s on 23rd April 2015, writers (including me) will read extracts from their books, there’ll be a series of panel discussions, books will be for sale — and it’s in a pub! What more could you possibly ask?

Thanks to Waitrose and Hawkesbury Writers for their generous sponsorship.

Offcuts (2)

Continuing the theme (in Offcuts) of passages that never made the final book, I’ve been working on When the Darkness Comes for a long time now and I really don’t know when I’ll be ready to let it go to print, but this has been in it from the start and beta reader after beta reader has asked me the same questions. Why is this here? What does it add to the story? Where does it get us? And they’re right; this is a perfect example of what editors mean when they tell writers to “kill your darlings”. So — and not without regret — it’s gone. Cut. Rejected. I don’t want it to disappear altogether, though — so here it is:

They’re getting into an elevator. Ted and the dwarf and King Tut. The Lizard stands back, watching them go. But something’s wrong. The building they’re supposed to be going up is next door. This lift is on the front of a tower that stands beside the building. It’s a high tower and a high building, but they’re not connected. How are they going to get across at the top?

There’s worse. The lift is one of those that run up the outside, with glass walls so you can see the people and the traffic grow smaller as you ascend, and the landscape grow wider. Ted hates these. He was in one and when it reached the top he was on his knees, facing inwards, eyes closed. Sobbing. They’d seen it before, apparently. They brought him out in a service lift inside the building. Kept telling him not to feel embarrassed, that it took some people that way. He did, though. Feel embarrassed.

He’s not good at heights.

He doesn’t like crowds, either, and there is a crowd now and it’s pushing forward.

What terrifies Ted, leaving the elevator to one side, what really leaves him wanting to lie on the floor again and scream, is: what happens at the top? If the tower isn’t connected to the building, how will he get from one to the other? And will he have to look down? And will he be able to stop himself?

He won’t make it. He knows that, so he doesn’t want to try. He’s struggling not to get into the elevator, but the crowd is enormous and it’s pushing and bustling and carrying him in there whether he wants to or not. The dwarf has him by the wrist and Tut is bobbing around a few rows back, taking care to keep him in sight.

How can all these people fit into one lift? And who are they? And why is Ted going where they’re going? He doesn’t know them. Doesn’t think he knows them.

And now the lift is climbing, shooting up the outside of the tower at increasing speed. The car is full of people eating and drinking, sitting at nicely linened tables, crisp starched napery, silver bowls, cut glass. Eating and drinking. Attentive waiting staff. Red wine, fizzy water, rare beef. There’s a cigar somewhere. Buzz of conversation. And Ted. He should be at ease in this environment. Man of the world, in his element in pampered luxe. Instead he’s screaming bloody blue murder. And no-one’s looking at him.

How is he going to get across?

Oh, help him, Mother.

They’re there. At the top of the tower. The crowd has strolled out and across, into the building next door. How? How did they cross? How the hell should Ted know? He couldn’t watch. They’re gone. What’s left is people he was at school with, in the Scouts with, played cricket with. How, why, he doesn’t know. And there, in the corner, trying to be invisible but never taking his eyes off Ted, is King Tut. Knowing that he’s really Ras Tafar, Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia should reduce the fear of seeing him, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes it worse. The dwarf stands in the corner by the buttons.

The others are crossing now, all but the dwarf and Tut, who seems to be trying to creep a little closer to Ted, and Ted can’t go with them. They’re calling him, encouraging him, cajoling. ‘Come on, Ted. It’s fine, it’s nothing. Just step over.’

But it isn’t fine and it isn’t nothing. It’s a drop of hundreds of stories, thousands of feet, higher than the London Stock Exchange or the Gherkin, higher than the Empire State, higher than the Twin Towers of the World Trade Building.

And look what happened to them.

‘Come on, Ted.’ And he can’t. Because he knows they’re wrong. They’ve crossed over and for them maybe it really was easy but Ted can’t do it. He can’t. He’s going to have to stay here. He lies on the floor. ‘I’ll stay in here. I’ll go back down.’

‘Come on, Ted.’

‘You can’t go down, Ted. The lift won’t start till you get out.’

‘For God’s sake, Ted, be a man.’And he’s sobbing as though his little heart will break. Help me, Mother. Help me. Don’t leave me stranded here.

And something strange has happened. Because before there was just the tower and the building and nothing between except blue sky and puffy white clouds. And now there’s a platform half way across. It’s got cloud all around it, so he can’t see where it goes, whether it’s standing on the ground or what, but it’s there and it looks solid enough.

It should help, there being a platform half way. But it doesn’t. It makes it all worse.

‘Stand up, Ted. Take a step onto the platform. Then hold out your hands and we’ll haul you across. Safe as houses. Come on, Ted.’

Stand up. The man’s an idiot. Always was, even as a child. He can’t stand up.

‘We’re going to have to go, Ted. We can’t wait for ever. We’re going, Ted.’

So go.

‘Ted! For fuck’s sake, get on your fucking feet and step onto that fucking platform.’

Ted’s the boy. Oh, Ted’s the kiddy, all right. The athlete, hotshot cricketer who can’t stand up for fear of falling. The master of a French whore, killer of villains and police alike who’s too terrified by what he might see to open his eyes.

Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

Ted is the fellow of infinite jest.

What does my gorge rims at it mean? He probably couldn’t write that line today. God, there’s some dirty bastards around. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

He hauls himself to his knees.

‘That’s it. That’s it, Ted. Now. Over!’

He’s lying face down on the platform. If he’d thought he was scared before, he knew nothing. This is fear. This is cold terror.

He can’t go forward and he can’t go back. The lift has gone, taking the dwarf with it. Or maybe that should be the other way round. The outer door is still open, but all that’s there now is an open shaft, waiting for Ted to fall down it. There’s no-one here but him and Tut, who crossed with him and is now so close he’s almost touching Ted’s spread-out leg.

He daren’t look down. Look down? He daren’t even open his eyes. How are they going to get him out of this? How can they send a rescue crew here? There’s no ladder in the world long enough, he knows that, and he couldn’t go down it anyway. Helicopter? How would they pick him up? Clinging to a net over that drop? I don’t think so, pal.

He can’t go forward and he can’t go back and they can’t pick him off. There’s no way out. It’s just him and Tut and the tower and the clouds and the wind. He hadn’t noticed the wind. It isn’t much, but it’s there. Probably the sound of people drowned it out before. The people have gone.

He and Tut are alone.