Do you have an appointment with fear?â
âIâve got problems,â I admitted.
His eyes glowed. Sidney Blood wasnât in it. âWhat are they?â
âIf I knew I wouldnât have them, would I?â
After a two-minute silence he said: âMichael, weâve all got problems, but a writer, like a soldier, goes through life with his problems unresolved. Iâve been both.â
I was fed up with his penny packets of wisdom. âYou disgusting old bastard,â I spat back. âI donât need you to tell me that everybody goes through life with their problems unresolved.â
He stared, maybe thinking there was something to the slum brat after all. He didnât like it. There was certainly no point in hoping for a bit of human kindness from a writer. He rubbed his head as if wanting it to come, then rubbed his eyes as if he wouldnât be able to stand the sight of what did. âI had a bad night last night. I spent it with Margery Doldrum, and didnât get anywhere. So leave me alone. Iâve got work to do. The heart of darkness is within. It used to be outside in jungle or desert where we could handle it, but now itâs back on home ground. It crept in to roost, with most of us unaware of its movement, but in reality it never left â not all of it, anyway.â
I hoped to cheer him up. âYou should write that down. Itâs not bad.â
âYou think so?â
âI would, except that Iâm not a writer, like you.â
He found a pencil and scribbled on the back of an envelope. There was an unopened pile of mail on the low-slung Swedish-type table. âIâm going to give a talk on the modern English novel, so itâll come in handy. Sometimes even a son like you can be useful.â
âHow is the novel going?â As his son, I thought I should at least show an interest in his work. But I only thrust him back into despair. You canât win.
âIt isnât a novel, itâs the Dead March from Saul , a chain-and-ball half-page a day, sometimes down to a comma a day, up a narrow valley with no blue horizon visible to cheer me on. Iâm one of the poor bloody infantry lost in the moonscape south of Caen but soldiering on in the knowledge, but mostly the vain hope, that Iâll get there soon and still have my feet left at least. But the joy of endeavour and solitude comes in now and again, Michael, sufficient to keep me going on this first draft route report. Fortunately, doing Moggerhangerâs biography â or ghosting his autobiography, Iâm not sure which yet â will bring in a few thousand, so Iâll at least have enough hard cash to keep your extravagant mother at armâs length. I wish youâd stop turning pale when I mention Moggerhanger, by the way. It unnerves me. Itâs not that I donât love your mother, but I canât even write commas when sheâs around. So Iâll deliver fifty pages of Moggerhangerâs trash now and again to line my pockets. If thereâs one thing he knows nothing about, though he thinks he knows everything there is to know about everything else, itâs writing. I can put one over on him there.â
âI donât suppose he knows what heâs let himself in for.â I looked glumly at the netsuke to cheer myself up. âIt must be good being a writer, and able to make people so unhappy.â
âWonderful,â he said, âbut do you think itâs easy? If anybody comes to me and says they want to be a writer I tell them to get lost before I cut off their hands, blind them, and burst their eardrums. In any case, itâs going to be impossible for a writer to flourish in the future. The manuscript of every book will have to go to the Arabian Censorship Office before itâs published. So will all radio, and especially television scripts. The Foreign Office donât want us to offend anybody whose hands are on the