The Information Junkie (16 page)

...this is Hell. We are the damned.

Her words ran through your mind like a half-remembered line of verse, a half-forgotten melody. You continued to watch as she waded knee-deep in the meadow that would become Berkeley Square, plucking and sniffing its flowers. She was not beautiful but handsome. And her dress—Victorian? Edwardian?—trailed below the level of the grasses and flowers: meadow rue, field horsetails, poppies.

She was a mute Pied Piper of Hamelin, though a scientist would have been hard put to define exactly what it was that emanated from her.

At a sound you turned. From an elm at the meadow's edge a blackbird issued notes, giving his account of the day. The sounds were an expression of pleasure, his song was constant and delivered with a simplicity you envied.

'This,' sang the bird, 'is what happened today.'

When you turned back, and your eyes met, there was the whisper of recognition. Up to this point you had been a mere observer; now you became a participant—on her terms. She smiled—she knew she had you. Did you dare?—but the thought was cut short as something high in the sky distracted her.

The object was too distant to identify but, against the impossibly-blue sky, it looked like a dulled-metal cigar tube. Without sound, as you watched, it split into parts before disintegrating and disappearing. In its place, dust.

'
A silver pencil
,' she said, '
and a puff of smoke
,' before looking down at you. 'That's the one. One like that will take us out.'

'How can you know?'

Again the smile.

'But here, first, you must suffer,' she went on.

'Suffer...?'

'Lost, unreturned love—call it what you will.' She paused to study your reaction. 'It'll test you,' searching your eyes and penetrating your core. 'You'll emerge a different man—stronger, more sensitive.' Once more that smile. 'Growing pains,' she concluded.

Who
is that love? you wanted to ask, but she continued:

'You'll never love as deeply or completely again.'

'And you—have you loved?'

She smiled again. 'I hope so,' and looked back to the elm where the blackbird (or was it another bird...?) continued to dispense his notes.

You found yourself, almost against your will, mimicking the bird. (Could it be a starling—and what sound did
they
make...?) Did the bird reply or was he mimicking you? Perhaps without understanding you were communicating with each other. The bird (curlew...?) seemed resigned to announce himself all evening—for, although time had ceased to exist, days seemed to share a shape determined by the rotation of the planet. This period, according to that scale, would have been classified a late sunny afternoon or early summer evening.

What bird
was
this? Against the light (you were looking westwards) it seemed black, but had the sun been coming from the south you could have determined its colours.

Looking south, now, you noticed the grassland sloping downwards, ending at a wide stream—too soon to call it a river. On the other side, marshland—a colony for a wealth of birds.

'This is Hell,' she said, 'and I am condemned.'

'Condemned...?'

'To tramp this area.' She paused.

That reminded you of another punishment—counting every grain of sand, a thought you used to terrify yourself with; extremes had always frightened and excited you. She paused before pointing to the east. 'This grassland will become a network of squares and thoroughfares and, after that—long, long, after that—it will be a riot of rhododendrons. But I am damned.'

'Damned...?'

'Yes, to wander these streets, questioning everything.'

You looked around at the grasses. 'Streets...?'

'It's a curse,' she said. 'I see too deeply and too much.' She paused. 'With me, the past, present and future are combined. I see it all—all the time.' She looked at your feet. 'You're standing on a tree.' You looked down; there were only grasses and flowers. 'One day, when your love affair has ended, your eyes will drill into it, searching for the answer. You'll find none—there is none.'

'None?'

'No—and you'll shake your fist at the sky, like Hardy.'

'Hardy...?'

'Thomas—a novelist-cum-poet who'll think of himself as a prophet or seer. But it will be all posture. He'll emerge as a genius with no talent.'

'No talent...?'

She nodded. 'But he'll have moments of vision.' She paused. 'And he'll love rhododendrons—they'll blaze across his landscape, and his child will be Egdon Heath.'

'I don't understand.'

'Egdon Heath will be his best-drawn character.'

'Yes,' you said, now impatient, 'but what will I have?'

'Pain,'—she watched the effect of that on your eyes, '—and a little insight.'

'Little...?'

She turned to leave.

'I want more,' you shouted after her.

She headed towards the sun and you stood, unsure how to proceed, as she disappeared into the sunlight behind the trees.

Come on, give us the real thing. Come on, let's
get
real. You mean back to Charlie and Belinda? But they're not real, and neither is the narrator who sometimes talks like Charlie. I mean, how real do you want your
real
to be, buddies?

Yet I can't leave Charlie and Belinda on their lounge carpet, can I? (Can I?) Perhaps I can. Previously I placed all the characters on back burners then had Charlie killed off by Martin. But Charlie wouldn't take death lying down. Oh, no, buddies. He was desperate for more life.

How about you? Is he still real to you? I've written myself into a cul-de-sac and can't see a way out. Then there are the practical problems of bringing all the strands together and offering a (convincing) conclusion. But, I'm tempted to say, real life ain't like that. It's un-neat. But it was you who asked me—begged me, for a story. Well, you've had that. (Yeah, says Charlie, you've
had
that!) You also requested a development. You've had
that
, too! In fact, you've had several. So, that just leaves an end.

Not only would it be artistically incorrect to leave Charlie where he is—I know you never quite believed in Belinda (too good to be true? Don't be too swift in your judgement: she's real enough)—it would also be immoral. I am responsible for Charlie. But he resists my attempts to liberate him. Oh, and doesn't freedom have its own responsibilities? Ffion was happy to be freed. The doc was relieved too—getting a little tired of my visits. Martin still hovers. Little Martin. He is, I suppose, a composite: part Amis the younger, part Graham Greene, part any competent writer who is conscious of style, part my creative conscience.

Some writers are said to commit their interior monologue to paper; I think mine's more of a duologue. Those mental niggles which won't go away. So, 'I' at last comes clean. I am the
I
, and I don't know how this ends.

We can't have Charlie and Belinda riding into the sunset because this isn't a western. Charlie can't be killed: that's a vulgar fiction. Perhaps we can leave him on the plateau near the top of his mountain. No: shades of
Pilgrim's Progress
. He's learnt he's not a teenager any more and that he shares the same cycle as a flower which lives, grows and dies. So far, so un-new.

Oh yes, there's a Charlie in me: that part of me which refuses to grow up. I hope Charlie never lets the Charlie inside
him
grow up. And I urge you, too, gentles, to ensure your interior Charlie (or Charlene) stays young. But Charlie has a choice: he can either leave his plateau and continue his ascent or decide he's high enough and allow the cable car to take him to the top, then take a leisurely stroll down the other side.

How old do you have to be to get wise? I think that begins when you reach your plateau. If you're not there yet, buddy, trust me: you'll know. (
Why did nobody tell me about this time of life? Why was I not taught in school about the profound volte-face that takes place? Why did no one tell me, warn me, that I would become responsible for my parents?
) Forty plus, in round figures.

Because Charlie is a fiction he asked me to write this for him. I've done my best, this is close enough (and yes: good enough
is
good enough) to the book he would have written had he been able to.

More life, Charlie asked for. I'd give it to you, Charlie, if I could. And for a moment I sensed omnipotence, my power over Charlie, and perhaps that sense of the divine which is linked with creativity. But time is limited, mate, and you've had your allotment—an intense life like yours was always going to be a shorter one. But, you say, Charlie also asked for his childhood, why have I not given that to him? I did: from the time we meet him being injected by the Cybernurse up to the present, he's been acting out his childhood.

I'm almost aware of Charlie and Belinda
behind
my screen. Do you remember school physics?
A reflection is as far behind the mirror as the object is in front.
This is worth pursuing. If you have a single-lens reflex camera try this. Stand a few feet in front of the mirror and focus the lens on the reflection of a few items. Note the distance. Then adjust the focus so that the mirror's surface is sharp. The items blur. Note the distance. The image is further from the camera than the surface of the glass. Now look behind the mirror: there's nothing.

The act of reading is like looking in a mirror. Who do you see? Fiction isn't a way out, it's a way in. A way of getting behind the mirror. Fiction takes you through the mirror to the other side.

So, there I was, on a plateau three-quarters of the way up Mount Peculiar, when I looked round and was a stranger to myself, felt alienated from everything. How the hell did I end up here? It all started when I woke up and found myself being injected by a nurse who made a middle-aged man feel adolescent again.

'Will there be anything else today, Mr Smith?'

'Er...actually it's Smith hyphen Jones hyphen Brown.'

'That's too much of a mouthful.' She smiled as she checked my papers. 'Tell me, what does the 'C' stand for?'

'Charles—Charlie.'

'Charlie,' she said, 'we'll soon have you up and out of here.'

Not, I thought, if I can help it....

PART FIVE

Collaborations of a Crimson Fish

My notion of giving the reader his money's worth was to throw difficult words and neologisms at him, to make the syntax involuted.

—Anthony Burgess,

'Little Wilson and Big God'

*

Make Mine a Monkey's Bum.

—Advertising slogan

21

'Ah, yes—NMBMBA. Tetrasyllabic, stress on the third syllable. Etymology? 'N' is from Latin
numero
, ablative of
numerus
, 'number'. 'MB'—we might be tempted to say from the Latin
Medicinae Baccalaureus
, 'Bachelor of Medicine', but we'd be wrong. It is, of course, a contraction of 'mob', abbreviation of
mobile
, short for Latin
mobile vulgus
, 'excitable crowd'. 'MBA'—a sloppy contraction of 'mamba'—a venomous African snake of the genus
Dendroaspis
, which are varieties of
Dendroaspis angusticeps
, from the Zulu
imamba
. So, a rough rendering would be—leader of excitable crowd with the potency of a poisonous snake. Or, someone not to be trifled with.'

Burgess looked down at the typescript and up to me again.

'Of course, you could call Nmbmba's bluff—or bluff yourself. Mitch could tell Nmbmba he has cancer and is bound to die.'

—How about the heat—several hours in the middle of the Kalahari...?

'Oh, few will check. Write with sufficient conviction and your readers will swallow anything. Take any spy novel...even
Tremor of Intent
...'

—How about the critics, though...?

'My views on them are clear. An academic would pull you through the mangle then shred you, but a novelist who enjoys reviewing might be kinder to you, particularly if you make him laugh. But as a first attempt yours won't get a mention. You're nobody, mate, and nobody you shall remain. You've nothing to lose so you'll lose nothing. If you focus on giving your readers pleasure—that complicated sort of pleasure which even an old word-wizard such as I find difficult (lexicologically, at least) to define—then you might build up a readership. But, as I say, you may think me the wrong guide. I'm more maverick than Mitch, more butch than buggered. 'Maverick', by the way—named after Samuel Maverick (who died in 1870), a Texas cattle-rancher who refused to brand his cattle. Hence an extreme individualist or person of unorthodox views.'

—But...

'In your own words:
Good enough is good enough.
'

—Right, we've dealt with Mitch Maverick. Pity he has to die because I should like to have explored his past.

'You could still.' Burgess left a silence. 'Leave him to simmer. Or, again in your words,
stick him on a back burner
.'

—But I've got too many pots on the back burner.

'Tell them you've got a commercial range.'

—How about the misfits?

'Oh, that's reasonably clear. Fiction intertwined with reality. Fowles is right when he says we're all trying to escape—but he takes such a long bloody time to say it. Some escapes are more subtle than others. Stick them on a back burner too. I did feel there was more to come from Gable. Grossly overrated actor, of course, but spoke some sense. Fictive sense, at least. Talk with him again when he returns and see if you can't create some moments of illumination.'

—Finally, V. Woolf...?

'...L. Woolf and the Big Bad Wolf... Oh, I tried the Big Bad Wolf myself once. When I'd finished
The Blooms of Dublin
I needed something to relax me so set The Big Bad Wolf to music. Oh, it's only a short piece and of little merit.'