Engleby (27 page)

I always went home by four on Tuesday afternoon and told Ball to ring if he had something for me. He sent me out of town a bit, which I didn’t mind, and once or twice asked me to interview people.

I didn’t think this was my strong point.

I interviewed someone called Jeffrey Archer, who wrote books. The point of interest was . . . A new job, a new book, I forget. He’d been an MP, and wealthy, then lost all his money in a window-cleaning company but recouped it with adventure stories, childishly written but bought by adults. I was directed to a skyscraper on the south bank of the Thames, not far from Lambeth Bridge, and took the lift to the top.

As soon as I walked into Archer’s office, he started to bark at me, like Chief Petty Officer Dunstable on the parade ground at Chatfield. I suppose he thought it would unnerve me. He pretended to be angry, then stopped suddenly and gave a hard, brief smile.

He sat me down on a sofa and pointed out some pictures by Andy Warhol (cans of soup, old film stars – first-year stude decor) of which he seemed proud. By this time he was yapping like a terrier. In answer to my bland questions he told me things he must have known weren’t true and other things he must have known that
I
would know weren’t true. He challenged me to disbelieve him. If you question any of this stuff, his drilling gaze seemed to say, then you’ll really see my temper – not just glimpses, but the real thing.

Then, for no reason, he veered like a spring wind, sat down next to me, all smiles, and offered me champagne. He asked after my career, my family and where I’d been at school. He started to congratulate and flatter me.

Although he appears to be off his trolley, he’s apparently very highly regarded in the Conservative Party. They keep offering him important positions.

At this point a blonde woman of a certain age (Mandy, Sandy?) came into the room (or ‘penthouse’ as Archer had two or three times called it) bringing the champagne and some smoked salmon sandwiches.

‘Thank you, darling,’ he barked at her departing back, as her black nylon calves crackled.

Then he winked at me.

I mean, really . . . I’d looked him up in the cuttings before I came out and seen that there was a Mrs A (some sort of chemistry gnome) and everything. But I’m ashamed to say that I smiled back conspiratorially.

I stayed and chatted to my new pal for hours, and in the end he took my home address and phone number and said he’d send me an invitation to his annual party, where, he mentioned two or three times, though I didn’t understand why it was significant, we’d have cottage pie and champagne.

I must say I rather liked him.

This whole thing of meeting famous people was something I found intriguing. The news desk was always awash with invitations to launches, bashes, dos, promos, parties and functions; and since most of the reporters were too idle or too nervous to go, I sometimes taxied along to have a look. There was always free drink and it wasn’t as if I had to write anything afterwards.

One of the ones I liked was the Foyle’s Literary Lunch at the Dorchester. You could drink gin and tonic in the VIP room first, then as much wine as you liked with a perfectly nice lunch. This was usually smoked salmon messed up with cream cheese and stuff, then fillet steak with green beans and rather over-salted gravy – but it was fine. The white wine was some sort of hock, but the red was claret from a chateau you might even have heard of. (I was beginning to notice these things by now. Was I getting posh? Don’t know. I still said ‘toilet’ as a matter of principle; but did I now feather it with irony – with the ghost of an inverted comma?)

The only drawback to the lunch was that you had to listen to three or four authors stand up and talk about their new books. The thunder of false modesty was deafening.

‘People often ask me how I first came up with the character of Horatio Beckwith, my famous detective. I think it was just one of those lucky coincidences. I was on a train, going to stay with my dear old friend P.J. Cowdrey in Somerset, when we stopped at a little station near Swindon. Rather an Adlestrop moment, I suppose! Anyway, a man got out of the carriage and made his way down the platform. I noticed that even though it was midsummer and hadn’t rained for days, he carried a rolled umbrella with him. How very
English
, I thought! And, do you know, I think it was that umbrella that gave me the key – the way in, if you like, to the whole of Beckwith’s character. I always carry a little notebook with me to jot down such observations, and by the time we reached Taunton I’d covered quite five pages with notes about Beckwith – the school he went to, which is not, as many critics have suggested, based on Eton – and no, I’m
not
going to tell you which school it
is
based on! – his nanny, his dear mother, his regiment, his unhappy time in Ceylon. To say nothing, of course, of his dear “sidekick”, Captain Trudge. As for the Captain . . . Well, he just sprang to life more or less fully formed, like Aphrodite from the head of Zeus! I have learned from the great stylists to always try and keep my vocabulary simple. I’m always mindful of the other demands on the reader’s time. I think of myself only as a privileged guest in the reader’s life, and I try never to weary him – or her! – and never to outstay my welcome. Never use a three-syllable word where a two-syllable one will do.’

You’d think it was James Joyce up there. I mean, Christ, how many syllables are there in the words ‘it’, ‘butler’ and ‘did’?

As I was leaving one day, I bumped into Sir Ralph Richardson at the cloakroom. He was retrieving a motorcycle helmet.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Do you ride a motorcycle?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘What make?’

‘Er . . . Yamaha. And you?’

‘I ride a BMW. They’re marvellous. I’m just going to look at a new one. Do you want to come?’

I looked at my watch. ‘All right.’

We went into the BMW showroom, a short way up Park Lane.

‘Don’t you have goggles or a vizor?’ I said.

‘No, no, I just screw my eyes up like this.’

He climbed on top of a big bike in the window. He must have been nearly eighty. He lay flat down on the tank and twisted the accelerator in his right hand. ‘Brmm, brmm. Like that,’ he said.

A salesman stood by nervously. I think he’d recognised Richardson. I gave him a conniving smile. These actors . . .

Then Sir Ralph said, ‘Go on. You have a go.’

I swung my leg over and gripped the handlebars. I’d never ridden a bike before, but I copied Sir Ralph’s chest-to-the-tank riding position while he stood alongside going, ‘Brmm, brmm, that’s the stuff.’

When he had tried a couple more bikes, we wandered through the car section back to the front door. A car salesman with a severe limp opened the door for us.

As we went on to Park Lane, Sir Ralph said, ‘I think perhaps he
used
to work in the motorcycle department.’

Then he called out, ‘Goodbye’ and walked off into Mayfair.

That’s another nice thing about being a journalist. People are more or less compelled to talk to you, and this can be helpful if you don’t have that many close friends. A bit odd that the last two people I had proper conversations with were Jeffrey Archer and Sir Ralph Richardson; but that’s life.

Although I liked meeting these people, I didn’t think I was a good interviewer. I wasn’t good at summing people up. I said as much to Tony Ball (or ‘Bollock’ as he’s known behind his back. You can tell the calibre of an institution by the quality of the nicknames it uses: compare, for instance, the brutal ‘spaso’, ‘Toilet’, ‘Leper’ with the windy ‘Iguanodon’ and ‘Australopithecine’. The functional ‘Bollock’ tells you pretty much all you need to know about Fleet Street).

However, my Archer piece had gone down well and Ball was keen for me to do some more. He gave me a list of upcoming possibilities: Billy Graham, Ken Livingstone, Douglas Hurd, Naim Attallah . . . I barely knew who half these people were.

I think it’s time to be a bit careful. And a bit frank.

I feel that my life is finally starting to fall into place. I like being a journalist. It’s insanely easy and pretty well paid. There’s a sub-editor on the woman’s page called Margaret Hudson. She’s a bit older than I am and she’s not what you’d call glamorous, but she’s not at all bad-looking. She wears rather old-fashioned clothes: knee-length skirts, thick-looking brown stockings, pleasant beige jumpers. She’s no Jennifer Arkland, I admit; but she’s busty and has a sparkle in the eye. What’s more, she’s nice to me. She says hello when we pass in the corridor; she never forgets to say, ‘I liked your piece on Sunday’; she comments on the weather or says, ‘We never see you in the canteen’ – little things like that.

I ought to have lunch with her in that canteen one day, but the truth is I’d rather cut my tongue out than eat there. Imagine: queuing up with a tray, cutlery from a grey moulded bin, the glass of water, strip lights. It’d be like being back in Chatfield. The panic of the institution . . . God, what are pubs and restaurants and cafés and bars
for
? They exist – to my mind – for the purpose of not being part of an institution. They are places you can be undiminished, unscrutinised and free. But the canteen . . . At the very thought my palms are wet, my armpits crawl.

Never mind. I’ll find other ways of getting to know Margaret. The Features Christmas party, for instance – reputedly a day-long bacchanal, ending in a cellar under Fetter Lane.

My flat is working out well and I like the area. At night I lie in bed and hear the car tyres going over the wet streets towards Queensway and Westbourne Grove. I hardly ever have to take pills any more. Just the hiss of rubber on wet tarmac is enough to rock me off to sleep, with thoughts of others on their night-time journeys.

Careful, did I say? Yes. I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven’t got it yet, but I can sense it out there. I feel I’m close to it. Some days, I’m so close I can almost smell it.

To wake up and feel enlivened; to be in a hurry to get out of bed and into the day. To have friends you want to speak to, compare experiences with and be on the phone to . . . Well, to be honest, I’m still some way from
that
. But I do like the routine of my average day: the papers in bed while I listen to Timpson and Redhead on the radio with a pot of PG Tips; the coffee from the espresso bar near Chancery Lane Tube on Tuesday and Friday; the way the unshaved Sicilian whacks out the grounds on the wooden drawer and offers me a grunt of recognition.

And then there’s my Sunday walk to Marble Arch, my weekly exercise. (Steady, Toilet, don’t overdo it . . .) My lunch in the tratt off the foot of Edgware Road over the paper, where I see who got a piece in this week and who didn’t. A small glass of Prosecco before the tonno fagioli, cannelloni and a litre of dense Etruscan red; then, their speciality: zabaglione, whisked in a copper pot, served with amaretti and a glass of vin santo before a snooze through the film on the big screen next door. Simple stuff, I admit, but hard to beat. Ciao, Mr Watson. Everyone calls me Watson, by the way, now; I even have an Access card in that name. I sign myself with virile candour pressing through the carbons: M.K. Watson. (Christ knows what the K stands for.) Ciao, Bernardo. See you next week. Ciao, ciao.

That’s the careful bit, my advice to myself: Hang on. Don’t take it for granted. Steady as you go.

Now the frank bit. Deep breath. Here it is.

One day in my first year at university I woke up in a psychiatric hospital.

This was (after Chatfield, obviously) the most unpleasant experience of my life up to that point. And this is how it happened.

It was during the vacation, and I’d got quite a well-paid job working for a plastic-seating factory in Basingstoke. My previous experience in the paper mill and some improvements to my CV meant I was in a semi-supervisory role. I had to get up early to drive the Morris 1100 down from Reading, but I liked the sense of escape, and it was only half an hour from the front door of Trafalgar Terrace. I was listening a lot at that time on the car stereo to
Time and a Word
by Yes (there was a song I liked called ‘The Prophet’ – all gluey organ intro, then zithery strings before the arrival of the ill-matched rhythm section, where the drums feather fast but the bone-rattling bass guitar clonks away right up front of the mix) and
The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys
by Traffic, which ends with the longest saxophone belch in record history. I used to time it so the tape ended with its burp as I pulled up in the works car park –
Bleeeeeaaaeeeeeeeerrrrggggghhhhhhhhh
.

Wednesday afternoon was a half-day at the factory, and rather than go straight home I thought I’d do some shopping and look round a bit. The expanding town of Basingstoke seethed like Laocoön within its concentric ring roads. I followed the signs for the town centre, but, after I’d spent fifteen minutes negotiating roundabouts and obediently going where the signs told me, they had brought me back to where I’d begun. The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. I didn’t know that T.S. Eliot had been on the Basingstoke Urban District Council Highways (Ring Roads and Street Furniture) Committee.