The Information Junkie (17 page)

—No, no. I met VW in a meadow that would one day become Berkeley Square. How can I tie that in...?

'Be careful your work doesn't appear too
willed
. It's one of, the better critics tell me, my many faults. Often a seemingly random scene doesn't begin to make sense until later in the work. The late great Graham Greene, one of my detractors, said, allow your subconscious to do the work for you.'

—But I could look a right prat...

'Adopt a
nom de plume
.'

—...if I can't bring it all together.

'Oh, you'd be surprised, old man. Often it's the obscurest bits that are praised the most. Always build in some ambiguity. Critics like to feel they have found a depth to his work that the author himself was not aware of. Trust me...'

—Does it always work out?

'No, no—good God, no. I've got crates full of the stuff. It's a risk you take. Do you want to be a writer...?'

—Yes.

'A writer is a person who takes risks and is not afraid of falling over in public. You've got to act the clown sometimes.'

—Well, I think that takes care of all my questions.

Burgess finished his drink then rose, shook me by the hand, picked up the (
my
) half-empty bottle, and left saying, 'You always know where to find me.'

Crumbs from a writer's table. I couldn't begrudge him the remains of the bottle of
Monkey's Bum
.

Burgess hovered, hiding the bottle from me.

'Small point, old boy. I know I've lost my gregariousness but why was I not invited to your literary bash?'

—That wasn't real. It all took place in my head. And, anyway, Melvyn Bragg drew up the invitation list.

'Ah, Bragg—able man. Useful writer—a not inconsiderable novelist himself, but sacrifices that to showcase others. Multi-talented. Formidable in his own way.'

—If it had been real would you have attended?

'I should like to have met some of the late greats—Dickens, Hardy, even Shakespeare. But Joyce, most of all.'

—Anthony, can I ask you a question?

'Go ahead.'

—What's heaven like?

'The question is presumptuous and makes several metaphysical assumptions.' He stopped to corral his thoughts. 'It's more than you expect—and less than I feared. Almost too true to be fiction and too good not to be.' He winked and tipped his hat with the empty hand. 'Must dash. I'm making lasagne.' As he turned he whipped the bottle in front of him.

Finally, I called:

—What shall I do about Charlie and Belinda...?

But he'd gone. Perhaps I should take his advice and allow my subconscious to weave them back in when appropriate. And bugger the critics.

*

'Oy! Oy! We're still here.'

—I know.

'Keeping us in solitary—or dualitary—confinement is a punishment. Come on, Rod, we want to
live!
'

—
Dualitary
—I don't recognise that word.

'We want more
life!
'

—I am aware of the difficulty I've placed you in but you are, after all—and after all—just ciphers, projections of my personality. You're not even three-dimensional.'

Belinda said, 'That hurts. Even those born with imperfectly-formed brains are entitled to love.'

'Why this gloom?' asked Charlie.

—Middle sections often take a dive. I acknowledge that you think (or do I mean
believe
?) you are real and so entitled to exercise free will. So, why don't you?

'We,' said B (who was emerging as the spokesperson), 'need you to write us, for us to continue.'

—But surely I've taken you both as far as I can. I gave you a start now you must seize control and determine your own lives.'

'Come off it,' she said. 'You know that the resolution of our conflict mirrors that of yours. That's the way you've written it. You can't leave us sitting on this carpet for much longer. Your continual starting of new sections with the phrase
So, there I was
only delays the inevitable. You're like a third-rate comedian with limited patter.'

—You make me sound like a tyrant—a fascist, almost.

'Please,' said Charlie, 'energise me again. What's happened to my oomph?'

—I lost my oomph when you lost yours. A bit like Enderby. Burgess was suffering from acute indigestion when he wrote
Enderby
. As the father, so the son. I'm lost, so are you.

'But,' said B, '
you
can do other things: eat, drink, sleep. You're condemning us to null.'

—Your complaint makes me feel responsible, guilty. This is worse than talking to myself.

They both smirked, having forced this confession from me. Perhaps we've stimulated him enough, they seemed to be saying.

— I'm finding this middle section terribly difficult. It's as if all the drive has gone and I'm just marking time. Length, as I said to Sarah several thousand words ago, has always bedevilled me. (I think that's one of Graham Greene's sayings.) Short pieces are so much easier—in that respect. I find grabbing and maintaining interest in a piece of say, two-and-a-half-thousand words, simpler.

'Well, you must come to terms with it and resolve this problem convincingly,' said B. 'We're getting bored.' She left a silence. 'So are
they
.'

—I don't think
they're
bored. They—like me—want to know how it all works out. In other words, they've had an introduction, now they want to see a development which must be succeeded by a conclusion. I always thought that this would be a ten-sheeter. Instead I find that I'm barely one-third into the middle section. Could this turn out to be a
five-hundred
sheeter?

'So,' said C, 'you've reached a kind of plateau. Now you must push the load up the mountain slope. Mount Peculiar, wasn't it?'

'We could all push together,' said B.

—I think we already are.

*

So, it looked as if John Burgess Wilson was to be my new
other
, rather than Amis the Younger. (Young Pretender...?) Both mavericks, both subversive—with their fiction, at any rate. Both holding up to the literary establishment two metaphorical, if ink-stained, digits. Martin said that the biro was mightier than the gun. Nevertheless he did try to kill me—fantastically—with his gun-pen.

But John I'd have to call Tony. Correction, Anthony. The one other advantage that Little Martin had over Big Tone (sh...don't tell him)—and we must never underestimate an advantage in these difficult times—was that he lived. Was alive, is living. So, more accessible, you might think. Mm. Anthony, in heaven (what a waste of all that lapsed-Catholic guilt), had the greater experience and I'd never have to make an appointment to see him.
Dear X, I know your time's precious. That's why I want some.
But AB was now in his second eternity of idleness.

Looking ahead. At the end of Part Three, Martin had me cornered in the house on Boxing Day. He shot me twice: the first time was kidology, the second was for real. What sort of showdown can I expect from Burgess at the end of Part Six? Did he ever obtain that sword-stick he spoke of to Amis the Elder(berry), viz. a weapon to threaten thugs with? I hope he's not going to pull that on me:

'Rod, you're abusing my hospitality. If I were alive I'd have you dealt with.'

(A link with the Mob?)

'But since I'm dead I must adopt other means.'

He draws sword, places tip underneath my chin, says:

'I nearly had cancer—for a year.'

He withdraws the sword and holds it across his body, flat side facing me and about twenty inches from my face. That's approximately half a metre, if you must—and I must, in order not to fall foul of the Metrication Units (Literary & Miscellaneous Uses) Directive 1979, as amended.

Will he say:

'This is an up-stick, hand over your holdalls.'? Or:

'This is a tree stump, hand in your overalls.'? Or:

'This is a wrap up, hand over your nightstick.'? Or:

'This is a tip off, hand in your night-soil.'? Or:

'This is a pogo stick, get off your leg stumps.'? Or:

'Rod,' he'll say, 'can you read the legend?' At this point the sword will flash in the light and I won't know whether I'm in a Hardy novel or...anyway we'll come to that at the end of Part Six.

I'd have to be sure to lay in several crates of
Monkey's Bum
. Anthony's capacity was legendary and Parts Five and Six looked like a long haul. I foresaw deep and wide talks with AB—well into the night and early morning. And I knew I'd have to work on my stamina. Here was a man who would make no concessions for my lack of experience. He wouldn't drop to my level but would treat me as an equal, and perhaps my best plan was to treat him similarly. There was no doubt he could raise my game. But could I teach
him
anything? As Nietzsche said in
Also Sprach Zarathustra
: a pupil repays a teacher badly by remaining only a pupil. The nutty Kraut also said:
Become yourself
. But I was up against a scholar and pedagogue of colossal erudition. Graham Greene isn't the only one compelled, after an encounter with AB, to consult a dictionary. [
When he was commissioned by the Observer to interview Graham Greene, Burgess did not use a tape recorder so sent Greene a typescript of the interview to check for accuracy. Greene passed it. But after the piece appeared in the paper Greene was quoted as saying: 'Burgess put words in my mouth which I had to look up in the dictionary'
.]

*

Need another rationalisation? Me too. Okay: I am Roderick Leyland writing this book. At the beginning I pretended to be Charlie in some sort of hospital, and spoke in a manic way. I couldn't sustain the mania so pretended to come clean, viz. I was Charlie, a writer of software, and the manic Charlie was one of my creations for some electronic game. But the two Charlies became intertwined so you—the gentles—and X, the narrator, got confused. That narrator, however, was not me, not Roderick, despite his use of the pronoun 'I'.

To try to resolve the issue I (Roderick—the man named on the cover of this work) introduced myself as a character, and whenever I spoke to any character I prefaced my remarks with this sign:—. So far, so good? Good.

But—and here's the difficulty—there is an
other.
This
other
interposes between what I, Roderick, want to say and what any
character acting as narrator
wants to say. So: we have two fictional Charlies, an unnamed narrator (X) who succeeded them, me (Rod) and the
other
.

Who is that other?

The rest of the book must be taken up with a search for the answer. But the problem is that I destroyed the illusion. Realising that, I attempted to bring the piece to a conclusion but, every time I tried, Charlie and Belinda demanded more life. Ah, you say, I'm just trying to bulk out a short book. Or, it's part of the plot to have the characters interact with the author. No. Believe me when I say that to abandon them now would feel like murder. No—it's not too strong a word. They are dependent on me, they know (
they
know—I didn't plant the thought) that they want, are entitled to, more life.

Ah, ha! you say, I the writer put those thoughts into their minds. No. They
told
me. I wish I knew some experienced writer I could discuss this with. Little Martin can't help (I'd look a right prat if I contacted the real Martin Amis for help [he must get enough cranky post as it is]—but I suppose I could always contact the fictive MA); and Anthony Burgess can't assist because he's constructing neologisms in the great word factory up there. He might even be drafting
Heavenly Powers
. So, after coming clean, after destroying the illusion, something remains. And it is that
something
which interests me. Because it is beyond my will. That
something
has an independent existence and can only be contacted, accessed, via my—well, my otherconscious.

In Pat Barker's
Regeneration
one character says—and here I paraphrase from memory:
If you want to get at the truth don't see a psychologist, consult a novelist
. So, my buddies, let's press on and see where up we end. I honestly want to know.

But I must tell you, folks, that this writing game is taking its toll. Frying my brain. If I'd known it was this dificulkt, I mean diffycult—no: diffykult; no: difty cult; no: dreary cult; no: dreamy clot; no: Deirdre Clump; no: drippy slot; no: drinky clot; no: clotted cream; no: twist and shout; no: let it all hang out; no: putting it all about; no: shake it all about; no: bridge over troubled water; no: bridge over the troubled Taffy; no: bridge over the River Tiffy; no: bridge over the River Liffy; no: bridge over the River Diffy; no: bridge over the diffy cult; no: diffy over the bridge cult; no: the Romans were throwing
timber
bridges across the Thames two thousand years ago but modern architects, designers and builders can't, despite two millennia of experience
and
all modern technology, throw a steel one across without it wobbling. Where's the difficulty?

Q: Why does it wobble?

A: Because people are walking on it.

Q: For whom was it designed?

A: Pedestrians.

Q: So, a design fault?

A: No, a design fact.

Come back, Hadrian, all is forgiven. We don't care what you've done. We'll always love you.

If I'd known this writing lark was so difficult I'd never have started. Honest. And that's the truth. But we're here, so let's press on. First, though, since I've hurt so many brain cells, I'm gonna chill me up a long slow icy cooling quenching filling relaxing enervating motivating energising revitalising reinvigorating anthropomorphising floccinaucinihilipilificating
Monkey's Bum.

*

Time for a Tiger? No—Make Mine a Monkey's Bum.

22

Got the bum's rush...? Drink a Monkey's Bum.

'No, no,' said Burgess. 'You misunderstand.'