“Yes,” I said, a little forlornly, “once London did hold considerable attraction.”
Ms Clements looked at me with a sudden spark in her eyes that said: “I knew it! I bloody knew it!”
“Can you tell me more Michael?” she said and leaned forward.
“Oh, I had grown tired of life in an anxious vacuum. That for me was London. It was what London had become; it wasn’t the city of my youth. The people that I knew then, the ingenue girls, vacant guys, the naive youth who listened to Ian Dury and The Clash, and who were simultaneously worldly and innocent, had grown up, gone.” In place of my friends a new generation had taken over; they were more commercially minded, they wore designer suits and were equipped with management toys, with which they played incessantly, as a substitute for sex; they had no taste in music. I had written a magazine article about them, pillorying them and coining the term ‘brain spastics’. A slow tidal wave of denunciation had followed the article, as a result of which I was not commissioned by that magazine’s editor again.
“An anxious vacuum,” she repeated, “I like that. May I use it?”
“Of course,” I said, secretly pleased that at least a fragment of my creativity would find its way into publication. Ms Clements looked a little deflated, not realising that my comments had been subterfuge.
“By the time you left London, you had started go build a reputation as a writer. You had published your first two novels,” and here she referred to her notebook, flipping through several pages, “these were The View from Primrose Hill and The Descent from Primrose Hill…”
“A sequel,” I offered, interjecting helpfully, thinking of John Braine, but loathe to concede the stylistic influence of Kingsley Amis. “My protagonist, Miles Chadwick, strives to find true meaning in his tedious middle-class life, eventually only doing so when he realises that his life cannot be defined by the view from Primrose Hill. They were comedies.”
“The reviewers, particularly the TLS, struggled to understand them.”
“They were avant-garde comedies.”
“How would you describe your writing style?”
“Oh, somewhere between Martin and Joanna.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Martin Amis and Joanna Trollope.”
“That’s quite a challenge.”
“Yes, I like to think of the warm and welcoming kitchen of Home Counties sensibilities splashed with puke following a drunken night out.”
She pondered the vibrant image for a few seconds.
“Would you say that they were your greatest influences?”
“No, that would be Lord Byron. I named my best cat after him. His contribution to Greece has been unequalled.”
She scribbled these responses down without further questioning.
“Are there any writers whom you do not see as influences?”
I coughed, bringing one fist to my face, and as I withdrew my hand, I extended the forefinger to make a point.
“Anthony Powell,” I said. “I know that it is not considered professional etiquette to comment on another author, but I really, really find his material tedious.”
“But A Dance to the Music…”
“Is tedious Rachel! And unoriginal! Snow descending on fire! Leading, by way of an inference to Roman legionnaires, and in a matter of three sentences, to Poussin and dancing Seasons! Why didn’t he just call his fucking book A la recherché du merde perdu?!”
Ms Clements dropped her pen, it clattered to the tiled terracotta floor. She bent down to retrieve it, her calm demeanour momentarily ruffled. I regained my composure. Ms Clements sat upright gripping her pen to her chest, her startled expression dissipating like a rain cloud over the Isle of Wight.
“I’m sorry Rachel,” I cooed, “I allowed my emotions regarding another writer to get the better of me. And I am conscious that you haven’t had the chance to rest after your journey.”
“That’s…that’s alright.”
“Sofia will show you to your room, we can continue later,” and without objection from Ms Clements, I turned and called for Sofia. She emerged from the kitchen, slowly scratching one hip.
Once Ms Clements had staggered away in Sofia’s wake, dragging her bulbous suitcase, I sat, with another glass of mastiha, calmy watching the sea. A fishing boat came in to view around the headland, its wheelhouse, a faded blue wooden spike, rolling in the swell as the boat returned to harbour. I surrendered to the day’s beauty and called softly for Lord Byron.
Copyright © David Alexander 2023