‘Yes, but—’
‘Look, Theo. I’m a writer. And what’s the most irritating question that a writer can be asked?’
‘I don’t know. Do you write by hand or on a computer?’
‘No, it’s Where do you get your ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where they come from and nobody should know. They evolve in thin air, they float down from some mysterious heaven and we reach out to grab one, to grasp it in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear a conversation in a café and a whole novel will build from that moment. Another might see an article in a newspaper and a plot will suggest itself immediately. Another might hear about an unpleasant incident that happened to a friend of a friend at a supermarket. So I took ideas from badly written stories that had been sent to me – unsolicited, I might add – and turned them into something that was not only publishable but sold very well. What’s the problem with that?’
‘When you express it like that, nothing,’ said Theo, looking utterly frustrated by my reply. ‘But don’t you think—’
‘I think what I just said, that’s what I think. Are you trying to suggest that no one has ever written a novel about an abandoned child before? For God’s sake, Daniel, how does the story of Moses begin? The Pharaoh has condemned all male Hebrew children to death and Jochebed places the baby in an ark, where’s he discovered by Bithiah. Are you saying that Ho Kitson stole her idea from the Bible? And, what, a college professor who seduces his students? You’ve read Updike, I presume? Mailer? Roth?’
‘But it’s not the same!’ he insisted, shaking his head, clearly discombobulated now. ‘You’re trying to justify your actions and—’
‘I’m not trying to justify anything. And if you have an accusation to make, Theo, then perhaps you should just make it. If not, perhaps you should stop fishing for scandal and focus on the work itself. Be a literary biographer, as you say you want to be, and not a tabloid journalist.’
He hesitated and, finally, shook his head. ‘I just think it’s a little strange that—’
‘My boy, you’re going to write an extraordinary thesis,’ I said. ‘I have to compliment you. The level of research you’re undertaking is exemplary. I presume you’ve talked to your father about this. He’s still interested in developing this book, I mean? A book about me?’
‘Yes,’ said Theo, looking down at the table and tapping it with his fingers. The wind had truly been taken out of his sails and I couldn’t help but feel a little amused. The poor boy looked crestfallen. He’d thought he was doing a Woodward and Bernstein on me but the truth was, he was very new to this game and I’d been playing it for a long time. It was hardly a contest of equals.
‘Are you all right, Theo?’ I asked, reaching forward and taking his hand in mine. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little shaken.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘I should probably go. I have some work I need to do.’
‘All right,’ I replied. ‘But what a great afternoon! If you ask me, I think it’s very impressive the lengths you’re going to in order to write a strong thesis. It’s obvious that you’re going to be a great success one day, I’m certain of it. No one’s secrets will be safe from you. Are you sure you wouldn’t like another drink before you go?’ I asked, reaching into my pocket and removing my wallet. ‘I feel quite thirsty and I’m so enjoying talking to you.’
6. The Cross Keys, Covent Garden
Sometimes you just know that you’ve made a mistake. I had put my faith in Theo, had thought that he would be the one to reintroduce me to the literary world, but after our last encounter it began to dawn on me that I had chosen the wrong person. He was hard-working, certainly, an admirable trait in one so young, but simply too naïve. He’d done his research but had utterly failed to understand the value of the information he’d discovered. He’d allowed me to dismiss his concerns and even to make him feel foolish for voicing them at all. Had I been in his place, I would have tightened the screw and made me reveal all, but the poor boy just didn’t have the killer instinct. I realized, to my disappointment, that it was time to let him go, just as I’d let Erich go, just as I’d let Dash go, and just as I’d let Edith fall. They’d each served a purpose and, while Theo ultimately hadn’t proved as useful to me as I had hoped, at least he’d inspired me to get back to writing and to put the events of the past few years behind me. It was time to stop drinking and begin a novel. If he had done nothing else for me, he had done that.
When I woke that morning, I reached for my phone, intending to text him to say that I would not be available for any further interviews but, just as I lifted it, a message arrived from him, asking whether we could meet later that afternoon in the Cross Keys. I thought, why not? It would be kinder, after all, to tell him face to face that our acquaintance had come to an end and that he would have to finish his thesis without me, than to do so over something so impersonal as a text. And so I replied in the affirmative, saying that I’d meet him there at three o’clock. I hoped there wouldn’t be a scene. I’ve always hated scenes.
It would have been Daniel’s birthday that day and I spent most of the morning, and my journey to Covent Garden, thinking about him. His loss lay heavily on me but, just as I was discarding Theo, it was time to discard him too. I couldn’t write if I felt guilt. The truth was, I had been wrong all those years when I imagined that I would like to be a father. Perhaps it was the idea rather than the reality that appealed to me most for, in the end, much like my marriage to Edith, the experience hadn’t moved me as much as I had expected it to. Certainly, I had formed an attachment to the boy and would have preferred him still to be with me, but a life alone, where I was in control of my own movements and decisions, was my natural state.
Other People’s Stories had begun as a rough idea one evening when I was feeling a little dejected from having discovered nothing interesting in the recent pile of Storī submissions. It had been almost a year since I’d found anything that I could adapt as my own and so I had started to think about my own life and how I had turned an unpromising beginning into a triumphant career. There were the people who really mattered – my parents, Erich, Dash, Edith and Daniel – and it was true that each had contributed something to my success. I started to make a few rough notes. I thought back over my own actions since I’d first left Yorkshire for the Savoy Hotel in West Berlin and realized the story I was searching for had been there all along.
It wasn’t another person’s story at all.
It was my own.
Not that I intended to write a memoir. Certainly not. Fiction was my métier and fiction was my comforting home. Also, it wasn’t as if I could ever write a truthful autobiography. I would be vilified instantly and, one would assume, arrested. No, I couldn’t do anything as theatrical as that, but what I could do was write a novel. All I’d ever needed was a story and, once I had that, I still believed that I was one of the best in the game.
And so I did what I had been doing all my life: I started to write.
I began with a boy growing up in Yorkshire who wanted to make something of himself. I kept separate files, taking the truth and recreating it exactly as I remembered it. I began with my friendship with Henry Rowe, that early conquest of mine and the first person who had made me understand the powerful draw of my beauty. It hadn’t worked out, of course, and I’d never managed to finish the story I was writing, but I’d been young at the time and I wasn’t going to reproach myself for that. I’d still been learning, after all, and Henry had proved an excellent place to start.