I was left feeling horribly confused. Was he a genius? Was I an idiot? His damned Proem kept repeating in my head when I would have preferred to remember McDiarmid’s The Watergaw or Hardy’s After a Journey or even Lear’s Dong With the Luminous Nose. Did that mean it was better than these? Impossible. But why could I not forget it? He had said he would contact me. A few weeks after seeing him I approached his sociology lecturer. She was chatting with colleagues in the staff club.
“Pardon me,” I said, “Can you tell me how Luke Aiblins —”
“I can tell you nothing about Luke Aiblins except that he is mad, stupid, nasty and has, thank God, left this place for good.” She turned her back to me.
The college changed its creative writing teacher every two years, perhaps to avoid paying a pension contribution due to regular teachers. I found similar jobs elsewhere, then had a book of poems published, then another. With an American friend I visited Edinburgh Castle and saw that an attendant in one of the regimental museums was Ian Gentle. I asked if the job bored him. He shrugged and said, “Not more than teaching, or punching railway tickets, or nursing in a mental hospital, or canning peas, which I have also tried. It’s like reincarnation. You don’t need to die to become somebody else. Have you read Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Idea?”
I had not and asked if he ever saw Aiblins. “Poor Luke,” said Gentle, “I’d rather not say anything about poor Luke.”
I left the castle with a weird feeling that Aiblins would soon appear again.
Yet was unprepared when the phone rang and a voice said, “Luke Aiblins contacting you as arranged. Remember?”
“I remember you but remember no arrangement. It’s years since you said you’d contact me.”
“I’m doing it. I have a job for you. You’re at home?”
“Yes, but —”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He hung up on me and arrived in four.
He was no longer beautiful because his nose was thickened and flattened except at the tip, which bent sideways. He was also haggard, with long bedraggled hair, and wore a shabby duffel coat and carried a duffel bag, articles I had not seen since my own student days. His manner was still eager but more tense. I asked if he would like tea or coffee.
“No thanks,” he said, settling into an armchair with the bag between his legs. “Let’s get down to business. You are at last able to help me because you are the king.” “What do you mean?”
“Poet Laureate of Dundee!” he said, grinning.
“I was born there.”
“Honorary Doctorate from Saint Andrews University!” he said, chuckling.
“I was a student there.”
“Winner!” he said, almost inarticulate with laughter, “Winner of the Saltire Award and a colossal Arts Council bursary forAntique Nebula! Antique Nebula!! Antique Nebula!!!”
“Have you read it?”
“Enough of it to see that it’s crap, rubbish, pretentious drivel, an astonishing victory of sound over sense. You won’t mind me saying that because you’re intelligent so must know it’s crap. I bet you often have a quiet wee laugh to yourself about how you’ve fooled the critics. Ours is a comic opera wee country with several comic opera imitations of English establishments. They’re even thinking of giving us our own comic opera parliament! Our old literary crazy gang, MacDiarmid, Goodsir, Garioch, Crichton Smith et cetera were also crap but they’ve died or are dying and leaving your clique on top. You are now the boss and godfather of Scotland’s literary mafia and at last in a position to help a real poet.”
From the duffel bag he removed and handed me a thin, grubby folder with a tartan cover. I looked into it then told him, “These are the poems your teacher typed twelve years ago.”
“Of course. You said you liked them, so prove it. Get one of your posh London publisher pals to print them. Tell them you’ll write an introduction. Of course you won’t know what to say so I’ll write the introduction. It will appear under your name so you’ll get the credit of introducing a great seminal book that won’t give you any bother at all.”
“Mr Aiblins,” I said, “since you invoke the past let me remind you that I praised these poems for heralding much better work. Where is it?”
“Have you learned nothing in the past twelve years?” he groaned, then with an air of immense patience said, “The voice in my head says there is no point in dictating more poems to me before the first lot are in print, so to get the later poetry we both want, you must first get these published. Send them to Faber or Bloodaxe with a strong letter of recommendation by registered post tomorrow. Phone regularly at weekly intervals and pester them till they’ve read it and offered a decent advance against royalties and a definite publication date. And remember to photocopy them before posting because then you can send single poems —”
I said, “Listen —”
“No! Last time we met I did the listening, now it’s my turn to lay down the law. In the weeks before publication prepare for it by getting single poems published in Stand, Areté, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Chapman and Cencrastus beside good reviews of the book itself by well-known poets rather than academics. I suggest for England, Ted Hughes and Craig Raine; for Ireland, Heaney and Paulin; for Scotland, Lochhead and Duffy; for former colonies, Les Murray, Walcott, Ben Okri and Atwood. We have only one problem. My wife won’t let me into our house, the people I’m staying with are trying to push me out, so for a while I’ll have no contact address. Fear not, I do not plan to camp on your doorstep. I’ll call here once a week for your report on developments at an hour you, not me, will choose. Make it as late or early as you please. Well?”
I said, “Mr Aiblins I am not the godfather of a Scottish literary mafia. There is no such thing. No firm will publish a book, no editor commission a review of it or print a poem from it because I order them. It is also many years since I was employed to show an interest in other folks’ writing. I am now a selfish old bastard who cares for nobody’s writing but his own. Please go away and tell that to as many other writers as you can. But you appear to be in poor circumstances. I am not. By a coincidence I refuse to explain I have seventy pounds in notes upon me. Here, take them. Goodbye!”
“You condescending piss-pot!” he said, smiling as he took the money, “But buying my poems won’t get rid of me. I know they’ll be safe here because your only claim to fame, your only hope of a place in world literature depends on them. So why postpone that? Your Antique Nebula will be forgotten long before critics notice where you got the few good lines in it.” “Are you suggesting that I have plagiarised you?” I cried, horrified, “I deny it! I deny it!”
“You sound as if you believe that,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Perhaps you’re unconscious of it. Perhaps most plagiarism is unconscious reminiscence.”
“I am staring hard at that brass-topped coffee table,” I told him, “because it is tempting me to lift it as high as I can in order to smash it down on your idiotic skull. But instead I will phone for the police if you do not take your poems and get the hell out of here.”
“Dearie me, dearie me,” he said waggishly. “I seem to have annoyed the poor old fat bald wee man. He must still envy me. I wonder why?”
He strolled with bag and folder to the front door, which I opened. On the doorstep he turned and said quietly, “One last word of advice. Publish these poems under your own name then try to live up to them. You’ll fail, but the effort may make a real man of you, if not a real writer. And think of the fame you’ll enjoy! I won’t resent that because great poetry is more important than fame. Here, have it.”