Everyone has a story to tell, he reminded himself.
Whether it really happened, to them or to someone else, is irrelevant. What’s important is that they believe some part of it, no matter how small. The most ludicrous and unlikely narrative might yield a telling detail that could lodge in a person’s mind forever.
Harold Masters smiled at the thought and was nearly killed as he stepped off the kerb on the corner of Museum Street. The passing van bounced across a crevice in the tarmac and soaked his trousers, but the doctor barely noticed. He raised his umbrella enough to see a few feet ahead and launched himself perilously into the homegoing traffic, his head clouded with doubts and dreams. Why were his pupils so inattentive? Was he a poor storyteller? How could he be bad at the one thing he loved? Perhaps he lacked the showmanship to keep their interest alive. Why could they create no histories for themselves, even false ones?
Fact and fiction, fiction and fact.
What was the old Hollywood maxim? Nobody knows anything. Not strictly true, he thought. Everyone has some practical knowledge, how to replace a lightbulb, how to fill a tank with petrol. But it was true that most information came second-hand, even with the much-vaunted advent of electronic global communication. You couldn’t believe what you saw on the news or read in the papers, not entirely, because it was written with a subtle political, commercial or demographic slant, so why, he wondered, should you believe what you read in a washing machine manual or see on a computer screen? A taxi hooted as he hailed it, the vehicle’s wing mirror catching at his coat as he jumped up on to the opposite kerb.
Dr Harold Masters, at the end of the twentieth century:
Insect-spindled, grey, dry, disillusioned, unsatisfied, argumentative (especially with his wife, whom he was due to meet on the 18:40 p.m. train from Paddington this evening), hopeful, childish, academic, isolated, impatient, forty-four years old and losing touch with the world outside, especially students (he and Jane had two of their own — Lara, currently at Exeter University, and Tyler, currently no more than a series of puzzling postcards from Nepal).
Dr Harold Masters, collector of tales, fables, legends, limericks, jokes and ghost stories, Professor of Oral History, off to the coast with his wife and best friend to deliver a lecture on fact and fiction, was firmly convinced that he could persuade anyone to tell a story. Not just something prosaic and blunted with repetition, how granny lost the cat or the time the car broke down, but a fantastic tale spun from the air, plotted in the mouth and shaped by hand gestures. All it took, he told himself and his pupils, was a little imagination and a willingness to suspend belief. Peregrine Summerfield disagreed with him, of course, but then the art historian was a disagreeable man at the best of times, and had grown worse since his girlfriend had left him. He made an interesting conversational adversary, though, and Masters looked forward to seeing him tonight.
Thank God we persuaded him to come out and spend the weekend with us, he thought as he left his taxi and walked on to the concourse at Paddington Station. Peregrine had suggested cooking dinner for the doctor and his wife this weekend, but his house doubled as his studio and was cluttered with half-filled tubes of paint, brushes glued into cups of turpentine, bits of old newspaper, pots of cloudy water and stacks of unfinished canvasses. Besides, they were bound to argue about something in the course of the evening, and at least this way they would be on neutral ground. Or rather, running over it, for they had arranged to meet in the dining car of the train.
Masters spent too long in the station bookshop quizzing one of the shelf stackers on her reading habits, and nearly forgot to keep an eye on the time. Luckily the dining carriage was situated right at the platform entrance, and he was able to climb aboard without having to gallop down the platform.
“Darling, how nice of you to be on time for once.” Jane, his wife, kissed him carefully. “I felt sure you’d miss it again. Perry’s not made it yet, either. I bribed the waiter to open up the bar and got you a sherry. God, you’re soaked. I thought you were going to get a taxi. Do you want me to put that down for you?” She pointed to his dripping briefcase.
“Um, no, actually, I’ve something to show you.” Masters seated himself and dug inside, removing a handful of yellowed pages sealed in a clear plastic envelope. “Thought you’d be interested in seeing this. I might include it in the lecture.”
Jane had hoped for a little social interaction with her husband before he plunged back into his ink-and-paper world. Concealing her disappointment, she accepted the package and slipped the pages from their cover. She was good at masking her emotions. She’d had plenty of practice. “What’s it supposed to be?”
“It was found in a desk drawer in a Dublin newspaper office when they were clearing out the building. Miles passed it to me for verification.”
With practised ease, Jane slipped the yellow pills into her cupped hand and washed them down with her sherry. “You really want me to look at this now?”
“Go on, before Perry gets here,” pleaded Masters. He was like an irritating schoolboy sometimes; he would hover over her, driving her mad if she didn’t read it straightaway. Reluctantly, she perused the battered pages.
“Obviously it’s meant to be a missing chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, revealing the fate of Jonathan Harker. But if it was real, it would have to be part of an earlier draft.” Jane tapped the pages level. “The quality of the writing is different, too coarse. It wouldn’t fit with the finished version of the book at all.” She studied the pages again. “It’s a fake. I think it’s pretty unlikely that Bram Stoker would write about oral sex, don’t you? The ink and the paper look convincingly old, though.”
“Damn.” Masters accepted the pages back. “You saw through it without even reading it properly. Miles went to the trouble of using genuine hundred-year-old ink, too. It’s his entry for a new course we’re starting called ‘Hidden Histories’.”
“Did you really expect me to believe it was the genuine article?”
“Well, I suppose so,” he admitted sheepishly.
“Honestly, you and Miles are as bad as each other.”
“Well, I believed it,” he moped. “But then, I always believe the stories I’m told.”
Jane smiled across the top of her glass. “Of course you do. Remember how convinced you were that the Hitler diaries were real?”
“I wanted them to be real. To learn about the inside of that man’s brain, didn’t you?”
“No, Harold, I didn’t.” She looked out of the window. “We’re moving. I hope Perry got on board.”
“Jesus, that was close thing. I wasn’t expecting it to leave on time.” Peregrine Summerfield was standing beside them, attempting to tug his wet tweed jacket away from his body while a waiter pulled ineffectually at a sleeve.
“Perry, you’re getting water over everything.”
“I was trying to choose a paperback. Nearly missed it. On Hallowe’en, too, that would have been an omen, eh? It’s pissing down outside. Hallo, darling.” He kissed Jane. “The tube smelled like an animal sanctuary, all wet hair and coats. Anyone ordered me a drink? What have you got there?” He pointed at the plastic-coated pages on the table as he sat down beside Masters’ wife.
“Something for my lecture on fact and fiction.”
“Oh?” Summerfield thudded down into his chair and eagerly accepted a drink from Jane, carefully guiding the sherry glass over his beard.
“Yes, it purports to be — well, it’s actually — ”
“Jane, you’re looking bloody gorgeous, as ever,” Summerfield interrupted, “beats me how you do it on a shitty night like this. What’s on the menu apart from their god-awful watery vegetables, I wonder? Let’s see if we can get one of these pimply louts to open some wine, shall we?”