My Life as a Fake_ A Novel.

by Peter Carey.

For our sons, Sam and Charley

'I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me.'Mary Sh.e.l.ley Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818.

The Old Rectory, Thornton, Berkshire. August

1

I have known John Slater all my life. Perhaps you remember the public brawl with Dylan Thomas, or even have a copy of his famous book of 'dirty' poems. If it's an American edition you'll discover, on the inside flap, a photograph of the handsome, fair-haired author in cricket whites. Dewsong Dewsong was published in 1930. Slater was twenty at the time, very nearly a prodigy. was published in 1930. Slater was twenty at the time, very nearly a prodigy.That same year I was born Sarah Elizabeth Jane to a beautiful, impatient Australian mother and a no less handsome but rather posh English father, Lord William Wode-Dougla.s.s, generally known as Boofy.Slater's own cla.s.s background was rather ambiguous, though my mother, a dreadful sn.o.b, had a tin ear, and I know she thought Slater very grand and therefore permitted him excesses she would not have tolerated from the Chester grammar-school boy he really was.It was Slater who carved my father's thirtieth birthday cake with his bare hands, who rode a horse into the kitchen, who brought Unity Mitford to dinner during the period she was stealing stationery from Buckingham Palace and carrying that nasty little ferret around in her handbag.I cannot say that I understood his role in my parents' marriage, and only when my mother killed herself-in a spectacularly awful style-did I suspect anything was amiss. In the last minutes of her life I saw John Slater put his arms around her and finally I understood, or thought I did.From that moment I hated everything about him: his self-absorption, his intense angry good looks, but most of all those electric blue eyes which inhabited my imagination as the incarnation of deceit.When my mother died, poor Boofy fell apart completely. He drank and wept and roared, and after falling down the stairs the second time he packed me off to St Mary's Wantage in Berkshire, which I did not like at all. I ran away, was returned in a post-office van, fought with the headmistress, and adopted the perverse strategy of writing with my left hand, thus making almost all my schoolwork illegible. I was so busy being a bad girl that no-one noticed that I also had a brain. But even while I was receiving D's in English I somehow managed to see that Slater's celebrated verses were nothing so much as bowers constructed by a male in order to procure s.e.x. This was far from being my only insight and I was not reluctant to let the Great Man know exactly what I thought. Somewhere in his papers there may still be evidence of my close reading of 'Eastern Oriental,' with its impertinent corrections, its queries about his heavily enjambed lines, all of which I archly hoped might be 'helpful to him.'I was, in short, a precocious horror and you will not be at all astonished that John Slater and I did not become friends. But, London being London, I did keep on running into him over the years, and as he continued to write poetry and I had ended up as the editor of The Modern Review The Modern Review, we knew many of the same people and had reason to sit at the same table more than once.Time did not make the a.s.sociation easier. Indeed, as I grew older his physical presence became more and more disturbing. I will not say that I was obsessed with him, but I could not be in the same room without looking at him continually; I was drawn to him and repulsed by him all at once. He was an appallingly unapologetic narcissist and so full of iconoclastic opinion and territorial enthusiasms that there was not a dinner party, be it ever so packed with the Great and the Good, where one could escape his increasingly bardic presence. Of course I could not look at him without thinking of my poor unhappy mother.In spite of the fact that we were so very intimately connected, it took all of thirty years for us to speak with more than superficial politeness. He was then sixty-two and while perhaps better known for his novels-The Amersham Satyricon had been a huge bestseller-he was still generally referred to as 'the poet John Slater.' Which was exactly how he looked: rather wild and windburned, as if he'd recently returned from tramping over the moors or following Basho's path all the way to Ogaki. had been a huge bestseller-he was still generally referred to as 'the poet John Slater.' Which was exactly how he looked: rather wild and windburned, as if he'd recently returned from tramping over the moors or following Basho's path all the way to Ogaki.Slater does seem to have worked very hard at the social side of literature, and there was scarcely a British poet or novelist whom he could not call his friend, or for whom he had not, at some time, done a favour. The Faber crowd he cultivated particularly and it was at a Faber dinner party, at the home of Charles Monteith, where we finally came to talk to each other. Our conversation aside, I don't recall a great deal about the evening except that Robert Lowell-the guest of honour-had inadvertently revealed that he didn't know who Slater was. This, one could hypothesise, is why Slater chose to turn and talk to me so urgently, calling me 'Micks,' a name belonging to my family and all that lost time at Allenhurst at High Wycombe.What he had to say was not in the least personal, but his use of the nickname had already touched me and his voice, perhaps as a result of the famous American's careless judgement of his life, took on a wistful, elegiac tone which I found unexpectedly moving. For the first time in years I looked at him closely: his face was puffy, its colour, uncharacteristically, a little grey. When he began to talk about revisiting Malaysia, a country where so much of Dewsong Dewsong and its successors had their roots, it was hard not to wonder if he might be tidying up his affairs. and its successors had their roots, it was hard not to wonder if he might be tidying up his affairs.Come with me, he said suddenly.I laughed sharply. He grasped my hand and held me with those d.a.m.ned eyes and of course he was such a Famous Crumpeteer that I looked away, embarra.s.sed.We should should go, he said. Don't you think? go, he said. Don't you think?It was impossible to guess what he meant by 'we' and 'should.'We must must talk, he insisted. It is very bad that we never have. talk, he insisted. It is very bad that we never have.This sudden intimacy was as off-putting as it was wished for.I have no money, I said.I have tons of it.He watched me closely as I poured more wine.You've got a boyfriend, he suggested.I have a very jealous cat.I adore cats, he said. I will come and talk to her.And suddenly his cab arrived and he had to go on to a very glamorous party where he was expecting to meet John Lennon and as he rose there was a general clamour of farewells and it was my understanding that our conversation had been of no great moment-merely a cover for his embarra.s.sment at the hands of Robert Lowell.But he telephoned me, at home in Old Church Street, at eight o'clock the next morning and it was very quickly clear that this journey was not at all impulsive. He had already arranged for the British Council to pay for one ticket, while two thousand words for Nova Nova would fund another. He would be delighted to foot all of my expenses. would fund another. He would be delighted to foot all of my expenses.My father had died just the year before in circ.u.mstances that were not at all happy-a sulky sort of estrangement on my part-and it was not in the least dotty for me to think that John Slater was offering this trip as an opportunity for us to talk, for me to understand my own unhappy family a little better. Of course he never said so, and even now, all these years later, I cannot be sure what his intention was at the beginning. Certainly it was not s.e.x. Let me dispense with that immediately. It was well known that I had no interest in it.John, I said, I am an awful tourist. I have no intention of slogging through the b.l.o.o.d.y jungle with binoculars. I am an editor. It's all I do. I read. I have no other life.You love to eat, he said. I saw you polish off that curry.Well, it was very good curry.Then Kuala Lumpur will be paradise for you. Darling, I've known K.L. for almost as long as I've known you.Of course he did not 'know' me at all.What's the worst thing that can happen? I'll make a pa.s.s at you? Micks, for G.o.d's sake-it's a b.l.o.o.d.y week of your life. We'll all be mouldering in the ground soon enough. Do come.That did it-the mouldering. After lunch I burgled our safe and took the last of the magazine's petty cash. In the King's Road I purchased forty-five pounds in travellers' cheques, a pair of sandals, and a summer frock. So prepared, I entered that maze from which, thirteen years later, I have yet to escape.In those days it was a thirty-hour flight from London to Kuala Lumpur, but we suffered a long delay in Tehran due to fog in Dubai, and then an interminable wait in Singapore. You would think that forty-two hours would be a sufficient opportunity for the two of us to begin our conversation, but it seemed that Slater liked to sleep on aeroplanes and he was so drugged with Phen.o.barb and whisky when we landed in Singapore that the air hostesses thought he was dead.He pa.s.sed through Malaysian Immigration in a wheelchair and so my very first memory of Kuala Lumpur involves the difficulties of transporting a large and meaty man into a taxi and from there into the extraordinarily kitsch foyer of the Merlin Hotel, and there his fame preceded him, thank G.o.d.Apart from the awful gold and tartan decor of the Merlin, my only impressions of this foreign capital were heat and smells, sewage, floral scents, rotting fruit, and a general mustiness which seeped into my skin and permeated my large plain room where someone had written 'f.u.c.k Little Duck' in grey pencil beside the toilet bowl.The next day Slater did not answer his telephone and I became concerned that he really might have died. Then, on the off-chance, I checked with the desk and discovered he and his luggage had departed the hotel. No message. Just gone.I immediately felt like someone who has been pa.s.sionately seduced, f.u.c.ked, and abandoned. This is not a pleasant feeling at the best of times and all my old animus against Slater came surging back. I was far too angry to read and far too agitated to sleep, and this was how I came to be inspecting the Indian haberdashers on Batu Road. I like to buy fabrics, but nothing pleased me here. The batik was rather coa.r.s.e and opportunistic, not nearly as refined as the Indonesian fabrics, and yet I purchased a piece, as tourists do. From Batu Road I continued window-shopping, not liking anything, until I found myself in a noisy street of Chinese shophouses with the unlikely name of Jalan Campbell. I did not like it very much either, although the buildings offered a continuous colonnade and I was grateful for the shade, if not the interruptions offered by the shopkeepers who brought their chairs and hammers and plastic buckets out into the public thoroughfare.It was here, glancing rather peevishly into one little store, that I saw in the gloom-amidst a tangle of bicycles, next to a Chinese woman who was ladling bright red fish into plastic bags-a middle-aged white man in a dirty sarong. He had lop-sided eyebrows and very close-cropped hair which made me think of both a prisoner and a monk. However, what struck me most particularly were the angry red sores on his st.u.r.dy legs. He was sitting in a broken plastic chair and gazing out into the street and did not, when I paused, show so much as the slightest flicker of what I can only call racial connection.I briefly wondered how he had got to this place where his sores were not being treated, but really I was too hot and sweaty, too offended by those Asian fish-paste smells, and generally too bad tempered to wonder about anything for very long. I crossed the muddy Klang River and was soon back in the musty air-conditioned Merlin, again trying to deal with the work of adequately talented English poets. I was still at it at eight o'clock that evening when Slater finally rang.Micks, he cried. Isn't it a wonderful city?How could I tell him that I'd waited all day to see him? He made me feel pathetic, childish.What have you done? Tell me everything.I walked a little, I admitted.Good, good, wonderful. Darling, he said, I was hoping we could have dinner on Tuesday, but I'm rather caught up here. Could you write me on your card for the Wednesday?John, it's Monday.Yes. You see, I'm in Kuala Kangsar. Really just arrived. Outstation, as they say.Kuala what?You knew I was going to Kuala Kangsar.He had said nothing about any such place. I know it. It was the first time I ever heard the words p.r.o.nounced, and I was sure then-and am positive now-that as usual he had followed some opportunity, and not one of the mind. Recklessness and hedonism had fuelled the engine of his early genius, but they had also, ultimately, betrayed his promise. If he had written more and wh.o.r.ed and sucked up just a little less, perhaps Lowell would've known exactly who he was.Well, he said, I'll definitely be back for Wednesday dinner. Enjoy KL. I really envy you discovering it.And that was it. No apologies. No concern for my well being. As I hung up the phone I finally understood poor Lizzie Slater, the second wife, the one who ended up in St Bart's with alcoholic poisoning.The thing is, poor ruined pretty Lizzie told me, the thing about dear old Johnno, dear, he always does exactly as he d.a.m.n well likes.I am not a good tourist, as I said, but that second night I was too angry to stay in my comical hotel. I forced myself to eat satay in a street market in what is called Kampong Baru, a Malay quarter five minutes' walk from the Merlin.The next day, likewise, I grumpily stepped out to stare at the Batu Caves, the Moorish railway station, the stinking Chinese wet markets. The smells were the most challenging aspect of my tourism, not merely the wet markets, but also the alien mixture of smoke and spice and sewer and two-stroke exhausts and all the sweet mouldy aroma of those broad-leafed tropical gra.s.ses. I preferred walking the streets very early in the cool morning as the Sikh bank guards were eating sweet barfi barfi and drinking their beloved cow's milk in the street. The rain trees were lovely, all of Jalan Treacher heavy with green leaves and yellow flowers. Only the sight of a boy cutting a banana tree with a machete reminded me that, not three years before, the gentle smiling inhabitants of Kampong Baru had been butchering their Chinese neighbours. Blood had run along those deep drains beside which I now walked. and drinking their beloved cow's milk in the street. The rain trees were lovely, all of Jalan Treacher heavy with green leaves and yellow flowers. Only the sight of a boy cutting a banana tree with a machete reminded me that, not three years before, the gentle smiling inhabitants of Kampong Baru had been butchering their Chinese neighbours. Blood had run along those deep drains beside which I now walked.I wandered largely without hara.s.sment. This was 1972 after all, and one would've had to travel to the east coast to find people easily exercised by the length of a dress or the bareness of one's shoulders. Moreover, the British colonial past was still almost the present and one could pop off Batu Road into the Coliseum and find, on every one of the white-clothed tables, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. This was all interesting enough, but what I had told Slater was true: I was an editor, and The Modern Review The Modern Review was my life. I actually preferred to sit inside my hotel room and read, not only the poetry submitted to the magazine, but also was my life. I actually preferred to sit inside my hotel room and read, not only the poetry submitted to the magazine, but also Paradise Lost Paradise Lost, which always reminded me, Mr Leavis notwithstanding, of what my life was given to. In the afternoon I again paid service to the word by writing long letters to my three most important board members: Lord Antrim, Wystan Auden, and a wonderful Mrs McKay, the divorced wife of a Manchester industrialist whose generosity had saved the magazine more than once. In each letter I mentioned our outstanding printers' bill but did not really expect anything to come of it. They had risen to the occasion too many times before and were, I suspected, exhausted by a magazine which might never be what we had all hoped.Slater showed up on Thursday, unexpectedly falling into step beside me as I walked across the bridge towards Jalan Campbell where I had been antic.i.p.ating the company of sodden red-faced planters who I hoped would say appalling raj-like things.He was wearing walking shorts and heavy boots, and was still so sunny and unrepentant that I began to wonder if he had forgotten our conversation at the Faber dinner party, if he imagined that I would actually enjoy exploring a steaming Asian city on my own.Micks, he said, I have something to tell you.Ah, I thought-and was disappointed when he launched not into an apology but a very detailed account of his hike through the jungle with an Anglophile Chinese poet. As I listened, I wondered why a man would wear shorts in the jungle where his unprotected skin would be so badly scratched. Was it simply to show his legs?Did you see that, he asked suddenly. No? Well, it was Die Sonette an Orpheus Die Sonette an Orpheus, in the 1923 Insel-Verlag edition. Must be worth a hundred quid.For sale?Don't be ridiculous. No, in that horrid shop back there. Come. You must look.I actually did not wish to be controlled by John Slater, but he had his great paw on my forearm and I had no choice but stare into the same bicycle repair shop which had taken my attention on Monday. The same white man with ulcers on his legs was sitting on the broken plastic chair and indeed was reading, by the light of a naked bulb, Sonnet to Orpheus Sonnet to Orpheus.See, said Slater.Hearing this, the white man lifted his mild eyes and, having considered Slater for a moment, slowly raised his arm in salute.Christ, said Slater.His hand still clamped around my arm, he propelled me forcibly back along the street.Do you know him?He looked at me with his big chin working as if he were chewing something unpleasant. Know him? he said indignantly. Of course not.And that is really where the story begins, for it was clear to me that he was lying.

2

The editors of literary magazines, while conceiving of themselves as priests, actually travel like brush salesmen, always making sure they have a sample of their wares packed along with socks and underwear, and it was not at all eccentric of me to bring several issues of The Modern Review The Modern Review to Malaysia. One of these had a very fine translation of Stefan George, which I expected a reader of Rilke would admire and so the following morning, at half past six, I wrapped it in some pretty paper and set off back to Jalan Campbell. I had no notion of how this half-mile walk was going to change my life. If I had only stayed in bed, I would not be where I am today, struggling in a web of mystery that I doubt I ever shall untangle. to Malaysia. One of these had a very fine translation of Stefan George, which I expected a reader of Rilke would admire and so the following morning, at half past six, I wrapped it in some pretty paper and set off back to Jalan Campbell. I had no notion of how this half-mile walk was going to change my life. If I had only stayed in bed, I would not be where I am today, struggling in a web of mystery that I doubt I ever shall untangle.Yet once I had started there was nothing to save me from myself. Indeed, all the obsessive tendencies which have made me a good editor were now brought to bear on this abandoned white man. I would not be happy until I knew who he was, although my curiosity wasn't quite so dispa.s.sionate, for I already imagined him to be 'lost' and wished, for my own personal guilty reasons, to give him comfort.I found the shophouse very easily and was well inside its rather oily smelling interior before I realised that my man was not in residence. In his place was the Chinese woman I had previously seen packing fish in plastic bags. Close-up, she revealed herself to be a fierce little thing with a flat round face marked by two long jagged scars.I greeted her as my phrase book ordered: Selamat pagi Selamat pagi, I said, but she was working to a different script.Wha you want?There was nothing to do but offer my precious quarterly.Wha for this?English poetry, I said, for the man. Orang Orang. Does he read English?Her lip curled, giving an impression of implacable hostility, towards poetry perhaps, or England, or sweating white women-who could tell?Poetry?Will you please give it to him?Not here now, she said, and tucked my proffered gift away as if she might later use it to wipe her bottom.Selamat tingal, I said, and left the shop feeling very foolish, striding along the street with my head down, wishing that I had minded my own b.l.o.o.d.y imperial business. Most of all I wished I had not wasted my magazine.Were it not for the squeal of a buckled bicycle wheel I might not have spotted my Rilke reader. In all the confusion of cars and trucks and motorbikes, it took a moment to recognize who was pushing the injured bicycle along the road. In the gritty, humid air, the white man did not look particularly alien, simply another human figure pressing forward under the clammy weight of the sky. I was by now rather at the limits of my social confidence, and if he had not stopped, I doubt I would have had the courage to address him.Was that John Slater, he asked.The moment I heard that nasal, reedy voice I understood he was Australian.Yesterday, he said. That matt saleh matt saleh with the camera? with the camera?Yes, I said.He raised his thin black eyebrows but offered nothing more.Do you know him? I said.As he considered this, I admired his face, the impressive eyebrows falling away at a severe angle, the possibility of a smile hiding in the shadowy corners of his rather wistful mouth. He was bone and muscle, self-effacing, a little melancholy.Not really-lah.Are you a poet?He looked a little startled. I thought it was Slater, he said, then blinked. Isn't it extraordinary how some people remain recognisable? One kind-lah.Shall I remember you to him?Oh, he wouldn't know me, he said, and with no more than a nod of farewell, he set off, pushing the squeaking bicycle along the edge of a treacherous storm-water drain. Nothing in his manner invited me to follow and so I wandered back towards the hotel wondering what curious events had led a cultured Australian to a repair shop in a street called Jalan Campbell.

3

At Heathrow John Slater had promised me chili crab and banana-leaf curry, but he was clearly a man who made his promises easily. I had been left alone to find what delicacies I could and had already wandered out into the dusty streets of Kampong Baru where there was a market, not in the street exactly, but in a sort of car park under a pair of giant mango trees. When I returned there it was already dark. It was not raining but I imagined it was the season that my father, who had done his stint in India, called Mango Showers, and in the yellow nimbus of the carbide lamps above the stalls and trolleys of the vendors, you could see and smell the damp as it mixed with the odours of sandalwood and satay and the inevitable undercurrent of sewage. In the distance there were a few sodium streetlamps and in the liquid dark beneath the mangoes one could see the glistening possum eyes of Malay men and boys whose idea of my rather tall white body seemed to have been formed by brightly lit images of American giants with ripped dresses and open thighs.Where you come from?They were not threatening but they were persistent and, finally, a little creepy.Where your husband?I had set out feeling angry with Slater but when I noticed him, seated alone at a table beneath the mangoes, I felt considerable relief.Seeing me, he rose, two long arms held high into the night, as if he had been waiting to greet me all this time. I am not being modest when I say that I looked a fright: frumpy cotton frock, no hat, no make-up, my hair cut in a style one can achieve only with two mirrors and a pair of nail scissors, a look I had mastered years before at St Mary's Wantage.Ah, the White G.o.ddess!What tosh! Yet when his hand enclosed my own, it was persuasive. I cannot explain it-partly the size, but also a dry sort of heat, like a river rock. I was ridiculously relieved to see him.Then he was doing everything at once, seating me in the most gallant style, calling for more beer, delivering a proprietary discourse on the etiquette of eating from a banana leaf.I must say I do envy you, Micks, discovering everything yourself for the first time. You should write it all down. You know Lafcadio Hearn? 'Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible.' A tiny fellow, Hearn, very strange-looking. 'They are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again.'It was not hard to believe that he'd learned those inconsequential lines just now, and only in order to charm me. He was capable of it, I'm sure. Yet when he crushed my hand I was completely persuaded of his sincerity, also that his abandonment of me had been an exquisitely designed gift which I had insufficient character to properly appreciate. Thus, so easily, was my anger dealt with, and soon I was happily recounting my little adventure with the old Australian.He said he knew you.What else?That you wouldn't know him.He looked back over his shoulder-marginal rude, I decided.Am I boring you, John?I remember him, he said-but his eyes had become dull, even churlish.And?He shrugged and lit a cigarette.Oh for G.o.d's sake, John, please don't make me draw you out.He raised an eyebrow. Be nice, Micks.You be b.l.o.o.d.y nice, John, I've been waiting four b.l.o.o.d.y days.It was Christopher Chubb.You know that means nothing to me.Slater deftly paddled his fingers in his rice and curry. Really? I was sure he must have fallen before your pencil.I sipped my watery iced beer in silence.Seriously, he said, I cannot believe he has never crossed your desk. Formally very rigorous, a great fellow for the villanelle and the double sestina.... Now that that is an extraordinarily rigid form. is an extraordinarily rigid form.Yes, John, I do know what a double sestina is.He smiled. Then you will know that our scrofulous friend was exactly that sort of fellow. Australian ... 'born/In a half savage country, out of date;/Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn.' A very serious provincial academic poet, committed to a life of envy and disappointment.Then you do know him?Instead of answering, he patted the back of my hand. Did you go to Bruno Hat's opening, Micks? No, you would have been too young. He was an artist. Milo wrote a huge piece about it, I remember.This was in London?Ssh. Listen. I actually saw the so-called paintings, he said, tapping the hot ash of his cigarette with a naked finger. Not really my taste, bits of cork and wool and shards, but half of Chelsea was there wolfing down the Cypriot sherry. Later, I remembered a fellow sitting in the corner in a wheelchair, face all wrapped up as if he was dying of toothache. He hardly invited conversation but afterwards it turned out that he was was Bruno Hat and it would have been hopeless to talk to him, so I was told, because he was Polish and spoke no word of English. Just the same, an extraordinary amount was said Bruno Hat and it would have been hopeless to talk to him, so I was told, because he was Polish and spoke no word of English. Just the same, an extraordinary amount was said about about the art. Milo wasn't the only one, but just as the whole thing reached a great crescendo 'Bruno Hat' quietly revealed that he was actually Bryan Howard. the art. Milo wasn't the only one, but just as the whole thing reached a great crescendo 'Bruno Hat' quietly revealed that he was actually Bryan Howard.Who actually spoke English rather well.Yes, it was a prank. Made a few faces red, but no-one died, and even Milo-who made the most hysterical claims-still went on to be Sir Milo Wilson and no-one would bother mentioning it today. Don't be so impatient, Micks. My point is that a prank's a prank and Bruno Hat wasn't going to pull the whole of English culture down around our ears. Whereas if you take a country like Australia, you see the whole thing is much more fragile, and this old codger with the evil-looking boils, Chubb, was the author of a similar sort of prank. Have you heard of the McCorkle Hoax? No? Well, our Christopher Chubb was the villain.The hoaxer, you mean.Of a horribly prim, self-righteous sort. This all takes place in 1946. Imagine-twenty-four years after 'The Waste Land.' You'd think the battles had been fought and the bodies buried, but that's the rather splendid thing about your mother's people.My heart actually leapt at the mention of my mother. Slater saw this. At least, I believe he did.His eyes brightened. He slowed his pace. Remember, this is the country of the duck-billed platypus. When you are cut off from the rest of the world, things are bound to develop in interesting ways.I thought to myself, He will talk about my mother now. But I was wrong. This is why, Micks, you can still have this fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y battle going on in 1946, when your friend in the sarong was a handsome shy young fellow seducing girls with his jazz piano. He was actually a little more 'chubby' in those days, if you'll forgive the pun, and when he was not drinking he had a sweet and rather pa.s.sive manner which hid the fact that he had this awful chip on his shoulder.Like Mummy in a way.Slater paused, looking as if he was about to deny knowing the person I'd referred to. Oh darling, he sighed at last, your mother was never chippy. She was so absolutely Upper North Sh.o.r.e. Poor old Chubb came from the dreary lower-middle-cla.s.s suburbs. I would say he loathed loathed where he came from. where he came from.Exactly, I said. Mummy could never abide Australians.He looked at me very directly, long enough to make me feel uncomfortable.I thought, You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you killed her.In any case, he said, and his tone was very cool, our Mr. Chubb had what you could only call a phantom pregnancy. That is, he gave birth to a phantom poet, a certain 'Bob McCorkle' who of course never really existed but to whom our bitter little Australian gave a ragingly modern opus: life, death, a whole biography-including, believe it or not, a birth certificate. And then he delivered the lot-with the exception of the birth certificate, which came later-to a journal with the rather pretentious name of Personae Personae. He did a persuasive job, actually. Made a complete a.s.s of the editor and became a celebrity along the way. Did you give him a copy of The Modern Review? The Modern Review?Why would I do that?You're an editor editor, Micks. Of course you did. Which issue was it?The one with the George translation.He'll hate it, he said gleefully. You'll have him spitting chips all the way to Ulu Klang.I thought how wounded he would be if I told him that someone would hate his magazine, if he ever had one. What happened to the editor? I asked.He killed himself I do believe.John! That's horrible.He sipped his beer and crunched the ice blocks between his teeth. It is rather a long story. I forget the particulars. Look, here comes the satay Probably loaded with parasites, but awfully good. We should get some of those Indian thing-ohs ... those ... d.a.m.n, my memory's going. I forget what they're called.The Indian thing-ohs were murtaba murtaba, and as Slater rushed away to order some I realised that all my sentimental feelings for the old 'lost' man had completely evaporated. Chubb had preyed on the best, most vulnerable quality an editor has to offer. I mean that hopeful, optimistic part which has you reading garbage for half your life just so you might find, one day before you die, a great and unknown talent.f.u.c.k him, I thought. I hope he hates the George translation. I hope it fries his tiny antipodean brain.

4

The following morning Slater telephoned, with such an uncharacteristic concern for my health that I immediately asked if he was unwell.Actually, yes. He paused. How are you?Not wonderful.Another pause. Stomach?I suppose it was the satay I said.No, it was the f.u.c.king ice, he said. I can't believe I let them put ice in my beer, probably washed the d.a.m.n stuff in the gutter. So much for the sainted b.u.mis. They pay for good ice and then get it so dirty they have to wash it in the filthy drain. You don't have any Enterovioform do you?I have two left.Micks?Yes.This is very humiliating ... I don't dare stray far from the lavatory.I waited for him to ask me to personally deliver my Enterovioform. Very few people would have done this, and fewer still would I have obliged. Just the same, I immediately began to dress.When the phone rang again I answered it very crossly.John, I said, I am very happy to bring you my drugs, but you must remember that I happen to be rather out of sorts myself.Yes, h.e.l.lo, said a strange, papery voice. The remainder was drowned by the metallic roar of small engines.Who is this?Chubb, he shouted. Chubb here. Is that Miss Wode-Dougla.s.s?How on earth did you find me?Name in your magazine, he said. I'll come and see you, can or cannot?Later I discovered this 'can or cannot' was very proper Malaysian English, but on this first encounter, hearing it delivered in Chubb's Australian accent, I judged it not only illiterate but disturbingly false.I'm actually rather ill, I said.I have medicine.Having no enthusiasm for any diagnosis he might make, I remained silent.Sarah Wode-Dougla.s.s? The Times The Times of London? of London?Not for many years.Please see me, he said. I can come to your hotel.This, of course, is exactly what I had wished when I carried my magazine to his shop, but that was before I knew his history.A fright in my sarong, he said. I'll wear my suit. Please. You show face for just a short while.Mr Chubb, is this about the George?Who is that?Stefan George, the poet.Sorry...I thought you might have an opinion of the translation.Forgive me, Miss Wode-Dougla.s.s. No time yet.At this point there was a great thundering on my door. I opened it and a white-faced Slater pushed past me. As the bathroom door closed I saw a small lizard flee for the corner of the room, where it slowly turned from green to grey. It was impossible not to hear the sounds of Slater's distress.Mr Chubb?Yes.I'm sorry, I can't meet with you.Mem, I have something extraordinary to show you. Absolutely unique. One kind only-lah only-lah.Some poetry, perhaps. By Christopher Chubb.No, no, not by me.By whom then?Please, let me bring it to you. Can or cannot? You won't be sorry.I was rather surprised to find myself agreeing to meet him downstairs at the Highland Stream, which ran its tasteless course from the back wall of The Pub, beneath a wooden bridge, to a drain beside the gift shop.

5

By a quarter to two the rain had became torrential and, given the unsettled state of my stomach, I was relieved. The Australian, I was certain, would not venture out in this downpour. Fifteen minutes later he proved me wrong, appearing before me as I sipped weak green tea.The sarong was gone. In its place was a double-breasted tweed suit made not only for a different age and climate but also, it seemed, for a more substantial man. Inside the framework of padded shoulders and wide lapels my visitor seemed shrunken, like a walnut left to wither in its sh.e.l.l. One could look at him and confidently guess that he had arrived in Kuala Lumpur in the late forties and had then, when the close-cropped hair on his beautifully shaped head was still black, displayed an almost sweet wistfulness around the shadowy corners of his mouth. Today he wore a white shirt and broad tie of a vaguely military design. He had done his best, as he had promised, yet the loose fit of his frayed collar gave him the appearance of even greater poverty and disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt than at that shocking moment when I spied him in his store.I should add that although he carried no umbrella, Christopher Chubb was somehow completely dry, as if he had been recently unfolded from a camphor chest.I offered him tea which he rejected rather brusquely. I am not here to bot on you, he said.I made room on my settee but he chose to sit opposite me. He immediately produced two envelopes which he laid on the coffee table, then a small metal case from which he took a pair of old-fashioned horn-rimmed spectacles. He appeared somewhat pompous. Without looking at me he carefully examined each of the envelopes and finally chose one to give me, his manner very monkish. It was unsettling to remember that these same hands had once given another editor the fraudulent poetry which had destroyed his life.What is this? I asked, looking into those seemingly mild eyes and discovering a sunken, sly intelligence.Something you need.There was nothing in the envelope but two roughly molded brown pills. If he'd said they were the work of dung beetles I would have found it credible.Pour les maladies des tropiques, he said in an appalling accent. I am not here to poison you, Mem. Please, take it. It will help, I promise.The pill seemed so alien, and he no less so. I doubt I would have taken it had not a particularly violent spasm arrived at just that moment.Watching me swallow, he smiled. In my interests that they work.I was startled that he should so plainly confess to 'interests.'He cast down his eyes, which produced an odd effect suggesting not whimsy or modesty but a sudden, secret arrogance. I don't want you dashing off, he said. I need to speak to you.He set down the second envelope. It was larger than the first and its flap had been closed with coa.r.s.e black tape, clearly from the bicycle shop, and this he now fussily rolled away. From the envelope he extracted a single sheet of paper wrapped in thin clear polythene.G.o.d knows why, but I was suddenly certain that he wished to sell me an autograph, and I did feel a twinge of compa.s.sion for this literary exile waiting for the chance to sell his little treasures. In this, I imagined, he was not unlike the boys who loitered in front of the Merlin with their rolls of batik, waiting for the Americans to come outside.Very delicately, he removed the plastic sheath, folding it so particularly that my eyes were held and I really paid no attention to the treasure it had protected, not until the owner brought it to my attention.It was a poem, or a part of a poem, composed in those thick rhythmic down-strokes which would later become, if only briefly, so familiar.May I pick it up?The tropics are not kind to paper.And indeed the page showed the signs of both mould and water damage, having become so very fragile that it seemed likely to break in half or even shatter. It looked to have been sliced from a bound journal.Read, Mem, read.I did so, and I doubt it needs saying that I read with a full consciousness of the old man's history. I approached these twenty lines with both suspicion and hostility, and for a moment I thought I had him. It was a sort of Oriental Tristan Tzara, but that was too glib a response to something with very complicated internal rhymes and, unlike Tzara, nothing felt the slightest bit false or old-fashioned. It slashed and stabbed its way across the page, at once familiar and alien. I wondered if the patois-Malay, Urdu-was disguising something as common as cod Eliot. But that did not fit either, for you really cannot counterfeit a voice. All I knew now, in my moment of greatest confusion and suspicion, was that my heart was beating very fast indeed. Rereading the fragment, I felt that excitement in my blood which is the only thing an editor should ever trust.Who wrote this, I asked. I must have looked frightfully stern but in fact I was all atwitter. Where is the rest of it?He removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, and sighed.Oh s.h.i.t, I thought, of course! It's him. It must be him. You wrote this?No, no, not me.Is the author a secret?You will not believe me.I should like to know, I said.It is a man named McCorkle.I do have a temper. My family knows I have a temper. It is probably true that I will die in a room by myself because I have savaged someone who was trying to help me, and I have seen good cause to write those notes of apology one of which-my grovelling little letter to Cyril Connolly-is apparently amongst his papers in the British Museum. But in this case it should not seem peculiar that I was angry, having been t.i.tillated by the prospect of a find only to be told that its author was the man upon the stair.I am afraid, I said, that Mr McCorkle's notoriety precedes him.Yes, he said, you know who he is. His manner was not as one might expect it to be-was oddly insistent, in fact. Oh, you know him certainly.But not exactly?He did not answer but returned the fragment to the safety of its plastic sleeve.I doubt it has much commercial value, I said.You think I come to hawk to you, he said brusquely.Of course that was precisely so, but I shook my head.Then what do do you think- you think-lah? He looked up at me with eyes still watery but also belligerent.Oh no, I said, you are the one who sought the meeting.He blinked. Perhaps a cup of tea, he said, and I saw what a strange and fragile creature he was, powerless, pathetic, filled with pride and self-importance.While I poured his tea he made himself very busy with his electrical tape, which he stubbornly forced to serve another time.You have been out to the Batu Caves, he asked. His treasure was sealed but as he lifted his tea-cup there was a slight tremble to his hand.I am a very bad tourist.Yes, he said, I never liked foreign places. Still, should see the kavadi kavadi bearers. People seem to like that, bamboos driven into the flesh. He paused, staring at me intently. Slater told you all about the McCorkle business? bearers. People seem to like that, bamboos driven into the flesh. He paused, staring at me intently. Slater told you all about the McCorkle business?Yes.He told you that Weiss died?The editor?He nodded and sipped his tea. The hand was now shaking violently.You must've felt terrible.Worse than that, he said in that papery, nasal voice.At first I had been struck by his beauty, but there was now something very off-putting about him-neediness where I had seen strength, unsteady liver-spotted hands, and the disconcerting sensuality of those tea-wet lips.You'll listen if I tell you a story?I looked over his shoulder to where Jalan Treacher had disappeared behind the knotted skeins of rain.I suppose I haven't anything better to do, I said, but in truth I had no interest in his story at all. I wished to read that fragment again, as he well knew, and so I must endure his tale.

6

I loathe dishonesty, he began, his grey eyes glittering. You would know that if you were familiar with my verse-lah my verse-lah. Like a good table or a chair, nothing there that does not do a useful job. So you see how bad it is that what I am remembered for is a fake. Smoke and mirrors, a joke, that's all it was.He paused, glaring almost accusingly. Have you been to Australia? he demanded suddenly. No, of course not-lah not-lah.Actually, I said, my mother was Australian.Yes, we have a terror of being out of date.Mother did not like to talk about Australia. She had rather a set against it.Yes, she is Australian. She is wondering, what are people saying in France or wearing in London? That is the issue for her, isn't it? He raised his reedy voice but seemed unaware of the attention he was drawing to himself. No, we cannot wait, he cried, slapping his knee. We cannot wait another day to know, and yet we must wait-lah wait-lah. They call it the Tyranny of Distance now, so I am told.In the nineteenth century, he continued, energetically adding sugar to his tea, the women of Sydney would go down to Circular Quay to see what the English ladies were wearing when they stepped ash.o.r.e. Wah Wah, look at that. Must have one now. Whatever they saw there would be copied in the week. It will still be the same, take my word. Must have whatever fashion comes down the gangway. Osbert Sitwell, Edith Sitwell, we will have poems just like theirs on the streets tomorrow. Now, he said, one of the fashion spotters on the dock was a young man named David Weiss.The editor?A very handsome Jew. Parents were in the shmatte shmatte business. A man of letters also, so he thought-boy of letters really, so young. The parents were cultured in the way these people often are. I never went into a Jewish house until I met him. Who could believe it? My home bare as a cupboard, no books, dried-out plates of leftovers in the fridge. Here, suddenly-b.l.o.o.d.y walls of books, Turkish rugs, modern paintings, De Chirico, Leger. So shocking to m business. A man of letters also, so he thought-boy of letters really, so young. The parents were cultured in the way these people often are. I never went into a Jewish house until I met him. Who could believe it? My home bare as a cupboard, no books, dried-out plates of leftovers in the fridge. Here, suddenly-b.l.o.o.d.y walls of books, Turkish rugs, modern paintings, De Chirico, Leger. So shocking to me-lah. Unfair that anyone should have such a start in life.Weiss and I, he said, were students at Fort Street, school for clever boys. Who would guess it now that I have become a mongrel? Then I won the exhibition in Greek and the Special Prize for an essay on the influence of Hokusai on Renoir-all this from reproductions, you understand. But it was through David Weiss-three years younger, imagine-I learned of Rilke and Mallarme. He lent me The Little Review The Little Review. We were friends, members only, but he was always foreign to me. You know these people, no natural reticence or modesty. Always thrusting themselves forward, must have a different table than the one they are shown to by the waiter. Soup has to be made hotter when any of us would eat it as it came. You must not think me an anti-Semite. Perhaps I sound like one.Indeed he did.Well, I was jealous of Weiss, won't say I wasn't. We were all struggling poets, trying to find our voices, to be published in little magazines printed on brown wrapping paper. It was the war, the end of civilisation, who could know? I was twenty-four, a private in the army in New Guinea. Weiss had some cushy job in the Department of Defence. He sat on his b.u.m in Melbourne. I was shot by b.l.o.o.d.y j.a.ps, carried on a litter for sixty miles, dropped and b.l.o.o.d.y-well abandoned in an ambush. Cheh Cheh. No end to it. Delivered to hospital in Rabaul; transferred to Townsville, where I was given this poetry magazine called Personae Personae. No brown paper here-lah here-lah. Top-hole only, the best stock, a cover painting in colour. Inside, all the very latest fashions in poetry and art. And who was its editor? David Weiss! My first feeling? Jealousy. Why not? He was three years younger. No war for him, and now so far ahead. But then I read what he had chosen, and what I felt was not jealousy but ... how pathetic, Mem. It was so fake, so half past six. No head, no tail. I truly could not bear it- sick in my gut. I will tell you the feeling-exactly like listening to my mother in the Church of England in Haberfield. Always the smell of something false about her. Holy, holy holy. Bellowing the responses more loudly than anyone else, making an exhibition of herself. Samah-samah Samah-samah, all the same- fake is fake no matter where you find it.In Australia they think I am the great conservative. Listen, I had spent more time reading Eliot and Pound than Weiss ever did, and later I would prove this. Even great poets have tics. No problem to trick a lazy reader with the mannerisms. Weiss knew of writers I had never heard of, but there was something shallow in his character. Send him a poem with the line 'Look, my Anopheles' as if it were some cla.s.sical allusion and he would never admit he did not know Anopheles. He might try to look it up, but if he couldn't find it-forget it. Fake it. Never mind.Well, Mem, Anopheles is a mosquito, and when I saw his magazine I had it in mind to sting him where his skin was bare. I know I said I would not bot on you....Please, I said, whatever you want.He ordered a cuc.u.mber sandwich, the cheapest item on the menu.But you invented a whole life for your poet, I said. Is it true that you even produced a birth certificate?He stared at me. Slater told you, yes or not? What lagi lagi?That's all he said.Weiss was a pinko, he said angrily. I would have made McCorkle a coal miner except they'd have gone looking for his union card. I gave birth to a bicycle mechanic instead. But his poems would be learned, so many cla.s.sical allusions- from a grease monkey. Explain that. It cannot be. What a notion, that the ignorant can make great art.It sounds as if you were very convincing, I said.It reeked of rat-lah reeked of rat-lah.His sandwich arrived and he paused to pick it up, turning it this way and that as if he hadn't seen one for many years.Reeked, he said, but I knew young Weiss had lost his schnozzle. He would so want want pearls in the s.h.i.t of swine, so want the genius to be a mechanic that he would never stop to question the evidence. This is why I wrote this letter. Meant to come from McCorkle's sister. pearls in the s.h.i.t of swine, so want the genius to be a mechanic that he would never stop to question the evidence. This is why I wrote this letter. Meant to come from McCorkle's sister.He replaced the cuc.u.mber sandwich, and as he did so his entire face changed, the cheeks sinking and the shadowy mouth becoming as tight and small as a widow's purse. The transformation was disturbing and did not become less so when I realised that he was taking on the sister's character.'Beatrice McCorkle,' he announced in a careful nasal accent which was marked in equal part by its lack of education and its great desire for propriety.'Dear Sir, When I was going through my brother's things after his death, I found some poetry he had written.'Watching Chubb, I was reminded of a completely unnerving seance I once attended in Pimlico where an old Welsh woman suddenly began talking like a posh young man. That had been a striking mutation, and this performance now taking place on the tartan banks of the Highland Stream was more than its equal. Christopher Chubb was still sitting there in his oversized clothes with his large spotted hands, but the voice was from quite another place and body. As would happen often in the future, all those disturbing Malaysian locutions were suddenly leached away. Witnessing the depth and detail of the character, I wondered if this was not the mother he seemed to loathe so much.'I am no judge of poetry myself,' said the voice of Beatrice McCorkle, 'but a friend who I showed it to thinks it is very good and told me it should be published. On his advice I am sending you the poems for an opinion.'It would be a kindness if you would let me know whether you think there is anything in them. I am not a literary person myself and I do not feel I understand what he wrote, but I feel that I ought to do something about them. My brother Bob kept himself very much to himself and lived on his own of late years and he never said anything about writing poetry. He was very ill in the months before his death last July and it may have affected his outlook.'I enclose a 2d stamp for reply, and oblige. Yours sincerely. Beatrice McCorkle.'At that moment, devouring his sandwich, Chubb appeared monstrous-malicious, anti-Semitic, so grotesque and self-deceiving in his love of 'truth and beauty' I felt the Wode-Dougla.s.s temper rising like steam behind my eyes and I do believe I would've said something very sharp indeed had I not been interrupted by the Sikh doorman who'd met us on the traumatic night of our arrival.Your friend, he said. Mr Slater. He is very sick. You must go to him.

7

Slater was waiting at his door. His face was green. From the gloomy room behind him there came the unpleasant aroma of a poorly ventilated lavatory.I'm so sorry, he said as he accepted my last Enterovioform. I am a selfish beast, I know it.Still standing in the open doorway, he gulped down the pill without aid of water. I rather hope it's not amoebic dysentery, he said. I did have that once. Lost two stone in a week. You really should get to a doctor if you're able, although they'll charge a b.l.o.o.d.y fortune if you're English. The Chinese chaps are better.He retreated into the room, which rather incredibly showed the remnants of two breakfasts. He followed my eyes.Yes, yes, he said, as he threw a napkin over the tray. I know, I know.You had a visitor, I asked incredulously.I'm a wretch, dear girl, I know I am. I thought a little ma.s.sage might make me better.Breakfast with a ma.s.seur? I have a visitor myself, I said. I have a visitor myself, I said.This perked him up a little-though in retying his dressing gown he revealed a great deal more of his legs than I wished to see. You devil, he said.No. It is Christopher Chubb.Chubb? No!He is downstairs still.Slater sat heavily on the bed. Now listen to me, little Micks, he said. You tell him to go.I'll do no such thing.This is not a nice man.But rather interesting nonetheless.Oh he'll be b.l.o.o.d.y interesting all right, he said, grunting with effort as he reached for the telephone. Call the b.l.o.o.d.y desk. They'll get that big Sikh fellow on the door to see him off.I took the phone from him and returned it to its cradle. He's my guest, I said.Your guest is barking b.l.o.o.d.y mad. What's he selling?He isn't selling anything. When you called he was telling me about the McCorkle Hoax.Jesus, Sarah, you're the editor of an internationally respected poetry journal. You don't even want to touch touch a thing like this. Did he show you poetry? a thing like this. Did he show you poetry?No.Are you sure?Of course I'm sure.Well, you stay away from Chubb. I should never have drawn your attention to the leech. Has he asked for money?Only a cuc.u.mber sandwich.Leave it at that, then. He is not at all well balanced. Why do you think he's here? Why do you think an educated man is sitting in that ghastly shop with those pustules on his legs?I think they're tropical ulcers.He is there, Micks, because he went mad.To hear Slater speak so loudly and negatively about another poet was, to say the least, unusual. Setting Dylan Thomas aside, he was normally exceptionally careful. I was not deaf to him now, but if I can trust anything it is my taste-or, to risk a vulgarity, my heart. One's pulse rate is a very reliable indicator of what one encounters.For a madman, I said, he seems rather credible. Why didn't you tell me how well you knew him?I don't know him! I spent an evening with him in Sydney at the end of the war and he tried it on with me.You mean s.e.xually?Of course b.l.o.o.d.y not s.e.xually. He is really a despicable person. He will drag you into his delusional world, have you believing the most preposterous things.You make him sound even more interesting.This is my responsibility, and I cannot permit you to speak with him again.Though intent on saying much more he was taken, at this moment, by a powerful colonic spasm and bent over in agony. Still doubled up, he stumbled to the bathroom. While he went about his business, I propped the door open with the telephone book and opened the windows to the rain, which hadn't relented in the least. The carpet was soon rather wet, but the room itself a little refreshed.Slater returned, threw himself heavily on his bed, and burrowed under the covers.Just send him away, he said. Trust me, Sarah.I could not have been given a clearer warning of the consequence, and I really did go back to the foyer with the intention of terminating our interview.You were talking to Slater? Chubb asked as I returned to my settee.Yes, I was.He told you I was mad?No, of course not, I said, observing that the wrapped page of poetry had been returned to the middle of the table.Wah-he got a fright the night he met me.And why was that, Mr Chubb?He looked at me keenly-suspiciously even-as if calculating the odds of my having heard the story already. I plan to tell you why, he said at last, but after I have told you what happened to the Jew. But I see Slater has put you off me.No, not at all. Of course not.He looked at me with an animal wariness, but of course continued with the story he had come to tell, pausing only occasionally to nibble at a sandwich. Although here again I was reminded of the way a dog or cat will eat, always cautious, concerned that a delicacy might be the bait inside a trap.

8

Jealous or not, said Chubb, I did submit my work to Personae Personae, and Weiss took six months to reject it. But now I sent him the first two fakes by 'Bob McCorkle,' and seven days later there was the envelope in the Townsville P.O. mailbox I'd rented for just this purpose. And Weiss was as boh-doh boh-doh as a crayfish, in a great rush to crawl inside a trap. So excited he could not write straight. Very difficult to read his scrawl. 'My a.s.sessment is that this is work of the very greatest importance. I should be very glad if you would send me any more of his poetry that is extant.' Extant, G.o.d save me. To Beatrice he writes 'extant'? So as a crayfish, in a great rush to crawl inside a trap. So excited he could not write straight. Very difficult to read his scrawl. 'My a.s.sessment is that this is work of the very greatest importance. I should be very glad if you would send me any more of his poetry that is extant.' Extant, G.o.d save me. To Beatrice he writes 'extant'? So aiksy aiksy.Well, you designed the trap just for him, I said. Surely you can't blame the poor man for falling into it.Oh I blamed him-lah. I blamed him very much at the beginning.But you set out to destroy him.No, Chubb cried, with such pa.s.sion that his voice cut across the lounge like a hawker's, and a wall-faced Chinese gentleman in a boxy suit stepped out from behind the reception desk and stood watching, hands folded in the region of his crotch.No! His watery eyes had turned a cold and cloudy blue. Please, no.Mr Chubb-No, he interrupted, you are plain wrong. I meant him no harm at all. No danger.He died, I said, more angrily than I intended.He stared so, it almost frightened me-white fissures in the iris, like those in fast-set ice.I liked Weiss, he began again. Meant nothing but good. He was only twenty-one and so desperate to be in fashion. But don't you see? The boy writes drivel, publishes drivel. Does this matter, Mem? Perhaps I valued truth above friendship.He looked to me, as if expecting me to endorse this view. I held my tongue.Think what you like, I set out to prove the truth. These people had become so hooked on the latest fashion. No substance. Action only. The truth was dead or rotting. There had been a complete decay of meaning and craftsmanship in poetry.When you say 'these people,' I said, do you mean Jews?He balked, staring at me fixedly, and I could not tell if I had hit the mark or gone so wide that he was stunned by my a.s.sumption.Have you read the McCorkle poems, he asked at last. No? He leaned forward and laid his surprisingly moist hand against my arm. I stayed very still until he removed it.'Swamps,' he recited mockingly in that wispy nasal voice, 'marshes, borrow-pits and other/Areas of stagnant water serve/As breeding grounds....' There, he said. The genius of young Bob McCorkle. What do you say to that?Naturally enough I said nothing.'Areas of stagnant water serve as breeding grounds.' Do you know what that is from?I shook my head.An army manual of mosquito eradication. You see, it meant nothing-lah. There is another poem I sent him, 'Colloquy with John Keats.' It begins, 'I have been bitter with you, my brother....' It is stolen. Any educated person would know from where.How I disliked this prim pedagogy. Pound, I said: 'I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman-I have detested you long enough.'Yes, he said, then listen to Bob McCorkle's lines to Keats: 'I have been bitter with you, my brother,/Remembering that saying of Lenin when the shadow/Was already on his face: "The emotions are not skilled workers."' Of course Lenin never said such a preposterous thing.With his frayed, gaping collar and his raised, crooked eyebrows he did look barking mad. Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon! Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon! I disagree, I said. The Lenin line is more witty than preposterous. And the opening line is quite different from Pound's. I disagree, I said. The Lenin line is more witty than preposterous. And the opening line is quite different from Pound's.Of course I had praised him without meaning to, so easy was it to forget that Chubb was the real author here. When I made this slip he could not quite contain his pleasure and he suddenly reminded me of those cunning old tramps who used to turn up at the kitchen door in High Wycombe with some story of the great tragedy that befell me, Miss great tragedy that befell me, Miss.Yet I must not make myself appear too cynical, for this was exactly the story I wished to hear. This must also have occurred to Chubb, of course.If I had shown the first McCorkle poems to you, he said, you would have smelled the rat, I know you would.But, Mr Chubb, you cannot have the slightest idea of my judgement.Aiyah-I saw your magazine.But as you said, you have not had time to read it.Again he balked and stared at me. Anyway, he said at last, Weiss wrote back to little Beatrice, who-he lapsed into that horrid accent-'was only too pleased to give the biographical information you requested.' Better she never wrote back, but no choice now. Bob McCorkle must be born. 'I could not stop Bob from leaving school at fourteen,' Beatrice wrote, 'and after that he was set on going to work. I have always thought he was very foolish not to have got his Intermediate.'See how she writes to him-ah. So polite. Very respectful. Carrying his big leg, is what we say here.'I am so pleased you think the poems are good enough to publish. I never thought they would be of interest to people overseas.' The writing in the letter, Chubb said, is even better than the poems. You can smell the suburbs in it. Cats' p.i.s.s in the privet hedge. Leaking gas. Reeking odours of the pet.i.te bourgeoisie.Could Beatrice, I said, bear any resemblance to your mother?In the hour or so we had been talking Chubb had taken nothing stronger than tea, but now he showed a drunk's quick trigger. Don't get clever-lah clever-lah, he hissed.This sudden rage reminded me of Slater's warnings. I therefore signed and collected my purse.Releks, he said urgently. Please. I know I am behaving badly. I promise I will stop it now.Thank you, Mr Chubb, it has been very interesting.You are the the Sarah Wode-Dougla.s.s? You covered the Christie Murders for Sarah Wode-Dougla.s.s? You covered the Christie Murders for The Times? The Times? That was you? What the chances you ever come That was you? What the chances you ever come jalan-jalan jalan-jalan past my door? And with John Slater? Me with Rilke? This is one chance in one million-but believe me, Mem, I have been waiting for you for the last eleven years. past my door? And with John Slater? Me with Rilke? This is one chance in one million-but believe me, Mem, I have been waiting for you for the last eleven years.I found myself, not for the last time, transfixed by him. I stood, holding my handbag, very aware not only of his earnest eyes but also of the tantalising parcel on the periphery of my vision.It is not only poetry I want to tell you about, he said. Something much worse-lah worse-lah. Sit.

9

It was to me that he issued his command to sit but John Slater also obeyed, appearing from nowhere to plop himself down untidily beside me, stretching his long arm protectively behind my back, extending his great bare legs beneath the table from which Chubb's plastic-clad offerings had disappeared.Those two vertical frown marks above Slater's nose were the acid which had always stopped his good looks from being too saccharine. They drew attention to his very clear and active eyes and somehow, in the tugged and twisted skin of his forehead, suggested a sort of moral outrage. He could certainly look extremely fierce, and I should imagine his sheer size made him frightening to Chubb, whom he had obviously come to drive away.First, as ever, he needed food and drink.To the waitress he said: Satu lagi Satu lagi beer, one more Tiger, and do you have any of those little dried fish things. beer, one more Tiger, and do you have any of those little dried fish things. Ikan ketcheel Ikan ketcheel. I forget what they're called.You want the fried fish, Tuan Tuan?No, no, small fish