A Closed Book Read Free Page A

Charles. He was an Oxford don. I ought to say, a former Oxford don. He lived in Chipping Campden. That, as you may or may not know, is a small town about thirty miles from here.’
    ‘I do know Chipping Campden.’
    ‘Well, my friend Charles lived in Chipping Campden and once, occasionally twice, a week, he’d drive over and dine with me. Then, after dark, he’d take me out for a stroll. Always after dark. It’s for that reason I always long for summer to come to an end.’
    ‘Sorry, for what reason?’
    ‘In winter, you see, it’s dark by – when? – by four o’clock? In summer we had to wait until at least nine or ten and even then there was a fairly good chance of meeting someone else out walking. And I couldn’t cover my face up quite so plausibly, of course, on a balmy summer evening. I tell you, John, some of theworst moments of my existence have been hot summer nights when I’ve been out for a stroll. People may not say anything, but I can hear them. I can hear the way their conversation falters and then falls eerily quiet and then starts up again when they imagine they’re out of earshot, but they’re not, you see. It’s always just that crucial little bit too soon. Do you know, I’ve actually heard cars slowing down –
slowing down
– presumably so their gawping occupants can get a better look at me. And dogs. There are dogs that actually bark at me.’
    ‘You know, you probably won’t believe me, but it isn’t honestly that bad. I can’t help feeling you’re over –’
    ‘I know how bad it is.’
    ‘Didn’t you ever think of having a dog yourself? You know, one of those – what are they called? – seeing-eye dogs? They’re Labradors usually.’
    ‘Can’t abide the nasty slavering beasts. Never could. I detest barking. To me a barking dog sounds just like some asthmatic old buffer coughing up his guts.
And
dogs work for the police.’
    ‘They what?’
    ‘You’ve never heard of a police cat, have you?’
    ‘Hah. Well no, I guess not.’
    ‘I’m basically a cat person. I had one once, a Siamese. No longer, though. My face would give even a cat the willies. But to return to Charles. Poor fellowdied on me last year. And now I have no one. No one but an illiterate housekeeper who cooks for me and keeps the place reasonably neat. Or so I thought. Till you let slip how grubby it was.’
    ‘Now look, sorry, but there you’re being a bit unfair, both to me and your housekeeper. I didn’t say the house, the room, was dirty. Just that it clearly hasn’t been painted in some years. Anyway, I like it the way it is.’
    ‘Enough to come and stay and help me write my book?’
    *
    ‘Well, I don’t really know. What exactly
would
that entail?’
    ‘You’d have to live here, of course. Seven days a week, if you’re so minded. Five, if you preferred to return to London for two days out of every seven. And, by the way, those two days wouldn’t have to be Saturday and Sunday. As I’m sure you must realize, weekends have no meaning for me.’
    ‘I meant the nature of the work itself. You said earlier you wanted to “borrow” my eyes?’
    ‘Yes. What I intend to write is – for want of a better word, I suppose I’ll have to call it my autobiography. In any event, whatever it precisely is, it’ll be my last book. My testament, if you like. And what I need from you, or whoever, is actually, physically, to write thebloody thing for me. Now I know I must strike you as a cantankerous old bugger. That was certainly my reputation in what is laughingly referred to as London’s literary world. But I’m not such a fogey as all that. In my study, for example – that’s the door to it on your right – I have what I think is called a state-of-the-art word processor. I purchased it only a couple of weeks before I flew to Sri Lanka.’
    ‘Really? Now I’d have put you down as a pen-and-ink sort of writer.’
    ‘Well, as it happens, old man, not quite, not quite. I’ve actually been known