All the Write Moves
There it is again: that shape in the corner of my eye! It has been maddening me for days! Is there something wrong with my eyes? Am I hallucinating? Then it vanishes and I carry on home.
‘Home – my lair of last resort – is a bedsit in one of the big old mansions bordering Clapham Common. Once described as ‘crumbling’ but have since been tarted up to house younger, more affluent tenants. Tenants unlike me, I hasten to add. I’m the exception, an ageing, impoverished interloper. Treadwell’s the name, Aubery Treadwell. I am – or rather I was – a novelist but I don’t produce much nowadays apart from the odd out squeezed out sentence on mornings when I feel clearheaded enough.
The novel I’m currently supposed to be writing is Diary of a Popped Cork about an alcoholic’s battle with the bottle – a topic a bit close to home perhaps. I don’t have a contract or – for many a long year – an agent. So what do I do when not squeezing out sentences for the novel? I traipse round the Common or eke out halves of bitter in The Alexandra, watching the sport on its big TV screen.
My life wasn’t always like this. In fact it started out quite well in a scuffed top drawer kind of way. If you look across the room and ignore the empties and the overflowing ashtrays you can still detect some traces: a photo on a shelf of me with my arms around some school friends at Sherborne, another with me looking sophisticated at Cambridge in a row of Footlights actors (several of whom are now knights and dames of the theatre) and a wedding day shot of me alongside Evelyn. Where is she is now? Not the foggiest. The last I heard she was involved in something to do with TV production in the States. Next to the photos stands my slender fictional output.
I wrote my first book, The Epictetus Gang, coming down from Cambridge. It was about a group of young people, somewhat rootless and unmoored, like me and my friends feeling their way in the capital, who vow to live by ancient stoic principles – with predictably serio-comic results. I wrote it on a high, astonished by the ease with which the words flowed and sparkled. People say it’s my only book with any joy and life in it. Whatever. To my surprise it proved both a critical and a commercial success, and for a time I was the bright new star in the literary firmament.
That glow soon faded. I proceeded to lose myself in the thickets of moral solemnity. My second book, Echo Chamber, was about mutual misperceptions inside a family. Politely received by the critics, it bombed in the bookshops. The central character of my third, Disconnected Man, was a middle-aged man in the throes of an identity crisis. It too died the death. Shaking their heads over my wretched sales figures, my editor and agent regretfully waved me good-bye. I proceeded to float down a river of booze. Divorce followed, more drink and then drugs – a journey broken only by the odd stint in rehab and a bizarre interlude when I was unaccountably taken on as a copywriter in an advertising agency – a position abruptly terminated given my habit of turning up every morning blitzed out of my skull.
So there you have it – the story of me. Or not quite the complete story. Looking across the room you might be puzzled, given my openly confessed creative sterility, by the mountains of manuscripts piled on every available surface. But these aren’t novels, I should add, although they are fiction of a kind. They are the records of a dream, the voluminous product of the semi-pleasurable, semi-lacerating fantasy that now absorbs my every moment.
It all kicked off one morning when I was pondering those cardinal moments in my life when I went wrong instead of going right. I began to try to imagine what an alternative, successful Aubrey Treadwell might look like, whom I took to calling ‘Treadwell Two’ or, more familiarly, ‘Two’. As time passed I fleshed him out, added colour, background and detail. Since then I have documented his life in its minutest aspects right down to his suits and shirts, even the cedar scented drawer where he keeps his socks. Daily I fill out his diary and I keep pace with him on his lonely writing schedule, that efficient assembly line out of which bestsellers unfailingly roll.
These documents are the replacement novel I cannot write – an alternative autobiography, the story of a man I could have been but wasn’t. I’ve ghosting and crafted a different me, one who is more real to me than I am myself. Among the few objects in my bedsit is a small mirror. When I’m not scribbling about Two, I sometimes look into it. Mostly it is my own pasty face that looks back at me with its thinning red hair and two little irritable raisins of eyes. But at other times Two’s face stares at me, that of a man basking in the many sunny satisfactions of his life, who keeps himself in glossy good shape, honed by expensive personal trainers, tempered and tanned by endless afternoon games of tennis and early morning lengths in his private swimming pool.
Two and I were one until my first novel after which we went our sharply separate ways. While I lost myself in the solemn fogs of moral introspection, Two plunged cheerfully downmarket, churning out a series of slickly plotted popular thrillers. Scorpion Dance was about a gang of double-crossing criminals who come to various pleasurably sticky ends. Loser Takes All told the tale of a casino heist masterminded by an ex-gambling addict. Coins of Vantage delved into the murky underworld of cryptocurrencies, Dopehead into the jungle of opioid dealing. The central character of Tightly Wrapped Bitches was a private eye hard on the heels of an international sex trafficking gang. Double Douche, featured an Amsterdam call girl who powered her rise through blackmail and murder. After that I took Two on a trip into Stephen King land. In his Roadkill an unhinged cleric turned itinerant serial killer, while in Roach Motel, the proprietor is a pillar of the local community who systematically slaughtered a line of hapless losers, fraudsters and petty criminals who have the misfortune to cross his threshold. As each novel came out I penned a clutch of rave reviews: ‘Aubery Treadwell,’ enthused one of my phantom critics, ‘is the fictional equivalent of crack cocaine, blending the pace of Lee Child with Jacqueline Suzanne’s glitzy superficiality.’
Why I didn’t write Two’s novels myself, you might well ask. The answer is I couldn’t. It had nothing to do with snobbery: I’d gladly have written them and enjoyed their profits but some mysterious barrier always seemed to come down. I can outline his plots and characters but cannot come up with a single line of text.
As I said, Two’s novels like high performance athletes leapt unfailingly to the top of the bestseller lists and squatted there profitably month after month. Inevitably Hollywood came knocking, and Two’s novels formed the basis for a line of blockbusters, which I was happy to populate with big name stars. William Dafoe proved sinister perfection as the murderous motel owner, as did Nicholas Cage as the psycho killer cleric. Liam Neeson was dourly convincing as he despatched the sex trafficking gang. Meanwhile Madonna fought for leading role in the film of Double Douche and in the face of fierce competition won it.
Two had by now become a superstar. Fought over by agents and publishers, wined and dined at The Ivy, topping of the bill at literary festivals. he was whisked up into a world of wealth and glamour, with houses in LA, Lake Tahoe, London, Paris and Moustique, not to mention a Thames-side mansion complete with heli-pad (Two has his own pilot’s licence) where he keeps his collections of Young British Artists and interwar Italian sports cars. There, from time to time he entertains the Clooneys, his neighbours in nearby Sonning. Having squired a bevy of beautiful talented women, Two finally settled down with Madison Mackenzie, an American ‘influencer’ with close links to the White House. Their daughters, Mia, Penny and Zoë, are currently being expensively ‘finished’ at private schools in France and Switzerland.
The only setback to Two’s career came when I had him appointed Chair of the Arts Council. I had not foreseen the furore this would spark. As he had long been a lavish contributor to Tory coffers, there were accusations of jobbery along with much handwringing over our sorry cultural decline. ‘It is that appalling,’ fulminated one literary mandarin, ‘that a scribbler of lurid thrillers has been enthroned at the heart of one of our most important artistic institutions.’ But given time – time I was only too happy to allot – the storm passed.
To counter these charges, I decided to nudge Two into more intellectually ambitious areas. His next novel, The Eternity Men, grappled with the issues of genetic manipulation, while his Preppers depicted the efforts of the rich and privileged to safeguard themselves against environmental and nuclear Armageddon. My imaginary reviewers duly took note, detecting a new note of sophisticated postmodern irony in Two’s work. ‘Treadwell’s novels,’ one declared, ‘are brilliant deconstructions of the thriller genre. Their hyperreal, hallucinatory quality forces us to confront, question and cross, nay transgress, the borders between art and reality and between imagination and praxis.’ Two had at last achieved cultural respectability.
Two’s most recent novel, The Backward Looking Angel, has just come out. It tells the story of a linked group of families over several generations from the end of the Second World War right up to 9/11, their members borne as it were backwards into the future, transfixed by the horror of the past. My critics enthused. ‘Angel takes us back to James and Conrad,’ wrote one. ‘Treadwell has restored the strengths of the classic European novel for a twenty-first century audience. For balance I dropped in one dissenting voice: ‘Treadwell’s latest overblown production,’ snarled one of my critics, ‘reads like Herman Wouk on a bad day.’ That said, Angel is the novel of Two I would most like to have written myself, had I his drive and stamina. You could say that in a sense with Angel Two and I became one again
*
The weirdness has spiralled! Those shapes in the corner of my eye have taken on a definite form, someone I know only too well – Two. I caught sight of him a week ago turning a corner in Clapham. Other sightings followed. I tried to catch up with him but in vain. One second he was there, the next gone. Did he sense my presence? I think so. More than once he looked back over his shoulder with what seemed a hunted, terrified expression. Yesterday, though, events took a bizarre twist.
I was sat on a bench on the Common when I sensed someone next to me. I turned and looked and there was Two, just as I had imagined him: well-groomed and expensively dressed. But he looked deeply troubled. He was trembling violently and staring down at the grass between his feet. Oddly, although I should have been alarmed, for some reason I wasn’t. I felt strangely detached, if anything dreamily amused by this surreal irruption.
‘Mr Treadwell, I presume?’ I said. ‘At last we meet. Are you the real me or am I? Am I in your dream or you in mine?’
Two looked round at me. ‘How can you be so smug!’ he snapped. ‘It’s intolerable. I can’t sleep, I can’t write, I can hardly breathe. There’s no escaping you – a dingy failed version of me with your stained mac, your worn-out shoes and your cheap haircut. I keep seeing you all over London. For God’s sake stop pestering me!’
‘It’s none of my doing. Anyway you’re looking well. Success clearly suits you.’
Two sniffed.’ I wish I could return the compliment.’
‘Thanks. But at least I haven’t sold out.’
‘I resent that. I’m good at what I do and I give pleasure to a lot of people.’
‘Money isn’t everything.’
‘But it’s something. Better than the nothing you’ve got.’
‘Now it’s my turn to feel resentment. We can’t all be successes, you know.’
He started. ‘All? You mean there are more?’
‘No, calm down. Only the two I know of.’ I decided it would be politic to change the subject. ‘Just ut of interest, Two, how’s our ex-wife Evelyn doing on your side of things?’
‘Fine,’ he answered absently. ‘We’re working together on a TV adaptation of one of my novels.’
‘How nice! Good luck with that. But tell me, Two: how exactly did you track me down?’
‘Stop calling me Two! I’m One – you’re Two!’
‘OK, sorry, sorry. But, as I say, how did you track me down?’
‘Something – I don’t know what – kept leading me south of the river.’
‘Well, they do say unlike poles attract.’
‘Don’t taunt me!’ Two jumped up and looked hard at me. For a second I thought he was going to hit me or even try to kill me. Well, I thought, murder might be one way out of this situation.
‘Come on, get a grip,’ I said. ‘Sit down and let’s see if we can find some way to end this.’
‘End it?’ he shrieked. ‘Yes, that’s right, end it – that’s what’s got to happen. Things can’t go on like this. I can’t bear it. One of us has got to go. If you won’t, I will.’
With that he got up and stormed off across the Common.
The following morning the weirdness reached a climax. When I woke, I found myself not in my own bed but lying on a deserted beach. My whole body was shivering violently. I soon saw why. I was wearing only my underclothes and they were sopping wet. Through them I could feel the hard grit of the sand. It could not have been long after dawn. The pale disc of sun had just broken the horizon and was still veiled in a thin skein of early morning cloud. Overhead, a few solitary gulls circled, clattering and cawing. Otherwise the shore was utterly deserted. But where was I? And how had I got there? Looking round, I spotted a pile of clothes on top of a pair of expensive shoes. Something white was fluttering pinned to the bundle. I went over and examined it. It was a suicide note from Two:
I can’t this any longer. I no longer know who or what I am. I’ve become a ghost not only to myself but to my wife and daughters. I cannot inflict this suffering on them and so I am going to end it for good. Tell my family I love them all dearly and that they are always to think of me as I was, not as I am now. Farewell. Aubery Treadwell.
The poor chap had obviously drowned himself. I felt a strange mix of emotions relief, pity but most of all a terrible desolation. My wry humour of the previous day had quite deserted me. My shivering intensified. Checking to see no-one was around I stripped off my sodden underclothes, dried myself as best I could and put on the clothes Two had so conveniently left behind. They fitted perfectly. I went through the other pockets and found a wallet containing a thick wad of notes.
Then, through the sand dunes, I made my way off the beach. I found a path that led to a cluster of houses. I recognised them at once: Studland, a place I had often cycled to from Sherborne. As I neared the village I smelt bacon and instantly realised how ravenous I was. Its source was the open door of a café under a sign that read, appropriately enough, The Pig on the Beach. No doubt it had opened early to cater for early fishermen. I went in and with some of Two’s money treated myself to a full English breakfast washed down by several mugs of strong tea. Feeling more solid, I left and caught a country bus to Ware, the nearest mainline station, and from there got on a train to London. That night I was back in the warm, welcoming squalor of my Clapham bedsit.
Next morning, though exhausted, I felt unusually elated and energised. A terrible burden seemed to have fallen from my shoulders. If Two had done away with himself, I would have done with him too. I bundled up all the papers about Two in the bedsit, carried them down to the large communal wheelie-bin at the back of the flats and stuffed them in, along with Two’s suicide note and his wallet (minus of course the money). Back in my room I cranked up my battered old word processor and tapped out a title page. It read: Scorpion Dance.
*
Madison was stood in the kitchen of our London house, her hips pivoted against the granite top. Even in the night-time half-light I was sharply conscious of her beauty: her creamy complexion, her dense cluster of auburn hair and her dark, deep-set eyes. She seemed only a little older than when my publisher first introduced us, having recruited her to promote my books in the States. Almost at once we embarked on an affair and a few months later found ourselves married. We’ve been together now for over twenty years, until recently very successfully.
Madison held out to me a glass of Dom Perignon, smiling in the stiff way that had become habitual with her over the past year. ‘So how was it at Hay-on-Wye? The usual triumph?’
‘OK.’
‘Only OK? You seem a bit down. Did anything go wrong?’
Nothing,’ I lied. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. It’s late and it was a long drive back on the M4. I’d better turn in. I’ve got a meeting with a producer in the morning.’
‘No difficult questions then?’
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ (There’d been the usual stuff about how did I reconciling my early thrillers with my more intellectual books. I fielded it with my standard line. Citing Simenon who alternated his Maigrets with his romans durs, I point out that it’s not uncommon for writers to span different genres. I generally add that critics were increasingly detecting a sophisticated ambiguity even in my early thrillers.)
Those early thrillers – how easily they wrote themselves after Two’s demise! They felt like someone else was holding my pen (I always write my first drafts in long hand and type up later with any revisions. Not that I have felt much need since to revise what I’ve come up with.) Scorpion Dance like all my later thrillers was an international bestsellers and the stuff of Hollywood blockbuster. Incidentally, Madonna fought hard for the leading role in Double Douche but finally lost out to Scarlett Johansen, who brought just the right edge of icy murderous beauty to the part.
I have never told Madison anything about my strange double life in Clapham. She knew I went through a period of bad writer’s block at that time but no more than that. Anyway there was no need. To all intents and purpose I have become Two, and life has been good for us. We have several houses including our Thames-side mansion. Our daughters, Mia, Penny and Zoë, are currently being expensively ‘finished’ at private schools in France and Switzerland.
As I say, all my books have been bestsellers. But I was hungry for something more and in The Backward Looking Angel I tried to head in a new and more artistically ambitious direction. The critics greeted the novel favourably but at that point something weird happened. I completely ran out of ideas. At first I welcomed this barrenness as a break and a long deserved holiday. But as the ‘holiday’ wore on I became increasingly agitated. I did not need the money – I had enough already – and I could easily swat aside the nagging of my agent and publisher. But I could not rid myself of a deep-seated emptiness: what was I good for if I could not write? Depressed, I turned to the bottle again and then, in a desperate attempt to kick-start my creativity, started consuming cocaine almost by the shovelful. To no avail.
Madison sensed my tension and pressed me to open up about it but I felt too insecure, to talk about it. It would have jibbed with the paperback edition of my life that I had handed her. I had always felt that our relationship was rooted in my continuing creative fertility and with its loss I withdrew more and more into myself – a move which Madison felt and resented. An increasingly hostile space opened up between us. We started to bicker, talked about a trial separation, even divorce. But I was reluctant to act, fearing that in losing her I would also lose my grip on reality altogether.
It was to talk about The Backward Looking Angel that I had been invited to Hay. Although I had not been lying when I told Madison my talk had gone OK, I did not tell her what happened afterwards. As I was sitting down, applause ringing in my ears, I glanced at the audience and to my horror noticed two familiar faces in the back row: the one pale and pudgy with thinning reddish hair, the other tanned and smooth, both staring at me intently. They half-raised their right hands and waved and grinned, then vanished. All the way back on the long drive to London I could not get those two faces out of my mind. The horrible conviction took hold that, though I prided myself on having laid these old ghosts to rest forever, they might not yet have had done with me. Maybe one day soon I – or rather they or even we – will pick up our pen once more.