Kill Your Darlings

by Terence Blacker

  Money was always the problem: when it was there, when it was not.

  I looked up to see that my wife was no longer fussing over the food but was staring at me as I gazed sightlessly at the table.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said.

  Self-mocking, I blinked owlishly and shook my head. ‘Working. You know how it is.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I forgot.’

  ‘Graham Greene used to say that so much of a novelist’s writing takes place in the unconscious that, in those depths, the first word is written before the first word appears on paper.’

  ‘Or doesn’t.’ Marigold smiled to herself as she inexpertly peeled an avocado.

  ‘As it happens, I’m working on my literary list project. The stuff’s pouring out.’

  ‘What happened to the novel?’

  ‘Back burner. If it’s so important to bring in some money –’ I spoke bitterly, allowing the full tragedy of the writer’s life to enter my voice. ‘I’ll do some paid work for a while.’

  ‘Maybe you could take on work where you can combine that productive staring into space with being paid. The caretaker at my office does it all day.’

  I paused, refusing to take the bait. ‘It’s a different quality of staring.’

  ‘Maybe he’s writing a novel, too. Most people seem to be writing novels these days.’

  ‘Mind novels. Perfect in every way except that they never get written down.’

  My wife looked up, seemed to be about to say something, then smiled, almost sympathetically. ‘I see,’ she said.

  Sometimes, having these conversations, I felt like an actor in a drawing-room comedy whose run had gone on for too long. The badinage concealed too much unexpressed tension. The jokes were imitation jokes, whose life had been drained out of them years ago. We enacted intimacy out of habit and fear of the alternative. Yet now, looking at her, I noticed something different about Marigold, something forgiving, almost mellow, which I found discomfiting.

  ‘So you won’t have to worry about my not earning for a while,’ I said, pushing it a bit. ‘I’ll be doing a literary version of your caretaker’s work. Those who can, write. Those who can’t, draw up lists about writers.’

  ‘Don’t blame it on us.’ She spoke quietly. ‘It’s your decision to put the novel aside. Don’t you dare let yourself off the hook by playing the domestic martyr. As far as I’m concerned, you can stare into space for as long as you like.’ She took two dishes, walked past me out of the kitchen. I heard her lay them on the glass table next door. She returned and stood before me. ‘We each have our own lives to live.’

  ‘Where were you today?’

  As she walked back to the oven, I noticed something languid about the way she moved, a lascivious swing of the hips. The wifely concern for my work, her preparation of a meal: there was something wrong and out of kilter about it all.

  ‘Working.’ She held my gaze and smiled shamelessly. It seemed to me that there was more colour in her cheeks than usual, that her lips were full. Her voice, throaty and sensual with a sort of jazzy catch in it, brought back distant memories of afternoons in bed or late-night conversations as we lay, glowing, intertwined and breathless. It was the voice of a well-fucked woman. As if reading my thoughts, she muttered, ‘I had a good Friday.’

  ‘Good? In what way?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you’re interested, Gregory. Go and tell Doug we’re having lamb. It’s his favourite.’

  ‘Is there any point?’

  ‘Try.’

  I stood up and walked slowly upstairs. I knocked on my son’s door. The volume lowered slightly and I shouted my message. He replied that he would be down later. Maybe. By the time I had returned to the sitting-room, my wife was at the table, holding her wine-glass with both hands, her narrow shoulders hunched forward as if she were cold or wanted to be held by someone. She looked pretty and sad and lonely, flanked by two empty chairs, the dishes and food laid out before her.

  ‘It’s just you and me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, goody,’ she said

  We both laughed, recognizing in that instant what we had become. I picked up my knife and fork and cut into the artichoke hearts before me. I glanced out of the window and caught our ghostly reflections in the glass. It was a shame that there was no photographer or profile-writer there right now to catch our domestic scene: the celebrated designer and her novelist husband, dining together in their dream home.

  * * *

  Affirmation

  Today I shall study my scars. In them, I shall read the story of my life. Every moment of hurt will be a paragraph, every dysfunctional relationship a page. From the ugliness of loss and pain and injustice will emerge the beauty of creation.

  * * *

  6

  Soon there was jealousy in class. It was noticed that, while I betrayed symptoms of boredom or impatience enduring the prosaic, overheated efforts of Bev or Alan or one of the Roberts, I lingered over Peter Gibson’s work, allowing it ten or fifteen minutes more than the informally allotted period for discussion. Even when Peter was not the direct focus of attention, I would frequently and unashamedly use his prose as a touchstone against which lesser efforts could be judged. I could see that this irritated the others but ignored the martyred sighs, tapping pencils and rolling eyes. It was important, I always felt, to introduce my students not only to the technicalities of writing but also to the tests of character which are part of the literary life – disappointment, hopelessness, despair, a grinding envy of one’s peers. Mine is a holistic course.

  It was said, after the tragedy, that there was something obsessive and personal in my response to Peter Gibson. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I spent more time socially with him, took him to readings and launches, it was, at that early stage, merely because he was the only member of that year’s intake upon whom such experiences would not be wasted. I had resolved at an early stage in my career as a creative writing teacher that to be seen too often in public with one of my students would be unhelpful to my public image. I am a writer, not a teacher taking his charges on an outing.

  From the start, I could see that Peter was not one of Connolly’s ‘amiable footlers’. The apparent shyness belied by every swaggering syllable of his prose; the way he sat apart from the other students, contributing occasionally, but tellingly, to the discussion; the notes he made in a small book, his hand-writing neat and microscopic, always at the most unlikely moments, as if a separate, more significant lesson was taking place in his head: these things suggested to me, from the start, that he was more a colleague, a fellow toiler in the vineyard of literature, than a pupil. His talent deserved nurturing.

  He was usually first out of the seminar room at the end of the evening but, on the Thursday of the third week, I asked him to stay behind. When the others had gone, I told him that I had been contacted by South Eastern Arts who were sponsoring a collection of short stories which might be of interest. Ignoring his marked lack of enthusiasm, I suggested that we might discuss the matter more comfortably at a local wine bar. He hesitated, as if even drinking with his tutor represented a small but significant compromise, then gracelessly nodded his agreement.

  I chose Glaisters, a bright, hangar-like wine bar frequented by young professionals, not a place I would normally visit but one which had the advantage of being avoided by students. As we entered, we were buffeted by the sound of fake, end-of-day merriment, by office workers clucking with gossip and excitement like battery hens at feeding time, the din punctuated occasionally by the plaintive, insistent call of mobile telephones. Glancing back as I pushed through various dark suits, I noticed that Peter seemed to be almost cowering, shoulders hunched, his hair falling girlishly across his face. I found us a table and, when a young, harassed-looking waitress appeared, he surprised me by asking for a whisky. I ordered him a double.

  ‘It may be of no interest, this idea of mine,’ I said easily when our drinks arrived. ‘It’s a sponsored collection for unpublished writers u
nder thirty. With a following wind and a friendly word from your tutor, one of your stories might make the cut.’ I hesitated, perhaps half-expecting a muttered word of curiosity or even gratitude from my student, but Peter was looking around the room as if, at any moment, the Chardonnay set would recognize us as outsiders and turn upon us. ‘No promises,’ I added, ‘but I know the editor.’

  ‘I’m not unpublished,’ Peter mumbled eventually. ‘When I was doing A levels, my English teacher sent something of mine to a Sunday paper that was doing some kind of competition. It won and got published. “Playground”. Embarrassing stuff.’

  ‘You kept quiet about that.’ Although still smiling, I was irritated. I remembered the competition and even read the first paragraph or two of the winner out of professional curiosity. It was, I recalled now, an astonishingly confident work for an eighteen-year-old. Yet he had failed to mention it in his application to the Institute.

  ‘I told you. It was crap.’

  ‘It was published.’

  ‘So they say. I never saw it. I wanted to withdraw it but the school wouldn’t let me. Still, it made me £250 – not forgetting lunch with a publisher.’

  ‘Lucky old you. Which publisher was it?’

  ‘Never found out.’ Peter shrugged. ‘I declined.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a bit unwise? You want to be a writer. It was a step on the ladder.’

  ‘The ladder.’ Peter Gibson laughed, an odd, unattractive snickering sound, and I found myself feeling uneasy in his presence, almost as if he were my tutor, rather than the other way round. He reached into the canvas shoulder-bag he always carried, took out a tin of tobacco and rolled a thin, white, Martin-like stick. He lit up, coughed unhealthily. ‘Yesterday. It’s what I do now that matters,’ he said.

  ‘Purity. The Garret. You’ll forgive me, Peter, but it’s pure romantic tosh. If you’re serious about being a professional writer, you will at some point have to tread that fine line between the muse and the bank manager.’

  ‘I’m not interested in that game.’ He spoke haughtily, as if publishers were already pestering him with offers and, truth to tell, it was not such a fanciful notion. He had looks; he had talent. These days, editors were even more youth-struck than when Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists were heirs to the kingdom. ‘In fact, I can hardly bear to read that story now. It’s sullied.’

  I laughed. ‘By readers?’

  ‘It was … premature.’ He seemed irritated now. ‘It’s like a creative writing class. The story loses something when other people have had their fingers all over it. The purity’s gone, the tension. I can hardly bear to read it again. The performance, the phoney compliments, the tedious critiques –’ He spoke the word with real venom. ‘It feels unnatural, all this exposing work to the light before it’s ready. It’s like strangling puppies.’

  ‘I see.’

  He looked at me and, for a moment, dabs of colour appeared on his cheek. ‘I didn’t mean to be offensive. Obviously your comments are helpful.’

  I smiled. ‘I don’t entirely disagree. When I get home after class, I need to read a few pages by one of the masters simply to wash the bad prose out of my system. All those redundant adverbs and ghastly, effortful, earthbound descriptions. It feels contagious. I often think that the business of making public and communal what can essentially only work when it is private and solitary destroys more than it creates.’

  ‘So why do you do it?’

  ‘Because, now and then, I find that I’m teaching a real writer. A natural.’

  Peter looked away quickly and stared at a nearby table where two women in their thirties sat on opposite sides of the table, each conversing animatedly into neat, dark telephones. He seemed to have regretted saying as much as he had.

  ‘When I’m dealing with someone of talent, I can help them,’ I said. ‘Not to write fiction but to spot the traps in the path ahead, maybe provide a few shortcuts. It’s not the most noble activity for the creative artist but then I suppose we all have to make compromises.’

  The whisky seemed to have mellowed Peter. Returning his attention to me, he pushed his hair back out of his eyes and, holding a handful of dark locks, placed his elbow on the table. I noticed for the first time a hint of red, eczema or psoriasis around the roots. ‘Tell me about compromises,’ he said.

  I caught the eye of the waitress. As I ordered us both another drink, I noticed her glancing with clear erotic interest in the direction of Peter whose hirsute and wild looks did, it was true, stand out against the backdrop of office drones all around us. He seemed oblivious to her interest.

  ‘I suppose, when I set out in this business, I felt like you. A writer writes. He doesn’t spend his essence on teaching unpublished mediocrities, or interviewing published nonentities. Every working moment away from the desk is time and effort lost to literature. Now –’ I sighed. ‘Put it like this. There are perhaps ten or fifteen writers of serious fiction in the country who earn enough from their work not to be obliged to scrap and scrub around the dustier corners of the literary scene to survive. The rest review. They toss off TV scripts, write biographies, sidle into advertising agencies where, in exchange for some ludicrous sum of money, they write copy extolling tampons or tyres or a private water company. Some even remove their brains, don the writing equivalent of nappies and write kiddie-fiction.’

  Peter stirred. ‘I’m not doing that. I’d rather work in a pub. Write in the day, pull pints in the evening.’

  ‘I’m lucky enough to have been able to resist most of these diversions. Reviewing, someone said, is a form of failure – you hurt people for things you have failed to achieve yourself. Insecure as a writer, you bolster your own self-importance by demeaning or over-praising professional colleagues. I’ve seen the way critics work – they’re as vindictive and scheming as anything you would find on a City trading floor. Television drains a novelist of his voice as surely as does journalism. Biography? As Martin said, it allows mediocre, Second XI types to feel and act superior to the knights of the First XI. It simultaneously negates and aggrandizes its practitioners. To become even the smallest part of the cynical, over-excited, coke-fuelled world of the professional advertiser is such a shameless prostitution of the word as to render meaningless all authentic literary acts of love that may occur after the infection takes hold. There are always those who argue, in all apparent sincerity, that telling tales for “kids” is serious artistic work but, having had the misfortune to attend, in a professional capacity, a children’s book festival, I have concluded that authors working in this area, good-hearted and amiable as they may well be, invariably suffer from the writing equivalent of maternal brain-fag. I could have followed that route – when my son was five, I published something called The Lonely Giant* before deciding that I was exploiting his childhood in an unacceptable way. The Institute and my regular column for the Professional Writer are enough for me.’

  ‘Professional Writer?’

  The waitress returned. ‘Another whisky,’ she trilled, making another unsuccessful attempt to catch Peter’s eye as she placed his glass before him. ‘And a wine.’

  ‘Yes, it’s not perfect but, in my own way, I have managed to retain a cordon sanitaire around my purely artistic endeavours by taking journeywork that does not require me to dip into the well of creativity. I meet writers and interview them. Not the kind of writers that you or I would read but purveyors of entertainment for the masses. I provide writing and publishing tips for my readers – none of whom, it goes without saying, are professional writers. I deal in a harmless dream world.’

  ‘Is it really that harmless?’

  ‘That’s not my problem. the Professional Writer, with its interviews, its plot and characterization tips, its breathless reports of deals and alliances in the sunny, charmed world of authorhood exists to feed the fantasies of the great and ever-growing army of would-be – that is, won’t-be – writers, the Not Yet Published.’

  Peter laughed, and there was something
arrogant and collusive about him now.

  ‘We shouldn’t mock the Not Yet Published,’ I said. ‘They are all around us. Taxi drivers, TV presenters, secretaries, lawyers, comedians, accountants, computer programmers, receptionists, bellhops, politicians, even journalists. The book that they will one day write may differ in seriousness and content but they all share the dream. One day, one day, the words will flow.’

  ‘Poor bastards.’

  ‘In the meantime, the Professional Writer provides the monthly illusion that they are serving some secret, non-executive apprenticeship, they are breathing in the writerly air. The success of those knights of the First XI will scatter gold-dust on their dreams.’

  Peter Gibson was looking at me with more interest now. ‘And that pays enough to keep you going?’

  ‘Yes.’ I elected not to mention that I had recently completed the annual humiliation of filling out a tax form. In addition to the £12,500 paid by the Institute and a little over £4,000 from my magazine work, the few pence accruing from royalties was only slightly in excess of appearance fees and readings. ‘My wife works.’

  ‘That must help.’

  ‘It does, yes.’ I sensed that it was time to change the subject. ‘Funnily enough there’s a party tomorrow night. A reading of new authors in a pub in west London. Maybe you’d like to keep me company.’

  ‘You’re not trying to corrupt me.’

  I laughed. ‘Not at all. I’m showing you the way of the world. You can make up your own mind.’

  And, to my surprise, he accepted the invitation.

  * * *

  Exercise

  All serious writers need to ‘play themselves in’ with what is technically known as writing workouts, a period of approximately forty-five minutes in which words are committed to paper without hesitation, head-scratching, throat-clearing, introspection or indeed thought of any kind.