Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks

by Alan Coren

  ‘Hurrah,’ I murmured. I brightened. Shirts it wasn’t, but a fake book it might well be, a piece of snappy packaging for the literary cigar-smoker, say, under which head I fall.

  ‘It’s like a little suitcase,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it, though?’ she replied. ‘What an eye for detail you have, and all self-taught.’

  Detecting a coppery tang of disappointment here, and instantly tracing its source, I cranked up my enthusiasm a couple of notches.

  ‘Wow!’ I cried, hefting the bogus vol, ‘How exciting to have a package within a package! Ha-ha-ha, it’s passing itself off as – let me see – The Reader’s Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual!’

  ‘Is it?’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ I replied.

  I snapped back the catch, and opened it, and it contained a million or two loose-leaf pages, cleverly ring-bound for maximum inaccessibility. They fell open at a page of circular saws.

  ‘Oh, look,’ I said, ‘circular saws.’

  ‘There you are,’ she cried happily, ‘and you’ve always maintained you weren’t technical.’

  ‘I can, however, recognise any tool you care to name,’ I replied. ‘I have learned to, just as mice come to learn about mousetraps. It is almost an instinct with me, now.’

  ‘It will be a whole new skill,’ she countered. ‘With this book, anyone can learn how to build anything. Look,’ she continued, turning a leaf with enviable dexterity, ‘a sideboard! All you do is saw wood up and fit it together.’

  ‘Well, well! And think of all the fuss they made of Sheraton!’ Many things were seething in my head at this moment, the least of them being my utter ineptitude when faced with anything constructional. The only thing I ever succeeded in making in school woodwork, and that after a year of ribtickling failed attempts, was a toast-rack, and even then you had to put a rubber band around the toast to keep the whole thing from falling apart. I transferred to metalwork after that, where they would give me steel plates which I turned into shrapnel. But this drear practical record, as I say, was nothing to the deeper significances with which the gift was fraught.

  ‘Darling,’ I said, ‘I had always believed that you thought of me as a sophisticated homme du monde, dashing scourge of croupiers and sommeliers alike, a two-fisted wit over whom lissom dollies sighed and suffered, a young god who could hold his liquor and his own with Freddie Ayer! Look here, upon this picture, and on this – and how many joiners do you know who could hit you with an apt Shakespearian reference at this early hour? – and tell me what you see.’

  She looked at the proffered page. A man in a leather apron was demonstrating the correct method of squinting at a rebating plane. He had several ball-points in an upper pocket, no doubt of different hues, and a short-back-and-sides he had clearly manufactured himself, possibly with adze and chisel.

  ‘Is that,’ I cried, ‘how you see me? A shaper of matchless dovetails, an adroit recycler of cotton-reels, a host to keep his guests enthralled, as they sip their Emva Cream, with tales of tile and bookcase? You know me,’ I hurtled on, ‘the only craft I have is gluing, and that imperfect. We have shared a life for ten years, you have watched me glue shelves to walls, and seen them fall, you have lain awake and listened while glued slates detached themselves from the roof, you have reeled back as wardrobe doors came unstuck from their hinges – and at the end of it all, this?’

  ‘It’s just a question of the proper tools,’ she said, ‘saws and chisels and – things.’

  ‘Wounds is the word you were looking for,’ I said, ‘that is what goes with saws and chisels, a floorful of thumbs, the squirt of arteries, overworked surgeons converting my body into a Fair Isle masterpiece!’

  Whereupon, wordless, she shoved back her chair, and left.

  I sat for a while, staring at the table (how did they fit the legs in, how did they get the top on, to what arcane glue secrets were cabinetmakers privy?) and the ruined toys, and I thought: would it not, in truth, be cool to wave mystic implements over these remains, bring old British skills to bear upon Jap tattiness, return the toys, new-perfect, to the kids and accept their squeals of joy and love? Or knock up – I flipped the book – a cocktail cabinet or two, some bunk beds, even a summer house? Put in (page 41) a swimming-pool, relay the parquet floors, convert the loft?

  Would this infringe upon the image of Renaissance Man? On the contrary, it would enhance it, endow new facets, why, I could paint the Mona Lisa with my left hand while my right was inventing the helicopter! I would buy gorblimey trousers, a crusty briar, learn how to hold nails in my mouth and tell the consistency of cement by the smell alone, and gawping neighbours would come to point out the matchless gabling, the new storey, the fresh bow windows—

  I rushed out, borne on the boiling enthusiasm, into the garage which was to be my workshop, carrying the manual by its handle (perhaps, now, I should always carry it with me, and when crowds formed around some fallen masonry or shattered window or the torn woodwork of a bomb-blasted pub, I would elbow them aside, holding it aloft and crying ‘Let me through, I’m a handyman!’), and, as luck would have it, there in an old tobacco tin on the window ledge I found a threaded hook, just the thing to hang the book on for easy reference, so I screwed it into the plaster, and I found a piece of string, and I looped it through the handle, and I hung the book up on the wall, and it did not fall off!

  Until I slammed the garage door, that is.

  I looked through the window, and there seemed to be a lot of plaster on the floor. But it did not faze me. A little thing like fallen plaster doesn’t bother me any more.

  Why, I’ll have it glued back up any day now.

  22

  Owing to Circumstances Beyond our Control

  1984 has been Unavoidably Detained . . .

  in which I set out to prove that totalitarianism in Britain could never work. How could it, when nothing else does?

  Winston Smith lay on his mean little bed in his mean little room and stared at his mean little telescreen. The screen stared back, blank. Smith eased himself from the side of his mean little blonde, walked across his dun and threadbare carpet, and kicked the silent cathode. A blip lurched unsteadily across it, and disappeared. Smith sighed, and picked up the telephone.

  ‘Would you get me Rentabrother Telehire?’ he said.

  ‘They’re in the book,’ said the operator.

  ‘I haven’t got a book,’ said Smith. ‘They didn’t deliver it.’

  ‘It’s no good blaming me,’ said the operator. ‘It’s a different department.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you,’ said Smith. ‘I just thought you might get me the number.’

  ‘I was just going off,’ said the operator, ‘on account of the snow.’

  ‘It’s not snowing,’ said Smith.

  ‘Not now, it isn’t,’ said the operator. ‘I never said it was snowing now.’

  ‘Perhaps I might have a word with the Supervisor,’ said Smith.

  ‘She’s not here,’ said the operator. ‘She gets her hair done Fridays.’

  ‘I only need the Rentabrother number,’ said Smith, ‘perhaps you could find it for me. You must have a book.’

  ‘I’d have to bend,’ said the operator.

  ‘I’d be awfully grateful,’ said Smith.

  ‘I’ve just done me nails.’

  ‘Please,’ said Smith.

  There was a long pause, during which a woman came on and began ordering chops, and someone gave Smith a snatch of weather forecast for Heligoland. After that, there was a bit of recipe for sausage toad. Eventually, after two further disconnections, the operator came back.

  ‘It’s 706544,’ she snapped.

  Smith put the receiver down, and dialled 706544.

  ‘809113,’ shouted a voice, ‘Eastasian Cats Home.’

  He got a Samoan ironmonger after that, and then a French woman who broke down and screamed. At last ‘Rentabrother Telehire,’ said a man.

  ‘Winston Smith here,’ said Smith, ‘
72a, Osbaldeston Road. I’m afraid my telescreen seems to be out of order.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ said the man. ‘We’re up to our necks.’

  ‘But I’m not being watched,’ said Smith. ‘Big Brother is supposed to be monitoring me at all times.’

  ‘Ring Big Bleeding Brother, then,’ said the man. ‘Maybe he’s not suffering from staff shortages, seasonal holidays, people off sick. Maybe he’s not awaiting deliveries. Not to mention we had a gull get in the stockroom, there’s stuff all over, all the labels come off, broken glass. People ringing up all hours of the day and night. You realise this is my tea-time?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Smith, ‘It’s just that . . .’

  ‘Might be able to fit you in Thursday fortnight,’ said the man. ‘Can’t promise nothing, though. Got a screwdriver, have you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Smith.

  ‘Expect bleeding miracles, people,’ said the man, and rang off.

  Smith put the phone down, and was about to return to the bed when there was a heavy knocking on the door, and before he or the little blonde could move, it burst from its hinges and two enormous constables of the Thought Police hurtled into the room. They recovered, and looked around, and took out notebooks.

  ‘Eric Jervis’, cried the larger of the two, ‘we have been monitoring your every action for the past six days, and we have reason to believe that the bicycle standing outside with the worn brake blocks is registered in your name. What have you to say?’

  ‘I’m not Eric Jervis,’ said Smith.

  They stared at him.

  ‘Here’s a turn-up,’ said the shorter officer.

  ‘Ask him if he’s got any means of identity,’ murmured the larger.

  ‘Have you any means of identity?’ said the constable.

  ‘I’m waiting for a new identity card,’ said Smith. ‘It’s in the post.’

  ‘I knew he’d say that,’ said the larger officer.

  ‘We’re right in it now,’ said his colleague. ‘Think of the paperwork.’

  They put their notebooks away.

  ‘You wouldn’t know where this Eric Jervis is, by any chance?’ said the taller.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Smith.

  ‘Who’s that on the bed, then?’

  ‘It’s certainly not Eric Jervis,’ said Smith.

  They all looked at the little blonde.

  ‘He’s got us there,’ said the shorter constable.

  ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ said the taller, ‘I don’t think people are supposed to, er, do it, are they?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know, men,’ the Thought Policeman looked at his boots, ‘and women.’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with worn brake blocks,’ said his colleague.

  They tipped their helmets.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ they said.

  Smith let them out, and came back into the room.

  ‘I’ll just nip down the corner,’ he said to the little blonde, ‘and pick up an evening paper. Shan’t be a tick.’

  It was crowded on the street. It was actually the time of the two minutes’ hate, but half the public telescreens were conked out, and anyway the population was largely drunk, or arguing with one another, or smacking kids round the head, or running to get a bet on, or dragging dogs from lamp-posts, or otherwise pre-occupied, so nobody paid much attention to the suspended telescreens, except for the youths throwing stones at them. Smith edged through, and bought a paper, and opened it.

  ‘COME OFF IT BIG BROTHER!,’ screamed the headline, above a story blaming the Government for rising food prices, the shortage of underwear, and the poor showing of the Oceanic football team. It wasn’t, Smith knew, the story the Government hacks had given to the printers, but you could never get the printers to listen to anyone, and challenged, they always blamed the shortage of type, claiming that they could only put the words together from the letters available, and who cared, anyhow? The Government, with so much else on its plate, had given up bothering.

  It was as Winston Smith turned to go back to his flat, that he felt a frantic plucking at his knee, and heard a soprano scream ring through the street. He looked down, and saw a tiny Youth Spy jumping up and down below him.

  ‘Winston Smith does dirty things up in Fourteen B,’ howled the child. ‘Come and get him, he’s got a nude lady up there.’

  The youth spy might have elaborated on these themes, had its mother not reached out and given it a round arm swipe that sent it flying into the gutter: but, even so, the damage had been done, and before Smith had time to protest, he found himself picked up bodily by a brace of uniformed men and slung into the back of a truck which, siren wailing, bore him rapidly through the evening streets towards the fearful pile of the Ministry of Love.

  ‘Smith, W,’ barked the uniformed man to whom Smith was manacled, at the desk clerk.

  ‘What’s he done?’ said the clerk. ‘I was just off home.’

  ‘They caught him at a bit of how’s-your-father,’ said Smith’s captor.

  ‘It’s Friday night,’ said the desk clerk. ‘I go to bingo Fridays.’ He turned to Smith. ‘Don’t let it happen again, lad. You can go blind.’

  ‘I’ve written him in me book,’ said the guard. ‘It’s no good saying go home. I’d have to tear the page out.’ He put his free hand on Smith’s arm. ‘Sorry about this, son. It’d be different if I had a rubber. We’re awaiting deliveries.’

  ‘You’d better take him up to Room 101, then,’ said the clerk.

  ‘NOT ROOM 101,’ screamed Smith, ‘NOT THE TORTURE CHAMBER, PLEASE, I NEVER DID ANYTHING, I HARDLY KNOW THE WOMAN, CAN’T ANYONE HELP ME, DON’T SEND ME UP . . .’

  ‘Stop that,’ said the clerk, sharply. ‘You’ll start the dog off.’

  Smith was dragged, shrieking, to the lift.

  ‘Ah, Smith, Winston,’ cried the white-coated man at the door of Room 101. ‘Won’t you come in? Rats I believe, are what you, ha-ha-ha, fear most of all. Big brown rats. Big brown pink-eyed rats . . .’

  ‘NO,’ screamed Smith, ‘NOT RATS, ANYTHING BUT RATS, NO, NO, NO.’

  ‘. . . Rats with long slithery tails, Smith, fat, hungry rats, rats with sharp little . . .’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Esmond,’ interrupted his assistant wearily. ‘You know we haven’t got any rats. We haven’t seen a rat since last December’s delivery.’

  ‘No rats?’ gasped Smith.

  Esmond sighed, and shook his head. Then he suddenly brightened.

  ‘We’ve got mice though,’ he cried. ‘Big fat, hungry, pink-eyed . . .’

  ‘I don’t mind mice,’ said Smith.

  They looked at him.

  ‘You’re not making our job any easier, you know,’ muttered Esmond.

  ‘Try him on toads,’ said Esmond’s assistant. ‘Can’t move in the stockroom for toads.’

  ‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Esmond. ‘Toads, Big, fat, slimy . . .’

  ‘I quite like toads,’ said Smith.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Spiders?’

  ‘Lovely little things,’ said Smith. ‘If it’s any help, I can’t stand moths.’

  ‘Moths,’ cried Esmond. ‘Where do you think you are, bloody Harrod’s? We can’t get moths for love nor money.’

  ‘Comes in here, big as you please, asking for moths,’ said Esmond’s assistant.

  Smith thought for a while.

  ‘I’m not all that keen on stoats,’ he said at last.

  ‘At last,’ said Esmond. ‘I thought we’d be here all night. Give him a stoat, Dennis.’

  So they put Winston Smith in Room 101 with a stoat. It was an old stoat, and it just sat on the floor, wheezing, and as far as Smith was concerned, things could have been, all things considered, a lot worse.

  23

  Foreword to Golfing For Cats:

  An Apology to the Bookseller

  One of the major headaches with which booksellers are invariably rack
ed is the astonishing intractability of authors. The division between these twin curators of our literary heritage is over which of the two syllables of the word ‘bookshop’ is the more important. How rarely can an author be found who considers, before even setting pen to paper, the marketability of his product! How often has an author rung a bookshop to say: ‘I’m thinking of doing a book, what’s the best weight to go for?’ or enquired as to the exact dimensions of the bookseller’s most popular paper bag, so that something may be written to fit it?

  Hopefully, Golfing For Cats will change all that. A new era of inter-literary co-operation, it is not too much to say, may well be dawning. For not only has this book been put together at the optimum size and weight, it also concerns the three most perennially popular subjects currently to be found on the bedside tables of the reading public, viz. golf, cats, and the Third Reich.

  Unfortunately – but, then, one cannot have everything, all revolutions are by nature imperfect – it doesn’t concern any of them very deeply. In fact, glancing through the material, I found nothing to do with golf, cats, or indeed the Third Reich. However, they are all there on the cover, which may well be enough: the majority of books sold are given as presents, and the givers, only too glad to have the rotten problem settled, rarely give more than a perfunctory glance at the dust-jacket. I cannot but believe that this book will find its way onto the bookshelves, not to say into the wastebins, of golfers, cat-lovers, and students of military history, in incalculable numbers. (These would be even larger had I managed to get ‘Book of Records’ somewhere in the title, but this proved to be impossible: The Golfing Cat’s Book of Records runs cumbrously off the tongue. Similarly, I have been told that even more books about fishing have been sold than books about golf, but Fishing For Cats, conjuring up as it did the vision of someone leaning over a bridge with a mouse on the end of a string, stretched, I felt, ambiguity to an intolerable limit.)

  Why, then, I hear you ask, should I apologise to the bookseller, having bent over so far backwards, not to mention sideways, to please him? Well, it is simply that some confusion may arise, this book having been ordered in the vast numbers necessary to satisfy the giant trifurcated public for it, when it comes to putting it on the shelves: should it go under GOLF, or under CATS, or under THE THIRD REICH; or, indeed, under none of these? (There is, I quietly submit, a good commercial case for putting it under BOOKS OF RECORDS, but I shall not push it.)