Complete Stories

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Oh, that.’ Now Daniel sounded contemptuous. Having said as much, he seemed at rather a loss, but soon rallied. ‘If you’re hoping for something about something like thoughts on stopping being a bloody parson, you’re wrong.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘For one thing, you can’t ever stop being a bloody parson once you are one. It’s called being ordained. Ha! You’re it for life, er, old boy, and I’m not going to write about that. For one thing,’ he explained, ‘it would be … bad form. I told the bishop so. Too private, I told him. Now let’s have the same again. My turn.’

  Daniel gave a grunt of pleased surprise at finding he had a twenty-pound note about him. His mood changed when the barman turned out to be reluctant to serve him. The landlord reappeared. Macdonald went out into the passage and activated the telephone there.

  ‘Ruth?’ he said a moment later. ‘It’s Mac. Yeah, in the Sussex. No, I didn’t, he just came walking in here just a few minutes ago. Yes, I’m afraid he is. Not so far, but I’d say any moment. Okay now, I’ll hang on till you get here. Ah, not at all.’

  On his way back, Macdonald heard a confused shouting from the bar.

  Note: Further information about identical or monozygotic twins can be found in Twins, by Peter Watson (Hutchinson, 1981), among other places. I have selected from Watson’s account of pairs of such twins who have been separated soon after birth and brought up apart. Further details of the male twins Leo describes (James Lewis and James Springer, born in Piqua, Ohio, USA in 1939) and of the female twins (Irene Reid and Jeanette Hamilton, born in UK in 1944) are given on pp. 9–11 and pp. 49–52 of Twins.

  A research group to study the subject was set up under Professor Thomas Bouchard at the University of Minnesota in 1971.

  Toil and Trouble

  I

  Adrian Hollies was a literary agent, which is to say he was a director of a prosperous firm of such, Parkes & Richards Ltd of Princess Square, WC2. One afternoon in early May he was sitting in his office in their offices talking to a well-known senior client of the firm, the novelist Jack Brownlow. Or rather Brownlow, enjoying the advantage of his valued seniority, was mostly talking to Adrian. In fact at the moment he was asking him one of those questions that no successful literary agent really enjoys being asked.

  ‘What’s your honest opinion, Adrian? I mean, I take it you have read the whole thing.’

  ‘Of course, Jack. Well, for what it’s worth, I think it shows you at the top of your form. Er, that is the character of Tom and his extraordinary relationship with Sonia, not to speak of the affair with Amanda, especially the part where they all find themselves—’

  ‘Because unless you feel quite wholehearted about it I think I ought to find someone who does to represent me. I’m not trying to hold a pistol to your head.’

  Much, said Adrian to himself. Out loud he said, ‘I haven’t the slightest reservation. I’ve never been in any doubt about the quality of your work.’ The second part of that was not quite true. At least twice in his nineteen years with Parkes & Richards it had crossed his mind, albeit without lingering there, that against appearances there might be something to be said for Jack’s work. After all, the first novel back in 1958 had been quite readable for a global best seller.

  ‘One of the young fellows at Fortuitous Millennium,’ said Brownlow now, ‘was telling me they’d give me substantially better paperback terms there than what you managed to get me for my last one.’

  ‘Was that Mark Skinner?’

  Brownlow hesitated. ‘Could have been, but I never really caught the name properly.’

  ‘I think at your time of life, Jack, you’d do well to consider the advantages of sticking to the devil you know.’

  The devil Brownlow knew, a small firm specializing chiefly in military history and reminiscences, had had the luck to publish that runaway success of 1958, and continued to publish him now he broke a little better or a little worse than even with his chronicles of elderly daydreams. To be sure, he was still something of a name, a quality that also helped to account for his continuance in the Parkes & Richards string. But both publisher and agent were also unwilling, out of compassion or cowardice, to bring him up against the fact that at the age of sixty-three he had ceased for ever to be the kind of literary property he had once been.

  Brownlow had at any rate not cared for the last remark, had possibly sensed something of what lay behind it, but he had hardly begun the long process of asking for clarification when a nearby telephone purred. Adrian snatched it up with simulated annoyance.

  ‘Yes. Yes, Tania. Oh, not again. How long ago? Well, I don’t remember meeting him. Oh yes. All right.’ In the next ten seconds Adrian got his face to run quickly through some of its less welcoming expressions. ‘Mr Pennistone? No, that’s all right. Well, if I said anything at all I meant it, including that. No, I remember it well. Your book is unpublishable, and when I say unpublishable I know what I’m … I’m sorry, but I happen to have Jack Brownlow with me at the moment, so perhaps you’ll understand if I … Very well, if you say so. Of course.’ Clunk.

  However this performance might have affected the unlucky Pennistone, it worked wonders for Brownlow, who did nothing more than extract from Adrian a promise to spend some thought and research on the possibility of a change of publisher, with special reference to an improved paperback deal. So all was as well as it could be.

  ‘Can I see you put it in?’ asked Brownlow finally.

  This question surprised Adrian less than it might have done because he had heard it in these circumstances before. What was to be put in was the xeroxed typescript Brownlow had brought with him, and what this was to be put into was the firm’s vaults for safekeeping.

  ‘It’s silly of me,’ he said without encountering any opposition, ‘but until that’s done I can’t help worrying that some joker might steal my only copy. Now there’s one in here too I don’t care if my house burns down. Most authors have their funny little ways and I suppose that’s mine.’

  After Brownlow had gone, Adrian thought for a time about him and his funny little way. It could be taken as showing a relentless determination to stay in touch with the reading public, a group seldom far from his thoughts, or just to continue to be counted as a writer. That was understandable enough in somebody with his history, but even total non-starters like Pennistone had their version of it. What was it about the almost always frustrating career of authorship that made them pursue it so obstinately, in the face of every disappointment and discouragement? By rights Brownlow would have packed it in a couple of books ago, decided to live on his fat, taken to drink, fallen down dead, even found something else to occupy him, but no, he was hellbent on going on writing his very own sort of terrible novel and getting it published.

  At this point in his reflections, Adrian almost literally bumped into Derek Richards coming out of his office. Derek was the son of the co-founder of the firm and was widely said to owe his position in it to little but his paternity. Perhaps in compensation, he affected a wild-eyed, bardic manner that suggested a mind usually bent on higher things than representing writers. Nevertheless there was a kind of distant friendliness about him.

  ‘You managed to get rid of that old fart Brownlow, then,’ he said.

  ‘Unfortunately he left the typescript of a new novel with us.’

  ‘Why can’t he go back to his roots in where is it and stay there?’

  ‘Bristol. I suppose he wants to feel he’s still a writer.’

  ‘You mean there was a time when he was one?’

  ‘Enough people would say so and there must be some who’d say he still is.’

  They crossed the entrance hall of the building. Derek said with an air of indifference, ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that you literary agent fellows tend to, what’s the word, identify with your clients. Now and then to a rather touching degree.’

  ‘Maybe. You should hear what we think about t
he likes of Brownlow in our innermost thoughts.’

  ‘But I trust you’re not going to tell me.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wished you were a writer, Derek?’

  ‘Never, thank God. You have, I know. Be very careful that nothing happens to you, or you may find yourself writing it up.’

  ‘Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to me.’

  But evidently Derek was tired of the subject of writers and writing. ‘So Keith Gordon has eluded both the arm of the law and the assassin’s bullet,’ he said.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I got it on the News. A chunk of masonry squashed the conniving villain as he was about to enter his offices in the City. Apparently an accident.’

  ‘Surely not. There must be hundreds of poor swindled sods dying to knock off an arch-shit like Thief Gordon. What were the circumstances?’

  ‘You obviously wouldn’t expect me to know all of them, but evidently there were plenty. So far they hadn’t managed to find any suspicious ones. What seems to have happened …’

  And for the rest of their short walk to the pub that was their undeclared destination, Adrian discussed with Derek the fate of the famously shady financier, and the very existence of Jack Brownlow altogether faded from his mind.

  II

  A couple of mornings later, Adrian was preparing to leave his comfortable Tufnell Park flat and go to work when the telephone rang. The girl he lived with, a picture researcher called Julie something, answered it.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she told Adrian, chewing a croissant.

  ‘Mr Hollies? Oh, it’s Sergeant Chatterton here, sir, Metropolitan Police, Kilburn Division,’ said a reliable youngish voice, which went on to elicit his agreement that he was the owner of a specified car. This part took place against a considerable distant accompaniment of ringing telephones, buzzing buzzers and general intramural clamour. The voice continued, ‘We picked up the vehicle in question early this morning, sir. It had been malparked near—’

  ‘I had no idea, I didn’t even know it had gone,’ said Adrian in a state of some consternation.

  ‘No doubt you didn’t, sir. We have good reason to believe it had been used in an attempted break-in at some premises in Maida Vale last night. I wonder, sir, if we were to send one of our cars to pick you up, if you’d be good enough to come and collect it, bringing with you the relevant documents just to formally establish ownership. We’ll get a car up to you right away.’

  Not more than twenty minutes later a white car with an orange stripe round it, labelled Police, duly pulled up outside the flat. Adrian picked up the required pieces of paper and looked about for Julie to kiss her goodbye for the day, but she had already left. Outside on the pavement he was greeted by a red-faced, solid-looking man in his middle thirties and a pale, taller, younger one. Both wore smart police uniform with peaked caps.

  ‘Mr Hollies?’ said the older policeman. ‘Good of you to be with us so promptly, sir. I’m PC Beaumont-Snaith and this is PC Llewelyn. This business must have come as something of a shock to you, sir, but don’t you worry, it’ll all be settled very shortly.’

  With some vague idea of verification, Adrian said, ‘I was rather expecting somebody called Sergeant Chatterton.’

  ‘Ah, he’ll be down at the station waiting for you, sir. I’m afraid poor old Chatty is a bit on the desk-bound side these days, eh, Taff?’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ said Llewelyn with a chuckle.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind getting in the back, Mr Hollies? Rather a squash, I’m afraid, but this week we’re having to take one of our trainees with us everywhere we go. Chris, this is Mr Hollies. DC Fotheringay.’

  ‘You’re a detective, then,’ said Adrian alertly to the large man in plain clothes as he settled himself next to him in the back of the car. He heard Llewelyn say something into a hand-microphone about returning to base.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about that, sir,’ said the large man in a deep voice, ‘if you wouldn’t mind just picking up that file for me down there on the floor. It’s a bit further than I like to bend, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Adrian’s fingers had not quite touched the grey cardboard oblong on the floor in front of him when a strong hand fastened on the back of his neck and propelled him bodily downwards. A sharp point penetrated the skin of his upper arm through jacket and shirtsleeve and, before fear could reach him, he felt himself floating into a region where there were no policemen and no car nor anything else in particular.

  After a lapse of time impossible to measure, Adrian became aware that he was lying on rather than in a bed that was strange to him. By degrees he found that this bed stood in an equally unfamiliar, small, clean but barely furnished room. The light was dim but definite enough for him to be sure it came from some artificial source and not from the two windows, which were heavily curtained and, as he was to find later, blacked out with thick paint. At any rate, he had no difficulty in reading the few words typed on a sheet of paper he found on the bedside table beside an electric bell-push with wires affixed. The message ran, ‘Don’t try to get out. You won’t make it.’

  Adrian found that he was still dressed as he had been, apart from his shoes, tie and jacket, which proved to be ready to hand. There were two doors out of the room, the main one strongly and invisibly fastened, the other open and leading to a proportionately small bathroom with w.c., handbasin, shower, comb, soap and towels, all in good order. No razor, in fact nothing more. Adrian peed, washed his hands and face and combed his hair. On returning to the bedroom, he investigated a previously unregarded table near the main window. Under a white cloth it bore a plate of cheese sandwiches and a flask of whisky. Without premeditation he disposed of both and found them excellent. Then he put on shoes, tie and jacket again, pressed the bell-push and sat down on a padded chair facing the main door. Within a minute it opened and in came the two men Adrian knew as Beaumont-Snaith and Fotheringay. Both had changed out of their former clothes into cotton sweaters and denims. Their manner had ceased to be respectful without becoming hostile in any way.

  ‘How are you feeling, Hollies?’ asked Fotheringay in his bass voice. He perched quite companionably on the end of the bed while Beaumont-Snaith leant against the wall by the door.

  ‘A bit heavy,’ said Adrian. ‘Sort of limp. I think perhaps I’m still dozy from that stuff you pumped into me. What was it?’

  Fotheringay looked at Beaumont-Snaith, who told him not to do that and added, ‘I just took what was given me and passed it on to you as ordered.’

  After nodding resignedly, Fotheringay said to Adrian, ‘Well, the next bit of orders is we take you along to talk to, er, the next one up from us, if you reckon you’re ready for it. There’s no great rush.’

  ‘Oh good. But I’m ready for it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ The big man made no move. ‘Aren’t you afraid, Hollies?’

  ‘Naturally I am, but ever since I woke up about twenty minutes ago I’ve had a lot to think about, for instance what this place is and what I’m supposed to be doing here. Or rather what the chap you’ve mistaken me for would have been doing here.’

  ‘Oh, so you reckon you’ve been mistaken for somebody else.’

  ‘I know I must have been.’

  Over by the door, Beaumont-Snaith pushed himself upright. ‘I think it’s time we fetched you along to meet the next one up from us, don’t you, er, Fotheringay?’

  Their way took them along an L-shaped piece of carpeted corridor in which and from which there was nothing to be seen and, except for the burble of distant traffic, nothing to be heard. All the same, Adrian sensed he was on an upper floor of a considerable building that stood on its own. Beaumont-Snaith, in the lead, knocked at a closed door and entered, followed by the other two.

  A well-groomed, well-dressed man of about forty, who had been sitting behind a large desk writing something, put down
his pen and took off his spectacles with an exclamation of pleasure, rose to his feet and extended a hand. ‘Good morning, Mr Hollies,’ he said affably, in decisive tones that seemed to Adrian in some way familiar. ‘Do take a seat. So glad you could come.’

  Without volition, Adrian shook the proffered hand and almost as spontaneously took the seat, a comfortable chair near and at an angle to the desk. He hardly needed to glance at the heavy furniture, the rows of books and periodicals or the Italian prints on the walls to perceive the ambience aimed at as expensive-professional. Beaumont-Snaith and Fotheringay were no longer to be seen.

  ‘At this stage of the proceedings,’ said the man behind the desk, smiling, ‘I should of course press a switch and tell somebody offstage that I don’t want any calls or visitors till further notice, which is acknowledged by the appallingly distorted voice of the somebody, but that would be going a little too far. Still, there is a switch I can press to cause something amusing to happen.’

  No switch sounded, but after a moment sounds of ringing telephones, buzzing buzzers and the like were to be heard from a concealed loudspeaker or speakers. With another smile, this time an eager, guileless, almost childish one that might have heralded the repetition of some established old favourite, the unknown recited carefully against this background, ‘Mr Hollies? Oh, it’s Sergeant Chatterton here, sir, Metropolitan Police, Kilburn Division. I wonder if you’d mind confirming that you’re the owner of’, and vehicular details followed. In the middle of them the loudspeakers faded. ‘There, now. What do you think of that, eh?’

  ‘I think that whatever it is you’re trying to do here you’re doing it to the wrong man.’

  ‘Oh, the wrong man. I see. But I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, Mr Hollies. Well, let’s just check, shall we? Here we are – Adrian Hugo Hollies, born younger son of Frederick Irving Hollies deceased and Diana Victoria née Barton, educated Westminster School and Trinity College, Oxford, blah blah blah, at present director of Parkes & Richards, et cetera. Oh yes. Er, current live-in girlfriend Julie Scharwenka, employed by Central Magazines plc. That is your life, isn’t it … Mr Hollies?’