I went over to Toby Salt.
‘Is this what you meant by being at the bleeding interface of literature and technology?’ I asked him, in an attempt to cheer him up.
It was at that point DI Lansbury reminded me that kidnapping was a rather serious matter, that Toby Salt would have endured a very traumatic and gruelling experience and that perhaps it would be the best for everyone if I went home and left them to it.
Friday December 7th
I opened the door to the spectacle of DI Lansbury’s triumphant beard, and behind him, the doughty Sergeant Tuck, bearing news.
‘Django has confessed all,’ declared DI Lansbury. ‘It was the final act of desperation from a publisher on the verge of bankruptcy.’
‘I had no idea,’ I said. ‘I’d always imagined they were doing well. That’s the impression that Toby Salt gave.’
‘I’ve no doubt he did. But all that poetry takes its toll on the finances,’ continued DI Lansbury. ‘Sales are precarious, margins slender. Then along comes Toby Salt, the best thing to have happened to Shooting from the Hip for years.’
I did my best to keep a straight face.
He went on. ‘But there was a cloud on the horizon. Toby Salt’s star was rising fast – he was winning awards, writing for newspapers, appearing on the radio and television – and the major publishers had started to circle. Django knew that a small press like Shooting from the Hip wouldn’t be able to keep hold of him for long. His only hope was to make as much money as possible out of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave – and what could be better for sales than a mystery surrounding its author.’
He helped himself to another custard cream before proceeding.
‘It worked far better than he could ever have dreamt. After his disappearance, Toby Salt was in the news every day – and as sales of his book increased that became a story in itself. A publishing phenomenon with a self-perpetuating cycle of sales and publicity.’
‘But what was he planning to do with Toby Salt when it had all died down?’ I asked.
‘Who knows! He claims he’d only intended to detain him for a couple of weeks. But then the book orders flooded in, and it all spiralled out of control. I suppose he’d have had to find a way of getting rid of him more permanently.’
I wondered momentarily whether I’d been a little too hasty in uncovering his whereabouts.
‘And now?’
‘And now, Mr Bilston, we’ll leave you alone. Thank you for your assistance and good luck with whatever it is that you do.’
He handed me my old diary back and they took their leave.
Saturday December 8th
Christmas without you is
A cracker in need of pulling.
A glass of wine that could do with more mulling.
A stocking that’s lacking in presents.
A champagne cocktail without effervescence.
A deep-filled mince pie with no deep-filled mince.
A Father Christmas who doesn’t convince.
A Wise Man bereft of myrrh
(substitute gold or frankincense, if you prefyrrh).
A card you’ve written but forgotten to send.
It’s A Wonderful Life without the bit at the end.
An Ernie without an Eric.
Generic
An out-of-tune carol.
A tin of Roses with no Golden Barrel.
A Bowie without a Bing.
A merrily-on-high dong that’s lost its ding.
Mistletoe without a kiss.
That’s what Christmas without you is.
With all the excitement of the last few days, my thoughts had been distracted from Dylan’s departure but it all came flooding back as I opened the door to him this morning. My attempts at cheeriness were unconvincing. By contrast, Dylan was in high spirits; I even caught him breaking out into a whistle.
Maybe he’s on drugs.
Or maybe he’s just looking forward to going away.
I hope he’s on drugs.
Sunday December 9th
Mrs McNulty whistled to me from across the fence. Reluctantly, I popped my head over. She handed me a piece of paper containing a series of strange patterns and squiggles.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ I asked her.
‘I’ve been reading the runes,’ she said, ‘and it’s not good news for you. No, it’s not good news at all. They spell. . .’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘. . . DEATH!’
I sighed. ‘Toby Salt has been found now, Mrs McNulty. Alive and well, worst luck. It’s no use trying to pin that one on me.’
She looked at me with something approaching sympathy, then shook her head softly.
‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘My poor boy.’
She reached into her apron and produced a book of Icelandic Christmas songs and fairy tales.
‘I was going to give you this for Christmas,’ she said. ‘But you should have it now. It will help you sleep.’
Monday December 10th
Papa Crimblecheeks
A traditional Icelandic lullaby translated from Old Norse
Be good, my child, be good,
for Papa Crimblecheeks comes tonight.
Shut tight those snowflake eyes
or he will slit your throat.
The whale pot rocks by the fire
and the wind whistles a tune tonight.
Papa Crimblecheeks is on his way.
Hear the ghosts of children’s cries.
Leave a tooth in the baleen bowl.
Keep it by your bed.
Papa Crimblecheeks will walk on by
for he knows you have been good.
Have you seen little Pétur?
He is hanging in the shed.
For he stole Eyhildur’s doll
and Papa Crimblecheeks found out.
‘Sorry to disturb you again, sir.’ It was Sergeant Tuck.
I was glad of the interruption. I’d been reading the book Mrs McNulty had given me and I wasn’t keen on being alone in the house.
‘I’ve just been wondering how you figured out where Toby Salt was.’
‘Oh, that was simple,’ I lied and showed him the taped-together postcard.
Sergeant Tuck filled me in on some more of the back story: how Django had forgotten his promise of providing the bookshop with handwritten postcards for the launch of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave; how he’d returned to the imprisoned Toby Salt and applied some ‘pressure’ to get him to write them.
I smiled at the thought.
‘Presumably, Django was watching him closely,’ I mused, ‘to be sure that he wasn’t able to send a message to the outside world about his incarceration. But then again his writing is so opaque, who can tell what any of it means? I felt, though, that there was something even odder than usual about the poem on my postcard. I’d seen it before in Well Versed. But there was something about it that jarred.’
‘Which was?’
‘For a while I wasn’t quite sure. But then, when I chanced upon the original version again, I noticed there were differences between that poem and the one on the postcard. Gutter press had been changed to letterpress. Jingle to jangle, like Django. Thigh to Hip. Daily agonies to shooting pains. Once I’d spotted the inconsistencies, it didn’t take a genius to see where all the clues were pointing.’
‘That cryptic crossword you’re always doing must have helped.’
‘Possibly. But also, a few days before, I’d been listening to some jazz and I’d had a sudden revelation. Improvisation and freedom of expression only works if the musicians have a common base from which to start.’
Sergeant Tuck was impressed, much as I’d hoped he would be because I’d just made that bit up.
‘One more thing, sir. Those eleven missing days in your diary: what were you up to?’
‘Ah. Some things are best kept secret,’ I replied enigmatically.
He didn’t pursue this further. I saw him eyeing up my anthologies.
‘Feel free to borrow anyth
ing you’d like,’ I said.
As he left, he thanked me profusely, from behind the large pile of poetry books he was carrying and expressed his hope that we might meet again one day soon.
Tuesday December 11th
I have been welcomed back into the soft and crinkly fold of Poetry Club.
Instrumental in my re-bosoming was Poetry Club’s latest recruit, Sergeant Tuck – or Henry, as he prefers to be known when he’s not on duty. He told them all about how I’d unearthed and untethered Toby Salt. As he narrated my fight sequence with Django, I thought of Douglas and how he’d have embellished the tale with suitable sound effects. I chipped in occasionally with the odd additional detail (again, no one laughed at my ‘heavy-hitting’ line) but I was content to leave the retelling to the good sergeant.
After the tale had been told, Chandrima hugged me. Kaylee gave me a fist bump. Liz stroked a sleeve of my cardigan, an action that I discovered to be surprisingly erotic.
Mary sat there, seemingly unmoved and impassive, and then cleared her throat.
‘When you’ve all quite finished,’ she said, sternly, ‘we have a poetry evening to put on. Brian . . .’ she paused and I wondered whether she was going to ask me to leave, ‘since we’ve all missed your poems over the last few months, I’d like to suggest that you go first.’
I took some crumpled pieces of paper out of my cardigan pocket and went up to the makeshift stage.
I took some crumpled pieces of paper out of my cardigan pocket and went up to the makeshift stage.
‘Here’s a poem about the time I kidnapped Mumford from Mumford and Sons,’ I mumbled in my usual, shambling manner, ‘planted him in a large pot and decorated him like a Christmas tree . . .’
It was just like old times: Mary treated us to a poem about the time her sixth husband nearly choked to death on a five-pence coin hidden in a Christmas pudding; Chandrima enchanted us with a meditation about the uniqueness of each snowflake; Liz accompanied a poem concerning the pulling of an obstinate Christmas cracker with a series of hand gestures that left me feeling rather hot and bothered for a while; and not even Kaylee’s powerful diatribe about an unscrupulous landlord who hires out his barn at an exorbitant price to a young pregnant mother on Christmas Eve was able to dampen the atmosphere.
And then, finally, Sergeant Tuck – Henry, I mean – shared with us something he’d written about the revelation of a corpse hidden beneath melting snow. It had promise but afterwards I gave him a few pointers as to how he might make some improvements to it.
On parting, Mary reminded the group about our Christmas lunch together next week. Chandrima said that she’d try to get in touch with Toby Salt to see if he would like to join us. I hope he does; it would be good to catch up and hear about what he’s been up to recently.
marginalised
I’ll
tell you
what
the
thing is
I’ve spent
too long
on
the
fringes
i’m
on
the
edge,
it’s
ever
so
cold,
please
welcome
me
back
into
the
fold
Wednesday December 12th
On the Shelf
They got straight to the heart of the matter.
‘It’s no fun here any more,’ remarked Bleak House, sadly.
‘He makes me so angry!’ whined The Grapes of Wrath.
‘I’ve never felt so alone,’ said One Hundred Years of Solitude,
for whom reality had long since lost its magic.
‘He couldn’t even remember my name, The Idiot,’
muttered a voice from the Russian literature section.
‘That’s because he avoids you like The Plague,’ said another.
‘C’est vrai!’ came a cry. ‘It is like I don’t exist!’
Two shelves below, an atlas shrugged.
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius thought for a while.
‘But why on earth doesn’t he read us?’ he pondered.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t have time because he spends so much of it
in a bookshop,’ suggested Catch-22 ruefully.
‘He just needs something to sink his teeth into,’ said Dracula.
‘Let’s not give up on him yet.’ It was Brave New World.
‘Who knows what the future may hold?’
After some Persuasion, they agreed to give him one last chance.
‘Be quiet!’ cried Waiting for Godot with Great Expectations.
‘I think that’s him coming now!’
My next deadline is approaching fast. I gritted my teeth and got down to it as best I could, interrupted only by an exchange of messages with Liz: she’s asked me if I’d be interested in joining her book group. After a brief deliberation, I agreed, and then spent the rest of the evening avoiding eye contact with my bookshelves.
Thursday December 13th
A ‘memory’ flashed up on Facebook today: I’d been tagged in a photograph from an old Christmas office party. There were about twenty of my co-workers on the dancefloor, all linked together to form some kind of human centipede – or ‘conga’ as I believe it’s called. They were all laughing and having fun. You could just about make me out in the background, sat by myself, looking glum. I was attempting to flick pistachio nuts into a jar.
It is funny to think that was only two years ago. It feels so good to have moved on from those days.
Friday December 14th
I’ve drawn Mary in our Poetry Club Secret Santa. I had a browse in the Age Concern shop and was able to pick up a second-hand Wham! CD for her at the bargain price of fifty pence. I have no idea whether she likes them or not but it’s the thought that counts.
After that, I went to the bookshop to pick up a copy of Liz’s book group choice for the month: Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. It seemed miserly to leave the shop merely with one book and so I also bought an illustrated edition of A Christmas Carol, a collection of English Ghost Stories, The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems and a biography of James Stewart.
Saturday December 15th
Dylan texted this morning to say that something had come up and he couldn’t make it over again today. He wouldn’t tell me what the matter was. I wondered whether Sophie might be behind his no-show and considered phoning her but couldn’t face another argument.
I lugged my misery around with me for the rest of the day. I lugged a Christmas tree around with me, too, carrying it for three miles before I eventually got it home. Exhausted, I collapsed on the sofa and ate a whole packet of custard creams, then fell into a strange, disturbing dream.
I was on a dancefloor in a nightclub. The music was awful. Balloons fell down from a cage on the ceiling, next to a shining, spinning disco ball. There was a man dancing next to me with bad 1980s hair. He boogied over to me with a balloon between his knees, which he then proceeded to lodge between my own knees, after a series of rather alarming cajolings. I inspected the man more closely and saw that he bore a remarkable resemblance to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge sporting a mullet.
I looked at my fellow dancers. I was surprised to see William Wordsworth there – and Percy Bysshe Shelley. And Byron. And Keats. They, too, wore their hair short at the front and long at the back. Suddenly, in unison, they clapped their hands and began to act out a sequence of bizarre actions in time with the music: pretending to sleep, waving their hands, hitching a ride, sneezing, going for a walk . . .
I woke up suddenly, my dream interrupted by a knock on the door. It was the Man at Number 29.
‘I’m just out delivering Christmas cards,’ he said, holding one out in front of me.
‘Oh. Thank you!’ I said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Not at
all. It was the least I could do. Thanks for all your help with that spot of bother earlier in the year.’
I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to ‘The Man at Number 25’.
‘Well, thanks to you for all your help, too. I’m Brian,’ I said. ‘Brian Bilston.’
‘Good to meet you, Brian,’ he replied. ‘My name’s Colin. Colin Porlock.’
We shook hands. After he’d gone, I began to write a poem about my peculiar reverie:
In Agadoo did Kubla Khan
Push pineapple, shake the tree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Wave your hands, superman!
But that was as far as I could get. It was incomplete, a fragment. I went to bed, unsettled still by my dream and the sounds of its sinister, haunting soundtrack ringing in my ears.
Sunday December 16th
Dave, Martin and Marvin have headed off for the Christmas holidays. Last night’s party had clearly taken its toll. They managed a mumbled happy Christmas to me before staggering over to their car and heading off down the street with a jaded parp of the VW Beetle’s horn.
I wasn’t on good form either, having been unable to sleep through the merrymaking. In the end, I gave up trying and climbed out of bed to go and read some of Grief is the Thing with Feathers on the sofa. I looked at the clock: it was 4.30am and I was up with the crows.
Monday December 17th
The shops are full of worried men. I was in one of them on the hunt for a Christmas jumper to wear at tomorrow’s Poetry Club lunch. It took me five hours to choose one. I stood in front of the changing room mirror as I tried jumper after jumper, featuring an assortment of knitted elves, reindeer, Christmas trees, mistletoe and snowmen.
Diary of a Somebody Page 26