Short fiction: The Man Who Lost the Plot

 A cardboard character

“Actually yes, my father did teach me something,” said Bernard.

Diana sat up in her chair. “He did?”

“Yes,” he replied. He looked at her, but his gaze was unfocused. He turned away, towards the Mediterranean that washed the cliffs 100 feet or so below the stone balustrade of the terrace; its surface glittered in the afternoon sun.

He was in his 70s, and rather thin; his beard was grey, his flyaway hair patchy, his eyes a very pale blue. He was slumped back in his chair, but the latter was high-backed and capacious, with thick armrests that kept him upright despite the amount he had drunk. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt in orange-and-lemon hues, and a gold chain around his neck that rested on the white chest hair visible at the shirt’s open neck. We must seem an odd couple to the other diners on the terrace, thought Diana. This louche being Bernard, and herself – a trim blonde in her late 30s, dressed for the London office she had left early that morning; a smart green cord blazer and white blouse that flattered her figure and a dark skirt that ended not too far above the knee.

Delfi de la Rua/Wikimedia Commons

“What did he teach you?” she asked. She glanced at her recording device to make sure it was working.

“It was a problem,” said Bernard. “That he had with Dexter.”

“Really?” asked Diana. Dexter’s Sacrifice. The novel that had nearly won the Booker. Though she had never quite been convinced by the ending. But the world had disagreed, and the book had brought Sir John Coulter the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel committee had talked of “the profound humanity… of his depiction of the ultimate sacrifice by a man driven by the nobility of the human spirit.”

I think there is a story here after all, she thought, and the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

*

“You’ll get nothing from his son,” the Arts Editor had told her the day before as they sat in his glass-and-steel office in Canary Wharf. “Remember, his own books were not well received. Compared with his father, Bernard has been a failure.”

“I shall try flattery,” said Diana.

“He’ll see straight through it. He must know what a flop his own career was in comparison.”

“Well, I should try,” said Diana. “We must mark Coulter senior’s 100th. How is he seen, 30 years after his death? Is he still read, and all that? – yes, we know he is. What does his son remember?”

“Also you get a trip to Italy… er, what’s the name of the place where he lives?”

She told him. He chuckled.

“That’s where aristocratic German perverts went in the 1890s, to take pictures of bronzed naked teenage boys,” he said.

“So it was. Well, if I don’t get anything out of Bernard, I can always do a feature on its history, and we can illustrate it with a tasteful selection of filthy daguerrotypes.”

“I wonder if that might pull in more punters, actually,” said the Arts Editor.

*

“So what was the problem he had with Dexter’s Sacrifice?” she asked.

She wasn’t sure he had heard, but after a moment he began to speak.

“I was about 16,” he said. “We were living in Hampstead. Dad wasn’t an enfant terrible any more, you see. He’d made some money by then. And he had this paper job as an advisor to the Arts Council.”

“That’s right,” said Diana. “Surprising for a rebel.”

“Not really,” said Bernard. “That is the way the Establishment does it in England, isn’t it? If you tilt at windmills too often, they give you one of your own to shut you up.”

“I suppose so.”

“Anyway,” said Bernard, “my father was in his 50s then. He wrote in an office that had French windows onto the garden. It was early summer and they were open. My stepmother was out somewhere, as she usually was; actually she was shagging a Tory MP but I didn’t know that at the time, though I expect Father did. I was sitting on the patio, revising for my French O-level. I failed it of course. He was very angry about that…. It was mid-morning and he was writing. He had this rule. Always write at least 500 words before lunch. He knew he wouldn’t after lunch, you see. Because by then he drank.”

You would know about that, thought Diana. Before lunch, they had gone through a bottle of Lacryma Christi, which Bernard appeared to drink as an aperitif. During lunch they had dispatched a bottle of Aglianico de Vulture. (“Vulture goes well with grey meat,” he had quipped, nodding towards her plate of vitello tonnato.) Bernard had drunk most of this; he had now drunk several Avernas. Diana drank little while working. She now cradled a limoncello.

He seemed to drift off, and Diana prompted him.

“So what happened about Dexter’s Sacrifice?” she asked. He seemed to jerk back to life.

“I suddenly heard my father roar out: ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ And he came through the French doors almost violently. ‘Dexter does not work! He does not work! He would not do it!’ And he stood there on the patio, looking down the garden. He took no notice of me.” Bernard hesitated for a moment. “But then, he never really did.”

That is what his biographers say, thought Diana. Out loud she said:

“And did he say anything else?”

“Not at first. But after a moment I said, ‘Father, why doesn’t Dexter work?’ And he looked around as if he had just noticed me and said: ‘Dexter is to perform this supreme sacrifice, this monstrous act of self-abnegation. But he would not do it. I am writing a book about an unselfish act by a selfish man; an act of redemption. It is supposed to warm the cockles of the reader’s heart. But damn it all, the man is a shit. I know that he would not do it. Do you hear?’ And he unclenched his fists and looked down at the grass and said, ‘He would not do it. We would not do it. We are all shits.’

“And then he turned and strode back through the French doors.”

“He wrote it that way anyway,” said Diana.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I asked you if he ever taught you anything, any piece of wisdom that has helped you write yourself,” she said, “and you said yes.”

“He taught me two things that day,” said Bernard. “First, that a character in a narrative must behave in character. Otherwise, they are cardboard. The book probably won him the Nobel. But it never worked, you see. It never worked.”

“I know,” she said. “I read it for A-Level English. It didn’t work.”

“The character lost the plot, you see,” he said.

“Actually,” said Diana, “it was the other way round. What was the second thing you learned that day?”

“That we are all venal,” said Bernard. “He needed to finish the book. It did not work. But his publisher was waiting. So that must not be allowed to matter.”

DCRJSR/Wikimedia Commons

He looked at her, his eyes unfocused.

“But he was better than me,” he said. “I was never any bloody good, was I?”

“People read your books.”

“For form’s sake, to see if I was like him.”

“Do you still write?” asked Diana.

“No.”

“What do you do, day to day?”

“I collect daguerrotypes,” said Bernard. “Have you heard of Wilhelm Freiherr von Westofen?”

“Was he one of the aristocratic perv – er, photographers who came here in the late 19th century?” asked Diana.

“Yes,” replied Bernard. “Although everyone calls these old pictures daguerrotypes, by then they were using glass negatives and paper prints.”

“Weren’t some of these guys …dodgy?”

“Judge for yourself,” he said, and took out his phone. He jabbed it a few times then handed it to her, saying: ”Here. Scroll down.”

So she did. She looked up at him.

“These boys look very young. Didn’t the locals object?”

“No. He was far too wealthy,” said Bernard. “And he paid off the local men of honour. Wouldn’t work now. Anyway, most of these pictures were thought lost. Destroyed, you see. By Fascists and priests. In a fit of morality.”

Diana looked at the pictures and wondered if the priests and Fascists might have had a point. She handed back the phone.

“You’ve got your story now, haven’t you,” he said.

“What?”

“You came to get something on my father. You didn’t really come to see me. But I can be a story too, can’t I? I’m a failed writer and a pervert who collects dirty pictures of boys. In the name of art history, naturally.”

He took a gulp of Averna.

“Why don’t you do that?” He continued. “Poignant story of famous writer’s failed son. The son who lost the plot.”

He was looking at her with what she suddenly realised was pure, unalloyed hatred.

“Why would I wish to do that to you?” she said.

“Because you do. Because you all do.” His eyes glowed with malevolence.

And then he cried.

It was a quiet time of the afternoon but a few tables were, like theirs, still occupied from lunch. One or two people looked their way. She looked her bag for a tissue and found she hadn’t one.

Then he fell asleep.

She sat with him for five minutes or so, wondering if he would wake. He didn’t, and she looked around at the sea, now sparkling against the sun as it swung round to the west. At length she stood and went inside, where she found the head waiter and asked for the bill. She paid, then took a €50 note from her purse. “I wonder if you might do something for me?” she asked.

The head waiter nodded politely.

“When Mr Coulter wakes up, would you arrange for a taxi and ensure that he returns home safely?”

“Yes, of course, Signora.” He took the note. “I have done so before. I shall call his housekeeper; she is my cousin.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Thank you.”

She walked back to her hotel through a series of small, shady streets and piazzas; most Italians were resting at this hour in summer, and there was almost no-one about, the shutters drawn across many windows. The occasional motorino hummed past and that was all.

At the hotel she sat at the small round table on her veranda and began to type her story. By seven o’clock she had it, at least in outline. Coulter Knew Dexter “Did Not Work”, read the headline. Knew Nobel book was flawed, says son.

She listened to Bernard’s last rant on her earpiece.

At length she pressed the Save button and took a Peroni beer from the minibar. The sun was sinking over the sea. She watched it for a few minutes, then took out her phone and composed a text.

Please report on status of joint projects

She smiled, and put the phone down. A moment later it buzzed in reply.

First joint project dormant

She replied: Good. Second joint project?

Bedtime strop earlier. Is now brushing teeth in compliance with project management

She chuckled.

How trip? How Bernard? 

Has lost plot very sad

Oh. Sorry

Hate job sometimes

Understand. Large gin waiting here

😊😊😊Love to joint projects

She put her phone down. No, she thought. I shan’t write about Bernard.

She swallowed some beer, and watched as the rim of the sun sank below the horizon and the sea began to darken.

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

The Long Road from the Black Death A history lecturer retires

Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now

A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth

Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story

In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer

A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place
A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit
Time After Time When you have to warn the children
Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style
A Time of Darkness History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes
Another Time A tear in the fabric
Evolution The world is turning
When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square
Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala
A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip
A History Lesson Why do we study it? So we can spot it happening
The Creatives Meeting a tech bro
Cold Everything is cold here
Homecoming A sort of love story
Solitude A Cold War memory
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography
Hiraeth A yearning…
Strange Places A spirit in the sky 
A Sideways Journey Things might have been different
Displaced Encounter on E94th Street
Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
Follow Mike on Twitter and Facebook.

Short fiction: The Long Road from the Black Death

 It was quite a day. I suppose. I mean, it’s not every day you retire, is it? Especially if you’re like me and you give a big lecture at 5 o’clock and the Vice-Chancellor turns up and the most important history professors in the country are piped in on Zoom and MS Teams and scholars in European history from Humboldt and Leiden and Columbia and Monash and the Sorbonne and God knows where else. 

And of course the whole faculty are there and all the postgrads too. But you know they’re feeling the same, let’s get through to the end of the old cow’s valedictory lecture then we can get to the cheap warm white wine and the finger food that’s been sweating in the summer heat, and after a decent interval we can slip home in time for a cold beer with Channel 4 News.

I mean, none of them like me, do they.

I don’t blame them. I’m not very nice. “Horrid desiccated mean old bitch,” I heard someone say after a faculty meeting once. She didn’t know I heard her. Or maybe she did. And when I was young …the Fellowships not renewed, the exile from Cambridge…

A big day today though.

Yet I sort of drifted off. I was sitting on the stage and the Vice-Chancellor was on his hind legs introducing me. (His hind legs are short though. He must have a hard time using his antlers in the rutting season.) As always with him, his words sort of coalesced into a damp wet cloud that rolled out over the room leaving everyone looking slightly depressed.

“Outstanding contribution,” he mumbled. “Deepened understanding. The rural workforce. Plague. Enclosures. How we have become – the scars on the land…”

I thought of Pietro. I hadn’t for years. Well, that’s not quite true; now and then he snuck into my mind but I wouldn’t let him stay there. I shoved him firmly out.

“…And it is my honour to present – our dear friend and colleague, Helena Carstairs – distinguished Bardsley Professor of English History…”

Thank God he didn’t go on about the Bardsley Professorship, I thought. The chair had been endowed by a drunken Tory newspaper magnate, baronet, ultra-patriot and noted appeaser whose divorce left the nation deliciously appalled for some weeks as the war-clouds gathered. In time he repaired to Antibes, where he drank himself to death in the company of various beautiful young boys. He died long before I assumed the Chair, which was as well as I am sure he hoped the incumbent would write reams on the glory of England, its cuisine, Empire and Morris dancers.

“…And her final lecture as a regular member of the faculty. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Helena Carstairs presents her Valedictory Lecture, The Long Road from the Black Death.”

I stood up. As always, before I spoke, I paused for effect. Well partly for effect, but also to see who was in the audience. Know your enemy. There was Professor Headley from Rutland University. How furious he’d been when I beat him to the Bardsley Chair. Oh, what fun when he reviewed my book a few months later. Unhinged. More vitriol than the Acid Bath Murderer. And Jake Carter from Evil College, Oxford, the noted expert in medieval malaria whose hands wandered in tutorials. Oh, there’s that ghastly undergraduate with acne, the one who keeps complaining about his marks. It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Thank God I’m retiring, I’ll never have another “snotfair” to deal with.

“Good evening, everyone,” I begin. “I am delighted to see you all, those here in person and those of you online. There are so many of you I love and respect, and whose intellectual stimulation I will miss… so much.

“I would like, tonight, to take you on a journey. A journey that changed England through a thousand years of struggle. For there was no Merrie England. There was no midsummer night’s dream, no rural idyll. The powerful seized the common lands and the poor died in droves. We know from the pioneer 19th-century demographer, John Rickman, that the England of Elizabeth was a savage place. Rural parishes had a high surplus of births over deaths; but towns had a high surplus of deaths over births. The poor were driven off the land as they were born. They went to the towns and died there. And then, in the 1690s, came Newcomen’s steam engine. And emigration. And it is written across our landscape, as in a huge book. In my work, I have sought to help us read it.”

Just for a moment I can see Pietro’s face. My voice wavers a little, and then I continue. And when I finish, I give a little bow and everyone applauds dutifully. There are no questions taken from the audience; instead we troop into the hall outside and I am awfully polite to everyone.

“You were generous in your tributes and acknowledgements,” said Professor Carter from Evil. “I was most humbled.”

“As was I ,” said Professor Headley. “I am glad so many of us have helped you along the way.” He sleazed a smile, then frowned. “It was a stellar list of the best in our discipline, but one name I did not recognize – that foreign character – Pietro someone?”

“Pietro Mancini?”

“Yes. Who was he?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

The white wine was cheap and warm and would itself have dissolved a body. There were crackers with prawns that had been baking in the heat, and the cocktail sausages were as slimy as a rock pool in summer.

*

“Nana’s lecture was jolly good,” said Maggie.

“Nana’s lecture’s good! Good! Good!” said Chrissie, and she danced around the garden, hands clasped above her head.

The teenage baby-sitter smiled at Maggie. “I’ll drop you at home, dear,” Maggie said, and I watched Chrissie as she rolled around on the grass. When Maggie came back she put her to bed, then sat down opposite me in the garden, working the cork out of a Prosecco bottle. I looked at her face as she did it, pleased that she did not look like her father. I had left him when he hit me once too often. I was happier after that.

For a long time we said little but sipped wine together, enjoying the deep blue of the gathering dusk as the flitting swallows were replaced by the odd bat.

“I heard Professor Dickhead ask you about Pietro Mancini,” said Maggie.

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“It’s a long story.”

“No,” said Maggie, “no, don’t just say that.” She smiled, then frowned when she saw my face.

“Mum?”

“I was 17,” I said slowly. “I was doing my A-Levels. I didn’t know if I would get into university, or what I would do there if I did. But I knew I would soon have to make up my mind. Aunty Carol was about to go. Mum and Dad invited an exchange student for a month. From Rome. And your Aunty Carol went over there. They were both history students. And they were both in their second year.”

“Did Aunty Carol have enormous tits even then?” asked Maggie. She giggled. “He must have thought he was in paradise.”

“Not really,” I said. “It was too hot in Rome and there was too much wine. I think she got horrendously pissed.”

“Italians don’t like that. Rather bruta figura.”

“Yes and I don’t think Carol was very nice to him anyway. He was very good-looking, actually, but I don’t think he was her type. She rather neglected him when he came over, and he spent most of his time with my parents. His English was excellent, and he was ever so polite.” I thought for a moment.  “He even pretended to like baked beans and sausages and mash. And greasy lamb chops. God knows how. And he was nice to me. Though I wasn’t exciting. I was flat-chested and had spots. Anyway, Mum and Dad were afraid he was bored. It was his last few days. I had just passed my driving test, so one day they told me to take him up into the fells to see the countryside and get some fresh air.”

I closed my eyes.

*

We’d had a cold, snowy winter, but the summer that followed wasn’t bad. It was August and the very best of the season was over. But that day was mostly bright, the odd bank of white cloud passing across the sun. 

I’d been working that summer and saved some money; I had £125 and spent it on a very old Mini. It cost £200, but Dad gave me the difference, and paid for the insurance. It didn’t last long; it failed its MoT a few months later because the subframe mounts were completely rotten and I’m lucky I didn’t go through the floor, but I didn’t know that then. I called it Minou, which was what I’d heard French people called sweet little kittens. It can mean something else too, but I didn’t know that either at the time.

Pietro was quite tall. He coiled himself into the passenger seat and tried to open the window; it took him a moment or two to work out the Mini’s sliding arrangement. The seat creaked. I watched him get comfortable and noticed that his eyes were deep blue and the lashes very long. I hadn’t seen those things before, though I had  noticed his deep brown wavy hair. I opened my own window and we drove off, though not before I had struggled to get into first, feeling for the slot with the long, slack gear-lever. Second to third needed a second attempt too, the first attempt engaging first instead; there was a loud graunching sound. The second attempt was more successful. At length I was in top and the Mini scurried along the windy B-road that led up into the valley that dug into the fells.

“I think you drive very well, ’Elena,” said Pietro.

“No I don’t,” I said. A country bus came towards us and I veered towards the left-hand hedge, hearing a scraping sound as the brambles scratched the paintwork.

At length I turned off into a country lane and followed it to a small car-park from which one could walk up into the hills. We took our rucksacks with water and sandwiches and tramped for an hour or so up a green lane, saying little yet oddly relaxed in each other’s company. Once we crossed an overgrown track along which ran a line of stones set across the track and parallel to each other. I had seen this track many times and did not remark upon it. But Pietro stopped, and looked fascinated.

“That is – what? Almost like a …primitive railway,” he said.

“I forgot – you’re a history student, aren’t you?”

He chuckled. “I am history student, yes. Look. Is that not a railway track to you?”

“Dad says it’s something to do with the old mines on the side of the fell,” I said. “They had horse-drawn carts and the used them to bring coal down to the coast. In time they opened bigger mines on the coast itself and colliers could load there, so these mines were abandoned.”

“What date?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “About 1720 I think.”

“Look,” he said. “The holes, where there must have been fastening for the rails. Were they wood?”

“Our teacher said they were wood,” I said. “But later they were replaced with iron.”

“That,” said Pietro, “is history.”

He was more animated than I had seen him before and I laughed. “Pietro, you are from Rome,” I said. “You have history coming out of your ears there. Really, ours can’t be very interesting.”

“But it is,” he said. He pointed to the row of stones. “You are mining coal. The rails are of wood. But then they are of iron and then of steel and they carry the coal to the coast where it fuels the furnaces where the first machines are forged and one day someone builds a machine that can pull the wagons in place of horses, and that machine links cities together and the modern world is born. Look! There it is happening before our very eyes! And you speak of Rome. All they did was whip their slaves and gorge themselves on lingua alaudae and garum.”

“On what?” I was laughing.

“The tongues of larks,” he said. “And garum was fish sauce. That they made with fermented fish innards.”

“That sounds quite disgusting.” I wrinkled my nose.

He was laughing too now. “Of course it was. The Romans, they were disgusting. But your coal and steel took you across the seas and built the modern world. And there it is.” He pointed to the stones again. “Forget the fish innards and pervert emperors …Did you see the field we passed, with the ridges still here from ancient furrows? Did you wonder who farmed there, and what became of them?”

“The Black Death?” I suggested.

“Maybe. Or maybe there were just too many people and the soil could not support them. It happened. Italy too. You may take the train from Roma to Sperlonga and you will see it; kilometre after kilometre of abandoned, dusty terraces. Where did they go? What happened when they got there?”

“I think the landscape speaks to you, Pietro,” I said.

“Speak to me? It will not shut up,” he replied.

We smiled at each other. And as we walked away, he took my hand. It was a surprise, and at first I was taken aback; then I realised I was pleased.

“Do you like Carol?” I asked.

“She is fine,” he said.

To this day I don’t know why I said it, but I did:

“She has awfully big breasts,” I said.

“So has my mother,” he replied.

We both burst out laughing, and I felt his warmth and his laughter. And then he kissed me. I’d been kissed before, but this was different; not a furtive fumbly sort of kiss that smelled of baked beans or breakfast cereal, but something gentle and nice, and now I’m crying, and Maggie is kneeling in front of me, anxious, holding both my hands.

*

So Maggie pours me a big glass of wine then sits down on the grass beside my chair.

“Silly old cow,” I say, and sniff.

“No,” she says.

We’re silent for a minute.

“What happened? I mean, with you and Pietro?”

“Nothing.” Another snivel. “We were never alone together again and three days later he went back to Italy. But we wrote each other. His letters never mentioned romance. But they were warm and chatty and nice. He talked about us meeting again. I think he wanted to. Then two years later the letters stopped. I wrote several times more, then I got a letter from his father. It was in Italian but I worked out what it said. In the summer Pietro had gone up to the north of Italy to see friends from university. On the way back he had to change trains in Bologna. It was the day of the bomb in the station there. They planted it in the waiting room. His father said he must have died at once.”

“Oh,” said Maggie. “Oh.”

She gazed up at me. “Mum, were you in love?”

“Yes,” I said.

I looked back at her.

“I’m not a bad person,” I said. “I just find it hard sometimes …to be…”

“It’s all right,” she said.

She sat beside my chair until the need to sleep crept up on me, and I felt at peace.

 

Pietro Mancini is a fictional character and no-one of that name died in the Bologna station bombing; I was careful to check. However, 85 very real people did die in the explosion, on August 2 1980. It is usually ascribed to an extreme right-wing revolutionary group, and was one of the nastier terrorist atrocities of my lifetime. The dead are commemorated on a plaque in the Bologna Centrale station, where it happened.

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now

A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth

Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story

In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer

A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place
A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit
Time After Time When you have to warn the children
Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style
A Time of Darkness History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes
Another Time A tear in the fabric
Evolution The world is turning
When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square
Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala
A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip
A History Lesson Why do we study it? So we can spot it happening
The Creatives Meeting a tech bro
Cold Everything is cold here
Homecoming A sort of love story
Solitude A Cold War memory
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography
Hiraeth A yearning…
Strange Places A spirit in the sky 
A Sideways Journey Things might have been different
Displaced Encounter on E94th Street
Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
Follow Mike on Twitter and Facebook.