Death’s Jest-Book. Reginald Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ described myself to Dwight as Sam’s literary executor, which wasn’t precisely true. What in fact occurred, as you probably heard, was that Linda Lupin, MEP, Sam’s half-sister and sole heir, decided out of the generosity of her spirit to place the reins of Sam’s researches into my hands. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the publisher with whom Sam’s biography was contracted wasn’t best pleased.

      I can see his point of view. Who am I, after all? In literary terms, nobody, though my ‘colourful’ background was something their sales department felt they might have been able to use if the field had remained clear. But with Albacore’s book already being hyped around as the ‘definitive’ biography, their judgment now was that setting me up to carry on where Sam had left off was throwing good money after bad.

      So, sorry, mate, but no deal for the big book that Sam was aiming at.

      They did however make an alternative proposal.

      Because Beddoes’ life is so thinly documented, Sam had been interlarding his script with what he clearly labelled ‘Imagined Scenes’. These, as he explains in a draft preface, made no claim to be detailed accounts of actual incidents. Though some were based on known facts, others were simply imaginative projections, devised in order to give the reader a sense of the living reality of Beddoes’ existence. Many would, I believe, have been much modified in or totally expunged from the finished book.

      How would I feel, I was asked, about cutting out most of the hard-core lit. crit. stuff, working up a few more of these ‘Imagined Scenes’, well spiced with a sprinkling of sex and violence, and producing one of those pop-biogs which had done so well in recent years?

      I didn’t need the time offered to think about it.

      I told them to get stuffed. I owe Sam a lot more than that.

      But while I was still reeling from the injustice of it all came this invitation for me to take up Sam’s place at the conference.

      I’d taken it on face value as the programmers paying a posthumous tribute to a valued colleague and at the same time saving themselves the bother of rejigging their programme. But this was no explanation of why, instead of being stuck in a student’s pad like the commonalty of lecturers, I was queening it in the Q’s lodging alongside Dwight Duerden. There had to be another motive and, since seeing Albacore’s name, I’ve been suspecting he might have hopes of sweet-talking Sam’s Beddoes research database out of me.

      Maybe I’m being paranoid. But the groves of academe are crowded with raptors, so Sam always assured me. Anyway, I’ll be in a better position to judge once I’ve actually met the conference organizers, which will be at the Welcome Reception and Introductory Session in fifteen minutes’ time.

      Now where was I? Oh yes, the new female psych. Her name, believe it or not, was Amaryllis Haseen!

      Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade was, you will recall, one of the alternatives to writing poetry which Milton’s most un-Puritanical imagination suggested to him. My only acquaintance with the flower is the garishly fleshy specimens that sometimes turn up at Christmas. Well, by those standards, Ms Haseen lived up to her name and was generally regarded by most of the sex-starved cons as an early Christmas prezzie. As one of Polchard’s top lads said dreamily, ‘Tart like that you can tell all your sexual fancies to, it’s better than pulling your plonker over Women on Top.’

      Everyone developed psychological problems. Ms Haseen was no fool, however. Her purpose in taking on the Chapel Syke consultancy was to garner material for a book on the psychology of incarceration, which she hoped would put more letters after her name and more money in her bank. (It came out last year, called Dark Cells, lots of nice reviews. I’m Prisoner XR pp. 193–207, by the way.) She quickly sorted out the wankers from the bankers. When Polchard’s lieutenant complained that he’d been dumped while I’d got a twice-weekly session, I smiled and said, ‘You’ve got to make ’em feel they can help you, and that doesn’t mean flashing your bone and asking her to give it the once over like you did!’ That made even Polchard smile and thereafter whenever I came back from a session I had to face a barrage of obscene questions as to the progress I was making towards getting into her underwear.

      To tell the truth, I think I might have managed it, but I didn’t even try. Even if successful, what would I have got out of it?

      A few top-C’s of mindless delight (no chance in the circumstances for more than a quick knee-trembler) and a coda of post-coital sadness that might stretch for years!

      For I had to be a realist. Even if Amaryllis could be seduced into enjoying a bit of sport in the shade, when she walked out into the bright sunshine beyond the Syke’s main gates and thought of her promising career and her happy marriage, she was going to shudder with shame and fear and pre-empt any future accusations I might make by marking me down as a dangerous fantasist. (You think I’m being too cynical? Read on!)

      So I set my mind to finding out what it was that she wanted from me professionally and making sure that she got it.

      There was another danger here. You see, what she really wanted was to get a clear picture of what made me tick. And the trouble was that this subject fascinated me also.

      I’ve always known I’m not quite the same as other people, but the precise nature of this otherness eludes me. Is it based on an absence or a presence? Do I have something others lack, or am I lacking in something that others possess?

      Am I, in other words, a god among mortals or merely a wolf among sheep?

      The temptation to let it all hang out before her and see what her professional skills made of the fascinating tangle was great. But the risks were greater. Suppose her conclusion was that I was an incurable sociopath?

      So, regrettably, I felt I had to postpone the pleasures of complete analytical honesty till such time as I could pay for it out of my pocket rather than out of my freedom.

      Instead I devoted my energies to letting Amaryllis find what suited us both best – that is, a slightly fractured personality which would make an interesting paragraph in her book.

      It was good fun. The checkable facts about my background I was careful to leave intact. But after that, it was creativity hour as, like Dorothy after the twister, I stepped out of the black and white world of Kansas into the bright bold colours of Oz. Like most of these trick cyclists, she was fixated on my childhood and I had a great time inventing absurd stories about my dear old dad, who actually vanished from my life so early that I have no recollection of him whatsoever. You’ll find most of them in her book. I knew I had a talent for fiction long before I won that short-story competition.

      Yet at the same time I was very aware that Amaryllis was no one’s fool. I had to assume she knew that my agenda was to help myself by apparently helping her. So, as with my chess games, I needed to play on many levels.

      It didn’t take many sessions before I began to think I was truly in control.

      Then she took me by surprise. Her opening was to ask me, ‘How do you feel about the people you hold responsible for putting you in the Syke?’

      ‘Apart from myself?’ I said.

      This seemed like a good answer, but she just grinned at me as if to say, ‘Come off it!’

      So I smiled back and said, ‘You mean the policemen who arrested me and built the case against me?’

      ‘If that’s СКАЧАТЬ