Stories: All-New Tales

For the next ten years or so life settled into routines nobody felt like messing with though Rex grew increasingly unreasoning in his arguments with editors, then publishers, then agents until almost nobody would work with him. His books didn’t sell enough for any editor to bother keeping him sweet. He took offence easily and frequently and, through his vengeful verse, publicly. Chick said he could no longer manage him. I would have thought this a good thing. I believed Chick’s natural leanings towards convention and literary respectability pushed Rex away from his saving self-mocking vulgarity. Balzac and Vautrin were less his models than Proust or Albertine. His work seemed to apologise for itself. He lost his popular touch without gaining critical prestige. Only Mary Stone went on making money for them. His short stories came out less frequently, but he kept his habit of phoning and often reading the whole thing to you. And he still enjoyed inventing a story when he got your answering machine. “Oh, I know what you’re doing. You’ve met that good-looking farmer again and gone badger watching with him.” Usually the time would be up before he could complete his fantasy. His new novels tended to peter out after a few chapters. I’d get frustrated and consider continuing them for him. They were wonderful ideas. Occasionally they would reemerge when a way of telling them occurred to him. His aptitude for ironic narrative verse never left him. I’d labour for hours to get anything close to what usually took him minutes. Chick helped him develop his taste for classical music, which is how he came to write his three operas, one of which he based on Kersh’s The Brazen Bull and another on Balzac’s Illusions Perdue but he became snobbish about popular music or he’d have written some great lyrics. I used a few of his verses in my own music stuff. I inserted another into one of my hack thrillers, its redeeming feature. His only opera to reach the stage was a version of Firbank’s Cardinal Pirelli. Rex delighted in upsetting Catholics, although his attacks meant little to most of us.

Then, as we limped into our sixties, we began to suffer from real illnesses, as opposed to passing scares. Rex was diabetic, arthritic. Chick was the first of us to be diagnosed with cancer. I think it was colon, he wouldn’t say. Even Rex refused to betray him on that occasion. His surgery seemed to cure him. We heard Jenny survived a stroke. By that time she hardly saw any old friends. When she had an operation, I’m not sure what for. Rex didn’t speak of the years when he’d seen her regularly, even as we grew closer than ever, all living up in those northern hills, from Todmorden to Kendal. Harry, of course, was still in Ireland. Billy Allard went to Corfu after his children grew up. Pete continued to be presumed dead. Peggy Zoran returned to New York and was very successful. The Cornishes moved to Kirkby Lonsdale. I had a hernia operation which went wrong. Bad stitching cut off an artery and caused problems in my leg. I couldn’t walk or climb anymore. Rex’s diabetes was complicated by drinking. Chick successfully got him on the wagon. In 2005, while we were at our place in Paris, I got an e-mail from Rex referring casually to Chick’s return to Airedale General, so I phoned the hospital at once. “It’s spread a bit,” Chick said. “I’ll be out in a few days.” So we flew home and drove over. Chick had lost a lot of weight. He was ghastly white but Rex pretended nothing was wrong. A lot of surgery was involved. Chick started a short story called “Over the Knife.” He showed it to us. Very mystical and sardonic. He got me to ask Jack Hawthorn if he’d take over Mary Stone, but Jack wasn’t up to it. The next thing we knew he was admitted again and we made the first of several trips to Skipton. Chick was bitter about friends who couldn’t find time to visit or phone. “Or send a bloody Hallmark card and a bunch of fucking flowers.” Rex, sometimes there when I was, echoed all this. I did what I could to make friends visit. Very few did. People were fighting to keep some sort of income, I suppose. At the hospital we made the usual jokes, complimented Chick on his courage. He found this amusing. “You’re just thanking me for not making you feel bad. It’s easy to be brave when everyone’s attention’s focused on you.” He could do the best wan smile, remembered Rex, giggling later. Chick asked us to stop sending flowers. The smell reminded him too much of funerals. I remembered my mother making the same complaint.