The Silkworm

The writer of the piece made much of the fact that Fancourt and Quine had once known each other well, had even been considered equivalent talents.

Few now remember Quine’s breakout work, Hobart’s Sin, although Fancourt touts it still as a fine example of what he calls Quine’s magical-brutalism. For all Fancourt’s reputation of a man who nurses his grudges, he brings a surprising generosity to our discussion of Quine’s oeuvre.

“Always interesting and often underrated,” he says. “I suspect that he will be treated more kindly by future critics than our contemporaries.”

This unexpected generosity is the more surprising when one considers that 25 years ago Fancourt’s first wife, Elspeth Kerr, killed herself after reading a cruel parody of her first novel. The spoof was widely attributed to Fancourt’s close friend and fellow literary rebel: the late Owen Quine.

“One mellows almost without realizing it—a compensation of age, because anger is exhausting. I unburdened myself of many of the feelings about Ellie’s death in my last novel, which should not be read as autobiographical, although…”

Strike skimmed the next two paragraphs, which appeared to be promoting Fancourt’s next book, and resumed reading at the point where the word “violence” jumped out at him.

It is difficult to reconcile the tweed-jacketed Fancourt in front of me with the one-time self-described literary punk who drew both plaudits and criticism for the inventive and gratuitous violence of his early work.

“If Mr. Graham Greene was correct,” wrote critic Harvey Bird of Fancourt’s first novel, “and the writer needs a chip of ice in his heart, then Michael Fancourt surely has what it takes in abundance. Reading the rape scene in one starts to imagine that this young man’s innards must be glacial. In fact, there are two ways of looking at , which is undoubtedly accomplished and original. The first possibility is that Mr. Fancourt has written an unusually mature first novel, in which he has resisted the neophyte tendency to insert himself into the (anti-)heroic role. We may wince at its grotesqueries or its morality, but nobody could deny the power or artistry of the prose. The second, more disturbing, possibility is that Mr. Fancourt does not possess much of an organ in which to place a chip of ice and his singularly inhuman tale corresponds to his own inner landscape. Time—and further work—will tell.”

Fancourt hailed originally from Slough, the only son of an unwed nurse. His mother still lives in the house in which he grew up.

“She’s happy there,” he says. “She has an enviable capacity for enjoying the familiar.”

His own home is a long way from a terraced house in Slough. Our conversation takes place in a long drawing room crammed with Meissen knick-knacks and Aubusson rugs, its windows overlooking the extensive grounds of Endsor Court.

“This is all my wife’s choice,” says Fancourt dismissively. “My taste in art is very different and confined to the grounds.” A large trench to the side of the building is being prepared for the concrete foundation to support a sculpture in rusted metal representing the Fury Tisiphone, which he describes with a laugh as an “impulse buy…the avenger of murder, you know…a very powerful piece. My wife loathes it.”

And somehow we find ourselves back where the interview began: at the macabre fate of Owen Quine.

“I haven’t yet processed Owen’s murder,” says Fancourt quietly. “Like most writers, I tend to find out what I feel on a subject by writing about it. It is how we interpret the world, how we make sense of it.”

Does this mean that we can expect a fictionalized account of Quine’s killing?

“I can hear the accusations of bad taste and exploitation already,” smiles Fancourt. “I dare say the themes of lost friendship, of a last chance to talk, to explain and make amends may make an appearance in due course, but Owen’s murder has already been treated fictionally—by himself.”

He is one of the few to have read the notorious manuscript that appears to have formed the blueprint of the murder.

“I read it the very day that Quine’s body was discovered. My publisher was very keen for me to see it—I’m portrayed in it, you see.” He seems genuinely indifferent about his inclusion, however insulting the portrait may have been. “I wasn’t interested in calling in lawyers. I deplore censorship.”

What did he think of the book, in literary terms?

“It’s what Nabokov called a maniac’s masterpiece,” he replies, smiling. “There may be a case for publishing it in due course, who knows?”

He can’t, surely, be serious?

“But why shouldn’t it be published?” demands Fancourt. “Art is supposed to provoke: by that standard alone, Bombyx Mori has more than fulfilled its remit. Yes, why not?” asks the literary punk, ensconced in his Elizabethan manor.

“With an introduction by Michael Fancourt?” I suggest.