I Hate Martin Amis et al. (6 page)

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I
t's his farm now. I don't know when Mr Sinclair died, but that Andy now lives there with his mother, his wife and his young son, I do know that. When I last visited my parents, I saw him. Ran into him in the centre of town, doing his Christmas shopping, immediately around the corner from where we used to go to school. He was still red haired and ruddy cheeked, just as he had been sitting next to me in class, but now he totally filled the space in front of me, a giant presence, awkward and silent. He was wearing an open checked shirt – even though the weather was cold – and big boots. He looked like he did as a kid, only bigger, as if he'd been pumped up. He was still self-effacing and shy, almost embarrassed, dancing around on the pavement in front of me, grinning awkwardly. The reason we became friends at school was because he was so quiet: I could boss him around. Andy always did exactly what I told him. He wasn't simple, like Steinbeck's Lennie, just eager to please, as if his life depended on helping people. He was a little in awe of me, that's what it amounted to: despite the fact he towered over me, he looked up to me. When I saw him in the High Street all those years later, so shy I think he'd have tried to walk past unless I'd stepped in front of him and blocked his path, we reverted immediately to our old relationship.

Standing outside the same newsagent we used to visit as kids every Saturday morning with our pocket money, I could once again have grabbed the coins from his podgy hands, prised open the sausage fingers, and told him which sweets and comics we were going to buy with his money. I don't believe he'd have objected.

It was in our early teens that I became tired of him. It was boredom, I think, the fact we had so little in common. He was dull and tedious, too kind and decent. He wasn't interesting or fun to be with. And I could see now, more than twenty years later, that I'd been right: he hadn't moved on at all. His dreams – if he'd ever had any – had stopped at his property's boundary fence.

Originally, I hung around with Andy because he gave me access to rifles. I don't think he ever realised this. I'm good at fooling people when I want to. I can lead them right up the garden path while they're still under the impression they're standing at the front gate. So he never had any idea it was the rifles that kept me knocking on his farm door, none at all.

I could even claim that Andy's dad is responsible for me being here today: he taught me to shoot. I liked Mr Sinclair; he was always laughing. ‘Come here, lad,' he said to me one morning. ‘Let me show you the proper way to hold a rifle.' We were standing in the courtyard outside the kitchen, and Mrs Sinclair was watching us through the window. She was smiling. I can remember still to this day how I felt they were a real family, not like mine.

‘Keep the butt tight against your shoulder. Pull it in here, that's it. But keep breathing. Breathe regularly.'

He moved around in front of me. ‘You have to be relaxed when you're holding a rifle, Milan. Don't get tense. When you're nice and ready, as you breathe out, hold your breath, then squeeze the trigger. Don't pull it, squeeze it.'

I squeezed the trigger and there was a click.

‘You're a natural.' He laughed, taking the rifle off me. ‘Did you see that, Andy? Steady as a rock. If you're not careful, he'll be as good as you one day.' Andy grinned. He looked genuinely pleased.

‘The rifle has to be a part of you, lad, an extension, like an extra limb. Remember that and you'll be right.'

Mr Sinclair also taught me how to clean a rifle and how to be safe and responsible – opening the rifle when carrying it. When he trusted me enough and felt I knew what I was doing, we were allowed to go out and shoot rabbits by ourselves. There were plenty of them around. We'd sneak up to the brow of this hill, overlooking a small field – the Norfolk coast and its slither of sea in the distance – and there were so many rabbits hopping around and nibbling away we could have closed our eyes and fired and we'd have likely hit one. I loved the way rabbits jump in the air when they're shot, as if they've been startled and can't hide their surprise, then crash to the ground, on their sides, absolutely still. It was like a little dance of death routine, and the contrast always surprised me: between the leap into the air and the finality with which they landed on the grass. As if miming an exclamation mark.

I remember Mr Sinclair once asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up. He never asked Andy. His future was to be the farm, everyone knew that.

‘I want to be a writer.' I don't know why I told him, I'd never told anyone, not even my parents. I wanted to impress him, for him to see me as different, I think that's what it was.

‘Books?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Novels?' I nodded. He looked sceptical, but said nothing more, just looked doubtful. I decided that he was neither interested nor impressed, and I was disappointed. But one evening, the very first time Andy and I went off alone to shoot rats in the two barns about half a mile from the house, he said to his son as he handed him the rifle: ‘And watch that friend of yours; he'll be more use with a biro than with one of these.' They both laughed, and I knew they'd been talking about my dream – together, behind my back. I blushed, and wished I hadn't told Mr Sinclair.

The moon was looming over the horizon, huge, like one of those cheap paper lamps with which students like to furnish their digs, and the air was perfectly still. The long grass was soaking, and our footsteps left a trail of dark green through a field of phosphorescence. Andy was whispering excitedly as we left the grown-ups behind us, his breath forming cartoonish thought bubbles above his head, his voice crystal clear in the crisp air. Soon he fell silent because of my lack of response. I followed his chubby legs, white and innocent in baggy shorts, across the field, detesting the complacency of his walk and the fact that he'd never, no matter how long he lived, ever wander off the path.

We were creeping through the sodden grass, quiet as mice, on the hunt for rats. Neither of us said anything as we approached the ghostly structures, perse and menacing against the trees at the end of the field. Then we were pushing open the great wooden doors, trying not to make any noise. The rats were running along the roof supports, and we caught them in the beam of our torch. One of us held the torch, the other did the shooting. The rats kept on running when they were caught in the spotlight, so they weren't easy to hit. I was good, maybe even a better shot than Andy.

That particular night, I can see it still as clear as anything. One rat was wounded, its rear legs shattered by a bullet. It fell to the ground and tried to drag itself away into a dark corner to escape. I reloaded the rifle in double-quick time and fired a second shot, at almost point-blank range, splattering the rat all over the walls of the barn as I did my best James Cagney impression: ‘You dirty rat, you!' Then we high fived in the gloom.

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I
spend a lot of time watching for people down in the city. The few to be seen scurry everywhere. They're like rats. They're caught in a trap, so I guess that's an accurate simile. They run across intersections, dart from one parked car to the next, and burrow into doorways.

Some of them even skulk behind the armoured vehicles of the UN when crossing intersections. These are driven slowly from one side of an intersection to the other while small crowds of pedestrians huddle behind them, like pilot fish around a shark. How's a sniper supposed to deal with that? Not only is it unreasonable, I think it's unsporting.

I realise the people act like this because of me, even though I've hardly fired a shot. They're darting around like rats because I'm inside their heads. I'm infiltrating the minds of an entire city. It's a psychological game. I've worked that out already – a mind game pure and simple. It is like the Chinese proverb: ‘Kill one man, terrorise a thousand.' They knew what they were talking about, those Chinese. They were saying, people don't like to gamble with a sniper. With an artillery piece they're willing to gamble, but not with a sniper. A sniper is too selective, his victims singled out, the elements of chance all but eliminated.

But this new career of mine (which I must remember to tell the school's Career Advisory Board about on my return to London) isn't exactly easy. I thought it would be much easier. Sometimes I barely glimpse a figure – looking like a hunchbacked dwarf or deformed cripple – as it springs into view from behind a building, dives into a doorway, or jumps up from beside a parked car and sprints around a corner. By the time it's registered in my brain, the person has gone, the opportunity has been missed. I haven't yet worked out the solution. Perhaps I should keep my rifle trained on one spot and hope that someone will eventually appear there, either wander across my line of fire or simply stand and wait to be transformed into a colander. It seems a haphazard way to operate, with too much left to chance and the likelihood I'll end up dying myself – from boredom.

Once or twice, just so I won't be forced to return home and tell my father I scarcely fired a shot, I let off a round into the city – often at this lamp post which stands, defiant in its loneliness, on the corner of two main roads near the National Museum. It's famous. Santo says it can be seen from many of the mountain slopes around Sarajevo, and only from the east is it completely blocked from view by a building. For this reason it's used as a target by snipers: the perfect way to adjust one's sights at the start of the day before moving on to human targets. The lamp post is chipped, marked and scarred up its entire length, from the fancy crossbar at the top, to the broad, ornate base which widens out just above the pavement. It reminds me, in its solitariness, of the lamp post in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, when the children have pushed their way through the clothes in the cupboard and reached snow-covered Narnia. I almost expect to see the White Witch in the centre of Sarajevo riding by on her sledge, wrapped in furs and eating Turkish delight. I imagine shooting her, a character in a novel, fictitious, the child of C.S. Lewis, and watching the blood spread, blossoming across her white cape before dripping down onto the snow. It's obvious I can shoot people in my head, that's easy enough. No problems there.

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E
arlier this evening I was sitting by myself on an upturned packing chest, waiting for Santo. He'd gone to the kitchen area to collect our food. Nikola, the lawyer, wandered up. He nodded. He had a smirk on his face. ‘I shot a guy this afternoon.'

I didn't say anything, wondering where this was going.

‘He was smoking a cigarette on the Skenderija bridge. I think he wanted to be shot. He was begging for it – like a woman. It happens sometimes.' He was grinning, not in a friendly way. ‘Some weak-kneed amateur was shooting around him. Didn't have the balls, I guess. I have no time for that. People like that shouldn't be here.'

At that moment Santo returned, and the lawyer turned and walked off. I cursed the fact it had been Nikola who'd been my neighbour, the sniper in the adjoining block. He obviously knew I'd failed. I decided to tell Santo, but made it sound like I'd been playing with the victim, and the only reason I hadn't shot him – although I had intended to – was because I'd been enjoying myself too much. I didn't mention Nikola. I simply wanted to cover myself.

Santo asks me at the end of each day if I've had ‘any luck.' I can feel the pressure building. I'm going to have to do something soon.

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H
e – the Soho harlot, the self-proclaimed guardian of the common man's reading, the artistic sifter, the endomorphic, intoxicated literary agent –
sentenced
my words on a Monday in January, like a late Christmas present. It was my death sentence, the day my words were interred, so I remember it well. It was a great way to start the week, let alone the year.

Returned manuscripts always catch me by surprise, turning up when they're least expected. ‘Allow up to three months', it states clearly beneath the publisher's or literary agent's name in the
Writers' & Artists' Yearbook
. Yet in the first few weeks after sending off part of my manuscript, I will open the mailbox every morning with an air of expectation. There will be a letter today, I tell myself, because they were immediately impressed by my novel. They are so in love with the first three chapters, they want me to express post the whole of my ‘promising first novel' to them right away. Even better, they want me to come in and discuss my book, as well as any other ideas I might be working on, over a spot of lunch. They want me to sign a three-book deal, to know if I could do some promotional work at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, to invite me to a cocktail party so that I can meet some of their other authors. They want to know if I could make dinner with their chairman, Lord Wordsmith. That kind of thing.

But as the weeks pass silently by, my expectations diminish and I begin to approach the mailbox with less hope. I've been disappointed before, so why should it be any different on this occasion? I'm dealing with idiots after all. I've written three novels before this one, and around eight short stories over the past ten years, and they've all been turned down, so let's not, as they say, give up the day job quite yet.

Eventually, I open the mailbox expecting nothing, or nothing except a rejection slip. And I know what to expect from a rejection slip; I know everything there is to know about rejection slips. Rejection slips are my metier.

They're usually in the form of a letter attached by a paperclip to the front page of the manuscript. A standard printed letter. I don't even have to read it. Only three words are usually handwritten: my Christian name, after the printed word ‘Dear', and, after a printed ‘Yours sincerely,' the sender's Christian name and surname. In between those three handwritten words is a pot-pourri of clichés from the publishers' food cupboard. ‘Thank you for sending us your manuscript, thank you for having approached us, thank you for having given us the opportunity to view your material, thank you for letting us consider your work … We read your submission with interest … After careful consideration, we have decided it does not fit in with our list, we do not feel we would be the right publisher for your work, we see no possibility of the completed work being suitable for our list, we have to be confident of substantial sales before taking on a project … I fear we do not feel able to offer the representation you seek … I'm afraid that due to the sheer volume of material, owing to the large number of submissions we receive, as we receive around three thousand manuscripts a year … Regrettably, unfortunately, sadly …' And so on and so forth, ad nauseam, ad nauseous. ‘We are unable to provide you with a more detailed response, we are unable to offer individual comments, we cannot give you a more personal response, we cannot offer critical comments … May I take this opportunity, may I wish you luck elsewhere with another house, agent or publisher, may I wish you every success in placing your work with another house, agent or publisher, may I, may I, may I … '

All of us would-be writers, all we want is something, anything that clearly shows our books have been read by someone. Something, anything that says this letter is addressed to me alone, a letter that identifies my novel by its title and contains a few lines that will make no sense to anyone else: ‘We particularly like the start of chapter 2', or ‘Your main character develops nicely,' or ‘The scene on the beach is powerful.' Something, anything that offers just the smallest ray of hope, the tiniest bit of encouragement. Something, anything that shows the manuscript has not been flicked through cursorily, fingered tentatively like some contaminated, soiled piece of refuse picked up at the municipal dump. Something, anything that demonstrates the publisher appreciates the effort that's gone into the book, the blood, sweat and tears, the early-morning tossings and turnings, the late-night agonies. Something, anything … just something more than nothing.

If publishers and literary agents are only ever going to send out standard rejection slips, why wait three months to do so? Why don't they return books within the week? Why go through the pretence? Why don't they simply take the manuscripts out of their envelopes, transfer them straight to the stamped, self-addressed envelopes that have also been enclosed, chuck in the rejection slips, and toss the lot into the Out basket? (Ms Diane at Mulqueeny & Holland could teach them how to do this, I'm sure.
An Introduction to Rejections, Part One.
) These publishers and literary agents are going to reject the books anyway, no matter how good they are, so why bother to pretend they've read them? Why even invite people to submit their manuscripts in the first place? They aren't interested, so why pretend they are? I know why, of course. It's because publishers are small-minded, contemptible people, slaves to fashion, and only interested in how much money's in it for them.

Only once, for my last book but one, did I receive a personal comment. It pleased me because it showed that someone cared enough to take the trouble to say what they thought, but made me angry for weeks after because it had been so negative. I can still remember the exact words: ‘The content is literary but the writing is not.' That was all they wrote.

After a few more weeks of nothing, of no news and no rejection slip, there comes a time when, perversely, my hopes are rekindled and I begin to think that my latest book won't be rejected after all. The longer they keep my manuscript, the more my hopes rise. I see positive signs everywhere. I start to believe I'm about to be discovered. I'm like some country or continent in the Middle Ages, as yet unexplored, but someone is about to set foot on me, put me on the map, acknowledge my existence, claim me as their own.

This particular morning, this terminal Monday, I remember well. It must have been a premonition because I phoned the school and said I was sick. I couldn't stand the idea of their inanities that day, the mud in the corridors, the blocked toilets, the rundown equipment, the musty smell of chalk and the rancid smell of sweating kids, the running feet and raised voices, the sheer childishness of the place. And Gilhooley knocking on the door of my small cupboard beneath the stairs and demanding in his cold, high-pitched voice why there is not a clean towel in the masters' washroom, why I haven't yet fixed the light bulb in 6C, or why have I not yet painted over the graffiti in the playground. Gilhooley, with his education theories changing faster than the departure board at Heathrow, his timetables, rosters and budgets, his team of middle-aged, brain-drained incompetents who couldn't have rustled up a vocation between them if their lives had depended on it.

I stayed in my flat all morning. I enjoyed the secrecy of being by myself and no one (apart from the foul-breathed, spinsterish school secretary) knowing where I was. Even Bridgette, now that we'd split, didn't know where I was. I lay in bed until late, reading. I had the window closed, but the gas fire wasn't working, so the small room was still cold. Outside, I could hear the rest of the world either at work or on the way to work, and it made me feel good. The pest-control man who lives upstairs with his ratlike wife and unratlike litter of two, was shouting as he slammed his front door and stomped down the stairs. I heard him start his van and drive off, his engine soon drowned in the steady roar of traffic on Shoot Up Hill. Eventually I got up, cooked myself a fried breakfast, then lay on the sofa and listened to Mozart's Requiem. I pondered the subject of my next novel. I was determined to keep writing, to get my follow-up novel, my next published novel – the all-important, notoriously difficult second novel – onto the production line. I had to be ready to go as soon as my first novel was accepted. I was determined not to be one of those one-novel wonders. This, after all, was to be my life from now on. I was to be a successful novelist, my dream was about to become reality, I was that confident.

When I went downstairs in the early afternoon I ran into Mrs Dawes. She and her husband live in one of the ground-floor flats. I rarely saw him, and I only saw her on those occasions when, muttering to herself, she limped around the front and sides of the building, picking up the empty beer and whisky bottles that materialised there most nights, or if she managed to intercept me in the company of ‘darling Bridgette' (her words, not mine), whom she doted on, like the daughter she'd never had and all that garbage. The senile creature was telling me something about her husband – who never ventured further than their front door – and how he hadn't been the same, not since that terrible thing happened to Sharon Stone. That was their cat, named after the American actress. I always wondered if the cat used to sit on the sofa, crossing and uncrossing her legs – fleetingly revealing her pussy – being interrogated by Mr and Mrs Dawes. I never got round to asking her, however, and now it was too late to ask her anything.

To tell the truth, I'd been glad to see the beast's back, rigor mortis straight, because I'd had a gutful of both Bridgette and that animal by then. ‘Oh you're so beautiful,' she used to say when she came round to stay with me, bending down, stroking the cat's head and tickling her ears. ‘You're the most beautiful cat in the world. Are you coming upstairs with Mummy for your little treat then?' Never having heard of a woman giving birth to a cat before, not even in the
Sunday Sport
, I took it upon myself to congratulate her as we climbed the stairs. She must obviously be something of a medical phenomenon.

‘Don't be like that, Milan. You know what I mean. It's my way of being affectionate.' Then, addressing the puckered buttonhole disappearing up the stairs ahead of us: ‘You're so cute, so beautiful.' Sometimes I think she even used the word ‘diddums' – and I'm sure that word is not to be found in any reputable dictionary.

The fact is, I should have told Mrs Dawes that Bridgette and I had split up, then she might not have bothered me any more. As likely as not she'd have left me alone. But for some reason I could never bring myself to make the effort to do this. I think she'd have taken it as an admission of failure – on my part of course – and then she'd have had a field day blaming me, either with ‘I could tell he wasn't good enough for the likes of her,' or with silence and reproachful stares.

But right then she was still talking, something about the pest-control man giving her the creeps and how could a man do such a thing all day, living with rats (‘It's not natural, if you ask me'), when I turned away and opened my mailbox. And there it was. I knew immediately. It's not every day I receive a bulky A4 manila envelope addressed to myself, in my own handwriting. It lay at the bottom of my mailbox, like a dog turd on the sitting room carpet. I stared at it, and it stared back at me, trying to look innocent, but with a definite air of belligerence about it. ‘So! So, it's me. Yes, I'm back again. Tough. Get a move on. Lift me out of here, will you?'

I brushed past Mrs Dawes and strode away, ignoring the loud tut of disapproval aimed at my back. I turned off the main road and walked along several narrow suburban streets, past semi-detached houses with bay windows and white lintels and neat front gardens, an abandoned tricycle or football lying on the occasional front path. I was heading for the local park. I wanted to be alone. Even though I was only wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a denim jacket, I was unaware of the cold.

The park was empty except for a lone jogger running repeatedly up and down the steep path which led to the café and the children's playground. It struck me as a particularly Sisyphean exercise. For a few minutes I couldn't bring myself to open the package. It lay on the bench next to me. We were like an old couple enjoying the peace of the park. The difference was that I felt powerless: my fate had been decided by someone out there, a literary agent whose reality, to me, consisted of no more than a few lines in the
Writers' & Artists' Yearbook
. This literary agent was about to tell me how to live my life, direct my future, and there was nothing I could do about it. Abruptly, unable to stand the tension any longer and wanting the suspense to be over and done with, I picked it up. I opened the envelope and pulled out my manuscript. Attached with a paperclip to the front page was the usual rejection letter, but at the bottom was a scrawled, almost indecipherable comment: ‘Scarcely original. Feel I've read this before.' For a few minutes I was stunned, my brain anaesthetised by shock. After three years of work, after all that sweat and effort, after the agonies of struggling with thousands of sentences, painfully pondering paragraphs, honing and polishing countless phrases, after agonising over every word and syllable, I had received a seven word dismissal – along, of course, with the standard five or six lines of utter and total impersonality.

Yet I'd have been satisfied with so little, with the most modest of morsels. ‘Your novel shows promise' would have made me happy. ‘We would be interested to see anything else you might write' would have made me ecstatic. Just more than this insulting, anonymous dismissal.

I looked down at the rejected manuscript. It was in pristine condition. I didn't get the feeling it had been handled by anyone other than a kid-gloved postman. I can't believe I'd actually said to Bridgette, ‘I'm optimistic about the people who have it now. I have a feeling about them, a good feeling.' I'd been talking about the Mulqueeny & Holland literary agency. I hadn't yet heard from them, and I'd begun to feel positive. I knew my argument lacked depth, that it was scarcely persuasive, I was aware of that. I also realised Bridgette could turn out to be right – as she'd so blithely pointed out to me – that my novel was destined to go the same way as its predecessors. At times she could be so encouraging.