Sticky Fingers. Pt. 6c. Childhood stuff.

I expect you’re all wondering what happened to Part 6b. No? Well I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a conversation between Arthur and a Special Forces bloke in a Bangkok fast food place. I just noticed Chuck’s already posted a version of it as ‘Dangerous Times’. http://www.abctales.com/story/chuck/dangerous-times I could fiddle with it and make it fit I suppose but I can’t be buggered. So I’m skipping it.

The editor's back from Tuscany too by the way. Had a lovely relaxing time she says. I brought her up to date on the progress of the novel and I could tell she was already wishing she’d stayed among the vineyards. She has a few problems she says. The way I keep getting side-tracked is one. How I keep interjecting myself into the story is another. What it all means is she thinks I should piss or get off the pot. But she's too polite to say something like that so she talks about the 'pace of the narrative' etc. Sod that. She's stuck with me now (no-one else wants the job) so she'll just have to lump it. I'll go at my own narrative pace thank you.

It’s not procrastination…well OK maybe it is a bit, It’s more like I can’t stand that bit in novels where they talk about their childhoods. Bores me to tears it does. Very tedious and time-consuming dealing with all those childhood memories. I mean who gives a toss about Arthur’s fictitious grandparents? Not me. Or Arthur come to that.

So as usual there’s a lot of childhood stuff that needs sorting and arranging as an integral part of the character establishment process. I’ve been putting it off as you can probably tell. It’s the worst part of narrating to my mind and I’m all for glossing over it (so is the author) but there’s no arguing with the editor. You can’t win with her. When she wants it in, it goes in, ready or not. Grasp the nettle Dick she says. Take the bull by the horns. Notice how it’s alright for her to use clichés but if I do it I get a right bollocking. Also notice how the author stays out of it all? Clever bastard. Let me do the dirty work. Flashbacks is one way round it but too much jumping around in time can be confusing for the reader. Bugger it. Let’s get it over with.

I suppose Arthur was what I would have called posh. Four bed-roomed detached house in Surrey that’s posh in my book. His father had a good job. Probably made a thousand a year doing something clever in the City. Nevertheless young Arthur was an unhappy child, here we go again, basically because he was caught in the middle of a quiet middle-class English divorce. Cue teenage alienation.

Poor Arthur. He was so sensitive. Everything seemed so pointless. His life was pure misery most of the time. What was the point of anything? Why did anyone even bother? Pathetic really. If you’d asked him (nobody ever did) he’d have told you all about his low self-esteem and how they fucked him up, his mum and dad, just like old Phil Larkin's. They did it by undermining each other and competing for their only child’s affections. His subconscious was a battleground. It left him divided and confused. Well it would wouldn't it? So you had schizophrenia compounded by various other insecurities none of which helped him in the self-confidence department.

I don't have much time for all that Freudian crap myself. All that anxiety, all those phobias and neuroses and psychoses. I'm not saying they don't exist but some people bloody wallow in it. No doubt Arthur and Phil did get fucked up by their parents. But those parents probably come from a long line of fucked up parents going right back to some great primeval pair of fuck ups all alone in the universe with nobody to blame except themselves. There’s plenty of blame to go round but where are you going to start?

Arthur’s two did it all wrong of course. They’d have a good old argument which he wasn’t supposed to hear then they’d use him to relay messages to each other. He’d come home from school and hide in his room because he didn’t want to deal with it. Not to labour the point but Arthur couldn't understand why they’d got married in the first place.

Things were a bit different for me as I say. Dad was in and out of nick most of the time when I was a nipper so I only got to know him through prison visits. I was stuck for a male role model you could say. Mum had a few gentleman friends coming round and of course there was Sid. Uncle Sid and Aunty Ethel. What a pair. They were in the adult entertainment business, taking dirty pictures and flogging them to Maltese blokes in Soho. They were quite brazen about it. Many's the time I'd wander into the living room and find some uncle or other getting his leg over one of my aunties. If I didn’t watch out one of them would make a grab for my winkle. Traumatized me for life it did.

Arthur’s only escape from his parents was to stay in his room and listen to Radio Luxembourg or hop on his bike and ride down to the River Mole for a bit of fishing. Here he comes now, speeding through the Council Estate on his red Raleigh 3-speed. He’s wedged a bit of cardboard in the spokes. It makes a rather pointless clicking sound.