Ghostwriter

Lunch with Rhonda, my agent and a childhood friend of Jen's. She
makes it clear early on that she is paying so I order steak.

I will not tolerate the stereotype of a struggling writer, I could
afford the steak, I can support my wife and family, but a free lunch is
a free lunch.

'I didn't mean it like that.' She protests. 'Perhaps we should have
another bottle.'

Rhonda's answer to everything is more to drink, I wonder briefly if
this is the secret to her success and conceive, on the spot, the basis
for a story, of a man (it would have to be a man) who's answer to
everything is more to drink and it gets him everywhere but finally
trips him up. It is a short story idea and could not carry more than
three thousand words, when I get home I cannot even be bothered to
write it down in my notebook. There is no money in short fiction.

'I've been contacted about this ex Tory MP.' Says Rhonda. 'Got a deal
to write his auto-biography, very good money.'

She pauses at the mention of money, as if it were a recent
bereavement.

'Only he's a complete duffer, never amounted to anything, junior
minister of something or other for a brief spell, nothing of worth. But
publishers being publishers will take anything that looks like it might
be the next Alan Clarke.'

I realise, as she says this, why I am here, and want to leave.

'So he needs a ghost-writer and, well, I thought of you.'

I act grateful and tell her I will think about it. Only I do not, I
have better things to occupy my mind and, after I leave the restaurant,
I do not think about it one jot. Instead I do the next best thing and
tell Jen.

'For that money,' she says, 'of course you should, I can't believe you
are even thinking about it.'

And like that it was settled. Jen is thinking of holidays abroad, or a
new kitchen, or helping the kids through university, or whatever it is
that women think about.

Conville Winscome, first meeting, as with all future meetings, Thursday
night after dinner in his London flat. I have not eaten because I know
that if I do I will fall asleep, instead I grab a McDonalds on the way
home afterwards. He buzzes me in and waits impatiently at the door as I
climb the stairs. He is fat, older than me but not nearly old enough to
be writing memoirs, and vaguely oily, both in manner and appearance,
like a Greek waiter rubbed down with bacon.

We sit in leather armchairs and I have to tell him to turn off the
television, I lay the Dictaphone I bought that afternoon on the table
and take out my notepad. He looks at me with a vague suspicion, as if
fearing that all writers are ultra left wing hippies and I am liable
any moment to set up a tepee in his living room and demand squatter's
rights. He asks me where he should start and I tell him to give me a
brief overview of his life before we start with the detailed
recollections.

He tells me he was born in Somerset, went to Eton where he didn't do
terribly well, then Oxford where he did even worse, then a job at a
bank in the city where he laughs and describes himself as a complete
duffer. He talks warmly of the Conservative party, describing it like a
cross between a social club and surrogate parent. He was elected in
seventy nine, swept in on Maggie's wake. The house of commons, he says,
was the only place he ever really felt at home. He was made a junior
minister in eighty six and lasted only one year, again he laughs and
describes himself as a complete duffer. It is clear he is warming to
me, no doubt due to my rapt attention and professional fascination with
his worthless life. He leans in close, at first addressing the
Dictaphone directly with a self conscious awkwardness, but later
talking easily to me. I make odd notes on my pad and doodle a little in
order to give the impression of making more.

After he is finished with this brief pr?cis he offers me a drink, I
accept eagerly and am given a tiny glass brim full of sherry. It is
putrefyingly sweet and so thick it feels like swallowing custard, but I
want the alcohol so force it down. I ask him to tell me about his
childhood.

It is clear he was an oik at school, no good at games and no good at
anything else. He talks with misdirected love about teachers who
clearly, through the evidence of his own anecdotes, despised him. He
brought them apples in the mornings and remembers clearly all the
Christmas presents he gave them. I form briefly the image of a lost
little boy looking for love but then he talks of bullying smaller kids
and it is replaced by the image of an overweight, spoiled, obsequious
turd, which is the image that sticks.

I leave the notes and tape recorder untouched till the following
Thursday, I have articles to write and the germinating idea of a novel
to develop, projects that matter to me. Finally I steal myself to
listen to the tape and am bored to tears, twice I pick up the phone to
cancel the arrangement but the money pulls me back. I take the tube to
Conville's flat as before.

Sixth form followed by university life, which appears to have been one
long and wholly unsuccessful pursuit of 'nice' girls. He talks of the
opposite sex with the attitude of a nervous adolescent who knows
nothing of them, it is clear all he wants is to be mothered. I write
this in my notebook and allow myself a wry smile which he mistakes as a
gesture of innuendo and some strange masculine conspiracy.

'I wasn't always unsuccessful of course.' He says with a queasy leer.
'I did persuade one filly to marry me.'

His wife, if she even merits that title anymore, stays in the country
home while he stays in the London flat. It is a loveless and I suspect
a sexless marriage, at least for him, in my head I imagine the wife
cuckolding him shamelessly from day one, I cannot envisage how any
woman could not. He moves on to describe their courtship in intimate
detail, it takes the rest of the session.

The third Thursday I again tackle the undisturbed notes from the
previous week. I type up a lot of what he says but it is nothing but a
dull list of events and my attention quickly wanders. In the evening I
am offered yet another sherry and suggest a beer, Conville refuses, he
will not have the stuff in the house he says, 'the opiate of the lower
classes.'

He discusses his humdrum and lowflying career in banking. It is
desperately tedious but we finish just as he is about to enter politics
and I hope that the following week will provide more interesting
subject matter.

I am phoned on Tuesday by the publishers who want to know how the book
is progressing. I am too depressed about the project to lie so tell
them I am still taking notes and 'looking for an angle'. They take this
far more positively than it was meant. Later that day Rhonda calls to
ask the same question and I unload my full discontent onto her.

'Go to the library.' She says. 'Find out what happened whilst he was in
the party, he must have known famous people, been present at important
events.'

I do not take this advice. The sessions remain awful, Conville's
election as an MP is a horror of nepotism and coincidence. Quite what
the voters were thinking is beyond me. His disdain for the electorate
is matched only by his inability to comprehend the issues that affect
them. For instance he does not believe in unemployment. 'Look at me.'
He says. 'If I can get a job anyone can.'

I am constantly aware that all I need is just one good revelation, that
he was bullied by Tebit, that he kissed a drunken Edwina Curry at the
Christmas party, that he once covered for one of Alan Clarke's many
indiscretions, just one good anecdote could sell the book, would be
enough to make the publishers happy.

I search without success for the elusive 'angle', all books must be
about something and this one no exception. At first I think of it as
tragedy of unfulfilled ambition, but Conville had no ambition to speak
of. I try a triumph of hard work over personal limitations, but
Conville never seems to have worked hard in his life. I linger for a
while on various formulas of a love story, between him and the
Conservative party, him and the House of Commons, him and his wife
even, but none of them work, Conville will not bend into a romantic
lead no matter how hard I twist him. I have nothing but a catalogue of
events.

Finally I make it to the library. I do not spend long researching
politics, I have always found it a turgid and dreary subject, full of
self important loudmouths pushing their own competing and mutually
exclusive ideologies, more interested in victory than consensus.
Instead, on a whim, I look through the art section and read books on
portrait painters. These great artists had to take commissions to
survive, surely they must have painted men they found as abhorrent as I
find Conville, surely they must have found ways to work through it and
still create a flattering picture.

Whilst I am researching painters I find a book on political caricature
and several of the illustrations remind me of Conville. He is a
ferociously ugly man, wigged and ridiculous. His chin has disappeared
into a great bag of fat leaving his face as one soggy neck-less slab
wobbling like a sack of custard. His yellow front teeth protrude
outwards at odd angles leaving large gaps between, whilst the massed
ranks of his lower jaw seem to have retreated towards the back of his
mouth and I wonder how he manages to bite anything. The man seems like
a caricature of aristocratic inbreeding. A particularly vicious Gerald
Scarfe drawing of a faceless Tory whipping boy.

This image, of Conville as a satirical cartoon, sticks in my mind, and
that night in bed I start to conceive a plan. It pleases me so much I
giggle out loud provoking an interrogation from Jen which I do not
answer. The following day I go back to my manuscript and discard all of
Conville's youth and ill advised banking career, instead I skip
straight forward to him entering parliament. Here I transform him, no
longer will he be the snivelling hairless infant, suckling at the bosom
of the Conservative party, now he will become the tapeworm in its
gut.

I start to write. In my mind Conville is a fictitious character of my
own design. My Conville. A young man with all the advantages the upper
class can offer and the world before him. The book will be a tragedy. A
failure of epic proportions. A warning to others. A lesson that nothing
can help the chronically worthless.

I embellish all of Conville's accounts and where there is not the
material to work with I invent my own. Conville pimps for Alan Clarke,
the whole civil service typing pool his harem. He has his nose broken
by a livid Norman Tebit after deliberately farting loudly through the
old bigot's speech, he gets his revenge by keying Tebit's car and
slashing his tires. He forces himself on a drunken Edwina Curry in the
supply cupboard at a Christmas party, and again the following year. At
the famous Brighton conference, which the real Conville missed with a
dose of flu, my Conville lets the terrorists in through the back door.
'Seemed nice enough' he rationalises afterwards, 'lovely Irish
accents'.

I start paying attention in my interviews with Conville, writing down
in my notebook plans to pervert every event he describes. The book,
which was previously a pallid and slender prospect is blossoming into a
vast and detailed novel, possibly it will require more than one
volume.

Conville is behind all the worst Tory embarrassments. He gets Heseltine
started on Westland, he tips the press off about David Mellor and
Antonia de Sancha, he covers up salmonella and mad cow disease for
years, in my book Conville is even responsible for most of Jeffrey
Archer's novels. Black Wednesday was all him. He wrecked the education
system, dreamed up the poll tax, closed the coal mines, introduced
Pamella Bordes to Colin Moynihan, played the europhiles off against the
euro-sceptics and heightened that disagreement to a blood feud. The
book is a parody of an autobiography. It is a cruel and comic
caricature.

Conville completes his account right up to the present day but I have
him go back over the parliament years looking for material I can use. I
enjoy our sessions now, I refuse the sherry and bring my own beer, he
disapproves of course but I do not care. He is mine, I made him, before
me he was nothing, just the shadow of a human being, a precursor to
what I would create.

The publishers ring and proudly I give them a word count and tell them
I have completed the first draft, only realising after I speak what I
have done. Rhonda rings minutes later to say she has arranged for a
read through at Conville's flat the next Thursday night. I feel sick. I
cannot turn up empty handed. I cannot resign because we have spent the
money. I have to bring the book I have written and face the
consequences.

They read in silence, Conville in his usual chair, Rhonda in mine, the
publishers on the sofa, me standing within easy reach of the door.
There is the occasional gasp. The publishers look often at each other,
Rhonda looks at me, nobody looks at Conville. They read on, past the
first few years, the Brighton bomb, the episodes with Edwina, the whole
section on spying for the Argentineans. My breath grows tight and I
edge towards the door.

Then something happens I did not expect, Conville laughs. I have seen
him laugh before but never like this, previously he had something of a
girlish twitter but now he emits huge, body shaking guffaws. He laughs
uncontrollably, crying massive tears and clutching his vibrating
stomach in pain. The publishers, looking at each other, sman
nervously. Rhonda, looking very sternly at me, feigns a polite chuckle.
Conville booms. He gets up from his chair and gives me a hug.

'My dear boy.' He shouts between snorts. 'It's hilarious.'

And I see in his eyes something I don't think anyone else but me would
notice. Not the mother who never took much of an interest in him. Not
the wife who hates him. Not the children who ignore him. Not the
friends who only keep him around to be the butt of their jokes. I have
hurt him, not by the exaggerated antics of my character but the abuse
of trust, the sheer liberty I have taken, I have not just insulted him
but torn down the very structure of his being. He trusted me with his
life history and I twisted it into a cheap gag. I have hurt him just as
everybody else he has ever known has hurt him, and he is dealing with
it as he always deals with it. He has accepted my book because he has
not the will or the wit to fight it. He will laugh because, then, at
least, the world will be laughing with him instead of at him. And all
he can do is hug me as if I was his friend.