The Murdstone Trilogy (3 page)

Minerva considered this for a moment. ‘Well, not
necessarily, I suppose. Some other monstery thing might do. Probably best to stick with dragons, though, to be on the safe side. Anyway. The idea of the Quest is to find the Thing. The Thing has mystical powers, of course. It’ll probably be called The Amulet of Somethingorother.’ Minerva paused. ‘I’m not exactly sure what an amulet is, actually. It’s a sort of bracelet, isn’t it?’

‘Um, no, that’s an armlet. I think an amulet is a sort of totemic object, rather like—’

‘Whatever. Anyway, the important thing, OK, is that this Thing gives the hero the power to overcome the Dark Lord. Which he does, at the end, in a huge battle between his lot and the Dorcs. In fact, he nearly loses the battle, but then the Whitebeard shows up and shows him a trick or two so that he ends up victorious. The Realm is saved. The End. Actually, not the end. Just end of Part One.’

‘What?’

‘These things come in trilogies, as a rule.’

‘Oh, dear God, no.’

‘Don’t worry your pretty head about that, darling. We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. There you go.’ She slid the sheet of purple graphics over to Philip, who stared at it.

‘I’m amazed,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve certainly done your homework. How many of these dreadful epics did you have to read to work out this, er, analysis?’

‘None. I pinched it out of the
Telegraph
. From a review of
The Dragoneer Chronicles
, actually.’

‘And what might they be?’

‘Oh, come on, Philip! Even you must have heard of
The Dragoneer Chronicles
.’

‘Nope.’

‘My God, darling, have you been living in a cave or something? Well, yes, I suppose you have, more or less.
The Dragoneer Chronicles
is the biggest thing since Harry Potter. You have heard of Harry Potter, I take it? You have? Good. Well,
The Dragoneer Chronicles
is a six-hundred-page fantasy blockbuster written by a seventeen-year-old anorak called Virgil Peroni. American, obviously. Actually, his mother wrote it for him, but that’s not the point. He got half a mill upfront from Armitage Hanks. A full mill for the movie rights. Enough to keep him in Clearasil for eternity. Which just goes to show, darling. If a beardless youth and his mum can do this stuff, a writer of your calibre should find it a doddle.’

Philip said, ‘Would you excuse me for a minute? I need to go to the toilet.’

When he came back Minerva was putting her iPad away. She glanced up at his face. ‘Philip, have you been crying?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Now then.
Style
. The style for High Fantasy is sort of mock-Shakespearian without the rhyming bits. What you might call half-timbered prose. Characters “hasten unto” to places; they don’t just piss off at a rate of knots. You have to say “dark was the hour”, not “at night”. Bags of capital letters. You know the sort of thing?’

Philip tipped the brandy glass until it wept its last burning tear into his mouth. ‘Yeah. I know the sort of thing.’

‘Good. Now then, what I suggest is this, OK? Take my notes away with you. Do a spot of research. Immerse yourself in the genre. Or take a quick dip in it, if that’s all you can manage. Then go on one of those lovely long walks of yours across the boggy fells or whatever they are and dream me up a quick outline and a couple of chapters. I’ll give you a bell when I get back from LA and see how you’re getting on. Actually, come to think of it, darling, you’re ideally situated, aren’t you? It’s all very misty and legendy down your way, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, very. Can hardly move for legends, some days.’

‘There you are then.’

Minerva described a dying man’s electrocardiograph on the empty air and the waiter hastened unto her with the bill. She slipped into her silk and flax-mix jacket, and hefted her bag onto the table. ‘Now, darling, I really must dash, OK? I’m already seven minutes late for lunch with a Dark Sorcerer called Perry Whipple.’

‘But you’ve just
had
lunch,’ Philip pointed out.

‘I know. It’s a
nightmare
. You’ve no idea.’

She stood up, so he started to. Then she sat down again. He was left half up and half down, bent in the middle like a man with stomachache. Which, in fact, he was.

‘I nearly forgot,’ Minerva said. ‘You have to have a map.’

‘A map?’

‘Yes. For the endpapers. You know, a map of the Realm with the funny names on. Showing where the Mountains of Shand’r Ga and the Mire of Fetor and so on are. Oh, and don’t forget to leave a bit of the map mysteriously empty.
Terra Incognita
sort of thing. OK?’

‘I used to enjoy drawing imaginary maps at school,’ Philip admitted.

Minerva beamed at him. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d be ideal for the job. I said so to Evelyn. You’ll do it marvellously, darling. I just know it.’

It was dark in the room now, but he could not bring himself to turn on the lights. He drained his glass, groped for the plastic flagon.

Redundant.

Obsolete.

Fucked.

Sold out.

He tried not to cry. He was assisted in the effort by his father, the late Captain Morgan Murdstone, who said from beyond the grave, ‘Steady, the Buffs.’ Philip had never understood the meaning of the phrase, but in his childhood it had halted the advance of pain, forced loss to retreat, driven tears back into their dugouts.

He snuffled up snot and sat to attention.

He would reach deep into himself. Yes, he would do that. He would draw from that quiet well of obstinate courage that had sustained him before. He had been
forced to lower his spiritual bucket into it, so to speak, in order to endure the dreadful writer’s block that had beset him halfway through
Waldo Chicken
. And again when the new septic tank had backed up. Those had been hard times, God knows. And this now was not much worse. He would get through it. He would boldly go into Hobbitland and bring back the goods. After all, he had a map, of sorts. It wasn’t quantum physics. He’d amaze them all. He’d amaze – sweet thought, this – Minerva.

So tomorrow – yes, tomorrow, why not – he would visit the Weird Sisters and carry off whatever Phantastickal, Magickal and Phantasmagorickal crap they had in stock and work his way through every last page. Although, given the choice, he would rather endure an operation for piles.

As if the thought had conjured it, an appalling spasm forked through Philip’s innards. Even as he doubled up and fell to his knees on the hearth rug he knew its cause. The farmhouse scrumpy had made alchemical contact with the Mexican Platter and, perhaps catalysed by the rhubarb and chocolate
torte
with Pernod cream followed by brandy, had triggered a seismic eruption. Just behind his navel, something huge and grotesque hatched from its egg. A brutal fist hammered at the door of his bowels. He climbed, whimpering, upstairs to the lavatory.

When he emerged, some forty-five minutes later, his face was white and waxen as a graveyard lily. He felt his way to his unmade bed, fell onto it and lost consciousness almost at once.

In the morning, delicately, Philip made himself a cup of tea and rolled a cigarette. He carried both out his front door and across the lane to where a warped and rusted gate was set into an ancient wall of stone. He sat his mug on the gatepost and lit his thin smoke.

The view from here was lovely, constant, and never the same. Somehow, it was always sympathetic to his mood. Today, it was a composition in weak watercolour lit by a pallid sun. Sheep Nose Tor was a couple of beige brushstrokes at the foot of a colourless sky. The clandestine outlines of the lost village St Pessary, halfway down Goat’s Elbow Hill, were thinking about becoming indigo. Beyond Beige Willie the elusive meander of Parson’s Cleft was a sepia vein running down the soft loin of Honeybag Common into the dark thicket of Great Nodden Slough. But, for once, this beauty did not comfort. Something slumped inside him. Could he possibly bring himself to leave this splendour to wander exiled in some ludicrous version of Middle Earth?

He stomped on his roll-up and turned towards home.

He had loved the cottage at first sight, ten years ago. Then, he had been flush with the optimism and the money that the success of
Last Past the Post
had brought him. He had treated himself to a long weekend break at a grand and expensive hotel near Moretonhampstead, secretly hoping to meet attractive young women who would melt into the arms of a rising star of children’s literature. As it turned out, Blyte Manor specialized in golfing holidays. His fellow guests were all garishly dressed men who, in the evenings, talked about golf until they were too drunk to do so.

To console himself he took to walking on the moor. He found it surprisingly enjoyable. In the middle of an effulgent summer’s day he found himself in Flemworthy, a small and nondescript town that had no apparent reason to be where it was. He took a liking to it, despite its drabness; perhaps it was because the inhabitants looked as dislocated as himself.

So he’d had a couple of pints in the Gelder’s Rest, the stark pub at the corner of the Square, then found the lane that led towards Goat’s Elbow, his target for the day. Beyond the low stone wall on his left, the ground tumbled into a leafy vale through which a stream murmured, then rose again into a landscape of interfolding, crag-capped hills that seemed to change shape as cloud-shadows stole across them. Sheep grazed, larks filled the sky with light jazz, etc.

If Philip had been less happy, less hungry-eyed, he might not have noticed the cottage. It was built of grey
stone with a monkish hood of shaggy thatch. It was snugly hunkered into a kink in the hill like a wily old animal expecting a change in the weather. Its small windows squinted as though unused to so much sunlight. The faded
For Sale
sign leaned wearily against the rusting ironwork fence that separated the tangled garden from the lane.

Philip had knocked at the door, even though it was obvious the place had not been lived in for some time. Shading his eyes, he peered into one of the two downstairs windows. Heavy black ceiling beams, a green-painted door that led to some further room, a stone fireplace that occupied almost the whole of the gable wall. He’d had a sudden and irresistible vision of himself comfily ensconced in that room in front of the fireplace, his peaceful solitude illuminated by a great log fire. Of himself contentedly surveying the changing seasons as they worked their magic on that splendid view. It was the kind of place that Writers lived in.

He’d jotted down the name of the estate agent and, after checking out of Blyte Manor on Monday morning, presented himself at the offices of Chouse, Gammon & Fleece in Moretonhampstead. When he explained the reason for his visit, Mr Gammon was both incredulous and exceedingly helpful.

The independent surveyor (another Mr Gammon, as it happened) reported that the cottage needed ‘a spot of updating’, so Philip offered, as an opening gambit, a mere three-quarters of the asking price. To his surprise and
delight it was immediately accepted. The paperwork, the legal stuff, was all completed at astonishing speed; Philip reflected that these Devon folk did not deserve their reputation for living at a slow and contemplative pace. Less than six weeks later, in a solemn little ceremony at the cottage door, he took possession of the keys to Downside Cottage and waved goodbye to Mr Gammon’s speedily vanishing Range Rover.

Five years later the spot of updating (new roof timbers and thatch; new drainage; elimination of dry rot, wet rot, woodworm and deathwatch beetle; the installation of indoor toilet/bathroom; new kitchen; the underpinning of the subsiding rear wall; new electrics and plumbing; replacement of the crumbling window frames; damp-proofing and replastering; two new ceilings; new staircase and upstairs flooring) was complete. None of it, to Philip’s ineffable pleasure, had done anything to damage the cottage’s air of divine discontent and ancient stubbornness. Nor had it made even the slightest difference to the unique and timeless smell of the place, the smell that now greeted him as he pushed open the door and stooped under the low lintel. He had tried many times to analyse this subtle odour, to identify its many components. Damp boots, congealed sausage fat, stale tobacco, ripening cheese, mildew, the dung of tiny rodents; all these were part of the rich mix. But there was something else, something elusive, that made it so welcoming; he had never been able to put his finger on it. It was almost as if he had created the aroma himself, rather than inheriting it.

He inhaled, searching for a word.

‘Badgery’, that was it. Her word.

She’d visited him once and only once, three years ago. In a state of thrilled anxiety and troublesome tumescence he’d made preparations for her stay, feminizing the bathroom with the best unguents that Flemworthy could provide, ensuring that the spare bedroom was comfortable, but less enticing than his own. Her visit had lasted less than two hours and she hadn’t taken as much as her coat off.

The memory unmanned him. Eventually he gathered himself and set off, brisk and resolute, for the village.

As usual, a small number of Flemworthy’s more superfluous inhabitants had gathered in the Square to enjoy the spectacle of people parking their cars. Later, perhaps, they would venture into Kwik Mart to admire the more nerve-racking arts of the astigmatic girl who sliced salami at the cooked meats counter.

In 1898, the Elders of Flemworthy had decided that the latent sanitary and cultural needs of the town would best be served by the building of public conveniences and a library. Needless to say, there had been considerable opposition from those who believed that these wilful extravagances would pose a threat to order and tradition. But, by a stroke of luck, Queen Victoria died in 1901 and the objectors were persuaded to accept the construction of both buildings in her memory.

The Elders cast far and wide for a suitable architect, finally settling on a slightly avant-garde young man
from Barnstaple. His thing was Harmony. He argued that because the two new buildings would dominate the Square, they should be built of the same local materials and to a similar design. Unused to such aesthetic considerations, and impressed by them, the Elders agreed. They failed to notice that the young architect had, in the interests of Harmony, designed buildings of the same size. Thus it was that Flemworthy came to have the largest thatched toilet and the smallest thatched library in the county; it was unsurprising that the locals occasionally used one when they meant to use the other. It was unto the less popular of these two buildings that Philip now made haste.

The Weird Sisters saw him coming. They abandoned their pastime of inventing suggestive catalogue entries and fluttered, like happy harpies, along the shelves in preparation for his entrance. In common with all the women of Flemworthy, they had pencil moustaches and a reluctance to assume a completely upright posture. They had names – Francine and Merilee – which Philip, in accordance with local custom, used interchangeably.

‘Good morning, Merilee. Good morning Francine.’

‘Mornen, Mr Murdsten. Us’s glad to see you safe back from Lunnen.’

‘Oh, tas awful you has to go up there. I cudden bear it, I swear to God. All that goin everywhere in tunnels an people speaken in langwidges. Make my flesh crawl just thinken about it.’

‘Yes, well, it can be a bit—’

Francine sighed sympathetically. ‘You has to go, acourse. You writers has to have your nights of wine an willen women on a reglar basis. Everyone know that.’

Merilee nodded agreement. ‘Tas all part of it.’

‘Well, um, I—’

The sisters leaned at him expectantly. Not for the first time, Philip felt strangely weakened by their skewed yet mesmeric gaze. It took a physical effort, a deliberate shudder, to free himself.

‘Actually, I was wondering if you have anything on the shelves by way of what I believe is called, ah, High Fantasy.’

They gargoyled at him.

‘For research purposes,’ he added hurriedly.

‘Ah,’ Francine murmured.

‘
Research
,’ Merilee breathed. Her hands moved as if to cup her breasts, but Francine halted their movement with a subtle slap. She slid from behind the counter and with a conspiratorial gesture summoned Philip to follow her. After a short and distorted walk they arrived at an empty shelf.

‘Bugger,’ Francine said. ‘All out agen. Tas always thus. Tas poplar, see? Us’ll not order no more.’

‘My God,’ Philip said. ‘People round here like that sort of thing, do they?’

‘Can’t get enough on’m.’

‘Really? I’m amazed.’

‘Reality’s too good for’m, swot it is.’

‘So,’ Philip said helplessly, ‘not even a copy of, um,
Lord of the Rings
?’

‘Ah. Not as such. But us does have the filums. On cassette
and
VD.’

‘Right. Unfortunately, I don’t have the necessary equipment.’

Merilee stifled a snort.

Francine glimmered up at him.

‘Tas not what I’d call a problem,’ she said, ‘seen as how us do. You’d be moron welcome to come rown an watch it at our place. Be lovely.’

‘Well, that’s very kind, I’m sure …’

‘Ternight?’

Before Philip could respond Francine turned to the counter and barked, ‘Book’n out!’

‘Actually,’ Philip said, suppressing panic, ‘I’m not sure about tonight.’

‘Tomorrer? Wensdy?’

‘I’ll check my diary.’

‘You do. The special effecks is fantastic.’

‘Ah. Right then. I’ll get back to you.’ He sidled slightly to his right, scanning the shelves. ‘Looks like all my books are out again,’ he observed.

‘As ever,’ Francine said. ‘Can’t keep’m in less we nail’m down.’

It was an ongoing puzzlement to him, this mystery of his local fan club. Somewhere hereabouts there must be a coterie of avid admirers who borrowed his books on a rotational basis. Yet he had never been buttonholed by a single enthusiast as he went about his daily business. Odd. A clandestine literary cell, unwilling to declare itself.

He was still pondering this enigma as he made the short journey to the Memorial Conveniences.

The Weird Sisters watched him go. When he was out of sight Merilee took the pristine copies of his works from beneath the counter and restored them to their rightful place on the shelf next to the undisturbed novels of Iris Murdoch.

Philip returned to Downside and, at the fourth attempt, persuaded his knackered and knock-kneed Ford to start. An hour later, he arrived at Tavistock library, where he was a familiar face. In addition to his net-surfing visits, he had given a good number of readings there; the last, at which he’d raised the possibility of being paid, had been almost a year earlier.

In answer to his query, Tania (her name was on a badge which rested on the gentle declension of her left breast) said, ‘Well, gosh, it depends what you mean by “Fantasy”. I mean, it’s a broad-spectrum genre, as I’m sure you know. There’s Post-Tolkien Traditionalist fantasy, obviously. That’s your goblins and wizards and so forth. Reliable. Then there’s Post-Tolkien Experimental, which has glam-rock angels and drugs and that sort of thing. Not to be confused, of course, with Mormon Vampire Fantasy, which is an entirely different thing. As is Steampunk.’

‘Steampunk?’

‘You know. Victorian time warp. Like
Blade Runner
directed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Philip’s brain scrambled for coordinates like a drowning spider clutching at the radials of a plughole.

‘Then, of course, there’s Portal Fantasy, in which the central characters find their way through some gap or tunnel in the cosmic fabric and find themselves in a different dimension of the spacio-temporal continuum, although, in my opinion’ – here Tania sniffed disdainfully – ‘these are often just sexed-up historical novels. Very popular with children of single parents, though. I have
absolutely
no idea why. Let’s see. Right: Post-Apocalypse Fantasy. That’s boys’ stuff. Basically Post-Tolkien Experimental with continuous violence. Think computer games for the semi-literate. Tricky to tell the difference between that and Splatter SF, as often as not. It’s provoked some lively discussions as to cataloguing, I can tell you. Baguettes have been thrown in the staff room more than once. Dystopian Fantasy is more or less the same thing, but with a girl as the main character because teenage girls are more miserable than teenage boys. What else? Philip Pullman. He’s another problem. The Dewey System just wasn’t designed with him in mind. Religious Fantasy, you might say, but that’s the same as Theology, isn’t it? Irene over there at the desk would call it Pretentious Fantasy, but then she only likes books about the SAS. There’s Terry Pratchett, of course, but he’s pretty
sui generis.
’

‘Indeed,’ Philip said knowledgeably.

‘And needless to say there’s Harry Potter, but you’ll know those. No point you looking for them anyway. They’re all out and reserved for the next two years. In
fact, the books that J. K. says she’s not going to write are reserved for the next two years.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Probably best just to have a browse. You’ve got about twenty minutes before the next lot of kids from the Community College come in for their Library Project. If you need help I’ll be in the Security Room checking the pepper sprays and the dogs. Use the wall phone to the right of the door. The code is One Nine Eight Four.’