Andrew Crofts - Confessions of a Ghostwriter

I had accidentally stumbled upon a path that was paved with a constant stream of adventures and the following are some of my confessions from along that path.

I was having a well-earned afternoon powernap at the end of a hard working week when my wife came into the bedroom with disturbing news.

‘There’s an eight-foot transsexual hooker in the living room,’ she said without even bothering to check if I was still sleeping. ‘I think you should come down.’

‘In the living room?’ I wasn’t entirely sure if I was awake or still dreaming. ‘How did she get there?’

‘She arrived in a taxi. Didn’t you hear it?’

‘I think I was asleep.’ I hauled myself up into a sitting position as my wife attempted to flatten my bed-hair. ‘Is it Geraldine?’

‘Obviously.’

‘What’s she doing down here?’

‘At the moment she’s playing Barbies with the girls, but I think it’s you she’s come to see.’

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘Of course I talked to her. You weren’t there and the girls had an attack of shyness. She’s very big and she’s wearing a full-length fur coat. They thought she was Cruella de Vil.’

‘She’s fun, isn’t she?’ I stood up, my head clearing. ‘I told you.’

My wife was exaggerating. Geraldine wasn’t anything close to eight feet tall. Without her heels I doubt that she was much more than six feet two or three. But then she did always tend to wear boots with stacked heels and liked to pile her wigs high. By the time I got downstairs the girls had spread their entire collection of Barbies out for inspection across the carpet in front of her shiny white boots and she had shrugged the fur coat down off her shoulders like she was Ava Gardner at a press conference in Cannes. I noticed there was an overnight bag beside her chair.

‘Did you get my message?’ she asked.

‘Message?’

‘I left a telephone message to say I had to see you. We need to do some serious rewrites.’

‘Rewrites?’ This was the first I’d heard of this. ‘But the publisher has signed off on the manuscript. They’re happy with everything.’

‘But it’s not right. I need to change things. It’s not printed is it?’

‘I have no idea, but I doubt they will want to make any more changes now.’

That was the moment when Geraldine started to cry and my wife managed to tear the wide-eyed, open-mouthed girls away from the show and into the kitchen to make tea. I felt a bit like crying myself. One of the best moments in the book-writing business is the one when the editor accepts the final version of the typescript and agrees to send it off to the printers. The weight of months of work and uncertainty lifts from your shoulders and there is a brief period of elation (not to mention a cheque in the post) before you have to start worrying about whether the shops are going to display the book, the papers are going to review it and the public are going to buy it. Geraldine’s panic was crushing my moment.

I had got to know her well enough over the months to be aware that if she had decided on a course of action she would not be easily diverted; going on the game and changing your gender are both decisions that require uncommon degrees of grit and character. It seemed best to go with the flow for the moment, at least until she had calmed down a bit.

‘Are you wanting to work on it over the weekend?’ I asked, casting a quizzical look at the overnight bag.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we have to. I’ll need to find a bed-and-breakfast or something so we can work during the day.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ my wife interrupted from the door, the girls peering round her skirts, ‘you can stay here. We’ve got a spare room.’

Maybe it’s something to do with female instincts, but as usual she was ahead of me in reading the situation. Geraldine did not want to rewrite the book any more than I did. There had to be some other reason for her arrival out of the blue at the other end of the country from the streets and kerbs where she plied her trade, and we just had to wait for it to emerge. As she relaxed into the evening, with the help of a bottle of wine, she opened up with a new story about a murderous pimp who she had thought was the love of her life but who was actually making her life a misery. He had arranged for her to be evicted from her flat and was now pursuing her with a gun.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a sequel to your book,’ my wife suggested as we washed up after sending an exhausted Geraldine up to bed, which was a relief since we’d signed a two-book deal with the publisher and finding enough material for follow-ups was nearly always an uphill struggle. It may be true that ‘everyone has a book in them’, but most people definitely do not have two, however much the publisher’s accounting and sales departments may hope to the contrary.

‘You must fly down for the launch of the book,’ the Minister boomed, ‘I insist. The President will be there. It will be a great day. There will be food and speeches. I will make all the arrangements for you.’

I didn’t really want to go, but there was no arguing with him. Most clients don’t even admit that they’ve used a ghostwriter; they certainly don’t want to invite him or her half way across the world to the launch party. In most cases they don’t even let the ghost know that there is going to be a party. Once the book is written and delivered the ghost normally slinks back into the shadows and moves on to the next project, allowing the client to bask in the glory of being a published author. The Minister, however, was a man who enjoyed the limelight so much he wanted to share it with the whole world, which was one of the reasons he was such an endearing man.

His extremely efficient assistant made the arrangements through the embassy in London and a business class ticket was delivered to the house by a driver. I didn’t even bother to ask about accommodation arrangements because my previous trips had shown that the Minister was the most hospitable of men. He would have thought of everything. Often when you arrive at the borders of a country other than your own you need to provide evidence of where you will be staying. When your ticket has been arranged by someone like the Minister everything is different. Someone would have had a word in the ear of the airport officials, money or other favours would have been exchanged, minders would be waiting to take me to an SUV with darkened windows. It had happened like that every time I had been to see him during the writing process.

The launch of the book was held in a government office that I hadn’t been to before. The building must have been designed in colonial times and had a suitable air of faded grandeur, befitting a distinguished literary event. A feast had been laid out for guests on trestle tables and groups of sofas and armchairs had been clustered around the room so that politicians and business people could huddle and whisper, their conspiratorial conversations occasionally interrupted with roars of laughter and outbreaks of back-slapping. There were surprisingly large piles of books which the guests were helping themselves to, flicking through the pages in search of their own names or those of their rivals.

The arrival of the President momentarily overshadowed the Minister’s flamboyant act as host and newly published author. The pecking order took a few moments to readjust before everyone was comfortable once more.

The Minister made a speech and graciously acknowledged his ghostwriter in a remarkable display of modesty, honesty and openness. The President also made a speech praising the Minister. Conversations then resumed as one politician after another stood to tell the room how much they admired the author of the book and how exciting it was that his ideas on how to lead Africa to future prosperity were now set down in print.