Alexander Masters - The Genius in my Basement

But Mummy must not be told.

‘I am not prepared to sacrifice her feelings to satisfy your artistic sensibilities,’ Simon sniffs. ‘The situation you are trying to manufacture reminds me of something I read in one of Hans Eysenck’s popular psychology books. He describes a Victorian with the pseudonym Walter, the ambition of whose life seems to have been to have sex with as many females as he could.’

‘I hardly think …’

‘Eysenck then expresses this point of view to put it up to ridicule: “What do the feelings of all these females matter in comparison with the satisfaction of Walter’s artistic needs?” As I say, my mother and children must be the test.’

It is only now, recovered from the shock of Simon discovering me trespassing down here – a fact that he still appears not to have noticed – that I finally detect the flaw in his argument.

‘But Simon, your mother died nine years ago.’

‘The principle is the same.’

‘And you don’t have any children.’

This is not the first time Simon’s had cause to complain about my intrusions. When I was researching my first book (‘which I think will also be your last’) he made the mistake of popping his head round the door of my study while I was interviewing my then subject, and before Simon had a chance to scramble out of the room again, I’d snatched him into print.

‘Twice winner of a Mathematics Olympiad Gold Medal …’ I’d written as his footsteps fled, ‘my landlord is a generous, mild man, as brilliant as the sun, but a fraction odd.’

‘One fact to get right, and you got it wrong in four different ways,’ protests Simon now.

One: the International Mathematics Olympiad does not award medals or (mistake two) golds, it hands out numbers: 1, 2 and 3. Three: there is no such thing as a ‘winner’ in these competitions: it is mathematics, not sprinting. You get a 1 for achieving a certain score or above. It is perfectly possible for all contenders to get a 1. Mistake four: three times – not twice – Simon scored this top grade, aged fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, and (although Simon insists he has forgotten this) one of those wins was with a triumphant 100 per cent, a perfect flush, and another with 99 per cent, one of the first boys in the world ever to achieve this mind-frazzling triumph. Others have managed it since, but unlike Simon they have had years of dedicated training, entirely skipped their adolescence, and looked like beaten-up tapeworms.

In just half a page of a biography about someone else I managed to misrepresent Simon in four ways, when all he’d done was have the bad luck to stray into my sight for five minutes.

‘Four errors in half a page is, hnn, eight errors in a full page, which in a full-length publication such as you are threatening to make this one, comes to, aaah, 2,000 or 3,000 instances of disregard for fact. Oh dear!’ he sighs. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’

True to expectation, the howlers in this manuscript have already arrived. ‘What do you mean,’ he says, submerging his arms into his holdall, for a moment looking puzzled, then following after with his head, as if his bag is eating him. ‘What do you mean,’ he reappears with a clutch of papers – the first chapters, which I emailed him this morning – ‘that women have a habit of shrieking when they come across me?’

‘Unexpectedly, when you’re hovering next to my bathroom door. They do.’

‘It may have happened once,’ he permits. ‘I do not think that makes a habit. I do not think my mother …’

‘Your dead mother, Simon. It’s happened three times.’

It’s not his looks. It’s the way he hovers outside the door, waxen and quiet. He’s not there with any wicked purpose. He’s been pacing up and down the front hall, tearing at his post or contemplating points of infinity in hyperbolic space, and just happens to have reached that end of the corridor when the bathroom door opens. His fixed stare gives him the impression of having enormous eyes. Muttonchop whiskers billow up the side of his face, as though his blank smile contained a fire.

Clipping from the Daily Mail , found in a sorry state by the clothes closet, front room of the Excavation. Reconstructed by the biographer.

Sprouting under his nostrils is half an inch of bristle where his electric shaving machine – based on circular movement – doesn’t reach into the corners of his nose. His stillness suggests someone plotting ambushes on a safari, or one of those people who squat in ponds with weeds on their heads, shooting ducks.

The woman shrieks. Mid-shriek, Simon does nothing, as though he’s thumbtacked between two seconds. Only once the screams have died down into gurgles of relief and apologies does he shake himself free with a heave of breath.

‘Hnnn!’ he says.

‘Hnnnn,’ he repeats.

Relieved to have resolved the situation so deftly, he thumps downstairs to the Excavation.

Another error he has noticed in these sample pages: why do I say he smells of sardines in tomato sauce? They’re not sardines, they’re kippers. They may, on occasion, be mackerel. And in all cases he buys them in oil. He dislikes tomato sauce.

‘If I can’t say you smell of sardines in tomatoes,’ I retort, ‘can I say you smell of fatty headless fish?’

It’s essential to emphasise that in no sense of the term is Simon mad. He’s covered in facial hair and wears rotten shoes and trousers for the opposite reason: too much mental order. He burps; he makes elephant yawns without putting his hand over his mouth; he thinks you won’t mind knowing about the progress of his digestion; and he goes on long, sweaty walks then doesn’t change his clothes for a week. But what else can he do? Everybody is messy somehow, and there’s no other place for Simon to store his quota. Inside his head there’s no room: all the mess has been swept out. It’s as pristine in there as a surgeon’s operating theatre.

Another word he doesn’t like in my manuscript is ‘stomps’.

‘What do you mean, I “stomp”? How do you know I “stomp”? I don’t believe you can hear me from upstairs. You’re not suggesting I “stomp” on the ceiling, are you?’

As for my description of his floor … ‘Oh dear,’ he groans, conclusively.

Suddenly, Simon loses interest. Although his face has no time for expressions, his legs and arms want to get on with it. He starts to wiggle his hands; his head begins to rotate; then, without explanation, he drops the thesaurus on his bedcover, bolts from the bed, dodging a wave of Asda bags (‘Sainsbury’s, Alex. I find it enhances one’s appreciation of a book if the facts are correct’) and hurries to the kitchen, gripping his peck of peppered kippers. Through the connecting door, I watch his hair weave around the lightbulb like a grey feather-duster. A large, disjointed man, he can move with surprising litheness.

People such as Simon – unknown, living people – don’t trust words. Words may be a familiar method of communication (although Simon generally prefers grunts or showing off bus tickets), but that doesn’t mean it’s respectable to make a living out of them, especially if you’re a sloppy scribbler with a lighthearted attitude to truth like me. Words are too nuanced and potentially destructive to be left in the hands of someone so unrigorous. A straightforward four-letter noun beginning with f—

‘No!’

– defining your style of accommodation, and bang! The entire disciplinary force of Cambridge City Council rushes up the hill with clipboards to snap, tick and bylaw you into a magistrate’s court.