Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘Agreed.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad.’

‘And Ho Kitson’s story was about a girl who has abandoned her baby in a railway carriage in California, just as it’s about to set off for a cross-country journey.’

I nodded but said nothing.

‘You can see where I’m going on this, I presume?’ he asked after a lengthy pause.

‘ The Breach ,’ I said.

‘ The Breach ,’ he agreed. ‘The opening chapter of that novel sees a young woman leaving her unwanted baby in a railway carriage. Another woman boards shortly after, discovers the baby and, being unable to have a child herself, steals him. No one ever knows. She just takes him home and she and her husband raise him as their own. And when the boy turns eighteen, the Vietnam War breaks out and almost all the sons of the families in town go to fight, but when he goes for his medical test—’

‘You don’t need to recount my own novel to me, Theo,’ I said, growing annoyed now by his impertinence. ‘I wrote it. I think I remember what it was about.’

‘And then there’s The Broken Ones ,’ he continued, looking down at his notes again. ‘Do I need to go on?’

‘Well, you’re obviously enjoying yourself,’ I said with a shrug. ‘So why not?’

‘Steven Conway. A story called “The Wedding Anniversary”. A husband and wife visit Paris to celebrate twenty years together and, while there, she has a brief affair. And then Anna Smith. A story called “Tuesday”. A comic story about life on a university campus where a professor is trying and failing to seduce his students. And if we look at the plot of The Broken Ones —’

‘All right, Daniel, for fuck’s sake,’ I said, raising my voice.

‘Theo,’ he said calmly.

‘Just tell me what your fucking point is.’

He looked at me with a certain contempt in his eyes and laughed. ‘It’s not obvious?’

‘Not to me,’ I said.

‘The ideas. They weren’t yours.’

‘And?’

‘Maurice, I’m not trying to be obtuse—’

‘Then you’re failing. Tell me this, Theo. Those four stories you read. Were they any good?’

He considered this for a moment and shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, they had some good ideas, story-wise, but the writing was weak and the characters were never fully developed.’

‘And if you had been the editor of Storī at the time, would you have published them?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Your novels – those two novels – they weren’t your ideas. They’re a blend of other people’s stories.’

I smiled. Other People’s Stories . My new book. My unfinished book. The book that Daniel, the little snoop, had discovered and got so worked up over.

‘But their stories weren’t any good,’ I protested. ‘And my novels, the two that we’re talking about, were both very well received.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Look, Theo. I’m a writer. And what’s the most irritating question that a writer can be asked?’

‘I don’t know. Do you write by hand or on a computer?’

‘No, it’s Where do you get your ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where they come from and nobody should know. They evolve in thin air, they float down from some mysterious heaven and we reach out to grab one, to grasp it in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear a conversation in a café and a whole novel will build from that moment. Another might see an article in a newspaper and a plot will suggest itself immediately. Another might hear about an unpleasant incident that happened to a friend of a friend at a supermarket. So I took ideas from badly written stories that had been sent to me – unsolicited, I might add – and turned them into something that was not only publishable but sold very well. What’s the problem with that?’

‘When you express it like that, nothing,’ said Theo, looking utterly frustrated by my reply. ‘But don’t you think—’

‘I think what I just said, that’s what I think. Are you trying to suggest that no one has ever written a novel about an abandoned child before? For God’s sake, Daniel, how does the story of Moses begin? The Pharaoh has condemned all male Hebrew children to death and Jochebed places the baby in an ark, where’s he discovered by Bithiah. Are you saying that Ho Kitson stole her idea from the Bible? And, what, a college professor who seduces his students? You’ve read Updike, I presume? Mailer? Roth?’

‘But it’s not the same!’ he insisted, shaking his head, clearly discombobulated now. ‘You’re trying to justify your actions and—’

‘I’m not trying to justify anything. And if you have an accusation to make, Theo, then perhaps you should just make it. If not, perhaps you should stop fishing for scandal and focus on the work itself. Be a literary biographer, as you say you want to be, and not a tabloid journalist.’

He hesitated and, finally, shook his head. ‘I just think it’s a little strange that—’

‘My boy, you’re going to write an extraordinary thesis,’ I said. ‘I have to compliment you. The level of research you’re undertaking is exemplary. I presume you’ve talked to your father about this. He’s still interested in developing this book, I mean? A book about me?’

‘Yes,’ said Theo, looking down at the table and tapping it with his fingers. The wind had truly been taken out of his sails and I couldn’t help but feel a little amused. The poor boy looked crestfallen. He’d thought he was doing a Woodward and Bernstein on me but the truth was, he was very new to this game and I’d been playing it for a long time. It was hardly a contest of equals.

‘Are you all right, Theo?’ I asked, reaching forward and taking his hand in mine. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little shaken.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘I should probably go. I have some work I need to do.’

‘All right,’ I replied. ‘But what a great afternoon! If you ask me, I think it’s very impressive the lengths you’re going to in order to write a strong thesis. It’s obvious that you’re going to be a great success one day, I’m certain of it. No one’s secrets will be safe from you. Are you sure you wouldn’t like another drink before you go?’ I asked, reaching into my pocket and removing my wallet. ‘I feel quite thirsty and I’m so enjoying talking to you.’

Sometimes you just know that you’ve made a mistake. I had put my faith in Theo, had thought that he would be the one to reintroduce me to the literary world, but after our last encounter it began to dawn on me that I had chosen the wrong person. He was hard-working, certainly, an admirable trait in one so young, but simply too naïve. He’d done his research but had utterly failed to understand the value of the information he’d discovered. He’d allowed me to dismiss his concerns and even to make him feel foolish for voicing them at all. Had I been in his place, I would have tightened the screw and made me reveal all, but the poor boy just didn’t have the killer instinct. I realized, to my disappointment, that it was time to let him go, just as I’d let Erich go, just as I’d let Dash go, and just as I’d let Edith fall. They’d each served a purpose and, while Theo ultimately hadn’t proved as useful to me as I had hoped, at least he’d inspired me to get back to writing and to put the events of the past few years behind me. It was time to stop drinking and begin a novel. If he had done nothing else for me, he had done that.

When I woke that morning, I reached for my phone, intending to text him to say that I would not be available for any further interviews but, just as I lifted it, a message arrived from him, asking whether we could meet later that afternoon in the Cross Keys. I thought, why not? It would be kinder, after all, to tell him face to face that our acquaintance had come to an end and that he would have to finish his thesis without me, than to do so over something so impersonal as a text. And so I replied in the affirmative, saying that I’d meet him there at three o’clock. I hoped there wouldn’t be a scene. I’ve always hated scenes.