‘There is a way to
die and a way not to die. That is very important. Hence my admiration for
George the Fifth who - on his deathbed, in reply to his physician who told him
that in a few weeks he would be recuperating at Bognor Regis - said: Bugger
Bognor, and died... Bugger Bognor. Ah, would that I might die with a phrase
half so sublime on my lips! There you have a man who at the moment of death
manages to put life into perspective.’ He paused. ‘Well, I might as well hear
your journal anyway.’
‘I - I set
fire to my notebook, Lord Malquist.’
‘Out of
pique?’
‘No... It
got wet and I was drying it.’
‘Oh, dear
me. Well don’t despair, dear fellow. Wasn’t it Mr Gibbon who sent his
manuscript of The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to
the laundry?’
‘I don’t
know, Lord Malquist.’
‘Not many
people do. But my great-great-grandfather was present when his publisher
received a parcel of dirty linen. Hansom cabs were summoned at once but it was
too late, and Gibbon had to begin all over again, wearing a soiled collar,
hence the uneasiness detectable in the first chapter. What’s the most
implausible thing about that sentence?’
Dimly aware that Sir Tom Stoppard had once written a
novel, and even more dimly never having researched its publishing status, I was
fortunate to quite literally fall over a copy in The Last Bookshop in Bristol. (For
anyone not in the know, please stay out of it because I want to buy all the
books in there... No really. OK, it’s a haven entirely comprised of remainders
with an excellent range and it’s almost criminally cheap.) This was yesterday.
I have now read Lord Malquist & Mr
Moon, marked most pages as ones that should be learnt off by heart and
begun reading it to my partner so that I have someone with whom to share the
joke.
