Open Writing

'Now, young man, have you thought any more about doing the biography? I can fill you in with details of his life - well, some of them, anyway. His first wife is still alive, I believe, but you'll have to track her down, perhaps in Brighton. And his sister is in a care home in Worthing. She'll know a thing or two about his early years, if she's not ga-ga by now. Also, there's a male literary cousin who -'

'Effie,' I said, ‘I’m not sure that I can take this on. I have my other work to do, you know [I was a supermarket shelf packer at the time]. And there's my divorce to sort out, access to the children and all that, and the car's gone kaput and I'm just about at the end of my bloody -'

'And there's a former, ahem, lady friend from Exmouth,' Effie went on, 'who has some porno letters from him which -'

'Porno letters?' I gasped. 'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm sure, she's told me about them. I've asked her to hang on to them until I find a biographer.'

She paused. Then, 'I know he's your favourite author but I think you've been rather taken in by the high moral tone of the novels, haven't you?'

*

Effie, I must explain, was the widow of Gregory Stapple, who'd recently died. He was the author of many novels, of which Effie had read only three.

'They're too predictable,' she said when we met. 'Virtue is always rewarded and that becomes rather tedious, doesn't it?' She took a sip of her gin and tonic.

'But I can well imagine their appeal to others,' she resumed. She looked very young and sexy at that moment, although she was over fifty.

'Yes, so can I,' I said earnestly, 'but it will be terrible if he's turned into a cult figure, with fan clubs, newsletters, visits to his birthplace and all that flimflam.'

'Oh,' she said, now very close, 'you're being far, far too negative.' Her hand moved. 'How would you like to be his biographer?' she murmured.

And that's how, as Gregory often wrote, it all began.