Selected Stories

He deals in first editions and manuscripts. As well, he and Clione run the Asterisk Press together, publishing the verse of poets who are in fashion, novellas, short stories, from time to time a dozen or so pages of reminiscence by a writer whose standing guarantees the interest of collectors. Their business is conducted from home, an old suburban house in south-west London, not far from the river. Provincial auctions are attended in pursuit of forgotten tomes and the letters of the literati, alive or dead. The demands of the Asterisk Press – the choosing of typefaces and bindings, paper of just the right shade and weight, mail-order sales - provide a contrast. A catalogue that combines both sources of livelihood is published every six months or so.

Years ago, the trade in first editions and other rarities threw up Michingthorpe, who specializes mainly in what he calls nineteenth-century jottings. A ‘trade friend’ James calls him, but there is more to it than this designation implies. Since before the children were born, before the funerals of the grandparents, Michingthorpe has been a regular presence in the house near the river. He has brought with him the excitement of jottings that are special; a discovery that defies or contradicts the agreed opinion of academe delights him most of all. But anything will do, for everything is special, or becomes so in Michingthorpe’s possession. Scraps of letters are lovingly laid out; the beginning of a Dickens chapter that was not proceeded with; frustrated Coleridge lines, scratched out, begun again; a note to a tailor; initials on a bill. All have been offered to James and Clione for perusal and admiration.

Michingthorpe talks mostly about himself. In remarking on the particular way a great Victorian author had of looping his I’s or y’s, he manages to make the matter personal to himself, going on to relate that he loops his own letters in that way too, or does not. Responding to a comment or prediction about the weather, he recalls how when he was in Venice once - on the track of a John Cross jotting – rain for six days caused the canals to rise, trapping him in his hotel with nothing better to re-read than Chesterton’s life of Browning, which he had not cared for the first time. If frost is forecast, he recalls that it brings on an ailment. He had an uncle who perished in a storm, struck by the bough of a cherry tree.

Michingthorpe was already running to youthful fat when he first became a trade friend; he is fatter now. The flesh that smudges the contours of his face is pale. Eyes, behind spectacles, are slate-coloured and small. His hair was conventionally short when he was younger; now its grey mat obscures his ears in so distinctive a manner that Clione has heard her waggish son likening Michingthorpe to a New Testament disciple. Had Michingthorpe himself heard that, he would not have minded but possibly would have recalled that as a schoolboy he wrote an essay on the subject of the Last Supper and was awarded a prize for it. He welcomes it when he is spoken of, adverse comments being rarely recognized as such.

When her middle child was three years old, Clione came into the sitting-room one day to hear Michingthorpe explaining why it was that oysters did not agree with him. He recounted occasions, before he was aware that they did not, when disaster had occurred. Still on the subject of his digestion, he next spoke of a dressmaker who had taken a liking to him in his own childhood, always having rock buns ready when he called in to see her. The rock buns had no ill effects, even though on one occasion he had eaten seven. Changing the subject, though without alteration of expression or tone, he reported that when he first wore spectacles everything tilted – whole rooms, and lamp-posts, the pavement when he walked on it. This led to a memory of someone saying, ‘We see God’s world as God would wish us to.’ Once in a zoo he watched a gorilla escape. He recognized on the street one day the late Boris Karloff. Often he speaks of waiters - how skilled or careless one was last week, what he had eaten on that occasion, whose company he was in. His mealtime companions are always from the trade, business conducted over soup and entrée and pudding.

In the past Michingthorpe appeared to dress more ordinarily: clothes that were hardly noticeable in youth – jeans and T-shirts – are more emphatic with his long grey hair, as if they seek to make a point or perpetuate some illusion. There are chunky jerseys to go with them, horn buttons down the front.

‘I dare say we all are someone else’s unpresentable friend,’ Clione has said, causing her husband and children to laugh, because Clione herself is not in the least unpresentable.