The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Is not the world full of better and more cogent concerns?

These questions I raise without, hardly surprisingly, being able to answer them.

I raise them because I have been so entirely a writer all my long life, forever concerned with what to say and why I choose – or why I have been chosen – to say it.

Hardly a year has passed without the publication of a slender book of verse, a translation of the poems of Makhtumkuli, a novel, SF, a travel book, a volume of social commentary, or a selection of short stories, as here and now.

The possible length of a tale has long been of interest. One of my inventions was the mini-saga. My mini-saga project was to confine a story within fifty words. Titles did not count within the bastions of that punitive fifty. The Daily Telegraph embraced my idea, and we ran mini-story competitions in the paper for six successive years.

My determination from the start was that a mini-saga should not be trivial; its spacial limitations drained narrative from the form; a moral aspect should remain.

Here is the example I offered my newspaper readers:

Happiness and suffering

The doors of the amber palace

closed behind the young king.

For twenty years he dallied with

his favourite courtesans. Outside,

the land fell into decay. Warlords

terrorised the population.

Famine and pestilence struck,

of which chronicles still tell.

The king emerged at last.

He had no history to relate.

Some years after this was published, I discovered that a beautiful and cultured lady of my acquaintance carried a cutting with her of this mini-saga in her purse. What is more enthralling than fame? Why, secrecy …

When I phoned The Telegraph with my suggestion, I was working at the other end of the narrative scale, on a long trilogy concerning a planet called Helliconia.

And now? A new year dawned and I suddenly determined to challenge myself, not with shortage of words but with shortage of time. In brief, I would write a short story every day in succession. This book contains some of the results.

To be honest (generally a foolish thing for a writer to do) a short story written on a Monday requires a Tuesday as well. On Tuesday, you edit, you correct, you knock out ungainly sentences, you amplify, you may suddenly discover a new meaning that had never occurred to you on the Monday. So you in effect rewrite. That’s what Tuesdays are for … the writing of tiny masterpieces …

Most of these stories are fairly dark, glowing with gloom. I like it that way. Such matters as this I discussed with a new friend. Whereas it had been my own firm decision as an ex-soldier to leave Devon for Oxford, my meeting with Anthony Storr was accidental. We became close. Where I was just a writer, Anthony was an important figure in the university, and the clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry.

He suffered from depression, but liked to be amused; he himself could be greatly amusing. More to the point – and the reason why he features in this introduction – is that Storr was the author – among other titles – of The Dynamics of Creation. It was that wonderful perceptive book which drew me to him. To read his volume was to understand better why and how and what I wrote.

As can be seen, I have written a generous amount. In the past at least, this was because of the times we lived in. And more recently we have the temperatures of our own mental climates to deal with. In the sixties, I was busy adjusting to life in England after many excitements in the tropics, coping with failing marriages, looking after children, struggling for recognition.

And in a writer’s life – as in other lives – curious accidents occur. Fearing my small children might be taken away from me for ever, I wrote a short story about it. Then I decided that was not enough. I launched out on a novel. As I wrote, I said to myself: ‘This is so miserable, no one is going to want to read it …’

But I continued to the end, christened the results Greybeard, and sent the bundle off to my publisher. Faber & Faber accepted it, as did Signet in New York. And they labelled it – to my surprise – science fiction. Under that flag, the novel sold promptly to Germany, Tokyo, Budapest, Milan, Verona, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Rio de Janeiro. Oh yes, and Amsterdam.

Never again was I to have such success with a novel. One often does not realise what one is writing or – fortunately – reading … Let’s hope it holds psychological truth.

Anthony Storr puts it this way: ‘A man may often be astonished to find the scarlet thread of his identity running through a series of works which appeared to him very different at the time they were conceived.’

In the end is my beginning, and in my beginning is my end

A Difficult Age (#u26255378-8b5f-5072-b09b-04857dbcd8bd)

Various rumours have been circulating about Imago, the first robot ever to commit suicide. I’m in a position to end those rumours. Imago was our family robot.

I remember clearly how he revealed the way his thoughts were tending. My wife and I had given a dinner for my father, to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday; our eighteen-year-old son Anthony was also present. As guests, we had invited father’s youngest brother, Eddy, who was fifty, and his daughter Vera. Imago waited on us during the meal and brought us drinks out on to the air-conditioned terrace afterwards.

Following an idle line of conversation, Eddy exclaimed, ‘Well, I wish I was thirty years younger, anyhow!’

‘Nonsense, uncle, you’d feel foolish being younger than your daughter!’ I said, and everyone laughed.

‘It’s a pity we can’t all stay at a favoured age,’ my father said. ‘I don’t know why you want to be younger, Eddy – I’d say fifty is the golden age. You have reached the pinnacle of your career – without going downhill, like me! You still have your health and your wits. Your career is stable, your prosperity is assured. You don t have the worry of growing children, like a younger man, or the vexation of grandchildren, like an older man.’

‘Nonsense, fifty’s the worst possible age,’ said Eddy. ‘You can’t yet sit back and enjoy a pension and delicate health as you do, nor can you still chase women like a man of forty.’ (He had the tact not to look at me, perhaps remembering I was thirty-nine.) ‘At fifty, you see all too clearly the things you hoped to do and now never will. No, for preference, I’d be – if not Anthony’s age – Vera’s age.’

Vera laughed. ‘Daddy, you’re an old misery! And I assure you that the mid-twenties are not as comfortable as you may sentimentally recollect they were.’

‘They sit very well on you, my dear,’ my wife said. ‘What do you find to object to? You have such a marvellous supply of adoring young men. What more do you want?’

Imago handed Vera a coffee. She took it, stared at it as if to hide her embarrassment, and said, ‘Well, take those young men. Honestly, you can’t imagine how silly they are, most of them. They either treat me as if I was still a little girl or as if I were already past it.’ At this, I noticed my son Anthony colour slightly. ‘And – I must admit – I do sometimes feel just a kid and at other times absolutely past it. The truth is, twenty-six is a very uncomfortable age. You don’t have the fun of being teenage or the pleasure of being regarded as a responsible person. If I could choose my ideal age, I’d be – oh, thirty-five, say!’

‘It’s not a bad age,’ I admitted. ‘At least, each succeeding year is worse. Every age has its snags. I remember feeling worst when I was twenty-nine and some idiot called me “sir.” At that moment, I knew youth had fled.’

‘Each age has its snags,’ agreed my wife, ‘and also its benefits.’

I could see she was going to say something more, but at that moment Anthony gave voice. He was at an awkward age, the poetry writing age, the age – as a friend of mine once said – when you have the hairs but not the airs of a man. He seemed always moody and generally silent, except when silence would have been the better policy. He was, in short, terrible company, and had my full sympathy, which I never dared express.

He said, ‘Some ages have no benefits! I notice all of you naturally want to be younger but none of you are fool enough to plump for eighteen. At eighteen no one likes your music, no one will publish your poetry, your clothes never suit your personality! You’re really a man but nobody believes it, not even yourself!’

‘Nonsense, Anthony, you’ve all life before you!’ exclaimed Eddy firmly.

‘But you don’t know what to do with it! At eighteen, you see every-thing with painful clarity before age starts its merciful task of dulling the brain. And you realise for the first time at eighteen how short life is, how much of it has scudded by without your having done a damned thing about it! By the time you’re twenty-five it’ll be too late – sorry, Vera! What is there but death and old age ahead?’

His grandfather said, ‘You express precisely why I was not foolish enough to say I wished I was eighteen again, Anthony. I agree that it is a very painful age. I too was obsessed with death – more so than I am now. We can only assure you that your perspectives will change in a very few years.’

‘It’s easy enough to talk!’ Anthony said, and walked out of the terrace, leaving his coffee untouched.

When the others had gone home, my wife and I sat chatting and gazing into the night. Imago was clearing away the coffee cups. Unexpectedly, he said, ‘Sir!’

‘What is it, Imago?’