A Light

The fifth instalment of “From the Booth”, my Weekly Story Subscription Service (!”$)

Late in the morning I was woken up by my phone, which is almost always on silent and especially in the daytime. It was my agent, who first asked why I was still in bed, none of her business, and then if I’d listened to Radio 4. I said, ‘Yes, on occasion.’ And she said, ‘Within the last hour, I mean.’ And I said, ‘Not that I can remember.’

My agent told me that on the Today programme there’d been an interview with a snooker player to promote a recently published autobiography. And the interviewer had paid particular attention to something that appeared in the early chapters, about a life-changing experience. Concerning a corner of a corridor and a light without a source. ‘It can’t be!’ I said. ‘We took that bit out, didn’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said my agent. ‘I thought you had.’

‘But I did!’ I said. ‘There was a great feeling of relief after pressing the backspace key.’

‘Well, it’s still there,’ she said. ‘And after all of the fuss you made.’

It had been my first job of that kind. Maybe two decades ago, though I don’t mind much about that sort of thing. I can’t have had an agent for very long at that point, being as I was profoundly nobody. The snooker player’s autobiography was all she could get me, and I was only getting it at all because I’d work for not much money, my agent was straight with me about that. Which at that time was true, and it’s still more or less true, although I’d probably try for a little bit more these days, if only to account for inflation.

I think the fee was seven hundred pounds, and this included any research. Over long afternoons in my flat, the snooker player spoke his life into my portable tape recorder, wildly obsolete even then, both of us sat on rickety stools at the table in front of the outsized and slightly warped mirror on my living room wall.

I’d watch him in the ripply mirror as he spoke rather than look at him directly. Sometimes I’d look at myself instead. Gently expanding and contracting my features by moving my head from side to side. This may have seemed strange to the snooker player, but he never mentioned it.

After collating the interviews and unencumbered by expertise I rushed into a series of drafts and delivered the book completed and in time for Christmas, which I didn’t think I’d manage. I’ve never known much about the future. And nobody was expecting the best book in the world.