The Hireling by LP Hartley

These days Hartley seems best known for The Go-Between and its opening line, “The past is a different country: they do things differently there.” In his time, however, he was a renowned author, recipient of literary prizes and the CBE.

The Hireling, one of the more popular of a fairly prolific output and still in print, tells the story of Leadbitter, who has recently left the army after the war, and started out as a driver for wealthy customers. Misogynistic, uptight and doomed to a life driving the idle rich while paying the crippling hire-purchase on his car, Leadbitter becomes chauffeur for a bereaved young Widow, Lady Franklin.

Asked to take her to Canterbury, he drives her there from London, but declines to see the cathedral with her, which she is visiting in an act of remembrance for her dead husband. Instead, he sits in the car and mopes, before going for a quick sharpener:

Left to himself, Leadbitter turned on the wireless. A woman’s voice! The civilian world was a dull place, a tried three-piece orchestra, waiting for the word ‘fun’. Moodily he got out, locked the car and went to buy himself a coffee. On the way he passed a pub, and after a few moments hesitation pushed the door open. Few working men drink spirits in the middle of the day and Leadbitter was no exception, he couldn’t afford to and besides he didn’t want to smell of alcohol: he had his customers, and the police, to think of. But he felt very tired and the job with Lady Franklin would bring in several pounds, so he decided to take the risk. He chose whisky, a drink he didn’t often indulge in, for it made him feel ‘antagonistic’, as he put it. One double Scotch sufficed to set the hostility working in him, and looking round he spied a small fat man whose inoffensive expression irritated him. He stared at him until the man showed signs first of uneasiness, then of confusion, and at last, looking every way except at his tormentor, ignominiously scuttled out. But Leadbitter’s demon remained unappeased. Arguing the toss with himself whether he should have another whisky, he approached the bar and said the barman, who was a big, heavily-built, pasty-faced fellow, with a slight foreign accent: “Are you an American?” “No,” said the barman. “Well, what are you then?” “If you want to know, I’m Dutch.” “I thought you were an American,” said Leadbitter evenly. His voice made it sound like an insult, almost a threat: and a faint stir of interest went through the drinkers, the pleasurable anticipation of a quarrel, and they turned their heads, awaiting the barman’s answer. “It’s written Dutch on my passport,” he said expressionlessly. “Well, they should know,” said Leadbitter, inferring that such knowledge didn’t matter much, either way. The barman raised his eyes but didn’t answer and Leadbitter, dropping the subject as if any interest it might have had was now exhausted, decided not to have another drink. For a moment, while his will clashed with the barman’s, he had felt that life was worth living: it had been brought to the fine point of conflict that his nature craved.

It’s not set up to end rosily and when Lady Franklin later asks him if he has a family, he lies and invents a wife and children in an effort to give her satisfaction. As his stories get more and more involved, he unwittingly falls in love with his aristocratic employer, with tragic results...

Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser

George MacDonald Fraser is best known for the Flashman novels, and rightly so, but he also wrote other historical novels, as well as screenplays and biographies.

Black Ajax is the story of Tom Molineaux, a former slave who came to London from America with the aim of taking on the greatest bare-knuckle champion of all time, Tom Cribb. The book is written through the voices of various promoters, chancers, gamblers and aficionados of The Fancy who are remembering him posthumously to his biographer. The result is a glorious piece of historical ventriloquism.

One of the raconteurs is none other than Flashman Snr, who has been sent to a sanatorium by his son because of his drinking problem:

I am one of a select band of gentlemen resident in this charming rural establishment because we have lost the battle with delirium tremens – temporarily, I hasten to add – and are in need of a breather between rounds, so to speak. We are here of our own free will, at exorbitant rates, have the freedom of the grounds, and do not consort with the loonies, and ... I say, you don’t happen to have a drop of anything with you, I suppose? Flask, bottle, demijohn, something of the sort?

He’s determined to keep mum on the subject of Molineux, however. Only when he’s promised a drink will he sing:

What’s that? You could call again after luncheon ... with a spot o’ lush, no doubt. My dear fellow, what a capital notion. Put ‘em in separate pockets so that they don’t clink ... the attendants here have ears like dago guerrillas, ‘tis like being in the blasted Steel.

After inquiring as to how the biographer has found him – the man appears to have unwisely left his sister in the company of Harry Flashman – Flashman Snr gets to work:

Now, have you brought ... oh, famous! Sir, you are a pippen of the first flight! Brandy, bigod, that’ll answer. Fix bayonets and form a square, belly, the Philistines are upon thee ... Ah-h-h! Aye, that’s the neat article. Sir, your good health ...

And so to his account; another chapter in an exploitive and bloody story from the golden age of boxing...

All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills

I first read this around ten years ago, finishing it in a single sitting. I was captivated by the sense of Kafkaesque menace that pervades the story, despite the fact that very little happens for most of the book.

Ostensibly the tale of a holidaymaker who gets trapped in a small village in the Lake District after procrastinating whether to go on his travels to India by motorbike, Mills imbues the book with an increasing feeling of menace. By the time winter has arrived and the unnamed narrator has found himself taking on numerous odd jobs including the local milk round, an ice cream franchise and painting a set of rowing boats in a hideous shade of green, the claustrophobia is unbearable.

It all starts off innocently enough; the narrator decides to stay on a week at the end of the holiday season. As the rest of the campers disappear home, Mr Parker, the farmer who runs the site, asks him to paint a gate in return for the next week’s rent for his pitch. It seems a reasonable deal, and it saves him a few bob which he can spend on beer:

After that there was nothing to do except go down the pub. I had a choice between walking and going on the bike. If I took the bike it meant I would have to drink less, maximum three pints. Or I could walk and have five. I thought of the money I’d saved by painting Mr Parker’s gate, and decided to walk.

Pretty soon, he is invited to join the darts team at the Packhorse, the livelier of the two pubs in the village. There’s a new barrel of bitter on tap, just for him, and he’s allowed to run up a sizeable slate:

My opponent from the Golden Lion was a portly bloke called Phil who didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered when I beat him, and instantly rushed off to buy me a pint of lager. When I asked if it would be alright if I had Topham’s Excelsior instead he looked slightly sorry for me, as though I hadn’t been properly weaned or something.

Well, it’s not as if he’s staying for long, just until he finishes the painting for Mr Parker:

When I walked to the pub at night I could hear seabirds out in the middle of the lake, squawking and arguing. It sounded as though there were thousands of them. I had no idea where they’d come from, but they seemed to have settled in for the winter. I thought about the seven boats waiting to be painted, the darts fixtures and the endless points of Topham’s Excelsior Bitter, and realized that I’d settled in for the winter as well.

But disaster strikes. He doesn’t realise that away matches take place on Tuesdays... When he gets to the Packhorse too late to make the game in the nearby village, he gets a distinctly frosty reception. It’s hinted that he ought to keep his head down at the other pub for a couple of weeks until it all blows over. Sadly, the Ring of Bells is a purgatorial dump of a public house:

That night I began my two-week sentence at the Ring of Bells. Two weeks of sitting in a pub with no women, no darts and no Topham’s Excelsior Bitter wasn’t very appealing, so I put it off until about quarter to ten... The same people sat in the same places and stared at their drinks, while the landlord (whose name, apparently, was Cyril) stood behind the counter and polished glasses. The conversation was at best desultory.

After a while of this, he begins to question if it’s worth going to the pub at all. He’s saved from this terrible fate when speaking to the captain of the Packhorse darts team while on the new milk round he has somehow acquired:

Tomorrow being Thursday evening I assumed he was referring to the next darts fixture in the Packhorse. I took his remark as meaning that my period of exile was over and I could begin drinking there again. My resolution of the previous evening about ‘not drinking anywhere for the time being’ had seemed very bleak in the cold light of day. After all, what was the point of working if I couldn’t go to the pub at night?

What point indeed? But by the time he finds that there is only one way to leave the village, it’s a bit late to be thinking about beer...

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

Somewhat of a literary sensation when published in its native Germany, Wetlands managed to cause quite a stir when it appeared in translation over here. Its protagonist, Helen Memel, is an emotionally damaged eighteen-year-old recovering in a hospital proctology unit from an infected shaving cut that occurred when depilating an area not traditionally kept hair free.

The book never leaves the hospital or Helen’s head, and the next two hundred pages consist of a rant against the over hygienic de-odorised concepts of modern femininity, a catalogue of Helen’s erotic experiences and predilection for anal sex, and a desperate attempt to bring her estranged parents back together which culminates in an incredibly painful complication of the original wound. It’s fair to say that Wetlands is not for those of a queasy disposition.

At the heart of the book are Helen’s feelings of rejection from her parents. Her father his absent, she has no idea what he does, and her mother, with whom she lives, once tried to kill herself and Helen’s younger brother, leaving Helen behind. That said, her memory of this is distinctly hazy, something that can be attributed to both shock and the fact that she’s done her best to blot out the experience with drink and drugs.

One of her ex-boyfriends, Michael, was a small time drug dealer who kept his stash in a fake Coca-Cola can. He mistakenly leaves this round Helen’s friend’s house – not a good idea, really:

We blew off school, bought some red wine at a kiosk, and left a message for Michael on his answering machine: “If you’re looking for cola, we found a whole case in Corinna’s room. You won’t get pissed if we start drinking without you, will you?” ... Then began our race against time. The idea was to take as many drugs as possible before the first one took effect and before Michael showed up. Anything we didn’t slurp down we’d have to give back. At nine in the morning we starting taking two pills at a time, washing them down with wine. It didn’t seem right to snort speed and coke so early in the morning, so we made minigrenades out of toilet paper. Half a packet each for us – which is half a gram – poured onto a little piece of toilet paper, skilfully wrapped up, and gulped down with lots of wine.

Michael is not a happy bunny when he finally turns up, not that Helen and Corinna are in any state to care:

I guess everything started to kick in. I can only remember the highlights. Corinna and I laughed the whole time and made up stories set in a fantasy land. At some point Michael came by to pick up his can and cursed us out. We giggled. He said if all the stuff we’d ingested didn’t kill us, we would have to pay him back. We just laughed. Later we puked. First Corinna, then me from the sound and smell of hers. In a big, white bucket. The puke looked like blood because of the red wine. But it took as a long time to figure out why it looked like that. And then we realized there were undigested pills floating around. This seemed like a terrible waste to us. I said: “Half and half?” Corinna said: “Okay, you first.” And so for the first time in my life I drank someone else’s puke. Mixed with my own. In big gulps. Taking turns. Until the bucket was empty. A lot of brain cells die on days like that.

Helen is certainly one of the more interesting literary creations that I’ve encountered, and although Roche’s prose deliberately sets out to shock, she does have some valid points to make but ultimately, they are lost under a welter of bodily functions and a rather clunky translation by someone whose day job is writing for Playboy. It’s certainly not a book I'll forget in a hurry, though, and I'm not sure I'll ever look at an avocado in the same way again...