The magic of it

 Michael Wilding's novel The Magic of It will be launched at Melbourne Writers Festival in August. Source: Supplied

Michael Wilding's new novel, The Magic of It, is set among the dreaming spires of Oxford. To be launched at Melbourne Writers Festival in August, this is an exclusive extract.

Revill walked through the endless twilight. The all but indescribable emptiness of North Oxford. Untrodden graveled driveways. Fallen leaves, forever falling. Leadengrove unleaving. The eternal hours before dinner. Distant bells ringing out for chapel, for hall, for the Hell of it. As if he'd never been away all those years in Australia. But he had. Without a doubt.

'Shame you didn't let me know earlier,' said Archer Major, answering the door. 'Could've fixed something up for you.'

A poisoned chalice. A diseased honey-pot. Some toxic icon from the reams of popular fiction Major had rifled over the years.

'Too late now, of course. Programme filled up for the rest of the year. You wouldn't draw an audience. Love to fit you in, but you know how it is.'

Revill knew how it was. It was however you wanted it to be.

'That's all right,' he said. 'I don't especially want to do anything.'

'You never did, did you?' said Major. 'It must be you, then.'

'What must be me?'

'You must be you.'

He didn't answer that one.

'When Lucy told me she'd seen you slouching towards the Bodleian and asked you to dinner, I had to wonder, was it really you? Heading for a library? Can never be sure with you characters from the colonies. Could be an imposter.'

'Why would I be an imposter?'

'It's hard to imagine, I agree. If you were claiming to be someone else it might be different. But I agree. It's hard to see what's in it for anyone claiming to be you. No hard feelings, of course, old chap.'

'Why wouldn't I be me?'

'Ah, that would be telling.' He tapped the side of his nose. 'I could give you a thousand reasons.'

Revill frowned. Major laughed and slapped him on the back. 'You're quite sure you're not an impostor?'

'Not at all.'

'Not at all sure?'

'Not at all an impostor.'

'The colonies used to be full of them. That E. Phillips Oppenheim novel, perhaps you know it.'

'No I don't.'

'Not much read these days. But it has its point. And the Tichborne claimant, of course. Nearer to home. You don't have any distinguishing birthmark? A recessive penis? Something unique?'

'No.'

'Irredeemably ordinary, ah well.'

Revill smiled thinly.

'You could be one of our secret service brethren, not really you at all, got yourself murdered and now you're just pretending to be you. Amazing what can happen.'

'In the world of E. Phillips Oppenheim.'

'Well, he was one of them. Or claimed he was. Could have been an impostor, of course. It was always denied. Very rich field.'

Revill understood.

'You're cultivating it.'

Plowing, tilling, reaping. Especially reaping.

'Inauthenticity,' said Major. 'A theme for our times. Or The Theme of our Times, really.'

'Really.'

'Really. It got me Erasmus funding. Socrates funding. Inauthenticité sans frontières. A burning issue now they've abolished internal passport controls. Some suspect chap like you flies in. Up from down under. Not necessarily you, but like you. Gets through passport control once. Never checked again. Could be anybody.'

'So it's not a literary study.'

'Heavens no. Absolutely not. Literature's a liability, strictly between you and me. The social implications are the things to go for.'

'What, not your old Marxist readings?'

'No, no, no, absolutely not. Don't even mention the word.'

He took a look over his shoulder, the automatic academic reflex of years of caution in the common room spread to his own living-room.

'No, border security and all that. The war on terror. Immigration. That's the big theme. How to stop it, in effect.'

'Keep people in their places.'

'If only we could.'

'And they give you money for this?'

'Serious money,' said Major, beaming. 'Travel. Top hotels. Top level research grant. Topping research assistants.'

He leered lasciviously. Revill shook his head.

'So you've abandoned magic?'

'Abandoned it, no. Put it on the back burner for a while, yes. Let it simmer away. Bubble, bubble. Nothing wrong with having two strings to your bow. Don't want to be stuck playing a Jew's harp all my life.'

'Inauthenticity.'

'It was either that or food labels. No, I tell a lie. Diaper labelling was a go-er, too. European community standards.

The future is in your hands. Don't want shit leaking all over them. But that was more the strictly linguistic chaps.'

'And this was literature?'

'No, literature's out. Cultural studies. A solid background in the popular. Ghosts, magic, crime.'

'Crime?'

'Crime and spy fiction. But the spies aren't the problem, really. Nor the criminals for that matter, not the professionals. It's the amateurs we're worried about. Civilians. Crawling all over the place. Never know who they are or where they are. Can't have chaps like you cropping up without warning all the time.'

'Your problem, of course,' said Major, 'was pulling back from the brink. Recoiling from the fatal shore.

Revill swallowed some more of the rough Bulgarian red.

'Interesting drop, eh?' said Major, topping up Revill's glass. 'Better than that antipodean plonk they try and sell us here.'

'Different,' said Revill. Gasped.

'Holding off, that was your problem,' said Major. 'Drink up. Lots more where that came from. All that anti-elitist stuff. You were in the vanguard in those days. Then you were outpaced. Not even outmanoeuvred. You just hovered on the brink while the smart money strode ahead. It's one thing to introduce Jack London and Dashiell Hammett into the syllabus, but they were still literary. Apart from being commos.'

'Yes,' said Revill. 'That was the point.'

Major cut him off.

'You failed to go the whole hog. Lord Archer. Tom Clancy. The X-Files. You could have made a breakthrough. But you lost your nerve. A two-minute delay. Fatal. The future rushed in and you weren't part of it. In the end you were no different from the old mutton-heads who'd hired you. Now where are you?'

'It's all such rubbish,' said Revill.

'Immaterial,' said Major. 'Or totally material, to be precise. But you never were a very convincing Marxist, were you? Never understood the material base. Too much of the old humanist all the time. Too many idealistic notions. You could never make the leap.'

'The leap?'

'Never effect the break.'

'Couldn't I?'

'Clearly not.'

'I believed ...'

'There you are. You believed. That was your problem. Stuck down there beyond the black stump. Belief. The old grand narratives died decades ago. There is nothing to believe in now.'

'Except success.'

'Oh, you don't have to believe in success,' said Major. 'It comes to those unrestrained by belief. You just grab it when it shows itself.'

He brandished the bottle of Bulgarian red menacingly. Revill declined.

'Don't be ridiculous. I got this in especially for you as soon as Lucy told me she'd seen you. I knew you'd be uneasy with anything too expensive. Let alone too good. What's Revill's level? I asked myself. If it is Revill. What rough drop should I get for the rough beast?  What about a few bottles of Bulgarian red for the old bugger? Good old bad old ex-commie red. That'll test him. See if it's really him or an impostor.'

Revill held his hand over his glass. Major poured the wine anyway. It flowed over Revill's fingers and onto the table.

'Silicone finish,' said Major. 'It won't hurt it. I said to Lucy, No tablecloths tonight. Not for Revill. He always spills his wine. Australian habit. Can't hold it. Always leaves a patch of red for his host to remember him by. After all, what else has he got to offer?'

Then Lucy came in and served dinner.

Michael Wilding’s latest novels are Superfluous Men and The Prisoner of Mount Warning. ‘Inauthenticity’ is an extract from his forthcoming novel The Magic of It (Arcadia – Press On) which will be released at the Melbourne Writers Festival on August 28.