My Copy of the Proust

Letter to a friend, not sent after I heard that he'd had a second more serious stroke.

Sorry I've kept you waiting for the Proust. Remember, you wanted it after me - the three volume Pléiade edition I borrowed under my donkey-jacket from the library in '62. I got to page 100 a few years ago but started again. To savour the full flavour of the language. Of course. I'm on page 57 and Tante Léonie has been looking through her window at the people in the street. She speculates about their every move and tells Françoise, her maid. Riveting stuff. Only 3000 or so pages to go and then I can start on the other 999 books stacked round the house to be read before I die.

Always meant to tell you about that time in Switzerland when Wogga Williams gave out our o'level results: you thought I could see you through the frosted glass of the toilet window and took your revenge by shoving sawdust on to my head from a hole in the hotel loft floor while I was on the toilet. Except I couldn't see you and therefore an apology is still due from you, even over fifty years later.

I know you got my last letter. I had to tell you I was angry that you didn't get your brother to let me know about your stroke. Fantastic of him to put shelves up in your room. All the way from Toronto. Still got all those books, eh? I don't blame you never getting a job, you had all them to get through. And your unpublished novels. And the impenetrable sonnets. I bet you've lost all my poems. Those booklets I sent you?

Remember, I phoned you to check that you'd received my letter, just after Christmas. You said you had. I'm sorry my chatting made you tired. You said you'd phone back the next day. But you didn't. And I had made a special point of getting the nurse to write down my number. I'm sorry you don't know what happened to your daughter. It's good that her mother, who you wouldn't marry, tried to look after her despite her appalling disability. I thought you might have remembered to ask about my daughter's misfortunes. She had a stroke, too, remember?

I think there's quite few things you've forgotten. Like that time, I bet, in the Latin lesson when I was translating aloud and you kept trying to put me off by lifting your desk top and letting out the choking smell of your rancid gym towel. Anyway, I thought that now they have provided you with a phone in the home, we could pick up our chats again from fifty years ago. When you get your speech back properly. Remember our chats, books, girls and books? And being dumped? Strolling round the north end of Birkenhead. Funny how I miss that town.

I could even drive up the M6 and see you. Last time was when I dropped by on my way home after my father's funeral. Thirty years ago. You were scrounging off that reporter in Stoke. He wasn't happy because you never helped in the house. He had a few moans, I can tell you. Trouble was, he never appreciated your good points. Wasn't right to expect a literary genius like you to muck in.

Anyway, I hope you've managed to read this letter. You could always dictate a reply to the nice nurse if you still haven't got the use of your hand back. See, my address is at the top. You b*****d.