To Cut a Long Story Short
Jeffrey Archer
HarperCollins £16.99, pp272
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If you have not made up your mind yet about Jeffrey Archer, read To Cut a Long Story Short. By the end of it or by the time you fall asleep - whichever comes first - all your prejudices will have been deliciously confirmed.
Jeffrey Archer is living proof of the old adage that when people write fiction, they show their true colours. In this collection of 14 short stories, the disgraced former Conservative Party deputy chairman plunders his colourful past to reveal himself as a man obsessed with money, preferably in brown envelopes, deceit, champagne and other men's wives who dress up like Shepherd's Market whores.
He even helps the reader out by marking with asterisks those tales which 'I would like to acknowledge are based on true incidents'. This is more than half the stories. Thanks, Jeffrey.
Readers now know exactly what Archer's idea of a good time is. He goes out on a bright, crisp spring morning and runs into a woman he has admired from afar for years. She is called something girly like Susie and has 'long, fair hair, blue eyes, a captivating smile and slim figure'.
She 'greets me with a long hug, an "I feel I know you better already" hug.' The two agree to have lunch. He tries 'a chat-up line I've used many times in the past' - 'If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?' She says she wants to go to Paris.
'That's my perfect day, too,' our hero declares, before the two agree to pack and meet at Waterloo Station. On the Eurostar, she gives him 'a hug that was a definite step towards "I can't wait to get your clothes off".'
He takes her to a little restaurant 'that prides itself on not being in any of the tourist guides' and where the mâitre d' is an old friend. As the last legs of the champagne bubble down the flutes, the two leave for 'my favourite hotel'.
To please him, Archer's 'lady' dresses up in a see-through blouse, skintight leather skirt, fishnet stockings, stilettos and shocking pink lipstick. In bed, she is 'everything a man could ask - exciting, tender, provocative, teasing and, for an exquisite moment, a rampant whore'. He does not say how he performed but enjoys ridiculing her husband - Angus - as 'an old prune'.
Back in London, their 'lovemaking' continues apace. They do it in the back seat of his Mercedes in an NCP car-park in Mayfair, in the service lift in Harrods, the loo at Le Caprice and in a box in the dress circle at Covent Garden. On one occasion, he says: 'I want to be tied up to a four-poster bed, with you standing over me in a police sergeant's uniform: truncheon, whistle, handcuffs, wearing a tight black outfit with silver buttons down the front, which you will undo slowly to reveal a black bra.'
He savours his conquest: 'I have always considered it ignoble for any man to discuss a lady as if she were simply a trophy but I must confess... it had been well worth the waiting.'
If the asterisked plotlines in this collection of scammy tales - 'Crime Pays', 'Too Many Coincidences', 'Something for Nothing', 'The Endgame', 'The Reclining Woman' - are to be believed, Susie's husband, 'old prune' Angus, will conveniently keel over with a heart attack, leaving her the £20 million he has made tricking businesses into paying for phoney advertisements. Our hero will marry Susie, use her fortune to make even more money with a spot of insider trading, before forcing her into the arms of another, divorcing her and using his detailed knowledge of Channel Island laws to make off with a third of her estate.
Given his own career-destroying entanglements with women, the stock market and the legal system, it is extraordinary that before his downfall, Archer had intended this new collection to be published just weeks before the election for London major. You would think he would have expected readers to draw their own conclusions about his character and vote for almost anyone else.
To Cut a Long Story Short is embarrassingly bad and expensive. Neither Archer nor his publisher need the cash but it is a small price to pay to see a man who has fallen off his political perch so comprehensively destroy what is left of his creative reputation. As one of his creaking, corny characters would say: 'Enjoy!'
