Frederick Forsyth demolishes roast beef sandwich with remarkable speed, downs a half pint of lager in one gulp and says he is a man with simple tastes.
True, if the desire grabbed him he could eat caviar for breakfast, lunch and tea, buy himself a jet…together with a villa in the South of France.
So writes our man in London about the bestselling author of “The Day of the Jackal.”
Meanwhile our local correspondent writes:
The noted author, was just downing another tankard of ale when I entered his peeling bungalow set in swanky suburbia of the Main North Road.
A cheerful garbage man hailed me on the way in and said “Yes. this is where he lives. Twice we’ve taken him off to the dumps but it’s not like anyone would make this his alternative lifestyle. Wrap him in an old newspaper. He’s no different from any load of old rubbish.”
It was a touching introduction to the booming Orson Wellesian figure that sprawled over three chairs in the fly-specked living room.
“I’m a man of the people,” he boomed, “and my writing reaches into the smallest rooms of the nation. That’s why people say I can be read at a sitting.”
He casually swallowed a double-cut beef sandwich, laced with pickle and topped with cheese.
“I believe in keeping myself in good shape,” he said, “Keep your windows closed and your mouth open.”
“Usually,” he went on, “we eat at the Gawler Hilton. Will you have a little drop of Road- house “76?” He splashed a beaker in front of me. “It’s a discreet little drink, pre-Self-Service.”
It gave me a moment to study this important writer. He is loosely built, so loosely that parts of him keep falling out over the top of his pyjamas.
He scratched himself reflectively.
“You haven’t met the wife,” he boomed. “Well, not to worry. She’s going through my trouser pockets this time of morning. Must let her do her own thing. We are a free-wheeling family.”
He spread half a hectare of Vegemite on a crazy pavement of bread and said: “Maybe you are wondering about my family. Well they are doing their own thing too, stoning trains, catching up on the overnight graffiti and fighting each other over use of the car. This is an atomic family,” he went on.
“Don’t you mean nuclear family,” I interposed.
“No,” he said. “Because if I have an atom on me they split it four ways.”
He cut himself half a shoulder of lamb and washed it down with a litre of tap water.
He said: “The recent rains have beggared the bouquet of Murray water. You don’t get that mud-and-carp taste that makes it so distinctive.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m just a food man. Success hasn’t gone to my head,” he said.
I took one look at him and agreed.
“I’m a simple man,” he said. He licked the tomato sauce bottle, savouring the taste.
“Bold but not offensive,” he said thoughtfully, “It tastes like a good year.”
The family is always wanting to go to the Costa Maslins,” he said. But I like a slow drive over the Bolivar treatment outlet and maybe a morning stroll down the Rue de la St. Kilda.”
“The wild cry of the crabs and the mangroves oozing goodwill mean more to me than the trinkets of materialism.”
“What about your next book?” I said.
“I’m glad you asked,” he replied, helping himself to a double-cut ham roll and following it with a cannonade of pickled onions.
“After my last success,” he went on, “I swore I’d never do another book. My publishers swore it too. They’re always coming the Spencer with me.”
I asked him to explain. “Well,” he said, “there’s a deep gulf between us.”
“Do you feel you have found a place in the Australian Pantheon?” I asked.
“It all depends whether Ian Chappell is captain,” he said.
As I left he was making a pile of beetroot sandwiches.
He roared as I left: “Literature hasn’t heard the last of me. You’ll never know what I’ll throw up next.”
My guess, for what it’s worth, is beetroot sandwiches.
Max Fatchen