The Maggot People

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At the age of twenty-three, Michael had the bad fortune to inherit his grandmother’s house in the south of France. For two long years, he spent his time dutifully going to the bar, buying drinks for strangers and talking about topics such as partridge shooting and viticulture, neither of which interested him very much. There was something fundamentally hopeless about his attempt to cultivate a local outlook in Provence. A typical local man in Michael’s village home was a cardigan-wearing inhabitant in his sixties, passionate about using his body as a sort of temporary wine barrel. Michael struggled for human companionship and felt like the oddest man in the world.

Back in Finsbury Park, London, where he used to live in a rented room, Michael had never done much more than play backgammon and drink Red Stripe with his neighbor, an unemployed drummer. Occasionally, when his anxious mother had called to tell Michael that he had to find himself a job, he almost gloatingly told her his favorite words of wisdom: “Consider the lilies of the field, mum. They don’t work, do they?”

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