First print edition of The Deptford Trilogy published by Penguin in 1983, 1992.

McClelland & Stewart with colophon is a registered trademark.

Cover Design by Lisa Jager

Detail of original cover artwork by Bascove

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication available upon request.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

The Deptford Trilogy

e-ISBN: 9780771027789

v3.1

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Fifth Business

Epigraph

1 Mrs Dempster

2 I Am Born Again

3 My Fool-Saint

4 Gyges and King Candaules

5 Liesl

6 The Soirée of Illusions

The Manticore

1 Why I Went to Zürich

2 David Against the Trolls

3 My Sorgenfrei Diary

World of Wonders

1 A Bottle in the Smoke

2 Merlin’s Laugh

3 Le Lit de Justice

FIFTH BUSINESS

Fifth Business … Definition

Those roles which, being neither those of

Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain,

but which were none the less essential to

bring about the Recognition or the dénouement

were called the Fifth Business in drama

and opera companies organized according

to the old style; the player who acted these

parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.

—Tho. Overskou, Den Danske Skueplads

1

Mrs Dempster

(1)

My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o’clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.

I am able to date the occasion with complete certainty because that afternoon I had been sledding with my lifelong friend and enemy Percy Boyd Staunton, and we had quarrelled, because his fine new Christmas sled would not go as fast as my old one. Snow was never heavy in our part of the world, but this Christmas it had been plentiful enough almost to cover the tallest spears of dried grass in the fields; in such snow his sled with its tall runners and foolish steering apparatus was clumsy and apt to stick, whereas my low-slung old affair would almost have slid on grass without snow.

The afternoon had been humiliating for him, and when Percy was humiliated he was vindictive. His parents were rich, his clothes were fine, and his mittens were of skin and came from a store in the city, whereas mine were knitted by my mother; it was manifestly wrong, therefore, that his splendid sled should not go faster than mine, and when such injustice showed itself Percy became cranky. He slighted my sled, scoffed at my mittens, and at last came right out and said that his father was better than my father. Instead of hitting him, which might have started a fight that could have ended in a draw or even a defeat for me, I said, all right, then, I would go home and he could have the field to himself. This was crafty of me, for I knew it was getting on for suppertime, and one of our home rules was that nobody, under any circumstances, was to be late for a meal. So I was keeping the home rule, while at the same time leaving Percy to himself.