by Barrie Shore
‘My first wife became a little difficult in her latter years,’ he says, with a lugubrious sigh. ‘It was a trial to me, I have to confess, but mercifully she kept to her room for the most part. I sometimes forgot she existed at all.’
‘Good Lord,’ says Jack, shocked to the core, ‘I never do that.’ Oh, doesn’t he? He often forgets Eva entirely when he’s down in the shop, sometimes even when he’s sitting beside her, chuntering on about this and that. But he can scarcely admit this even to himself and certainly not to the Great Man.
‘I say, old chap, do get a move on,’ he says to Eva in a cheerful, uxorious way, as if to confirm their close understanding. ‘There’s half a saucepan here we’ve got to get through.’
He attempts to feed her another spoonful, but she’s tired of co-operation, clamps the spoon between her teeth and won’t let it go.
‘Why is it,’ says the Great Man, ‘that you call her old chap? It’s an unusual endearment by a husband for his wife.’
‘I don’t quite remember. It must have started when we were reading Great Expectations and it just sort of stuck. That’s right. Pip, old chap, that’s what I called her.’
‘Not Estella?’
‘No, that made her cross.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ But he did.
‘I’m not your Estella. I’m Cathy, I’m Emma, I’m fury, I’m fire…’
‘So I changed it to Pip to make her laugh.’
‘And did it?’
‘Did it what?’
‘Make her laugh.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Jack, don’t make me laugh, let me love you instead.’
‘Pip, old chap, that’s what I called her. And she called me Joe for a while, and Bumble, and Barkis. Barkis, that was her favourite.’
‘Ah, Copperfield, marvellous stuff. “So she makes,” said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, “all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do
she?”’
‘“I replied,”’ says Jack, ‘“that such was the fact.”’
‘“Well. I’ll tell you what,” said Mr Barkis, “If you
was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say…”.
‘“That Barkis is willing.”’ They finish the quotation together, pleased with themselves, and Eva joins in, growling through her teeth, round the spoon, the spoon that she’s guarding like a dog with a bone.
‘And you see,’ says Jack, ‘I can’t call her darling any more, that’s what the carers say, and I hate it. All right, my darling? And besides…’ He stops as memory jumps once again, unbidden, unwanted, into his head.
Eva at the window looking at the moon, brushing her hair.
Jack sitting up in bed, with a book in his hand. ‘Darling…’
‘Don’t call me that.’ Brushing in fury.
‘But darling…’
Hairbrush hitting his head in the mirror. ‘Darling means love, darling means passion, darling means…’
The Great Man is combing his moustache with fastidious fingers. ‘Yes?’
‘Nothing,’ says Jack. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
Eva opens her mouth in a cackle of laughter. Jack rescues the spoon and slips her another mouthful. But the porridge is cold now, she looks for a moment as if she’s going to spit it out, changes her mind, closes her mouth and munches noisily, chomping and smacking in loud pretence of enjoyment.
The Great Man turns away with a disparaging lift to his left eyebrow, and Jack is uncomfortably aware of the spectacle that he and Eva present: the saucepan of congealed porridge, the shared spoon, the stickiness of the honey jar, the smacking of Eva’s lips, and how distasteful a performance it is for a man of such sensibility as the Great Man. He struggles to his feet, stiff from sitting, and takes the offending breakfast tray out to the landing, puts it on the stairlift and wonders should he go downstairs to get washed and dressed, the better to present himself to the Great Man. On the other hand, he’s loath to leave Eva to the mercies of the Great Man, or vice versa; so he pulls his dressing gown over his chest to hide the tea stain down the front of his pyjamas, reties the cord, squares his shoulders and goes back to the living room hoping, disloyally, that the Great Man will have decided it’s time to leave.
He hasn’t. He’s studying the bookshelves with close attention. ‘Do tell me,’ he says, in a by the way sort of way, ‘does my work still sell?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Jack joins him at the bookcase, cheered by the change in the conversational direction. This is exactly what he’d hoped for in re-encountering the Great Man: the discussion of books, not as the boy he was when they first met, not alas, as writer to writer as once he’d hoped, but man to man, reader to reader, both connoisseurs of the printed word, both lovers of language, exchanging views on the great works of literature. And where better to start than with the work of the Great Man himself, whose glorious poetry and prose has given him a lifetime’s inspiration. ‘I can’t stock enough of your books,’ he says, with a deprecatory smile, as if he alone has been responsible for the phenomenal sales of the Great Man’s work. ‘Especially in the tourist season.’
‘Tourists? In Castlebridge?’ The Great Man raises a disagreeable eyebrow. ‘I thought the tourist was a seaside phenomenon, brought about in large part by the advent of the railway.’
‘Oh, no,’ Jack blunders happily on. ‘We have more and more visitors to Castlebridge every year, almost entirely… no, what am I saying? Absolutely and entirely because of you. Your work is tremendously popular.’
‘Is it really?’ says the Great Man, feigning indifference. ‘After all these years?’
‘Oh, yes. In fact, you remember the brewery? Hope and Hopcraft?’
‘Yes, indeed, I knew old man Hopcraft very well. A most superficial, ignorant, unweighing sort of fellow, talked of almost nothing but himself.’
‘Well, it’s going to be turned into a centre for the arts, arts and culture, and it’s to be dedicated to you.’
‘Is that a fact?’ The Great Man tries and fails to disguise his gratification.
‘Yes, I heard it on the news only just now.’
The Great Man stands a little straighter, puffs out his chest and, in a Napoleonic gesture, places one arm across it. ‘Well, well,’ says he, inclining his head as if to acknowledge applause, ‘yes, now that I remember, old Hopcraft was always an admirer of my work, most fulsome in his praise, in fact tediously so. He invited me one evening to give a reading of selected poems for the benefit of his staff and caused much hilarity by falling asleep and snoring loudly. He was rather too fond of his barley wine. What’s more,’ says the Great Man, with a remembering frown, ‘I lent him a copy of the Collected Poems, a first edition, which he never returned. Perhaps it’ll turn up in this arts centre of yours.’
‘That would be splendid.’
‘Speaking of which…’ The Great Man takes up his hat and inspects the brim in a casual way, as if to demonstrate his entire indifference to the subject in hand. ‘You still have my first editions, I suppose?’
‘Ah,’ says Jack. He spots the nutrition chart, revealed from beneath the Great Man’s hat, and seizes it gratefully. ‘Oh, yes, the first editions.’
‘There’s a full set, as far as I recall.
‘Is there?’ Jack fumbles for his glasses and frowns at the chart. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I am seldom wrong.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Jack absorbs himself in the calculation of spoonfuls of porridge consumed by Eva for breakfast. ‘Well, the fact is…’ He counts on his fingers.
‘Yes?’ The Great Man balances his hat on his finger and sets it twirling.
‘I’m most awfully sorry, but I had to sell them.’
‘Sell them?’ The Great Man arrests his hat. ‘Sell my first editions?’
‘Believe me,’ says Jack, anxious to justify his misdemeanour, ‘I was mortified at having to part with them, but I had no choice.’
‘Did you not.’
‘You see, the shop doesn’t make much money these days, we’ve only our pensions to rely on, and I’ve had so much expense in the last few years, all the equipment we’ve had to install, the lift and the hoist and so on, and then there’s the agency, the fees are astronomi…’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure,’ the Great Man interrupts him with a tetchy sniff. ‘My point is, the books weren’t yours to sell: they were a present to Bob, I put my autograph to every one.’
‘Oh, I know,’ says Jack, eager to make amends, ‘and they fetched a very good price as a result. I have a dedicated collector in Japan.’ But he is mistaken in believing that the Great Man will be so easily placated.
‘Japan?’ The Great Man’s eyebrows bristle with outrage.
‘Yes, Doctor Kashimuro. He’s a Professor of English, at the University of Tokyo.’
‘Good God above…’ The Great Man regards his hat with contempt. ‘That my first editions should end up in Japan. The land of the geisha, of origami…’ He punches the crown of his hat into a dome. ‘And of the bonsai tree.’
‘No, you’ve got it all wrong.’ Jack is beside himself with anxiety now. ‘The Japanese are a most erudite people, great lovers of art and literature.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Did you know, for example, perhaps you didn’t…’ Jack feels he may score a small victory here. ‘Did you know that Japan was the first country to set up an appreciation society for your work? Long before we did. Dr Kashimuro was a founding member.’
‘Was he.’ The Great Man chews his moustache but finds it not to his taste. ‘So you’ve been courting this fellow. A traitor’s wooing, as it were.’
‘Not at all.’ Jack has lost count of spoonfuls of porridge and gives up on the nutrition chart. ‘Dr Kashimuro visited Castlebridge several years ago, it must have been an anniversary of yours, or the Millennium festivities, I can’t remember. Anyway, I had your first editions on display in the shop and he offered to buy them on the spot. I wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting then, but he’s visited every year since, and in the end… well, in the end he made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.’
‘Did he.’ The Great Man carves the crown of his hat back into careful shape. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to pass on a royalty payment?’
‘What?’ Jack finds himself wrong-footed again and begins to feel out of temper under the Great Man’s barrage of accusations. ‘No,’ he says, with an irritable edge, ‘I’m most awfully sorry, I’m afraid it didn’t.’
‘No, of course not. It is the writer’s misfortune to be entirely overlooked while others make profit out his work. Out of his blood, his sweat, his years of toil… out of his genius.’ The Great Man turns on his heel and marches to the door.
Jack pursues him, anxious not to part on bad terms. ‘If only you could meet Dr Kashimuro, I’m sure you’d like him. He’s particularly interested in the comedy of tragedy, if you see what I mean.’
The Great Man, balked of his exit, stops in the doorway. ‘All comedy, as Ruskin says, is tragedy; and as for tragedy itself, if I may paraphrase Lord Byron, tragedy is only finished by death. I bid you good morning.’ He sets his hat to his head and exits with a metaphorical flourish of trumpets.
‘Bugger,’ says Jack.
The grandfather clock strikes the half hour. Half past what? The morning must surely be nearly over by now, time to start thinking about lunch. He potters out to the landing to check. Half past nine. Only half past nine? Three minutes slow. Maybe four by now. He mustn’t forget to remember to wind it tonight.
‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho…’ He goes back to the living room and sees, in a moment of guilty surprise, the old woman in the wheelchair, wonders for a second or two who the devil she can be. Oh, yes, Eva, Eva his wife, who’s picking at the buttons of her blouse with oblivious intent.
He slaps his thigh in a catchy tune, drumming himself into positive mood. ‘What shall we do, old Pip, old chap? What shall we do to pass the time?’
They have long since given up chess. He tried her with draughts for a while but she played by some unfathomable rules of her own and went into a fury whenever he huffed her. He’d tried a jigsaw puzzle, gratified when she smiled at the picture on the lid, a Pearly King and Queen, he remembers choosing it specially to remind her of London, gratified as she traced their smiley faces with the tip of her finger, mortified when she hurled the pieces across the room in an inexplicable access of rage. Scrabble pleased her for a time, when she could still read and write simple words, except that she cheated blatantly, which drove him wild. She secreted tiles in her pocket or up her sleeve, always the E, E for Eva, twelve of them, which made the game impossible to play; swallowed one in the end, the solitary J, J for Jack; whereupon Margaret drew the line and confiscated the game. ‘I’ve got enough trouble with her bowels as it is. If it causes a blockage I won’t be responsible.’
He wanders about, aimless, unsettled; picks up a book from the top of the television, a paperback copy of Jude the Obscure. ‘Oh, good. Shall we read for a bit? Would you like that, old chap?’
She’s hell-bent on her buttons, reaching her head down, trying to eat them.
‘I say, don’t do that, you’ll have Margaret after you.’
She looks up with a sudden smile. ‘Shlump,’ she says.
‘Shlump, yes, and shlump to you too.’
Ye gods, what has he come to?
He flumps, shlumps, into his chair, opens Jude at a bookmarked page. ‘Part the Second.’ Settles back in his chair and begins to read.
‘“The next noteworthy move in Jude’s life was that in which he appeared gliding steadily onward through a dusky landscape of some three years’ later leafage than had graced his courtship of Arabella, and the disruption of his coarse conjugal life with her. He was walking towards Christminster city…” I say,’ he says, interrupting himself, ‘what was that game we used to play? You remember, when we guessed the names, all those names, the names of the places that Hardy used. You know what I mean… Casterbridge, Dorchester; Melchester, Salisbury; Quartershot, Aldershot; Christminster…’
‘Shlump.’
‘No, Christminster…’
‘Ah, Christminster! City of light.’ The Great Man reappears in the doorway like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Alas, poor Jude, and dear, impossible Sue, what simpletons they were, doomed to self-destruction: their love, their hope, ground to the dust of failed ambition. Still, it’s a good read, do carry on.’
Jack is thankful that the Great Man seems to have recovered his good humour. He clears his throat and continues his reading, not so fluently now, conscious of his audience, anxious to make amends for his Japanese blunder.
‘“He was walking towards Christminster city, at a point a mile or two to the south-west of it. He had at last found himself clear of Marygreen and…”’
‘Incidentally,’ says the Great Man, with a touch of spite, ‘didn’t you plan to go to Christminster once? Or am I confusing you with somebody else?’
Was it really the idyll that he remembers it was? On a Sunday in June, or was it July? In nineteen forty something or other. After a year of courtship, of occasional meetings and weekly letters, sometimes more, his filled with rapturous poetry and Joyce, he was reading Joyce; hers bespattered with jokes and deflections.
Did they walk down the High in a private cocoon? Buffeted by Town, flapped by Gown, noticing neither. Did they float with the pleasure he thought that they did? Did they prickle with love and unspoken desire? And touch each other as if by mistake? Move apart and draw like magnets together again.
Did they tread the streets that scholars had trod and touch the walls that thinkers had touched? And tour the great colleges, Balliol, Queen’s, Merton, Exeter
, breathing their inky, academic smell, listening to the sighs of their ancient stone.
And was the sun really shining as they lay side by side on the banks of the Cherwell, he on his back gazing up at a cloudless sky, she propped up on her elbows, pulling petals from a daisy. ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he…’
‘He loves you.’
And when she held a buttercup under his chin and touched the golden glow on his throat with her damaged thumb, did she say, ‘So he does.’ And did she kiss him then? And he her? And then did she say, ‘Marry me, Jack’? Or was it the other way round? And were they both filled with a Joycean fervour so that when he, or she, whichever one it was who said ‘Marry me’, did one of them say yes? ‘Yes,’ did they say? ‘Yes, I will. Oh, yes, yes, yes I will.’ Or did one of them say, ‘No. No, I won’t.’ And if they did, or they didn’t, why didn’t the other one take any notice?
And whatever they did or didn’t say at the time, what were the plans they made? Was it true that he said he would sell the shop? Go up to Oxford and take his degree? And did she say that he wasn’t too old? And he, ‘But I am, yes, I am.’ And she, ‘No, no you’re not.’
And was it she who said, ‘I shall work and you shall study, and I’ll toast your slippers in front of the fire and you’ll be a famous writer one day. And we’ll have lots, oh, yes lots of children, half a dozen, at least.’
And did he put on his considering face and say, ‘Six would be better, don’t you think?’
And then did they laugh and agree, one with the other, sealed with a kiss, so luscious a kiss that both of them forgot whatever objection it was that one or the other should have thought of before? ‘Oh, yes,’ did they say? ‘Yes, yes, how happy we’ll be.’
And did he believe in their future together, or only pretend that he did? Or was it the smoke in the bar at The Eagle and Child that dizzied his head and swept him along in an impossible dream? Or the sound of the students with their confident voices raised in precocious debate? Or the sight of the Inklings engaged in whining complaint about plots and publishers and the price of ink? And did the Great Man put in an appearance? Smile his approval with beneficent eyebrows? Or did he whisper his warning? ‘Women, beware women.’ And did Jack ignore him in favour of the impossible dream?