Diversifications

by James Lovegrove

  “We’re screwed, d’you know that?” Elaine said.

  I frowned at her. “What?”

  “Steve and me. Financially. I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but…It’s to do with the tech bubble bursting. I’d thought our money was safe but Steve had done some stuff he hadn’t seen fit to tell me about, some shenanigans. Backed a few of the wrong horses. Too much faith in his own profession, if you ask me. We’re going to have to give up the place in Antibes.”

  “I thought you owned that outright.”

  “Nope, nope, just a mortgage job. There’s some equity in it and that’ll help redress the balance. And Steve’s still got the business, of course, though that’s been struggling a bit lately. But I’d thought we were comfortably off, secure, and we’re not. Not in the way I’d thought. Not secure secure. Our savings are pretty much wiped out and we’re going to have to build them up all over again from scratch.”

  “Ah well,” I said, “that’s what you get for marrying someone who’s flash with the cash. You should have gone for someone who wouldn’t raise your expectations like that. An impoverished author, for instance.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realised how spectacularly blundersome they were. I was too drunk, however, to do anything about it except hope that somehow, miraculously, Elaine had been stuck stone deaf in the last twelve seconds.

  “Jon,” she said, with aching coolness. “We made our choices. You made yours. I made mine. Nothing can change that. We are what we are now. We’re as fixed in place as that lot up there.” She nodded to the heavens. “We’re a constellation. No, we’re asterisms within the constellation. Me and Steve, you and Caroline. We’re safe and solid, we’re not moving from where we are, and it’s hopeless to hope otherwise.”

  I nodded, chastened. All at once I remembered the look on her face when I broke up with her. She hadn’t been upset. She had been—far worse—disappointed. As if she’d expected better of me than this.

  Bill’s voice boomed across the garden. “All right. It should be starting soon. Places, everyone.”

  He and Deirdra had spread out groundsheets in the middle of the lawn, with blankets and cushions on top. The eight of us lay on our backs, human dominoes at cater-corner to one another. Caroline was next to me, her head by my stomach. My head was close to Trev’s shoes and Deirdra’s shoulder. A pre-rolled joint was passed around, with Jennifer, predictably, the sole abstainer. Each of us, in turn, sweetly fumed the sky.

  “OK,” said Trev, addressing the universe. “Go ahead. Impress us.”

  Several minutes passed. Nothing.

  “Any time,” said Steve. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Several more minutes.

  “What’s that?” said Jennifer. “Is that one?”

  Everyone peered.

  “That moving light?” said Bill.

  “Yes.”

  “Like one of the stars has gone wandering?”

  “Yes.”

  “Satellite.”

  “Oh.”

  Another minute. Two.

  Trev started fake-snoring. We all chuckled.

  “Apparently some of them are as small as a grain of sand,” said Deirdra.

  “I heard as small as a fist,” said Caroline.

  “I heard the size of Wembley Stadium,” said Bill.

  “Christ, I hope not,” I said. “Otherwise it’s goodbye human race.”

  Another minute.

  “Anybody else here thinking of Day of the Triffids?”

  “No, just you, Jon,” Bill sighed.

  “Why Day of the Triffids?” Jennifer asked.

  “Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “At the beginning, there’s a meteor shower and everybody goes blind.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” groaned Trev. “I was looking forward to this, and now I’m not. Well done.”

  Caroline none too gently whacked my thigh.

  “I thought Day of the Triffids was about monster plants,” said Jennifer. “Isn’t it?”

  “No,” I said. Mischief-making got the better of me. “The Triffids are the meteors. That’s their name. Like the Leonids. And the Perseids.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. What happens is ––”

  A streak of brilliance shot across the black. There was a sharp, collective intake of breath. Then:

  “Whoo!”

  “Did you see that?”

  “Fuck!”

  “Jesus!”

  “So bright!”

  “Amazing!”

  “That was so bloody cool!”

  We were still jabbering about the meteor when the next meteor blazed overhead. A line of instant whiteness, there then gone, lingering only as a blue retinal blur.

  Again, we gasped and yelped and went “Wha-hey!” and “Fuck!”

  Long, eager seconds passed.

  “Was that it? Tell me that wasn’t it.”

  More time, then more.

  Suddenly, two meteors in quick succession.

  We all, quite spontaneously, broke into applause. It felt like a private display, a theatre of the universe that had travelled to this spot, our town, this garden, to put on a show solely for us. Bill and Deirdra’s trees were our proscenium, the cosmos our diorama, the meteors the actors, we the wowed audience in our lawn auditorium.

  And on the meteors came, more and more of them, at intervals of two to three minutes, each performing its brief, dazzling turn, darting from east to west, scorching the ionosphere, little one-shot wonders that had, it seemed, waited all theirs lives for this moment.

  It was Bill who came up with idea of throwing out our troubles to them.

  “There!” he cried as the next meteor flashed by. “There goes the president and the prime minister and their fucking war.”

  Trev cheered. I cheered.

  “And there!” Bill yelled to its successor. “There goes the wrong type of veggieburgers.”

  “There!” I joined in, as another meteor flared across the firmament. “There goes men with beards who kiss other men.”

  “There!” said Bill. “There goes repressed closet cases.”

  “There!” said Deirdra. “There goes eejit husbands.”

  “There!” said Bill. “There goes wives who don’t appreciate how lucky they are.”

  “Lucky my arse,” Deirdra muttered, but not without affection.

  It was a long wait till the next meteor, and everyone wondered who was going to pipe up this time.

  It was Elaine.

  “There!” she said to the sharp scar of brightness. “There goes bad investments.”

  I felt Steve nearby writhe with discomfort. But then he said, softly: “Yes. There they go.”

  For a while we were silent. I had no idea who else had been aware of Steve and Elaine’s financial woes. Anyone who hadn’t been certainly was now.

  Another meteor came and went.

  “There,” said Caroline, quietly. “There goes regret. And feelings of compromise.”

  That one was for me. I groped for her hand across the blanket. I found it and clasped it, and at first the pressure wasn’t returned, but then, blessedly, it was.

  Patient, we lay.

  Another meteor came.

  “There,” I said. “There goes books that don’t work out.”

  I expected everyone to murmur in surprise at my confession, but no one did, and it came to me that what I’d felt was so important, a dark stillborn weight within me, wasn’t so important after all. Failures happened. There would be other books.

  The moments to the next meteor simmered.

  It came. Went.

  No one spoke for a while. There was one person present who hadn’t yet taken a grievance and hooked it to a shooting star and watched it soar into invisibility. We hoped, and didn’t hope, that she would say something.

  Finally, she did.

  “There,” said Jennifer, in a frail, small voice.

  That was all
.

  Just: “There.”

  CUTTING CRITICISM

  Dear friend,

  First of all, may I say how gratified I am that you have chosen to send your narrative and images to Incisive Comments. When I started this service all those years ago, I had no idea it would grow in quite the way it has. What was originally conceived as a hobby to pass an idle hour or two and earn me a little pocket money has burgeoned into a full-time occupation, one which I realise now to be my life’s work. Not only did I underestimate the number of potential clients out there, I underestimated it by a huge factor. I tapped a vein, and it turned out to be a major artery.

  All of which is a roundabout way of apologising for the tardiness of this reply. I have been snowed under with submissions lately, and only now do I seem to be making some headway. Thank you for your patience. It is much appreciated.

  Much appreciated, too, is the quality of your submission. The Polaroids and accompanying text are evidence of a mind at once lively and logical, mischievous and at the same time possessed of a healthy sense of tradition. It is immediately clear to me that you have, with your first outing, discovered your “voice”. (At least, I am assuming this is your first outing, since I have not heard from or of you before.) For many novices, there is often only failure and disappointment. The event does not go as planned, or does not reward them with the satisfaction they were expecting. I recall one correspondent of mine, a young American fellow, whose maiden effort in a sorority-house dorm was both ill-prepared and poorly executed. The girls simply would not behave as planned, outsmarting him at every turn, avoiding all the traps and lures he laid—clumsily—for them. He, I should point out, has since gone on to bigger and better things, and I like to think that in some small way my advice has helped steer him onto the path of success and keep him there. I mention him now merely as an example of someone who did not instinctively possess the skills of his craft but had to learn them en route. This would appear not be to be case with you. You are of that fortunate breed who spring into artistic being, like Athena from Zeus’s brow, complete and fully-formed, brandishing your weapons.

  Your use of an anniversary date amply demonstrates an adherence to both the theatrical aspects of and the conventions of your craft. April 1st has, of course, already been employed by others, but then so have all of the major public holidays and calendar events. The adoption of a thematic date is in itself somewhat slightly passé, but that does not matter when the interpretation of the theme is fresh and innovative, and in this respect you have come up trumps. I take it that April 1st has some personal significance for you? No matter if it does not. I enquire simply because your work has the hallmarks of a private, deeply-held passion. In its honesty, its directness, I see that sublime fusion of self and self-expression that invariably gives rise to great art. Hence I am drawn to the conclusion that, for you, All Fools’ Day represents more than just an iconography to plunder; that its associations have provided the key to the actualisation of your psyche.

  I am impressed with the content of all your photographs, but two of them in particular, nos. 5 and 7, stand out. I like the way 7—the young man in overalls with the mouthful of Swarfega and the adjustable wrench embedded in his skull—offers a neat commentary on that hoary old building-site trick of sending the apprentice off to fetch a left-handed spanner or a can of elbow grease. As for 5, the girl whom you have drowned by thrusting a hosepipe down her throat and turning the tap on full—the nod to the oft-reiterated “powdered water” hoax of television fame is noted and enjoyed.

  I enjoyed also your account of how you set up and executed each piece. Nowadays, when kitchen knives, meat-hooks and machetes are all the rage again, meticulousness and imagination are, alas, rare commodities. As I think I have made clear, I am not averse to tradition, but it must be leavened with an admixture of flair, or at the very least of mordant humour. Your third subject is a perfect example of what I mean. Yes, he died by a knife wound, but the knife was held in the hands of the puppet in a jack-in-the-box and driven through his eyeball by the impetus of the puppet’s spring. Great art is a question of inventing new variations, of taking things one step further. Lazy minds recycle clichés; great minds invent the motifs that will become the clichés of the future.

  One small suggestion. Your self-portrait—photo 11, yourself in the mirror—shows that you wear a jester mask while plying your trade. A mask has, of course, become de rigueur for those who follow your vocation, necessary both to intimidate subjects and to maintain anonymity. Since you have adopted the jester as your visual “signature”, and since you do not at the moment have a nom de meurtre with which to identify yourself, might I propose the Fool or the Fool-Killer as suitable soubriquets?

  Whatever you choose to call yourself, what really matters is the high standard of your work, so let me conclude by saying again how impressed I am with what you have achieved so far. I look forward to your next offering, which, I assume, I will be receiving a few months from now, after another April 1st has passed.

  By the way, I am on e-mail—address at the top of this letter—so if you have online capability, why not get in touch with me that way in future? If it’s any incentive, I tend to get round to responding to e-mail submissions more quickly than those that come through the post. You might also like to visit the Incisive Comments website, where you will be able to see your own work featured along with that of your peers. Contact me if you want the password.

  All the very best,

  X

  Dear Fool-Killer,

  Has April been and gone already? Time really does fly these days!

  Thank you for your new batch of pictures and attendant letter. Don’t apologise for not owning a computer. The old methods of communication still work fine. Besides, for those like you who pay me in cash, there is no alternative but the post office, is there?

  I must say that I have been looking forward with some eagerness to seeing what you would come up with for your follow-up, and on the whole I am not disappointed. You have managed to avoid the many pitfalls that tend to bedevil sophomore efforts. You have not repeated yourself. You have come up with fresh techniques. You have resisted the temptation to revisit the location of your previous foray. These are all laudable points. They indicate someone not content to rest on his laurels, someone still keen to, as the Americans have it, “push the envelope”. You would not believe how many times a second attempt turns out to be a limp rehash of the first, if not a downright carbon-copy.

  As before, your methods of despatch show verve and wit and attention to detail. I grinned mercilessly at the picture of the Frenchman clubbed to death with a frozen trout—poisson d’Avril indeed!—and laughed aloud at the shot of the television journalist hanged from a tree with lengths of white washing-line, a neat consonance of expediency and form there, ridding yourself of, as you put it, “that troublesome snoop” while at the same time referencing the famous Panorama hoax about spaghetti trees. It is obvious that you are continuing to invest a lot of thought into what you do, and that you are happy to broaden your range of subjects to include people only tangentially related to the incident, whatever it was, which initially inspired your creativity. That shows determination and adaptability, both admirable traits.

  It is on the, as it were, subject of your subjects, however, that I feel obliged to offer one small criticism. Rereading my copy of the comments I sent you last time, I notice that I made no mention of the young lady whom you allowed to survive your first night of mayhem. I heartily approve of leaving someone alive to tell the tale—it enhances mystique and establishes for you a reputation that you can capitalise on during subsequent activities—and I realise it was necessary for this purpose to allow the person in question to wound you grievously with an axe and leave you for dead in order for you to make a successful getaway. This is a tried-and-trusted tactic. However, I felt it self-indulgent of you to leave the young lady alive again at the end of this second spree of yours, and indeed to give her an o
pportunity to let off a gun at you three times. Surely you need have “played possum” only once. Rising from the floor after she had left you for dead twice smacks of masochism. I presume this female means a great deal to you—your text hints as much—and I grant you that, from the pictorial evidence, she is attractive, not least when terrified. I do think, however, that you are allowing sentiment to interfere with your art. It may be that you derive a particular thrill from persecuting the girl and encouraging her to test to the limits of your mortality, and I acknowledge that there is pleasure to be had in inciting the object of one’s obsession to penetrate one’s body violently and repeatedly. This is not, however, a habit you should continue to cultivate, in my opinion, as it undermines the purity of your original concept and endangers the validity of your enterprise. You may want to think about ignoring the girl when next April 1st comes around, or eliminating her then, so as to indicate that you are beginning afresh, drawing a line under all that has gone before, starting with a clean slate.

  That is something for you to consider, at any rate. My esteem for you remains undiminished, and you may be pleased to know that I have been assiduously recommending your work to those who share my specialised interest. Were you able to visit the Incisive Comments website, you would see that you have received an average visitor-review rating of five and four stars for, respectively, your previous and latest offerings. I am not the only one, it seems, who admires very much what you do.

  Keep going!

  X

  Dear Fool-Killer,

  Well, what can I say? In fairness, the hat-trick is very hard to pull off. I am only sorry that you felt you had to resort to gimmickry in order to try and make this year’s offering more interesting. Hitherto a single picture of each subject has sufficed. Collage-composites made up from several Polaroid exposures…Well, not only is the idea hackneyed (and Hockneyed), but it also fails in practical terms, since it renders the images unclear and thus deprives them of much of their impact. The same goes for your attempt at a disjointed, oblique narrative. I have never been one for the Burroughs school of non-linear prose. Merely a disguise for an inability to write, if you ask me. Yes, it is very witty to have utilised a “cut-up” style when describing laceration and dismemberment; it is also contrived and far from novel. What initially struck me as so strong about your work was its subtlety, its lack of overt artifice. You are clever, but you should leave that cleverness implicit. There is no need to show off about it.