by Paul Theroux
The church, St. Mary's Battersea, was sited directly on the south bank of the river, next to a flour mill and a public house, the Old Swan—the houseboats and brick façades of Chelsea just across the water. The church was in a perfect place, surrounded by light and water, with a Thames sailing barge moored beside it. Just upriver, above a black railway bridge, the sun was breaking from between some smoky clouds.
"Ken Tynan showed me this church," she said. "It's Georgian. Such a beauty."
"Tynan the theater critic?" I asked, unlatching the large church door for her and holding it open.
"And fetishist," she said, entering the church.
We passed though the crypt under a low wood-paneled choir loft to a side aisle glowing with patches of color from the light of the stained-glass windows. I picked up a leaflet from a side table and saw that Blake had indeed been married here, that Turner had visited, and more.
"Benedict Arnold is buried here, I see."
"Arnold, the brave hero," she said.
"Arnold the wicked spy."
"Don't be so predictable."
I approached the pretty altar and pulpit, thinking how orderly they were, and that though somewhat unadorned they were not severe, they had a purity of design, a spareness that had spirit and strength—thinking this while Lady Max began talking again and looking away.
"The rest of the time, Tynan was gadding about in women's clothes," she said. "He had mirrors on the ceiling of his bedroom. He said to me once, 'Have you ever tried soft fladge?' I suppose he meant gentle spankings. He had well-thumbed copies of Rubber News. This is authentic Georgian, you know."
She was working her way along the smooth carved pews to the altar rail.
"Is he dead, Tynan?"
"Oh, no. He's very ill, but that doesn't stop him," Lady Max said. "These days he dabbles in urolagnia with eleven-year-old girls. What do you call it? Golden showers—something like that? I adore these exquisite finials. What's wrong?"
I shook my head because what was there to say?
"I'm telling you things you need to know."
"About sex?"
"About London," she said. "The love and knowledge of London is in all the great English novels. You're funny. You don't know how good you are, or how great you can be. Now I must go."
We left the church and walked along Vicarage Crescent to find a taxi.
"Wilson lived there," she said in front of a two-story house made of gray brick. "A vastly underrated painter and great naturalist. He died at the South Pole with Scott."
Just before she got into the taxi, she said, "I have my accountant tomorrow, so we'll have to meet Thursday. I'll ring you."
She did not touch me, the English seldom touched, and that left me feeling even more flustered, in the cloud of her taxi's foul exhaust.
When Thursday came, I agreed to meet her in Mortlake that afternoon. As a consequence I had a productive morning writing my novel, and, stirred by her talk, I looked forward to seeing her.
The Mortlake excursion was to another church, a Catholic one—and in the high-walled churchyard, Sir Richard Burton's tomb, a marble monument in the shape of an Arabian tent.
"This grave has never appeared in any novel of London," she said. "I'm giving it to you."
I read the plaque and then began to tell Lady Max how Burton had explored unknown parts of Utah, when she interrupted.
"Because of the polygamy among Mormons there," she said. "Burton was sex mad but he combined it with scholarship and a love of languages. That's why he translated the Kama Sutra, and he was fascinated by fetishes."
There in the quiet churchyard of St. Mary Magdalene, she spoke about some episodes she'd had with men she had known as a girl — older men in every case—and how they had involved some sort of whipping, "and not soft fladge, I can tell you." The men had been canted over chairs while she had slashed at their buttocks, cutting them with a dog whip.
Then she giggled and pushed a branch aside and said, "It's all school nonsense. English men never get over it."
"What about English women?"
"We're all sorts, but the most effective kind are matrons—like our prime minister. Bossy and reliable, with big hospitable bosoms.
She put her hands on her hips and faced me, but I kept my distance.
That day we finished up at Richmond Park, looking at deer. The following day we met at the London Library, which was a private, members-only clublike place—Musprat was always mentioning it. Lady Max insisted that I become a member, there and then, and I did, writing a check for the thirty-pound annual membership fee and making a mental note that I might have to transfer funds so as not to be overdrawn.
After a weekend—Saturday shopping, Sunday outing to Box Hill—I met Lady Max at Blackfriars and she took me around some rotting Dickensian warehouses at Shad Thames.
"All of these wonderful old buildings will be renovated and made into hideous little flats for awful people one day."
That week she took me to Strawberry Hill, to Hogarth's House in Chiswick, to World's End, to the room van Gogh had rented in Brixton, to Sir John Soane's Museum. I had crossed Lincoln's Inn Fields thirty times and had never been aware of this lovely house that had been converted into a museum of exotic treasures.
I would be looking at a gable, or some fretwork, or a picture while she monologued in her offhand way about something totally unconnected, usually sexual.
"I thought I had seen everything," I would say.
"Yes, Sir John actually collected these artifacts himself."
"I mean, about what you just said about—what's the word?"
"Oh that. Frottage. It's just French for rubbing. Very subtle. Not very popular. Takes ages. Who has the time, my dear?" And she turned to an inked sheet of petroglyphs. "I much prefer that rubbing."
At Turpentine Lane in Victoria she pointed out the fact that the houses had no front doors, and in what perhaps seemed to her a logical progression—but surely a non sequitur?—added, "And I never wear knickers."
She deconstructed for me—the word was just becoming fashionable among reviewers that year—the Albert Memorial and said, "You should put this thing into a story sometime," and went on to tell me how, after the death of Albert, Queen Victoria developed a passion for her Scottish footman, John Brown.
"But why shouldn't she? Life is short, and passionate people should have what they want. It makes the world go round, and no one is hurt."
I felt that was true, but she said it with no passion at all.
That day, walking to Kensington Gore from the Albert Memorial, she said, "I don't live far from here. You could see me home."
She took me by a circuitous route, to show me where Stephen Crane had lived off Gloucester Road.
"His common-law wife had been a prostitute, but you know that," she said.
I said yes, but the true answer was no.
"She owned a brothel called the Hotel de Dream in Jacksonville, Florida," Lady Max said. "It's perfect, isn't it? But you're much better than Crane."
She walked briskly—in different shoes—and wore a long black coat and a velvet hat, and she kept slightly ahead of me. Then her white house loomed, looking less white than when I had first seen it, and there were patches of yellow water stains near some decayed gutters and broken downspouts.
At the front gate she said, "Won't you come in?"
It was a winter afternoon, blackening into early dusk.
"I should be moving along. I have to be home by six."
She did not hear my excuses. She batted at some trailing leafless wires of clematis and said, "This has all got to be cut back."
I was still hanging back. She lit a cigarette.
"See me to the door," she said. "Don't worry. I'm not going to eat you."
Fixed to the door was a big brass knocker, very tarnished, of a turtle with a tiny head. You banged its shell.
"I'm not worried," I said. It was impossible not to sound worried when uttering this sentence.
> "I have the feeling there is something you want—in your life, in your writing," she said.
She released the cigarette smoke from her mouth, but with so little force that blue trails of it encircled her head.
"What is it?"
I was restless and a bit fearful standing with her in this vast creamy portico of blistered paint. She had exhausted me with her talk, though she was still bright, as though she had drawn off all my energy. I was looking into the little square at the Boltons. I seriously wondered whether there was anything I wanted. My life seemed whole and orderly; there was no emptiness anywhere in it, and so little yearning.
"I've always gotten everything I've wanted."
"That makes two of us," Lady Max said.
I smiled. What more was there to say?
"That is what I'm asking you," she said. "What is it you want now?"
"Very little," I said, surprised that I had said it.
"Then it must be something crucial," Lady Max said.
"I wish my writing was more visible. I work hard doing reviews and they're buried in the back of the paper. My books are reviewed in these roundups, three or four at a time. I'd like a solus review. I'm very happy, really. But I'm indoors all the time. That's why I like these outings of ours, I suppose. I don't have any friends."
She said, "That's the proof you're a real writer. How could you write so much or so well and still maintain your friendships?"
It was what I had often said to rationalize my empty afternoons. I liked Lady Max better for defending me this way.
"But you consider me your friend?"
"Sure."
"Then you have plenty of well-wishers," she said, "and you will have everything you want."
What could I say to this? I stammered and tried to begin, but she cut me off.
"It's time for you to go home," she said, as though making the decision for me.
I kissed her cheek.
"I get a kiss," she said, stating it to the darkness behind me.
But I couldn't tell whether this was gratitude or mockery, and I realized even then that I did not know her.
6
Sometimes it is only when you turn your back on it that the world gives you what you want.
I woke up angry and in a very short time I came to hate Lady Max's promises. I had been content until she made them. Then I disliked myself for hoping. Was it that she had made me want something that I felt was unattainable and did not really deserve? No, it was just a matter of Don't ask. I detested the suspense. What you want should be your secret, not spoken aloud. Revealing it had made me feel lonely.
Trying hard not to think about it, I avoided seeing Lady Max. That made life easier. She called three times, and she was sharp and insistent, and I was just dumb and unwilling. It was not only a question of my pride. I had work to do. I turned my back on Lady Max and London. This woman and the world seemed like much the same thing.
I wrote all day at my desk, until the boys returned home. I bought the Standard when the Fishmonger's Arms opened. I sat and drank and read, and after a pint or two I went home and made dinner for Alison and the boys. There were whole days when no one spoke to me—days of great serenity and isolation—and I wondered whether I felt this was because I had become a Londoner or that I was a true alien.
But one evening the barman in the Fish said, "Terrible about Jerry," assuming that I knew.
***
He had not known me, but I knew Jerry Scully. I went to Jerry's funeral out of curiosity, because I had never seen a cremation in London. And also I wanted to test my anonymity. My going to this service on a weekday morning in London was a form of open espionage.
I had not liked him much. He sat under the dartboard that no one used and often grunted at the television. He was a carpenter, a "chippy," he called himself, a Derry Catholic who could whip himself into a fury in seconds merely by someone's mention of British troops, or by the sight of a British soldier on the six o'clock news. Watching Jerry, or listening to his talk, I understood the ambushes, the girls who were tarred and feathered for dating British soldiers, the heartless bombings, the fathers shot in front of their children—Jerry approved, Jerry was violent. Now and then I would hear an English person say, "What sort of monster put these bombs in places where they'll kill innocent people?" and I smiled because I knew. It was Jerry.
I happened to be sitting near him once when Prince Charles appeared on the screen. Jerry began to spit. "Fucking bastard," he said with real feeling, as though he had been wounded. I often overheard him, and most of his talk was blaming. In Jerry's eyes, Jerry was Ireland.
But, really, Jerry Scully was a Londoner. He was paid in cash for his carpentry, he also drew the dole, he lived alone, his nose dripped, he was nearsighted and wore old wire-rimmed National Health specs, and when he was not drunk he was tremulous and uncertain, his eyes goggling in thick lenses.
He shouted when he was drunk, and lately he had complained of a sore throat. He was someone for whom drink was a remedy as well as a sickness. Drink made him ill, and then it made him well. He drank more and his sore throat developed a painful lump that no amount of drinking could ease. He found swallowing difficult, though he still shouted hoarsely at the television set in the Fish. The doctor gave him tablets for his throat, and when these had no effect Jerry saw another doctor, who diagnosed throat cancer, and at last a specialist who told him there was nothing that could be done. He stopped going to the Fish. It seemed a very short time later that the barman said, "Terrible about Jerry."
According to his wishes, he was cremated at the cemetery in Earlsfield, on the number 19 bus route, and all the stalwarts from the pub showed up, looking pale and shaky in the thin February light. Some of them looked downright ruined, as though they too were suffering a fatal illness. They had that fearful and unsteady—almost senile—look of dry drunks in the daytime before the public houses opened, and they looked lost here on Trinity Road, so far from the Fish.
There were wreaths of flowers on the steps of the red-brick crematorium—bouquets wrapped in cellophane, and flower baskets, all with messages to Jerry. One was from Mick, the landlord of the Fish. The strangest flower arrangement was a tankard of beer, two feet high, marigolds representing lager, daisies as froth. The men smiled at it, but not because it was clever. One said, "Jerry wouldn't touch that." Jerry drank Guinness.
Filing into the chapel, I heard a wheezing man in front of me say, "These days I get home pissed and want kinky but me missus won't play."
A small organ was gasping a ponderous hymn. We were handed booklets indicating the details of the crematorium service, and a short eulogy was given by a man who, in this glorified furnace, was more a stoker than a priest. He spoke of the immortality of Jerry's soul and the frailty of the human flesh—the brevity of our time on earth and our vanity in thinking that earthly successes mattered. Hearing this, I had a sense of Jerry's being precious and indestructible, and that he had carried the secret of his soul around with him all these years. We prayed for Jerry and ourselves, and afterwards Mick opened the Fish early so that we could have a drink. The drinks were free, so opening the pub at ten-thirty was legal.
Lying on the bar of the Fish that day was the early edition of the Evening Standard, the one that all the gamblers bought for the horse races, and in the gossip column, "Londoner's Diary," was a photograph of my face and a short paragraph with the headline "American Author Content to Live in London," as though it were news.
It was a comment on a quotation from my book review of the Henry James letters—though I had no idea that it had been published. I had said in an aside that I regarded London as "the most habitable big city in the world," and the fact that I lived here was proof that I meant it. The diary item mentioned that I was not one of those Anglophile American professors in stiff, matching Burberrys who spent the summer swanking in Belgravia. No, I was a hard-working refugee writing my head off in Clapham. The photograph, printed small and smudgily, flattered me.
I read this three times while the others (who did not know me and would not pay any attention to this section of the Standard) reminisced about Jerry. I could not say why I felt there was a close connection between this gratuitous little paragraph about me and dead Jerry Scully—perhaps it had been the preacher's speaking about the vanity of earthly success. I was aware of being absurdly pleased.
And there was more. Reading the diary item, I was reminded that I had not seen the review I had written. I went next door to Patel's and bought the New Statesman. My name was printed large on the cover of the magazine, as large as the name of the prime minister (the subject of another article), and my piece was the lead for the week, the most prominent book review I had written.
I often had the feeling that only two people cared about any book review—only two people read it—the reviewer and the reviewed: the person who wrote the piece and the person who wrote the book. It was public correspondence, a letter from one to the other that no one else read. Sometimes—certainly in London—there was a reply, when the reviewed turned reviewer, answering back. But this was Henry James: did anyone else care?
From time to time Musprat called to say he had seen a piece of mine, but he would use the occasion to tell me he had writer's block. No one else commented. But the day after the New Statesman appeared, Alison said, "Several people at work today mentioned your review."
It was a scholarly book. My review had not been brilliant. And I doubted whether they had actually read the review. But they had seen my name. The point was that I was now visible. Before this I had been buried in the back pages.
Heavage called me that same week and offered me a new book by Walter Van Bellamy. Had he remembered that I had met Bellamy at Lady Max's? It was Alarm and Despondency, Bellamy's first public mention of being treated for depression. It had to be a favorable review, but a thoughtful one, ruminative, discursive. There was nothing crooked about book reviewing, but often a good book was helped on its way, and the reviewer—in helping—rode along with it.
"I think you'll do it rather well," Heavage said. "I can give you fifteen hundred words."