The Scent of Dried Roses

by Tim Lott

  Mr Salik, who always seems on the verge of being angry, notices me, takes my notes and carefully counts out some florins and half-crowns to match the value of the notes. I am hoping he will offer me something to eat from the cake shelf, some mysterious cream gâteau or marble-cake, but he simply hands over the change and goes back to work. Wally winks at me and ruffles my hair. When I return back to the shop with the change, I ask my dad if I can have some Stollen, and, looking at me as if I am mad, he says:

  What am I, Joe Soap?

  What am I, made of money?

  Who am I, old muggins?

  Then he asks me what Stollen is, when it’s at home. I blush, for I do not know. Jack laughs and goes back to serving a customer. Yet I know somehow that whatever Stollen is, and provolone, and cervelat, and Chocoleibniz, I want them, and at the same time, obscurely, I know that it is not the food itself that I desire but… I cannot put it into words or systematic thought. It is simply a craving for other, for difference, unfocused, unnamed.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon working in the shop, trying to learn the distinction between nectarine and plum, Sturmer and Cox, Webb and cos. At one point a tall, distinguished-looking man in an aquamarine suit with elegant, brilliantined hair walks in. He has with him a young boy, about my age, with the crimson clouds on his cheeks that so many of the young rich seem to possess, tailored shorts, a crisp white shirt and a bow tie. The father and son are talking in loud, plummy, unselfconscious voices that advertise confidence, power, success, stretching back generations. I help my father prepare their order; I sort through filthy potatoes and soaking cos.

  The young boy, when he turns in my direction, looks straight through me as if I were invisible. Then I realize that I am invisible, I am nothing, because I am a shop worker, and to this boy – younger than me, I think now – I am simply one of the large army of service personnel that make his life run smoothly on the way to Eton or Harrow. The boy, I realize, is talking to his father, in measured, analytical tones, about the production of a particular opera by Puccini – its strengths, its weaknesses, its moments of catharsis. A wave of shame and rage engulfs me. I do not know who ‘Poo-chini’ is. I hardly know what an opera is, let alone catharsis. My father hands the tall man his order in a plastic bag, and the man pays peremptorily, without saying thank you, still talking to the small boy as if there were no one else present. My father hands him his change, indifferent, easygoing – good luck to ’em! – and smiles, and the man and the boy leave the shop, still braying, eternally oblivious to the world beneath.

  We are on holiday again, at a boarding house in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. We have crossed on the ferry from the mainland and I have been sick over the side of the boat four or five times.

  Now we settle into our holiday routine, of breakfasts accompanied by tiny glasses of orange or grapefruit juice, which are also served as a starter in the evening as an alternative to Brown Windsor or vegetable soup, followed by cottage pie, or Cornish pasty and crinkle chips, or suet with steak and kidney. The days are made up of swimming in a cold sea or walks along windy bluffs and sand dunes. There are visits to amusement arcades, where you can play bingo or skittles, or shoot tin ducks to win worthless pink rabbits and Chinese alarm clocks.

  I am soon bored with the routine, and spend hours on benches, or in the back of the rented shooting-brake, reading books and comics – the Topper and Beezer annuals, Billy Bunter and Jennings books. As a special holiday treat, someone has bought me a full-colour American DC comic. Intriguingly, it is entitled The Death of Superman, and its cover shows Superman, the Man of Steel, laid out in a stately coffin, with Lana Lang and Lois Lane and ace reporter Jimmy Olsen weeping over the noble cadaver.

  I imagine, even as I am handed the comic, that there will be a trick ending, that the cover is a dupe or a teaser. I take my superheroes religiously and, in a child’s way, can enter into the pages of a comic entirely, as if I were myself Mr X, or the Green Hornet, or the Flash, or Plasticman. There is no irony in this reading; the precious trick of entering entirely into myth, forgotten by adults, had not yet been lost to me.

  There is a strapline on the comic that announces, gravely, that The Death of Superman is a one-off issue, an ‘imaginary’ happening that might or might not take place one day. This means nothing to me, for Superman is as real as Jesus or Santa, an absolute inner fact.

  I sit on the beach as my parents sunbathe and become engrossed in the comic, following the narrative and oblivious to the sand stinging my face. Lex Luthor, as happens from time to time, has gained access to a quantity of green kryptonite, a glowing rock that has the capacity to kill Superman (significantly, the deadly rock is a scrap of his home, an element of his past). In previous episodes, although Superman was weakened, or made ill, or stripped temporarily of his powers, he always emerged triumphant, leaving Lex Luthor to curse to the heavens the fact that good endlessly triumphed over evil.

  As I approach the end of the comic, I wonder vaguely how Superman will escape this time, as he was exposed, in a dark cell, to the opened lead casket containing the kryptonite, its eerie glow bathing him with death itself. Superman weakens and turns pale, as Luthor leers. He falls back on the ground. He closes his eyes. And Luthor rejoices.

  I turn the final page and the tableau that greets me, full-bleed, in lurid blotting-paper colours, is simply a development of the one on the cover. Superman is in his coffin; Luthor rejoices; Lois, Jimmy and Lana weep. There is no let-out. The final panel reads, ‘Not to be continued’.

  My mother arrives, back from swimming, floral bathing cap still in place, to find me weeping bitterly among the dunes. Her face transforming from mildness to concern, she bends down to my level. The comic is lying in the sand, being slowly covered by the edge of the sandhill.

  Timmy, what’s the matter?

  I cannot speak, because something permanent in my imagination has changed, something triggered by this cheap and trivial comic book with its grey pulp paper and spreading out-of-register inks.

  Timmy, why are you crying?

  I look up at my mother. Now there is embarrassment at the edge of my mind, because some part of me senses that adults will think me ridiculous. But a switch has been thrown that cannot be pulled back. Jean holds my gaze, waiting for an answer, so that she can help, so that she can comfort. I cannot find the words to express what I have discovered, so I blurt out the bald fact.

  Superman, Mum. Superman is –

  Jean notices the comic and picks it up, brushing off the sand. She glances at the cover and her face breaks into a broad smile of relief that something worse has not happened.

  Don’t be silly, you daft ha’p’orth. It’s only a story.

  But it isn’t, it isn’t only a story. Superman is dead. And if Superman is dead, then… then…

  You and your imagination! Here, Jack – you’ll never guess what…

  But I am still lost in unnameable sorrow, oblivious to the growing laughter of the adults. For I have discovered something I had not known or suspected before. Since, in the story, I had become Superman – as I could as easily become Batman and Green Lantern and Thor – I have discovered what my parents had once known but had forgotten already: everything, one day, even if you were Superman, even if you were an eight-year-old boy, would come to an absolute and final and unstoppable end.

  I am in my school assembly at Lady Margaret Primary School, which my mother attended before me. The headmaster, Mr Turnham, presides. There are perhaps 200 of us, in smart grey uniforms. My shirt is made of grey Bri-nylon and makes me sweat. There is an Osmiroid fountain pen in my top pocket with which I am learning Marian Richardson handwriting. The children in my class are called Steve, Dave, Mike, Sue, Jenny and Julie, these modern names having superseded Bert, Fred, Alf, Vi, Dot and Gladys.

  We sing, as we sing every morning, hymns to a God who is invisible, and everywhere, who watches over us and judges our actions and secret thoughts, each second, every minute. We sing ‘All Things Brig
ht and Beautiful’ and ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Immortal, Invisible’ and ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’. The words to the last hymn are so powerful, I cannot sing for the choking of emotion.

  And there’s another country

  I heard of long ago…

  Day after day, the teachings of the Bible are read to us, in assembly and Bible class, in nativity plays and harvest festivals, rituals and traditions that still, more or less, hold England in a common envelope. As an adolescent, I recognize the stories as fairy-tales, like death and Superman, but as a child I breathe them in, and perhaps they enter my bones, beyond my later mocking denials. I learn, much as my father and mother have learned before me, that goodness is rewarded, not only in heaven, but within, with the elevation of the soul. Wickedness leads to spiritual death and damnation. I learn that there is a hidden order of things that is not to be transgressed.

  I hear of the Good Samaritan, the Gadarene Swine, the Burning Bush, the Healing of the Lame, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the Rebirth of Lazarus and of Barabbas and Pilate, and Jesus on Calvary. There is much I cannot understand. What is the Holy Ghost? Why do the Jews hate Jesus? Why does God not save him? What happens to the black babies in Africa who die of starvation not believing in Jesus? Will they go to hell? But all the stories, massed together, tied and underlined each day by the muttered incantation of the Lord’s Prayer, convince me of this: that there is something called Sin, and it crouches within us, waiting for an opportunity to strike and damn us.

  So that night, as I drift into sleep, I make a decision, because, like a TV American, I believe that the decisions I make in my head will change everything, inside and out, that my will is decisive. And I am unhappy, because I am being bullied by a larger boy, from whom my mother cannot protect me. So the decision I make is this, prompted by the assemblies and prayers and hymns. I will be good, always. If someone strikes me, I will turn the other cheek. If a child is cruel to me, I will forgive them. I will be kind to the weak and ugly, to the misfits in the class. I will do as my parents tell me. I will love my older brother, although he does not care for me. I pray to the stars on the ceiling that I will be like Jesus.

  And I wake with the resolution still in my head, and carry it out. That morning, my brother pins me down under the covers of my bed, which terrifies me, and will not let me out. But I do not cry and I refuse to become angry. Later on, the bully in school attacks me, but I do not fight back. In the evening, my mother asks me to wash up when it is not my turn and I perform the chore without complaint.

  This strategy I follow, doggedly, for days, even weeks. I lend other children my pocket money and do not ask for it back, and when they want more, I give it to them. When my brother steals my toys, I let him do it and try to smile. One night I offer to clean my father’s shoes and, bewildered, he accepts.

  It takes some weeks before I realize that I am not entering into the promised condition of holiness and reward. People at school take advantage of me and laugh at me behind my back. The weak and the ugly children cling to me, and I realize that they repel me. The bully goes to greater and greater lengths to humiliate me. My parents do not even notice or comment on my strenuous efforts towards virtue. My prayers go unanswered.

  The next day the bully follows me home again, taunting me with a thin branch that he lashes at me. A gaggle of mates look on and laugh. After the fourth or fifth lash, some gear inside me turns, shifts lower. I turn around, swinging from the waist, and punch him full in the face. He stops dead in his tracks and looks astonished. I punch him again, this time in the stomach. He doubles over and begins to cry. The crowd of silent and sullen observers then suddenly begin cheering. The boy cries bitterly and I feel sorry for him and want to apologize, but the children laugh and cheer even more. The next day, everyone in class wants to be my friend; I am popular. When the weak, ugly children approach me, I shun them. I have realized, dumbly, wordlessly, that, as my father has always suggested, the world is not a gentle place and I must play its prescribed games with this in mind.

  That night, I do not pray to God. In fact, I never pray again, not until I am thirty-one years old and hoping to die.

  It is a Sunday morning in late summer and, as usual, we are at the open-air swimming baths at Chiswick Lido. There are rows and rows of wooden changing cubicles which, on one famous occasion, I emerge from having actually forgotten to put my costume on, until the amazed glares of hundreds of bathers alert me to my absence of mind. But that is years in the future. On this day, I am noticeable only for being unusually overweight. There are towels and Lilos spread out to cover almost every square foot of the paving stones, and transistor radios, made in Hong Kong, broadcasting chatter and chart hits that are somehow increased by the tinniness of the speakers, punctuate the perimeters of the rectangular towels. On this day, they are playing ‘Have I the Right?’ by the Honeycombs, and ‘Concrete and Clay’ by Unit Four Plus Two, and ‘Telstar’ by Jet Harris, and ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon. The shouting and music and chatter make an astonishing row. The air smells of cheap hotdogs and Westler’s hamburgers, which we do not buy, preferring to economize with packed lunches of white bread with Sandwich Spread, pilchard and salad cream sandwiches, followed by rock cakes. We will drink squash rather than Idris or Pepsi or Corona.

  I am plucking up courage to jump in the pool, for I know that the temperature – it is chalked up at the entrance – is only fifty-seven degrees and that the shock of the initial cold will knock the breath out of me. Today is what I have christened Flying Ant Day, for I have noticed that one day in the year the air is filled with winged ants who disappear the next day, not to be seen again for another twelve months. If this day takes place while I am at home, I boil water and try to exterminate them as they teem through the rockeries of our back garden. But today, Flying Ant Day takes place at the pool, and the bathers swat and wave their hands in frustration, and guard their Zooms and Fabs and Jublees against the clouds of pests. Simply for the enjoyment of it, and to delay the plunge into the pool, I stomp around the paving stones with my flip-flops, killing as many ants as I can. But it seems to make no difference; the flying ants just keep coming.

  Finally bored, I make my way towards the edge of the pool and try to pluck up the courage to dive – or belly-flop, since I am clumsy – into the icy water. There are two stone lions erected at the shallow end that spew out water in constant streams. Where these streams strike the surface of the pool, children gather to douse themselves and tamper with the cascades, filling buckets or empty crisp packets. I climb to the top of one of the lions and look for a gap in the crowd of flapping arms and kicking legs. I decide to break through my fear. I jump.

  The clutch of the water is as shocking as I knew it would be and I pant for breath. I have struck a small boy below me in my fall and he looks at me, offended, then shrugs and swims off. I strike out into a shambolic butterfly stroke in order to distract myself from the chill and make my heart pump so as to raise my body temperature to something tolerable. This takes several minutes, and at last I feel I am beginning to enjoy my swim. On the edge of the pool, my brother throws a beach ball to my cousin, David. I change strokes, breast, then Australian crawl, then backstroke, which I have to abandon because the packed crowds get in the way. The stench of chlorine is overwhelming and my eyes will smart for hours afterwards. Somewhere in the middle of the pool is my mother, keeping her chin just at water height, her bare head encased in a rubber bathing hat which she never submerges. She is always terrified that someone will knock it off, but I do not know this. I do not even know yet that my mother is bald.

  I now do the doggy paddle, keeping to mid-shallow end, because it seems less crowded. I begin to imagine, faintly, that people are staring at me but dismiss the impression as ridiculous. I notice that there is a faint redness around the patch of water I am swimming in. I look up and see my brother pointing to his chin and gesticulating wildly. I do not know what he means. He is shouting something, but the noise of the bathers around m
e makes it impossible to hear. Screaming boys are doing torpedoes and belly-flops all around, and I feel as if I am under artillery attack. My brother is still yelling something. I make my way to the chrome ladder at the far side of the shallow end.

  As I climb out, my brother’s face is a mask of excitement and suppression. He blurts out his secret. Your chin! I look down and see that my chest is doused with a crimson liquid. I raise my hand to my chin and it comes back dripping with pink, chlorinated water. Everyone is staring now and my mother has left the pool. The blood makes patterns on the flagstones. I am embarrassed rather than in pain. They rush me to hospital and sew me up, in a two-inch wound under the chin. I now have seven scars in total on my body and face. It seems sometimes that I am a child whose central instinct is one of self-damage.

  My father has brought home a box of records, old 78s that a customer has given him and he in turn has given me. I am excited, for I do not own any records, even though we have a second-hand Dansette, bought from Harvey’s Exchange and Mart in West Ealing. My father has a couple of Music for Pleasure albums of top chart hits, cod versions of real records that sell for a fractional price and feature exciting go-go dancers in chain-mail bikinis on the cover. Also – perhaps later – an album by Manuel and his Music of the Mountains, and Big Ben’s Banjo Band. Neither my mother nor my father is very keen on music, except for ‘background’.