by Paul Bailey
Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed,
Or Laïs of a thousand wooers sped.
Harry Chapman paused momentarily, took a deep breath, and continued.
— I snatched her gown; being thin, the harm was small;
Yet strived she to be covered therewithal;
And striving thus as one who would be cast,
Betrayed herself, and yielded at the last.
Stark naked as she stood before mine eye,
Not one wen in her body could I spy.
What arms and shoulders did I touch and see,
How apt her breasts were to be pressed by me!
How smooth a belly under her waist saw I,
How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh!
To leave the rest, as liked me passing well,
I clinged her naked body, down she fell;
Judge you the rest: being tired she bade me kiss.
Jove send me more such afternoons as this.
Whatever he was suffering from, it wasn’t lapse of memory. He had given a bravura performance, imagining himself in a more congenial bed with a Corinna whose ‘large leg’ and ‘lusty thigh’ were those of a Corin.
— We enjoyed that. A bit risqué, isn’t it?
— Who’s the Semi— what’s his name?
— Semiramis. She was the founder of Babylon, Nancy, and the wife of Ninus, King of Assyria. She ruled over the country after his death. And as for Laïs, she was a Corinthian concubine who really did have thousands of lovers. In her old age, when her looks had gone, she took to the bottle and died an alcoholic.
— I’m learning something new every day you’re here.
He was warmed by her remark, warmed because of the teacher in him, the man who was most content when he was passing on arcane information, the best information there is, in his peculiar view.
He felt depleted now. He had spent himself, reciting the poem. He wanted only to drift away, courtesy of Dr Pereira. Maciek Nazwisko’s ‘best sleep’ was an alluring prospect.
It was not to be. It was definitely not to be while there was bustle in the ward. Nancy Driver had offered to instal a television set a couple of days earlier but he had declined her offer.
— It would distract you, Harry. Take your mind off things.
— I’m happy as I am, he’d lied.
— You always have the radio.
— Yes. I might listen to some music later on.
But he hadn’t, and he wondered why. It was unlike him to pass an entire day without Bach or Schubert – especially Schubert – to afford the emotional and intellectual stimuli he had craved from childhood. Yet the headphones within his reach remained unused. It was as if he had no need to have his savage breast calmed and soothed.
— I would prefer not to listen. That is my preference.
— Bartleby?
— I have answered to that name on occasion.
— Not today?
— Today I would prefer not to.
Ah, that phrase, that metaphysical decision to neither do nor say anything practical, anything that exerted the body or mind, was as the loveliest solemn music to Harry Chapman’s ears. Bartleby’s preferred pronouncements were like plainsong.
There he stood, the shadowy scrivener, in what looked like a nightgown.
— Are you a patient here?
— I am beyond being cared for.
— I wish I were.
— You do not wish any such thing. You would prefer to live. You would prefer not to die.
It was true, and he was gratified to hear it from such a sepulchral source, who stood there no longer.
— You’re right, Bartleby. I wish to go on living.
If only, Harry Chapman thought, to read about you again, to enjoy your cheerless company. He had come to Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby’ late in life, when he was forty, in the Midwestern wastes of North America, and the skeletal clerk had been by his side ever since. He was still unsure, careful reader that he was, what the short, beautiful novel really meant. It refused to be summed up neatly, to be encapsulated in a paragraph or so, for Bartleby lived on beyond the confines of a closed book. He had faded away into death, but he was nevertheless immortal.
Shortly after waking, Harry Chapman realised that he’d been granted Maciek Nazwisko’s ‘best sleep’. And then he wondered if he had simply dozed off for a few minutes.
— The weather today is simply glorious, he heard a woman trumpeting from somewhere down the ward. — There’s lovely misty sunshine and the leaves that are still on the trees are either golden or red. That heavenly russet colour. You must get better, Maurice, before autumn turns to winter.
If Maurice, whoever Maurice was, made a reply, Harry Chapman didn’t hear it.
— I was thinking to myself as I was driving along how Maurice would appreciate those divine autumnal hues. Who was it described autumn as a ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’?
In case Maurice didn’t know, or was too ill to answer, Harry Chapman shouted:
— Keats. It was John Keats.
The trumpeter did not respond. Perhaps he had embarrassed her.
— Oh, I remember, she continued after a long pause. — Am I right in thinking it was Keats?
Tell her she’s right, Maurice, he refrained from saying. Tell her she is spot on.
— Keats was how old when he went over to the other side, Maurice? Twenty-five at the most. And here you are, you rogue, at seventy plus. You’ve been a very lucky boy.
Harry Chapman was intrigued now. Who was this woman and what did she have to do with Maurice?
— Very lucky, and very, very naughty, she went on, with a hint of sauciness in her braying voice. — Oh, Maurice, you have been wicked beyond the call of duty.
What had Maurice done to be deemed ‘wicked’ in such a complimentary manner? And how far ‘beyond the call of duty’ had he sinned?
Oh, here was a story to be told, to be relished.
— That trip to Morocco in ’89. She chuckled. — That was a trip and a half. What you got up to in Tangier would have brought a blush to Casanova’s cheeks, you dirty reprobate. Isn’t that the utter truth?
Yet again, there was no sound from Maurice.
— So you don’t deny it? You’d be a copper-bottomed hypocrite if you did. What have I just said, Maurice? ‘Copper-bottomed’. There were plenty of copper bottoms in Morocco, weren’t there? Some more coppery than others, if your disgusting tales are to be believed.
Harry Chapman hoped the woman would feel inspired to repeat at least one of Maurice’s disgusting tales.
— Here’s hoping, he whispered.
— I wouldn’t begin to soil my lips by reminding you of the things you told me.
The killjoy, he thought. The pestilential killjoy.
— I bet you made most of them up, just to shock me. Those positions, she exclaimed with a vocal shudder. — Those impossible positions. Even an Olympic medallist would have baulked before attempting them.
Harry Chapman was at his most attentive. He had always prided himself on his ability to listen, that rarest of gifts. He waited, and then waited, for further revelations. He was becoming impatient when he heard:
— Maurice, my old darling, you must set your house in order. You really, really must. Think of poor Fritz, and of Mona, and those weird, weird twins, Boris and Jocelyn. Don’t you feel a smidgen of guilt regarding them?
Maurice’s guilt, as far as Harry Chapman could ascertain, was unexpressed.
— Well, that’s a relief of sorts, that you acknowledge, in your curmudgeonly way, the pain you put them through.
There was another, deeper silence, in which Harry Chapman pondered the fates of poor Fritz, and of Mona, and those weird, weird twins, Boris and Jocelyn. Who were they, and what in God’s name had Maurice done to them?
— It’s Boris I feel for most. You put him through hell, if in the nicest fashion. The nicest fashion you knew. It was the nearest you ever came to nicest.<
br />
She was not speaking vindictively. Her trumpet had not been muted, yet it contained no trace of hatred.
— Maurice, did you ever love me?
Maurice was tongue-tied, as usual.
— Of course you did. Silly question. I know you did. The children we had together are living proof you did. That’s the only proof I have.
Harry Chapman was beginning to pity the jocular brayer. He sensed sorrow on the horizon.
— But there it is, and there we are, and what’s done is done.
The unknown woman, the present or past wife or lover of the wicked Maurice – he of the impossible positions – had fallen into what Harry Chapman supposed was a sorrowful silence. He came to this judgement after several minutes. He felt deprived of essential information. For example: what was the precise nature of the weirdness credited to the weird, weird twins Boris and Jocelyn? Was Jocelyn a man or a woman? Jocelyn was one of those names – along with Hilary and Evelyn – that was defiantly sexless.
The silence, sorrowful or otherwise, persisted, and Harry Chapman forgot about Maurice and Morocco and Fritz and Mona and the weird, weird twins. Night had descended and all he could see in the dim glow was the nurse on duty sitting at the reception desk reading a book by – yes – Harry Chapman. She raised her head at one point and he recognised Nurse Mullen, who had offended him – how many days ago was it? – with her philistine observation that poetry had to be spouted rather than spoken.
She rose from her seat and came over to his bedside.
— There’s a visitor for you, Mr Chapman. She’s walked all the way to the hospital from your house. I do declare she’s pining for you.
— She? Who is she?
— I know this isn’t regular, Mr Chapman, but we’re making an exception for you. It’s your cat.
— Puss?
— Is that what you call her?
— Yes. When I was with Christopher, we gave our cats fancy names. There was Omar Khayyám, a monstrous Persian; Orpheus, a tabby who listened to music; and Jezebel, a black-and-white minx. But Graham and I know this one as Puss, pure and simple.
— Puss, Puss, come to your master, commanded Nurse Mullen, and the dumpy tortoiseshell obligingly padded into view. She hesitated a moment, her green eyes sparkling, and then she leapt in the air and landed on his bed. She purred – and cats only purr when they are happy – and licked his face. He stroked her back and pulled her tail gently and ran a finger through the white patch under her chin. She purred even louder in response.
— I’ll leave you two lovers alone, Mr Chapman. She’s got twenty minutes and that’s her absolute limit.
Puss spread herself across his chest, adjusting her body to achieve maximum comfort. He stroked her again, and the thick fur crackled with electricity. He felt her rough tongue on his hand.
What was this? Could it be that there was another cat in the ward? As far as he knew, Puss had no feline friends or even casual acquaintances, yet he could detect the distant tormented serenading of a tom whose lust needs to be satiated. The maddened creature was moving nearer and nearer, his yowls increasing in volume, while Puss slept contentedly.
This was a spectral cat before him, a very ghost, a creeping, yowling skeleton. Harry Chapman knew on the instant that he was Jeoffrey, the comforter of the poet Christopher Smart, keeping the ‘Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary’.
— Go to your master, Jeoffrey, he whispered, in order not to disturb or waken Puss.
A small, plump, dirtily dressed man of forty-one was now praying sonorously in – in – where was it?
— St James’s Park, answered the man. — For I blessed God in St James’s Park till I routed all the company.
Yes, it was poor Kit Smart, as the London dandies and wits of the 1750s dubbed him, removing his filthy, soiled linen as the rain fell, sending the rabble who had mocked the madman scuttling for cover. He was soon as bare as Adam in Eden.
— For to worship naked in the Rain is the bravest thing for the refreshing and purifying the body.
— Her time’s up, announced Nurse Mullen. — She’s been with you twenty-two minutes already. Sister Driver will have my guts for garters if she ever finds out I allowed a cat to visit you.
— Thank you, Nurse Mullen, he said, as she lifted Puss from him and cradled her in her arms.
Jeoffrey’s ghost remained, washing his bony back with a vanished tongue and the bones that were once his fore-paws. His master, clothed again, beamed down on him.
— He is the cleanest of the quadrupeds. And the Good Samaritan is not yet come.
— I’ve met him. He exists. Or rather, she does.
So Harry Chapman told the by turns radiant and disconsolate Christopher Smart, former occupant of the madhouse at St Luke’s Hospital and latterly resident in Bedlam, that once, long ago, in his own deranged younger days, he had been rescued from a watery grave by a Good Samaritan named Eileen. It was very early on a winter’s morning when she saw him poised to leap from a parapet into the swirling Thames. She had advised him to wait a minute before making such a final decision and the calmness with which she proffered the suggestion caused him to turn and look at her. She had smiled. She had wondered, calmly, if his life was as bad as he believed or imagined. He’d replied that it was worse than bad, and she’d invited him to tell her how and why. He’d hesitated – of course, he’d wavered, and doubted, and paused – before he accepted her invitation by jumping down to the pavement.
The stranger, who now identified herself as Eileen Robb, said there was a café nearby that stayed open throughout the night. It specialised in extra strong tea and sandwiches of the kind known as doorsteps. Nothing fancy; nothing cordon bleu. But it was warm, and the husband and wife who ran the place were friendly.
The tea was indeed strong and the bacon sandwich mountainous. Eileen Robb watched him as he widened his mouth to its limits in order to eat. Between bites, he told her about his failed career as an actor, of the sense of inadequacy that afflicted him whenever he attempted to write. She listened and occasionally nodded. When he’d finished, she remarked that, as far as she could judge, his life wasn’t that bad, and far too precious, in her opinion, to sacrifice. Was he ill, she asked him, with an incurable disease? He had to answer no. Her advice to Harry, for such she knew him to be, was to persevere, to carry on, to regard every mistake and drawback as the bottom rungs on the ladder to success. Failure was often necessary to a person’s development. And besides, she reminded him, he was young, and the wide world was his to discover.
They parted at around four o’clock, the dawn still some hours away. She walked with him to a bus stop and waited with him until the bus arrived. He waved to her from his seat on the upper deck, and she waved back. On the way home, it occurred to him that he’d asked her no questions about herself, and he felt ashamed. He never saw Eileen Robb, his very good Samaritan, again. He hoped, as the years went by, that she would contact him. He was at his most hopeful when his first book was published. She would write to him, surely, he reasoned. But the letter he wanted to receive, signed Eileen Robb, did not reach him.
He stopped talking. Poor Kit Smart and his spectral Jeoffrey had gone. He hadn’t seen them leave.
— Just checking your blood pressure, Harry, said Marybeth Myslawchuk. — And your pulse.
— Thank you.
— No need to thank me. It’s my job, honey.
— Tell me something.
— I might if you could be more precise.
— There was a woman here earlier today visiting a man called Maurice.
— What do you want to know?
— Who she is. Who he is. Idle curiosity.
— I had the afternoon off, but I’ll try and find out for you. Maurice has been moved to another ward, that much I can reveal. He’s in a fragile state.
— I’m not surprised.
— Why is that, Harry? Are you cleverer than the doctors?
— I was being facetious. Mauri
ce’s wife, or ex-wife, or lover has a bedside manner beyond compare. She brayed at the wretched Maurice from start to finish. I could almost picture him wilting under the onslaught.
— I’ll do some detective work on your behalf. If the information will make you a happier man.
— I doubt that it will. But it might just divert me for an hour or so.
Imagine a great green forest somewhere in Africa. Picture an elephant who has just been born. His doting mother gives him the name Babar. He is her first child and she loves him very much. She places him in a hammock strung between two palm trees and rocks him to sleep with her trunk, singing softly to him all the while.
Babar grows bigger, as elephants and humans do. He plays with the other little elephants, some of whom have friendly monkeys perched on their bodies. One day, when Babar is riding happily on his mother’s back, a wicked hunter, who has hidden himself behind a bush, shoots at them, killing Babar’s mother.
A monkey, who has been watching, scampers off and all the birds in the air disappear into the blue. The hunter – is he the wicked Maurice, whose impossibly positioned misadventures in Morocco are the talk of the Zoffany Ward? – runs up to capture the orphaned Babar. But the nimble Babar escapes being captured, and keeps on running for several days, until he comes to a town . . .
— How old are you, Harry Chapman?
— You know my age, Mother, if anyone does.
— How old are you?
— Oh, for God’s sake stop pestering me. I’m fifteen.
— If you’re fifteen, soon to be sixteen, what are you doing with a book about a baby elephant?
— It’s a present from Leo. He read it when he was very small. He said I’ve had a deprived childhood because there was no Babar to make me smile and be happy.
— Deprived? That’s a fine way for a boy to speak whose father is as rich as he is, I must say.
— Must you?
— Yes, I must. What time did we have for baby elephants? Especially French ones. It is in parlez-vous, isn’t it?
That was his father’s expression, that parlez-vous. It was virtually all he knew of the language, surrounded as he was in the trenches of Flanders by the English mates whose names he called out on the day of his dying.