Kitty & Virgil

by Paul Bailey

  Then he looked up at her and said: ‘He has ghosts galore, the saviour of my country. An army of them, a regiment. You, Kitty, have made me understand that the men – and women – who write the Conducãtor’s sermons are ghosts. They are shadows of their true selves. Their typewriters are not registered and numbered for purposes of identification as the typewriters of the flesh-and-blood people of Romania are. They have no fear of being identified, these non-beings, these ghosts. Why should they be afraid? They have his words at their command, which is his command, and his words ensure their ghostly survival. They press the keys of their machines to the same rhythm, with the same ideas ready to be typed on to the page, and on they go with their joyless task, Kitty, until the factory alarm sounds and the rhythm is brought to a halt for another day. I imagine that is how they work for him, his regiment of ghosts.’

  His voice was low, his speech measured, his body contained. There was none of the near-hysterical excitement that took possession of him whenever he spoke of the Conducãtor.

  ‘You see I am earth-bound, Kitty. I am not carried away. Perhaps it is because I do not find his ghosts as amusing as his dog or his hunting of the bears. Yes, that is it. Our leader’s ghosts – I thank you for the conceit – do not divert me. I worry for them. The prose they produce for him has no energy, no colour, and it has no grammatical errors. I have listened to it. I have read it. It is perfectly lifeless. They have fashioned it for him to drone. But sometimes, Kitty, he loses his place in the sermon and his droning ceases, and then – panic-stricken – he speaks his own words. He falters, he fumbles with his glasses, he takes a sip of water and he says whatever comes into his head, and it’s only we who are watching his performance on television who are free to indulge in the luxury of a smile at his expense. He has dared to improvise and his daring has revealed him for what he is – a man ill at ease with language. The party officials in front of him in the Hall of the Palace of the Socialist Republic do not have our freedom. They must hide their smiles behind solemn looks of agreement. But we can laugh if we want to, we writers and artists and intellectuals who use the subjunctive when we ought to, and make our nouns and verbs agree. We can laugh at this peasant who slaughters our cherished syntax the minute he strays from the sermon his ghosts have prepared for him. He is suddenly vulnerable, standing up there alone on the podium. He reaches the end of his tortuous, unghosted sentence and stops. It is a cue, a desperate cue, for applause. The clapping begins and increases in volume. He finds his place. He is secure. The massed ranks of officials sense his security. Their applause has come to his rescue and is no longer necessary. The droning resumes and our laughter is silenced.’

  She sat on the floor by his chair and rested her head on his knee.

  ‘I am crazy, Kitty. I am not there to join in the laughter. It is your fault for mentioning the ghost-writer.’

  ‘I apologise.’

  ‘I hate myself for bothering with him, for letting him into my mind.’

  If it weren’t for him, she refrained from saying, you wouldn’t be here; if it weren’t for him, my life would be merely jogtrotting along, as it used to jogtrot along, day after forgotten day, in all that time before I met you.

  He had arrived that evening, in his faded and much washed overalls, bearing what was by far the most lavish of his gifts – a box of handmade chocolates from the shop in Bond Street to which her father had once taken her while he was briefly in London with the artistic Linda. Felix had requested a special monkey’s bum kiss in exchange for mountains of her favourite mints and she had duly obliged. She remembered, now, that Felix and his third wife were dressed for the opera – ‘Pity me, my darling, I’m in for an evening of Druids’ – and that they looked ridiculously elegant to her young eyes, ‘like a pair of chic fossils’ she told Nelly. Virgil, in his working clothes, had stood in that same shop a few hours earlier, hardly the picture of elegance or wealth.

  ‘That’s Edward the Confessor over there in the corner, in those two bulky parcels. He’s my latest assignment. It’s going to take me a month, I suspect, to tackle him.’

  (Kitty Crozier would recall that she was with the Confessor and his eleventh-century court and kingdom for ten arduous weeks. The memory of that happily occupied time would come to her after Virgil was gone, when she began to play a game in her head that made her heart ache at the loss of him. In this game she would think back to the Lives she had read – and indexed and edited – while he was with her, from Warren Hastings to Aubrey Beardsley. Bismarck and Piaf and Nielsen and Wally, the King of London’s Underworld, and the saintly Edward, and Sergei Diaghilev, drenched in a perfume called Mitsouko, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Michael Faraday and Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as a swarm of Albigenses, had all featured in the life she shared with her doomy lover. In some peculiar way their very names became associated with contentment, fulfilment; and in later years someone’s remarking that Nielsen’s songs were finer than his symphonies or that Bismarck was the best kind of bad German would set her pulse racing at the thought of him. They belonged, for ever now, in her Virgil period.

  The Lives she worked on, when she was capable of work, in the immediate weeks post-Virgil, soon formed into a blur. She would wonder if she had been in a trance or perhaps hallucinating, so indistinct had those celebrated figures become for her, their cares and concerns inextricably jumbled together by her numb intelligence. Their sufferings meant nothing to her and she viewed their triumphs from the limbo she was in, which was a place where human success seemed risible.

  Then, one overcast day, a day designed for accidie, she opened a manuscript and started to read. Another Life, another task to distract her. At the end of the first chapter she felt curiously elated, and by the end of the book itself she was moved to tears of pity and deep commiseration. She went out to her small garden and let the rain fall on her. And as she stood there, she saw Virgil coming across the lawn, his Communist tooth gleaming in the dimness.

  The Life that was to release her was scarcely more than a monograph – a short character study, simply written, running to a hundred and twenty pages. Its subject was Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of the great Johann Sebastian, a man desperate to escape from under his father’s shadow. She learned that he was an accomplished composer at an early age, the pleasant harmonies coming easily and naturally to him, in the fecund manner the music-lovers of Leipzig expected of a Bach. Yet Wilhelm Friedemann grew disenchanted with the facility with which he was able to write for the orchestra, the keyboard and the cathedral choir, and took to experimenting. His ambition was to create a new sound, a sound distinguishable from Johann Sebastian’s, a sound that would be recognised as his and his alone. But his father’s shadow lengthened and darkened with each fresh composition, and Wilhelm Friedemann sought relief from his frustrations in drink. Alcohol mellowed him, dulled his demons, and in his final years he was one of the familiar sights of unrespectable Berlin – an amiable drunkard, shuffling from tavern to tavern in old and shabby clothes, his once tormented nature apparently at rest.

  The shadow that Constantin Florescu had bestowed upon his eldest son was of a greater length, she understood, and of a denser darkness.)

  ‘A month, God help me, with a saint in my house. Do you feel like being unsaintly?’

  ‘Yes, Kitty, I do.’

  He was shovelling leaves into a cart when a rasping voice behind him said, ‘So this is the London park the poet honours with his presence.’

  He turned abruptly, scattering leaves into the air, and saw that the speaker was Derek Harville, who doffed his bowler hat in greeting.

  ‘I didn’t startle you, did I, sufficient Virgil?’

  ‘You surprised me, yes.’

  ‘Not unpleasantly, I hope.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you at liberty to take a short rest? I have a few minutes to spare. Will you incur your employers’ wrath if you sit and chat with me on the bench over yonder?’

  ‘I am allowed a break
for tea. I shall be happy to sit with you.’

  ‘Very good. I am in pressing need of intelligent discourse. I spend most of my waking hours listening to the idiot ramblings of the admirable Kitty’s preposterous father and I have just endured lunch with my witless, literally wit less, son.’

  ‘You have a son, Mr Harville?’

  ‘I have a son. The fruit of my irresponsible loins. I permit him to treat me to an expensive meal on the last Wednesday in the month, and today’s meal was very expensive and very satisfying. And because serious drinking is against his new-found religion I had an entire bottle of Crozes-Hermitage all to myself. He glowered each time the sommelier topped up my glass. I am, I confess, ever so slightly tipsy.’

  ‘You were married, Mr Harville?’

  ‘Never. No, no, no. I failed to make an honest woman of his mother. Failed, did I say? I had no intention of marrying her and she was equally unenthusiastic at the prospect of giving herself in matrimony to a mere servant, albeit the butler of a duke. Marriage, no. She had other men at her disposal, a whole flotilla of them, and she picked out the ugliest and richest to be her husband. He died young, fortunate fellow, leaving her but a pittance to live on. That shrewd analyst of marital to-ings and fro-ings, August Strindberg, would have relished their liaison, to judge by the rumours that reached my delighted ears in the safety of the ducal residence. They squabbled in the grand style. They tore a passion to tatters.’

  ‘I recognise that phrase. It’s from Hamlet.’

  ‘Is it? It must be, if you recognised it. I’ve used it so often, I’ve forgotten its origin. Actually, to be honest with you, I thought it was my own clever invention. Well, well. Should I ever feel the need to use it again, I shall be certain to acknowledge its source. Hamlet, eh? How shaming.’

  ‘I interrupted your story.’

  ‘You did, indeed, but only for the honourable purpose of improving my education. I am self-taught, Virgil. I was wrenched from school at a tender age and put out into service in order to boost my family’s modest income. That was long, long ago. Now I am interrupting the story, such as it is.’ Derek Harville chuckled. ‘It is not an enthralling narrative, to tell the truth. Sufficient to relate that my son, who was exhibiting in childhood every symptom of the dullness that marks his character to this day, regarded me as his benevolent Uncle Derek until he was informed otherwise. It was a role I played convincingly, for the boy was fond of me and seems fond of me still, despite the deception. He would prefer me to be sober and sensible and, I suppose, paternal, but I am afraid I cannot readily assume qualities so very repugnant to me.’

  ‘Your son must have a name. You have not mentioned it.’

  ‘True. He was christened Alexander by his mother and was Alexander Jenkins throughout the years I posed as his uncle. Now he is Alex Harville and the redeeming love of Jesus Christ is virtually his sole topic of conversation. His other passion is money, which he would rather not talk about since he is far too busy amassing it.’

  ‘May I offer you some raisins?’

  ‘Raisins?’

  ‘Yes. I eat raisins whenever I am – what it your quaint English word? – peckish. I am peckish. Give me your hand if you would care for some.’

  ‘Here,’ said Derek Harville. ‘A modicum will suffice, sufficient Virgil. There is no room in my stomach for more.’

  ‘How is Mr Crozier?’

  ‘How is he? He’s crazier, is Crozier, than he was when you met him. He speaks of little else but his impending funeral. He favours a midsummer ceremony at the moment, with the birds twittering in the churchyard trees and the roses in glorious bloom. I have tried to reason with him. I have repeated, and repeated, to him that the Reaper has the last word in these matters. If the Reaper decides it’s November, then November it is. Crozier, who has had his own way in everything for most of his useless existence, has somehow convinced himself that he is going to snuff it in June. Next June, perhaps, or the following June, or the June after that, but June it will be. He knows, he says. He is also confident that I shan’t die before him, as I have been entrusted with the responsibility of comforting the mourners with food and drink once the interment is over and done with. Mourners? Apart from the admirable, tolerant Kitty – accompanied, no doubt, by your good self – and his amused companion, what mourners will there be? If Crozier has his wish, every man, woman and child from the village, and the surrounding villages, will be in attendance. He has issued invitations to the whole neighbourhood. “You must come to my funeral. I won’t take no for an answer.” What an absurd specimen he is.’

  ‘You sounded very like him.’

  ‘It is a gift I have. I might have made a career of mimicry. Crozier is but one of several straw men, imitation men, in my repertoire. He is an impersonator’s dream-come-true. His shallowness really does know no depths. I find his company a constant pleasure.’

  ‘Mr Harville, Derek, could you impersonate me?’

  ‘No. Definitely not. I am paying you a compliment when I say that you are not worthy of mockery. I think you are who you are, Mr Virgil Florescu, and no one else. Honesty is not to be mocked, but self-deception is. I draw my inspiration from those who fabricate themselves and I meet plenty of their number. It isn’t just the voice I try to capture, it’s the temperament, the individual psyche. My victims, and they are myriad, have one characteristic in common – at some stage in their lives they began to perform, to put on a public show. As I did. As I do. No, no, you are beyond my imitative powers.’

  ‘I am disappointed.’

  ‘Don’t be. You must return to your leaves and I must push off. I have an appointment shortly with an imposing woman whose working name is Francesca. She insists that her gentlemen callers stay silent while she is at her soothing tasks and I am bound to obey her.’

  They rose from the bench.

  ‘Thank you for the raisins. I should have asked you about Romania, shouldn’t I? Or are you ticklish on that subject?’

  ‘My English is suddenly woeful. “Ticklish”, as in being tickled? I am at a loss.’

  ‘It also means “delicate”. Is Romania too delicate a subject for you to discuss with foreigners?’

  ‘I understand you, Derek. Yes, it is a delicate subject. It is a ticklish subject for me, Romania. And I am tickled by it, too.’

  That evening, as they sat down to dinner, Virgil told Kitty of his encounter with the man she considered Mephistophelean. He related what Derek Harville had said of her father – ‘“He’s crazier, is Crozier’” – and how he had spoken of his gift for mimicry.

  ‘Did he do Daddy’s voice for you?’

  ‘Yes, Kitty. Brilliantly.’

  ‘I found his impersonation too accurate for comfort that day we went to lunch. I couldn’t laugh at it. It’s wickedly accurate.’

  Wicked was a word she had never had occasion to apply to anyone before, but she sensed that Derek Harville was probably wicked. Not wicked wicked, of course, but wicked enough.

  ‘No, Kitty, he is not wicked wicked. He is not of that kind. You should have seen him today in all his finery. He was dressed to kill, as you say. He was wearing a dark-blue suit in some soft material, with a yellow handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a striped silk shirt and a yellow bow tie. His shoes were shining. He had a brown bowler hat and he carried a rolled umbrella. He was the complete dandy, Kitty, from top to toe.’

  ‘That’s what Daddy used to be. In his days of glory.’

  ‘I fear I shall be a wallflower, Kitty, a petrified wallflower. I am not a party man.’ He smiled. ‘What I mean is that I am not a man for parties.’

  ‘You’ll meet some interesting people, I promise.’

  ‘I meet interesting people every day – in the park, in the streets, at Mrs Whiteside’s. A room of strangers fills me with terror.’

  ‘I’ll be with you. I’ll hold your hand if necessary. Laura is one of my closest friends. We dropped out of university together. I should love you to meet her. And she’s asked me to bring
you.’

  (She would regret, for years, that she persuaded him to go with her to Laura Clifford’s Christmas party. He’d wanted to wait for her at the house, watching nonsense television game shows – to which he had become slightly addicted in a horrified way – or taking a nap on the sofa, or passing useful time with a dictionary. She wished, later, that he had been stubborn with her, mulish, difficult. He had it in his nature to be obstinate, as she was by now aware. He chose to be compliant instead: ‘I will come with you, Kitty. I will come along and pretend that I am not desperate to escape.’)

  ‘Courage, sweetheart,’ she said to him in the rickety lift taking them up to Laura Clifford’s top-floor flat. ‘You’ve survived worse ordeals.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes. The ones you’re secretive about. The ones your modesty won’t allow you to mention.’

  ‘You are fanciful, Kitty Crozier. Very, very fanciful.’

  ‘I think not.’

  Laura Clifford was on the landing to receive them. She stared at Virgil for a long moment before kissing and embracing her friend.

  ‘You look wonderful, my old darling. No one would ever guess you’d been in the uterine wars.’

  ‘That was months ago. Laura, let me introduce Virgil. Laura Clifford, Virgil Florescu.’

  ‘Hullo, Virgil.’

  ‘Good evening. It is kind of you to invite me.’

  ‘That’s because I have a heart as big as Africa. Isn’t it, Kitty?’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘Follow me if it’s intellectual fun you’re after. There’s champagne, too.’

  (‘I can’t forget him,’ Laura Clifford would assure her friend when she was given the sad news of Kitty’s lover. ‘It was his face as he came out of the lift. I gaped at him, I remember. Perhaps my jaw dropped. I thought to myself: all of this man’s life is in his face and he’s unable to hide it. And then I thought: he is Kitty’s man and I am being rude, and that’s when I noticed you standing beside him. You introduced us and I said something facetious, as I usually do, and I took you both in, and I didn’t speak to him again. I saw him by the window and that was it. Somebody told me he’d left in a terrible state and that you’d gone with him. This is ancient history now, my old darling, as is that bloody Sandor, whom I promised to murder for you and should have done, but I can’t forget your Virgil’s face that night and don’t believe I ever shall.’)