by Gregory Dark
The world has simply become a macrocosm of the conflicts that exist domestically. And those, probably, are only a macrocosm of the conflicts that exist internally within each of us. And those conflicts arise almost exclusively because we won’t let ‘Bartlett be Bartlett’. Or our partner be him-/herself. Or our neighbour. We most certainly don’t let our parents be themselves. But, then – such is our inherent insanity – neither do we allow our children to be themselves.
Even our own children we judge through our own eyes. I know of no-one who tries to see themselves – to judge themselves – through the eyes of their children. And, thinking about it, that too would be a forlorn attempt. Because those eyes would not be the children’s eyes, they would be eyes imposed on a child by a parent. However altruistically and apparently objectively. …
Chapter 16
The look, Drew, in her eyes when she was packing … Well, it said it all. Said it more than all. It wasn’t that she loved Al: I’d always known she still loved him. I’d always known she’d never leave him for me. The only time in our entire time together that I doubted something Trove said to me was when she told me she was leaving him for me.
And she’d no sooner said it, before even I’d had time register my disbelief in what she’d said, than the telephone rang. And there was that look in her eyes. That look which told me – and so eloquently – that not only had I lost her, but that I had never won her. Not in any complete sense.
And that was alright. That was painful, but acceptable. Less acceptable, though, was what it trawled.
It was a realisation that not only had I never had a relationship – probably not even with myself – but that I never deserved to. And that was excruciating. And still is.
I really hope you never have to know what that pain is. It is one which consumes all of you. If I am not able to have a relationship, I think it behoves me to remove myself, so that the sham need no longer be perpetrated.
You won’t be able to forgive me, so I don’t even ask you to. As much as I have loved anyone, I have loved you. I know that’s not enough.
Franklyn is lucky to have had such a special man as a father. He pulled the long straw quite as much as, I’m afraid, you pulled the short one.
“He signed it ‘Dad’. When I read it I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At it, at him ... at me. It did so completely vindicate my impression of him: the trompe-l’oeil-thing, I mean. How could I have been so stupid? So unbelievably stupid?
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… For all the wickedness that is latent within us, what surfaces far more often is Man’s good. It is incredible, the amount of good in mankind. Simply incredible. After the Boxing Day tsunami the British public raised over a million pounds sterling per hour – considerably more than came from the coffers of the world’s richest country, or from the coffers (that we know) of any of the world’s richest people. This fact prompted Mr Blair (how could anyone ever forget it?) to declare – his body shaking with the emotion of his magnanimity – that the British government would at least match the generosity of the British public. As if, for God’s sake, the money was coming from his own bank account. It could only be a politician of Blair’s arrogance who would not recognize that the government’s money was already that of the “generous” British public. No wonder he’s such great chums with George W.
For every such cynical act by government, though, for every one act committed by the wicked of unkindness or even cruelty, I see ten – maybe a hundred – acts of kindness and generosity. Enormous kindness, I’m talking about, and generosity that brings tears to my eyes: those who volunteer for ‘front-line’ charities like Save The Children; the Erin Brokovich’s of this world: moral Davids taking on venal Goliaths; firefighters rushing not only into the Two Towers, but onto airplanes to tender their services in earthquakes abroad. Simpler acts of kindness. Of great kindness. Even in prison you see acts of kindness. Daily. It’s often covert. Prison exacts a penalty for kindness. But, despite that penalty, it’s there. Even in abundance.
And it exacts a penalty too in the non-prison world. Even if that penalty is only derision. No, I’m not going down that path again.
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“I was right, you know. Sheridan is knocking her up. The journalist. She going to write about herself, do you think? ‘Tabloid reporter involved with murderer’s wife’s lover’s best friend shock, horror’!? I’m not often vindictive but, you know, I really hope she gets hurt by him. The amount of hurt they cause, tabloids, that whole cesspit of journalism.
“You okay for time? You don’t have to get back to the office or anything, prepare stuff for tomorrow? I’ve been watching too many movies, I guess. Well, it’s good of you to see me. I wanted to see you. I really don’t now have anyone left I can talk to.
“It was so strange, the whole thing: the atmosphere in the Court room, all that pomp and mundanity at one at the same time, the smell of paper and (it seemed to me) stale cooking fat, the starch of officialdom, the smell of floor polish, the silent screams all around you – all around you. Al as I’ve never seen Al before. Wan, contrite … a felon. With that prison paleness – that famous prison paleness. Not in ten zillion years would I ever have imagined Al a felon.
“Not paleness, pallor. That’s the phrase, isn’t it?: ‘prison pallor’.
“If he hadn’t have noticed me, you know (and if I hadn’t noticed him noticing me), I would’ve gone. Sidled out the back. Disappeared from the court. I found it so difficult to see him like that. In the dock like that. I mean, so fucking difficult.
“And to see his folks like that. That too was hard. Harder than I’d imagined it would be. Them not knowing whether to acknowledge me. And if so, how. What to say to one another? Do we kiss? Do we smile? If we did smile at one another, would that somehow impact on Al?
“His folks don’t matter. Well, they do – of course they do – but they’re not going to influence anything, is what I’m saying. Most times I like them a lot, sometimes they drive me crazy, but they’re not going to feature, is what I’m saying, in my thoughts, in my considerations and deliberations – neither mine nor the Court’s.
“I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Al, is the thing. He knows he’s going to be found guilty, he knows he’s going to jail – and he’s okay with both of those things. Know what? Because he is, so am I.
“What I’m not okay with is how I was able to know that just by the looking at him. I’m not okay with not knowing how fantastically expressive his face is. I had no idea. I mean, no frigging idea. And it suddenly clicked: It wasn’t that Al didn’t express himself. That wasn’t it at all. It was a moment, that, almost of epiphany. It isn’t that he doesn’t express himself, it’s that he doesn’t use words to do so. He doesn’t, as the phrase is, ‘do’ words, Al. Watch him, though, look at him and his whole face is a neon sign of what he’s feeling.
“I felt two inches goddamm tall. I mean, that was my entire bitch with the marriage, this whole Al-not-talking number, his entire lack of communication. I mean, shit, that’s what the thing with Mike had been all about: Al’s not talking, and my knowing he wasn’t talking. And God knows how many years before that, I’d felt there was something wrong, without being able, you know, to give it a name. I knew then, in that moment of epiphany, it wasn’t that he wasn’t speaking, Al. It was just that I wasn’t listening.
“Watching him today in Court I realised that.
“I also realised it was me who had betrayed him. Oh, not by screwing Mike, not even by leaving him for Mike (as I had every intention of doing), but by not taking the trouble to know him better. To know him at all, in fact. To know, for instance, that Al communicated through his face and not through his words.
“I guess the whole fun of the future is that we don’t know what it holds. That is both its hope and its menace. And both together kind of deal. I know only this about my future. I owe it to Al to get to know him better.
“Someone said, I can’t remember who, that adversity introduces
a man to himself. Well, maybe it also introduces man to those who love him.
“Know what? I think it’ll be good to find out.”
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… Growing old, Trove – it’s shameful to admit this, but I don’t really understand why – is to me a frightening experience.
Even more frightening is that morning when you wake up and realize you have grown old. That life has passed you by. That, in the world of wannabe, you’re in that of wanted-to-have-been. In my case, that was the realization of a moment. And (again talking only for myself) from that moment, the experience of further aging became frightening.
Firstly, I suppose, because it suddenly was only a matter of moments for the future to become the past. Secondly, because the slow physical erosion is uncomfortable and worrying – it begs questions about how much pain you will die in, about how decrepit you’re going to be at the end of your life.
And, thirdly (and for me most importantly), because the world around you is at that very second bequeathed to the next generation. And it is a world which makes increasingly less sense to you, and that becomes, both consequently and not, increasingly more confusing to you. ‘Come mothers and fathers throughout the land/ And don’t criticize what you can’t understand …’ – Dylan, in case you’d forgotten! Well, those lines, shit, they take on an entirely different meaning when it is you the ‘mothers and fathers’. Even if, like us, Trove, you’re only ‘mothers and fathers’ by proxy. Or by dint of being fifty.
What I’ve been wondering, though, the fear that I’m talking about? Is that fear for what the young might do? Or fear of the consequence of what you have done? Is it fear of the future, in other words? Or fear that you may have to regret the past?
I guess in my case it’s both. The regret (and regrets) I have is/ are enormous. Just enormous. But I also loathe the ethos of the generation which has now taken over control.
More than it, though, I loathe myself. And I loathe those of my generation who, with me, left this ethos as our bequest. Which is why I simply cannot watch the news. I have to get back to my own eyes and to my own experience. See with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, experience for myself the reality of the world – and the reality is that daily across my path come a hundred acts of kindness. Even in here. That mankind still is – despite what you hear on the news –, by and large, as humane as it is human, and by and large is kind as well as it is human.
It’s amazing: Stripped of all dignity, it’s amazing just how much dignity those stripped can muster. Just how much dignity is innate, not just to humankind, but to life. Even skunks have the most enormous dignity. Even mosquitoes and poison ivy.
God’s indulgence to Himself, of course, is the enjoyment He takes in irony. He must have His irony. God is probably an irony-junkie. And there is, of course, an enormous irony involved in the fact that the time I have best been able to talk to you is that time when I have been wrenched from you. Not, I hasten to add, by anyone but me. I do understand that. If I am complaining (which I am not) it is only against myself.
I’ll be a jail-bird when I get out. A murderer. (I doubt too many will bother with the distinction between that and man-slaughterer – if the word even exists!) For all the increase in value of my work which my infamy has trawled, not exactly the catch of the century. But what I need you to know …
I know you won’t come back to me. For a host of reasons. I know you can’t. For an even bigger host of different reasons. But I also need to tell you that, if the Red Sea suddenly divided or a camel was drawn through the eye of a needle or George W. told the truth, I would welcome your return not just with a fatted calf but with an entire herd, an entire breed of them.
Not for a nanosecond do I pretend that I have, overnight (as it were), become a stripey leopard. Not a bit of it. But I am working on it. And I do think, finally, it will happen.
No.
No, no, no.
What am I talking about? It’s that I’ve been a stripey leopard. All through my life. I think that’s a trait I share with most of my fellow human-leopards. And it’s not that I/we/they cannot change our spots or their spots. It’s more that I/we/they are discouraged – severely discouraged – from seeing them, our natural spots. It’s like we’ve all been told, you leopards should all be stripey. And we – poor leopards that we are – believe them!
So, what I’m talking about, Trove, is about finding my spots, and scraping away at the stripes to reveal them. I know I could do that so much better with you at my side. But, of course, I also know that can never be. As I know as well that your absence does not free me from having to do the job alone.
To have met you already marks me as a lucky man. To have shared a life with you indicates my luck must be enormous. That I squandered such fortune only goes to prove how very stupid and ungrateful I was. Not any more.
I don’t think any longer I’m stupid. Certainly I’m considerably less befuddled. And I am grateful. Hugely, colossally grateful. Not only to you – but, yes, especially to you.
I have no right to ask this, but … Is there a future for us?
It is not idly that I sign this – ‘Love’ – Al xxx
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Dear Al,
Can you woo me from jail? Can you from your cell take me to the places I need to go? Can I take you where you need to go?
I think we could try. Shit, I think, Al, we should try.
What I’m saying, I’m saying, if – naked and with a broken ankle – you’re prepared to piggy-back me to the top of Mount Everest, I’m prepared to sit on your shoulders.
Which is kind of a neat trick as, me, I’ll also be piggy-backing you.
Deal?
Yeah, we could maybe love again – Trove xx
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Maison d’arrêt de Toulouse-Seysses, 1st August 06
My darling Trove,
Al’s Well! – xxx
OTHER BOOKS BY GREGORY DARK
The Millennium Trilogy:
The Prophet of the New Millennium
A search for principles in an unprincipled age
Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet is an acknowledged classic. Millions have read it. But it is now of a different age. The Prophet of the New Millennium is offered as a complement to the original – a complement not a sequel. The style is redolent, but it is a book which stands by itself as:
A political and moral atlas of, and for, today.
That “today” is one where the line becomes ever hazier between ethics and expedience.
The Prophet of the New Millennium seeks to bring principles into the 21st century. Not by defining them. But by helping us frame our questions. It aims to help us separate for ourselves truth from fantasy, and sanity from delusion – to find our own sense in a world of ever more dangerous nonsense.
The God of the New Millennium
A search for balance in an age of spin
Only the mad or bad – or politicians! – would seek to deny that mankind is currently facing the greatest crisis (and crises) in its history.
Philosophy’s first adage was that you cannot plan for a future without understanding the past.
In this, his new book, Gregory Dark takes a new look at our yesterday … in the hope that such will lead to a less cataclysmic tomorrow.
For too long man has ceded spiritual power to priests and temporal power to politicians and generals. It's one of the principle reasons why we're in the parlous and perilous position today. If our tomorrow is going to be any better, it is not our right but our duty to reclaim that power – each and every one of us.
The God of the New Millennium, though, is no dreary dialectic. The discussion evolves within a narrative of tenderness and poetry, of sacrifice and death – most of all of life.
The God of the New Millennium leaves us asking of ourselves the biggest, and most vital, question of today – one that decides whether or not there is even a tomorrow: Do we have what it takes to do what it takes?
Man of the New Millennium
Man of the New Millennium is a book for us: the millions and millions of people who want to see the end of mancruel and the start of mankind. The probably billion or so of us in this world, exasperated and disenchanted by worn-out templates, trying to find new ones.
Wrapped in the most gentle of narratives, Man of the New Millennium leads us through the maze of history’s travesties and today’s duplicities to a future with a future, to a future whose potential is our potential, our potential as a species, and that potential special to all of us individually.
Man of the New Millennium is a search for us in an age of me; it is a text for humanity in fictional dress; it is a book which changes hope from an ill-defined aspiration to a realisable ambition. It is a book of today which guarantees a quality tomorrow.
Titus and Roni
Two parents who, in facing death, face life. Perhaps for the first time.
As well as being a parent Titus is a grandparent: He is kidnapped with his grandson by guerillas in Colombia. Roni is a Scots woman whose son, in 24 hours, will be executed in the United States by lethal injection.
Written with Dark's customary polish, Titus and Roni is as elegant in its telling as it is electric in its tale.
For younger readers:
Charming!
Or
If the glass slipper fits
It's the story they didn't want you to hear!
Finally Prince Charming talks!
The man was a cross between James Bond and Martin Luther King. Yet what is it we know about him? That he fits a mean glass slipper! And that's it.
For generations, Prince Charming has been the Watson to the Holmes of Cinderella – maybe even Charles to Diana. Far from being the nothing character of legend, however, the prince had the spirit of an unbroken horse. He was a loose cannon, one whose every move seemed dogged with intrigue and adventure.