Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘You do exaggerate, Gerry. I mean, come on, what people want is to see their heroes make those daring, split-second decisions that break records.’

  ‘I was afraid of that.’

  I think Leo’s interview with Joan goes rather better. I assume Joan comes up with plenty of human-interest details about Millie’s relations with her fellow sailors in Britain’s south-coast yachting community, tales of all-girls-together fish barbecues while moored in Langstone harbour and Hayling Bay. I believe at one point I overhear Leo asking if maybe Millie had been attractive to gay women. I suppose a rule of thumb for broadcasters is the same as that for barristers: that they never ask a question to which they don’t already know the answer. This would certainly account for the air of utter predictability the news media seem to cultivate almost as a point of honour.

  Eventually, though, it is over, Leo saying she has ‘some sensational stuff from both of you’. They are just starting to pack up when another shout announces a fresh discovery. This one might actually be useful, I think, as I see reposing in the excavator’s muddy bucket my battered beige filing cabinet. Battered it may be, but it turns out to be locked and faithfully impregnable. I no longer have a key so I shall take it back to town and have a locksmith open it. Joan fetches the van across and the excavator lifts the cabinet up and tilts the bucket so we can slide it in. It is remarkably heavy.

  As we close the van door Joan pauses like a beagle sampling the air and says, ‘Do I smell poppers?’

  ‘Oh lor’.’ I now remember Adrian’s present. ‘Well, if we’ve suddenly made it leak it’ll soon evaporate.’

  ‘I’m thinking of the drive back to town with our heads pounding and our blood pressure bottoming out and us both reeking of guardsmen’s feet.’

  ‘It’s not amyl, it’s butyl. That doesn’t smell so cheesy.’ I call up to the excavator driver that he can now knock off. Meanwhile the film crew have loaded their car and are poised for hand-shakings and, I hope, an offer of dinner tonight at Global Eyeball’s expense. Suddenly Jonti, who seems habitually to be scanning the horizon, gives a cry. ‘Christ! Look up there!’

  A dark bundle is falling, bouncing, sliding, rolling down the mountainside. From above it drift thin wisps of screaming, and gesticulating figures are visible on the lip of the precipice. Limply flailing, the bundle comes to rest in a cloud of dust, limbs asprawl. I experience a brief moment of paralysis in which a small sick feeling is embedded before the admirable Joan banishes it as she sets off at an elderly lope.

  ‘Bets, anyone?’ she calls out gleefully. ‘First aid or last rites?

  Adrian 6

  email from Dr Adrian Jestico (ajestico@bois.ac.uk)

  to Dr Penny Barbisant (penbar@labs.whoi.ed)

  Amazing about your Hattie MacAllister being a Liberty ship. So it’s exactly like the Richard Montgomery stuck in the Thames estuary. Ancient Mariner in the Archaeology Division here tells me the Americans churned them out for us in WW2 at breakneck speed to replace all our merchant ships sunk by U-boats in the N. Atlantic & it was a good job they did. But the vessels weren’t a brilliant design & they were hardly put together like Swiss watches. Do keep me posted, Penny. I’d be interested to know if the HM went down in a storm or from structural failure or was torpedoed. According to Ancient Mariner the U-boats used to wait all up that coast which is why in addition to a crew of 50 those Liberty ships usually had about 30 gunners & torpedo crew aboard.

  Meanwhile, high drama over in Gerryland. Really, his life seems to have tapped into a vein of sheer wackiness – was this what Jung meant by synchronicity? When things just go on happening as though some offstage entity was trying to make a point? Gerry & and an ex-naval friend of his called Joan spent a day with an excavator going through the ruins of his house (they didn’t find much, tho’) & they were also interviewed by that poison dwarfette Leo Wolstenholme from Global Eyeball who had flown over specially. You know – the one whose boob op. ended up in court along with that unfortunate journalist who’d referred to her ubiquitous cleavage as ‘Silicone Valley’ in his column? Just as they were all packing up to leave, a kid falls over the edge of the cliff up where Gerry’s house used to stand. It’s not actually a vertical drop but a very steep slope covered in scree & rocks & tree trunks felled by the original landslip, & the poor kid (she’s only 10) came tumbling down about 100 metres in a small avalanche of her own. But – & get this – she’s OK! Bruised all over & covered in minor cuts but nothing broken. Everyone stands around saying it’s a miracle & really meaning it. But it gets better still. After the initial tears she’s acting oddly, staring around her & naturally everybody thinks she’s a bit concussed, no surprise there & an ambulance has already been called, when suddenly it turns out not only that she speaks English but that she was blind from birth & can now see!!!

  Well, that does it. The bulldozer driver and some local officials practically fall on their knees. Have you ever seen those primitive ex voto paintings in Italian churches? They’re often quite touching & depict dramatic accidents that people have survived. They’re painted as a mark of gratitude to the Virgin, who usually appears in a little cloud in one corner. This kid falling, surviving and being cured of a lifetime’s blindness is pure ex voto stuff. Then it slowly sinks in that this time the Madonna might have had help. Where did the kid fall from? Why, right by the Diana shrine where her parents had just been posting a prayer that her sight might be restored. I mean crikey, Penny, I’m so glad I’m not there at this moment trying to preserve a calm, sceptical demeanour as supposedly befits a scientist. There had already been a very minor ‘miracle’ earlier in the day when the excavator found an undamaged but awful camp statuette of – you’ve guessed – Princess Diana that Gerry had banished to his bathroom for laughs. So you’ll see what I mean about synchronicity. Everything is suddenly conspiring to point fingers at Gerry and Diana as though they’re spiritually joined at the hip. Poor Gerry is spitting blood when he’s not busy working out how he can profit from it. And I forgot to mention that this little ex-blind English girl isn’t just some nameless catspaw of fate. Her name’s Darcie & Gerry has known her parents for some time. They’re a couple he calls ‘Baggy & Dumpy’ who came out to Italy, bought a house a year or so ago & now live much lower down but on the same road as Gerry’s old house.

  Yeah (I hear you say), so how come two loving parents allow their blind daughter to play on the edge of a precipice? The answer seems to be that they’re not the brightest buttons in the box & they’d ducked under the warning tape strung along the edge to find out what all the people and excavators were doing down below. I gather they each had a firm grasp on the belt at the back of their kid’s coat, & when the ground beneath her suddenly gave way her weight tore the thing loose & they were left holding a strip of navy blue wool as she bounced down the side of the mountain accompanied by parental screams. These things happen. Of course with the folly of hindsight they now realise it was all for the best & was Meant, because such are the mysterious ways that lead to miracle cures & theirs not to question the method which, I should point out, family doctors and opticians everywhere strongly oppose even though it occasionally works. It’s a bit like thumping a TV that’s on the blink: once in a blue moon you get a decent picture.

  So how about that for excitement? Gerry tells me his first thought on seeing this dusty bundle come rolling down the mountain in a flurry of limbs was huge relief at having signed over his remaining land to the local council only days earlier so he was no longer legally responsible. At the time he was naturally thinking in terms of corpses & being sued for not having put up a proper fence or something. But far from blaming him, people are now treating him like a species of holy fool: about as spiritual as a slab of cheddar, granted, but nevertheless one of those people around whom profoundly mysterious things just happen. And of course he’s also regarded as being in virtual communication with the late squeeze of the Son of Harrods. He tells me Leo W. got her camera unpacked again within seconds & cap
tured the little girl discovering she could see for the first time in her life, possibly the only such occasion ever filmed. Apparently Leo has now decided that this Diana cult & Gerry’s association with it is ripe for investigation. Despite his howls of anguish I’d guess he’s adoring the attention. It certainly hasn’t made him moderate his off-colour remarks. Apparently he told Leo on camera that he felt rather sorry for little Darcie since it would be awful to regain your sight & discover your parents looked like Baggy & Dumpy. At least this kind thought will never be broadcast.

  Thanks for your brief run-down on your friend Luke. Choosing my words carefully I’d say he sounds, well, normal. Nothing to do with sex, of course; I’m just comparing him to Gerry, somewhat enviously. I should think an ornithologist would make an excellent companion for someone like you who spends hours staring down a microscope. Patience is a good quality for two people to share. Bit of an age difference, I agree, but hardly disastrous. As for Gerry, in your last email you astutely wonder whether he’s the genius he thinks he is. A pertinent question, even if applicable to most of us. It’s unfortunately true that the thing at which he really does excel – ghosting the biographies of sports celebs – is also the thing he most loathes & disparages. Why? Because he’s convinced he has far greater talents, hitherto unexploited & hence unacknowledged for reasons of financial necessity. Talents for what? we may ask, even as we note it’s his very qualities as a ghost writer that have turned him into a minor celebrity himself, fit to be interviewed for TV, as well as earning him a living the rest of us salaried peons can only envy.

  There’s no doubt he does have other talents, including the ability to make an entire dinner party throw up at the same moment. This is a gift which none of us who were present is likely to forget even though it’s something Gerry himself has long since put out of his mind, accusing the rest of us of faking and exaggeration. He’s unquestionably musical in a bizarre sort of way & knows a lot about it although he doesn’t actually play any instrument, & this seems to be behind his weird relationship with Marta which I’ve mentioned before. It looks almost like rivalry on his part, yet that’s preposterous because Marta’s a bona fide conservatoire-trained composer with all sorts of stuff including two film scores under her belt. My conductor brother-in-law thinks she’s genuinely outstanding & one of the 2 or 3 younger contemporaries he’s eager to watch & promote. So any idea that Gerry could rival her is as absurd as suggesting Marta would make a good ghost writer. Yet until recently he was for ever mocking her musicianship behind her back while to her face he was just plain patronising. It sounds unforgivable – it is unforgivable – but as so often with Gerry one forgives him because he’s usually very funny with it & because you suspect it’s born of a complicated repressed admiration. He’s actually far fonder of Marta than he lets himself believe, but heaven help you if you say so. He’ll go off into a tirade about ‘that Voynovian bat’ or ‘the Iron Curtain bagpiper’.

  Right now he’s moderating all that because she has at last agreed to write the music to this opera of his he’s become obsessed with. I gather he has just about finished the libretto & it really is about his new alter ego, Princess Di. Honestly – an opera about her, of all people! To me I’m afraid she’s just another dim Royal, but I listen to Gerry with what I hope sounds like proper enthusiasm. He’s paying Marta to do the music but I don’t know how much & don’t quite like to ask. I do know she has vast private means of her own, thanks to her criminal family. But the important thing is that Max is enthusiastic & provided he likes the finished article he’s proposing to première it at Crendlesham. If it’s a success Gerry will at last feel vindicated. He’ll have proved he has the right to mix & mingle with the international arts glitterati on his own terms. He may well become quite insufferable as a result.

  I think it’s kind of you to ask about things here at BOIS though as I’ve said before, part of the reason I like writing to you about munitions ships & Gerry is to take my mind off work. At present I can sum my professional life up with the plaintive question ‘Why me?’ You know me, Penny: I’m just a typical boffin who’s attached to copepoda, never happier than when in the little beasties’ company. OK, so I’m head of a small department, but why does the director choose me of all people to deal with these special interest groups who come down to Southampton to petition us? I have the public relations skills of Kim Il Sung. These people turn up here daily, each clamouring to be heard on the subject of the Severn barrage & each convinced that their ‘input’ is the one make-or-break factor that will finally decide whether the damn thing ever gets built, even though they know all the real decisions are taken by politicians 80 miles away in Whitehall who can’t tell a shrimp from a sea-cow.

  On that sunny note – token of a grey day here in S’thampton – I shall sign off.

  Cheers,

  Adrian

  7

  The scene is the drawing room of Balmoral Castle, nearing teatime on a rainy afternoon around the year 1990. Present are the Queen, on her knees on the hearthrug tempting a corgi with the sort of things corgis find tempting; the Duke of Edinburgh, who is listlessly leafing through a magazine devoted to field sports; Prince Charles in a kilt, who has just found Sir Stamford Raffles’s History of Java in the Castle library and is reading passages from it aloud to a potted banana plant to make it feel more loved; and Princess Diana, a downcast presence who, as the orchestra begins its lead-in, leans back on an overstuffed sofa with her exquisite arms thrown wide along its back. It is a posture both of despair and of transcendence. Wearing an outfit by Versace, she is outstandingly the best dressed person in the room with the possible exception of the corgi, whose au naturel look is unassailable. The Duke’s wardrobe, in particular, appears to have come from a Range Rover boot sale. Diana sings:

  DIANA: This place is gloomy as a tomb

  I really feel I’m dying here

  So far from London and its pleasures.

  Heads of dead animals everywhere

  Slaughtered for the leisure

  Of heavy men in heavy tweeds.

  DUKE (speaks):

  Oh Christ, here we go again!

  DIANA: The rain outside just falls in sheets.

  In darling Gianni’s clothes I shiver

  And Manolo’s slingbacks melt in this rain.

  QUEEN (speaks): One can buy perfectly good Barbours

  in Ballater. Wellies also.

  CHARLES: Oh why must you be so difficult?

  Marrying me was your own choice,

  No one twisted your delicate arm.

  You only had to raise your voice,

  Put your foot down, sound the alarm.

  But making history turned your head.

  DIANA: Oh why must you be so boring?

  It’s no secret that you never

  Loved me, even though I shut

  My eyes and thought of England twice

  And twice became my country’s slut

  Though proud to be their mother.

  DUKE (speaks): A nice sort of squabble for your

  wretched in-laws to have to listen to! Damned

  bad form, frankly. My God, this place: weak tea

  and moaning women. I’m off to the gun room

  for a Scotch.

  [Exit]

  I just thought I’d run a draft of the opera’s first scene by you to give you a foretaste of my libretto and to convey its dramatic, slightly foregone tone. Diana’s liberation is close at hand, when with her boys at boarding school and her husband busy with the organisational minutiae of shoehorning adultery into his tight ceremonial schedule she can devote herself to charity work and a fun time. No longer is she the ‘Shy Di’ of her engagement ten years earlier: the demure, biddable kindergarten teacher who innocently allowed press photographers to pose her like a Bendy Toy against the light so those 24-carat legs were outlined against the filmy white background of her dress. Now, through her amazing wardrobe (requiring two full-time staff to manage) and the confidence that cult
status confers, she goes her own way, disco dancing and hobnobbing with lepers and other outcasts such as far-flung British Army units. I’m afraid I daren’t divulge the two arias I have written for her and Charles when their respective extramarital affairs become revealed via eavesdropped conversations. I’m pinning great hopes on these ‘Squidgy’ and ‘Tampax’ scenas and it would be a shame to spoil their effect by giving the game away in advance. Suffice it to say they employ a device that as far as I know is novel in opera although not in gynaecology. I’ll say no more. Marta has promised me she will devote her best energies to match the brilliant words with equally brilliant music.

  Oh dear, though – there are so many good things. I long to quote them so they will send you scurrying to buy tickets before they’re all sold out. For instance, Diana’s tragicomic number on learning of her friend Gianni Versace’s death not long before her own. It begins:

  Today’s glitterati

  Are tomorrow’s obliterati …

  and if you think you catch a whiff of banality there you must remember that the very essence of opera (not to mention musicals) is cod philosophy and stock human emotion. The words alone shouldn’t try to express anything too deep otherwise they push the music into second place, and vice versa. I’m sure you’ll remember Richard Strauss and Clemens Krauss thrashing all that out pretty thoroughly in Capriccio, based on the old parody by Casti, Prima la musica e poi le parole. In Strauss’s opera Flamand the composer and Olivier the poet are constantly trying to decide which comes first, the music or the words. This question was to remain open until decades later when the lyricist Sammy Kahn settled it by saying ‘The cheque’.