Collected Columns

Home > Other > Collected Columns > Page 6
Collected Columns Page 6

by Michael Frayn


  In the first place, Algernon’s parents took care to conceive him during the first hour of his mother’s fertile period, in accordance with a survey by Progel and Hergstrom which showed that early-fertilised ova have the highest chance of A/B class membership in later life.

  Next, his parents began talking formatively to him by the use of deep-penetration sonic waves while he was still in the womb. By the time he was born he could recite the subjunctive of most irregular French verbs reasonably reliably, and his parents felt free to address him thenceforth, as they croodled encouragingly over his cot, entirely in mathematical equations, to which the delighted infant would reply by gurgling the solution, with many a gleeful laugh.

  He spent a year travelling to broaden his horizons after leaving school, and therefore did not go up to Cambridge until he was nearly four. He took his PhD at six, after two very fruitful months at MIT, and entered the Mashmaestro Corporation on the research side, where he enjoyed a brilliant career, rising to become head of his department at the age of seven, and joining the Board in the following year.

  And there he will remain for the next 57 years. His hobbies are conkers and marbles, and he is writing what is likely to be the standard work on the after-effects of precocity, entitled ‘The Problems of Teenage Senility.’

  Get older younger, that’s the aim, and come fresh and unspoiled to second childhood.

  (1968)

  Childholders

  What my wife and I have now got more of than anything else, it occurred to me the other day, as I staggered through the front door with another armful of the stuff, is child-handling equipment.

  I mean devices for holding small children up, holding them down, moving them along, and keeping them in one place. We must have got a hundredweight of the stuff. The only thing we’re a bit short of is the children for all this wealth of plastic and bent tinplate to be used upon. I keep counting up incredulously, and we’ve only got two.

  We’re thinking of opening our home and making the collection public. I’ve been compiling a catalogue. What I’ve tried to do is to provide the visitor – and indeed myself – with some sort of catalogue raisonné; a coherent, step-by-step account of exactly how we came to build our great collection up.

  The first exhibit is

  1 THE PRAM. Naturally there must be a pram. All children have prams. Where we were rather shrewd, I think, was in choosing a special patent collapsible model which at the turn of a nut lifts off the wheels to become a cot, or subsides into a push-chair. In which case, why do we need

  2 THE CARRY-COT? Well, you see, the patent collapsible pram’s downstairs and the bedroom’s upstairs. And in any case, without the wheels the top of the patent collapsible pram would have to stand among the draughts on the floor. Whereas the carry-cot can stand on

  3 THE CARRY-COT STAND. A great economy, a carry-cot and stand, because we didn’t need a crib. All we needed was

  4 THE DROP-SIDED COT. Now why the devil did we need a drop-side cot when we had a carry-cot? Because the baby had grown too big for the carry-cot. Then why didn’t we skip the carry-cot and get a drop-side cot in the first place? Well, have you ever walked through the streets carrying a baby in a drop-side cot?

  5 THE FOLDING WEEKEND BED. Why, you ask patiently, didn’t we take the drop-side cot away for weekends? Because we’d have needed a larger car. A folding weekend bed was cheaper than a larger car.

  All right so far? Now,

  6 THE PUSH-CHAIR. We must have forgotten, you laugh, about that patent collapsible pram we started with which turned into a push-chair at the turn of a nut, the wrench of a bolt, the heave of the chassis, and the couple of thumps with the starting-handle. By no means. The fact is, the patent collapsible pram is now occupied by the second baby, while the original infant sits on top in

  7 THE CLAMP-ON SEAT FOR ELDER CHILD. What? – you scream – why isn’t the elder child sitting in the brand-new push-chair? Now, come, come. My wife could scarcely walk to the shops pushing the pram and the push-chair. Good God, man, you cry, make the elder child walk! Certainly. But this the elder child would consent to do only if bought

  8 THE TOY PUSH-CHAIR to push. Unfortunately, the toy push-chair turned out to be large enough for the elder child to sit in and wait to be pushed. So we had to get her

  9 THE DOLL’S PRAM, of a type so small that there was no room for the elder child. Indeed, there was only just enough room for the elder child to cram the younger child in. So the younger child had to be placed in protective custody inside

  10 THE PLAY-PEN, from which it was released only to be sat up for meals in

  11 THE PATENT ADJUSTABLE ALL-PURPOSE BABY CHAIR. Now why on earth couldn’t we sit the child up in the clamp-on pram seat? Because the only thing the clamp-on pram seat clamped on was the pram, and the pram was downstairs. The patent adjustable all-purpose baby chair, however – strongly recommended by a liberal-radical woman’s page – proved to have one small drawback; it turned upside-down if the child moved. The child did move. The answer, we felt, was not a high chair, but – much more economical –

  12 THE CAR-SEAT, because it could be used both in the car and on the back of an ordinary chair at table. Then

  13 ANOTHER CAR-SEAT, because the baby could lever the first one right off the chair. Then

  14 THE HIGH CHAIR, because the baby could lever the second car-seat right off the chair, too. Then

  15 THE SMALL CHAIR for the elder child, to stop it jealously insisting on sitting in the younger child’s high chair.

  16 THE CARRYING SLING, for taking younger child on health-giving nature rambles (don’t tell me we should have pushed the patent collapsible pram over all those stiles and up all those mountains). Unfortunately the sling – strongly recommended by the liberal-radical woman’s page – exerted intolerable pressure on the top of my spinal cord, and the agony was relieved only by the child falling out. Replaced by

  17 THE RUCKSACK SEAT, a rugged structure of solid welded steel, recommended by the same damned liberal-radical woman’s page. We hadn’t got very far up the first mountain when it struck me that steel and child together, presumably, had the same effect on the heart as being three stone over-weight. Came down the mountain hastily, and haven’t tested the equipment since.

  That’s as far as the collection goes at present. Just the 17 items. No doubt we shall add to it in time.

  The only other point of interest, I think, is that between them (if I have counted correctly) the 17 exhibits are decorated with 43 frogs, 47 rabbits, 51 fairies, 108 pussycats (60 with bows), 46 pigs, 96 ducks, 48 dwarfs, 103 mice, 204 doggies (40 of them stark naked), and one rat.

  And I may say that every one of them, except the rat, is grinning fit to bust.

  (1965)

  Cleveland Suede Accuses

  Good evening (smiled Cleveland Suede, the well-known young Bow Labour MP and television personality). Welcome once again to ‘Cleveland Suede Accuses,’ our weekly series in which well-known personalities come along to the studio here and try to offer me some sort of explanation for themselves. This week, by a remarkable technological achievement on the part of Eurovision, we have managed to set up a direct link with Leonardo da Vinci, the well-known painter and inventor, in our Renaissance Studios. To many millions of people throughout the world, Mr da Vinci is known as one of the greatest geniuses of all time. Mr da Vinci, may I ask you, how have you managed to sell this line to so many people?

  L da V: Well, I …

  Suede: I take it you’d agree that you’re fairly overrated?

  L da V: I suppose …

  Suede: After all, your pictures are pretty dull, aren’t they, compared with Veronese’s, say, or Van Gogh’s?

  L da V: Yes, well, they’re different …

  Suede: I suppose it’s just a personal thing, but I don’t like all those dark colours. Look at the brightness in a Dufy, for example. Have you made any serious attempt to catch up with him?

  L da V: Well, I’m not really trying …<
br />
  Suede: I suppose you’re going to say the varnish changed colour. Did you always use cheap varnish?

  L da V: Now, look, there are several technical questions involved here …

  Suede: I see it’s a sore point – I won’t labour it. What about the way you draw people, Mr da Vinci? Is that deliberate misrepresentation or simply lack of skill?

  L da V: I try to draw people as I see them. I can’t help it if …

  Suede: Everyone’s out of step but our Leonardo, eh? A lot of people complain about the quality of your exports. Someone was telling me only the other day that he’d just seen a picture of yours which you sent over here without any paint on it at all. What have you got to say about that?

  L da V: If you mean the cartoon …

  Suede: The same story as the varnish, I suppose. Mr da Vinci, we’ve heard a great deal about the flying machines you’ve designed. If it’s not a rude question, when are we going to see one actually in service?

  L da V: Well, I simply sketched …

  Suede: Or have they been refused an airworthiness certificate? Incidentally, what qualifications have you got as an aircraft designer? Do you feel any responsibility at all for the lives of the ordinary men and women who may one day travel in your machines? Wouldn’t it be better if you stuck to painting?

  L da V: Which question do you want me to answer first?

  Suede: None of them if it would be embarrassing. Do you get any satisfaction from painting and designing and so forth?

  L da V: Yes, of course.

  Suede: Then do you ever worry about the moral point of doing absolutely nothing with your life but amuse yourself? Perhaps that’s a rather loaded question. What else do you do besides painting and inventing and so on? Any hobbies?

  L da V: Hobbies?

  Suede: Isn’t it rather a narrow life? Wouldn’t it be healthier if you got out of the rut occasionally and played the odd game of golf? I mean, there must be something unhealthy somewhere if you agree to appear on a programme like this. Are you conscious of having some streak of masochistic exhibitionism? Never mind, now you’re here perhaps you’d like to say something about art as it appears to you, Leonardo da Vinci?

  L da V: Well, it’s not easy to make any brief general statement. But there is one thing I should like to say.

  Suede: And so we come to the end of another ‘Cleveland Suede Accuses’. Next week – a simultaneous exhibition match in which I shall try to cut all the Twelve Apostles down to size at one go. Good night.

  (1962)

  The cogitations of the Earl of Each

  Sometimes, as I sit beside the little electric fire in the morning-room, with The Times sports pages open beside me, and Henry muttering quietly to himself in his sleep at my feet, I fall into what I call my cogitational mood. At these moments it begins to seem to me a matter of some wonder that things are as they are and not otherwise.

  Everything! Just thus and so! When it could have been not thus and so at all! Indeed, it could have been not thus and so in various different ways. In a thousand different ways, when you think about it – while there is only the one single way in which things could have been thus and so in the way that they are.

  The horse has come in at a thousand to one!

  *

  And every time I begin to think like this it seems to me that the most surprising thing of all is that I am the Earl of Each.

  I. Not my brother Charles or my cousin Shandon. Not some complete stranger. Not some Chinese fellow – and there are a great many more Chinese fellows in the world than there are cousins of mine. Not to mention brothers, of whom there are only three.

  None of these people is the Earl of Each. I am. And of me there are even fewer than there are of brothers, let alone cousins or Chinese. Of me there is only one.

  Good God.

  *

  And here’s another thing which is almost as remarkable.

  Not only am I the Earl of Each, but the Earl of Each is what I am.

  I am not, for example, Sir Alfred Upward. Nor the Marquess of Hight. I am not my brother Charles, nor my cousin Shandon, nor the estimable Wun Hung Lo, nor yet the redoutable Hoo Flung Dung. I am the Earl of Each. No less. No more.

  And this astonishing fact is something that everyone takes absolutely for granted. Never has my cousin Shandon said to me: ‘Good heavens, Pot, you are the Earl of Each!’

  Most of the time I take it pretty much for granted myself.

  The Earl of Each. Goodness. I am. My word. The twelfth earl, moreover. Not the eleventh or the thirteenth. The twelfth. Just so. Just exactly so.

  *

  How has this surprising state of affairs come about?

  It is because my father, in his day, could say much the same.

  So now we must think what it was like for him. And if it is cause for wonder that I am the Earl of Each, then it was no less cause for wonder that he was the Earl of Each before me. So look here, this isn’t a matter of a single horse coming in at a thousand to one! This is the Spring Double!

  Another question comes knocking at my brain immediately: how was it that my father was the Earl of Each? It was because his father was the Earl of Each before him! And back we go in time to the beginning of the line, wonder before wonder, each as astonishing as the one before it. A tower of improbability twelve floors high!

  What we are discussing is not simply the Spring Double. It is nothing less than a twelve-horse accumulator!

  *

  I sometimes even wonder if we can stop at the first earl. Would Sir George Shy, as he then was, have been created earl if he had not been Sir George? Evidently not, since it was indeed Sir George and no one else who was so created!

  Now, would Sir George have been Sir George if his father had not been the father he happened to be? No, plainly, he would have been someone else altogether!

  Back we plunge through the centuries to Adam, or the apes!

  Yes, and which do I find it easier to believe? That my being the Earl of Each is the final product of God’s purpose for the world, or that it results from the blind interaction of chance and natural selection?

  I have to confess that I find both hypotheses a little difficult to accept.

  *

  Another thing: my earldom is a perfect fit. At least as good a fit as my shirts and shoes, and a rather better one than my suits, because that fool Stubbs insists on cutting the bellyband of all my trousers too wide – to allow, as he says, for natural development, while never making accommodation for any other natural development – for example, the settling of the head forwards and away from the collar that occurs as the years go by, so that I look like a tortoise in its shell.

  I wasn’t absolutely sure about the earldom when I first came into it, I have to confess, any more than I was with the Oxford brogues that Tapsell made me at about the same time. It took a little while for those shoes to settle to my feet, I recall, but settle they did, just as Tapsell said they would, closer and closer, and it’s the same with the earldom. The Earl of Each has become more exactly who I am with every passing day. The bellyband of my earldom, unlike the bellyband of my suits, neither sags nor presses, the collar stays close to my shirt.

  And yet it fitted my father before me, who was of a very different temperament from me. In the first place he was not, so far as I know, given to these cogitational moods of mine. It made no difference, though. Earl of Each he was, no less than me.

  It fitted his father before him, and his father’s father before that.

  An amazing garment!

  Unless – a new and most striking thought – unless it is not the earldom that ever more closely fits me, but I who ever more closely fit the earldom!

  I believe the truth is this – that we have both changed. Just as Henry and I have both changed and accommodated ourselves to each other’s ways. He has learnt not to disturb me in my pensive moods; he opens one eye and glances up from the toecap of my shoe, and knows at once that the toecap of my shoe is where he
must remain while the mood is upon me, that he must not think of aspiring to rest his head upon my knee. While I, for my part, have learnt not to disturb his thoughtful moments by any sudden withdrawal of my foot from beneath his head.

  But now a different question arises: am I master or am I dog? I mean, figuratively speaking, in the relationship between me and the earldom. Am I the one sitting by the electric fire with the earldom drowsing on my brogues, or am I down upon the floor, with my chin supported by the tolerance and patience of the earldom above me?

  *

  Henry’s looking up at me now. I believe he’s a little anxious on my behalf. Yes! Deep waters we’re getting into here, Henry!

  Or is he thinking: ‘What surprises me is that I am Henry and he is the twelfth earl’?

  Back to sleep, Henry!

  *

  Today, at the fresh fish counter in Tesco’s, I met Wiggy Hight, buying prawns for those cats of his. ‘Hello, Pot,’ he said. It occurred to me that had the world been a slightly different place I should have been the one who was saying ‘Hello, Pot’. Then I should have been returning to that dreadful old ruin of his at Godforth and sitting in front of the fire thinking: ‘Goodness me, I’m the Marquess of Hight!’

  I was very struck by this, but kept my counsel. ‘Hello, Wiggy,’ I said. I was struck, though, very struck.

  *

  Well, let us imagine that things were arranged differently!

  I am imagining as an experiment that I am not an earl at all. Not even a marquess. I am … Who am I? Yes, I am Fred Upward! Now, here’s a laugh.

  Let’s see … I’m all skin and bone. I look down at my shoes. Are they Oxford brogues? Not at all, they’re mildewed carpet slippers. All right so far. The telephone rings. ‘Upward here,’ I say. Good. I’m doing rather well so far! Master of disguise!

 

‹ Prev