I am sure St Jerome was closer to the truth, I said. Why wouldn’t nun’s farts be as vigorous and hearty as anyone else’s? Given their diet. Else why would they tickle so lasciviously?
And smelly, said Flora. Not an attractive thing in a biscuit. Or maybe a sign of holiness is odourless farts.
What fun we had. How we delighted in one another’s words. Sitting in front of this page, writing down the words that so bound us, so enchanted us, I cannot decide quite how I feel: is there more pleasure in recalling them, and the old happy times they embody, than misery in recording their loss? If I could live in that past, in my head, I could be a soberly contented man. But you cannot control what you think, and though so far it is the happy times I am transcribing here, in my head they are inextricably bound with grief.
Leonie is not sitting on my page today. She is asleep by the window. A champion sleeper is my tubby little cat. There is a patch of sun on the floor and she has found it. That is one of her gifts. To find sun. Even when it is not cold, like today’s high summer, she finds the sun.
For in her morning orisons she loves the sun and the sun loves her.
For she is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
Dear Christopher Smart. I love his mysterious utterance.
This script is fading, because my pen is running out of ink. I keep the bottle tightly closed against the ink monkey. A little creature smaller than a hand, with fur that is black and silky and soft as down. Its eyes are scarlet. The ink monkey is fond of ink. It sits with its forepaws crossed waiting while you write. When you have finished it drinks what is left of the ink and then sits back, happy and quiet.
But this is older technology even than mine, with my fountain pen. It needs an inkwell and a dipping pen, possibly a quill, or perhaps a brush. I remember the inkwells at school when I was a small boy, the little bluish china pots each sunk into its hole at the right-hand top of the desks (who knows about inkwells any more, who is not as old as me?) and how there never was any ink left when you came back after a short absence; the ink monkey must have flourished there. The ink monitors had to get the big bottle of ink out of the press and refill them.
Perhaps I should leave the cap of the ink bottle unscrewed, so the ink monkey could drink his fill. He comes from China, from the north, and my report of him is dated 1791.
I should be sad to lose this pen. The writing it does for me is small and well formed, quite round. I have another which writes large and scrawly, with blots, and does not please at all. And another with upstrokes and downstrokes, quite calligraphic, that I use for notes, the polite kind. Now Leonie is awake and comes stalking across the desk. She bats at my pen, which she knows I wind across the page purely for her entertainment. Why else would I make such intoxicating curves. Silly girl, you have blotted your own name, it would be illegible did I not know it was itself. It is necessary to stop before all the words smudge out of existence. I pick up a toy I keep for her, a little Russian painted carving of an axeman and a chicken, fastened with string to a wooden ball. When you manipulate it so that the ball rotates the chicken pecks, up, down, the axe rises, falls, and you think that you will be able to organise it so that the axe beheads the chicken but you can’t, when the chicken pecks down the axe is up. It’s inexorable. Down comes the axe, up goes the chicken. Forever safe. Leonie watches with her yellow eyes, mesmerised it seems, then leans in to bat. But she cannot change the fate, of the chicken to survive, of the axeman to fail. When she gets bored she puts her head against my forehead and gently butts it, purring, and breathes on me with her fishy breath.
Montaigne said, When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn’t amusing herself more with me than I with her.
Sometimes Flora cooked fish for us. Always starting with whole ones, filleting them with her sharp skilful knife. I would stand in her kitchen and watch her. I remember their anguished faces; vividly they are present to me. Yet that anguish I know is simply anatomy, gaping mouths curving downwards, glassy eyes. They did not know grief, and death had probably come kindly. The fishes of the deep, gazing at us with impenetrable eyes, know nothing of tragic fates.
But hindsight taints. There was a golden time, and with its own time that put such value upon itself that it seemed so much longer than it was. I have been writing this diary now for rather longer than its events took to happen. There were nuns’ farts and long gazes, and words, endlessly spinning, and us weaving them into conversations of rare and precious cloth that we carelessly put away in the cupboards of our minds because there was always more where that came from. And her work and mine. Of course, that is one reason I wanted us to marry, to live in the one house, so we could spend more time on our work. But time was at that time almost sufficient, or no, not sufficient, but there was the promise that one day there would be; in my Augustine study I was happy, I knew I was making progress.
On my wall I had a Celtic poem. St Jerome said the Celtic language of Ankara – the Turkish Ankara – could be understood in Northern Gaul at the end of the fourth century. I find that immensely moving. Christendom in a sentence. I do not know about Ireland, which is where my poem comes from, but I do not see why not. Celtic that could travel comfortably comprehended from Turkey to France would not get lost by Ireland. I’ve still got the poem. It’s called ‘Pangur Ban’. I copied it out because it was so much me and Leonie, my brown Burmese small slender beauty, not the present tubby little earthling, though the poem is her too. The cat is a he; I translated Christopher Smart’s poem into the feminine pronoun, in this one I just think, she. The heroism applies. The writer would have been a monk, perhaps only male cats were allowed in the monastery. As in certain Cambridge colleges, I believe. In the past, of course. Here it is, Pangur Ban, cat and emblem.
Pangur Ban
I and Pangur Ban my cat
’Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
’Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will
He too plies his simple skill.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way.
Oftentimes my keen thought’s set Takes a meaning in its net.
’Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
’Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light.
And so do I. So do I, I said to myself.
Well. Leonie is a great mouser. But I no longer see myself turning darkness into light. The monk who tried all his little wisdom against the wall of knowledge did it for the glory of God. Whereas I
well, hubris is maybe a word. I did it for my own glory. Perhaps not glory, I need not be so harsh, but for my own intellectual desire.
Perhaps my mother was right; had I been a Jesuit I might have found sufficient mental exercise to keep me in the religious life. The Franciscans were not the greatest thinkers. But again no. I need not send my regrets back so far. That would be to lose even more of what is precious to me; I cannot afford to do that, even if ignorance might have left me happy.
Sometimes I remember the colours in my Venetian study, a certain fresh green, glowing as an emerald, and particular reds, vermilion, coral, or the pale biscuit colour of the gem in a cameo, colours so delicate yet so rich, and equally in their naming for precious things. And then I can hardly bear to look at my present feeble walls, the blank bagged concrete tastefully bland, oh how I could spit out those words if I spoke them aloud, the blank bagged blandness, and I gaze at my bottle of red ink and think of casting it over the wall, the way the ink would soak in and stain it, but then I remember blood running down and I refrain.
There�
�s a picture of St Jerome, by Caravaggio I think, a naked brawny hermit in his study, wrestling with the word of God. He has on one of his open books a skull. And so do I, so do I.
19
Clovis sleeping in his hidden place against the warm air vents of the library woke suddenly to find Gwyneth sitting beside him, not looking at him, just sitting waiting. He felt a small pang which he expected to be irritation but which in fact seemed pleasure; he was happy to see her.
I’ve brought some food, she said, unpacking a plastic bag of pots, picking their lids off. There was salmon, and a piece of very pink lamb, a lobe of brain crumbed golden brown, something that might have been tripe, a length of black pudding. Small portions, but lovingly separated.
Not exactly breakfast, is it.
Food’s food, doesn’t matter when you eat it.
True.
He took a mouthful of salmon. It had a quite spicy crust on one side and inside was rare, hardly cooked, creamy and quite raw. There was a grassy flavour of dill and the sweetness of onion. The flavours were strong and intense; he was interested to see that he could still so easily recognise them. Mostly he ate fruit, bread, packets of biscuits, cheese sometimes, a pot of yoghurt, a paper of fish and chips from the Fisho if he was pushing the boat out. He took a bite of black pudding; it was so richly excessively savoury. Almost unbearable. There was some green gloop, a puree of vegetable, broccoli it turned out to be, and a paler one, Brussels sprouts.
These your spoils from the restaurant?
Yup.
Gwyneth was eating. She wasn’t talkative this morning. She sat in her moods like a saint in a glory, untouchable. He looked at her curiously; he was happier now she had her big grey knitted coat, she didn’t look so pinched and bloodless. There was some bread in the bag, too, and he bit on that; a little of this intensely flavoured food was enough. It was somehow greedy. His stomach might turn and say, Stop.
I suppose this takes you back, said Gwyneth. Now she was taking small occasional mouthfuls. He wondered when she would tell him what was on her mind.
Well, you know, it doesn’t really. I never tasted food in quite this way before. Just glugged it down and yapped on about whatever was on our minds. It was a greedy kind of life. And I suppose I was a rather greedy kind of person. Fat. Well, a lot fatter. He knew he was lean now, he could feel the bones of his ribs and pelvis, the muscles stringy under tight flesh. I suppose, now, I eat to live … it’s not an entertainment any more.
There was an attack last night, she said.
Clovis looked at her.
On the willow sculpture. Those same kids, the ones that were going to rape me. With that fucking baseball bat they go around with. Baseball, my arse.
You saw them?
I was talking to Joe. The guy who puts the food out. Flora, that’s her name, she’s the one I saw dancing, you know how the restaurant is like one of them lanterns from the olden days, you know those I Am the Way, the Truth and the Light lanterns in the Jesus picture books? at Sunday School? and I saw her, one night, dancing. Churchy music it was, too. She was real upset. About the screen. He, the bloke, the one she was dancing with, he called the police. Joe said we would be witnesses.
Did you talk to the police?
No way. I was outta there. Thin air. And I thought, I should tell you, we better lie low for a bit, because I think they might be hanging round.
Lie low, you think. Right. We’ll go up the other side of the bridge. Up near the wetlands, Oaks Estate way. You can disappear up there. Clovis began to put the lids back on the pots. We’ll take the food. Have a picnic.
Gwyneth stared at him. Then she gave a funny choking snort of laughter. As though like a sneeze it had suddenly pushed itself out, found a route for itself it didn’t know was there.
All right, she said. A picnic.
Is the sculpture ruined?
It’s bashed about. Looks wonky. This morning there was a man looked as though he was trying to fix it.
You reckon it was the kids? The ones who threatened you?
Yeah, for sure.
Who are these kids? Where do they come from?
They’re very okay. They’re fucking nice kids. All the right gear, you know, the Nikes, the Calvin Kleins, all the stuff with proper names you have to have. They go to college.
How do you know?
I just know. All right?
So … Clovis hesitated. What are they on about? Rape. Trashing screens.
Gwyneth shrugged. Having fun.
Is it lack of love, would you say, loveless families … Or is it that they are quite simply wicked.
Wicked! Gwyneth snorted. They’d like that. You know what wicked means. That means something’s really terrific. Wicked. She breathed the word in two yearning syllables. They think they’re wick-ed, all right.
You know that’s not what I mean. I mean bad, evil. I don’t understand evil, I don’t think anybody does, I don’t know how to talk about it. But these boys, you’d have to say, they just seem naturally so, somehow.
Like Daryl. But he was a drunk, you could blame the drink. Though I suppose you could say it was more fun fucking me than Mum, she’d be asleep and snoring like a pig before she even got to bed. Once he told her she had a cunt like a bookie’s bag.
Clovis screwed up his face. I wish you hadn’t said that.
An’ I don’t? Wish wish wish. What the fuck good’s wishing? You could blame the drink for what he said too, as well as what he done.
So you think there is some blaming needed? Who is to blame for these boys?
Maybe it is the way they are. Maybe they have cruel hearts.
That is what I would like to know. Cruel hearts. Are there such things?
What else?
Is it drugs that make them behave so badly? Is that what’s to blame?
Look who’s blaming now. Nah, I don’t reckon, drugs don’t do that. I reckon it’s because they have cruel hearts, they are not good people, they don’t have good parents.
You believe in goodness then.
Yeah – don’t you?
I suppose I do. Yes.
They set off. Clovis looked at Gwyneth. Might I suggest – a bit of a wash of the face? The aim is to look eccentric, not derelict. There’s a fountain over there. Always a fountain when you need it, in the garden city.
She frowned, dipped her fingers in the water, rubbed at her face. Okay?
He wet his fingers and rinsed the places she’d missed. She pushed into his hand like a cat, then grabbed his arm and dried her face on his sleeve.
He suddenly felt extraordinarily happy. A picnic, he said to himself. A picnic.
They went in a wide arc, to avoid The Point, around the library, keeping as far under trees as possible, past the government buildings, through Barton and then down to the lake on the other side of the bridge. Beyond the old powerhouse sites, the destroyed printing works, behind the railway station, was waste ground. There were strange bare huts, or shacks, with glassless windows, Gwyneth wondered what they were. Hides, said Clovis, for bird–watchers. There was a lot of dry reedy dead-looking swamp, which might come good again in the summer. Though what would happen to the dead sticks of the reeds? With a bit of clambering they could find a sunny sheltered spot. The water ruffled and plopped against the bank, and there were willows trailing in it. Their long whippy leafless fronds were russet gold colours, and the grass underneath the colour of claret. They could hear kookaburras laughing.
It would be nice in summer, with the leaves on the willows, said Gwyneth, they’d hang down and make secret caves for us to hide in.
There’s something about willows and summer, said Clovis. What is it? Processions. Girls in white dresses, with willow wands. Fertility, that’s what it was. Some movie or other.
Fertility, who needs it.
You either do or you don’t, said Clovis, and both equally badly. Wasn’t recent, this procession, some old ritual. The country, well, England.
Clovis had put the f
ood in his faded blue Kathmandu backpack, along with the bladder from a cask of wine and two glasses. One of the glasses got broken along the way, so they had to share. Down to two, now, said Clovis. We can’t have any more visitors.
After they’d eaten they had a bit of a snooze but then the sun started to come and go behind clouds and the breeze off the water was cold, so Clovis stood up and did some stamping and arm-waving exercises. The sky was full of monumental clouds and he could hear a solitary aeroplane, with propellers softly burring, though he could not see it. The inky green water trembled.
Lying low, he said. You could get bored with it.
Like life, said Gwyneth.
It’s something you have to do. I’m not used to having to do things.
Gwyneth heaved a sigh, huge, theatrical, melodramatic even. But full of pathos as well. Clovis looked at her, firmly. What are you going to do, Gwyneth? You can’t stay here forever.
Gwyneth said, What are you going to do, Clovis? You can’t stay here forever.
Clovis was shocked. He thought it a question he could ask, that did not apply to him.
I’m living, he said. I’m being alive. I am content. I’ll know when it’s time to do something. In the meantime, I’m living. You don’t get bored with that, not like lying low, which is a distinctly low-level activity. What I am is free. You’re not free when you’re lying low. It’s somebody else’s agenda. What about you?
Gwyneth squinted away across the lake. She shrugged. Clovis was about to say, You’re a fugitive. On the run. You can’t hide forever, you’ve got to make some decisions, maybe you should face the music, get it over and done with. All these clichés ran through his head, so that he thought, that’s Dutch uncle talk, whatever that means, while Gwyneth squinted across the lake. Do I want to talk like a Dutch uncle? Do I need to? What is a Dutch uncle, anyway.
Suddenly she said, Let’s cut some willow wands. Got a knife?
Clovis did, a French folding knife with a handle of ebony and brass, his precious Laguiole, bought for a great deal of money in Paris, and wasn’t sure that he wanted to cut willow wands with it. Gwyneth was pulling at him, so he ended up standing under the weeping branches of the willow. This one, she said, this, this, swiftly choosing them all of a thickness, showing him what length to cut, and then pulling at the thin fronds to use for knots. The Laguiole was a peasant knife, with a spike for letting the gas out of bloated animals; he hoped it could cope with willow wands.
The Point Page 14