Amazing Disgrace

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘Does that mean you’re keen to start?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh yeah. Yeah, man. I wanna get going on this thing. Getting shot, you know? Makes yer think.’

  ‘Not about mortality, I hope.’

  ‘Give over, Gerry. Nah, just that there’s so much yer can’t do while waiting to heal up yer may as well write a book, know what I mean?’

  ‘Only too well, Nanty. We’d better get the formalities out of the way, then. Your agent contacts mine.’

  ‘Cool. But what about this other book you’re supposed to be doing for Millie?’

  ‘I promise that won’t get in the way. In fact, between you and me, I don’t think that will be going anywhere. I’m predicting her imminent change of heart about Neptune, though don’t quote me. She’s got herself in with a pretty flaky crowd.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Nanty equably, quite used to the idea of a sudden leap in midstream from the slippery back of one hobby horse on to that of another. I recall a similar equestrian feat he himself had been obliged to perform some years ago when his much-publicized, much-revered guru of the day, a sunny rogue from Benares with the usual robe, beard and mantras, failed in a foolishly undertaken test under laboratory conditions to make even a postage stamp levitate using the power of thought. This gentleman had previously convinced Nanty and another member of his band that within a month of embarking on his levitation course they would be able to rise two metres into the air while in the lotus position. The guru with the off-world powers was swiftly exposed as a businessman with offshore accounts. Nanty had leaped adroitly, although I can’t now remember which fresh steed he’d alighted on: I shall need to find out when researching his book. ‘Yer know,’ he says, ‘I always did think there was something a bit daft about those voices on the seabed. Stands to reason.’

  Dear, brainless child. Why is their reason the last thing these credulous creatures ever actually consult? Let alone their agents? Talking of which, with any luck Frankie will be able to secure me a pretty good fee for writing The Life of Brill, though it may not be as munificent as the one Millie and Lew were offering. I am prey now to chiller thoughts than those I managed until yesterday to suppress. Fifty years old, and still hacking out biographies of people I essentially despise, although often amicably? So be it, Samper. The toad pays Le Roccie’s bills and keeps you in suits of chocolate corduroy. Such parameters define life on earth, which makes the mind of a Divine Planner inscrutable indeed. However, the next item on today’s agenda might be evidence that the Divine Planner has a quaintly human need for light relief. It is nearly time for Samper’s appointment with Benjy Birnbaum, and no ‘erotic eventuality’ has taken place in the last twenty-four hours. I turn up on his doorstep in Beaumont Street with an apprehensive schoolchild’s feeling of being already scolded. I have to remind myself that not only am I about to turn fifty, but I’m also about to be billed by the good Benjy, meaning that he is in my employ.

  The same empty waiting room, the same aquarium, the same fish glooming in a fossil dream. Even the plastic swordfish, poised in its proctological whimsy, seems to have lost hope of ever plunging head-first into the rubber-suited diver, just as the diver’s doubloon-inspired gloat has frozen into everlasting indifference to all loot. It is not clear how wise it was to have placed a tableau in a waiting room that so efficiently expresses the hopelessness of waiting. Perhaps it was an unconscious comment on the necessity to patients of patience, and the Latin denominator of suffering common to both. Suddenly the matronly Virginia opens the door, not a moment too soon, and together we once again succeed in finding the doctor’s consulting room on the other side of the wall.

  Benjy is gracious, even warm, maybe because we no longer share the stiffness of strangers. Inevitably I interpret it as an attempt to soften the blow he is about to deliver.

  ‘Do please sit down,’ he says, waving me into one of those steel and black leather chairs that win design prizes and in which no one would ever instinctively sit. Today his nylon overall is pale blue and buttoned to the neck as though he anticipates another good drenching. His magnified glance passes damply over me. ‘Now, your results.’ The schoolchild feeling returns. Benjy Birnbaum flips through a sheaf of forms headed in red print. ‘Overall, I’m glad to say my original impression has been borne out and there’s nothing much to worry about.’ Great. ‘However …’ As you were, Samper … ‘however, there does seem to be a marked elevation in your moticular gammaparandrogens.’

  ‘Much as I suspected,’ I agree gamely. ‘Far too many of them.’

  The Doughboy lowers the reports and regards me through his thick lenses. His eyes swim like oysters on the half shell. ‘I’m happy our professional opinions coincide,’ he says amiably enough. ‘You know how awkward it can be when specialists disagree.’

  ‘No, come on, Doc. I’ve not the remotest idea what these vehicular pandagens are.’

  ‘Good. Then I can blind you with science. Basically, something in those pills you’ve been taking – rather nobly, as you describe it – has managed to raise a particular one of your hormones to a level more appropriate to adolescence. Sadly, as you have probably discovered, it won’t have had an equivalent effect on your libido. I fear that trick works only once in a lifetime. In the intervening years we have acquired too much experience to be able to kid ourselves that we’re still floating across life’s surface on a raft so thin we’re never more than a thought away from boundless and unplumbed deeps of erotic passion. In short, we’ve been there and done that many times too often. Hormones can do a lot of things but they can’t reinvent novelty. In the present instance your flesh appears willing but it is the spirit that’s weak. Would this summation describe the facts?’

  ‘All too well.’

  ‘You’re about to tell me of your failure to have brought about a climax as I requested yesterday?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of. At fifty it should take more than a doctor’s orders to set the pulses racing.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure the same would have been true at forty.’

  ‘And why not? Meanwhile, you’ve had no further recurrence of the priapism?’

  ‘Not a smidgin.’

  ‘I think we’ll just have one further look, if you wouldn’t mind slipping onto the … excellent … and just lowering the … perfect.’ Again he retreats to the dispenser on the wall and comes back with freshly sheathed hands. His fingers begin squeaking busily.

  Again the Dicktionary and other titles. This time I note Jackelby & Sprutt’s monograph The Ageing Male, which takes my spirits several notches lower.

  ‘Terrific,’ says Benjy Birnbaum. ‘Beautifully drained and flaccid. Tell me, as a curious medic, have you noticed any overall growth as a result of taking those pills? Honestly?’

  ‘I did for a while. Might that have been down to early onset priapism, or is that a new medical condition I’ve just invented?’

  ‘The pills could well have begun to affect your capacity to drain fully, yes.’

  ‘Well, the tape measure cannot lie. But I haven’t done any measuring recently. I’ve had rather a lot of other things on my mind.’

  ‘Like writing your article?’

  ‘Er … exactly. Difficult to get the tone right, you know. Manly frankness? Veiled discretion? Brutal realism?’ I climb off the trolley, zipping defensively.

  ‘Well, I really would suggest no more unknown pills, Mr Samper, not even in the interests of science or your readers. There’s a real danger that some of those rogue pharmaceuticals could cause lasting damage. Much better content yourself with the entirely adequate and even quite elegant appendage which nature has given you. Continue to keep a close eye on it and don’t hesitate to call me at the least sign of irregularity in its behaviour. Since you tell me you’re no longer a resident in the UK you should take these lab reports with you as a record. They are, after all, yours. I think you’ll find Virginia has the rest of your paperwork completely up to date.’

  ‘No
t expressed in guineas, you mean?’

  ‘No. But should you wish to pay in sovereigns I certainly won’t stand in your way. Failing that, I’m sure a conventional cheque will serve most adequately.’

  We take leave of each other, not too sadly, and soon I am standing once more on the doctor’s doorstep, this time more stunned than apprehensive. ‘Not cheap’ was Derek’s way of putting it and he wasn’t wrong. Still, Benjy Birnbaum’s is not a job I should care to have myself and he has definitely cheered me up by ruling out surgery. Overall, though, I’m left with an obscure sense of disquiet. Below-the-belt consultations undeniably represent a milestone. From now on such things will only become more frequent, the dysfunctions more gross, the paper-sheathed trolleys more familiar … Samper! Get a grip! Think ‘periodic checkup’ and quit moaning. And he did say the old veal was not only entirely adequate but elegant as well: quite a compliment from someone for whom genitalia are his daily meat and two veg. He would hardly be in the habit of overusing a word as precise as ‘elegant’. One couldn’t imagine him saying the same thing to Derek, to take an example at random. This is a thought worth singing about. Back to Durance Vile:

  The Fates are busy fating

  The moment of our dust.

  And e’en as doves are mating,

  Our cards fall as they must –

  They must, they must, they must!

  My progress northward along the east side of Beaumont Street is marked by my mellifluous rendition of this little-heard number. As I come abreast of a stone portico a large lady in beige appears at the top of the shallow flight of steps and hurries down, her face bruised with rage.

  ‘This is a hospital!’ she hisses. ‘Disgraceful! Noise like that! Private hospital! Entitled to peace! And quiet! Certain patients! Gravely ill!’

  With some difficulty I drag myself away from the Tower of London and return to the twenty-first century.

  ‘Aha,’ I say, looking up at the building’s dingy façade. ‘Isn’t this where duchesses come on dark nights to give birth to babies fathered by gamekeepers? Or am I wrong?’

  ‘Disgraceful! Din! Hospital! Some people …!’

  Spirits appreciably lifted, I saunter onwards to Derek’s perfumed pad to make myself a well-deserved cup of tea.

  21

  Ten days drag by, leaving me chafing. It is all well and good that I have apparently overcome the whole costly Pow-r-TabsTM episode, but the ads – and worse – are still there each time I turn on my computer. How far have we sunk when we receive letters from total strangers beginning ‘Hey, cute dolls moan from harsh insertions. Click to hear’? Even more incredible that we now take it for granted, wearily. Apart from that, I suppose these are days of some minor importance to me since the events have direct consequences for the future of Samper Enterprises Inc. However, as I predicted these with flawless accuracy they lack the interest that might otherwise have compensated for my enforced stay.

  First of all, stout Joan of the Sealyham terriers phones to tell me she has passed on my message to Millie about attempts being made to raise a container of mystic voices from the seabed off the Canaries. According to her, a long and thoughtful silence fell at the other end of the phone, as well it might. This is more than could be said for my conversation with Joan, which is sporadically interrupted by terrific outbursts of barking and rich naval expletives. For the life of me I can’t understand why the unexceptional fact of being lesbian should so often entail living in conditions of canine mayhem. It makes ordinary human intercourse so difficult. However, I’m confident enough of how Millie will react to Joan’s news to be satisfied we’ve reached a turning point. As soon as I’ve rung off I find myself extemporizing a triumphant little song:

  Amazing Disgrace! How vile the cries

  That plague poor Millie’s ears!

  Whom once they loved they’ll now despise,

  They praised whom now they’ll jeer!

  Next, Frankie rings in some alarm to say that Brill’s agent has been in touch to draw up a contract for the boy band leader’s autobiography. I owe Frankie an apology for not having kept him abreast of developments. I pay this debt and explain that I’m ninety-nine per cent certain Millie Cleat is about to have a change of heart where her public role is concerned, and this in turn will almost certainly mean her pulling out of our book project. I commiserate with him because, after all, Frankie takes ten per cent plus VAT of whatever I earn and a Millie! sequel would have kept the office in paperclips for about seven thousand years, allowing for inflation.

  ‘You’re sure it’s dead?’ he asks plaintively, from the sound of it coughing up live pulmonary tissue.

  ‘It has to be.’ I recount what has happened. ‘Just wait, Frankie. Have faith. The old fraud’s got no alternative but to recant.’

  ‘You realize Millie!’s selling a streak? Champions are already reprinting. Another thirty thousand in hardback and looks like building.’

  ‘If we’re not careful we’ll be earning out our advance.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? The woman’s a national institution. And this isn’t even the proper Christmas market yet. It’s such a pity about that sequel,’ he adds wistfully.

  ‘Not to the man who was going to have to write it, surrounded by Neptune’s courtiers, coral huggers and people worried about whether clams might be more self-aware than limpets. I’ve already gone the extra mile for Cleat, Frankie. That chapter I added about her spiritual depth is not only a masterpiece of tactful exaggeration, it says everything that can be said about a small, ageing woman with one arm confronting the ocean’s grand immensity and discovering that she is a small, ageing woman with one arm. Not to mention a dysfunctional family in Pinner. Anyway, Frankie, if you ask me Nanty Riah’s a damned good prospect. I wouldn’t care to say whether Brill is more or less of a celebrity than Millie, would you?’

  ‘No. Different publics, but equally mega. Actually, Brill probably has the edge internationally. And he’s got the kids. I doubt if too many teenagers see a one-armed sailing granny as a role model.’

  ‘There you are, then. It’s up to you to cut a deal that will keep us all in paperclips to the grave and beyond.’

  I can’t remember if it was that night or the following morning a shocked nation learned that on the advice of her doctors Millie Cleat was reluctantly resigning her position as the titular head of Neptune. She gave a careful interview to the Guardian in which she let slip having some mild misgivings about the direction being taken by certain younger activists working on behalf of the marine environment. She wondered (and here I could imagine a single brown forefinger laid pensively along her chin, another thespian gesture she’d picked up), she did wonder whether a small minority of the Deep Blue movement might not be risking their credibility by adopting certain controversial, even extreme, positions at a time when the urgent need was surely to unite blah-blah since only by harnessing concerned public opinion blah-blah hope to stave off disaster.

  This was adroitly done as, with the spate waters of the river of lost credibility foaming dangerously around her suddenly limping thoroughbred, Millie leaped lightly onto the broad back of an exculpatory Suffolk Punch and lumbered safely to the shore. Just in time, too. For within a day Adrian called via Inmarsat link to announce that the container had just been retrieved, its babbling contents silenced, and that a great hush had at last fallen in the water column. Thanks to Millie’s bareback – not to say barefaced – equestrianism, our plot to leak the Neptune-on-the-seabed story to the press is now in abeyance until I can see Adrian again and we can re-plan our campaign. However, the story’s sheer absurdity ensures it will surface sooner or later. Old Millie has done a good job of getting clear in the nick of time, leaving the Brilovs and Tammeris and Debras to face the general derision when it comes. I fancy they will soon know what it feels like to cower beneath a torrential downpour of ciderpresses.

  *

  Once my contract with Nanty has been drawn up and signed there is at last nothing further
to keep me in London. It is now November and I have been away the best part of a month: a fact brought home to me the moment I retrieve my slightly dusty car from Pisa airport car park. Really, at that price the damned machine might as well have been lounging in the matrimonial suite of a provincial hotel on full board and room service. As usual, my mood improves as I gain altitude on the winding road up to Casoli and beyond. In my absence the forests have changed colour, leaves are thinning, the dark bones showing through. Another year passing, goddamn it. My house when I reach it glows in the afternoon sun but inside it has the dankness of a stone building that has not been aired. I bustle about, throwing open shutters and windows and laying in wood for the fire. By the time I have unpacked I need to close the windows again. At this altitude the waning afternoon sunlight is thin and there is a sharp dampness in the air outside.