Injury Time
Page 18
The authority on social correctness retained by one of our leading broadsheets rules that it is not essential for the butler to learn Dutch since ‘as purveyors of an impenetrable language, the Dutch have long mastered our tongue’. On the other hand, it would be ‘an extremely effective social gesture’, helping to integrate the butler into the life of the Netherlands (‘Live?’ proclaimed Prince Axel, literary creation of the penurious nineteenth-century French count, Villiers de I’Isle-Adam: ‘The servants will do that for us’), and moreover he might on occasion need to deal with persons whose English is not of the usual high standard. There is no indication of the butler’s views on the question. He knows his place, and it’s not in the newspapers.
Oh no? A fortnight later the butler appears in the same column, explaining with admirable lucidity that his problem is different and more delicate. The people he concerns himself with are mostly accomplished speakers of English, but they have difficulty understanding him because of his Scouse accent. He is proud to be a Liverpudlian and wouldn’t have dreamt of trying to ‘talk proper’ when working in Britain. However, he now thinks he should learn to speak English more clearly. At the same time, he is worried, especially at his age, that if he changes the way he expresses himself he may turn into a figure of fun.
The judicious mentor, no doubt happy to exercise his rare skills, advises him to seek tuition that will render his speech ‘less parochial’ and more readily intelligible to the Dutch. This would entail diluting the Scouse flavouring without losing it altogether. A little easier, I imagine, than attaining proficiency in Dutch. But what a treasure this butler must be! (If he exists.)
Fears have been circumspectly voiced that the English are becoming a mongrel race. Yes, a bit scruffy, snarling at passers-by, getting kicked in the ribs. Still, better mongrel than pure-bred. But don’t count on such multicultural joys in store as bare-breasted clog-dancers or the Kama Sutra arranged as pantomime. Religion is the better – at least the bigger – part of some cultures, so watch out. You may come to wish that multiculturalism resulted in nothing worse than culturelessness.
Addressing themselves to my ‘literary estate’, Gale Research Inc. thought me more dead than I was. In a communication dated 7 December 2001, Cornhill Direct thinks me more alive than I am. ‘Dear Mr Enright, Why is this date important? 1st January 1941. It’s your birthday of course. So let me wish you Happy Birthday in advance.’
There is, Cornhill Direct informs me, another reason why that date is important. ‘Based on your age of 60, a £14 monthly premium gives you £2,189 of life cover.’ In fact, I’m far too old to avail myself of Cornhill’s Senior Security Plan. Reports of my (relative) youthfulness have been exaggerated.
The young man at Cornhill who takes my call shows no surprise. Information on likely clients, he says, is supplied by an independent market research outfit. Nor does he show any remorse, though he expresses temperate regret that I am excluded from the Senior Security Plan and the ‘welcome gift’ that goes with it. He promises to remove me, the supposed me, from the Cornhill computer.
A picture in the Times Literary Supplement is captioned ‘A Ukrainian woman catches pigeons for her Christmas dinner in Kiev’s central square.’ A Ukrainian subscriber writes that Ukrainians do not eat pigeon, and the caption ought to read ‘A Ukrainian woman feeding pigeons in a Kiev street.’ Let’s hope a British ambassador assured Ukrainians and pigeons that no one would believe the printed story.
In 1936 a German scholar pointed to Heine’s shallow knowledge of the German language and the disfiguring effect of residual Yiddish. For example, the opening line of ‘Die Loreley’: ‘Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten’ – a true German would have written ‘Ich weiss nicht, was es bedeuten soil’. The scholar omitted to mention that even then Heine still went astray, deluding himself that ‘bedeuten’ rhymed with ‘Zeiten’.
A little later, the poem – so popular, so German, that it couldn’t possibly be ignored, or written by a Jew – was represented as a folksong. Far from defective grammar and false rhymes betraying its infelicitous provenance, these were evidence of authentic folksiness. Heine must have written better than he knew: he invented an instant tradition.
Where did that endearing television comedy, The Last of the Summer Wine, find its name? Someone, it now emerged, was claiming that the phrase, in French of course, occurred somewhere in Proust’s extensive oeuvre. Some ten years before, when my wife and I were revising the translation of À la recherche du temps perdu in accordance with the second Pléiade edition of the text (1987–9), we liaised with Rowena Skelton-Wallace at Chatto and Windus, an intelligent and helpful young woman. It was she who rang to tell me of this development and invite me to call in at her office. There she showed me a large, roughly shaped cylinder of rock on which, she said, every word ever written by Proust was inscribed, somewhat in the manner of a compact disk. Would I like to take it home and study it? As Proust’s long-time English publisher, Chatto would be tickled to know where and in what connection the phrase came, if indeed the claim was true. A fascinating little job, I thought, searching for the words ‘le dernier vin de l’été’ or whatever. I tipped the heavy rock into a rucksack, slung the latter over my shoulder, and set off for home.
There the dream ended. A happy dream, invoking happier days, linking the apparently artless and lowbrow with the ostensibly rarefied and highbrow.
‘T. S. Eliot was gay – official’: on front cover of The Oldie, January 2002. ‘How gay was Hitler?’: on front cover of the Times Literary Supplement, 11 January 2002. That ought to put paid to this sad perversion of a once cheerful little adjective.
At a time when dysphemisms have put euphemisms to flight, and a spade is called the gravedigger’s accomplice, it is rather nice to catch a glimpse – just a brief glimpse, you understand, one does not hold with ivory towers – of the parallel universe of Billy Collins, the American poet, in which a history teacher is solicitous to protect his pupils’ innocence. The Ice Age, he tells them, was really just the Chilly Age when everyone had to wear sweaters, the Stone Age turned into the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways common at the time, the Spanish Inquisition was simply an outbreak of questions such as ‘How far is it from here to Madrid?’ and ‘What do you call the matador’s hat?’, and ‘The War of the Roses took place in a garden,/ and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom/ on Japan’.
(And what is called a playground is a ground where children play innocent games. It is noted in passing – if not by the teacher himself – that when the bell rings for playtime, the pupils soon divide into bullies and bullied, and the strong torment the weak. Parallels meet.)
Extract from Wandsworth Social Services, Occupational Therapy Assessment Report:
‘CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS (including Language): No cultural considerations mentioned during initial assessment.’
‘COMMUNICATION: Mr Enright communicates his needs and wishes clearly in English. He wears reading glasses and is able to write with difficulty using a pen with a thick grip.’
‘ACTIVITY: Mr Enright is able to independently transfer on/off his bed … Mr Enright does not comply with Physiotherapist’s recommendations to use a walking frame.’
‘LEISURE Interests/Hobbies: Mr Enright writes books and visits the local library regularly. He watches television and enjoys reading.’
Therapy has developed its own dialect. Nouns officiate as verbs, transitive verbs as intransitive. ‘He fatigues easily’, ‘mobilizes slowly’, ‘adapted cutlery to be provided, after trialing different types’. The Department is obliged to send the client a copy of the assessment. Seeing oneself as others see one – in this case a tall Valkyrie-like young woman, bossy but pleasant with it – gives the subject a weird sensation, as if a short sharp earthquake has jolted him out of his normal cubby-hole in the universe. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Slowly I am approaching the end of the final draft of this book. Bits of it, I think, are rather good; I say as much to a coup
le of old friends who drop in. That night I dream the book is finished, falling naturally into three parts. I pass it to an unidentified, distinguished-looking person, prominent in the literary world, so the dream lets me know, and influential among publishers. Having read it, he tells me with icy clarity: ‘The first part is boring. The second part is rather more boring. The third is more boring still.’ The words ring in my ears as I awake.
In PN Review 138 John Killick, once editor of a small press, quotes an aspiring genius who came his way: ‘Here is Part One of My Diary; with all its imperfections I make the claim that it contains Great Poetry. I dare aver a memorable verse on each page. I am prepared to make cuts where necessary, and why I sent you so many pages is because I like the ninth verse (see here). Page 170 is the climax of my poem, though I have much to say afterwards, and will continue to do so until one day I am too good not to be published.’ Mr Killick remarks that in his experience letters of this sort are always written by men. Presumably women have been too oppressed in the past and are too mature in the present to permit themselves any such excesses of self-admiration and advertisement.
Years ago our daughter planted an apple pip in a pot and it grew into a sapling, too tall for her flat. It was transplanted to our garden, where it flourished, amazing everyone privileged to see it, and in the fullness of time bearing apples, more and more each year. My wife, a confirmed nature lover, doted on it, and it thrived on her ministrations. This year strong winds blew the tree over. When my wife tried to lift it up, it fell back on her, knocking her to the ground. ‘Red in tooth and claw,’ I said, as she washed off the blood. I said it to myself. (But for my wife, not a word of this journal would have been written. Literally – yes, a proper place for that weighty adverb – not a single word.)
Time, perhaps, to look again at Musil’s warning that you cannot be angry with your own time without harming yourself (a warning Ulrich never allowed to interfere with his pleasures), and at Horace’s complaint about complaining, on this occasion invoked by Matthew Bramble in Humphry Clinker (1771), and passed to me by Tobias Smollett’s biographer, Jeremy Lewis. Thus: ‘There is another point, which I would much rather see determined; whether the world was always as contemptible, as it appears to me at present? – If the morals of mankind have not contracted an extraordinary degree of depravity, within these thirty years, then must I be infected with the common vice of old men, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti; or, which is more probable, the impetuous pursuits and avocations of youth have formerly hindered me from observing those rotten parts of human nature, which now appear so offensively to my observation.’
As I copy this out, the BBC announces a new sitcom: ‘Reassuringly offensive’.
It never rains but it pours … One of the truest of clichés, elaborated in the soldierly words of our national bard: ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies,/ But in battalions.’ Our much loved cat, sick with liver cancer, had to be taken on ‘that last fated hateful journey to the vet’ (a line of Gavin Ewart’s), and put to sleep (another cliché, and euphemism – thank God for them). A few days later I slipped on the recently polished kitchen floor: lift-off was smooth; landing ungainly, and so a broken rib. (What can’t be cured must be endured – which is a relief.) Then my wife had to go for an endoscopy; she always accompanies me on these hospital trips, and the least I could do was accompany her. We turned up at St George’s, she the frail invalid, me the macho bodyguard. We were there in the unit for several hours, the waiting-room was stuffy. My wife sailed through the endoscopy. I had a dizzy fit, and had to be pushed in a chair to the thronging entrance hall, where flowers could be bought and cabs ordered, my wife trotting manfully behind the porter. Roles reversed; the female of the species more lively than the male. In age and sickness pride is repeatedly injured, which must be hard on those not already used to it, whether in waking life or in dreams. Happily my amour propre was never a passionate love affair.
Then something happened that almost made it, some of it, worthwhile. The young black cabbie allocated to us was sweet-natured and kind-hearted, above and beyond the call of duty or of any conceivable tip. (He didn’t want one.) Every cloud has a silver lining? But this was an avatar, as if some aspect of deity had chosen that moment and that place to descend among us.
And this would be a good note to end on. On the brink of sudden happy tears.
– Were it not that life, or whatever, goes on. Colonoscopies show that my wife has a suspect (‘pre-malignant’) polyp. (As I write, it remains on bail.) A biopsy reveals that chemotherapy has left me rather worse off, the trouble having spread to the prostate. St George’s hands me over to a new hospital, the Royal Marsden in Chelsea, where I receive a new name, ‘Enbright’. (Soon rectified.)
Apparently I’m not up to any taxing treatment (fine by me), so they’ll give me a dose of radiotherapy once a week. Am quizzed on my first visit by two incredibly beautiful and bright young women doctors.
(Time to finish writing a book, eh? A freakish excuse for wanting to stay alive. Must be genuine. What’s it called? That’s a funny title. Poor you. Injuries done to other things too, like language? Oh.)
– By shrinking the tumours the treatment may procure extra time.
– The treatment is time-consuming and tiring.
– Swings and roundabouts. It’s a bit of a toss-up, you see.
(God is his own interpreter, and he may not like the sound of the book.)
The dazzling doctors – they seem to have all the time in the world – lead me through a lengthy consent form, detailing possible side-effects. As an erotic experience, out of the ordinary: ‘… impotence’ (remember how Sima Qian got to finish his book), ‘… loss of pubic hair’ (no occasion for public mourning).
Never a dull moment, hardly ever.
‘Dr X will see you now’: a smiling nurse leads us to a shining room. ‘Please wait here.’ After weeks of preparation, scan after scan, I am about to meet the much talked-of team leader. And in bounces Dr X, a middle-aged woman, waving a clipboard and beaming broadly. ‘Splendid!’ she cries, ‘We are so pleased with you! Your PSA is way down the scale, far lower than we could have hoped for.’ (PSA, I later discovered, stands for Prostate Specific Antigen test; the lower the reading, the brighter the outlook.) Could this be me, a well man? ‘It shows how marvellously well the treatment has worked.’
Reluctantly, I hold up my hand: ‘I’m sorry but I haven’t had any treatment yet.’ She freezes for a moment, then stares at the clipboard. ‘You’re not Mr Payne?’ ‘Well, no,’ I start, but she has fled. ‘Come back, Doctor,’ I call after her, and ‘Yes, yes,’ I hear fading in the distance.
But she never did come back. Never. Just my luck, to alienate the boss at first contact – merely by not being happy Mr Payne.
Used to read the newspaper … Used to read the headlines in the newspaper … Used to read the first two or three words of the headlines … Have given up reading.
Expelled from the relative luxury of the RMH, the home of Dr X, and back at St George’s, in the oncological ward. An ebullient old codger in the next bed has lost a pound coin during the night. The following morning he nags on about the coin to all who come within range. Eventually a nurse seeks to cheer him up: his wife will give him another pound. ‘Dare say she would,’ he booms, ‘but she’s dead.’
‘There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth’: Huckleberry Finn’s opinion of Mr Mark Twain. For all the allure of unhappiness, and its marketability, there will still be chroniclers tempted to alleviate the truth in the name of hope, even to submit a happier ending.
‘And therefore, Reader, I am myself the subject-matter of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, farewell.’
Montaigne – with the nonchalance of a born gentleman – placed his address ‘To the Reader’, his adieu, at the very forefront, the beginning of his book.
INDEX
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nbsp; The page references in this index correspond to the print edition from which this ebook was created, and clicking on them will take you to the the location in the ebook where the equivalent print page would begin. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Ackroyd, Peter, 157
Acton, Eliza: Modern Cookery, 11
advertisements, 31; see also personal advertisements
age, old, 6, 21, 30, 31, 47, 69, 111, 137, 151, 166
Albright, Madeleine, 110
Alexandria, 144, University of (Farouk I University), 67
Allen, Fergus: ‘To be Read Before Being Born’, 73
Alzheimer, Alois, 21
Alzheimer’s disease, 21, 73
American Express, 152–3
Amis, Martin, 73; Experience, 155
Aristotle, 128
Arnold, Matthew: Culture and Anarchy, 2–3, 153; ‘Stanzas in Memory of the Author of “Obermann”’, 105
Arts Council, 10
Atherton, Mike, 14
Athill, Diana: Stet, 77
Auden, W. H., 123;
‘September 1, 1939’, a
‘Short’, 130–1
Augarde, Tony: The Oxford Guide to Word Games, 91
Austen, Jane, 22–3, 61, 130
authors and publishers, 11 122;
see also Oxford University Press; writers and writing
B., Dr, 96–7, 136
Bagehot, Walter, 99
Balzac, Honoré de, 128
Barbellion, W. N. P. (Bruce Frederick Cummings), 4–5, 10–11; The Journal of a Disappointed Man, 11
Barnes, Simon, 39
Barthes, Roland, 62
Baudelaire, Charles, 52, 131;
Journaux Intimes, 132; Mon coeur mis à nu, 32
BBC Radio 3, 56
Beckham, David, 142–3