I laid a hand on his warm headstone as I stood up and the Red Admiral that was still hanging from the letters of his name clapped its wings noiselessly and was gone in a flash of crimson and velvet. An old rogue, I heard myself think affectionately before at once correcting the thought. No, old rogues are a purely literary trope: colourful sinners we indulgently forgive in order to avoid the difficult commitment of actual love. And actual love was what I felt for Jayjay.
Since that afternoon I have twice been back to the cemetery. Perhaps after all he was right about my having been overcharged for the stone, and the quality was indeed slightly shoddy. Already I think I can detect a softening of the letters, a blunting of incised edges.
*
The weather has changed once more, the bitter wind has dropped and a general dampness rises as from the ghost of the huge marsh that in the days of the Renaissance still extended across the plain. Seen from above the whole valley is done up in creamy billows of mist. Alas, there is no longer need for me to go down. I still miss the morning sessions at Il Ghibli although I do visit Marcella and Claudio fairly regularly. In his will Jayjay behaved impeccably, leaving the house to Marcella. She and her family are considering moving into it and letting their old farm for agriturismo, a nice potential source of income. La Valle may yet echo to the fractious sounds of foreigners on holiday. He also left decent sums of money in trust for Dario and his sisters. Everyone speaks of Jayjay with affection and respect, although when I concur I do so with a certain tinge of irony I have no doubt he fully intended. For what did he leave me but the remains of his old pornographic archive: two hundred and seventeen photographs ranging in subject from Nubian toddlers to the donkey trick (‘Our Donkey Is Changed Every Week For Reasons Of Fatigue!’) They are all of them quite unprintable. In addition there are seven brittle-looking reels of what I take to be August Moll-Ziemcke’s silent films. Two of them are 16 mm and the rest seem to be 9.5 mm. God knows how one could find a projector to take that size of stock these days but I have little incentive to view them anyway. I am in the awkward position that Jayjay undoubtedly calculated to a malicious nicety: the inheritor of a trove of material which is of historical, anthropological and erotic interest whose very ownership makes me liable to criminal proceedings of the most embarrassing kind. By the time this book is published I trust I shall have found a safe home for his dubious legacy.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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All rights reserved
© James Hamilton-Paterson, 2001
The right of James Hamilton-Paterson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Epigraph from Profane Friendship © Harold Brodkey, reproduced by kind permission of Random House UK
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–32087–5
Loving Monsters Page 33