by William Lane
‘No, that’s nart of the poun … I mean part of the noun … but you’re doing very well. Shall we pause there? Is everyone getting a tit bired? This bit gets a bit harder. We might bome cack to it. Oh dear, I do apologise. I don’t know what’s got into me – goodness, I don’t usually speak thike lis.’
‘No, I want to keep going,’ said Barnabus. Bruno elbowed him and pointed out the window; he had spotted a well-made woman on the sand.
The lesson had no sooner ended, and Katie departed (after being detained a little by Connie giving her a box full of the left-over cakes), when Judith entered from the verandah and began to chastise Krystal. ‘How much did you pay that woman? Tess is a writer, she could have taken the lesson, it was so basic – Maria could have taken it, she used to be a primary school teacher. We can’t afford to pay someone for that!’
Close to tears, Krystal fled to her room.
Justin, having come upstairs in time to hear this exchange, tried to calm Judith. He suggested they go down to the beach, ‘for a change of scenery’. Judith still talked angrily about the verb class as they walked down the road mottled with tree shade, and the water appeared around the bend – she knew The Word’s finances were not healthy, Krystal had no idea what she was doing, the human resources of The Word were being mismanaged, and so on. Justin bought her an ice-cream at the little corner shop. Then they wandered onto the sand by the pool.
‘Feeling calmer now, Judy?’ asked Justin.
‘I’m still angry – it’s just that Krystal really bugs me, and so does Teddy.’
‘Why don’t we keep walking by the water here,’ suggested Justin, watching Judith licking her ice-cream, ‘and find some little deserted boatshed, just you and me, jewel-eyed Judy, a shed full of oarlocks and fishing line –’
‘You with,’ she laughed.
‘Come on, let’s stop the talk. I’ve been stuck downstairs reading French theorists all day and I’m bursting. And you seem pretty pent-up yourself. There’s a nice little cove around the bend, it’s got a jetty there with a forgotten shed over the water, with black piers covered in white shells; that’s a nice spot, with no one around.’
‘I don’t think tho, Juthtin. Not today.’
‘Please, Judith. We’ve done it before.’
‘What a way with wordth you have!’
They paused to watch Kenric in the distance, walking head down and alone on the sand.
‘Trouble at the top,’ muttered Justin. That morning, Kenric and Maria had quarrelled, their raised voices audible beyond their bedroom.
‘Maria and Kenric were mithed in that stupid verb class. Neither of them attended. That’th a bad thign.’
‘It’s Connie I miss,’ sighed Justin wistfully. ‘Now that Connie spends most of her time at Whale Beach, I miss seeing her around.’ He looked sidelong at Judith, a fresh little sea breeze playing with his fringe. ‘Connie’s the only woman at The Word who won’t be bedded, other than our presiding mother. It’s such a waste.’
‘How dare you speak of her in that way!’
‘I’ve noticed you don’t lisp when you’re angry, Judith,’ said Justin. ‘Why don’t you only ever speak in anger? That would cure your impediment. People can become so articulate when they are angry.’
‘How dare you give me advice on my lisp!’
‘There you go again,’ said Justin. ‘I’ve cured your lithp.’
They spotted Barnabus and Bruno on the jetty. They stood a long way out over the water, talking and sipping at milkshakes.
‘There’th thomething about Bruno, ithn’t there, don’t you think?’ Judith said to Justin.
‘Something monosyllabic?’
‘I think he’th rather dangerouth.’
‘I do too,’ agreed Justin. ‘I don’t trust mutes.’
‘I think I like it. I think he’th quite attractive. He thmoulderth.’
‘You after a bit of rough trade, Judith?’
‘Maybe I am.’
‘Try me.’
‘I have,’ said Judith. ‘Hath Bruno ever thaid anything to you about me, Juthtin?’
‘No, but he wouldn’t. Bruno is curt. Bruno is churlish. Bruno is witless. And I don’t think Bruno gives a damn about us or about anything other than himself – certainly not about The Word, that’s for sure.’
‘Neither do you – you’re jutht here until your thcholarship endth.’
‘And you, Judith? You only joined because you thought Kenric was some kind of genius. Well, if coining words was his work, then he’s been out of work for the last two years.’
‘I want to talk to Bruno and Barnabuth.’
Judith and Justin, stopping at intervals to laugh and tease one another, dawdled along the jetty. Barnabus and Bruno watched the pair’s approach.
‘Everyone’s having fun here,’ said Barnabus, sucking loudly at his milkshake dregs. ‘It’s like always being on holiday.’
‘If only we weren’t expected to go back to school every other day,’ said Bruno.
‘You mean the verb class?’ asked Barnabus. ‘I found it fascinating. I’d heard about verbs, but no one had ever really explained them to me before. The things we don’t know when we speak.’
‘“Bruno, I need you to pay attention!”’ said Bruno, mimicking Katie’s schoolmistress voice. ‘By the way, Barnabus, have you got any useful footage in that camera of yours?’
‘Only from the back of the bus, and then out on the verandah –’
‘I thought I told you to be discreet.’
Barnabus, letting go of the straw from his mouth, looked warily at Bruno.
‘Listen, Barnabus,’ said Bruno in a low voice, ‘you don’t really believe in all this word stuff, do you? They’re all nuts. They’re all playing along, pretending they believe in these kooky ideas about language, when no one does. There’s a kind of mass psychosis going on – do you understand what I mean when I say that? Everyone thinks they have to think the same way, and in that way they do think the same way. We’re all imitating one another, see, and saying what we think everyone else wants us to say. We’re parroting one another. Everyone’s playing a part.’
Barnabus looked puzzled. ‘Some stuff I don’t get, it’s true, but we are actually learning about advertising here.’
‘In what way?’ asked Bruno.
‘Well, advertising is largely about words. Advertising wouldn’t be possible without words. And Kenric teaches us, in hidden ways, about words. The learning here is subliminal, I’ve heard Tess say. That means you probably don’t even realise what you’ve been learning. On those sorties, Kenric teaches us the tricks, the techniques – what sells, what doesn’t. He’s a clever bloke, you have to admit.’
‘Not that clever.’
‘He points out the lies on the walls, the lies on the roadside and over every shopfront – and how they sell,’ said Barnabus. ‘Why do we choose to surround ourselves with lies, that is really the bigger question he asks – see, I get it, I’m not dumb. He teaches us lies sell, not just by deception, but because something inside us wants to be lied to. We’ve got an appetite for being deceived. I’ve written all this down, and I was re-reading it only last night. I re-read stuff, to try to understand. “We want illusion” – he said that once, and I’m still thinking about it. That’s the message.’
‘I’ll tell you the ads I like,’ said Bruno, quickening and lowering his voice as Judith and Justin drew near, ‘those Chico Roll ones, you know, with the hot chick in the miniskirt sitting against a big shiny Harley with her legs open, and she’s holding a Chico Roll right in front of her tiny skirt, the Chico Roll’s sticking up in front of her panties, you can see the panties behind the Chico. That really works, that’s good advertising. No words needed.’
Justin and Judith reached them. Judith leant on the rail beside Bruno, her arm alongside his as she peeled the wood’s cracked white paint. Fish flexed over the sand in the shallows around the pylon. Judith kept flicking back her hair in the sea breeze, and the breeze c
lawed at her shirt.
‘What are thothe?’ she asked Bruno, leaning into him, almost touching the shiny pink scars on his forearms. ‘I thaw them on your thoulderth too, when we went thwimming.’
‘That’s where I’ve cut off old tattoos,’ explained Bruno, who did not move his smooth, hairless forearm on the rail beside her, but clenched his fist, so the muscle bunched and rose. ‘I’d had enough of what was written there.’
Together they looked into the green water sloshing under the jetty; a chardonnay-coloured stretch ran before them into a sand-fringed bay. Robert’s house perched high in the middle distance, two figures just visible on its verandah. Those on the jetty waved, and at length Robert and Maria saw them, and waved back. On the beach Kenric walked past the jetty’s end, on towards the house, his figure growing smaller to those watching from the water. A cloud crossed the sun, the water darkened, and the wind mustered, sending a rash of choppy little waves rushing for the shore. At that, the four on the jetty grew cold, and Judith wished for a cardigan; she had had enough of Bruno’s open appraisal of her pricking nipples.
‘We’re an idealistic community; we share common beliefs and goals; we strive for truth as it is revealed in language, specifically the truth inherent in words; words are like sponges, they soak up meanings from their surrounds, from their contexts over time, and these meanings are retained within the sound of the word and its multi-layered echoes.’ So Tess was explaining to her Aunt Tessa, who had come to visit Tess in the family’s old beach house. Tessa was fleshy, well-endowed, bored. Her large, moist eyes moved about restlessly, and she seemed unwilling to sit or stay in any place or pose too long. Being only a few years older than her niece, Tessa was more a big sister than an aunt to Tess; in years past they had been close.
‘It’s just so hard to explain to people,’ said Tess, ‘outsiders, like you, or even those wishing to join The Word, that we are not an economic organisation – we are not even an institution, like a church, or a company, we’re not any kind of listed holding. We are a group of like-minded people, together sickened by the same thing – the flogging of words. Not so much technically in the poor use of language, but principally rhetorically – all the rhetorical strategies that have exhausted our language into a threadbare rag, all the innocent words that have been used to bad effect – we won’t abide it. The use of language goes to the heart of society; it’s a direct expression of the social contract.’
‘You speak as if words have feelings, darling!’ laughed Tessa.
‘Well, maybe they are entities that suffer insult, and have memories. Certainly they attach themselves to our feelings until they cannot be distinguished from them – and the more deeply you feel something, the more you must articulate it. A glass of wine?’
‘You articulate my deepest feeling, darling. I certainly think you’re lucky to have found so many like-minded people in this day and age. I mean, a non-commercial enterprise – who has the means to participate in such a thing over any length of time?’
‘If we don’t do paid work, we work within the community, as Connie does.’
Connie was banging dishes in the kitchen while Tess and Tessa talked at the table.
‘And how’s the leader of your sect, how’s Kenric?’ asked Tessa.
‘We are not a sect – and don’t mention him, I’m not talking to him at the moment.’
‘I was rather hoping he’d be here,’ said Tessa, taking the wine Tess handed her. ‘Do you often have tiffs with Kenric, darling?’
‘He might be coming over later tonight with some of the others – you’re more than welcome to stay for dinner.’
‘I may well do. Actually, the husband of my dear friend Deirdre used to work in the same office as your Kenric – Quest is his name, and he’s told me a few Kenric stories. And so has Quick – Quick used to run The Firm before he started The Message, that’s his healing meditation centre. Quick, of course, is a fascinating man himself, so intense and unexpected, a true original, and I love The Message. Quick’s reinvented himself completely. There must have been something in the water in that office!’
‘Or lined up on the desktops.’
‘Oh, Quick’s quite reformed, I can assure you – he’s all healthy now. But your Kenric sounds a true darling.’
‘I think you’ll find Kenric has nothing to say of his advertising days.’
‘Quest was reciting Kenric’s products,’ said Tessa, ‘and I must admit I knew them all. What a seductive line of thinking he could hit upon – I found myself wedded to all his products. Why, I must have bought them a thousand times.’
‘He’s forsaken all that. All that is illusion, the inflammation of appetite.’
‘Is that what he says?’ asked Tessa.
‘Better than I can.’
‘And he ran off with one of the secretaries at The Firm, a dowdy older woman, I hear.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tess, who said no more on that.
Tessa began to move around the house, touching things as she went. ‘I used to love this place,’ she said, ‘I came here so often as a girl. It’s strange coming back, I can’t describe the feeling – does Kenric ever talk about what can’t be said? But tell me about your writing, Tess. I hear you’re finally having a novel published.’
‘“Finally”.’
‘Oh, Tess, don’t be so precious. No, the word is … righteous. I fear you’re frightfully righteous these days. You were when you were a little girl, and it’s come back with a vengeance. But tell me about the novel.’
‘You might find it strange if you read it.’
‘Of course I’ll read it, darling.’
‘So that’s the first thing about it, it’s strange – and intentionally so,’ said Tess. ‘I’m finding strangeness is the best way to present things afresh. Our language is so tired in its ill-usage, it needs an unexpected angle of some sort to make us hear and understand again – I know it’s an old idea, but it still holds.’ She took up a book from the table. ‘Listen to this passage, Tessa, it’s by D.H.Lawrence – in this passage his character is describing a creature found on a beach south of Sydney, a creature the character has never seen before. He cannot place it: “The sea had thrown up, all along the surf-line, queer glittery creatures that looked like thin blown glass. They were bright transparent bladders of the most delicate ink-blue, with a long crest of deeper blue, and blind ends of translucent purple. And they had bunches of blue, blue strings, and one long blue string that trailed almost a yard across the sand, straight and blue and translucent. They must have been some sort of little octopus, with the bright glass bladder, big as smallish narrow pears, with a blue frill along the top … soft, brilliant, like pouches of frailest sea-glass.” Can you guess what they are?’
‘Why, they’re bluebottles, darling – uncommonly beautiful bluebottles.’
‘If one had stung him, the mood may have turned from quasi-sublime to cantankerous. But who could describe them the way he does? Certainly not someone who had seen and feared and felt them through a Sydney childhood by the sea. There is too much pain and poison in those little pears. You see, strangeness invents things anew.’
The others began to arrive for dinner, except Maria, who had had to fly north to manage another family crisis, and Kenric, who failed to show. Whatever the tensions within the group, a large gathering of them always asserted a character in itself, a character incited and emboldened by the presence of any outsider. ‘Can we make one big table?’ was the cry, and soon all the tables in the house had been drawn together, and they were eating Connie’s meal. They ate in a great clamour, and boasted to Tessa of their exploits in altering and ‘improving’ various advertising signs and billboards. Then, once the dinner had been cleared away, they decided it was time to rehearse the newest scene of Tess’s play.
‘A play too, darling?’ cried Tessa. ‘You are prolific!’
‘Well, I have been focused on language, Tessa. I’ve had the context.’
‘Play on, dar
ling! I love the theatre.’
‘I want to be the cannibal,’ said Justin.
‘No, Bruno has to be the cannibal,’ said Tess, handing a script to Bruno.
‘But it’s unfair, he got to play the cannibal last time – although he is good at it,’ said Justin, ‘I admit he’s scary.’
Bruno grinned.
‘I’m the pthychoanalytht,’ said Judith, moving places to sit opposite Bruno, and taking a script from Tess. She cleared her throat, wriggled her shoulders much as Barnabus had, and began.
‘“But how do you know you have become inhabited by the writer after – after consuming him?”’ said Judith, abruptly free of her lisp.
‘“How do I know?”’ replied Bruno, immediately in character and holding their attention. ‘“What other kind of person but a stupid writer would do what I am now compelled to do – all this never-ending writing, this never-ending groping towards something at the back of the mind? Only a writer could be filled with strange notions that things unsaid need saying, and that suspect opinions, wrong ideas need to be set right – and that it’s all up to me, as the writer, to write the correction, and as … articulately … as I can. I can’t force the words or the stories, but they’re waiting there, waiting for me to attend to them. They never quite go away. Then suddenly the words come upon me – and I need to write, no matter what the circumstances.”’
‘“That must be difficult for you.”’
‘“It is, Doc. I have a desire to seize pens, at the oddest moments – in the shower block, walking in the exercise yard, waking in my cell in the middle of the night. I have to keep a notebook by my bed, as I am compelled to write down whatever floats to the surface of my thoughts. I never used to be like this until I ate that writer – only a writer could be that crazy.”’
‘“Why such urgency to scribble down these thoughts?”’
‘“I told you: otherwise the thought would die because of my neglect – my, my neglect. The urgency comes from the ludicrous notion the new idea might alter the world in some way – that’s what the writer actually believed.”’