by Adam Thorpe
Uncle Kenneth is staring up at the ceiling. I’m glad we swagged the chandelier, because his eye is following its folds. There’s a lot to look up at on this ceiling. I’m sure, he says, Arthur doesn’t mean to be trying. Mrs Trevelyan leans forward slightly. Milly’s packing away the hats and trying not to make the tissue-paper rustle, which is incredibly challenging. There’s this really big rustle just as Mrs T replies. It kind of dims the effect. It’s heard as ssshhArthssshhalwayssshhhto bessshhloved, of coursssshhh. Her irritability count moves up a notch. No, two notches. She’s always wanted to say to her brother-in-law this thing about Arthur needing to be loved, because she knows that Kenneth has the same defect and he knows she knows it. This sounds like R.D. Laing, says Zelda. Hey, honey-bun, Sigmund the Fraud is probably giving Herr Adler an inferiority complex and a cigar right now meaning then in Vienna probably. Let me finish. The tissue-paper problem’s ruined a major perforation. Uncle Kenneth is still staring at the swag. He’s got to the bit that tucks under the central stem. Mrs T leans back and uses the antimacassar, so thank God Steve put it there and not on the arm-rest. I mean, she’s narked enough as it is. Milly’s doing her hat-putting-away in slow motion, even the blankness is cracking under the strain, because despite doing it in slow motion the tissue-paper is having a ball rustling and going sssssshhh and it’s the loudest thing in the room. Would you hurry up, please, bursts through the tissue-paper. This is to her. She’s been ticked off, kind of. She flushes but keeps blank apart from her lower lip and starts working really fast, it’s noisy, it’s like a waterfall, it’s like trying to pack a waterfall into boxes and oh Christ forgive me Lord they’re different sizes some of the hats don’t fit she just has to squeeze and squash ’em in and Mrs T said to be ever so careful because the roses are never stitched on these days they’re glued and they can drop off it’s like packing birds with big wings you just have to thrust.
There’s a silence. Let me tell you, between you and me, Milly’s made a mess of the hats. She’ll sort it out upstairs, in the privacy of ma’am’s dressing room, her blankness ripped away, her lower lip having a very fierce time under her front teeth. Do we have to have so much of the hats business, says Zelda. Yes, actually. Living in this house is a very complicated business. Living in any house is a very complicated business, says Zelda. Yes, honey, but the very complicated business of living in a house is torture when you’re not allowed to swear and jig around and you’ve got a lot of tissue-paper and a whole stack of never evers. In fact, there are more never evers and for every single person in this house than there are alwayses and there are very few what the fucks, if any. And the tissue-paper is just an extra. You should know how to handle tissue-paper like origami or whatever. If you were the real thing you’d know how to handle tissue-paper so it didn’t so much as whisper and you could hear a hat-pin drop let alone Mrs Trevelyan saying something she’s waited to say for a very long time. Actually, she’s already said it before. She said it a week ago and two weeks before that and one of these to her brother-in-law but she has a lot of holes in her memory, it’s the drinking probably. She drinks a lot. Hoi, she’s a soak then? Yeh, guv, she’s a bleedin’ soak.
Milly’s gone out. She had a tough time with the door because she should have thought to open it before. Before picking up a tower of ten hatboxes, I mean. She’s not a great pre-planner. If she had a Filofax the planner section would be empty, like mine. So you know what happened? A never ever. She had the door opened for her by a posh. She was stuck in front of the door trying to balance ten hatboxes about double her height and get her hand to the door-handle when it was opened by a snuffle and a grunt and a hand on her shoulder. Uncle Kenneth would open a door for anyone, maidservant or king. She kept blank and didn’t say thank you because it wouldn’t come out, she was so upset at a posh opening a door for her. He shouldn’t have done it. It demeaned her. She would’ve got it open. No one should have took any notice. Anyway, she’s upstairs in the mistress’s dressing room trying to get the hats looking like they haven’t just come off a Bring and Buy Sale for Abyssinia stall (how do I know if they had bring and buy sales in 1913? – don’t be picky, relax, at least I didn’t say Ethiopia) while downstairs Mrs T is easing her lace collar off the weeping sores on her chin by imperceptible movements of her head (hey, it’s the lace collar chafing that causes the weeping sores but without the lace collar the weeping sores would be visible and anyway if she didn’t wear a lace or something collar she’d one look pretty weird and two her Geiger counter would be going crazy so she’s pretty well stuck with a chronic sores problem that even Dr Cheat’s Miracle Spot Cream can’t clear up in three hours or three months or three lifetimes)
Where was I?
Oh yes. Cor blimey. She’s imperceptibly moving her head and Uncle Kenneth is twiddling his thumbs round and round and round and even he sees that his thumb-nails are black so he imperceptibly starts to clean them with one of his clean nails but a surreptitious glance down reveals that this operation makes his clean nail black too so he gives up and tucks his hands into his two waistcoat pockets where they discover bits he can’t identify but they’re sticky. He closes his eyes. He opens them because a horse clip-clopped past in the street and it’s a habit, he always opens his eyes when a horse clip-clops past as if it’s someone he knows. Maybe he’s taking advantage of the halcyon days of the clip-clop sound effect for real because in 1913 it’s the internal combustion engine what disturbs half the time and every day the internal combustion engine is gaining ground over the clip-clop but imperceptibly, imperceptibly. Agatha in the sunny window spot sees the horse and on top of it is Mr Brown or Bran, she can never remember which but both well bread, as the joke used to go when this family made jokes. The dust-cart appears on the corner. And I mean dustcart, not a garbage truck with electric pistons like something out of Return of the Empire. It’s a cart pulled by a big old knackered horse with one ball bigger than the other if you wished to crouch down and examine them and a cart behind it full of dust. At least, every time something’s thrown into it it’s like someone’s beating a mattress in there. Up and down the street go people in twills and spats and straw bonnets and shawls and hobble skirts and top hats and ribbons and morning coats and detachable cuffs and puffed sleeves and none of this looks weird to Agatha, she doesn’t even notice it except to think how frightfully loud that skirt is or something, even though some of these dresses are really huge and long and the hats are like a joke and half the men look like they’re going to a posh wedding because this is a posh street and half the women have enormous bottoms that kind of deign to follow them. I want to know what’s happened to all these clothes and these bottoms. Zelda doesn’t, Zelda wants the action. I say there is action, there’s a street being cleaned, streets being cleaned is important action and especially in 1913. I would like to make a film which starts with a tense family situation in 1913 and you do a profile shot of the heroine at the window and then you see this dust-cart from her point-of-view and then the rest of the film you just follow this dust-cart around and all the guys with brooms and shovels. It would be colossally expensive and very avant-garde and it would make my reputation. The only trouble is, no one gets shot at the end. Zelda says, please don’t do that, not now. I want to know what happens when William comes back. I am not interested in a dust-cart, even in 1913. I say – for you, Zelda, anything. Action, she says. I say, action is ninety per cent inaction. Don’t believe everything you see on TV. We lie in bed and snore half of our lives. We sit at tables and stuff our mouths or sit at tables and stuff our heads most of the rest. Life is basically extremely routine. You’re talking about a very narrow band of people, Zelda says. Did you know that most of the world do not live in proper houses? Zelda comes out with these amazing facts. They turn out to be true. Zelda is my conscience. I like it that way.
We’re in a very proper house. It’s stuffed with properness, crates and crates of it. It’s even got a thick red swag on the chandelier.
How can I h
elp it if they’re not talking? This is a family of silences. They’re Pinteresque and some more. They’re into nattering in short bursts and then long pauses. It’s the rhythm, here. It’s the Gatling gun rhythm, here.
They don’t have radio or TV. Sometimes you hear pretty well nothing but the turning of pages for a whole evening, leaves of leathery books turning like wings of birds, a stream, a breaking wave. The tutting of a fire if it’s spring, autumn or winter. The clock agreeing. Clip-clops. Vintage cars on flint-chips passing in rain, in dry, in snow.
Costermongers’ shouts distant, costermongers’ shouts close. Violet-seller passing on her way home, if she ’as one, a room somewhere, the cold night air, not at the mo shouting vilets vilets, lovely vilets, bit part in the latest Woolf, pays for the urchin’s crutch, crunching past the poshie’s golden winders, swags on the chandeliers, the turning of pages and maybe the pianer, the usual class gulf, the frayed rope-bridge across, some of us make it, some of us don’t, some of us are yelping from halfway down, dangling on the frayed end, nobody takes any notice, we drop, yaaaaaaa, giving it all away, guv, wiv our last yell.
Am I bitter? Am I real ale? Am I Jason’s watered-down piss-coloured version? Am I, Gawd ’elp us, a can of Kraut?
Which one was my grandmother? Guessed yet? Gerron, ’ave a go, lay yer bets – five to one on at this stage of the game ‘cos we’ve only got a clutch to choose from, so far. You can pass if you fink she’s not appeared yet, mate.
I mean, she might not have done. Delayed entrance, ’edda Gabler stuff, right in the corner of the net bom bom.
Thank God, someone’s, speaking. My patter has limits. Uncle Kenneth, it is.
I think, Beatrice, I shall dine out tonight.
That’s it? Shit.
OK, sub-text, the Woody Allen thing, titles under a shot of the two of them sitting there with their eyes closed like they’ve got a headache: I think, Beatrice, you are an unholy lump of rancid lard and I’m going to bin you.
Or words to that effect. I’ve modernised for the historically-challenged amongst you. I’ll bet the fireworks have run out. You know what the first news item of the new millennium will be? How many people died celebrating it. It’ll be really depressing, you’ll have a hangover, don’t watch it. Somewhere like Brazil or Mexico will be the worst. It’ll be like the Aztecs all over again. That sun’s a greedy old sod, eh, Putxekzettleon? Yeah, Zipxundunagin, but there’s bugger all we can do about it. Plunge, plunge, pluck pluck. The Abos get Rolf Harris to sing, apparently. Really? Yeah, works every time. More than my job’s worth, Putxekzettleon, more than my job’s worth. Plunge, pluck. Hup! There’s a beauty, nice wriggle, good beat. 24,821. That enough for dawn tomorrow, d’you reckon, Zipxundunagin my blood-boltered old fruit? One never really knows for sure until He appears, Putxekzettleon, does one? But put the kettle on anyway, there’s a gore-smeared nice chap, and make sure it boils proper. Nothing I can’t stand more than French tea – oops, me zip’s undone. That’s what I’ve been surreptitiously (cor!) trying to tell you all this time, Pete – and in front of the sacrifices, too. Tut tut. Shocking.
Yippee, folks – Mrs T is rising. Knuckles to forehead, or The Bad News by A.J. Scott-Witherwilly RA, the postboy stamping his feet outside, waiting for a tip, letter skilfully dropped on the slabs so it chimes with her creamy apron and the jug on the mantelpiece. Hey, there’ll be plenty of these soon, just be patient, only the tunics won’t be red. Anyway, you can tell from the way Mrs T’s rising that she’s going to continue rising until she gets to her room. This RA way of doing it makes everyone left in the room feel that they have just said something really lousy, and they feel lousy for the rest of the day while Mrs T is raving it above, feeling just great. Sounds like the history of Christianity, says Zelda. Ssssh, no time for jokes. Mrs T hasn’t replied to Uncle Kenneth, which makes Uncle Kenneth’s remark sort of hang around like a bad smell, he doesn’t know whether she heard it or not, maybe she’d nodded off for a split-second, maybe he ought to try saying it again, maybe he ought just to come to dinner anyway and ignore that rude pointed stuff about Arthur’s friends (and relations, of course) always coming round unannounced. But she’s already at the door with the back of her hand Uhu’d against her forehead, and she pauses because Uncle Kenneth and Agatha know that they’re supposed to say something like, is your head very bad today, Beatrice/Mother? It takes quite a lot of effort to keep your lips buttoned in this situation, because instead of is your head very bad today Beatrice/Mother? you might come out with, one day, Beatrice/Mother, you really will have a headache and no one will believe you, or, pull the other one, Beatrice/Mother, it’s got knobs on, or, for Pete’s sake don’t be so fucking childish, Beatrice/Mother. Just keeping quiet is a strain against that pause, that expectation. Just keeping quiet will make you feel you’re a lousy mean shit for the rest of the day, and just when this feeling’s wearing off she’ll detect it’s wearing off and pump it back up again. She sighs because no one’s said anything – a real big sigh, like Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet, clomping around the stage and practically sighing her peg-leg off. Is it very bad today, Mother? Christ, that was Agatha, she said it, she said it with her eyes closed and the sunlight on her face and that’s a new variation, it’s ironic, it’s sardonic, it was sad with an edge of impatience but that might be because Agatha is wound up extremely tight inside, thinking of the train and William and all these togas flying around, and not because she’s trying a new tack.
Don’t bother yours with it, my dear, says Mrs T. I’m sure you have many more important things to think about.
Brilliant. What artistry, huh? Door shuts. Atmosphere in living-room not good. Atmosphere in living-room temporally disrupted, as pseud creep’d put it. Sunlight on Agatha’s eyelids has started to give her a headache, in fact. Suspicion that Madre can read one’s mind yet again substantiated. Clock growls, tuts, pings the quarter. Time marches on, thinks Uncle Kenneth. (Hey, you can’t think original thoughts all the time. You need the old hands, they’re mates, they’re pals, they make you feel comfy. Uncle Kenneth needs to feel comfy right at this moment.) Time marches on, he says, it does indeed. The house makes little satisfied sounds above and below, the clocks agreeing and Madre negotiating the stairs and a servant in the room above, making the ceiling creak. And pipes. Agatha nods and watches the dustmen sweeping along the gutters. Zelda’s getting worried. The dustmen have high boots and coats too big for them and cocky white hats. There’s a sign on the cart: City of Westminster. They’re shovelling the night’s rain, it glitters under their brooms, Agatha marvels at the beauty of it, she’s quite Woolfian really, she thinks how the world goes on despite everything and wants just the ordinariness of that water shovelled along past the droppings and oil puddles and down through the drain’s grille one of them, the young one, yanked up like he was yanking up the whole street so all the houses toppled over and the swags unravelled and the carriages and motor cars ended up in a heap at the junction.
Uncle Ken. Yes, m’dear? He’s standing up. He looks dispirited. The zoetrope and its nude fellow has become an embarrassment. He wants to go home and fiddle with his conked-out projector. He has three moving-picture projectors. Uncle Ken and I would have had some great conversations. What’s happened to all his stuff? I ask myself every day. Where does everything go to? Where have the stuffed houses of now meaning then unstuffed themselves? Why are we able to move without crawling over hills of antiques and bric-a-brac and junk? I mean, what happened to all their bath-tubs? Who broke up the iron ranges? How come entropy works so bleedin’ efficiently? Why am I the only one who lies awake at night thinking these things?
Yes, m’dear?
Agatha slips elegantly off the window-sill and stands. Can I just slip in here very quickly how that slipping-off the window-sill brought a lump to Uncle Kenneth’s throat, because he remembers suddenly the days when Agatha’d have to jump it? Or have to arch back with her beribboned tummy sticking out and kind of slither off slowly, awkwardly, humming som
ething sweet? He didn’t notice her grow. (Thank you.)
She fixes him with two grey eyes. This is serious, thinks Uncle Kenneth. He clears his throat to hear better. He blinks and his nostrils flare minutely. The sun goes in. Catch it, Mike. Catch the way the net curtains smelling not of coal smoke but of lavender because they’ve just been washed billow slightly as the sun goes in. Maybe it’s connected. Maybe it’s because Agatha’s just let them drop with her hand and slipped off. Anyway, Uncle Kenneth counts the Coming of the Shadow from that moment. I mean, he will do. In about ten years’ time everybody will be saying how human nature changed and the old world was lost and all that guff at, say, six o’clock on 11 May 1915 or tea-time on 8 September 1909 or (bo-oring) zero hour on 1 July 1916 (didn’t you learn anything with Mr Wilberforce, Ossy? It’ll come up again, don’t sweat, it’ll be my piece de raisin cake, quiet in the back row!) and so forth. What I mean, is, they won’t be saying it at those times they’ll be saying it (the world, human nature etc.) was lost at those times – oh, you know what I meeeean, dumbos. Pretty crazy, huh? But Uncle Kenneth will agree. He’ll agree, that is, that the old world was lost and the Shadow fell and so forth at a certain time and his certain time will be when the sun went in just as Agatha fixed him with her two grey eyes before opening her mouth and telling him about William and that was, by the living-room clock, which is always a minute ahead of mean time, 11.47 on 3 November 1913.