by Adam Thorpe
There’s something wrong, he says. You’re not in here.
He tries the other disc, the 1980 to Present disc. Zilch. I’m sweating, I’m falling, I’m falling a long way, it takes ages to die. Zelda’s frowning. At least there were no giggles. My cerebral malaria week had left its skid marks in my head. I got up to leave. Both of them were looking at me. You’re nowhere, Rick, said Lazenby. There’s some mistake, said Zelda. I raised my head. I tried to look like Gary Cooper in High Noon but ended up looking like Charlie Laughton in I, Claudius. I even stammered. I g-g-guess it’s not c-c-comprehensive, I replied. The room swam. It started off as a doggy-paddle and ended up Olympic butterfly. I had to sit down. I did, but there was no chair. Men don’t faint. I guess I’m gender-challenged. Anyway, I didn’t really faint I just wanted to be blown to Bermuda or someplace or have a trap-door open under me dropping to anywhere but the HCDVA library and Lazenby’s lazy laser eye. He picked me up. Git y’hands off of me, I growled. It’s the malaria, I heard Zelda say. I lie even to Zelda. Yeah, it’s the cerebral, I said, I apologise, I shouldn’t have white-water rafted up the Congo that time, but I was into Conrad before Stanley, Stanley Kubrick I mean, not Stanley Stanley I presume, old fellow. He’s delirious, I heard whisper Zelda. Yeah, I am, I heard whisper myself, don’t tell him. Todd Lazenby turned into my bedside lamp. It was all a nightmare, I thought. I was so relieved. Then Zelda strokes my forehead. Boy, you’re heavy when limp, she said. It wasn’t a nightmare, it was worse, it was real. She and Lazenby had got me to my bed. I was apparently unhelpful. I don’t remember. The doctor came round. He gave me Aspirin and suggested a heart-check. There’s nothing wrong with my heart that Zelda running into my arms won’t cure. Zelda aikido-ing Todd Lazenby in the balls and running into my arms won’t cure, I’d better say. If I’m strictly honest with myself, old fellow.
This is ridiculous.
Milly has stood up, she’s OK. We don’t need the ambulance. Agatha says she might have concussion, her brain might be bleeding, if she gets sleepy we’d better take action. I’m looking at Milly’s eyes now. She’s standing in the doorway of the London living-room. Her eyes are dilated, but it’s the dazzle, we have a specular in here that’s getting Mike jumping up and down, it’s the polished floorboards where the rugs aren’t, it’s the specular that’s closing down her retinas, it’s aperture correction, that’s all. Hoi, she’s no more doomed than you or me. The whole world’s brain is bleeding. Watch out for sleepiness. If your wrist droops, or is it your thumb, it’s the apocalypse. It’s 999. Milly is thirteen. Look in her eyes. They are definitely dilating. They have coal smuts in the corners and on the eyelashes. Are you telling me she was always doomed or something? Are you telling me that the bleeding can’t be staunched, snipped out, my golf slice spliced away into a nothing as nothing as my absence in the World History of the Movies, vols 11 and 12?
Too right you are, guv.
George looks at her.
Milly milt, eh? Our Milly milt.
Milly’s lower lip darts about but fails to make contact with its partner. She swallows. She’s not quite sure what made her come in. Perhaps it was the tea things, but they’ve been took. Perhaps it was the noises. Sometimes she thinks she’s sleepwalking. Her brain is poisoned by Worksop’s soap works, by the whole industrial revolution, by her crappy diet, by the way her corset bunches her up.
Lily tells her to shut the door. Lily’s not nervous, just corset cautious. Milly shuts the door. It bangs. She can hear the echo go great guns in the hall and up the stairs. George murmurs, aye, we’re fuckin’ deaf too, and his tongue appears, searching in the corner of his mouth for something, perhaps a crumb, perhaps a sweetness. Milly blinks but watches him go over to the draped object on the table like she can’t watch anything else. He purses his lips and sniffs and takes the cloth between his thumb and forefinger and his little finger goes up and he tweaks the cloth off. Lily sniggers. The zoetrope’s drum shifts minutely because of the cloth being tweaked off. It’s well-oiled. It’s a fine piece of nineteenth-century engineering. George’s eyes widen. Och, will ye look at him, he says. His tongue explores his lower lip as he looks at the ballock-naked men who are all the same man. You can see his privates and his tuft. Naked as Adam. There’s a hedge behind him. Maybe Eve’s behind it, waiting. Something stirs inside his breeches, something in his loch stirs, something a saint’d like to chase away. He bends down. What the aye fuck do we do now, mite, he says. You turn the handle says Lily, looking at Milly and sniggering. George looks up and sees the handle resting next to the zoetrope. D’you ken where it goes, mite? he breathes, fingering it. I’m just under the green. Great shot. A number seven’ll toss it up. Just let the club do it. Don’t overplay. Don’t think too hard. Just leave it to the club.
George is stood there holding this little handle like it’s a motor car starter with a fancy knob. Where, mite, he hisses, where do I put it? There’s no fuckin’ hole. Milly is backing off, which for once means she’s going in the right direction, towards the door, staring at George the whole time like he’s about to shoot her if she makes a wrong move. Lily claps her hand to her mouth and goes ooh, because she’s suddenly overcome by the mischief of what they’re doing. They haven’t a load of time. George’s face somehow gets itself into a grin. You can see his awful teeth now. Here, milt, he snaps, sticking the handle out and jabbing it towards her, stay right where ye are. I know where it goes, says a voice. Milly is amazed to find it is hers. George scowls. He showed me, says Milly. She doesn’t know why she’s blabbing like this. It’s nerves. I know the feeling. It’s like she’s running to catch up a part of herself that’s blabbing and dancing just in front of her but out of reach. This blabbing part of her is next to the zoetrope now, lifting the little latch in the side of the base and sticking the handle in the hole secreted under it. She’s blinking in fright. She hates this machine. She was alone with it and the uncle and the uncle put his hand on her shoulder and told her how she must run naked through a field of long grass and she’d feel better. She wouldn’t, she’d thought. She’d mostly catch her death and expire gracefully. That’s what th’manager’s wife over at Soap Works did, like. Expired gracefully. After forgetting her umbrella. Clean soaked to knickers, she were, Mam’d said. She’s turning the handle. It’s heavy but it moves the drum, the drum clunks and moves slowly round. They are all three looking at this thing going round and round like it is the most gripping sight in the whole world, like they are Europeans seeing their first wheel bumping under a barrow in about 3,300 BC and not knowing what to do about it. (I’ve just checked this fact up. It really shocks me that Europeans saw the wheel so late. I was about 2,000 years out before. Zelda claims she was a neolithic shepherd in one of her past lives, like this guy they found stuck in the ice a few years ago. She likes meadows. She says they were in tune in those days, their god was the Great Goddess, Mother Nature, all that stuff. I’m not surprised she was hanging around then. I’d like to be regressed. Maybe I was her wife. Maybe we grappled in the thick grass of the high summer meadows above the tree-line, above the tree-line of the thick forests of the New Stone Age where there were no Todd Lazenbys not finding you in CD-ROMs and talking gunk. Where there were no golf bunkers. Where there were no movie critics. Hey, it sounds like the Golden Age. Pan was not dead. Eros was hanging around behind every bole. There were lots of rare flowers and my great-aunt Agatha would’ve gone out with my great-uncle William and had a great time catching butterflies and chasing dryads. I like the sound of the New Stone Age. Maybe we should model ourselves on the New Stone Age. Maybe we should give it a second chance. Maybe I should carve myself a crook. Zelda and I see eye to eye. I’m into Zen and I’m into the New Stone Age. Todd Lazenby is into hydraulics when he’s not into words like diseases. He’s incredibly unsuitable for Zelda. She’s not here today. She’s at a conference. Lazenby is one of the speakers. It’s something to do with the MLA. I wasn’t invited. Well, I was, but I was invited to pay $75, $75 for the privilege of li
stening to Lazenby and ten other jerks explain why movies are incommensurable figural disruptions of temporal significations. I guess mine were, if only I’d known. They had to hire a coach, there were so many groupies. I said I get coach-sick and I don’t like Dallas ever since. Ever since what? said Zelda. Hey, is memory that juvenile?)
I got into the tough grass there, I’m sorry. I hurt the Great Goddess a little hacking out of it. I was like a mowing machine. I overshot the green into the tough stuff at the back. I didn’t let the club alone. I didn’t hold back. I’m up there now. I’m as far from the hole as you can get without dribbling off the velvet. I’ll do my best. This one’s for Zelda. I’m trying to stop myself saying that if it doesn’t go in she’ll leave me. I’m not superstitious, just insecure.
Milly feels the flat of a hand on her back and this means she has to bend down. Life sometimes repeats itself. It’s George’s hand. He’s making her look. The thing’s going round on its own now and she lets go of the handle. The walking naked man flickers past her eye. Maybe this is what life as a maidservant is all about. She watches and her throat doesn’t even go dry. She’s deeply into a never ever and she doesn’t care. She’s fucked up the hats and she’s let a poshy open the door for her and she couldn’t hang the coat properly and now she’s definitely into a never ever in a big way and all in one morning. Her head’s bleeding inside. She’s getting sleepy. She’s tired. Her mouth is furry and the naked man walks past it, swinging his hands and lifting his feet forever and ever flash forever and ever flash forever and ever and George’s face is next to hers, one huge eyeball under a forest of eyebrow, one horrible nostril yanked wide open so she can see everything inside it, like when the dentist came round to the factory to pull the workers’ teeth out. The carious ones! Hey, things aren’t that bad in Europe, yet. She thinks there’s a cat in the room but it’s George’s throat, it’s mewling and whimpering. She feels she’s aged about twenty years. She’s looking forward to writing a letter. To her mam. She’s grown up in one day, and it’ll show. The hand on her buttocks is definite. There’s a hand on her buttocks. She looks at the eyeball and the hand is a tentacle of it. Incy-wincy, says George. The spider is crawling down the slope of her rump, down into the cave. Her whole body is frozen. She hates spiders. The naked man is slowing down. She hears a voice from the other side of the naked man. Turn it faster, Mill, says the voice. It’s Lily. Lily doesn’t know about the spider because she’s the wrong side. The spider has stopped, as if it senses a big fist about to squash it. Milly opens her mouth to tell Lily about the spider but only a squeak comes out. Dunna fret. Never ever. Christian souls. Expired gracefully. Machines in the factory. A moment’s silence. All lined up. Hiss.
The spider bites her.
She’s poisoned. It’s a poisonous spider. She tries to stand but the spider’s on her back again, pulling her towards the eyeball. The eyeball and nostril whisper out of their forest.
Would nae ye both like it, eh? Would nae ye both like a lick o’ that cock, eh?
Whassat? says Lily.
Milly has a very open mouth. She knows this language. But here she can’t hang it up on the right hook, to coin a phrase. It won’t go in the box, to coin another. She doesn’t like this eyeball and nostril and bad smell. The thing as it goes round flicks her cap, flick flick flick. Her brother had a thing. It was made of cardboard. You turned it on a pencil, like. A man went cross-eyed ’cos a fly flew right onto his nose. Her brother’d play wi’it for hours. He swapped th’pictures. It got stamped on, if she remembered straight. Mill, says Lily, he’s stoppin’. The open mouth which is hers, I mean Milly’s, fills with saliva. The back of her head is clamped. It’s like a photograph in the studio. That time. She has an uncle on a reasonable income, a shipping clerk, he paid for it, it’s Still Nine. Go see it in a minute. She looks terrified. The clamp is the spider. Teeth. Awful teeth appear beneath the nostril. This is kissing. Not quite. About to be kissing. The thing is squeaking as it slows. She presses into the clamp, away from the teeth, but not before the cheek next to it scrapes her lips. She has full lips, she has at least a full upper lip, the lower lip’s kind of a pedestal, a cushion for the upper lip, you know what I mean, it’s pretty attractive in a kid and in a grown-up it’ll be sexy and right now it’s indecisive. Oi, move it, Mill, says Lily. Mill can’t. She’s stuck about a half inch away from this eyeball, lifting her face away with the spider trying to press her back down again. The clamp loosens. In fact, it goes right away and she finds herself almost falling backwards. Her hat is awry. There are hair-pins on the floor. She’s panting but she hasn’t run anywhere. Never ever. Her face goes blank. Lily’s watching her the other side of the drum. The room is echoing with a cry, a kind of dragon’s bellow if you can imagine that. George is holding a handkerchief to his face. The fuckin’ bitch comes out muffled. The room is frowning, unsure what’s going on exactly. The antimacassars are prepared to be embarrassed. The pictures are waiting for her to speak before they carry on. It appears that she actually gobbed at his eyeball. Whassup then? says Lily. She’s frowning, but you get the feeling she knows whassup. Milly takes a step back. The clock’s carrying on. The pictures are sighing and carrying on because they’re that busy. A dray full of churns goes past. Clippety clang clang clop. Dunna lay a finger on me, says Milly. That’s what her sister told her to say if anyone except a gentleman with means tried it on. There was more but she’s forgot it. Or else, she says, instead. Or else.
Clip then clang.
That was a great putt, only it hit the pole. We forgot to remove the flag. We are idiots. I never expected to get that far. Lily was standing there. She should’ve hoiked out the flag when she saw what an incredible putt was coming over. Now there’s this little extra bit I have to do, but it’s a whole stroke. It’s unfair, waaaah.
George removes the handkerchief from his face. The whole of his adult life is scowling at him. OK, OK, he happens to be facing Napoleon’s full-length mirror. It’s not really Napoleon’s, it’s a nice Napoleon III plaster-mould and gilt mirror out of some Paris dealer’s back room but somebody got it wrong somewhere and the servants call it Napoleon’s mirror and only George can clean it. He looks away from it. I didnae touch ye, he says. Lily is already walking towards the door. Oh that’s it, thinks Milly. He didnae touch me. It was a spider. And if ye do that agin, skrunt, adds the butler, if ye gob at me agin ye’ll be on the street afore ye can squeak.
Milly’s plump upper lip retracts under its little cushion. She wants to keep blank but her mouth won’t let her. This thing about being on the street is really terrible. The house would be the wrong side of her and she’d be the wrong side of it, and the street would be wet, and she wouldn’t have a commendation. A commendation, Sis said, is the passport, the lifeline, the Most Important Thing along wi’ a clean pair o’ knickers. Wi’out a commendation tha’ll drop through bottom and into gutter and sell tha rump to them as want to eat thee and send thee to Hell. She knows, does Milly, how easy it is to slide down to Hell because the minister was always saying how easy it was, he was a proper clever minister, he gave her bits to read out of the Bible especially written out in big capital letters and they were always about HELL and CANKERWORM and A GREAT NUMBER OF CARCASES and THE LABOUR OF THE OLIVE failing and bad INDIGNATION and young children DASHED IN PIECES AT THE TOP OF ALL THE STREETS and a load of ARISE AND THRESH, O DAUGHTER OF ZION which came back at you off the bare walls much higher than it was sent out. She liked the bit about the maids leading wotsit AS WITH THE VOICE OF DOVES and saying BUT NINEVEH IS OF OLD LIKE A POOL OF WATER slowly and all that about Zerubbabal’s hands and the Lord’s eyes running about through the earth which made her feel all tingly in her feet but she’d only had that to read aloud once when it was very bitter out. Actually, this minister was incredibly screwed up and spittly and eventually strangled some street vendor or other and died in prison but in 1913 he was still operative and had really wheedled himself into Milly’s personal make-up. She can almost feel the
wet street on her bottom and at the end of it HELL MOUTH waiting to swallow her up. The house is the only thing between her and the widest mouth in the world. It was that easy, the minister was right, she’d been here a day and the mouth was a’ready grinning. She nods.