Still

by Adam Thorpe

  Talking of water, that’s exactly what Agatha wants but if she takes another sip it’ll be embarrassingly like her party turn so she works up some saliva instead. Because the snorting and snivelling is actually authentic she doesn’t feel like skipping on the spot and saying oh yippee any more. What should happen now is questions. She glances at Uncle Kenneth, who is beaming from ear to ear. The telephone rings. The beam drops and on to Uncle Kenneth’s toe apparently. Ouch, says Uncle Kenneth. The manservant racks his back as straight as it can go, which isn’t very. Shall I take it, Miss Agatha? he says. Oh no, says Agatha. Oh no, don’t. I shall take it. Mr Trevelyan seems to be nodding. It’ll be the school, he says. Good God, it’ll be the school. It’ll be the school, good God. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? comes out of the black hole in the pale ovoid. I have to take it, says Agatha. Uncle Kenneth has both hands on the table as if he’s trying to stop it levitating and he’s playing Uncle Kenneth Trying Not To Panic At The Unforeseen Intrusion very well. He’ll get the part, no sweat. Why, why didn’t you tell me earlier? Good God. I’ll definitely take it. Oh dear from Uncle Kenneth. The rifle mike’s a blur and Bosey’s training for the London Marathon or something. The telephone’s terrible, it’s like an old alarm clock, even through the door it’s loud. The crew’re crashing into each other and binding each other up in cables and Mrs Trevelyan’s getting terrible draughts. She shudders. Why, oh why didn’t you? she wails. Suddenly the volume is awful, the whole situation is crazy, she’s wailing and Mr Trevelyan’s standing up and knocking his goblet over and saying good God it’ll be the school and Agatha’s trying to open the door the wrong way and Uncle Ken’s slapping the table to keep order and Milly’s just blank and George is doing his growling thing again and hey, let me out, all we need is Buñuel in here for the ceiling to pay a call.

  But I’m not Buñuel.

  I’m not Buñuel I’m Ricardo Thornbia, notorious once, married twice, forgotten thrice, celebrated part-owner of an Alfa Romeo 1750 Spider Veloce, low, streamlined and sporting, whose every move the paparazzi click their tongues at if only I could get it off the blocks. Why, oh why didn’t God freeze-frame 1968 just before Jim Clark skidded and Spangles & Starburst crashed in jeers at Cannes? Ah, Ossy me old chum – remember them hairpins above the azure Med’s glitter, Louisa’s headscarf turned into a wind-sock, her sunglasses auditioning me in Technicolor as she turned and stuck her tongue out and I said hadn’t you better watch the road because she was crazy, I was a coward, I never had the guts to just enjoy going over the edge practically give or take a sprig of thyme here and there like you had, Ossy, like Louisa, like the rest of our gang who didn’t want to grow old anyway, who thought I was already practically behind a Zimmer frame because I didn’t know the words to Penny Lane or was it Arnold Lane and would quite like to be sending postcards when I’m sixty-four instead of cheering every time one or two of the perforated disc wheels around carefully buffed hub-caps mirrored nothing but the far blue horizon with distant yacht and the rubber trying to get a grip on a hundred feet of air? Hey, was it surprising I never jived the night away when all you sods did was tease me about the way I gripped the windscreen frame and said oh God oh God oh God? I realise this now – you always put me on the worst side, the side facing the sea, I don’t think you realised about my vertigo but if you did realise you’re all even bigger bastards than I thought you were then and anyway I got the girl, I stroked the pussy-cat, I freaked out on the taste of her Lauren Bacalls, OK?

  Sometimes I think it would have been better actually to have gone over.

  How about that?

  Well, guv, when I’m back in London I open up the arm and a leg of a rented ten square foot of garidge in Hendon and give the hubcaps a wipe until I see my face and each time I’m older but the Alfa isn’t, Greg wants her, but I’m hoping Hilda’ll take it because she wears these great headscarves and has the right Polaroids and anyway Greg’ll just throw her into a quarry or cover her in plaster of Paris and call it Occurrence #3 or something. I’m talking about the Alfa, not Hilda. I have these dreams where the Alfa’s being winched up out of the sea and Louisa’s in it but she’s all bone, she’s all picked clean and there are thousands of people watching from the cliff, jeering in French. Or maybe they’re cheering and can’t pronounce it properly. The Alfa’ll survive us all, accruing, accruing in value even if I don’t so much as touch it wiv an adjustable. Isn’t that a crazy thought? I wish I were accruing in value. I sign the paper tablecovers in Dunkin’ Donads and they make me pay extra. I tell them I don’t like your doughnuts anyway they have holes in, they remind me of lavatories. Then I tell them in England they don’t have holes in. Neither do the doughnuts. We invent the complicated bits first, that’s our way, we’re geniuses, we’re above holes, we’ve put the ugh in doughnuts. We get a lot of splash-back but then we’re not fussy. By now I’m saying this outside the door, I’m yelling it actually, the security guy is calming everyone down with his Magnum, get back to ya donuts, folks, get back to ya dunkin’, it’s OK, he’s not armed. Shit, what a life. To be taken for a psychopath when all I’m really telling them is I am slain by a fair cruel maid and he only lives that deadly is in love. Sometimes I just tell them that but they still scream. No one here speaks the RSC’s English, there’s the rub. Cor blimey blow me down what a load o’ cobbler’s awls. Nah where was I, guv? The telephone. Sorry about that interlude. I hope it gave you some time to visit the toilet or some fresh twenty-first-century air. I mean, it’s not been fouled up yet, has it? It’s not been fouled up. Unless you’ve been working real quick. Cordite, I guess, from the fireworks. Booze belches. Smoke out of people’s insides. A lot of radiation from all those power stations swilling around in vodka right at this moment. (Your moment, I mean. And probably my moment back now if we only savvied it, mate. I’ll ’ave an ’arf, ta. Yeah, if we only savvied what went on we’d all call it a day, mate. All call it a day. Ta, mate. Cheers. Seen me Black Spot anywhere? Ha haaar.) Hey, I hope you’ve found your seat. Hi again. If you’ve missed anything, don’t worry. It was vital. But don’t worry. Worry gets you nowhere. You’ve probably just missed meeting the person who will make you happy for the rest of your long life together. You looked the wrong way at the right second. Blame your neck-muscles. Blame the bore who called out to you to come tell them all about Switzerland. Who is the same, which at my window peepes? Or whose is that faire face, that shines so bright, Is it not Cinthia, she that never sleepes?

  Almost certainly. Raped by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hey, one small step for mankind. I know my mythology, I know my poetry, I’m extremely cultured, I call my jeans Frank Levis and my goldfish Stendhal ’cos it’s red and black. I used to be into anthroposophy. Greg and Maura went to an anthropoposopical Rudolf the Brown-Nose Steiner school and look what it did to them. I’ve spent the last half an hour trying to say anthropoposoc whatever the fuck it is, I used to say anthrax, I’ve had to change to a dry shirt. It’s a great test of inebriation. You can only say it if you’re inebriated. Anthrax. So I can have another one, or two. Cheers.

  The telephone.

  THE TELEPHONE.

  Look, I’m really fucked. Basically what happened is Agatha got to the phone and it was fucking Boulter. At first she couldn’t get her tongue back into her mouth from wherever it was hiding but by the time she did Boulter had finished telling her about the articles belonging to your son being placed on the 8.15 London & South Western from Basingstoke non-stop to Waterloo tomorrow and was sending white noise down the mouthpiece which was him belching from nerves. Because, let’s face it, after having

  Mr Trevelyan is standing right there. I mean right behind Agatha. He’s grabbing at the phone. It’s because Agatha’s tongue said good evening Mr Boulter before she could stop it. Mr Trevelyan regards Mr Boulter as a fine sort of chap because he uses Trevelyan Disinfectant to swab the corridors and Trevelyan Antiseptic to swab the sick and welted. There’s a brief tussle between father and daughter which is totally silent apar
t from the echoey scuffles and squeak of shoe-leather on highly-polished ceramic. If we can turn ourselves into sound waves for a moment and pound along the wire we’ll get out the other end without having to hire a jalopy but remember to duck because there’s this giant pile-driver which is Mr Boulter’s finger tapping the earpiece. Hey, it’s quiet in here, you can relax. The boys are in Study Hour. Mr Boulter likes this hour. He drinks in it. Actually, if we could go over to Upper School Library for a second and just peep in through the door to see them at Study the silence would be kind of broken because the prefects have not yet arrived and we’d probably either be lynched on the ends of some ties or at the very least get Volume Three of Gibbon’s great work in the mouth and a buttered bun on the lens so let’s not, let’s just enjoy the quiet in Boulter’s room.

  Aaah. We’re no longer sound waves, by the way, Ossy. You can take your carton off now, it’s losing its milk-bottle tops, it reminds me of your amazing designs for Dig It. Well tried. Aaah.

  He’s tapping away at the earpiece again, scowling. Maybe we should be back in Albermarle Terrace. There’s not a lot going on in here. Maybe he’ll offer us some of that veteran port. It’s all over his whiskers. I hope he sucks it off. I hope he develops cirrhosis of the liver pretty soon, sucking all that port off of his whiskers.

  Ah. There’s a voice, at the other end. It sounds like a duck speaking Japanese but Bosey’s getting a directional mike on it, don’t worry. Relax. These are really comfy old sunken armchairs. They’re made like this by Public School Supplies Inc. It’s in their Period Headmaster’s Study range. They come complete with bloodstains and dog hairs and pipe-ember burns and butterflies-in-the-stomach. But I am not at this school. I AM NOT AT THIS SCHOOL. I try telling myself that in my dreams but I don’t believe myself. I go to night school every night. I wake up exhausted. I’ve taken more exams than all the Japs put together. I’m disappearing into this fucking armchair. It smells of one hundred volumes of Queen Victoria’s memoirs. Bosey, get that mike fixed quick. Ah, we have it. I’d have nipped back to London by steam train but this film’s shoestring, it’s crazy, even Clive’s Seasons had proper laces. Shaddap.

  ing.

  Indeed, Mr Trevelyan. I understand your sorrow. The affair is most unfortunate.

  Unfortunate, Headmaster? Is that all it is?

  Unfortunate, yes. But remember, if I may be so bold, the action of Diogenes. Who struck the father, sir, when the son swore. Burton’s Anatomy.

  The allusion escapes me, Headmaster. I have lost a son. It is not surprising.

  Never lost, never lost. Say not good night but in some brighter clime bid me good morning and all that, what?

  Your – your tone, sir, dash it, strikes me as somewhat airy for the leaden hour. You will soon be firing off at me how the darkest one is just before dawn or when bale is highest—

  Then I will be more to the point, risking bluntness. I urge you, sir, not to spare the rod. One must never forget the facilis descensus Averni.

  Confound it, sir—

  Uncuff and pull back and birch the rottenness out of him. For he is too soft, Mr Trevelyan, he is too soft and that is, if neglected, fatal. A disease known is half cured, as we say. We do know the disease. Alas, we do. My advice only, of course. Take it or not. Now his effects, as I mentioned to Mrs—

  What the Devil are you blithering on about, sir?

  Blithering, sir?

  Blithering, sir. Your tone does not fit the circumstances. Indeed, I do not catch your drift at all. If you’re speaking of the late condition of his lungs—

  Lungs?

  The softness of his chest, as it were—

  Facts are stubborn things, Mr Trevelyan. I speak of the softness of his heart.

  Ah, his heart!

  High shriek from Mrs Trevelyan just detectable as backing track. Great stuff, Bosey.

  Yes indeed, Mr Trevelyan. Dig deep, dig deep. To root out such a weakness, the blow must be very hard.

  It is, it is.

  Good.

  Good, sir?

  I say it is good. The harder the better.

  I take that exceeding ill, sir.

  I am sorry you take so ill, sir, such amount of disinterested advice as your son’s nurse – for that is what I was, in a manner of speaking – can, indeed must, peculiarly proffer. A good, hard, rugged nurse, Mr Trevelyan. Rods of iron have no slack. Christ, something in Ancient Greek. Or, as Herodotus put it of the fleet at—

  Once again your drift, sir, quite escapes me—

  I speak of the unfortunate battle of Lade, between the Persians and the combined fleets of the Ionians, the Samians and the Lesbians. Sounds great, huh? Bosey’s giggling. Shaddap. You know, of course, why the Greeks were routed, sir? They were routed because they refused to submit to a few days of rigid discipline. Something too quick in Latin, shit. They made their choice freely. They freely chose a lifetime of slavery over a week of slavery, sir. They preferred to live soft and good gracious how they paid for it. I am, as you may know, sir, an Old Sedberghian. And Sedbergh’s motto is dura virum nutrix. Homer’s description of Ithaca, Mr Trevelyan, rendered into the Latin for those ignorant of the Greek. It has held me steady, sir, throughout my life. The thick and the thin. Ha yes. Dura virum nutrix.

  Sorry about these fossilised bits. I hope Hilda’s relaying what dura virum nutrix means. OK, something like a cold bath and a ten-mile run in driving hail and a spot of self-flagellation is better for you than a six-pack of Guinness, twenty Rothmans, a great long-play video and a couch. Mr Trevelyan’s totally gobsmacked. I just want to say in the pause how really wonderful Mr Sparta 1913 looks while he’s saying dura virum nutrix. Really wonderful. I mean, take those ginger whiskers. When he gets excited there are these little blebs of spittle all over them. He’s also got very round shoulders and he’s blubbery. If you took a rod of iron to him he’d just splash. I don’t want to kind of prejudice you because this movie’s liberal and tolerant and wishy-washy but I thought I ought to fill you in. Just in case his speech about the Greeks and stuff was making you sit straighter or something. I’m sitting very unstraight. In fact, I’m getting bad curvature of the spine down here. I’m a real A1 Ionian. If I’d been born in Sparta I definitely wouldn’t have been the amazing success that I am. I’d have been

  Sir?

  I do not get your drift one iota.

  Then my words have been cast upon the wind, alas. As for your other son, sir, he has given neither cause nor opportunity for reprobation. A quiet, but steady sort of feller.

  While my great-grandfather’s getting his broccoli around that one it’s just worth explaining that Big Cunt is mentioning my grandfather in case Mr Trevelyan feels moved to remove him which would be a nasty little dent in the school’s finances what with the recent losses from killer stuff like ’flu and cut thumbs and the latest outbreak of Randle Cholera courtesy of the antique sewerage system and of course Trevelyan Minimus’s exit. As the Bursar has put it many a time: fees alere flammam, General. It’d have been neater as fees to feed the flame but the Bursar has no ear and wants to make people think he’s educated. He isn’t. Actually, he’s pretty innumerate. He counts on his fingers but the little one was taken off by Gordon of Khartoum’s pet chihuahua or something in 1884 so the accounts are all way out. Heck, you don’t believe me. I tell you, this place is a nut-house. Even the mashed turnips smell reminds me. Of where Louisa ended up, I mean. Just in case you were thinking I’d had a spell within as well or something. Give over, mate, give over!

  bation? What the deuce do you mean, reprobation? What the devil do you intend by it, sir?

  Boulter’s got a frown on and he’s picking his nose really thoughtfully. He always does this when he concentrates. It can get embarrassing in class. His whole finger just disappears sometimes when there’s a knotty bit of Theocritus to deal with. But no one, absolutely no one, sniggers. Weird, huh? His finger’s coming out. OK, guys, duck.