Still

by Adam Thorpe

  Here’s the poem. As never read by me old mate John Gielgud bless his soul, but you can imagine it, you can imagine it, complete with bad scratch:

  Dishonourable omens where a cry

  suspends itself from marriage

  and the curlews weep over the silver mere…

  the mudflat’s mute calligraphies

  where the froth flourishes its fetid trace

  and nothing’s in its place

  bar the ice-ground glens, apostrophes

  on market vendors’ boards, the queer

  austerity of horse and carriage

  as they flee the television’s lemur eye

  once more and again and once more, O Pitys!

  Hey, not bad, huh? I remembered it by O so lonesome heart. I think ’tis roughly right including the Pitys. I said thank you, Henrik, pity about the spelling mistake at the end and he said codswallop, O colossus of modern ignorance or words to that effect she was a soughing fir tree changed thus from the loveliest of nymphs by the desire to escape the lustful Pan get me another I’m skint thoroughly he snapped a branch and wove it round his head and some pork scratchings for old times’ sake, my boy. It’s his greatest poem but everything’s relative. The reason I know it by heart is that it’s dedicated to me. For Richard Thornby. About a year before this I took him out for a drink and I said, Henry, you’re the greatest living Randleian poet under the age of fifty-eight and I want you to know that. How about writing me an adaptation? OK, I was desperate, I’d been let down, my budget was a trickle, the project was up against the wire with its hands up, I bought the second round because Henry Peterson was incredibly mean, I knew I’d be waiting all night if I didn’t. This was in 1973. There’s something really depressing about that date. I think there were paraffin lamps giving the plastic flowers droop because the oil sheikhs or the miners or maybe both were bringing down Western Civilisation as we knew it and Heathrow was full of highwaymen again but I liked the paraffin lamps, the light was soft, it smelt of old times, you could look at Henry without feeling nauseous. His eyes lit up. He hadn’t been praised for decades. At least since his mother died. What to adapt, he growled. Henry had this weird grammar, you got used to it. My grandfather’s diary, I said. His face loosened and I feared for his eyeballs. Hah, he commented. I removed my dark glasses and found my beer and sipped while he cogitated or whatever. It was disgusting beer. This was 1973. You had to drive out to somewhere turfy like Wiltshire in those days to get anything that wasn’t What You Want. Your grandfather’s, he grunted. Your grandfather’s diary. Yes, Henry. My grandfather’s diary. His eyeballs were really teetering. He leaned forward, I leaned back, I didn’t want gristle in my lap, the paraffin glow was slanting dramatically across his skin problem. I felt like Apollo 11 on the approach. Not Nostromo, not Middlemarch, not The Forsyte Saga, but your grandmother’s diary, he growled. The Forsyte Saga’s been done, Henry. And it’s my grandfather’s. He went to Randle. I know he went to fucking Randle, Henry spat, for so did I. I know for how you went to Randle, Henry. I know for how you fucking know that, director fellow of films, for haven’t you so said in too many letters, my boy? It’s Thornby, call me Rick. The point is, Henry, watch that ash, the diaries are an intimate account of my grandfather’s life at Randle. Unpublished. Unabridged. Hey, it’ll start with the linden tree avenue in deep perspective, a carriage raising dust, a gravelly voice-over—

  Shit, what’s the point in telling you the whole history? Peterson was hopeless, an old hopeless vitriolic soak but just as I was realising this well into the fifth round on my bloody slate he took to the idea with a vengeance, he opened his eyes so wide I could see they were well attached actually, he became really excited, he started taking notes on a Watney’s mat with his one good finger-nail. Look, the guy was a bit of a legend in certain circles, I thought it would be one of those mismatches that strike a spark that lights a cult classic on a par with, I dunno, Penda’s Fen or Culloden or something. ’Cos it was going to be for Beeb 2. The bloke was dying an inch a day, I saw it as his swan-song with me on the bank taping it and then shrugging off the glory. Yeah yeah, I’d always considered him one of the great post-war poets, man, pity you were all so deaf. I had fairly long hair and shades and said man in those days, I was very embarrassing because I was too old but I so wanted to be hip, I wore Indian beads for about a week and then my hair-line decided to give up the struggle and started journeying to meet the back of my neck. I really know what the Aral Sea is feeling like. I still dream I have hair other than the rampant stuff up my nose and in my ears and concealing my dick. OK OK, I’m not Yul Brynner, but it’d be better if I was. Zelda used to tousle my head and I’d panic. Peterson had lots of hair but it looked as if it was trying to leave on the next tramp steamer out. No poet ever smelt as much except probably Chaucer. By the seventh round he was singing. He was singing songs he and his old drinking boyo guess who in the Fitzrovia days made up on the spot to upset the barmaid only Peterson remembered them and Thomas never did and then died before it got embarrassing. The What You Want Is Warthog Piss was really getting to me. My head was in my hands. He wanted to see the diaries straight away, he was demanding a contract, he said he wouldn’t start without whatever Dylan got for Under Milk Wood slapped on the table right now. Llareggub backwards, I said, but he didn’t get it. Hey, I was always sticking my neck out in those days only it was usually into a noose with drinks on Albert Pierrepoint ho ho. All this particular little follow spot in my head illuminated was Henry fucking Peterson clutching me trouser-belt (Indian pig-skin, man) until the day he expired, which was not a day too soon in my book. ’76, if you missed the whitewash job in the Randleian and the crawly mention in Wolseley Words (he had a bootiful green liveried 1931 Wolseley Hornet and a luverly little 1939 Wolseley Ten Saloon wot once belonged to Lord Nuffield and is now appearing in many an adaptation, I’ll have you know – the nearest the dear old soul got to one, tee hee). And all I got aht of it was a poem I don’t get. It’s called Lights Out, ’cos that was going to be the title of the cult classic. The line about the carriage on the TV screen is how I saw the cult classic kicking off. Once more and again and once more ’cos it was going to be, wait for it, a trilogy. I showed him the diaries in the end because I had some burning questions. He kept ringing me up and reversing the charges and saying he was putting the call on expenses. Who’s that, darling? (Crazy Louisa’s bathtime query. Luverly more than crazy she was at that juncture. Hey, the bathroom door’s open. She’s soaping her breasts with a coppery oval of Pears and letting the delicate curve of her Susan Hampshire neck get nibbled by the Apple Blossom Oil, to quote myself. I could write great scenarios in those days. I was an auteur, fuck it. We tried asses’ milk but our fridge wasn’t big enough.) Henry Pestersson, sweetheart. Henry who? Henrik Pestersson. A Swedish poet, huge, blond, worked with Bergman. He wants me to adapt his opus but it’s way too gloomy. I need to swing, man! Darling, swinging finished years ago, I’ve told you so so so many times how hanging around Carnaby Street in those dark glasses does your reputation for incisive contemporaneous statement no good at all. Pass me my loof—

  Ah, Louisa my love, my crazy woman, I think I want to meet you again after death, on that great set in the sky where the doors open to clouds you can’t fall through and no one ever swings themselves on the gaffer tape. Or herself. Or herselves.

  Shaaddap, son.

  These diaries.

  The fact is, I could just fix a lens on ’em. I could do a Sean Connery thumb but he wasn’t available and anyway that isn’t what the cinema’s abaht, is it? The cinema is truth twenty-four times a second. Merci, Jean-Luc Godard. I mean, you wanna some action, huh? My grandfather’s Randle diaries are not full of action. They go on and on about soul and porter and bladderdash and God and nymphs and queer rippling sensations which he discusses with Barstow who sniggers, dash it. But they’d have made a great frame, a great hook, something for the Henry Peterson I thought existed to get his caries into and wow it would have be
en swinging and wild and beaten poor old Lindsay Anderson by a bit, if only. And there’s a great little nugget of a drama in there. It stars Hubert Lightfoot. Uncast as yet, Henry, but I’m putting feelers out, don’t sweat, stay cool. It starts on the playing fields of Randle and ends on the killing fields of Flanders. Henry, the genius, noted immediately the anagrammatical potential of Randle and Flanders. There’s no F in Randle, Henrik, I’d say. But he was too excited to notice. At least he spent his last years excited. I just tagged him along. I’m still pitching the back-up, Henrik, I’d say. These broadcasting bastards are all lip. I mean, it’s a ginormous budget. Just hang in there, man.

  Christ, I have so much to tell St Peter about. Let’s hope there are no massacres or mud-slides or civil wars at the same time. I’ll hold everybody up and the Pearly Gates’ll buckle or something. It’ll be worse than Eisenstein. I’ve been such a bastard, in my time.

  This thing happened I need to tell you about. A week ago. A week before Willo’s boot, I mean, not a week before the end of the millennium or a week before me sitting here looking out at the fifteenth green and watching some fat-arse in pink flannels from Sunset Homes get a birdie. Hey, he’s good. You wouldn’t believe it. And in this heat. OK, sorry, I know you’re pressed, I know you want to join the Welcoming of the Millennial Dawn in Hyde Park and bang your drums and triangles because you won’t be around for the next one, nor will Hyde Park probably. But I really need to tell you about this thing wot happened to Giles my grandfather at Randle about a week ago, it’s in the diaries, I read it, it’s relevant, it’ll all tie up in the end, or get tangled up, tangled up because there’s no one here tying anything up, OK? This is the truth twenty-four times a second. THIS IS THE TRUTH.

  The afternoon of this day a week back opens with bladderdash. Bladderdash is written in the diaries like this: Bldsh, or sometimes Bosh, ironically. It didn’t take a lot of research to decode it, just a few costly rounds with Henrik. Actually, the day begins with Brrr. Cold. Light frost on Pod! Kpprs. Trigmy & beastly P. T. Gardiner snitched my waistcoat for a jape. I welted the beast with tie. Ouch! Rst beef & sago (verdict: guilty). P. T. isn’t Gardiner’s initials, it means Physical Training. You see why Henry was useful. I could’ve got reet muddled, lad, by all this pubelic skewel tosh. Then it’s OTC like it is every day with a little remark like dropt rifle or OOS again or oh wot a lot of frightful SWANK. I said Henry, I presume OTC is not Over The Cop or Overdid The Cannabis but Officers’ Training Corps. I presume OOS is not Out Of Sync as in lousy cinemas but Out Of Step. And SWANK is not what you think it is you fin de sick bastards but the first indication of my grandfather’s pacifist credentials I’ll have yer know. All right, all right, just an incy-bit tarnished by Field Day Exercise on Pod. Present: Fairly Big Wigs from Aldershot – no Generals tho. I was not, thank the Lord, a DARKIE this time. Barsity was. Played the corker – refused to drop when I shot him, just carried on whooping like nigger minstrel gone compl. dotty. Frightfully good fun, but Major Wormsley ticked Barstow off no end & H. P. thunderous. Ho ho. Some use in these japes, I spose. Civilisation kept intacto. Felt quite excited in nice RED uniform, firing away. Red so much grander. Green safer of cse, but give me red any day & I’ll risk the pot-shots. Wd go back to helm & halberk in a jiff, if came with crimson plume attached.

  Get the idea? He’d survive about a minute at HCDVA, wd my grandad. Wd all our grandads. Dads. Wd most of you out there – pink or black or brown or yellow or even purple ’cos Ossy’s present if you were given an HCDVA thought-scan, you intolerant bastards.

  Bldsh. We’re all out here on the pitch and it’s raining. Or maybe it’s just very heavy mist. Anyway, it’s England. It’s not Flanders. If I was a low-budget genius like I am I could use this pitch for The Greatest Battle Scenes In Ve History of Ve Cinema and I probably will, if ve mist keeps up. Frandles. Frangincourdles. Out of the mist comes Mike, in his best duffel. It has beads of moisture all over it like a duffel has beads of moisture all over it. When it’s damp. Don’t expect me to be a poet when I’ve got wet tussocks and mud instead of feet. Mike looms up and then is gone. It was a vision. Mike is dead. There’s only me and mist. The whole crew is not here and they never were. I’m alone. I’m cold. I’m my grandfather. Somewhere near the other end of the mist which has no end is the rest of the mob. The game swayed up this end and my grandfather alias me gave the ball a dashed good boot and the mist swallowed up all those eggy chaps who take life far too seriously and think the bladder should be dashed for when really the whole thing is frightful poppycock. Actually, I’m kind of only half right about the egginess of the other chaps. No one, repeat no one, takes bladderdash seriously. Not even the bloods get cut up about it. Not even the bloods. Indifference is all. If one gets into a real scrap it’s not the game but the natural inclin. of the fellows. So little care is ta’en of the score that even when the damn thing flops into the enemy’s ditch for the 5th time & chalks up a point, it is Bad Form to cheer. This is all in the diary, OK? And the Sunday Times refused to serialise it. Maybe they thought it was fake. Maybe they thought it wouldn’t sell their lousy paper. Maybe the fact that bladderdash is totally extinct now the Old Randlers don’t have their ceremonial Prize Day bout since one of them choked to death on their dentures in the scrimmage means that no one’s interested any more, it’s about as gripping as dodo shit or the History of Fleet Street or watching indoor fireworks. Some jerk’s bound to have brought some indoor fireworks. Sorry about that. Wave your sparklers around and pretend you really appreciate the gesture. Imagine being this jerk and continuing to be this jerk in the new millennium because it’ll take more than a new millennium to change him. Sad, huh? Like it’s sad being my grandfather in the middle of a bladderdash game a week before his brother’s due to be given the boot in the way he was given it and it’s raining and, hey, he had to play this fucking thing on the Very Day Itself can you imagine. Life can only get better. Unfortunately, this is 1913. This is pretty well the peak. This is certainly, if not the actual peak, one of the approach slopes. The actual peak was where we all know it was. I’ll get there, I’m looking forward to it, I’m looking forward to strawberries and cream under the sighing elms and Rupert passing his latest scribble and the tinkle of bicycle bells or maybe flocks of sheep or maybe it’s those vicars under floppy hats as they lean over the gate and scratch their mutton chops and wave halloo through a cloud of gnats. It’ll be a nice break. I deserve it. We all deserve it. No one scratches mutton chops these days unless it’s from adhesive irritation. Whoa hey the bladder’s coming our way. The fellows are floundering after it. Someone’s given it a jolly decent tonk and here it comes. As Last Domino it’s my grandfather’s unavoidable duty to collar it. Kendal is pulling Sandicot round by the sleeve over there wheeee which is rather beyond the pale because Sandicot has not touched the ball yet but as all bladder-dash aficionados know even if they don’t know how to spell aficionado there are no pales in bladderdash, you can bloody well Whirl a fellow until his brain separates into its constituent parts if you want, you can actually pin a chap to the ground and get the whole team to trampoline upon him until he’s disappeared into the mud if you so desire but that would be bad form because it’s a touch keen, what? The fact that only one person has ever died playing this thing (not counting the stupid Old Randler with the lousy dentist and the eleven or maybe twenty-five wheezy chaps whose pulmonary fluid may have been topped up by a little stint of it in fairly uncomfortable weather) is only remarkable if you apply normal everyday rules of conduct whatever they are. My grandfather slides over and collars the ball fairly deftly but because he’s thinking about cigarettes and how he’d really like to suck on one right now his mind’s not with it and he just stands there holding out this inflated mud-pack ready to kick it but someone else does it for him and not very accurately so quite a few levels of knuckle-skin go flying too and he has to suck his fist after shaking it some. The fist tastes of blood and mud and stuff and it stings. The fellows slip around yelping after th
e ball and not even Barstow comes up to see if I’m all right. Bldy rotter. Youch. This is the taste of Agincourt. Out of the forest on the edge of the Pitch comes the damsel with her lint. The mist is clearing. The forest is deep, its craggy oaks and flowery brakes and mossed stones go on for as long as the ocean goes down and down. About five miles, actually, but I don’t think my grandfather is a very literal guy. Let him be poetic, for God’s sake. No one’s allowed to be poetic these days meaning the other end of the sickle. No one’s allowed to believe in forests being so deep and oceanic they might contain nymphs and knights and stuff. Hey, Giles my grandfather believes in Pan. He’s standing there in that fucking awful sub-marshland about a board-rubber’s throw from an incredibly unpleasant boarding school to which he has welded half of his youth sucking on a torn fist and gazing at this scrappy little oak wood under drizzle and thinking how he might just spot Pan cavorting in there on his hairy goat-legs. I mean, isn’t it ridiculous? Amazing but true. My grandfather’s view of the world is basically a lot of England divided between the shallow bits and the deep bits. The shallow bits can be anywhere and so can the deep bits, but generally the deep bits need to have trees or at least some kind of shady greenery except that there’s a view of the downs near Hamilton Lodge with nothing but a few juniper bushes on it and a lot of sheep plus shepherd of which (Christ, this shepherd’s really important, he was hell to cast because no one has a face like that these days unless they’ve been pegged out on the beach in Antigua for about three months – I’ve ended up with this hippy traveller guy with no front teeth and a slight limp and extremely distressed skin. The limp and no front teeth look great, he was set upon by a consortium of major English landowners for picking a blackberry or something and he’ll get dubbed over by Ben Kingsley pretending he’s got no front teeth because this hippy traveller guy cannot do accents, OK? I mean, he’s from Hemel Hempstead for crying out loud. He and my grandfather have had some great conversations in the caravan over the last five years. But no one hangs around off set forever, with or without free cups of tea brought by Julie Patchouli and the latest Grip Weekly personally cinched by me. I’m running way over schedule. It’ll be I, C-C-C-Claudius all over again, which won’t be too bad, actually)