by Adam Thorpe
Hey, London always makes me feel gloomy. It’s the shit on your own doorstep thing apart from the weather and the food and the badly adjusted diesel engines and people who look like they could do with eating more fruit or something. London is the shit on my personal doorstep and I always step in it because you don’t look, do you? My first memory of my home city, I say to interested parties back in Texas, was a hanging bathket. A hanging basket? No, a hanging bathket. There was this bath hanging in the air where a bathroom had been and maybe someone scrubbing their back with Miss Hope’s face. It was hanging by its plumbing and it had weeds growing out of it and kind of drooping prettily over the side, it was a hanging bathket, I found it amusing, I pointed and laughed but my mother jerked me because she said that’s where Mrs Vernon had joined her Maker. What a place to join your Maker, a bomb-site, the dust’d get into the seals and the wings’d fall off I reflected but not out loud. The interested parties in Texas show their dental work understandingly and go back to talking about commodities or polyphylesis or the origins of the medieval guild system or whatever, I don’t know, it depends who’s present and unable to quit their career mode for even a couple of hours. I tend to drift off in these things and find my face in the ice-cream as opposed to the ice-cream but it’s just as unpleasant and never very popular.
You wanna know what happened, huh?
Still Fifteen, from my short VD, Home with Mrs Halliday. Take a break. The white and yellow stuff in the chair is the white cat lying on what’s left of my great-uncle’s summer flannels. The black stuff on the wall is my shadow.
YOU WERE AGES.
It’s not that those things in Mrs Halliday’s place tell me a great deal, guv. They’re not exactly teeming with information or clues if you wanna make me out to be some kind of shifty sleuth, streuth. It’s just that they reassure me. They tell me that it was all reeal, that these people actually did exist for God’s sake, that they moved around knocking their legs against reeal furniture and went up reeal stairs holding on to reeal banisters that didn’t shake and wobble along with the walls and opened reeal doors that went somewhere other than a ten-foot drop with Joe Gel winding some cables at the bottom. If they were real then so were my grandmother and my mother and me. Because basically there is so little left of them, so little that they might all have been a rumour, even my grandmother at the top of the stairs oh Christ suddenly and my dear old mother for crying out loud when she was young. And I don’t believe in rumours. Maybe I should make the rest of the film silent with me doing a voice-over like the voice-over in Mrs Z. Lazenby’s favourite film after Bambi (Jules et Fim, by the Truffle), really dry and matter-of-fact while these amazing very passionate and profound things are going on. Maybe I should do that. If I don’t do that I’ll crack up and furnace what I’ve had printed up so far and annoy my neighbour because I’ve processed about five hundred yards of celluloid and it cost me what Greg got for one of his carpet squares out of some unhinged private collector with gold-handled lavatory brushes which is half of my savings, for crying out loud.
Or maybe I should just crack up. Maybe I’ll just sit here in this lousy little empty kitchen and decompose like one of those early Warhol films. Letting it roll for hours and hours while I just sit here and decompose. The Decomposition of Ricky Thornby, 30 hrs, dir. Richard Thornby, 1998.
But the hoovers’d arrive just at the most exciting moment, when my eyeballs fall out or my kidneys flop onto my toes. Or something.
What would Robert-to-rhyme-with-despair do? Robert would not despair. When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best – that is inspiration.
Why am I outside everything and everybody, Robert? Why am I always sneaking up to their windows through the shrubbery and pestering them, Robert? Why have you made so many great complex masterworks that strike the inner soul and me not one, Robert? Why do I seem to see through everything and everybody and comprehendeth them not, Robert?
Quoi?
He likes the Jules et Fim idea. He thinks it’s my only hope. Shooting is going out to meet something, Richard-to-rhyme-with-bizarre. Nothing in the unexpected that is not secretly expected by you, OK?
OK.
Hi again, crew. You’ve been so patient. We’re going kind of silent. Sorry, Bosey. You can pack up your woofers in the old kitbag and jack me a lip mike. Sorry, Norma, for all those wasted times on the sheep-sprinkled downs and stuff. I’m doing all the voices. This is the eleventh hour. The Hoovers Are Coming. Here’s what we do. William has the line about the burnet then we cut into me wrapping the rest of the story up while you move around enormous on the silver screen. Thus.
William has the line about the burnet. Action.
He goes out of the room. He moves through the kitchen and up the back stairs. The steps are of brick but dip in the middle. Basically a lot of damp and gloom. One gaslight at each turn and a tiny window halfway up. He looks through it at the front drive where the carriages and motor cars used to deposit luggage and attached guests and the gravel’s moving because the moon’s a day away from full, Mike’s got a gobo over the blue luminaires and Clifford’s waving the flicker-stick, he needed the job, sorry, I don’t want you saturated with detail.
Breathe.
William’s now noticing nicks on the steps, bright new nicks like someone’s just begun carving a waterfall and had to go answer the door or something. He’s nervous. The top floor’s floor creaks and he thinks about ghosts and goblins and stuff – he thinks particularly about the phantom new boy in the basement of Cavendish House and he has to kind of sigh and blow a few red admirals out of his stomach. Then a great whine which is the door opening at the top of the stairs though he can’t yet see it, it’s round the turn. There are these little clicks and clinks and a thump which his feet pick up at some very subliminal level. Also a hissed bust me that makes William’s mouth fall open.
Shadow. The shadow first, on the wall at the turn. Me in my expressionist mode. A shadow like my clothes always made on the chair in the bedroom, probably a psychotic monk. Hooded. Vile smell courtesy of Des’s socks.
Then her. Unhooded. Or hooded by her hair which her hair-pins have mostly let out on parole. Quit the jokes, Rick. Hit the bone.
The maid. Millicent (Milly) Stephenson. Bent over a big metal bucket, both hands on the handle, taking it a step at a time. Blouse, long cotton skirt, big boots. He coughs. She looks up, there’s an intake of breath, the bucket thumps back onto the step and water splashes up golden in the gaslight. Big saucepan lid bobbing on top. Bust me, she exclaims again but under her breath. William swallows.
Do you want a hand? he proffers. She blinks, her tongue explores the corner of her mouth. She’s three steps higher than William. William feels a bratchet. Screech outside. Barn owl, says William. Glances through window: Clifford’s doing great things with his flicker-stick, Bosey’s got hiss on the Scotch pines, the black tops of the elms against the night sky are approaching ogres.
It’s got a nest in the barn, he says, but where you can’t see it.
The light’s too poor to see my grandmother’s spots.
Can I keep this up?
Yup. And now you know.
My grandmother’s looking down at the bucket, biting her lip. Blouse unbuttoned at the neck, hair really astray. William mounts two steps. Let me help, he says. She looks at him and gives this little nod. Their hands sit side by side on the handle like a couple of kids on a gate. Mrs Lazenby’d be really impressed by this.
Hold that, Mike. Hold their hands tight.
They lift the bucket and the saucepan lid rocks and some water splashes out. She grunts, he wheezes I’m afraid. They get it down with a few more nicks and spills and they giggle. Lower it thump onto original earthenware tiles outside scullery. Phew, I say! He wheezes and coughs and takes out his handkerchief and wipes his mouth on it but there’s no blood and the sputum’s passable.
I had to do it up there, sir, she says, she’s took a fancy to me.
; William flushes of course. OK, she’s lifting the saucepan lid. He bends over and takes a squinny. He makes a face. Rats but with these big snowy feet and they’re bobbing about. Tighten on one. They have very swollen eyes but tight shut. Oh, he says. He feels nauseous. He looks at her.
My great-uncle and my grandmother stand together in the dark little back entrance outside the scullery and don’t know what to say. The summery night air’s sneaking in under the original outside door that doesn’t meet the original tiles, there’s a hint of honeysuckle and evening primrose and stuff. I think that is a nightjar. A moth hits the door but softly because it is only a moth.
Silence.
More silence.
I wish you’d shut up in the back there. There’s such a thing as soft-pedal lovemaking for God’s sake, it doesn’t have to sound like a pack of wolves. Ay. She said as to deal with it straight away. That’s my grandmother breaking the silence, which is fine. Mrs Abbot said. She’s either massaging her thighs or wiping the flat of her hands on her skirt. Mrs Abbot.
My great-uncle nods and he closes his mouth.
On ma bed, snorts my grandmother.
On ma bed, she repeats. The little Devil.
William’s blush would power a jet turbine. Thank God it’s gloomy in here. Des didn’t flush ever, he just stayed pasty. I did. Of course I did. I flushed very easily just thinking about flushing. It was a no-win situation. But then Des doesn’t have a very flushable face. It’s like school brawn. That silent few moments a few moments back will appear a lot of times in my great-uncle’s sketchbook, and once as a completed painting about the size of a person. It went the way of all inflammables with his other more personal effects gratis my great-grandmother. I was going to study the painting with a magnifying glass this trip because it appears in one of Uncle Kenneth’s snapshots only slightly out of focus but I can’t because The Police Will Be Alerted if I try to axe Mrs Halliday’s door or jemmy a window or winch myself down through the roof out of a stolen Harrier powered by William’s blush. Shame. Take it from me it’s a remarkable painting.
THE WASTE.
So much fuckin’ waste, mate.
How many and how more were the violins unsung
By the fingers something over Dachau’s stack?
Smoke cannot play the Einsteinian rag
Nor blear its own eyes to feel the lack, the lack!
Thank you, Henrik old friend, fellow pesterer and toss-pot but not now, not now. Later, maybe, in the bar after the screening. For old times.
Christ, I’m older than he was when he was old.
Plip. That’s the hairpin dropping into the pail. My grandmother dabbles about in the water for it. My great-uncle wants to tuck her curl back but misses the opportunity and anyway he feels frightfully seedy watching her bared arm being nibbled by the dead OK you’ve twigged kittens. She lifts her arm out, on the end of it is her hand rising up in slow motion trailing a ribbon of water and the hairpin’s there and she sticks it into her bun and her wet skin gleams, obviously. Note that, Mike. The water in the pail rocks gradually. Because she has her arms up William’s lungs are taking in a fair amount of her body odour, which is sweetish. She’s gone and made a downright mess, says my grandmother. Hey, she has my ears, small and neat. Pardon? squeaks William. He clears his throat. Maybe his broken voice is getting itself fixed again. On ma bed, she says. Blood’n stuff on ma bed. Oh, how frightful, says William from about two hundred miles the other side of the class divide, how quite frightfully awful. The maid has never spoken to him like this before. He’s never given her the chance, actually. I’m thinking we should have had an establishing clip of Calypso the pregnant cat but I’m sorry it was furnaced. You’re not that dumbo, anyway.
Little horror, she says, it’s ’cos I makes such a fuss of her.
My great-uncle nods. He feels he’s confronting life and death in its profoundest vestments. This is Frank Franklin’s influence. Frank Franklin is D. H. Lawrence without the background or the red beard or the genius or the poor health, which is a tough thing to be. But Frank Franklin maintains that the country life of blood and soil and sex is vital and profound and that we are all attenuated beings, so he’s making progress. He’s not yet touched William’s knee. He’ll do everything he can to join up instantly despite his club-foot and’ll fail and turn deep pacifist and practically vegan and weep uncontrollably at William’s funeral and throw himself into the grave at Agatha’s funeral which we’ll come to, he’s a rival, I tracked him down to a low-slung cottage with a lot of cats in Shropshire and stepped on his hearing-aid BY MISTAKE in 1989 when I was on my general recce but he was totally ga-ga, it was OK, he posed no threat, he’d burnt the letters from her in about 1928 because he’d learnt them by heart I think his mistress or maybe just helper said, she was a mine of information, he died about a month later aged something totally ridiculous but not quite a century.
Have you killed all of them?
Oh ay, she says. She looks down at the kittens as if she has just decided to suckle them or something. They’re revolving slowly with outsize paws because they’ve landed on the other side of the water from a great height or maybe depth and are just recovering. They’re blind, thinks William. They came out and the first thing they knew was horrible. The only thing they knew. They were refused.
They were refused flaps around in his head like it’s broken in from somewhere else and can’t get out. It is from somewhere else, actually – it’s from something his father said last week when he’d motored down for the weekend, he was on about the Club and a couple of chaps who tried to enter without ties or spats or longjohns or something. My grandmother looks down at them like she’s thinking how cute they are. She’s about at her peak right now. This’ll be the happiest she’ll ever be. I’d have preferred a backdrop of spring flowers and Austrian mountains because it’s hell shooting all this in a few square feet of black hole on an extremely uneven floor even with a bazooka mounting on the Number One but no one chooses where their happiest moments come, mine was in a bus shelter in Uxbridge, I’ll explain it sometime but not now because we have a little technical wizardry to perform at this point. OK. Sometimes my great-uncle has nightmares involving linden trees falling on top of him and right now the linden trees are racing past him like he’s in a motor car. He swallows and leans against the wall because the last thing he wishes to happen is to faint in front of the girl. The linden trees are superimposing themselves in front of his face. They race past him and go on forever and in flickery black and white. The whole Frank Franklin feeling has vanished, frankly. It’s this thing about being refused. I want a few seconds of the supered flashing avenue over my great-uncle’s cold sweat and staring eyes so tell the sod who’s standing up in front of the screen to duck down or fuck off, we can’t cope with more than one super at a time and anyway, his face isn’t flat enough.
Thank you.
Little ’orror, murmurs my grandmother.
Little ’orror would’ve been an expression my mother would’ve recalled my grandmother using a lot if I’d asked her, like my, my or not on me onions or joining the Maker are expressions I would’ve recalled my mother using a lot, if you’d asked me.
The flashing-avenue super has gone. There’s just the face now. Look at this face. Those of you not draped over the bean-bags under someone or maybe under the bean-bags will have begun to note t
Sorry about the jitters. Kitchen-knife edit and the Romanies haven’t been around lately with their whetstone. I decided the time wasn’t ripe. Stick with it. We’ve lost about a second, twenty-four frames, not a lot happened.
Did you not mind awfully, doing it?
She shakes her head with a little puzzled frown and about the penultimate swatch of black hair comes loose from the bun at the back. Her lips are kind of hovering away from each other. She has my mother’s lips. I mean, my mother had her lips. I see it now. I never saw that before. Who needs a magnifying glass? Who needs Mrs Halliday? Who needs a mirror? We need a spade,
says the maid. Pardon? says the young gentleman. We need a spade, sir, she repeats. You’d think this’d be a never ever but it isn’t for some reason. Maybe deep down she’s very embarrassed at being in the tiny entrance bit between the scullery and the ancient outside door that doesn’t meet the tiles with the young gentleman – or maybe she’s just lonely for God’s sake and this loneliness has overridden all the rules. I don’t know. All I know is that my grandmother is getting Master William in on this whole operation. Don’t call me sir, William squeaks. Hey, this voice thing is really unfortunate. There’s a stupendously awful silence, stupendously awful, broken only by a moth. YOU CAN CALL ME WILLO, IF YOU WANT. Then he says it, but quieter. He clears his throat again. I’ll call you, um, Milly. That’ll be terrific, actually.
If you were never incredibly embarrassing at sixteen, you’re either lying or you were in a coma for a year, OK? Stick with it. How do you think I feel, huh?
I don’t mind butterflies, he adds. He thinks it’s adding but it’s not of course. He’s fairly confused by her look, which is appproaching the pop-eyed. I don’t mind butterflies, he repeats, but they’re different. You just put them in a chloroform jar or whatever. He isn’t sure when exactly a chap puts an arm round – Pantile told him when and he’s forgotten but the when can’t be much more whennish than right now. Her eyes relax some. She bites her lip and studies his collar button. The mess on the bed, thinks my great-uncle kind of echoily. Hey, something about the mess on the bed disturbs him. Maybe it’s because it makes him think of the mess he sometimes does into handkerchiefs or his sputum jar out of his throat. We need a spade, he says, like it’s his idea. His arms are nailed in about five places to his hips and his thighs. She’s breathing through her nose and her nose is flaring. William wonders why this should be so dashed miraculous. She dips and picks up the bucket again. It makes him jump, this big movement. Her dress brushes past his flannels, it actually touches his white flannels. I think Gordon caught that, I hope he caught that. She lifts the latch on the outside door and opens it. Her fingers on the black latch have the same effect on my great-uncle as the flaring nose. Perfumed night air enters, it’s really a relief. Then she’s gone. Never ever call a master by his Christian name. That’s what did it. Stephenson the Rocket. The outside door starts to swing back because the world’s on a tilt or whatever and he catches it with his foot. It bumps against his foot and stops there like it’s a bit put out because it’s a very old door and not used to being interrupted these days – it’s taking it easy, it hasn’t got long to go, it’s in its senescence, it’s fraying at the bottom under the impact of about a million boot-strikes because the boot-owners’ hands have been around a tub or a cheese vat or a couple of muck-knockers or something, it’ll be ripped out after two hundred years of uncomplaining service in 1958 and replaced by a glazed door you can’t see more than a blur through like the world outside’s a lavatory and which’ll be ripped out obviously by the new people after thirty-one years and replaced by a thick varnished oaken slab with wrought iron hinges and six Chubb locks like the world outside’s New York and William blinks out into the blackness with his hand on the very special frayed and scarred original door not appreciating it or consciously anyway. The various rustles might be her or they might be Sylvia setting up the next shoot or even bats. Damn, he whispers. Blasted rotten damn. I mean, the blackness is really black like I’ve got a lens cap over the whole thing but it’s OK, we’re out to the widest aperture now and there’s a practically full moon coming up any moment and some stars and wow we’re going infra-red.