Mr Toppit

by Charles Elton

  And on the screen, Luke 3—let’s get the pecking order right: I am Luke 1, Lila’s version is Luke 2, and Toby, the boy actor whose career took such a spectacular downturn after the series ended and who now has AIDS rumors circling around him like vultures (“Gaunt Appearance of TV’s Luke Hayseed—Shock Pictures”), is Luke 3—teeters through the garden, his brave-but-frightened face intercut with closeups of superbees the size of rats, whose stings could clearly fell a giant.

  Spot the difference, spot the mistake. It is this: plucky, spunky Luke 3 overcomes his natural fear (knowing what danger he is in) to perform this terrifying and thankless task for the unsatisfiable (as it turns out) Mr. Toppit.

  Luke 1, for whom pluck and spunk are strangers from beyond Venus, performs this task without either bravery or fear. He does it because he knows it to be right, and the very certainty of the act gives it a dignity so lacking in Luke 3 that it takes your breath away.

  But the point for me is this: they were my bees and I do not remember offering them up to the world.

  • • •

  There was a family. There was us. My father and mother, and Rachel and Luke, the Hayman children who became the Hayseed children. Rachel handled it quite differently from me but, then, her problems were quite different from mine.

  The last time I saw Rachel properly, when she was in one of the many clinics she had got to know so well, taken like a favored diner in a restaurant to her usual table, when she was in denial or in recovery or in remission or in relapse or hovering in a place she had made uniquely her own—the cusp between all of them—she had at last reached a state of complete impasse: she had stopped doing anything at all.

  What she wanted, I think, was to stay in one place in her head. Claude said once, “Rachel has drug dealers like other people have accountants or dentists.” He knew because he had introduced her to them. For years, she was always going down or up, taking drugs to feel good or taking drugs to stop feeling bad, conscious like a chess player of each move, and each move beyond that, trying always to second-guess her body and altering her moves to achieve the perfect combination that would keep her in that one place. I think the permutations finally became too many for her to cope with, spinning off into space, dividing and subdividing with terrifying rapidity. Everything altered everything else—a cigarette smoked, a dress worn, a line snorted, a door opened, a preference stated, a road crossed—until the only way she could see of just being was to do nothing at all, to sit in a chair absolutely silent.

  The nurse who took me to her room told me she was quite cooperative over feeding—would allow herself to be fed, that is—and was lifted in and out of bed with no resistance. However, she would not look at anyone, or answer a question directed at her. If forced to do something she did not want to do, she would cover her eyes and ears with her hands and curl up in a ball, but make no sound. I did not ask about the lavatory arrangements because I suspected that nappies might come into it.

  It had been a long time since I had seen her. She was sitting in a straight-backed armchair staring out of the window, but when I knelt down in front of her and took her hand, I could see that her eyes were not really focusing on anything. “Are you going to talk to me, Rach?” I asked her. “You don’t have to.”

  Clearly, she was not going to, but maybe she made some small acknowledgment that I was there, a gentle squeeze of my hand. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell.

  What a consummate theatrical pro, I suddenly thought. I knew and she knew. We were back playing a game—who can stare longest without smiling: a game we had often played as children. But this was clearly not to be acknowledged now she was surrounded yet again by a phalanx of shrinks trying to coax her back into some semblance of normality, paid for—to my mother’s fury—by the cascade of royalties from the books, the pencil boxes, and the eggcups.

  “We could call this chapter of your life ‘Homage to Catatonia.’ What do you think?” I said. No response. “ ‘Portrait of the Autist as a Young Woman’ ”?

  Did the corners of her mouth turn up a little? I considered tickling her ribs—she had always been responsive to that as a child—but then I thought she should be allowed to keep her dignity, if that was the word for it.

  Then I saw something odd. Under her chair, the corner of a book was peeping out and I recognized it instantly from the bit of the jacket I could see. It was Darkwood, the last of the series, with Lila’s illustration of Luke’s back and head bathed in a celestial yellow light, dwarfed by a huge and menacing wall of trees parting in front of him to reveal a strange glow in the darkness.

  I picked up the book and brought it to Rachel’s face. “Is this yours? Are you reading it?” She did not reply. Now, this raised an interesting question: was Rachel only in her mute and immobile state behind closed doors? The moment the shrinks and doctors left the room, did she dive into a secret life, reliving happy Hayseed days, turning the pages of the book with the kind of fervor she normally reserved for her other secret lives?

  Or had one of the relief nurses, not knowing Rachel’s precise condition and believing she was dealing with an amnesiac, tried to surround her with familiar things to jolt her memory? If it had been somebody else, it might have been a favorite song, say, or a recording of a loved one’s voice on permanent loop, like a saccharine-speaking clock, a selection of family photographs placed close to the bedside so that when those unseeing eyes eventually focused, their gaze would fall on brightly colored images of this summer or that Christmas, smiling babies or loving parents.

  But Rachel did not want to wake up to her old life. The state she was in now was the good bit. She wanted, if she could, to wake up as someone else, somewhere else. Surround her with familiar things—straitjacket her under the Hayseed duvet and pillowcase set, blast the excruciating “Luke’s Theme” down headphones into her ears, force-feed her through a tube from the Hayseed cereal bowl and mug combo—and you probably couldn’t kick-start her to save your life. Put her on a spaceship, people it with beings from a different solar system who speak no known language, and you might have a chance.

  Up the corridor there was a kind of recreation room where I waited to see Dr. Honey, Rachel’s doctor. At the other end a circle of people was sitting on chairs. One of them was weeping rather noisily, and the others were staring at him in silence. I hated this place.

  As I watched, a boy looked up at me from his chair. He must have been about eighteen. “Group,” he said, with an apologetic smile.

  “Sorry?”

  “Therapy.”

  He was staring at me and I turned away. Behind him, on the wall, was a large pinboard. I couldn’t quite make out what was on it, but as I moved closer I saw that it was filled with neatly arranged rows of Polaroid mugshots.

  “Rachel’s there. You’ll see her if you look,” he said.

  I scanned them and, sure enough, there was one of Rachel. Her face was overexposed and drained of color. Her eyes were closed. A chill came over me: she looked like a corpse.

  “Before,” the boy said. I turned back to him, unsure what he meant. “When we come in they take one. It’s the clinic version of being fingerprinted. They take an After one when you leave. There’s not always a lot of difference.” He indicated the chair next to him. “You can wait here if you want. I’m Matthew Sumner.”

  “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re Rachel’s brother. Luke Hayseed.”

  “Hayman. Actually.”

  “Yeah. Cigarette?”

  I shook my head.

  “We all smoke like chimneys in here. Except Rachel. She’s given up. Given everything up.” He chortled. “I’ve been with Rachel before.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “I was at Lakewood for a bit. Near Marlow. When she was there. Like youth hostels, these places. You run into the same people if you’re on the circuit. No, I really liked her.” He looked away with a jerk, and started to bite the nail of his little finger with astonishing ferocity.<
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  I began to get up. “I’d better go back,” I said.

  He put out his hand and, with surprising strength, grabbed my wrist. He leaned into me and said softly, “I’ve read the books. All of them. I can quote bits, if you like.”

  I wanted to go, but something about him almost riveted me there. “What are you in here for?” I asked.

  Sheepishly, he held up his hands, palms out, and like a concert pianist about to play, he pushed his arms towards me so that the shirt-cuffs pulled back. On his wrists there was a mass of vertical scars. “I expect they’ll start on Rachel soon,” he said.

  “To do what?”

  “They’re not going to put up with her being like a loony for long. See, you’re meant to confront yourself, change your behavior patterns. They break you down. If you like wearing white, they make you wear black. If you like to dance, they make you sit still.”

  I heard myself ask, “And if you’ve stopped talking?”

  “Oh, they have ways of making you talk.” He threw back his head and laughed so loudly that the group at the other end of the room looked round briefly.

  Then he stopped. “I know Toby, too.”

  I was confused. “Toby?”

  “Toby Luttrell. Who played you. In your TV series. We shared a room at that place in St. Albans.”

  “It wasn’t my TV series,” I said.

  “I fucked him,” he added conversationally.

  The appropriate response to this statement eluded me for a moment. As Matthew stared at me expectantly, I managed to conjure up, “Well, bully for you.” I tried to mold my tone into something smooth and light, although I felt anything but. I felt as if I had stepped off a cliff, but had not yet begun to fall, like a character in a cartoon film. “I have to go,” I said.

  He looked me right in the eyes. “You see, I know who Mr. Toppit is. That’s something we have in common.” He smiled as if he had just worked out something rather important. “In fact,” he said, “that’s only one of the things we have in common.”

  I got up so abruptly that my chair fell over backwards. “Actually,” I said, “I don’t give a flying fuck who Mr. Toppit is.” I headed for the doors.

  “Don’t worry about Rachel. I’ll look after her,” Matthew called to me, and then he shouted, “She’s my friend!”

  I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but they had the grace to remain at my sides.

  I found Dr. Honey’s office at the other end of the corridor. I knocked, and a muffled sound came from inside. He was in the middle of his lunch. On his desk everything had been arranged with mathematical precision—a plastic cup of coffee, a KitKat, a bag of crisps, and a sandwich placed exactly in the center of a square of greaseproof paper, all equidistant from each other. He was probably an expert on obsessive-compulsive disorders.

  “I want to take Rachel out of here,” I said.

  Dr. Honey nodded slowly. He cleared his throat. “Do you think that should be your decision,” he said, “or hers?”

  “I don’t think she’s capable of making that kind of decision,” I said.

  “So you think you should do it for her? Impose it?”

  “Don’t you impose things here? In this place?”

  “As a matter of fact, we impose very little. We try to …” he searched for the word “… suggest a structure under which a patient can confront the issues that concern them. Has something upset you?”

  “I’m not upset,” I lied. “I’m worried about Rachel.” I didn’t want to talk about Matthew yet, but I knew I had to come up with something quickly. Dr. Honey had the air of a theatergoer waiting for a late curtain to rise.

  “I think some of the other patients are …” And then I paused. I didn’t know how to go on and, to my amazement, the word “horrid” limped out of my mouth, like a straggler at the end of a race.

  “Horrid,” he repeated thoughtfully. He turned his head away from me briefly and looked out of the window. Then he swung back, fixing me with his eyes. “This is not an hotel or a health farm. Our patients are not here to improve their table manners. Nor, may I remind you, is it a prison. Anyone, including your sister, may leave when they wish. She is as free to go as you are.”

  I struggled on lamely, now forced to play my remaining cards. “Matthew … I don’t know his last name …”

  “Sumner,” he said.

  I could feel my palms sweating. “He said some really strange things.”

  “Strange?”

  I tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I don’t suppose you use that as a technical term much here.”

  “Not often. No.”

  “He seems to be obsessed with these books, my father’s books.” It sounded impossibly feeble. “You know, they’re quite—”

  He cut in: “Yes, I know all about them. Obsessed? My goodness, the books are famous. It can’t be a surprise that your father’s extraordinary creation of Mr. Toppit might strike a chord in someone whose issues stem from an ambivalent attitude to authority figures. You know, Mr. Toppit has an almost iconic significance: his need to be obeyed, his withholding of approval. Naturally Matthew is interested. I doubt if it’s obsession. Personally, I’m a great admirer of the books. They’re as dark as Grimm but not so one-note. We use them sometimes in our group sessions. They’re a surprising link: everyone has such a clear memory of when they first read them.”

  “You mean like where you were when Kennedy was shot?”

  He smiled wearily. “We aren’t strangers here to the children of well-known figures: film stars, politicians, the corporate world. The burden of an achieving parent can seem formidable,” he said.

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t an achieving parent. He just wrote some books.”

  “Rachel, if I may say so, seems more comfortable with that than you do.” He arranged a patient look on his face. “Your sister—and please do not take this the wrong way—is not a well person, is not a functional person, to use our jargon. She identifies very strongly with the books—perhaps too strongly—but they represent a kind of golden age to her. That’s an area we touched on in many of our sessions the last time she was here. She told me then that she is writing the official biography of your father. Has that progressed? It’s important that she has a project, something that will build her confidence.”

  “No, she’s not writing his biography,” I explained patiently. “She went to see the publishers and told them she wanted to do it. They’ve made a fortune from the books so they could hardly say no. If she’s written half a page I’d be surprised.”

  “I sense you have a sort of ambivalence about her work. Do you feel that it might be more appropriate for you to write his biography?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  I couldn’t help laughing as if it was the most ridiculous thing in the world. Which it was. “It isn’t ‘her work.’ It isn’t anything.”

  He seemed hurt. “I can’t help feeling you’re competing with Rachel in some way,” he said. “Surely you can both share in the riches—I don’t mean material riches—of your father’s books. His extraordinary heritage, if you will.”

  “It’s not about sharing. That’s the problem.” I stopped because I saw something now more clearly than I ever had before. “You’ve read the books,” I said. He nodded. “There’s one omission from my father’s heritage. The books are about me. I am Luke Hayseed. The thing is, there’s no Rachel Hayseed in them. Not a walk-on part, not a guest appearance. How would that make you feel? Don’t you see? She just isn’t … there. Somewhere in that area I think you might locate her issues. That’s why she’s not a functional person, to use your jargon.”

  When I went back to Rachel’s room, she was asleep, her head tilted up against the headrest of her chair. I leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  As I said, her problems were quite different from mine.

  Arthur

  On a spring day in 1981, Arthur Hayman, now in his sixties and lately the author of an obscure set of children’s books, but when youn
ger general factotum to the British film industry in the shape of sometime editor, sometime scriptwriter, and one-time director of the 1948 film entitled Love’s Capture, not well reviewed at the time and not remembered precisely as a milestone in the oeuvre of the lead actress, Phyllis Calvert—so tenuously remembered, in fact, that the title, having once been misprinted in a Festschrift to its star as Love’s Captive, now tended to be referred to, when it was referred to at all, as “Love’s Captive (a.k.a. Love’s Capture)”—was walking through the gardens in the center of Soho Square. It was two minutes before one o’clock on the Monday after the first hot weekend of the year and some of the men lounging on the grass eating their sandwiches had already taken off their shirts. The girls, in short-sleeved dresses or scoop-necked tops, were rubbing suntan lotion on their shoulders and arms, still red from sunbathing over the weekend.

  As Arthur walked through the gate at the southern end of the gardens and crossed the road to the top of Greek Street, a church bell struck one. The reverberation of the chime hung in the still air and he looked up, wondering which church it had come from. When he was younger he had spent most of his time in and around Soho. He still banked there—indeed, had just walked past his bank where, in the days before he had had money, the manager would proffer a cup of tea and give him and the other young men who looked as if they might have promising careers in the film industry one last chance before bouncing their cheques while they waited for the accounts department at Rank or Ealing or Gainsborough to pay the money that would clear, or at least reduce, their overdrafts.

  Now he rarely ran into anyone he knew in Soho. Once, in the fifties, he might run into any number of people, normally either leaving the Sphinx Club, heading for lunch somewhere else, or heading for the Sphinx to drink their way through lunch. He would sometimes be sucked into their wake and cram himself with them into the rickety lift, with the peculiar smell and judder, to the top floor where Jimmy the barman would greet them—the greetings somewhat more vociferous for the others than for Arthur—and they would settle down for some serious talk as lunchtime folded into teatime and the sandwiches sat untouched on the tables.