by Stephen Fry
“I’ve no idea,” says Jane, “why Wagner didn’t think of that for himself. A toneless rhythmless howl is exactly what the piece needs there.”
“Sorry.” I desist and win a forgiving beam.
“It’s okay, Pup,” she says, giving my thigh a couple of hearty slaps. “You do your best.”
“It’s funny,” I venture at length, “that you like Wagner.”
“Mm?”
“I mean, you know. Being Jewish.”
“It is?”
“Hitler’s favorite composer and all.”
“Hardly Wagner’s fault. Hitler liked dogs too. And I expect he simply adored cream cakes.”
“Dogs and cream cakes,” I return, quick as a flash, “aren’t anti- Semitic.”
“But Wagner was?”
“You know he was. Everyone knows.”
“But I don’t think, Puppy, that he would have stood by the ovens cheering the murderers on, do you? He wrote about love and power. You can’t have both. Love is stronger, love is better. He said so many times.”
“Hm. Still.”
“Still,” she agrees. “And I have to admit my father hated me playing The Ring at full volume in my bedroom. Drove him crazy.”
It never precisely irritates me that Jane’s tastes in art are just a little more serious than mine, but it always surprises me. If it comes to a choice of films she always prefers the art house to the obvious. I can watch any movie at any time of the day and get something out of it even if I think it’s bollocks, but I never really believed it when Jane said she genuinely didn’t enjoy Toy Story, nor could I begin to understand it when she didn’t throw up at The Piano. Schindler’s List she declined to see, which was fair enough.
“Did you lose,” I ask, my throat a little tight, for this is something I have never asked before, “many of your family in the camps?”
She shoots a surprised glance. “Several. Most of my grandparents’ brothers and sisters. My great-aunts and great-uncles, I suppose. And cousins, that sort of thing.”
“Where? I mean, which camp? Do you know?”
“No.” She sounds surprised at her answer as she gives it. “No, I don’t know. My mother’s family was from the Ukraine I think. My father’s from Poland. So around there, I suppose.”
“You’ve never asked your parents?”
“You don’t. You tend not to. Anyway, it’s more a question of them asking their parents. My father was born two years after the war ended.”
“Sure.”
“I think my grandfather wrote something. A memoir, a diary, something like that. Why?”
“Oh, you know. Just wondered. It’s not something I’ve ever heard you talk about.”
“What’s to say?”
“Right.”
A companionable little pause.
The Siegfried Idyll draws itself out to an attenuated close and I switch to One FM, where Oasis are having a seriously good time, telling the world not to look back in anger.
“Suppose,” I say, catching her wince and turning the volume down a smidge, “suppose you could go back in time to . . . I don’t know, Dachau, say, Treblinka, Auschwitz, whatever. What would you do?”
“What would I do? Be gassed I should imagine. I don’t suppose I would be offered much choice in the matter.”
“Right.”
Another little pause. Not so companionable, but friendly enough.
“Do you think,” I ask, “that we will ever be able to go back in time?”
“No.”
“Is it scientifically impossible?”
“Just logically.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” says Jane, backing the car into a scientifically and logically impossible space, “if it were possible, then at some time in the future someone would have gone back and stopped things like the Holocaust from happening, wouldn’t they? And they would have prevented that madman from walking into the Dunblane school gym with guns blazing. And they would have warned the office workers in that federal building in Oklahoma that there was a bomb there. They would have told Archduke Ferdinand to cancel his visit to Sarajevo, advised Kennedy to travel in a closed car, suggested to Martin Luther King that he stay home that day. Don’t you think? Above all,” she says switching off the radio with a crisp snap, “above all, they would have gone back to Manchester in the seventies, separated the Gallagher brothers at birth and made sure that Oasis was never formed.”
Tchish! Some people . . .
Double Eddie and James are at the party, all in white with laurel wreaths on their heads. The dudes throwing this particular party are those kind of dudes and it is that kind of party.
“It’s Pupples!”
“Er . . . hi, you two. You know Jane Greenwood?”
They each take her hand solemnly.
“Hello, Jane Greenwood. I am Edward Edwards.”
“And I, I am James McDonell. So there.”
“Are you Puppy’s girlfriend?”
Jane nods gravely.
Double Eddie puts an arm round her shoulder. “Tell me, is he marvelous in bed?”
“I’ve still got those CDs of yours,” I say. “Must give them back to you some time.”
“He is, isn’t he? He is! Isn’t he? I bet he is. Tell me he is.”
I duck away, pinker than pink, to a large central punch fountain and fill a glass.
We leave after a few drinks. Parties are for the young.
Back at the house in Onion Row, Jane holds me over the toilet and watches, detached and only lightly amused, as I noisily turn my intestines inside out.
“I reckon,” I say, trying to pull free a string of spittle that hangs down and bounces over the bowl like a yoyo, “that I may need a pair of scissors to get rid of this. It seems to be like, glued to the back of my throat.”
“If you keep making that horrible hawking noise to clear it I’m going to leave the country and never come back,” says Jane. “You won’t even get a postcard.”
“It’s not normal gob, this. It’s a kind of elastic. You know, like a bungee. Khkhkhya!”
The cappuccino maker impression seems to do the trick. A wadge of sputum flies free from my uvula and the long string slaps itself around the porcelain. “Funny,” I say, as I stagger to my feet, “I don’t remember eating any plum skins.”
“You,” says Jane, “are a horrid little boy. You came in here as white as a sheet and now you are as purple as . . .”
“A purple sheet.”
“Your hair is damp and stuck to your forehead, your nose and eyes are running, you smell revolting, sweat is oozing from the bum fluff on your upper lip . . .”
“Stubble,” I amend with a sniff that sends vomitory acid deep into my sinuses.
“Bum fluff.”
“Anyway,” I say, eyes stinging. “There was something wrong with that punch.”
“Of course there was. It was ninety percent vodka. As it is every year. And every year you make a fool of yourself with it. Every year I have to virtually carry you to the bathroom and watch you puke.”
“It’s a tradition then. That’s cute.”
“And I don’t know why you’re walking towards the bedroom.”
“Actually I think I’ll crash out now.”
“You’ll have a shower first.”
“Oh, right. That’s prolly a good idea. Shower. Cool. Yeah. Sound.” I narrow my eyes with a glitter. “That might wake me up and then maybe we could . . .” I give two clicks in the back of my mouth, like a rider urging on a horse, and I wink suggestively.
“Christ,” says Jane. “Are you suggesting sex?”
“You betcher, bitch.”
“I’d rather clean out that lavatory with my tongue.”
I awoke with a quiver to find myself in b
ed, Jane snoring lightly beside me. Not an unattractive snore I should point out. A gentle, elegant snore. I listened and watched for a while before noticing the alarm clock beside her.
Ten minutes past four.
Hm.
We had returned from the party early, no later than half-past eight. What happened after that?
I had thrown up. Natch.
Then what?
I guessed I must have showered and crashed. No wonder I was awake. I had slept nearly eight hours.
I became aware that my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and that a great thirst was upon me. So maybe that was why my body woke me up.
I slid off the bed and padded nude into the kitchen, the bones in my feet cracking on the floor.
The window above the kitchen sink looked out over fields, but the sky was already light, so I modestly pulled down the blind before leaning forward to hook myself over and pee into the plughole. A deliciously naughty feeling, which I justified to myself by reflecting that this quiet piddle was less likely to wake Jane up than a great plunging wazz into the bathroom toilet. Besides, W. H. Auden always pissed in sinks. Often when there were piles of crockery in them too.
I ran the tap until the water was icy cold and I ducked under the faucet to drink. I gulped and gulped and gulped. Never had water tasted sweeter.
Don’t need an aspirin. No headache, that’s the joy of voddie.
More than no headache, though. I felt wonderful. As great as Frosties. I simply rippled with well-being.
I stood panting, the water dripping from my chin and down my bare chest.
It was ages since I had felt so alone. When the world around you is asleep, that is when you are truly alone. You have to rise early of course. Many times, when working on the thesis, I had stayed up as late as just this hour and felt miserable and lonely, but waking up as early as this, that is when you feel gloriously, positively alone, there’s the difference. Much better. Mm.
I stalked to the bread bin, enjoying the slap of my feet on the tiles. Not too warm, not too chilly. Too exactly just right. I tore off a hunk of bread and inspected the fridge.
I don’t know why I find it intensely erotic to stand naked before an open fridge, but I do. Maybe it’s something to do with the expectation of a hunger soon to be satisfied, maybe it’s that the spill of light on my body makes me feel like a professional stripper. Maybe something weird happened to me when I was young. It is an alarming feeling, mind, because all those assembled foodstuffs put ideas in your head when you’re on the rise. Stories of what you can do with unsalted butter or ripe melons or raw liver, they crowd your head as the blood begins to rush.
I spotted a big slab of Red Leicester and pulled off a piece with my hands. I stood there chewing for some time, buzzing with happiness.
That was when the idea came to me, full born.
The force of it made me gape. A mashed pellet of bread fell from my open mouth and at once the blood flew upward to the brain where it was needed, leaving my twitching excitement below with nothing to do but shrink back like a startled snail.
I closed the fridge with my shoulder and turned with a giggle. My head was pounding as I tiptoed to the study. All my notes were piled onto a shelf above the computer. I knew what I was looking for and I knew I could find it.
I mention the state of sexual arousal that preceded the birth of my idea because I have a theory, looking back, that a subconscious part of my mind, pondering the thought of some kind of sexual release, with or without the use of unsalted butter, olive oil or liver, had wandered to thoughts of semen. Thoughts of semen had awoken an affinity (something to do with reflecting on the absence of a headache while drinking from the tap perhaps), a connection in my memory that then caused synapses to fire off in all directions until the idea screamed itself awake in my consciousness. It’s only a theory. You can be the judge of it.
MAKING MOVIES
T.I.M.
FADE IN:
EXT. ST. MATTHEW’S COLLEGE—MORNING
A GARDENER is mowing the court of the lawn in Hawthorn Tree Court. A bell chimes the hour.
CUT TO:
INT. ST. MATTHEW’S COLLEGE,
OUTSIDE LEO’S ROOMS—MORNING
MICHAEL stands outside the Professor’s door, thumping on the oak eagerly. He is carrying two large Safeways carrier bags.
LEO (OOV)
Come in!
MICHAEL laboriously puts down the bags, pushes wide the door, picks the bags up again and enters, hooking the door closed behind him with his foot.
LEO looks up from his computer in surprise.
LEO
Michael!
MICHAEL
(nervously)
Professor, I have to talk to you.
LEO
Sure, sure. Come in, come in.
INT. ST. MATTHEW’S COLLEGE,
LEO’S ROOMS—MORNING
MICHAEL is blushing, nervous and out of breath. He moves to the center of the room but seems unable to know what to say. LEO stares hard at him.
LEO
(continuing)
Sit down, I get you a cup of coffee.
LEO
Leo disappears into the gyp-room. HOLD on MICHAEL.
We hear, as before, coffee cups rattling and a kettle being filled, OFF.
MICHAEL walks over to the bookshelves and looks at them once more. He is restless. He taps his teeth nervously with his fingernails. He is coming to a decision.
MICHAEL
(raising his voice)
Professor . . .
LEO
(coming out)
How many times do I have to tell the boy?
My name is Leo.
MICHAEL
Leo, like I’m no scientist, you know, but isn’t it true to say that when Marconi invented the wireless the first thing he did was make a broadcast?
LEO
What do you mean?
MICHAEL
Well, he couldn’t only receive, could he? I mean, there weren’t any signals to receive, were there? So he had to transmit and receive.
Leo nods his head slowly.
LEO
That makes sense.
MICHAEL
Cool. So what I’m saying is, the discovery of . . . what do you call it . . . wireless telegraphy?
LEO
Wireless telegraphy, sure.
MICHAEL
The discovery of wireless telegraphy meant the ability to receive and to broadcast. Otherwise it would have been pointless, yeah?
LEO
Quite pointless.
MICHAEL
And you said that your machine . . . what you showed me yesterday . . .
(breaking off as a thought strikes)
. . . what’s it called, by the way?
LEO
Called? What do you mean?
MICHAEL
Its name. What’s its name?
LEO
(puzzled)
Name? It doesn’t have a name.
MICHAEL
Oh. Maybe we should call it . . .
(thinking)
. . . we should call it Tim.
LEO
Tim?
MICHAEL
Yeah, as in “time.” Or . . . hang on! Yeah, it could stand for . . . er, what was it you said? “Temporal imaging . . .” So, Tim stands for Temporal Imaging Machine. Cool! Tim. Tim. Like it.
LEO
Tim. Okay, we call it Tim.
MICHAEL
What was I saying?
LEO
(with a shrug)
Something loosely connected with Marconi.
MICHAEL
Right, right. You told me that Tim was like a radio set that could only t
une in, but couldn’t transmit.
LEO
That’s what I said.
MICHAEL
Well, what I’m saying is, any halfway competent engineer could take an ordinary radio, muck about it a bit and turn it into a transceiver, right?
LEO
An ordinary radio, yes. But who’s talking about an ordinary radio?
The kettle starts to WHISTLE angrily in the background.
MICHAEL
It’s the same thing! The same principle.
(beat)
You can do it, can’t you? You know how to!
LEO meets MICHAEL’s eager stare.
LEO
I get the coffee.
MICHAEL
(calling after him)
You can! You can do it!
MICHAEL follows LEO into the gyp-room. LEO is pouring boiling water into a cafetière. MICHAEL watches in a state of suppressed excitement.
MICHAEL
(continuing)
It’s true, isn’t it? It is.
LEO holds up a finger for silence and with calm deliberation assembles, on a tray, a jug of milk, a little bowl of sugar and a mug for his own hot chocolate. He picks up the tray and goes out: MICHAEL follows close at heel, still bubbling with excitement.
LEO puts down the tray, watching MICHAEL’s energetic pacing out of the corner of his eye.
LEO
Now I know why they call you Puppy. You follow people about, you pant, you yelp. For all I know you piddle on the floor as well.
MICHAEL
I just want to know . . .
LEO
(interrupting)
Listen. Sit down and listen.
MICHAEL drops sulkily into a chair.
LEO
(continuing)
While I pour your coffee, you listen. You know nothing about the device I have constructed, this Tim. You know nothing about the physics behind it, nor the technology behind it. I described it as being like a radio set because I thought that was something . . . a model, an analogy . . . that you could understand.
(handing him a cup of coffee)
But that does not mean that this device, that Tim really works like a radio set. Such an analogy falls down in all kinds of ways.
MICHAEL
(defiant)
But you can, can’t you? You can!