Diary of a Somebody

by Brian Bilston

  Less comforting were the messages on my phone that had accumulated during my confinement. There was a series of five messages from Liz, each successive one showing a steady increase on the Umbrage scale. The tone of the final message, though, had moved from annoyance to resignation:

  I guess that’s it then.

  At first I couldn’t understand why she was so upset but then, in my outbox, I noticed my message to her from 10th June. It was marked as undelivered; I must have turned my phone off too soon.

  I looked again at the words I’d written as they teetered in my outbox, suspended in a permanent state of nearliness, like a metaphor for something that never quite happened.

  Friday June 29th

  Newcastle Brown Ale

  This is how I remember it. He appeared

  on my fifth week here, asking for food.

  He’d washed up on the beach to the south of me;

  I’d seen his footprints in the sand,

  several days before. I’d been troubled by these,

  like an astronaut who discovers giant steps

  upon a not-so-lonely moon.

  He strung up his hammock next to mine

  and slept fitfully.

  Later, he told me his name was Gordon –

  although he should like to be called Sting –

  and I noticed his thighs, welted

  and swollen from the tentacled attentions

  of jellyfish. One night, he told me of his dreams

  of blue turtles

  but by then I had tired of him:

  the constant wrapping and unwrapping

  of the tide-carried twine around his finger,

  his insistence, as we swung gently in our beds,

  that we put on the red light

  as a beacon to passing boats,

  that habit he had of standing so close to me.

  On his last night, I watched him

  as he slipped the note inside the bottle,

  and launched it over the surf,

  and, when its brown glass disappeared

  underneath the waves,

  I smashed the oar down upon him

  until he’d no more breath to take.

  Six weeks on, when the helicopter came,

  there was nothing of him,

  picked dry as he was, bones shining

  beneath an invisible sun.

  Every year, I raise a bottle to my lips

  and set him free. This is how I remember it.

  One might have imagined that, having had all this free time on my hands, the task of finishing Robinson Crusoe in time for the monthly book group meeting would have become somewhat easier. It’s a reasonable assumption but one that doesn’t take into consideration the fact that Mr Bloomer was only able to deliver my edition of Robinson Crusoe this morning, on account of it being ‘extremely rare’ and ‘difficult to source’. It was also ‘extremely expensive’ and that was ‘difficult to stomach’. I didn’t dare take it along with me to the meeting this evening for fear of it being doused in best bitter and essence of wasabi.

  The rest of the group seem increasingly irritated with me at my failure to read the monthly book. On the pretence of not being able to squeeze anyone else around the main table, they made me sit by myself at a smaller table, shipwrecked on the rocks of guilt, marooned on my own personal island of shame. I’m surprised they didn’t call the police.

  Saturday June 30th

  In a Parallel Universe*

  there is

  parallel parking

  for all of the cars

  and

  gymnasts drink

  in parallel bars.

  *this poem was sent by parallelogram

  Dylan and I watched a film this afternoon called Donnie Darko, in which a ‘tangent universe’ erupts out of our own universe. It was all rather complicated but thankfully, Dylan explained to me various theories concerning alternative fictional universes. I nodded my head vigorously along to his words as if I understood him.

  It made me think that in one of the alternative universes out there, there is an alternative world in which an alternative Brian Bilston is, at this very moment, enjoying an episode of unalloyed passion on an alternative sofa (one without the custard-cream crumbs) with the Liz from this world (although one who has been modified to return his text messages).

  The Brian Bilston who lives in this world, and who is currently sitting on an unalternative sofa with an unalternative cat on his lap, writing in this, his miserable unalternative diary, utterly resents that alternative Brian Bilston, and hopes he puts his back out.

  July

  Sunday July 1st

  Audley End

  Yes, I remember Audley End –

  The name intrigued me, I don’t know why,

  As the train pulled up beside it.

  It was the first day of July.

  The doors beeped. An announcement

  Was made. I stepped down from the train,

  Unwittingly. The sign I saw

  Said Audley End – only its name

  Was then followed by other words,

  Ones to strike a note of caution.

  Five words to fill a heart with dread:

  Alight here for Saffron Walden.

  And, for that minute, a church bell tolled,

  Close by, and round it, clangier,

  Louder and louder, all the bells

  Of Essex and East Anglia.

  It being one of those uncommonly pleasant and sunny English days, I decided to take myself off upon a train journey. The destination was irrelevant; what counted was the time to sit and reflect, to watch the countryside rattle by from the window of my three-quarters-empty train.

  Two and a half unwonten hours later, I got off in search of air. The station was called ‘Audley End’ and seemed as good a place of disembarkation as any other. It was only having strolled to the end of the platform and read the poster pinned to the white lattice fence that I recalled the station was but a short stroll to Saffron Walden where, it appeared, a Poetry Festival was about to begin. What a stroke of luck! I’d forgotten all about this event, but there were some excellent poets on the bill (as well as some awful, pretentious ones).

  I checked into the hotel on the high street and unpacked the clean shirt and cardigan that I’d carefully folded and placed in my suitcase last night, hanging them in the wardrobe to prevent further crumpling.

  Monday July 2nd

  Saffron Hall was busier than I’d imagined. Some ticketing issue with one of the more interesting, popular poets, I supposed, had meant that festival visitors had been given some free tickets to Toby Salt’s talk instead. I squeezed in at the back of the auditorium, hidden beneath my balaclava.

  A rather weaselly man with a goatee beard and nasal condition introduced Toby Salt. This was Django, editor and owner of Shooting from the Hip. He described Toby Salt as ‘one of this country’s finest poets’. I was thankful that my balaclava muffled my laughter.

  Toby Salt began, as he invariably does, with a Petrarchan sonnet. It concerned itself with human fragility and the restorative power of Lake Como. I concerned myself with the crossword which I had brought with me to fill just such moments of tedium. I fished out my dictionary to check my answer to 17 down:

  NUDNIK (noun): a tiring, dull or boring person.

  As I was pencilling it in, I noticed that the rest of the audience, rather than staring embarrassedly at their shoes or gazing blankly into the mid-distance, appeared to be actually enjoying this stuff. A lengthy exploration in free verse on the nature of hermeneutics was greeted with a ripple of warm applause. There were gasps and strangled cries at his graphic retelling of the story of the Rape of the Sabine Women. Selected readings from his advance proof copy of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, which he shook in the air like a TV evangelist, provoked tears, laughter, melancholic reflection and a thunderous response from the audience.

  And it was then, amidst the sighs and swoons, the squeals and th
e whoops, that I saw Liz. She was gazing up at him, with an expression paused somewhere between unexpected admiration and unbounded wonder. I scrambled blindly to my feet, and out of the auditorium, my mind reeling with its imprint of her beautiful, treacherous face.

  Tuesday July 3rd

  Somehow, I took the first train of the day out of Audley End. To distract me from myself, I attempted to write a poem about the view from my carriage window:

  A pylon looms up suddenly like a sini-

  Two birds puncture the early morning blue as th-

  Cows stare into the distance and wonde-

  Fields sleep drowsily, waiting for-

  Buddleia bubbles up along the tr-

  A woman waves at her youn-

  Some buildings.

  Graffitti.

  King’s Cross Railway Station.

  It was no use. The world was passing me by too fast and everything was hopeless.

  Wednesday July 4th

  I had a dream that I’d murdered Toby Salt.

  Liz was running a workshop on how to lay out a newspaper. We were looking at text alignment and I was experiencing some difficulties with a ragged right side. Toby Salt began to mock me.

  I’d always been a marginal figure, he said. I should climb back into the gutter where I belonged.

  Liz laughed at his awful puns. I flushed angrily, then proceeded to bludgeon him with the keyboard from an old nineteenth-century Linotype machine.

  I ran out into the street in panic and bumped straight into a newspaper seller, who was brandishing the evening edition. I stared at the headline: ‘POET FOUND MURDERED!’. The front page had been printed in red ink. I inspected it more closely. It wasn’t red ink, it was blood. It looked like poet’s blood.

  I woke up with a shudder and consulted my Dream Dictionary. But there was nothing in it about Linotype machines and so I am none the wiser as to what it all might mean.

  Thursday July 5th

  My phone buzzed. There was a message from Liz:

  Are you around for a drink tonight?

  We need to talk.

  I need to know where we stand.

  I felt like responding that I knew exactly where she had been standing, i.e. next to Toby Salt at an inexplicably oversubscribed poetry reading in Saffron Walden. But I restrained myself; I am not one to bear grudges. My reply was measured and courteous:

  Can’t make tonight.

  There is an old episode of A Touch of Frost on ITV4

  that I’m planning to watch.

  There were no further messages from Liz so I can only assume that has drawn a line under the matter.

  Friday July 6th

  I nearly forgot about bin day! The distant rumble of the lorry woke me up and I jumped out of bed in horror. I got my bags out just as the bin men were pulling up in front of Mrs McNulty’s house. The Man at Number 29 had his bags neatly stacked outside and awaiting collection.

  I went back inside and attempted to write a poem; an exercise in futility, as it turned out, as I was interrupted constantly. Every five minutes or so, I would be forced to check my phone only to discover that – yet again – there was no message from Liz. She kept up this stream of non-communications through the day. It was very infuriating. After many hours of this, I looked down to see the unripened fruits of my labours: a sequence of discarded first lines and no more.

  I put them in a drawer where I keep all the abandoned first lines of poems I shall never write. Perhaps one day I shall make a book out of them.

  Index of First Lines

  Also, I am bleeding profusely so please stay for a while .......... 8

  Carter called again today, enquiring of his ladder ..................... 22

  For that was the winter we listened to Enya ............................... 31

  her eyes were a question mark, her mouth a semi-colon .......... 36

  I am a bowl, chipped at the rim .................................................... 43

  I remembered Newport Pagnell and wept ................................... 5

  I see you forgot the fabric softener again ................................... 25

  In the vacuum between when and how, I squat ............................ 3

  Me and you in matching tank tops ............................................... 39

  Oi Oi! ............................................................................................. 78

  Our love is a broken oatcake ....................................................... 61

  Please don’t do that, it’s disgusting ............................................ 27

  She loved his unfinished similes like ......................................... 52

  That, my dear, is a diphthong ........................................................ 73

  The sky is darkening and yet the dove ......................................... 11

  Today, we shall make strudel ........................................................ 4

  Whither the hair tongs? I have seen them not ............................. 19

  Saturday July 7th

  I opened the door to Dylan. Standing next to him was a man clad in Lycra. He looked to be in his late thirties. His jawline was chiselled and his cheekbones delicately planed. He was as healthy as an Alp and wore the look of somebody who knew his way around a velodrome.

  ‘Brian!’ he exclaimed. ‘Stuart! Stuart Mould!’ He pointed to himself then reached forward and shook my hand before I had the chance to withdraw it. I could sense him taking in my shabby tartan dressing gown and Mr Men mule slippers.

  ‘Sophie sends her apols but she’s got a few things on – haven’t we all! – and said you wouldn’t mind if I brought Dylan over for once! Sometimes you just gotta be pragmatic! That which works, works!’

  He looked at me expectantly for a response. I silently willed him to go away.

  ‘Err . . . anyway, Bri, I’ve got an eighty-mile bike ride ahead of me! Fundraiser for Syrian orphans! You know how it is! So great to meet you at last! Absolutely love those slippers!’

  He bounced off down the path. I went back inside to Dylan.

  ‘How do you put up with it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied glumly. I realised that it had been several weeks since I’d heard Dylan mutter a single inspirational quote. There was hope for him yet.

  Sunday July 8th

  This month’s book is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.

  I have decided not to return to Bloomer’s, having taken something of a dislike to the shop after receiving a rather brusque letter concerning my overdue payment for Robinson Crusoe.

  It felt good to be back in the bookshop on the high street although, as is customary, I came away with rather more than I’d intended: Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept; Harold Pinter’s Betrayal; Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; and John Gray’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

  I also bought a book entitled Deaths of the Poets. This was a rather morbid exploration of the stories behind the demise of famous poets: Dylan Thomas and his eighteen straight whiskies, Sylvia Plath and her Primrose Hill gas oven, John Berryman and his leap into the frozen Mississippi, and so on. It is grisly but fascinating! Who’d have thought there could be so many ways for a poet to snuff it?

  Monday July 9th

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  The arrival of Well Versed – The Quarterly Magazine for the Discerning Poet becomes more foreboding every quarter and today’s issue was no exception. My poem was unplaced, as per usual. And there, of course, was the competition winner, Toby Salt, with the latest impenetrable example of his inexorably rising star.

  1905

  Порви все портреты, rage, my comrades / place the telephone back upon its cradle / I spent these years waiting for you / like the crocodile who basks / inside the handbag / fashioned from its own hide! / The walls are crumbling now / Even Mme. Vissilovich knows that / She with her head full of wool / and her hands that are never still / Hush! царские солдаты идут / It is safe here / inside the past / where the future cannot find fault / Safe behind this barricade / of paper/ Watch how it burns! / This paper / These walls that crumble / The future that turns in / upon itself / And the bear who weeps / his tears of iron.