A correspondent writes, after my last blog, “Is this not only the second half?!”
And indeed it was. So refer to the preceding then read this (or don’t) then go back and do part one which is really part two.
I Got here. It’s raining you know.
That’s hardly very obscure1.
Oh gosh, no. I am sorry. Shall I come in again?
No need: just get more obscure in what you say.
The ducks are flying low over the marshes. The nineteen twenty five is running late out of Scarborough.
Robin, watcher of trains, thinker of thoughts, wanting to know which of the toilets to use and would it thunder later or clear up so that he could lean out of the window if a goods went by. A large cloud hung overhead and they talked of writing.
Nyd wyf i yn deall Cymraeg ddim. Rhaid i fi y Teach Yourself llyfr yn def nyddio2.
Who all else is coming?
Who can say? Assorted students, perhaps some people from your work. People we knew when we were programmers, working making chocolate. Paul, back from the mountains and Sybil, with Ina or without her.
Sybil? That perverted child of Satan? Can I remain ‘mid such iniquity? Will Truth lift up its head above Scandals?
O, simple organist of God, stay and perchance convert the sapphisticated classicist. Myself, I have studied Latin and Greek (at my age too3) to understand and to impress her.
I shall stay though I am scared; though my soul is unprepared. Yet tomorrow I shall pray and sing and bless the name of Christ the King.
You are too pure for her corruptions, too masculine for her desires. But remember that speaking in tongues and gibbering are two completely different thing … er, things4.
———————
Which are the things that stay, which those that flow? Down they went, on went the trains, down fell the rain. Hello Heidi, hello Wendy, hello Elaine. A chicken coop too late, alas, I shall sell words for blessings. I shall sit in the window for most of the night and closely observe the trains.
What is the matter? What is wrong?
Sybil and her friends, a touch of colour in this city of the plain. How can we cut our way through all this rubbish? Is there a story here for my book? Oh son of Kunti, you cannot change trees into saucers of milk, nor hatch stones into chickens5. Have one of Heidi’s crudités. There is drink on the sideboard. Come in and have a drink from the sideboard. Or would you prefer something different? Speak now before the beer-off closes.
I shall partake of nothing alcoholic (at least nothing too alchoholic) lest, inebriate, I allow the corruption of this latter day Gomorrah to creep upon me in this night of sin.
My darling may it keep you from the power of the days that hang so heavy on your tired shoulders. Remember the illegality of guns, the unreliability of nooses and the malodorousness of gas. We all long for relief but queue jumping is not playing fair.
Robin, you worked with me until a year ago. They called us programmers then. Now I work no more while you still fight to bend the tin gods to your iron will. Once we offered sacrifices of punched cards; whole trays of them which operators sent back shuffled. Today I work no more and you communicate by Visual Display, directly with your metal slave, who does exactly what you say but rarely what you mean. And they call you team leader, that name I would not let them give to me. Ce n’est pas un mot anarchiste, pas un mot de spectre6.
O friends, nicht diese Töne: what of the future? what of tomorrow?
Perhaps for some of us there will be no tomorrow, as there was no yesterday.
No my melodramatic miss, trust in Him from whom you receive an eternity of tomorrows.
A thought like that depresses her yet more. But she believes not nor wishes to believe. Her despair is her religion from which she lapses less and less as she becomes yet more devoutly doomed. What of us, what of us? (Think no more of Heidi’s fuss) What of me, what of me? (Can I set the poor child free?) And you, yes, what of you? Can you tell me what to do? If I could but find the words to free my mind from limbo, to give expression to my soul, to convey my thoughts and feelings to a people starved of truth, then is it not yet possible I could be rich and famous? How long, O Lord, how long? At the present rate of progress, Robin, thou shalt be chairman of the board ere I have but one short word in print.
If you will not turn. If you will not turn to God then there is no hope. Failing that, try listening to string quartets by Haydn. But now, if I may be excused, I haven’t had a motion of the bowels since I left home (take up a fork please, and frighten me).
Heidi, where’s the fancy bread? quoth Wendy and then laughed at what she’d said. Why isn’t Robin here? Has he gone again?
He shits in your shittery, pisses in your pissery, in your most lordly and most excellent convenience7. Don’t look at me like that, my staple diet is shit and beans. Garbage in, garbage out; an ill cast comedy for fools.
We are all your fools. You’ll be the death of us. I fail to see how Heidi goes on living the life you offer her. She suffers, not in silence, but she suffers. What will become of you twixt now and your inevitable death?
Will he fetch that can from out the cutting?
———————
Our Heidi, happy optimist that she ain’t, studies the stars to see what form her doom will take. Her husband, typical of Libra, cautiously sceptical, wonders is there anything therein 8?
They are the husband and the wife. Blank Frank is the waiter, he’s the knife and he’s the table. Will they reach a culmination, will they stiffen in this rented house; will Wendy share their dreadful, wretched torment9? From the half moon to the toil of the sun, will any remember them?
What lies within our horoscopes tonight? A tall dark stranger or only Jack, who reads biology? Food in the kitchen, drink in the lounge, dancing and sex in a draughty room. Us it devours.
Surely you mean beans we devour. Surely we know who is coming.
We know who should be coming but how many will show up? Will they arrive on the pages predestined? And you, child of Aquarius, must you meet your death in the bathroom?
I shall be satisfied if the scales fall from my eyes.
———————
In time for the senescence of the theme came Robin the Christian. Born under Euston with Mallard in conjunction with LNER, ephemerides by Bradshaw. A descendent of Noah, survivor of the flood with no belief in such superstitions; divines only the passage of trains to Scarborough, East of Malton, in obscurities which communicate before they are understood (they are never understood).
How do you see this railway line? One sees a symbol, parallel lines, coming and going, motion through time and space, lives passing, never intersecting. Another sees endless fascination, years of history, complexities of timetables, development of machines, the iron horse triumphant. Yet another sees a place where a bean tin lies, a potential for pain and death. A fourth sees an eyesore, a source of annoying noises in the night. The last and youngest wonders what the rest are staring at.
No hangings, lives of dust and cobwebs. I see crowds of people getting pissed but that is only wishful thinking or the vision is not set here. If anybody comes tell them I’m in the coal shed practising astral projection.
And all the promises they made are ground beneath the sadist’s fall.
Jona andie guassa goussy etan behar da er remedio beharda versala ysser landa. Anbates oyto y es nausu eyn essassu gour ray proposian ordine den. Nonyssenna bayta facheria egabeb genherassy badin sadassu nouraa ssia10. Direful evening.
The others drift away and I await a crowd to fill this dusty attic, to overrun it like so many rats. Across the lines, through dusk and intermittent evening, the hospital for those whose lunacy will not conform with ours; and those whose madness is unmasked, while others keep theirs hid forever in a jar (it will follow you, it will follow you).
They’re coming to take me away (ha, ha!). Open now, the graves, houses that last till doomsday, lie in wait for those who dare to tarry, minds and bodies never quite in step. The hospital and the railway tunnel, the street lamps and the luke warm rain. It was very quiet there.
What low world breathed in my breaking brain? Preparing for death, yet is this not the finish but rather a setting-out? The cans rusting on the line, the can-nots rotting in the garret and the hospital on either side. Footsteps in the street, the advent of those who can do those who cannot teach, whatever that means. Drifting through a well-stirred soup of time, rain and twilight intervals. Peering down between the boxed-in blooms of misfortune, they saw me not until I called their names: Derbys, Bowlers and Bush! Come in, one and all: you who were with me in the shit at Rowntrees, have you learned to write specifications yet? You girls, twins, as like as two peas in a pod, if less intelligent) and April, older sister to them both, how does your garden grow? Will it get you your BA this year? And your fiancé too, how nice! the door is open, do come up and see me. Kick the landlady, should you pass her on the way.
Happiness is complete with GAB’s arrival. What does April see in him? Perhaps he helps her mushrooms grow. What subjects will he bore us with tonight? There is more rubbish in his philosophies of heaven and earth than I have ever dreamed of. O, keep the sod away, that talks so much, or I’ll not be the centre of attention. Ah reader, what a hypocrite, to hate one for resembling me so like a brother12!
———————
Enter a King and Queen, very lovingly. Rex and Sarah Bowler stood in the doorway, dimly back-lit by the landing light. Casual but smart in well-pressed slacks and shirt with open neck, he looked both more and less than thirty-eight (his age in fact was only thirty four). The rising young executive, grown old before his chance had come to rise.
Your bread and water’s growing cold/Your hair is short and neat.
Smart and neat, believer in ambition, with ambition unfulfilled, with mortgage, car and some-point-something kids. Pretty, mousy and quiet, waited the little woman, houseproud housewife, apologetic childless mother13, standing behind her lord and master, and a little to one side, in a simple flowered dress of cotton, hanging just below the knee and clutching a handbag, as a hamster holds a sunflower seed.
It was Rex who persuaded Dai to give up work, by arguments supposed to make him stay. Heidi often wished that Rex had won the day but, when she saw that couple, thought maybe Dai was right for a’ that.
They stood there, looking lost, trapped between two generations, draped limply o’er a hanger, labelled sort of middle class. Heidi led them off to dump their coats, fearing atrophy unless she kept them moving.
I want a biologist, someone to give opinions on my flowers.
Come in April; let me see your face again. April Derby, with a spring in her step and a brilliant shining face. Sensible but silly, in a tee shirt and last year’s jeans; a badge insists she lives here, she is not a tourist. She is in fact a student and comes from the South and East. The sweet young thing, finding out about life as only a biology student can.
No one to help you get up steam/
And the whirlpool turns you way off beam.
Bright but quiet, modest in opinions but completely self-assured; feminine and feminist, bra-less and outspoken, defiantly more than merely a body: the sex-object of the seventies. With her, I rush ahead to slam doors in her face lest she declare me sexist and do me bodily harm.
It was she who persuaded Heidi to read The Female Eunuch. Those arguments that could have caused a rift. She came so close to going, even though I gladly joined her in the lovely water14.
Again a smile, uncertain of her style, caught between two decades. Dai led her to the lounge, fearing a conversation with her guy.
Come now and tell me why my flowers should thrive at this obnoxious time of year: leave Wendy to receive your groom-to-be. (Aside) A tiresome bastard: and what an unpleasant arse-licker he is.
Gabriel Amadeus Bush stood blinking, looking around, a verbose cobra looking for a victim. In a suit left over from a brief spell in the Mormon faith. He is in fact the son of a Methodist minister. The student of philosophy who thought perhaps he would become a priest15.
The builder of the castles/Renews the age-old purpose.
Well connected, knows many thinking persons, Lord Longford and the Bishop and everyone else. He may (or may not) be studying for his PhD or it could be his DPhil. No one seems quite sure and no one knows quite where. When the answer is over its features are lost in a hell of rocks and stones.
It was he who persuaded April to plight her troth. Simple wonder had sufficed when they went out together but gasps of astonishment had to be employed to greet the news of their engagement. So, smugly, he stood in the doorway, as ever caught between two religions (if not more), eager to see who was in the kitchen and if there were any beans to eat, no doubt16. I am not hungry; but thank goodness, I am greedy.
Ah yes, said April, those must be dolphiniums.
Bring on the matching girls. Twin maskers, out of their wits and the pubs not yet called time. Wendy greeted Melanie on the left and Blanche on the right. They were in fact the other way around. Sisters of April, one a telephonist, the other a secretary at the other chocolate works, down by the racecourse. Completely identical, hairstyle and dresses, slim, pretty legs on display, cheeky faces, lashings of make up, no conversation, seek two Mister Rights for double delights, easy prey for every drunken pair of Mister Wrongs that happen along (or should that be alongs?).
And your wise men don’t know how it feels/To be thick as a brick.
Divested of their coats their turquoise and lemon spotted mini-dresses assault all our eyeballs without pity. Dai, peering at the flowers, found excuse again to lean on, this time, April’s shoulder.
It was I who persuaded John to take up golf17. The twins, giggling, went upstairs to tend to the music and dance in the darkened room.
Because they thrive in the wet, replied April, moving herself away, unaware of etymology and not explaining her remaining pun, as Heidi came in and led Dai from her side.
———————
I feel I am alone tonight. Yes, all alone. A writer’s wife is not a happy one18.
You will go off with other girls and hardly say a word to me, or you will hide in corners and ignore us one and all. What do you think on such occasions? You used to tell me all your thoughts but now you only speak to quarrel with me. Go on, think for me.
Given the existence, as uttered forth in the public works …
Oh no, oh no, not that, not that. Quickly, someone, grab his hat! Gabriel descended from on high to interrupt. The twins are asking for some bread and cheese. They want a slab of Boticelli each. Sure, there’s nothing like education after all19.
I think that I can stand his voice tonight. Sometimes he amuses, sometimes makes me mad. Oh April, my advice to you is don’t. You must be daft to marry such a being. T’would be the end of life as you know it.
There is no wife after marriage, if the attention this man pays to me means anything. If you’ve any sense you’ve got to fear it.
April can have no illusions there, for Mr Bush has ears for none but GAB.
I should thank ye kindly, good persons, an ye keep to yerselves yer counsel and refrain from slagging off my love like that. I love him for he does not place me on a pedestal.
Because he has no pedestal made for two for you to share.
I’ve heard enough. I’m going to get a drink. Non-alcoholic though, as Gabby’s trying on the Society of Friends for size.
His society certainly is trying on any friendship. ‘Tis he that doth make quakers of us all. How she sticks it I shall never know. Perhaps she takes him with a pinch of wholefood salt.
———————
Did you hear it?
Did I hear what?
What’s that? Is someone shuffling on the stair?
Nobody is there; nobody.
Are you certain? Is no one coming to our party?
Nobody is there just yet. There will be others, I am sure of that.
Of all the people we have met, do they regret it? And what if some of them forget it?
They will remember. Though they may not wish to come.
The bed’s too big without you and too fast
Oh no, the twins, they play The Police at different speeds. Excuse me while I go and set them right
Does he listen to a word I say or not? Is it just a waste of time? Will I ever wake up from my dreaming? See next week’s turgid episode, if there is another episode. If there is another week.
And it would be okay on any other day.
Just call me if I’m not around when you want another record on. And not too loud: you might annoy the neighbours (they’ve made it very clear: they don’t approve of ravers).
We could be together, we could last forever. But what can I do? All I wanted was to be close to him. If I wake up from this nightmare, I’ll be right there, out of sight there. But all I have is this scheming twit. That’s it. Am I awake or am I slumbering? What’s he saying, what’s he playing and am I still on the board? It’s all right for you.
Good golly, those twins. You know I don’t think they know which is which themselves. Perhaps they have but half a brain per girl. And what of you? I’m sorry, please don’t worry: try to mingle, talk to people, listen to Gabriel or trade obscurities with Robin. I don’t want to upset you and I never forget you but I must keep up the image, if not the rhyme and reason.
Is there something I can speedily enact, worth my dejection? I shall run out naked into Grosvenor Terrace: I shall search the weeds and grasses for your tin. I shall throw things at the neighbours and expose myself to strangers. You will find me in the morning, weeping softly ‘mong the trees, there in the funny farmyard.
You are daft, bloody daft. Heidi clutched her head and laughed. And he laughed also, as ’twere at a jest, for Rex and Sarah came into their presence.
A small white wine for me and a tomato juice for the wife.
Now Rex, come fill us in. What news of the Old Chocolate Factory? Tell Heidi what new systems are in store; she lies in direst need of scintillation.
Indeed, a tale of two programs for a plate of Wendy’s wondrous victuals seems fair exchange to me.
Go show the others where the food’s laid out. Then they may feed in quiet. Deliver their bodies to the relevant repast of yon good woman.
I will, my lord.
Exit (, with the body of the Duchess).
———————
I say, it’s getting rather late. Will anyone else arrive do you suppose?
I’m sure of it, quite certain, Brother Bush. The inhabitants of Haxby are bound for Ebor on the wheel. That is why the world is when it spins.
Does one still doubt the existence of a personal God? As a friend of reason and the human species what are your thoughts at this present point in time? Is it simply what one knows, is it all just black and white? Surely what one knows and what one does are one.
One is what one does and what one knows? I check’d him while he spoke. How he could speak, alas.
No, no. Well, one is, one supposes, but
GO ON DAI, IT’S THE DOOR.
one meant one’s knowledge and one’s actions are as one. One as in unity. The final one that is. Not one as one’s ongoing phenomena of personality and perceptions, as were the other ones one’s just employed. It is a complex concept, hard for one to express, owing not a little to the otherwise solecistical philosophies of the Orient. Perhaps one could use it as the basis of some moral and uplifting work of fiction.
I’m sure some one has already done just that. Therefore I shall not waste my time20.
Surely you do not partake of that British worship of inspiration? Somewhere one read the opinion that it is merely the avoidance of comparison with foreign literature, a dodging of standards.
What idiot would write a thing like that?
It matters not, for no one has a right to the fruits of their work. That is another aspect of the selfsame Eastern proposition. A king may catch a fish, a man may eat a worm, a bishop may take a knight and one may speak of God in all his glory but if one claims the words for oneself one is as a darkly tinkling glass.
An awful exposition of a senseless allegory, my friend21. Clever but crap.
GO ON DAI, IT’S THE DOOR.
Why am I now being nagged in upper case?
One must enquire of course how this applies to one’s philosophy and where one’s God fits in – or Gods, if one insists on more than one – I have been kicking the Arian heresy around the Athanasian creed to see how the chickens like the look of the ball park, so to speak. One feels that your substitute for one’s own true God is the intense feeling derived from the production of some work distinctly all one’s own22. In some ways, one shares in this, but, believing there is only one First Cause, one Unmoved Mover,
HURRY UP DAI, IT’S THE DOOR.
Whatever happened to Catherine Tekakwitha and is that how you spell her name? Alas, now I have offended.
as one feels justified in doing, one feels that all one does is of the Lord and thus His holy property.
If one believes, as I, that property is theft, how does that affect your thesis – of which I have yet to see the point?
Indeed one sees that as a whole new ball game. Perhaps all property is theft from God. Perhaps the Moslem has it right that only Allah’s work is perfect and that representation of reality is blasphemy. But all things have been thought of first by Him who stands apart from curvéd space and time. (Let us not stray far from the original subject.)
Where shalt thou find this judgement registered? Yet I cannot assist; I know not why I write who only feel I must. I get no kicks from champagne — sorry, from achievement. And if I achieve success in some small measure I am deeply ashamed at feeling any pride. I try to treat impostors all the same. I never can. That’s where it all falls down, you see.
HURRY UP DAI, IT’S THE DOOR.
HURRY UP DAI, IT’S THE FUCKING DOOR!
I think perhaps that I had better go, please take your strange deistic deipnosophistry to some other poor benighted soul.
All right, but later we must speak of this again. Perhaps your thoughts betray some kind of Zen.
But I do not possess a motorcycle.
One never suggested that you did. One was speaking of Zen Buddhism: a religious equivalent of avoiding the question.
I know full well the faith of which you speak, though am not quite so certain in my condemnation. If Nicodemus Unsett comes tonight, ask him to tell you his Zen Buddhist jokes. Now I must hurry up. It’s the door.
———————
Beware! Women! And not those I expected. The one I know, the other wish to know before too long has passed. Though I suspect that as she comes with this other, my wife will suit her tastes far more than I might hope to do.
Good-evening ladies, good-evening sweet pair of angels, good-evening. Come in.
***
O tell me all about your new friend, I want to hear all about your new friend.
Leaving Gabriel like a poor Christian that had been got by a Tiger, the nymphs are greeted, Sybil says hello, her friend, who isn’t Ina, doesn’t speak.
Come to the front room, don’t touch the food yet, what are you drinking? Look out the window, Robin is calling, late out of Scarborough. Nobody listens, what does it matter — not even a steam train, only a diesel, common-or-garden23.
Here they stand so pretty a pair of lovers. How can I hope ever to have the skill to find the spondees fitting to all the feelings they are arousing?
Sweet girls, who are you and what are you drinking? (The answer’s a lemonade.)
A sexy smiling classics scholar makes crude innuendo in deliberate mistakes24.
The street outside glistens in the rain, the rivulets run down Bootham to the town. The cars take up the baton as the lights turn green and some pass through the bar to Petergate. In the York Arms, where men are men and men like men like men, a girl sits wondering where her friend has gone. Sybil Wellborne’s been a-hunting.
So here’s why Heidi has not had the pleasure of serving you bitter on Haxby Road of late. Hello darling, who are you? What are we going to see you do?
Добро вече. Ја се зовем Катка Гроздиђ.
Farfel farfel pipik. I will say the only words I know that you’ll understand.
She is called Katka Grozdic, which is all I understand or know about her. But in other ways we understand each other well. Both in love with love with love everlasting, in varying forms. The definition’s right: the same emotions, selfsame appetite. We’ve brought some bottles too.
Cresta! The river of booze is broken. I don’t believe I ever thought a day would come when I’d see that. Heidi, look what Sybil’s brought. The girls are drinking mineral water.
Well you wanted a show; a compulsory show. Just let us stay sober and wait for the show to begin. Perhaps we’ll help you with your vast stock of liquor later.
The eyes twinkled like the street lamps’ light through the rain drops on the leaves in Alma Terrace. The last portion of mushy peas is served. One of each twice with salt and vinegar, eat them in the car, then on to the party where Sybil spoke of cuisine much more haute. Dance and talk of a restaurant.
Yes indeed, an old bedmate of mine has opened it.
And what’s it called again?
It’s Theotrello’s: no, that’s not her name, it’s meant to be a joke, though no one understands. She wanted to call it Aidoioleikty’s but that was too much of a mouthful. Is O’Sullivan coming? I think he knows her too. He suggested that she open a Malaysian in Soho25 but she had her heart set on a Greek in Bloomsbury.
Here Katka, have a drink.
Хвала лепо.
Gospodi pomiluj. What language does she speak?
I’m hardly sure; but know it isn’t Russian. I think she mentioned somewhere once: Belgrade.
The town or the theatre in Coventry?
And still no cats crawled through the vegetation, to cut their paws on hidden empty tins. Throughout this picture-postcard city, men and women drank and laughed, while others sat in silent unlit rooms, brooding on lost lovers who ran off with other girls to Dai’s low garret. In the streets all merry and drunk the people drifting home, back from the pubs and clubs and all the late night shows for to keep the town awake until another day has dawned for all and Sunday. The river flows quietly under Lendal Bridge, past Museum Gardens where the peacocks sleep (sweet Ouse, provide me with the things to say until I end my paragraph). Beneath the railway, past the Esplanade and under Water End to Clifton Ings and onward to the hills. Beneath the bridges under posters advertising one more shelter, lovers consummate the night’s desires. Faces of souls! For those of us oppressed by the figures of beauty is there consolation in the poet’s dying words: We are ugly but we have the music?
More loneliness than anyone can bear.
What are you thinking? Heidi; does he think?
For God’s sake don’t start him off on that again.
It is you my love, you who are the foreigner.
Yes, you.
.
as you were. Footnotes on previous post…
@Grieve-not Lake 