by Greg James
But the gallery-cum-shop has been a distraction for me in recent months from such thoughts of making an exit. I once harboured certain artistic dreams that have long since fallen by the wayside. One breakdown too many and the urge to create was overwhelmed and consumed by the urge to instead annihilate. When I do try to make something now, to shape a dream into some suitable form, I approximate the crude and awful offerings on display in the gallery-cum-shop. So, even though I stand here and I wander here every day surrounded by dreadful sights and sculpted ordure, I at least know that I am not alone in the world in my way of seeing things and feeling.
So, as you might imagine, I bought the painting and took it home. Now, it hangs upon my bedroom wall and watches over me. I look upon it when I awaken and I gaze upon it until I am sure of nightmares before I go to sleep. It is so awful and ugly and sometimes I think I feel a breeze come from it into the room. I am sure I can smell a certain dampness; pungent, ripe and rancid. So very foul that it is almost sweet to me in its rarefied rottenness. On other occasions, I am sure that I have opened my curtains and, for a moment, been confused as I have seen not the city but the landscape from the painting there before my eyes, in all its silent, dark and dusty glory. It is waiting for me. To open the window, to raise the glass, to reach out, to step through and become lost to myself in an endless and ongoing desolation stretching from dead horizon to dead horizon. My hands shake as they never have before when I think of it. How I fear the temptation will become too much for me. And I know that, like everyone else, and the city itself, I have a long history of breakdowns and failure. I also live in an apartment on the uppermost floor and that thought and knowledge has so far stayed my hand from opening the window, from stepping through whenever I see the landscape showing there before me.
But to be there, forever, in that nighted realm of silence, dust and darkness, to walk through it from end to end, with that depthless, shrieking sky above. I fear that I will not be able to resist for much longer. And there is a light wind at the window tonight, I hear it scratching at the glass with a dead man's fingernails. Perhaps, I will open it, just for a moment, to take the air.
And then, maybe then, I will find peace.
“ ... and These Pale Pictures still Flicker Softly on in the Abandoned Cinema ... ”
The cinema was a place of fading. Falling into disrepair, old boards and posters plastering over what had once been the Art Deco finery of its marquee. Scaffolding stands against it, it has been steadily rusting in the rain for years, becoming a scaled exoskeleton for the disintegrating corpse of the building. The doors closed when the owner died and, in the present economy, none have come forward to save or salvage the relic that it is fast becoming. Raw and rotten, like a memory best forgotten, the cinema stands alone, waiting to die.
She walked past it every day and did not know why she stopped today. Stopped to look, to take in the rusting femurs of the scaffold and the peeling pale faces leering and grinning from the mould-mottled posters adorning the sheets of plywood on the doors. But it was then that it began to rain and, with a curse on her lips, she ducked under the shelter of the marquee. The downpour that quickly ensued marked out the marquee’s outline onto the pavement, a lighter grey against a darker grey as water soaked into concrete and left a familiar, bitter smell lingering in the air.
She heard a thump-bump-crash, muffled by walls and distance, and she ignored it.
The same syncopated series of sounds came again.
thump-bump-crash
Her breath caught in her throat and she stared fixedly at the falling streaks of rain, willing them away so she could step out into the damp air away from this place. Away from the sound that was tempting her though she did not know why.
thump-bump-crash
The rain continued to pour and pour, and she turned to the plywood door, held in place on cheap, rusted hinges. She tried the handle, feeling the texture of its surface turning to wet powder at her touch, and the door was open. Of course it was open, such doors always were.
And so, she went inside the abandoned cinema.
The lobby was bare, decorated only by sections of striped tape that clung to the walls and floor, as if they had been torn apart trying to restrain something colossal. There were continents of black dampness, spreading across the ceiling, which was yellowed and sagging at the edges. The rattle and drum of the rain was distant now, like something on the soundtrack of a film. An opening scene, perhaps, falling rain, then the camera pulling back to reveal the surroundings, the heroine, standing in shelter thinking on things, on life insoluble. Her shoes sounded incredibly loud on the floor as she crossed the lobby, looking for the source of the noise that had reached her ears outside. It couldn't be far away now, could it?
thump-bump-crash
It was coming from the auditorium, from the dark heart of the cinema. She didn't want to go in there but knew she would, knew she must. The door had been open, inviting her in, few people invited her in these days, because people were not kind. Men and women. Just people really. Performing much the same as on the set a badly-scripted film. Shouts out of place. Whispers where there should be none. Drama and despair that left her feeling unlike them, no part of the real world. Behind closed doors, in empty spaces, where there was quiet and peace, away from such people, there was where she was at her most real and most beautiful. Where she could paint life's pictures and let pale shadows softly play.
thump-bump-crash
She removed her shoes and trod barefoot across the dirty and atrophied floor, thinking about how this was, in some way, someone's house. She should not be wearing her shoes and treading the dirt of the outside through someone's house. Of course it was someone's house - they had invited her in, had they not?
So, she left her shoes by the wall, she would pick them up later, and she went into the crashing darkness of the auditorium.
Unseen carpet stuck and clung to her toes and soles as she walked into the yawning space. The screen was here and, as she watched, it came alive with silent shapes. Chiaroscuro forms and amoebic phantasmagoria that were pale, flowing and awful to see. There was a staccato flicker to the film, lines and grains scrawling across it, jagged signs of crudely-done splicing, and yet the fluidic movement of the shapes upon the screen never paused, never halted, never stuttered, not for a moment. And, slowly, steadily, she became aware of a change, of a darkening, and with it, there came a clarity. She saw outlines shining so bright and so pale, white as death, and she saw depths within them too. Fathoms and densities too indefinite and deep to survive mere description by small, small words.
She found herself sitting in one of the seats, feeling it creak and give under her sudden weight. And, as she rested her arms on those of the seat, she realised they were as sticky and slick as the floor beneath her feet. She tried to get up, to move, but the adhesive was strong and it held her tight. It stung also, making her skin writhe in the same way as the things on the screens writhed and steadily flowed. Ought to panic, ought to react, she thought, but instead she found she was relaxing, easing. Her breath slowing, her heartbeat faltering. She let go of the need to struggle and let herself become unbound. She let the aimless blobs and dismal smears upon the screen cavort and drift about across her vision. Following them was exhausting, her eyes were closing. She was fading fast. She yawned into space and, with her head sinking down, its outlines undoing, face, body, thoughts and limbs all flowing together, sticky, slick and amoebic, she felt one last stray thought go shrieking, desperate to be heard, through the unravelling matrices of her mind. One last thought. That she could no longer understand.
Cue canned laughter – and the sound of soft feet departing.
Shadows Closing In
The following is an excerpt from the Collected Diaries of Kenneth L. Wainwright; much-loved star of the Oh, Hello films who made his name on Dennis Woodcock's radio comedies. He was found dead on 15th April 1988 at his London home aged 62. His mother, Sheila Wainwright, was also found dea
d at the time and a suicide pact between the two was suspected though never confirmed in the national press. He appeared in twenty-six Oh, Hello films and, on radio, he was a regular winner of Wait A Minute. In earlier years, he contributed a range of character voices to Boris Yeoville's Beyond Me and its successor, Beggar's Belief. A chat-show regular for over twenty years, he was given his own television show to present in later life between stints in repertory theatre.
Monday, 11 April
Oh, how drear it has all become, reely. The Mater continues to be the most crushing bore. Her geriatric decrepitude wears away my patience as much as it wears away her remaining sense into senility. The soiled sheets. Those horrid yellow and brown stains. The forgetfulness. The repetitive child-like neediness. Oh, my dear, it is all so crushingly dull and a waste of life's hours.
I wish I were done with this life. I wish I were through. This is it, the utter end. It reely has to be. After so many years, so much now conspires into torture. My stomach’s lining gnaws at me when I disturb it with food. Walks are an agony as the bowels act up and the bum does its dirty work on my pristine underwear. My bones, my kidneys, my liver, everything seems to curse me with cramps and intolerable aches.
Oh, how I wish to be dead. Post, nothing. News, nothing but the same old cycles of violence and drab melodrama as I remember it always being since I was a boy. Nothing ever changes, not reely. I am sure in the future that when such things as genocide occur, they will be considered mercy killings by those who are left to live on afterwards in whatever dreadful world we, the people, create for ourselves.
Shut up in this box all day, these walls I never could bring myself to decorate, this floor I never dared to disturb with carpet. It makes it all so much easier to keep clean you see, leaving out the modern accoutrements, leaving the packing plastic on the cooker and so on. Oh, but this space lacks so much of life, of laughter. This clinical morgue I have made for myself, a dead man walking to shops then home again. I feel a bleeding going on inside me, every step is a step nearer the grave, nudging me closer, a little piece of death itself.
One last thing from the shops for the Mater, always the way, one last bloody thing to be done.
Tuesday, 12 April
Walk in the park with Paul today. Grey skies. Quite tolerable. Conversation around the usual subjects, went something like this.
“Oh, do slow down, will you?”
“What’s wrong with you now then, Ken?”
“Don’t be so bloody smart. Hurts me doesn’t it? With my insides, the state they’re in, I can't stand all this running about.”
“Running? We’re barely bloody walking, mate.”
“Oh, do shut up, will you? Christ, what a dross, what a life, I’ve had enough of the world. Enough, enough.”
“Dramatic as ever. You just need to find yourself a good fella to bunk up with.”
“Oh, I wish, no. That’s what they all say but no. Death is the only lover I’ve got waiting for me. Waiting my whole life for me, he is.”
“Don’t talk such morbid rot, mate. What about me, eh? Your friends? You still want to see us, don'cha?”
“Yes, I do, but you just don’t understand the pain, Paul. It’s been with me, one form or another, me whole life and I just don’t know what to do any more. It's really gripping me. And there’s nothing the doctors say they can do to take it away. It’s down to me. No-one else. And I seen ‘em coming after me.”
“Seen who?”
“The shadows, they’re closing in on me. Horrid spidery things with these long, long legs. I think they’re legs, they might be arms. And they’ve got these fingers, no flesh on them, and these horrid black fingernails that they use to tap-tap and scratch-scratch at my windows with.”
“You need to see a doctor, Ken. A good head doctor if you’re seeing things like that. Come on, Barney. Good boy.”
"Care more about the bloody dog than you do about me."
"Oh, do shut up, Ken."
Paul led Barney away, leaving me standing alone in the dirty white embrace of the winter fog. It was my first time telling another soul about the shadows. I've not even told the Mater about them. In her state, it probably wouldn't matter one way or the other but, oh, how I had hoped Paul would be receptive. I don't know what these things are that I see, crawling about in my room at night. I turn the light on and have a fiddle about just so as not to see them there. When the light goes off, they come back. Evil things. Not sure what I am to do, apart from prepare for tomorrow night's show.
Best dust off the old mask and costume.
Wednesday 13 April
Where is it all happening, eh? Why was I never invited, not now, not ever?
They were in the theatre tonight, in the aisles and the seats. Such a low turn-out for the last night that I couldn't help but notice them. Not enough bodies available to shield from me the sight of those awful crematory shapes drifting dustily about the place. Made me gabble like an idiot during a straight performance. Ad-libbing like mad. Oh, the shame. Felt so suicidally depressed afterwards that I didn't bother to stay for the ticking off I would have received from the director - obnoxious little shit. Made it home through the streets. The utter shambles of the production needed only a little push to bring it crashing down and that push came from me. Though, looking back on it, I feel a certain triumph like Nero playing his fiddle whilst Rome was burning down around him. Only laughs of the night were mine and mine alone. That's something I suppose. Thank god I won't have to go back to that rubbish bin of a theatre with its dull-as-dishwater cast and dumb-as-diddlysquit crew. The Mater woke up screaming and shouting about black things that were cold as ice to touch. Ignored her. Now going to bed for my second fiddle of the evening.
Thursday 14 April
Oh, how I miss those times in Tangiers. I wish I'd made more of them. Looking back over one's life, one sees it laid out and wonders at what might have been had a different detour been taken, a left turn at this junction, straight on ahead when there was a pause for thought either here or there. The villas were exquisite and so were the boys in the Medina; beautiful skin, brown as a nut. I could do with a bit of that now.
But there was never a truly successful visit now I think of it. The orgies and intimacies were for the others, the young bucks, not for me, no. Some are born to enjoy life and all its fruits, it seems to me, whilst there are those of us who are left to gnaw upon the unsatisfying roots for what little nourishment we can find. I fled to Tangiers every time out of a sense of panic at the inner despair growing within me. I had been motionless for too long and being so created a desperate need for motion of any kind. Even the motion of a younger body that I had paid ten dirhum for the company of, rather than a body opening itself up to me because of the great cheat and lie we call Love.
Love and its bastard child, Hope.
They seep through the cracks in life to stain me and crawl about the walls. Yes, maybe that is it, that is where these shadow-things have come from. Lithe as they are, slender too, could they be the lonely ghosts of those antient orgies I attended? The big A must have made it as far as Morocco and some of the ones I fiddled with.
Then, of course, there were my forays to The Spartan Club in Victoria. Always needed a few stiff ones before I went looking for a few stiff ones. Oh, the cheap old jokes, the lavatorial gags, how wasteful my way with words was. Bawling and shouting. Mutual masturbation in the bogs with some young sod I'd then ask home who would serve me a curt "No, thank you," and then leave me to sob alone. Can you pass on the Big A like that? I've no idea. Are they all back to haunt me then, now that I am a lizardly touch-me-not, in my dying days?
Friday 15 April
Life is all innuendo and this is what makes it totally unacceptable, reely. They, we, the people, the audience, do not want characters. Cliché, stereotype, trope, caricature, everything camped-up and overdone until no-one knows who is wearing mask or costume. An endless parade of the drab, drear and commonplace dressed up in rags pretending to be fi
nery until we all drop down dead and the dust and the darkness that's left hold dominion over all and everything.
Oh, what an insult to existence, all those years I spent making those Oh, Hello films; twenty-six of the beastly things, and I never saw the truth of what I was becoming. Life imitates art far more than art imitates life wrote the Bard of Reading Gaol, but what about the utter horror of when art imitates life so poorly to the point where the difference is lost upon us and we can never return to the former way of being? When we do no longer know where and when the performance begins and ends? When we continue to excavate ourselves, serving up the 'body-fat' of our lives to others until there is nothing left but dusty shadows with nothing better to do than creep and crawl about the place?
Yes, you see, I understand now. I've got it. Well, don't you give it to me then - that would have been the punch-line, of a sort, back in the old days of witless verbiage.
I put Mater to sleep earlier tonight. I had enough barbiturate poison saved for the both of us, you see. Now I know these shadow-things are not a madness I've picked up from her, I felt better about it - feeding my pills to her and then pressing the pillow down over her face for good measure. A kinder death than I gave to Dad - that carbon tetrachloride made a right mess of him. He still deserved worse though. I guess that makes this entry my confession to that nonsense after all these years then. Oh well, as I'm going now, it doesn't matter. Not reely. I killed the old bastard and I'm glad I did so. I know now there's no Heaven or Hell for me to go to. No judgement to come from on High. I am no longer to be an object of Crass Ridicule.
