Chosen

by Paddy Bostock

  “Who the bloody hell’s that?” she muttered, dropping the dustless duster on the bedroom floor, primping her platinum-dyed hair, checking her eyeliner in her vanity case mirror, marching over to the window, and peering out.

  Sir Magnus tugged the bell rope again, this time holding it while the wind chimes hit their mega-decibel levels.

  “Bloody woman,” he grumbled, thrusting a hold-it-right-there hand behind him at his hastily assembled army of Jeremy healers, which consisted of two sex-and-death Freudians, plus two Jungians just in case Jeremy were to be tempted by a spot of the collective unconscious. Behind them stood three further shrinks clothed in battle dress. These were not real military personnel because, despite his fictitious boasts of involvement in the “freeing” of Iraq and Afghanistan, Sir Magnus didn’t know any real military people, so he’d hired these guys—Kevin, Duncan, and Caitlin—from an out-of-work actors Internet site called JFJA (Jobs for Jobless Actors). He hadn’t expected a girl to be included in the deal, but she looked good in khaki and green, even Sir Magnus had to admit, a bloody sight fiercer than Kevin and Duncan, that was for sure. Despite their crew cuts, faux scowls, stick-on war wounds, and toy AK-47s, Kevin and Duncan didn’t look frightening at all. Especially not when holding hands, which a furious Sir Magnus had forbidden them never ever to do again while they were in his employ or they’d be fired, civil partnership or no bloody civil partnership.

  “Bloody hell,” said Sophie, gawping through her bedroom window. “Who are that lot?”

  Sir Magnus tugged at the bell rope yet again. Chimey, chimey, chimey it went. Then the rope came off in his hand and the chiming came to an abrupt halt.

  Behind him, the troops were getting restless at the delay. And quarrelsome. You know how it is with Freudians and Jungians, how little respect for their rival philosophies they have at the best of times. Well, this bunch—Friedrich and Marcus, the Freudians and Carl and Milly, the Jungians—were already swapping snide glances when first introduced to each other on what Sir Magnus had described as “a joint mercy mission.” Now, despite the currency-stuffed brown envelopes in the pockets of their white coats, they were barely on speaking terms.

  When Marcus said, “What the fuck’s going on here anyway?” for example, Carl told him to calm down and shut his gob.

  “Calm down? Calm down?” sneered Friedrich. “Just the sort of unhelpful, unempathetic, un-thera-peutic bollocks one would expect of a Jungian.”

  Behind them, Kevin and Duncan continued holding hands despite Sir Magnus’s homophobic command. Some bum job this was for actors who had once played Hamlet (Duncan) and Iago (Kevin). Okay only the once in both cases because of their disastrous first-night performances at repertory theatres in Middlesborough and Slough respectively. But even so, they had trodden the boards. And now they were reduced to this.

  Caitlin and Milly stared off and tut-tutted. It was Milly who broke the ice.

  “Boys, eh? Don’t s’pose you’ve got a ciggie on you?” she asked Caitlin, who said she didn’t have a regular one, she rolled her own. But she’d be happy to make them both one.

  “With a little extra?” she asked, nodding at the cellophane pouch of weed she took from her pocket. “Always find it helps.”

  Milly giggled. “Go on then.”

  To calm the “boys,” Caitlin also rolled them what she termed “wee mind enhancers” to keep their spirits up and, in the case of the shrinks, bury hatchets. Which, once they were all toking happily, they agreed to do...at least pro tem.

  By the time Sophie eventually managed to teeter downstairs and open the door and be commanded by Sir Magnus to lead his “army” to the barn to confront Jeremy, his army was in a pretty playful mood. Glassy-eyed and giggly.

  It was little wonder, when there came no response from Jeremy even after repeated hammerings, and the soldier shrinks Duncan and Kevin and Caitlin were reluctantly, and now on wobbly legs, dragooned into breaking down the door, that Sir Magnus’s grand plan met its fruitless end.

  “Come out, come out, you bastard, wherever you are,” he called.

  And called. And called. But to no avail.

  “Even the bally pig’s gone,” grumbled Sir Magnus, striding around the barn, tossing hay bales hither and thither.

  Following in behind him, Sophie tugged at her platinum-dyed hair and wept.

  “Oh, my poor Jeremy,” she snuffled hypocritically. “Where have you gone?”

  Mind you, she calmed down a bit after a couple of puffs on the spliff Caitlin offered her.

  Sir Magnus didn’t calm down at all though, far from it. Stamping up and down, he fired all his “trick cyclists” and “military men” on the spot, and then, swearing he’d come back with sniffer dogs, stalked off in a huff, banged on the roof of his waiting midnight-blue Bentley 4x4, opened the passenger door, and told the driver—Boris, a distant cousin of Nina’s—to hit the road.

  Which would have made for a powerful and dramatic exit for Sir Magnus had Boris’s idiomatic English been up to scratch. But, while having an excellent command of the regular everyday aspects of the language, Boris hadn’t bothered much with idioms and, interpreting his new master’s order literally, leapt from the driver’s seat and took to beating the asphalt and shale with his fists, thereby rendering Sir Magnus’s departure even less powerful or dramatic.

  His by-now pretty well stoned mishmash of shrinks and actors loved it. Even Friedrich, Carl and Marcus linked arms and punched air, while Milly, Caitlin, Duncan, and Kevin hopped about in Kevin’s idea of The Dance of the Clowns in the last act of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sophie joined in too, leaping about in a manner she considered balletic. Until she fell flat on her face and had to be helped up by Milly.

  Understandably, Sir Magnus was apoplectic.

  “Get back in the fucking car and stopping hitting the road, you fucking foreigner,” he shrieked xenophobically. Sir Magnus was a devoted Brexiteer, except when he could hire foreign labour on the cheap, that was.

  “What I do wrong?” Boris wanted to know, lifting himself from his knees.

  “Just get back in the fucking car and goose the fucking gas,” Sir Magnus told him.

  “Goose the...?” said Boris, flapping his arms a bit.

  Which was when Caitlin, still in faux battle dress, marched over, slung an arm around Boris’s shoulders and told him not to worry, everything would be fine if he joined her friends behind her. Pointing at the still cavorting Dance of the Clowns people. So off Boris happily went. He liked dancing.

  Then Caitlin turned her fire on Sir Magnus.

  “About time you fucked off, knobhead,” she told him. “Drive your own fucking car.”

  Sir Magnus blustered a bit as is the way with blusterers, but left with little option other than ignominy, climbed into the Bentley’s driving seat and slammed the door.

  “But I’ll be BACK,” he hollered through the open window before flooring the accelerator and spraying shale all over the place.

  Six

  While his host had been off in his tiny kitchen fetching the burdock brandy and fiddling with glasses, Jeremy experienced the first of the many surprises Barry had on offer. Wide-eyed, he stood before the floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with tomes from Plato to Bertrand Russell, and even including works—in French—by Frenchie thinkers such as Barthes, Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Cixous normally poo-pooed by the British academy. Although Jeremy had been more interested in the economics part of his Oxford PPE programme than the philosophy or politics, at least he could tell a logical positivist from a poststructuralist. But what was a humble gardener doing with such heavyweights in his meagre home? And this was just the philosophy section. Jeremy hadn’t had time to check out the poetry and fiction.

  It was close to one a.m. when they took to swigging at the burdock brandy, but after their adventure with the wheelbarrow, neither felt sleepy, although Shirley and Pete had already snuggled down together in Shirley’s super-size dog bed at her invitation. You know how it is
with animals. When it gets dark, they go to sleep till it gets light again, then they wake up and start all over. If the humans wanted to stay up and chat, that was their business, meanwhile Shirley and Pete were getting their normal shuteye.

  “Didn’t know you were a...” said Jeremy, carefully avoiding any reference to humility or gardeners but nodding nonetheless at the bookshelves.

  “Reader?”

  “Um...well...yes.”

  “As opposed to just a humble gardener?”

  Barry smiled, uncorked a fresh bottle of burdock brandy, and refilled their glasses.

  “An understandable confusion,” he said in a quite different register from the one he’d used while working on Jeremy’s estate. “I have lived a number of lives already, and have yet to reach the government’s new retirement age.”

  “How old...?”

  “Am I? Sixty-eight.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Thanks. Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “And listen, when I mentioned the books, I didn’t mean to imply...”

  “Of course you didn’t, old chap, so don’t beat yourself up over it. You were what you were, and I was the gardener. Okay, I was also “Bazza,” for fun. Yet I am still the gardener, albeit in a perhaps more metaphorical sense.”

  Jeremy blinked. “And the books?”

  “Are my best friends, possibly my only friends. Seen me through some tricky times, those fellows have. Ever read any Voltaire?”

  Jeremy shook his head as Barry levered himself from his chair and headed to the Vs in his carefully alphabetised philosophy section.

  “Ah, here it is. My old pal Candide.” He chuckled, taking down the ancient hardback, blowing off the dust and flicking to the last page.

  “Many troubles the poor fellow had to endure in his young life: The Seven Years War, the seventeen fifty-five Lisbon earthquake. But what does he conclude? That ‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin.’ Not quite the Leibnizian optimism he started out with, but still a way forward, eh? In any case, you may think of this as my own take on life’s messiness. Mine, and that of my old mate Voltaire. And so it is, as I said, that I was and still am a gardener.”

  “And you were?”

  “A professor of philosophy at the very university you once attended, old man. But that was only during the second of my lives and didn’t last very long. In feline terms, I’m now nearing my seventh, so we shall see what happens by the time I get to my ninth, eh? It’s never too late to learn a new trick or two. And, as I said, if I can help you along the way at all, you’d be most welcome. A top-up of the burdock?”

  ~ * ~

  While Pete and Shirley slept the sleep of the innocent, Jeremy and Barry talked through the night. Unaccustomed although he had long been to conversations of an even vaguely abstract or personal nature—all bankers ever talked about was spread sheets, targets, and numbers—it was surprisingly Jeremy who kicked off this part of the conversation. After all, he remembered having confessed his choosing/chosen conundrum to Barry who had seemingly understood, so now it was perhaps Barry’s turn to offload.

  “And what made you quit Oxford?” he asked.

  “I became tired of teaching already hyper-privileged chinless twits how to become even more hyper-privileged chinless twits by developing their ‘mental muscles’ so they could be adapted to any other subject on the planet. That was the bizarre notion on which the place still operated.”

  “Twits like me?” Jeremy raised an amused eyebrow.

  Barry laughed. “Twits like you, my friend. Only worse. Have you any idea how many prime ministers, foreign secretaries, home secretaries, and chancellors of the exchequer were ex-Oxbridge? Twits who’d pumped up their mental muscles studying Classics and then turned their big brains to running a country without the first idea how to do so? Twits who’d have trouble distinguishing an idea from a hole in the road and couldn’t count beyond single numbers without a calculator, but happily pontificated their way through the Westminster parliament to Downing Street on the back of their Oxbridge ‘educations,’ the very same sorts of twits who are currently the laughing stock of Europe over Brexit. And who, apart from them, stands to gain most from such privilege?”

  “Oxbridge,” admitted Jeremy who, through his alumni association, had been invited on a regular basis to contribute large sums to the “refurbishment and re-development” of his alma mater.

  “Quite. Enough of which I had soon had once I twigged to this unholy arrangement between the ancient universities, the sons and daughters of the already mega-rich, and ill-gotten power. Bally country run by the posturing buffoons whose ‘minds’ I was helping develop? No, thank you very much.”

  “So you left.”

  “With some aplomb, and indeed ephemeral notoriety in the media, as it happens. You know hacks. How half of them were educated at Oxbridge and the other half weren’t, so both sides make up all manner of defences for their positions. As evinced through my resignation being leaked by a post-doc student of mine and the bastions of the press having a, mercifully short, field day debating whether I was a whingeing wet or a working-class hero. And those were the days well before Facebook and Twitter. Imagine how it would be in these story-ballooning times with all their mindless chatter. Anyway, interest in me died down soon enough to be replaced with some war or another. Excuse me just a sec, old man, I think I need a pee. Bladder not working quite the way it once did. Not the full flush, if you know what I mean, although you probably don’t.”

  While Barry was off trying to pee, Jeremy checked out the poetry and fiction shelves in his library and found them to be as representative of top writers as those of the philosophy section. And not just with texts from the Eng. Lit. canon. It also included contributions from the French, the German, the Spanish, the Italian, the Russian...most in translation, but not all.

  “Holy shit,” he was muttering to himself as he heard Barry returning.

  “More friends?” he said, gesturing at the bookshelves.

  “Indeed. Always need the balance of the literary and the logical to feed both sides of the old brain,” Barry replied, struggling with the flies of his khaki gardener’s pants. “Fancy a smoke?” he added, taking a battered Old Holborn tin from his pocket.

  Jeremy hadn’t smoked since varsity where it had been de rigueur to smoke, whatever the health Nazis said. Would probably make him dizzy after all these years. But, hey, what was a little dizziness in addition to his other problems? Might even help.

  “Sure. That’d be great.”

  “A fatty or a thinny?” said Barry, extracting his green Rizla cigarette papers.

  “A thinny or my head might blow off.”

  “Okey dokey. Now, where were we?”

  “You quitting Oxford.”

  “Right. And you know why?”

  “Because of the chinless twit business.”

  “Yes, the chinless twit business. But that was only the surface reason,” said Barry, carefully tamping and rolling Jeremy’s “thinny” before handing it over along with a red plastic lighter. “May I quote my old pal Socrates?”

  “Quote away.”

  “‘The unexamined life is not worth living,’ a concept which failed to penetrate even the most brilliant minds in academe, all of which appeared to be so concentrated on self advancement no room was left for the question: Why exactly am I doing this?”

  Jeremy nodded as the tumblers began to fall.

  “It was on this basis I found your questioning of the ‘choosing/chosen’ dyad so interesting,” said Barry, head bent as he concentrated on rolling up his “fatty.”

  “Because you had done the same thing yourself.”

  “Precisely, old fellow. Took a long hard look at myself and, like you, concluded it was time to put an end to singing from other people’s hymn sheets. To examine very carefully the power games secreted in their subtexts. And when I looked, again like you, what did I see?”

  “Lies? Fantasies? Delusions?” Jeremy n
odded, puffing on his roll-up.

  “Exactly so. Belief systems swallowed whole. As you said, folk chosen by the cars they drove, the smartphones they changed every five minutes, the fashionable clothes they wore. All the while fooling themselves into thinking it was they who were doing the choosing. It was you who also gave the example of ‘speaking’ languages as opposed to being spoken by them, if I remember.”

  Jeremy nodded again. Some memory this bloke had.

  “But sadly how else are we to communicate, except through our always already infected grammars and lexises?” Barry continued. “What was it George Bernard Shaw said? ‘The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.’ Something of the sort. I now think bees are more capable of sending effective messages than us poor humans. We could learn from bees.”

  “And the rest should be silence,” muttered Jeremy, misquoting a line from the only Shakespeare play he’d ever watched, the one at the local church hall in which Sophie played Ophelia badly.

  “I wish it were,” said Barry lighting his fatty. “So much better than the gibberish we are given to think of as reason. Once one becomes aware of these things, life changes. It must. Which is why you find me where I now am.”

  Jeremy stubbed out his roll-up in the ashtray Barry proffered for the purpose.

  “And you’re happier now?”

  “Ah, happy. A problematic notion, happiness. You may recall Basil’s line in Fawlty Towers when asked by his wife, Sybil, whether something was the matter because he wasn’t looking very happy. ‘Happy?…happy?...Oh, happy?’ Basil replies delving back into ancient memory.”

  Barry chuckled and crushed out his own cigarette.