Chapman's Odyssey

by Paul Bailey

  — I haven’t gone away.

  It was the rarest of summer afternoons. The sky was unclouded and the heat was bearable.

  Harry Chapman was at his happiest. He had written well that morning, and now here he was in the stands at Wimbledon waiting for the men’s singles final to begin.

  On to the court came the reigning champion, Roger Federer, but alongside him was a player from a different, bygone age. Who could it be? The man wore glasses and seemed to have none of the physical grace of his elegant rival.

  — Mr Drobny has elected to serve, the umpire informed the excited crowd.

  Mr Drobny? Was Harry going to see the phantom at last? The heroic Jaroslav, the Czech out of Egypt who had once lived in England, was about to challenge the young conqueror, the possessor already of ten Grand Slam titles.

  — Federer leads by four games to one.

  Harry Chapman was now relying on the umpire for news of the match’s progress, because the sunlight of early July was blinding him. No matter how much he squinted or blinked, he could see nothing but an unending whiteness.

  — Mr Laver leads by five games to two in the final set.

  Ah, that respectful ‘Mister’. That’s how it used to be in the gentlemanly olden days.

  He waited, in anticipation, for the next umpirical – was there such a word? – pronouncement.

  — Federer leads Mr Tilden by two sets to one.

  Yes, yes – it would have been ‘Mr Tilden’, then. Nowadays the Ladies, God bless them, are still addressed as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ at Wimbledon. ‘Ms’ has yet to be heard on those hallowed courts.

  — Six all. Tie break.

  But who was playing whom?

  — Égalité.

  Why was the umpire suddenly reverting to French?

  — Avantage, Mademoiselle Lenglen.

  No, this couldn’t be. This simply couldn’t be.

  — Jeu.

  Someone was being applauded, but he couldn’t determine who it was. Voices were saying that this was championship point.

  — Deuce.

  A collective groan, expressing concern and frustration, echoed round the Centre Court. Harry Chapman made his own feeble contribution to it.

  — Advantage, Rosewall.

  What on earth was going on? Rosewall, Federer’s equal in elegance, had retired in the 1970s. He had been Harry Chapman’s hero then, as Federer was now.

  — Racket abuse. Second caution, Mr McEnroe.

  — You can not be serious, shrieked the furious contestant.

  — I was never more serious in my life. I swear on my mother’s immortal soul that I am as serious as I shall ever be. I am the very epitome of seriousness. But wait a moment – did you say ‘serious’ or ‘Sirius’? If the latter, I have to inform you that, yes, I can not be Sirius, since Sirius is the brightest star in the sky after the sun, lying in the constellation Canis Major. For your additional edification, I can also inform you that Sirius is a binary star whose companion, Sirius B, is a very faint white dwarf. Sirius is known, variously, as the Dog Star, Canicula and Sothis. Ergo: I am serious, but I can not be Sirius. Shall we continue with the match? Resume play, if you please. Federer to serve.

  He was standing with Graham in the Accademia in Florence. They were looking at Michelangelo’s statue of David when Graham began to laugh.

  — What’s so funny?

  — It’s that hand on his hip. You’d think he was cruising Goliath. I can just hear him saying ‘Come on, big boy. Have you got a special something for me?’ I’m sorry, Harry. I’m a heretic.

  As they walked towards the Ponte Vecchio, Harry remembered being a silent worshipper in May 1949 in the public baths with the swimming pool that reeked of chlorine. That other David, Cooke by name, was still there in his mind, striking the same nonchalant pose as he’d done that day when the pigeon-chested Harry emerged from the water he had yellowed blinded by sun and glass.

  — I like the notion of Goliath being rough trade.

  — None rougher, Harry. Ask David. He reckons Golly, as he calls him, is an absolutely gorgeous brute.

  — Graham?

  — He’s answering a call of nature, Mr Chapman, said a nurse he didn’t recognise. — He’ll be back very soon.

  — Where’s that gushing nurse? And the bullet-headed doctor who calls his patients ‘Sunshine’?

  — Nurse Dunckley has left us. Mr Russell, if that’s who you mean, has been taken ill. I am Evelina, by the way. I am from Finland, before you ask.

  — What time of day is it?

  — Eight thirty on Wednesday evening.

  — Thank you, Evelina.

  — I hope and pray that this Graham person, whoever he is, isn’t taking advantage of you.

  — Taking advantage? What do you mean, Mother?

  — You’re such a child where people are concerned. You let them tread all over you. You’ve never been cautious enough.

  — Cautious?

  — Yes. They say nice things to you and you believe them. I’ve watched you being taken in. Harry, you’re as daft as silly old Rosy Glow at times. She sees the sunshine where she ought to see the rain, and you are just as blind as she is.

  — Am I?

  — Yes, my boy, you are. I worry about you, I honestly do. Life isn’t a book, though I bet you wish it was.

  He needed to tell her, now, that some of the books he loved were full of disturbance and chaos and unresolved dilemmas – quite like life, in fact – but the words wouldn’t come to him.

  — Mother, he remarked instead, — it was your resistance that inspired me to write. Let me continue, uninterrupted. I’ve always wanted to do fictional justice to people who aren’t cultivated. So many novels are concerned with rarefied creatures, blessed or cursed with high intelligence, but my concern was, and is, with the Franks and Alices and Jessies and Roses, the ones who are seldom honoured with beautiful sentences and paragraphs. You challenged me to love you with your endless gibes and you turned me, superficially, into a parody of your cynical self. You gave me the worst of you, but I was determined to dig and dig, archaeologically, until I chanced upon the best in you, the best you buried. And I found it, Mother, in the book I wrote after your death. I care to think I granted you a few beautiful sentences at least.

  There, he had told her. Would she respond to his heartfelt outpouring with a ready sarcasm? He would soon find out.

  — I don’t know much about beautiful sentences, whatever they are. And I can’t say as how I follow your drift, Harry. But there’s none of your usual mockery in your voice.

  He refrained from saying there was none in hers, either.

  — Harry, my son, whispered Frank, suddenly appearing at his wife’s side. — It’s good to see and hear the pair of you going easy on each other. I’d hoped you’d grow up to be a stranger to moodiness, but my hope was dashed a bit, wasn’t it?

  ‘A stranger to moodiness’ – there was that phrase again, on the lips of his laconic father, Private 36319 Chapman, survivor of the horrors of Passchendaele, which was Passion Dale to his young son’s ears.

  Moodiness, garbed in red and black, had visited Harry Chapman in that desolate time that began with Frank’s burial.

  — Hello there, Harry Chapman. I’m Moodiness.

  — Hello.

  — I’ve been a friend of your mother for many a long year.

  — You don’t need to remind me.

  — So shall we strike up an acquaintance?

  — Why not?

  — Just for the hell of it.

  — Exactly.

  — That’s the spirit, Harry.

  Harry Chapman looked on as Frank and Alice embraced, in the way they must have done before he was born. He couldn’t recall their being this affectionate during his childhood. Such a display of mutual tenderness might have happened in private, once their children were in bed and soundly asleep, but nowhere else. Harry smiled that he was audience, at last, to Frank’s love for Alice, and Alice’s for
Frank.

  — Don’t go any further, Alice cautioned her eager husband. — A certain little nosy parker has his eye on us.

  — Get along with you, son. Your mother and myself have some unfinished business to attend to.

  — Have you answered your call of nature?

  — Yes, Harry. Thank you for asking.

  — My mind’s all over the place.

  — Not to worry.

  — Is it still Wednesday?

  — Just about.

  — Will there be chimes at midnight? What a silly question.

  — It’s a very silly question.

  The youthful waiter led him to the same table by the same window in the same bright and sunlit room.

  He sat in the same capacious chair. There was a place card on the white tablecloth in the name of Lucius Licinius Lucullus.

  Harry Chapman was about to observe that the restaurateur had made a mistake when he remembered that Lucullus was a wealthy Roman famous for his lavish banquets. The card was a joke, a prank, to amuse the honoured guest.

  The meal began with antipasti: artichokes; Parma ham; dried beef from Lombardy; and a salad of fennel and cucumber.

  When the waiter arrived with the fish courses, he had aged by a decade. That was Harry Chapman’s supposition.

  There were langoustines, clams, seared tuna, fried scampi and calamari, sardines and lobster fritters for Harry to enjoy.

  What a feast, he remarked to the waiter, whose hair was now greying at the temples.

  At Easter, he ate roast suckling lamb, to the accompaniment of church bells, and then – as the leaves turned vivid red and golden brown on the trees – a whole pheasant was set before him. The bird was of an astonishing sweetness, having been marinated in milk and Muscat wine. The waiter was stooping slightly when he returned to take the plates away.

  He was bent over the next time he came into view.

  — Would His Excellency care for a lemon sorbet to clean his palate?

  — That’s a lovely idea. Would you be kind enough to pour a measure of vodka over it?

  — Your wish is my command.

  The waiter was supporting himself with a stick now.

  — You don’t look very well, said a concerned Harry Chapman.

  — Duty is duty, sire.

  In what seemed like hours later, the old man’s duties were fulfilled. He had lost all his teeth and most of his white hair. He sank to his knees with the words:

  — Mine has been a lifetime of service. Let me go to my rest.

  The famished Harry Chapman, alias Lucius Licinius Lucullus, cast his greed and selfishness aside and took the dying waiter in his arms.

  — You deserve your rest, if anyone does.

  — I still want you to tell me, loud and clear, that this Graham person, whoever he is, isn’t taking advantage of you.

  — He isn’t, Mother. It’s the other way round. It’s me who is taking advantage of him.

  — How’s that?

  — This is how. He is the ideal companion. Ours is a marriage of curious minds. When we first met, three years after Christopher found lasting refuge from his foul temper, Graham was mourning the loss of a loved one. Early on in our relationship we dispensed with something I have never talked to you about. You once described it as ‘what goes on down there’. Well, we tried ‘what goes on down there’ and it didn’t really work and ‘what goes on down there’ quickly became ‘what went on down there’ and we laughed it out of our thoughts.

  — I wish I could believe you.

  — Try to.

  — Yes, Alice, believe what your son is telling you, Aunt Rose intervened.

  — Believe him, Mum, Jessie pleaded.

  — I’ll give it a try, Alice Chapman said quietly. — That’s all I can promise to do.

  — Aimez-vous Brahms? an unexpectedly cheerful, even hysterical Christopher was asking him.

  — Oui.

  — I don’t. I never did. And would you believe it – I’ve made two friends, two very distinguished friends, who hate his music, too.

  — I think I know who they are. Hugo Wolf, perhaps? And Benjamin Britten? Yes, Christopher?

  — Yes, yes, you shit.

  Harry Chapman, picturing Christopher with his chums Hugo and Ben, hummed the opening bars of the Second Piano Concerto just to annoy the three of them.

  — Is it Thursday yet?

  — Yes, Mr Chapman, it is, replied Veronica.

  — Veronica?

  — That’s me.

  — Where am I?

  — You’re back in Zoffany. You were moved overnight.

  — Where’s Graham?

  — He’s gone home to grab some sleep. Sister Driver and Marybeth and Philip will be on duty soon.

  — That’s good, he said. — That is good news.

  — Be careful, Master Harry, warned Jack the ship-boy as Mr Chapman entered the lecture room in whichever university he was visiting. He had been invited to address the Creative Writing students, and was distressed to see that there were at least a hundred of them. How could a hundred seemingly sane men and women be so naive, so foolish? Why weren’t they studying biology, chemistry, history, foreign languages? Why weren’t they living their lives to the full? Why the hell were they here?

  He began by saying that he wasn’t a writer by choice but by vocation. His career, such as it was, dated from early childhood, when he listened to the adults around him and tried to make sense of what they were saying. He was intrigued by the fact that they made hardly any sense at all, for their talk was composed of riddles and secrets and words and phrases that constituted a private language. He listened, where other children might have shut their ears to the chatter going on and on above and about them.

  Their prattle refused to yield its secrets, and so – when he had learned to read and write – he turned to books, those depositories of unravelled mysteries, of mysteries acknowledged. He read comics, as every child did, but when he was twelve he embarked on a voyage of discovery that could only end with his death. He read voraciously, then judiciously, and found his writing voice by rejecting the voices of those he was tempted to impersonate.

  — So far so calm, Jack murmured in his inner ear.

  And what a multitude of friends and acquaintances he’d accumulated – Philip Pirrip, Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Collins, Emma Woodhouse, Don Quixote, Emma Bovary, Jane Eyre, Wilkins Micawber, Hamlet, Rosalind and Orlando, Ishmael and Queequeg –

  — Talk about a small world, Skinny Boy –

  As well as Prince Myshkin, Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, and Bartleby, the scrivener, beyond consoling –

  — I would prefer that you refrained from mentioning me.

  And Dorothea Brooke, Cathy and Heathcliff, and Paolo and Francesca –

  — Love brought us to our death, Harry.

  It occurred to him that these names, these beloved and familiar names, were not known to the students amassed before him.

  The next five minutes were hell for Harry Chapman, despite Jack’s efforts to placate him. One girl identified Philip Pirrip as Pip; three were aware of Elizabeth Bennet’s enduring fictional existence; no one had an idea who Don Quixote, Emma Bovary and Mr Micawber were, while six – or perhaps it was seven – thought that Hamlet was the guy in Shakespeare who had problems making up his mind. Nobody came to the rescue of Jim Hawkins, and as for Myshkin and Bartleby and Rosalind and Orlando and Paolo and Francesca –

  — Love brought us to our death, Harry.

  He had to be reasonable. It was too much to expect of them to have any knowledge of Myshkin and Bartleby. But the others, the others. Why hadn’t they heard of them?

  Shakespeare’s ship-boy, Harry’s Jack, advised Master Harry to be as tranquil as he could. There were worse problems a man might face, such as guiding a ship out of treacherous waters.

  — You cannot write well unless you have read well. If you read trash, God help you, trash will be the result of your labours, if labours they are.
/>   He had nothing more to say. He consulted his watch. He had been booked for another hour.

  — Do you have any questions or observations?

  Silence ensued.

  — Tell me what ideas you have. For your writing, that is.

  — I am working on something profound.

  — Go on.

  — It’s set in an unknown country in an unknown period.

  — Why?

  — That’s the way it is.

  — Does this profound work have anything as specific, as concrete, as a title?

  — Yes. It’s called Hearthrug of Ug.

  Harry stared at the middle-aged man, who was dressed in a dark suit, as if prepared for a day at the office. He wore a stiff white shirt and an undemonstrative tie.

  — Does it have characters, your Hearthrug of Ug? Do they sit around the hearth, on the rug that I assume belongs to Ug?

  — Ug is not a person. It is a philosophical concept.

  — Ug is?

  — Ug is definitely, definitively, a means of uniting all the philosophies of the world. There can only ultimately be one Ug.

  — But why does Ug have need of a hearthrug?

  — I don’t wish to be rude, Mr Chapman, but are you stupid? Are you, for fuck’s sake, fucking stupid?

  Those in the class who had been tittering were now gasping in disbelief. Their soberly attired resident lunatic was revealing his manic depths, and in language Harry Chapman might have expected from the younger, wilder, drug-fuelled boys and girls with whom he was trying to communicate.

  — I apologise for my stupidity, Mr –

  — Ug. I belong to the great brotherhood of Ug. I am Ug in the everlasting order of Ugs.

  — Well, then, Mr Ug –

  — No ‘Mister’, Mr Stupid Mr Harry Mr Chapman. There are no ‘Misters’ in our order of Ugness. We are Ugs, full fucking stop.

  Harry Chapman, with all his faults, had never felt the desire to murder. He felt it now. He felt it with a ferocity that was delicious to him. Decapitation, strangulation, a sharp knife to the heart or the gut – oh, the joy of dispatching this smug originator of Ug and Ugness.