by WALL, ALAN
And as I walked up to Deptford Strand, where they said that Marlowe had been murdered at Eleanor Bull’s house for lonely sailors, I found myself thinking of Marlowe’s Faustus, who flies through the air, transports fruits from one hemisphere to the other at speeds thought preposterous at the time, just as Puck does later; who studies the true nature of the movements of heavenly bodies, as Prospero had done. All of these were Hariot’s preoccupations too, and perhaps all had arisen out of Hariot’s dangerous tutorials, given to the School of Night in the dead of night. And I started for the first time to see a possible solution to my problematic study, but I could barely bring myself to ponder it. Surely it was ridiculous? Ridiculous to most, certainly, but not necessarily to me. I had, you see, separated myself by now into a strong-minded isolation. I was no longer dependent on the opinions of others; I seldom even shared the daylight with them. I stood at the water’s edge and stared at the cormorants perched on a rotting wooden structure, stretching out their black, gothic wings to dry in the chilling breezes.
There didn’t seem to be any Eleanor Bull establishments offering their welcomes to lonely sailors these days, so I took a boat back to Westminster and there stood once more by the water’s edge. Could I really presume to move such a mighty paradigm so far? I looked down into the lapping waves and detritus to see a single red rose shifting about forlornly in the swell. I couldn’t help wondering whose it had been.
2
Over the years I had developed a nose for the status of news. Why not make some? Dan had asked me so many years before. Well, I still couldn’t make any, but I could sift it instinctively. I knew what should go in and what could be left out; I could even leaven the grave transactions of global catastrophe with the odd tiny anecdote whose wryness might leak an invisible smile across the airwaves. One had to balance massacres in distant places with economic summits, destruction of the rainforests with shifts in interest rates, skirmishes in Westminster with the pursuit of ancient war criminals, those improbable old geezers who stumbled out of their semis in Eastbourne blinking into the congregated flashlights of the press, only to mutter in thick, dark accents about mistaken identity. The raped child, the nuclear emission, would be hushed with a brief look at the football results and a prediction as to pole-position in the forthcoming Formula One event. I also learnt the strange superstitions of the newsroom, for example never to assume that Christmas Day would be a quiet one, despite the brandy and the paper hats, for that was when Sadat had chosen to fly to Israel and offer his hand in peace; it was also the day when they took the wretched Ceauşescu and his equally wretched wife out into a frozen yard and shot them both dead. The spirit of good will affects different people in different ways. I fear my view of life might also have become gradually darker as the years passed, though I can hardly blame that on the newsroom or the BBC. Optimism is nothing but a blindfold where the truth’s concerned. From time to time I remembered what Dominique had once said to me: that my study of the School of Night was no more and no less than an attempt to prove to myself the truth of my Catholicism. All my psychological default settings, according to her, were Catholic. Original sin on the one hand, redemptive grace on the other; the one pervasive and inescapable, the other seeming elusive at times, even to the point of absenteeism. ‘Do they know they’ve got a tormented medieval monk gathering the news?’ she asked me one day, while she was drying her hair, coiling the long dark ringlets around heated tongs. ‘They wouldn’t care,’ I said. ‘They’ve had a lot worse than that in there.’ Dominique’s flourish of black ringlets I had at first thought entirely natural, but I’d come gradually to realise how much work she had to put into their maintenance. Her Medusa coils, she called them: no myth is ever lost on a Freudian. You looked upon those black snakes at your peril. The analytic stare that came back was enough to turn any man’s heart to stone.
My grandfather had worked for the council all his life and I suppose I’d assumed I’d do the same at the BBC. Perhaps I’d even come to think that capitalism was something that went on elsewhere, involving other people, the manipulable masses, something I merely noted and summarised for the desk. Without thinking about it much, I felt I’d joined a collegiate institution where people, as long as they were competent, had jobs until they retired. It was the one part of my life I didn’t need to consider. Which is why it probably came as such a shock when Andrew, the newsroom manager, invited me into his office one day, having arranged for my union representative to sit there beside me, and then told me I was to be made redundant in three months’ time. I stared at his big sad face and tired eyes. He was a kind man who wrote desolate plays about contemporary Britain, which were very seldom performed. Everybody liked him.
‘But there’s never been a single complaint about my work since I came here, Andrew. Not once in all those years.’ His face creased into an even deeper frown.
‘It’s nothing to do with the quality of your work,’ he said. ‘There’s this process of rationalisation going on, that’s all.’ He gestured exhaustedly towards the computer in the corner of his room. Its green screen seemed to glow at me with muted venom. It seemed that Dan had been wrong: the BBC was speeding up after all. ‘There’ll be a lump-sum payment, of course, but I’m afraid you’re too young for a pension. Denis here has all the details. Maybe you’d like to go off and discuss it with him. We can meet again tomorrow. I’m sorry, I really am. But you know as well as I do what’s been going on in this place over the last few years, Sean. Now it’s all about management consultants and cost-to-reward ratios. And I suppose someone who’s never even met you and never will has decided you’re more of a cost than a reward. And that’s all there is to it. You know as much as I do.’
I suppose I did know – I just hadn’t thought they were going to apply this costing regime to me. I didn’t think I was significant enough to need to be rationalised away. I went down to the bar in the basement and watched the luminous fish swerving this way and that in their fluent internment as I sipped my gin. I’d never really learnt how to do anything else except précis the news, so what was I supposed to move on to now? At least I’d have the better part of six months to think about it from the payment I was going to receive, according to the union representative. A little reading time then. This probably cheered me more than it should have done. I never have been able to think very far ahead, worried such anticipations might constitute another capital sin against time. Something else had been given, that was all, so I couldn’t get entangled in worries about money and investments, could I? I’d always been sure enough of that. If I didn’t save all my energies for the solution of my riddle, then it wouldn’t get solved. In which case, I might just as well climb into the fish tank and drown.
3
I made two trips up north over those next six months. The first was when one of those parts inside her, which my grandmother had only recently found the name for, ceased functioning completely one night and she died. And the second was when my grandfather went to join her.
Black millstone grit had now become brown and grey, in the intervening, smokeless years. It no longer corresponded to my chiaroscuro recollections. Methodist chapels had metamorphosed into curry houses, with bright welcoming signs draped across them. And the old mills stood to lonely attention, like mausoleums after the grave-robbers’ visit. Everything had been stripped out, even the lead and the floor brackets. Looms had been hefted long ago, munched back to dross in a scrap-iron maw. Some of the mills and warehouses had been converted into apartments, Victorian solidity now colonised by modernist hygiene, with formations of gleaming new German cars parked outside and CCTV cameras controlling the entrances. I stumbled about amongst the wreckage of the old buildings, though don’t ask me what I was looking for. Beckoning to the ghosts of long-gone bronchial wheezers. The perennial crippled pitmen. Emphysema. Silicosis. I stared at the little Pakistani children, their enormous eyes mournful inside the northern rain.
And as I walked the streets of my childhood I cam
e back, again and again, moth-like to the lethal flame. There was a way of explaining the astonishing intellectual adventurousness of the works that had come to be known by the name of Shakespeare, also of approaching their utter desolation. Nothing, after all, has ever been written which is more desolate than the major tragedies. What could have happened to any life so annihilating as to confront this intelligence with such a ceaseless pageant of horror? Here was a man who had known murder and subterfuge, who knew the dreadfulness, the hourly torture of exile. He had endured as much as any person who’d ever lived. I had become feverish about it all by now.
After I’d arranged my grandfather’s funeral, I put a notice in the Telegraph and Argus. It seemed ridiculous that I should have only come to take his hand again, only kissed him once more on the cheek, only shed my shy tears of love all over his lined old face, after he was dead. I should have done that while the blood in his body was still warm, shouldn’t I, so that he could have taken me in his arms too? But maybe he would have been as incapable of it as I was. Now I’ll never know.
The funeral was a week later. I stared at the raw newness of my grandmother’s headstone, only just settling in. Now the upturned clay in the ditch next to hers was waiting to close its mouth on her husband too. I made a large effort not to cry, though I felt the salt urgency of tears beginning behind my eyes. Strange and ridiculous, only to realise how much you love people when you’re watching them sink slowly into the ground. Then I looked up and saw Dan on the other side of the grave. I’d not noticed him in church, but then I suppose I hadn’t been looking. He was turned out immaculately in black and was easily the most elegant figure amongst us. He bowed slowly and I nodded and smiled, if a little grimly, my eyes constantly moist with the possibility of tears. There were flecks of grey in his hair I’d never seen before. His head had the mottled texture of a thrush. My friend Dan.
Once we had thrown our clods of earth on top of the coffin, the little throng started to disperse raggedly and Dan was at my side.
‘You should have told me, Sean. I only found out about all this from a clipping my mother sent me from the paper. You should have told me, you know.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I suppose I should.’
‘I loved that old man.’
‘Not as much as I did.’
‘I didn’t even know you’d lost your job at the BBC. Where are you living?’
‘In a hotel on Theobald’s Road, but I can’t afford it much longer.’ This last was said with a weariness I could no longer disguise and didn’t wish to. ‘I’m going to have to find somewhere else to live.’
‘I’ve got somewhere for you to live, Sean.’ Then he put his arms around me and I finally let the tears come scalding out.
4
The Pavilion had an attic storey high above the King’s Road and Dan had converted it into a penthouse apartment. When I finally stepped in there, I halted and whistled quietly in admiration.
‘You should have been an interior designer, Dan, you’d have made a fortune.’
‘I have made a fortune, Sean. Told you I would. Even once invited you to come and do it with me, remember? But you wished to devote your life to broadcasting, or something of that nature. Touching the way they finally decided to reward you for all your conscientious hard work.’
‘It doesn’t matter since I’ve really been devoting my life to the School of Night, Dan. Remember?’
‘That’s all right then. Cracked it, have you?’
‘Nearly.’
I was walking around and running my hand along the smooth surfaces. It was as though his mother’s expensive bad taste had inoculated him entirely against any hint of it himself. There was a perfectly proportioned co-ordination between the minimal furniture, the polished floorboards, the understated rugs. Everything was enticingly light and airy. A few pastel colours here and there offset the brilliant whiteness. The only curiosity was a large low bed backed up against the wall in the living room.
‘People spend a lot of time in bed,’ Dan said meditatively. ‘It’s always struck me as odd to want to hide yourself away in a tiny little room for a third of your life. I like to be in the centre of things when I’m lying down. So will the accommodation be to sir’s liking?’
‘Yes, but what am I supposed to do to earn it?’
‘Earn it may be putting it a bit strong. But there is something you can do for me while you’re here, as a matter of fact. Something you could only ask of an old friend. Don’t you have more luggage than that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This is a bit more than I normally carry.’ Along with the bags containing my clothes, notebooks and my few remaining texts, I had the book of photographs of my mother I had taken from my grandparents’ house and my grandfather’s ancient snooker cue. Don’t ask me why I’d taken that; I don’t even play snooker, but somehow I couldn’t leave it there. The rest I had arranged to be collected. The men had given me thirty pounds, then stripped the place of every saleable item, even pulling the encrusted cooker out of the wall.
‘You don’t have any clothes that are maybe a little more formal, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Is it really possible to live so entirely the life of the mind?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know, Sean, given your singular incompetence in the normal procedures of life, I do sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t have joined that religious order you used to knock around with at Oxford. Who were they again?’
‘Dominicans.’
‘There was a rumour going about that you’d signed up. Then you could have made a feature of your unworldliness.’
‘A feature, Dan?’
‘That’s how estate agents refer to awkward and immovable facts. If your west wall falls down the night before you go on the market, they say, “One of the original features is a lovely open prospect of the sunset.” With you we could say, “A total absence of material preoccupations is one of our candidate’s more endearing features in these pursey times.” But as things stand I can’t help thinking it’s something of a liability. Anyway, the first thing we’ll do is pop down the road and get you some new togs. Don’t worry: it’s all on the account. I’ll put it down to company expenses. Did you really used to make money dressed like that?’
‘Not much.’
‘Life at the BBC, eh? The monk’s parlour.’
‘Not any more.’
Thus did I acquire the first dark suit I’d had since the one I’d worn at Oxford for my examinations. Some shirts. A few ties. Then, looking down at my shoes, Dan had taken me a few doors along and bought me some new black ones. When we got back he suggested I change into it all, which I did. Staring into the full-length mirror, if only for the briefest moment, I hardly recognised myself.
‘Right,’ Dan said, as he came back in, ‘you’ll do. Do you want a drink?’ I nodded. He picked up one of the telephones on the low table by the bed and ordered two gin and tonics.
‘This one’s the internal phone,’ he said. ‘That one’s the outside line.’
‘What is it you want me to do, Dan, that’s worth installing me in here and kitting me out in all this clobber?’ Dan went and stood by the window, looking across the rooftops of Chelsea.
‘I’d like you to be the one person in this building who’s here on my behalf rather than his own, that’s all. I don’t suppose you know much about the catering business, do you, Sean?’ He didn’t even wait for my reply. ‘The thing to remember is that cash is constantly moving. Out of pockets on to tables. Out of pockets on to bars. From tables and bars into tills. And out of pockets into pockets. What I’d like is for most of the money that comes out of pockets in this place to end up in my pocket. I’d like to put the amount I specify in the pockets of my employees, rather than having them specify how much they’ll put there themselves. Comprendo?’
At this point there was a knock on the door and after Dan had shouted, ‘Come in’, a man in his mid-twenties entered, well groomed, blond and bear
ded. When he asked where to put the drinks it was evident he was American.
‘Jess, this is Sean Tallow. You’ll be seeing a lot of him. He’ll be staying here in my absence.’ Jess bowed slightly and said he was pleased to meet me. If there was anything he could do, I was to let him know. Then he left us.
‘So what do you make of Jess?’ Dan said, handing me my drink.
‘He seemed pleasant enough.’
‘That’s because he is pleasant enough. Why do you think he’s working here?’ I shrugged.
‘The start of a career? Work experience? Between two other jobs?’
‘Get something clear in your mind, Sean, or you’ll be no use to me at all. He’s working here because that’s the best money he can get. He doesn’t have a valid work permit for a whole year, but I don’t care about that. The labour here is largely cash and no questions asked. He wants to make enough money in twelve months to get himself through college back in the States. He’d do just about anything to acquire it. If I were to toss him down on that bed over there and roger the boy, he probably wouldn’t complain too much as long as I gave him a large enough pile of readies afterwards. He doesn’t get paid all that much, to be honest, and if he were to see a nice pile of money downstairs and feel confident no one would notice if he took it, then he’d take it. And I don’t blame him because I would too, if I were in his shoes. And that applies to just about everyone in this building. None of them’s doing it for love, believe me, and I don’t trust a single one of them. But I trust you. Which is why you’ll be my ears and eyes while I’m gone. All you have to do is be here and look and listen. And the fact that they know you’re here, my old friend from the north, looking and listening, will make it a lot less likely that they’ll put themselves in the way of temptation. Places like this go bust because they’re left in the hands of a manager, who starts helping himself, or not paying attention, or cutting deals with the suppliers. All you have to do, Sean, is be here every day and keep watching what’s happening. You’ll soon get the picture, believe me. Someone spends hours on the phone to her boyfriend instead of serving the customers. Someone has a funny habit of disappearing every hour and when he comes back his mood has noticeably improved. Can’t just be the one Silk Cut then, can it? Always keep a close eye on the very friendly ones, the ones who smile even in the morning. They’re usually nicking something. And if you catch anyone at it, you phone this man.’ Dan took a card from his pocket and handed it to me.
