by Weldon, Fay
‘Of course,’ he said, apparently surprised. ‘Karl wants to talk to you. He has an idea for a TV series about a travelling jazzband and wants to know if you’d help him get it on.’
‘Ah.’
‘Will you?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
So in I went with the Citronella Jumpers to Blasimon-les-Ponts, where the street flags fluttered up and down the streets, and stalls selling ethnic niceties from every corner of the globe lined the square; you could buy freshly made prawn crackers – smelling of real fish and quite disgusting – tortillas (from a microwave), African beads and bangles so high in the asking price, so cheap in the selling you’d think it’s some kind of plot and wouldn’t be seen dead in them. How do these street traders survive so far from home? Can they even tell one coin from another in a foreign land? I fear not, despite their reputation as shrewd and mean: it is they who get ripped off, not do the ripping – and not a thing on sale which couldn’t be bought in Camden Town Market, London, any day of the week, so universal have become the gewgaws of the world. Little groups of folk dancers, in the intricate, uncomfortable costumes of the past, danced and skipped and sang their way along the streets, to the music of pipe, violin and drum, while watching crowds grouped and applauded and dispersed, glad of at least something happening in what could only be the infinite boredom of their lives. What goes on behind the fastened shutters of the small French town? Nothing, I fear. The young and the old stare into space, and brood, and wait, sweltering in summer, freezing in winter. I said as much to Jack, who reproved me for my attitude. There was obviously something about gypsy fiddling he knew, and I did not.
Frances, after last night’s softening, will have nothing to do with me. She went off arm in arm with Jennifer. I sat with Jack and drank café au lait from agreeably large green cups, gold-rimmed. My wrist looked thinner and browner than usual. My hair had bleached in the sun. Nothing much mattered. I could live like this for ever. Close the shutters: be content, like anyone else round here, just to be. The Citronella Jumpers were to play at eleven thirty beneath the War Memorial; it was difficult to get details of time and place from the Festival Organisers, inasmuch as no one there spoke English. Only the French rivalled the British in their expectation, nay, determination, that theirs should be the universal language. I offered to translate but Jack wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Try and understand,’ he says. ‘This Band doesn’t want anything to go smoothly. It’s not the way we work. We like to pick things up by osmosis. We do not want to be organised. Efficiency is the enemy of creative energy.’
I’d like to know what the discovery of Athena entailed other than creative energy and efficiency combined. But I was sensible enough not to say so. I called for a bottle of wine, instead.
14
Under the War Memorial
By some magic not worked by me the Band had assembled under the War Memorial by eleven twenty-nine and, what is more, all had their instruments in working order. In the time between the parking of the minibus in the Festival Car Park – an acid yellow David between rows of Goliaths, for the other groups came in massive coaches with national flags flying, on-board loos, catering facilities, and some kind of embroidered garment hanging from all available windows – there had been the repeated customary panics – broken strings, snapped keys, valves stuck, music missing, the sound system without its master plug, the van locked and the keys lost, one or the other of the Band refusing ever again to play with another, but all these difficulties were, as ever, resolved in time. A little organisation, a little system, a little tact, and none of these problems would have arisen – but then where would have been the fun? Most of the ills turned out to be imaginary, of course, as I began to realise. They were no more than little spasms of paranoia or despair – the stolen notebooks were under the seat; or Hughie had been trying to unlock an already unlocked door: the damage to instruments almost non-existent, obvious only to an obsessive owner, and of course Jennifer was there to sort things out – mother to this group of wilful, talented naughty elderly boys – who needed me, bossy little sister that I was? And look, eleven thirty came, and there they were in their green shirts, and a kind of gleam passed from one to another, of exhilaration and complicity, and Jack’s foot was beginning – one, two, three, four – and they were off, and the pigeons fluttered and soared as the first notes struck, fit to raise the dead. He had listened to me. I was part of the Citronella Jumpers. My heart soared: form, style, content, in that order! I had made an impression! A gust of wind blew through the square; trees tossed about above: what did the morts-pour-la-patrie think, the roll-call of their names the backdrop to this strange band of unlikely men? Did they too want to get up and dance? The living certainly did. French crowds, acclimatised to the genteel rituals of the folkdancers, usually took time to respond to these half-New Orleans, half-idiosyncratic sounds: hard to make sense of it if you were not accustomed to it, a kind of overlapping of random sounds, of oddly assorted instruments. But today a sense of excitement gripped them almost at once: feet stamped, faces beamed, they were delighted: the sense of complicity, of being naughty children, themselves presented to themselves and far, far nicer, more at one, than they had ever realised, the threads of individual exultation pulled together to make one universal, joyful sound – the wind blew, the trees tossed, even the dead came to life: the people danced. Well, it wasn’t often like this. Just sometimes. It was the moment the Band worked for, hoped for, put their wives through hell for, annoyed their employers for, ran off with women for, drowned their sorrows in drink for, savagely bantered with each other for, practised hour after hour for, in garages, lofts and fields: just to bring these few minutes into existence, when the music took off, and took the crowd with it, and everything added up to more than the sum of its parts, and they could do no wrong. Form, style, content! Told him so! Whispered the secret into his sleeping ear: not like poison into Hamlet’s father’s ear, but the elixir of the universe into Mad Jack the trumpeter’s ear – my knowledge the same as his: what works for the stars will work for you. I was dancing: so was Jennifer, so was Frances, so was Bente; in and out we wove, the bad women and the good, the undecided and the stolid; the stern French faces relaxed in smiles, peasant feet stamping, old hands clapping – and then it was over, and the wind dropped and the hot, hot sun won – but some benign presence had been there and we all knew it. Well, where there are demons there are angels too. Perhaps I brought them with me. I think I carry them. But what was this? The Band was leaving; the Citronella Jumpers had been taken on board the Cuban coach (no one wanted to be seen with the battered British minibus); everyone except wives, children and hangers on had gone off to some mayoral reception in the next town: they wouldn’t be back till evening: the groupies were left behind: no room even on the half empty Polish coach – a bad case of food poisoning had kept many of this vast-ankled, sharp-nosed group confined to their quarters – what a vehicle, we see it leave, darkened windows, coffee bar, loo – we have no passes they say, sticklers for order – and of course Sandy’s taken the keys of the minibus with him – and that’s us put in our place, me, Frances, Bente and Jennifer. Not part of the real business.
So there we stood, the four of us, in the suddenly deserted market square, with the stallholders putting up their boards, because it was midday, in our uneasy relationship: women deserted by men, pretending it didn’t matter.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ said Bente, and strode off in the direction of the castle, her sturdy lace-up shoes clomping. She had a big bust and a big bottom and wore a pale blue track suit not quite large enough. She ate a great deal, I noticed. She and Hughie exchanged chocolate bars a lot; and she would butter French bread for him, and he for her; and tempt him to delicacies: a nice way to go on, but fattening. And of course musicians drink a lot on gigs: especially beer, to quench their thirst: and in France, perpetual wine in between, because it’s everywhere, and his woman drinks to keep him company, o
r he suspects reproach in her gaze.
‘She’d do better jogging than walking,’ said Jennifer. ‘Get some of that weight down.’ It was the kind of thing she said. She wore a blue and white striped cotton dress, belted; it looked as if it came out of the fifties, but not the fifties returned to, but the fifties never left. A pity. She had a pretty face and a nice figure and an acid tongue. But then Sandy had left her without a word or gesture, still on his jazz-man’s high. Jack had at least smiled and glimmered at me.
‘I think they’re disgusting,’ said Frances, ‘leaving us standing here like fools. And Dad hasn’t even left me my lunch ticket.’
Festival folk ate self-help canteen fashion, up at the college at the foot of the castle, queuing up in the shade along the wooden banks of the moat, each national with his/her own group. Tickets were handed out to group leaders, who distributed them amongst his troupe or, if he employed power, used them as a means of discipline. No ticket meant no food, which was a pity, because it was good in the French fashion, well cooked and sauced and served by enthusiasts – carrot salad, egg mayonnaise, chicken legs, pork steaks, beans in quantity, melon in profusion, chunks of bread and tin jugs of crude red wine on every table. Also in the French fashion, cooks made no concessions to the dietary fancies of ethnic minorities, so there were constant ‘pork strikes’, as Jack called them, amongst the Muslims, and ‘beef strikes’, amongst the Hindus, and the Israelis wouldn’t eat a thing, and the Poles contrived food poisoning, and of course the Citronella Jumpers had the British suspicion of foreign foods, but were too small a group, and too diffident, to make the fuss that other nations made, shrieking and banging along the counters, chorusing their national pride, walking out in huffs, with Monsieur le Directeur called up every meal time to deal with one crisis or another, through inadequate interpreters. I could see why Frances would be piqued to miss her lunch.
I offered her my ticket. She was wearing a white T-shirt and white shorts, and had very long translucent, apparently sun-resistant white legs and her red hair was untidy and frizzy and be-ribboned in the English fashion, and bunched on top of her head, and very different from the glossy cropped business like chic of the French teenager. The alleged flea bites on her legs and cheeks stood out in an oddly exotic and personal way. Her large blue eyes were liquid with angry grief: they filmed over with moisture, I noticed, when she was in the grip of passion. I thought she looked terrific.
‘I don’t want your stupid ticket,’ she said. ‘It’s all your fault. I’m worn out with all that fucking dancing.’
‘Language!’ said Jennifer.
‘Fucking dancing,’ repeated Frances. ‘I only did it for Dad’s sake, to get everyone going. Not that he cares. He doesn’t even notice.’ (to me) ‘He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his fucking music. I hope you realise that. My mum’s well rid of him if you ask me. He’s been a rotten husband and a rotten father.’
She stared down at me, waiting for my response. She was twice my size.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s not a rotten lover.’
That shrivelled her. She snivelled.
‘Sandra!’ reproached Jennifer. And then. ‘I know, everyone! Let’s go and have a lovely lunch, all by ourselves. Who cares about the men!’
‘I do,’ said Frances, ‘and I’m going off to find Douglas.’
‘Douglas?’ said Jennifer. ‘I thought it was Jock.’
Change seemed to frighten her.
‘I’ve gone off Jock. He’s just a boy, no more use than a sick cat. Douglas is the one who clashes his swords above his head. He comes from Ilvercuddy. He’s something else. A real man.’
‘But he’ll be at the Reception,’ said Jennifer, ‘along with all the others. So come to lunch with Sandra and me.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Frances. ‘They won’t let the Scots Guards in, in case they get drunk. Only the officers can go. They’re really pissed off. They’re going to break up the town tonight.’
Rumour travels fast through the lands of the young.
‘I know you want to stop me,’ said Frances, terrified. ‘But I’m old enough to know what I’m doing. And everyone else does –’ (glares at me, her father’s doxy, bad girl of the Band) – ‘so why not me.’ And off she went, one could only presume, to lose her virginity to Douglas, or Jock, or whoever. (Difficult to tell one from another beneath a busby.) No doubt about it, those sturdy, strapped, socked and be-ribboned calves below the swirling kilt would be hard enough to resist. And why bother, as she herself had pointed out.
‘She’ll get AIDS,’ said Jennifer, all but weeping. ‘And it’s all your fault.’ She stood in the French market square and shook her English finger at me. The nail varnish was chipping. I mentioned it. She took no notice. It was the bright red kind I most dislike. I favour beigy pink crystalline. It was bound to chip, I suppose, considering the amount of housework she did. ‘What sort of example have you set her?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you realise your responsibilities? If you take on a married man you have to behave decently towards his children.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s only decent.’ She was frothing and spitting.
‘But they’re a nuisance.’
‘You take them on when you take him on.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘He didn’t start life the day he met you. A married man brings his past with him.’ She was quoting a hundred women’s magazines. I told her so. She frothed more.
‘You are a monster!’ she cried, and I thought that was that, she’d come to her conclusion, and now perhaps we could have lunch. French restaurants fill up quickly after twelve. But she thought of another tack.
‘As a public figure,’ she said, ‘you ought to set an example.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Napoleon was a public figure and he didn’t. The less well public figures behave, the more public they become.’ I am argumentative, it is true.
‘Oh you and your stupid media world,’ was all she would say. She did quite like me, in spite of her disapproval of me, as I quite liked her. We went and had lunch. Crudités, steak and frites, fruit and cheese, but she began to cry over the cheese. She missed Sandy. And now the really hot part of the day had begun, and her hat was locked in the van, and whatever was happening to Frances – even as we ate, the dreaded virus might be passing from the Scots Guards into her young body. I was going to have to pay for Jennifer’s lunch, because Sandy had gone off without leaving her any money.
‘Sandy this and Sandy that,’ I said. ‘Can’t you organise your own life?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I like Sandy to organise it.’
‘Then you’ll cry for ever,’ I said, and then I cheered her up by saying that Jack and I couldn’t help it, love was its own imperative, a greater good overwhelming all the little wrongs, and of course Frances wouldn’t get AIDS, and she’d have a far better time with Douglas from Ilvercuddy than she would with some local boy back home who’d betray her and disappoint her and be around for ever to remind her of it – as it was Frances could write Douglas love letters and tell herself it was circumstances kept them apart, and she could hug her love to her bosom and save her face and be the envy of her friends, and if I was instrumental in Frances losing her virginity to a soldier in a French provincial town, then good for me. That was what soldiery were for. Think of all those younger sisters in the Austen novels – the minute the Regiment was in town they would be off; there was no controlling them: nor should there have been. Kilts and busbies and sweaty brows and dancing feet and puffing cheeks – wow! Lucky old Frances, said I.
She actually smiled, and discovered she was eating goat’s cheese – crumbly and white and not tough and rancid as imported goat’s cheese is. Poor old Britain, fobbed off with the world’s culinary cast-offs.
15
Lying in the Shade
Look, one thought leads to another. After lunch I parted gracefully from Jennifer and went to lie in the shade of an oak tree on the gra
ssy slopes that led down to the moat at the foot of the castle. On the far side of the moat a thousand senior French citizens milled around the big marquee where the afternoon concerts were held. They had come in by bus from the villages around. For four hours they would sit in a confined and unventilated space, on uncomfortable chairs, watching endless heel-and-toeing, swirling skirts, gracious bowing and ferocious thigh-slapping (Turkish) and listening to gypsy fiddling, Creole mourning, and thirty-piece orchestras playing melancholy, energetic but always folksy pieces. This they would do with an intensity and appreciation which made me, a mere lady astronomer, feel ashamed. The women wore dark cheap cotton dresses on their bolster bodies; their arms were fat and flabby, or thin and fleshy. The men had little sharp elderly eyes, tough burned skins and wore greasy Sunday suits. To such an end must all peasants come: nothing left in life but to be bussed in to Folk Festivals to witness the artificial celebration of a daft and dreary life.
I catch myself thinking like my father; the Nazi beast. That is what happens when the work machine gets turned off: you find out who you are, how nasty you can be. In the sudden silence of non-attempt, non-effort, you hear the furies flapping round your ears. If there are no papers to write, no graphs to decipher, no lectures to give, no dinner guests to entertain, you see ghosts. You drive dogs shrieking in terror from the mere sniff of you. You are yourself. To what end had I come, forget my elderly peasant brethren. I leapt upon Mad Jack the Knight Errant’s horse as he galloped by and he landed me in the fire, not the frying pan. The truth of the matter is, no amount of fucking can stop you thinking and the time had come to think.
I felt obliged to give some thought to the matter of my father. My father, the supplier of the genes that gave me the Aryan cast of my countenance, the precise lines of jaw, cheekbones, nose – the rather thin mouth, the small perfect teeth, the long legs – all so different from my gypsy-girl mother Tamara, plump, dark and somehow diffuse, and she herself, in her turn, so inappropriate a child for her mother, my grandmother Susan, who had the kind of English horse-face seen at its best in an English vicarage garden, pruning hands protected by thick cotton gloves. Susan ran off with a gypsy: she was, I like to think, the original for the girl in the D. H. Lawrence story, The Virgin and the Gypsy. I am one of a race of misfits, that’s for certain: the result of a surfeit of miscegenation, and would have come to nothing had it not been for some chance mutation in the genes, which gave me the kind of brain which is useful in worldly affairs – one that can do sums, pass exams, consider the heavens, discover a new planet, and has a gift for teaching, for making the improbable facts of the universe seem probable to a television audience. This I do by throwing myself around a studio, pretending to be the sun, or a black hole, or a red dwarf, or whatever, demonstrating the Doppler Shift by putting a brass band on a railway carriage and zooming it past the mike – in imitation of what Christian Doppler himself did, long ago – and so forth. I am good at it. Look, I’m really something, me. And also I am nothing. I am the debris of the world, product of a series of unconsidered and unnatural matings, between the proud, the mad and the murderous. Once things start going wrong in a family they certainly go wrong. (The brass band I chose for the Doppler Effect show were a staid and boring lot, by name the River Kwai Beat. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have employed the Citronella Jumpers. They’d have got, for once, Musician Union rates – a rare event in any musician’s life. (Then I would have really impressed them.) Though, now I come to think of it, it was the sousaphone player of the River Kwai Beat who gave me the card of the Citronella Jumpers, which I in turn gave to the Centenary Organisers, which was how I encountered Jack, meaning of my life. Love at first sight!)
