by Olivia Fane
‘OK, so are we going to sing?’
‘Sing?’ sniggered these streetwise lads in disbelief.
‘Come on,’ she said, trying to jolly them along. ‘Happy Birthday to you…’ went Josie’s tuneful solo. No one joined in, and she stopped singing.
‘You’re a useless lot,’ she said. And then, as she looked down at the glum Josiah, feeling desperately that she didn’t want Josiah to be hurt or feel that his birthday was ruined, she took both of his hands in his and planted a kiss on his forehead.
‘Ooooooo,’ piped up a couple of the younger boys.
‘Fucking disgusting,’ reckoned one of the older ones, and stormed out. Four others followed him.
‘I don’t know what’s got into them!’ said Josie, anxiously. ‘Just ignore them, Josiah. Come on, blow out your candles then!’
Josiah did, to please her, and it seemed very hard work. He then had to be the first to eat the damn cake, but he managed that, too. But the younger children all guzzled it down, and in fact Josie was quite relieved that all that ‘bad karma,’ as she called it, had left the room.
When Josiah went to his room at seven o’clock that evening he saw that a bit of paper had been glued to his bedhead. At first the message written in thick green felt pen was difficult to decipher, not least for its strange spelling, but after a few minutes he managed to make out the following:
So sorry to have missed singing your birthday song at tea. Here’s one we thought you’d like instead. If you behave yourself we’ll sing it to you later tonight.
Happy birthday to Josiah
Have you seen your pants on fire?
Just wait a tick
While we suck your dick
Darren wants to swallow it.
Darren’s name had then been crossed out and various other names put in its place, even Josie’s; it was in fact quite unclear who wanted to swallow Josiah’s dick; but for Josiah, who had had sole possession over his dick to that point, the prospect of a nightly visit was terrifying. There was no lock on his bedroom door so Josiah saw no alternative but to spend the night in the bathroom. He got into his pyjamas and dressing-gown, and then smuggled a duffle-coat and blanket into the small bathroom on the second floor, which was hardly ever used (everyone preferring the newly installed showers). He bolted the door and tried hard to stop himself from shaking, and every time he heard a foot on the stair he started. Finally he managed to line the bath with the blanket: even so, his head made a soft thud on the enamel as he lay down on top of it, and he wished he’d brought a pillow, too. He’d left the duffle coat on the floor next to him, but he realised he was incapable of stretching over the side to pull it over him, or indeed of moving at all. So he lay and waited: first, for the night to fall, and then for the dawn to follow.
It had been dark for a couple of hours when Josiah heard them clambering up the stairs.
‘Jo-Jo, Jo-Jo,’ they called, in fake silvery voices, ‘We know you’re in there. You mustn’t be frightened of us, we just want to sing to you… You just open the door, Jo-Jo.’
Josiah couldn’t have answered them even if he had anything to say.
‘Jo-Jo, you know we can break this door down by just breathing on it. Anyone would think you didn’t want us to sing.’
Josiah heard them laughing and then one of them took a kick at the door.
‘A bit harder than that, Kev.’ More laughter.
‘Come on, Jo-Jo, open up, or we might get angry. Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you? We only want to fucking sing to you.’
And then their tone became more serious. ‘It’s only a flimsy bolt in here, y’know. Come on, let’s get it open.’ Five shoulders rammed the door, and the bolt broke. The strip light went on.
‘Well, what’ve we here?’ sneered Darren, when they found Josiah shivering on his blanket. ‘We thought you’d be having a nice hot bath, didn’t we? But I trust it wasn’t us what stopped you. Poor boy, I think we should give him a bath. Poor little mite.’
‘Judging by the state of his feet he fucking needs one,’ said Kev.
‘Just take a look at his neck and behind his ears! You keep yourself in a disgusting state, arsehole,’ said Ricky.
‘Fucking disgusting,’ agreed Jed.
‘I bet his dick’s crawling,’ suggested Dan.
‘We’ll soon see whether it is.’ Darren was in command. ‘Are you going to strip, Jo-Jo, or are we going to do it for you?’
Josiah lay as stiff and passive as a doll. Darren began to untie the cord around his dressing gown; Josiah instinctively held tight onto the knot.
‘I’m going to need a little help here. Come on, you lot, hold him down.’
Dan and Ricky held Josiah’s wrists against the head of the bath, while Darren summoned Kev’s help to strip him.
‘Fuck me,’ said Darren, ‘What sort of pathetic shrivelled little stump is that? You’re not exactly going to give the girlies a lot of pleasure with that, are you, Jo-Jo dear?’
‘Shall we cut it off?’ asked Jed, producing his new gleaming penknife.
‘I’ll have that,’ said Darren, and Jed just handed it to him, with a certain pride.
Josiah flinched. Darren held the knife in front of him and admired the blade. ‘Hold him, you idiots. We don’t want there to be an accident, do we, Jo-Jo? This is a tricky operation, you know. Jed, you hold his dick so I can just lop it off. It’s a good blade. Let’s hope I can do it in one swipe, hey?’
Josiah screamed and hands immediately piled over his mouth and nostrils so that he couldn’t breathe. Josiah thought, ‘Dear God, let me suffocate first,’ and shut his eyes. No one thought to make him open them. Josiah was waiting to bleed to death. He was waiting for the pain, and the release from pain.
The five of them saw that in some sense they had lost him. They put cold water in the bath and dunked him; they jabbed the knife into his inner thigh and threatened more, but they saw that he was gone. Even his stiffness had gone, his body was white and small and flaccid. Their game stopped being interesting.
For Josiah was lying under the beech tree and knew one thing only: there is somewhere better than this. He was deaf to their leers and their lewdness, and when they threatened to put the knife up his bum, Josiah said, because it suddenly occurred to him, ‘You haven’t sung to me yet. You promised you’d sing.’
It was midnight, and the boys realised that whatever momentum there’d been was now gone. So they told him not to worry but they’d sing to him the following night. ‘Same time, same place,’ said Darren. They turned out the light and left the room.
Josiah waited in his bath until he heard the last of their bedroom doors slam shut on the floor below him. He turned the light back on and noticed the bath water was pink, but had neither the spirit nor the curiosity to inspect his wound. Then he put on his duffle-coat and sat with his back against the wall and his head between his trembling knees. And this was the only time, in all the years that Josiah had spent and would spend at The Hollies, that he cried.
Chapter Seven
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AUTUMN TERM 1998, in a large, warm room in Old Court, Corpus Christi College, Dr Thomas Marius was refilling the glasses of three female undergraduates with sherry. There was a fire burning in the grate, around which they all sat hugger-mugger in an array of armchairs, files and essays either spread out on their knees or at their feet. On the mantelpiece were three or four formal invitations to the various college feasts which were held at that time of year, and above these a large, blank space with a picture light above it, for Thomas had never found himself a painting he liked well enough to hang there. He was undeniably handsome, yet oblivious to the fact; his clothes were donnish, all corduroy and wool – though the clothes which would have really suited him were velvet britches, linen and lace, and a glorious frock coat, for there was a look about him of a neurasthenic eighteenth century poet: pale, flawless skin, wavy dark hair and bright blue eyes, and his physique was slight, effete and effeminate.
&n
bsp; It was half past six in the evening and Thomas Marius was teaching, an activity which he generally found disappointing. The young Classicists he met tended to be privately educated – he himself had been at one of the last grammar schools – and he quite often found them confident, cocky and clever, but a deeper commitment to a subject that he had loved from the first was too often lacking. His pupils often knew how to write a good essay, how to use primary and secondary sources well, and doubtless would one day be fine lawyers and sassy city traders, but it was a shame, he considered, when a university was considered a mere means to an end, and a sound education not an end in itself. When he was feeling charitable, he would blame the Government (at High Table, he was the first to blame national educational policy not for a decline in standards but in genuine interest); however he felt no charity towards the three New Hall girls before him, and pouring them a second glass of sherry was really an excuse to have another himself.
‘Samantha,’ he said, ‘you’ve been rather quiet this evening, though at least your book is open on the right page. If you could just translate from line 17…’
Samantha crossed her long, naked legs first in one direction, and then the other. She had thick dyed white-blonde hair and a pouty red mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she gushed, ‘I’ve not had a chance to look at this. I’m in a play tonight, Oedipus Rex, I’m Jocasta. Perhaps you’d like to come and see it?’
‘Translate it anyway,’ said Dr Marius. ‘It’s not difficult. Just six lines. If you’d read them out first, please.’
‘I find Catullus terribly hard…’
‘Go on, read it out. We’ll help you if you get stuck.’
And Samantha read out, quite beautifully as it so happened, these words from Catullus 76:
O di, si vestrum est misereri, aut si quibus umquam
Extremam iam ipsa in morte tulistis opem,
Me miserum aspicite et, si vitam puriter egi,
Eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi,
Quae mihi subrepens imos ut torpor in artus
Expulit ex omni pectore laetitias.
They then proceeded to attempt a translation, which after a few minutes emerged as something like, ‘O Gods, if you know what it is to have pity, or if ever you have brought any help to those facing death itself, see here how wretched I am, and, if ever I have lived a pure life, take this disease and ruin from me, which so crawls through my innermost being that it has driven from my heart all happiness.’
‘So then, Samantha, have you led a pure life?’ asked Dr Marius.
Samantha tapped her silver-painted fingernails on her black PVC mini-skirt. ‘I don’t quite get your drift,’ said Samantha.
‘Well, then, do you think Catullus has lead a pure life? He asks the gods to help him si vitam puriter egi – he evidently thinks he has led a good life. But do you? Now, Catullus is suffering badly, and he doesn’t feel he deserves to, but do you think he deserves this pestem, this perniciem?
‘Are you suggesting that I’m not pure?’ asked Samantha.
‘I’m not suggesting anything of the kind. But I want to know by what standard, if any, you would judge yourself. Now, Catullus considers himself pure despite committing adultery with a Roman matron, something utterly unheard of, something utterly shameful for all parties concerned. And he’s asking the Gods for their help! How dare he?’
‘Because he thinks he’s pious, that’s what it says here, in line 2,’ said Jane.
‘Good,’ said Dr Marius, ‘but what kind of piety is this? Would a Christian ask for pity for bungling up a burglary?’
‘Perhaps the Romans didn’t believe in their gods,’ said Jane.
‘A good point, and the intelligentsia probably didn’t. But that didn’t mean that invoking the Gods was meaningless. And he uses the word “sanctus” to describe their “fides” – their bond of trust is holy, as Catullus tells us with great feeling. How can adultery be holy?’
All three girls waited to be told.
‘This love is different. For the first time in Roman history, we have the complete package. The Roman might eroticize his meretrix, his whore, he might write love poetry to her; but his wife demanded his respect, at best, his friendship. To feel lust for your wife, except for the first few weeks of your marriage, was considered rather embarrassing, or rather, simply wrong. Sex with your wife was always about procreation, never pleasure. Now, with Lesbia, Catullus has redefined love. He wants both mind and body. I’d call him the first modern lover, or perhaps even, the first modern husband. And the thing is, he thinks the system he has fallen upon quite by accident is right, right not necessarily in the eyes of the law (because obviously it isn’t) but by nature. That is why he has pietas – which incidentally has a profounder meaning than our English ‘piety’, in that it is about inner obedience to moral laws rather than outward appearance – that is why he can look into his heart and say he has lived “puriter”. Catullus is living true to how things are by nature, and nature transcends custom.’
Dr Marius paused and was surprised by the vigour with which he delivered his little speech, as were his three students. The sexy Samantha, the sensible Jane and the lanky Henrietta, twenty years a piece, had all known desire and had all known guilt, and they wanted to know what was to be done about it.
‘But what do you mean by nature?’ asked Jane, putting her edition of Catullus on the floor and sitting forward in her chair.
‘Nature is everything,’ suggested Henrietta. ‘Nature is cancer and nits and squidgy bottoms.’
‘But perhaps nature itself contains civilization, perhaps it is just “what is”. In the animal world, we have bucking reindeer; in the human world, bucking ideologies and hence wars.’ Dr Marius stood up and paced the room, which was what he did when he was thinking. ‘But you see, it isn’t as simple as that. Because the human experience of an ideology is that it is true. Whether it is or not, there is no way of knowing, but man’s experience is one of seeking truth. Do the gods exist, or don’t they? Is this a truer paradigm, or that one? Or simply, is the theory of relativity true? Yet suddenly with human beings it becomes more difficult. Nothing is clear anymore, all is a muddling through. If we embraced unfettered individualism, we’d all end up as alcoholic existentialists, where nothing would matter ever. If the state was the arbiter of what mattered or not, then look at fascism, at communism. There has to be a truth which transcends nature, state and individual. Well, there doesn’t have to be. But it’s a nice thought. And when Catullus invokes the Gods he is seeking out a truth which is eternal, like prising an oyster from its shell. It takes precision, but one can also feel one’s way to it.’
There was an awed silence, or at least Dr Marius hoped it was ‘awed’, but then the bell chimed seven in the quad and Samantha said she thought oysters were quite disgusting creatures. Dr Thomas thanked her for her valuable comments, and Samantha said, ‘Any time.’
Dr Marius handed out essay titles and book-lists for the following week. For some reason it irked him to watch the girls get up from their chairs and blithely pack their books away, and for some reason it irked him even more when they said, ‘See you’ rather than ‘Thank you’. Henrietta and Jane scuttled away; Samantha lingered just a moment.
‘You will come tonight, won’t you, Dr Marius? The ADC at eight.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Dr Marius, and forced a smile.
Samantha as Jocasta. He had certainly not been intending to see her, but he did; and he went because he didn’t like Samantha, and was curious to see whether she could ever inspire sympathy, and because of the inertia that fell on him when, for the first time that day, he found himself alone.
She was wearing a short red dress, high heels and lots of jewellery. Was it the director who had cast her as a whore? Or did she herself insist that there was not enough colour in the set? How capable she was, he thought, of seducing her own son. He watched her; and when he saw her crying out before her suicide, he thought to himself, ‘Why don’t I desire this woman? The
whole of Cambridge desires her, look at them all salivating on their seats! Yet I’ve seen her skirt riding up a dozen times in my supervisions, I know it’s deliberate, and the more I see of her legs the colder I become.’
But the star of the show was undoubtedly Oedipus himself. His skin had been chalked white, and his blond hair shaved almost to the scalp. He was wearing a simple linen tunic with a knife in his belt, and his calves were strapped in leather bindings, to remind his audience of how he had been found by a shepherd as a baby, feet pinned together: the reason for his name, ‘Oedipus’ – ‘swollen-feet’. When he moved, he stumbled and rocked, inciting those who watched to come and steady him; and then he asked them, he asked Thomas Marius, Am I all impure?
‘And is he?’ thought Thomas Marius. ‘If his intentions are pure but his body is defiled, if he has made love to his own mother but didn’t know it, should we blame him? Would God blame him? Surely, if purity means anything, he is purer than Catullus. But is he “pius”? No, because “pietas” is beyond intention, it’s more like “grace”, something god-given, a disposition to certainty, to knowing; his ignorance, through no fault of his own, has robbed him of it.’
The audience was now moving to go, laughing, joking, gushing enthusiastically, debating the pub to head for; while Thomas was sunk in his seat and his reverie. And then suddenly the magnificent Jocasta herself, restored to life, began making her way towards him. All those she rubbed against congratulated her, and she was like a star, thanking them, waving to friends, self-effacing in her moment of glory.
‘Oh Dr Marius!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’m so pleased you made it, ‘I’m so flattered that you came…what did you think? Didn’t you think Oedipus was brilliant?’
Dr Marius stood up from his seat and answered her, without feeling, ‘I thought you were all very good.’
‘Just wait there, I’m sure Oedipus would love to meet you, I’ve told him all about you, you know.’ And off Samantha skipped to get him. When she came back a minute later, Oedipus’ arm was about her waist. ‘Meet Dr Marius, Simon.’
