The Lightning Cage

by Alan Wall

  ‘Now, you have a good look at those things behind you. They’re not at all bad, you know, not at all bad.’ They weren’t either. There was a luminous quality to the brushwork and colouring that often held me for minutes at a time as I walked past, on my way to find a book. They all seemed to delight so much in their fluency and uninhibited palette. ‘But they lack something. Impress me, Christopher, and tell me what it is that my wife’s paintings lack.’ I couldn’t. ‘They lack black, that’s what. The colour of no colour at all, the colour of no belief and no comfort, let’s call it the pigment of extinction. Oh, they display a great delight in the rainbow, I grant you, but she never did find a space, either in her mind or on her canvases, for the shadows, my poor old Serena. And then, when her mind set off on its own strange journey to the grave, shadows were all that she could see around her, but she simply had no way of exorcising them by that stage. She’d never had any practice, to be fair. So, after a while, she put down her brush and just got on with being mad, there being nothing else to get on with.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what might have happened if she could have started to confront that dark before it overwhelmed her…’

  The bell on the door had once more clunked its dread dull summons. A long-haired young woman in a voluminous, floral-printed dress meandered over to the poetry section, pulled down a volume with what seemed an insouciant rapidity, and dropped down on to the floor cross-legged, laying the book open on the tented fabric now pulled tight between her knees. Fordie watched her for a moment in silence, then, with the stoical air of General Gordon stepping down into the sea of spears, he stood up and walked across to the window, where he picked up the pole and started to pull down the blinds. The young woman looked up at him, confused, as the light by which she was reading was curtained off, section by section. Fordie turned to her finally, a kindly expression on his face in the sudden morning gloom.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t seen you down there, catching up on your homework. If you’d like to have a word with my young colleague over there the next time you come in, he might be able to arrange the provision of a torch, but now I really must get some sleep. Migraine, you know.’

  He led her to the door and I couldn’t help noticing how caressingly his hands upon her back gently ejected her from his little Eden. (I wondered if Fordie’s mysterious afternoon off once a fortnight could be connected with women? He simply wouldn’t say where he went.) He put the lock on then, and we sat in the semi-darkness for a few minutes. But he didn’t continue his monologue. Finally, after about ten minutes, he spoke again, ‘Fancy a drink, Christopher?’

  I nodded, and he went into his back room where, among all the other treasures, he kept the white wine chilling in his fridge. A few minutes later we were sipping contentedly at Fordie’s Chablis.

  ‘And you,’ he said as we sat there, ‘do you believe in hell?’

  ‘I’m a Roman Catholic,’ I said. ‘All Roman Catholics believe in hell, even when we no longer believe in heaven.’ He looked at me with a renewed interest.

  ‘How Roman Catholic are you?’

  ‘Enough to have nearly become a priest. Enough to be a lapsed Catholic but never a non-Catholic. Do you really have the Chilford papers, Fordie?’

  ‘I think I probably do, yes.’

  ‘Can I read them?’

  ‘Would that be with an eye to a purchase?’

  ‘You must have had them a long time,’ I said warily.

  ‘You still have much to learn about this business, Christopher.’ He reached for the bottle and refilled our glasses. ‘Look at Christopher Smart, for example. No edition of his work for a century and a half, and no edition of Jubilate Agno ever, but when Cape brought out Stead’s edition in 1939, the book didn’t make a penny. Now admittedly, publishing an eighteenth-century English madman’s poetical ravings just as a twentieth-century German madman was about to drag us all through another world war was less than ideal timing.

  ‘Do you know how they found Thomas Traherne’s Commentaries of Heaven? An autograph copy was pulled from a smouldering tip in south Lancashire in 1967, three hundred years after the things were written. Isn’t that extraordinary? One of the occasional delights of this sort of work is that now and then one finds a treasure.’

  ‘What sort of price would you be asking for them, if you were to sell?’

  ‘Do you know that you’re the first person I’ve ever heard express the slightest interest in Pelham in all my years in the book trade? I thought everyone had agreed to forget him, though I suppose people might start to look at him again these days simply because of his madness. Is that possible? That seems to be very much on the curriculum. I’ve never really understood it, this new vogue for insanity. The last critical piece I looked at seemed to give the impression that the whole of the eighteenth century was a great formal deceit, waiting to explode into Blake’s eccentric authenticity. What do you think he might have meant, by the way, your man, when he spoke of the ancient haunting ground of English mercies?’

  ‘Are you sure that’s Pelham?’ I asked.

  ‘Assuming the authenticity of the text, then it’s Pelham. Don’t often mix up my quotations. Poetic licence is the most foolish phrase ever used about literature, since poets, even very minor ones like myself, traditionally make such a large effort to be precise.’

  ‘That phrase is not in any of the published work that I know. And I know all of it.’

  ‘There was a correspondence … but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Whenever two men are alone together there’s always the spirit of a woman present, at least one, and I’m trying to work out which one it is with you. Your mother perhaps? A wife maybe? I use that term loosely.’

  ‘There was someone called Alice.’

  ‘I note your use of the past tense, so what was the problem?’

  ‘She’d never really been born.’

  ‘That could be disadvantageous, I can see. It is, however, your mother’s house where you now live, isn’t it? I wonder if it might perhaps be time you moved.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am prepared to sell you the Chilford papers, Christopher, along with half of the stock of my shop. And you can have the whole lot when I’m dead, which won’t be too long now. I always knew someone would come through that door one day to fit the bill. Besides, you seem better qualified than anyone else to sort out the Chilford and Pelham business.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you still believe in hell, for a start.’

  ‘But how much are you asking?’

  ‘How much would that big house of your mother’s be worth on the open market these days?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I suppose about a quarter of a million.’

  ‘I’ll settle for two hundred thousand,’ Fordie said and I started laughing. Then I stopped laughing. ‘You’re serious aren’t you?’

  ‘I’d be giving it to you cheap, very cheap, I’d say. You have no idea what I have back there. In any case, I’d also teach you the business. Or did you have something else planned for the rest of your life?’

  * * *

  I lay awake that night and thought about the sheer absurdity of Fordie’s scheme. The next morning I rose early and padded barefoot as usual round the empty house. I stared down at my feet and saw the busy clouds of dust motes jumping up in little spasms where I padded. They were coming back. They seemed inescapable. So I dressed myself and set off down to the local estate agent to have a chat about the value of my mother’s house.

  Resentment #1

  Where does this man make his peace

  In Athens, Jerusalem or Rome?

  So I replied, In none of these:

  It’s in resentment he has made his home.

  STAMFORD TEWK, Soho Ledger

  Now I went over to Richmond every day, unless prospective purchasers were coming to view the house. We’d had one offer, but it was too low. I tried to pump Fordie about those famous Soho years, a
nd he would occasionally reminisce glancingly as we took a glass of white wine in the afternoon.

  ‘You know, Christopher, half the people I knew back then have stopped writing, stopped whoring, one or two of the poor sods have even stopped drinking, and some they tell me have long since stopped breathing, but the one thing none of them ever desists from, as far as I can see, not even posthumously, is the never-ending anecdote about what a sappy, spunky crew we were, unable to tell day from night, as we ripped the buttons off Soho’s blouse. Jazz clubs and Colony Clubs and big-hearted tarts in doorways, and all those brilliant queers. I think I might have declared war on the anecdote, Christopher. All I know is that if an old man’s reduced to anecdotage and self-congratulation for his earlier sins, he should have the good manners to get on and die – which I’m doing, by the way, if you’re interested, though I do seem to be taking an unconscionable time about it. The last occasion I went near the Coach and Horses, I peered round the door and there enthroned in the middle of the floor was Jeff Bernard, in a wheelchair, with one leg and a stump, and on her knees beside him, on her knees, mind you, was a young black lady tending to his every need. I couldn’t face it, honestly couldn’t, so I didn’t go in.’ He looked out through the window. ‘They say he made a good end on’t, all the same.’

  Positioned here and there in the shop were photographs of writers Fordie had known, fading in their battered little frames. One was a picture of T.S. Eliot, his Chinese smile aslant under a well-brushed bowler. I pointed to it one day.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, smiling, ‘old Tom. Now there was a grave, gracious and tormented man. Used to come here, by the way, though not often. I read some of these things about him recently. It seems there’s a growing crew now who want him remembered only for one or two early abstract hatreds – ugly hatreds, I grant you, but abstract nonetheless – now do you know what I call that, Christopher?’ I shook my head. ‘I call that resentment.

  ‘I’ve seen these people with their television smiles, but underneath the smile is a little reservoir of resentment. They flatter their vanity and usually seem to be doing very nicely for themselves, thank you very much, and every single one of them is a devoted disciple of resentment. Resentment says that what is mighty shall be brought down to my size or preferably even a little lower. Resentment says that all achievement is rigged, all greatness a sham, and that tradition is always and everywhere a lie. Resentment says one early sin obliterates all later virtue.

  ‘What was that phrase of Nietzsche’s? The soul squints, that’s it. And what it squints through is resentment.

  ‘It’s my personal conviction, for what it’s worth, that Shakespeare underwent just about every emotion including at some point the annihilation of faith in anything at all. And yet it never did issue in resentment, did it? Poison goes into the system and comes out as growth – that’s the opposite of resentment.

  ‘Look at this book.’ Fordie picked up a recent novel he had received through the post. ‘Now listen to the opening paragraph:

  Albert was at first a little bitter when he realised that, after the girls had anaesthetised him, they had then gone on to cut off his penis. But, on reflection, it struck him that now at least he didn’t need to fret any more about that infection of his.

  ‘And that’s it, it carries on with that idea for three hundred pages. What would have passed for a half-way decent joke at the bar in my Soho years is now proclaimed a classic of modern fiction. One of the theologians you, in your wisdom, have abandoned said the only spiritual advice he could give was to receive everything that happens as though directly from the hand of God. I suppose the gospel of resentment receives everything as coming directly from the hand of the Devil. Or could they possibly be the same thing? Anyway, beware resentment, Christopher.’ By now he was filling up my glass again. ‘It causeth the bookman to make a great hoard of his books and look with unkindness on those at his window.’

  ‘Fordie.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I went to see the solicitor today. There’s always been a family connection, so you must understand he’s not being difficult.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Would there be any chance of an inventory?’ Fordie looked at me with some disappointment.

  ‘What do you think, Christopher?’

  ‘We are talking about a large sum of money here. Everything I own in the world, to be precise about it.’

  ‘I was under the impression that it involved everything I own in the world too.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Did you show him the proposed new draft of my will?’

  ‘Yes. He was very impressed, but he did keep saying that we had somehow to establish the worth of some of the stock and archive here, at least up to the value of the house. He said it was only prudent.’

  Fordie sat back and eyed me dispassionately.

  ‘Prudent? You do remember what Blake had to say about that? Prudence is a rich old maid courted by incapacity. There are things here no one has seen but me, and no one will until you do. What do you think an independent assessor is, Christopher? Do you imagine they don’t live on this planet, or have tongues in their mouths; do you think that people employed to assess the value of books have nothing to do with the book trade? It’s up to you, entirely up to you. But you must either take my word, or we’ll forget the whole thing.’

  So it seemed that I had to choose between what my solicitor wanted and what Stamford Tewk wanted, and I soon realised that there could be no choice, whatever the risks. I asked, ‘Can I at least see my quarters, then?’ Fordie smiled and led me up the stairs to the small bedroom overlooking the road, across the corridor from his. Every wall was covered with books, most of them eighteenth century. Even the sides of the staircase were solid with obscure titles. On the way back down I stopped before the safe set into the wall.

  ‘Yes,’ Fordie said brushing past me, ‘that’s where I keep the stuff. Fordie’s gold, they call it. Now let’s go and talk theology, to make sure you’re qualified for this job.’

  * * *

  So it was that, after listening three times to my solicitor’s exasperated warnings about the reckless folly of the course of action on which I was embarking (he had evidently begun to wonder if I was truly my father’s son) I sold the house, and gave the better part of the proceeds to Fordie, who then made himself scarce for a day or two. When he returned he gave me a chequebook for an account called Tewk Bookshop, which had two printed signatories, namely myself and him. The solicitor had looked carefully over the new will Fordie had made out, which stipulated that in the event of his death all the assets and liabilities of his business passed to me in their entirety, but without specifying them. So there we were.

  I used the car to carry my own books over to Richmond, then I sold it. My whiplash injury had stopped bothering me so much over the previous six months, though it’s true that I’d learnt to avoid any sudden movement or exertion. But the whole palaver of moving brought it on again, and when I was finally settled at the shop the first thing I did was to go to my room, rig myself up and lie down. Fordie came to take a whimsical look at me, supine on my new bed. He offered me a glass of wine, which I refused. I had learnt in any case not to try to match him glass for glass. He asked what I was doing and I explained about the TENS, then he went downstairs again. A few minutes later he came back up, brandishing a book. He read the passage out to me, a little gleefully I thought, given my discomfort:

  ‘I advised one who had been troubled many years with a stubborn paralytic disorder, to try a new remedy. Accordingly she was electrified, and found immediate help. John Wesley’s journal, Sat 20th, 1753. Here’s the machine he had made for himself,’ he said, as he sat down on the bed and showed me an old sepia frontispiece with a picture of Wesley’s electrical device. ‘Yours is a lot neater, but you are shamming aren’t you, Bayliss? All this is nothing but eighteenth-century research disguised as pathology.’ He left the book with me and I started reading it as I lay there. It
seemed that Wesley was in the habit of prescribing the use of electricity for stomach pains and angina. The current flowed like the Holy Spirit, according to him, and often removed all diseased obstacles in its path. It was an aspect of the healing portion of creation. He even used it on some of the troubled young women who made the pilgrimage to see him. Wesley had his own recharging box then, just as I did.

  Fordie’s arrangements with regard to food were curious: he seemed to eat nothing but eggs. I asked him about this, and it transpired that he had shopped for some years at the supermarket a quarter of a mile down the road, but then one day he noticed that everything had been rearranged. Though irritated, he made the effort to reorient himself and once more memorised the positioning of all the items he needed. Then, a week later, everything was moved again. He took the matter up with the management, who were finally driven by Fordie’s relentless questioning into admitting that the company’s retail psychologist advised on these moves, which were due to continue, and which were said to increase overall sales.

  ‘Retail psychologist,’ Fordie said with wonder, shaking his head at the very fact of it. Anyway, that had been enough as far as he was concerned, and he had decided to trim his requirements, so he made arrangements with a local store to supply his newly simplified needs. Now a delivery arrived once a week: fourteen bottles of dry white wine, five boxes of eggs, a few loaves and some salad. And that was his diet. He boiled four eggs close to hardness every morning, until the yolk had the texture of friable yellow soil. One he ate warm with toast for breakfast. Two he ate with a tomato and a few sprigs of lettuce for lunch, and one he would have for his dinner. He had a whole repertoire of exotic things he might do with that one. White wine accompanied all these meals except breakfast. Once a week he might venture out, and then he would eat anything, as long as it had no egg in it. So, vegetarian that I was, I simply joined in. Fordie merely doubled his previous order.