Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Marvellous accent,’ he whispers to his wife in Psychomanian.

  ‘Honestly,’ he says to me, ‘don’t worry about us. You must get on with your work and we’ll watch you. No, truly, there’s nothing I’d enjoy more.’

  When he discovers that I am an article writer by trade he is very excited.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he says, ‘I’m by way of being something of a connoisseur of articles – I’m a member of the literary club at home, and we have regular article tastings. If you want my honest opinion, I’d swap any of your overpraised vintage Hazlitt and Addison for the sort of unpretentious rough stuff I expect you’re turning out, if I could read it where it was meant to be read, in the rain, next to an English gasworks.’

  While his wife, who apparently doesn’t speak English, goes out to the kitchen, smiling with wordless benevolence, to watch and make notes while my wife opens a tin of ravioli for lunch, he takes photographs of me operating the traditional typewriter. He asks me what all the different keys are for, and begs to be allowed to have a go himself.

  ‘It looks easy when you do it,’ he says admiringly, as he crashes his thick peasant fingers up and down. ‘But I can’t seem to get any sort of article out of it at all.’

  ‘Takes practice,’ I mumble, flattered into loquacity.

  ‘What a marvellously true thing to say! God, you people really have got a salty bourgeois wit, haven’t you? How about singing one or two of your suburban songs for me? No? Well, then, what are the local superstitions round here? Do people hereabouts believe in little electrons, and all that sort of thing? Come on now – have you ever seen an electron yourself?’

  I could tell him a thing or two about electrons all right, but I prefer to keep myself to myself, so I just shrug my shoulders and grunt expressively. With a little cry of delight the peasant discovers the telephone and asks if I would be prepared to sell it to him.

  ‘I’ve got quite a little collection of English urban artefacts,’ he explains. ‘I find them rather amusing. Let’s say a shilling, shall we?

  ‘You know, it’s a great privilege, being invited into such an ordinary home as this. But the really marvellous thing is to find oneself among people who’ve got time to sit down and talk. At home life is just one long rush to get the ground ploughed, the seed sown, the crops harvested. And of course it’s a terrible rat-race, you know, the peasant world – everyone trying to be just that little bit shrewder and more obstinate than, everyone else all the time.

  ‘But then, the – whole pace of ancient life is killing. The trouble is, things are still so simple that there’s nothing to think about but money, money, money. There are no chemicals in the bread – the eggs still taste like eggs – we plod senselessly from place to place at three miles an hour. I must say, I sometimes wonder where it will ever start.

  ‘But it really is a wonderful break to sit here listening to you talk. You’re so remote from the earth, somehow. Oh, is this ravioli for me? Gosh, thanks. Incidentally, I’ve heard a lot about the complex urban, merry-making that goes on. at cocktail parties. I don’t know whether it would be possible to get into one?

  ‘I mean, it is people who take one out of oneself on holiday, isn’t it? And they cost so much less than all the other forms of entertainment I can think of.’

  (1964)

  Ron Number

  Whatever other unseen beings we do or do not believe in, we are all believers in Ron Number. Ron Number is mysterious, unpredictable, unknowable. But undeniably, Ron Number is.

  He speaks to us all at one time or another, and when he speaks, there is no denying the call. The telephone rings. ‘REPugnance 4278,’ one says. ‘Oh,’ replies the voice, ‘Ron Number.’ And rings off.

  Ron Number never forgets us. He speaks to us on our birthdays; at Candlemas, Martinmas, Lammastide, and Septuagesima. He remembers us on Mondays. He remembers us on Tuesdays. He remembers us on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. He does not forget us at the weekend.

  He calls us when we least expect it – saving us from the tedium of being asleep at six o’clock in the morning and interrupting our idle reverie as we sit in the lavatory. When one’s guests have been warmed with food and wine to the point where they are just beginning to speak openly and directly from the depths of themselves, Ron Number phones. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Ron Number.’ And afterwards nothing is quite the same again.

  What is Ron Number trying to tell us? His utterances are oblique and cryptic. I have humbly recorded the ones vouchsafed to me in the Book of Ron Number, which in the Improved Version comes between the book of Usually Reliable Sources and the Book of Celebrities. Here is a reading from Ron Number, vii 3–10 as a sample:

  ‘And when the bell chymed, he made answer according to the law and to the usage of his house, saying: “REPugnance 4278.” And Ron Number spake unto him, saying: “Oh,” And Ron Number spake further with him saying: “Ron Number.” And Ron Number here made an end to his speaking.

  ‘And on another occasion Ron Number spake unto him saying: “Oh. Oh.”

  ‘And at another chyming of the bell Ron Number saith: “Oh, terribly sorry.”

  ‘And at another: “Terribly sorry. Frightfully sorry.”

  ‘And at another: “I wish to speak to Mr Chatterjee, in the small room on the first floor.”

  ‘And at another: “Is that REPugnance 4728? That’s right – 4728. That’s what I said – 4728. Yes, 47 … – oh’ 4278? Oh. Sorry.”’

  ‘And at another Ron Number saith nothing, but silently departed. Yet was he known even by his silence.’

  A great deal, of course, has been written by commentators attempting to elucidate these utterances. Most commentators have pointed to the remarkable insistence on a sense of grief for transgression. Others have pointed out that the sum of 4278 and 4728 is exactly 9006. Some have seen the mysterious Mr Chatterjee as a textual corruption of Mt Chimborazo.

  Almost everyone has been struck by the constant repetition of ‘Oh,’ or ‘O.’ A minority of somewhat eccentric commentators have taken this to be a revelation of the Golden Number, and have attempted to use the figure zero to compute the date of the invention of the telephone. The usual interpretation up to now has been that it stood for Operator, and was intended as giving a metaphorical corporeal identity to Ron Number to make him comprehensible to the human intelligence. But the most modern commentators read the whole phrase as ‘O Ron Number!’ and regard Ron Number as a self-worshipping entity, a sort of abstraction inherent in the telephone system,

  One day, almost all of us more or less believe, Ron Number will come in person. He will ring the front-door bell. ‘Oh, Ron Number,’ he will say, and stand there mysterious and awful, the miraculous visual equivalent of the universal way he sounds, as he speaks with the tongues of old ladies, wizened Chinamen, fat company directors, and burly West Indians.

  Not, of course, that Ron Numberism is entirely undivided in its beliefs. There is, for example, a sect of telephone subscribers in Bexleyheath, the principal tenet of whose creed seems to be that I am an incarnation of the South Eastern Gas Board.

  They ring me up and pray to me. ‘Oh, South Eastern Gas Board?’ ask the more agnostic members of the faith, sceptically. ‘O South Eastern Gas Board!’ the true believers proclaim in resounding vocatives.

  As an orthodox Ron Numberist I try to put them right. But you can’t combat faith with reason, and the really convinced believers go right ahead and pray to me to heal a sick gas water heater, or provide them with a refrigerator, or even sometimes to take from them an old and ailing gas cooker.

  Perhaps they are sustained in their faith by a miracle – a time when after earnest prayers had been offered up to REPugnance 4278 a palsied gas water heater suddenly and wondrously filled with gas and blew up, killing seven. Perhaps they have a chapel of their own, and a wise old preacher who tells them that if when they phone REPugnance 4278 they imagine they hear someone denying that REPugnance 4278 is the South Ea
stern Gas Board it is only a temptation put in their way to test their faith, and that they should strengthen themselves to overcome it by telephoning twice as often. Perhaps they sing simple gas hymns, like:

  Oh how the weary heart desires

  The golden streets, the pearly gate,

  The gaseous heaven of the wires –

  REPugnance 4278.

  Only, of course, an argument breaks out as to whether the number is 4278 or 4872, and a schism occurs. But the more schisms they have the better; the more combinations of numbers they try the more people to whom they will have to say ‘Oh, Ron Number.’ Yes, whatever our beliefs, and whether we know it or not, we are all doing Ron Number’s work.

  (1962)

  The sad tale of P-t-r B-nnykin

  Once upon a time there was a naughty little rabbit called Peter Bunnykin.

  This sentence is almost certainly actionable (noted Mr K. J. Writweather, barrister-at-law and libel-reader for Chicks’ Own, in the margin of the galley-proof) unless we are absolutely certain that Mr Bunnykin is no longer alive.

  ‘Naughty’ is indefensible, and I think to be on the safe side we should also remove the name, since a jury might conceivably hold that calling Mr Bunnykin ‘a little rabbit’ was damaging.

  Even so, Mr Bunnykin might be able to show that the phrase ‘a little rabbit’ identified him to those who knew him, and I should feel happier if it were removed. If you think ‘Once upon a time there was,’ is not strong enough as an opening sentence on its own I should be prepared to accept a completely fictitious description – ‘a big griffin,’ say, or ‘a medium-sized dodo.’

  Peter Bunnykin lived in a cosy little rabbit-hole in Bluebell Woods.

  Any hole in the ground, however innocent it seems, may, unknown to the author, be a Regional Seat of Government, and as such covered by D-notices. I suggest: ‘He lived in a cosy little dwelling in a wooded location.’

  One day he decided to go along to Farmer Barleycorn’s lettuce-patch and steal a lettuce.

  This imputation upon the good faith of Mr Bunnykin’s intentions would be impossible to substantiate. Either ‘steal’ must be changed to ‘purchase,’ or else the link with Mr Bunnykin must be weakened by changing the sentence to ‘Later, a rabbit went to Farmer Barleycorn’s lettuce-patch, etc.’ Then if Mr Bunnykin ever did bring a case I think it could be argued with some success that it was never intended to suggest that the rabbit who took the lettuce was the same rabbit that was mentioned earlier.

  Off he went, hippity-hop, hippity-hop.

  I suppose this might just pass as fair comment.

  With two snip-snaps of his little front teeth he was through the fence around the lettuce-patch.

  I suggest: ‘At another point, a rabbit was in the lettuce-patch.’ By the sound of it, an action may well lie against the manufacturers of the fencing material, and by the time this story is in print the whole matter may be sub judice.

  What a bad rabbit he was!

  The nearest I can get to preserving the rhythm of this sentence and avoiding any resetting is ‘What a brown rabbit he was!’ I realise this is not very close to the original sense. The best I can do in that direction is ‘What a broad-minded rabbit he was!’

  But he had eaten only two lettuces when Farmer Barleycorn leapt out from behind a hedge and gave him a terrible spanking!

  ‘But only two lettuces had been eaten …’ – the passive is in general a much less dangerous voice – ‘But only two lettuces had been eaten when a rabbit and a hand were in collision.’

  And Farmer Barleycorn said, It’s not the first time I’ve caught you stealing my lettuces, young Peter Bunnykin.’

  I think the nearest we can get here, if you are prepared to take a calculated risk, is ‘Farmer Barleycorn then made a statement.’

  But coming on top of everything else I’m afraid there is still an element of innuendo even in this. I must admit I should feel safer if it was changed to ‘Someone said something.’ Though here again we must ask ourselves, as always, ‘Will someone sue?’ I’m afraid that in my experience someone always sues. I should sleep easier if we changed it to ‘No one said something,’ or better still, ‘No one said nothing.’

  Poor Peter Bunnykin slunk off home with his tail between his legs, feeling very small and wishing the earth would swallow him up.

  I have as you suggested taken the opinion of leading counsel on this passage, and the more we discussed it, the more ways we could see in which it could be taken to be tendentious. Adding together all our reservations, we suggest: ‘A certain animal went home in a certain manner, with his tail in a certain position, feeling a certain size, and wishing that a certain object would perform a certain action.’

  And so Peter Bunnykin lived happily ever after, with a permanent house-guest who was a model with plenty of men-friends: his name connected with members of the Royal Family in vile rumours published by scandal-mongering children’s comics on the Continent: being frequently helped home in a state of collapse after gay parties suffering from influenza: with a trunkful of letters from the Undersecretary for Rabbit Affairs addressing him as ‘My dear Bunnykin’: and described by a Divorce Court judge as a thoroughly rotten, contemptible little rabbit without a single spark of common decency.

  This bit seems more or less all right.

  Sir, – We are instructed on behalf of our client Mr Lybell Laws, whose attention has been drawn to an article containing certain extremely damaging innuendoes …

  (1963)

  Sandra sesame

  You have dealings from time to time with various large and complex organisations – international corporations, professional bodies, public authorities. You’re a humble private citizen, and your business with them is modest.

  You ring them to get one replacement part, one small piece of information, one minor adjustment to your account. They are publishing your thesis on Carolingian funeral customs, perhaps, or manufacturing some little range of armaments you’ve designed. You have never set foot inside their doors, but you know that at the other end of the line are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people, organised into departments and divisions, structured into grades and hierarchies, in ways that are completely opaque to you and the rest of the outside world.

  ‘How can I help you?’ asks the impersonal corporate voice that answers their phone. What do you say? How can it help you? How do you, in your lowly state of singleness and ignorance, enter into communication with this mighty complex of manifold unknowability?

  Well, you have a magic formula. Two simple words.

  ‘Sandra Sprott,’ you tell the corporate voice authoritatively.

  How did you first get hold of this name? You can’t remember. Someone you met at a party told you. Or the first time you rang the organisation they put you through to various people with various names and positions, who put you through to various other people, with various other names and positions, and the one name you somehow caught was Sandra Sprott, though you never quite understood what it was she actually did. You wrote it down on the back of an envelope nevertheless, and somehow the envelope was still lying on your desk the next time you had to call them. So you asked for Sandra Sprott, and Sandra Sprott seemed to have a dim recollection of dealing with you before. On this fragile basis you have built some kind of continuing human relationship. You still don’t know what she does, even so, or very much else about her, except her name. You know that she once told you how to fill in a GX/33/Y (Exemption) form, and that raises some faint hope that this time she will also be able to help you get the washing-machine repaired, or obtain tickets for the opera.

  Or possibly not. You may be asking her to do things which are not part of her professional responsibility at all, since you have so little idea what her professional responsibility is. She knows that applications for exemption go to Documentation, and exemptions from documentation go to Applications – but not to Lynette Swordsmith, who only deals with Overseas, except in the absence of Peter Cork, who is
also responsible for Foreign (not to be confused with Overseas!), and certainly not to Elwyn Eady, who is notoriously difficult about such things – probably not even to the ever-reliable Jane, in Ted Thorough’s office, since she is moving next week to run the vehicle fleet in the Devotional Software Division.

  Nothing of this is vouchsafed to you, though. So of course you worry about your helpless dependence upon Ms Sprott. Are you embarrassing her by asking her to do things which are beyond her, or beneath her? Is she coping with you merely out of the goodness of her heart? Are you her private welfare case?

  Probably when you first got put through to her it was because she was so junior that she was the person to whom everyone who didn’t know anyone in the organisation got put through. She was so humble that she didn’t like to tell you you’d got the wrong department altogether, so raw that she didn’t even realise herself. Maybe she’s nothing to do with the publication of academic theses – she’s in the Industrial Paints Division. To get your awful thesis published she had to get on to someone she knows in the Trade Directories and Gazetteers section, and get them to do a favour for her, even though they’re obviously not the right person, either – it’s just that they’ve always done favours for her, and they don’t like to start saying no now that they’ve become a Deputy Controller.

  And of course she’s been promoted herself since the far-off day when you established that first tremulous contact. She’s now Director of the Industrial Paints Division. She’s sitting there trying to think large strategic thoughts about expansion in the Pacific Basin and down-sizing in the North Sea, and there’s this idiot on the line who wants to make a correction to a footnote on eighth-century shroud-weaving techniques.