Aldous recognized the heightened spirit of Janus Brian’s discourse. Colette had been like that in hospital. It had come as if to counterbalance the flat years of her depression, as though her person had been replaced by a bright, talkative alter ego, and it had left him with the feeling that so-called normality is a sort of masque, played out continually. In madness we don’t so much lose our minds as forget our lines, and it was in hospitals like these that the insane began to relearn the pretence of normality, which was why their inmates seemed so preternaturally normal. They hadn’t yet learnt the subtleties of their roles, and were overplaying them.
For Colette, Janus Brian’s residence in Haverford meant an extended period of rest for her, the first since Mary died. It took his internment to make her realize just how dependent he had become on her, and so she hoped strongly that this might be the beginning of his full recovery, and that when he came out he could begin leading a fully independent life again. But her feelings were ambivalent. She knew she would feel disappointed if he came out of hospital and spurned any attempts to help him. And she couldn’t deny that responsibility for her brother had had a beneficial effect on her, she hadn’t felt so good for years.
It shocked her how quickly she missed her daily visits to Leicester Avenue. With her son at home it had become something of a retreat, or haven. Now she was stuck at Fernlight Avenue all day with Janus drifting about the house. She did her best to avoid him. He wasn’t usually up before eleven, so she would wait till then before going out to do the shopping. She could spend a couple of hours wandering down to the Parade and back, pottering about in all the shops. When she got back Janus might have gone out. Where he went she never knew, but it wasn’t to go drinking. He usually came back sober some time in the evening. He really had run out of money by now. Presumably he’d run out of things to sell, people to borrow from.
Once, to avoid Janus, she’d gone down to Tottenham High Road to see if she could retrieve any of the things Janus had stolen, feeling quite certain that he would have sold them to the various second-hand shops that were down there. It was a long, tiring and fruitless task. A difficult journey, two buses and a long walk, and she felt depressed by the scruffiness and overall seediness of the district that in her childhood had seemed so grand and elegant. She poked around in all the shops but could find no trace of her things, returning disappointedly to Fernlight Avenue.
She visited Janus Brian at Haverford weekly. She had never known him so talkative. He would talk about anything. His mind free-associated. His numerous appointments with a psychiatrist and therapy sessions with a group of other would-be suicides has caused him to think about the past, and his own childhood.
‘Apparently I thought Dada would castrate me,’ he said, half-amused.
‘Did you?’
‘That’s what came up in the sessions. Did you know this is the main drying-out clinic for the whole of north London? All the old soaks come here. They take you off the booze for a couple of weeks, give you a few therapy sessions, then sling you out. Some of the old characters here come back again and again. All they have to do is attempt suicide, or appear to have attempted suicide. Handy thing to know about . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Colette. ‘What else do they say in these therapy sessions?’
‘They just keep asking us about our childhoods. For some reason they want us to share our earliest memories. I keep telling them the same one, I just can’t get it out of my head, and it’s not even a memory, it’s that story Dada used to tell, about the Man Who Thought He Was Jesus, do you remember?’
The story had been one that Dada frequently retold, with great laughter. He had been in The Flowerpot, an Irish pub on the fringe of Clapton Common. The area hardly merited the name, as it was really just a triangular wedge of grass surrounded by tall Victorian houses, with a small pond in the middle. It was near to where Colette’s family had lived, after leaving Howard Road and moving a little upmarket to Stamford Hill. Dada had become a regular at The Flowerpot, and from his descriptions of the event that evening she had a picture of its interior, crowded with Irishmen in flat-caps drinking Guinness and singing Irish Folk songs to the accompaniment of someone on the piano accordion, when into the pub burst a wild looking figure with matted hair and a long tangled beard who claimed he was Jesus Christ. He was ignored at first, but then he lifted his hands, palms outward, above the crowd, to show that they had been running with blood. ‘I am the risen one,’ he cried, ‘I have pushed back the stone at Golgotha and I sit at the right hand of the Lord!’
Gradually he was engaged by the drinkers. Someone bought him a pint of stout and he drank while a circle gathered around him, who, drunk as they were, seemed rather convinced by the man’s claims to be Jesus Christ. They kept asking him to perform a miracle. When he appeared to heal Frank O’Shea of his bad back, a state of great excitement ensued, and the man was requested again and again to perform further miracles. So a great hush fell on the pub, the accordionist stopped playing and the singing ceased, as the man prepared to announce his next miracle.
‘For the benefit of all men on this night of great thirst I will perform for you a re-enactment of the miracle I performed at a wedding in the village of Cana in Galilee. I will turn the water in the pond on the common – into wine!’
The Flowerpot emptied, the drinkers, empty glasses in their hands, following the Man Who Thought He Was Jesus out of the doors and onto Clapton Common, across the unlit grass to the pond.
What happened then? Colette was never sure if Dada had been one of the crowd, or even whether he was there that night, and the story sometimes varied. The one she remembered was of the man walking straight out into the water until he was at the centre of the little pond, up to his waist in the muddy, murky liquid. Arms outstretched he proclaimed some words. What words? Miraculous incantations. A cheer went up and the drinkers closest to the edge of the pond dipped their empty glasses into the water and drank. Then, instantly, they spat out what was only filthy, stagnant pond-water. Incensed they turned on the Man Who Thought He Was Jesus. They splashed into the pond with him with the intention of ducking him under. The Man Who Thought He Was Jesus was sharp enough to make a hasty escape, was lost in the darkness and the spray of the water that was being kicked about. There the story dissolves into a myriad of variant endings. Sometimes he merely vanished into the night, other times he was chased around the common, or found hiding in Piggot’s Church, prostrate across the altar, self-crucified.
‘Do you think Dada was actually there that night?’ said Colette, ‘When you think about it it sounds a bit made-up.’
‘He may have embellished it a little. I don’t suppose there was a big crowd at the pond, but the event definitely happened. I remember other people talking about it, friends of Dada’s, other kids’ dads. I think it’s probably basically true. But it has made me think about Dada and drink. It never occurred to me before, but Dada was out most evenings in that pub, as I recall. Do you think he had a drink problem?’
Colette thought. It was true, he did drink almost nightly at The Flowerpot. But she could never remember him drunk.
‘He may not have appeared drunk,’ said Janus Brian, ‘but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t. I think maybe his drunkenness manifested in the violence he showed towards me and Lesley. I think maybe he was an alcoholic.’
It was rather a difficult idea for Colette to take in at first. She’d always thought of her father as a tower of moral rectitude, a Victorian patriarch, brutishly disciplinarian. Someone to be feared and respected. Her clearest memories were of his old age, however, when he’d mellowed a little. He still drank, bottles of stout by the fireside, reading travel books. A man who never went abroad, in his old age he’d developed a fascination with the great Victorian explorers, and loved to read Livingstone’s accounts of his travels. Where had the violence gone? If it had been inspired by alcohol, surely it would have persisted in different forms even after his sons had left home.
‘No,’ s
aid Colette, ‘Dada was never out of control when he was thrashing you or Lesley. That was always the frightening thing, the way he administered those beatings so calmly, somehow. Almost clinically. If it had been drunken violence it would have been like my son’s, wild and out of control, randomly striking out at whoever was near him.’
‘But the more I think about it, the more I think there was a drastic mood change that came over him when he was violent. I don’t know. I’m just starting to think that alcohol played a big part in Dada’s life. And one of the fellows here was telling me about a theory that’s come up, saying that alcoholism can be inherited. Which could explain a few things, if he’s passed it on to me and to you, if you don’t mind me saying, and to your son, and to Lesley . . .’
‘Lesley’s not an alcoholic.’
Janus Brian paused, seemingly greatly surprised that Colette didn’t know.
‘Surely you’ve heard about his escapades from Agatha? I thought she’d told everyone. She usually does, the gossip.’
He then went on to fill his sister in with stories about Lesley’s drinking, about how he had taken, like his father, to going out alone each evening to seedy pubs in the shabbier parts of High Wycombe, and returning, unlike his father, in a state of near unconsciousness each night. Madeleine had confided, foolishly, in Agatha, despairingly telling her sordid tales of having to undress her husband, remove his soiled underpants, sponge the vomit from his clothes. Colette absorbed this information greedily.
‘So it’s passing down through the generations, this drinking gene,’ Janus Brian went on, ‘One of Agatha’s lot, Douglas, I think, or is it Kevin, has turned out to be a raving alcoholic. He sounds rather like Janus, as a matter of fact.’
Janus Brian stayed in Haverford for nearly three weeks and when he came out he seemed greatly recovered. Colour had returned to his skin, he walked with more certainty, and had lost that perpetual drunkard’s stagger. He had begun to eat properly. She hoped that this marked the beginning of his rehabilitation, she worried about how he might feel once he was back in the house. On the day of his release she went to Leicester Avenue to prepare the house for his return, and was shocked to realize that the noose on which he’d tried to hang himself was still hanging in the bedroom. She took it down.
When Janus Brian arrived in the afternoon, delivered by Reg, he was full of plans.
‘I’ve decided you’re right, dear. I’m going to sell the house and move somewhere else. I’m going to the estate agent’s tomorrow. This place is too full of memories. I need to make a fresh start. Wipe the slate clean. I could sell this place and buy somewhere smaller, and release a considerable amount of capital that’s tied up in this house. Also, my dear, I realize I’ve been an awful burden on you this past year or so, I’ve been an awful bloody nuisance, so I’m going to move right away from the area. I need to be out of New Southgate, out of London altogether.’
‘But where will you go?’ asked Colette, rather taken aback by the boldness of Janus Brian’s decisions.
Janus Brian looked at her as though the answer was obvious.
‘High Wycombe,’ he said.
Colette mouthed objections but couldn’t say anything.
‘Dear, I’ve had enough of being a pain in the neck for you. You’ve been so sweet this year, but now I thought it would be time to go and be a bloody nuisance to Lesley and Agatha.’
‘But it’s so far away, Janus, I’ll never see you.’
‘It’s only an hour’s drive away, dear. Be reasonable. Where else can I go, to be honest? I want to move right out of the area, but I don’t want to move somewhere where I don’t know a soul. High Wycombe’s the only place outside London where I have any connections with family. House prices are much cheaper as well. It’s the obvious answer. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, it’s so obvious. High Wycombe!’ He said the last words with a sort of absurd emphasis, raising his small fist and thumping the television gently, just as a prospector might have thumped a map of Idaho at the beginning of the gold rush.
Part Two
7
28 Polperro Gardens
London
19th October 1974
Dear Janus
Report from the front (and back)
It is night now here, somewhere just outside Windhover Hill in Sinai. Occasional bursts of gunfire can still be heard. The fighting has been growing heavier the last few nights (usually after closing time). The Egyptian Unit that I am with at the moment has been taking heavy bombardment from the IRA from the East Ridge. That was up until last night due to the troubles in Rome. Their morale is now very low. In Rome there were more calls for the impeachment of the Pope! The ‘Holywinegate Committee’ headed by Cardinal Jack Dash is still asking for the controversial scrolls. A venomous attack by Cardinal Amin caused near havoc in the Sistine Chapel early in the week, and 200 clergy walked out. The Pope at once flew off to his summer palace in Peckham! All this has had a very demoralising effect on the IRA contingent here. Solly Flanagan (General Commanding) has retired to The Red Lion, five miles from the front line and his two hundred men have put down their pickaxes and started on the stout (which is running in short supply!) ((NEWS FLASH) . . . The ‘Holywater Men’ in Lourdes have decided to cut supplies to Windhover Hill, Uganda and other sources supporting Mark Philips.) As November 5th approaches it is feared there will be a major battle, unexploded Brocks 2p bangers have already been found outside and inside the cease-fire line. El Fata, The Salvation Army and the Black September Group have reinforced the Goat and Compasses approach road. Things seem to be getting worse!!! The UN, Nato, Warsaw Pact Dancers and 3rd Elf Brownie Group peace keeping force are having a hard job to stop the supplies of gin getting through and keeping Ted Heath’s organ boys apart!
When o when can our thirst-quenching begin? Some men are like musical glasses, to play their best tunes they must always be kept wet!!!!
Wooooooeeeeeaghhhghh! That’s better.
Nitty Gritty section of letter now follows –
A long time in the distant past (the Jurassic, or was it the Ordivician period) one Janussimus did bash (thump) ((squash)) the man they call Guy on the nose and ears, causing the blood to flow – subsequent exclusion from The Quiet Woman followed, voluntarily.
Nitty nitty gritty bit now comes –
Guy is no longer on the what they call scene at The Quiet Woman – he has not partaken of a drink there for several weeks. The coast is therefore clear, the beaches uncluttered, the sands refined, the waves polished and the dunes swept, for the reinstatement of senator Billisimus and most imperial co-senator Janussimus to re-establish their consulship of The Quiet Woman in a matter of days. A coup is there for the taking – the power is lying on the streets just waiting for someone to pick it up (Lenin)
What say you to this Friday? Janussimus? Yourself.
What say you?
Signed by
Bill (me)
It was the first letter from Bill for several weeks, as elaborately decorated as before, with skilfully drawn visual puns (the phrase ‘the coast is clear’ and subsequent seashore metaphors were accompanied by a little pen-and-ink drawing of a coast with palm trees and waves). Janus didn’t want to admit to himself that he was thrilled by this letter, but he was. His ban from The Quiet Woman had hurt him. Who the hell did Guy Sweetman think he was? In fact, he was a close friend of the landlord, John. Guy was closer to John than Bill was. It turned out that Guy could ban anyone he liked from The Quiet Woman just by having a word with John. Bill had told him not to come to The Quiet Woman for a while, but Janus at first hadn’t taken it seriously. He’d gone there one Friday night, and the staff wouldn’t serve him, not even that pretty little barmaid Kathy (she’d looked so embarrassed having to refuse him). Before he could even get a glimpse of who was in there John was round the counter and escorting him off the premises. Janus hadn’t tried again. The sheer cheek of it. The effrontery. He who’d once single-handedly revived the pub’s fortunes b
y playing honky-tonk jazz on The Quiet Woman’s battered old upright now couldn’t even get a drink. Janus had suggested he and Bill drink elsewhere, and Bill had agreed. But Janus had accumulated bans in most of the local pubs over the months and years. The Red Lion, The Carpenters Arms, The Goat and Compasses, The Owl. We should go further afield, Janus had suggested, try a different part of London where nobody knows us – and Bill had again agreed and in letters he had suggested The Rising Sun in Crouch End, The Stag and Hounds in Bruce Grove, The Britannia in Whetstone, but it never came to anything. ‘I’ll call for you – remember to save some money, we must find the source of the Limpopo . . .’ But Bill never did call. The promises came to nothing. Bill would write apologizingly: ‘Your dear sweet sister insisted I came to The Quiet Woman on Friday – she likes to keep an eye on me . . .’ Later came medical excuses: ‘The doctor says I’ve got to cut down on the booze – he says it’s the booze that’s causing the asthma – but he knows as well as you and I, that there’re as many old drunks around as there’re old doctors – come to think of it, most old drunks are old doctors . . .’
The truth was that Janus felt unable to go out drinking unless he was with Bill. And the imagined sprees in adjoining north London suburbs were a dream. They were not going to spend time and money on Christ knows how many buses it took to get to Whetstone or Bruce Grove. Bill was never going to get sloshed in some alien suburb of London with no hope of getting home at night. It was the pubs of Windhover Hill or nothing. And Bill was popular. He could charm his way into any pub. If he was with Bill there was a chance he could get into The Red Lion or The Owl. But now here was the news that Guy had left The Quiet Woman and that his ban might therefore be lifted. Bill had written his first letter in weeks, months. Such good news.
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon Page 15
