by Robert Irwin
Only slowly and by degrees did he fall into silence.
Getting out of the train at Cambridge, it occurred to me to wonder if I might not now be beyond the range of the psychic forces of the Lodge. Certainly I sensed nothing as I walked towards my parents’ house. Dad let me in. Mum was in the living room watching television. Her hair …
I do not want to write about this. I do not have to. It is none of my diary’s business – nor the Lodge’s. Enough. I am writing this in my old room. Although I have spent quite a lot of time here on and off since going to university, the room still looks as though it was suddenly abandoned in 1964 – the dinosaur posters on the wall, the cycling magazines, the Buddy Holly and Connie Francis records. Although the old records are still here, my record player travelled with me to London. This is a house without music. (It feels like a machine for dying in.) Mum and Dad have ‘no time’ for music. That is how they put it. Instead, they watch television with the volume turned down low. And recently, since Mum has become too tired to hold a book for any length of time, Dad reads to her. Currently it is Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. I understand without anything actually being said that, while I am here, I should attend these sessions and, as I listen to Dad’s low-voiced mumbling rendition of Philip Carey’s ill-fated passion for the waitress, Mildred, it seems to me that these readings have taken on the nature of a prayer meeting.
But now, as I write, the house is quiet. It is a new house and everything here is white and silent. By contrast, the Black Book Lodge is all creaking staircases, dark corners and heavy drapes. Just inside the door of the Lodge a sculpted black-amoor holds a silver tray for the reception of visiting cards and a stuffed tiger glazedly looks down on the doorway from the top of the great staircase.
According to The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich, cancer is the product of passion repressed. That is what Mr Cosmic told me anyway – I have not read the book. Cosmic says that Reich was murdered by the FBI (just as they dealt with Buddy Holly). The FBI wanted to suppress Reich’s orgone box. According to Cosmic, cancer is a judgement on a life that has failed. It is a sort of punishment for not living in accordance with the natural harmony. Cosmic is always smiling when he talks about things like natural harmony and part of me always thinks that what he is saying is absolutely ludicrous. Suppose that Mum had spent the last few years going round the houses and passionately offering herself to every man who fancied her, would she now be in harmony with the world? Would she be plump and apple-cheeked? Would she be constantly inventing excuses (‘I’m just off to borrow a cup of sugar’, ‘I’m just taking the dog for a walk’, ‘I’m popping round to the shops now’) in order to conceal her life-enhancing fucks with the neighbours. On the other hand, there is part of me which believes Cosmic. Certainly cancer is very mysterious. I have the superstitious feeling that one can contract cancer just by thinking about it – or writing about it. Enough.
Saturday, May 27
Over breakfast they quiz me. They worry about me. They worry about my long hair – or rather what the neighbours will say about it. They worry about Sally. They are sure that she is unsuitable and a bad influence and that I spend too much time with her. Inconsistently, they also worry that I may be lonely. Am I taking drugs? Am I eating enough? What about my studies? From Dad’s perspective, that of a research chemist, sociology is not a real science. I try to soothe them and bore them into silence. If they ever found out that I was in an organisation like the Black Book Lodge it would freak them out totally.
This business about Sally being a bad influence is a bit unfortunate. Last year she came up to Cambridge to stay a couple of nights (separate bedrooms of course). At first things went OK. Although Sally had her period, there is a glow about her at such times and she claims that my big problem is that I, like most men, have menstruation-envy. Anyway on the Saturday my parents announced that they were going to be out for most of the day, so Sally and I decided to trip. Sally had been getting me to read some of her Arthurian stuff, so the trip we shared was confusedly centred round the Grail Mysteries. Sally was the Moon Priestess of the Grail Castle which was located in the midst of the Wasteland, desolate under an enigmatic curse. I was the questing knight who, having penetrated the Castle, saw a procession of dancing youths and maidens (bearing a remarkable resemblance to Pan’s People) and this dance troupe whirled and jived around a lance which dripped blood and behind the bloody lance came the chalice of the Grail which was overflowing with blood. In order for the Wasteland to be renewed, the question had to be asked, ‘The cup that bleeds, what is it for?’ To attain Gnosis I had to become the ‘red man’ of the alchemists. Stuff like that. All well and good. Except that Sally and I were not then as used to LSD as we are now and we had slightly underestimated the length of time our trips would take. By the time my parents returned we were coming down all right, but we still were not one hundred percent straight. This meant that I had not removed all the blood from my face. Also I was talking very slowly and carefully, as I was checking myself all the time in case I let something psychedelically mad out. Ever since then Sally was marked down as a bad influence. Things were not helped by my parent’s mistaking a joss-stick for hashish.
Grail Mysteries Day in Cambridge just does not bear thinking about – any more than does the bloody day Cosmic came round to my pad with a bottle of whisky and a hand-drill. I do not like whisky, but Cosmic made me drink more than half the bottle before he explained what he had in mind. He had just met a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gandalf’s Garden and this monk had explained to him, how one could enjoy a perpetual mystic high if only one had the resolution to let oneself be trepanned. Cosmic wanted me to drill a hole in the side of his head. If it all turned out to be as wonderful as the monk said it was, then he would do the same for me. Cosmic removed my glass of whisky and put the drill in my hand. The thing had a spike which I was to thrust resolutely into the side of his skull. The spike would hold the drill steady in the bone while a circle of saw-teeth went round and round until they had cut a neat little ring in the skull. This ring of bone I should be able to prise out with a penknife. Then oxygen would rush into Cosmic’s brain and give him a perpetual high. Fine. So I had another whisky while Cosmic stretched himself out on the floor. I offered to hoover, so that the place might be a bit closer to operating-theatre standards of cleanliness, but Cosmic was in a hurry to be high. I plunged the spike down onto his skull. First time round I could not bring myself to stab down hard enough. So I had another go and this time the spike went in a tiny bit and I started to turn the hand-drill. Blood was spurting out all over the place and Cosmic was whimpering a bit when I fainted and the whole thing had to be abandoned. Not a memory to dwell on.
Having written the above, I put my biro down and, closing my eyes, I concentrated on counting backwards from 1,000, in case any other gruesome memories were queuing up to be recalled.
Enough of these unpleasant digressions. I escaped my parents as soon as I could and, on the pretext of looking for some sociology textbooks, I walked into town. Just as I was about to enter Heffers Bookshop, I belatedly noticed the tune which had been playing in my head. It was ‘Strange Brew’ by the Cream – ‘Strange brew killing what’s inside of you’. I shook my head to clear it of this sinister music. On the way back to the house, I collected a shopping list’s worth of food and, as I paid for the food, I noticed that the tune was still with me, like a familiar dogging my steps. As I envisage it, such fragmentary silent tunes and lyrics inhabit the ether, like larvae from the world of the dead. They want to communicate, but they are not all there and they are not quite sure what it is that they want to communicate.
In the afternoon Dad went off to a football match. He never used to be so keen. He must have been desperate to get out of the house. I am left alone with Mum. She obviously wanted to resume her interrogation about my unsuitable life in London. But this deathly interrogation was interrupted by the phone ringing.
Sally and I are a number once more! She
was ringing to make things up. The telephone was in the living room where Mum was sitting, so all Sally’s tenderness and passionate remorse had to be met by calculatedly downbeat, monosyllabic responses from me. Fortunately she swiftly twigged. We have agreed to meet on Monday. Sally says that she is, after all, prepared to share me with the Lodge.
‘I suppose it’s part of you and I love all of you.’
Then I am alone with my mother. The sickness and the treatment, working together, have turned her into a witch with straggling locks and cadaverous cheeks. Every time she opens her mouth to speak there is an exhalation of foul air. Surely I am too young to have a dying parent? I paced about the room filled with a mad anger at Mum’s weakness. Soon after I first met him, Felton showed me a passage in a book by the seventeenth-century divine, Joseph Glanvill: ‘And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigour? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death, utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.’
At length – God it was long – Dad returned from the football, like a prisoner who has just finished a brief outing on parole. At dinner we talked politics – the LSE sit-in, the Greek colonels’ coup, the Vietnam War. We are not really interested in these things, but we have nothing else to talk about. Mum and Dad have no interest in rock music, occultism or sociology. Indeed, they actively dislike these things. There is only one topic which obsesses the three of us and we do not talk about that.
Sunday, May 28
Sunday is like Saturday only more so. It is like as if it is the same day with only the name changed. There was a thick morning fog. It seemed to be prowling round the house looking for a way in. I tried to read Marcuse and all his stuff about civilization’s repressive, monogamic supremacy, but I kept thinking about Sally. Perhaps the old man on the train was right after all. Sally rang again today. This time it was to ask if I thought animals had souls. It was her question of the week.
Some of the time passes helping Dad to prepare the dishes that he will serve up later in the week. While I was chopping up vegetables, he asked me if it would be possible for me to transfer my research to Cambridge? I promised to think about it. At last it is time to leave. I kiss Mum tentatively. Why so tentatively? Is cancer indeed infectious? Dad drove me to the station. He was querulous. Did I really have to leave this evening? I really did. I have a supervision on Monday. I promised to return next weekend.
On the train now, writing this, I am gleeful, set free, like a man who has escaped from a plague-stricken city. Suddenly it occurs to me to wonder if I really can be their son?
Sally met me at Liverpool Street. I stepped off the train into a cloud of soap bubbles. The bubble-blowing kit was a present for me to remind me of the transience of maya. She danced ahead of me down the platform, leaving me to follow her train of iridescence. Outside the station, she took my arm and started to question me about my mother. Although she was all sympathy, that sympathy was muddied by various loopy ideas about how the universe works. If I have got it right, Sally believes that my mother has allowed herself to fall under the influence of Cancer, the astrological sign. This sign of the Zodiac is negative and governs the stomach in an adverse way. Cancer and the moon preside over the grave. In order to heal herself, my mother should align herself with a positive fire sign like Leo, wear warm-coloured clothing, eat lots of curries and sunbathe. It is that simple.
Back at my place, she has my jeans off in seconds and is down on me, performing a hum job, so that my penis thrills to the mantric hum of Aum, Aum, Aum. Later, while strains of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat are coming from the record player, she produced another little present. It is a crucifix which I am to wear under my shirt, in order to protect me from the baleful influence of the Black Book Lodge. Once again she asked me to give the Lodge up and once again I replied that I had only signed up with them in the spirit of sociological enquiry.
‘So you are writing it all down?’ she wanted to know.
‘Yeah, I’m a writing a diary.’
‘Am I in it?’
I nodded.
‘Can I read it?’
I shook my head.
‘Why not? What’s to hide? We ought to be open with one another you know.’
‘It would cramp my style showing it to anyone. I don’t want to have the feeling while I’m writing it that there is a reader over my shoulder.’
‘Screw that,’ she replied. ‘Now I’m always going to have the feeling that you are spying on me and writing me down in your reports.’
‘Sally, it’s not like that. Even I am not allowed to read my diary.’ (I am lying.) ‘I am saving it all up – bottling it, as it were, saving it up to read in old age. You can read it then too.’
Sally was satisfied with that. Thank God for that. I could not have her discover how its writing is being directed by Dr Felton, nor those frightful kissing lessons, nor what I think about some of her nuttinesses. As for us reading the diary together in old age, the hell with that – old age is another country, inhabited by foreigners speaking a language I can’t understand. Also, I do not know why, but I have not told her about all the money I am accumulating. We used to be completely open with one another, but now just the bare fact of having a secret inside me is changing me. It is like I am secretly pregnant.
For a moment, though, I was tempted to show her my notebook. There would have been an adrenalin kick in such a gesture of total honesty – letting her see these pages, to be psychologically as well as physically naked before her … it definitely has an erotic buzz.
But then, no, this diary belongs to the Lodge and it is to the Master and those who serve him that I owe the debt of total honesty.
But then, as I continue to think about this, I think that maybe, after all, I will show this notebook to Sally. I like to play with the thought of it. It even gives me an erection. Her reading my diary might destroy our relationship, but, then again, total honesty with one another, might bring us closer together. Love is a risk and I think that I want to take that risk.
Anyway, the diary business was forgotten as we played the usual game with the cucumber before turning the light out.
Monday, May 29
The day gets off to a bad start. Over breakfast of cornflakes lightly laced with soap bubbles, we agree to meet on Wednesday to see Elvira Madigan. It is still early when Sally leaves my bed and all tippy-toes heads towards the front door. I roll over in bed, but only moments later I hear a commotion on the stairs. Melchett has intercepted Sally on the staircase and is raging at her, calling her a tart. Still pulling on my jeans, I come out onto the landing in time to see Sally blow the landlord an ironical kiss as she flits out of the door. He turns on me,
‘OK, you, you piece of hippy vermin with your girly hair and your jigga-jigga music! It’s all up with you! I want you out, out, out! I’m giving you until the end of next week to be out of here.’
Strictly he does not have the right to do this, but, as I have no rent book, I am in no position to resist. There are unpleasant tales about what happened to some who clashed with landlords in this area.
This morning I have a supervision with Michael. Since the sit-in drags on, it is in his flat in Camden Town. Although he is not much older than I am, in academic terms he is a whole generation older than me – old enough to be suckered into buying the theoretical constructs of Talcott Parsons. He riffles frantically through his notes and keeps pushing his spectacles back on his nose. He is so nervous about my research. But what’s there to worry about? He keeps warning me not to get emotionally involved with the subjects of my thesis. Only after I have repeatedly reassured him about this does he relax a bit and start talking in that jerky way of his about alternative modelling systems and the four paradigms of Parsonian modelling of groups: values, norms, collectivities and roles.
Then he starts to fret that I may not be classifying my data effective
ly. He shows me what he calls his ‘data base’, all stored in racks of file-card trays, cards with holes through which long wires can be passed. It is, he explains, the new information technology. Everyone, not just the universities, but big businesses also will be using them.
‘In twenty years time or so every major institution will be using this sort of information retrieval system! Punched cards are the shape of the future!’
I try to tell him about my lodgings problem, but he is not interested. If a problem is not an intellectual problem, then it is not a problem.
I have lunch in Senate House and spend the afternoon working in its library. The place is built like a mausoleum and I have fantasies of myself as a library-wraith hiding forever in its stacks and subsisting on sandwiches and chocolate biscuits stolen from librarians. It could be the solution to my accommodation problem. Another fantasy: somewhere in this library is the book of power, the key to all knowledge.
By evening, I have had more than enough of sociology, so, before finally crashing, I start reading Dennis Wheatley’s The Haunting of Toby Jugg. It has an ominous epigraph:
‘Should any of my readers incline to a serious study of the subject, and thus come into contact with a man or woman of Power, I feel that it is only right to urge them, most strongly, to refrain from being drawn into the practice of the Secret Art in any way. My own observations have led me to an absolute conviction that to do so would bring them into dangers of a very real concrete nature.’
What a wonderful come-on …
Tuesday, May 30
I spent part of the morning on my accustomed spot on the wall of the playground, meditating on Talcott Parsons for the under-10s, but really I was too worried about where I was to live next to concentrate. So I spent the rest of the morning trudging around the Goldhawk Road area looking for to-let signs in newsagents’ windows. There were places, but I was feeling too idle to go and check them out. Since I was feeling flush, I went to Oxford Street and the HMV shop where I bought the Beatles’ single of ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’, plus LPs of Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ and the Stones’ ‘Between the Buttons’. I would have bought more, if it were not such a bad time for new music.
