‘Jason said it was over quickly. She was at home until the end and then the hospice.’
‘She died? I didn’t even know she was ill. Were the two of you in touch?’
But she did not want to talk about it. It upset her too much, she said, it would spoil the evening. Mrs Hay awoke as if from a trance and said that no one was more shocked than she. Wessels declared that drinks were needed all round, for the nerves, and went to fetch them. There were no waiters tonight, it was self-service only.
A lost fascicle of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ drifted down from the roof of my mind. Dinner at the Budgerigar. The maître d’ had recommended the duck and gone away to the kitchen. Fluxman took Georgina’s hand in his and carried it up to his lips (Alibians knew without even thinking to confine such gestures to the entrée). There was a faint zest of lemon on her fingers.
‘Whatever tomorrow brings, I want you to know that I will never allow anything unpleasant to happen to you.’
‘If it’s within your power.’
‘Exactly.’
Dead. Spadework for gravediggers. Graaff. Graf. Earl. Tearle. The doggerel of the interior life.
I could have killed Wessels. When he came back with the brandy, he’d taken a swig off the top of the bottle two fingers deep, I spotted it at once. ‘You said you got hold of her!’
‘I left a message with the mate.’
‘Douglas has been dead for years.’
‘With the domestic, Aubs-ss. What’s your case anyway?’
‘If you were more responsible, I wouldn’t have heard the news in this way, at a party of all places. We should call the whole thing off out of respect for her memory.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t seen Merle for ages.’
‘She wouldn’t want us to neither. She’d want us to enjoy ourself.’
Spilkin suggested that Mevrouw Bonsma play something to remind us of Merle, as a tribute to her, and she went to inspect the musical machinery in the corner.
‘We’ve got a responsibility to Tone as well. He’s gone to a lot of trouble.’
‘You can always go home,’ Darlene said. ‘We’ll understand.’
The news of Merle’s death was a blow. More so because I felt it not just as a personal loss, but as a professional failure. Mevrouw Bonsma had put her finger on it as surely as if it were middle C. How could I have missed the announcement? The sad fact was that I couldn’t bear to read the death notices any more. ‘Safe in God’s cave’ … ‘I will always remember your similes and laughter’ … For heaven’s sake! One was not even free from insult beyond the grave.
I had looked forward so keenly to showing her ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ and thanking her publicly for her guidance. There was a line to that effect in my speech.
‘There’s one more angle in heaven’ … ‘Dried tragically’ … ‘A cruel twist of fete’ … The only fate I could remember now was Clotho. Who were the others? I looked up ‘fates’ in the Pocket. No names. While I was about it, I looked up ‘monoblepsia’: also not there. Mono was ‘one’, of course, but one what? -ia. Forming abstract nouns. Often in Medicine. Blepsia … blepsia …
Mevrouw Bonsma came back and subsided into her chair. She regretted to inform us that she could not find the button to switch the music manufactory on. She began to hum. This made me aware of a sympathetic murmuring, like a muted string section, from the other tables. More old faces gathering, the newcomers as well as the originals. There was one of the ’Enries, McAllister, some Bobbies and Freddies and what-have-you. The show going on, as it must.
*
It was in the Concise. Monoblepsia: condition in which vision is perfect when one eye is used, but confused and indistinct when both are used. What was he driving at? I’ve got a lazy left, it’s true, he knew that as well as anyone, and none of us were spring chickens any more. But I wouldn’t say I was ‘monobleptic’.
I put the dictionary back in its hiding place on the cistern and took out the original of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’. How badly I had wanted to show it to Merle. I couldn’t help wondering whether her approval was the main reason I had pressed on with it, perhaps even the only one. But she would never see it. What could be done with it now that she was dead?
Then it bore in upon me, unavoidable and crushing, like some juggernaut with ‘How am I driving?’ carved into its treads. Death itself was the greatest decline in standards of all. That was the certainty I had always been trying to evade. And expiring was just the beginning: unpleasant as it was, it was infinitely more palatable than the decomposition to which it led.
A gruesome vision took hold of me. Merle in her box, disintegrating, liquefying. It was wet, this deterioration, it consisted of leaking and oozing, it struck through crêpe, it wept. And then I saw myself too, mummified, in a box as grey as a ledger, the skin stretched tight as parchment over my irreducible bones. My solid waste, my dry remains. Such fine distinctions would have comforted the squeamish, the ones afraid of water, but they made my blood curdle. A match flared up on the edge of my vision, wet and dry fought a battle on the tips of my fingers. What did it matter? We would have to pass through a river of putrefaction before we issued in dust. Perhaps it would be better to burn, to turn at once to ashes, to go up in smoke.
Morbid thoughts. What next: a public display of emotion? Pull yourself together, Aubrey. Asafoetida … liquidambar … turpentine. Now who will keep you in bon-bons, madame (6)? It fitted itself into the dibbled furrows of ‘An English Country Garden’.
*
Hunky Dory was twiddling his thumbscrews. Time I introduced myself.
‘Good evening. Tearle. You must be Hunky. Any relation to John?’
‘It’s Rory actually. Hunky Dory’s the name of my group.’
‘Group? There’s only one of you.’
‘The drummer split. It used to be Rory and the Hunky Dory, know what I mean, but my drummer fucked off to Cape Town. He says Joburg’s getting too heavy.’
Hunky pushed some buttons. ‘Wanna see my wah-wah?’
‘If it’s all the same …’
‘Okay, that’s cool.’
‘Do you know any Max Bygraves? Let’s see … “Consider Yourself’’?’
‘How’s it go again?’
But I am not a hummer.
By way of showing an interest, I threw in a couple of gems from the Look and Listen: ‘How about some Tosh? Or some Luther van Dross?’
*
As soon as everything had been properly connected, Hunky played some ‘golden oldies’ on our behalf with the sound turned down low. ‘Played’ is too strong a word: his part in the production involved no more than the periodic throwing of a switch. Killed the conversation stone-dead. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. The machines were less like musical instruments than gadgets for poking fun. He had one which gave a passable imitation of the absconded percussionist, and also of a trombonist and a Scottish piper. It was marvellous. The band played on even when Hunky excused himself to fetch a drink from the bar.
Mevrouw Bonsma, who had been gazing mournfully into the distance since the first note, made a special request for ‘Roll out the Barrel’, and he was playing that when Bogey arrived with some Patronymić or other in tow. Looking quite spruce, in a leather jacket and a Paisley cravat, the genuine Croatian article, presumably. I noticed, when he slung the jacket over the back of a chair, that the labels of his clothing had retreated to the linings where they belonged. But the pockets were bulging with fruit and vegetables. Must have become a market gardener.
‘I am make big money,’ he declared by way of introduction, indicating with outflung arms banknotes the size of beach towels. ‘It so easy make big money in new Sout’ Africa, only lazy pig poor like you.’ He was holding out a fistful of notes, as if he meant me to take them. The cheek of it. I made a point of ignoring him, and he stuffed his ill-gotten gains back into his pocket and took out a carrot. What was that Wessels joke about the shrinking rand? It was a manhole co
ver … Poor old Van der Merwe, if I remember correctly, the butt of all jokes. ‘I am just worry about damn Communists,’ Bogey went on. ‘They want take everytink. Is good we kill them.’
His English was much improved, although he was rolling his r’s and twanging away at his n’s like a singing cowboy. I should send him across the road to cry on Herr Toppelmann’s shoulder, I thought. I could see the pair of them lamenting among the sausage-skins.
Bogey and Spilkin began to talk business. The vegetables were a sideline; the war hero had gone into souvenirs.
My thoughts returned to business of my own: ‘The Proofreader’s Derby.’ Finished or unfinished business? It was hard to say, exactly. Spilkin’s question – which is everyone’s, when all is said and done – came back to me across the years: ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ I still wasn’t sure. Long before, when the idea of presenting ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ to the world was still fresh, a false spirit of invention had had me in its thrall and my imaginings had been grandiose. But in the weeks before the Goodbye Bash, as I laboured to finish the fair copy, I had decided to content myself with making my work known and leaving it at that. If a full-scale championship followed, at someone else’s initiative, well and good.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ I would chime on the rim of a champagne glass with a cake fork until I had their attention. ‘Many of you will know of the project on which I have been engaged these many decades, the crowning achievement of a long career’ – with a nod towards Spilkin – ‘my life’s work.’ I had the speech in my notebook. There was a prologue on declining standards and the prophylactic properties of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’, some expressions of gratitude – especially to Merle! – a passing reference to the floating trophy, an outline of corrigenda and proofreading marks, a digression on deletion, an epilogue on the rules and regulations. By the time I proffered the photostatic copies, an interested few would be pressing forward to take them from my hand. Perhaps their enthusiasm would be infectious, and the others would ask for a demonstration. Then a few sample fascicles – not the whole thing, of course, this was neither the time nor the place – could be administered right there to whet the appetite. I might provide the corrected version on an overhead projector (if one could be secured), and then glance over their efforts and reward the author of the best one with a prize, as an encouragement. So I had imagined.
Now, as I looked around at my companions – Spilkin and Bogey brooding on the price of ostrich eggs (painted, for the tourist trade, I discovered afterwards), Mevrouw Bonsma and Darlene on the care of the cuticles, Mrs Hay somewhat crestfallen, a herd of Olé ’Enries, Wessels agleam like a toby jug – my ambitions shrank to even more modest proportions. I would be satisfied with a simple announcement. Do you remember ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’? Well, it’s finished. I’ve done it, as I said I would. If any of you want to take a closer look, I have copies. You only have to ask.
And this is the moment to do it, I concluded, with just the few of us here, the originals and the less disruptive late arrivals.
But Clotho put a spoke in my wheel. As I gathered myself to speak, there was another rumpus at the door, and Errol and Co spilled off the escalator, laughing and swearing. The New Management rushed to defend the buffet.
*
The newcomers came rolling in. ‘Yo!’ they said. Raylene, Nomsa, Floyd. The new girl – she hadn’t been hardened yet, I thought, she might still be redeemed if someone showed her a good example. A new boy too, so black he would have served quite well as a printer’s devil. He would scarcely have required inking.
‘Huge,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Huge Semenya.’
‘Phil, Phil Harmonic.’
They were toting cardboard boxes full of bottled lager. ‘The invite said BYOB,’ Raylene explained.
Boy backwards to the blood group. Boy backwards. They should have ‘Yob’ on their caps instead of ‘Boy’. I should find some entrepreneur and suggest it as a new range. Yobs and slags: backward children. It would look good on a baseball cap, especially when they wore them back to front on their silly heads. Wessels says it’s because they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Sometimes they wear their trousers back to front too.
As their contribution to the ‘graze’, they presented an enormous plastic bag of fluorescent ‘Cheesnaks’. Floyd was carrying this fodder over his shoulder.
‘I see you brought the Cheese Snacks,’ I enunciated, not that I expected him to get the hint. ‘No nutritional value whatsoever. You may as well eat this newspaper.’
Spilkin piped up: ‘That’s a very unhelpful attitude, Aubrey. Some snacks will tide us over nicely while the buffet is out of bounds.’
Unhelpful? Aubrey?
Floyd took a dagger from his pocket and cut a corner off the bag. He was wearing one of his playsuits with cartoon characters on it, odd creatures, hybrids of human and hound. You’d think he was on his way to a pyjama party. Errol, by contrast, was wearing a tuxedo.
‘Where did you swipe that?’
‘Don’t be like rude, Mr T,’ Raylene said. Evidently they had all taken it upon themselves this evening to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. ‘He bought it at the Jewish Benevolent in Yeoville.’
‘It makes him look like an assassin.’
‘He’s going to get a job as a bouncer.’
‘And he’s gonna practise tonight, keeping out those what wasn’t invited.’
Floyd began to make a circuit of the room, spilling the garish doodahs out on the tablecloths.
The ‘invite’? Had Wessels gone so far as to print invitations? And if so, why hadn’t I received one?
*
‘Have you got any tassies?’ Another new one, going by the name of Ricardo. He’d mistaken me for the proprietor. I suppose I did look rather authoritative in my collar and tie.
Tassy? Tassie? It rang a bell. I looked it up: small cup, a Scots term. This Ricardo had unexpected depths of vocabulary. His preference for small measures was encouraging too; the others were drinking straight from the bottle as if tomorrow would never come. Where had he sprung from, I wondered, as I steered him towards the paper cups. Perhaps there was a Highlander in his colourful background? I should find a way of testing his capabilities later on. He might even be ripe for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ – and wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books?
*
In the clutter behind the counter was a bottle of Pfeffi, the Pfiffiger Pfefferminzliqör, green stuff as thick as cough mixture. The neck of the bottle had been stretched by some clot of a glass-blower into a screw a yard long, and it had stood unopened on the top shelf, with its cap brushing the ceiling, since the reign of Mrs Mavrokordatos. Floyd climbed up on the counter to fetch it down – they just wanted to see the label, they said, and that bumpy thing in the bottom that looked like a gallstone – and before I could say a word, he had seized the floating trophy for ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ as well, and they were passing it around and cracking jokes. Lascivious comments about the little gymnast on the lid and their own reproductive prowess.
‘Where’d this come from?’
‘Ask old Churl,’ Wessels said.
Another opportunity to introduce ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ came and went. It would be madness to raise a serious subject in the company of this rabble. I should bide my time until Errol and Co grew bored and wandered off into the streets. When the old crowd was left, in the lull, I would produce my fait accompli.
As for the trophy, much as it pained me, I must let them have their sport, they would tire of it soon enough; not one of them could concentrate for more than five minutes at a time on a single activity, pool excepted. At an opportune moment, I would recover the trophy and put it somewhere for safe keeping. While I was musing, the trophy had already been discarded on table No. 2, and they were beginning to drift off in the direction of the pool room with the Pfeffi in hand. Then that blasted Darlene sat straight up in her chair as if she’d been b
itten by a horsefly.
‘What’s a champoin?’ she squeaked.
Stupid woman. No social graces whatsoever, all flaking varnish and crooked pri-horrities. She showed the trophy to Wessels, who buffed it with a forefinger like a maulstick and guffawed. I ought to have cleaned it.
‘What is it now?’
‘Put on your spectacle and you’ll check.’
Spilkin stuck his nose in and smirked, ‘This is rich. A corrigendum.’
‘Cham-poing!’ said Wessels, as if one of his inner springs had finally broken.
They were pulling my leg and pinching a nerve. Spilkin thrust the trophy at me, almost gleefully, and I glanced at the inscription, still touchingly familiar, although I had not examined it closely in years: Transvaal Gymnastics Union – Senior Ladies – Overall Champion. Except that it did in fact seem to say: Overall Champoin. I would have been grateful for a more palatable explanation, I might even have stomached a practical joke – but the simple transposition of i and o was irrefutable. Champoin. Engraved in metal. I had missed it. I saw at once what had happened: those io’s in ‘Union’ and ‘Senior’ had lingered on the retina and the after-image had bamboozled me. Then again, the whole inscription had been an irritation. Was it because I’d wanted too badly to wish it away that I’d overlooked a blunder so elementary even Spilkin’s illiterate lady friend had spotted it?
I felt my cheeks burning as if she’d slapped me.
‘I’m glad you noticed that.’ A melting ice cube jammed in my throat for a breathtaking instant and then slid down. ‘That’s half the reason I bought this particular cup. To test the mettle of the champion. Or should I say: the champoin. At the prize-giving.’
She was looking at me blankly. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember whether she knew about ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’. She must have, they all did. Surely Spilkin would have told her. When exactly had Darlene come among us? I looked at Spilkin, for whom my rather clever explanation had been intended. If he could be convinced … He looked back with a sceptical smile on his cherubic lips, but said nothing. I’d never noticed before quite how curvirostral he was, for a cherub.
The Restless Supermarket Page 26
