‘So, how is it here?’ he asks at last.
The views, I tell him, have begun to pall.
He tells me about a theory espoused by some crackpot American scientist – that we could all be reborn in a computer simulation at the end of time. An instant after we die, we could wake up again, billions and billions of years in the future, in a world sustained by code.
‘I’d want to see the terms and conditions,’ I answer. But I appreciate that this might be good news.
Ellen likes Peter very much, she tells me. Charlie told her that Peter is a genius, but she’d never have guessed that he was a genius – and she means this in a good way, I must understand. She would have liked to have kids, she says. Why has she never mentioned this before? ‘Well, I’m not going to go around complaining about my situation, am I? In the circumstances,’ she says. Maybe she will have kids, I tell her. ‘Too late,’ she answers. I remind her that Stephen’s folks were late starters; she nods, as if acknowledging a fact that’s of no relevance to her.
Thinking again of the hoopoe I saw with Celia. Some facts: the cry of the hoopoe is a ‘soft repeated “poop”’ – very similar to the sound produced by blowing across the mouth of a milk bottle, and not unlike the first component of the bird’s remarkably euphonious ornithological name, Upupa epops. The hoopoe was once known as the dung bird; it was said to make its nest in human faeces.
Mr Ridley is crossing the road, unaccompanied, when a young man appears on a Vespa. Young man pulls up in front of Ridley, removes helmet and commences conversation which elicits not only laughter from the ogre but also an affectionate-seeming application of claw to young shoulder, in manner that suggests congratulation. I am not the only one to be surprised: the woman across the road, looking up from her ironing in the front bedroom, observes the remarkable interaction and, losing concentration, slides the hot iron onto a fingertip. Mouth movements and facial expression suggestive of bad language.
Celia calls again – the patient’s condition is giving cause for concern, evidently. She chats to Ellen for quite a time; Ellen afterwards is overcast. Is it Roy? She says it’s not Roy. It’s nothing, she says. Two hours later, the truth is revealed. While talking to Celia, Ellen had mentioned that she’d spoken to Stephen yesterday, and that Stephen was excited about going to Japan. ‘You once thought of going to live in Japan, didn’t you?’ she asked Celia, who answered that at some time or another she’d considered going to live in virtually every country north of Antarctica. Ellen says she must have got the wrong end of the stick, but didn’t Celia strike up a friendship with one of her Japanese students, when she was working in London? Well, Celia replied, there were some nice Japanese kids, but nobody in particular stood out, as far as she recalled. Ellen reminded her about the Japanese businessmen lying drunk on the floor of the bar, foot to foot. This rang no bells.
Celia has a memory like a sieve, I tell Ellen. Of course there had been a favourite Japanese student: her name was Kachiko and she had a sister called Yuko. I couldn’t count the number of the times I’ve remembered incidents from Celia’s life more clearly than she did. ‘Next time you talk to Celia, remind her of Kachiko. The name will come back to her.’
‘OK,’ says Ellen. It would appear, however, that more things than merely the story of Kachiko began to unravel during her conversation with Celia.
‘Want to tell me what else Celia said?’ I ask.
‘It’s not important,’ she says. Her face, I suggest, says otherwise.
‘For God’s sake, Ellen, what’s the bloody problem?’ I groan.
‘There’s no problem,’ she says, with a brightness that only makes things worse.
‘Yes there is.’
She’s holding a towel stretched tight between her outstretched hands; she studies it as though it’s a printed page and she’s scanning a story that doesn’t quite make sense. ‘All it is,’ she says at last, ‘is that she thought it was funny, the idea of the drunk businessmen lying on the floor. But I don’t think she’d forgotten it. I think it was the first time she’d ever heard it.’
‘Well, it’s true,’ I tell her.
‘OK,’ she says.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘It happened. The salarymen on the floor – I didn’t make it up. Perhaps Kachiko’s father wasn’t one of them, but that isn’t important. It happened.’
‘So it isn’t true?’
‘Yes, it’s true. I just told you.’
‘But it didn’t happen to this girl’s father?’
‘I think it did.’
‘But maybe not?’
‘Maybe not.’
‘OK,’ she says, scrutinising my eyes with a look of gentle disappointment that makes me want to start hurling large objects. ‘I understand now,’ she says, and she goes into the bathroom to cram the towel into its drawer.
‘What does it matter?’ I shout after her. ‘What the fuck does it matter?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she calls.
‘Why are you so worked up about a bunch of pissed Japanese engineers?’
‘I’m not worked up,’ she says calmly, coming back into the room. ‘You’re the one who’s worked up.’
Of course she’s right, but it’s pleasant to lose my temper; a lovers’ tiff must feel similar. ‘It amused you, didn’t it?’ I yell, though I’m already losing conviction. ‘It amused me. So what’s the problem?’
‘There is no problem. I’m just a bit confused, that’s all.’
‘What the fuck is there to be confused about?’
She points out that I had expected her to tell me what was going on with Roy, and in the end she’d told me. In fact, as she recalled, I was the one who’d talked about how important it was that we were open and honest with each other.
‘I did?’
‘Yes, you did. As you know perfectly well. So I thought that you were being straight with me, all the time. I misunderstood.’
‘So I put in a dash of local colour. So I tightened things up a bit. I’d have thought that was obvious. I wasn’t there. I don’t have tapes.’
‘I know that.’
‘I put words into people’s mouths.’
She looks at me steadily, and I see wounded affection. ‘It’s all right, Daniel. Really. Like you say, it doesn’t matter,’ she says, then she leaves.
At bathtime, having apologised yet again, I ask: ‘Was I very unpleasant? Did you dislike me for a minute?’
‘For a minute.’
‘Only a minute? Are you being honest, Ellen?’
‘Two minutes,’ she says.
I smack my hands together in what is intended as a gesture of delight. ‘God knows I’ve tried to be as horrible as the next man,’ I tell her.
We go downstairs to watch a film with Charles and Janina. I’m swiftly asleep.
I Still Cannot Get My Head Around This Absolute Beatiful Babe – I Could Never Beleave Theres Such A Woman In This World – Have I Died And Am Looking At An Angel Or A Godess?? I Love U Soozie And I Wish 4 U All The Best Things – I Give U Thanx For Brightning Up My Life For This Time.
God help us all.
Reading in the living room. From time to time Ellen glances at me over the top of the page. A spiral of hair, slipping out from a purple plastic hairslide, swings in front of her face; cross-eyed she examines the fallen lock, then tucks it back. For some reason I find this extremely touching. The smell of molten solder comes into the living room; turns out that it’s the smell of rosemary in hot oil. Ellen sniffs: ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘it smells like rosemary to me.’ Since our argument there has been an infinitesimal cooling between us. I’ve told her, more than once, that everything I’ve written for her is true, essentially. She nods, and talks about something else.
‘I’m going to have a nap now,’ I tell her. ‘Please do not disturb, unless I start rattling.’
‘Sweet dreams,’ she says.
I dream of sitting in the living room, reading with Ellen; what a waste of unconsciousness.
As El
len administers the night-time dose, I remark that this is the worst pain I have ever experienced. This is quite probably true. But I can’t know that it’s true, because I cannot remember a previous pain as I remember the hoopoe, or being in a taxi in London with Celia and Stephen. I recall that I was in pain, but not the pain itself.
‘What were you thinking, Daniel?’ asks Ellen. ‘Nothing in particular,’ I answer, too tired for more. Cumulus – stratocumulus – Stratocaster – Jimi Hendrix – Hey Joe – Voodoo Chile – voodoo – Haiti – Papa Doc Duvalier – Maurice Chevalier – little girls – boater – bloater – ichthus – Jesus – mosaics – Ravenna – Constantinople – Cefalù – cephalopod – celadon – poison – poisson – Poissons d’or – Debussy – Eastbourne – East of Java – East of Eden – James Dean – Nicholas Ray – Fay Wray – King Kong – King Vidor – King Zog – King of the Road – Roger Miller – King Roger – Roger Dodger – Roy Rogers – Wyatt Earp – Virgil Earp – Virgil – Aeneas in the Underworld – Orpheus in the Underworld – Kathleen Ferrier – furrier – farrier – blacksmith – Vulcan’s forge – Venus – breasts – what’s-her-name Myers – Russ Meyer – Russ Conway – Conway Twitty – Tweety Pie – pie in the sky – toad-in-the-hole – spotted dick – syphilis – Naples – Vesuvius – Pompeii – Pompey – Julius Caesar – Marlon Brando – Mutiny on the Bounty – the Pirates of Penzance – Pirates of the Caribbean – treasure chest – cabinet of curiosities – Kunstkammer – Rudolph II – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – moose – caribou – elk – Elke Sommer – Britt Ekland – Wicker Man – Man of Straw – man-of-war – U-boats – torpedoes – Hedy Lamarr – Hedwig Eva Maria – Ave Maria – the Queen of Heaven – Heaven Can Wait – Heaven’s Gate – Forest Gate – Forest Hill – New Forest – Rufus – Chaka Khan – Kubla Khan – morphine – curare – tree frogs – bullfrogs – Jeremiah was a bullfrog – Lamentations of Jeremiah – Skeets Nehemiah – clay pigeons – homing pigeons – carrier pigeons – pigeons pigeons pigeons – Trafalgar Square – Trafalgar Square with Celia. That’s what I was thinking, El.
Oceanic stupor and lurid dreams, which evaporate before I can get them down. Describing dreams like describing a piece of music. A vivid memory breaks in: Celia’s decrepit old blue Mini. The sunburnt paintwork felt like polished chalk and the interior smelt of hot engine oil and damp leather.
Again the bowling green, more or less the usual script. Then a jump-cut and I’m looking out from a ground-floor window of a house that is submerged in water as clear as arctic air. But I don’t know it’s water until, high above the house, a horse steps out from a bank of grass and ripples spread from its hooves. The line of vision is 30 to 45 degrees from the vertical, so I can see the rider: he’s a Mongol warrior, clad in scaly armour, with a round leather shield and domed helmet. Horsemen troop out onto the water: many lances are in evidence; much flapping of scarlet silk pennants. All eyes are trained in one direction, but so many horses that the surface of the water quickly becomes choppy and opaque. Hooves cover it like lily-pads. When the water settles there’s nothing to see but the bank of grass and the sun. Dreams: the bubbling scum or froth of the fancy.
Charlie brings up a bottle of Château Taillefer, 1990, one of his favourites. J & E join us. A toast proposed by the moribund: ‘Thank you very much for having me.’ Janina a paragon of self-control; never lovelier. Wine tastes of mucus. Later, when we’re alone, I remark to Ellen that most people, not being ready, leave a mess behind when they go. In my case, however, everything is in order. There are no loose strands. I know how my story ends. ‘No,’ says Ellen. ‘If someone is thinking of you, it hasn’t ended. Nobody knows how it ends.’
Memory: watching a zombie film with Zoë. Her squealing at the dismemberments and eviscerations – disgusted-thrilled, like a small boy finding a dog turd churning with maggots. I can hear her voice in the room. Without this body, might something have happened with Zoë? But without it, I would never have met her.
A plane enters the window and crosses it on a course parallel to the frame, at precisely the line of the Golden Section. Below its condensation trail, a long reef of smoke from a bonfire at the farm. Behind, scribbles of cirrus. It looks like a sketch of a sky, abandoned. At the crack of a backfiring engine the sheep sprint in unison across the field and abruptly stop together, like a platoon of automata disabled all at once by power failure.
Imagine it: after the cremation, all gathering downstairs. Janina, the most obviously upset member of the party, busies herself in the kitchen. Stephen is talking to her, and she keeps breaking into tears. Dr G is there? Perhaps. Celia whispers to Ellen that the weeping is beginning to get on her nerves. ‘Want to go for a walk?’ she asks, and they go for a stroll by the stream. Ellen and Celia come to the spot where we saw the heron. Ellen tells her about it, and she recalls the heron. She watches Celia, who watches the smoke from her cigarette as it drifts over the stream.
In the evening, Ellen is in my room. She has the laptop, her inheritance. Tucked into a pocket on the outside of the laptop’s case there’s a postcard. She takes it out, hoping there’s some sort of message for her, and dreading it too. There isn’t one. She switches on the laptop and reads two or three pages. She reads a description of herself. ‘True enough,’ she thinks. Or ‘That’s not nice.’ She looks out of the window. There’s nothing to see, except a big silver Mercedes arriving. Celia comes up to check that she’s all right, and within a minute she’s in tears and Ellen is comforting her. Ellen has the composure of a bishop.
A year later. This room has been repainted and the books have all gone to Stephen and thence who knows where. There is no trace of me here, other than a scuffing of the carpet where the chair was, and a faint mark left by the tripod of the telescope. Celia and Ellen sit on the riverbank, a few yards apart, not talking much. Yes, Ellen is a frequent visitor. Celia lights a cigarette. For a few months she’d managed to give up, she says, but not smoking didn’t agree with her – she’d become too twitchy and too crabby. ‘And too fat,’ she adds, squeezing a thigh. Is she still with Mauro? Yes, she’s still with Mauro and it’s going well, she says, with a smile that signifies that she doesn’t quite understand how she’s come to be in this situation, but isn’t going to worry about it too much. ‘What about you?’ she asks, and Ellen tells her what? Ellen says she might have started seeing someone. She isn’t quite sure what the situation is, so she’s taking it slowly, but she likes him and she thinks he likes her. ‘Good for you, El,’ says Celia. She’s delighted, or a better actress than Ellen ever thought she was. Celia’s friend Maria has moved to Livorno because her husband (name??) has landed a good job there, so Celia is seeing Maria quite frequently. The school where Celia’s working now is a good one. She’s rid herself of Christine, who’s had her affair with whatever his name was, and might still be having it now, for all Celia knows.
Perhaps she has seen Petru? Yes, she’s seen Petru, crouched against a wall in an alleyway, beside a pile of discarded cables, winding a length of wire around a stick. Behind him there was a supermarket trolley loaded with spools and lengths of copper piping. His hair looked as if he’d poured oil over it. She watched him winding the wire, slowly, grimly, as if making a bomb; to Ellen she confesses that she couldn’t bring herself to talk to him.
They talk about what I have written. There are things here that Celia isn’t happy about – the Taussigs weren’t really like this, and the portrait of Mauro is off-beam as well. Having read this description of Mauro you might be able to pick him out at a party, but Daniel’s version of him is too crude. And often she can’t recognise herself in the woman called Celia. ‘More Danny than me,’ she says; this is what Charlie will say as well. Janina will never read a word of it.
How long will Ellen remain in contact with the family? Many years, I think. I hope. Dum spero spiro.
Roy. What about Roy? Pissed for the eighty-fifth day in succession, he drives into a phone box at two o’clock in the morning. Car is a write-off, but Roy survives.
Lightly injured: a broken ankle and a cracked wrist. That’ll do for Roy.
Wake up to find Janina and Ellen kneeling beside the bed – an Adoration of the Shepherds. Beatitude of the almost dead. Janina says they are thinking of installing a carp pond. Ellen admits to having a grudge against fish. Janina laughs – so she knows quite a bit about Roy, it seems. One day, says Janina, she may run for a seat on the local council. More news: Freddie is coming next week.
A night of constant rain, then a morning of radiant overcast: the sky a glowing porridge. Long pools have formed in the fields: bright offcuts of sky lying in the mud.
So much more to write. Dissolving in pain.
Tomorrow Stephen
Copyright
TELESCOPE by JONATHAN BUCKLEY
Published in 2011 by
Sort Of Books
PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL
www.sortof.co.uk
Copyright © Jonathan Buckley, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Telescope Page 29
