by Adam Thorpe
I hope he’s not bloody out there instead of at his do – a hundred rare species of quiche, stripper popping out the iced phallus, nice sensitive types eyeing up your measurements for the next piling ’cos the millennium’s in the zip bag, there’s gonna be a lot of zeros after it, we’re not talking chicken soup in a basket, chum. It’d be like him to gatecrash. Bull in a china shop. Arty friends, eh? Let me tell you, little Ricky Dicky here used to play with his little soldiers in the bath until he was sixteen, har har.
And then what did he play with? you’re supposed to chortle, if you’re one of his sort.
Cunts. The lot of ’em. I don’t mind saying it. How are the ferns? Christ, it’s taking an age. Hey, watch that bloody porcelain, Steve! It’s real! It’s antique! Even in 1913, mate!
I used to talk like that. English, British, a bit like Mick Jagger or someone. I used to kid myself. From Enfield to posh to swinging to sub-Clark Gable. No, as one of Muriel’s chums once squealed – ooh, you sound just like Dave Lee Travis! Dave Dee who? I said. She couldn’t speak for ten minutes. She’d choked on her scampi-flavoured twirly thing that was supposed to be a crisp. I guess I’ve been out of circulation, I shouted, rubbing her back so hard she was frightened for her pimples. A pity I didn’t fancy her, guv. I didn’t. I can’t take women who weatherproof their eyelashes. Then Des put on some bloody awful music and knocked the halogens and it was all these breasts bungee-jumping all over the place until the slow track when it was, well, quite frankly it wasn’t exactly Saturday Night at the Palladium, was it? I got out, quick, before the cops arrived or something. The local had the same music, it must have been wired up or something, but at least I wasn’t being pawed. Not much, anyway. This British National Party or something guy dribbled on me, but that was it. At least he bought me a pint. Here’s to your dad, he said. I’d told the creep about my dad, about Mosley, about what horrible bastards they all were. That’s it, he said, that’s it. Real quality, in those days. He wasn’t a skinhead, he had hair, he looked like a ferret with specs. Yuk. I got back really late. I really crept in. I waded to the bar for a settler but I was tripped up by something. I fished it out. It was a pair of lacy black knickers with a hole sewn in. I guess they might have been special to someone, they were personalised, so I hung them on the soda syphon. Hey, I was amazed.
Pssst! There’s more. I’ve started so I won’t stop. Hold on tight, we’re on a sharp curve. I’m the sneaky little brother, OK? Des and Muriel are into serious things. I mean, with their chums. I don’t mean the sort of Bacchanalia thing but the sort of Deadly Organised thing. They have some New Zealand lead-free and then they squeeze their tails on to the leatherette three-piece and the wives chuck their car keys into the middle of the room and the men kind of lucky-dip. If a man gets his usual car keys they start all over. The wives are practically wetting themselves ’cos anything’s better than the usual. Then they all go off but at five-minute intervals in case the neighbours limpeting their kitchen windows think it really is like Brooksides or whatever that thing was called and half of them (not the limpets) get into a strange bed and half of them get into their usual bed but both of them are strange to each other’s skin and smell. I’m getting excited. That’s really terrible, getting excited over Des and Muriel and chums. You know how I know this? Because my naked foot found a pair of car keys and I yelped and hopped and they were dangling off my big toe and Muriel flushed trout-farm pink and said oh and Des chortled dirtily. So that’s where Ted’s lot got to, he said. Don’t tell him, Desmond, said Muriel. Do, do, I cried. What’s it worth, Dicky? said Desmond. Three gin and limes down at the Cock and Bollocks, I replied. Done, said Des, always one for a cut-price bargain. Muriel said, he might put it into one of his films, Desmond. He doesn’t make films, pet, said Des. He just teaches.
Hey, that was a great evening. Des and I got plastered, certificate X. We rollicked home arm in arm, almost. We would have done in a crap movie, anyway. Our elbows touched under the coach-lamp as he was fumbling at the lock and we didn’t flinch. We were singing softly. I forget what. Lights sprang up all around Glen Close. It was like being in a spaceship or something. Heads appeared in silhouette. They bobbed about. The windows were eyes. Have you seen Mon Oncle? I enquired. That was a mistake. He tensed. Don’t start talking posh and ruining it, Ratty, he murmured. Actually, he yelled it. He fucking bawled it. Don’t start talking bloody French to me! Don’t start that! I think it was for Muriel’s sake. I don’t think it was really him, that one time. Not that time.
I’m serious about that name. Glen Close. It gave rise to my most serious humiliation.
Hoi, Steve!
Yeah, Chief?
What the fuck’s that antimacassar doing on the arm-rest?
I put it there, Chief.
What’s it for – a fucking crippled midget?
I thought it looked nice, Chief.
You thought it looked nice?
Yeah. Kind of dainty. Nice crochet. My grandma—
Listen, Steve. This is my great-grandfather’s house. This is 1913. This is the living-room of my great-grandfather’s house. There’s a clock ticking. It’s ticking 1913 away, tic by toc. There’s a smell. It’s a 1913 smell of coal and beeswax and Pears soap and the maid with the underarms and so on. You can’t come in here and just put something somewhere because you think it looks nice. You put something somewhere because it’s the only place it can go given the socio-historical forces at work, given the taste, class, standing and financial position of my great-grandparents, given the fact that it’s 1913 and not 1933 or 1983 or 2003, geddit? It goes on the back of the chair, Steve. Where the head goes. Where the head with half a gallon of Macassar oil goes. I like the pony-tail, Steve. But get some brain under it, OK?
You’re a gas, Chief. Right on, Chief. Y’know, I’ve worked with Procul Harum, Chief. I lit them at Hemel, once.
Gerronwivit, berk, or you’ll get caught by my great-aunt. She’s due to enter. The cosmos has fixed it implacable, like. You’ve got four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Straighten that doily. There’s still no fucking swag on the chandelier. Straighten that Alma-Tadema. I said Alma-Tadema, stoopid, not the curtains. That one, the one with the lyres and the rose-bud tits in sunny Umbria or someplace. Thank you. My great-grandfather liked his paintings straight and he liked mirrors. He liked to straighten his collar and stuff in great big curly-wurly gilt mirrors like that one so don’t hang it like we’re on the Titanic. Get those bloody cartons out. The place stinks of Steves. Christ, why do I bovver?
Julie Patchouli, fix me a Coke. Crush the ice so I can pretend I’m at the Big Game. (I’ve never been to any Big Game or Medium Game or Little Game but Julie’s impressionable. She’s pretty putty in my palms. She polishes my brass speaking-trumpet so I can see myself in it. Am I a creep?)
I was talking about Glen Close, thoroughly desirable, ooh yeah – about twenty poncy villas in Lotts Bricks style with fluffy bamboo things on the nail-clippered lawns and a big Private Road sign in case you thought it just the verge to let your pet lobster crap on. Des points to the sign, the Glen Close sign. Great, eh, Ratty? he says, not helping with me suitcases (I had to stay the night with him, it’s complicated) – great joke, eh? Fatally attractive place to live, eh? Ho ho. I put my suitcase down and prise my hand out the handle and try to straighten the fingers and there’s a terrible red welt with stitching where my joints ought to be. Someone had added an n. Glenn Close. That was the joke, I guess. Now comes my most humiliating moment ever wiv Desmond me bruvver. He knows I don’t make films no more. He knows I teach it instead. That’s bad enough, OK? ’Cos he doesn’t think very much of teachers, doesn’t our Des. It was the teachers’ fault kids were taken out of the mines and out of the chimbleys of the greatest industrial power known to man, ever (Des after a coupla gin and limes, Muriel nodding over her sputumante) and then got stuffed with useless bloody facts and ended up swelling the unemployment figures and doing sweet Fanny Adams (Muriel chokes a little at that, being uprig
ht), Dick. He always calls me Dick when he’s being political. It’s a concession. Or maybe it isn’t. Sweet Fanny Adams or beating up innocent old ladies, Dick. I’m serious. At least the buggers had a job up the chimbleys and down the mines, Dick. At least they were kept out of bloody mischief. At least it sorted out the rotten apples from the decent apples and stopped the whole lot going manky, Dick. Des, I murmur, Dad would be proud of you. He is proud of me, Ratty, says Des. He’s not dead yet. Can’t wait, can’t wait, I say. Muriel arranges her face into Appalled of Friern Barnet. That’s not funny, says Des. (But hey, I know it’s what he thinks every morning before he gets his dick to go down – hmmm, I wonder if the old bastard’s copped it in the night and we can get our fists on the capital that’s bleeding away each day into the coffers of that bloody stiff private nursing-home in Havant? He knows I know it’s what he and especially Muriel think every morning and probably every evening after their hump. But the bastard’s still alive, Des. He’ll outlive us all.) I was talking about this bloody sign. Yeah, great joke, Des, I say – I thought he was great in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Yer what? says Des, twitching. He can’t stand me talking French, especially with a French accent. I thought he was great, Glenn Close was great, in – I thought that’s what you said, Ratty, says Des. I also thought you taught Yanks about movies, Ratty. I do, Des, I do: my special subject’s Danish post-war cinema, but I do spots on Tarkovsky, Bresson, God—Glenn Close, dickhead, says Des, is a woman. No he isn’t, I say, he was very good in Les— Have you seen Fatal Attraction, Ratty? Er, no, no, Des, I’ve missed that one. She’s in that, too, Dicky my boy. She’s definitely got tits and a beaver in that one. I gulp, I sweat, I try to smile, I try to think of what I had for breakfast, I try to recall my own name, I want to play it again and get it right but I can’t, Ricky Thornby’s feeling sick, and it’s not just the jet lag and my extended elbow joint. It’s the sickness that comes when you think of all those times you’ve talked at the Houston Centre of Dramatic & Visual Arts about how great Glenn Close was in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, especially when he gets shot at the end. There’ve been a lot of these times because Les Liaisons Dangereuses is the only release you’ve watched from end to end in about ten years apart from Tarkovsky’s definitely-last and Bresson’s probably-last but at HCDVA that doesn’t count and that was because Zelda craved it for her birthday, you couldn’t say how you hate films, may you wait in the lobby and look at the stills and munch popcorn and get off on the quadrophonic effect vibrating your feet? You couldn’t say it because you were in love. So I watched it and, hell, I used it. Every time the keenies got talking in the common room I’d butt in with yup, and I thought Glenn Close was pretty good in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in what? they’d say. Ah, sorry, in Dangerous Liaisons)–especially when he got shot at the end. I thought they were snuckling at my French. I really thought this. What a stupid fucking name. Des has used it ever since. The whole of Friern Barnet knows I thought Glenn Close was a bloke. Des has absolutely no respect for me any more, and he only had a Cock and Bollocks’ whisky measure before. He knows I know he’s rumbled me. I know he knows I know he’s rumbled me. It makes for a great filial feeling between us. Hey, all our siblings the world over know that we are frauds because once upon a time we picked our noses and played with our little soldiers in the bath and stayed in our diapers and wore sideburns and hugged our teddies till we were seventeen or something. Come to think of it, the whole of HCDVA knows I’m a fraud, but that doesn’t bother me one jimp. Why does it bother me that Des knows? I really don’t like Des. I have no respect whatsoever for the creep. He embarrasses me. The only reason I’ve stayed with him two or maybe three times when I’ve been over was because I wanted this little locket with a tiny blue butterfly in it belonging to my late mother and I knew he had it somewhere and that he wouldn’t hand it over unless I crawled and whimpered – which I did, kind of. I had to be humiliated and I was and he handed it over to me like it was a medal. For Grovelling and Whimpering and Letting Muriel Beat You at Strip Poker. It was just worth it. I have it now. It’s here, it’s on my desk next to the flint from the wind-blowing mind-blowing top of Wot Hill and my Hopi bowl and my little photos of William and Giles and Agatha. Shit, she’s coming in. My great-aunt, she’s coming in. It’s OK, the swag’s on the chandelier and stuff, the room’s genuine, there’s a smoky light, it’s kind of morning in London and there’s been yer dawn fog that’s left its dribble on the window panes and my great-aunt’s coming in right now because now is her now and there’s nothing in front of it, yet.
Hush.
Sssssh.
She’s reading. This is how it was. Her now is is and not was, hers and not ours, our now is not yet and never will be because she’ll be dead. Bom bom. You know what she was reading in her right now? Swinburne. Really sexy stuff, swoony, all over the place. She’s reading in her favourite place, it’s weird, it’s behind the biggest fern next to the really enormous piano and at least she has a cushion for her bum. She’s dressed in – you know what she’s dressed in, you’ve seen hundreds of these lousy adaptations and you’ve read hundreds of these lousy contempowawy novels where they tell you what someone’s dressed in before she’s had a chance to open her mouth, it’s like a fucking fashion parade, it’s called great art and it stinks of libraries. I’ve been in the libraries. I’ve been in the British Library and I’ve been in the Imperial War Museum Library and I’ve been in the Public Record Office Library and I’ve been in the Houston Centre of Dramatic & Visual Arts Library. What’s so funny? HCDVA is rich. It’s so rich it has at least two of Shakespeare’s First Folios or something. Maybe not the First, but certainly the Second. It has Harold Pinter’s Laundromat tickets for five years and Sam Beckett’s toothbrush. I’m not joking. The toothbrush, hog bristles, and worn flat. It also has the finest air-conditioning system in Texas (the library, the library) and it’s really quiet. There are no golf-balls striking the tinted windows. There are no students, apart from the weirdo in spectacles hung up on Granville-Barker of all people (HCDVA has most of his correspondence, as it happens. I’m serious). It’s where I work. On this. On this. Mostly. The librarian is astoundingly attractive, even under neon. Her name is Zelda.
Geddit?
Swinburne.
We have this huge fern and my great-aunt Agatha kind of behind it head down in this white book. It’s white and cream, you can sink your teeth into it, she is sinking her teeth into it, metaphorically. It goes with her dress. Her dress is kind of all creamy and fluttery – Edwardian, for Christ’s sake. She has a corset on. She has this corset underneath this fluttery summery silk dress and you wouldn’t know it except that when she stands her bust and bum stick out unnaturally. Some people find this sexy. I find it a shame. So does she. Well, I probably do find it sexy but I can’t stop thinking of whores welting some fat pillar of the community when I think of corsets. Mr Swinburne is unribboning her corset. He actually makes her feel a little breathless. Cor blimey, guv. Doesn’t he swing, just?
She looks up. See those grey eyes? I’m filling the whole screen with her face, her grey eyes are as big as the Statue of Taking Liberties, they’re beautiful in this lousy light (Mike, I’m talking about a miserable day, it’s difficult to get this light as lousy as I want it, she isn’t used to switching a lamp on just like that, she hasn’t adapted to this electricity thing, she’s one of the under ten per cent in this country who’ve gone over from gas, it’s like me an’ ma microwave, she doesn’t believe it won’t kill you, and she’s right) – hey, even in this deadhead inkie-dinkie light and what the fog clears to outside, which is a really coaly atmosphere, her eyes are beautiful.
The rest of her is pretty beautiful, too.
If she hadn’t been beautiful, I would not have said this. I mean it. I wouldn’t have got some prettyface to play her, just for the sake of it, just because no one believes a star can’t be plain Mary Jane. I’m not like that. I used to be, I used to be as knee-jerk as all the other movie guys. But I can’t help
the fact that my great-aunt was beautiful. It was a fact. It was a well-known fact. She had fine features, thick brown locks, a good shape.
