by Adam Thorpe
And Uncle Kenneth thinks he ought to say something because he’s only just clicked that his niece is clearly a little ruffled and that it might have something to do with this telephone call. He’s opening his mouth at the same time as the front door does and Mrs Trevelyan comes in. He shuts his mouth and turns round. Ah, good morning, dear, he says, instead of what he was going to say, which is drowning in the vast bog of the great unsaid. Mrs Trevelyan blinks at him as if he shouldn’t be there. Good morning, Kenneth, she says. She’s peeling off her gloves. There are boxes in the carriage, she says. Uncle Kenneth jerks a bit. Ah, he expostulates. He’s a gent, a real gent. He goes over to the bell and presses it. It’s an electric bell. It’s the latest thing. It’s very shrill, there’s this far-off shrill sound and a pause and then the sound of boots on far-off steps, a stirring, a summoning of the elves deep down in the ground. Thank you, says Mrs Trevelyan. I have a headache. It’s all roses, dear. She’s saying it’s all roses dear to her daughter. Agatha is standing up because she’s polite, even to her mother. Roses, Mother? Roses, dear. Back again, back again. One cannot move for roses. She’s touching her hat which hasn’t a rose on it, it’s got a kind of sprig of heather with a lily on top. It’s been roses in the spring, roses in the summer, roses in the autumn, she sighs. You’d think they’d have a new idea, these French, now and again. The hallway is big but it’s already filled up with Mrs Trevelyan. Basically, it’s something to do with her projective personality. She doesn’t like to be ignored. She sets people on edge. She sets inanimate objects on edge. You’re an animate object. But even the inanimate parts of you, like your fillings, react to Mrs Trevelyan. They react even more to Mrs Trevelyan than your animate parts. In fact, the inanimate parts of you seem to take over your animate parts when Mrs Trevelyan is around. It’s a very curious thing. You feel like slush. You feel like slush to her windscreen-wiper. She wipes you out. I think you must have got the nub by now. Imagine being her daughter. Swish, swish.
Up comes the servant, on cue. It’s Milly. She’d gone through the dining-room down to the kitchen, keeping incredibly blank. Then when the kitchen door was shut behind her and Dorothy looked up from out the steam on the range this blank face had kind of crumpled up and tears had plopped on to the original earthenware tiles that (I checked) some bastard’s gone and lifted since and replaced with cork. What’s up, duck? said Dorothy. Let me tell you here, in case you shrivelled-up cynics think that Dicky Thornby has lost all faith in ’uman koind – Dorothy is nice. She’s large, she’s ample, she smells of bread if her BO isn’t on form, she wheezes a bit, she’s straight down the line nice. Nice as in kind, generous, thoughtful, cuddly. She hails from Wiltshire. London gets up her nose and literally. Her cooking’s so English but her Irish stew is succulent. She can’t handle beans, for some reason. She likes gravy. She likes dishes to look brown and sensible and a lot. She’s never heard of quiche lorraine. She doesn’t wash her hands after visiting the toilet but who cares? She’s wholesome, she’s clean, she’s a miracle, she tucked up Evelyn and Agatha and Giles and William, in that order, when she was so young she didn’t have hair on her chin. Drink to Dorothy, you ornery haute cuisine bastards.
Milly wouldn’t tell what was the matter. Dorothy hugged her some and put it down to nerves. She’s got just the thing for nerves. Dr Quacker’s Miracle Pills. Guaranteed Relief. Money Back If Not. No Nerve Strain Since, Says Busy Nurse. Bell shrieks, vibrating the pan and Dorothy’s brain. Wipe your eyes and nose-parts, dearie, advises Dorothy. Milly goes up. It’s the memsahib.
Yes ma’am ma’am ma’am? I mean, one ma’am.
She curtsies. The hall is big. The chequered tiles fan out on every side. She’s a pawn, basically. Mrs Trevelyan tuts and moves (Queen to Hall Table with the Carefully Ironed Times on 3). Uncle Kenneth doesn’t, he hovers and makes his usual little noises in his throat and wonders why Agatha is staring at the telephone and holding her hands very tight and how his little surprises never go quite right. Milly helps Mrs Trevelyan off with her coat. The boxes are in the carriage, says Mrs Trevelyan. Milly has taken off memsahib’s coat without too much effort, it’s a great milestone, she’s sweating but pleased. Ma’am, one ma’am. She’s forgotten which hook it’s supposed to hang from. Lily said there is only one hook for Mrs Trevelyan’s coat and she was showed it. There are twelve hooks in the coat cupboard. Three are unoccupied. She tries the one on the left, the first one. The coat won’t hang. It won’t hang. She’s using the wrong hook, or maybe the wrong tab on the coat, she mustn’t look surprised, be it ever so, be it never ever, be it never ever so queer and if you drop it dust it down and don’t look surprised. They’re talking, amongst themselves, about hats. That’s all right then. She finds the tab, it’s tiny, the hook’s too big, they’re all the same size of bloody hook forgive me Lord, it’s stupid, fancy that, she hooks the coat by the big furry collar, never ever ever, but it might’ve been Lily done it, they won’t see, dunna fret, it hangs there like it’s unhappy, squirrels’ fur, a hundred squirrels at least, a hundred hanging squirrels looking unhappy but shrugging it off, look sharp, keep blank, close cupboard, get boxes out th’carriage, don’t drop, don’t fret, don’t expect or ’ate.
Good advice, huh? Don’t expect, don’t hate. That just about covers the ground. What memsahib had meant yesterday, if you’re too pissed or something to have got it, is don’t spit, posh version. Milly’d looked blank, but she’d nodded. Don’t expect, don’t hate. Don’t spit in the wind or at anybody else. Not a bad credo for the new millennium. The Anti-Expectoration Movement. The last one, hey, we spat all over. It was an orgy of expecting and hating. There was spittle coursing down the windows. This one, we should keep silent, receive, try to like a bit more, even love. Zelda is getting deep inside me. It sounds better when she says it. It sounds better when it’s said from the pillow next to me. Like dawn in Kyoto, nightfall over Lhasa, moonlight through the Sierra Nevada, a grey mizzle over the Thames and Milly humping these bloody hatboxes up the steps under the wrought-iron and fancy glass portico with nicely unpeeling pillars if you can imagine that. Try to. OK, OK, here it is on a plate, here’s the shot – rear view, mid, angled up the steps, her black skirt and white apron-ties at the back and black boots and firm black hair that’ll have its little fancy white cap at tea-time, humping these big lightweight drums of hatboxes, about the same size and shape as the zoetrope drum – light motifs, geddit? – the front door swinging open to her foot and never ever leave it open for the draughts and drunks. Interior view door swinging open note that nice light shift across the waxed tiles, Mike. Luverly. Milly is in monochrome. Her face is white. She is not robust, but she’s not dying either. Until yesterday she lived every one of her thirteen years next to the Worksop soap works. The world’s worst soap works were the soap works in Worksop. You got filthy, living next to the soap works in Worksop. All her almost fourteen years Milly has breathed in the equivalent of two packets of unfiltered Woodies a day. Here she’s breathing in a little less, but her room is smoky. The chimney is badly aligned, it’s under the roof, it’s got no draw. I’ve seen this room. It had an art student in it The fireplace was blocked. Milly’s room, I said. No, Philidea, actually, she replied. Something like Philidea or maybe Philadelphia, even. There was a lot of paint around and most of it on her face. She was a posh punk, I guess. She was maybe how my great-aunt would’ve ended up if she’d been born in the 1960s. Only maybe, because my great-aunt was quite sensible and practical and serious. Actually, Philadelphia was probably all these, too, but I didn’t hang around long enough to check her out. It was the three guys in the room: they looked like they were on stand-by for a lousy Channel 4 drama about this jerk visiting his grandfather’s old house and finding it full of art students on a hand-held camera. You know what I mean. I can’t help it if they were lounging clichés. That’s how they were. It was a few years back. Ripped jeans and Hallowe’en faces were in. Milly would’ve screamed and screamed. She’d have liked the two-bar electric heater, th
ough. She’d have appreciated that, even without the spit and the fizz.
Zelda’s come back from the overdue books. The absent overdue books. The absent centre, as this pseud creep with about three Ph.D.s on Milos Forman calls it. He teaches here. He likes the idea, he tells me, of a library full of books that are overdue. Yeah, shelf after shelf after empty shelf, Rick, an absent presence of books that are semenotically there, y’know? Yup, I say, especially when he gets shot at the end. He gets really flustered when I say that, because I say it a lot these days.
Phantom books, I think he means. Like phantom films. Yeah, yeah. I’ll buy him a drink some day, step on his glasses, steal one of his doctorates, lend him Honky Tonk 2. He impresses Zelda.
They’re all back in the living-room, they’ve moved out of the hall draughts. The hall draughts are worse than the living-room draughts which, if you position yourself right, can be avoided. The hall draughts can’t be avoided, they’ve irradiated the whole area, they’ve got every corner covered. Everyone has a kind of draught Geiger counter built into them at this time. It’s not surprising: a draught can snuck up under your five layers and settle in there inside your drawers and before you can say lozenge it’s manufacturing fluid in your lungs and you’re on a downhill slope, guv.
The hats are out. It’s admiring time. It’s always like this when Mrs Trevelyan goes shopping. It’s what mothers and daughters are supposed to do. Uncle Kenneth is hanging around because he knows the tea’s coming up in a minute and he wants Agatha to look at the fellow taking a walk through the zoetrope. He’s not too sure about his sister-in-law looking at it, but she wouldn’t anyway, she’s sick to her carious back teeth of his machines and moving pictures and mismatching spats. Milly is sort of waiting to be dismissed because she can’t remember whether you never ever or you do. Lily is on tea-duty. Morning tea with a fan of biscuits and the morning sugar-bowl with the fancy coat of arms. Lily comes in while Mrs Trevelyan is lifting up a trousseau with a big bronzed bloom on it that reminds Agatha of a malignant tumour in one of Father’s medical books though she doesn’t say it she just says very elegant, Mother, it’ll suit you I’m sure, while behind this gauzy sentence there are all these Roman depravities in togas and a steam train whistling and smutting and William flying through the air with his articles because he’s been booted out of Randle. Where’s Giles in all this? She’s nodding and wondering if Giles will telephone with an explanation. He’s not sure he can telephone. Maybe he’ll sneak out and get to a public telephone You May Telephone From Here, if he has some pennies. He must, it’s simply essential. She’ll shoot to the telephone if it rings. She nods and smiles while the ridiculous number of hats piles up and there’s tissue paper all over the place and Milly’s thinking she should be tidying up and Lily gives a cool little bob and exits not helping our Mill and there’s the japanned tea-tray winking its silver on the tea table behind the chaise longue and on the japanned tea-tray there’s a really modern whacky teapot Uncle Kenneth bought for Christmas, which Madre doesn’t like too much, it’s kind of ceramic bamboo but Lily hasn’t got the message yet. Agatha’s decided not to tell Madre. When she imagines telling Madre there’s this awful blackness and dizziness, there’s Madre with her mouth open and her eyes popping out, there’s this frightful beastly screaming and the Romans are laughing in their depraved togas, laughing and laughing and waving chicken-bones. She nods and says how charming at a light brown straw with a soot-grey wing on the front. There are enough hats here for a costume museum. I’m thinking that, she’s not. She’s thinking there are enough hats here for a millinery. Uncle Kenneth is helping himself to sugar. He’s pouring his tea out. He’s drinking it. He makes a noise when he drinks. Milly’s staring at him because it’s that loud and he sticks his lower lip right out and it’s not how Sis said they drink he hasn’t even got his little finger stuck up. Mrs Trevelyan’s running out of steam, her natter is slowing down, you can tell she’s getting irritable and she’ll stay irritable until her afternoon nap. Put these back, take them away, into my room, she says. Put these back take them away into my room hits Milly’s brain and she jumps. She was gawping, never ever gawp, her mouth shuts, she turns blank. Yes, ma’am. It’s a squeak. She clears her throat. Ma’am is looking at her pretty nastily. Make allowances, Mrs T, c’mon. The girl’s new to all this shit. But Mrs T isn’t like that. The one thing that saves Milly from getting yelled at is that now meaning then was a hell of a time for finding domestics, decent or indecent. There was a supply and demand imbalance. Domestics could be cheeky and survive because it was a hell of a thing to find a replacement. There are articles in all the papers about this, I’ve read them, on microfilm I’ve read them, I’ve taken rolls of microfilm out of their capsules and put them in the wrong way up and got a ricked neck because I’m lazy and I hate machines, it’s been like this for years, even the really modern crazy people are moaning about it between jigging around and humping each other and throwing flat-irons at their partners if they’re Frieda Lawrence and don’t like doing the dishes because she didn’t, David did them. He did a lot of things. He did a lot of DIY, painting and decorating and stuff. He washed his clothes and cooked and sewed. He dug the garden. He didn’t moan about the servant shortage because he liked to do these things, he liked to wrestle and heave with the great mistress of life, with the elements of earth, air, fire and water, with his vital being, with all that Lawrentian stuff. Peeling potatoes and getting his knuckles chapped kept him in touch with the living man. Zelda’s nodding. It’s Zen, she’s saying. You sit all night in the temple yard and then go off and sweep leaves into perfect circles. Mrs T has never swept a leaf in her life. She can drop a tub of talc and someone else gets to sneeze over it. No wonder she hasn’t got this vital thing. No wonder, I’m thinking, America isn’t very Lawrentian. I’m thinking maybe I should rent a cottage with no running water and get my hands chapped drawing up the bucket each morning. In England I mean, mate. Roots and that. Foind my voital English bing. Maybe there isn’t that sort of cottage left in England. Maybe I’d have to go to Newfoundland or somewhere to find a cottage with no running water and a bucket in a well. That’s a terrible thought. But then, maybe it’d drive me mad. Maybe this Third World Thoreau Iron John thing would not suit me after all. Maybe I’d just pine for my Magimix and my electric toothpick. Zelda’s saying I should get back to the action. But they’re just sitting around sipping tea, Zelda. She says I should try to be Henry James about them sipping tea. Zelda did Henry James for her master’s. She’s smart. But I’m not Henry James, Zelda. I just see them sipping tea with their little fingers stuck out in this room stuffed full of objets d’art and I feel very claustrophobic. What’s Agatha thinking, Ricky? I’ve told you what Agatha’s thinking: she’s in a mess. She just wants Madre to get out of the way so she can perhaps tell Uncle Kenneth about William but right now she’s kind of treading water, she’s confused, she’s developing a headache, headaches and dyspepsia are really in at this time, practically everyone was trying not to fart the whole time, it must have been the diet or something, they didn’t have great stomachs and there was a lot of mental fatigue, probably from straining their eyes in lousy light and breathing in coal smoke and stuff. I think I ought to change the paragraph.
Phew, as me dad would say in World’s End Park, nice to git out, eh son? Nice to have a bit o’ fresh oof. (Chuckle chuckle.)
Too right, Pop, I reply, nursing me ribs. Cor though, that was a short one, eh? That was sort of late-Beckett length, I’d say.
Mrs T’s talking. I was going to snip some but what she’s saying is quite interesting. Agatha has discovered a bit of sunlight on the window-sill. She’s actually sitting on the window-sill. It’s a nice shot: sunlight rippling over the creamy dress, her grey eyes, her hair kind of glowing as hair does in sunlight, youthful and fresh, even the soft down on her forearm’s glowing, David Hamilton crossed with T. S. Eliot, her Geiger counter clicking but she can take it, the sunlight’s keeping her warm mentally, the mornin
g sun, the plunge, that’s Virginia Woolf says Zelda, I know the plunge is Virginia Woolf, Zelda, but a film without cultural references is not art house, OK?
bother yourself about me, dear. Isn’t it a little late for a frock? They say it will be frightful tomorrow. But I expect you want to keep ahead. When you get to our age, dear, one wishes to conserve. Don’t catch chill. We cannot have two invalids in the house. If I may count myself an invalid, if I may have that privilege. Father’s habit of encouraging pot-luck is awfully trying. One has to play the hostess when one can hardly see the guests for one’s thumping. Though guests, I think, in most cases anyway, is hardly the correct term, since guests are usually invited.
Piercing side-glance at Uncle Kenneth. A twitch of the mouth. Sip tea. It’s a great part. Martita Hunt’s doing it, of course, someone good at half-crazy ladies stirring behind their cobwebs. Mrs Trevelyan is half-crazy and she’s intelligent. She doesn’t come at you screaming with a cudgel but kind of pads around and just when you think it’s OK, you’re safe, she’s only talking about herself out comes the gimlet and you’re perforated, oof, under the second rib. That’s why Agatha’s sitting on the window-sill. It’s safer. And the sun’s great. The sun’s burning on her eyelids, it’s aflame, it’s pathetic November stuff but it’s turning everything under her closed eyelids into a golden beyond, really incredibly golden and beyond and oceans of it and it’s even warm, she’s drinking it up, she’s got her small chin lifted and it’s on her throat above the lace collar, she’s showing her throat to the sun, she’s letting the sun kiss her on the throat and on the eyelids and it’s quite sexual though she doesn’t think hey, this is quite sexual, she thinks if only I could stay like this forever and ever and there wasn’t this awful thing that is like a frightful dream you cannot wake up from, this beastly horrid thing with William and what am I to do if only Mother would go away Uncle Kenneth would help me oh this sun, this sun, it’s so vital, it’s probably full of vitamins, I’m sure it is, it does feel as if it is and medically.
