by Adam Thorpe
Zelda?
She’s gone.
I think she got tired. She’s left early. Weirdo’s snoring. She doesn’t keep official hours always. That’s Zen, guv. I think maybe she’s psyching herself up for Todd Lazenby Tonight, the pseud creep. He has girls dropping off his every vowel. Even though he’s incredibly ugly and quite small and has a lazy eye. Lazy-eyed Lazenby the laser brain. No one understands him, that’s why they hang off his every drawl. He makes movies sound like particle physics and particle physics is sexy. These girls bump up and down on his wooden spoon then they go home to Mom and Pop like they’ve been beamed down from the Starship Enterprise and Mom and Pop chew their hayseed and shake their heads as Miss Spock decodes Rocky 3 or some other crap and she feels brainy when she isn’t, she’s actually less brainy than her mom who can at least write. If she wasn’t jacked up with Lazenbyspeak and patent Lazenbyseed the girl would have a hard time thinking at all. I try to teach them to think but it’s very tough with a class of holograms. The real kids are somewhere else, thinking simple and original thoughts under sweet appel orchards in delitefule aere. I think Lazenby is quite evil, really. I’ve told Zelda this. And I said he must have AIDS by now. She said are you implying people with AIDS are evil? I said Zelda, you have just committed the sin of syllogism. I’m surprised at you. I donate my boost to AIDS welfare. I—
How the hell did I get onto this? Don’t I trust her or something? Aren’t we in love with each other? Aren’t I sure that This Is It and maybe for always? Zelda Zelda Zelda. Thank you for coming into my life. Back into my life because we had a long interval with no ice-cream some time back. Try not to leave it for lousy Lazenby and a bunch of five-syllable words that sound like diseases.
Zelda has grey eyes. A still of Zelda. Still Number Seven: Zelda laughing at my cake. I baked her a cake for her thirtieth. It didn’t rise to the occasion. We had a great time laughing. Hang on a minute, don’t rush out to scan Ricky’s sweetheart until I say so. Still Number Eight: my great-aunt Agatha not laughing because you didn’t when someone was taking your photograph in a studio in 1913 and it was costing your papa an arm up to the elbow. See the grey eyes? See the way she’s lifting her head to the light and looking as Burne-Jonesy as possible? See how if she was photographed laughing at a cake instead of looking like the Lady of Shalott in good times she might just pass for Zelda? See how crazy it was to hike up and pin down a tumble of hair like that? See how she has the same tumble of hair as Zelda only in all the other photos I have of my great-aunt Agatha it’s not allowed to tumble? See how grave phantoms are and how laughing the living? See how terrible the difference and how terrible the sameness?
Mike and Bosey and even Sylvia are getting really sore at me. They’ve had a very hard time from the itinerant street traders of Lunnen. They’ve had cough pastilles and marigolds and oranges and a bit o’ rump-work thrust at them and Bosey’s needles were on purple. It was like My Fair Lady shot by Pasolini or someone and their sleeves smell of juniper berries. I have to say that there is indeed a serious drink problem around here, like there’s a serious sound problem. The growler’s driver negotiates a city with no zebra crossings and a million horses with iron hooves and cars with brakes as dicky as their steering driven by people with no driving certificates and big electrical trams and bigger double-decker buses without roofs on from which brats in boaters chuck half-sucked barley sugars at his rubbers on a bottle of some unidentifiable liquor a day. I don’t know where he is right now, with Uncle Kenneth and Agatha bouncing about inside the tatty coachwork, but what I do know is that he is glowing under his cape despite the drizzle and a couple of half-sucked barley sugars stuck to his head. The horse is not drunk. It is the horse that leads. The horse has The Knowledge between its blinkers. Despite this, it has haphazardly flayed flanks because the driver thinks the horse has only a blasted farthin’ inside ’is noddle, you can ’ear it rattlin’, it’ll pay for the knackers when they split ’im open.
Ah, the misery of the animals, the misery, the misery.
There’s no one in the library. Either that or weirdo’s stopped breathing. I just dozed off myself. I dreamt I was a leaf being swept by Zelda. I was a very heavy leaf but she swept me into a perfect circle with the other leaves, who were discussing something about Canadian fishing rights, I think. It’s really quiet down here. I have banks of books either side of me. Zelda’s subjects. I am gripped by a sense of my total unreality. I may not exist. According to Laserbrain I don’t. I am just a text, he tells me. I am about as important as a paper on Canadian fishing rights. I am a leaf out of a book on myself. I must not panic. I know why I’m thinking this. It’s to do with some biological process in the brain. I’ve dropped off and I haven’t quite climbed back up again. I’m a failure. I’m going to be sixty in a few years’ time. My boost would make a great golf handicap. I repeat myself. I tell the same jokes all the time. I don’t listen enough. I don’t listen because everyone else tells the same jokes or says the same things about the same things or even different things all the time. Why should I listen? Even Zelda – even ZELDA tends to say the same things all the time. I don’t care a fuck about sweeping leaves into circles. What a waste of days. Even symbolically. I’m making a film that doesn’t exist. Maybe no one’ll come to the party. Maybe this film that doesn’t exist will play to an empty room. Empty except for myself, which is really empty. What a great metaphor for the brain. I am gripped by a sense of my total isolation. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’ll wake up and I’ll be in hospital with minor injuries and a big headache and this doctor with sideburns and a voice like David Niven’ll boom well well, we took that corner in the Bond Equipe G.T. 4S Saloon a teeky bit hastily day before yesterday, didn’t we now, Mr Thornby? It’ll be 2 January 1965 and I’ll have dreamt the last thirty years. I’ll know all the moves. I won’t make lousy films to pay for the great personal statement that never gets made due to the fact that the lousy films are so lousy only my uncle in Melbourne wants to see them. I won’t compromise. I’ll make great tragic films on a budget so low the unknown actors’ astonishing portrayal of hunger and distress comes from hunger and distress. Waste, waste. I hate this air conditioning. It dries my mouth out. The last thirty years can’t have been real. This place can’t be real. Todd Lazenby can’t be real.
Stop.
Don’t wipe it. Keep it. Save it and continue. You never know what we might need. No one’ll know the difference, anyway. The moon landing shots were filmed right here, in Houston. The caretaker says so. He’ll be coming round rattling his keys in a minute. He worked up at NASA. He peeped through a keyhole in ’69 and saw Neil Armstrong playing golf in slow motion in a very large grey bunker. It’s his big thing. He grabs your neck and looks around like he’s expecting to be jumped and hisses in your ear one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, said Tricky Dicky, and his whole face goes into a wink. You have to run or you get the conspiracy theory in full, and it’s long. He wants me to make a film about it. To make a film about these guys making a film of these guys making a film that wasn’t. I say to him, you’re on the moon, kiddo.
But it’s a great idea. I should have had it in ’69. It could have been low budget. Just steel walls and grey sand and this caretaker and a few Michelin men bouncing around in slow-motion. An intense study of illusion, astonishingly wrought. Derek Malcolm. With this work, Richard Thornby proves himself to be the Robert Bresson of British cinema. Philip French. I wish I’d taken a corner too hastily, just once.
Here’s Loony Tune with the keys. Shucks. It’s all for real. It’s all too late. It’s all my fault. Maybe I should take up golf again.
I could’ve called it The Keyhole. Poster with a big eye in a keyhole. Or a full moon.
Hey, Ricky, stick to what you’ve got. And not got.
Anyway, hey, ping, lightning-bolt time – there’s a flaw, a very big one: You Cannot Have a Keyhole in an Air-Lock. I mean, haven’t I seen 2001 twenty-one times? Don’t all doors slide or something in NASA?
I want to ask him. Here he is. I want to see his face crumple. It’s already crumpled. I want to see it crumple some more. Hiya, Mr Thornby. Workin’ laayet, Mr Thornby? No, I’m just thinking about keyholes and writing down what we’re saying as we say it. This is CNN, live from — I’m lockin’ uyup, Mr Thornby, but if you’re talkin’ about keyholes … (Hand-on-my-neck-eyes-all-about routine.) One smaall steyep for—Leonard, you cannot have a keyhole in an air-lock. Not a see-through keyhole. It’s physically impossible. It would probably suck out your eyeball. Mr Thornby? Yes, Leonard? I swear to you, sir, I am not a liar. They did not land on the moon. The moon is a virjeyen. Man has not landed on the moon, Mr Thornby. I sayed theyem not landing on the moon with my own eyes. They want to eliminate me, sir. Before I speak ayet. Maybe you want to eliminate me too, sir. I don’t, Leona — Maybe that’s why you have loored me down heyer, Mr Thornby. It’s a trap, ain’t it, Mr Thornby? Thank the Lord I’ve gotten my geyern. The eliminators ain’t never succeeded and they is not going to naye no way. Leonard, I was only jo
Shucks. We’d have made a great team. But he blew me away with his forefinger. Leonard is part of our equal opportunities policy for the mentally challenged. Everyone calls him Leonard the Loon. We can’t all be fired, not simultaneously. Actually, he’s only pretending to be mentally challenged so he can keep the job. Which must drive him crazy. It would me, if I wasn’t already.
Lily is saying something important. (I’m sorry about that drivel about keyholes and moons and Leonard and the stuff about my non-reality last week. I’ve played some golf. I’m up and running again. I ought to wipe it, but I’m superstitious about dumping rushes. Always have been. You never know. We might need an ice-cream break. There was always an ice-cream break at the Enfield Ritz. The Lady with the Limp’d come out a bit too early and you got distracted just when it was really important. She’d stand down at the bottom just in front of the screen and her hairdo would be all lit up and flickered over and she’d be rattling coins or maybe it was her teeth with this big tray strapped on to her like she had the weirdest breasts in the world and you missed the vital bit at the end of the first half, it was like it was really unimportant, the whole thing up there was unreal, she had no respect, she was a breaker of spells and she had a limp which for some reason made everything taste a little unpleasant. Maybe everything was off, or maybe it was contaminated by the cigarette hanging off her top lip because there was ash on my Wall’s Choc Special once. Ash or chocolate powder, I wasn’t quite sure. There’s nothing wrong with limps. They can be very attractive, like moles. It was just that particular limp. And she had very long painted fingernails which you could imagine tearing the screen to shreds. You had to avoid them when you took your Wall’s and the red torch made things worse, it sort of lit her nostrils and not much else. I was frightened of her but I liked ice-cream.)
Actually, Lily has just said something REALLY important but we’ve missed it, I’m sorry, the refreshments vendor came out too early, as usual.
(I just really have to add that one time she didn’t come out. It was during Lassie, of all things. The first half ended and she didn’t come out. The local adverts came up and she still hadn’t come out. She’d died. Honest. It was terrible, actually. I cried in Lassie but I thought maybe it was because she hadn’t come out and I knew life could not be relied upon. Maybe. Her name was Lil. Not to be confused with Lily. I’m glad she’s part of all this, now. Phantoms can sell ice-creams and popcorn and Liquorice Allsorts, too, you know. We have a policy of equal opportunities in this art house. The refreshments are real and they’ll be on sale in a minute. Watch her fingernails. She won’t change a two bob piece for nuffink.)
Wot’s vat fing in the sittin’ room, ven?
(Hey, I’m gonna drop these phoney phonetics. I can’t do it all for you. This is not Pygmalion. I am not George Bernard Shaw.)
What thing? says George. Just get on, says Dorothy. Mr Kenneth likes his pea soup piping. What bloody thing then, mite? says George. The thing on the little table, says Lily, with a black cloth over it.
She sniggers into her hand. A lock pops out of its pin. She tucks it back.
I peeped under, she says. She sniggers again. George’s face is like a little boy’s for a teeky moment, mouth open, forgetting itself. If it wasn’t for his bleached-out stubble and flab and skin fissures you could breathe on the lens and have him back in Aberdeen for a second, watching his mother knit. Then it collects itself and tucks into a scowl. He grabs the lock between his fingers and tugs it. Lil says ow but her head goes with the lock. This golf did me good. I’m beating down the fairway fast. My swing is great. I’m not slicing, I’m not scooting off into the rough. Stick with it, Rick. Ow, says Lily again. What the fuck are you snigglin’ aboot, mite? says George. Dorothy’s stirring the oyster sauce. She’s on hold. She only ever intervenes when George starts swinging a fist. He never contacts with it, just swings it, but one day he might. Gerroff of me, says Lily. It were a bloke. She sniggers again and I’m sorry about this detail but a bit of nasal stuff shoots out onto her apron. I forgot to say that she’s in her black and white outfit with a little cap because she’s just served tea. Don’t ask me when she got changed out of her cleaning and buffing cotton but it’s like she did it so quick she still smells of beeswax and petrol. She smells of petrol because this morning she was dealing with the washing. Petrol for stubborn stains. I was on a Persil ad once, years ago, and the blood was ketchup. Early days of colour. Dollop of ketchup on a nice white shirt. It looked like a Hammer horror and I got fired. I said it wasn’t my fault. We tried blood and it was more than stubborn, it was bloody-minded. I showed them a pile of underpants with perfect skid-marks and said how’s about using something more normal, not everyone’s hubby’s just got blown away by the Krays. That’s when they fired me. Dick the Talking Prick. Maybe petrol works better, but it sounds pretty drastic. The wash-room’s more like a garage. Sometimes Lily comes in smelling like she’s pissed in her knickers, but that’s the ammonia and benzine cocktail she uses on Mr Trevelyan’s suits, because Mr Trevelyan’s suits accumulate stains like he’s been strapped to the bonnet of a Crossley Open Tourer going at sixty down a country lane on a summer evening or something. This bit of nasal stuff sticks to the frilly starched bit over her chest and it’s really bad luck because otherwise she’s immaculate. OK, she has breadcrumbs under her nails but that’s because – you won’t believe this – she’s been cleaning one of Agatha’s dresses and it’s beautiful, it’s pure white silk and you can’t wash pure white silk so you use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs. I have a great storyboard for a Persil ad: cleaning through the ages. Petrol and ammonia and breadcrumbs, really complicated and foul-smelling and terrible for the skin, then it’s all shoved aside by my first wife holding a Persil packet. I could’ve made my name. Then I could’ve made my Great Personal Statement. I’m in the rough. I’m hacking out of it now. Keep in the clean, Rick. A bloke, eh? says George. Lily sniggers and says, a bloke without nuffink on. George lets the lock go and Lily tucks it back up under her little cap. They’re nae jabberin’ in there now, are they? says George. Lily shakes her head. She tugs open the dresser drawer and counts out the cutlery. She bursts into sniggers again, then sniffs it back. A hand-barrow trundles past the window and George watches the blurry boots pass and then the wheels. The window’d give a peep of frillies if you aye twisted your neck like a chicken. He’s thought this many times but the window can’t open more than an inch and the wrong way. Dorothy’s wiping her mouth. He does like it piping hot, does our Mr Kenneth, she repeats. She always says this if Uncle Kenneth is around for luncheon, but Uncle Kenneth never gets it piping. It’s weird. She says it way too soon and then forgets about it. The soup is ladled out anyway about half an hour before it’s served up because that’s the way Mrs Trevelyan likes it, she has sensitive lips, they chap easily, and Uncle Kenneth has to lump it. It’s in the bowls and it’s accumulating a scum and when the spoons sink in it’ll dent really low and then fissure an
d the liquid part will seep through disgustingly, but no one really notices. We’re in England. It’s 1913. They liked scum on their food, maybe, like we like gravy. They liked gravy then, too. The gravy boat sails at every meal. Dorothy’s gravy is really salty, it’s like she has lead poisoning or something and maybe everyone else does because no one says anything, they just pour on this thick brown salty stuff all over their meat and potatoes and whatever and tuck in elegantly, not opening their mouths too much, getting gravy drops on their huge napkins which’ll keep Lily really busy the next morning. I’m feeling hungry. Writing about food before lunch is a mistake. Our canteen here makes McDonald’s look inconvenient. The people behind the counter use surgical gloves. It’s like you’re queuing up for an operation. I think they’re wearing surgical gloves because they might have AIDS and a cut finger but it might also be because the food’s so irradiated they have to protect themselves. I don’t know. Everything is huge and varnished. The apples are like balloons and you can see yourself in them. They taste like balloons. Everything tastes like balloons. The inside of a balloon, I mean. The french fries, even. Nowhere else in the world do they make french fries so regular. I sit down with my tub of french fries and try to find one that isn’t regular. It’s like being in China or something. When I find one that isn’t regular I say yippee and hold it up. The regular students chewing next to me look up and they’re all as blonde as french fries. Back home we say chips, I shout. We eat them out of the Daily Herald, preferably the sports pages, so we can walk into a lampost reading about Stanley Matthews through the vinegar scrim. Not one of them looks the same, and they’re soggy. That’s the British for you. Not one of them looks the same, and they’re soggy. Then I eat the french fry. No one even sniggers. They nudge away from me. They think I’m related to Leonard. They think I’m part of the equal opportunities policy.
