Still

by Adam Thorpe

  I’ll bring you something to eat, she whispers. Whatever you do, don’t move around too much. We’re right above the servants’ quarters, remember, Willo. She gives a little nervous laugh. Oh, Will, it’ll be all right. I’ve got it all worked out. Oh dear, it’s all so frightful, but it’ll be over by this evening, I promise. Right will prevail. I’ll be back within the hour. Trust me, Will.

  She’s so GOOD. Maybe they don’t make ’em like that any more. She flits out. Not quite smoothly out because her hem snags, as I knew it would. It snags on something really prosaic: a nail. The big HIG could write a twelve-volume treatise on the significance of this clip because he’s full of crap, he can spin it out of nothing and everyone applauds because he’s the Emperor, inne? There’s a bit of embroidery left on the nail. Let me tell you something. When I visited this house in ’90 I went up to the attic. It was full of purple paint cans and plywood sheets and zinc sinks and heaps of unused polystyrene ceiling tiles left behind by the moving tides of interior fashion, it was really sad, and I found the nail. It was a big nail, sticking out at the bottom of a mainbeam. There was a tiny yellow thing on this big nail. It was a scrap of embroidery. I took it. I bought a locket in a junk shop on the Portobello Road, just a tinny thing, nothing special, it cost me a fortune but it was tiny and it clicked tight shut and that’s where I keep the scrap of my great-aunt. Round my neck. It’s better than ashes. Some people go through life without anything snagging ’em. They die forgotten, leaving nothing but dandruff on the terrible suit. Being snagged’s great. The door clicks shut. William closes his eyes and thinks about the woods behind Hamilton Lodge. A dryad flits, or maybe the sun shifts over a blackberry sucker. Maybe there’s no difference. Agatha’s a trooper. She’s terrific. He always considered that she didn’t really think much of him, that she preferred Giles. Thinking that she does really care about him makes him smile. Catch that. That smile is secret. He feels warm all of a sudden. She’s really terrific. They could run away together and live in a cottage somewhere like Aunt Rose and Uncle Jack, who never found anyone better but don’t sleep together, of course. They could read and talk and garden and he could create the most important butterfly collection in the British Isles. There are lots of butterflies at this time. There are lots of hedgerows and wild banks and thick woods and unpoisoned meadows. There are also some cheap cottages – David Herbert Lawrence can even afford them. It’s not all that crazy an idea, just näive. He’s fifteen. Let him keep that smile. It might have seen him through if the world wasn’t full of maniacs who run our lives for us and don’t smile like that, not ever, not like that.

  I’m really drained.

  Life is shit.

  You know the trouble with all my films? They were deliberately B. B as in Bad. B as in Bloody. B as in Bollocks. B as in Boring. In other words, they were lifelike, they were exactly like life. Not like life out there, I mean life as filtered by your Brain. Life out there is by Fellini, OK? But life in here is by me. You wouldn’t believe what my Brain gets up to. It believes in love stories turning out happily, it believes in things in general turning out happily once the rough patch is over and I get a new door lock because the fuckers smashed it to get themselves in – once I get a new door lock and sell the house and throw in the job for a part-time lectureship in Danish Cinema at Tahiti University where Zelda has just been appointed Chief Librarian. I’m serious. I’m serious not about this appointment but about the fact that I go round believing in this crap. I go round watching these really terrible B movies in my head and believing in them. I lie awake at night and when I’m not watching my Brain screening an intimate account of all the possible things that can go wrong with the human body as if I need these fucking medical lectures, this asshole lump of grey broccoli is screening stuff that makes On Golden Pond look like The Bicycle Thieves. What do I do about it? Zilch. I give classes on stuff like Neo-Realism and the New Wave and Redemption and Illusion in the Works of Robert Bresson and Illusion and Redemption in the works of Carl Theodor Dreyer to about three students and a hearing-aid and meanwhile I am engaging my attention with the kind of crap that used to go on at the Enfield Ritz when the main print had got held up or mislaid by some poncy pea-brain at Ponders End Plaza or nicked or left out in the drizzle or eaten by giant sewer rats or something. I hope you don’t mind me saying this. It’s like a public health warning before the main feature. This one’s coming in the middle of the main feature. WARNING: HUMAN KIND CANNOT BEAR VERY MUCH REALITY. Keep those B films rolling. At least you’re the star, you might get an Oscar if you act bad enough. Zelda says she thinks she’s in love with the creep. Maybe it’s his heckelphone. There goes Tahiti or wherever. I came back kind of disappointed and found my house burgled. Done over. Smashed up. They say it’s drugs wot do it. I made to make myself a cuppa cha ’cos that’s the Blitz spirit, innit, but they’d taken out my fuse-box. I mean taken out as in killed. Shotgun, maybe. For the sparks. I’m glad I wasn’t in. Hey, it was probably some of the students, they know my timetable, maybe the creep wants to keep me on my toes. I made to telephone Mummy I mean Zelda I mean my friend Carol happily married with twins who likes me and we swap British comedy classics because she’s British but the telephones had been taken. My studio went dark. The reel clattered out. I was off the air. No B films, no reruns of old soaps, no nothing but Des Pear in his terrible suit and an imperial litre of Famous Grouse, Duty Free, with a stupid Union Jack round its neck.

  I wish my grouse was fucking famous. Like Baudelaire’s or someone.

  Bom bom. Or maybe oof. Great stuff, Des, great stuff.

  Then this phantom enters. She stands there in her silk robe and stares at me. I’ve got the nadgers. I’m practically dribbling. I raise my glass. To Agatha, I say. To goodness. To beauty. To love. To you. She doesn’t say anything she just looks. Ricky? Christ, it’s Zelda. It’s the moonlight. Moonlight does wonderful things. She steps over the wreckage and sits down next to me. I thought you were my great-aunt, I say – you know, Great-Aunt Agatha. I think I’ve mentioned her. What’s that, Ricky? says Zelda. Apparently I am inarticulate. Funny, I thought I’d said it clear as daylight. Every time I open my mouth my sync point is out by about a quarter of a second. It’s like the blahdy Ritz all over again. She strokes my hair or what’s left of it after fifty-five years and Des Pear’s little number. The crickets are zizzing like crazy. I drink rarely, I try to say. Ssssh, that’s OK, she says. I’m giving up my project, I go on. It’s too draining. Masterworks are too draining. I’m pulling it. I have accepted that I am a complete failure. I turn. Christ, it’s not Zelda. The grey eyes have worms in them. The hand is like ice on my scalp. The silken robe is stiff and yellowed and there is a cobweb across the underarm. I’m so scared I cannot move. I swallow. I’m even scared to swallow. This is death, obviously. I’ve probably had eighteen straight whiskies, big ones. The mouth with its awful teeth opens. My great-aunt’s voice comes out, clear as daylight. Remember, she says. Then she flits out without snagging on anything but there’s a small greenish evacuation on the rug. (There was this morning, anyway.) I cry. I sob. I’m not sobbing for myself. I’m sobbing for her and what she said. Because the way she said it – it was pleading, it was very pleading. I have such a responsibility. I like responsibility. I’ve never really had any responsibility before. Greg and Maura just grew up, it was mostly Deirdre who did it all, things were like that in those days. I just read poetry to them and took them round the Science Museum and to Custer’s Last Stand in Sensurround which was a mistake and fished a bit on vacation and got them Edward Woodward’s signature and stuff and then suddenly their shoes were bigger than mine. At least Greg’s were. Maura’s were just higher. Now I have responsibility. I sat there in the wreckage of my house and sobbed because I knew it was all going to be OK and life is shit. It was all going to be OK because life is shit. Basically this is a promo for my new attitude. I’m going to try to stay out of it now. I’m not even bringing my clubs. I’m just gonna sit at my desk in the wreckage
of my house. I have a new fuse-box. At least they didn’t touch my computer. I don’t have to use my plume and inkpot and get chapped lips from my tongue helping out. You know why they didn’t touch my best friend? Because the phantoms stood round it and rippled their ectoplasm and pointed at them and went ooooh. We’re in this together, it was a great performance, it beats Securicor any day. Zelda, honey, go screw yourself. Go screw yourself, Todd Lazenby, go stick your dick in Spielberg’s clapper-board and keep it there. You’re a fake. You have no clothes on. I’m a little kid, I am humiliated, but I have a great responsibility and you wouldn’t even begin to have the teeniest-weeniest inkling of what this means, creep.

  That’s sour, but understandable.

  Now shuddup, son. Your muvver’s ’ad enough of your yap yap yap. So ’ave we all. Yap yap yap all blahdy day. Even the wallpaper’s ’ad enough, look, you’re peelin’ the blahdy wallpaper wiv yer jaw-mag. Puddesoginnit. All roigh’?

  All roigh’, Dad, all roigh’. Can I ’ave a bob for the flicks? Cor, fanks. Fanks, Dad!

  Phoney, so phoney. Even my ur-accent, my real one, sounds phoney. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. By Jove he’s got it. The heinous in Venus falls mainly on the penus. How true, by Jove, how true! Now button y’lip, mate, or I’ll zip it for yer.

  Ahem.

  The new maid, Milly Stephenson, hesitates before opening her door. It is a habit. She opens her door and enters her small room crouched beneath the attic. She doesn’t have to crouch because she’s small. But the room is indeed extremely low. A small pan of the furniture: water jug, small pan, cane chair with rickets, iron bedstead, hook, chest of drawers with missing knob and spotty three-sided mirror, small table with frayed edging of pink chintz nailed to it, nail-heads rusted, Polanski patches of damp and general rot on wall, tiny rug on bare boards, tiny rug has tinier hole in it for catching the big toe, bed has bedspread of white muslin that has seen better days in the guest suite of Mr Trevelyan’s great-aunt before a guest spewed up on it after a great Victorian Christmas in 1853. Tallow candle because there’s only electrics in the corridor. Oil-lamp someone forgot to refill and Milly’s too new to mention it. Window with view of roof-tiles and pigeons, mid-opaque due to collected grime, north-facing. In the time it’s taken to pan all that Milly has donned her black tea-serving uniform with frilly apron and frilly hat and frilly detachable cuffs and frilly detachable collar. It’s OK to look now. She’s doing something with her hair. A pin drops. She picks it up. She pokes it back in. She studies herself in the mirror, smoothing down her general frills. Creak. She looks up. Creak creak. Her chest flutters. She holds her hands tightly together in front of her apron. Ghosts. Mr MacPhearson said watch the ghosts ha haaar. Eyes widen. Creak creak creak. Tongue in her mouth. MacPhearson’s tongue. Gob. Dismissal. No commendation. The gentleman’s hand on her shoulder. Naked through the grass. Naked gent through the Wheel of Life. What the Butler Saw in the Pantry. Nay, the Master Bedroom. Creak. Ghosts. Boy in hall. Uncle in hall. White face and Miss Agatha in hall turning like Milly were th’ghost, queer uncle pushing her back into dining-room and booming at her till her ears split about some Irish situation and locomotives. He took a breath. She nodded. The young master will need his room turning out, she said. What young master? said he. The young m-m-m-master as I have just seed, sir, she said, bobbing. Stammer come back. Creak creak. Queer gentleman with eyebrows puts eyebrows very close to hers. Bad breath. Needs Dr Swillshake’s Extra Strong Menthol Fluid Beats Bad Breath Every Time Says Leading Dental Surgeon. There is no young master in this house, my dear. Both young masters are at school. You must be referring to the tradesboy delivering Miss Agatha’s new, ah, new, ah, new skirt, yes, yes skirt, a very charming one too, a yes skirt. I see, she said. Yes skirt. Well then. That settles that. Now, my dear, don’t let me interrupt you. Or I will be in a great deal of trouble! Queer uncle leaves her alone in dining-room. Creak. Tradesboys deliver skirts. Well I neveranee. Creak creak. Slow hexaminationary of ceiling like it’s a big cake o’ soap, for blemishes, bubbles, foreign matter. A variety of maps on it. Faces. Oh. Faces looking at her. She shivers. Under the bedspread with the yellowy stain is her rag doll. It has no mouth. When she prays to God she sits on the edge of the bed and holds her doll. This is what she does right now. Small clock on table with nailed pink chintz chimes tinnily because it’s on the hour, it’s time, she’ll be late down Amen. Doll goes back under bedspread. Agnes. The name of the doll is Agnes. Smooth down frills. Creak. Don’t look up at it. Look sharp. Yes skirt. Tradesboy wi’ white face. Yes skirt. Black hat. Posh black suit, posh shoes. Leave room backwards because the Devil likes to leap on weak spines. Door closes. Room empty. Shoot pigeons fussing blurrily through window-pane with grimy glass and blue curtain which is too short. Creak. Scuffle. Creak. Print that, like.

  Down below, downstairs upstairs upstairs downstairs in her lady’s chamber and out again, tea served, two different lots of tea ’cos memsahib’s imbibing it alone in darkened room, drawn curtains, headache, Aspirin Does Wonders For Your Overstrained Brain Says Leading Nurse, other tea in conservatory, Miss Agatha and queer uncle almost whispering, so do likewise wi’ will that be all sir, fresh pot sir, very good sir miss bob bob out again traps for the unwary everywhere ay and the olive trees blighted and blasted yea what a lark what a plunge who said that smooth frills down again dear Lord protect me from all hurt and bogies and the stuffed rat on the landing and Mr MacPhearson specially him cut.

  I’m sorry about this. I just want to get to supper. Stream of consciousness makes me sick. Nobody thinks like this. But I’m doped up and I’m keeping it. The cutting-room floor’s looking like my barber’s after the Grateful Dead freaks who’d decided to join the Hare Krishnas came in that time. Fuck off, Thornby. Just quit yacking and get to supper. WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW, SON. WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHO BUILT THE WORLD’S FIRST BLEEDIN’ SWING BLEEDIN’ BRIDGE. Do watch your language, dear. He’s only trying to inform us.

  George is belabouring his lapels and thigh, etc. Dorothy is stirring whatever I said they were having for supper ages ago, last year, when Zelda loved me. That’s Sylvia’s department. She’s got the Polaroid. She re-hired herself after I broke down by the wrong stuffed lemur and wept. Don’t expect me to remember. I’m falling apart. It is something meaty and tough and grandparenty. It is early evening. I can’t be more specific. Try saying specific on a lot of Texan ten-gallon gut-rot and hashish. Yeah yeah, hashish, hashish. I’m crumbling. I’m Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I’m Thomas de Quincey Jnr, I’m Jack Kerouac, I’d be so lucky. Zelda’s left me, pretty well, jogging and pole-vaulting with Pubes In the fucking Gate. PIG. Hey, that’s genius. PIG. I was never happy with HIG. It sounded affectionate. Pubes In the Gate, PIG. Well I never. Harry Hashish hath done it again. I feel nauseous, however. My father is turning my ears into broccoli. He’s only trying to inform us, dear. I need a vacation. I need a weekend off. I need to join my other neighbour Jake G. Firth Jnr and go drag some illegal immigrant around from the back of a Jeep on the Mexican border. I need to take a pot-shot at some tires on the freeway. I need to freak out in the way they do here. I need to go to NASA and ask if I can be on the next shuttle to inner space man, I need to leave skid marks on the interstate highway instead of in my underpants. I need to kill someone.

  I burnt an essay today. Like burning a thousand dollar note. The fifteenth rewrite. It cracked me up. I just burnt it. Fuck off, student. Go cheat off someone else. On the end of a match I burnt it. Oh, it was SO SATISFYING. Smear marks on the silver. Someone’s whingeing on about smear marks on the silver. It’s the butler. It’s the chief domestic. It’s Anthony Hopkins disguised as George MacPhearson. I hire only stars, Welsh stars, Welsh stars so costly you can’t make out what they’re saying and what’s more George MacPhearson is not Welsh. There are pimples on George MacPhearson’s neck a blind person’d want to pop, they read I KEN HAIRY BITS in braille. Let him whinge on. Let him overact. The smear marks mar the silvery shine, the mar smarks se
ar the shivery saliva by the light of the silvery moon, my dear, my love, by the light of the silvery moon, my pussy, my love, by oh fuck. Aye, George, aye. I’ll inform Lily of the matter. Dorothy is patting something. It may be blancmange. It goes up her arms as she pats and turns her into THE THING.

  Ricky, you’re being irresponsible. Seriously. He’s pissed, he’s completely shashed again, guys. Let’s cap up and tail out the takes.

  No, no. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m a genius. I’m Baudelaire. I work best horizontal. I want a cam remote on the nike and a scrim on everything and no zooms. I’m a genius. I want a rifle mike but watch it hey there are gonna be a ton of reversals, reaction shots, catchlights of candles in aghast stares, quietly aghast stares over the dinner-table, just candles actually, no luminaires Mike, real dark, shut right down, not even a day for night, barn doors tight, nothing, no scrims, no nothing, not half a lux that isn’t candle-light and a merrily blazing fire and one electric standard lamp, circa 1911, in the corner, OK? No buts, Mike. No buts. I’m a genius. I know what I’m doing. These are gonna be voices out of the murk, catchlights of eyeballs, taffeta rustles on the buzz track under silver and crystal pings, and that’s it. Murk.

  Bridging shot. WHERE’S MILLY? WHERE’S MY STAR? CHRIST, HOW CAN I WORK WITH THESE PEOPLE? Rick, you got the megaphone the wrong way round. We can’t hear you. You’re very faint. Mike’s been dead ten years. Bosey’s married with three kids. Sylvia’s in Spain on the plain someplace. Pierre’s unemployed. Joe Gel’s HIV but is doing just fine. Julie’s I don’t know where she is. Ossy you know about. I’m sorry he was like that with you. Maybe he’s insecure. It’s been rough lately. Can you hear us? We can’t hear you. You got the megaphone the wrong way round. It needs polishing. The Brasso is all dried up in the tin. Ah, here’s Milly. We had problems with the detachable cuffs. She has very thick wrists. Here’s George. He has a very thick neck. We have electric light in the dining-room. We have dusk through the long windows. We have a buzz track of Residential Street, Westminster, 3 November 1913. Do you need any bells?