Still

by Adam Thorpe

  In the attic, adds Agatha.

  Agatha is Guinevere, only no Lancelot has ever actually touched her. She’s been stuck in the nursery reading Tennyson and Scott and the Earl of Beaconsfield and hasn’t yet gone neo-realist and certainly doesn’t know what a man’s lips feel like. She’s the same age as Hilda. Hilda’s her great-great-great-niece. Hilda (hi, honey) is very lucky to have been brought up in the late twentieth century instead of in the early bit. She can wear shredded Levis and shoot heroin and shave her head to the scalp and get laid every day if she wants to without being a member of the destitute classes. Hilda is bright, she reads Dostoevsky and stuff, she’s awf to Awxford soon. Agatha is also bright but won’t be awf to Awxford soon because her mind also has to be kept virginal for whoever comes clopping up on his fat charger before she’s on the shelf at twenty-three. This is beginning to make her cross, mainly because it’s perfectly tedious. She’s hanging around at the back of these meetings in Hyde Park where women with large heads and small hats or maybe small heads with large hats shake their fists and shout but she also likes Tennyson and Scott and the idea of this tall dark handsome fellow coming up to her at the next tea dance and murmuring how she reminds him of Guinevere. It’s tricky. I don’t know what got me on to this. It doesn’t matter because no one’s said anything for a couple of minutes. I think they’re musing. Mrs Morgan le Velyan’s surveying the rout. Maybe they’re not musing – maybe they’re thinking what the fuck do we do now? genteel version circa 1913. I mean, in the attic is such a ridiculous place to be. It’s only just striking Agatha how actually frightfully ridiculous it is. It’s going to take him ages to come down, clomp clomp clomp clomp on the three flights of stairs, past the Boy Picking His Verruca, past Albert the One-Eyed Lemur, past the cows and churches and the tiny frightening anatomical one of a whale and everyone’ll have to wait and it’ll be frightfully awkward and beastly. She should have had him all prepared, hair brushed, shoes polished, waiting in the drawing-room or wherever. Mother sees through everything. She ruins everything. Papa is so awfully weak. Uncle Kenneth is useless. Now one supposes that Willo will be banished. She can almost hear the tumbrels rattling and the knitting needles prattling partly because she’s just re-read A Tale of Two Cities and has fallen in love with Carton this time instead of Darnay, know what I mean.

  Then he must be fetched, mustn’t he?

  That was Mrs le Fay, now Queen. Uncle Kenneth closes his eyes and tries to dematerialise himself, but the sago won’t let him.

  Yes, indeed, murmurs Mr Trevelyan. Yes indeed.

  What are you going to do? murmurs Agatha.

  That depends, does it not? shouts Mrs Trevelyan. She isn’t really shouting, but it sounds like shouting after all the murmuring. Uncle Kenneth’s eyes open and so does his mouth.

  Quiet, snaps his sister-in-law. Uncle Ken’s mouth snaps too but shut. He lets out a little nasal sigh which reminds Mrs Trevelyan deep down of the way Willo sighed in his cot as a golden-haired sleeping infant but it’s so deep down it needs a bathysphere and doesn’t even bubble.

  We have not yet comprehended, she says, why he has been – ah – um—

  Expelled, proffers Uncle Kenneth.

  The term is quite familiar to me, thank you. A horrible, ugly term, like expectoration.

  Spit is worse, says Uncle Kenneth quite unintentionally.

  You are the Devil’s own of a bore, sometimes! shrieks Mrs Trevelyan.

  Beatrice, please be calm—

  It has come, it has come!

  Beatrice?

  My attack! The – the strangulation! Help me, help me!

  Good God!

  Mr Trevelyan is entering the Valley of Death with his gallant six hundred, he’s standing up and leaning forward and saying are you all right, Beatrice dear? and it’s half a league, half a league, half a league onward and someone had blundered and volleyed and thundered into the jaws of death, into the mouth of Hell, Beatrice dear, are you all right, shall I fetch the doctor? Are you all right, my dear?

  She’s got her fingers underneath her collar and the embroidery is straining but she’s not blue, she’s breathing in deeply and shuddering, she’s definitely all right. It’s a great performance. Mr Trevelyan is really worked up. The Light Brigade is no more. He’d kept it in reserve but now it’s in tatters. He’s puce. He’s lost control. His nerve lies somewhere between the candelabra and the silver butter-dish. Keep it light, keep it light is his motto. But sometimes, to Carry On Quoting, his not to reason why, his but to do and die. He yanks his napkin from his throat and hurls it onto the table. Hurling a napkin onto the table is not a big thing, though. It just kind of flops and doesn’t even knock over his goblet. He’s definitely not reasoning why any more. He’s exerting his authority. It helps that he’s on his feet. He puts his knuckles on the table and leans on them with a really authoritative demeanour, trying to push the chair back with his calves to give himself space. Unfortunately the chair is caught on a ruck in the rug and so it’s riding up on his calves and practically tipping over. He has to bend his knees and the chair descends to a less precarious position but Mr Trevelyan does not look impressive on bent knees. Gordon wants to crawl out of shot to help him out but I wave a no-no, this is how it is, no part of the unexpected which is not secretly expected by you. Tighten on a foreground candle flame, pull back focus to get his face medium close up, Gordon, it’s all on the dope sheet, everything’s predetermined, get to it. Hey, stop moaning, I don’t know why my great-grandfather doesn’t lift the chair away himself, maybe his knuckles are nailed by now and anyway the fact that the chair is bobbing up and down really wildly as he tries to get it to slip off his calves and he’s looking like he’s jacking off through a knot-hole in the side of the table or something is not our business, just crank and catch him, catch his roar, it’s an important moment for this guy, it’s an important moment for the whole darn enterprise.

  All right! Let’s stop fidgeting and fardling and have done with it! I’ll tell you why they’ve given him a one-way ticket! The boy has drawn obscene pictures!

  Mrs Trevelyan’s hand comes up to her chin no mouth maybe nose nope, sorry, it’s carried on all the way up to about a foot above her top hairpin and kind of stays there so we’re pulling back a little to include it, it has a nice sheen on the thumb, it’s not a gesture you see very much these days and I’m talking about 1913 now.

  Arthur! Not in front of our daughter!

  Not theft, not punching somebody in the head until his ears bleed, not poaching or truancy or tying a skeleton to the chapel bell, but obscene pictures!

  Oh!

  His chair nearly tips over and Agatha’s half out of her own to take a catch but it doesn’t, it jiggles, it rocks back safely. It’s weird, but it’s keeping everybody on their toes, this high-backed fairly heavy chair with what are either chocolate whirls or stylised dog-turds on either corner, it’s making them quite anxious underneath all the other emotions. I’m sorry about all this shouting. When these people erupt they really erupt. I have to stress that this is not a normal dinner here. A normal dinner here is about as exciting as bread sauce. I mean, it’s not every day you think your son’s dead and then find him resurrected in the attic. It’s raining, by the way. In case you like to be kept up with the weather. You can hear it in the hooves and the wheels of the gigs and the rubber tyres of the automobiles. You can’t see it because George closed the thick curtains about an hour ago so I thought I’d tell you in case you’d forgotten your umbrella because there are about twenty-three in the hall but I don’t think now is the time to leave, frankly. Have some sensitivity, for Christ’s sake. Let alone some politesse. This isn’t the 1990s. OK, it’s safe to open your eyes again now.

  Do you mean that he purchased them, Arthur?

  Purchased produces a minor spray of spittle which falls mainly on the condiments her end. Arthur blushes because actually he’s the one that purchases obscene pictures. When I say obscene I mean 1913 obscene, like a couple of p
lump Parisiennes with corsets round their ankles and authentic black suspenders looking like they’re delousing each other, or a butler tickling the bare globes of a maid’s behind as she cleans up some gravy. OK, maybe not gravy. Maybe some spilled madeleines, one of which she’s licking with a long tongue and not thinking about Proust. Hey, we’ve come a long way in eighty-odd years. Maybe there was hardcore stuff then too but it hasn’t yet come the way of Arthur Bertrand Edgar Trevelyan, and I’m not sure he’d like it if it did. Ruthie’s got a fairly hardcore side but so far he’s not bitten into it, not like the Cabinet Minister whose transexual double-barrelled name she can never remember and who’s into defecation and Georgian water sports. I have to say, while on this subject, I did a very sneaky thing last month. I thought that Dr Todd In The Hole might like to take advantage of this great Introductory Offer to Labia, a high-quality monthly catering for all male heterosexual tastes in full frontal colour. It cost me a fortune but I know Zelda really hates pornography. I think I forgot to say that over the last year (hey, you think I’ve shot this dinner scene in under a year or something?) Mrs Todd has left Mr Todd and gone with Weeny Todds to live with her parents in the Vermont hills while Mr Unfaithful 1996 gets his arse sorted out from the bed-springs. You know what he did? He got Zelda to come and sort it out for him, on a fairly permanent basis. Is it surprising I’m doped up a lot of the time and risking Death Row or whatever they do to you here in sunny Texas for puffing on a joint and pretending to be a freak? Not that I look like a freak. I wear my hair balding and my tie knotted and my Levis creased in all the right places. The only weird thing is this paper bag on my head. But they can’t drag you around behind a pickup for wearing a paper bag on your head. Hey, it’s accepted round here – one of the highlights of Texan culture is wearing big white pointy bags on your head with large eye-holes and a flaming torch in the right hand. Anyway, I only wear it when I go into the HCDVA library and there’s never anyone else there except—

  Oh Christ, why do I have to be so funny all the time? Why can’t I be Ingmar Bergman or someone? Or maybe Woody Allen pretending to be Ingmar Bergman? You know how many wives Bergman had? Five. How many mistresses? Twenty-something. And the guy was still fucking miserable.

  Where was I?

  Crank back.

  yyyyou mean that he purchased them, Arthur?

  Of course not! Good God! He painted them with his own hand!

  With his own hand? You mean, he did it all by himself?

  Look, I really think—

  I know what he did, Papa. It’s quite ridiculous. He painted a few nudes, that’s all. Like they do at the Art School. Don’t you remember how he kept painting the nymph on the stairs and that one of Hermes in the conservatory and Laocoön wrestling with the serpents at Hamilton Lodge—

  And a very fine watercolour of the fellow taking a thorn out of his tootsie, adds Uncle Kenneth.

  Do I? Vaguely, says Papa.

  If you wouldn’t mind sitting down, Arthur. You’re giving me a headache with your bobbing.

  I’m not bobbing! Good God! I’ve had a very stiff day—

  The chair tips over and they all bob. They sigh and everyone except Big Chief Mainbeam of course resumes their seats. He tweaks his trousers just above the knees and stoops and rights the chair and sits in it with a huff and then puts his head in his hands trying not to think about the penny papers tomorrow or his tucked-away album of French cards or Ruthie’s scented underwear on the chair behind his left eyebrow.

  Do you mean to say that he asked boys to sit for him, without a stitch?

  Yes, Mother. He tells me their subjects were mythological. I do believe they were in the best taste, and those silly fools—

  Who are you speaking of?

  Those, Mother, who twist everything to mirror the sickness in their own minds.

  Specifically?

  Mr Boulter. And the others, the other beaks.

  That is confounded disrespect, Agatha! cries Mr Trevelyan, who was thinking far worse thoughts on the Randle fellows a few minutes back, which is why he’s over-reacting now.

  Your elders and betters, dear, adds Mrs Trevelyan. Do stop shouting, Arthur.

  Dash it, is it damn surprising? shouts Mr Trevelyan. Mrs Trevelyan closes her eyes as if the sound waves are breaking against her face – which actually they are, of course. Gordon is happy because the neuralgia’s gone. She’s in focus. She’s so precisely in focus you can count the hairs on her chin wart and the pimples on the side of her nose revealed under the talcum powder by the recent deluge. I mean the pimples were exposed under the talcum powder, not the nose, because the talc’s thickly applied but not that thick. Her fingers are no longer tucked into her collar. You have to remember with my great-grandmother that she’s a flash-flooder, she’s tectonic, she’s very much on a fault-line. She’d be a dangerous country to live in. She’d be the kind of country where tens of thousands perish in mud-slides and collapsed cinemas and stuff so often that it’d only just make the fourth news item everywhere else for a couple of days. Mind you, it’d have to be a place where the prevailing climate was English. I mean, Mrs Trevelyan is not exactly California.

  Mr Trevelyan huffs again, in floral italics. Seriously, he does. He actually huffs. He takes a good swig of his wine. Ruthie and his combinations. The whole damn day’s gone skew-whiff. Good God, it has. And it ain’t over, not by a long chalk, old chap.

  The shame of it, murmurs Mrs Trevelyan. She gets up. She goes over to the window. Gordon is so surprised he loses his grip and gets some camera-shake but it doesn’t matter, it looks avant-garde. She’s at the window holding the curtain back a little. There’s a yellow light coming through from the fog and the street lamps but not enough to more than give her a touch of jaundice, which is fairly suitable. Great effect, Mike. He uses real gas, you know. Nothing but real gas gives that sort of blurred glow out of a lamp. Oh, the frightful shame, she adds, in case anyone was in doubt.

  Please try to understand, says Agatha.

  That was a bold, even crazy, move. Uncle Kenneth’s closed his eyes again. The sago’s causing him problems. He’d like to loosen his girdle but feels in the circumstances to unbutton his waistcoat and loosen his girdle would be disrespectful and might well bugger everything up, if one could bugger it up any more than it was already buggered up. The idea of William stuck up in the attic waiting to be summoned or is it summonsed is either droll or pitiable, he can’t decide which. A small hysterical pocket of mirth is making plans to expand in his belly but it turns into a cough which makes his dear brother jerk a bit. His brother either swims around benignly or jerks. It is most trying, and got from Mater. Mater jerked when she died, come to think of it, in that very chair during that frightful luncheon with Mr Quill, or Spill, or whoever it was was trying to lay hands on her cash. Jerked and burbled and fell head-first into the rougemange. The rougemange was garnished very tastefully with sprays of white jasmine, one of which had affixed itself to Mater’s cap when they lifted her up. If it wasn’t for the rougemange mud-pack, it would have been rather touching, with the jasmine spray. Rather touching.

  I understand perfectly, says my great-grandmother, allowing the curtain to fall back into its usual evening station. She’d like to be a curtain. Just hang and be drawn and maybe cleaned at long intervals. There’s being drawn and being drawn, she reflects. This is one of her rare jokes, but she doesn’t share it. She only shares her nervous problems, remember.

  Yes, she sighs, I understand perfectly, quite quite perfectly.

  This is crap, actually. Her mind is in total confusion. She has absolutely no idea of what to do with this situation. But she says it anyway because it sounds nicely sinister, and people who sound nicely sinister give the impression that they are also totally in control. Not very deep down she’s really terrified of confronting Willo. Really terrified. She’s floating back to her chair. She sits down. Gordon was ready this time. His knuckles are white. That’s the sign of a great grip.

  I su
ppose we’ll have to bring him down, says Papa.

  Giles telephoned, says Agatha.

  Mrs Trevelyan is brushing some imaginary insect off her puffed shoulders. She pauses in mid-brush. She’s a film still. We can make that Still Eleven or is it Twelve but you don’t have to leave your seats. If you hadn’t seen the film you might think she’s inspecting her nails discreetly to one side. You might. You’d be wrong. Never trust a still.

  Giles? she murmurs.

  He very kindly telephoned and said they were utterly and completely beastly to Willo. They made him walk the cestus, if you know what that means. They did it to that other fellow—

  You forget, my dear, that your father was at Randle.

  So was I, sniggers Uncle Kenneth.

  He stops sniggering pretty quick, and looks serious, but really, you’d think he’d make some sort of bloody effort. The guy’s about as switched on as a shorted patch-panel ho ho. He frowns and lowers his head as if he’s about to say grace again. His brother tuts and sighs.

  Good God, did they really make him do that? The devil of it.

  Dashed hard, says Uncle Kenneth.

  The devil of it, repeats his brother.

  Mrs Trevelyan gives up being a still and does actually inspect her finger-nails. For an upper-middle class woman of the Georgian period, they’re not perfect. She also gets crumbs on her tea-gown that lodge themselves for days. Get this: she doesn’t change her tea-gown every day. A faint air of neglect, as some ex-Harvard ponce at HCDVA put it to me last week, just because I’d forgotten to do my fly up and my socks were fallen or something. OK Mr Clean, I said, lend me your bicycle-clips and I might lend you my nose-hair clipper. He flushed, he really flushed. No one messes wid de Ricky Thornby, OK?

  What else did Giles say? murmurs my great-grandmother.