Still

by Adam Thorpe

  But I’ve quit my paper bag and the dope. I’m hanging on to the Scotch. Cor blimey progress is relative, innit? It’s not any old whisky and it’s certainly not the napalm they drink out here with Coke for crying out loud it’s old and peaty and oaken, like me.

  So I have to pick up on my grandfather in a fresher state of mind. I mean me in a fresher state of mind, not him.

  Youch. My toes are burnt. I was just wriggling them. I always forget my toes. I did meet a girl. We got to the stage where she was camomiling my toes on the penultimate day and giggling because I was Ambre-Solairing hers and yelping but this was on the beach and when we came off the beach we had dinner and then we had a walk along the beach in moonlight and then it was warm haired arm in warm smooth arm and then I had this idea that life was like a Hemingway novel and was just a series of thens but nevertheless and however and needless to say got their act together and despite the beauty of the phosphorescent foam and the perfume of the sea breeze if you can call an aerial massage a breeze and my inimitable attractions she scarpered from under my very lips, guv. I think she was a neurotic, actually. She was a German painter or maybe potter or maybe cocaine runner about Zelda’s age and I think she thought I was very wealthy and famous yeah yeah. I stood for about two hours staring at the ocean under a full moon but no one circled me with a tracking camera or even without one. Apart from the thump of the surf or maybe a distant disco I was alone with my thoughts. Actually, I had incredibly significant revelations while staring at that ocean, like how incredibly insignificant I was staring at that ocean.

  And old.

  Yup, old. Old in a really superficial way, because if you’re staring at an ocean like I was staring at an ocean you feel actually you haven’t really got used to being around at all yet, you could do with a few more years, like a hundred thousand or maybe a couple of million, just to get used to things like surf under moonlight and the soft inside bit of a girl’s arm. But I felt old and was worrying about my eye-bags for crying out loud when in the whole movie of the planet the history of civilisation isn’t even a single frame, it’s not long enough, so what am I, I’m a jerk who needs a hairpiece, I’m not even significant enough to make my insignificance significant.

  But me muvver loved me. She thought I was significant, I guess. Wrapped up in me black-out curtain, bald as an egg, not yet realising how lucky I was. I mean, I could’ve been a mollusc, or Himmler’s daughter, or Des. Imagine that. I could’ve been Des. So close.

  See what lying on the beach for two weeks does to you? And there’s a white rectangle where my Michelangelo sketch (OK, OK, maybe School Of) used to be because my walls are grey with Houston atmospherics. Anyway, I like white rectangles. Build your film on white, on silence and on stillness. Too right, mon cher Robert. I do most definitely feel fresher. My grandfather is in the bathroom. That was scary, being inside his head. That was scary. Now he’s in the bathroom contemplating a cold bath. I don’t mean my bathroom. That would be even scarier. I got a chill just then, thinking that. Maybe he is in my bathroom. I believe that click just now was a cat. Or maybe my dicky swivel-joint, right hip. I’ve had a dicky swivel-joint ever since Peter Brook leapt on me in a drama game in 1966 when I was briefly considered as the guy to film Marat/Sade but I shrieked too loud or maybe I swore at him because wow did it hurt. It’s Peter Brook in my set-the-table-in-a-roar number but actually it wasn’t it was Glenda Jackson. OK OK it was some guy who now plays mainly period bank tellers or runs a pub in Weymouth called The Boring Rep or something but he was in Brook’s gang and he did leap on me to Brook’s precise instructions softly spoke. I’m not a liar. But it lost me the contract. Big deal. My call is higher. I am not an archivist. Repeat. I am not an archivist. My grandfather is in the bathroom of Cavendish House. It is a very large bathroom. It has a high ceiling no paint has ever succeeded in sticking around on. It is like a Roman bath without the comfort. The steam is causing our lenses some problems. Basically all you can see is a blur. The pinkish shiny bits are limbs. There’s a queue. The water under the wooden slats is black. I’m sorry about the temperature: some jerk smashed a window last week with a calker ball. I can’t go into what calker is right now. The northerly gusts are punching up the steam and making it very desirable to be immersed in a tin basin, but as the tin basins are shared you can’t wallow without your dick ending up under the guy’s chin, which however attractive that might sound to some of you this is a public place and you’ll just have to be happy with splashing the four inches over your upper torso’s goose pimples and remember that hot baths soften your spirit and declined the Roman Empire and draw your legs up pronto or the other fellow’ll think you’re making advances with your big toes.

  Sorry about the silence. We’ve got problems with the sound. Bosey’s tapes don’t like the steam. There are some great sounds here with the echoes and tin basins and water pouring out of jugs and so forth, it’s a pity. It looks kind of interesting, though, all this blurry nude stuff in silence so maybe we won’t dub it after like – ah, there we go. Bet that got you jumping out of your bean-bags. OK, it’s noisy, but there are twenty-odd naked adolescents in here and a lot of water and metal and bare surfaces and the wooden slats are wobbly, they smack and creak and things. That whoosh was Girtland tipping a jug over his head. He’d saved the last fill-up. Now he’s sponging himself. There’s a break in the steam, you can see him and so can my grandfather. There’s a hot pipe in the middle with towels on. Barstow’s whipping one off and rubbing himself vigorously. Beastly luck, Trevelyan! he cries. We only caught this because Bosey got a lip mike to him, there are so many cries and echoes it’s like a naff nightmare sequence, all we need is a church organ.

  Barstow is my grandfather’s best friend, the fact that they call each other by their surnames most of the time has nothing to do with their feelings for each other. I call Dr Lazenby Todd and I hate the guy. People I have never met before like stewardesses and bank tellers and stuff say hi Richard. My name is open on all sides, it’s flowing away, it’s everybody’s to do what they like with, they might as well take my trousers too while they’re about it, like they’re generally taking my money. I feel really dispersed sometimes. Mr Thornby has walls around it. When I want to I’ll invite you into Ricky, and maybe even Rick and the other ones. But no one except the mad floor-cleaner at HCDVA calls me Mr Thornby any more. Master Trevelyan has a towel over his shoulder to keep him warm. He flicks it at Barsity but misses. The queue shortens because two basins have their three minutes’ sponge-down time up simultaneously, if you get what I mean. Barstow vigorously rubs himself some more and laughs. Still, I expect there’ll be a drop or two of hot, Trevels, if you search for them hard enough, old fellow! He disappears for a minute behind some magnificent samples of early twentieth-century English youth as they go grab their towels. Actually, one of them has a bow back from a drunken midwife or something but generally these four are pretty marmoreal. Marmoreal is a big word for you people I know, it means like marble – Zelda gave it me as a present after reading it in some poem or other and I use it frequently because people out here are always saying hi how are you but really what they’re doing is showing you what excellent and very expensive dental care they are having so my reply is frequently marmoreal, thank you. Now generally I am just nodded to, which is great. I gave Zelda syzygy because I’m a whizzy guy and I think it’s what angels do. Ho hum. I don’t think she uses it much. These moving Discus Throwers are currently trying to sneetle each other’s towels. These towels are small squares of linen, by the way, that only just meet around the waist, because Athenian Warriors do not disappear into half a ton of deluxe furry cotton like we fin de softies do without instantly losing their manhood, so sneetling another chap’s towel is not that easy. Sneetling is something else I haven’t time to go into, but it does mean that Barstow is jostled around a bit. Barstow is definitely not marmoreal. Actually, he has a stomach. He’s got out from between the classical nudes and is right next to my grandfather. You wouldn
’t believe my grandfather’s goose-pimples. The warm steam is teasing them a little but they’re not reacting. Barstow is wrapping his towel around his waist but as usual it’s a quarter-inch from meeting so he just holds it there.

  I’ve got some porter, he says. He says this to the slats which if Tarkovsky was doing this movie would have a few hundred frames to their own because there’s some great bath-spill swilling past under them, some great flow full of grass blades and mud and the occasional piece of lint and various clouds of blood although these are pretty small. But I’m not Tarkovsky. That fact has given me some pain in the past, before his TED (tragic early death, stoopids) at least, because at the moment I reckon on balance and after much consideration it’s better to be alive. My grandfather is examining a bruise on his thigh. Porter, repeats Barsity. He hisses this at the slats. He’s pretty certain he can see an ear down there, or maybe an eyeball. Top notch porter, Trevels. Molten gold. You can help me with my elegiacs. Bring a toasting fork. Stroke of four. Some devil’s snitched mine. A surge tickles his feet, because Kidlinton has just tipped some guy who’s nameless on the credits and shall remain so because my budget is limited and you won’t believe how much you have to notch up the payment just because they’re called something out of his basin and it’s the baby with the bathwater syndrome. Trevels also watches the steamy water swill past and away and shakes his head. Dash it, enough to make one feel seriously indisposed, he says. The waste, the shocking waste. There’s a smell of antiseptic, by the way, from the soap around the place. You’ll be glad to hear it’s stopped raining. I hope Mrs T hasn’t begun to thaw out yet in a week from now. I hope the candles on the dinner table have not started to quiver. I hope it’s not a strain on the sprocket holes in your head, keeping the frame frozen in the gate like that. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be a long time before we get that scene up and running again. A long time. So file it away in the still store for now, OK?

  Barstow is shorter than my grandfather and he has to go up on his toes to get anywhere near the ear so he does. He’s about to risk saying porter again when Trevels nods and says I’ll bring my toasting fork, Barsity. Barsity grins and goes back onto his heels. Someone’s turned round in the queue and is talking to my grandfather. It’s Kidlinton. Just in front of Kidlinton is Lord Walking Silo. I don’t know how Walking Silo got in front of Kidlinton but does it matter? Actually, it does. It’s relevant to what’s about to happen. The diary was fairly inexplicit about this bit of the action-packed day but I’ve not had twelve years of analysis for nothing, I can read between the lines like my analyst could read between the lines of my cheque-book oof. Walking Silo is going to bag a basin for Kidlinton. There’s cash involved. This is not what Kidders is chatting to Trevels about. What he’s chatting about doesn’t matter, and there’s an infernal racket coming from the locker-room which is making hearing anything intelligible difficult anyway. I think the four magnificent marmoreals are throwing their boots at someone, something like that, I dunno, guv, I’m not of or in their class, am I? One of them has just been sent a telegram from the Palace for making one hundred not out but since he’s deaf, blind, and suffering badly from Alzheimer’s I don’t suppose it made his day. Still, I thought I’d let you know. The other three did NOT perish in THE GREAT WAR but made it through with various minor disabilities and decorations and became fat sagging purple-nosed braying chairmen of various minor corporations and konked out at various moments between 1960 and 1978, so there. I’m sorry about that. It would have been poignant nay more appropriate to have had their beautiful forms draped brokenly across the corners of some foreign field but sorry mate, nuffink doing, LIFE’S LIKE THAT, it puts the apostrophes in all the wrong places, it nips up on you and doesn’t nip up on you, I’m not one to change VE TROOF.

  My grandfather is feeling the boiler. He’s out of the queue because he’s realised with a soggy kind of flash that the very last person in a queue doesn’t have to queue because no one else is going to snitch his place. As he’s realising how tepid if not actually lifeless the boiler feels he’s simultaneously but only briefly wondering why therefore queues don’t just sort of dissolve as each last person drops out but then of course the other dropper-outers would snitch—

  A large cake of carbolic smacks against his ankles. Ouch, he cries, I say, look here! I know only the Royal Family now say I say look here in a similar situation but not in 1913, please try to understand that my grandfather is not an an an an anachronistic joke. If Hilda and her privately-educated pals were his age in 1913 they would also be likely to shout I say, look here! if Smedmark smashed a cake of carbolic against their ankles with a cricket bat, although given that this is a place of steaming male nudes it would be extremely unlikely Hilda and her female pals would be in here, stripped or unstripped. Smedmark is the Norwegian Ambassador’s son and he’s now whooping as once Vikings whooped when they split monks in half from tonsure to scrotum. He’s now loping over. He’s tall. He’s very tall. Past silly mid-off to ze boundary, what? he says to Giles. Rotter, Giles mutters. The bathroom is practically empty now so you can mutter and be heard. Giles is not feeling inspired right at this moment, otherwise he’d quip. Smedmark slaps Giles on the shoulder. A four, I think, don’t you know! He takes being Captain of the House Fourths really seriously, but actually no one else wanted to be Captain of the House Fourths. I’m full of useful little nuggets of bitchy information like that, if you’re interested. My grandfather can be quite acerbic in his diary. You’re not interested? You mean bitchy nuggets lose their crunchiness with the passing of time? Hey, you don’t say. Maybe you should quit the idea of that autobiography, Ossy. Maybe no one’ll be interested in what we all got up to in the swinging sixties and the strangled seventies. Maybe the fact that I once called Joe Losey an accident is not a burning issue any longer. And so forth. Lord Walking Silo is blinking white-eyed through his filth right next to Giles. He has a jug in his hands. He smells miasmically. Over his shoulder is a towel with the bright coat-of-arms stitched on by Lady – by Poppy, I haven’t got all day. Otherwise the towel is regulation. Giles steps back and lets him drain the very last of what might be called reasonably-heated water out of the boiler tap. I say, Willers, would you like some porter? (Smedmark’s pissed off out of it by the way. You can go home, Niall. You’re no longer needed. Thank you. I’ll call you. Actually, it was hell to get a real Norwegian. There aren’t many of them. Icelanders are even worse. Tell me, how many Icelanders have you ever met in your life? You mean you’ve been to Iceland? Shucks. Shaaaddap. This is a reasonably important dialogue between Silo and Trevels. All ears, OK? Lip mikes, Bosey m’boy.)

  What’s that?

  Porter. Would you like some porter?

  Rather!

  Then let me in first, there’s a decent chap.

  In first?

  Your bath.

  Oh.

  I’ll just be a jiff. And you are rather soiled, old fellow.

  Thought there was something in it, Trevelyan.

  In what?

  In the porter.

  Burnt malt. And a toast to his majesty. Huzzah huzzah.

  All right. Since we’re toasting. When?

  Four of the clock. You’ll have to skip Hall.

  I say, what a tragedy.

  Barstow’s study, half an hour. Now mind out, you lucky chap. I’ll be breaking the blasted ice soon!

  He takes the filled-up jug from Silo and humps it over to the basin and finds Kidlinton already in there with his eyes closed. He adds the clean water to the soiled and tests it and smiles and neatly flips his towel on to the rail and steps in and touches bottom and leans against the back of the basin and it’s reasonably pleasant. He doesn’t wonder how Kidders got in before Willers given their queue positions. He’s not the CIA, for God’s sake. The other basins are empty both of water and personnel. A couple of chaps are rubbing vigorously beyond the rail which is now cool. It’s nice, the quiet. My ears are ringing more than usual. There’s ju
st the slop of water as Giles tries to snuck in an extra inch of his torso and bathes his knees basically to keep them from going Alpine. He closes his eyes and smiles in the kind of reddish darkness because he’s thinking how thick Willers is and how he’ll most definitely end up at Sandhurst, the silly prawn. This is not the most generous side of my grandfather but life at Randle is not a ball, it does not make you into Jesus or someone. His hips are being stroked by something fairly coarse. He opens his eyes. Kidlinton’s knees are very low in the water. When the ice-caps melt they’ll be the first to go.