by Adam Thorpe
The buffing-cloth’s moved, it’s being shaken, I can’t help it I go heugh too and grip my mother’s coat-pocket lapel. My mother groans. I feel woozy. The buffing cloth’s rippling at us on the end of this arm and a lot of dust comes out and makes its way down slowly over the stairs. The witch is definitely narked about something, her face is screwed up into this paper ball and I want to go, I want out, but my mother says oh Mum and yanks me across the tiles towards this other door, it hasn’t changed a lot since we last encountered it, it’s still like the lid of a coffin, they’re all pretty well ready behind it with their fangs and smoke and clawed hands, the witch is starting to come down the stairs and kind of muttering and spittling at the same time and the more I gaze totally terrified at her the more I see my mother, but stop shifting kind of knowledgeably Moira and get this: she was my mother’s mother so there was nothing particularly neurotic about my observation, we should be congratulating my little self on being a perceptive little blighter, I noticed a lot of things aged five.
OK, the door’s opening, I don’t know whether my mother knocked, she was put off that time by the apparition, the times to come she’ll wait until the clocks strike quarter past two, they had their sago very late, it was cold, only Uncle Kenneth sampled it and he’s not in there, he has actually dematerialised like he wanted, there’s not even a place laid for him now, I hope Sylvia’s remembered that, the one time she has to fuck up the continuity on purpose she won’t, she’s so reliable. People are so reliable. I’m sorry, Moira, I think I’ve just broken a castor, just put it on the bill with interest along with my id. Go get your chicken. I don’t like the way your lips are moving, like you know what I’m going to say next or something.
Hey, at least we have the door between us and the buffing-cloth, be thankful for small mercies, the fact that everything facing me is probably worse’ll just get me nicely in trim for the next six decades, I was trained up young. There’s a fire at the other end and there are candles fattening on the table and the curtains are drawn and there’s a blank where Uncle Kenneth’s pudding plate should be. Well done Sylvia. I don’t know why the curtains are drawn, Moira. It’s been like that since 1918, the whole house has been like that since 1918 – where there are curtains to draw they are drawn, the indoor plants have a very hard time, it’s to do with being plunged in morning according to my mother, but it’s the afternoon now, I don’t twig it, I just want to get back to the bomb-site and dive-bomb the cats and my chum Monty Rowland with the caliper.
Here here, says Moira. Or a dead ringer for, if you know y’grunts, pardner. But I cain’t quit. The scene has me in its sights and its finger ain’t goosin’. OK. Cacti off. Dark panelled dining-room on, don’t tear it. In front of the fire is this kind of basket with a handle at the back and in this basket there’s a shadow. The shadow says, the child? I’ve just noticed a pair of shiny pumps sticking out of this kind of recess by the way, just a little to the left of the dwarf geranium table which Sylvia’s left quite rightly but without the dwarf geraniums, I think I’m going to hug her after this, I need to hug someone standing in for my mother and my wives and my lost love. The shiny pumps might be a spare pair or they might have someone in them, I actually don’t want to look, it was the only time they were there because we were early, we’d not waited for the big hand to hit three, normally they were under the head of the table joined to Mr Trevelyan playing Mr Trevelyan. My mother’s saying yes ma’am, sorry, but. The shadow is now a sack with a head on it, the firelight’s playing behind it, the flames are happy but they burn. I have to walk to the sack. I know this because I was told, we’ve practised it in the yard even though the washing was out and it was sheets week and every time I walked forward I got a damp ghost attacking my face, it was gusty yesterday, but my mother didn’t want to practise outside with all the nervous net curtains and stuff. My mother didn’t say walk towards the sack, Moira, she didn’t use that term, she was a sensitive woman, she said walk towards the nice old lady in the Bath chair. OK, I can’t see the taps but it’s dark, the firelight and the candlelight are reminding me of unpleasant things, they were called blackouts Moira, London was badly bombed, you may have heard about our minor role in your country’s victory at some time or other, we had a lot of deaths including our charming next-door neighbours, the Jacksons. I’m walking towards the nice old sack with the wobbly head with the help of my mother’s palm in the small of my back for the first few feet while my heels are finding very little grip on the parquet but then those weeks of practice tell and I go into automatic, kids are very easily drilled, I’m not even considering the bright green Dinky Foden flat-bed that’s coming my way, my legs are just slotting in and there are no damp ghosts sailing to America, there’s just the length of a very long table and there’s someone else, it’s amazing I never noticed her before, she’s turning her head as I goose-step behind her chair and she’s incredibly lovely, she has grey eyes, she’s dressed in white, she’s probably an angel, she’s much much older than me and each year she got older and more like a grown-up and each year I fell more profoundly in love with her, her name was Victoria, we were half-bloods, she was really my older sister and she would take me away but she didn’t. She married some jerk called Halliday, a property agent or something and I got into films, Moira, in case you didn’t know this. He died. She didn’t. Anyway she was and is my half-aunt and not my sister really. Now I’m haunting her, I’m haunting Mrs Halliday and she doesn’t like it any more, she’s threatened me with lawyers, the police, the works. I don’t know where Victoria has got to, but I found the dress. A part of it. On a nail. I’m sorry about all this emoting, I’ll wipe the mucus off your couch if you can lend me a tissue, put it on the bill, the rest of it was in the V&A, it was off-cream, Mrs Halliday had donated it, I held it to my cheek and rocked and the expert with the buffed finger-nails said I wasn’t to, could I please leave, he turned very sour suddenly.
Each time she gave me a smile. She hadn’t touched her sago. The dress was a little small for her, I think people have generally grown.
There. I think I’ve completely wrinkled my tear-glands, actually. My ears are wet. Your ceiling is beginning to clear, Moira. It has a cobweb.
I’m there, anyway. I’ve made it up there. It’s OK, the sack is in fact the nice old lady but there are no taps, the water would just drain completely out between the wickerwork, leave alone the bit where her legs come out. I was that sort of kid, I was extremely sceptical at a very early age.
Heugh.
Her arm’s up. She’s staying like that with all these cracks in her face getting worse in the firelight and my collar itches. I’m just staring at her with my mouth open and scratching my groin. So what’s changed? thinks Moira. Great joke, pity you didn’t make it, you could do with a sense of humour, honey, like you could do with getting rid of that trouser-suit, they’re back in fashion. OK. Her arm comes down and the cracks get really wide and she turns her head. What we’d practised was her saying something about a willow not being afraid and I just had to peck her on the cheek and that was it but instead she talks to the other end of the room.
You’re not in your seat, Giles.
This isn’t what we’d practised. And I really badly want to widdle. My mother kept asking me if I wanted to widdle all the way here but I didn’t want to widdle all the way here, I don’t have that big a bladder, you’re not laughing, Moira, you’re asleep, you’re sliding off your swivel chair. Now the widdle’s desperate, it’s one of those widdles that you can’t just enjoy not giving into for about an hour, it has to be instantly obeyed or it stabs you. It is stabbing me. On top of this problem the spare pair of shoes has become a man with white eyes. He’s stepping out, he’s feeling his way to the chair at the other end of the table and it’s OK, he’s sitting down, he’s not going to take me away to Mars or Transylvania or wherever. The candle flames are sort of in his eyes but there’s nothing else in them, he’s got them rolled right up better than Des and keeps them there so I wi
ddle. It’s amazing how you can widdle silently if it’s not into a toilet amplification system – at the end of my large widdle I don’t think anyone was the wiser, I really don’t, perhaps my knickerbockers were thick enough to absorb, I can’t remember, all I remember is terror and shame, Moira. I think you’re really getting my money’s worth, actually. I hope you’re all OK out there. If anyone’s left in the last few minutes pity them.
I was warned about the man, of course. I was not allowed to say he was my grandfather. I was not allowed to go oooh at his eyes or say cor blimey, ain’t they ’orrible, just like a coupla coddled eggs wivart the shells? I was probably not allowed to wet my pants as soon as he appeared either but that wasn’t specifically mentioned. Moira, I just want to show you this clip for a minute, mind your head, there’s a great patch of blank wall above your thoughts and hey, howzat, my antique projector just happens to be set up and crankable so here goes.
Flickery shot of Captain Hubert Lightfoot on the edge of a shell hole. I mean a very large crater with a bunch of guys and some pools at the bottom. They’re lifting up this guy in a mess on a couple of poles with canvas stretched between which is, Moira, a field-stretcher circa 1917. The guy in a mess is not important. I mean, he is important but not to us, particularly. I’m not paying him more than a half-day basic, anyway, despite the two hour make-up job, the budget’s crazy. OK. Gas. That’s someone shouting gas who’s not in a very good way, he’s stumbling towards the crater but it’s not easy, he kind of fits in with the general landscape which took a lot of time and effort to get this bad, it’s like NASA’s moonwalk practice room times about one million and wet. Captain Hubert Lightfoot shouts gas very robustly but he doesn’t take cover in the shell-hole like you or I would, he’s sensible, he’s not a dickhead who thinks that gas isn’t heavier than air. The guy in a mess I’m afraid slides back down and screams because his protruding shin-bone catches on somebody’s belt while the bunch of guys basically panics. Or it looks like they panic. We should have some floral titles soon because their lips are having a tough time from their teeth. Here they are. There’s no piano accompaniment, I’m afraid. This is not Charlie Chaplin.
Basically they’re getting their gas helmets out of their gas packs like they’ve been trained to do using official stages one to seven except that the stages have got cinched together and there’s this guy screaming and no one’s shouting out the numbers and it’s musical chairs, there are always some quarterblokes who’ve forgotten both and even more halfblokes who’ve forgotten their spares – in the few seconds it takes Captain Lightfoot to hide his pencil moustache and assorted features behind some big goggles and rubber tubing, the bunch have become a gaggle of yelling yobs. Amongst them is Second Lieutenant Giles Trevelyan. He’s yelling but his yelling is not panic, it’s control. He’s given his spare helmet to this really thick oick from some other regiment who happened to land up in the same crater, don’t ask me why, I don’t even know what the fuck’s going on here exactly except that they were lifting out this guy in a mess who’s still screaming and it was probably this screaming that kind of stirred up the panic when some gas shells were dropped, although I didn’t notice these gas shells dropping at the beginning, maybe they were off the spool. Someone’s cooking some onions somewhere, imagine. My grandfather’s got his helmet in his hand but this other hand grabs it for God’s sake, there’s not even a tussle, it’s just yanked away, the onions have had a whole clove of garlic added, my grandfather is now the only person with his face still showing except for the guy no longer screaming in a puddle of possibly yes definitely his blood and some sick. The former post-office clerk with early hair-loss recently engaged to an expecting typist who sends the creep a tin of Benger’s Baby Food each week to keep his vital organs in trim and thick socks because my gum-boots are v. cold my Dear Darling little Nellie my Sweetheart God Guard and watch over you Darling till I return home my Own Little Nell my Sweet Darling is now clambering up the side of the crater with his officer’s gas helmet not quite gastight over his face until anyway his arms go up and he slides back down because Hubert Lightfoot’s shot him dead with his ivory-handled revolver. Obviously my grandfather is looking up at Hubert Lightfoot who lifts his mask and yells.
I hope you don’t mind these floral titles, we have smells but still no sound except my heavy breathing. There’s more dramatic action in this clip than in the whole of my long life, it’s like a day out with the Knights of the Round Table or the Houston coke cartel, it’s called living dangerously or maybe just all at once.
A gas helmet’s flying through the air, heading into the crater. Hubert Lightfoot definitely threw it although the film’s got bad hop and some terrible tramlines. We’re jogging through this practically frame by frame now, the moving image is for the moment broken right down to its bare essentials so as the thing curves or maybe jerks through the air you can see that there is DEFINITELY NOTHING LEAVING IT THAT SHOULDN’T and anyway it’s a nice hommage to Godard, it’s the killing of Kennedy on Kodak, it’s Blow-Up with me old mate David Hemmings oh where is he now? Jog, jog, jog. What’s that flying out, mate? A speck of dust on the celluloid. A wake of I’m afraid a boat over Loch Ness. The President’s important bits of brain.
Jog.
Jog.
And jog.
Whatever’s behind’s swished right out but it’s only mud and the helmet’s all over the place, we lose it for a second, shit, you try shifting a hand-crank smoothly in a mustard gas attack, guv. King of Gases, King of Gases, mustard. Right royal persistent little fucker. A fist’s coming up and it converts to fingers.
They’re Second Lieutenant Trevelyan’s. They catch it. He didn’t stick at silly mid-off and last domino all his school career for nothing. We’re on fairly normal speed now. This onion and garlic fry up is getting ridiculous, I feel like waving it away, maybe you’ve farted, Moira. Maybe it’s thinking too hard about that Kentucky Fried.
How can I be so gross at this juncture?
Phew. He’s pulled the thing on, he’s biting the rubber, his nose-clip’s clipped, he’s got half a gallon of saliva and nasal mucus with nowhere to go, he feels sick with the flange pressing back his tongue like this, he pushes the thing out from behind his teeth with his tongue and it squashes his nose but he’s sitting there calmly with the other chaps looking like a dry-run for something by Wells and the oh fucks have practically given out like the last little shuddery kind of sobs. The guy in a mess is dead. There is absolutely nothing different about the air or the light but there is. Flickery close-up of my grandfather’s eyes encircled by metal and rubber. They’re blinking. The onion and garlic is kind of mildly irritating them. He places a finger on the glass of his eyepiece but jabs his eyeball. He feels the same lurch that you’d feel if you placed your nose against the unusually clear perspex of a 747 porthole as it was lifting off the runway and you had to pull your head back in fast out of the draught minus your toupée. He lifts his mask away from his mouth.
That was Hubert. Flickery film spools out to white just before we can tell whether Captain Lightfoot is guffawing evilly up there on the lip of the crater. Nothing is crystal clear but I have to say that for the second time in this movie j’accuse because hey, I’m Rick the dick, I’ve put several things together and they click, I don’t think Hubert Lightfoot was making a helpful suggestion or anything although it’s just possible because closed lids help. He must have got his lips blistered shouting it because he lifted his respirator away from his mouth like I had to lift my respirator away from my mouth each time I kissed my parents goonight in the Anderson, I had this allergy to warm rubber, it made me look like I was an early shaver using war-issue laundry soap. Holy shit, I’m beginning to think that the main handle in this movie might have been Evostuck and’ll come off in the boiling water of your relentless scrutiny. Maybe Hubert Lightfoot was a hero and not a vengeful bastard after all, maybe he deserved his posthumous VC for doing something incredibly useful like trying to shave a pillbox bristlin
g with machine-guns with only five men and his gumboots a couple of days later, I don’t know. Shit. Anyway, no one leant my grandfather their eyepieces. A hell of a lot of mustard-gas shells must have been plopped because within half an hour his eyes were tingling and within an hour his tear-glands were working overtime and his eyeballs were stinging frightfully and he had a headache and could only whisper. By the time he’d got himself to the First-Aid post which was a slightly deeper ditch than the others with FIRST-AI on a post and some blankets and a doc with blood instead of gloves and serious stubble his eyelids were bladderdash balls and he was weeping pus. It gets worse. By the time he crawled into the medical marquee behind the lines the conjuctiva at the interpalpebral aperture was projecting between his bladderdash balls and fighting it out with his palpebral conjunctiva for space, it looked very distressing as my mother used to say. By the time the doc got a look at his cornea – which was not easy because Second Lieutenant um um ah Trevelyan was now severely photophobic and the slightest inky-dinky particle of light got his eyelids blepharospasming which for you dumbos too young to have read line by line the Air Raid Precautions Handbook No. 3 (Medical Treatment of Gas Casualties) Price 6d Keep It With You At All Times, son, means that they shut tight despite their oedematous and septic situation – it the cornea please follow was grey and hazy and in about three hours went as orange as the vomit on the edge of his bed because, hey, he could never find the bowl quick enough and anyway his laryngitis and headache and gastric pain and septic skin-blisters made him want to die let alone the nausea, so the little ginger-haired nurse with the nail scissors told him off for missing each time totally fruitlessly.
