by Gary Crew
And were his child readers convinced?
Eminent judges aside, I doubted that they were.
So far as I knew, a clothes peg wrapped in a handkerchief meant just as much to a child as a china doll that blinked and wailed ‘Ma Ma’. And wasn’t the empty box as much a thing of imaginative pleasure as the jaw-gnashing, eye-flashing, batteries-included robot that it had come in?
Maybe I had stumbled on the answer. Chanteleer was no fool. Realising that he lacked the imaginative wherewithal to appeal to kids, and knowing that he didn’t like them anyway, did he overwrite on purpose? Did he wear that silly bow tie and those mismatched socks to cover his inadequacy? Had he constructed the ‘eccentric author’ persona (like making the goofy face? or being Monkey Boy?) that he hoped would win hearts?
It’s fair to say that even the truly great children’s writers used a few winning wiles to get kids on their side. Charles Dodgson, dull as ditchwater Oxford don, had changed his name to Lewis Carroll and kept a cupboard full of toys in his academic rooms to attract kids; Hans Christian Andersen sat children on his knee while he made wonderful paper cutouts and James Barrie played piratical games with the Llewellyn-Davies boys who would later figure in his Peter Pan stories—but for all of their monkey-suited goofy face making tricks to suck kids in and make them laugh, these men could still summon sufficient of their childhood clouds of glory to make their stories appealing. More than anything else, it was through their writing that these iconic children’s writers had succeeded with kids, through their skills in exciting the childhood imagination that their young readers had found something of themselves in the stories those adult authors created.
So I began to understand why Chanteleer had failed to capture Lootie’s class. He had relied on his funny clothes to see him through, and the kids were too smart to buy that. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was old news; kids had long since seen the zip up the monster’s back. And when Chanteleer did read from his novels, those same kids saw them for what they were: overwrought and hackneyed special effects, the stuff of Hollywood—bubbling potions, frozen kingdoms and fire-breathing dragons. While this might have worked once, in the twentieth-century, now that movies could do better, kids expected more from books. Special effects might satisfy fluffy-slippered adults to whom TV was a night’s entertainment, but kids of today inhabited their own dark kingdoms—worlds where aircraft cut buildings in half—for real.
And so, feeling very smug, I decided that Sebastian Chanteleer, acclaimed children’s writer, had lost his understanding of childhood: his original ‘cloud of glory’. The odd-sock-wearing author that I knew lived in a self-serving fantasy. The only problem was, no one had told him.
Then I remembered how Lootie had loved his books and Michael the school principal at the garden party loved them too. I doubted that every child who liked Chanteleer’s books did so because some distant librarian had awarded the author a prize. So for all of my reading, all of my brain waves, all of my cogitations, my theories behind the reasons for Chanteleer fame didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Totally dispirited, I was about return to the garden and get seriously pissed when Lootie burst in. ‘Sebastian’s giving me a chance,’ she said, beaming. ‘He wants me to organise a gig for him at the Uniting Church in Curzon Street. That’s just around the corner. I’ve got a month!’
I did go outside later that night. And as I sat thinking, I saw the fiery ladder again. This time the crow perched at the top split into two, and then, in a burst of flame, the two became one—that one being my love, my Lootie.
20
The Friday before the workshop I prepared for an ordinary day riding with XPress. I showered, pulled on my uniform and, since Lootie had been getting up late, I took her coffee into the bedroom.
Her face was buried in the pillow.
‘Hey,’ I said, sitting on the bed beside her, ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘So you wake up crying into your pillow for no reason?’
She pulled herself up and wiped her eyes with the sheet, accepting the coffee sheepishly.
‘I’m listening,’ I said, packing the pillows behind her.
‘I think about stuff too much,’ she moaned.
‘Stuff?’ Her hair was across her forehead, tears undried on her cheeks.
‘Like organising Sebastian’s gig at the church.’
‘I thought you were happy about that. The other day you were over the moon.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Do you want me to skip work and hop into bed with you?’ I asked, reaching for her hand.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said, shifting.
‘I won’t leave until you talk to me,’ I said. ‘I want to help. I love you.’
‘Only a man would think that sex could help.’
‘I never mentioned sex,’ I protested. ‘We need to talk.’
She sipped her coffee.
I sat, waiting. ‘What’s the trouble with the gig at the church?’ I asked. ‘Tell me.’
She sniffed, dribbling her coffee. I soaked it up with my shirt. When she saw that I had no intention of leaving until she spoke to me, she said, ‘Sebastian expects so much. He already sacked that other girl…’
‘Eve,’ I said, and she looked at me as if to say, Why would you remember her name?
‘Yes, Eve,’ she said. ‘Nearly every time he sees me he tells me how hopeless she was. How she couldn’t organise a bun fight. And now he expects me to do this…’
The thought crossed my mind that I should tell her I’d met Eve, but I couldn’t. As soon as she knew that I’d gone behind her back, especially to investigate Sebastian, there would be one hell of a row. Besides, there lurked the hint of a hope, just a hint, that Lootie might pull this off. That she might actually make this job work. That if anybody could, with her belief in Chanteleer, and her dedication to him (tunnel-visioned as it was), she might just get him back on track.
‘Sebastian wants me to organise everything,’ she said.
‘But what exactly is everything?’ I said, ‘What’s this gig all about?’
‘It’s like the one he did at the Redmond Barry theatre, when we first saw him’—I resisted a shudder—‘only this one is bigger. I’ll introduce Sebastian, then he’ll speak, and after there’s refreshments—drinks and nibblies and stuff—flowers, advertising, a printed souvenir program and, would you believe, he wants me to choose two items from the repertoire of the boys’ choir that sings there. What the hell do I know about “uplifting music”?’
‘A boys’ choir?’ I said, disbelieving.
‘It’s in the church hall, in Curzon Street. Just around the corner. I told you that.’
‘Then ask the choirmaster. He’ll tell you their repertoire.’
‘Sure,’ she groaned. ‘Seeing he’s also the chaplain, I’ll end up with “Amazing Grace” and “Onward Christian Soldiers”.’
‘And you’re getting paid what?’ I couldn’t resist.
‘I’m on a trial basis,’ she said. ‘If I do this right, Sebastian says he’ll employ me.’
‘And Eve failed?’
‘Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with what she did at the Redmond Barry. Among other things.’
‘What did she do wrong?’
‘Everything according to him. She didn’t get enough people to attend. The sales were poor, but most of all he reckons she didn’t commit to him. You understand?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Sebastian wants all or nothing. He wants his PR person to be his entirely. To get him back on his feet. To get his books on shelves. To make a name of him.’
‘Lootie,’ I said, ‘Nobody can do that. Not one person. He needs a machine. A company. And besides, he needs to get off his arse and write something new. Something hip. Something that the kids of today want to read. There, I’ve said it. No one can do what he expects. Do you understand that?’
She reached out and took my hand
. This was a turn-up. ‘Charlie,’ she said, giving me a squeeze, ‘he might seem like a pain sometimes, but I don’t want to lose this chance. I’m doing it because…’ she turned to the pillow again, sobbing.
‘What?’ I said, stroking.
She turned to face me. ‘You’ll hate me for this,’ she said, ‘but I’m doing it because he’s a great man. He really is remarkable, you know. Just down on his luck. No matter how bad things are—and yes, you were right about his books being out of print—he’s determined to get his life back on track.’ She put her hand up to touch my cheek. As she did, I felt my heart sink. She was saying goodbye, I knew. She was bidding me farewell. ‘And besides,’ she whispered, ‘I want to do it. For me.’
I went to stand by the window, my own tears welling. I looked down into our garden. There was my tree, my elm, the spring buds bursting all new and hopeful, and my wall, my silver lizard, basking in the sunlight, and over the road the vacant allotment where my ladder had come to me, burning, fiery with challenge, demanding that I have courage, that I drag myself out of that puerile monkey suit I’d come to hide in, rather than grow.
‘So’, I said through my tears, ‘you’re determined to give yourself to him, even if helping him makes you wake up like this? What sort of life is that?’
‘I’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘I can do this. I only know that I don’t want to get up every day fussing over kids. I don’t want to end up in the classroom. Or the nursery for that matter. I’ve seen that woman over the road, the one with the two boys and the husband who works in an office. She goes to the shops; she does the washing. Her life is on hold until her hubby gets home. Bugger that. I want to make my mark in the world. I want to do something.’
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘Making your mark is making his life? How does that figure? You give your life to make his?’
‘He’s famous,’ she said, pushing herself up on the pillow to confront me. ‘He’s the most famous person I’ve ever met. I could build a reputation on him. Like I said, he’s just down on his luck. He needs my help.’
I turned my back to the window, the garden, my tree. I crossed to the bed to stand facing her. ‘If that’s how you think, you could help me,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be famous. I’m going to be a writer too. A respected writer. And you’re my inspiration, you know that.’
She laughed. She threw her head back and laughed. ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘That’s all bullshit. I’m not your inspiration, Charlie. Your mother’s your inspiration. Your dead bloody mother. Manipulative bitch that she was. Conniving, blood-sucking old bag. You know who I am? You know what I am? Huh? I’ll tell you. I’m some sort of construction. Some sort of perpetual virgin, the one that probably stood on a pedestal in a grotto at St Finbar’s, all those years ago. The woman that you lusted after but could never touch. That’s me, Charlie. The sacred goddess you’ve never had the balls to get to know. Sex or no sex. There, now I’ve said it, so we can call it quits, okay?’
‘There wasn’t a grotto at St Finbar’s,’ I said, lame as usual. ‘I don’t even remember a statue of the virgin.’
‘That makes matters worse,’ she sneered. ‘That means that you imagined it. Imagined her. Like me, she’s a fantasy. How good is that for the title of your first novel, The Fantasy Virgin?’
‘Lootie,’ I said, ‘Lootie…’
‘Alice!’ she shouted. ‘Call me Alice, for crying out loud. I know it’s not the most grown-up name a woman might be stuck with, but it sure beats Lootie. Go on, say it. Say my bloody name!’
I sank to the floor, my head in my hands.
But she didn’t get up and stomp off. She didn’t rage and slam doors. She threw back the covers and slipped down beside me, her arm around my shoulder, hugging me. ‘I know, I know,’ she whispered. ‘You are who you are. A little boy lost. I’m sorry to say. Your mother made sure of that. She wanted to keep you, just as you were. All for herself. To satisfy something. Something she needed. Something she took to her grave. And here you are, still old Florrie’s little boy. Still trapped in the folds of her death bed.’ Her fingers trailed down my cheek, my neck. ‘The trouble is, now somebody else has come along. Sebastian Chanteleer. Man of the world. A man who has been, and will be again. There’s a difference, see? And since he came my way, I’m sticking with him. I’m sorry Charlie, but this is my chance, you understand?’
I turned to her, eye to eye. ‘Really?’ I whispered, hardly trusting my mouth to work. ‘Really?’
‘So I was upset this morning,’ she shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I get down sometimes. Just let me get over this first hurdle. Just let me do this church gig, right?’
I was so low, I guess, that I would take heart from anything. Any hint of compassion. Any hint of return. Of reconciliation. Of hope. And I heard promise in those words. Surely she hadn’t meant what she had said. All that about virgins and grottos and my mum? And Florrie’s little boy? How could she? How could she live with me for so long, with all that stuff pent up? No, I decided. No. This outburst was just a passing phase. Anxiety, nothing more.
‘Do you want me to take the day off?’ I said, wiping my nose and pulling myself up. (Pathetic lump that I was.) ‘I could take a sickie. I could help. Or we could go to Georgio’s?’
‘Now you’re being silly,’ she said. ‘You go to work. I have to see the chaplain. Things will sort themselves out, you’ll see.’
I worked hard that morning, pedalling like crazy to block out what I didn’t want to think about, but when I found myself looking down at those steely tramlines I felt the tears well up. Thoughts of Lootie came flooding over me, time and time again, thoughts of Chanteleer with her, the two of them, together. Insane thoughts. Thoughts I had no grounding for, no basis, no evidence. But still they came, growing more and more lurid. This was jealousy. An emotion only an adult could know, an emotion I had not appreciated before.
I found myself riding beside the park. The grass lush, the trees vivid with leaf. I saw kids playing and pulled over.
Near the playground was a camphor laurel, much like the one I had hidden in when I was a kid. Between those protective roots I might hide, seeking the solitude I had known in my childhood; the presence of my fiery saints, my fantastic martyrs, those rivers of pearls.
‘No, I’m not giving up,’ I said to Charlie Bloome who wheeled his bike beside me. ‘I’m just taking a break. To hide for a while. Those tramlines, you know, those ruts of depression…’
‘Nor should you give up,’ Charlie said. ‘Why should you forfeit your life to a has-been like him? You’re a man now. A big man, and big things are expected of you…’
Uncertain of his meaning, I told him to leave me be, and remarkably, Charlie did.
The kids in the playground were way too old to be there. They must have been in their early teens, the fenced enclosure obviously intended for pre-schoolers. Besides, this was a school day, they shouldn’t have been in the park at all. I guess there were half a dozen of them, all dressed in baggy jeans and T-shirts, climbing monkey bars and generally mucking around. A pair in one corner smoked. I could hear what they were saying, swearing and cursing. Some had earrings, a couple nose rings. When I looked closer, I thought some could be girls. I couldn’t tell, but I saw tattoos and the flash of earrings. They didn’t strike me as being private school kids. I guessed that they were playing truant and nobody cared.
A line from the Cohen book on Lewis Carroll came to mind, a quote by Carroll himself, cited from a letter regarding Alice in Wonderland: ‘It isn’t a book poor children would much care for,’ he said.
Carroll had italicised poor. This quote remained with me for the very reason that it hadn’t surprised me. I mean, what did Lewis Carroll know about poor kids? About working-class kids? Nothing really. Raised in the protection of churchgoing parents, entering the ivory tower of the Oxford don, Carroll might not have been rolling in money, but he sure wasn’t impoverished. He was no voice of the people, no advocate of the working class, no social reformer�
�certainly not a parent.
On one of his annual excursions to the beach, looking for children to photograph (preferably little girls), Carroll had written, ‘The children are not the right sort…They are a vulgar-looking lot…Hardly above the small shopkeeper rank.’
I sat between the camphor laurel roots, happy to daydream for a while. But the shadow of guilt crept over me. Lousy as my job was, I doubted that the parents of the kids fooling around in front of me even had jobs, not even pedalling a pushbike as I did, let alone being of ‘the small shopkeeper rank’.
Maybe because we’d been broke when I was a kid, I’d never taken to Carroll’s character of Alice: such a bossy, upper bourgeois little miss with her white stockings and prissy tongue. I figured that kids of today would know who she was, through merchandising, and Disney, of course, but I wondered if modern kids (the ones who smoked and swore and bullied one another in front of me) had actually read Carroll’s book and what they’d make of it if they had.
The irony was, as nasty as they appeared to be, as foul their language, as aggressive their behaviour, as self-centred and egocentric their attitudes, they were still kids, still young. Children really.
Whenever had there been a time when I was so free to dream? To hope? To wonder? To tremble, even thrill with fear?
And so I laughed, letting Lootie slip from me, and with her my doubts and fears. As Charlie Bloome had said, I could grow. Leaving childhood behind, I would be…
I watched as the kids left the playground to disappear among the trees, their raw voices trailing. Where are they going? I wondered. What do they have to do?
But I had run ahead of myself, for in their wake, Sebastian Chanteleer returned, and my own dark thoughts.
Like Carroll’s well-off Alice, maybe rich kids of the shopping mall species constituted the audience that Chanteleer was writing for. After all, A. A. Milne had chosen his Winnie-the-Pooh characters from the shelves of Harrods, and what was Star Wars if not one of the greatest commercial successes of all time?
