by Lucy Ellmann
They’re all so glum, they act BEREAVED. Can’t look you in the eye because they’re BEREAVED, can’t speak because they’re BEREAVED, can’t cook because they’re so BEREAVED, don’t FUCK because they’re BEREAVED, drive on the wrong side of the road because BEREAVEMENT has confused them. But what are they bereaved ABOUT? What is this gnawing collective tragedy? The loss of an empire they should never have had in the first place? Lack of sun? Train privatization and a year of tricky train timetables? Fluctuating Darjeeling prices? The perpetual self-abasement of the Royal Fambly? It could be ICE HOCKEY deprivation, for all they know.
They’re philistines too. You can’t get a bookcase in this country for love or money. They’ve filled them all with their hideous knick-knacks and they’re NOT LETTING GO. Shelves sag throughout the land under bubble-glass paperweights, china figurines and photo albums full of blurry ‘pics’ of soggy camping ‘hols’. Probably put the gerbil cage in there too, and, of course, the VIDEO collection. The Brits watch more videos per capita than any other race on earth.
Anything to avoid a roll in the hay, I guess.
The sporting man parades his fury
For the crowd, his judge and jury;
Mimicking the lack of feeling
Men adopt for raping, stealing,
What they need in war for killing.
Nothing slows him, nothing stops him
(Skating dimly, puck before him)
In his phony-baloney anger,
His IMAGINARY DANGER.
When not writing my poem, I battle on with my hapless screenplay for the BBC — now in its EIGHTH INCARNATION. All a big waste of adverbs:
MAN NOISILY EXTRACTS BREAD FROM OVEN. MAN LOOKS HESITATINGLY AT WOMAN. WOMAN LOOKS SADLY BACK. MAN DROPS PAN CLUMSILY. MAN BOLDLY CROSSES ROOM. MAN GRABS WOMAN FIERCELY, DELICATELY PARTS HER CUNNINGLY WANDERING WISPS OF HAIR AND KISSES HER.
FERVENTLY.
I’m just beginning to get the hang of it. Lotta good it’ll do me. Now they want me to get rid of the LOVE interest (what do the Brits know about love, after all?), make all my characters shallow and promiscuous and generally ‘lighten’ the thing up a bit! Each character’s got to make a JOURNEY, they say. Something like a pasta machine: start off as one sort of guy, go through stuff (:LIFE), and come out different by the end (twirled, ridged, tubular or green). How childish can you get, this idea that everybody’s CHANGING and IMPROVING all the time! Jeez, if they mention JOURNEYS once more I’m taking the next plane home.
Their latest complaint is that my dialogue isn’t AMERICAN enough! They’ve assigned me a new script editor (:glorified PAIN IN THE ASS), Iolanthe, to ‘help’ with it. She’s ENGLISH!! She tells me my dialogue doesn’t tell you anything about the characters. Tells ya what they’re SAYING though, huh? The new dialogue tells you a lot about Iolanthe: she’s CRASS. But the last one was worse, kept making me rewrite stuff As It Would Be Filmed. I have wasted MONTHS of my life changing things like: ‘MAN WALKS TO WINDOW ENJOYING THE JOKE’, to ‘SMILING MAN WALKS JAUNTILY TOWARD WINDOW, LAUGHING A LITTLE’. Months.
They dangle before me the tantalizing prospect that Charles will someday read it. Charles is too busy ever to be personally consulted by a writer – he delegates the script chicks to deliver his message to the scribes. I wouldn’t have even believed the guy EXISTS, except I saw him on his way to the john once. Never saw him come OUT, though. The entire future of BBC Drama rests on Charles, and Charles is resting on the john (well, I would too, probably). But my producer insists she knows what Charles likes and if I make all her changes (that is, fuck the whole thing and myself up in new and wonderful ways), she’ll eventually shove my pitiful screenplay, about the pitfalls of love, in his direction. Together we daily try to please and appease Charles.
My only comfort: pinball. Old family tradition. My father’s gangster uncle, Harry ‘Hands’ Hanafan, used to control all the pinball machines in south Boston. The guy had hands like BEAR PAWS. Only had to walk into the bar or grocery store and show those paws and they’d hand the money over! My dad went along for the ride occasionally (about which he was not proud), but by the time I could have joined them Harry seemed to be permanently in prison. I never even got to meet him! God, I would have LOVED to check out all the old pinball machines while Harry was arranging those mitts of his on the counter beside the cash register.
What’s wrong with promoting a little pinball anyway? A noble game. Must’ve given hope to many a sad lad. I wouldn’t have gotten through college without it! Ice hockey and pinball saved ME.
And behold, in striving for the attainment of … his own individual welfare, man perceives that his welfare depends on other beings. And, upon watching and observing these other beings, man sees that all of them, both men and even animals, possess precisely the same conception of life as he himself. Each of these beings … is conscious only of his own life, and his own happiness, considers his own life alone of importance, and real, and the life of all other fellow beings only as a means to his own individual welfare. Man sees that every living being, precisely like himself, must be ready, for the sake of his petty welfare, to deprive all other beings of greater happiness and even of life.
Eloïse
Nest-searching queens fly to and fro, low over banks
and rough uncultivated land, sometimes investigating
dark holes, crawling briefly into cavities and tussocks.
‘One duty of friends is to walk with people in their own particular Garden of Gethsemane,’ said some nun on the radio. This was why Eloïse didn’t want friends: they ruined walks.
What is the point of socializing anyway? Information, gossip, networking, the soap-opera machinations of other people’s lives? Sexual frissons? Xmas cards? You can get all that (except the cards) from TV without having to tidy up. And there were no sexual frissons for Eloïse these days – she had learnt to talk to men of nothing.
If it had been up to her, people would never get together, never speak. She always said the wrong thing. She was tortured after any social encounter by regret about her misdemeanours, misapprehensions, stupidities, her callousness, her coldness, and also the many ways in which other people let her down. There was not love enough in the world to appease her.
She had offended her friends by never wanting to see them, but she’d offend them more if she did see them. And they would offend her (there were few subjects of conversation that did not give her pain). She offended herself enough as it was.
We have found nests in a rolled-up carpet and a disused
armchair, under an old lawnmower and an upturned
sink, in a heap of coal.
Eloïse knew nothing about country life except that gates must be kept shut and dock leaves sometimes cure nettle stings. She stood eating soup in her overgrown garden, looking up at stars she could not name.
Never did anyone walk through an empty field with more self-consciousness. Eloïse always felt she was being watched. Trees seemed to whisper behind her back and small creatures made kissing sounds in mockery of her. Lynxes, panthers and psychopaths were said to lurk in the English countryside (ex-pets grown too big for the parlour), and Eloïse had once been chased through a small meadow by about fifty merry young bullocks. But she was more worried about being talked to than killed. She could meet a violent death in a more or less normal way, lie extinguished beneath a bush for months like the best of them; making small talk was a much greater challenge.
She was the victim of an increasing number of friendly overtures. Villagers were forever knocking on her door with their charity boxes, drinks invitations, reports on upcoming fetes. If they didn’t stop she’d have to move again! Stretches of straight road particularly unnerved her. What if someone appeared at the other end and she had to walk towards them for half a mile, preparing herself for conversation? Or worse, if she turned a corner and found someone she vaguely knew going in the same direction, requiring conversation with no end in sight? Ghastly collisions. To deter as much contact as p
ossible she kept her head down and walked swiftly — one day a man appeared behind her so suddenly she thought she must have farted him into existence.
All social encounters took their toll, and could be graded according to the necessary recovery time:
DAMAGING ENCOUNTER
RECOVERY PERIOD
Speaking to postman
half an hour
Receiving pkg. and exchanging a few words with postman
one hour
Unavoidable chat with neighbour —
(outdoors)
two hours
(indoors)
three hours
Unpleasant stare from villager
half an hour
Ditto from neighbour
one to two hours
Walking through field occupied by farmer on tractor (no eye contact)
ten minutes
Ditto, but involving cheery wave
twenty minutes
Glance from stranger —
(innocent)
ten minutes
(hostile)
fifteen minutes
Shopping transactions:
Paying for petrol
ten minutes
Ordering cat litter —
(by phone)
half an hour
(in person)
one hour
Sainsbury’s expedition —
(no speaking necessary)
one hour
(words exchanged)
two hours
Meeting milkman by accident
(no speaking necessary)
half an hour
(having to discuss milk)
one hour
Pretending not to be in when coalman comes
half an hour
Paying coalman in person
one hour
Receiving TV repairman —
(in anticipation)
half a day
(afterwards)
two hours
Being approached by charity worker —
(in public)
twenty minutes
(in own home)
one hour
Seeing doctor –
(anticipation)
between one and four days
(after)
two hours
Preparing to make phone call
days (indefinite)
Making phone call
two hours
Answering ringing phone
one hour
Ignoring ringing phone
half an hour
Not answering doorbell
one to two hours
Answering doorbell
two hours
Considering going to film or concert
ten to fifteen minutes
Actually going to film or concert –
(without having to exchange eye contact with anyone)
one hour
(with eve contact)
two hours
(eye contact and some physical)
three hours
(continuous physical contact with someone in next seat)
four hours
(physical contact plus some verbal exchanges)
five hours
(verbal contact followed by rejecting behaviour on parting)
days
Swimming-pool expedition
ditto
Writing letters
(business)
half an hour
(personal)
variable
Remembering social encounters from the past
(pleasant)
twenty minutes
(not so pleasant)
two hours
(painful)
four hours
(downright pitiful)
days
Recovery was best conducted in bed. Bed, the most welcoming place she knew, and dreams her only entertainment.
People harbour strange expectations about the telephone: they expect you to use it! They expect you to answer no matter what time it is, no matter what they’re interrupting (they’re always interrupting something), whether you like them or not. They expect you to press that nozzle to your ear and listen to them for however long it takes, until they dismiss you. If you don’t comply, they think you’re rude, or weird. (Or out.)
Eloïse was rarely ready or able to answer the phone when it rang, and it took her days to gear up to make a call. What was she so scared of? That she wouldn’t have anything to say? That she would sound foolish, because she was out of practice talking to people, and because she was foolish (big secret)? Or was she simply afraid that the call would go on so long (she did not know how to say goodbye) that her ear would ache?
She had a trusty answering machine to befuddle and delay (it sometimes cut people off midstream), while she cowered in the hallway trying to decide if she were capable of speech that day (it is sometimes hard to tell if you’re ready to talk until you’re actually talking, and then it can be too late). But usually she simply listened to people leaving their messages, with no thought of answering. Then she would plod around in her pigeon-toed way for days, assessing whether or not she was yet ready to return the call. And where was the reward? It was a never-ending onslaught! As soon as she managed to phone one person, someone else called and the whole apoplectic process began again. Optical fibres would be her undoing.
One day, in a burst of normality, she called a carpenter about some shelves she wanted built. He wasn’t there. Later he called back and left a message. Weeks passed before she was fit enough to speak to the carpenter again. Again, he wasn’t in. He called her back. A few days later, she called him. He was out. She left another message. He called back. She cringed and dithered in the hallway as usual while he left a message. It could have gone on for ever, this sad little ballet between Eloïse and the unknown carpenter. But guilt, shame and embarrassment briefly overcame terror, shyness, despair: she picked up the phone. The carpenter proposed coming over that afternoon to assess her shelving needs. Appalled to be speaking to him at all, Eloïse was ill-prepared to veto this plan. Thus, only a few seconds into a phone call she had never wholly endorsed she had committed herself to a direct confrontation with the carpenter (some might call it an appointment) and was gripped by the familiar sense of impending misadventure and regret.
She tried to remind herself that such invasions must be borne occasionally. She had an urgent need of bookshelves after all. She had long since rescued her boxes of books from a friend’s damp basement (wresting herself simultaneously from the friendship), only for them to slip, flop and lounge about reproachfully, awaiting the shelves to which they were entitled. Eloïse felt she had bought the house mainly as a sanatorium for those books but now they shamed her, they blamed her, and they got in the bloody way.
She had designed the shelves she needed. She had spent hours measuring walls and drawing bookshelves with a variety of felt-tip pens on nice white sheets of paper, a separate sheet for each new book-welcoming niche she found as she trailed round the house compulsively snapping her tape-measure in a style she felt exuded carpenterish competence. Hours and hours of adding and subtracting and colouring-in (maths never having been her strong point).
The carpenter came early. When it is a horror for anyone to come at all, it is a particular horror for them to come early. Eloïse had only just finished a gourmet lunch of Saumon en Croûte (actually the remains of a packet she’d found at the back of the freezer and wasn’t too sure about), accompanied by a concoction made by dissolving a huge vitamin C tablet in fizzy mineral water, there by producing an extremely fizzy, if dull, healthy drink.
Earlier in the day she’d been to the local GP’s surgery to have the scald on her foot rebandaged (she had dumped a boiling-hot cup of coffee on it the week before and skin had come off when she’d frantically removed her sock). Unwrapping the unsightly wound, the nurse mistook Eloïse’s self-disgust for self-pity and gruffly told her she’d seen worse. Hurt by her coldness, El
oïse had hobbled away from modern medicine, she hoped for ever.
But as a result, she was limping round the house in loose-fitting pink bedsocks when the carpenter arrived. Also, she had not had time to reapply any lipstick (she had reached The Age When Lipstick Must Be Applied). This hampered her somewhat with the carpenter, with whom she’d hoped to appear, if not suave, at least vaguely respectable.
But he seemed oblivious to her and her multifarious crimes of omission, both ancient and modern, and to her contrition. Hurrying through the house, he swiftly noted her ‘designs’, as well as her more far-fetched dreams (she had touched on window seats and wine racks), refused tea, asked if he could take her drawings away with him and send her an estimate, searched a little frantically for the front door, and was gone.
Eloïse stared disconsolately at the catalogue he’d left behind. It displayed an intimidating level of craftsmanship his firm seemed to specialize in baronial banisters and banqueting halls and suddenly she realized she’d been had. He’d known as soon as he saw her — minus shoes and lipstick that she didn’t deserve his bookshelves. He had taken her drawings only to give his mates back at the workshop a good laugh. Her red felt-tipped shelves in somewhat wonky perspective, her skirting boards scribbled yellow, her bolder grey diagonal strokes demarcating floor, her intricate inexpert concerns over height, depth, length and thickness, her pretence of having mastered inches.
It had taken Eloïse six months to work up the courage to ask for those shelves. And several phone calls. Only to get a warehouse full of joiners, carpenters and cabinetmakers (what’s the difference anyway?) laughing at her. (Was it the pink socks or the lingering stink of stale Saumon en Croûte??)
But who cares about books anyway? She certainly had no interest in reading them. Had she moved to the middle of nowhere in order to be communicated with? Books are like rooms, rooms full of people. Eloïse did not want to enter an unfamiliar room and have to hear about someone else’s thoughts, childhood, love life, joys, sorrows and death.
Death, which makes all of life hardly worth living.
George
1. INT/EXT. Amusement arcade — daytime.
MAN (PINING FOR ICE HOCKEY) JERKS PINBALL MACHINE ANGRILY. CLOSE-UP OF PINBALL FLIPPERS FLIPPING WILDLY. MAN FURIOUSLY TURNS AWAY, PICKS UP SOME BULGING SHOPPING BAGS FROM FLOOR, LEAVES ARCADE MOROSELY.
