by Lucy Ellmann
My dear lady, this is a list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.
In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey ninety-one.
In Spain already one thousand and three.
Among these are peasant girls,
Maidservants, city girls,
Countesses, baronesses,
Marchionesses, princesses,
Women of every rank,
Every shape, every age.
Honouring the memory of the esteemed personage who died mysteriously the other day after eating a raw egg in his soup were:
Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, Lord and Lady Kilmarnock, the Hon Gerard Noel, the Hon Emma Soames, Mr Ferdinand Mount, Sir Mervyn and Lady Brown, Sir Frank Kermode, Sir Kenneth Bradshaw, Mr John Bayley and Dame Iris Murdoch.
Mr Anthony Howard, The Times, Mrs Katie Campbell, Evening Standard, Mrs Jane Mays, Daily Mail, Mr Mark Le Fanu, General Secretary, Society of Authors, Mr Eddie Bell, Executive Chairman and Publisher, HarperCollins, Ms Gail Rebuck, Random House UK, Mr Peter Carson, Penguin Books, Mr Peter Janson-Smith, Chairman, Glidrose Publications, Mr Bruce Hunter, David Higham Associates, Mr Denis Doble, Consul General lor Amsterdam.
Mr Anthony Butcher, QC, Chairman, Garrick Club, and Mrs Butcher, with Mr Martin Harvey, Secretary; Mr John Heald, the Betjeman Society, and Mrs Heald, Mrs Lisa Parkes, Walton Theatre Collection, Mrs Yvonne Simmons, St Anne’s College, Oxford, Mr Ian Hall, Chairman, Bloomsbury Society for Racial Harmony in the Arts, Mr Eric Shorter, Director, The Royal Theatrical Fund.
Mr Peter Taylor, Mr David Plante, Mr Norman Garrod, Mr and Mrs Tom Maschler, Mr Bernard Levin, Prof and Mrs John Postgate, Mr and Mrs Anthony Thwaite, Mr Alan Brien, Mr D.H. Enright, Mr Christopher Horne, Mrs Jill Day-Lewis, Mr Geoffrey Moore, Dr Patricia Gillam, Mr David Williams, Mrs James Gibb, Miss Emma Gibb, Mrs Colin Welch, Mr Dermott Clinch, Mr Patrick Garland, Mr Alan Ross, Mr Paul Lew, Mr William Boyd, Mr Paul Johnson, Mr Paul Sidey, Mr and Mrs Richard Hough, Ms Miriam Gross, Mr Derek Nimmo, Mr Alan Jenkins, Mr Alan Watkins, Miss Isabel Fonseca.
Mrs Robin Orr, Ms Wendy Cope, Ms Antonia Phillips, Miss Livia Gollanez, Mr Nick Rankin and Dr Maggie Gee, Mr Salman Rushdie, Ms Rosie Boycott, Mr Lionel Bloch, Mr Keith Waterhouse, Mr Paul Ferris, Mr Donald Trelford and many other friends.
THE SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED WOMAN
Like a newly released convict, the sexually frustrated woman is predisposed to passion and on the prowl. She supposes herself ripe, and she is everywhere. Hear her giggling? Feel the tension when you sit beside her on the bus or innocently obtrude your knee between hers on the tube?
Study her life history and you will find that despite some quite promising early years she has retreated increasingly into herself. By obsessively substituting food, booze, embroidery and the banging of pots and pans for sex she has become an Autonomous Rogue Female. Every few months she will send off an air-mail letter to some long-lost love object who rarely if ever replies. She is a nervous fretful companion with nothing to say for herself, prone to hysterical outbursts and the sudden poignant disclosure of irrelevancies. For a social life she relies heavily on the radio.
Her hormones are leaping, her heart is leaping, the woman is leaping (when not weeping). Avoid this demon. Try to mistake her for an inanimate object. Lower your eyes in her presence: eye contact is provocative. Do not speak to her if you can help it her passions are easily aroused. Even a ‘hello’ or ‘excuse me’ could be misinterpreted. Tone down your costume, do not dress up when out in public — you could be accused later of having ‘asked for it’. It is unsavoury to meet a sexually voracious woman down a dark alley so keep to main streets and well-lit areas. In fact, if you’re a sexually unavailable man, why not just stay home? For your every courtesy is a cruelty. Look at the pain you cause when incautious of where you direct your stares, your winks, your smiles, your D.I.Y. advice. You leave a trail of devastation, a bunch of tantalized women who may never forget you, may base all hopes and preferences on the formative experience of having met you, and may berate their present and future partners for not being you. Bear this in mind when next you try to interest some strange woman in the falling pound. This woman is alert to every touch, even that of a fly, a raindrop, a car’s gear-stick. Try not to be friendly or good-looking. You are dealing with ungovernable lust and there are certain responsibilities involved.
(from the absent student’s notebook)
Denver, Dekalb, Garson. Gary —
Chippewa, Saskatchewan.
Colonizer colonized.
Man and woman, yeastlike mystery:
Love and sadness rise there swiftly,
Kneaded (NEEDED) into being.
Flesh is both our doom and our delight.
Eloïse
One day ant and bee flew
out to do some shopping.
Bee told ant they must not
buy too much or the basket
would get too heavy.
Now ant and bee are flying home.
Doesn’t the basket look full!
The basket is too heavy!!!!
(Would you like to know what is in the basket? I’ll tell you.)
1 little LETTUCE
2 little TARTS
3 little BANANAS
4 little CAKES
5 little APPLES
6 little EGGS
7 little BISCUITS
8 little SAUSAGES
9 little CARROTS
10 little GRAPES
(Isn’t it a lot! No wonder the basket is too heavy!)
My tragedy doesn’t strike anyone else as a tragedy, my poignant sorrow moves no one. I regret everything I have ever done and everything that has ever happened to me. Death is all around me. This does not make you strong. I am frightened of the whole world and its hostility to me.
My neighbours are my true oppressors, them and their skinny, stripy, naked-looking dog like a penis on wheels, and their bratty little boy who’s always trying to destroy his own toys, and their clapped-out Mercedes-Benz. Our cottages are semi-attached to each other in such a way that when they go up and down their stairs, it sounds like they’re on mine. And they never walk, it’s always a gallop. When not galloping they’re persecuting the kid. I once heard the mother yell at him, ‘Nobody likes you!’, which is probably true but not kind. I thought about reporting them to Social Services but they’d know it was me, and anyway, I didn’t come all the way out here to save the world (only to save myself).
The father’s German, hence his devotion to the Mercedes, which he keeps in a state of total collapse right outside my kitchen window. He’s forever tinkering with it, blowing his noxious fumes at me for hours at a time. Nazis.
They had a burglary. Banged on my door to ask if I’d seen a green and white van outside on the day. Did I move here to study traffic? (Actually I hardly ever look out of my front windows in case some bloody villager is looking in.) Then the wife decided that, as her husband and I are usually about during the day, we should let each other know when we’re going out so that we can mutually guard each other’s house. Did I give up all of human society in order to report my every movement to a Nazi who thumps up and down stairs all day, veils at his son and incessantly fixes his car? (He whistles too.) To sum up, am I to change my entire way of life because they got their hi-fi stolen?
I can’t even go to the loo in peace anymore. Knock-knock at the door. When I arise and go to it (noting on the way that a goldfish has died) I find the husband across the lane shuffling about in the garage, as is his wont. I apologize for taking so long to come to the door. He requests an electric drill. I have already informed the wife that I don’t stock any useful electrical devices but he clearly does not believe this. He can see no point in my existence — weird ageing solitary female — unless I can provide equipment of benefit to my neighbours. I a
m meant to feel guilty because I cannot help him with his drill needs. Now he’ll have to go into town specially, so that he can install his burglar-proof window locks. How to convey to him that I don’t give a shit?
Back to the loo to put a suppository up my bum. They’re the same shape as atomic missiles and have roughly the same effect. Only a hermit could get away with it. ‘Nobody likes you.’
Why’d the fish die?
Dissection of a queen caught seeking a hibernation site reveals a massive clear or white fat body that may occupy most of the abdominal cavity … in spring the fat body is almost exhausted.
Why enquire, why amass knowledge? Why this widely held notion that we should be improving ourselves all the time? Cats aren’t trying to improve. Sheep don’t improve. Why send teenagers with terminal illnesses to school? It only makes sense if you believe in reincarnation and think you need to graduate up in the next life.
Someone is making a terrible racket outside with a lawnmower. Spring! A pitiless revenge is being wreaked against nature with the aid of electricity. The countryside is just one big battleground. Did I come here to listen to that whining? Hard to tell where it’s coming from. I now think it may be a hedge trimmer — I can hear the sound of tiny branches being wrenched untimely from their parent stalks. Gardening is obscene. If I went out now I’d probably be beheaded. I’m a prisoner in my own home. Alone, unloved, unprotected, lacking counsel of any kind.
One of my cats reminds me of my mother. I pat my mother in her. Reincarnation of evaporated mother.
How to stop missing her?
Born alone, live alone, die alone.
There is a strange duality of character in the bee. In the heart of the hive all help and love each other. They are as united as the good thoughts that dwell in the same soul. Wound one of them, and a thousand will sacrifice themselves to avenge its injury. But outside the hive they no longer recognise each other. Mutilate them, crush them – or rather, do nothing of the kind; it would be a useless cruelty, for the fact is established beyond any doubt – but were you to mutilate, or crush, on a piece of comb placed a few steps from their dwelling, twenty or thirty bees that have all issued from the same hive, those you have left untouched will not even turn their heads. With their tongue … they will tranquilly continue to absorb the liquid they hold more precious than life, heedless of the agony whose last gestures are almost touching them, of the cries of distress that arise all around … they have not the slightest sense of solidarity or pity.
George
‘He has got lovely hands, this man’ British tennis commentator (MALE).
June. Classes over for the year. Screenplay in the clammy palms of Charles at the BBC. All I have to do now is finish me pome. Hence: TORPOR in front of the TV, watching Wimbledon. It’s mayhem this year though, because there are some BRITISH players for once. Sort of interesting really who’d have thought the British could be so belligerent? They are unreservedly, unrestrainedly nationalistic. They’re all REDNECKS under the skin, sustained by strawberries ’n’ cream. Their patriotism has been allowed to run RAMPANT. (Never had a Vietnam War to give them some SHAME.)
All they care about is BRITAIN and, now, BRITISH TENNIS. The fact that none of their players has ever won a match worth winning doesn’t seem to stop the baying crowd thinking they might. If everybody YELLS loud enough. No feelings are spared for the unfortunate opponent (they cheer his every blunder). But that’s English POLITENESS for ya. Their xenophobia’s completely out of hand. It’s narcissism really, and it’s SCARY. And if they’re like this when their man’s obviously losing, what would they be like TRIUMPHANT? Lynch mobs? CONCENTRATION CAMPS?
Can’t help thinking that most of Benjamin Britten’s (enormous) reputation here’s due to his name being BRITTEN. They just LAP that kind of thing up. Their famous tolerance is a farce. They hate EVERYBODY they just get away with it by hating us all equally. The latest news flash is that anti-Semitism is on the decline here. Like hell it is!
They treat the Irish like shit too:
Irish people in Britain suiter discrimination at work, are dismissed as scroungers by DSS staff, are bullied by their neighbours and are targeted by police … Harassment at work includes name-calling and Irish jokes, which 79 per cent of people surveyed said they found offensive. Many said they were “deeply wounded” when colleagues automatically assumed they had sympathy for the IRA.
How do they get away with it?! Try telling one of those Irish jokes in a Boston bar! Fuckers.
I’m beginning to think Venetia’s after my BODY after all. Her behavior’s increasingly peculiar. She admires a shirt I’m wearing. Next week, SHE’S wearing it (or something very similar). She’s read up on ICE HOCKEY and quizzes me on the finer points. I used to be able to get rid of people by blasting ’em with ice hockey trivia! Not Venetia. Now she’s bought herself a cappuccino machine, in imitation of the one I got for judging a short-story competition (poor recompense) — but of course she has to get one that WORKS.
Yes, everything she has is slightly BETTER than my version. It’s copycat stuff with a resentful twist to it. She doesn’t just want to climb all over me, she wants to SUPERCEDE me in some way. It’s not friendly. She goes and buys something because I have it, buys it without asking me if it’s worth having, then BLAMES me when she finds out it isn’t. Jesus, I am becoming responsible for her WHOLE LIFE and I hardly KNOW the woman!
She made me come with her to a DIRK BOGARDE READING the other night, reluctance issuing from every pore of my being. He wasn’t too bad in the end. But even Dirk Bogarde and his exhaustive memories of infancy couldn’t make up for the fact that I was worried the whole time that Venetia was about to slip her hand into my PANTS. The woman gives me the creeps.
Earlier this spring I made the mistake of admitting to Venetia that I was looking for a writing studio in which to finish my poem — somewhere separate from home and bed and the kitchen and this damn couch I seem to like so much and she offered me her get this! MOVABLE GAZEBO, in the back yard of her vast property on Primrose Hill. You can MOVE IT AROUND so that it CATCHES THE SUN. Pretty irresistible. So I move in my typewriter, my pens, my pencils, my MAGIC MARKERS, my paper, my stapler, my erasers, my paper clips, my Scotch tape, my scissors, my Boston Bruins calendar, stamps, envelopes, postcards, dictionary, thesaurus, other people’s poems, my coffee thermos, RUG for my FEET, tapes, tape player, cushion, some socks, spare sweater, desk lamp, suntan lotion and what exists of my poem; and I settle down, planning to start off by writing something about writing something about writing something until I disappear neatly up my own littry ass … All on the understanding that this corny but adorable little den is all MINE for the time being, PRIVATE, no INTRUDERS, no GLANCING AT STUFF left lying around in manuscript form, no admission AT ALL in fact when I’m not there, no nonsense, no NOTHIN’.
Then — exotic flowers start turning up. On my desk. In exquisite little vases. A black lily from Guatemala or some other strange sprig. The occasional snack would also appear out of nowhere. Only a matter of time before she’d be bringing me my SLIPPERS and PIPE!…
Had to cancel the whole arrangement, move my stuff OUT. (Gazebo-less in Gaza!) Venetia became very cool after that, which was alarming, but basically satisfactory. But soon she was back in action, calling me up for coffee. I felt I must go (out of guilt), and there she was, using my THERMOS. Or an exact imitation!
I hide at home with my very private thoughts about Eloïse. I want her so much it makes me cry.
ELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSELOÏSE
Pros
Cons
her skin
cold feet
her lovely eyes
(kind of BIG feet too)
her wrists
too much lipstick (wrong color?)
HER
English
we’re in same country
RESERVED
SHE LOVED ME
worrier (hypochondriac?)
her ha
nd on my thigh
awkward, kind of clumsy
my cock down her throat
MAD at me?
cats
probably wants KIDS
bit iffy about ice hockey
long-lost, gone
long-gone, LOST
too late, TOO LATE
STAR-CROSSED LOVERS
They were made for each other. They both liked ice-cream, fossils, ping-pong and opera. Both were moderate drinkers and non-smokers. Both were on the lookout for a long-term commitment.
Unfortunately they lived on separate planets and, through the incompetence of astronomers who assumed that her planet’s cumulus clouds were icebergs, and the pigheadedness of bureaucrats and politicians who refused to allocate adequate funds for space exploration, the two potential love-birds were destined never to meet. Plans to colonise her planet were put on hold for another 300 years, by which time he was dead and she could barely hobble out to have a look at the alien spacecraft.
Thus, all chance of romance was knocked firmly on the head.
(from the absent student’s notebook)
Eloïse
Eloïse’s list of daily achievements:
Monday
1 Hoovered.
2 Tidied kitchen.
3 Cooked chicken, prepared vegetables.
4 Decided to write down things I accomplish every day because I never feel I’ve accomplished anything.
5 Washed hair.
Tuesday
1 Took bottles to bottle bank.
2 Shopped; unloaded shopping from car; put shopping away in cupboards.
3 Cleaned up kitchen.
4 Skimmed accountant’s letter.
Wednesday
1 Paid milk bill.
2 Made vet appointment.
3 Bought TV guide.
4 Made big supper. Too big; froze some.
Thursday
1 Washed two loads of clothes.
2 Took cat to vet.
3 Read George’s old letters in order to throw away; kept them.
4 Read accountant’s letter in full.
