by Robert Irwin
Caroline, suddenly seized with shyness, shook her head vigorously and moved back to my side, taking hold of my arm once more. The city gent tipped his hat and walked on. Then Jorge came over. It was all arranged, he said. The Eluards were finding it too disgustingly hot in London, so tomorrow we – Jorge, Paul, Nusch, Caroline and I were going down to Brighton for the day.
Chapter Seven
Since Gala Dali and Oliver wanted to come too, we needed two cars for the journey to Brighton. Monica was persuaded to take some of our party in her Model T Ford in exchange for an interview with Paul Eluard. So on the Saturday, Jorge, Oliver and I set off early to collect Caroline from her home in Putney, leaving Monica to pick up the Eluards and Gala from their hotel. (Salvador Dali had said that he would have liked to come too, only he had a meeting with Edward James that day to advise on the decor of the millionaire’s new flat in Wimpole Street. In retrospect, though, I am sure that Gala had told Salvador that she did not want him to come.) Caroline was waiting for us on the pavement outside her house. I opened the car’s door to let Caroline climb in beside me and as she did so, I noticed her mother, dressed in a flowery housecoat, leaning out of an upstairs window and looking down on us thoughtfully.
Caroline leant forwards to tap Jorge on the shoulder.
‘Jorge, I’ve got to ask you something. My friend Brenda came round last night and she wanted to know what sort of car it was that we went to the gallery in yesterday. I said it was a blue car, but she got jolly annoyed with me. She wanted to know the make and I’m hopeless at cars and things like that. What is it?’
‘It’s a Hispano-Suiza’ said Jorge tonelessly.
‘Hispano-Suiza, Hispano-Suiza. I’d better write it down or I’ll forget it,’ she said. Then, ‘Isn’t it a super day!’
Unsmiling Jorge made no reply as the Hispano-Suiza rolled silently off. For Jorge, the Serapion Brotherhood was a kind of long-running party which he gatecrashed repeatedly and to which he kept bringing bottles but at which he was never fully at ease. On occasions when he did try to participate in conversations his contributions tended to bring discussions to an end.
Very soon the car’s acceleration made conversation impossible as the wind stripped all our words away. Caroline leant heavily against me and kept her scarf tight around her face.
We motored down through deepest England, bowling along between high hedges, overtaking cyclists, haywains and ramblers. I looked out on it all quite baffled. I was supposed to be an Englishman, but the truth was and is that the country I have grown up in is quite foreign to me. Trees crossed branches over the roads and I did not know the names of the trees. The hedgerows were bright with things that I knew were called flowers, but I could not have been more specific than that. I saw men toiling on farmlands and could not guess at what they toiled. Ramblers would wave to us as we passed and I wondered what devil it was that possessed them and drove them to plod through the countryside.
We rendezvoused with Monica’s party on the front at Brighton. Despite our early start from London it was already hot on the sea-front. We hired a bathing-hut and the women changed first and then the men. I emerged in time to see Caroline and Nusch run down to the sea together. As they neared the water’s edge they each instinctively pulled at the edges of their costumes to cover their bottoms more completely.
Paul, Jorge and I followed them in. It is hard for anyone who has read Freud intensively (as all of us in the Brotherhood had done) to plunge into water of any sort and not to experience himself or herself as metaphorically diving into the depths of the unconscious. My plunge into the dark green murk rendered me chilled and sightless. I resurfaced swiftly and, as I did so, Caroline came swimming towards me. Her long dark hair hung in an eerie veil across her face, but she pushed it aside and we managed a briny kiss. Jorge produced a beachball and Caroline and I splashed about with it like little children under his gloomy supervision. Oliver and Gala did not swim. It was fairly obvious that Gala did not like the seaside and I think that she had only come with us to Brighton in order to be close to Paul. I was unable to decide whether Paul and she were still lovers or not. She sat on the shingle looking out disapprovingly on us with those unforgettably dark and deep-set eyes that her husband’s paintings have made so familiar to everybody since. Oliver sat beside her and after a while Gala produced a pack of tarot cards from her handbag and set to telling his fortune. We watched her muttering and throwing up her hands in gipsy-like gestures and once or twice she pointed to us in the water, but we were too far out to hear what she was saying and I was never to discover what Oliver’s fortune was.
Monica was another non-swimmer. Instead she had brought a great pile of newspapers down from London and these she spread out on the beach. There were reviews of the Surrealist exhibition in almost all of them and, while we were drying ourselves Monica and Oliver read out choice passages. According to J.B. Priestley, Surrealists ‘stand for violence and neurotic unreason. They are truly decadent. You catch a glimpse behind them of the deepening twilight of barbarism that will soon blot out the sky, until at last humanity finds itself in another long dark night’. He went on to suggest that we were all sensation seekers and sexual perverts. I remember remarking that hearing all this seemed particularly unfair after we had just had a bracing dip and an energetic game of beachball. Had Priestley done anything half so healthy that morning? He was probably still scraping the dottle out of that disgusting pipe of his.
Oliver felt the same way,
‘We should hold a Surrealist sportsday and invite jolly Jack Priestley to participate. Kraft durch Unheimlichkeit, Strength through Weirdness, should be our winning motto.’
And Paul was puzzled by Priestley’s description of the Surrealists as ‘sensation seekers’.
‘Surely it is good to seek sensations?’ he mused. ‘That is what poets are for.’
This last remark provided the opening for Monica’s interview with him. Eluard spoke fluently if somewhat delphically, a natural oracle. Eavesdropping on the interview, I gathered that in his vision of life poetry was a force for political change and that the poet’s place was on the barricades. The poet was not so much one who was inspired as the one who inspired. The inspirational teachings of the poet would restore to the proletariat the natural poetry that had been stolen from them by the capitalists. He quoted Lautréamont; ‘Poetry must be made by all. Not by one.’
As Eluard moved on to discuss the misfortunes of the Popular Front in France, Oliver, who hated politics, grew bored and rolled over towards Caroline.
‘And what about you? I’m sure that you’ve found better things to do than read poetry.’
‘Oh, but I love poetry! I’ve just been reading Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. Have you read it?’
She had him on the defensive, for he had not. Turning to me, she continued,
‘Baudelaire’s jolly gloomy isn’t he? I can’t see how he managed to keep writing all the time, if he really was as sad as all that. And doesn’t he make being beautiful sound really sinister? Still he did like cats and that’s good. And he did love the sea.’
Then suddenly she sat up and, looking across the water, declaimed in a high clear voice,
‘Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame …’
By the time she had finished reciting all four verses of L’Homme et la Mer, Eluard had stopped pronouncing on the poet in politics and was gazing curiously at her, while Oliver was quite slack-jawed. ‘Little Miss Typist’ had at last succeeded in impressing him.
‘Clever old you,’ he said weakly.
Caroline smiled and lay back to cuddle against me on the hot shingle. She hissed in my ear,
‘Would you like me to be a Baudelairean woman, debauched and deliciously impure, with a cruel soul and sharp teeth? Then we could live together in jewelled squalor. The squalor wouldn’t be too bad, as long as we had all the jewels.
’
We closed for another kiss. She was so soft and wet, it was like drowning in another sea.
‘You know, you’re very bad for me – like chocolate cake,’ she whispered. ‘That kiss in the park was the first time I ever kissed a man. Your being blindfold made it seem safer somehow.’
Then as I still said nothing, she continued,
‘I feel like I have been brought up in a goldfish bowl which you were sent to smash. Mummy and Daddy spend all their time protecting me, trying to save me for Mr Right. And now you come along and I’ve just realised what your secret surname must be – Mr Wrong, Caspar Wrong!’
We lay entwined for a while until Nusch, Gala and Oliver bullied us into accompanying them on a beachcombing walk, looking for interestingly shaped pebbles and pieces of driftwood. We walked for a long time, until we were out of sight of the pier. Before turning back to rejoin the others, we sat and rested. Oliver was at his most charming. He talked about his forthcoming examination by the membership committee of the Magic Circle and did a few tricks with Gala’s tarot pack. Then he started to conjure pebbles out of the women’s ears. Laughing crazily, he informed Nusch:
‘As you see I have no sleeves to hide things in today. However, there are concealed pockets everywhere in the universe where one can hide anything. It is merely a matter of distracting the audience’s attention while one fumbles for the pocket.’
It turned out that Nusch was somewhat vague about the difference between conjuring and sorcery. I assured her that the two things were quite distinct and that Oliver had no belief whatsoever in the latter. But at this point Oliver stopped smiling and interrupted me. He was looking at me very strangely, almost as if he feared me.
‘Up to a few days ago I could have agreed with Caspar and let that pass. Now though, I am not so sure. No … rather it is that I am sure, but I am not sure about what …’
He hesitated, evidently undecided what, if anything, he should say now. Then, to my amazement Oliver told the women about the seance that the Serapion Brotherhood had held a few weeks previously and about how it had been concluded by the spirit ‘Stella’ signing herself off in vigorous fashion.
‘For some reason the name intrigued me,’ he continued. ‘It seemed significant, though I had no idea why. So I put the matter aside and I decided to concentrate on rehearsing the repertoire which I was going to present to the Magic Circle. But no sooner had I decided to stop grappling with the problem of the significance of ‘Stella’ than it came to me where I had seen the name before.’
Oliver paused dramatically. He really looked very striking. I think that the reason he had not swum that day was that he had not wanted to spoil his mascara.
‘You know that the Serapion Brotherhood is named after a fictional hermit who tells stories and who believes in the unlimited powers of the imagination. He is a character in a collection of stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a tormented nineteenth-century German musician and short-story writer. Well, quite by chance, I had recently purchased a second-hand copy of Henry Clute’s life of Hoffmann and in this book I had read about the writer’s difficult and impoverished life, and about the weird sources of his weird stories, his terrible illnesses and his ever-present fear of going mad. I read also of his ill-fated love for a certain young girl he glimpsed across a crowded ballroom in Berlin. In the very instant of that vision in the ballroom he knew – he thought he knew – that elective affinity had brought them together and that she was his love predestined from all eternity. But Hoffmann was deceived in his certainty. Though his health was indeed poor and the girl, so gay and sparkling in her pretty ballgown, had seemed the very picture of health, in truth her condition was more parlous than his. Stella – that was her name – was to die of consumption, before Hoffmann had ever summoned up the courage to approach her and declare his love for her.
‘Now we in the Serapion Brotherhood, Hoffmann’s children if you like, have trained ourselves always to be alert, so that we are in a position to recognise and fully respond to those curious epiphanies known to the rest of the world as “coincidences”. But I did not regard the manifestation of Stella’s name at the seance as any sort of coincidence. I recognised it for what it was, a sign sent to me from across the centuries, like light from a distant star. The name Stella – it means star, of course – possessed me. I thought about it constantly, so that the name in my head pulsated in time to the beating of my heart. At length I had to acknowledge that I had fallen in love with a girl simply by hearing her name. I was possessed. I still am. Amourfou, mad love, is the name for my condition.
‘So then, how does one go about courting a ghost? I had no idea, but I did the best I could. I tidied up my sordid digs off Tottenham Court Road and on an appointed evening I served up a dinner for two on a candle-lit table covered by flowers. I did not wait for my unseen companion, but, as I ate, I spoke to the darkness beyond the reach of the candles’ flames. I began by invoking her name. “Stella, Stella, Stella, Stella, Stella,” I cried again and again. All my will, all my concentration was focussed on imagining the reality that might lie beyond that name. “Stella, I love you. Stella, I would serve you and worship you all my days. Stella, I am poor, but I can make myself rich, if riches would make you happy. Although I am poor, I have talent … No, let me be honest. I have genius, both as a writer and as a conjuror. I am certain that I do not deceive myself in this, for I see my faults as clearly as my abilities. My faults … I will not, must not conceal my faults. Stella. You shall know me as I truly am. So then, you should know that I am vain and easily made jealous. I have to excel and praising others comes hard to me. I need affection, but never dare ask for it. I particularly crave the affection of men and I am terrified of women. Only now for the first time do I feel that it might be possible to love a woman.’
By now it was my turn to listen slack-jawed. I was astounded. I had never heard Oliver talk in this way before, nor had I guessed that he was capable of such self-awareness. At first as I listened I toyed with the idea that Oliver was using us, fooling about and merely rehearsing a short story in the manner of Sheridan Le Fanu or indeed of Hoffmann. Perhaps then we would soon see it in printed form in, say, Blackwood’s Magazine. But no, this was not Oliver’s usual experimental style and, besides, this was all far too serious and self-revelatory.
‘Am I not one of the Brothers of Serapion?’ Oliver’s address to Stella continued. ‘It is only necessary for me to train the will in order to use it to conquer time and space. My will which is limitless is the source of my genius. Either one is serious about this or one is not. I am absolute and my love for you, Stella, in whatsoever incarnation you may appear is also absolute. Come what may, I shall succeed in life, but my success will come more easily and taste the sweeter if you are with me and my pen shall make you famous. Stella, Stella, Stella. Come to me, I implore you. I am not weak and unhealthy as poor Hoffmann was. I am strong, young and determined. Also, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, I am alive, whereas by now even Hoffmann’s bones have turned to dust.’
Oliver’s eyes glittered as he spoke. The verb is not used lightly. His eyeballs shone as if there was independent life in them. His jaw was tense and he seemed to find difficulty in continuing to speak.
‘All that evening I continued to address what was to all intents and purposes an empty room. After I had finished eating I still continued to talk to the emptiness, but I also started to perform card tricks, hoping to entertain the spirit in that manner. At length – it was a little after midnight I think – I felt, there was no mistaking it, something cool brush lightly and briefly against the back of my neck. It was the kiss of the virgin.’
The sun still scorched down from a flawlessly blue sky. As Oliver had talked, my eyes had been resting on children building castles out of heaped pebbles and old men paddling with their trousers rolled up. It seemed so incongruous to be listening to all this on Brighton beach and I shuddered. It was not that I believed for a moment in Stella, the ghost or vampire, but I s
huddered because I believed that my friend must be going mad.
Oliver was smiling tensely and for a time he seemed to be gazing on nothingness. Then he turned to Caroline and me.
‘It was a kiss of absolution perhaps. Or perhaps a pledge of future love. At all events it was the first time I had ever been kissed by a woman. So what now? I really am not sure. I have no map of the way forward. But, just as I am certain of the holiness of my passionate devotion to this woman, so also I am certain that one day, in one way or another, she will be made flesh and on that day we shall consummate our love. You know, I feel that I can hypnotise reality and make it do what I want.’
He paused and looked down on the sand debating within himself. Then he continued in a more matter-of-fact vein,
‘To that end and in readiness for the day of consummation I am going to buy a settee or divan – a divan I think and it should be covered in red velvet and on this Stella and I shall make love. I have pawned what’s left of the Sorge family jewels to raise the money. Even so it will have to be second-hand. I thought I might try the Fulham Road. The trouble is, though, I have never bought furniture before. You wouldn’t like to come and help me choose one would you?’
Caroline shook her head decisively. She was terrified, I think, of this new and strangely serious Oliver. Nusch looked equally nervous, while Gala just sat grinning up at the sun, as if she had not heard a word of what he had been saying. He shrugged and let the matter of Stella drop and a few minutes later we stood up and started walking back towards the others. Nusch, who had once worked as a mannequin, was a slender, sweet-faced young woman. As we walked together, she told me about her girlhood in Germany and about her dreams and how she produced collages based on her dreams.
After Caroline’s recitation of Baudelaire and Oliver’s even more out-of-character declaration of ghostly passion, I half expected when we got back to find Nusch’s husband displaying an equally unexpected talent for tap-dancing and playing the ukelele. But no. He and Monica sat quietly talking and I think that Monica was trying to explain to him what the Serapion Brotherhood stood for.
