The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  The Consultation was acquired in 1840 by John Perceval, I would have continued. His ancestor, Richard Perceval, the founder of the Perceval dynasty of physicians, was renowned for the uncommon speed with which he removed kidney stones. The museum has no image of the expeditious Dr. Perceval, but it does have an illustration of the procedure as it would have been conducted at the time. I indicated the print that shows a supine man, with legs splayed and feet hoisted by two burly men, stoically accepting the insertion of the rod.

  •

  Walking through town, one day before the end of shooting, Imogen apologised for talking too much. “But you’re a top-class listener,” she said. “You’d have made a good doctor, in the eighteenth century.” And she reminded me that, in the course of the tour, I had explained that a physician at that time would have been a listener above all: the patient would relate the story of his or her illness, and on the basis of this story the doctor would pronounce his judgement. Diagnosis by letter was not unusual, I had told the group, pointing out the letter written to Cornelius Perceval by a grateful patient whom Perceval had never actually met. “See—I was paying attention,” said Imogen; then the kiss.

  •

  I have not a single line of Imogen’s handwriting. Any day, at the museum, I can examine the letters of Adeline Hewitt and Charles Perceval; I can enjoy that residue of their intimacy. Every handwritten word is intimate: the ink is an immediate trace of the thinking mind, and of the writer’s body. Before long, pens will be employed solely for signatures, if at all.

  •

  My grandfather’s pen. “Moss-Agate” the gorgeous mottled green and brown is called, and the material is celluloid, a lovely liquid word, so pleasing to pronounce, I thought as a child. It was from my grandfather that I first heard it, I believe. The beautiful instrument was the first plastic pen to be made by the Waterman company; the plastic feels and looks like a valuable substance. The Waterman name, cut into the barrel, has been blurred by my grandfather’s fingers. I remember seeing the pen in the room in which my grandfather had died. The pillows were still on the bed; the upper one was shaped like a bowl, as if cradling the head of his ghost. The marks of his teeth were on the mouthpiece of the pipe that lay on the dressing table.

  •

  An incident, after work. For a few seconds I did not recognise the man who crossed the street from North Parade, calling my name. The beard, profuse and ungroomed, was a disguise; then the features of William’s face became discernible. He ran through traffic to reach me, maintaining the smile throughout, as if this encounter were an extraordinary stroke of good luck.

  “Great to see you again,” he said. The handshake was forceful.

  “How are you?” I asked. I would estimate that he was around thirty pounds heavier than when I’d last seen him; an encouraging sign. And his sweatshirt, though not new, was clean, as were the jeans.

  “I’m back,” said William, taking a step back and raising his hands like a man accepting applause. “Older. Wiser. Hairier.”

  “So where have you been?” I asked.

  “Where haven’t I been?” said William. The full answer lasted for ten minutes, with no pause long enough to permit anything other than an expression of continued interest. With the van-owning friend he had travelled slowly along the south coast as far as Hastings, where they’d stayed for a while, renting a couple of rooms for as long as the work held out, then they’d cut up through East Anglia, which was a dead loss, before heading west into the Midlands, where the companions had fallen out irretrievably, after many disagreements. William had stayed in Birmingham for a year, fitting tyres mostly, then moved northwards, through Sheffield and Leeds and across to Manchester and Liverpool, then back to Leeds and up as far as Newcastle. He’d been a removals man, a labourer, a warehouseman, a courier, a house painter, a street sweeper and God knows what else. He’d worked in recycling centres and in some of the nation’s nastiest fast-food outlets. “Nothing you’d want to make a career out of, ” as he said. At one point he’d had the idea that some sort of reconciliation with his mother might be possible. He lasted less than a fortnight in the spare room. Talking to his stepfather was like standing in front of a freezer with its door open.

  Later, when he’d been shovelling asphalt with a lad whose father had recently died, he’d thought he might attempt to make contact with his real father. He had found him without too much difficulty. That too was a disaster. No details given. “A self-pitying slob,” was William’s verdict. Things went “downhill a bit” after William had walked out of the shambles that his father called home. He’d ended up on the streets. Standing on Hungerford Bridge at two in the morning, he had considered whether drowning might be the answer. Instead he asked himself: “Where have I been happiest?” And the answer was that he had been happiest here, he told me. “So here I am,” he said, “and here you are.” Then he added, perhaps observing a reaction: “Don’t worry, I’m not going to camp on your doorstep.” He asked me for the time; he had to meet someone who might need a hand with some house-clearing. Patting me on the arm, as if in encouragement, he apologised for having to leave. “See you around,” he said, and away he hurried.

  •

  The first encounter with William; or what I can reconstruct of it. We were sitting outside, near the abbey; Imogen had come down for the weekend. She glanced over my shoulder several times: a young man, twentyish, was standing a few yards behind me, importuning the people at the adjacent table; it appeared that none of them had offered him any money; he was asking them to reconsider, to no effect. Though the hair was a mess, he was not the most plausible of desperate cases: he looked more like an odd-job man than someone who was sleeping rough. “OK,” I heard him say, conceding failure. “You all have a nice afternoon.”

  As he approached us, Imogen seemed to be thinking what I had been thinking—that this person might not be genuine. But she said to him: “Would you like a coffee?”

  A sticking plaster was attached to his brow, touching the hairline; he pressed a thumb onto it, as if to focus his thinking.

  “Sit down,” Imogen said, indicating the seat next to mine.

  He gave me a permission-seeking half-smile. I pulled the chair out for him.

  “Are you hungry?” Imogen asked, sliding the menu card across the table.

  His expression was that of a man who suspects he does not fully understand the situation in which he finds himself. “No cash,” he said, pressing the plaster again. When he lifted his finger, the disc of blood in the centre of the plaster had widened.

  “Have what you like,” Imogen told him.

  He would just have a coffee, he said.

  “If you’re hungry, choose something,” said Imogen. “Are you hungry?”

  He glanced at me, for guidance. “I recommend the chocolate cake,” I said, pointing to my plate.

  A waitress had arrived; her gaze registered the unkempt young man, then she smiled at Imogen; her smile was like a puppet’s. Imogen ordered another coffee for herself, and directed the waitress to our guest, who ordered a cake as well.

  “Very nice of you,” he said. The finger went back onto the plaster, pressing hard.

  “Let’s have a look,” said Imogen. Obediently he lifted an edge, revealing a cluster of sutures. She offered a tissue, which he took with a trembling hand. “You need to change that dressing,” she told him.

  “This’ll be fine,” he said, tapping his fingers on the tissue.

  There was a pharmacy in the row of shops on the opposite side of the street. “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Imogen.

  He watched her cross the road; a man beguiled. In her absence, it was agreed that she was a very kind person. That was more or less the substance of our conversation. His coffee and slice of cake were deposited by the waitress. The cake was consumed in a matter of seconds, before Imogen returned.

  “How did it happen?” she asked, applying a new dressing.

  He murmured his reply, as though respo
nding to a question from a nurse in A&E. There had been a bit of bother at the place where he’d been living.

  “Where’s that?” she asked, in nurse-like mode, removing some specks of dried blood with the tissue.

  He named a street. It was a squat; a defunct office building.

  “And what’s your name?”

  “William,” he answered.

  “Imogen, and David,” she said, giving him a hand to shake; he wiped his hand on his chest first. “Would you like anything else?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” said William. He took a sip from his empty cup; he was worried that in return for this charity he would have to submit to questioning.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  “Sure, thank you,” he answered, nodding too much.

  “OK,” she said; from her smile he understood that there would be no interrogation; he could leave.

  “That was very nice, thank you,” said William.

  “Our pleasure,” she said, and she handed him the pack of sticking plasters.

  “Really?” he asked, as though this generosity were extreme. On leaving us, he bowed to her, with a hand over his heart.

  •

  Watched Jumièges last night. I remember speaking to Imogen about it; Franck Boudet had called her, to talk about the script. One of the crew on Maintenant had told Franck a story about his family, a story that was now becoming Franck’s screenplay. The man’s sister was the model for the character that Franck was hoping Imogen would play. Every week she visited their father with their mother; she was much closer to both parents than was the teller of the story. The father’s health was poor: his mind was falling apart; a stroke—the most severe of a series—had rendered his speech incoherent and indistinct. He was confused, and often perplexed as to where he was and how he had come to be there. But one afternoon he seemed to wish to communicate something. His daughter was showing him again, on a map, the location of the village where her husband had been born. Her father’s gaze slid around the map, apparently seeing nothing but a web of coloured lines, but then his eyes became focused, as though he had suddenly seen something that made sense to him. He became agitated, and more agitated with the effort of making himself understood. His finger quivered above the map, pointing to Jumièges; eventually it was established that he wanted to go there. Jumièges was located more than a hundred kilometres from where he had been born and had always lived. When his wife asked him why he wanted to visit it, she received no intelligible answer. Before the next visit he would have forgotten all about Jumièges, she was sure.

  But he did not forget. He was like a child demanding a treat that had been promised to him. They went to Jumièges. The expedition was difficult; it was also unwise, his carers argued. But the old man would not relinquish the idea, and it was unlikely that he would live much longer. This might be his last request. So arrangements were made; a nurse travelled with the family. At Jumièges, the dying man managed to make it known that it was the river, not the great abbey, that he wished to see. They came to Rue du Perrey, and there he became calm. His daughter turned the wheelchair to face the direction her father seemed to be indicating. Some small cliffs, some trees, the ferry, the green-brown meander of the Seine—it was not a memorable vista. But at the sight of this scene the old man started to smile. In recent years, he had rarely smiled. The smile dwindled; then he was crying. “When were you here?” his daughter asked. There was no answer. When she asked again he became angry. He wanted everyone to be quiet. He did not appear to notice that his wife was upset. Her own memory was becoming insecure, but she knew for a fact that she had never been to Jumièges with her husband. She would never know what memory was being revived at that place, by that ordinary view.

  The actress playing the daughter is adequate, but Imogen would have been better. The long look that this actress gives the father, at the river, is simply sad; Imogen’s gaze, as I imagine it, would have made us understand that she is not only seeing what her father has become—she is seeing the man that he once was, and the woman that she used to be.

  •

  After Imogen’s departure, whenever I encountered William I did not linger; there was pressing business elsewhere, I would pretend. Finally he remarked that he had not seen her for a while. “She’s in Paris,” I answered.

  “When’s she coming back?” asked William.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, neutrally. Imogen had grown tired of London, I told him; she wanted to live in Paris for a while. I told him about her family’s connection to Paris, of which he had known nothing.

  Looking down the street, he said, gravely: “That’s a blow.” It was as if this development might necessitate some revision of his plans.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “We’re friends. We talk.”

  “That’s good,” said William, still considering.

  Imogen was about to start work on a new film, I told him. “My Friend Claire. She’s Claire. Top billing.”

  “Of course,” said William. Then he looked at me, his companion in loss, and said: “She was lovely.” The stress was strangely on the second word, I remember.

  “Indeed.”

  It had been like having a part-time sister, he said; a bigger and more sensible sister. More words were exchanged in Imogen’s praise. When I gave him money, it felt as though I were honouring the terms of a contract.

  •

  From the adjoining room I heard Marcus, giving instructions. The physician’s murmuring was followed by a brief response from Beatrice. Again the physician spoke; though I stood by the door, I could not discern the words. Then silence. A minute later, a high gasp. A physician-assisted paroxysm had been enacted. Charles Perceval was known to have administered this treatment to some of his patients. The inference was confirmed by Imogen’s glance when she emerged from the room—a mock-sly smile, with startled eyes, as if she had been caught up in some mischief, not unwillingly.

  •

  In the first draft of Devotion, Beatrice’s sister, an ostentatiously devout young woman, was the hysterical patient whom Julius had been asked to attend, thereby bringing about his meeting with Beatrice. Considerations of cost had brought about the merging of the two characters, but this revision had improved the film, Marcus told me. It had brought the film’s central concerns—“obsession, madness, reason and faith”—more sharply into focus. The lard-coloured doll lay in his lap, swaddled in a towel, its single eye turned towards me. He offered to donate it to the museum, for room seven, but it was not in good condition by the time they had finished with it.

  •

  Though she had found the story “a bit silly,” Samantha assured me that she had enjoyed Devotion, especially Imogen’s performance. “She really has something,” Samantha said, congratulating me on my good fortune. Val concurred. Imogen was “the best thing about it,” Val told me. But Imogen had deserved a better film, she thought. Aspects of Devotion had troubled Val. The scene in which we are shown Beatrice after the wedding, preparing for bed, for example. Why, she wondered, was it necessary for us to see her naked, even if only for a second or two? Why do we not see her husband undressed? Why always the woman? Some observations were made on the topic of objectification.

  Perhaps, I suggested, this had been what Devotion had been about, to some extent.

  “Of course, of course,” said Val. But she was inclined to think that the good intentions were something of an alibi. Not that she was accusing Imogen of any such thing; the fault was the director’s. “It annoys me,” she said, in case I had not noticed. We were at the customary café, which had a rack of newspapers and magazines for the customers’ use. Taking a magazine, Val searched for evidence. It was easily found. “This sort of thing,” she said, displaying pictures of a woman on a yacht. She too was an actress, and not one whose reputation was dependent upon the excellence of her body, as far as I knew, but here she presented herself in a bikini, in scenes of ersatz spontaneity: sipping a drink through a straw; shielding her
eyes from the sun to gaze out to sea; laughing with a male companion. One picture was honestly posed—a coy topless shot, from the back, revealing nothing more than the undercurve of a breast. “This is what gets me,” said Val. “The collusion. It gets me down.”

  •

  First impression of Val: the lack of embarrassment was remarkable. We had met to “clear the air,” on neutral territory—the café that became our favoured venue. Val’s eyes compelled attention, and her posture was exemplary. Much work had gone into the maintenance of the hair’s lush dishevelment; the same was true, I felt, of the air of well-being. Sauntering stride, beneficent smile, slow-blinking eyes—it all advertised the deep inner harmony that she had managed to achieve. I found the performance too studied. But for Samantha the attraction had been powerful and immediate: the conduct of Val’s son’s had become disruptive; she was called to the school to discuss the situation; and in the course of the third or fourth discussion a moment of ignition occurred. I could not understand it.

  •

  Crossing the park this evening, I heard a harmonica. The sequence of sounds was simple and not unpleasant, if not quite a tune; the improvisation of someone who could not really play. It was William. “Another skill I picked up on my travels,” he told me. “Hear how sad I am,” he said, and produced a mournful fading slide of notes. He was wearing exactly the same clothes as when I saw him before; they had not been washed in the interim. The house-clearing job was for one day only; since then, nothing. I asked him if he were staying at the Melville Street hostel. The notion appalled him. “You get some desperate characters there,” he said, “and I’m not desperate.” For now, he’s at a friend’s place. It’ll do for a day or two, but there’s not a good atmosphere, because the friend has some dodgy mates. One of them is a dealer; a “cold-eyed bastard,” said William. He had a lot to say about the cold-eyed bastard.

  It was not so much a conversation as an attended monologue. I could not speak to William as easily as Imogen could. This was what I was thinking when he asked abruptly: “And what about Imogen? You still in touch with her?”