by J S Hollis
“You shouldn’t have.” He walked out of the room.
“I think he is too caring,” Clara said to me.
I didn’t disagree but I knew it was the opposite. He was just offering moral weight to his asexuality. We thought it was a passing phase. Perhaps it would have been.
Do I feel guilty? Maybe I do, but I don’t believe I should. I did the right thing by ending Clara’s life. But doing the right thing isn’t good enough. My actions forced Sebastian away. I blame myself for that. Does that mean I should regret what I did? Not for a second. Sebastian was happy. Sure he could have been something more than a community worker out in the desert whose whole existence has less significance than the grains of sand that will eventually bury him. But his happiness is enough for me. At least, I tell myself it’s enough. I’ll admit part of me wishes he was more conventional and not prolonging a few miserable lives for his own sense of selfworth. It could have been worse though. He could have been a W editor.
Guilt stopped me from going to see him straight away (not to mention the bureaucratic nightmare of having to convince my probation officer to let me go abroad). And fear. I didn’t want to confront him. I didn’t need him to tell me I was a bad father, a bad husband and a bad man. I had fifteen years to think about myself. I could beat myself up pretty well. Sebastian’s repudiation of my philosophy was implicit in his actions. I didn’t doubt for a minute that his exploits in the desert were directed at me. It was his subtle way of raising a giant middle finger – his own Cleopatra’s Needle. There was no point, as I saw it, in awaking any more of the trauma. Why kick a sleeping dog even if that dog’s your son?
Anyway, I was sure he didn’t want to see me. If he wanted to see me, he would have popped into Pentonville over the last decade. He didn’t and I don’t blame him. I may not have totally cast his life into the abyss but I certainly made it difficult. I know that. Parents are meant to softly guide their children’s lives like clay. I just left Sebastian in a boiling pot of slag. It would have been too much to expect him to forgive me or even think about me. One of the last times we had been together we had laughed so hard. I assumed he wanted to leave his memories there. I would have liked that to have been his last memory of me – making him laugh. I can’t offer him anything more than laughter. Who can? If I taught him that much, job done. I worried that I didn’t even manage to teach him that. He seemed so serious when I watched him on W. Living ascetically and helping the downtrodden, like some virtual Jesus. Well, we all have to laugh now. All our good work for nothing.
So I didn’t want to see him and he didn’t want to see me. And there were the distractions and discontents of reentering the world. Some self styled Stanhopians – all young, strapping and dark like the forgotten children of Mussolini’s Italy – met me when I left prison. They wanted me to set up my own Party and run for Parliament. They told me it was my duty. I had promised them as much.
I wanted to help them. One of them was Eugene, a childhood friend of Sebastian. He was unemployed like all the others. He had foolishly studied economics because he was “interested” in it. At least he could explain all the reasons he didn’t have a job. Haha. I began to go along with their plans but my time had passed. I soon told them I was retiring from duty. Adjusting to life outside of prison was far harder than I had imagined it would be. I could argue about politics but I couldn’t actually do anything. Run a Party, seek votes, plan a campaign. So much had changed. The “reopening”, the return of glass and nudity. I longed for a vision of the underlying grey concrete slabs that I used to bemoan. And the sight of a road fixing itself amazed me. Neon men were added to the ever rising heap of unemployed. Given enough to survive and divert them in exchange for a job and a purpose. But even once I had seen how the new world worked, freedom continued to overwhelm me with its choices and duties.
Prison has its pros and cons. I found the lack of social obligations relaxing. People visited me (or not) and there was no reciprocal need (or opportunity) to visit them. I didn’t have to constantly worry about whether I was being a good son or if I had done enough to support a friend or if I should be doing more charity work. I did have visitors. My parents came. Separately. My dad about once a month. My mum less frequently because she was living in South Africa. They immediately forgave me for my actions but Mum told me I needed to get over my God complex. I thanked them for being so matter of fact. Julius, my brother, came too. I teased him when he did. I said he just wanted to check that my life was more screwed up than his. He said that he envied me. Our chats proceeded like a free counselling session. He would provide me with all the reasons why being a lawyer was so great. Even though I knew he hated it. I let him rant. I never said what my parents always said, that “he was such a good chef”.
After leaving prison, the social obligations rushed back in like the stench of a rotting living wall that had been left locked up for fifteen years. Parents in their nineties require care. Mum was in South Africa so there was little I could do for her, except beam into her eyes and recall with affection the time we had escaped Madame Tussauds during an attack by anarchists. Dad, on the other hand, required my constant attention, despite the fact he had survived without it for so long. I visited him regularly. He never liked technology so we couldn’t chat virtually. I had to literally go round to his flat and drag him out. We then walked about very slowly. Not really saying very much. He would ask me how Clara and Sebastian were getting on. I simply said “fine” and I satisfied my sense of responsibility.
So there was Dad and then there was sorting out my own affairs. There wasn’t that much to do. Cook dinner. Put clothes in the wash. Sort out my finances. Check on Sebastian. Clean. The rest of the time I watched the world go by. I was frustrated when some piece of information slipped past. I tried to form a net. I had three news channels constantly beaming at me from the top of my vision and comments scrolling down my left hand side. I gave up on silence and ensured the latest literature was being delivered into my ears. The solar panel dust crisis, the stalling disarmament negotiations, soaring mental health costs (still), the data storage crunch, arguments over public nudity, complaints about the goal drought in world football etcetera. I felt obliged to be in touch with all these developments. I wanted to know more than everybody else about everything even though I only spoke to a few people. I needed enough on each topic to add my voice to any debate on W. But it all exhausted me and left me with no energy to actually work in politics. It’s a young person’s game anyway. Best do it before there is too much baggage. I wasn’t just a receptacle. I wrote some academic pieces on areas I knew little about and tried to get involved in some community projects but, because murderers are bad for business, I tended to help other criminals.
Then W cut out. Apparently a “massive solar flare” had caused “significant damage to the delivery systems”. Three days without it. I became nervous. Not of anything in particular. It was a tension I had never felt before. An expectation that some unknown entity or event was going to surprise me. I would have stayed in the house but I had no reason to believe the thing I feared was outside. Still I hesitated before opening the door when my neighbour knocked on it just to say hello. I told him about my condition. He suggested all the shouting in the street had riled me and that my nervousness would pass. But when W returned, my condition remained the same. Wherever I looked, I could see a dark thread weaving through the fabric of life. I felt like it had always been there. I had failed to look closely enough before. I couldn’t stay abreast with current affairs. The bored faces of the diplomats at disarmament talks were spine tingling. Poor shots during football matches filled me with worry about the debauchery and hedonism of our age. I recalled a childhood infatuation with spontaneous combustion and feared it might be caused by an overload of information. What if the whole of humanity was on the edge of data overload?
With the present and future overwhelming my senses, I turned to history to calm them. I was drawn
to those spaces of time where a majority believed, with conviction, in an idea that would shortly become nonsense: those people worrying about falling off the end of the earth or that bad air was the source of disease. The condition wasn’t only scientific. There were those who believed in the superiority of one race or sex over another and artists who sought the perfect form. Mondrian knew about the false dawns of the past. Yet through simple lines and colours, he sought an art that captured the universally beautiful while remaining universally human. I was with him. I shared his confidence. I looked at my beliefs and couldn’t find one that I wasn’t sure of. And yet what were the chances of me being at the end of time? Small. So my nervousness developed into an expectation of debilitating discovery. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me that we were actually at the centre of the universe. That the Big Bang happened right below our feet. We can’t see the singularity because we are standing on top of it. And although it wouldn’t have surprised me, I knew I couldn’t possibly believe it until it happened.
Then my confidence was shaken further. While reading about Mondrian, I learnt that a handwritten note of his was found some years back. Mondrian admitted his philosophy of art was backward engineered. He didn’t believe he was producing some ideal art – he just liked lines and primary colours. The dealers needed him to justify his work so he made up a justification.
“Colours and lines can mean anything you want them to mean. The meaning of life. The beauty of form. Or that I am a lazy artist,” he wrote (in Dutch).
I felt like I had been stabbed in the back. My confidence was shattered and I no longer felt right about how things were with Sebastian. I turned to his diary and began to understand the pain I had caused him. The murder had opened up a canyon in his mind that he had fallen into repeatedly like a lemming. I needed to build a bridge for him before whatever it was that was coming came. I needed him to believe me.
He saw me before I saw him.
“Over here,” he called as I emerged from the Arrivals gate. Even those words tugged at my heartstrings (no doubt weaker than they once were). I had watched him for a couple of years and I had hoped his virtual self would turn around and say “hi, Dad” but he ignored my presence. Our conversation over recent weeks had been textual. He had remained intangible.
We beamed at each other unsure of what else to do. His pointed face had a developed a rugged handsomeness that became more apparent to me when we walked along the sand dunes later that week. Perfection would have grated against all that nature.
And then we hugged because we both couldn’t hold onto our smiles any longer. He felt stronger than his languid form suggested.
“It’s great to see you,” I said.
“You too,” he replied. I think it was genuine.
He kept looking at me as we walked towards a cab.
“Is something wrong?”
“You look different.”
“You mean I look older.”
“Wiser,” he countered.
“I doubt it.”
Chatting to Sebastian was easier than I expected. He seemed less inhibited. He hadn’t become loquacious in the intervening years but he had stopped his habit of blockading conversations with monosyllabic responses. We were able to discuss our lives. I told him about my premonitions, which he suggested might be down to aging or simply adjusting to life outside of prison. He might have been right. I watched Sebastian work with the local farmers, who were having a hard time preventing the desert from encroaching on their land. They discussed finances, crop yields and community projects. Sebastian mainly listened. From time to time he would provide a word of caution or encouragement.
The days passed and I enjoyed being with him. We rode camels into the desert and looked out over the giant solar fields that ran out into the horizon. They glistened in the scorching sun. I was awestruck. Sebastian wondered how there was all this wealth and yet he had to come and help the locals stay alive. I saved him the lecture.
We were dancing around the past without even trying. Sebastian was comfortable with silence and I was used to it. We spent hours sitting in the shade and watching the village walk by. We rarely saw the young and, when we did, they ambled carelessly while coning into somewhere else. Conversation was scarce. Eventually I broke. We were having the same meal for the fourth day in a row, at the same low wooden table, under a forgotten air conditioning unit with a spider’s web between the slats. My head was hot, exacerbated by the cool touch of my shirt. The flies buzzed around us and I was constantly slapping them down. A tune blared out. “The love you make, the love you make.” It had followed me from the airport lounge. The boredom irritated me. I began worrying about Sebastian’s future. I struggled to believe he was truly content. His life was tough. No choice. Little space. Few real friends. I saw him as a bitter old man, alone, with no recognition for his work. The picture upset me.
I asked him, “Are you really happy here?”
“As happy as I can be.”
“You could come back to London.”
“And do what? Help the local farmers?”
“I don’t know. Work in politics perhaps.”
“Ha,” he exclaimed. Finding the idea funny but not actually laughing at it. “I don’t think that is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a Londoner anymore. I’m just the foreign aid worker living in the fourth best house in town who everyone lets be.”
“I miss you.”
“Then come out here.”
“This life isn’t for me.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“We really are quite different.”
“Seems so.”
We continued eating for a few more minutes. I watched an old woman put on a veil before entering the mosque. The mosque was busy. It wouldn’t change anything.
I turned to Sebastian. “You still don’t believe I did it for her.”
“Is that why you are here?”
“No, its not. I told you why I came. I needed to see you.”
“To find out what I think of you. You know what millions of people think about you and you come all this way to see what I think.” He scooped some chickpeas up into his mouth.
“You’re my son.”
“That much seems indisputable.”
He didn’t disguise his anger. I still needed to know. “Do you believe me?” I asked again.
He stopped eating and looked at me. He began to speak methodically. “It doesn’t matter if I do. You’ve missed the point. And why do you need to know anyway?”
“Because I think your view of me is stopping you from finding happiness.”
“Where did you get this idea that life has to be happy? Life is more important than happiness.”
Once again he hadn’t answered my question. “But do you believe me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Sebastian got up and made some mint tea. He wasn’t going to answer the question.
“Do you still think about the past?” I asked him.
“Not really.”
“Not at all?”
He poured the tea out and sat down. He blew the top of the small ceramic cup and tried to sip. “Sometimes, I think about watching my whole life from birth to Mum’s death.”
“Why don’t you try?”
“What’s the point?”
“I read your diaries recently. You were always looking back.”
“Must have been dull.”
“Not at all. You should have kept writing.”
“I couldn’t. I felt like I was fishing with my hands and the fish kept getting away.”
Maybe I would have pressed further but I burnt my mouth on the tea and lost my train of thought. The past was left in Sebastian’s head.
We walked around a local art exhibition
later that afternoon. The artist had used local dyes to paint each canvas a single intense colour. They were pretty but they didn’t say anything to me. Sebastian found them mesmerising and discussed the changes in texture with the artist. He bought the green one.
I surprised myself when my eyes welled in the airport.
“Do you think I’ll see you again?” I asked Sebastian.
He hugged me and said, “I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.”
I believed him. But the fear didn’t lift. Each day it encroached. I watched people passing by in cabs and they looked worried too. They had begun to scan the pavements for clues. They knew the end was coming. Now the sky is darkening and I’m confronted with three screens of rolling coverage. A new record can begin. Funny that. Just when we were getting some
thanks
the story of the stanhopes lived inside me for over a decade after i first stumbled across it. if not for the support of aj, it would have remained there, gnawing away at me, until some other researcher had the opportunity to draw the fragments together.
aj gave me three gifts: time, love and her undying confidence. if i had received just one of those gifts, i would have dedicated my life to her in thanks. i must live therefore three lives to show her the extent of my appreciation. i will endeavour to do so.
even with the gifts aj bestowed upon me, the process of putting together a rational man often felt sisyphean. perhaps i would have given up if not for the encouragement i received from friends and family. in that regard i would like to thank, in particular, mg for his early words of support and sw for showing me that my vision could be shared.
i would also like to thank my co-editors. bh for seeing the book through from the start. rh for his guidance on technology. ad for his philosophical musings. job for telling me what he wanted. and jg for informing me of my love for the word “consume”.
my final thanks go to md. i had an idea for the cover of a rational man but lacked the skill and imagination to transfer that idea into reality. md took the time to understand and to turn that understanding into art. i hope the book does his art justice.
