Pistache

by Sebastian Faulks

  Christopher Robin has gone into care.

  JOHN MILTON

  dictates a sonnet (in the Petrarchan style) on his declining powers at tennis

  When I consider how my forehand’s spent,

  Left in the veteran’s doubles for a gentle hack;

  And that one talent which I had and now I lack,

  Lodged with me useless, in arthritic knee unbent:

  To serve at speed my Dunlop with intent,

  Now hits my partner’s rear end with a smack.

  ‘Does he expect clean aces from a frozen back?’

  I fondly ask. But Partner, to prevent

  My tantrum, soon replies, ‘I do not need

  Either your volley or your top-spin lob;

  Your fluffed return with neither slice nor swerve.

  For fetching drop shots I have all the speed;

  With your knees you’re confined to static job:

  They also rate who only stand and serve.’

  IRIS MURDOCH

  is told it’s time her characters had real employment in the real world

  Tamar began her new job, working at a factory that made scratch-cards.

  She was shown round the works by the foreman, Lysander. ‘This is Cato, our head of sales, north-east. This is our Tyne-side rep, Amadeus.’

  ‘Hello,’ said a tall forlorn beautiful dull mesmerising young man.

  ‘Production chief is Julian,’ said Lysander.

  ‘Which one is he?

  ‘She actually,’ said Lysander. ‘Over there.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tamar, ‘and how does this scratch-card work?’

  ‘The punters just try and try again, scratching and hoping, but the prize comes on a whim really, as a gift.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tamar, ‘so it’s like the grace of God.’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Coming to the Crown, Tamar?’ called out Amadeus at lunchtime.

  ‘No, thank you. I have brought my own.’

  At her desk, Tamar made a picnic of cold baked beans with malt vinegar, grated Canadian cheddar on ginger nuts and some cold tagliatelle with dried oregano and Worcester sauce. With it she drank a sweet vermouth and apple juice, a combination of the nice and the good.

  After work she went to see Gulliver, the head of human and Platonic resources, a man who had been married to her best friend Cassandra for fourteen years.

  ‘Come in,’ said bald beatific feline serene dandruffy Gulliver.

  At once Tamar fell in love with him utterly and completely and without spiritual compromise.

  ‘Come with me, Gulliver,’ she said, ‘to the seminary in Colonnsay where we can study Heidegger and Greek vases, get drunk on Rioja and swim naked in the Firth of Kant.’

  ‘I am in love with you too for ever,’ replied wretched twitching amorous angelic Gulliver, ‘but for the next six months, my love, I’m on the early shift.’

  [Norah: Is this more like it? IM]

  GEORGE ORWELL

  confronts the real 1984

  It was a bright cold day in April and the miners were striking. Winston Smith glanced up at the telescreen where a woman in a blue suit with rigid blonde hair was wagging her finger at him as she recalled her recent victory in the southern seas of Oceania. He pointed the remote control at her, but the lady was not for turning off. ‘Big Sister is Watching You’ said a message on the screen. He sighed, as he pulled a sheaf of papers towards him.

  Winston’s job was to rewrite articles for The Times so that they included more references to prole feed and Sky Television. He was working on an article about the Balkans. After the word Sarajevo, he inserted, ‘site of Torvill and Dean’s recent sizzling, six-point, sextravaganza on ice’.

  On the next page was a photograph of miners picketing at Orgreave Colliery, which he recaptioned ‘Horses from the Police Three-Day Event team practise dressage manoeuvres encouraged by cheering Yorkshire proles’.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Winston,’ said a leaden voice, ‘come to Room 101.’

  ‘What’s in Room 101?’

  ‘Everyone knows what’s in Room 101.’

  Winston found himself sitting in a chair with blinkers on his head compelled to watch a screen. On it there suddenly appeared a painted hermaphrodite wearing a black hat, pigtails, rouge, feathers and mascara. Winston screamed. And then the terrible noise began. ‘Karma, karma, karma, cham–ee–lee–on, you come and go, you come and go …’

  SAMUEL PEPYS

  still loves London life

  Betimes to White Hall where I did discuss with my Lord Falconer and Sir G Hoon the Queen’s navy; though the colloquy was swift ended, there remaining but three vessels and they in dry dock for want of provisioning.

  In the evening to the Cockpit where I did see a lewd play which pleased me mightily; was shown to my seat by a wench with electric lanthorn whom afterwards I impressed to dine with me at Mr Conran’s coffee-house upon a leg of mutton, turkey pie, dish of fowl, three pullets and a dozen larks all in a bowl. On borrowing her miniature speaking device established that my femme was not yet returned from her Book Group and took the wench in a cab in Hyde Park where I contrived con mio manu toucher queyntly – puella absolument nihil negat!

  Upon my return home found my wife in front of the electrical theatre in the parlour watching drama of four harlots in the New World. She cried, ‘Samuel, here is a most apt title for your coded diary: Sex and the City’. Afterward, she, all complaisant, informed me she had prepared my favourite dinner – leg of mutton, turkey pie, dish of fowl, three pullets and a dozen larks all in a bowl – enjoined me to set to with a will. Meanwhile, femme, inflamed by watching New World harlots, exceeding frolicsome. So at midnight found myself obliged once more to perform same acts that but two hours earlier avec grande passion in the Hackney carriage. And so at last – with troublesome colic and appalling wind – to bed.

  HAROLD PINTER

  once wrote an episode of a television sitcom

  Grace Brothers. The shop floor. The usual staff.

  Enter two sinister customers, GOLDBLATT and MCCOURT.

  CAPT. PEACOCK Good morning, gentlemen, may I—

  GOLDBLATT Sit down.

  MCCOURT They’re coming for you.

  CAPT. PEACOCK I beg your pardon. Who is coming?

  GOLDBLATT The men. (Pause.) The men are coming.

  MR HUMPHRIES Ooh, good-ee. Save one for me.

  MCCOURT And who are you?

  MR HUMPHRIES My name’s Humphries.

  MCCOURT No it’s not. I remember you … (Pause.) You’re … Prendergast. Aren’t you?

  HUMPHRIES (cross) Well, no one’s ever spoken to me like this before in my life.

  MRS SLOCOMBE These … men, whoever they are, I hope they’re not going to interfere with my pussy.

  MCCOURT What’s this about a cat? Do you see a cat? You. What’s your name?

  MISS BRAHMS Miss Brahms.

  MCCOURT Well … Miss … Brahms. Do you see a cat?

  MISS BRAHMS No, not reelly. But I think … well … what she means is … it’s more of a metaphor reelly.

  Pause.

  MRS SLOCOMBE Oh no, not another pause. There’s more paws round here than on my pussy.

  GOLDBLATT Be quiet about your … pussy. No one’s interested in your … domestic pet.

  CAPT. PEACOCK Can I interest you gentlemen in a sports jacket?

  MR HUMPHRIES You couldn’t interest me whatever you wore, dear.

  MCCOURT Yes. I want a Norfolk jacket. You ever been to Norfolk?

  MISS BRAHMS Oh, it’s ever so nice in Norfolk.

  MCCOURT With wooden buttons. Side vents. Leather elbow patches. Like we used to have them … Before the men came.

  GOLDBLTT When we were still free.

  Pause.

  MCCOURT No one’s free any more.

  Short pause.

  MR HUMPHRIES I’m free!

  SYLVIA PLATH

  tells the story of Goldilocks

  I am th
e doctor who takes

  The temperature of each bowl.

  Daddy Bear, your gruel,

  Grey as the Feldgrau,

  Pungent as a jackboot,

  Rises under an ailing moon.

  I have been sleeping

  In your bed, Daddy.

  Mother’s oats are blebbed

  With ruby stains of fruit preserve

  Beside the glass fire

  Of her blood-orange juice.

  The baby’s porridge bubbles

  With a foetus eye.

  I swallow the sins it is not

  His to shrive. I devour

  The cancerous pallor

  With spoons of handled bone.

  I plough the winding-sheets

  Of each bear bed with my

  Surgical breathing, as I die and rise

  Three times before dawn.

  My golden hair is electric

  With the light of

  Borrowed stars, spread out

  On my pillow of skulls.

  ALEXANDER POPE

  turns his big guns on another soft target

  I sing the goddess Bathos, who conspired

  With Saatchi and Serota, much admired,

  To cast Britannia in a sleep profound,

  Into which torpor, with one mighty bound,

  While gods of oil paint and Muses slept,

  The Chapmans, Hirst and Tracey Emin leapt.

  ‘No brush, just axe and chainsaw,’ Damien cried;

  ‘For me no canvas, just formaldehyde’;

  And so forthwith unseamed his hapless cow:

  ‘Now look at me!’ he shrieked. ‘I’ve caused a row!’

  And there above the tatty objets trouvés,

  There played a turgid installation movie.

  And lo! the work of Mistress Sarah Lucas

  A mount … of cigarettes and is that … mucus?

  Oh, daughter of Mnemosyne and Zeus,

  Explain to us the meaning or the use?

  ‘This photo of my boyfriend with the abs,

  I think it’s called Fried egg and two kebabs.’

  Was ever sullen maid seen quite so pesky?

  Turn in thy tomb, ’temisia Gentileschi.

  Outside, Hyperion’s light grew dark as pitch:

  Off/on it went, on/off – with just a switch.

  The Chapmans, Dinos and his brother Jake,

  Were two more arty chancers on the make.

  With plastic toys they showed the Nazi camps.

  ‘It’s new,’ they claimed, ‘and we’re such naughty scamps!’

  Must further cent’ries into darkness fade

  Since Duchamps his upended privy first displayed?

  If so, to us it would be no surprise;

  For, born a goddess, Bathos never dies.

  BEATRIX POTTER

  confronts the facts of real animal life

  Mrs Fluffy Rabbit lived in a sandy hole beneath a hawthorn hedge. She had twenty-three sons, nineteen daughters and fourteen offspring by a previous partner. Her favourite three boys were called Randy, Ready and Peter.

  One sunny afternoon she called them indoors for tea. ‘Ready, put on your scarlet kerchief,’ she said. ‘Randy, your plus-fours are over there. And Peter, your yellow waistcoat – Peter, will you stop doing that. Mopsy is your cousin.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. She looked so lovely in her gingham pinafore.’

  ‘Sit down and eat your lettuce pie.’

  After tea, Peter put on a hunting jacket with shiny brass buttons and went for a stroll. Just near the foot and mouth disinfectant trough at the big farm he ran into little Flopsy, gathering buttercups. He allowed his eye to run up and down her gathered smock. She was his sister, it was true; but on the other hand, it was at least twenty minutes since he had last—

  ‘Look out!’ cried Flopsy, as a huge motorised vehicle thundered past. There was a squelch and a splat from further up the road. Peter hopped off to investigate.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Flopsy when she caught up. ‘What’s that messy thing you have in your hand?’

  ‘That’, said Peter, ‘is the tail of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.’

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  writes a speech for Basil Fawlty

  Good morrow, Major, what news of battles past,

  Reunions, oft-told tales and regimental ties?

  (aside) The man’s a fool and deaf as Lethe’s soundless

  Waters sunk in sempiternal tacitude.

  Ah, Ladies, must you be gone so soon upon

  Your trysts and messages? Haply the charabanc

  Awaits without. Sirrah, good morrow, the room

  Is not to taste? The prospect circumscrib’d,

  The lodging cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d? Pray tell

  Me, sir, exactly what your fancy had envisag’d.

  A wood near Athens, the bright Illyrian shore,

  Or Arden’s forest dense, pack’d e’en unto

  Its utmost bound with prancing unicorns?

  Manuel, philosopher and sage of the Iberian

  Coast, pray take in charge our noble friend,

  Explain – as best thy tongue may serve –

  The virtues of our hostelry, its charms—

  But hark! What ghastly shrieking rends the morning

  Air? ‘Basil! Basil!’ My poisoned posset, verucca

  Of my heart, she-witch of wither’d dugs and venom

  For her mother’s milk. I come, I come, my bride!

  May Aphrodite’s chariot speed me to thy side.

  DYLAN THOMAS

  writes a cereal advertisement

  The force that through the green gut drives the food

  Is each morning taken mortal fibre, tock-ticking,

  Clockworking, regular in motion

  Of day and wind and

  Under milk good soaking of rough husk

  Of hill-high rough-age in tough

  Tock-ticking, regular,

  From the farm in the blossoming hill through the mill

  From bole to bowel to hwyl

  Where gesture and psalm ring—

  It is your thirtieth day to heaven

  Consecutive,

  In all dark, all black,

  All brown, all Bran.

  J. R. R. TOLKIEN,

  as so often, gives directions

  EPSOM ROTARY CLUB

  Vernal Equinox Meeting

  In the Ancient Halls of the Great Travelodge,

  High Street, Epsom

  Take A3 leaving Black Towers of B and Q to Westward under leaden skies. Take Morden Filter right avoiding accident and deathly spot at Hanger Lane, leaving Eastward in torrential floods of Kingston upon old Thames. Beware of road-rage, ram-raid and grey smoke of old mines at E-sher. Stop for mulled ale and folksong at dark waystation – but most assuredly at sign of Elf. Ford the mighty lowland ridge upon the Hog’s Back. With howling gale from north by east along the southern circular, join M25, 4,000 leagues east and west, counter-clockwise, through the southern famine of the old wars of Gat-wick. Take exit south by north from second mini-roundabout.

  Proceed with quaking heart to find main entrance to Travelodge (next to disabled parking) and enter in good cheer and fellowship.

  Journey time: fourteen years, more in case of traffic.

  JOHN UPDIKE

  on how to boil an egg

  Take one egg yielded by Rhode Island hen who stoically resisted the urgent courtship of the rooster; extrude its psoriatic carapace, held firm but tenderly above the pan, where the weakly bubbling tide appears exhausted by its repeated cycle from the headwaters of the Delaware, through the intricate plumbing of the human gut and the carpentered bowel of the Philadelphian sewer to issue once more from the kitchen’s clacking faucet. Immerse the egg beneath the fretful surface, where you may watch its opaque shudder in the grudged wattage of the unfixed lamp. Admire the quotidian ebullience of its movement for as many minutes as may be yielded from your temporal overdraft, or until the mucous albumen has set �
�� whichever you prefer. Marvel at the trembling of the aluminum handle of the pan from Norwalk’s German hardware store on Pittsburgh Street, as the ebullience of American water makes it sing. (Remember to protect your hand in the miraculous cotton-jersey weave of the tea towel with its motif of New England churches that once quilted the Republic.)

  Remove the egg in the cradle of a shining spoon, inclined at twelve degrees, and place it on a tray. Walk upstairs on planks of bevelled pine worn smooth by press of uxorious feet, and serve it to your neighbor’s wife in bed.

  EVELYN WAUGH

  writes A Bluffer’s Guide to Society

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Inner Gentleman

  Whatever the circumstances of your early life, even if you were brought up in North London, the Inner Gentleman can still be revived. Remember: It is never too late to buy the family silver.

  1. Education. You were educated at Ampleforth and Trinity College, Cambridge. Brook no argument on this point; it is doubtful whether even the most resolute can overcome the disadvantage of having been to school at Lancing.

  2. The family tomb. The Inner Gentleman will require a substantial mausoleum. While your actual parents may know nothing of the family before its arrival in Peckham in 1929, you may be sure that your forebears number among the great Recusant families of the land, and trace their lineage past the vulgar diversions of the Reformation and the Norman conquest back to the arrival of Saint Augustine.

  3. Children. Children are an unutterable nuisance: greedy, ill-mannered and petulant. There is, however, no need to converse with them until they have reached the age of majority, at twenty-one. Do not be tempted to baptise them with a modish Christian name such as ‘Ken’ or ‘Tony’, but prefer Peregrine, Septimus or Auberon. They will surely thank you for it in later life.