The Death of Mr Love, page 20
Then it was Katy’s turn, trim in her beige unpronounceables and black jacket. The Moron behaved impeccably. He jumped the first round like a pro. None of his old tricks: the extra stride just before a fence, necessitating a cat-like spring over the poles, or the habit of trying to run in different directions at the same time. He went clear.
The second round was against the clock. In the lead was a child whose mother, dressed as if she were going to a hunt, was very near me, and very noisy. When the Moron’s turn came, I was desperate for him to repeat his earlier success. He clattered over the first two fences then did one of his strange shuffles, which must have cost several seconds. As they turned I could see Katy lean forward and talk to him, and he put his ears back and took a run at the big triple. They were haring straight towards where I was sitting. I stood up and shouted, ‘Come on, Moron!’
Oxymoron glanced up, saw me and his mind must have turned instantly to mints, for he looked as if he was trying to give me a smile. It must have been then that he decided to duck out, but with a style that only he could manage. With no check of stride he teleported sideways around the fence. Katy, picking herself up from the sand floor, looked up to the gallery and mouthed, ‘Thank you very much!’
‘There’s absolutely no excuse for abuse,’ said the hunting woman, giving me her most disapproving glare, as I left.
On the way home, the trailer weaving behind us, Katy said, ‘Bhalu, you don’t hate your life, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you ever regret you married me?’
‘Daft thing. Why should I?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘All this, the horses, living in Sussex. This is my life, but maybe it isn’t really yours.’
‘Of course it’s mine. I chose it. I like it.’
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ cried Piglet. ‘Well, lady . . . Don’t know if Bhalu qualifies as a gentleman. A magnificent repast calls for like entertainment.’
We had finished lunch, and while the dishes had been cleared away, the savour of roast still hung in the air. A bottle of wine, emptied almost to the lees, stood in the middle of the table.
Piglet drew from his pocket some folded sheets of paper and put on a pair of reading glasses.
‘I give you a scene from The Real Tragedy of King Richard III. I ask you to imagine a wild coast in Brittany. It is dark, near midnight and on a cliff-top, two sentinels stand watch.’
He read, throwing his voice.
A sea coast in Brittany
FIRST WATCHER:
Ten is the hour that was appointed us
To watch for ship, lately embark’d from England.
SECOND WATCHER:
Look where it comes; sail fill’d with fretting gusts
The black vessel shakes on Neptune’s billow,
Half the flood hath her keel cut; up and down
The poor ship drives, delug’d, overflow’d and drown’d;
The ruthless waves with sands and rocky shelves
Do threaten her with wreck.
FIRST WATCHER:
And yet she lives!
Piglet paused and drew an anxious breath. He gazed at us over the top of his spectacles, searching our faces for reactions.
‘Did you really write that? ’ asked Katy, full of admiration.
‘Yes, in a way, no, not exactly, ’ he said all at once. ‘Did you like “delug’d, overflow’d and drown’d”?’
‘Very much, ’ I assured him.
‘Did you?’ asked Piglet.
‘I did.’
‘You’re not just humouring me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh shut up Bhalu!’ cried Katy. ‘Is the bloody ship wrecked or not?’
‘Ah!!’ said Piglet and pushed his glasses back up to their battle station.
SECOND WATCHER:
She cannot perish having one aboard,
Of such dark, secret, midnight wickedness
That even Neptune’s green, prodigious bowel
Cannot enclose, engulf and swallow up,
But like a drunkard must vomit him forth,
Who’s destined to a drier death on shore:
James Tyrell, Knight of England, here he comes.
Enter Sir James Tyrell.
SECOND WATCHER:
Yea, I’d warrant him gainst drowning, though the
ship were no stronger than a nutshell and as leaky
as an unstanched wench.
‘Spot any joins?’ asked Piglet.
‘Not me,’ said Katy. ‘Sounds just like Shakespeare always does.’
‘That’s because it is Shakespeare. Well, all but a couple of lines, humble things but mine own.’
‘Which are yours?’ asked drowsy Katy.
‘Oh, you must tell me,’ he said. ‘And now please pay good attention, because here comes the point at which history is changed.’
The point at which history is changed. Listening to Piglet. I found myself wondering why people felt such a compulsion to reinvent the past as it ought to have been. The Plantagenets had been gone half a millennium. The Tudors who had supplanted them were gone. The Stuarts were gone. What difference could it make now? Perhaps the wine had made me drowsy, for my mind began to wander. Into my head unbidden came something Maya had said in The Eel Fisher. ‘These men have been freed to carry on their rewriting of history’. A statement impenetrably Mayan. I had no idea what it could mean, only that it was in some obscure way connected with why she blamed herself for the hatreds between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay.
TYRELL:
’Tis not the first time I have landed on
This unkind coast, and when I came before
Did not the awkward winds conspire to turn
Me back again unto my native clime?
What well forewarning wind did seem to say
‘Seek not the scorpion’s nest, nor set no footing
On that traitor’s shore’? What did I then,
But cursed the gentle gusts that took me home,
And bid them blow towards these Breton rocks.
And now come I again, ’tis not the waves
And savage seas have wrecked and hammered me
From top of honour to disgrace’s feet:
My shamed life in Tudor’s dishonour lies.
How was it possible, that foreign hire
Could out of me extract such spark of evil?
O treason, thou art glutted, gorged and full
With guiltless blood of innocents. Edward’s
Children murdered! God rest their little souls.
The most arch deed of piteous massacre
That ever yet this hand was guilty of,
For Tudor would not be their murderer,
But gave that hateful office unto me.
FIRST WATCHER:
Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him, his complexion is perfect gallows.
TYRELL:
The tyrannous and bloody act is done.
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn . . .
‘. . . And the rest you know!’
‘Bravo!’ I cried, when he had finished. ‘So this is how you pin the Little Princes on Henry Tudor!’
‘Exactly! For the rest of Tyrell’s tear-jerking confession, it’s back to the orthodox text. The way to change history,’ he said, leaning towards me and holding out his glass for a refill, ‘is to tell a lot of small truths, then recombine them to make a big lie . . . have just un-told Shakespeare’s big lie.’
He began to talk about Shakespeare’s sea scenes. ‘Notice how often he says “seems”. The ocean “seems to pelt”, “seems to cast water”, the sky “seems to pelt down stinking pitch”. Two different plays, mark you. I reckon old Shakespeare would get himself into a sea-ish mood, scribble down whatever struck him, and file it away. Whenever he needed a bit of sea, or storm, he’d just hoick a few lines out of his store. He’s a joy to cut and paste.’
We were almost asleep in front of the fire. That feeling that your knees and shins are going to start smoking while your back is freezing. Put more logs on. Give me fire to thaw me. Piglet’s voice droning about rhythm, falling, five hard beats to a line. They don’t write poems like that any more. Never know, might have been paid by the line. Well, time was, poetry was sold by weight. Maya bought leather bindings by the kilo. Bindings by the yard, gleaming gold-blocked titles. Piglet flaps his umbrella vigorously, enters an old bookshop, stoops through an arch into a small room where a log fire is burning in the grate. Leather bindings gleam in the firelight. A slender, grey-haired man looks up from his reading. His brown skin and dark eyes proclaim his eastern origin. This foreigner asks politely if he can help. Piglet begins to talk about King Richard III. The sallow foreigner smiles. Piglet has entered the heart of his universe, the spider’s web. ‘Bhalu,’ says a voice. Yes, I, Bhalu Sahib, am the spider. Bhalu, short for Balachandra. Bhalu, the bear in The Jungle Book – whose name the English pronounce as if he were a relative of Cat Ballou. Even Kipling spelt it that way, Baloo, but it should be pronounced with a growl, bhhhaaaalu. There’s a growl in that child. Maybe he’s unhappy. Are you unhappy, growling boy? Can’t say I’m unhappy. Unfulfilled, could say. I drifted here. I came in on the tide, like a jellyfish and now I’m stranded in this cold and grey. Yearn I for the sun. This sun hasn’t followed in his father’s footsteps. Not in Great, Twice, Thrice-Great-grandfather’s footsteps. Was the one that got away. Was me. The dream changes. Voices flit mockingly across. I am with Maya, who is lying on her deathbed, reading a play and laughing. Mother, at least I’m free of the curse that besets most people, of having to live by other people’s ideas. Not so! That’s illusion, she cries. Like me! You can’t escape the past, my bhola-est of Bhalus. Not your own, nor the ever-evolving past-to-present left you by your ancestors, of whom I’m one, my small manushya, little man, says she, putting down her book. No, I say, that’s why I’m here jellyfishing. You told me this yourself, Mother. To escape those very consequences. Even in this, says my mother, you are actactacting out my dododoctrine, you will spend your life trying to ununenact mine. But you can’t un-enact murder, it will out. What’s done can’t be undone and what was done, by thunder, lightning and in rain, was murder. Yes, while they crouch, those innocents, asleep in one another’s arms, their lips like four rose petals, hiding from ghosts, they do not hear the thunder crashes. Knock, knock. Knock, knock. Wake, children, with thy knocking, I would thou couldst. Something broke the surface of my dream. Katy was shaking me.
‘Bhalu,’ she said. ‘Bhalu, wake up. Phoebe’s here.’
HALLUCINATION (SUSSEX, JANUARY 1999)
She was just inside the front door, hovering as if uncertain of her welcome. ‘Hello? I’m not interrupting? I haven’t come at a bad time, have I?’
She looked quite different from last time. She was wearing jeans and a short jacket. The Downs wind had caught and disarranged her hair. She smiled at me and a small green bird flew into my heart and sang.
I said, ‘No! No! What a surprise! Come in, Piglet’s here.’
‘You remember I told you Mummy had left Maya a bequest?’ said Phoebe, taking off her jacket and hanging it on a peg beside my shabby overcoat. ‘Well, I’ve got it with me. I was coming down this way, so I thought why not drop it off. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, of course, but—’
‘It was meant for your mother,’ she said, smoothing her hair. ‘God, I need a mirror, I must look awful . . . The logical thing is it should go to you, only . . .’ She gave me an apologetic smile. ‘This is going to sound weird, but before I hand it over, would you indulge an odd request?’
‘I’m sure I shall,’ I said. ‘Bizarre, you turning up out of the blue like this.’
‘I should have rung first.’
‘I meant because I don’t have your number. Or address. In fact, I had no way to reach you.’
‘How strange.’ She did that little trick with her head. ‘I’m sure I gave them to you. Or someone, anyway. I’m sure I remember writing it all down.’
‘Well, it’s a mystery.’
Phoebe laid a hand on my arm. ‘Just before we go in . . .’ She leaned forward and kissed me full on the lips, just as she had at Maya’s funeral. This time there was no one to see, we were pushed in among the coats. She said, gazing at me with great grey-green eyes, ‘I’ve thought about you a lot.’
I said, ‘I was worried I’d frightened you off.’
‘Silly. Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I would have, but . . .’ She gave a little helpless shrug. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Well, you’re here now,’ I said, not knowing at all how it was, but still in recovery from the kiss. ‘Come in. Don’t say you’ve driven all the way from Yorkshire?’
She was still staring at me, but the smile had gone.
I said, ‘It’s warmer inside. I’ll put some tea on. Piglet’s here. He’s been reading to us from his new play. Well, not exactly his new play, but . . .’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Come outside for a moment. To the car.’
‘Is this your odd request?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just for a moment. I’ve got to explain something.’
It was a freezing afternoon, bitter as morning had been. Sun going to earth behind a stand of birches. Oxymoron in his field looked up and snorted. Pair of pigeons wing-clapping home.
Her car was parked in the lane outside the cottage. When she unlocked the boot, it lifted slowly on dampened springs. Smart car. Clean, modern-looking, especially compared to ours. In the boot was a large, squarish object draped over with a cloth.
‘If Katy appears,’ she said, ‘I’m showing you this. It’s the thing I was talking about, that Mummy left you. All right?’
‘Okay, but why all the mystery? Is something wrong?’
She stood with her back to the open boot and said, ‘Look, this is awkward. I’ve got a confession.’
‘A confession?’
‘I wasn’t honest with you just now. About my details. You were quite right. I didn’t give them to anyone.’
‘But why not? Is there some problem?’
‘We’ve only just met again. You’ve no idea how important this is to me. I can’t bear to begin with a lie.’
‘You’re going to have to explain. I’m confused.’
‘Bhalu, I can’t give you my address, or phone number. Not just at the moment.’
‘But why not?’ I asked, thoroughly puzzled. ‘What possible harm could there be?’
‘I can’t risk you contacting me.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s my husband. He doesn’t understand. About you and me. He thinks . . . Well, never mind.’
I was staggered. It was the last thing I had expected her to say. ‘But . . .’ I said. ‘But, Phoebe . . . What is there to understand?’
Then she made her odd request.
Katy, in the kitchen, listened glumly.
‘She wants you to go where tomorrow?’
‘To Brighton. To see a medium. That’s what she said.’
‘She’s not going back to Yorkshire tonight then. Where is she planning to stay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So Phoebe, where are you staying tonight?’ asked Katy, prodding a drowsy Piglet. ‘Tea, Piglet. Cake, or left-over Christmas pudding, if you prefer . . . We can’t let you go to a hotel,’ she said, turning back to Phoebe, who was perched rather uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa. ‘You must stay here. I’ll make up the spare room for you. It won’t take a minute.’
‘Oh no,’ said Phoebe. ‘Thank you, but I have friends in Kent. It’s why I was down here in the first place. I saw them earlier, then came on here.’
‘You’ve driven down this morning? It’s a long way, isn’t it, all the way from Yorkshire?’
‘I left before dawn. It was very icy.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘Thank you,’ said Phoebe. ‘But I promised I’d get back.’
‘Nonsense,’ cried Piglet, coming back to life. ‘How can she drive back to Yorkshire tonight? It’s hundreds of miles.’
‘She is staying with friends nearby,’ I said.
‘You missed the performance,’ said Piglet. ‘First reading ever. An historic moment, in its way. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to tell Bhalu, I had a good shufti on the map for that village of yours. What did you say it was called?’
Phoebe said nothing, looking from Katy to me.
‘Oh yes, I remember,’ said Piglet. ‘Sleeman. Odd sort of name. Not easy to remember, but once you do, not easy to forget. I tried looking it up. Checked on the large-scale Ordnance Survey we use for our gallivantings. Not a whisker of a Sleeman.’
‘Well, the map can’t record everything,’ I said.
‘Look, I’ll run Piglet home,’ Katy said. Tea finished, we were in the kitchen for a quick conference. From next door came the boom of Piglet explaining about Shakespeare’s use of minor characters.
‘You stay here and have your talk with Phoebe. Maybe she’d like to stay for supper. And do say she’s welcome to spend the night, if she changes her mind.’ She stopped, then said, ‘You know, I bet she hasn’t any friends in Kent. I had the feeling she just made it up on the spot.’
‘She wasn’t planning to stay with us.’
‘Brighton is full of hotels,’ said Katy. ‘She might be having an affair.’
‘An affair?’
‘A woman of her age who dyes her hair blonde might easily be having an affair.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘An affair with whom?’
‘Someone in Brighton, of course.’
It would at least fit with the jealous husband. On balance, this seemed a not-unlikely explanation, but I did not want to believe it.
‘When we left Ambona we went on a ship to England. I think it was the first one my father could get a passage on. A cargo ship. It stopped at a port somewhere north of Bombay for a week and loaded sacks of fertiliser. I used to hang over the rail watching the barges. And the stevedores sitting in the barge fishing for their lunch. They had lines they let down into the water, and up came mackerel, eels, small sharks. They’d dismember them and sizzle them with tomatoes and peppers in a big blackened pan. Rather like a large wok.’
