Accident, page 8
A building slightly peeling with a wedding-cake facade; inside a lift, a man in a peaked cap, a concertina gate, the old man chewing, the lift with brass buttons. On the third floor an office with scrubbed wood and secretaries. A pile carpet and lights with small holes; a copper head with a white face, a daffodil buried all summer. I said—I have an appointment with Mr. Rounceval. Pale silver lips, smooth cheeks, black eyebrows.
On a contemporary table magazines with pictures of dead girls. Will you wait please. In this tomb an ancient Juliet. Armless sofa, smell, heat. High heels seen from the back when you are old. Queen, Newsweek, Films and Filming. Those thin soft arms and flames from the faggots. A trade magazine with photographs of my friends from Conversation Piece. Tommy Parker with his crew-cut through coloured mica.
The secretary returned all in one piece, a wheel, that new invention. Mr. Rounceval, Mr. Rounceval, Mr. Savile. That will do then. Copper coloured hair, small eyes, below them nothing. A prisoner’s fingers against barred windows. I rose to follow. Outside the earth, the air, violence coming down like parachutes. We walked across the carpet, a man in striped trousers, thumbs in waistcoat, blind and brilliant. Balloons filled with water. Intestines of power. The unfledged eggs.
A cubicle of cream and plywood rough at the edges. The old moulding of what had once been a house now broken and melted. A voice in the next cubicle talked and shouted. Police. Fire. A pale narrow desk. Mr. Savile was a short dark man in a cardigan. We must rally round Savile. I recognised him as a boy from my minor public school. He had done something in the observatory. People were always doing things in the observatory. To see better with. A telescope and two brass cogwheels. Savile said “Bill Rounceval is ill.” He looked ill himself. He came round his desk like the man in the western film. Hips round his knees. I could not remember what exactly he had done in the observatory “He’s lying all alone in bed in St. Thomas’s” Savile said. “I’m so sorry” I said. “I’ve got to go and see him” Savile said. He stood by the desk. On that dusty street, that hand on holster, verandah and wooden pillars. Something to do with a boy called Eccleston, the school tart. Flight Lieutenant Eccleston, A.D.C. to someone. “I don’t really know him” I said. “Don’t know Bill Rounceval?” Savile said. He looked annoyed. He had a yellow skin, an electric razor, tufts at the top of his cheeks which at school had been called buggers’ grips. “You’re Stephen Jervis aren’t you?” I said “Yes. ’ Another secretary tapped away in a comer: the only thing man was good at; the Post Office, the telephone. Savile said “What did Bill Rounceval want you for?” His secretary bent down in front of a filing cabinet; a behind in the bar of the western saloon. A tinkling piano. Savile watched the secretary. I said “I had an appointment with him.” The secretary came up with a file. Her yellow fingers. Savile said “Do you ever see Francesca?” I couldn’t remember about Francesca. Savile with the cowboy expression. There had been a time when we had all been in a car, in the front seats. Charlie had hit his head against a lamp post. I said “Francesca!” I remembered—the Provost’s daughter. I said “How is Francesca?” Savile was looking through the file. I caught the eye of the secretary, who wore a mauve cardigan. I said “Of course I remember.” Those mauve eyelids, hard skin, helmets of copper. Savile said “Of Palling Manor, Palling?” I said “Yes.” He said “Bill was thinking of you for Conversation Piece?” A distraught man like a jockey suddenly came in. He said “Where’s Bill?” Savile said “He’s in St. Thomas’s Hospital.” The man like a jockey sat down: he seemed on the point of collapse. Francesca had her eyes closed running, running. We had laughed so much in those days. The man like a jockey said “I didn’t know he was ill.” Savile said “He’s very bad.” The telephone began ringing. The secretary picked it up. The three of us sat at the far end of the cubicle. We had been on some party. I said “I think he was thinking of me.” The man like a jockey said “He was all right the day before.” Savile watched the secretary. The secretary put her hand over the mouthpiece. I thought—Now let me get out: let the world take over to my salvation. The man like a jockey mopped his forehead. I said to Savile “Never mind.” Savile said “I don’t know what his plans were.” The man like a jockey said “Jesus Christ.” I thought—we are being experimented with; people are watching us with cameras and microphones. Savile said “Perhaps I could let you know.” Outside the pyre was being piled up with faggots. My legs felt heavy; my head a balloon. I said to Savile “I must go.” He said “Why don’t you come along and see Bill Rounceval?” He was talking to the man like a jockey. This was an office in a television building. I said “Goodbye.” Savile said “Give my love to Francesca.” I said “I haven’t seen Francesca.” They must have something else to say to me. The man like a jockey was shaking. Savile was trying to catch the secretary’s eye. The secretary was sitting in front of a typewriter. I left them.
What I remember about Francesca was my own propensity to tears; I would cry for exercise, for the world, a sort of madonna. Francesca was the Provost of St. Mark’s daughter. I had loved her once; or had said I did. I had known her in another world. We did not like the truth: we did not know it. I found her number in a telephone book.
This was the afternoon of the second day of my visit to London. In the morning I had been to the television office. At lunch I had seen a film. I went into the telephone, out of it. I was in an underground station of white tiles. Francesca’s name had been put into my head by Savile. Savile was standing in for Rounceval, who was ill. Rounceval’s name had been given to me by Charlie. There was a small square mirror showing my tie. The crowds in the station were like com.
I had come to London for two days, taking time off from the summer term. Rosalind and the children were in the country.
I remember crying with Francesca in the front seats of cars. All my early life had seemed to happen in the front seats of cars. For security. So that you could always move on; not be caught anywhere.
I went into the telephone box. The speck of dust in London. The brain in the Oxford frigidaire. It dropped on the white tiles, splashing.
I rang Francesca. I hoped Francesca wouldn’t answer. She did. I said “Francesca?” To prove the independence of the will. “This is—” My name. A betrayal. You toss a penny: murder a pawnbroker. How else to prove the will? I said— “I just wondered—” I asked her out to dinner. Francesca had never understood why I cried. You do what you don’t want. It had seemed I was not happy. I said “You can? That’s marvellous!” I wished I had not rung her.
When I was out of the call box I was pleased I had asked her to dinner. Now my two days in London would have some point. This is what people did. Francesca had once been my mistress. I would meet her and we would talk about old times. I would stay late. We would go to bed together. London was so beautiful, so much light about it. Sexuality in the skin and the mind. I had some time to wait before dinner. I was moving through streets hoping for excitement around some comer. Having exerted the will. I could fall down on the pavement and say—I am ill, dying. To compose myself. For that tragic time when I was twenty three, a beetle with its legs in the air; someone turning me over and putting a foot on my body, my eyes. I was growing young again. Something to hold on to with my claws. Grown brittle now. The streets of London so beautiful. Faces dreaming on comers. No one alive now. With their teeth and talons: the swordfish bill.
I met Francesca at her flat. Without flowers, without a personality, having disposed of it along the route. A package in a litter bin. Francesca was a middle-aged matron with her teeth going. I had not remembered this. I wanted to run. I had got my foot in at the door. No one wants to do this, you do it for a living. Have pity. I embraced Francesca. She had one of those rooms I had forgotten, with paperbacks and a divan and a record player. Perhaps I could still do this: there are rules. How to use a person for your own advantage as an object. The ultimate sin. Francesca was like a Spanish lady at a bull-fight, all lace and garters. When she smiled we were terrified: I was a hairy thing with arms and legs. I wanted to sleep. Perhaps this was charm, the art of seduction. The more you try the less you hope for. Or the statistical technique, the more you try you exhaust the numbers. Francesca and I were talking from two comers of the ceiling. How long is it since. What have you been doing. Perhaps she would faint: then I could go home. It was only an hour and a half to Palling. She said—How marvellous to see you! In order to catch a spider you put a piece of paper on the floor, the spider turns away, you put the paper back again, it turns away, you get two pieces of paper. My knees stretched out of perspective. Francesca was a music-hall heroine. You become tethered to this, made a god of it. The age of religion.
I tried to concentrate on Francesca. We were in the sitting room of her flat, making conversation. I had not seen her for five or six years. We had once been in love. I had now rung her up to ask her out to dinner. My wife Rosalind and the children were away in the country.
We were talking of old friends. What had happened to so and so. I was holding a drink.
It would take two or three hours.
There is a love scene in which the same thing is done repeatedly: a head against a neck, turning, the long hair falling. Francesca was thirty-five now. Her hair was going stiff. People have nothing to say from beyond the grave, when they try to make contact with one another. It is a beautiful day up here: it is going to be all right. Swinging around the moon. Francesca and I were exchanging goods in a curb-side deal. We had no capital. We should start weeping like we used to do. No wonder people do it. Carried out paralysed, kings or gods in electric chairs.
We had come to some pause in our conversation. We were drinking to hurt the brain: a grating through which water flowed. If enough poison came down like weeds then there would be peace, tension. I thought—Tomorrow I will see the dam collapsed; the muddy swirl.
Up till now I had not listened. In this room, darkhaired, soft, no one listened. She had slight hollows in her cheeks which at an angle made her beautiful. I thought—I only want something. She said “And how are your children?” I told some story about Alexander. She smiled. “How sweet!” There was some justification of religion: it recognised only an abstract hope. I said “And how have you been?” Her nose, her soft upper lip, padding like pain. I had been thinking something of importance. Not about need, contact. Francesca went on about some holiday in Spain. Why didn’t I say—It is no use. A short story: a scene in a film. I began to tell Francesca about some holiday in Spain. If you did get contact then what would you do? Scream with hand in front of the face. Running.
Francesca and I were discussing where to have dinner. There was a blank place at a crossroads on a windy night. I said “Let’s get drunk!” That sleeping thing in the car; a sea-cow being prodded to sensibility. Francesca laughed. I said “That’s a lovely dress!” She looked amazed. I thought —Why shouldn’t I say That’s a lovely dress? I had almost lost myself now, a parent shouting among a field of daffodils. Two of us, hand in hand, out in the street. Two children. Francesca tossed her head. How do you act love? A hop and skip; a murmur. And then the scene with the long and falling hair, repeatedly. Everyone looks up and says—They are in love. They are on their own. Where do these myths come from, the liver, the heart. I wanted to cut them out so they would be on their own. I would then be free. I would watch them poison the ground. Mutation. Hormones. In a hundred years there would be nothing.
Francesca and I went to an expensive restaurant. It was pink. All these things we know now. I stared into her eyes. She began to tell me the story of her life. She worked in consumer research. You came across interesting people in consumer research. I decomposed. The wind blew through the walls and body. How to break up bourgeois society. I thought—Now it will be all right. The fields flat, the footprints in winter. A man in the back streets killing. Francesca was talking of her boss. A good man. The buildings like skyscrapers falling round the knees. Above them the pale body of nothingness. I touched Francesca’s legs with mine under the table. There was white soup, bread, chicken, mushrooms, spinach. I said “How extraordinary!” I was stretching out around the room, raising my head as the water came up to my eyes. In the corner a young man lurked: a cuckold with his finger on the button. They had pigs’ eyes. Human anatomy is similar to pigs’. Is impossible any more to fight against killing.
We lacked a Viennese count with a violin. We were on to our second bottle. This evening was going very well, a man of ninety and a teenage model. The food settled down and you lay on top of it. I began talking of the world; an age of decadence, the divorce of love from power. I had to use my charm, my eccentricity. A cloud was moving over the downs. There was the thing in the corner with the cigarette, the soft mouth. The bridge with the ice-flows in the river. The inner division and the outer state of the world. Symbolic. The skyscrapers with their skirts falling. The man chewing. There was no more space; the food like coal over green fields. Mist, rain, wine; darkness like phosphorus. For every good action there had to be the appalling war. I could not think of the answer to this.
Francesca and I were getting ready to leave the restaurant. There were some actresses with red hair in a comer. I said “Let’s go somewhere else.” Francesca said “Where?” To Marrakesh. Timbuctoo. Camels like skeletons. Turrets. We turned into the street. Radioactivity; the lost direction. We were going the wrong way into the hills. Things stretched their necks out. Dying. Laying their eggs away from the sea.
Under my hand there was a piece of bone and muscle, Francesca’s arm covered with cloth. Something trotted on the sand in front of palm trees. The shrill cries of birds and hunters. At the corner of the street there were newspapers and the hot wind from the poles. The balance of life lay between infinitesimal temperatures: I said “Let’s go home.” Now we were mourners at a funeral. In black, heads down, from the tops of our eyes seeing the visitor. Francesca made no objection. You live in the present, which does not exist: it exists in memory. Those old men with their teeth gone and their hair out, shaking. The future hitting you like a wave in the back. It was so cold. I held Francesca’s hand in a taxi. We were going back to the old life with the sun and snow and children with muffs round their ears. Reindeer. I started to kiss Francesca. Mouth coming up to the worm, the hook. A mother’s face. Grey fish’s lips and jerked up through the palate. Francesca was soft, warm, a sleep, an exercise. Floating above my head the starry world.
We were now two people in front of a doorway. Francesca was looking for a key. I was dressed in an overcoat. The street was empty. I looked this way and that past the dustbins. To make sure. Hurry or you may get caught. Francesca had long legs and thin ankles. I was a shadow against the wall, blown by that wind. Take enough trouble and you can destroy anything. My brain poisoned. That marvellous softness.
There is now going to be a celebration, dance, beat-up, pas-de-deux on the gramophone. The black man on a dark night in the coal cellar. Toot toot di toot. A non-existence with dark hair and wooden faces. Francesca and I were back in the bed-sitting room, bathroom. After how many hours. There was a bedspread made of dust. I had been to sleep and woken up again in a thousand years. What was it I had wanted? A gothic castle, dream, terror. Francesca went into the bathroom. I sat on the bed at right angles with my feet up. Now at this quiet time: heroically I lit a small cigar. Now I could be that person with sideburns and the long, tapering carrots. You push him and he grows—a tufted cowboy. Somewhere a bird was fluttering at the window. You shot it. A mutation was taking place in the deep and wandering world. Francesca came up to the bed. Now drop your hands with the flags and banners. The mechanic has his spanner and oil. You have bright fingers. Don’t move, move, or it will break. The body full of lights. Light. The love of machine.
Francesca wore a black woollen dress. Hairspray, mascara, lipstick. In several flavours with cream. Her hair grew from pores like a snowfield. Across the snow there was a building with the blank wall of the mind. Leaning over the landscape I was myself a cloud, a hand on her breast, a nerve in my cheek twitching. That beauty of earth, sky, iris, pupil. Behind me there was a row of windows and a chimney smoking. The power house. We had discovered everything, youth, memories. I began to walk across the cold harsh landscape. Bump: the look of the dog. The cow with its front legs like flippers. A turtle. Now I was in this white light, cave. I saw a bird on the curtain rail. I was in Francesca’s room. The bird’s bright eye was watching me. I was holding on to the body, the loved one, the child in pain. Achilles with his sword knelt over the body of his dead hero. Go into the darkness again. This sickness of mind will die soon: the molecules, atoms, rubbing. There are gyrations that do not belong to me: an eccentric with pistons and gears. The windows are high up in the long wall of the power house. Platforms and rails and iron stairs. There is so much noise: on this bed a murder might be committed. A child in a blanket. Dirt coruscating. If I could cry, kick it; ride the earthquake. I am so pleased to be here again.
You do not think this has anything to do with you. You are working through a thick glass with pincers. At the end of your long fingers there is a piece of radioactive material. You lower it into its protective sheath. Your arms are stretched out as part of your personality beyond the glass wall. A tool is a limb. The white root is the long stem of the flower. The flower is of gold petals. The metal changes. Nothing of this is seen. It is all known by its effect. A fish with its wings out breathes air, fire. It is known from the inside. Its eyes are white and invisible. It glows; spreading outwards. The man manipulates. The man is dead.
Now I remember this I am so happy, rolling on that old sail, tethered. If we are brave enough we hold the sea: a race of gods and horses. We forget but this time will remember. Smile again. Please. I do so adore being with you. The muscle from the back. Within layers of lead. The mysterious explosion.
