BOOK TWO
THE INCIPIENCE OF BUFFY STRANGELOVE.
“…I believe in a heaven from which I escaped; I believe I followed the light and that immigration need me now, as then, for clues. I believe it’s a heaven from which none of you, even you baseball-hatted guys, are theoretically excluded. I believe. I make others believe. If only you knew the cheap tricks we employ in getting there. If only. If only. The cheap cheap tricks…I believe…”
…About 200 yards away, the bus screeched to a halt. There was a loud though muffled bang. There was a commotion. What sounded like bellowing, trumpeting…Eileen looked up and thought she saw, in peripheral vision, angels…obscure clues, levitating down the Camden Rd, shimmering with intent. Across the road from the bus stop, in the playground, a thin pale yellow juvenile line ebbed and flowed. Several minutes later, the surplus passengers having alighted, she was aboard the bus. As it chugged and wheezed away, the old woman had ample opportunity to observe the young athletes skittering to and fro, free like angels, light as birds, swooping in and around in youthful abandon. There wasn’t much to look forward to for Eileen. 80 if she was a day, her time was gone. At most she had, what, 5 years left? If she was lucky. And now, sickness was stalking her, it was ever more insistently upon her. She had no idea whether the waves of nausea she felt every morning presaged the big one, or whether these sicknesses were only to be expected…at her time of life. Her GP hadn’t had much of a clue, pressing his fingers together in a parody of medical rectitude, his stock response having served to address nothing of her anxiety. Solicitous and careful, he’d just suggested that she take it easy…don’t expect there’s anything really to worry about…but you should expect a certain, ah, degree of deceleration at your age…
…Heaven again. Three shades of pale grey. Masked up. I’m alarmed at the prospect of running into Eileen again. She was my mother. What will she say? I know what happened anyway. I’ve seen it in my, ahem, dreams…Man at desk, suited, bow-tied, up to his elbows in invoices, fantasy self importance, bespectacled men in cheap fabric all around. Water coolers, tap-tap-tap of keyboard sound-ambience, the glow of spectral presences on hi-resolution screens, beyond which…nothing…“but Madame, you aren’t actually entitled to any disability benefit. The medical notes we have here on file suggest it’s nothing to do with rheumatism. It’s just…” he tailed off.
“Just what”? she demanded.
He played with his spectacles, and nervously clicked at his Parker biro. His limp tie flopped indeterminately in the suffocating office air, mimicking his lank hair, which clutched suicidally at the crown of his head. The office thrummed with boredom. Frustration was predominant, a majority of it emanating from the office staff themselves. The supplicants were beyond boredom. And beyond frustration, their suffering a livid caricature of suffering, a representation of something beyond and above suffering. Meta-suffering. Misery had outrun itself, the stragglers left behind in a welter of representational angst. They stood for misery, as inane daytime presenters might be representational of the urge to half-witted chuntering. The old and the disadvantaged, the needy, versions of misery for imagining, in front of primed documentary cameras. The old and the disadvantaged, both playing to a different gallery, one filled with angels.
…the voice drifted back into focus. “It’s just that we can’t pay you any more money. We don’t have any more money to give you. You aren’t entitled to any more. The last time we reviewed your case, it was decided that you were absolutely at the top of the limit that we can pay to any one individual, war hero or no war hero. I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can do.”
She looked on benignly. “I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed to respect your conclusions”.
It wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. The old, beyond the reach of irony, he reflected, make do with tense reality. Old people, nudging reception desks and flirting with death, waiting in waiting rooms, kept waiting as though time weren’t now urgent, beyond the understanding of functionaries whose only purpose is to keep them hanging about, hanging on. For the old, all too aware of the impending exchange of life’s brief candle for a life beyond death, that is a life beyond irony. Death comes to visit each day and night, visions of elephants at large, familiar spirits, uneven and leathery hucksters of ambivalence. Choppers fill the night sky and circle like vultures, then seek out and occupy the dreams of the very old. Fires built to keep the warmth in merely attract the choppers. The choppers carry versions in black chic of the cloakèd one, the grim reaper.
Night-time dreaming with the chopper blades throbbing over-head…The orchestra was on form. Effortlessly dispatching the Messiah from memory, the attentive audience rapt, the evening was proceeding as planned, undetermined, by the book. Minutes in, the collective reverie was broken. In the upper circle a woman was moved to vomit copiously and loudly upon the heads and shoulders of the patrons seated in front of her. Clearly not fully functional, either mentally or physically, the octogenarian sat as though dazed, seemingly unaware of the appallingly inappropriate, clearly involuntary regurgitation. As critique, it was unbeatable, a poetically rich metaphor. The recipients of the contents of her stomach reacted as though themselves dazed. Dazed, and confused, and being largely composed of members of the English middle classes, their reactions were circumscribed by the need, long ingrained, to remain polite. Not to make a fuss. Not to acknowledge overtly the indignity to which they’d been subjected. Dabbing nervously at each other’s shoulders with hankies, they did their best to give the impression of having been only mildly inconvenienced.
Word spread by stealth until the pressure bubble was ready to burst. Static electricity filled the air and stewards, themselves having seen better days, were suddenly in attendence. Neighbours of the stricken pensioner began to move surreptitiously away as the stink of bile filled the air. The orchestra played on oblivious. The stewards began the task of excavating the woman from her seat. She was led slowly away, her humiliation transferred oddly to those who bore witness to the scene. The discomfort of the elderly sick reproaching those not yet ill, or old, or those as yet unaware of encroaching illness. An angel at her shoulder was visible only to a few, those fellow code breakers who’d strayed too far into the light during their hours of wartime watchfulness. Coded embarrassment, breached only through divine intervention. A member of the decrypt force that won the war, she’d lived long enough to know that there were no thanks due to her from the Walkman generation. It was perhaps a privilege still to be alive, now that the last remaining memories of that dark night of the national soul were gradually being extinguished, candles blown out, all over the land. There were still one or two left whose minds were not yet befogged and struggling, caterwauling into the dark night of dementia, and in these minds there was yet a degree of life. Half a century of contempt from those whose lives they’d made possible couldn’t wash it away. One of her fellow former cryptographers, bearded and pixy-bonneted, was these days in the habit of approaching the young uninvited, bearding unreflective personal stereo bearers, and demanding loudly that the volume be turned down. The bemused recipients of this heroic behaviour were always too taken aback to protest. The spectacle of this blue-bearded old coot, this drivelling yet strangely dignified seer, high on static, facing them down, giving them the eyeball, was just too much for them. And besides, the silent approval or snickering amusement of bystanders made it impossible for these fellows to play any role at all other than that of humiliated buffoons.
Down the steps came the old lady, supported on all sides by attendants who, though older and yet more decrepit even than their charge, were unflustered. These superannuated commissionaires stood for something insane, and they discharged their duty with immense gravitas. Half way down they allowed her to stop for breath, and there they left her a moment. They withdrew a reasonable distance for a fag break, their nicotined fingers disembowelling a shared pack of Senior Service. Puffing slightly, Eileen eyed them narrowly and then threw up again with great despatch.
Across the road, underneath the Albert memorial, a peculiar scene was playing itself out. A phalanx of evening promenaders was arranging itself around something apparently of interest on the pavement. The pernicious screen of their bodies obscured Eileen’s view. Suddenly, something emerged from this improvised igloo of inclining rubberneckers, a wiry figure in distressed headscarf, or possibly turban, clutching its side. It wound its way snake like through the throng, not pursued but giving the impression that it expected pursuit at any moment. It was impossible to tell what had occurred as the turbaned figure made its way quickly from the scene.
Outside on the pavement a female cellist and her compatriot, a puppy-fatted girl, were seated. They partly confronted the solemn exit party. They were holding a placard, which read, “Leave Jackie Alone – Music is important, Sex is not”. Slightly to one side stood Dionysia, my errant wife. Giving it away, literally giving it away. Looking to all intents like a very high-class escort, black box jacket and pencil skirt, slickly coiffed hairdo and jet black sunglasses. She affected an air of latent intrigue, whorish mystery, a monochrome extra in a Technicolor production. She carried an umbrella, though it wasn’t raining, her stilettos were razor sharp. Although sex was not the answer to everything, you’d be forgiven for thinking that sex was in fact the be-all and end-all of life in this sensually overloaded city. Every advert screamed the lure of sexual congress. Every design miracle an encoded invitation to masturbation. Actually, she considered, sex was, literally, the be-all and end-all of life. But still, a bit much to have it shoved in your face or up your arse at every turn. Sex which in these profane times was just banging and nibbling, slurping, pecking and rubbing. Just so much friction being generated. Friction without warmth. Electricity. Bad electricity.
Like with Frank, who’s dished the dirt in that cute way he has, for money, but we knew he was joking. He let me have it, Dionysia thought…subtle rumours, incest at the family table, supercilious contempt in the tabloids. The joker. How much sharper than a serpent’s tooth, she considered irrelevantly. Brothers and sisters really do generally hate each other passionately don’t they? And brothers and brothers. And wives and brothers. Wives and brothers in domestic ecstasy, family divinity, breached by bad intent. How to untangle the vectors? Frank knows, the joker. He knows how to ensure good faith, to breach the bad intent, which is all around. He sluices away these tangible gobbets of bad faith, dissolved in the air like rain. Sibling hate, refined love of the shared brainpan. Chopped away, the hippocampus surgically enlarged to accommodate two, or three, brains. These were her thoughts, preoccupations. At least until someone other than Frank, or Billy the familiar, some other vessel might be found to take care of these sacred articles. She desired a return to a life of fecklessness, domestic unrest. Over the road in Kensington Gardens, large grey figures were indistinctly visible, moving ponderously among the trees. Dionysia moved towards the perambulating fugitive, looking bemusedly at his retreating figure.
“You shall know me, but not at present. We are older and better friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall look in on you and renew a friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant recollections. But I must now travel day and night, on a mission of life and death – a mission the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment.”
She inadvertently spoke aloud, the murmured words fleetingly audible, an afterthought. Hard Hat turned and half smiled.
“See here” he muttered. “I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. You have the sharpest tooth – long, thin, pointed, like an owl, like a needle. Ha Ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen it distinctly. Now if it happens to hurt, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish or the tusk of an elephant, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey! Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?”
Dionysia indeed looked very angry as she drew back from the crowd.
“How dare you insult me so, mountebank? My husband would have you tied to the pump, and flogged with a cart-whip, and burnt to the bones with the brand!!”
Of course it was all simulation. Brothers and sisters…bound in direction finding divinity. Bound by hate. Simulated contempt. The sound of the discourse was carried away on the currents of her own apparently languid intent. The wind was rising and black clouds were rushing by in fast motion as though in filmic existential parody. A cheesy metaphorical exegesis. As it began to rain heavily, without intro or prelude of lighter spitting drops, the scene began to resemble a religious medieval biblical painting. Attitudes were struck, postures assumed. Desperate strollers clung to the porticos of the Hall, struggling to retain their balance. The wind was lifting them off their feet. Dionysia flung her arm up to protect her face from the sudden downpour (although she forgot to unfurl the umbrella, in some obscurely portentous way negating the obvious, refusing to adhere to the commonplace, the obvious, as a valid blueprint for action) and several of the previously languid strollers prostrated themselves at the feet of the old woman’s escort party. Eileen was suddenly borne aloft by her ancient protectors, the four attendants each grabbing either an ankle or a shoulder and rushing aimlessly hither and thither. The old woman had become a bizarre kind of tribal fetish for the promenaders, now terrified of the rain, an ornamental talisman to ward off the worst effects of the weather. Her magical properties only succeeded, however, in bringing down the rain in ever-fiercer torrents. Her venerable escort made for the bus lane, now their only hope. The elephants in Hyde Park began a stampede towards the Serpentine. Soon everyone was completely drenched. The deranged pall bearers dithered this way and that, plunging wildly and without apparent purpose away from the sanctuary of the hall itself, then veered insanely into the road, their geriatric cargo stiffening like a board in mournful supplication. The road was suddenly illuminated, seemingly from within. The rubberneckers were driven this way and that by the swirling wind, leaves from the trees in the park cascading on them like confetti at a witches’ Sabbath. The old woman and her porters suddenly disappeared. There was a humming. Electricity. The rain stopped. The thoroughfare was dry.
Dionysia was now unchained. She’d never really been any good at picking up her own sort and this had left her embittered against the world. And against me, her husband. She just hadn’t had her share despite being tremendously beautiful, a veritable ornament of the age, a thoroughly contemporary mythical figure…outrageously witty, she was a writer of considerable power and style. TV had, oddly enough, never meant that much to her, although she could have walked into any job that required poise, beauty and talent. TV and the media in general she regarded as well beneath her. She regarded her Gucci wearing rivals as somewhat lacking in essential dignity and not worthy of her respect. They wouldn’t have had anything like the foresight to be present at a drama like the one now unfolding. But her life in the last few years has been spent in domestic drudgery, invoking angels for me, product engineering, packaging and promotion of Elephant Gnosis™, assisting at re-birthings and re-entries, assuming domestic responsibility, hosting revival evenings, burning the midnight oil, attending to business, making do, writing it out, cheating on Frank, making sure me and my pals are supplied with booze well into the long unquiet nights. She’s dead tired of me. I am mad, obsessive, in her book. I talk obsession, I live it, I obsessively invoke familiars. I walk around and around, pretending to a revelatory insight, a visionary outlook, which she’s sure I no longer actually possess. Maybe once, but not now. Doc Abrahams is almost on the point of giving up on me. Night walks on Hampstead Heath, looking for fun and trouble. Talking to strangers. Talking to myself, looking at myself…in shop windows. Avoiding the cracks in the pavement. Oddly attired acquaintances caked in filth tramping through the house day and night. She puts up with a lot. I’ve become sub-mythic in her eyes. I’ve never been the lover she hoped I might be. She remembers that once I’d been a convincing visionary, a hot-wired seer. A visionary with legs. Eyes wide shut. Now the light seems to be dimming for me, a household god without wings. And I’ve consequently become sufficiently annoying that her thoughts are turning increasingly to the Sapphic pastimes. Frank’s dead, and I’m dead in the water, a lame duck semi-divinity. But I’ll make it. Elephant Gnosis™ is our collective saving grace. And now she stands on the threshold of a great writing career, and on the threshold of real occult power. Her mere presence in the park was enough to usher Eileen, her mother, into the light. She stands alone, at the highest peak of her aspiration.
She is at present writing nine complimentary volumes, each to be written and published secretly and anonymously, pamphlets…nine volumes of travel writing, visionary in import and each relating to the hard coded secrets of the universe; the nature of light; the constituent elements; levitation; torsion fields; codes of conduct, song books including a number of wedding songs, elegies, and hymns. Or this is the plan. But being a drudge, a moonlighting office flirt with dipsomaniacal tendencies, a domestic goddess with flashing eyes, goddess in the kitchen, vibrant in the bedroom, and devoted to fecklessness, means she’s unable to devote as much time to her writing as she might have hoped. It’s all travel books, guides, these days. Apparently just hack-work but in the hands of someone like Dionysia, really of a far deeper, intrinsically mystical importance. However, the publishers she knows are mostly mad, or manipulative, or stupid, attention seeking witches. They are the talent that never came.
Memo to rehab centre staff from Ahab: This goes to the heart of the problem. This is Buffy’s problem. She knows that he no longer moves in the circles that guarantee a series of affairs, liaisons and bunk-ups. This world, the demimonde of the blathering or blithering classes, an assembly of easy lays and loose attitudes, of actions without consequences, is now a closed book. To both of them. I fear their familiarity with this lifestyle will not stand either of them in any kind of good faith. He is scared of commitment, has become scared of the energy released even in phone sex. He’s taken to hanging around supermarket checkout queues, attempting to catch the eyes of enervated bulk loaders, flirting with hoarders of good will. Supermarkets, in his view and, it has to be said, that of the style supplements, are still a good place to catch the eyes of under-achieving freeloaders…
My hard-hatted familiar, Billy, had seen her standing there under the portico…the hooded figure, a vamp in 40s gear. He’d assumed that she was one of Frank’s girls. She was his type as well, all snake-eyed intensity and pencil thin stilettos. On approaching her, however, it was obvious to him that he’d made a fundamental mistake; that of assuming that he was remotely in her league. She’d merely glanced disdainfully at him from under her funeral veil, dissing him with a silent narrowing of the eyes…For a moment, Billy thought about brazening it out, making out that he knew Frank, that he was in fact a stooge of the Top Man, and that it was accepted practice for him to receive special favours from Frank’s women. One look from her, however, and it was clear that she was not in the mood for any sort of exchange at all. She looked, a doomed romantic in the autumn sunshine, like she wanted to be anywhere but there, invoking storms in the distant sky. Hard Hat felt the force of her as the wind got up. The sky darkened and he fell backwards into the tourist group. They clicked and smiled, all solicitous and f-stopping, as he lay there. He was in a dream. The tourists’ faces assumed feral intensity, vulpine, B-movie, a horrifying aspect, terrifying to a less than divine figure. They closed in on him. He was looking away, trying to avert his eyes, dreaming of the coast…the water, where salvation lay. Water, needful, dreamlike. He was sure he was meant to be away from here…the rocks…lying on the rocks, a crashed autopilot, a black box recorder, obsolete technology lying undiscovered, while whales and dolphins bore away the evidence. These matrices of bad intent, were now breached. Billy the conduit. Dionyisia the medium. At last. The inauguration of Buffy Strangelove, now almost complete. Auto-pilot elephant gnosis, gone and lost forever, electricity swept from the parks and thoroughfares. Reporters at a loss, operating without The Knowledge, unable to re-formulate the techniques of fretful reportage. Reports unwritten, because the templates don’t exist. They don’t know how to report it yet. The memes that will carry at my will the Information Fallacy, the rumour, are not yet formulated. Information mutants, hybrid rumours, all non-patent and un-copyrightable material. It’s now a race to the end, my fictive mission still a rumour, in danger only from immigration control. Ayton is now at the door, accompanied by shadowy therapy attendants/whores.
Tags: ahab, Billy Hard Hat, buffy strangelove, david kettle, Dionysia, Elephant Gnosis, sex
