Rancid Pansies (23 page)
Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson
‘But you can’t deny its survival is pretty miraculous,’ the hack perseveres. ‘Just look at it.
È porcellana
,
è
fragilissima
, yet it’s not even chipped. It’s perfect, even after falling at least a hundred metres in a shower of rock and rubble, lying buried for nearly half a year and being brought to the surface by an excavator. Don’t tell me that’s not miraculous.’
‘It’s remarkable, certainly,’ I concede. ‘Even wonderful.’ Now, Samper, be careful here. Your new home depends on it. ‘But I’m not sure I’d dare call it a miracle. We’re not priests and it’s hardly for us to make judgements of that kind. And as a matter of fact it isn’t perfect. She was holding a ghastly silk rose in her right hand – the stem went through here, look. I’m glad to see that’s gone.’
‘
Eh bé, signore
, a detail. A missing rose, though? Some would see that as significant. My judgement tells me that Princess Diana is somehow bound up with your life and, miracle or not, here you are and here her statue is, both of you intact. I can assure you, very few of my readers will have any doubts.’
‘That I can well imagine. After all, a good percentage of them believe they’ll win the Lotto each week.’ Suddenly I notice the saturnine Jonti has his camera on his shoulder and is filming this little scene. ‘Hey, stop that!’ I cry. ‘Come on, you guys, you’re not here to film this stuff, you’re here to do an interview about Millie Cleat.’ I turn to Leo for support. ‘Can’t we get started?’
‘Oh, Jonti was just getting some light and sound levels.
General
location shots. Anyway, it’s interesting, Gerry. This statue really came from your house?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. It’s just one of those silly camp gifts that friends give each other as a joke. I bet you’ve got plenty of
similar
things at home. I mean’ – I swing around and sweep an arm over the boulder-strewn scene – ‘somewhere under this lies a farting teddy bear I was given. If that had survived, would these goons be calling it a miracle? Of course not.’
‘Still,’ Leo says musingly, ‘it does rather tie in with what they were saying in the hotel this morning. Maybe you really are under the protection of Lady Di’s spirit even if you don’t know it.’
She laughs, but not as though the whole things is as risible as I find it. A weight of irritable hopelessness envelops me like a leaden cape. All at once the excavator stops and falls silent with a wheeze. People begin drifting towards their cars.
Midday
already. Leo agrees to send her crew down to the nearest bar to have some sandwiches made up for us and also bring us back something to drink while she stays behind with Joan and me to prepare the interviews. I wander off and kick moodily at my heap of ex-finery. I notice it includes my famous pair of Homo Erectus jeans that a mere two or three years ago were denim couture’s equivalent of a Vacheron Constantin watch and now look as though they’d been used to stuff a drain. Strangely, I feel no pang. Since I’m hiring its driver by the day, the digger can carry on this afternoon but if nothing else turns up I shan’t bother to continue. What’s the point? I’m sorriest about my books and CDs, many of which (if I could ever remember their titles) would require a good deal of money and effort to replace. All the rest is just stuff that can be bought anywhere. Of all things it
would
be Derek’s blasted Di doll that should have come to light. True, ten years ago I was happy to have it as a piece of topical kitsch. In her bobbly bolero she used to stand behind the bath taps and gaze down at bathers’ languidly floating genitalia with her curiously American, Pepsodent smile. She kept dropping her rose into the bathwater and after sundry immersions it was looking faded and tatty. Still, I do wonder at the physics involved not only in the statuette’s freakish survival but in its complete
isolation
. There was not a shard of broken hand basin nearby that I could see, nor even one of the sundry Floris bottles that had shared her perch. Strange indeed.
The film crew returns, we eat our lunch, the day wears on. As the excavator comes to life again Leo interviews me perched on
the rock in an uncomfortable posture that reminds me of Copenhagen’s mermaid readying herself for curettage. My boots will, I hope, go some way towards dispelling this image. Even as my feet throb I wonder whether an important part of my decision to halt all further excavation after tonight isn’t down to my determination never to wear these things again. I’m equally determined never to be interviewed again. Leo’s questions are disappointingly the tired old stuff of someone who is afraid of eliciting responses that imperil the line she has already decided to take. What was the great Millie Cleat like to work with? (Grim.) How close was she to her family? (Not.) Do I think she had mystical experiences during her lone
voyages
? (If you
knew
how I’d prayed for her to try walking on water.) When things appear to sag I at last break the story of Millie’s yacht
Beldame
cutting across the bows of that EAGIS survey in the Canaries and confirm that the scientists have it all on video. This promise of some enlivening drama is just what Leo wants to hear. It means being able to show footage the viewing public has never seen – unlike the newsreel shots of Millie’s death in Sydney harbour which constant repetition has rendered no longer visible, along with the fall of the Twin
Towers
or the wives, children, pets and pictures in our own homes. Leo becomes quite red with excitement. She looks like a gnome on hearing it’s going to be a bumper year for toadstools.
‘Obviously a perfect instance of a natural-born
sportswoman
being competitive to her fingertips. It’s that killer instinct:
Go for it!’
‘It was certainly a perfect instance of an egocentric and ignorant sportswoman ruining a major European scientific survey of vital interest to half the countries in the northern hemisphere with an Atlantic coastline.’
‘You do exaggerate, Gerry. I mean, come on, what people want is to see their heroes make those daring, split-second decisions that break records.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
I think Leo’s interview with Joan goes rather better. I assume
Joan comes up with plenty of human-interest details about Millie’s relations with her fellow sailors in Britain’s
south-coast
yachting community, tales of all-girls-together fish
barbecues
while moored in Langstone harbour and Hayling Bay. I believe at one point I overhear Leo asking if maybe Millie had been attractive to gay women. I suppose a rule of thumb for broadcasters is the same as that for barristers: that they never ask a question to which they don’t already know the answer. This would certainly account for the air of utter predictability the news media seem to cultivate almost as a point of honour.
Eventually, though, it is over, Leo saying she has ‘some
sensational
stuff from both of you’. They are just starting to pack up when another shout announces a fresh discovery. This one might actually be useful, I think, as I see reposing in the
excavator’s
muddy bucket my battered beige filing cabinet. Battered it may be, but it turns out to be locked and faithfully impregnable. I no longer have a key so I shall take it back to town and have a locksmith open it. Joan fetches the van across and the excavator lifts the cabinet up and tilts the bucket so we can slide it in. It is remarkably heavy.
As we close the van door Joan pauses like a beagle sampling the air and says, ‘Do I smell poppers?’
‘Oh lor’.’ I now remember Adrian’s present. ‘Well, if we’ve suddenly made it leak it’ll soon evaporate.’
‘I’m thinking of the drive back to town with our heads pounding and our blood pressure bottoming out and us both reeking of guardsmen’s feet.’
‘It’s not amyl, it’s butyl. That doesn’t smell so cheesy.’ I call up to the excavator driver that he can now knock off.
Meanwhile
the film crew have loaded their car and are poised for hand-shakings and, I hope, an offer of dinner tonight at
Global Eyeball’
s expense. Suddenly Jonti, who seems
habitually
to be scanning the horizon, gives a cry. ‘Christ! Look up there!’
A dark bundle is falling, bouncing, sliding, rolling down the mountainside. From above it drift thin wisps of screaming,
and gesticulating figures are visible on the lip of the precipice. Limply flailing, the bundle comes to rest in a cloud of dust, limbs asprawl. I experience a brief moment of paralysis in which a small sick feeling is embedded before the admirable Joan banishes it as she sets off at an elderly lope.
‘Bets, anyone?’ she calls out gleefully. ‘First aid or last rites?
email from Dr Adrian Jestico ([email protected])
to Dr Penny Barbisant ([email protected])
Amazing about your
Hattie MacAllister
being a Liberty ship. So it’s exactly like the
Richard Montgomery
stuck in the Thames estuary. Ancient Mariner in the Archaeology Division here tells me the
Americans
churned them out for us in WW2 at breakneck speed to replace all our merchant ships sunk by U-boats in the N. Atlantic & it was a good job they did. But the vessels weren’t a brilliant design & they were hardly put together like Swiss watches. Do keep me posted, Penny. I’d be interested to know if the
HM
went down in a storm or from structural failure or was torpedoed. According to Ancient Mariner the U-boats used to wait all up that coast which is why in addition to a crew of 50 those Liberty ships usually had about 30 gunners & torpedo crew aboard.
Meanwhile, high drama over in Gerryland. Really, his life seems to have tapped into a vein of sheer wackiness – was this what Jung meant by synchronicity? When things just go on happening as though some offstage entity was trying to make a point? Gerry & and an ex-naval friend of his called Joan spent a day with an
excavator
going through the ruins of his house (they didn’t find much, tho’) & they were also interviewed by that poison dwarfette Leo
Wolstenholme
from
Global Eyeball
who had flown over specially. You know – the one whose boob op. ended up in court along with that unfortunate journalist who’d referred to her ubiquitous cleavage as ‘Silicone Valley’ in his column? Just as they were all packing up to leave, a kid falls over the edge of the cliff up where Gerry’s house used to stand. It’s not actually a vertical drop but a very steep slope covered in scree & rocks & tree trunks felled by the original landslip,
& the poor kid (she’s only 10) came tumbling down about 100 metres in a small avalanche of her own. But – & get this – she’s OK! Bruised all over & covered in minor cuts but nothing broken.
Everyone
stands around saying it’s a miracle & really meaning it. But it gets better still. After the initial tears she’s acting oddly, staring around her & naturally everybody thinks she’s a bit concussed, no surprise there & an ambulance has already been called, when
suddenly
it turns out not only that she speaks English but that she was blind from birth & can now see!!!
Well, that does it. The bulldozer driver and some local officials
practically
fall on their knees. Have you ever seen those primitive ex voto paintings in Italian churches? They’re often quite touching & depict dramatic accidents that people have survived. They’re
painted
as a mark of gratitude to the Virgin, who usually appears in a
little
cloud in one corner. This kid falling, surviving and being cured of a lifetime’s blindness is pure ex voto stuff. Then it slowly sinks in that this time the Madonna might have had help. Where did the kid fall from? Why, right by the Diana shrine where her parents had just been posting a prayer that her sight might be restored. I mean crikey, Penny, I’m so glad I’m not there at this moment trying to
preserve
a calm, sceptical demeanour as supposedly befits a scientist. There had already been a very minor ‘miracle’ earlier in the day when the excavator found an undamaged but awful camp statuette of – you’ve guessed – Princess Diana that Gerry had banished to his bathroom for laughs. So you’ll see what I mean about
synchronicity
. Everything is suddenly conspiring to point fingers at Gerry and Diana as though they’re spiritually joined at the hip. Poor Gerry is spitting blood when he’s not busy working out how he can profit from it. And I forgot to mention that this little ex-blind English girl isn’t just some nameless catspaw of fate. Her name’s Darcie & Gerry has known her parents for some time. They’re a couple he calls ‘Baggy & Dumpy’ who came out to Italy, bought a house a year or so ago & now live much lower down but on the same road as Gerry’s old house.
Yeah (I hear you say), so how come two loving parents allow their blind daughter to play on the edge of a precipice? The answer seems to be that they’re not the brightest buttons in the box & they’d ducked under the warning tape strung along the edge to find out what all the people and excavators were doing down below. I
gather
they each had a firm grasp on the belt at the back of their kid’s coat, & when the ground beneath her suddenly gave way her weight tore the thing loose & they were left holding a strip of navy blue wool as she bounced down the side of the mountain accompanied by parental screams. These things happen. Of course with the folly of hindsight they now realise it was all for the best & was
Meant
, because such are the mysterious ways that lead to miracle cures & theirs not to question the method which, I should point out, family doctors and opticians everywhere strongly oppose even though it occasionally works. It’s a bit like thumping a TV that’s on the blink: once in a blue moon you get a decent picture.
So how about that for excitement? Gerry tells me his first thought on seeing this dusty bundle come rolling down the mountain in a flurry of limbs was huge relief at having signed over his remaining land to the local council only days earlier so he was no longer legally responsible. At the time he was naturally thinking in terms of corpses & being sued for not having put up a proper fence or
something
. But far from blaming him, people are now treating him like a species of holy fool: about as spiritual as a slab of cheddar, granted, but nevertheless one of those people around whom profoundly mysterious things just
happen
. And of course he’s also regarded as being in virtual communication with the late squeeze of the Son of Harrods. He tells me Leo W. got her camera unpacked again within seconds & captured the little girl discovering she could see for the first time in her life, possibly the only such occasion ever filmed. Apparently Leo has now decided that this Diana cult & Gerry’s
association
with it is ripe for investigation. Despite his howls of anguish I’d guess he’s adoring the attention. It certainly hasn’t made him moderate his off-colour remarks. Apparently he told Leo on camera that he felt rather sorry for little Darcie since it would be awful to
regain your sight & discover your parents looked like Baggy & Dumpy. At least this kind thought will never be broadcast.
Thanks for your brief run-down on your friend Luke. Choosing my words carefully I’d say he sounds, well, normal. Nothing to do with sex, of course; I’m just comparing him to Gerry, somewhat
enviously
. I should think an ornithologist would make an excellent
companion
for someone like you who spends hours staring down a microscope. Patience is a good quality for two people to share. Bit of an age difference, I agree, but hardly disastrous. As for Gerry, in your last email you astutely wonder whether he’s the genius he thinks he is. A pertinent question, even if applicable to most of us. It’s unfortunately true that the thing at which he really does excel – ghosting the biographies of sports celebs – is also the thing he most loathes & disparages. Why? Because he’s convinced he has far greater talents, hitherto unexploited & hence unacknowledged for reasons of financial necessity. Talents for what? we may ask, even as we note it’s his very qualities as a ghost writer that have turned him into a minor celebrity himself, fit to be interviewed for TV, as well as earning him a living the rest of us salaried peons can only envy.
There’s no doubt he does have other talents, including the ability to make an entire dinner party throw up at the same moment. This is a gift which none of us who were present is likely to forget even though it’s something Gerry himself has long since put out of his mind, accusing the rest of us of faking and exaggeration. He’s unquestionably musical in a bizarre sort of way & knows a lot about it although he doesn’t actually play any instrument, & this seems to be behind his weird relationship with Marta which I’ve mentioned before. It looks almost like rivalry on his part, yet that’s preposterous because Marta’s a bona fide conservatoire-trained composer with all sorts of stuff including two film scores under her belt. My
conductor
brother-in-law thinks she’s genuinely outstanding & one of the 2 or 3 younger contemporaries he’s eager to watch & promote. So any idea that Gerry could rival her is as absurd as suggesting Marta would make a good ghost writer. Yet until recently he was for ever
mocking her musicianship behind her back while to her face he was just plain patronising. It sounds unforgivable – it
is
unforgivable – but as so often with Gerry one forgives him because he’s usually very funny with it & because you suspect it’s born of a complicated repressed admiration. He’s actually far fonder of Marta than he lets himself believe, but heaven help you if you say so. He’ll go off into a tirade about ‘that Voynovian bat’ or ‘the Iron Curtain bagpiper’.
Right now he’s moderating all that because she has at last agreed to write the music to this opera of his he’s become obsessed with. I gather he has just about finished the libretto & it really is about his new alter ego, Princess Di. Honestly – an opera about
her
, of all people! To me I’m afraid she’s just another dim Royal, but I listen to Gerry with what I hope sounds like proper enthusiasm. He’s paying Marta to do the music but I don’t know how much & don’t quite like to ask. I do know she has vast private means of her own, thanks to her criminal family. But the important thing is that Max is
enthusiastic
& provided he likes the finished article he’s proposing to première it at Crendlesham. If it’s a success Gerry will at last feel vindicated. He’ll have proved he has the right to mix & mingle with the
international
arts glitterati on his own terms. He may well become quite insufferable as a result.
I
think
it’s kind of you to ask about things here at BOIS though as I’ve said before, part of the reason I like writing to you about
munitions
ships & Gerry is to take my mind off work. At present I can sum my professional life up with the plaintive question ‘Why me?’ You know me, Penny: I’m just a typical boffin who’s attached to
copepoda
, never happier than when in the little beasties’ company. OK, so I’m head of a small department, but why does the director choose me of all people to deal with these special interest groups who come down to Southampton to petition us? I have the public relations skills of Kim Il Sung. These people turn up here daily, each clamouring to be heard on the subject of the Severn barrage & each convinced that their ‘input’ is the one make-or-break factor that will finally decide whether the damn thing ever gets built, even though
they know all the real decisions are taken by politicians 80 miles away in Whitehall who can’t tell a shrimp from a sea-cow.
On that sunny note – token of a grey day here in S’thampton – I shall sign off.
Cheers,
Adrian