Room Service (13 page)

How the hell do you write an obituary that is halfways acceptable for a man whom you've known for quite a while, worked with, yet did not greatly admire, on a paper where we try to tell it as it is?

That's my problem.

I was the only senior staffer on duty when the news came through. Young Morris came back from the telephone and said, ‘Berry Tonge has knocked himself off.'

I told him to go away and check it because it sounded to me like a hoaxer from Stewart's because, whatever else you might have to say or not say about Berry Tonge, he is definitely Life Affirmative.

Young Morris came back after having rung the widow and said that it was no hoax alright.

I was infuriated. I think I am entitled to self-destruct whenever I choose, but I would never do it so close to deadline, which again struck me as rather comic because Berry Tonge always put himself forward as a considerate person.

Berry Tonge wrote a column for us (this is the beginning of the Obituary proper) before we went down-market and found readership. Down-market
I often sayeth to Tonge is where most of humanity lives. He never listened to me and that is probably why he is where he is now. In the morgue.

Well, he wrote a column for us even after we went down market in search of readership, and the column was, as you all should know, called
Life Stylish.
I always said to Tonge, ‘Berry, I don't have a lifestyle, I just have life.' He ignored me as usual. His last piece for us was ‘Listening to the Silence' (Jan 3). Don't rush away – you can read it later.

Now I was not one of those who admired his writing or, let it all hang out, his ideas. But I'm the only one here in the office and it's forty-five minutes to deadline. Many of our readers, however, did commend him for his Earth Philosophy. Young Morris has found fourteen congratulatory letters in the twenty-seven months during which Berry Tonge wrote sixty-one pieces for us (when you have nothing to say use some statistics). I want to be honest, as he would, I hope, wish me to be. Berry, your Earth Philosophy got up my nostril.

But I suppose the virility symbol he wore on a chain around his neck, his knee boots, his kaftans, and his home-grown tomatoes were just not my style. I come from the anonymous sartorial style of the crumpled, cheap suit journalism, albeit, one trying to make it into the New Journalism and keep a job.

But I think it was that he worried about those two things we cannot afford to worry about, immortality through achievement and Proper Report. Berry Tonge did not claim to be a writer (to his credit), but saw
himself, rather, as a Teacher in the older sense. The Old Teaching. His expression to be precise was ‘A Free Teacher'. He would not work within the system or for an institution. He wanted to be Respected as a Free Teacher by the world and kept for it and remembered for it. Well, Berry, here I am thirty-five minutes to deadline trying to write the only obituary you'll get, I'm afraid. Bad luck. Hard cheese. You were never very strong in irony, were you, Berry? You'll excuse me while I take a small swig from the office bottle. Ah. Yes. You asked a lot of the world, Berry. You become very vulnerable to the world when you demand such things. I myself wouldn't dream of asking the world for these things. My life is based on one question which I live with most mornings of my life. That question is: ‘How have the sub-editors fucked up my story this time?'

People will now question, of course, how you could write sixty-one columns on the Richness of Life and still do away with yourself. There was not one column on suicide that I can see, now leafing through. How come? You were supposed to be telling it as is, you were the last Flower Child. You were still using the jargon that Young Morris would have to look up in a glossary of Hippie Terminology. Methinks, Berry, you were not letting everything hang out. Those columns were again part of the world's rich bullshit.

I'll put it another way, Berry, I think, you silly old bugger, that last night you re-read some of the things you wrote, I hope while sipping elderberry wine, or whatever your tipple was, if you tippled, and in one
moment of blinding clarity you saw that you didn't believe in it, and the world wasn't listening. The world was never going to join the Movement.

Young Morris points out to me that this is our first obituary in sixty-two months of publication. I've taught Young Morris to collect facts.

I've found something now that I can respect you for, Berry. If you did in fact have this one rare moment of blinding clarity and have made the ultimate response to self-knowledge, I salute you.

What I really suspect is that you were making a final manoeuvre for immortality. I suspect you were using the ultimate act to try to extract from life Proper Respect. No go, Berry. It didn't work.

Goodbye, you poor bastard. Ten minutes to deadline, Blase.

Notes: Morris says that Berry Tonge OD'd on twenty-eight sleeping capsules at 2.23 a.m. and was d.o.a. at Prince Alfred. Good work, Morris.

Letters, March 13

‘Sirs, It is customary on a newspaper that the person who writes the obituary should have some understanding of the life about which he has taken upon himself to write.

‘We the undersigned wish to express our dismay at the disrespectful, frivolous and unfair obituary by Blase (March 6).

‘On one point, however, the obituary was correct – Berry Tonge was a Teacher. His pieces in your journal
were often regretted by his friends as a departure from his vocation and suffered from the influences that swirl around such newspapers, no matter how hard one fights them. You would be described as one of such influences – negative and destructive and soured.

‘You fail to mention his books or his past great project,
The Commonplace Book of Key Insights.

‘He sought a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms of human growth and the possibility of transcendence through flexible love. This made him queer among the happy ego-trippers who make up the staff of your newspaper and who seemed to him to be in an extended adolescence. He admitted to close friends that he had failed to find self-transcendence through flexible love and to have any impact at all on the staff of the newspaper, especially during November and December of last year. Of course, none of you noticed. There was a circle of beneficent influence directing its beam at your newspaper, under the guidance of Berry Tonge, but this could not penetrate the soullessness of your scene. We pity Young Morris and our heart goes out to him.

‘A point of fact: Berry did not wear a “virility symbol” around his neck, it was a “fecundity” symbol and expressed more than Blase could understand or deal with in thirteen paragraphs on page 40.

‘Berry's relationship to sperm was a thousand miles away from concepts of “virility” and, although there is ample testament to his virility, he said many times that
it meant nothing to him. Fecundity may be the outcome of mature virility correctly applied in the service of transcendent flexible love.

‘As to the Why. He was very deeply demoralised by his efforts at the newspaper both to involve your readers and to turn around the minds of those like yourself who worked there. For over a year, week in and week out, he not only wrote the column but delivered it in person to you at the newspaper, hoping that his presence in the office would ultimately have its effect. It might have helped you if you'd eaten those home-grown tomatoes and other gifts from the soul of a very soulful man. But oh no – not for you the cynic.'

Signed, seven of Berry Tonge's friends

 

‘Sirs,

For Berry Tonge

I heard a horde of people

asking why

and yet for some

it was just a case

of time

and place

he spoke about it

once or twice

and someone said

he'd never have the guts

but then he saw a last defiant chance

to swing the wheel of destiny

and grasped it firmly

yet all he lacked was love

from those he loved the most'

 

Another friend.

 

‘Sirs, What was the last insight, in Berry Tonge's Commonplace Book of Key Insights?

‘Perhaps the indefatigable Morris could dig it up. I'd be interested to know.'

 

Peter Ferry, a curious reader

Letters, March 20

‘Sirs, Berry Tonge, like many folk outside the System, had to have money to live. As one connected with his practical life I can say that he was basically worried about money. It is ironical that only a short while ago he presented to our Speakers' Agency a new title,
A Bowl of Rice Will Do.

‘The Book Industry for instance wanted him to give one of his well-loved talks –
Read Your Way to Riches.
They said they couldn't afford a fee. He refused to speak and got me to write to them saying that he “would prostitute himself no longer”.

‘Yes, Berry Tonge was an angry man. But he was a talented man. His first book, written as a young man –
Speak Out! –
went to seven editions and is still a valuable text for those wanting a vocation as a public speaker. He was a “broadcaster” and one of the first so to describe himself.

‘He was an authority on Fruitful Co-partnership in Industry, but met with puzzled apathy from both unions and management.

‘I look sadly into his file and see that his spare-time interests are listed as “conversation, bread baking, and care of the garden and all that in it dwells”.

‘I see he gave us one title on human relations which was called
A Shoulder is to Cry On as well as for the Wheel.
There will be a great many people who will wish they'd known to offer him a shoulder.'

 

June T. Dempster (Mrs), June T. Dempster Speakers' Agency Ltd

 

‘Sirs, A short letter to convey my disgust at the way you wrote about Berry Tonge. If Berry could have read that obituary he would no doubt have felt like dying again.

‘As usual Blase wrote about himself. Count how many times the pronoun I is used – 23.'

 

Teresa Grey

Letters, March 20

‘Sirs, What an enormous lot of superstitious and sentimental plain old silly rubbish your letters have been about Berry Tonge. Yet you have a note threatening to cut long, boring letters and to axe short, boring letters. Why was this policy suspended?

‘Perhaps all this is inevitable in this pseudo-scientific age, with apothegms of the past becoming superstitious folk sayings of the present. This new age of illiteracy
has turned us back into yelping savages when we can no longer disregard the phrase “Speak No Ill of the Dead”.

‘I myself am a Public Speaker (why did Berry Tonge drop this age-honourable title for the fashionable, silly title Free Teacher?). As a Public Speaker I do not feel Berry Tonge was above criticism, in enunciation especially. Whether he was a good speaker is a matter for discussion at any time. The Great Leveller is not also the Great Censor. As a rationalist also I will not be intimidated by death.'

 

Peter Smith

 

‘Sirs, I think the obituary for Berry Tonge was most beautiful. But maybe there is something the matter with me? Surely those who complain could feel the pain. Facetious – no! Read again the last line … it said it all.'

 

R. Harley

Letters, March 27

‘Sirs, Now we've had it all. Sentimental signatories, the slightly acid obituary – readers for and against.

‘I knew Berry Tonge rather better in a way than others. Recognising what the poor bugger was up against, I did my best to flog his last book,
Some Words for the Young.
It must have sold in all about 50 copies. It was not a good book and I told him (the reviewer for
your newspaper was the only one who praised it).

‘Berry Terminated because like so many of us who do the same, he could not use his failure in one direction as an experience to build success in another sphere. That was it. It amazes me that the others who knew Berry don't see this.

‘There are still 230 copies of his book in my shop. Should any of those who wrote to say how much they cared for Berry like to buy them I'll give the money towards a scholarship in his name (less the cost of the books to me initially).'

 

Signed, Wholemeal Books Ltd

April 4
From the vineyard

It seems many of my readers and colleagues have been deeply offended by my ‘passing' remarks on the death of Berry Tonge. I am not sure whether it was because I spoke the truth or because I tried to be humorous about death. Why not?

To those who say I was facetious I can then but plead guilty … but only in order not to weep. And as for speaking the truth – guilty, friends, guilty. But I was not writing your customary accolade or epitaph for Berry Tonge. That is not our way here.

I do not know if any of you have read your own writings in the still of the night, as I have, and had that cold feeling that you were really never going to make it. I have. All I suggested is that is what Berry Tonge did.

Young Morris has a nice story about Tonge's ‘Flexible Love', which Berry suggests they both experience in the lavatory here at the office. Young Morris says he wasn't feeling that flexible.

And I will say they can write whatever obituaries they like, but they know bugger all about the proper way to say goodbye to a fellow toiler in the vineyard writing week in week out about life's rich pageant, weaving threads in the tapestry of life, a tapestry one is never destined to see.

What a heartbreak old vineyard, pageant, and tapestry you are.

 

Blase

Letters, April 11

‘Sir, Thank you Francois Blase for replying to those who whinge about your Berry Tonge obit. Better the truth than the bullshit. Especially at death.

‘Many hours of pleasure your writings have given me too. I'll never forget the insect dropping his bright green turd down the stem of your pipe. The book reviews terribly good also.