Turtle Diary (13 page)

Harry Rush’s letter still lay on my desk unanswered, heavy with the burden that would be on me if I accepted. Of course I needed the £1,000, when would there ever be a time when I shouldn’t? The letter nagged at me like a paper devil, I knew I’d never finish such a book if I were fool enough to start it, I’d sicken at the very first page. I had feelings of doom and damnation, utter lostness, and now the dead and dying oyster-catchers seemed to put the seal on it. Everything seemed too much for me, I was overwhelmed.

I was getting hot flashes of desperation and running about the flat picking things up and putting them down aimlessly. I wanted a rest, wanted peace, wanted the world to let me alone for a bit.
King Kong
was playing at the Chelsea Odeon, so I went.

Wonderful inside the Odeon, cool and quiet and sheltered from the world. The place had been redone, the seating was spacious and comfortable. The lights had not yet dimmed, the screen was still playing music to itself the way they always do before a film starts. I like that music whatever it is, it sounds the same in all cinemas, light and gay and full of safe expectation.

The film was first released in the United States in 1933 during the Great Depression. That sounds strange: the Great Depression. One thinks of millions of people sitting with their heads in their hands and groaning all at the same time. Many did of course but there was no atom bomb then, the world was still like a child too little to know about death. Whatever was happening beyond the camera’s field of vision, innocence was still possible and one felt it in the opening of the picture: the dark and foggy harbour, the film entrepreneur with his ship bound for a secret destination, the beautiful hungry girl he recruits when he finds her stealing apples. He holds her at arm’s length looking intently at her face, she returns the look almost fainting, full of surrender that is transcendentally sexual and innocent. She knows she is beautiful, knows that her beauty has been recognized, that good things will happen if she surrenders.

On the ship he rehearses her in front of the camera, has her look up (‘Higher, higher!’) and scream. He doesn’t tell her what she’ll be screaming at later but he knows he’s going to bring her to some giant terror. It’s a reversal of the
Schöne Müllerin
theme of the unattainable beauty: the voyeur, the picture-maker, must put his attainable beauty within easy reach of the colossal beast. I watched her scream at the unknown horror she was heading for. That was a good touch, it was absolutely right. She screamed with complete acceptance of her place in life.

When Skull Island appeared it was mostly a painted backdrop but that didn’t matter; even if the studios and camera crew and all the behind-the-scenes equipment had been visible in the film it wouldn’t have mattered. Even showing the animator moving his little articulated models and photographing them frame by frame wouldn’t have made any difference in the effect: Kong with his teddy-bear fur is a fifty-foot tall idea even if the reality was only eighteen inches high. Kong lives. There
was
a giant arm for close-ups of Fay Wray screaming in Kong’s grasp and that seems right too. Possibly somewhere in Hollywood that giant arm lies in a warehouse, empty-handed now. Kong had no visible male member even when presumably excited but then he was
all
male member in a manner of speaking so that doesn’t matter either. On the other hand maybe that’s why he only wanted tiny women to play with instead of looking for a fifty-foot-tall she-ape with whom to have sexual kongress. The psychological ripples are ever-widening. Now that I think of it why
weren’t
there any other fifty-foot-high gorillas about? What had happened to Kong’s mother and father? That too must be part of the pathos of the thing: Kong is an orphan and alone of his kind. Not just an orphan but a giant orphan, a monstrous Tom o’Bedlam.

Carl Denham, the film man, comes ashore with Anne Darrow (Fay Wray) and his crew to look for the legendary beast-god of Skull Island. They see the natives making ready to offer a bride to Kong. The massive wooden gates at the edge of the village suggested the size of the beast they were meant to keep out, his colossalness preceded him. There were the black men
dancing in gorilla skins and chanting for Kong to come and claim his bride: ‘Something something KONG! KONG! Something something KONG! KONG!’ flinging up their furry arms at each KONG. The music by Max Steiner was just right. Then they saw Fay Wray and that night they went out to the ship in their boats and captured her and offered her instead of the local girl.

There she was in the light of the torches, wearing a white silk frock I think, all blonde and helpless with her head drooping and her arms outstretched, hands tied to two posts. Then she looked up, higher, higher, and screamed and screamed when Kong’s luminous face rose above the trees like a giant ape-moon. It was at the same time laughable and ineffably real. Yes that’s a big fake ape, ha ha. But the fake ape is only the cipher for the real thing before which we stand with outstretched arms, hands tied, head drooping, and we scream or are silent.

By the end of the film Kong too is a victim, tragic in his greatness and the height (the Empire State Building) from which he falls. When he’s brought a captive to New York to be exhibited on the stage it is he who stands with arms outstretched, crucified by midgets and manacles with great thick chains.

‘He was a king and a god in the world he knew,’ says Denham, ‘but now he comes to civilization merely a captive, a show to gratify your curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!’

Fay Wray is on the stage as well. When the photographers’ flashbulbs go off near her Kong thinks she’s in danger, he growls and strains at his chains. Then comes one of the very best lines in the film or indeed anywhere: ‘Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen, those chains are made of chrome steel,’ says Denham. Then of course Kong breaks loose, kills some people, derails and smashes an overhead train and climbs up the Empire State Building with Fay Wray, there to be shot down by aeroplanes.

‘Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen, those chains are made of chrome steel.’ Wonderful line. Marvellous how one’s afraid of the thing that’s going to break its chains and then so quickly one
is
the thing that’s broken its chains and climbed the heavenward spire to be shot down.

‘Oh no, it wasn’t the aeroplanes,’ says Denham standing by the fallen Kong (there must be a giant head in the warehouse too), ‘it was Beauty killed the Beast.’

What a sad life. On his island Kong had plenty of other monsters to fight with, he was very good against the tyrannosaurus I thought. But he had no one to be friends with. Poor thing. At the end when he’s dying from the aeroplanes’ machine-gun bullets he reaches towards Fay Wray who’s lying on a ledge where he’d put her. Weak and swaying, his grip on the spire loosening, he touches her gently, then lets go and falls. The year 1933 was full of many things. Showing with
King Kong
was a documentary film on Hitler’s rise to power. In 1933 there was Goebbels officiating at a book burning. ‘You do well at this midnight hour,’ he said, ‘to exorcise the past in these flames.’ Exorcise the past. Surely that thought alone was sufficient evidence of madness. But more and more I think that madness is the world’s natural condition and to expect anything else is madness compounded. In the train derailment scene in
King Kong
the engine-driver could not believe his eyes when he saw Kong’s face rising through the gap where he’d torn away the tracks but that was just another day in 1933. That trains mostly stay on rails, that the streets are mostly peaceful, that the square continues green and quiet below my window is more than I have any right to expect, and it happens every day.

Madame Beetle swims in her green world expecting neither continuation nor sanity, I don’t think expectation is a part of her. While there is water she will swim. Arabella spins her weightless web on
Skylab-2
and the white shark goes its way without rest. There is no buoyancy in sharks, they cannot rest, they must keep swimming till they die.

Sermons in stones. The other day coming home from work I noticed for the first time a manhole cover near my corner. Square plate in the pavement, K257 on it. All right, I thought as I stepped on it, go ahead, play Mozart. It didn’t. When I got home I looked up K257 in the Köchel listing in my
Mozart Companion.
It was the Credo Mass in C.
Credo.
I believe. What does the manhole cover believe, or what’s being believed down in the hole? I don’t like getting too many messages from the things around me, it confuses me. Now whenever I walk on that manhole cover it’ll say ‘I believe’. When Mozart was my age he’d already been dead for eight years. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the music.

Having slept together Harriet and I woke up together. I woke up first actually. Dora had always looked angry in her sleep. Harriet was calm and beautiful, better-looking than when awake. Lineaments of satisfied desire. I was impressed, pleased with myself as well. Maybe not a bad chap after all. Harriet kept looking beautiful when she woke up. She has quite an elegant figure too, long and graceful. Breakfast was cosy, we didn’t talk much, mostly looked at each other.

That evening we had dinner together, went to my place and Harriet spent the night there. Sandor stuck his head out of his door and opened his eyes wide as she passed on her way to the bathroom. ‘I believe,’ said K257 as we walked over it together the next morning.

All right, I thought, I’ll get through this turtle business and
that’ll be out of the way. I’d been giving some thought to turtle-shifting and I’d decided they could best be handled in crates. I rang up George Fairbairn and he gave me the measurements I needed. The big day would probably be in a fortnight or so, he thought. A fortnight. Right. If I’d drop off the crates first he’d have the turtles boxed and ready for pick-up. Wonderful.

Harriet was emanating weekend availability and I was more than willing but I wanted to make the turtle crates on Saturday and I wanted to keep her and the turtles separate. I told her I had things to do at home all day and evening and couldn’t get over to her place until late Saturday night.

On Saturday afternoon when I finished at the shop I bought the wood for the three crates and I bought six ringbolts and a hundred feet of half-inch rope. The ringbolts and the rope are for lowering the crates or dragging them up steps or whatever. Should I have got one-inch rope I wondered. I also bought a five-gallon container for extra petrol.

Mrs Inchcliff was very pleased to see me active in the lumber-room. As soon as she heard me sawing she brought me a cup of tea. ‘What’re you making?’ she said.

‘Turtle crates,’ I said. ‘I’m going to steal three sea turtles from the London Zoo and put them into the sea.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s a good thing to do.’

I’d started with a hand-saw but she went to the cupboard and got out Charlie’s Black & Decker power drill with a circular-saw attachment. Marvellous, the things men leave behind. Of course she’d paid for it.

‘I don’t know why he didn’t take it with him,’ she said.

‘Yes you do,’ I said.

‘I expect I do at that,’ she said. ‘But he’d have been welcome to it.’

I’ve always been afraid of power tools. Castration complex. Castration complexes are reasonable though. More and more chances these days to have one’s members lopped off by labour-saving devices as civilization progresses. All right, I thought, be a man, be powerful with a saw. So I used Charlie’s Black &
Decker and I didn’t cut anything off after all. I was quite proud of myself. An afternoon and evening’s work and there they were, three turtle crates with two ringbolts each. They were just plain open boxes, no lids, four feet long, twenty-eight inches wide, one foot deep. The turtles would lie on their backs with their flippers pressed to their sides.

‘Tools,’ I said. ‘With tools you can do anything.’

‘With tools and a man,’ said Mrs Inchcliff. ‘It takes both.’ She’d kept me company the whole time I was working, couldn’t stay away. Gave me supper too. Odd how young she looks. As far as I know she’s never done anything special to keep herself young except not smoke. Maybe it’s because she’s never been able to get through all the stages of her life. Her youth is still in her, not lived out.

Miss Neap, back from an evening out, came down to look in on us. ‘What goes in those?’ she said when she saw the crates.

‘Turtles,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put some sea turtles into the sea.’

She was standing outside the circle of the green-shaded light, her pince-nez glittered in the shadows. She had a theatre programme in her hand, fresh air and perfume had come in with her. Her blonde hair and leopardskin coat looked as if they’d go out even if she stayed at home. ‘The sea,’ she said. ‘It always seems so far away even though the Thames goes to it.’ She smiled and went upstairs.

I hadn’t expected to create a sensation but I was a little surprised that Mrs Inchcliff and Miss Neap were so incurious about the turtle project. Speaking of turtles and the sea seemed to make their thoughts turn inwards.

Mr Sandor came home while Mrs Inchcliff and I were still sitting in the lumber-room admiring the crates and drinking tea. He had several foreign newspapers under his arm, was carrying his briefcase as always and smelt of his regular restaurant. ‘Not strong joints,’ he said looking at the corners of the crates. ‘Dovetail joints better.’

‘They’re as strong as they need to be,’ I said. I didn’t say anything about turtles.

I must try to remember my first impression of Harriet, how she looked to me when I first started at the shop. Reproachful, that’s what I thought. I’d said to myself quite recently that her face was a constant reproach. I mustn’t forget that, however cuddly she seems now. The reproach is waiting to appear again I’m sure. I think it’s always like that. Dora looked angry when I first met her and the angry look was what her face came back to in the end. And I’m sure whatever look gave Harriet her first impression of me is waiting to return to my face.