With an imaginary spoon
One thing at least was clear, with Derek’s departure. I wouldn’t be getting that mescaline any time soon.
I adored The Count of Monte Cristo. A long rehabilitation demands a long book. First hip Pamela, second hip Monte Cristo. Richardson and Dumas both knew how to play the long game. I wasn’t in a hurry. The Count of Monte Cristo wasn’t prescribed by any reading list but it was still irresistible. I identified pretty strongly with Edmond Dantès. He was gloriously cold and nasty, and we were both stuck — if he had the Château d’If, then I had CRX. Perhaps it’s perverse to find your release in an account of someone else’s confinement, but that was how it was with me. Dantès was accused of treason and imprisoned — it was almost a disappointment when he got free. And what is juvenile rheumatoid arthritis if not a treason of the body, physical mutiny? My most trusted generals turned against me, leaving me to tunnel my way out with an imaginary spoon.
The only thing against such a big book was its physical awkwardness (or mine). If my human-lectern idea lacked practicality, then I didn’t see why the National Health Service, if it could run to linen sheets and bottles of stout, couldn’t afford to pay for a reader. Bernard Miles, perhaps, why not? Since he was philanthropically minded (a benefactor of Vulcan) and had a juicy voice, though CRX wouldn’t be able to match the fees he got from Mackeson. There would be a certain amount of grumbling from the ward codgers at first, but I was confident that in time they would surrender as wholly as I had. I wouldn’t have minded starting again from the beginning. The nurses might not be so happy, since they’d have to pull themselves away from the story to wipe bottoms and save lives.
I wish I’d known then that being read to as they worked was one of the perks traditionally enjoyed by the cigar-rollers of Havana. The lector was paid out of the workers’ wages. He would start with the daily papers and move on to essays or novels, according to the votes of the workers. Supposedly the workers named a new brand of cigar after the book they enjoyed most of all as they rolled the carcinogenic leaves of their livelihood … hence the Montecristo. I might have put in a plea for the Pamela, but their choice has a lot to be said for it.
The book itself was as close as I have ever come to a big fat cigar, rolled by an expert, delivering the slow-burning pleasure of narrative intoxication. I inhaled it page after page. I blew smoke-rings of pleasure up at the ceiling.
I had an invisible cigar, and since the collapse of the Guardian Bank my money likewise was invisible. Still, I had my evening Mackeson and my copy of Satipatthana Sutta and Its Application to Modern Life — so much better as a guide to life than the Daily Telegraph. I could even look forward to legal sexual expression only a few years down the road, as long as I could keep my desire for uniforms under control. For now, only the songs on the radio gave a feeling of what I was missing by spending most of the Summer of Love in the Château d’If.
I was relatively indifferent to my surroundings during this period, not entirely thanks to my absorption in The Count of Monte Cristo. This was something that made an impression in its own right. I wasn’t my usual chatty and forthcoming self. My fellow patients hardly seemed worth the trouble of cultivating, since they were mainly in-patients for a few days only. Why waste precious charm on transients?
My appetite for books had slackened off, and this too was interpreted as a sign of low mood. Of course I finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo, but that was different. I was on the last 400 pages by then, so I was really only coasting home. A certain amount of chivvying was set in motion on an administrative level, which took the final form of Ansell sitting on the bed one more time and urging me to cheer up — I was on the last lap, after all, and mustn’t lose heart. The second operation hadn’t been a roaring success, but I was still much better fitted for life than I had been before the whole cycle of surgery and rehabilitation began.
I’m not sure my mood was really so low — Western culture, uncomfortable with inwardness, tends to interpret it negatively — but I went along with the fiction of depression, smiling wanly and promising to buck myself up.
Of course it’s natural, as Dad was always pointing out, for baby birds to be pushed out of the nest by their parents, to fend for themselves. But it’s also natural, when it’s time to leave any place of safety, for even a senior chick to go back to bed and pull the bedclothes over his head.
Chronic female veto
There was a surprise waiting for me when I came out of CRX the second time, as rehabilitated as I ever would be: Mum and Dad had put up a greenhouse! I was delighted. I showed every shade of appreciation and wonder that the human face can manage. Possibly I overdid it. I didn’t know when to stop. I couldn’t recognise the point where plausible extremes of joy had been acted out to everyone’s satisfaction.
It was an act because I knew quite well what had been going on. My plan all along. I’d been using Peter as my cat’s-paw in a campaign of action-at-a-distance, briefing him when he visited me and sending him letters with additional instructions when necessary.
First he had suggested the whole scheme to Dad. The experiment was designed to exploit Peter’s standing in the family — I had the idea that Dad was less fully armoured against his second-born than his first-. Dad didn’t dismiss the scheme, but he wasn’t exactly encouraging, pointing out that Mum would exercise her chronic female veto.
After a suitably calculated interval, Peter was primed to remark that Mum would dearly love somewhere to sunbathe out of the wind. What a shame there was nowhere suitable in the garden … particularly as you could divide off one section of a greenhouse — if you had one — and call it a sun-lounge. Was there a nicer word than ‘greenhouse’, do you think, Dad? Didn’t some people say ‘conservatory’ instead? Perhaps Mum would like the idea better if we used the word ‘conservatory’…
The vocabulary was a critical element. I thought of using the word ‘solarium’ instead of sun-lounge, but it was a matter of knowing your market. Dad might enjoy the word, but he wasn’t the one with a passion for burning his skin, and Mum would find it intimidating.
Dad said he’d think about it. Maybe it wasn’t out of the question. Then the final touch was for Peter to say that Mum would have to be careful not to get sunburn even if there was glass between her and the sun, wouldn’t she? I relied on this very oblique hint tipping the scales with Dad.
This was string-pulling in the grand tradition of Granny, although on a humble scale and without real ruthlessness. Everyone was happy, weren’t they? I had somewhere to grow Drosophyllum lusitanicum, Dad had an indispensable aid to his own more ambitious gardening projects, and Mum had somewhere to bask like a lizard in sunny weather, even on windy days.
That greenhouse was as much my work as if I had slipped out of the body every night, using the handy exit of a dream of knowledge, and dug the foundations with my own astral hands.
I wondered how Granny found the strength to conduct such campaigns on a number of fronts at a time. Yes, I had got my way, and it was fascinating to see that under certain circumstances people could be flicked against each other in predictable pathways like so many marbles, but still I felt depleted and even a little sick.