I think about Roswell Clark and wonder what I expect from him. In the beginning it was clear enough: I was the patron; he was the artist whom I commissioned to make little sexually active crash-dummies: man; woman; mastiff; and gorilla. What is in my mind when I watch these various wooden couplings? What do I think of while Victoria does her best to anticipate my every desire? Sometimes I see mass graves.
Crash Test was a metaphor absurd and profound; I recognised in Clark a talent capable of surprises, possibly of development. Because of the manner in which Crash Test had drawn me to itself it seemed to me that there might be a significance, as yet unknown, in our transactions. I tend to see omens and portents in all kinds of things: if the yolk of my soft-boiled egg is at the top I expect the day to go well.
What does crashing into a wall and flying into pieces signify for me? Mortality, yes — life crashing into death; I have already spoken of that in these pages. Is there more? Is there in me a desire to crash, to go Peng! and fly into pieces? Have I already flown into pieces without the Peng? What did I think my toys would do for me? From depravity does one move on to something higher? Depravity, I think, comes naturally to the human animal. And it is of course more fun than higher things.
As I was saying, in the beginning I was the patron. As I commissioned the man and woman, the mastiff, and the gorilla, I felt each time that Clark and I were moving closer to something of importance, something that would come from him as his talent demanded more of him. What will it be? The large and the small of it is that I am depending on Roswell Clark for something, I know not what, that will make me feel better than I do now. Money can buy many things, and uncertainty is one of them.
18 Roswell Clark
I had another Jennifer dream. We were on a train, just the two of us. It was the 13.24 to I don’t know where. I tried to read our destination on my ticket but the letters wouldn’t form a name. I couldn’t read the names of the stations we passed through either. There was no one else in our carriage; the lighting was dim and kept flickering; there was rubbish on the tables and all over the floor, empty beer and soft-drink cans rolling about. We were both hungry and we’d expected to get something on the train but there was no announcement about a buffet car. When the conductor came through to punch our tickets I asked him, ‘Where are we going?’
He pointed to my ticket and said, ‘There.’ He looked like the manual-training teacher I’d had in junior high schooclass="underline" large freckled hands with part of his right index finger missing.
‘Where’s the buffet car?’ said Jennifer.
‘This train doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘It’s a dream train so there’s no buffet car on it.’
‘Then how come there’s buffet-car rubbish all over the place?’ said Jennifer. ‘People have been eating and drinking buffet-car food and drink here.’
‘Not my problem,’ said the conductor. ‘Talk to the Transport Minister.’
‘If at least there were bar service!’ said Jennifer as I woke up. I was hungry and I felt sad because Jennifer had been hungry too and wanted a drink but there was nothing she could do about it because there wasn’t a Jennifer any more. Her hunger and her thirst, all of her wants are gone and the world goes on without her except when in the loneliness of death she visits me in a dream.
I had two fried eggs and bacon and toast and jam for breakfast. After my coffee I had a Glenfiddich for Jennifer. Then I had one for me because I was alive and could do that. ‘Here’s looking at you,’ I said to both of us. ‘I know I haven’t been doing much lately but I’m not idle; I’ve been making sketches.’ Which was true. I didn’t want to say anything more about it, even to myself. If there was really anything happening, I’d be the first to know.
My chisels and gouges hung in their pockets, sharp and ready to bite into wood or turn in my hand and plunge into my flesh. ‘I know it’s hard for you to hang about like this,’ I told them, ‘but maybe there’ll be work for you soon.’ I looked around at the workbench, the drawing table, the easel. I didn’t want to stay in the house; it was raining and I felt like walking in it.
I put on an anorak and my rain hat, then went to the jacket I’d last worn and got my house keys out of the right-hand pocket. I checked the left-hand pocket without remembering what was in it, then drew back suddenly as my fingers touched the crucified wooden hand Sarah Varley had given me. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much — it’s just what I’ve always wanted.’ I put it on the drawing table, then picked it up again and put it in my anorak pocket.
Then it was like a cut from one scene to another in a film: I was in the North End Road standing by the railings of St John’s. It was a real November rain by now, wind spattering the yellow leaves that lay everywhere like fallen hours, days, years. Jesus on his cross was wet and gleaming. Suddenly I felt sorry for my smartass remarks about his fibreglass slickness; he was only a humble artefact, one of millions of images, some of them great and some of them not, reiterating the idea of this one who was called the son of God, crucified large and small, indoors and out, in marble, bronze, wood, and plastic, in wayside shrines and echoing cathedrals and little hand-held crosses, dying twenty-four hours a day for our sins.
The low-budget drinking community was not in its usual place but I had the feeling that Abraham Selby was going to turn up and after a while he did. This time he had an umbrella instead of a can of John Smith.
‘Dry day?’ I said.
‘Every day is not the same,’ he replied in such a preacherly way that I almost said Hallelujah.
‘A lot of them are, though,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Anything today?’
‘Messages, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you expecting any?’ I asked him.
‘Not for me — for you.’
‘I wasn’t expecting any either.’
‘Sure you were.’
‘How can you tell?’ Under the umbrella and without the John Smith he seemed different from his previous self.
‘Takes one to know one.’
‘You just said you weren’t expecting any messages.’
‘Not any more; I’ve passed my Selby date.’
‘But there was a time when you were expecting messages.’
‘There was a time when I was expecting a lot of things.’
‘Did you get any of them?’
‘Some that I wanted and some that I didn’t.’
The rain was sometimes drumming on my hat, sometimes slanting across my face; Jesus was on his cross doing his job regardless of the weather and the fingers of the crucified right hand were touching the fingers of my left hand in my pocket; the traffic behind us was hissing and revving and changing gears; the trees were swaying and losing more leaves; Selby was standing there nodding his head as if agreeing emphatically with what he’d just said and I was waiting for him to continue.
‘The other day in The Times,’ he said at length, ‘in my local dustbin, I saw that Maria Callas’s underwear was being sold at auction. I used to have a lot of her records. You look surprised.’
‘I thought you were going to say more about what you expected and what you got.’
‘Not today. Right now I’m thinking of God sitting up there in his office.’ He tilted his umbrella back to look up at where the rain was coming from; he was in preacher mode now. ‘Yes, brother, he’s sitting up there in his office …’
‘Hallelujah,’ I couldn’t help responding quietly.
Selby nodded several times. ‘Maybe he’s watching the world on closed-circuit TV. He’s looking at war and famine, fire and flood; he’s looking at rape and murder and unemployment and people sleeping rough …’