The preliminaries to dying, to what in the end is the simplest act of all, were so endlessly complicated.
“Mrs Allwright used to say,” said Arthur, “when she did her block at me, when she couldn’t find the things she’d put away, or had given somebody the wrong change, she used to say: ‘I sometimes wish you’d die, Arthur Brown. Then Mr Allwright would come to his senses and realize how we’ve been wasting our time.’”
Arthur would assume the voices of those who were addressing him. So that now on the unmade pavement on the Barranugli Road the mother with kiddy in stroller turned round to wonder whatever the old nut could be going on about. One old nut, or two? It was a shame to allow them their freedom. Somebody else always payed the price.
“But it was Mr Allwright who died,” Arthur continued. “Lacing up his boots. Mrs Allwright took up Christian Science. She’d do anything not to wake up and find she was dead.”
“You don’t wake up,” Waldo reminded.
He wouldn’t listen. Only it was not possible not to listen.
“Eh? “asked Arthur.
Though of course he had heard. Arthur always did hear, even with traffic whizzing or lurching along the Barranugli Road.
“Wonder if Mrs Allwright died. That’s the worst of it when people leave the district. Sometimes their relatives forget, or don’t know how to put the notice in the column. Or perhaps Mrs Allwright didn’t die. By rights, by logic — wouldn’t you say? — Christian Scientists don’t.”
“Death, thank God” — Waldo caught himself, “comes to everyone.”
Or almost everyone.
He wouldn’t listen. He began to count, to name the passing cars: the Chev the Renault the Holden two more three Holdens the Morris Minor the Bentley — that was Mr Hardwick who’d done a deal with the Council over Anglesey Estate only it couldn’t be proved. Nobody would have known that Waldo Brown, so unmechanical, could name the cars. Perhaps even Arthur hadn’t found out. It was Waldo’s secret vice.
Arthur who found out everything caused his brother to turn round, to test his face. Arthur, as Waldo dreaded, knew, and was smiling.
“What is it?”
“I waved at the Holden,” Arthur smiled, “and the lady waved back.”
Oh well. Arthur was not infallible. So Waldo Brown decided to indulge his other secret vice. If Arthur died. It was not impossible — that dead weight on the left hand. Waldo Brown dragged quicker, if not to effect, to think. He would do how was it he would blow everything the first editions of Thomas Hardy the whole Everyman Library quite a curiosity nowadays Mother’s spoons with crests on them the emerald ring the Hon Cousin Molly Thourault left in fact one big bonfire the land the developers were after if Anglesey Estate then why not Browns’ place Terminus Road see an alderman no alderman was so dishonest you couldn’t teach him a point or two approach a minister if necessary the Minister for Local Govt if only Mrs Musto were alive and say it is imperative imperative was the word that W. Brown of honourable service should end in a blaze of last years.
They were so dry Waldo had to lick his lips. He hoped he wouldn’t give himself a heart. His oilskin sounded slithery with speed.
If it was immoral, then he was immoral. Had been, he supposed, for many years. Perhaps always. The million times he had buried Arthur. But only now, or recently, had he perfected his itinerary of islands. He would visit islands first, because they symbolized, if only symbolized, what he craved. Of course he knew about the other things too, the bars and Americans. He would know how to sit in bars and drink, what was it, Pernod Fils, and stick his hand up under the raffia skirt of some lovely lousy brownskinned poster-girl complete with ukulele. And get the pox, and not do anything about it, what was the point at his age, in spite of all the modern drugs.
The Chev the Holden the Citroen quite neat the Holden two six seventeen Holdens one Fiat-2500 flash tripe-hounds. The traffic he was certain was sending his temperature up.
Of course, in spite of his intellectual tastes and creative gift, it was the hotels he was craving for. Always had been. He had started long ago writing for the brochures to have them waiting Poste Restante G.P.O. Tore them up after reading and threw them out of the train window before reaching Barranugli. The women would be waiting in the foyers of the posh luxury hotels held down by plush buttons but waiting in their shingled hair their long cigarette-holders gently balanced. Clara Bow — or was it Marilyn Monroe? And Mrs Clare Booth Luce and Mary Macarthy, he wouldn’t overlook the intellectuals. To make conversation with the more established intellectual women. Though women, even Dulcie would suddenly tire him, not so much Mary Macarthy, who was more what you would call a Force. Of course though it was the beds he was really looking forward to, the fine linen, or perhaps sometimes silk with monograms, to feel his long limbs had never aged, and now at last, without Arthur, able to lead a celibate life. Spiritually celibate.
Waldo blushed, and worked his adam’s apple. Down. Over. Something.
One thing, he decided, he would never do. He wouldn’t touch a penny of Arthur’s savings, out of delicacy, because he had willed Arthur dead.
“There,” he said, looking round.
“What?”
“That’s the worst hill done with. So you can stop moaning now.”
“I’m not moaning. I’ve settled down to enjoy a healthful walk.”
So faint normally it could have been a refraction from the memory of Arthur’s carrot hair, the bluish tinge in Arthur’s skin appeared just that much deeper than when they started out, that morning, on a purpose. Abnormally blue.
No, he would not touch a penny of Arthur’s wretched account. He would make it over to that skinny Jew boy Arthur Saporta, with brown flannel patches round his eyes. Whatever Arthur Saporta meant. Beyond the fact that he had his mother Dulcie Feinstein’s eyes.
If Arthur Brown died.
But it finally seemed improbable, on that morning or ever, which meant the alternative. Waldo scuttled at the thought. He was still young enough not to believe in his own death. He kicked the nearest of the blue dogs — Scruffy it was — on deliberate purpose.
“You always hated Scruffy!” Arthur moaned. “Because he was mine.”
Waldo could not feel he owned anything — certainly not Runt his dog — perhaps still his box of manuscripts clippings letters of appreciation — perhaps still Arthur also — if Waldo Brown Terminus Road Sarsaparilla no flowers please ever since the accident he had kept it legibly written out and easy to find if he were inadvertently inadvertently was the word to die.
Paper flowers on the other hand didn’t. So he must make sure of his boxful of papers. Sometimes going through the manuscripts the clippings the letters of appreciation he would feel them still warm with the reason which had brought them into existence. The thoughts. Even if he had not produced what you might call a substantial body of work the fragments and notebooks were still alive with private thought. The minds of others appropriating paring hacking rubbing with a sandpaper of lies impairing invariably ossified what had been tenuously personal. Was he vain to have lost faith in public sculpture? Unlike some. Take Goethe, Goethe must have worn a track through the carpet leaping at his notebooks to perpetuate he thought a Great Thought. The vanity was that men believed their thought remained theirs once turned over to the public. All those goggle-eyed women reverent for their own reverence trailing past a sculpture of poetry and epigrams, and earnest young people fingering IMPROVING ON because it is ordained that great works of art should be exposed, becoming what they were never intended for: done-by-the-public sculpture.