THE DIARY I DIDN'T KEEP 8

Good morning, Everyone!

Today's instalment has been a close thing. It nearly didn't happen. Only Tommy's persistent nagging has kept me from falling behind in my duties as his official recorder. First came the flu, then RSV. The latter still has me in its clutches, but with an ever-weakening grip. Here's hoping.

These days, oligarchs, billionaires, bureaucracies and ideologies are spread so thickly on the ground that all too many of us clamour to serve them as a way to get rich or get ahead. This is a trigger warning: our fearless adventurer is about to reveal the harsh realities that can lie behind the seeming glitz and glamour of entering service. Now please read on...

Cheers and stay well,

Ron

THE DIARY I DIDN'T KEEP 8

Like I’m trying to remember a tune no one’s ever heard before – a few sounds somewhere inside me. The start of a new poem. Three gulls… three gulls…

Andy and me are standing side by side at the kitchen worktop. He’s cooking dinner (fried chicken, mashed potatoes and peas) and I’m helping. My hands picking up potatoes I’ve already scrubbed clean; now peeling them, now dropping them one by one into the pot.

Three gulls move… Three gulls…

Potatoes set to boil, I reach for the can of peas. …Three gulls move circle… circle…

Tin opener.

Turns out to be the tin opener from hell. Punctures and jams, punctures and jams. Jams, jams. Prising apart its stainless steel jaws.

Move circle…circle… Clamp it on again. Puncture-jam, puncture-jam another few inches.

Move circlewise… circlewise… circlewise…

Another inch. Jams solid this time. Gap enough to slide in a fork. Force the jaggedness open, minding fingers.

Three gulls move circlewise…one…

Emptying the family-sized slither of peas into a pot.

Move circlewise…move circlewise…one…

‘Put in a knob of butter.’

‘Big? Small?’

One… one… one…Listening hard for what’s coming after. So as not to lose it.

‘Medium to large. Don’t stint.’

I don’t. In goes a pretty solid slab, a double one. It was a big tin.

Three gulls move circlewise, one between ... Stir the softening yellow butter to spread, soak and saturate every pea in the pot. Then all at once: Circlewise one between the other two…

Desperate to write it down or what’s lost now will be lost forever. All the energy, mystery and magic – all the poetry gone. Like my dreams, my poems know so much more than me.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Mashing the potatoes.

‘Can you set the table?'

Plates, forks, knives laid out in seconds. We sit down. Andy serves. Brown and crispy chicken. Glistening-green peas. Mash that looks so –

'Wow! This is great, man. Right on!' First forkful's making me a better person already. I can feel it. ‘No idea you were such a far-out cook.’

‘Thanks. Glad you like it,’ says Mr. Modesty. Hint of a blush nearly!

Then he floors me.

‘But I wish I wasn’t. Me or my Dad, one of us had to learn to cook. Which meant me. Dad was… nowhere. Totally out of it, and out of everything. Hardly noticed what I put on the table.’ He shrugs. ‘I could make mistakes, and learn.’

‘What’ll he do now?’

‘Make mistakes and learn, too, I suppose.’

‘How long ago did…?’ I want to say something about his mum but don’t know the words.

‘Been three years now. With me away, Dad can learn hoovering. And laundry.’ He pauses. ‘I wanted away, anyway. School’s not for me. I like working with my hands. Fixing things.’

‘Like with the bikes?’

‘Yeah! Fixing anything, really. Seeing how it works and getting it to work again. Can’t beat it.’

‘A fab meal, man. Excuse me while I…’ I run my finger across the plate and lick it. Several times. ‘Not bad manners, more a compliment to the chef!’

Table wiped, washing-up done, I start up the three flights.

Three gulls move circlewise, one between the other two…and… and… No idea what it’s about or what it means. Never do. The poetry is still to be discovered. It will be. I can feel it.

Then in a sudden rush: ‘…and yet again / One between the other two.’

Yes! Yes!

The top floor and into my room. Write it down. Write it down.

Leaning back against the headboard, saying it under my breath. Listening for more, listening…

That ‘letting go’ sensation. Not me letting go of the poem, but the poem letting go of me. No longer inside the poem, I look at the zigzags of strokings out, the scribbles, arrows and phrases that might belong or might not.

Need to see the poem so far, clearly written out:

Three gulls move circlewise, one between

the other two, and yet again

one between the other two.

And their moving paths create such

surface-tumbling curves, such harmonies

to prove circlewise...

The planets, the gravities... Holding the planets...

Spinning into the distance…

Work on it tomorrow. I write to Mum and Lorna. The new job, new life, the sunny room, full board and no expenses. Leaving out Larry the Lecher, the Toolies, the skinheads. Already ancient history and…

That's Andy leaving the bathroom. I join him for a last chat of the day on the landing. William. Is he for real? Think he’s getting it, tottywise? Agree he’ll say he is. And then ‘Goodnight’.

Me and Dostoevsky get ready for bed.

Life is good.

Friday morning. Up in the cold north they're getting beheaded by Russian dictionaries. Down in my sun-drenched room, I'm about to disappear. Wish me luck. On with the shirt, in with the studs, on with the collar, waistcoat, tie and the rest. Glance in the mirror. Perfect. I am no longer here. No one is.

And so –

No one knocks on Mr. Giles' bedroom door. No one places a cup of tea on his bedside table, wishes him 'Good morning, sir'. No one opens his curtains, goes into his bathroom, runs his bath. No one lays out his morning clothes, turns off the taps. Leaves.

Back down in the kitchen, Lance asks if Mr. Giles said anything?

‘Just “Good morning, Cairns”.’

‘Nothing else? Praise indeed! Give yourself a pat on the back.’

Split-second thought: Did my father ever say that to me, or anything like it? Even once? In sixteen years? Say anything at all in that kindly tone of voice? The split-second’s a void ringing out: Never. Never. Never.

'Sorry for the last-minute notice…’ Lance is still speaking. ‘Can you change into travel clothes, pack for two nights and be at the front door in twenty minutes? It's an emergency.'

‘No problem.’

'This is yours for the weekend.' He hands me a red leather suitcase.

Me and my superior luggage are in position as Lance and his superior luggage come down the stairs. His leather suitcase is dark blue.

‘Very glad you're coming, Tommy. You'll be footman to my butler, as it were.'

'But I've hardly–'

'Don't worry. I'll keep you right. You're a quick learner. We're going to –'

The door knocker’s Thud! Thud! Into a taxi. Onto a train. Non-smoker, and all to ourselves.

'We're going to stay in a castle,' Lance tells me. 'Well, it was once. A real mongrel of a place now. Two turrets at the front and parts of a Hindu temple scattered round the back; tiger skins in every room; polo sticks and weapons on the walls. Lord Woods made his fortune in the East India Company and brought home the spoils. He was Empire, and still is.'

‘Sounds an interesting place.’

‘Hmmm.’ Lance asks me about my family, why I’ve come to London. I keep it short and upbeat. All about wanting to see the world and hoping to meet the Beatles. Which makes him laugh. I tell him about Andy and me and our bikes, but don’t mention writing poems. Not sure why.

As the train slows down for our stop, Lance grins at me: ‘His Lordship was so used to colonial life he keeps the castle at 90 degrees!' Which is a joke, of course.

Only it's not. I'm soon running in sweat as me and my luggage toil up a stone staircase that corkscrews itself up the inside of the left-hand turret. My room's at the very top, my windows are arrow slits.

'Just keep coming down and you won't get lost,' he says. 'If you're standing on carpet, you're in owner-and-guests territory. Keep to the stone floor and the butler's pantry is just beyond the kitchen.'

Nearly midnight. I've crashed out on my bed, half-in, half-out of my collar and tails. Too tired to undress and get between the sheets. So tired from standing and standing and standing. My gentleman is Mr. Dawson. Carrying up his luggage (two leather suitcases, both calfskin). Unpacking his luggage. Running his bath to the right temperature, laying out his evening clothes in the correct manner, listening to him in the correct manner, answering him in the correct manner. ‘Don’t let him get to you,’ says Lance. ‘Don’t speak beyond “sir”. Mr. D. is new money, and they’re the worst.’

Too tired to keep from drifting back downstairs where I'm giving a top-heavy elephant god a quick wipe and dust-down before returning him to preside over the evening’s feast as the table’s centrepiece. ‘Ganesha is the god of wisdom,’ Lance tells me. Glorious in his mantle of precious stones, Lord Ganesha has a ruby set in his forehead like a third eye. He looks on as I arrange the cutlery (gold) and position the candlesticks (silver). The dining room is our Dumfries sitting room times ten; the dining table the length of a cricket pitch. All that, and only four for dinner.

Like a snooker player crouched at eye-level to the table, Lance calls out directions. Three wineglasses at each setting. ‘Quicker to put out three bottles,’ he mutters.

I struggle free of the wing collar and bow tie. Drop them over the edge of the bed onto the floor. Plenty spares in my suitcase. Need to unstud the shirt next. Need to open my eyes first. But opening my eyes is taking...

Still wrestling with the studs when I again hear that roar outside the dining room window. Lance stands up to watch the helicopter descend. Rotors too loud for conversation, he bellows in my ear, 'The guests!'

Which startles me back awake, still in my shirt and studs.

Everything wrenched off at last, I'm fully in bed and so very ready to fall deeply... when I'm entering the dining room all over again, in time to see the blonde catching the first-course prawns being tossed across the table at her – catching them in her cleavage, to great applause.

Fuck. Fuck. What chance for sleep now?

But I do, and within moments.