Chapman's Odyssey (24 page)
—
Oui
.
— I don’t. I never did. And would you believe it – I’ve made two friends, two very distinguished friends, who hate his music, too.
— I think I know who they are. Hugo Wolf, perhaps? And Benjamin Britten? Yes, Christopher?
— Yes, yes, you shit.
Harry Chapman, picturing Christopher with his chums Hugo and Ben, hummed the opening bars of the Second Piano Concerto just to annoy the three of them.
— Is it Thursday yet?
— Yes, Mr Chapman, it is, replied Veronica.
— Veronica?
— That’s me.
— Where am I?
— You’re back in Zoffany. You were moved overnight.
— Where’s Graham?
— He’s gone home to grab some sleep. Sister Driver and Marybeth and Philip will be on duty soon.
— That’s good, he said. — That
is
good news.
— Be careful, Master Harry, warned Jack the ship-boy as Mr Chapman entered the lecture room in whichever university he was visiting. He had been invited to address the Creative Writing students, and was distressed to see that there were at least a hundred of them. How could a hundred seemingly sane men and women be so naive, so foolish? Why weren’t they studying biology, chemistry, history, foreign languages? Why weren’t they living their lives to the full? Why the hell were they here?
He began by saying that he wasn’t a writer by choice but by vocation. His career, such as it was, dated from early childhood, when he listened to the adults around him and tried to make sense of what they were saying. He was intrigued by the fact that they made hardly any sense at all, for their talk was composed of riddles and secrets and words and phrases that constituted a private language. He listened, where other children might have shut their ears to the chatter going on and on above and about them.
Their prattle refused to yield its secrets, and so – when he had learned to read and write – he turned to books, those depositories of unravelled mysteries, of mysteries acknowledged. He read comics, as every child did, but when he was twelve he embarked on a voyage of discovery that could only end with his death. He read voraciously, then judiciously, and found his writing voice by rejecting the voices of those he was tempted to impersonate.
— So far so calm, Jack murmured in his inner ear.
And what a multitude of friends and acquaintances he’d accumulated – Philip Pirrip, Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Collins, Emma Woodhouse, Don Quixote, Emma Bovary, Jane Eyre, Wilkins Micawber, Hamlet, Rosalind and Orlando, Ishmael and Queequeg –
— Talk about a small world, Skinny Boy –
As well as Prince Myshkin, Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver, and Bartleby, the scrivener, beyond consoling –
— I would prefer that you refrained from mentioning me.
And Dorothea Brooke, Cathy and Heathcliff, and Paolo and Francesca –
— Love brought us to our death, Harry.
It occurred to him that these names, these beloved and familiar names, were not known to the students amassed before him.
The next five minutes were hell for Harry Chapman, despite Jack’s efforts to placate him. One girl identified Philip Pirrip as Pip; three were aware of Elizabeth Bennet’s enduring fictional existence; no one had an idea who Don Quixote, Emma Bovary and Mr Micawber were, while six – or perhaps it was seven – thought that Hamlet was the guy in Shakespeare who had problems making up his mind. Nobody came to the rescue of Jim Hawkins, and as for Myshkin and Bartleby and Rosalind and Orlando and Paolo and Francesca –
— Love brought us to our death, Harry.
He had to be reasonable. It was too much to expect of them to have any knowledge of Myshkin and Bartleby. But the others, the others. Why hadn’t they heard of them?
Shakespeare’s ship-boy, Harry’s Jack, advised Master Harry to be as tranquil as he could. There were worse problems a man might face, such as guiding a ship out of treacherous waters.
— You cannot write well unless you have read well. If you read trash, God help you, trash will be the result of your labours, if labours they are.
He had nothing more to say. He consulted his watch. He had been booked for another hour.
— Do you have any questions or observations?
Silence ensued.
— Tell me what ideas you have. For your writing, that is.
— I am working on something profound.
— Go on.
— It’s set in an unknown country in an unknown period.
— Why?
— That’s the way it is.
— Does this profound work have anything as specific, as concrete, as a title?
— Yes. It’s called
Hearthrug of Ug
.
Harry stared at the middle-aged man, who was dressed in a dark suit, as if prepared for a day at the office. He wore a stiff white shirt and an undemonstrative tie.
— Does it have characters, your
Hearthrug of Ug
? Do they sit around the hearth, on the rug that I assume belongs to Ug?
— Ug is not a person. It is a philosophical concept.
— Ug is?
— Ug is definitely, definitively, a means of uniting all the philosophies of the world. There can only ultimately be one Ug.
— But why does Ug have need of a hearthrug?
— I don’t wish to be rude, Mr Chapman, but are you stupid? Are you, for fuck’s sake, fucking stupid?
Those in the class who had been tittering were now gasping in disbelief. Their soberly attired resident lunatic was revealing his manic depths, and in language Harry Chapman might have expected from the younger, wilder, drug-fuelled boys and girls with whom he was trying to communicate.
— I apologise for my stupidity, Mr –
— Ug. I belong to the great brotherhood of Ug. I am Ug in the everlasting order of Ugs.
— Well, then, Mr Ug –
— No ‘Mister’, Mr Stupid Mr Harry Mr Chapman. There are no ‘Misters’ in our order of Ugness. We are Ugs, full fucking stop.
Harry Chapman, with all his faults, had never felt the desire to murder. He felt it now. He felt it with a ferocity that was delicious to him. Decapitation, strangulation, a sharp knife to the heart or the gut – oh, the joy of dispatching this smug originator of Ug and Ugness.
— Does anyone else have a question for me?
Silence, again.
To fill that silence, to prevent at whatever cost any further invocation of Ug and the inexplicable hearthrug that was in its possession, Harry Chapman stated that no one could possibly teach another person to write imaginatively. If you have no powers of observation and no insight into character and no flair for language, you cannot expect to be taught them. These were expectations that could never be realised with the assistance of even the most accomplished, dedicated and sympathetic tutor.
In the ten minutes left to him, he told the sad story of the writing life of Herman Melville. He wrote some wonderful short books before producing his masterpiece,
Moby-Dick
. Everything he had written went out of print. For the last nineteen years of his life, he toiled in the New York Customs House, his novels forgotten and ignored. He died in 1891, an irascible and unhappy man. Then, in the 1920s,
Moby-Dick
was rediscovered along with his other writings and since then he has been recognised for what he is – a novelist of genius, a visionary, a writer whose finest prose is of a transcendental beauty. This recognition was denied him while he lived.
The students applauded him when he finished speaking. Even Ug saw fit to clap.
At a reception afterwards, a young woman came up to talk to the distinguished guest. She had a problem, what you might call a dilemma. She felt a real, vital urge to write creatively, but was undecided if the project – Harry Chapman winced at the word – should be a long novel, a collection of short stories, a volume of poetry or a three-act play. What could he suggest?
While he was looking at her, wondering what to say, she suddenly sprouted horns. She was not alone, for everyone present had become a demon.
Why, this was Hell, nor was he out of it.
— Welcome back, Harry, said Nancy Driver. — We’re going to give you something nice to eat tonight. Fish, since it’s Friday.
He smiled, recalling the two gargantuan meals he had consumed in the bright, sunlit restaurant.
— I hope I have an appetite, Nancy.
— It will only be a small portion.
Was this going to be his third funeral? The guests, or mourners, or visitors, were dressed for an important occasion. He realised, now, that he was standing alone on a stage, in the pleasing glare of a spotlight, while they were taking their seats in the auditorium. Nancy Driver, Marybeth Myslawchuk, Philip Warren, Maciek Nazwisko, Veronica and Dr Pereira were in the front row, alongside Alice, Frank and Jessie Chapman and Aunt Rose, who was glowing as rosily as ever. He could make out, behind them, Leo and Eleanor Duggan, Ralph Edmunds and his sister Beryl, Randolph Breeze and Blanche Westermere, Prince Myshkin, Pip, Emma Woodhouse, Antal, Bartleby and a disgruntled Virginia Woolf. Jeoffrey and Puss, sleek creatures, were being stroked by Pamela, who had turned her back on Wilf Granger. And, dear God, there was Christopher, but without Hugo and Ben.
His performance was about to begin when the Duchess of Bombay, begging pardon upon pardon for her lateness, found a place on the aisle. She was wearing a black T-shirt on which was printed, in bold white letters, the message ANTON VON WEBERN ROCKS.
He was there to recite every single poem he had committed to memory. Soon he was speaking the timeless lines of Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Anon, Keats, Blake, Smart, Hikmet, Ungaretti, Auden, Eliot and – oh, naughty, naughty Harry – John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, enjoying the wickedest of rambles in St James’s Park. Jack was high above the glare, willing his friend to remember all the words.
On and on went his recital, line after line, century after century. As the hours passed, he became oblivious to the silent audience.
—
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light . . .
he was muttering to nobody in particular in the Zoffany Ward.
In Harry Chapman’s heaven, Frank and Alice Chapman held each other’s hands as lovers do. There was music by Bach and Schubert, and Fred Astaire led Queen Céleste in a perpetual waltz. Serene harmony prevailed.
But not, alas, for long. He awoke, in the dark, to sounds of weeping, whether from grief or pain he could not tell. He found the noise strangely consoling. It told him he was back in the real heavenly and hellish world.
So here he was again, where he had doubted he would ever be. He was at home among his books and pictures and music.
He had learned, from Dr Pereira, that the surgeon who had called him Sunshine was dead.
— An aneurism. Very swift.
The doctor warned that his own illness might recur. A benign tumour had been removed, but another could appear at any time.
— So my days are numbered, Doctor?
— Everyone’s days are numbered, Harry. Even mine.
He had kissed Nancy, Marybeth and Veronica goodbye, and shaken hands with Maciek, Philip and his fruitseller saviour. Nancy had forbidden him to return, though she would miss his poems.
He sat in his favourite chair while Graham prepared supper. He hoped that he would come to agree with Jeremy Taylor that death is a harmless thing. A poor shepherd suffered it yesterday, as did a rich man. When Harry Chapman dies, he thought, a thousand others will die with him throughout the whole wide world.
The cat leapt on to his lap, curled herself into a multicoloured ball, and purred contentedly.
Harry Chapman offered Jack the ship-boy silent and heartfelt thanks for bringing the creaking vessel safely into port.
Those working parts of Harry Chapman’s body that could be beneficial to others – his heart, liver, kidneys and corneas – were removed at the hospital soon after his sudden death in the early hours of Sunday morning. Later that day, Graham informed the media of his friend’s passing and started making arrangements for his funeral.
What was now left of the corporeal Harry Chapman was encased in a coffin of the plainest, cheapest wood. A clergyman would not be required to conduct the service, which was to be totally secular except for a reading of George Herbert’s ‘The Flower’, with its invocation of a Lord of love who rescues the grief-stricken and benighted with His fulfilled promise of renewal and rejuvenation.
The mourners gathered at the chapel in Mortlake crematorium just before three o’clock on Friday afternoon. Graham greeted every one of them, accepting their condolences with the quiet dignity that was his by nature. He embraced and kissed Pamela Kenworth and the newly widowed Eleanor Duggan and shook hands with Wilf Granger, who remarked: