Imago Bird (12 page)

Aunt Mavis said ‘Come in and shut the door.'

I said ‘I thought I heard a noise.'

Aunt Mavis said ‘They've got this place bugged.'

She clambered upright. She went to the window and put a hand up against the wall Her nightdress gaped at the side.

I thought—Or like some bird unable to fly, trying to get back into its cage again.

I said ‘Is Uncle Bill here?'

She said ‘He's with that woman.'

I thought—Surely he's been with Mrs Washbourne too long for Aunt Mavis to call her that woman?

I did not know what to do. I sometimes sat on the edge of Aunt Mavis' bed and chatted to her in the evenings.

I said ‘Have they really got this house bugged?'

She said ‘I think it's behind the shutters.'

I thought—Or is she like one of Goya's disasters of war?

I said ‘But I mean, if you found wires, they'd probably just be false wires put in to make you find them. And the real wires would be somewhere different. Like burglar alarms. Or there
wouldn't be any real wires, that's what they'd have wanted, to make you think they were real wires to save expenses. Or they might be real ones. Or anything.'

She said ‘There was a man here the other day.'

I said ‘Yes, did you see him?'

I thought—Am I as drunk as she is? Do I think the house is bugged?

Then she said ‘They've got photographs.'

Aunt Mavis used to keep bottles of sherry in her room. Sometimes she called them cough-medicine. She would wait till someone was passing her open door, and then take a swig from her bottle.

I had thought—She wants to be rescued then?

Or now—She's forgotten where she's pretended to hide her bottle?

I thought I should go over and act as if I too were trying to find something behind the arras.

I said ‘What sort of photographs?'

She said ‘Look—'

There were in fact wires attached to the shutters. They were thin, and went down to a junction box near the floor. But I thought they must be to do with old burglar alarms which I knew were installed, but were seldom turned on.

Aunt Mavis said ‘Go to that drawer.'

The burglar alarms were not turned on because Aunt Mavis used to set them off: and then when the police arrived it was difficult to explain about Aunt Mavis, either that she was drunk or that she was not.

‘Which drawer?'

She said ‘I'm not decent.' She giggled.

She sat on the edge of the bed and put her feet up.

I don't know if I've explained about Aunt Mavis. We used to see her quite a lot when we were children. We had a house in the country, and she used to come and stay there and play croquet. She would arrive with her own special mallet which had brass rings round the ends, and she would hit her balls very hard into the shrubbery. She and my sister would have terrible arguments about whether or not the shrubbery was out of
bounds, and whether her balls could be replaced a mallet's length on to the lawn.

I went to one of Aunt Mavis' chests of drawers and opened a drawer and there were a lot of those soft women's clothes like packets of bacon.

She said ‘One drawer down.'

I thought—What would Dr Anders say about my thinking that women's clothes are like packets of bacon?

Aunt Mavis said ‘Underneath the jumpers.'

Once, when I had been a child, and we had been having supper with Aunt Mavis, she had taken her false teeth out while sitting at the table and had held them in front of her face and moved them slightly as if she were a ventriloquist and she were having a conversation with her dummy.

She said ‘Find it?'

It was after incidents like this at the supper table I think that Aunt Mavis had gone away to do a cure for alcoholics. My mother and father did not seem to talk about this much: as if they thought it both funny, and too tragic.

Underneath the jumpers, and skirts, and furs like bits of old skin (I thought—Is it that I am frightened of death? My mother's?) I came across a mounted photograph, about six inches by four, which I recognised as being one of those such as used to be taken in the thirties or forties on a seaside pier. I had seen illustrations of these in books. You put your head or heads through holes cut out of a piece of boarding from the back, and on the front were painted bodies in shapes and poses that made you look ridiculous. In this particular photograph the painted bodies were those of a very fat lady and a baby she was pushing in a pram. The heads, coming through the holes from the back and superimposed on the bodies, were those of Mrs Washbourne and Uncle Bill.

Aunt Mavis said ‘You recognise them?'

I said ‘Yes.'

I thought—Is she saying something very subtle here, which is that this is a bit of profound symbolism representing something true about Mrs Washbourne and Uncle Bill? or is she just being half-witted?

She said ‘She's pushing him in a pram.'

I said ‘I know.'

There are primitive tribes, I had read somewhere, who when they are shown a photograph are unable to make out what it is about: they turn it this way and that, as if it were a piece of paper with just a design on it, or perhaps as if it were the reality it is representing.

Aunt Mavis said ‘It's that woman.'

I said ‘Yes.'

Aunt Mavis put her arms round her knees and rocked to and fro.

I wondered—But might Mrs Washbourne and Uncle Bill in fact do something like this? I had read in one of my pornographic magazines of a man who liked to sit in a pram outside his house in some suburb —

Aunt Mavis suddenly put her head back and opened her mouth and made a noise like paper tearing.

I said ‘But Aunt Mavis, this is painted on wood. You put your head through from the back. It was taken on a pier. It's the sort of thing people did, you know, when they wanted to cheer themselves up at the seaside. I expect it was taken at one of those political conferences, you know, where politicians must want to cheer themselves up.'

Aunt Mavis said ‘It certainly is funny!'

Then she laughed again as if her inside was coming out.

I said ‘Aunt Mavis come to bed.'

She leaned forward and gazed at me intently.

I thought—Anthropologists do no good by trying to explain things reasonably to strange tribes —

Aunt Mavis said ‘He had an affair with your mother, did you know?'

I thought—You shouldn't say that!

Then—She is like someone in the electric chair.

I said ‘Who did?'

She said ‘Your uncle.'

I thought—O my prophetic soul! —

I said ‘What do you mean affair?'

She said ‘I just thought you should know.'

I thought—I bet you did!

Then—Act one, scene four or five; that old goat, that ghost, that smiling, damned villain —

She said ‘I think it had quite a lot to do with the break-up of your father's and mother's marriage.'

I said ‘What break-up?'

I thought—Oh what shall I do with you if I have no crucifixes, if I cannot fart at you? Put my fingers in your eyes and turn you inside out like an octopus?

After a time she said ‘Oh don't tell me you don't know about your father's and mother's marriage!'

I said ‘There's nothing broken about my father's and mother's marriage. They just don't stay together much, that's all. There can be terrible and ridiculous things about marriages that go on all the time, can't there?

She looked at me crookedly: then her whole face seemed to begin to fall sideways as if she were a tower with clouds rushing past her.

I said ‘What sort of affair did my mother and Uncle Bill have? Was it a good affair, bad affair, sad affair, a happy affair? Who cares about affairs? What matters is whether or not people are killing and dying with envy and resentment.'

I thought—That old fool Hamlet should have stuck his mother up the arse as well as the arras.

Then—But Aunt Mavis is not my mother?

She rocked backwards and forwards as if she were someone acting crying. Then she put her head in her hands. She said ‘I so adored your mother!'

I said ‘I bet you did!'

I began to wonder how I could continue this scene more successfully than Hamlet She was just an old woman: there might be bugging devices behind the arras.

Aunt Mavis said ‘Oh Sophie! Sophie! Forgive me!'

I walked round the room. I thought—Oh my mother, my mother, you do what you like! And my father with those girls like snakes in the long grass —

Then—Who is it I want to kill? Uncle Bill? Myself?

Then—Good heavens, Dr Anders will have a field day!

As I walked round I wondered—Where is that fourth wall which actors like to think either is or is not there; to let them preen, as if in a mirror, their awful emotions?

I said ‘When did my mother and Uncle Bill have an affair?'

She said ‘In California.'

I said ‘And what was Mrs Washbourne doing?'

Aunt Mavis took her hands away from her face. She looked quite sober. She said ‘What do you mean, what was Connie Washbourne doing?'

I thought—The point is, if we are our own audience, we could see all this is ridiculous.

I said ‘—Pushing Uncle Bill in a pram?'

Aunt Mavis got off the bed. She came and took the photograph away from me briskly.

She said ‘I thought you'd be interested!'

I thought—O Ophelia, Ophelia, can you not come quickly: can we not holds hands and run along a sea-shore that is not a painted back-drop on a pier —

Then—Actors, if they do not know that their audience is themselves, at least they know that they are acting?

Aunt Mavis put the photograph carefully back in the drawer.

I remembered—But when I used to go to the theatre with Sheila I wanted to shout—Come on, ref, break it up!

The whole performance in which Aunt Mavis and I had been involved—my coming into her room; her being on her hands and knees; the finding of the photograph of Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne; my wondering whether I should be reasonable; her telling me about Uncle Bill and my mother—all this seemed to be to do with an experiment about what is acting and what is not: what is behind the arras or a seaside pier: what is beyond the necessary framework of a stage; as we sit in the wings of our conscious or unconscious —

I thought—O Ophelia, let us go through streets where tanks are aiming their guns at this old barracks!

Aunt Mavis said ‘Sh!' Then she stamped on the ground.

After a time there was a creak like a cat mewing.

She said ‘You see?'

I thought—Where did I once think: witches have cats?

I said ‘It sounds like a teddy-bear.'

Aunt Mavis went to her bed and climbed into it and pulled up the bedclothes to her chin.

She said ‘What did you do tonight?'

I said ‘Oh, nothing—'

I thought—But what if there were some demonstration by which people could know they had to act out perhaps all their ridiculous emotional dramas—somewhat formally perhaps—people bashing each other about, pulling each other's hair, fucking their own or each other's mothers—I mean we like these dramas—why else should we like to watch them? But at the same time we don't—I mean we don't like them—so, where was I—so that at the same time they wouldn't be trapped in them—the people—the actors—they'd be saying—Look! isn't this what you like? But also not—because, you see, this is what we're showing you—you can also get out—by getting all this stuff out—as if on to a stage —

I said ‘I met Tammy Burns.'

Aunt Mavis said ‘Did you have a good time with him?'

I said ‘Yes, I did, really.'

She said ‘Oh well that's good then.'

I said ‘And what did you do?'

She said ‘I wanted to be an actress.'

I said ‘And what stopped you?'

She said ‘I got stage fright.'

I said ‘Couldn't you have given marvellous performances, if you had stage fright?'

She said ‘No, I couldn't, it was too difficult, really.'

I said to Dr Anders —

‘Well, what happened was that Tammy Burns ordered me a drink—I hadn't done very much: you don't have to do very much you know: I mean I think I know about these people; what else is the point of stammering? They don't like speaking much either. Or rather Tammy Burns told one of his hangers-on to get me a drink; or just nodded to him; he always has hangers-on, you know, I suppose to prevent other people pinching little bits off him. Well when this drink came there wasn't one for Sally Rogers. They were doing this on purpose I suppose: Tammy Burns was just standing around: it's his thing just to stand around: so people can watch him and want to pinch little bits; as if he isn't a human being but a thing: this is quite powerful you know: human beings get a sort of force around them, if you look at them as things. You want to see if you'd get a shock if you touched them. I was thinking about myself I suppose. I mean, I can stand around without talking longer than anyone. As if language were a sort of insulation. Well, Tammy Burns still hadn't said anything. He'd just ordered me a drink. So we were getting on rather well weren't we. And I was thinking—This sort of homosexual thing, you don't have to make anything, you don't have to prove anything, it's either there or it isn't: have I said this before? But after a time Sally Rogers had to say—Don't I get a drink?—because this wasn't her thing, silence: but then what was she doing there anyway? I mean she'd taken me to the club. And she had her own bottle of whisky. I do think that with women you have to be proving things, don't you? Or is this old-fashioned. I suppose you'll say—What women? There's only this or that woman. But don't other people find this? I'm joking! Well anyway. But it did seem as if I had to get a drink for Sally Rogers, or I had to get one of
Tammy Burns' hangers-on to get her a drink, or I wouldn't be doing my stuff as a sort of man for her. Isn't this awful? A man as a sort of dispensing machine; or juke-box. But if I spoke, I wouldn't be doing my stuff for Tammy Burns: as a sort of spook I mean. So I was trapped! Grow up! But what else was the point of the evening? Of course I wanted to get off with Tammy Burns. But to have dumped Sally Rogers wouldn't have been spook either, you see. And he was rather like the boy I had an affair with at school. All this was like a ballet. How could I move! except by some signs, or signals. So I just raised my glass, as if it were a test-tube or something, and stared at it, and waited, as if to see if there were angels or bubbles or something: if you cut out language, you see, what happens if you wait? Then after a time Tammy Burns did nod to one of his hangers-on; and the hanger-on went to get Sally Rogers a drink.