I got something of a shock —
it said, ‘When you hear the pips
would you kindly read my lips
because the time will be exactly
no more world …
This of course provoked further confrontations among the T-shirts but a silence swallowed up the band and the audience as a great weariness overcame me and I sank deep, deep into a blueness that grew darker as I sank. Above me I saw naked Christabel sinking with me deep, deep, deep into the dark. Yes, I thought, it’s quiet here, quiet is good.
Then I was back in the Hammersmith Apollo and the noise. I wasn’t sure I could stand up but I did, waving both arms while the people behind told me to sit down but I was unable to catch Christabel’s eye so I left without further attempts at communication. I made my way past the souvenirs without buying a Mobile Mortuary T-shirt and got out into the air where I just stood breathing in the carbon monoxide for a few moments. What was that all about? I asked myself. What was that with the blueness and the dark? I’m a doctor, for God’s sake, I don’t take drugs and I don’t hallucinate or go into altered states. On the other hand, maybe I’m unable to metabolise the blueness and the dark. But where were they coming from?
I went to the Fulham Palace Road hoping for a taxi but there were none. Shortly a 295 bus appeared and I boarded it. The upper deck was crowded but I was able to rest one buttock next to a fat man who was enjoying a burger and fries out of a styrofoam container. I’ll probably see you in my clinic one of these days, I thought. The smell of the grease, the sounds of his eating and the oppression of his bulk soon became too much for me as the lights and colours and names and words on shop fronts blurred past. I got off at Dawes Road and walked the rest of the way home, not bothering to hail the several cabs that passed me. The T-shirts and voices of the audience were still with me and all of the opinions expressed, of whatever persuasion, seemed to me reasonable protests against a world that had gone ugly. War or no war didn’t make that much difference — the world was tired and ugly and would grow more tired and more ugly as time went on. And more and more people would turn to greasy burgers and fries, Cokes and candy bars and ice cream and come to my clinic in various stages of hyperglycaemia, obesity and cardiovascular distress.
When I got home I opened the door, took a deep breath of silence, turned on some lights, took my coat off, got Top Hat off the video shelf, poured myself some cask-strength Bowmore Islay Malt, added water judiciously, and settled back to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fred by himself has never interested me much despite the wonderful things he could do; the enchanting Ginger, however, as a partner of independent spirit, gave him importance and validated his masculinity by acknowledging his mastery and following his lead. Seeing the grace and joie de vivre of their silvery ghosts as they danced ‘Cheek to Cheek’ filled me with delight and sadness. When they were alive I was glad to know that somewhere they were among us; when they departed this life they left the world poorer. Their dancing was real. Unlike western stars who perform impossible feats with handguns and western presidents who command hundreds of thousands of expendable stuntmen and women, Fred and Ginger actually did what they did. With tears running down my face I drank my whisky, finished the film, phoned Christabel at home and at her mobile number, got not-available messages at both numbers, and went to bed.
15 Christabel Alderton
25 January 2003. I was hoping to see Elias in the entertainment suite after the show but he didn’t turn up. I was stuck talking to D.O.A. executives, and when I got clear and rang his number I got the answering machine, so he must have already gone to sleep.
I’d especially wanted to talk to him because I’d be flying to Honolulu in the morning. The tenth anniversary of Django’s death would be the 30th January and I’d booked my flight a couple of weeks before this. I hadn’t told Elias about Django, we hadn’t yet got that far. I’d booked a return flight for the 2nd February, so I wasn’t going to be gone long, but I wanted to hear Elias’s voice before I left.
Every year as the 27th approached I thought of Django as I last saw him and tried to imagine how he’d look now. I’d seen Anthony Hopkins as King Lear at the National some years back, and at the end, when he holds the dead Cordelia in his arms and says:
… no, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never.
I wept as quietly as I could while everything spun around me and I tried not to faint. I bought a copy of the play and read those lines until they burned themselves into my brain and now I hear them when I’m brushing my teeth, crossing the road, all kinds of moments when I’m not even thinking of my lost boy. Consciously. Now, before my flight to Honolulu, I kept seeing him with the grey sky and the dark sea beyond as he went over the edge.
I put on my Django Reinhardt record and that brought back Django’s dead father, Adam Freund. I can’t control the pictures in my head, and when the music started I saw Adam shagging the stone sphinx to the tune of ‘Limehouse Blues’. ‘Nuages’ brought back naked Adam, the red lampshade and the spires of the Stephansdom. And ‘Herr Oluf’. And Elias. Can a person be a bad-luck carrier and am I one? Up to now, four men (counting Ron) and my son were dead. I’ve had my share of one-night stands and sport fucking and I don’t know if any of those men who didn’t mean anything to me ran into the Curse of Christabel. Should I break things off with Elias for his own good? Thinking tired me out and I fell asleep and dreamt that Django was with me. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I’m tired. Can we go home now?’
‘But we are home,’ I said, and my voice woke me up. My American Airlines flight was due to leave Heathrow at 11:05 but I was advised to arrive three hours early because of security checks. So I ordered a minicab for 07:15, got to Heathrow Terminal 4 at 07:45, wondered if I should phone Elias, decided it was unlucky, loaded my things on a trolley and joined a very slow-moving check-in queue. I eventually reached the counter, and after assuring the woman that I’d packed my own luggage and nobody had given me anything to take on the plane, asked for an aisle seat towards the rear, got a boarding pass, went through Passport Control and the metal detector, and found myself with about an hour and a half to get through before boarding time.
This is the time of year when I feel like a hermit crab without a shell, exposed and vulnerable. But airports have always been safe houses between what’s behind me and what’s in front of me. Except of course no place is safe now. In spite of that I like the smell of blankness and carpet shampoo and I like the stale recycled air and the lighting that’s neither day nor night. I’m comfortable with my book and my ticket and my boarding pass and all the strangers who are between me and the Erlking, the Cyclops, whatever.
I couldn’t help asking myself why, on this tenth anniversary of Django’s death, I was going to the place where he died. The answer will sound strange but I guess that’s how I am. Strange. My night in the Mini Hotel in Honolulu International Airport in 1993 had kept me from falling apart and I wanted to be kept from falling apart now. I’d phoned ahead so I knew that the Mini Hotel had been shut down after 9/11 but I thought that just being in the airport overnight might help me get my head straight about Elias. Did I want to drag him into my bad luck or should I turn him loose?