‘There’s one more angle in heaven’ … ‘Dried tragically’ … ‘A cruel twist of fete’ … The only fate I could remember now was Clotho. Who were the others? I looked up ‘fates’ in the Pocket. No names. While I was about it, I looked up ‘monoblepsia’: also not there. Mono was ‘one’, of course, but one what? — ia. Forming abstract nouns. Often in Medicine. Blepsia … blepsia …
Mevrouw Bonsma came back and subsided into her chair. She regretted to inform us that she could not find the button to switch the music manufactory on. She began to hum. This made me aware of a sympathetic murmuring, like a muted string section, from the other tables. More old faces gathering, the newcomers as well as the originals. There was one of the ’Enries, McAllister, some Bobbies and Freddies and what-have-you. The show going on, as it must.
*
It was in the Concise. Monoblepsia: condition in which vision is perfect when one eye is used, but confused and indistinct when both are used. What was he driving at? I’ve got a lazy left, it’s true, he knew that as well as anyone, and none of us were spring chickens any more. But I wouldn’t say I was ‘monobleptic’.
I put the dictionary back in its hiding place on the cistern and took out the original of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’. How badly I had wanted to show it to Merle. I couldn’t help wondering whether her approval was the main reason I had pressed on with it, perhaps even the only one. But she would never see it. What could be done with it now that she was dead?
Then it bore in upon me, unavoidable and crushing, like some juggernaut with ‘How am I driving?’ carved into its treads. Death itself was the greatest decline in standards of all. That was the certainty I had always been trying to evade. And expiring was just the beginning: unpleasant as it was, it was infinitely more palatable than the decomposition to which it led.
A gruesome vision took hold of me. Merle in her box, disintegrating, liquefying. It was wet, this deterioration, it consisted of leaking and oozing, it struck through crêpe, it wept. And then I saw myself too, mummified, in a box as grey as a ledger, the skin stretched tight as parchment over my irreducible bones. My solid waste, my dry remains. Such fine distinctions would have comforted the squeamish, the ones afraid of water, but they made my blood curdle. A match flared up on the edge of my vision, wet and dry fought a battle on the tips of my fingers. What did it matter? We would have to pass through a river of putrefaction before we issued in dust. Perhaps it would be better to burn, to turn at once to ashes, to go up in smoke.
Morbid thoughts. What next: a public display of emotion? Pull yourself together, Aubrey. Asafoetida … liquidambar … turpentine. Now who will keep you in bon-bons, madame (6)? It fitted itself into the dibbled furrows of ‘An English Country Garden’.
*
Hunky Dory was twiddling his thumbscrews. Time I introduced myself.
‘Good evening. Tearle. You must be Hunky. Any relation to John?’
‘It’s Rory actually. Hunky Dory’s the name of my group.’
‘Group? There’s only one of you.’
‘The drummer split. It used to be Rory and the Hunky Dory, know what I mean, but my drummer fucked off to Cape Town. He says Joburg’s getting too heavy.’
Hunky pushed some buttons. ‘Wanna see my wah-wah?’
‘If it’s all the same …’
‘Okay, that’s cool.’
‘Do you know any Max Bygraves? Let’s see … “Consider Yourself’’?’
‘How’s it go again?’
But I am not a hummer.
By way of showing an interest, I threw in a couple of gems from the Look and Listen: ‘How about some Tosh? Or some Luther van Dross?’
*
As soon as everything had been properly connected, Hunky played some ‘golden oldies’ on our behalf with the sound turned down low. ‘Played’ is too strong a word: his part in the production involved no more than the periodic throwing of a switch. Killed the conversation stone-dead. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. The machines were less like musical instruments than gadgets for poking fun. He had one which gave a passable imitation of the absconded percussionist, and also of a trombonist and a Scottish piper. It was marvellous. The band played on even when Hunky excused himself to fetch a drink from the bar.
Mevrouw Bonsma, who had been gazing mournfully into the distance since the first note, made a special request for ‘Roll out the Barrel’, and he was playing that when Bogey arrived with some Patronymić or other in tow. Looking quite spruce, in a leather jacket and a Paisley cravat, the genuine Croatian article, presumably. I noticed, when he slung the jacket over the back of a chair, that the labels of his clothing had retreated to the linings where they belonged. But the pockets were bulging with fruit and vegetables. Must have become a market gardener.
‘I am make big money,’ he declared by way of introduction, indicating with outflung arms banknotes the size of beach towels. ‘It so easy make big money in new Sout’ Africa, only lazy pig poor like you.’ He was holding out a fistful of notes, as if he meant me to take them. The cheek of it. I made a point of ignoring him, and he stuffed his ill-gotten gains back into his pocket and took out a carrot. What was that Wessels joke about the shrinking rand? It was a manhole cover … Poor old Van der Merwe, if I remember correctly, the butt of all jokes. ‘I am just worry about damn Communists,’ Bogey went on. ‘They want take everytink. Is good we kill them.’
His English was much improved, although he was rolling his r’s and twanging away at his n’s like a singing cowboy. I should send him across the road to cry on Herr Toppelmann’s shoulder, I thought. I could see the pair of them lamenting among the sausage-skins.
Bogey and Spilkin began to talk business. The vegetables were a sideline; the war hero had gone into souvenirs.
My thoughts returned to business of my own: ‘The Proofreader’s Derby.’ Finished or unfinished business? It was hard to say, exactly. Spilkin’s question — which is everyone’s, when all is said and done — came back to me across the years: ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ I still wasn’t sure. Long before, when the idea of presenting ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ to the world was still fresh, a false spirit of invention had had me in its thrall and my imaginings had been grandiose. But in the weeks before the Goodbye Bash, as I laboured to finish the fair copy, I had decided to content myself with making my work known and leaving it at that. If a full-scale championship followed, at someone else’s initiative, well and good.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ I would chime on the rim of a champagne glass with a cake fork until I had their attention. ‘Many of you will know of the project on which I have been engaged these many decades, the crowning achievement of a long career’ — with a nod towards Spilkin — ‘my life’s work.’ I had the speech in my notebook. There was a prologue on declining standards and the prophylactic properties of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’, some expressions of gratitude — especially to Merle! — a passing reference to the floating trophy, an outline of corrigenda and proofreading marks, a digression on deletion, an epilogue on the rules and regulations. By the time I proffered the photostatic copies, an interested few would be pressing forward to take them from my hand. Perhaps their enthusiasm would be infectious, and the others would ask for a demonstration. Then a few sample fascicles — not the whole thing, of course, this was neither the time nor the place — could be administered right there to whet the appetite. I might provide the corrected version on an overhead projector (if one could be secured), and then glance over their efforts and reward the author of the best one with a prize, as an encouragement. So I had imagined.