The fact probably is, a man was sent to prison in France for slapping the face of the head of a person who had just been beheaded to see if the face was still alive after the head was cut off!
The fact probably is, too, that in Halifax you could be sent to the Halifax Gibbet if you stole thirteen and a half old pence, and Halifax is not very far from York, where there is a house where a lady lived who was pressed to death by big stones. Brooke knows this because she has visited the lady’s historic house where there is a museum.
But the fact is, how do you know anything is true? Duh, obviously, records and so on, but how do you know that the records are true? Things are not just true because the internet says they are. Really the phrase should be, not the fact is, but the fact seems to be.
The fact seems to be, someone tried to blow up this very Observatory right here in 1894! It is a fact, apparently, that he didn’t damage the Observatory but instead he just blew his own stomach out right here in this park! There was a hole where his stomach should be and one of his hands exploded off, when the bomb exploded in that very same hand he was holding it in, well, the moral of the story is, don’t hold bombs in your hand, duh obviously. In fact a two inch piece of bone from inside the hand was found near the Observatory wall after that man died but the Observatory itself was not damaged by it or anything. Brooke puts her hands where her own stomach is and feels for what she can’t see inside herself. The man was apparently still alive when the people found him, and he could still speak apparently. Doctor Doctor, I feel a little empty inside. Doctor Doctor I really need a hand.!!! No, but it will have been really horrible. That man, therefore, could have literally actually in reality basically reached his own hand through the hole in himself and out the other side (meaning the hand he still had, obviously, not the one that got exploded off). So that is what history is, people and places that disappear, or are beheaded, or get damaged or nearly do, and things and places and people that get tortured and burned and so on. But this does not mean that history is not the unseen things as well. As an example of this: from up here you can see some of Greenwich — but not all of it. You can’t see all the people who still don’t know what in fact in reality has happened, still waiting there outside for Mr. Garth to come out or not come out. They are invisible for the simple reason that the place and the people are behind the trees and buildings so you can’t see them from here. It is a matter of perspextive. You can’t see the theatre, or even its roof, where the man called Hugo who was there the first night Mr. Garth shut himself in is doing the monologue. A monologue is a play with just one person in it. The title of the actual play is Miles To Go Before I Sleep, because Miles is Mr. Garth’s first name, although all the people outside call him Milo. It is meant to be about Mr. Garth and what is happening inside the room.
(The man called Hugo was sitting there on the stage when the audience members came in and sat down. He sometimes waved to them and sometimes acted like they weren’t there. When the play began, you couldn’t tell that it had begun, and then suddenly it just had. He did a lot of talking to himself and to the audience about how he had shut himself in the room because he wanted to be an actor and be on TV and the Stage but he had Failed in his life. There was a lot of sitting in the play, and some standing up, and then sitting down again. He sat on the bed and spoke, and then he stood behind a chair and spoke, and then he sat on the chair and spoke, and then he sat down on the floor and spoke. There was a great deal of speaking. He had pretend long hair and a pretend long beard like a wizard. He did not look anything like Mr. Garth. Brooke and her mother and father went on Friday night. It was an Alps of boredom. Brooke fell asleep in the second half. Then Brooke and her mother and father were on their way out of the theatre and they met Mrs. Lee who goes to see it every night and matinee because she has something to do with it. She told them for ages, again, about how realistic it all was and how she went and stood on the stage sometimes before or after the audience was allowed in and imagined she was in the actual real room in her house, and sometimes she could actually believe that she was, that’s how real it was. She told them again how the people doing the play even sent to Amazon.co.uk to get some of the very same DVDs that were in the actual room, with the same pictures on the covers, to make it be true and lifelike. He doesn’t look anything like Mr. Garth looks in the room, Brooke said. Well, none of us knows for sure, do we, Brooke? Mrs. Lee said, and the performance, every night, virtuoso! Mrs. Lee shook her head as if there was something she was looking at that she couldn’t believe. It was kind of you to put the tickets aside for us, Brooke’s mother said, especially with the run being sold out like it is. Then Mrs. Lee spoke some more about how the play was transferring soon to a real theatre. This is a real theatre, Brooke said. You enjoyed the play, didn’t you? Mrs. Lee said to Brooke. I found it weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Brooke said. Mrs. Lee laughed. A bit over her head, Mrs. Lee said over Brooke’s head to Brooke’s parents. It is so not over my head, Brooke said. We all enjoyed it very much, thank you, Brooke’s mother said. We certainly did, Brooke’s father said. Then the Bayoudes said goodbye to Mrs. Lee and left the theatre. They stood outside and waited to cross the road. Virtuoso, Brooke’s father said. Virtue so-so, Brooke said. Her parents laughed so much that she thought about saying it again but people tend not to laugh so much the second time you make a joke. It wouldn’t be virtuoso of her if she did. It would actually be a bit virtue so-so if she did! Why is the theatre always sad, Brooksie? her dad said taking her hand as they crossed the road. Joke or do you really mean it? Brooke said. Joke, her father said. I give up, why is the theatre always sad? Brooke said. Because the seats are always in tears, her father said. It was a good joke when you knew that it was about the other spelling of the word tears: tiers. Tiers: rows of seats on a slant.)
The fact is, Mrs. Lee’s husband isn’t living at the Lees’ house any more. Josie Lee has to go to Bloomsbury to visit him since that’s where he’s moved to. Hugo who is in the play now lives in the Lees’ house because it is so close to and handy for the theatre. Is that a kind of history too? She will write it in the Moleskine. But history usually only records the Abbots and Kings and the Dukes and so on fighting over who gets to own a park like Greenwich Park and who gets put in jail because someone else wants what they’ve got so just sticks them in the jail and leaves them to rot and goes and takes it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t record all the histories. On the contrary.
(Take One-Tree Hill, for instance, Anna said when she gave Brooke the Moleskine for her birthday. Look how many trees are really on that hill. Lots more than just one tree. Look at Queen Elizabeth’s Oak. We all know the story, or we can find it out really easily if we don’t know it, about how it was already old and hollow when Queen Elizabeth the First sheltered under it when all of a sudden she was caught in the shower of rain. And we know that it only finally fell over about twenty years ago, when the people who decided they were going to conserve it stripped off all the ivy then found out, when they did that, that it was that ivy that had actually been holding it up in the first place, and then while they tried to fix it into place forever with a piece of metal they knocked the tree completely down by mistake. Ha ha! Brooke said and Mr. Palmer laughed too. They all laughed for ages. It was funny. What if Queen Elizabeth the First had been there and had seen those things happen? Off with their heads, probably! But think of all the other trees in the park too, Anna said. They all have histories.)