Rancid Pansies (33 page)

email from Dr Adrian Jestico ([email protected])
to Dr Penny Barbisant ([email protected])

Thanks very much for yours, Penny. I note you’re home for
Christmas
so will simply reply to this UK-based address. Let me know when I should revert to Woods Hole again. Surely you can’t resist paying us a visit in Southampton? BOIS – and no doubt boys – will welcome you with open arms. Alternatively, any chance of meeting you in London? We could always try that Voynovian restaurant if you’re feeling enterprising or suicidal.

Your idea of starting an email campaign to shame people into
boycotting
ICOC’s Thailand extravaganza is a good one, although such things have been tried before & have fallen on largely deaf ears. Like everybody else scientists cherish their freebies, as I expect you’ve noticed. But I certainly agree that we ought to be setting an example these days, like doctors who give up smoking. Besides, I’ve never been convinced these thrashes produce much in the way of hard science. And somewhere at the back of my mind I’ve always felt it’s incongruous that a devotion to the study of organisms a
millimetre
or so long can lead to gigantic Boeing-loads of people flying 6,000 miles to talk about them for five days on end. Anyhow, good luck with the campaign. I shall immediately nail my colours to the mast by declaring that I shan’t be going myself.

And now I can no longer delay telling you about recent events here at Crendlesham, where Gerry’s & Marta’s opera,
Princess Diana
, had its first momentous performance 3 days ago. To cut to the chase, it has turned out a huge critical success although there is marked dissent from a small but vocal minority. More of that later,
although I might attach some representative newspaper reviews before sending this.

The first night was dramatic in ways its authors didn’t intend & was an experience I wouldn’t have missed for much fine gold. One day I hope to be able to tell my wholly imaginary grandchildren that I was present at the famous first performance of
Princess Diana
, an
occasion
on a par with that of Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
in 1913 which caused its Parisian audience to riot. Checking back, I see I told you in my last email that I’d only ever heard a sketchy run-through of the piece in Gerry’s house in Italy with Marta at the piano. I was
completely
unprepared for how good it is with full orchestra, bells,
whistles
, etc. I don’t know about you but I admit I’m not normally keen on contemporary music, still less of the little I’ve heard of modern opera. But
Princess Diana
is surprisingly approachable thanks to very agreeable music & an entertaining – if occasionally bizarre – script that quite often is genuinely funny. I spent the first 2 Acts revising my view of Gerry as something of a fantasist. Of course I know he’s an excellent sports biographer, but I also know he
despises
himself for it & has aspirations to be rated up there in the ‘serious’ arts. I can’t deny that at the back of my mind I’ve been thinking of him as someone who, when push comes to shove, probably lacks the creative talent or the right kind of energy or something. I realise his appearance of dilettantism & his frequent daftness are essential parts of his charm, but I think I’ve imagined they would always undermine any claims he has to be taken seriously.

Well, I was wrong. What he & Marta have tried to do in
PD
– & we must remember that it was entirely Gerry’s idea in the first place – is actually quite complicated. So far as I can judge he’s attempting to present this (to me) rather null creature both as averagely silly (by poking fun at her haute couture pretentiousness & humiliatingly public amorous carryings-on) & as a genuine icon. Somehow he & Marta manage to weave these 2 threads simultaneously &
convincingly
, which I think is quite a feat. As I say, the first 2 acts were
entertaining
& although there were definitely some members of the
audience who didn’t approve of the mockery, there were many more swayed by the charm Diana exudes through the music. In short – & as I never would have predicted – Gerry & Marta turn out to be a brilliant team. One really good idea of Gerry’s was to have 2
mannequins
representing the princes William & Harry onstage
throughout
. They were periodically replaced by larger models so you had these little children gradually ageing into youths & functioning as silent witnesses to events. It was an extremely effective continuity device.

But in the 3rd Act disaster struck & unfortunately right at the moment of maximum emotional tension. Diana & Mother Teresa were
discussing
the Princess’s possible conversion to Roman Catholicism (
can
this really have happened? I must ask Gerry where he got it from). Gerry, in his role as the Duke of Edinburgh – he had written himself an occasional speaking part – was sitting on the right of the stage at the front in plus-fours & a wig pretending to clean a shotgun while Tizia Sgrizzi-Pulmoni as Diana (& you can hardly get a more famous soprano than her to launch your new opera) was bewailing her spiritual inadequacy or something. Suddenly, someone wearing a penguin suit just strolled on to the stage from behind & started feeling Tizia up with his flippers. Talk about wacky moments in grand opera – none of us knew what the hell to think. Could this really be part of the action? Some awful send-up of Gerry’s, maybe? Or is a penguin perhaps the accepted modern version of one of those holy doves that flutter around the heads of the blessed in Renaissance paintings? There was a moment of bafflement when no one was sure whether we were meant to laugh openly. But being ticklish, the wretched prima donna broke down in giggles & the
audience
with her. Seeing everything being ruined, poor Gerry sprang up brandishing his shotgun & overbalanced backwards into the orchestra where he landed on three kettledrums and much else.

To my eternal shame (eternity in this case lasting approximately 3 seconds) I’m afraid I simply corpsed with most of the audience. However dire the consequences, the actual spectacle of the Duke
of Edinburgh doing a pratfall into the percussion section was
dreadfully
comic. It sounded like the late signor Pavarotti falling 20 metres into a display of kitchen equipment & silverware & most of us simply gave up & howled. But I could see Gerry had probably been hurt so I went forward, by which time everything had broken down & come to a halt. Max made a speech & they started the last Act again. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to hear it. It turned out poor Gerry had injured himself quite badly & came all over faint so I drove him off there & then to A&E in Ipswich. The sight of the Duke of Edinburgh still in character hobbling up to announce himself at the hospital desk (‘Had a bit of a prang’) caused consternation & I’m sorry to say that although Gerry was in quite a lot of pain it was again too much for me & I disgraced myself rather. Anyway, all was explained & he was X-rayed & found to have broken a rib badly enough to threaten puncturing his lung. So they took him off & did a small op – some new American technique, apparently, in which the splintered ends are pulled back out and clipped together with a metal sleeve.

I fetched him back to Crendlesham the next morning, still sore but immediately cheered by the early reviews I brought him. He said he’d seen Derek in the audience, about which he obviously had mixed feelings. On the one hand he was upset that Derek had been there to witness the disaster, on the other he was dead chuffed that he’d seen the eventual triumph. Those two certainly do have a weird relationship so I badgered Gerry a bit & he finally told me about their great secret from the past. You’ve probably forgotten but some time ago I mentioned I thought Gerry & Derek each had something on the other from way back & that it might even have involved
something
criminal. Well, I don’t mind passing this on, a) because I know you’ll be discreet & b) because it all happened so long ago & the
villain
of the piece is dead. What Gerry told me was that in 1979 he’d been working for Curzon TV as an apprentice scriptwriter. Owing to a senior writer’s illness Gerry was included at the last moment in a unit sent to Morocco to film an episode of
Tulliver’s Travels
. You won’t remember it but it was a series built around roving reporter Frank Tulliver, a cross between Alan Whicker & John Pilger, currently
to be seen in an awful series of ads for instant coffee. In Morocco Gerry was enlisted by a cameraman called Dave Barraclough to help with a scheme DB had employed before to smuggle hashish back to the UK in film cans. The cans were stuck all over with
important
-looking labels saying something like CURZON TV/EXPOSED FILM/URGENT/RUSH PROCESSING & no one ever stopped them. They went straight to the processing centre at Chorleywood where Barraclough’s 17 year-old protégé, Derek, knew how to
separate
the cans with hash from the rest (they were marked so he could pick them out under UV light). On this occasion, though, the cans never reached Chorleywood. HM Customs picked them up & Barraclough went down. Both Gerry & Derek were prosecuted for their part but because they were so young & pleaded intimidation by Barraclough they got off with severe cautions & lost their jobs. Ever since then Gerry has nursed an unverifiable suspicion (based on something another member of the film crew said) that it was Derek himself who anonymously tipped off HM Customs & shopped
Barraclough
in retaliation for an indecent assault by DB when Derek was only 16. For a long time afterwards Derek suspected Gerry knew this & was terrified that he might one day tell Barraclough, who did his time & left Wormwood Scrubs stripped of his union card & full of resentment. So for years each was wary of what the other knew & might say, & a sort of fossilised friendship has grown up based on a wary conspiratorial amity from the past. Gerry says Barraclough died several years ago, making the whole thing irrelevant now although Derek and he are left with this sometimes petulant rivalry. So that’s
that
little tale.

As for the opera’s last act which Max repeated while we were at Ipswich Hospital, it seems to have gone brilliantly after all though Max said some of the prolonged applause & many curtain calls may have been down to the sympathy effect that favours those who Bravely Carry On. Still, the largely rave reviews have completely
lifted
the librettist’s spirits & he is now basking insufferably. He has attended both subsequent nights, which have played with someone else as the Duke, & borrowed a silver-topped cane to lean on in
order to appear in the curtain calls with Marta at the end. It’s still too painful for him to actually bow, so he stood there in a cloak and gravely raised his cane, looking for all the world like one of those old-time impresarios – Diaghilev or someone. All he needed was an astrakhan collar & a top hat. I’m afraid Gerry’s future in the world of musico-thespianism is now assured.

The mystery of the penguin was soon cleared up. The strange thing is that in the shock of the moment neither Gerry nor I immediately thought of the mad clarinettist who came to that fatal dinner a year ago dressed as a gorilla & was later sectioned, although Max says he realised at once who it was. It turns out the wretched man, a
really
talented musician who was a founder member of the CSO but who now has no job, was eventually ‘returned to care in the
community
’ (in the touchy-feely phrase that actually means ‘Get lost & keep taking the pills’). It seems he was put up to the whole thing by a
fellow
we know as Spud. Spud was the servant or driver or partner of Dougie Monteith, the ancient near-neighbour who died of a heart attack on that same night of the Great Puke & who was yet another Crendlesham guest who has needed to be stretchered off to Ipswich A&E. Spud has apparently never forgiven Gerry, whom he blames absolutely for his friend’s death, & he paid this loony out-
of-work
clarinettist to sneak onstage & bugger things up. Which he did magnificently. Spud was waiting for him outside in a car & whisked him away again. But the fellow had a serious relapse that night (I almost wrote ‘went ape again’) & has now been sectioned once more & the whole story has come out. No actual crime has been committed so nothing more will happen although Gerry talks darkly of suing for injuries sustained or otherwise wreaking some terrible vengeance on the delinquent Spud. He drops the names of some Lincoln’s Inn barristers he knows & says he’s looking forward to seeing Spud come up against men of the forensic calibre of Berndt Naughten QC or Sir Julian Easte-Coaker QC. I shall do my utmost to talk him out of this idiocy otherwise it will all degenerate into a truly operatic vendetta. My job is being made easier by the way the other two performances have gone & the praise he’s receiving. In
fact he’s getting so mellow I’m confident I can prevail on him to be magnanimous. It’s already a good sign of his recovery – though not necessarily good news for the rest of us – that he says he’s feeling like doing some creative cookery again. Anything but that.

And so closes this chapter in Gerry’s rise to stardom, as one might say. In my last email I think I bored you with my fears that simple geography might sooner or later drive a wedge between him & me. But from the way things are going it looks more likely that he will soon begin to tire of a humble boffin who likes copepods. Suddenly he’s been catapulted into a world of musical grandees & it’s all Tizia this & Brian that & Jeremy the other. I’m not really being mean – he’s earned it. My hope is he’ll calm down round about the time his stitches come out. My fear is he won’t.

Do let me know about London. Having now sampled and relished Marta’s music I have this odd & probably quite misplaced feeling that I owe it to her to try her national cuisine. I’m sure it’s perfectly OK. Gerry always does exaggerate so. But in any case happy
festive
season, as we say in 2008 AD (Anno Dawkins).

Cheers,
Adrian