Read The Back of His Head Online
Authors: Patrick Evans
The old fellow looked at me hard when he said this. He knows you're as mad as he is, he said. Madder. He knows you've got his DNA.
And I wondered, how much of the story, the full story, did he know?
Now, at last, the September meeting of the Raymond Lawrence Memorial Trust, properly notified and quorate: Hon. Chairman Mr P. Orr, Hon. Secretary Ms M. Swindells, Hon. Treasurer Mr J. Yuile,
Order please
â
âOh, shit, is there a meeting now?' Marjorie has just noticed the papers set out before each chair at the dining table. âYou just said it was an emergency.'
â
That's
the emergency, having a meeting!' Semple. âOnce a month, Marge, thought you'd remember once a month!'
For twenty seconds, the usual rattle of ill-tempered gunfire.
Order, order
â
We get through the prefatory nonsenseâ
is it your wishâthose forâAYE
(Semple always very loud at this point, sometimes sustaining the note like a choirboy)
those against, CARRIED
.
There are no matters arising but under chairman's business I am able to report the ongoing sale of unauthorised Raymond Thomas Lawrence memorabilia onlineâcheap
bric-a-brac
, more a hangover from the time of the award of the Prize than a real and ongoing threat, but crass and irritating all the same: for example, a line in garden gnomes made to look like the Masterâthe Master sitting fishing, the Master as Rodin's Thinker, even (most lamentable of all) the Master as the Manneken-Pis. Appalling, upsetting, infuriating: but, according to our legal advisors, untouchable, since we'd lose more if we sued, apparently, than we might gain. And, as I said, this particular phenomenon does seem rather to be fading out.
âYou've told us all this before,' Semple is slumped forward, his arms along the tabletop.
âTrue,' Marjorie works a moist refreshing tissue at a reddening septum. âNext business please.'
âWe haven't
got
to the business proper yet,' I tell her. âI'm still doing chairman's business.'
âAll right, do that,' she tells me. âCome on, chop-chop.'
âRoof repairs,' I tell them.
âIsn't that Item 2 Upkeep?'
I remind Julian I'm still reporting from the last meeting. âEric the handyman's had a look at the roof,' I tell them, âand he gives it a year.'
Pause.
âAnd then, what?' Marjorie demands. âIt all falls in on us?'
âAnd then it needs repairing,' Julian says.
âAnd then it needs
replacing
,' I tell them.
âOh, shit. Let's forget about that, then, what's next?'
We move on to the agenda proper.
Proposed from the chair: That in light of today's theft, Item 3 Security be moved to Item 1: CARRIED nem. con
.
Once it gets there, though, the perennial impasse returns.
âI can't believe we're discussing a fucking paua shell
ashtray
,' Semple groans. âWho cares if some prick's nicked a paua shell?'
âIt's not just a paua shell,' I remind him.
âWe've discussed this before, aren't we rather thrashing it to death?' Marjorie asks. âNext business
please
.'
But the next business is Financial, and there, the same issue threatens to come up again, meltingâ
order, order
âinto Item 3 (as it is now), Upkeep.
Whichever item we deal with, of course, it's about the same thing, even I have to recognise that: the need to find money against the perennially rising cost of running the Residence and the fundamental, ineluctable fact that, even without our having spent a dollar of it, the Trust's endowment capital has become relatively smaller and smaller as each year has gone past. And against all this, the need to keep alive the authenticity, the integrity of the venture. Its
purity
, even: even its
spiritual
aspect.
Whenever we discuss these things, as I've said, Julian and I are always for the latter, and Semple and Marjorie are always (in effect) against: meaning that they want to start selling some of Raymond's
objets
to pay for upkeep, while Julian and I don't want to sell anything at all. They want to
represent
Raymond's life with bits and pieces from second-hand shops, imitation antiques or even rough approximations, used books by the carton-load from the back room of the university's bookshop, knives, forks and spoons from Bargain City out by the airport, and so forth. Julian and I have always held the line against these proposed atrocities, and for
authenticity
.
And here, at this evening's meeting, the perennial impasse, presenting itself yet again. Semple starts the show:
âEvery single problem on this'âhe taps his agendaââwould be solved if we cashed the place up.'
âThere's no motion on the table.'
âIf we cashed up, it wouldn't matter what they nicked, they'd be nicking crap anyway, we'd just replace the crap with more crap. If they gouge it we'd, you know, use wood-filler? If they keep on gouging it we'd replace the whole item from a junkshop. It'd all be crap.'
âI have only one thing to say about this.' A pause, as I look around the table. âMabel Carpenter.'
âOh,
fucking
Mabel Carpenter. Not her again.
Christ
, she was dreary.'
âYes.' Julian. âSome of her stuff's unreadable.'
â
All
of it's unreadable.'
âShe was a great writer, though,' Marjorie says.
âOhâno doubt about that, she was a great writer all right.'
âNo doubt about that at all.'
âHer Memorial Residence is a
disaster
,' I remind them. âWe all know that.'
And it's true, both that the Residence of the late Mabel Carpenterâshe whose fiction brought Dargaville to the worldâis a joke, and that we all
know
is so. When it was first opened we had a look at the place, Julian and I, driving north after a conference in Auckland at which the pair of us represented the Master late in his life, when he was too ill to travel. Naturally, given his condition then, we had thoughts of what might soonâand now, alas, hasâcome to pass: I mean how a writer's home might most properly be turned into a memorial residence once he has (as Raymond used to put it)
passed on to the great whisky decanter in the sky
.
Not like that! the pair of us chortled happily as we drove away from Mabel's Residence afterwards. It was her house all right, I mean it was one that she had lived in: but for years after her death it had been rented by civilians (as Raymond used to call the inartistic), and there was not a thing she'd actually owned in it once her memorial trust decided it was time to commemorate her, nor anything very much to guide them in their sad little reconstruction.
A desk very similar to one Mabel might have written on
is a line I rememberâwith laughterâon a notice tacked to the wall above a very ordinary table that had been sanded down to nothing, no past in it, no life.
A bed typical of beds of the period
was another. The
pièce de résistance
âthe nearest they could manage to the real thing, the nearest to achieving, for the literary tourist, the true and authentic momentâwas a clothes-wringer in the outside laundry, certified to be authentic on a nearby placard, though described as a mangle all the same.
Mabel's mangle
, we came to call it, and we were quite clear that, when the time came, the Raymond Lawrence Memorial Residence would do better, far better, than that.
Naturally, I remind the meeting of all this.
We mustn't get caught in Mabel's Mangle
is my concluding lineârather a good one, I can't help thinking.
There is a pause, and then Marjorie continues as if I haven't even spoken!
âIt'd have to be good-looking crap,' she's telling Semple. âIt'd have to look almost the same as the stuff we're talking about selling.'
âIt's not stuff and we're not talking about selling it,' I remind her. âThere's no motion on the table.'
âYou mean if there was, you'd discuss itâ?'
âIf it had a seconder.' I look across at Julian. âThen I'd have no choice.'
âAll right.' Semple. âI move we sell the Steinway.'
âOh, not the baby grand,' Marjorie says.
âI think'âthis is me, feeling my way towards a deferralââI think it'd be better if we addressed the principle first rather than the particulars.'
âMy motion's on the
table
, fuck itâ'
âNo, it's not, there's no seconder.'
Semple looks at Marjorie. âCome on, Marge,' he says.
âAsk somebody else. I don't want to sell the baby Steinway. And don't call me Marge.'
âIt's worth more than all the rest. It's worth more than the entire house and garden. It's worth hundreds of thousands. It's a fucking
Steinway
, for God's sake, with art casing, I don't know how it got here in the first placeâ'
The Steinway is in the corner of the Blue Room, covered in framed photographs and with a large table lamp on it. It's one of several items in the Residence obviously with some monetary value, though (it has to be said) not necessarily as much as Semple and Marjorie would like to think. Though they don't realise it, I've had it valued, and found it would bring in about fifty thousand local dollars according to when and where it was sold and by whom. Overseas, of course, it would be a different matter, sold overseas it would fetch rather more. But then one would have to
get
the piano overseas in order to sell it, which would cost all we might realistically sell it for once it was there. Checkmate: and, in some ways, the history of our little country in a single proposition.
Marjorie, meanwhile, is casting around for alternatives. âThat thing.' She's pointing at the carved buffet behind me. âLet's sell that.'
âThe Henri II buffet?' Julian asks. âYou'd have a job replacing that, you'd have a job getting something cheap that looked like that.'
âYou'd have a job getting it out of the house.'
âIt'd have to be authenticated first,' I remind them.
âWhat about the berber rug, then?'
âNo,' I tell them. âThe berber rug is off-limits.'
Mr Semple's motion that the Trust sell the Steinway baby grand piano lapsed for want of a seconder
.
Ms Swindells' motion that the Trust sell the carved buffet lapsed for want of a seconder
.
Ms Swindells observes that the answer is to increase visitor numbers. Mr Semple expresses reservations
.
âYou must be fucking dreaming,' he says. âHow are we going to get more of the bastards in?'
âHow many did we used to get?' Marjorie asks me. âYou know, in the good old days?'
âTwo or three hundred a month. More. Admittedly a while agoâ'
âAdmittedly ten years ago,' Semple says. âWhen he was still famous. Christ, when he was still
alive
â'
âYes, butâ' Julian. âWeâ'
âThey used to come here to get a sight of him drooling in his fucking bath chair. Ray. That's the only reason they came, that's why we got so many people through, the old boy was still around to gob in front of them.'
âButâ'
âYes, but even so, show me the literary residence in the country that ever gotâ'
âHow many literary homes
are
thereâ?'
âShow me the literary residence
anywhere
â'
âYes, butâ'
ââthat has consistently made a profitâI mean a meaningful profit, not just pocket money.'
I sit back.
Marjorie squirms her mouth. âYes,' she creaks at me. âThat's all very well, Peter, but you're telling us yourself, dear.
You've
brought it up,
you're
telling
us
we've got a crisis. Item 2, Financial crisis.'
âA problem. A challenge.'
âYes, but'âJulian at lastââit's not just visitors, they don't bring in that much, for God's sake, they never have, we didn't ask for anything at all for a long time and what do we ask for now? A voluntary contribution that hardly anyone actually makes.'
A pause.
âTrue,' says Marjorie. âWe'll have to start charging them to get inâ'
âThen nobody'll come,' says Semple. âEnd of story.'
âBut we'd have to charge a hundred dollars a visit to get anywhere near what we need.' Julian turns to me. âWhat needs doing?'
I look at my list. âWe pay quarterly rating, the phone, electricityâ'
âWell,
fuck
the phone for a start.' Semple rocks from cheek to tender cheek. âWho needs a fucking
phone
when there's no one here most of the time?'
âRobert, darls, don't tilt back like that.' Marjorie. âThese chairs just won't take it anymore.' Then (to me): âMaybe
they
need replacing, tooâthe chairs?'
Proposed Mr Semple, that the telephone be disconnected forthwith, seconded by Mr Yuile: carried nem con., Mr Orr to action
.
What else?
âThe guttering needs replacingâ'
âIt needs
placing
, there isn't any at all round the sideâ'
I stick to my script. âThe garden. We're down to one gardening lady now. Valâ'
âHow many did we used to haveâgardening ladiesâ?'
âBack then? Seven. But we didn't pay them. Deciding to pay them was a mad idea. We were paying four at one stageâwhen those Austrians came and made that documentary we had four gardening ladies on the payrollâ'
âYes, but doesn't it look spiffing, in the doco, I meanâthe house and the gardenâdoesn't it look
spiffing
â? Summertime, and all thatâ?'