From Jester To King LII

The bit I remember best was them telling me to leave. It haunts me, I mean it really haunts me and I can feel it in my body even now. And these things are so much worse when you’re all upbeat and chipper and think you’ve got everything down pat. I remember milling outside for a bit talking to Thomas, such a big burly hunk of a man is Thomas, doesn’t look like a Thomas, and he had his briefcase in hand and when I asked him if he was going somewhere, he was all coy, a bit mysterious, like a travelling salesman on his way to Hull with all his brochures and his samples and offcuts and his harrowed visage and having to do something which the best part of him was averse to and which he had to keep on doing in the good-old fashioned way of just doing what he knows best, what keeps him busy, what keeps wolf from the door.

I am always wondering if people like me, and that is a drag. And then when I’m all up it seems as if I’m geeing everyone else up, this artificial buoyancy and I can feel them coming back for more and more  air, more cushioning, support I feel them attracted to me and life is a breeze. And the angst goes away. Oh and by the way, can you believe they think it’s a good idea to scalp animals, I mean it was horrific to see them catching lemurs and monkeys in Hyde Park and just ripping the skin from their hides, why that is something to be praised, I have no idea, but the memories of that are even vaguer, just a few images of the lemurs leaping from tree to tree and a man with a scalper.

Back to Alvin Primus, the house of Alvin Primus’ parents. Alvin I hadn’t seen for years but time changes no one, same old Alvin twenty years later. So I go inside, and this buoyancy I spoke about, well I’m coming off a particular rush, and I dash in, all happy and full and buoyant, and there they are on the low circular couch arrangement the Primuses always had just off the kitchen, very ‘70’s, very kitsch, a bit louche, and there are about nine of them, and I hardly even notice individual faces, such is my chipperness, and I don’t even get what they’re doing to start with, and as I look closer I see Joseph Childs amongst a few familiar others and I must admit to making a sarky remark, I can’t exactly remember what it was, but still in the vein of the jovial and the upbeat and the attempt at making all and sundry jolly and light-hearted, and the remark doesn’t arouse derision or anything but it certainly doesn’t endear, it was admittedly not the best opening gambit, easy to say now with hindsight, but I’m not saying I had completely befouled my approach, all I’m saying is I should think before speaking.

And it was then I noticed that they were playing Trivial Pursuit, wonderful old Trivial Pursuit, the asking of questions, their answering, the revealing of knowledge, of facts gathered and retained in our time on this earth, and the particular question that was causing consternation amidst the group --they’d opened it up to the floor -- and what with all the Oxbridge bods no one could answer it, and the question was, well see if you can get it: what is the term for a person who exercises control over another?, and as soon as they I heard it, though I have to say I don’t think they were expecting me to pipe up, well as soon as I heard it, the word Svengali came into my head, and I’m not saying that it fits the description, but I couldn’t prevent myself from blurting it out, it was purely spontaneous and in the right spirit, but when everyone made as if to suggest that not only wasn’t it correct but it wasn’t even in the ballpark and s not even a word that made any sense, a bout of braggadocio, well I was more than a bit put out.

And just to be silly and high-spirited, to show I’d go along with their assessment I started shouting ‘Fuck’, I must have said it three times, to show that I wasn’t going to object, but then as soon as I say the third ‘Fuck’, Alvin tells me to get out like I’ve committed the most heinous of crimes the world’s ever known. And he doesn’t even get up, just motions with his left arm, and then as I’m moving away, almost feeling this hateful energy repel me, one of the prissy Cambridge girls who I can hardly remember turns round on the couch so that she’s kneeling on it facing the back and now facing me, she expresses in words what Alvin Primus has just gestured, telling me I should leave. I will go if Alvin tells me, but this girl, what did she have to do anything, and I’m absolutely riven with anger by now, and I spit at her: YOU DO NOT TELL ME WHEN TO LEAVE THIS HOUSE, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?  Of course I’m making my way out anyway, I can hardly stick around with nine people fully against me, and I remember as I walked out the side door, his driveway all muddy from the rain which had fallen and which had started again falling, and it was a nice feeling to be out in the air, in the elements, feeling the stones beneath my feet, the wind and droplets of rain, and there was this sense, this message, that people are one facet, they are one side of the circle, and the other side is the natural world and neither has dominance over the other.