John Cairns: Elizabeth Clark, Writers' Group, Richmond Trees and sundry other interests

The most interesting reaction to my telling everybody about Dadaoism (An Anthology) in which I’ve a short story was Bill Goldman’s. I came across him in Waitrose. His reaction was of one feeling he was being put down and having of necessity to put himself up by putting the other down or at least by some means to get out of the implied imposition he should buy the book. He asked how much it cost and, on being told, said it was too much. Why should he buy it? I wouldn’t buy his. His doctoral thesis was on William Blake’s poems or mysticism in general which had to be shortened to book length for publication by someone other than Bill who couldn’t while yet recommending himself as an English tutor. “At least you got your doctorate out of it,” I sympathised ingenuously. Retrospectively, ingenuousness works better than disingenuousness in response to somebody keen to put you down.

Since he was academic, I went on, “You might be more interested in the book, coming out shortly, I made from an archived correspondence with a literary figure.” “Why did the publisher want to publish it?” I offered that I’d contrived to possess both sides of the correspondence if not, of course, entirely. “Why did the publisher want to publish it! You’re not famous!” That it might be good didn’t enter in. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask her. She said she might as well publish it and I said ok.”

But the killer was when I went onto my verse translatons of Baudelaire, coming out shortly in a magazine. Bill couldn’t wait to get away, saying I should email him them and the short story. I didn’t value his opinion and wasn’t about to give him gratuitously grounds for a cheap comeback at my expense I could do little to rebut, so I disingenuously emailed him the links to the book on Amazon and to a review of it I thought mentioned me. He replied the review didn’t. I got the review that did and sent him that: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-dadaoism-an-anthology-edited/page-2/, coup de grace.

To the left of the shop front was notice to let a retail space with basement which might entail the end of the WG there.

John and Jacqui came in and we’d plenty time to discuss publishers, primarily Quentin and Chomu since John and I both have an interest in promoting his books, my short story being in Dadaoism, but Jacyntha and her shopfront display in Glasgow got a mention since it looks like CORRESPONDENCE is back on course and I’ve also translated poems to be published in a magazine probably called Leaves of Art. Jacqui’s book is at the typesetting stage.

I read out a passage on punishment, the topic, from ‘the book’ which caused them confusion. John thinks any mention of ‘man’ means Johnny’s man, his spirit, and Jacqui had difficulty understanding how the two telepathic interlocuters had got where apparently they were. These aren’t stupid people but sren’t graspiing it’s all by Johnny’s imagination, from imagining a man behind a tree to imagining he’s been abused and succeeded his abuser as societally appointed abusing man and to have been put in prison. He also shifts the background to suit so has shifted his imagining of where he is from Avenue to green without any intervening crossing of the burn and walk there though he thinks he’s forgotten how he got from one place to another. That there’s a gap is therefore covered in the text.

I understood why they have so much difficulty after I heard them talk about the way they write. Basically the difference is I write from the inside out, they, as is usual, from the outside in, where they are the outside. I’m realising what unconsciously I remembered of the content when time stopped. They are making their writing consciously up and can have no concept of anything other than the temporal. John has the additional obstacle of his disbelief in any unconscious, thus having to understand only on terms of his own way of writing. So far as I’m concerned mine isn’t fiction; theirs is. For example John might in writing change a name of a character. All he has to do for consistency is find the name he used and change it to the new name by means of his computer. What struck me was the superficiality of the characterisation, dependent on such conventional labelling, whereas Johnny is so grounded in his own real character, conveyed by every authentic word, as is his mum, that he can change personae fluidly. John and Jacqui’s characters can’t. Jacqui described getting so carried away in creating dialogue she couldn’t be bothered placing it. She then has to place it to heighten its effect, in a car rather than a room say. John finds he’s put a scene leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in September, rather than when it has to be, in November. It’s almost all applique writing like Mozart’s imposition of form, instead of organic, form emanating from content, style and content as one.

While I scrubbed out a red stain, Jacqui read out the end of John’s Fake Book and then from her own new writing, developing a character from the to be published book. She’s yet to find a way to fit this together with the piece she read out last time. It’s a jigsaw method.

John emailed:
Langtons is closing. I popped in today and got the news. You had noticed Lease sign and spilling red wine was an omen we didn’t recognise at the time. I’m told Mary will email in due course. All things end, of course, but this is a bit de trop. I presume you’ll let the gang know when dates are confirmed. Last night may well be our finale there.

More later when everyone decides what to do
John

I’d known Maureen years ago. I saw her again in Tesco’s. “Con!” I said, realising afterwards that that was not her name, which popped up, and I addressed her by it next time. (‘Con’ was an ‘n’ short of her surname though.)

There came a buzz on the entryphone: Maureen. She had a cup of tea and two glasses of wine. She’d seen the empty flat downstairs and wanted it. She said she’d buy the book, “How much did it cost?” She didn’t use the internet so couldn’t buy it for herself from Amazon.

She had a form to fill in for being housed by the council but hadn’t got round to filling it in …in three years. My advice was to the point.

She visited again; tea, drink, and wasn’t buying the book. She didn’t read. She had books given her in a cupboard. She’d had a reply from the council and has more than enough points to be housed but could amplify her chances with a medical report. My advice was to the point but do I want Maureen downstairs of me? What in any case is the likelihood of that?

A man buzzed me to be let in; he said he was to do with the painters, who’d finished. I let him in, then thought to check. As I went into the stairwell he was about to climb the stairs to the floor above. He said he recognised me, not so much the face as the voice. He looked recognisable too and it was by the face I said he was. He pinned down where he’d recognised me by asking had I lived here when the standpipe was installed. He would answer any questions I had later, he said, going upstairs, adding he was younger then. I didn’t say he was still desirable since the ‘still’ would confirm the self-deprecation he was less so by being older in the face. I don’t think I’ve ever had an erection from talking and bemusedly wondered if he’d knock at my door, like John had, because I was quite likely in the circumstances to be unfaithful. He did’t. It was of no consequence like the last time when I’d shouted “Kitten!” on the cat and seen this naked back below me arched over a hole like a cat a mousehole. The men insinuated I was calling on him who they called Kitten or say they said.

Next morning he was looking up as he came to clean up a spill of paint and I waved. Going to vote, I stopped to find out he’d studied genetics. Then. I asked, What are you doing this for? He liked working with he men. There was no erection. He’d read A Brief History of Time and gave me his name and an email address to contact him with links to my story. The address didn’t work. I wasn’t having an erection either.

No letter, no prison orders from John.

Quentin vouchsafes an address for his beach party. Borrowed a pen from Rosie, the librarian, to write it down. Plan itinerary. Back in library where Fiona, assistant librarian and friend, looks up Dadaoism: An Anthology which can be preordered on Amazon, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dadaoism-An-Anthology-Reggie-Oliver/dp/1907681140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335801968&sr=8-1. My name isn’t evident but my story’s in there, a chick pecking through the shell.

Greg calls in and it’s half-six before I know it. I rapidly grill turkey pieces and make up takeaway rolls, just catching the fast train to Waterloo, onto London Bridge, Bank, finally to Limehouse, there, always the trickiest part, using the A-Z, asking my way to Repton St, which, I was told by a Moslem girl, I was on.

Quentin wasn’t there. I was met at the door by a young couple who’d forgotten my name and I theirs, though we’d met on a previous Quentin occasion. She reintroduced them, to little avail – I may have got the rudiments of her name – and I gave mine. I was the first to arrive, the other young man, Ben, presumably living there. People usually come late. I excused my faux pas on the grounds I had no idea how long it’d take, one hour ten minutes, to get there, having left at seven five.

I was starving and ate to get it out of the way in the kitchen while they continued preparations in the other room. When I joined them, the host asked where he should put the drape or throw and I said the plain couch since the other was already patterned. Domenica, as I would be spelling the name if I did get it, wouldn’t let me open the £140 bottle of champagne – two for £180 – I’d brought till Quentin came so we had the Prosecco. I liked her theme pictures on the kitchen wall of Quentin juxtaposed with Annette Funicello, especially the multiple green fingers groping Quentin’s green face.

My host at the open door thought he’d seen Daniel. I assured him Daniel’d come back and he did come next. He’s still publishing my translated poems in his magazine and I wanted to know how people’d set about buying that, even more problematical than the book for people who didn’t order on Amazon. He’s very nice to me and draws me out in talk, knowing how shy and socially timid I am, while ironically observing, “You told me that last time,” presumably whenever I did. Once upon a time I could remember where I’d left off a conversation with whoever I’d been talking with however long before. Daniel asked if I knew of Quentin’s depression a fortnight ago. I didn’t; “I wasn’t in when he called.” Daniel wasn’t talking at a gallop or like a burn in spate splattering on protruding boulders but measuredly. He referred to a Mark Samuels from our last encounter but one. There was a Mark by then in the kitchen but it wasn’t “That Mark there? Was he the baldy one?” “Yes!” said Daniel, admitting he’d been thinking how to put it politely like ‘short-haired’ but I said you should always go for the significant detail like my big red nose or his long hair unless, as Daniel observed, there was another long-haired man present, in which case long straight hair, with glasses. I commended Daniels’ last intellectualising thing on Facebook but hadn’t commented, I said, because I’d’ve gone straight for the missing apostrophe. I got onto the subject of being affronted by Greg’s asking me to type out prison John’s poem for him. (Greg has never evinced any interest in my writing though he has promised to buy the book.)

Quentin! who I asked how were people who didn’t use Amazon or the internet to get a copy of the book. He suggested my ordering from Amazon for them. He was bored writing horror and writing gothic instead. “What’s the difference?” A lack of horror in the gothic. He said I thought him too conscious a writer. I was mortified, “By definition, writing has to be conscious. You can write beautifully.” He apologised about not getting back to me about what I’d written on Justin’s book. “You’re busy. It’s was no good,” I suggested. It was okay. “It would offend Justin.” Justin wouldn’t mind. “Good, I wouldn’t want to offend Justin.” I could now go on to see if my theory of narcissism panned out in the other stories, mentioning the one on the female Buddha, whose name I didn’t remember, who’s in the sky, seen by everybody, yet the story’s protagonist could damage her in a room, “Standing on a chair,” said Daniel, and in her throat see himself, “narcissism!”

Quentin, diminutive, thin, with ringleted locks, displayed the mild nudity stipulated for the party in an open-necked paisley patterned shirt, and was being given presents he tore open; and I hadn’t even thought to bring him one, I plained to Daniel. I urged the opening of the champagne and all had some in mugs: Agnes and her boyfriend whose name I didn’t pick up though I did appraise his slightly bulging waist and tilting nose, Nina with a floral wreath in her hair who’d crowned Q with another, Mark, Ben, Domenica and my nameless host, a gentle boy, with a pierced left ear and memorable black hair. He’s more mature than last time or perhaps just that bit older (more assured perhaps in his own setting), prettiness unimpaired, even enhanced. Domenica had Quentin sign her copy of the anthology. “Why is he signing it? He’s only the editor,” I objected. “Oh, he does have a story in it, doesn’t he?” I went on, Daniel ironically observing that, of course, I had only read my own story, as if I were a total egotist. “I’ll read them all when I’ve a copy.”

Domenika – I took pains to follow Quentin’s dedicatory spelling on the same page – had me autograph her copy of the Dadaoist anthology. I wrote my dedication to her in uncertain French and commented of my signature, “It’ll be valuable one day, since probably the only one.” She understood as I did not how my depressing Greg further could lift his depression. She wouldn’t agree Tina, a neighbour who’d furtively cracked my rosemary, was bad, conceding she was mean-spirited.

We all had to buy a book as a present for Quentin. I bought one and he gave me another one free. I protested. I’d brought money. It was because I was supportive he said. “You’re publishing me!” He wouldn’t let me buy more then, to let others have a go.

Domenika writes porn poems in English but is primarily a performing artiste. She and Quentin are doing a work together in a made-up language arranged in constellations, concrete poetry I suggested. Stephanie joined us on a couch. She’d retreated home to Dorset, working in a jobclub there, but was coming back to teach art in London. She’d come with a capped and idiosyncratic John. A ball somebody, probably Domenika’s father had left but that was now theirs, when stotted incited two little balls inside it to sparkle colourfully. I would’ve liked to know how. Quentin thought one of these wasn’t working but it was. I bounced it to invariably hit Mark on his balls. He kindly bounced it back till I caught it less awkwardly. I caught a look in Nina’s eyes of unsureness her social cogs were meshing. Then they were again.

Books were spread out on a table in the other room and I went for the one Domenika recommended but Quentin wasn’t sure, suggesting I read the first few paragraphs first, which I did for all, picking one somebody else had already bought, so settling for the first faute de mieux. Daniel teased I should buy another, indicating which. “Isn’t that John Elliott’s?” I retracted in gothic horror, explaining to the assembled party-goers why, on principle, I wouldn’t read it. He’d gratuitously said he would never buy ‘the book’, which wasn’t even being published, because he wouldn’t read it. In our writing group we were polarities.

Gareth arrived. He’s tall, thin, with a cap of dark hair and sideburns that go on to become a jaw-fringing beard. If anything, he looked younger than last time and I’d no trouble recognising him, I noted. He offered a beer I couldn’t accept because of my gluten-freakery or a cigarette because I don’t smoke. Quentin, in the kitchen, had a cigarette. “I didn’t know you smoked.” “Occasionally,” we both said.

Gareth’s coping with an eleventh month old baby with great forbearance as is Mark with his fraternal two year old twins. (I’d’ve joked ‘fratricidal’ here but it’d be out of keeping with the tone of the occasion.) I was thinking of leaving by quarter to eleven. Quentin told Gareth I’d wanted him to read prison John’s love letters, to give him a different …I snared the fugitive word, “perspective!” He affirmed John was good-looking, for his age. Quentin was encouraging me, because of my aforementioned retiring nature, to tell Gareth, who didn’t know any of it, the entire saga of prison John from start to finish with “Fade-out,” intruded by Mark who was getting the hang of the intermissions in that relationship and who didn’t think, from his experience, five months was long to get somebody off hard drugs and shoplifting. Gareth asked was I off the hook yet.

It was five to eleven! I went upstairs for my hoodie with my host I really wanted to be able at that juncture to address by name. I’d’ve liked to stay and he asked why not then. Daniel had arranged to sleep over though, as Quentin put it, having to share with somebody. That’d’ve been interesting, to see who with – not my host who’d be sleeping with Domenika – and to casually drop on prison John I had, but I’d never have slept, first night in a strange place, as I could when young. It’d’ve been an imposition.

Back in the kitchen I asked Quentin what Domenika’s husband’s name was. He wasn’t her husband, punctilious Quentin just had to say, didn’t he? “Partner then.” “Joe.” “Joe?” “Joe.” Domenika was laughing into the wall. How could anybody not remember ‘Joe’? I kissed Quentin goodbye. Gareth, leaning back, kept me at arm’s length with a firm handshake. Daniel stretched his hand out in the other room to be grasped. I was seen out, Domenika giving me directions how to go before turning her attention onto an arriving guest. I got lost but spied a bus going to Shadwell and ran for that. It contained predominantly white-dressed Muslim men at the back and black-garbed Muslim women of face and eyes at the front where sat I. I ran upstairs to the train at Bank, and went through the wrong gates at London Bridge but was let out again and caught the train to Waterloo East and the Reading fast train to Richmond, one hour five minutes to get back home.

Mark wanted to move my plants from beside the runnel to the balcony wall in order to paint the cement skirting of the flat wall from stairwell to …wherever. He wanted to move them onto Tina’s bit. I said he’d better ask. In fact he didn’t encroach on hers at all but moved the rosemary balcony box in front of the stairwell door where its protrusion was least impeding since anybody coming through for me and Leslie could go one side of it and Tina the other. Leslie, his friends, even Bob who wanted to know what option I’d chosen for the stairwell walls and railing, all managed.

Tina returned from wherever and asked had the painter moved the box there. I said he had. She said it was in people’s way, meaning hers, and should’ve been farther down my bit. I explained then it would be in the way of people visiting me and Leslie and that it wasn’t in anybody’s way – hers – where it was. She said it’d be there till Monday when the painters returned. I said I’d move it back myself once the paint dried.

I was moving wine back into the shed, toing and froing, when from inside the flat I heard a crack and on my next visit to the shed saw the rosemary had been broken, no sign of the bit broken off. Taking a leaf out of Diana’s book, I said loudly enough for her to hear from inside her flat that she was arrogant, that I’d get her for it and she needn’t think I wouldn’t.

She lost her locked shed door key with her bunch of door keys inside the shed.