for a

a hum for Alaric Sumner

study # 3

Lawrence Upton

I went with you to Zennor, you know. Of course, you don't. You had no choice, I realise; though you do not. Carlyle came too. She'd asked that, and how could I refuse? Or why should I?

It was the day before we buried you. I didn't stay at your house - well I told you all this, didn't I? Do you remember? Round about Trevalgan. I remember your resistance to Wicca; and so, once more, I didn't go. I'd have thought death might have changed you or that death would have allowed me to change you. But you said: you can change me if you want but it won't be me. And that intelligent giggle of yours remains. I remember my father's cough more easily than I remember him speaking.

You see! I still side-track myself... I talk as if you had been dead for years. This is me speaking now. Just me. You have to be quiet. I'm going to be tyrannical for architectonic reasons. You'll not speak again until and if this piece is repeated. Be patient.

But the point is: I remember my father's cough; and he's been dead nearly thirty years. I hear it now.

So off we went, together, an unbelieving trinity on a road to our own Emmaus. And Carlyle saying she couldn't manage the stiles; but she always did. And better than me. She was impressed by virtuality. I was the only one who tired.

Of course, you remember all this, if I choose. It slips. I have to tell the truth; but, for a while, you remember. You remember; you don't remember. It flickers. You flicker. Something like mistyping. Producing oddities. Possibilities. Layers of them. In some, Carlyle was excited by the mermaid carved on the chair; in some, she paid it little mind. In others, we didn't go into the church.

Something you don't know, because you weren't there - that's the point.

Verisimilitude prevents your knowing. I couldn't have told you and you couldn't see it. I don't think the dead get omnipresence, do they? We never actually talked about you being dead. It seemed inappropriate. And neither of us knew before. I've been trying to learn from this, to see out of the sump, to see the world; but, for my reasons, as you for yours, there's nothing changed. It's objective. I don't even promise not to switch myself off some time. There was nothing about natural death in our agreement. You've broken it.

What you don't know is how stiff in the joints I was that evening. We must have walked twenty miles. I'm glad you talked me out of going on to Gurnard's Head. I might have died if we had!

Sorry. That's not funny. It's not funny, so you needn't laugh. They can't hear you; only me. They can? Oh. Well, stop it anyway. Thanks. What was mad, for me, anyway, was going back by a different return path, trying not to gesture as we talked, in case we frightened someone with our partial invisibility. A pretty route. Once I lay down at the end, it took an hour at least to move, I was in such extensive albeit mild pain. Took myself to the shower. There was no room to move.

You know, at the funeral, I was listening to hear your protests; but you took it well. I heard nothing. I was listening before I spoke; and then, when I stood up and tried to tell this story, I was listening. It was tight in there. I could hardly soap myself; hardly rinse the soap off. Then back to watching tv. What else is there to do in St Ives with you not there to talk to? I don't drink much now, you know...

MacSweeney died. I don't know more than that, not yet. I'll update this in later drafts if it seems appropriate, let you know.

& I was ok by the morning. Went round to your mum's. The point is we took that walk.

I'll be back soon. I'll make you know. Come down from Long Rock to meet me. I hate Carbis Bay. Meet me just beyond the turn off to Nancledra. We'll go inland this time and you can talk at me about Stanley Fish and I'll talk at you about D H Lawrence; and if Carlyle comes she can laugh at both of us, especially when we get to the sign to Wicca and I want to go and you don't. You're right, you're right, there's nothing much to see and nothing at all to see that I don't know about, small details long washed away. But it connects me with our ancestors, in my fantasy; and so with whom I am. In whom, I might say. Almost a good pun, "I might say" a fragment of the late Professor Mottram. We are, Alaric, as you now don't know, and always did, an accumulation of the dead and of each other. We are each other. Rags and scraps of being, as Strindberg had it. I misquote seriously. After Alaric is, I am.

I just wanted to be sure you knew we went. Maybe you heard through that polished wood. Maybe that was why you were so quiet.

What self-control. You and me walking to The Tinner's and me not going in; and you not trying to persuade me, knowing I would enjoy it.

This piece was performed by the author at Writers Forum Workshop during the summer of 2000.

Studies 1 and 2 have been published by the online magazine Riding the Meridian.

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