Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

‘I can’t possibly read in front of Gregory Corso,’ he says, like he is some sort of mouse who’s been granted an audience with the king. According to him the clown-faced American is famous and has hung out with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and almost caused a riot with the Beats in Paris. We’re each of us shy for our own reasons. I am so much younger than anyone else here.

Chuck’s chestnut beard is neatly trimmed to a point and he dances around us with a jug of fresh mint julep, swooping us to Gordon who stands by the grill in his Maxim’s de Paris apron, spatula in hand. Jimmy asks if he’s read much of Corso’s work and the way Gordon inclines his head makes me realise that he must be slightly deaf. He smells of exotic oils, cocks his hand to his ear and moves closer to Jimmy. He has zero interest in me.

I’m relieved to see Charmian and George standing together. She’s in a fresh cotton blouse with blue and yellow dots, and he’s his usual bushfire of gossip and gasping and coughing.

His arm is around her waist and Charmian rests her head on his shoulder while he takes centre stage. There’s Göran, a brooding poet called Klaus, the playwright Ken and Janis with their sweet child, Leonard and Marianne. There are lanterns hanging from the trees. The widow Polymnia moves among us with bite-sized pastries of cheese and spinach and cocktail sausages on sticks.

‘Ah, Polymnia is like a mother to the boys,’ Charmian says, watching the widow, whose pinafore hangs from the vast dado of her bosom. I can see how Chuck might be described as a boy, being so small and lively, but not Gordon who looks semi-embalmed.

Polymnia is clucking around Greg Corso, serving him from a bowl of aubergine dip. I like the look of Corso; there’s mischief in that worn, torn, old, young face. Charmian says that he’d been on the streets as a kid and spent his youth in Clinton state prison. ‘It’s a tremendously upsetting story,’ she says. ‘But it was in prison that he found Shelley and that’s when he started to write…’

‘Quite typical Chuck and Gordon behaviour, I reckon, to suck up to the famous beatnik and invite only the published writers of the island,’ George says, speaking perfectly audibly from the side of his mouth.

‘Oh pfft , George. It is good of them to invite us, that’s all,’ Marianne replies, and adds with a giggle, ‘After all, what is it you think I have published?’

‘You qualify because of Axel,’ George says. ‘Any news, by the way?’ And when Marianne shakes her head Leonard mutters darkly under his breath.

George waves his glass around, indicating everyone.

‘Seems a bit rough to exclude Paddy Greer, poor sod, but please don’t think I’m so bloody rude that I criticise our hosts, in fact I’m very much in favour.’ He raises the glass in salute to Chuck and Gordon. ‘This way we’re shot of the bloody decadents for a night,’ he says and downs his drink to fuel his oncoming tirade.

‘Oh George, please…’ Charmian says, as he starts to gather pace.

‘They come to me sticking one hand out for a favour and with the other they’re thumbing their noses because they think I write commercial shit. Meanwhile, the Ruskies aren’t taking too kindly to being lied to by a president over the bloody U-2, we could be on the brink of atomic war, but does any of that ever enter their pleasure-seeking little noggins as they hop like bloody fleas from bed to bed?’

Leonard narrows his eyes at him through the smoke of a newly lit cigarette. I’m still angry with George for his cruelty to Charmian the other night. For once I find my tongue. ‘Why does it have to be a crime for a young person to spend some time, if they can afford to do so, just living somewhere peaceful for a while? Who are we hurting? I can’t say either of my parents made being in the rat race seem that appealing. And do you really think it would make a jot of difference if I joined a march to ban the bomb? I don’t see what harm I’m doing just dreaming a while or why I make you so angry…’

George couldn’t look more taken aback if Gordon’s cat had suddenly spoken. He starts cursing and letting go at me with a great torrent about how he’s pouring with sweat over the keys of his typewriter while everyone else is siesta-ing and playing around. His ranting is muddled in with stuff about the American spy plane, so anyone might think it was all my fault that guy has been caught red-handed by the Russians.

Charmian raises her voice above his, ‘George, I really think you might lay off for one night…’ but still he rages until Leonard leaps in and by force of pure charisma makes him stop.

‘If we assume the role of melancholy too enthusiastically, we lose a great deal of life…’ he starts while George growls, ‘There won’t be any life if there’s an atomic war.’ Leonard bows his head and continues, ‘Yes, there are things to protest against and things to hate but there are a vast range of things to enjoy,’ and he looks up and lets a warm smile settle on Marianne, ‘beginning with our bodies and ending with ideas… If we refuse those or if we disdain them, then we are just as guilty as those who live complacently.’

George’s entire face is harrumphing. ‘Tell me that still feels like the truth once you’ve tried to write your novel through the crazy season,’ and he grumbles on until, at last, Marianne distracts him by reaching up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

‘What a grumpy old moose you are tonight, George,’ she says as he lurches off for a refill and Charmian accompanies Greg Corso on Kyria Polymnia’s tour of Gordon’s house.

‘Little dumpling is with my neighbour’s daughter,’ Marianne says when I ask and for a moment she looks downcast and reaches for Leonard’s hand. ‘I haven’t left him before but sometimes I want to be free to join in.’

George returns and immediately starts mocking Gordon’s novels whilst simultaneously recommending Leonard read one.

‘I learnt everything I know about queer sex from his manuscripts,’ he says. ‘You know The Strumpet Wind was on the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks? I’m sure Gordy’s told you that himself by now… Sixteen damn weeks!’

The wine flows. Chuck brings out the gramophone and plays Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers while we eat at the petal-strewn table. The lamb is melting; Gordon claims he’s been turning and basting it for five hours, though I hear Charmian snort and say to George, ‘We all know it’s old Polymnia does the cooking.’

Greg Corso is sitting in a high carved chair at the head of the table, his face one broad smile, like a pixie-emperor on his throne. To his right Charmian, both of them talking so intently they barely find a moment to eat. From across the table I hear them quoting Keats and they match each other drink for drink. He’s telling her about a dream he’s had where he’s a prisoner in Red China and has to stack a jar containing an atom bomb on a shelf or die on the end of a bayonet. ‘So I stacked it and got caught in my infamous action by a million flashbulbs… What can it mean?’

Leonard seems as enthralled by the poet as Jimmy, though unlike Jimmy he isn’t awed into silence. He keeps leaning across Marianne to ask about the scene, about protest and performance, bop and cut-ups, about this poet they all find so impossibly interesting called Allen Ginsberg.

Charmian is following their conversation, and several times they speak over her when she tries to join in.

‘It’s all very well, but where are the women’s voices?’ she manages when, as luck would have it, both men simultaneously need to draw breath. ‘Why are there no female Beat poets?’

‘There are female Beats,’ Corso says with a fist to the table. ‘The trouble is their families have had them all locked up in institutions where they give them electric shocks.’