Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

13 November 2003. I fell in love with Charlotte Burton the first time I heard her voice, months before I actually met her. This was back in 1966 when she was at Radio Essex, Britain’s Better Music Station on Knock John in the Thames Estuary. Her voice had an elegant eroticism that was effortless; that it came to me via pirate radio gave it the added charm of the forbidden. I bought the nautical chart of the estuary and revelled in its esoterica. The unseen Charlotte became for me a princess hedged about with buoys and soundings and magical names. Knock John Tower, the old World War II fort where she worked, was shown, with the eponymous sandbank and channel as well as Barrow, Long Sand, Fisherman’s Gat Precautionary Area, and other names that sang in my mind while my fantasies rose and fell with the tides.

When I finally met Charlotte she was exactly as she sounded and from the first moment everything was as I hoped it would be. We were married and had ten good years together. We were faithful to each other and I had no mid-life crisis. Then she died. Nobody talks about end-of-life crises but they do happen and twenty-seven years after Charlotte’s death I fell into one at the age of eighty-three. I needed some technical help with it so I bought a bottle of expensive whisky and went to see Istvan Fallok at Hermes Soundways in Soho.

I handed him the bottle and he read the label. ‘Bowmore Cask Strength Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Thank you, I’m deeply moved.’ He found two cloudy glasses somewhere; maybe he washed them every six months, I don’t know. He poured for us both and I added water from a kettle that was sitting on some sheet music. He tried his neat. ‘Here’s to whatever,’ he said, and swallowed a little. Then he coughed, blew out a big breath, wiped his eyes, added water, and said, ‘This must be serious.’

‘It is,’ I said. We were in the deep-sea grotto of his basement sound studio off Broadwick Street. November rain was pinging on the steel stairs that led down to his door. Little red and yellow and green eyes winked while a humming silence listened. Dim shapes crouched and towered and unheard decibels rose and fell in blue columns on screens.

‘Don’t be bashful,’ he said. ‘Blurt it out.’

‘OK,’ I blurted. ‘I’m in love.’

‘Mazel tov. What’re you now, ninety-five?’ He was only in his early sixties.

‘Eighty-three.’

‘You look older. Still get it up?’

‘Don’t be coarse. “Love is not love / Which alters where it alteration finds.”’

‘So it’s all in your mind then.’

‘So are you, so is everything. I experience the world through my cerebral cortex.’

‘Please, no fancy talk. What’s her name?’

‘Justine Trimble.’

‘And she’s what, twenty-five?’

‘She was. Now she’s dead.’

‘Great. You’re old and she’s dead. So what do you want from me?’

‘Get me to her. Or her to me, I don’t care which.’

‘You want to go to her, no problem: slash your wrists, throw yourself under a train, whatever.’

‘Come on, you know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t. If you’re going to have a mid-life crisis at the age of eighty-three at least do it with a woman who’s available. Who is this Justine Trimble anyhow?’

‘Here, look at this.’ I’d brought a video with me, Last Stage to El Paso . The Internet Movie Database showed that she’d been in fourteen films but there were only four on commercial videotape and I had them all. I stuck it in the machine and we watched it. Justine Trimble was pretty in a 1950s black-and-white western kind of way but she was more than just pretty — she had something about her that made me fall in love with her the first time I saw her swing into the saddle. In several of her films she co-starred with Dawson Chase, a much bigger star than she was. Westerns back then had not yet achieved political correctness. Justine Trimble had what it took for the time. You could tie her to a post and leave her out in the rain for two or three days and she’d come out of it freshly laundered, make-up unsmudged, and with dry knickers. When the action required it she loaded guns, bandaged wounds (nobody bled but they would hold themselves where they were shot) and she said, ‘Look out, here they come,’ as necessary. In Last Stage to El Paso they actually let her rescue Dawson Chase. She had an exemplary figure, a modestly unassailable bosom, and was an expert horsewoman much admired for her seat. When she and Dawson kissed they didn’t use their tongues and when they embraced he kept his hands above her waist. She was wasted on him. Why did I love her? Why not someone my own age from a similar background? I have nothing against eighty-three-year-old women but love isn’t rational, it isn’t correct. It can strike like lightning anywhere, any time. Wham, that’s it. The first time I saw her I knew she was the one I’d been waiting for through my years of loneliness.

Fallok was watching the film attentively. In the scene where Justine goes after the bad guys she was wearing what would have been jeans if they’d been made by Levi Strauss but these had been run up by the wardrobe department and although lycra hadn’t yet been invented they brought out the best in Justine. As she swung into the saddle Fallok backed up the tape, then made her swing into the saddle again. ‘Why’d you do that?’ I said.

‘Just checking something.’

‘Checking her ass, you mean.’

‘Oh, and I suppose you fell in love with her mind?’ He behaved himself for the rest of the film. Dawson saved the gold shipment, Justine saved Dawson, they kissed with closed mouths and it was THE END.

‘OK,’ said Fallok, ‘now I know who she is. Was. What am I expected to do about it?’

‘I told you — get me to her or her to me.’

‘What her ? You’ve got her on video and the real Justine is an ex-her. What her are you talking about?’

‘Don’t play dumb — I want the whole flesh-and-blood Justine in 3-D where I can get my hands on her.’

‘Where is this 3-D Justine supposed to come from?’

‘From the video. She’s in there in the form of magnetised particles or whatever. In those particles you must be able to find her visual DNA.’

‘Visual DNA! Did you read this or are you making it up as you go along?’

‘It just came out of my mouth. Is there such a thing?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never done anything with image enhancement or reconstruction. I’m not the man for the job.’

‘Sure you are, you can do anything with technology. I know you can do it.’ He was smart and he was weird and that made me believe in him.

He didn’t say anything for a bit and I could see that he was mentally replaying Justine as she swung into the saddle. Then, ‘Let me think about this for a couple of weeks.’

‘Try to think fast. I haven’t been feeling all that well and I might be checking out pretty soon.’

‘Leave the video and I’ll see what I can do. Mind you, I can’t promise anything and I might have to damage the tape.’

‘That’s OK, I’ve got a copy. I know you’ll figure something out. When can I call you?’

‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you when I have anything to report.’

14 November 2003. It was Herman Orff who put me on to Istvan Fallok. Orff was in his sixties by then. He and Fallok were both famous among the people I knew, writers, painters, composers, and various others on the way up or the way down or treading water in the arts. Between fifteen and twenty years ago Orff, who got very small advances and whose books never earned back those advances, was suffering from what we in the trade call blighter’s rock. He was totally rocked and couldn’t get anything useful down on paper. While in that state he received a handbill through his letterbox in which Istvan Fallok claimed that he could unrock anyone. The rest (among a rather small circle) is history.