Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

I let go of Suzy's hand. I went after Wittgenstein. Then I thought — Oh, but anyway, I am drunk.

I saw that my father and mother were coming into the house from the roadway. I thought — But there are too many people in this picture! Get them out.

Wittgenstein had gone through on to the roadway where I could see that Donald was standing. I thought — Oh yes, Donald can be in this picture! Wittgenstein was now talking to Donald.

My father said to me 'I didn't know you'd be at this party.'

My mother said 'Are you all right?'

I said 'Yes, I'm all right.'

Suzy's father was pushing Melvyn out of the house. Mullen and Suzy were following; they were watching me. My mother and father were standing side by side. We had all emerged on to the roadway. Wittgenstein and Donald were going off, talking.

The smoke that had been blowing from a next-door building now seemed to be going up in a straight column into the sky.

I waved to Suzy. I thought — Oh but we had it, for a moment, exactly, didn't we, what you can't talk about, in a picture!

In the summer holidays of that year politicians went abroad to their usual watering-places while the mechanism of the capitalist world ran down; it seemed to make drooping, groaning noises like those of a clockwork gramophone. Politicians were recalled from their watering-places to see if they could get the capitalist world wound up; but it seemed that they had lost the handle, it was no longer in the nursery toy-box.

I had heard of a clergyman in the north of England who was looking for volunteers to help build, or re-build, a church hall which was to be made into a recreational centre for the use or edification of the unemployed. I thought — I can go and help build a hall for the unemployed, but will I not be doing this for my own edification?

Then — But might not the world be wound up, if everyone tried to see what was their own edification?

I bought a second-hand suit of clothes and travelled to the north of England. It had seemed that I might emerge in a different dimension. People had said — But you cannot imagine the north of England!

I might have said — But do you not carry around what you imagine in your own head?

When I got out at the railway station I seemed to be underground; the train had run into the centre of the town in cuttings and tunnels. Climbing, I emerged into an area of heavy blackened buildings — a town hall, a department store, a bank, a museum. It was as if these had been in a fire which had been put out by rain. I thought — But this is just how I have imagined the north of England!

There was a pale grey light as if the town were set on the curve of a low hill; or on the surface of a convex mirror.

I had a haversack on my back. I walked in the direction in which I imagined the river. The river was where there were the dockyards and shipbuilding yards which had once been the reason for the existence of the town.

The ground fell away from the central keep or fastness of the town hall, the department store, the bank, the museum, to where there were the dwellings and workplaces of the people that might be sacrificed, as it were, if the town were besieged. I thought — But now, what are the besiegers? they are more to do with states of mind.

I turned off the main road and went into an area of narrow streets and tall, jumbled houses. Here there were piles of refuse and splintered wood and broken carts. Men stood by the broken carts. I thought — Could not the men use the wood to mend the carts and take away the litter? Then — But of course, one is not supposed to think like this now. There were smells. I thought — Humans have lost their sense of smell: they once had a sense like that of hunting dogs, which made connections.

The men wore cloth caps and mufflers. The women had long thick skirts and shawls over their heads: some of them carried small children with dark furious eyes. There were older children in clothes and caps that were too big for them; it was as if they were involved in a game of dressing-up. It was these children who, as I walked through the streets, paid attention to me, followed me, mocked the way I walked. When I turned to them they would pretend to have been doing something different. I thought — It is this age, from five to eleven, that children still have a chance to do what they want to do.

I was on my way to the church of the clergyman who had asked for people to help build, or re-build, the recreational hall for the unemployed. He had found it difficult, apparently, to get local men and women to do this for themselves. They had felt that it would be some sort of defeat for them: they wanted work provided as part of what other people wanted to do.

I did not want to arrive at the church straightaway: I wanted to observe more of the strange landscapes in which besiegers and victims seemed reflections of states of mind.

I moved out of the narrow jostling streets into a more open area where the ground sloped down towards the river. Here there were long rows of low houses back-to-back like stitching. There were not many women and children visible here, and the men in cloth

caps seemed to have been swept into groups on street corners. The windows of shops on these corners were boarded up; the walls of houses at the ends of rows were falling down. I thought — This landscape is like clothing coming apart at the seams: a shroud that has been tied too tightly over the body of the earth, our mother.

Beyond the houses was a maze of railway lines that went down towards the river. The lines were raised on posts; they were where coal must once have been carried down to ships. Now the railway was not working; there were rows of stationary trucks like bumps on the spines of skeletons. Beyond the railway lines were the shipyards with tall grey cranes that were themselves like birds become skeletons, for want of anything to feed off.

I thought — These images are of a charnel house: these images are in my mind. If I am an anthropologist come to take notes of this strange tribe, what I should be doing is taking notes of states of mind.

The railway lines were like the tracks of baby turtles that had once run down towards the sea: the birds, the cranes, the crabs, the seagulls had got them.

I thought — But one or two get through?

— Or the town hall, the department store, the bank, the museum, has burned like a volcano and the lava has pushed human beings down towards the sea -

— But it is these images in my mind that go tumbling, jostling, like a crowd running down towards a river!

I had come to the edge of an area of wasteland that lay between the houses like stitching and the delta of railway lines on their wooden pillars. Beyond the railway lines were the cranes and the river: there were no ships on the river; there were some hulks on the mud that seemed part of the land, rotting. There was a group of children playing on the wasteland: they were on top of a small hill of slag and rubble. The children were playing a game of rolling old rubber tyres down this hill; the tyres rolled and bounced and span towards the railway lines at the bottom. There was a small embankment with a wire fence on top in front of the railway lines and when the tyres reached this they leapt and whirled in the air and then flopped down like dead fishes. There was one small opening in the embankment which consisted of an archway which gave access to the area under the railway lines beyond. The children did not seeem to be aiming the tyres particularly for this opening; the game seemed to be just to watch the tyres bounce and leap.

I thought — The children on that mound are like Napoleon and his marshals surveying a battlefield: they watched soldiers and cannon balls bounce and leap, flopping down like dead fishes.