Пит Таунсенд - The Age of Anxiety

I grew up knowing only that my mother had been an angel born at the moment of my birth and her mortal passing. I knew that angels never die, are ever present, invisible, guiding, loving, observing.

Of course, without a living mother I loved Siobhan more than might be normal. She was the principal star in my firmament, but I still thought she was too dyed-in-the-wool for Walter. Too demanding. Too bossy. Too redheaded. Too fecking Irish and literary. Despite all her feminine strength, she was another girl who wouldn’t even be in this story were it not for me.

When you were struggling—trying to withdraw from heroin and get clean, trying to save your marriage by accepting the sexual distance Pamela suddenly demanded, and were seeing faces in your old French bedhead—Louis darling, you were seeing real faces, real people, locked in history, imprisoned in the terror and pain of the past, unable to get free. Their screams were real. They needed someone like me to help them escape. You needed me. Pamela was a bitch. You might wonder if she was waiting for a reason to leave…

At Dingwalls, as Siobhan went back to Waterford, convinced that Walter would follow her, and I first made my pitch for him, offering him cocaine and the chance of a blow job, Louis, you were so right. No one understood what I saw or what I felt.

No one understands today, not even you, not even now that we live together and I look after you and teach you and tease you and try to make you happy. You still don’t entirely believe me. I have to show you where to look for those angels, how to see them, and how to find the angel in your own heart and soul. The angels don’t care if we are good or evil. They love us whatever we do.

Do you remember soon after, when Floss walked into Dingwalls to catch up with me, her best friend, do you remember what happened? You do remember, I know. You were smitten by her as were all the fucking wet-eared men in the club. I always know what you’re thinking, sweetheart. You wanted to speak to Floss, to check out whether she might notice you were alive. You’d thrown yourself at her like an old idiot at Walter and Siobhan’s wedding.

Did you think she would remember you? Remember the bloody low-grade horse tranquilizer you shared with us? I didn’t care much, not that night at Dingwalls. I was still intent on Walter. Louis, this is a good story I think. The hard men who like rock music and think all women are vague, romantic, and unfocused will especially enjoy it. But you are telling a story here about five of the most extraordinary women ever gathered in a book like this. You make Maud into a kind of middle-aged sex object; you obviously long for her and you don’t know why. And yet she is loyal, smart, and determined. She irritates me, because you adored her, but I respect her. She knew exactly what to do with Andréevich’s art. She was playing you.

And my sister! God knows she wasn’t merely some hippy from the Emerald Isle who wanted her husband to transform himself into James Joyce or Seamus Heaney. She saved my life and I saved hers. Our father was a broken bully, God rest his soul, and I mean that. Siobhan brought me up; she was my mother. And at the same time she brought herself up through college and university and ended up running a department at the BBC. You know, Louis, Siobhan may not have been on the front line of the world’s troubles like your daughter Rain, but we had seen plenty of trouble. And Siobhan felt it all deeply. I do believe Walter was a weakness for her. He represented an escape route, back to Ireland, to poetry.

Pamela, your wife, although she was a bitch, does not deserve to be described as a “nymphomaniac” just because she liked sex with you for a while. I only met her a few times, but what a fantastic and potent woman she was. She didn’t leave Rain behind as a matter of convenience, or to give you something to do. She left Rain because she too had a breakdown; right under your nose. You were so full of your own dark visions you didn’t even notice. Pamela had a revelation too, and one day you will come to understand its nature. She came out. It was so simple that you missed it.

That brings me to the teenyboppers. Ringo Starr called early Beatles fans that. Teenyboppers. At Walter’s wedding Floss and me and Ronnie, we were the teenyboppers. We were running around playing at being bridesmaids. Yes, even Ronnie! We were fantasizing about the day we would be married and have bridesmaids of our own. We were young, eighteen years old but really immature, and I know we looked and behaved as though we were much younger.

Louis, you can’t imagine how strong our friendship was back then. How much can one hurt someone else? Is there any point in hurting a person one doesn’t deeply love? Floss and I have hurt each other; we may never go back to where we were, but we will always be soulmates. If we’ve hurt each other it is a measure of our love. Yes, Floss loved horses. I see angels. Don’t imagine that makes us dizzy birds.

So Floss arrived at Dingwalls. I was a bit sad; I admit that. Do you know what I was thinking when I watched Walter’s eyes fix on my best friend Floss?

I was thinking that I was an angel, and I conferred with angels. To you men, all of you there that night, that part of me did not exist. I wanted to shout out to you all: “Bury me, stone me, for I know that not one of you will ever marry me!”

Oh, Louis, reading this makes me rather sad all over again. You write about my love for Walter with the detachment of an academic biographer. You can’t imagine how desolate I was feeling around those times. I hardly ever managed to see Walter, or give him any help. I rarely saw Floss. I felt shut out completely. When your best friend gets married they have less time for you. But Floss married the man I loved, who had first married my older sister, and always treated me like a bit of an irritation. I started to become normal, as you rightly say. Not good. Normal is not good, Louis. Normality was not what I was born to.

Do you remember when I told everyone about Ronnie? I never cared whether he was gay or not, or that he liked to wear high heels and borrow our bras sometimes. Ronnie had a blurred black monkey sitting on the back of his fekking upright Prussian neck! I could see it.

After Walter had played the stuff his father wrote to Steve Hanson, do you remember writing in this book about our lunch at the Caprice, saying that I could be difficult to read? You said that you could see my obsession with Walter was strong, and wondered why I was turning to you? It was almost as though I were giving you a warning, to prepare you for something terrible I could see ahead.

Oh God! This is so hard for me to write, my darling. It’s all true; everything I said at that lunch. I was still obsessed by Walter, and still in love with him like a teenager. But I asked you to lunch because I needed help. I can “see” what others can’t see. Whether that means I’m psychic or barmy makes no difference. Maybe I can just read people, sense their moods, and then some synesthetic mechanism kicks in and makes peculiar connections.

Walter was in terrible trouble. He loved Floss. No question. But why did she leave him alone so much? Why did Walter trust Ronnie? No one else did! But I also wanted to see you, my darling Louis, and to be with you. I’d realized how you were trying to help. You were being so kind. And you had always been on my list after all. Gorgeous old muffin.

I’m so sorry, Louis, that this story is going to unfold as I know it will. I decided to use you, to take advantage of you. I do regret that now. But I simply had to try to steal Walter from Floss. I couldn’t help myself. They call women like me “home-wreckers.” But Floss and Walter didn’t have a real home. Not like this one, the one you sit in these days to write. I made this home for you. This is the real thing. It’s turned out pretty well. Hasn’t it, sweetheart? Do you forgive me? Can you?