Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

No tits

I like this movie there is beauty in death though but I’m defiantly not turned on by it in sexual ways.

Should the opportunity arise, I shall bid for a print: the picture of Sequah, the Native American medicine man, pulling teeth by lantern light, on a stage in Chester, in 1890. Purveyor of such ‘world renowned remedies’ as Sequah’s Oil and Sequah’s Prairie Flower (‘a boon to suffering females’), Sequah was so successful that there were as many as twenty-three Sequahs on the road at any one time. On the night of the Chester tooth-pulling, Sequah was simultaneously bringing succour to the people of Manchester, Norwich and Cork. The original Sequah, founder of the brand, was born in Yorkshire, c.1857; real name – William Henry Hartley.

At the end of Brock Street a sudden noise – a roaring rush of air – made me look up, and there was a huge white balloon, low enough for me to read the faces that were gazing down. It was overtaking me, drifting over the park. Everyone on the grass looked up; and ahead of me, at the railings, I saw the carmine coat and silver hair, and Bianca, also looking up. My approach was noticed and acknowledged with a raised hand; the woman turned her attention back to the balloon, which was rising with another blast from the burner. ‘Have you ever been in one of those things?’ she asked, still watching. ‘I went up in one once,’ she went on. ‘Years ago. In Mexico. The City of the Gods. Terrifying experience. Never again. How are you?’ Now she looked at me. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ It was a very lovely day, I agreed. Bianca had raised a paw. ‘She really does seem to like you,’ her owner remarked. ‘I’m flattered,’ I said. And I remembered Francesca, after a boyfriend had let her down, taking consolation from the fidelity of the family dog. Then I heard myself repeat the line that Francesca, in self-parody, had quoted: Mentiri non didicere ferae. ‘Animals have not learned to lie,’ I translated, regretting that I had not kept quiet. But the woman looked at me as though I had said something profound, and intriguing. ‘On the whole,’ she agreed. ‘Though this one isn’t entirely straightforward,’ she added, directing a quizzical gaze into the eyes of her pet.

It was time for me to get back to work, I told her, not making it obvious, I hoped, that I was inclined to remain.

‘The museum is closing, I hear,’ she said.

I explained the situation.

‘Such a pity. As if we need another hotel.’ She would visit the museum again before it closed, she assured me. Then she said: ‘Alexandra.’ We shook hands.

Reading, I look across the room to the chair in which Imogen used to read. I can picture her, turned to the side, with her legs curled up and a book propped on the arm of the chair, angled into the light of the lamp. I would sit here and she there, on opposite sides of the room, each in a small zone of illumination, and the rest of the room in shadow. The pleasure of reading together – of being solitary together. It was like acting, in a way, she said: we become someone else when we read, and each book changes us, for a while, even if only for as long as we are reading it.

To describe Imogen, I could write: five feet eight inches tall; of slender build. Hair: dark and heavy, straight, usually shoulder-length. The eyes, essential to any description of the beloved, were also dark – brown, with a russet tinge. The fine arch of the eyebrows would have to be mentioned. The hands: delicate and long-fingered. I could write about the regularity of her features, the ‘openness’ of her face. Still she cannot be seen. This character named Imogen speaks words that Imogen spoke, but Imogen’s voice cannot be heard. ‘Imogen pauses; she looks down at her hands, arrested in the act of forming an awkward chord; frowning, she leans forward to scrutinise the notes on the page; she bites her lip; the candlelight glows on her throat.’ An ideal Imogen, in the perpetual present of the sentence, where nobody is alive and nobody dead.

The Biography of Thomas Lang

Xerxes

Ghost MacIndoe

Invisible

So He Takes the Dog

Contact

Telescope

Nostalgia

The River Is the River

Published in 2018 by

Sort Of Books

PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL

www.sortof.co.uk

Copyright © Jonathan Buckley 2018

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

E-ISBN 978–1–908745–78–1