How many times do you have to die before the penny drops?

As a book reviewer I get some of the strangest subject lines in my e-mails, but none usually capture my interest quite like "How many times do you have to die before the penny drops?" I was excited when I finished reading the e-mail and I'm sure you'll be excited too by the end of this post.

The people over at Table 13 Books are giving readers an amazing treat. Every day in November I'll be posting a chapter from E.P.Rose’s new novel; NOVEMBER, Ralph Conway’s Immortal Diary.

The book will be published mid December – so you’ll be getting it before anyone else!

What’s it about?

Ralph Conway is a messed-up master-of-wine.
What with being unable to do his job,
and his girlfriend going on hunger strike,
and everything in the world being so crap,
he concludes that suicide is obviously the sensible option,
so he kills himself,
only to discover that he seems to be immortal.

This is Ralph Conway’s diary, written as the reality of immortality dawns.

You can read the preface now here:  Then come back every day in November to read each new entry in Ralph Conway’s immortal diary which I will also link to in this post for your convenience. Feel free to post comments sharing your thoughts about this title. I'm looking forward to reading it along with you, and then reading what you think. I love this serialization idea! Thank you to Table 13 Ltd, and Panpathic Communications for making it possible.

For more information about E.P.Rose and his books visit: http://www.tablethirteenbooks.com

November. (Please be advised the following posts contain mild adult content).

Preface

The First
The Second
The Third
The Fourth
The Fifth
The Sixth
The Seventh
The Eighth
The Ninth
The Tenth
The Eleventh
The Twelfth
The Thirteenth
The Fourteenth
The Fifteenth
The Sixteenth
The Seventeenth
The Eighteenth

November: The Eighteenth

Our daily adventure continues right here with The Eighteenth instalment of November: Ralph Conway's Immortal Diary. If this is your first day with us, I'd recommend you click here for links to the preface and previous instalments.
The content appears here on The Literary Word courtesy of Table 13 Ltd

THE EIGHTEENTH


I’m on the train again.
Taking up where I left off yesterday afternoon, it was my mother at the door. She came in with a pullover.
“It’s your father’s, but he never wears it.”
I could see why not. It was grim.
“Oh, thank you very much,” I said.
I’m going to give it to Eric for Christmas. Christmas! If only there was some way of avoiding it.
I was looking at my mother and I thought of something which was quite revolutionary to my way of thinking about her. 
“You know, it’s very odd.” I said. “I always thought that you were the impossible one and I could never understand why Dad didn’t divorce you ....”
“Ralph!” she gasped.
“..... but the odd thing is that since I’ve been down here now, I’ve come to see that it is in fact the other way around. He’s the impossible one. How come you’ve never left him?”
She became thoughtful.
“I mean, I hope you don’t mind my asking - but have you ever thought of it?”
“Well, obviously, I’ve thought of it.”
“Have you?”
“I did actually leave him once.”
“You didn’t? When?”
“When you were fifteen.”
“I never knew that.”
“You were at school.”
“What happened?”
“I went to a hotel. I don’t know why I’m telling you this ..... “
“Go on. It’s interesting. Which hotel?”
“Browns.”
“Were you .... I mean .... were you on your own?”
“I wasn’t running off with another man, if that’s what you mean.”
“There’s nothing wrong in that,” I said. “It happens all the time.”
“Well it hasn’t happened to me.”
“Never mind,” I said. “So what happened?”
“Well, obviously, I went back to him. The next day.”
We sat there in silence for a while, her remembering and me attempting to imagine that one night, sixteen years ago: my mother all alone in Brown’s Hotel.
“Why did you go back?” I asked.
“I think for the same reason that I left.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“I don’t think I can,” said my mother. “Where else was I to go? We all have our cross to bear. Your father’s mine.”
How’d you like that? 
I joined them for supper in the flat. It was stew. My mother’s stew is almost as good as mine, which is not surprising, as I got the recipe off her in the first place. My father has not cooked anything for himself ever.
They pulled out the table in the living-room, and we ate on that.
I told them I would be coming back to London this morning and that I would let them know about the wedding. Then mum and dad had an argument about going to Australia - and dad threatened to cancel the tickets.
“I just can’t see the point in going to Australia,” said my father.
“Oh for God’s sake,” said my mother, “there isn’t any point. There isn’t any point in anything.”
She pushed back her chair, went into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I shook my head and tutted.
He shrugged and gave me an awkward smile.
“How long’s Mum been grey?” I asked.
“Oh, your mother’s been grey for years.”
“Really? How many years?”
“She went grey when you went away to school.”
“Oh.”
“But ever since she came down here, she stopped dying it. Couldn’t see the point.”
“Ah.”
Then my father went off to play snooker with Earp.
I cleared the table and washed up, said goodnight through the bedroom door and retreated to my room, where I put a call through to Orson.
“Joan has just been telling me about your diary,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you took that pill?”
“Of course not,” I said, absolutely without a moment’s hesitation. “I told you. I chucked it away.”
“Well why did you say you took it?”
“I never said that.”
“Joan says she read it in your diary.”
“If Joan goes around reading other people’s private diaries, she’s bound to get the wrong end of the stick.”
“He says he didn’t take it,” I heard Orson say, presumably to Joan.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Just about as well as you’d expect anybody to be who hasn’t eaten for eighteen days. What? Oh, sixteen days. Look, Ralph, where are you?”
“I’m not anywhere,” I said. “Goodbye, Orson.”
“Hey, wait.”
I hung up. I went to sleep. I stayed in my room till noon. Then I checked out and strolled up to the station and climbed onto this train, and here comes Battersea Power Station, and here I nearly am.

I walked all the way from Victoria to Eric and Chloe’s house in Chiswick. It only took me a couple of hours. I was wearing my father’s brogues. Halfway there I had to take them off and change back into my sneakers. I stopped at two McDonalds en route, in High Street Kensington, and then at the one in Hammersmith. I had a quarter pounder with cheese in each one.
Eric and Chloe were in, as was Mavis, their nanny/au pair, and the two children. Children are simply a nuisance. You can’t carry on a decent conversation when they’re around. Coco went up to bed at six, and Dylan finally retired at eight, when Eric and Chloe had to go out to dinner somewhere. I asked them if it would be alright if I stayed. Chloe was far from keen on the idea. What with her being Joan’s best and closest friend, she felt that giving me shelter would be something of a betrayal. But Eric said it would be fine with him - and I acknowledged the fact that Chloe had made an official complaint. 
One person who was extremely pleased with my advent was Mavis, who has taken advantage of my presence here by going out. So here I am - baby-sitting.
Bauhaus meets Glynn Boyd Harte meets Laskys in the Epstein household. The Corbusier furniture and the arsenal of hi-fi and video equipment are all Eric. The Glynn Boyd Harte, the colour, is Chloe’s input. I am sitting here at the Corbusier table in the huge open-plan downstairs. Everything is open and well-lit. There are no dark corners in this house. I’ve just been watching a programme called Birth Reborn about this French surgeon called Michel Odent - Mike Otooth in English - who runs a maternity unit in Pithiviers in France. Pithiviers, home of the eponymous pie.
I found myself imagining Joan giving birth to our child.
The weird thing is that on the one hand I got pretty excited by the idea, but on the other hand it made me feel ill.
Do I have dynastic longings in me?
Oooh, I forgot. While I was walking here, at one point I started counting my footsteps - to pass the time. It did not take me long to reach 169. I stopped and thought about it. I started again and soon reached 169 again. I stopped counting and carried on walking, and as I walked, my mind worked its way round to this extraordinary discovery: My birthday is on June 18. And, guess what, June 18 is the 169th day of the year!
Well so what? So what! What difference does it make? Supposing I was, supposing I am, well, suppose there is something special about me. Alright, let’s go the whole hog. Suppose that, for want of a better word, I am the messiah. Well, it’s perfectly bonkers. I mean, the whole point about Christ is not who he was, but what he said and did. Had he never said all that stuff, he wouldn’t have been anybody at all, never mind who his daddy was.
Look, you, God, the big whoever-you-are - if you think you’re going to get any mileage out of me, you’ve got another thing coming. I am no messiah. All I want is a nice quiet life.
Oh dear. Oh shit. How about this for a thought?
If I have children, will they be immortal too?
Or do both parents have to be immortal? And if so, is that the clincher as far as not marrying Joan is concerned?

I am really loving this book and I can hardly wait to see what the next instalment brings. See you tomorrow!

November: The Seventeenth

Our daily adventure continues right here with The Seventeenth instalment of November: Ralph Conway's Immortal Diary. If this is your first day with us, I'd recommend you click here for links to the preface and previous instalments.
The content appears here on The Literary Word courtesy of Table 13 Ltd


THE SEVENTEENTH


It has taken me sixteen days, fifteen excluding last Sunday, when who knows where I was, to fill up 121 pages of this book. I have just counted and there are 392 pages in this Flying Eagle Chinese diary of mine. If I do 121 pages in half a month, I’ll do 242 pages in a whole month. That’s 482 pages in two months, and 2892 pages in a year. (These calculations, by the way, are brought to you courtesy of my old man’s pocket calculator, which I came across in the inlaid box beside the gilt and green plush phone.) My God, suppose I live for the traditional three score years and ten. That gives me seventy minus thirty-one years to go. 70 - 31 = 39. (Steps!) Say 40 years. Going at this rate, I’ll have written 2892 x 40 pages by the time my time has come to kick the bucket, which = 115,680 pages. Now, all I have to do is divide 115,680 by 392, the number of Flying Eagle pages in this book. I make that 295. Amazing. If I keep this up at this for another 40 years, I’ll leave 295 of these volumes behind me.
Of course, being immortal, the figures become absurd. I have definitely thought the thought that someone would read these here words after my death. But if I am to have no death - what is the point in them? Oh God.
I supposed that sooner or later people are bound to start suspecting something. It won’t be all that long before I am England’s oldest inhabitant. I’ll get my hundredth birthday telegram from King Charles. But then, won’t it be news when I get my two-hundredth birthday telegram from King William, if he lives so long.
A most ghastly thought has just struck me. Suppose the loonies win and kill everybody, including themselves. And there’s only me left in the destruction. All alone.
Perhaps I won’t be alone! Perhaps there are others like me. Immortals. Total global nuclear war would in fact be a very convenient way of finding out if there are any others like me.  
I was walking along the front this morning and I was sort of looking at the sea out of the corner of my eye and what with one thing and another I started thinking about fish. You have to wonder about fish, don’t you, especially all these apparently super-intelligent dolphins and hump-back whales and the like. Well, yes, alright smartypants, I know that whales and dolphins aren’t fish, but they do live in the sea. That’s the point.
I went onto the stony beach and clattered down to the sea’s edge and looked at it more closely.
Supposing all the fish got together and started thrashing their tails in unison - they’d cause a tidal wave that could engulf the earth. No problem. Fish! We eat them and eat them and eat them. We hook them and net them and gut them and eat them. And sooner or later, they’re going to get fed up with being hooked and netted and gutted and eaten, and they’re going to get together, thrash in unison - and drown the lot us. Why shouldn’t fish get more intelligent? Humans are getting more stupid.
When my mother got back from the launderette yesterday, we finally had a conversation.
“So - to what do we owe the honour of this visit?” she asked.
“I just felt like seeing you.”
“I see.”
Inspiration struck me.
“I’m thinking of getting married.”
“To whom?”
“She’s called Joan.”
“Oh,” said my mother. I could see from the look on her face that the name, Joan, conjured up something unpleasant. “And who is this Joan?”
“She’s a waitress,” I said.
“Oh Ralph.”
Waitresses are rated on my mother’s social scale somewhere between prostitutes and bus-conductresses.
“She’s upper middle class,” I said.
My mother would like to think of herself as being upper middle class. In fact, she is middle class, verging, in her present state, on lower middle class. The thought that I might be marrying above myself soothed her.
“What’s her surname?”
“Henderson. Her father was a judge.”
“Was?”
I explained about Joan’s family and how her parents are dead.
“What’s she doing being a waitress then?”
“She likes being a waitress.”
“Huh,” said my mother, obviously finding this last assertion hard to swallow. “And what about you?”
“I’m not doing anything at the moment.”
“You’re out of work.”
“Yeah.”
“On the dole?” She made it sound like a nasty disease, like herpes.
“Certainly not.”
“And you’re living with this upper middle class Joan?”
“Yeah.”
“And she’s supporting you.”
“Well,” I said, “only up to a point.”
Fool! I should have lied. I should have told her I had a job. I should have told her I’ve got an incredible new career. What harm would it have done? It would have made her happy.
“And you and this Joan are planning to get married?”
“We’re thinking about it.”
“And when she gets pregnant?”
“What?”
“Is she planning to carry on at her waitressing, or what?”
“Getting married doesn’t automatically mean you have children, you know?”
“Whose idea is it to get married, Ralph? Yours or hers?”
“It’s both of our idea. Well, Joan’s very keen and I’m thinking about it.”
“She wants children, Ralph. Are you going to look after them, while Joan goes off to be a waitress?”
“I might do,” I said.
“Oh for God’s sake,” she snapped.
There was a silence, and then I asked her if I could take them out to dinner.
“On Joan’s money? No thank you very much.”
“I’ve got money,” I said.
“Oh yes?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Now do you want to come out to dinner?”
“Alright,” she said. “That’ll be very nice. It’ll make a nice change.”
“What about Dad?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“Well, where is he?”
“What time is it?”
It was one-thirty.
“You might catch him at Forfars in the Lanes. He goes there for lunch. If not, he’ll probably be at King Alfred’s. Bowling.”
“Bowling? It’s a bit cold for that, isn’t it?”
“Not bowls. Bowling. Ten pin bowling.”
“Good Lord,” I said.
The walk along the front to King Alfred’s Sports Centre took me about twenty minutes into the wind. My lips were good and salty by the time I arrived - and descended into that clattering subterranean world. I think I must have been fourteen the last time I went bowling. I know I wasn’t strong enough to lift anything heavier than the speckled balls. I used to go with Eric up to the lanes in Temple Fortune. When I first moved to Cricklewood, I went to see if they’re still there, but they’re gone.
Dad was alone on lane thirteen. I traded in my sneakers for a pair of bowling shoes, bought a couple of games, and went and sat in the plastic seats behind him. He had his back to me, was holding his ball up to his chin, preparing to roll it at the pins.
He was wearing a bright pink bowling shirt, with the legend EARP’S ANGELS on the back. He moved forward with three fluid crouching steps and rolled the ball gently down the runway. At first I thought it was going into the gutter, but two thirds of the way down it started to curve in onto the target. A strike! He gave the air a little punch of pleasure. Then he about-turned, came back to the scoring table, filled in his score, while his ball returned and the automatic machine replaced the pins. He failed to notice me.
With his next ball, he got eight, and left himself with two, in either corner, a split. A gesture of annoyance from him. Then he failed to pick off either of the two pins. It was strange, watching him. He finished his game and noticed me.
“Hi,” I said. “Fancy a game?”
He was very happy to play with me. I was astonished at how well I did. It all came back to me. I scored 169, which is an amazingly good score. Dad was miffed, as he had been expecting to beat me hollow. But then it dawned on me that I had scored 169 - and that we were playing in lane 13. And that 13 into 169 is 13 and 13 times 13 is 169 and that’s how many pounds I weigh. And I am 31, which is 13 backwards.
If I was the kind of person who tends to imagine that he is the victim of satanic plots, it is at this point that I might well have started seriously to worry. But I’m not that kind of person. I’m not. I do not believe in satanic plots and conspiracies with me as the victim at the centre. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I don’t. 
We did not talk during the game. Then we wandered round to this rather wonderful cafe-cum-ice-cream-parlour called Marocco’s, round the corner on the front - where we had hot chocolate.
“I thought I’d take you and Mum out for dinner this evening,” I said.
“Oh.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“No, it’s, er .... “
At this point a character breezed in and clapped my father on the shoulder.
My father introduced him to me. It was Earp.
“As in Earp’s Angels?”
“You’ve got it, son,” said Earp.
Earp is terrific. He’s a sixty year old Teddy boy, basically. He has grey Brylcreemed hair, combed up in a quiff at the front, and in a D.A. at the back. He was wearing drain-pipe trousers and winkle-picker shoes. Apparently, my father used to pop into Marocco’s on his various walks up and down the front. And it was here that Earp had recruited him for Earp’s Angels.
It turned out that my father’s reluctance about dinner had to do with the fact that he had made an arrangement to play snooker with Earp. But when Earp heard of my invitation, he insisted that my father accept.
Then we all went back to the bowling lanes. I sat and watched the two of them play. I declined their invitation to join them, claiming a sore shoulder. But the real reason was that I didn’t think I could follow the 169 in lane 13 with anything better. Another score in this other lane, where they were now playing, would spoil it.
Earp is brilliant. But my Dad beat him with his handicap. The old man was as pleased as punch. I played the space invader machines, while they had another game. Then Earp gave us a lift back to the Metropole in his customised Zodiac, which is black with leopard-skin upholstery and the names Earp and Sheila on the windscreen over the driver’s and passenger seat respectively. My father in this car, and indeed my father with Earp anywhere, was a thought-provoking sight. I thought that here he was, having the mis-spent youth he would have had, if he hadn’t had the misfortune to marry my mother and have me and my sister.
On the way up to the flat, Dad told me that Earp is 64, that his Christian name is George, but never used, that Earp and his sons run a we-buy-and-sell-anything kind of business in the back of Brighton, and that he is not to be mentioned “in front of your mother”.
My mother had organised a room in the hotel for me.
“Unless of course you plan to go back to Joan tonight?”       
“No, but it’s alright. I can sleep on the floor.”
“No you can’t.”
So I thanked her graciously. Then we discussed where I was going to take them, and my mother suggested a French place called Le Trou dans le Mur, which didn’t bode well. She booked the table and I went and had a look at my room. Nothing to write home about - but better than the floor. Apart from which there is a certain something about all hotel rooms, however ghastly, that is strangely enchanting.
I gave them time to get themselves ready. Then I returned to their flat. My mother had in the interim been going through my father’s wardrobe - and produced an outfit for me to wear.
The shoes weren’t bad. Black brogues. The trousers were out of the question. But I agreed to don the sports shirt - “which he refuses to wear” - and a herringbone jacket that I really like.
“Are you sure you want to part with it?”
He shrugged.
“He never wears it,” said my mother.
“I never wear it,” he echoed glumly.
I put it on.
This restaurant, to which my parents had not been, but about which my mother had read good words, was dreadful. I mean, they started you off with perfectly acceptable crudités - but when it came to the main course, tinned French beans were produced. Tinned! As everyone knows, a French bean, unless it be fresh, is simply not worth the shit in which it was grown. I said to le patron: “Look, you served all those nice fresh vegetables to start with - why serve tinned beans?” He made some preposterous excuse about the size of the kitchen.
Then my mother said: “If you don’t like them, Ralph, why don’t you just leave them?”
I dropped the whole subject.
Over the inevitable chocolate mousse, I mentioned that someone had read my palm and told me that there is a mystery surrounding my birth.
“The only mystery surrounding your birth,” said my mother, “is that your father ever managed it.”
I was shocked - but he was highly amused.
“I went to get my birth certificate,” I told them.
“Checking up on us, eh?” he chortled.
“What an extraordinary thing to do,” said my mother.
It seems to me now that I was stupid even to have considered that my parents weren’t who I’ve always thought them to be. Namely, them. Apart from which, what difference does it make? I mean, really, what difference does it make, whether my father is a retired incompetent shop-keeper or, I don’t know, a shower of golden rain?
I mean, when Jesus was a kid, did he know all along that Joseph wasn’t his father? No, I think that Joseph was Jesus’ dad, and that’s who Jesus thought he was, and when someone in the playground said to Jesus: “What does your dad do then?” - Jesus would say: “He’s a carpenter.” 
“So,” said my father, “your mother tells me that you’ve landed yourself a rich girl.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I muttered.
“That’s what I always wanted to do,” he said, “but I got your mother instead.”
They wanted to know when they would meet Joan. I told them that we would try to manage it, but that she was very busy at the moment.
I always fancied being a restaurateur,” said my dad, “opening my own place.”
“Thank God you never did,” said my mother.
Then we talked about my sister. Most of the time, I completely forget that I even have a sister. She’s a few years older than me - and I hate her. I’ve always hated her. When I was sixteen, she fell in love with an Australian person and married him and went to live in Australia with him, in Melbourne of all places. Apparently, she now has four children. Mum and dad are going there for Christmas.
“That’s nice,” I said.
Dad gave the same shrug he gave when he gave me his jacket.
She said: “It’s better than nothing.”
“I don’t see why she can’t come here,” said he. “She’s always going on about how well-off they are.”
“You know they can’t, with the children.”
“Huh,” said my father. “Children.”
I paid the bill with a cheque. We walked home, said goodnight in the lobby of the hotel. 
Breakfast was included in the price of the room - so I went and had it with the delegates in the enormous hotel dining-room. Frosties, followed by  kipper.
I wandered up to the Brighton Pavilion, which looks as though it has just landed and is about to take off again at any second. Then I wandered around the town for a bit. Everybody here seems to be either old or stupid. The rest must have gone up to London. I met my father for lunch at Forfar’s in The Lanes - not the bowling lanes, but The Lanes - where I ate an excellent Buck Rarebit, with not one but two poached eggs on top.
I decided that my father was perfectly content, that he didn’t particularly mind my being there - but I was an interruption, a nuisance. I think that’s what I must have been, when first I erupted from his loins, when he was thirty-one and I was nought. Mind you, he’d already had to get used to my sister. But she went, and I remained. And my school fees were much more expensive than hers.
“Do you regret having children?” I asked him.
“That’s a funny question. From you.”
“I’m just wondering. I mean, why did you?”
“What?”
“Have us.”
“I don’t know really. There wasn’t much alternative, when I was your age.”
“But did you like being a father?”
“Some of the time.”
He said he had to get along to the bowling lanes, King Alfred’s. To give him his due, he did ask me if I’d like to come too - but I reckoned he’d rather be left to it. So I came back to the hotel.
I don’t know what to do. Whether to go or stay. I can’t stay in the hotel. They can’t afford to pay for the room - and neither can I. But I just don’t feel like going back to London. I - hang about. There’s someone at the door ...

See you back here tomorrow for more.

November: The Sixteenth

Our daily adventure continues right here with The Sixteenth instalment of November: Ralph Conway's Immortal Diary. If this is your first day with us, I'd recommend you click here for links to the preface and previous instalments.
The content appears here on The Literary Word courtesy of Table 13 Ltd


THE SIXTEENTH


The sea!
As I walked down from the station towards it, I began thinking about the dreadful scene which precipitated my departure from home at the age of twenty-one.
I was supposed to go to university - but when I overheard my father telling my mother how much in debt he was as a result of paying for my extremely expensive and ineffectual education, I decided not to go to university at all, but that I would join the family business instead.
My father was really rather pleased. My mother was horrified, but she consoled herself with the thought that perhaps with someone of my brilliant academic bent beside him, my father’s business might pick up.
She put up with it for about three years. And every morning, my father and I would take the bus into Tottenham Court Road and open up the shop, which was just opposite where Lasky’s now is. Then it was coming up to my twenty-first - and Dad told me that he was going to change the name of the shop from Wilfred Conway Ltd. - to Wilfred Conway and Son Ltd.
I said that while I was highly appreciative of the honour he was doing me, I thought this might be a good opportunity to change the whole name and image of the shop altogether. I think Electric City was the name I suggested. My point was that you had to get young people to come into the shop. I thought we should start moving away from white goods and start getting more into stereos and music. I was full of good ideas. I wanted to try out some of the new Amstrad lines, you know, affordable stuff. And I thought we should sell records as well. And car stereos. And we’d fit them in. And we could sell them cokes and cups of coffee and tapes, while they were waiting. 
I was full of enthusiasm. My father was full of caution and, well, boringness.
“See, the thing is, Dad, why does work have to be so excruciatingly boring?”
“Because, Ralph, that’s what work is. If it wasn’t boring, it wouldn’t be work.”
He just didn’t get it 
At which point, my mother finally exploded.
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” she yelled at me, “do you want to end up like him?”
My father was sitting between us.  She was staring me in the face. It was an incredibly awkward moment. I couldn’t look at him.
“I knew,” she started. “I knew all along. You had the whole world at your feet. But you wanted to come and work for your father. Alright, I didn’t say anything. Maybe you’d make a go of it. But he’s just dragging you down with him. Please, Ralph, it’s not too late. You’re still young enough to go to University. You could still make something of yourself, instead of this. It’s bad enough having one failure on my hands.”
I heard a sort of “ouf” from my father’s side of the table, as of one who has been viciously kicked in the solar plexus.
There was a harrowing silence, during which I couldn’t think of a single word to say. My mother realised, I think, that she had overstepped the mark - but having stepped over it, she was determined to maintain her position. She glared at me. I could not return her gaze. I looked down at my gooseberry crumble, a dish I’ve not been able to stomach since that day. She turned defiantly toward my father.
I could not imagine what he would say or do. I have a feeling he wanted to burst into tears. Then I thought he was going to hit her.
Stab her with your fork, I thought.
At the very least, I was sure he would divorce her on the spot. What he in fact did, which quite astonished me, was smile. Then he said something which under the circumstances was pretty classic. He said: “Irene, would you please pass the custard?”
I couldn’t take any more of this. I left the room, and five strained days later, I left home. If I was going to be a failure, I wanted to be a failure on my own account - something, I suppose, I’ve rather succeeded in. 
I found myself a job as a delivery driver for a wine merchant in Lamb’s Conduit Street, and that’s how I first met Joan, delivering a box of Chiroubles, I believe it was, from Georges Duboeuf, the King of Beaujolais, to the restaurant in Chelsea where she worked.
I would like here, if you don’t mind, to pay tribute to the late great Felix Parker, whom I loved as a son, in an ideal world, should love a father. It was his habit at the close of business to open a bottle or two of something interesting and to share it with whoever happened to be around. This tended to be his nephew, a moron, who worked full time in the shop, an ever-changing assortment of part-timers, a variety of friends and family, who were always popping in and out and, when I joined the team, me.
In my family, wine never featured much, but I found that I took to it like a duck to water. It turned out I had an extremely good memory for flavours and, in no time at all, I could tell a gamay from a merlot at five hundred paces. Felix decided to take me under his wing and teach me everything he knew, and when he had taught me everything he knew, he enrolled me in the Institute of Masters of Wine and funded my studies there. 
When I graduated from the Institute with the highest marks in my year, Felix took me to Paris to celebrate, with lunch at Le Grand Vefour and dinner at Le Tour d’Argent. The highlights of this wonderful weekend were a stonking bottle of 1945 Chateau Palmer and a gorgeous 1969 Gevrey-Chambertin, Clos St-Jacques from Fernand Pernot. All I have to do is close my eyes and breathe in. There. I smell them. I taste them. I am intoxicated.
Six months later, Felix Parker Wines went bust. It wasn’t just Felix’s exuberant generosity, although that had a lot to do with it. He was also, as he was the first to admit, an absolutely crap businessman. Added to this, he was a dedicated gambler. There were weekly poker games in the back room at Lamb’s Conduit Street, at which I became a regular attendee, not as participant, but as sommelier. When Felix wasn’t drinking the profits, he was cheerfully redistributing them to his poker cronies.
But the bankruptcy did him in. Felix took to his bed and was dead before the year was out. He left me his private cellar, the last benighted dregs of which languish in my so-called cellar at home.
You may not believe this, but before Felix died, I never drank to get drunk. Sure, from time to time, I drank too much, and I was frequently intoxicated, but with the thrill of whichever wonderful wine it happened to be. Mostly I tasted, then spat it out. Smell, taste, analyse, record, remember, spit. Taste and spit. Taste and spit.
When Felix died, I stopped spitting. And when I stopped spitting, that’s when I started to unravel. And that’s how I ended up here.
The last time I saw my parents was about two years or so ago - just before the move to Brighton. I went round to the old house.
“I bet you got a good price for it,” I said.
“Not bad,” said my father - at the same time as my mother said: “Very disappointing. This area’s gone down a lot.”
“Well, still, it’ll be good to get out of it all. Nothing like a bit of sea air,” I said.
“I’ve always liked Brighton,” said my father.
“I hate Brighton. God’s waiting-room,” said my mother. “I’d rather be going to Siberia.”
“I’d rather you were going to Siberia,” said my father.
I was impressed. This was a distinct improvement on Irene-pass-the-custard.
So there I was, with the sea on my left, as I strolled along the front, past the Brighton Conference Centre, as seen on television, past the lovely gleaming Grand Hotel - and came at last to the Metropole’s massive red-brick bulk.
In I went.
The foyer was seething with delegates to some conference they’ve got going on here. The place is infested with noisy red-faced people in ill-fitting suits, with name-tags pinned to their lapels.
I struggled through to the reception desk - whence I was directed round to the appropriate lift.
Their flat is on the sixth floor of this hotel. I stepped out of the lift, and into the corridor, which is just like all those corridors you see in American made-for-TV films - totally unrealistic. Well, the fact of the matter is that realism and reality are poles apart.
I rang the bell. Then, after a goodly while, I heard a voice. My mother’s.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Ralph.”
“Who?”
“Ralph.”
“My Ralph?”
“Yes.”
I heard the chain being slipped into position. Perhaps she thought I’d come to murder her. Then her face appeared in the crack.
Last time I’d seen my mother, her hair was brown. Now it was grey. It was a shock.
She recognised me. Then she looked at me. She looked at my exterior. Her gaze passed over my face. I became aware of the bristles that covered it. Her gaze went down. I felt the grime on the neck of my T-shirt, my grubby pullover, even though my coat was buttoned over it. This book throbbed under my arm. Then all the way down to my feet, my sneakers, her least favourite form of footwear for men, especially when in the condition that I suddenly became acutely aware mine were in.
“I’m sorry about my appearance,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?”
She let me in.
“I was just going to bed,” she said.
“It’s very early.”
“There’s nothing else to do down here.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s out. Look, Ralph, I’ve really got a dreadful headache.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t talk. Your father will be in. I’m ..... You must excuse me.”
This whole conversation took place in this tiny hall they have here. Immediately on your left is the sitting-room. And to the right, there is a little corridor - with the bathroom just past the kitchen, and the door into the bedroom at the end of it. Through this last door, my mother now plodded. No mention of if I was staying, where I was staying, where I would sleep. She was not interested. She had gone to bed.
I walked into the living-room.
The place is swarming with cupids. And the telephone is in its own special basket of gilt and green velvet plush. I sat down on what purports to be an armchair and looked at the onyx coffee table.
Never mind what I was doing here, what were my parents doing here? What are they doing here?
I stood up and looked out of the window. The window overlooks the front. I saw the sea and West Pier, sticking out into it. The Pier looked singularly spooky and full of possibilities out there. It looked like a runway. It looked like it was waiting for something to land on it.
I yawned. I was extremely tired. I thought of taking a bath - but the chances of my falling asleep and drowning in it were high. On the other hand, what was that to me? If I drowned, I’d only pop back to life again.
One of the features of the furniture in the living-room is that none of it is the right size for lying down and going to sleep in or on. So I lay down on the carpet-covered floor, looked up at the golden cupids clinging to the perfectly inappropriate chandelier and went to sleep.
I woke up, to a certain extent, when my father finally came in. He did not come into the living-room. He did not see me. I only saw him in silhouette, through the glass in the living-room door. It has some of that nice wired glass in it. He seemed to be wearing a jaunty cap. Then he passed through the frame, and I heard bathroom noises. Then he went to bed.
After a while, I went to sleep again - and I did not wake till early this morning. My bladder woke me up. I went, with joints creaking after my night on the floor, to the bathroom, peed. The bath looked too inviting for words. I twirled the taps, stripped off my stinking clothes and climbed in.
Oh, the bliss of that bath.
I poured some Fenjal into it and the milky white stuff curled through the water. I gave myself up to physical sensation.
Then there was someone on the other side of the door. It was my father. The door opened a fraction and our eyes met in the mirrored wall over the sink.
“Ralph?”
“Hello there,” I said.
“Do you mind if I have a pee.”
“Go right ahead.”
He came in and loafed out of his pyjamas and peed. I observed the paternal penis out of the corner of my eye. I could not help thinking that’s where I come from. I was once a sperm inside those balls – unlike, of course, Jesus, who wasn’t. I mean, well, you know what I mean.
Dad flushed the loo, brushed his teeth, and then he started to shave. He did not seem to be in the least inclined to talk - but he did seem to be happy for me to be there. Well, he wasn’t noticeably unhappy. 
I watched him shave. Amazing. He taught me how to shave.
All my childhood - I suddenly remembered it. I remembered being small and watching him shave like this. It was such a good memory,
“How old are you now?” I asked.
“Sixty-three,” he said.
It struck me that when I was but a sperm inside his balls, he was the same age as I am now.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.
He left the bathroom.
I washed my hair and washed myself. Then I climbed out of the bath. I helped myself to his shaving kit and removed the stubble. I noticed the scales, dropped my towel and stood upon them. I weigh twelve stone and 1lb - or 169 pounds. It occurred to me that 169  is 13 squared. Then it occurred to me that I am 31, and 31 is 13 backwards. I was wondering whether this was significant, when I heard the front door open and close. Shortly after this, the departure of my father, there came a knocking at the bathroom door. Old mother Conway.
“Ralph?”
“Hello.”
“Hurry up. I’m late.”
I picked up the towel, wrapped it round my middle and came out of the bathroom. She was back in the bedroom with the door closed.
“All clear,” I shouted.
She came out of the bedroom as though she had been waiting on the other side of the door. She looked at my face, saw that it was shaved and said: 
“Well, that’s better.”
And she swept into the bathroom and shut the door.
I made myself a cup of tea and took it into the living-room. I heard her come out of the bathroom and go back into the bedroom. Then she came out of the bedroom and into the living-room, stopping en route to get her coat out of the hallway cupboard.
She was holding a yellow plastic bag.
“How’s your head?”
“Pardon? Oh - much better thanks,” she said, then, holding up the yellow bag: “I’ll drop these in at the launderette.”
They were my clothes that she had picked up off the bathroom floor.
“Launderette!” I exclaimed.
“Well, there’s no room for a machine in this .... “
She groped for the mot juste and failed to locate it. Off she went.
There were some eggs in the kitchen and bread in the bin. I scrambled the former and toasted the latter and ate them on the little flap-up table in there.
Then I found my father’s bathrobe. Having donned it, I came in here, into the living-room, put this book on this gleaming mahogany table, under the gilt mirror, on the wall opposite the windows, and began writing in it. And here I am. Here I jolly well am. Sea. More gulls. Swooping squabbles. Hold on - there’s someone at the door.

See you tomorrow.. 

November: The Fifteenth

Our daily adventure continues right here with The Fifteenth instalment of November: Ralph Conway's Immortal Diary. If this is your first day with us, I'd recommend you click here for links to the preface and previous instalments.
The content appears here on The Literary Word courtesy of Table 13 Ltd


THE FIFTEENTH


All right. I’m convinced. I’m immortal.
And I’ll tell you this for nothing, dear diary: if you’re feeling suicidal, immortality sucks.
So now what? Where does that leave me? 
Apart from the fact that we both died and came back to life again as ourselves on the third day, are there any other similarities between Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Ralph Conway of Cricklewood? Are there? Are there, my eye! A bowl of spaghetti is more messianic than me …. than I. Do I love mankind? No, I do not. Do I want to save it? No, I do not. Do I wish I was dead? Yes I bloody do. Now hold on a minute there, Ralph. Don’t get hysterical. Let’s take this nice and easy. What’s happened exactly?
What’s happened? I’ll tell you what’s happened. I’ll tell you exactly what’s happened. What’s happened is that I’ve died and come back to life as myself again, AGAIN!
We’re moving! I’m on a train, going to Brighton.
Sunday?  I’ll tell you what happened to Sunday. On Sunday, I was dead. It was Remembrance Sunday too. Remembrance Sunday always reminds me of Remembrance Sunday at school. We used to have this outdoor service round the Norman staircase, and the Archbishop would come, looking windswept - and it would always snow during the service. When I was at school, it would always snow without fail during the service on Remembrance Sunday.
At first I did not know what was going on.
I seemed to be lying face down on the carpet, between the settee and the coffee table.
I could hear the sound of knocking. Then the ringing of a bell. It dawned on me that there was someone at the door.
I arose.
As per one in a dream, I went to the door and opened it ..... and there was Alison, standing on the mat. I sensed at once that her mood was not friendly.      
“Where’ve you been?” she demanded. “You promised you’d be here, when I got back.”
“I am here,” I said.
“You weren’t here, when I got back at ten o’clock this morning.”
She pushed past me.
“What day is it?” I wondered.
“What do you mean, what day is it? It’s Monday. What day do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. Are you sure it’s Monday?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure,” yelled Alison.
“What time is it?
“It’s bloody four o’clock in the poxy afternoon!”
“Ah.”
So, it was Monday. I was alive - and it was Monday.
Alison scanned the room with a beady eye.
“What’ve you been up to in here?”
She crossed to the coffee table and plucked the empty valium bottle from the debris there.
“Are these mine?” She inspected the bottle. “They are mine.” She upturned it. “It’s empty.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“I had a job to do today. I needed these.”
“Sorry,” I said, lamely.
Poor old Alison, unable to cope with the rigours of her chosen profession without pharmaceutical support.
“This bottle was practic’ly full. What’ve you done with them?”
She glared at me. I shrugged, uncertain as to how I should respond.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken the whole sodding bottle.”
“I’ll get you some more,” I offered.
“You actually swallowed all them pills?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
“Bollocks,” she said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“Aha,” I said.
“Aha? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I blinked my eyes and cleared my throat: “Well, you see, that’s the whole thing. I was.”
“Was what?”
“Dead. But then, you see, I came back to life again – as myself.”
I gave her a somewhat sheepish smile.
She folded her arms and gave me a flinty look and then produced the following speech:
“I’m disappointed in you, Ralph. I am. I really thought you were something a little bit special. I did. But you know what you are? What you are is a total fucking tosser. And you know what you can do? You can piss off. Piss right off back to where you come from. And don’t come back.”
Then she gave me a quivering finger. Nail a nasty weapon. Long. Blood red. Vicious.
It wasn’t quite the Mary Magdalen sort of response I had been hoping for.
I shrugged, stepped up to the coffee table, picked up this book and went to the front door
“Keys?”
“Pardon me?”
“My keys.”
“Oh.”
Good point. Her keys were in my pocket. I handed them over and departed.
The air in the street hit me. It’s been another icy sky-blue day. As I staggered home, the evening came along and swallowed it up. 
Home?
I stood in the street outside our big white house. There were lights on in the basement in Orson’s flat. His car was parked nose to nose with Joan’s in the street. I crept up the stone steps and let myself into the building. I stepped across the hall, without recourse to the time-switch light. I felt for our key-hole in the dark, crouched and applied my eye to it. As far as I could see and hear, there was no-one in. I inserted my key and then I was in the kitchen. In the dark, Alison’s block towered against the sky.
More than anything then, I wanted a bath. No hot water. If the heating engineers did come, they didn’t do anything. It was damp and freezing in there. I could have gone downstairs and used Orson’s - but I did not want to speak to him, and I did not want to speak to Joan, who was missing, presumed downstairs with him. Unless she was ....
“Joan?” Pause. “Joan?”
I went through to the bedroom, treading lightly. I did not want them to hear me moving about on their ceiling. No, she wasn’t in the bedroom.
I switched on the kettle and located the hot water bottle, which was half under the bed. While I waited, shivering, for the kettle to boil, a cockroach crawled out from underneath an unwashed plate, nonchalantly crossed the kitchen counter and inserted itself into a crack in the splashback. I shuddered.
Glancing up, I saw a new moon in the sky. Must have been hitherto hidden by a cloud. It’s one of those skies tonight. You can’t tell where the clouds end and the sky begins.
I reached, somewhat self-consciously, into my pocket for a coin to turn. When you see the new moon, you turn a coin in your pocket and make a wish, or so my Mother always told me.
“Go on, Ralphie, make a wish,” I heard her say.
“I wish ..... I wish ..... I wish .....”
Well, I couldn’t think what to wish.
The kettle boiled.
I wished: “I wish I knew what to do about all this.”
I turned the coin in my pocket, and filled the hot water bottle, which I carried through to the bedroom. I climbed into the bed, got under the blankets. Joan hates duvets. It was cold and damp in the bed. I hugged the bottle, and rubbed my stockinged feet back and forth on the sheets. The friction produced a pittance of heat.
What the fuck was I doing here – shivering in this dump?
I considered the cockroach.
It seemed unlikely to me that that cockroach was a lone operator. It seemed highly probable to me that that cockroach had friends. In Fat Freddy’s Cat, the cockroaches operate like an army. There are thousands and thousands of them. The one I saw was probably a scout, who was doubtless even now reporting back to base. Cockroaches like heat, don’t they? And protein. In this godforsaken Siberian waste, which used to be my home, it dawned on me that I was the only source of either of these two commodities.
I had to get out
But where could I go?
I could go and stay at my club. Only thing is, I don’t belong to one.
I suppose I could always crash at the Epsteins. What, and be lectured at by Chloe? No, thank you. 
Orson was out. I mean, he was in, but out of the question.
 I’d blotted my copy-book irrevocably, I reckoned, at Alison’s. That quivering finger of hers had a definite air of finality about it. 
I tried to think of someone else in London on whom I could descend out of the blue. Nobody came to mind. Ten years ago, everybody slept on everybody else’s floor, dropped in and out at all hours of the day and night. These days you have to make an appointment.
“You could always go and stay with the ‘rents,” I suggested to myself.
“You must be joking,” I replied.
But then I thought: Why not? After all, there is still that mystery surrounding your birth, which more than ever now needs clearing up. So if you go, you will be doing something constructive.

I hope you are enjoying November as much as I am. Check back tomorrow for the next instalment.

November: The Fourteenth

Our daily adventure continues right here with The Fourteenth instalment of November: Ralph Conway's Immortal Diary. If this is your first day with us, I'd recommend you click here for links to the preface and previous instalments.
The content appears here on The Literary Word courtesy of Table 13 Ltd

THE FOURTEENTH

There is no entry in Ralph’s Immortal Diary
for the fourteenth of November.

E.P.R.

Sorry gang, but we have another day to wait.. 

I can't wait to see what comes next.

November: The Thirteenth

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