The art of lying down
Jeremy Clarke
The morning after the students’ summer ball they told me that, just beside the entrance, a girl, naked except for red striped knee-length socks, was lying on her back on the clipped lawn, staring up at the stars, as if she’d been ravished. Her clothes were strewn about, also the contents of her handbag, as if she’d been robbed as well. She was an art student, they said, and her lying there like that was a work of art, an installation, intended for the intellectual stimulation of those queuing to have their ticket checked and their hand stamped.
My friends also told me that halfway through the ball they’d gone to look for me and found me unconscious outside, flat on my face on the lawn, next to the naked girl. Someone had taken off my shoes, arranged them neatly side-by-side and set fire to them. Overheard suggested titles for my rival installation were ‘The Oldest Swinger in Town’ and ‘The Death of Icarus’. My shoes burnt merrily, they told me. I said I didn’t think one could set fire to one’s shoes as easily as all that. One of my friends, a physics graduate, reminded me that leather, shoe polish and Odor Eaters were all highly flammable. ‘Well, obviously you’re the expert,’ I said tetchily, embarrassed that I couldn’t remember going to the students’ ball, let alone making an installation of myself while there.
I had malaria once. The morning after the students’ ball I would gladly have swapped my hangover for the relative vitality I felt then as I crawled to the Rwandan hospital lavatory. Unfortunately, I’d committed myself to driving my family across Britain to attend, that same evening, a surprise 80th birthday party and family reunion. Six hours later, I parked the car outside the Everglades Park Hotel, which turned out to be far less swish than we’d been led to believe and was patronised chiefly by asylum seekers and the homeless.
We’d booked seven rooms. I shared with my boy; my sister with my Mum; the others were occupied by a medley of aged aunts and uncles, including Uncle Victor and Aunt Charity, who’d come all the way from Melbourne, Australia. For any forensic scientist, the carpet in our room would have meant six months’ work and possibly a groundbreaking article in a respectable scientific journal. There were no towels in the bathroom — it looked like the type of place where the proprietors steal towels from the guests — and the mattress on my bed felt as if it had been cast in a foundry. But to someone as hungover and yearning for the oblivion of sleep as I was, our room was one of the most beautiful hotel rooms I’d ever seen.
There was just time to splash my face in cold water, however, before it was time to head off to the family reunion. For the next five hours, it was difficult enough being both immobile and awake at the same time, without the added burden of having to give an impression of conviviality. I moved from one dimly remembered relative to the next with my eyebrows raised to keep my eyes open and a fixed imbecile grin. And everybody said how surprised they were at how little I’d changed over the years. I fell asleep just twice. Once, during the speeches, with my head resting on the surprisingly comfortable top of an upright piano, and once while discussing the outermost branches of our family tree with a relative who knew every twig. During the disco, I was pulled on to the dance floor for ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’, where I moved about like a hibernating toad unearthed by a gardener’s spade.
Finally, we walked back to the hotel from the church hall. I hauled myself up the stairs, stumbled through the door of our crummy room, laid face down on my bed, buried my face in the pillow and embraced sleep like a hungry baby feeling with its mouth for the teat. And the next thing I knew it was Sunday morning and the room was full of distraught aunts and uncles.
They’d all been eaten alive by bed bugs during the night. Uncle Denis had captured some of them in a plastic container for identification purposes. He cautiously removed the lid so that I could have a look. They were horrible-looking things, a sort of cross between a cockroach and a tick. Before going downstairs to complain to the manager and demanding our money back, they needed to know whether my bed was infested as well.
I stood up, removed the pillow and pulled back the bottom sheet. The mattress was indeed crawling with them. My aunts and uncles recoiled in unison then hurriedly departed to have it out with the manager. I replaced the sheet and pillow and got my head down again for a few more delicious minutes.
Previous page
