Asking for more Oliver
Jane Gardam
LOVE, ETC by Julian Barnes Cape, £15.99, pp. 249 So here they are again, the three loqua- cious loonies, the three endearing floun- derers, the three knowledgeable but oh so unwise monkeys. I didn't think we'd heard the last of them. Well, did you? Did you?
Trouble with Barnes is he gathers you into his gang, gets you talking like they do, writing like he does. Well not altogether like he does because he's rather good at it and he's got this big-screen view of the wankpit, of the unheroic, overtired, impos- sible-to-be-happy-in world. Am I right? Am I right? I am right.
Did you though? Did you think you'd seen the last of them in Vol 1, (i.e. Talking it Over?) He never said. Remember. Rem- ember portly Stuart, hiding behind the net curtains in the provincial French village watching ex-wife Gillian sweeping her steps and then sweeping way out into the road, every morning, baby under arm, just like all the other girls? Well, she's half-French isn't she? Her mother's all-French and if you ask me it's Mme Wyatt who's been half the trouble. I don't think Mme Wyatt is grave and wise and resigned and neither does she. Nor does Barnes in the end. She's old and yearning and secret and sad.
So — think of old Stu in France behind the dentelles, immortalising Gill with his box-Brownie, Vol 1. And Oliver, Stu's once best friend and now Gill's second husband; whip-lashed, brilliant, damaged, impossible Oliver, bawling her out in the middle of the street and landing her one on the kisser with the car-keys then screeching off in the knock-kneed Peug. Barnes has to tell it all over again in a few pages at the start of Love etc, (Vol 2). Just as well he's like I said a good writer. Oliver says, 'Thought you'd seen the last of me didn't you?'
Oliver's the one we really care about in what he might describe as this poo-scary Vale of Tears. Wonderful life-crazed wick- ed Oliver. Wants the Nobel Prize but has a long way to go and rather further by the end of Vol 2. But what a portrait! What a dazzler! What a talker! Coleridge, stand down.
Jealous though. Depressed and jealous. Poo-scared. Wants Gillian, gets Gillian but . . ; Gillian in many ways still a mess, but knows Oliver, loves Oliver. Ten years on, (in Love, etc), everyone says how heroic, working away at her picture-restoration, paying at the Sainsburys' check-out, taking the children to music. Not grown up yet though, whatever it looks like. Bit trixie even — she knew what was behind those curtains and deep down what she wanted. And she fixed Stu with a victim — and then what about letting all that happen with the dishwasher! Almost in the dishwasher. Just after it was all stacked. She's cracking up. Mind you she's had much to bear even if she is half-French.
The French love Barnes. He wrote a book with a title that was half-French called Flaubert's Parrot. Good wheeze. Bagsie, bagsie. They gave him all the big prizes and they'll have to invent an even bigger one for Love, etc which, like Mme Wyatt, tends to get more and more French as time rolls along. The final chapters are going to be a French feast. A chateaubriand et truffes. They are an analysis of the impos- sibility of human happiness expressed through the media of wit and farce. Sort of cross-Channel Sterne. Well, Sterne was cross-Channel wasn't he, he spent a lot of time over there behind the net curtains. Sort of Sterne-between-the-sheets. The Sterne-sheets. Oh shut up, Oliver.
I wonder who does Barnes's transla- tions? Must have been fun. How e.g. do you write tagsie, bagsie' in French? Oliver when cynical-sick-nostalgic-schoolchum-daft is always saying bagsie. `Bagsie I go first. I want to tell it first. Bagsie, please bagsie.' Not French humour really.
Oh Lord he makes me laugh, Oliver. Old Stu-baby makes me laugh a bit. Gillian never made anyone laugh. The children make me sad, they are innocent, intelligent and sweet and don't know what's going to happen next. They are in danger. I know what's going to happen next and so do you. You shouldn't have let us all in, Jules-baby. You begged advice on every page.
Jules-baby, Vol 3. Are you going to make it all right for Oliver? Yes? Oh don't let him top himself. Don't leave him upstairs with all that going on beneath him in the kitchen under the old chaise-long (half- French) and that dishwasher. You're going to let Oliver have a BIG SUCCESS right? Film-script prequel to Four Weddings, say Five Funerals? Les Pompes Funebres?
Actually. Actually speaking and joking apart, he's going to make it with the psychi- atrist isn't he? I see her just beginning to melt. Just a little bit of moisture round the edges? Dr Rodd. Call her Dorothy. Next session on the couch and she'll be like Gillian all those years ago fantasising about washing Oliver's hair in the bath. I mean with him in the bath. His hair was clean then. Not now. Gillian shocked herself then with her adulterous thoughts but got over it. She's half-French.
End of Love, etc, Jules-baby, I couldn't stop crying if you want to know. Crying because Lover, etc, and indeed love etc, is so desolate and I don't mean desolee. And the cleverer you are and the more passion- ate you are about what matters, like wit and the glory of words and the promotion of organic vegetables, the more it will duff you up. Well, hilarity does make things more endurable from time to time. But oh the anguish! Oliver de Roncevalles, Oliver- Mercutio, Oliver of the vast allusion and bottomless vocab. Selling door-to-door for Curry in a Hurry. But then again — the fun of the terrible crone and the monkey-puzzle tree, and Stu on his exercise bike.
Oh I do love Oliver. More, as my heart breaks for him. It should be him that's half- French not Gillian. Maybe he'll go off with her mother in the end, she needs livening up. Oh, I hope he makes it in the films. You keep asking me, Jules, through all this chit- ter-chatter, this non-stop dialogue and nary a narrative word, not a moment for cast in the wings, no intervals and the scene- changes instantaneous and invisible, you keep asking me without thank God ever calling me Reader — you keep asking me, Jules, what hope there is for Oliver. Look Jules, I'm his hope. I'm Gillian and Mme Wyatt and a side-kick or three, and even Stuart.tu We're the only-girl-in-the world. Mind we're none of us what you'd call a great hope. Oliver's mother topped herself when he was six. Now it's up to Dorothy. I could write Vol 3 for you Jules-baby if you like. Just say the word. But I expect you've started it already. Something called — something half-French — Amour Some- thing? Love Propre? Amour Again? Dorothy L 'amour? Could I, I wonder, order the first possible copy? Please Jules. Please bagsie. Bagsie, bagsie, bagsie.
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