COMPETITION

Dreamboat

Jasrnstos

In Competition No. 1756 you were in- vited to improve on a Graham Greene dream, recorded in his A World of My Own, featuring himself, Henry James and a Bolivian river-boat.

Greene's dreams were often about famous people. Though my own night life is rich and riotous, I have only once dreamed about a celebrity. I woke up at four in the morning and wrote it down — and I'm still quite proud of my subcon- scious. I was debating furiously — I don't know about what — against Cyril Connolly in the Albert Hall. Although he had had the edge on me throughout, I downed him, to roars of applause, with this immortal uppercut: 'You are the sort of person whose highest ambition is to be allowed to say "artichoke" instead of "rhubarb" in a stage crowd.' Later, when I met him, I saw at a glance that he was not the right man to share my dream with.

The prizewinners, printed below, get £20 each, and the bonus bottle of Aberlour Single Malt Whisky goes to Caroline Bing- ham.

While the Bolivian passengers passed their time drinking whisky or playing cards, the sombrely dressed, heavy-faced man who appeared to belong rather to the nineteenth century than to our own, spent the days in a deck chair protectively clasping a golden bowl. Beside him, propped against his chair, was a large, rectangu- lar package wrapped in brown paper, concern- ing which he seemed to have equal anxiety. Curiosity grew on me. I sought a conversation

with him merely to discover what it contained. He replied, 'It is the portrait of a lady.'

'Tell me,' I began. He interrupted, 'Why am I travelling thus incommoded by two incongruous objects? Yes. It is the inevitable question. I am condemned to travel the inhospitable terrain of Greeneland with the impedimenta of my literarY life. And you? To whom do I have the doubtful pleasure of addressing myself?' My name,' I replied, to my lasting astonishment, 'is Henry Pulling, and I am travelling upriver to meet mY aunt. . .

I asked myself when I woke why, if Henry James, for his sins perhaps, was doomed for a space to travel in the landscape of my creations, I could not make myself known to him — he weighed down by his labours, I imprisoned in mine.

(Caroline Bingham)

'You have here already a compatriot, Senor,' said the Captain. 'At least — he speaks like you.

Yet somehow not like.'

'Not like?'

`He speaks English as — as a foreigner. He said he was a passionate pilgrim, for example. You would never say that, Senor — and ashore in Riberalta he would not go with me into the brothel, as you would. Not even for a coffee. See! He comes.'

Indeed: the wing collar, the carefully pressed morning suit, the panama worn at what he must have supposed a 'rakish' angle. He did not belong to this world of shady deals, lost hopes, Poverty, but to the drawing-rooms, afternoon tea, conversations of oblique velleity. 'Graham!' he cried, advancing, the white, pudgy paw half-extended, half-withheld. 'Is not this delightfully —' he paused, searching — 'seedy? You might even call it — Greeneland!' I nodded to the Captain. As the single shot rang out I woke, refreshed. (Alyson Nikiteas)

The water was so clear that I could see that it was full of fish which! took to be piranha. James promptly put his hand in and withdrew his arm, neatly severed at the wrist. Unconcerned, he found a spare hand in a First Aid box and began to bind it on, using the caulking between the Planks. He required a great deal and the boat began to sink, but at once we found ourselves on

board a sort of Bolivian African Queen.

I knew it was vital to keep up the steam pressure. The fuel consisted entirely of remain- dered copies of Our Man in Havana, which I shovelled into the furnace until the safety valve lifted with a shattering roar. This woke me up, indignant that literature should be cheaper than logs, and especially that for our purposes a better book would have been The Turn of the

Screw. (D. Shepherd) There was a notice, 'TITICACA CRUISES', by the quay where James was waiting. He wore a light grey suit and a panama hat and I said, 'That won't do, we're in Bolivia.' He replied, in a marked New York drawl, T11 bolivia, Graham,' and offered me the hat, which was full of biscuits. 'Have a cracker, Graham,' he said, and laughed heartily. I took a biscuit and so did a foxy-faced man with a small moustache who had joined us in the prow of the boat. 'You're Greene.' I admitted this. 'I'm Watson, we were at school together.' It came to me then that I had once hated this boy, so I pushed him into the river and watched his striped school hat float

away on the stream. (John Sweetman) Seated with Henry James on a Bolivian river- boat, I told him how, one afternoon, my copy of The Europeans had turned into Boccaccio's Decameron. He gazed wistfully at two white mice scuttling across the deck.

'The heart is willing,' he murmured, 'but the manhood is weak.'

I noted the vivid green and purple checks of his jacket and the large striped humbugs he was eating one by one. I felt emboldened.

'Let me show you my relic,' I said. 'It was given me by a Monsignor in Rome, the day he and I and Pope Paul danced a saraband with the Beverley Sisters.'

Instantly things changed. The river was still there, and the boat, but he had become the James of the Sargent portrait.

`No, Graham,' he said, raising a nose beneath which every swamp plant in South America seemed suddenly to be festering. 'You may not have an overdraft.'

(Chris Tingley)

No. 1759: Gilbertian

A famous 20th-century poet wrote the Gilbertian line, 'When you're alone in the middle of the night and you wake in a sweat and a hell of a fright . . .' Please carry on, Gilbertianly, for up to 12 lines. Entries to 'Competition No. 1759' by 18 December.