The Concord Diaries

(The diaries of Lazarus and Cain Concord, like those of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, were originally intended only to be published twenty years after the death of the surviving brother. Despite the inaccuracies, spites and pre- judices they contain, it is felt that a further selection from the daily jottings of these two poisonous scribblers may be of particular interest while the authors are still more or less alive. Accordingly MR. ALAN BRIEN has once more transcribed a few of the more printable recent entries.)

December 16, 1965.—Dined at the Belgravia show-off flat of the social-climbing impresario, `Porgie' Klosinteim, an excruciating mixture of fake antique and only-too-genuine modern fur- niture which provoked Cain to groan halfway up the interminable plastic staircase—'See Maples and die, man, die.' Disillusioned by the mys- terious failure since 1939 of almost every one of our sixty-nine joint works, Cain was in his most cynical literary mood.

After dinner, the little fellow nimbly clam- bered upon Lady Molly's hypochondriac hand- bag (that famous small trunk, three feet by four, rumoured to contain a folding camp-bed, a portable operating table and a full set of midget surgeons) and launched into a rather witty, ironic vote of thanks to `Porgie': 'I par- ticularly enjoy every mouthful of rotting pheasant and every swig of prickling champagne served here because I know every morsel is gouged from the backsides, and every drop is wrung from the withers, of gullible, vain, hard-working hacks who, alas, are only too glad to earn enough to buy a TV dinner in aluminium foil and a bottle of Tizer.'

These barbed shafts of wounding satire would have struck more deeply into the hairy nipples of Klosinteim if Cain's delivery had not been so noticeably slurred by the effects of that alcohol-based medicine, Cossack Vodka, he takes for his asthma; if he had not kept sliding off a greasy patch on Lady M's bag and hitting his chin on the table; and if he had not been continually interrupted by being lifted on to the palm of Milord 'Jock' Bowcamp, the giant Cyclopian Scots humorist of TV fame, who would insist on unrolling his furred tongue like a purple toilet roll and stuttering—Divvil take it, were you the titchy Casanova who had it off with Snow-white?'

Such are the crude, Philistine, thoughtless pleasures of Klosinteim's Eaton Square circle (or 'the Eton circle of squares, the Dolce Bournvita Set,' as Cain christened them once).

It was a relief to bump into Cyril Sneeridge, the Lime Grove Savonarola, even though he im- mediately began denigrating his host, a habit I abominate. I think I made no secret of my dis- taste for this kind of backbiting by keeping my face steadily averted from him while I listened to what he had to say.

`Porgie,' he said. 'Why, dear boy, Porgie's my oldest friend. I adore, simply adore, the dear grotesque, obese, big-buttocked thing. Some people blame him for financing quite so many oeuvres by, and for, and about the -Hunnish monsters, such as I Was Hitler's Chamberpot. But you must admit that if anti-Semitism is going to exist, no one has a better right to make money out of it than the Jews. I estimate that Nazism has been more profitable to "Porgie" than to any other German-speaking entrepreneur outside the Krupp family.'

Cyril is known among TV technicians as `The Shrunken Head' and his cranium certainly looks as if it had been boiled for weeks in bile. There is something ventriloquial about his be- haviour as if he were only the mouthpiece for his absurdly misanthropic anti-sensualism while being bounced on the invisible knee of some satanic puppet-master. 'The Archie Andrews of the intellect' was the phrase Cain coined—and it is typical of him and his set that the reference should be to a radio doll of the post-war period. But then the 'wireless' is .the chic cultural fad of the moment--the young crowd meet in darkened cellars to listen to pirate recordings of ITMA, George VI's Christmas broadcasts and the treasured wartime editions of Round Britain Quiz.

As we talked, various celebrated nonentities bumped up against Sneeridge, basking in his strangulated smile and his strained vowels. 'Of course, love to see you after Paris and before Rome—fellow's a fluent bore in five languages and can make tedious small-talk in another six. Yes, darling, do bring the Cardinal—she's our leading Catholic lay-woman. the constant,

nympho, positively ecumenical in her favours, but I do wish her father would stop making speeches in the House of Lords about the moral value of Christian upbringing. My dear chappie, they behaved disgracefully and deserve your deepest contempt—he never forgives a good turn and he's particularly incensed because a newspaper has paid off his debts without even receiving one of the ten articles it commissioned.'

I refused to laugh at any of these cheap pleasantries, uttered behind the back of his so- called friends, but merely jotted them down on my cuff with a straight face. Eventually, he was swept away in the crush and I could almost swear I heard him muttering 'he and his brother are the Laurel and Hardy of Grub Street, every book remaindered before publication. . .

December 17, 1965.—Cain insisted on mak- ing an early-morning trip to Clapham Junction, wandering round all the greasy cafés and one- bulb snack bars, talking to tramps and drunks. He said he was looking for 'rough trade,' whatever that might be, and when.I asked what any of them could possibly have to barter with people like us, he laughed in a really rather nasty way. 'I'm always chasing Rimbauds,' he chuckled. I do hope a life devoted to literature with such little monetary reward is not begin- ning to affect his mind.

In the Copper Ptomaine, I got into conversa- tion with a tiny crone-like creature, wearing a man's suit so polished with dirt it looked like leather. She was crooning into one hand intimate confessions of a kind even I blush to record.

`His filthy fingers stinking of sewage, crept up my white and scented leg. . . . He had no teeth and his nostrils looked like the en- trance to the Aldgate Tube. . . . He bent me over the red-hot exhaust of his 2,000 c.c. Yoni motor-cycle and began to unscrew my navel with

an adjustable spanner....' -

I could stand it no longer. Though we have little income save what Cain occasionally earns reading Trollope to avuncular bedridden playwrights, I could at least save this lost soul for a few nights from being the plaything of local hooli- gans. I pressed five shillings into her tiny cat's paw.

That should at least ensure you a bed at the Salvation Army, my poor woman,' I whispered.

`Get stuffed, you feeble old stoat,' she shouted. `I have a suite at Claridges and I'm taping the first chapter of my new book.'

It was only then that I realised she actually was wearing a leather suit, and Cain, who knows everybody, identified her as Nell Doins, the millionairess author of Up thi'Spout and Down Your Junction.

December 21, 1965.—As the Esperanto, folk- song, maternity-clothes and little-magazines cor- respondent for the Sunday Peeper, I like to pay a visit every now and then to the paper's Tuesday morning editorial conference. It is a perfect example of a true democracy on a minor scale —even the lowliest member of the staff is allowed his say, each topic is rigorously debated and criticised for , as much as two hours; then the Editor does exactly what he was going to do anyway.

Life on a radical newspaper is very different from that on the capitalist, conservative organs of Fleet Street. You must be continually care- ful, in even your most casual speech, not to suggest that anyone on the staff is different in any way from any other person on the staff. Cain says you would need a search warrant to tell the girls from the boys. This is just his joke, but it is true that to hint that a woman should not write a certain article is to be guilty of 'sexual chauvinism'; to suggest another has not the knowledge to pronounce on some specialised discipline is to face a charge of 'intellectual over-privilege'; to point out that one of the staff is thirty years older than another is to court indictment as a 'pedlar of age prejudice.' How- ever, just to show that you are too liberal even to be suspected of the more conventional forms of illiberalism, it is the custom to address all Jewish contributors as 'Fagin' and all coloured ones as `Sambo.'

As I entered his office, the millionaire Editor and Proprietor, William Wisteria, was seeking the advice of the staff on how to save the people of Underdoggia from extinction. This race (sorry, cultural community) are unique in the world, and especially dear to Wisteria's heart, because they are all black, Jewish and working-class. Every Un- derdogg is exactly the same height, weight, shape, age and sex as every other. Each grows his own food, brews his own beer, weaves his own clothes, builds his own house and makes his own music.

`Sounds an ideal existence,' said someone in- sincerely. 'What have they got to worry about compared to us?'

`The trouble is,' explained William, shyly tugging a forelock, 'they now have nothing to eat, drink, wear or live in and the music is driving them mad.'

The talk immediately turned, through a natural link, to a discussion of what the staff could afford

to eat, drink, wear and inhabit on their present salaries. Worn underwear was exhibited, holed shoes passed round, summonses. for non-payment of rates produced. Some members, in defiance of office custom, actually insisted on being poorer than others.

`Money! Money!' reproved Wisteria. 'All you can think of is money. Do you imagine I could even remember for a moment that there is such a thing as money when the Underdoggs are in such trouble?'

At this, the entire staff rose to its feet and, with tears in its eyes, began kicking him to death. I left, moved to think that the revolutionary spirit is not yet dead in class-ridden Britain. Later I was told that before much damage had been done to the Editor, a raise of £1 17s. 6d. had been offered and accepted all round. The Editor then apologised to the staff who apologised to him. Tomorrow the union chapel are meeting the general manager to negotiate an agreed joint apology and the discussion on Underdoggia has been postponed until Thursday. December 22, 1965.—Not all of our progres- sive publicists are as democratic to the point of masochism as Wisteria is. I was telling the story of the Sunday Peeper conference to John Pope- son, editor of the weekly Left Conspirator.

`None of that on my mag,' he snapped. parade 'em every morning in the street outside, leftest on the right, rightest on the left. Sideways, quick shuffle. Thumbs along the seam of the party line. Stand up when an Editor enters the room. There are three ways to write articles here —your way, my way and the New Statesman's way. We are going to do it my way. That's wh.o the entire country needs. The working class are getting sloppy and bolshy—I'd teach them to vote Tory or stay away from the polls just be- cause it's raining. Serve their pampered • little offspring right, listening to the Beatles when they could be learning to play Debussy on a lute as I did, if they were compelled to go to public schools and tough it for a few years. What this country needs is a good classics headmaster, not a shifty little lab assistant.'

Only one thing frightens him—that some vicious enemy in the Labour party (he has none among the Tories) might brand him as a secret Royalty-lover. He has continually denounced the Monarchy; however, he lives in a country house in Kensington Gardens near the Snowdons and, in the way of neighbours, the Princess will drop in to borrow a cup of caviar and the kids can't help playing with the young royals occasionally. John has, of course, forbidden the house to anyone above the rank of life peer, but he can't be there to keep them out all the time. I do see his dilemm

December 23, 1965.—Cain and I can't help being a little hurt that there are no photo- graphs of us in Frisby Bull-Dyke's Sack of Cast-offs (published last week by Aitken and Pitman, £50 a bag—reductions for quantity). But then there are only four men in the entire collection and all of those male sopranos. Still, we cannot help remembering the good turns we did for handsome 'Frizzy' in the days before she was taken up by Royalty and became one of the 'now-faces.' Often, down on her luck, she would drop in to cadge a cigar, to borrow my morning coat or dinner jacket for some social occasion, or even just for a friendly bout of fisticuffs in the backyard. Yet even the most crabbed old fogey could hardly deny her fantastic success in choosing for her sack the `most glamorous people in Britain now.' There is P. J. Clytemenestra, the eighteen-stone pop-linger, portrayed as the Virgin Mary giving birth to a gold record—'she sees herself a Fertility Symbol' explains the caption on the back. There is pop artist Rosie Ragged, who paints only herself, then is flayed by a secret process and sells her multicoloured skin to collectors. I cannot describe her better than the caption—`Rosie is bald, androgynous and illiterate. Her Dalek- figure and her hands like bunches of gouty car- rots, her blacked-out teeth and her stinking feet, conceal a nature both sweet and lovable. When someone has passed a satirical remark in a restaurant, most of the other girls in this sack would line the male• diners up along the wall and pound the daylights out of them. Rosie may stick the boot in once or twice to show she's a trend- setter but usually she can be found comforting the frightened waitresses or deserted girl-friends with a matey hug.' Surely, this is a gallery in which Cain and I deserve to be included?