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Alice Thomas Ellis
The mite who inhabits my unconscious intruded into my waking hour the other morning with a dreadful pun. I had been dreaming about an enormous serpent who was on his way to flatten a castle, and the mite popped up saying, 'I just coiled to say I love you.' I never say things like that when I'm conscious, I don't even think them. When other people say things like that I pour beer on them.
When the mite returned to his cranny I moved into the parking space myself and started thinking about suicide. I know it's forbidden but I wondered whether there might not be circumstances when it's allow- able — like when you're about to appear on telly, or Christmas is coming, or some- body expects you to produce 70,000 words by April. There's a certain panache about ritual suicide if you remember the moves correctly, though it can go embarrassingly wrong. Take the Japanese variety. You have to stick a sword into yourself and unravel your insides round it like so much spaghetti. It's not the sort of thing you can practise, and if you make an error a long-suffering friend has to bale you out. Rolling his eyes heavenwards and mutter- ing 'Can't you get anything right?' he has to stroll up and swipe your head off. It's asking a lot of friendship.
The third son was in a pub near Beachy Head the other day and asked the barman whether he had many customers hell-bent on self-destruction. `Yus,' said the barman judiciously, 'I fink we've 'ad firteen so far this year.' He said you could frequently distinguish them from the normal run of customers who were merely there for the beer. There was something about their expression. The son enquired whether he was not sometimes moved to attempt to prevent them, and he said after a moment's contemplation, 'Well, no, not reelly. . . I suppose the bar staff can only take social work so far.
The nearby call-box was out of order and the barman said he thought it might have been closed down because people kept using it to deliver their final messages. I just thought that if we all had to rely on British Telecom to relay our last words there'd be people all over the country wondering why on earth we'd done it.
I have a theory about poor Canon Bennett. I couldn't understand why being caught out being rude about the leadership of the C of E should have driven him to take his life. I should rather have expected him to have basked. Then when I read that his cat had died in a distressing fashion I began to understand. If he lived alone with it they would have had a close relationship. With the wolves baying at his heels in that maddeningly self-righteous way, and the prospect of further advance- ment closed to him, finding Kitty laid out on the carpet would be the final straw.
We're not supposed to mind about animals as we do about people, but some of us mind, if not more, at least as much. When the fifth son went to Canada he was mildly sad to leave us but what really upset him was returning his boa-constrictor to the shop because we were loth to look after it. Animals are frequently better company than humans and they don't argue about where the mustard should be positioned on the table. I don't mourn them as I do people, but I remember some pets with such pity and regret. They were sinless — a peculiarly disarming, inhuman quality and much more straightforward than your average Anglo churchman. I bet they go to Heaven and, as I said earlier, the idea that some suicides might get in with a caution is not perhaps beyond the bounds of possibil- ity.
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