AFTERTHOUGHT
JOHN WELLS
I hear a voice you cannot hear, Which says I cannot stay; I see a hand you cannot see, Which beckons me away.
Thomas Tickell (1686-1740)
Some people, 1 know, find bores extremely distressing. The mere sound of a bore's voice at the front door, raised in ebullient greeting before apologising for not arriving earlier and moving naturally on into the exposition of his first ponderous anecdote, is enough in some cases to make men react as if they had been surprised in the nude with the bore's wife, sending them climbing desperately over sofas and flattening themselves behind doors in a frenzied attempt to gather up their clothes and leave the house, if necessary by some tiny win- dow, before the bore's arrival in the room. Others, actually cornered by the bore bearing down on them with luminously hypnotic eyes and a meticulously prepared monologue based on last week's Times gossip column and 'Lon- don Day by Day,' will resort to ludicrous ex- cuses like that offered by the poet above, feign a sudden stroke or epileptic fit, or become in- sane, roaring and snarling in the face of the bewildered bore until he withdraws and per- mits them to escape.
But this is surely a primitive and insensitive reaction. For one thing we are all bores to somebody. My friends in Greek Street inevit- ably turn to this column on my arrival in the offices of the satirical fortnightly and affect heavy-lidded yawning, expressions of anguished ennui, and finally a sudden and dramatic col- lapse into well-feigned slumber. And it is this inescapable fact that irradiates any encounter with a bore and elevates it into a beautiful experience.
The bore, in fact, stands as a heightened symbolic figure, illustrating in his relationship with those he bores the eternal inability of human beings ever really to communicate with cad] other, to understand or to be understood.
The Frenchman, glumly gesticulating, shrug- ging his shoulders and arching his sad eye- brows as he unfolds his nasal and diffident tale
to the uncomprehending English colonel in the bowler hat, until the colonel composes his face
in an expression of distaste, turns to a nearby table. takes up a plate of cold consommé and empties it over the Frenchman's head, tells us
something about the mystery of communica- tion and the legacy of language, not to men- tion the condition humaine: but the bore tells us everything.
Unaware of the profound and embittered hostility of his victim, the bore draws nearer.
There is within him a deep desire to please and to be loved. He has, he knows, little to offer this red-faced gentleman with the white mous- tache in exchange for his friendship, but he offers him all that he has. A little anecdote. Did the gentleman with the red face and the white moustache by any chance know the story of the late Sir Winston Churchill and Mr Mikardo? He did? Then he would not perhaps mind if he were to sit down beside him on the sofa. He would? He chuckles to himself, re- membering that someone once told him that the gentleman with the red face and the white moustache was a bit of a humorist. He settles down, complaining as he does so that none of us is getting any younger, and turns to face his new neighbour.
The gentleman has now assumed, he notices, an expression of intense intellectual excite- ment. His slightly bloodshot eyes appear almost crossed, and his face is puckered up into what could be a smile. Sir Winston, he begins, was once sitting in the House of Commons with a friend, and was asking the names of some of the younger members. He sees that his com- panion on the sofa is making curious champ- ing movements with his dentures and is attempting to rise. Fearing some embarrassing personal ailment that the old gentleman is bravely attempting to conceal, the bore pre- tends not to notice and continues his recital. Sir Winston was apparently most interested in the younger MPS sitting on the Opposition benches. That was, of course, the Socialist benches in those days. Seeing Mr Mikardo, as he then was, Sir Winston asked his companion his name. His companion told him, saying that it was Mr Mikardo. `Aha,' exclaimed Sir Win- ston, as quick and as witty as ever, 'I hear he is not as nice as he looks.' The point of the story being, he goes on to explain, still look- ing straight in front of him in order to save the old gentleman embarrassment as he wrestles with his personal ailment, that Mr Churchill as he then was did not think that Mr Mikardo looked at all nice in the first place.
He chuckles for a few moments, shakes his head, and then turns to ask his companion whether he read about the remarkable num- ber of starlings nesting in the trees near Wim- sey Charlton as reported in the Daily Telegraph that morning. His companion has gone. Hurt and alarmed, he looks up to see the gentleman with the red face and the white moustache lean- ing against the drinks table, apparently dis- traught, and emptying almost half a pint of brandy down his throat, his chin stretched up- wards beneath the glass. He finishes the brandy, swallows with eye-bulging violence. and fixing the bore with a glare of apopleptic insanity, screams, the words 'Yes I did.' Two tragic figures, unloved and unloving, uncomprehend- ing and incomprehensible, baffled, suffering and alone in a hostile and desertesl universe. Perhaps someone could write a play about it.
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