Barefoot in the Head Read online

  The waiting man began to breathe in a certain way. Charteris regarded him curiously out of the corner of his eye, because he fancied that the man was accomplishing rather an accurate parody of his daughter’s breathing. So good was it that the girl was virtually conjured up between them; she proved to be, to Charteris’ delight, the one of the three girls in a mini-skirt he had most admired while walking up the hill, perhaps a year younger than himself. The illusion lasted only a split second, and then the waiting man was breathing naturally again.

  ‘All pretence must be broken! Maybe that is the quest on which I came to this country. Although we are strangers and should perhaps talk formally together, I must declare to you that I believe very deeply that there is a strange force latent in man which can be awakened.’

  ‘Kundalini! Turn left here, down Petunia Park Road.’ ‘What?’

  ‘Turn left.’

  ‘What else did you say? You were swearing at me, I believe?’

  ‘Kundalini. You don’t know your Gurdjieff as well as you pretend, my friend. So-called occult literature speaks of Kundalini, or the serpent of Kundalini. A strange force in man which can be awakened.’

  ‘That’s it, then, yes! I want to awaken it. What are all these people doing in the rain?’

  As they drove down Petunia Park Road, Charteris realised that the English middle-classes were standing neatly and attentively in their gardens; some were performing characteristic actions such as adjusting ties and reading big newspapers, but most were simply staring into the road.

  ‘Left here, into Brontosaurus Broadway. Listen, my boy, Kundalini, that serpent, should be left sleeping. It’s nothing desirable! Repulsive though you may find these people here, their lives have at least been dedicated — and successfully, on the whole — to mechanical thought and action, which keep the serpent sleeping. I mean, security masquerading as a little danger is only a small aberration, whereas Kundalini — ’

  He went into some long rigmarole which Charteris was unable to follow; he had just seen a red Banshee, driven by another Gurdjieffian I, slide past the top of the road, and was disturbed by it. Although there was much he wanted to learn from the waiting man, he must not be deflected from his main north-bound intention, or he might find himself in the position of a discarded I. On the other hand, it was possible that going north might bring him into discardment. For the first time in his life, he was aware of all life’s rich or desiccating alternatives; and an urge within him — but that might be Kundalini — prompted him to go and talk to people, preach to them, about cultivating the multi-valued.

  ‘Here’s the house,’ said the waiting man. ‘Pear Tree Palace. Come in and have a cup of tea. You must meet my daughter. She’s your age, no more.’

  At the neat little front gate, barred with a wrought-iron sunset, Charteris hesitated. ‘You are hospitable, but I hope you won’t mind my asking — I seem myself to be slightly affected by the PCA bombs — hallucinations, you know — I wondered — aren’t you also a bit — touched — ’

  The waking man laughed, making his ugly face look a lot uglier. ‘Everyone’s touched! Don’t be taken in by appearances here. Believe me, the old world has gone, but its shell remains in place. One day soon, there will come a breath of wind, a new messiah, the shell will crumple, and the kids will run streaming, screaming, barefoot in the head, through lush new imaginary meadows. What a time to be young! Come on, I’ll put the kettle on! Wipe your shoes!’

  ‘It’s as bad as that? — ’

  The waiting man had opened the front door and gone inside. Uneasy, Charteris paused and looked about the garden suburb. Kinetic architecture here had spiked the viewpoint with a crazy barricade of pergolas, patios, bay windows, arches, extensions, all manner of dinky garages and outhouses, set among fancy trees, clipped hedges, and painted trellis. Watertight world. All hushed under the fine mist of rain. Neighbourhood of evil for him, small squares of anaemic fancy, wrought-iron propriety.

  He found himself at the porch, where the gaunt rambler canes already bore little snouts of spring growth. There’d be a fine show of New Dawn in four more months. An enchantment waited here. He went in, leaving the door open. He wanted to hear more about Kundalini.

  At the back of the house, the waiting man pottered in a small kitchen, all painted green and cream, every surface covered with patterned stuff and, on a calendar, a picture of two people tarrying in a field. Behind the frozen gestures of the couple, sheep broke from their enclosure and surged among the harvest wheat to trample it with delight.

  ‘My daughter’ll be back soon.’ The waiting man switched on a small green-and-cream dumpy streamlined radio from which the dumpy voice of a disc-joker said, ‘And now for those who enjoy the sweet things of life, relax right back for the great all-time sound of one of the great bands of all time and we’re spinning this one just especially for Auntie Flora and all the boys at “Nostalja Vista”, 5 The Crossings, The Tip, Scrawley, in Bedfordshire — the great immortal sound of you guessed it the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing “Moonlight Serenade”.’

  Out in the garden winter birds plunged.

  ‘ “All time sound” — you are for music?’ asked the waiting man as he beat time and watched the treacly music as it rose from the kettle spout and steamed across the withered ceiling.

  ‘My daughter isn’t in. I expect she’ll be back soon. Why don’t you settle down here with us for a bit? There’s a nice little spare room upstairs — a bit small but cosy. You never know — you might fall in love with her.’

  He remembered his first fear of the waiting man: that he would detain Charteris in the customs shed. Now, more subtly, the attempt at detention was again being made.

  ‘And you’re a follower of Gurdjieff, are you?’ Charteris asked.

  ‘He was rather an unpleasant customer, wasn’t he? But a magician, a good guide through these hallucinatory times.’

  ‘I want to waken a strange force that I feel inside me, but you say that is Kundalini, and Gurdjieff warns against waking it?’

  ‘Very definitely! Most definitely! G says man must awake but the snake, the serpent, must be left sleeping.’ He made the tea meticulously, using milk from a tube which was lettered Ideal. ‘We’ve all got serpents in us, you know!’ He laughed.

  ‘So you say. We also have motives that make our behaviour rational, that have nothing to do with any snakes!’

  The waiting man laughed again in an offensive way.

  ‘Don’t laugh like that! Shall I tell you the story of my life?’

  Amusement. ‘You’re too young to have a life!’ He dropped saccharine pills into the tea.

  ‘On the contrary! I’ve already shed many illusions. My father was a stone-mason. Everyone respected him. He was big and powerful and harsh and sad. Everyone said he was a good man. He was an Old Communist, a power in the Party.

  ‘When I was a small boy, there was a revolt by the younger generation. They wanted to expel the Old Communists. Students everywhere rose up and said, “Stop this antique propaganda! Let us live our lives!” And in the schools they said, “Stop teaching us propaganda! Tell us facts!” You know what my father did?’

  ‘Have your tea and be quiet!’

  ‘I’m talking to you! My father went boldly out to meet the students. They jeered him but he spoke up. “Comrades,” he said, “You are right to protest — youth must always protest. I’m glad you have the courage to speak up because for a long while I have secretly felt as you do. Now I have your backing, I will change things. Leave it to me!” I heard him say it and was proud.’

  And he heard now the all-time orchestra never dead.

  ‘I became fervent then myself. Sure enough, father made changes. Everyone said that the young idealists had won and in the schools they taught how the Old Communism had been okay but the new non-propagandist kind was better. The young ringleaders of the revolt were even given good jobs. It was wonderful.’

  ‘Politics don’t interest me,’ said the waiting man, s
tirring his tea. ‘Do you care for music?’

  ‘Five years later, I had my first girl. She said she would let me in on a secret. She was part of a revolutionary group of young men and girls. They wanted to change things so that they could live their lives freely, and they wanted the schools and newspapers to stop all the propaganda. They determined to expel the Young Communists.

  ‘For me, it was a movement of terrible crisis! I realised that Communism was a just system for hanging on to what you had, no better than Capitalism. And I realised that my father was just a big fraud — an opportunist, not an idealist. From then on, I knew I had to get away, to live my own life.’

  The waiting man showed his furry teeth and said, ‘That’s hardly as interesting to me as what I was telling you about the serpent, I think you must admit. There’s no such thing as an “own life”.’

  ‘What is this serpent of Kundalini then? Come on, out with it, or I could pretty easily brain you with this kettle!’

  ‘It’s an electric kettle!’

  ‘I don’t care!’

  At this proof of Charteris’ recklessness, the waiting man backed away, helped himself to a saccharine pill, and said, ‘Enjoy your tea while it’s hot! Forget your father — it’s something we all have to do!’

  ‘Yes siree, one of the great ones in the Miller style. And now for a welcome change of pace — ’

  Charteris was conscious of a mounting pressure inside him. Something was breathing close to his left ear and stealing away.

  ‘Answer my question!’ he said.

  ‘Well, according to G, the serpent is the power of the imagination — the power of fantasy — which takes the place of a real function. You get my meaning? When a man dreams instead of acting, when he imagines himself to be a great eagle or a great magician...that’s the force of Kundalini acting in him...’

  ‘Cannot one act and dream?’

  The waiting man appeared to double up, sniggering in repulsive fashion with his fists to his mouth. Love Burrow — that was the sign, and a pale-thighed wife beside him... His place was there, wherever that was. This Pear Tree Palace was a trap, a dead end, the waiting man himself an ambiguous either/or/both/and sign, deluding yet warning him: perhaps a manifestation of Kundalini itself. He had got his tasks in the wrong order; clearly, this was a dead end with no alternative, a corner of extinction. What he wanted was a new tribe!

  Now the waiting man’s sniggers were choking him. Above their bubbling din, he heard the sound of a car engine outside, and dropped his teacup. The tea sent a dozen fingers across the cubist lino. Over his fists, the little doubled figure glared blankly red at him. Charteris turned and ran.

  Through the open door. Birds leaped from the lawn to the eaves of the bungalow, leaden, from motionlessness to instant motionlessness.

  His heart’s beat dragged in its time-snare like a worn serenade. Down the path. The rain had lured out a huge black slug which crawled like a torn watch-strap before him. The green-and-cream radio still dialled yesterday.

  Through the gate. The sun, set forever with its last rays caught in mottled iron.

  To the road. But he was a discarded alternative. A red Banshee was pulling away, with one of his glittering I’s at the wheel, puissant, full of potential, multi-valued, saviour-shaped. He ran after it, calling from the asphalt heart of Brontosaurus Broadway, leaping over the gigantic yellow arrows. They were becoming more difficult to negotiate. His own powers, he knew, were failing. He had chosen wrongly, become a useless I, dallying with an old order instead of seeking new patterns.

  Now the arrows were almost vertical. LINKS FAHREN. The red car was far away, just a blur moving through the barrier, speeding unimpeded for...

  He still heard breathing, movements of clothes, the writhing of toes inside shoe-caps. But these were not his. They belonged to the Charteris in the car, the undiscarded I. He no longer breathed.

  As he huddled over the arrow, gulls tumbled from the cliff and sank into the water. Over the sea, the ship came. Up the hill, motors sounded. In the head, barefoot, a new age.

  There had been a war, a dislocation.

  TIME NEVER GOES BY

  You must remember this

  That beds get crumpled skirts get rumpled

  And hedges grow up into trees

  Cinemas close and the parking lot

  Loses its last late Ford Everything goes by the board

  But Time Never Goes By

  And when true lovers screw

  Novelty wears off the affair’s off

  Perfume fades from the air

  The bright spinning coin will tarnish and

  The miser forget his hoard

  Everything goes by the board

  But Time Never Goes By

  The watch keeps ticking true enough

  But time’s glued down to something stronger

  It’s a fixture Do enough

  But every second’s a second longer

  Try your best you’ll be impressed

  Every minute has centuries in it

  It’s still the same old story

  Characters change events rearrange

  Plot seems to wear real thin

  Coffins call for running men

  Hated or adored

  Everything goes by the board

  But Time Never Goes By

  NOVA SCOTIA TREADMILL ORCHESTRA

  ROSEMARY LEFT ME

  Beyond the buildings the buildings

  Begin again

  Beyond recording the old records

  Spin again

  It’s sort of sad it’s kind of safe

  It seems so sour

  The things that are past will fortify

  The menace of the coming hour

  My Rosemary left me outside The Fox

  Said I smelt said I didn’t care

  Then why do I keep her pubic hair

  Tied up in ribbon in a sandalwood box

  Now I’ve found Jeanie cute as you please

  Tight little skirt and leather jerkin

  Soon I’ll get the scissors working

  History comes bobbing on back like knees

  So I go ahead tho I know ahead

  Winds blow ahead

  Two steps forward one step back

  Trodden in another tread

  Beyond recording the old records

  Spin again

  Beyond the buildings the buildings

  Begin again

  THE GENOSIDES

  LITTLE PAPER FACES

  He goes through the land

  His tomorrow in his pocket

  He seeks a land

  Where the faces fit the heads

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Yeh, with hand-drawn expressions

  He crosses over the sea

  Pilgrim of the Pilgrim Age

  He hopes to see

  A different mask beneath the skull

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Yeh, with crayoned experience

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Little paper faces

  Yeh, papered on the paper bone

  THE ESCALATION

  DRAKE-MAN ROUTE

  So maybe this was the real Charteris or a personal photograph of him wire-wheeling towards the metropolis none too sure if matter was not hallucination, smiling and speaking with a tone of unutterable kindness to himself to keep down the baying images. Uprooted man. Himself a product of time. England a product of literature. It was a good period and to dissolve into all branches — great new thing with all potentials, prosperity and prenury.

  He saw it, see-saw the new thing, scud across the scudding road before him, an astral projection perhaps, all legs, going all ways at once. A man could do that.

  He wanted to communicate his new discoveries, pour out the profusion of his confusion to listeners, in ma
dness never more nerved or equilustral, all paradised by the aerosols until the undipped hedges of mind grew their own utopiary.

  His car snouted out one single route from all the possible routes and now growled through the iron-clod night of London’s backyards: papiermâché passing for stone, cardboard passing for brick, only in the yellow fanning wash of French headlights; pretence all round of solidity, permanence, roofs and walls and angles of a sly geometry, windows infinitely opaque on seried sleepers, quick corners, snickering bayonets at vision’s angles, untrodden pavements, wide eyes reflected from blind shops, the ever-closing air, the epic of unread signs, and under the bile blue fermentation of illumination, roundabouts of concrete boxed by shops and a whole vast countryside rumpling upwards into the night under the subterranean detonation of unease. The steering wheel swung it all this way and that, great raree show-down for foot-down Serbs. Song in the wings, other voices.

  Round the next corner FOR YOUR THROAT’S SAKE SMOKE a van red-eyed — a truck no trokut! — in the middle of the guy running out waving bloody leather — Charteris braked spilling hot words as the chasing thought came of impact and splat some clot mashed out curving against a wall of shattered brick so bright all flowering: a flowering cactus a christmas cactus rioting in an anatomical out-of-season.

  Car and images dominoed into control as the man jumped back for his life and Charteris muscled his Banshee past the van to a halt.

  All along the myriad ways of Europe that sordid splendid city in the avenues Charteris had driven hard. He thought of them spinning down his window thrusting out his face as the vanman came on the trot.

  ‘You trying to cause a crash or something?’

  ‘You were touching some speed, lad, come round that corner like you were breaking the ruddy speed record, can you give me a lift I’ve broken down?’

  He looked broken down like all the English now narrowly whooping up the after-effects of the Acid Head War, with old leather shoulders and elbows and a shirt of macabre towelling, no tie, eyes like phosphorescence and a big mottled face as if shrimps burrowed in his cheeks.