The History Of Us

Philip Leslie

Description

The History of Us is a beautiful exploration of love and obsession, based on the stories of a group of friends growing up in Norfolk and told in reflection focused on the incredibly close but conversely fractious relationship of the two central characters. Told in three parts, The History of Us, explores the relationships between the two and a close friend, bonded by love, but also by a single tragic moment in their shared lives. As the book unfolds, we hear many whispers, which shift our understanding of that tragic day, and ultimately, of course, our perceptions of the characters, and theirs of each other. Although we are offered a kind of resolution in the final pages, there remains a sense of ambivalence and unease that disturbs.

Sujets

• Friendship
• General officer
• General
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 30 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907461033
• Langue: English

Extrait

The History of Us
Legend Press Ltd, 3rd Floor, Unicorn House, 221-222 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PJ info legend-paperbooks.co.uk www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents Philip Leslie 2009
The right of the above author to be identified as the authors of this work has be asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-907461-03-3
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Set in Times Printed by J. H. Haynes and Co. Ltd., Sparkford.
Cover designed by Gudrun Jobst www.yellowoftheegg.co.uk
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Editor s Introduction
Notes :
JAMES
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEE N
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
WILSON
ALISON
(Real) author s note
Editor s Introduction
As the well-known epigram 1 reminds us, Geography is about maps, Biography about chaps. The History of Us , a biographical fancy, is about three chaps: our popular actor and national treasure James Rudd 2 ; his friend the libidinous genius 3 Wilson who, behind all the mischief and fanfaronade, is a much-admired painter; and Alison Dury, sine qua non , of whom you will not have heard, and whose diary 4 forms a substantial portion of this book.
A brief word on structure. In the catalogue to his 2004 retrospective 5 Wilson describes how, during his time as an art college lecturer, he would drive to work not by the most direct route, but circuitously, along narrow lanes, through out-of-the-way villages and around a tortuous suburban maze. His reason? Because, Wilson being Wilson, he needed to ogle the beautiful women he knew would be waiting at various bus stops 6 . A waste of petrol perhaps, but his round-the-houses commute provides a useful analogy for the structure of this book. Put simply, do not expect to be taking the most direct route. At times you will even find yourself heading backwards 7 . Furthermore, inspired by parallel narratives in Faulkner 8 , Golding 9 and Kaye-Smith 10 , this editor has decided to keep each biography self-contained rather than blend them into an homogenous, chronological whole, thus better preserving their individual voices.
Notes :
1 More accurately, a clerihew, named after the inventor of that species of humorous verse, Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
2 It is requested that all correspondence regarding Inspector Poole should be directed to the various appreciation societies and internet fan sites, not this editor or his publisher, vita being so brevis, and ars, beautiful ars, being so much longa.
3 [Wilson s] moulding of the female nude is sheer genius. Michael Hunt, The Twenty-First Century Nude. Erotic Arts Review , Summer 2004.
In his nudes explicitness transcends mere concupiscence. It is not difficult to see why Bonjour Louise! - bold, brash, intellectually uncompromising - is his masterpiece, and possibly one of the greatest British paintings of the early 90s. Genius! Chris Davies, The Independent , May 1994.
Or, if you prefer: Genius he is most definitely not. He s no more than a hard-on with a lavatory brush attached to it. Jessica Toll, Dirty Old Man: The Sordid World of Wilson. ArtSmack, Winter 2000.
4 Privately owned. Used with permission.
5 Private Parts, Public Places: Forty recent oils by Wilson . Green and Smart Gallery, London 2004. Wilson s prolixity is counterbalanced by a short yet generous appreciation of the artist s work by James Rudd. Nothing escapes this painter s eye. He could solve a murder simply by setting up his easel next to where the body was found.
6 Not strictly true. Wilson neglects to mention that his daily journey was achieved in defiance of a three-year total ban resulting from drink-related driving offences. The various detours were necessitated by fear of arrest rather than voyeurism.
7 According to the artist, the figurative works in Private Parts, Public Places were hung so as to offer the viewer a striptease in reverse ; an attempt to demonstrate how eroticism increases with concealment. The artist s thoughts on this subject are explored in conversation with Nicola Potter: Christine Keeler s Chair , Contemporary Art Studies, Spring 1999. W: You ve watched porn, right? NP: In the name of research, yes. W: Same here. [Laughs] The point is, wouldn t you agree that the opening scene, when everyone s fully clothed, is powerfully erotic? It s the expectation, isn t it. I mean, here I am, sitting here with you, and the main thing that s running through my mind is: are those stockings or tights ? [Winks and laughs]
8 William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury . New York, Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931. Regarding Caddy, Faulkner said: To me she was the beautiful one, she was my heart s darling. That s what I wrote the book about and I used the tools which seemed to me the proper tools to try to tell, try to draw the picture of Caddy. (Quoted on p97 in The Achievement of William Faulkner . Michael Millgate. Constable, London 1966.)
9 William Golding, Rites of Passage. London, Faber 1980. While it is possible to close Golding s novel at the point when Talbot s narrative ends, true understanding comes only through reading Colley s letter. Similarly, the James and Alison sections of The History of Us , though independent, are the two halves of one whole.
10 Sheila Kaye-Smith, The Lardners and the Laurelwoods . London, Cassell 1948. Out of print but well worth the effort of tracking down. Similar to the Faulkner in that four different narratives - here, all third-person - when added together solve a puzzle.
JAMES
ONE
Look what I ve found, Alison.
This photograph. It s us at sixteen play-wrestling in my nephew s sandpit. I d not seen it for years, had I. And do you know where it was? It was caught in the pages of my first Inspector Poole script, which I discovered jammed behind the radiator in my study. Instantly: the jangling sunlight, the hair-drier breeze laden with thrips and dandelion fluff, the clamour of next door s kids, my brother hurrying into the garden with his instamatic pressed to his face, paparazzi-style.
How was I to have known Martin coveted you? Unwittingly I gave you to him. I grabbed you around the middle and lifted you, and you kicked out and bicycled and managed to overbalance me onto the hot sand, just as the camera clicked and he got your famous legs.
Famous? Show me that. Now remind me about me. This girl I m looking at.
That s easy. Build: essentially lissom with the standard issue squidgy places. Height: above average. Hair: dark, shoulder-length, always perfectly sleekly groomed as if you were in an ongoing shampoo advert. Face: deadpan pale, ineffably pretty. Eyes: aluminium grey, huge. Voice: you d been raised to eschew the local accent and to enunciate . I loved your voice. I miss it tremendously.
Appearance?
Smart but casual. No great interest in fashion.
Did this girl have any hobbies?
Books, the cinema.
The very solo pursuits they advise you not to put on a CV, along with chess and self-abuse.
Books and cinema are on mine. My interest in Who s Who is staring out to sea while staring in to see . Can t get more solitary than that.
How long had we been friends at the time your brother snapped us?
Oh, since for ever. I can still remember when I met you. Our mothers were chatting outside your house. They used to do that at one time. I spotted you in your front garden and strayed in to see who you were and what you were doing. After that, mainly because of our proximity as near neighbours, we were rarely apart. You were invited on holidays with us and I accompanied your family to the cottage you rented in Dorset. We were glued together, even through the trials of puberty. People often wrongly assumed we were a couple.
Describe the you I m looking at.
He s a fraction taller than the girl, slim, with a mousy mop. Not particularly smart, definitely casual. As for his voice, his parents had no preference as to how he spoke, only that he spoke sense. Although his local accent had vanished, undermined by elocution lessons and years of parroting other accents. His interests included amateur theatre and staring at the sea - or into blank space, whichever happened to be handy at the time. He was something of an artist too; a draughtsman rather than a painter. Mainly stage designs which his mother sometimes used, although he drew you once.
And the stamping ground of these good friends -?
- was Gorleston-on-Sea, a sprawling accumulation of housing estates to the south of Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. We lived at the southern end of the town, on an enclave of 1960s bungalows a short stroll from the seafront. Our nearest pub was a 1930s Art Deco former hotel situated halfway along Marine Parade within beer-mat-frisbeeing distance of the sea. In spite of its attractive curved-brick central bay, its assorted projections and period asymmetry, its once-fashionable strata of brick, painted concrete transoms and Crittall, The Links was incomprehensibly bulldozed in the late nineties to make room for five architecturally unremarkable executive-style dwellings. I added my voice and household name to the protests, but the decision to raze it had already been passed. I shed a few tears. I know a lot of people who did.
Back at the start of the eight