RIP-TV / guestbook

LONDON DIARY

2002-05-29

Ian Drury
B. 5.12.42 Upminster / D. 3.27.00 London
Colon Cancer

2.17.02 - BRIGHTON / Am I a ghoul? A ghoul I said—not a girl—a ghoul, a leaner over tomb rails, feeding through the eyes on ghastly facts. . .such as those I did not stop to write down in my notebook concerning a family in blue Brighton. Five children, all died young—very—at various ages, leaving father and mother (renowned in the town as a "bather") to decades of childless-ness—both died in their seventies.

This horrible sorrow inscribed in stone stands close by the church door (St. Nicholas, at the top of a steep hill, with a facing of cracked agate). While I paused on sore feet in the cheerless dusk to will the details into memory I suddenly thought—A bit too close to the church door! A bit I surmise of post-mortem mockery on the part of two murderous but oh so publicly pious parents. Knocking them out and then off for the thrill—beach people, remember, are selfish and frequently mad. (So sad a story, you see. The heart recoils and leaves an empty frame to fill with lurid fancies.)

SUMMER 1853 / Here comes the old couple now, walking arm in arm along Marine Parade into a throng which parts before them save for one young man who's merely passing through. A local grabs him roughly, jerks him back to clear the path and meets the young man's startled protest with a frown. The local's wife or some other lady leans in to offer in undertones an outline of the couple's tragic tale and the young man cries, "I shouldn't be surprised if the old rogues didn't do away with the whole lot themselves!" For which blasphemy he wins a trip to the end of the pier on an impromptu litter of plaid-clad and herringboned shoulders, and is cast. . .SPLASH!. . .into the greeny-blue sea.

Poor noisy boy! He haunts the shore, the piers, beyond the screeching video arcades, beyond the grave—the only one who ever got it right about the local demons—a hapless wholly-disembodied Philomel, piping counter-spells through seagull's beaks and sticks of Brighton Rock ("Don't Cry! Don't Cry!") in perpetuity.

:::