Dialogues of the Dead

He went to the bookcase. You could find out a lot about people from their books, or so he’d read somewhere. But only if you knew a lot about books in the first place, which he didn’t. One thing he could see was that there were a lot of plays here, reminding him that Rye came from a theatrical family. He plucked out a complete Shakespeare and opened it at the fly-leaf. There was a date, 1.5.91, and an inscription, To Raina, Happy fifteenth to the Queen from the Clown Prince, with love from Serge xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Fifteen kisses. Was that a pang of jealousy he felt? Of someone he didn’t know who could be any age giving a prezzie to Rye years ago when she was still a child? You’d better watch it, my boy, he admonished himself. As he’d worked out before, any sign of his interest becoming obsessively possessive was going to be a real turn-off to Rye.

“Improving yourself?” she said behind him.

He turned. She’d put on a T-shirt and jeans and was still towelling her hair.

He said, “To Raina. I’d forgotten your full name.”

“Rye-eena,” she corrected his pronunciation. “Otherwise I’d be called Ray.”

“Rye’s better.”

“Whisky rather than sunshine?”

“Loaves rather than fishes,” he said with a grin.

She considered this then nodded approvingly.

“Not bad for a plod,” she said.

“Thank you kindly. Where’s it come from anyway, you never told me.”

“I don’t recall you asking. It’s a play.”

“Shakespeare?” he said, hefting the anthology.

“Next along,” she said.

She went to the bookshelf and plucked out a volume.

He replaced the Shakespeare and took it from her hands.

“Arms and the Man by G. B. Shaw,” he read.

“You know Shaw?”

“Nicked his brother once. GBH Shaw,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Police-type joke. Funny title. Why’d he call it that?”

“Because he lived in an age when he could assume that most of his audience wouldn’t need to ask why he called it that.”

“Ah. And that was because …?”

“Because a classical education was still regarded as the pedagogic summum bonum by the moneyed classes. And if you hadn’t read at least the first line of Virgil’s Aeneid, you’d clearly wasted your youth. ‘Arma virumque cano,’ which Dryden renders as ‘Arms and the man I sing.’ Good title way back then. But a man would have to be very sure he had a highly cultured, intelligent and alert audience to try anything like that now.”

“You sound nostalgic. You reckon they were better times?”

“Certainly. For a start, we weren’t born. Sleep’s good, death’s better, but best of all is never to be born at all.”

“Jesus!” he exclaimed. “That’s really morbid. Another of Virgil’s little quips?”

“No. Heine.”

“As in Heine, that Kraut poet Charley Penn, is working on?”

Something was ringing a very faint bell.

“In civilized circles I believe they’re known as Germans,” she said seriously. “You don’t have to like them, but that’s no reason to be beastly to them.”

“Sorry. Same applies to Penn, does it?”

“Certainly. In fact there’s a great deal to like about him. Even his apparent obsession with my person might by some be considered not altogether reprehensible. That was one of his translations I just quoted which he brought to my attention when my refusal to let him cop a feel was rendering him particularly despondent.”

Hat was beginning to understand the subtle stratagems of Rye’s mockery. She left doors invitingly ajar through which a prat might step to find himself showered with cold water or plunging down an open lift-shaft.

He said, “So what’s it mean precisely, that stuff about sleep and so on?”

“It means that once upon a time we were all enjoying the best of possible states, i.e. not being born. But then our parents got stuck into each other in a hay field, or on the back seat of a car, or between acts during a performance of a Shaw play at Oldham, and they blew it for us, forced us without a by-your-leave to make an entrance, kicking and screaming, on to this draughty old stage. Fancy a coffee?”

“Why not?” he said, following her into a tiny kitchen which was as well ordered as the living room. “Hey, is that why they called you Raina? Because they were acting in this play when they …? Now that’s what I call really romantic.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Can’t see why you’re so cynical about it. Nice story, nice name. Just think, you could have been called …” He flipped open the play to the cast list: “… Sergius! Just imagine. Sergius Pomona! Then you’d really have had something to complain about!”

“My twin brother didn’t seem to mind,” she said.

“You’ve got a twin?”

“Had. He died,” she said, spooning coffee into a cafetière.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t know …”

“How could you? He gave me the Shakespeare you were looking at.”

Serge. He recalled the inscription and blushed at the thought of his infantile jealousy.

To cover his confusion he gabbled, “Yes, of course, that explains the inscription, the Queen, May the first, Queen of the May, and he was the Clown Prince …”