Irish fiction writer Paul R. Hyde presents extracts from Starkey, The Second Death of Hamlet, and The Dark Room.

Starkey
The Second Death of Hamlet
The Dark Room

STARKEY

In the Village of the Immortals, reality is having a nervous breakdown. Wyatt has spied the drowsy planet Rictus Minor. An abandoned railway station, discovered by the manic surveyor Quirke, becomes a crack in eternity. Meanwhile, Corcoran is dabbling with mental fire, and Walshe's bassoon is playing itself. When the voluptuous archangel de Coote arrives to hand out instant ecstasy, Starkey – the maestro of oneiric engineering – detects the onset of terminal entropy. But Starkey has been secretly overhauling this exhausted reality and a miraculous metamorphosis is about to take place.

With its cast of extraordinary characters, Starkey is an extravagant comic parable of human folly in the Irish baroque tradition which sees reality as bankrupt, something to be parodied, dismantled and re-invented according to the liberating impulses of the imagination.

* * *

Two flat packages wrapped in shiny brown paper and bound with green twine lie on the dresser in Starkey's room. Beside these are two pieces of sheet music, the edges of the paper slightly yellowed and broken. The inks and colours are faded, suggesting a bygone age.

Starkey's eyes glowed with enthusiasm.

– Look at this! he took up one of the songs.

I could smell from him the sweet sour traces of drink and guessed he'd been to town.

– Discovered in a second hand bookshop, he went on, never know where one might find these gems, these veritable treasures.

The picture on the front displays an auburn-haired woman, smiling shyly and revealing a row of once-white teeth. Blotches of pink stain her cheeks and her rosebud lips are still vermilion. Around her hair a diffused halo of light is spreading to her shoulders and upper arms, across her throat, to where the tips of some flowers conceal her bosom. Her name is Leonora.

– Women are fickle yet we delight in them, remarked Starkey, she's a fetching trollop.

He broke into song accompanying himself on an imaginary violin between the verses, lifting his arms, shaking his head in transports of futile delight.

Starkey's recitals have become more polished, his voice more mellow and redolent of all but extinguished yearnings. His repertoire, too, is expanding as fresh packages of songs arrive by post. Now his rehearsals can be heard throughout the villa, even above the endlessly inventive bassoon of Walshe, who, since the liberation of his F# key, has redoubled efforts on his magnum opus.

Though I was the only person who knew what lay behind all this musical energy and how it related to other secret circumstances, I was still aware that some further factor was yet to manifest itself.

During the period in which Starkey has devoted himself to the lucid and ultimate of music, his appearance has been changing in small ways. Gone are the brogues and in their place something altogether different - a pair of brightly gleaming and pointed spats. And frequently, instead of the flowery cravats, the now familiar creamy white or even silver bowtie clings to his throat. In the breast pocket of his old jacket what had once been the merest pip of white, then a minuscule triangle, has now grown into a full sized immaculate flag, luxurious, soft and opulent, betokening lustrous nights and miraculous occurrences, moonlight, scented flesh, portents of sumptuous mysteries such as candelabras, white gloves, black-eyed women, trumpets.

In his bearing Starkey has become grander than before with his chest fully expanded and his head high, ready to sing at any and every moment. There are now certain puzzling gestures, however, which have spawned from these songs, nourished upon the mysterious dynamics of music; these thrustings and sweeping manoeuvres, these sudden flights of the arms, swift adjustments of stance, in particular that impulsive flight of the right hand from the temple into free space, its brief expiring flourish before falling, none of these gratuitous. Each carries its own cargo of significance, each is a signal, more or less intelligible, of the metamorphosis that is already taking place.

* * *

For Starkey, women were only partly human. They belonged, in reality, to the world of floribunda; some were more daffodil, crocus, rose than others but the period of their beauty belonged decidedly to the domain of blossom. Some women would become so much part of the floral realm that they never fully returned to this world and could be found only in botanical gardens, or sunning themselves against garden walls, adorned in fantastic displays of shameless colour. Uprooted or cut for display, these exotic ladies would seldom survive very long.

In this way the collusion between women and flowers began to affect my mother too. And finally, after a period of indeterminacy, she succumbed, shifting between flowerhood and womanhood, the strain became too much for her; the attractions of the exuberant speechless world of flowers overwhelmed her completely. No doubt this tendency is a kind of regression in some aspects, this succumbing to blossom perhaps representing a mysterious resistance to ageing, to the loss of youth. The essence of femininity is clearly floral and from birth, many ladies are destined to become dahlias, primroses, lilies or even lupins and evidence for this can be seen in the fact that the arts of female display and floral display are identical, that the coquettish tricks of the one are derived instinctively from the other. Thus, as Starkey maintained, the possession of a woman is no more possible than the possession of a flower.

The floral tendencies of my mother led finally to her disappearance, to her transubstantiation into the world of roses, an event which coincided with Starkey's own transmogrification, and it is no more than probable that the splendid bouquet which Starkey presented to her played a decisive part. Coinciding with these changes was the revelation by Starkey that she was, in fact, Leonora.

A raucous and buoyant sound surges through the house in an unstoppable wave. It is vintage rock and roll, my brother's latest craze. But suddenly the flow of frenetic music stops. Wondrous transformations are about to take place. My brother has fled and Starkey has arrived at the door. But it is a Starkey who is not quite Starkey as before. Where there has been a baggy old navy business suit there is now an elegant grey dress suit. The familiar fedora is gone, replaced by a majestic top hat. In his lapel a bright carnation sparkles. Here is a Starkey I have not seen before, a Starkey who is shaking my hand in the usual epicycles; yet such a Starkey had been evolving, bit by bit, first the spats, then the white bow-tie, the songs, the rehearsals, the imperious and eloquent gestures of submission and languishing, all this slowly and patiently gathering. My mother stands astonished at the resplendent figure on the threshold.

– Enchantè, Madame, and Starkey sweeps up her hand to his mouth following this with a quick genuflection, which enables him to conjure from his person an huge bouquet of red roses, a flourish which will be catalytic, magical. And my mother's gasp is one of submission to her fate, that her subtle flirting with the floral world is now in its terminal stages as her allegiance to motherhood diminishes. Perhaps from a certain nostalgia or reluctance she will attempt to keep up appearances, to maintain some outward manifestations of womanhood but this will naturally be futile, a mere social gesture of politeness scarcely concealing the shameless transmogrification which has already begun in her heart, soul, spirit. My mother is entering the world of roses.

With giant strides Starkey followed me into the drawing room flashing his eyes at the ceiling. From the little silver casket he took up a pinch of snuff, deposited it ceremonially upon his wrist and whooof! it was gone. Now the air fills with the aroma of cinnamon and roses.

– Really there is no need, says my mother, already vermilion, thank you, but you shouldn't have troubled yourself, really, I'm sure. These are delightful . . .

But where are the roses? Already they have vanished, have been absorbed into her person.

– Now Mister Starkey, she attempts feebly to go on, struggling with embarrassment, the language already become strange to her, won't you seat yourself? You'll have a drink of something, is it whiskey?

And Starkey accepts with haughty demeanour what he describes as a 'splash of whiskey'. He flings the golden nectar into his mouth and smacks his lips. The ranks of blossoms on the walls tremble and crowd upon us seductively, attending to my mother, thickening the atmosphere with a crushing dense perfume. My mother is disappearing, all that the remains here and there is a hand, a shoe, a fragment of her hair, then a glimpse of her face which is oval, sad, shy, immersed in roses, with the ink faded, suggesting a bygone age, her hair now auburn, her cheeks blotched pink, her lips rosebud red, and an aura of diffused light spreading to her neck and shoulders where there paper is yellowed, frayed because it has lain so long in the window of some dusty second-hand book shop.

In the midst of these, voices can be discerned, a discourse between Starkey and my mother, complete with platitudes and gracious eloquence, almost as if nothing is happening.

– Leonora, this is a sumptuous repast and I might add that your dress is most becoming, truly fetching. Leonora, I especially admire your hair, for it is true, is it not, that a woman's hair is her crowning glory? One feels this is a general truth, simple and irrefutable, n'est ce pas? Golden locks falling, yes, exquisite, Leonora, as in your picture.

And, with an effort, it is possible to catch a glimpse of Starkey at the table amid the floral turbulence, the upsurge of burgeoning decadence; there he is, with arms outstretched, triumphantly declaiming over the hysteria of blossoms:

– The thoughts and insights of the ancients have been a great solace and succour to me, Leonora, it is true. Yes, the doctrine of metempsychosis, the attainment of Nirvana and the teachings of the great patriarchs of China, indeed yes, begob, solace and succour, as I say, notwithstanding the truths of pataphysics which alone can redeem us from the cage of space and time, from the disorder of entropy. Bedad, the noble truths of Buddha, the eightfold path, the gateless gate, for we are but wayfarers, Leonora, you and I, as the good Swami Ricapandi said, but wayfarers through this maya, this web of illusion . . .

In this intense floral frenzy, my mother's transformation is almost complete. She has become entirely roses, entirely Leonora. Starkey helps himself to the whiskey. The monumental top hat, thronged with flowers, tilts back as the glass is pitched at his mouth. The soft petals press themselves against my cheeks, ardent with unspeakable affections and desires, pursuing their truculent feminine instincts, embarrassing me with taunts, provocations, exposing their erect stamens and secret parts overloaded with wild, nameless fragrances, tingling and pulsing with strange liberated excitement, agonisingly intimate.

Starkey is strutting through the floral turmoil, the carnation glitters fiercely, hostile to the plethora of roses, insane with jealousy at the seduction they have wrought. At the hearth he draws himself up into the orator's posture, smiling wisely. His voice is golden and ruby and juicy with authority.

– Song is the lucid and ultimate metaphor of the human soul, the most elevated effusion of our passion. It is the gyre of subtle disclosures wherein second and third order ascensions of melody are sweetest auguries of the absolute.

My mother unfolds herself like some strange flower and flows towards the piano, tilting the lid back with her pale hands, caressing the milky keys, coaxing them. She has become more flower than woman; it is impossible to tell which parts are human and which belong to the floral world, so strong is the perfume filling the room. Surely she is now Leonora?

Starkey begins to tune himself up to the piano with short blasts, opening his mouth wide in a circle, eyes closed, one hand lightly pressed to his middle across the buttons on his waistcoat. His voice, a shaft of mahogany, a fantastic sculpture emerging from his mouth, entangles itself with the gorgeous blossoms of Leonora. The room is intoxicated, reeling with cinnamon, whiskey, flowers so that as he begins to sing, new tremors of understanding come to fruition in my head. Maya, the veil of illusion has fallen away. Starkey is Starkey no longer for an exquisite transformation has taken place, a miracle in which I have played a part, is now revealed to the world. Starkey has become the celebrated tenor, Count John MacCormack.

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Starkey
The Second Death of Hamlet
The Dark Room

THE SECOND DEATH OF HAMLET

Paul R. Hyde's new book is a tantalising collection of fourteen 'fictions' with settings in Ireland, Italy, China, Vienna, Judaea and elsewhere. The title piece relates the comic misadventures of a third-rate English repertory company performing Hamlet in 1930s west of Ireland. The Antic Players, led by muscular Yorkshire-man, Savage - "the horse murderer," - and stirred to the "visceral hatred" required for true revenge drama, unwittingly re-enact the original story which inspired Shakespeare's version. All this is set against a background of jealousy and poitin, the Spanish Civil War and impending WW2.

These 'fictions' have a noticeably speculative character deriving in part from their treatment of the enigmas of personal identity, time and 'reality'. 'Dead Hours' opens as 'Notes for a Lecture', for the International Society of Analytical 'Pataphysics. However, the lecture is never delivered and the author is expelled from the conference. Nonetheless, the spoof notes move on to a lyrical account of a memoire involuntaire which occurs during a dream. This is typical of the subversive approach which shifts imperceptibly between fiction and speculation, between lyricism and sceptical irony.

"We do not so much awake from these veridical dreams as we emerge from them and in a marvellously perturbed state of mind, almost as if a miracle has occurred, and as if we have not been asleep at all. For some minutes we scarcely recognise our surroundings and seem to have forgotten what it is to believe or to know, or even to believe we do indeed know, who we are. This illusory loss of identity, although temporary, can lead to a mild panic attack, as if we have lost something vital and utterly irreplaceable, a buoyant raft bearing us to glorious horizons where fame and love await. Indeed, we awake with the paradoxical feeling that we are entering a dream."

In 'Shakespeare's Hands' we encounter an oneiric reincarnation of the Bard as a mere "copyist" with hands like "the vile paws of some nocturnal animal" and later we meet him again as a waiter in a Verona café.

"For some moments I looked at the coffee Shakespeare had brought me, at the spoon and the neat packet of sugar. I knew this was not a dream. The man who played Shakespeare in my dream had become a man of flesh and blood whose dream was that he was a waiter in a café in Verona."

A wry humour permeates much of the book. 'The Dwarfs' purports to be a report of a country overrun by an invasion of dwarfs and brought to the brink of collective madness. Here there is a blend of Swiftian satire and the absurd reminiscent of Ionesco with the precise control of the former played off against the manic exuberance of the latter.

In some pieces, however, the humour disappears. In particular, the story of the secret pact between Jesus and Judas (The Dream of Judas) is fascinating but lacks the ironic wit of, say, 'Shakespeare's Hands'. The same can be said of 'The Other' and of 'The Clock', although both are intriguing and complex explorations of identity and chance.

The world of these fictions is both strange and intimately familiar as are our dreams. Each piece seems to occupy a landscape of its own making, which somehow is also the world all around us - enigmatic, elusive, taunting us with the possibility of meaning. Like the worlds of Kafka where the transcendent declines to appear, in this collection meaning is undecided, shy. Perhaps it is our presence in the world which exiles meaning.

Constantly provocative, these 'fictions' defy easy categorisation due to the remarkable marriage of thought and feeling, of dream and reality, of lunacy and lucidity. They suggest that perhaps reality is no more than a failure of the radical imagination.

The Second Death of Hamlet is of a uniformly high standard of excellence - inventive and resonant. If a subtle interrogation of 'reality' is indeed a prerequisite of original literature then The Second Death of Hamlet would certainly be accorded a honourable place.

Review originally published March 2004 by Just Book Reviews.

HUNTER-GATHERER

I doubt our paths will ever cross again. I met him in Campbell's Pub which, as everyone knows, is on the road south for Louisburg in County Mayo. I made my way there from Westport on a June evening last year. It was my first visit in ten years though I had been a frequent pilgrim in earlier times and had often passed a long night there with what the tourist guidebooks call 'music, song and mirth'.

Before this strange encounter, the strongest association which Campbell's Pub had for me, was with Anna. We had been there together only once, one long summer's night of music, song, mirth and love ten years before.

In one of Titian's famous paintings there is a girl with red tresses. The Venetian had, of course, a weakness for these redheads and many of his paintings depict such voluptuous creatures. However, this girl appears in at least two other paintings by Titian and in other works there are more copper-golden-headed girls who might be her sisters or cousins. The recurrent presence of these lovely and often naked women ought to have alerted the so-called art experts to at least a great passion in the painter's early life, perhaps to an amor non corrisposto.

Not much is known about the original models Titian used – they may have been courtesans from Venice but none of the experts in the art of that period are aware of the fact that I know the true identity of the beauty in those pictures. I am not an art expert.

I will not reveal here either the titles of the paintings or even their dates. They were executed before the painter's marriage and indeed before his first contacts with the Gonzagas of Mantova. But let me say that the experts are quite wrong when they claim that these sensuous redheaded women are merely the master's ideal of feminine beauty. On the contrary they are terrifyingly accurate portrayals of a real woman as Titian knew her. And as I knew her. Her name was and is Anna.

But let us return to that evening in Campbell's Pub. The pub stands at the foot of Croagh Padraig, the sacred mountain which Saint Patrick climbed and blessed, and which to this day is a shrine and place of pilgrimage. Few true pilgrims or even passing pagans would miss a visit to Campbell's Pub which retains the saintly simplicity of a quiet sanctuary belonging to a bygone era.

There were few customers when I arrived – it was still early. A giant stood at the bar and as I took my place he nodded.

– Good man, he growled in what sounded like a foreign accent.

I assumed at once from his accent that the giant was both Norwegian and a professional wrestler. But he might as easily have been a Bulgarian ballet dancer. Whilst waiting for my Guinness, I took note of the huge hands which he had carefully laid on the bar. They resembled the feet of some prehistoric creature. To ensure my safety, I exchanged a couple of civil words with him.

I passed an hour oblivious of the banter and small talk around me, dwelling on memories of Anna, lingering over the mystery of her beauty and still enjoying the exquisite pain of losing her love. In a brief pause to order another pint of stout, I decided that Anna is, was and will ever be my erotic destiny. Anna from Venice, the statuesque redhead, la principessa from the dream city in the lagoon – had I ever understood her wild soul, had I ever loved her enough?

My Guinness arrived, a dark, stern, sober column of decency, owing nothing to anyone, impassive and certain of his destiny. The pub was filling up. A fiddle started and someone gave out a yelp of approval. I turned to see a bearded man enter the bar, looking around. Then, seeing me, he came across at once as if we had an appointment, nodding as he approached and magically inserting himself between me and the Norwegian wrestling champion.

The newcomer spoke at once, offering a drink and, confusing me by speaking in Italian; then, taking advantage of my confusion, he ordered two pints of stout – in English. This was a bad start. I had no appointment with this stranger; my only appointment was with the fragrant memory of my belovèd Anna, my lost Aphrodite of the lagoon, my Venetian goddess, my etcetera ...

The newcomer commented on the weather in what he supposed was a friendly manner. I took silent offence at his jacket, a hunter-gatherer thing and no doubt second-hand. Nonetheless, I thanked him for the stout – in Italian.

I had no idea who this man might be but he seemed to know me and so I concluded we had met before, perhaps in Dublin or even in Italy. A certain hauteur which some might see as reserve, dissuaded me from asking his name. Certainly he reminded me of someone, but I felt he was someone I had known but had never liked.

Why he spoke in Italian I had no idea. We were neither of us Italians. But a man has a right to speak in any language he wishes and it seemed ill-educated to inquire. I guessed he was at least ten years younger than myself. His arrogance and conceit were quite obvious but I admit these were offset by his friendly disposition. And he clearly thought we had something in common – perhaps the Italian connection.

We conversed for several minutes about Italian politics, about fiddle tunes, and about various pubs including John McGing's in Westport, which he knew well. Then, after a lull he asked:

– Your favourite painter?

– Titian.

– Mine is Rembrandt.

– Well, I said, I too have loved Rembrandt, still do, but I suppose Titian has a special meaning.

– Of course, he turned to signal to the barman.

– Someone I used to know, I added.

– What was her name?

– From Venice, I said, adopting the Italian tactic of evasion.

– Her name?

– A redhead.

– Her name?

– Anna.

Then another tense lull as he waited for me to continue, to confess.

– She was intoxicatingly beautiful, I said. I am lucky to have lost her.

– Why? said he.

– Because I can still see her beauty.

Just then the Norwegian wrestler began a jig, knocking several drinkers aside.

– Tell you what, said the stranger, if you want to see him – perhaps you should.

– I don't follow.

– Well, d'you know the old abbey, Murrisk, down the road?

– Of course.

– I'm due to meet up with him there in half an hour.

– Who?

– Your pal, the painter.

– I don't follow.

– Your man, Titian.

– But he's dead.

He looked at me as if I had made a bad joke.

– Since when?

– Well, since about ... 1576 or 77.

The stout arrived and he turned again to pay.

– Let's quaff these, said the hunter-gatherer, then go down there.

I lifted my pint. Something odd struck me. The word quaff was unusual. It was a word I had always respected though I had seldom met anyone else who shared my respect. I commented on this and he chuckled.

– Grand old word – quaff. Middle Dutch, I imagine.

– Doubt it, I said. I think Low German is your man.

– Same thing, he retaliated, more or less.

I felt myself bristle but turned again to quaff the cool stout.

– I love words like that, he said, beginning with a q, do you know? -- quagmire, quandary, quaver, quiver, quench ...

– Quaff is very good, I agreed.

– You can't beat quench, though, eh? It's a cracker.

I will decide that, I thought, if quench is better than quaff. But this too was peculiar because quench was a word which, since childhood, had made me dizzy with delight. Accordingly I began to giggle like a child.

– How do you feel about wench? I said lightly, pretending to change the subject.

But he didn't hear or perhaps ignored me. In truth, I was seeking revenge for that earlier slight over Middle Dutch and Low German.

But change the subject.

– I like this place, I said. I came here with Anna once, about ten years ago.

– What does she look like?

– So this place is redolent of her, I went on the defensive at once.

– Redolent, he said with a sick smile, redolent, that's good. Sweet smelling, Latin, of course.

That is my word, I said to myself, and I will decide the etymology of my word. He excused himself, said he was going for a 'micturition' and would be back. I thought of escape but – no, I would not yield to the hunter-gatherer.

In his absence I reflected that he was more abrasive than aggressive. A tussle, an unseemly brawl over Middle Dutch etymology in Campbell's Pub ... surely not? Though lightly built, he was younger and quicker than I was. But he had riled me, first over quaff and now again over redolent. Did he know, for example, that a truddle was a pellet of dung, a close cousin of turd? I calmed down and withdrew into my hauteur.

Then he was back again and making for the door. I followed. In his old scabby Ford Escort we went down to Murrisk where he parked in front of the ruined abbey. The sky was heavy, was ... psychotic. I decoded its dark message as follows:

– Here I am, at a later stage in life, waiting here in a battered old Ford at Murrisk on the westernmost edge of Europe before the insane Atlantic, waiting for Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, to turn up, hoping he can explain why Anna left me, why destiny has brought me here, and who this hunter-gatherer is.

There was no sign of the painter. An hour passed. For a time we stood outside the car, smoking, listening to the ocean as I told the story of my encounter with Anna, of how we quickly fell in love, how we consumed our passion with a religious intensity as if we might become gods. At times I ventured perilously close to telling the truth. The hunter-gatherer listened, mostly in silence, as if he might learn something.

– What do you think, he said, what's it all about?

– What?

– Your Anna.

– Destiny.

– Holy monkey!

There was a silence following this. Then he said:

– He must have been held up ... typical of Italians.

Again I felt I ought to ask him something or other but I couldn't find the appropriate question. Titian held up? Was he not already held up after over four hundred years in the grave?

Soon after, he or we decided that Titian was a waste of drinking time and in a few minutes we were back at Campbell's Pub.

I suddenly recalled that Anna had given me on that memorable evening a tiny photo of herself, one of those little passport things and that together we had hidden this in the pub, somewhere off the main bar. This foolish impulse had been intended to protect our love against the pitiless insults of time.

As we went in by the side door, the hunter-gatherer sang out:

– Well, perhaps some day I'll run across your Anna.

– Not ever in a million thousand years, you little hunter-bastard-gatherer, I muttered.

Only then did it occur to me that he could not have known that I spoke Italian unless we had already met. This logical device comforted me for only a short time. Why did I detest him in my heart and why was I afraid of him?

I was afraid of no one. No Norwegian wrestler or Middle Dutch hunter-gatherer could intimidate me. I went at once to find the picture of my lagoon-lovely Anna and, guided by Titian and Saint Patrick, yes, I found her in the broken corridor outside the Gents, placed high on a shelf, faithful throughout all the years. My Anna.

With a dab of Guinness I wiped clean the dusty face of my Venetian goddess, then dried her lovely features on a beer mat. I looked around for the hunter-gatherer, ready at last to settle with him, but on a matter of honour not of etymology. But he had disappeared and the pub was full. He had gone.

The Norwegian wrestler glimpsed the photograph, looked at me with a kindly eye and nodded.

–God bless the drink, he gurgled, pushing across a pint.

At that very moment I realised who the stranger was. The jacket, the beard, the etymology, the Italian connection ... A cold snail slipped down my throat. Suddenly it was all clear. He was myself. He was myself – before Anna. Anna.

I trust to Saint Patrick that our paths never cross again.

Hunter Gatherer was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on 16 January 2004

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Starkey
The Second Death of Hamlet
The Dark Room

THE DARK ROOM

Mysterious as a photograph by Kertész, The Dark Room is an evocative story of doomed love. Robert's chance encounter with Claire, a beautiful pianist, draws him towards that unlit region of her soul where the past flickers incessantly across the screen of memory, where past and present dissolve in the flux of light and shade, chance and fate, music and silence. On that April day he does not know that Claire has already sent her soul on a voyage into the past. Too late he understands that something happens in the silence between the notes, in the instant before the shutter opens, where shadows linger in the dark, in that deeper present sensed only by those who, like Claire, have glimpsed the angel of history.

A father lost in the chaos of war, a missed train connection, a photograph never taken, a strange illness and the poetry of Akhmatova fold into one another to form an adagio of love and destiny.

This short, poetic novel, which won an Arts Council Award, is a love story and a meditation on photography, music and the sacramental art of remembrance. Chance, love and memory resonate through the lucid, calm prose of The Dark Room like shifting chords in a haunting sonata of loss.

CHAPTER ONE

Probably there are moments in all our lives when we think we should have taken a photograph of some person or situation but didn't. Yet the actual image lives on in the memory as it never could do in a photograph. And these occasions, so slight and ordinary in themselves, we realise on reflection afterwards, were crucial; we understand too late that we were at a crossroads in our destiny and hadn't known it.

Certainly if I hadn't taken a camera with me that Saturday afternoon I should never have met Claire Kochanska. I first saw her in the Viennese coffee shop near Covent Garden. I used to go there whenever I was down that way. She had, I recall, a huge slice of sachertorte on a plate which she was toying with idly as she wrote something in a diary. She reminded me of someone in one of Kertész's pictures; she had the same sleek, jet-black hair to her shoulders and a pale complexion and features which could only be described as tragic. She was wearing a string of pearls round her neck which seemed unusual, even old-fashioned.

I got it into my head to try to get a picture of her as she sat there, she seemed so self-absorbed, so oblivious. But then the light wasn't right and there was too much shadow round her face. It was when she suddenly turned to the window and the light caught her profile that I sat up. Even now I can't explain why. But, looking back, I suppose that was the moment when my life changed. I should have got up then, paid for the coffee and pastries and left. Perhaps I'd have got some good pictures elsewhere that afternoon. But I stayed where I was, mesmerised by her beauty. I remember thinking I would try to get her photograph if she turned again like that to the light.

I used to carry an old Kodak Retinette with me then. The Schneider lens, made about 1936, was excellent, the equal of anything modern at ten times the price. I'd bought it for twenty-five shillings in old money, as we say now, in a second hand shop up in Kilburn. Its compact size made it ideal for the pocket.

I slipped the camera out of my jacket and set it behind the tariff card on the table. Fortunately the taped Strauss which was playing covered the sharp snap of the bellows clicking into position. I set the aperture and the shutter speed and waited, sipping the last of my coffee.

It wouldn't have taken much to please me, simply another movement of that lovely head, a moment looking through the window with the April sun on her features and my angle at just less than three quarters with that period iron screen behind, lost in her own thoughts, her eyes focussed on some remote past or future; the secret twing of the shutter and the moment snatched from our separate lives. I'd have smiled smugly that the experience had truly revealed itself to me, to the camera, and was not lost, that I'd preserved something precious and unique.

But it didn't work out like that. And perhaps there was a challenge to try for a picture like Brassai or Kertész would have taken and probably it was nothing more than a secret vanity and not fate which kept me there waiting that Saturday afternoon not knowing that my life was about to change so completely.

When she closed her diary and made to leave I must have put my cup down with a clatter for she glanced over briefly. Probably she hadn't seen me until then. She paid the woman at the counter and left. For some seconds my mind was blank. Then, without a conscious decision, I folded the camera into my pocket and rose from the table. It was only when I was at the door that I realised I was going to follow her.

She was walking slowly enough towards Covent Garden keeping close to the shops. A cream leather bag swung over her shoulder and I was surprised to see how tall she was. Yet there was something peculiar about the way she made her way along the street, as if there were some unseen obstacle. It was quite busy, especially nearer to the market arcade and yet she didn't seem to move to avoid others in the bustle. She seemed distracted and I thought she might be looking for an address.

I followed her at about fifteen feet behind and soon began to feel a bit awkward. What was I doing, following her? If she glanced round and realised she was being followed she had only to speak to a policeman and I'd be in a difficult spot. But something happened then, which made me forget my misgivings. Quite without warning, she walked into a teenager, one of those punk freaks with green hair, who was standing, back-turned, waiting on someone. She apologised and seemed upset by the incident. The kid, who must have been around sixteen, swore at her with that familiar arrogant contempt and she stood for a moment speechless, looking pitifully desolate. I had to pretend to be interested in the photocopiers displayed in a shop window.

But then, looking round, I saw her hurrying away. Seconds later, to my horror, she stepped off the pavement directly in the path of an oncoming double-decker bus. I leaped forward instinctively as the bus braked with a horrendous screech. The usual scene followed with the predictable crowd of onlookers circling around the driver as he pranced in hysterics in front of his bus, the passengers inside pressing their faces to every window. A policeman duly lurched onto the scene, adding to its unreality with 'what's all this about then, eh?'

It was absurd and pathetic. I happened then to be standing nearest to her and she turned to me looking deathly white. An embarrassed smile seemed to appear as I took her arm to steady her. The constable rather uselessly asked if she was all right and I heard some calls to the general effect that people should watch where they were going. The policeman assumed that we were together and advised with some gravity that I should 'take her for a cuppa, Sir, steady her nerves'. The driver started up his bus and the crowd dispersed.

Still holding her arm I walked a few yards with her. When I suggested she might feel better with a drink she muttered something and nodded. I ushered her to the nearest pub.

She asked for a whisky with some ice. We sat on opposite sides of the table. She tried to smile again.

"I must thank you for being so gallant. You saved me from being run down by a London bus."

There was gentle mockery in her voice.

"What an ignominious end," she chuckled.

"Would you rather I'd left you?"

"Of course not! Perhaps you really did save my life. Thank you."

I shrugged.

"Noble," she smiled.

"You didn't see the bus?"

She shook her head. The kid on the pavement, she explained, his abuse had upset her.

"You noticed?" she said, looking up at me.

"Yes, I was just behind."

I don't know why but I told her then that I'd noticed her in the coffee shop earlier. It sounded odd, clumsy or perhaps I was feeling slightly guilty. I think she realised I'd been following her but she didn't say anything. I explained about the camera, about wanting to take a photograph and I sheepishly produced the Kodak as a kind of bona fide. I set it on the table between us as if it proved something, that I was harmless.

"Only you left," I said, smiling, "just when I was ready."

She looked at me, undecided. We exchanged names then, we might even have shaken hands. I thought her name was Russian but she corrected me. It was Polish, her family had come from Lithuania. She seemed to recover quickly. Her face brightened, probably the effect of the whisky, and the warm glow added contrast to her cheeks. Her eyes, almond-shaped, deep set, seemed almost black but were in fact a very dark green. Her nose was long and narrow and her mouth small with full high lips.

"You're a photographer?" she asked, tilting her head so that her hair slipped across her brow and face.

"Not exactly. I work with computers."

Her expression altered, just a faint flicker in the eyes I'd seen before.

"A hobby?" she nodded.

But I'd never thought of it as a hobby. Hobbies are for schoolboys. For me taking pictures was a passion, a search for something invisible.

"I'm in a small consultancy," I explained, "to do with computer security."

"A consultant!" she seemed amused by this, "why can't I be a consultant instead of just a piano teacher?"

"You teach music?"

"Afraid so. Look, I don't mind," she chuckled, "if you want to take a picture. After all, you probably saved my stupid life. Only, I haven't a hat on today. Never mind. If you really want to get your picture."

But it was too late and I explained as best I could that since we'd now met she was no longer completely unknown to me. She thought it very strange that I would only photograph people if I didn't know them.

"So why did you want to photograph me?"

"Because it might have been a good picture," I shrugged. "I can't explain exactly but something about your expression interested me, I suppose."

She insisted on buying another drink. I had lingered over mine as long as possible. I asked for another Glenfarclas.

"We have something in common," she laughed when she came back with the drinks.

"What's that?"

"Good whisky."

She had studied piano at the Royal College of Music on a scholarship. Some concert performances and occasional radio work had supported her after that but now she had a part-time post teaching at the College which she supplemented by taking private pupils. At college, she'd wanted to be a concert pianist, she explained with ironic amusement, but the personal sacrifices required were excessive. Luck too had been against her, she went on, when she had missed the train to a very prestigious piano competition some years before.

"Connections, you see, Robert," she leaned towards me, eyes widening, "I missed the connection at Birmingham. Life is full of connections. Who knows where I'd be today if I'd caught that train?"

"Yes," I said, "you might have won and then gone on to become a famous pianist, jetting all over the place."

With an impish grin, she nodded.

"Fame, fortune, immortality even. It really is frightful, isn't it? Just think! And we've just met - another connection - where will it lead, do you think?"

"Probably nowhere," I responded lightly but sensing a false note in my voice.

She shook her head, swaying long dark tresses across her face.

"No, I think you're wrong. It's the connections we don't plan for that really lead us somewhere. Do you believe in free will?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we all do. What choice do we have?"

We laughed together at this and touched glasses. She was very beautiful. I was enthralled by her.

Even then, that very first afternoon with her, I sensed a reserve about her, not the reserve of certain women with strangers, but something else, something troubled and unresolved behind those dark eyes.

By a trivial coincidence which seemed to amuse us at the time, she was living near an old address of mine in Belsize Park. Before leaving, we swapped telephone numbers and promised vaguely, with sudden shyness, to be in touch for a meal or a drink.

"Look," I said, "I have the car with me. Can I offer you a lift somewhere?"

But she had more shopping to do and had put me out enough already. In the doorway she half turned and gave me a penetrating look, longer than would have been usual. It seemed to communicate something but I didn't know what. It was as if we both now shared a fateful secret. I stayed on in the pub for a bit trying to put her out of my mind but without success. She hadn't elaborated on how her people had come to England but I guessed they had been refugees of some kind after the war. Lithuania. It was a name on an old map, it was a grey and weary postage stamp from a place history had eliminated.

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