Adrian, the poet. Broken, but please Father, not bent
The first thing you should know about Adrian is that he isn’t Adrian at all; he’s Jimmy. James was the name he was given in the sight of God and Jimmy he was called by all the family until he got it into his head that ‘it didn’t go with his image and would we please call him Adrian from now on’.
Maybe it’s difficult – being in the middle. With two older brothers and a younger sister and brother he’s bound to feel something of a misfit and an in-between. For this reason maybe, Adrian – because we all do as we’re told and call him that, except when new forget or are annoyed with him – has always been both a trier and a worrier. He’s the only one of them that actually worked at schoolwork at school. Joey breezed through on charm and an agile mind. Jack slogged away and got his girlfriends to do his homework. (Which is a clear explanation of why he consistently go low grades; Jack wasn’t inclined to pick his female company for their intellectual abilities. Like his father before him he has always been sadly inclined to the grotesque sweater line.) Aveline never thought it necessary to dazzle with the mind when she could do so with her looks and from an early age she relied on her body to do the talking. And Billy – well, all I can say about Billy and school is that they were not compatible. But I will eventually come to Billy and try to explain the almost unexplainable, so for the moment let me simply say that he suffered more at school, for less results, that seems humanly possible.
But Adrian got stuck in there and in no time he was sitting his A Levels and passing – though what use A Levels in English Literature, History, Art and Botany was going to be to a young man setting off on life’s long voyage through urban Liverpool in the ‘80s was and remains a mystery to me.
However Adrian is ‘A for Application’. He went out there and got himself a job. I remember his coming back all flushed with success and announcing to a stunned family gathered round the table as usual (our family only ever seem to meet with their noses in the trough), that he was going into ‘Real Estate’.
There was a lot of debate about whether Unreal Estate wouldn’t have been more profitable – but, of course, we were all proud of him. Not that he seemed to earn much from Real Estate. His first month’s wages went on buying a leather briefcase which I think he must have had grafted to his right hand, because you never saw him without it from that day on. Oddly enough, the day he got that briefcase was the day he stopped carrying what was left of his comfort blanket like a sodden little ball in his pocket. And he got in a terrible state about that. He couldn’t find it and he’d wanted to put it in his brief case. I told him it was a shame to spoil the leather interior trim with mangled little ball that had been sucked and chewed since he was a baby; but apparently I didn’t understand it’s ‘true significance’ nor did I appreciate its ‘symbolic stature’. We searched high and low for it but to no avail. Adrian kept yelling that his ‘peace of mind was hanging by a thread’ but then he’s always got something or other hanging by a thread, be it his sanity or his masculinity or even his life, so we didn’t get too alarmed. We never did find that comfort blanket but I did catch a contented look on Mongy’s face and that dog will eat anything he finds lying on the floor. That’s why I never have people camping out on the sitting room carpet, he’s have them for breakfast.
After the initial purchase of the briefcase the most he managed to put in the family post was the odd pound coin; apparently, working in Real Estate you have a lot of outlay, mainly on things to put into your briefcase I think.
Eventually the bottom fell out of Real Estate, or something like that, and our Adrian was made redundant. He was devastated, of course. But then everything devastates Adrian and it’s best not to get caught up in his emotional vortex (his words to describe what used to be known as a paddy).
| We told him that now he was a real part of the family business and that being in Real Estate had been stifling his natural talents. He seemed to accept this without a murmur though at the time none of us had really defined what his natural talents were and I was only saying it to encourage him (funny how, later, I was to be proved right). Joey took him down to the DHSS to introduce him to Martina – our personal counter clerk – and sign on. |
Our Adrian trying to charm Martina at the DHSS - recorded for posterity by Joey, with a camera hidden in his leather jacket |
Our Adrian didn’t take at all easily to Unemployment. Some do, some don’t. None of us want it, of course. But the last thing you can do is mope about, getting depressed. You have to go out there and beat them at their own game.
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Adrian - before he went too artistic
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As mentioned previously, Jack took him on a few jobs, but it wasn’t a happy arrangement. I think the trouble was that Adrian brought his Real Estate mentality to bear in an area where, perhaps, natural low cunning was called for. But then, to be reasonable, I think the same low cunning is required in Real Estate as well – which could explain why Adrian got the pot handshake. Post indeed. You hear of people being made redundant, getting golden ones and walking away with fortunes but I’ve never met anyone who actually has. But then I’ve never met anyone who’s won one of those competitions you get on the sides of packets. ‘Name three vegetables beginning with the letter C; and state in not more than ten of your own words why Doggy-Bix is your favourite pet food and win the holiday of a lifetime for two at the fabulous Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas….’ Have you ever met anyone who’s been for a fabulous holiday to Las Vegas, free? Or flown Concorde? Or even won the jackpot at Bingo? Because I haven’t. |
What Adrian requires, I realise now, is a framework. That’s why he was good at school. He had somewhere to go in the morning. That's why he fitted into the Real Estate. He’s no good at hanging around waiting to see what’ll turn up. He has to have an image to relate to, a place to report to, a persona to live up to; schoolboy, Real Estate agent, poet, artist, great lover.
So, very soon, without the office to go to each morning, he began to see the gaps in his life – and God help us, he began to fill them.
The biggest gap – like a black hole really, really – was ‘Love’. Not for our Adrian something common like ‘hanky-panky’. He had to have ‘Love’. And, poor lad, he had to go and meet, and hope to find it with, a rampant carnivore by the name of Carmen. Carmen! I ask you. She was one of those who’d had nothing but salads all her life and was on the look our for a hot dinner – and she chose our Adrian?
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It was all passion and heavy breathing with those two from the first day. We
know because she phoned him up once, when we were in the middle of supper and
there he was all pale and quaking, promising to wear his brown cords again.
Brown cords? What did she think he was? Lady Chatterley's Lover?
Oh, our Adrian! It's hard to stand by and watch your own flesh and blood being eaten alive. Needless to say it got our Jack very worked up - because she sounded just the sort of girl he'd been searching for. And even our Joey betrayed a gleam in the eye that wasn't exactly fraternal. |
Carmen, A TART-in-the-making, is the blonde in the middle. Billy's Julie doesn't look too happy - but then she never does. |
A lot of what took place between Adrian and Carmen should have been no more than mere speculation to us all, but of course Adrian always came home with either his virginity or his virility hanging by a thread and we'd be subjected to the lurid details over our chicken chasseur. I could draw a map of the bushes they tried 'hanky-panky' behind, not to mention the beauty spots of England that they climbed, crossed or burrowed beneath in their desperate desire to fulfil their carnal passion. If they'd managed it once then I expect they'd have erected a monument to commemorate the event. But there are no monuments - they talked about it so much that I doubt there was every enough passion left to erect anything of much significance.
I knew things were getting to a drastic state when he brought home a book from the library entitled How to Gain Confidence.
Our Jack came to the rescue and tried to advise him, but being Jack he didn't use kid gloves. He just leapt in and told him straight he didn't need a book: 'Sex', he explained, 'is nature's trick, Adrian. It's just bodies - it's fun. It's getting it right and getting it wrong and laughing all the way.'Funny how assured you can be when it isn't your problem. I've seen our Jack knotted up with nerves over a woman many times. 'I'd like to talk about love rather than sex, if you don't mind,' Adrian told him, masking his embarrassment behind a snooty look. 'Ah, yeah, "love",' Jack agreed, looking haunted. 'Well, that's different. That's more to do with brain damage, terminal lunacy and a lot of sobbing.'
'Well, your experiences have obviously been more ecstatic than mine,' Adrian countered, 'and anyway, I can't understand why you're so cynical about everything. I mean, look at last year, all your conquests.' 'It was a good year, last year' (Jack has never been a slave to modesty.) 'Elaine Shardley, Jean Connaught, Lizzie Haycroft...' It was true, he did have a string of females after him. 'And Brenda Makin, don't forget Brenda Makin...'
'Well, there you are!' Adrian cries, making a broad gesture with his arms - maybe next time round he should try being an actor. He's definitely got the dramatic streak. 'You must've been getting something right. Unlike me.'
So- Jack deduces that his brother must be frightened of women and decides to set him right. The things you hear when you're stuffing a cabbage. But: 'No,' Adrian protests. 'Women are wonderful...' Actually, Adrian, should you ever ask me - your Mother - I can name one or two who are distinctly NOT wonderful. However:
'No,' he continues, 'it's Carmen I'm frightened of.'
'A bit of a goer, isn't she?' Jack is nodding now, very man of the world. 'Jean Connaught was like that. I used to plan quiet evenings sitting in the back of the van with a bottle of Blue Nun and a box of Milk Tray but she had my shirt undone before I could get the top off the bottle.'
'That's it! That's just how it is!' Adrian exclaims, overcome with masculine buddiness. 'Oh God, that's just how it is. All physical.'
'I've been there. I've been there,' Jack nods wisely in agreement.
'I don't get a chance to talk,' Adrian is now sobbing with frustrated bonhomie, 'to think, to plan. Two minutes after we meet, she's checking my erogenous zones.'
'They have a knack, don't they?'
'That's it, that's it. They have a knack!'
It's as exciting as Stanley discovering Livingstone in the middle of the jungle. they're hugging each other now mentally as they share the pain of being lusted after.
'Then it's the little wiggle...'
'It's the good news, the little wiggle,' Jack yells. 'When the little wiggle comes - you're nearly there.'
'And the next thing you know...'
'You're banging away like a couple of road drills, I know. I've been there. Great, isn't is?'
No, Jack - you just blew it. Can't you see? That's how it may be for you - but it's just how it isn't for our Adrian. When he gets to that point, he wants to 'think', to 'talk', to compare what's happening to him to what happens in Shakespeare's sonnets, and little bells ringing and buttercups after rain. In other words - he's dead scared.
Nor is he going to be helped by Billy telling him that sex is like eating jelly babies - and I'm glad he stopped him from explaining precisely what he meant, because I don't think I'd have liked it nor would I have wanted to impart the information here.
Not that I'm blaming Carmen really. She did try, so far as I can gather, to build his confidence. She told him he was a tiger and that he set her world on fire and all the other things people whisper while they're trying to unfasten buttons. It's just that he knew that there had to be more to it than he was actually achieving. That's the wonderful thing about nature. We get up in arms about sex education - but there's a little voice in the head that tells you if you've passed. You don't need your A Levels for that. What Adrian found hard was - being a man. Just that. He found it very hard - being a man. But as Joey pointed out to him he was too much of a perfectionist.
'We all have to learn - about everything,' he told him. 'Leonardo da Vinci drew arms and legs before he painted the Mona Lisa.'
I rather think that was intended to make Adrian feel secure and confident - like being back at school doing biology. And I can see that his attitude had a hint of the classroom about it. A sort of analytical approach to 'hanky-panky'; like: 'When you're a boy you worry about when you're going to do it. When you're a man you worry about how you're going to do it. And when you've done it you worry about how everybody else does it.'
Well, of course he finally managed it - much to the relief of us all. And when he'd done it he followed some advice from Joey and he walked away. He just upped and left her. She must have though: At last! Eureka! We've done it! He managed it! He was a tiger! The earth moved! And Adrian just snapped his fingers at her, pulled up his trousers, walked away and before she had time to button her blouse, he was off on his bike without once looking back. I had to admire that...
Though, of course, Father, I don't really approve of all this 'hanky-panky', but what am I to do? Boys have to get it out of their systems. I just wish you'd devised some less untidy method of doing it and I also wish you'd created a breed of females who didn't complicate it even further with their constant demands for earth moving and should shattering. It's quite enough to be forever crawling in and out of your clothes without having to be subjected to psychiatric analysis as well.
But did I not say early in this chapter that our Adrian is A for Application? He didn't let the grass grow under his feet for long.
Dear Father, I don't like the use of that word 'bent'. Does a mother ever stop worrying, Father? Is there ever an end to it?
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A Motto of Adrian's FRANGI NO FRACTI |
Having conquered the art of consummated seduction, our Adrian passed on to higher things. He decided to apply himself to more cerebral pursuits than mere bonking. He started writing poetry instead.
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PARTING by I do miss you |
I know, I know. I can hear the groan from Land's End to John O'Groats. Poetry? But this is Adrian I'm talking about - for A Levels and a bookcase of his own. I daresay a lot of young people write poetry. But not all of them get it published, do they? Adrian did. We've each got a copy. It was an anthology of Northern writers. |
Selected Poems from the North, page 27, Poems by Adrian Boswell. 'My Granny's Bucket', 'Go Now', Arthritic City'; I don't know where he gets the works. Even one about our Mongy - 'Dog'. Then there was 'Parting':
I don't know where he gets the ideas from either. Silken sheets? The only time he was ever indoors with Carmen was in Grandad's front room - and there are no silken sheets there; nor was there any 'hanky-panky', not with Grandad coming in every three minutes to water his aspidistra.
I suppose it's creative inspiration. Like living with John Keats or Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I don't suppose Keats ever heard a nightingale, not suck in London; and if Alfred, Lord Tennyson really heard the 'horns of Elfland faintly blowing' he'd have ended up working in a delicatessen in Los Angeles'! Have a nice day indeed.
It's odd when one of your own flesh and blood suddenly comes out with something like poetry and gets it printed and becomes a celebrity. In a way I felt I'd lost him. Up until then I thought I'd had a pretty good idea what went on inside his head; I thought I understood him; I thought I knew his cravings and that we shared more or less the same ideas. But 'silken sheets' and My Granny's Bucket' might just as well have come from Outer Mongolia as Kelsall Street - it was suddenly all foreign. I was proud of him - my son, the poet - but I knew I'd never quite understand him again. And what was worse, of course, I never had. Because that poetry was always lurking in there, waiting to jump out onto the printed page.
Mind, Adrian's been an encouragement, even an inspiration to me. If it hadn't been for him, I doubt I'd now be sitting here at the kitchen table with my user-friendly word processor, when there's a whole stack of washing waiting to be tumble dried.
He was that chuffed when he got the copies of his poetry book form the publisher. We each got a copy ad a present. He gave me a little gold cross that I've worn ever since. there was a medallion for Mongy with writing on it: 'If you love something, let it go free. If it comes back it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.' It was a lovely sentiment, but we kept his usual disc on his collar as well; just our phone number and the name 'Mongy' seemed more useful if he went missing. that's one of the problems about poetry and the poetic mind - it's not always very practical. He gave Billy a nine carat gold watch. It wasn't an entire success. Billy turned into the speaking clock and kept us informed about every passing second. Jack of course was in America, but I know Adrian sent him a copy, because he sent a postcard of The Gold Gate with the cryptic message: 'Great, our kid. Sock it to 'em.' Aveline got a pair of earring s she'd admired in a shop window and Joey got an antique pair of lorgnettes. A strange choice, I have to admit. I can't see our Joey down the DHSS flashing out his lorgnettes and giving Martina a withering look - like the Scarlet Pimpernel. but there, that's Adrian's artistic temperament again, I suppose.
And now he's taken up painting, as well. He says he's 'a true Renaissance Man'. He did our Grandad a lovely Green picture for his birthday. With trees in it - at a distance. You need binoculars to see them, but they are there. He sees himself as Leonardo da Vinci one day and William Shakespeare the next.
But he still can't get it right on the home front. A young fan seduced him only recently. Nice looking girl, apparently; she'd read his poems and thought he sounded fantastic. She wrote him a fan letter, suggesting they should meet. ' Dear Adrian Boswell, I am an art student. The other day a friend gave me a copy of a book of poems in which I found your work. I am writing to say how I appreciate the poems, and how I identify with them. Is it possible for us to meet? I will be outside the Everyman Cafe on Wednesday at 12.30. If you can't make it, I'll understand.
Can't make it? Try and stop him! He couldn't wait! Hot shower, body splash, a ton of talc, after shave on his arm pits and a song in his heart. the works. He was breathing so fast with excitement, I was afraid he was hyperventilating and told him to stick his head in a brown paper bag.
But no: 'I had six months with Carmen - the school of life. I'm ready for anything. I know now. I know about women. They like passion. Well it's common logic really, isn't it? I mean if God wants the universe to continue... Well, I mean it's no good putting a train on the track without an engine in it, is it?'
| Oh, Adrian, love. How did you end up so artistic and so... hopeless? I mean - what went wrong, Adrian? How did it come about that you had to creep home down our street wearing nothing but a bin liner after one meeting with a female fan? How? You should never leave your clothes unattended when you're in the company of strangers. |
My Jimmy in the old days, when we were full of hope and Mongy was still complete |
