The Scent of Dried Roses Page 21

  I reach the Yew Tree roundabout and take a left turn. My Converse All-stars, worn with thin rayon socks bought by my mother, feel sticky. Outside Graham’s house there is a Vespa scooter that does not work; the guts of the engine are splayed on the crazy-paving. I knock on the door and Graham answers with a conspiratorial grin. We go inside. A carriage clock sits on the mantelshelf and there is a coal-effect gas fire. We are alone in the house. Graham’s parents, unusually in this particular England at this particular time, are divorced and his mother is out for the day.

  Graham is a small, stocky boy, almost a man, with an impudent, knowing expression, even when his face is at rest. He moves something like a boxer, in short, stubby shifts of motion. I sense an edge of violence to him sometimes that makes me nervous, but he is on the whole likeable and funny. He also attends a secondary modern, but seems clever, cleverer than me.

  I sit in the brown napped and stained 1950s-style armchair, clearly humbler than Jean’s neat three-piece. I am slumming it in a sense, a wafer below my class, but I am hardly aware of such things. Graham and his family are not quite respectable and that makes them attractive.

  Graham makes me a cup of powdered coffee – I hate tea for some reason – and we fiddle with a couple of Royal Scot biscuits. It is as if some introductory ritual has to be gone through, but we feel the irrelevance of the gesture. I am rubbing my knees, a nervous habit I have picked up from my father. Graham reaches into his pocket and brings out a piece of silver paper the size of a sixpence. He smiles, like a butcher displaying his best cut of fillet.

  This’ll do the trick.

  He carefully unpeels the silver paper and shows me proudly the contents. I can see nothing at first, then, as he waits for my reaction, I notice two tiny dots standing out from the foil. I am not sure what I am expected to say.

  Oh. And this is –

  Blue Sunshine. Microdot.

  They’re so small.

  I had expected the LSD tablets to be about the size of paracetamol. I had intended, on this occasion, to take only a half or even a quarter. But the tablets are so tiny, they are virtually indivisible. It seems that I am bound to lose face if I try and divide it up. Anyway, something so tiny can hardly be very powerful.

  Jack and Jean have warned me about drugs, that if I smoke pot I will go mad and become hooked. The fact that this prediction has proved untrue has weakened the scraps of their authority. This is the first time I have been offered LSD, however; the supply lines that once fuelled Chelsea art schools and Notting Hill communes have only just reached the suburbs. The gap between Sergeant Pepper’s and the Yew Tree roundabout is about five years. In the King’s Road now, they have moved on to junk, skag, H, which are still more or less unknown this far away from Charing Cross. Marianne Faithfull is shooting up somewhere in a basement, Mama Cass is dead, Neil Young is writing ‘Needle and the Damage Done’, Lou Reed is singing love songs about heroin.

  The inherited taboo about drugs is still very powerful, even if the barriers to availability have fallen. Also there is a part of me that is sensible and cautious, in a way. I do not smoke cigarettes, for instance, considering it stupid. So as I pick up the tiny dot and place it softly on my tongue, I fight a faint sense of shame, as well as fright. Then the tablet dissolves and I begin to wait, neutrally.

  I do not know what to expect, other than a vague idea of hallucinations, which I suppose means that I will begin to see things that are not there. Dancing elephants, perhaps, like in Fantasia, or hosts of cartoon cherubim. Most of all, I expect to feel sick and slightly disappointed, as I do when I smoke the low-grade cannabis that is sold in the brewery-remade pubs around the estates of Ealing and Hillingdon, where I wash down crisps with barley wine and draught Triple V cider. Sometimes, at parties fuelled by Watney’s Party Sevens, I am given what I am told are mandies and dexies, or blue bombers. They, too, disappoint. Perhaps they are placebos, inauthentic like everything else, like me.

  For about half an hour nothing happens. We walk over to Donald’s estate, where Graham knows a couple of girls. I have met them before, but this is the first time I have entered their flat. Again, their parents are out. They are both dumpy and have dull, unstyled hair. Pictures of a weeping clown and a wide-eyed orphan boy are the sole decorations on their living-room wall, which is on the second floor of a thirty-storey block. A dull thud of music can faintly be heard from the flat above. It is a kind of pop reggae, perhaps ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ by Anthea and Donna. I feel awkward with the girls and can think of nothing to say to them. They bring me a whisky glass filled with Orange Corona, which I dutifully pick up without drinking.

  I notice, after a short while, that the two girls are looking at me curiously, although I cannot imagine why. Graham has started laughing like a loon.

  What you looking at?

  And then:

  What’s up with him?

  The girls do not know that we have taken LSD, so they can have no idea why I am staring fixedly at a spot on the wall about a foot square. The wall is covered with stippled wallpaper, presumably to cover lumped plaster and stains. I have picked the spot at random and am finding it intensely satisfying. The curve and whorl of the pattern seem to be coiling and uncoiling of their own volition. The sunlight that fires through the oily, metal-framed window catches them in a fascinating way, making the contours stand up and gently vibrate. I follow the beam of the sun to the air in the middle of the room. It seems to have become solid, or perhaps a thick liquid. It exists in a sheet that cuts below the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There are dust motes illuminated by the sun, hanging, rearranging into fresh patterns. My mouth is beginning to drift open in amazement. The motes – there are so many of them and their dance is so slow. They seem to be the loveliest things I have ever seen. Everything appears as lit by a powerful, hidden strobe. Motion slows.

  I am still and my mind is brilliantly clear. There is no reason to move, ever. There is just this shining moment. I let my eyes drift around the room. No longer are the objects out there. It is clear that they are fundamentally, intensely connected to each other and myself.

  Noticing Graham’s laughter, I look at him and begin to laugh too, not because anything is funny, but because everything is so fresh and new-minted, so absolutely wonderful. It is as if some great leathered covering has been lifted from my eyes and heart, as if some invisible, fogged layer has been pulled back to reveal an always-hidden Eden. When Graham speaks, it is as if his words are bowled to me in slow motion.

  Something funny?

  Yes. Yes, I suppose you could say that.

  Mind telling me what it is?

  Mind? No, I wouldn’t mind. How could I?

  My sentence drifts away. I have become astonished by Graham’s face. Little ripples are passing over it at an astonishing rate. It is still recognizably Graham, but it has become more than him, somehow, more concentrated. I hold my hand in front of my face and move it; it leaves a blur of afterimage.

  The girls have started to look nervous now, aware that we are both behaving peculiarly. I notice that Graham’s eyes are black at the centre, the pupils dilated, as if to allow the world in. Mine must look the same. We are sitting oddly still and attempt to maintain an even conversation, but it breaks down every few seconds, as some new wonder catches at us: a patterned teacup, a crumb of biscuit, the weave of my shirt.

  Graham.

  Yes?

  Graham.

  What?

  But I have forgotten what it is I have to say.

  We remain rational enough to sense the girl’s mounting unease and rise as one to leave. The exact coincidence of this makes us begin laughing again, as if some deep mystery has been suddenly revealed. Steadily, we make our way towards the door and out into the estate grounds. It is apparent that the girls are relieved to see us go. As the door closes, they are forgotten.

  Well? Fancy a stroll?

  Why not?

  I don’t know.

  Well, then. We’ll co
me back later.

  Yes. We’ll clear up.

  Well, then. Tally ho.

  We collapse into laughter again. The tower blocks shine like mirrors, and the blue of the sky seems to have concentrated and leaked out into the air, so that everything is soaked in aquamarine. There is a deep, relentless and secret whirr within me, a dynamo which has just been switched on to full power for the first time. I am so full of delight I want to leave my skin and melt. Indeed, I think I am melting into the world around me, and that it is melting into me. There is no barrier any more.

  We stand at the bus stop, waiting, though I forget what for, until a bus moves into the middle distance. I have decided to go home and see a friend from Southall, Nick Blong, who lives two streets away from the house at Rutland Road. Suddenly Graham takes it into his head to wander off towards his home, as the bus approaches. I get on all the same. The street is moving like a sea and is coloured like petrol spill. The red of the heaving bus is more red than anything I have ever seen, more deep in its hue than a field of poppies.

  What amazes me, as I fumble for money for the fare, giggling to myself like an idiot, is that I feel sure that I am not seeing things that are not there – I am seeing things that are there. It has become plain, quite obvious, that the sensible world is simply a construction of my brain, and the brain is a kind of filter that keeps unmanageable, too-large information out. This I deeply know to be true, and know it to be true long after the effects of the drug have worn off. I am in a state of the purest, most concentrated ecstasy and it is the most real, the most truthful thing I have ever experienced.

  By the time I leave the bus, in Lady Margaret Road, I have noticed that there is a sort of ratchet effect built into the drug. It builds, falls back, then builds higher, more intensely than before. I presume it will level off after a while, but I do not mind because I assume the greater the strength, the deeper the pleasure I will experience. Certainly things are becoming very strange now. Objects seem to be on the point of disintegrating before my eyes into sparkling, undulating crystals. My eyelids are pushed up, my eyes are round. Matter seems to present itself as energy. The most trivial object is invested with a celestial significance.

  When I arrive at my friend Nick’s, his parents are home. As a sort of running joke, he calls his mother faggot and his father fag. He calls for a cup of tea.

  Faggot! Tea!

  I try very hard to make myself appear normal, but it is increasingly difficult. A slight sense of fear is appearing at the edges of my self, as the strength of the drug kicks up another level. Things are becoming so large and encompassing that I fear I will be absorbed, lost. But for the time being, I can politely refuse Nick’s mother’s offer of tea, and sit and pretend to listen to the Stooges ‘1969’ and ‘No Fun’. The intensity is now becoming insupportable. I say to Nick that we should go and he comes with me. He knows that I am on acid and finds it amusing, but I can tell that he is becoming a little disconcerted by the oddness of my behaviour, and my wild, fractured sentences.

  We walk the few hundred yards back to my parents’ house and I somehow manage to open the door with the key. Nick is recognizable as himself, but he seems increasingly gnome-like and malevolent. The fear within me is slowly turning to panic, as I understand that the whole experience is going out of control and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The flood of images and sensations is becoming a tidal wave that threatens to engulf me entirely. I am only vaguely aware that I have even taken a drug. I begin to stamp the floor with my feet in an attempt to reestablish some relationship with a more manageable reality and shout, as loud as I can, No! time and again. But I am slipping away, into somewhere that has no boundaries. Nick is looking distinctly nervous now. When I pick up a chair and throw it across the room, I turn and am just about aware that he has gone, that I am alone. The panic begins to turn to unalloyed terror, as I feel my very sense of self beginning to collapse into the swelling chaos of everything else. I start to walk like a robot, picking things up, putting them down, rearranging them. It is no longer me who is acting, but some much larger, metaphysical force, a force within which I am absolutely drowning. I am negated. I have gone completely mad, although everything is unmistakably, intensely real.

  I pick up a piece of cake and it collapses into terrible, rotting, moving heaps. I do not know what to do and in a fear so great I cannot bear it, I begin to smash up my parents’ house, throwing picture frames, plates, ornaments. I kick the wall. I pick up the carriage clock and hurl it at the window. It seems undamaged. The minute hand clicks another degree.

  My sense of being present in any sort of time – of time itself passing – has disappeared. I have found myself present in a sealed off never-never land, which I believe cannot end. I seem to know that I have plugged into my source and it is burning me horribly. I suddenly need to be free of all that binds me to earth and I tear off my clothes, as if it will release me from torment. Naked, I pace the house, all sense and meaning now sucked out of me and into the heated, distorting air. I stare out of the window, as if I could find salvation there. I want to see Jamie, my younger brother, the only particle of my self that I can remember. In my love for him I see some hope of relief, some tether.

  Jamie is two years old at this time and I run out into the hot street, still naked, to see if I can find him. I do not notice the astonished stares of the neighbours. A woman is walking along the road with a small baby, and I rush up to her and pick up the child in the hope that it is my brother. I inspect his melting, drifting face and see that it is not him. The woman is screaming now, but I am indifferent. I put the child down and start to wander, absolutely without purpose.

  Walter Wall, who lives opposite, opens his door and comes out. A labourer, stockily built and powerful, he tries to knock me down with a blow to the chin. I scarcely feel it and run instead into his open door and upstairs, where I begin tearing the Walls’ bedroom to pieces. Walter, although more powerful by far, cannot find the strength to stop me.

  After a while – I cannot tell how long, because I have lost all sense of time passing – I am aware of two policemen entering the room. They overpower me and drag me into a police car. By now, the entire street is watching. I am talking gibberish. They start the car and start towards Greenford Police Station. I feel momentarily relieved that I am being taken somewhere safe.

  When I arrive at the station, my panic has returned, more intense than ever. I have decided that I am God and am engaged in a cosmic battle against nothingness, that the world is my creation and I find it intolerable, that it must fracture. I am locked into a tiny cell and left alone.

  Now I am nothing but terror and madness. I know that a doctor is coming to see me and I think that if he examines me, he will discover that I am dead, and once this discovery is made, I will be dead. I imagine that I am faced with a choice between an eternity in this tiny, barred room or final oblivion. I clearly feel a sensation inside the pit of my chest, like two electric drills being held point to point, two opposed battling energies perfectly balanced. The doctor arrives. I fight to stop him from examining me and the police hold me down.

  The cell door opens again. It is my father. I fall into his arms and begin to cry. He holds me, embarrassed, and takes me home in the back of his car as if I am a child again, wrapped in a tartan blanket.

  When I arrive home at Rutland Road, I feel that the effect of the drug is weakening, to the extent that I am at least aware that I have taken a drug. But the world is still opalescent, whirring within itself, shining. My father takes me up to my room and puts me to bed, not knowing what else to do. The stars on the paper on the ceiling reel.

  After a while, I hear sounds coming from downstairs. To my amazement, it seems that Jean has brought her friends back from the tennis courts. My uncles and aunts begin to parade up to my room to look at me, and sigh. I am still barely cogent and do not really recognize them, although I am annoyed that they are there. At certain moments I feel that they too are gods and have co
me to judge me.

  After a while, my mother appears in the room. She is pale and looks shaken. I have steadied enough by now to wonder idly what she will find to say. She looks down at me with pained, incredulous eyes and looks for some phrase that will express the complexity of her feelings. She opens her mouth to speak. The moment seems to stretch.

  Oh, Timmy, she says. Where did we go wrong?

  I am now sane enough to feel let down by the cliché and an ironic smile edges my lips. It seems to be me who shakes my head in despair in reflection of her. Even in this condition, I am a snob.

  Much later, I wonder why it was that my father came alone to see me at the police station. I learn that when the police came to Duke’s Meadows, Jean simply carried on playing tennis, while Jack set off urgently in the car. She played well, without any apparent disruption to her accustomed rhythm.

  I think of the television that she switches off when pictures of famine appear. I think of Jean hiding in the cabin of the boat as we head for the weir. I think of Jean telling Irene that her brother, actually in gaol, was away on holiday. It is becoming clear what Jean’s final line of defence against life was. I think I always knew it, really. But I did not then, of course, understand what was on the other side of that line.

  The second happening is perhaps closer to a process in that it is a series of linked events. The first tile of this domino line – for I think of them arranged into linear steps of cause and effect – is set in place on my fourteenth birthday. For the first time, as a birthday treat, I have been to the West End, with my best friend at the time, a shy, gentle boy called Frank Brezine. The experience was bewildering, the sheer weight of people seeming to have increased my natural sense of invisibility. I do not tell my mother that I became hopelessly lost twice and frightened. But I am relieved to be home in a place where I am not so completely diluted. Jean behaves briskly in the kitchen. She is preparing tea, soft baps with liver sausage and tomato, lettuce with egg and salad cream. There is home-made Madeira cake for what Jean has now learned to call dessert instead of afters or pud.