Viva Lewes Issue #154 July 2019

COLUMN
David Jarman
Straight through the red lights
I’m now sixty-two, my wife a little older and
a lot wiser, and if the last year is any guide
to what the future holds, we’ve definitely
embarked upon the four funerals and a
wedding time of our lives. Samuel Beckett
seems to have got there even earlier. In January
1966, a few months before his sixtieth birthday,
he wrote to Jacoba van Velde: ‘Giacometti
mort. George Devine mort. Oui, conduis-moi
au Père Lachaise, en brûlant les feux rouges.’
This is translated by George Craig as: ‘Yes,
drive me to Père Lachaise and go straight
through the red lights.’ I’m reminded of it
because George Craig’s was one of the funerals
that I have attended this year. I only met him
once, but I was glad to have the opportunity
of going along to St John-sub-Castro and
paying my respects to one of the editors of
the magisterial four-volume edition of Samuel
Beckett’s Letters.
Then there was the Memorial Mass for
Christopher McConville that we attended at
St John the Evangelist’s, Islington on 20th
March. It was more like once a week that I
met Chris during the last twenty years of his
life, and quite often before that, since being
introduced in 1984. A pupil of Wittgenstein’s
once wrote: ‘Though I learnt very little from
him as a philosopher, Wittgenstein was a very
good friend of mine. There is a beautiful word
in Sanskrit for “friend”… which freely rendered
would mean “one who constantly does good
to one without any reason whatsoever”.’ That
was, incontrovertibly, Chris to me, to all our
children, and to so many other people.
Chris was a contemporary of David Lodge
at University College, London, both reading
English, though reading was not, perhaps,
a priority of Chris’s at that time. In his
autobiography, Lodge describes him as ‘an
amiable but notoriously idle student who spent
a great deal of time in the Union bar and failed
to get an honours degree.’
Never in exuberant health, sometimes looking
rather ghastly, occasional punchbag for a
recurring tropical malady picked up in Malawi
while working for The British Council, it
showed remarkable resilience in Chris that he
got to 84.
He didn’t really look after himself, or at least
only in very idiosyncratic ways. I once met
him at The Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Street
with a mutual friend, David Lintern, another
consuetudinary drinker. Earlier that morning
Chris had been to see his doctor. After four
hours and five pints, David suggested a final
pint, round the corner in Rugby Street. Chris
insisted we stay put. “But it’s only a couple of
minutes walk.” “Yes, I know, but my doctor
advised me to stay in a controlled environment
if I want to get better.”
Back to Beckett for my token effort at tackling
this month’s theme of gardening. In a letter
dated 7 January 1983, he
wrote: ‘Now such
inertia and void
as never before. I
remember an entry
in Kafka’s diary.
“Gardening. No
hope for the
future.” At
least he could
garden.’
Illustration by Charlotte Gann
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