Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

poem – which let’s be honest isn’t that good but got itself stuck fast in my head through a mix of repulsion and chancing on my pet obsession – in how it relates to Tom and the diary that he became obsessed with.

Tom is a book that did not want to be a book. He’s populated by characters he has no say in. He’s marked by our hands holding onto his edges and wearing him away. He’s a book with something like that poem in it – content not worth the pages it is written on and not needing the pages to be written on since now we’re taking it out to put it in another place. I think that’s what the internet does to texts. See John Berger. Or any other theorist. But stamped or scribed indelibly in its original setting, anyway there is a split from the text-Tom and the form-Tom. From his inner content and his being. A proliferation maybe rather than a split. Let me be clear – this is not about mental illness. Don’t be tender yourself. This is not about mental ill health. This is about plurality and possession. He’s both the story Daniel and I tell of him here – inevitable errata, derivations, blah blah blah – and the body he has and the inner life he has, which Daniel and I are trying our best to give lines to. He’s the diary. He’s the diary’s omissions. He’s the ghost. He has succeeded where I haven’t in becoming plural. And it’s not just down to me it happened – he split himself. He was split. Something clawed at him and he let it in and in the process let himself out. Selfletting, like bloodletting. Each red bead of him a letter and some of it captured here.

Distraction/Decoction

To get to it: I was late for the housewarming. Tom went ahead of me from his work while I scrambled to finish a bit more research – there was always a bit more to do before I felt like I could afford to quit for the night – and got myself to Tesco for a wine – under six quid with a non-cringey label – I could give to the hosts. I was glad Tom was moving in somewhere new without me, that he hadn’t even thought to ask if I’d move in with him. Took the pressure off us for a while. Let me say again at that point Tom was not more than he was. I still didn’t have a clear idea whether he knew how to clean up after himself and wouldn’t want me for a combination housecleaner and sexual services provider as some had before. Likewise I had flaws I wasn’t ready to inflict on him yet. Relationships tended not to survive the full onslaught of me in one of my righteous, didactic moods.

When I got into the house I saw how things had been tidied away not just stuffed behind things as I’d have done. One person at least was house-proud. Or maybe the lads were just better at hiding the evidence of a rush clean. Tom let me in; he introduced me to Badr, and some of his workmates, and some of Badr’s workmates. The first group had dim faces I remembered from the club. All men. Badr had a couple of female colleagues. They gave small tight waves and hellos. My stomach dropped. I would have nothing to say to any of these people. After a while I got myself out on the pretext of opening the bottle. In the kitchen was another housemate. He introduced himself as Daniel. How shall

I say Daniel looked? First impressions: He stood in the light of the refrigerator, slight, soft. His fluffy brown hair a little too long on his head – later I learned there was a small bald patch back there – and he was swaying as if he was listening to some music playing in another room. He talked very softly but in a way that enticed one to lean in to listen. He gave the impression also of not wishing to be overheard by someone listening in the wings, and along with that had a slightly surly, distracted air that made it seem that this someone was waiting on him, and if he did not go soon he would be late, suffer some kind of ticking off. But here he stayed because he did not want to let you down either and was as generous as he could be with it. He was, I saw, a man of interior ambiguities and the whispers of the fairies in his ear. He looked like he slept in his socks.

‘Nice coat,’ he said, then lightly flinched as I looked at him. A tricksy man then to like right away but he had enough going on that I somehow did.

‘Here,’ I said, handing him the wine, ‘I don’t want it. I don’t even know why I brought it.’

‘Beer?’ he offered me a cold can.

‘I hate beer, I always drink it and hate it. Does the job, but . . .’ I said. We sat down at the kitchen table and I was about to ask all the usual who are yous. Then something strange in his look stopped me. The way I found myself looking back. It was kinship, there in our glances performing itself, hard to put into words without sounding trite. And I said instead, ‘You’re wondering why, aren’t you?’

‘Why what?’ he said. ‘Not really,’ he poured himself some bitter lemon, and made me a glass too, with vodka. I tried some. Not bad. Laughter came from the living room. While Tom sat on his throne, easy monarch of any place. He told stories, then, if you can believe it. He had anecdotes and courtiers fanning themselves. And I was irked at my jealousy and tried to outrun it with this strange man there whose manner intrigued and who, so quickly,