‘Staines — what a name for a town!’, W. says. And, a little later, ‘Egham — it's unbearable!’ ‘These names, these names!’ True life is elsewhere, isn't it?, W. says. True life is elsewhere. But we are in the suburbs, and on the slowest train in the world.
This is suicide country, W. says. He’d top himself if he lived here. He’d either top himself, or think some great thought, W. says. To think against the suburbs. To think in the suburbs, hating the suburbs. What pressure of thinking you could build up! What a head of steam! – ‘But it didn’t work for you, did it?’
Oh, but he sees why. It gave me the fear – the fear of falling back here. The fear of crash-landing here where I grew up. That’s why I’ve flung myself into administration. That’s why I’ve tried to lodge myself in the administrative work of the university like a tick in an armpit. – ‘They’ll find you in the end’, W. says. ‘They’ll smoke you out. There you’ll be, coughing in the sun …’
We speculate about the lost geniuses of the suburbs. Bracknell's secret Rilke (Coetzee lived in Bracknell, W. says) … Martin's Heron's hidden Leibniz (W.: ‘Martin's Heron: what kind of a name is that?’). And Sunningdale's own Solomon Maimon, drunk in Tesco's carpark …
You'd have to go on the sick, if you lived in the suburbs, W. and I agree. You'd have to stay unemployed, wandering the streets with the early-retired and mothers pushing buggies. And you'd go mad from isolation. You'd go off your head. And then you'd top yourself.
It's different in the north, of course. It was different in my Manchester, back then before the regeneration, I tell W. It was different before Marketing Manchester and Heritage Manchester and Superclub Manchester. It was a shithole, I tell him. It was a shithole, W. agrees. But we should only live in shitholes. Where else could we live? (W.’s house, for all its grandeur, is in the worst part of Plymouth).
Maimon would have felt right at home there, in old Manchester, we agree. I felt right at home there, as muggers held knives to my throat and junkies trailed after me asking me for money. I felt right at home in my bedsit next to the curry house extractor fans.
There's a crack in the wall, I told the landlord, when he showed me the room. — 'A crack in the wall, yes', he said and smiled. I could hardly breathe for cold and curry, but I took the room nonetheless, because it cost nothing and I had nothing. — 'You were born for squalor', W. says, and that’s my gift. I live the life of the abased, of the abject, he says. I can’t help it. I’ve found my level, which is very low, and I’m bringing him down to my level, W. says.
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