Albert’s Getting Married
By John Ellison Davies
"I'm thirty-four and I hate it." Celia stabs her strudel. "I should sell the car and get a facelift."
"You're gorgeous," I reassure her.
She lights her cigarette like a fuse.
We are in La Chamade, a restaurant newly popular with people like us. The chef's most delicate sauces compete with the subtle aroma we carry of self-confidence and money. We are the real menu. We come here to admire ourselves.
"Posers!" Celia almost spits. "Can't we go somewhere else?"
"Hey!" I sense this conversation needs steering. And I have a surprise for her. "Guess what? Albert's coming back."
She stares at me.
"I got another card yesterday", I explain. "From Florence. He's getting married. What do you think?"
Celia stirs her coffee anti-clockwise, a habit which annoys me. She knows it annoys me. Frankly, Celia can be difficult.
"I'm wondering why they pay you so much."
"I mean about Albert."
"You're obsessed."
A shattered nostalgia comes over me. I feel myself inflated by a sense of... where did I read that? Never mind. I am overwhelmed by memories of the prince, the virtuoso, the golden goose. Albert.
I am doing my morning exercises. I am developing the muscle tone across my chest. I have never felt stronger in my arms and shoulders. When I stand my legs feel as lithe as a dancer's. I am ready for anything.
I do not yet know that this will be the worst day of my life.
"Doesn't the smoke get up your nose?" Celia wrinkles her eyebrows.
"Khan cigarettes have been good to me," I say.
She can't object to this. My advertising campaign for Khan has doubled their sales and almost done the same for my income. I am on the rise. I have found my own style in this business and know how far it will take me. It will take me far enough.
The fact that today I will meet a young man named Albert who is joining our agency, Auchmutty & Costello, means little to me. I will be generous with the newcomer. I can give him a few tips. Not too many.
"Is this," I ask myself in the bathroom mirror, "the face of a man who is going to win through today?" My lines of experience - Johnny Walker's footprints, Celia calls them - crease appealingly. "Is this..."
"Breakfast's ready," Celia calls from the kitchen.
We have been living together for one month. I have no complaints. I do notice that it is becoming difficult to finish a thought with her around. I tell myself this is a period of adjustment.
"Don't bring it into the kitchen," she says.
I hear bacon sizzling, the toaster popping. I stub out my Khan.
At this time in our relationship we are still discreet and do not arrive at the office together. Celia is already in her place at the reception desk. The look she gives me is gloweringly domestic. I fear our secret cannot be kept much longer.
The pale pink carpet is soft and deep, a fluffy fallen patch of heaven. I swagger a little walking towards her.
"Is he here yet?"
A smile of relish trembles on Celia's lips. She licks a finger and points.
They say you never forget the face of your torturer.
He stands under the portrait of Auchmutty, our founder. His mouth is open as if he is gulping for air. He is gulping for air, like a goldfish. His shoes are brown. His suit and knitted tie are brown. His shirt is a light cream brown. He carries a brown briefcase. His limp hair is a sandy brown. In our pastel office he resembles a crab that has brought its own mud for company.
"You are what you wear," I murmur to Celia. "Justin Pfizer," I introduce myself to Albert. "Good to have you aboard."
"Fine, fine." He blinks amiably. The face is angular, the eyes soft and melancholy and wondering as a baby seal's
"I'll show you to Murdoch's office."
"Who's he?"
"Our Creative Director. Haven't you met him?"
"No."
I sense something is desperately wrong. I can guess why, and the answer gives me a watery feeling in my stomach.
"Who offered you the job?"
"Mr Auchmutty."
This patch of heaven I call mine seems suddenly as safe as a penthouse in Kobe. I have been with Auchmutty & Costello for five years. I have never seen Auchmutty. He lives in a castle in Provence. He communicates by fax machine and computer.
Murdoch obviously shares my misgivings. A gloomy man in yellow corduroy, he stares at Albert as he would a wraith from the bogs of his own Celtic past.
"Justin will show you your office. It may not be what you're used to. We are short of space. Good morning. Good luck."
Albert grins. Murdoch's handshake, a sandpaper grip that can make a normal man weep, makes no impression on him.
I lead him to his office, a bare and narrow cubicle adjoining a storeroom.
"Fine, fine." He opens his briefcase. On his desk he places a brown leatherbound diary and a gold fountain pen. On the window sill he assembles a small coffee-making device of a kind I have not seen before.
"That's it?" I pace the undecorated room. I look out his window over the railway station below.
"I'm paid to dream." He smiles vaguely at the discoloured wall. "I have a print I can hang there."
"A nice view of the Sahara desert?"
"You've got the idea."
I go to my office, which is naturally larger, has leather furniture, a Nolan on the wall and a view of the Harbour, deep in thought.
Days later I look in to see how he is getting on. He is staring at the wall.
"What's the brief, Al?"
"Air freshener."
A single blank sheet of paper lies on his desk, soaking up sunshine.
"Amazons," I suggest generously.
"What?"
"An army of amazons battling household germs and odours."
"Murdoch would like it," he grins, rocking in his straight-backed chair like a Buddhist monk in a television documentary about Tibet.
I find him again during lunch hour, outside the newsagency at the railway station.
"How's it going, Al?"
"Nothing yet." He walks past me. I follow. He admires a mannequin in a shop window. He talks to a dog dribbling out the window of a parked car. He sits on a bench at the bus stop. He pulls a sandwich from his pocket and chews with the urgency of an unusually patient cow.
In the newsagency I pick up a financial review, a couple of women's magazines, an issue of Slav Handicrafts, an assortment of fashion and photographic magazines from overseas. This is part of my regular research. One day I might need a shadow placed in a particular way and remember where I have seen it before.
Albert is talking to the girl who sells flowers outside the station. He hasn't got a clue, I think. I think, “this is going to be easy”. I feel triumphant. I feel like Beethoven must have felt starting the fifth movement of his ninth symphony. God help me. I am closer to John F. Kennedy sight-seeing in Dallas.
I am whispering to Celia at the reception desk when Albert returns carrying a bunch of purple flowers.
"Can I find a vase for these?"
"I'll get one for you," Celia offers.
"This is breaking the mould. Purple is not your colour, Al."
"They're lilacs," says Celia quietly. "In the language of flowers they signify a beginning."
My motorcade is turning the corner. I can almost see the grassy knoll.
Our weekly conference with Murdoch. I am fuelled with the burn and pillage spirit.
I have no ideas at all.
Grim as ever in silk shirt and red leather pants, Murdoch scrapes our hands. I am watching Albert. He appears to have a mystical connection with something on the ceiling. Celia is wearing that tight skirt that I like, crossing her creamy legs and staring at me.
In his most convincing last-rites manner Murdoch invites Albert to begin.
In the Harbour below nimble yachts scratch the water's glassy surface. Heavy cargo ships plough a splintered spray. Dolphins leap in delight and cheeky ease. Behind me Albert drones on outlining his plan for the deodorant campaign.
Spite sweats from Murdoch. Celia winks at me.
There is a kind of defeat so total that is comes as a relief.
Three days later we are in the conference room on the seventh floor where the great ones lurk in splendour. All staff have been summoned. At the far end of this room there is a life-size version of the poster that will soon appear on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, on buses and taxis. It shows a young woman in a simple white skirt and blouse, in a modestly furnished lounge room, offering a bouquet of purple lilacs to the viewer.
It is nothing. Look at it again and it is everything, like the Mona Lisa.
I almost enjoy watching the reactions of my colleagues. One hisses his delight, harsh as steam. He looks again and sees the end of his world.
A seeming hesitation in the woman's gesture suggests that there is something she wants to say. In her face there is an expression of invincible trust. She knows you will understand what she wants to say to you.
Any doubters among us become instant believers when Auchmutty enters the room. He looks as if he has stepped from his own portrait, broad-shouldered, pipe in hand.
He examines the poster in silence. Albert stands apart, gulping air.
Auchmutty's terrible gaze rotates from the picture to Albert, direct as a gun turret.
"She reminds me of my aunt." All ears strain to hear him. "A small rosy woman she was with hair long and blonde and loose as an angel's. She ran a pub. Sailors and men with all the sins of the world in their hearts were as well-behaved as spinsters in her bar. They could not bear to see the smallest frown crease that adorable face. Once she cried and the docks were quiet for a fortnight."
I can almost hear his turret creak as he surveys us, gauging the story's effect. Someone behind me sniffles. Celia does something with her handkerchief. I am not feeling too cynical myself.
Auchmutty glares with the good humour of a tank commander who has spotted a hostile dot on the horizon. An evil gurgle rises in his throat. He is laughing.
"You believed it!"
He waves us aside as unworthy of his attention.
"I had no aunt!" He slaps Albert on the back. "But if I did she'd remind me of her."
Albert blinks.
The phenomenon has begun.
People talk about her on trains and buses, argue about her over dinner. They dream about her. Radio talkback stations open their lines with the theme "What will she say?" Television talk show psychologists talk about why everyone is talking about her. Semioticians write rhapsodic essays on her silence.
Sales of air freshener are booming. Women are wearing white again. Florists cannot keep up with the exploding demand for gardenias, red carnations, fleur-de-lis, ambrosia... Albert's poster inspires many lilac beginnings that get at least as far as a rose fulfilment.
"It's like lancing a boil," I tell Celia. "All their fantasies are oozing out."
"They're called yearnings. People have them."
Albert is given an office on the seventh floor, with a view of the sparkling Harbour. I am only happy when it rains.
I languish in my box floors below. I score a minor success from time to time with my Amazons and my Mongol horsemen.
Thinking dog food, I go for long walks around the Quay. I spy through binoculars on the zoo and the Botanical Gardens, on the navy depot and the parks. I scour each inch of untidy blooming life around me for an idea. Nothing comes.
At the same time Albert, seven floors up and behind double glazed windows, devises a campaign for a bank. It shows a dolphin crying its delight and cheeky ease, among waves and sharks.
And just as I stop trying to overtake him, he stops running.
He does not decline. He crashes.
At first he simply becomes unpredictable. He arrives and leaves the office at random, without explanation. Sometimes he does not come in at all. We think - so what? Genius is allowed a private clock.
Then he does not shave for days at a time. So what? That look is still fashionable everywhere.
He begins to wear red socks, blue shirts, white trousers, bizarre combinations. Who among us would cast the first stone? If he looks stranger than any of us it seems an overdue assumption of natural privilege. A legend should behave like a legend. Princes are expected to go regally mad.
Murdoch is almost cheerful when he tells me the incredible news.
"Albert's kaput."
Celia adds: "We're talking extinct volcano time. He's been alone in the screening room all day staring at his Mona Lisa. We've tried... It's the end of an era." Her eyes are moist with emotion. "It could be the beginning of a new era for you.”
I see what she means. My options in an Albertless universe are unlimited. I can roam free.
Then why do I feel so sad?
I find him in the dark.
A dozen empty videotape covers lie discarded on the floor. The tapes themselves are stacked in a precarious tower. On the big screen his life's work flickers before his eyes. Crying dolphins. Welcoming log fires. Loyal dogs. Blocks of butter melting on family meals. Apple pies. Children with grazed knees. Helpful strangers. Friendly policemen. Rains after drought. Rainbows. And, over and over again, his flower-girl.
"What do people want, Justin?" His haggard face is illuminated by a firework display.
"It's all there. Rainbows. Warm apple pie."
"That's not all."
"Near enough."
"What do you want?" My mind is a montage of better-looking cars and faster women. A boat. "What do I want?" he rambles to himself.
His Mona Lisa, his flower-girl, appears on the screen again. He blinks. He gulps for air.
"How do you do it?" I ask.
"I look for the obvious. I follow my nose." An echo of Auchmutty's peculiar laugh wheezes in his throat. He has an idea.
Auchmutty ordered that a portrait of Albert be hung beside his own. Murdoch resigned to lecture, on a modest salary, at a technical college.
A year ago I received a post card from Athens, followed by one from Paris. There was no message. I recognised in the address characteristic lines of a certain gold fountain pen. Occasional photographs followed from other cities, casual snapshots of himself with and without a beard and every stage of growth between. Albert the Golden Goose had become the chameleon, the wanderer, the man of limitless possibility.
Three weeks ago I received several photographs of Albert with a woman. Camera-shy, in each picture she hid behind her hands, or a towel, or withdrew into the shadow of a rock. On the reverse of the last photograph he wrote: "Getting married. See you soon.”
Celia lights another cigarette. Her eyes are red.
"What exactly are you telling me?"
"He's coming back. With this woman. I can't wait to see what she's like."
"You owe your career to the fact that he left. You did your best to get rid of him."
"It's different now. Working together - imagine! We could own this town! Me and Albert!"
"You're incredible."
Celia stares at me the way people stare at their television set when the picture goes blank.
-The End-