Terry Newholm
“Ah, that ... will ... be ... three thousand two hundred and
twenty three pounds.” Anna takes the proffered credit card, places it into the
reader, hands the reader back and, as custom demands, looks away: towards the
shining bikes racked approximately in order of consumer desire. Each pristine
aerodynamic cycling machine is designed to maximise the ratio of visual impact
to unit cost. Each innovation in style and engineering sweeps across the rack
of Cambell’s daydreams
[i].
Together, and this cannot be unintentional, these cycles offer the consumers’
eyes a kaleidoscope of alluring colour.
Anna turns back to the customer’s raised eyebrows and
extended hand. “Sorry, sorry, thanks.” She takes the reader, completes the
transaction and returns the card to its owner.
“Delivery?” says the customer.
“In ... your ... area, Thursday.”
“Absolutely no later, I’m team racing on the weekend, must be used to it. Do
you understand?”
“They’ll do their b... absolutely, yes, no question.”
“And the chainset?”
“The replacement on your other bike?”
“Of course.”
“Oh yes, ah, on the maintenance desk over by the counter. If you ask for Don,
that’s Donna, she’ll tell you when it’s scheduled. She’ll have a better idea
than I will.”
“Hope so”, says the customer as she wheels about.
Some day please, please send me a gentle, grateful customer.
Eventually John arrives to swell the evening staff and so it has to be 4pm. “I
love the bikes” she calls to him in the empty shop “Should I say something charitable
about the customers? Perhaps just an unlucky day. Over to you John.” Anna
stuffs her belongings into her backpack, wheels her bike to the goods entrance
and begins her precarious journey home. It is the start of the working week, 22nd
April 2013 and still a little chill.
Tuesday is mending Anna’s mood with some customers grateful
for her good advice. As the afternoon progresses she notices someone in an old
coat is standing by one of the racks of shiny bikes facing away from her. Short
with unruly hair so probably in from the cold, Anna thinks. The old coat stands
back, moves forward and gently runs fingers around a front brake calliper.
“I’m looking for gloves” says a woman standing at the
counter, “What I’m actually wanting is a full glove not a mitt, is that what
it’s called? .... do you have such a thing?”
“I’m sure we have, please, follow me over to the gloves display.” From the
display Anna can steal a glance to see the old coat is worn by an unshaven man.
Anna selects gloves, “Sealskinz, we get excellent feedback, good brand and have
more durable cushioning for the grip than most. Oh, are you looking for
warmth?”
“I get Raynaud's, you know, white fingers .... even this time of year.” The
customer takes her smart phone and points the camera at the barcode. “Hm,
really is seal skin, that’s bad news, something else please?”
“I think Giro are all synthetic if that’s what you want. They’re a bit pricy
but really warm. We only carry the two brands in long-fingers at this time of
year, so ....”
The customer flashes the phone again and asks the price. “Fifty-one
ninety-nine.” The old man is watching but turns away when Anna looks. “Okay,
I’ll think about it. You’ve been really helpful, thanks.”
“If you need any more help I’ll be back at the counter” says Anna
embarrassingly aware that she’s used the same retail cliché yet again. John
arrives marking the end of Anna’s shift. She looks about but cannot see the old
man.
The following day the man appears again. Anna goes across to
him to speak. “Can I help you?” Anna says.
“I am right in thinking these many machines to be for travel, am I not?”
“Some are touring others are for commuting or racing, it depends what you
need.”
“I wonder how it might be possible to ride one of your cycling machines?”
“Are you looking to buy one? For a friend, perhaps?”
“It is I who would wish to experience .... I have ten guineas” he says scooping
coins from a pocket and offering them for inspection, “but I confess I am
confused by what I take to be the tariffs applied to the machines.”
“Do you mean .... the ones displayed here cost between five hundred pounds and
four thousand. I doubt we take guineas sir.”
“My goodness” .... “Since I shall be
returning to make a purchase, I hope, might I be permitted to enquire as to
your name? Oh, do I presume too much ..... or should I not ..... unwise
perhaps?”
“Anna”
“Anna?”
“My name, you asked ... Anna.”
“Lady Anna” said the smiling potential customer, or was that to put too high a
commercial expectation on the encounter.
“I’ve never been called Lady before, but you can ask for me by name if you
wish” says Anna subsequently unsure whether such an offer had been wise.
“Forgive me, forgive me because I
once knew a lady called Ann and....” he puts his fingers to his mouth and then
in an exhaling breath “My name is Gompertz .... Lewis Gompertz.” Anna
recognises the richly pronounced ‘because’ from her friend Ariella. Lewis
Gompertz slightly bows his head, turns slowly and walks from the shop. He is
over-polite and she revises her guess: he is a professor down on his luck, or,
aren’t they all rather dishevelled?
Curious, Anna, taps ‘Lewis Gomperts’ into her smartphone:
‘Lewis Gompertz’ = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Gompertz
“1783/4–1861 oh nooo, and Jewish, and
short, and the picture”
‘Lewis Gompertz’s bike’ = https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VDlaT0KxJfAC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=lewis+gompertz%27s+bicycle&source=bl&ots=SNVYAwTzhh&sig=X94zlgMVgO_Xtqb-Lb3GBxFmbss&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwp5aElN_WAhVEIsAKHWTIDVMQ6AEIRTAI#v=onepage&q=lewis%20gompertz%27s%20bicycle&f=false
“Fuck .... fuck ... the bike as well.”
Lewis Gompertz strides in through the door mid-morning on
Wednesday and would have looked impressive, clean, shaven but for long
sideburns and in his new long coat were it not for his short stature. Anna
intercepts him.
“Lewis Gompertz”
“The same, I ……”
“Born 1783?” She says more quietly, close to his face.
“Ah, 1784 but ……”
“Died 1861? Vegan, Inventor of a velocipede?”
“Indeed, be calmed Anna.” Gompertz pleads as Anna repeats Oh my god. “I have as
little understanding of my presence here as do you. I think I may have
precipitated this calamity because it fulfils my dying wish ... I am so sorry
... somewhere to converse Anna? I am in need of your help ... please.”
Anna holds Gompertz firmly by his elbow and walks him out of
the shop, she a young woman with confidence found of fear and confusion, he a
77 year old man uneasy in this world. Right and right again she turns him till
they reach the café where ‘not-so-handsome-Joel’ struts his stuff.
“Two coffees Joel, no freeking questions, no f....., no bloody Joelness, just
two coffees.”
“I’m ser’ving, you’re freeking my customers, sit down quietly and wa’ait” Joel
sings.
“He’s insufferable. Sit down Lewis, you are in the 21st century,
explain before my mind explodes ... do you understand?”
“Dear Anna I ...”
“No, no I am not your ‘dear Anna’, I’m me, Anna who works in a perfectly normal
bike shop, explain.”
“I have little idea why it might be so. My dying wish was, if I soundly
remember, that I might come to see the fruition of the velocipede, as you call
‘bike’. Why such a think might be granted, I am, I insist at a loss. Anna you
severely treat the ghost of Gompertz.”
“Ghost of ... Joel, come here now” she shouts across the café.
“You’re in a foul one Anna; at your command and all that” says the stooping
Joel on arrival at the troublesome table.
“This is Mr Gompertz” Anna asserts gesturing extravagantly in his direction.
“That’s his name?”
“Shake Mr Gompertz’s hand, Joel.” Gompertz stands and dutifully obedient, the
two men shake hands.
“Hmmm” says Anna nodding her head.
Joel shakes his head, “Yeees”, and sensibly sulks away, backwards at first.
“Why now? On my watch, why?”
“On my watch?” Gompertz repeats slowly.
“Why arrive NOW Gompertz to give me grief .... to upset MY life .... sanity?”
“Why now” Gompertz reflects “I cannot say, save that the cycling machines have
far surpassed my expectation.”
An uncharacteristically timid, not-so-handsome-Joel brings
coffees to the table.
“You think the cycling machines, oh god you’ve got me saying
it, are … what … wonderful?”
“Indeed I so do Miss Anna. .... might I enquire if you have seen illustration
of my now feeble effort?”
“Yes, it’s possible now to find everything about you, or any others .... easily.”
“There are many more wonders?”
“Huh, I suppose you could say so.”
“Perhaps I should caveat one point. Whilst I wonder at the elegant machines of
which your shop is purveyor, my feeble efforts redesigning the velocipede were
for quite a different purpose than you might imagine. As in all your
exploration of my history will I suppose have informed you, and I am shocked
both that knowledge of my oft unsuccessful life might in some way be preserved
and that access to that might be available, I have championed the rights of
brutes and loathed their exploitation. My interest in the velocipede was as
much .... probably mostly to relieve the great burden of my time on the horse
and the ill-treatment that occasioned.”
They sit quietly letting their coffees grow cold. A lady is
eating her slice of cake as if the obesity police would imminently pounce. Joel
fusses about his customers. The coveted window seats are held against all
pretenders. Two dazzling ladies on the white couch effuse over the social world
they construct while a grey man hunches in a corner over his mesmerising Apple.
All now seems in good order in the coffee shop.
“Anna, I understand little of this and in that, I need your
help. Perhaps my wish has been granted by some deity.”
“Oh god ... if we’re having wishes granted... taaa ... I may have ... I may
also have wished, Lewis.”
“I believe that if I, with your help, were to ride one of your wonderful
machines, my wish fulfilled, this unaccountable sequence might end” Gompertz
conjectures.
After a pause to consider Anna conjectures “Then isn’t the reverse also true?
If your wish isn’t fulfilled, Lewis, you will live .... again, I mean on, or
whatever?
The coffees may survive these intense customers intact.
“I’ve got to go back, I can’t lose my job .... as well as my
mind” and Anna stands “drink your coffee Lewis and, look, I’ll .... see you
here tomorrow .... four-fifteen, okay?”
“A quarter past the hour of four .... I am merely assuring that I understand
because your instruction is most precise. Anna, I am truly most grateful.” The
coffees are untouched as one customer leaves before the other.
Lewis Gompertz arrives in his new coat as the cycle shop
opens on Thursday. He briefly observes the staff preparing for the day then
moves as quickly as he can to the rack of sparkling bicycles. He observes
purposefully and moves skilfully to avoid contact with the staff. Arriving back
at the door, he turns and glances at the video screen showing as it does
cycling in action. Then he leaves to return to his lodgings always observing
intently and a little nervously as he goes.
“He’s been in again, Anna” says Don as Anna arrives. “God, did you hear about
that awful factory collapse, Rona Plaza or something, makes clothes and things,
Bangladesh; loads killed, how do they do it! D’you think any of our T shirts?”
“Have to ask Lizzy.”
“Yeah.”
Black painted concrete walls set off the shiny brassware and
a Nuova Simonelli Aurelia II Volumetric 4 Espresso Machine graces Joel’s chic
industrial interior décor but contrast oddly with the one ironical(?) small
white alcove with its soft white furnishings; all something of a contrast to
the listed 60s brutalist exterior; both equally perplexing to our hero as he
encounters them for the second time. The inside is warm, however, and since
Gompertz is now known to its proprietor, perhaps welcoming? It is Friday
morning and Gompertz arrives at Black and Beautiful café. “A fine day, is it not so”
is his greeting to Joel.
“Reserve judgement Mr Gompertz.”
“As you wish. It would please me if you were to call me Lewis and I might be
permitted to call you Joel as seems customary.”
“Joel or Nos.”
“Joel, it is settled. But Nos, how so?”
“Short for ‘not so’ Mr Gompertz, can I get you a coffee, sell you a cake, buy
my shop, make my day?”
“Ah, droll Joel wonderfully droll .... I have no doubt that you are capable of
getting me a coffee and I would be pleased if you would .... black if you will.
And I might enjoy a cake if you could assure its recipe to include no
ingredients deriving from brutes .... animals I believe you would say.”
“Vegan Mr Gompertz, you’re not the only one nowadays. I’ve a red velvet cake”
says Nos proudly presenting his white and red special.
“I shall take your advice Joel … but, I have heard Anna use this word ‘vegan’
and … might you explain it for my edification.”
“Ffffff, you’ve not been on social media Mr Gompertz, vegan, someone who
doesn’t have any animal …. food. I’ll bring the coffee over ... er... Lewis.”
Even 21st Century Nos didn’t feel quite comfortable on first name
terms with this loquacious but principled septuagenarian.
Gompertz drinks his coffee, orders another and eats his cake whilst reflecting
on the availability vegan cuisine some one-and-a-half centuries after his
death. He is still not entirely sure he understands the use to which his new
friends put the word ‘vegan’ and certainly didn’t want to tackle Joel on
‘social media’. There is something pleasing to Gompertz, however, about having
established some rapport with not-so-handsome Joel.
Gompertz notices, for the first time perhaps because he has been so distracted
in conversation with Anna, that many of the customers in Nos’s café
are intent upon .... various implements, if that is the right word. Most are
quite small and held in one hand but one is like a large silver clad open book
set upon the table in front of its reader but the wrong way for reading. Nos
notices Anna’s friend staring intently at one of his customers and slowly
leaning to the right; peculiar. When Gompertz is able to see the screen, the
illuminated text and illustrations, he realises that this is alike with the
screen he has seen in the cycle shop and perhaps, as with books, is a source of
information.
Gompertz returns precisely at fifteen minutes past the hour
of four to find Anna seated facing the door. “Good morrow Nos” Gompertz says
just sufficiently loudly for Anna to hear. He bows, “Lady Anna”; it is a test,
he thinks, of her mood.
“Hello Lewis, I have a present for you” and she rummages in her back pack to
produce a copy of
Moral Inquiries[ii]
reprinted 1992.
After a moment’s thought, Gompertz exclaims “Good heavens, I had not thought to
look. You are kind and thoughtful indeed” he says as he examines the apparently
unbound book.
“You’ll have to explain your aversion to carrots Mr vegan!”
For the first time in this life Gompertz laughs “Carrots, indeed I shall Lady
Inquisitor; if I read correctly you are in jest?”
“I’ll get you a coffee ....”
“Oh tea I think please, black tea, but I must ....”
Anna acquiesces and continues “then I have two things I must tell you Lewis.”
She turns and fixes her trajectory towards Nos.
As she returns she says, “I’m terrified I’m going to starve but I’m going for
vegetarian .... don’t say vegan Gompertz, I can’t do that .... are you pleased
Lewis?”
“I am deeply flattered that you might think me of sufficient import that you
wish for my pleasure in your decision. I hope that is not your sole motive
Anna.”
“I’ve been reading your book
and
Singer’s Animal Liberation so I think .... look, I’ve decided you can borrow my
bike. Were about the same height and it’s a ‘fine cycling machine’” Anna says
ironically. From the bar, Nos sees Lewis and Anna stand up, move together, in
sequence they touch their own crown and then that of the other and then seat
themselves again. ‘The observer’ does not always have an easy role to
play.
That Friday Anna, John, Don and Lizzy are customarily
marking the end of their working week on the white sofa. “Item one” says Lizzy,
chair for the evening, “Rana Plaza … oh, that’s me. Well I couldn’t get
anything much out of the buyer, they’re all tight lipped. I chatted with
Precious Woembi, you know, she cleans the offices, says the T-shirts are made
in Bangladesh but in a different factory” she looked at her papers “Interstoff
in … Gazipur?” “Probably another hell hole” says John. “Even asking makes them
think” says Lizzy. “But we can’t do anything … can’t exactly tell customers
John thinks they might be shit
garments, and central’s not going to listen to us.” says Donna. Lizzy says she’ll
check Interstoff on the internet and will, in a funny voice, ‘report back’.
There’s a murmur of disappointment, despair or may be consent and Lizzy moves
them on.
“Item two, Anna’s bike … Anna?” Anna starts telling the
others that she’d been stupid and let the old man go off with her bike in
Kennington Park. He’d ridden through a huddled group of people on the path
gathered around … around, she wasn’t sure what. There’d been shouts of ‘bike,
BIKE’ and they’d parted to let him weave precariously through. As they closed
company again she’d lost sight of him. She hasn’t seen him since. That’s why
she’d borrowed the old Condor from the store; the one that had never been
picked up after repair.
“It’s all been an elaborate hoax Anna!” laughed John. “Noo”
insisted Anna. “Anyone can find this stuff” begins John ponderously, “you did,
and pretend to be some crazy old bike geezer … you’ve been caught and lost a
bloody good bike.” Protests. “Leave her John Bolham, no point in making her
more upset” says Donna. “Why bother to be some Victorian” asks Lizzy “there’re
easier ways of conning people, no?” John responds in I told you so mode “But
she fell for him, didn’t she, and the story, no?” “She” Anna emphasizes,
“thinks you’re right Lizzy, it was just too … elaborate … didn’t make sense …
just to get a bike?” “So, I see, easier to believe he was a very, very nice
ghost?” “You didn’t know him” says Anna, “he was gentle and …” “Not too many
gentlemen these days ah, John Bolham?” says Donna possibly referring to their brief
affair. “I’d settle for one” says Lizzy.
Nos approaches the table with a letter and a small neat
green box tied with real red ribbon. “Hay Annar, it’s really your lucky day,
Nos is on the make!” says John. Leave it out says Donna almost as soon as John
has started his jibe. The tranquillity of a lady eating yet another slice of
cake is disturbed by noise, not by the obesity police. The two dazzling ladies
look across disapprovingly that their almost perfected social world might be so
rudely interrupted … and they’d found their white couch occupied again. All seems out of order in the
coffee shop.
“Naa” says Nos “not from me but shhhh, upsetting the
punters.” Anna takes the package and
opens the letter addressed to ‘Anna, care of Nos at the Black and Beautiful café’. She reads:
Dear Lady Anna
I have not been entirely truthful with you. At the end of my
last life I made two wishes, not one. The second, as you know, was to see the
anticipated development of the velocipede. In that I am entirely and greatly satisfied.
I confess I made no attempt to alter the cycle gearing of your admirable
bicycle. The stumbling start you must have witnessed, however, was followed the
most sublime travel in space. To have entrusted such a fine cycling machine to
Gompertz was an act of extraordinary trust for which I am most grateful and you
will have concluded by now that our plan was indeed successful.
Please open the red parcel box and you will find ten gold
coins. If you take them to Philip Cohen, the numismatist in Cecil Street he
assures me that you will receive sufficient modern coinage to amply replace
your cycle.
Be kind to Nos and please give him one of the sovereigns.
Beyond the strange terms of his converse there is, I believe, much to recommend
him. Insofar as I began to feel comfortable in the 21st Century it
would be in my feeble mimicry of Joel’s clipped elocution.
I wonder if I might believe that you, Anna, will be in the
vanguard of a gentler future where mankind asserts no right to kill or harm the
brutes. Keep wishing Anna; I believe your compassion serves us all well.
My first wish was to see again my beloved Ann.
Lewis Gompertz
Kennington, LONDON
26th April 2013
[i]
Colin Campbell
The Romantic Ethic and the
Spirit of Modern Consumerism (
Oxford: Basil
Blackwell 1987)
.The
sociologist, Campbell, observed that much of our lives are lived through
daydreams. Since the experience of a daydream, with its various consumption
fantasies, always exceed reality, our acquisitiveness always remains
unrequited.
[ii] Lewis Gompertz
Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, edited by
Peter Singer (Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1992).
