Cremation part 4 or 3b. The Fighting Temeraire.

Before we get too far into Pt.3b it should be noted that the author had more than a little trouble with this part. It was supposed to flow smoothly on from part 3 but the narrator got in a muddle. Omniscience fatigue most likely. Tense changes, flashbacks etc. are never easy to write. Things got so bad he went back to part 3 and made some changes. Arthur’s mother’s ghost showing up was the main problem. She could easily send the narrative off on a wild uncontrollable tangent. So he shuttled her into the bathroom and instead of Arthur nodding off we now find him staring at Turner’s ‘Fighting Temeraire’ on the hotel wall. It’s a cheap reproduction, one of millions, but it’s something to focus on, and for Arthur it may contain the answer he is looking for. Or not. The author is now thinking the whole passage should be filed under SF Pt. 3c.
It had been quite a confusing day. It began with the cremation. Then the meeting with the estate agent. Then came the first train journey on the Brighton Line in twenty years followed by lunch with Simon in Sticky Fingers. Plenty of fodder for rumination there. But Arthur is starting to drift off. He has entered that nebulous state just before sleep comes. This is fertile ground for writers. Ideas seem to appear out of nowhere; whole paragraphs pop up fully formed. The trick is to write them down. Put it off and they vanish. So in theory Arthur should be nodding off except for the voices in the bathroom. One female, middle-class English; the other male, mid-Western American.
‘OK. One of my cats got in a fight with a coon.’ Says the sepulchral American voice.
‘Oh dear.’ Says the English voice. Arthur knows it well, ‘Nothing serious I hope.’
‘He’s got one eye out and an ear hanging off.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I stitched him up. He’s a tough bastard. Should be OK. Shot the coon. Used the Colt. Wasn’t much left of him.’
The English voice is familiar of course. It’s Arthur’s dead mother. The American voice is familiar but hard to place. Arthur badly wants to go to sleep but he is intrigued. These are voices from beyond after all. Perhaps they know something.
‘Tell me Mr. Burroughs…’
‘Call me Bill.’
‘Regrets. Do you regret anything er, Bill?’
‘Everything.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘Oh man. Well killing Joan of course. That was wrong. Taking another human life, even by accident, is wrong.’
‘But it freed you up to write. You’re on record as saying you wouldn’t have started writing if the William Tell incident hadn’t happened.’
‘It’s true. Writing became a compulsion because of that. A way of keeping my sanity.’
‘And of suppressing the guilt?’
‘That too. You’ve done your homework. I failed as a father too you know.’
‘So you’ve made a few mistakes?’
‘You could say that.’

‘Er, Bill, there’s no actual plotline in most of your work is there?’

‘Naked Lunch you mean? That’s true. There never was a storyline. It was just a bunch of stuff I wrote when I was out of my pod. I called them routines. Ginsberg put it all together. Made a book out of it.’

This is absurd, thinks Arthur. My mother’s ghost is in the bathroom interviewing William Burroughs! She knows nothing about writing. He’s dead too come to think of it. Who’s writing this stuff anyway? Now comes the sound of the toilet flushing. What are they doing in there? What does it all mean? Don’t expect an answer. The author doesn’t know either. Another reason to avoid using an intrusive narrator. Best to skip the whole episode and move to Pt. 4.

But the ghosts aren’t quite done yet.

‘Shouldn’t there be some kind of resolution?’ asks Arthur’\s mother’s ghost. ‘We can’t just leave Arthur hanging like that can we?’

‘Sure we can,’ says William Burrough’s ghost. ‘ Literature has changed a lot you know. You can do pretty well what you want. Look at my cut-ups for instance. They made no sense at all but people love that stuff. They supply their own meaning. Let Arthur’s mind wander wherever it wants to go. He’ll be fine.’

‘Well I suppose you’re right. I’m not a writer so who am I to say. But mothers can’t help worrying you know. Poor Arthur. He never was a normal child.’