e-mail from Dr Adrian Jestico (ajestico@bois.ac.uk)
to Dr Penny Barbisant (penbar@labs.whoi.ed)
Sorry about the gap, Penny. Like almost everyone else in this department I’ve become the victim of temporary institutional paralysis. We’ve had our work disrupted or suspended by the government’s sudden brainwave to dust off – yet again – their ancient plans for a Severn Barrage. So we’ve all gone into lunacy mode, with fifty-nine thousand committees trying to work out how many Environmental Impact Assessments they’ll need to cover all political eventualities. Everyone knows, of course, there can never be enough EIAs for a thing this size, or well enough done. It’s guaranteed that if the project does eventually go ahead (oh! that delicious gravy train of EU & taxpayers’ money!) somebody at the very last moment will discover a community of five specimens of something called Showalter’s Banded Snail (previously thought extinct) in the Vale of Berkeley, or a nesting pair of Gloomy Petrels or some other unknown bird of vast emotional significance to the middle classes in Notting Hill Gate, & the entire thing will grind to a halt amid recriminations & backbiting.
I’m glad the idea of following up on Eurythenes has paid off. With those P concentrations you quote I’m willing to stick my neck out all the way & say you’ve definitely got a wreck or a dumped cargo out there. I can’t think of anything else that would come close to accounting for such quantities. Any wreck ought to show up on the GLORIA scans USGS did for the 200-mile EZ, depending on how much sediment is getting dumped out there. You might eventually have to do a search through some printouts if you can bear the tedium.
As you say, it was probably inevitable that Gerry would return to Italy, & not just because of what happened at Crendlesham. He seemed to suffer from a kind of paralysis in the UK as though completely out of his depth: moody, on edge, generally baffled. Often not even very good company, which really is unlike him. I suppose it’s simpler to think of him as a displaced person, he’s lived so little of his adult life in Britain. In fact, he often describes himself (with some pride) as a professional foreigner.
Quite why he’s so disenchanted with the land of his birth isn’t clear to me. I don’t think it’s anything to do with that accident at Lyme Regis when he was a kid: a freak natural event like that could happen anywhere. It’s more as if he felt let down, as though he expected England to live up to some propaganda version he inherited from his parents. The war and all that. He once told me the tiny straw in the wind that finally made him realise he would need to leave Britain permanently was the slogan ‘You Know It Makes Sense’ that the government used in one of its public campaigns. It’s over things like this I’m most aware of the age gap between us. And no, your questions aren’t improper at all – they’re highly pertinent. It’s just that I don’t know the answers. I don’t know Gerry well enough & suspect I never shall. He manages to maintain no-go areas in his private self that he polices with great subtlety & humour so you’re hardly aware they exist. It’s only later when you’re trying to explain his behaviour to somebody who doesn’t know him that you realise how little you actually understand yourself. He’s the archetypal god of the gaps. And as I know to my cost, it’s pointless trying to quiz him as part of a plaintive demand for more intimacy. One relates to Gerry on his terms or, I’m afraid, not at all.
If you want a tale out of school, it’s something I heard him once hint at in an unguarded moment. It dates from way back in the Seventies when he was working in London as an apprentice scriptwriter for Curzon TV. (Curzon TV? You’re far too young to remember it.) All I know for certain is that it involved his friend Derek, who was at his birthday party on the night of the earth tremor & with whom Gerry maintains a strange relationship based – as far as I can see – equally on affection & contempt. (If I say Derek’s an ebullient little hairdresser you’ll get at least half the picture, but he’s also surprisingly sharp & steely underneath. Quite a street-wise creature, if you ask me.) Something happened back then & they were both quite badly burned. I get the impression they may even have narrowly escaped jail. Actually, I quite like to think of Gerry having been caught up in something fishy. It’s so much at odds with his current image as grandee aesthete. At any rate I suspect each has something on the other; & whatever it was is enough to keep their relationship going. I thought at first they were ex-lovers but they’re so not each other’s type. No, I feel sure they share a history as ex-conspirators or as the seared survivors of a scandal. It’s yet something else that shows me how little I know about Gerry but I do quite like the mysteriousness.
Exactly how much hold he has over Derek now becomes germane. Gerry is making an extraordinary request of everyone who was present at that birthday party of his. No, not a request – more a demand. Take a deep rationalist breath, Penny, because you won’t believe this. He wants us all to back a story that we were saved from death that night by a vision of Lady Di, who is supposed to have appeared in the kitchen & warned us to get out of the house. Apparently it’s something the Italian newspapers concocted at the time & it has caught on to the extent that there’s now a sort of St Diana cult involving pilgrimages to Gerry’s land – what’s left of it – & miraculous healings & all the other stuff you’d expect them to invent.
Well, of course we all know it’s garbage & to judge from his phone calls Gerry’s own brand of combative scepticism is unimpaired. However, it seems the local authorities are keen that nobody issues any actual denials because they sense a boost for their tourist industry. But what’s in it for Gerry, you acutely ask? Broad hints, apparently, of massive concessions over planning permission for a new house. He says he wants to stay in the area & find himself somewhere to live that is as private as his old house was (his ex-neighbour Marta aside) but not so hopelessly inaccessible. So he’s put us all in quite a fix. For his sake, how can we not go along with this bogus vision story? But for the sake of our own self-respect, not to mention reputations, how can we possibly agree to it? My brother-in-law Max Christ is extraordinarily good-natured & loyal, even though as a Bavarian he must be wondering what on earth kind of nutty English family he has married into. Despite everything he clearly has a genuine soft spot for Gerry. But I can tell he’s pretty exasperated, all the same. We had a sort of family confab last weekend at which both Max & I agreed that if asked we will simply answer any questions with a firm ‘No comment.’ However, it goes against the grain. I don’t know about you but it costs me nothing to keep quiet about things like Creationism or Intelligent Design. I’ve no more quarrel with them than I have with Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. But helping to maintain the fiction that you’ve seen a vision of the Princess of Wales feels like a serious cause for shame. I suspect these dilemmas only ever happen to people who associate with Gerry.
And so back to BOIS & a meeting in half an hour with some bearded geologists moaning about erosion if the Severn Barrage doesn’t get built. Small wonder I burden you with long emails: it’s such a pleasure to be reminded there’s life outside this institution. I had a similar pleasure at the weekend introducing my young nephew Josh to tardigrades (I bought him a beginner’s microscope recently). It’s great watching a bright kid catch on to the idea that there’s so much going on in the world he can’t see with his naked eye. He now badgers anyone who’ll listen to go up a ladder & pull lumps of moss out of gutters so he can find his ‘little bears’. He’ll soon be risking his own neck but I still think it’s better than sitting inertly in front of a TV.
I hope things with Luke are progressing satisfactorily. Even satisfyingly?
Cheers,
Adrian