Lady Rice has a real headache: aspirin won’t touch it: it’s the kind she got before the internal amoeboid first began to split: she had it before the conversations in her head began, before Angelica and Jelly separated out. There is something important going on here, she senses. This time it’s something male, something magnificent: something, someone bursting out perforce, who has to be in charge, to be in control: to take a clear-eyed overview of herself. Some hero who knows everything, and understands what’s going on, who can tell a friend from a foe, and slay the foe. And even as Lady Rice came to this conclusion, gave permission to herself to think such incorrect thoughts, (these chattering women, that noble man), lo! I, myself, Ajax, was born.
The purifier, the scourer of thought; the hero of old; the banisher of the bath-ring of guilt.
Look at it this way: Angelica, Jelly and Angel, as the single Lady Rice unit they still tried to be, were perforated but not quite split. Now, traumatised and persecuted by an attack from within, from the internalised love object himself, Edwin, and sent screaming in all directions – Angelica cheating, spying, lying; Jelly typing, earning, office-serving; Angel fucking, sucking, wailing, howling for all of them – they spawned between them one further personality: one male to three parts female; that’s Lady Rice’s special recipe. Ajax.
Ajax it is who knows everything there is to know about Angelica, Jelly and Angel; by their initials let them be known: AJA. Then add an extra X for maleness. AJAX. Ajax who reports on these perforated-to-the-point-of-split personalities: Ajax, writer, rider, hero of the aether, Lord of all narrative, Lord of all joy, Lord of all grief, and all stages in between. Ajax, not the sleeping sentinel of the past, but the fierce and waking Guardian of the present. I, Ajax the Hero, before his disgrace, before his fall. Ajax is to be the only I round here, from now on.
If the chaos is extreme enough, words form, God forms. If the pressure of black is sufficient. Light dawns: if the tumult in the female head is dire enough, Man is born. Oh, I’m a fine Fellow-ess indeed! I, Ajax. I too shall write a novel.