The Back of His Head Read Online Free PDF

says.
    â€˜I think’—this is me, feeling my way towards a deferral—‘I think it’d be better if we addressed the principle first rather than the particulars.’
    â€˜My motion’s on the table , fuck it—’
    â€˜No, it’s not, there’s no seconder.’
    Semple looks at Marjorie. ‘Come on, Marge,’ he says.
    â€˜Ask somebody else. I don’t want to sell the baby Steinway. And don’t call me Marge.’
    â€˜It’s worth more than all the rest. It’s worth more than the entire house and garden. It’s worth hundreds of thousands. It’s a fucking Steinway , for God’s sake, with art casing, I don’t know how it got here in the first place—’
    The Steinway is in the corner of the Blue Room, covered in framed photographs and with a large table lamp on it. It’s one of several items in the Residence obviously with some monetary value, though (it has to be said) not necessarily as much as Semple and Marjorie would like to think. Though they don’t realise it, I’ve had it valued, and found it would bring in about fifty thousand local dollars according to when and where it was sold and by whom. Overseas, of course, it would be a different matter, sold overseas it would fetch rather more. But then one would have to get the piano overseas in order to sell it, which would cost all we might realistically sell it for once it was there. Checkmate: and, in some ways, the history of our little country in a single proposition.
    Marjorie, meanwhile, is casting around for alternatives. ‘That thing.’ She’s pointing at the carved buffet behind me. ‘Let’s sell that.’
    â€˜The Henri II buffet?’ Julian asks. ‘You’d have a job replacing that, you’d have a job getting something cheap that looked like that.’
    â€˜You’d have a job getting it out of the house.’
    â€˜It’d have to be authenticated first,’ I remind them.
    â€˜What about the berber rug, then?’
    â€˜No,’ I tell them. ‘The berber rug is off-limits.’
    Mr Semple’s motion that the Trust sell the Steinway baby grand piano lapsed for want of a seconder .
    Ms Swindells’ motion that the Trust sell the carved buffet lapsed for want of a seconder .
    Ms Swindells observes that the answer is to increase visitor numbers. Mr Semple expresses reservations .
    â€˜You must be fucking dreaming,’ he says. ‘How are we going to get more of the bastards in?’
    â€˜How many did we used to get?’ Marjorie asks me. ‘You know, in the good old days?’
    â€˜Two or three hundred a month. More. Admittedly a while ago—’
    â€˜Admittedly ten years ago,’ Semple says. ‘When he was still famous. Christ, when he was still alive —’
    â€˜Yes, but—’ Julian. ‘We—’
    â€˜They used to come here to get a sight of him drooling in his fucking bath chair. Ray. That’s the only reason they came, that’s why we got so many people through, the old boy was still around to gob in front of them.’
    â€˜But—’
    â€˜Yes, but even so, show me the literary residence in the country that ever got—’
    â€˜How many literary homes are there—?’
    â€˜Show me the literary residence anywhere —’
    â€˜Yes, but—’
    â€˜â€”that has consistently made a profit—I mean a meaningful profit, not just pocket money.’
    I sit back.
    Marjorie squirms her mouth. ‘Yes,’ she creaks at me. ‘That’s all very well, Peter, but you’re telling us yourself, dear. You’ve brought it up, you’re telling us we’ve got a crisis. Item 2, Financial crisis.’
    â€˜A problem. A challenge.’
    â€˜Yes, but’—Julian at last—‘it’s not just visitors, they don’t bring in that much, for God’s sake, they never have,