I Posted this yesterday and believe it or not it took two days to write; forty years if you include the time these images have haunted my tiny mind. This is a fiction of course, but I did see this skeleton [or a replica of it] in that tawdry little freak museum on The Isle Of Wight and I remember dad crying too. This all lay dormant in the brain until 'The Elephant Man' came out. Dad got 'The TRUE History Of The Elephant Man' from the library and did resist the film but not because of sympathy for Tom Norman [the freak show owner who paraded Merrick] but because, like myself he couldn't stand to see this poor helpless man humiliated. I usually write nonsense on here, for one thing you don't have to worry too much about grammar or tense or sentences going on too long and the rest. This is why this was doubly difficult for me to do. I need editing. The most haunting image from the film [still to be watched in it's entirety] is when the maid is sent up to Joseph's room to give him tea. She has no idea what is in the room, it's typically David-Lynch-spooky and dark and black & white and harrowing. That is also a ridiculous trick being played on us - Doctor Treves [who 'rescues' Joseph from Norman's grasp] is no angel - he goes on to gain much from Merrick's misfortune - but surely no-one would deliberately let that happen. I maintain that Lynch made a horror film, one where the monster is the victim like King Kong or Frankenstein's creature. There is also guilt here - kids dressed as Merrick shuffling through the playground, pretending to be him on the cricket field, doing the voice...
So what follows is what I did yesterday, I had to write it, or something like it, to hopefully remove some ghosts. I'll stick to nonsense from now on.
I first saw him on The Isle Of Wight, near Ventnor, in a little museum of the strange. Only much later did I wonder why dad had dragged the Norman family to this weird place on such a miserable afternoon. Apart from Joseph, there was a ram with two heads, various hideously deformed foetuses in jars - the liquid preserving them clouded with age and the glass green with molds - and a 'cricket match' being played by 22 guinea pigs. The guinea pigs were stuffed of course, so too the ram, and Joseph was a skeleton. As the rest of the family wandered this rather shabby tourist trap, my dad Frederick stayed in front of Joseph's remains. Crying. My other memories from that holiday are seeing sugar lumps for the first time, sand in my cream cheese rolls on Sandown beach and a minor bird in the café where we used to have our tea.
"A little birdie tells me your name is Tom" said the café owner every day...
"...but I'm John."
Tom Arnold was later portrayed as the brutal, heartless freak show owner who paraded Joseph Carey Merrick to the paying public in the film 'The Elephant Man'. Dad looked into his family tree and found that his great grandfather was no saint, but not the monster seen in black and white. The film seemed to bring a huge cloud over dad however, he refused to let us see it and his behaviour became increasingly strange. One night I crept downstairs to get some milk and found mum asleep on the sofa, upstairs dad paced the spare room muttering to himself. Soon after, mum left us. She took my sister and brother with her, I felt I had to stay with dad - I knew what was wrong.
The second time I saw Joseph was the day of dad's funeral. It was a foul morning with horizontal rain and a gale whipping it into mourner's faces. As we drove back to the house for the wake we passed our childhood playground, the tennis court overgrown with moss and weeds, the mesh fencing rusty and holed. In a corner, huddled in a black overcoat, face covered with a grubby stretch of cloth, stood Joseph. He watched us pass and in the rearview mirror of the hearse I saw him creak open the tennis court door and start following. As the wake dispersed I found myself alone for the first time in the old family home. Now living 200 miles away on the Norfolk Broads, the old place was already for sale, I went upstairs to double check if anyone had left a coat or umbrella in the designated cloak room. There in the spare bedroom, sitting up in bed, was Joseph.
"You have to look after me now."
So Joseph was now haunting me.
I drove home east and there he was in the guest room, cozily tucked up waiting to be read a story. Every night, an hour before lights-out, I would read to him until a slight raising of his left hand signified 'enough'. He would also turn up during my days, watching in shadows and alley ways of the city as I travelled to and from work. I had a wife and two little girls of my own, soon to leave because my life was taken over by Joseph, the guilt of my ancestors compelling me to care for this ghostly man.
One night Joseph said he didn't require a bedtime reading, he said he was too tired. I noticed the pillows were not ready for his usual upright sleeping position, instead he lay flat, wished me a good night and waved me away. The next day I was free, I'd slept soundly and woke up fresh and carefree for the first time in years.
