...then somebody dies

Someone I knew while at St Andrews University has died. I would not say we were close, but we were friends through quite a few scrapes and hangovers during my last two years there. I can still hear his voice ("Oh, copious bottles of wine were drunk").

And I can still hear his laughter ("Oh, we'd had a few glasses of vino"). And I can also readily see him standing to attention, smoking a cigarette ("Oh, please, may I bum a fag?"), ready to burst into guffaws and gales of merriment. I can see his narrow jeans and woolen sweaters, horn-rimmed spectacles, big smile.

He was gay, and almost preposterously English-upper-class-twit, a P. G. Wodehouse character come to life. I believe he once said he was 80th in line to the Throne, doubtless we all laughed with and at him ("this queen is to be Queen!"). He endured his failings, if I may say so without seeming unkind: he failed his PhD, and seemed destined to walk the path in life where the most banana skins lie in wait. He was guileless.

I had not seen him since perhaps 1998 -- I moved to New York, so our paths were not to cross again. But he was not much older than I, and so, certainly I have been shocked at his death. I associate him very much with one place: London. And so, it may seem a little odd, but I now quote from the greatest novel about London, "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf:

Big Ben struck the tenth; struck the eleventh stroke. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Pride held her erect, inheriting, handing on, acquainted with discipline and with suffering. How people suffered, how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night decked with jewels, eating her heart out, because that nice boy was dead, and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin.

'Good morning to you!' said Hugh Whitbread raising his hat rather extravagantly by the china shop, for they had known each other as children. 'Where are you off to?'
'I love walking in London,' said Mrs Dalloway. 'Really it's better than walking in the country!'

Arlington Street and the Mall seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, upon waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To ride; to dance; she had adored all that. Or going long walks in the country, talking, about books, what to do with one's life, for young people were amazingly priggish—oh, the things one had said! But one had conviction. Middle age is the devil. And now can never mourn—how did it go?—a head grown grey . . . From the contagion of the world's slow stain, . . . have drunk their cup a round or two before . . . . From the contagion of the world's slow stain!

She held herself upright.

— from Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street, by Virginia Woolf