Just a bit player

Rosemary
Jackson had parents like chestnuts roasting by the fire. Rich accents popped
out from small round bodies that had emigrated from somewhere in Middle England.
Their daughter was their single joy. Rosemary was of grave demeanor with skin
that merited the accolade of peaches and cream, and she had dark lustrous long
hair with hints of auburn. She smelt like spring and autumn. We were passing
acquaintances, yet she had a sense of tragedy and sadness that remains with
me; a deep pool of solitude like a dark pond encircled by tall trees. I have
a vague sense that she became a primary school teacher and that something untoward
happened in her life. But forty years have passed and the avenues of recollection
and investigation wither into paths that have become lost in the thickets of
forgetfulness and time.
Yet I remember her sitting beside me in my car on a cold Christchurch night
as if it were yesterday.
I also went out with a girl who, soon after I found interests other than our
relationship, became Miss New Zealand representing the land of the Romney Merino
Cross in Miss World and Miss Universe. In this I displayed my singular ability
to have the women who have left my life do extraordinarily well.
You would think that you would find more than one photograph of her in the vast
cloud empires of the web, but you won’t. Somewhere she vanished into another
realm of time, taking images, press clippings and memories with her.
Yet more than even the first emphatic teenage kiss (thank you Judy Tait) I recollect
one never to be repeated moment when I held the hand of a young library technician
who worked for me many years ago in the wind-swept basalt plains of Melbourne’s
northern suburbs. It was an end of year party and I was dressed as Jesus, long
hair and white robes, and she was out of character in an outfit that would have
made a cowboy’s eyes pop out in any Texas cat house. Imagine Victoria’s
Secret twenty years before it’s time on a raven haired olive skinned lady
of incredible sweetness and charm. I recollect to this day that, even in my
best Jesus mode, my hand shook.
If I am totally realistic to the point of pessimism, I can be sure that none
of them has ever given me a second thought, apart from a rueful shake of the
head. These moments exist in my life in an unstructured way, where my recollection
probably has no counterpart in their lives.
If the script were properly written our lives would always be front and centre.
We are the star upon whom the spotlight is forever focused, the one with the
best lines surrounded by a pantheon of extras that are but there to lend us
significance.
Even if we lead a life of mortification and humble embarrassment we are still
see ourselves as major players.
But overall we believe that, no matter how obscure our role, there must be a
script, a sequential and logical development of character and theme carrying
us on the tide of our lives to some point where we get the point of it all.
It may not be Shakespeare, but we secretly hope that there may be a small smattering
of applause before the curtain closes and the audience shuffles out into the
night leaving the detritus of pop corn and wrappers.
Unfortunately we are in life’s equivalent of Tom Stoppard’s absurdist
play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, where the minor players
of Hamlet become inversely the main protagonists and where Hamlet himself has
only a minor role. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are often confused as to
their own names, identity and purpose, appear on stage when they are off-stage
in Hamlet excepting a few scenes in which the dramatic events of both plays
coincide.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist in a world which is never quite comprehensible
and where the significance of words and events is ever changeable. The have
the incompleteness and uncertainty of memory of the characters of convenience
they were in Hamlet itself. Created as devices and cast adrift and to eventual
death the existential fragility of their lives is camouflaged behind a barrage
of non-sequiturs of accidental depth. Where they are profound they don’t
realise it and the tragicomedy of their situation escapes them like the shadow
of a figure disappearing out of scene
One of the delights of the 1990 film that was directed by Stoppard is the whimsical
creativity of Rosencrantz, who with a childish inventiveness re-enacts many
of the great experiments in science without quite realizing their profound significance.
There is the arch cleverness of a play occurring on the fringes of a play within
another play, where you are never sure if the verbal pyrotechnics are revealing
a great truth or just the wonderful showmanship of a theatrical professional.

So my St Valentine’s Day memories were just the touch of a tangent kissing
a circle. We are bit players, the unknowing supporting actors of other people’s
lives, not knowing the shape or effect of our words and deeds on theirs. Baffled
and confused we wonder why the parts seem brief, ill written and badly spoken.
Yet in that other life they were perfect, complete – and unfortunately probably
what we were.
Pity we never get to see it. Pity we weren’t really there at the time.