The Gaslight Hotel

Fitzroy's Lawn in Lemur Park

I call this scape of grass Fitzroy’s Lawn in LemurPark--
but no lemurs frick about this day of gloom and rain--
perhaps malaise has run the healthy ones off to jungle
caves in Mandalay.

I know lemurs like the sun, that trams groan to make
Spectus Hill. I know the cafes, how the river smells of
cinnabare. I know the tides-- I know Fitzroy died at
Casino Del Mars dealing baccarat to Baron de Jonc
and the woman from Brazil.

How we marveled at the woman from Brazil-- she,
calmly playing Bank with Martingale; then pulling
down her evening gown and playing bare-breasted
when she lost the double five times-- de Jonc already
down two American million. She took a cigarette from
Powell’s silver case and gave de Jonc a kiss on the tip
of his nose. The three left the casino laughing.

That had been a glorious week-- true, it had been so
glorious-- until Johnnie Fitzroy died.

That very night he slipped and fell away from the ta
-ble, his stiffened arm scattering $1,000 cheques .We
waited until a heavy rain lifted, then we buried him
in the little cemetery across the street from Lemur
Park.

I call this burial place Fitzroy’s Lawn in Lemur Park.
We drank. We ended dawn by dancing in the mud on
Fitzroy’s grave.

I know lemurs like to frick and frolic about in the sun,
beat oleanders with their tails-- prefer rotten fruit to
eat and in oleander tuffs to play. But in rain, where do
lemurs go?

Where do I go in late afternoon?

Mornings-- I like to walk in heavy mist and tarry near
the bookseller tents or stand here on Fitzroy’s Lawn be-
neath the chestnut trees, remember baccarat and the
woman from Brazil. Sometimes I find shelter and read--
a pretense perhaps, sentences, paragraphs, a page from
Chamfort, Balzac, Maines.

Years ago when I lived at Northumberland Manor with
my father, a groom for Doctor James, I would hide in the
greenhouse behind the garens and waited for Alexandra
to come from the summer house. I would watch her pass
by with her hoop and stick and skip a garden promenade.
I often mentioned her to Fitzroy and he mused-- he too
would have watched the skip and roll, would have waited
until her body filled, then taught her Baccarat.

A lady touches a book and looks away as if quiet neglect
murmmers her melancholy. I pretend to know how crum-
pled she had left her morning linens to get quickly away
from her house, away from her memories-- away from
the crimps in scented pillows, from strawberries spilled
and left to spoil, from ears of corn tumbled out of baskets
onto the floor, from her chipped Vendean plates, tea cold
in cups, sticky wooden spoons-- away from the cycle of
her lonely hours.

I take my morning tack through the bric-a-brac of morn-
ng rain. Tech tech tech-- long drops off the trees splash the
bookseller tents. I ease and maunder about, light a cig-
arette and watch the woman buy prints. She asks that
they be wrapped in paper and tied with string. I stoop un-
der the flap of tent cover and walk on--

toward Fitzroy’s Lawn in Lemur Park.

##
Don Taylor