In Memoriam: Derek Helman

Earlier this month I published a piece entitled In Memoriam: …, followed by the name of my late friend from fifty years ago. Part of my intention was to bring him back to life in my own mind, and if possible my reader’s too. But what most inspired the effort was the wish expressed in my closing words:

“I may never discover how he lived and died. That’s why I’m writing this, in case someone out there, one day, can tell me.”

In order to make that come true, it was essential to give his real name plus corroborating detail, to jog the memory of some future reader. I never thought that my carelessly-tossed “message in a bottle” (21st century equivalent) would wash up so rapidly on its intended shore, but that’s the way it happened. Eight days after posting, I was contacted by someone from his family, and informed of their various reactions, including interest, upset, doubt as to the veracity of my tale. I immediately withdrew the piece, promising my correspondent to follow the family’s wishes, even to the point of suppressing the fragment of memoir forever, if so requested. Then I regretted my rashness, for no one had asked me to go that far. But the way I saw it, if I was to be entrusted with the information I sought, I could do nothing less. Who would give me more information, if there was any suspicion that I would tell the whole world? So I put it all in their hands, and was very relieved when they agreed to republication of the original piece, so long as minor edits were made to conceal the identity of its subject. The original piece had 19 reader comments, which I’ve edited where necessary for the same reason. Those which were humorously fanciful speculations based on his real name have been left discarded on the cutting-room floor. That’s the way it goes. Most of my readers are bloggers themselves, and understand perfectly the fine balance between revelation and reticence, publicity and privacy. So here is that piece once more.

Now I feel as though I’ve done violence to my own past through sheer neglect, like a man who lets his ancestral home fall into decay. I’ve dishonoured old friends and acquaintances by not trying hard enough to stay in touch. When I do make the sustained effort, I discover they are dead, and obscurely blame myself. And I growl at the Web, that supposed compendium of everything, for yielding so little and so late its answers to my questions; as if I expected it would be the curator of all the flotsam I carelessly jettisoned from my remembered past.
On 24/07/2012 16:49, Denis W wrote:

Ian,
Many thanks for your message via the St Bede’s website.
I’m afraid that I’m the bearer of sad news in that I understand
Derek passed away about 4 or 5 years ago.
Kind Regards
Denis W

I’m grateful for your reply, Denis. It’s indeed sad news, and oddly I’ve been wondering what happened to him, on and off, for four or five years. It’s silly, I know, but now I wish I could know more about what happened to him – how he lived and how he died.
Best wishes
Ian

I first met Derek Helman in October 1962, at the University of Birmingham. He didn’t even finish his first academic year, which makes me feel a certain guilt by association. It was in the dark evenings of February or March ’63, when four or five of us—Jim Slater, Alan Williamson, maybe Dave Boardman and/or Dick Boatman—hung out in the Mason Lounge playing three-card brag, with deuces and one-eyed jacks wild. I’ve never been one for card games, but as one of the gang I went along with it. My winnings tended to outweigh my losses by a small margin, so I didn’t see it as gambling. We probably played for no more than five evenings. I’ll never forget the last two.

In those days you got a student grant. The fees were paid direct to the University and you received a bank credit for your living allowance—about £80 per term, to pay for food, lodgings & books. Normally we played brag for cash, the change we had in our pockets. On the two last evenings, we didn’t have enough change so wrote down the gains and losses on a slip of paper.

Let me interrupt myself and tell you what I remember of Derek. He credited his personal model of manhood to Ernest Hemingway. I first remember him on a night out near the beginning of term, when a bunch of freshers got together. It was organized by Jim Slater. He and I were both in our final year, but Jim used to gather people round him in a sort of literary, gaming and adventuring salon. As well as Derek, those present included a Rhodes Scholar from the States, a fine young man with the physique, I guess, of a football player, and the easy grace of an old New England family. Then there was Christina Bednarowska, who let it be known she was a Polish princess; and a specimen of “English Rose” from the counties, I can’t remember her name, whose cheeks turned easily crimson and who formed an instant crush on Derek. This seemed to disgust him. I remember we discussed her at the urinal, and I said something like “Well, I don’t know what your problem is. I certainly wouldn’t kick her out of bed.” He was so irritated at the thought, that he accidentally splashed on his new suede shoes, and came out ill-tempered. He liked to cut a dash, and habitually wore an expensive black leather jacket. No one was good enough for him, and he wasn’t good enough for himself. He was sometimes sarcastic but you felt flattered if he paid you attention at all. He was permanently competing against himself to be more devil-may-care; to avoid anyone or anything that wouldn’t fit in to his hero-narrative. It wasn’t just Hemingway: amongst our gang we were passing around the novels of Ian Fleming. I’m sure that one way or another we had all been to see Dr No, with Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, but I was too highbrow to think of it as special, and didn’t read any of the novels. But when Jim introduced the four volumes of The Alexandrian Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell, which have the virtue of being readable in any order you like, ideal for passing round within a group, these books resonated deeply with me. I’m sure they wouldn’t now; and even when I see one in a second-hand shop, I’m not tempted, even from nostalgia.

So that was Derek, wild and wayward as I was, but opposite in every other respect. That must be what attracted me to him. And in the business of playing three-card brag, he refused to accept the idea of being a minor loser.

Hemingway defined the Code Hero as ‘a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.’ He measures himself by how well he handles the difficult situations that life throws at him. In the end the Code Hero will lose because we are all mortal, but the true measure is how a person faces death. He believes in ‘Nada,’ a Spanish word meaning nothing. Along with this, there is no after life. (See below for source.)

We were playing as usual for pennies working up to shillings; but as I’ve said we were short of change so kept a tally on a slip of paper. Rationally there was no difference but psychologically it made money seem like an abstraction. Derek was down. Casting fate to the wind, he swore he could get back up with a policy of double or quits every time he thought his hand was worth it. Thus he could clear his mounting debts in a single round. If he lost, he’d double his debt, but if he won, he’d walk away from the table free of burden. He must have lost five times in a row because he ended up owing £80—an entire term’s spending allowance. He insisted on continuing, but we all felt bad, couldn’t carry on. He was angry and walked off, leaving the rest of us to discuss the dilemma. I said we should forget the whole thing, throw away the slip. Others said that the honour of the table must be respected. I can’t remember much about the outcome, only that Derek disappeared: left the campus never to return. Then of course we were all sad and said to one another we wouldn’t dream of asking him to honour his debt. But, as it does when you’re young, the gap left by his absence closed up. He was all but forgotten. It’s not too hard to console oneself in such circumstances by reflecting on the man’s flaws, and his own responsibility in the matter.

I saw him only once again, perhaps twice. The second and more questionable occasion was about sixteen years ago, on the Tube at Aldgate East. I was sitting and he was straphanging; a bit tanned, smartly dressed with a faint Code Hero smile, looking nowhere in particular, as if he were a celebrity expecting to be stared at. Perhaps he didn’t look like Derek at all, perhaps he just reminded me of him. I was plucking up the courage to go across and say, “Is it you—Derek?” when the train stopped at the next station. He leapt out: I was not well enough at the time to run after him.

But the time I really did see him again still haunts me. Jim and some of the gang had bought a clapped-out van for our weekend
trips to North Wales, where we used to go climbing in Snowdonia. Derek had come with us on such a trip once, in the snow. We had camped in a barn on a farm. I can’t remember how we got there from Birmingham. Anyhow, the van never lasted long enough to fulfil our intended purpose, but we did manage one long trip, some months after he disappeared. We drove from Birmingham to Cardiff on a Saturday evening. It was dark when we arrived and found the address: a nondescript council house on a dreary estate near the docks. Derek didn’t answer the door when we knocked, but threw open an upstairs window and talked to us from there. He seemed to think we were bailiffs coming to collect. We assured him that all was written-off, never-to-be-mentioned, forgotten. Wouldn’t he come out with us, for old times’ sake? He would not. But he answered our questions, became less suspicious, a bit more animated. He was working as a shipping clerk, he said, in an office which hadn’t changed its décor since Dickens. They sat on high stools with sloping desk-tops. The most exciting thing he could tell us was the day one of his colleagues, a man in his late fifties, keeled over, fell off his stool: dead of a heart attack. And now Derek gone too. I may never discover how he lived and died. That’s why I’m writing this, in case someone out there, one day, can tell me.

——-
Notes
Quote about Hemingway: http://engliterarium.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/hemingways-hero-and-code-hero.html

The adventuring element of Jim Slater’s coterie was led by Bill Cheverst, an ex-student who haunted the campus and persuaded us to go climbing in Wales, or failing that, up drainpipes on the campus itself. I looked him up in Google. All the references are to mountain-climbing, but none goes beyond 1971. I hope he did not prematurely and fatally fall off. He lived dangerously in more ways than one, but I will not give the search engines the dubious benefit of more detail.

The names of other student friends mentioned above are genuine. I still hope that one or more of them might make contact some day, after I so heedlessly lost touch with them, and headed into my own form of oblivion.

PS I referred above to the film Dr No, assuming that I watched it when it first came out during the period in question, but that it had made little impression on me. To check this assumption, I watched it on DVD last night. “Inveterate truthfulness” compels me to confess I’d never seen it before. The discussion of Ian Fleming’s novel amongst my friends brought me to the high-minded and priggish conclusion that James Bond,  archetypal male role-model, was beneath me. I would not yield to fashion and watch the film. As for Fleming’s novels, I didn’t have the time, despite not attending any lectures.