The Gay Experience - 4. Chapter Four: Noël Coward "…the loveliest things happen to yours truly…"

Chapter Four: Noël Coward "…the loveliest things happen to yours truly…"

We are surrounded by first-person storytelling, the Big I as my childhood priest termed it, and it is so pervasive currently that third-person narration seems like an unusual choice when encountered.[1]

Unfortunately, with this plethora of stories told exclusively via 'I' and 'Me,' many of the narrators' voices wind up not being particularly unique or interesting. Let's be honest and admit to ourselves, few can conjure the likes of Melville's "Call me Ishmael" or J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.

With that in mind, the fourth piece from David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell's anthology presents us with a powerful example. Noël Coward's Me and the Girls from 1964 is a brilliant teaching story for any writer who wishes to do first person in the 'right' way.

Presented as a series of longwinded journal entries, we slowly learn about the life, career and loves of a song and dance man. He's currently in a French hospital after having had an attack – "…they came into the dressing room and there I was writhing about with nothing but a jock-strap on and sweating like a pig…" – and requiring some unspecified surgery. His journal is a way to track the events of his life and sort them in his head as he battles physical pain; his weapons are humor, deflection and lighthearted reminisces.

The man's name is George Banks, and his story begins like this:

Tuesday

I like looking at the mountains because they keep changing, if you know what I mean; not only the colours change at different times of day but the shapes seem to alter too. I see them first when I wake up in the morning and Sister Dominique pulls up the blind. She's a dear old camp and makes clicking noises with her teeth. The blind rattles up and there they are – the mountains I mean. There was fresh snow on them this morning, that is on the highest peaks, and they looked very near in the clear air, blue and pink as if someone had painted them, rather like those pictures you see in frame shops in the King's Road, bright and a bit common but pretty.[2]

Besides beginning his journal, Tuesday also turned out to be the first day after his surgery George could think straight. He receives a visit from his general attending physician, Dr. Pierre, plus the specialist who preformed the unspecified procedure. George thinks of the second doctor as "…the other professor, with the blue chin and a gleam in his eye, quite a dish really he is…."

I could go for him in a big way if I was well enough, but I'm not and that's that, nor am I likely to be for a long time. It's going to be a slow business. Dr. Pierre explained it carefully and very very gently, not at all like his usual manner which is apt to be a bit offish. While I was listening to him I looked at the professor's face: he was staring out at the mountains and I thought he looked sad. Sister Françoise and Sister Dominique stood quite still except that Sister Françoise was fiddling with her rosary.

This leads to thoughts of death – that they suspect he won't make it – and he brushes off the importance of them.

It's not going to matter to anyone but me anyway and I suppose when it does happen I shan't care, what with being dopey and one thing and another. The girls will be sorry, […] but [they'll] get over it.

We learn 'the girls' are his traveling troupe of performers. For years George has toured the continent doing what we today would refer to as lounge acts in midrange venues, like hotels. And at this point in the narrative, we are introduced to Coward's impressive style of slipping bits of emotionally relevant background information into otherwise chatty discourse. To distract himself, George looks around and tells us:

This is quite a nice room as hospital rooms go. There is a chintzy armchair for visitors and the walls are off-white so as not to be too glarey. Rather like the flat in the rue Brochet, which Ronnie and I did over just after we'd first met. If you mix a tiny bit of pink with the white it takes the coldness out of it but you have to be careful that it doesn't go streaky. I can hardly believe that all that was only three years ago, it seems like a lifetime.

Then we are introduced to one of 'his girls,' Mavis. He's worried about the troupe and has written his agent in London to see what can be arranged for them. For Mavis, he wishes she'd settle down, as her dancing is not that hot. He is closest with her from among the members of his group, and reveals they share a past.

She knows all about me. I've explained everything until I'm blue in the face but it doesn't make any difference. She's got this "thing" about me not really being queer but only having caught it like a bad habit. Would you mind! Of course I should never have gone to bed with her in the first place. That sparked off the whole business. Poor old Mavis. These girls really do drive me round the bend sometimes.

On Wednesday, Mavis' visit sparks a bit of heat. After telling George he's going to be all right, and reassuring him – probably against his wishes – that the act is doing just fine without him, she seems to show a deep understanding that her boss' queerness is not a meaningless thing after all.

She also asked if I'd like her to write to Ronnie and tell him about me being ill but I jumped on that double-quick pronto. It's awful when women get too understanding. I don’t want her writing Ronnie any more than I want Ronnie writing me. He's got his ghastly Algerian and the flat so he can bloody well get on with it. I don’t mind any more anyway. I did at first of course, I couldn't help it, it wasn’t the Algerian so much, it was all the lies and scenes. […] No more being in love for me thank you very much.

Perhaps thinking "Sex is all very well in its way" leads George to a quiet afternoon considering old and new times. This includes a sexy thought or two about the orderly who does the heavy lifting for the nurses.

He's the one who shaved me before the operation and that was a carry-on if ever there was one. I wasn't in any pain because they'd given me an injection but woozy as I was I managed to make a few jokes. When he pushed my old man aside almost caressingly with one hand I said "Pas ce soir Josephine, demain peutêtre" ["Not tonight, Josephine; maybe tomorrow"] and he giggled. […] When he'd finished he gave my packet a friendly little pat and said "Vive le sport." [Something like "Keep the party going."] Would you mind! Now whenever he comes in he winks at me as though we share a secret and I have a sort of feeling he's dead right. I suppose if I didn’t feel so weak and seedy I'd encourage him a bit just for the hell of it. Perhaps when I'm a bit stronger I'll ask him to give me a massage or something just to see what happens – as if I didn’t know!

George's reminisces lead him to recall starting out in show business at a very young age, even indulging in a memory of how the composer of the first musical he was in "used to pinch our bottoms when we were standing round the piano learning his gruesome little songs." By the age of nineteen he was a fulltime chorus boy at the Palladium in London and rooming with a sometimes-boyfriend named Bunny Granger, but soon George decides he'd rather be on his own. The flat is untidy and Bunny, a party boy.

Nobody minds fun and games within reason but you can have too much of a good thing. There was hardly a night he didn’t bring someone or other home and one night if you please I nipped out of my room to go to the bathroom […] and there was a policeman scuffling back into his uniform. I nearly had a fit but actually he turned out to be quite nice.

Wednesday's entry closes with a remarkable passage, one of the best of LGBT belle lettres, because although published in 1964 (five years before Stonewall, mind you), it's still as valid and fresh today as then. And coupled with the 'politics' in the statements are thoughts of love.

Anyway I didn’t stay with Bunny for long because I met Harry and that was that. Harry was the first time it ever happened to me seriously. Of course I'd hopped in and out of bed with people every now again and never thought about it much one way or another. I never was one to go off into a great production about being queer and work myself up into a state like some people I know. I can't think why they waste their time. I mean it just doesn't make sense does it? You're born either hetero, bi or homo and whichever way it goes there you are stuck with it. Mind you people are getting a good deal more help about it than they used to but the laws still exist that make it a crime and poor bastards still get hauled off to the clink just for doing what comes naturally as the song says. Of course this is what upsets some of the old magistrates more than anything, the fact that it is as natural as any other way of having sex, leaving aside the strange ones who get excited over old boots or used knickers or having themselves walloped with straps. Even so I don’t see that it's anybody's business but your own what you do with your old man providing that you don't make a beeline for the dear little kiddies, not, I am here to tell you, that quite a lot of the aforesaid dear little kiddies don’t enjoy it tip-top. I was one myself and I know. But I digress as the bride said when she got up in the middle of her honeymoon night and baked a cake. That's what I mean really about the brain not hanging on to one thing when you're tired. It keeps wandering off. I was trying to put down about Harry and what I felt about it and got side-tracked. All right – all right – let's concentrate on Harry-boy and remember what he looked like and not only what he looked like, but him, him himself. To begin with he was inclined to be moody and when we first moved into the maisonette in Swiss Cottage together he was always fussing about whether Mrs. Fingal suspected anything or not, but I kept explaining to him, Mrs. Fingal wouldn't have minded if we poked Chinese mice providing that we paid the rent regularly and didn't make a noise after twelve o'clock at night. As a matter of fact she was quite a nice old bag and I don’t think nor ever did think that she suspected for a moment, she bloody well knew. I don’t mean to say she thought about it much or went on about it to herself. She just accepted the situation and minded her own business and if a few more people I know had as much sense the world would be a far happier place. Anyway, Harry-boy got over being worried about her or about himself and about us after a few months and we settled down, loved each other good and true for two and a half years until the accident happened and he was killed. I'm not going to think about that because even now it still makes me feel sick and want to cry my heart out. I always hated that fucking motor bike anyhow but he was mad for it, forever tinkering with it and rubbing it down with oily rags and fiddling about with its engine. But that was part of his character really. He loved machinery and engineering and football matches and all the things I didn’t give a bugger about. We hadn’t a thing in common actually except the one thing you can't explain. He wasn’t even all that good-looking now that I come to think of it. His eyes were nice but his face wasn’t anything out of the ordinary: his body was wonderful, a bit thick-set but he was proud of it and never stopped doing exercises and keeping himself fit. He never cared what the maisonette looked like and once when I'd bought a whole new set of loose covers for the divan bed and the two armchairs, he never even noticed until I pointed them out to him. He used to laugh at me too and send me up rotten when I fussed about the place and tried to keep things tidy. But he loved me. That's the shining thing I like to remember. He loved me more than anyone has ever loved me before or since. He used to have affairs with girls every now and again, just to keep his hand in, as he used to say. I got upset about it at first and made a few scenes but he wouldn't stand for any of that nonsense and let me know in no uncertain terms. He loved me true did Harry-boy and I loved him true, and if the happiness we gave each other was wicked and wrong in the eyes of the Law and the Church and God Almighty, then the Law and the Church and God Almighty can go dig a hole and fall down it.

Perhaps all these thoughts of the past, coupled with his slowly increasing pain, give George a 'bad night.' At two a.m. the nurse offers him a pill and he sleeps. On Thursday morning, his emotions spill over the top of his dam.

My friend the orderly came in at eight o'clock and gave me enema on account of I hadn't been since the day before yesterday and then only a few goat's balls. He was very cheeky and kiss-me-arse and kept saying "Soyez courageux" ["Buck up"] and "Tenez le" ["Hold on"] until I could have throttled him. After it was all over he gave me a bath and soaped me and then, when he was drying me, I suddenly felt sort of weak and despairing and burst into tears. He at once stopped being happy-chappy and good-time-Charlie and put both his arms round me tight. He'd taken his white coat off to bathe me and had a stringy kind of vest [tank top] and I could feel the hairs on his chest against my face while he held me. Presently he sat down on the loo seat and took me onto his lap as though I were a child. I went on crying for a bit and he let me get on with it without saying a word or trying to cheer me up. He just patted me occasionally with the hand that wasn’t holding me and kept quite still.

The rest of Thursday's entry revolves around how he formed his traveling troupe, a "merry little bunch of egomaniacs." The girls and George have been all over the world entertaining crowds in small venues where there were always "a few poufs clustered around the bar hissing at each other like snakes."

The next day, developments occur.

Friday

The loveliest things happen to yours truly and no mistake. I'm starting a bedsore! Isn't that sweet? Dr. Pierre came in to see me this morning and he and Sister Dominique put some ointment and lint on my fanny and here I am up on a hot little rubber ring feeling I ought to bow to people like royalty.

By the afternoon, the little secret the head girl of the group has arranged shows up.

Another scrumptious thing happened to me today which was more upsetting than the bedsore and it's all Mavis' fault and if I had the strength I'd wallop the shit out of her. Just after I'd had my tea there was a knock on the door and in came Ronnie! He looked very pale and was wearing a new camel-hair overcoat and needed a hair-cut. He stood still for a moment in the doorway and then came over and kissed me and I could tell from his breath that he'd had a snifter round the corner to fortify himself before coming in. He had a bunch of roses in his hand and the paper they were wrapped in looked crinkled and crushed as though he'd been holding them too tightly. I was so taken by surprise that I couldn't think of anything to say for a minute then I pulled myself together and told him to drag the chintz armchair nearer the bed and sit down. He did what I told him after laying down the flowers very carefully on the bed-table as though they were breakable and said, in an uncertain voice, "Surprise – surprise!" I said "It certainly is" a little more sharply than I meant to and then suddenly I felt as if I was going to cry, which was plain silly when you come to analyse it because I don't love him any more, not really, anyhow not like I used to at first.

While Sister Françoise sweeps in to give our boys time to collect themselves, gather the roses for a vase, and ask if Ronnie would like tea, I'll use the time to point how brilliantly Coward is painting emotional details. The brandy on Ronnie's breath, the crumpled paper where the man has been too nervously gripping the bouquet, the fighting back of tears on George's part and the insistence that his feelings for this man are dead and buried. When writing in first-person narration, sometimes details like these are lacking, but here Coward shows us how to integrate them flawlessly. By flawlessly I mean they seep into the reader's mind without needing any thought at all; in the best sense of the word, they are shown not told.

After the nun leaves them again, the awkwardness of the exes is indulged for a bit.

We went on talking about this and that and all the time the feeling of emptiness seemed to grow between us. I don't know if he felt this as strongly as I did, the words came tumbling out easily enough and he even told me a funny story that somebody had told him about a nun and a parrot and we both laughed. Then suddenly we both seemed to realise at the same moment that it wasn't any good going on like that. He stood up and I held out my arms to him and he buried his head on my chest and started to cry. He was clutching my left hand tightly so I stroked his hair with my right hand and cried too and hoped to Christ Sister Françoise wouldn't come flouncing in again with the roses.

Things go much better after that and they have a nice reunion. We learn Ronnie is not with the Algerian anymore, that the flat is doing nicely and had some fresh paint in the bathroom. Also that Ronnie has an upcoming TV stint as an English sailor, and George insists he get a haircut before going in for costuming.

After an hour and a half, Ronnie says he will be back next weekend, but must go meet Mavis now for a drink before his 7:30 pm train back to Paris.

The unexpected arrival, mending of fences, and sudden departure of George's ex causes some mixed emotions for the man.

I cursed Mavis of course for being so bloody bossy and interfering and yet in a way I'm glad she had been. The sly little bitch had kept her promise not to write to him but had telephoned him instead. I suppose it was nice of her really considering that she'd been jealous as hell of him in the past and hated his guts. […] I leant back against the pillows which had slipped down a bit like they always do and stared out across the lake at the evening light on the mountains and for the first time found myself hating them and wishing they weren’t there standing between me and Paris and the flat and the way I used to live when I was up and about. I pictured Mavis and Ronnie sitting at L'Éscale and discussing whether I was going to die or not and her asking him how he thought I looked and him asking her what the doctor had said and then of course I got myself low as a snake's arse and started getting weepy again and wished to Christ I could die, nice and comfortably in my sleep, and have done with it.

Saturday is spent reminiscing about his troupe and all the places they have been.

By the following morning, he feels overwrought. The usual sleeplessness and discomfort he feels at two in the morning is more acute, and George notes the nurse came in and gave him an injection instead of the usual pill. He tells us the effect was 'trancelike,' and he awoke in the morning with something like a hangover, but his pain is lessened.

After the orderly takes him to the bathroom, and wraps a comforter around George while they wait for his bed to be changed, they get to talking.

He's quite sweet really. He told me he'd got the afternoon and evening off and that a friend of his was arriving from Munich who was a swimming champion and had won lots of cups. He said this friend was very "costaud" ["beefy"] and had a wonderfully developed chest but his legs were on the short side. They were going to go have dinner in a restaurant by the lake and then go to a movie. I wished him luck and winked at him and wished to God I was going with them.

Later that Sunday afternoon, the specialist comes to see him. The surgeon's in a sports coat and "looked different." George talks to him about the injection and how it made him feel, and then the professor chats about religion and whether or not George follows any particular one. Our hero says the priest attached to the hospital has been by several times, and although he finds him to be a pleasant enough man, he still "gave me the creeps." The doctor agrees that he's not a religious person either, but can see how it's a comfort for "some people to hang on to."

This whole time George has noticed the professor is distracted. The man then begins to wander the room as though "thinking of something else."

Eventually he settles, not in the chair, but on the side of the bed. Something is definitely on his mind.

I looked at him sitting there so nonchalantly swinging his legs ever so little but frowning as though something were puzzling him. He was a good-looking man all right, somewhere between forty and fifty I should say, his figure was slim and elegant and his face thin with lots of lines on it and his dark hair had gone grey at the sides. I wondered if he had a nice sincere wife to go home in the evenings after a busy day cutting things out of people, or whether he lived alone with a faithful retainer and a lot of medical books and kept a tiny vivacious mistress in a flashy little apartment somewhere or other or even whether he was queer as a coot and head over heels in love with a sun-tanned ski instructor and spent madly healthy weekends with him in cosy wooden chalets up in the mountains. He looked at me suddenly as though he had a half guess at what I was thinking and giggled. He smiled when I giggled and very gently took my hand in his and gave it a squeeze, not in the least a sexy squeeze but a sympathetic one and all at once I realised, with a sudden sinking of the heart, what the whole production was in aid of, why he had come in so casually to see me on a Sunday afternoon, why he had been drifting about the room looking ill at ease and why he had asked me about whether I was religious or not. It was because he knew that I was never going to get well again and was trying to make up his mind whether to let me know the worst or just let me go on from day to day hoping for the best. I knew then, in a sort of panic, that I didn’t want him to tell me anything, not in so many words, because once he said them there I'd be stuck with them in my mind and wake up in the night and remember them. […] That was a bad moment all right, me lying there with him still holding my hand and all those thoughts going through my head and trying to think of a way to head him off. I knew that unless I did something quickly he'd blurt it out and I'd be up shit creek without a paddle and with nothing to hang on to and no hope left and so I did the brassiest thing I've done in my life and I still blush when I think of it. I suddenly reared myself up on my pillows, pulled him towards me, and gave him a smacking kiss. He jumped back as if he'd been shot. I've never seen anyone so surprised. Then, before he could say anything, I went off into a long spiel – I was a bit hysterical by then and can't remember exactly what I said – but it was all about me having a "thing" about him ever since I'd first seen him and that was the way I was and there was nothing to be done about it and that as he was a doctor I hoped he would understand and not be too shocked and that anyway being as attractive as he was he had no right to squeeze people's hands when they were helpless in bed and expect them not to lose control and make a pounce at him and that I'd obeyed an impulse too strong to be resisted – yes I actually said that if you please – and that I hoped he would forgive me but that if he didn’t he'd just have to get on with it. I said a lot more than this and it was all pretty garbled because I'd worked myself into a proper state, but that was the gist of it. He sat there quite still while I was carrying on, staring at me and biting his lip. I didn’t quite know how to finish the scene so I fell back on the old ham standby and burst into tears and what was so awful was that once I'd started I couldn’t stop until he took out his cigarette-case, shoved a cigarette into my mouth, and lit it for me. This calmed me down and I was able to notice that he had stopped looking startled and was looking at me with one of his eyebrows a little higher than the other, quizzically as you might say, and that his lips were twitching as though he was trying not to laugh. Then he got up and said in a perfectly ordinary voice that he'd have to be getting along now as he had a couple more patients to see but he'd come back and have a look at me later. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t feel I could really without starting to blub again, so I just lay puffing away like crazy at the cigarette and trying not to look like Little Orphan Annie. He went to the door, paused for a moment, and then did one of the kindest things I've ever known. He came back to the bed, put both his arms round me, and kissed me very gently, not on the mouth but on the cheek as though he were really fond of me. Then he went out and closed the door quietly after him.

On Monday and Tuesday the journal entries are full of more reminisces concerting the world tour of George Banks and His Six Bombshells.

There follows a gap in the entries and the next one is dated Friday. We learn he hasn't been feeling too well. It started on Tuesday night when he had horrible pain in his lower back and legs. He was given a series of injections, which he says have made him "feel half asleep ever since." He recalls Mavis and the professor visiting with him; one of them bringing flowers, the other a small pot of pâté de foie gras, but he can't remember who brought which. He does recall some details of the surgeon's stay.

I know he held my hand for quite a long time so he can't have really been upset about me behaving like that. He's a wonderful man the professor is, a gentle and loving character, and I wish, I wish I could really tell him why I did what I did and make him understand that it wasn't just silly camping but because I was frightened, I expect he knows anyhow. He's the sort of man who knows everything that goes on in people's minds and you don't have to keep on saying you're sorry and making excuses to him any more than you'd have to tell God if God is supposed to be anything like what's he's supposed to be.

There is no proper way to lead up to the conclusion of the novella, which rather mimics the unknown nature of our time on earth, but the final entry reads:

Sister Clothilde pulled the blinds down a few minutes ago just before Dr. Pierre and Father Lucian came in. Dr. Pierre gave me an injection which hurt a bit when it went in but felt lovely a few seconds later, a sweet warm feeling coming up from my toes and covering me all over like eiderdown. Father Lucian leant over me and said something or other I don’t remember what it was. He's quite nice really but there is something about him that gives me the creeps. I mean I wouldn't want him to hold my hand like the professor does. […] I wish Sister Clothilde hadn't pulled the blinds down, not that it really matters because it's dark by now and I shouldn't be able to see [the mountains] anyhow.

Unstated is George's end, but the setup seems in place for our imaginations. Perhaps at that mentioned time of 2:30~3:00 in the morning, he passes on. Unstated too is the emotionally reality that Ronnie will be on his way Saturday morning, and likely grieve in person with George's girls, the orderly, Sisters and doctors in that hospital room.

But, Coward does not leave us desolate. No, quite the opposite, he leaves us with a smile of relief through our stinging tears.

I had the funniest experience last night. I saw Harry-boy. He was standing at the end of the bed as clear as daylight wearing his blue dungarees and holding up a pair of diabolically old socks which he wanted me to wash out for him. Of course I know I didn’t really see him and was dreaming, but it did seem real as anything at the time and it still does in a way.

□□□□□

Do I admit to being intimidated at the prospects of my summarizing this remarkable novella to any satisfaction…? Perhaps, yes. There are some works of art where you feel like a vandal to even try to analyze how they work.

Even amongst writers there is substantial debate on how much style – that is the chosen method of telling a story – affects the reader's ability to connect with the material. Sometimes a master is good enough to lead us down the road of comedy and then deliver a punch that has everyone in tears only moments later. Few authors have been able to do it me, and other than Shakespeare, Noël Coward turns out to be one of the few others.

In my summary of the work, I have omitted 10,000 words or more of the original exploring George's memories of his girls and his career. By doing so, I am aware I have distilled the emotional parts of Coward's story here, but I did so to convey how impactful the work of art is.

So in précis, what can we learn to improve our own first-person narration?

- Voice is all-important. George is delivered in a very conversational way here, and it's highly effective to convey his flighty, self-absorbed personality.

- A lack of perfection builds the main character and our attachment to him. This not only extends to way the text looks (lacking much basic punctuation, for example), but the fact of George's cluelessness concerning his inner workings and emotions. He states he's over love, then indulges in a moment of wanting to be free and back in Paris with Ronnie. He also does not seem to be aware of why he's crying in many situations, or denies the real import to us (and possibly himself).

- In the construction of the other characters, the author paints pictures of less-than-perfect individuals. For example, the way Harry-boy is rendered is a model to follow when creating our own 3-D persons: he's not all that good looking, moody, possibly abusive (as hinted at when George tells us Harry would not put up with any drama). But the man is loved and loves George, and so we as readers come to love him too. It's almost beyond our control and thus mimics the workings of love itself; how brilliant is that?

- The emotional plot of the novella is so carefully charted, and yet couched in a great cushion of triviality. This is perhaps the most elusive element to dissect. The passage where the doctor is about to deliver hopeless news and has his mouth stopped up with a kiss is a masterpiece. If you are anything like me, you were laughing your ass off and slapping your knee in enjoyment, and then only moments later on the verge of tears as the doctor came back and showed genuine humanity for George as an individual. This level of accomplishment is truly Shakespearean, and one we might try to aspire towards in our own writing.

And what of the Gay Experience itself rendered in this novella? Mitchell-Leavitt point out the importance of this popular piece of fiction (one even made into a film in 1985) showing same-sex couples simply "getting on with it," as George would say. The permanent connections of love forged by Harry, Ronnie and George are not passing, and by no means unlike those of opposite-sex couples. Fortunately in our times the acceptance of love amongst men is easily equated as not being qualitatively different than love between men and women, but not so in 1964. The tendency then (even among the most otherwise progressive thinkers) was to regard same-sex connections as capricious, merely physical and meaningless – a 'habit' at best, as Mavis thinks, or 'homosexuality' at worst, a psychotic condition to be barbarously treated or quarantined in prison or mental ward; a thing to be eradicated in worthless people who if destroyed along with them only benefited society as a whole.

Undoubtedly, Coward's remarkably successful novella went a long way towards changing attitudes in the 1960s. Nowadays we can enjoy the piece as the timeless treasure it is.