Davenport had always lived a long way from London, but when he was 17 he decided it was high time to hit the smoke.
Whilst a baby still fresh from crawlout, he’d never heard of a place called London. However, on slipping free from his mother’s arms for the first time late one Sunday afternoon, he spotted a yellow photograph of St. Paul’s Cathedral glued to a tin where, he later learned, his mother kept stale biscuits for the Trick-or-Treaters each Halloween.
This being the first picture he’d ever seen, Davenport’s brain kept a little bit of itself devoted.
He thought the dome of the cathedral a hat. He knew all about such things, for his mother always wore one with a tortoiseshell hat-pin.
School taught him a lot more about London. That there were City people, quite different from the normal ones like Davenport and his mother or like his school friends and even the teacher. That trains went below the pavements like horizontal chimney-sweeps. That it was bigger than all the world’s other cities put together. That, most important of all, it had mighty churches sowing the skylines like threadbare forests of faith. And the one the teacher pinned on the blackboard was...
****
The train loitered through the countryside as if it had lost its way. Davenport was sitting in the corner of the carriage, pretending to read a book, as his mind reacted to scenes it had not yet experienced. The book was by W. Harrison Ainsworth, and the print on the pages was in blocks of foreign black.
Use Town was the place the station ticket-puncher had mentioned as being the train’s destination. Near London it was, he was assured. Use Town may even have one of those underground trains. The train he was now on might even change into an underground one, come London.
There were three other people in the carriage; a woman with a large flowery hat in the luggage rack, a man up there with her who sniggered a lot and a little girl in the other corner on the seat who was evidently someone’s daughter.
Davenport stared at the girl. She must be 12, only five years younger.
‘Is it Use Town this train’s going?’ he asked. This was the first time he had spoken on a train.
‘USETON,’ she mumbled, after a tunnel.
‘Is it near London?’ he asked.
‘It’s IN London, it’s part of London. A big station.’
‘Does the train go underground there — I want to go to the city to see a big church, you see?’
‘No, you’ll have to change.’
Davenport pondered. He’ll have to change. He nodded, understanding perhaps for the first time.
****
The hubbub of the big station was more surprising than he expected. It hit him like a chain of those summer storms chasing each other around the hills surrounding Davenport’s village back home. The little girl told him where to go. He hadn’t realised that he could have relieved himself on the train.
The man and the woman who had been in the luggage rack, Davenport saw, had turned themselves over to the station lost property office — they evidently were even more bemused than Davenport.
To his horror he lost his little friend in the crowds. And the crowds in Useton seemed not to be at all like the little bunches that automatically formed during gaines of ‘Denno’ in the school playground of his childhood. For here they were constituted of unco-ordinated bodies in sheer exi-fugal selfishness. Davenport found himself party to a particularly large one led by a gangling youth with ear-rings — and this crowd violently careered from one end of the concourse to the other like Davenport’s demented Uncle in the padded cell back home.
Eventually he was expelled by the crowd outside Smiths, where a policeman was standing guard.
‘How can I change?’ asked Davenport, without fear or favour, for policemen were friendly back home.
‘Spain off, you bugger! I’m soddin’ well not going’ to tell YOU anything!’
This was like a foreign language to Davenport.
But, evidently, the policeman was not impressed with Davenport’s reaction, so he decided to try the soft touch, as an alternative:
‘Well, young man, see that over there — that’s what they call Dosser’s Bar...’
And he pointed to a joint bursting to the seams with ill-dressed miscreants tipping wine-glass after wine-glass into their thirsters.
The policeman continued
‘Go in there and I’m sure they’ll give yer a drinky on the ‘ouse...’
Davenport wandered over to the evil-looking place and a great stench of pee met him like he remembered the boy’s toilets in the playground back home. And amid all the dirt and the foul language, he spotted his little girl friend from the train, who was asking one of the customers to interfere with her.
Doubtlessly, Davenport can’t recall much about it least of all the motives that must have taken hold of him unbeknownst, but he took the girl’s hand, dragged her out into the concourse and delivered her up to the policeman. Who forthwith took her away to apparent safety.
****
He reached the City with the help of a friendly-seeming taxi-man who took pity on him after finding him in his empty bonnet pretending to be the engine. Davenport’s Uncle evidently had a lot to answer for.
The taxi-man knew EVERYTHING about London; where to go, what to do when you got there and, most important, how to change.
Davenport had used up all his disposable assets on the train journey, but he had a tanner left. The taxi-man knew the A to Z like the back of his hand and, for the tanner, he agreed to allow Davenport to follow his taxi on foot. But he couldn’t get it started, for some reason, so he palmed Davenport off with some complicated misdirections... And off Davenport went, on his own.
However, before he rounded the final corner away from Useton, he turned to wave goodbye to the taxi-man. But he’d gone… no doubt for a snifter with the dossers.
****
All roads lead to St. Paul’s. And, after several hours, a tired and hungry Davenport arrived before the mighty edifice of his childhood dreams.
The enormous dome lifted into the blue sky — if nothing else, Davenport had chosen a nice day for his trip — and the sides of the pillared building had statues dotted about like rock-climbers. But it was the dome to which his gaze kept returning: the huge hat of his childhood with a crucifix-pin rising from its peak.
He was in awe. If he had not changed at Useton, he was certainly changing now. Sublimity filled his head, gorgeous rhythms of faith and desire.
Then he heard the flapping. From somewhere beyond the dome, a mighty bird as big as the cathedral itself must have been slowing its motion for alightment. Davenport still could not see what made such a noise — it was probably Concorde (the teacher had also once pinned a picture of this wondrous jet liner on the blackboard back home) with new found leather wings and spindled snout
But what eventually loomed above the dome was simply a monstrosity. Its face was the Devil’s own Halloween mask, with skin in leprous folds, wild staring eyes swimming in pools of blood, champing beak of yellow splintered bone and wattles of sickly fire. Its nose was indeed like Concorde’s, but drooping from it were swelling globs of regurgitated spew surpassing by far the produce of the vilest fount of slime in the ranks of nastiness...
The ribbed, webby wings suddenly filled the sky, as if the earth itself had unfurled them.
Davenport called out for his Mummy — he wanted to be back home more than he had ever yearned for the tit when a baby.
He felt a small hand slip into his and, looking down, be saw the little girl he’d met on the train (last seen traipsing off with a policeman) smiling up at him.
‘I didn’t let him,’ she mumbled mysteriously.
‘Good,’ replied Davenport, without really understanding why. They wandered off together to where they thought Useton would be.
But before they rounded the corner, he turned back to find that the cathedral must have been nothing but a figment of his imagination. A bank stood where the monster had been. London was evidently a city of false pretences.
****
They ended up at the zoo which, after all, could not be far from Useton. There they saw a monkey wearing a hat with the words “I LOVE U”. It threw it into the air and the girl picked it up and put it on.
But Davenport had disappeared when she turned to show it to him. So she went off to find the lost property office.
(published 'Krax' 1989)
www.nemonymous.com
Des Lewis - GESTALT REAL-TIME BOOK REVIEWS
A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
A Dark Miscegenation
"Don't you believe in ghosts any more?" asked Clement's mother, while fingering the tiny cross hung at her throat—as if she believed it would protect her from those very ghosts.
The empty room was crowded with other members of the Victorian family—a funerary gathering, with too many children under the age of ten for comfort. Clement grimaced at the thought of the ensuing hours of small talk and big arguments. Yet, despite the numbers, there was currently a deathly hush, as the grown-ups balanced the chinking of their cups against the nibbling noise caused by an inconsequential cucumber sandwich, underlaid with the snickering of the log's flames from the hearth.
The children maintained an uncharacteristic modicum of good behaviour, even including the boy who had dared wear a bobble-hat at the earlier ceremony. They were crouched on the floor peculiarly staring at an empty corner of the room.
Twins Archie and Annabel had given up squabbling, once one of them at random had been given what Clement considered to be a rather vicious clip round the ear by their otherwise prim and proper mother. After all, in those days, punishment was worth the effort.
Clement had arrived at the funeral on his own. His mother lived in the opposite end of town, pretending to her neighbours that she had always been a Spinster, thus concealing the evidence of Clement as fruit of her erstwhile marital loins. Indeed, she had ignored her son during most of the day's proceedings—other than the initial pleasantries which she had a way of making quite unpleasant.
Clement surveyed the others. They surveyed him, too, with the usual embarrassment that people have about returning silent stares. Most of them were unmentionable creatures whom Clement would not have even granted a second glance in the town's market. The simple fact that they once had blood-ties with him in various devious ways surely did not make them worthy of consideration. He would rather be friends with those donkeys on the sands, when his mother and father took him to the seaside every Whitsun.
"Ghosts, mother?" he said, as if the words fitted in with what had already been said earlier. He fingered his cufflinks, echoing her earlier perfomance with the crucifix.
"Yes, Clement, you were always going on about ghosts. If you're so clever, where's Auntie Rita now?"
His mother swept the room with her heavily braceleted arm, as if to conjure up some wraith masquerading as the remnants of that day's buried body. She ignored the steely glances from some of the grown-ups who evidently condemned her tactless remark.
Clement had found it difficult to remember who Auntie Rita had been. Some long-lost distant relative born not only on the wrong side of the blanket but also quite the wrong blanket? One who wanted to be called Auntie because of some perverse logic as to respectability? Or was she his mother's sister, as simple as that? Whoever she was, he laid the blame at Auntie Rita's door for today's irritations. At least, at a Christening, one could curse the babe in question. Or, at a wedding, stick pins into metaphorical dolls of the bride and groom. But at a funeral, the proximate cause of yet one more family gathering was already dead. But, he knew, as the old saying went, there was no rest for the wicked.
With corpses as scapegoat as well as subterfuge, families, like nations, had wars, bitter, twisted and, yes, mercenary. Why would they all be haunting the living-room, otherwise? If not for the reading of the Last Will and Testament...
So that explained the gentleman in half-moon glasses who sat uncomfortably on the sofa between Archie and Annabel. The family lawyer, no doubt. But the man also had the stigma in his eyes and the caste of complexion which typified the rest of the room's crawling life. Clement winced at his own words. He hadn't chosen them. It was as if someone else described the scene. Clement was no culprit—he was sure. Yet the family did stem from a particularly nasty form of ethnic cleansing that had transpired in Old Europe, before Clement's birth. Yet nobody had heard of ethnic cleansing in those days, that, at least, was true. But it gave him no excuse for racial slurs.
"I don't believe in ghosts any more, Mother."
Clement had broken another icy silence. Her accusation could not have remained unchallenged. Who knew what concertina of destinies would have been set in motion, otherwise? The supposed lawyer coughed—either because he had a frog in his throat or he genuinely wanted to let slip the dogs of war with the Will. It turned out to be a frog, since the man pawed at his own chest as if he fought for breath—or someone else's breath, Clement unaccountably thought, in a moment spawned by surrealistic private humour.
Still the children silently stared at the empty corner of the room but one of them was eventually instructed to fetch the lawyer a glass of water. Upon recovering, he maintained that a piece of cucumber had gone down the wrong way.
Gone down the wrong way?
Which was the right way? contemplated Clement, as he fingered his own throat and discovered the tiny cross he always had hanging there, against his better judgement. Habits died slowly—and a habit, inculcated in the younger Clement by his mother and father, was particularly hard to kill. Not that he believed in God any more. Well, not that God in whom his mother appeared to place so much faith.
The children were now becoming more and more fractious. Who could blame them? The whole affair was being drawn out to unncesssary lengths of fitful silence. At least, their encroaching wheedles and whines relieved the heavy atmosphere. Nobody had dared broach the Will, not even the so-called lawyer—a man who looked remarkably like Clement's late father when he was younger. Yet, Clement's father had been a cleric: or a lower-rank verger or sexton or, maybe, at a push, a curate or something. Certainly not a deacon. Some shame had come on the family when Clement was too young to appreciate the repercussions. A minor peccadillo with a female creature which flaunted itself on the seaside rocks (near the donkey-ride).
Clement couldn't believe in ghosts. He never would. He didn't dare.
He snatched the long toasting-forks from either Archie and Annabel (he was unsure which shape was which) and jabbed and spiked the air of the dark living-room. He then squatted in the empty corner and tugged harder at the cross-chain, hoping it would make him dark, too.
The empty room was crowded with other members of the Victorian family—a funerary gathering, with too many children under the age of ten for comfort. Clement grimaced at the thought of the ensuing hours of small talk and big arguments. Yet, despite the numbers, there was currently a deathly hush, as the grown-ups balanced the chinking of their cups against the nibbling noise caused by an inconsequential cucumber sandwich, underlaid with the snickering of the log's flames from the hearth.
The children maintained an uncharacteristic modicum of good behaviour, even including the boy who had dared wear a bobble-hat at the earlier ceremony. They were crouched on the floor peculiarly staring at an empty corner of the room.
Twins Archie and Annabel had given up squabbling, once one of them at random had been given what Clement considered to be a rather vicious clip round the ear by their otherwise prim and proper mother. After all, in those days, punishment was worth the effort.
Clement had arrived at the funeral on his own. His mother lived in the opposite end of town, pretending to her neighbours that she had always been a Spinster, thus concealing the evidence of Clement as fruit of her erstwhile marital loins. Indeed, she had ignored her son during most of the day's proceedings—other than the initial pleasantries which she had a way of making quite unpleasant.
Clement surveyed the others. They surveyed him, too, with the usual embarrassment that people have about returning silent stares. Most of them were unmentionable creatures whom Clement would not have even granted a second glance in the town's market. The simple fact that they once had blood-ties with him in various devious ways surely did not make them worthy of consideration. He would rather be friends with those donkeys on the sands, when his mother and father took him to the seaside every Whitsun.
"Ghosts, mother?" he said, as if the words fitted in with what had already been said earlier. He fingered his cufflinks, echoing her earlier perfomance with the crucifix.
"Yes, Clement, you were always going on about ghosts. If you're so clever, where's Auntie Rita now?"
His mother swept the room with her heavily braceleted arm, as if to conjure up some wraith masquerading as the remnants of that day's buried body. She ignored the steely glances from some of the grown-ups who evidently condemned her tactless remark.
Clement had found it difficult to remember who Auntie Rita had been. Some long-lost distant relative born not only on the wrong side of the blanket but also quite the wrong blanket? One who wanted to be called Auntie because of some perverse logic as to respectability? Or was she his mother's sister, as simple as that? Whoever she was, he laid the blame at Auntie Rita's door for today's irritations. At least, at a Christening, one could curse the babe in question. Or, at a wedding, stick pins into metaphorical dolls of the bride and groom. But at a funeral, the proximate cause of yet one more family gathering was already dead. But, he knew, as the old saying went, there was no rest for the wicked.
With corpses as scapegoat as well as subterfuge, families, like nations, had wars, bitter, twisted and, yes, mercenary. Why would they all be haunting the living-room, otherwise? If not for the reading of the Last Will and Testament...
So that explained the gentleman in half-moon glasses who sat uncomfortably on the sofa between Archie and Annabel. The family lawyer, no doubt. But the man also had the stigma in his eyes and the caste of complexion which typified the rest of the room's crawling life. Clement winced at his own words. He hadn't chosen them. It was as if someone else described the scene. Clement was no culprit—he was sure. Yet the family did stem from a particularly nasty form of ethnic cleansing that had transpired in Old Europe, before Clement's birth. Yet nobody had heard of ethnic cleansing in those days, that, at least, was true. But it gave him no excuse for racial slurs.
"I don't believe in ghosts any more, Mother."
Clement had broken another icy silence. Her accusation could not have remained unchallenged. Who knew what concertina of destinies would have been set in motion, otherwise? The supposed lawyer coughed—either because he had a frog in his throat or he genuinely wanted to let slip the dogs of war with the Will. It turned out to be a frog, since the man pawed at his own chest as if he fought for breath—or someone else's breath, Clement unaccountably thought, in a moment spawned by surrealistic private humour.
Still the children silently stared at the empty corner of the room but one of them was eventually instructed to fetch the lawyer a glass of water. Upon recovering, he maintained that a piece of cucumber had gone down the wrong way.
Gone down the wrong way?
Which was the right way? contemplated Clement, as he fingered his own throat and discovered the tiny cross he always had hanging there, against his better judgement. Habits died slowly—and a habit, inculcated in the younger Clement by his mother and father, was particularly hard to kill. Not that he believed in God any more. Well, not that God in whom his mother appeared to place so much faith.
The children were now becoming more and more fractious. Who could blame them? The whole affair was being drawn out to unncesssary lengths of fitful silence. At least, their encroaching wheedles and whines relieved the heavy atmosphere. Nobody had dared broach the Will, not even the so-called lawyer—a man who looked remarkably like Clement's late father when he was younger. Yet, Clement's father had been a cleric: or a lower-rank verger or sexton or, maybe, at a push, a curate or something. Certainly not a deacon. Some shame had come on the family when Clement was too young to appreciate the repercussions. A minor peccadillo with a female creature which flaunted itself on the seaside rocks (near the donkey-ride).
Clement couldn't believe in ghosts. He never would. He didn't dare.
He snatched the long toasting-forks from either Archie and Annabel (he was unsure which shape was which) and jabbed and spiked the air of the dark living-room. He then squatted in the empty corner and tugged harder at the cross-chain, hoping it would make him dark, too.
Friday, September 16, 2005
An Ounce of Three Castles and a Packet of Blue Rizla
He was called Nagl. I originally came across him in a dream.
A concert pianist, of the first water - I can remember his fingers curved upon the keys, their nails long uncut to give the notes extra bite: every line and facet etched with the prehensility of dark genius. God, by comparison, would be a huge white sagging barrage balloon floating tetherless across endless turgid oceans.
I woke with the dream still plastered to the back of my skull, where my brain had sprayed it with all the force of cinemascope. The wordy pretentiousness stuck, too. At least for the duration of the Sixties.
I then met Nagl in real life. I was introduced to him at a party: evidently not as old as I had thought in my dream.
. "How are you?" he asked, as if we'd met before.
"Very well, thank you... Excuse me for being rude, but are you a pianist?"
He glanced down at his own fingers and I noted in the darkly fizzing lights that the nails were long and yellowy white.
"I play the piano, yes, but only for my own amusement. But how do you know?"
I shrugged and asked him to dance. Our small talk had been close to either grinding to an embarrassing halt or entering dangerous realms.
As we jabbed our hind legs sporadically to Mr Kite, I heard him, during breathless interludes, mention a few composers he liked playing, especially Scriabin. I nodded although, of course, I had never heard of the composer.
We parted on good terms, both of us promising to keep a weather eye for each other at future parties.
The following night, I dreamed of him for the second time. On this occasion, I was nearer to the front of the auditorium, standing amongst several others as we jostled to obtain the best position nearest to the pianist. The orchestra's tuning up was particularly frightening, but I put this down to the dream. The audience suddenly broke into cheering uproar, as Nagl (for it was indeed him) had marched to the podium with the conductor.
As the noise subsided, he squared himself on the adjustable stool, after having flapped out his tails from beneath. He made a few running chords along the slipstream of the keys...
He turned towards us. I was captivated, convinced that he was staring straight at me with piercing white eyes. He began speaking about the music which he was about to perform. Some of the audience asked him questions on style and interpretation. Most unusual. Pre-performance talks were quite common, but separate from the musical event itself, customarily held in a different venue an hour or two before the doors opened on the concert proper.
Eventually, I found myself asking a question, much against my better nature, even though I was conscious of the impatience of the orchestra members and their conductor (the latter being a maestro in his own right).
"Would you like me to buy you dinner after the concert?" I asked, my voice croaking with nervousness.
Nagl smiled and nodded. With some relief, I noticed the conductor raising his baton...
I awoke, bitterly disappointed that, after all the preamble, it would never be possible to hear the music. Nagl's description of it was more than just a little tantalising.
My disappointment continued at the next party. Nothing to be seen of him anywhere, unless he was one of those neckers in the dark corner. But if he were hiding, it could only be because he wanted to avoid me. I recalled the dream ... and the wicked smile.
The next time I slept, I merely collapsed into darkness, with the sense of fingers touching me all over. Yet, it was too blurred and forgetful to warrant the name dream. I was still obsessed with Nagl's inscrutability. Nagl this, Nagl that. I was bemused, in love and, peculiarly, wistful.
The next day, I tried to contact some of my friends (fellow guests at this season's parties) but none of them could recall him. But, I said, he had been the soul of the party. Surely nobody could have failed to note his striking pose, the glistening dusky face. How could I be so mistaken? Even now, I recalled the feel of his hand like claws as I twirled him round in an old-fashioned jive. The famous composer's name which he had mentioned as enjoying, however, had gone completely from my head. I wished I had written it down. But it was too late.
Nevertheless, I did dream of him again. This time, sleep was conducive to dreaming, I knew that straightaway. As soon as I planted my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, I felt him creeping up from the background. On all fours, I imagined. Or on his belly.
The first scene was a restaurant. We only had eyes for each other, so the waiters had to make do with cursory signals as to our wants. The menu lay between us on the table like an unread score. The candlelight brought out the matt swarthiness of his skin. His eyes were gentler than I ever remembered.
His fingers were hamfisted away from his piano, more pedestrian. He dropped his cutlery with unsightly clatters. Dreams only speak of visions, not sounds, I realised, thus easing my earlier disappointment at not catching the music before waking.
Whatever its ingredients, the meal was strangely unsatisfying. Afterwards, we left to go to his home. As he paid the bill, I promised to meet any further expenses of the evening. Eventually, after much toing and froing, we arrived at a large rambling house on the edge of the city ... with several staircase chimneystacks silhouetted against the moon-stained sky, like suprlus lumber that couldn't fit into the house's countless attics. The spiralling iron fire-escapes strangled the two end towers with the Devil's own jewellery. Dream talk, again. I shrugged in my sleep.
We had passed, on our way, a huge liner in dry dock still being worked on by overtime repairers at the dead of night. Several derelicts were sleeping nearby in the heat of the spotlights. Having reached the house, Nagl took me by the hand through the vast front entrance into a gorgeously draped hallway, where a toady helped us off with our capes.
Now being indoors, I felt I should instruct the toady to take our capes to the derelicts who would need them more.
I was shivering. I awoke to discover the covers had slipped from my bed. The pillow was sodden with tears ... my tears. I could only hope against hope that the next night would see me dreaming again with a vengeance.
During the day, I purchased an ounce of Three Castles and a packet of Blue Rizla. I needed a good smoke.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, I wondered if there was in fact a building at the edge of the city similar to Nagl's house in my dream. I had never seen one with so many tall smokestacks, far too many in truth for the number of rooms they serviced. Mouth to mouth resuscitation, I mused. And the fire escapes so plentifully supplied, too. Surely it would not be too difficult to ascertain the whereabouts of such an edifice.
I was due to attend another party that evening and I determined to make enquiries with some of my more outlying bosom acquaintances. In the dream, which was now fast disappearing into a forgotten memory, Nagl and I had travelled to the house in a black taxi. There should be an underground entrance quite close, I assumed, the city being undermined with regiments of tube tunnels and Victorian sewer systems.
The party was a dead affair. People laid about half-drugged to the gills. One crazy individual, whom everybody called Rabbit, told me stories of his youth which he threatened would make my hairs curl. I looked for Nagl, not really expecting him to be present at such a lousy gig. Rabbit's ramblings were something I could have done without, but I humoured him with grunts and nods.
Then I saw Nagl. He was standing by the bar, in close conversation with a blonde. His shining skin sent pins and needles through my muscles. I could not get up from my squatting position near Rabbit, for my legs had gone dead. And even if I could, would he welcome my intervention?
There was a police raid. I even forgot Nagl in the havoc. Luckily, I was released with a caution, as I was, for once, clean as a whistle. They couldn't stand a charge up on Three Castles, could they?
Amid the milling turn-out on the pavements outside, I suddenly recalled Nagl ... and the blonde. Could that two-headed shape glimpsed disappearing around the next turning be them? I followed quickly, brushing aside Rabbit's invitation of a walk into the city centre in search of a late-night club. Instead, Rabbit tagged along with me, much to my annoyance. I did not have the heart to cut him dead.
Eventually, I collapsed into my own bed. Rabbit borrowed my bedroom floor, as he had done once before.
Dreams would be hard to come by that night, especially in my current frame of mind. However, gradually, I was back in Nagl's house. He sat poised before a Grand, smiling round at me. I think I must have been sitting in an armchair, artfully positioned so that I could benefit from both the best acoustics of the chamber and an unobstructed view of his arched hands upon the striped reptilian keyboard. The moment his tapering fingers touched, my hair stood on end. The music thrilled me beyond measure. I realised this must be his own composition, because it spoke Nagl in every semiquaver. I was privileged to be an audience of one as a song of pure genius was played for the first and last time. I was no longer the lonely lost soul who lived inside my head in real life.
The fingers, each one a bone in drag, moved across the pulsing keys. His face, even in the full light of the art deco lamp standard, was a shadow of itself. Each drop of sweat was as black as a spade on an ace.
The music's beauty was unbearable, its ugliness unimpeachable. I yearned for it to finish, so that I would be able to approach and tentatively fondle his body, he mine.
The keyboard became a sweat-slicked hide, swelling up so that his fingers actually moved inside it, as if he reached for the innards of some serpentine creature. Thus, the bizarre harmonies sounded from within our heads, not from out inward - as dreams dictated.
Piecemeal, the music tailed off, with an ending as unsatisfying as the restaurant's food we'd only just consumed. I vaguely recall leaving the music room and climbing the many flights of Nagl's stairs, his talons exquisitely embedded in my palm, as he led me ever upward.
I heard others making an unsightly clattering upon the fire escapes outside but could not tell whether they went up or down. They shouted something about a pirate uprising, but I couldn't be sure.
I fell into Nagl's arms as he dragged me into his vast four-poster, only to be swaddled by silk sheets. And I never saw the creature he must have become, only felt it like a child at a party guessing what the mystery object was in the otherwise shapless bag. The act of sexing insects wasn't a starter. Snakes on heat were two a penny. This dream cost a million souls to stage it...
I woke to find myself pinned to my own sodden mattress by Rabbit. I let him have his way, because love is stronger than hate, and less lasting.
Not long afterwards, the Sixties abruptly ended with a lurch towards blander decades. I assume Nagl still drifts from party to party, no doubt fibbing about being a concert pianist and owning a large house in Hampstead. I can no longer have dreams. Yet I hope Nagl can dream of me.
(published 'Peeping Tom' 1991)
A concert pianist, of the first water - I can remember his fingers curved upon the keys, their nails long uncut to give the notes extra bite: every line and facet etched with the prehensility of dark genius. God, by comparison, would be a huge white sagging barrage balloon floating tetherless across endless turgid oceans.
I woke with the dream still plastered to the back of my skull, where my brain had sprayed it with all the force of cinemascope. The wordy pretentiousness stuck, too. At least for the duration of the Sixties.
I then met Nagl in real life. I was introduced to him at a party: evidently not as old as I had thought in my dream.
. "How are you?" he asked, as if we'd met before.
"Very well, thank you... Excuse me for being rude, but are you a pianist?"
He glanced down at his own fingers and I noted in the darkly fizzing lights that the nails were long and yellowy white.
"I play the piano, yes, but only for my own amusement. But how do you know?"
I shrugged and asked him to dance. Our small talk had been close to either grinding to an embarrassing halt or entering dangerous realms.
As we jabbed our hind legs sporadically to Mr Kite, I heard him, during breathless interludes, mention a few composers he liked playing, especially Scriabin. I nodded although, of course, I had never heard of the composer.
We parted on good terms, both of us promising to keep a weather eye for each other at future parties.
The following night, I dreamed of him for the second time. On this occasion, I was nearer to the front of the auditorium, standing amongst several others as we jostled to obtain the best position nearest to the pianist. The orchestra's tuning up was particularly frightening, but I put this down to the dream. The audience suddenly broke into cheering uproar, as Nagl (for it was indeed him) had marched to the podium with the conductor.
As the noise subsided, he squared himself on the adjustable stool, after having flapped out his tails from beneath. He made a few running chords along the slipstream of the keys...
He turned towards us. I was captivated, convinced that he was staring straight at me with piercing white eyes. He began speaking about the music which he was about to perform. Some of the audience asked him questions on style and interpretation. Most unusual. Pre-performance talks were quite common, but separate from the musical event itself, customarily held in a different venue an hour or two before the doors opened on the concert proper.
Eventually, I found myself asking a question, much against my better nature, even though I was conscious of the impatience of the orchestra members and their conductor (the latter being a maestro in his own right).
"Would you like me to buy you dinner after the concert?" I asked, my voice croaking with nervousness.
Nagl smiled and nodded. With some relief, I noticed the conductor raising his baton...
I awoke, bitterly disappointed that, after all the preamble, it would never be possible to hear the music. Nagl's description of it was more than just a little tantalising.
My disappointment continued at the next party. Nothing to be seen of him anywhere, unless he was one of those neckers in the dark corner. But if he were hiding, it could only be because he wanted to avoid me. I recalled the dream ... and the wicked smile.
The next time I slept, I merely collapsed into darkness, with the sense of fingers touching me all over. Yet, it was too blurred and forgetful to warrant the name dream. I was still obsessed with Nagl's inscrutability. Nagl this, Nagl that. I was bemused, in love and, peculiarly, wistful.
The next day, I tried to contact some of my friends (fellow guests at this season's parties) but none of them could recall him. But, I said, he had been the soul of the party. Surely nobody could have failed to note his striking pose, the glistening dusky face. How could I be so mistaken? Even now, I recalled the feel of his hand like claws as I twirled him round in an old-fashioned jive. The famous composer's name which he had mentioned as enjoying, however, had gone completely from my head. I wished I had written it down. But it was too late.
Nevertheless, I did dream of him again. This time, sleep was conducive to dreaming, I knew that straightaway. As soon as I planted my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, I felt him creeping up from the background. On all fours, I imagined. Or on his belly.
The first scene was a restaurant. We only had eyes for each other, so the waiters had to make do with cursory signals as to our wants. The menu lay between us on the table like an unread score. The candlelight brought out the matt swarthiness of his skin. His eyes were gentler than I ever remembered.
His fingers were hamfisted away from his piano, more pedestrian. He dropped his cutlery with unsightly clatters. Dreams only speak of visions, not sounds, I realised, thus easing my earlier disappointment at not catching the music before waking.
Whatever its ingredients, the meal was strangely unsatisfying. Afterwards, we left to go to his home. As he paid the bill, I promised to meet any further expenses of the evening. Eventually, after much toing and froing, we arrived at a large rambling house on the edge of the city ... with several staircase chimneystacks silhouetted against the moon-stained sky, like suprlus lumber that couldn't fit into the house's countless attics. The spiralling iron fire-escapes strangled the two end towers with the Devil's own jewellery. Dream talk, again. I shrugged in my sleep.
We had passed, on our way, a huge liner in dry dock still being worked on by overtime repairers at the dead of night. Several derelicts were sleeping nearby in the heat of the spotlights. Having reached the house, Nagl took me by the hand through the vast front entrance into a gorgeously draped hallway, where a toady helped us off with our capes.
Now being indoors, I felt I should instruct the toady to take our capes to the derelicts who would need them more.
I was shivering. I awoke to discover the covers had slipped from my bed. The pillow was sodden with tears ... my tears. I could only hope against hope that the next night would see me dreaming again with a vengeance.
During the day, I purchased an ounce of Three Castles and a packet of Blue Rizla. I needed a good smoke.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, I wondered if there was in fact a building at the edge of the city similar to Nagl's house in my dream. I had never seen one with so many tall smokestacks, far too many in truth for the number of rooms they serviced. Mouth to mouth resuscitation, I mused. And the fire escapes so plentifully supplied, too. Surely it would not be too difficult to ascertain the whereabouts of such an edifice.
I was due to attend another party that evening and I determined to make enquiries with some of my more outlying bosom acquaintances. In the dream, which was now fast disappearing into a forgotten memory, Nagl and I had travelled to the house in a black taxi. There should be an underground entrance quite close, I assumed, the city being undermined with regiments of tube tunnels and Victorian sewer systems.
The party was a dead affair. People laid about half-drugged to the gills. One crazy individual, whom everybody called Rabbit, told me stories of his youth which he threatened would make my hairs curl. I looked for Nagl, not really expecting him to be present at such a lousy gig. Rabbit's ramblings were something I could have done without, but I humoured him with grunts and nods.
Then I saw Nagl. He was standing by the bar, in close conversation with a blonde. His shining skin sent pins and needles through my muscles. I could not get up from my squatting position near Rabbit, for my legs had gone dead. And even if I could, would he welcome my intervention?
There was a police raid. I even forgot Nagl in the havoc. Luckily, I was released with a caution, as I was, for once, clean as a whistle. They couldn't stand a charge up on Three Castles, could they?
Amid the milling turn-out on the pavements outside, I suddenly recalled Nagl ... and the blonde. Could that two-headed shape glimpsed disappearing around the next turning be them? I followed quickly, brushing aside Rabbit's invitation of a walk into the city centre in search of a late-night club. Instead, Rabbit tagged along with me, much to my annoyance. I did not have the heart to cut him dead.
Eventually, I collapsed into my own bed. Rabbit borrowed my bedroom floor, as he had done once before.
Dreams would be hard to come by that night, especially in my current frame of mind. However, gradually, I was back in Nagl's house. He sat poised before a Grand, smiling round at me. I think I must have been sitting in an armchair, artfully positioned so that I could benefit from both the best acoustics of the chamber and an unobstructed view of his arched hands upon the striped reptilian keyboard. The moment his tapering fingers touched, my hair stood on end. The music thrilled me beyond measure. I realised this must be his own composition, because it spoke Nagl in every semiquaver. I was privileged to be an audience of one as a song of pure genius was played for the first and last time. I was no longer the lonely lost soul who lived inside my head in real life.
The fingers, each one a bone in drag, moved across the pulsing keys. His face, even in the full light of the art deco lamp standard, was a shadow of itself. Each drop of sweat was as black as a spade on an ace.
The music's beauty was unbearable, its ugliness unimpeachable. I yearned for it to finish, so that I would be able to approach and tentatively fondle his body, he mine.
The keyboard became a sweat-slicked hide, swelling up so that his fingers actually moved inside it, as if he reached for the innards of some serpentine creature. Thus, the bizarre harmonies sounded from within our heads, not from out inward - as dreams dictated.
Piecemeal, the music tailed off, with an ending as unsatisfying as the restaurant's food we'd only just consumed. I vaguely recall leaving the music room and climbing the many flights of Nagl's stairs, his talons exquisitely embedded in my palm, as he led me ever upward.
I heard others making an unsightly clattering upon the fire escapes outside but could not tell whether they went up or down. They shouted something about a pirate uprising, but I couldn't be sure.
I fell into Nagl's arms as he dragged me into his vast four-poster, only to be swaddled by silk sheets. And I never saw the creature he must have become, only felt it like a child at a party guessing what the mystery object was in the otherwise shapless bag. The act of sexing insects wasn't a starter. Snakes on heat were two a penny. This dream cost a million souls to stage it...
I woke to find myself pinned to my own sodden mattress by Rabbit. I let him have his way, because love is stronger than hate, and less lasting.
Not long afterwards, the Sixties abruptly ended with a lurch towards blander decades. I assume Nagl still drifts from party to party, no doubt fibbing about being a concert pianist and owning a large house in Hampstead. I can no longer have dreams. Yet I hope Nagl can dream of me.
(published 'Peeping Tom' 1991)
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
The Dark Hem
Asquew bought HABLA USTED as an investment.
Its corner turrets were imposing, but it was a pity a TV satellite dish had been erected on one of them. The disused balconies were choked with a plant-life which didn't evidently need real ground for its roots. He decided to leave repairing the chimney-stacks until the house's future was settled. Planning permission for the place to be converted into offices was not out of the question and he mentally listed out the necessary changes, including communication systems and toilet facilities. In the meantime, he decided to allow his three Aunts to live there at a reasonable rent since they had all recently been widowed and made cheap caretakers.
"Do you think the roof leaks?" asked Mildred to the other two who were sounding-boards rather than an audience.
"It hasn't rained for ages," piped up Louise, as if that were an answer.
"Those chimneys don't look too safe to me, so I reckon we should ask him to do something or other about them," continued Mildred, using a non-sequitur as a conversational ploy.
Tania didn't say anything. The three women were sitting in one of the front rooms where the paltry cul-de-sac's lamps outside seeped sufficiently indoors, leaving the switching on of the electricity to the very last minute.
"Can't you put your knitting down for a while, Mildred and give me a hand with my crossword," said Louise.
"Only if you help me ball the rest of my wool later."
Meanwhile, Tania stoked the open coal fire which also helped to illuminate the room, throwing three Auntish shadows across the garish wallpaper. They had already taken down the diagonal ducks, as such knickknacks were not to their taste. Well, at least, Tania did not object to them being taken down. Louise had hung a picture of her late husband upon the ducks' faded outlines. Mildred was the shy one, on the quiet. She had always dressed like a spinster, even when she was happily married. Her eyes were often settled on the medium stare, showing only whites from certain angles, as if she were examining the insides of her head. Most of the day she dressed in a dowdy house-coat and wielded a tickle-duster. She did not even change come the evenings. Her husband's name was Bob. Asquew remembered Bob, particularly. Louise was more certain of her identity than Mildred. Self-assurance was not exactly correct, but more a selfless definition of purpose. Her clothes were ever immaculate, usually twin-sets with cascading pearl necklaces and heavy tweed skirts, whatever the weather. Unlike Mildred, she rather enjoyed wearing high heels, even at home. Her husband was Nigel, an uncommon name for the times. Asquew never knew him, since Louise had met Nigel in Kuala Lumpur where they had settled after marriage. No one stood out as memorable.
Tania didn't say much. Whilst Mildred overcame her shyness by strange remarks, Tania was silent most of the time, mainly because she had very little to say ... a credit to her. Her clothes could not be characterised, since she wore different outfits according to mood. If each choice of apparel was evidence, then she was not only in a state of near continuous flux but also varied between a very wide spectrum of emotions. Tonight, she wore a bright red silk scarf at the throat, providing contrast to the black cocktail dress, grey fish-net stockings and, like Louise, high heel shoes, all specially sported for the short evening. Her husband was Fred whom Asquew thought was a bit of a prat. Fred, Bob and Asquew had been drinking friends, and Fred had often ended the evening by drinking himself silly and slapping the other two on the back as if he thought they liked him. Bob and Asquew had separate get-togethers, without Fred.
So, Mildred was shy but relatively talkative, showily domesticated, somewhat reflective, widow of Bob. Louise was forceful, confident, unreflective, member of the twin-set brigade, widow of Nigel, had lived in Kuala Lumpur for most of her life. Tania was quiet, but not shy, changeable moods and costumes, unshowy in her tasks, widow of Fred (prat).
Asquew's mother, Deirdre, another sister, had died in giving birth. None of them were memorable. Particularly Deirdre, who did not figure much at all.
Asquew stood on the pavement opposite the house. There were not many houses in the cul-de-sac, the only other one being an even larger (but without the turrets) close to the railway embankment. That other house had also been on the market, when he was negotiating for HABLA USTED. HABLA USTED was not Asquew's name for it, but the nameplate was still above the front entrance, and the Aunts had not complained. One of them even wiped it over daily. He had been upset by Bob's sudden death. In fact, it was one of those deaths which lingered in the mind, since he had been on holiday in Spain with Mildred and, forgetting for a moment that foreign traffic went the wrong way, he had stepped boldly into an on-going motorbike and, mercifully, died without further preamble. From then on, drinking just with Fred, out of duty to habit, was barely bearable. And now with Fred gone by means of an abrupt heart attack, Asquew was again a free agent. Being an only child and unmarried, his simple concerns were the three Aunts and the furtherance of his money-making. He had even given up drinking, since he had nobody with whom to share visits to the pub. Saved a lot of loot this way, too.
Yes, HABLA USTED was a bit of a monstrosity. The sooner the satellite dish was removed the better, but that would not help a lot. The chimneystacks were indeed outlandish, far too tall. In Victorian times, he assumed, they liked smoke to be carried up as far as possible before letting it go. This evening, one of the chimneypots was puffing paltry amounts which stayed put in the still air like grey cotton-wool around the cluster of TV aerials. From time to time, he saw one of the sisters fiddling with the curtains of the front room. They did not pull them across fully, but only halfway, a fact which mystified Asquew. In any event, he was finding it impossible to remember which Aunt was which. He had to mull over their attributes in his mind. One of them had been abroad for most of her life, married to someone or called Nigel. So the one Bob always kissed goodbye before going to the pub, she must have been...
He couldn't bother to put names to faces. As a businessman, he had enough to do keeping track of his contacts. And his contacts had wives, too. After all, the Aunts were simply house fillings, until he had made decisions relating to HABLA USTED. He did, however, have a soft spot for them, and widowed Aunts of their age were surely intended to be at least a trifle batty.
Round the corner from the cul-de-sac was one of the pubs he used to frequent with Bob and Fred. He fancied a little tipple, despite the abstinence of the last few months, and he left the environs of HABLA USTED, whilst considering the intricacies of setting a fair commercial rent for office premises in this otherwise residential area. He liked summarising, totting up, drawing tentative conclusions...
Asquew's mother, Deirdre, had married early in life. His father, Tom, was a stocky fellow made even stockier by the heavy lifting and carrying he did at the docks. He drank too much and knocked his wife around when he had finished drinking. He loved her too much to mark her face. But her bottom was often black and blue, criss-crossed with fresh red welts. Tom was not as bad as had been painted, Asquew thought. At least one of Deirdre's sisters had kept a soft spot for Tom. Asquew suspected, Deirdre was in the dark as to whether Louise, Mildred or Tania were at the guilty end of Tom's canoodling - that is, before one of them went off to Kuala Lumpur.
Asquew had enough problems ridding himself of his own feelings about Deirdre's death, without taking on anybody else's. The whole affair was too complicated to consider as a whole ... like HABLA USTED itself which, because of the railway, the trees and the high wall around the cemetery opposite, there was never any one vantage point with a complete view of the roofs, stacks, turrets and windows.
Asquew felt that human histories and emotions could never be encompassed by one person. You needed different viewpoints (even if some were misguided) to obtain as true a picture as possible. Tom, after all, was never so black as he was painted. He took one last look for the night at HABLA USTED before submitting to the desire for a drink. But who was that man at one of the half-drawn windows? Not a question he wanted asking, exactly. How could an impossibility happen? The male figure once seen, was gone, and could easily have been mistaken for one of the three Aunts. He decided not to follow it up. He had enough problems and he shuffled slowly, almost against his own will, towards the Spread Eagle pub.
Mildred tried to get the others to bed. She liked making sure the fire was damped down (after Tania's careless poking), lightly Ewbanking the carpet to paddle-brush up the odd macaroon speck, turning off all the lights ... an endless list of chores if she tried to tot them up. She had certainly had enough chat about Kuala Lumpur tonight to last her a lifetime. If all the so-called facts about that godforsaken place could be paraphrased and documented it would be as good as having visited the place oneself. She thought she knew London well enough by having happened to live there all her life - but Louise's Kuala Lumpur ... it almost seemed she knew it better than London, by virtue of being one step removed. Mildred shrugged - at least they didn't have A-to-Z maps of Kuala Lumpur. Or did they? She would rather not know.
In any event, Louise had already retired for the night. Only Tania to go. And there was no getting through to her. She was as inscrutable as a dead trout on the fishmonger's slab. Still waters ran deep. Tania had a lot going for her, if only she would come out. Not exactly shy. More stuck-up. She took after Deirdre, in that respect.
The nights were drawing in and, as Tania eventually gathered herself together, Mildred squared up Louise's crossword book on the coffee table and bagged her own spools of wool. Upon undrawing the curtains ready for morning, she shuddered as she imagined a figure lurking near the cemetery opposite. Could that be somebody undergrunting in the newly plumbed bathroom upstairs? It was surely to be a long time before Mildred could find a slot for her ablutions. That came from sharing a bathroom.
A goods train trundled by, not allowing Mildred to hear Tania's mealy-mouthed "good night". Asquew would doubtlessly come tomorrow to collect the rent. She would ask him for a rent book. Even witn relations, one should have things above board. The house shook with the train's passage, en route for London Bridge Station further up the line. Such sounds accentuated loneliness. She wondered if there were trains in Kuala Lumpur. Louise had never mentioned them. So, probably not. Despite everthing, Mildred felt happy and secure, convinced she could see her whole life, past and future, from all angles.
When Tania died peacefully in her sleep, the remaining two sisters expected Asquew to allow them to stay on at HABLA USTED, but they couldn't each afford half of the total rent he was previously charging.
Asquew smiled. The sisters were pets. They knew where their bread was buttered. At least, there was no possible motivation for them to have wanted Tania's death. Where money was concerned love often relegated itself to second place.
"Yes, you may continue at your current individual rents." He couldn't help making it sound business-like. Mildred nodded a thank you, for once at a loss for words. Louise tried to think of a word for her crossword but, as usual, she failed. It had seven letters and the gaps could only be vowels. The puzzles had been even more difficult when she lived in Kuala Lumpur.
Tania's last costume, the one she wore dead for the funeral, was not exactly a tour de force... Louise couldn't finish the memory. Tania had only passed away two weeks ago and what was a fortnight between sisters? Bitchiness was only one step removed from mental cruelty. You cannot divorce a blood relation.
Asquew decided he had at least buttoned down the identity of the remaining Aunts. Two were easier to handle than three. But he couldn't avoid the memory of the face he had spotted between the curtains the night of Tania's death. If only recognition could reach that far. Not a police matter, more a family one. No good thinking such thoughts. It made no sense to think.
He had indeed visited the Spread Eagle, but at the last moment decided to order a mineral water instead of a beer. He had never really believed in drinking on his own. Fred had been such a prat, but he was useful as a drinking-board. The fizzy water didn't seem to have a flavour, but it was equally obvious that he had lost his taste for life ... even as far back as when Deirdre died giving birth to his nameless dead sister.
Mildred looked at Asquew. In the old days, men had been men. Bob, her husband, had been quite a bit older than Asquew. He had been a man's man, whatever that was supposed to mean. Asquew would never be a proper man. He pretended to make money, but often ended up owing it. Take this house for example - dearly bought with Deirdre's money. He would be nowhere without that little windfall. Everyone seemed to die at convenient moments for Asquew. Even Tom, his father. But that was another story. Somewhere along the line, a family tree would have to be drawn up with no gaps. Like most crossword puzzles, the clues were sure to fit together.
Mildred and Louise did not talk after Asquew had left. The roof, he promised, did not leak, but a man would be coming round to clear the balconies and dismantle the satellite dish. With the docks closed down, there was a lot of unemployment in the area and many odd job men about. Time for an early night, thought Mildred. Slots in the bathtime rota were getting easier to find. First a bit of light Ewbanking to break sweat.
How someone like Louise could have married Nigel, it was all like a dream now ... with the added confusion as to the identity of the dreamer.
Kuala Lumpur looked more like London, for an oriental city. Amid all the mosques, there was one which appeared remarkably like St Paul's Cathedral. And the muezzins sounded as if they were wailing out newspaper sellers' calls rather than anything to do with religion.
Louise wandered amid the Persian market, feeling carpets, running necklaces over her hands, tasting spicy titbits ... and, there, there was Nigel, like a knight on a white charger. Except he was selling cigarettes in a booth in Leicester Square...
Mildred awoke from Louise's nightmare.
She was in a cold sweat. She could hear something or other moving about on the roof above her bedroom. She went to the window but the cul-de-sac's light opposite was nearly out. The satellite dish glinted, as if it might be slowly revolving. One of the house's turrets was close to her bedroom's bay window, but that night it seemed like a separate building, a lighthouse or folly. She was convinced she could see half of the moon shining through between the turret and the mainland of HABLA USTED.
Mildred wept, knowing that death was not as distant as it used to be. But all her tears would need to be eked out ... for Ruth (who was lost at the age of two in an accident with scalding water), for Louise (yet to be lost), for Bill (lost in the First World War), for Deirdre (lost in fruitless childbirth), for Tania (lost in her bed in this very house), for Hubert (lost in the Indian Ocean during the second world war), for Tom (lost from the top of his crane at the docks), for Nigel whom she never knew (lost through a terribly painful oriental disease), Fred (lost in his pint of beer at the Spread Eagle, as he always predicted he would be), for Bob (lost in suicide), for Asquew (who would leave no formal children of his own but was a rogue father nevertheless), finally for Mildred.
Mildred knitted out the clicks of night for a while. Or was it Louise? Even Tania? None were memorable enough to count (or list).
An undergrunt outside as the dish was manhandled away in the dark.
(published 'Chills' 1996)
Its corner turrets were imposing, but it was a pity a TV satellite dish had been erected on one of them. The disused balconies were choked with a plant-life which didn't evidently need real ground for its roots. He decided to leave repairing the chimney-stacks until the house's future was settled. Planning permission for the place to be converted into offices was not out of the question and he mentally listed out the necessary changes, including communication systems and toilet facilities. In the meantime, he decided to allow his three Aunts to live there at a reasonable rent since they had all recently been widowed and made cheap caretakers.
"Do you think the roof leaks?" asked Mildred to the other two who were sounding-boards rather than an audience.
"It hasn't rained for ages," piped up Louise, as if that were an answer.
"Those chimneys don't look too safe to me, so I reckon we should ask him to do something or other about them," continued Mildred, using a non-sequitur as a conversational ploy.
Tania didn't say anything. The three women were sitting in one of the front rooms where the paltry cul-de-sac's lamps outside seeped sufficiently indoors, leaving the switching on of the electricity to the very last minute.
"Can't you put your knitting down for a while, Mildred and give me a hand with my crossword," said Louise.
"Only if you help me ball the rest of my wool later."
Meanwhile, Tania stoked the open coal fire which also helped to illuminate the room, throwing three Auntish shadows across the garish wallpaper. They had already taken down the diagonal ducks, as such knickknacks were not to their taste. Well, at least, Tania did not object to them being taken down. Louise had hung a picture of her late husband upon the ducks' faded outlines. Mildred was the shy one, on the quiet. She had always dressed like a spinster, even when she was happily married. Her eyes were often settled on the medium stare, showing only whites from certain angles, as if she were examining the insides of her head. Most of the day she dressed in a dowdy house-coat and wielded a tickle-duster. She did not even change come the evenings. Her husband's name was Bob. Asquew remembered Bob, particularly. Louise was more certain of her identity than Mildred. Self-assurance was not exactly correct, but more a selfless definition of purpose. Her clothes were ever immaculate, usually twin-sets with cascading pearl necklaces and heavy tweed skirts, whatever the weather. Unlike Mildred, she rather enjoyed wearing high heels, even at home. Her husband was Nigel, an uncommon name for the times. Asquew never knew him, since Louise had met Nigel in Kuala Lumpur where they had settled after marriage. No one stood out as memorable.
Tania didn't say much. Whilst Mildred overcame her shyness by strange remarks, Tania was silent most of the time, mainly because she had very little to say ... a credit to her. Her clothes could not be characterised, since she wore different outfits according to mood. If each choice of apparel was evidence, then she was not only in a state of near continuous flux but also varied between a very wide spectrum of emotions. Tonight, she wore a bright red silk scarf at the throat, providing contrast to the black cocktail dress, grey fish-net stockings and, like Louise, high heel shoes, all specially sported for the short evening. Her husband was Fred whom Asquew thought was a bit of a prat. Fred, Bob and Asquew had been drinking friends, and Fred had often ended the evening by drinking himself silly and slapping the other two on the back as if he thought they liked him. Bob and Asquew had separate get-togethers, without Fred.
So, Mildred was shy but relatively talkative, showily domesticated, somewhat reflective, widow of Bob. Louise was forceful, confident, unreflective, member of the twin-set brigade, widow of Nigel, had lived in Kuala Lumpur for most of her life. Tania was quiet, but not shy, changeable moods and costumes, unshowy in her tasks, widow of Fred (prat).
Asquew's mother, Deirdre, another sister, had died in giving birth. None of them were memorable. Particularly Deirdre, who did not figure much at all.
Asquew stood on the pavement opposite the house. There were not many houses in the cul-de-sac, the only other one being an even larger (but without the turrets) close to the railway embankment. That other house had also been on the market, when he was negotiating for HABLA USTED. HABLA USTED was not Asquew's name for it, but the nameplate was still above the front entrance, and the Aunts had not complained. One of them even wiped it over daily. He had been upset by Bob's sudden death. In fact, it was one of those deaths which lingered in the mind, since he had been on holiday in Spain with Mildred and, forgetting for a moment that foreign traffic went the wrong way, he had stepped boldly into an on-going motorbike and, mercifully, died without further preamble. From then on, drinking just with Fred, out of duty to habit, was barely bearable. And now with Fred gone by means of an abrupt heart attack, Asquew was again a free agent. Being an only child and unmarried, his simple concerns were the three Aunts and the furtherance of his money-making. He had even given up drinking, since he had nobody with whom to share visits to the pub. Saved a lot of loot this way, too.
Yes, HABLA USTED was a bit of a monstrosity. The sooner the satellite dish was removed the better, but that would not help a lot. The chimneystacks were indeed outlandish, far too tall. In Victorian times, he assumed, they liked smoke to be carried up as far as possible before letting it go. This evening, one of the chimneypots was puffing paltry amounts which stayed put in the still air like grey cotton-wool around the cluster of TV aerials. From time to time, he saw one of the sisters fiddling with the curtains of the front room. They did not pull them across fully, but only halfway, a fact which mystified Asquew. In any event, he was finding it impossible to remember which Aunt was which. He had to mull over their attributes in his mind. One of them had been abroad for most of her life, married to someone or called Nigel. So the one Bob always kissed goodbye before going to the pub, she must have been...
He couldn't bother to put names to faces. As a businessman, he had enough to do keeping track of his contacts. And his contacts had wives, too. After all, the Aunts were simply house fillings, until he had made decisions relating to HABLA USTED. He did, however, have a soft spot for them, and widowed Aunts of their age were surely intended to be at least a trifle batty.
Round the corner from the cul-de-sac was one of the pubs he used to frequent with Bob and Fred. He fancied a little tipple, despite the abstinence of the last few months, and he left the environs of HABLA USTED, whilst considering the intricacies of setting a fair commercial rent for office premises in this otherwise residential area. He liked summarising, totting up, drawing tentative conclusions...
Asquew's mother, Deirdre, had married early in life. His father, Tom, was a stocky fellow made even stockier by the heavy lifting and carrying he did at the docks. He drank too much and knocked his wife around when he had finished drinking. He loved her too much to mark her face. But her bottom was often black and blue, criss-crossed with fresh red welts. Tom was not as bad as had been painted, Asquew thought. At least one of Deirdre's sisters had kept a soft spot for Tom. Asquew suspected, Deirdre was in the dark as to whether Louise, Mildred or Tania were at the guilty end of Tom's canoodling - that is, before one of them went off to Kuala Lumpur.
Asquew had enough problems ridding himself of his own feelings about Deirdre's death, without taking on anybody else's. The whole affair was too complicated to consider as a whole ... like HABLA USTED itself which, because of the railway, the trees and the high wall around the cemetery opposite, there was never any one vantage point with a complete view of the roofs, stacks, turrets and windows.
Asquew felt that human histories and emotions could never be encompassed by one person. You needed different viewpoints (even if some were misguided) to obtain as true a picture as possible. Tom, after all, was never so black as he was painted. He took one last look for the night at HABLA USTED before submitting to the desire for a drink. But who was that man at one of the half-drawn windows? Not a question he wanted asking, exactly. How could an impossibility happen? The male figure once seen, was gone, and could easily have been mistaken for one of the three Aunts. He decided not to follow it up. He had enough problems and he shuffled slowly, almost against his own will, towards the Spread Eagle pub.
Mildred tried to get the others to bed. She liked making sure the fire was damped down (after Tania's careless poking), lightly Ewbanking the carpet to paddle-brush up the odd macaroon speck, turning off all the lights ... an endless list of chores if she tried to tot them up. She had certainly had enough chat about Kuala Lumpur tonight to last her a lifetime. If all the so-called facts about that godforsaken place could be paraphrased and documented it would be as good as having visited the place oneself. She thought she knew London well enough by having happened to live there all her life - but Louise's Kuala Lumpur ... it almost seemed she knew it better than London, by virtue of being one step removed. Mildred shrugged - at least they didn't have A-to-Z maps of Kuala Lumpur. Or did they? She would rather not know.
In any event, Louise had already retired for the night. Only Tania to go. And there was no getting through to her. She was as inscrutable as a dead trout on the fishmonger's slab. Still waters ran deep. Tania had a lot going for her, if only she would come out. Not exactly shy. More stuck-up. She took after Deirdre, in that respect.
The nights were drawing in and, as Tania eventually gathered herself together, Mildred squared up Louise's crossword book on the coffee table and bagged her own spools of wool. Upon undrawing the curtains ready for morning, she shuddered as she imagined a figure lurking near the cemetery opposite. Could that be somebody undergrunting in the newly plumbed bathroom upstairs? It was surely to be a long time before Mildred could find a slot for her ablutions. That came from sharing a bathroom.
A goods train trundled by, not allowing Mildred to hear Tania's mealy-mouthed "good night". Asquew would doubtlessly come tomorrow to collect the rent. She would ask him for a rent book. Even witn relations, one should have things above board. The house shook with the train's passage, en route for London Bridge Station further up the line. Such sounds accentuated loneliness. She wondered if there were trains in Kuala Lumpur. Louise had never mentioned them. So, probably not. Despite everthing, Mildred felt happy and secure, convinced she could see her whole life, past and future, from all angles.
When Tania died peacefully in her sleep, the remaining two sisters expected Asquew to allow them to stay on at HABLA USTED, but they couldn't each afford half of the total rent he was previously charging.
Asquew smiled. The sisters were pets. They knew where their bread was buttered. At least, there was no possible motivation for them to have wanted Tania's death. Where money was concerned love often relegated itself to second place.
"Yes, you may continue at your current individual rents." He couldn't help making it sound business-like. Mildred nodded a thank you, for once at a loss for words. Louise tried to think of a word for her crossword but, as usual, she failed. It had seven letters and the gaps could only be vowels. The puzzles had been even more difficult when she lived in Kuala Lumpur.
Tania's last costume, the one she wore dead for the funeral, was not exactly a tour de force... Louise couldn't finish the memory. Tania had only passed away two weeks ago and what was a fortnight between sisters? Bitchiness was only one step removed from mental cruelty. You cannot divorce a blood relation.
Asquew decided he had at least buttoned down the identity of the remaining Aunts. Two were easier to handle than three. But he couldn't avoid the memory of the face he had spotted between the curtains the night of Tania's death. If only recognition could reach that far. Not a police matter, more a family one. No good thinking such thoughts. It made no sense to think.
He had indeed visited the Spread Eagle, but at the last moment decided to order a mineral water instead of a beer. He had never really believed in drinking on his own. Fred had been such a prat, but he was useful as a drinking-board. The fizzy water didn't seem to have a flavour, but it was equally obvious that he had lost his taste for life ... even as far back as when Deirdre died giving birth to his nameless dead sister.
Mildred looked at Asquew. In the old days, men had been men. Bob, her husband, had been quite a bit older than Asquew. He had been a man's man, whatever that was supposed to mean. Asquew would never be a proper man. He pretended to make money, but often ended up owing it. Take this house for example - dearly bought with Deirdre's money. He would be nowhere without that little windfall. Everyone seemed to die at convenient moments for Asquew. Even Tom, his father. But that was another story. Somewhere along the line, a family tree would have to be drawn up with no gaps. Like most crossword puzzles, the clues were sure to fit together.
Mildred and Louise did not talk after Asquew had left. The roof, he promised, did not leak, but a man would be coming round to clear the balconies and dismantle the satellite dish. With the docks closed down, there was a lot of unemployment in the area and many odd job men about. Time for an early night, thought Mildred. Slots in the bathtime rota were getting easier to find. First a bit of light Ewbanking to break sweat.
How someone like Louise could have married Nigel, it was all like a dream now ... with the added confusion as to the identity of the dreamer.
Kuala Lumpur looked more like London, for an oriental city. Amid all the mosques, there was one which appeared remarkably like St Paul's Cathedral. And the muezzins sounded as if they were wailing out newspaper sellers' calls rather than anything to do with religion.
Louise wandered amid the Persian market, feeling carpets, running necklaces over her hands, tasting spicy titbits ... and, there, there was Nigel, like a knight on a white charger. Except he was selling cigarettes in a booth in Leicester Square...
Mildred awoke from Louise's nightmare.
She was in a cold sweat. She could hear something or other moving about on the roof above her bedroom. She went to the window but the cul-de-sac's light opposite was nearly out. The satellite dish glinted, as if it might be slowly revolving. One of the house's turrets was close to her bedroom's bay window, but that night it seemed like a separate building, a lighthouse or folly. She was convinced she could see half of the moon shining through between the turret and the mainland of HABLA USTED.
Mildred wept, knowing that death was not as distant as it used to be. But all her tears would need to be eked out ... for Ruth (who was lost at the age of two in an accident with scalding water), for Louise (yet to be lost), for Bill (lost in the First World War), for Deirdre (lost in fruitless childbirth), for Tania (lost in her bed in this very house), for Hubert (lost in the Indian Ocean during the second world war), for Tom (lost from the top of his crane at the docks), for Nigel whom she never knew (lost through a terribly painful oriental disease), Fred (lost in his pint of beer at the Spread Eagle, as he always predicted he would be), for Bob (lost in suicide), for Asquew (who would leave no formal children of his own but was a rogue father nevertheless), finally for Mildred.
Mildred knitted out the clicks of night for a while. Or was it Louise? Even Tania? None were memorable enough to count (or list).
An undergrunt outside as the dish was manhandled away in the dark.
(published 'Chills' 1996)
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Deathless In Venice
The House of Extra-Mural Studies had darksome towers rearing at each corner and Hyacinth Manning had promised to have me initiated there by its top Faculty. She picked me up at the gondola derrick, but she seemed different by night from what I remembered by day - for she was now literally dripping in her late husband's jewellery and sporting a waxen moustache she evidently (but mistakenly) considered to be fashionable.
We strolled, hand in hand, along the sidewalks, kicking dents into the kerb-paddlers who floated near enough to warrant such treatment, their exhausts really zoning us out, but we suddenly found ourselves amid the terracings of a night market, where some demonsters were demonstrating their wares to us few curfew-hoppers who were still about.
Hyacinth felt the thickness of one demonster's ornamented billy-bob.
"Try it!" she was invoked by the demonster and, if I had seen him by day, I'd've thought that the world'd gone crazy. Yet now, by night, he seemed to fit in better, since he wore a moon-mask and preened himself in black cockerel tights. To my growing horror, Hyacinth took the whole billy-bob into her mouth and gulped deeper than a simple swallow, whilst the demonster became grinnier than a round smile.
"Quicker than fast food," she scoffed - and we trended towards what we thought was the Main Street, following an esoteric streetwise slope of the land, eventually ending up, via several unaccountable ley-lines, in sight of the House of Extra-Mural Studies, the four topmost turrets of which vanished into the dark-choked sky. Yet the intrinsic body of the building was barricaded against us by wide canals and by the still inhabited two-up-two-down terraced back-to-back houses which belched chimneyfuls of smog from several silhouetted sets of stairway smokestacks.
"Well, we know where it is, but how to untangle these blind-alleys, rat-runs and back-doubles to get there?" I pondered.
Hyacinth shrugged and forged on, with me in her wake.
The grinny demonster hopped from zone to zone, dropping the more unsavoury parts of its body into the sidelines: but as soon as one part went the way of its predecessor, another grew for chucking.
By the time of which I speak, the citizens had grown accustomed to such busy busy busy critters riddling the streets with turnippy tumours as well as more dicky-dory appendages. Yet they welcomed this offure for their gardens: for, once planted, such demonster discards zip-sprouted as interlocking cauliflower-trees bearing, within days, great big dollops of putrid fruit.
"Enough to keep us going in these hard times," would say my old Ma, as she harvested the over-rich ruptures and melonheads from the meshed and mushy vines of her own particular zone. And, indeed, only the demonsters could straddle the zones. One zone was was as distant from any other zone by time rather than space - and, naturally, it was the commodity Time of of which the citizens such as Hyancinth and I (and my old Ma) had scant supply. "Give me just one hour extra before I do die," continued my old Ma, "and I'll use it to do good for others - but things being like they are, I've got no time even for myself." She was no doubt announcing this to her neighbour as they both tried to lean over the zone fence to gossip from opposite directions.
"Times are hard here, too," came back the usual response from a woman who patted her hair-style in an attempt to prove the existence of something or other. The demonsters took such conversations from zone to zone, zip-betweens toting message pads like there were no tomorrows.
One day, the demonster that Hyacinth had made more grinny than a circular Cheshire cheese entered burn-up on a specially energetic gambol between two tight interfaces. Thus, in transit, it dropped its scorched beer-belly into a field that was close by where my old Ma was pegging up my old Pa's pants on the washing-line, despite him having, in one zone, already died whilst, in another, he wasn't yet born.
The sight of something falling thus from the sky stirred my old Ma into saying something to at least somebody. "Blimey, another flipping flying saucer!" she told my old Pa's ghost which was probably just the wind ballooning out the pants into some figment of shape. A fresh wind, at that, for a change, she thought - with a grin.
The zones nudged each other in the night, like an audience at a saucy film. And from the tightening ancient furrow between the erosion of two chafing histories, there bloomed a bloatful of blood atop a mighty tree-stalk of mottled knotted flesh - one which threatened to encroach on another universe altogether. Infant demonsters clambered it like a school of zip-spiders, apparently zoned out and seeking a more likely reality. Their arcane cries of "Oo-Fo! Oo-Fo!" echoed endlessly down the corridors, betokening a game they used to play only in jungles.
Hyacinth and I, needful to say, never reached the House of Extra-Mural Studies or, to be more precise, we are still looking for it. It's day by now, of course, and everything around us takes on the customary tawdry welter of last night's meals brought back on a tide of nausea. The back-to-backs huddle looser and, eventually, we can see a possible way through a yardful of step-ladders - to the rear of the House of Extra-Mural Studies.
Yes, the sun's spiked on one of its towers like a lump of orange phlegm. Hyacinth's moustache runs down her chin like a Bogarde of Bogies in a blind Venetian beach-alley. This gives her the appearance of a child in fear of its parents, having gobbled up all their chocolate. Her jewels are now seen for what they are, simply slave-chains. Her tongue slips the prison of her mouth and scuttles along the kerb-gutter like a demonster's sickest afterbirth. Naturally, this prevents her speaking and, entirely dislocated, she dashes herself against the wall of the House of Extra-Mural Studies - without avail.
A prison always keeps its walls firmly shut to prisoners. Even a Zone Manager, as Hyacinth was training to become, can end up spider-whipped against the bricked-up bars, if a forced entry is attempted. Yet Hyacinth is more grinny than a demonster. I'm quite grinny, too. Stoics to the last. Being the person she is, Hyacinth's destiny is to be entrapped on the outside - among all the mixed-up kids and unredeeming lunacy that being on the outside inevitably entails. As for myself, if I weren't so grinny as an oval oo-fo, I'd be weepy, thinking of my old Ma who wanted me to become a better person than my old Pa - and, really, being a good person actually means being one. Equally, death can only follow life.
(published 'Hallow*Zine' 1996)
We strolled, hand in hand, along the sidewalks, kicking dents into the kerb-paddlers who floated near enough to warrant such treatment, their exhausts really zoning us out, but we suddenly found ourselves amid the terracings of a night market, where some demonsters were demonstrating their wares to us few curfew-hoppers who were still about.
Hyacinth felt the thickness of one demonster's ornamented billy-bob.
"Try it!" she was invoked by the demonster and, if I had seen him by day, I'd've thought that the world'd gone crazy. Yet now, by night, he seemed to fit in better, since he wore a moon-mask and preened himself in black cockerel tights. To my growing horror, Hyacinth took the whole billy-bob into her mouth and gulped deeper than a simple swallow, whilst the demonster became grinnier than a round smile.
"Quicker than fast food," she scoffed - and we trended towards what we thought was the Main Street, following an esoteric streetwise slope of the land, eventually ending up, via several unaccountable ley-lines, in sight of the House of Extra-Mural Studies, the four topmost turrets of which vanished into the dark-choked sky. Yet the intrinsic body of the building was barricaded against us by wide canals and by the still inhabited two-up-two-down terraced back-to-back houses which belched chimneyfuls of smog from several silhouetted sets of stairway smokestacks.
"Well, we know where it is, but how to untangle these blind-alleys, rat-runs and back-doubles to get there?" I pondered.
Hyacinth shrugged and forged on, with me in her wake.
The grinny demonster hopped from zone to zone, dropping the more unsavoury parts of its body into the sidelines: but as soon as one part went the way of its predecessor, another grew for chucking.
By the time of which I speak, the citizens had grown accustomed to such busy busy busy critters riddling the streets with turnippy tumours as well as more dicky-dory appendages. Yet they welcomed this offure for their gardens: for, once planted, such demonster discards zip-sprouted as interlocking cauliflower-trees bearing, within days, great big dollops of putrid fruit.
"Enough to keep us going in these hard times," would say my old Ma, as she harvested the over-rich ruptures and melonheads from the meshed and mushy vines of her own particular zone. And, indeed, only the demonsters could straddle the zones. One zone was was as distant from any other zone by time rather than space - and, naturally, it was the commodity Time of of which the citizens such as Hyancinth and I (and my old Ma) had scant supply. "Give me just one hour extra before I do die," continued my old Ma, "and I'll use it to do good for others - but things being like they are, I've got no time even for myself." She was no doubt announcing this to her neighbour as they both tried to lean over the zone fence to gossip from opposite directions.
"Times are hard here, too," came back the usual response from a woman who patted her hair-style in an attempt to prove the existence of something or other. The demonsters took such conversations from zone to zone, zip-betweens toting message pads like there were no tomorrows.
One day, the demonster that Hyacinth had made more grinny than a circular Cheshire cheese entered burn-up on a specially energetic gambol between two tight interfaces. Thus, in transit, it dropped its scorched beer-belly into a field that was close by where my old Ma was pegging up my old Pa's pants on the washing-line, despite him having, in one zone, already died whilst, in another, he wasn't yet born.
The sight of something falling thus from the sky stirred my old Ma into saying something to at least somebody. "Blimey, another flipping flying saucer!" she told my old Pa's ghost which was probably just the wind ballooning out the pants into some figment of shape. A fresh wind, at that, for a change, she thought - with a grin.
The zones nudged each other in the night, like an audience at a saucy film. And from the tightening ancient furrow between the erosion of two chafing histories, there bloomed a bloatful of blood atop a mighty tree-stalk of mottled knotted flesh - one which threatened to encroach on another universe altogether. Infant demonsters clambered it like a school of zip-spiders, apparently zoned out and seeking a more likely reality. Their arcane cries of "Oo-Fo! Oo-Fo!" echoed endlessly down the corridors, betokening a game they used to play only in jungles.
Hyacinth and I, needful to say, never reached the House of Extra-Mural Studies or, to be more precise, we are still looking for it. It's day by now, of course, and everything around us takes on the customary tawdry welter of last night's meals brought back on a tide of nausea. The back-to-backs huddle looser and, eventually, we can see a possible way through a yardful of step-ladders - to the rear of the House of Extra-Mural Studies.
Yes, the sun's spiked on one of its towers like a lump of orange phlegm. Hyacinth's moustache runs down her chin like a Bogarde of Bogies in a blind Venetian beach-alley. This gives her the appearance of a child in fear of its parents, having gobbled up all their chocolate. Her jewels are now seen for what they are, simply slave-chains. Her tongue slips the prison of her mouth and scuttles along the kerb-gutter like a demonster's sickest afterbirth. Naturally, this prevents her speaking and, entirely dislocated, she dashes herself against the wall of the House of Extra-Mural Studies - without avail.
A prison always keeps its walls firmly shut to prisoners. Even a Zone Manager, as Hyacinth was training to become, can end up spider-whipped against the bricked-up bars, if a forced entry is attempted. Yet Hyacinth is more grinny than a demonster. I'm quite grinny, too. Stoics to the last. Being the person she is, Hyacinth's destiny is to be entrapped on the outside - among all the mixed-up kids and unredeeming lunacy that being on the outside inevitably entails. As for myself, if I weren't so grinny as an oval oo-fo, I'd be weepy, thinking of my old Ma who wanted me to become a better person than my old Pa - and, really, being a good person actually means being one. Equally, death can only follow life.
(published 'Hallow*Zine' 1996)
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Both Sides Of Midnight
There must have been a full moon the day I was born. If it were not for the screaming, the doctors would have heard themselves tell each other that it couldn't be judged where my body ended and my mother's began. Her extraordinarily fulsome pubes and my fur, at the best of times, were difficult to distinguish apart, even by stroking, let alone at eye's length. And, growing up, you see, dear soul, meant my memory became longer and longer, its starting-point disappearing, as it did, beyond the womb itself - like a limitless umbilical of dead-end thought: dead at both ends.
Some people are so moribund towards the middle of their life, they may as well have died properly in some otherwise unplanned schoolyard playtime accident in their youth. But those, like me, who live life to the full, do not have sufficient time to worry about such concerns. I always knew, without even trying, exactly what sort of creature I was. Life, you see, was not only constituted of waking hours but also sleeping ones. I lived existence to the full, not merely life. I gritted my teeth and stared God full in the eye and expected Him to pray to me, whilst at my school, they taught us that praying should actually be the other way round. I laughed. Yes, I laughed - not out loud, but behind my praying hands, as lessons came to the end for the day, and we were told to perch our tiny chairs upside down on the desks - ready for the school caretaker's broom. My chair, however, I always balanced legs down on the sloping desk, the way God meant it to sit - more precarious, true, dear soul, but much more thrilling to see whether it toppled before Miss Crossbrow saw my wicked prank.
I had a special school friend whom I tutored in my ways. Harry was his name. There was often a pinafore-frocked girl tagging along with him and she was called Tara. Neither of them, of course, possessed the nature of the thing that I'd been born as. Neither of them, come to that, suspected anything untoward from their point of view with regard to myself - nor that on some days I slept even less than simply not sleeping.
Yes, on nights when dreams became real, instead of placing my palms flat together in mock prayer to God, I coiled them into conch shapes and horned through them - a baying, a howl, a wail, a roar, a siren screech: or all of these things at once. But now I'm older, wiser and fully aware that, if I am to go on living an existence worthy of you, dear soul, I need to make human dreams as real as mine: so that their dreams can later flesh out my own dreams when the need comes - since it is true, you see, that without such sustenance, I must eventually release hold of the umbilical universe, having by then only brittle claws to cling on with.
Harry married Tara. I sometimes wonder if it was my doing thay they fell in love in the first place. With my presence making them second best to each other, this factor became common ground between them.
Later, I grew to need their protection as a couple. When the three of us were still ten, I whispered secrets in their ears, first to Harry, then to Tara, secrets which inevitably became their own secrets from each other, dire secrets, deadly secrets, secrets that bound them inextricably to you, dear soul. Thus, I should not have been surprised when they invited me to live with them as their lodger, after the marriage. But they had, by then, forgotten the childishness of secrets transferred at playtime in the schoolyard. Humans always devalue their past that way. Only special creatures like you, dear soul, can remain endebted to your circle of durations: pasts, presents, futures, all wheeling around the moment that is none of these things, the continuous moment of fear and sorrow, the core moment which the evil of joy cannot possibly besmirch.
Yes, Harry and Tara became my step-parents, in all but name - and their own eventual children were my siblings despite these siblings calling me Uncle. It was as if Harry and Tara instinctively felt some responsibility to the lost soul that had once befriended them when they needed it most amid the dream-ringed islands of childhood.
If Harry and Tara remain mere names for cardboard cut-outs, I shall not be able to cast them into the roles I have in store for them. Even actors need the underpinning of their own personalities to bring to their parts. They require strengths and weaknesses: the latter to prove them real, the former to stiffen the vessels they will provide for my dreams, dreams that might otherwise burst like bubbles. So, yes, dear soul, we must spend some little time fleshing out Harry and Tara.
Meanwhile, I escape into the monthly punctuations of my endless night. But you have no need, dear soul, to be put through such ordeals. You simply watch, for your own benefit, seeing the creamy-pink skin choking and sprouting wiry fluff, as if the pores are lakes of sea and the flesh an intertissue of connected islands ... and the monsters bristle their backs: a hirsute archipelago of antipodal angst. Yet you feel my teeth with your finger-ends, fast finding my fangs with your claws. Swabs of tangled hide corrode your throat, worse than gagging on cotton-balls. Pubes forest out into bouquets of undead passion-flowers. You hear the Devil bending your ear: not praying to you, as God sometimes did, but urging, exhorting, whipping you up into a frenzy of fur...
Harry and Tara, inside the house, hear you howling from the other side of the parlour window. They shrug. They believe all their children are tucked up safely together in the nursery upstairs. Like most people nowadays, they stay home at night, for the simple fear of going out. The television keeps them indoors, not only through the sheer delight of its entertainment but also with its frightening depiction of the so-called evil that lives outside both sides of midnight.
The beast they hear every month within the precinct of their garden is, they believe, just another case in point: probably one of the many unemployed on a drug gig. Tara shrugs. She has shrugged so often, her shoulders are level with her once beautiful eyes. She turns up the volume of the mind-snatching television and then, as if in challenge, tries to speak above it:
"There's never anything on."
Self-evidently, there is at least something on. What she means is that there's nothing on she wants to watch, but watch it she does, nevertheless. Harold nods in agreement. He has nodded so often, his nose is in his lap.
He says nothing: Shall I try another channel?
And without waiting even for a silent reply, Harold remotely zaps out, eyes glazed, mind in suspended animation ... finger pumping uselessly upon the numbered pads of the remote control. The scratching on the parlour window goes unnoticed. The rising shrieks from the nursery, too. A nightmare of rough schoolyard play. Followed by a dream of Father Christmas coming down the vestigial chimney like Red Riding Hood in drag. The Soot Queen.
I could no longer foist myself on Harry and Tara - nor blame them for the strange twists of reality dressed up as imagination. They'd never be able to be vessels for anything but themselves. I wanted to smash through the couple's double-glazed windows and somehow prove I wasn't snug as a bug in a rug with the rest of their children upstairs - although, dear soul, you were up there, weren't you, aren't you? Nuzzling those very children: disguised as a pet puppy dog with praying paws - a chip off my old furry block. You were to be a Christmas present from Santa Claws. And, with a smile of near compassion, I snuck away into another part of the benighted suburbs to find stronger story characters than Harry and Tara.
The Lady of Night: your real mother of death: she opens her largest valve and draws in the umbilical blood-vessel upon which you've been threaded since that terrible day in the schoolyard when your neck snapped beyond redemption of either pretend play or priest. The Lady of Night pushes your huge bristly outer innard so that it is now within you: whilst snatching out the previous contents of your body, dear soul, to make room for it - those human contents that made a simple kind wolf into a person-tainted monster.
Meanwhile, having found more human creatures to flesh out elsewhere, I wonder whose soul you wield now, dear zombie.
(published ‘Enter The Realm’ 1994)
Some people are so moribund towards the middle of their life, they may as well have died properly in some otherwise unplanned schoolyard playtime accident in their youth. But those, like me, who live life to the full, do not have sufficient time to worry about such concerns. I always knew, without even trying, exactly what sort of creature I was. Life, you see, was not only constituted of waking hours but also sleeping ones. I lived existence to the full, not merely life. I gritted my teeth and stared God full in the eye and expected Him to pray to me, whilst at my school, they taught us that praying should actually be the other way round. I laughed. Yes, I laughed - not out loud, but behind my praying hands, as lessons came to the end for the day, and we were told to perch our tiny chairs upside down on the desks - ready for the school caretaker's broom. My chair, however, I always balanced legs down on the sloping desk, the way God meant it to sit - more precarious, true, dear soul, but much more thrilling to see whether it toppled before Miss Crossbrow saw my wicked prank.
I had a special school friend whom I tutored in my ways. Harry was his name. There was often a pinafore-frocked girl tagging along with him and she was called Tara. Neither of them, of course, possessed the nature of the thing that I'd been born as. Neither of them, come to that, suspected anything untoward from their point of view with regard to myself - nor that on some days I slept even less than simply not sleeping.
Yes, on nights when dreams became real, instead of placing my palms flat together in mock prayer to God, I coiled them into conch shapes and horned through them - a baying, a howl, a wail, a roar, a siren screech: or all of these things at once. But now I'm older, wiser and fully aware that, if I am to go on living an existence worthy of you, dear soul, I need to make human dreams as real as mine: so that their dreams can later flesh out my own dreams when the need comes - since it is true, you see, that without such sustenance, I must eventually release hold of the umbilical universe, having by then only brittle claws to cling on with.
Harry married Tara. I sometimes wonder if it was my doing thay they fell in love in the first place. With my presence making them second best to each other, this factor became common ground between them.
Later, I grew to need their protection as a couple. When the three of us were still ten, I whispered secrets in their ears, first to Harry, then to Tara, secrets which inevitably became their own secrets from each other, dire secrets, deadly secrets, secrets that bound them inextricably to you, dear soul. Thus, I should not have been surprised when they invited me to live with them as their lodger, after the marriage. But they had, by then, forgotten the childishness of secrets transferred at playtime in the schoolyard. Humans always devalue their past that way. Only special creatures like you, dear soul, can remain endebted to your circle of durations: pasts, presents, futures, all wheeling around the moment that is none of these things, the continuous moment of fear and sorrow, the core moment which the evil of joy cannot possibly besmirch.
Yes, Harry and Tara became my step-parents, in all but name - and their own eventual children were my siblings despite these siblings calling me Uncle. It was as if Harry and Tara instinctively felt some responsibility to the lost soul that had once befriended them when they needed it most amid the dream-ringed islands of childhood.
If Harry and Tara remain mere names for cardboard cut-outs, I shall not be able to cast them into the roles I have in store for them. Even actors need the underpinning of their own personalities to bring to their parts. They require strengths and weaknesses: the latter to prove them real, the former to stiffen the vessels they will provide for my dreams, dreams that might otherwise burst like bubbles. So, yes, dear soul, we must spend some little time fleshing out Harry and Tara.
Meanwhile, I escape into the monthly punctuations of my endless night. But you have no need, dear soul, to be put through such ordeals. You simply watch, for your own benefit, seeing the creamy-pink skin choking and sprouting wiry fluff, as if the pores are lakes of sea and the flesh an intertissue of connected islands ... and the monsters bristle their backs: a hirsute archipelago of antipodal angst. Yet you feel my teeth with your finger-ends, fast finding my fangs with your claws. Swabs of tangled hide corrode your throat, worse than gagging on cotton-balls. Pubes forest out into bouquets of undead passion-flowers. You hear the Devil bending your ear: not praying to you, as God sometimes did, but urging, exhorting, whipping you up into a frenzy of fur...
Harry and Tara, inside the house, hear you howling from the other side of the parlour window. They shrug. They believe all their children are tucked up safely together in the nursery upstairs. Like most people nowadays, they stay home at night, for the simple fear of going out. The television keeps them indoors, not only through the sheer delight of its entertainment but also with its frightening depiction of the so-called evil that lives outside both sides of midnight.
The beast they hear every month within the precinct of their garden is, they believe, just another case in point: probably one of the many unemployed on a drug gig. Tara shrugs. She has shrugged so often, her shoulders are level with her once beautiful eyes. She turns up the volume of the mind-snatching television and then, as if in challenge, tries to speak above it:
"There's never anything on."
Self-evidently, there is at least something on. What she means is that there's nothing on she wants to watch, but watch it she does, nevertheless. Harold nods in agreement. He has nodded so often, his nose is in his lap.
He says nothing: Shall I try another channel?
And without waiting even for a silent reply, Harold remotely zaps out, eyes glazed, mind in suspended animation ... finger pumping uselessly upon the numbered pads of the remote control. The scratching on the parlour window goes unnoticed. The rising shrieks from the nursery, too. A nightmare of rough schoolyard play. Followed by a dream of Father Christmas coming down the vestigial chimney like Red Riding Hood in drag. The Soot Queen.
I could no longer foist myself on Harry and Tara - nor blame them for the strange twists of reality dressed up as imagination. They'd never be able to be vessels for anything but themselves. I wanted to smash through the couple's double-glazed windows and somehow prove I wasn't snug as a bug in a rug with the rest of their children upstairs - although, dear soul, you were up there, weren't you, aren't you? Nuzzling those very children: disguised as a pet puppy dog with praying paws - a chip off my old furry block. You were to be a Christmas present from Santa Claws. And, with a smile of near compassion, I snuck away into another part of the benighted suburbs to find stronger story characters than Harry and Tara.
The Lady of Night: your real mother of death: she opens her largest valve and draws in the umbilical blood-vessel upon which you've been threaded since that terrible day in the schoolyard when your neck snapped beyond redemption of either pretend play or priest. The Lady of Night pushes your huge bristly outer innard so that it is now within you: whilst snatching out the previous contents of your body, dear soul, to make room for it - those human contents that made a simple kind wolf into a person-tainted monster.
Meanwhile, having found more human creatures to flesh out elsewhere, I wonder whose soul you wield now, dear zombie.
(published ‘Enter The Realm’ 1994)
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Backseat Dreamer
Many of the vehicles had been abandoned with no regard for the white lines that marked out the allotted spaces in the carpark. The snow that had covered the area had subsequently melted, thus giving an excuse for careless parking.
A shapely woman in a scanty frock approached the barrier, whereupon the ticket-dispenser machine thought she was a thing on wheels and handed her a reminder of the date and time printed on a stiff hard-to-lose card. She forthwith flicked it away into the darkness, as if participating in one of those ancient school-playground cigarette-card games—the blind-man's buff version.
She remembered that she sought a car (one with its headlights switched on) and a registration-plate matching the letters and numbers tattooed on her left breast—a combination she'd meticulously memorised the night before. If she ever turned into a nameless corpse, her compatriots would be in no doubt that it was her. The whereabouts of such a corpse would indicate the successful outcome of her mission—or not.
Yet none of the cars were alight. They simply squatted there like extinct baby-pods of prehistoric monster berserkers. She wandered in and out, unworried as to the floweriness of her own thoughts' language. She had been brainwashed only to take the illogical for granted. Amid the haywire aisles of scattered metal, she peered through the windows to ascertain the nature of any occupants and, if there were any, whether they were still alive and communicado. Not that she really wanted anything but an empty car. But the confusion derived from her training to seek that for which she did not seek, in the hope that such obliquity would lead her—by accident—to the thing she actually sought without knowing she sought it.
The sky had just started to activate sprinkler-systems of disabled snow, which seeped as sleet into her skimpy clothes, making her shiver...
The headlights came on suddenly. Not merely one or, even, two. All the cars broke their vows of silence and erupted into a life which, if the very beginning of the world had been witnessed, this would appear to be its obverse at the very end of time. An abrupt awakening as a prelude to death. She was caught in the cross-glares, eyes blinking, heart thumping, her mind full with memories of those shafts of twirling lateral light stirring the war-stricken night of her youth.
Having used confusion as a subterfuge for clarity, she could hardly recall how she had clambered into one of the cars and driven it from the car park. Even without the all-important card, the barrier had lifted of its own accord, knowing that, if it had not, it would have been smashed to smithereens. Even stones did bleed in certain phases of the cold blue moon.
She steered quickly through the slanting icicles of rain, her high-heeled feet playing the engine like a bass organ. She knew the bomb in the boot may also have had a life of its own, its short fuse matched to her own feminine one.
The streets through which she drove were completely unfamiliar but, at the same time, she knew exactly when to take certain turnings. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she thought she could discern the dark shape of someone sitting in the backseat. Yet, darkness, when it saw fit, could take whatever fumbling form it wanted.
Ah, there was a bridge: a mock-gothic affair which the street lighting moulded from almost nothing, so as to allow the river (or was it a railway track?) to be traversed as the crow (a very special crow) would drive. Was she mad? She felt an embodiment of someone else's dream. She felt calm, as she was certain that she had been warned about the encroachment of such madness. Madness was what made the job so dangerous. She would need to compare notes.
Driving to a halt at the brink of the bridge, she turned to see who may have been backseat-driving. But nobody there, only a pile of what appeared to be unwanted rubble from a building site.
She left the car and walked round to the rear where she could see tyre-tracks in the snow leading up to the back-wheels. The sleet had in fact resumed its snow disguise after settling. The marks were more akin to skids, as if she'd screeched to a halt and, on returning to the front, she saw why: the inky cut was just out of sight beyond the gaze of the headlights. The bridge was a cartilaginously cantilevered mass of pulsing flesh, ribbed further with engorged veins, parts fluted with perfectly linear tumours, other areas haphazardly sown with knobbly cancers beyond even the manufacture of crazy modern sculptors in clay or any other medium, and the pinions and stanchions upholstered with scarlet haunches of clumsily sawn meat—all being wrapped by snow and, conversely, dyeing it.
Tentatively, she first-footed upon the near edge of slimy gristle. It moved under her, as if hurt by her stilletoes. She shuffled forward, testing all the time, because the snow made nonsense of the structure's hidden strengths—like walking on a hammock, but with underlays of breathing, if not burping, animal-fat.
Halfway across, she looked back at the car, which immediately doused its lights as it trundled engineless in her wake. She was thus left invisible to anybody keeping watch. They could only guess whether she had reached the other side, before the boot blew...
Morning brought communal waking, with news of yet another car-bomb outrage. "Carnage leads nowhere," said the Prime Minsiter on the wireless. Nobody, however, appreciated the kindness of the terrorists in arranging for the mayhem to pre-date the bombblast. It lent a certain inevitability, if not an excuse.
Beneath the snow, there was a conical piece of rip-edged flesh with a coded message (D679 BBY) branded upon it. It was never discovered, so nobody would have to face such mystery; nobody would need to explain how a dream could leave bits of itself in the real world. Whatever the case, no party admitted responsibility.
(published 'Rictus' 1994)
A shapely woman in a scanty frock approached the barrier, whereupon the ticket-dispenser machine thought she was a thing on wheels and handed her a reminder of the date and time printed on a stiff hard-to-lose card. She forthwith flicked it away into the darkness, as if participating in one of those ancient school-playground cigarette-card games—the blind-man's buff version.
She remembered that she sought a car (one with its headlights switched on) and a registration-plate matching the letters and numbers tattooed on her left breast—a combination she'd meticulously memorised the night before. If she ever turned into a nameless corpse, her compatriots would be in no doubt that it was her. The whereabouts of such a corpse would indicate the successful outcome of her mission—or not.
Yet none of the cars were alight. They simply squatted there like extinct baby-pods of prehistoric monster berserkers. She wandered in and out, unworried as to the floweriness of her own thoughts' language. She had been brainwashed only to take the illogical for granted. Amid the haywire aisles of scattered metal, she peered through the windows to ascertain the nature of any occupants and, if there were any, whether they were still alive and communicado. Not that she really wanted anything but an empty car. But the confusion derived from her training to seek that for which she did not seek, in the hope that such obliquity would lead her—by accident—to the thing she actually sought without knowing she sought it.
The sky had just started to activate sprinkler-systems of disabled snow, which seeped as sleet into her skimpy clothes, making her shiver...
The headlights came on suddenly. Not merely one or, even, two. All the cars broke their vows of silence and erupted into a life which, if the very beginning of the world had been witnessed, this would appear to be its obverse at the very end of time. An abrupt awakening as a prelude to death. She was caught in the cross-glares, eyes blinking, heart thumping, her mind full with memories of those shafts of twirling lateral light stirring the war-stricken night of her youth.
Having used confusion as a subterfuge for clarity, she could hardly recall how she had clambered into one of the cars and driven it from the car park. Even without the all-important card, the barrier had lifted of its own accord, knowing that, if it had not, it would have been smashed to smithereens. Even stones did bleed in certain phases of the cold blue moon.
She steered quickly through the slanting icicles of rain, her high-heeled feet playing the engine like a bass organ. She knew the bomb in the boot may also have had a life of its own, its short fuse matched to her own feminine one.
The streets through which she drove were completely unfamiliar but, at the same time, she knew exactly when to take certain turnings. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she thought she could discern the dark shape of someone sitting in the backseat. Yet, darkness, when it saw fit, could take whatever fumbling form it wanted.
Ah, there was a bridge: a mock-gothic affair which the street lighting moulded from almost nothing, so as to allow the river (or was it a railway track?) to be traversed as the crow (a very special crow) would drive. Was she mad? She felt an embodiment of someone else's dream. She felt calm, as she was certain that she had been warned about the encroachment of such madness. Madness was what made the job so dangerous. She would need to compare notes.
Driving to a halt at the brink of the bridge, she turned to see who may have been backseat-driving. But nobody there, only a pile of what appeared to be unwanted rubble from a building site.
She left the car and walked round to the rear where she could see tyre-tracks in the snow leading up to the back-wheels. The sleet had in fact resumed its snow disguise after settling. The marks were more akin to skids, as if she'd screeched to a halt and, on returning to the front, she saw why: the inky cut was just out of sight beyond the gaze of the headlights. The bridge was a cartilaginously cantilevered mass of pulsing flesh, ribbed further with engorged veins, parts fluted with perfectly linear tumours, other areas haphazardly sown with knobbly cancers beyond even the manufacture of crazy modern sculptors in clay or any other medium, and the pinions and stanchions upholstered with scarlet haunches of clumsily sawn meat—all being wrapped by snow and, conversely, dyeing it.
Tentatively, she first-footed upon the near edge of slimy gristle. It moved under her, as if hurt by her stilletoes. She shuffled forward, testing all the time, because the snow made nonsense of the structure's hidden strengths—like walking on a hammock, but with underlays of breathing, if not burping, animal-fat.
Halfway across, she looked back at the car, which immediately doused its lights as it trundled engineless in her wake. She was thus left invisible to anybody keeping watch. They could only guess whether she had reached the other side, before the boot blew...
Morning brought communal waking, with news of yet another car-bomb outrage. "Carnage leads nowhere," said the Prime Minsiter on the wireless. Nobody, however, appreciated the kindness of the terrorists in arranging for the mayhem to pre-date the bombblast. It lent a certain inevitability, if not an excuse.
Beneath the snow, there was a conical piece of rip-edged flesh with a coded message (D679 BBY) branded upon it. It was never discovered, so nobody would have to face such mystery; nobody would need to explain how a dream could leave bits of itself in the real world. Whatever the case, no party admitted responsibility.
(published 'Rictus' 1994)
Friday, July 22, 2005
And More
The reflection in the mirror
Turned her stomach. A scrap of paper,
As if stuck to the glass—
She could reach to peel it,
But felt nails clinking on the hard surface.
Tantalisingly beyond reach.
Even in backward mirror-script,
She could sense its stomach-turning.
Man came into the bathroom, a stolid individual—a fireman
Of the first water, with brylcreemed hair.
The marriage had indeed been a series of fire-fighting.
The odd burst of flame from a once moribund fire in the old days' coal-grate. The sudden ignition of a garden bonfire after hope had been given up of it ever catching. The chimney fire streaming smoke and setting all the local kids a-goggling—as they ceased, momentarily, their game of hopscotch or hide-and-seek. The conflagration that beset a local factory—a memory from childhood that would remain beyond the reach even of the final fire of all: a seething furnace which nothing at all could douse.
The marriage and more.
Now old, the man still retained
Deep respect for anything untoward.
Alert for any emergency. Lack of imagination
Prevented him being scared of anything.
Sanity was his watchword.
Approaching the mirror,
Devastated to see the reflection
Of a woman's face—blushing
To the roots.
He no longer had stomach for it.
Wife cremated only yesterday;
Not even left a suicide note.
And more.
(published 'Edgar' 1999)
Turned her stomach. A scrap of paper,
As if stuck to the glass—
She could reach to peel it,
But felt nails clinking on the hard surface.
Tantalisingly beyond reach.
Even in backward mirror-script,
She could sense its stomach-turning.
Man came into the bathroom, a stolid individual—a fireman
Of the first water, with brylcreemed hair.
The marriage had indeed been a series of fire-fighting.
The odd burst of flame from a once moribund fire in the old days' coal-grate. The sudden ignition of a garden bonfire after hope had been given up of it ever catching. The chimney fire streaming smoke and setting all the local kids a-goggling—as they ceased, momentarily, their game of hopscotch or hide-and-seek. The conflagration that beset a local factory—a memory from childhood that would remain beyond the reach even of the final fire of all: a seething furnace which nothing at all could douse.
The marriage and more.
Now old, the man still retained
Deep respect for anything untoward.
Alert for any emergency. Lack of imagination
Prevented him being scared of anything.
Sanity was his watchword.
Approaching the mirror,
Devastated to see the reflection
Of a woman's face—blushing
To the roots.
He no longer had stomach for it.
Wife cremated only yesterday;
Not even left a suicide note.
And more.
(published 'Edgar' 1999)
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
The Princess And The Rose
A collaboration with P Jeffery & B Lewis
Published 'Broadsword' 1995
The princess, wandering amid beds of bright flowers and along avenues of cool fountains, paused to place her nose to the delicately involuted petals of a rose. In the soft earth at her foot was a double slotted depression, as though a pig had rooted amongst these royal bowers. I felt sure that the princess had failed to observe the mark. Lurking in the shadow of the trellis where the honeysuckle twines, I observed all. Such is my station.
For sixteen seconds, and the twelfth part of a seventeenth, the princess paused, nose to petal. I measured the time by the pulse at my wrist. All has to be set down to twenty-four decimal places in the royal accounts. Once, I recall, old Scalthwaite had forgotten to carry a nought - well, the less said about him the better.
The princess passed on her way, and it was time for me to leap from cover. Four seconds later, the slots were obliterated and the spilt rose pollen swept away. A droplet of fountain spray clung to the wrong leaf. That, too, I righted.
When she stopped by the lily pond, I was under the water, staring up. If she saw my eye, unwinking, she must have taken it for a fish. A willow leaf circled downwards. More mess to which I must later attend. As she walked towards the house, I levered myelf from the pond - not forgetting to ensure, of course, that its surface was left exactly as I had found it.
I knew she would not turn back, because she never did. Despite her carelessness, she was most precise in her habits. One walk around the garden and it was time for her slumber. Never would she discover me fussing in her wake - since that would make her late for Scalthwaite who kept a strict reckoning of her whereabouts. In her world, the timetables were more awesome than anything - even than God. But that didn’t mean she could skimp on her allowance of minutes for praying to God, of course.
But suddenly, she spotted me climbing from the pond and returning an autumn windfall to its stalk. I was aghast. How would she view me? I knew myself to be uglier than most misplaced things.
“Why have you been cleaning up after me for all these years?”
Her voice was even lovelier than her face, if that were possible. It was the first time I’d heard it.
“Because - I love you, sweet princess.”
I noticed that she winced as if my voice were tree bark become sound.
“Follow me,” she instructed. “At least you seem to be experienced at that.”
Her soft steps took me to the lily pond where she wrapped me in her smooth arms. However, she had trodden accidentally upon her beloved rose. She screamed as she saw the petals drop slowly from the flower’s crimson heart. Her body shook with horror, threatening, 1ike the beautiful bloom she was, to crumble in the process. Crying, I stroked her hair in the crazy belief that it might revive her - but clumps came out in my hand. I shall never forget the way she smiled her last smile as I scuttled off to allow Scalthwaite and some other servants to carry her inside. But he had overestimated the number of servants required, in view of the lightness she was fast becoming.
A smile is not the mouth. It’s what a mouth does. So a ghost is not its body. Merely what a body does. I grab my broom and decide to answer this renewed call to duty for the residual moments of my own life, because now I truly sweep what makes me weep - watched, if only by her smile.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Billy Belly
It was during that afternoon of October 31st in the Year of our Lord when evenings drew in with a particular vengeance.
"Let's play hopscotch."
"No, hide-and-seek's will be better, especially today."
If Sam allowed them to do so, Idle White and Pauline would argue for the rest of the afternoon into the evening, ending up with them not playing any games whatsoever. So, it was usually up to Sam to mediate.
Today was a case in point.
But first Sam needed to write a letter:
Dear Auntie Beryl,
I'm writing a thank you letter to thank you very much for the Hallo Ween mask. I really injoy playing with it. I keep it in the toy cubbird at night. Hope you are well. Love, Sam xxx
Sam's mother had checked the spelling.
"How about playing Dares, eh? That’ll be better, won’t it? I dare either of you to make faces at big fat Billy Belly." This was Sam's suggestion, today.
"You're always saying that and I'm fed up with Dares." The little boy who responded to Sam's suggestion was indeed Idle White who wore a duffle coat despite the unseasonable balm. Idle White knew their Mums wouldn't call them in until after dusk had started the process of blackening the sky.
The city wasteground was lit by one tall light - and by a couple of not-too-distant Belisha beacons whose orange pulses disguised the children's blushes during a rude game which they often played last thing ... just before they sensed the onset of their respective Mums' cooing roundelay of Come Home. Hide-and-Seek had taught them such tricks of the trade, what to hide, and what to seek, and what to find, and where to do it.
"I'm fed up with Dares, too," announced the piping tones of Pauline in a yellow pinafore dress. "And, Sam, I'm really more fed up with you inventing big fat Billy Belly - he never comes - and so why ever do we do Dares, if there's no-one to be scared of?"
Sam winced: he hated having his Billy Belly bluff called.
“He’ll bound to come today!” Sam said with some false earnestness.
Eventually, however, hopscotch was decided upon. Sam agreed to chalk out the grid, for the other two. He couldn't actually play since he had to have an early tea, because his Auntie Beryl was coming to visit. But first Sam needed a pee. He disappeared into one of those dark spots on the wasteground which served so well amid bouts of Hide-and-Seek - and during his own soporific gushing, he heard underlaid the lonely droning of a distant aeroplane circling the city before landing at the new aerodrome across the other side of the city. Billy Belly. Billy Belly. I like jam and jelly. He hummed absentmindedly. He often concocted such rhymes that made far more sense than those nonsensical nursery ones his mother used to tell him on her knee, before the blazing log fire amid the sacrosanct evenings of his infancy. Billy Belly had become mixed up with Jack Horner and Jack Sprat and Lucy Locket - and Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of...
A pail of what?
The voice was silent, yet it didn't require actual saying to show it was being said rather than imagined. Ghosts spoke like that, since they didn't exist. And English only existed as long as those using it also existed. Ghosts could not exist. But, of course, monsters did. Especially today. And Monsters were topped up and down with blood, bones, bellies, balls...
Sam chose to ignore his fears and clambered from the oily oubliette, half done, still buttoning his flies. He could not endure things bluffing him.
By the time he returned, Idle White and Pauline had already started chalking the grid on a large oblong piece of concrete that once must have been a runway when this area was an aerodrome. The widening of the sun upon its dying dip was rhythmically accentuated by the belisha beacons - making their orange faces like monsters in real life rather than like those black and white ones they saw in the local Picture House.
Idle White and Pauline blared looks at Sam, flushed with a substance not dissimilar to the results of Sam's recent kidney tap. It was as if the pair of them accused Sam of treachery. Almost as if they'd already seen Billy Belly and he wasn't at all frightening.
A little later, when dusk was almost over and the hopscotch grid still incomplete, Sam drifted off behind the derelict shape of the Control Tower. The wind forked his hair, since nights were often stormy. He found the mask that he had hidden under a nettle bush for safe-keeping. He gathered stings like other children did stamps. He sucked the fleshy part between his finger and thumb, preparing to mount it with a sticky hinge.
Made easier by Aunt Beryl’s gift, this procedure was part and parcel of a transmutation that Sam himself failed to understand, stemming, no doubt, from an erstwhile game of Dares that had gone horribly wrong in the 1940’s before Idle White and Pauline had been old enough to play out so late. That was when Sam played with other kids. With other boys walking on earth-shadowed shins. With other girls of white-thighed abandon. And with some of indeterminate sex who could never stop playing the last game first.
Tonight, though, Idle White sighed with relief on completion of the hopscotch grid. Numbered 1 to 10, box, double-box, box, double-box, box, double-box, box. The belisha beacons lit the litter-strewn arena with shifting desolation and despair, in-built emotions that children rarely noticed. They failed to imagine the thriving concourse, as it had once been. Ever since the new aerodrome had been built, this previous one had been allowed to go to rack and ruin.
Pauline laughed hollowly, as Idle White threw the puck towards the head of the grid. She prepared to hop. Dangled her left leg as if it didn't belong to her...
Then came the cooing of their mothers.
Time had caught up with the children, and they had not even begun the hopscotch, let alone the more dubious games. It was strange, however: home was in the opposite direction to the cooing. How could that be? Pauline shrugged. Where was Sam? The city became a weird place once the sun had set. Especially tonight.
It was as if the world were wheeling faster - or slower. Or, at least, differently, disorientatedly. Such words were not in her vocabulary, but the thoughts were in her mind, nevertheless. She felt Idle White take her hand as they left the hopscotch grid behind.
Meanwhile, there was a single coffin behind the disused tower. Nailed down. A double-coffin, next to it, gaping open. Two shapes of darkness got out together. Despite their age, they maintained a vestige of their erstwhile marriage. A pair of ancient schoolkid sweethearts (precursors of children such as Sam, Pauline and Idle White) ever sought at least a smidgen of their first explorations and the first uncoverings of the means of love.
Special Hallowe’en monsters, too, waddled free. Despite having stayed hidden for the rest of the year, they retained forbidden memories of interlocking crosses, some like metal aircraft floating in the sky, others embedded in limechalk. Yes, they waddled free...
But Sam, Idle White and Pauline eventually reached their respective homes and their mothers used speech with which to converse...
"Why home so early, Sam - did you have a quarrel?" asked Sam's mother, upon his arrival.
"No, it was cold when the wind came."
Sam smiled at his mother, then at Aunt Beryl. He'd really wanted a scarier mask. Perhaps he'd ask for a chain-saw next Hallowe’en, instead. Better than pumpkin pie. Aunt Beryl smiled back obliviously. "Oh, thank you for your nice letter, Sam," she said, "I've put it in my tresshore cubbid for when I'm old."
"You're nice and early," said Pauline's mother in another house.
"Yes, the wind got up," said Pauline, meaningfully.
"Well, as tea's not ready yet, why don't you go and play upstairs?"
"Yes, I'll tidy up my album." Pauline felt something turn over in her stomach as she rushed for the lavatory.
"Goodness, you're back soon," said Mrs White to the idol of her eyes, in yet another house.
"Billy Belly came."
"Idle! Didn't I tell you you're not to have such fanciful notions - it's bad for you. There's nobody called Billy Belly. Sam made him up. That Sam's a queer boy, at the best of times. He puts these silly ideas in your head. I don't think you should be playing with someone so much older than you."
He nodded, without answering, other than in thought.
But, Mama, your rong, Billy Belly duss live.
Billy Belly. Billy Belly. I love jam and jelly.
Belly Billy. Belly Billy. I love Jack and Jilly.
Billy could've gulped a whole pail of blood for tea, given half the chance. A lonely plane droned far-off, as the idol of Mrs White’s eyes later climbed the little wooden hills to Bedfordshire. He vowed to punish that Sam for failing to scare Pauline - but what could you expect with Sam merely wearing nothing more frightening than a silly trick ‘n treat mask, sticky-plastered hands and a stuffed anorak?
Yep, I cun't wate t' go get that dammed Sam - soon's his backs bent chorking new hotchpotch lines for me and sweet Porleen.
But that would have to wait till next Hallowe’en. Not so big and fat, Billy Belly held out his arms-within-arms and made roaring noises as he continued to fly up the stairs tread by tread towards his glove-puppet’s truckle bed. Tomorrow, Idle White would be back on his own strings. And in his own bed.
(published ‘Bats & Red Velvet’ 1995
This was a prequel to Ertz
"Let's play hopscotch."
"No, hide-and-seek's will be better, especially today."
If Sam allowed them to do so, Idle White and Pauline would argue for the rest of the afternoon into the evening, ending up with them not playing any games whatsoever. So, it was usually up to Sam to mediate.
Today was a case in point.
But first Sam needed to write a letter:
Dear Auntie Beryl,
I'm writing a thank you letter to thank you very much for the Hallo Ween mask. I really injoy playing with it. I keep it in the toy cubbird at night. Hope you are well. Love, Sam xxx
Sam's mother had checked the spelling.
"How about playing Dares, eh? That’ll be better, won’t it? I dare either of you to make faces at big fat Billy Belly." This was Sam's suggestion, today.
"You're always saying that and I'm fed up with Dares." The little boy who responded to Sam's suggestion was indeed Idle White who wore a duffle coat despite the unseasonable balm. Idle White knew their Mums wouldn't call them in until after dusk had started the process of blackening the sky.
The city wasteground was lit by one tall light - and by a couple of not-too-distant Belisha beacons whose orange pulses disguised the children's blushes during a rude game which they often played last thing ... just before they sensed the onset of their respective Mums' cooing roundelay of Come Home. Hide-and-Seek had taught them such tricks of the trade, what to hide, and what to seek, and what to find, and where to do it.
"I'm fed up with Dares, too," announced the piping tones of Pauline in a yellow pinafore dress. "And, Sam, I'm really more fed up with you inventing big fat Billy Belly - he never comes - and so why ever do we do Dares, if there's no-one to be scared of?"
Sam winced: he hated having his Billy Belly bluff called.
“He’ll bound to come today!” Sam said with some false earnestness.
Eventually, however, hopscotch was decided upon. Sam agreed to chalk out the grid, for the other two. He couldn't actually play since he had to have an early tea, because his Auntie Beryl was coming to visit. But first Sam needed a pee. He disappeared into one of those dark spots on the wasteground which served so well amid bouts of Hide-and-Seek - and during his own soporific gushing, he heard underlaid the lonely droning of a distant aeroplane circling the city before landing at the new aerodrome across the other side of the city. Billy Belly. Billy Belly. I like jam and jelly. He hummed absentmindedly. He often concocted such rhymes that made far more sense than those nonsensical nursery ones his mother used to tell him on her knee, before the blazing log fire amid the sacrosanct evenings of his infancy. Billy Belly had become mixed up with Jack Horner and Jack Sprat and Lucy Locket - and Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of...
A pail of what?
The voice was silent, yet it didn't require actual saying to show it was being said rather than imagined. Ghosts spoke like that, since they didn't exist. And English only existed as long as those using it also existed. Ghosts could not exist. But, of course, monsters did. Especially today. And Monsters were topped up and down with blood, bones, bellies, balls...
Sam chose to ignore his fears and clambered from the oily oubliette, half done, still buttoning his flies. He could not endure things bluffing him.
By the time he returned, Idle White and Pauline had already started chalking the grid on a large oblong piece of concrete that once must have been a runway when this area was an aerodrome. The widening of the sun upon its dying dip was rhythmically accentuated by the belisha beacons - making their orange faces like monsters in real life rather than like those black and white ones they saw in the local Picture House.
Idle White and Pauline blared looks at Sam, flushed with a substance not dissimilar to the results of Sam's recent kidney tap. It was as if the pair of them accused Sam of treachery. Almost as if they'd already seen Billy Belly and he wasn't at all frightening.
A little later, when dusk was almost over and the hopscotch grid still incomplete, Sam drifted off behind the derelict shape of the Control Tower. The wind forked his hair, since nights were often stormy. He found the mask that he had hidden under a nettle bush for safe-keeping. He gathered stings like other children did stamps. He sucked the fleshy part between his finger and thumb, preparing to mount it with a sticky hinge.
Made easier by Aunt Beryl’s gift, this procedure was part and parcel of a transmutation that Sam himself failed to understand, stemming, no doubt, from an erstwhile game of Dares that had gone horribly wrong in the 1940’s before Idle White and Pauline had been old enough to play out so late. That was when Sam played with other kids. With other boys walking on earth-shadowed shins. With other girls of white-thighed abandon. And with some of indeterminate sex who could never stop playing the last game first.
Tonight, though, Idle White sighed with relief on completion of the hopscotch grid. Numbered 1 to 10, box, double-box, box, double-box, box, double-box, box. The belisha beacons lit the litter-strewn arena with shifting desolation and despair, in-built emotions that children rarely noticed. They failed to imagine the thriving concourse, as it had once been. Ever since the new aerodrome had been built, this previous one had been allowed to go to rack and ruin.
Pauline laughed hollowly, as Idle White threw the puck towards the head of the grid. She prepared to hop. Dangled her left leg as if it didn't belong to her...
Then came the cooing of their mothers.
Time had caught up with the children, and they had not even begun the hopscotch, let alone the more dubious games. It was strange, however: home was in the opposite direction to the cooing. How could that be? Pauline shrugged. Where was Sam? The city became a weird place once the sun had set. Especially tonight.
It was as if the world were wheeling faster - or slower. Or, at least, differently, disorientatedly. Such words were not in her vocabulary, but the thoughts were in her mind, nevertheless. She felt Idle White take her hand as they left the hopscotch grid behind.
Meanwhile, there was a single coffin behind the disused tower. Nailed down. A double-coffin, next to it, gaping open. Two shapes of darkness got out together. Despite their age, they maintained a vestige of their erstwhile marriage. A pair of ancient schoolkid sweethearts (precursors of children such as Sam, Pauline and Idle White) ever sought at least a smidgen of their first explorations and the first uncoverings of the means of love.
Special Hallowe’en monsters, too, waddled free. Despite having stayed hidden for the rest of the year, they retained forbidden memories of interlocking crosses, some like metal aircraft floating in the sky, others embedded in limechalk. Yes, they waddled free...
But Sam, Idle White and Pauline eventually reached their respective homes and their mothers used speech with which to converse...
"Why home so early, Sam - did you have a quarrel?" asked Sam's mother, upon his arrival.
"No, it was cold when the wind came."
Sam smiled at his mother, then at Aunt Beryl. He'd really wanted a scarier mask. Perhaps he'd ask for a chain-saw next Hallowe’en, instead. Better than pumpkin pie. Aunt Beryl smiled back obliviously. "Oh, thank you for your nice letter, Sam," she said, "I've put it in my tresshore cubbid for when I'm old."
"You're nice and early," said Pauline's mother in another house.
"Yes, the wind got up," said Pauline, meaningfully.
"Well, as tea's not ready yet, why don't you go and play upstairs?"
"Yes, I'll tidy up my album." Pauline felt something turn over in her stomach as she rushed for the lavatory.
"Goodness, you're back soon," said Mrs White to the idol of her eyes, in yet another house.
"Billy Belly came."
"Idle! Didn't I tell you you're not to have such fanciful notions - it's bad for you. There's nobody called Billy Belly. Sam made him up. That Sam's a queer boy, at the best of times. He puts these silly ideas in your head. I don't think you should be playing with someone so much older than you."
He nodded, without answering, other than in thought.
But, Mama, your rong, Billy Belly duss live.
Billy Belly. Billy Belly. I love jam and jelly.
Belly Billy. Belly Billy. I love Jack and Jilly.
Billy could've gulped a whole pail of blood for tea, given half the chance. A lonely plane droned far-off, as the idol of Mrs White’s eyes later climbed the little wooden hills to Bedfordshire. He vowed to punish that Sam for failing to scare Pauline - but what could you expect with Sam merely wearing nothing more frightening than a silly trick ‘n treat mask, sticky-plastered hands and a stuffed anorak?
Yep, I cun't wate t' go get that dammed Sam - soon's his backs bent chorking new hotchpotch lines for me and sweet Porleen.
But that would have to wait till next Hallowe’en. Not so big and fat, Billy Belly held out his arms-within-arms and made roaring noises as he continued to fly up the stairs tread by tread towards his glove-puppet’s truckle bed. Tomorrow, Idle White would be back on his own strings. And in his own bed.
(published ‘Bats & Red Velvet’ 1995
This was a prequel to Ertz
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Do Ghosts Dream Of Winding Sheets?
His sleep was a pure blackness that ever seemed to teeter on the edge of white. In any event, he assumed what he was experiencing was sleep. It seemed very much like it, except sleep consciousness was entirely new to him.
He stirred with the dawn cracking. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but its fanfare of known and unknown colours was.
Sleeping on the lush grass amid the daisies and beneath the stars was a perfect blessing - the weather never changed, the temperature held between the tolerances of night and day, the shades and hues both destructive and creative in their interchange. Strange that he could not recall falling asleep here in the first place and, even more strange, that he was not at all surprised waking up here.
The words in his ears were spelt with silence. He shook his head to make them sound inside. Eventually, he discovered that it was a girl’s voice articulating deathly secrets. He turned to squint into the rising rim of the sun’s birth only to find its bloodorange aura shimmering along the close reclining nudity of the one who spoke. Who wanted him to hold her.
The mystery deepened as, on top of everything else, he realised he had not been sleeping alone.
She woke dead. She felt dead. She was dead. The sun was just dipping below the horizon, shafting black sunbeams across the plain. Her consort in death held her in his arms, the love from his eyes still very much alive. Whilst the sun finally departed the Earth, snow descended in a groundswell fabric of minute stitched crystals to seal their eternal warmth.
(published 'Opossum Holler Tarot' 1990)
He stirred with the dawn cracking. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but its fanfare of known and unknown colours was.
Sleeping on the lush grass amid the daisies and beneath the stars was a perfect blessing - the weather never changed, the temperature held between the tolerances of night and day, the shades and hues both destructive and creative in their interchange. Strange that he could not recall falling asleep here in the first place and, even more strange, that he was not at all surprised waking up here.
The words in his ears were spelt with silence. He shook his head to make them sound inside. Eventually, he discovered that it was a girl’s voice articulating deathly secrets. He turned to squint into the rising rim of the sun’s birth only to find its bloodorange aura shimmering along the close reclining nudity of the one who spoke. Who wanted him to hold her.
The mystery deepened as, on top of everything else, he realised he had not been sleeping alone.
She woke dead. She felt dead. She was dead. The sun was just dipping below the horizon, shafting black sunbeams across the plain. Her consort in death held her in his arms, the love from his eyes still very much alive. Whilst the sun finally departed the Earth, snow descended in a groundswell fabric of minute stitched crystals to seal their eternal warmth.
(published 'Opossum Holler Tarot' 1990)
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Misanthropy-On-The-Naze
The flashing coloured lights wheeler-dealed across the upright displays, further engendering misplaced hope by giving the punter the chance to pull the forelock of fate with the small mercy of manipulating the two-timing “flippers” at the side, returning balls into a whole new campaign of cascading, tricksy shenanigans: accumulating points towards an illimitable target, the biggest number you can think of, the size of which only God (and perhaps the owner of the amusement arcade) was aware.
But, now, the arcade is shuttered, the sea-front deserted and the heaving of autumn seas edging nearer to overflow, as the council cart, with a revolving pulse, yellows the night from its cabin roof. It’s touring the streets, with its bewhiskered paddlewheels churning up the gutters, freeing them from the sludge and detritus of summer: discarded buckets, sandcastle unionjacks, rude hats, regurgitated fish ‘n’ chip suppers, mutant condoms fingering out into spider shapes, crystallized candyfloss, like sea-creatures’ abortions, and soggy saucy postcards, scrawled over with undehivered “wish you were here”’s, picturing enormous bums, even bigger boobs and triple entendres...
Outside the Hotel Despond, there stands two men, once holiday-makers, no doubt, but now deserters from overdue homecomings and from the inevitable return to the treadmill that keeps their families in sunday dinners and the annual visit to the seaside.
Towards the top of the hotel, the electric sign still flashes on and off, certain of its letters missing. It fills the street with an intermittent red haze, illuminating the men’s faces, revealing their stone expressions and surly resignation. One of them curls his lips as he takes another drag from his last cigarette of the season, and says: “They’ll be battening down in Misericordia, by now...”
A third man has now approached them and, in theweaving lights from both hotel sign and sweep cart, he can be recognized as one of those accessories to the End of the Pier Show which, every night during the summer, entertained the pre-bingo audience … with clattering joanna and cheap talent competitions.
This man was the ventriloquist, a semi-professional, who spends the rest of the year working for the council on the sweep carts. His mouth does not move as he speaks: “It gets me through the endless winter, dreaming of all the hot summer fun we had, you know. Do you remember Ol’ Ma Manning? She showed her knickers twice a week, for a free go on the housey-housey. There were numbers all over them, all the sixes, clickety-click, seventy-six, sunset strip, hangman’s noose, Blind Pugh...”
The other men nod, but do not listen, for they are preoccupied with the dirty weather that is now threatening to come in off the sea -they wish they were back in Misericordia or Parsimony, further inland, where their children, even now, stare into the night, wondering when their daddies will come borne; their mummies have told them that they are still on holiday, perhaps the silly buggers have one more End of Pier Show to enjoy, the last of the season and, then, they will creep home, heads bent, to the duties to which all men must face up.
The ventriloquist has taken out his dummy and the rain drips down its plastic face.
“A gottle of geer, who wants a gottle of geer?”
The two men, bemused, disappear into the public convenience nearby which, by tomorrow, will be the last facility to be barred up for the off-season. One more night of relative comfort in the cubicles, one more night before decisions will need to be made.
The council cart is returning on the opposite side of the street, a lightship floating across the shimmering, swelling puddles; it will pick up the ex-ventriloquist at the corner of Litany Street, if he is not careful.
He listens to the rumpus coming from the end of the pier. The fat woman is playing a Russ Conway medley, the gap-toothed sit-down comedian is telling third generation ma-in-law jokes, Ol’ Ma Manning is getting all eager in her seat waiting for her big moment, the audience is clapping half-heartedly, for they’re only there for the bingo...
The seas are becoming heavier now like an army commissioned as an impatient vanguard of winter. The ex-ventriloquist speaks quietly, but the storm is growing steadily so noisy that he can hardly hear himself: “There’s something special about the sea. That’s where we all originally came from, after all…”
And, as if hypnotised by the mind-reading act that he always had to follow on to the stage, he strides along the planks that creak in the wind. Between their gaps, he can see blackboiling pools revolving within each other...
Through the useless turnstile, towards the darkened theatre, he is counting backwards from the biggest number he can think of ... and his dummy leads the way, on short stumpy legs.
Someone or other threw the switch on the hotel sign, and went to bed for the winter. The council workers locked up the public loo, one night earlier than normal, got back on board the sweep cart and drove it further inland, its yellow pulse gradually withdrawing its reflections from the empty sea.
(published 'Peripheral Visions' 1991)
But, now, the arcade is shuttered, the sea-front deserted and the heaving of autumn seas edging nearer to overflow, as the council cart, with a revolving pulse, yellows the night from its cabin roof. It’s touring the streets, with its bewhiskered paddlewheels churning up the gutters, freeing them from the sludge and detritus of summer: discarded buckets, sandcastle unionjacks, rude hats, regurgitated fish ‘n’ chip suppers, mutant condoms fingering out into spider shapes, crystallized candyfloss, like sea-creatures’ abortions, and soggy saucy postcards, scrawled over with undehivered “wish you were here”’s, picturing enormous bums, even bigger boobs and triple entendres...
Outside the Hotel Despond, there stands two men, once holiday-makers, no doubt, but now deserters from overdue homecomings and from the inevitable return to the treadmill that keeps their families in sunday dinners and the annual visit to the seaside.
Towards the top of the hotel, the electric sign still flashes on and off, certain of its letters missing. It fills the street with an intermittent red haze, illuminating the men’s faces, revealing their stone expressions and surly resignation. One of them curls his lips as he takes another drag from his last cigarette of the season, and says: “They’ll be battening down in Misericordia, by now...”
A third man has now approached them and, in theweaving lights from both hotel sign and sweep cart, he can be recognized as one of those accessories to the End of the Pier Show which, every night during the summer, entertained the pre-bingo audience … with clattering joanna and cheap talent competitions.
This man was the ventriloquist, a semi-professional, who spends the rest of the year working for the council on the sweep carts. His mouth does not move as he speaks: “It gets me through the endless winter, dreaming of all the hot summer fun we had, you know. Do you remember Ol’ Ma Manning? She showed her knickers twice a week, for a free go on the housey-housey. There were numbers all over them, all the sixes, clickety-click, seventy-six, sunset strip, hangman’s noose, Blind Pugh...”
The other men nod, but do not listen, for they are preoccupied with the dirty weather that is now threatening to come in off the sea -they wish they were back in Misericordia or Parsimony, further inland, where their children, even now, stare into the night, wondering when their daddies will come borne; their mummies have told them that they are still on holiday, perhaps the silly buggers have one more End of Pier Show to enjoy, the last of the season and, then, they will creep home, heads bent, to the duties to which all men must face up.
The ventriloquist has taken out his dummy and the rain drips down its plastic face.
“A gottle of geer, who wants a gottle of geer?”
The two men, bemused, disappear into the public convenience nearby which, by tomorrow, will be the last facility to be barred up for the off-season. One more night of relative comfort in the cubicles, one more night before decisions will need to be made.
The council cart is returning on the opposite side of the street, a lightship floating across the shimmering, swelling puddles; it will pick up the ex-ventriloquist at the corner of Litany Street, if he is not careful.
He listens to the rumpus coming from the end of the pier. The fat woman is playing a Russ Conway medley, the gap-toothed sit-down comedian is telling third generation ma-in-law jokes, Ol’ Ma Manning is getting all eager in her seat waiting for her big moment, the audience is clapping half-heartedly, for they’re only there for the bingo...
The seas are becoming heavier now like an army commissioned as an impatient vanguard of winter. The ex-ventriloquist speaks quietly, but the storm is growing steadily so noisy that he can hardly hear himself: “There’s something special about the sea. That’s where we all originally came from, after all…”
And, as if hypnotised by the mind-reading act that he always had to follow on to the stage, he strides along the planks that creak in the wind. Between their gaps, he can see blackboiling pools revolving within each other...
Through the useless turnstile, towards the darkened theatre, he is counting backwards from the biggest number he can think of ... and his dummy leads the way, on short stumpy legs.
Someone or other threw the switch on the hotel sign, and went to bed for the winter. The council workers locked up the public loo, one night earlier than normal, got back on board the sweep cart and drove it further inland, its yellow pulse gradually withdrawing its reflections from the empty sea.
(published 'Peripheral Visions' 1991)
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Raw Air
Can anybody's life be called ordinary? To the person living it, each passing moment should be all important. Even the scrubbing of a dirty new potato ready for lunch must be felt for what it truly is - a precious moment of rare life, to be cherished as a gem of priceless sparkling beauty.
"Make sure you do those potatos properly. Last time I gave you a job in the kitchen, I spent the rest of the week clearing up your messes!"
The voice came and went, like a bird of prey that merely pecked at my carcass, then, thinking better of it, soared back into the blue sky, blotting out the glorious sun for just a nonce.
It was Christmas Day. There WAS something special in the air but, equally, it was not like Christmas Days I remembered as a child: those were so special, all the people I saw that day would seem to have a halo glowing above their heads. But today was not significantly unlike any other. In fact, we all decided to split up, get into our various vehicles and tour the local towns and countryside, before lunch, it being such nice weather for the time of year.
The turkey was already "doing" inside the oven, plus the bag-pudding hissing above the steam, my potatos ready-scrubbed in their milky liquid and, finally, but not least, of course, the various items of alcoholic beverage lined up in the fridge eager for consumption. I noticed that the stuffing was still on the kitchen table and not safe inside the turkey's gaping belly ... but I did not draw attention to this, for fear of delay to our trips.
Many people were out and about, and I was relieved they all looked as ordinary as myself. My own particular husband and children harnessed themselves into my car, all excitedly chatting about their Christmas presents (many of which had been brought with them on the trip, no doubt only to be discovered several months later when I got round to clearing out the back of the car). I was a great collector of secondhand books, so I'd not been given any of these, for most people think Christmas presents should be new things. Somebody HAD bought me a new paperback, but it was a science fiction novel I would never want to read, if I had not read it already from the public library.
The other families staying in the same house as us for the seasonal weekend, including my own parents with their new children, drove off in their jalopies, even before I'd had the chance to start mine. We were all to return here by "lunchtime" (a moveable feast, if ever there was one). I was glad I was not ultimately responsible for its production. (Perhaps I SHOULD have told someone in authority about that stuffing). I was eager for a drink, but driving.
We soon became lost in the first town we encountered (the one we were staying in). Because of the recent bomb threats, most of the roads that the public could use as short-cuts through the garrison areas were fenced off. Not all of them, since we saw soldiers toting their Christmas slop buckets between barrack-rooms in some of the less sensitive military demarcation zones. In any event, the maps were sufficiently confusing to send us on a wild goose route through the smaller town of Bulstrode. But once there, we scaled the climbing alleys, till we reached the market square.
I do not know whether my family noticed it was becoming less and less like a proper Christmas Day. There were a few stall-holders calling their wares in the square. The one that surprised me most was an old fellow with a brazier selling off portions of fish and chips. "No time spent in waiting for drinks", he called. I did not quite understand the drift of his sales pitch - maybe, today of all days, he was giving the drinks away free or, at least, speedily, while they were still piping hot.
I was delighted to see in one corner of the busy square a man selling secondhand books. Tomes of various sizes were spread around him on mats, some huge purple encyclopaedias and entrancing little matching volumes no doubt containing rare fictional gems. I could not wait to get my hands on them.
My attention was temporarily drawn by the others in my party to the fact that some of our fellow guests at the house had turned up at the same place, evidently also confused by the shut-down garrison and the undependable maps of the area. They were haggling with a shopkeeper at the entrance to his open-plan emporium. From this distance I could not actually discern what he was selling and indeed what they were buying. They had not yet noticed us. My mother must have been among them since I could hear her voice right across the square.
At the same time, I spotted Auntie Enid wandering through the crowds in another part of the square. SHE was not staying with us for Christmas, so it was surprising to see her as lost as the rest of us. If I recall correctly, Auntie Enid was a relation that everybody seemed to acknowledge, but nobody knew exactly who she really was. The nature of her relationship with the rest of us was to remain a mystery of the tenable universe. She bore an uncanny resemblance to the Queen. I waved at my mother to point out the whereabouts of Auntie Enid, but she had evidently already seen her and decided that it was impractical to leave the others to make herself known. My mother had not yet seen me. By the time I turned back to the secondhand books, the man had already cleared them away, surrendering any hope of likely customers on Christmas Day, and scarpered, mats and all, whilst the going was good.
One of my children was by now tugging at my person, pointing eagerly into the blue sky. Why I took it for granted, I do not now understand, but I was not surprised to see that the child was indicating a peculiar-looking flying craft. It seemed like a huge piece of electrical equipment, one of those components sold in shops which I always thought were for experts or, at least, for people who were clever with their hands. It spread its spindly wings on ratchets, even as I watched, its insidious roaring making most of the people in the square to block their ears. It was buzzing very close to the tops of the buildings and, as it careered towards us, I saw it was literally enormous, bigger than a jumbo jet. Then, from another quarter of the sky, there came another monstrosity like a floating steel works complete with chimneys and silos. It must have crept up on us, unawares, for I now only noticed its crescendo of booster-engines for the first time, as it thundered close above our unprotected heads, blotting out the sun for more than just a nonce.
The two craft darted off together as if they were playing tag, towards what I took to be the direction of Colchester; and we could now view them as smaller contraptions, emitting bumble bee noises as they made flirtatious sorties over the Essex marshes. As they gathered speed to make a re-approach to the outskirts of Bulstrode, the roars sporadically returning to our ears, they clipped wings: it was an accident, I was sure, but my husband said they were fighting. How he knew, I have no idea. In fact, I had no time to question him, for the two craft scattered apart, cartwheeling out of control, and with a pair of ill-timed skull-cracking crashes they made a messy landfall elsewhere in Bulstrode, beyond the unsuspecting rooftops. Thickly plaited plumes of dense smoke streamered into the sky. And I cried. I still do not know why I cried, but it seemed the most appropriate thing to do.
I then saw that the shop where my mother had stood with the others was in ruins, evidently collateral damage of the engagement.
My mother was never to know about my duplicity with regard to the turkey stuffing.
We drove home in silence and convoy, easily finding the way. My husband was missing. One of my children was hopefully with him. Unaccountably, Auntie Enid was with us. I cannot remember much of what happened when we returned to the house, but I certainly now felt selfish in having kept that job of potato scrubbing all to myself. For one fleeting moment, I thought there was a faintly shimmering halo above Auntie Enid's head, as she dished up the food. I cracked myself open a cold beer. It would soon be time for the Queen's Speech.
"When she was a child, her only Christmas presents were an orange and a sparkling silver threepenny bit in a stocking. She was far more excited about those than ever children these days feel about the most expensive new fangled science fiction hardware..." Rachel Mildeyes (THE SAYINGS OF PETAL FRANCES)
Published 'Gothic Light' (1991) part of which was recorded directly from a dream.
"Make sure you do those potatos properly. Last time I gave you a job in the kitchen, I spent the rest of the week clearing up your messes!"
The voice came and went, like a bird of prey that merely pecked at my carcass, then, thinking better of it, soared back into the blue sky, blotting out the glorious sun for just a nonce.
It was Christmas Day. There WAS something special in the air but, equally, it was not like Christmas Days I remembered as a child: those were so special, all the people I saw that day would seem to have a halo glowing above their heads. But today was not significantly unlike any other. In fact, we all decided to split up, get into our various vehicles and tour the local towns and countryside, before lunch, it being such nice weather for the time of year.
The turkey was already "doing" inside the oven, plus the bag-pudding hissing above the steam, my potatos ready-scrubbed in their milky liquid and, finally, but not least, of course, the various items of alcoholic beverage lined up in the fridge eager for consumption. I noticed that the stuffing was still on the kitchen table and not safe inside the turkey's gaping belly ... but I did not draw attention to this, for fear of delay to our trips.
Many people were out and about, and I was relieved they all looked as ordinary as myself. My own particular husband and children harnessed themselves into my car, all excitedly chatting about their Christmas presents (many of which had been brought with them on the trip, no doubt only to be discovered several months later when I got round to clearing out the back of the car). I was a great collector of secondhand books, so I'd not been given any of these, for most people think Christmas presents should be new things. Somebody HAD bought me a new paperback, but it was a science fiction novel I would never want to read, if I had not read it already from the public library.
The other families staying in the same house as us for the seasonal weekend, including my own parents with their new children, drove off in their jalopies, even before I'd had the chance to start mine. We were all to return here by "lunchtime" (a moveable feast, if ever there was one). I was glad I was not ultimately responsible for its production. (Perhaps I SHOULD have told someone in authority about that stuffing). I was eager for a drink, but driving.
We soon became lost in the first town we encountered (the one we were staying in). Because of the recent bomb threats, most of the roads that the public could use as short-cuts through the garrison areas were fenced off. Not all of them, since we saw soldiers toting their Christmas slop buckets between barrack-rooms in some of the less sensitive military demarcation zones. In any event, the maps were sufficiently confusing to send us on a wild goose route through the smaller town of Bulstrode. But once there, we scaled the climbing alleys, till we reached the market square.
I do not know whether my family noticed it was becoming less and less like a proper Christmas Day. There were a few stall-holders calling their wares in the square. The one that surprised me most was an old fellow with a brazier selling off portions of fish and chips. "No time spent in waiting for drinks", he called. I did not quite understand the drift of his sales pitch - maybe, today of all days, he was giving the drinks away free or, at least, speedily, while they were still piping hot.
I was delighted to see in one corner of the busy square a man selling secondhand books. Tomes of various sizes were spread around him on mats, some huge purple encyclopaedias and entrancing little matching volumes no doubt containing rare fictional gems. I could not wait to get my hands on them.
My attention was temporarily drawn by the others in my party to the fact that some of our fellow guests at the house had turned up at the same place, evidently also confused by the shut-down garrison and the undependable maps of the area. They were haggling with a shopkeeper at the entrance to his open-plan emporium. From this distance I could not actually discern what he was selling and indeed what they were buying. They had not yet noticed us. My mother must have been among them since I could hear her voice right across the square.
At the same time, I spotted Auntie Enid wandering through the crowds in another part of the square. SHE was not staying with us for Christmas, so it was surprising to see her as lost as the rest of us. If I recall correctly, Auntie Enid was a relation that everybody seemed to acknowledge, but nobody knew exactly who she really was. The nature of her relationship with the rest of us was to remain a mystery of the tenable universe. She bore an uncanny resemblance to the Queen. I waved at my mother to point out the whereabouts of Auntie Enid, but she had evidently already seen her and decided that it was impractical to leave the others to make herself known. My mother had not yet seen me. By the time I turned back to the secondhand books, the man had already cleared them away, surrendering any hope of likely customers on Christmas Day, and scarpered, mats and all, whilst the going was good.
One of my children was by now tugging at my person, pointing eagerly into the blue sky. Why I took it for granted, I do not now understand, but I was not surprised to see that the child was indicating a peculiar-looking flying craft. It seemed like a huge piece of electrical equipment, one of those components sold in shops which I always thought were for experts or, at least, for people who were clever with their hands. It spread its spindly wings on ratchets, even as I watched, its insidious roaring making most of the people in the square to block their ears. It was buzzing very close to the tops of the buildings and, as it careered towards us, I saw it was literally enormous, bigger than a jumbo jet. Then, from another quarter of the sky, there came another monstrosity like a floating steel works complete with chimneys and silos. It must have crept up on us, unawares, for I now only noticed its crescendo of booster-engines for the first time, as it thundered close above our unprotected heads, blotting out the sun for more than just a nonce.
The two craft darted off together as if they were playing tag, towards what I took to be the direction of Colchester; and we could now view them as smaller contraptions, emitting bumble bee noises as they made flirtatious sorties over the Essex marshes. As they gathered speed to make a re-approach to the outskirts of Bulstrode, the roars sporadically returning to our ears, they clipped wings: it was an accident, I was sure, but my husband said they were fighting. How he knew, I have no idea. In fact, I had no time to question him, for the two craft scattered apart, cartwheeling out of control, and with a pair of ill-timed skull-cracking crashes they made a messy landfall elsewhere in Bulstrode, beyond the unsuspecting rooftops. Thickly plaited plumes of dense smoke streamered into the sky. And I cried. I still do not know why I cried, but it seemed the most appropriate thing to do.
I then saw that the shop where my mother had stood with the others was in ruins, evidently collateral damage of the engagement.
My mother was never to know about my duplicity with regard to the turkey stuffing.
We drove home in silence and convoy, easily finding the way. My husband was missing. One of my children was hopefully with him. Unaccountably, Auntie Enid was with us. I cannot remember much of what happened when we returned to the house, but I certainly now felt selfish in having kept that job of potato scrubbing all to myself. For one fleeting moment, I thought there was a faintly shimmering halo above Auntie Enid's head, as she dished up the food. I cracked myself open a cold beer. It would soon be time for the Queen's Speech.
"When she was a child, her only Christmas presents were an orange and a sparkling silver threepenny bit in a stocking. She was far more excited about those than ever children these days feel about the most expensive new fangled science fiction hardware..." Rachel Mildeyes (THE SAYINGS OF PETAL FRANCES)
Published 'Gothic Light' (1991) part of which was recorded directly from a dream.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Absent Without Leave
A collaboration with Anthea Holland
Harry fingered the stripes as his boot-burst toes circled the irregular Summer detritus of sedge and mulch.
A pond or pool that was stagnant. No scent of water lilies hung on the summer evening air; no reeds or rushes bordered its banks. Green slimy growth covered the undertow.
Cold for Summer, though, Harry thought as he knelt at the edge. Despite the warmth of the day, little of the sun’s rays would penetrate the thick branches of the ancient oaks that surrounded the pond. Cold oblivion, what bliss.
‘But smelly,’ a little voice reminded him. ‘Do you really want to smell like sewerage?’
‘Won’t care, will I?’ he responded casually. ‘It’ll all be over for me.’
He stood up and shrugged his shoulders out of his jacket. No point in ruining a perfectly good suit.
The plane appeared from nowhere. He hadn’t heard it coming; it was suddenly overhead, its thunderous roar reverberating around the tree circle. He threw himself to the ground, scared shitless, burying his face in the muddy marsh ground.
The jet - for surely it must have been a jet from the Air Force base - was gone as suddenly as it came, leaving a pregnant silence behind. Harry lifted his head slowly, stickily, from the mud and gradually stood up, as embarrassed as if a crowd of people had seen his craven action.
He picked up his jacket.
“And you thought you were going to drown in twelve inches of stagnant water?” he questioned.
"Six inches," said the little voice, now in full hearing, as a long grey glistening back rose to the surface of the turgid brine - making Harry think that the pondbed itself was raising its profile. "Six, quickly becoming nothing," it said, persisting in a commentary upon its own birth.
The creature was in full to empty view, hardly breaking the murky meniscus.
"Who are you?"
Harry stuttered inside but spoke quite smoothly aloud.
The question hung about on its interrogative hook, as a whole series of imputed jets filled the stagnant air with a fleet of shadows and roars.
"I'm whoever you want me to be," the voice eventually stated. "I can be your worst nightmare or your most delirious dream. Which do you want? Think carefully, now, there is only one chance."
Harry thought carefully. He wasn't quite sure what his worst nightmare was.... Then again only a fool would ask for that option surely. But then he was a fool - amongst other things. Only a fool would attempt suicide drowning in a mere foot of fetid water, a pool for a fool.
Perhaps it was all he deserved - this worst nightmare idea. He was a good-for-nothing, low-life character.
He knew that was right, he'd been told it often enough.
But still, his worst nightmare ... what dossier of domestic doldrums could he conjure that out of?
No, better to conjure up his most delirious dream - except if he asked for that - and got it, wouldn't that give him a reason to live?
And hadn't he lunched out for the last six months on the fact that he had no reason to live?
Lunched out; evening dinnered out; night-time drunk out; and outlasted all his friends with his constant harping on his total nothing-ness.
If he were nothing, the pool creature was definitely something else. And the jets tessellated the sky like a patchwork storm, thundering more than a million twisters. Was this death? Even God had to keep an air force handy. Then silence as furlough fornicated with desertion.
"I'm whoever you want me to be," repeated the voice, in a storm that was the eye of a calm.
He looked up and wished he were a tree with tap-roots.
The pool was scummed over with grey Autumn.
Absent without leaves.
(Published 'Roadworks' 1999)
Harry fingered the stripes as his boot-burst toes circled the irregular Summer detritus of sedge and mulch.
A pond or pool that was stagnant. No scent of water lilies hung on the summer evening air; no reeds or rushes bordered its banks. Green slimy growth covered the undertow.
Cold for Summer, though, Harry thought as he knelt at the edge. Despite the warmth of the day, little of the sun’s rays would penetrate the thick branches of the ancient oaks that surrounded the pond. Cold oblivion, what bliss.
‘But smelly,’ a little voice reminded him. ‘Do you really want to smell like sewerage?’
‘Won’t care, will I?’ he responded casually. ‘It’ll all be over for me.’
He stood up and shrugged his shoulders out of his jacket. No point in ruining a perfectly good suit.
The plane appeared from nowhere. He hadn’t heard it coming; it was suddenly overhead, its thunderous roar reverberating around the tree circle. He threw himself to the ground, scared shitless, burying his face in the muddy marsh ground.
The jet - for surely it must have been a jet from the Air Force base - was gone as suddenly as it came, leaving a pregnant silence behind. Harry lifted his head slowly, stickily, from the mud and gradually stood up, as embarrassed as if a crowd of people had seen his craven action.
He picked up his jacket.
“And you thought you were going to drown in twelve inches of stagnant water?” he questioned.
"Six inches," said the little voice, now in full hearing, as a long grey glistening back rose to the surface of the turgid brine - making Harry think that the pondbed itself was raising its profile. "Six, quickly becoming nothing," it said, persisting in a commentary upon its own birth.
The creature was in full to empty view, hardly breaking the murky meniscus.
"Who are you?"
Harry stuttered inside but spoke quite smoothly aloud.
The question hung about on its interrogative hook, as a whole series of imputed jets filled the stagnant air with a fleet of shadows and roars.
"I'm whoever you want me to be," the voice eventually stated. "I can be your worst nightmare or your most delirious dream. Which do you want? Think carefully, now, there is only one chance."
Harry thought carefully. He wasn't quite sure what his worst nightmare was.... Then again only a fool would ask for that option surely. But then he was a fool - amongst other things. Only a fool would attempt suicide drowning in a mere foot of fetid water, a pool for a fool.
Perhaps it was all he deserved - this worst nightmare idea. He was a good-for-nothing, low-life character.
He knew that was right, he'd been told it often enough.
But still, his worst nightmare ... what dossier of domestic doldrums could he conjure that out of?
No, better to conjure up his most delirious dream - except if he asked for that - and got it, wouldn't that give him a reason to live?
And hadn't he lunched out for the last six months on the fact that he had no reason to live?
Lunched out; evening dinnered out; night-time drunk out; and outlasted all his friends with his constant harping on his total nothing-ness.
If he were nothing, the pool creature was definitely something else. And the jets tessellated the sky like a patchwork storm, thundering more than a million twisters. Was this death? Even God had to keep an air force handy. Then silence as furlough fornicated with desertion.
"I'm whoever you want me to be," repeated the voice, in a storm that was the eye of a calm.
He looked up and wished he were a tree with tap-roots.
The pool was scummed over with grey Autumn.
Absent without leaves.
(Published 'Roadworks' 1999)
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