OFF BEAT
Published 'Premonitions' 1995
Like a suicide pilot, he had climbed to the top of a tall smokstack and wondered if he was meant to jump.
Robin knew he had to keep quiet, maybe tell a few old drinking chums at the Black Fen pub—because, the sooner uttered, the sooner forgotten. The evening had been blowy since about six, but when the storm actually hit home at ten, everybody knew they were in for a rough ride. Robin had just tucked his kids in, telling them that wind in England, even on the East coast, could not hurt anybody. Tracy looked up with her large innocent eyes and swallowed his words, along with the dregs of the orange juice.
"Night, night, Daddy," she squeaked, snuggling under the covers, as if nothing could harm her now.
"Night night, dear."
Tom in the last room along the corridor made a teenage grunt as Robin knocked to say goodnight to him. Tanya in the middle room was already asleep, so Robin only lingered a few seconds after tucking in the thick bobbly sheet around her neck. It was no ordinary wind. By midnight, as he lay in his own bed, he could feel the house vibrating around him. The windows shook as if they were desperate creatures thrashing to escape their frames. In the distance there was a crash which on an ordinary evening would have sounded like an aeroplane nose-diving into the suburban streets. The chimney roared like a giant hoover. There was something churning around inside the blocked off chimney breast. It groaned like a prisoner in the condemned cell, wailed pitifully and, in evident panic, leapt up and down the inside of the disused flue, a crazed monkey-rat.
"Daddy, Daddy," he heard from within his head: a plaintive call that had no direction. He blocked his ears, but still heard the call that had no direction. He blocked his ears, but still heard the call, sharper now, almost rabid. It seemed to be a creature that could not escape the walls of his skull, the sound bouncing from left to right and back again in horrific stunted stereophony, like a young woman having a mastectomy at the hands of a clumsy surgeon.
The storm in fact left no sign of its damage. Robin wouldn't have believed it anyway if he'd seen trees down, with their roots shamelessly exposed. No, there was indeed no wind in England sufficient to harm anyone or anything. But that idea about having three children was really something. Weird. But like all ideas, as soon as remembered forgotten—and he went off to have a chat about chimney breasts. He wanted one of his do-it-yourself chums to come round and remove one for him.
The wet pavements ran yellow with the city night. He idled at the corner of Bay Crescent, waiting, waiting, never ceasing to wait for an excuse to wait ... until he was moved along by a dark faced policeman.
"Move along, move along, that's all I get! I'm waiting for ... yes, for a girl friend, and how will she find me?"
"Where's she coming from?"
Robin thought hard and eventually muttered: "Frinton-on-Sea." He moved along, away from the policeman, speaking to the slanting shadows of the lamp-posts, not waiting for their replies. He thought they were more policemen stalking him out of their precinct. Abruptly, he reached an unlit area, indicating the outskirts of the city, but there was just sufficient residue of illumination at the back of his eyes to see a narrow slick guttering down the back wall of some factory. He relaxed and listened to its slurps, knowing that the policemen would not venture this far after minor prey such as Robin. Neither would the girl friend.
The sky lit up with a thunderflash, frightening Robin with a vision of his own face reflected in the puddles. It was not raining, but it seemd that recently it must have torrented from the biggest darkest black cloud that some called night. His thoughts were items he could not himself quite fathom. He took after his mother who had also been a thinker and had taught him the correct way to cross a thought, looking both ways, then marching straight across without fear of the monsters encroaching from the wings. Smiling, he wished he had been older and his mother younger, then they could have courted each other. She would not have kept him waiting. She may even have borne him three lovely children of his own to cherish. She'd always wanted grandchildren.
He went towards the wall to sniff the redolence of the slurry scumming down it. No smell, but that, Robin decided, proved nothing, for his nose was bunged up to the nostrils with its own characteristic stench. He placed his little finger in the flow and tentatively placed its tip to his tongue. Quite sickly sweet, with an under flavour reminiscent of seaside rock mixed with his late father's home-made wine, and a consistency of curdled milk.
The storm had evidently passed over without even one gust. The highly coloured lemon wedge of the moon was dodging between the scuttling patchwork of night's covering. Standing on tiptoes, he stretched up his hands, ignoring the lancing pain set in motion along his arms by the jagged glass embedded in the top of the wall, and levered himself into a position whereby he could see over it. The place looked more like an asylum than a factory, with one tall chimneystack limned coldly against the whitening and spreading of the misty moon.
He was grasped by the scruff of the neck as he toppled over inside the grounds. He heard a screech in his ear and a face of running boils peered closely into his. "When you crossed the road near St Paul's, you didn't look both ways, did you?" The words hissed out, as the creature proceeded to squat on Robin's open mouth. A policeman, far off his proper beat, whistled as he passed along on the other side of the wall...
The skylights blazed. The best-boy waved. The lens-shifter dropped the tea tray. The assistant gaffer lurched into the wardrobe ... and Robin's Show began. Millions of TV sets were switched on all round our green and pleasant land to watch the nightly trip into good conversation and famous faces. Someone, looking like Robin, sat opposite, with a wide open plate of a face. The frothing tankards of special brew seemed to breathe and pulse in time to the underground steam train rattling away beneath them ... en route between stations that had closed their entrances for fear of too many war evacuees herding along the platforms and brimming over on the tracks. There were not enough outlets for the smoke.
Robin's companion indicated he was dying to relieve himself and, whilst crossing, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs, he propounded the theory that if cows are left unmilked for too long, they explode and thus do away with the butcher's art. Robin, his eyes pure white and sightless, announced: "Good evening, Ladies and those in the Gents..." A light chortle took itself one by one across the studio audience. "My guests tonight you may not be too familiar with, but, after tonight, who knows?" And as his guests tugged and pulled each other in the guise of actually shaking hands, the audience suddenly realised that the pair of them were joined at the waist, like Siamese twins.
"Now, Mr Fenn, what can you tell me about boils? Sorry, I didn't mean to say that—can you tell me about what you actually saw?" (Could it be that the famous TV chat show host and his guests were speaking in perfect unison? On a live, unrehearsed show?) "This is a historic moment, dreamfolk, when host and guests are one—tune in, blow on the screen to brighten it up and turnstile your private parts 'gainst unseasonable interruption. The great dome of St Paul's Cathedral had bigger got, 'cause of the war. They needed it like that to deflect the bombs on to the houses. But I was the one who thought of putting up high-rise office blocks a-straddle it by Ludgate Circus—to stiffen it further, for not only did the alien monsters plan to float in like giant hang-gliders and use it as the basin for their further entrenchments into our green and pleasant land—but they were to lead in wider, more shadowy storm critters with long skinny legs which would eventually brood on our roofs to hatch out those that cringed within—that's you and me, folks. We needed protection, but the high-rise blocks took on a life of their own, bred other high-rise blocks, nurtured nasty natty men who paraded themselves in mock of us, dealing in shares, stocks, trusts and junk bonds. Those towering office monoliths sprouted arms with mighty hammers that pounded at our poor St Paul's dome until they cracked its big end like a skull..."
The audience silent grew, for what they had feared would now surely happen—and their favourite host waved a fond farewell. The pupils of Robin's eyes began to prick out as he heard thousands upon millions of clicks that indicated the switching off of millions of TV sets across the land. Bedtime drew on apace and the nation could unravel its private parts for a while in needed exercise, prior to making tourniquet knots of them 'gainst night piss. Getting purchase by means of the chimneys, the thin winding monster-legs tightened around houses and homes, as the last tube train hissed to a halt below the foundations of the city. The creatures brooded long and hard, since nights doubled-up on themselves then, and days were just selling themselves short, peddling Futures in the black markets of despair. Meanwhile amid the Essex marshes...
"Get thee gone to Jaywick Sands!" they'd said. And so, Robin became the TV reporter commissioned to employ the forces of the media to stimulate action against the increasing use of seaside resorts as sewage outlets. Swimming was like being force-fed, they'd said. The Weirdmonger, Black Fenn, Lavatory Todger, Dosserman Weggs, Feemy Cat's-Meat and Jack O'Lantern were there to meet Robin, where creek and land merged ... to ask for TV publicity to formulate the election campaign of their new pressure group, temporarily called the Condom Party.
But to whose votes did they aspire? And was there to be an election anyway? And, if so, on what platform would they stand? The Weirdmonger was all in favour of hiking through South America from hustings post to hustings post. But that, some argued, would be pretty useless in garnering support round Clacton way. Perhaps he thought Southend was in Argentina or, more likely, Tierra Del Fuego. Black Fenn vigorously suggested that Walton-On-The-Naze should be their jumping-off point, till someone who, if Robin reported correctly, was himself, mentioned the small problem of the Nazemen, sworn enemies of throwbacks such as human beings. The Nazemen could indeed do more than a mischief to the campaign by spreading scandals relating to the pressure group's peccadilloes. Black Fenn, who was at this very moment wrapped up inside a blow-up rubber doll with makeshift chimney-breasts, wondered what Robin was getting at. Lavatory Todger, who had in fact had some dealings with conglomerate advertising agencies (i.e. when marketing his sewage toting services in the unplumbed parts of the East coast) suggested a high profile campaign. Black Fenn grunted agreement, but the Weirdmonger said he would have nothing to do with nancy-boys nor the self-confessed wankers of the City near St Paul's. Dosserman prepared to put in his two halfpence worth: but with odd socks on, his views were not taken too seriously. So, the debate turned again to South America and whether there were likely to be any joy-rides from off Walton pier and, if so, would they sail into the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro (a port city currently twinned with Leigh-on-Sea)? Jack O'Lantern, fresh from throwing light on affairs in the oldest part of Colchester, waved about a used flag. It was soon furled however to prevent it becoming easy meat for any foe currently eye-wigging. Robin offered his tongue instead but that was too long and stringy, no good for getting round words. Feemy Cat's-Meat burst forth with a tour de force. He proffered a view that the marsh folk, the Punch and Judy attendants, the side-show tattooists, the deck-chair imitators, the promenade slickers, the bent solicitors, the shanty town drifters et al, all those seed merchants, seaview purveyors, marshy back-enders and the whole gamut of Low Essex life from creek to beach, from Roman Wall to the South's bottom end, were only likely to vote for the campaign if policies could be created for which they wanted to vote. No good setting up images, quite beyond the common men of coast and parlour, an image like one of alien monsters from outer space taking over this blind corner of the world called Essex in some half-cocked attempt to further the arch-monetarism of some devil which lurked in the pipes underground. Why not keep it simple and teach them how to read fortunes in those new-fangled water closet bowls after its skimpy flush failed for the umpteenth time?
The others stared, each lost in his own thoughts, with no obvious way out. Padgett Weggs had the last word, but not even Robin was sufficiently compos mentis to appreciate the true importance of what he said, which was this: "I think we should hitch to Frinton-on-Sea and lay a few chicks, before it's too late. We'll be past it, otherwise, and everybody else'll've got their own personal bit of skirt, bar us."
And they all got up en masse and frantically sought a paddle-train to catch as it churned away from the endless dripping marshes. But not quite en masse, for Black Fenn didn't want to come. He preferred to meditate and gently suck the involuted teats on the inside of his costume, gently puffing smoke from out the nipples of the breasts. The Weirdmonger said he would have preferred Buenos Aires, but Frinton, he had to agree, was, on the face of it, next best. So off they traipsed, most of them, alongside Dosserman in his quest for love and beauty. Jack O'Lantern lit the way with his fireflies, Feemy Cat's Meat not far behind as he masticated contemplatively upon his own chewed-off boils. Robin felt that none of it really had the quality of a proper memory, but that didn't mean it wasn't one. Then, they heard in the distance the lonely drone of an aeroplane...
Robin found himself thankfully, if peculiarly, alone. He saw the aeroplane crash at approximately four o'clock. It banked steeply over the marshes, then just seemed to splutter to a halt, smoke billowing from the cockpit. No sooner seen, it sliced into some far-off trees with a splintering roar. He couldn't believe it. He must be the only person around these parts to see it happen. It was literally hours since he had viewed a Colchester with its uncharacteristic domed cathedral nesting in a distant valley. He felt responsible somehow, as if merely looking at the aeroplane had caused the accident. Worse than that, it would be up to him to scramble across the squishy terrain to see if there were any belated survivors. Would it not be preferable to forge straight back to where he recalled Colchester being and raise the alarm there. That would get the experts on the job. Better than him making amateurish, mock-heroic attempts at rescue himself. Caught upon the prongs of a dilemma, he decided to do neither; he merely sat on a tussocky weed, pulled out his pipe which always seemed to help and puffed away, assuming that the world and all its troubles would wait for him to catch up.
The smoke continued to spout from amid the shattered trees. Robin was horrified when he arrived there. The flaming trough which the nosecone of the plane had divotted was at least a highrise-block deep. There were a number of passengers still trying to clamber out, despite the ferocity of the sporadic fire around them. But it just couldn't be! The whole scene was beyond comprehension. The survivors appeared to be flickering shadows actually part and parcel of the living flames. Not even TV pictures alongside his report would make anyone believe this news story. He had indeed tried to reach Colchester but, by getting lost, found the crash-site instead, deceived into thinking that the smoke was emanating from the town's central factory chimney. The plane itself seemed to have disappeared altogether. Surely it could not have taken off again, after allowing the maimed and half-dead to disembark? Robin squinted into the sky where he could just discern the wrecked aeroplane gliding with the large black birds.
He pulled out his pipe again and proceeded to fry a new-laid egg upon the scorching earth. Embedded in the semi-hemisphere of the yellow yolk bulb was the translucent body-shape of a miniature human still twitching. Thank goodness things couldn't get any stranger. In due course, he slowly rose to his feet. The fire-pit created by the crash had gradually relinquished its imitation of a long vertical volcano, but dark perforations and fragile black sculptures of ash still floated upwards intermittently from the erstwhile core. Robin wondered how, why and if he had seen a plane crashing in the first place. No doubt they would tell him at Colchester if there were any flights missing. But would he ever reach Colchester at the leisurely pace he now assumed? He deposited the bony carapaces of some insects into the stained bowl of his pipe. All was silent as he teetered upon the brink of his own thoughts ... except for the gentle nuzzling voices inside his head calling "Daddy!"
He felt the balance of a hand upon his shoulder and, turning, he found it was that damn policeman, off his beat again.
