Hard-Ons
HARD-ONS

Dear Agnes, I am writing to thank you for a wonderful weekend. Even when we broke down, we had such a good laugh, didn't we, finding out that it was because we'd run out of petrol. But the torrential rain was the icing on the cake! Not that it was particularly cold, but we could have done with some tucker to stoke us up.

The AA was so understanding. What a nice man! It's not often one ends up calling such people by their first names, is it?

Anyway, the hotel was a real hoot, too, wasn't it? Fawlty Towers wasn't in it! Wouldn't have been so bad if the manager had been as funny as John Cleese. What a creepy fellah! He liked us even less than we liked him, didn't he? Said there weren't any reservations in our names. Until we tried to tell him that names didn't matter, only bodies. There was almost a ghost of a smile on his face. In any event how could we have made any reservations, this being an emergency stop-over? He had no answer to that, did he?

The box room at the top of the hotel wasn't too bad, was it? Not exactly the Royal Suite, but serviceable enough. Good job we still had the AA man to lug the bags up there for us - what with the surly bellboy trying to avoid us at all costs and his bosom pal the manager trying to make us feel as if we were in a foreign country.

Anyway, Agnes, if it weren't for you, I'd've'd a lousy weekend, listening to the relentless drumming on the roof. Pity the AA man couldn't have stayed. But his bleeper did keep going off, didn't it, and they do say three's a crowd, don't they?

Here's to the next time, Affectionately, Ample.

P.S. That midget manager looked disappointed when we didn't complain at the end of our stay, didn't he? Good job we didn't give him that pleasure. I very nearly made a scarcastic comment about his bellboy, but think I got away with it. They all spoke another language, anyway. Didn't sound like Welsh, though, did it?

#

Dear Ample,
Thanks for your letter which I received recently.
I'll come clean right at the start - I've unfortunately misplaced your letter, and answering it by means of memory is not exactly the most ideal situation for a conscientious correspondent like me. Anyway, discretion to the wind, here goes.

I was sorry to hear that your trouble flared up again. You shouldn't really keep doing it, if the pain's so bad. If I were you, I'd insist on it. It'd be worse on the inside than on the out, I'll be bound. Still, I wouldn't know, would I? Life has not been much of an experience for me like it has been for you, Ample, has it? - by a long chalk! Be sure to give your latest my love, won't you?

Glad to learn that the twins have settled their differences.

Oh, yes, before I forget, Ample, do not take any cheek from that landlord of yours. All the rights are with tenants these days. And if his harrassment persists, just stick to your guns - he'll soon get the message. By the way, is he the chap I once met? You introduced him as your own personal Rackman - so I assume it was your landlord. A man with the narrowest gap between the eyes I've ever seen in my life. No wonder he looks so shifty.

I've very little news of my own or, rather, if I have, it's so insignificant, it's gone clean out of my mind. (Leaving only dirty thoughts!? Whoops! Godd job you know me.) We'll have to go on holiday together one day. Just the two of us. Then you can teach me a thing or three about life, eh?

Much love, Agnes.

#

Dear Agnes,
What no P.S.? That's the first time you've written to me without a P.S. Did you forget?

Let me say straightaway that I was somewhat nonplussed by your letter. Sometimes I think you must be going doo-lally. I know you had misplaced my letter but... What twins? Which trouble that has flared up again? Indeed, I should ask who the devil is my "latest" but I won't! What's more, I am an owner-occupier and have no landlord - and I could ask who you are. I know we went to college together and struck up a passing acquaintanceship. But is that any excuse for us to spend the rest of eternity being bosom pen friends?

Well, having got that little lot off my chest, how are you, dear? Well, I trust. There's not much news to report. I had a bit of a set to with Clive (that man with "the narrowest eyes in the world" as you so pointedly put it). We almost resorted to fisticuffs. Something to do with rent boys, or something. I didn't really understand (nor want to!). Clive kicked away my crutch and I came tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down... Then it was all forgotten after we came to some sort of arrangement. It wasn't entirely satisfactory either of us - more of a consensus than a full-blooded agreement. I expect you can imagine it. On the other hand, my dear Agnes, perhaps you can't. You really ought to get around more - do you a power of good.

Thinking about it, Clive's children happen to be twins! But how could you possibly have known that?

Any way, must sign off. My eyes are aching. Age I suppose. Pity life's only a leasehold.

Take care, love, Ample.

PS: I nearly forgot - do put this letter in a safer place this time. It's not for just any old eyes. And haven't we just been on holiday together?

#

Dear Ample,
I thought I would write to you before you had the chance to write to me. Non-sequiturs in our correspondence seem to contagious, to say the least. Anyway, it was not me who needed thanking when your spare tyre turned out to be nearly as bad as the one it was taken out to replace.

That nice AA man had a lot still to do when he eventually arrived. I hadn't done the nuts up tight enough, he said. And he certainly got plenty of turn with his large spanner, didn't he? The tyre itself was a bit off, he said, but should get us home.

I was amazed at the way he had such healing hands.

So it's him you need to thank, not me. I was only too pleased to help jack up the car, but it was indeed awful when the ratchet broke and I had to wedge one of my high heels underneath.

The scars and welts in the tread, I agree, were the strangest thing. Why did you have such a dicey wheel in your boot, flayed like slave-lover's flesh - if I can admit to the crazy way I thought about it at the time?

It didn't seem to roll true, either - made too much play on the steering. The AA man warned you about that, but it did indeed take me by surprise when you tried to drive back down the M25 in the wrong direction. Still, you got me home and I trust you did, too, afterwards.

I'm just writing this quickly, because there's something nagging at the back of my mind to relay. Incidentally, rubber burns easily come off, thank goodness. So, please don't think anything of it,

Yours fondly, Agnes.

PS. I hope the reverse gear is now working OK.

#

Dear Agnes,
Despite your wishes, I must thank you for your efforts with the wheel change. The AA man was no more than the cherry on the cake. By the way, I had a "home start" a few days later, and it was the same AA man. Something to do with the boot, he said, but he was pleased to see I'd had a complete tyre change all round, including a new spare.

I must admit I didn't know I had such a heavy load in the boot, but it was straining the suspenders, he said, and making the wheel alignment a little dodgy. I was in fact coming to see you, but with all the turmoil, I decided not to go out at all, after he put it to rights. His name, you know, is Clive Williams and he's coming to give me another push start or something next week, which I probably will need, since the engine's not what it was. I've not been under the bonnet to check it for yonks. I think I might try to sell the thing.

You don't want a run-about, by any chance, do you? Only one affectionate owner!

Must go now, see you on the 5th, if I can make it.

Sweet regards, Ample.

PS. Clive says he'll give you a jolly old homestart, if you need one. Any time.

PPS. Off to my new home, this weekend. Can't say I'm sorry.

#

Dear Ample,
When I heard the revving noise outside this morning, I was convinced it was you. But it was extremely early for a Sunday, almost Saturday night. I hoped it was you as you left no forwarding address. It did not sound exactly like a car's engine. More a tractor or juggernaut. It had gone by the time I went to the curtains to see. There was a stain on the road by daybreak, a patch of oil, no doubt, or something. Then it started to rain heavily and I decided not to go out for a walk.

Why not write to Ample, I thought. I'm bound to discover your address, if I wait long enough. But there's not much here to say. Clive of the AA came round yesterday morning, as promised. I didn't have a membership card, so he said he couldn't by rights give me a home start like he did with you. He said I had a good friend in you, but there wasn't much that could be done about the trouble with your sump.

It's next day now. I had to halt writing yesterday, because of a sudden doubt as to why I was writing at all, not having your new address.

The AA are pretty good, aren't they? Clive had a pick-up truck with him parked outside my house the day before yesterday and a broken-down vehicle and its driver, but Clive still had time to make a detour for my home start. Now, he's here again and will be off soon to deliver this letter to you at your new home, when he's finished mending the washing-machine. It got clogged up with oil, he said.

Funny that Bill knew your new address before I did. Must rush.

Love, Agnes

#

Dear Agnes,
It was good to hear from you via Clive.

He's taking me to the seaside today (Southend, I think) in an AA van convoy. That'll be nice. Southend rings a bell. Have we been there together? I've always liked Welsh men.

It's a nice place this new home, but strangely tatty. The man in charge is on crutches. Never washes. I do miss my independence. What's more, I can't bear such black hands touching the food - specially with all those cuts. Still, I've got the trip to Southend to look forward to. He says I can go on the dodgems. Long as I don't have any head-on's.

Yours forever, Ample.

PS. Remember mum's the word about my RAC membership and our other little secret, of course. I sometimes think that secrets are secret from each other, deep down - playing spies and decoys and so forth with each other. Even our letters can't keep up with them, let alone real life. Thank God for postscripts.


(Published ‘End of the Millennium’ 1998)

Painting With Water


First published 'Noir Stories' 1993


The pendulum of darkness swung from side to side.

My eyes could hardly take in the extremes of the cinemascopic night, as blinding rain drove itself into my face. The streaks of street lighting oscillated with the pulsing of the deep gloom. I might have found the effects mind-blowing, if it were not for the knowledge that everything stemmed from my swaying walk, the hood of my overcoat extended forwards to ease the stinging torrents. Thus blinkered, I could only follow my eyes in their near drunken rite of passage.

I felt I might be in an old Hollywood film, where some editor had splodged various shades of streaky yellow into the shuttling celluloid monochrome, making the rain appear more like blood than if he had used proper red instead.

There were indeed stock figures in those old films, mysterious threatening hoods roaming empty backstreets, but I did not feel mysterious nor threatening. I realised, however, that those peering out of ill-curtained windows would think otherwise about me. Perhaps all villains were innocent, merely wending their way between run-of-the-mill assignations (like taking their mother to hospital), never dreaming that their own dark shapes, hunched up against the encroaching storm, were viewed as evil and horrific.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

No doubt this would be the real villain of the piece: a young lady, perhaps, unsuitably dressed for the weather, with chiselled smile and cleavage. She, with her winsome walk, would tempt me to accompany her...

I turned to face out the demon sex eye to eye. It was a policeman with as friendly a smile as ever was seen in Dock Green.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He squinted closer to see my face properly. But I could clearly discern his egg-shaped face below the back helmet. Residues of my swinging gait made him seem like the policeman dummy guffawing imbecilically at the end of Southend Pier, just for the price of an old penny in the slot. His loving family no doubt waited eagerly by the banked-up fire for his shift to end. The beacons of humanity which shone out from his face were a comfort indeed, until...

“Want me to give you a good time, Mister?” he said with a wink.

No Norman Bates I.

It was not me, surely, who slid so easily the tirelessly honed firepoker between the narrowing ribs above his cringing belly, just missing the silver buttons and other more natural obstacles to his heart...by means of a prestidigitation perfected over centuries of dark memory.

It was not me. It was not me.

I waddled down back-doubles of the city, each gloomy landmark individually daubed with its own personal colour, unblending, unblurring. I had even forgotten I was taking my mother to hospital.

I was no longer me, I was convinced: rather something else masquerading as me, with frighteningly clearer, freshly angled shots of everything.

Joe
JOE

First published 'Agog' 1989

Joe lived someone else's life. Or so he thought.

He convinced himself that he could not really be such on individual, working in an office factory from 9 to 5: surely he was not that boring. Mind you, he religiously followed the channels of the destiny laid out before him, with glances to neither side. Well, until now...

The wife told him that she loved him but how could anyone love a zombie? It didn't stand up to reason.

One day, he decided to wake up as the real person he felt he truly was. He went to sleep, not before bashing his head seven times on the pillow (a trick that worked better than an alarm clock set for seven in the morning). However, that was the last routine he carried out as the old self.

Waking up had always been a struggle into renewed existence via the bleary regions of brainache, but that particular morning, it was somewhat different. Everything seemed fresh, effervescent, renascent ...

The wife he did not recognize, for she was someone else's. Mind you, she did not recognise him either: and they both made love, as if it were the start of an illicit affair.

Their kisses were searching, their foreplay an extended version of teenage exploration (with the backwash of prurient froth upon the roof of the mouth), ending not with premature ejaculation but in a mutually stunnirrg slowmo orgasm that lasted even beyond the fuel that fed it.

The breakfast she then cooked for both of them was a feast fit for a banquet: jacket potatoes that had been gently simmering in the oven from the evening before, generously knobbed off with butter; rare gammon steaks upon a bed of under-coddled eggs; toasted doorstops smarmed with a marmalade so thickly cut it was tantamount to a whole-orange bob game at the fair; and finally, a breakfast birthday cake where the candle flames seemed to burn upon the seeping fuel of the cake mixture itself, layered jumbo currants, molasses, long- and shortbread and oodles of rum...

He did not understand why there were so many candles on the cake. Surely this was the first day of his life. A ready-born . . . Not tarnished by emerging through the channels of a woman's body ...

But there was something very diminishing about not being able to blow out one's own birthday candles.

He got up and went to work . . . but found his desk occupied by someone called Joe, plugging away at routine tasks, the simplest of which would be beyond him, anyway. He then lost himself in the city, where he would never ever find himself again.

His wife did not even bother to look for him, either, because she did not know he was lost. And never again did she rustle up bumper reward breakfasts for Joe...

Hunger for the Word

HUNGER FOR THE WORD

 

 

In the beginning was the Word.

 

The woman wondered whether this was true.  In the beginning was Nothing – logically.  And at the end, likewise.  She turned her shoulders – leather cracking around the blades – to find her husband had come into the room.  He stood at the door, suds up to his elbows and a dinner plate thrust towards her like a second face.

 

“See!  I’ve got it clean.  OK?”

 

She laughed, having complained most of their life together about the quality of his doing the dishes – claiming that there were supplementary meals to be had if one simply dashed to the draining-board before it was cleared of the crockery he’d just done.

 

She put down her book.  Religious Studies for an Open University course was using up a lot of time.  More than life itself.  No time for real things.  Her children were permanently at some school in the sky … from where her husband had always wanted to fish them down with some hook line and sinker.  Thankfully, the children themselves hadn’t assigned blame to the barrenness that created their non-existence.  Or so she believed.  Nobody could be sure.  Especially nobody.

 

She yearned for a fulfilment that would retrospectively cast some meaning to the previous years of her life.  She scribbled out a few notes from the text book she was studying and she wondered whether her handwriting could subsist beyond the paper’s surface whereon the joined-up letters seemed to reside.  Tangible fashionings that would taste and feel their own meanings as words if they could only be lifted like children’s transfers and popped in the mouth.

 

Her husband had returned to the kitchen, following his joke with the plate.  But was it a joke?  She sensed that every joke was seriousness disguised.  And vice versa.  Especially religion, which, in its way, gave the words birth and death an extended meaning they otherwise lacked.  Lifted their existentialist absurdity into realms where it could be unfathomed, unspooled, unspun, like whipping a top until it paradoxically bore the static colours of mysticism.

 

She licked her lips.  The sight of a famine on the television  faced her from some news event.  She often had the picture on with no sound.  The reception tonight was leathery – with the same matt consistency as her jacket … as she tried to penetrate the dull brown pixels to follow the paths of ghostly skeletons lined up towards the flat screen’s variously moving horizons.

 

She heard a plane crash.  Sorry, cross that out.  She heard a plate crash on to the kitchen lino.  Or was it a wine-glass.  She’d later be ages picking over every splinter.  Her husband never had the knack for such minutiae, nor the gumption.  Then the sound of skidding feet as he evidently walked through the suds he’d scattered in all directions.  She visualised chaos with body-sized meat at its centre – orbitting seeds, then lumbering life itself.  A spinning plate.  Or a series of many spinning plates that used to be an act on variety shows where the artist had to keep them all up in the air by twirling in turn each spindle upon which they spun.  Humming like giant bees.

 

As a child, she was once severely scolded at a school-dinner for licking the remains of gravy from her plate with her tongue..  French-kissing food was not what a well-behaved girl was meant to do.  Indeed, after lifting the plate to her face, she cold see the teacher’s shocked expression – even now.  A bit like a cross God. Or so she thought.  One of those ancient memories that stayed with you all your life, trivial in themselves, but fundamental in retrospect.  She could hardly believe she was herself a child once.  And, before that, a baby dropped down the chimney by a stork.

 

A plate was spinning on the TV screen like a visitant from space.  World Hunger  had been replaced by a black and white Dr. Who episode from the Sixties.  There was a strange mixture of moods as she channel-hopped herself through the eons with the remote.

 

Time for supper.  She felt hungry. Strangely tired.  Her husband had only just finished the washing-up for lunch.  They really must get a proper dish-washer, before it was too late.  In the beginning was the Whirled.  She slumped to the floor and cracked like a leather egg.  No joke.

 

 

 

Hands Across The River Of Life

 Published 'Purple Patch' 1992

 

HANDS ACROSS THE RIVER OF LIFE 

 

''Luxury, this morning."

 

The old gent behind the newspaper spoke to me as I took my seat in the Thameslink train.

 

''Luxury is it?" I asked, not understanding even my question.

 

"Yes, it's usually old stock." He paused before saying: "Victoria is it?"

 

"No, London Bridge, I think, then Bedford."

 

''Must be something wrong ... something wrong, but not unusual"

 

"Yes, not unusual," by which I suppose we meant it was usual.

 

The conversation was in itself unusual, but unusual things are always happening to me. Trivial exchanges with complete (and sometimes incomplete) strangers are only part of the ill-fitting jigsaw.

 

The jigsaw piece that represents me is irregularly nodular, always unpromising as the one to be fitted next into the puzzle: further from the straight bits even than the middle of the picture, or so I seem.

 

That old gent who struck up a useless conversation has now left the train (set on changing at East Croydon, he told me).

 

Perhaps he's off to join another puzzle. Indeed, he'll have to change a lot at East Croydon to retrieve the puzzle of his own life. That's because he was the one who chose to speak to me, not the other way about. Thus, he has no option really but to remain a piece in MY crazy jigsaw, whatever he does now. And he'll soon discover that the pieces of my puzzle form a picture which doesn't seem to match the one on my box-lid at all.

 

Spamhead

 Published 'Lost' 1992  

 

The boy sat at the foot of the stairs in the half-light of the late afternoon. He was unable to see to the top where, presumably, the landing lights were off. He could only resort to playing cat’s cradle with his own shadow, until the growing darkness expunged even the shadows.

Quite close was the broom cupboard under the stairs. In fact, the boy leant towards its ill-fitting door, his ear against it like a pressed flower.

He had grown accustomed to the noises from one of the bedrooms which led from the unseen landing. He was not sure which one, but it was his father’s voice speaking in low tones to his guest. The words grew wilder for a time and then gradually tailed off into undertones....drifting on into eventual silence. 

***

 The broom cupboard door suddenly banged violently on its loose hinges, as if a spirit fresh from the slips of hell was hammering from the inside with its head.

“Mummy, mummy,” murmured the boy, a dewdrop welling like a priceless emerald from the end of his nose. The battering forthwith ceased immediately, and a harsh breathing ensued.

 ***

 The boy’s head was literally massive, with a high frontage which bore honest, unfurrowed brows. At birth, his mother had had to strain to force him through to the nest of her loins, the flesh cracking and bones creaking to bear the giant skull.  

His friends, soon to learn how to be deeply cruel without really trying, had called him spamhead....  The house was quiet. The father’s guest had left, stepping over the boy’s pretence of sleep at the foot of the turning stairs, but not without leaving a slight heel-mark in his cheek, like a dimple....  

From the broom cupboard, the boy could hear a low voice, vaguely reminding him of one who had lapped him in rhymes of breaking boughs. The voice was the one who had told him not to worry about the outlandish size of his head, and he had felt safe in her arms, as if all the fu¬ture was preserved in her soul like an irreducible gem...  

But it dripped out, like blood.

And all he could hear now was the same voice in the cupboard addressing him over and over again: “Spamhead.. sssspamhead.... ssssssss......”

The Weirdmonger XII

Published 'Peripheral Visions' 1992

 

The hammer sword was spliced to his side-he shambled like a mammoth, with tusky beards, thickened lips, thumper nose and a frown fit enough to irrigate a greater dome even than his head.

 

He grunted from the depth of his chest as if his mouth had nothing to do with it. It was established, however, that he was the Weirdmonger - but, ages ago, someone or something had rudely excised his tongue so that he found it more difficult to wield words as well as weirds. But how could anybody talk with no tongue? So no one believed this part of his tale.

 

That night, the town celebrated his arrival. Come morning, though, all took on a new complexion, as differ­ent as sun from moon. The wild parties had become breakfasts all too easy to sick up.The crazy notions had turned to worries of the clock and the purse. The idle chitchat and pub talk had long since run out or words. The eyeballs ran with yellow wanks of snot.

 

They rose from their beds, made the best of bad jobs and hunched their shoulders at the smallholdings where not even a solitary chicken could scrape together enough provender for the day. They donned sufficient clothes just this side of decency and set off for the swelter­ing town square where they had left the Weirdmonger snoring beneath the dry fountains. Having arrived, with the eyes still glazed over with an ingredient of sleep some call dream, others life, they crouched like school children on the dusty ground, to await what must happen.

 

But nothing did.

  

The town was at the foot of a panhandle. The endemic swirling seasons there run their course without due consideration for each other.

 

Last night, at the height of the festivities, the Weirdmonger had mimed his journey to the town. He had endured a trek ... lengthened out his legs, lowered his head nearer the ground and pretended his feet had be­come only fit to be the root vegetables. His massive lungs had done nothing to cool the body spaces in each of which he had briefly inhabited along the way. The seeping of his eyes had done little to conceal the wild fury that ever danced like a cloud of fireflies he followed.

 

If only he had tongue enough to flicker in pace with his pantomime of passage.

 

He boasted that he was Weirdkeeper, Weird­ster, Weirdmin, Oracle, Swordmaster, Mascot, and Beasthead. But none could even begin to believe him, for nothing continued to happen. The endless vigils merely grew hotter as the summer seasons leapfrogged each other with no winters between.

  

He no longer shambled: he became a mountain of stagnant flesh. Only his hammer sword remained recognizable, untarnished by the sultry air.

 

But, then, came another like him. Or like him, when he had first come.

 

The newcomer dislodged the sword from be­tween the palpitating thews of the tidal monument and sliced joints of it asunder, like chopping away ravenous squealing runts from their mother's steaming udder.

 

The crowd of townspeople crooned in pain, since their own unborn babies were swollen beyond the lips of the wombs.

 

One of the crowd spoke, as if to describe some­thing to one who could not see: "We flock to this baking square every morning in good faith. We kept him here to become a figurehead - we felt he had something to teach us about beauty, about ugliness about faith itself. We asked him. We had a thousand questions to ask. If our enemies came, would he up and fight? If our friends came, would he tell them of the luck he'd dispense to them as he would to us? When he decided to speak more clearly, with all gutturals forsaken, would he teach us of the past and how we're to create a new one for a brighter future? Would he ring the unfaulted brazenness of his bell along the length of our land in clear and certain tones? But without a clapper, as one of us eventually found out for sure when prizing open two loving rows of teeth in his massive jaw, to ease the pain in the rotted, rutted gums... Yes, it was his throat that indeed ran up and ran down the scales of utterance, but all we heard were boasts and more boasts, since whilst chests are boastful, mouths can only simper ... but if had ideas, if he had solutions or benedictions for our troubles, they were never trans­ferred by the gutted cords of his oaken neck. So, he turned out as effective as the tongue of land he crossed to come here: in short, he was little better than a god!"

 

The deeper voice of the newcomer rang out in reply: "But I am the true Weirdmonger ... one who can speak out as loud and clear and fluent as the best of you ... give me your questions, poor folk, your hopes, your desires, your unanswered prayers - for each word or weird even in a whisper I utter becomes a truth as I utter it."

 

The townspeople shouted at once, all in a babble of tongues racing to communicate at last with a chosen one. Some even rose from their haunches, but such had been the length of time in crouching, they left their feet behind like carrots.         

 

            The second Weirdmonger collapsed upon the first. His words jammed up at the tip of his tongue, lungs ballooning even from his ears. 

 

            Thank goodness the townspeople never realised that their uproar had stoned the second Weirdmonger deaf as a doorpost. Or maybe they did realise, for some of them wandered off muttering, in evident horror, that unheard prayers are even worse than unanswered ones. 

 

If the townspeople had been bright enough, they would have foisted a course in reading and writing upon their gods.

 

            Better still telepathy!    

 

For, you see, there is at least one god holding court in the universe somewhere whose whole basis of worship and prayer depends on this dubious branch of the paranormal called telepathy.

 

In the main, however, sad to report, gods and those who pray to them are pretty insensitive and un­imaginative beings (which is perhaps the biggest paradox of all.)

 

The townspeople had a party that night which despite the hammering heat, was wilder than ever: plenty of young meat baked in wrap-arounds of old, together with a rhythmic stumping dance till dawn.

 

Not many stayed at home - but those who did prayed against the further encroachment of weirdities. A few even prayed that the need for prayer be lifted from their shoulders ... so that they could spend their time farming the panhandle.

 

ARITHMETIC

 

When the saviour was due to conduct a sermon on the Mount, he had been warned in advance by the almighty that this was going to be the most important one of all. THE sermon on the Mount, in fact, so he'd better have something pretty good up his sleeve to deliver.

 

Imagine the saviour's consternation, then, when he arrived on the Mount (via Woodmansterne's station of the cross) only to find just a bedraggled mob waiting for him which you could hardly call a tete-a-tete, let alone a crowd.

 

Although he had the beatitudes up his sleeve, he produced a rabbit instead.

 

"Go forth and multiply!" he commanded the mob.

 

And in the circumstances that was a very wise thing to have said.

Published 'Purple Patch' 1991 

 

We Won't Keep You Long

WE WON'T KEEP YOU LONG  

The room was empty when I arrived. This was unusual because waiting in National Health hospitals had long been a communal activity, if not a particularly sociable one. Perhaps I'd mixed up the time of my appointment. Instead of 9.30, it should have been 3.09.  

No, the lady behind the glass at the reception desk, surrounded by many varieties of potted plant, as in an Henri Rousseau painting, certainly had my name in the appointments register, even if someone had cack-handedly written my name as Lewis Desmond instead of Desmond Lewis.  

"We won't keep you long," said the lady in the jungle. "Take a seat and we'll call you."  I knew I should take what she said with a pinch of salt.

  Well, it didn't seem to matter what name she eventually called out, since I was still the only one in the waiting-room. I was bound to know it was me, by the process of elimination.  

published 'Purple Patch' 1991

Conjugal Spice

The bedroom was quiet, with the thunderstorm abating. No rain rushing along the gutters. No wind whining through the chinks in floor and roof.

Time to catch up on sleep. Husband and wife snored soundly, giving a wide berth to each other's shape, which was easy because the old-fashioned bed was possibly big enough for three.

Then, unlike the erstwhile weather, came a pinpoint of noise. Quiet at first, like the gentle nose-nose of mice or, at the most, rats, coming from under the floorboards.

Maude sat bolt upright, her every faculty primed. "Wake up, George," she whispered loudly.

George grunted. .

"Wake up, I said," she softly squealed.

The noise was now free-flowing rather than the initial separate sound of tentative snuffling. George eventually sat up and said: "What's up, Gorgeous?"

"Listen to that noise - whatever is it?"

His ears pricked. The moonlight, filtering through the slight gap in the print curtains, picked out the tiny glistening beads of sweat on his upper lip. "Nope - can't hear a damn thing, Gorgeous."

"You must be deaf, George. Just be quiet for once..."

The quietness was fast filling with another sound as if bare bones were rattling inside the chimney breast.

By now, Maude had switched on the bedside lamp with a click that always seemed louder at this time of night (especially with the moon on the wane.) "Look!" she screeched from underbreaths.

And they immediately clicked the light off, since what they thought they saw noodling from the cracks between floorborads were bloated worms, fangs denoting where snouts should have been if they did not simultaneously liquefy.

Maude and George long continued to sit bolt upright, fearful that a resumption light would attract further incursions.

"Gorgeous..." "Yes, George?" "The noise has gone, if I'm not too much mistaken." "Oh, George, I'm shaking fit to break and my titties are freezing, and I've got a splitting headache. Rub my feet for me, George." "Okky Doke, Duchess."

He tunnelled inside the bed, but there was a fleshy jelly with a spicy stench which slightly reminded him of Maude's night soil in the old days, before she had taken to wearing stiff underwear designed for those little incontinent moments.

Moonlight later saw fit to well back from the darkest hour before dawn. Still, nothing could be seen except the outer margins of varying consistencies of shadow moving about across the ancient king-sized bed. There were belching snorts as body rubbed against body, the air being sucked from between the red raspberries of skin.

And so much later in the night, it must have been morning. Something seeped into the print curtains like light, bleeding through rose-weft filters and willowy patterns of melting rhubarb.

Laid out across the huge bed were the flesh-sucked husks of two identical human bodies that had, at long last, shared the conjugal bed with a third party. And another storm could be heard grumbling in the distance amid jagged moonlight.


(Published 'The Night Side' 1991)