Carving The Fish

 

 The fish had been poached perfectly and Rachel turned from her atlas to scrutinise its potential edibility.  Bill had prepared it for her - and had sprinkled several herbs and whole peppercorns over it.  Bill was currently her Ex.  But they were still fast friends. 

 

.            Bill taught geography which was Rachel’s worst subject at school -- but she enjoyed the shape of maps more for their aesthetic quality than for their representation of reality.  She hated reality.

 

              The atlas she had been browsing through was one of Fantasy Worlds, where all literary maps had been collected together.  Tolkien’s Middle Earth.  Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.  Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.  Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.  James Hilton’s Shangri-La.  Cervantes’ La Manche.  And so on.  Rachel adored poring over them with studious grins – lovingly tracing their margins, imagining herself in the various purlieus of mindscape. 

 

            “You want to read a real atlas one day, Rachel,” announced Bill as he carved the fish: thick-slivering fillet after fillet upon each of their plates. 

 

            “I’ve always wondered how anyone reads a map?”

 

“Real places on maps are like words, too. Full of meaning, nuance, history, language...”

 

“Well, this bloody place we live in is not spelt properly then!” Rachel joked with a wince of seriousness.

 

            The reason for them falling out as soul mates had been caused by their lack of sympathy regarding these very maps.  Bill was fascinated by the salt-of-the-earth disciplines of physical geography.  Political geography, too.  Brown contours that swirled around outlandishly tall peaks.  The bright primary colours dividing chance nations.  The pastel ones depicting exports, customs, geological features or striations, irrigation projects, hydroelectric dams, forestry conservation preoccupations and so on. 

 

 

          But Rachel loved nothing better than the more nebulous worlds that occupied her precincts of thought. 

 

 

            She grabbed the fish knife and, in a desultory fashion, prodded her share of the mutual meal.  

 

 

           Bill, by now, had taken a whip from his wide-mouthed briefcase.  It was a snaky, quirky terrier of a whip.  It snapped and coruscated.  It almost had a life of its own. 

 

 

            Bill positioned it on the table in the map-outline of the place whence the fish traditionally derived.  . 

 

Nags and Knitting

Nags and Knitting

The race was between some scurvy nags. Point-to-Point. Pointless. But there you go. Just some down-in-the-mouth, dyed-in-the-wool farmers and their workers, a loose gathering of faces in the dishevelled dusk – discussing their various nags, which to bet on, which to gainsay. Not much more than 5 shillings each way.

The day had been sodden. Going good, now good to heavy. Fences straggly – some beaten flat by unknown feet or, perhaps, a short-lived storm. Indeed, more like a flat race than a jumping one. A chase without chairs. The other course, the hurdle one, was being repaired from some unseen skirmishers of the night. Or from pub yobs hopping along in the dead of night, drunkenly kicking down any obstacle in their way.

Farmer Watts was putting his money on Blackberrypie. For him, it couldn't lose. The other nags were so out of salts, they looked as if they had been broken in quite clumsily and too often. Robbed of all their filliness or coltitude or geldinghood. With saddles covered – for whatever reason – with the knitting from the local old people's day centre.

However, Farmer Coughlan was tantamount to putting the whole of his farm itself on Sausageandmash. The property was only worth 5 shillings at the best of times, bearing in mind the never-ending saga of food scares even scaring God Himself. No exaggeration.

Farmer Watts and Farmer Coughlan stemmed from rival farming clans since time immemorial. They stared steely-eyed – as the makeshift racing steward (a man in a dungarees whom nobody seemed to recognise) lifted the tapes for the forty odd scrawny steeds to start running.

 

One immediately started munching the grass. Another unseated his jerk of a jockey. Yet more careered off in all directions - except towards that of the finishing post.

Blackberrypie and Sauasageandmash were leading a small pack who were drifting, one guessed, generally in the right direction. A few even in this contingent of mediocrity-masquerading-as-might stumbled on the flat fences. Leaving the two main contenders (Blackberrypie and Sauasageandmash) to negotiate the home strait, in vile vying brays and wicked snaps of the whip from what they saw as unseen yet weighty powers above.

Blackberrypie was leading by a head. Then Sausageandmash by a neck. Then Blackberrypie by two heads. Then Sausageandmash by a head and two necks.

 

The croaky crowd uttered their approval amid catcalls and whistles from some flatcapped locals who did not seem to have backed anything at all – merely graced the day with their presence. A disinterested crowd is better than no crowd at all, some claimed. In actual fact, it was becoming, if belatedly, rather a good race between these two nags, bearing in mind the general standard of Point-to-Points hereabouts.

Farmer Watts and Farmer Coughlan actually roared. The first time either of them had managed this throaty evidence of their lungs for years and years. The usually mumbled, these days, and grumbled under their breaths. For the first time in a tandem of eternities, fire shone in their eyes.

Yet, imagine their deflation when they spotted Blackberrypie and Sausageandmash grazing in a field, never having reached the finishing post.

 

Either illusion or wishful thinking had created the mass hysteria. The sunset (with the rain clouds in retreat) made the grass the two nags gnawed look a gooey red-black. Natural processes caused the horses to appear to ooze long black things which coiled to the ground to form a mass of wriggling moonlit maggots.

 

Two short human-like shapes eventually separated themselves from the nags in a slow-motion unknitting action, and very slowly raced off to the pub – followed (as now allowed in tradition) by the two farmers and their cronies, slapping each other's backs, guffawing, nay, laughing, gloriously laughing at the pointlessness of Point-to-Points, at the sheer animal absurdity of God's gift called life.

 

Only later did they go back to muttering.

 

(unpublished)

ONANISM
       

                     

                      “‘Reports are coming in that a thousand children have been captured close to Ingatestone in Essex.’ 

 

                      He switched off the TV in disgust. The latest war had made children wonder whether their species could actually be preserved.”

                     

                      I closed the book for a moment, leaving a finger in my place. I glanced at the title again—MISCRE­ANT IN MOONSTREAM—in many ways a beautiful phrase but one pregnant with foreboding. It was a fantasy story—well, at first, I thought it was. But, when it started dealing with close on a thousand names of children who had been slaughtered by just one Town Coun­cil alone—I knew this could not be entertainment, whatever the mean­ing of that word. Since when were lists something you could read for pleasure?

 

                      Come to think of it, it was a strange book, as a physical thing. The cover seemed to be made from wrinkled black skin. The title it­self was artfully picked out in gold tooling, the spine could be de­pended upon to crack each time it was opened and shut and there were weathered metal clasps. I tried to recall the whereabouts of the secondhand bookshop where I had obtained it. Having haunted such places for most of my life, I felt like a ghost through whose fingers the book would soon slip to the floor. Or it would fall, not as a result of a false grip in my fin­gers, but because of its own lack of substance.

 

                      Yes, it had been that darkly lit street, back of High Holborn—the one that always laid out its penny dreadfuls on planks, the worst of them all ranked outside beneath smeared panes. Not that the owner was any better at window dressing. It looked more like a backstreet sex shop than one intended to house such classics as George Eliot, James Tiptree, Jr., Fiona MacLeod, Rad­clyffe Hall, Branwell Brontë, Oscar Wilde, Petal Jeffery, &c. Indeed, when the runes were read, civilized fornication had as much seediness as the backstreet variety. Having known neither, I was not the one best suited to judge.

 

                      The man behind the stacked counter was smaller even than my­self. He wore a long beard and a short pinafore dress, each, no doubt, to disguise a different as­pect of his true persona. His pip­ing voice offered assistance in in­terpreting the labels on the various plank shelves.

 

                      “I’m after historical stories with a good straightforward plot.” My voice, too, echoed the high pitches of the room. It had evidently been a public drinking-place in its hey­day, one of those large affairs with a honky-tonk in every corner for random sing-songs. You could even see woodworm holes around a perfect circle on one of the walls…“I’ve got cleverly plotted histor­ical stories in here than you’d ever dream of, young man.” I didn’t relish his tone—nor his grammar, for that matter. I scowled, or I attempted to scowl—whether he saw it as a scowl, I am probably not master enough of my own narrative to tell. He showed me behind some heavy-duty shelving bearing the biggest books I had ever seen. They must have been very tall peo­ple back in History, especially in Ancient Egypt. It was too dark to read the titles. However, he pointed to a finger-torch which, if I stood on the stepladder, I could reach. It felt very precarious teetering up that ladder. If I didn’t believe in sanity, I could have suspected him of having murderous designs on his customers by enticing them into unnecessary accidents. He was right, though. Once I got stuck into browsing, I discovered a veritable treasure trove of historical litera­ture, by the likes of E. F. Benson, C. S. Lewis, A. Blackwood & Machen, R.Aickman, L. Dunsany, T. Ligotti, M.P. Shiel, D.F. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, C. A. Smith, E. A. Poe.

 

          The list was endless, except it couldn’t’ve been. There were also small volumes with grey and yellow photographs bearing the names of writers who had not yet earned the fame of those undeserving of it. Let me see, there were Sarah Poe (no relation), Samuel Rigger, Pad­gett Weggs, Blasphemy Fitzworth, Abraham Bintiff, Clovis Camber, Archibald Z________ (no relation), Felix Holt, C. M. Eddy, Sr., the Wild Man of Hurtna Pore, Fred Tyr­rel, Stripling Welham, Nial Hopper, Ervin Tourner, the Weirdmonger, Rachel Mildeyes &c, &c. And there was, of course, MISCREANT IN MOONSTREAM, tucked away in the third rank, where no literary greed had previously been sufficient to send the page-turners grubbing and pawing. It was by an anony­mous writer, if it was by a writer at all. With the flickering torch, I scanned random paragraphs.

 

          The tome cost an arm and a leg, or it should have done judging by the glint in the shopkeeper’s eye as I toted it to his front counter. He seemed to be pissing, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He would only accept a cheque, so I put my ready cash back where it came from and scrawled some out­landish number in the amount space, finishing with a crazy flourish that people often do when first invent­ing their own signature. He took it without demur. I was convinced he was glad to be shot of MISCRE­ANT IN MOONSTREAM. But why then stash it away in the most inaccessible slot imaginable, beyond the reach of even the painstaking­est bookworm? I clip-clopped along the wet pavements of the moon-strewn city, reading as I went.

         

          There was once a war that spread haphazardly across the fron­tier of twilight, between the fields we knew and the lands held to be subject to the sound of elfin horns. The light, extruding from the dawn sky like strands of melted butter, suddenly re-hardened with thud of tank on tank. He peered over the makeshift edge of the trench he had dug the night before in a marshy area, and saw that the bore-holes of two tanks’ gunbarrels were so dissimilar that one had slipped upon the other, like a tele­scope, only to explode outwards in a particularly nasty fashion, plying him with jagged curds of steel. From along the nearby waterway which began somewhere further back than the fields we knew and extended even beyond the elfin gloaming, he could make out the distant chugging of one of those Narrow Boats that the allies utilised on canals as transporters of army provender. Eventually, it rounded the bend, emerging from the shim­mering curtain of sunrise and moored clumsily quite near his en­trenchment—into which he had by now withdrawn his head to gouge out the splinters. He heard voices laughing, as if a joke had been cracked amongst the crew. He laughed, too, uncertain of his own sense of humour amidst a war. Sporadic gunfire still stitched the air from another quarter of the fields we knew and, out of the prevailing silences, an intermittent screeching of the death terrors served to remind him that there could be no joke worthy of even the slightest titter. Then, the return fire, like the Earth ripping off its waistcoat, button by button. Having reteethed to the gums, he lifted a loud “halloo!” from the bot­tom of his trench, half to put a halt to the unseemly light-headedness of those who should know bet­ter and half to release the bad air in his lungs. The “halloo!” re­turned from their direction with re­doubled force. Could he have set up, unintentionally, some communi­cation system that was intrinsic to a wider, more complex pattern of passwords, resistance movements, codes, semaphores, undercover war-work and smugglers’ tips-of-the-wink? It was with some ab­ruptness that he realised he was not exactly alone in his trench. He had indeed dug it for himself, but someone else had crept in on tip­toes . . . or someone else was already there, a four-limbed earth snake of slithery black. “Who are you?” The voice sounded hoarse with shouting. “I am a very old man.” His voice was as high-pitched as a child’s. “What are you doing here?” “What are you doing here?” “Sheltering from the war.” “Which war?” “Is there more than one?” The implication was incredulity that even one war was feasible. He saw tears weltering in his eye-holes and felt some stinging in his own without his mind being particularly doleful. He pushed his head into the soft loam of his trench, as if that would make him forget about him. He de­cided tentatively to peer out of the trench and test the score. This he did and saw the Narrow Boat with the name “Abraham Bintiff II” painted along its side. A series of faces watched him, a line of decap­itated heads along the bulwarks staring deeply into his eyes from only a few yards away. Suddenly, with a great roar of childlike laugh­ter, they got up on the feet grow­ing directly from their necks and waddled to the bank where, without preamble or possible motive, they began eating each other with the utmost relish. The fastest eaters naturally lasted the longest and the right gobblers, scolded by their better-mannered compatriots, filled their cheeks with massy balloons of face-fodder—only to sick it all out again into the grume of the inky cut. Without bellies, sicking-up was the only sure result and, be­fore long, tatterdemalion skull- bones with half-digested cheek-flaps fought for each other’s succulent neck muscles. He knew he witnessed a vision stemmed from war. If madness is born, then madness will die. The heads soon became serried clottings of living gristle and, tail in mouth, their Worm Ouroboros wound across the deck and interlaced with the poles and boat-hooks which, on better days, helped the passage of the boat through the locks and winding-holes of those fields we once knew. It was at that point he became the first self-confessed human being to spot, if fleetingly, the inscrutable faces of our elfin neighbours from just across the other side of twi­light. A whole day had passed, evidently. As a child, he had learnt that, beyond the fields back­ing on to the back of the last row of terraced houses, there lived others that could only be told about in song. And, that day of all days, there was no possible way that such a song could be mus­tered by his aging, dried-out lips. It was all gone from him, with the war. And, gradually, ineluctably, the rest of his body crept away from his head, disgusted by the foulness that brooded inside the skull. And the head of D. F. Lewis rolled into the moonstream with a glittering splash.

         

“The bookworm closed the book with a final splintering of its back­bone. He could now go to bed; he had been insufficiently awake to tell how tired he was. The plot had held him fast for literally hours since arriving home. He uncoiled his nether-turban of a nappy, ensuring piecemeal that his day’s doings were all present and correct. He scratched at the new stubble on his chin. He, too, was about to sprout a false beard upon what no longer felt to be his own face. As he collapsed into the confines of his cot, he managed to plug a dummy into his mouth to stopper the screams.”

         

Nobody

Laziness is just another word for dying - some of us doing it more quickly than others. Ambition walks hand in hand with birth and death like a near mindless toddler being escorted by its parents. Suicide is being fostered out to oblivion. Happiness is simply grief disguised. Such sayings mean nothing. Nothing means something called death. Most of us are too lazy or too scared to care. Fear grows from a sub-conscious that even pre-dates birth itself; a sub-conscious we all share, whether we're ever alive or not. Again, at the end of the day, who cares? Nobody.

(Published 'Purple Patch' 1992)

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......”