ASHLEY LIME

Published 'Odyssey' 1993

Ashley Lime worked in an insurance company and arrived daily in the office mausoleum at precisely seven a.m., early enough to catch the batting-lady still passing a feather duster over the desks. She topped and tailed the loose ends, freshened up the jotters, primed the blotters, stirred the pots of correcting-fluid, laid out the virgin sheets of carbon paper...



Ashley's parents had been surprised at his arrival, since all their astrologers, clairvoyants, mediums, marriage guidance counsellors, radio phone-in experts, agony sister-in-laws, social workers and old friends had all said that, in the circumstances, Mrs Lime’s pregnancy was not even a possibility.



"Morning, Mr Lime, I'm just off now, back to me ol' hubbie,” said the batting-lady. “Have a nice day, love."

Ashley sat down at his own personal desk, dealt out the insurance documents for the day like clock patience and, lastly, while resting his chin on the bridge of his hands, he kept a weather eye open for the bustling arrival of his colleagues.



Mrs Lime's belly had been as flat as a pancake, her body-clock as regular as Uncle Tom's fob watch and, in any event, she had often been sick in the mornings since that summer camp with the girl guides when they force-fed eveybody's bacon and eggs down her gullet simply for the sake of a silly joke.

Ashley's father had put his arm around her and said, never mind, all children are the cruellest beasts that God ever created and, furthermore, it is no good harbouring resentments against your own body.

She had bitten her tongue, before not saying that she felt like chopping off his whatsit and putting that in the cot instead.



Ashley should give home a tinkle to tell his wife that he had arrived safely at the office. No doubt, there had been some holcaust on the railway that morning, simulcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and she would be worried about his being mixed up with it somewhere along the line.

The relentless telephone tone jabbed his brain like the needle of a slow motion Singer sewing-machine.

There was no answer!



So, when a living thing did arrive, against all the odds, Mrs Lime called it Ashley and cradled it in her arms, trying, from time to time, to adminster the kiss of life. She then plunged what she thought was its face against her dry pap - but, eventually, she gave up and went to the bathroom to wash off all this pre- and after-birth that had erupted from her body with no sign of a real baby amongst it.



Had he dialled the correct number? She always picked the phone up after the third ring. Dial again, Lime! And he did - but still no answer.

Today was suddenly taking an untidy tangent and, to cap it all, colleagues had by now started trooping into the open-plan office, gabbling about the day's disasters. Thousands killed here, thousands (different ones) killed there. A nuclear meltdown a day keeps the doctor away.



My name, I think, is Ashley Lime.

The world is all around me like a mystic vision. I try to learn from the senses, but my eyes, ears, nose and fingers simply belie the evidence of their own reality.



He dialled home all day, even questioning the integrity of the whole telephone system with Directory Enquiries. They gave him an alternative number, but that only ended him up on some damnable radio phone-in where he was expected to comment intelligently on a local epidemic.

When the tea-lady came round, whom he usually knew under the name Gladys, she pretended to be a complete stranger, saying that it was more than her job was worth to pass the time of day with the likes of Ashley.



Am I monster? Or, at worst, man? I wonder if God, were He alive, would He recognise the likes of me. I doubtless fall short of his ideals. Nevertheless, what more can I do to match them? I've done enough, surely, to rest assured.

And death, if nothing else, is assured.



The batting-lady arrived to find him still in the office, the last one to go as usual. She "did" around him and then helped him stack up his index cards in a neat pile. At least SHE was familiar.

He asked her to drain the inkwells and remove the sediments to the Ladies. She did not care for this job - worse than stomach-pumping Gladys' tea urn or scraping out the waste bins - and she gave Lime an old-fashioned look fit to set him reeling back on the balls of his feet. But she had a certain fondness for him, and no mistake.



So, I seek only one thing: a sign of myself: because my original parents have denied me birth, have slaughtered me before I was old enough to stop them, even before they forgot about me by first changing the past itself.



He travelled home, heart in mouth, fearing what might face him in the shape of his wife.

But she was there as usual, puckered lips as ever raised to greet him. Then he noticed a blemish on her left cheek, like a wen. It was not worth making a fuss about, as there was only one stiff hair sprouting from it. But, that was not all, her arm hung pathetically shrivelled by her side like a shameful part.

No wonder he had got a wrong number that morning, in view of such evident dis-figurement.



At the sea's bottom, the lissom weeds sway in a slow dance with darting colourfish and, among them, Ashley crawls, crab-like, dragging the disease-riddled foetus of his twin brother.



He put his wife to bed, in the hope she would improve by morning. He kept vigil the night through, tending to the weeping sores that broke out around her front-loader.

He must have dozed off, because following the dream of the sea creature, he saw the bald head of a vile bird forcing itself through the bedroom wall, as if from a giant cuckoo-clock. Its neck was long, indeed, but before it could reach out to give Ashley a peck, its snapping beak abruptly hinged back on itself and swallowed whole the wattled head whence it came.

Ashley glanced at his wife who was at that moment tossing in the bed - and she cried out in evident desperation to what had become a blurred image of her husband: "Ashley, everything in me is coming free and flopping about..."

Ashley Lime shrugged - he put it all down to what he called “things he couldn’t possibly understand”. He would ask the batting-lady about it first thing in the morning.



And if death is the most certain thing in one's life, the natural conclusion is that everything else is more uncertain - even the fact of one's birth.



But the next morning, there were many insurance documents awaiting Ashley Lime's urgent attention, so all such thoughts fled quickly from his mind. No impulse, then, of course, to ask the batting-lady whether blood is God’s correcting-fluid.

There should be a piping hot carton of tea at precisely eleven a.m. and Gladys, the tea-lady, might ask if Ashley’s wife was well, as she often did. THEN, he should be able to get to the bottom of some things - to the bottom of body-clocks or what might not live amongst the dead tea-leaves in Gladys' huge slopping tea-urn. He’d even fathom why most memories are false, but when faced with the only true memory which is death, then why had he no need of it? Why is the only connection between people an interruption?