Vicious Circle

   VICIOUS CIRCLE

 

Published 'Connections' 1995

           

Peppered with picnic parties across Gushing Downs: a loom of dawnlight; twirling parasols; bright checked tablecloths spread over the greenest grass possible outside of a painting; wicker baskets brimming with edible goodies of every dietary persuasion; and joyful, sexy people. 

 

          "Nice day, Susan."   A hand both saluted and shaded the sun.

 

          "It'll be even nicer when the wine coolers arrive."

 

          The voices of chirpy, dimply children mingled with the deeper grown-up sounds.  The clink of glasses.  The buzz of bee.  The chomp of molars.  The giggles of those deep in love with each other.

 

          "It'll be great when the competition begins."

 

          "Yes, it'll soon be time."

 

          A stranger might have questioned what competition was in prospect.  Three-legged or egg-and-spoon races ... or both together?  Tug of love?  The loudest laugh?  The furthest roll of the hoop?  The fastest spin of the top with a cracking whip?  The prettiest frock?  The sweetest smile?  The longest beard?  The shortest?  The ugliest pulled face?  The biggest this, the smallest that? 

 

          The most durable picnic?   The maroon-party to beat all maroon-parties?

 

          No, it was probably none of these.  As a rubicund retainer arrived with cases of chilled white wine and amid the consequent hilarity surrounding the popping of corks, it gradually became clear to the stranger what exactly was to transpire.  Each group was sited beside one of the many natural geysers that abounded on the Downs.  The openings were controlled by manual valves - and the intention was to release them in one fell swoop, whereby the winning group would be the one with the tallest and longest lasting fountain.  A special prize was to be given for the fountain that emerged with the fanciest configuration. 

         

          As the sun dipped below the distant wooded hills, it spread along the horizon like thick cut marmalade.  The wine corks took up new crescendoes of popping, as bonfire beacons were set alight across the Downs by each picnic party.  Then, there was a secret starting signal (which was only obvious retrospectively to the stranger) - and the geysers were released in a perfect flashpoint of simultaneity.  Some spluttered in short silver cascades or spirts of gurgling spray.  Others were sufficiently tall to steal gold from the sunset and become gushing giants of myth and magic.  A few, even taller, sported every colour of the rainbow plus colours unknown.  Yet, there was one geyser, the tallest of all, which lost its colour as it sprayed new-born stars across the darkening sky - and at the mountain-peak of its fountaining power, it formed a mighty dragon's head.  The roar from the head's gargling mouth was incredibly even louder than the geyser which had originally given it birth.  The picnickers were cowed by the intrinsic, if short-lived, magnificence of such a white-water beast looming from the earth in cataclysmic contrast to the rearing tides of night... 

 

          After eventually packing their hampers, the parties wended their way home across the Downs, each jollifier with a blazing torch.  The stranger followed, keeping himself to himself, and softly sobbing.  He had stayed on the Downs long enough to watch the geysers being pent up within their rightful confines of dark earth - except, of course, for that single squirt the picnickers had forgotten to cap within its oubliette: it continued spluttering, perhaps pathetically, perhaps otherwise, to form snowdrop petals in the marooned night. 

 

          The stranger knew, despite the carefreeness of those he followed, that the treasure which Dragon Earth greedily guarded was itself: teetering on volcanic brinks ... and the stranger shuddered with ultimate fear. 

 

          O Stranger, O Saint George.

 

 

 

THEIR COLD TOUCH

   Published 'The Unnameable' 1994  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Can I borrow the use of one of those?” asked the Tinker Man.

 

He pointed at Peter’s fingers.

 

He then proffered a copper ring which was fastened to one end of a thick thread, the thread’s other end leading from a fly-wheel, a fly­wheel that spun eccentrically on a large Meccano model—a ring which Peter allowed to be placed on his finger.. marrying him, as it were, to childhood’s contraption.

 

After about five minutes of intense scrutiny of the Meccano model—kneeling down to view its innermost sanctums—the Tinker Man told Peter to tug sharply on the ring. Before thinking, Peter jerked the finger and the machine started whirring like a clock about to strike. And Peter became the small boy who used to play with the Meccano set: a small boy in over-large short grey flannel trousers and with a missing finger which he recalled being severed when he foolishly revolved the pedals of an upside-down bicycle and tried to stop the spokes spinning with the said finger.

 

The Tinker Man smiled as he held up his own fingerless fist and faded away. But Peter had already forgotten him, as he stared into the nursery fire, where lines of sparks climbed the back. He thought they were armies marching to a war in the darkness of the chimney. He turned away from the embers, which had been long left untended by the grown-ups. Since his bedtime drew on apace, he looked toward the toys grouped round the cot. His clockwork train remained derailed beside the inattentive teddy-bear. Lead soldiers and their steeds lay about like stage stiffs from Tom Thumb’s Theatre. Remains of a dismantled Meccano model were strewn across the carpet. Many figures were already asleep and one in particular, called Griff, lay unnoticed near the dying light of the fire. Griff had indeed accompanied Peter to tea with the grown-ups and had helped him name the fruit-stones around the edge of his pudding-bowl. Griff had been a lead soldier, before his painted uniform had worn off.

 

 

“Griff’s alive, isn’t he?” said the woman to the messenger at the door. Tears began to well in her eyes.

 

“He’s missing...”

 

“Who’s he missing?”

 

The question was fired like a gun, with no realisation of the ludicrousness of asking it. She wiped her hands down her apron— for she had been caught cooking. She almost smiled and then wept bitterly. An elderly gentleman came to stand behind her, emerging from the gloom of the hallway. His pipe was in his hand—being prepared for speaking his mind—but all he could do was rest his hand on the woman’s shoulder in a pitiful attempt both to comfort her and to steady his own wobbly legs.

 

The messenger thought it best to leave. As he strode down the garden path, the tired couple still wide-eyed at the doorway, like model people who were tokens of weather to come. He wondered why they had given their tired old eyes the bother of silently counting the silver buttons on his uniform.

 

 

Peter lay awake.

 

A depth of overlapping shadows.. .noiseless movements of nights past and nights future as they sought union in that one night of nights...even the toys (Griffo among them) sank into the deep-pile carpet, for fear of such a night. ..the fire was a dead eye in the corner... and Peter recalled that the last fruit-stone he had counted was not the Tinker nor the Tailor, but a Soldier on the brink of unutterable pain.

 

 

The woman lay awake, too. Griff was surely her only son. The snoring mound by her side was no longer her husband but the faraway hill where her son had died. She had her legs curled up to her chest, as if afraid to lower them to the colder reaches of the bed. Down there would be she knew not what, but what was indeed down there would soon need to come up for air. It was only a matter of time.

 

 

On the roof, just above Peter’s nursery window, was something else that had wanted air: a shape that numbered the slates to pass the interminability of that night of nights. It curled up on itself, to keep warm, for the house where it had chosen to brood, was at the centre of a frost-hollow. Within the nursery, Peter stared from his bed and listened to the crackling of the window’s pane. The sight of Griff’s dark blob on the carpet eased his dithering with false dreams...because, quite simply, there was a horse on the roof, if one that was barely alive and now only softly snickering.

 

If in other bed-ends, and on other roof-trees, there began to quicken the once dead sparks of existence, it was too late, since the red streamers of dawn were just around the corner. Peter finally slept for a few fitful hours. When he awoke he saw that Jack Frost had splattered crazy patterns of pink icing across the bright-seeping rhombus of the window.

 

He turned on his side and smiled at his waiting toys. Griff lay beside the fallen ashes of the hearth.

 

 

 

The messenger returned. The old couple noticed this time that he didn’t have any fingers on one hand.

 

Griff had been found, he told them.

 

She again wiped her hands down her apron and, bewildered, she seemed to check whether the pattern had come off in the process. She stamped her feet, one after the other, as if to warm them up or count time to some in-built rhythm. The elderly gentleman rose up from the dark backdrop of the hall and said: “That’s good news. When will he be home?”

 

“The body is here now.” The messenger pointed to the van in which he had arrived. “I’m afraid it’s not a pretty sight—identification you see was most difficult. We just need your final confirmation.”

 

The couple stood and stared, whilst the ugly corpse was frog-marched up and down in front of them. His last parade.

 

As the weather was exceedingly nippy they afterwards went into the kitchen to warm themselves in front of the woodstove. They had toast and wild honey for breakfast and spent the rest of the morning talking to someone they called Griff.

 

“How about some damsons and custard for tea, Griff. You like that, don’t you?”

 

Thus, Peter never answered.

 

 

 

She was a little girl in pigtails—a real dish of a face and knobbly knees fit to tweak the strings of the crabbiest heart. She took the boy by the hand into the woods near the village where they lived—telling him that she would show him the hospice. His imagination was really on overdrive as they tried to reach it. She knew parts of the wood he did not even dream existed, where the translucent golden girders of the early sun twirled like circus spotlights, passing through their bodies as if even real people were ghosts. Before long, she pointed beyond the trees. They skipped and hopped and giggled, holding hands, fingers entwined, her leading, all the way across a meadowy clearing, in full view of the shimmering white sky.

 

And then they saw more clearly the dark rambling house with too many tall chimneystacks and stained roofs. The windows glinted with winks. People in dark clothes, with the odd glinting button, were going in and out of the front entrance, some always staying in, others out. There were interspersed a few desultory horses with their long heads lowered in grazing.

 

“That’s the hospice,” she said.

 

“That’s the what? The hoss-piss? But where’s the...?”

 

The boy merely breathed the reply. He pointed, but his finger seemed to enter another world: fading from its knuckle-root outwards into cold.

 

She looked blank—and walked towards the house alone.

 

 

 

The woman woke and turned to the still mound beside her in bed: the once innocent boy turned husband turned old man, now at last dead flesh. A happy, yet fruitless, marriage. Thankfully, he would not need to suffer the institutionalised indignities yet in store for her. Women always lasted longer. The world’s weathering seemed to suit them better. She wove her own hands together in the darkness, recalling days when other fingers—her husband’s fingers—had entwined amongst them. Abruptly, she felt their cold tinkering touch.

 

 

 

 

Dear Suzanne

  Published 'Xizquil' 1994

Dear Suzanne, 

Why do you keep ringing me? I’ve got nothing more to say to you,

 

Love, Antony x

 

==

 

I know that last night we spoke again at length on the phone, trying to work it all out. But, really, when you get down to it, what is there left between us — merely a touching of strangers on an underground train. So, Suzanne, I’ve come down to Brackensea in an attempt to forget you. The ocean ( as my mother always said) is a fine companion at such times — taking stock, while watching waves make and break. Loneliness is listening to the surf at dead of night from a one-bit lodging. It is strange how I can never express myself properly. Yet words could not even hope to connect two skulls socket to socket. My tongue’s in knots when you take me unawares with your phone calls — I always end up saying things I never intended and then blaming the words themselves for having clandestine meanings..

 

==

 

As you haven’t rung since my last letter, I thought you must be dwelling on my fanciful talk of waves and words and so forth.  So I have decided to scribble out a few more thoughts, in case you’re still under the impression that there’ll ever be anything between us again.

 

Those loud friends of yours, those who always seemed to be drunk - they never took to me, did they? They were never able to get me to play their games. Fucking stupid (excuse my French!) games, if you ask me. Colin lying on the floor pretending to be a dead cat. Hannah —that was her name, wasn’t it? — allowing anybody to undo her bra straps (she’d got nothing to speak of up top, anyway). And Bruce, he tried to make me jump from the box at an Albert Hall live broadcast - said it would make those wireless listeners sit up. Whatever next! I know they’d have grown out of it in time, but not before someone breaking his or her neck in the process. I suppose I loved you too much, Suzanne, to wait around and perhaps see you hurt.

 

We only kissed once, but I’ll remember it forever.

 

==

 

Not hearing anything, I assume you must have gone off with your family to Florence – something which was once planned (in my hearing). Upon reflection, it was rather cruel of you all to sit around making arrangements, without even realising that I might wish I’d been invited to accompany you. You readily accepted my advice on the travel details.

 

Has it occurred to you that we only knew each other in the winter? You must look nice in summery clothes.

 

Brackensea will soon be closing down for the winter. Even holidaymakers with their silly kiss-me-quick hats have tears in their eyes — from the cold wind perhaps — or from a grief which only holidaymakers can feel at the end of the season. The amusement arcades have shutter-men making preparations. The Ferris Wheel almost seems to roll along the promenade in search of its hibernation. And I must go now, too.

 

==

 

I tried to ring your flat, but the phone didn’t answer. You must still be away with the family. The moment I realised you were going to a foreign country, I thanked heaven that you’d be away from some of those godawful friends of yours. See? — my first thoughts were for your well-being, not mine. Your father said he’d always wanted to go to Florence. Hasta la vista! (excuse my Italian). Your father was certainly young for his age.

 

Did I tell you that I can actunlly see the beach from my window? It was cluttered with wind-breaks and crouching children for most of the summer. Now, it’s almost deserted. I can just make out the dark shapes of a couple throwing pebbles into the sea —trying to make them skim, no doubt. They’re now walking along by the sea’ edge – it’s the blurring of the late afternoon which makes them seem joined at the waist rather than hand in hand. I wonder if their romance will last.

 

I can’t stop giggling. I just imagined that couple out there were two of your so-called friends. That’s why they’re now lying down, pretending to be beached whales, presumably!

 

I didn’t know until recently that all your friends were really what people call ‘yuppies’. I’ve read about them in some old colour supplements in the lounge. That they go around saying ‘Yah!’ and ‘Crikey!’, wearing pin-stripe shirts with studs through the collars, and sloane-ranger costumes. Seems to fit them, eh? But, now, a dying race - quite out of fashion. I wonder if Colin, Hannah, Bruce et al have sobered down, too. Anyone reading this letter in a few years’ time will probably never have heard of the word ‘yuppy’, let alone its meaning.

 

I still can’t stop giggling — better than crying, I suppose.

 

==

 

I expect you’ll get my letters all in one go, when you return from abroad. If I’d known, I’d’ve numbered all the envelopes.

 

The lodgings are suddenly full of people — come here for Christmas.

 

(Incidentally, while I think about it, when you’ve been abroad for a long time, don’t you think your own street is either narrower or wider, like a foreign country itself, don’t you think? (excuse my English!).

 

Anyway, that couple on the beach I told you about last time — they wave at me sometimes when they see me with nose plastered to the window. I can just see a flicker of black at their shoulders. During the night, I expect they’re no longer there.

 

The sea sounds more brittle in the winter — no longer the hissing strains of the spume running over the shingle,but more like glass shattering — each wave a suddenly crazed car windscreen. All this is to give you a sense of ambience, Suzanne. And I sit in the corner of the dining room at my own separate table. The other guests stare at me. Surely, I should be staring at them, since they are the newcomers, after all. Most of them are downright obnoxious, as silly as your so-called friends used to be. In fact, one of them reminds me somewhat of Hannah (if that was her name). I begin to wonder whether it may indeed be Hannah. She often smiles my way (underneath the stare), when I look up from the soup.

 

After Christmas, I wonder whether I should leave Brackensea and return to London. I expect Florence is wonderful at this time. A renaissance of a place.

 

==

 

It’s too cold even for that couple to be on the beach. Snow instead of sand. Chunks of frozen lumber being landed from the sluggish sea (excuse my sudden ambition to be a poet!). The whole place looks like a fucking dump.

 

The Christmas roisterers left the lodging yesterday. The one who looked like your friend Hannah had a most unfortunate accident. During a party game, she had an eye pierced with a knitting needle. The ambulance was here relatively quick, despite the weather. We’re currently awaiting news as to her condition. The girl’s friends told us they would try to return in a few weekends’ time - to visit her in the local hospital.

 

later. — You won’t believe it, Suzanne, but I’ve seen that couple again. Not walking on the beach hand-in-hand, this time, but actually cavorting in the sea! I don’t judge the incident, merely describe it, and leave it at that. (Excuse my sang-froid).

 

The lodgings are quieter now. The landlady and I often have a hand of whist. Mrs Tidy is her name, if I haven’t mentioned it before.

 

 

==

 

Dear Suzanne,

Nice of you to ring, after all this time. Yes, I can confirm that I’m still in the land of the living. It is peculiar, however,  that you never receved my letters since the first one - especially as you never went away as planned. Little matters it, though - I never had anything more to say to you really. I’m writing this in the dining-room at my separate table. No guests – except for another man who grunts under his real words. I can’t say I like the cut of his jib.

 

No, I don’t think I’ll be able to accept your kind offer to accompany you and your family to Florence this spring. It would never work out, you with your sparkling personality and me with mine.

 

Sorry to hear about Hannah. And about Colin and Bruce developing pneumonia.

 

I’m nothing, if not in love with you.

 

Antony. x

 

Shamefaced
 Published 'Wearwolf' 1993 

SHAMEFACED

 

I had heard of claustrophobia. But when Simon told me that he suffered from a cosmic strain of it, I was so embarrassed I just didn't know where to put my face.

 

            In fact, as far as I could gather, when I asked him to elaborate, he often resorted to crouching in the broom cupboard under the stairs to escape from the sheer oppression of the open sky.

 

            "Are you sure you're not suffering from agoraphobia rather than claustrophobia, Simon?  It sounds as if you might be."

 

            "No, I feel I must escape the universe itself, you know, to put my body beyond its constricting margins."

 

            I laughed: "Maybe, death is the answer..."

 

            "Yes, it may be, but what if it isn't  -  it's a bit rash to try death out, before exhausting all the possibilities."

 

            For no reason whatsoever, my mind wandered regarding his phrase about "exhausting possibilities" and I visualised peculiar creatures lying all over the place panting desperately for breath...

           

            Then, it struck me that one of the creatures didn't have a face, which solved my problem, if not Simon’s. 

LONDON CHRISTMAS STORY

Are you sitting comfortably--since I am beginning. My name is Felicity and I am the happiest woman in the world. Why? Well, because ...

 

WHAT’S THAT NOISE?

 

How can I tell you about my happiness when there's so much noise? Is it workmen drilling? Or sirens wailing of another war? Sounds a bit like a fuss about nothing, as usual.

 

Well, come closer, my dear. I am happy because I love you. Why don't you look surprised? Why are your eyes so small? I am sincere. Come closer, since you don't seem to be hearing me.

 

Oooh, my mouth is now so very close to your ear, I can see all the white hair sprouting in and out of it. The noise is deafening and I'm afraid I shall have to shout. I am suddenly feeling very lonely. Please ignore that person staring through the window. And that other one. Men in church-dome hats.

 

I think we should pretend to ignore all of them. The noise I hear in the chimney is certainly far too early for Christmas. In fact, almost a whole year yet to elapse.

 

Ah well, the workmen seem busy hammering at my door. I turn your head. I kiss your cold old lips. What are those noises I sense clip-clopping on the roof-slates; certainly not the dear dear rain.

 

I am indeed so happy. I think YOU are your own best present.

“In the old days, children were delighted by the merest stockingful of fruit and coal, and Christmas plum pudding could be sown with any loose shrapnel like threepenny bits or tanners.” Rachel Mildeyes (THE GOOD OLD DAYS vol viii. Cone Zero)

FLAT IRON

I am a classical composer of music; by adding 'of music', though, is perhaps unnecessary, for what else do classical composers do other than compose music? However, it is necessary to clarify this in my case, because many people do not class what I compose as music at all. Some call it utter rubbish, being, to their unacclimatised ears, a noise or racket of alarming ugliness. Yet … I still compose it. I sit in a serious stance with my old-fashioned nib poised over the staves, believing every note I write is a mark of genius.

Concerto for Ping Pong ball and Orchestra. Black Elegy for flute and zither. Wild Onions, a chamber opera for water sounds and Welsh harps. These are just a few of my works, as you know. There are many more as yet unplayed, unperformed, unheard. Most reside in my head, giving off their own vibrations to the skull. I am serious about my music having a deeply aesthetic value as art. And I am proud to report that a few unlucky souls turn up at my concerts and pretend to enjoy the sounds they open their ears to.

Brenda was one of those. She did enjoy it, I'm sure; either that or her overtures to me as the composer were completely false. If she did not wallow in my music like a whale enjoying a bath in its own blubber, then she was a good actress at pretending to do so. She even bought the CDs!   Brenda couldn’t help being fat.

It was she who suggested the flat iron.

Now, I ought to make it clear. I was never completely in love with Brenda. There was something quaintly homely about the tender caresses she often gave me. She was a touchy feely person. One day, I would reciprocate, I vowed. But it was always put off until tomorrow.  It wasn’t because she was fat.

She had been married in the past to someone she called Alfred. Apparently, he was fan of pop music and endlessly played the Everley Brothers in the bath. They had not really got on. That was a pity, I'm sure, because Brenda was a fine housewife, one who cherished the dusting and the washing and the ironing. She had a thing about ironing, even in the age of drip dry and non-iron shirts.

The thing about the flat iron happened during the interval of the biggest success I'd ever had with my music. A concert which was more than half full in Huddersfield, and only ten people got up and left during the performance. One even shouted ENCORE at the end.  I was sitting with Brenda at the back, watching the heads move in time to the music. Wild shakings and noddings that had no rhyme or reason. Even their clapping was ragged and ill-coordinated. Yet, most of them stayed the course. And the reviews were singular in their acclaim. Reading between the lines.

Throughout the first half of the concert, Brenda had rested her plump hand in my lap, where I let it stay. I often unplumped her hand from its berth upon my body, but tonight I was thrilled by the reception of my music. Tonight, I even felt warmth towards those to whom I owed warmth (like Brenda), as I had often given undeserved warmth to those who had ridiculed my music. It is often difficult to explain such skewed emotions. I suppose my music described my emotions best. Tonight I tried to be more human, and let my words and face express my inner feelings, instead of my music.

So, I smiled at Brenda, encouraging her to speak. We very rarely had real conversations, especially at my concerts. Silence seemed to be the best option; indeed, some of my pieces incorporated that very silence into the fabric of the sound world I was trying to recreate through the scoring for various instruments. Instruments both conventional and outlandish. One whole movement of my Siren Suite depended solely on the ambience of the audience and concert hall. Each cough was an audience-inspired moment.  Even farting.

Still, the intervals allowed more scope for non-art communication. We could shift away from the pretentious modes of stony-faced listening and become less self-conscious and less stylised.

"Have you thought about using a flat iron?" she asked.

"For what?" I was half-listening to her, whilst trying to catch the eye of one of my faithful sponsors. A sponsor who was deaf, but seemed to enjoy patronising penniless composers like me. I wanted some more backing. But my heart melted. I was in a good mood. I had actually replied to Brenda's question, albeit with another question. I may have said it or I may have thought I said it, viz:

"As a percussion instrument?"

I smiled again. Two smiles in one evening were unheard of, but I instinctively had pricked up my ears at the suggestion of a flat iron. I actually tried to extend the audit trail of the conversation, much as a viola often does in conventional String Quartets.

"You mean hitting it with a metal hammer?"  I could actually hear the chunky clink inside the bone basin that served as a container for my brain. All composers, I guess, have these strange ideas and words for feelings they feel about their own body. Only ordinary people think of the head merely as a head. There's something special about artists in all walks of art, or they wouldn't be artists at all. Even one's limbs became ownerless appendages, given the all-consuming force of art that takes over the mind as well as the body. Still, Brenda was a simple soul. I never really troubled her with these preoccupations.  She had enough to cope with, being so fat.

"Do you know what a flat iron really is?" she asked, with a mischievous look about her. I stopped staring at a woman in a low-slung ball gown (you didn't often get those at avant garde concerts) who was tackling a huge cocktail at the Interval bar. I could see what Brenda must be driving at. It was quite an arresting thought, and the thought drove out all my wayward desires. A flat iron kept the heat after being left among the red hot coals, kept the heat whilst you ironed the clothes. It didn't run off electricity. It was an old fashioned way of storing heat. And, so, if it could store heat … the logical continuation of the thought need not be made. Music was just like heat, wasn't it, a storeable force. So an acoustic musical instrument that could store the music played on it during live music was a brilliant conception. And I owed it all the Brenda. I gave her a peck on the cheek.

We would have made love that night, had the second half of the concert gone to plan or even just followed the example of the first half. But there were several illnesses that beset the audience during the abrasive coughing movement of my Aubergine Dreams for French Horn and Prepared Piano. The after-shocks and echoes that had been pent up all evening in the sound-box of the hall's rafters suddenly erupted with full force and rained down plaster (some claimed it was asbestos) upon the audience, Brenda and myself included.

We left on good terms, though. She scowled at the state of my shirt's detachable collar and I could sense she imagined the terrible creases of its tail. She made it plain that she thought I needed a good woman to look after me. But love is often tantalisingly unattainable -- although my dreams, later that night, homed in on the woman in the ballgown at the bar. Brenda's flat iron was entirely forgotten for a long sleep of complete bliss as I dreamed of better leaner fish in better deeper seas.   Brenda was only indeed one such dream that sometimes escaped to the outside of dream.......

I was rudely woken in the morning by car klaxons betokening a new day, new accidents, new encounters, new sound systems and dustcarts clanging as they collected the world's rubbish. I washed and shaved in a daze, and then I pulled on my wrinkles, without even a single thought for the deflated body thus wrapped up. Irons have sharps, as well as flats.   (unpublished)

Henry Moore

 

Written 1967 and published in 'Purple Patch' 1993

 

Round, smooth, sinewy, full of holes,

The scupltures of Henry S. Moore

Recline in my mind

With the exactitude of a nightmare,

But only vaguely seen,

Frustratingly snatched at

Before they fade through the smoke of ages,

Back to the primitive gulf of stone,

When sex breathed in stone,

Palpitated with unknown forces

Of Lawrencian mystery,

Churned through the black loins of the core

Of origin,

Only to decay, fragment, fracture

Till Moore urges

His tingling fingers to fondle

The seething souces from form,

Till only Moore sees the core,

The essential key to the mystery of living.

Not created, behind the mask of rebellion,

Of automatic fumbling,

Of surly surrealistic brandishing of fear,

But spawning a chunk of rigid core

Out of the cortex,

Out of the nadir of civilisation,

And raising it to the zenith

Of clean, white swirls of chiselling,

Of edgy scraping of stone,

To upturn the nerves into aesthetic response;

And Moore

Is the core

Which obeys every law of nature,

And disobeys

Those God chose.

 

Just Married
JUST MARRIED

When they entered the town that was tucked away in the French hills, the sky was already closing in with the swelling swags of darkness. He had heard tales of such places where honeymooners were often welcomed with rites enacted under a sailing full moon: as they staggered into the last valley, he told his companion about the pots of wild honey that locals toted from the slanting outward doors of their cellars and they would then force-feed the newlyweds, whilst chanting ribald rhymes. She didn’t believe him of course. He didn’t suopose she listened to his crazy legendeering, for she was more worried about finding lodgings for the night.

Dogs seemed to bay across the valley, from each extremity of the town, as if passing messages of their coming to their snoozing masters. The couple would need to steer clear of the dogs for, unlike in England, rabies was rife hereabouts.

They held hands as they talked among the ghosts of their fears.

“Darling, have you noticed that most French butchers have a skimpy array of dark meat on their slabs, with hardened, dried-out edges. They have no connection with the plentiful variety of English cuts...”

He could have bitten his tongue off: he did not have need to hark back to the argument they had had earlier in the day: he had made her feel sick with speculations on the nature of the meat served uo at the auberge that very lunchtime.

“Dick, please... I still feel queasy... Look! All the lights have gone off in the town all at once.”

In one fell swoop...

“It must be some kind of curfew or blackout.”

It was then that they heard the droning noise and the whirr of wings above them. The last they felt was the blood congealing in their veins. The last they saw were hordes of figures with nets over their faces being led towards them by straining dogs across the dark emerald fields of pruned trees. And the last they heard was the chanting:

“A real live English loving couple,
Let’s oil ‘em, make ‘em supple.
But first, slice off his sting!
Before he sheathes it in her thing...”



(Published ‘Arrows of Desire’ 1989)

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?

Skin Deep

SKIN-DEEP

Published ‘Atsatrohn’ 1993


Lisa tried ever so hard to keep the flat clean. She'd recently moved there, vowing to top and tail its residues every morning, but the road to Hell was surely paved with such intentions of Godliness. So, as the days ensued, small chores were gradually left undone, the devil's motes accumulated in the guise of common dust and grime grew unsightly as entropy encroached. Everything became a mildewy mountain that Lisa convinced herself was unscaleable.

Having barely quit the nest twig-twined by her mother, Lisa was hit hard: crockery with organic stains; bedroom ceiling crazing over with more and more cracks, whilst their patterns seemed unchanged from one day to the next; varieties of mould spanning the mineral, vegetable and animal surfaces of daily life - well, she even believed that her inability to cope would, sooner or later, cause the walls to collapse like a house of cards.

Daytime was easier, since she could escape into the streets, where she began relaxing, convinced that she wouldn't be held responsible for the city's deep-skinned fuckweed.

"Hey, lady, stick yer nose in that!" One of the food vendors shouted to her from a stall which he was clearing after a day's business. This was evidently his normal sales-cry for cut price bananas. He prodded his finger into a brown mushy pile on his trestle, and laughed his tongue out.

Lisa cold-shouldered him and continued towards the theatrical quarter, where she hoped to feel less like the interface between flesh and stone or between blood and gutter-swill. Everything was on show for what it was worth, whether good or ill, where personal responsibility and humanity's common savagery could walk hand in hand. Lisa laughed for the first time that day, as the ludicrous words which her thoughts employed came to mind. Yet her thoughts had false bottoms. She didn't even know she had such quake-lines in her mind.

Eventually, she'd've to leave the shimmering arcade and return 'home'. Night brought new ills to the city streets, from which even the flat seemed haven. She scrutinised the flashing lights, each coloured bulb being a constituent of a saying or a title or a message or dancing sequinned lady beckoning man to her embrace. Lisa shivered off a sob. She felt need of her mother's enfolding arms and bruised breasts upon which to rest a worried head.

A man accosted her. He had crept up to her ear like a stealthy cat and whispered sweet nothings in a foreign language. She did not appear to care, since here she was as anonymous as everybody else. Were a knife to be surreptitiously eased between rib-bones to carve an arc from her heart, she'd die in peace with a self she no longer recognised.

But she returned, she knew not how, to the street where her flat was to be found. She sensed her own personality slipping back into position between the ears, as she recalled with a shudder the unfinished washing-up, the dust-clogged hangings, the undarned trappings of her lost youth. Mother had died too soon, before Lisa had fully emerged from the eggshell that had been moulded around her by hen Aunts who could never countenance the way human beings tended to give birth. They'd thought Lisa too pure for those honking party-games in a brown butcher's shop...

Lisa's thoughts tailed off again, before she could grasp their meaning. The flat was opened with a key that grated in the lock. Not bothering to switch on the lights, she fumbled her way to the bedroom where, if she were lucky, she could collapse under the quilt without even seeing any of the dark rubble around her.

The bed sucked Lisa in even before she realised she'd reached its unmade mouth. The innards were in tatters: shredded by long toe-nails. Only Lisa's head remained outside, a sweetly pitiful expression fleeting across its features under cover of darkness.

The lower ends of her body were the first to become as one with the bed's thick-cut soup of animal, vegetable and mineral. Then, she heard street-callers, costermongers and a solitary cat's-meat man distantly selling their wares to those of us who only come out after dark.

Tomorrow, Lisa vowed to top and bottom the whole world.