‘What do you want the money for?’
He stared across the large leather-topped desk, empty except for a blotter. His eyes were sporadically hidden behind glasses that reflected the window with the rhythm of his head movements, much like a pair of erratic lighthouses. So, the power of the stare was magnified by my inability to follow his look...
‘To ease cash flow problems.’ It was a pretentious way of saying I was stony broke. Better than showing him the holes in my pockets.
I eased out into day-dreaming: the bank manager was laid out in an open-topped coffin, one with curlicue knobs on. Sovereigns rested upon his eyes, glinting in the communal flame of many closely-stemmed candles. His hands, embossed with ring-studs of onyx and old gold, were poised in tranquil prayer upon the imperceptible rising and falling of his chest. The cuff-links were designed in the shape of black horses...
I unravelled myself from reverie, only to find it was my turn to say something. Conversations tend to be like that: duties on both aides (except, of course, my late mother, who’d only required someone’s silent face to bounce off a continuous flow of gossip and counter-gossip).
‘Sorry, could you please repeat the question?’
“What security can you offer on a loan, Mr White?”
I found myself idly looking out of the bank’s high rise window, where light was quickly dying from the sky. It was as if blueblack ink was seeping from one quarter of the universe to the other. A herd of dark clouds stampeded over the horizon. A union jack upon the flagpole of another building attempted to flee its perch, and join the pair of long johns that had escaped from some old dear’s washing-line; no doubt to create together some act of carnal patriotism in the night sky, in memory of the world wars that have grown out of fashion...
I was again stirred from my dusk-dreaming, only to find that my friendly bank manager was searching through his waste paper bin. He had it upon his desk, one of its jagged corners scoring the flesh of the work surface. He seemed desperate to find something or other. A scrunched up ball of paper. Evidently, I’d been let off the hook, at least for a while, so I returned to the back of my mind, where I felt safest...
I returned to the front parlour of candleflame and corpse. This time, I could see the faint ringworm blotches of moulder. The patches were randomly situated, one faintly outlined in bottle green upon the cheek, others in close fester around the knuckle joints of the left hand and a particularly large one on the sole of his bare right foot, made up of inflamed pores and overnourished goose pimples, threatening to turn all the colours that a rainbow disowned. The chest still rose and fell with the rhythm of the flickering waxlight, but I suspected it was that sluggish pulse inherent in body decay which caused this mockery of life...
“Ah, I’ve found it, Mr White. I thought I’d filed it there.”
He replaced the bin under his desk with a flourish, and started unscrewing the paper he’d retrieved. I guessed it must be some computerised rubbish confirming that I was uncreditworthy, because I’d once defaulted with a company that sent me assorted stamps through the post, as a result of answering an advert in the Beano comic. Who wanted ten identical editions of a Spanish stamp hearing the moustachioed features of an old geezer who looked more like my late Dad than was good for him, anyway?
Out of the window, I could see a whole fleet of ladies’ frilly underwear sailing into the dark blow of the night.
I decided: Why the hell do I need money in a dream anyway? I stormed from the interview room, leaving a bemused pile of bespectacled chunky green slime trying to slither from the chair into the gaping confines of the wastepaper bin carefully placed to receive him.
Only the jewelry retained any sort of integrity...
(Mind’s Eye 1990)
