The Widower
THE WIDOWER


Published ‘Among The Ruins’ 1997


I was convinced she would one day marry a brutish good-for-nothing if she didn’t become my wife. So, for her sake, in a moment of selflessness, I asked for her hand. Indeed, I began to love her more than I could love any other, but could it be the true love that many said to have experienced? Yesterday not only did everybody in the street have their thumb and index finger as far apart as possible, but even domes seemed to be pyramids and the tops of chimneys were sunk to the waist in brick bubbles. But last night she returned to haunt me. I should never have started thinking about her again, because such thoughts made me guilty of resurrecting her.

For months I slept alone in the double bed we had once shared, recalling the way she had slid the sheet’s lip up and down, playing peeky-boo with me and rubbing my feet with hers. Even in the pitch darkness which we both had cherished during many a sleepless hour together, I had managed to discern her half of the bed rising up in even pitchier, sootier darkness. I had never allowed her to untwirl my pyjama cord and the fly had already been sewn up. Love for me then was simple cuddling. She had never complained, only rubbed harder with her feet.

Ona was her name. She told me of a father who never said anything, only grunted, having once interfered with her. The psychology was beyond me, but it confirmed my belief that marriage to anybody else but me would have been her ultimate nightmare, worse than any possible father with doubtful leanings, but, on the other hand, wasn’t a spouse merely an idealized reflection of the respective parent?

So, last night, Ona returned. In the darkness, I saw the tossing shape beside me, making tears come to my eyes - real tears, not the ones I used to wet my face with in the en suite bathroom. The deepest agony was finding no night smile. Yet, how could any credence be placed in ghosts, especially those that pretended to exist by kicking up bedcovers at the dead of night? They were the worst kind of ghost, because existence was a foul crime if such existence was impossible. My only weapon against ghosts was the disbelief in ghosts. Giving them the sense of satisfaction in your belief in their existence would make them into monsters far worse than ghosts could ever become. With this logical response, I ignored Ona’s pleas for my acknowledgment of her presence. I simply turned over in the bed as I often did following marital squabbles in the early days. My wrenching sobs soon petered out and, upon turning back, I discovered there was nothing in which to disbelieve, in any case.

Today, I reconciled for the first time the exact circumstances of Ona’s death. I must have always known that I would eventually reach such a crunch point. After all, a crunch was what it was. An amazing coincidence of converging misfortunes, her being in the street, slipping the Yale key into our front door, when the chimneystack collapsed upon her with no prior warning. There wasn’t even any wind. Paradoxically, those sort of accidents made belief in God’s existence easier, which in itself was a farfetched idea at the best of times. Indeed the act of existence itself implied He must be a bad God.

I heard Ona’s single scream, cut off in half blast. I was in the front room, channel-hopping on the T.V. and I literally felt the place shudder, followed by the scream less than a split second later. I know the feeling will stay with me forever, that loathsome cataclysmic sickness, because I must have loved her after all. So, hindsight get thee hence! My earlier presumption of it being for her sake that I took her from the emotional catchment area of other men was all very well, but fundamentally I loved her madly. To hear her stifled scream and then be faced with the red-tinged splinters poking through the low denier tights, henbones that the rubble had pushed down from the ribcage via the belly, made me love her even more - if that were possible. I knelt in prayer and kissed the feet that had once rubbed so tenderly against mine, ignoring pointblank all the moon-eyed bastard bystanders, none of whom had thought of calling the ambulance men.

In my heart, I knew she was dead. I blamed the Building Society surveyor. Madness often struck at times like that. I felt like going round to his high faluting house in the suburbs (if I’d known the correct address) and doing him the direst mischief imaginable. If not him, the people who palmed the house off on us. Or the Estate Agent himself, who was a greasy spiv. The way he showed us the photograph of the house back in his office - yuk! He had it at an angle, holding it between thumb and index finger. Pointing to the chimney stacks. Ona said he probably tricked his wife out of the housekeeping he allowed her. Yet, reliving that day did some good. The thing masquerading as my dead wife failed to return for ages - and soon my thoughts petered out - much as they petered in.

I must have needed to admit to myself the cruel details of the accident. Accident? I still believed someone pushed the chimney off the roof. Perhaps the husband she would have married if it had not been for me pre-empting. Whereas she had never told me if her father was still alive, I had always assumed he was dead and I did not push her into giving me any gory details of her past with him as a father. The word “interfere” seemed to cover a multitude of sins.

So, yes, she returned last night. Ona for real this time, complete with night smile. The guise of ghost was not even viable for someone as dead as she. I untwirled the cord voluntarily, even before she had the chance to ask me. Much easier with her dead. She my widow, because I was the widowing one, a widower being one who widowed, like a winnower was one who winnowed. And so much better to believe in the dead being able to return than having wet dreams on one’s own. Ona’d come again, given half the chance, dressed as a chimneysweep, so I wouldn’t see her, bar the spiky darkness. And my Ona would become more than a mere faith called Onanism.

Remote controls could channel-hop solo, its pure remoteness tantamount to autonomy. I even had thoughts that the damn thing could take clawhold on the TV aerials, perched so haphazardly on the chimneys. The central heating began to hum all night now with the onset of cold weather. I couldn’t bear too many bedcovers - gave me a case of Russian-doll claustrophobia. Petering in and out could never be complete. Not even death was dreamless. A corpse tossing.

Cartwheel Crazy

 

He liked to be called Cartwheel Crazy for personal as well as obvious reasons: a budding clown who combined fast clockwise somersaults with a cheeky chappy wit, subtle as well as slapstick.  He often wore a garish wartime yellow suit that had frayed at the cuffs and turn-ups, hanging on his slender frame with a bagginess that his father had passed down to him without the body to fit it.  

Being, as he thought, quite a character, Cartwheel Crazy had an ambition to enter the Big Brother House and become one of those jugglers of antics and outbursts who depended on the huge audience being unable to differentiate between truth and fiction.  Not that he went as far as that in his thoughts. Or in so many words. He simply wanted to big himself up and he thought he had the capacity for gimmick and for furthering his chances in the roulette of modern life.  He knew, at least, he had the ghost of a chance.

"If you’re crazy, why not make craziness an asset rather than a drawback?" he asked himself, in the hearing of his Mum who merely continued reading her celebrity magazine as she humoured her son with an unknowing smile.  Yet, his chosen nickname as a whole was a bit of a mouthful: crazy in itself.  You couldn’t imagine strangers and potential viewers to ‘Big Brother’ and fellow contestants on the programme using ‘Cartwheel Crazy’ as  a name in their day-to-day speech either to his face or behind his back.  They would need to shorten it somehow.  Carty? Weelzy? Carzy?  None of the shortenings seemed right.  Indeed, most of his friends and associates in his home town had managed to articulate the whole nickname for many years in their conversation, so why not strangers?  Not strangers, for long.  Being on ‘Big Brother’ would soon bring many friends or enemies from the midst of strangers.  They would have to lump his name.

So, Cartwheel Crazy he remained.

He misunderstood the eligibility process, believing, as part of his craziness, that he needed votes of confidence, proposers and seconders, from his friends and neighbours, so as to get on to the programme.  He failed to realise that he needed to attend one of the many nationwide auditions along with the thousands of other budding contestants.  He sent out several letters requesting support from the people he knew personally, including neighbours, local shopkeepers, his relations, old schoolfriends and some of those likely lads he knew down the pub.  The man in an brown overall at the corner shop – who had never watched ‘Big Brother’ and knew very little about it – suggested Cartwheel Crazy put an advert in his shop window, so Cartwheel Crazy wrote out a card and pinned it up along with the adverts for secondhand prams, flats to let and services to be rendered.

BIG BROTHER HOPEFUL OFFERS SERVICES FOR SUPPORT.  PLEASE CONTACT CARTWHEEL CRAZY and there followed his address which, for security reasons, is not shown here.

However, he soon realised – after accosting other proposed supporters – that this was not really the way to do it.  He needed an act, a sense of the subtle differences between pride and humility, fame and infamy, reality and unreality and, above all, comedy and tragedy.  Not only their differences, but also the ways in which they blended each with each. 

And then he needed to take that ‘act’, hone it, perfect it, take it before others, hone it again, perfect it again, then parade it at the optimum in a carefully targeted moment in a line of serendipities affecting the individual destinies and sensibilities of each member of the selection panel as well as of himself.  He had only one throw of the dice.  Only one ghost of a chance.

Meanwhile, as the day of the all-blaring, all-shouting 'Big Brother' audition circus in Cartwheel Crazy’s town approached, he received an unexpected visitor at home. His Mum was out with her two cronies, Mrs Mummerset and Mrs Milledges.  The three Mums he called them.  And, in view of his aloneness in the house, Cartwheel Crazy was a bit unsure whether to invite the stranger in or not.  But as this was a nice-looking young man whose voice sounded like the commentator who did the voice-over for 'Big Brother' round-up programmes each evening, Cartwheel Crazy decided to let him in.  The man must have read his card in the corner shop window.

“Two eh em ... the housemates are all awake...”  The man spoke as if he were about to make a long speech, while inspecting the surfaces in the kitchen where Cartwheel Crazy had led him to make a cup of tea, for one thing, and to allow possible avenues of escape, for another, should this man be a stranger dangerous to know, such as his Mum had always warned him that many strangers were.

“I’m sorry, I should have taken the card out of the window.  It was a bit of a misunderstanding on my part.”

The man coughed to clear his throat and continued: “Cartwheel Crazy is in the kitchen entertaining a stranger...”

Suddenly, there was a loud voice, belonging neither to Cartwheel Crazy nor to the visitor, one that resonated lugubriously: “This is Big Brother.  Will Cartwheel Crazy come to the waking-room.”

“Will he go, or will he stay,” said the slowly fading man with the voice-over, “Only <i>you</i> can decide.”

The man’s fading had pre-empted the decision, as the voice became just the hissing of the tea-kettle.  And there was a slowly revolving vertical somersaulting of yellow air, that blurred with the matching shutter-speed of fast-strobing migraines.

If there is such a state as half dreaming and half not dreaming, Cartwheel Crazy thought he was in one.  A bit like having his sleeping body being watched over by other sleepers who could not see him because their eyes were shut whilst they dreamed of seeing something quite different but really thinking that they saw what they assumed to be him sleeping.  A bit like watching Big Brother live in the morning while the housemates merely twitched in grey outline in a deep slumber or dozing whilst maintaining the pretence of being in an old nineteen-fifties Andy Warhol film where he had someone sleeping for nine hours under the view of his camera.  The frightening prospect of a permanent ghost that hardly moved.

Cartwheel Crazy woke with a scream.  He was in bed and the hissing was rain on the blacked-out window of his bedroom.  Or the blacked-out screen of a derelict cinema in wartime London.  He called for his Mum.  But she was snoring in her bedroom – her latest scandal magazine having slipped off her bed as she entered her own blocked-off world with the light still on.

“Three eh em – and Cartwheel Crazy is the only housemate awake.  He comes to the diary-room.”

“Hello, Big Brother.”

“Hello, Cartwheel Crazy. How are you?”

“I’m dreaming that I’m on Big Brother.  Can you wake me up, please, Big Brother?”

“But you <i>are</i> on Big Brother.”

“Hello, Big Brother.”

And the craziness  went round and round, gnawing its way through a yellow suit with frayed cuffs and turn-ups.  A washing-cycle.  A ring-cycle.  A dream or ghost of a wooden wheel.  Hell is not other people, after all.  It’s you on your own, riding solitary shotgun on the back of an old black and white film that is spooling from wheel to wheel, an aging film that has flickering feelers creeping in from the sides of the screen turning into the fingers of those who think they are watching ghosts but are, in fact, the ghosts watching themselves: the ghosts of fame and infamy, truth and fiction, pride and humility, tragedy and comedy, and all the other things that balance life and death.

Ghosts, too, of past and future.

The shopkeeper took the card out of the window. Its display time had expired.  Tomorrow was Christmas Day, 1984.

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The above is a footnote to WEIRDTONGUE 32

DFL's comments on Big Brother: http://newdfl.bloghorn.com/136
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Symbol Cream

Terry enjoyed piping hot tea, the scalding type that scoured the roof of the mouth to the bone.  Terry was a fitness freak.  Enjoyed pumping dumb-bells (as many as possible)  to the silent music of his own bodily rhythms.  Toned his muscles to the optimum of rib and tissue.  Honed his manly curves towards the Golden Mean of Grecian perfection.

He leaned forward with an imaginary discus in his hand and prepared to lob it, loft it, float it towards the heavenly heights of health.  His very heart, indeed, floated, too, in the silken tides of his own breathing.  He paused for a while to take another searing sip of Darjeeling tea, but it had somehow turned into a lukewarm consistency more akin to creamy curds than anything else.  But he had not put any milk in it.  That would have been against his religion. 

Tea was to be consumed strong and hot and untarnished.

 A bit like Terry.

 He wiped a bead of sweat from the enticing bulge of his left bicep.  Only to hear (or, rather, glimpse) an irritating attempt at attracting his attention from outside.

 “Terry! Terry!”

 He saw the face of his Ex.  She was mouthing her own garbled version of speech at him, accompanied by a highly visible rapping on the window.

 He shrugged.  Shrugged inside, if not out.

Ever since his latest binge of bodily exertions, he had avoided the Call of the Wild.  And, for Terry, sex was tantamount to losing self-control.  His discipline was threatened whenever he allowed his defences to be corrupted by the chance cavortings of female breast or bottom. 

His Ex continued to shout relentlessly through the pane.

“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” she mimed.

He shook his head.

“Can’t hear you,” he mimed back, although he could have read her lips.  And probably did.

The church across the road from Terry’s place – which possessed the biggest looking bells in the whole wide world – failed to penetrate his concentration, especially as he usually sported ear-pads which carried several layers of white noise.  Even on Saint days or periods of marital ceremonial, these bells, for Terry, were as silent as the deepest grave.

“Are you bleeding deaf?” shrieked his Ex, as she tried, in vain, to pierce Terry’s studied otherworldliness.

He attempted to mount a dumb-show of innocence, mouthing nonsensical words as a diversionary tactic, as he played harder to get.

Perhaps, she’d go away of her own volition, given enough rope.

Soon, however … having grabbed an absentminded gulp of stonecold sludge from the tea-cup … he decided to open the front door to give her an unambiguous piece of his mind.

As soon as he had slipped all the bolts and trip-switched the various tumblers in a highly charged complex of locks, he allowed his draw-bridge slowly and dead-silently to lower itself.  His muscles strained at the harness of fleshless cantilevered bone … and the tepid outside air met his deeply carved manhood with a creamy touch.

“We won the lottery!” screeched his Ex.  “The ticket we shared has come up!”

Tears came to Terry’s eyes.  How sweet of her.  She needn’t have told him.

But something inside told him different.  That heart of stone of his.

And, impulsively, he cut her dead … with the sharp edge of a blood-bloated artery which he meticulously uncoiled from its wrapping of bone and flesh.

Her dying eyes spoke sad volumes as the church bells pealed deafeningly across the town’s gambrels.

Touching gingerly what remained of the roof of his mouth with his tongue, he found he could actually lick the lower edge of his brain.  It was soft and mushy, like cottage cheese, if not cream. 

He knew Mind and Body were inextricable.  His whole being evidently needed more tuning up with the dumb-bells and he returned inside, abandoning what remained of his ex Ex on the doorstep, steaming.

(published 1995?)

To The North

I love the intricate, semi-understandable fiction of those women writers who were either Elizabeth Bowen or Elizabeth Bowen's contemporaries who wrote in her vein.  Dialogue was Ivy Compton-Burnettish to the nth degreee, often murkily fustian but, on clearer days, clear as clouded crystal.  Intervening prose of description and scene-stetting and mind-setting and passion-posing was dense at times but, at others, crepuscular with emerging meaningfulness.   Words which stretched you.  Thoughts that imbued you with thoughts you dared not earlier think you could even have the capacity to think.  It made me want to write further fictions their pens had not had time to write.  Days of the heart where plots bleat for escape.  Heat of the death in a night's hotel.  A house in a city called Eva Trout.  Eva she was the one I'd love.  A country where maps were made like her face.  Ley lines giving form and favour to a sweetheart's beauty. This was the fiction I needed.  A fiction that fabricated a real-life lover I would not otherwise meet.

 "And now you have made me, what next?" she asked, splitting from the page like a woodknot made proud.

 "Let's explore the place you live."

 I looked around at a city I knew was like Paris but was not Paris.  It had canals like Venice, museums like Vienna, statues like Florence, lakes like Maggiore. 

 "What here?"

 "It made itself as a sort of non-sequitur in admiration of your own gratuitous serendipity."

 "Your big words are too clumsy for real thoughts."  She looked even prettier as she mewed this plaint.

 "Real thoughts don't touch the sides ... least of all the sides of paper.  They flow along wordless channels like these mock gondolas."   As I spoke and as if she had not seen them, I indicated, with a slightest finger, the ghostly craft that threaded the ever-developing veins of my city.

 "Even if your words are plain and simple, being used in complicated structures of thought and meaning does not absolve you."  Eva, now thinking herself autonomous enough to stalk off into parts of the city I had not yet created, toppled into a canal I had only just deemed possible.  She sleeked off into the splintery rainbows of false tides, before I could catch her in my all-weather, all-fable net.

 Perhaps it was the ghost of Elizabeth Bowen herself.  But do ghosts have scales and eyes in the sides of their heads?  Human ones, surely, don't.

 The city faded around me to the north.  To the nth degree.

(Published ‘Oasis’ 2001)

 

Killing Time / Budget Day

Killing Time 

He looked at his watch. An hour to go. It could be worse than eternity if he actually stared at the hands moving. So, the question was how to kill time, to give the impression of it passing quicker. Almost on an impulse, he prodded the two fingers of one hand into his eye sockets …      a little overhard for comfort, as it happened, for they slipped too easily into the ill-guarded confines of the brain’s soft underbelly. Sledgefingers to crack a nut... The watch ticked on, unconcerned

 Published 'Cloth Ears' 1990 

 

 BUDGET DAY

If I were to write clearly enough I wouldn’t need to type it out at all. Still, it would look more official in print, as opposed to my spiderwriting of a leftward bias. It’s strange how apparent nonsense can take on a tone of credibility and respectability when in the guise of neat printed uniform characters on parade. It seems to flow better, even mean better. Take the word ‘budget’ as an example. As I write it down in my typically colloquial manuscript, dressed to the nines in smart shoulder-high quotation marks, although it is, I somehow visualise a scrawny bird in a cage which is, after all, better than a scratched hand in a bush, when it comes to matters financial. But now I’ve managed to type it out, it takes on all the aura and demeanour of an official government statement on economic housekeeping rather than a childish exercise in cutting corners off postage stamps which, in essence, it surely is.

 

It’s strange, I repeat, how arrant nonsense assumes the rank of meaningful authority, when the words move in the strict rhythm of the typewriter’s choreography rather than the outlandish wobbling and weaving of my ill-tutored pen which, if the truth be known, is probably drunk on ink.

 

The spoken word is another story, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer drones on, taking gulps at the tumblerful of seeming water. I suppose it’ll look OK in Hansard.

 

Published 'Eavesdropper' 1989

 

Inchware
  

I hardly recognised the lady. In her finery, she looked nicer than she did when I first saw her in the lounge bar of the Bell and Steelyard. On that occasion, the hastily thrown on clothes that she had automatically found at the forefront of her wardrobe had done her no justice at all. Tonight, however, she was obviously putting on an effort for me.

 

‘This is a much better place, isn’t it?’ I said, even before sitting down. My insistence on our first official date being at a venue different from that for the original off-chance encounter was based on a gut feeling that relationships could take no chances.

 

In retrospect, I should have been surprised at her willingness to wait for me in a pub, whilst still alone. Most women of my acquaintance would ensure they were later than the man, so as to avoid unnecessary embarrassment. Something I took for granted.

 

‘Never tried this one before.’ The lady’s reply was instantaneous. She nervously weighed the back of her bouffon.

 

‘I see you’ve already got yourself a drink.’ I nodded towards the half drunk remains of a fluid that looked like undiluted bleach at the bottom of a tumbler.

 

‘I’m not late, am I?’ I added during a pause for afterthought.

 

‘No ... no. It’s just that it’s raining outside.’

 

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ My face was large and I wore whiskers to cut down on the bare frontage. My old best grey suit cut into my behind proving, if nothing else did, that I was not in the same shape as when I was younger. I’d tried to liven up the ensemble with a floral tie. The white ankle socks you couldn’t see: my legs must have grown shorter over the years, too; whilst the flairs had grown wider, by the look of them. I felt self-conscious of my spectacles, like peering through a porthole in a ship. Without another word, I turned to the bar where I intended to obtain a drink for myself. I was not in the mood for one, but even I understood that you wouldn’t be welcome to sit down in a pub without one. I should have brought a thermos of tea and some plastic cups. It cost more than a bomb to buy even a soft drink in a place like that, A number of pubs have now started to sell cups of coffee but, even so, you felt a wally asking for one from a blousy girl whose only skill in life was pulling pints. I had chosen this pub because the clientele was customarily well dressed. You could tell a lot from a person’s garb. However, I was perturbed to discover that I had forgotten that the staff were definitely more than one cut below the average punter. A surly individual, whom I understood to be the manager, scowled, as I approached the bar. His suit did not seem to have had even the lick of an iron for several wearings. The tie was ill-knotted, more a Y than a small Q. His face was only something you could write to doctors about (preferably skin specialists). The manner of his service made me wonder if I’d done something wrong. Instinctively, I looked round to see if I’d soiled the carpet, quickly realising it was already one huge horizontal wall-to-wall dog dirt. The drink he poured out for me was flat. When I complained, he said it was not meant to be fizzy and, even if it was, it’d probably give me wind. I scowled back — a bit late in the day, but I hope he got the point. My mother always told me that you can say more with the face than ever your tongue can get round. If I say so myself, I’ve a pretty rum selection of old-fashioned looks for all eventualities. Not waiting to witness him reeling back on the balls of his feet at the severity of my cutting expression, I turned my back on the little downsquirt and made for the table where I expected the lady, my date, still to be sitting.

 

She was.

 

But who was that with her? Didn’t look like me. At least I’ve got some dress sense.

 

‘Are you going to introduce me?’ I cannot recall exact;ly which of the three of us said that. Three of us? Three of me? Three of them? Three of you? Three of her? Three of him? All seemed to ring untrue. Whatever the case, one of the ladies (or both?) had an escort for the evening, so I left without causing any trouble. I don’t suppose, in the event, that ugly customer of a pub manager would have stood for any nonsense. Looking back, that word seemed to make sense of the whole affair.

 

(published 'Odyssey' 1991)

Baffle 42

If you need a clue as to your own whodunnit, don’t ask the murderer who created you.

RSVP

 

 

Saturday Night, for Hazel and I, was copycat night.  That meant we had to

duplicate the hi-jinks of the night before, because we needed to live up to

its living it up.  You see, TFI Friday Night Was Music Night and, of course,

Friday Night (it bears repeating) marked when the weekend, at the

full-frontal lobe optimum, was still young—with the Sunday Night down-in the

dumps blues not even residing at the back of the mind let alone at the down

lobe of last Sunday’s precursive lo-jinx.  Déjà-vu echoes were meddling

affairs at the best of times.  So, when Hazel and I sported Friday Night’s

glad rags on Saturday Night, we tended to ignore the sick stains.  And many

of those who could only afford putting all their eggs of entertainment in

one basket (at the Saturday Night Bop) ignored us, pretended we weren’t

there, chatted lightly of tomorrow’s Antiques Road Show, Songs of Praise and

100 Best Tunes, before they consented to a right old sing-song around the

Honky-Bonk—followed by the archetypical pub brawl.   Tank-tops and

Tonk-Bops.  Shell-suits and Monday Morning Rhythm & Blues.  OK, OK, Hazel

was a nut.  But she’s the past now, as far as I am concerned.  Or at least

since last weekend.  I never liked the way she’d lately been tending towards

extending Wednesdays outwards until the whole week became a no man’s land. 

I am running a Big Breakfast party, starting at 7 this coming drizzly Monday

morning.  Hazel does the weather.  Bring a flask of tea or a bottle of RSVP.

 

published PURPLE PATCH 1998

The One-Eyed Fly

The One-Eyed Fly. 

 

When Wiles arrived in the town, he knew he was in good time for an equally good reason. His mother had informed him where everything was bound to be in relation to the bus station including the venue arranged for meeting his estranged father. Although she herself did not want to renew acquaintance with her husband, there had always been a feeling that it was inevitable that Wiles would meet the man who had, to put no finer point on it, helped create him. She did nothing to stand in his way. How could she? A man and his son had a right to meet this side of death. How else would they recognise each other later? And she swatted a fly, without thinking. ‘Here, take this packed lunch with you. It’s got all your favourite things - Marmite butties, flaky pastry apple pie and extra strong peppermints. The thermos has got hot tea in it at the moment, sugared to the nines, just as you like it.’ She stared sweetly at him with her one good eye, the bad one having burst in a pub brawl many years ago.

 

‘Thanks ma.”

 

‘Remember me to him, won’t you?’ She flicked a careless sprig of hair from her eye, as Wiles wondered how his father could possibly have forgotten her. ‘Don’t forget, he’ll be in the library reading room at precisely twelve o’clock. You’ll recognise him from the photographs, he says, though I’m not so sure... they were taken donkey years ago.’

 

Wiles put his hand into his duffel-coat pocket to ensure that the Brownie snaps were still there. The sharp edge of a corner pricked his thumb. One of the duffel-pegs on his coat looked decidedly dicey, but he didn’t want to worry his mother about that now. Best to have that fuss and bother later in the day.

 

He gave her a peck on the cheek and walked to the bus stop. He mused over the circumstances of how his father had regained contact with them. It were mere chance, apparently - his current step-father was a friend of his real

father, a fact unknown for some time to all parties concerned. The two men were members of the same Lodge which met every week in the same town towards which Wiles was now heading on the ring road. A random natter had served to reveal all, before either of the two men had the wherewithal to keep mum.

 

Wiles sat back in the top front bus seat (having given up the pretence of driving it with the safety-bar) and consigned his life to the careful driving (or otherwise) of the man propped up at the large vestigial steering-wheel underneath him. Wiles often eschewed public transport for this very reason. He once fired off a letter to the local newspaper recommending that all potential bus passengers should be allowed to audition (or at the very least be introduced to) the one who was to be in sole charge of so many precious lives.  They did not print his idea, but he did receive a nice reply with an attractive embossed letter-head (which was in his duffel-coat pocket along with the photos of his Dad, for an inscrutable reason of Wiles’ own).

 

The town turned out to be a confusing place. After shaking hands with the surprised driver at the bus station, Wiles had tried to follow the directions his mother had given him. He found the public convenience easily enough. He managed to go twice, in case he couldn’t later find his way back to it. Then he set about reconnoitring the lie of the land for the library. It was supposed to be in Upper King Street... but not the one his mother had said. He started to panic so much he had to sit down and cross his legs. But it was only ten o’clock and he still had two hours left in which to establish the whereabout of the library. He moithered and dithered about asking a passer-by as to the mystery of Upper King Street, but thought better of it. He sat outside the Post Office in order to partake of an early lunch. Despite having had a heavy breakfast of cereal, thick-cut rashers of fatty bacon, grilled mushrooms looking to Wiles a bit like bodily innards and as much toast and marmalade as he could stomach in the time available, he decided to get the Marmite butties over and done with in case he was faced with a tight time schedule later in the morning. Apparently, as he later found by following a blue fingerpost saying public library, his destination was situated in plain King Street (presumably upper in position only). It was an old fashioned building amazingly constructed with the steep slope of the street (rather than against it for perpendicularity). It was closed! Closed for renovation! He could not believe his own angst, but eventually his brain had no option but to place faith in the purely impersonal image on the retina of his eye. Now the time was ripe for panic and he desperately looked around for his mother. But of course, she was nowhere to be seen. He picked out a photo from his duffel-coat pocket to stare at the young man on it. He looked remarkably like Wiles himself, which in a way was not surprising. However, what was more than just a little surprising, the image of his father was standing outside the very same library building - except the street did not seem to slope at all.

 

As the first ever earthquake to hit Hertfordshire began to shudder with increasing violence under his feet, Wiles unaccountably thought it would have been less surprising for the town to be attacked by a giant one-eyed fly flapping its enormous wings like marmite-smeared clipper sails. He then spotted someone familiar on the opposite side of the street to the library taking his photo with an ancient Brownie box camera.

 

Wiles sicked up his breakfast (without somehow budging is lunch) and he cursed aloud that he had not been able to audition God before he was born. But his last thought (other than the loose duffel-peg) was that it had indeed been very wise to go twice when he had the chance.

 

 

Published 'ProtoStellar' 1992

Baffle (16)

If there were a dining club for shy diners - not versed in prandial repartee - would each member take advantage of the secret logistics of dumb waiter or serving hatch when providing a meal for just one other member, i.e. providing a single meal, by turns, in each of their own homes, while not revealing themselves to the diner visually, only culinarily?

A good question is one which you can't get to the end of and thus find yourself unable to answer it.