Cassandra Voices

Category: Fiction

  • Wouldn’t You?

    Summer was winding to its natural end but the evenings were still warm in London as Michael Maybrick made his way on foot through a crowded Covent Garden on his way to Long Acre. He was immaculately dressed, wearing a black evening suit with a velvet bow tie, polished to the shine black shoes and a smart top hat. His moustache was trimmed to perfection and the rest of his face was freshly shaved, knowing this was to be an important meeting at the grand lodge. A pretty young prostitute approached him with a basket of flowers to disguise her intentions and offered him ‘relief from his hard day and trouble.’ He stopped and turned to greet her eye to eye. The face that glared out under the rim of the hat froze the young woman’s soul. His expression, as intense as it was vacant, sent a sudden shock of fear through her. She had the morbid sensation someone was laying flowers on her grave. He saw fear in her eyes and a smile cracked side to side on his lips. There was a malice lurking. He turned his head away without saying a word, and with a tap of his cane on the cobbles, disappeared into the London crowd. The woman looked down at her flowers disconcertedly as Maybrick performed a pirouette in a strange, uncoordinated way.

                  Maybrick was a musician by profession and was a well-respected member of his Masonic lodge. He was seen by his brethren as a decent sort of fellow but his brooding and melancholy moods had been commented upon. On one occasion he had struck a bell boy around the face for merely being late with his luggage. He had been rumoured about by some of his colleagues. “Given to fits of anger” was how one of his fellow Masons described him at a lodge meeting in Marylebone, a meeting at which Sir Charles Wheeler, the head of the Metropolitan police at that time, was present. It had been noted in the minutes.

    When Maybrick reached the corner of Neal Street and Long Acre he stopped still. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarette case on which was inscribed the letters “TALJ” and then placed it back in his pocket. He put a cigarette in his right hand with an empty box of matches. The case had been a gift from a fellow Mason of high ranking who was grooming him for promotion. He pushed the box open with his thumb and saw that there were no matches left. Again, as if the city were made for the thing, a pretty young woman on the street corner selling matches caught his eye. This time, as he watched her standing on the street corner watching the crowd go by, a cloud of hate itched under his black hat.

    He approached her slowly from out of the shade of an awning and put his hand in his pocket to reach for a half penny. With his eyes obscured by the rim of his hat she handed him the box of matches and he put the coin in the palm of her hand. He gently folded her fingers back over the ha’penny so her hand was making a fist and clasped it between his large, strong hands. He began to squeeze her hand, gently at first, but then gradually harder. And then harder still.

    “Please sir, no!” She said in a squeal as she tried to wriggle her hand free. He began to laugh and then let her go. He turned his back and then lit his thin cigar before making his way on. She looked for a policeman but to no avail. The London crowd milled along Long Acre, behaving as the London crowd always does, as if it were somehow immortal. It does what it does fearlessly and without worry of ends. Two thousand years is only the opening chapter. As long as humanity lives on this planet, there will be London, bathing in the dark and the light. As Maybrick was fond of saying “The pure soul lives in light, the eternal soul under night.”

    He walked on with purpose, gripping his cane tight in a hand. He was riddled with nerves but as he approached the grand lodge he began to take hold of his emotions. He became endowed with a sense of reverence as he entered the building. Filled with fluxing passion he entered the great hall and slowly craned his head backward. He gazed upward at the all-seeing eye. They met each other in an unshakeable stare, back and forth from heaven to earth. The eye sat proudly and distinctly at the centre of the ceiling. Unblinking. He took his hat off and then craned his neck back further still and marvelled at the image for the thousandth time. His heart soared to see it. It was for the glory of God he lived, and through the lodge he had made a solemn vow to work most diligently for his glory. It would be his life’s work. In the stillness of the quiet, near empty chamber, he heard the voice of God speaking to him directly through the great all-seeing eye.

    “Go forth and do my work.” Said the voice. “Obey my command and you shall live with me forever in glory.” The great booming words echoed around his head. Tears welled in his eyes. They fomented through his ecstasy dilating pupils giving an extra sparkle to their blackness. And then they changed. The joy in his eyes turned to fear and he trembled.

    “Yes” he said, with a solemnity that brimmed with emotion. One of his brethren, who had been reading quietly on one of the pews, looked up and peered over the top of his reading glasses. He was a journalist at The Times called Graveney. He saw Maybrick in a trance like state, staring wild eyed, up at the image in the ceiling.

    “I shall do thy bidding.” Said Maybrick softly, and the fear in his expression suddenly turned back to joy.

    “Maybrick! Maybrick there!!” Shouted Graveney. Maybrick looked over at him with a start, as he was suddenly jolted from his trance. The dreamlike state of his aloneness with God, his state of grace, had been punctured.

    “Everything alright Maybrick?” Asked Graveney.

    “Yes. Quite alright” He replied, attempting calm. Graveney noticed the sweat on Maybrick’s brow. Maybrick discreetly wiped his forehead, regained his composure, and returned the hat to his head.

    “Good fellow.” Said Graveney encouragingly, even though he was now tinged with suspicion.  His brethren colleague was certainly acting in an odd manner, one certainly unaccustomed to the lodge. Maybrick nodded at him calmly and made his way to the study to prepare himself before that evening’s meeting began. As he went to leave, he turned to Graveney and said unexpectedly,

    “Call me Jack.” He smiled, turned and walked away leaving Graveney in a state of slight discombobulation, and definite concern.

    When the meeting was over and the brethren were milling about in idle conversation, Maybrick, without informing anyone there, left quietly and made his way clicking down the marble stairs to the back entrance of the Masonic head-quarters in Long Acre. It had begun to rain so he waited a while in the porch for an opportunity to hail a cab. By the end of a thin cigar the cab had arrived and the horses were whinnying in front of him. He opened the door and turned to the driver whose face was covered by a large hood that he wore to protect him from the downpour. Maybrick said one word at him. “Whitechapel.”

    He shut the door behind him and pulled the curtain to, leaving just enough space that he could peer out at the street through the slit. The driver whipped the horses and soon there was nothing in Michael Maybrick’s head but the sound of the wheels and the hooves on the cobbles. It was as if he were void of consciousness. As they made their way east along the Roman road, the summer air began to turn foul.

    Within the east end of London was the pitilessness of human existence manifest. The warren of streets were dark and labyrinthine. It was easy to disappear from sight. Maybrick placed his index finger gently on to the curtain and pulled it back slowly to give himself a better look. He saw two prostitutes talking on a street corner and a sudden volcanic surge of sexual energy coursed through his veins. He could feel his blood heating up in the furnace of his rage and supressed himself from crying out by putting his forearm firmly against his mouth to muffle his excitement. He bit into the arm of his coat hard as the ecstasy turned to euphoria.

    Soon enough they had reached the east end as the pubs were shutting. The quiet of the city night approached. He tapped his cane hard three times on the roof of the cab and it came to a halt half way down the Commercial Road East. He was about to get out but the heavy rain changed his mind. He had somehow lost his nerve. He shouted to take him to the west end where he lived and told the driver he would tip him when they arrived. He looked at the women talking and then closed the curtain and then rested his head back with his eyes closed.

    “Soon.” He said. And with a huge grin that exposed all his large rotting teeth and his blood red gums, and with his eyes as wide as could be, he sat there between his imagination and his reality, conjuring the future images of what he conceived to be the genius of his diabolical game.

    ———

    Warm days passed by. Then on the 31st of August 1888 Maybrick left his house, and shut the door carefully behind him, humming the melody to a song he had written entitled “They All Love Jack.” Night had fallen but before long he hailed a cab and asked again to be taken to Whitechapel. The night was cloudless and there was no sign of rain. He looked at his pocket watch as the cab began to move. It was just after 11pm.  He wore a long coat with deep pockets and about it a black cape and by his feet was a dark carpet bag. That night he wore a bowler hat which was tilted slightly forward. On the inside on his pocket watch was a depiction of the all-seeing eye and when he saw it he went into a kind of flux. His head began to shake softly and his eyes rolled back to a hypnotised state. “God’s work’ said the voice, “Gods work” again until a jolt of the cab’s wheel on an upturned cobble awoke him. He rubbed his face and lit a cigarette and then carefully, as he had done a few nights before, he pulled the curtain back an inch and looked out. If it wasn’t for the noise of the city he would have been able to hear the thumping of his heart. Adrenaline seeped through him, but then diminished, leaving him unfilled in the charging moment, the unrequited eroticism begging him towards the fire. Making sure the curtains were pulled shut he unsheathed one of the knives he was carrying, allowing himself for a moment to admire the sharpness of the glinting blade. He then put it back in its sheath and concealed it in the specially made pocket in the inside lining of his cloak.

    When Maybrick arrived in Whitechapel it was just past midnight and the pubs were beginning to empty. “Hehe” he giggled in a mad way. The sound of his own laughter let off a madness in him that he boiled to repress, sinking his face into his hands and then scratching the back of his head with dug in nails. He rocked backwards and forwards a little. A sweat had began to form around the edges of his hair. His eyes were so dilated they were nearly totally black when he opened them. He got out of the cab and paid the driver, taking care to obscure his face. He thanked him and said goodbye. There was life sounding out of the various pubs and a few people milled around including a drunk, swaying on gin, holding on to a wall to keep himself upright.

    Although the road was badly lit there was still enough light. Not like the side streets and back alleys that were lit by the stars and moon. A light that could be doused by the movement of clouds, plunging the back alleys and courts into pitch blackness. As he stepped down onto the cobbles a man walked past him with wild, incendiary eyes. The man’s name was Kosminski, one of the many immigrants that had arrived in east London, causing the city itself to swell. Maybrick had once commented that the east end was like a bloated abdomen. Rats and sewage festered. Conditions and sanitation in some places, especially the doss houses, were unfit for living, and the stench in places so bad, especially in summer, as to make an unsuspecting visitor retch. But London could cope, as it always has and always will, with change and misery.

    The two men caught each-other’s eye. Their madness met in a fleeting glance. There was a sudden moment, as there is before fights, fuelled by adrenaline. But they turned their heads away from each other and there was no conflict. They had out-madded each other. Kominski carried on, muttering to himself as he walked down Commercial Road East and Maybrick carried on into the sullen heart of Whitechapel, to be among the night wanderers.

    One of those night wanderers was a woman by the name of Mary Anne Nichols. She had been turned out of her lodgings and needed to go and make some money to pay for her bed. She said to the woman that ran the doss house “With me pretty bonnet I’ll soon get me doss money” and she left the place with her shawl wrapped tightly over her shoulders. She had been drinking that day and had a head full of booze but was compos mentis in terms of what she felt she had to do. She staggered a little when she walked but not too much. Almost an hour passed without her getting any business. As she slowly sobered up the night became quiet. The badly lit street where she waited offered no sound. It was almost half-way through the night when she smiled at the opportunity of her luck changing. Walking towards her across the empty road was a tall man with his hands in the pockets of his long dark cloak and with a bowler hat tilted forward. As he crossed the street towards Buck’s Row and to Mary, he said to himself in a controlled monotone way:

    “All this I most solemnly, sincerely promise and swear, with a firm and steady resolution to perform the same, without any hesitation, myself, under no less penalty than that of having my body severed in two, my bowels taken from thence and burned to ashes, the ashes scattered before the four winds of heaven, that no more remembrance might be had of so vile and wicked a wretch as I would be, should I ever, knowingly, violate this my Master Mason’s obligation. So help me God, and keep me steadfast in the due performance of the same.”

    This was a part of his Masonic oath. An oath to which his mad mind clung. By the time he was close enough to speak to her he had stopped speaking. She didn’t hear him say a word. When he arrived he stood two feet away from her and waited for her to make an offer.

    “Hello kind sir. I’m hoping I can be of service. How do you like my new bonnet?” He lifted his head up and looked at her from under the rim of his hat. The moonlight caught his face. She looked back at him and paused as she registered his glare. In a fleeting moment she thought she may have seen some sadness there, some forlorn soul within. However, she was eager to get paid and back to her lodgings to sleep.

    “Yes.” He said. Where can we go?”

    “Just here by the gates. No one can see us.” She said. He followed her calmly into the darkness.

    In Buck’s Row by the stable door she turned and faced him and they looked into each other’s eyes. She knew who he was. That is certain. As did the other four. The canonical five as they eventually came to be known. Including the ripper himself there are six people to know his identity for sure, six that we know of. To actually know his face and his eyes.

    As they looked at each other and she put her hand in his belt he put his hand over her mouth and taking the large knife from his pocket slit her throat causing blood to spill onto his maniacal face. She tried to cry murder but he muffled her cries and she bled out as he began to slash and stab wildly at her if indeed making some crazed attempt to cleave her in two. He stabbed her vagina on purpose. For four minutes he cut and hacked, nearly salivating as the intensity of the moment started to dry the roof of his mouth. Four minutes that felt to his soulless soul like the release of a life-long prisoner, repressed and caged. The laughter had gone out of him, extinguishing some remnant goodness with every vicious slash of the knife. He shook violently as the life left her body. Looking up to the heavens he gave thanks. With his power over life he was now in direct communion with God.

    He suddenly heard the sound of footsteps and dropped her lifeless cadaver to the floor where she fell with a thud. Her eyes remained open though she was now dead. The ripper fell back into the shadows. A man called Charles Cross walked up Buck’s Row on his way to the early shift at work. He was used to walking this street through the dark of the night and saw what at first he thought to be a discarded tarpaulin.

    “A tarpaulin’ he said aloud as he came near, but the moonlight revealed something sinister.

    “Oh Jesus” he said. The ripper heard him speak as he stood motionless in a pitch-black alcove with his back to the street less than fifteen feet away. Within a few moments another man named Robert Paul who was also on his way to work saw Cross standing there and curious at the scene approached, unaware of the grim spectacle that lay in store. Cross touched her face which was still warm with life but her hands were deathly cold. With her eyes open in the bad light there was some confusion between the two whether she was dead or merely unconscious.

    “Let’s find a peeler” Said Paul to Cross “I’m late for work as it is.” This piece of information did not go unnoticed by the man in the shadows. He closed his eyes and concentrated intensely on his hearing. He listened to two pairs of feet making away, and when the sound had disappeared around the corner the ripper emerged from the blackness, ignoring the carnage he had made as he made his way swiftly in the opposite direction through the rabbit warren of Whitechapel’s streets which he had learned so intimately, making his way west on foot in the wake of the rising sun.

    In the lodge of the Freemasons in Great Queen Street Sir Charles Wheeler sat with five other men, including Graveney who had witnessed Michael Maybrick’s bizarre trance like behaviour a few weeks before.

    “Odd kind of fellow” said one man.

    “But he is one of us.” Said another.

    “And a fine musician I hear.” Wheeler sat pensively averting his eyes from the ceiling. Then he spoke.

    “Don’t be troubled. It seems he was having an episode. Thank-you for informing me and I would be grateful if you could all monitor the situation and keep me informed of any developments. Both Maybrick and the Whitechapel murders. It’s possible……. they are connected. Remember, he is one of the brethren and for that he WILL receive our undivided loyalty. No matter what. Do I make myself clear?”

    “On our honour.” They all replied to him in unison.

    Wheeler learned of the second murder soon after it had occurred. Her name was Annie Chapman. The mutilation was even more vicious than the last and initial reports said the two murders were connected. But there were other pieces of information from the first report he received that perturbed him greatly. Things that may connect the murders to themselves. It was about her abdomen. It had been removed by the killer and placed over her shoulder. At once Wheeler thought of the Masonic oath. Then he thought of Maybrick. When the double murder occurred he had personally rushed to Whitechapel and had seen above the bloody apron of Catherine Eddowes the graffiti on the wall which ran ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’ Wheeler had personally ordered the writing to be removed.

    He suggested to himself it may have been coincidental, but he was in reality overwhelmed with doubt. But then he learned about the farthing coins that had been laid deliberately and ceremonially around the body. When Wheeler found this out a grim, unflexing look of despair came over his face. He immediately sent word to the commanding officers on the case and demanded that everyone with knowledge of this event must not tell a soul. Any details with Masonic connections must be excluded from the reports. Wheeler said specifically to those involved in the investigation, especially those who were in liaison with the press that the facts about the meticulous arrangement of the coins and the entrails being placed over the shoulder must be kept secret from the public as it might jeopardise the investigation.

    That was the official line. In private, he recommended caution and vigilance to the brethren of the lodge concerning the Whitechapel murders and then disbanded the meeting. He sat alone that night looking out of the window brooding on the recent horrors. One thought obsessed him and one thought alone. If the killer was a Mason he would have the most solemn task of keeping these despicable events from in anyway tainting the brotherhoods good reputation. Again he thought of Maybrick. At first, each hour, then each minute, then each second until the whole business began to obsess his mind. Graveney, the journalist-Mason that worked on the Times said to Wheeler “If we can make the killer out to be a fool of some kind… the important thing is….. that we are in control. Perhaps I can invent a character for this murderer to live up to. Create some publicity. As a diversion. A crafted idiot, a dunce with a vicious soul. Something for the masses to wonder about. I can put them off the scent. It will be good for us in any event.” He smiled a broad smile. Wheeler looked at him and with a slight nod of his head, gave his tacit approval.

    “But remember” said Wheeler “this is no cause of laughter.” Graveney knew as well as Wheeler that if news got out about the macabre nature of the carefully placed farthings, or the compasses that had been carved into the flesh of the victim, or indeed the fact that the small intestines had been placed over the right shoulder, then it may bring the eye of suspicion on their fellowship. It was this line of thinking that led him to his ingenious idea. He would create a character that would divert public scrutiny. They could benefit from the confusion. He would have to create someone stupid and semi-literate in their ways of thinking. If he made him a Cockney the East Enders might start bickering among themselves, and stoke the fires of suspicion. Then, in Whitechapel, they would need the police even more. They would seek protection. Their power would be upheld.

    One night before the double murder Sir Charles Wheeler looked out of the window of his high office at the lodge down on to the west end street below and saw Michael Maybrick himself standing quite still on the other side of road, staring skywards into the night as he puffed away on a cigar that hung on his lips. Slowly Maybrick began to sway and then to the surprise of Wheeler began to dance slowly with his arm up as if he was doing a waltz with an invisible woman. Wheeler looked down at him from the high window noticing that rain was beginning to hit the pane. But that didn’t stop his dancing.

    Graveney approached Wheeler and stood by him at the window with a blank sheet of paper in his hand. He looked down out of the window with his brethren friend and also witnessed the spectacle, the two of them looking down at the street in silence, through the rainy glass. Graveney turned and went over to the desk, leaving Wheeler by the window. He was unable to hide the smile of inspiration in his expression. Then he dipped his pen in the red ink pot that he had especially purchased and bent over the table as he began to write;

    Dear Boss,

    I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly
    Jack the Ripper

    Dont mind me giving the trade name

    PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now. ha ha[5]

    When it was done he showed the letter to Wheeler who then called the most high ranking Masons into his office to share his proposal. When he finished reading the letter out loud to the brethren they cheered heartily. ‘Well done that man!’ Said one of the Mason’s.

    “I will send it to the central news agency now, should take some of the heat off brother Maybrick.” They said to him “well done old chap” again and in celebration of Graveney’s moment of creativity Sir Charles Wheeler opened a bottle of Glenfiddich and began to pour. When their glasses were filled he went over to the window to close the curtains, and looking down on the street, noticed that Maybrick had gone.


    Feature Image: Michael Maybrick (1841–1913), English composer and singer, best known under the pseudonym of Stephen Adams who composed “The Holy City“, one of the most popular religious songs in English.

  • Fiction: Yer Man

    Inside the castle’s gift shop stood White, reading the biography of the artist whose work was on exhibit. She was not a local. White had expected as much. It was often the case. Arts councils promote the work of foreign writers and artists, liminal beings that they are.

    Yes, I mean, why else would they have done it? Artists are, after all, liminal beings forever inhabiting society’s margins, and that is why so many among their number are consigned to travel abroad. Even on foreign shores their natural domain is to live out on the perimeter. So to be permanently precarious, is in a sense, an ontological grounding for them, of sorts.

    The work on display was surprising and novel, he thought. Artistic tropes were being explored in both complex and perhaps popular ways. A Bacchic display of human like heads whose hair had been transformed into great tresses of grapes at once reminded him of those chiseled river gods which adorned so many public buildings and bridges in the inner city, or humorous reworkings of the once risqué Sheela na gig, now easily hung on the walls of someone’s room. But whose?

    No, there was something not quite right there. White considered the surrounding geography, the demographics of the local populace. What used to be thought of as middle class couples;  a dying breed that were the glue cementing a working class on one end to the rich on another.

    How were they immediately indentifiable, the middle class? Typically, two cars. The drive- way foregoing any semblance of lawn or front garden as now the mortgage payments to maintain a three-bedroom plaster board edifice made it imperative that both parents work. Which meant two cars despite one’s carbon footprint on the environment. What an utter sham, and it had happened almost overnight. The newspapers had just announced an average cost now for these three-bedroom abodes was over half a million euros.

    White couldn’t afford one and he was convinced that this was one of the reasons why his father had only ever stepped foot in his place once during the last decade, out of shame. Although, unless pressed on a drunken night, he would never dare admit to it.

    Appearances were everything. Post-colonial societies were a bloody nightmare. The REP was no different. REP was White’s name for The Republic of Ireland, which was such a fucking mouthful, that if you uttered the phrase it was as if your mouth was overflowing with snot and phlegm.

    The elderly woman behind the gift shop’s small counter remained on the phone. White hung about now just trying to get a bit of information on the whereabouts of a local writer’s group he had once been a part of, so many years ago. Well, being a part of was perhaps too strong a word for it. White had long since ceased being a joiner. He was the most liminal of them all.

    A stroll might reveal if there was any indication at all of the existence of the writer’s group to be found in the shop. He had already checked the walls in the hall leading into the café but to no avail. Then, hovering by the counter, he noticed a few paperbacks placed on a corner table by an entrance leading into the castle itself. Sure enough, he found what he had been looking for. Two titles were by members of the writers group. One was a local who had been a tradesman all his life in the inner city who upon retirement had moved out to Sker to settle down in a three-bedroom house built in the nineties. An older housing estate to the one where White lived.

    John Freed was the man’s name. White had met him about a decade ago when attending the writer’s group one Saturday morning. John was almost mono-syllabic at the time, but that was what was attractive about him back then. Now, emboldened by so many open mic sessions, and with the latest coup of finally getting a book out, John had left behind his former persona filled with quiet reticence and smouldering frustration, a rather charming cocktail White had thought, only to replace the former qualities with a newfound confidence and stupidity that filled White with despair.

    What is it about society these days? he thought. Everyone’s a poet or an artist. You would see it on their LinkedIn accounts; Profession: Poet at Writer. How many poets actually made a living from writing poetry? With six published collections behind him, White wouldn’t put Poet as his profession. In thirty years of writing, he had earned about six thousand euros. In all that time.

    White felt the furies coming on, so he made for the door of the gift shop and got the fuck out. Far as he could away from that place. Anything might set him off.

    On the way, he would message John and ask him about the possibility of a gig. He was going up to the castle on a regular basis now, particularly as he was using the rose garden in the castle grounds as a centre-piece, in a sense, to the new novel that he was working on. So, it made perfect sense to reach out and enquire about facilitating a reading or a workshop of some kind. Readings and workshops! Hardly were the words out of his mouth and he was again driven to the depths of despair. Christ, but what a god-awful fucking society they had become!

    Looking downhill on the whole surrounding territory before him, White sent a brief message to Freed enquiring about the possibility of a reading followed by a workshop or something and a nominal fee of fifty euro or so. Should he invite Freed out for a drink down in the bill local where they both used to read together? White liked Freed, as a person. He simply hated what he had become and this was more a societal thing as Freed was just caught up in it all.

    White’s iPhone addiction was getting to the point that he would find himself either reading texts or making audio messages while he was out in the middle of one of his hikes. But now he stopped on the pathway that interrupted the flow of the descent. The view was simply overwhelming if you actually took the time to take it in.

    His surroundings went back to the mid-seventeenth century. A main house and an estate which had been cleared of woodland. But the castle itself had really only come into its own at the beginning of the eighteenth century and then was further developed in the early 19th. It was easy to imagine, White reflected, looking around him at the great expanse of sea before him. The little harbour floating illusory upon the waves of sometime mercury only to be replaced by emeralds and aquamarine when the sunlight danced upon it. Sker’s own micro-climate could be summer-like which White was experiencing just now, only for the skies to suddenly cloud, and he would beat a retreat back into the woods from whence he came.

    Yes, it was very easy to think back to the early 19th century, the time of Jane Austen and Napoleon. Or Ludwig van Beethoven, who White once listened to for years on an old Walkman. Until that ancient machine finally gave up the ghost. It had been a kind of statement. His stubborn refusal to use Spotify. Somehow, playing compact discs, which he carried around in a special satchel, allowed him to keep connected to the eighties and nineties, to a mythical past when he had attained his apex.

    Now, most certainly, he was in the grips of irreversible decline, which was fine. One could not reverse the inevitable. That would be folly. Acceptance then? Nay! Embrace, rather. One had to embrace one’s age. One’s own and also that age into which one was born.

    Besides, White thought, it had all really started, his decline, in his early thirties. That had been the start of it. Age thirty-three to be precise. The age of Christ! What a fucking joke. It was too rich really, but then, life had always been surprising and rich in irony. White recommenced his walk. The slow decent of the hill sped him gently on his way. Freed had responded by a thumbs up. Detestable habit. What a cunt, White thought, laughing to himself through the almost audible strains of the Eroica booming again in his ears.

     

     

  • The Death of Blake

    The bed had been positioned deliberately near the window so the artist had a view of the sky. The sky embodied eternity. Our creations change with every era, each century brings a new art, but the sky, on a cloudless blue day or in the grey rain, appears as it did to our most remote ancestors. The wind on their skin feels the same to us. He lay there dying, looking up through the window with the eyes of his childhood self. The sky was a glimpse at something death cannot kill. On that day, the day of his death, the sun was shining over London and the artist was filled with joy.

    His health was deteriorating and with each passing hour it seemed to his wife Catherine more rapid. Her hope of a recovery was fading. They had been married these past forty-five years and she knew him better than anyone, enough to know he was always capable of the unexpected, and for that, hope remained kindled as it waned. They had caused a stir walking around their garden in Lambeth naked together. They had shocked their neighbours, and the respectable people of the street thought them to be strange at least, others said they were patently mad. The Blakes had refused to bow to the outcry and continued with their nudism throughout the warm summer days. There was one neighbour in particular, a very old lady in the highest room of a nearby house that would sit there in her rocking chair and watch them dance among the azaleas and foxgloves with her long-ago youth flickering in her eyes. Seeing him lying there with his poorly head emerging from the blankets she smiled to remember it. He was a rebel by soul.

    Then there was the time they ate in a soup those strange mushrooms that Flaxman had brought up from the West Country in a small wooden box decorated with golden flowers. They had a psychedelic effect. The artist ate the soup, enjoyed the evening and laughed until it was time for bed. The next morning he went for a walk and when he returned full of thoughtfulness he said to his wife over cups of tea and bread and butter that ‘he wouldn’t be doing it again’ as he ‘had no need for them.’ Some years later she remembered out of the blue that he recalled the experience to her and said matter-of-factly that whatever ‘grows on God’s earth must be God’s creation.’ She had no reason to argue with his logic. She herself had enjoyed that evening very much.

    Catherine took the bowl of water and placed it on the bedside table before soaking the flannel and resting it on his forehead. The wet cold of the material opened the artist’s resting eyes and he smiled to see her and the sunshine flooding in behind her. Just the vision of her standing there, her face, filled him with happiness. She leant forward and he could see over her shoulder toward the window. He noticed a thousand colours in the dust particles in the air, each one with its own divinity, each one a galaxy. He watched carefully the movement of the dust in the beam of sunlight, slowly synchronising each angled manoeuvre until it became an entire day of his childhood. It was never difficult for him remembering being a child, how it actually felt, the lineaments of thought he once had and soaring of feeling he often experienced. And then his brother Robert died when he was still a boy which only served to intensify the clarity of his visions. He remembered everything. It was on Saturday mornings in the warm spring when his parents allowed him to go off roaming on his own that his relation with the eternal was born. Now this simple, sparse room in which he lay dying was to the artist a realm in itself. With his eyes closed he dreamt like all of us do, with his eyes open he saw worlds beyond worlds and time beyond time.

    Blinking slowly he opened his eyes and looked at Catherine’s eyes for a while. When she noticed, she held his stare. With a slight croak in his voice he began to speak.

    “Thank you.”

    “For what?”

    “For my life.” She didn’t quite know what he meant but inferred the meaning ‘I love you.’ She had never doubted it. Tears welled in their eyes. And then suddenly, seeing him lying there so ill, made her deeply sad. It was like a void, an almost violent, unexpected misery that befell her. After all those many long years of marriage she would soon find herself alone. It was only then, on that bright sunny day, that she really felt it for the first time, the potential of loneliness, and when it fell on her it fell hard and pitiful. But he was determined her future happiness reigned over their parting.

    The artist began to cough and splutter a little so she put a cup of water to his mouth which he drank from with difficulty. “Sit me up Catherine, I would like to see the river again.” There from the window he looked out at the Thames. Old father Thames was right, it had given birth, knowingly or unknowingly, to every Londoner there ever was or ever will be. “Look” he said “it shines like a bar of gold.”

    “It does at that.’ Catherine answered. They both sat there a while looking at the sunlight playing on the water, brave, complete, magically alive. He looked at it for a time and knew for certain that the pangs and pains of death could never crush his spirit. There was just no chance. It seems perhaps unreasonable now, but it was true. Blindingly, obviously true. He, she, we, are nature. The sun beam glittering in the bough of the tree like the melody of the crashing waves on the shingle, or a full bellied peregrine falcon with nothing else to do but fly, make up one whole. The artist leant his head back on the pillow and smiled.

    There was a wrap on the door. When Catherine opened it she saw it was one of the artist’s ‘disciples’ and a member of The Ancients, a young man named George Richmond. The Ancients were a group of painters that included Edward Calvert and Samuel Palmer, brought together in brotherly kinship by the love and admiration for the artist, whose life was now drawing to a sad close as he lay on the bed by the window at Fountain Court.

    “How is he?” Asked Richmond as Catherine ushered him in from the street.

    “He is gravely ill, and coming in and out of consciousness.” She began to cry. Richmond tried to give some kind words of consolation, but soon realised his words could not suffice. He rested his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, as he himself now feared the worse. As they entered the room, the drifting of a cloud let a sharp burst of sunlight in. The artist heard the footsteps and his head turned with open eyes as they both entered the room. He recognised the young man immediately.

    “Ah. Richmond my boy! Welcome.”

    “William. Mr. Blake.” The sight of the dying man made him tremble suddenly. Richmond was only eighteen at this time and death to him, quite rightly, was an abstraction, a fake. He sat down in a chair by the bedside and saw the artists almost pug-like face, frail, wan, and devoid of rosiness.

    “How are you feeling Mr. Blake?”

    “Ha!” The artist looked over at Richmond and smiled. “I am dying. But do not be troubled. I am travelling to that country I have always wanted to visit!” Then, surprisingly to those present, Blake began to sing. It wasn’t the singing voice of a dying man, but rather someone bursting with life. Catherine became full of delight as the artist went on singing psalms and hymns and for a time she forgot about death, and suffering. He sang ‘Jesus Christ the apple tree’ ‘Come, oh thou traveller unknown’ and ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ among others. He had always loved to sing. Always. Both Catherine and Richmond wept with joy when they sat witnessing these moments. These perhaps final moments.

    Then, as one hymn ended, the artist took a sharp intake of breath. His head rocked gently on the pillow. “Quick Catherine, get me my drawing things. I will paint a picture of you! You have been an angel to me.” He looked up at the ceiling and his eyes widened to their fullest extent, dilating with ecstasy. His mouth opened slightly in a sigh of joy. “Behold! The angels!” His mind cried out, but no words came, the only thing audible was the rhythm of his last breaths. Above him he saw his brother Robert in angelic form, bathed in white light beckoning him on, for his spirit to rise, and he saw the archangel Gabriel, smiling as old friends do. He looked at Catherine and thought ‘We will meet again.”

    And then, on that summer day, by the river of London, he died. A look of serenity came over his face, and his eyes were open, keen and eager at the last. The death mask that was made reminded The Ancient’s of one the good emperors, full of calm and wisdom. Richmond placed his thumb and middle finger on the artists eyes, and closed them gently. Catherine was still weeping as she showed Richmond out, and as a slight evening summer rain came down, Richmond himself began to cry and continued to cry through the streets and all the way home. Somewhere in those sad joyful tears with the rain wetting his head, he knew the words he would write to Palmer. So strange, in the eyes of the young man, how the artist had greeted death. The absence of fear. The way he sang.

    Feature Image: Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786) by William Blake

  • The Secret Garden

    The leaves of Greenwich Park were the soul of Autumn as I walked slowly up the hill to the secret garden in the quiet rain. I opened the gate and entered to find there was no one there. Maybe there was nobody in the whole park. A red squirrel went on eating in the middle of the wet lawn, untroubled by my presence. Above me sat the Observatory on its perch, a great seat of learning. An opportunity for humankind to understand the universe. Once upon a time you could see the stars from here on a clear night, but not now. Not since industry. Not since work.

    I opened a can of beer and lit up and made my way on through the drizzle wet, and felt lonely but not sad, this feeling of rain, delving sublime, richer than silk indigo was Inigo in ideas, deeper than feeling, in my own world almost auto stick, non-verbal, who are the same as us and yet not the same. One with everything, if only those little beauties could understand. I can’t. I went over and sat on the damp bench at the picnic table, content to be alone, for now at least. I had the plants and the trees and rain for company and that was all I needed. It’s a good time to think about people, when there’s no-one there.

    I don’t remember how long I spent in the secret garden. The time pieces of Greenwich had all floated clocks among the rainclouds tick-tock until sun’s return. The great orange ball at the top of the Observatory was obscured by mist. I noticed the clouds after that and drank deeply and rolled the cherry on the edge of the wooden bench, the place was damp so nothing could set fire. I put my hood up and felt the unmistakeable tingling of comfort. My eyes were good, and ears, and legs and arms and heart, nothing appeared to be dying. Nothing at all, not even the hiding sun.

    It felt good to finish the can of beer and crush the empty can in my fist. Especially as I had another one in my bag. Plenty I believe the word to be. It can be a good thing, better than drought. The trick to life is appreciation, in knowing when enough is enough, but knowing what enough is, has always been hard for me, because the memory of the shit never goes, so let the good times roll. There is a great beauty in this world of ours, remember, the world that created us, against all the naysayers. Yes, it’s beauty I made sure before I died.

    The squirrel has gone and I am alone with the half Red Stripe. Keep on smoking, careful not to get it wet as the rain isn’t easing. Under the picnic table with the paper and the tobacco and then the filter and finally the lick and flip. The new lighter is a good feeling and works first time producing a burst of smoke in the downpour. Maybe shelter soon but not just yet. I can hear the rain on my rain proof hood like music. Sit a while.

    I’ll leave this place before the rain lifts. I stand up and then rattle the can. I spy a bin and move towards it to leave my mark. I look around and think the place was worth visiting in all seasons, in all weathers. I am a little drunk, it was a long night, a good night, but genuinely, peaceful reader, nothing I can’t handle yet, my body holds out still as fifty approaches like an old friend I have fallen out with. The things that can’t be avoided must be confronted, who said that? Good mothers probably.

    And so on up to the top of the park and the General Wolfe statue who must have defeated the French in Canada. Let’s build a statue to remember wars won. Then it will have meaning, if it is remembered. But only then. I can see the days of Nelson from where I stand, and the days of Raleigh on the riverbank and we can see what happened when we hear the toothpaste advert from the other side of oceans, in a different accent of course. Why all the war, all the carnage, all the misery and death? Something to do I suppose. “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.”

    I can see all of London, but better to stay in the park and nature and rain. Different company. Maybe a teenager is being stabbed out there but maybe not, it doesn’t happen every second or every minute. Not enough for the politicians to get involved. Ten million people and a couple of hundred slaughtered youth on the street, lying in pools of their own blood. Nothing to see here, nothing to see here. Nothing to see.

    I turn and make my way past the pavilion and into the Flower Garden. Good name. The Flower Garden. Rain is letting up now. They had a good drink today. Strange thing, that nature has no control over itself, it spreads where it can when it has a chance, and now beyond where was once impossible. I spy the Observatory again over the brow. Let’s build monuments to war and keep the deers in the enclosure, they’ll be safe there. Good idea. One of them looks over at me through the fence. Through the misty rain. It’s free in its own world. Like me. Maybe a prisoner could be free if he had the right mind. If he was in control of his imagination, then where would he be?

    The Flower Garden is beautiful. The rain has returned so I put my hood back up. I remember I was here one hot summers day in nineteen eighty-five. Wouldn’t it be a thing to have dates for those childhood days of summer. They are now lost in time, they are time. The only time we know. The pinnacle of childhood, using imagination on everything. I look at the tree that has changed less than me since then. It is magnificent then and now. The tree, nature’s gifted form, blown about by the winds but always rooted. Only disaster and time can kill it. Like us. The rain is back for sure. I put my hood up and leave through the gate on Maze Hill. Back into the world, for now.

    Feature Image: Royal Observatory, Greenwich

  • Open

    The boy was wretched. He sat on the bed in shorts and T-shirt his hair a tangled mess. I noticed they had put him in a single room, the last on the corridor beside the fire escape. I examined his chart, apart from the nurse’s hourly checks no one had spoken to him since he had been admitted three days ago. I introduced myself.

    ‘I’m Dr Peter Philips your doctor.’

    The boy looked at me. He had piercing blue eyes and an odd way of tilting his head as if he was asking a question. There was no hostility, but it was obvious he was terrified.

    ‘Do you hear voices?’, I asked.

    He looked puzzled.

    ‘I mean do you hear voices other than your own in your head?’

    He still didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. I tried something else.

    ‘Your mother said you threw yourself from an upstairs window. Were you trying to kill yourself?’

    ‘No, I just wasn’t ready.’

    I withdrew from this cryptic comment and closed the interview.

    Later that day I looked through his case notes. He was involuntarily admitted, his mother had brought him in. The duty registrar had done the paperwork noting that the boy was unwashed, and he rambled on about a bird, a pet bird maybe? He was delusional with suicidal tendencies. Normally I would move on to treatment, but something about the boy bothered me. He obviously didn’t suffer from auditory hallucinations and there was something odd about his suicide attempt. I looked at the other entries on his file. He had never been in trouble with the Guards not even a scrap on the street. His mother had been interviewed separately. She was unwilling to say too much and appeared to be overwhelmed by what was going on. She did say her son had become obsessed by birds of prey. I didn’t draw any conclusions from this I was satisfied he was delusional.

    Nightfall, a nurse came into the room with a tray of medication. The boy took the pills and turned to the wall.

    ‘Alright Pat?’

    ‘Yeah’, he muttered.

    The night was windy, and a twig tapped on the window, a message tap, tap, tap. A message from the trees whipped by the wind. The boy listened curiously; he tapped his knee in time. Then there was a lull in the wind and the tapping stopped. In the morning there was porridge for breakfast. The dining room was full. Pat looked around at the other patients most of them were concentrating on eating. After breakfast there wasn’t very much to do, the day gaped like a long empty corridor.

    We had a team meeting the morning after I interviewed the boy. I set out the psychopharmaceutical position to murmurs of assent. There was a girl at the conference table. She introduced herself as the new occupational therapist on the ward.

    ‘His mother said he’s quite good at drawing. Could we provide him with paper and pens and see what he comes up with?’

    I was sceptical at first, the fact that he was suicidal created all sorts of problems, but then so far, my attempts to interview him had proved unproductive so I gave her the OK on the paper and pens.

    The day was slipping past, it was already afternoon, the lunch things cleared away. A smell of boiled potatoes hung limply in the air. Sunlight streaked the floor tyles and Pat let it land on his T-shirt and his legs. He felt restless as if something was boiling away inside him. He could see the sky through the high windows and a bird only a speck above the city. For a moment he felt pure joy then behind him a nurse said:

    ‘Time for you medication Pat.’

    It was almost time for the night shift to come on duty when she came through the door. She was wearing baggy black pants and she carried a bag. The doctor he had seen the first night was with her and they stood talking at the other end of the ward. Pat looked at her carefully. Her fine red hair was clipped back in a ponytail. Then she laughed a small nervous laugh, barely parting her lips. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and said something Pat couldn’t hear. The man pointed towards Pat, and she came over to him. When she reached him, she held out her hand:

    ‘My name’s Anna, I’m the ward occupational therapist. I’m told you’re interested in birds.’

    Pat mumbled something. She smelled sweet like honeysuckle and her eyes were the colour of morning sky. He wanted to tell her everything, the peace, the freedom, to be up there looking down. Instead, she opened her bag and took out paper and pens. She was saying something like draw what you see, put down what you feel. He hardly heard her; he was so happy.

    At first it was a tremor, a flash of light a sweeping glance across the landscape. He was fifteen when it first came over him crouched at his window ready to fly. That time it only lasted minutes, but he was already caught willing it to happen again. In his sleep he dreamt of a huge black bird that soared above the fields. He became impatient and tried jumping from the windowsill, that landed him in hospital with a broken shoulder and a fractured knee. Remembering the first time, he imagined the bird and the wind beneath him, now he could see with the bird’s eyes. He sat still in his room focusing on the breath, waiting, waiting for the flash of light. Without knowing how he knew he was ready; he opened the window, and everything was there. With raised arms, the wind rushed past his face, and he could hear rustling feathers. Nothing could stop him, his feet lifted off the sill and effortlessly he cleared the treetops, the shifting breeze carried him into the clear blue sky. He wheeled around and headed back home gracefully landing again where he had left.

    The drawings were spread out on my desk. Some were remarkable pictures of birds. Others were indecipherable. I picked one up.

    ‘What’s this supposed to be?’

    ‘Well,’ Anna said tentatively. ‘At first I thought it was some kind of pattern and then I came across drone footage, and I realised it was a drawing from the air.’

    ‘So, he can imagine what things look like from the air?’

    ‘Yes, it’s amazing, isn’t it?’

    ‘But you’re not suggesting he can actually fly?’

    Anna sank back in her chair.

    ‘Look our job is to treat his symptoms. He needs to take his place in society, get a job, fit in. Maybe you’re too close to him someone else can take over.’

    Pat hung around the ward pretending he wasn’t waiting for anything. By lunchtime he wondered why she hadn’t come. Then it was three in the afternoon and when the ward door opened  it was his mother looking anxious and distracted. They sat in his room without speaking. Eventually she took out a bottle of fruit juice and put it on his bedside locker along with sixty euros in twenty euro notes. She was crying and took him in her arms:

    ‘Be a good boy,’ she said.

    Pat waited the excruciating hours until bedtime and still she didn’t come. In the morning at breakfast a nurse said quietly to him:

    ‘Dr Philips wants to see you as soon as you’re ready.’

    I saw him in my office first thing. He looked tired and hung his head as I went through his notes.

    ‘You’ve been doing some work with Anna. She’s been transferred to another ward, from now on you’ll be dealing with Carl,’.

    The boy looked shocked, and I made a note that he should be monitored carefully.

    When the nurse went into Pat’s room in the morning the small window over his bed was open. There was no sign of Pat. They never found him; he couldn’t have crawled out the opening the window afforded. Dr Philips maintained the door to the fire escape must have been left unlocked. Anna asked to see the room. She looked under the bed and lying there innocently waiting to be found was a glossy black feather. She held it up to the light and admired it, then she slipped it into her bag.

    Feature Image: AI Art Generator.

  • Island State

    On 55th West between 8th and 9th Street I just miss getting mugged. I hear them coming up behind me, two street kids and I speed up. They hit the next guy, take his phone and break his arm. I back off, slipping between parked cars as they run away. He’s just sat there on the pavement in his neatly pressed suit, cradling his broken arm. This is a quiet street, neatly trimmed hedges, expensive apartments. I say something like “Can I help?”, but he doesn’t speak English. The cops arrive and I give them a vague, racist sounding description of ‘the perps’. Two days ago I would have helped.

    Two days ago I owned a can of pepper spray, picked up for fifteen bucks on Venice Beach because Inglewood felt dangerous. But they scan you and pat you now, before they let you board the ferry to Ellis Island, so I trashed it. I sit on a rock in Central Park and call friends in Ireland and Russia on the last of my credit. These calls last a surprisingly long time. I am completely alone.

    So I get a ticket for the Tonight Show. If Letterman looks a little orange on camera, then he’s ruddy as a horse under the lights. Tonight’s guests: Sean Lennon, Billy Bob Thornton and a girl who hypnotises lizards and poses them in hand sown outfits. I feel sorry for Lennon, this nerdy, yupster kid, born overshadowed. Billy Bob’s here promoting a movie. He’s brought along a picture of himself as a fat toddler. We laugh as instructed. ‘The CBS orchestra’ make a good house band, tight session musicians in loud ties and late 30’s paunch. I watch Dave’s hands shake during the ad break, as pages coo and pamper him. Is he still nervous after all this time? Is it Parkinsons, rattling through the L-dopa? Is it the DTs?

    Up and down the Upper East Side stalk little old ladies with pointed faces. Their midget pooches, humiliated in booties, snap against their leads like bobbinhead Johny Rottens in the CBGB’s gift shop. I pick up a naggin in 7-Eleven, mixing it with the too sweet remains of a Big Gulp. Tiny grocery stores are selling mountains of outsize pumpkins. Jews for Jesus thrust leaflets at passing Hasidim, angry under their beards. Columbia is a squall of grey bricked buildings splashed onto a sandstone thoroughfare. I don’t know if it’s a good school, but I’ve read about the naked campus parties. I am titillated and terrified in equal measure. The campus is quiet, and I potter about the swollen crypt of St Paul’s chapel, come to rest on the steps of the library and wish I went here.

    Laura and I are mid-conversation. One of those drunken transitions you can’t remember happening. I’m talking up the Aran Islands, staring at this fake pearl necklace on her tan wrist. She’s a senior, majoring in Neuropsych, and we talk about functional imaging and the new Girl Talk record. She hop skips and jumps before me down the steps, right out of the college and across to a red brick hall of residence and it’s happening finally, that manic pixie dream romance.

    At the party she tells me to wait. I stand in a dark room containing an actual keg that no one actually drinks from. Minutes go by and I think of leaving to buy condoms. I wonder how I’ll get back in. I worry about us finding a room, I wonder if I can sneak her back to my hostel, if I’ll have to bribe whoever’s on the desk. I wonder how long it’s been since I jerked off, and whether I’ll be able to last with a stranger. I lick my palm to check if my breath stinks.

    Laura is kissing a tall Indian kid in t-shirt that reads ‘Cover me in Chocolate and feed me to the Lesbians’. I am crammed on a couch, beside a heavy freshman with a dyed blonde goatee. He reads aloud from his first novel. No one is listening.

    Charles, Charlie, Chuck, had been dead for a very long time. Music had become little more than sound. He gathered and collected films that he did not watch. He purchased books that he never found the time to read. He feared the theft of these collections, though they gave him little pleasure. He carried paperbacks like stowaways in his leather satchel, wearing away the covers on unbroken spines. He had walked through pairs of shoes in the time between reading one book and the next. Periodically he would attempt to consume something; some item of narrative literature, some important work of cinema, some critically acclaimed contemporary composition. Books were too long. Songs were too kitsch or too sincere. Films simply frightened him. It was as though, long ago he had run out of a burning building and into the snow, and he could not remember how to return or find a place to escape the cold.

    In my mind the East Village is an all night street party, tuned in dropped out business men sleazing on boho bimbos in dyed pashminas and lambswool ponchos. I am disappointed. At 14th St, yuppies are replaced by respectable gay couples and hipsters. The air gets smoky, moleskins appear, even the homeless wear designer cast offs. Disneyland Manhattan. I watch a twenty something couple eat day old burgers from the twirling, spoiling windows of an Instamat. I puke in front of them on purpose.

    They show midget porn in the Double Down Saloon. We drink Coronas and the house cocktail, Ass Juice. The money shot in midget porn comes after the action, when the burley stud zips up his little person partner and fucks the suitcase out the window. I am flirting with a roller derby queen. We have consumed great quantities of some cheap imitation of falafel, which demands drink in its roiling savoury language, and on its own bowel wrenching terms. On the street her Disney princess miniskirt and whiffle bat get catcalls. I line up shots at the wing mirrors of parked cars and strike out.

    Rain falls my last morning in Manhattan. It drops in fat wet polyps that hit and burst as I drag my sodden case across Midtown, heart of a heartless empire.  I spend my last damp dollars on American candy for my Irish girlfriend. I take the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station, watching the neighbourhoods get shorter and poorer. These carts were once crewed by gangster taggers in matching costumes. They’d rob you and stick you and keep on walking. Eyes like scissors, riding high over the low down world. They’re gone now, civilised. I am fifteen hundred feet up in the air. Outside, the wingtips blink clouds purple, and the ice wind wracks this comfortable shell.

    * * *

    Feature Image: view of the stage with David Letterman’s desk and guest seats.

  • Fragment Number 64

    It was Saturday morning. Maher was lying in bed. He had just woken up. It was early yet, before eight he could tell. When he had been a much younger man, he had been able to lie in for hours on end but ever since he had passed 30, which was almost twenty years ago now, he had found it impossible to sleep on once he had woken, which was typically before eight on the weekend, maximum, and 5 or 6am minimum on the weekdays.

    He looked around him. Light was already beginning to filter through the dark yellow curtains that he had bought particularly for his bedroom. This had been one of his greatest discoveries in terms of interior decoration, as the soft light they diffused helped him to acclimatise gently to his surroundings. And, considering he was such an early riser, he needed this bit of morning douceur. It was the first in a complex and methodical line in his defences against the onslaught of the day. For Maher, life was an unending struggle, or at least, series of struggles. War in short. He had always felt this, ever since he was a young boy. So, when he finally came across the figure of Heraclitus, in his first year in university while majoring in philosophy, he had been endlessly consoled to read fragment 64, literally translating as the thunderbolt steers all things. In other words, from out of conflict came everything!

    As he lay lying there on his bed watching the wedge of light widen a little through the gap in the heavy curtains, Maher could not but help think of the unending cosmos. This was reflexive. Maher, obviously, was a morning person. It was, without any doubt, one of the plethora of reasons why he was single. His ex-wife used to joke to him, after they had separated of course, of the years of abuse he used to subject her to with cosmologically ruminations like this, first thing in the morning. She would joke, sometimes almost seriously, that she was sure that she would be open to pursuing a claim for psychological abuse after the years that they had spent together and all the subsequent trauma she had faced after being subjected to Maher’s monologues.

    She had a rich sense of humour, Maher smiled, thinking about her now. However, obviously not rich enough.

    As Maher finally lifted himself up off the bed, he heard the pitter patter of Dave, the dog. Dave was a Jack Russell. Mad as a box of Jacks! Maher had read somewhere that the breed was rather particular as they were convinced, apparently, that they were human, not canine, which as far as Maher could tell kind of helped to explain their rather anti-social behaviour vis a vis their four -legged brothers and sisters. Dave, for example, basically wanted nothing to do with other dogs. Except of course when he had an urge, and that was basically it. Apart from random acts of sodomy, typically rather perversely involving a rather aged mongrel, Dave, as far as Maher could see, did not particularly give a shit about his fellow quadrupeds.

    Maher sat on the side of the bed, half contemplating the face of his pet who was, as was his systematic habit, sitting in the most physically endearing position imaginable, for human empathy at least. That was another character trait, Dave the dog had a most uncanny knack how to make himself cute as possible, somehow shrinking himself by adapting a very specific posture, typically first thing in the morning, making his shoulders go in, contracting every part of himself so that he appeared physically as small and so as defenceless as possible. The head would tilt then slightly, that was when he really wanted to work on Maher, he would tilt his head in this impossibly cute angle, the eyes then would look appealingly at him so that the invisible bubble-like memes above his head would float up.

    “I need you.”

    And Maher would just look on, indeed as he always seemed to, helplessly with some amazement at the eternal ingenuity and downright cleverness of the creature. Only that very year, animals had been granted sentient status in a government bill, in the UK. Maher had greeted the news with incredulity. After two thousand years and counting, finally, they were now recognised legally as being thinking creatures! Christ, Maher, could not think of any human who met a Jack Russell’s level of conniving and sheer trickery. Personally, such attributes he found rather admirable.

    “Okay, Dave, I’m with you man!” he addressed the dog.

    All too often, Maher observed, Dave was the instigator of communication. Non-verbal, of course. Dave was only prone to bark on two occasions. Firstly, when someone approached the front door, typically in the form of a courier or the postman and secondly, when they were down on the beach and Dave wanted Maher to play fetch, typically with a common stone that Maher would throw for him along the beach.

    Maher sat in a face-off with Dave for a further few moments before Maher eventually capitulated and got up off the bed.

    In the kitchen, Maher approached the coffee machine. He had ordered it from Italy directly from the manufacturer. Oh, it was nothing fancy. It was more like something from the nineties, Maher’s favourite decade. In other words, it was still quite mechanical, rather than electronic. Maher didn’t trust technology, at the best of times. He was of that generation that was somehow in between both worlds. Not quite wholly 20th century, not quite wholly 21st century. Born on the cusp, as it were. And, fundamentally so.

    He ground the coffee which he retrieved from the big golden foiled packet which he also ordered online. It came from Naples. The Neapolitans were great blenders, and particularly of coffee. Maher had once visited the city with Claudia when they were still in their honeymoon period. Oh yes, the days of magic they still remained in the great storehouse of the mind. Golden memories reflected back to him now in the reflection of the light on the coffee packet, such were the unholy correspondences. There was never any escape from memory. It was Proustian, that equation.

    After grinding the beans, he filled the cartridge with five spoons of the precious powder, before screwing it in place. He prayed that the filter was clean before pressing the start button. Miraculously, it sprung to life and poured, literally, into life. When the espresso cup was three quarter’s full, he flicked the switch and admired the colour of the coffee against the white quartz of the counter top. It was a thing of beauty, he told himself. Then, he filled a mug with soya milk and placed it in the microwave heating it for 75 seconds. It was the same beautiful ritual every single day. Finally, when the latte was ready, Maher versed the content of the espresso cup into the mug of warm soya-milk. It turned a beautiful tan. The first sip was always delicious. This is what he needed. Such continuity. Every single morning. It was, after all, the only thing he could be certain of each and every day. This, along with the incredibly rich taste of the coffee in the warmed milk, was what made his morning ritual so particularly special. Maher stood in the kitchenette staring down at Dave. Mornings never got any better, he thought.

    Once Maher had taken Dave outside the front door, the usually circus started. Every time it was the same. Dave, the minute the collar was placed around his neck, would start barking and jumping about. I had forgotten, there was indeed a third criteria for Dave when it came to barking. This was inevitable, the barking. Also, the omission. Maher, considering himself to be a prisoner himself, in the most global existential terms, he had nothing but sympathy for Dave’s predicament, and what is more, rather than get frustrated by Dave’s constant frustration and ultimately his persistent rebellion, Maher openly approved of it. It only cemented, at least for Maher, their already precious bond.

    “Good man Dave, that’s it!” Maher would encourage him.

    “Don’t take any shit, from any of them!”

    It was almost as if by addressing the dog thus, Maher was in fact talking to his alter-ego.

    Up in the castle grounds, Dave, typically, was in his element. Maher had taken him across the cove as the tide had been out and then they had walked across the sandy expanse of coastline, which was usually completely devoid of any human activity. Maher found it was a real tonic as it helped to clear away all of the white noise that still lay combusting in the furnace that was still his mind; all the accumulated stress of the commute, the apparently unending tension which earning a monthly paycheck necessitated, life being reduced as it was to a strict timetable and series of schedules involving train times, scheduled appointments with customers or clients and all of the countless minutiae that made up a working day X 5.

    So, in this way, just watching his dog run about the castle grounds without so much a care in the world somehow seemed to ease Maher’s peace of mind. It was almost as if the dog’s delight was a symbol or sign of Maher’s own peace and contentment so that he began to see Dave almost as an extension of him, in some way.

    Typically, Maher would then take Dave through the small wood which ran alongside the edge of the cliff looking down onto the beach below, although you couldn’t see the cliff’s edge from the paths as they were too far inland, approximately 25 meters or yards away from the edge and whose visibility was also blocked by so many trees and plants and other forms of vegetation.

    Maher loved to walk under the great boughs of the trees and while Dave typically would scamper about the wood, going in and out between the trees just enjoying the general feeling of freedom of movement without having the leash attached to him, Maher would, at the same time, stare up at the sky directly above his head and marvel at the colours that would confront him. The deep azure of the sky contrasted sharply by the verdant colours of the leaf in spring and summer say, although now it was midway through Autumn and there was a slight chill in the air as if someone had switched on the fridge.

    There was a certain section of the wood where the path joined two others and some beautiful old trees formed a kind of island in the center of the junction forming a clearing, effectively, where the sunlight would stream in, particularly during the summer months, but even in the Autumn too like right now. Maher stood there as if appraising the phenomenon of the light pouring into the clearing almost as if in liquified form. It was a phenomenon that he really enjoyed as it made him think of Heidegger who likened these kinds of clearings, for he too was a great woodsman, or Lichtung, to the spaces in the mind where thought could occur in illumination…

    Maher thought it was an extremely poetic analogy or idiom and he often thought of the German thinker when he passed this clearing in the wood. Thinking, in general, is one of the reasons why Maher would come up here as he found the great expanse of space and time, the unlimited acreage of the demesne allied to the timeless nature of the walk, in that he was, for once in the week, not bound to some schedule be it train or academic (Maher was a Lecturer in a third level institute in the city), brought a truly metaphysical dimension, in the proper meaning of the term that is, in other words when spatial and temporal notions collided in a rather fortuitous manner, so actual thought, as opposed to mere reaction, could actually take place.

    Indeed, Maher often found himself engaging in discourses with Dave his dog, in other words, while he was up walking in the local castle grounds, which most of the time were devoid of people, Maher found that it helped him to actually give physical embodiment to his thoughts in the form of his own voice using Dave the dog as a receptacle. It was the old Socratic method of uttering what one thought, (or was it Platonic?) and by doing so one could actually physically embody one’s thoughts in one’s voice so that one could clearly see them better, as opposed to just leaving them unvoiced in the cocoon then of one’s mind.

    “The current situation, it seems to me,” Maher began, throwing cursory looks around him there in the wood to make sure once again that he was in fact alone and seeing that he was he felt further emboldened so that he could continue his discourse proper.

    “Concerning the sexes, that is. It would appear to be really quite clear that there is a profound discord in the nature of popular discussion today between the sexes, that is to say between men and women. Why is this? Well, first of all, let’s try to clarify further what it is exactly we mean by this statement. So, when I say that there seems to be a rupture in communication between men and women I really want to further specify between heterosexual men and heterosexual women as public discourse between the two seems to have become completely splintered or fragmented into the overall discussion of identity politics which seems to be interminable now and which is really strange as both heterosexual couples would appear to be completely excluded in current popular debates, having been taken over by fifth wave feminists now and queer ideologues.”

    Maher laughed aloud at this pronouncement as he imagined the startled sighs of dismay if he had actually dared to utter such a statement on an unsuspecting public in a public forum, it would go off above their heads rather like an invisible bomb. This was good, he imagined himself now preparing to support his thesis before them, standing behind the rostrum. Dave his dog, meanwhile, ran on through the vast expanse of fields embracing, without question, the unlimited nature and scope of physical freedom.

    “I mean, take poetry, for example. In the current context, here in the Republic of Ireland today, you have an almost ludicrous situation where heterosexual men have almost been banished from the public spectrum of debate and in many public readings because of the extremely predominant nature of identity politics which indeed has completely taken over the realm of all public discourse and particularly in the arts, poetry, always being the poorest medium, being the place where the damage has been almost terminal. What are the reasons for this? Well, without a doubt, poetry was always the preserve of white male middleclass privilege in this country, especially since the origins of the state right up to the 1980’s and nineties. You only have to look at an anthology of Irish poetry from this time, take John Montague’s Faber Book of Irish Verse, for example first published in 1974 and you can see that the representation of Irish men to Irish women is 52 white male Irish poets, and generally hetero, to 2 Irish female poets covering the period from W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) to Montague, which is a truly shocking figure, I grant you. The two Irish women poets represented in the book were Evan Boland and Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin. That ratio is worth repeating so as in order to better take it in.

    52 / 2

    That’s covering a period of say, 100 years.”

    Maher let some time pace, as he walked with his dog, in order to let the content of the figures sink in. This was the country that he had grown up in, after all. If this wasn’t a sign of patriarchal orthodoxy, he didn’t know what else to call it. And it certainly existed, until the sudden war of feminism, which started in the eighties, and then the other voices entered in the nineties. First Gay, Trans, and then Lesbian. Maher remembered it all well and clearly growing up in Cork and the arrival of the first gay bars and vegetarian coops. They were the original pioneers in the new quest for cultural and personal identity.

    Maher stopped to take in the view of the Irish Sea before him, the vast expanse of mercury tinted liquid shimmered before him in the breeze.

    Those were such very different times, he thought. The shoe now was very much on the other foot. Maher was representative of the white middleclass heterosexual poet personified and completely sidelined to such an extent that he couldn’t even get a book published in the country, so under-represented was the nature and style of his work. The situation was actually bordering on the ludicrous. He remembered only just a few weeks previous sitting in a public park where the Arts Council had installed a screen with a number of black and coloured poets reading their work, all women of course with a token gay or other ‘under-represented minority’, that was the preferred terminology, wasn’t it? And this was all happening as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests that had recently happened in the USA and also in the UK. Here was the thing, the percentage of black Irish nationals in the country was hardly similar to the percentage per head in the populations of both the UK and the USA. But that point, extremely relevant you would think in the context, did not seem to occur to the blessed powers that were. No, they were just conforming to the international zeitgeist of identity politics, as opposed to actually considering the literary value of the work. Maher had watched the lectures and talks of Harold Bloom dating from as far back as the nineties when he had seen the whole catastrophe of identity politics taking over. And, he had been right. Look at the situation today!

    Maher just laughed and continued his walk with an even greater vigor. He wanted to go to the walled garden where the flowers were, they were his quarry. He wanted to savour the aroma of a carnation, whatever type of flower was currently on display, Maher wasn’t discriminating, flowers after all were flowers. Though some, it is true, had a greater, or better, aroma than others, it was fair to say.

    Upon entering the enclosure, Maher kept a firm hold of Dave as he seemed to grow even wilder within the enclosed formal garden tethered to the leash once again.

    From the corner of his eye, Maher saw the first flourish of orange roses. These were the L’oreal Trophy which were being buffeted by the breeze. Maher could barely contain himself any longer, he approached the first big carnation, the superlative as it were, which could be clearly distinguished by its vibrant colour. Dave seemed to become even more agitated as he approached the flower. Les Fleurs du Mal. Its many-formed leaf burst in a dazzling display of rich and light orange hues depending on the intensity of the sunlight and the degree of strength of the individual pigment of the leaf. Maher stooped down placing his nostrils firmly yet gently over the flower. The aroma or perfume emitting from the flower penetrated in an unmistakable scent of vanilla with hints of tea. Yet, Maher only thought of her cunt, and how he missed it so!

     

  • Parallel Weekend

    I hadn’t heard from you since Wednesday, the morning before you flew to Copenhagen. You’d messaged me while I was at work “Are you free at all, can I give you a quick ring?” I was the only one in the office and Jen, my manager was in a meeting. “Yeah, go ahead.” You proceeded to tell me your fears about whether you would make your connecting flight from Stansted to Bordeaux. “I’ve left it very fine and I’ll be checking in a bag.” I’d talked it through with you and reasoned that since your flight from Denmark was so early in the morning it was unlikely to be delayed, plus you had four hours to play with in Stansted. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be fine.” You’d started to list some of the things you still needed to do before heading off, and ended the call.

    Afterwards you sent me a photo of yourself in your suit with the new shirt you’d bought, a white floral number. “What d’ya think?” In the fitted suit you looked like someone else- older, more serious. The long, toned body, normally swaddled in a woolly jumper and loose jeans, was picked out. “You look UNREAL.” The last thing you’d said was, “Thanks”.

    Now I was walking into town on Friday night, for pints in Neary’s, then techno in Tengu. Neary’s was a pub off Grafton Street I’d never been in until a week before, but was now promoting as a summer meeting spot, mainly down to the fact it had a few tables outside that got sun until late. It was still warm, a gorgeous evening coming to its end, and as I walked down Fenian Street I could see the sun, fat and orange, half hidden by the dental hospital, the sky around it stained hot pink. My outfit was a bit of a departure.

    Instead of a soft, flowing shirt tucked into jeans, I had on a tight, short skirt and boots, plus a shiny black top I’d bought that day. I’d gotten my hair cut earlier in the week and I had mascara on. I looked hot and I felt excited to be heading towards town, my friends and dancing. It’s partly to pass some of the ten minutes I had left before I reached Neary’s that I started recording you a voice note. But I also wanted to share my jubilant mood with you.

    I told you about the sunset, the warmth, though not my outfit or the details of where I was going, and said that I hoped you were having an amazing time with your friends and that you were going to totally nail playing fiddle at the wedding.

    Two drinks in at Neary’s, sitting outside with Conor, Rachel and Nessa, I took out my phone to take a photo of a snail we had collectively noticed climbing up the side of a plant on the windowsill. It moved with impressive speed. You had texted me back “Thanks! I having a great time! I love Copenhagen”. There was no need to reply, the “I having” told me you were already fairly on it, so I put my phone away.

    A few hours and several dabs from a bag later, I went upstairs to the bathroom in Tengu. It was hot in the crowd of bodies and I felt sticky but good. We’d been dancing and chatting shite to strangers since midnight. Now, checking my phone while I peed, I saw it was 2.37 and it seemed time to update you.  As fun as the downstairs antics were, I wished you were there. To get to know my friends better and to see me around them, in my element. We mostly spent time with your group where I was an outsider trying to establish myself. “Sounds class, in Tengu. It’s turned into a very gurny evening.”.

    I came out of the bathroom, and as I passed him a guy standing near the top of the stairs called to me, “You look like Amelie Lens”. I stopped beside him. He was cute; tanned with dark hair that fell into his brown eyes. “I don’t know who that is.”

    “She’s a DJ. Look.” He took out his phone and googled her, then held the screen towards me so I could see the photos coming up on screen. A very thin woman, with dark hair and eyes and sharp cheekbones. “Oh, I don’t look like her. I mean she’s very pretty, but I’m nothing like her.”

    “You are,” he said, meeting my blue eyes. “You’re very pretty”.

    “Thanks”, I said stepping back from him. As I did, he said, “My friends and I are going to an after party near Stephen’s Green now, do you want to come?” I stopped again. I hadn’t planned on a big night. I’d been half thinking of catching a train home to see my parents the following day. I hadn’t been near them since the last bank holiday. My friends didn’t know the offer had been made, and I could have just walked away. Of the four of us, I was probably the least likely to take it up. But a voice in my head said, “Go! You’re always letting what you have to do tomorrow decide what you do right now.”

    While I considered the idea, he showed me his phone again, a video on screen this time, panning across a crowd full of people dancing in a dim room, coloured lights falling across them to the rhythm of the techno track I could just about hear, up to a DJ booth I couldn’t see anyone behind. “Looks cool. I’m out with friends, can they come?”

    “Sure.”

    “OK, I’ll go and see if they’re up for it”.

    He took my number, only then did we exchange names, his was Al. “I’ll text you when we’re leaving.” Seconds later I got a message, “Hi Amelie 😊”. I went back downstairs and found the others outside in the smoking area, pupils huge. “I just met this lad outside the toilets who knows about an after session. Would you guys be up for going?”

    A few minutes later we were outside, introducing ourselves to Al and his friends. They were a mix of ages, mostly younger than us, and from abroad, Turkey, South Africa, Spain. After weighing up whether to hail taxis, we started to walk. On the way, we called into the 24-hour Centra on Dame Street to get cash for the door and whatever we wanted to buy inside.

    I fell into step beside Jorge, from Alicante, got talking to him and as we made our way up George’s Street, a couple of younger guys, sensing we were going somewhere besides home as the closing bars around us emptied their contents onto the streets, asked us where we were headed and if we knew of anything open. “Ah come with us,” Rachel said without hesitation.

    We picked up a couple more people this way as we passed the junction with Kevin Street. It felt nice, a troupe of pied pipers drawing in strays just by walking a little faster than those around us. Eventually Jorge noticed we’d lost Al, the only one who knew where we were going and stopped to call him.

    He’d gone ahead to talk to the guy he knew on the door and sent Jorge directions that brought us down a side street to a row of Georgian houses. Al was waiting on the curb and pointed to a house a few doors down. On the bouncer’s orders, only two or three of us could go in at a time. Conor and I went first. I paid his entry as he’d been handing me drugs all evening. The man in a red woolly jumper who took our cash pointed us towards a staircase and once Rachel and Nessa had paid in, we went down to the basement.

    The floor was covered in grime but I didn’t realise until I was taking my boots off several hours later. Downstairs was busy, the scene similar to the video Al had shown me. There was a five deep queue at the bar, which was at the far side of the room, past a crowd dancing in looped movements to the pulsing tune. Rachel and I left Conor and Nessa to queue for drinks, not before we each took another dab from Conor’s bag, and nudged our way into the crowd. We found Al and some of his friends who had come in after us, and he made his way around the circle to me. Leaning in, he asked, “Do you want some coke?”.

    “I’m ok,” I said. I didn’t want the shrillness of coke confusing the soft high I was getting from the MDMA. I also didn’t want to take anything from him while he was still under the impression that I was single.

    “Ok. Well do you want to come upstairs with me for a cigarette?”

    “No thanks.” He cocked his head, frowning and I looked into his eyes. “I should be clear. I have a boyfriend”.

    “Ahhhh”, he shook his head then but smiled. Like for a moment me rejecting him couldn’t have made sense but now there was a reason he could metabolise. “Ah, ok. I understand. “He left then, for a bump or a smoke or both and the rest of us kept dancing. There was a tall guy, dancing near us, pretty out of it but doing nobody any harm. He leaned in towards Rachel and I. “Is this not class?”

    “Yeah, it’s pretty good”, we returned. Kept dancing. A few minutes passed and I felt someone very close behind me, then hands placed on my shoulders. I shifted forward. Again, this time hands around my waist. I reminded myself how high he was and turned my head to him as I stepped forward, “Could you please not do that?” But Jorge and the others had already seen. The group had shifted away from the guy while Jorge came and planted himself between us, so I could move in the same direction, into the middle of the circle.

    He turned to me. “Are you ok?”

    “Yeah, no worries, thanks.”

    We got back to dancing and after a while Jorge said in my ear, “You’re a good dancer, I’ll give you that.”

    I smiled. “Thanks. The trick is to not think about it or give a fuck.”

    “Ah so you just dance like no-one is watching?” I laughed at that.

    “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

    So, he hadn’t heard me tell Al. “I have a boyfriend”.

    “Oh, are we doing that?”

    He thought it was a line. I didn’t mind you not being there anymore. I shouldn’t have to prove your existence to this guy. I looked around, Rachel wasn’t on the dancefloor and suddenly I felt like getting off too.

    I went in search of her and Nessa. I found them in the toilet, which was visible from the corridor as there was a massive hole in the door where there should have been a pane of glass. Nessa and Rachel were blocking the space so a woman with long wavy hair could pee in privacy. When I came in, they did the same for me and from outside, two more women asked if they could come in. While they took turns peeing and Nessa and I once again covered the open space in the door, we got chatting.

    Everyone was gurning a little and we were all extra interested in one another.  The smaller of the two girls, Charlie, said she felt a good energy in here and asked us our star signs. When we told her: Cancer, Pisces and Sagittarius, she started to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

    “I’m a Taurus rising”, I added. Not knowing what that meant really, but thinking it might be relevant. The four of us moved into the hallway. We stayed there, for what felt like hours, talking about how we’d ended up at the rave, our jobs, what Dublin used to be like and what was going to happen if rents didn’t somehow magically drop.

    “Are ye single girls?” Charlie asked. “I’m not”, I said.

    “Oh”, Charlie turned towards me, “What’s their star sign?”.

    “Scorpio.”

    You’d told me that on our first date, and when I asked you what Scorpios’ deal was, you said, “Well, raw sexual power”. That was a bold move. I don’t remember anything else you told me about Scorpios after that. But it made me curious, so I’d read up on our compatibility.

    Apparently, Scorpio and Cancer make a seriously good sexual pairing. And that’s what I had found so far. A year in, and I was still just as impatient to be naked with you whenever we met up, as I had been that first night. “Oh, a Scorpio? Really?”.

    “Yeah. He’s a Scorpio. He’s great”.

    “I don’t know,” she said, “I just find Scorpios can be really temperamental, you know? Plus, Scorpios, when they turn on you, It’s brutal.”

    I felt like I had read this exact description of Scorpios in Allure, or some other online magazine, whenever I was scrolling to see if you and I were a good match after that first meet up and decided she was repeating from the same article, rather than speaking from experience.

    “Aw I don’t know; I have two Scorpios in my life and they’re both really sensitive and kind and creative”.

    “That’s fair enough,” she said. “They can be.”

    At that moment she caught sight of a guy with a beard who seemed to have been looking for her. “Sorry Matt, I got talking to these girls in the bathroom.” She introduced us, and I suddenly felt like this was the time to go dancing again, so I caught Nessa’s eye and tilted my head towards the main room.

    “Will we get back in amongst it?”

    Inside we found Conor and Rachel dancing with some of our strays from earlier, the cute young Australians who’d first approached us.

    “Do you want half a yoke?” Conor asked me. I thought for a second. I hadn’t taken a pill in a while…but it was hard to pass up the chance. He’d already bitten into it and was holding the remainder, pink and tiny, towards me. It’s only half. I thought. It mightn’t even do anything after everything else.

    I took it and swallowed and he passed me his drink to wash it down. About ten minutes afterwards, I took my phone out and seeing the time, 6:38, I suddenly just wanted to be home. Looking around the room I felt like all the good juice had been squeezed from the night already. Nothing new was about to happen. I ordered a taxi and told the others I was heading on.

    Getting out of the taxi, I realised I was only coming up from the little bit of yoke. I’d already been acting strange in the car, rubbing my hands up and down my tights, looking out the window as if I’d never seen any of the streets we went down before. I’d caught the taxi driver’s eyes in the mirror and he didn’t look too delighted to have this space cadet as a passenger.

    The rational part of my brain panicked. Why had I left the others? I was just alone and high now. But that concern couldn’t override the feeling of my chest floating upwards and the desire to spread my hands out and touch things with my fingertips. I half ran, half skipped to the door of our building and up the stairs to the flat. It was empty.

    Francesca and Darragh were spending the weekend with Darragh’s parents in Galway. My bedroom door was open, and sunlight was pouring in onto my bed. I walked past to the living room and sat on the couch. I could feel my mouth contorting and twitching, it had been a long time since I’d taken anything that made me gurn that much.

    I took out my phone and laughed at my face in the camera. I took five or six pictures as my lips and cheeks moved involuntarily and the photos made me laugh even more. I was having a good time. I hooked my phone up to the speaker in the living room and put on a playlist I made in January when you were being kind of a dick.

    “Fucking catch”, It’s called. I took my boots off and started to dance, sliding around in my tights on the wooden floor, the curtains open. I thought about the start of the night, walking into town in the still warm summer sun and the turns it had taken since.

    A while later, I’m not sure how long, I got into bed and tried to sleep. Flat on my back, on my side. Duvet on and then kicked off. It wasn’t coming. Even with the curtains shut it was bright enough to read in my room. Around 8.30, I started to feel low. I wished you were there again. This is exactly the kind of moment when I’d been single and regularly recovering from raves that I had wished to be in a couple. Now I was, and you weren’t even there.

    “What is the actual point?” I asked myself. “No, you’re being unfair, It’s not his fault he happens to be away this morning”. I knew it would be hours before I could hang out with anyone and being by myself was making it impossible to ignore how slowly time was moving. I text you “Hey. Feeling a bit ropey, could you give me a call if you’re free”.

    You wrote back, “We’re all busy here. Rushing to get suited and booted and head out for the wedding”.

    “Yeah, I figured it might not be a good time. Have fun. Just feeling a bit edgy/shook here cos I haven’t slept.”

    I texted a few people to see were they about today. The problem with deciding not to go and see my parents was that now I had an empty weekend ahead. Mark had a friend visiting, and he had asked me to go out to Howth to walk the cliff path with them, but I wasn’t feeling up for that. Though maybe in a while I’d change my mind.

    Since the sleep ship had clearly sailed, I decided to get up and shower. It was hot in the room, even with the curtains closed, and I felt like some direct sunlight might do something for my serotonin. The normal joy of morning, waking up hungry and pottering around making breakfast, was absent along with my appetite. I did force down some heavily buttered toast so I could take a couple of Ibuprofen. Again, as you know, on an ordinary day I’d be stopping mid-bite to exclaim how great toast is, but this was purely functional eating.

    “Even food don’t taste that good,” I sang to myself, smiling in spite of the dread. When I’d cleared the dishes away, I got into the shower and let the water run down my head. I’d only washed my hair the day before, but I felt like it was holding onto all of the sweat from the past twelve hours.

    When I was dressed, I put my wallet and a bottle of factor 30 in my little backpack, and headed outside. I didn’t know where I was going to end up, but headphones on, I played the John Prine song you’d shared with me a few weeks before, “That’s the Way That the World Goes Round” and turned on the song radio feature so that Spotify would follow it up with music of a similar mood. Upbeat acceptance of life’s lows as well as highs was what I needed to hear.

    It was still only coming up to 11am, and nothing was giving me joy. It was going to be hard to pass this day. By the time the next track on the list had started to play, I was turning onto that little path by the Dodder near Lansdowne Road. I didn’t know it, but I recognised the voices, and then heard the chorus “How lucky can one man get”, followed by this gorgeous instrumental. And somehow, I remembered that I am lucky. I wasn’t alone. Ok, so nobody was free to immediately come and hang out with me early on a Saturday morning. But I had so many friends I was able to ask. I had someone I loved.

    I was alone now, but that only felt terrifying because I’d had too much fun the night before, and I would feel like myself again soon. Then another song I’d never heard before, The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright came on, and the opening bars were just so buoyant and beautiful I forgot I was in a chemical hoop for a couple of minutes. I wished the other people strolling along the boardwalk could hear it.

    At this point, I hooked around to the left and took Newbridge Avenue to head toward Sandymount, thinking I’d walk out to the coast, but then I got a message from Nessa. “Are you awake? I’m in bits. Rachel’s asleep on the couch. Don’t be on your own. Come over.” I was saved.

    I walked back to mine to grab my bike, and listened to the Swimming Song on repeat all the way to Nessa’s flat in Terenure, bouncing out of the saddle to every loud strum of the banjo. People in the horrors should be prescribed Loudon Wainwright and John Prine I thought.

    I got to the estate where Nessa lives with Helen. You’ve never been there but their place is great. It’s a duplex flat and they have a little yard outside that they’ve put a fire pit in, which was great last summer when we were all supposed to be meeting up outside. I went to a lot of parties in that garden while you were away.

    As soon as I saw Nessa, (and Rachel, who was now awake and sitting up on the couch telling us about some guy she’d managed to shift, changed her mind about and escaped without any of us even noticing the night before,) I started to feel better. Appetites now returning, we walked to the deli up the road to get rolls, and then got straight back into the soothing dim of Nessa’s living room where we watched an episode of Peep Show, before deciding it was actually too bleak for our fragile mental state and switching to the American Office.

    Hours later, while we sat in comfortable silence eating takeaway, I said to Nessa “You know, if you’re with someone and you love them, but you don’t think It’s something that can last… Like maybe it’s something that has two or three years in it, but you just don’t think it can go the distance. Is it ok to stay in it and see it out to its natural end? Or is that stupid, like should you cut your losses and finish it?”

    Nessa considered this, probably wondering where this slightly pleading question had come from. “There’s just no way of knowing”, she said.

    I cycled back from Nessa’s, listening to the Swimming Song again. During the day, Aoife had written back to one of those desperate texts for company I’d sent out, to say she wasn’t about today but that she’d love to go for a swim tomorrow. I met her early the next day and we spent the morning chatting. First in the water, after jumping in at the Forty Foot. Then over coffee in Sandycove.

    On the way home, I bought groceries. Back at the flat, I cleaned the bathroom and started on a pie for dinner. Felt better, but still uneasy that I hadn’t heard from you. I’d told Nessa the night before, I didn’t expect to until Monday, when you’d be traveling all day and have some free time. I knew you were with all your friends and wouldn’t be focused on your phone. You aren’t someone who has it out to take pictures. All your friends were there. Besides me, who would you be texting? But you did have me to text. And I’d told you I wasn’t feeling great.

    I woke up on Monday to a message from you. Sent at 6:40. “Just about to head to the airport. Phone is gonna die soon. Hope you’ve had a good weekend. I’d love to talk to ya soon.”

    Great, that was all I needed to know. We would talk soon. Maybe once you were through security and could charge your phone. Or when you landed in London. I texted back that I was heading into work, but that things were quiet. So, you could give me a shout when you had battery.

    I got to the office before 8am and while my laptop was loading, I went out to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Sometimes I wait to do that at work if I need to get out of the house quickly. Today had been like that. I’d been rushing to make it in early, so that I could leave on time for a gym class.

    At the sink, as I gently scrubbed my molars, my gaze unfocused, I had this sudden fear there was something wrong in your message. Why did you want to talk to me? Had something happened at the wedding? I imagined you running into someone there, a person you hadn’t seen in years. An old friend, someone’s sister, or even someone you had hooked up with before we got together and something happening. You were calling to tell me that you’d realised you wanted to be with them, whoever they were, because they were already part of your group of friends and it made more sense. I wouldn’t be able to convince you otherwise.

    I shut my eyes and shook my head. You are being ridiculous. He said he’d love to talk to you. That isn’t exactly suggesting a heavy chat.

    Around quarter to ten, you called. You asked me how my weekend was and I chattered happily about Friday night, the come down, being rescued by Nessa and Rachel. I told you about the Swimming Song. How it had saved me while I walked along the Dodder and helped me enjoy the sun and know I was going to be ok. “I think It’s now my favourite song.”

    “Oh, send it to me,” you said, “I need something like that to cheer me up right now. Feeling very shook.”

    “Ah, ok. How was the wedding?”

    “The wedding was good, yeah. Very Danish. Irish people losing the run of themselves.” Then a pause. “Alice…This is really hard to say.”

    I knew then. You weren’t going to break up with me from departures in Stansted, so it had to be. “What is it?… What happened?” Silence. “Just tell me.”, I said, my voice hard.

    “I kissed someone else at the wedding. An old friend.”

    Staring at the wall opposite the windowsill, I felt like I should react in some way. Cry. But I didn’t feel sad or even angry then. Rather, it was like I’d gone through a door that had disappeared behind me, and now I was stuck in this horrible place I didn’t want to be in. Still on the phone to you.

    “How could you do that to me?” I asked but didn’t actually want to know. There was no answer you could have that would give me any way back to where I’d been before. “I don’t know, Alice I’m sorry I was so drunk, I…”

    “Like, at the wedding? In front of people? In front of your friends?” For some reason, that aspect was the part to bother me. I wasn’t thinking about you flirting with someone else or leaning in towards them. Yet. You had humiliated me in front of those people I’d spent months making an effort with, getting to know. “Yeah. Well yeah, they saw us kiss. It was…”

    “Wait. They saw you kiss? What else happened? Did you sleep with her?”

    Another few seconds where you said nothing and then. “Yes. Alice, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe…”

    I hung up. Sank down until I was sitting on the carpeted floor of the office and stared forward. In my hand, my phone started to buzz again, your name lighting up on the screen. I ignored it and went to Spotify. Put on the Swimming Song. And for some reason what I was thinking as it started to play, is that I am someone who tells people my story too easily. I’ll confide in almost anyone if they want to know. But you used to call me mysterious. There are so many things about me you don’t know. That I never told you. Because you never asked.

  • Three Parables / Short Tales

    ABOUT A GIRL AND HER DATE OF BIRTH

    Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was so used to being accompanied by her date of birth, that she couldn’t imagine herself separated from it. For seven years following her first birthday, the girl and her date of birth were always seen holding hands, and people who knew the girl well were surprised when on her eighth birthday, they saw the girl walking alone, although strictly speaking, she was not alone, as her date of birth ran just a little behind her. Everyone got so used to seeing the girl’s date of birth running just a little behind her, that when the girl turned 15, they were surprised yet again to see her date of birth lagging behind, not just two steps away as it did during the last seven years but almost fifteen steps away from the girl. The number of steps between the girl and her date of birth grew with each birthday, and when the girl turned twenty-five, her date of birth was lagging twenty-two or twenty-five steps away, no one knew for sure how many, as there was no way to measure the number of steps. When the girl, by now no longer a girl but a woman of course, was celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday, her date of birth was so far behind her that it was no more than a small dark silhouette on the horizon, running, running, trying to catch up with the girl, that is, the woman, and of course, its efforts were in vain, as there was no way for the date of birth to catch up. Ten years later, when the woman was celebrating her thirty-ninth birthday in the new millennium, her date of birth tumbled back into the 20th century where it belonged and, no matter how hard the woman tried to pull it back into the 21st century so the two of them would stay together, she could not see her date of birth in the darkness of the past millennium. From then on, the separation grew harder for both of them, the woman and the woman’s date of birth. When the woman turned fifty, she walked to the Edge of the World, which was nothing but a precipice that divided the third millennium from the past, and she called out to her date of birth, hoping to hear its voice, even if she could no longer see it, but her date of birth did not respond. The woman spent the next ten years weaving an unusually strong rope, and when the rope was finally long enough as well as strong enough, the woman once again came to the so-called Edge of the World. She dropped her rope into the darkness and waited. Finally, someone tugged on the rope at the other end, ever so slightly, and although the tug was ever so weak, the woman knew it was her date of birth tugging, for who else would care to catch the other end of her rope? The woman spent the next twenty years standing at the Edge of the World, trying to pull her date of birth out of the abyss of the past century, but as every passing year her date of birth fell deeper and deeper into the past, the woman’s task looked quite hopeless, even to the woman herself, who just couldn’t quit and she stood there year after year and pulled and pulled, until her hands were so sore that she couldn’t hold the rope anymore, and when she gave up and died at the age of eighty-three, she was finally reunited with her date of birth.

    ABOUT THE APACHE AND A POET

    A long time ago, when the Spanish first encountered the Apache, whom they called Querechos, the Apache managed to capture five Spaniards, and they did to four of them what they always did to their enemies, and when they were about to do the same to the fifth man, their medicine man warned the Apache chief that the man they were about to execute was what the Spaniards called “poet”, which was similar to what a “medicine man” was to the Apache. It was decided that the life of the “poet” would be spared if he composed a “poem” every day, so the Apache medicine man could use it as a spell in his healing ceremony, and of course the Spaniard complied, under fear of death, and produced a poem per day, for many days, and after six months of this, the chief of the Apache pardoned him and changed the sentence from death by lancing and scalping to suicide. Thus, as soon as the poet ran out of poems, he would have to kill himself. Under this sentence, the poet went on and on writing poems every day, until he outlived all the Apache who had been present at his sentencing, and even though no one any longer remembered the sentence of suicide, he continued composing a short poem daily, because he knew that he would kill himself if he stopped composing poems. Come to think of it, this isn’t very different from the way some of us write poems today, is it?

    ABOUT INDIFFERENCE TO FAME

    One poet was very concerned about his future immortality, therefore he did everything possible to ensure that his works would remain for centuries. We will not waste time recounting unnecessary details of the steps he took to achieve his goal. We can only say that when that which will happen to all of us, happened to him, his soul instantly forgot about its existence in his body and began to fly around the world. In its seemingly aimless flying around the world, his soul sometimes flew over the city in which the poet had lived, but it recognized none of the streets or houses, including the poet’s own house. The poet’s soul flew into a book fair where his books were being sold and advertised, but after circling first over his books beautifully laid out on counters, then over the magnificently illuminated advertisements of his books, it flew out the window, as if the image of its former self on book covers had nothing to do with it. Just as accidentally, it flew into the house where the poet’s wife and children were still living, and without recognizing them, flew out the open door. The soul, freed from the body, was deeply indifferent to the man’s dreams of the immortality of his name, which it had long forgotten.

    Feature Image Daniele Idini

  • Girl Without Mercy

    My father was a French lumberjack. That’s just a joke. People don’t always know I’m joking. Especially men. They laugh when I’m being serious, then nod or look blank when, well… guess I’m not too good at telling jokes. Now, I know how to act funny. On camera, I mean. In character. From the inside out. If that’s funny, then okay. Wish I could be funny in real life. Witty! I want to be thought witty, but most men look more like they’re waiting for me to get my tits out.

    There I go again, sorry. I’ll be good. Doris Day good. Promise we’ll stick to words you’re allowed to print. What was it you asked me?

    Right… Dad. My father could’ve been anyone, anybody in the whole wide world. When I found out Sylvie is French for of the forest, I figured Mom must’ve shacked up with a French guy, like maybe French Canadian, you know? Because she lived up in Washington State for a while. Before I was born.  She’s not from there. She’s kind of from everywhere. Or nowhere.  But since she did live there, I figured she got mixed up with some forest ranger. Or something. Something to do with trees. Et voila! Sylvie. That was a joke too, by the way. I’ll warn you about the jokes. Maybe, if you wouldn’t mind, you could laugh a little bit?  I mean if you want to. Et voila!

    Once a reporter, not a journalist like yourself, some sleazy newshound, snuck into the hospital to ask Mom who my father was. They say she said, with perfect serenity, that it was her left bedroom slipper. Those were nice soft slippers. Powder blue. I make sure she has nice things.

    Now where was I? Oh yeah… my dad. It’s a fact that all girls are attracted to their fathers, isn’t it? Where that leaves me, I don’t know. Wait, you wanted to ask me about Johnny.

    Johnny was… wow! Valiant. How come that word’s gone out of style? I’m not the only girl who likes valiant, am I? Like, someone who’d come to your rescue? He was no bedroom slipper, I’ll tell you. Had those old-fashioned English manners that make a girl swoon. Of course, the first time I saw him, Johnny was wearing a suit of armour. That was his role in the picture we made together. There he was. A knight in shining armour among the dress racks. I didn’t stand a chance.

    In the movie, I’m this mythical creature, like a fairy-elf, who meets the knight in a summer meadow. And she seduces him!  I did loads to prepare for the role.  Read everything I could find on elves before I had lunch with Hiram, the director. Over the shrimp cocktails, I explained to him how I was going to need special makeup, because elves have oversized eyes and small, pointed ears. I had made a couple sketches. He pushed those sketches right back across the table and gave me a look over his glasses.

    “Syl, Cookie,” Hiram said, “your adoring public are not paying their seventy cents to see you prancing around in a pair of pointy ears.  They’re paying to see Sylvie Davenport. America’s wet dream.” Seeing me droop down, arms crossed over my chest, he said, “It’s a compliment, Cookie.”

    So, they made me up to look the way I always look. Only with longer hair. I wore a sort of gypsy costume. Johnny had to string garlands of flowers in my hair. Around my neck, my waist. The warm summer meadow we were supposed to be in was really Sound Stage Four. Johnny’s breath smelled like sardines. And the garlands were plastic flowers with wire. They snagged my skin.

    But there’s this thing I do, once the camera is on. A place I go inside myself. Where the flowers are real. The sky is a true sky and everything is marvellous. So marvellous I almost can’t stand it. My eyes become like broken windows, with all the light and wind rushing through. People love me. I just have to look at you. You’ll love me. Like he did.

    Johnny followed me into my dressing room after. Pressed himself up against me. He said, “Sorry about the kippers.” No kidding, that’s what he said.

    I stared up into his blue eyes. His noble face. “That’s alright. I like sardines.” Which I don’t, but I didn’t want to break the spell. “Kippers aren’t sardines, they’re herrings,” he said softly. Then he kissed me. He, Johnny, kissed me, Syl. Which was different from the knight kissing the fairy. Mainly in that there was more tongue.

    That was the start. We were together for seven months. Oh, here, take one of mine. There’s an ashtray there, right by your elbow. You want a drink or anything? I make a mean martini. Sure? Have to butter you up, don’t I? Otherwise, you might write nasty things about me.  Aww, that’s sweet of you. You’re nice, too.

    When he spoke, his mouth hardly moved.  I used to kid him it was because he was trying not to spit out all those marbles. He said shag instead of fuck… of course that cracked me up. Johnny liked to quote Shakespeare…and the Greeks. Which was all Greek to me! Oh good, you got that one? See? I can be funny!

    He was a wonderful lover. Passionate. With lots of stamina for a guy his age. That first time, he crushed those stupid plastic flowers. It was heaven.

    “God, you’re amazing,” Johnny said to me once… in bed. “It’s like you have no bones.  Those breasts, that belly, the great big thighs – “

    “Hey!  My thighs aren’t fat!”

    “No, not fat, they’re perfect. All that soft flesh.  It’s like riding a cloud.” He took a drag off his cigarette, slipped it between my lips. I sucked in some smoke, while he twisted a handful of my hair around his knuckles. “All these golden locks…”

    “It’s not natural. The golden…”

    “Well, yes I noticed, but oh Sylvie.”  Eyes on the ceiling, he said, “You’re like America itself. Completely uncomplicated. Open. Welcoming. Saying, Come on in….”

    Okay, Johnny talked a lot of shit. Sorry. He talked a load of baloney, but his accent made it sound less silly.

    Was I in love? I’m always in love. All the time. I wake up, first person I see, I want to paint sunrises. Just for them. My heart comes cheap, you know. But Johnny, he was like an answer to a prayer I hadn’t even got round to praying yet. I felt safe with him. Until I didn’t.

    Know what was funny? He always wanted to go to Chasen’s. I had my own booth there. We went at least twice a week. Johnny didn’t even like American food. But he was always dying to go. So, I’d get all dolled up, and we’d go. The minute our car pulled up, bang! Photographers. Every time. You’ve seen the pictures. Me and Johnny, under the awning at Chasen’s. Me smiling. Showing a little leg. I could pose like that in my sleep. Johnny glaring at the cameras. Clutching my arm. That wasn’t play-acting, by the way. I’d have bruises the next day from him holding on so tight. He hated that whole scene. So, I could never understand why he wanted to go in the first place.

    Life Magazine sent a photographer to my house to take pictures of me in my kitchen. Me stirring a pot. Me staring into the oven. Me chopping carrots. You know the kind of thing.  About how I’m really an ordinary person. How I cook for my man like any normal girl does. Fact is, I am a pretty good cook. Betty, one of my foster moms, taught me. Betty was great to me, but her husband Jim, he…he paid a little too much attention to me. So, I had to leave. But I remember everything she taught me. Dan… the Life photographer… he was surprised I even knew how to turn on my oven. This is another thing: I’m not supposed to be witty, and I’m not supposed to know how to make a pot roast. I don’t know who made these rules. So, I said to Dan, “Actually, you’d be lucky if I made you dinner.”

    “I sure as heck would be,” he said with a grin. He had a sweet, Mickey Rooney sort of face, so he could get away with being flirty.

    “I mean it!” I tapped his arm. “I’m an excellent cook. I’d adore to have someone to make dinner for, but Johnny likes to go out. Well, you know.” Dan had snapped us outside Chasen’s so many times.

    “Poor little movie star,” he chuckled, tucking his camera back inside its case. “But you know, if you were my girl, I’d wanna show you off too.”

    “Oh, he hates all that stuff.  Posing for you guys drives Johnny crazy.”

    “Syl?  How do you think we all know to be there when you get outta your car?”

    My stomach sort of dropped. “Beats me.”

    “He tips us off. His assistant phones up every magazine, every newspaper. She tells us where you’re going. That’s how.”

    “But that doesn’t make any… If Johnny wants his picture taken, why does he get so mad?”

    “Maybe because he’s not the main attraction?  If you weren’t there, we wouldn’t bother.” Slinging his camera bag over a shoulder he says to me, “I’ll be going. Listen, Syl…  uh, Miss Davenport. Thanks a lot. We got some great shots today.”

    “Well, that’s down to you.”

    “Nah, it’s all you.” And Dan was out the door.

    In our movie, Johnny strips his armour off to lie in the grass with his head in my lap. This is the seduction bit. I feed him berries I’ve gathered myself that stain his lips. Bread with wild honey dribbling down, glistening on his knightly chin. My line is, “I love thee true.” I tried different ways of saying it, to make it sound more natural. In the end what worked best was to almost throw the line away. To say it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I love you; I was made to love you. She’s a fairy, and I think in her mind she has been sent to him. To love him. Help him. She has magic that makes plants grow, makes summer out of winter, and all she wants is to do the same for her knight. To bring back the summertime of his life.

    So, while he’s eating her food and feeling the sun on his skin… while all that’s going on, she sings to him. This little fairy song about love, the blue sky and tra-la-la. They were thinking they’d dub it, but I practiced a lot and, in the end, they used my voice. The song is a spell. As she sings, all the lines disappear from the knight’s face. His hair goes from grey to a warm brown that Gordon, the hairdresser, mixed just for Johnny. And then the knight gets all virile and sexy. It’s my favourite part of the picture. Not for the sexy bit, but the way she’s able to make him feel young again. Like his best self. Shouldn’t love be able to do that?

    The reviews were awful.

    I’ve gotten bad notices before, but these were really stink-a-roo. Thou Hast Made a Flop, is one headline that hurt. They weren’t gonna buy my talking all thee and thy. I feel like if someone could’ve coached me on that, I would’ve got the hang of it. Hiram always said there wasn’t time. Hey… At least they didn’t pan my singing!

    But poor Johnny. Nymph and Gnome in Garden Frolic was the tag line that stuck. Variety said he looked more like my father than a lover. That he should trade in his sword for a walking stick. That it’d take a team of fairies, weaving spells night and day, to make John Sampson Law leading man material again.

    Johnny said it didn’t matter. But it was right around this time he started bruising my arm outside Chasen’s. Then if the photos appeared with the caption, Nymph and Gnome, he’d break things. A glass ashtray. Souvenir plate from San Francisco. A framed photo of my mom. Once he punched a hole in the wall. Right there, by the patio door. Plaster dust drifted down like snow. And so all of a sudden, he started laughing. Worst sound I ever heard. The breaking and punching were easier to bear than that. That laugh.

    I’d hide. Well, not hide exactly. I’d go into the bedroom. Sit on the floor and smoke. I’ve sat on a lot of floors in a lot of bedrooms. Listening for the breaking to stop, or the car to drive away. Guess what I keep wishing for is that there might be a someone somewhere who will want to sit on the floor with me. Someone who can stand me when I’m scared, or crying, or smoking too many…no, wait. Don’t write that down. That’s not… I don’t mean to make too much of it. Everyone has their blue days, right?  Even here, in sunny Los Angeles. Sometimes I wish it’d rain so I could mix a pitcher of martinis and have a good cry. This weather is a lot to live up to.

    Still, we had our good days, Johnny and me. Had some laughs. Sometimes he’d use one of his funny expressions, like don’t get your knickers in a twist and I’d giggle. He’d beam like he won an Oscar. And I’d think, okay. I can do this.

    The last time we were out in public together was that premiere last Christmas. What was the name of that movie?  The Brave Men of… Something or Other. For publicity, the studio had invited some soldiers to watch the picture. The armistice thingy had happened that summer.  So, these were the first boys back home from Korea. They were under the marquee, in their uniforms, posing for photos when we got there. So fresh. So bright and alive. Cheeks like apples. You couldn’t look away from them. Then they saw me, and started chanting. “Syl! Syl! Syl!” Oh, they were boys! But boys with big men’s voices. Shouting my name as I walked right into the middle of them. It was like they each had their own separate engine running inside. The heat. The purr. And all talking at once. Flashbulbs popping all over the place.  I’m smiling. Touching one on the elbow. Another on the shoulder. Cradling one’s face like he was my son, another like my kid brother. “You glad the war is over? Glad to be back home?” Yes, they said, and it was lovely. So sweet, to see how happy they were. It was all so…vivid. I’ll never, ever forget it.

    The crowd started moving, what with everyone going into the theatre. Thinking Johnny had gone in ahead, I was surprised to see him still behind me. Still at the curb, where the car had dropped us off. Just standing there, on his own. Heading over to him, I saw something in his face.  He was white. Eyes blazing. I held out my hand but he wrinkled his nose at it. As if it was rotting meat on a stick. Then he leaned in and hissed into my ear, “Why don’t you just shag them all?” My face went hot. Like I’d been slapped. He smiled that vicious smile of his. Turned and walked away. I watched him go, hands jammed in his tuxedo jacket pockets.  Johnny walked right down the street. No one recognised him. No one noticed him at all.

    When I got home that night, he was here. Sitting here, in the living room. In the dark. Except for the Christmas tree lights blinking on and off, like they do. They’d blink on, and in this reddish light, I saw his face, and his knuckles gripping the arms of his chair. Then they’d blink off and I couldn’t see him at all. I remember thinking it seemed like the scene of an accident. You know, when you pass one on the road? Squad cars, an ambulance. Red and blue lights flashing. I sat down on the sofa. Didn’t even take off my coat.

    “I’ve been having this dream.”  He started as if he was in the middle of a story. “And in this dream… well. I don’t want to upset you, Syl.”

    “I won’t be upset.” My legs were pressed together. Hands on knees, I could feel the cool sheen of my stockings.

    “That’s right.You’re really very strong, aren’t you? Stout Yankee stock. Whereas I…”  He stopped talking and the lights flashed off.

    “Are you sick, Johnny?”

    Again, the laugh. Like a donkey with a chest cold. “Not at all! Kind of you to be concerned. I only meant that I’m old. Very. Very. Old.”

    Then silence, woolly thick. I had a thousand different answers at the ready…  No, you’re not. Don’t be silly. Come here and I’ll make you feel young again. I’d used all of these on him before, and they had mostly worked. This time though, I just couldn’t manage it. I was hurt.  But it wasn’t only that. I was waiting to see how bad this was going to get.

    “So, in this dream,” he said, “you come home from some gay, glittering Hollywood gig. You float in, just as you have tonight. You’re perfect. All hair. Teeth. And tits. That sexy little wiggle when you walk. Wearing some champagne coloured, tighter-than-fuck frock leaving little to the imagination. Because why should it?  Nothing about you, My Darling, is engineered to appeal to Man’s mind. Your aim is…somewhat lower.”

    Johnny was pale. His forehead sweating. And I was holding onto my knee so hard I could feel my nails making half-moons in the flesh.

    “Everything on display. What are shop windows for? Let’s get those punters in!  This is, after all, America.” Arms open as Jolson singing Mammy, the ruddy light made Johnny’s features grotesque.

    “Why weren’t you at the party with me?”

    “Because I’m not wanted.  I’ve got grey pubes and I quote King Lear.  I don’t fit. But you!  You fit right in, and every man fits right in you. And I do mean every man, Syl. I could smell them off you. You came to me. In your frock. You kissed me. And I smelled their spunk on your pretty neck. Tasted it. In your pretty mouth.”

    “I’m going to bed.”

    “Oh no you’re not.”  He stood up, throwing the shadow of a giant on the wall. He was leaning over me, his hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop looking at his face. His long, noble face. So haggard now. The last thing he’d broken in my house was himself. Into a hundred un-mendable pieces.

    Then Johnny said, “They warned me about you.”

    In our movie, there are ghosts. Two kings, in jewel encrusted crowns and velvet robes. Two knights in full armour but for their helmets, which they carry under their arms. Two who I think are supposed to be princes… tights and swords and shining hair. They appear to Johnny. That is, to his character, when he wakes up in the morning to find I’m gone. He stumbles down to the edge of this pond, rubbing his eyes. Looking around the whole time like he’s wondering where I am. He kneels in the mud to splash cold water on his face. In the close-up, we see droplets beading on his majestic brow as his blue eyes widen in surprise.

    The ghosts are on the far side of the pond. You know right away they’re ghosts because they’re very pale, with dark staring eyes and black, toothless holes where their mouths should be. They appear out of nowhere. This is why Johnny’s character looks so surprised. They start calling out to Johnny, something like, “Beware!  Beware!  She’s got you under her spell!”

    Basically, the ghosts are my ex-boyfriends doing a spooky version of you’re better off without her, Pal. You’d be surprised how many of my movies end like that.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  I’m bad news, right?

    So, I asked him, “Who, Johnny? Who warned you? About what? What did they say about me?”

    His fingers were drilling down into my shoulders and his breath was hot and stank of booze.  And just when I thought I’d scream, he started saying one word, over and over, in this weird stage whisper.  Just one word, while Johnny’s face turned redder and redder.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Then he stood, opened his arms again and bellowed, “Beware the girl without mercy!”

    “For God’s sake, Johnny, it was only a movie.”

    He stood right there, in the middle of the room, and he laughed.  Laughed his horrible laugh at me and said, “And I am merely a ghost.” I stood up. Still tall in my heels, and turned to go upstairs. Locked my bedroom door, and cried myself to sleep.

     

    That was it for us. In the morning Johnny was gone, and we never spoke again. Yeah, just about a year ago now. I haven’t got around to putting up a tree this year. It’s a hassle, isn’t it, all that ‘deck the halls’ stuff? I’m not really in the spirit this year.

    When I heard about his heart attack, I remembered the way his face went all red that night.  And I wondered… I mean, if he was already sick, that might sort of explain? I don’t know.  Maybe not. What else can I tell you? We were happy. For a while.

    No, really, thanks so much for coming. Hope it was okay. Hope I gave you what you need. I’m always nervous until the article comes out! I’m sure it’ll be fine.

    I’m actually going away in January. To Korea. Some of our fellas are still over there, and they’ve asked me to go do a few shows for the troops. Not sure what I’ll do. Thinking I might sing a few songs? I mean I’m no Rosemary Clooney, but I can carry a tune. Well, enough that they won’t throw stuff at me.

    I just think it might be good, you know? How can you be lonely with all those beautiful boys around you?  How can you be sad? With all that youth? All that life?

    Feature Image from the 1928 move Dry Martini.

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