Cassandra Voices

Tag: Cassandra Voices fiction

  • Visiting

    In February Anne faced the days with her usual shaky stoicism. She opened the curtains to cold stunted mornings glimmering through the window and at the bottom of the park the pathetic trees. At lunchtime Ryan’s was full of the office crowd so she went at three when she only had a couple of old timers and the occasional dog for company. The barmen knew her and brought a large one to the table when she had settled herself, then she felt OK and had another one. Anne thought about the letter in its pink envelope. She hadn’t opened it immediately but left it on the windowsill pretending not to notice it. When she put her coat on, she picked it up and turned it over to see if there was a return address, nothing. Finally, she slid a butter knife under the gummed flap and tore it open. At first it seemed like the letter was written in a foreign language, she couldn’t understand any of it. She looked again at the name and address on the envelope.

    It was getting on for five thirty when Anne left Ryan’s and crossed the road to Dunnes. She wandered through the shelves of fruit and vegetables, the brightly coloured packets of rice and pasta, put a net of oranges in her basket and a sliced pan. Just a sandwich this evening, cheese or a bit of ham maybe biscuits or a fruit cake? Well no. At the checkout a woman was emptying a full trolley, must have a few to feed at home Anne thought. The woman unloaded several packets of mince and a red pepper. This was going to take a while. There were a few people waiting now, the woman was nearly at the bottom only a couple of bottles of Fanta and a bottle of Coke to go. Anne put her items on the conveyor belt. The boy at the checkout looked at her briefly as he put the bottle of Smirnoff through. Tomorrow she’d go to Tesco’s.

    The letter was waiting for her when she got home. She smoothed out the page and put on her reading glasses. After she read through it quickly, she sat back. There could be a mistake there must be plenty of Anne Wilsons. How could her mother be alive after all these years with no word It was forty years since that night when Anne was nine years old, the night her mother disappeared. The bottle was within reach, and she poured herself a stiff one. Forty years is a long time still Anne could remember it clearly. It was a Friday night, and her birthday was next day. Ten years old, she would be a big girl and allowed to stay up late. Every detail of that night stood out sharply in her mind, but there was no warning that her mother wouldn’t be there next day. Her father said nothing and said nothing until the day he died. From then on was sad, the brightness was gone. It was worse than if her mother had died then Anne and Dad could have gone to the grave and put flowers on it and cried.

    Anne ordered the taxi for six. It was raining and traffic was slow. The taxi driver was listening to the evening news on the radio. Anne sat very still in the back seat waiting for the lights to change as the windscreen wipers swept back and forth making a squeaking noise on the windscreen. The news had given way to ads: insurance, face cream, cold remedies. Anne listened and looked at the lights smudged against the rain spattered glass. The lights turned to green, the taxi inched forward and then sped on unimpeded. It was moving steadily now making its way through gleaming wet streets. She was rarely in this part of town, the buildings seemed darker, the streets emptier. It stopped raining as the taxi drew up to the hospital entrance. She climbed the steep steps and pushed open the gigantic door. Anne’s memories of her mother were all bound up with her disappearance. No child can accept abandonment, there had to be a reason. All through her teens she was haunted by a phantom mother, a mother that didn’t leave. At eighteen she had her first drink. It was in the Palace Bar sitting on high stools with Paul a guy from her class in college. Anne raised her glass of orange and vodka to her mouth and the pain she wasn’t even aware of vanished. A comfortable numbness gathered around her neck and shoulders. In that instant she knew she needed it and that she wanted more.

    The hospital was vast and gloomy, there was no sign of her. How would Anne even recognise her? She went to the nurse’s station, but there was no one there. Wandering aimlessly, she eventually noticed some movement from one of the beds, a tiny woman was waving frantically at her.

    ‘Come here, come here,’ she gasped.

    Was this her mother? Maybe she had expected a monster not a little bundle with snowy hair and a soft pink bed jacket.

    ‘It’s you I knew you as soon as I saw you. Do you hate me? Please don’t hate                    me I couldn’t bear it’

    Anne sat down.

    ‘What should I call you?’

    ‘Oh, call me Margaret,’ her face dimpled into a girlish smile.

    ‘Why are you here? Are you ill?’ Anne asked carefully.

    Margaret’s smile faded she plucked distractedly at her bed jacket and blew her nose.

    ‘Yes’, she said in a small voice. ‘I’ve got cancer’.

    Anne caught sight of herself in the window her hair grey and unkempt, her skin greyer still. She didn’t feel able to offer sympathy. It was forty years too late, but still she had the decency to pretend. She was well practised at passing herself off as a decent human being. She turned to her mother.

    ‘I’m so sorry is there anything you need?’

    Her mother’s blue eyes were closing, she tried to say something, but she was overcome with sleep. Anne stood up and bent over the sleeping woman pulling the blankets around her then left the way she had come.

    After she graduated Anne and Paul got married and bought a house. They tried to be like everyone else. They had a normal mortgage and a normal car. They got up in the mornings like everyone else and went to work, but that was where it ended. At home with the T.V. turned up loud so the neighbours couldn’t hear they argued heatedly and without inhibition. Alcohol no longer sedated Anne’s anger but seemed to fuel it. There was guilt, shame and above all the need to escape. Still, they went to the pub, on her third double vodka Anne convinced herself this was a good life, the only life she deserved and then the drinks would work their magic once again. One night Paul collapsed and was brought to the cardiac care unit in James’ St Hospital. A year later he didn’t get that far. The house was empty without him. The silent kitchen reminded her of the angry words that had passed between them. She hadn’t told him she loved him for a long time. In work it was harder to hide that things weren’t the way they should be so when she told her boss she was planning early retirement he didn’t discourage her.

    She was alarmed to see her mother wasn’t there when she visited again. Then behind her a voice called:

    ‘Yoo hoo it’s me I’m not dead yet.’

    Margaret grinned impishly at her from the confines of a wheelchair.

    ‘Will you get into the bed for me,’ the nurse cajoled.

    When she was settled Margaret turned to Anne and said:

    ‘Oh, good now we can have a nice chat.’

    Anne stiffened.

    ‘I think you need to tell me where you’ve been all these years.’

    ‘I met a man who was kind to me,’ Margaret said seriously. And I thought love was the most important thing in the world.’

    ‘It is,’ Anne surprised herself by saying. ‘But why didn’t you take me with you?’

    The older woman started to cry. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

    ‘You have no idea how many times I asked myself that and then time passed so quickly, and I thought it was too late.’

    ‘You don’t think it’s too late now?’, Anne asked bitterly.

    ‘Was it hard for you?’, Margaret ventured.

    ‘You could say that.’

    Anne leaned back in her chair. Then from somewhere deep in her chest she started to laugh. At first Margaret looked shocked and then soon she was chuckling too. Before long the two women were bent over with laughter. It resounded around the ward, down the corridor and out into the star-studded night.

    February gave way to March and at the beginning of April when the light is beginning to brighten in the sky Margaret slipped away in her sleep like a child exhausted by play. It was a small gathering at the funeral just one or two nurses from the hospital and some other people Anne didn’t know including a tall man with curly hair wearing a long grey overcoat. She found herself leaving the crematorium with him.

    ‘Did you know her well’, he asked.

    ‘No, I really only got to know her recently, but you could say we go back a long way.’

    ‘I’m her son David,’ he said smiling a familiar youthful smile.

    Next morning when Anne opened the curtains pale lemon sunshine washed the famished lawn. Eggshell blue sky, fresh and limitless roofed the world. Spring had arrived in person and to Anne this time it seemed different. There was nothing special about the daffodils clustered under the trees even the birds’ carefree song had been sung a thousand times before, but there was a detail and Anne had noticed first thing. When she opened her eyes this morning she hadn’t wanted to escape.

    Feature Image: Irina Iriser

     

     

     

  • This Is The Leg I Use When I’m Thinking

    His blue look was on the ground, as though it held the reason for the last five minutes. She took him all in. The hair was wavy on top and cropped tight at the sides, sprinkled grey. He looked down at her on the step. Are you ok?

    My hero? she ventured.

    From her seat on the steps in the archway, she watched the rain come fast and heavy on the lane.

    He laughed, lowered his head and folded his arms, looked at his shoes then at the rain, searching for the next thing to say.

    We should bring you to the hospital.

    No, she said. No hospital.

    The steps led up to what looked like two apartments with dark, imperious doors. Across the lane, the open back door of a commercial kitchen, wheezing steam, chattering work and a churning smell of Italian food mingled with the food bins parked by the door. The rain was the type that felt like God tipped over the sky and the blue was washing away. She loved it. She wanted to ride down a newborn river crashing through the buildings, forests, mountains, meat till she reached the ocean and swallowed it. But she had just been hit by a car so instead, she wanted her seat.

    Do you live near here? he said, biting his lip.

    He sure wore that black suit.

    Sorry I slapped you, she said.

    Ah, he waved his hand. You were in shock.

    Ask me the next thing.

    Are you drunk? he said, smirking.

    No. I just want to go home.

    It’s just I saw you in the restaurant –

    I want to go home.

    I’ll take you.

    No, she said, trying to rise.

    She stopped because she lacked the strength, so she concealed it by instead shifting to fish out her purse from underneath her.

    Were you drinking? he pursued, worrying his lip again.

    Ignoring him, she lit a cigarette, and blew a drag at him, careless, spent. With something like tiredness, her long lashes closed slow and long on him. She felt languorous, suspended for an unknown interval, free and anonymous on a step behind the rain. Her head rested on the wall.

    A pack of girls in hotpants skittered trilling and swearing through the alley like a fuckle of turkeys, their jackets held high over their heads as umbrellas. Celine could taste blood on her tongue.

    Gimme one a’those, will ya? he said, dabbing his face dry with the cuff of his jacket.

    His finger grazed hers when he took the packet – a shock of intimacy worse than his manhandling when he cowboyed her clear of the road, away from the traffic and chaotic onlookers. Snatching her lighter from the air between them where she threw it, he moved closer. Her palm massaged the hip that caught the bumper. The car that hit her threw bawls of abuse out the window, taking her for drunk as well. It struck her how much taller than her her rescuer was when he was close, the way trees get taller when you walk toward them.

    So what are you fallin’ all over the place for? he said, squinting down at her.

    Fuck off, she said, quietly.

    He laughed. Is it your birthday or something?

    She looked at him.

    Well, you’re all decked out in leopard print and silk and eating alone in a restaurant. And falling all over the place drunk.

    I’m not drunk, she said, emphatically flat.

    Really? he smirked.

    And I’m not engaging your asshole-ishness either because if I do collapse and start spitting up blood you’ll know I’m not drunk and that yes, you tool, I have a condition. Tachycardia.

    I don’t care.

    Jesus.

    Because you’re just so fucking beautiful I can’t think of anything else.

    She laughed, a great blart of a belly laugh.

    Fuh – I haven’t laughed like that in a while, she said.

    Well at last, he beamed, A fuckin’ smile outta ya.

    You think this is funny?

    I do, a bit, yeah.

    She spiked him an awful look.

    He retreated and exhaled, letting the air flupper his lips like a horse.

    The rain was thunderous on the cobblestones and rooftops.

    And I’m not a l-lady, she stammered, I’m a strong woman. I’ll take it from here.

    I’m Bob by the way.

    Ya. Call me a taxi, will ya?

    I can drive you.

    No.

     

    Bob followed Celine’s taxi in his car without her knowledge. It brought her through Shantalla and dropped her at the University Hospital. The night was dirty green and umber with trees and street light. He parked outside Mr. Waffle and watched her in the mirror walking away from him toward the building where she was born.

    He shadowed her to the ICU. In an open plan of a dozen beds, she rounded a corner and was gone. Staying hidden, he spied out from the corner and saw her. Four beds down, stopped at the one near the window. The bed contained a small figure, a child.

    As she faced the bed with slumped shoulders, Celine’s expression was sombre. Her heart separated through water. She stood still at the foot of the bed and raised a hand to her mouth.

    You won’t let me leave, wee one, she whispered to her fingers.

    The child’s small, closed eyes, with the tubes up her nose and down her mouth. Her daughter hooked up to the Matrix, and not the Ribbon, where it was easier to spend time with her. Celine softly traced a curl on the sleeping forehead. With soundless poise, she placed herself on the plastic grey seat next to the head of the bed, and lightly rested her hand on the bedspread. The night drank the place down. Beyond the window, it painted with hate.

    You can’t out-G me, she said to it. I’ll hate you dead.

    She wished she knew what she thought. In that moment she was blessed with the truth that it was not possible to know anything, not even that you didn’t know, because you often did and had no excuse. And what did knowing and not knowing at the same time do to each other? Give birth to something, anything you wanted. She wanted freedom. In that moment, she had it. But the guilt of having it swept in to rob her of it. Nothing after nothing, and she was herself again, for the first time that day, without self, nobody, happily, with all the answers and no way or wish to convey them. She was without her body, left with a voice that would not speak, wiser than her and uncontrollable until the time called for it, and it just came to cut through the ugly and vulgar. She almost worshipped it. She hesitated to call it truth, in case it taught her a lesson in manners about labelling and chose never to speak to her again.

    Christ, anything but that, she prayed.

    No, it wasn’t gone. It would hold its peace. It would hold all the pieces.

    Maybe it will be today, she thought. On your birthday, Polly, pet. I’ll be there to welcome you. Here or there, in the next place. Don’t be scared. Ever. When it comes time to go.

    Polly hadn’t moved. Not a twitch or a sniff, in her deep sleep. Did she sense her mother? Celine did not aspire to that level of vanity. She loved her daughter, she wasn’t in love with her, and didn’t expect the same in return, she didn’t expect any love.

    It will cleanse you, she said silently, covering her mouth with her fingertips again, afraid that the world might see the words.

    Your death, love.

    Something selfish made her acknowledge death; where it was in the room, where it came near and pulled up a chair. It carried the details, and the world’s ‘reality’: the floating world, a weaponised litany of details masquerading as facts, aiming her memory at her with diagnoses, prognoses, projections, reflections, incompetence, fallacies, failure, contingencies, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, deny God, deny faith, accept death, a reality that did not accept the agency of free will, but stole it and sold it back in the form of vanity branded as truth. Untraceably, one’s own truth. Good or bad.

    Details. She didn’t want charts, names of medicines, names of doctors, nurses. Let death slobber over those. But she had them. Like a disease, she couldn’t get rid of. If she had them, Polly didn’t have to have them and if Celine tossed them, they’d be far from Polly. Either way, Polly was free. Either way. She would be free.

    And with that endorsement, Death reached a hand out toward her child. Celine caught the wrist. It was like catching solid air. It struggled. She put its fingers in her mouth, and bit down. They slithered down her throat and fizzed in her oesophagus. Peristalsis saw them to her stomach where they were corralled in a dance of digestion. She swallowed all the death in the room. And felt better.

    The pain of envy struck Celine’s breast. Polly was closer to birth, and therefore death, and was the only guide Celine had to her own point of origin, the point in space and time where she was born. Yes, Celine was caught in vain self-preservation and all its grey shades. With a shock, she realised that it had been here in this very building, thirty years ago in two days time. Celine was born into this on September 17th 1988, perhaps on this very spot. It was violent genius, divine.

    Polly or Celine. One or the other would go. The old way. Barter. No. Not that way. It was what Celine would mean it to be. For one to live, the other did not have to die. No deal of Celine for Polly. Or the threat of what no intervention would bring – Polly for Celine – with nature favouring the robust. She appealed neither to the god of nature or the one who was supposed to control it. She blessed herself and thanked whatever was the most honourable aspect of God, the one who protected the meek, for her life and for Polly’s. She had always accepted Polly’s immortality. For the first time she was able to accept her mortality, two years into her small but powerful life. If Polly lived, her mother would live. If Polly died, her mother would die, she promised God. But she swore neither of them would die and she put her foot down.

    If she dies, she said to God, I’m coming for you.

    Bob, watching her from the corner, saw a small curly brown head on the pillow above a face of rosebud features. A potted plant sat on the bed stand. He was struck by its dark green leaves and bright red flowers, a liminal vigil above its small human ward. What he saw – mother and daughter – he couldn’t process at that moment, and slipstreamed into an oblique thought.

    Bob considered the watering of a potted plant, why it could never be a good thing to pour water from a jug down on top of the soil. It would only wash the nutrients away after the manner of a flood. For another thing, if plants were sentient, and he had some doubt as to whether they were not, it would become distressed, and he couldn’t abide the thought of that. For the overall health of the thing, at least, it was better to be gentle with watering, like rain, as gentle as nature is when it waters. Even heavy rain distributes water evenly, hitting the ground lighter than a jug’s spout aimed at a stem.

    The roots took in water from below, he acknowledged, watching Celine’s face. The leaves took in light from above.

    Be water, said the martial artist once.

    And the meek inherit the earth.

    Feature Image: Kaique Rocha

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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  • Into the River

    I can barely make out Richard´s handwriting on the piece of torn paper. 
    “Second left” I say, looking down at the words. “After the farm…with eh, the eh, big stables.”
    “I think we just passed it.” Richard says, looking behind him.
    “Eyes on the road dude!” I shout. “Please!” I´d almost reached for the wheel. “After the farm. So, the second left. Not signposted. Look! There! There there there! Second left! Second left!” 
    Richard takes a glance at the rear-view mirror, indicates, decelerates, and turns off the winding, narrow country road.
    “This is it,” I say, turning down the music. 
    “This might be it.” Richard says.  

    The boreen is a long tunnel of trees. Sunlight flickers through the thick leaves overhead, giving the passageway an intense golden-green glow. Stray branches and brambles tap, knock and scrape against the windshield, and drag against the worn-out body of the car, as we’re bumped and jolted gently in our seats. Richard is quiet, his forearms resting over the steering wheel, his fingers interlaced. We’ve been driving since morning, across the smooth new continuous sedation of the M7 motorway, from Dublin to Exit 27. But now, nearing the end of our journey, I’m becoming curious again as to where I´m being led.

    Richard sits back and steers the car slowly from out under the trees and into a sunlit clearing. In front of us, behind a low, grey, moss-mottled stonewall, squats an old shrunken cottage, tucked up in welcoming silence. Richard turns the key in the ignition and the rattling engine shudders and shuts off with a sigh.

    Once through its small front door, we begin to explore the dark little habitation. The air inside is cool, cavernous. Rough flagstones, slightly uneven, line the ground. Whitewashed stonewalls loom close in the wan daylight which struggles in through the deep-silled elfin windows. For some reason I was expecting a stifling humidity, a trapped reek of old country rot and neglect to greet us.

    On the right is the kitchen. A deep white porcelain sink and dim countertops domesticated with wooden containers, a red kettle, a wooden bread-bin, a blue cup-rack, and a stainless steel dish drying rack. From the ceiling of an arching alcove hang a confusion of copper pots and pans over a blackened range. Ahead, at the far end of the room, stands an old round pine table and three pine chairs. Behind that, and in front of a larger day-lit window, is a red cushioned, two-seater couch and small mahogany coffee table. To either side of the couch, tall leafy plants, dark and evergreen, creep up out of the farthest corners, as though the trees outside had somehow broken in. On the left wall is a small black stove and, beside it, an empty wicker basket for firewood.

    I follow Richard down the narrow hall that leads to two bedrooms, their open doors facing each other. In the smaller room I see a framed print of “Men of Destiny” hanging on the wall. Behind the last door, at the end of the hall, is an old grimy bathroom. I step around Richard and take a look inside. Its green-tiled gloom and old dirty white shower-curtain remind me of something out of a horror film.

    “She must have had someone in to do the roof,” Richard says, walking back down the hall and looking up at the newly restored wooden beams.
    “She keeps the place well, your aunt,” I say, following him. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised.”
    “What you think?” Richard asks, looking around.
    “I love it,” I say, “It’s perfect.”
    Richard looks at me.
    “Do you good to get out of Dublin anyway for a while,” he says. “Clear your head.”
    “You have no idea, Man.” I say, looking at him. “Thank you for inviting me.”
    “No worries,” he says, spinning his car-keys around on his finger. “Right. Let’s make this place our own.”

    Out back, in what we could reclaim for a garden, after I´d sheared away some dead dried branches of a gooseberry bush and Richard had strimmed some of the long grass, we share a light lunch at a small wooden table, sitting on two loose wooden chairs.

    It’s a fine spread. Various cured hams. Gorgonzola and Camembert cheese. Black pepper crackers. Green pitted olives. Sundried tomatoes. Crisp brown bread and a beetroot, grated carrot, broccoli and hazelnut salad for which Richard has whipped up his delicious honey mustard and Irish whiskey dressing. To top it all off, I´ve opened a none-too-chilled bottle of steely Chablis.

    In the warm summer air, we take our time and eat slowly, swatting wasps and midges away from our food and from our faces. I’ve had to move my chair out of the sun and into the shade more than once. I don’t want to get burned. The garden surrounds us. The creeping brown briars. The exhausted trees and their shade. The tall dry grass. All so overgrown. So still. So dense. So close to us. This is true summer seclusion. I look around and enjoy a deep sense of peace. This is our place now, to do as we please, to idly rusticate in, undisturbed, for a week.

    Richard is sitting back in his chair with his blue denim shirt open, sunning himself and chewing on a piece of bread. Under his straw hat he wears Aviator shades and with his Van Dyke goatee he is nothing if not the epitome of summertime cool. He smiles broadly at me and looks like he’s about to say something, or is thinking of saying something to me, but then just goes back to admiring his surroundings, leaning back on his chair. I drink my wine and listen to the insect hum in the grass, and in the trees all around me.

    “You know what?” Richard says after a while.
    “What?”
    “I found a bag of MDMA in these work shorts.”
    “Ha! Really?”
    “I think it must have been left-over from the barn-party in Kilkenny.”
    “That was some night,” I say, reaching for my pouch of rolling tobacco, suddenly nervous and certainly thrilled on hearing that night now being finally brought up again.

    I fumble with my rolling papers and with the tobacco. Part of me wonders if it´s true, if he’d really found it, or if he’d bought some especially for this trip in the hope of recreating something of that night, of that morning. Either way it’s welcome news. In fact, it’s exactly what I want to hear, what I’d been hoping for. I tap my rollie on the table, smiling, then light it up.

    Settling back down into my own skin again, I feel at ease. Recomposed and in control. I look at Richard as he takes a drink of wine and rests the base of his glass on his flat brown stomach. Then, with a finger, he lowers his shades, looks at me from under an arched eye-brow and, in a mock paternalistic tone says,

    “I was debating, you know, on whether or not I ought to tell you.”
    “Well, you’ve blown that now haven’t you? And sure why wouldn’t you have told me?”
    “You said that you wanted to get some work done down here.”
    “So did you.”
    “Ah, but that’s different.”
    “How is that different?”
    “Mine is just the monkey work. I don’t want to be a bad influence on you and, you know, hamper, or dampen, or darken even, your…” He searches dramatically, airily, with his free hand for the right word, “…your cogitations.”
    “My cogitations? Or do you mean, my brooding contemplations?”
    “Your country ruminations?”
    “Oh, my rural cerebrations?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Well, you won’t. Besides, I don’t plan on writing much. I’ll be reading, mostly.”
    “Mostly,” Richard says, smiling. “You brought enough books down with you anyways.”
    “I always do. Usually too many,” I say. Then I add, with a smile, “I just don´t know what I want sometimes.”

    Tapping the ash, I pass the rollie over the table to Richard.
    “You still only writing the short ones?” he asks.
    “Yup. And still only for myself and for the entertainment of my friends.”
    Richard blows smoke in the direction of some midges.
    “Too right. Nothing worse than a poet who publishes. So go on then. Give us one before we go back to work.”
    “Alright. Do you want a happy one? A sad one? A funny one? Or a sexy one?”
    “Surprise me.”

    I take my glass and raise it for a toast. Richard sits up, leans forward and raises his glass too. I can imagine that behind his sunglasses Richard has closed his eyes, cleared his mind and is making himself suitably receptive. Sitting up straight in my crockety chair, I look at him and say, in my smoothest voice.
    “I find myself again, cast into the ancient gaol of love. But this time I´ll remember that the cell door is always open, and the guards are always drunk.”
    “Beautiful” Richard says. “I was transported”
    “I’m sure you were.” I say, smiling.
    “I want more.”
    “You’ll have to wait.”
    “Well then, in the meantime,” Richard says, “Here’s to a poetical and festive week in the country.”
    We clink glasses.
    “Cheers.”

    We clear the table, bringing our plates, glasses and bowls back inside. My eyes have to readjust to the sudden cottage darkness. Sun-dazzled, and a little drunk already from the heat and the white wine, I find that I´ve wandered off in the wrong direction and start laughing to myself, at how disorientated I am. This is a crazy little domicile I’ve found myself in. Blinking and stretching my eyes wide open, now I´m standing by the table. I look down at my stack of books, at my notebook and my pens, all neatly laid out. There will be time. Plenty of time. I can feel it building already. Some good work is going to get done.

    Richard has plugged his phone into the speakers he’s brought and is playing a compilation of Italian Renaissance lute music. Its gracious simplicity fills the air around us with a homely sophistication. I put the two plates with my emptied wine glass down on the countertop and stand beside Richard at the sink. He washes. I dry. We listen to the music and fall into an easy rhythm. I notice that he’s even brought his own little bottle of organic washing-up liquid.

    “Man, that wine is choice.”
    “Goes down easy.”  He says.
    “Too easy.” I say, smiling. “So, time for a little daba-daba?”
    “Ha! You dirty drug fiend. I have to get up into those trees now…”
    “You doing that today?”
    “Better to get it done now,” he says, looking out the window. “Then I can relax.”
    “True,” I say. “Best to wait…To wait. To wait.” I add with a deep sigh. “Such exquisite restraint you display.”
    “All the better to torture with, my dear.”

    Richard smiles and hands me a rinsed wet plate and I come back to myself, dreamily, to the task at hand.
    “Will I open another bottle or do you want a beer?”
    “I think I’ll have a coffee,” He says, pulling the plug in the sink.
    “I’ll make it for you,” I say. “You go out and get started.”

    At the side of the cottage, I bring Richard his coffee. He points up at some low overhanging branches.
    “These are the ones she wants me to cut back I’d say,” he says.
    “How long will that take you?”
    “´Bout half an hour or so. But there’s probably more to do around the place.”
    “Well, I’m looking forward to helping out,” I say.
    “Don’t worry,” says Richard, “There’ll be plenty to do.”

    We step over the orange extension cable and Richard’s chainsaw, his clear-plastic goggles and his pair of old, dirty, heavy work gloves.
    “Bringing the hammocks was a great idea,” I say.
    “It was, wasn’t it?” He says, grinning. “We’ll put them up later. One there…and one…over there. If you could strim some more between those two trees that’d great.”
    “Yeah. No worries.”
    “And I was thinking of digging a little fire pit too, over there, for later on. If the nights are going to be as nice as they say, might as well stay outside for as long as we can.”
    “Sounds great.”
    “When was the last time you lay out in the night and looked up at the stars?” Richard asks.
    “I can´t remember,” I say. “There was even a time there when I couldn´t look up at them for long. Sometimes, I don´t know, it was just too immense. I´d get the fear, and have to look away.”

    At the rear of the cottage near a little back-gate we stop at a gap in the boundary trees. I look down over a field of high, lush green grass. Shielding my eyes from the sun I see the hazy banks of a river, more fields, other country houses, and mountains far in the distance.

    “We’re not too far from Ardnacrusha, are we?”
    “No,” Richard says, lighting a rollie, “It’s a few miles down to the right there.”
    “We should go for a walk then later, if you want?”
    “Sounds good,” Richard says. “I’ll get cutting.”

    On a narrow pathway, along the bank of the river, we walk in the direction of Ardnacrusha, passing my hipflask of whiskey back and forth. The calm country scenery, the cooler evening air and the sound of gravel pleasurably crunching underfoot mellows my thoughts. Up ahead, Ardnacrusha Bridge arches over the river. Nearing sun-down, the shadow of the bridge ripples on the orange and purple water.

    “So you’re serious…about leaving your studio in Callan, and never painting again? Say it ain´t so, Man.”
    “Well yeah, that´s the idea.”
    “Just had enough?” I ask, passing the flask back to him.
    “You saw the last work.”
    “I did. And I really liked it. Very zen. One fluid movement across the canvas. I always thought it looked like a tusk. You sold a few too.”
    “Three.”
    “That´s good.”
    “Not good enough I´m afraid. No, it´ll never leave me, but I need to take a step back. Or a step forward. I need to get out, get moving again.”
    “Where you thinking?”
    “The Camino first. Then maybe Mexico, for a while. Bring my ukulele.”
    “And write some songs?”
    “Write some songs and find my way. At the moment I think I´m being drawn to horticulture.”
    “Really? That actually makes a lot of sense,” I say, taking the flask back from Richard.
    “Yeah,” Richard says, “I think so too. Tend a garden and…”

    But I’ve noticed something up ahead. The diminutive form of someone standing up on the bridge. I pocket the flask and gaze on, thoughtlessly, not even wondering until, suddenly, that same body falls clear from the bridge and splashes into the water. I stop and grab Richard by the arm.

    “Fuckin’ hell!
    “What?”
    “Did you see that?”
    “Did someone fall in?”
    “I don´t know, Man. Either fell in or jumped.”

    Without another word Richard starts to run ahead. I keep my eyes on the water and watch as an arm, then a head, comes up to the surface, and disappears again. On the bank of the river Richard begins rapidly undressing: shirt off, boots off, jeans off, socks off.  He looks back at me, desperate for some sign of warning or encouragement. But I’m dumb-struck. Helpless.

    I stand back and watch as Richard dives into the water. Gathering up Richard’s still warm clothes, I hold them close to me, and keep my eyes on him as he swims out and dives under. Coming back up, he looks around, and dives back down again. Each time he disappears, I hear myself mumbling,
    “He’ll be ok. He’ll be ok. Come on. He’ll be ok.”

    I walk backwards to keep up with the displacements of the current. From the river bank all I can to do is focus on maintaining a line of living endurance between myself and Richard. Somehow, through my undivided attention, a fierce observance, I feel that I can transfer all my available energy and strength to him. That this will keep him safe. That this connection will keep him alive.

    Thrashing the water Richard struggles back to the riverbank, pulling the still body of a boy, a teenager, behind him. At the water’s edge I bend forward and grab hold of Richard. Once he’s up on the bank, I reach out and get a hold of the boy, grabbing him under an arm. I pull and drag him, with Richard’s help, up and out of the cold water. Richard collapses on the grass and turns on to his back. Grunting and gasping for air, he covers his face with his arms and struggles to speak.

    “He…He’s got something…in his pockets…weighing him down…”
    But before I can gather my thoughts Richard rolls off his back and gets himself up onto his knees. He leans down over the kid, tilts his head back and blows into the boy’s mouth. Richard stops, gasps, listens, and looks down. Nothing.

    Again he blows again into the boy’s mouth and I watch, horrified, as that chest rises and falls under his soaked, black t-shirt. Nothing. I turn away. All I see is the rushing, swirling brown surface of the river, and all I can think is that there must be more bodies in there, more bodies like this one, lost in those damnable depths, helplessly flowing by.

    A sharp and sudden intake of breath from the boy’s mouth startles me. Richard falls backwards onto his hands. We both watch as the boy’s body spasms and contracts on the grass. His eyes open wide as his pale hands clench and tear at the grass. He coughs and gasps painfully for air as dirty greenish rills of foul river-slime runs down the sides of his mouth.

    On our way back to the cottage nobody says a word. We trod through a field, having forgotten to take the easier pathway back to the cottage. Richard strides through the waist-high grass with all of his reach and strength, and still only in his boots and wet underwear, determined to get away from that river as fast as he can.

    The boy staggers behind me as though drunk. Lost to his surroundings. From the corner of my eye, I think I see him dropping stones out of his pockets. I think I hear them falling to the ground, one by one. I look his way but his head is down, staring into the grass. Mesmerized. Twice the boy snaps out of it to look up and take notice of where he is. I hear him gulp and catch his breath.
    “You ok?”
    “Yes.”
    “Sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s your name?” I ask.
    But the kid says nothing.

    Our cottage appears up ahead from behind the cluster of trees. Up beside the chimneypot is a rusty TV aerial and a warped weathervane leaning silhouetted against the clouds in a fading purple and orange sky. Richard opens the barely hinged back-gate and the kid follows us around the side of the cottage. We enter through the small front door, one by one.

    The kitchen and living room smell of cool country evening air, coffee, and freshly cut firewood. Richard’s shaking, and without saying a word, walks down the hall and into the bathroom. Still holding Richard´s clothes, I pour a glass of water from the sink tap and put it down on the table for the boy. I ask him to sit, and he sits.

    “I’m Stephen.” I say. “And that’s Richard. What’s your name?”
    Sitting there in front of me, silent and stunned, he’s a rudely revived corpse shivering in his dripping clothes. Around his plain grey canvas runners, strands of slimy green river weed are still coiled. I try not to stare but can’t take my eyes off his narrow, mean-looking face. His long, thin arms are pale and his short dark hair is flattened to his head. He can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.

    “You should have a shower when Richard gets back.”
    A long silence passes between us before he says anything.
    “Don’t tell anyone I’m here,” he says.
    “I won’t.”
    “Don’t call anyone.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Swear?” He says.
    “I swear. What’s your name?” I ask again.
    “Daniel.” He says, looking at the glass of water on the table. “My name is Daniel.”

    Richard returns in a long grey woollen jumper, fresh jeans, and in his bare feet. He hands Daniel two big fluffy grey towels and walks him down to the bathroom.
    “There´s hot water,” I hear Richard say. “Try and get warm.”
    Daniel closes the door.

    Without looking at me, Richard goes into his bedroom and shuts his door. I go and sit down at the table and place Richard’s clothes on the seat beside me. I take my hip-flask from my back pocket and I drink from it. But the whiskey doesn’t taste right. It’s watery. Silty. I put my pouch of tobacco, filters and lighter on the table and just sit there, looking at them, without appetite, but it’s not even the pouch of tobacco that I see.

    All I see is Daniel, standing in his clothes under the hot shower, waiting to feel warm again. Then peeling off his wet clothes, like layers of a painless, un-protective skin. Runners. T-shirt. Socks. Jeans and underpants. Drenched, they fall and slop to the floor. Heavy. Sodden. And sad. I see him sitting down in the bath, under the showerhead, in the steam, his eyes closed. A tiny dot of darkness, peaceful and unthinking. And warm. Warm for a while at least. Until the water starts to run cold.

    In the living room candles are lit and pots of food simmer on the kitchen’s range. A fire rages silently in the stove. The mahogany table, on which Daniel´s clothes have been laid out to dry, has been pushed closer to the fire. Richard and I are busying around each other, almost as though we’re putting on a little show of domesticity for Daniel, who sits quietly at the table, in warm borrowed clothes.

    Richard opens a bottle of red wine while I lay out three plates. We’ve insisted he eat with us. There is no talk about today. Nothing. Richard pours wine as I spoon out steaming pasta shells and meatballs. Passing an aromatic roll of garlic bread around, I feel that me and Richard are doing our best, our utmost, almost telepathically, to make Daniel feel included and welcome at our table.
    Instinctively, I go to raise my glass for a toast but correct myself, and cover it, by just taking a small sip.

    “Tuck in.” says Richard. “Its good. It’s warm.”
    We all eat slowly. Small mouthfuls. We try to eat. There’s warmth and healing goodness in the food but there seems to be no real depth to our hunger. Still, we persist in silence. Shadows flicker close around us on flame-lit walls. Daniel´s shadow flits and frets on the wall behind him. When he burps, I think I get a phantom, silty taste of muddy water in my mouth. Daniel pushes the food around on his plate, then cuts a meatball into small manageable bites. Richard nods and sighs as though talking to himself in his head.

    After chewing on a piece of sauce-soaked bread for what seems like a very, very long time, Daniel coughs, clears his throat and looks up at me, then at Richard. In a soft, hesitant voice he asks,
    “Ye both…ye both from here?”
    “No,” I say, and clear my throat. “No. I’m from Sligo originally, but I live in Dublin now and Richard’s from Kilkenny.”
    Daniel nods and looks down at his plate.
    “Are you from Clare?” I ask.
    “Limerick.”
    “Oh right. Where abouts?”
    “Castleconnell.”
    “That nearby?”
    “Near enough.”
    “My aunt owns this place,” Richard says finally. His voice is distant, as if it were coming from somewhere behind him.
    “We thought we’d just come down and do some work around the place,” I say, “Help out his aunt, you know?”
    “Just the two of ye?” Daniel asks.
    “Yeah.”
    Daniel looks at Richard, then at me. I feel like he’s going to say something –
    “Would you like more sauce?” Richard asks, moving the ladle around in the pot. “There’s some left.”  “No.” Daniel says, pushing his plate away from him. “I want to go home.”
    “We’ll take you home after this,” I say. “Please. Try and eat something.”

    Attempting to lead by example, I try to eat but have to stop after a few mouthfuls. I sit back in my chair and turn my wine glass around by its stem, observing the marks left by my lips and the tiny bits of food on the rim. I’m unable to look at Daniel directly. I can’t watch him go through those mechanical movements of eating all alone. A density, of something incommunicable, hangs around him. It´s emanating from him. He saw nothing down there, in the murky underwater. No premonitory flashes or flickers of an afterlife. Nothing in those last moments but the shock of it, and the struggle against it. A last taste of terror before release. I watch as my wine glass becomes misty. Candle light flares into golden, watery shards. I turn my face from the table and discreetly wipe the welled tears from my eyes.

    We drive in the direction of Castleconnell in silence. It’s late, but not so late that Daniel’s parents might be worried. In the back seat Daniel sits in his own damp clothes.
    “You should make up something about today,” I say to him. “Say that you went out to Ardnacrusha for a swim. And eh, a group of lads or something threw your bag of clothes into the river and you had to swim out after them, to get them, you know, and you nearly drowned. And that’s why, if they say you look shook, that that’s why you look shook, you know?”

    “And you just went to a friend’s house then, afterwards,” Richard says, looking back at him in the rear-view mirror, “To shower and to calm down or something. But now you’re home. Safe and sound. And everything´s ok.”
    I turn around and look back at Daniel.
    “You know what we mean? Like a cover story.”
    “I know,” he says.
    “Practice it in your head for a while,” Richard says. “Convince yourself that it’s real.”

    We park outside Daniel’s house, a huge, warm-looking, many-windowed Bed and Breakfast just off Station Road. Cars pass by on the road beside us, their headlights shining in on us intermittently. I think about giving Daniel my number, but I don’t know how much more I can help. Then it just seems like a bad idea. Richard turns in his seat and looks back at Daniel.
    “You alright?” He asks.
    “Yeah.” Daniel says.

    But he just sits there. Waiting. Part of me is expecting him to say sorry to Richard, or to the both of us. Part of me is expecting him to say thanks. Part of me is expecting him to break down crying and part of me is expecting him to go absolutely ape-shit now. To start kicking and punching the back of my seat and screaming. Screaming that we tried to abduct him or kidnap him or…But he just sits there. Waiting.

    After a while he opens the door, gets out and slams it shut behind him. He doesn’t turn around, or say anything, once he is out of the car. We just sit there and watch him as he walks over the cow rail and makes his way up to his house.
    “What’s the name of the B&B?” Richard asks, taking out his phone.
    “Glenville B&B,” I say. “Why?”
    “´Cos we’re coming back here tomorrow. Or calling them.”
    “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    “Why not?”

    But I don’t say anything. I’m watching Daniel as he walks up the long, steep driveway to his home. All I can think about now is what it’ll be like for him when, after he rings the bell and waits in the cold, well-lit archway for his mother or father or brother or sister to come to the front door, and they see him standing there, pale and shivering and alone. They won’t even have to look in to his eyes to know. Daniel. It’s Daniel. Something has happened to him.

  • Getting Away

    Margaret didn’t like Walls, so why had she agreed to go walking with him in the mountains, and afterwards for a drink in a remote hotel bar? She had no self-control, she broke all her promises, she was weak and gormless. Flaws she contemplated, unlacing her boots at the fireplace.

    “You should take off your socks too,” said Walls. “So that your feet dry off properly. Hang them off the mantlepiece, here.”

    “Can we just do that?”

    “Do you think we have to behave ourselves in this dump?”

    Margaret smiled with warm disapproval. It wasn’t a dump, but she liked that he wanted better for her. She felt nice; she felt a sense of belonging. It was the end of December and it was a strange, antique hotel – empty, save for some old people at the collapsing little bar. The chairs shook. The evergreen strung along the mantlepiece looked feeble, picked clean by time, and even the fish in the boxes on the walls were dead.

    “Evening.” A narrow-faced unsmiling man lowered a tray of hot ports to their table.

    “Thank you, Sir,” said Walls. “Hits the spot – we feel we deserve it, too. We were out at Glendalough today, hillwalking with the best of them. Busy, here, this time of year?”

    As the men found things to say Margaret cupped the port in her hands and dipped her nose to the bitter scent of liquor, lemon and cloves. She took a long drink, gazing affectionately around. The empty floral armchairs sat facing each other, backs reclining, arms outstretched as if caught in a ghostly confab. A grandfather clock sounded. The clock was strict, censorious, like a clacking tongue.

    “It’s just so pleasant here.”

    “It’s a nice place to come and disgrace yourself anyway.” Walls picked up The Shooting Gazette and read from a story about gundogs and winter grouse, making Margaret laugh. He propped the ankle of his desert boot up on his bulky knee and leaned back, testing all the strength of his chair. His legs were long and sturdy. How much were the rooms here anyway? She didn’t have to decide on anything yet. Margaret gulped her port, sinking back, sinking further inside an evening she’d never imagined she’d agree to.

    On Christmas Eve she’d sat on a kerb on Dawson Street with her bags of shopping spread around her and into her phone typed: “Not only do I not love you, I don’t even like you, now get away from me.” She sat in the sleety cold, reading back through all their texts: the block paragraphs of his voluble accusations alternating with her neatly edited retorts. She did not feel safe. The shadows of ruthless passers-by bore over her, feet thumped, her ass froze on the cold stone.

    Margaret pressed send, then put up her furry hood and fled the streets. Their love was over, and it hadn’t even been. On Christmas day, she kept her phone switched off for discipline with the benefit of also torturing him. On Boxing Day, she turned back on her phone to face three new emails from him. One sad belated Groupon offer for ice-skating – even the offer had expired. A press release for a pantomime, subject headed ‘Matinée with me?’ Then a sonnet, typed into the body of his email and evidently authored by him too in some dismal late-night rage: the couplet ended with the words ‘dishonour!’ and ‘suicide?’. (His punctuation).

    Then on the 27th of December, she wrote that she hoped he had had a good Christmas. He wrote back that it was awful. ‘Awful’, he wrote. ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, not knowing what for. On the 28th they chatted all day about themselves. Now we find the former soulmates on the 29th December in a hotel with buffalo horns displayed in the creaking hallway – something about the Boer War, the unsmiling concierge had told Walls – and sullen photographs of aristocrats in sporting gear. Why had she come all this way? Because that morning she’d opened her curtains to a bright winter sky booming down on her. ‘Beautiful day’, she texted, and exactly an hour later she pulled into the traffic island opposite Donnybrook church, grinning and waving at Walls as if he was a friend. He got into the car, bulky and ungainly as the wrong jigsaw piece. He looked so suspect, checking around him – always guilty, stigmatised by some certain yet unclear wrongdoing. She liked the boyish glint, the boyish smile – he was terrible, incorrigible – he was her punished pupil. They got along well. They both liked walking in the mountains, they liked wine, books, planes. He liked politics, man’s worlds. Both liked the idea of causing trouble – of escalating something, shocking other people. He edited a little online magazine in his spare time and she’d been his intern and his girlfriend the past year. His protégée, unpaid apprentice, the weirdo in the corner of his study eying him while he worked, blushing at his glances, her amorous eyes – though never undressing him there and then. Their fantasies remained just that, ethereal, abstract ideas transacting between them, through a fug of newspapers, laptops, coffee cups, vape and sandwich wrappers. All physical sex was had after dark and in the dark. About once a week, or twice a week, one of them would say something pointed and disruptive and they would argue. Arguing would last hours or days. Arguing became yelling, slamming, became toxic waste – life was flammable and unhinged, something she couldn’t control. Once, on holidays abroad, he drove her drunk late and night and told her he had the power to kill the both of them. He speeded up the car and scared the shit out of her. Then he slowed down the car. She never asked him about it afterwards, she told the story only to herself, she reasoned with its oddness; it was all bluster, wind-up. A joke – just a stupid joke.

    At Glendalough, the surrounding hills were plush and velvety with deep colours, and snow lit up the mountain peaks. The cold air blanched her face as the soles of her shoes gripped the railway sleeper tracks along their path. They chatted happily, normally, like decent people, offering nods to ruddy-cheeked women and their dogs. The sky grew dark and the hikers dispersed, leaving them alone in the mountain ranges. She felt shy and elated; she wondered if they would touch. When her ankle turned on a rock along the track, she almost fell, but he grabbed her wrist and held her glove, looking at her with tender fright. After that she let him hold her ungloved hand.

    The man came carrying two more ports, and a Christmas cake, encased in white marzipan, with little mince pies in paper cases laid out on a doily, their pastry tops dusted with icing sugar. Margaret spooned whipped cream all over a mince pie and ate it.

    “I adore whipped cream! I think whipped cream must be my greatest pleasure. If I had cream every night I’d be happy for the rest of my life.” She licked her lips of cream and sugar powder.

    “We could actually eat before we go,” he said.

    “We could. But the ice. Would the ice be dangerous?” She had no interest in the answer to her question, a formality in the resistance she would need to provide. Her limbs felt heavy, her skin baked in the heat of the flames.

    “They have a table, if we want.”

    “Oh, you already asked them?”

    She tilted her head as if she was considering something. “I suppose I am very hungry.”

    The grandfather clock ticked, jaunty, like horses galloping. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-TICK, it went. So percussive, so repetitive it couldn’t possibly signal change, or progress.

    “Leave your boots.”

     

     

    The dining room was a solemn rectangle with every table set and nobody there. Serviettes were ironed into fans, candlesticks loomed unlit. Margaret admired a very big fork, and touched the white table cloth as if it was a sheet of gold. “This is all so nice!” She gave a histrionic shiver and at this cue, Walls took off his suit jacket and tossed it on her shoulder. The jacket buried her in warmth, and as the chill eased from her body a big bottle of red wine came. The bottle did seem bigger, fatter than an average bottle, and she assumed it was expensive. Getting home was going to be impossible, though they both had a history of reckless driving – she was chaos, did not take care with things. Food arrived with the rapid pace of an establishment with very little to do: scrolls of ham with out-of-season melon cut in half moons, thick slabs of game terrine. A blue fish with a crispy eye was placed in front of Walls and for Margaret, a duckling’s breast stewed in dark juices.

    “How are we going to make it back? I’m so tired for driving,” Margaret announced after a time.

    “Look, the rooms are fine, if you want.”

    “You think.” She let her voice trail off – she would not contribute any more to this discussion.

    “Only €75 a head, dinner included,” he said. “And it’s on me.”

    “You don’t have to.”

    “I owe you anyway.”

    “That’s separate.”

    “Sure.”

    He must have been referring to the fee he normally paid for two articles, for which she had invoiced him, and which he still hadn’t paid her for. She sliced a piece of meat in two and ate quickly and unhappily the morsels on her plate. Next week, she’d have to send him the invoice again, for the third time. They sat in silence for too long. Walls sloshed wine into her glass, and she drank as much as she could in a mouthful.

    “Let’s order dessert. Apple and rhubarb pie, sticky toffee pudding, blancmange, or – oh goodie. Baked Alaska. Or did you see the cheese on the trolly earlier? I think I saw cheese.”

    The door brushed over the carpet, and in came the serving lady and behind them, a tall fair-haired couple in handsome coats. Margaret’s head lifted and turned as the man and the woman crossed the room. Her eyes were tugged, locked, as the man pulled off his hat to reveal a face that was as familiar to her as it was intimidating, in its classic lines of beauty and clear, healthy skin. His name was Antonio, and he was the tech millionaire who had taken her to the party where she first met Walls. Millionaire, or billionare. Secret investor – someone of great worth, great wealth. She didn’t care about wealth, but. Antonio, she knew, moved easily in the world, had experiences. He had fulfilled more of his dreams than, for instance, Margaret.

    Walls was saying something.

    “Sorry, what?” she was dazed. “Sorry – It’s – did you see, who just came in?

    Antonio and the woman had seated themselves at the furthest corner, leaving a barricade of empty tables between them and the suddenly inferior, suddenly scruffy Walls and Margaret. Margaret touched her hair, damp and unbrushed, and seized a silver spoon to check her reflection – she had the face of a bumpkin, nose, lips, eyes blown up. She tilted in her chair, trying to catch Antonio’s eye while also paying Walls extra attention.

    “Did you see the dessert menu?”

    “All I saw was you staring at him.”

    As ever, it came in a single rough blow.

    “I wasn’t – ”

    “You were.”

    “But – ”

    “You were staring at him like a little girl in a shop window.” Her cheeks were hot, and her heart beat in a way that hammered, weighted her. Superglued to where they sat, stitched into the furniture, she felt that life would run on, this way, facing Walls, answering to Walls. She looked around her, so as not to have to look at him, and Antonio turned around just in time.

    “Ah!” He said, and stood from his seat.

    Both men faced each other, chests puffed as they shook hands. Antonio kissed Margaret’s cheek, and the other woman and Margaret kissed politely. “Pearl,” she said. “Pearl,” Margaret said, forgetting, for a moment, her own name. Pearl and Margaret talked for a few minutes about their jobs.

    “I’m hoping to specialise in equine law,” Pearl finished.

    Margaret dropped into her chair to see puddings and cheeses all laid out in front of her.

    “This is really great” said Walls. “I’d have to say the food has really been first class, you wouldn’t have thought it.” Hunched forwards, he sawed into his tart. “Taste, here.”

    Margaret recoiled. Like a child she shut her lips to the advance of his laden fork.

    “What? Oh, are you annoyed or something? Because I teased you for looking at Antonio? Come on, weren’t you? Don’t tell me you weren’t staring at him doe-eyed – don’t tell me you’re not mesmerised. I don’t blame you – he’s a handsome guy. You know, who cares. I’m not annoyed with you. Are you? Are you annoyed with me or something?”

    “No.” Margaret smiled politely, and then did something strange. She asked the serving lady for the bill, and she paid it using her credit card. She zipped up her wallet, threw his jacket on his lap.

    “That was very generous,” he said.

    “I’m feeling generous.” An eerie pause. She started to laugh. “Because I’m so happy. Really, you have no idea how happy I am. Because I remembered something, just there. I’ll never, ever have to do this again. I’ll never have to see you again. You have nothing to do with me anymore. You are a hole – you don’t exist. Oh, this is a relief” She tore a handful of grapes off a branch and popped the grapes between her laughing jaws. “And you know maybe I was looking over there. Maybe I wasn’t. I can actually look at people, ha ha, I can look at whoever I want, whenever.”

    Margaret hacked out a wedge of yellow cheese and lined up three crackers. “And you know I will think about all these other people, other men maybe. I might even kiss them too, on the lips.”

    “Yeah!? he goaded.

    “Yeah! I will probably go to bed with them!” Margaret flashed her eyes at her defeated lover. “And then, well, who knows what might happen? Once I’m alone with them.” She leaned over a debris of cheese rinds and blue crumbs and broken biscuits. “I’ll take my clothes off, everything. One by one. Down to my underwear, and then I’ll sit on the bed, with no clothes on, and they will look at me. Oh! I am so young, and you are not. I am so young and free, and you are so irrelevant!”

    Should she go on. Tell him all the things that she could do, with these imaginary men, or just carry on insulting him, get all the bile out on the table. No, someone had to drive them home. Margaret was over the limit. And she knew enough not to eliminate the fear that he could try and kill her, or at the very least, threaten to do so, which is also blood-chilling. She drew in a series of deep, imperious breaths, then picked up the wine bottle and upturned it in her glass. She drank the rest and sat up.

    “I’ve to go.”

    “Go,” he repeated. “Just go, just like that.”

    “Yes, now.”

    “And you probably want to go home without me, do you.”

    “Oh god yes.”

    “I booked a room. But you don’t care.”

    “Nope.”

    “That isn’t very nice – I thought we.”

    “Nope. Cut it out now. I want to go. Now. And you should drive, because I’m too drunk. And I don’t feel like driving.”

    Margaret handed Walls the key to her car, or rather, her mother’s car.

    In the dark of the courtyard, he turned the key. The engine breathed, and omitted a lengthy energetic death rattle, then cut out. He tried again. It cut out again.

    “Look,” he said. “I know you think I was out of order –”

    “Start the car.”

    “I was just going to say.”

    “Start the car.”

    He stamped his foot and the sound of pumped gas wheezed, then thinned into the night air. Tree branches crouched behind them.

     

    Later, under her duvet, fully clothed and shivering with adrenaline, Margaret’s head raced. With outrage, disbelief. Revulsion. She felt excited by the hate in her, enriched with its potency. She was free and alive, shot of him – what had she been thinking; of course, he never would have killed her, not like that.

    New year came, like a homecoming, a beneficent place of safety. And as the years passed, she still triumphed in the afterglow, the feeling of survival. But he came with her, he lived in her. His voice was in her mind, talking and lecturing and murmuring and making her laugh. It was his face that hovered in her dreams, his eyes that spotted her in a crowd, or narrowed on her in quiet moments. ‘Get away from me!’ But he wouldn’t get away. She couldn’t get away. She couldn’t get him out.