Waiting for the White
Whisperers to return
by Adam Parry.
PART ONE: SHE
An old map lay up in attic
hidden for years beneath a pile of books and newspapers many of them dated from
before the second millennium, parts of the map had been scribbled on-phone
numbers of girls and with names he didn’t recognise, e-mail addresses he had
never sent messages to. The map was found just after our hero moved in when he
had moved into a new Council flat and had put boxes of books up in the attic
and had never sorted and were forgotten about. No several years later he was
having clear, out he wanted to cast aside all the junk clutter. In between the
pages of Waves by Virginia Woolf. The map was of the London Underground, on the
other side of the map a prayer had been written-not to one specific god, but
still a heart-felt plea, asking for guidance, to avoid the dark-side of life
and human nature. Yet before the Amen the colour of ink changed-green like
The colour of new geranium
leave or the shade of his wife’s eyes.
‘Oh Jesus help make listen to
the doctors say, take the chemo and the pills.’
The prayer on the other side
of London’s Underground had not been answered, maybe he hadn’t said Amen right,
or was smoking a cigarette, or it didn’t count as he wasn’t in a church on his
knees, or maybe, probably, he never really believed and he remembered his mum
hot dishevelled swearing at the Doctors so out of character, her nightdress
exposing her. Then later she had pleaded for him to take a get her out of this
terrible place. She didn’t take the tablets and refused the chemotherapy and
the last few weeks she was taken care of by his father and a couple of kind
nurses. He remembers she had tried to make a pot of tea, but it was too heavy
for her so he helped and she smiled at him for the last time, he told her he
loved her. Yet she was asleep and never heard.
In the attic he got off his
knees by the piles of newspapers and dusty long unread books and checked
closely the tube route from Heathrow and within a day he knelt at her stone
that told him she would always be in his heart and a wind whipped up from the
exposed valley causing tears to fall on his face he wanted to stay there a thousand nights in
silent vigil, but like a coward heartless and flowerless he skulked away from
where she sheltered from the wind, he scrunched up the tube map and the prayer
that had fallen on deaf ears throwing into a gust as the sun set.
PART TWO: HE
He moved away from the grave
as if being near it disgusted him. Then just as quickly, tears at the back of
his eyes, to his mother’s grave,
‘What am I going to do?’ He asked.
He thought:
I can’t stand this. She isn’t
here.
Images of his mother on her
dead downstairs in the dining room, where dad had put a single bed where the
Macmillan Nurses cared and watched over her, filled his mind and his body was
wracked with sobs. He realized he had to get away, he’d been trying to get away
from the grave since he had arrived, but he wanted something, he wanted an
answer, yet all he could do was cry. Rubbing angrily his tears away and with a
fierce effort ceased crying, and vowed never to cry ever again with a great
effort said in a loud:
‘I’m going. Goodbye.’
An hour later he sat in a
dreary pub, dreary because outside the pub the light was sombre and the sky
full pregnant with rain, a grey heavy weight pressing down heartlessly on the
city. He knew as soon as he stepped outside the rain would begin. Although the
pub was nowhere near full – a man stood at the jukebox choosing music. Soon the
silence was relieved by the first chords of a song he recognized ‘Heroes’ by
David Bowie. He thought as he always did when he heard the song:
Heroes do something heroic.
The guards shot above our heads
And we kissed like never before.
He the lip of his pint and
drained the glass. I could never be a hero as he never, never did anything
heroic. It was his first pint in over five years, he’d not had any breakfast.
Looking at his watch he saw that it was almost one. Or lunch, he added silently
to himself. Scanning the bar he saw a menu. Fancily writ in chalk it offered
Risotto, Fish, Pasta, all he wanted was a burger. He decided it was time to
leave, turned his back on the empty glass and left. Just then it started to
rain.
