A Particular dream by Adam Parry

 

 

 

Chapter one: Hammers and feathers, 1989

 

Sunlight streamed, like amorous light beings, lying across Jane’s pale sharp shouldered back. She smiled in her sleep as the light encompassed her, gentle as sentient silk sheets, and it seemed some player in her dreams was nudging her into the sunlight its warm caress welcomes Jane into today. She lifted up off the bed and rested on her elbow her face full of summer kissing her, she yawns, her sleep smeared mascara made her look like a badly constructed Goth, a glimpse of a dream made her smile and the smile lingered on her face, and for a moments long after she lost the dream it seemed she too was a source of illumination, her happy summer-blue eyes shone brighter in the sunlight  flooding in through the badly drawn curtains, her faced was flushed as if she were embarrassed by a thing she half-remembered yet this seemed to make her glowing in the orange waves like the curtains were breathing fire. Should anyone see her that morning she would seem a golden ghost trapped on the bed by the light, perhaps a figure in one of her dreams remodelling her. She yawned again the sound melancholic like an endless sigh belied the joy Jane felt within. She stretches her arms, her lips make a circle, but she stifled the yawn and breathed out deeply releasing her dreams that seemed like jigsaws with too many missing pieces yet still dreams she had revelled in but, now she set them free to try another mind.

Jane looked at the clock by the bed.

She had plenty of time and lay back down on the mattress strands of her hair stuck on the moisture on her face, she brushed them aside. She had plenty of time and she wondered when Carl had left, had he got any sleep at all? He was always up at Anniesland doing night paintings of the lights down to the West End, already he had finished five from various positions and viewpoint. He’d even sold one. But Jane was worried about him he had become so thin as if he had burnt the little fat off his already skinny form, Jane had small hands but even she could put her hand about Carl’s wrist. A couple of days earlier she had thought she heard him crying in his studio, he used to cry too much when they first met, but it had stopped for a while when he was starting work on the series of nightscapes, now this, the crying was not like before it was almost ruining her listening to it, almost a feral howl he could no longer keep down in belly of his mind.

The night before she had stopped him as he left his room, behind him she saw his curtains were closed against the day. They were always pulled shut to blinker out his day, Carl looked shorter too and he hunched over himself as he were trying to hide, his white skin gleamed with sweat.

‘You look terrible,’ she told him, he smiled then curled over himself like a bad actor playing the part of a hunch-back and walked slowly, quietly toward the front door. Silently he opened the door, then wordlessly closed it behind himself. She stood at the door that day wondering if he would come back, he looked like he could fall down at any moment.

She had all the time in the world. For a while longer she lay on her bed, almost patiently as if she were waiting for someone she knew would not turn up. She remembered his face when she found him in the great, green carpeted hallway drunkenly trying to find the light’s switch. Snapping the switch on she faced him when he turned surprised to see her there. His eyes seemed to be on fire sunken deep in the red pits of the sockets, his mouth was slack she could see drool drying at the corners of his mouth. She had seen homeless people in sleeping bags worse than this. When she remembered the angel-faced man she had first met, made her ashamed of herself that she loved that man more, than this bedraggled rag of himself, just added to the shame she felt seeing him there a lost man in his own house. She led him to his bed, she did not want to touch him and managed to guide him there without holding or lifting up him off the floor, she did not want to remember his pale hairy belly or his bony arms, so was glad when she left him snoring in his bed along the hall from the bedroom where she lay now washed in sunlight. In her lethargy she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Only the angry banging on the front door shocked her into waking she ran there and asked who it was but the banging on the door was the only answer. Then kicking began and suddenly black boots smashed through the flimsy green painted door. Carl stood there with two massive men standing behind him.

‘What have you done?’ Was her only greeting,

Then men behind hustled Carl into the house.

‘This my house!

‘Carl rents rooms. Get out if my house.’ but the heavies pushed Carl further into the bright, expansive hallway. She, was so angry, she felt like a wall of fire that was stronger than the bullies and could push them out then she could care for Carl. In the light she saw his face was bloody and she could feel the pains panting from his body. The heavy-set men loomed over her. Suddenly she was in terrified scenarios of rape, of pain, of imprisonment. Murder.

One of the guys said to the other:

‘Search the place, get all the money and the jewels we have plenty time get everything that looks valuable. Anything you can think of to cover his debt.’ She wept as the men trashed her house. Later one of them had kicked Carl and kicked even harder and he lay lost and breathing belabouredly as the cash and valuables were taken out by the men with an unbelievable swiftness helplessly, she watched as they took all they wanted and everything she loved about her home was gone or smashed and broken. When they just as swiftly departed, she went to Carl and said a Jewish prayer, an old prayer, and wept her healing tears on his face.

They were gone. Crusted blood closed Carl’s eyes, he was glad he’d been so drunk when Jess and his entourage grabbed him, he knew they’d had hurt him bad cut him, threatened to burn down Jane’s house with her still in it. If he had been sober, he would feel the pain they had inflicted on him burning lit ends of fags on his face, the cuts on his hairy arms as he tried to fend off their knives. ‘We’re going to kill your cat.’ They told him again and again. Through his bloody lips he asked if Chantelle, the pregnant tortoise-shell love of his life was OK. Jane lifted him up off the floor, though she was slight figured and two foot smaller than Carl, she somehow managed to struggle him up into her arms and carry him into her room and lay him on the sunlit bed. As she cleaned most of the blood off him her voice reached him and slowly his terrifying nightmares diminished and he was left in a dreamless slumber until the next day.

As he slept Jane started to tidy up and count her losses, they had taken so much, jewellery her father had given her with all their memories, taken were all of her watches and photographs in their expensive frames, her computer with all her work-she had raced through to her study and starting to really panic for the first time scrambled through all the forgotten crap in one of her desk drawers but finally discovered her Floppy Discs, they’d even gone through the fortune of LP’s she and Carl had collected, so many had gone almost made her weep. As she sat with her legs under her, she began to think of all the things they hadn’t taken and felt such gratitude when she saw this or that, and they hadn’t taken what she had already lost like her father, the memories of him were still safe in her head. Later she went and sat beside Carl, he looked broken, she could clean and salve his body, but she worried that this time she could not fix him.

In the afternoon she made soup and lingered a while in her garden, she pulled up some potatoes and onions, a couple of carrots, and sat on the lawn writing in her journal of that day’s journey. She got lost in the words and wrote for two hours. Surprised by the time she went back into the house and made the broth and had a bowl topped for him and still morning he was awake and smiled at her she couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled and she felt the onset of joy, as he devoured the soup as if he were kissing it, the same joy she had felt when she first met Carl two years ago.

She first met Carl in Radio City, a night club on Sauchiehall Steet.  He had scammed his way into the club and she had laughed as she stood near the entrance, she laughed too at the face annoyance of the feeble bouncer whom he’d befuddled and got by him. Carl didn’t notice her. He went straight to the bar. All night she hoovered around, but he barely noticed the long tawny haired Geography student in her long green dressed that she made herself.

Just before two when the nightclub closed, she went over to him:

‘I saw you.’ She told him smiling

‘What?’ He mirrored her smile.

‘Sneaking in without paying,’ she pointed to the bouncer. ‘You should go back and pay him.’

He laughed, ‘yeah right.’ He turned away gripping tightly onto his final Guinness of the evening, Jane walked to his side. ‘The bars closed can I have a sip of that?’

‘Sure,’

She drank half his pint, Carl looked surprised and a little angry, but drank the rest as quickly as she and together ignoring the busy bouncer left together. Cold was coming up stairs from Sauchiehall Street below. He saw her shiver and offered her his Crombie coat, but she wouldn’t take it. Then once they reached street-level and as the blast wet wind hit her harder, she changed her mind, he took it off and put it over her shoulder. ‘Thanks, Mr Gentle man.’

‘Where are you headed?’

‘George Square I can get a bus to Halfway there. Thankfully the bus is quick this time of night.’

‘Halfway? I like the name. When will you get halfway to Halfway? Where is that?’

‘Over the Clyde.’

Slowly they made off. with the wind it was a long, slow battle to George Square. He took her hand and led her to the shelter of a well-lit shop doorway and started to kiss her; she laughed and pulled away.

‘You have Mick Jagger lips,’ she told him.

‘Have I? No-ones told me that before.’ She gave Carl a quick kiss on them and led him back into the wind. ‘The bus leaves in ten minutes, we’ll have to run.’ And hand in hand they blasted back at the blasted wind down Sauchiehall Street like a wall of cold that they broke through, like a door, or the eye of a storm, through the wind barely aware of it with their speed and laughter and excitedness and they made it to the bus-stop just a minute before the vehicle took off for Halfway. They kissed almost the whole way there they sat at the front seat on the top deck watching the drunks stoting about, and other lovers in their own shop doorways, Carl baulked at stink of the bus a few, no more than a few, drank lagers and bottles of vodka. They would have would’ve missed their stop if Jane hadn’t instinctively looked up as they turned onto her street.

The stop was just passed Jane’s house; she took his hand and led him in, then with his lips of hers Jane started speaking. She was studying Geography at Glasgow University near where Carl had his flat. She could come and visit he told her after she’d finished classes, she said she would.

‘Hillhead Street? What Number?’ She wanted to know.

‘4, Hillhead Street,’ as if he were James Bond speaking his name

‘I go down there every day.’ Finally, they had made their way in after all the wind and alcoholics on the bus. Wrapped in each other, to the end of the hallway she took him into the kitchen and asked him if he wanted a pizza:

‘Obviously.’ He said; she laughed. While they waited for them to cook, she went upstairs and ran a bath. Once the bath was steaming and hot and bubbly and steamed encompassed the bathroom, they brought up their pepperoni pizza’s, undressed together for the first time and ate the food in the bath. Afterwards, after wiping the tomato sauce off his chin, she dashed down the stairs again and fed Justinian the dog and brought up some black grapes from in front of late-night television, laughing at all the weirdos on Channel Four’s late night discussion programme, then once it got boring Jane went to the kitchen to make breakfast soon Carl followed her down, she asked him if he’d take out the garden waste. It was cold as he’d left his Crombie coat in the bathroom, but he spent some time taking in the gardens, recognizing the plants, some he had forgotten name of and some he had never seen before as Justinian peed copiously and shat once. Once in again, the smell of frying bacon sausages mushrooms, Tight Tomatoes and black pudding reminded him of home in Aberdeen. Greedily, as if he had not long before they’d had a 12-inch pizza, he wolfed down the food while Jane with a modicum of dignity ate more slowly and only stepped up the pace when she noticed Carl looking hungrily, almost lustily, at the black pudding and what else left on her plate, he didn’t get a bean, not even when reached out to her plate she forked him on the finger.

They had a good time the next two years, she moved into his house on Hillhead Street and had a long honeymoon of love and sex, after a while they had a room to themselves but, then they spent long times with each other Jane wrote in Carl’s room as he painted in the silent room, sometime in the middle of the night he would knock on her door to show her his latest painting, thrilled the sight of her on the canvas and then he would try to write paltry poems compared to her beautiful words, but he would read them for her and he fell in love with her. Later she was buying him new clothes and food and he was always asking for money to buy painting equipment.

‘You should buy some in the Barrowlands a lot cheaper,’ she advised  one day the first day of the of that day there  in their second year together but he refused to use cheap paints, she knew he was afraid of Barro lands as some yout had kicked Carl one stupid day, always he insisted  ‘I only used  good paint, and all the clothes she bought for him, she never got even 1/2p from him, within a week they were messed covered in paint even his new boots, he was borrowing a fiver or more often a tenner, which he never returned. His crying at the slightest thing pissed her off, they’d make up and both were having the best sex together, then things changed  he refused sex  and he became a born-again Christian and didn’t let Jane in his room in case he was tempted by the lovely Jane, but fell out of faith with goodness and the weeping started up again and he looked ill all time and hid in his room for days, then he started to tell her how excited he was with his plan to do a series on night pictures, he never read her novel anymore or read to her, most nights he was up at Maryland looking down at the city and would try to capture the lights of the immensity of housing estates til they were lost to the horizon. She thought she’d change flats, hating him, but they stayed in the strange house on Hillhead Steet that was as tall and dissolute as a Dreadnought,  the house of her heart, she had loved this place, would always love this place she stayed went to University during the day and stayed in her room in the evening most of the time writing short stories didn’t see Carl much except in the kitchen, it had been over a year they hadn’t had sex, he had not even  intimated that he’d like to do it, but she went out some weekends and Carl made himself sick with jealousy. His new painting left unfinished on his easel and the paint brushes thrown untidily on the floor, something else wasted which had enthused his mind when first he started it, quietly he would sneak through on those weekends she was out and he’d read her stories and extracts from the novel she still hadn’t completed and during those nights he fell in love with her again, or maybe he fell in love with Jane for the first time.

Now. He slowly regained consciousness and all pain that the alcohol had masked swamped over him and he wanted to throw up. He threw up, on himself on Jane’s bright sheets, pillow, blankets, he couldn’t stop himself stopping only when he had rid himself of all that was in his stomach and still he retched, as if his body was telling the poison was himself and puking Carl out of Carl was impossible, then thinking he had made too much noise, fear that had been made present in his life for so long recently, returned that she would hear him and come through and demand answers, that Jez somewhere had heard him and finish him off, that had not already taking everything and return for more. But, then in his head, incomprehensible, were the Jewish words she had spoken over him when Jess’ men had looted their home, and they slowed the pace of his heart and he wiped the tears from his eyes. They were enough, whatever she had said, to remind him of resolve, recall himself before he had met Jess, who he had been before he had started taking that stuff. No, he told himself, no more. And he fell back asleep and woke up hungry and Jane came into room with the soup.

Jane fell weeping angrily onto Carl’s dirty-mattress and unmade bed. She felt filthy, she had emptied the bath once she had brought him back to her bed and had to gush open the cold taps to get the dirt, the blood and puke and shit and stink of him off the enamel, had scrubbed it with a hard brush and used bleach as the annoying noise of the washing machine rose louder and louder in volume, vibrating inside her. She wanted to scream her body demanded that she screamed. She complied and almost intentionally struck her head against the side of the bath. Then the tears came and she felt ashamed and had to hide in his room, she thought, all these years she had thought, that she had consigned such behaviour to infancy, but now she had begun weeping and shuddering and snotting down her face she couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. Yet she did eventually and went to the washing machine and inspected her sheets and hung them in the garden to dry then had a bath herself. She lay there and alone more herself she didn’t know what to do, that she had herself back under control was a relief, but she had to do something as she had washed him, she saw what a mess he was in, really, she should take him up to A+E, then she told herself she was catastrophizing then she began to doubt her own thoughts. Eventually she got out of the bath, dried herself and put on some clean clothes an old pair of denim shorts and a Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt with no sleeves, and put the dirty ones into the machine, but couldn’t bear to put the annoying thing on again. She went back into her room and rummaged about in an old handbag she never used and took out some savlon creme and some antiseptic lotion and until that day fell into dusk and then darkness she slowly and methodically soothed the hurts on his body promising herself she would never cry for him again.

 

 

 

 

Fallen Sparrows by Adam Parry

 

Fallen Sparrows

 

Webbed

I caught the heart thief,

caught her in a pale veil,

like a duvet,  or an armour of song.

Covers over us completely as we levitate on lips.

Until sleep, our protector, is blown away.

Huddling, vulnerable as children,

the Land and sky, you and I, but

watched by baleful stars whose cold light sees all,

thoughtless as cruel necessity.

Inert we lie my love and I

as unnoticed as a fallen sparrow.

Unhoped we too fly off, look

down to see heart-threads mend men’s dreams, and

the fallen sparrows soar.

 

Maybe by Adam parry

 

Maybe I don’t love you.

Maybe I don’t need you.

Maybe I don’t want you.

Then again…

is the sky green? Maybe,

are fish good hill-walkers?

or maybe, just maybe if it isn’t true

I didn’t love you, you. The Earth

is a sausage and I am the mustard you

can’t find.

But, maybe, all of that was a lie.

Just words-a pen cannot choose what to write,

maybe just maybe, if the earth is round,

you and I found that the fish are safe in their sea

I’ll never let you slide

away, my love, my want and need.

Playing poet by Adam Parry

 

Playing poet 

 

Cutting a fine figure

On some historical page

windswept and anxious

bloodshot and lonely.

 

Angst ridden lover, getting

Home on a drunken horse.

Pain free at first light

can’t remember where he’s been,

 

but by mid-afternoon, the

poet’s bored with what he’s never done.

He leaves the sleeping to the new-born

and lies in Judgement’s scorn.

A halfway house to home by Adam Parry

 

She plays clock patience of the carpeted floor of her ward dormitory. She had been playing the solitary game for hours now, she was only half aware of the dormitory’s morning routine. Some of the women went to the TV room, some straight to the smoking room one had a day pass to spend the day with her daughters, as the ward emptied cleaners appeared, they made up the beds and put a blue and white NHS towel at the end of the bed, two cleaners took on the bathrooms and showers none of them noticed Shirley there playing clock patience. Shirley didn’t mind she was used to being invisible, most people barely noticed her, not the nurses, the doctors lost inside their own eyes, but it especially hurt when the others in here, in the locked ward ignored here

Shirley had decided long ago that time was a broken gift, for a long time she wept when she realized that and she did stuff that got her arrested and making a right fuss six months section, she was so angry, why do these other people affect my life so much? Why couldn’t the people in her dreams why could they be real? They saw her, they opened her up and made her laugh, but it was always a long time in this until she was allowed to dream again. She started up another game and slowly swift memories of her dream last night, the one she had woken up with such surprising delight and disappointment, but still…

Shirley trekked all the paths in the forest, especially those she hadn’t gone along before. Above the magpies helped her and, in their ways, guided to the centre of the White Forest. Now the sun was lowering and the magpies would have yawned if they could and one by one slowly flew off for a night in someone else’s nest. All through the night in the star’s lights light footed and then on to the next morning she went wandering on alone, lost. Soon all the food she’d taken from the Palace was gone and as she tired walked all she could think about was jelly

She bumped into a large man, pasty-faced, he seemed to not being able to see Shirley and carried on talking and talking talking, as he was before she knocked into him with fast voice, stumbling over the words, afraid, stuttering:

‘The truth is I am guilty. Extremely. And despite what my lawyer said, the guy had the jury in his palms he had them strung up like puppets. The prosecution team might as well have been somewhere else, he spoke with a booming voice.

Not only did I kill the man I was accused of murdering, as well I murdered a few of his lovers, but let this case bring us all a time of thought and patience, never rush a decision especial when the jury loves, 12 good people, looking like angels I disguise.’

He walked away then almost trembling, taking a cautious look back at Shirley

 Shirley wet into the corridor turned and went in the direction of the refectory she took her fill and starts playing clock patience. And must’ve half dreamt:

She wanders the White Forest and found hidden pathway, but more a graceful avenue that led to the steps into the cloudbanks that took her to the rage of the sun he climbs up hand after hand up the clouds clutching mist as she swam to the cloudless blue where stars shared the sky with the sun and the moon .

The subtle art of killing time by Adam Parry

 

The subtle art of killing time.

 

In town that Saturday Norah Blue bumped into Sylvia a friend of one of her siblings. Sylvia asked her what was she doing in Town.

‘I’m just killing time until I meet Jane,’ Sylvia nose wrinkled as if she were breathing in methane or mustard gas when Nora said ‘killing time.’

Abruptly Sylvia said:

‘Well I’ll be off,’ and she stalked off to the nearest charity shop down the way to the Castlegate end.

Nora tried to dismiss the dirty look and the small, no not small, tiny woman’s dislike she had for those that said killing time as if they had in some obscure way blasphemed. She thought to go into the charity shop and apologize say something like I didn’t want to upset you but instead she fumed for a bit and muttered to herself:

‘What’s wrong with killing time surely it’s better than wasting time or spending time as if time was coinage.’ In a louder mutter, ‘time isn’t something you could buy or sell’ so she decided:

‘I’ll stick with killing time as it’s much more accurate, but maybe I should look in Roget’s Thesaurus,’ and smiled at her sarcasm.

She walked to the cross-roads. She knew she wouldn’t make it across, not without running, before the green man went out, when she made it to the kerb stragglers were still in road but Norah Blue stood there patiently, looking down she saw a £1 coin and smiled broadly as she picked it up despite the brisk, cold wind from the North Sea that carefree blasted on her face almost sending her hat flying. When the light changed slowly she made her way across looking down just in case she found a partner to the £1, much to the annoyance of the hasty bus driver she eventually made it to the other side before the driver broke rank and ran her over.

To her surprise she found herself in a group of protestors demanded the Boycott of Barclay’s bank, one handed her a leaflet. She looked through it and listened to the chants. One of the protestors at the back was trying to get in the doorway of the bank, but was pushed back by the cops determined not to let any of them in. She stood there for five minutes watching as one after another tried to get in but each time the taller, stronger, determined cops pushed them back to the curb. She was slightly disappointed that there were only ten protester and she considered joining them, but her head was turned by the exquisite sounds of a long-haired blonde Japanese electric guitarist outside HMV, slowly she meandered over and put the pound in his receptacle of admiration.

This isn’t ‘killing time,’ Miss Sylvie. It’s enjoying time. She lit up a regal king-size which took her a while in the cold wind until she found shelter in the doorway of Gregg’s. She sucked in the Regal in the doorway listening for a while the beautiful noise the Japanese guy played. Drowning out the protesters. It started to rain so she went under the vestibule of the Infinity Centre. Being a Saturday bag laden people let her hold the door open for them, with not a word of Thanks. Inside there were hordes of them and she wondered if there really was a cost of living crisis.

While she smoked Miss Blue looked at her phone, saw that she only had an hour and a half left to kill before she met with her daughter, stubbing out the cigarette in one of few ashtrays on the particular stretch of shops she thought I will be good and have her as good a day as I’m having. But the crowds of people she dodged and apologized to was tiring her and then spotted the noodle bar Helen had vomited outside and she had to call Jane’s adoptive parents to come and get Helen, Nora had cried that day and glared at the beautiful people who thought she was a mad old lady and was spoiling their day, the looks they gave her as if she saw they had just been baptized as a Satanist.

She went into the Infinity Centre, a gentle man held the door open for her she thanked him as if she had all the time in the world she stopped at every pop up stalls one by one with practiced ease, one sold expensive crystals, others wood carved jungle of animals one she particularly liked was a giraffe but it was ridiculously expensive but she admired the wood carvers’ skills, there was cheaper small elephant that would look good in her collection and she paid the price gladly, perhaps she would give it to Helen and get another for herself, but she had to keep money back to pay for the cinema and get Jane a burger after the film, she had her face in her head she was so beautiful and still little reaching up to her hip, she only saw her every second month now, and Nora’s excitement was building, she wondered if Jane had got any taller, last time she’d seen her daughter had put on weight and that had made her sad, she was still at Primary School, her so-called adoptive parents were feeding her too much. Nora said to herself she should give them a hard time, but they’d probably ignore her.

Less than an hour until she saw Jane now and her excitement built up, buoyed and walking lightly as the floor of the centre was covered in cotton wool she made it down the thirty steps to the toilet wondering if she would get back up the steps once she’d peed however she did, slow as an old woman she was not quite yet, but it killed some time, but irritatingly three kids and heavily laden grandmother bumped into her as she reached the tops and almost slipped back, they barged by at her side without a ward of apology.

Breathless she went to the new blue plastic moulded seat and reached it before someone else could steal it from her. Slowly she managed to regulate her breathing and took a book out of her bag, an Anne Enright she was halfway through, but because of the noise in the Infinity Centre she couldn’t concentrate  so marked the page and put it back in her bag.

She wondered if it was Christmas that no-one had let her know it was Christmas, but she was sure Christmas was two month away, it’s supposed to be a cost of living crises - these crowds obviously had so much money they didn’t give the pan handlers a penny.

Soon now, she smiled as she checked the time on her phone, resting she concentrated the people passing: couples with kids; other kids without their parents shouting and scarily involved in play fights; everywhere there were women with red dyed-hair of all the colours of the rainbow, emos in pink-hair all black with chains and disgusting tattoo’s one every spare piece of flesh. an army of middle-aged men heading for the Lewis’ sale and women with fixed determination in their eyes avoiding the male gaze. Time seemed like a TV show on fast forward, and dizzied Nora’s eyes.

Then she saw when crowds parted a teenage lassie by the hole in the wall, she was crying and at the same looking around then a well-dressed, immaculate man approached, the girl’s sobbing intensified she looked like a wean who’d never got what she wanted. The gentleman asked her if she was OK. Although Norah couldn’t  hear what they were saying it was obvious what was going, the actress was laying it on thick, her false face wet with tears, the gentleman was taken in. She looked fifteen but was probably thirteen she managed to control her sobs the look of palpable relief spoke on his face, and she told him of what a terrible day she’d had, she’d been robbed she was trying to contact her mum but she wasn’t answering, could he give her some money. I’ll pay you back, she undoubtedly told him, I’ll give you my address. He fell for it and when he took out his wallet, her eyes fixed on it then quick as a cobra she grabbed his wallet and ran. Norah thought I could’ve told him what would happen minutes ago, The girl legged it to the steps down to the car park. He started to chase after her, but, Nora thought, you’ve nay chance. And Nora laughed at the tragi-comedy she just witness free of charge. Hope, she thought, Helen doesn’t turn out like that when she grows up. She tutted and tutted guilty that she had laughed so loud.

Nora now was over-heated  and crowded by the other shoppers. The plastic chair had begun to have her sweaty so she levelled herself onto her feet looked at her phone again and her heart sank, the telephone exhorted cruelly that there was still an hour until she saw her daughter.

Had time stopped? It had been at an hour away when sat down and she felt she’d been there an hour itself. She had to think about what she could do to kill this extra hour, but couldn’t think of anything, but she looked forward to the meal they’d have and the animated film they’d see and heart almost broken lifted a little.

She took the forty steps where across the road at the bottom of steps was the Disunion Square as she called it during the Scottish Independence Referendum.

There before she crossed of an unhappy looking homeless guy who was invisible at least to the people in front of her, but when Nora got to the pavement she told him what a rascal his dog was beside him was and pulled out an unopened packet of biscuits and put it beside the recycled old McDonalds cup with 5p at the bottom. He looked at her as  if she’d given him the Black Death, poor thing she thought.

Further along the pavement there was set of traffic lights, on the far side there were at huge group of people straining at the leash, for the green mannie to light and when it did they rushed over into Nora’s path a brightly clothes wall of flesh, she felt as invisible as the homeless guy, she tried to get out of their way and missed the lights and stood as impatiently as they to cross the road. But, it killed some time. As she was crossing a car blared it’s horn at her and made her jump in fright. Safely over the road she recalled she had all the Nero loyalty card stamps and was due a free coffee.

Slowly she walked by the smokers outside the Disunion Square  and went into the new Nero’s she hadn’t been in before. Inside it seemed over-heated and even more crowded than the Infinity Centre, but she put herself in the queue and watched the barista’s as well-practiced swiftly worked the queue down to Nora, the was a tall black guy and another fatter in comparison black guy who seemed to be doing all the work, the two lassies behind the counter looked lost as if it  were their first day at the job, he’d made three flat whites for some grumpy tourists fresh from the train station across the entrance to the Arcade, while the lassies made an expresso between them. 

She had thought about getting a gift card for Helen, she’s too young she told herself. Those two better not have been letting her drink coffee. She’s too young. Too young she wanted to shout at Helen’s adoptive parents, but they weren’t there for her to shout at, scream at.

She gave one of the new girls her Loyalty card and asked for a double expresso, with milk on the side.

She looked round for a seat holding tightly the tray there were none nearby so she cautiously went to the back of the coffee shop, all the leather upholstered seats and tables were occupied except for one under a window. She poured the milk in to the black liquid and stirred three sugars.

Everybody seemed to be speaking so loudly, across the way a young woman was oblivious to the world around her on her laptop, further away an angry man was chiding who Nora presumed was car mechanic who hadn’t fixed his car properly.

At a table under another window three Chinese woman were laughing giddily at what Nora hadn’t a clue but it must’ve been incredibly funny by their reaction. All the rest were doom scrolling on their phones as if they had nothing better to do. One of the Chinese woman shrieked with hilarity getting on Nora’s nerves she sounded like someone playing a saw on a Stradivarius, angrily she slurped down her coffee and got out of there. At least it was free. She stood by a bin and lit up her penultimate Regal.

She looked about her, cigarette butts were everywhere. Look, she shouted inside, there’s a bin there and just over there were the blind?

Thirty minutes until she’d see Helen’s pretty face, yet she eyed every passing kid to make sure they weren’t her daughter, some looked like her, but on closer inspection, disappointedly dismissed them all.

She pointedly stubbed out her cigarette into the bin and went in the Disunion Square.

Seemed cooler in here than she had been all afternoon, and spacious as if the world had gone to bed early. She took the escalator towering over a Costas, up to the first floor where all the restaurants and the cinema’s were.

She dismissed almost all the restaurants, as she had done with the children who looked vaguely like her daughter, as she past them, one had intolerable food another they had been in too many times, others that had bad memories for her and stopped to look at the advertisements outside the cinema to see what was on, then went in and used the machine, Helen had told how to use it.

Her feet were sore, but some kids had taken over the massage chairs outside the foyer so she went over to the bar and ordered a second expresso this time with no milk. Apart from herself the bar was empty even the vast foyer with it popcorn machines and rows of sweeties was almost empty except for the young woman who checked the tickets before going in - once she’d seen the lassie in the street she’d completely ignored Nora – she’d do the same to her today as if she were nothing.

Stupidly she had chosen to sit on a high stool at the bar and wobbled about a bit and as her coffee arrived the shrill of the phone in her bag on the floor echoed in the lonely foyer. She almost tipped over onto the sticky floor in her haste to answer it, when she saw who was calling she almost wept.

‘I’m sorry Nora.’ He said. ‘Helen’s sick.’ Nora could hear the woman in the background saying:

‘Tell her she’s been in and out of the toilet since six.’

Nora wanted to scream and break her phone on the cheap marbled bar.

‘Yeah.’ He said distracted. ‘Helen’s really bad she won’t be able to meet you.

Nora hung up.

She ordered a vodka straight and sipped it slowly as if it was time and looked at her phone.

Only 35,712 hours until I see her. Plenty of time to kill. She hid her phone in her pocket and ordered another vodka, a double this time. No ice.

 

He's leaving home by Adam Parry

 
In touch with unreality
in a cocoon of metal and glass –
flying in the dark.
Home ahead, behind home
as the orange light of the motorway
speeds the bus on.
There is no air out there
only gravity in here
stuck to the tartan double-seat
some sleep
some snore
some eat crisps noisily
and just sit
homesick already
or read in the orange light
lose track of the words
and others
just sit and stare
at the unreality out there
all so warm and unafraid
unaware of adventure
                                  just a fingertip away.
Not yet knowing what they’ll find
who they’ll be
no time to take it all down
in my book and too soon
we are there.