Chapter Seven.
The days, then the months went by, each one followed as a
string of forgotten days, the months echoing the rain in him, the months of mist
that seemed sheeted on the dusty green of trees beyond the front window, all
alike as if the Earth was in mourning. He read, wrote his journal, saw his
daughter, and read some more. But he
didn’t write, he lived in abject fear of the computer after he had tried to
find out what had happened to a woman called Jacs he had known in Glasgow. She
had given birth to his son; on a website he had found his son’s obituary. He thought he might have wept, but he
didn’t. Numbness fell over him, beneath
the medicated pillows of his head; a great rage formed and grew within him. He
stopped calling folk so much, sleeping so much, and didn’t eat. He wanted to run. He wanted another adventure
into the unknown. But now he was a coward, and he saw only barriers to his
desires. After a while it became easier, once more he got used to the emptiness
of the world about him, got used once more to his game of loneliness and though
he struggled he began to write.
chapter one- where our hero smiles in the first time in
years, dances, is thrown out of a pub, and then performs a few sneaky kisses.
I hadn’t been to the monthly poetry group in Books and
Beans before though I had been thinking about going for about five years and
every time the last Thursday of the month passed, I would flagellate myself
wildly. I took along ‘Song upon the Flame’, just in case. I didn’t know the
routine. Upstairs of the cafe and
bookshop, clutching a coffee, I made my way through to a seat at the back,
fortuitously beside the sci fi section, the place was humming with
conversations and the light in the room was bright and warmly lit. Slowly
people began to settle. On the row beside
me was a couple of guys chatting away to each other, in the seat next to me sat
a lassie, quite tall looking with a long beige coat and hiking boots. I
wondered if she was the fabled Rowena who wrote a lot about King Arthur and his
ilk who I heard about at the odd group when I had mentioned one of my own
stories in the same vein. Then proceedings got started.
I tried quite successfully to focus on the tale about the
poet Rilke and enjoyed the reading of the poet’s work. Halfway through a well-dressed
but harassed looking guy came in with a laptop and sat on a stool by the
counter in front of me. I began to drift away and looked along the rows of sci
fi and fantasy books. Got that one. And
those two and, none of L Ron Hubbard’s ten-part trilogy of arse wipe. He looked
with certain adoration at Stephen Donaldson’s epics read them all at least
three times. Only two years, 6 days and a few moments until the final instalment
of the latest Tom Covenant saga coming out. O happy day.
The latecomer in front of me went forward and took centre
stage. I managed to easily focus on the guy’s voice and saw more of Rilke’s
poetic Identity. The leader of proceedings, Arthur, apologised but the speaker had
no more time and next there were to be some of the gathering’s poems. Arthur
asked me if I wanted to read one. I said I would. I thought Rapunzel Wizard
read out the best one. Me and the lassie beside me were next. I read the title
poem of A Song upon the Flame. Didn’t stutter and performed it quite well,
afterwards Rapunzel and the guy beside me gave me an appreciative look. I made
my way downstairs once the group was done and dusted to have a smoke; Rowena followed
behind. When I lit up, she made an exasperated
noise. But I decided to disregard it and followed a couple of lassies who had
been the first to escape into a pub opposite. I got a pint and saw the women
settling into seats at the back. I got a
seat by the window considering whether or not to speak to them, but realised I
didn’t have the bottle. I had another pint then left dejectedly. I walked down
to The Moorings but that place was pretty dead and I didn’t want to hang about
so I went up to a pub at the corner of Union Street. Rob the Artist was there
reading The Times. I was glad to see a familiar face. I chatted away to
him. Told him about the Rilke poems and
signed the copy of ‘Song upon the Flame’ to him.
‘I’ve given one to most of my friends; you’re my friend
so this is yours.’
Somehow, I managed to drag him down to The Moorings and a
bought him some of the lager I call amnesia brew, telling the barman that I’d
lost a couple of hours the last time I drank it. Made the barman laugh. We got
a table a where Chinese woman and pixie short girl were talking beside us. I
didn’t at all resist the urge to speak to the Chinese girl, but pixie lady
asked me what I was doing and told me her friend was married. I apologised a couple
of times and smiled at Bob and shot myself in the head with nicotine-stained fingers.
I felt an urge to leave. So, we traipsed up to O’Neill’s near where I’d started
from in Books and Beans. The barmaid wouldn’t serve me a drink but poured me a
pint of water - was she being sarcastic or obtuse? I wondered if the girl knew how much money I’d
invested in here back in the day when I used to projectile vomit across Union
Street. I took a few sips of the water and
decided to leave. As I went out the door, I bumped into Phil a homeless guy
with a mass of hair and the same clothes he was wearing the last time I passed
him in the street months ago.
‘D’ya wants a fiver? D’ya wants to go for a drink?’ I
said as if I’d known Phil all my life though I’d never spoken to him before. We
went to one round the corner. She behind the bar wouldn’t serve me.
‘Whyni?’ I complained.
She pointed at Phil. ‘He’s been banned for drinking from other people’s
drinks.’
I turned and set out, Phil in my wake. We frogmarched to The Prince of Wales and we
got served this time. We sat quietly I couldn’t think of a single thing to
speak to Phil about so I waffled at him intensely until I decided to go off
again along the cobbles of Belmont Street to the last bar on the right. Not long after I started dancing on the empty
dance floor and falling over, a gracious barman asked me to leave. I apologised
and left, got into a taxi I don’t know what I did when I got back to my bit,
but I must have gone off planet for a while.
Chapter 2- Our hero finishes work, feeds the cats and
illuminates his excess of methane expulsion.
For a while people started to neglect their duty of care
towards me and stopped treating me with their obligatory respect and deference.
I decided that the decision to run as a local community councillor should be
rescinded as these, ‘my peers and contemporise’, obviously no longer needed the
sacrifices, effort and time I bestowed upon them.
I delivered the last copy of The Sun into the last
letterbox; my musings came to a halt.
‘Only 7.30am and my day is done.’ I thought with surprise.
I sighed. Tomorrow was the Sundays, bent double like old
beggars under sacks. I took out my Guardian, just a slip of a thing these days
and walked back to my bit reading the bullshit. My shoelaces like four snakes
on hunger strike trailed behind me trying impetuously to trip me but failing
pathetically at every attempt.
An attack of cats greeted me at the door. Eva the
sprightly three-year-old dashed into the morning without her breakfast. Emily Tortoise Shell nineteen summers young
followed me like a loyal servant to the cat bowl and eyed me with round, greedy
and yellow greens. I opened the can I’d carried since first thing in the
morning.
Emily ate. I said afterwards:
‘Well make me a coffee’. But she went to sit on the red
armchair where a shard of sunlight remained.
I tried to read the paper. But, after smoking three
cigarettes I lost track of the words.
‘All propaganda and balderdash,’ and I threw it down to
the side of the ebony sofa as I lay there.
For a while I looked up at the smoke dim ceiling and
decided for the thirtieth time since last weekend to paint it. But, I felt the
pain in my back, the endless screaming of tinnitus.
I tried to block it out by making up buzzwords in my
head;
50 Shades Of Puce
The Psychiatrist’s Pneumatic drill
The Homeopath’s Heartache
No Country for Middle-aged Men.
I supposed I should write it all down, but once all the
desk drawers in my head were stuffed, more buzz words and phrases came along
drifting into the teeming filing cabinets in my head the next buzzwords came along
then another like that spider.
I put on the radio. The theme tune of The Archers came on
so I stuck it off straight away.
The first PPI compensation call of the day banged me back
into reality. I let the phone ring out. A thud of the letterbox sprang me into
action.
I’d been recycling three or four times a day to get me
out on Saturdays. I sent the lonely Scientologist’s letter straight to be
pulped, unopened. I even forgot to tear off the stamp.
I suddenly felt like going to Edinburgh and bombing Scientologist
HQ. They’d been trying to communicate since 1980. Briefly I considered starting
my own wee cult. But I realised it would be too much effort.
I took my morning dose of Uncle Depressants. Then took
tomorrow’s too and sat on the step by the front door.
Chapter 8
A month passes, two, then another, already dust was
gathering on the passport somewhere in a drawer. If he thought about it, it was
only to regret the energy and money he’d wasted on the wee bits of papers and
bonny pics he would never now probably use. Apart from his cats everything
seemed to get further and further away from him. Each day he told himself that
he should pop out to Dyce and see William, he had appointments with the Mental
Hygienist, Simone, but he missed about four, either cancelled them or just
didn’t turn up. When three months –since Helen – passes, months filled with
torpor and TV, trips out to get the cats food or trips down to the library to
take books he’d not read still he barely saw a soul much, apart from Rachael
and Lara. Yes, he called William, Dad sounded so much mellower on the phone,
but Ash knew if he’d been Skyping his Dad he wouldn’t feel content actually
seeing how frail he was. His sister, Veronica called, mainly to tell him how
busy she was and what the buzz was in her back garden – the hydrangeas are fair
taking off. Right. Lovely. Ash could barely stop himself from hanging up
some days. He’d call Martha, the poet in her crystal city, but he almost always
regretted it, before and after he did it. Ash would think about the
conversation thinking after all these years do I know her? Am I the same with a’body?
He filled the days with movies and TV shows on computer websites, unable to
move away from the mouse, clicked on the next show or film, the contents of the
film being sucked into an empty black hole, then after that the next, and the next
filling the screen the actors’ lives reflected in his glasses and gray crusted
eyes. Flicking, clicking over and over the next and the next as if he were searching
out some obscure idea in CCTV footage, searching perhaps for a little truth,
someone to chat with, but just these 24/7 images of emptiness clogging up his
head and soul, denying existence to his soul. He would always get by just
watching another then it was to find some excuse to get out and escape Culter. But
there was always cat food to get, and gas, yes there was the TV license, and
food. Fucking food. It drove him insane the demands of his body to go up and
down to the Mace day after day and coming back with nothing he wanted.
One week around about the time of the Olympics Veronica
turned up just as he was about to pack up his rage like a tent and leave it
there in a shed, or cupboard until his next camping trip, but he hadn’t sealed
it away too well, or hidden it properly in the silent shed. He and Veronica
were having their day with Lara which was normal, once a year, during summer. They
were going to get a pizza and... well that was about it. Lilith liked pizza,
Veronica used to make fine pizzas, but she was always too busy these days what
with William and Ronnie, he seemed in need of more care than Dad. Needs a bloody minder what with some of the things
he comes out with, Ash thought as Veronica came in the front door. Almost at
once the metaphorical tent of rage spilled out of the cover, out of the shed, and
took off on a really strong gust of a wind. She sat in the back garden almost
instantly knowing it would piss him off and started reading a stolen GP’s copy
of the Reader’s Digest. Hypocrite, he thought. The ding-dong soon started.
‘What the hell are you doing here? If you’ve just come to
read then you can just do it in your car.’
That started it.
‘Don’t you start shouting and swearing at me.’
‘Swear at you, I’ll rip your fucking throat...’
‘Right, that’s it. I’ll be in the car if you still want
to see your daughter.’
He threw his howls of rage at her like sugar free custard
pies and slammed the door behind her.
Lara. Lara, he thought for what seemed an hour, as if the
word could make him better.
He called Veronica’s mobile.
‘Hello, hello. Have you left yet?’
‘What?’
‘Have you left?’
‘No, I’m just outside your house.’ He looked out the
window but couldn’t see the car, as if some joker had covered the window with a
picture of the road outside, with all the life missing from it. But he trusted
Veronica if she says she’s there she must be there. She came up to him
flinching as he locked the door.
‘Can I use the toilet?’
He let her in and dashed to the sanctuary of the car,
avoiding speaking to the old couple who must’ve heard the shouting and were
trying to see what was going on.
Veronica had a five-minute conversation with them about
her blooming hydrangeas. He almost hit the windshield with his head trying not
piss tears from his eyes.
Come on come on come on. We’re going to be late.
Veronica eventually got in the car, but before they’d
even driven twenty meters down the hill Ash was letting rip. The scythe of his
words though was blunt, all the blame he cast at her with yelling and
expletives seemed to fall on her like soft rain. He tried all the old
arguments, brought those same incidents that he’d tried to stab her with over
the years. But today the knife was a dummy. He tried something new, her
childlessness – this would do it and they’d both die in the crash as she tried
to attack him and the car spun out of control, but he might as well have been
offering her a mouldy biscuit. Her face stretched out onto the road. He started
the old wounds bleeding, but now they bleed very little, could easily be
brushed away like a solitary tear. He would have floods, but he didn’t get it.
He wasn’t surprised when she swore; he could see it
coming, but not what came next. He wasn’t expecting this.
‘Get out of the car.’ She swung over to the side of the
road. ‘Just get out.’
He stayed sat. ‘I’ve just won a fiver. I wagered myself
that I could get you to say the f word before mushie season and the c word by
Christmas.’
‘Well, you’ve won your bet you cunt!’ She swung round at
him. ‘Just get out of the car.’
Inside he was apologising to himself. What am I doing?
What am I doing? I just want to see Lilith, why am I such a pathetic little
man.
‘O come on Vers I was just bored, we said we’d be there
at 2.’ All his mannerisms and voice changed in an instant, an actor daddy in
control. He told himself to try not to kill the designated driver.
‘Vers? Where is it, we’re going?’
‘Gordon’s.’
‘Right.’
Slowly she made her way back into the traffic and they
drove toward Gray’s School of Art and the Robert Gordon’s Sports Complex where
Lara was involved in a holiday club. Once there they made their way to the
large gymnasium on the bottom floor where Lara and a tribe of about 100 summer
orphaned primary schoolers were rehearsing for the Group show. Ash saw a poster
for it, everyone was invited, oh, that’ll be quite a good thing to do. He
craned his head around the gymnasium door and finally saw Lara, older it seemed
than the others as she picked her way over bags and crossed legs with a look of
relief at Ash, she made her way towards them.
He wanted to hold her, but for her sake he’d keep it
cool.
‘What’s this about a show...?’
‘Hello Auntie Veronica.’
‘Were you going to do something?’ Veronica asked.
Skirting the question, Lara said: ‘Those boys are doing break-dance,’
and pointed in the vague direction of the open door of the gym.
‘Look’, Auntie Veronica said, ‘they’re climbing walls all
the way up the building. Do you want to do some climbing?’
To Ash’s relief Lara said no in response. The last time
the three of them had gone on the climbing walls at the Extreme Sports Club by
the beach he had shit himself, literally.
By default, they went to the cafe a floor above, he
bought them juice and he a healthy sugar-based cup of coffee while they watched
the Summer tribes of kids down below in the Gym rehearse their acts for the
show. By default, afterwards they went to ASDA and Ash did his weekly shop with
lots of help from his daughter. Veronica had gone off somewhere, probably to
stick needles in a voodoo doll of Ash, so they trailed through the desolation
of products and by increments his trolley filled. He thought somewhat perturbed
that he might be getting too many chocolate biscuits. But, he rationalized, I
have a Visa card and I know how to use it
At the checkout Veronica returned, like Gandalf always
turning up at exactly the right moment and surveyed his trolley.
‘Did you get pizza?’
‘Oh-...’ Ash mumbled so they all traipsed back from the
queue to where the variety of fresh pizza was on display. He remembered the plan
was pizza in the garden. Oh, not the garden ritual again, he thought and
imagined the three of them hunched outside on his patch of green eating their
food in the ‘sunshine’ of ‘summer’ like a small family of crows on a telegraph
poll. He really didn’t want to drag Lara back to his bit, cat stink heights. He
remembered that Veronica had been redecorating her study, he had said before
that he’d go round and see it although he hadn’t, perhaps they could do that,
he thought slightly excited by the idea. Veronica though was having her regular
dose of road rage so the thought went out of his head
‘You’re so selfish and you don’t even know it,’ Veronica
had said during his earlier fit of apoplexy. As if he didn’t. I’ve been selfish
and mean all my life and I have no way of knowing how to stop. I’m a pathetic,
cruel little schizo. He felt the voice
of William in his skull when she’d spoken pleading with him to help and visit
him. Ash scowled at himself in the side mirror, hearing the voice and knew it
was too easy to ignore and he would just go on smoking and smoking, clicking
and clicking to shut out the voice, that wasn’t real anyway. Finally, some Audi
let them out onto the roundabout.
Back in the back garden where the mood of the heat and
sunlight had changed and seemed to be healing the pain between sister and
brother they ate their pizza, though not like scrounging, unhappy crows but as
if they were on the side of a vast open air swimming pool their eyes open to
the cornucopia of life, the grass splashing, the birds like high divers
swooping about them and the familiar sight of the garages like bored faced life
guards up on their airy step ladders.
To close his special daddy day, one once again ruined by
his mood, Veronica and Lara surfed the web for laptops and phones; he had to
quell his rage for a while so he paced about from garden to bedroom wondering
why they bothered as they were probably not going to buy anything. ‘A phone for
fucking £400 and they call me crazy.’ he thought.
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