Cobra Spit

Cobra Spit

About the second or third night after you told me you didn't want to see me any more
and stopped returning my calls
I walked into a bar I'd never been in before
and ran into a girl (who wasn't you)
who looked at me twice.

No one had looked at me twice in the longest time
least of all you
so after some small talk
and a few drinks
I invited her home to my new and unfamiliar bedsit
and she said no
let's go to mine
I just bought a new bed.

She was nothing like you
being smaller and less pretty
but something about the way her dark eyes peered at me
from beneath the bleached strands of her fringe
reminded me of the way you used to look at me when you thought I didn't know
and it really got to me -
As though I was unexplored territory and she had a flag all unfurled and ready to plant
and I realised that life hadn't got at her yet
hadn't begun to grind her down or crush her.

When we got to her place she searched in her bag for her key
until I kissed her
and then she kissed me back
very gently.
We stayed that way for a while till we were both a little short of breath
and I took the key from her and opened the door.

Inside we were less reserved
and within thirty seconds we were more or less completely undressed
and laughing in each others arms.


When I slid her jeans from her legs I found a tattoo of a cobra winding round her thigh
so high no one could have seen it ordinarily
head rearing over her belly
poised and ready to strike at her sex.
I kissed the cobra
kissed her mouth
and then her legs closed tightly around my hips
and with her heels
she pulled me to her.

And then I froze.
I could feel the cobra moving between my skin and that of the girl-who-wasn't-you
and as it raised it's head and inspected me I wanted to shut my eyes
but I couldn't.
And I could see now that it wasn't a King Cobra as I had first imagined
but a Spitting Cobra
which had me firmly in it's sights.
Only instead of spitting into my eyes
it was drawing something out of them
something milky and translucent and poisonous and sticky
which had been there a long time without my knowing it
stopping me from seeing clearly.

Which was exactly when I realised that this time you really meant it
that this was not one of your 'Needing Space' separations.
Not one of the times when you had better things to do than me
or been distracted by a more interesting guy than me
or become embarrassed by the difference in our ages.
This was no meltdown
you'd simply had enough
and you were gone for good.

Back in the here and now
I found I was lying very still in the arms of a girl I'd only just met
and who'd been generous enough to invite me home with her.
She too was lying still.
On her new bed.
Beneath me.
Wrapped around me.
And terribly
terribly
still.

I focused my eyes and looked
into those of the girl whose bed I lay in
no more than a hands width away from my own
and she asked
very softly
if I was alright.
I swallowed hard and said I thought I was.
And then I asked her the same question
and she nodded without speaking
but her lips were pursed
and I said I was sorry
and she nodded again.

After the shimmering silence which followed
she said she thought it might be best if I went home
and now it was my turn to nod without speaking
and I began the long search in darkness and unfamiliar surroundings
for my clothes.

Outside my door when I got home was a black bin bag
containing the last of my things from your flat.
Balanced on top was my battered old copy of Solaris
and the poems and stories I'd written for you.
And I realised that everything I thought I knew was gone
and that I could never go back to my comfy limited version of the world
or my place in it.

I went into my new kitchen
and I sat at my new table
and I wondered what you were going to do
and I wondered what the-girl-who-wasn't-you was going to do
but most of all I wondered what I was going to do.

Through my window
a flash of blue neon from a passing emergency vehicle
on it's way to save someone who wasn't me
punctuated the night sky.
And I sat and waited for it to be morning so I could go to work.

And sat. And waited.

And sit. And wait.



*

*

Nameless.

That particular Saturday night we'd been drinking for hours. I finally decided I'd had enough and said I was heading for home.

The girl I was sitting drinking with wanted to know, What about her?

I laughed, and said she could do what she wanted – she was a friend of a friend of an acquaintance, probably half my age and no real concern of mine. I said I'd put her in a cab, but she said she had no money left and didn't want to put me to any trouble, then added she'd rather sleep on my couch, IF it wasn't any bother to me.

We walked back to mine and on the way she slipped her arm through mine and we shuffled on like that till we got to my house.

I offered her coffee, but she said she'd rather have some wine, which I didn't have; so we ended up perched on chairs at my table, sipping orange juice and talking about nothing.

After a while I said I was going to bed, and fetched her some bedding which I put on the couch.

With her tongue showing slightly out of the corner of her mouth, she gave me a couple of sideways looks but didn't speak, as I made her up a bed, showed her the bathroom, and then told her goodnight.

I was too tired too shower, so I threw my clothes on the floor where I stood to undress, then flopped onto my bed and laid there staring at the ceiling like always.

I must have fallen into a light sleep and turned onto my side, because I felt, rather than heard the bedroom door opening behind me, and then felt the bedsprings compress as she climbed on the bed next to me, lifted the covers and snuggled into my back.

Her small breasts felt pointed as they brushed the skin of my arm, and I could feel her pubic hair tickle my leg, as one of her hands crept down my stomach.

All I could think of was how one of my uncles used to do the exact same thing to me every night when I was small, and of how he taught me to keep my mouth shut and say nothing to anyone, no matter what; and of what I did to him when I grew bigger and stronger than him.

After that there was no hope of doing anything, no matter what she tried with her hands and mouth, and pretty soon she gave up.

I felt her tense up against my back, then relax as her tears came, and then she was trembling and sobbing helplessly onto my shoulder, and it became impossible to stop my own tears from boiling up inside me and spilling into her hair.

I didn't know the source of her pain, but it seemed to me that all the pain and hurt I had ever experienced welled up and burst that night.

All the years of lying.

All the years of hiding myself away.

All the trouble I had caused for my family and friends, without them ever understanding why.

All the destructive relationships with boys and girls, both, that littered the wrecked pathways of my broken life, and the constant fear of being discovered for what I did to my uncle came flooding out in a terrible, gushing, outpouring of emotions I didn't even know I possessed, and, for the first time in forty years, I began to cry.

I turned to the girl, took her in my arms, and naked together, we cried like the children we both were. Clinging together like the last two people in a burning building from which there was no escape; until our hair and the bedsheets were soaked through; until exhausted we finally slept, still entwined in each other's arms.

For the first time in my life I didn't dream.

I slept like a fallen tree – and when I woke the next morning she was gone, and I never found her again, though I have searched ever since.

And I don't even know her name.

*

*



I dreamed a dream of solace
in a borrowed bed;
And woke to find the strands of love unwinding from
my bloody head
like barbed wire from a broken fence
that tears the skin.

The fire was ash, and
silence reigned;
the sheets were rags upon my new-grown limbs that
once were maimed -
and echoes bore into the present tense
from deep within.

Your finger bones lay draped
across my heaving chest;
and mossy pools were formed where once blue eyes your
face had blessed -
where love once shone, a skull's blank gaze
met mine.

My feet made stricken imprints on
the splintered floor;
a careless breeze caressed me, as I tore away the
crumbling door
and stumbled down the ruined stairs, half crazed
into the night.

And in the streets all
life had fled;
all life had passed and gone, while I lay sleeping in your
rotting bed -
immortal, while your last embrace grew cold
upon my dreaming flesh.

I dreamed a dream eternal
of a stolen throne;
then woke to claim the empty world I own and
rule alone -
I dared to touch the face of love, grew old -
and found myself instead.




*

She made me cry
then caught my tears,
and, challenging my jagged sighs of sullen grief,
she soared beyond my ethereal fears.

She made me laugh,
amazement bred.
With disbelief - emotion taught as singing wires -
my cultured air of carelessness was shed.

With discontent
my heart she stole.
Consumed me with her subtle flame. Then coaxing,
with her savage grace - unveiled my certain soul.




*

(Earth Borne) Cities of Dust – a love story.

Ever since I was a kid I have thought of cemeteries as being cities of dust. My Gran used to take me to help her tend my Grandfather's grave when I was small. It always seemed to be Easter when we went. Maybe we went other times, but I can't recall it ever being another time of year so maybe that was when he died; I'm slightly ashamed to say I don't know even to this day. I guess that losing my Mum when I was too young to remember anything about her might have given me an outlook that didn't attach too much significance to the actual dates of such things, who knows?

I used to run up and down the gaps between the graves when I got bored with Gran's clipping and pruning, until she got mad and yelled at me to stop being so disrespectful. It didn't seem disrespectful to me, the lanes between the graves were just right for playing in, with large roads and intersections for me to cart imaginary lorry loads of goods along.

The variety of grave styles never ceased to impress me, particularly the ones with layers of frosted glass fragments on them, which I thought of as being precious gemstones. I would fill my pockets with different coloured glassy pieces, hoping to get away with sneaking them home to play with, but I was always ordered to turn my pockets out and return everything to their rightful places before we left to go to the bus stop.

As I played, I would find myself gradually being drawn further and further away from my Grandfather's plot, past my aunts and great-uncles last resting places, and into unfamiliar territory, where people had names other than Williams or Boswell. There seemed to be no end to the population of this city, and I would sometimes vaguely wonder what the citizens did when they got bored with simply lying around in their neat little walled off plots. Coloured glass or no, there had to be some limit to the amount of resting-in-eternal-bliss a body could go along with.

One sunny autumn day, years later, when we buried my Gran there too, I found my dad kicking leaves away from old family graves, thinking about who-knows-what when he should have been shaking hands with the mourners, little knowing that he was only five months away from his own neat little plot there. I wish now that I'd asked him what was on his mind, but what can you do? You can't know what you don't know – as the old feller himself was so fond of saying.

As I grew older and lost friends to motorcycles and needles, I became a regular up at the old cemetery, even going there at night from time to time when I couldn't sleep, to stand at the gates with my head pressed against the ironwork in the darkness. It really wasn't that I was being morbid, at least, I don't think so. It was just that I could never reconcile the vibrant living personalities still so clear in my mind with the conspicuous and painful absences from my everyday life. I felt sure that if I tried often enough then sooner or later I would feel the presence of one of them from beyond the grave. How could everything simply stop, just because of a heart attack or motorcycle accident?

That's where I met the love of my life – in the City of Dust that had become so familiar to me over the years.

I had gone up there on my beaten-up old Honda - that just wouldn't quit no matter how badly I treated it - in a moment of supreme desolation at yet another fragment of my life having recently departed without so much as a goodbye. I was sick of it, frankly, and had it in mind to hurl abuse at the occupants of one or two of the oldest graves at their unwillingness to keep in touch with those of us still stuck in the mortal world. They didn't call or write – nothing. What were we supposed to think? Didn't they care any more? Selfish bastards, I was beginning to hate them.

I decided to start on my Dad, to be going on with. I stood at the foot of his grave and began to let him have it. When he took no notice, again, I lost it, and started to jump up and down on the mound of grassy earth that covered him, calling him all the ignorant tosspots under the sun, and that's when I first became aware I was no longer alone in the previously deserted cemetery.

Imagine you are a working in a burger bar; you like your job and enjoy meeting the customers, and pride yourself on being cheerful and helpful at all times. Imagine then that one of your regulars comes in with a large group of family and friends and asks that you make a special effort to look after everyone, promising, with a wink, to see you alright if you do a good job, only to place a live scorpion in your hand as he leaves, still smiling and saying thank you. Imagine the expression you might have on your face at this point and you have a pretty good idea of how Danielle looked the first time I ever set eyes on her. Well, I was jumping up and down on the grave of my father, remember.

I stopped jumping up and down and stared right back at her. She was the most perfect looking girl I had ever seen, and believe me, I'd been looking. The fact that I hadn't realised that small and pale with a long dark ponytail, and startled black eyes peering from beneath a long fringe was my perfect girl until that exact moment was neither here nor there. Here she was, here I was, and we were staring at each other intently. I felt a thousand-watt stupid grin begin just beneath my eyes and gradually spread all over my silly face.

After we'd gawped at each other for a time, it finally dawned on me that one of us should say something, so I stepped down from my Dad's grave, nice and casual, and stuck my hand out toward her, saying my name as I did so, and that I was pleased to meet her. The thanks-very-much-for-the-lovely-scorpion face was still on her, and showed no sign of leaving any time soon, so I started talking, fast, explaining how I came to be pogoing on a grave in broad daylight, and it turned out we were made for each other, can you believe that? She regularly went to the cemetery and just sat there, sometimes listening to music, and others just to get a bit of space from her partying housemates. Considering how often we each spent time there it seemed odd that we'd never met before.

When I turned up and started bouncing on my Dad and shouting, she was perched neatly on a nearby grave, Simonds, I think the name on the stone was, listening to a song called Cities in Dust, of all things. I hadn't heard of it before then, or the band, but it seemed entirely appropriate to tell her all about my whole Cities of Dust thing, and to my delight, she was only too happy to listen, jumping in with the occasional question, and frowning and nodding as she heard of the growing list of people missing from my life. I learned that she'd never known any of her own family and had grown up in a succession of foster homes and local authority places. She didn't think there was anything disrespectful about enjoying being in a cemetery either, and said that she liked the idea of kids playing on her grave one day. I couldn't believe my luck, a kindred spirit at last.

From then on we went everywhere together; down to the coast on a Saturday on the Honda, off to see a movie on a week night, sitting quietly together in the cemetery contemplating nothing in particular, or bickering over whether the dead outnumbered the living or were just trying to keep up with a growing world population. There was no end to it; having found one another we simply adored our own company, me the chatterbox, and her the laid-back listener, and it was the most natural thing in the world to get our own place and move in together; we even got a cat, a little black creature of the night, naturally. While he was still a kitten we used to take him places with us on the bike sometimes, he was small enough to fit inside Dani's leather jacket with just his little head poking out, staring wide-eyed at the world as it flew by us. Of course, when I say Dani's leather jacket, I mean she wore an old one of mine that she found in a box at the lock-up and cleaned up.

I just couldn't get over how she looked fantastic in anything, much less a worn out old leather that had looked crumpled and shapeless on me. I loved her so much it hurt to look at her sometimes, and somehow I knew she felt the same about me. Me! Scruffy, loner me, who was so baffled by most of the everyday things other people seemed to take for granted. I never managed to go more than a week without unwittingly saying something that irritated the bejesus out of my Dad or my Gran when I was a kid, and I hadn't changed much over the years even though I had wanted to, forever having misunderstandings with workmates and the like. With Dani, I found the peace of mind that had eluded me so far, and a measure of understanding I hadn't known could exist between two people; and our little cat was simply the most perfect icing on a very special cake.

My Dad had been all about dogs, and I had never imagined being in a house without at least one artless mutt, bouncing off everything and demanding attention in that careless way that has been perfected over countless generations of family pets. Kipper, though was something else again.

When we got him from the guy down the road, there had never been any real discussion over what to call the helpless bundle of skin and bone and fur that was our beloved kitten. He was so frail and undernourished that he slept most of the time. Kipping was what he mostly did, so Kipper was what we named him. That was the way things were for me and Dani, we just always did what seemed obvious – even if it wasn't always so clear to others. I realise now how precious that time together was, and, although we knew we had something special, I guess we thought there was all the time in the world, and maybe took it for granted, just a little.

Anyway, we spent most of our time at home doting on Kip, while we fed him up and got him fit enough to become your typical playful kitten. The guy who gave him to us reckoned he was a litter of one, but the vet said that was usually a cover story when the rest have been drowned and just the one kept; happens all the time, apparently; with dogs too. The vet warned us that he might always be frail, especially as he had clearly been taken from his Mum too soon. I wondered if Kip could remember his Mum at all; something the three of us shared, if not. At any rate, with the help of some unbelievably expensive bags of complete-food for cats, he soon became a big strong chap and we were all happy together.

One day, when I came home from working late at the bookshop on the High Street, I found Danielle weeping silently on the sofa with all the lights out and our poor Kipper dead and cold in her arms. We clung together until we could hardly breathe, it hurt so much. He had been hit by a car outside our house, and had run home to Dan just in time to die of his injuries before anything could be done to help him. I rang the vet the next morning, and though she was all sympathy all she could offer was to arrange to have him cremated and the ashes returned for us to do whatever we wanted with. My first thought was to scatter them up at the cemetery with my Dad and Gran, but Dan was clearly distressed by the thought, and wanted to simply bury him in our own garden where we would have him nearby, in a tiny city of dust, if you will, so I rang the vet back and said thanks-but-no-thanks to the cremation, and that's where the trouble began, really.

The hole was a bugger to dig. You know on the tv, when the bad guy digs a hole to hide the body in? There's never dozens of tree roots criss-crossing the soil no matter where he tries to dig, and he never repeatedly nearly breaks his hand on the handle of the spade when it hits rocks or half-bricks hidden in the earth. He never soaks his clothes with sweat, or brings the neighbours out to see what the hell's going on when he swears like a trooper at having to give up on a half-dug hole and start on yet another because of some unmovable obstacle in the ground. By the time I had one decent hole ready to use, the garden looked like the Somme with a mole problem, and I was in no fit state to officiate at a funeral.

Danielle simply sat quietly while all this was going on; she was exhausted by her grief, and had no energy to either placate me or remonstrate with me for my antics. I had to go in for a shower before I could even think about interring our beloved little man, and poor Dani had to just sit there waiting while the inept undertaker sorted himself out upstairs in the bathroom.

By the time I was ready to put Kipper into the earth Danielle had prepared a cosy bed in the bottom of the hole for him to spend eternity sleeping in, and had put the forlorn bundle of fur into it with his favourite toys and a couple of treats. I was shocked that it had happened while I was indoors to be honest; it was the first time we hadn't done something important together, and I felt an exquisitely fine needle of ice slip between my ribs and pierce my heart at the thought that she had preferred to get on with it in my absence. I arrived, all wet hair and bare feet, just as she was covering Kipper up with one of the soft blankets he had liked so much, and I only had time to mutter a few words of goodbye before she was efficiently ladling the soil, which I had struggled so badly to extract, back into the hole. I protested briefly that I had wanted to help her, but Danielle had such a faraway look in her eyes that I didn't have the heart to pursue it.

After the hole was filled in we had a few moments of thinking our own thoughts, and then we went indoors and I put the kettle on, relieved that I wasn't expected to immediately fill in all the stray holes that I had left lying around in our back garden. When it was made, I took the tea into the front room where Dani was sitting quietly on the sofa. It was still a jolt to see her sitting without Kip purring on her lap, but I supposed I would get used to it as time passed. I hadn't reckoned on Danielle's feelings though. When I asked if she fancied going to see a movie that evening she gave me such a look that it nearly dried my still damp hair.

That night when we went to bed I half expected to be given the silent treatment, something that had never happened between us before, and my heart ached at the thought that my beloved Dani was suffering so badly that I couldn't reach her; but I couldn't have been more wrong. The moment the light was out she clung to me, scratching me in her urgency and grazing me with teeth I hadn't realised were so sharp until, at last, her hot tears fell and flowed down my face and onto the pillow beneath my head in the darkness.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over, and as we laid panting in the brittle night air I felt her cool slim fingers twining round and around in my hair, gripping and releasing my stupid half-curls over and over again, until I was more or less mesmerised by the repetition. I was drowsy, and murmured under my breath how much I loved her; and that was when she tightened her grip and snatched me upright by the hair, with a strength I simply couldn't have imagined she had, demanding to know how much, until she was screaming into my face and her spit was freckling my cheeks. How much!? She shrieked, again and again, Enough to keep me with you forever when I'm dead like Kip? Or are you going to burn me and throw the ashes away like you wanted to with Him?

I was stunned; too shocked to even speak at first, and so she started slapping my face with her free hand until the night seemed filled with sparks and I was just a gibbering wreck, gabbling on witlessly that I was sorry, without any real idea what I was saying.

Danielle, my lovely Danielle, gave me a look of such withering contempt and hatred that it shone through the darkness; then pushed me down onto the damp pillows; turned her back on me; and wept like I'd never heard anyone weep before. Each hacking, rattling, moaning breath she took seemed to begin and end in some primal part of the psyche that most of us are never aware of, and each exhalation went on for so long that it seemed I could hear her ribs begin to crack. I crawled, bonelessly, across the bed to her, wrapped my arms around her skinny hips, and held on as tightly as I could until she finally stopped fighting me and sagged with exhaustion, collapsing in on herself, eventually reaching a place where no one could hurt her, not even the small black cat that even now lay cold and still beneath the earth outside.

*

In the morning I had that classic moment of feeling fine. The one that comes just before the awful truth rushes back in like a returning tide and the world caves in. I tried to open my eyes and found they were jammed almost completely shut, no matter how hard I tried to prise them open. Danielle laid silently next to me in our bed as though she was a fallen tree, and for a while it seemed she had ceased to breathe at some point during the long night that had enveloped the pair of us in our misery.

I hobbled to the bathroom and ran the shower, cold, over my upturned face until it seemed that I must drown, but there was no way my battered eyes were going to open properly any time soon. I dripped my way to the mirror, wiped it clear of condensation, and squinted at the damage with a mounting sense of dismay. How could I go to work like this? The flesh around my eyes was several times it's normal size and several new colours, none of which were usually there to my knowledge, and long, raw grazes raced across my face, but I simply couldn't afford a day off with no pay, and it wasn't until I had stumbled my way to the kitchen and made coffee that I saw my bike gear stashed under the stairs and had my first clear thought for many hours.

Danielle was usually far more of a morning person than me, and often sang as she readied herself for work; a far cry from the dishevelled waif that refused to emerge from the duvet on that morning. She still had strands of my hair caught around her fingers, and what can only have been shreds of my skin beneath her nails. Her eyes were red rimmed and her skin was a shade of grey to gladden an undertakers heart.

I placed her coffee on the bedside table and told her I had phoned her in sick, but she only grunted, and seemed absently pleased at the thought that I was going to have to leave her while I went to work. She still hadn't looked at me, and part of me wanted her to see what she'd done, but I didn't press her; just kissed her on the head that still wouldn't turn to face me and made my way outside to walk to the bus stop.

At work, my appearance was met with a mixture of stunned avoidance of the subject and plain curiosity – depending on who I was talking to that day, and the customers tended to hold eye contact with me just a little too long, before their eyes slid away never to return. I think my story of the bike and me careering through a hedge full of brambles sounded plausible enough, but who can really know what someone else is thinking? I'm pretty sure I would have been extremely suspicious, presented with a similar explanation. It might have helped my story's credibility that I used the bus for a while, anyone who knew me back then was aware of my reluctance to use transport with more than two wheels. Or walk anywhere for that matter; but in any case, no one would ever have imagined that my petite elf of a girlfriend would be physically capable of such a thing on a great lump like me, even if she had a reason, so at least Dan was in the clear; and, as my flesh healed, over the next few days, the guys at work gradually stopped studying my face when they thought I wasn't aware of it, and things returned to normal, more or less.

When I got home that evening, it was with a distinct sense of anticipation. I turned my key in the lock, stepped inside, and simply stood for a moment, wanting to see if I could gauge the mood in the house before committing myself to coming all the way in. I needn't have worried though, I was greeted by the savoury aroma of cooking and the cheerful sounds of pots and pans being rattled around in the kitchen.

It was as though nothing had happened. As though the events of the previous night hadn't occurred, and as though we'd never even had a cat. There were no signs of Kip's food and water bowls on the kitchen floor where they always stood, and not the slightest trace of any of his toys or bedding, where previously we were always tripping over them.

When she realised I was home, Dani greeted me with a cheerful smile as she called my name, pecked me carefully on the cheek, and then ushered me proprietorially to the sofa, to sit with a drink until the food was ready – all without ever making eye contact or looking at my face. I wasn't feeling too good right then, my skin was too tight, and I had never realised before how many casual expressions flitted across my face in the course of one typical day in response to trivial situations. My head ached and I was burning to talk through what had happened, but somehow, in the face of Dan's resolute avoidance of the fact that I looked as though my head had been microwaved, I wavered, and without me noticing it at the time, the opportunity was lost for ever.

As I sat listening to the sound of plates of lasagne being dished up I sipped my coffee carefully, holding my split lips stiffly against the mug, and gazed through the open window to the garden. It looked much nicer than I remembered it from the last time I looked, with the daffs doing their cheerful thing in the borders and the lawn turf seeming neat and green and healthy, with the shrubs at the back just coming into full leaf.

Spring has always been the best part of the year for me – full of, well, promise. No matter what actually comes next weather-wise, it's going to be better than the dead of winter, and all the vigour of life returns after the low-profile season before. But now, sitting with my cooling coffee in my hand, all I could think was that the garden looked too good to be true, like something from the pages of a garden centre brochure.

I murmured my thanks as a peculiarly perfect version of Danielle handed me my dinner, telling me to stay put and relax while she fetched her own plate. As, we ate Dan did all the chatting, and I mean all of it, there was no chance for me to do more than provide a supporting role to her as she took the lead. I doubt whether I ever heard her say so much in one day before then, let alone one meal. My usually reticent best-girl was like a Stepford version of herself, and, all things considered, I was beginning to feel that the Twilight Zone had come to town. I needed to get out of there and think, so when the meal was finished (and Dani had rushed to clear away and do the dishes instead of us both good naturedly putting the job off till tomorrow like we usually did) I made some excuse about the bike running a bit rough and went out to pretend to tinker with it.

The Honda CX 500 was no one's favourite bike when it came out, that I knew of at any rate. The guys I hung out with back then called it The Plastic Maggot – me included – and took the piss big-time when any one came near us on one. It looked ungainly, and made a weird sound with it's v-twin water-cooled engine, a sort of glugging-chugging noise, and was a far cry from the sleekly roaring Japanese multi's we all craved at the time, but when I stumbled, always stumbling, me, into working as a motorcycle courier some years later I discovered how cheap to run, long lived and comfy to ride they were and owned several. Now my daily ride was my last courier bike, and as I crouched down beside it in the early evening light that spring, I began to see what a comfort blanket it was to me. Something that never changed in a world where change seemed to be the only constant, and something that I had begun to overlook as I had settled down into my life with Dani. What had once seemed talismanic, the freedom of simply taking off on two wheels into the elements, had become just so much metal and plastic at some point, like it would to anyone else, having been replaced by the essential reality of having a genuine relationship to hold onto.

I suddenly saw that, for me, Kip had been merely an extension of my relationship with Dan, albeit one that I cherished, but that for Dani herself Kip was the talisman – the very symbol of happiness in a stable loving existence with me, and that Kip's death, and my inablity to see things the way she did had brought everything crashing down around her. She hadn't known her family, but had never had anything to lose before either and this experience was entirely new for her, whereas I had become, without realising it, accustomed to loss – blasé about it, even, and the discovery of this hitherto unimagined hardness in myself made me feel sick to my stomach.

I wanted to ride.

I wanted to ride now.

Away from the pain in my head - away from Dani, and dead cats buried in the garden. And there was only one place to go – straight up the Wishaw Road to the cemetery, to be near to the remains of people who had long since been lost to me. So long, in fact, that I had pretty well forgotten what they had ever meant to me, really meant to me, I mean, when they were still here and alive, rather than the vague sense of abandonment they had come to represent to me.

Right now, with this seething rush of thoughts teeming through my mind, even their customary silence would seem soothing.

The City of Dust was waiting for me;

but only if I could get my helmet over my stupid, fat, broken head and face.

*

By the time I reached the cemetery gates there was a kind of sultry moon lingering in the soon-to-be-dark pale blue sky, as though on the other side of the world things were maybe a little hotter than usual, and I remembered a science fiction tale I had read where the moon was too bright because it was reflecting the light of the sun becoming a supernova. I shuddered for a moment at the fresh images of burning this conjured up, and then returned my attention to removing the helmet from my swollen head – no mean feat as, having been forced unwillingly into what felt like an even more confined space than usual, my face seemed to have expanded generously through the hole behind the visor.

Danielle had been sitting at the table scribbling on a sheet of paper when I went in to tell her that I thought the bike was running better and that I was going for a test ride. She had barely glanced in my direction, though whether it was because she was busy with whatever she was writing, or simply to avoid looking at me I couldn't tell. I longed to put my arms around her and tell her that I understood, or that I wanted to at least, but instead I heard my own voice betray me with the first lie I had ever told her, immediately compounded by a kind of dull satisfaction that if she really cared she would have wanted to come on the fictitious test ride with me, like she always had in the past.

I had lingered a moment in the doorway, wishing for a way to undo what had so carefully been done over the last couple of days, but it was as if I had already left, and then it was too late. I found myself halfway to the cemetery on my rattling old bike, wondering if it was ever possible to truly change anything or whether we are all utterly condemned to witness the car crash of our lives in slow motion for all perpetuity...

Nearly all I have so far of this one

*

Cold Sun.

My stiffening ego and suffering pride
Salute the reactions of those who deny
That there’s anything good
Or there’s nothing so bad
As rejecting the knowledge
That I could have had
All your love in my pocket
To give me a thrill
But I’d trade all your love for
A handful of pills

Yeah it’s sad and it’s sweet
And it’s bitterness too
For the wave of a needle
A true magic wand
That I’d sell you my body
My battered soul too
To be rid of this burning
This twisting this turning
And beneath a cold sun
Nothing’s new



*

Elegy, Shared.

Did you know what it was, when your chest first tightened?
When the bands of steel first gripped? Were you frightened
By the chain of events being unleashed - the consequences?
Did you wish you’d made the time to repair your fences?
Did you want to run? Did you long to hide?
Was there a moment of truth? Was there time for denial?
As the world spun around you, in the wintry dark,
Did you wonder whether you’d made your mark?
Did shrapnel from the genetic bomb that killed your Father
Leave a scar on you? Perhaps you’d rather
He’d died a cleaner death?
Not a lingering one, as he fought his own heart for every jagged breath.
Could you have known then what was meant for you?
Or that in due course it might wound me too?
Were you haunted by the things you’d started,
But would never finish? Who’d have thought that, having parted,
I’d be the one to mend your fences?
As I live with your absence, in the shade of the consequences
Of a hidden disease, I’m stronger and younger than you were. But my heart feels -
Like lead - and the anticipation is just as real
As I fear it must have been to you. I think, such a lot,
Of how little I knew you, and I wonder how much I’ve forgotten.
Did you know how much better a man you were than I could ever be?
Was it preordained that I should achieve my best too late for you to see?
And, I wonder - how soon will my presence diminish?
Am we merely beginnings for others to finish?





*

Love Lies Laughing

My love lies laughing in a shallow grave not far from here

Beneath the shadow of a rotted oak

Whose twisted branches crowned with fear
point starkly to a leaden sky

No passion I
whose crowded soul recoils from all
human touch

Cold earth is not enough to quiet my
shrieking love

November Islands.

Split-seed rays of summer sun
Encroach upon the mornings drift,
As a once-proud man, curled tight
Against his knocking door, awakes,
Reflects upon his shame,
And hangs himself with stained-glass noose.
Empty house of mortal brick, at first,
Stands silent witness to the deed.
Then, shuddering, tears ligaments from
The foundations of one mans desire,
And crumbles to dust.
Rushing onward through misted time,
Lonely as windowless rooms,
We come and go.
Blazing like comets as we approach,
Hissing like the wind in reeds as we depart,
And the moon rises full on the deserted beaches of our pain.



*

Garden Boy copyright 2005 Stuart Williams

It seemed to the boy that the only way to garden successfully was to find something that liked being in his soil and then tend it carefully. No matter how many times he raided the gardens of the abandoned houses that surrounded his churchyard, he had never been able to get delphiniums to grow. Slugs had stripped the only one that had even tried, apparently eating the whole plant overnight.

When the last of the local people had finally disappeared, the boy had been drawn to the churchyard. There had been no warning, no mysterious illnesses, no threat of imminent war; just a gradual dwindling of numbers until he was the only soul left. He had taken to living in the church because it was the only place that didn’t remind him of everything that was gone; candlelight, he had discovered, lent an impressive atmosphere to the interior of his church, but in any of the nearby houses only accentuated his sense of loss.

The boy had occasionally wondered whether God minded him living in his house, but the ancient building had never seemed anything other than comforting to him, and he had felt frightened in it on only one occasion.

In the absence of all the things he had grown up with, levels of loneliness had tormented him that he could never have imagined in his old life. It would have been no comfort to him to know that neither his parents or teachers, or any of his old friends would have lasted as long as he had without the things he had once taken for granted.

Now he lived without even the simplest of friendships to sustain him. He solved the immediate problems of food and drink by simply breaking into nearby houses, and carrying home to the church whatever canned food and bottled water he could find. Most of the houses weren’t locked, and it wasn’t as if anyone would suddenly turn up demanding their things back; anyone would have realised the total absence of humanity, and he simply knew that the changes were far-reaching and permanent.

He had begun gardening simply by clearing the autumn leaves that blew around his churchyard, fearing at first that the trees were dying; but he had come to realise that it was just what many trees do at the end of the year. The following spring the massive plane tree at the far end of his garden had pushed new emerald green shoots from every tip. The row of tall beech trees had made their intentions clear by carrying leaf buds all winter. The boy had noticed them when he ventured into the frosted graveyard to collect kindling twigs for the fireplace in the old office, which was built onto the rear of the church. There was a dead branch about halfway up the ancient yew, and the boy wondered how he would cut it up when it finally fell. He had been fetching bags of coal from the village shop, but they would soon be finished.

When there were no more leaves to clear, he had found to his delight that green spikes emerging from the hard ground later became snowdrops.

He discovered that he could select and encourage plants for the characteristics that pleased him the best, but he was always anxious not to lose a plant completely - so many things were already gone from the world - and he had an area outside the graveyard walls where he grew the plants he might want again some day.

As he cleared the overgrown graves, he dreamed of night-scented Stocks, their fragrance drifting like a spell across the churchyard in the coolness of a summer evening, and Honeysuckle creeping across the headstones.

He filled his pockets with seed that he collected from the rapidly disappearing gardens in the now ruined village; Hollyhocks and Lupins; Salvia and Phlox. The boy was frequently disappointed when seeds were not true to the plants he collected them from, and he worked hard at learning to identify natural strains.

He missed his family less as time passed; they seemed to retreat into a world that was far away.

He grew potatoes in the cool deep soil of the graveyard, and planted beans and squashes in last years compost heap.

He never saw a cat or dog, but bees frequently alighted on him, as he weeded and hoed between mixed rows of Nasturtiums and Cabbages; Robins helped pick the leaves clean of caterpillars. As the boy fed himself with the fruits of his own hard learned labour he wondered if there were others who lived like him, scattered across the face of the world.

Sometimes his mind drifted unwillingly to the face that had stared at him through the lych-gate, but he was unable to think of the episode without pain, and he always pushed it away, preferring to return to his life of green solitude.

Time passed.

The shape of the graveyard that was now a garden shifted and changed with the ebb and flow of the seasons. Names on the headstones gradually faded into the delicate etchings of lichens and became covered in moss; and the boy became absorbed deep into his garden.

Trees and shrubs pressed in close to the churchyard, jostling for position as they whispered among themselves in desire of the clean rich soil inside.

It became hard for the boy to sleep, remembering against his will the howling that had echoed throughout the countryside surrounding his church on that long ago night; the aural signature of dogs or wolves on a trail. He shook and raved through each burning night, consumed with fear and regret.

On that night, the howling had drawn closer over several hours until, no longer able to ignore it, he had quickly dressed and left the safety of his church armed with his spade.

In the open night air the howling was unbearably loud, and the boy had shivered against the unearthly sounds. He saw a girl running toward the lych-gate along the overgrown remains of the path to the church; she stopped at the gate when she saw the boy standing in the glow of the moonlight. Tiptoeing from the shadows the dogs had come next, wild-eyed, and hungry from the chase. They sidled and sneered at the girl and boy, frequently snapping at each other in their ferment, nametags dangling incongruously from ragged collars around matted necks.

The girl took a step toward the boy and the dogs moved also. Wide-eyed, the boy had raised his spade against the girl. She stopped, confused, staring at the boy questioningly. He raised the spade again and shook it at the girl menacingly. Get out of here, his eyes seemed to say, you don’t belong here. At this, the dogs melted back into the shadows and waited, grinning to each other. Again, the girl had stepped towards the boy, less certainly this time though, and when the boy, mindful only of his own terror, mimed as if to strike her with the spade, she had lowered her eyes to the ground in resignation. She turned and walked slowly away from the lych-gate into the looming trees. A few moments later the dogs reappeared and followed her, smirking briefly at the boy, who paused a few seconds longer before bolting for the safety of his church.

When it came, the sounds of the pack descending on the girl sent the boy screaming up into the bell tower. He grabbed a handful of bell ropes and jumped into the void. Slowly, at first, the bells began to ring, growing faster and louder as the wriggling boy, wrapped now in a web of hemp, heaved and strained as he tried to blot out the awful sounds from the woods.

Shaking and sweating, he had at last climbed down the ropes to the ground below, to lie, listening, as the tolling of the great cast-iron bells died away into silence.

He lay long into the next day upon the old cold flagstones. When he finally worked up enough nerve to walk among the whispering trees again, he found only an unbroken silver chain with a little silver pendant that was worked into the name Lily. It was lying in the midst of a swathe of scuffed leaf mould.

He never saw or heard of the girl or the dogs again.

Older now, he carefully avoided thinking actively of his fear and selfishness that night, and cared for his garden with an unnatural vigour. He wore the chain around his own neck, and longed to plant white Lilies in great snowy drifts across his garden.

He ranged further and further each day in his search for a garden that would yield what he wanted. At last one day, in the grounds of a large house that had once been great, he stumbled upon a small clump of Lily of the Valley, almost overwhelmed in the overgrown tangled mass of grasses and convolvulus that had sprung up around the house. The roof of the house had fallen in and Buddleias were stretching from the broken windows, as though leaning toward the butterflies that would come to it later in the year.

With his bare hands the boy clawed at the earth, tearing his fingernails as he scrabbled in the stony soil. Nettles stung his face and arms as he worked deeper into the ground, following the green stems of the Lilies down until they became pale; and at last he came to the bulbs. Red faced and sweating the boy panted, breathless from his exertion. He filled his pockets with the ghost-white Lily bulbs, and dashed from the garden, blood pounding in his head. He ran back to his church, exuberant.

He had done it. He had finally found the one species of flower he really wanted, needed, to plant.

He ran through the wreckage of the old village, and along the roads that were now covered in tall weeds and grasses; then along the narrow paths through the woods, through the familiar lych gate and into his churchyard, his garden, where he could now plant his tribute to the long lost girl. He felt as though he could do anything. His chest swelled and his lungs filled with the clean air of a world bereft of the chimneys that had poured poisonous smoke and gases into the sky; free of the machines that had overheated the world and spoiled the land.

He could do ANYTHING. The whole world was out there waiting for him. As soon as he had planted the Lilies in his garden, he would pack his old rucksack and travel far abroad, searching tirelessly until he found other people, and when he did find them he would never let them go; he would never fail another human again.

He would find people to share the world with; but first, he would plant his Lilies, in memory of the girl named Lily. The boy raced into the church to find his spade. As he entered the church, his eyes seemed drawn to the bell tower, where the ropes he had swung on so hard, that night, dangled limply to the ground.

Of course, thought the boy. He would ring out a tribute to the girl before he planted her flowers. There might even be people within earshot of the bells who would be drawn by the sound. Why had he not thought of it before?

Feverish now, the boy clambered up the wooden stairway again, to the top of the bell tower, tripping over himself in his haste. Again, he flung himself at the ropes, and again he writhed and bounced, until the pealing of the old bells sounded out once more across the tumbled down deserted houses of the village, and far into the overgrown fields.

Far beyond exhaustion, the boy tolled the great bells; but no one came, and, eventually, as the afternoon wore on, he began to accept the truth; that he was truly alone.

He lowered himself to the flagstones and climbed the stairs again, slowly, and painfully. This time he did not stop when he reached the bells but continued up, high into the steeple that had been added long after the original square tower had been constructed.

Near the top of the steeple was a window, which led out onto a small gallery. Squeezing through the window frame, the boy made his way outside. There was a ledge running right around the steeple, and, with his back to the slates, the boy crept to the far side, from where he could view his garden.

He gazed down onto the graveyard. It was altered beyond recognition from when he had first made it his home. It was barely a place of the dead at all now, but rather a witness to the tenacity of life, a garden. How many winters had passed since his first night here? How many nights had he huddled alone in front of his fireplace during the long cold nights, when he might have had the friendship of the girl named Lily, whom he had turned away so harshly in his terror of the dogs.

His raw fingers felt the lily bulbs, with which he had so carefully filled all the pockets of his home made clothes; and he knew what he had lost.

He stood motionless for longer than he knew, and when he realised that the sun was creeping toward the far horizon, and that it was almost night, his arms and legs had become cold, and unwilling. It was hard to make his way back to the safety of the small window on the other side now, and when the long-dead branch of the nearby ancient Yew suddenly, and finally, lost it’s hold on the trunk of the tree, he was startled, and began to slip.

When he realised that falling was inevitable, the boy gathered all his remaining strength, and leaped, as hard as he could; driving himself up and out toward the sunset, his broken fingers outstretched and clawing at the last shreds of the days sunlight.

For a brief, glorious moment, it seemed that he would fly. The boy hung motionless against the orange and indigo-blue colours of the evening sky, before slowly twisting, and plunging to the welcoming soil beneath.

Summer came, and then autumn. With no one to take care of it, the churchyard became a wild place once more.

Birds came to eat the seeds from the heads of the perennials, before the winter winds and frosts broke down the standing stalks of the Hollyhocks and Phlomis.

Rudbeckia and Golden Rod fell, to cover and protect the new shoots of growth that would surely come in next years growing season.

The following spring, a young woman came to the lych gate, and pushed her way through the dead remains of last summers Morning Glory. Her bare legs were scratched and bleeding from the sharp hooks of the old brambles that had sprung up in the woods around the church; brittle, woody remnants of last year’s growth. Her hands and face were deeply scarred, as though she had once had to defend herself against a ferocious predator.

She was afraid of the long ago boy, who had driven her into the clutches of the dog pack, but her loneliness was overpowering, and she had returned. She could see that the churchyard was no longer cared for, and, as she rounded the stone and flint corner of the church, she found a low mound of Lily of the Valley growing in the shape of a young man, laid on one side as though sleeping. His head rested on one outstretched arm, and in his hand was a chain of silver.

*

A Walk In The Park. copyright Stuart Williams 2005

Danny was very worried. His uncle wanted to take him searching for wolves again. Every Sunday without fail Danny’s uncle would insist that the finest fun they could have together was to go looking for wolves. Danny thought this was weird, and possibly dangerous too. Sometimes his uncle even wanted to take a ball with them and kick it around in the park, when they got there, instead of concentrating on the wolf hunt.

Danny wasn’t very good at football. He found it difficult to play when his mind was on the wolves that might be stalking them from the bushes. The park was just fine for Danny without trying to find wild animals too. They would leave the neat house on the estate where Danny lived with his mum, and set off for one of the nearby parks on most Sunday afternoons. On the way, they would call in at the shop on the corner of Danny’s road and the main road. There was a nice man there who knew Danny’s name. Sometimes, if the weather was hot, they would buy ice creams from him. Sometimes they would buy crisps or sweets. They would thank the man and say goodbye to him, then walk along the road together, contentedly licking or munching in silence until they got to whichever park Danny’s uncle wanted to visit this time.

The strange thing was that Danny’s uncle never mentioned the wolves once they had left the house. Perhaps he thought that it would bring bad luck. Danny often wondered what they would do if they caught one. Would his uncle want Danny to run home for his rucksack to put it in? Would it even fit in Danny’s rucksack?

Danny had seen a wolf in a safari park once. There was a whole pack of them, living on a sloping meadow with a fence around it. Danny wondered whether the fence was there to keep the wolves in or the people out. One of the wolves had come right up to the fence and stared at Danny. Its eyes were a sort of pale orange colour, and very certain in their gaze.

“Hello, boy,” the wolf seemed to be saying. “Pity this fence is here, I could do with some nice fresh meat instead of that frozen stuff I’m given.”

The wolf opened his mouth and seemed to be laughing gently to himself. At the time, Danny had been too surprised to say anything back to it, but afterwards he remembered how large and sharp the creature’s teeth were, and how thin it had been. He had no doubt that the wolf could have made a very quick meal of him. Danny had trouble getting to sleep for ages after that, and had been scolded so much for being silly that he had made up his mind to never mention his night time fears again.

Today Danny and his uncle didn’t go to the shop, they had a picnic lunch that had been prepared for them by Danny’s Mum. When they got to the park, instead of getting straight on with kicking the ball around, they sat themselves comfortably on a large log, which was left over from clearing up a fallen tree.

Danny’s uncle opened the paper bags and got out their sandwiches. There was ham and mustard for him, and cream cheese for Danny, a bag of ready salted crisps each, and a slice of chocolate cake each for afters. They both liked chocolate cake. As they ate their picnic, Danny glanced nervously around the park for wolves. He felt sure that the spot they were sitting in would be a perfect hunting ground for the wolf he had seen at the safari park; it certainly looked similar.

The park was green and leafy and had a lot of different kinds of trees growing in it. Sometimes Danny came here in the autumn and collected conkers, when they fell from the conker trees. He liked kicking up the dead leaves too and hearing the swooshing noises they made, the sound reminded him of the sea washing the sand and stones at the seaside when he was on holiday. Once he had rolled in a pile of leaves and had got dog mess all over his new jacket. His Mum had been angry with Danny’s uncle when they got back home.

Danny would have liked a dog of his own to take to the park. He was sure that a dog would look after him and keep the wolves away, no matter how keen his uncle might be to find one, but his Mum said she had enough on her plate as it was. Danny thought she might try putting a little less on her plate from time to time, she was always moaning about her waistline, but he knew better than to say anything.

His uncle was speaking to him now.

“Wassamatter, kiddo?” His uncle said. His uncle always called him kiddo; he called him lots of pet names. “Cat gotcha tongue?” He added.

Now Danny really was worried. The idea that a cat might have got his tongue must mean that there were cats in the park, as well as wolves, and they would have to be big ones too, to get his tongue from him. Not for the first time, Danny wished that it was a little easier to make sense of what grownups were saying. They never came straight out with a thing, but rather went through a series of strange word mazes to make a person see things their way. As he finished off his slice of chocolate cake, Danny shook his head at his uncle and stuck his tongue out at him to show it was still where it belonged. He jumped off the log as his uncle packed away the remains of the picnic. There was just time for the two of them to wash their lunch down with gulps of orange juice, or ‘wet their whistles’ as his uncle always put it, before they began searching for wolves in earnest.

They always started off the same way. They would head towards the swings kicking the ball to each other as they went. Danny began to think that the ball was just a way of tricking the wolves into thinking that he and his uncle weren’t there to find them at all, so that they might get careless and show themselves. Then, Danny imagined, his uncle might leap onto the nearest wolf and wrestle with it while he, Danny, stood by wondering what to do to help. He wished his uncle would be more clear about his intentions; imagine if after all these fruitless trips to the neighbouring parks they finally caught a wolf only for it to escape because Danny hadn’t been told what to do. That was another problem with grownups, Danny thought; they insisted on telling you what to do until you needed to know something important, then they said they were too busy and told you to go away. Then, later, when they discovered what you had managed to do on your own, without ANY help at all, they got angry and demanded to know why you hadn’t gone to them for help, like the time, long ago now, that Danny had shown his Mum the contents of his potty at a dinner party.

Only the week before that his Mum had praised him madly, for being a good boy for not needing a nappy any more, and encouraged him to show everyone. The dinner party had been a different matter altogether. There had been pale faces and startled looks, as Danny made his way proudly around the table from place to place, displaying the results of his efforts to each guest. His Mum had been FURIOUS, and had grabbed him and marched him off to bed, demanding to know how Danny could want to humiliate her like that. No one around the table had seemed the least bit impressed that Danny was a big boy now.

When he heard what had happened, Danny’s uncle had roared with laughter at the tale, and in no time at all Danny’s Mum was laughing too! Poor Danny, grownups were so mixed up that he often wondered if he would ever make sense of them.

It didn’t seem to bother Danny’s uncle that they had never so much as caught a glimpse of a wolf at any of the parks they visited, they still went off on their Sunday afternoon treks. With a cheery smile on his face, he would sweep Danny off his feet and up into the air and say:

“How’sa boy, then?” And then he would add, without waiting for a reply to his first question, “Ready to go for a wolf in the park? It’s a beeyootiful day!”

Danny couldn’t see why his uncle kept sounding so enthusiastic, but had learned that all grownups believed they knew best. He had also learned that grownups would rather be right than happy - the last thing a grownup wanted was to be questioned, especially by a kid.

Danny and his uncle went on past the swings and carried on towards the duck pond. They used to feed the crusts from their sandwiches to the ducks, but the ducks were gone now. There had been a story in the local paper last week that stray dogs had been seen slinking around the park at night, and were believed to have scared the ducks away. Danny wished again that he could have a dog for himself, as there were so many spare ones wandering about.

The pair trotted past the duck pond and across the football pitch, which was empty over lunchtime.

They headed for one of the goals, passing the ball to each other.

Danny kicked the ball to his uncle. His uncle kicked the ball back to Danny. Danny kicked the ball to his uncle again.

“Watch this, Danny-boy!” Shouted his uncle, as he ran fast towards the still rolling ball, “This one for the FA Cup!” Sidestepping an imaginary defender, Danny’s uncle kicked the ball as hard as he could, side footing it to curl it around the keeper. He was jumping high into the air in celebration when he realised that the ball was skidding off the crossbar and over for a goal kick. No FA Cup.

“Oh well, Dan-the-man.” He said. “You can’t win ‘em all.” He jogged around the goal and over to the laurel bushes which the ball had rolled beneath. He stood for a moment while Danny caught up with him. They stood together, then, staring at the bush.

It moved!

They looked at each other, and then back at the laurel.

“Did you hear that, kiddo?”

Danny HAD heard it; a sort of low rumbling sound, a bit like thunder, or a large plane going overhead in the night. He wondered whether it was a wolf, or one of the big cats that got people’s tongues. No way was he, Danny, going into that shrub for the ball.

He shook his head vigorously at his uncle’s question.

“Cat’s still gotcha tongue then, I see?” Said his uncle; “You’ve hardly said a word ALL day!”

Danny had actually not said anything at all that day, but he knew better than to contradict a grownup. He stared at his uncle, then turned and started to head for home, he had had enough of going for a wolf in the park to last him a lifetime. As he marched off he heard his uncle call after him, “Hold on second, Danno, I’ll just get the ball back and I’ll be with you.”

Danny didn’t care about the ball anymore, and he didn’t think he cared much about his uncle at the moment. He was going HOME. The last he saw of his uncle was his legs disappearing underneath the laurel bushes, kicking as they went.

It wasn’t until he was nearly home that he realised that a large grey creature was following him at a discreet distance. It looked just like the wolf at the safari park. When Danny stopped walking, the creature stopped walking. When Danny started walking again, the creature started again too. Danny stopped and had a look inside his paper bag. He got the crusts of his sandwiches out and offered them to the creature, which hesitated before reaching out and gently taking them. After that Danny and his new friend walked home side by side.

At first, his Mum was cross that Danny’s uncle had let Danny go home on his own. She planned to give him a piece of her mind when she saw him, but gradually came to realise that he was gone for good. She was sad to begin with, but it wasn’t the first time that one of Danny’s ‘uncles’ had left them on their own, without saying anything, and she didn’t suppose it would be the last. There were plenty more fish in the sea, she was fond of saying.

To begin with, Danny’s Mum found it difficult to get used to having a pet around, and complained about the fur he shed in the house. But when she realised that Danny was sleeping better at night, with his friend curled up on the bed beside him, than ever before, she agreed he could stay; and gradually grew to like him too.

Now that Danny and his Mum had their new friend, potential ‘uncles’ seemed unwilling to come round again, after the first visit. It wasn’t just anyone who could feel comfortable watching television with a large carnivore staring intently at them. There seemed to be more time for Danny and his Mum to spend together, and they had fewer misunderstandings. Soon Danny’s Mum found that she was sleeping better too, and in time she began forgetting to lock the front door at night.

As Danny grew older, ‘Going for a wolf in the park’ became a favourite private joke between him and his Mum, and, as they laughed together, their large furry friend, too, would open his mouth, and seem to laugh gently with them.

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My Uncle Frank. (reprised for Rumpelstiltskin)

Our Uncle Frank was the best uncle in the whole world. We usually knew when he was coming round, because our Dad would start muttering under his breath and sucking his teeth, while he gathered up all the stray bits of his newspaper from around the house so he could have it in the garden shed with him when Uncle Frank arrived.

When he got to our house, Uncle Frank would often frighten us all stupid by banging on the front door so hard that it seemed likely to come crashing in. He couldn’t help it; it was just the way he was. He didn’t understand that he was frightening us, no matter how many times it was explained to him. Other times, we would be watching television, or reading or something and one of us would look up and there was Uncle Frank, watching television along with us, as nice as you like, having let himself in without saying a word to any one.
Mum said that, when her and our Dad first moved into the house on Belmont Road, the local kids had been scared of Uncle Frank. Crazy Uncle Frank they called him, and pulled faces behind his back. Our Frank never seemed to mind how people treated him, but us kids would go wild at anyone we thought was ridiculing him. We loved the ground he walked on, even if it was sometimes a bit smelly afterwards.
I rarely saw him walk straight, he usually had this sort of sideways shuffle on him that seemed to do the job, but attracted loads of attention. He could straighten up, but apparently preferred the shuffle.
One of the neighbours once told me that our uncle had been as normal as any of us when he was a lad, but had fallen out of one of the plane trees down the park and onto his head, and had never been the same again. I was just a kid and believed her, of course, but when I grew older, I learned that there were names for the sort of condition that Uncle Frank had, and that he had always been like it.
Frank had lots of twitches and unexpected jerks that would sometimes possess him at odd moments. His head might suddenly twist to one side, accompanied by a wildly swinging arm, and then he would be as right as rain once more – as though nothing had happened. I once saw him leap out of our Dad's armchair, goose-step his way around our sitting room in a tight circle, arms flailing in the air, and then collapse back into the chair and carry on watching television as if everyone did these things from time to time. He had been eating popcorn, and our sitting room suddenly looked as though it had been snowing for a week. No one batted an eyelid as we watched The Two Ronnies on the television, and at least it saved Uncle Frank the bother of passing the popcorn around. We all just sat there, me and my brothers and sisters, along with our Mum, contentedly munching as we picked popped corn out of our hair, while Dad read his paper in the garden shed.
We loved mealtimes when Uncle Frank came around. It was the best fun for us kids, but the worst torment of all for our Dad. Dad hated swearing with a passion, and to our Frank, who seemed to think that only using one swear word at a time was a breath wasted, this was the biggest mystery of all in a world that was almost entirely mystery.
Not only did Uncle Frank jerk, twitch, and swear his way through every meal – he spat frequently as well. Within minutes of picking up his fork (I never once saw him use a knife, except as a screwdriver) there would be great gobs of spit rolling down the walls of our dining room, to collect along the top of the skirting board for our Mum to wipe up after. There would sit Frank, yelling happily to all and sundry as he chewed on a piece of lamb chop. There would sit us kids and our Mum, holding pieces of paper towel up to shelter us from the barrage of spit, and there would sit our Dad in the shed, glowering his way through his Sunday roast, outside in the cold, rather than put up with his brother-in-law’s table manners.
One time our Mum and Dad had a big row in the kitchen, all the way through Sunday lunch. We ignored them and acted as though they weren’t there at all, it was nothing new for them to fight about Frank. For his part, Frank spent the entire meal mashing up his roast potatoes with his gravy, and inadvertently flicking most of them over his shoulder and onto the windowpane behind him instead of into his mouth.
Our dog loved Uncle Frank as much as we did, and would sit beside him and gaze adoringly at the tall thin man who would feed him so spontaneously and generously. He didn’t mind a bit if he had to lick the windows or our Dad’s wireless to get the calories on board, and to us kids it was all part of the fun, seeing Max the dog standing on the old black and white television set to reach a Brussels sprout that had recently splattered onto the wall above it.

Once, Uncle Frank came on the bus to town with us. He lurched his way to the back and rolled a cigarette, which he lit and then accidentally hurled out of the open window.
“Aw, shit!” Commented Uncle Frank, casually. He rolled another. I could see the fat lady across the aisle start to size up our Uncle Frank with open puzzlement on her face. Her expression quickly changed to one of hostility when Frank cheerfully gobbed onto her handbag and then began to loudly sing a Gene Vincent song.
The fat lady whispered into the ear of her friend, who was sat next to her, and they both turned to stare at Uncle Frank with unconcealed disapproval. “Shouldn’t be allowed out!” their faces seemed to be saying, “And with children, too…”
Frank was blissfully ignorant of the sensibilities of the two women, and aimed his next volley of swear words directly at them. I became aware that the bus was now alive with indignation, as muttered comments made their way towards the driver at the front, and in no time the bus was pulling in to the side of the road at a place where there was no bus stop. A committee of three elderly women and one old gent began negotiating with the driver, who reluctantly heaved himself from his seat and made his way to the back of his bus where we were sitting.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave the bus, I’m afraid,” he began. “There have been, uhm, complaints, you see.” The bus driver shifted around uncomfortably and Uncle Frank beamed out of the window, at nothing in particular. The bus driver was staring at me, pointedly. As the eldest, I knew where this was going, and gritted my teeth as I stood up and took Uncle Frank’s elbow.
“Come on, Frankie,” I said. “We’ll just have to walk the rest of the way, it’s not far now.” Frank was looking up at me in sheer disbelief that I could be daft enough to suggest that the remaining distance to town wasn’t far. He knew as well as the rest of us that it was another four miles, but it wasn’t him who the bus driver was trying to face down. I hated this sort of thing, and had no stomach for confronting the prejudices that followed my uncle Frank wherever he went, but I had reckoned without my youngest sister, Kate.
“You leave my uncle alone, you big bully!” she piped up loudly. “He can’t help it, you know!”
The bus driver was clearly unhappy at being called a bully, and I dreaded to think what our Dad was going to say to me when he heard about this particular escapade, when all at once my brothers and other sister were in on the act.
“Come on, mister, give us a break, he’s our best uncle – he really can’t help it!” said Kevin. The others were nodding furiously in agreement. I still hadn’t said a word to defend Frank myself, and was wondering what on earth I could possibly say to do my bit, when I saw the drivers angry expression melt away to be replaced by one of kindness instead.
“Ah, go on, you’ll do,” he said. “We can’t have you walking all the way to town now, can we? Especially not when you love your uncle so much, eh? Wish I had some nieces and nephews like you.” And with that, the driver made his way back down to the front of the bus, leaving me standing there alone with my mouth hanging open.
“Oh, give the guy a break, will you?” he said to the protesting huddle of pensioners waiting for him. “He can’t help it, you know,” he added, wisely.
“Bollocks!” sang out our Uncle Frank, and we rode triumphantly all the rest of the way to town.

We lost our best uncle when he went to sleep in the back of a bin lorry. Christ only knows what he was thinking of. He had always had this odd aroma about him, so maybe it was a regular thing. At any rate, it was one time too many, and when the crusher came down onto our Uncle Frank there were no nieces or nephews handy to argue his case for him. After an awful wait for the inquest, we were finally allowed to bury him in a cheap box on the far side of the graveyard in the pouring rain.
My brothers and sisters often came to me in the night, after that, begging me to tell them again that Uncle Frank hadn’t known what was happening to him. I gladly promised that it was so, and reassured them as best I could, letting them sleep in with me whenever they wanted, for as long as it took them to get over it, and, in time, it seemed they did.
Personally, I have barely slept a wink since then; I was in the next street, doing my paper round, when I heard my Uncle Frank begin to scream.

My own kids are grown up and living away now. I rarely see or hear from them, and that’s okay, they all have busy lives. They used to love to hear tales of Mad Uncle Frank when they were little, and of how their Granddad practically lived in the shed at one time. They all refused point blank to believe what a grumpy old sod their beloved Grampy once was, but I suppose having grandchildren can melt the hardest of hearts – maybe I’ll find out myself one day.
For now, I just sit here alone and think things through a lot. My missus left home shortly after our youngest had gone to university. Who would have ever thought that kids of mine would go to university? They all seem to go nowadays, don’t they?
We didn’t fight or anything, the wife and me, we just – fizzled out. I came home from work one day, shortly before I had the accident that put me off for good, and she was just – gone. Had enough. Took the savings and went. I wasn’t even angry, God knows I’d thought about it often enough myself.
So, here I sit. All alone with my reminiscences, and surrounded by books. The phone never rings, but then, I never dial out either, so…
I miss everyday company, of course, I mean, I never really got the hang of this wheelchair, and I don’t get out too much these days.
I would give just about anything, right now, to sit down to one of our Mum’s huge Sunday roasts, with my brothers and sisters, all just how we used to be when we were a family. Dodging my lovely Uncle’s flying spit and forbidden swearwords, while he hoots with laughter and our Dad skulks in the shed outside with his cold, but spit-free dinner.
But I’d settle for not having to sit awake all night, every night, endlessly trying to find ways of avoiding thinking about what happened to Frank.

At least Dad came out of the shed.



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Yet another strand from the main project: started writing this today - more to follow as it comes

Something in the attic Stuart Williams (protected)

The arms of her rocking chair were so worn that from time to time Aunty Rose stopped knitting and simply sat stroking them. As smooth and silken as any freshly hatched conker, the feel of them reminded her of her mother and grandmother, both of whom had sat by the fireside through their own long winter nights in this very same chair, polishing the arms incidentally with their sleeves while they worked.
Behind the heavy curtains the windowpanes chirped and pinged to themselves, as they flexed between the crystalline November wind outside and the dry heat of the birch-brush fire-warmed air inside. Aunty Rose always thought of November as a no-man’s land, a stretch of time between the faded and almost forgotten flamboyance of autumn and the frozen taste of full winter; a time for reflection after the hard work of one season, before the white onslaught of another.
She caressed the arms of her chair absently with her hard fingers, thinking of the hours of knitting, sewing, or just plain rocking that had smoothed the knotted pine arms of the chair through three generations of use.
Uncle Bob would be home soon; stamping the leaf mould from his boots in the doorway of the brick and timber built house before coming in to take them off and begin oiling his axe and billhook. Only after he had lingered long over the forged steel blades and hickory handles would he speak to Aunty Rose, who would by this time have the kettle boiling over the hearth and tea ready to brew in the tannin stained pewter pot. Then, in a voice turned and shaped by endless seasons of back breaking work and weathered by forty odd years of hand rolled cigarettes, he might begin to speak of birch and spruce, or of repairing chestnut fencing, or of bringing down the sheep from the mountain for over wintering in the barn.
Aunty Rose would listen till he finished, pour the black tea into mugs laden with sugar and, after a respectful pause, might tell him of the price of corn or how the old black hen still wasn’t laying properly - but neither of them would mention what they both heard from the eaves of the old house.
The noises only came after dark when the two of them were settled in front of the fire; Uncle Bob slouched in his large soft armchair and Aunty Rose bolt upright in her grandmother’s rocking chair. The old hound, as threadbare and scorched as the ancient rug on which he lay, stretched out between them watching one with his left eye and one with his right, waiting for them to start dinner, knowing that whatever was left after their meal was his.
At the first flutterings from the attic above, each evening, Aunty Rose would stir creaking to her feet, collecting the cold tea mugs on her way to the kitchen corner where the dinner, usually a soup or stew at this time of the year, would be bubbling gently having simmered there since Aunty Rose had prepared the vegetables that afternoon. Only at this late stage would she add seasoning, cracking black pepper corns between two breadboards on the oak kitchen table, and sprinkling them with salt in a dramatic swirl onto the top of the heaped earthenware bowls. With the long handled knife that she cleaned with lemon juice and salt before each use, she carved chunks from the crusty loaf of bread that had been resting since leaving the oven. She then dipped the chunks into melted butter before returning to the fireside where Uncle Bob was studiously ignoring the sounds of fluttering and scratching that drifted down to them from high in the thatched roof above.
From time to time, as they ate without speaking, the old hound would break off from gazing longingly at the spoonfuls of food journeying from bowl to mouth, and trip-trap his clacking claws across the bare floorboards and up the stairs to the landing, where he would sit staring at the ceiling, head on one side.
At this, Uncle Bob and Aunty Rose might pause from their silent chewing, and their glances might even meet over their bowls – but they said nothing, and in time the dog would return the way he had come and resume his hopeful gaze.
Afterwards, when the washing up was done and the dogs bowl licked clean, Uncle Bob would put another log, and maybe a lump or two of coal for extra warmth, onto the embers of the fire, roll a cigarette, and look deeply into the new flames while Aunty Rose brought more mugs of syrupy black tea and silently joined him in his contemplation.
Above them, from their bedroom, they could hear the clicking and shuffling of the old hound, pacing around as he stared upward trying to follow the sounds of flapping and the occasional muffled giggle emanating from the attic. Uncle Bob blew swirling smoke rings and tapped his tobacco tin repeatedly on his belt buckle, and Aunty Rose stroked the arms of her chair incessantly, but neither of them seemed willing to meet the eye of the other...


Please forgive any obvious clumsiness - it's a first draft. More to come

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