yammering

I love the succession of scents that map the way through summer. The heady coconut smell of gorse, the sweet vapour of may, the clover, the roses, the honeysuckle. I love the way they ambush and seduce you as you walk or cycle the country paths.  For some reason this year I missed the honeysuckle, the one which I perhaps love most of all. I missed it without knowing I’d done so, mostly because it’s by its scent that the honeysuckle announces its presence.  It’s easy to pass a tangled hedgerow and hardly notice it.  The scent of the honeysuckle is its voice. It’s the scent that calls you near. I realised I’d missed the honeysuckle as I was cycling west through Northburn Grange estate in Cramlington a week past Sunday. It was warm and the air was humid, and as I was spinning along the cycle path between a hedge and the bank of the burn I was overwhelmed by the scandalous honey-sweet fragrance of purple Buddleia. Most years it’s the honeysuckle that catches me this way. It’s the scent of honeysuckle that usually establishes for me a deep entanglement with the energy of summer.

Owen was in the office again earlier this week. He was chatting in the team room to Lily when I came in.

‘Are you and Jack okay now?’ I said. ‘I heard you had a bit of a spat.’

‘Jack has an ugly side to him,’ Owen replied. ‘He’s a bully. He seems to have set himself on the dark road to damnation. You’ll know he’s gigging again with the band, of course?’

‘Is he?’ I said. ‘With The Clips? Hey, you can’t keep a good man down, eh?’

‘He should act his age. I don’t know who he thinks he is. He told Tallulah the other day that he saw himself as Dante and that he’s descending into an inferno. Dante! For goodness sake.’

I laughed. ‘So is Tallulah his Beatrice?’ I joked.

Owen smiled thinly, sadly. He then began to tell me about a girl called Beatrice who was an old flame he had, his first sweetheart, in fact.

‘Heidi hates her with a vengeance, of course,’ he said. ‘First love, last love, only love, and all that.  I made the mistake of telling Heidi when we first met that I called Beatrice my little Bee, and that she found me in the dark forest and led me to the foot of the mountain. I told her it was with my little honey Bee that I first walked through the vale and talked about the making of the soul. Heidi said that these conversations were tattooed on my heart, like a harlot’s name on a sailor’s arm, and there was no way they could ever be erased. I’ve told her since that she’s wrong, of course. I’ve told her that she is my true soulmate. But the thought of Bee still cuts her to the quick, I think, even now. Or as she would put it, when she thinks of Beatrice consternation pierces her heart.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘That must hurt.’

‘The thing was, Bee just wouldn’t let me go.  We parted because her mother and father thought I was too old for her.  And looking back now, I would agree with them. She was just sixteen and I was twenty five. I know now that it was wrong. But without Heidi I’d have never seen that.’

‘And so when her parents said it had to stop, you and your little Bee just kept on buzzin’, I suppose?’

‘We did for a while.  But one day her father accosted me as I was on my way to a rehearsal. It was early June. We were working on a Simon and Garfunkel medley that day. As I stepped off the zebra crossing Bee’s dad walked up to me. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, you pervert!” he said, and set about me.  The next thing I remember was waking up in hospital with a broken nose. That’s where I met Heidi. I was sitting in A & E waiting for the results of my X-ray. She was sitting next to me. She’d been stung on the eyelid by a wasp.  We began to talk, and the rest is history, as they say. It was love at first sight for us both. I opened my heart to her. I told her what had happened to me and there and then she said she knew that I knew it wasn’t right.  She said she could see that I was a good man who’d been led on to a path of ruination and sin.  And she was right, of course.’

I nodded earnestly. ‘Hmmm. So that was the last you saw of your little Bee?’ I said.

‘No,’ Owen replied. ‘Sadly it wasn’t. It turns out that Bee was utterly obsessed with me.  She seemed to turn up wherever I went and, worst of all, she was always sitting in a front row seat at every concert we played.  And she was always wearing a very short skirt and the red shoes I’d bought her for Christmas.’

‘You were being stalked by a little Bee in red shoes, eh?  Why did you buy her red shoes? What was that about?’

‘It was our thing.  Bee looked like Judy Garland, you see. That’s how it all started.  And when she used to ask where she would tell her parents she was going when she went out, I used to say “Tell them you’re off to see the wizard”. She used to call me The Wiz sometimes and sing silly little rhymes to me, such as “Gee whizz, it’s me, Wiz, your little queen bee, Wiz,” and “You’re the biz, Mr Wiz,” and “Mr Wiz, Mr Wiz, you’ve got me in a tizz!”.’

I smiled politely. ‘And so how long did she turn up at your gigs for?’ I asked. ‘Weeks? Months?’

‘Almost two years. Never missed one show. But it was beginning to take its toll on Heidi.  Heidi can be very possessive and she always worried in case Bee won back my affections, in case I succumbed again to her charms. Heidi became very insecure, and it got so she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. ‘”First love, last love, only love” she would say to me. “Suppose you feel the same way too?” “But I don’t,” I’d say. But for some reason poor Heidi just could not convince herself that I loved her and not my little Bee with her long, long legs and shiny red shoes.’

I laughed. ‘What is it with you and your women, Owen?’ I said. ‘You’ve got more limpets than the Titanic!’

Owen chuckled and blushed. ‘Believe it or not I was a good looking fellow in those days,’ he said. ‘I turned many a fair lady’s head, I can tell you.’

‘Oh, I can imagine you did,’ I said. ‘But how did you ever shake off little Bee?’

‘Heidi took matters into her own hands.  She can be quite resourceful, you know. She rang Bee’s dad and told him where her daughter was going on all her nights away from home. The next concert we gave was in Stockport and Bee was sitting in the middle of the front row, as usual, in her short skirt and red shoes.  For our second number we always played a song I’d written called “Why Is The Sky As Blue As An Angel’s Eye?” In the middle of the first chorus Bee’s dad emerged out of the darkness and marched along the front row. Bee jumped up in fright.  The band stopped playing and the whole place stood up in silence to see what was happening. “Ah ha!” her dad said, grabbing her by the ear. “So you’re off to see the Wizard again, are you, my girl?  Well, I’ve got one or two tricks left up my sleeve too, I can tell you. And the first is to get rid of those red shoes.” He made Bee take off her shoes and place them on her seat.  Then he led her by the ear, barefoot up through the audience and out of the concert hall via the stalls exit.  It must have been absolutely humiliating for her.  But of course for Heidi it was as if a huge stone had been lifted off her shoulder.  We did the rest of the gig with the pair of red high heels sitting on the seat where Bee had been. That night for the first and only time in her life Heidi got drunk. And we never saw Bee again.’

‘Where did the red shoes go?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ve often asked myself that.  I like to think that perhaps they were claimed by a poor fan from Stockport and that she wore them every Friday night when she went out on the razzle. I like to think that fan is wearing them still. But the truth is I really don’t know where they went.’

‘You don’t think Bee came back for them?’

Owen looked shocked. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have never thought that.  My God, Heidi would never cope with the idea that Bee might still be wearing those red shoes for me.  No, if they are anywhere they are safe in the hands of devoted fan from Stockport.’

Owen was thoughtful for a moment or two. I wondered if he wasn’t trying to process the notion that Bee might still be wearing those shoes.

‘Of course, you’ll know I later wrote a song called “Stockport Girl”, don’t you?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Oh yes. It’s a little bit in the style of Bruce Springsteen. A cracking song, even if I do say so myself. Ask Eric about it – he’ll know it well, I’m sure.’

Owen stood for a while, his head slightly bowed, his body language penitent, a bit like that of someone who expected to be whacked across the back of the head at any moment.

‘Ah, those were the days, Owen, eh?’ I said, just to break the silence

‘You know, it was a very peculiar concert,’ Owen said, wagging his spindly index finger. ‘As I remember it now I was playing only to that pair of red shoes on the seat. There was no-one else there.  I still have a dream sometimes where that’s what’s happening. I see myself standing at the microphone in a concert hall with my guitar singing and the only audience I have out there in the darkness is that pair of red shoes.  I dreamt it again just a few nights ago. What do you think it means?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Were you naked?’

‘No, I had my pyjamas on. Heidi likes us to wear them. We have matching pairs.’

‘I meant in the dream, Owen. Were you naked in the dream?’

‘Oh. No, I was wearing blue jeans, a cowboy shirt and light brown boots with Cuban heels.  Why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just one of those questions dream analysts always ask, isn’t it?’

Owen nodded slowly and looked up at me, a little like a crumpled cheese cloth Columbo.

‘Were there spurs on your boots?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Owen replied, his eyes narrowing. ‘Why? Does that matter?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It’s just another one of those questions analysts always ask.’

As I was leaving the office later that afternoon I bumped into Eric.

‘Aye, aye, whaat cheor, bonny lad?’ he said. ‘Hoo’s yah marra?’

‘Owen, do you mean? Or Jack?’  I replied. ‘I think Jack’s back with the band and they’ll be doing some gigs again soon.’

‘Whaat?!’ Eric said, his round face lighting up like a camping lantern. ‘Are the Proodloot gannin’ back on the road?  Just wait till aa tell wor young un’ that. Ee’ll be ower the moon! How, do yuh think the’ might dee a gig at the Fell ‘Em Doon?’

‘No, Eric,’ I said. ‘Jack’s back with the band. You know, the skinny guy in sunglasses with the dyed black hair in a pony tail – the one you met a few weeks ago?’

‘Ur. Ur, aye, the Spider blowk. Ozzy Osbourne. Whaat’s his band caalled again? The Gliffs?’

‘The Clips. Short for Pluto’s Apocalypse.’

‘Ur, aye, the five Plutos. Ur aye, noo aa remember. Ur, hing on, ur, whaat waas aa ganna say again?’

Eric put his finger into the air like a grubby crude antenna and waited for a signal. Eventually he got one.

‘Ur, aye, so are the Proodloot not ganna dee any more gigs, then?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Owen’s more a slippers and pyjamas sort of man these days. Give him a nice mug of Ovaltine and his Wizard of Oz DVD and he’s a happy bunny.’

‘Ur, aye. That’s a pity.  If  ‘ee wanted tee, wor young un’ knaas the gadgie at the Fell ‘Em Doon and could probably get them a spot there. Will yuh ask yah marra next time yuh taalk tiv him if ‘ee wants wor young un’ t’ dee that?’

I said I would and began making my way out of the office. And then I remembered that I had to ask him something.

‘Hey, Eric,’ I said, ‘do you know a Proudlute song called Stockport Girl?’

‘Whey, aye,’ he said. ‘Of course. It’s a crackin’ song. It’s on tha thord album, isn’t it? Heroes in Clurgs. Hoo does it gan again?  Ur aye. Hing on.’

Eric shut down, searching for a signal again, like a mobile phone in a deep valley. Then in a sing-song sort of way he recited these lines, which I took to be the chorus:

‘Soothport gorl, Soothport gorl

Bright as a ruby, pure as a porl

Aa’m nivva ganna leave aa

Me Soothport gorl.’ 

 

I nodded, appreciatively.

‘Cheers, Eric,’ I said.

‘Aa’ll dee yuh a CD of it, if yuh want iz tee.’

‘No, that’s fine. But thanks anyway.’

Just as I was opening the door Eric shouted to me again.

‘Ur, aye,’ he said. ‘And can yuh ask yah marra as weell if the Proodloot ivva played on the same bill as the Jefferson Airplane. Wor young un’ says the’ did.’

I agreed to make this enquiry on Eric’s behalf and finally made it back out into the sunshine.

The loneliness of a woman is a sad misfortune, but the loneliness of a man is his destiny. I had this thought yesterday as I ate my tea. I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s first album. I don’t usually listen to music at teatime, but yesterday Margaret was watching The Weakest Link on TV when I got in from work and so I went into my bedroom and put my CD player on. As Cohen sang Suzanne I realised that it is age, not youth that defines a man. It isn’t until a man is getting old that he realises how loneliness defines him. Loneliness, he sees, is his absolute purpose.

I dipped pieces of stone ground wholemeal bread into my bowl of lentil soup. It’s summertime again and I’m struggling to get fit and shed the pounds that winter brought me. And all I could hear was this loneliness, this fact so obvious I began to wonder how I’d ever missed it. I looked at the painting of a lion I painted a year or so ago. He is virtually emaciated. A naked young woman rides him. I see now the terrible loneliness I have put into his orange eyes. She will never be as alone as he is already.

I’m off to Scotland for a week tomorrow. I’m going to walk the hills around Loch Tummel and Loch Rannoch. I’ve also arranged to go over to Fort William one night to have dinner with Alice McTavish and catch up on things in her world. I’m really looking forward to it. What would any life be without a good pair of boots and a yellow brick road?

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