Archive for the ‘lily’ Category
that goddam glib and oily art
J. D. Salinger died last week and Tony Blair appeared before the Chilcot Inquiry. Blair’s generation in many ways both embraced and constituted the spirit of Holden Caulfield and constructed their identities around the values he represents. I would guess that Blair has very probably read Salinger, and in fact it isn’t hard even now to imagine Tony turning up for the cameras wearing a red baseball cap backwards, oddly enough. I wouldn’t have been hugely surprised if he’d turned up at the inquiry wearing one. It’s exactly the sort of misguided, cringe-worthy, I fancy myself to death sort of thing he would do. Blair is a malign and manipulative man – nothing at all like Caulfield really. Holden is all too aware of his own motives, all too ready to admit his failings. Holden sees the inescapable phoniness of the world that is closing in on him and he recoils from it, desperate to hold on to what one critic terms his radical innocence. Blair no longer retains one shred of such innocence. He is radically corrupt, annihilated by his own narcissism, a man without authenticity.
I was in Morpeth earlier this week for a meeting about the implications for us of the high numbers of homes that are being invaded by mice because of the cold weather. The Twichell case combined with the current fears about child trafficking in Haiti have alerted us again to the transformation issue. Senior managers were anxious to ensure that we were alive to the danger that abusers might take advantage of the situation and to ensure we had a strategy to address it. Some felt it was a problem that could only effectively be addressed at a higher political level and argued that the right course of action was to lobby the government for a mouse licensing and registration scheme. Others felt that we needed to take a more active stance. John Sultan suggested that it would be helpful if social workers had sniffer cats available to them when undertaking challenging investigations. The Director agreed with him and it was duly decided that two adult sniffer cats would be bought and a select group of social workers trained in their use.
Gilmour was part of the meeting. Afterwards I sat with him in his office for a little while catching up. It struck me that as he matures he’s growing into a warm and affable man. The thing that was most on Gilmour’s mind seemed to be how annoyed he was with John Sultan. Gilmour and John have the same role in different halves of the organisation; they are rival princes in the line of succession.
‘Bloody Sultan!’ he said. ‘That sniffer cats idea was mine, you know! Did he acknowledge it? Not on your bloody life. He never bloody does!’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I thought it was a bit imaginative for John,’ I said. ‘A bit leftfield.’
‘I tell you, he’ll try to take credit for just about anything,’ Gilmour said. ‘He’s shameless. Last week he told someone that multi-systemic therapy was originally his idea. Just before Christmas I heard him say CBT was another idea he came up with.’
‘He’s a remarkable man,’ I said.
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it, my boy,’ Gilmour went on, shaking his head in slow disbelief. ‘Antibiotics, string theory, nanotechnology, the electric violin . . . ‘
He gazed out over the rough winter grey grassland outside his office window. A few white gulls circled against the flat grey sky.
‘How’s your dad?’ I said.
‘My dad?’ he said, suddenly cheering up. ‘My dad is ticketyboo, thanks. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, you know, just wondering. Is he still in the prize cattle business?’
‘Oh yes very much so. My boy’s following him into agriculture, you know. Did I tell you that? Oh yes. He’s driving the quad now.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘It seems like only yesterday you were telling me about his first day at school. Doesn’t time fly?’
‘It certainly does. But how’s your dad, by the way? Is he well? He hasn’t retired yet has he?’
‘Retired, my dad? Nah, he’ll never retire. No, he’s still in the same line of work, dismantling old turbines in submarines and that sort of stuff.’
Gilmour nodded earnestly. ‘And his health?’ he said. ‘Is he is good health?’
‘Generally speaking, yes, he is,’ I said. ‘Yes. Like any man of his age he has occasional ailments, of course. He had a touch of scurvy just before Christmas and gets sciatica whenever it snows, but on the whole he’s not doing too badly. Is your dad well?’
‘Father is in the pink! Apart from his gout and the occasional bout of biliousness he’s the very picture of health. Not at all bad for a man who has already had more than his allotted three score and ten. But as you say, none of us is ague-proof. How old is your old man now, by the way?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ I replied. ‘My dad’s very secretive about his age. He always has been. He told me about twenty years ago that he was almost sixty. But that would make him about eighty nine now and I can hardly believe that. I would say he’s perhaps in his late fifties.’
‘Yes,’ Gilmour said, a twinkle coming to his watery blue eyes, ‘father’s like that too. Old people are funny, aren’t they? It has to be something to do with the way they deal with mortality, don’t you think? A little white lie they tell themselves to keep the nearness of the end out of sight. I’ll wager that you and I will engage in the very same self-deception when we get to their stage of life, eh? There are things we’d all rather not see.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘My dad quite likes the idea of it all being over, I think. I think it’s something else with him. Probably sheer perversity, possibly simply vanity.’
Gilmour smiled and looked at me in what I thought was a rather paternal way. His smile then slowly froze and he returned his gaze to the wide field of winter grass.
‘Fiscal easing,’ he said, a note of horror in his voice. He was almost whispering, as if at a vision.
I nodded, slowly.
‘I’ve just realised Sultan claimed that one too.’ He turned his head and looked at me with almost exhausted astonishment.
‘You should have challenged him,’ I said.
‘I know I should. I know I should. But at the time you just don’t realise that it’s happening. He says these things with such absolute confidence – with such a sense of ownership of everything he says – that it never occurs to you that these ideas aren’t his or that they might not be true.’
‘You’re going to have to examine every word our John utters,’ I said. ‘Once he’s sold you the stolen goods it’ll be too late.’
Gilmour smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I like that analogy. A robber selling on his ill-gotten gains, eh? A perfidious charlatan, a fraudster, if you like. Yes, exactly. Caveat emptor must be our dictum in these matters. Beware Sultan’s dodgy goods.’
As I made my way across the car park a few minutes later I spotted Jack Verdi parking up the Ducati near a pile of old snow.
‘Hey, hey, dude, how’s tricks?’ he said, turning up both his black leather-clad palms for me to slap as a greeting. I complied, in a perfunctory manner.
‘I’m pretty good, Jack,’ I said. ‘As good as anyone can be after a morning with the management group.’
Jack took off his gloves and laid them on his bike seat. He lifted the black helmet from his head. He reminded me of Ivanhoe.
‘The management group,’ he said, as if slowly crushing each syllable he uttered. ‘Pah! A bunch of grey suits and sell-outs, you mean. Phony bastards, everyone of them, dude. Who was there?’
‘The usual bunch,’ I said. ‘Gilmour, John Sultan – that lot.’
‘Ah, Goneril and Regan,’ Jack quipped. ‘Was Freddie there?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, he was.’
‘I knew Freddie when he sold the Socialist Worker and was planning the revolution’ Jack said. ‘What price integrity, eh, man? Look at him now – Bungalow Bill. He’s a turncoat, man, a toad-spotted traitor, a Benedict Arnold, a Judas, a backslider, a deceiver, a defector, a dog-faced deserter, a double-crosser, a hypocrite, a quisling, a snake, a hollow square, a fink, a ghost, a google, a nark, a rat, a weasel, do know what I mean, dude? He’s a sell-out, man. Know what I mean?’
I nodded. ‘So what brings you here, Jack?’ I asked.
‘I’m at the Panel again with the Buttercup boys. Waste of bloody time, of course.’
I nodded again. Jack adjusted the red bobble holding his pony tail.
‘Is the band still going?’ I said.
‘Yeah, of course. I’ll be on the road for the rest of my days, man, I know that now for certain. It’s what I was born for.’
‘Born to be wild, eh, Jack?’ I said, smiling.
He laughed and put his Aviators on. ‘Hey, dude,’ he said. ‘Where do you think Joanna Lumley stayed when she came to Morpeth to open the Sanderson Arcade?’
I looked at him, narrowing my eyes. Surely he wasn’t about to tell me she’d stayed at his place? Surely that couldn’t be true?
‘I’ve no idea really, Jack.’ I said. ‘Where did she stay?’
‘I don’t know either, man,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t think it would have been at the Anglers Arms in Weldon Bridge, do you?!’
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so – but hey, who knows, Jack, sometimes – ‘
‘I bumped into Talullah down in the Arcade earlier,’ Jack said, cutting across me. ‘She told me that’s where Joanna stayed, in the Anglers at Weldon Bridge. I told her she was dreaming. We had quite a spat about it.’
‘A spat? Why?’
‘Because I told her she was simply wrong. I told her that I knew as more or less a certainty that Joanna had stayed in the Malmaison in the Town. I told her I knew Joanna and that I’d had a drink with her on the quayside the night after the opening.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Joanna Lumley, Jack’ I said. ‘You kept that one to yourself.’
‘I don’t know her, man. I just said that to our redheaded friend to put her in her place. And it worked! She was just so sure of herself, man. She said someone she knew from Rothbury had told her it for a fact. Bullshit, dude! She was blagging, man, blagging, and we both knew it.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought the Sanderson Arcade was your sort of territory, Jack. What were you doing in a place like that?’
‘I was going to Mark and Sparks to purloin a couple of Mexican Three Bean wraps. Ever had those, man? Delish!’
‘Yes, I like them too, they’re good.’
I drove back down to Ashington listening to The Duke and The King. The first two tracks on the album are pretty good – If You Ever Get Famous and The Morning I Get To Hell. When I got back to the office I told Lily that we’d be getting sniffer cats and she might want to think about whether to use one on the Twichell case.
‘I don’t suppose we get to choose the cats’ names, do we?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t.’
Lily shrugged. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said. ‘It would be nice to call one of them Hercules. I’d call the other one Tim.’
I asked her if she’d like to do the training. She said she would.
When I got home that night Margaret was making batches of onion pate and turnip cakes to put in the freezer. I asked her how Brenda and Tristan were doing.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard something?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just curious.’
‘Oh, well they’re fine at the minute, I think. Brenda certainly seems a lot less dissatisfied than she was. I’m pleased about that. She gives a lot to others and deserves a little happiness herself.’
I went out for a walk before tea. I left Plessey Road and wove my way towards Links Road through the streets of South Beach Estate. At the corner of Curlew Way and Lapwing Close a couple were kissing beneath a streetlight. I went on past the pub, along Fulmar Drive to the traffic lights and then down to the beach road roundabout. I walked along to Wensleydale Terrace and Belgrave Terrace and down Ridley Avenue past the old police station building into Blyth town centre. It was quiet, almost deserted. I passed Blockbuster Videos, the yellow light swilling on the damp pavement, and up Waterloo Road as far as Coomassie Road before making my way back to Broadway by way of Princess Louise Road.
When I got home I went on to Amazon and ordered some DVD’s of film versions of King Lear: the Olivier version, the Paul Scofield version, and Grigori Kosintsev’s Russian sub-titled version. The Olivier version arrived a couple of days ago. Olivier is convincing and noble enough in a stolid sort of way, but for me Robert Lindsey steals the film with his callow, lithe, and slippery Edmund, sleek and shiny eyed, like a poacher’s dog. Like a viper.
.
a glimpse of maybellene’s garden
‘The sun is God’
(Said to be Turner’s last words)
Debs and Angie both went down with Swine Flu this week. I began to think about the apocalypse again. The birch seeds are blowing across my garden path and burrowing into the rubber seals of my car windows. Great dark swirls of lapwings have taken to the air above the fields along the beach road. Dozens of goldfinches are nervously harvesting the seeds from tattered windblown thistles along the fence lines that run inland towards Newsham and New Hartley. The days are closing in. Darkness is on its way.
Lily burst into the office. It must have been Tuesday. She strode across the room like a Valkyrie.
‘That bloody woman does my head in!’ she said. ‘I’ve had to walk out or I’d have killed her!’
Pippa, Jodie, Jules and Michelle all glanced at her briefly in a very matter of fact way. They said nothing. Lily does this sometimes.
‘Who are you seeing?’ I asked. I was nibbling on one of the Thornton’s Mini Caramel Shortcakes that Jules had brought in from home to save herself from excess or waste.
‘Maybellene Twichell’ Lily replied, throwing her long blonde hair back like a palamino’s mane and adopting a haughty but subtly self-mocking stance. Lily does this too sometimes. Her moods have a dramatic quality about them, like the weather in the mountains.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘The Mouse Lady. So what’s up now – more evidence of spells and potions?’
‘No,’ Lily said, in a clipped way. ‘No. Polly has gone missing now. That’s two down, one to go.’
‘So Penelope didn’t ever turn up, then?’
‘Of course she bloody didn’t. Maybellene says that she saw next door’s tabby, Mr Bilbo, in her garden the other night and fears the worst. Of course she didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by this possibility. If they were mice I’d be beside myself, wouldn’t you?’
I nodded. ‘So have you spoken to the cat yet?’
‘No, not yet,’ Lily replied, now suddenly distinctly more reflective. ‘I’m interviewing him tomorrow. But I can tell you now Mr Bilbo will have nothing to say on the matter. My guess is Mr Bilbo will not have laid a paw on either of these mice. My guess is that Maybellene has already delivered them to childless couples for transformation. That woman makes my blood boil some times. She’s as slippery as an eel, that one. And oh so smug with it.’ Lily paused briefly and then asked,’ If Mr Bilbo says he didn’t take these mice, do you think we’ll have enough to start proceedings on Priscilla?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I replied. ‘But why not run it past legal. You never know. How’s Pearl, by the way.’
‘She’s fine, I think. No fur, no facial or dietary changes. In fact I think it may be that she is already her mother’s apprentice. It may be too late already for Pearl.’
Hmmm,’ I said, shaking my head thoughtfully, ‘that’s a shame.’
I emailed John Sultan and updated him on the disappearance of Polly. He replied tersely: ‘Okay. Thanks.’ John’s not a rich or nuanced communicator. This is pretty much the answer he gives to every email.
‘Hi John. The world’s turned to a strawberry tart.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Hi John. There are seventeen extraterrestrial beings in the office and they’re turning all the staff into small china teapots.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Hi John. A shopkeeper on Woodhorn Road is buying new-born babies from strung out heroin addicts from North Seaton and feeding them to his pet tiger.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Hi, John. There are tanks on Station Road, bombers over Lintonville Terrace, and my eyes have turned to turpentine.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
I drove through the silent regiment of traffic cones on the Spine Road and up the slip road towards the Laverock Hall. The light was grey and white, the fields were yellow and rust. Already leaves have fallen from the trees. I was listening to Richmond Fontaine’s latest album, “We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River”. It’s predictably excellent. Willy Vlautin is a songwriter with unusually sophisticated narrative skills. His work is sometimes described as Carveresque. These are songs of anomie and dysfunctional relationships; their narrators inhabit a landscape that is almost irretrievably post-traumatic. Perhaps at one level these songs map a psychological meta-narrative – the collapse of character against environment into character against self. Something tragic and dehumanizing has happened here, but yet there’s something about the sharing of this experience in a song that offers a remedy of sorts, a kind of humanizing openness.
When I got in I discovered Margaret was on the telephone to Brenda. I went into the kitchen. About half a dozen or so of her clocks were gathered on the kitchen table. A yellow duster lay beside them. De Kooning was sitting among them, like a slightly bemused black druid. I made myself a cappuccino and took him through to watch the six o’clock news. Nick Clegg was on. I wondered if I should go for walk before tea.
‘How’s Brenda?’ I said to Margaret when she came through with a cup of tea to watch the weather.
‘She’s troubled,’ Margaret replied. ‘She doesn’t think Tristan really wants to find work. He goes out every day and tells her he’s out looking for work. He goes out every morning at nine, comes back every night at half five. He acts as if he’s working, but says he isn’t. Brenda doesn’t know what to make of it. She doesn’t trust him. She wants to support him but doesn’t want him to make a fool of her.’
Nick Clegg popped up again, like a robin on a Christmas card. I picked up my book on Ivon Hitchens and began flicking through it.
‘Tristan’s a creature of habit,’ I said.
‘Brenda thinks he’s seeing someone else,’ Margaret said.
Kettles and frying pans crossed my mind.
‘Who?’ I said. ‘Does she drive a bus?’
Margaret scowled. ‘She’s not sure who it is,’ she replied.
‘Ah.’
‘But she has an idea.’
‘She has an idea?’
‘Yes, she has. She thinks it might be a woman from South Beach Estate. One of her clients said she saw his van there on a couple of occasions.’
‘It wasn’t Mrs Byro, was it?’
‘It might have been, yes. Why?’
‘I just wondered. Which road was Tristan’s van allegedly seen in?’
‘I’m not sure. One of the bird streets, I think.’
‘Curlew?’
‘It might be, yes.’
‘Or was it Avocet?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Or Osprey?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘Or Eider?’
‘I’m not sure. It might have been Dunlin.’
‘Hmmm,’ I said, wondering if perhaps Mrs Byro was the femme fatale herself and had lobbed in the South Beach idea to throw Brenda off the scent. It was an very odd thought. Tristan’s a Trostskyite.
‘It wasn’t Albatross by any chance, was it?’ I said.
‘No,’ Margaret replied. ‘I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that one.’
Lily interviewed Mr Bilbo on Wednesday, as planned.
‘How did it go?’ I asked.
‘Okay,’ she replied, in a resigned sort of way. She obviously hadn’t got much.
‘Did he talk to you okay?’
‘Oh yeah, he was fine. A really well mannered and polite little chap. Straight as a die too.’
‘So?’ I said. ‘Come on then, what did he say? Has he been in Maybellene’s garden or was she just telling porky pies?’
‘Yes, he says he’s been in a few times.’
‘Ah ha! And?’
Lily frowned. ‘Mr Bilbo says he feels uncomfortable in Maybellene’s garden. He says there’s something odd about it. He never stops there, but he has to pass through it to get to Mrs McMurdo’s garden. Mrs McMurdo lets him sit in her greenhouse and she has catmint planted in her border.’
‘So what does Mr Bilbo say is so odd about Maybellene’s garden? Is it full of dead mice, for instance?’
‘No,’ Lily said. ‘That’s the odd thing. Mr Bilbo says he has never seen any evidence whatsoever of even one mouse in Maybellene’s garden. He says it’s the only garden he’s ever been in that’s like that. Don’t you think that’s strange?’
I nodded slowly. ‘It is strange, yes. But what does it tell us?’
Lily shrugged and shook her head.
‘Okay, so what else did he say? Has he ever heard or seen anything odd?’
‘He says he’s heard them singing. At first he says he thought it was a Mahalia Jackson record, but then he glimpsed Maybellene through the kitchen window. Mr Bilbo says Maybellene sings a lot and that he can hear her even if he’s in the next street. She sings spirituals.’
‘Spirituals?’
‘Yes, you know – Go Tell It On the Mountain, I’m On My Way to Canaan’s Land, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, that sort of thing.’
‘Did Mr Bilbo mention those particular songs?’
‘Yes, he did actually. Do you think they are telling us something?’
I shrugged and shook my head.
‘So other than the Mahalia Jackson syndrome, which isn’t really that unusual, I guess, and the garden with no mice, was there anything else he mentioned which might be important?’
‘He said the garden smells strange.’
‘It smells strange? In what way? What does he say it smells like?’
‘He doesn’t know. He says it isn’t a smell he likes. He says it could be snakes.’
‘Snakes?!’ I said. ‘He definitely said that?’
‘Yes,’ Lily said. ‘He said the smell could be snakes.’ Lily looked sheepish.
‘You suggested that to him, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You asked him a leading question, didn’t you?’
Lily nodded. Her head drooped in shame, her long hair closng around her face like crematorium curtains. ‘Yes, I did,’ she said.
‘Lily,’ I said. ‘What on earth were you thinking of? That’s not like you.’
‘I know, I know,’ she said, looking up at me, wide-eyed and beseeching. ‘I know. But that bloody woman really gets under my skin. I know she’s up to something, I just bloody know it. I was so hoping Mr Bilbo would give us something.’
I was in Keswick last weekend. On Saturday I walked around Derwentwater and up over Catbells. It drizzled a bit around the middle of the day, but for the time of the year I couldn’t complain. On Saturday night I went to the Theatre by the Lake to see a production of an adaptation of one of P G Wodehouse’s novels – Summer Lightning. It was written in 1929. The characters have typically unlikely Wodehouse names – Percy Pilbeam, Sir Gregory Parloe-Parsloe, Galahad Threepwood and Hugo Carmody. The men were all dapper and dandy – striped blazers, brightly coloured waistcoats, pastel ties, tan brogues and all that. This novel was published just three years after the General Strike of 1926. Of course such events unfolded in a completely different universe to that inhabited by Wodehouse’s characters. The men who in those days worked (or didn’t) in the dirty dark world of the pits and shipyards of Blyth never ever dressed like this. I never saw a striped blazer in my granddad’s wardrobe. My grandma was never a flapper girl. But oddly enough I found myself taking a strange liking the style of the male characters. As soon I got back went on to the Veggie Shoes site. I really must get myself some tan brogues.
It’s been another good weekend weatherwise. I rode my bicycle over the fields to Bebside and then up the Heathery Lonnen to the Three Horse Shoes. There seems to be a unusually high number of berries on the trees and hedgerows this year, more than I can ever recall seeing in any previous year. I went up through Cramlington and Nelson Industrial Estate to Beaconhill and then down Arcot Lane, the broken track already littered with dry brown leaves. Sometimes the wind picked them up and swirled them into sudden vortices, like dogs chasing their tails. I went through Dudley and then back down to Seghill on the road, the wind at my back. I came over the fields to Newsham. It was feeling a little colder. Some kids had set fire to some trees and grass along the track that follows the route of the old railway line to New Delaval. The place is bone dry. It hasn’t rained much for weeks now.
.
when the lion dreams about red shoes
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?
.
the pure white doves and the peregrine
Early one morning in high summer a few years ago I was sitting on Great Gable at Westmorland Cairn looking down the valley at the famous view of Wastwater. I had the mountain more or less to myself, having camped the previous night down on the shore of Sprinkling Tarn. As I sat leaning against my rucksack, a raven and a peregrine falcon floated up on a thermal close to the crag. They were no more than thirty feet from me. The raven was harrassing the peregrine, which was mostly ignoring it, but at one point made a quick and very short move towards it, as if to get it to back off. Sort of like the way a lion might suddenly turn towards a troublesome hyena. The gesture had the desired effect. The raven made off across the valley in the direction of Scafell Pike. The peregrine continued to rise into the sky on the thermal. I lay back and looked up as it became an eventually invisible speck in the blue sky far above me.
As I lay there I wondered what would happen if a flock of fifty pure white doves passed beneath the falcon. It would stoop, of course, and take one of the doves – but which one? How would it decide? Would it take the whitest? The smallest? The slowest? One in the middle? One on the edge? The doves would be flying in a flock as an evolved protective tactic: being in a flock is safer than flying alone. It might be that if fifty doves passed by one by one a peregrine would take every one. In a flock of fifty only one will be lost. But which one would a peregrine target as it hurtled towards the flock like a thunderbolt? And why would it choose that one? Could the peregrine discern differences between the doves invisible to the human eye? Did the peregrine have a special kind of knowledge? How was its victim selected? I lay gazing into the cloudless sky as if waiting for the answer to descend on me. It didn’t.
Swine Flu is becoming a lot more widespread now. Lily went off with it at the beginning of this week. The disease is picking off more and more people, apparently at random, although I’m inclined to find metaphors that suggest selection at some level. I imagine the disease as the peregrine over the flock of doves. Does the peregrine pick the dove it just happens to get its eye on? I imagine the virus as a lion running at a herd of zebra. It tends to take the one that runs a little slower than the rest, the young or weak one, or the one who gets separated from the herd for other reasons or whose trajectory just happens to unfortunately veer too close to its own. So while chance plays a part here, it’s not an entirely random process. Here we see the unfolding of the probabilities that, aggregated, evolution rests upon. It’s a process which features chance and choice, natural selection.
There is a tendency to ascribe intentionality and purpose to agents that do not in any sense make decisions or have any consciousness of their own actions. A virus is obviously not like a lion or a peregrine, but that’s something we easily forget. In fact we often seem ready to attribute an even higher level of intentionality and meaning to activities of invisible, microscopic organisms. The hand we cannot see becomes the hand of God or Fate. We see a moral judgement or higher purpose in who the virus ‘chooses’ to infect. The virus must be the agent of a higher force. What we cannot see and rationalise quickly falls into the realm of the mythical. Often this shift of perspective can be seen in a change of terminology: a disease becomes a plague. The myth of the righteous and evil plague makes sense for us of the invisible, uncontrollable danger that we may be prey to. To prevent or survive its onslaught we need to clean up our lives. We need to repent and cease our evil ways. The virus is karma. If we get straight with the universe the continuation or restoration of our good health will be assured. And yet the innocent must die too sometimes. But there’s a reason for everything. God is good. God is merciful. Those innocents His virus takes from us have a special place in His plan. They will have the best seats on the Black Aeroplane that will take them straight to the orchard-plots of Heaven.
The fact of course is that in the case of every epidemic some people are always more likely to die than others and even though some of the strongest will die too, in the pattern of swine flu mortality we will also surely see the principle of natural selection at work. The lion may most often take the weak and the vulnerable, but once in a while he’ll take one of the strongest and quickest zebras on the plain. Swine Flu will do the same.
Last night I went for a walk up through Newsham, over to South Newsham and the old waterworks, down to the beach and back along Rotary Way. When I got back Margaret was on the telephone. I made myself a cappuccino and sat down beside De Kooning in front of the television to drink it. What I took to be a sports programme trailer or link was on. The voice-over was reciting a poem by Michael Laskey.
On Having Given Up Cricket
I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others’ leisure.
I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.
And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I’ve done without.
And I’ll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will efface
the faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.
When Margaret had finished her telephone call she came through.
‘That was Brenda,’ she said.
‘Oh, how is she?’ I asked.
‘She’s very well. I asked her about your cat stealing the nine jigsaw pieces.’
I ignored her, as if I was engrossed in the television. I gave De Kooning a stroke.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He won’t sit still for acupuncture, if that’s what she has in mind.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Margaret said, tersely. ‘I know you’re not interested, but Brenda does think the theft and burial of those nine linked jigsaw pieces has a definite meaning.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. She actually thinks your cat is protecting you. Brenda thinks that by removing the driver from the steamroller he is neutralising the person who might use it to do you harm. She says the steamroller stands for someone or some force close to you that does not have your best interests at heart.’
I said nothing. Margaret paused for a minute or so. I was wondering if it could be the Swine Flu that De Kooning was supposed to have in mind.
‘Brenda also thinks she can help De Kooning,’ she eventually said. ‘She feels his energies are out of balance. She asked me if you would agree to her doing some work with him. She says she won’t charge you for her time.’
‘Some work with De Kooning?’ I said. ‘What work does she have in mind, exactly?’
‘Reiki.’
‘Reiki?’ I said.
‘Yes, reiki. She thinks it will really help him.’
‘She thinks that doing reiki on a cat will put an end to him stealing jigsaw pieces? Is that what she thinks?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I won’t let her do it.’
‘Why not? What harm can it do?’
‘De Kooning doesn’t particularly like reiki,’ I said. ‘He has no faith in it. And besides, he won’t give his written consent.’
‘Then you could give it for him.’
‘I could,’ I said. ‘But I won’t. And in any case, I don’t want him fixed just yet. First I need him to tell me who’s driving that steamroller. I need to see those missing pieces.’
At that moment I wondered how Lily was. I wondered if Lily might be dead.
.
yellow cheese and moondust
It looks like Tristan bottled it.
‘How did Brenda’s birthday go?’ I asked Margaret on Monday. ‘Was she happy with her presents?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Margaret replied. She was polishing one of her clocks with lemon-scented Pledge. ‘Tristan’s taken her off for a surprise last minute holiday in the Lakes.’
‘Has he?’ I said. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘They gone to one of your hideaways,’ Margaret replied, buffing the clock face with a yellow duster. ‘Bowness.’
Bowness is obviously the new Prague, I thought. I expect I’ll discover a bottle of Fursty Ferret and a slab of Kendal Mint Cake on the kitchen bench any day now.
A week or so ago we received a referral from Carol Anne McKenzie, a School Health Advisor, about an eight year old girl, Pearl Twichell. Carol Anne suspected that Pearl’s mother – who rather interestingly goes by the name of Maybellene, hopefully after the eponymous heroine of the old Chuck Berry song – was acting in a way that suggested possible MCTS, Malignant Child Transformation Syndrome. Such cases are few and far between these days and I admit to regarding the suggestion with a fair degree of skepticism. However, the case was allocated to Lily and after her initial assessment she felt Carol Anne might well be right.
We called a strategy meeting to share information. Lily told the meeting that she’d asked Maybellene directly about the concerns leading to her involvement.
‘I asked her straight out,’ Lily said, ‘“have you been trying to turn your daughter Pearl into a mouse?” Maybellene replied that she hadn’t. “Isn’t it true that you have three pet mice?” I asked. “It is,’” she replied. “Were those mice once children?” I asked. “Not so far as I know,” she replied, which struck me as a curious answer because it seemed to me to admit the possibility that they might have been. “Are you telling me they might once have been children?” I asked. “No,” she replied, “what I’m saying is that I don’t know. I got those three mice off a traveller who lodged in my house for a while. They were his. When he left he left them behind. I never inquired into their history or ancestry.” “Why not?” I asked. “Weren’t you curious?” “No,” she replied, in a way that was almost cocky, “I didn’t ever think it mattered.” I think one of the things this meeting needs to realise is that in Maybellene we have a woman of exceptional guile and cleverness. She knows the answers professionals want to hear. Sometimes while I was talking to her I felt she was simply toying with me.’
Jennifer, our new Senior Spells and Potions Advisor, a small plump woman with curly grey hair, nodded knowingly. “I’ve met women like Maybellene before,’ she said. ‘They are very difficult to read sometimes.’
‘Yes, any way,’ Lily went on, slightly irritated, ‘I then asked her why her three mice were called Polly, Penelope and Priscilla. She said they were already named when she got them from the traveller. “But those three names are all girl’s names, aren’t they?” I said. She accepted that this was true, interestingly enough. But she was too clever to fall into my trap. “So are they girls?” I said. “No,” she replied, looking at me as if butter wouldn’t melt, “they’re mice.” “And you’re quite sure that they weren’t girls before they were mice?” “As I said,” she said, “I do not know their full history.” I’m not an aggressive woman, as you all well know, but at that point I felt like planting her one, I can tell you!’
‘But she’s clever. Isn’t she?’ Jennifer remarked. ‘She isn’t suggesting transformation is out of the question. No, she’s only saying that if it occurred it’s not something she had a hand in.’
‘Can we believe her?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t think we can,’ Lily said. ‘And in any case, surely to take possession of mice you know to have been transformed from infants is little better than to transform those infants yourself. It’s like the kind of thing we did with the torture of those suspected Islamic terrorists – farmed it out to the Americans and Moroccans. If she knew about the transformation she is an accomplice, and therefore responsible for the trafficking of transformed infants.’
‘But do we have any clear evidence about the two areas of concern here,’ I asked. ‘First, that she has been seeking to transform her daughter Pearl into a mouse, and second, that the three mice she keeps are in fact transformed infants?’
The meeting was completely silent.
‘Jennifer,’ I said, ‘these spells that Maybellene is believed to have been using – what do we know about those? How potent are they? Are they specific to mouse turnings? Do they provide us with clear evidence of an attempted transformation?’
‘They are of moderate potency,’ Jennifer said. ‘Certainly not spells of extraordinary efficacy. But they could achieve mouse turnings if used properly by a skilled practitioner. However, they are not mouse turning specific and indeed have a quite broad application, including some relatively mundane and benign uses, such as vanquishing the white spots from toenails.’
‘What about the Yellow Cheese and Moondust spell?’ Lily asked. ‘That’s the one Pearl’s teacher found written in Maybellene’s handwriting in one of Pearl’s schoolbooks. Isn’t that one specific to mouse turnings?’
‘Yes, Jennifer said, ‘that one is. But what evidence is there that Maybellene ever uttered it? And that spell is also really only suitable for use by experts. It requires extraordinary exactness and patience. In the wrong hands it can have catastrophic results. There are many well documented cases of accidental snake and toad turning by inexperienced users of that particular spell. It’s not a spell that comes without hazards. I suppose we’ve got to ask if a mother who loves her child as much as Maybellene appears to love Pearl would take the chance of such a catastrophic outcome.’
‘You see, Jennifer,’ Lily said, becoming distinctly matriarchal and assertive in her tone, ‘this is where you and I differ. To me any mother who would transform her child into a mouse by definition does not love that child. Such an act is a de facto rejection in my eyes and self-evidently emotionally abusive.’
Jennifer nodded patiently. She looked a little like a dandelion clock. ‘I respect your position on this issue, Lily,’ she said. ‘As you know, this is one of those difficult questions that child care professionals we haven’t yet come to a clear consensus about.’
Lily shrugged, and gave me a snarky make-believe smile.
‘The other issue, of course,’ Jennifer continued, ’is that even if we could show that at any point she did give voice to the Yellow Cheese and Moondust spell, we’d also have to prove intent. The recent judgement in Highspot v Northamptonshire makes it clear that unless malignant intent can be clearly demonstrated there is no legal basis for seeking an order on the grounds of the utterance of transformative spells. You’ll recall that in that case a child’s grandmother had uttered a spell in her sleep and by accident turned her granddaughter, who had been sleeping nearby, into a lettuce. The court agreed this transformation would have been malignant but only if intent could be proven. Social Services’ applications for orders in respect of the other children in the family were dismissed.’
‘The law’s a mess on this issue,’ Lily said. ‘I think judges are getting this all wrong. The whole thing needs sorting out.’
‘I agree with Lily about this,’ Carol Anne declared. ‘If you ask me no normal mother would act in such a way and any family who even knows such spells should not be considered fit to care for children.’
‘We all know them, of course,’ I remarked.
‘Yes, but we’re professionals,’ Carol Anne countered. ‘We are not in the business of harming children.’
I nodded sagely. ‘So what about Maybellene?’ I said. ‘You met her too, Jennifer, didn’t you? What did you make of her?’
‘I agree with Lily that she’s a very very clever woman. But I too struggled to find definite proof of malignant intent – or indeed even of intent to transform.’
‘Did you challenge her?’ Lily asked, obviously bristling.
‘Of course,’ Jennifer replied. ‘I also asked her directly about the concerns. “How many children have you turned into mice?” I asked. “None,” she replied. “How many times have you uttered spells over your daughter?’ I asked. “Never,” she replied. “How many spells do you know?” I asked. ‘None,” she replied. “So what about the Yellow Cheese and Moondust spell, which is written in your hand in one of Pearl’s school books,” I said, thinking I’d finally caught her out. “Isn’t that just a nursery rhyme?” she said, as if butter wouldn’t melt. “No,” I replied, “it’s a mouse turning spell.” She frowned and said, “Well, I never. You learn something every day. Who would have ever thought it.” I’ll knock the smugness out of you, I thought to myself. “What about when the school nurse – sorry Carol Anne, I know I should have said School Health Advisor – heard you muttering under your breath when you were standing alone in the corridor outside Pearl’s classroom? What were you muttering then, if it wasn’t a spell?” “A psalm,” she says, as bold as brass. “A psalm.”’
‘A psalm!’ Carol Anne exclaimed. ‘Well, I ask you. I’m telling you it was no psalm she was chanting outside that classroom.’
‘But the difficulty is we have no evidence to prove it wasn’t a psalm, Carol Anne,’ Jennifer said. ‘By your own admission you didn’t actually hear what she was saying. And Maybellene does seem to dote on Pearl, doesn’t she? That child obviously wants for nothing.’
‘Do we have any evidence of harm?’ I asked, looking towards Stephen, our legal advisor, who had sat quietly listening. ‘Anything we could put before a court?’
‘Not in what I’ve heard so far,’ he said. ‘No. Nothing that would stand up.’
‘And there’s been no evidence of transformational signs in Pearl?’ I asked. ‘Carol Anne?’
‘No, none that I’ve seen. No facial fur patches, no ear changes, no changes to her vocal range – nothing.’
‘Of course, we know gradual transformations are very much the exception,’ Jennifer said. ‘Most transformations are instantaneous and occur immediately on the utterance of an efficacious spell.’
Lily looked despondent. Her hunch was that Pearl was at serious risk of malignant transformation, and she may well be right. But unfortunately the evidence wasn’t there to support a decisive intervention in Pearl’s life. This is often the case in social work, the complexities and conflicts of which are not at all understood by the media or the general public, who have for the most part little idea of the reality of the lives of the marginal families we deal with. The lives of the underclass are more or less invisible to the great mass of society. Inevitably we concluded that we didn’t have grounds to remove Pearl from Maybellene’s care and that we could only continue to work with the family on a voluntary basis and try to monitor Pearl’s welfare closely.
As I drove home that evening the sun was shining. I was listening to the Felice Brothers’ album Yonder Is The Clock. It’s good potent rootsy music, Americana, as the genre is called these days, music unmistakably in the tradition of The Band, Dylan, Tom Waits, the Jayhawks and the like. It has that same sort of loose texture and abrasive darkness.
As I sat in the traffic queue on the Horton road at the Laverock Hall Farm roundabout I began wondering what other albums or songs had clocks in their title. The obvious one was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around the Clock. I wondered how many more I could think of before I got to the roundabout. It turned out to be fewer than I thought, probably because the queue was shorter than usual, or perhaps because there are fewer than I imagine there are. This was my list:
Clocks by Coldplay Clockwork Orange Soundtrack Sky Like a Broken Clock by Kelly Joe Phelps Stop The Clocks by Oasis Punch The Clock by Elvis Costello Clock Without Hands by Nanci Griffith Beat The Clock by Sparks
When I got home I noticed that a large bright blue barrel had landed on the gravel in Hugo’s front garden fairly close to his path, near the car wheels and the sheets of plasterboard. It looked like a depth charge. The colour contrasted vividly with the orange of the Bond Bug. I stopped for a moment beneath the fidgety green canopy of the birch and noticed the hosta against my fence were now growing strongly. The air was cool and there was a bit of a breeze. As I was feeding De Kooning Margaret came in and began preparing her vegetables. I got changed and went out for a walk. I went through the Solingen Estate, through Ridley Park, and along the quayside. I came back up Waterloo Road, past the open space of the refurbished market place. At the spire of the Presbyterian church I turned south on to Cypress Gardens and made my way back to Broadway field. A couple of young children in yellow coats and their parents were in the new play area. When I got back Margaret was out. I put Shine Eyed Mister Zen on the CD player. De Kooning sat with me and we listened to it. It’s my favourite Kelly Joe Phelps album and I hadn’t heard it for far too long.
The weather went downhill later in the week. It rained and got windy. I went to my dad’s in the car. Our conversation was dominated by the MP’s expenses scandal.
‘I see Campbell’s paid back six thousand pounds for furniture he bought for his house in London,’ my dad said. He was talking about our honourable member, the redoubtable Red Flag Ronnie.
‘I noticed that,’ I said, munching on a chocolate Brazil. ‘Such a generous gesture. But I bet we don’t know the half of it yet, eh?’
Campbell is an unreconstructed old style pseudo-egalitarian. He may lack Peter Mandelson’s urbane façade and sophistication, perhaps even his intelligence, but at the end of the day they have more in common than either would admit. Campbell used to be a miner, an NUM official at the time of the miner’s strike in 1984. He got himself elected on a wave of local Labour party consolation, mixed with the disillusionment with the absent carpetbagger who was his predecessor. Ronnie had a slogan, a vision, a USP: he was an ordinary man, a man of the people, a socialist. He declared to the whole self-seeking throng of Thatcher’s world that he, Ronnie Campbell, would do an MP’s job on a miner’s wage. Hubris, Ronnie, hubris. Nowadays he rakes in nearly quarter a million pounds a year from being an MP, taking his full sixty five grand salary and pretty much every expense he can, including the usual twenty odd thousand for the mortgage payments on a second home. Many people also believe that his wife is probably on his office staff payroll, although to date Ronnie’s been a bit coy about sharing the details of that arrrangement with the electorate. This is at least consistent with his unstinted opposition to the introduction of the new Freedom of Information legislation, of course.
When Ronnie was elected he lived in an old terraced house in Cowpen Quay. He now lives in a big detached house on Marine Terrace and drives to the betting shop in his Jaguar. It turns out that what some of us suspected all along was true: Red Flag Ronnie doesn’t really have a red bone in his body. His sort of socialism was never going to have the spine to reasist the siren songs of the John Lewis list.
‘Aye, Campbell’s been a big disappointment,’ my dad said. ‘I know you didn’t agree with me, but I thought he was a decent man, somebody who was on the side of ordinary people. But we know now he’s just as bad as the rest of them. How does he think history will remember him now? It won’t be as a socialist or a man of the people. It’ll be as just another insignificant self-seeking old Labour crook, the ex-pitman who had to pay back six thousand pound for furniture he’d fiddled on expenses.’
‘Yeah, that and his support for fetishes,’ I joked, alluding to the occasion last year when Ronnie had declared his public support for National Fetish Day after misunderstanding the meaning of the word. Ronnie thought it had something to do with worrying about which horse to bet on. ‘You can see the headline for his obituary already, can’t you – Furniture and Fetishes MP Dies.’
‘What do you think happens to them when they get into Parliament?’ my dad said, a look of disbelief on his face. ‘Is it an infection, do you think, like the Swine Flu? Or is it just the glitter and clink of the cash? Is that what casts a spell on them?’
‘Maybe it’s the wicked witch from the Fees Office,’ I said. ‘But I don’t buy the idea that these are good people inevitably transformed to bad people by some strange irresistible system. Not everyone turns bad. Those people that do were perhaps weak and self-deceiving from the start. Maybe they were never really in it for the good they could do, or if they were there was always a stronger motive lurking behind that façade, one waiting like a lion to pounce out and devour them – self-interest, vanity or greed. We don’t choose our representatives well. We choose them for sentimental and irrational reasons. We don’t really know them when we choose them, we only know the label they’ve got stuck to them. It’s a pig in a poke every time.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ my dad said. ‘Campbell did well enough during the strike. He looked like he was on the right side then, no-one can say he didn’t. You’ve got to be fair to the man.’
‘Appearances are deceptive,’ I said, nibbling at what was at least my seventh chocolate Brazil. ‘That’s the bedrock of modern politics, isn’t it?’
‘Surely the Labour Party will deselect him before the next election,’ my dad said.
‘Do you think so?’ I said. ‘I bet they don’t. If he isn’t their candidate, it’ll be because he’s decided himself not to stand.’
‘Well he should stand down. The man should be ashamed to stand again.’
‘Maybe that’s why he won’t stand down – because it’d be admitting his faults. And any way he’s probably forgiven himself already. Politicians never let their sins weigh on their consciences for very long.’
‘Well, I’ll not vote for the scoundrel,’ my dad said, picking up my empty pineapple juice glass and taking it to the kitchen. ‘And I’ll tell you this, there’s a lot of other people who won’t either. They cannot understand why he did it!’
‘Did what? Bought the furniture? Well, he thought he was entitled to it.’
‘Pah, baloney! He knew he wasn’t entitled to it! He’s a stupid bugger, I’ll grant you that, but he knew fine well he was only entitled to what he needed. Do you not think so?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do think so. But I think Ronnie lacks a reliable moral compass and probably always has. It’s depressing. Another example of an all too corruptible fallen socialist, yet more evidence that the prospect of a fair world is just pie in the sky. It just confirms the view that greed is human nature and that everyone’s born like that. But if we are we’re done for. It’s just a dog eat dog, cat eat mouse world.’
I drove back in the rain, past the new beach huts and on to Plessey Road. I listened again to Yonder Is The Clock. I was pondering whether I’m sometimes a bit too hard on Ronnie and wondering if Tristan and Brenda were back from Bowness yet.
.
the owl, the albatross, and the dodo
‘How, aa wuz blaan away by meetin’ ya marra,’ Eric said. ‘Aa towld wor young ‘un and he waadn’t believe it. Ee thowt aa waas just mekkin’ it up! But aa towld him whaat he looked like an’ aall that an’ ‘ee believes iz noo. It waas him, waasn’t it? Ya marra iz the real McCoy, isn’t ‘ee?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘He is certainly the one and only Owen Vardy, late of the much feted minstrel troop who went by the good name of Proudlute.’
‘Aye, that’s whaat aa telt wor young ‘un,’ Eric said. ‘That ya marra waas definitely the blowk oot of the Proodloot. The lads at the Prymeeaa cannit believe aa’ve met him. Nor can aa. It’s like a miracle for someone who’s been on Top of the Pops to be in Eshinden, yuh knaa whaat aa mean? There’s ownly one thing that waald ‘ave been more amazin’ than meetin’ ya marra. D’yuh knaa whaat that waald o’ been?’
I looked at him and shrugged. I wondered if it wouldn’t have been an audience with George Herbert himself, author of The Country Parson and important early metaphysical poet. I said I didn’t know.
‘To meet that Peter Andre,’ Eric replied, with an implied ‘obviously’. ‘Yuh knaa the one that’s married to hor wi’ the massa bazookas. Ur, yuh knaa, whaat’s aa name – Jordan. D’yuh knaa we aa mean?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I know them,’ I said. ‘I mean Peter and Katie – I know Peter and Katie.’
‘Whaat? Yuh knaa them as weell?!’ Eric exclaimed, his celebrityphilia obviously allowing him to get the wrong end of a fairly short verbal ambiguity. ‘Is it through ya marra? Does he knaa them from when ee wuz in the Proodloot?!’
‘No, Eric,’ I said. ‘I don’t know them in that sense. I know who they are, that’s all.’
‘Ur, aa see whaat yuh mean,’ Eric said, palpably crestfallen. For a moment a dream egg beyond his wildest imaginings had been hatching before his very eyes, the possibility of meeting the legendary Peter Andre. For now Eric would have to do with Owen.
‘Here,’ Eric said, abruptly, putting his hooked finger in the air. ‘Ur, aye, whaat was it again? Eh, ur, aye, eh, hing on.’
At that point Eric stopped dead, his pirate pose frozen, like someone playing Statues. His face became expressionless, his eyes stared blankly into an invisible void. It was as if yet again someone had thrown the switch on his neurological systems. He stood as still a gravestone. And then suddenly life re-entered him.
‘Ur, aye,’ he said, as if no time at all had passed, ‘ya marra nivva met that Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, did ‘ee? Yuh knaa, them whaat did the Woolly Bully an’ that.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t ever recall Owen mentioning them at all, oddly enough.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Eric said. ‘They were mint.’
For a minute or so Eric again seemed absent, as if ruminating in an unseen life world perhaps. You’ll have realised by now that is something that often happens with Eric. I was about to wander off when he spoke again.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Hing on, er, whaat waas it again? Ur, aye, the swine flu and aall that. Whaat d’yuh think of that?’
I shrugged. Before I could give an opinion however, Eric decided to give me his.
‘Aa think the telly’s got it aall wrang, divvent ‘ee? Wor young ‘un knaas someone who’s been to Mexico and tha’s nowt the matter wi’ hor. Aa mean, ‘ee says she’s got a caald an’ aall that, but nowt weird. D’yuh knaa whaat aa think? Aa think tha’ mekkin’ it up?’
‘You don’t think swine flu exists?’
‘Nur. Whey, hoo waald a human porson catch a pig disease? Hev yuh ivva hord of a pig sneezin’ or hevvin’ a snotty nose? Aa mean, hoo can a pig hev the flu? The flu’s a human disease. Aa mean, the pig would hev to tek paracetemol and aall that!’ Eric laughed, his face lit up like the man in the moon.
‘So what about bird flu?’ I said. ‘Do you believe in that?’
Eric’s systems briefly shut down again, as if he might be downloading something from an external site.
‘Aye, aa dee,’ he eventually replied. ‘Aye, an’ aa’ll tell yuh whaat, aa think the bord flu is warse than this pig one, d’ye not?’
‘Worse? What do you mean by worse? That it’ll kill more people?’
‘Aye. Aa’ divvent think this pig flu’s ganna kill anybody ower here, d’ye? Aa mean, we’re not like Mexicans, are wuh? Hoo can English folks catch a disease off pigs?’
I nodded. ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘But sooner or later they’ll be right. Sooner or later nature will bite back. But I think you’re right, swine fever might not the one.’
We live in apocalyptic times. We wait for the hurricane. We wait for the fire. We wait for the plague. But for some of us we’ve already been waiting too long. We’ve got apocalypse fatigue. While most of the world intermittently runs around in blind panic, the prospect of the end of the world bores some of us now. We don’t feel inclined to believe it. Or maybe we just don’t feel inclined to care. And this is more or less exactly how the end will come – and more or less exactly why.
Tristan called along on Thursday night to pick up a box of sunglasses. Margaret was out when he arrived. I invited him in while I looked for the box. De Kooning arrived to give him the once over.
‘What’s your cat called?’ Tristan said.
‘De Kooning.’
‘Hello, De Kooning,’ Tristan said, stroking him beneath the chin. ‘Aren’t you beautiful? My name’s Twistan and I’m vewy pleased to meet you.’
‘So how’s tricks with you and Brenda, Tristan?’ I asked.
‘Oh pwetty good, I think,’ he said. ‘I think we’re getting there.’
‘It’s her birthday next week, isn’t it? Have you got her anything special or have you agreed you’ll just have to tighten your belts his year?’
‘I’ve got her something special,’ Tristan said. ‘But it wasn’t expensive. I think maybe I misjudged her in the past. I think she weally does know it’s the thought that counts.’
‘So what have you got her, then?’
‘An enamel keywing. An owl. It’s weally nice.’
I nodded. ‘An enamel owl keyring, eh? Are you sure Brenda will think this is what she wants? I mean, in what way is it special?’
‘One of Bwenda’s hewoes is the Gweek goddess Athena. Athena’s the goddess of wisdom and I think a kind of wole model for Bwenda. When her business gets bigger and there’s more than one thewapist she’s going to call it Athena Associates. The owl is Athena’s sacwed bird and it’s going to be the symbol of Bwenda’s company. That why this keywing is so special.’
‘Oh, I see. So Brenda sees herself as a sort of wise owl and your gift recognises that wisdom, eh? Clever stuff. You obviously have put a lot of thought into choosing it. ’
‘Yes, I have. I wanted to get her something that said something to her, that has a deep message fwom my heart to hers. You know Bwenda does have a good heart. I know sometimes she seems theatwical and shallow and self-obsessed and pweoccupied with her own needs, but behind that façade there weally is a genuine person. A weal person. I know sometimes she imagines she’s the bloody owacle or something, but maybe she weally does have something to give others that can help them. Do you think?
I shrugged. ‘Maybe. I just like the idea that Brenda can see in the dark and that she somehow resembles an owl. I’d never noticed that before!’
‘I think maybe that’s the idea of Athena’s owl,’ Tristan said. ‘That it’s a voice that can help us to choose the wight diwection in life. Fweedom is a dark dark fowest, my fwiend. We all need a voice like that sometimes to wemind us where we’re going, to guide us along the wight path.’
‘And so you reckon the enamel owl keyring will keep her happy, do you?’
Tristan nodded. ‘Bwenda’s moved on, my fwiend. She weally has. She’ll be thwilled with her pwesent.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. Of course a little bird in my head was telling me he probably wasn’t.
‘I love birds,’ I said. ‘So does De Kooning, of course. For me, freedom rather than wisdom or capriciousness or pestilence is what birds symbolise. Because they can just come and go as they please. They can always fly away. Their presence is always a sort of beautiful gift. Their absence is always a possibility. If you had to choose a bird to represent yourself, Tristan – like Brenda has chosen the owl – what would it be?’
‘I dunno, mate,’ Tristan said. ‘It wouldn’t be an owl, though, that’s for sure. I’m not that wise. Twotsky was intewested in birds, you know. He famously said “The nightingale of poetwy, like that bird of wisdom, the owl, is heard only after the sun is set.” He’s making a wefewence to Hegel’s wemark about the owl of Minerva, of course. But I digwess. So what bird would I see myself as? Maybe it would be a pawwot. Because I weally do need to learn hold my tongue sometimes. I can’t sing, so I couldn’t be a nightingale. I guess it would have to be a bird on a long journey, an albatwoss perhaps. What about you?’
‘I don’t know either,’ I said. ‘A dodo, maybe, or a cuckoo!’
Tristan laughed. I gave him the box of sunglasses and he gave De Kooning’s black fur a final quick ruffle before he went on his way.
‘Good luck with the keyring,’ I said as he walked down the garden path beneath the gently fluttering spring birch leaves.
‘Don’t wowwy, mate,’ he replied. ‘She’ll be over the moon, I pwomise you.’
I sat in the conservatory with De Kooning for a while, drinking a cappuccino and flicking through The Guardian. Gordon’s in deep doo-doo, and it seems to be doo-doo that gets deeper every day. How he must now long for those days when life was simple and all he had to do was try to get his clock to tick more quickly. Tristan had remarked that Gordon better beware of assassins and coups. Tristan reckons the long knives will be out for him now.
When Margaret came in I told her Tristan had been and collected the sunglasses.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to see he can do something right.’ Margaret’s tone told me there was a whole conversation going on that neither I nor Tristan knew anything about. Brenda was nowhere near as happy as Tristan believed, it seemed.
‘Has he got her a birthday present yet?’ Margaret asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He has. Strangely enough he was just telling me about it.’
‘Good,’ Margaret said, tersely. ‘Let’s just hope it’s something nice. He really does need to make her feel special once in a while. God knows she does enough for him.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think Tristan does want her to feel special. I think that’s why he’s got her what he has. He’s obviously put a lot of thought into it.’
‘I don’t want to know what it is,’ Margaret said. ‘So don’t tell me. I just really hope he doesn’t let her down this time.’
I was pleased Margaret didn’t want to know what Tristan had bought Brenda for her birthday. I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to let the enamel owl keyring out of the bag yet.
It was getting dark. Margaret was chopping onions. I was going to go for a walk but for whatever reason I couldn’t be bothered. I made myself another cappuccino and began to think about which part of Blyth I wanted to paint next. I’m torn between concentrating on Newsham and doing a series of old pubs in Blyth. The Kings Arms in Cowpen is the oldest building in the town and I thought maybe I should do that next. Or maybe I should do the Willow Tree and the Black Diamond first. I began wondering how many pubs there still were in Blyth and if I should map them all before I decided which one I should paint next.
On Friday morning I arrived at the office late. On one of the chairs in reception there was a copy of Neruda’s Selected Poems. There was a lad in his late teens with a shaven head and a stud in his upper lip sitting on the chair opposite. He was wearing white nylon track top and pants and big white trainers.
‘Is this yours?’ I said, picking the book up.
‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It belongs to one of them Zorrs. He’s in there talking to one of the social workers.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I took the book and went through to the team room.
‘Are Mandy and Mr Zee in?’ I said to Lily.
‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘They’ve been getting funny phone calls again. Debs is in with them.’
I flicked through the book and came across Neruda’s poem Bird. I probably wouldn’t have read this one in particular – or even noticed it – had my week already not been so punctuated by avian references.
It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air –
and there, night came in.
When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography –
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.
When I came down from my office at about lunchtime Owen was in the team room. He was wearing a thin brown cotton jacket, almost like the sort that a store keeper might wear. It hung on his bony frame like a slowly collapsing tent. He had just been in a meeting with Michelle and was passing time until his bus was due. I told him I’d been talking to Eric and that he’d said how blown away he’d been to meet him at last. Owen smiled, suppressing his elation. Celebrities do that sometimes, I think. It’s paradoxical. It makes them look all the more remarkable for seeming all the more normal by being modest.
‘He said there was only one other famous person he’d have wanted to meet more,’ I said.
Owen frowned, curiously. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Who? No, no. No, let me guess.’ He gazed at me, narrowing his eyes and giving this issue deep thought. ‘Was it Leonard Cohen?’ he finally said.
‘No, Owen,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘This is Eric we’re talking about here.’
‘Oh yes, Eric, eh? Okay’ He paused again. ‘So was it Neil Young?’
I shook my head slowly, emphatically.
‘No.’
‘James Taylor?’
I continued to shake my head. Owen looked perplexed, non-plussed even.
‘I’ve absolutely no idea, then,’ he said. ‘Give me a clue.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what Eric said to me when he was trying to remember this person’s name. He said it was the bloke who was married to “hor wi’ the massa bazookas”.’
Owen flinched a little, as if a Jack in the Box had just popped out beneath his nose. He then frowned a distinctly different frown, a frown of disapprobation. For a minute he looked like he was about to suffocate. He shook his head mechanically. It was going to difficult for him to answer now even if he knew. There are some things about a woman a man like Owen can’t admit he’s even noticed.
‘Peter Andre,’ I said. ‘The guy that’s married to Jordan?’
Owen looked vaguely appalled. ‘Peter Andre? Eric would rather have met Peter Andre than me? Really?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I was only joking. He actually said Chubby Brown.’
‘Did he?’ Owen said. ‘Chubby Brown? Oh my God! I’d have preferred Peter Andre!’
‘Well, there you go. So it’s not that bad after all, is it? It was Peter Andre. Chubby was a joke.’
‘Chubby is a joke,’ Owen quipped. A part of him was obviously beginning to feed off the better bits of being second best to Peter Andre. It’s often a consolation in life if when you lose you focus on those people you’ve beaten rather than those who turned out to do better than you. There’s nothing worse than seeing yourself as a swan and being beaten at the bird show by a turkey. There I go again. I seem to have birds on the brain these days.
Owen then began to tell me another story about Jack. It seems Tallulah has recently taken part in an amateur production of Moulin Rouge, and that she’d brought some pictures of the show into the office. One or two of them apparently revealed her in a red silk basque, pink feather boa, black fishnet tights and black stilettoes.
‘You should have seen Jack’s eyes,’ Owen said, leaning forward and looking around as if to be sure no-one was eaves-dropping. ‘They looked like they were going to pop out of his head!’
‘How could you see them?’ I said. ‘He didn’t take his sunglasses off, did he?’
‘He did!’ Owen said, his face for a moment assuming the expression of a monkey that had just bitten into a lemon. ‘Between you and me,’ he went on, ‘I think he is descending into depravity. His lechery was undisguised. Utterly undisguised.’
‘So did you see these pictures too, Owen?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Oh they were truly shameless. You could see all of Tallulah’s legs and everything. I will grant Jack this, of course: she should never have brought such pictures in. Never. She’s as much to blame as he is, in that sense. But her mistake was only an error of judgement, albeit a fairly grave one. She certainly isn’t depraved.’
‘Was she embarrassed by you and Jack looking at the pictures?’ I said.
‘Embarrassed? Tallulah? No, I don’t think so. I certainly hope not. Well, to be honest I don’t know. She must have been embarrassed when Jack asked her if he could have an enlargement of one of them for his wall. Any woman would. But Tallulah was very good, very controlled and professional, and didn’t let it show.’
‘Just as well,’ I said. ‘It sounds like she let just about everything else show.’
Owen looked as if he was hovering on the brink of panic. ‘Oh, look at the time,’ he said, as if gripped by a sudden urgency. ‘I must fly. I really must. My bus is almost due.’
I wandered back upstairs. There were a pair of collared doves sitting on the sill outside my window. I sat down carefully and watched them for a while. Eric was right, I thought: how could creatures like these ever have a human disease?
.
prague, the skylark, the mephisto express
We had more snow last week, again on Thursday. For a while it looked like it would never stop. ‘So this is how the world ends,’ I thought to myself. Most members of my team went home early. There were rumours that the Spine Road might be closed so at about half four I set off for home. It turned out that the snow was already turning to sleet and rain by then. The wild apocalyptic blizzard was a false alarm. Nevertheless it was a slushy slither back down the Laverock and along Newcastle Road into Newsham.
The snow almost interfered with Tristan and Brenda’s Valentine trip to Prague. Once or twice on Thursday the airport at Ponteland was closed for a while. But the snow is the least of their problems, it seems. Tristan had discovered earlier in the week that Brenda has become friendly with a man she’s been life-coaching. The man’s problems revolve around his marriage, it seems, and making decisions about how he is going to spend the rest of his life. He owns and runs an executive coach company called Mephisto Travel and he has a big house in Tynemouth, it seems. He’s made his fortune and he’s looking forward to taking it easy and seeing the world. What he doesn’t now know is who he wants to be with him on his travels. The man’s name is Elvis Devlin.
‘Elvis Devlin?’ I said to Margaret when she told me the tale.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That’s right. Do you know him?’
‘Do I know Elvis Devlin?’ I said. ‘Do I know Elvis?’
‘Yes, Elvis. Do you have a problem with that? It’s no sillier than your name, is it?’
‘You’re right. I just hope he’s not an impostor,’ I said. ‘I just hope he’s not a Devlin disguise.’
Margaret groaned and got on with cutting up the onions.
It seems that on a couple of occasions Brenda has been seen having coffee with Elvis Devlin at the Milkhope Centre near Blagdon. This is far enough from Whitley Bay to suggest that these encounters did not happen by chance, although that apparently is exactly how Brenda claims they did happen. (But in any case doesn’t everything happen for a reason, Brenda? I heard myself thinking.) Tristan’s suspicion is that Elvis might be singing Viva Las Vegas in her ear. So Prague nearly didn’t happen. Margaret says it’s a make or break weekend for them. She’s convinced that Tristan’s fears are unnecessary, but you know what the song says about suspicious minds.
On Friday morning the roads were okay and most people made it in. At about lunchtime I went downstairs to make myself a coffee. Lily was checking out the weather on the Met Office website. Michelle was having a sandwich and doing her sudoku book.
‘We’ve got another one,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve got another mother who’s got a spirit in her house. She says it knocks thing off the windowsills at nights and taps on the window.’
‘Has she got a cat?’ Michelle chipped in. Lily laughed.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘She hasn’t even got a broom. The place is mingin’!’
I stood in the kitchen with my hands in my pockets, gazing at the filing cabinets and waiting for the kettle to boil. I filled my cup and wandered back out into the team room. Angie came in and Lily asked her how the roads were. I sat down in Debs’ chair and put my feet on her desk.
‘You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Lily?’ I said.
‘Nah!’ she said. ‘It probably is the cat. Actually it probably isn’t. She’s probably just nuts.’
‘Oh, I believe in ghosts,’ Angie said. ‘We used to have one on the house we had in Forest Hall.’
‘So do you think Lily should call in an exorcist for her client?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Probably for the same reason we don’t make assessments from star signs,’ I said. ‘And because it’d get me the bloody sack.’
‘What sign are you, Lil?’ Angie said. ‘Let me guess. Okay, okay, I’ve got it. You’re a Virgo. Am I right?’
‘No,’ Lily said. ‘I’m an Aries.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. How didn’t I see that? How stupid am I?’
‘I’m an Aries too,’ I said.
‘You’re not!’ Lily said. ‘You could never be an Aries.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Honestly.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Lily said. ‘You couldn’t be.’
On Friday night I began a new painting of Seaton Sluice. I’ve painted it before. I’m ambivalent about doing it because it is making a concession to the conventionally picturesque, something I’m trying to get away from. I decided on a low horizon. I was doing a view from the bridge of Rocky Island and the Kings Head pub. I used the canvas I’d underpainted in vermillion a week or two ago. I painted the sky quickly with a big flat brush. Square chunks of white and yellow ochre clouds careering wildly around in a Prussian blue sky.
On Saturday I rode along to my dad’s on the bike. It wasn’t a bad afternoon and the paths were mostly completely clear of snow.
During the week my dad had been to the library. As I was drinking a glass of pineapple juice he gave me a photocopy he’d made of an article from The Blyth News at the end of May 1936. The article reported the death at age eighty one of Harry Clough, the father of Tom Clough, the Newsham Nightingale. “FAMOUS PIPER DEAD”, was the headline, with the by-line “Newsham Man Who Played Before Royalty”. He is said to have died at his home in Plessey Road, of which Brick Row must have been considered a part.
The article said that in 1905 Harry Clough had played for King Edward VII at Alnwick Castle. Until a few weeks before his death Harry had acted as a caller at Cowpen Coal Company, the article said. Here’s a typical paragraph from the article, which is really a eulogy:
His music like his character delighted his audience. In both cottage and palace he enchanted with the folk music of Northumberland. His nature was kind and genial without ostentation. Unassuming and without any love of fame, his art was always at the disposal of charity.
As I recall Harry was buried at Blyth Cemetary, back down on the beach road. I’d ridden past it on the way along. I wondered if I should stop off on my way back and see if I could find his grave. But no doubt I’d have no more luck looking for the grave of the Nightingale’s father than I had looking for the grave of his son.
I asked my dad which route the old road out of Newsham followed. The book on the Cloughs had said it was very rough.
‘It followed the route of Newcastle Road along to where the little roundabout is now, and it turned right there and went up towards the Laverock,’ he said. ‘Of course in those days the houses on the right weren’t there. The store field was there, where they used to turn out the ponies from the pit in summer.’
‘So was it a rough road?’ I asked.
‘It was wet. When it got over the old railway line to the relief pit it took a big sweeping bend around before going up the Laverock. It was often flooded there.’
Laverock is an old word for a skylark. Most people assume this is how the farm on the ridge got its name and that the road got its name from the farm. I’ve never seen any real evidence for this. My alternative theory is that the place name may have nothing to do with the skylark at all. In Cumbria there’s a place called Laversdale. The first element of this is from the Old English personal name Leofhere. I wonder if this name or something similar isn’t the first element in Laverock and that the second is rigg, meaning ridge. There are ridge and furrows in the field beside Laverock Hall Farm and these will date back to the medieval period at least. The farm is also on a ridge, the ridge along which the road from Seaton Delaval to Horton runs. So the history and topography are arguably there to support the possibility that this might be Leofhere’s Ridge. Furthermore, local people usually talk about going up or coming down the Laverock, as if the land form itself is the thing they are climbing or descending. They do not say they are going up to the Laverock. The word is also said with a final vowel that is very close to the i sound in rigg, although admittedly inevitably somewhat neutral. There are other examples around here of false etymologies arrived at and imposed by mapmakers, and this may be another. Rigg and rick are close enough together to allow an obvious aural mistake to be made. It was perhaps this mistake that threw an imaginary skylark into the sky above the ancient ridge.
As I rode home I glanced over to the cemetery, but rode straight by. It was getting late and the light was beginning to fail.
At about eight o’clock tonight I went out for a walk. It was a mild dry evening and there wasn’t much wind. I walked along Sixth Avenue past the front gate to the site of the Citadel. The gates were closed and the security lights were shining eerily on the colossal towering structure. It really is a hellish, oppressive monstrosity, the wrong building in the wrong place. No wonder it reminds me of Kafka’s Castle. I walked through the cut and on to Newsham Road. I walked up into Newsham and down past the first school. From there I crossed Winship Street into Elliot Street. They are already building on the site of the demolished Big Club. As I walked across I was thinking how these sites aren’t like widows: they don’t have to wait for a respectable period before they allow another building to occupy them. I had thought that apartments would be built here and I was therefore a bit surprised that building had started so soon, given the current depression in the housing market. I noticed a sign on the fence. It said “Considerate Construction”. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? I went over for a closer look and discovered that the new building appears to be going to be a new library. I was pleasantly surprised and for a moment impressed.
I went down Elliot Street past the take-aways and the betting shop, which was still open for business. An old guy in a flat cap was leaning in the doorway telling the woman inside a story about a bet he’d made. I crossed over to the Willow Tree, which was also open, although there weren’t many in. It seems to be under new management. I noticed there were flyers on the windows for a group called The Buskers, who it seems are playing there on Friday this week. I glanced over to the Brick Row open space. I wondered what sort of music they’d be playing. I wondered if the Cloughs would all be tapping their ghostly pipers’ feet. I walked back down Plessey Road, past the old Grammar school and on under the trees beside the bus stop.
When I got home Margaret was in. She was polishing the old Napoleon from her bedroom. It wasn’t ticking.
‘How did Brenda’s trip to Prague go?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘I haven’t heard from her.’
‘But she is back, isn’t she?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, they came back yesterday, I think.’
Or maybe she didn’t, I thought to myself. Maybe she’s already riding the Mephisto Express to Vegas.
I put the kettle on and went looking for De Kooning. I wanted to put him out in the garden for a while before I did a bit more on my painting of the Sluice.
.
a sort of macabre sweepstake
Last Wednesday morning I was at a meeting in Morpeth first thing. When I arrived back at the office about mid morning Jesse and Pippa from admin were in the team room talking to Michelle, Lily, Sally and Angie. They were discussing a game Pippa’s daughter plays with her colleagues at the place where she works.
The object of the game is to be the person who picks the well known person who dies before any of the people picked by anyone else. It seems each person can pick three people – let’s call them their Gees Gees (which could stand for Grim Gallopers) – and they pay £5 into a kitty for each of their Gee Gees. No two people can choose the same Gee Gee. The person who has picked the Gee Gee that dies first collects the whole kitty. At that point everyone in the game has the opportunity to pick a new set of Gee Gees. It’s a sort of macabre sweepstake.
A week or two earlier Pippa’s daughter’s workmate – Kathy – had won: Patrick McGoohan, the star of the one-time cult TV series The Prisoner had died. He was eighty. His demise brought Kathy a windfall of £540, or, to be strictly accurate, £525, as her original stake should be deducted from her winnings.
Pippa’s daughter had been sitting with Hugh Hefner, The Pope and Amy Winehouse. In the way the game is played at Pippa’s daughter’s company (sorry, I don’t know Pippa’s daughter’s name) on there being a winner everyone gets the option to keep the Gee Gees they hold or to throw in one or more. Pippa’s daughter chose only to keep Amy Winehouse. Rather than go for old people who might go on forever she decided to go for a full hand of younger people with dangerous lifestyles. She added Pete Doherty and Lewis Hamilton to her portfolio.
‘Why don’t we play that game?’ Angie said. ‘I’d pick Margaret Thatcher.’
‘That’s just wishful thinking,’ Lily said. ‘If that worked I’d go for Richard Madeley. He’d be gone tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no, he’s not very old,’ Sally said. ‘I think I’d put my money on Patrick Moore.’
‘Isn’t he already dead, Sal?’ Angie said.
‘No. No, he isn’t,’ Sal said. ‘I saw him on The Sky at Night just a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Yes, Sal, but was he alive?’ Lily said. They all laughed.
‘Don’t you think this game’s a bit sick?’ Jesse said.
‘Yes,’ Angie said. ‘It is. But isn’t that the point?’
‘Why don’t we make up our own variation?’ Michelle suggested. ‘What about trying to pick the next local authority to have a child death on one of their social workers’ caseload? Who bags Haringey?’
The others cringed and frowned.
‘Why stop there?’ Angie said. ‘Why don’t we just put the money on the kids on our own caseloads?’
‘Hush up, Ange,’ Lily said. ‘Don’t tempt providence.’
I made myself a coffee and wandered upstairs to my office. At first I was pondering the idea of tempting providence and wondered if this was another manifestation of magical thinking. Maybe it’s closer to the idea of speaking of the devil. Maybe it’s to do with the idea that God is not mocked. And yet what kind of insecure and fickle deity would it be that needed to throw Its weight around like that for such a trivial provocation? Maybe it’s just something to do with a primitive belief in the power of words.
I sat down with my coffee and looked out over the rooftops. I began to think about painting. I haven’t painted anything since I finished my canvas of Corby’s Crag. I have been thinking about painting somewhere more urban. I like Gillies’ paintings of Temple, and although it seems to be a village and probably quite rural, I want to find and show the beauty in the things beneath our noses. I want to say we don’t have to go far to find something worth looking at.
When I logged on to my computer I discovered I had received an email from Alice McTavish in Fort William. She was writing to tell me that there had been a fair amount of snow up there this winter and she was wondering if I was planning to come up for a few days skiing. She offered to make me a mushroom risotto. I wrote back and said that I couldn’t get any holiday until the end of February. I asked her to make sure none of the snowflakes melted before then.
At about lunchtime Tania picked up baby Davina during a supervised contact session and simply walked out of the office with her. Michelle followed her down the street, telling her she was being daft and doing herself no good. Tania was having none of it. Davina was her baby and she’d do what she liked with her. Michelle told her she couldn’t because we had a court order and Davina had to stay with her dad, who was now approved as her emergency foster carer. Tania just walked on.
Michelle was powerless. What was she supposed to do, rugby tackle Tania and wrestle the baby from her grip? She ran back to the office. She was in a panic. She rang the police and gave them a description and potential addresses Tania might go to. The police went straight out but had no luck. They visited Joe’s house too. His mother said she had no idea where he was. He hadn’t been home since yesterday. The plot was thickening. A young mother with no real interest in her baby had abducted the baby and gone off with a hare-brained youth. Maybe Michelle’s about to win the kitty, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud, of course.
Next morning baby Davina and Tania were still missing and we had no clue where she was. I took a call from a police inspector and agreed to publicity. Later that day the missing baby began to be mentioned on the news bulletins on Metro Radio, along with pleas to the public to contact the police if they had any information about the whereabouts of mother and baby. The whole day passed without any news. Michelle sat in the office, unable to do anything. The rest of the team made her cups of tea and told her not to worry, the baby would be found fit and well, they were sure. Gilmour rang to see if there’d been any news. He also asked how Michelle was.
‘Not good,’ I said.
‘Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that this baby is okay,’ he said.
For a moment or two I imagined that the universe was indeed at the command of some perverse force. That things don’t ever go wrong by chance or accident. That they go wrong because the world is in the hands of providence, and providence is amoral and prone to mischief and cruelty. Providence is metaphysical spite. It’s funny that such a nutty belief will probably be reassuring to some people. We’d rather believe that we’re in the hands of a monster than think we’re in the hands of no-one at all. At least you can talk to a monster.
After tea Margaret was baking onion tarts. De Kooning was hiding somewhere. I went for a walk through the Isabella and over the reclaimed land to Tynedale Drive. I walked all the way to Cowpen Road and then down past the cemetary to the North Farm. I came back along Renwick Road, past the Thoroton Hotel and back along Broadway to Rotary Way. Later I went along to my dad’s to return the library book on the Cloughs, which was almost overdue. I drove up the Avenue and through Seaton Delaval on the way back. I turned on the radio and flicked through the stations. Alan Robson was on Metro. Hettie from Bomarsund was on the line.
‘Hello, Alan,’ she said. ‘It’s Hettie from Bomarsund here.’
‘Good evening, Hettie. What do you want to talk to us about tonight?’
‘Good evening, Alan. Alan, have you heard about that young lass who’s kidnapped her own baby? Isn’t that a terrible thing? I think she must be in a terrible state to do something like that, don’t you, Alan.’
‘Well, I don’t really know that much about it, Hettie. I mean, can a mother really kidnap her own child?’
‘Yes, but this bairn was being looked after for her by a foster parent, Alan. She’s obviously got needs, Alan. Don’t you agree, she must be a girl with needs?’
‘You might be right, Hettie. If that lass happens to be listening now, Hettie, what would your message to her be?’
‘You know what I’d say to her, Alan? I’d say, “Take your baby back, pet. People are just trying to help you. If you hurt your bairn you’d never forgive yourself.” My heart goes out to her, Alan.’
‘Thank you, Hettie. Let’s go now to line two, where we’ve got John from Westerhope. Good evening, John. What do you want to say to the night owls tonight.’
‘Hello, Alan. What I want to say is that with all due respect your last caller is exactly the sort of person who’s got this country in the pathetic state it’s in today. Do you know what my message to that girl on the run with her baby would be? It would be “Good for you, girl.” It’s the do-gooders who have taken away all our freedom and brought the country to its knees, Alan. Social workers only take people’s kids off them to give them to middle class couples who can’t have them or to put them with lesbians and paedophiles.’
‘Well, I’m sure there are a lot of people won’t agree with you there, John. Surely sometimes social workers are right to take children off their parents, aren’t they? What about Baby P?’
‘Exactly, Alan! Exactly! That’s proves my point, doesn’t it? If this lass’s child had really been at any risk of harm at home the social workers would have left her with where she was. That’s what they do, Alan. You can hardly open a newspaper these days without coming across the story of another poor kid social workers have left to die.’
‘I’m not sure you’re right on this one, John. But of course I respect your point of view. Let’s have another record. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there who want to have their say on this lass’s baby. We’ll be back after this.’
Chesney Hawkes came on. The One and Only. I drove past Newsham Coop and over the railway crossing, past the Black Diamond and the Newsham Hotel and around to the Willow Tree. I glanced over the grass where the Brick Row once stood and through the dark spaces where the Newsham Nightingale once piped, across to the anonymous little council houses beyond and the little yellow rectangles of their windows. Tania and Joe were probably holed up with baby Davina in just such a house tonight. They were probably with a bunch of raucous kids, drinking cans of lager and smoking cannabis, arguing about whose turn it was to be on the Wii, passing Davina round like a stray kitten they’d brought in from the street. A tattered-eared pitbull called Tyson was probably sniffing at her face.
As I drove into the top of my street Chesney stopped singing and Alan Robson returned to the mike.
‘So, welcome back, night owls,’ he said. ‘Tonight we’ve been talking about the girl who’s stolen her baby from social workers and gone into hiding with her. Right now on line four we’ve got Cheryl from Ashington. Hello, Cheryl. How are you tonight? This bairn’s from around your way, isn’t it?’
‘Hello, Alan. It’s Cheryl here. Yes, Alan, she is. I could tell you who she is, Alan, if you want to know.’
‘Oh no, Cheryl. No, no, I think we’ve got to respect this lass’s right to privacy, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, Alan, that’s true. But what you don’t know is just what’s going on around here . . .’
At that point I turned the radio off. The last thing I needed to hear was that baby Davina had been abducted by Robin Hood and his Merry Men and was being taught to use a bow and arrow in Bothal Woods.
I slept badly that night. I awoke at least three times. Baby Davina was on my mind. The first time woke up I was wondering who was feeding her. She was in a dark place crying frantically. She was completely alone. De Kooning made his way to the top of the bed and sniffed at my face. He began to purr. I pressed him back down on to the duvet and gave him a stroke.
‘Go back to sleep, De Kooning,’ I said. ‘It’s not morning yet.’
Next time I awoke I was thinking about Michelle. I knew she’d be lying awake. I knew she’d be worrying herself to death. If anything happened to baby Davina she’d carry the can. Her photo would appear in The Daily Mail. She’d be pilloried. She’d be destroyed. I heard De Kooning begin to purr again. I put my arm out of the sheets and rubbed his tummy. He gave my hand a little play fight.
‘Go back to sleep, De Kooning,’ I said. ‘It’s not morning yet.’
The third time I awoke I had been having a terrible dream. I dreamt I was King Lear. Or perhaps I was some other character from that play. The Fool, perhaps. Or Edgar. Or Gloucester. I was probably an amalgamation of several of the characters all in one dream person. I was caught in a storm. I was blind and stumbling close to the edge of a cliff. I dreamt I was gathering samphire. I dreamt I was gathering samphire and I heard De Kooning fidgeting. He was purring again, loudly, like a tractor.
‘Go back to sleep, Cordelia,’ I said. ‘It won’t be much longer now.’
.
as good will stalks the fairy-lit earth
It would have been a miracle if all the slippers had gone when I returned from Ambleside. They hadn’t. Over the weekend one after another, like Magi logging on to LastMinuteMyrrh.com, Citizens came to collect their orders. Big Trevor had ordered no fewer than six pairs. For his mother he’d ordered some lambswool moccasins in dusky pink. For his mother-in-law the same, but in a more restrained natural light tan. His two sisters and sister-in-law all got shiny silk sequined mules with a low heel in silver, black and red. His daughter got a pair of Winnie the Poohs, which Margaret says have been one of the best sellers over Christmas. Interestingly Trevor didn’t order any slippers for himself and nor did anyone else order any for him. Perhaps Trevor’s a barefoot sort of man at home, I thought. Or perhaps he’s hoping to get a pair for himself in the Slipper Sisters eBay shop sale, which was starting on Christmas Day (because that’s when Marks and Sparks start theirs, Margaret explained).
While I was away the Widow Middlemiss returned home. Her brother and sister-in-law are staying with her until the New Year. It seems she had been quite anxious about returning and had feared that when she got back she would find her house overrun with a plague of frogs. Fortunately this was not the case, although it did occur to me that as was it was winter now and the heating in the house hadn’t been on for months there could be any number of them hibernating behind her settee or under her bed. She sent Margaret a glittery white Christmas card with a picture of an angel on it. Inside the card she thanked Margaret for all her help at the time of the flood. She also gave Margaret a similar card to pass on the Brenda. On Sunday morning Maureen and the Whelp turned up at the Widow’s door. How do they do that? How did they know she had returned? Do doorstep evangelists have some sort of special radar which enables them to detect the presence of people like the Widow? Are they for instance like sharks, which are said to be able detect a single drop of blood in the ocean from more than five miles away and without fail to always find their way to its source within a matter of seconds? How do they do that?
At work most of the toys from the Salvation Army and other charities were delivered and distributed in my absence. We don’t get as many as we used too, though, and there are always a number of parents who turn up at our door in the days before Christmas asking if we can help. For the most part the answer is no. Whatever other Christmas bonuses he gives out there is no allowance for toys for the children of the poor, perhaps because that whole process would look a bit Dickensian and evoke images of the Poor House. The Poor House is not the sort of image New Labour is really looking for.
Lily took Boz’s kids through to the hospital to see him. He’s no longer on a secure ward and expects to be discharged early in the new year. Lily said he was very calm and ‘absolutely lovely’ with the kids. He had bought them presents and had a little Christmas party with them on the ward. They all wore Christmas hats and played pass the parcel and musical chairs with some of the other patients. Angie asked if the Mad Hatter had been there. Lily said he hadn’t. Apparently he’s on Prozac now and not half as much fun as he used to be. As I listened to this conversation I recalled that the Mad Hatter had been found guilty of murdering time and his stopped at teatime watch came to mind. I wondered if Margaret would be resetting the time on her twenty three clocks for 2009.
On Christmas Eve Angie visited Mandy, Apple and Sparky. Mr Zee was still there and the situation was calm and settled. Mr Zee’s job interview was cancelled because the company went into liquidation and so the possible crisis has been averted, as least for the time being. Angie asked Sparky what he was hoping to get from Santa, and he said a Zorro suit just like his ‘daddy’s’. Unfortunately Flinty has become aware of this development in the relationship between Mr Zee and the children. He rang Angie on Christmas Eve, ostensibly to ask again how he was supposed to get his presents to them. Angie reminded him that he’d already been told several times that if he got them delivered to the office they we would see to it they got to the children in time.
‘Aye, but how can I do that?’ Flinty said. ‘I’m not allowed to enter Ashington, am I? What are you saying, that I should break the conditions of my parole?!’
‘No, Mr Flintoff,’ Angie said. ‘I am not suggesting you do anything of the sort. I would suggest that it would be very irresponsible for you to ever do such a thing.’
‘Aye, exactly,’ Flinty replied. ‘So how are the kids going to get their presents?’
‘Last time we spoke you said you could get your sister to drop them off. I thought that’s what we agreed would happen.’
‘But what if she doesn’t want to do that?’
‘You said she wouldn’t have any problem doing that. Did you ask her?’
‘That’s not the point, though, is it? What if she’d said no?’
‘So she said yes? So she can drop them off and we’ll make sure they’re delivered.’
‘Any way there’s another thing I’m not happy about. Someone tells me that that freak is making my kids call him dad. Is that true?’ It better bloody well not be.’
‘So far as I am aware Mandy’s current partner is not making the children call him anything,’ Angie said.
‘Hey, listen, pet. Them’s my bairns and I’m telling you now that neither you nor anybody else in this world has the right to let them think some weirdo from a fancy dress parlour is their dad. Got it, pet? I’m their dad, not that freak.’
‘Mandy’s partner has a very good relationship with the children, Mr Flintoff,’ Angie said. ‘It would be quite wrong to judge anyone merely by the way they dress. But for your information I can assure you he does not dress the way he does as a form of fancy dress. He’s actually a very serious person.’
‘Serious person, my arse! What sort of serious person needs to dress up as some sort of fictional Mexican bandito?! Eh?! If it isn’t just fancy dress, what is it, eh? Is he in disguise or something? Is he being hunted down by the Federales or something?!’
Flinty had a point, of course. There is a big difference between dressing up and being in disguise. A man dressed as an Arab to evade the attention of the police is a good example of the latter, and his behaviour is obviously open to explanation by reference to his predicament (although the reasons for his choice of disguise might be less clear). The reason why someone would simply want to spend all his or her waking hours dressed as Count Dracula, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Godzilla or Zorro is rather less obvious, and in any case if someone did the term ‘wearing fancy dress’ would probably not be an adequate account of their behaviour. But Angie wasn’t wanting to debate the complexities of this issue with him or to provoke him further by raising The Arab question with him, an identity which in any case he’d simply categorically deny he’d ever assumed.
‘I think you’ll find, Mr Flintoff, that we all have a right under Human Rights legislation to dress as we choose, just so long as it doesn’t offend public decency or break some other law.’
‘And you don’t think that a geezer dressed up in cowboy boots and a cape living in the same house as my kids offends me?! What planet are ye from, pet?’
‘Obviously not the same one as you, Mr Flintoff,’ Angie replied. ‘Can I suggest that this conversation is getting us nowhere. If you get your sister to bring the presents in I’ll make sure they are delivered in time for Christmas.’
‘Hey, don’t bother, pet. I’ll tell you what, I’ll deliver them myself!’ he said, and hung up. Flinty’s sister brought the presents in to the office an hour or so later.
Every morning on the days before Christmas I noticed there was a lot of sand around the photocopier, especially on Christmas Eve morning. ‘Morning, Frodo,’ I said as I passed him. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Is Tom having any holiday this Christmas?’ I asked Jesse from admin when she came up with a letter for me to sign.
‘No, I think he’s in every day,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’s very big on Christmas.’
‘Has he got any family?’
‘Actually, I’m not sure. Tom’s a very, very private person. He never talks about his home life at all. He’s a sort of international man of mystery.’
‘So he doesn’t have a partner?’
Jesse shrugged. ‘If he does it’s not one he’s ever told anybody about,’ she said.
‘Kids?’
Jesse shrugged again.
‘Parents? Grandparents?’
She shook her head.
‘A girlfriend, a boyfriend, a best friend, a confidante?’
Another shrug.
‘A cat? A budgie? A goldfish?’
Late that afternoon there was only a skeleton staff left in the building. Tom had let all the other admin workers finish early and was in the main office, manning the telephones. I wandered through and sat down at one of the desks.
‘You all ready for Christmas, Tom?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am. I’m looking forward to a few days off.’
‘So do you do anything special at Christmas? Are you a party animal or a stay at home kind of guy?’
‘Oh, I’m not one for parties.’ he said, and smiled.
‘No, me neither,’ I said. ‘And doesn’t all this present buying business drive you loopy?! There’s supposed to be a recession going on. I don’t know about you, but to me it still seemed like Bedlam again out there this year! Still, what’s the point of having money if you’re not going to spend it on anyone, eh?’
Tom smiled, meekly. I noticed a parcel lying on his bag. It was wrapped in fine silver paper with gold spots on it and tied up with a blue satin ribbon. From its size and shape I would have said it looked very much like a new toner cartridge for a Xerox M35. There was also a ream of Premium Ivory Bond and a brand new green extendable leash on the floor near him, as well as another big gift wrapped bundle which looked to me as if it probably contained a quilted stable rug coat for a small horse.
‘Do you want to get away?’ Tom said. ‘I’m happy to hang on here. We can always get you on your mobile, can’t we?’
‘Thanks, Tom. That’s very kind of you. Yeah, I might do that.’
I suspected Tom wanted everyone to go so he could take Frodo home for Christmas. I sat for a minute or so. I got up, leant over towards Tom and shook his hand.
‘All the best to you and yours, Tom,’ I said. ‘Have a really good Christmas.’ What I was wanting to do of course was to remind him that a Xerox is for life, not just for Christmas.
‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘All the best to you too. Merry Christmas.’
When I got home the house was full of the smell of the sweet onions Margaret was cooking for Christmas Day. I fed De Kooning a plate of prawns and sat for a while flicking through Bill Smith’s book on D Y Cameron. Then I went out for a walk. I crossed Broadway Circle and went along to the top of Waterloo Road to look at the house with the Christmas lights and the inflatable Homer Simpson dressed as Santa. I walked down past the still unfinished market place refurbishment and the bus station and on down to the quayside. It’s easy to convince yourself on a night like this that all is well with the world and that good will really does stalk the earth.
When I got back home Margaret was wrapping up the last of her presents.
‘Did you get Brenda something?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I got her a pair of winter gloves and a matching muff in leopard skin faux fur and a sweet little Radley purse with a lime green dog. I also got her a Chanel Coco Mademoiselle Gift Set – perfume, body cream, body wash, everything. Coco‘s her favourite. She’ll really love it. Oh, and I got her some silver earrings from The Biscuit Factory, handmade ones with little birds dangling down.’
‘Did you get anything for Tristan?’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t leave him out, would I? I got him a three-pack of striped socks from Topman.’
‘Hmmm, good choice,’ I said. ‘Troskyists are really big on stripes this year.’
‘Oh, by the way, that’s your present from Brenda over there,’ Margaret said. ‘The one beneath the tree in the holly and mistletoe paper.’
I picked it up. It was a cube, each side being perhaps twelve inches in length. I shook it. It rattled a little and I fancied it might have slurped or gurgled too. I very much wanted it to be an electric screwdriver set, but its weight and sound told me it wasn’t. I wondered if I stared at it long enough and wished hard enough I could change the contents of my unopened gift into what I wanted it to be. I wondered if it was a Plaster of Paris Paint It Yourself horse’s head or an illuminated world globe showing the map of the British Empire at the end of the Nineteenth Century. It was probably not a good idea to entertain such thoughts though, just in case. Be careful what you wish for, as they say.
‘Do you know what it is?’ I asked Margaret.
‘No, of course not,’ she replied.
I decided to open it. It was a battery powered Zen-style Feng Shui Windchime Table Fountain. That’s what it said on the box. I took it out. It somehow reminded me of the whale’s jawbone arch at Whitby, although of course that isn’t made of silver plastic. The Table Fountain is obviously meant to be a therapeutic ornament, something to soothe me.
‘Oh, isn’t that lovely!’ Margaret said. ‘It’s so unusual, isn’t it? You must remember to thank her for it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will. By the way, you did put my name on her present, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. Why? You haven’t bought her something on your own, have you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t. Not this year. I only wish I had.’
.
tallulah and the good catastrophe
It looks like Debs will be off sick for a few months. Earlier this week I held an emergency meeting with the whole team to talk about redistributing her cases.
‘How do you want to do this?’ I said. ‘Do you want me to decide who gets what or should I just throw all the names into a hat and let you take turns picking one? Or do you want to discuss them one by one and see who’s interested?’
They decided that I should decide. I divided the couple of dozen most serious cases on Debs’ caseload between the five workers left standing. Angie copped for Mandy Potts, who as it happened turned up just as the meeting ended. She had Apple and Sparky with her. Mr Zee wasn’t with her. Mandy was upset.
‘Seems like a good time to introduce yourself,’ I said to Angie.
‘Oh, isn’t her weird boyfriend with her?’ Angie said. ‘I was looking forward to meeting him. I like young men in uniforms.’
‘A Zorro outfit’s hardly a uniform, Ange,’ Lily said.
‘Isn’t it?’ Angie pulled her pondering face, and wandered off to meet Mandy and the kids.
‘What’s up?’ Lily asked, when Angie came back along.
‘They’re going to make Mr Zee get a job. The dole’s on his back. Mandy doesn’t want him to because she’s scared that if she’s on her own Flinty will come to her door.’
‘She has a point,’ Lily said. ‘But it’s not a point the dole will take.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Angie said. ‘He’s down there now and he thinks they’re going to send him for an interview.’
‘He should go,’ Lily said. ‘No-one’s going to give a job to a man dressed as Zorro, are they?’
‘Well, that’s the other thing,’ Angie said. ‘Mr Zee isn’t prepared to not dress the way he does. He thinks he has a human right to do so, like Christians wearing crucifixes and Muslims wearing the veil.’
‘Another good point,’ Lily said. ‘But again, not one the dole will buy.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Angie said. ‘They’ve suggested he may need to take work at MacDonald’s.’
‘Oh my God,’ Michelle said. ‘Can you image that, Zorro appearing in the drive-thru window! Imagine asking Zorro for a couple of Happy Meals and a regular Coke!’
‘It could bring them business!’ Lily said, chuckling to herself as she tried to get on with inputting stuff on to the computer. ‘It’s a shame MacDonald’s aren’t likely to think the same.’
‘Mandy thinks that Mr Zee will leave her and return to Newcastle if they force him to take a job where he can’t continue to dress the way he does.’
‘That surprises me,’ Lily said. ‘I always had the impression from Debs that he’s really committed to Mandy and the kids. Things will fall apart if he does leave, that’s a certainty. Mandy will never cope without him.’
‘Bloody men!’ Angie said. ‘Is there a single one out there that isn’t a complete waste of space?!’
It snowed on Thursday. I sat in the team room for a while first thing going through the post and listening to the team talking about the BBC documentary on the Shannon Matthews case which had been on the previous night. Fairy tale explanations are the bedrock of the world according to the popular media, and on this occasion the police seem especially ready to give the story the right slant by stating that this girl’s mother was ‘pure evil’. Here we have The Cruel Mother. ‘I thought that police officer was about the tell us the story of Hansel and Gretel or something,’ I heard Angie say. The police are hardly more self-aware or enlightening as social narrators than The Sun or The Daily Mail. It is within the terms of the crude and narrow narratives the popular media constructs that the identities and aspirations of their audience will to a significant extent arise. Karen Matthews, who no doubt is a person who came to see herself in the terms of those narratives, was and is stupid, dysfunctional, misguided, and inadequate. But this description could equally as well be applied to the police themselves who had four hundred officers in the area for almost a month and failed to find a child who all the time was under their very noses. The same could also be said for the troops of journalists who traipsed around the area 24 hours a day for the same period. And now they’re blaming social workers for not seeing this coming two years earlier. Lily wondered when we would get our crystal balls.
‘It’s a pity Shannon didn’t think of dropping pieces of bread as a trail to her wicked uncle’s house, isn’t it?’ Angie said. ‘That’s always the thing to look for in a case like this.’
I went upstairs. About mid morning I was sitting up in my office looking out over the car park watching the white stuff falling hypnotically, like a weird quiet currency being repaid to the world. Nature has a fascinating economy. A pale blue Favorit slithered into the car park. It was Jack Verdi. He got out and pulled the collar of his black reefer jacket up around his face. He was wearing his Ray-Bans. His long grey hair was tied back in a pony tail by what looked like a red elastic band. In his pale desert boots he gingerly made his way across the snow into the office. He brought to mind something vaguely Russian, maybe someone from a Gogol story. He’d come for a meeting with Debs and forgotten she was off. He asked if I was free and came upstairs for a chat.
‘Hi, Jack,’ I said when he came into my room. ‘How’s tricks?’ He shook my hand. As he leant forward to do so I briefly caught sight of his pale blue eyes peering out over his sunglasses.
‘Hey, I’m not so bad, mate. Bloody awful weather though.’
I looked out of the window and nodded.
‘Actually I like the snow,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ Jack said, ‘to look at, but not to drive in!’
I made him a cup of tea and for a while we talked about music, as we always do. He always asks me who I’m listening to as a preamble to him telling me what I might want to try instead. On this occasion I swapped him Teddy Thompson and Josh Ritter for a classic album from Jefferson Airplane and Neil Young’s Live at Canterbury House 1968, Sugar Mountain album.
‘Hey, that was quite a performance you gave at Rosie’s leaving do,’ I said, finally mentioning the elephant in the room. ‘Man, you certainly blew them away that night!’
Jack shook his head and looked down into his lap. ‘Yeah, well, maybe. I just wish I’d stuck to bloody well playing the piano, as I was supposed to do.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ I said. ‘Banging out Chas and Dave numbers in a room so thick with the reek of HRT isn’t exactly my bag either.’
He laughed. But he had something more on his mind, and I thought I knew what it was.
‘Hey, Jack,’ I said, ‘I’d just let it go if I were you. Most people will already have forgotten about it, you know how they are. You’re the only person who’s thinking about now.’
‘Oh yeah, yeah, I know that,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not that, it’s what it’s telling me about me that bothers me. I’m becoming desperate. I can’t seem to let myself ever be anything but young. You know why I did that? Because I’m scared to death of getting old. I’ve seen this happen to other guys, guys who I was once in bands with. I’m starting to do what they’ve done and make a bloody fool of myself.’
‘Well, as they say, if you recognise a problem you’re half way there to solving it.’
‘Yeah, but how do you solve the problems of decrepitude and death?’
I laughed. I wanted this conversation to remain light. ‘Euthanasia’s good,’ I said. ‘I’ve already booked myself a one-way ticket to Switzerland.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ Jack said, shaking his head.
‘You don’t want to go to Switzerland, Jack? Compact land-locked mid European country? Bankers, watchmakers, Toblerone, Heidi, St Moritz, lots of big snowy mountains? It’s the sort of place where there’s never any litter and they don’t ever have to think about Asbo’s. Switzerland’s not such a bad place, Jack.’
‘I don’t mean I don’t want to go to Switzerland, man. No, I mean I don’t want a die. At least not yet. I’ve still got some good times left in me. The problem really is that the rest of the world is starting to disregard me. It’s as if as you get older there’s a quiet conspiracy to exclude you from things. It starts when you’re about thirty. The world begins to tell you that you can’t do that. And do you know why it says that? It says it because it embarrasses them if you do. They just don’t want you around. They discard you, like you’re an old-fashioned appliance of some sort. I don’t buy it, mate. There’s some stuff I’m just not ready to say goodbye to.’
‘Like good old rock and roll, eh?’
‘Well, yeah, but not just that.’ His Aviators looked straight at me and for a moment or two he paused. ‘You read poetry, right?’ he said.
I said I did sometimes, yes.
‘You know I’m into Keats, don’t you? Yeah? Okay, can I show you something? It’s like a modern take on something he wrote. I’d be interested to know what your response to it is.’
He bent over and unbuckled his brown leather satchel bag. He took out a couple of sheets of A4 and handed them to me
‘You’ll know the original,’ he said. ‘It’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’
I.
O what’s bothering you now, my bonny lad, Alone and palely loitering? Has thy assessment slithered into the sink?Are you waiting for the telephone to ring?
II. O what can ail thee, fostering man!
So flushed and so woe-begone?
The question from the Chair was crass,
The Police Checks were never done.
III. I see a cloud across thy face
Your reviews are all long over due,
And in thy diary a fading date
When your anxious manager last hounded you.
IV. I met a damsel in the tearoom,
Full beautiful-an Ashington child,
Her hair was red, her foot was light,
And her laughter was quite wild.
V. I bought a cosy for her napper
And sent her a text from my mobile phone;
She texted me back and asked me to sing
‘Will you give this little dog a bone.’
VI. I sat her in my Skoda’s front seat
And put Crosby, Stills and Nash on,
I whizzed her around the slippery bends
Till all her lingering doubts were gone.
VII. She bought me bags of morish sweets,
And Honey Tunes and herbal tea,
And then in an accent strange she said-
“Bonny lad, aa’ve got the hots for ye.”
VIII. She took me to her terraced grotto,
And swept the sawdust from her floor,
And I gazed into her wild wild eyes
Until my heart could take no more.
IX.
And with a tambourine she lulled me asleep,
And I dreamt I heard a terrible din
‘Twas the scariest dream I ever did dream,
I dreamt I was trapped inside her bin.
X.
I saw pale ploughmen, businessmen too, Old heartthrobs, death-pale as if without feelings; They cried-“The Bonny Lass Without Pity Has dumped us amang her peelings!”XI.
I saw their starved lips in the garbage With horrid warnings gaping wide, And I awoke and found me dumped, With another old scratter at my side.XII.
And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, My assessments all soggy in the sink, And my mobile phone not ringing.
After I’d finished reading it I said nothing for maybe a minute or so. Nor did Jack.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘This is, er, interesting.’
Jack looked at me. He wanted more than just, er, interesting.
‘Hey, Jack,’ I said. ‘What do you want me to say here? How I’d feel if I was the woman you wrote this for?’
‘It shows, then?’
‘Yeah, Jack, it shows. It’s about Tallulah, right?’
He nodded slowly.
‘So,’ I said, tentatively, ‘have you and her got a thing going on, or what?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s just tittle tattle. Emma Pope started that rumour as a put down to me.’
‘But you would like to have something going on with her, yeah?’
He nodded, safe behind his sunglasses. ‘Yeah.’
‘And? . . .And? . . . And what? You think she’s too young for you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all. What bothers me is that she’ll think I’m too old for her.’
‘She’s not a kid, Jack. She must be well into her thirties now. What are you saying, that she’s shallow?’
‘No, she’s definitely not shallow,’ Jack said, almost indignantly. ‘She’s a woman with deceptive subtlety and depth. She’s like a great river and her complexion is forever changing as she makes her course through her days. Sometimes she’s wild and tempestuous, sometimes she trickles and gurgles, but sometimes she’s quiet and still and just so damned profound. No, she’s not shallow, man, but I’ve got twenty years on her, and she knows it.’
I nodded. I almost smiled. I looked at the poem again.
‘This dustbin metaphor,’ I said. ‘That’s serious, right, a deep concern hidden behind a daft joke?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Exactly. What bothers me is that even if I got something off the ground with Tallulah she’d pretty soon dump me for a younger model. She has a bit of a reputation for chewing guys up and spitting them out.’
‘And the bin, that’s the bin of decrepitude, yeah? It’s a bin you fear that once she dumps you in you’ll be in for the rest of your days?’
‘It’s more than that,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a bin I fear I’m already in. Not because I want to be there or because I’m really need to be. It’s just the bin the rest of the world has put me in. It ‘s like that Yeats line, isn’t it, the one about old age being tied to you like a tin can to a dog’s tail. It stinks, man!’
‘And the bonny lass without pity, that’s not just Tallulah, is it? She’s society too, isn’t she, and young mistress Time herself. This bonny lass is The Reaper.’ A picture of Tallulah Hudspith wielding a giant scythe crossed my mind. It was an image from a Tarot card.
‘Yeah, something like that, I guess,’ Jack said.
‘You know what I’d do if I were you, Jack? I’d go for it. What’s the worst that can happen – you don’t get the gig. Or if you do you don’t get booked for a second night. But hey, Jack, for you this might just be the gig to end all gigs. One night with Tallulah might be your Madison Square Garden moment, the one gig you’ll never forget!’
Jack stood up. He very deliberately buttoned up his black reefer jacket. He smiled quietly and flicked his pony tail back over his collar. It was indeed a red elastic band holding it together.
‘Carpe diem, eh, man? I kinda knew that would be your take on it. Thanks, man. It helped.’
Jack picked up his brown satchel and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Hey, and one more thing, eh? This conversation we’ve had, strictly between me and you, right?’
‘Yeah, of course, Jack,’ I said. ‘Between me, you and the gatepost.’
He smiled and shook my hand again. I walked along the landing with him. As he was making his way down the stairs he turned and asked me if I knew Warren Zevon’s stuff.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He’s good.’
‘He wrote a song called I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,’ Jack said. ‘Give it a listen some time.’
‘I will’ I said. ‘But isn’t poor old Warren now fast asleep himself?’
‘He is, man. But what a way to hit the mattress, eh?!’
I laughed. Jack left. The snow had turned to rain.
When I got home I had a quick pizza and then put my boots on to go for a walk. It was turning cold and the slushy snow was beginning to freeze into crusty waves. I walked along Broadway and then on as far as the Thoroton Hotel. I went up Marlow Street and cut through past the sports centre and over on to Newsham Road. I walked up into Newsham and down Winship Street past the site of the Big Club, which is still fenced off but now completely razed. At the roundabout I stood for a moment or two and looked at the strings of Christmas lights slung above the road. I then made my way back down Plessey Road. In the last few days a lot more Christmas lights have appeared on houses and a lot more Christmas trees in their windows, but Christmas still seems slightly reluctant to appear this year, even though the Angel Alistair and the Good St Gordon from every television in the land sing, ‘Spend, Spend, Spend!’
‘Spend what?!’ the world sings back.
When I got back home Brenda was there again, gathering more slippers into boxes to take away for dispatch.
‘Hi, Brenda,’ I said. ‘How’s business?’
‘Brisk!’ she replied. ‘Surprisingly so. Things have really picked up in the past few days.’
‘Well, you can never go far wrong with slippers at Christmas, can you?’
‘Yes, I think you’re right. Folks may not have much money this year, but everyone can afford a good old fashioned pair of slippers, can’t they?’
Brenda didn’t have her Auguries of Innocence cardie on that day. She had a sort of long very expensive looking camel-coloured wrap around coat. She was also wearing green knee high leather boots with big shiny silver buckles on them, and out of the collar of her coat the leafy frills of a spring green blouse of some sort erupted. She also wore a coffee-coloured knitted hat of some kind, a one with a peak and a small chocolate brown button on the crown, the sort of hat that reminds me vaguely of Barbra Streisand. For a moment it crossed my mind that Brenda looked rather like a tortilla wrap.
‘So what’s Tristan getting you for Christmas?’ I asked.
‘Oh I don’t know that!’ she replied. ‘That would take all the fun out of it. I like surprises.’
‘But there must be something you hope he gets you.’
‘Oh well, yes, of course. What I’m hoping for is a Matthew Williams Chapelle weave coat and some Jimmy Choo Erica ankle boots, as well as some lovely smellies and maybe some nice stocking fillers, such as earrings and brooches and choccies and things. Just lots of lovely lovely delicious surprises really. I’ve pointed Tristan in the direction of net-a-porter.com and I know for certain that he’s looked. I’m quite excited really. But what about you? What do you want for Christmas?’
I paused for a moment, as if taking thought. ‘The emancipation of the working class, I think,’ I said, very calmly and seriously. ‘Yes, that definitely. That and world peace.’
Brenda nodded her head approvingly. ‘That’s just such a beautiful wish,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course, you’re absolutely right. It is the spiritual aspect of Christmas that really matters, not all the shopping and materialism. And in any case it really is better to give than to receive. You know, I don’t really care what anyone gets me actually. Christmas is just such a special time of year. Just be close to someone you care about and to know they’re there, that’s all any of us really needs.’
So I’ll tell Tristan to just send you a note and prod you from time to time then, I thought. I know what great joy and cheer that will bring.
‘So what are you getting Tristan?’ I asked.
‘An electric screwdriver set.’ Brenda replied. ‘I saw one at B & Q. It was such a good buy and it will be all he’ll ever need. He’s always saying how much he wished he had one.’
‘That’s nice, Brenda,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got to spend then a practical gift is always the way to go, I think.’
Lucky Tristan, I thought. But of course I’m sure Brenda will get a huge amount of pleasure from giving Tristan his electric screwdriver set.
‘Oh, but what do presents matter?’ Brenda said. ‘Christmas really is first and foremost a spiritual time, a time to think of others. As you said, a time for peace and love. Material things are such a terrible distraction sometimes, aren’t they?’
For a moment I wanted to ask her what the word ‘spiritual’ meant. But I thought better of it. In any case I think I already know how spiritual Brenda is: she’s about as spiritual as a checkout till. She has exactly the sort of spirituality the Angel Alistair wishes we all had this year.
‘Do you know anything about the Tarot, Brenda?’ I said, changing the subject. It was like asking a seagull if it knew about fish heads.
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, becoming animated. ‘Do you want me to do a reading for you?’
‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘But thank you for the offer. No, I was wondering about one of the cards and what it means.’
‘Which one?’ Brenda said, always ready to share her esoteric knowledge with the curious.
‘The one with the reaper on’ I said. ‘Is it called the Tallulah?’
‘The Tallulah?’ Brenda said, screwing up her face. ‘The Tallulah? The Tallulah’s not a Tarot card. No, no. No, the card you’re describing is the Death card.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The Death card. So there’s not an expression which is like “turning the Tallulah” or something like that?’
‘No,’ Brenda said, a little sharply. ‘No, there isn’t. The reaper is on the Death card.’
‘And if that card turned up for you it would be bad news, right?’
‘No, not necessarily,’ Brenda said. ‘That’s a common misconception. The Death card does not necessarily signify death. But it does signify that major change will occur in your life. Catastrophic change, in fact, but not necessarily for the worse.’
So, I thought to myself, turning the Tallulah foretells catastrophe. But not necessarily a bad catastrophe. The idea of a good catastrophe appealed to me. This was an idea it would be good for Jack to know about.
‘So have you ever done a reading for anyone when the Death card has turned up?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Brenda replied. ‘Many times.’
‘And are any of those people still alive?’ I asked.
‘Yes, so far as I know, they all are.’
‘But they will have all encountered a catastrophe by now, yes?’
Brenda had rumbled my game a while ago of course. She was prepared to play along no longer.
‘You should stop taking the mick,’ she said. ‘You know, many people have been helped to make important decisions in their lives through the Tarot. Just because you think it’s nonsense, doesn’t mean it is nonsense, you know.’
I nodded. She was right of course. I began to wonder about making a catastrophic decision, or rather, making a decision to have a catastrophe in your life. It seemed to me that since the future can’t really be foretold, this must be the way the Tarot works. The cards suggest that decisions of a certain kind should be made. It sets an agenda in someone’s mind. Decisions are then made according to the cards’ suggestions and hey presto – the cards appear to have done what cards never can and to have foretold the future. The classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps most divination works in exactly the same way. The effect is that you take active responsibility for your own future but that by some sleight of hand you can always say that whatever happens was bound to be, that it was written in the cards.
I wandered through to the conservatory. De Kooning was sitting on the windowsill, looking out into the dark where the snow had fallen among the gaping spaces of the Citadel. Sometimes I think I’m too passive about the future. It’s not something I get a hold of and try to make for myself. Maybe it’s that working class thing. Maybe it’s something else. I just seem to be happy to sit and watch the river flow by. I could dip my foot in, I know that. Maybe I fear a catastrophe if I do. Maybe I think I might turn the Tallulah if I get my feet wet.
I wondered if I should get a Tarot pack and do a reading for De Kooning. I know of course that this sort of stuff doesn’t work for cats. Cats sit on life’s windowsill and sing Que Sera Sera. They sing it nine times over.
.
yammering 