Archive for the ‘tallulah’ Category
the lonely death of duncan the vulcan
The problem of devil children continues to grow in our society. In some quarters it is considered to have reached epidemic proportions. Inevitably this has become a political issue and with an election looming each major political party has a position on the problem. Often such children are in cahoots with deviant adults, of course, and often they have transformational powers and can pass themselves off as small rodents. They pose particularly difficult challenges to carers. Last week I was in Stannington at Placements for a high level meeting to look at resources for such children. We are developing an innovative multi-agency approach under the rubric of SADCAP, our Satanic and Demonic Children Action Programme. We have developed a good evidence-based assessment tool and will monitor all cases at a high level through a group which will be called the SDCG. We are very hopeful that at a later stage this project will win an award and attract government money no matter which party is in power after May.
After the meeting I decided to hang around for a while and read my emails before heading off home. There weren’t many people in. I wandered through the magnolia and pale green corridors past the cubicles that are used as offices. I came to the office Tallulah shares with Betty. Neither were in. I sat down at Tallulah’s desk to use her computer to log in. Her desk was quite orderly but inevitably bore the mark of her personality. There was a calendar of famous squirrels, a small yellow frog pencil sharpener, a plastic fox, some aloe vera hand cream, a magnetic porcupine clad in multicoloured paper clips, a photograph of Nicole Kidman, framed and signed, a couple of Meg and Mog books, that sort of thing. There were also a number of documents of various kinds on her desk. Partly visible beneath an assessment report of some kind was a handwritten letter on deckled ivory foolscap paper. It was written in deep blue ink by a fountain pen. The handwriting was scribbly and urgent, angular, but also rhythmical. It reminded me of a record made by the needle of a seismograph. I lifted the report to one side and leaned forward to read the letter. As I pulled it towards me I saw that there were a couple of other documents beneath the letter; one of them was a cutting from a newspaper. I read the letter first.
Dearest T,
It’s strange, isn’t it, how suddenly a death can follow a birth sometimes. March has been the cruellest month for me, and despite what the poet says I know April will be far kinder. Until a few weeks ago it was as if I was unborn. At best I was dormant, and had been for so long that it seemed to me my natural state, a state not unlike death itself. And then our correspondence began. You came into my life absolutely unannounced, absolutely out of the blue, the way that an angel always does. My long dead limbs and other organs began to warm and to twitch in unusual, almost forgotten ways. It was as if I was being warmed by an invisible fire. My heart was awakening from a deep slumber. The eternal hibernation of my soul appeared to be ending.
As you can imagine I was initially a little confused by this turn of events, but very quickly became utterly cockahoop. Well, any man would, wouldn’t he, if suddenly blessed by the presence of an angel as unique and lovely as you? I found myself singing in my cabin, walking through the snow in the woods laughing and giggling like a foolish school boy. I found myself looking at my reflection in the head of my favourite axe and grinning at the grizzled old face I saw there. I found myself telling my reindeer about your emails and asking them how they would feel if they could pull you and I together on my sled, all the way down the long straight road to the village. I was happy, T, happy. I had forgotten what happiness felt like. Can you imagine how that must have been? I had been a dead man walking, T, I know that now.
And yet this joy began to fade almost as quickly as it came, much as the winter sun does in these high northern latitudes. I know it was my fault; I misunderstood you. I thought you must feel as I do. How daft can a lumberjack be? An angel doesn’t have the same status as a lumberjack, the same organs, the same purpose in life. An angel is a messenger, the bringer of a blessing she doesn’t own, so to speak, a blessing that is just something entrusted to her to bestow upon someone else. An angel doesn’t have a heart to give a way. An angel doesn’t have a heart like a lumberjack’s, a heart that is all too ready to be broken.
As you know, I came to see you as the Angel of the Volcano. I should perhaps have never told you this; I fear it may have been my fatal mistake and the single event which turned you from me. In using this phrase I was in effect calling into question your entire status as an angel. And yet what else could I think? In my younger days vulcanology was my whole life. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that without it I would have had no life at all in any real sense, and that my entire being depended upon my relationship with volcanoes. How I loved the strange, powerful, virtually infinite interiors, the unpredictability and volatility. How I loved to hear the rumble and roar, the fuming and spitting. How I loved the unquenchable nature. To me beauty and desire were surely irrevocably volcanic.
I knew of course that in my flirtations and closer relationships with volcanoes I could be melted, fried or vaporised at any time. Of course I had to guard against the vanity and folly of heroic love, of becoming addicted to the risk and of seeing only myself in this adventure. While there is no doubt I sometimes did take a little pride in my composure and poise while on the slopes of such formidable entities, I like to think that this was never more than a brief and all too human weakness, and that for the most part what drove me was always my love of the volcano herself. Heroic love seeks admiration and needs to conquer and tame: it was never my wish to stifle or choke any volcano. To me a volcano is never a challenge: to me a volcano is a delight. My aim was never to subordinate, manage or contain; my aim was always intimacy. With intimacy came acceptance, with acceptance redemption, and with redemption, peace. This is something that those who don’t love volcanoes never grasp. The redemptive dimension. The radical reassurance and sense of wholeness that come from such willing intercourse with danger.
As the tone of your emails subtly shifted and cooled I realised that I would never now approach you. I realised we could never meet, never kiss, never touch. I realised then that what I’d feared and hidden from myself for so long was true: I will never again walk towards a volcano and reach my destination. I will never again be close to the fierce beautiful furnace in a volcano’s heart. I remembered now too keenly what brought me to these snowy northern parts, why I chose a remote solitary life among the snow. I realised that the purpose in my life has disappeared and that in pretending I can live without it I am fooling no-one but myself, athough given the isolated and reclusive life I have chosen to live here among these trees there is of course no-one else here I might have fooled!
Anyhow, I’ve gone on a bit. I’ve said what I needed to, I think. I hope I haven’t said too much. I am happy to have felt your warmth, even if it was distant, even if for the most part it was only a fire in my imagination. My life has been the better for that. What has happened to me in speaking with you has been rather like having my coffin lid lifted and having a beautiful hand awaken me for a moment. I felt a strange heat and it warmed me. I was blinded by the fierce light. And just when I began to believe this dream might be real the coffin lid closed over me again. The final nails are now being driven home. I hear them in the darkness. And yet for all that, it is true: I wouldn’t have missed these weeks for the world. I can now die with a living memory of true happiness. Thank you, T, my flame-haired friend, my angel of the volcano.
I must go. Do not think me cowardly or lacking courage. Discretion is the better part of valour, don’t they say? It is braver to know when to leave the ring than to remain there and fail. The reindeer will be hungry and wondering where I am. My axe will be going rusty. There are things I must do before this short day ends.
Thank you and goodbye, my angel.
Yours volcanically,
Duncan
Beneath the letter, written in the same seismic handwriting on blue deckled edged writing paper I saw what I recognised to be a couple of Emily Dickinson’s volcano poems. This was the first:
A still—Volcano—Life— That flickered in the night— When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight— . A quiet—Earthquake Style— Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples— The North cannot detect . The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol— The lips that never lie— Whose hissing Corals part—and shut— And Cities—ooze away— .Beneath that there was a line, followed by the second poem:
The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan— Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. . If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her Can human nature not survive Without a listener? . Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be The only secret people keep Is Immortality. .I turned over the blue deckled paper to read the press cutting that lay beneath it. On the back of the sheet I found another of Dickinson’s volcano poems, again scribbled in the same hand, although this time in black ink, less evenly and at an angle across the sheet. It looked as if it had been added as an afterthought. Or perhaps it was a note he’d made earlier and he had forgotten was there.
On my volcano grows the grass,– A meditative spot, An area for a bird to choose Would be the general thought. How red the fire reeks below, How insecure the sod– Did I disclose, would populate With awe my solitude. .I picked up the press cutting and lifted it closer. It was dated from earlier in the week and was from a copy of The Journal. It read as follows:
MYSTERY WALKER FOUND DEAD ON CHEVIOT
Late yesterday afternoon a mountain rescue crew brought down the body of an unknown walker found dead on the northern flanks of Cheviot close the The Bizzle. The man, believed to be in his fifties, died of hypothermia.
Although police say there are no suspicious circumstances to his death, members of the mountain rescue team have told The Journal that the man was extraordinarily ill-equipped for the winter weather on the mountain, wearing only jeans and a lightweight orange fleece top. They also say the man appears to have been engaging in some sort of unknown artistic exercise when the weather caught him out.
One member of the team has told The Journal that the circumstances in which the man was found suggest he may have deliberately allowed himself to die. Our understanding is that the man was lying spread-eagled facing the sky, and that prior to his death he had scraped a large square and an overlapping circle in the snow. The Journal understand that both shapes were of very exact, near perfect geometrical proportions. We also understand that the width and height of the square exactly matched that of the man with his outstretched arms. It appears that prior to his death the man had performed a ‘snow angel’ in the snow and that the arc of his arms and legs exactly described the line of the circle.
The leader of the mountain rescue team, “Mighty” Ron Telfer, has said he is convinced that the man was attempting to reproduce Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man. As Mighty Ron points out, this drawing represents an ideal of human proportion – and of symmetry and order within the universe generally – that few would hold to in today’s society, where diversity and difference in people are welcomed and celebrated.
Detective Sergeant “Tinker” Robson of Northumbia Police described the man as “obviously a troubled individual who may have been suffering from Dysmorphic Body Syndrome.” Mighty Ron describes the man’s actions on the mountain as ill-advised and irresponsible and has made a plea to other walkers planning similar activities to think again.
The identity of the man is not yet known. The only personal objects found on his person were an unused postcard of Sicily and a card for Zefferelli’s restaurant in Ambleside. ‘We believe the man may not have been from these parts,’ Sergeant Robson said.
Police are appealing for anyone who thinks they may be able to identify him to come forward.
I put the documents back as I’d found them. For a moment or two I gazed into Nicole Kidman’s unblinking eyes. I decided not to check my emails after all. I was a little unsettled by the story of the death on Cheviot. I know that mountain well and I was pretty sure I know the spot where the man would have died.
As I was making my way over to the car park Jack arrived, rumbling across the gravel on his black Ducati. He scrunched to a halt beside me, got off the bike and lifted his black helmet from his head.
‘Yo, dude,’ he said, offering his gauntlet clad palm for me to slap. ‘How in the world are you, man? What brings you to this particular circle of hell?’
‘SADCAP meeting,’ I said, shrugging.
‘Oh, the old devil children business, eh? Was Freddy there?’
‘Yeah, he was there. So were an assortment of priests, a bevy of psychologists and a woman called Cymbeline McMurdo, who represents the local Pagan network.’
‘The usual suspects, then?’ Jack said, sarcastically, pulling up the collar of his leather jacket and flicking his pony tail over it.
I nodded. ‘Hey, I was sitting a Tallulah’s desk intending to look at my emails a few minutes ago and I came across a letter to her from a guy called Duncan. Do you know anything about that? Is he her latest flame?’
‘Oh, Duncan the Vulcan!’ Jack said. ‘Oh, yes, there’s no-one in the place doesn’t know about that poor sod. There’s a lesson for us all there, mate. I mean, man that could have been me, know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, you had the hots for her too once, as I recall.’
Jack laughed. ‘Yeah, man, I stared over that precipice so long my eyebrows caught fire! But, you know what, dude – I got wise? I stepped back from the brink.’
‘That’s not the way I remember it, Jack,’ I said, frowning.
‘Hey, hey, whatever, man,’ Jack said, irritably, adjusting his new Wayfarers on his nose. ‘The point is this – I could have been that poor sucker in the snow. She’s bad news, man, I tell you. She sucks you in and she spits you out, dude.’
I nodded slowly. ‘So you think the guy in the snow was Duncan?’
‘Oh, for sure. Who else would it be? It’s him for sure – Lady T knows it too.’
‘It’s ironic, isn’t it, that a man so obsessed with fire should die frozen in the snow?’
‘Ironic, dude? Ironic? It’s freakin’ tragic.’
When I got back to the car I rummaged around on the back seat and found my copy of Damien Rice’s album “O”. It’s a tremendous album and in my view one of the best albums of the century so far. One of the best songs is entitled Volcano, and that was the reason I wanted to listen to it.
I drove down past Plessey Woods and over Hartford Bridge. It was grey and had been raining a bit. The sky was a mess of torn and ragged black and white clouds. Volcano began to play as I was climbing the bank out of the woods. I turned left at the roundabout at Plessey Checks and down the dual carriageway that follows the course of the old wagonway to Blyth. I didn’t sing along, even though the chorus is almost irresistible and on any other day I would have done. I was strangely preoccupied with Duncan the Vulcan, the man who’d died in the snow on Cheviot. It was almost as if in my mind I knew the exact spot where he had been found.
I wanted to listen to the whole album, so rather than go home I drove down to the car park opposite the South Shore estate and looked out over the sea until it finished. As I drove home along Rotary Way I saw Tristan’s white PermaPlumb van coming in the opposite direction. At first I thought he was alone, but as we approached one another I could see that sitting next to him was a diminutive figure, someone barely tall enough to see over the dashboard. Tristan was laughing and talking in a very animated way to his companion and didn’t notice as I flashed my lights at him. As we passed one another I glanced across into Tristan’s van to see who was with him. It was none other than Mrs Byro. She was dressed to the nines. Gone was the charity shop ragamuffin look. She was now wearing a silky red dress, low cut with thin straps. Her arms were bare. She was wearing lipstick, fake tan and false eyelashes. She had combed her hair. She looked almost sexy! Although it was impossible for me to tell, she might even have been wearing black tights and a pair of black patent Jimmy Choo’s with five inch heels.
I drove home gobsmacked. Tristan and Mrs Byro: who would have thought it?! As I went in De Kooning came down the hall to greet me. Margaret wasn’t in.
‘You won’t believe who Tristan’s having a fling with?’ I said to De Kooning as I picked him up. ‘Mrs Byro! For Christ’s sake, Mrs bloody Byro!!!’
He rubbed his face against mine. I carried him into the kitchen and stood him on the bench while I looked for some prawns for him.
‘It just goes to show you never can tell, doesn’t it? People have hidden depths. You never know who the wild ones are or just who might turn out to be a volcano!’
I gave De Kooning his prawns, turned the oven on and got myself a pizza from the freezer. I put the kettle on. I made myself a cappuccino.
.
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.
.
the needle in destiny’s jukebox
You’re young and you’ve got your health. What do you want with a job?
The Coen Brothers
Raising Arizona
I was standing in the corridor talking to Jack. In his skinny black jeans and biker boots he was leaning against a poster that says Safeguarding is Everyone’s Business. He reminded me a lot of Felix the Cat. It occurred to me Tallulah was in a meeting upstairs.
‘Hey, you’re not waiting for Tallulah, are you?’ I said.
‘Nah,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve moved on, man. I’ve got another cherry in my crystal chandelier now.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean, you aren’t actually waiting here now for her are you? She’s upstairs in a meeting. I thought you might be going back together.’
Jack laughed and shook his head. He adjusted his Aviators on his face and pulled up the collar of his leather jacket. I wondered if he was about to break into a chorus of You’re the One that I Want.
‘I saw her at Tynemouth at the weekend. She was in the Wooden Doll, out on the lash with a slackjawed entourage of mule-faced harridans. She was blathered, man, I can tell you. They all were. Blathered and blotto, blasted, bombed and boogalooed. Know what I mean?’
‘They were drunk?’
‘As skunks, dude. Lady T can hardly remember seeing me. She was well hammered, mate, hooched up, out of it, tanked, toodlelooed, wrecked, wrinkled, polluted, and duplicated. Man, she was trousered, know what I mean?’
‘I think so. She was drunk. So did she speak to you?’
‘She sneered at me, man, that’s what she did – sneered at me. That lady’s got one helluva attitude problem, my friend. She wants to eat the sparrows from my soul.’
I nodded very slowly.
‘So are you still with the band, Jack?’ I said.
‘Yeah, I sure am. It’s my life, man. It’s what I am. I was born to be a needle in destiny’s jukebox.’
I nodded again.
‘So were you playing at the Wooden Doll at the weekend? Is that how you happened to see Tallulah?’
‘Nah, that was Friday. We didn’t have a gig that night. I was on a recreational mission, if you know what I mean.’
I was about to begin nodding again when Tallulah bowled around the corner at the end of the corridor and began striding towards us like a leopard with a Mae West half-smile on her face.
‘Oh oh,’ Jack said. ‘Here comes Minnie the Moocher. This is probably my cue to skedaddle, dude.’
Tallulah strode up to us, her bag slung over her shoulder, her red hair tied back.
‘Well, well,’ she said, looking Jack up and down, ‘if it isn’t Ronnie Wood.’
‘Miaow!’ Jack replied. ‘What’s the problem, Lady T, did the green-eyed monster come a-callin’?’
‘Dream on, Jack,’ Tallulah replied. ‘But, hey, I suppose that must have been your daughter I saw you with at the weekend, was it?’
‘Have you ever noticed’ Jack said – to me, rather than to Tallulah, ‘how when women reach a certain age they can get a bit confused about those who are young and beautiful?’
‘Oh, come off it, Jack,’ Tallulah came back. ‘If you were only my age you’d still be twice the age of that half-naked tattooed bimbo you were drooling over on Friday.’
Jack looked at me and made a sort of palms up shrug.
‘See what I mean, man?’ he said. He zipped up his jacket. ‘Time to make tracks, I reckon.’
Jack slouched away slowly down the corridor. As he opened the door at the end he looked back, pulled his Aviators down his nose and, looking over them, blew Tallulah a kiss.
Tallulah shook her head. She turned and looked straight at me, her blue eyes very serious. It struck me that she reminded me a lot of Florence Welch.
‘He’s going to get himself sacked,’ she said. ‘He’s on self-destruct. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Jack will be with us much longer.’
For a moment I thought she was going to cry. I was sure she was. But just then Eric came into the building. He spotted me immediately and made a beeline for me.
‘How,’ he said, ‘Aa’ve just seen ya marra’s sidekick, whaat’s ‘ee’s name? The one whaat plays wi’ that baand – yuh knaa, the Gliffs. Ozzy Osbourne – yuh knaa, the Pluto, him wi’ the massa motorbike.’
‘Jack’s band’s called The Clips,’ Tallulah said, as if very politely correcting him. ‘Not The Gliffs.’
‘Ur, aye,’ Eric said, looking at Tallulah. ‘Aye, here, so d’ye knaa ‘ee’s marra, iz weell? The blowk whaat wuz in The Proodloot? Whaat’s ‘ee’s name again? Ur, aye. Hing on.’
Eric slipped into please wait, communicating with server mode, his rigid index finger raised like a coathook.
‘Owen.’ Tallulah replied, laughing quietly. ‘Owen Vardy. Oh, I know Owen, all right.’
‘D’yuh knaa wor young un’s tryin’ t’ get the gadgie at the Fell Um Doon to book them for a neit? Aa’ll get yuh a ticket, if yuh like.’
Tallulah shook her head. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘But if he books The Clips let me know. Now there’s a band worth seeing.’
She winked at me and left.
‘We’s she?’ Eric said, as she closed the door. ‘Is that the Pluto’s lass?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. In fact they can’t actually stand each other.’
When I got home Margaret was in the kitchen cooking some onions and scraping some carrots. I hadn’t seen her for a few days. I asked her how Brenda and Tristan were.
‘Not good,’ she said.
‘Any more news on the woman he’s supposed to be seeing from South Beach. Where does she live again, Albatross Way?’
‘It looks like there is no woman from South Beach,’ Margaret said. ‘Mrs Byro seems to have made a mistake. It seems it was something she dreamt.’
‘So Tristan’s in the clear, then?’
‘Not quite. It’s only a matter of time before Brenda figures out what Mrs Byro’s dream means. She thinks the dream is probably prophetic. She thinks the birds are symbols of things to come. Brenda says Mrs Byro is one of God’s chosen vehicles. It’s through the likes of Mrs Byro that the radio stations of the future broadcast their quiet music. ’
I nodded slowly. I could have been listening to a tune by Elgar in my head, but in reality I was thinking how much I dislike it when the clocks go back and all of a sudden you have to drive home in the dark. You feel like the victim of a robbery.
I gave De Kooning a cuddle and sat with him for a while watching the six o’clock news and drinking a cappuccino. Afterwards I went out for a walk in the dark. I went looking for the autumn leaves. I walked through the Solingen Estate and into Ridley Park. I walked from there along Bath Terrace and then back up Ridley Avenue, which might be at its very best at this time of the year. A little while later I walked across Broadway Circle. I stopped beneath the streetlight in the middle, close to the TA building, drifts of fallen leaves all around me. The lights from the Broadway shops – the chippy, the newsagent cum corner shop that calls itself a superstore, the chop suey house, the off-licence – were flooding the dry pavement. And yet there are still those who will tell you that Blyth isn’t a beautiful place.
.
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 black aeroplane
It was very summery in the earlier part of last week, although as it happens it wasn’t going to last. On Monday Tallulah was in the office. I was standing in the kitchen at the photocopier wondering if I should ask Eric to brush up all the sand when I heard a soprano voice in the corridor singing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’
I come home in the morning light
My mother says when you gonna live your life right
Oh mother dear we’re not the fortunate ones
And girls they wanna have fun
Oh girls just wanna have fun
It was Tallulah. As she passed the kitchen door she glanced in. When she saw me she came in to say hello. Or rather she slinked in. There is something strangely lithe and feline about Tallulah sometimes. Her red hair was tied back in a thin turquoise scarf. She was wearing long silver earrings, a tiny crescent moon at the end of each one.
Tallulah told me that Jack and Owen had almost come to blows at a meeting of the Keats appreciation group a few days earlier. It seems they’d been arguing about Lauren Laverne’s rendition of “the golden pen poem”, as Tallulah called it.
‘Owen felt that Laverne’s reading was disrespectful and impertinent,’ Tallulah said. ‘Jack sniggered at him and accused him of being elitist. Of course Jack didn’t quite put it like that. He suggested to Owen that only a stuck up little twerp who had his head up his own backside could think like that. Owen retaliated by calling Jack “slack and totally without scruples” and said Jack was “lacking a robust sense of the true meaning and value of poetry”. Jack guffawed and suggested the real problem was that Owen had the hots for Laverne but was in denial about it, denial that he was converting into denial about the quality of her rendering of the poem. Jack said Owen would never admit the beauty of Laverne’s reading of the poem until he admitted the beauty of Laverne herself. You should have been there. It was bloody hilarious.’
‘It sounds like it,’ I said. ‘And so Jack nearly hit Owen, did he?’
‘Yes, it’s worrying. Jack’s needs to watch himself. When Owen retaliated by called him degenerate and disrespectful to women, Jack got up, swaggered over to him, poked him on the brow with his index finger and asked him what he was going to do about it.’
I laughed. ‘What did Owen do?’ I said.
‘He trembled!’ Tallulah laughed. ‘What do you think he did? He trembled, picked up his carrier bag of seasonal vegetables and went off to catch the next bus back home to Heidi.’
‘Sounds like Lauren’s really put the cat among the pigeons among the Keats aficionados, eh?’
‘Yeah,’ Tallulah said. ‘But it’s Jack I worry about. I’d hate to see him do something he’d regret.’
‘Bloody hell, Tallulah, since when did you ever care about what happens to Jack? Last time you spoke to me about him you didn’t give him the lickings of a dog.’
‘Didn’t I? Really? How odd. I’m really very fond of Jack.’
Tallulah looked at me with a wide-eyed, innocent expression. It was an expression Laverne herself sometimes wears. I laughed. She laughed too.
‘Hey, do you know he’s taken to wearing a cowboy hat now?’ she said. ‘Well, a sort of Fedora, I guess.’
‘Is it black?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ Tallulah said. ‘Black as your hat. Black as a spider. Black as night.’
The Good Doctor Sticks also came over last week. We had a session about the Electronic Assessment Module, which he continues to see as the future of social work, and then moved on the other matters. He had an idea he wanted to pitch.
‘In The Observer this week it said that there were eight hundred Brits on waiting lists for Swiss euthanasia clinics,’ he said. ‘This is a clear case of demand without supply. Where’s there’s need, there’s opportunity. This is the fundamental principle of the market economy. And the government’s not about to make euthanasia legal over here any time soon – except in Gordon’s case as a one off, of course – and even if they did the money’s not there to fund the service from the public purse, so the market will need to fill the gap. I’m looking to pull together some interested people from various disciplines to begin to put together a package and come up with a business plan. Needless to say you, my friend, were one of the first people that came to mind.’
‘Thanks, Sticks,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘I’m flattered. So how do you see this working, exactly?’
‘Okay, our company will essentially operate in a specialised area which combines the expertise of social care professionals, counsellors and medical practitioners of various kinds with other areas of expertise, such as those of the travel and package short-break holiday providers, the leisure industry, the undertaking profession and funeral services. The basic idea is that we will put together complete packages in Switzerland for those who wish to end their lives by euthanasia. We will provide a complete service – transport, accommodation, nursing and medical care, return of the body, funeral services and so on. But within that service we will offer a bespoke end of life experience for every client and their family. We will set up a centre in Switzerland where a dying person and their loved ones can spend the client’s final days together. We will offer privacy and five star care. But more than that, we will tailor the whole package around the dying person’s wishes and desires. They will eat the foods they love, listen to the music they love, see DVD’s of their favourite films or those they’d always wanted to see but missed, have their favourite books and poems read to them, and so on. The family would have a suite with all the amenities they desired and a top notch twenty four hour global care and hospitality package. We’d ensure that we met their every demand. For example if they loved Bartok, they could listen to him all they wished. We might even be able to get a string quartet to play for them. If they liked Chas and Dave or ragtime, we’d ensure that it was available for them. Rap music, hip-hop, madrigals or Welsh male voice choirs. Whatever they wanted to hear before they left this world, we would ensure they heard it. Similarly with films. If they wanted Close Encounters of the Third Kind they would have it. Plasma screen, wraparound sound, Dolby stereo – the works. Similarly if they wanted The Swimmer or The Masque of the Red Death or The Snowman. And the same with food. If they wanted caviar they would get it. If they wanted cheese and onion pasty and mushy peas they’d get them. Top quality ingredients, cordon bleu chefs. On their final day, which I see as usually being a Sunday, the dying person would have a final evening meal – a Last Supper , if you will – after which they’d retire to their bed to begin their final journey. At this point the music of their choice would begin to play, and again it could be anything they wanted, from Gorecki’s Third to something like K. C. and The Sunshine Band’s sublime and immortal “That’s the Way I Like It”, uh huh, uh huh. The latter would be my personal choice, of course. We’d want to make dying an unforgettable experience, if you’ll excuse the paradox.’
I nodded slowly. ’You don’t see this as at all cynical, do you?’ I said. ‘The exploitation of desperate and vulnerable people?’
‘I don’t’ Sticks replied. ‘Not at all. Don’t forget, my friend, better the good guys provide these services than let them fall into the hands of the bad guys.’
‘So if good guys do bad things does it make those things good?’ I asked. ‘Or does it not just make the good guys bad?’
‘You think too much, my friend,’ Sticks said, his affable smile rising like a brand new day across his face. ‘The key issue here is need and ensuring that need is met. That’s the business we’re in. We need to see that the market is the future for all areas of social care. There’s no shame in it my friend, no disgrace. So, are you interested? Do you want to hear more?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Go ahead, shoot.’
‘Okay, here’s how I see it. In addition to the Your Final Days centre in Switzerland, we’d need a support, preparation and after-care service in the UK. That’s where you’d come in. But more importantly we’d need our own aeroplane specially equipped to transport the dying person and their family to Geneva, or wherever. It would be a unique aeroplane for a unique journey, the Final Journey, a journey the dying person will only take once.’
‘So what will you call your aeroplane?’ I said, ‘EuthanAire?’
‘That’s good,’ Sticks chuckled. ‘I like its phonic ambiguities. It sounds like “you thin air”, where the status of “thin” is uncertain. Is it a verb or is it an adjective? But either way it speaks of the ephemeral, transitory nature of our corporeal selves, does it not? And the word also evokes the phrase “youth in air”, which is also helpful in reminding us that we all grow old and that death is inevitable, that being young is as fragile as a perfume on the wind. It isn’t the name I have in mind but it’s an interesting suggestion.’
‘No, Sticks, it wasn’t a suggestion: it was a joke.’
‘Of course it was’ he said. ‘But an interesting joke, yes? However, the aeroplane I have in mind will be completely black, black wings, black from nose to tail fin. But inside it will be lined with white satin and all the furnishings – the seats, the couches and beds, the curtains, the carpets and the drinks trolley – will be gleaming, clean and white and lovely white lights will light every corner of the cabin space. And the cabin staff will be dressed all in white too. It’s like a metaphor for death itself, you see. From the outside it looks dark and forbidding and inscrutable. The dying person wonders what it’s like inside. But his or her final flight shows them that inside the black aeroplane it is peaceful and serene and that everything shines like snow. This is how the Final Flight of life will be for our clients. They will ascend above the Earth and make the passage to Switzerland in the black aeroplane. That will be the name of our company, Black Aeroplane Enterprises. I like to think that in time the phrase “it’s time to take the black aeroplane” will become an everyday figure of speech for dying, in much the same way as shuffling off the mortal coil and popping one’s clogs are now. And the advertising material is there already: take the black aeroplane and make dying an unforgettable experience. What do you think? Do you like what you’re hearing, my friend?’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said. ‘But do you think it’ll ever get off the ground?’
‘A black aeroplane is no heavier than a silver one,’ Sticks quipped. ‘I am anticipating no special difficulties with gravity.’
‘But what about if it’s made illegal to offer such packages. Or what if they liked their last weekend so much they decided they didn’t want to die after all? Or what if euthanasia’s made legal in the UK and service providers are popping up everywhere?’
‘If the dying person were to decide they wished to remain with us they could return to the UK alive with their loved ones on the same flight that would have taken their body home. Furthermore they will be offered a fifteen percent discount on a future booking if they make this within twelve months of that date. If euthanasia is made legal in the UK I already have a plan to capture the market with a chain of high street branches aimed at providing a sensitive high quality service for the volume market. I’ll call these Last Stop Shops, which is rather clever, don’t you think?’
I shrugged. I sometimes think Sticks is on something – like another planet, for example. However, he’s regarded in the Directorate as our key ‘blue sky thinker’ and as a man whose views you should never dismiss. Some say he sees the order of future where others can see only chaos.
‘You should be on The Apprentice, Sticks,’ I said. ‘Alan Sugar would be bowled over by someone like you.’
‘You think so? ‘ Sticks smiled, a slow, deeply self-satisfied smile, almost the smile of a cat. ‘Well, I’ll take that in the spirit I think it’s intended, my friend. Thank you. Yes, I can see it too: “Sticks: you’re hired!” Ha ha. And so what’s your answer, then? Do you want to be in my project group? Yes or no?’
I rubbed my jaw. ’Let me think about it,’ I said.
‘Fair enough. I’ll give you a bell next week. But remember, if the good guys don’t do it, the bad guys will.’
I love the way there’s so much greenery and light at this time of the year and how it all seems so irrepressible and profligate. I drove along Renwick Road that evening in slightly luminous marbled-pebble light. I passed Ronnie Campbell’s office at the corner of Claremont Terrace. It’s funny how meretricious and unfashionable the yellow and red of Labour looks now (no doubt a rebranding now awaits us in the not too distant future). Less than half a mile by Jag from his big house on Marine Terrace, Ronnie’s shabby office, an old brown corner shop – inscrutable and uninviting and which never looks likes it’s open – seems a metonym for his shoddy worn-out party, a metaphor for the way our representatives weigh the needs of the people against their own needs. I slid around Broadway Circle past the bow-windowed pre-war semis – solid, secure, desirable – and noticed in gardens the yellow tongues of the laburnum lolling in vague, soft shadows. I remembered that when I was a kid I thought these houses were really posh and that they belonged to rich people, people from a different world to me.
When I got home Margaret was sitting at the kitchen table doing a new jigsaw. It was a picture of a steamroller, a green Aveling and Porter. There was also a large jagged crystal on the bench beside the kettle.
‘Have you seen Brenda?’ I said.
‘I have,’ Margaret replied.
‘And how was Bowness?’
‘Bowness was good, I think. Tristan perhaps a little less good.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh, indeed. The man doesn’t know how close he is to being given his marching orders. I mean, he’s so insensitive he even asked Brenda to marry him one night! Marry him, you know! Marry him! What is it about hanging from a thread that the man doesn’t understand?’
‘Tristan asked Brenda to marry him?!’ I said, genuinely surprised. ‘Nah, surely not. Are you sure Brenda’s not just pulling your leg?’
‘Brenda does not pull anyone’s leg,’ Margaret replied, very earnestly. ‘What she told me was the truth, I’m sure of that. They were sitting at a window seat in an Italian restaurant called Rumours, which is apparently at the bottom of the hill opposite St Martin’s church. Do you know it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. They do a good garlic bread.’
‘They’d just come back from a cruise on Windermere. It was a lovely evening and the sun was shining on her face. Out of the blue Tristan asked her to marry him, but, and here’s the cherry on the cake, he wouldn’t be able to buy her an engagement ring until business picked up! Brenda says she was absolutely gobsmacked. She felt it was as if he wanted her on the cheap.’
‘So did she say no?’
‘No, she didn’t know what to say. She said she just leaned over, kissed his cheek once and asked if she could have another glass of wine.’
‘Wasn’t she flattered?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it isn’t every day a woman gets a proposal of marriage, is it?’
‘No, she wasn’t flattered. She felt she was being manipulated. She felt she’d been defiled.’
‘Defiled?’
‘Yes, defiled. That’s the word she used. She felt she’d been defiled.’
At that point De Kooning, who until then had been sitting benignly on the kitchen table, took it into his head to steal a piece of Margaret’s new jigsaw. He knocked it on to the floor with his paw, jumped down, picked it up in his mouth and ran away with it, out through the conservatory into the garden.
‘Which piece has he got?’ Margaret asked.
I looked at her and shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘The one that fits the hole that’s still there when you’re finished, I guess.’
Margaret shook her head in dismay. I turned on the oven and got a pizza out of the freezer. I made myself a cappuccino and sat in the conservatory waiting for De Kooning’s return. It crossed my mind that the piece of music I’d want to play while I lay dying in Switzerland would be Dvorak’s cello concerto.
.
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?
.
elvis, orpheus, and the panopticon
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their
silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is
conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing;
but from their silence certainly never.
Franz Kafka
There’s nothing you can’t buy at Al’s Video’s in Ashington. It is a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of a shop, a cornucopia of the mundane and the outlandish, the exotic and the ordinary. It’s a Tardis-like shop that somehow contains more space than it occupies. It stands on North Seaton Road, a little way around the Grand Corner from the town centre. Next to Pal Joey’s and Lintonville Fabrics, the curtain shop. Lily once told me she’d bought four exquisite inflatable golden giraffes there. Pippa swears by it for everything from birthday cards to bubble wrap. It’s the sort of haberdashery where you’d get a harpoon if you needed one, the sort of junkshop where you might find magic butterflies among silver confetti. Debs told me once she got a rainbow-coloured paper suit there, good enough to wear for court. On another occasion she got herself a fine lightweight wheelbarrow made from recycled lemonade cans. Last Thursday I went over to Al’s in search of brightly coloured foam letters and card to make a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with, along with some sky blue ribbon to hang it by. I found what I wanted next to some luminous plastic skeletons. As I was making my way back down South View I met up with Owen Vardy, carrier bag in hand.
‘So what’s in the bag this time, Owen?’ I said. ‘More vitamins?’
He chuckled. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Just a few things for my holidays. My wife Heidi and I are going over to the Lakes for a week at the weekend. We always rent a lovely little apartment in Portinscale called The Leveret’s Relief. We stay there every year.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘So what have you got in the bag, energy bars and stuff?’
‘No, I’ve got some fruit for the first few days, just in case local supplies aren’t available. Heidi and I have got to have our antioxidants, you know.’
‘So what have you got, apples and oranges and that sort of thing?’
‘Berries. Berries are the best thing. I’ve got strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, bilberries, blueberries and red grapes. I’ve also got some nuts – walnuts and almonds – along with flax and sunflower seeds. I’ve got a couple of nice pomegranates, some tomatoes, broccoli, kiwi fruit and spinach. I’ve got baby leaf herb salad. Oh, and an avocado and some Brussel’s sprouts. And a beetroot. And some sprouting seeds.’
I looked down at Owen’s carrier bag. Al’s Video Shop suddenly began to seem quite ordinary.
‘That’s quite a shop,’ I said.
‘Well, you can’t take any risks with your health, can you? And as we all know, you are what you eat. You’re a vegetarian too, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Does it show?’
‘I think if more people knew the dangers of eating meat the whole country would soon be vegetarian,’ he said. ‘Don’t you? As Heidi always says, the sausage and the steak are sure-fire short cuts to an early grave.’ I nodded slowly. Heidi’s phrase had a definite prophetic, even Blakeian ring to it. Owen was wearing a long brown jacket, blue corduroy trousers and an open-necked white linen shirt, all hanging loosely on him, as if they were all a size too big, and all somehow wrinkled and in need of an iron. He seemed to be expecting me to continue the conversation. I took a predictable turn.
‘How’s Jack?’ I asked.
Owen’s expression froze. He leaned close, like a sort of spectral Columbo.
‘To be honest, I despair of that man,’ he replied. His expression was one of studied incredulity. ‘He appears to care so little about his dignity. You’ll know about the motorbike, of course, and that he insists that everyone should now call him Spider. Well, now he’s dyed his hair jet black, blacker than a raven, tarantula black. It’s a terrible thing to say but when I first saw it he reminded me of Ozzie Osbourne. You do know he was born on the same day as me, don’t you?’
‘Who was, Ozzie Osbourne?’
‘No, Jack.’
‘Oh yes, I knew that.’
‘Well, I ask you, is it in any way dignified for a man of his age to dye his hair black like that. Who does he think he is – Elvis Presley, Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson? I ask you, who?’
‘Maybe dignity’s not something that bothers Jack much these days,’ I said.
‘Ah, but it does,’ Owen replied, quick as a flash, putting his hand on my arm like a monkey’s claw. ‘There is not a man alive who doesn’t seek dignity. Believe me, I know. Dignity is truth, and Jack is seeking dignity just as much as you or I, my friend. But he’s taken the wrong road, I fear, and for him there may be no way back.’
I smiled. I was wondering if there was anything in what Owen was saying. I was thinking about how a man might deal with temptation. I was thinking about beeswax and the lyre. If Owen was Ulysses I was wondering if Jack might not be Orpheus.
‘So what’s happening on the Jack and Tallulah front?’ I said. ‘Has she ridden in red leather on his black pillion yet?’
Owen shook his head, as if the very thought of it in some way ruffled the soft white feathers of his soul. ‘No,’ he said, gravely. ‘Not yet. And we can only pray that she never does.’ He paused. Again he looked troubled, like a heron in a storm.
‘What are you saying?’ I asked, ‘that she might be up for it?’
He looked me straight in the eye, as a priest might look at a heathen. ‘Women are strange creatures,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you that. And Tallulah is a woman.’
I sort of already knew he’d noticed that, of course, although I still wasn’t absolutely sure how much attention his all too human flesh was allowed to pay to this fact. I could now hear our leather-clad siren singing to him. I could see him sailing by, lashed to the mast, his ears stuffed with dignity
‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ he said, suddenly almost composed. ‘I can’t. It’s wrong in any case. But Jack’s life is his own, Tallulah’s too. That’s something we must all accept.’
I nodded. ‘So you’re off to the Lakes, eh? Lucky man. Hey, have you ever heard the story of Florence Nelson from Bowness? She was known as The Steamroller Murderess, it seems.’
‘Florence Nelson?’ Owen said, looking up quickly. ‘No. No, I’ve never heard of her. When did all this happen?’
‘Oh it was probably about fifty years ago now,’ I said. ‘In the sixties, I think. Any way, listen, if you do get into a conversation with any of the locals while you’re over there, ask them about it, will you? I only know bits of the story and I’m sort of intrigued to find out the rest.’
‘Yes, I will do that,’ Owen said. ‘I’d like to know about it myself. Anyhow, time marches on, I really must fly or I’ll miss my bus.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Just one more thing – you and Heidi don’t have any children, do you?’
‘No, we don’t. We were never blessed that way. Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered. Does Jack have any kids?’
‘Not officially, no. However the story does go round that he has a son who he has never seen since he was a baby. They say that the mother might be someone quite famous, a singer. My own guess is that he doesn’t have a son at all and it’s just something he made up to make himself more interesting. If he does have a son my guess is that the mother will probably have been a groupie or some other woman he hardly knew. You know Jack.’
‘Maybe it was Janis Joplin,’ I said. ‘Maybe Jack and Janis had a secret love child. Maybe they called him Jimi. Anyhow, Owen, enjoy your holiday. And don’t forget to ask about steamroller murderess if you get the chance.’
I watched him as he turned the corner on his way to the bus station. I really must find time to read George Herbert, I thought.
I had mushroom pizza for tea that night and then went out for walk. As I walked up past the first houses on Cowpen Road opposite Sure Start I looked up at the massive steroidal three-headed CCTV lamppost at the junction with Albion Way. There are a surprising number of these things around Blyth. I’ve read somewhere that the police have nineteen CCTV cameras in Blyth town centre alone and there are clearly many others elsewhere, such as this one at the junction of Albion Way. In fact I’d already walked past another of these Medusas, the one that looks down on us from the top of Waterloo Road. For some reason I’d taken no notice of it as I passed.
There is nothing benign about being watched. All surveillance is coercive. We are all wearing a t-shirt with “SUSPECT” written across the chest. (It’s probably the same t-shirt the government gave us all, the one with “VICTIM” written on the back.) What I wonder is if we haven’t done anything wrong why are they watching us? To make sure we can’t, or to make sure that if we do we will, in Foucault’s famous formulation, be disciplined and punished, I suppose.
I walked along past Au Naturel and Morpeth Road School towards the North Farm and KwikFit, where there’s another gigantic forbidding three-eyed monster at the junction of Hodgsons Road. In fact Cowpen Quay is supervised by several of these massive inscrutable swivel-headed wardens. The estate is surrounded by these silent Gorgons. It is of course the poorest area of Blyth and has long had a reputation for crime and drug use. These things haven’t stopped of course, it’s just that they now happen indoors, or elsewhere. I walked on past Netto and up towards Cowpen Cemetary, wondering just how many CCTV cameras there actually are in Blyth, wondering if one could see me now. I was thinking it would be a good idea to map them and to try to find which areas of the town aren’t covered by them, to chart those streets down which a citizen can still walk without being regarded as a suspect. It would be good if there were maps like this on the internet of every town in the UK, showing us the places where we can still feel free.
It’s increasingly hard to believe there is anywhere left in Britain where we aren’t being watched. We’re getting to the point where CCTV is so ubiquitous we don’t even know it’s there. But if that meant we weren’t responding to its presence there’d be no point in it being there at all. The truth is we must now assume we are always being watched. We live beneath the mute soulless gaze of a host of invisible God-like controllers who we must imagine track every step we take. We must know we are not free. There’s something so sinister and feudal and oppressive about those spaces we used to think were ours. Invisible assumed surveillance has taken root in our unconscious, like an imaginary malignant metaphysical presence. This is the psychology of the Panopticon. Irrationality now lurks around every street corner. A new dark age awaits us. Paranoia and morbid dread are key phenomenological characteristics of existence in twenty-first century urban environments. I wanted to ask Gordon if he expects things to get worse. I wanted to ask him if we wanted to say sorry.
When I got home I glanced up at Hugo’s little security cameras. I waved at them as they gazed relentlessly at the junk in his front garden – the old car wheels, the stunted conifers in their pots, the oven hob, the sheets of plasterboard, the orange Bond Bug that glows like a jelly in the twilight. I felt an impulse to vault over the fence and steal something, just to see if I would get away with it, just to see if there was anyone really watching me at all.
It was Easter weekend. It was good to get a few days off work. I painted a bit and did some walking and biking. With De Kooning’s help I did some pruning and pulled up a few weeds in the garden.
On Sunday I decided to go up to Thrunton Woods to walk. I asked Margaret for a garlic clove before I went but she refused to give me one. As I drove up I listened to Elvis Perkins’ new album, Elvis Perkins in Dearland. I thought it was oddly appropriate for a trip to Thrunton. The album was initially a bit of a disappointment to me. I thought it didn’t really come up to the standard of his first album, which I think is one of the best singer-songwriter albums of recent years. Mr Perkins, son of Anthony of Psycho fame, has an elegantly intelligent lyrical imagination and a loose freewheeling vocal style. While being inescapably American and showing a clear debt to Bob Dylan and other North American influences, he also seems to have a distinct dash of European-ness about him, making him sound distinctively cosmopolitan. The new album starts well and the first four songs are very engaging. The opening song in particular has a popish immediacy as well as slyly deceptive lyrical turns. The final songs are strong too. So for me at present the problem is somewhere in the middle, probably around song six. Somewhere around about there he overdoes it a bit, becomes a bit too mannered. Cabaret comes to mind, or maybe the Danse Macabre, something Gothy. Late Beatles circus tent burlesque stuff, a bit like For the Benefit of Mr Kite but without the tune. There’s something just a little too theatrical and artificial going on around here for my liking.
It was cool but the sky was clear and blue. I parked at the top of the woods and set off along the forest road up towards Coe Crag. There were very few people around and for the most part I had the place to myself. The larches were beginning to get their fresh bright green needles. Small birds were chittering among them. As I made it on to the open moor a buzzard slid north far above me. I walked on up to the trig point on Long Crag. I sat down on a stone near there and gazed for a while over the valley and the woods to the hills beyond. Not a trace of snow remained on Cheviot.
I continued west from the trig point and then descended into the valley on the well worn rocky track. I crossed the burn and made my way up through the woods toward the Black Walter forest road. There are secret mountain bike tracks through these woods, trails few other people even know exist. They are like wormholes through the dense homogeneous fabric of the forest and often come out at quite unexpected places. I entered one of the longest, just north of the final ninety degree corner on the long climb. The track wriggles and slithers through the dense conifers all the way back down to the valley, emerging behind the big Scots pine tree near the footbridge. I crossed the bridge and made the long climb back up through the woods and then on up to the huge Coe Crag cairn, where I sat for a while to catch my breath, say goodbye to Cheviot, and lie for a while in the old heather gazing at the sky’s blueness. I didn’t see a single deer during my walk. I hadn’t needed the garlic after all.
I drove south listening to Dearland again. I left the A1 at Blagdon. As I was driving up past the estate wall a Mephisto Travel minibus went past me going the other way. Ahead of me a deep red Honda Civic was turning on to the Cramlington Road. I turned left and found myself following it. It was Brenda’s new car. She was alone. I followed her as far as the Target roundabout, where she took the exit down towards the village while I went north towards Plessey Checks. She hadn’t noticed me behind her.
It could have just been a coincidence, of course. As Brenda says, such things do happen. But my guess was this was no coincidence. A pound to a penny says the driver of the minibus was Elvis Devlin.
When I got home Margaret was in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table doing a jigsaw while waiting for an onion tart to cook. I thought about mentioning my little chance encounter to her. But I didn’t, and I don’t think I will. It’s not really any of my business.
That night I read some of Michael Donaghy’s Collected Poems. He’s described in the slip jacket blurb as “a modern metaphysical”, and it isn’t difficult to see why, although it’s impossible to pretend he’s George Herbert, of course. Nevertheless he has an intellectual cleverness and poise which makes the description reasonable. If I’m honest I find his stuff often a bit austere and lacking in sensual richness, but many of his poems are witty, rewarding and thought-provoking. Here’s one I like. It’s called “Meridian”.
There are two kinds of people in the world. Roughly. First there are the kind who say ‘There are two kinds of people in the world.’ And then there’s those that don’t. Me, I live smack on the borderline, Where the road ends with towers and searchlights, And we’re kept awake all night by the creak of the barrier Rising and falling like Occam’s razor.
Donaghy was an American who moved to London in the nineteen eighties and wrote much of his work over here. He died in 2004, aged only fifty. There are many who lament his passing.
I finally had a stab a doing a painting of Newsham this week. I used another of my 16″ x 16″ Loxley canvasses. I did a view of The Newsham pub and the roundabout in front of it. I initially painted it monochromatically, in Prussian blue and white. I then added areas of raw sienna as a warm counterpoint. I broke with this rather subdued palette only for the shop front of Tanz-N-Here, where I used vermillion and chrome yellow. It seems to work. It reminds me of Lowry in its limited palette and its simplified urban landscape. It’s a bit more expressionistic than Lowry, however. I pondered a lot about whether to add any figures. I didn’t think I should. Their absence gives the place a more existential focus. It asks the question “what kind of people live here or used to live here?” It makes the trap of sentimentality easier to avoid. While I love the paintings of Norman Cornish, for instance, I wouldn’t want to replicate them or their feeling. I wouldn’t want to characterise people in the same way. Painting the remains of an old way of life, like history, is to present a view of the past from a place in the present. Although it’s very easy to do, it’s important not to lose your historical perspective. ‘Northernness’ as constructed and remembered in the paintings of Cornish and Tom McGuinness is now an anachronism. That world now comprises only vanishing remnants. To paint like Cornish nowadays is to do little more than to produce a nostalgic commodity, historical confectionary. A painter like Alexander Millar, for example, – the bloke who does the ‘gadgies’ – seems to me to do just that. He’s draws on Andy Capp as much as on artists like Cornish, of course. But his work offers only nostalgic stereotypes and peddles urban industrial northernness as a sentimental commodity. It says little about how we encounter these places now.
Anyhow, I decided on no figures. Those people are gone now. In many ways their lives were as complicated as ours and they weren’t all the same. They were exploited and oppressed, but they also had dignity. They were wage slaves but they knew freedom too. They lived in a tiny world. But like Al’s Video shop and Owen’s bag, this world was bigger than it seems. Sometimes some of them might even have heard the Nightingale’s song. And in any case, if I’m going to paint ghosts they will look like ghosts. But ghosts, of course, are invisible and perhaps I’ve painted them already.
.
the part of beauty that can’t be destroyed
As I was driving to work one day last week I was devising a questionnaire to help individuals to self-assess their attitude to the place where they want to be buried. I decided upon one graded and scaled multi-answer question: “Which of these options do you consider better than having no grave at all?”
- An unmarked grave
- A grave that has your epitaph but not your name
- A grave that gives only your initial and surname
- A grave that gives only your name and date of death
- A grave that gives your name and age at death
- A grave that gives your name, dates of birth and death, and the names of your parents
- A grave that gives your name, profession, date and place of birth and death
- A grave that gives your name, profession and cause of death
- A grave on which someone has planted a mighty oak tree
- A grave that no-one ever visits
- A grave that isn’t kept clean
- A grave that gives your full name and title, profession, dates and places of birth and death, cause of death, names of parents, children, spouses and old lovers, and an epitaph
- A grave marked by a marble statue of an forlorn wingèd angel
- A grave marked by a weather-beaten stone skull
- A grave on which someone has urinated and left an empty lager can
- A grave watched over by solar lights
- A grave that no-one can ever find
- A grave which has someone else’s gravestone on it
- A grave beneath a boulder near the foot of Great Gable
- A grave that has fallen into the sea
When I went into the team room Pippa was telling Angie and Sally that The Death Kitty had again been won by someone at her daughter’s workplace, but that yet again the winner hadn’t been her daughter. The winner on this occasion was Malcolm, a finance officer. He was fortunate enough to have selected Hank Locklin as one of his candidates. Locklin had been the oldest surviving member of the Grand Ole Opry. He died on 8th March at the age of 91. One of his best known songs was Send Me the Pillow that You Dream On, which in lyrical terms contains little more than the famous line “Send me the pillow that you dream on so darling I can dream on it too”.
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Angie said.
‘Me neither,’ Sally said. ‘Had no-one picked Wendy Richard?’
‘They mustn’t have, no,’ Pippa said. ‘I don’t even think anyone’s got Jade Goody.’
‘How do they find out who has died?’ Angie asked.
‘From the internet,’ Pippa said. ‘There are lots of sites out there, you know, such as whosedeadandwhosalive.com, celebritydeathbeeper.com and dead-celeb.com. You can subscribe to some of them and they’ll send you an email to let you know whenever a celebrity dies.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Sally said. ‘I think I’ll have a look.’
‘What’s your daughter’s name, again, Pippa?’ I asked.
‘Candy.’
‘Oh yes, of course, Candy. So is she okay?’
‘Yes, she’s fine,’ Pippa said. ‘She’s actually on holiday this week in the Lakes with her boyfriend.’
‘That’s where I’ve just been,’ I said. ‘Bowness.’
‘Candy’s in Cockermouth. But we love Bowness,’ Pippa replied. ‘We used to take the kids there all the time when they were little.’
‘Yes, I like it too,’ I said, ‘even though it’s a bit touristy for me.’
‘So where were you staying? In a hotel?’
‘No, I rented a house up on Longtail Hill.’
‘Oh, Longtail Hill! Do you know the story about the young lass who was flattened by a steam roller there?’
‘Yeah, I’d heard about that,’ I said. ‘A red-head, wasn’t she?’
‘When the kids were little we used to always get the ferry over to Hawkshead. A woman on the ferry told us the story one day. It seems that Sharon – the beautiful red-headed woman who was eventually squashed? – used to get take the ferry every Sunday morning and secretly meet up with a young man called Ned Perfect. Together they used to take long walks together, hand in hand through Claife Woods and around Far Sawrey. The trouble was that Ned was already engaged to be married to Florence Nelson, and Florence Nelson wasn’t a woman to be trifled with. When Florence heard about Ned’s secret trysts with Sharon she decided to eliminate her rival in a way that would obliterate every last trace of her beauty. She decided to flatten her with a steam roller.’
‘The tale I’d heard was that Florence was irrationally jealous and that Ned had in fact done no more than accept a piece of orange from Sharon. I also thought Sharon always went to church on Sunday mornings.’
‘That might be what she told people,’ Pippa said. ‘But that’s not what the woman on the ferry told us. No, it seems that every Sunday morning Sharon met Ned on the far side of Windermere and that this went on for a long time. Florence eventually found out, of course, and discovered that every Sunday at about noon Ned gave Sharon a goodbye kiss at Claife Station and that Sharon then caught the quarter past twelve ferry alone, back to Bowness, and walked back up Longtail Hill to go home for her dinner. That’s why Florence hatched her plan to ambush Sharon with a steam roller as she was walking up the bank.’
‘Yes, I know about that bit,’ I said.
‘And did you know that after the murder Ned Perfect would walk out on to Longtail Hill every morning and try to find a strand of Sharon’s red hair embedded in the tarmac, and that he’d prise the strand he found from the road and take it with him on the ferry over to Hawkshead. They say he put all the strands together in a silver box which is hidden among the roots of a tree near Claife Station. When the woman told us the story, she said Ned was still doing the crossing every single day. But that was a long time ago, of course. He’s probably dead now. And in any case we never saw him. The kids used to run around the woods shouting for him to come out, come out wherever he was. It was a little game we always played.’
‘For Ned Perfect, Sharon’s hair must have been the only part of her beauty that Florence could not destroy,’ I said. ‘The part she could never take away.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ Pippa said.
‘You haven’t forgotten about our meeting this morning, have you?’ Angie said.
‘Who’s it about again?’ I said.
‘Mrs McElhatton? Fern? The lady who thinks her daughter’s been replaced by an imposter?’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ I said. ‘Give me a bell when everyone arrives.’
So it seems likely that the old white haired man I walked back from Far Sawrey with, and who as it happens had left me at the foot of the little path up to Claife Station, the place where Ned always kissed Sharon goodbye, was none other than Ned Perfect himself. It’s amazing that love and loss can bend whole lives into such strange shapes. As I made my way upstairs to my office I also realised that Perfect though Ned might be, he is clearly a far from reliable narrator. There’s obviously a lot more to this tale, and I was wondering if perhaps I could find out more on the internet. Surely there must be something somewhere about it. Perhaps I’ll find something on famoussteamrollermurderers.com.
As I was leaving the office that night Jack Verdi was pulling into the car park on his motorbike. It was as Owen described it, big, shiny and black. Jack was in black leathers and wore a black high-gloss helmet with a dark mirrored visor. The word Spider was written across the side of his helmet in blood red lettering.
‘Hi, Jack,’ I said. ‘What’s your fettle?’
‘Good, man. Yeah, cool.’ He was trying to get the bike on to its stand. It was like watching a man made of pipe cleaners trying to bring a buffalo to heel. I couldn’t help but wonder if he wouldn’t have found a Vespa scooter more manageable. He took off his helmet and put it on the tank and began to undo the Velcro on his black gauntlets, each of which seemed to be about as big as a vulture’s wing.
‘Nice machine,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’d heard you’d got rid of the Skoda.’
‘You bet I did, man. That was an old man’s chariot. I might as well have been travelling in a hearse. This baby is more up my street, dude, if you know what I mean.’
‘Owen told me it was a Kawasaki.’
‘Nah, this is a Ducati, man. Classic Italian race machine. Owen wouldn’t know a real bike if it jumped up and bit him. Guess what I call this beauty?’ he said, stepping over it and pointing to some white lettering on tank.
‘Hilda?’ I said.
‘Hilda?’ Jack said, frowning. ‘Hilda? Why Hilda, dude?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was just a guess.’
‘Cruella, dude. I call this baby, Cruella.’ He chuckled and brushed his hand across the name to remove a slight smudge from the gleaming black tank. ‘I named her after our mutual friend.’ He laughed again.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And this Spider thing – the thing on your hat?’
‘The name on my helmet? Spider? That’s the name they used to sometimes call me in the band, man. That’s the name I answer to now. That’s my real name, man.’
I nodded. ‘So what are you here for, Jack?’ I asked. ‘A meeting?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got a four thirty with Michelle about the Cassidy girls. We might have found a long term placement for them up over the Carter Bar near Hawick. Nice couple, run a little craft shop. He’s a woodturner, she’s a craft knitter, does handbags and scarves and mittens and stuff. If she likes the look of them I want to arrange to take Michelle up to meet them next week.’
‘Not on Cruella’s pillion, I hope,’ I said.
‘I will if she’s up for it,’ Jack joked.
‘She won’t be,’ I said. ‘You’ll be crossing the border in the Yaris.’
I made my way down towards the car park at the bottom of the street. I listened to Bonnie Prince Billy’s latest album as I drove home. It’s certainly a bit more upbeat and musically animated than some of his previous work, but not as much as the reviews I’d read had led me to expect. The faltering, slightly washed-out and vague quality of his voice doesn’t readily lend itself to joy. The Jayhawks, for example, have a kind of emotional buoyancy and confident musical momentum which its hard to imagine Mr Oldham ever achieving – which isn’t to say that what he does isn’t in it’s own way just as good and valuable as the Jayhawk’s stuff, of course.
I drove down the Laverock towards Newsham and noticed that leaves are beginning to appear on the some of the hawthorn hedges. It’s suddenly possibly to believe it’s spring. When I arrived home Margaret was at the gate talking to Geraldine. A couple of months or so ago, Griff decided to add an extension to Citadel, another mere twenty feet of shadow for those of who live beneath it. It was almost as if they wanted the world to see it as barely more than a whim, a casual afterthought, nothing worth getting in a lather about. The Citizens were understandably shocked. They consulted leading members of the ruling political group, who were absolutely clear that they had been against this project from the start. They recommended that the Citizens appear at the planning hearing and seek a deferment, which they duly did. They asked the committee to visit residents’ homes to see just what the real impact was upon their lives.
The Committee made their site visit. The Widow Middlemiss had prepared herself for their visit. The Committee visited the building site, walked among the machines – the cranes, the dumpers, the diggers, the piles of breeze blocks and tiers of scaffolding – and beneath the naked girders and half built walls, and the builders went about their work all around and above them. The council official then announced the Committee could not visit any resident’s house, not even the Widow’s. On health and safety grounds. The official didn’t elaborate on exactly what the risks might be, of course, but Geraldine was pretty sure she’d worked it out.
‘They were frightened that Ethel’s teapot might fall on them,’ she said.
The planning committee duly returned to Morpeth and have now made their decision. It was absolutely predictable that they would grant consent for the extension and they did so. A committee member commented that the extension would not make a significant additional impact on the appearance of the building or upon residents. This of course is in a sense true. But it’s like saying that if you’ve stolen from someone more or less everything they’ve got taking the remainder of their loose change isn’t really such a big crime.
‘Democracy is a farce,’ Geraldine said. ‘They just do what they want. The whole thing’s been a charade.’
‘You’re right,’ Margaret said. ‘We may as well not exist.’
Margaret agreed. I stood and listened and nodded my agreement. I was thinking that the trouble with the councillors is that they’re probably just as powerless as we are, but that that none of them has the courage to admit it. I gazed idly over into Hugo’s front garden, where I noticed an old silver oven and hob unit had arrived in recent days along with a few sheets of plasterboard wrapped in polythene. I also noticed that The Alligator had acquired a new black boot and a towbar. It was obviously roadworthy again. I tried to recall when the beating had ended. Had I heard it this year? I wasn’t sure.
I went into the house and left Margaret and Geraldine plotting the revolution. I scooped up De Kooning and took him through to the kitchen. There was a pile of onions and carrots on the bench. I made myself a cappuccino and we went through to the conservatory. I stood with De Kooning in my arms and looked out at the giant walls which now constitute the whole of our horizon.
‘That’s it, then,’ I said. ‘The battle’s finally over. There’s no way out of here now. We’re entombed.’
De Kooning rubbed his head against my face and began to purr.
‘Hey, you don’t know any Hank Locklin songs, do you?’ I said to him. ‘Send Me the Pillow that You Dream On? Happy Journey? Geisha Girl?’
It was only half past five, but the sun had already disappeared behind The Wall. As I contemplated the implacable panorama that incarcerated us I began to wonder if Bonnie Prince Billy had ever sung Hank Locklin songs. I wondered how that would sound like. De Kooning was watching the blackbirds chasing each other around the garden. I began to wonder if there was anywhere in Northumberland where I could still buy myself a steam roller.
.
the skies in nature aren’t made out of paint
At teatime last Friday I noticed a pair of glass earrings and a big green bottle of Becherovka on the table in the conservatory.
‘Have you seen Brenda?’ I asked Margaret, who was in the kitchen topping and tailing parsnips.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She brought me those crystal earrings back from Prague. Aren’t they lovely?’
‘Some of the old Czech herbal paint stripper too, I see. So how are things with her and Tristran?’
‘Oh they’re fine,’ Margaret replied, in an I don’t know what all the fuss was about sort of way. ‘They’re all loved up and happy again. They had an absolutely wonderful time. They bought each other amber amulets and they’ve both vowed to wear them forevermore. Brenda bought some really beautiful lace for herself too and a wooden marionette for her consulting room.’
I nodded. ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Tristan’s okay.’
I sat down to drink my cappuccino. De Kooning came in and jumped up beside me. I’m reading a book of poetry called ‘Beasts for the Chase’ by an American poet called Monica Ferrell. A friend in New Jersey sent me the book. Ferrell wasn’t a poet I’d heard of till then. She turns out to be a bit old-fashioned and prophetic in her tone at times, quite earnest, although quite good at her craft. She strikes me as one of those poets who imagine a poet is a seer, someone with special access to a world behind and beyond this one. Such a vision (!) always entails a belief in the supernatural, often under the guise of the primal. Such poets often invoke animals as their metaphorical selves or equivalents, their spiritual alter egos and agents in the other world. Such poetry always pretends to show us what we really are, what our essence is, and to show us the eternal world our souls inhabit, the world behind the veil of perception. It’s all seductive nonsense, of course. Poetry certainly somehow plugs fairly directly into the way we make the world and the ways in which we make it make sense. But it’s an exercise done with words, just as music is an exercise done with sound and painting an exercise done with pigment, canvas and brushes. I like Tam Lin as much as the next person, but anyone who thinks that at Halloween he was turned into an adder and a bear and a burning gleed really is away with the faeries. That sort of stuff doesn’t even happen in Glasgow. Poetry and truth have a much more oblique and complex relationship than some poets imagine. We need a poetics that is rigorously non-dualist. I’m sure there must be critics out there who’ve tried to formulate something to rescue us from the mire of misty-brained mythologies. I must go on to Amazon some time and see what I can find.
‘So, De Kooning’ I said. ‘What do we make of this stuff?’
He put his front paws on to my leg and looked up at me. His right ear flicked a couple of times.
‘Yes, you’re right, we prefer Ted Hughes, don’t we?’ I said. ‘We Brits like mumbo jumbo with a bit more muscle.’
It’s been much warmer for the past few days. On Sunday it was dry and almost spring-like. I went out for a bike ride to make the most of it. I rode across to Bebside and up the Heathery Lonnen to the Three Horse Shoes. I freewheeled down the hill from High Horton Farm and over the Horton Bridge and then went up through the new housing estates towards the Nelson Industrial Estate. There was a noticeable north westerly breeze. I took the road past the Snowy Owl towards Blagdon. I glanced over at the new opencast site. It’s on the estate of those famous stewards of the landscape, the illustrious Ridleys. Matthew Ridley was a prominent figure in the development of Northern Rock and not a man to let concern or consideration for the needs or feelings of other human beings get in the way of personal profit. In fact Matt can’t get his head around the idea that anyone can actually do such a thing, because surely it’s not human nature to think of anyone but yourself. The planning application was rejected by the County Council but overturned by the government on appeal. It’s another shameful mess. I turned left at Blagdon went south past the Holiday Inn to the Seaton Burn Roundabout. The wind was finally behind me. It’s about ten miles home from there. I went via Arcot Lane, High Pit and Shankhouse.
When I got home I did a bit of gardening. I took the secateurs to last year’s withered stragglers from the catmint, lopped some branches of some of the shrubs and cut back the fuschia almost to the ground. New growth is already beginning to appear from the earth and the snowdrops are already flowering. Winter’s on its way out.
I’d finished the painting I was doing of Seaton Sluice. During the week a pack of five Loxley 16″x16″ canvases had been delivered. I decided I’d do another painting of Seaton Sluice on one of those, using the first one as my source. I underpainted the canvas in cadmium yellow and read The Observer while that dried. Then with a big flat brush I scribbled, scrawled and slapped on a sky in titanium white, burnt sienna and burnt umber. It was dramatic and swirly and turbulent and as I let myself get into it I was aware that it was very Turneresque and that it was Turner I was stealing this sky from. It was probably the influence of the burnt sienna, a colour I have only recently added to my palette, used with white on a yellow ground. I think I was somehow remembering The Fighting Temeraire – there was a print of this painting on the wall at my old school, I now recall – and The Slave Ship, I think. Turner is hard to emulate in acrylic paint though because the paint dries too quickly and doesn’t allow you to use glazes very well or to achieve those beautiful subtle gradations and colour shifts. When I’m a better painter I’m sure I’ll want to use oils a lot more. The sky I produced was of course nothing like a sky you’ll ever see in nature. I don’t think that ever bothered Turner much, and it certainly doesn’t much bother me either. After all, the skies in nature aren’t made out of paint.
On Tuesday morning I had a meeting at the Blyth office. It was another nice morning and after the meeting I decided to have a walk over to the quayside to look at the river for a few minutes before I went back to Ashington. I spotted Tristan’s white PermaPlumba van parked on the quayside close to Eddie Ferguson House. Tristan was sitting alone on one of the benches at the other side of the fence.
‘Hi, Tristan,’ I said. ‘What brings you to these parts?’
‘Just killing time, mate,’ he said. ‘Nothing better to do, I guess.’
‘Still no work, eh?’
‘Dead as a door nail, my fweind. Dead as a door nail. I’m telling you, this wecession will close Bwitain down if Bwown doesn’t sort it out soon.’
‘Do you think he can do that?’
‘No, I know he bloody well can’t. But let’s not pwetend he had nothing to do with getting us into this mess. He should pay the pwice.’
‘So how was Prague?’ I said. ‘Margaret tells me it was the business.’
‘Did she?’ Tristan said, and turned to look me in the eye, as if to see if I was joking. ‘Well, Pwague’s a fine city, sure enough, a place worth seeing.’
‘But you wouldn’t go back?’
He shrugged and gazed out over the river towards the bauxite silos on the far bank. A couple of kids were fishing on the jetty just downstream from there. The first wind turbine loomed above them. ‘Can I ask you something off the wecord?’ he said. ‘Just between me and you?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anything you like.’
‘Have you heard of a bloke called Elvis Devlin? Wuns a bus company called Mephisto Twavel?’
‘Listen, I know about it, Tristan,’ I said. ‘Margaret told me.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I thought you might know.’
‘It’s no big thing,’ I said. ‘It’ll go no further than me.’
‘Oh no, no,’ he said. ‘That’s fine. That’s fine.’
‘I thought you and Brenda had sorted that out. I thought things were cool between you again.’
‘Bwenda’s vewy needy, you know. She’s vewy insecure. She’s got twust issues, weally big twust issues.’
‘But this isn’t about anything you’ve done, is it?’
‘The thing about Bwenda is you’ve always got to do something to pwove you love her. That’s what the Pwague twip was about. All the fuss she made about her Chwistmas pwesents. Bwenda doesn’t know what the weal thing is. If I was the wichest man in the world and gave her evewything money could buy, it wouldn’t be enough. Tomowwow she’d want something else. Bwenda thinks that if you don’t give her pwesents you don’t love her. The thing is, she’s almost got me bwoke – but I daren’t tell her. I’m wunning our welationship on my cwedit card now. The cwunch is bound to come!’ He laughed a little.
‘Now you know how Gordon feels,’ I said, laughing too, trying to keep the thing in the air. ‘So what you’re saying is that the only way to make sure Brenda doesn’t believe you’re not about to go off with some other woman is to keep on giving her things, and that if you don’t she won’t trust you anymore?’
‘Yes, exactly. You know how matewialistic she is. But it’s weally about twust, not gweed.’
‘But surely there’s no way you can give her things indefinitely? You’re not Richard Branson!’
‘No, you’re damn wight, I’m not Wichard Bwanson. I’ve told her that. I said “Bwenda this is about twust. For you pwesents are pwoof that someone loves you.” That’s why she’s attwacted to wich men, like this Elvis bloke. It’s because they can give her an endless supply of expensive pwesents. You know, that’s why I think she pwobably went for me now. Because when we met I was doing well. I was wolling in it. She’s so insecure she needs you to give, give, give. I asked her: “Bwenda,” I said, “Would you still think I loved you if I couldn’t buy you things?” “Of course I would,” she said. “What on earth do you take me for?!” But she wouldn’t, I know for sure she wouldn’t.”
‘So what’s the answer?’ I said. ‘Maybe she needs to life coach herself a bit.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve pointed out the iwonies of this situation, believe you me I have. Maybe there is no answer. But the cwunch is going to come before long, that’s for sure. I’m spent up and there’s no work coming in. You can’t wun a welationship on cwedit. Pretty soon I’ll be bankwupt.’
‘Maybe things’ll take a turn for the better soon,’ I said. ‘Gordon’s green shoots might be springing up all around us any day now.’
‘Fat chance of that!’ Tristan said. ‘And besides that would only pwolong the agony. It wouldn’t solve the pwoblem. Bwenda needs to learn to twust. The thing is of course that it isn’t weally men she doesn’t twust – it’s herself she doesn’t twust. And evewy time she cwaves for another pwesent she knows she can’t be twusted. People who can’t be twusted don’t twust others, isn’t that twue? Because they think evewybody’s just like them. Bwenda can’t see that anyone could ever love her for what she is. It’s a self-worth thing with her. It’s as if she thinks only expensive things will ever make her good enough. But of course they never will.’
We sat quietly for a minute or two watching the river. A seal popped up and I pointed it out to Tristan. He said it had been there all morning.
‘He’s cute, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ Tristan said. ‘He’s really beautiful.’
‘Anyhow,’ I said, ‘I need to be making my way back to work. I hope things work out okay for you and Brenda.’
‘Thanks, mate. Me too. Oh, and by the way, do me a favour, don’t tell Margawet you’ve seen me. I don’t want it getting back to Bwenda where I spend my days.’
‘Brenda thinks you’re working?’
Tristan nodded. ‘Yeah, and I need to keep it that way. God knows what she’d do if she knew I wasn’t’
‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ I said.
I drove past Ridley Park and along Wensleydale Terrace, past the site of the demolished Wellesley School which now stands deserted waiting for the economy to turn to make it worth building houses there. I reached the South Shore estate and glanced over at the sea. At the roundabout I went up South Newsham Road. It struck me that Blyth no longer has outskirts. It has a settlement boundary which marks the point where fields will turn into housing estates. The transition is sudden, in no way gradual. You can’t really say you’re coming into Blyth these days. You’re either in or you’re out. You’ve arrived or you haven’t. I turned on the CD player and listened to The Killers’ Sam’s Town album. I played it loudly. I crossed the railway at South Newsham and cruised up the Laverock and on to the Spine Road.
I parked in the public car park at the bottom of the street. As I was walking up to the office I met Owen Vardy coming down the hill. He was wearing a loose wrinkly oatmeal-coloured linen jacket – it was at least a size too big for him – and pale baggy Chinos. He had a stripey brown and pink scarf wrapped around his neck, Dr Who style. He was leaning into every step, each of which appeared cautious and measured. Owen walks like a man on a treadmill, a treadmill he thinks might at any moment either stop completely or speed up dramatically. He was carrying an Asda ‘Bag for Life’.
‘Hi, Owen,’ I said. ‘Have you been shopping?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, not really. I’ve been to a meeting about the Collingwood children. I carry my files in this bag. It’s the perfect size, you see. Actually, between you and I, I did take a quick toddle over to the high street to pick up a few vitamins.’
‘Oh, so what vitamins do you take?’
‘Oh, you know – zinc, vitamin C, B complex, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, selenium, folic acid, echinacea, evening primrose oil, flax oil, omega-3 and omega-6, saw palmetto, feverfew, calcium, magnesium, potassium, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, garlic, CoQ10 . . . you know, just the usual stuff.’
What, no Becherovka? I thought to myself.
‘So are you ever ill, Owen?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, of course. I’m just the same as everyone else, you know, I catch colds and what have you. But there’s no point in taking unnecessary chances, is there? Oh, by the way, did you hear the latest about Jack?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. Don’t tell me he’s been dressing up again?’
‘No, no. He’s got rid of his Skoda and bought a motorbike. A big shiny black one. I think it might be a Kawasaki. It’s a very dangerous machine, a very dangerous machine. I think he’s being very foolish, actually.’
‘It’s his life, Owen,’ I said. ‘Or death, as the case might be.’
‘Exactly. Do you know he’s the same age as me? In fact we were born on exactly the same day. You’d never catch me on a motor bike.’
‘I don’t think I’d bother trying,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t stand a chance.’
For a moment Owen missed the joke. He looked at me quizzically, his head slightly to one side, a half smile frozen on his face. What was he listening for, I wondered. Then he got it.
‘Ho ho,’ he laughed. ‘Very good. Yes, very good.’ And then he slid straight back into parson-like caution and prudence. He put his fingertips on my sleeve. He leaned in close to me.
‘And you’ll not have heard what he said to Tallulah either, have you?’ he said. ‘He offered to buy her a full set of leathers – a red leather bodysuit. He offered to take her out on his pillion.’
I laughed. ‘Oh my God, he’s shameless, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Owen said. ‘He is shameless, and lacking in any sort of dignity too, I think.’ Just for a moment I fancied I caught the elusive vinegary whiff of piety and prurience.
‘Any how,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘I really must be getting along now or I’ll miss my bus.’
Owen always travels by bus, for road safety and environmental reasons, he says, although given how much he must spend on vitamins I wonder if he could afford a car in any case. As we parted I was thinking I must read George Herbert again.
When I went into the office Mandy Potts was in reception with Apple and Sparky. She looked like she’d been crying.
‘Hi, Mandy,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’
She shook her head slowly. She wasn’t. When I went through to the team room I asked Angie what Mandy wanted.
‘She wants to go to a refuge.’
‘Again?’ I said. ‘Why? Surely Mr Zee hasn’t turned nasty?’
‘No,’ Angie said. ‘Anything but. No, it’s not that. Elephant Carmichael called to see her last night. He gave her a message. He told the Arab said not to forget that what’s his is his forever. He told her the Arab said to say hello. When they got up this morning there were four piles of sand on the step. She said they looked like four little graves. ‘
.
while searching for the nightingale’s grave
It snowed on Thursday night. It was unexpected. For the most part the Northumberland coast had missed the snow that for the last week or so had hit the rest of the country and eclipsed the recession, British jobs for British workers and the relentless destruction of Gaza in the six o’clock headlines. But on Thursday night at about midnight it snowed for about half an hour and turned the landscape white. I joined De Kooning behind the curtain to watch the torrent of snowflakes ticker-taping through the blurred chambers of orange streetlight.
It took me about three times as long as usual to get to work on Friday morning. I crawled with a slow caravan of hatchbacks, 4×4’s and white vans up the temperamental incline to the Laverock Hall roundabout. Going north up the Spine Road to North Seaton I joined another cautious procession and after that a few more jittery queues down the hill into Ashington.
By lunchtime it was sunny and the main roads had cleared. I’d spent all morning authorising stuff on the computer and answering emails and I needed to get out of the office for a break. I put my Canon compact in my coat pocket and decided to drive over to Horton churchyard to find Tom Clough’s grave – The Prince of Pipers, as he’s known among the Northumbrian piping fraternity, to me The Newsham Nightingale.
After crossing the River Blyth at Attlee Park and climbing out of the misfit valley, the old Horton road snakes south along thebroad ridge between – to the west – the valley of the river or its tributary the Horton Burn and – to the east – the long slope down to Cowpen and Newsham and the North Sea. Horton Church sits on the high point of the road just before it drops a little to the Three Horse Shoes pub and High Horton farm. The pub sits opposite the farm close to the crossroads of the ridge road on its way to Seaton Delaval and the Heathery Lonnen as it becomes the road down over Horton Bridge to Bog Houses. The crossroads is close to the line of the old Plessey wagonway which leads over the fields and straight down to the river at Blyth. The eastern end of the wagonway’s route is now Plessey Road.
Bog Houses sits at the point where the up until then relatively steep sided valley of Horton Dean opens out into what was a large flat area of marshland, now for the most part drained and built upon. The slightly shabby little row of pebble-dashed terraced houses stands near the southernmost practical crossing point that the wagonway could follow. The remains of the old raised causeway across the burn are still visible in the field near Horton Bridge, between the old road and the new dual carriageway. Nowadays, we are most of the time disconnected from topography and the way it shaped the lives of people and communities in the days before motorised travel. Walking is a good way to discover why old routes went the way they did. It reconnects us with the shape of the land, the form of the earth beneath our feet. It shows us why places are where they are.
My guess is that both the Horton ridge road and the Plessey wagonway follow the lines of quite ancient routes and that the Shoes sits at what was probably a reasonably busy and significant crossroads at one time.
North of the river the Horton road becomes Bedlington Front Street and goes up to the next hilltop crossroads at the Red Lion pub in Bedlington. The road heads off west along North Ridge and eventually leads to Stannington and Morpeth. Perhaps it was a salters route joining up eventually with Salters Road itself to make its way across Northumberland to Rothbury and Alnham and on into the Cheviots to join with Clennell Street before crossing the border at Hexpathgate, just north east of Windy Gyle.
The road north from the Red Lion crossroads leads to Guide Post, Choppington and Scotland Gate. Perhaps this was a drove route followed by drovers who brought cattle and sheep down from the borders and beyond to take to market at Tyneside. Perhaps they were heading south towards common land at Shiremoor to rest and fatten up their stock after their long journey. Perhaps on their way south the herds or flocks stood a night or so earlier on Longhorsley Common, the night before that perhaps somewhere on the moors up around where Thrunton Woods are now. Maybe the area just north of the river at Bedlington was a stance for cattle too. It’s interesting that there are two old pubs at the south end of Bedlington Front Street: the Dun Cow and the Black Bull. I read somewhere that pubs called The Black Bull often occur on old drove routes.
When the Plessey wagonway was constructed a tavern at the crossroads above the Bog Houses causeway might have picked up custom from the men leading the coal wagons up and down from the river. It’s easy to imagine an old public drinking house here as it filled up at midday with drovers and miners and wagon men, farmers and agricultural workers and assorted itinerant travellers. Perhaps clerks and priests stopped in as they made their way between the church lands of Bedlingtonshire and Tynemouth. This may indeed have been the main purpose of this route, which after going through Seaton Delaval makes its way to Tynemouth through Holywell, Monkseaton and Preston Village, all place names with something to do with religion. So maybe the old inn got more than its fair share of ecclesiastical custom. Perhaps even the gravedigger from Horton churchyard too took a break from his labour and strolled down for a pint of strong ale.
This invisible history would help explain the siting of Horton church itself, which nowadays seems almost stuck out in the middle of nowhere. It sits in a elevated and very visible place, a place which might even have been a significant prehistoric site, perhaps for a stone circle or a burial cairn. There’s no evidence for that, so far as I know, of course, but it’s unlikely that on a site on arable land so close to a highly populated urban area much evidence would survive in any case. And yet this place was once wild. That too hard to see now. So who knows? We do know, however, that Christian churches were often built on the sites of important ancient pagan or pre-Christian monuments and constructions, as a sort of colonisation.
The standard references say the place name of Horton is first recorded more than 750 years ago and that the spelling has remained unchanged since that time. They state that its origin is from the Old English horh-tun, which means a settlement on muddy land. This suggests that the marshland in the valley of the Horton Burn gave its name to the settlement, the marshland the line of the road steadfastly avoids. I had wondered if the origin wasn’t hoh-tun, which would have made it the settlement on the spur of a hill and perhaps fit better with the location of the church. The historical evidence seems to suggest otherwise, however. It seems clear the original settlement was around High Horton farm and it was probably a crossroads town. But either way, high on the hill or down beside the marsh, perhaps hundreds of years ago another piper sat at the back door of his cottage playing old reels and airs in the evening sun in the summertime.
But I’m rambling. Let’s leave this imagined place for a while and get back to my search in the snow for the Nightingale’s grave.
There aren’t any parking spaces on the road at Horton church. But there is a narrow footpath at the side of the road. I squeezed my car up on to it and against the wall far enough down the road to be visible to cars coming both ways.
When you go through the graveyard gate you see a jumble of old graves ahead of you. Battered and weatherworn stones. They don’t stand straight anymore. Many lean, some have fallen. The ground has settled and sunk and shifted over the long years since these first graves were dug. I was reminded of Hugo’s front garden. You could imagine that passers-by might have simply dumped these graves here at random over the decades and centuries. Here was mortality’s junkyard.
Of course the place has a structure, a superficial order – paths laid out around the graveyard, even though these are for the most part overgrown with grass and difficult to discern, especially in the snow. This is not a particularly well tended or much visited graveyard, it seems. Perhaps most of those that lie here are now more or less forgotten. And as it turns out this attempt at order is no more than a quixotic gesture against the wilful randomness of the universe.
I tottered in my smooth-soled work shoes through the crispy thin snow on the concrete path next to the church building, before heading off through the more sparsely scattered graves to the north and north east. These all seemed like old stones. In many cases wear and moss had left them almost unreadable. The Newsham Nightingale died in 1964, as I recalled. It didn’t look like his grave could be in this part of the cemetery. I wove my way over and between the graves over the snowy slope back up to the church. Have you ever noticed that when you walk across a grave you try to walk on tiptoes, as if to avoid disturbing the occupant, or perhaps because you fear you might sink in, as if a grave is filled with a sort of dreadful quicksand?
I crossed under the line of rugged bare trees into the southern part of the graveyard, where it seemed space was being used somewhat differently: it seemed more crowded. There also seemed to be some graves that had flowers on them and were still got visitors. At the edge of the area of graves, just before the area of still undug earth, I found the most recent group. I went methodically along the tightly crammed rows. In places this group of graves appeared to some extent (although not entirely or very exactly) to follow chronologically, according to year of death. I found the graves of fathers and mothers, grandparents, sisters and brothers. There were children’s graves. Some were infants who had died very young. One was decorated with toys and storybook grave guardians – Winnie the Pooh, a grey resin Peter Rabbit and a black and yellow bumble bee on a spindly wire wand. I felt sure that Tom Clough’s grave would be somewhere among this group, but it wasn’t. There had to be another set of relatively new graves in another area of the graveyard.
I went around the church again and back to the far north eastern corner, where I could now spot the flowers and ribbons of a still visited grave. But this wasn’t the Nightingale’s grave either. Close by there was a grave on which someone had planted a tree. It had grown and its thick, sinuous, muscular roots now curled like the arms of a great octopus and seemed to be delving deep into the owner’s grave. Somewhere six foot under these roots were wrapped around the occupant’s skeleton as if in a gesture of desperate love or overwhelming grief, as if they could not let the buried body go.
I was beginning to notice things about graveyards. First, that there is no strict order in force about who is buried where. A graveyard isn’t like a library – there is no index and the bodies do not lie in a particular order; there’s no sort of Dewey Decimal system for the deceased. You’d think it would be possible to lay them down in strict chronological order. But as we all know death comes unpredictably. The reaper can call at the oddest hours. There’s not one of us who couldn’t turn the Tallulah tomorrow. And a chronological system – although it would help the visitor to find the dead person he or she wanted with relative ease – would potentially not let the dead from a family lie together. A wife who outlived her husband by thirty years might find herself lying fifty yards away from him with a motley crew of strange bedfellows between herself and her dearly departed. Loving couples would have to conspire to pass way together if they wanted to avoid eternal separation in the burial ground. That would never do, obviously. And of course there’s also only so much space can be kept for one family, so eventually some grandson or niece is bound to wind up exiled to yonder end of the yard on their own.
I had wondered if the alphabetical graveyard wasn’t a good idea. There’d be distinct areas set aside for families whose surname began in a particular letter, so the Forsyths would lie down with the Fergusons, the Turners with the Thirlwells, and so on. Again this plan is likely to be disrupted by the Reaper’s arbitrary and sometimes quite profligate ways. It would just take a couple of Smith families with fifteen kids between them to be struck down by some previously unknown strain of a strange new plague to throw this plan into disarray. What would you do then – allow the S‘s to lie down among the R’s and T‘s? Or designate a new area for the S‘s on the undug land at the top of the cemetery? But that would defeat the object of the plan.
I wondered if another plan might be to order them according to age at death, setting aside the most space for the ages at which most deaths occur and proportionately less for the others, in strict accordance with probability as determined by actuarial tables. But this plan too would be easily defeated by the Reaper who one morning could decide to take a busload of fifteen year olds on a school trip and have them all drowned by launching their bus off the Kitty Brewster bridge and plunging them into the muddy river. These things happen, and they must be a nightmare for graveyard managers.
So at the end of the day the graveyard turned out to be a bit of a jumble, an appropriately complex mixture of order and chaos. They aren’t very user friendly for the stranger searching for a strange grave, but their disorder tells us something and reassuringly tells us that, while death will come to us all, some of us might be around a lot longer than any human filing system can readily anticipate.
A last thought on this – and something about which in this day and age perhaps something can be done – is around the permanence of gravestones. Old stones all suffer to a greater or lesser degree from the erosion and eventual erasure of the name by wind and weather. Trying to read these stones and discern who lies beneath them – although it might entail a pleasant and meaningful philosophical or poetic contemplation – is time consuming and frustrating for the time-poor twenty-first century grave finder. Surely there are modern composite materials which resemble granite or marble or another stone and which have a guaranteed erosion free life of at least 500 years. If there isn’t there should be, because I’m not only sure that the prospect of their name vanishing from their memorial stone appals and scares many people, I am also, by the same token, sure there would be a good market for such a material. If the market economy does the job the way they say it does, any day now these new long-life – yes, I know, I know, but what else would we call them, “eternity-proof”? – materials should now be becoming available to the bereaved and to those who like to plan their own funeral arrangements in advance. An epitaph should be forever, not just for as long as it takes an engraving in sandstone to lose it legibility.
I turned from contemplating the octopus rooted grave tree and saw just a little way up the slope a dark simple cross, probably made of metal but very much resembling a wooden cross. This might be the Nightingale’s grave, I thought. It would befit a man who has taken pleasure in the simple joy of music to have such a simple marker, and a one with arms upon which small birds might perch too. As I got closer I could see that this wasn’t Tom Clough’s gravestone. But it did seem to be Tom someone, and to my delight as I got closer it seemed to me that this was cross marked the burial place of one Tom Tremble.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said to myself. ‘This is Tom Tremble’s grave.’
Not that I knew who Tom Tremble was, of course: what I liked was the fairy tale sound and connotations of this name. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed. The name was difficult to discern easily from a distance because of the glare of the sun on the snow around it. When I got up close I found that this was in fact the grave of someone called “O.M. Tremble”. I was struck by the formality and terseness of that marking, of a gravestone that doesn’t tell us the first names of the buried person. When was this person born, when did they die? Were they not the beloved offspring or spouse or parent of anyone? Clearly this person or those who buried him or her (initials don’t disclose gender) favoured a sort of formal if inevitably ambiguous minimalism. This grave gives us only a name and nothing else, not even an epitaph. This tombstone decision throws an interesting light on that of Keats. In this case we see that a name on its own is intriguing but unhelpful and ultimately anonymous. O. M. Tremble is now nothing but a name, as they say. A name on its own might as well be writ in water as in stone. What a name needs is a story. What a name needs is a life.
O. M. Tremble’s modest cross contrasts well with the Leviathan stones some of the long dead have in this graveyard, and it’s true that the size of the stone doesn’t necessarily tell is anything about the worth of the life the dead person lived or their value to society, even though we tend to think it does. O. M. Tremble begins to look like an embarrassed, disgraced or self-effacing nobody, a clerk or a storekeeper perhaps, a criminal even, lain in a field of lawyers, captains of industry and lords of the manor. A grave is like a house and land: we think it tells us something about the importance of whoever it is dwells there.
I made my way back up to the church and looked again back down over the slope. I noticed that all the graves appear to face east. I seemed to recall then that this is a Christian thing, symbolic of the dead awakening into the dawn of a new life, a new day in heaven, or something like that. It isn’t a bad view for them either, out over the fields and the Spine Road to the town and the mouth of river – the pale grey wind turbines on Cambois pier, the Indian red Alcan bauxite silos, the gaudy yellow gantries at Battleship Wharf – and to the deep blue North Sea beyond. They must indeed see some grand sunrises here. The town has the same sort of junkyard look as the graveyard itself does at first glace, and in some way echoes that same ramshackle development – a mixture of opportunity, accident and design – that same mixture of chaos and order. It has the sort of look people like to call organic, by which they often mean unplanned and accidental but somehow also functional and good.
I left Horton graveyard without ever finding the Nightingale’s grave. I drove back down between High Horton Farm and the Three Horse Shoes, where despite the snow there were still a fair number of cars of people who were there for lunch. I knew the Horton gravedigger wouldn’t be one of them, of course.
I turned on the Radio 4 one o’clock news as I accelerated down the slip road on to the Spine Road. It was clear now. I drove back to the office quickly. I was thinking about Tom Tremble. How did he live? Who did he know? What things mattered to him? I was wondering about the story of Tom Tremble’s secret life. I was wondering what he looked like. I was wondering how Tom Tremble died.
.
yammering 