The girl down the corridor

I have never told you
have I
about the girl
whose name I never knew
with angular features
a long sharp nose
and shaped eyebrows
skilfully shadowed eyes
with hair
cut short
and gelled up
into a fine comb

who had a room
down the corridor
from you in halls

I never told you
did I
how she and I
caught each other's eye
from time to time
how she would smile at me
even while you held my hand
and how
while we were studying in your room
you and I
I would listen for footsteps in the corridor
Fancy a coffee?
I would say
and you always would
and I would dutifully trip along
to the kitchen
in the hope that she might be there too

and sometimes she would be
and while the kettle boiled
we would courteously
dance
a light flirtatious gavotte
between sink and cupboard
kettle and coffee jar

and I would fail to say
all the things to her
that I had planned to
because of you

and she would ask about you
because that was a respectful
and a safe
thing to do

Night visitor

Those are not
the sheets you feel
slip sliding over
your sleeping skin,
but these, my hands,
come wandering
across a thousand seas

my silken palms
have sailed the wind

seeking a golden smoothness
on your thigh
sweeping the sweet bowl
of your belly flesh
the subtlest softest

pillow of your breast
and now 

with phantom fingertips
I trace your velvet nipples
trace your lips
I taste your tongue
I kiss your neck

your back

your hips

I rove among the stars
and find you
shed bone and blood and skin
to race the sky
and find you

I become the breeze
and wind these spirit arms
around you
in an astral cloud's embrace
I bind you

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga creeps
on chicken legs
down the dark night street
claws patches
of rain black clouds
from the sky
and pastes them to the attic window

I know it's her
I can hear her fingernails
trapping on the glass

She croaks my name
with her frog voice

if she wanted
she could slide in
through the window crack
and snack on my heart
while I sleep

I wouldn't mind
I would feel her breath on my skin

that would be enough

maps

will we be skin to skin again

will blood be hot

will bones awake

and subtle muscular ripples strum

and judder breaths

as we strip the fret

from stressful days

in naked exploration

will we find my finger

running the curve

of your cheek again,

tracing the arc

of your back

the valley of your belly

strolling the soft velvet

of your inner thigh

and the domains

that here adjacent lie

like snuggled rabbits

our bodies fitted once

leg coiled round leg

hand round breast

buttock seamed to thigh

have we forgotten

the maps

we drew of each other's desire

the songlines we sang

and danced

and dawdled down

can we redraw

before it is too late

the paths of pleasure we once knew

Physic

Should black bile sophisticate my blood 

and shock my joints into a rictus lock
then with your sharpest knife open my veins
and drain the viscous liquor into a jar

carefully label with the subject's name
spend flower petals in the velvet red
stir sweet spices through the carmine brew
and agitate until they marry true

leave this dark claret in a sun-filled spot
or by a winter fire if season must
and for the turning of a half a day
let nature take its course

the tired spirit, blessed and nurtured thus
will grow and ferment, gather strength anew
now duly pumped afresh within my veins
watch colour revive the pallor of my cheeks
and gorgeous life return into my soul.

lovesong

Night has come

like a bus stalled

outside the window

spewing mud grey clouds

I think of you

I think only of you

I only ever think of you

owls are keening

on Upper Albert Road

in treetops

slick-leaved with rain

and somewhere

some fool is playing

the cello

out there

in the rainy street

bleeding his heart into the grey rainy street

like some sort of fool

blood in the gutters

blood and tears of rain in the gutters

he doesn't even know you

          but me

I think of you

I only ever think of you

I think only of you

ever

I have reached for your arms

many times

          I have

but you live

in the book of another world

in the crook of another arm

and will not hear the

thump, thump, thump

of this stupid heart

this stupid raging heart

and so all I can do

is think of you

while the night bus

chugs choking clouds outside the window

with the owls

and the fool

and the cello

blood and tears of rain

and the thump, thump, thump

          yes

I'm thinking of you again

I only ever think of you

I think only of you

ever

A Disappearing Act

Dr Gwendoline Trowell had the capacity to disappear.

Whenever she found herself in the company of more than four or five people she discovered it to be desirable to reduce her presence to such an extent that she might slip away and not be missed by the gathering until they, by mutual consent, decided to part from each other.  At this point there would be a general questioning as to where Dr Trowell might be - did anyone see her leave? One thought perhaps she might be in need of a lift home as the weather had certainly ‘come in’ this evening... And eyebrows would be raised and shoulders lightly shrugged as each member would quietly mumble of their ignorance of her whereabouts.

Dr Gwendoline Trowell never felt comfortable amid such gatherings, be they friends, so called, colleagues or even family. She was one who preferred her own company and found it difficult to accommodate the needs of others - the questions they asked, the responses they required. Small talk was anathema to her. She would lower her voice to a barely audible level, shorten her answers to a phrase or a word and finally an ‘I don’t know, to be sure...’ by which means she would leave her interlocutor adrift in a sea of unknowing, dissatisfied hesitancy. They would start to find their clothes itching and their attention drifting to the lie of the nose hair within their nostrils; their eyes seeking someone else’s, anyone else’s, across the gathering in the hope of more stimulating, rewarding conversation.

Dr Trowell, an intelligent, quietly articulate and informed woman, found she did not require herself to present her acquired knowledge for public scrutiny. Some acquaintances might describe her as introverted, some might say withdrawn, nay, aloof. However, she felt no necessity or desire to defend herself against such judgements. Despite her intelligence she was deliberately, resolutely free from opinion on most matters and consequently lacked any social ambition to present a case or argue a point.

Despite her best efforts however, it was with alarming frequency the Dr Gwendoline Trowell found herself in such circumstances. Being the sole physician within this small community she was regarded with the same degree of respect and honour in which her predecessor Dr Nightingale had been held. She was judged by many of the towns more prominent movers and shakers as an integral member of ‘polite society’. She would be invited to any and every meeting called in the name of some local issue - the inadequacy of street lighting; the lack of receptacles for the depositing of dog excrement; later, after a satisfactory outcome, the continued determination of local dog owners to scatter, willy-nilly, the droppings of their canine companions.

Dr Gwendoline Trowell, also an Elder in the local United Reformed Congregation, was the first name mentioned when local dignitaries were required to populate committees. She was seconded onto the Jumble Sale Committee, the Charitable Donations Committee, was appointed a member of the Harvest Festival Committee, voted prime candidate to chair the Celebrate The Animals Day Committee and many more.  She would dutifully attend and purely by that attendance she felt she contributed, and was indeed thanked by those who had appointed, invited or seconded, for her valuable contribution and the personal sacrifice of her precious time. Inevitably however, the coffee would start to flow after the business was done. Fairy cakes, or if the season required them mince pies, would appear and Dr Gwendoline would find herself closing down, folding herself up, shrinking in form, becoming more and more translucent, until that blessed moment of complete invisibility when she could be confident that her presence was not only no longer required but, moreover, not even experienced by her fellow committee members.

She would step back slowly, allow the space between others to become a void, a vacuum that naturally required filling. She would observe the subtle movement of feet, the shifting angles of toes and elbows, the wordless language of shoulders. She would systematically gather her belongings around her, then build them into the structures required for departure - coat folded and draped upon her forearm; handbag looped over wrist then carried to the crook of her elbow; gloves held in the correct alignment in the palm of one hand. And then after the required period of silent contemplation of the group and with the slightest of voiceless clearing of her throat she would reverse and then turn towards the door, unnoticed, unseen, unmissed.

Back at her front door, as the key turned in the lock she would mentally allow the emotional tumblers within her mind to fall away. She would release the collected tensions of the day with a series of short ‘Ah!’s.
Kettle on. ‘Ah!’
Cat stroke. ‘Ah!’
Jim Reeves, slippers, sofa. ‘Ah, ah, ah!’
A cup of tea and a schooner of sweet, rich cream Sandemans - she would sit and read into the small hours, murder mystery being her favourite fare, preferably with graphic descriptions of forensic autopsy.


So when the local drama group - performing as the Minster Minstrels - asked her to become a patron, she felt, as ever, obliged to accede. She attended meetings quarterly to ensure that the group’s charitable status was held up to scrutiny and that all monies raised and expended were correctly accounted for.

After a twelve months, she was asked if she could assist in a more practical way in the mounting of the Christmas pageant - a retelling with music of the legend of Sleeping Beauty. She agreed to act as assistant to the wardrobe ‘mistress’, Mr Carmichael.

The following year - Cinderella - Mr Carmichael regarded her assistance as understood, and Dr Gwen found herself also undertaking other light Stage Management duties including a brief foray onto the stage itself as part of a sleight of theatrical deceit. Cinderella was to be transformed at midnight back to the raggedy girl of Act One before the very eyes of the audience. There would be an extravagant lighting effect, a cloud of purple smoke (in keeping with the Fairy Godmother’s richly coloured cape and bonnet) and it would fall to Dr Gwen to enact the heroine’s fleeting escape, dressed as the be-cindered urchin, while Annabelle D’Urquhart, playing the titular role, performed a rapid change in the wings.

Dr Gwen played her part competently enough. Annabelle, in her princessly regalia, exited the stage under the cover of purple haze, and Dr Gwendoline scurried out in her rags, an arm shielding her face as if in shame, but really simply to preserve the illusion that the transformation had been magical and instantaneous. But Dr Gwen noticed the shortness of her breath, the racing of her pulse. She recognised the dryness in her mouth and the taste of adrenaline at the back of her throat and afterwards, only afterwards, recognised the pleasure of the moment and the slight fall of disappointment when the performances were all done and the production but a memory.

It was however the following year when Dr Gwendoline Trowell found her voice and as Snow White’s wicked Stepmother, Effluvia, she commanded the stage at every entrance and sent several small children home with dampened undergarments and nighttime terrors.

And afterwards, as she sat in the evenings and cast her mind back to the boos and hisses she had received, and the thrill that such responses had evoked in her, she found herself revelling in the memory of those moments. She found that Sandeman’s Sherry now seemed rather too sweet and that Vodka had a somewhat pleasing fire. She found herself purchasing a packet of cigarillos, despite the professional diatribes she had listened to as a junior doctor and had frequently relayed to her patients.

She decided, as she considered her various duties and responsibilities, that Mr Turbot, whom she had always found to be rather opinionated as Chairman of the Rotary Club would probably do well to keep some of those opinions to himself in future, otherwise, perhaps, she might find she had to ‘say something’. In fact was it not time for one or two changes in the accepted state of affairs in the Rotary Club and in one or two of the other organisations of which she was, was she not, an integral member?


prompt: A poor disguise.

24.09.2019

Sidings and Dead Ends

‘You must remember how Jet tried to herd the ducks, Dad. You remember that don’t you? When we first got him...Dad?’

He turned to look at me although it seemed he was still looking out of the window.
‘Eh, Dad? D’you remember Jet? When he was young?’
‘Jet,’ he said.
‘Yes, Jet. The collie. You loved him, didn’t you.’
‘He’s a clever thing, Jet. He’ll need his tablet. I haven’t given him his tablet today.’
‘Oh you don’t need to worry about that, Dad.’
‘The vet said it’d help.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t need it any more, does he. Not any more.’
Suddenly, he brightened.
‘He was a clever dog, Jet. He really was.’
He looked out the window again but seemed to be catching an image in his mind. ‘Uncle Peter gave him to me. I went over on Sunday and picked him up. Tiny thing he was then. But I knew right away he was a clever ‘un.’
Dad smiled to himself but I could see how the thought faded, the connections in his mind dissolving again. His smile sagged, lost its animation. His mouth held the shadow of it over his teeth, but the life had gone again.
‘Do you want some more tea, Dad? Shall I get you a fresh cup?’
His eyes flickered towards me.
‘Pass me your cup, Dad. I’ll pour you some more.’
I reached for the cup that sat on the table to the side of his chair. He watched my hand move and then with surprising speed he reached out and snatched the cup indignantly - as if it were his final possession.
‘I was just going to pour you some more tea, Dad. Would you like some?’
He lifted the cup to his lips and tipped the tiny drop of cold liquid into his mouth.
‘They haven’t asked me to do anything yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. You’d think they would have all that sorted out, wouldn’t you...’
‘I think they just want you to relax, Dad.’
‘What?’
I don’t think they expect you to do anything... except rest.’
‘You’d think they’d sort all that out before they got us all here, wouldn’t you...’
‘I suppose so, Dad.’
‘We won’t have much time if they don’t get it all sorted out soon, will we? It’d be a rush. A rush job. Can’t be doing a rush job.’
‘No, Dad.’
He looked out across the grounds again. The groundsman was cutting the grass with a large petrol-powered lawn mower. We watched as he guided the machine in gentle parallel sweeps around the edges of the borders. The engine chuntered across the afternoon lawns like a bumble bee in a glass jar.
‘It’s too wet to cut the grass today.’
‘I don’t think it is, Dad.’
‘After all that rain. It’ll be too wet. He shouldn’t do it today.
‘But it hasn’t rained for days, Dad. Not since...’
‘He’ll ruin the lawn with that great thing on the wet ground. On the wet grass. He’ll chew it all up.’
‘I think he knows what he’s doing, Dad.’
‘Where’s my stick? Go and tell him. Tell him to stop’
‘Dad, I really...’
‘Where’s my stick? Go on! He’ll ruin the lawn.’
He bent from his chair scraping towards the floor in search of his stick.
‘Ok, ok...’
‘Go tell him.’
‘Ok, I’ll go tell him.’
I stood up and walked behind his chair, confident that this moment would pass as rapidly as his animation had been aroused. I walked over to the trolley and filled a fresh cup with tea, dropped a splash of milk into it, one sugar cube, and stirred as I returned to my father.
‘Here you go, Dad, I’ll put it here.’
He looked at me, startled, as if I were a stranger. Here we go, I thought.
‘Where’s Sid?’
‘Sid?’ I felt a pang twist in my chest.
‘Who are you? Where’s Sid? Sid should be here.’
‘It’s his afternoon off, Dad.
‘Sid knows how I like it.’
‘Your tea? I know, too.’
‘Sid knows. Where is he?’
‘Listen, Dad. Sid’s off this afternoon. It’s me, Michael, Dad. I’ve just popped in to say hello. To see how you are.’
He craned back in his chair and looked at me.
‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’
‘You’re looking well.’
‘I’m fine.’
I’d met Sid before. Seen him dealing with my father. He was good. Treated him with respect. I liked that. His was an unsentimental gift to which my father responded well. The infrequency with which I could visit left me always on the cusp of stranger-hood. Sid was here everyday. My father could rely on him. But I felt a subtle acidic flow in my stomach.
‘Where’s Sid?’
My father continued to mutter the question, more to himself than out loud. But I doubted that he asked for me when I was not around.
Again the connections dissolved in his mind. Like points on a railway track splitting his train of thought along different lines. Sidings and dead ends. No thought lasted for much more than a minute. His mind could not navigate a pause in the momentum of an exchange. Synapses would fire and trigger each other but there was no mental network to keep them clustered together.
‘Do you remember your train set, Dad? Do you remember?’ He could usually pick up on this thread. ‘Do you remember how it folded down from the wall? On that platform you built?’
He looked at me and smiled. I could see him remembering. It was a magnificent construction. OO-gauge. Yards and yards of track looping around itself, between modelled mountain scapes. Slopes prickled with wire brush pine trees. Velveteen meadows.  Miniature stations, signals, the paraphernalia of the railway in minuscule detail. And a hole in the centre of this little world where Dad would stand as the Great Controller. He’d lower the whole thing down on Sunday afternoons and pop up through the hole, don his guard’s cap and, with a wink at me, flick a series of switches to start each little electric locomotive off on its journey, announcing each as he did so.
‘All aboard. Mind the gap between the train and the platform.’ Then he’d blow a sharp retort on his Thunderer whistle, saved from his days as a football coach.
‘Have you still got your whistle, Dad?’
Again his eyes lit up. He reached out to his table and pulled open the drawer. Pushed his hand in and stirred at the contents. But a look of panic spread across his face. He looked at me. Then back at the drawer. Started pulling things out and throwing them aside. Letters, a comb, a pot of Vaporub, a palm cross from some ancient Ash Wednesday. His agitation increased.
‘Can I help you, Dad? Shall I have a look?’
I stood and walked around the back of his chair to the table. Gently I placed a hand upon his shoulder and then softly stroked down his arm to his searching hand. He eyed me again, wondering who the stranger was.
‘Let me have a look, Dad’
I gently eased his hand back out of the drawer and placed it on the arm of his chair.  He didn't resist.  I sensed his tension relax as the thought processes behind the search evaporated in his mind again. His mind could no more sustain agitation than focus. I opened the drawer wider and spotted the whistle nestling at the back.
‘Here it is, Dad.’ I took it out and held it towards him. But he looked at it with empty eyes.
‘Here’s your whistle,’ I said again. He reached out and took it from me simply because he could tell I wanted him to but not from any point of recognition.
He studied it, then looking at me he raised it to his lips. The sensation of the metal on his lips must have triggered a muscle memory and he blew a soft stream of breath into it. The pea inside fluttered under the weak current of air. Then this soft sound seemed to trigger a further reaction. He took a deeper breath and suddenly blew a mighty blast on the whistle. It pierced the quiet of the room. A resident on the far side jolted awake.
‘Shut up! Shut up!’
Dad blew again, hard and shrill.’
‘Stop that! Stop it now, you idiot.’
The commotion brought a blue uniformed orderly through the door to investigate. She stood trying to analyse the scene but the whistle had already dropped from his mouth and Dad had drifted away into his familiar mist.




prompt: Part of his memory he did not visit

blackberries, 2019

     we have come out early

this year and

before the heat of the day

have stretched legs up the hill

to Carr Wood

     the blackberries

in thick clusters

hang from vines, still cradled away

in bush tops

hoist in bindweed canopies

behind barbed brambles

and stealthy nettles

smirking beneath a green palace 

an angry salad of leaves

     for we are the first

this year

to assault this harvest

to marvel at the crop

the dropping wealth

of sunblessed flesh that

slips between fingers

and into our mouths

a flood of perfumed berry blood

as our tongues

press to mash

these precious clots

     and we pick

in silence

mostly

the girl and I

cast in memories and thoughts

of other years

and when we speak

we talk again

of hedgewitch

of rosehip, sloe and haw

of lost recipes

folklore

and ancestors

and on the brambles' thorns

we swear a tacit blood pact

that should we never again

do this together

we will always have done it

today

     but you

have stayed behind

despite our invitation

because it was not in your plan

for the morning

or you found some other hesitation

that held you home

     we are disappointed

and relieved

for this harvesting

has become our thing

we forage for links that bind us

and we find them

in the gathering

of this rich fruit

something in that room

disregard the dirt

the windows, clouded

draped with cobwebbed curtains

I have lived here

and hear the echoes of your laughter

silver cords

bind my heart's bones

to each object

resonant in the afternoon sun

playing the melody of memories

as from each something

in that room

a note vibrates

I had hair then

and skin-soft hands

and we were afloat

in the womb of the moment

and still are here

a fading harmonic

despite the cobwebs

clouded windows

and the dust

7^th May, 2019

Silent Witness

It was the luminous yellow hatching that caught his eye first.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but when Ken saw the ambulance parked outside as he came home from school a stone fell somewhere inside his body. In his stomach. A familiar black stone that he had always felt was there but that now, dislodged, sent a cold shock wave through him. A metallic taste flooded his mouth.
The front door was stood open and Dad was in the garden just looking back into the house. Ken saw the skin shiny and tight on his forehead as Dad pulled his hand across his scalp, smoothing his thin hair.
As Ken approached, he followed Dad’s gaze and saw two paramedics inside, on either side of Mum, helping her down the stairs. She was in her nightie, as usual, and the blue woolly cardigan she always wore against the cold. Pink slippers, the ones Ken and Dad had chosen for her birthday.
She looked old, suddenly, Ken thought.
The paramedics were gentle with her, softly encouraging, allowing her the time she needed to place each foot carefully and ease her weight down onto it.
Kenny stood behind Dad. Slipped his hand into his father’s where it hung by his side. Dad didn’t look at him. Ken felt Dad’s fingers curl around his, but apart from that he didn’t seem to notice. He was too intent on the trio now coming down the hallway. Mum looked up at last when they had negotiated the front door and the steps down onto the path. She looked at Kenny. Smiled a weak smile. She rolled her eyes at him as if to say ‘Look at all this fuss I’m causing.’
Kenny felt himself try to smile but all he could manage was to stretch his lips across his teeth. It didn’t feel like a smile and he knew it didn’t look like one. He looked at Dad - his eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the slow progress the three were making down the garden.
As the paramedics passed them, Kenny felt Dad let go of his hand.  Dad slowly started to follow the little procession down the path but then stole past them to open the front gate. Out onto the pavement they went and round to the back of the ambulance where the doors stood open. Ken watched his mother carefully attempt the steps, the paramedics at her elbows. He could see the weakness of her muscles after these past weeks in bed. But they had her. They had her now, these people. These men. These strange uniformed men. They’d got this. They knew what they were doing.
Ken wanted to run to his mum and throw his arms around her. But he shouldn’t - he knew he shouldn’t. She wasn’t his anymore. She was becoming theirs. Like when the furniture men had come and put all the cupboards in the back of their lorry at the old house. All their things taken away. Ken was only six then, but he remembered the puzzled feeling he had had as everything came out of the house and floated and bobbed past him on shoulders or swinging between the hands of people and then got piled up in the back of the lorry, covered by blankets, tied up with long cloth straps. He remembered how the house no longer worked as he ran from room to room, how it was dying without these familiar things, like when they had turned off the inflatable castle at Kyle's birthday party. He couldn’t settle anywhere in it. Except for in the dark corner of the cupboard in his bedroom. Mum and Dad had been so busy that day, they hadn’t noticed him gone, hadn't wondered where he was. He just sat there in the dark listening to shuffling feet on the bare floorboards, the strange grunted directions the men gave each other.
Mum and Dad didn’t seem to mind that these men were taking their things. They even helped them, watched them stow things in the back of the lorry.

Then the journey through the night to this house.
He remembered the Moon following them as they drove through the dark countryside - sometimes swinging behind the car, or hiding behind trees or clouds, but always racing along with them.
And then he had slept. And when he awoke the car was stopped in a lay-by. The sky was pearly grey and Mum and Dad were asleep in the front too. And they had to wait until morning had come properly before they could drive again and find a cafe. He remembered the first time he had stood in this garden and walked in through this front door.
And then the lorry had come again - the same lorry, and the same men had taken all the things out again and carried them into new strange rooms where they didn’t belong yet. And Mum and Dad were busy again telling them were to put things and arguing with each other and shouting at him to stay back out of the way but there wasn't a cupboard to hide in in the new house. Not yet.
But today was different. Ken didn’t feel the same anyway. He heard the men talking to Mum in the back of the ambulance. Were they covering her with blankets, tying her with straps? Were they lashing her round with ropes too like they had with the tall lamp from the sitting room?
Dad stood with his left hand holding the ambulance door. He suddenly looked up and stood back – the paramedics had evidently finished packing Mum in. One of the men stepped back down onto the road. He talked to Dad. Dad nodded as they both looked over at Kenny.
‘Ken. Kenny.’ Dad threw his head back a little, beckoning him. ‘Come over here, son, say goodbye to your Mum.’
Ken walked down the path to where Dad was holding out his hand. It came to rest on Kenny’s shoulder as he approached.
‘Give your mum a kiss, son.’
The paramedic inside the ambulance was crouched just inside the door. He reached a hand out and helped Kenny climb the steps into the back. It smelled in there - strange ointments, Ken thought.
Mum was sitting in a wheel chair sideways on to the side of the ambulance. It had been strapped into place somehow and there was a blanket across Mum’s knees. Her rosary hung from her hands.
She smiled at him.
‘It’s just for a few days, Kenken. I’ll be home again soon. Just a few days.’
‘We’ll come and see you tonight,’ said Dad, ‘ when you’re settled in. Eh, Ken?’
Mum lifted her hand a placed it upon Ken’s head. Her beads dangled across his cheek.
‘Yes, come and see me tonight. Now give me a kiss, Kenny.’
Ken leaned over the side of her wheelchair as she offered her cheek for him to kiss. She smelled of her bed.
‘There’s a good boy,’ she said, ‘ I’ll see you tonight. You come and see me tonight. All right?’
‘Okay, Kenny-boy,’ said the paramedic. ‘Jump out to your dad. We don’t want to be taking you with us by mistake, do we?’
Ken felt a dark shudder, a sudden urge to run, as if a large dog were chasing him.
His feet stumbled and he nearly fell as he stepped down but Dad hooked him around with his arm and pulled him in close to his hip. The pair stood on the pavement as the second paramedic clamped the backdoors shut, walked round the side of the ambulance and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Ken waited in frozen anticipation of the siren and flashing blue lights to kick into desperate life, but actually the ambulance started with a regular juggle of an old bus and pulled sedately away from the pavement.
Ken felt his father’s hand find his again and, Dad led him back through the gate. They stood and watched as the ambulance reached the end of the road and turned right.
'She'll be all right, won't she Dad?'
His father didn't speak. He just put is hand on Ken's shoulder again.
'Dad?'

The Edge

‘It may be the Hippodrome, but please, Clara, my darling, no hippo-dramatics here.’

Clara continued to remove her costume, piece by piece, from her trunk and hang each item carefully on the rail.
‘This is the last show before London, my darling, and I really can’t have any of your clumsiness - do you hear me?’
She reached once again into the trunk and with one hand drew out her boa. She played it across her other hand, pulling it over her palm, feeling the soft kiss of the feathers as they passed through the crook of her thumb. She felt her resolve grow stronger as the gaudy feathers aligned. She carefully draped the lithe snakelet over the hat stand that stood by her dressing table.
‘We really can’t have a repeat of Ipswich, can we. Promise me, my darling. You will take extra care tonight, won’t you. Extra care. You will won’t you?’
The lacquered make up box containing all her makeup - sticks of greasepaint, powder, eyelashes, brushes, lotions, and creams - was the last item she lifted from the trunk. She placed it upon the table between herself and the mirror.
At last, Clara turned to him, held his eye and gave him her most pleasant smile.
‘Of course,’ she said.
He studied her for a second, his gaze flickering back and forth from one emerald eye to the other, always seeking the sincerity he craved.
At last he smiled too. She felt him move momentarily towards her, hesitate, then lift his hands to her face. He cupped her cheeks and drew her lips towards his mouth.
She tasted whisky, stale smoke on his breath.  She felt the bristle of his moustache as his lips pressed into hers. She found the tip of his tongue pushing, penetrating, seeking entry between her teeth. She resisted the pressure to open, locked her jaws and hardened her lips.
At last he withdrew from the kiss.
‘You know how precious you are to me, my darling. You know I cannot live without you. Your love is all I long for, all I crave. You know this, my dearest darling, my angel, don’t you.’
She stood motionless, held her breath as she waited for him to release her from this moment. She waited for the freedom that would dissolve the chill that froze her blood.
But before he relinquished her, he pushed his mouth onto hers again. His saliva lubricating the motion of his lips upon hers. Then with sudden flourish he turned away from her towards the door.
‘I must prepare, my dearest dear. Come wake me at the half. I will need a shave. And please, until then, no noise... no noise.’
He turned towards her again a placed a final finger over her lips.
‘So beautiful,’ he said, ‘so beautiful.’

Alone at last, she breathed, wiped her hand across her mouth, and dropped weakly into the chair in front of her mirror.
How she hated him.
How she hated what he had done to her, what he had made her into.
She reached for her makeup box, flung open the lid and reached into the corner. The razor. She felt its coolness in the palm of her hand. She opened the blade and laid it on the table in front of her. There was a comfort in the reflected light from the blade. The familiar blade. She felt a frissance in the skin of her thigh. The gorgeous terror rise in the pit of her stomach. The skin opening a scarlet smile. Past pains released. Blood on her tongue.
But not today.
Now she saw the blade as it rested against the skin of a throat. The artery pulsing beneath the lightest of pressure. She had learned to shave her father after the accident, carefully drawing the blade across the hair of his chin and neck, severing each at the root. Those days, before she had learned the keen bite of the edge, she had often seen the blood seeping into the white lather on her father’s neck. He never complained, never even winced and slowly she had learned the skill of it. The delicacy.
But this man. If she so much as nicked his cheek, he would reprimand her and scold her, call out her clumsiness, abuse her, ridicule her. True, no hand had he ever laid upon her. Not in anger. But afterwards, after the evening performance and sometimes after the matinee, if the crowd had been appreciative and respectful, had rewarded his efforts with their praise, afterwards he would call her into his dressing room and insist she help him.
‘I can do nothing,’ he would say, ‘I am a child, helpless, completely helpless. Come comfort me.’
And she would stand before him and spread cream thickly upon his glistening face, into the folds of flesh around his neck, the sly intimacy of his closed eyelids. Then she would wipe him with balls of cotton wool. His flesh moving in waves beneath her fingers. And he would murmur to her as she worked.
‘You are my angel, my saviour, without you I am nothing, my darling, nothing. Kiss me, my darling, lay your lips upon mine for your kisses are a balm to me, a healing balm.’
And then he would have her open his clothing, guiding her hands to each hook and button of his shirt, pushing the linen open across his belly, pulling it free of the waistband of his trousers. Then the buckle of his belt, buttons. He would stand and draw her hands up again to his breasts and he would gaze into her eyes as his hands descended and his movements would be rhythmic and she would feel his heart beat as he became more frenzied until... until... She could not, would not imagine it. But he would crumple under her hands, his mouth gaping like a landed fish, a shudder stuttering through his body. His head would drop.
‘Leave me,’ he would say, ‘leave me now.’
And she would withdraw in to her room, into her mind and visit places of her childhood dreams again. Summer afternoons. Ice cream sundaes. The gentle touch of Frederick's hand upon her cheek.

A tap.
A light tap.
A tap at the door and she surfaces through sunlit water and back into the fusty dressing room. The theatre boy outside the door.
‘That’s the half, miss.’
She says nothing.
‘Miss? D’you hear, miss, that’s the half.’
She rises. Goes to the door. The lad looks at her, startled to see her in front of him.
‘Yes.’
‘The half, miss, your half hour call.’
‘Yes, yes.’
Was her tone sharp? He looks a little alarmed.
She slips her fingers into the purse at her waist and draws out a coin.
‘Thank you, Alfie, I’ll tell him.’
‘But...’
‘I’ll tell him Alfie. Go.’ She presses the coin into his hand.
‘Thank you, miss, to be sure...’
‘Go.’
She closes the door and turns back to her table. The razor gleams.
She lifts it and tests the edge against the ball of her thumb.

prompt: ecstasy
06.08.2019

Paired for Life

‘You have to become the swan,’ she said. ‘You do not simply see the swan upon the water, you have to BE the swan. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, but with little conviction.
‘Try it again, please, one more time before we finish.’
He rested his bow against the string, placed his left hand in its starting position high on the neck of the instrument and started to play.
He knew he was a little flat but Miss Radcliffe was already lost in her imagination of the most beautiful music. She could not resist the temptation to join in.
‘Yaaa da da, laaa da da... she is alone, the swan
Daaada da... Feel the water supporting you...Daaa da da da ... she weeps as she swims
Crescendo as you climb... her grief is overwhelming...
Better...
...and sweetly at the top there - you’re a little flat...’ she sang the words.
‘Let the current flow... it is exquisite pain for her...
the water is cold, powerful...
it carries you along... yes
yes, that’s better... more and more....’
Charlie drew his bow across the final note.
‘There, Charles. Did you feel the difference? You were finding the instrument’s voice there a little, do you not agree?’
‘Yes, Miss Radcliffe.’ He was ready to leave the fusty room and walk home through the afternoon air.
‘Right, well we’ll leave it there for this week, Charles. Good. Some improvement. Definitely. Some definite improvement.’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Have you seen a swan swimming, Charles?’
‘Yes, miss, of course. In the park. On the lake. I’ve seen them there.’
She didn’t seem quite satisfied with his answer.
‘Yes, they do come to the lake, I suppose. But in the wild, away from humans and ducks and bread and picnic baskets - have you ever..?’ Her eyes glazed a little as her thoughts drifted away from her.
Charlie waited a moment to see if her sentence had an end...
‘Right. I’ll see you next week, miss’
‘Yes, Charles. Please be prompt.’
‘Yes, miss.’
He slackened the nut of the bow, released the wing nut on the spike of the cello and eased it back into the base of the instrument. He lifted the lid of his case and carefully packed cello and bow away.
Miss Radcliffe watched him, lost in her thoughts. He could still smell the peppermints on her breath with which she tried to mask the sour stain of cigarette smoke.
He stood and gripped the handle then realised he had not gathered his sheet music. Miss Radcliffe noticed at the same time and reached across from her seat and lifted the pages from the wire stand. She glanced again at the title.
‘They pair for life, you know,’ she said.
‘Pardon, miss?’
‘Swans. They pair for life, and if one of them dies the other slowly pines away.’
‘Right... Bye then, miss.’
‘Yes, yes. Goodbye, Charles. Goodbye. Practise please, practise.


At the park he swung the kiss gate open and clumsily manhandled the cello awkwardly through it. He would normally just stick to Clementson Road to avoid the difficult kiss gate manoeuvre but today... there was something in Miss Radcliffe’s tone that had stayed in his mind. So now he looped down between the rhododendrons, past the restored Victorian greenhouses and down into the park proper.
There were handful of children with their parents on the spinners and swings. Three boys were playing football on the grass, their bikes casually strewn across the path. As Charlie picked his way between them the ball came bouncing over towards him and struck the case of his cello. He shot an angry look at the boy who seemed to have kicked it but then, seeing him come running over to retrieve it, Charlie felt a little intimidated.
‘Sorry,’ he said, as the boy came into earshot, then he immediately felt stupid.
The boy didn’t even look at him- just trapped the ball, steadied himself and kicked it hard back to the others.

By the lake, Charlie lifted his cello and rested it on the bench. He stood by the end resting one knee on the wooden slats and looked out across the water. A few ducks muddled around on the grass and a row of grey pigeons sat uniformly spaced along the low wall at the water’s edge. Across the lake a little way, he spotted the swans. The same pair had been here for as long as Charlie could remember. Every year they would nest on the little island in the spring and a few weeks later four or five grey cygnets would follow them as they sailed serenely across the water. Charlie wondered where all those swan children were now. He imagined them flapping furiously across the water, beating their wings, until optimum takeoff speed was reached and then majestically rising into the air, swimming up into the clouds, the sun setting on the horizon. In his mind he saw them arced across the sky, formation flying like old footage he had seen of droning war planes, Lancasters, Wellingtons, brave warriors flying off to their destiny.
The swans had seen Charlie too. They came gliding across the water towards him as if powered by thought alone. Charlie wished he had something to feed them - bread, anything. He bent and pulled at a golden dandelion head. Tossed it towards the water. But it was too light and just fluttered down onto the mud. One of the swans swam closer drawn by the familiar movement of the throwing arm, but without even seeming to look it discounted the muddied flower.
Charlie noticed the moment the swans realised he had nothing for them - they subtly, coolly, simply, redirected their way parallel to the bank to a spot further down where a young woman was freeing her toddler from her pushchair. Charlie and the swans saw the woman reach for a paper bag beneath the seat and start handing pieces of white bread to her daughter. The little girl took each piece and held it extravagantly over her head before throwing it with abandon, mostly in the general direction of the water.
You shouldn’t feed them bread, Charlie thought, even while he envied the little girl. It’s not good for them.
He remembered the excitement of standing just there with his own mother, being handed the same pieces of bread, throwing with as much enthusiasm as this little girl did. His feet started to walk him towards them, until his hand on the handle of his cello case reminded him that he was older.
The swans moved with no hesitation. Theirs were perfect, easy movements, each reflecting the other as the water reflected each of them. A silent duo. A pas de deux. Their heads moved in perfect synchronisation, never deciding where to go but yet swimming with pure intention. Charlie found himself watching the space between them - an invisible silver, silken connection, sometimes stretching, sometimes shrinking, constantly changing shape. They were together and yet separate, a unity of swan and yet two distinct beings. They were paired for life, Charlie thought.
He thought of Miss Radcliffe sat waiting for him each week. He could only ever imagine her in the study, still, quiet, waiting. As if there were no other purpose in her life. Just music, and the teaching of it, the teaching of him. He saw her - a cigarette in her thin fingers, a column of ash growing at its tip as she waited. She had never paired, he thought. Or maybe she had. Maybe she had lost the one who had moved in slow easy arcs with her, the other separate being in her unity.
The bag of bread was empty now.





The swans glided slowly, separately, together, back out across the chilly grey water.


prompt: she asked him if he understood
written in one hour - with a little subsequent editing.
20.11.2018

Sudden Rain in June

An ash black cat on the tarmac licks her gravel paws I pose on the sofa snack on blue tortilla chips the salty olive oiled jalapeños you gave me and blossoms of tangy goats cheese

Worlds apart you & I share stories of sudden rain in June I tell you how it hits the pavement like applause bloodies the asphalt lifts the scented lid of first dust The cat scutters away burned by these insulting drops But you I see you lift your open mouth to the clouds

Birthday Poems for a Brother

John's Poem

When John

stopped going to Mrs Moore’s

he went to

Our Lady Of Lords

and he learned how to

have friends

Marcel

and Tina

and Michael Popplearse

and how to have a drawing book.

Then he learned writing

and he drew pictures of his friends

and underneath he wrote

I like Tina in my tea

and

Marcel is poosticks and a bum.

So this is John’s poem really

I don’t think he knew how to spell

Popplearse.

Lessons in Lego

Jess was born

upstairs

with the door shut

and Cousin Wyn

came to look after us

downstairs.

And when she had come

Cousin Wyn told us

we could tiptoe like mice

up the stairs and see

our new baby sister.

And Mum was there

and Dad

and there was this baby

in a black carry cot

and Mum said the baby

had brought us things,

and if we put our hands

in the bottom end

of the carry cot

we would find the things

she had brought.

I didn’t know

how a baby

could get to the shops

but Mum said

I didn't need

to worry about that.

And there were things -

I got a little box of lego,

blue lego

roof pieces.

It was all right.

Then John opened his box -

when I saw what he got

fireworks went off in my head

John got

little yellow curved bits of lego

that made a fantastic round tower

if you put them all together.

Yellow bits

not blue.

Curved bits

not roof bits.

And they said the baby

was called Jessica Mary

and that she was the baby now

and I had to be her big brother

and teach her things.

I thought I should better teach her about

lego.

I expect Kate got something too

but she was six

and I didn’t want it

it was probably a wet yourself dolly

or something.

Only a game

John and I

dug Jess a grave

in the garden.

Dad had been doing some digging

and we asked if we could.

He did not know

why we were digging,

but we dug a trench

then mounded

up the soil

as if we had buried Jess there.

Then we made a cross

out of two bamboo poles

and made a paper sign

with

Jessica Baldwin

RIP

written on it.

When we told Mum

she thought we were mean.

So did Jess.

The Russells

were coming for tea

and she said

don’t let Ann Russell

see our grave

she might get upset

and cry.

Ann was seven

and it was only a game.

So John and me

we went and

jumped up and down

on Jess’s grave.