She (excerpt)

The trees were slowly shedding their autumn leaves as we turned our backs on the hospital gates. The lost canopies formed a ruffled, auburn carpet across the floor, our feet hidden in the rustling beneath. I held the image of a solitary patient rushed in on a hospital bed, metal legs clattering with cylinders on a stony path. This one cast a glance up at me as if to question why I was even there. I watched the leaves fall to the ground, given up and left to be trodden on.

We’d popped out while the doctors ran checks.

Fluids, tubes and heartbeats. 

The faint flicker of red lines and subdued bleep of monitors could only indicate so much. She was, they said, stable, but nothing more. What was going on inside was sure enough, but any long-term predictions had to be avoided.

Rose’s Mum seemed most upset, her tears fruitlessly concealed. Whether it was that famous British stoicism or an awed sense of disbelief that silenced the rest of us, who was to say. Our words didn’t seem adequate, fading in the morning like street lights on the blink.

She’d come out worst from the crash.

Two others – both female – were receiving treatment in the next ward. Neither was comatose. Neither had been in a position to offer an explanation of the incident. They had friends and family gathered too. Other worlds, other traumas.

I’d seldom spoke to Rose’s parents in the last year. She’d had some issues at college, returning home to the country every other weekend. I hadn’t been considered a help in all this – diligently following the course of my studies when I should have been with her. I remember the last time she left me at Marylebone, her eyes drifting away, awash in a pool of disappointment.

I didn’t hold her gaze.

 Her arm unmoored steadily from mine.

I still see her face on that day, but now it’s that bit more dim and floating. It accuses me more openly than the one lying on the hospital bed. But I hope to hell this isn’t the last of it.

We dropped in over the road at the café for drinks, the tinkle of tea spoons a gentle reminder of routinely waking up each morning. 

My mind flickered at the holiday I’d left behind. That would be the last time I thought of it that year.

“What’ll it be Mark?” 

Rose’s Dad looked intently at the menu on the wall above.

“It’s alright. I’ll get these.”

My offer seemed cruelly mistimed. I hesitated to look around registering only empty looks.

“You can do the milk”, he replied, gathering orders from the group.

I studied the waitress behind the bar for lack of anything better to do. She demonstrated a crude carelessness, I thought, casually flicking the dark hair that covered her eyes. I wondered how long she’d been working and how she’d deal with us. We weren’t your usual customers after all. She looked up, I stared at the floor.

“I’ll grab some seats,” I ventured, turning to see a table by the window already claimed. I thought instead I’d get in quick with the conversation. But I remembered my calling with the milk and returned to the bar.

“Mark,” Mr. Milligan said, his voice as commanding as ever. “Mum has the milk here, with reduced fat, one sugar. The other guys want one with milk and one black, two sugars, and yours. I have mine and Maria’s. That okay?”

I nodded, my murmur of ascent lost in the steam rising from the coffee machine.

Mr. Milligan was a portly man. His chestnut brown hair slid languidly over bold features and a stern look. He was a teacher at a private school in the country, his musical ability concealing a wayward nature I’d heard about over the phone. Still, I’d had several decent conversations with him during my time. We talked about music often and he was keen to hear my take on the crossover between modern and classical styles. He was affable and talkative, despite this difficulty in pinning him down.

I gathered the cups in my hands but the waitress presented a tray.

“You’ll need that.”

“Thanks,” I said, still a little embarrassed from my misplaced offer moments before.

I held the tray firmly, taking care to watch my step. The sun was rising through the part-frosted glass of the partitioned window. As it peaked over the divide, a glorious blaze of light soaked the café, inviting an appreciative glance for just one moment at the break of day.

My eyes fuzzied against the glare as I placed the tray down.

“The milk?”

“How have you been Mark?”

I sat opposite Andy in the bright white corridor, the hospital lights leaving a blotchy smattering across my eyes. His voice rose above the sound of a generator, qualified by a rub of the hands and a jerky yet controlled glance at the ceiling. I heaved myself up, a keen eye set on the cup of tea balancing precariously on his chair.

“Alright”, I said, scraping my sole against the polished floor, my thoughts fumbled. “This is tough.”

It wasn’t a conversation starter, but I hardly expected it to be. The others sat beside us, Rose’s father pacing less hurriedly as he withdrew to a neighbouring room. A lady cleaner moved along the corridor emptying bins. Another, slightly younger and with darker skin, swished a mop across the floor.

Andy ruffled his black hair, wavy and loose, his skin grooved all over. Chris stood propped by a single mousey dreadlock nurtured for years through college. Maria and Joe sat a chair apart - his legs spread, an impish frown across his face, her knitted tightly in a ball, hair falling across his chest. Joe hung a lonely arm around her, a threadbare blanket against the growing storm.

We all felt apart in that corridor, searching for meaning, our minds escaping us. I felt the force of our connection so much stronger now from all those occasions before. I think all the fronts had dropped, that we were really seeing each other as we were, naked and bare.

Uncertain smiles broke the hushed silence with fleeting ripples, unnoticeable and unremarked. A solitary leaf flew in lazily on a sharp breeze, lightly kissing the white floor.

“Mr. Andrews?”

I stood up.

“Can you come with me?”

A doctor in a long white coat carrying a clipboard ushered me forward. I took the call and followed him into a side room, dark before the light switched on.

“Mr. Andrews. We have some news. You are Rose’s boyfriend, is that correct?”

I nodded circumspectly.

“Mr. Andrews, Rose is pregnant.”

A brief pause.

“Her parents have been told.”

I stepped outside, breathing deep, tilting my head. Clouds like cotton dotted the sky in a hospital without walls.

Summer (return)

Summer ends here.
The sand washed away
In Saturday sun
Your footsteps coursing over
Cobbled streets and a russet
Sky.
It seems long ago when
Names travelled west over the fields
And wheat stooped beneath ebbing dreams,
Our ambition, far away, traces
In the clear
Water.
That was where we once were, who
We thought we might be
Wandering from the path
Becoming, in our sights
Idols from a bigger world.
Feeling, there, but somehow not,
The road took us, now it leads us back
Returning home like before,
Not like the first time.
Fanfare muted, for you've been
Away too long
Down below the waves are still,
Toy ships and bodies lost amid the suspended
Sea.
What we need is near
The colour of your eyes
White mist and fishermen's huts
Shanty song by a warm fire
The cool breath of
Harbour
Morning, night.

Future Perfect

We arrived on the Monday, the first day, the rest of our lives begun in a chuff of diesel smoke as we pulled away from the airport gates. We’d waited for five minutes in the lounge. Curious faces hidden behind darkened stares our only welcome to shores where each new stream of arrivals disappeared into its own beyond. We were alarmed when you weren’t there to meet us. One short connecting hop and, deep in a foreign land, we were plunged like so much luggage down a shoot. It begun with a G like your name, but this could be anywhere and we could be lost. Out here with the small passage to exit signs it didn’t work to have just one look because how could you know you’d get the same chance again. I wouldn’t hold your eye at any other time but I was so tired. One day lost, or was it two, seven hours distant and you’re quiet now. Just waiting, and a little bit inside says you might start to worry. The crowd filters away as we tunnel across the parking lot and the heat, it is oppressive.

You hear your name and all of a sudden it’s go, bags slung in the boot, a few murmurs of assent and one translator, he’d just met her he said. Foot down and the city, or something like it, is outside the door. A driver was waiting to take you. Up streets with no name, across junctions that lawlessly spill loose, to your eyes it’s all meaningless anyhow. The air is a leaden grey and half-finished building blocks are lost amid rubbish and sweeping motorways that direct the new world beneath. Quick notes, things said, and you will digest at a later point. Not worth worrying about now, because then you’re stuck. For a moment you think of the future but it won’t stay, and it’s only because you’re older, not just tired that you do this.

The rear view mirror is a mouth, swallowing up whatever’s left, a portal, like there’s no way back. Out the window you catch a glimpse of someone, another life going someplace else. Fewer look back at you, your object of contemplation, for you’re safe behind windows and doors. Lines of traffic blur and introductions are quick, each a connecting plate in the barren jigsaw of your mind. Cars swap places and horns blow freely and this is something you’ll get used to, if only because it’s different. The air is kind of hazy, smothered by exhaust fumes tipping from cars. You don’t know where to look but your passenger is eyes set out the window and you wonder if this is how it all fits together.

The city swells before you, alive even if inside you feel kind of dormant. You didn’t notice the highways become streets but not a word’s been said in the last five minutes. The traffic’s worse than you thought and you haven’t bothered with a seat belt because why would you when no one cares. Shop fronts are just sounds and you’ve done a good job, but this language is like nothing and nothing you’ve ever known. Lights from office blocks and a thousand competing horns flash like thunder. Trees, there are none, save for the odd plucky bush nestled between lanes. People drift in and out of traffic, their faces unflustered like the clothes on their back. The air is still but a strange humidity fills your breath. You enter a side street, dimly lit and lined with market stalls. Among the throng of people, some space to exit the car.

The alleyway is awash with rubbish brushed brazenly to the side. The light rain has formed rivulets that dash down the gentle incline across dents and divots, through cracks and etchings in the road. You’re not sure where to look; you’ve a feeling of being watched. It’s 50 metres, no more, before a set of steps that leads up past open houses to the apartment. The air hangs heavy and if it wasn’t for you and the weather now I’d feel this welcome devoid of all comfort. You’re too new to notice the strange stares like questions repeatedly unanswered. The stairs exert an unfamiliar pull and is it three flights you ask, I hadn’t counted. Time has become strange but there’s a sense of urgency and things happening and passing too quick. Barely a chance to look around, your room, it’s nice, spacious, if a little on the dark. It’s the facilities though that hanker, could do with a little scrubbing up, and conveniences so freely taken in the past, denied you now. Outside the bay window, neighbouring blocks squash in behind halting rails, vacant stares into the dusk.

The damp that lines the corridor has spread a little inside. The door closes heavily and it’s like only your ears will hear it. Don’t drink the water and the rubbish, it’s collected from your door. I’ve spent endless nights in this living room, in my mind it’s all happened before. Dark times when shades are drawn and how many quartered bottles that linger on in the silence. Sometimes taking a walk some place and sometimes left alone with nowhere much to go. Out on the street and we’re in unspoken lands, reliant on you as much as any primal motive. Is it coming together or are you still skating, brushing past things that will face the dawn much later on? It’s not quite dark but evening is pressing and things are wrapping up or are they starting? People gloss the streets like so much candy, denied the child in you, for there are things to do.

It may as well be a main road and, after all it is leading somewhere. The buildings rise up like so many others, floor on floor, the sky a touchscreen target high above. Roof tops like pin pricks pierce the big blue, unashamedly unaware of impropriety. Bright neon street signs serve to highlight the concrete grey of the office block and the side streets plucked with puddles splash and slip their way along. Cigarette smoke floating out before you beckons as you enter the lobby and head for the lift. It’s several floors up and when you’re there you sometimes have to walk down a level, these lifts, they have a funny way about them. Other faces and mixing signs, elevated. Just look ahead and be done with it. Awaiting the ping of that 13^th floor, your head is down, hoping a little, praying inside.

Nobody told me why we’d come, but then again neither had you. We were all a little empty perhaps, playing with the truth, looking to start anew. I sit here staring out the window, imagining the city beneath, abuzz with life and a thousand interactions conducted without the slightest care for you. You become a target, a point of interest, if only for a moment, before things move on. It’s been a few days and the stares, do they matter so much now? Did they even mean that much at all? Your thought travels back and forth, mimicking a kind of space voyage as you fumble with memories and half-spun truths. We’re separated like two trees.  But I like to think after the rain, we come together as a river, as a mouth finds its source.

The wallpaper is a murky grey and it seems to fit right now. The colours around ache unrequitedly, pouring all over as you choose to ignore. I can’t hear your cry above roof top howls and horns that resound into the night. The window looks out on new blocks rising up out of the ash, and the rain, it continues to pour on the guttering below. Outside, street vendors live on passionately, finding dedication in that simplest of truths. I want you to go and live a little, to feel the things you wouldn’t feel.

One evening I got lost, I took a path that led nowhere but deep into the dusk. Dark alleyways and mountain lanes that seemed to want for nothing but return to barren form. Scooped up by a stranger I was, tailed for miles and offered assistance in the strangest of tongues. Drip, drip, dripping, while all around was remoteness, eerie reflections off of street signs and refuse at the side of the road. How it breaks my heart tonight to find one simple craving wish fulfilled, the basic cry to slake your naked throat, and how long you’ve been waiting, how dearly it’s possessed. On romantic nights I note the plainness of my soul and come crying to you for help, to start all over.

On Leaving London (fragment)

Rain tonight. And I’m made

To think of you in mist

Eyed skies, the way

You soaked up that

Incessant flood, a summer

Washed out like no other,

And reminders so

Recklessly left.

It was the last day, caught

On repeat, with nowhere

Left to go, and so little time

To do so much. You showed

Me beneath your skin, and

Walking along I pressed you,

Each minor heart beat an

Emerald store for years of

Sun.

Now the noon has burned away another

Day, and all I hear is horns

Tonight. On lonely walks along

Puddled streets, I can’t see

Your face for anyone.

The Common Man

I couldn’t tell you his name. He’s always there. Like some spectre, a constant reminder. Who is he, I wonder? And how to describe someone you’ve never met? This is what I think. I’ll call him the Common Man.

He doesn’t have a name. I think I said that already.

He refuses to discuss serious matters, political, religious or otherwise. The careworn look on his cracked, muddy face suggests things had been different once.

If he finds himself splitting hairs between arguments, he’ll resort to points of fact to disentangle himself from the mire. His opinions are always expressed as such and he wears around him a cloak of anonymity.

A profusion of dark facial hair is still ripe with colour after all these years. He has no one, an estranged mother, a distant father, and his principles take root in an early Christian upbringing that refuses to budge. Little does he know how much he is directed by this.

He hangs with other alcoholics at the fountain on the common each day, but his participation is transitory, liminal, somehow abstract.

The Common Man maintains a remarkable serenity that masks a virulent streak of bitterness, anger and discontent. Whether it was through a rare kind of knowing wisdom that he overcame this facet of his nature one will never know. Perhaps it had rather been the result of years of frustrated desire and hollowed out hope, beating him down to a semi-confused, pottering weariness.

Yet there is something different about the Common Man: his stride, confidence, and contemplative face suggest otherwise. Something to indicate all this has been judged out, reflected upon, voluntary, deemed right. Like the sails on a ship deliberately brought to mast so the wind can carry you along as it must.

The Common Man has not always lived in this country.

His goals are unapparent, as if undergoing a steady and unnoticeable process of negation. He was educated when the meaning of the word was different.

He has no work. He is calm, composed, or ready to flip. Hobbies, interests, there were some. A deep down fear of being left alone though this has always felt what he’s been driving at.

A heavy smoker with a deep, dark secret. Like every other character.

Seagull

‘Table for eight, Madam? Please, this way.’

The young waiter motioned across the floor, the sight of the table appearing to the boy after a few moments. The dining room was huge, three times as big as his living room and perhaps four times that of his own bedroom - although he had been promised a bigger one at some point and felt he might have the good fortune to inherit his elder sister’s as early as next week when she was due to move out.

The boy peered up over the tabletops in between and stretched his tiptoes to gain a surer view of the window. He was quite excited but wondered if he’d be made to sit in one of those different chairs again, not like everybody else. He followed his mother and she clutched his hand tight. Her long emerald dress flapped against him and then the table legs and he wondered what they thought of it all. He’d once heard his uncle remark that he’d like to get lost up a woman’s skirt and the boy had thought how that could happen when his uncle was so big and so tall.

The boy stole passing glimpses of the other diners as he shuffled on quickly past the occupied seats. He heard little bits of words as well as his mother talking, and he tried to piece them together like he did in school, saying things out loud and seeing what would come next. He could just make out the table now against the big blue background of the sky and the waiter who stood to one side.

            ‘If you’d care to have this table, Madam, I will be delighted to take your coats.’

            The boy stared up at his mother to see if she responded to the waiter because he’d just said something, but she remained silent and kept her mouth closed. His father may have grumbled a word quickly but the boy kept peering at his mother and the way she flicked her long dark hair back as she removed a white chiffon scarf.

He always had to wait for her to say a few things to his father before he could sit down and before they all sat down after that. He often wondered what these things were but couldn’t ever hear because it was all spoken so quietly. Today the noise of the restaurant made it difficult to make out anything and the boy took the chance to sneak a quick peak out the window at the grassy slopes that tumbled down to the sea and the flurry of seabirds that shot up over the cliffs like fired arrows or falling stones.

            ‘Marcus, please will you sit down so everybody can have the chance to do so too.’

            He remembered then that he must sit down as he heard his mother scold him and that if he didn’t he might forfeit his chance at sitting like the rest of them. He felt himself lifted a little as he prepared himself to sit and it felt like something had been put there to make him taller.

            ‘My little emperor.’

            The boy looked up at his mother smiling and felt himself smile too and all the eyes of the world seemed to be upon him. He quite liked when the faces were all happy and nice to look at and when this was so he sometimes let out a little giggle that seemed to please them even more. It’d had happened before that he received most attention at the start like this and then things turned to more adult topics and he had to wait until it was his turn again. At least he had the window to look out of this time and the sea and the sun and the sand.

            His sister was at the far end of the table when once before she would sit next to him. It seemed like the bigger you got the further you were allowed but the boy would have to wait for now and sometimes it felt like it would last forever. He liked to watch the others eat and drink their funny liquid from the glass bottles that they all seemed to find so very funny. Sometimes he tried to see if he could make his liquid funny but each time he did it made him almost choke and his mother would scold him for being so silly. She would look at him with disapproving eyes and shake her head and he would feel sad. He would want to make it better by making her laugh and he’d point and poke at the funny liquid on the table. She never seemed to understand and he would be made to stop because it was all making too much noise or by then somebody else had started talking.

            When it got late and the sun began to set, casting a warm fuzzy glow across people’s faces and the floor, he would sometimes grab at his mother’s dress because he didn’t like the place anymore and he wanted to go home. This time there was plenty to watch out the window and he liked seeing the white gulls swoop onto the brick wall and peer in as if they were looking straight at him. He liked to point to them because it made his mother pay attention and she seemed to want to play when she opened a window as if she’d let the silly birds in. He liked to look across at his father to see what he thought of it all but it didn’t happen often that he’d even be looking or appear to care at all.

            The boy would know it was time to leave when his father beckoned the waiter over and made an odd gesture with his hand while whispering something into his ear. He wondered how it was that each time this was understood so as to leave no room for confusion, how this peculiar activity his father called upon each time meant any sense to anyone. He often made a point of staring at his father to see if he could perhaps work out his secret but each time he did this his mother would turn to him and tell him to stop because it was all quite rude. He found then that someone would say something to make it seem normal when he knew very well it was not and that if no one else was going to try and find out his father’s secret it would simply have to be him and no one would stop him.

            ‘Ah, that’s nice. They’ve put some music on. And only now as we’re about to leave!’

            The boy heard the soft sound of music ripple up from behind the bar and wondered if they’d put it on for them but strangely when they were leaving. He liked the music his mother played in the car or at home on the long armed machine that didn’t like it when you got too close. His uncle had told him that the machine got frightened especially if you jumped around and that it could sometimes scratch itself because it shivered all over. The boy wondered how music could scratch itself when you can’t even see it and this thought made him dismiss the music for now.

            Outside the window more and more seagulls had gathered and the boy thought this funny and smiled. The waiter had returned and was holding up a machine without a long arm and the boy considered whether this one would scratch itself if it was held up like that.

The boy kept his eyes on one of the gulls that appeared friendlier than the rest as it slid along the small tiled balcony outside. No one else seemed concerned and this provoked the boy because it was like no one was welcoming the new guest. He’d heard his mother remark that new guests should always be made to feel welcome. He thought the bird may like some bread so he held it up in his hand and waved it enough so the silly thing could see it. The boy’s mother was not impressed and it seemed like she had seen it all coming, so quick was she to remove the bread and place it on the table. The boy kept looking at the bird and maybe he looked hard enough to make it fly in because the silly thing came launching through the window and dived to pick up the bread.

The boy remained fixated on the bird and then the bread and the sounds of the music were broken up by exclamations from his sister and his aunt. He kept looking at the bird but it wasn’t the bread he’d got. Instead the bird had found a small rectangle that his father had removed from his pocket only moments earlier. He didn’t know what it was but it was important enough for his father to leap up and take chase as it took off straight out the window, piercing the calm, quixotic music with its miraculous, fearless shriek.

Roll into the night

Now I hardly find the words to speak.
 And shadows fall in numbered months,
 Crowding my heart and my knotted tears,
 I took the wrong path, then,
 And should have left my thoughts unpacked,
 To roll once more into the night.