Flowers

It was a sunny day, but her vapours still veiled me. Her morning mist, hovering above the still Earth in earliest dawn, still consumed me. She lay before me, peaceful and still as always, her eyes gently closed to the stars, awaiting the communion of a kiss, not ponderous - never one to flutter.

            The birds chirruped, their calls and song carried easily in the stillness. The soft spongy earth gave wing to the spring flowers, that smell of April – soft, airy. Like hands cupped to pool rain water, transforming it into honeysuckle, into bee nectar. The earth is like her: it transfigures. If only my memory could do the same.

            Her gravestone is still as clear as ever, etched whitely like an invisible message written into chalk cliff-face. Two years gone, her body rests beneath the earth in a shroud. I place the irises atop the faux emerald stones, the violet and purple flowers perfectly coupling the deep green.

            A noise carried on the wind makes me stir. I turn, curious and stunned. But it is not her voice that I hear; just the distant mutterings of an old lady, mourning somewhere amongst the endless rows of graves.

You (flash fiction)

Let me paint the picture for you.

                You are heading home, walking alone down a cul-de-sac, the dark outlines of the trees shadowing the rows of houses, as if projections secreted into fell solidity by the darkness. The moon is haloed in a clutch of diaphanous vapour, suspended in the firmament like a crystal ball held in the pale bony death-hand of the night.

                Your footsteps echo out before you like lost words in the halls of judgement, the lonely reverberations of wolf-song. Suddenly your skin creeps, as if picking up a signal through the darkness, as if your flesh is folding up along the scaffolding of your bones, breaking in violent waves of skin and fat and nerves, rippling in the memoried fix of sensation.

                You feel you are being watched. You’re sure of it, in fact, as if a pair of eyes are burning in the back of your skull. You recognise that your footsteps are now twinned with the faint pitter-patter of another’s. Your heart drums loudly in your chest, like a prisoner beating on the casing of your ribs, prying them loose.

                As you come to the close of the cul-de-sac, approaching the yellow glow of the lamp-lit alley, the footsteps quicken. You stop, breathing shallowly, the presence lingering behind you. A cold hand reaches out steadily and grips your shoulder. You turn sharply, the hand recoiling, and the shape shrinks back. You don’t recognise the face, and it doesn’t recognise yours. A scream rises to the top of its throat. But you cut it off just short of its forming that primordial shrill.

                You are the monster in this story.

To One Hell of a Dame, Whom the Night Could Never Hold

                                                
                                                

                                                a poem is this city now,
                                                50 miles from nowhere,
                                                9:09 in the morning,
                                                the taste of liquor and cigarettes,
                                                no police, no lovers, walking the streets,
                                                this poem, this city, closing its doors,
                                                barricaded, almost empty,
                                                mournful without tears, aging without pity,
                                                the hardrock mountains,
                                                the ocean like a lavender flame,
                                                a moon destitute of greatness,
                                                a small music from broken windows...

                                                                   -   A Poem is a City, Charles Bukowski

This is a story about Rose.

           It was 1986 that I met her, bumming my days down Skid Row, spending my afternoons drinking in the cheap dimestore bars. The days bled into the nights, back into the days, seamlessly, as fine as the movements of a surgeon’s hands, as fine as death. Yes, I remember it as if it were yesterday, her small limpid body, her eyes dark like two rusted coins plucked from the gutter, her hair the brilliant red of cheap wine.

            It was evening, and the bar felt like rain, though it was twenty-nine degrees summer outside. I drank several piss-strength beers, tipping them back in the dark hole of this place, which was frequented by various barflies, low-lives and junkies, like a subterranean beast. ‘Barkeep?’ I said.

            He shifted his towel over his shoulder as he stopped polishing the glass, the gesture now an automatic routine, pointless, given the uncirculated air that was thick with dust, like the inside of a tarred lung. ‘Another Miller?’ he said.

            ‘No,’ I said, my head rattling with days of sleepless ache and semi-conscious drunken stupor. I turned my eyes back down to the bar. ‘Just get me a scotch on the rocks.’

            He put it down in front of me. I looked at it, held it up to the toilet water-coloured light, took a sip. It felt like sweet defeat. ‘Barkeep,’ I said, ‘what time is it?’

            ‘7.45,’ he said. ‘PM.’

            I shrugged my shoulders in resignation, in protest, for no reason. ‘Thanks,’ I said, raising my glass without looking at him. My notebook sat bare on the bar. I was dry on ideas. The sun was now dwindling behind the buildings, setting somewhere over Beverley Hills or over the ocean overlooking Venice Beach, somewhere far away from all the dross and hopeless nullity of this city. I heard the door open but remained fixed on my drink, contemplating the way the brief sting of the liquor stirred up a brief pleasure, a little epiphany down there in my gut.

            She approached the bar, I could smell her cheap and oversickly perfume, and in between drags of her cigarette she asked for a glass of red wine, her voice dark and sweet and hoarse, then she sat a few stools down from me. ‘Starting a little early, ain’t you?’ said the barkeep.

            ‘Fuck you,’ she said, the sound of defeat and indifference ringing through her voice, intermixed with the slightest hint of dignity, like an old defeated dog sick with being too often left at the mercy of the merciless, rain-sodden, underfed and kicked down, to where pride was something unknowable, ineffable, a miracle rather than a human given.

            I sat fixed on my drink, and after a few seconds I could tell she was watching me. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You look like a writer. Are you a writer?’

            I didn’t respond. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I asked you a question. Are you a writer?’

            After once again getting no response of me, she said, ‘Jesus, what pickled you, eh? Bad day, is it?’

            ‘What makes you think you can talk to me like that, you skank whore bitch!’ I said, not taking my eyes away from the bar, my voice angry and grizzled.

            She sat there silent for a moment. ‘That’s very hurtful,’ she said.

            ‘Oh yeah?’ I said.

            ‘Yeah.’

           I turned my face away from the old scratched oak to look at her. She was wearing a low-cut red dress, her legs shapely and full, riding up into a big glorious ass, all woman. Her tits were hanging out almost, and in the faint sourmilk light I could barely see her face. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you want a drink?’ 

            She didn’t respond. ‘Listen, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You want a drink?’

            ‘Sure,’ she said.

            ‘You wanna move down here?’ I said. ‘I won’t bite.’

            She moved down the bar, slowly shuffling in her heels, and sat beside me. ‘What are you having?’ I said.

            ‘I got mine,’ she said.

            ‘No, what are you having?’ I said.

            ‘I got wine!’ she growled, sputtering slightly and clearing her voice. ‘But I was right, wasn’t I? About you being a writer.’

            I laughed to myself and took a sip of the scotch. ‘I guess you were. I’m kind of a novelist.’

            ‘Kind of?’ she parroted.

            ‘Yeah. Well, I’m kind of in the middle of writing a novel.’

            She nodded, seeming either curious or indifferent, or maybe neither, and went to light a cigarette, offering me one. I took it, lit mine, and then she leaned in and waited for me to light hers, her look mysterious. I cupped my hands around the end of the cigarette, flicking the flint and setting off a spark. I looked up above my hands into her eyes. They were green, dark green, like a sickly garden, and her eyes returned my gaze. She took a drag, the cigarette kindled into life, and I unpeeled my hands from the bright glow as the wisps of smoke rose like lost souls into the dead air. ‘A novelist, eh?’ she said. ‘Not some hot shot trying to pull one over my eyes, are ya?’

            ‘No,’ I said. 'I’m a writer.’

            She sat there smiling. ‘So what’s it called, then, this novel?’

            I thought about it briefly. ‘Factotum,’ I said, brushing my chin, as if to reaffirm in my own mind this lie.

            ‘Factotum, eh? Tell me, Mr Writer, what exactly does ‘factotum’ mean?’She leant in towards me, her breasts like two small milky pearls secreted by the night.

            I took a drag. ‘It means, ‘man of many jobs’.’

            ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so it means ‘a bum’, right? A bum – is that right?’

            ‘Very good,’ I said, laughing gently.

            She sat there biting her lip, then she took down a good mouthful of wine, smiling at me. In the semi-drunken smokehaze of my mind I smiled back, my eyes two tired slits, my lips dry.

            ‘Barkeep,’ I said, ‘two of your finest scotches, please!’

            ‘Oh, Mr Writer!’ she said. ‘You are a hot shot after all! You big shot,’ she said, and I wasn’t sure whether she was teasing me or deriding me, as if she knew some dark secret of mine immediately upon clocking me.

            ‘I guess I am a big shot,’ I said, as the barkeep poured the scotch down over the ice. ‘When I can afford it.’ He was a bit tight-assed with the drinks, so I said, ‘Hey, hey! I ordered some scotch with that fucking ice!’

            He looked down his nose at me and shook his head, so I sneered back at him. He didn’t look like he could duke for shit. Big fat feller, but he didn’t realise I could be quick, and my small hands came in handy for sucker-punching the kidneys. I’d take him out back and lay him one any time.

            ‘Here,’ I said, raising my glass, ‘here’s to – to –

            ‘Happiness?’ she offered.

            ‘And fucking!’ I said.

            ‘And writers!’ she said.

            ‘And tits and ass!’ I said.

            ‘And cock and balls!’ she said.

            ‘And endless nights of liquor and mornings full of warm glorious beer shits!’ I said.

            She almost fell off her stool with laughter, and I laughed fitfully and hoarsely down into the bar. ‘So tell me, Mr Writer,’ she said, ‘you have a name?’

            ‘Henry Cherkovski,’ I said. ‘But I prefer Hank. And you?’

            ‘I’m Rose,’ she said, ‘but you can call me Candy,’ she said, winking. ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Hank,’ she said, reaching out a hand. I palmed it, shaking it limply. I went in for a romantic kiss on the hand, fumbling at the end in a spittled confusion of lips, growling like a randy drunkard for comic effect, making her laugh once more.

            When she’d composed herself she said, quite calmly, ‘I like you, Hank.’ And then she leaned into me. ‘Do you wanna fuck me?’ she whispered into my ear. ‘Huh?’ she said, leaning back into her stool.

            I thought about it briefly. ‘I’ll give you $20 if you show me your tits, Candy,’ I said, turning back to the bar for my whiskey. ‘But I ain’t promising much more than that,’ I said, smiling.

***

We made for my place, a little box room on Bunker Hill, late in the evening, picking up two bottles of cheap red wine on the way. We both smoked in the warm evening’s demise as we walked, her huddling at my side, my arm craned around her, propping each other up like two drunken statues.

            We entered into my room around 1 am after much walking and I sat down on the bed and took my shoes and socks off. Candy took off her jacket and brushed her hair in the bathroom, before coming into my room and sitting at my desk in the corner. She turned the chair around to face me, getting my attention. She sat down and started carefully removing her heels, flexing her little feet as she removed one, then removed the other. She stood up and gave me a coquettish look as she hitched her skirt slightly, unbuckling her garter. She lit up a cigarette and slowly removed her tights, flexing one naked leg into the air, then the other, like each was a curious underground animal smelling the many possibilities of the daylight. She sat down in the chair facing me and crossed her legs, expecting me to break the silence.

            I lay back on the bed with my arms resting behind my head. ‘What would fifty dollars get me?’ I said.

            ‘For fifty you can have anything you like,’ she said, swiping her blouse to one side playfully and reaching a hand down towards her cunt.

            ‘Fifty dollars? Hmm... why don’t we talk for a while?’ I said.

            ‘Talk? Don’t you wanna fuck me, Hank?’ she said.

            ‘Well, maybe,’ I said, ‘but I’d just like to talk for a while. Isn’t that a basic service you provide all your valuable customers?’

            ‘What are you, Hank, queer?' she said.

            ‘No, baby. I just wanna talk,' I said.

            ‘Don’t call me baby, Hank. You don’t even know me,’ she said. ‘You ain’t gonna cut me up into little pieces, are ya?

            ‘No! I just want to talk!’ I said, my voice somewhere between amusement and frustration.

            ‘Fine,’ she said, and she came over and sat next to me.

            We talked for hours. I told her about my father, how he used to whip me with the razor strop in the bathroom of our bungalow on Mariposa Street when I cut the grass incorrectly. How my mother never stuck up for me and how my father beat her. About all the women I’d fucked, all my conquests, all my losses. About the time I spent an evening in the slammer for trying and failing to drunkenly assault a police officer. About my stories. About literature. She told me about why she became a whore, opening up to me like a night rose revealing its scent to the stars, like a child uncupping her hands to reveal a small cream-coloured butterfly, or perhaps a little rainbow-spattered newt. She told me about her father, too, and the things he used to do. And she told me about her mother, how she’d never known her – how she’d never been to see her grave. About her younger sister and her abusive relationship. And about heroin, that nihilistic little resin that incites pleasure to riot and will to oblivion. She told me that all she ever thought about was her next fuck, her next fix, and her next drink – and how her next meal was the last thing on her slate.

            It was around 4 am now. We lay there on the sheet, like two soiled angels, two seraphs hit hard times, and I thought about John Fante, Robinson Jeffers, Miller, Celine – all the virtuoso writers of my youth, their words running strong and clear and good like whiskey down into my soul. Virtuoso, I thought, as I lay there, smiling.

            ‘Baby, what you thinkin’?’ said Candy.

            ‘Oh, just about stuff. Nothin’,’ I said.

            ‘Baby, you’re a writer. Tell me, what’s your favourite word?’

            I thought about it for a second, before the word filled my glass like a bottle of rich strong pungent wine, slipping its way down my throat into that place filled with the pleasures of the damned. ‘Virtuoso,’ I said.

            ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What does that mean?’

            ‘It means it’s really good, baby. It’s really good.’

            ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Virtuoso. Hmm.’ She snuggled in closer. ‘Wanna know – wanna know what mine is?’ she said, tickling my stomach, playing with the navel, and giggling with bated breath.

            ‘What is it? What’s your favourite word?’ I said.

            ‘It’s epigram. E-pi-gram,’ she said.

            ‘Know what that means?’ I said.

            ‘No,’ she said. ‘But it sounds very nice.’

            ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But I thought something like fornicate woulda better suited you.’

            ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Don’t get smart with me, mister, you toilet mouth! I know you think you’re some hotshot writer, but I can take you!’ She straddled me, laughing.

            ‘Oh yeah?’

            ‘Yeah!’ she said. She leant down to kiss my lips, and I did not refuse. They were gentle, puffy from years of bruised kissing. Her hand crept down my thigh.

            ‘Wait,’ I said.

            ‘What?’ she said.

            ‘I don’t wanna fuck,’ I said.

            ‘You don’t wanna fuck?’

            ‘Yeah,’ I said.

            ‘You don’t wanna fuck? Okay,’ she said. ‘Have it your way.’ She rolled back down next to me, once again playing with my chest. ‘You’re a weird one, Hank,’ she said.

            I thought about it. ‘I know,’ I said, and I leant in to kiss her. I turned her on her side and massaged her shoulders and those big legs. ‘Let’s sleep.’

            ‘Okay,’ she said.

            As I lay there, listening to her breathe, for some reason – I wasn’t in my right frame of mind – I reached over a hand and played with her hair. She woke up with a start and I thought she seemed fazed. ‘You okay, baby?’ I said.

            ‘Hey, Hank,’ she said.

            ‘Baby,’ I said, kissing her shoulder. ‘How about it?’

            ‘Oh, so now you wanna fuck me, huh?’ she said.

            ‘How much?’ I said.

            She rolled over fitfully onto her side to look at me, looking restless. ‘Oh, I dunno,’ she said, then she straddled me and said, ‘I guess I could just call this a gift – claim it on my expenses... sound good to you?’ she said, laughing quietly.

            ‘Oh, baby? A gift? You think I need a gift? Well, I never look a gift horse in the mouth!’ I said.

            She laughed hard, and so did I, but within a few seconds she’d stopped and was looking at me searchingly. She leant over, her breath unsteady and stinking sweetly of wine, her heart fluttering like a little caged bluebird, and she kissed me, softly at first and then more deeply. I held her in my arms and flipped her onto her back, my hand inching down towards her cunt. I fucked her and she took it like a blade, like it was killing her. She moaned quietly, then louder, looking up at me and smiling gently, her eyes big and full of passion and fear and something else that I couldn't figure. I went down to kiss her again before finishing in a rapturous white tide of exhaustion. I lay beside her, holding her, and she snuggled into me.

            ‘Baby,’ I whispered quietly, ‘I think I love you.’

            ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

***

When I woke up she’d gone, and I never saw her again. I got up and puked and then took a beer shit, my ass feeling like habanero chillies had been boiling away in there for a few months.

            For two weeks I asked around for Candy on Skid Row, but there were so many girls that nobody could ever pin her down. I bummed around, worked odd jobs in warehouses, drank the nights away and slept the days back into the despair and bleakness of night, the numb jaw-ache of beer, wine and whiskey.

            Several months later I heard she’d died from AIDS after contracting HIV from a soiled needle. It was now 1987, but times never change in LA: the rich get richer; the poor get poorer; the sick die, and their disease, poverty, is said to be of their own making; the mean get meaner, and the wise get – well some of ‘em get wiser, but most piss away their lights in the dark holes of bars.

            I’m sat in Mickey’s Bar and I’ve just headed one of my stories. To One Hell of a Dame, Whom the Night Could Never Hold, I scratch onto the top of the page. I go home and print it on the typer, on my little piano, making music of words and dreams of sentences. Little fragments, broken off the edges of life. I put it in an envelope and send it in to Black Sparrow Press.

            I’ve found Rose’s grave and I’m going to see it tomorrow afternoon. I’ve bought her a single red rose, and I’ve promised her in my heart that I won’t cry, because I must be as brave as she was. It’s an unmarked grave, I’ve heard, and apparently they stuffed her into the cheapest casket they could find. I think about the plunger, the needle – how it both gives and takes. Fights its way into the epidermis, into life, into the heart, retracts, the blood mingled with the chemical.

            It both gives and receives, I think. It leaves an impression, a residue, a scar. And if you look in the right places you see the marks made above one’s veins. They remind you that life always gives something, and death always takes – but what life gives I don’t know. Maybe I am a hot shot writer after all. Maybe I am full of shit.

            But fuck that. I tip the bottle back and drink deeply of it, sucking the sweet beer down into my gut. Here’s to you, baby doll, I think. Here’s to you, Rose.

Fragments

 

Today will be the last day of my daughter’s life. I know what you’re thinking: it's only fiction, and here comes the part where he says all the clichéd things about her – about her eyes, her soft hair, how I love her so, how I would do anything to protect her. But you see, I can’t, because I don’t know she is going to die. Life is like that, you see, and if you think it’s not you’re sorely mistaken.

            We are in the park and she is on the miniature Ferris wheel. I can see her little beaming face as she circles slowly in the faded green compartment, on her own, her Baba down below her waving, her mother in the house preparing lunch, Uncle Ashram at the Mosque, and Abed at home practising his readings, biting his nails down to the quick when not absorbed in his religious concentration.

            ‘Sufi!’ I yell. ‘I love you!’

            ‘Baba!’ she says. ‘Baba! Look how high I am!’

            ‘Don’t be scared,’ I say. ‘Don’t be scared, Baba is right here, and you can go as high –’

***

It is night time and I am in bed. Baba shouted at me earlier for not brushing my teeth, and he stood beside me whilst I said my prayers; he tucked me in, kissing me on the forehead, telling me that Gabriel would one day keep me beneath his wings, then he tickled me until I begged him through tears of laughter to stop. I am lying in bed and the lamp is on in the corner, shining light on the paper butterflies and bees on the wall. I turn out the light and go to the window, looking at the stars. They are bright, but not very clear, as Mr Hahmat, next door, has left his pantry light on and it brightens my window in its fuzzy half-light.

            I hear a strange noise and look upwards, shapes seeming to rush like dark angels through the night, and then in the distance I see a bright illumination. It is beautiful and big, like the bonfire that Uncle Ashram made last year when we cooked the lamb after Ramadan. Suddenly I see more lights on the horizon, big balls of colour engulfing the sky. I can hear loud noises and I am scared.

            ‘Baba!’ I yell. ‘Baba!’

            ‘Sufi!’ my Baba calls from downstairs. ‘Baba is coming, get down on the floor!’

            I get down on the floor to hide beneath my bed. I think maybe Allah is angry. I hope it is not because I said my prayers wrong. ‘Baba!’ I scream, and then a bright-hot light explodes outwards like a sun outside the window and I’m –

***

It is March 20th and Rageh Omaar, our Iraq Correspondent, now reports live from Baghdad, a day after Operation Shock and Awe and the bombing of Baghdad was begun by the American Coalition. Rageh, what’s it like where you are?

Well, all is panic and confusion. Where I’m standing the streets are littered with rubble. This used to be a market, but now it’s barely recognisable as anything more than a pile of scorched bricks. Fathers and mothers search desperately for their children amongst the chaos, and over here there is a memorial for a local family whose several children all died in the explosion.

               Fathers show me pictures of their children in desperation, thinking that a non-Iraqi face might be able to help them find their missing family members, but there is very little hope here, and there is little that can be done to help the situation. People are just trying their best to pull together in this desperate hour in searching for their loved ones, but the hospitals are full and the wounded are dying out here in the streets.

            I watched earlier as Coalition troops arrived, the children stood stock still, some waving American flags, some merely terrified or confused. A few adolescents pelted the tanks with stones and bricks but quickly dispersed when more and more troops filled the streets, any opposition encountered easily frightened off with this display of militaristic power.

And Rageh, what’s the situation been like for the past few months?

Well, life has continued as normal. People still live in poverty and obscurity. The middle classes try to keep up their businesses and read American and British magazines and journals; the poor still try to maintain their everyday necessities – electricity, fresh water, heating. But to me it has been like a dream. Most sit in the coffee houses, praising Bush, discussing what will become of Saddam Hussein and his various ministries. To them it's just something to discuss, apart from the tedium and pain of everyday life.

               Since the UN Security Council blockade and sanctions began in 1991, Iraqis have been suffering almost constantly. I’ve asked many Iraqis what they think the occupation will bring, whether it will be a success, but most of them have severe doubts. After the last ten years of despair and disappointment, from what I can gather most of them think that –

***

My father once told me that when a child dies, their young life does not flash before their eyes. They do not see the past, living in their most joyful moment for all time; they see the future, full of pain and misery and the terrible things yet to come. He told me that this is their punishment for the sins of man. But I pray, mighty Allah, protector of all that ever was and will be, redeemer of lost souls, please guide my daughter, my Sufi. Please protect her from such visions. Redeem her, lift her, and show her only the olive branch, the white dove, the tranquil waters of the river Jordan. Allah, cradle her in her hour of need; show her only your everlasting mercy and enduring love. And tell her that her father loves her, that her Baba shall not have let her death be in vain.

            Please, Allah, let her death not have been –

The Painting

The painting was a picture of purity, of placidity, a paean to the God that created it, but it was alone. Alone in a sordid room of old books, dust-ridden, the walls around it crumbling slowly deep beneath the rotten plaster, the tack- and hole-ridden walls discoloured and faded. The painting hung there on the wall like a portal to a better world.

            When the old woman died and her family came round to greet her housekeeper, heads respectfully bowed, attitudes the typical pseudo-morose attitudes of those merely countenancing a pose, young Elizabeth strayed away from the coat-tails of her mother and came upon the room, its large, forbidding oak-panelled door like a guardian.

            She entered, looking around the room, and saw the low grey and brown tones, the cobwebs strung up in the corners like faded decorations, the books like disabled relics of knowledge, crippled now in their cracked and mysterious jackets. Then she noticed a small colourful object, up there pinned to the wall, obscured by dust like the skin of her grandmother’s face, bent in sneer and wrinkled in obscurity, masking whatever beauty once lay beneath.

            She went up to it, but it was positioned too high, so she searched for something to stand on. She found a low chest of drawers, and, bending her knees, almost squatting, she pulled it over to the wall, straightening out the lace covering and swiping the dust off it before climbing atop it. She reached up to the painting and gently wiped the dust from it. Her fingers were slightly damp, and they merely rubbed the dust to a condensed paste, so she wiped her hands on the back of her dress and then cleaned the frame.

            The picture was beautiful. It was of a woman lying on a sun lounger, wearing a bathing suit, a small golden stretch of sand sweeping out in front of her, and she was looking out to sea, as if she were looking at something out there afar, perhaps something she’d lost, a memory, or maybe she longed for something, something that the blue clarity of the water hinted at and yet hid, somewhere beneath the hush of its gentle wash and spray.

            There was a cycad to her right, and a small cottage to her left. It had hanging baskets of small beautiful flowers, buttresses impressed with carnations and potted herbs and spider plants of various sizes, and there were two rose plots running down the sea-facing side of the cottage, brimming over with tangles of red and brilliant sunburst orange flowers.

            She could only make out the back of the woman’s head and the violet sun hat she wore, but she could see her auburn hair, its tight little ringlets seeming to swish and sway in the calm breeze. And then the strangest thing happened: the door to the room slammed shut, a low wind blew through the room, dovetailing her dress and licking the backs of her hands like a small dog’s wet tongue. The picture in the girl’s periphery caught her eye: the woman’s hair seemed to move; the little white tufts of cloud seemed to blow gently across the picture, and then waves seemed to wash upon the shore in quiet succession: whoosh, silence, gulls distantly screeching, the faint cries of coronets, whoosh, whoosh, silence, whoosh, whoosh….

            The girl closed her eyes in fright, willing this vision away, and when she opened them again, the sounds now louder, closer, clearer, she was standing barefoot on a small beach, tranquil, golden, with seabirds wheeling overhead and in the distance. A woman sat in a sun lounger a few yards away from her, her head capped with a delicate violet hat. She approached her quietly, her small feet tiptoeing through the warm sand. Once she stood beside her, she gently tapped the woman's shoulder, but her hand seemed to pass straight through her. She walked out in front of her, looking at the woman’s face.

            She was beautiful, the woman: her face pale; her milky flesh seemed to perfectly contrast her black bathing suit, and her figure was supple and firm. A small beauty spot dotted one corner of her mouth, and the woman wore upon her face a contented smile.

            The girl was overjoyed: ‘Hello! My name’s Elizabeth!’ The girl considered this, and then said, ‘No it’s not! It’s Maisy!’ She gave herself the name of her favourite china doll, entertaining this fantasy in the proper fashion. ‘What’s your name?’ she said.

            The woman’s gaze was still fixed out there on the sea, and Elizabeth thought it strange that she hadn’t yet blinked. ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Excuse me? Miss, do you know where I am? Miss?’

            But the woman was unresponsive. Just then Elizabeth thought a cloud had passed over the sun, as everything momentarily went dark, as if some terrible and mysterious force had briefly cloaked her world. She looked down the beach and saw something strange written in the sand. She approached it, walking a few yards down the beach, and when she got there, tiptoeing between the ruts in the sand, she couldn’t make out what it was. She stood below the symbols, legs wide apart looking down, investigating the sand like an amateur sleuth. It was an artist’s signature, but she could not make it out. She decided to walk back up the beach to the woman.

            She waited a few more moments, looking at the woman's blank face. ‘Miss? Miss, are you all right?’ She looked at the woman’s face more closely, and beneath the bright smile there seemed to lurk an immense tide of sorrow, pulling at it, showing through like the sun teasing cold-coloured vapour in the early twilight of morning.

            Elizabeth looked out to sea, and she could see something strange out there. There was a little grey square floating above the water, suspended in the air like a niche in a wall, and it seemed to be swelling in size. As she strained her eyes she began to make out what it was: it was a painting of her grandmother’s room, the browns and greys deep and immeasurably sorrowful, washed in pain and twisted beneath the waves of a leaden ocean. It was a picture of sadness, and she could no longer bear not to reach out and touch it.

            As she did so, she closed her eyes, a bright light filling the cracks between her eyelids, and when she opened them she was back in her grandmother’s room. ‘There you are, Elizabeth!' her mother said. ‘What are you doing in here?’

            ‘I – I was lost,’ she replied.

            ‘Lost?’ her mother repeated in disbelief.

            ‘Yes, for a little while,’ she said.

            ‘Don’t give me that!’ she said, tugging her daughter out of the room. 'And look at your dress!' she said, patting her down. 'Now come, this is not our house to wander around.'

As they stepped over the threshold, turning into the hall, Elizabeth looked back at the painting and caught a glimpse of the woman sitting on the beach staring out to sea. There she would sit for ever, she thought, blown by the breeze like a desert, never giving up her secrets to the wind.

Absurdity

It was just another routine day – eating porridge oats alone at his small breakfast table, cup of strong coffee to wash it down, leaving the house at 7.30 am – until Officer John Stiles got the call from Sarge to report to Lower City Heights to talk the suicidal man into not splattering his old body onto the dirty grey sidewalk of South East London. He’d dealt with hundreds before, most of which he’d saved, but there was the odd exception – the odd exception like Mr Beckett.

            He woke up at half six, his mouth reeking of the bitter taste of whiskey, as if the blood of a Glaswegian had been strained and siphoned directly into his veins, and showered immediately. He got the call at 7.15: ‘The guy’s name is Samuel, apparently,’ said Sarge, ‘but he told us to call him Mr Beckett – doesn’t like informality. A Ms Rover, on the twentieth storey, called in just after 7 am saying she could hear someone on the roof ranting and raving, and when she opened her sliding doors all she could make out was blah, blah, absurdity, blah, blah, blah, the bleakness of it all, the absurdity, the laughability blah, blah.’ Sarge paused. ‘Get there ASAP, John. We already have two squadrons down there to secure the area. Rendezvous with DS Sturridge. Good luck, John.’

            He left his house as soon as he’d grabbed his coat off the hook and checked the boiler. He drove off at speed in his beige Beamer from his house in Islington, putting his single blue siren on the top of his car to inform the public that he wasn’t some angry scrap metal dealer hurling himself around London on some mob reprisal but was in fact a respectable off-duty member of the London Metropolitan Police Force.

            The sky outside was like lead, like the inside of a rusted kettle, and the ugly grey clouds pocked the heavens as if it were the scabbed over face of some fat greasy teenager. No sun penetrated the clouds, and the iron scaffolding looked like it would last all winter. As he approached the series of high-rises, which rose up like the legs of giant birds dominating a desecrated wasteland of rubble and irregular sprays of greenery, he looked up at the top storeys of the buildings. Hanging from one of the three he could see dangling a pair of legs, indistinct way up there, but he could see they hung limply like the legs of a straw man.

            As he pulled in to park he was met by Detective Superintendent Paul Sturridge, Detective Inspectors Mike Turrington and Michelle Evans, and Detective Constables Peter Wood and Steven Mitchell. ‘Morning, Superintendent,’ said John, locking the car and approaching his colleagues, who were cloaked like death in long black jackets. Two officers stood by a patrol car, staring up at the top floor, one of whom was talking into a two-way radio. ‘Morning, DI Turrington, DI Evans.’ He turned to the DCs. ‘Morning, fellers.’

            ‘John,’ said DI Evans, her thick lips, like full segments of tangerine, mouthing his name, forbidden fruits with erotic connotations, ‘the man’s been up there God knows how long; Ms Rover went to bed at 1 am, so it could’ve been any time after that.’ She paused, giving John just enough time to admire her supple neck, her long blonde hair, her eyes like shimmering horse chestnuts. It had been three years since Karen left him, and it had been two years since he’d had a piece of ass: his last was DI Evans two Christmases previous, but she’d not given him any indication since that she felt anything more for him than the entertaining of a quick drunken grope and a pity shag in the back of the Dog and Duck pub.

            ‘John,’ she continued, summoning his distant gaze, him seeming to stare through her, or into her, ‘Ms Rover is a recent widow: her husband died seven months ago from a heart attack. We sent her round her daughter’s to give her a bit of peace from all this.’

            ‘John,’ DS Sturridge broke in, ‘we’re counting on you to get this feller down. Some hot shot world-famous writer, we’ve been told. We’ve had his literary agents on the blower bellowing commands at us, telling us how much the fucker’s worth and what they’ll do to us if we don’t fix this. They tried to send someone down to talk to him, but the nutter said he wouldn’t talk to anyone from Faber and Faber. He wanted to be left alone to think things over and enjoy the view, he said. Hence why we’ve called you.’

            DS Sturridge stared at Inspector Stiles. ‘Okay,’ said John, ‘I’m ready for this one. Samuel Beckett, you say? The playwright? This must be a dream.’

            ‘It ain’t no dream, son,’ said DS Sturridge. ‘Now when you’re ready head up. We’ll all be waiting down here for the two of you when you come down. You’ve got till 9 am. If you’re not down by then we’ll be changing plans. We don't want to create a scene or alert this to the press. Here, take this,’ he said, as he handed him a radio. ‘Do not stay out of radio contact, okay? Give us any important updates as and when they arise.’

            ‘Sir,’ said John, as he pocketed the radio. He gave a quick salute to them as he headed towards the entrance. ‘Boys,’ he said to the two officers guarding the entrance to the flats. He entered the lobby and paused briefly to decide which of the two elevators to take. He pressed the right buzzer and waited for it to descend to the ground floor.

*****

The elevator climbed the shaft slowly until it reached the terminus of the twentieth storey, crunching to a mechanical silence with a start. The doors shuttered open and John stepped out from the dimly lit space out into a dimly lit, grimy hall, a large bay window to his right overlooking the sordid grey sweep of South-East London brick-top and tarmac. Next to the lift there was a door with a lock broken off its hinge, and on this door was printed the phrase MAINTENANCE ENTRANCE – DANGER: ROOF ACCESS! STAFF ONLY!

            John forced the door open slightly and climbed the ladder up to a small hatch that opened onto the roof terrace. The wind howled its low tones quietly about him, sweeping up his hair. John held his jacket to himself to stop it billowing up, and he fastened it tight for fear of being blown off of the roof, down to ground level with the rest of the grey scum and detritus.

            He could see the back of the man. He walked over to him slowly, his feet gently crunching the gravel. The man turned around and John recognised him immediately: slattern long face and dark serious eyes, his hair a shock of white; he was cloaked in a trench coat, a brown suede suit underneath, and clasping a rosewood pipe in the corner of his mouth, his head topped off with a black hat. There was no mistaking that this man was Samuel Beckett.

            ‘Hello, there,’ said Beckett. ‘You must be the man who’s come to save my poor little soul, I presume?’

            ‘Mr Beckett?’ said John. ‘What a pleasure this is.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he said.

            ‘Oh, go for it,’ said Beckett, rolling up his eyes. ‘It can’t do any harm, can it?’

            ‘That’s my philosophy exactly,’ said John. ‘Care for one?’

            ‘Oh, go on then,’ said Beckett, plucking a Camel from the pack. He tapped the ash from his pipe and put the pipe into his jacket pocket, then searched his pockets for a light.

            ‘Here,’ said John, extending out his Zippo.

            ‘Ah, thanks!’ said Beckett, inhaling a lungful of thick sweet smoke down into his grey and famished body. He held it for a few seconds before releasing the ream of smoke like a blast of fly ash from a chimney.

            John stood there, puffing on the cigarette, pleasurably watching Beckett as he smoked, the routine of his little habit one obviously cultivated since his youth. ‘So tell me, Mr Beckett,’ said John, ‘why are you half hanging over the ledge of a twenty-storey municipal building?’

            Beckett took one last puff before stubbing out the cigarette and flicking it over into the swirling abyss, watching it twirl downwards, little embers sparking off of it. ‘Very astutely observed, Mr?’

            ‘Detective Inspector Stiles,’ he interrupted, ‘but, please, call me John.’

            ‘Ah, John? A real man’s name, wouldn’t you say?’

            John looked humoured by this little non-sequitur.

            ‘Got any kids, John?’ said Beckett.

            ‘Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. Why don’t you answer my question first?’

            Beckett looked taken aback. ‘Why, John, that’s no way to speak to a man on the edge! Haven’t you got any idea of how to comport yourself in such matters? Why, I thought this was your job!’ He smiled up at him wryly. ‘Well, if you must know, John, I just wanted to observe this lovely view.’ He paused, a whimsical look passing over his face. ‘I bet Paris is lovely this time of year. The patisseries, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the various still waterways, the artists chatting deconstruction and Sartre, strong coffee, carefree women. Ever been to Paris?’ he said, nostalgically.

            ‘No, never,’ said John. ‘How long were you there?’

            ‘Oh, just in my youth. The golden days, the good days, the salad days – the whiskey and cigarette smoke days,’ he said, smiling. ‘Everything in France is done to excess!’ he beamed, ‘Unlike here, in this miserable hole of a country.’

            John didn’t know whether he was supposed to take offence at this comment, but he remained neutral. ‘I have two sons and a daughter,’ he said. ‘My youngest lives with his mother,’ the other two are out there in the big wide world doing their own thing. One lives up in Manchester, the other is studying Economics at University College.’

            ‘Oh, yes?’ said Beckett. ‘Sounds great. I’ve heard Manchester is quite the up and coming place.’ He looked back down over the precipice at the little black and white ants and their patrol cars.

            ‘Why do you want to kill yourself?’ said John. ‘If you’ll permit me to be so blunt. It seems a man like you has everything he wants – could ever want for in fact.’

            ‘Kill myself?’ said Beckett. ‘Who said anything about that? If I do it or not, it’s not a conscious choice. I just think the good things have run their course, and now all I can see is absurdity. A wide blank empty absurdity, its cold eyes winking at me wherever I look. But you’re right, I am a lucky man in many ways.’

            ‘Absurdity?’ said John. ‘I’ve heard about your theories on life. Sounds quite depressing, really. Why do you believe everything’s so vacant? Are you a pessimist, Mr Beckett?’

‘A Pessimist? Oh, no! I’ve far too much to do than to couch my thoughts down in such pointless low sentiments! Why dwell in such a mire when there is work to be done?’ He cleared his throat slightly. ‘You see, I believe that absurdity is the sole force operating in this universe that we call the, er –

            ‘Universe?’ interjected the officer.

            ‘Precisely,’ said  Beckett, ‘but to kill oneself would be an admission to it – to absurdity. Do you follow?’

            ‘I think so,’ said the officer, ‘but, pray, please continue.’ John was acutely aware that he was sounding more and more like a caricature of a Shakespearean character, and as they conversed he could sense that Beckett was tiding off any feelings of suicide he’d been entertaining as he was permitted to ramble on, so John permitted him to continue, and as Beckett did so he inched himself closer and closer to him, until he was eventually sitting beside him. He offered him another cigarette, and they both lit up.

            ‘You see, whilst the universe is a pointless mass of stars, the superheated inanimate husks of which emit heat and light until they die pointlessly, are re-birthed pointlessly and so cycle on in such a pointless fashion until the universe winks out its last in a bleak infinite final moment of total death, one has to look on the bright side of things occasionally.’

            ‘As the Pythons said?’ said John, quite disbelieving the fact that he was entertaining the milieu of this man, whom most certainly was either a manic depressive or entirely sideways out-of-his-rocker mad.

            ‘No, snakes can’t talk – don’t be absurd,’ Beckett said bluntly, smiling, his Irish lilt coming through ever so gently with the last word.

            ‘No, the Monty Pythons – you know: Eric Idle, Michael Palin, John Cleese, etc.’

            ‘Oh, I know those fools. Inspired by my work, no doubt! Tell me,’ said Beckett, taking off his hat and looking into it, ‘have you read any of my works?’

            The officer paused to wrack his brains. ‘Well, I once saw a production of Waiting for Godot. I know you’ve written other stuff, but I’ve never really picked any of it up – I don’t get the time now, you see.’

            ‘Oh, Godot, eh?’ said Beckett. ‘There’s something that’s always been a bit of an albatross to me. What did you think of it?’

            ‘Me? Well, I thought it was quite funny, really. Painful in places,' he said, Beckett staring at him unconvinced. 'My wife used to love the arts. She dragged me along to it, if I’m honest with you. If I’m completely blunt, though, I thought it was a load of self-indulgent bullshit. But that’s my attitude to most of the arts. It’s hard to dream big when your day job is to stop the psychologically compromised from messing up council property with their flesh, blood and faeces.’

            Beckett looked amused. ‘Not exactly a patron of the arts then? C'est la fin des haricots! Well, the arts have been going down the toilet in this country for years: nobody cares about them. But without them where would we be? All in the gutter, with no stars to aspire towards.’

            ‘Well, I see your point,’ said John. ‘But if I may change the subject,’ he said, ‘why did you really come up here?’

            Beckett was looking down over the edge at his dangling feet. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘it wasn’t really to admire the view. I think you know that,’ he said. 'I feel this could be my last tape, as it were,' he said, whimsically. He turned his stern features towards John. ‘We are born into circumstances beyond our control, to parents out of our choosing, to a life through which we scamper like subterranean rodents down a network of blank tubes, into a godless and purposeless universe. From birth we slowly run downwards and downwards into the inevitable decay of all living creatures, into the inevitable decay of the universe. Love mistreats us, blinds us, fools us, conjures up apparitions before our eyes and then snatches them away just as we reach out to embrace them, phantoms and ghosts of the heart, and then those we love fall away into death’s arms. And passion? The good go mad, the bad get bolder, the sane fill the asylums, the mad run the stock exchange, the honest are tricked and used, the con men dress up as cherubims and wear their public smiles, the loveless go unloved and unappreciated, and the loved put maggot-ridden apples to the lips of their lovers, and ultimately we all lose the things we adore, eventually craving the grave more than the worm craves the flesh. We die before we are dead, and in dying we merely accept that life is too much of a heavy burden to behold, giving up our bodies to the loam like dandelions their seeds to the wind. We are, in essence, lost children, finding our own way in a dark world, with the cradle on one side, death on the other, and great fields of sorrow and ecstasy all about us.’

            John looked at Beckett with a heavy expression writ across his brow. ‘And you believe that?’ he said, not really bearing in mind that final sentiment.

            Beckett nodded gravely.

            A dark sentiment was throwing down roots inside John, curling them around something solid deep down there and gaining purchase. He thought about his children, most of whom didn’t care when or whether they saw him, and he thought about his ex-wife Karen, and he thought about his future, looming ahead of him like a huge grey cloak covering his eyes, and when that cloak was removed there was only a behemoth gravestone, etched in grey marble, with the word FIN printed upon it. John stood up, looked down at Samuel, and then paused. He looked over the edge of the building, down at his colleagues, teasing one foot over the edge and letting it hang out there. Then John looked back to Beckett, gave a nervous smile, and jumped.

*****

            Beckett watched, tilting his head down over the precipice, as John descended. The police officers down below craned their necks and gasped watching as the figure plummeted, his jacket billowing out like smoke behind him. Air rushed up into his face and he briefly entertained the idea that he was a bird; he could wing himself left or right, up or down - maybe even into the past. Before the terror filled him completely, he pictured his daughter when she was three, her beautiful jade eyes framed in a podgey rosy-cheeked face. The ground rushed up towards him like death's embrace.

Within a few seconds he’d hit the ground, a loud crunching sound issuing out, followed by a sucking sound, like a giant foot had left an impression in sticky mud and then wrenched it out. From up on the twentieth storey, Beckett could see the body, contorted into an inhuman shape on the road. It was mashed up like a pulped novel, bits of spongy flesh scattered like bird feed. His look of horror somehow turned into one of brief amusement, before he suddenly burst out laughing, throwing his head back in a menacing throaty howl that felt like it would wrench up his lungs from out of him.

            But then he looked again, realising that the shape down there, inconsistent with the regular form of a human being, was actually once a man, a man whom had tried to save him, a good man, conceivably. He once had taken his children out into the countryside for picnics, sitting beneath the shade of oaks and willows whilst pointing out red admirals and ladybirds, had bathed them, had offered them consolation when tears filled their eyes; he had made love to his wife, once sharing with her a carnal knowledge of her most intimate secrets and desires, promising never to let things change. And now he was just a sorry spattering of flesh down there on the blacktop.

             There had to be more to life than this, thought Beckett. He looked to the sky but the grey refused to break. Somewhere amidst all the noise and chaos of London, on the roof of a twenty-storey council flat, something absurd was happening: somewhere out there, the human heart of a moribund man was taking a hammer to his skull, trying to break into the thing which had so consumed all the life that once filled him. He gazed out onto the noise and stink of the city, and all at once colour and music seemed to jump out at him from the drab monotone as if the city were once merely a badly sketched outline of a city, printed onto tracing paper. 

He sank to his knees beneath the leaden sky like an idol, like a child ready for communion, like a damned man seeking penance, like a doomed man who'd had the light forced into the tiny black crack of his being from which he once peered out at the world like a frightened crab. And with each breath the world crashed down into him, as if into a gorge, each wave like drowning, each second an eternity of death and rebirth....