STORYTIME (part 7)

Part 7! Enjoy.

PART 7

So now they were alone, the three of them. Well, alone at the table, that is. The Cockatoo still roared along, hipster lads comparing identical scarves, musician types starting up a tune on the resident xylophone. Drunker clientele were drawing moustaches on all the chickens. If there’s one thing that’s truly unnatural, it’s a chicken with a moustache, picture or otherwise.

“Sorry about him. I needed you to meet him tonight.”

“Who was he? What was his name, anyway?”

“He don’t have no name, or that’s what he says. Gave the booksellers hella trouble when his first anthology got out. Some cat come in, look for the book, don’t find it, crawl out the shop. So he had to give it a name, called himself Rupert Cornelius Chameleon. Ain’t real, I guess.”

“Anyways, I don’t know if Lester told you, but Gert, I got you here to tell you something. You need to know Abraham’s story, what happened to him in America.

“I don’t know ’bout his early life, don’t know about him growing up on the Emerald Isle. They say he was England for a while too, but the first I knew of him was in the good old U S of A.”

“We’ve heard some of his shenanigans in Ireland,” Gert informed her, proud of his sleuthing skills.

“Right, great. Well, I first met him out in Tennessee, one long lonely night under the stars. He didn’t have a bean to his name, that young lad. Came over there for the American Dream, he did, but way back then it was still just that – a dream.

“So he was there, truckin round Nashville, living day to day, just looking for something to eat. He’d eat anything, that kid, except fish, for some reason. Never did find out why he turned up his nose at the seafood, wouldn’t say.

“One day, I passed him on the side of the road. He was grinning ear-to-ear. I asked him, ‘Sonny, what you so glad about?’ He’d got himself a salt shaker. I couldn’t for the life of me see what was so peachy ’bout a salt shaker.

“Well, anyways, he comes back next day, and he’s got something in his chest pocket. He’s got a toothbrush! I ask him, ‘Sonny, where d’ya get that toothbrush?’ Turns out he’d bartered for it. Hung about some fancy porches all day. Picked up some snails and slugs from the topiary, put them in the flowers. Home owner comes out later to water his plants, finds the slugs. Abraham pops up, little Irish fella with a salt shaker, offers to trade the Yank some salt, asks for something in return. Ends his day smiling bright, he’s got a toothbrush for his troubles.”

“Why’d he want a toothbrush?” asked Lester, not understanding what oral hygiene had to do with the American Dream.

“He didn’t want no toothbrush, kid. He sold it immediately.”

“Sold it?”

“Bartered it, really. Found some old paint in the dump, gave it a lick of paint, racing stripes. Takes it back to them fancy porches, goes knocking door to door. Sometime later, an impressionable young teen likes the look of his brush, offers to trade it for a pair of scissors. So now kid Abe’s got himself a pair of scissors, real sharp like.

“He takes them scissors, cuts himself a chance. Sharpens them up, turns them to a weapon, well that’s if your enemy don’t like no poke in the arm. Finds a hunting shooting type, trades it for a sheepskin hood. Turns out the hood’s down, the latest trend with the kids. Trades with another boy, now he’s got himself a bike. Fair trade then, a hood for a bike.

“Living the American Dream, our Abe. Took that bike, put an exhaust pipe on it, called it a rocket ship. Finds another kid, kid gazing at the stars, wants to be Neil Armstrong. Trades the bike, gives him a Chevrolet in return. Abe ain’t got a home or a family, but he’s got himself a classic auto-mobile.

“Classic’s pushing it though. Beat up, run down, brown dirt track camouflage. Ain’t the car you’d drive through Sunset Boulevard. But that’s just what he did, our Abe. Jumps in his front seat, pulses the motor, runs it all the way to San Francisco, looking for Hollywood. Course, Hollywood’s in LA, so he goes there instead, living America for real.

“Takes that saloon, gives it a shoeshine. Dirt brown’s now a shining copper light, bright to reflect all them stars in the sky. He’s out in front the movie studio, leaning ‘gainst the Corvette, smokin’ something strong. Producer rolls out from a film, dressed as a policeman, tight in uniform. He says to Abe, ‘What can I do for you, son?’

“And Abe’s a sweet smelling man in ragged clothes, a crazy, cootie-ridden Irishman with a Chevrolet, and he looks like he’s on for a deal. He’s up for a part, if he can just act it out. So he says, in that rough Irish growl of his, ‘Hey, movie cop, I’m your next star.’

“The producer has five kids like this a day, rolling up, looking for dinner in the camera light. And every day he turns five away, sending them back to electric hotels. Failed surfers, Broadway castaways, all go the same way. But today, this time, somehow he gives in. Gives Abe a go. No script, no shoeshine, just a small-time picture as Angry Crowd Member Twenty One.

“Abe wasn’t leaving LA any time soon, so he traded in his car for a one-bed apartment on the Upper East. World of guns and knives and pocket-thieves, a part of LA where it’s all rats and no stars. Abe plays his part, dodging the devil, playing the crowd. The kind of life folkies sing songs about, a droopy-hair fella softly strumming the guitar.

“So he’s there watching, waiting on the overpaid male leads and all them swingeing starlets. And he sees a pretty young actress, all eyelashes and talent, and he falls in love from the crowd, as men often do. He says he’s gonna get that girl, no matter what he does, gonna be the star of the show for her, take away all her sorrow.

“And so Abe’s a Crowd Member, he’s a Bus Passenger, he’s all the little people, from Flower Seller 3 to the bruised-out Victorian Urchin. But he’s good, oh yeah he’s good. If you’d seen him at the bus stop you’d think it was a real bus you were waiting for, not some over-budget dinosaur rom-com Z-movie coach wheels.

“He’s so good, he gets a line. Shopkeeper: That’ll be 12 dollars, ma’am. Great performance, shopkeeper gets another line. ‘Can I interest you in some apples?’ Producer goes wild, gives him a pay rise of 20 cents. Big money, but Abe’s got a new plan. He’s gonna play the shopkeeper for good. So he gets out the apartment, walks down the bakery.

“Abe waits ’til there ain’t no prying eyes, and he stands behind the counter. Customer walks in, he delivers his 12 dollars line, customer can’t tell dream from real. He collects the dough, makes the dough, and now he’s a living breathing money-spinner, baking his daily bread straight from the oven, a real-time Yank hero.

“He’s still playing his parts, but now he’s got a trade. Keeps acting, and suddenly he’s making a fistful. Bedsit’s now a little house, a continent away from gangland. But he’s still acting, and he ain’t forgotten the actress. So he puts half shares of his bakery up, trades with the producer for a speaking part, and soon he’s sharing tickets for the big time.

“But tickets don’t get you no seat in the big time show, they just let you in the door, and l’il Abraham needed to find the girl in the stalls. He still don’t know her, ain’t spoke a word to her. He was only tall as his height, and only had what he could trade for. He thought he’d need to play the big shot, the collar jewel, the watch-worn college boy.

“His first part’s a French count in a sci-fi drama. He learns his lines, loosens his accent. He’s standing tall in the studio, croaking every ‘r’, and suddenly she’s there, all dressed up as an alien carpet salesman. Now the toad’s deep down the French count’s throat, and he can’t make no sound nor song nor rhyme.

“But one day he speaks and she speaks back and he speaks again, and the frog’s gone and it’s leapt away out into lush grassland, hopping and jumping. More days go by and the picture ends, and they’re still talking in still life, like sunflowers in a vase. But Bea don’t go with him, not yet. Not now he’s got all that dime.

“See, she’d just been playing the Russian leadin’ lady in a spy thriller, and she’d looked all the Communists in the eye. And she’d caught the faith, seen the sickle light. Life ain’t about trading your way to the top, she said, when you can join hands with the proletariat by the altar. If he wanted to go to the altar with her, she said, he’d have to trade it all for a ticket to Cuba.

“Anyways, I’m over in LA by now, and I’ve seen him again, and I’ve heard all his fight. He’s in a new movie, as an old President of the U S of A, He don’t wanna go to Cuba, not really, and he don’t know how to get there, not really. The Pacific Coast got sun enough, he reckon, and free trade too. But he’ll go with her, all the same, go back to the pits if she wanted, if they could.

“It’s hard there. He’s got his part to play. He’s got half a shop. She’s got her place too, now a heroine in an indie teen flick, and she can’t just run off. They’ll be caught. Contract law, kid. Can’t just break it all off. So they get their heads together, and they plan their escape. Come up with a plan so devious they could fool the wisest cat on the curtain. Now, them kids could act, all right. He thought about being the shopkeeper again, but there’s no way a shopkeeper can run away with an indie heroine. No talkie ever ends like that, no matter who’s directing.

“So there’s only one thing he can do. They make their plans and, one week later, the pearly-white producer, the one who gave him his big break, the producer hears his phone ring. Picks it up, holds it close, and there’s an official voice in his ear, you know, like the guy who reads the news. Reading the news to producer-man now, telling him the President’s gonna be visiting his studio tomorrow, a super slick visit, not just to chum. There’s business to do, national security. Things more important than flicks, if you know what I’m saying.

“And the producer has a crazy night. He’s never met the President, not once, but he’s the kind of cat who thinks he oughta. Thinks the country’s all for him, that he’s the superstar in a great big play, the lion of jungle suburbia. And he gets all his staff ready, hands clasped behind backs, leaning forward as a shiny limousine approaches.

“The limo slows, a big, dark limousine, and it stops right in front the red carpet. A man gets out, dark glasses and sweeping hair, and offers his hand. I’m there too, carrying his case, playing the President’s aide.

“’Welcome, Mister President!’ The producer’s time is shining, and his tie is sober. Abe, Mister President, does his best JFK impression, hooting, tooting, talkin’ ’bout donuts. He’s swept round the studio, looking through all the cameras, caught up in all the bright lights. And finally he’s introduced to Bea, as if for the first time, and he smiles politely, and says it’s her they need to discuss.

“So we go to a back room, Abe, the producer, Bea and me. And Abe, Mister President, Abe says that the CIA have been tracking Bea, and she’s a Soviet spy, and they need to take her away. Off to jail she’ll go, locked up for betraying the land of the free. She’s crying, and cries, and cries. Producer’s still starstruck, sad but tryin’ not to show it, and he tells her to go. Contract law don’t mean nothin’ when the President tells you otherwise.

“And they’re off, back of the old Chevrolet Abe’s bought back, and I’m outta there, back to my li’l room in Tennessee. Di’nt see Abe again, not for years, but I heard all about what happened.

“You see, some kid at the film studio suspected something. He’d been in love with the girl for an age, seen her with Abe, and he’d been pretty darn green. Yeah, the President said she had to go, but when did the President do this kinda thing? What’s more, no-one could get hold of Abraham. He’d gone someplace.

“The more he reasoned, the more he suspected. JFK was a tall guy, and this one was as short as a sharpened pencil. I guess that didn’t clinch it, though. The year was the real killer. It was 1970, and Kennedy, Lord rest his soul, had been gone seven dark years already. Ain’t no President gonna show up seven years after his death, even the great hero JFK. So the kid tells his boss what’s happened, and his boss calls the cops. Someone flicks a switch and every siren on the West Coast is humming the tune.

“Oh, the film studio knew Bea had been playing a Communist. They’d been keeping every ear out, hoping to catch her drift. But they’d missed it, and she’d gone, and they sure were angry. The newspapers are buzzing and the radio’s stinging for her and the cops are chasing for a classic Corvette and a pair of Red tearaways.

“The lovers didn’t get to Cuba. Feds saw to that. Where they did get to is anyone’s guess, but they weren’t ever seen in the U S of A again, that’s for sure. Abe never went back, he told me. Guess they musta ended up over on this li’l island, most likely.”

Lester was the first to talk again. “Where did Abe live when he got here, anyway?”

“Oh, on the West Point farm, just outta town. He took it over, the whole place.”

“Lucky lad, Abe,” Gert remarked meaningfully, as if he’d got a hint to drop.

“Yeah, too right.”

There was one question Lester felt he needed to ask. “So if they ran away, and Abe ended up back here, and now he’s gone for ever, what happened to her? Where;s Bea?”

“Well kid, that’s just the thing. See, she…”

But before she could explain, Rupert Cornelius thundered back in, crashing to their table, only quietening down to slide elegantly into a chair.

“Forgot my pen,” he explained, picking up his pen. Turning round to the bar, he ordered himself a Martini and sat smug in the way. Janey, shrugging, left it at that.

“Now where were we? I think we were trying to find a rhyme for ‘chalk’, were we not?”

Gert groaned and left the bar. Lester, of course, followed quickly.

“Gert, why do you think Janey wanted to tell us all that so urgently?”

Gert laughed knowingly. “Oh, Lester, I don’t think she knows what I know. She wanted us to hear more about Abraham, but I’ve understood everything! The final jig’s in the saw, young’un.”

“So who did it, then?”

“Oh, it’s not who, but why. Lad, there are some things people murder for. Some things even I’d murder for. You’ll understand soon.

“We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Need to be up bright and early, so you’re off duty. Go home, get a proper kip.”

“Why? Are we going to apprehend the murderer?”

“No, young’un, no.”

“Are we going to take our evidence to the police?”

“No.

“No, tomorrow’s the Novelty Vegetable Show at the Farmer’s Arms! There’s some fun to be had there. See you on the morrow!”

And with that the night set in.

STORYTIME (part 6)

I will get around to posting something which isn’t this stupid bloody story. Anyway, here’s part 6.

————————–

PART 6

Twenty minutes later, Lester was poised by a flickering neon sign, bemused. He was resting on a translucent, bright blue counter, trying to communicate with a dreadlocked barmaid. All very simple, you might think. The problem was that he couldn’t speak.

It is very difficult to order a packet of peanuts when you cannot speak, for there is no language designed to order nuts, and no alternative convention for these moments. His first task was to try and attract the barmaid’s attention in the first place. Normally, this was difficult enough, as some rough-and-ready chancer always had better timing than Lester. He would be waiting at the bar for minutes, but was poor at seizing his chance when it finally came, giving way to a more rhythmic drunk in the ordering pre-chorus. Even if he did manage to catch the barmaid’s eye, his second challenge was to convey an impression of peanuts. This is not easy. If he had been ordering a beer, he could have pointed to one of the bottles in the little fridge under the bar. If he was wanting a whisky, he could have pointed to the pointlessly upside-down bottle that hung from the wall and was connected, via a labyrinth of tubes and tunnels, to the nozzle lying on the counter itself. Peanuts, however, were not within sight, and were not clearly in mind.

Lester looked up to the heavens, pondering. Above the bar hung an ironic poster emblazoned with the slogan, “You can never find a cock or two in the Cockatoo!” Underneath, just to reinforce the humour, was a picture of two large chickens. Uninspired by the poster, Lester wondered whether to use his finely-honed charades skills, a talent acquired from a thousand family gatherings.

Unfortunately, it was at this moment, before Lester could dismiss charades as an option, that the barmaid spotted him. He paused, ready to order. She waited expectantly, raising a finger to her lips, as if mute Lester needed telling to be silent. He raised his finger in response, not to his lips, nor to meet hers in a Sistine Chapel sort of way, but to indicate it was the first syllable.

She narrowed her eyes, looking a little befuddled. Trying to help, she turned sideways, leaned closer and cupped her hand to her ear, gesturing for him to speak up. Silent Lester, of course, could not speak up, and, even if he could, she would only have told him to be quiet. Instead, he made a little motion with his fingers, as if squeezing a fresh green pea between them.

The barmaid folded her arms, widening her eyes. She clearly hadn’t guessed the first syllable, Lester thought. He would have to proceed immediately to the second., because the only homophone he could think of was ‘pee’, and that’s not something you want to be signalling in a public place.

Lester raised two fingers up in the air: second syllable. The barmaid’s surprise quickly changed to a scowl, which deepened as Lester pointed his finger at his head, rotated his arm and made the face of a lunatic. Pea. Nuts. Peanuts. Simple, he thought. Even an amateur could have guessed that charade. He didn’t understand why she stormed off, still taking care not to make a noise. Exasperated, Lester gave up on the peanuts. He turned to face the evening’s entertainment.

In fact, the evening’s entertainment had caused Lester’s silence. There was a light, high humming from the far end of the bar. It was barely audible, but the audience were riveted, taking care not to miss a single beat. Three musicians posed there, dressed identically, grey matching cardigans with grey corduroy trousers, looking down at their computers with fervent dedication. The humming continued at the same pitch, with relentless virtuosity. The audience sat rigid, upright, poised for the slightest murmur, tremble, prey listening for a wise owl to prey on them.

The bald, muscular musician on the left pressed a button on his synthesizer. There was a small gasp of appreciation from some of the audience. Lester gasped along too, half a second later, hoping he’d done the right thing. A few more button presses, a couple of clicks on the keyboards, and the lady in the middle of the band, a tall silver-haired songster, moaned. Some listeners leaned back, looking to the skies, lifting the sound to Heaven in their hearts. Lester didn’t do this. Instead he drifted into a daydream, the one where he was the way making all the strange humming sounds, where everyone was looking at him in awe and appreciation…

Halfway through his pleasant fantasy, just when he was reaching the humming chorus, he noticed that everyone was looking towards him. Not in the dream as he’d intended, but in reality. The musicians were staring too. He swivelled quickly, examining himself, wondering what he might have done now. There was no pee on his trousers.

“Turn zat off,” the right-hand musician ordered, silver spectacles firmly on his face, hand grasped moodily on hip.

“Yes, ve cannot hear are moo-sique,” the lead lady demanded.

A barman looked sheepish, embarrassed. His fringe had fallen over his eyes, and he pushed it back worriedly. Panicked and awkward, he turned around, crouched low, and pressed a button, turning off the noise. Low lights dimmed to black, and the fridge stopped humming.

Relieved, the clocks ticked again. The musicians, forgetting the interruption of their holy prayer, turned back to their technology, pressing more buttons. There was an awed silence as the fridge’s hum died away, to be replaced by an even gentler, higher buzzing sound. Lester could only just hear it, and he was pretty sure any older person would miss it completely, but there it was, all the same. The musicians continued, the muscle slamming his keys, the silver chiming in, the glasses peering in concentration. It was intense, furious expression – the crowd sat, transfixed by the sound.

Suddenly there was faint, polite clapping, and the musicians bowed.

“Zank you! Zank you!”

“Ve are grate-vell!”

“Tat was our hymn to te Hungarian wax industree!”

More cheers. This was a knowledgeable crowd. They knew their wax surpluses.

They continued to acknowledge the applause, bowing even when the clapping and died and only its echo could be heard. Slowly a hubbub of chatter took over. People settled to their ordinary Friday night routine, which was the same in the Cockatoo as it was in the rest of the world. Lester, standing still in appreciation, was joined by a beaming Gert.

“That humming! Did you hear all that humming! Reminds of the old days when I still owned my swarm of friendly bees!”

Gert never stopped going on about the time he’d looked after some friendly bees.

“My greatest achievement, other than that time I balanced two snooker balls on my nose. That was before your time, weren’t it? Talk of the town for days, that was. Two snooker balls and a swarm of bees! I’ve had a charmed life, lad.”

He handed the two drinks beside him to Lester, who struggled and jusggled them.

“Where’s those peanuts?”

“Sorry, couldn’t order. The barmaid thinks I’m mental.”

“She’s not the only one!” Gert roared. Gert had never really learned how to riposte, and tended to ditch the rapier wit for his tried-and-trusted laughter-blunderbuss.

“Right, let’s go and find them dream flamingo experts. Where do they be?”

“Well, Janey said she’d find some. Let’s look around, see where she is, see if we can find her.”

Gert was half listening. He’d spotted a packet of peanuts hanging from someone’s pocket, and swiped them in one deft motion.

“I’ll lead the way!”

—————-

It was on this journey through the bar that Lester got his first good look at the clientele. Apparently stripy red-and-white scarves were in this month, as everyone seemed to have one. Not all were being worn as scarves, though – a few draped the garments over a single shoulder, one couple shared a scarf between them, and one intrepid lad had fashioned his scarf into trousers. There wre more of those chicken posters scattered around, plastered to tables, as if the bar were trying to convert the unfaithful to the one true religion of roosters and edgy synth-pop.

Behind all this pugwash sat Janey. Next to her, looking contemplative, was a man in a plain black shirt and stripy scarf. His windswept hair was designed as such, waxed – perhaps with the aforementioned Hungarian product – so that no wind would ever sweep it again.

Janey stood up to introduce everyone, but the mysterious windswept stranger breezed across her.

“Gert. Lester.” It was more of a naming ceremony than a sentence. “Are these our stars, our detectives?” he asked Janey.

“For now,” she answered, thoughtfully, “It’s a game few can play for long, for the rules are hard to follow and the pieces rarely move the same way twice.”

“Yes,” remarked the stranger. “And a detective must learn where the rules end.”

“Gert, nice to meet you.” He liked the cut of the strangers jib, but then Get liked everybody’s jib, whatever a jib was. “And what do I call you?”

“I don’t know, what do you call me?” There was weight behind his words.

Gert, surprised, tried again. “I mean , what’s your name?”

“My name? Hmmm. In his life a man goes by many names. In youth, he is the little one, the child. Later, he becomes a man. He grows older, frail, becomes the old man.

“In youth I have one name, in adulthood another, at the end of my life, another still. Speak not of my name, but of my youth.”

Gert smiled.

“You’re just what I’m looking for! I need someone who knows all about dream flamingoes, and I would say, laddie, that you’re just the thing!”

“Ah yes. But not just dream flamingoes. I know of all dream birds. I spent five of your mortal years in the aviary of the subconscious, and I understand all their roostings and flights of fancy.

“This chicken, for example,” he gestured at the poster on the table, “this chicken is no real world bird, but a feathered friend of the frontal lobe. Do you know what happens when she enters your dreams?”

Gert, waited expectantly.

“No? I’ll tell you. An earthquake. Yes, an earthquake. Natural disaster follows this chicken as surely as chicken follows egg. Of course, no-one knows which came first, the chicken or the egg, that is the most important question of the universe, but in the dream world the chicken is always followed by the egg.”

“I know which really came first,” Lester volunteered, “It was the egg!”

“Ah, but where did the egg come from?”

“The chicken!” Gert yelled happily. He loved philosophical debate almost as much as he loved chicken.

“Another animal like a chicken. It’s called evolution,” Lester explained, glad that two hundred years of scientific endeavour were finally relevant to real life.

“Ah, but why couldn’t the chicken have come from a chicken-like animal’s chicken-like egg? Then the chicken would come first.”

“Maybe the egg wasn’t really an egg at all, but was actually a dream,” Janey suggested, “then the dream comes first, and the chicken and the egg are one, forming a single reality.”

“Perhaps, but as I said, in the dream world the chicken always follows the egg, so they cannot be one.

“And the chicken is always followed by an earthquake…”

“No you didn’t, you said the egg is always followed by the chicken!” Lester was indignant.

“Yes, that’s what I said. The egg lays the chicken, and then the dream chicken grows, fed by its chicken mother on dream eggs, and then the dream chicken enters the frontal lobe, and the dreamer dreams the dream that hatched out of the dream egg. And what did I say the dream chicken symbolizes?”

“The chicken!” This was one of the best Friday nights in ages.

“No.”

“The egg!”

“No.

“No, it was the earthquake.”

Gert sighed in relief. “Of course!”

“So the dream chicken – or rooster, I do not distinguish between gender – the chicken leads to the real earthquake, which the dreamer is part of. If you ever dream of the chicken, fear the earthquake, for the earthquake will crack the eggs.”

“The dream eggs or the real eggs?”

“The real eggs. The dream eggs have already hatched, you see.”

Lester and Gert did see. It was all clear now.

“Anyway, let me ask you some questions first, before we talk of dream flamingoes.”

Gert agreed, reluctantly. He was more interested in flamingoes than he was in himself.

“So. You are, for now, the detectives, yes?”

“Yes, yes we are. And fine ones at that.”

“Of course. You saw the collage and the chalk, yes?”

“Yeah, took some of those photos away with me. Good quality pictures, them. Show them to all the wives and girlfriends.”

“Hmmm. Your courage is commendable, noble detective.”

The nameless one paused in thought a little.

“But the chalk, also? You saw the chalk around the dying place? You take the chalk away with you too, hmmm?” He gave a little half-smile.

“No, left the chalk. Got nothing to do with it, don’t want it.”

“But what did you feel, seeing the chalk there, circling a life? How did you feel, what did you feel of the chalk circle?

He didn’t let Gert answer.

“You must have felt, like we all feel, that we too are surrounded by that chalk, entombed in it. For that chalk outline surrounds this city, marking the divide between the living, breathing town and a hundred years from now, when all will be gone. There will be town here still, in all likelihood, but it will be a different one, of different people. There will be shopkeepers and boot-polishers and detectives, but we, the current townsfolk, will have faded, leaving only chalk outlines where we once stood.

“And then, one day, this whole town will be gone. Just a chalk outline that nobody stayed behind to draw. An empty wasteland in an emptier universe.

“That is how you felt, was it not?”

Gert just felt uneasy now. He considered saying ‘The chicken!’ again, just to lighten the mood, but this might have been foolish. He needed his dreams interpreting, after all. Fortunately, they were interrupted by the silver-haired, spectacled band, who chose to join their table at just that moment.

“Hello?” Janey asked, trying to welcome them. They did not reply. Instead, they stared ahead in unison, as if seeing some long-forgotten tragedy in the distance. The others turned back to the table, realizing that their conversatoin was not for artists such as these.

“So, these flamingoes. What do they mean?” Gert asked, trying to take control. The windswept stranger, however, was not in the mood just yet.

“The tale of the chalk, it is… almost poetry, is it not? And now that we have such accomplished artistes in our company, perhaps we shall make our day into glorious Poesy. Young man,” he proclaimed, turning to Lester,” Young man, do you wish to help me write a poem?”

“Yes please!”

“Very well, then, I feel it is time. Hand me my poetry pen,” he said to nobody in particular, pulling a feathery biro from his pocket. “This quill only produces verse, it cannot be used for any other purpose.”

“Do you carry a separate pen for signing things, then?”

“Sometimes, although I do like to write my coupons in rhyming couplets.

“How shall we begin?”

“The cat sat on the mat! That’s poetry, because it rhymes.”

“What about a sonnet?”

“I think,” Janey interjected, “we should bop about our shared identity with the murdered man, and how, by surrounding him, the chalk runs circles round all of us too.” Seeing as the stranger was set on that idea, she thought she’d hurry things along a bit.

Suddenly the synthesizer strongman spoke up.

“Human voices, zey are only ze babbles of chim-pan-zees. Zyou are monkees, babbons, o-rang-o-tangs. Zeese people, zey ooh and aarrrr and pip and squeak, but ze words have no meaning, no sense. Zey are not for expressing great truze, but for ze customs of ze chim-pan-zee! Zyou are all baboons!

“Baboons!”

Janey responded. “Aren’t ya human then?”

“No, ve are not hoo-man.”

“We are not te babbons.”

“Ve are ov a different kind to you. Ve have come wit a message. Ve vant to spread te message across your world, troo te medium of moo-sic, and ten ve vill leave your babbon planet for ever.”

“What’s the message?”

“Never mind the message, we’re trying to write gentle lyric that will be heard in the long future, when the world is all one steel machine.”

“Bugger the steel machine. What do you want to tell us?”

“You shud know zat, zat zyour power, your energy, will destroy you!”

“Our energy, what energy?”

“Maybe it’s our energy, the way we try and try to be something we not,” suggested Janey, “the struggle through these times.”

“Perhaps,” declared the windswept one, “she means the life-force, our great human power, and that will end everything.”

“No, zyou baboon!”

“Baboon! I am no baboon!” He untwirled his scarf and threw it on the table, as if releasing some wild animal from its cage.

For a few moments he shook in furious silence.

“I cannot bear such outrage! I must go. Good bye!” And with that he twirled his scarf decisively around his shoulders, stood up angrily and strode away from the table.

No-one spoke for a moment. The musicians returned to their aloofness, before standing up in unison and shuffling off. Lester noticed that the lady was clutching a crisp note in the fingers of her left hand.

Gert was disappointed. He still wanted to find out about the aviary of the subconscious.

TO BE CONTINUED

STORYTIME (part 5)

Here is the fifth installment. It was quite a difficult one to write, and I’m sorry if it appears to be treading some of the same old ground. I haven’t really written the hooks into the story yet – that’ll come with later drafts – so I appreciate that it might be tricky to keep reading. However, given that it’s a first draft and it’s only really for my benefit, I’m not all that sorry. Enjoy!

——————————————–

PART 5

It was the next afternoon. Lester jumbled down the steps and walked briskly along the river path, taking care to miss all the cracks in the paving. The brown, misty water didn’t appear to be moving at all, just sitting there under a grey sky, wondering why to bother with Friday anyway. Lester, on the hand, needed to bother with Friday afternoon. Something urgent had happened, and Gert needed to know. Lester quickly outpaced the river, speeding round the bend towards the low concrete bridge, looking for the great detective. It was there he found him, asleep under the bridge, slumbering merrily, bottle of cider precariously balanced, just out of reach.

Some people are beautiful sleepers. They can resemble a finely carved Michaelangelo statue or a fresh Renoir beauty, so warm as to be a pure creation of Art, not of flukey Nature. Other sleepers would be at home in wildlife documentaries, sleeping to prepare themselves for hunts and hunting, looking slightly out of place on a fluffy feather bed. Gert, however, was neither of these. He slept in a way all of his own. His body seemed to crumple and fold in on itself, jagging into the corner between the bridge and the stone, as if he were unconsciously trying to fall through the wall. He snored to upset the rhythm of the universe. It wasn’t a bellowing roar of a snore, or a well-timed tick. Instead, he gurgled just loudly enough to surprise any unfortunate listener, and just deeply enough to put them off whatever they were doing or eating. The snore came at no predictable rhythm, so that it was impossible to become used to, and made a completely different noise each time, so that it always came as a shock.

It was the irregularity of sleeping Gert that made Lester so reluctant to wake him. Lester felt as a bomb disposal rookie feels when he’s asked to deal with his first ticker. Occasionally, when manipulating the wires, the dynamite makes a ghastly creak, forcing the brave hero back, as if he were recoiling from one of Gert’s snores. Our young lad knew, however, that Gert would want to be woken today. Friday afternoons were Gert’s speciality. He liked to wander on down to the Moon On The Hill and gesticulate over a pint, usually about some pressing matter of the day. With the murder investigation taking over the town, Gert wouldn’t want to miss his favourite drink of the week.

Fortunately, Lester’s job was done for him. Two young lads came whizzing past on bikes, both in identical rapping hats. Recently there had been a rapper craze amongst the youth of the town, so all the kids now talked very quickly to one another and used easy-to-rhyme words a lot. One of the hats glanced over his handlebars at Gert.

“Tosser!”

“Yeah, tosser!” his mate rhymed in unison, rapping out the word. With that judgement they departed just as they had arrived: rapidly, with whooshing noises.

The interruption woke Gert with a start, breathing him back to life.

“Whuuh wuh errrrr,” he pronounced, knocking over his cider bottle in the process.

“It’s Friday afternoon, Gert,” Lester explained, knowing full well that Gert would understand the importance of Friday afternoon. With his tone he tried to convey the urgency of this particular afternoon, but such subtleties were lost on a sleeping non-beauty.

The cider bottle rolled down the path a little, towards the river.

“Did you just call me a tosser?” Gert asked. A little bit of golden liquid was trickling from the cider bottle now, forming a new tributary of the river.

“No.”

“Huh, I must have dreamt it. Didn’t think you’d be calling me a tosser, lad.”

“I didn’t call you a tosser. It was two rapper chaps on bikes.”

“A likely tale, young’un! Do you know what else I dreamt?”

“No,” replied Lester again, although this was hardly necessary.

“Flamingoes. Rows upon rows of flamingoes, marching as to war. Don’t know why. Perhaps we’ll go to the Cockatoo later, see if we can find anyone who knows why. Full of that sort, the Cockatoo. Bound to be someone who knows about dream flamingoes.”

“I thought we were going to the Moon On The Hill?”

“We are going to the Moon, just you wait. But we can also go to the Cockatoo. No point spending all your time in one pub when you can go to two. Life lesson for you there, boy.”

Gert was fond of giving life lessons. He’d once set up as a life coach, but the only trade he got was as a replacement bus service, so he’d let it go.

“And we’ve got questions to ask of people. No good lying asleep when there’s a killer on the loose!”

“Speaking of the killer, there’s something I need to show you.”

“You’ve got him! You’ve got the killer! Well done Lester! I always knew you were a bright lad. Where is he?”

“No, it’s not…”

“Or a she, for that matter. Might well be a lady. Where is the scoundrel?”

“I haven’t got the killer!” Lester protested, getting a word in at last, “It’s something else. I can’t really explain, I need to show you…”

Lester let his sentence fade into the background, as if it were the album version.

“You’re starting to scaring me now, Lester. Alright, let’s go and see it, whatever it is.”

There was a small splash behind them, and Lester hopped in fright. He cowered, crouching down, shielding his head from the attack he was so certain would come.

“Something’s spooking you! No need to be jumpy, young’un. It’s only me cider!”

The bottle had fallen into the river and was floating gently downstream, as cider bottles are wont to do. Gert turned and watched the bottle go, a rank-and-file Viking mourning the passing berserker, saluting his burning rise to Valhalla. After a short, solemn pause, Gert turned back to Lester.

“Lead the way!”

—————————–

The walk was longer than Gert had expected, mostly because Lester wasn’t much good at directions. It’s a curious fact of small towns that you can only find the public toilets when you’re looking for something else, and Lester found them three times that afternoon. Gert was starting to tire of those little stick figures on the doors. He reckoned they were secretly mocking him, turning up on random doors just to confuse him. It was a relief when Lester found his way, whatever he might be finding his way to. Roads swirled and spiralled and curled, until the market square was reached. A small crowd stood there, ready for a show. People turned their heads as Gert and Lester approached, waiting for the moment the penny to drop and the performance to begin.

“Just here,” Lester indicated, as they scurried over to the crowd, “Just here.” The spot was where Abraham had been found, two days before.

The first thing Gert noticed was chalk, fresh white chalk. It was in the shape of a body.

“They’ve traced him! The bastards!” Gert commented, with feeling.

“No, they always do that. It’s been done more recently though, by whoever wrote that.”

He pointed again. In big chalk writing, someone had spelled out, underneath a collage of photos:

GERT AND LESTER – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNE

“We’ve been Warne?” Gert didn’t quite understand. The only Warne he’d heard of was the great spin bowler, and Gert had never been a great spin bowler, Warner or otherwise.

“I think he meant to write WARNED, but the chalk broke,” Lester pointed to a blunt, broken bit of chalk lying on the ground. “That’s not really the main bit, though.”

“I mean, we’ve been warned? What have we been warned about? I haven’t been warned,” stated Gert frankly, feeling that he hadn’t been included in this discussion, whenever it was.

It was then that he looked up and saw the collage. It was made up entirely of photos of Gert. Gert sleeping under the bridge, Gert drinking a cider, Gert signing an autograph. He was pictured talking to friends, playing tiddlywinks in the park, saying hello to a friendly dog. There was a photo of baby Gert, Gert at a school disco, Gert making hay while the sun shone, Gert on the beach, Gert at someone’s bar mitzvah, Gert staring intensely at a shrew, Gert dressed up as a Spice Girl.

“I don’t remember that,” Gert frowned, casting his eyes upon a picture of him with John F. Kennedy. “Or that,” pointing at a photo of Gert’s head on the body of a woman, shaking hands with Jack the Ripper.

“It’s unlikely you ever met Charles the First either,” commented Lester, indicating a painting of Gert with a bunch of people in wigs. All in all it was a startling collection of photos.

“I might keep some of these,” said Gert, taking a few down and stuffing them in his pocket, “They’re pretty good, aren’t they?”

So someone had been watching him, collecting photos. He might have known he had a stalker. Detectives always had stalkers, shifty men who preyed on their every weakness.

“Anyway, I’m not that impressed, gents,” he proclaimed to the audience, “I’m off to the p… I mean, I’m off to continue my investigation and follow up on some leads.”

With that, he and Lester went off to the pub. The crowd looked quite downcast. They’d expected better of their favourite showman.

—————————

Ten minutes later, Gert was leaning over the edge of the serving hatch, trying to attract the attention of the bar staff. The Moon On The Hill was pleasant and empty on a weekday afternoon, and today was no exception, but ordering a drink remained tricky. Ordering at a pub is particularly difficult when there is more than one barman or maid – they try at all costs to leave the drinker to the other, like two sentries on the easy mode of a platform game.

“I think I know what that was all about,” Lester ventured.

“Huh?” Gert quizzed absent-mindedly, hoping for a pale ale.

“The photos and the chalk message. I think someone might be trying to frighten us off the case.”

“What case?” Gert was still concentrating on the pale ale.

“The murder!”

“Oh, that case. I thought you were talking about whisky.” Gert sounded disappointed. “No-one will frighten us off the case. Can’t be done.”

Having briskly dealt with the threat, he turned his attention to the pub. “Ah, the old Moon. You can tell it’s the eve of the weekend, can’t you?”

Two of the three Cobains were sat in the corner as usual, mumbling and checking their phones for news updates. The third wasn’t there – presumably off making gloomy, hard-edged rock music. Assorted saxophonists came and went, fretting over something. In the far corner, as usual, sat Janey and Pixar Paul, discussing a topic in earnest. Paul sat tensely, his eyes harmonizing with a hazy day.

Gert finally received his ale and, with Lester, wandered over to the corner. Janey, who was immersed in conversation, turned a little sharply, stopping her chat in mid-flow.

“Gert!” She exclaimed, trying to reassure. “Gert and Lester, how are you both? Come, take a seat. What games are you playing today?”

“Have you been to the market square yet?” Paul asked, a little anxiously.

“Yes.”

The two jazz hands hesitated. “You must have got to him. Or her. Disrupted his tune, made him stop just before the trunpet solo. Never stop a jazzman before his trumpet solo. He’ll turn into a tornado.”

“Literally a tornado,” Paul continued, “Yes sirrrrr. Did I ever tell you boys how Mary Lou Williams hit the big time?”

“No, no you didn’t,” Gert confirmed.

“Well then, let me tell you,” Paul sat eagerly to attention, his troubles forgotten. Lester looked at his watch, worried that the killer might be doing something diabolical

“Well, Mary Lou was doing her thing, up on stage, dominating the room, the world, the galaxy, sir! Her songs were symphonies, freaky space symphonies, taking you all the way out to the moon and back, round Mars and Venus, through all them star signs.”

“Her songs were spaceships to the stars,” Janey agreed. “Buzz Aldrin got the buzz early on, and after tripping out to the Moon, he buzzed all round Gemini and Taurus and Alpha Centauri!”

“So she was doing her thing in some small-time Atlanta joint, twinkling that piano of hers across the stars, hoping to become a star herself one day. But the critics didn’t like her, no Lord they didn’t!

“|There was one critic in that town, a small man…”

“He weren’t no seagull, not one bit.”

“That’s right, Janey, no seabird at all! He hated talent and progress and art, and all he could do was hate on it. But the other boys of this town, they listened to him, not her, and they didn’t listen to their own souls. So she played and played, and jazzed and jazzed, but she wasn’t playing to the stars, for all she tried.

“Then one day, one night in some blue watering hole, she’s twinkling and he’s listening with all his pack of critics frowning behind him. And she let’s the piano fade a little, and her voice croak a little, and the trumpeter raises his hooter…”

“Sorry to interrupt, but does anyone want any crisps?” A resplendent quiff offered round the packet, and sat down, motioning for the Cobains to join in too.

Paul glared, ignored the crisps, and continued his story.

“So the critic, who’s not listening anyways, interrupts, just like you did there. Just as the music goes quiet, he talks extra loud, talking about a taco he ate on the highway.

“But as I said, if you interrupt a trumpeter before the solo, he becomes a tornado. And so there’s a rumble and a roar and a violent growl, and the trumpeter turns right into pure wind, then and there. One hundred miles an hour. A zephyr of avant-garde jazz fusion, ripping through the joint like a jazzman through rice paper.

“And the big critic, the one who sneered and hated on Mary Lou Williams so much, he’s blown away to a distant land, never to return back there, Atlanta, Georgia. With the chief gone, the rest are dumbstrucked. Instead of listening to The Man, they start listening to themselves, to their inner jazzman.

“They listen to Mary Lou Wiliiams, listen to the piano silver-flash through the universe, and they love it. Her voice brings the solar systems right to their tiny town, and their praises take her right up to the stars.”

“What was your point?” Gert asked. “There was definitely a point to this story.”

“I don’t think there was a point. I’m just spreading the jazz, spreading it round the world.”

Gert was satisfied, although Lester looked slightly concerned. He felt sure there had been a point to the story too. Paul paused, and everyone enjoyed listening to the silence. Soon, they started to talk again of roack n’ roll. While everyone else was distracted by a lyric ballad about Chuck Berry, Janey motioned for Lester to come and talk with her alone, where no-one else could hear.

“Lester, I know Gert’s taking this well. But he ain’t really taking it well. He’s pretending. Pretending to be the big ass detective, all calm and casual, but he’s a fool. You’ve got the smarts, kid. Remember not to interrupt the trumpeter. Just remember that. A trumpeter ain’t always a trumpeter. Sometimes he’s a trumpeter, sometimes he’s a gust of wind, sometimes he’s a murderer.”

Lester nodded. He didn’t really understand, but it’s always best to nod, especially if you don’t understand.

“Kid, here’s something I want you to have. When you were last hear you’d never met the blues. Now that you’re starting to see it, seeing it for the first time, sprouting wings, I want you to know it better.”

She took a penny whistle from her bag. It was shiny and silver, and reminded Lester of big tall skyscrapers in big tall cities.

“Take this. I though about giving you a record, but you kids can find them all so easy these days. Take the whistle, and learn to play the blues.”

“Thank you very much,” Lester responded crisply. He was nothing if not a polite young man, and he’d been wanting a musical instrument ever since his last visit to the Moon.

“Oh, and one last thing. I want to tell you and Lester a story, and I want to tell it to you tonight, as soon as possible. The world’s been turning today. It won’t turn for ever, not if I don’t tell the story. But I can’t tell it hear. Come to the Cockatoo later – I’ll be there in an hour or so with some cool cats, hanging out. Bring Gert.”

“Oh, we’re planning on going anyway. Gert wants to find about dream flamingoes.”

Janey wasn’t surprised in the least. “Oh yeah, the cats in the Cockatoo know all about dream flamingoes. Tell him the answer’s there. Bring him. Bring him alone.”

And with that she grabbed her bag and strode past the gathering clientèle of the pub, swinging the non-swing door behind in her wake. Lester wandered back to the corner, wondering how to convince Gert to visit the Cockatoo.

Paul had finished talking about Chuck Berry, and was now singing.

“Gert, did you want to go to the Cockatoo? We need to find about your flamingoes.”

“Oh, we’re all right here. Paul’s in form tonight. He might even tell the story of how a shady lady from Saudi Arabia nearly tricked him into watching Wall-E!”

Lester tried again. “But it would be good for my education, I think, to learn about the interpretation of dreams.”

“You don’t want to know about the psycho business, lad. That’s for psychos. No you want to stay here, hear about moo-sic. No psychos.”

Lester, fortunately, had one last roll of the dice.

“I know. I want to go to the Cockatoo so much that” – he paused for effect – “that I’ll buy you a small packet of peanuts.”

“Peanuts? Why didn’t you say so? Alright, the Cockatoo it is. We’ve got flamingoes to find!”

They took their leave of the others and sneaked off quietly into the sunset. Young Lester was learning, it seemed.

TO BE CONTINUED

MISCELLANEOUS MUSINGS (from my walk earlier this evening)

 

This isn’t to be taken as philosophy. If I was writing this as philosophy it would come out an awful lot better than this. I’m actually quite good at philosophy, you see, but I’m not really very good at this sort of thing. It’s more phenomenology than truth-seeking.

 

Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order, sequence or narrative. It’s not a train of thought either – placing it in a logical sequence would detract from it, somehow. (I do enjoy the phrase ‘train of thought’. I like to imagine ideas as puffing locomotives, red-faced as they try to arrive at the station, trying to make their connecting train. In the past I’ve been guilty of failing to record the train-of-thought timetable.)

 

1. Obviously it’s really good to choose what you do. Definitely beats being forced to live in a particular way. (hey, I didn’t say these thoughts were going to be profound or controversial.)

2. It’s also really pleasant to be free and succeed. If you have control and responsibility over your own actions, then it’s wonderful when you’ve done well. I’m proud of getting a Cambridge degree, of playing chess at a really good level as a kid, of perfecting tofu-and-black-bean-sauce stir fry.

3. It’s great when you’re free, and despite not succeeding at anything in particular, you either deliberately or accidentally find happiness.

4. It’s not pleasant at all if you are in control of your actions, have a wide range of choices open to you, are to be praised or blamed for your actions / choices, and you fail in some way. If you are totally in control of what you do, or at least could have acted in such a way previously as to be better at a certain activity, then failure is more painful than before, because an element of blame comes with it too. For example, if you’re playing in a squash tournament, and you’re in control – in the sense that winning or losing is something you are responsible for – then losing is particularly bad. It implies some failing that you can be blamed for. On the other hand, if you did not have total responsibility, in the praise-or-blame sense, then losing wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

5. In some Ancient Greek doctrine – sorry, don’t remember or care who it was – there’s a line of thought that, in the greatest human actions, there’s no human agency, or less responsibility for action. You can see it in the myths. Achilles is a great warrior (partly) because he has been given armour by a god, and protected from harm by their actions too. Battles are presided over by gods who can’t be fought, and their actions largely decide the outcome. Heroes are often half-man, half-god. Actually, it goes a little further than this – actions of heroes are guided by something external to them, something which isn’t necessarily divine in origin. I can’t remember the exact example I’m thinking of.

6. It does sometimes feel as if the actions I’m proudest of weren’t done by me. In some of those chess games I can only imagine the board and the moves – didn’t always feel like I was guiding them.

7. Bad things are easier to bear if we’re not to blame for them. Good things, perhaps, aren’t quite so fun.

8. A tutor once pointed out to me a really difficult question for Christianity. Suppose that Jesus died for our sins. Let’s say that a sin is something we’ve done, and that we are, deservedly, strongly blamed for, in the sense that we deserve to go to Hell for committing them, if such a place existed (irrelevant for these purposes whether it does or not). Suppose that, as we tend to believe, we and we alone are responsible for our actions. I mean that, for example, if Dennis the Menace does something good or bad, and he alone does it, then it is he who is to be praised or blamed for it, not Roger the Dodger who had no part to play in the action at all. If all these things are true, isn’t Jesus’ sacrifice wrong, both factually and morally? Wrong factually, because Dennis did the action and Jesus’ behaviour can’t change that; and wrong morally, because each one of us is responsible for our actions, not someone or thing in a far distant time, and each one of us ought to be responsible for our own actions. Taking away our sins is both depriving us of our moral agency, which is immoral if possible, and assuming that such agency can be taken away, which is false.

9. One of our main moral arguments for democracy is that it promotes individual freedom. Plato’s main criticism of democracy was that it promotes individual freedom.

10. All class systems are awful.

11. When we say that we want equality, we are asked “equality of what?” Many of us respond, “equality of power.”

12. Equality of power is very similar to individual liberty. If everyone has equal power over their society, then nobody has power over anyone else, and everyone has a sort of freedom.

13. If a worker has no power over his or her situation, then he or she can be exploited very easily. Suppose that there is no welfare system, that someone on very low pay requires that job to survive, and that there are unemployed people who could replace the worker. In that situation the worker has no freedom: the employer can increase working hours, let working conditions worsen or pay the worker less – if the worker needs the job to survive, has no power and is expendable, then the worker will suffer more and more for no reason.

14. J.S. Mill supported a minimum wage – he reasoned that, if there was no minimum wage, workers with no families would have more bargaining power in finding jobs, because they could work for less money than people who had families to support.

15. Taking money and land from the super-wealthy to give to the poor increases freedom in a way, because it gives the poor greater opportunity to survive and live their lives as they wish.

16. Taking money and land from the super-wealthy to give to the poor decreases freedom in a way, because the money and land belonged to them and formed their plans and possibly their happiness.

17. A large welfare state increases equal power, and possibly freedom as well. Making the marginalised as powerful as the majority is maximising freedom.

18. A state with the power to take away people’s money and land does not allow a free country, in a way. Even if I were allowed to keep the things I owned, I wouldn’t be truly free if it were possible for the state to lawfully take them away. Or unlawfully, for that matter.

19. A good society can’t allow individuals to steal from others, obviously.

20. If someone wins a race they should be praised for winning. If someone does not win a race they should be praised for doing their best.

 

 

I like walking around at night.

STORYTIME – part 4

This is clearly becoming a weekly thing. Hopefully I can continue writing at this pace, although I’m bound to slip up sometime. Oh, and I finally have a good idea of where it’s all going, which is a relief.

————————————————–

PART 4

“The story ends in a seaman’s mission, on a cold Gaelic day, one dreadful December. Our friend Bill sits by the fire, cradling a cup of tea in his hand, listening to a young man speak.

“This young man had a blanket round, white and woollen, and he was shaking slightly, telling his tale. I’ll tell it for him, since he’s no longer here himself, rest his soul.

“The story started some years before, when Abraham was younger still. He and his bosom pal Sean were known to the whole harbour. Sean was a fighter, a drinker, a lover. He was both loved and despised by everyone who met him, but he cared nothing for the gossip of lesser mortals. He was interested in one thing, and one thing only – carp.”

“Carp? I thought you were going to say money,” interrupted Gert, “Everyone loves money. Some people say they don’t, but they’re lying just to get more money.”

“No, Sean only cared about carp. It was his one passion in life. Carp.”

“Maybe he was only interested in carp so he could sell it and make lots of dosh.”

“No, he only wanted carp. Someone offered him five bob for a carp once, and Sean nearly tore the jacket off his very back in rage.”

“That’s because he didn’t offer enough dosh!” Gert was not abandoning his theory.

Maximilian sighed, but continued nonetheless. “At first his love of carp was just an eccentricity, a quirk, if you will. It made him seem a bit zany, not your everyday man. Gave him something to thrill the ladies with, made him a bit of a catch, just like his beloved carp.

“But, slowly, everything changed. Sean’s obsession grew. At first he only had the occasional carp poster on his bedroom wall, but soon his whole house was covered in their pictures. There were fish photos, fish drawings, watercolours of carp, fishy pastels, even a giant tapestry he’d had made in Nantucket and shipped all the way over on the deck of a whaler. All the way round the deck it stretched, mocking the hungry sailors as they longed for land.

“Sean was no longer so lucky with the ladies. He stank of fish, you see, and carped on about carp all the time, even when the stars shone bright.

“Abraham watched his friend’s obsession slowly turn dangerous. Abe had never been much interested in carp, preferring backgammon and rummy and that sort of thing. He’d occasionally won some mackerel with the cards, for his mate. That’s as far as it went.

“It all came to a head one day, one fateful day, when Sean decided he had to be with his carp for good, leave dry land, live close to the sea. He bought a boat and a sail and a net and a buoy and a boy to man the thing and a mast and a wheel and an anchor and a poop deck, and he proclaimed that he was going to the ocean for good, or for as long as his supplies lasted.

“Sean asked Abraham to join him, but Abraham refused. Not for fear of the sea – Abraham, as it happens, was a sort of fisherman himself – but for fear of his friend’s madness, that one day the tides would finally break in his mind…”

“Hang on, if Abraham was a fisherman, why didn’t Sean just ask him to bring back a carp or two every time he went out in his boat?”

“Ah, fishing is a competitive trade, Gert, and its margins are tighter than your trousers.” Maximilian was about to say ‘tight as my trousers’, but he still wasn’t wearing any, so it would have been a superfluous simile.

“If he had brought Sean back so much as a single fish each trip, then his whole enterprise would have collapsed like a mackerel cathedral. And besides, he wasn’t much good at it, as we shall see.”

“Anyway, Abraham refused to have anything to do with the enterprise. Sean cursed and swore and cursed, but nothing could be done.

“Sean declasred that he would leave without Abraham. They met for one last supper, but they argued bitterly, as they had never argued before. Harsh words were said, the kind that can never be taken back. Sean stormed out, pronouncing lifelong hatred for his best mate.

“As it happened, Sean spoke the truth when he declared lifelong hate. The next morning, Sean sailed out on to the deep green sea, and was never seen again, alive or dead.”

The table paused in thought.

“He sleeps with the fishes,” muttered Gert, unable to resist. Sadie gave him a push. Lester giggled.

Maxi continued. “People went looking for Sean, but the boat wasn’t found. He had been lost, but where he had gone was obvious, in a way. These Irish fishing villages have been in love and war with the sea from their very beginnings. The ocean has claimed so many of their loved ones. Many stories have ended on the black rocks. Old, hearty Norse longboats; proud, leering Spanish galleys; imperious British navy frigates; poor precarious trawlers – whether kings or pawns, all men are the same to the rocks and the deep dark sea. The sea kept these people alive, but took their families and friends in payment. In olden days Moorish pirates would come and steal their children, taking them from their beds, waking them to a life of hard slavery in a far foreign land. People here knew another of their sons was lost to the sea.”

“Abraham was beside himself with grief. Maybe if he, an accomplished fisherman, had boarded that boat, Sean would have lived to eat carp again. For a whole year, Abe went down to the harbour at sunset, every single night, to wait for Sean’s ship. He’d sit there every evening, staring at the horizon, believing that soon a little dinghy would appear, a speck in the distance, emerging from the beaming old western sun. The days went by, gentle autumn passed into cold diamond winter, and he never came. Winter then became cool green spring, and he never came, spring turned into…”

“Get on with it,” Sadie barked, “We don’t want to hear no speaking clock.”

“Ok,” Maxi coughed, “Well, Sean never showed, and Abraham stopped waiting, and continued his life from where he’d left off. But a couple of years later, there was trouble in the town. It was a cold hard winter, with terrible winds and icy dawns. Fishermen kept returning with low hauls. Things were so bad that the town was even complying with fish quota regulations!”

Lester looked horrified. Once the brave fishermen were keeping to EU law, there might as well be no justice at all. Or, at least, that’s what his dad said.

“What it meant was that the fishermen had to go further out, far into the sea. Abraham had never been that far out in his boat. Usually he just stayed in the boating lake, splashing around in a paddle boat, picking up pilchards. His biggest haul came when two American tourists left the lunch behind. There were enough ham sandwiches to last for hours!

“Occasionally he had to venture out into the sea, but even then he usually kept to the shallow bits. Now there was a carp shortage, he had to do what he’d always dreaded – venture miles out into the open ocean.

“Usually in stories like this it’s a dark, bitter night, blue and navy, with a maelstrom wind from the underworld itself. The sky howls like wolves in a pack, smelling warm, tender meat. This night, however, was not like that at all. It was a clear, pale night. The moon wasn’t full but it was pleasantly crescent-shaped, like a really juicy banana you might have had in your primary school lunch box. There was no real wind and the waves were low and calm. It is always a miracle when the water is calm there, and Abraham was immensely grateful.

“So he jumped into his boat alone, carrying his little paddling craft as a potential lifeboat, and put the SatNav on his favourite setting – Myfanwy, the Welsh female voice. She always spoke soothingly to him, whether he was navigating the terrifying Atlantic Ocean or paddling round the little boating lake. She would keep him company, whatever happened. Abraham jumped into his wellies, threw on his fluorescent lemon waterproof – standard issue kit for the distinguished fishing type – and undid the moorings, setting off into the endless horizon.

Lester shivered slightly, knowing something bad was about to happen.

“Abraham ventured into the ocean, and soon left all land behind. There’s a special kind of loneliness out there, far away from any other human being – apart, of course, from Myfanwy, but her conversation was largely limited to points of the compass. Abraham felt, for the first time, the terror of being utterly alone in the world.

“And that’s when the first trouble occurred. His radio, which had been merry crackling some satirical comedy show, crackled no more. He tried in vain to re-start the ironic ramblings of some Dublin-based buffoon, but he had no luck. There was only one thing to do, and that was continue fishing. He drew his nets up high and cast them off the boat, watching them quickly sink down into the water.

“Things continued in this way for a while, but then the second trouble occurred. Abraham was holding the SatNav on deck and slipped a little bit on wet decking. The SatNav tumbled to the deck. When he picked it up, he noticed that something wrong. He could no longer hear Myfanwy’s dulcet Welsh tones singing songs of Lake Bala. Instead, the SatNav had switched to a coarse, harsh growl. He had unwittingly selected Markus, the male Bulgarian voice. Abraham was horrified.

“It is all very well to have Markus guiding you sometimes. If you are lost somewhere deep in Eastern Europe, he will be your guide. If you are on the shores of the Mighty Danube, staring at the magnificent waterway that connects so many major cities, then he will be your guide. If you come across an ancient Slavic forest, venture deep within, and are confronted by some bearded Slavic woodsman, then he will be your guide. But Markus knows nothing of the Atlantic Ocean, the great body of water that, in medieval days, was believed to stretch all the way to India. He’s never tried to sail to the New World, and has never lain safe behind some great stone harbour, protected from those fierce waves by Man’s studious craft.

“Just as importantly, Markus spoke no English. Oh, he could probably say enough words to save you from the forest. He could surely shout ‘Wolf!’ or ‘Woodsman!’ or ‘Gypsy folk dancers!’ but such an idiolect is no use at sea. Markus, then, jabbered incoherently in his own language, and Abraham had no idea what he was saying at all. The switch had broken, there was no chance of changing him back to Myfanwy.

“So Abraham was stranded adrift in the great Atlantic Ocean, with no way of knowing how to reach home. He searched his pockets and, to his relief and delight, found a map. However, it was only a promotional leaflet on how to reach Barry’s Carpets in Leytonstone. He considered the use of this – even Leytonstone is better than being lost at sea – but unfortunately the map showed nothing further west than East Ham, which only made him feel nostalgic for the sandwiches he’d found on the side of the lake.

“He drifted around the ocean, inconveniently forgetting that he could use the stars to guide his way. Actually, he couldn’t use the stars to guide his way. Abraham could usually locate the moon, but that was about it. He used to snooze off in astronomy class.

“Unknown to Abraham, he had drifted into the very place where Sean had gone missing all those years ago, and lay still, deep under the sea. Sean had been waiting here a long time, frozen cold and alone in death. Some souls are cast into an otherworld, but Sean had been left in his burying place, in dark tunnels far below the waves. What little energy his soul could muster was spent in anger at his former friend, the friend who had failed him on his last voyage. All of us know – in fear – that we shall eventually die alone, but nothing is quite as alone as the death of a lost seafarer, far away from his birth and loving life, from a smiling family and a warm hearth.

“Lust for revenge poured through Sean, and he suddenly had his chance. With loath, ghostly hands he tugged at Abraham’s nets – they were still dragging behind in the water. Abraham had left them to catch carp for hungry families. Instead, they caught only the dead grasp of a man who had, himself, given his life in search of that terrible, elusive fish.

“Sean pulled and pulled, and the boat started to tip. In frantic, desperate panic Abraham tried to loosen the net and let it fall into the ocean. He knew he was facing a force more powerful than anything he could muster, but he hoped to let his catch go.

“But nets aren’t so easy to disconnect from ships. It is a long and laborious process – after all, nets are designed to hold fish and to stay attached to the boat. They are not supposed to detach in the middle of the ocean, for obvious reason. Abraham couldn’t cast the net away, and the whole boat was rocking harder and harder, unable to withstand the strength of a power from beyond the grave.

“The radio was useless. Markus the Bulgarian SatNav babbled warningly of his native tongue, presumably wishing for warm Sofia, not the darkness of the ocean. And the ship turned over, slowly at first, but with immense gravity. There was nothing Abraham could do as his boat capsized and sucked everything down, including Markus. Sean had claimed a life.

Maximilian stopped and took a sip of rum, letting the horror snake, flame-like, along the tavern floor. He began again.

“But that is not the end of our story, as you might have guessed. The next morning, the little fishing village awoke, and there was no sign of Abraham. Everyone feared the worst. They remembered Sean’s tragedy. They remembered all the departed sons which the sea had claimed. Above all, they remembered that Abraham usually pottered about on the lake, hoping for a tuna sandwich – he was not the sort of man who can take on the sea and win.

“Yet, just then, something extraordinary happened. The townsfolk were at the sea’s edge, anxiously searching the horizon for a speck of light, just as Abraham had once done with Sean. And something appeared in the ordinary morning light. A boat, a speck of a boat, appeared in the distance. It was not the fishing boat that everyone had been hoping for, but it was a boat nonetheless. They wondered who it could be, what great hero had fought the ocean that night and won.

“Then, as the boat drew a little nearer, a great cry went up from the keenly-sighted members of the village. For they recognised this boat. They all knew it well. They’d all seen it several times a week, gently bobbing up and down on the boating lake, looking for tins of sardine.

“It was Abraham’s little paddle boat, toddling towards them with a new-found seriousness, like a little boy back from boarding school. The yellow, glowing figure of Abraham could soon be made out, miraculously alive, despite the torment of the night.

“And Abraham was shivering, wrapping his bright yellow mac waterproof tightly round himself, as if protecting something deep inside, something that he had so nearly lost. His soul was nearly damned in that fateful voyage, but he had escaped the wrath of his former mate. He reached the shore and was helped out, supported as he climbed the narrow stone steps from the harbour to the harbour wall, carefully treading his away along the wall to the seaman’s mission, which was secure behind sea defences.

“That, my friends, is where our sailor friend Bill met him, in the mission. Bill gave him a good cup of tea and gently coaxed his tale from him, listening carefully to everything I’ve told you.”

The others looked slightly surprised. They’d never noticed Abraham’s tail.

“However, there was one thing Abraham refused to discuss. He never let on the secret of his escape. Abe was not a formidable man, he could not stare down a small dog, let alone assay the forces of the dark deep sea, with its mysterious dead power. Somehow he dragged himself away from that malevolent spirit, but no-one ever found out how. Perhaps he was stronger than he let on, a man for a life-or-death situation. Perhaps Sean’s ghost had a change of heart at the last, and let his friend go. Either way, we will never know.

“Abraham vowed never to return to the cruel Atlantic. Instead, he became firm friends with Bill, and together they sailed over to England, to Liverpool, where they settled for a time. Abraham left soon afterwards, but I don’t know where to. He eventually found his way here, of course, where his long voyage has finally, terribly, finished.

“There is, perhaps, one saving grace to our story. Sean had suffered terribly, but was no longer alone. Abraham’s SatNav was not recovered, and lies still at the bottom of the sea, working despite the water and a lack of electricity. It tells Sean a thousand tales of old Bulgaria, of long low train journeys and moody green skies. It is the purest kind of love, that companionship in the depths of the ocean. Markus keeps Sean company, easing his loneliness, and will do so for ever, until the world’s very last breath.”

With that, he stopped and sighed.

Collectively, the table swigged their remaining rum, gathered their things and stood up. Coats were fetched, scarvess were hastily swirled round long jackets. The group left the bar, tired in a way that only drunkards know.

Lester and Gert trudged along the pavement in silence. Both were thinking about the night’s events. Lester was quiet, thoughtful. Abraham was clearly a complex man, the sort who lives a complicated life and dies in a way that only he could. Lester felt a little sad for the man he had never met, but felt a strange connection with. Gert, on the other hand, was overjoyed with the night’s tales. For him the investigation had finally begun.

TO BE CONTINUED