Competition

" I think I can speak for my colleagues, Miss Lampeter, when I say how impressed we have been with your CV and your experience in magazine publishing and banking in New York. The position we want to fill requires an unusual degree of management skill in addition to the technical knowledge which you have demonstrated in the excellent way you have answered our questions so far. Upon the successful development of international digital publishing depends the future of our company. Universal Letters has been a leader in business and leisure communications for more than 100 years. We need now to take steps to ensure our dominance in the next 100 years..."

The person speaking is Sir Roland Forsyth, chairman of Universal Letters. On one side of him sits Helen  Rampling,  international director of marketing, and on the other Mark Stone, finance director. Across from the three of them in the centre of the long boardroom table sits Mary Lampeter, composed, quietly confident in a tailored light grey suit. She is most people would agree rather stunning.

Though only 27 her first class engineering degree at Cambridge, coupled with a diploma from The Harvard Business School in addition to internships with a small and still respectable American bank and Grandage Inc, pioneer in electronic publishing, explains her popularity with head hunters and why she has already turned down several job offers. The interview is taking place  on the fortieth floor of one of the new steel and glass skyscrapers high above City of London.

"... You have told us," says Sir Roland, " how you see publishing completely transformed in the digital age. How precisely would a largely traditional business like Universal fit in without compromising its reputation.?"

"I hope I covered that adequately in the paper I submitted with my application, but if it is a question of scale, of reach,  I believe that there are few limits for a company with Universal's resources." Her succinct answer modestly presented clearly meets with the approval of The Chairman and of Helen Rampling, who smiles benignly, the smile of one successful woman to another. Only from Mark Stone does Mary sense if not direct hostility a need to challenge.

"How hungry are you , Miss Lampeter?" She knows the mode of thought and of speech, and resists even the shadow of a frivolous response.

"I have found that the challenge of a task is enough to motivate me fully. Am I ambitious.? Yes. Quite simply to do a job well."

"And no more..."

"Is there more?"

" I would suggest a lot more, Miss Lampeter. This job is sought after across the world by the toughest and most accomplished candidates. You are one of a short list of six.  This is a race in a violently competitive business. I would expect the winner to possess nerves of steel and backbone, yes backbone. I am not sure that you have demonstrated that you have those qualities. what do you say?"

"None of us can know, Mr Stone, until we are tested. You are I suspect testing me now and I can only respond  by confirming my continued interest in the job" She spoke with the same measured calm but    was that a hint of sharpness mingled with the lilt in her voice which the Chairman had found so charming.

"First of all Miss Lampeter" says Sir Roland, " I would like to thank you for your application and to say what a pleasuret has been to meet you. A most stimulating and enlightening interview. Before bringing it to a conclusion are there any questions that you would like to ask us?

Mary looks calmly at the faces opposite. At the patrician Sir Roland, red face, white moustache, shrewd blue eyes. Helen Rampling, understated, lightly made up, immaculate hair, not obviously dyed. Mark Stone, glinting spectacles, severe drawn features. He looks away when for a moment her gaze crosses  his.  Her mind is made up.

"Just one question, " she says. " I am 27. Of child bearing age, a fact that none of you ventured to raise. Should I say thank you?  Or simply acknowledge the power of political correctness? So  I will raise it myself. I am not married and have no specific plans in that direction. But I often think that I would like one or two children before I am thirty. I wonder whether this thought would in any way affect your decision to offer me the job?"

In the silence that follows, she gathers the papers in front of her and makes for the door, scarcely leaving time for Sir Roland, ever the gent, to rise unsteadily to his feet.

Definitions

Extended comment and responses in the appropriate place seem to be difficult. So I am doing it here.

To respond to Robbie's search for a definition of the short story I can only plea that in my view there is no need for one. It can be what you choose it to be. My brother Ken aka Lucas kicked off with his idea of very short stories. I picked up the ball.   Lucy called them "flash fictions". Borges, the great Argentinian writer and English scholar, meanwhile, had already coined the term ficciones, fictions, to describe his pieces, almost stories if not stories. It seems to me that there is no reason not to push back frontiers. Meanwhile I am looking forward to Robbie's thoughts as promised. Only good can come of dialogue. I guess War and Peace is not a short story. Nor is Ulysses. But Borges might respond in one of his ficciones that in a different universe both might be.

Watch out for a new story in pipeline.

Catching on

"Flange", he says.
She looks at him surprised. What's he talking about? But she responds in kind. "Flange," she says.
"Flange," he says con affetto
"Flange," con spirito.
"Flange.." con dolore.
"Flange." com  molto  espressione
The word remains the same but variations come like pistol shots in a western.
"Flange. "
"Flange"
Together they walk down the street arm in arm. "Flange,   Flange., Flange, " in unison.
Soon they are joined by other students. They proceed towards the square, a vast army of young people. Some have already improvised banners which bear the word Flange.
There is no stopping them. They clamber up statues and lampposts, onto the ledges of buildings. They mount vehicles and each other's shoulders. They chant louder and louder with an in intense and deafening rhythm: "Flange, Flange, Flange..."
The sound spreads through the town, through the country.  It is quickly transmitted via Twitter and Facebook and U Tube into every corner of the world.  "Flange, Flange, Flange, Flange.. . " chant the people. And the sound rises up to where the atmosphere is very thin. It hangs there like the echo of a prayer.

Myth

If there's was one thing that he liked about the iPad it was that it allowed him to take photographs of himself. He could compose his face on the screen, touch the screen and there were his fine features displayed for anyone to see. Anyone that is who had access to his photo file or to whom another couple of taps would ensure an email. Not that there were  many on his contacts list whom he deemed worthy of receiving the images of himself that he seldom grew tired of producing. Sometimes he sent himself an email which relieved his boredom when not engaged in photography.

One day in search of further relief he thought that would attempt to fly and to capture himself soaring among the clouds.  He had often been compared to an angel and if angels could fly so could he. With the remarkable agility that accompanied his beauty, early one morning, his iPad strapped to his stomach, he climbed the new steel and glass building known as The Shard on the south bank of the River Thames in London. Balanced  for a moment on a projection outside the viewing platform and looking eastward towards the river estuary, he admired the sunrise and imagined himself, his arms spread wide like eagle wings against the brightening sky. Why waste time? He unfettered his tablet, touched the camera icon and holding it above his head launched himself gracefully into the air. What a blissful sight! He clicked away before he realised that he was falling.

Not much time. Go to photographs. There he was, clouds and blue sky behind him, the sun imparting a special glitter to his eyes and lending a sheen to his chestnut hair streaming behind him. He almost forgot. Two taps only as he tumbled through the air... narc... he began touching the screen with difficulty as the momentum of his fall increased., ..issus@myth.com...He believed that he had completed the address and tapped  "send" but he never knew whether the email had been sent and  neither he nor anyone else whether it had arrived. 

Pretending

"Let's pretend," she says.

"Pretend what?" he says

"Let's pretend,  just for a bit of fun, that we're deeply, deeply in love, that it's hard for us to be apart even for a few days. That we are in tune with each other's thoughts and feelings, That  it's as easy for us  to be silent together as it is to talk.  That sort of thing.   Nothing wrong with a bit of fantasy from time to time?

On a terrace beside the lake candlelight from the restaurant table flickers on their faces. Stars float above the line of  the far shore.  From close to, a waiter sees anger in their eyes. Or is it hatred?"

Let's pretend that we've just met," she says. "Do you remember? Try to remember."

"You're asking a lot. You bamboozled me. I had no idea what you were really like. I thought ..."

"What did you think? How did you see me then? Tell me."

" I thought you were beautiful. Your beauty overwhelmed me. It was magnificent, self-sufficient, inevitable. It was remote.  It  called for no comment.  Yet it  shone with an intelligence that touched everything around it...And everyone. Or so I thought. A beautiful mind in a beautiful body..."

She is at a loss for words for  a moment, a little stunned.  "And how do you see me now?"

"I see you as corrupt, dishonest, deluded..."

"Is that the best you can do?" she says.

"You lie to yourself. You lie to me. You are living lie."

All this is delivered in conversational tones though an occasional high note suggests steam building pressure.

They fall silent. They stare about them. People at adjoining tables notice them. Waiters and commis with trays appear. A ballet begins at their table. Wine is poured, food served. Spotlights illuminate plates and glasses. But their faces remain candlelit and seem to threaten. They become self-conscious. The silence between them is oppressive. Neither likes to be the object of comment. They had wanted no row in the first place. Least of all do they want  it to continue now in public.

They can  go no further. They look at each other. They look away across the lake.

She says, "people are watching us. Let's pretend,,,"

"Not again, not again ... for fuck's sake, not again."

"I'll tell you what, " she says: "Look at me and count aloud to ten. "When you have finished, I' ll  start counting."

He stares at her bewildered.

She stares back: "Whatever happens you  must look as though you  mean it."

He shrugs his shoulders, begins: "One, two three..."  and continues to ten.

"Ten, nine, eight..." she responds with feeling.

"Un, deux, trois..."

A nervous giggle erupts in her voice as she enunciates, "Uno, dos, tres ... "  It ripples on as she reaches, "ocho, nueve, diez."

He picks up the reflex of laughter  with a choking sound, "Eins, zwei, drie ..."

People are staring at them. They are laughing.   They can't stop  laughing. And they don't want to stop for fear of the emptiness to come.

The eye

A hole had appeared in the wall. It was a about three inches wide. The wall disappeared over the horizon behind him and  beyond the horizon in front of him. It rose so high  that he could not see its top. It was made of  black granite. He looked through the hole which reached  to the other side of the wall, a matter of four feet. Staring back at him was an eye. It was the eye of a living creature. Its iris expanded as his own eye greeted it. A mammal's eye, he thought. Or perhaps even a human eye. He watched it and it watched him. In the silence he heard a sound as though the owner of the eye was trying to sniff at the hole.

His eye to the hole he waited until without warning the eye vanished completely. In its place remained only a circle of sky.  He hoped that the eye would return. He listened for a sniff. He sniffed at the hole himself.  But soon  he realised that he would have to wait a long time, if ever, to see the eye again. 

Shattered Part 3 of A Cat's Tale

Part 3

I cannot be sure how long I slept. Voices came and went in my dreams. And I could not know for certain whether those which  eventually awoke me were real. "Trophe, Trophe..." they were saying. A male voice unnaturally wheedling, Kangaroo doubtless; and in her normal voice, Cheetah. My first thought was one of relief. The pun  in Catastrophe was no longer operative. The name, though  it had probably been clever was too long to be practical.  Trophe would do.  My next  thought was that I was now likely to be released from the laundry basket. As I have said I detest the "miaow" sound and refuse on principle to employ it. But escape was imperative. So I managed a sort of growl, a locution which in a lion would have been a roar.

Within a minute the basket was upright, the lid removed and I felt myself lifted up  by the soft hands of Cheetah. "There, there ," she said as she put me gently on the floor. I think she liked me. If I liked any human I suppose I liked her.  Kangaroo meanwhile looked down with a puzzled expression. I couldn't make up my mind how he felt about me and in truth I didn't care. I walked away my tail in the air.

Such was the introduction to my new home and the two people who shared it with me. In the days that followed my release from the basket, I began as I inspected my new premises to build up a picture of my companions, their routines and habits. Clearly they were addicted to work. Except at the weekends they left the house early and returned late in the evening. Even when at home they sat in different rooms in front of whispering keyboards and fluttering screens. Around them rubbish of one sort of another expanded like something organic. They even snacked separately at their computers. It was only in their large untidy bed under a soft duvet that they met for any length of time. When  they were not sleeping  there side by side I was aware of them  heaving and rolling under the covers.

The  lack of order in the house, which I have already described, was now the least agreeable aspect of my life.  That's to put it politely. I hate mess. And they lived in chaos. Might it, I thought, be in my power to change things? It may seem vein to say this but I am a fine looking animal, sleek and  well proportioned. I  possess a pair of eyes that make people think of emeralds and  my silken ears are pointed like the buds of an exotic flower. My black, shiny coat reflects light like a mirror of polished granite, my nose is velvety, my mouth small and discriminating, my whiskers fine and of a delicate blond colour.  A figure such as mine, to be seen at its best, requires a spacious and elegant backcloth - a need seldom out of my thoughts whenever I am going to sit or lie down.

The piles of junk that filled the  house were a gross abuse of my beauty. Even Cheetah and Kangaroo, I thought, should in time come to recognise that I deserved  better surroundings.  As I have said the only two places in the house where there was any evidence of order were the tables where they worked. So, taking his work-place and hers in turn, I would sit down  and choose a position which showed my profile at its most superb and  where the space around me did credit to my proportions. I wanted to make it clear that I expected order and harmony. Did I demand too much ? I think not. I have astonishing powers of silent communication which are  supported by an iron will. As a rule I get my way.

One fine day it seemed that my project had succeeded.  A skip appeared on the road outside the house. A cleaning lady arrived and she and Cheetah began to clear up the mess room by room. Decorators next painted the walls and built shelves for the books. Kangaroo even brought flowers for Cheetah who put them in a vase on a newly cleared table. Curtains were hung and I was able to spend days choosing good places to sit and to snooze. An embarras de richesse.

A cat flap had appeared earlier allowing me to come and go as I pleased.  But it was the other improvements to the house  of which I was most proud. It had been moulded to my every wish and whim. Space in plenty. Colour where it was needed but plenty of white to set off my jet black profile.

Only in one respect did I feel let down: kippers. My favourite food of all never appeared in the house again since I had  demolished a couple of them at a sitting on the first day of my arrival. I never ceased to think about that blissful experience.  I had achieved so much  with my thought control yet  in this small respect, I had to admit, the system was failing.

For  all  that I was not going to complain. Gratitude does not come easily to me but  even I managed a small purr when I next saw Cheetah.

Unfortunately she scarcely seemed aware of me, as she opened my tin of food and refilled my water bowl.. My purr went unnoticed.  It was then, as I looked up at her,  that I saw that she had changed. Her face had become rounder.  She smelt different. She was less tense, slower in her movements. And then... then I noticed the bump. Her belly had swollen. And I knew what  had happened. I was stunned, horrified.

If there is one thing I hate it is smelly, human babies. And as for the changes which had taken place in my house, it was  painfully clear that that they had nothing to do with me or my efforts. Whatever happiness I had flew straight out of the window.  Have you ever heard a cat laugh?

                                                   The end

Catastrophy Part 2 of A Cat's Tale

 My nose led me to a table top in the middle of the kitchen . Among the bottles of  jam and wine and boxes of biscuits and cereals  on it, was a pair of kippers. In my previous existence the idea of jumping on to a table would never have occurred to me. I knew my place. And my place had been instilled in me from kitten-hood . But here amid the mess in which these serial destroyers of order managed to live,  my inhibitions fell away. In minute I was picking with my paws at the sweet and delicate flesh and working it away from the bones.

 Reader, dear reader, I have never enjoyed a meal like that, and I doubt if I ever will again. Because of the bones it took time, but every minute was exquisite. Even now I dream of that smokey, oily flavour, lick my lips, and try not to wake up. All I needed now was a drink. Beer. I had never tasted the stuff. I disliked  it as much as I  had loved  the kippers. But there was a glass full of it which I managed to tip over. Despite its bitterness it was a relief to quench my thirst and I lapped up every drop.

After such a meal two things were foremost in my mind. One was sleep and the other, an urge, which in common with human beings I am reluctant to describe in detail. Certain pressures let us say had to be relieved. But how and where? In the old days it was easy. A cat flap had been built into the back door, which allowed me into the garden. I never, at least not as far back as I could remember, crapped in  our own garden. It was my territory and sacrosanct. As to the neighbouring  gardens. I never gave much thought to their purpose. They were  pleasant spaces which I took it for granted were intended for my use. There I  would do my business where the neighbours had conveniently turned the soil in preparation. What to do now? I wandered into the next room where a computer sat in solitary splendour on a desk. It was  the only place I had so far encountered where I sensed tidiness. On the floor beside the desk was a  neat pile of manuscripts.  On the sheet on  top of the pile I read : Page 1  Quantitative Easing: A Necessity? Whatever this was originally intended to mean (something to do with economics) it contained one clear and relevant direction for me, and  it was with  intense relief that I crouched over the paper and supplied an answer to the question.

Now for some sleep. I left the room where I had left my deposit and as quickly as possible. Stairs are for climbing and I glided up the staircase  in front of me, vaguely aware of the continued conversation between Cheetah and Kangaroo in the room where I had left them. At the top of the stairs I encountered the place which I have always thought of as "the room of the falling waters". I didn't like the disinfectant smell too much but I was driven to explore it. And what was this? A basket full of  what seemed to be soft material, cosy and comfortable. Just what I wanted after my series if ordeals.  I jumped in and realised immediately that I had made a mistake. In the first place the basket toppled over jamming itself against the wall and trapping me inside. In the second I found that  the rags had the revolting  human smell of clothes intended for washing. I was trapped in Cheetah and Kangaroo's laundry basket.

One quality -  or perhaps you will think it a fault - which I possess is never to make the pathetic moaning noise that cats are supposed to make and which is usually transcribed as "miaow".  So I kept quiet. I gathered my thoughts, fuzzy as they were as a result of my unaccustomed intake of beer. One  good thing was that  thanks to the gaps in the walls of the wicker basket, I could breathe. Another was that I had somewhere that seemed safe and comfortable to sleep.

No sooner had I closed my eyes than I heard  the voices of Cheetah and Kangaroo ranging the house. What were they saying? It took me a minute or two to catch the words  repeated over and over again.  Then I got it. "Catastrophe ... Catastrophe..." Oh God, I thought:  Is the  house on fire? Have we been burgled?  Not a sound emerged from my throat. Then I got it.  They were calling me, and calling me by a new name which they had bestowed on me. And what a name! Bloody hell, I thought. I have always despised cats with names based on puns on the word "cat". And now this was to be my fate. Henceforth I was going to be called Catastrophe. Cats don't sigh. They make a noise like a human fart. And that, reader, is what I did before sinking into a troubled sleep.
                                            End of part 2
 

Crisis Part 1 of A Cat's Tale

For most of my life I lived with an old woman. She  was clean and compulsively tidy, characteristics which to some extent have rubbed off on me.  She was my only companion in the house where we used to live,  and it did not disturb me that she never stopped telling me what she was thinking. As though I didn't know!  What I liked least was the baby language.  I am not, nor ever have have been, a human baby. Smelly  little creatures. I hate them. Being addressed as one makes me want to throw up.

Nor did I enjoy being called Mr Toffee, a ridiculous name which had nothing to do with my appearance nor with my temperament, which is far from sweet. I would like a name that  I can be proud of. Hercules has a certain appeal. Likewise Tamburlaine. But as it is not in my power to  name myself I have to put up with what I am given. So I was glad when fate arranged that "Mr Toffee" should be dropped.

Though what  came with my new name completely changed my life. I don't like change. And this was shattering. A major crisis.  It happened a year or so ago, when the old woman one day put me in a wicker carrier and took me down the road to a neighbour's house. She didn't talk much on this occasion, and seemed sad even to the point of whimpering. When we reached the other house which belonged to the same terrace as the first, she rang the bell . It was answered by a woman. She was much younger than my old woman. She had a wild look,  an animal quality which appealed to  me. It was something about the way she stood, relaxed, one hip jutting forward, her mouth half open as though she were about to  protest. There was something fearless about her.  I immediately named her Cheetah.

My old woman began talking without delay and rapidly. She was talking about me.  It seemed that the next day she was to enter a retirement home. And she wanted to hand me over to Cheetah.  What was else was she to do?  Her daughter  had been going to look after me, but she had resolved to go to Australia at the last minute. I knew the daughter. The screaming woman, was how I thought of her. Not to my liking at all.  She smelt of embrocation. And now it seemed she preferred Australia to me. No taste. No judgement.  A lucky escape.

 We went in. I was still in my hateful carrier. It was the first time that I had been inside a house other than my old woman's, which, naively as it turned out, I had thought of as my own. On entering, even with my view limited by the sides of the carrier,  I had  probably the biggest shock of my life. The hallway was stacked with books, newspapers, boxes, items of furniture, which made it almost impossible for my old woman with me in the carrier and Cheetah jammed against us to make any progress. I could - athletic and supple as I am -  have managed very well  on  my own, by clambering over the obstacles.  But I felt  sorry for the old woman, who was not  steady on her pins. "I am afraid," said  Cheetah,  "that  although we've been living here for nearly a year, we still seem to be moving in. We've been so busy both of us".

 The next  thing I knew we were in a room stacked to the ceiling with  more boxes of books many of which were overflowing.  The floor was covered with stuff,  files and bulging envelopes, gadgets of one kind or another, a radio, an electric iron, an ironing board,  a vacuum cleaner. With a sweep of her hand, Cheetah moved some books and folders from what turned out to be a sofa. "Sit down," she said. "I'll get Keith." My old woman put my cage on the floor at her feet and cautiously sat on the edge of the  sofa. Keith was a narrow man, with large glasses and  long arms  which made him look like a tall monkey.  "You know my husband, don't you." My old woman did, and so did I. For I had seen him walking past the house head bent forward looking neither to left nor right, blinkered like a horse or a greyhound in a race. He tipped some stuff off an arm chair and sat down.

My old woman started talking again her words now interrupted by sobs. "Look," said Keith, abruptly. "We'll have the cat." He sounded bored by the thought of it, and I had the feeling that he just wanted the old woman out of the house.  I don't think he cared a damn about me. Cheetah was meanwhile trying to be kind to the old woman and me and to humour Kangaroo  (my name for Keith) who was beginning to twitch and bounce up and down.

What followed was mercifully quick. The old woman opened the door of the carrier and I stepped out into my new life, the unaccustomed smell of dust and mould, and a  maze of junk for me to explore and hide in. I stuck my tail up in the air and slipped into the jungle.  As I penetrated the unknown,  I felt  like Christopher Columbus or David Livingstone.  I heard talking and the front door closing , and more talking as Cheetah and Kangaroo were doubtless discussing me, their new charge.
Oh and the old woman? it seemed that I had blinked and when I opened my eyes she was no longer there. Ahead of me a brave new world, behind me, one which I would quickly forget. I sniffed the air and through the dust I thought that I detected the smell of food. Do you blame me? It was in that direction, towards what turned out to be the kitchen,  that treading with care, slipping through encumbered doorways, past a hat stand on its side and a sealed carton marked Fragile, I set my course. I was hungry. Definitely hungry. And indignant and scared.

                                                  End of part 1.

Making it up

 She didn't fancy the Valentine's  dinner. Certainly not in her husband's company.  It was as intended a surprise. Not enough notice to turn it down.  "Why did you suggest this, she said as they were led into the candle-lit dining room? " I should be flattered but I'm not. You must want something from me. But I can't think what." They sat side by side on a  cushioned banquette in the richly decorated restaurant where other couples examined  the menu with signs of animation.

"That's not very gracious." He spoke as though he didn't care one way or the other. Her reaction  had been no surprise.

It's how I feel. We haven't talked properly for months. Today you left for the office without saying goodbye. Not a word. Typical. Cold, self-obsessed. Even now  when we met in the bar you didn't notice  what I was  wearing.  I took the afternoon off to have my hair done. I  put some decent clothes on.  Not to let you down?  My metier for the last nine years.  Not to let you down. To be truthful  it was not to let myself down.  Not that you would care either way.This was after all  just another  appointment in you diary.

"I thought it might break the ice.  The menu and the wines seemed  OK. I thoughts perhaps we might remember better times.

"That demands a long memory and a high pain threshold."

A waiter slid into place and handed them each a leather folder. Options were few and discouraged. This was a special menu devised to restore romance to the jaded lives of the rich.  "For the first course we suggest a truffled consommé with gold leaf. To accompany it a glass of chilled manzanilla." She nodded her assent. Her husband did the same.

"I was thinking just now," she fixed him with a steady gaze, "that this might be an opportunity to have a serious talk about our future. But perhaps that would be ungracious."

The consommé  glittered in the candlelight. Slices of black truffle bobbed beneath it. The   perfumed  bowl proved enough to take their minds off her recent outburst. As they sipped   they looked across at other tables. She was afflicted by a sense of inadequacy. A sort of loneliness.  Should they not be enjoying themselves or at least pretending to? But her doubts didn't last. He never felt inadequate. Why should she?

"Not bad," he said.

"Must have cost a bomb," she bit into a generous tranche of fungus: "Truffles are scarce in the Dordogne this year, like eating banknotes."

"To go with the gold leaf."

They fell silent. The silence lasted a long time.

It was a relief when the waiter appeared: "Next there is artichoke heart filled with chicken liver parfait.  With it we suggest a glass of St-Amour.   We prefer to serve it  slightly chilled.

Again they nodded it through. "I detest the Gamay grape," she said, "even in a Beaujolais Cru.  But never mind Amour conquers all I suppose. "How's the bank? Still raking it in despite the crisis?

"I can't bet on much of a bonus this year, but I shouldn't complain.  Some will get none at all and I can think of at least one person with a prosecution round the corner. It will be alright for commercial lawyers like you particularly with connections like me. At least I have some uses where you're concerned. "

"Sometimes I think I would  run a restaurant with gastronomic pretensions somewhere rural, with bunnies in the garden and pheasants in the woods".

When  the  artichoke arrived she said: "You know, this Beaujolais was a good idea. I must rethink my Gamay phobia."

The waiter again: "Would you like a pause before the next course?"  "No,"  they both said  almost in chorus. "Bring on the duck.

 "To accompany  the Duckling with Poached Cherries,  we propose a glass of Château Mouton Rothschild 2000."

"Makes a lot of sense, it should be drinking well just at the moment. Thank you, " she said.  And was that a skeletal smile?  She thought  maybe she had managed one. No one could say she wasn't trying.

"Banking is no longer a respectable profession. People look at me as though I were a pimp or  convicted rapist. Perhaps  I should take off to the country, forget the boardrooms and the politics. Would you come with me though?"

" Fine talk, darling, but you couldn't let go of the power and the thrills. Not for a  moment."

"I might if I had to contend with another parliamentary committee and the threat of some sort of investigation...

"You don't mean ...."

No I don't but.... if it's not  a dirty business, it too often looks as though it is. If I retired while the going was good, I could expect a reasonable  handshake, enough to leave us comfortable..."

"Comfortable maybe, but happy ...How would we spend it?   Managing a restaurant is a lot harder than playing with investment when it comes down to it. You're no golfer.  You're not suited to country life. Nature is not exactly your cup of tea. What would we talk about?"

The waiter: "Something for love and romance  to celebrate St Valentine there is a Délice aux Fruits de la Passion, a delicate assembly of passion fruit custard, with fine layers of sponge and meringue" and to accompany it a glass of d'Yquem 2005.

"I  would be happy with that,"  he said. His wife blinked her agreement.

In the moments of anticipation before the arrival of  the passion fruit he said to his wife, "I wonder if you have noticed that couple over there, do you think they are enjoying themselves?"

"They are not really a couple,  I'm afraid my dear, despite your efforts.  Vain as ever, you are not wearing your glasses. If you were you would have recognised yourself in that  mirror and perhaps  noticed who it was  who was sitting next to you."

Near miss

He on the  down-escalator, she on the up. Who saw the other first? They waved more or less at the same time. It was five-thirty on a Friday afternoon.  The London rush hour. Time to go home or to meet friends for a drink.   There was no room for either of them to turn on the moving segment of stair on which each was wedged.  He shouted her name across the well, "Sylvie'". She managed only a smothered cry.

He thought: What to do? What would be in her mind? Had she shared the intensity of his feelings? They were different people then. How long was it? Ten or eleven years? Should he when he reached the bottom of the escalator turn and go up?  Would she wait at the top? Or even turn round and transfer to the down-escalator? Time would have changed her as it had changed him. He could not, as he might  once have done, guess her thoughts or feelings. Or predict her behaviour.  Just follow your instincts, he said to himself, and  edging into the jostling crowd, up he went back where he had come from.

She thought: What to do? More than anything else she wanted to tell him that she had missed him. She repeated his name under her breath, "Tim, Tim",  as though chiding him. More recently since her marriage break-up, he had been continually on her mind. At least the Tim she had known. No question,   she would turn at the top of the stair and go down in pursuit. With luck he would be waiting for her. With luck. She wanted to throw her arms round him. To say sorry, though she was not sure for what she was sorry.

What happened? They both retraced their steps, he on the up-escalator, she on the down. They passed for the second time midway, and waved frantically. He tried to indicate that this time  she should wait for him at the top but his signals were open to misinterpretation. And uncertainty was beginning to gnaw on either side.

She thought it likely that he was hurrying home to a girlfriend or a wife. Or perhaps he was on his way to an appointment. Perhaps one  that would affect his future. She felt guilty about her own loyalties, the new lover she was on her way to meet.

This pursuit is about to become absurd, he thought, a perpetual hell of passing escalators sweeping them off for ever in opposite directions. What if they succeeded in making contact? What would be the outcome?  Life was complicated enough as it was, in the office and at home. An ache hollowed his stomach.

He realised then as did she that to resume their journeys they would anyway have to retrace their steps, he on the up and she on the down-escalator. This time they glanced across the well but there was an awkwardness in their wave, something half greeting, half farewell.

At the top of the escalator the crowd grew even busier and more urgent and she felt herself swept on towards the station exit.  In the sharp  air of  the winter evening laden with fumes and the smell of food, a tear came  to her eye. She wiped it away impatiently. She had promises to keep.

At the bottom of  the stairwell for the second time he half turned and tried to join the opposing stream of people to go up again, but he was troubled by doubts and fears.  He was older now. Suspicious of impulse. He gave in and allowed himself to be dragged by the flow towards the Northern Line platform and the train that would take him home.

The Book

From the cave in the mountainside  the procession follows a rough, winding path down to the plain below. Three tall figures  - two men and a woman, the woman taller than the men - lead the way. All three wear garments of a grey,shining material. Behind them six men similarly clad carry,  on a sort of stretcher, a large solitary  book with a worn leather cover. Beside the book, a structure,  about 5ft high, rises from the stretcher  towards the sky. Its uneven, knobbly surface, gives the impression of a giant anthill. It is secured to the stretcher by cords made from the guts of animals, tough but elastic enough to allow it to sway as the stretcher advances.

On the plain in a natural amphitheatre in the rocky ground  a crowd of people has gathered. In the early morning sun their faces have a golden tint but are otherwise white and expressionless. The men, women and children all  wear animal  skins. Many sit on  the ground. Their eyes are fixed on the procession which moves slowly in their direction.

When it reaches them, the people part to allow it through to an elevated area in the centre of the circle. Here a flat stone serves as a stage. A boulder provides a stand for the book. The woman sets it  down  and bowing her head backs away respectfully.  The tower meanwhile  is unloaded beside it. The six stretcher-bearers bow towards it and towards the book.  Once in place as you look towards the horizon, there is no mistaking the tower's resemblance to a mountain and  specifically to the central peak of the range which extends along the skyline.

The procession consists  of people known as "guardians of the book" The word for book is sad, plural sadth. It is a word rarely employed, for books are objects of mystery and written words are neither considered nor conceived of.  This, the only known example of a book, was found buried in the cave in the mountainside, but the guardians have long speculated about the existence of others.

With the book in place and the replica mountain on the floor beside it, the tall woman, chief of the guardians, steps forward and begins a prolonged wailing chant.  Its  harmonies  owe much of their rhythm and tonal variety to  the  sound wolves make at night up in the mountains.  Regularly in the long hours of darkness  her listeners are thrilled and terrified by the howling of wolves. As they are now in the light of day, by the  sound similar, but more formal and  more cerebral, which emerges from the guardian's throat tilted  back, like a wolf's. As she breathes in and out her breasts rise  and fall to the cadence of her chant. It lasts about five minutes and ends suddenly leaving a silence hollow as a cave.  Pairs of eyes in the white upturned faces topped by tangled manes follow her as, bending over the boulder, she lifts the book above her head, and turns it to left and right to make sure that everyone had been able to see it.

The book back on the boulder, with reverential slowness and solemnity, she opens it. To her watchers, who  have never seen it close to,  it is as though she has effortlessly doubled its size.   She leans over it as a mother over a child.  She spreads her hands above it in a gesture, half of blessing, half of caress, before with deep deliberation she tears one of the pages from the spread. It is not the first page to go, as the tattered margin bears witness. She  raises the page above her head and shows it  to the crowd. Lowering the page she tears it into three pieces. One piece she hands to each of her fellow guardians. The third she stuffs into her mouth and began to chew it. The other guardians follow suite. The six stretcher bearers sit on the ground cross legged.

As the guardians masticate the strips of page, the crowd begins to intone, "chew, chew, chew... chew the Sad."

When the paper in their mouths has been reduced to something soft and pliable, the guardians spit out the  papier mâché and one by one stick it still wet and pliant on to the model of the mountain, adding  proportionately but minutely to its stature.

 "Sad. Sad. Sad..." chants the crowd.

The sun is high in the sky. It is the longest day of the year. The mid-summer ritual has been handed down from  ancestors and practised as long as anyone can remember.

Understanding

It 's Christmas Eve. God's in the air. Thomas Fastnet doesn't believe in Him.  His brother Chris does. They are good friends and argue at length but amicably.

Thomas says: "Why do you think that  this world and its inhabitants are important enough to receive divine attention? Of the millions of possible worlds, circling millions of stars in millions of galaxies, why this one? And if this one, why is it in such a mess?

"The world is God's. The mess is ours."

Again Thomas says: "Let's get it in perspective. The universe is 13.8 millions years old, the Earth three and half billion. We've been around for 200,000 years.  Crocodiles and ants, fish  and dinosaurs for much longer. The  whole lot is supposed to have started with a bang, from a pinpoint. How can apes like us, clearly bent on self-destruction, matter in the scheme of things?"

The big bang theory may be true but that doesn't mean that it didn't have a cause. There can be no effect without cause. Something must have created your bang. Yes or No?

And so it goes on.  Chris opens a bottle of Madeira, sercial, the dry stuff. They savour it together. Chris's small children are asleep upstairs.  Or supposed to be. Empty stockings  hang at the ends of their beds.  And their heads are buzzing with speculation and mystery. They are awake and whispering.  Chris's wife Pat and Thomas' wife Alison are at Midnight Mass at St Nicholas just round the corner from the house. If they listen carefully they can hear voices, "Hark the herald angels sing..."

"Where's peace? Where's goodwill?  Where's the justice? Just endless fighting over frontiers and tribal differences.

"Perhaps," says Chris, "justice and peace are in the balance of chemical elements in the universe which makes life and this conversation possible. Something of a miracle in itself.  Or one almost achieved.

On that they seem to agree. And so they talk on with long companionable pauses in which the fire mutters in sympathy, until the quiet is  suddenly disturbed. With a popping sound, the  Christmas tree lights go out. In the dark the church clock chimes midnight. When Chris restores the fuse they see that the star on top of the tree is no longer alight. The  bulb inside the  plastic casing has blown. "A surge of current," says Chris.

"Or divine disapproval of my views?" says Thomas.  "Or the state of the world?"

"Chris goes into the kitchen and brings another bottle. They drink in silence.

Outside,  gravel crunches under foot, voices and... "I thought I heard a baby cry," Chris says, and gets to his feet.  The sound of a key in the lock. The front door opens and into the room comes Pat and Alison, and in Pat's arms indeed is a baby wrapped up against the cold. "It's the Vicar's," she says. Her husband broke his ankle. Fell off a ladder trying to fix the lights which fused. At midnight would you believe it! Vicar's seeing him to the hospital. We're looking after the baby till she gets back. Jesse is his name." 

The baby looks  solemnly about him. He has that superior look of very young babies which seems to say, "I know more than you do".  She holds him up to show him the Christmas tree lights. He gurgles, wide awake now. He enjoys the attention.

Thomas, who has no children of his own, on an impulse, takes Jesse from her and raises him in the air. He jiggles him up and down. Baby and man catch each other's eye. In a moment of understanding they both laugh.










  

The Stalker

"Move over Dermot. You're occupying my space"
London underground trains do not lend themselves to social niceties. Passengers avoid each others' eyes. In the rush hour, you shrink into yourself to minimise physical contact. The man sitting next to me, apart from accusing me wrongly of taking more than my fair share of space on the seat which we share, overflows liberally. His bum bulges and his elbow digs into my side. And now to make it worse he is talking to me.  Reluctantly I turn towards him.  Though he has obviously recognised me, I have no idea who he is.
"Another novel on the stocks, I suppose?"
For a moment I am flattered. I am not the sort of writer who seeks publicity, but confirmation that a stranger  knows your work, can sometimes ease discomfort. Not  this time. My neighbour is unsavoury as well as presumptuous. "Name's Shadwell," he says, "Tony Shadwell". Feeling as though I had been kicked in the stomach, I turn towards him. I sense some sort of bad joke. Tony Shadwell is a character in my last published novel and in the one which preceded it. A mean and ingratiating inhabitant of the corner of London where it is set. He makes a living by spying on people in public life and selling information to any one who will pay for it. He is a blackmailer and persecutor of women.  Much of the dirt he gleans turn up on the Internet, or worse specifically in the hands of hostile foreign powers.
"So you recognise me?"
" I suppose I should  be flattered," I say,  that you want to  enter into the spirit of  two of my books. The only thing is, your shoes are wrong, cheap and unpolished; that brand of wrist watch is not right for  Shadwell - he wouldn't wear a Swatch - and you have fat, pudgy hands, instead of sneaky, bony hands"

He laughs. He has a particularly unpleasant laugh. Something I recognise and have attempted to describe, though my description does not match the vomit-inducing, staccato snicker I now hear.
What is this? The beginning of some sort of blackmail attempt? Or an even even more sinister threat? The threat of mischief?  I think about my enemies. Who would resort to such a weird trick? And why?

The next stop is Charing Cross where I get out. Will he follow me? I stand up and leave the train without looking behind me. As I follow the familiar route of brightly lit tunnels and moving staircases which lead to the main line station, I persist in keeping my eyes in front of me. The Hastings train is waiting  on Platform 6 and I make straight for the barrier. Even when I enter a carriage half way to the front I refrain from looking back. Relieved I sit down. But my relief is short-lived.

As the train  leaves the station a body thuds into the seat beside me. Making use of its bulk it edges me to  one side. No question  now that I am being pursued by a persistent and sinister stalker. "Not going to greet me, Dermot? I am yours after all, Mr Dermot Frankenstein, your very own handiwork. I now have  a life of my own;  and, I don't mind saying, with rights and in particular the right of self-determination."

"I hope you are enjoying the joke" I say.

"What joke? The crime writer Dermot Martin has responsibilities, like a father for his children. Like a bitch for her pups. Jokes don't come into it. "

"What do you want?"

"What would you want in my place, Dermot? OK, I'll tell you what I want. I want respectability. I want to be ordinary, dull, banal, a bit  like you Dermot. And  I want to be looked up to at least  by a few people. To put it at its simplest, I want to be loved."

I fall for this. "But in that case you would be someone else. The person  in my books has no outwardly attractive qualities . He is a bastard, a liar, a thief and a bully. It is too late to change that. And you, meanwhile " I add to make it clear that I am  not myself nutcase enough to take my stalker seriously, "you are a nut case."

"But you could, if you wanted to, change me. You have already featured  me in two novels. Your Shadwell is a wanker but not a wally".  The stalker  is bright enough to come to terms with his weak and evil side, to pull himself up, brush himself down. "I suspect that I am already in the plot of  the next  book unwinding in your predictable, little brain. You could plunder your imagination for a change  to show a deeper side to my character, one ready to be rescued, to be redeemed..."

Please don't talk to me any more," I say looking out of the window. "I'm thinking." I am not  thinking. My mind is a blank. But may be  the belief that I am thinking will keep him quiet. Even encourage him to leave the train at the next station.  Some hope. My character lives in South East London in a flat above a seedy shop on a street corner.

From Hastings station it is a short walk  through a street of Victorian houses to my house. I walk quickly and don't look back. "Give me a few minutes" I say to my wife". I know there is a drink waiting and a meal in the oven, but I have a  chore before I can relax. From my study window I can see the street below and sure enough there is Shadwell leaning against a wall under a street lamp just flickering into life. At my desk I begin to type right away what is in my mind.

 '"Come with me," said Lorraine taking Shadwell's arm. She smelt of violets, Her blond  hair brushed his cheek.  Surprised he followed her. It was a new experience  for him to meet a willing partner. And the woman who called herself  Lorraine Price was  to his fevered mind something out of the ordinary. Carpe diem. The pick-up ruse had worked. The man  may have been cunning, coniving and and dangerous, but vanity drove caution out of the window. They left the pub together. "I'm staying here," she said, indicating a small private hotel. Looking over her shoulder she led him upstairs, unlocked the door of her room, and ushered him in. "Make yourself comfortable, " she said, "I won't be a minute" , and  disappeared into  the en suite bathroom. There, opening her hand bag she produced a syringe which she expertly loaded, holding it up for a moment to the light.  Hiding it behind her back she returned to find Shadwell as she had hoped naked and on the bed. "Ah," she said approaching him as though to negotiate an embrace, but instead plunged the syringe into his left buttock ..."That will settle you."'

Would that do at least for the moment?  Some polishing perhaps but positive enough. I looked out of the window to find that Shadwell was no longer in evidence.

The black butterfly 1989

Poem or story? Perhaps both. But true either way.

                   The Black Butterfly 1989

Two days after the funeral in darkest January in the silent house

a butterfly appeared, out of nowhere it seemed, in the room 

where she used to sit,  her long legs stretched out resting

on a footstool, cigarette in one hand, wine glass in the other.
It flew from window ledge to table top or settled now and then
on the arm of a chair or patterned rug as if in thought, or briefly slept.

It was black, quite black from wing tip to wing tip, from antennae
to abdomen. I had not seen one like it and have not since. I thought,
scepticism apart (hers and mine), had she elected to return

in animate form to satisfy a curiosity or concern, a black butterfly
would have matched her wit. What to do with such a guest,
wanderer or recidivist? A diplomatic quandary. It was cold outside.

I let it be. Its gentle wings whispered in the quiet room until one day
I found it dead, on its side, its wings folded, a black triangle, little more.

Obsequies are always inadequate. This town with its brick pavements 
and restricted parking is no place to bury a butterfly.

A Safe Pair of Hands

The day Bill Parchment retired  from the Bank they offered him some cakes containing a generous portion of cannabis. Which of his colleagues had thought up the prank, he was never to know. Four of the cakes were brought to his office with his mid-afternoon tea.They were little cubes of  moist  sponge, coated in white icing and decorated with curlicues of chocolate. There were a dozen cakes in all. The remainder were left in the pantry at the end of the corridor  to be eaten after work when their effect might not be too drastic.

He had been head of the department for the last 15 years.  His colleagues thought him dry and rather dull, a reluctant drinker. Senior management  considered him "a safe pair of hands". Nobody had a bad word to say about him but few had a good one. For the most part people took him for granted.  In fact Bill  had enjoyed his work,  and if he seemed taciturn and distant, it was because he had other interests. When not engaged with  his job at the Bank  his thoughts would be in his studio in the basement of his Victorian house in Dulwich. Here he had for years recycled old packaging materials - boxes, tins, cartons and the like into  small pieces of furniture  and ornaments. New projects crowded his mind when he was not working.

As he was hungry he scoffed all four cakes. He had missed lunch because he had to complete his last task before leaving the office.  This was to conclude the arrangements for a visit to the Bank by an oil magnet from a former state in the Soviet Union. The visit was to take place that afternoon, and he had to supply a final briefing to the Bank's Chairman, arrange an interpreter and book a limousine to take their guest to Heathrow Airport when the meeting was over.

By the time he had finished his tea and cakes the briefing was complete. Three hundred carefully chosen  words summarised the magnate's career and background, the political undertow which affected his long terms prospects as a client of the Bank and a tactfully phrased indication of sensitive areas to avoid in discussion.  At the end of  the meeting the magnate was to be escorted  to the limousine. He would be met at the airport by his staff  whom he had given time off to visit the shops. His briefing complete, Bill's work for the Bank was at  an end.  He sent the document on screen to the chairman. Others would assist at the meeting.

Meanwhile another task, which might in different circumstances have been his province,  had been assigned to his successor.  Now in  its final stages it concerned his own farewell dinner at a West End hotel. A car was to pick him up outside the Bank and take him to the hotel where his wife and colleagues would be waiting greet him.

Bill leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He felt extraordinarily relaxed.  To his surprise, he found himself laughing out loud. When had he ever laughed in that office before? That in itself he found funny. For a while he couldn't stop laughing.

By the time he had  showered  and changed in the executive suite provided by the bank for senior managers, his laughter had quietened to an occasional chuckle. But there was still much to laugh at. And he thought it oddly amusing as he said goodbye to the receptionist in the lobby, to hear the jovial voice of the oil magnate in the process of leaving. He seems a cheerful bird, Bill thought. What he didn't know was that like himself  the magnate had been offered and greedily swallowed with his tea, some of  the remaining cannabis-laced cakes.

Out of the corner of his eye as hewaited for his own driver, Bill saw the magnate disappear through the entrance into the street, where the doorman helped him  into a waiting car.

A few minutes later Bill handed his suitcase to his driver who stowed it in the boot of the car.  As he sat back on the padded seat, he laughed again.   No more worries. Even his unavoidable speech at the dinner has been honed and reduced to seven points interspersed with two jokes. Now he went over the points in his mind, and one by one eliminated them as superficial. The jokes which earlier had seemed original were he realized only variations of old ones. No, he would not make a speech. How pleased everyone would be. He would just say thank you and sit down. He lent back and laughed at the prospect.

It was only then when looking out of the window  that he realised that the car was travelling in the wrong direction. Probably some sort of surprise they had dreamed up for him, he thought, and went to sleep.

When he awoke it was to find two men on either side of him in the back seat of the car. Another occupied the passenger seat next to the driver. One of his new companions was prodding his ribs with something that could have been a gun. They seemed to be speaking gobbledygook.  This was ridiculous. The bank had always been a sober institution steering clear of the excesses which had brought larger and more ambitious enterprises to their knees. To go to such lengths to surprise a middle rank executive on the occasion of his retirement party, didn't make sense. "Look, " he said, "It's very kind of you to go to such trouble to give me a good send off... but...". The man with the gun pushed the weapon heavily against him and continued to gabble in what, it dawned upon him, must be a foreign language. It struck Bill Parchment, whose  business life had been notably unexciting, that he was making up for the absence of  thrills on his last day at work. And much to the consternation of his assailants, he began to laugh. He looked out of the window and realised that the car was now on a motorway and that they were leaving London behind.

Meanwhile at the Savoy Hotel in The Strand a bewildered  magnet stepped out of his car to be greeted by the  Chairman of the Bank  to whom he had said goodbye only a few minutes earlier. Gradually the facts unravelled. After an hour of explanations,  apologies and calls to  the magnet's staff at  the airport, the Bank's guest set out once more for Heathrow. But what had happened to Bill Parchment? No calls from him. No response from his phone which he had left in the jacket of his suit now packed away in the boot of the hijacked car. Eventually the police were alerted and provided via the hire company with the registration number of the missing vehicle. 

It was nearly midnight when three police cars managed to stop the car on the M 6, to rescue Bill Parchment and arrest his kidnappers who were under the impression that they had a lunatic in tow and were waiting orders from their employers. As for Bill, provided with a lift in a police car on his way back to London,  he was still laughing.

Metamorphosis

In the hotel swimming pool  I couldn't help noticing that Charles - I think that was his name - had gradually changed while we were talking into a benign and rather talkative frog.

The pool is very rarely used by guests other than ourselves when we are on holiday in mid-September,  and we find ourselves  as regular visitors quite unreasonably resenting others who want to swim. Charles quickly became an exception. He seemed to understand our possessiveness. And  I didn't mind at all when he plunged into the water.

As he stood in the middle of the pool and I above him on the edge, I  saw that while his head and shoulders appeared to be of normal size, his body below the surface, distorted by some trick of refraction, had dwindled to miniscule hips and small if muscular  legs.  As we talked, struck by his new appearance,  I nearly drew attention  to the change that had occurred, throwing in a reference to Ovid's Metamorphosis (for he was a literary chap) but feared that It might give offence. Kafka's version of the process, where a young man wakes up one morning to find that he has become a beetle, seemed  an even less promising  topic.  But I couldn't  get rid of the frog in my head and still can't.

Thinking about  Charles I realize that most of us  now and then change into other members of the animal kingdom  but don't realize it. How often have you heard a chicken cackling at a party and traced the sound back to a person with  a pair of mobile lips, a long neck and rapidly nodding head? Or seen at one end of a table at a formal meeting, the face of a large fish advancing a proposal for a new project or denouncing someone's expenditure. Watching the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Question Time you must sometimes have seen, as I have, rows of  MPs morph into a menagerie. One of my contemporaries at school had the ears of a monkey. Another walked like a duck.

The tendency for our fellow human beings to adopt alien shapes I suspect accounts for the way we  keep our eyes averted from one another in lifts and  underground trains. The thought of a wolf or a python rubbing shoulders with us when travelling between work and home can be too much for comfort and peace of mind.

I do not mean to be unkind about the way people look. Or the way animals look that matter.  In fact you will see that I am myself not exempt from this sort of  mimicry. Proof is to be found at this moment in the right hand column on your screen. There you will see how, bored with my old picture, by some deft manipulation  of the keyboard, I  recently transformed myself  into a seagull.

In the new photograph I may appear tranquil enough but I confess that at a fishmonger's or near the sea where fishing boats are drawn up on the beach I can no longer keep my wings folded and begin a raucous series of cries, wild and penetrating to the human ear, as I rise up in the air in pursuit of raw flesh.

Plucking the goose

It had been a bugger of a day in the kitchen. Full house that evening.  A commis chef's finger almost amputated.  Somebody had to be spared to  take him to A & E.  Two staff short at a critical time and inevitable delays.  A row with front of house about a customer intent on trouble-making.  Hardly surprising that scrubbing down, the  traditional  after-service chore for the brigade which he never shirked himself, took longer than usual.

Home at last he fumbles with the key to his flat. Then he remembers it's not his flat. It's their flat. His and Sylvie's since Sylvie had moved in six days ago. Normally he would have extracted a can from the fridge, turned on the TV,  flopped on the sofa,  and almost certainly fallen asleep immediately, beer not drunk, TV still going. But now he must be quiet so as not to wake her. She too has to be up early in the morning.

 He has himself been up since 5 am today, or rather yesterday. The visit to the fish market was important. Getting ingredients right is 80 per cent of good cooking. The best advice he had been given on the way to his first Michelin star.  You  have to keep suppliers on their toes. But, God, is he tired! He takes his shoes off and creeps across the sitting room. He'd showered in the restaurant. But he needs a pee.  In the bathroom he pees. Then still on tip-toe  he eases open the door of the bedroom to be greeted by feminine smells, perfume and cosmetics to which he is not yet accustomed.  There she is curled up on her side of the bed apparently asleep. His clothes seem to fall off, and in a moment he is blissfully under the sheets, his eyes closed.

"Do you know what the time is?"  Sylvie's voice. Or is he dreaming? He swims on into sleep.

Sylvie props herself up on her elbow and in the darkness between them says:

 " Did you do it? Did you shag her? No answer from you. So of course you did. Was it a good shag? And where precisely did it occur? On the pastry bench, kneading flesh instead of dough. Or on the shag pile carpet on the restaurant floor? She may be the best pastry chef in London. It doesn't count with me. It's 2.30:   at least two hours later than usual, and you didn't call me.  Too busy with your fun and games.  Too busy being a celebrity? Plucking the goose. I knew it would  ruin you,  that TV series.  Of course you are silent.  Don't bother to say anything. No excuses makes a change.

"I saw the way she looked at you the other day. And I saw the way you looked at her tarte au citron. Oh?  Nice of you to ask, except you don't.  My God I've had a hell of a day. Not that you would care. Too many women want to tear that white jacket off your back. But you're not the only one to get the attention, though. My boss made a pass at me today. Then he hinted that he'd get me the sack. I'll get him. Don't you worry, I'll get him and I'll get you too. Imagine coming back to an empty flat after a day like I've had. Sitting in front of a screen chasing numbers, only a sandwich for lunch, and then alone all evening. Nothing to think about but you and that tart of a pastry chef..."

And so she went on, letting it all  out, talking into the dark.

 When  four hours later the alarm went, "For Christ's sake let me sleep, " she said. "I 've been awake all night"

" Me", he said as he switched off the alarm."I must have gone out like a light. " 

The Lie

 "Aunt Rosie will take care if it"  was one of those shorthand jokes that occur in families. It was based on the hope of an inheritance never to materialise. As with most such jokes it came with layers of irony which the Grands took for granted but were wasted on outsiders.   It was a joke that Patricia,  Patrick Grand's second wife,  did not fully understand.

To complicate matters  Patrick misled her about Rosie. It had seemed to him that a larger-than-life picture of his aunt might add colour to his own background, which he considered dull. So selecting and distorting the facts carefully, he used his imagination to turn Rosie from a  sour, sickly, crabbed, old woman,  into a gifted, eccentric with a large straw hat and a forthright manner.  He  even implied some substance in the inheritance story.  She left me the house in her will." he told Patricia adding vaguely, "but I never did much about it". Aunt Rosie, he said, had loved the view of the Channel which inspired her art and her conversation. In the evenings, he remembered,  she would sing to the setting sun.   She made sculptures out of fragments cast up by the waves. He described expeditions to the beach from which they returned loaded with frayed strands of rope, pieces of timber whitened by salt and  polished by the sea, bottles, corks, tins, you name it. Rosie had a shed full of the stuff.  She sold her work to holiday-makers. "Some people believed she was a genius waiting to be discovered", he said.  Somewhere in the story were remnants of the truth.

Like Bluebeard's last wife. Patricia was, in time overcome by curiosity. She  was reluctant to bring up the question of the inheritance,  but they could do with some extra money and it had not escaped her that Aunt Rosie might now prove useful. So she raised the topic obliquely by suggesting a visit to Spratston. "It would give you the opportunity to introduce me to another aspect of your past.

 Patrick laughed nervously. "Aunt Rosie you mean? ".

Reluctantly Patrick drove her down to Spratston one weekend in early June.  He shuddered. There would be some explaining to do. He remembered the road  to Aunt Rosie's. It had led under the railway bridge by  the station up towards a quarry. She had lived on the edge of  the quarry. Now there was a motorway to be crossed by a footbridge before reaching the quarry road.  They rounded a bend in the road, topped a ridge and there it was. No way to disguise the extent of his deceit.

 A small patch of brambles, a collapsed shed and some nettles.  And the house?  Part of the joke.  It was no more than a caravan. And now, its roof collapsed,  its panels vandalised, its wheels missing, it looked utterly forlorn and unwanted. There was no view, only a high wire fence,with "keep out" notices bordering the quarry. It was clear why no one wanted to buy this pocket of land. Even he,  a victim of self-deceit, remembering the path and  neat flowerbeds in front of the caravan, was shocked by its  present desolation.    Patricia looked at him in surprise, her surprise quickly turning to anger.

"This is something to do with trust," she said. " We seem to have a problem, Patrick. I've always trusted you.  Why the lie?

 He didn't know. He still didn't know.He looked up at the sky where the setting sun had formed a golden sea streaked with islands.

But there was no answer to his problem. And no Aunt Rosie to take care of it.                                                                                                                                              ...................................................................................................................................,,,,,,,,,

Pretending

"If there is a Mr Phillip Defoe on board will he please make himself known to the cabin staff?" The doors were locked and the plane was begining to move into position for take off. "That's you," said his wife seated beside him, surprise in her voice. He pressed the button above him. A member of cabin staff  having confirmed his identity, handed him the transcript of a telephone message. All it said was "Saw you at the airport. Carmen", followed by a telephone number.

"What is it?" said his wife.

"Nothing. Somebody I used to know was at the airport." He had gone white and closed his eyes as the Airbus gathered speed on the runway.

"Are you alright?"

 "Fine."

She leafed through catalogues from the art galleries which they had visited in the last few days. From time to she cast her eyes in his direction. He had never liked flying, she thought, any more than he liked the profit motive. They were returning  to London from a buying trip for their West End art gallery.  Paintings were his love and he had the knack of knowing what would sell. And what sold he usually liked. She was the business partner, her head full of calculations.

He screwed up the paper and leant back as far as he could in the upright seat. Carmen. He couldn't remember her other name. Perhaps he had never known it. But In 20 years he had not forgotten the time they had spent togther. He could find no words for their encounter which did not reduce it  from something to treasure to something mundane, even sordid. For some people it  might have seemed ordinary enough for  two arractive strangers  towards the end of the 20th Century to meet away from home and make love on the spur of the moment.  But for him certainly in retrospect it had been far from ordinary.

They had walked out of the  press party conference in the Ritz Hotel talking, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English,  as though they had known each other for years. She a photographer, he a journalist whose special subject was photography. It was early evening. May. And the warm air despite the traffic fumes smelt of perfume and dark tobacco  people still smoked in those days). They went from tapas bar to tapas bar and eventually to her small flat down a narrow street in the old quarter of the town. The ice-cold fino Sherry sharpened their minds and appetites, both of which in their different ways were to be languorously sated . Could he ever forget  the free play of her laughter and the fleeting moments of intervening sadness when she sat up her arms clasped round her knees her head on one side? Had she cried then? He couldn't remember.

Two days later he returned to London. They didn't communicate again. Perhaps it had had seemed too close to perfection, uncontaminated by familiarity or detail, to be spoilt by further contact. All he knew was that as the years passed their meeting seemed to grow like a knot in the timber of his memory.

In his left hand the note had been reduced to mush by the constant pressure and moisture of his hand. He sensed his wife looking at him. He pretended to be asleep. The plane droned homeward above the clouds.  He kept his eyes  closed wishing that he would not  have to open them again. It struck him  that in the last 20 years he had never stopped pretending.