Darkness in the Afternoon - Part One

I was sitting in my office cleaning my imitation handgun when it accidentally fired killing a Mr Alfred Rukelhaus who was having his hair cut in “The Hair’s Progress” across the street—a business run by a bald-pated man called Stravinsky.

I immediately leapt from my chair, closed the venetian blinds and crawled on my knees back to my desk. I was still on the floor when Elina entered my office.

"That sounded like a shot?" she enquired.

"It was my new coffee percolator. Buying a 'twenty cup' was a blunder. It just flew out the window. Probably in Shoreditch Park by now."

"Are you a private eye?"

I slipped back into my chair and awkwardly shuffled the one piece of paper on my desk. When I glanced at the source of the voice, I saw a beautiful, golden-haired and voluptuous creature. Normally I stand to greet clients, but decided—for her modesty, and mine—to remain seated. I gestured to the lady to take a seat.

"My name is Elina."

"Sounds Greek?"

"I’m from Tooting."

She looked at me with a mixture of intensity and pride.

"Are you an investigator, or not?!"—Elina glanced at her watch—"I’ve no time to waste!"

After I checked I was breathing my two eyes met her two eyes. "You have a face that cries – NO, SHOUTS (I leapt from my chair at her booming voice) MELANCHOLY!" Then softly, "And just a little anxious, no?"

I pretended otherwise, but odd sounds emanated from my body and my legs quaked. I made a mental note to modify my diet.

"I’m—an explorer—a prober—a sleuth." I started to ramble.

"What was your most recent case and the outcome?"

"A kidnapped halibut. It belonged to a dentist who performed a shoddy deep-root filling. The kidnapper sent a ransom note to its owner with a photograph of the fish holding the Hackney Post. The fish was returned unharmed. I’m sorry to say the dentist was later found dead—battered to death with a haddock."

"How did you recover this fish—this hellibute?"

"Halibut. Basic, professional detective work. I’m sworn to secrecy about the details—" I made a note to obtain analgesics; my gums were still markedly sensitive.

"What’s the book?" she asked, pointing to my desk.

"Gustave Flaubert by Madame Bovary. I’m not usually a fan of female writers, however this is breathtaking, a masterpiece."

I followed her gaze until our eyes met again. The smile went from her face to be replaced by fatigue, sadness. She wrung her hands then placed a hand on her neck.

Elina had lost her husband and was fearful he was in great danger. I stayed quiet hoping she would volunteer information. She didn’t.

Finally, I asked, "Did you murder or arrange the murder of your husband to inherit his wealth?"

She half-closed her beautiful eyes with a weary grace.

"I said—"

"—I know what you said. How ridiculous. Why would I?"

"Money, pleasure, the excitement of amorous adventures—?" I said, in a high squeak.

"NO! I could never do that! You're insane." A perceptive and smart lady.

Elina kept silent. My instinct told me she was talking straight. She obviously occupied the high-end of the market. She was good-looking despite her paleness. I was smitten.

"OK. I believe you." I tried to picture my face without wrinkles and my head with a heavy mop of hair. I drew a blank. I needed answers to questions. First I had to think of the questions.

"Tell me about your husband. How you met him—" As I listened I looked more closely at her face. Occasionally she smiled and blushed, as if guilty of something indecent.

End of Part One

Read Part Two  

Happy New Year in 2012 & New Year Resolutions

The Birth of the World - Joan Miró (1893-1983)

With gratitude I wish to thank the people who visit this site. I wish you happiness and peace in 2012. Also, success with your dreams, your inspirations, your creations, and may your life resound with good health, hope, solidarity, trust, and love.

§

My new year resolutions are to eat and sleep regularly, to look at all things again without any preconceived ideas, to stop feeling like an empty square in search of a future, to travel by Chinese lantern with my pet kangaroo high above a chestnut grove, to get more variety into my dream life, and to sleep in a barn with an ethereal, amorphous, waif-like, beautiful young lady who wishes to explore the conflict between love and independence with eloquence, vitality and magical insight.

§

Reflections: Only the rich and privileged are able to maintain their grand illusions of life for long. Others' must live on solid ground, in the real world, celebrate its joys, mourn its misfortunes, and pass from the darkness into the light before it is too late and all is lost.

A Night At The Opera, Ophelia, and The Necklace

I remember one evening attending the theatre with an old friend, Anders Pedometer - a small, round-faced, short-sighted man. When the curtain went up a strange sound welled from the orchestra pit.

Anders had fallen from the balcony and was sitting on the shoulders of an oboe player. I was left holding his well-groomed black moustache, white eyebrows and left hand. The audience applauded under the false impression that Anders' acrobatics and severed hand were part of the show. He never again set foot in a theatre. I was told he once threw a bus timetable at a theatre door in Paris due to a train arriving late at Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

Following that episode poor Anders hurtled headlong into a mire of alcoholism, drug abuse and chain-smoking feather mattresses. I'm under no illusions; Anders is somewhere, dying slowly. I wish I could say his future is uncertain, but friendship demands openness, a passion for honesty.

§

I've kept diaries my entire adult life. Not my own, of course. I confess they have provided me with welcome distraction and untold pleasure when I desired calm day or night. The excitement of reading and pondering another individuals account of love, desire, embarrassment, meetings planned that did not happen, and synopsis of dealing with demons, rootlessness, anxiety, were engaging and enlightening. The diaries reminded me of my failings and weaknesses, and why I constantly felt bewildered and lost.

The life the diaries portrayed was not exhausted by sleepless nights or indecision. Each page described the fulfilment of dreams, successful conclusions and the need to make sense of one's existence. The remarks were neither blurred nor ambiguous.

This morning my home is less warm, my vision blurred, my movements motionless. I was foolish, or absentminded, not to recognise the chronicler of such dubious passages was myself. Suddenly my dreams were drowned by waves of devastating, tangible reality. I retired to the sitting room to play Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand with my right foot. Somehow it seemed appropriate.

§

This year, I have read and reread Guy de Maupassant's short story The Necklace. I remain dazzled by its brevity, ironic plot, and thought-provoking brilliance. Many films, novels, stories, plays, operas, are overly long for no other reason than poor editing. 

A case in point. During a recent operatic performance of "Hamlet" the lovely Ophelia took so long to die I wept with dismay. Her expressions and gestures (never mind her singing, wailing, giving and throwing flowers) made me mumble in Chinese, eat a stranger's handkerchief, and tear my shirt, trousers and stockings to shreds. In a moment of madness I approached the stage. With Ophelia in a trance I filled her ears with pansies, each nostril with violets, and placed a garland of fennel in her mouth for good measure. Anything to help her on her way, so to speak.

The scene ended abruptly. Surprisingly the audience roared my praise. I bowed, embracing a sustained ovation. Was the opera finished? The rest of the performance cancelled? No. Just shortened. It ended just before midnight just as I collapsed with a migraine.

§

Reflections: One should choose wisely which books to read as one's lifespan is limited. Also, support your local library. Since I was twelve or thirteen years of age I've borrowed books from local libraries. I'm glad I didn't have to purchase most of them. On reading a few of the books [sic] it was a triumph to get past the first chapter. Does anyone count the money they spend on wearily written novels that swim to the public on a slick sea of marketing, advertising, and chain-book store and supermarket placement? 

The choice of downloading thousands of ebooks to an electronic reader is a choice for many readers. While outlets still exist, I enjoy browsing, exploring, reading, buying, physical books at local bookstore chains. Also, on the internet when price dictates. In the present economic climate my first port of call is the library; unless I discover an unforgettable book that doesn't have to plea to belong to my personal collection.    

The Uninvited Guest, Gritting Teeth, and 'The Brightest of Days'

I don't often grimace unless someone unexpectedly appears out of nowhere. Indeed, my heart has sunk on more than one occasion when conversing with a guest at some party, or other social occasion, and a face suddenly appears over my guest's shoulder to join the conversation.

The uninvited individual usually has large protruding eyes and squints menacingly at me. 'The heat gets to me. Does it get to you? It gets to me and then I doze off. Do you doze off? Do you doze off and wake up with your head throbbing? Just like me? A blinding headache? A mitigating migraine? Just like me? Back in a second.' The person then disappears in the manner they first appeared. A nightmare come true, surely?

My guest usually looks at me with raised eyebrows – their eyes are engaged elsewhere - and expects an answer or a reaction. I tend to give neither. I say nothing. I remember once or twice snickering at such bold clowning when I was at school, or on probation in some godforsaken workplace where the risk of being fired was ridiculously funny in itself. Now I find such antics tiresome. In fact, they tend to deaden one's spirit.

My mouth starts to twitch. I'm sure I look like a frightened rabbit, or some other poor animal with sizable floppy ears, in need of a good night's sleep, or a trip, say, to Moscow in the depth of winter when it is bitterly cold, dreary, and unpleasant to the eye.

The world is confusing enough without individuals unexpectedly appearing out of nowhere when one is otherwise engaged. Such confusion can cause great embarrassment, for example, spraying a sliver of one's saliva in the direction of one's guest. Indeed, it can make one question whether one is crazy, gone of the boil, or just plain dead.

Another infuriating habit I've been told I embrace in circumstances described above is gritting my teeth. This I do for two reasons:

1)  I believe a violent snowstorm is imminent.

2)  The uninvited voice sounds like an old bed in a small dusty room: incapable of providing calm. In fact, the old bed in the small dusty room is only capable of wailing in despair, screeching like a two-bit fiddle, and reading detective novels. I'm of the opinion the voice belongs to a middle-aged man; his hair is dyed jet black yet he is in command of a long, bushy beard which is unmistakably white? Such sightings are not entirely unknown, but it does tend to raise a sniff of puzzlement nevertheless.

§

I feel daring and inquisitive today. Not something I'm sure you expect to hear from someone who suffers from an inferiority complex and who abandoned the novel Ulysses on the final page. My ardent search for useless information has no bounds: why do bald men usually wear a hat? do they wear a hat in bed? in the bath? when they make love? when they sit down to dinner? when they greet a lady? when they dye their hair? How is one supposed to remain passive in life when the answers to such questions remain ridiculously evasive? I believe my quest is upsetting my bowels.

Why do so many men dye their hair? Perhaps the desire to tussle with the ageing process resides in most people? Yet if someone of bold intellect, and good eyesight, wishes to wash their hair in egg yolks - and has the hen's consent - the end justifies the means. N'est-ce pas?

§

Reflections: Last week I was in bed for two days. I had a sore throat and fever. I was scarcely conscious. Nothing new, I assure you. However, I decided, as part of the recovery process, to take a bus into town. We had lunch and walked by the river. It was a glorious afternoon. I found the bus to be warm, gregarious, a great imitator, and "a breath of fresh air" on intellectual matters.

When she spoke of the blur of departures and arrivals at bus stops I swear she was thinking that life can sometimes be mundane, boring, predictable, if one dwells too long on one's thoughts. She thanked me for the “brightest of days”. I basked in her sincerity and reciprocated. As the bus and I were both tired after such a wonderful outing we agreed to take the train back to the village. A diminutive snore fragmented the silence during the journey home.

The Crucible of Love and Relationships

Today I'm filled with emptiness, uncertainty, and mired in a dreadful, deep malaise. Just when I thought my life was insulated from further anxiety and absurd intrigues two harrowing experiences leapt from nowhere, gripping me by the arm.

I normally rise at five-thirty, disembark from bed at seven, and swim across a lake close to my home. The exercise usually fills me with elation, and gives me time to think. Imagine my surprise and indignation to discover the lake no longer existed, and had been replaced overnight by an out-of-town shopping mall.

In fact, I was swimming by the entrance to the House of Frazer department store before I realised there wasn't any water. I walked sheepishly back through the mall with the sound of mocking laughter in my ears. My only consolation? I was naked and wouldn't need to wash and dry my 'Arctic White Casino Royale' swim trunks. I'm sure Dr Freud would have found my predicament, this defining act, of interest.

The second eye-popping experience happened on Saturday evening. I was standing under a restaurant awning; the rain coming down unremittingly. My partner, Eleanor Winchester-Rifle, was beating me about the head and torso with twenty inches of rubber tubing. 'To think I missed bingo for this!' she bleated in a cracked, decaying voice.

I studied her face and found myself amazed by her aged appearance and skill in wielding large rubber tubing. We quarreled; she left. (I never see her again. She dies, aged seventy-one, from a broken fingernail while abseiling in the Sahara Desert without a rope and harness.) I remained in the entrance watching the vile weather and light fade, careful not to meet the gaze of whispering bystanders.

A man's voice, toneless and steady. 'Every relationship has its highs and lows. A couple like you require homeostasis.'

I try to resist talking to strangers. I'm abnormally self-absorbed and a fervent collector of patterned wallpaper. Conversations tend to turn into complex jigsaws with too many pieces. Any pieces above ten and I want to run, soil my pants, or buy an umbrella; usually its all three. My hands became clammy, my voice thin and strained. 'I can't go near a doctor without suffering post-natal depression. My nose and mouth turn stale, metallic . . . And I have an aversion to small, tanned faces.'

His silence filled me with dread. I felt like crying or weeping, and I wasn't wearing my fake glasses. The guy could be a psychopath, or worse, full of jovial indifference. His body and face were both heavy and round. I jumped when he put a strong, swollen hand on my shoulder. 

'I learned my first wife was a lesbian after twenty years of marriage. Imagine that? I was suicidal for two minutes. Then Jane and I sat down and openly discussed the situation. The prospects of our relationship surviving after such a thunderbolt, you know?' He glanced at me. I tried to put on a fake smile but it didn't fit my sagging face.

'Your wife! . . . Jane! . . . Are you still a pair!? . . . A couple . . . !?' My voice sounded as if my vocal chords were squinting.

He moved closer. 'It's a question of attitude. I wish I'd handled the whole situation with more maturity, you know. With more care and love for my wife and children.' My mouth was as dry as bones residing in a museum or in a microwave with a broke timer. His gaze penetrated each muscle of my face. He seemed to enjoy watching me squirm.

'Jane had a laissez-faire tendency. It was hard for me seeing her leaving our home on a stretcher. But then I was always the pragmatist. We had a yin and yang type of thing going, you know?' He leaned forward and whispered, 'We all tend to act differently in times of crisis than in times of ease. I risked everything when I shot her.

My heart pumped faster. My knuckles turned white in concert with my hair. 'Your wife?! . . .' I gasped. 'You?!  . . . You shot your wife?!'

He put his fingers to his lips. 'Talk quietly,' he whispered. 'You never know who may be listening. Our marriage wasn't great before my wife died.' My fingers trembled so much I felt a French accent coming on. With his voice flat, and devoid of emotion, he stared directly into my face. 'Do you think I'm making this up?! That I didn't kill my wife?! Getting over an agonizing break-up isn't easy, you know!  Especially for the partner left behind!'

Life and death shot before my eyes. I pictured myself walking around on sticks for months if I didn't escape his company. 'I've just remembered I have two children to launch! . . . I mean, two children to take to lunch! My children and I have a shared history! . . . It goes back years! Decades! Centuries, in fact!' I longed to be invisible. 'I've just remembered I'm someone else, and my job has been outsourced to an untuned, plywood violin! Catch you later!'

Without batting an eyelid I jumped into the rain, and entered the city's sewage system by the nearest manhole.

§

Reflections: Partners, lovers, family, friends - indeed, ourselves - change over the course of a lifetime. It may be due to the death of a loved one, illness, redundancy, debt, addiction, family secrets, broken hearts, fear. To successfully survive expected, or unsuspected, experiences we need strength, room to breathe, to discover who we were always supposed to be, and strive to become that person. 

Closing our eyes and minds solves or achieves nothing. Embrace the 'kiss of life' while it exists, and handle your inner emotions with sensitivity and care. Treat others' with genuine and deep feelings. Life is neither predictable, nor a fairy tale.

Great Interviews of the 20th Century - Ronnie Kerrigan discusses his novel: Sink

This is an edited version of Ronnie Kerrigan's interview with Tanya Shepherd, first published in Dogs Monthly, November 22, 1996

Tanya Shepherd:  Would you describe yourself as English?

Ronnie Kerrigan:  In view of the fact I was born in Northern Ireland; No.

Your parents were schoolteachers. Did this have any particular influence?

I remember our home was covered in books. Roof tiles would have been more effective. I believe they would have prevented the rain encroaching and soaking our clothes, beds, and watering down our food. Of course, it was a household full of readers. One day I counted twenty five and I didn't know a single person.

Were your family energetic and battling people?

My mother was highly energetic both physically and mentally. She was a marvellous pianist. I remember sitting on the sofa listening to her playing Chopin. My father would simultaneously be chopping wood in the same room. I believe out of spite, perhaps jealousy. He felt eclipsed by my mother's creativity, and her ability to eat home-made ginger biscuits without a sudden need to use the bathroom.

What was your relationship with your father? I believe he had numerous affairs.
How much was reality or fantasy is anybody's guess? He carried a candle for years for a woman younger than my mother. Undeniably this played havoc when he was washing, eating or driving. I don't believe the candle was ever returned to the young woman? . . .

Your father started writing seriously while in jail. Did that influence you to write?
Perhaps. My father rejected the script life give him at the outset and rewrote it when he was forty-three. He had a terrible fear of silence. Anything motionless such as a full moon, a mist, a pool of water, a quiet asthmatic, would light his short fuse. He was jailed for impersonating a menu at "The Grill at the Dorchester" in London, and shouting at diners, 'Chips with everything!' He wrote a novella while incarcerated titled: Trying To Be What I'm Not. It was never published.

Why?
A mixture of things. It was thought too credible, absurd, yet truthful. He felt that woman were superior to men in all aspects of life. Anyway, one has to sell, promote, market oneself. My father didn't have the energy to 'perform' with the goal of influencing a particular set of observers at a given time.  He once said to me, 'Only the reader can judge whether a book is superficial or, alternatively, possesses an abiding intensity that provokes thought, empathy, joy, doubt, and gets to the heart and soul of things.'

Your novel, Sink, is the first of three short stories that will form a trilogy of novels? Is that correct? If so, can you elaborate?
I'm still trying to find my writer's voice. One must be an acute observer of human behaviour, attitudes, and be able to read character. A voyeur, of sorts. The language, the words, the characters, must impact on me. I don't expect anyone of a reasonable intellect to read it. Otherwise, I would be outed as a fraud. The trilogy will include, Sink, Bath, and A Single Room. The first short story, Sink, is not an intellectual puzzle. I suppose it could be interpreted as an attempt to cast light on something detached, yet ever present, that has borne witness to the life and values of an individual. The effects of their childhood and formative experiences; their ambitions, achievements, loves, disasters. The heart of the story is that no human being is free of flaw or disappointment. The antiquated 'Sink', and the single room in which it stands, face the cycle of renewal. The cycle of renewal that those with abiding intensity and strength use to create a less complicated and better life for themselves, and those around them.

If you could change one thing in your life what would it be?
I would not have boarded the night bus to Putney High Street.

Would you care to elaborate on that?

The bus was "Out Of Service." I spent five days on the damn thing before a passing dog jumped on board and informed me. 

§

  

Reflections:  It's noteworthy to remember that words can be dangerous in the mouths of the supercilious, the detached, the impassive, the fabricator, and especially if they fall on your head.