Alan McCormick Writing

SEAN THE SWAN WRANGLER

‘Sean, you fuck’ was how he was known, and how he thought of himself.

He’d lost his way. He needed a new direction. One that was his own; not anyone else’s, especially anyone else who referred to him as ‘Sean, you fuck.’  The days of name-calling were over. It was time for a new start.

He felt this desire for change standing in front of Leyton’s Londis noticeboard. One advert stood up and spoke to him: ‘Sean wanted for new post as Swan Wrangler on the River Lea’.

‘That’s fucking me,’ he shouted, but then felt better of the ‘f’ word. ‘I’ve done with that fu**ing word. That’s me: I’m Sean, the Swan Wrangler.’

The next day he was on the towpath being instructed on how to lasso a swan out of the river without damaging its neck or beak.

‘It’s not as easy as it looks, Sean,’ cautioned the instructor.

‘It doesn’t look fuc… flipping easy.’

‘You need to talk to a swan softly to set it at ease, then come at it as if you were wearing carpet slippers and velvet gloves.’

‘Like a cat?’

‘Not exactly, but I can tell you’ve got the right idea.’

The first weeks in the job were not easy for Sean or the swans. But once he started to think less ‘cat’ and more of himself as ‘Sean, the slipper-wearing swan wrangler,’ he injured less swans and began to see himself in a whole new light.

Others saw it too, and when hooligans now called to him from the bank as he wrestled with swans in the river below, they no longer shouted, ‘Sean, you fuck,’ but shouted ‘Sean, you flipping swan wrangler!’

‘Flipping’ is what he heard or chose to hear, and it always made him smile.

*Drawing by Jonny Voss

ERIC LUCASTEES

A party was taking place on the deck of a cruise ship in Southampton docks. Fine white linen covered a long trestle table, fairy lights swung in the breeze, and high notes of sweet sickly perfume mixed with the heavy undertow of diesel.

It was time for goodbyes. Eric Lucastees was there of course. Eric Lucastees was always there. Only soon he would be gone.

‘I was dreaming about you,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember if I was fucking you or you were fucking me; either way your wife seemed to like it.’

What could I say to something like that, so I said, ‘what did you say?’

‘You heard,’ he said.

‘I did,’ I said.

‘Anyway, where’s the lovely wife?’

‘She couldn’t come.’

‘Oh dear, poor old girl,’ he said, offering one of those evil, thin, cracked smiles he liked to save especially for me.

‘I could wipe your smile off here and now,’ I said

‘You couldn’t,’ he said.

I couldn’t. He was right.

‘There are things I know about you,’ I said.

‘You know nothing about me,’ he said.

Things I know about Eric Lucastees:

First thing:  My wife used to say that she never liked to enter a sauna if a man was already there because the room and her skin would invariably end up smelling of sweaty testicles. It’s as if Eric Lucastees must always have been taking a sauna just before we met because after we shook hands, my hand would end up smelling of testicles too – his testicles.

Second thing: Eric Lucastees nursed his (inappropriately named) wife Joy for six years when she was dying of cancer. He was proficient and dutiful. ‘I’d have made a fantastic nurse,’ he liked to say with a flutter of his eyes, and a glint of suggestiveness. This devotion cut him a lot of slack with the ex-pat crowd, allowing him to behave erratically, to entertain unusual alliances with other husbands’ wives, and to re-name his pet Labrador after his wife when she died.

‘Come here, Joy,’ he’d say. ‘Roll over and I’ll tickle your tummy,’ a party game on the carpet at parties, a little vaudeville when too much had been drunk and the lights were dimmed, the poor male dog bemused with all the laughter and attention, longing to be called Buster again.

Third thing: Eric Lucastees’ father was a lion tamer and had learned his craft from a Kikuyu shaman in the Nakuru valley, who’d taught him to utilise a local purple plant – Valium for big cats – to calm the lions and make them more amenable to basic instruction.

Fourth thing: Eric Lucastees possessed a perfectly symmetrical physique. ‘Take a long piece of string, secure it at your foot and then run it up to the top of your head,’ he’d say. ‘Then take that length of string and coil it around your waist twice. If the string is used – no more, no less – bingo, you have symmetry. Any more string required, then you must exercise and diet, one without the other will not be enough to save you.’

‘Why don’t you just halve your height and see if your waist is bigger?’ I suggested.

‘Where is the romance in that, Robin?’ – he went through a phase of calling me Robin, Robin Reliant, after a laughable three-wheeled vehicle of the time.

‘The name’s not Robin.’

‘What size is your waist then?’ he asked.

Fifth thing: Eric Lucastees scored 67 at snooker as a boy and I know how he built the score, every ball, every position, every angle. The story never changed the hundreds of times he told it, so I can still visualise the sequence now.

‘It would have been a hundred, only my opponent had already scored 65. I had to clear the table, utilise every opportunity of taking the black to rack up 67, which as you know I did, to beat him. Blue. Pink. Black. Boom, the place erupted!’

There is also a list called ‘Things about Eric Lucastees that keep me awake at night’ but more of that later.

It was a small raggedy group that assembled on board to wish Eric Lucastees bon voyage and fond farewell. For many, having reached that uncertain age where plans were measured ahead in months rather than years, it would likely be the last time they’d ever see him. Eric Lucastees, for one, had said he wouldn’t be returning to the motherland ever again. He’d made his bed – ‘wink, wink, should anyone want to join me in it’ – and was returning to Kenya where we’d all met many moons before, the rest of us marooned in England to see out our days, draw our pensions and fill up the local hospital beds. Anyway, it was common knowledge that Eric Lucastees’ finances had not fared so well during his stay in Blighty. The taxman was coming, and as Eric Lucastees was wont to say: ‘what is a man to do except pull up his trousers and get the hell out of it before his penis gets trapped in the door.’ Eric Lucastees’ penis: a thing of legend.

When I first met Eric Lucastees in Kenya, de-mobbed from army duties, he still had a leftover post-war malnutrition stare, his requisite baggy khaki shorts voluminous and pouring over his spindly white legs, a slug of moustache stuck to his upper lip giving him the rakish, already tarnished charm of a black-market spiv. 

At an early boozy get together he introduced what would become a regular party trick (one of many) involving an accomplished shirtless headstand, taping back his ears with sellotape, removal of four frontal dentures, two above and two below, so his tongue could prod in and out in time with the breathy cuckoo chorus of the Laurel and Hardy theme song. The effect was initially grotesque and had the effect of making him appear like an upturned rodent but somehow it also wrong footed us, and before long we were laughing, and the more he did it the more we laughed, until the room was filled with a kind of mass hysteria.

Afterwards his act received a more sober reaction. Most of the women said that it was ‘disgusting’ and the men found themselves instinctively protesting that it was just a bit of fun but in private we were as unsettled as the women. It was over our wives though that Eric Lucastees cast a lingering secret spell, the image of his reckless upturned skeletal frame entering their private and collective consciousness, his daring physical uninhibitedness violating conformity, enticing anarchy and abandon.

Maybe his allure had something to do with him performing his grotesque comic contortion dressed in only a pair of shape-defining brilliant-white Aertex Y-fronts. So brilliantly white that the women came round later to ask Joy what washing powder the house girl used to clean their clothes. As they did, they couldn’t help but notice that Joy looked washed out herself, as if she’d been put through some giant mechanical wringer.

‘Insatiable,’ Joy replied. ‘He’s like a whippet humping off my legs day and night.’

‘Poor you,’ the women consoled out loud, different thoughts gestating within, and a libidinous Eric Lucastees was busy taking hold of their fantasies.

My wife told me that before congress he apparently shouted, ‘stand and deliver’, at the same time as his pants fell magically to the ground.

‘Hey presto! You couldn’t make it up,’ she said with an unusual smirk I’d not seen before.

Eric Lucastees’ lifetime as a colonial Don Juan amongst the disaffected neglected ex-pat wives had begun. And my wife was not immune to his charms.

‘I don’t get it. What’s the appeal?’ I dared to ask her years later.

‘He made me laugh and he was a relentlessly attentive lover,’ she said.

Which brings me to the first thing on the list of ‘Things about Eric Lucastees that keep me awake at night’ – or more accurately variations on one particular thing – what exactly did Eric Lucastees do with my wife in the weeks she was with him after his wife died? And what did “relentlessly attentive” mean in practice? I needed to know.

One clue might be something my wife said only recently: ‘Eric Lucastees was not what you think. He was maddeningly egotistical, of course, but he could be vulnerable too.’




I’ve only seen him vulnerable twice; once, twenty years ago when we still lived in Mombasa. It was the middle of the night, and the phone rang – never a good thing – and it was his voice on the other end.

‘Joy’s collapsed, she’s not making any sense and I can’t get her off the floor. Please come and help.’

‘She’ll be drunk,’ my wife said. ‘Don’t go.’

But something told me I should. When I arrived, their front door was open. I walked in. Eric Lucastees was sitting on an armchair in the lounge nursing a whisky; Joy sprawled on the tiled floor under a throw by his feet. Her mouth had collapsed on one side, and she was breathing loudly, moaning.

‘She’s so cold,’ he said.

‘She’s had a stroke,’ I said.

‘Like her mother, a time bomb, after the cancer she knew it was coming. We shouldn’t have been so vigorous, but Joy likes it on the floor, you know. Hard on the knees though, poor thing.’

‘We need to get her onto the sofa. Have you called the doctor?’

‘On his way,’ he said. ‘You take her top half and I’ll take the bottom but mind yourself, she’s naked under there.’

We lifted Joy up and he sat down on one end of the sofa, lifting her head so it rested on his lap. He positioned her so she could look out of the window towards the sea, and the blinking boat lights on the horizon: the Lucastees’ were famed for the sea views from their house.

He stroked her hair, soothing her: ‘It’s going to be okay, the doctor is coming and Robin Reliant is here, so nothing bad can happen,’ and he winked at me. ‘Fill this up and get yourself one, dear pal,’ he said, gesturing at his empty glass and the bottle of Johnny Walker.

This was the old colony days before ambulances and response teams and the doctor was taking ages. So, as we checked Joy was still breathing and as comfortable as she could be, we chatted and drank.

‘My brain is on fire,’ Eric Lucastees said. ‘Some diversion if you’ll allow: my snooker score! Did I ever tell you my father was watching?’

‘No, but is this the right time?’

‘I think it is and Joy won’t mind, so it’s up to you: is this the right time?’

‘Take your cue and off you go.’

That momentarily wrong footed him – the only time I ever had – and he paused, smiled tenderly at me – another first – before continuing: ‘As you know, Jimmy Brambles had racked up 65, and there was a maximum of 67 left on the table if I took every available black. Not something you’d know about,’ his off-key joke unsettling me because Eric Lucastees was known to have slept with many local black women.

‘Not in front of Joy,’ I said.

‘Joy knows all about that. She forgave me a long time ago. She’s a forgiving kind of women, aren’t you, Joy?’ he said ruffling her hair.

I found myself looking at her to see if it was true, but her expression still lolled to one side, her eyes staring, full of confusion and fear.

‘My father witnessed the first flurry of shots, red, black, red, black . . . then left the room. I couldn’t wait for him to return so carried on – ‘

‘There’s one thing I’ve always wanted to ask. Is this story true? Did you ever actually score 67?’

‘Two things you’ve always wanted to ask,’ he corrected, and suddenly started crying, his whole body shaking, so Joy’s head bounced up and down on his lap.

‘Careful, Eric!’

‘The point is,’ he said, collecting himself. ‘My father didn’t return, didn’t get to see me pocket the final black; didn’t hear the crowd going mad.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, just as the doctor arrived.

‘Ah, Jonny Walker!’ the doctor said. ‘Eric Lucastees, you read my mind.’

Back on board, Eric Lucastees had the microphone, a hint of the seasoned well-lubricated redcoat in his delivery: ‘I suppose I should thank everyone for being here – but I won’t – and thank the crew for doing such a good job – so badly – ‘ 

A large older woman in a formidable tweed coat stepped out of the crowd and snatched the microphone off him.

‘Whatever stories Eric has told you they’re lies, whatever lies he’s told you they’re not necessarily lies and whoever he’s slept with, go and see a doctor. Oh, and if you have children and wish to corroborate any dates, don’t bother, if your child is a liar and thief, then it’s probably my brother’s.’

Eric Lucastees sighed and leaned against the woman’s ample bosom and began to laugh. ‘For Fuck’s sake, everyone, please meet my sister, Hattie!’

I expect there was barely anyone present who knew Eric Lucastees had a sister.

Hattie sought me out later. ‘You must be RR, or Robin Reliant as Eric likes to call you.’

‘It’s not my name.’

‘I know my dear, it’s sport that’s all.’

‘He never told us he had a sister.’

‘We’ve been re-united on his return here. I’ll miss him when he goes. You and your wife will too, I expect.’

‘What?’

‘Are you in the love camp or in with the haters? I mean with my brother you either hate him or love him, don’t you?’

‘Neither, but closer to hate I imagine.’

‘I thought you’d say that. Did he ever tell you we’re orphans? We were adopted by different parents, I got to stay here, and he took the passage east.’

‘He never told me. Why are you?’

‘So, when you write about him, you can fill in the gaps.’

‘I’m not going to write about him.’

‘You will,’ she said, and disappeared to find someone else to unsettle.

Joy mercifully didn’t last long after her stroke. Her funeral brought a loyal turnout, the hard unforgiving African earth requiring a mechanical digger to make a hole big enough to take her coffin. The Mombasa crowd were all present: Joy’s friends sat on one side of the grave, some of them Eric Lucastees’ lovers from the past, his present harem huddled around him on the other side. Expensive black dresses and oversized Sophia Loren sunglasses were the order of the day, the sweet swirling mix of Channel No 5 and Fidji nauseating in the heat. My wife stood dutifully by me, but kept looking over at Eric Lucastees, who grinned sheepishly every time he caught her eye.

A week later he came round to see me.

‘I’d like to borrow your wife for a few weeks if you don’t mind.’

‘If I don’t mind?’

‘Yes, you’re the husband, after all, so much better for everyone if you’re in agreement.’

‘And if I’m not?’

‘Daggers at dawn, Robin R – ‘

‘Call me Robin Reliant today and I’ll personally pull out your dentures and shove them down your throat.’

‘That’s a no then, is it?’

‘If she wants to go, I have no choice.’

‘Good man,’ and he went to hug me.

‘Get your filthy ball-smelling hands off me.’

‘Oh, yes, you don’t like to be touched.’

‘Not by you, I don’t.’

‘Not quite what your wife says.’

And he scooped his dentures from his mouth and shoved them in his pocket, his open cave of a mouth and sunken jaw making him look instantly older and ridiculous.

‘Can’t have these, Robin, they cost too much, but I promise to bring her back in one piece, the least I can do,’ and with that he was gone.

My wife arrived later to pack her bags.

‘Eric Lucastees needs me, but it won’t be for long my darling.’

‘He told me that.’

‘We’re going to Nakuru, to his father’s old place. It’s still standing years after the old man passed on.’

‘Oh, yes, the lion tamer.’

‘Was he? That’ll be one of his fanciful stories I expect,’ and her nose crinkled in amusement, even though she tried her best to hide it by pretending she was about to sneeze.

‘Let it out,’ I said.

‘Must be the change in the weather,’ she said with a shiver. ‘Anyway, we’ll keep out of your way, so it won’t be too embarrassing for you.’

‘It’s really good of you both to consider my embarrassment in all this. Only, don’t you think it might be a little odd for me to have to explain how you’ve both suddenly disappeared at the same time, and for so long? It’s not like you’re just popping down to the shops, is it?’

‘Tell them I’ve had to go and see my ill sister in Edinburgh.’

‘You don’t have a sister in Edinburgh. You don’t even have a sister.’

She looked like she was about to laugh but righted herself: ‘Make something up; you’re good at that. And I do love you, you know.’

‘I expect you do. And where shall I say Eric Lucastees has gone?’

‘Tell them grief got the better of him and he jumped off a cliff.’

Only, I told people the truth, the whole truth. It earned me sympathy at first but soon people were turned off, repulsed even – what kind of man was I? – and the visits and invites quickly dried up. I turned to drink but I wasn’t very good at that either, and the third bottle of wine usually left me gagging, passing out in a pool on the floor.

I took to howling, howling uncontrollably, so one night my howls became so loud and persistent that they alerted a pack of wild dogs, who congregated in my garden under the moonlight wondering what was going on – perhaps one of their own was trapped inside or a potential prey in distress was calling out to be finished off? The biggest dog looked in at me through the lounge window. He looked puzzled at first and then his eyes narrowed, his expression turning to cold disapproval.

It was a sobering look. As our eyes locked, I resolved to toughen up, and I shouted the dogs away.

Eric Lucastees returned my wife several weeks later. She looked shredded, washed out, when he left her at the door.

She became a crier, and the antidepressants and tranquillisers she was prescribed allowed her to sleep but made her slow. She was unfailingly polite to me though, a first, her bite diminished, her spark snuffed out.

If I did anything for her, fixed her a drink, fetched her pills, she’d say in a strange flat voice: ‘You’re such a good man.’

I didn’t see Eric Lucastees for a long time after this, but late one night he came knocking at our door – the second time I’d see him vulnerable. He wanted something of course.

‘What I’m about to tell you, it can’t go further, you understand?’

‘You want me to help you?’

‘Yes, I do, please, there’s no one else I trust.’

‘God! Okay, go ahead.’

Eric Lucastees had been driving back from a weekend in Malindi – another favourite hideaway for his dalliances – and it was dark and raining. It was common in those days of fewer cars, for local children in the villages to come to the roadside and wave as you drove past. A little boy on his own had ran out from behind a bush and edged too close to the road as Eric Lucastees’ car went by and it hit him. Eric Lucastees stopped the car and got out to investigate what had happened – that part, at least, showing him in a reasonable light – but when he located the boy, he was apparently already dead. Feeling there was nothing he could do – his neglect to find someone to tell or to look for the boy’s parents surely showing him in a less good light – and panicking for his own safety – he didn’t want to be lynched and had been drinking and didn’t want to lose his licence – he left the boy by the roadside and drove away.

By the time he’d got to our house, he’d cleaned the front of the car as best as he could and had attempted to push out the dents in the bonnet and bumper rail, and was wondering if he could stash the car away in our garage until things had blown over.

‘A lot to ask, but what are friends for?’

‘For things like this,’ I said.

‘Okay, thank you.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Will she see me?’ 

‘I think we might leave her out of this, don’t you?’

When Eric Lucastees left, I used tweezers to take out fine strands of debris from the car grill and placed them in a plastic container and took numerous close-up photos of the still obvious damage to the car.

When the party on the boat was over and it was time for goodbyes, I made sure I got in mine.

Eric Lucastees was drunk and sitting on his own at the table.

‘None of us can know how long we have, so let’s part as friends,’ I said.

‘No hard feelings?’

‘None.’

‘A hug?’

‘Let’s not go that far.’

‘Ha, you just look after your wife.’

‘I intend to, thank you.’

A month before I’d sent an envelope to the Kenyan constabulary with the photos I’d kept of his car, along with the saved matter (what else to call it?) – amazing what forensics can do these days. I detailed time and place and told them that Eric Lucastees was drunk and had fled the scene. The unsettled political climate there was advantageous; a white ex colonial to make an example of could be useful. So, they were very grateful when I informed them that he’d be arriving in Mombasa in three weeks, and said they’d be waiting for him as he disembarked.

I told him all this.

‘Well, well, and you’ve waited all this time to turn?’

‘It seems like the right time to me. But don’t worry, I hear Kenyan prisons have improved since our day: half-decent food, fewer cockroaches, dorms with less than twenty inmates in them. You may even get a bed if you pull in a few favours.’

‘Checkmate?’

‘Oh, I’d call it snookered, wouldn’t you?’

‘She was a wonderful fuck your wife.’

‘Bye, my friend, and try and keep your end up, I’ll be rooting for you.’

In England my hobby has been gardening; never without a spade in my hand.

My next-door neighbour commends my recent spadework: ‘bloody hell, Robert, you trying to dig yourself to Australia, or what?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

‘You could do with a digger.’

‘In Africa it might have been useful but here the earth is more forgiving.’

Eric Lucastees never disembarked at the first port of call in Malta. When a cleaner found his belongings laid out on the bed in his cabin, along with a small pile of addressed envelopes on his bedside table, the coastguards were alerted and a search put in motion. After a few days his naked body – naked, naturally, an exhibitionist to the end! –  turned up entangled in a giant trawler’s fishing net.

A fortnight later, Colin the postman is at my door.

‘Hi, Robert,’ he says, holding out an envelope. ‘Do you know anything about this one? It’s addressed to Mister Robin Reliant.’

‘The car? Funny that, but I can’t say I’ve heard of anyone with that name.’

‘Okay, I’ll keep it; mark it as addressee unknown. Bit odd, but there’s one here for your wife too – same foreign postmark, same handwriting.’

Nosey these people in English villages.

‘Oh, she’s off with her terminally ill sister in Edinburgh and is going to be gone a long time by the look of things. I’ll make sure she gets it though. Now, sorry, I can’t stand around chatting forever, I better get back to the garden.’

‘Still digging for victory, Robert?’

‘Something like that,’ I reply.

*

Eric Lucastees recently came third in the Plaza Short Story Prize judged by Damon Galgut, who wrote: ‘I really liked this whacky, unexpected story, especially its unusual and fluid narrative approach.’

TAKE AWAY

Visiting day, the curtains have been opened, the untouched takeaway removed, and the evil commode wheeled from my room.

Mum is talking in the hall: you’ll have to be quieter today. She’s struggling and noise is really bothering her but seeing you will cheer her up. Go on now, she won’t bite.

Yasmine and Sarah come into my room.

Heh, Hannah, look what we’ve got you!

A huge card. I raise my head off the pillows.

Three Labrador puppies on the cover. They open it up: Ta-da!

Wince.

Sorry, too loud? Everyone’s signed it this time. Even Michelle Mayes.

Grimace.

They laugh.

Bubble writing, kisses, love hearts, smileys. Too much. I can’t keep my head up anymore. Back I go. Eyes shut. Tight as I can.

We’ll read it for you.

Taking turns. Yasmine first: Laura says hang in there, babes, we all love you.

And Jane says we misssssss you. One, two, three . . .that’s seven s’s.

She must really miss you! says Yasmine.

Gemma says you’re the best and I hate what’s happening to you, continues Sarah.

That makes me want to cry.

But when I open my eyes, it’s Yasmine who’s crying.

I rest my palm on her cheek.

Don’t, Yas, it’s all right.

No, it isn’t, she says, kissing me, holding me close.

Sarah stares at us. She looks sad and unsure what to do, so she reads on: Mrs Fox says I loved teaching you . . .

Swot! Yasmine whispers in my ear.

And can’t wait to teach you again. Keep strong and we’ll undoubtedly see you soon. Shall I carry on?

I shake my head and mouth thank you.

Undoubtedly: what a stupid word, says Yasmine.

Can we do anything for you? asks Sarah.

I shake my head and close my eyes again.

They find a way to get into my bed. One lying on either side. We hold hands and I don’t want to let go. I like their heat. The smell of their sunny outside skin. As I feel myself go under, I hear Yasmine singing – sail here, let me hold you – and when I surface, they’re gone.

I press the buzzer and Mum rushes in like a dog is chasing her.

Weeks later, and Robert Smith is singing ‘Close to Me’ on the cassette player by my bed. I’ve always loved that song but today it hurts; everything from tip to toe tingling, aching, as if my body is riddled with some ancient plague coursing poison through my veins. I slide myself off the bed and onto the commode. A sick geriatric trickle when I’m fifteen, and in my prime apparently. I must have been an evil witch in my previous life!

Only those kinds of thoughts are supposed to be banned from my psyche since Katherine the counsellor has been visiting me:

Keep in the moment, no blaming, and look forward rather than back without putting any pressure on yourself, tiny steps at a time.

She doesn’t know about the stumbling witch-like steps to hell, might save that for another session.

The witchy nightmare started over a year ago when I was diagnosed with glandular fever. I was off school for six weeks. When I returned, I was greeted with a mixture of envy and sympathy, and perhaps – though I may have been exaggerating it in my head – suspicion.

Envy came from glandular fever’s reputation as the kissing disease.

So, who have you been snogging?

Did you go further?

Bet she did.

Was it worth it to get ill?

Yasmine stepped in: She was kissing me, and it’s none of your business if we went further. And, of course, it was worth it, eh, Hannah?

Suspicion came from me looking too well for someone who was off school for so long.

My brother had glandular fever and he was only off for a week!

He didn’t have glandular fever then, said Yasmine.

Maybe you were kissing him, Hannah, said Michelle Mayes.

Some of the girls – not all – laughed.

Anyway, suspicion was something I’d need to get used to, as a month later I felt even worse and was diagnosed with M.E.

A few friends have stayed loyal, but it’s hard when the Daily Mail keeps labelling M.E. ‘yuppie flu’, a ‘malingerer’s disease’ reserved for ‘spoilt middle-class hypochondriacs.’

My new loveable trait is to wake with pools of dribble on my pillowcase, a kind of paralysis of my tongue and bottom lip, as if I’ve had a minor stroke, so now when I speak, I’m like a drunk, gurning, slurring my words.

It’s inexplicable, not mentioned in any textbook, not visible in any test but it is happening – at least I think it is – this illness can play tricks with you. There’s so much disbelief that even I’m beginning to question what’s real and what isn’t.

The pillowcase is wet. Maybe I emptied my glass onto it in the night?

No, my glass is full. I’m a glass full kind of girl, surely.

As my symptoms worsen, Mum and Dad become desperate. They take me to A&E.

A doctor examines me. Makes me stand until my legs start to buckle. Then he drops his pen and asks me to pick it up from the floor. I say I’ll fall if I do.

No, you won’t, he says.

And like a good dog at Crufts, I perform the trick on all fours and hand it up to him.

Now I’d like you to get up too.

I can’t.

I’m waiting.

Dad goes to help me.

Stay!

Good dog Dad does as he’s told.

I’ve got all day, so take your time.

I think it’s hatred that makes me somehow force myself off the floor.

Hey presto, he says.

I’m shaking and want to cry, but not in front of him.

You’re being a prick! Dad tells him.

Wow, that makes me proud.

Maybe so. But I’m asking myself if you really want your daughter to be well? Maybe you should be asking yourselves that too?

Is that it? says Mum. You’re not going to do anything for her?

M.E. is not a recognised illness, there’s nothing physically wrong with her. Now, if you want me to call someone from the adolescent psych team to come down, I’d be more than happy to do that.

Come on, Hannah, says Dad, helping me on with my coat and into my wheelchair.

She doesn’t need the chair either. I’ll be recommending a follow up from social services in my report, just so you know.

Dad pushes the chair quickly away, a back wheel bouncing over the doctor’s shoes as we leave.

Loving faces congregate around my open coffin. The wake has started. Crap music like a dirge is playing but the dancing is manic. Robert Smith is standing to the side like an exotic wallflower with his big hair, blood red lipstick and heavy clown mascara. He leans over my cask and uses his ring finger – a twisting coral viper – to smudge black eye shadow onto my eyelids. His breath is patchouli and Bovril crisps and when we kiss, I think I’m in heaven. Then the front doorbell rings, and seconds later Dad is knocking on my door.

 Sorry, Hannah, the Assessment Team are here.

I thought they were coming next Wednesday.

I hear him tell them: you’ll have to wait while she gets herself ready.

A woman’s voice: Hannah can get herself ready then? Dress herself?

I don’t know if she’s getting dressed. I didn’t say that. She just needs some time.

A man’s voice – two of them then? Or maybe more? An army? – It’s okay, we’re here to help, not catch anyone out.

Sarah visits without Yasmine later in the day. I don’t mention the assessment and tell her instead about my Robert Smith dream.

I like him too, she says, and then pauses. I can tell she’s not sure whether to continue: Adam (that’s her brother) says that girls who like Robert Smith don’t really like boys at all. It’s a sign.

Of what?

I’m only saying what Adam says.

Okay, so ask your Nazi brother Adam if he’d be happier if I fancied Frank Bruno?

Hannah, stop, I wish I hadn’t said anything.

Me too.

Shall I go

If you want to.

I’d rather stay.

Okay, I’d rather you stay, too.

Okay?

Okay!

We don’t speak for a bit. Then I break the silence.

Have you seen Yasmine?

None of us has seen her in ages.

She can get reclusive sometimes.

She hasn’t told you, has she?

Told me what?

That’s she’s been seeing someone.

No, she did!

Okay, I thought maybe –

She’s told me all about her.

Hannah, she hasn’t told you, it’s not a ‘her’; she’s seeing a boy from another school. They met at a party. He’s called Spike.

Ouch!

Hannah, come on.

The name is funny, that’s all. She ought to watch where she sits.

Hannah, it’s okay to be upset.

I’m not upset and stop saying my name: Hannah, Hannah? Hannah!

I know you.

You know my name.

Hannah, please.

You should go, Sarah.

I close my eyes and feign a coma, and eventually she gets the message.

At the door before she leaves, she says, I know you’re not actually sleeping.

Yes, I am, I say quietly enough so even I can barely hear.

That day wiped me out for weeks and I disappeared into a fug – ‘brain fog’ which the M.E. handbook describes just doesn’t cut it – a dirty toxic pea-soup fug. I slept, dribbled, and dreamt I was lying on my back, unable to move off a cold ocean bed, life shimmering above the surface of the water.

Yasmine kept ringing, and I pretended to be asleep each time there was a knock on my door to ask if I was well enough to speak to her.

Eventually I tell Mum: Inform Yasmine that my fever’s spiked. That I feel like I’ve been spiked.

Spiked?

Mum, repeat back to me what I said to you.

‘You’ve been spiked, that your fever’s spiked.’ It’s an odd way of describing it, that’s all.

Mum, that’s what I want you to say!

She goes off to relay the message and comes back a minute later.

Well, I told her exactly like you asked me to. And she said, ‘tell her the spike will soon be over’. I’m not sure what’s going on but is there something you’re not telling me? Are you and Yasmine okay?

Never better.

And I disappear again, this time feeling a trickle of warmth seeping onto the ocean bed.

I hear Mum on the surface above, edgy and desperate: Hannah, please let’s try a takeaway tonight, we all need cheering up!

A letter arrives the next day. Mum and Dad open my curtains a crack and sit on the end of my bed to share its contents. Mum starts:

Hannah, they’re recommending an exercise programme; gradual exercises building up over time. They also want you to take a higher dose of the anti-depressants.

The ones I stopped taking because they were turning me into a zombie?

Dad continues and Mum takes my hand – teamwork – we’re on your side, love.

Then Mum takes on the baton: Hannah, we know the anti-depressants didn’t agree with you and that exercise could make you worse.

I feel a ‘but’ coming on.

Well, yes, they’re worried that you’re becoming underweight. We explained that you need to be on a low sugar, toxin free diet and that you find it hard to eat big meals, but –

I told you a ‘but’ was coming.

I’m afraid there are a few ‘buts’, love, says Dad.

Mum takes a deep breath: they want you to stop the painkillers.

No, no, they can’t make me!

Maybe we could cut the dose a little? she suggests.

Ok, God, you’re with them!

Hannah, I’m not but we have to try something. If they won’t prescribe any more, they’d last twice as long if we cut them in half.

Get out of my room!

Hannah!

I summon all my energy and scream.

Dad tries to hug me, and I scream louder.

Come on, he says to Mum and takes her by the crook of the arm and leads her away.

We love you, Hannah, and we’ll check on you later, he says at my door.

Mum returns a moment later, pulls the curtains closed and legs it out of the room.

I consider my options, evaluating the impact of reducing the painkillers first: the DFF118’s that have helped when nothing else has. If they make me give them up, then I might as well be dead.

Mum and Dad have left their letter, by mistake (I think), on my bed.

We are concerned for the welfare of your daughter, Hannah, and are seeking to work together with all the family to ensure her wellbeing. Your signed agreement for the rehabilitation programme as outlined will ensure clarity regarding expectations – expectations? – In rare cases, if a minor’s – so, that’s what I am – condition is deemed to have significantly worsened, and they are assessed to be in danger, either from themselves – grammar! – or as a result of actions by legal guardians entrusted with their care; or in situations where a contract is broken, where support and co-operation is not forthcoming for any prescribed programme – yawn! – steps may be legally taken to remove the minor – from the mine? – and place them under the care of the local authority – Nazis!

I know it’s not going to go well but I call Mum and Dad back and tell them that I’ll start reducing the painkillers tomorrow. But I won’t take the anti-depressants again, let alone increase the dose. As I see it, I’m not really depressed for any other reason than my life is extremely depressing, but I may start to jiggle my toes – one at a time – if it’ll help.

I may even consider the threatened takeaways if they’ll add a few pounds and help keep me home.

Things have become diabolical. Mum and Dad have started leaving me a half dose of the painkillers – less than a third of a bottle left – by my bed each morning. We’re nervous, listening for the phone and doorbell, waiting for the authorities to take their next step.

Hope it doesn’t end up like Waco, Dad.

That’s not funny, Hannah.

But I have my own plans for Armageddon and don’t always take the painkillers, secreting a small stockpile over the week in my bedside drawer, just in case.

The pain becomes literally unbearable, and sometimes I feel like my body is so inflamed and out of control that I might spontaneously combust.

We haven’t got as far as tackling food concerns yet. Mum and Dad know not to push things too far. But we’ve started the exercise regime, and from my bed I raise and lower my arms, sometimes more than once, and even lift my head off the pillow now and again. Farcically, I feel worse each time but carry on so we can tick at least one of the boxes. Not so much tiny steps as microscopic ones.

I cry a lot and get easily angry. Dad christens me Linda after the girl actress in the Exorcist.

Don’t call her that, Mum says, and he whispers, okay Ellen, (after the actress playing her mother in the film) so only I can hear him.

Mostly I’m left alone, festering, and raging in spurts in my head, my body hurting all over as if I’m being continuously tortured.

A pincer movement is coming together. The next day, I receive a note from Katherine, my counsellor. She normally visits the house but now she’d like to see me at the surgery. She knows how difficult this will be for me, as I haven’t left the house in months. So, why is she asking me now?

Mum comes into my room with a new sheepskin cover for my wheelchair.

You’ll need this, it’s bitter out there.

I’m not bitter!

It’s a nice one; you’ll feel more comfortable.

Whoopee.

Hannah, please, I know it’s hard for you, but Katherine may be able to help.

Well, she’s not helping by making me come to the surgery.

I know, I’m not sure why –

Maybe it’s a trap, and the social services will be hiding behind a door, waiting to take me away?

No, I don’t think so.

You don’t seem to care.

And Mum suddenly starts crying, and says, I do care, of course I care, I just don’t know what’s best anymore.

Stop crying, Mum, it’s me who’s ill.

And you don’t think that affects me or your father?

God, I know it does.

Shall I help you get dressed?

Yes, please!

I’ll get a brush; your hair is like a bird’s nest.

Charming.

You have lovely hair, Hannah, you’re lucky.

No-one has called me lucky in a long time.

Sorry –

No, I like it, don’t stop.

Dad wheels me into the surgery and parks me in the waiting room. The dragon at reception has a form waiting. As Dad fills it in, she glares at me, a mixture of disdain and disapproval, and I think about sticking out my tongue, but I don’t want to appear crazy to the other waiting patients.

A half-dead old man stares at me, shakes his head, and mouths ‘sorry’.

Katherine’s room is surprisingly bare. I’d fantasised a leather Freud couch, Persian rugs and portraits of crazed patients from an asylum along the wall. Instead, there are two red plastic chairs in the centre of the room, a stack of files and a small picture of two young children on her desk.

This is a borrowed room; sorry it’s so austere.

Yours? I ask, pointing at the picture.

Yes, I bring it with me everywhere. Hopefully it helps soften things.

How old are they?

Six and seven. Now, how are you?

What are their names?

Hannah, how are you?

I didn’t know you had children.

Hannah?

I feel terrible. The doctors have put me on an exercise regime and cut my painkillers.

Is it helping?

I said I feel terrible, didn’t I?

You seem angry.

Do I?

How are you feeling?

Like shit.

I never normally swear with Katherine, but she looks calm in response, gives nothing away.

What does ‘shit’ mean for you? she asks.

I laugh. Sorry, it sounds funny the way you say it.

That’s okay. How is the new dose of anti-depressants suiting you?

You know about that?

Are they helping?

Are you sharing information with the doctors?

No, everything we say in here stays between us.

I don’t believe you.

Hannah, I’m telling you the truth.

Do you know how difficult it was for me to get out of bed and come here?

Yes, I do, and I’m very pleased that you came.

Pleased? It sounds like you’re thanking me for coming to your seventh birthday party.

I know it was a big effort.

Do you believe I’m ill?

Of course, I know how terrible you feel.

That sounds ambiguous to me. Do you believe I’m physically ill or do you think it’s somehow all in my mind?

Hannah, this isn’t helping.

You won’t answer?

It’s what you think that matters. Not me.

And I scream as loud as I can and won’t stop.

Dad comes panicking into the room.

As he wheels me out, still screaming, Katherine’s features give nothing away, until she swallows and her neck bulges.

Dad wheels me through the waiting room and everyone stares. The sympathetic old man is tutting now, and I daren’t even glance towards the reception desk.

The ‘counselling debacle’ (Dad’s phrase for it) wiped me out and shredded my tonsils. Now I can’t scream even if I want to, and my voice has become evil and gravelly just like the girl in The Exorcist.

From now on I’ll only be prepared to feel worse after doing something I actually want to do. Like . . .God, I can’t even think what that might be anymore.

Tinny pellet sounds tap-tap against my bedroom window, as if rice is being tossed at the pane. It comes in waves. Eventually, I turn on my bedside light, crawl out of bed and open the curtains a little. The moon is full, and someone is standing in our back garden. Yasmine! She gestures for me to open the window. When I do, she talks loud enough – but not shouting in case she wakes anyone – so I can hear:

Why won’t you speak to me when I ring up?

I shrug my shoulders.

Still cross with me?

Go away!

No, I don’t think I will. And what’s with the voice?

How’s Spike?

She laughs and comes closer to stand directly under the window, so it’s less of a strain for my voice: De-spiked. Didn’t Sarah tell you?

No, I haven’t seen her for ages.

Can I come and see you soon?

I shake my head.

I promise I won’t tire you out.

Maybe, but I need to go back to bed now.

Your new voice is sexy by the way, she says and blows a kiss up to me.

My performance at the surgery has had repercussions. Another letter from the medical team arrives – this time with a starker warning about non-co-operation – along with one from Social Services, who announce that they’ll be visiting us next week ‘as a matter of urgency’.

They’re closing in, aren’t they, Dad?

We’ll be okay. You, Mum and I know what’s best for you; we just need them to understand too.

You know you can make a bomb out of fertilizer, Dad.

I’ve told you before, Hannah, that kind of joke isn’t funny.

Or we could drink lemonade laced with strychnine?

Like Jonestown, you mean? For your information, they drank Kool-Aid and added cyanide, not strychnine.

You’ve been thinking about it then?

And Dad gives me an unusually stern look, so I know not to continue.

Part of my parents’ response to crises is to take back control, and they persuade me to go to my first M.E. group meeting.

Mum dresses me up in my Top Shop jean skirt – once a favourite, now way too big for me – and a new mohair jumper – way too prickly. She even plasters on some bronze foundation and persuades me to apply a film of red lipstick.

There, you look lovely, Hannah.

It’s not a dating agency, Mum.

No, but you might meet someone nice.

She hands me a mirror: God, I look ridiculous.

Just rub a little of the foundation off.

Can you dampen a flannel for me, then?

She comes back with one and I rub the makeup away.

There you go, they get me warts and all, or not at all.

In the mirror, a pale ghost of a girl with sunken eyes and red scratched cheeks stares at me.

Well, maybe I could use a little on the cheeks then, but not like I’m auditioning to join the circus.

Circus is about right though when Dad wheels me into a church hall. It’s done out like a Women’s Guild fete, bunting, preserves and Tupperware on picnic tables, a flattering soft-focus portrait of the Queen above the stage. Grown-ups in a variety of M&S leisurewear are congregated at the back, and a circle of wheelchairs positioned at the front. I hear someone sobbing as a man drones on from the stage, something about care packages and benefits. Our arrival has been noticed and a vicious looking old bag in a tweed skirt comes to greet us – her name badge telling us she’s ‘Doreen’.

This must be your little Hannah, she says, looking at Dad.

You can talk to her, she understands everything, Dad tells her.

She bends down close to my face and smiles: Now, dear, we’re going to get your father to park you by a lovely girl called Susan, though she likes to be called Suzie. She’s a little older than you and isn’t feeling well, either.

Thank you, Doreen, I say.

My use of her name wrong-foots her, and she eyes me with a look that labels me ‘Trouble’.

I click my fingers. Off we go, James, I tell Dad, and he pushes my wheelchair next to Suzie’s.

Ooh, she has the funky sheepskin cover too, I mutter under my breath.

I’ll wait at the back, says Dad, and he applies the brake on my wheelchair.

I’m glad he did that; I might have got out onto the motorway and made my escape.

I’m Suzie, the girl says, and parents always do that, it helps them feel that they’re protecting us.

I like the way you’re thinking.

And I heard what you said about my ‘funky’ seat cover.

Oh.

It’s okay; I hate mine too.

I like her already.

How long have you been ill? I ask her.

Five years.

Oh, I’ve only been ill a year.

I wouldn’t say ‘only’.

Is this your first meeting too, Suzie?

No, I come every month unless I’m having a bad relapse. My parents insist and Doreen is my grandmother.

She seems nice.

She isn’t.

Is it helpful coming though?

No, I hate every minute.

Right.

What’s your name?

Hannah.

Look, Hannah, it’s all crap, and it’ll never get better. But I have a way to put an end to it.

What do you mean?

Hannah, you mustn’t tell anyone but I’m planning to kill myself.

She says it so flatly, matter-of-factly, and we don’t speak again.

I sink back into my chair as another speaker on the stage waffles on – ‘the importance of knowing your body and listening to what it’s saying’.

Mine is quietly screaming. At the tea break, I tell Dad I feel ill and need to leave.

How was Suzie? he asks in the car.

She’s nice.

Glad to hear it. The old lady said something strange about her, and Dad perfects her needling voice just right: ‘Suzie is a good girl, but she has a very vivid imagination.’

Good old Doreen.

Bit of an old bag, eh? Well, perhaps you and Suzie could meet up sometime?

Don’t think so, Dad.

Social Services were due to visit tomorrow but Mum and Dad have managed to put them off until next week. The medical assessment team have written again though, saying we must report to the surgery in a few days so they can monitor my progress with the exercise regime, weigh me, and assess the effects of the withdrawal of painkillers and higher doses of anti-depressants.

Another plan is needed and so Mum contacts an old friend who works for the local paper – The Snooper’s Gazette, Dad likes to call it.

Mum’s friend can’t cover the story – ‘conflict of interest’ apparently – so Adrian, a trainee journalist arrives the next day.

I hear Dad explaining things to him in the hall: she’s very ill but the doctors don’t seem to understand and are imposing treatments on her that could make her worse.

They’re even threatening to take her away if we don’t comply, adds Mum.

We don’t know that for sure, says Dad, but their tone is threatening. The worst thing is they don’t listen.

Can I see Anna? Adrian asks.

It’s Hannah, and yes you can but not for long.

I’ll only ask a couple of questions, and maybe take a photo or two.

Three knocks on my door. Adrian would like to interview you now, Hannah, says Mum.

If you’re up to it, Anna? Nothing quite as grand as an interview though, Adrian adds.

Come in, Adam, and my name is Hannah, which is like Anna but starting and ending with ‘h’.

He doesn’t get it.

What are your symptoms like? Is it like flu?

A bit like bad flu, I suppose.

A temperature?

No, it’s more about deep aching, muscle pain, extreme exhaustion –

You get tired then?

More than tired.

More than tired, he repeats.

Jesus, Adrian’s the type who says words as he writes them.

Do you want a photo?

It usually helps. You can take a moment to brush your hair if you like.

Thank you, but I’m fine.

Shall we put something on the –

I think ‘commode’ is the word you’re looking for. But no, it’s fine with me. Crop the photo if you must but I’d rather it stays. It’s more honest.

He takes two photos. The first is of me looking suitably sad. The second is of me sarcastically smiling after he asked me to smile, ‘because it’ll make you look prettier’.

The car crash interview was completed just in time to make Friday’s issue. First thing in the morning, Mum rushes to the newsagents for a copy. My article is on page seven, their human-interest section, next to the story of a pensioner whose had his mobility scooter jazzed up to look like a Harley Davidson motorbike. My sarcastic smile picture has been jettisoned for the sad smile picture, complete with sad commode. I look frightening, a ghostly white doll. Maybe a smile wasn’t such a bad idea?

The headline is ‘Flu Like Virus Leaves Anna, aged 15, in bed for a year’. At least he got my age right, but Adrian seems obsessed by the flu analogy and predictably also refers to M.E. as ‘yuppie flu’. He goes on to say how Mum and Dad are taking on the authorities to ‘stop any treatment’. Sounds like they want the drip taken down and my life support machine turned off. The article is a disaster, and Mum and Dad seem defeated by it. We barely speak for the rest of the day.

The paper comes out twice weekly and the next issue brings an unexpected deluge of letters in response to the article – well, three, which take up the whole of the letters section. One calls me ‘tragic’, another wonders what kind of ‘rotten parents would allow a commode so close to a child’s bed, ‘and what’s more, to allow it to be photographed so close to a child’s bed’. None of us is sure what Mister G. Wilson’s angle is here.

The last letter is the worst though. It calls my parents ‘irresponsible’ for challenging the medical professionals and goes on to say that ‘their actions are putting a child in danger, and that something should be done about it!’

The leader article, normally consigned to rants about dog poo not being picked up or sex classes in schools, really puts the boot in. Their headline reads: ‘How Childhoods Go Missing When Parents Stop Parenting’. None of us get past the first paragraph.

Tomorrow is my appointment at the surgery, and two days later Social Services will be arriving. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve saved enough of the painkillers to go round.

I look in the drawer, but they’re gone.

Mum!

What? What? she says rushing in.

The pills, where are they?

Hannah, it’s okay.

No!!!!

Don’t scream, please! We’ve been reading and researching on the web, and we think there’s something else you could take that will help with the pain, and it might make you feel a bit better too.

Heroin?

Not quite.

She opens her right hand to reveal a small black lump on a torn piece of tin foil.

What the hell is that?

It’s something your Dad and I used to enjoy in the old days.

You’re not serious –

Your Dad had to go to that dodgy pub behind the bus station to get this.

The old devil.

Less of ‘the old’, Dad says, coming in to join us.

I can’t smoke though.

Just this once; I know it might make you feel awful at first but the effects once they hit, might be worth it? says Mum.

Don’t knock something until you’ve tried it, Hannah, adds Dad.

It’ll be okay, we’ll take it with you, says Mum.

God, Mr G. Wilson was right when he called you ‘rotten parents’.

Mum and Dad look startled.

Too much? I ask.

Too much, they say together, and we all laugh.

Once I stop coughing, I feel like my body is muffled, wrapped up in cotton wool, and whilst I’m trying to examine and describe this feeling, I notice something else, something missing. For this moment – and I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I stop myself questioning too much and instead try and relax – I’m not in agony. Yes, my lungs hurt a little, and my body feels slow and heavy but it’s also free, free of pain. 

Mum and Dad are in my room, sitting on the end of my bed. Dad sings along to Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, which he has blasting from the lounge.

Did I ever tell you that your Mum and I saw him, Hannah?

Only a thousand times, Dad.

Only a thousand times – God, Dad is talking so slowly – I thought I’d have told you more times than that.

You’re so stupid, Mum says ruffling his hair. They kiss and it turns into a snog.

Ooh, get a room, I shout.

They smile soppily back at me.

There’s tapping on my window, like grains of rice being tossed up against it again.

Someone must think you’re getting married, I say, getting up and pulling open the curtains.

Yasmine beams up at me from the centre of the garden and curtsies, a giant love heart of rocks from the rockery shaped around her.

I wave at her to join us.

Wow, the Marrakesh Express, she says as she enters the fog of smoke enveloping my room.

She’s soon taking a hit.

Very nice, she says. Lebanese?

Dad grins and gives the thumbs up.

Now his behaviour is way too weird to be embarrassing.

Heh, Yasmine, do you know a Mr. G. Wilson of this Parish? asks Mum, as if she’s turned into someone else.

No, I don’t think so.

Mum stifles a giggle and continues: Mr. G. Wilson has a thing about commodes in bedrooms. Maybe thinks they should be in the toilet.

Bathroom, Dad corrects and snorts.

But if it was in the toilet, I mean bathroom, then it wouldn’t be needed because you could just go the toilet.

A pause while we digest her logic.

And now we really are laughing, so hard I can barely catch my breath.

God, I’m hungry, I say.

Ah, takeaway time at last! Mum says. Curry or pizza or fish and chips?

Fish and Chips! Yasmine and I shout together.

Fish and chips it shall be, says Dad.

I’m going to pay for this but who cares, I think to myself.

Somehow, Yasmine reads my thoughts and holds me close: you’ll be fine, Hannah.

When Dad leaves to get the takeaway, Mum stays seated on the lid of the commode; eyes closed, humming the Dylan song.

Hope your Mum is not about to use that, says Yasmine, gesturing at the commode. And who is this Mr. G. Wilson anyway?

Shush, Yas, we haven’t got long left.

She climbs into bed with me, and for a moment everything feels possible.

*

Take Away was included in Issue 14 of the wonderful journal The Lonely Crowd (editor John Lavin) early in 2025. It can be ordered here.

I also read the story and talked about writing it on the Lonely Crowd website here

Saint Francis Psychiatric Hospital dominated the town where I grew up. The vast red-brick Victorian asylum stood in parkland, bordered by woods that massed towards the Downs, a long spine of hills separating us from Brighton and the sea beyond. It held the longest inner corridor in southern England, a third of a mile long, where shuffling patients picked up butts, and a blurred dread and melancholy tainted the walls nicotine yellow. A village retreat for the disturbed and fragile, with its own farm, laundry and chapel, where Gran and Mum would sometimes come to convalesce after breakdowns.

In 1980, I applied to be a porter there in a year break between school and university. Dad tried to persuade me not to apply, as if Mum’s depression were enough to cope with, and working with other mentally ill people risked further contagion. In the patients’ canteen I waited to be called for my interview. I took in the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of rickety chairs and tea-stained tables, ubiquitous pale blue plastic teacups, the rude clatter of metal trolleys, women in borrowed clothes, often too short and tight, men in gravy-stained suits with absurd high waistbands.  An odd shriek amidst a slow melancholic drudge of repetition: confused conversations with no end and no beginning. I felt oddly calmed, listening, watching, distracted and sleepy in the familiar—I’d experienced it all before, already having visited Mum and Gran in asylums and discreet seaside convalescent homes—becoming so comfortable that I lost my grip, letting go my teacup and emptying its contents onto my lap. Trousers sodden and bottom sticking to the chair, I pulled myself up and attempted to dry myself in the patients’ toilet, with its rank splatter over the bowl that I’d come to recognise as heavily medicated freeform shit.

Mrs Nettles came to collect me in her grey East German prison guard suit. In the interview she didn’t mention the England-shaped damp patch on my crotch at first, but, after offering me the job, she advised me not to drink in the patients’ canteen anymore.

‘It’s very loyal and patriotic but you’re one of us now,’ she said.

I loved working there, trying my best to avoid voyeurism, being witness at a freak show. I found myself instinctively empathising, taking it all in but also sometimes revelling in the otherness, the defiantly different.

I’d recently finished reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest  and showed Mum a video of the film on her return from hospital after one of her nervous breakdowns, hoping she’d find some kind of kinship, familiarity, a home from home.

‘Why did you show me that film?’ she asked.

‘Bloody well unbelievable!’ Dad said.

Kesey’s McMurphy was a wild, charismatic rebel, a con faking madness to keep out of prison. Harry was a patient who’d been imprisoned after fighting with a prostitute in Brighton and attacking the policeman who’d arrived to arrest him. In prison he’d babbled and hurled himself at the walls and was sectioned to Saint Francis. Like McMurphy, he arrived onto the ward full of wild energy, joking and raving whilst handcuffed to a prison guard.

He was a sociopath who beguiled and wove spells. A tanned bear of a man with long blonde tousled hair, he burst through my flimsy defences back then. He ran barefoot, talked fast, harangued and freewheeled as if he were permanently drunk. Occasionally, he could be charming and funny, even thoughtful. I lent him books: Cuckoo’s Nest (naturally), On the Road (trusting him with my prized original UK edition paperback) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Orwell’s book was his favourite; he liked its subtle subversion of suburbia, the hidden humour appealing to his own disdain for the everyday and normal.

I witnessed his character change in an instant, starting with repetitive jibing of the nurses.

 ‘A fucking mess, a wonderful fucking mess! Eh, Paddy, what do you think?’

‘Less of the “fucking”, Harry.’

‘Never do much fucking, Paddy, you’re right.’

‘And less of the Paddy.’

‘Right you are, Paddy.’

‘Harry!’

‘Paddywhack, Paddywhack, Paddy whacked a Paddy.’

‘Last warning!’

Then suddenly he was running, roaring, and emptying a jug of water over the nurse. A shout for help from a crowd of cowering patients, and Harry was taken to the ground, four nurses on top of him.

‘I’m the crazy guy here, and I’m supposed to be looked after, not oppressed. What a sorry state of affairs.’ He caught me looking. ‘Hey, Adam.’ Harry never got my name right. ‘What do you think? It’s a fucking disgrace, is it not?’

A heavy knee to his chest and he went red in the face, struggling to breathe.

‘My inhaler, get my inhaler!’

Before he left for prison again, he returned all the books I’d lent him, folded page marks neatly turned back.

‘I’d like to have discussed them with you but my brain is frazzled. You know?’

I did know but I also knew not to tell him where I lived in case he came calling when he was released from prison.

Gordon was a retired bank manager on Kingston Ward. He sat on a big armchair, which he positioned to face out onto the grounds. He loved looking at the branches of a particular old oak tree and he’d sit staring at it for hours. I’d bring him a cup of tea—he preferred a cup with a saucer to a mug—and take the seat next to him. There was something relaxing being by his quietness and stillness. Sometimes he’d ask about my life outside the hospital and offer advice.

‘Keep living, son, and don’t get depressed if you can help it.’

Often he’d read.

‘The books in here aren’t really my cup of tea though.’

I wasn’t surprised. The library hadn’t much beyond Steele, Archer, Cartland and Wilbur Smith. I gave him Graham Greene’s The Human Factor, a perfect sombre book. The next day he’d nearly finished it.

‘I’ll get it back to you as soon as it’s done,’ he said.

A couple of days later I was back on Kingston. Gordon’s bed was bare. He’d slipped away from the nurses’ attention and slit his wrists in the bathroom the night before. A nurse handed me back my book. There was a note inside.    ‘Thank you, it was very kind of you to lend me the book. I’ve always liked Graham Greene and I really enjoyed this one. All the best, Gordon.’

Suicide, a familiar chill, a curse running down Mum’s family line—I shuddered when I saw the stripped mattress, I knew the form. ‘As soon as it’s done’ he’d said, but I hadn’t been listening carefully enough. Thankfully, the bathroom had already been cleaned and so I took a cup to his chair and sat for a while and looked out. The oak tree quiet and unmoved against the shifting sky.

At thirteen, I’d watched out of my bedroom window as Gran’s tiny body, hidden under a bright red blanket, was carried on a stretcher into a waiting ambulance. I’d found her unconscious in our spare bedroom. She had taken an overdose and was brought to hospital but I wasn’t allowed to see her.

I did later visit her in a large Epsom asylum. The spartan isolation room along the hallway spooked me on the way to find her waiting in the dining room. Her worn bloodhound expression, drugs pulling down her features to reveal bloodshot, watery eyes, nicotine yellowing and roughening her skin in lines and crevices, a cigarette defiantly cupped in her mouth, a cup of tea shaking in her hand. She always had a carrier bag waiting for me full of fruit pastilles and Mars bars. We made each other laugh, me mimicking Frank Spencer and Brian Clough, her playfully supporting Arsenal against my team Chelsea, repeatedly shouting ‘arse n’ all’ to all and sundry, releasing a wheezy cauldron of sound from deep inside her chest.

‘Don’t get too close,’ she said, pointing at an old lady walking in circles by the door, wringing and tearing at her hands.  Later, I had to squeeze past her to open the door. Her mouth was open wide as if she was screaming but nothing came out, but I could sense this high frequency hum vibrating through her body. ‘Is my son coming, is my son coming?’ she pleaded. I could only shake my head and say, ‘I don’t know.’ She pinched me hard on the arm and said, ‘You do know, I know you do.’

After a few months of working at Saint Francis, I was joined there by my best friend, Mark. Our friendship had grown away from the rigid confines of the town’s Grammar School, and the mock liberation of Sixth Form, where if you weren’t going round with a fixed grin all the time and having ‘a fantastic experience’ then there was something wrong with you. And they were right: there was something wrong with us.

I took every chance to blot out the all-too-real madness invading my family, and, together, we welcomed any distraction from the late-teenage sadness suffocating us both. We liked to escape with our packs and sleeping bags onto the Sussex Downs. From the highest point of the Beacon, looking north, rows of flat fields, skirted by newly planted woodland, joined the grounds of Saint Francis. We usually walked east along the highest ridge towards Lewes or Newhaven and Seaford, long stretches of bumbling hills and shallow ravines, ancient copses and stony bridleways. We would talk excitedly, sharing our outsider angst, excitement and belief that books and music mattered more than almost anything else. We both loved Jack Kerouac, The Velvet Underground, J D Salinger, Hermann Hesse and Sylvia Plath. Mark aligned himself with teenage outsider narrators Holden Caulfield and Esther Greenwood—the latter a thinly veiled disguise for Sylvia Plath—a curl to his lips as he viewed life through their young world-weary eyes.

Mark cut a fine figure in those days, a siren for both women and men with his tousled dark hair and delicate poetic looks. Sometimes he was Keats and other times in his tight red motorbike jacket he was Jules, the charismatic young postman from the French film, Diva.

Mrs Nettles saved certain jobs for polite middle-class boys, and weekdays Mark would often be sent to work as a theatre porter in the adjoining neurological hospital. Maybe I was harder to fathom and seen as more of a risk, as she kept me at Saint Francis. At weekends we had the chance to work together, driving the rickety hospital laundry van, with its wretched, stinking load of soiled bedding, the necessary distraction of a cigarette permanently in our mouths. Sometimes we took the van for a spin outside the grounds and rested up in a nearby field, chatting, sharing a joint, taking in the sun’s rays climbing up over the Downs.

We liked to lose ourselves in other people’s lives and stories whenever we could. One character’s life particularly touched us. Biddy was born in 1900 and had been at Saint Francis since she was fifteen, when her father had deposited her at the gates for lewd behaviour: kissing a neighbour’s boy. A farmer’s daughter still, she got up at the crack of dawn and spent her days busy and bent over, a willing helper, fetching and carrying for the nurses and tending the less able patients. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon she’d settle into her chair with her own teacup and saucer. ‘

‘My cup, see, it’s got a picture of the Queen, lovely.’

Proud, a quiet voice with no hint of rancour, apart from maybe a tinge when she talked about her father.

‘I told him I only kissed the boy but his mind was made, and I told him not to bring me but he wouldn’t listen. He had a temper, see.’

Biddy’s eyes blinked out from tight skin creases, her pupils shiny and bulbous, damaged by the lack of light of prolonged incarceration.

‘Love my tea, I do.’

Tipping the pot repeatedly into her cup and smiling.  A smile of the contented; Zen and vacant.

We admired Biddy’s spirit and enduring stoicism. Sometimes I also saw my gran in Biddy, and, in turn, a glimpse of how Mum could become, the shuffling slippers and institutionalised pallor of tranquillising medication. But in truth Mum and Gran were already defeated, finding ways to give up the ghost; Biddy had a spirit that sought to get away. On Sundays, she busied herself handing out hymns and prayer books for the patients’ morning service. As the asylum organ groaned and struck up, she closed her eyes and her voice escaped wild and shrill, like a scalded cat let loose amongst the congregation.



Under the Downs, in the long shadow of Saint Francis hospital, is a nunnery where Mark’s friends and family met, a decade after we’d worked at Saint Francis, to commemorate his life and unexpected death. I gave a talk and the wind blew and chucked like a madman. The steeple wavered, and the building groaned and slammed, the choir’s voices trilling and booming like banshees (Biddy surely joining in!) and hanging in the rafters, before dropping like mist amongst us, touching us with a sense of togetherness, otherness, in shared dismay at his life torn away.

Mark’s body was never found after his last lone mountain hike in the foothills of Pakistan. When I think of him now I remember his weary smile and soft voice, and find myself laughing about the time we shared magic mushrooms under the Beacon.

All October I’d been picking them in the hospital farm’s sheep fields. Other porters had shown me how to wipe and dry them with paper, how to make tea with them, how many to eat to make things tingle, how many to scramble the brain. Tingle was for the afternoon shift at work—I’d need maybe ten—so that the harsh lights along the hospital corridors would slowly blur into gorgeous pinks and purples, and the newly buffed floors would sparkle and glimmer like an ice rink on a star filled night. The soles of my shoes sliding and skating along, my arms out wide, my mouth slipping into a wide, beatific smile when I met the patients.

I had a knapsack full from a recent mushroom harvest when I met Mark at Hassocks station, close to his home. We shared them out on the long footpath out to the Downs, eating a small handful at a time. Within minutes the stomach cramps and swirling waves of nausea started, but we were on a mission and knew to ride it out. We waited and then took more, and by the time we climbed over a stile to Wolstonbury Hill, we were sweating, in the grip of a tumultuous tsunami, senses all churned up and at odds with each other, excitement beset with anxiety, struggling to keep a lid on the madness, the horizon moving like a seesaw, the soft Sussex Down ahead taking on the shrouded outline of an Anglo-Saxon burial mound.

I’d learned from experience that angst and sadness usually passed and so I trusted somehow that this derangement would pass too, to breathe slower and let things happen. Time jumped forward and back, and then slowed, so that we seemed to be there a lifetime, with my gaze fixed on the top of the hill where sheep moved and shimmied against the clouds, marching one minute with iron masks ready for war, dancing in brown cage aux folles knee stockings the next, the clouds behind massing, re-forming, the orange mouth of the sun grinning in between.

Rain seeped from the sky to caress my cheeks. I lay down and drank it in. Mark was near, moaning (or was it a cow in a nearby field?), crawling on all fours to examine a patch of grass, wearing a small brown felt hat, that, with his protruding black curls, made him look less like Keats and more like Chico Marx. Then I was Harpo, squeezing my imaginary horn, looking like a cherub, cheep, cheep, cheep, a wig of sheep wool, no judgement necessary . . . so that’s why the sheep were marching: to cover my head.

Mark and I looked at each other and started laughing. Big teeth monkey laughs (that’s where we originated from, then!), the sun erupting out of the clouds and the sky suddenly going Van Gogh blue.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ said Mark.

‘No, you won’t,’ said I, the warmth of the sun calming, healing, making me talk as if I were Jesus. The thought of me as Jesus set us off laughing again. But I wanted the laughter to stop, for that bigger connected feeling to return, and then we were lying next to each other, long rays reaching down and baking the earth and our skin, everything chiming, the scattering clouds making patterns on our eyelids, the ancient past buried in the earth revitalised and reaching out, new grass rising, a bird passing above, our breathing slow and in unison, all one, all one big united world. At that moment we were closer than ever, love pouring out for each other, for everyone, for everything.

Mum and Gran carried through with their threats and are long gone, and Saint Francis was turned into luxury flats soon after Mark died, but its memories linger, ghostly expressions at the windows infiltrating my thoughts and dreams.

Mark had a relationship with my sister and died when their son, Den was eight. I’ve kept Den close ever since, unconsciously inculcating him into the spirit of my relationship with his father, taking him travelling and eating out from a young age (ticking off a list of thirty different ethnic restaurants on his visits to stay with me before he was sixteen), pulling him leftward and buying him music and books Mark and I had enjoyed.  He’s his own person but sometimes I can see Mark clearly in him: the humane intelligence, the ever-present dry humour, the juxtaposition of steely independence and moments of vulnerability, a gentle understated communication that cuts to the core. Den is thirty-six, three years older than Mark when he died.  We’re close friends, and it’s he who recommends the restaurants, books and records now.

Somehow, I managed to keep a pictorial record of my trip with his father: shots taken from weird angles, sunlight bleaching out colours, hats endlessly swapped, our faces distorted and gurning, eyes smiling, so that the camera seemed like it was tripping with us. The pictures sit in their own album (how could they go with any others?) and when I look at them that feeling of trepidation overcome by a tidal wave of understanding and love still floods over me.

I recently stayed with Den and showed him one of the photos. It’s a miraculous close-up of me and his father, a selfie before the term even existed: we’ve come down from the mushrooms and are sitting next to each other on the grass. We’re both smiling, and there, behind us, is the blurred, outstretched outline of Saint Francis.

*

Ghost of Saint Francis appeared in 2022’s autumn/winter issue of The Stinging Fly.

https://stingingfly.org/product/winter-2022/

Two short pieces about my best friend who also features in the essay Ghosts of Saint Francis, and who died in Pakistan in 1994.

A PIER DISAPPEARS

Sitting on Swanage pier, my stomach chronically fermenting, ageing muscles tightening then losing their snap; a discreet underbelly flop, memories gestating below, waves massing at the horizon, then spilling out and fizzing on arrival; a passing undertow glimpsed between the slats, seaweeds’ arms remonstrating, silver shoals of small fish funnelling through for their catch, then disappearing into the shadows.

To be in a moment, a young gull filleting and fussing with a mollusc scrap, floating, riding the currents, its beak of playful daggers; and in the far-flung meadows rising from the sea, my dog is on show, a ginger flash, poppies strewn in his wake, chicks chucked up into the sky, running for the pleasure of it.

My youngest daughter is at play too, each sentence interrupted by a cartwheel or headstand; my eldest, moulding words that fly out from her senses; and me, my face a blank ghost’s, mind soured against the computer screen, everyone’s stories better than mine, the endless chitchat, the horror of everyday news and egos on repeat; I crawl to bed and my wife asks, ‘why so late?’

Along the pier, wooden slats embossed by silver plaques, small jokes and blessings, odes to lost holidays, engagements, memories of loved ones, a candyfloss kiss, sticking plasters on kids’ knees, sunburn cooled with bicarbonate and aloe vera – oh, hello Vera, I thought you’d never say yes – fifty years married and not a dry eye when they’re gone.

A tipping boat mast tinkles, I turn to see the pier’s diving school, where you came in the nineteen-eighties long before I lived here; your passion, not mine, and you sat just here downing a pint, picking at a sandwich, food was never your thing; diving the wrecks, an old galleon, a WW2 Frigate, a misguided sailboat, dazzling tragic plunder; and then you took a wrong turn a decade later in Pakistan, lost your footing and drowned, your body never found.

I dreamt you were still alive last night, infinitely young, sitting in a waiting room with someone I didn’t recognise, smiling expectantly at the door; and I was about to go in, but something stopped me, a chill on my neck, rain trickling down my collar; a breeze picks up, a heavy wave punches the pier, and I open my notebook to write to you, before the ink seeps away and all the pages are gone.

The One That Got Away

At the end of their futile search for your body, your mother and brother built a circular cairn from grey rocks and wild mountain flowers. The cairn sits on the shore of a mountain river in northern Pakistan. I’ve only seen it in a picture taken by a guide from the search party. The water is moving fast, a shimmery blur, whilst the rocks are as pale as ash, as if communing somehow with your missing body; mingling dust, sieved of life or hope. The cairn’s careful position by the river suggests a plea for closure and meaning, an inference that you might have died close by, or somewhere similar, met a recognisable watery death – it’s what a spiritualist would later interpret from your spectral visitation back to our world to announce matter-of-factly that you were ‘okay’, and had lost your footing and drowned, all over quickly, painlessly, in a rush.

At sixteen, we’d been drawn to each other, despite initial misgivings, by a strange otherness that put most people off, melancholic missteps in each other’s shadows, avoiding the bustling sparkling school corridors for secret hideaways and quiet oblivion. I took a train to find you on Newhaven harbour late one night, your secret other world laid out – you always did need time on your own – your fishing rod ready, its weight cast out into the murky dark, your small grey tent nestled by the harbour wall, two gutted mackerel, their eyes exploding, sizzling outside on a pan. I’d nervously brought along some beers, not quite acquiring the taste yet, and we drank and ate and looked up at the stars, and never caught a thing.

Years later, a fisheries PHD took you to work for the National Rivers Authority – your self-deprecating Keystone-cop stories of dodgy searchlights, overpowered boats snagging banks and upturning in pursuit of poachers, making everyone laugh – and then to Pakistan to work for VSO on lake fisheries projects, your life cruelly snuffed out at the end of your posting. A few cassettes I’d made for you – The Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes, REM’s Everybody Hurts – the latter a coded plea as if I’d sensed something was up and needed to say everything would be okay – along with letters from your friends and family, photos of your son, left on the bedside table in the walking lodge you stayed in before your final mountain climb.

No reply ever came back to us, no explanation was offered. Well, you always were a little guarded and cryptic; even your uncharacteristically plain-speaking visit to the spiritualist left more questions than answers. Wry humour was usually your first line of defence: I think of the picture hanging in your family’s home, dressed in a traditional shalwar kameez, you smile as you extend your arms out wide to measure a huge fantasy fish, the universal fisherman’s joke of the giant catch that got away, three young Pakistani boys with you and in on the joke, clapping their hands together and laughing delightedly.

*

Both pieces were published in Banshee last year https://bansheepress.org/shop/p/issue-15-springsummer-2023

IN PLAIN SIGHT

The last Palestinian left alive in Gaza will be a child lying starving in the rubble. An IDF soldier will be filmed walking slowly over and shooting her in the head. The media will report that he saw an unclipped grenade in the reflection of her eyes, a Hamas control centre deep in the pit of her stomach, a flicker of defiance in the faltering beat of her heart. With everyone successfully starved, shot and blown away, the blood-drenched Western leaders will scrub themselves clean and declare that at least it never met their definition of genocide.

GOOD GOD!

To be read with extended pauses and endless amounts of self-love

Adam is good and it’s going to be great, maybe the greatest, will be the greatest – I told him, Adam, it’s going to be the greatest because you’re good and I’m great – Eve not so much – shouldn’t have taken the apple, Eve – I told her, don’t do it, it’s not a good deal – I don’t like any fruit that’s been in the earth – I don’t like the earth, dirt, dirty, so dirty – or hanging from a foreign tree or a foreign bush, touched by foreign hands – I don’t do hands, even made the Queen Lizbet – a nice lady, eyes like beads, expensive beads – wear gloves on her tiny hands and we never even had to touch. Burgers are burgers I told her. And I made burgers, me, Ronald MacDonald – from American cows, not European cows or Canadian cows – I said put them in a big clean American factory like a shopping centre or a hangar but with no windows, I don’t like windows, and do whatever you need to make them clean, wash them in bleach, cook them in big furnaces. The biggest. And wear gloves. Always. And afterwards sell everyone a big beaker of Coca-Cola – I drink four litres a day and I’ve never missed the bowl or speech or deal – and Eve, I don’t know, maybe she should have just eaten the burger – I warned her, fruit is no good, and a burger is good but she didn’t listen – some people never listen, communists, immigrants, crazy people – I told her I’ll create all this from a seed, not an apple seed – and I did create all this, everything, it’s true – I created you too I said and you just need to start things off like I started things off, businesses, deals, buildings – I never paid for any of them – and construction workers, I love construction workers, came out 90 per cent for me, even the Mexican ones – those ones can stay, the rest, they’re going back, I made a promise and they’re going back. Ice are coming for them, and Ice aren’t nice, shouldn’t be nice anyway – and construction workers, you know, the crazies on the left tried to say my song was gay – it’s a gay song they said – GAY – YMCA – we’re closing those places down by the way, all of them, full of bad people, injecting, making trouble – the swamp people don’t want us to have fun or dance or salute anymore, it’s very sad – a traffic cop, a cowboy, and a construction worker, they’re real men! – and I was telling Eve how I started it all off, not just songs or buildings but worlds, things like that, and a woman with a man is just beautiful, so beautiful – why didn’t you listen, Eve? – and I’m beautiful – maybe I shouldn’t say it, I don’t know, but a lot of people are saying it. You, they say, you’re beautiful, and you took a bullet for us and your hair is so good, your skin, everything, and you’re going to make everything good. God saved you for a reason, you know? And I say, yes, I know, I saved myself and it was a good deal and I’m going to make everything great again but Eve, she just didn’t get it – you needed to believe, Eve, just needed to believe – I explained it’s like if I put a tariff – I love tariffs, tariffs are good – on your apple, it’d make it cost more and we’d all make more money so you can’t just pick it and eat it – it’s science, good science, business science, not Chinese science or bad science, it’s the only science – then because Eve ate it, came wars, and more wars. So much killing and I said, I’ll stop it. I’ll stop you, wars – wars are bad and good is good. God is God and God is good. And I’m good, I’m God. I’m good God.

THE SUITCASE

He carries the suitcaselike he means business. He carries it like he cares about it. He carries it like he cares about it too much. He carries it like he’s been somewhere with it. Like they’ve been somewhere. Together. The suitcase and him.

The suitcase never leaves his side. A family heirloom some suggest. Or it’s carrying stolen goods. A suitcase of lifesaving or painkilling pills. For his gout – he has a limp, after all – or chemo for his unseen cancer. A suitcase to hold his collection of false teeth. Only one person suggests that. That would mean he’s a travelling tooth salesman. Tooth fairy? Disgraced dentist? After a short argument, we agree the suitcase isn’t carrying false teeth, and the man who suggested it gets his coat and leaves.

 It’s a serious business and people get unsettled, don’t they, and need to know what’s going on because a man carrying a suitcase everywhere he goes, never leaving his side, arouses suspicion. It’s natural, it’s human nature to be inquisitive. To care what’s happening in their neighbourhood. What if he’s a refugee wanting shelter? A home? One of our homes? What if he’s come out of hospital and he’s lost his mind and doesn’t know where he is or even who he is? What if he’s a murderer carrying the body parts of his victim? What if he’s carrying a bomb?

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to talk to him, some people might think. To ask his name. Ask him where he’s come from. How long he’s staying. Where he’s going. Ask him what he has inside the suitcase.

But what if he becomes defensive when he’s questioned? Aggressive? Upset? Starts crying? Starts shouting? Starts laughing? Uncontrollably? Like he’s demented or having some kind of fit? What if he triggers the bomb? On purpose? By mistake? Either way, it’s going off, and then everyone will be sorry.

Better to call for help before it’s too late. Ring friends. Supporters. People who care about this type of thing. Shout into alleyways. Yell from rooftops. Send messages online. Sort it out. Sort him out. Grab his suitcase. Open it – it’s not going to be a bomb. Very unlikely to be. It would have gone off by now.  Empty it out. Throw everything away. Burn it. Tell him he shouldn’t be here. Making trouble. Threatening people. Taking what’s ours. He doesn’t belong. Tell him that even if he doesn’t understand.

He’ll know it anyway. He’ll see it in our expressions. In our eyes. In the flickering flames above him. On our soles of our shoes raining down. On the tattoos on our arms and fists – mum, flag, love, hate, brothers, united.

SHARED ANGER

ice through their veins,

a slab holding form,

despite the friction,

the heat from outside,

ruling with fists,

starving with favours,

silencing the herd,

who die to speak,

bloodletting on tap,

hearts drip dried,

dissing the truth,

with viral overloads,

too much screen time,

ranting scream time,

your touch that held,

now fallen aside,

time to reach out,

strike a match,

risk immolation,

for a kiss, touch,

to line the kerbs,

break down barricades,

disarm the neighbour,

who carries the flag,

anger is my fire,

and if you hold it,

I hold you too,

and the fire catches.

See also https://www.culturematters.org.uk/author/alan-mccormick/

A week after I should have been born, I still wasn’t. And then a few days later when everyone had gone home, I arrived. My father presented me a voucher to redeem when I was eighteen. But he withheld his hug, from me, from Mum. He was impatient because you arrived late, she said.

It created an echo that was repeated over again. I was late. People got angry. I got later. They became angrier. I was late for school particularly on Thursdays. Double Chemistry. I was late for my first date, first kiss. Last dance. Last train home. She grew weary and I was too late to notice. I was late for the birth of our first child, and our last. The middle one never arrived.

I was late for the bus. The one that might have crashed had the bus driver not waited for me. Into a truck that loomed in the shadows and crossed our path just as I was getting on. I thought of my father’s displeasure. I told the bus driver that me being late had saved our lives. He listened more than I expected, and I took a window seat to catch the passing light.

*

Why I Was Late was co-winner of the Stories at the Duncairn Shadows & Light Flash Fiction Competition. It was read on August 9 at Belfast’s Duncairn theatre by actor Tony Flynn during a Scribes story event with writers Paul McVeigh (one of the competition judges), Jan Carson and Bernie McGill.

https://www.theduncairn.com/events/scribes23-h5hb7

STEALING A KISS

MUSIC (BARBARA STREISAND SINGING ‘THE WAY WE WERE’) PLAYS IN BACKGROUND; A FEW LINES: ‘MEMORIES LIGHT THE CORNERS OF MY MIND. MISTY COLOURED MEMORIES OF THE WAY WE WERE. SCATTERED PICTURES OF THE SMILE WE LEFT BEHIND. SMILES WE GAVE TO ONE ANOTHER OF THE WAY WE WERE’. AN OLDER MAN AND WOMAN SIT A LITTLE APART ON A PARK BENCH LOOKING FORWARD SOMEWHAT VACANTLY (HIM MORE SO). VERY OCCASIONALLY (WHEN IT FEELS RIGHT), THEY TURN TO FACE EACH OTHER. THEY HAVE OBVIOUSLY BEEN THERE FOR SOME TIME. MUSIC CUTS OUT.

W: You do know who Chris is?

M: Do I?

W: Of course you do.

HE SHAKES HIS HEAD.

W: Chris. Little Chris.

M: Little?

W: Big Chris then. Come on! (BEAT) Chris. Chris. CHRIS.

M: There’s no point in just repeating his name.

W: Christopher. Christy. Chrissy.

M: He was never a Chrissy.

W: You do remember, then?

SHORT PAUSE.

M: I never liked him.

W: Chris?

M: His dentures chattered.

W: He never wore dentures.

M: Like he always had frostbite: (EXAGGERATED ENACTING) Ttttttttttt!!

W: I’m not sure –

M: (INTERRUPTING) Joke-shop-teeth-Chris we used to call him.

W: You didn’t.

M: We did. We all did!

W: No, you didn’t.

SHORT PAUSE.

M: No, you’re right, we didn’t. (BEAT). I never knew him. Not really. Not at all in fact.

W: You did. I promise you did. You still do.

M: But his wife?

W: (BRIGHTLY) Yes?

THEY MOVE CLOSER.

M: I liked her!

W: What was her name?

M: She had such beautiful breasts.

W: Wow!

M: Personality, her personality was lovely too.

W:  I heard that.

M: Catherine! That was her name (SLIGHTLY LONGER BEAT, LOST IN REVERIE) Elegant. So elegant. She looked like a racehorse.

W: No, no, I think you always said she moved elegantly like a racehorse.

M: Rode her over the downs.

W: Goodness. Surely not?

M: Held her mane tight and whispered in her ear.

W: A lovely horse then?

M: (THINKS, THEN BLURTS WITH CONVICTION): Albino!

W: What?

M: Palomino! (BEAT) Like her mother. (BEAT) Made the nicest cakes. Her mother. Not Catherine. (BEAT) She wore the nicest shoes. Catherine did, I mean. (BEAT) Not horseshoes, haha (BEAT) No, yes, that’s right, her mother never wore – (STOPS, CONFUSED)

W: And what about dear Jimmy Brambles?

M: A cod!

W: Fish?

M: Hahaha. He was a shyster. A shit stirrer.

W: No, you always liked him.

M: No, I like the words: shyster, shit stirrer. Shy sitter. Sounds good on the tongue.

W: You did like him though.

M: Did I? (BEAT) If you say so.

W: He was your best man.

M: Poor me.

W: He died this morning.

M: Poor him.

W: I’m sorry.

M: Don’t be sorry, no need to be sorry.

THEY MOVE UP CLOSE. SHORT REFRAIN FROM MUSIC STIRRS (WITH NO WORDS).

W: I think we should go.

M: If you say so, yes, okay.

W: You’re on better form today

M: Glad you think that.

W: Yes, and the old you is always in there somewhere, whatever. Those words: (SMILING) shit stirrer, shy sitter. That’s you!

M: And you: it’s like I don’t know you, yet I I’ve known you forever.

W:  You have, you dolt.

M: But when I look in the mirror, I don’t know who I’m looking at anymore.

W: Well, maybe don’t look. I see you; I know who you are.

M: Can I hold your hand?

W: I wish you would.

M: I feel like I want to kiss you.

W: Then you should.

THEY KISS.

W: (LOOKING DIRECLY AT HIM) Chris, it’ll be okay.

M: You moved like –

W: (INTERRUPTING) A racehorse? I know but stay here, Chris, don’t wander off, let’s just hold the moment.

M: Yes, you’re right, I’d like that very much.

W: And we’ll write a card for Jimmy together, later?

M: Who?

W: Jimmy. Jimmy Brambles. Our best man.

M: Another kiss?

W: Another kiss.

THEY EMBRACE. SLOWLY FADES TO DARKNESS.

DIAGNOSES

A two-seater couch in a doctors’ waiting room, centre stage facing the audience. A woman of about sixty in a smart well-worn coat sits alone on the couch looking out at the audience, from time to time chuckling to herself.

A slightly dishevelled man of around forty enters stage right. He looks nervous as he surveys the stage looking for an empty seat. She keeps a laser-like stare on him as he surveys the scene, but he won’t catch her eye; it’s obvious he doesn’t want to sit by her. Nevertheless, she noisily pats the empty couch space beside her and smiles towards him. He walks in the other direction and all around the stage, desperately searching for an empty seat. As he searches, she chuckles to herself again and smiles knowingly at the audience.

He stands frozen, unsure what to do, and then approaches her slowly, dejectedly from the back of the stage, and then comes around the couch to face her. She pretends she doesn’t see him, even as he coughs to get her attention.

M: Excuse me, is this seat taken?

W: The modern advice is to cough into your arm.

He stays standing and then she cheerfully pats the empty space beside her again. He slumps into it with an audible sigh. (BEAT) They both stare at the audience. He coughs, this time as instructed, and she smiles.

W: You may have saved a life with that action.

He shuffles nervously in his seat.

Her attention is taken by a person (*no actors are needed for this: the person’s arrival is brought to life for the audience by her actions/her looking/scrutinising) entering front stage right, walking towards her. Her eyes follow the person all the way until they pass enroute to the (imagined) reception behind her. As they pass, and with exact timing, she addresses the audience:

W: A sorry sight. Not the same since the enemas stopped doing their business. Stomach like a balloon, nothing of him left under his shirt except GAS.  

M: Excuse me?

W: (Turning to address the man beside her) Mister Reynolds. A needle in there and he’d pop. (BEAT) Used to run the alcoholics’ shop in the next village.

M: Did he?

W: He did, until he ran it into the ground (BEAT) along with his wife. Poor dear. Emphysema and (with exaggeration and a shake of the head) V-A-R-I-C-O-S-E VEINS, like drooping grape vines (BEAT). Her dear mother was the same. A (crossing herself) martyr to her legs and the wee bottle, if you know what I mean – she stops, her attention taken by two new arrivals. This time she speaks as they approach rather than waiting for them to pass – ah, poor girl, I didn’t think Rickets still existed – looking up, she smiles up at the mother as she passes, then sympathetically across towards the girl. Then, after they’ve passed: That Sandra Benedict should never have been allowed to have children. It’s like dogs, if you’re not going to look after them, then don’t have them.

The man’s forlorn expression tells us he would rather be anywhere else, listening to anything else, anyone else . . .

W: Why don’t you give it a go?

M: Give what a go?

W: I call it diagnosis before the doctor sees them and kills them off.

M: No, it’s weird. It’s a weird thing to do.

A new arrival. She nudges him in his side with her elbow and talks conspiratorially to him as if they’re somehow now a team. They both look towards the person:

W: Here you go (BEAT): Water on the knee or water on the brain?

M: (Whispering) It’s cruel. I don’t want to do it.

W: (Looking over her shoulder at the person after they’ve passed) Waterworks anyway, a labyrinth of bad plumbing, he’s gone straight into the toilet. Let’s hope he cleans the seat and (crossing herself) flushes afterwards.

M: (Sharply) Why don’t you go and check?

W: In a man’s toilet? No thank you.

M: I don’t understand what you’re doing.

W: I told you, making a diagnosis –

M: (Interrupting) before the doctor kills them off, I know. But what does that even mean?

W: It means what it says (BEAT). So, what’s brought you here?

M: I could ask you the same.

W: And I’d tell you.

He looks at her as if expecting her to answer.

W: You first!

A new arrival. They both look at them as one.

W: Scaffold-pole legs. Arthritis. Easy. Even you could diagnose that.

He smiles, shrugs his shoulders, and ruefully shakes his head.

M: Okay, yes, he looks like he might have arthritis but so what?

W: You tell me (BEAT). Now, for my diagnosis: there’s nothing wrong with me but don’t tell anyone here that.

M: Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with you?

A BEAT.

W: You’re sharper than you look (scrutinising him now, teasingly, mock pointedly) A difficult, different kind of diagnosis I’d say.

M: (Sharply) Don’t do that! (softening) Please, I’d rather you didn’t do that.

A BEAT.

W: You haven’t asked why I’m here if there’s nothing wrong with me – stopping to survey a new arrival, then speaking from the corner of her mouth – was never out of Reynold’s shop, gold card customer (BEAT). Cirrhosis, six months.

M: Six months?

W: Until (miming shovelling), you know (peering down into an imaginary hole). The worst sendoffs too as they’ve normally upset everyone around them and drunk the funds dry. Fish paste sandwiches, bought tea cakes, stale ones mind, no sign of a drink. A miserable experience, altogether.

M: I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before.

W: I’ll take that as a compliment

M: (Laughing) I’m not sure I meant it as one (BEAT) Okay then, why are you here if you’re not ill.

W: A habit. I used to sit here with Norman (BEAT) My husband. A cough. The doctor said it was most likely a virus. Nothing to be done, take paracetamol. It kept getting worse. We came back. The doctor, a different one this time, said maybe it was an infection. Prescribed antibiotics. Only it got worse again. We came back. First doctor again.  Pneumonia this time. More antibiotics. It got much worse (taking in a deep breath), so much worse. Fourth time. Fifth time. After the sixth, he collapsed as we walked through our front door. Went into hospital. Never came out (BEAT). Cancer.

M: God, I’m so sorry.

W: You didn’t kill him (BEAT, then teasingly) Did you? (then looking up at a new arrival) –migraines, should request a scan – the doctors didn’t kill him either. It’s just they should have been more thorough. He might have had more time. A better ending.

M: But what can you achieve by being here?

W: Diagnoses. Sometimes I pass a note to the patient before they leave.

M: (Softly, teasingly) Well, I’m sure they’re very grateful (BEAT) And you do seem good at it. (BEAT) Okay, so what’s mine?

W: I think you’ve had your heart broken and you moved to the town to get a fresh start.

He looks shocked.

W: I’m right, yes?

He nods.

W: And you want counselling or some drugs to make you happier.

M: How did you know all that?

W: I didn’t, it was a guess. Like a lot of diagnoses, just an informed guess.

M: Informed by what?

W: Oh, I don’t know, the white mark on your finger where you’ve removed your ring, your unironed clothes, your sad walk when you arrived.

M: Oh, stop.

W: I hope you’ll find happiness again. (BEAT) I think you will. I’ll (crossing herself) pray that you will anyway.

He stands up.

W: (Slightly taken aback) They haven’t called you in, have they?

M: No, but I think I’ll leave it today.

W: They’ll still charge you.

M: It’s fine, I have my diagnosis now. I’ll be okay.

She smiles warmly. He shakes her hand.

M: Thank You.

He walks away.

She watches him exit. Then, a new arrival takes her attention.

W: (Addressing the audience) Stones, kidney or gallbladder (BEAT) or maybe both.

*

*Stealing A Kiss was performed at Cork Arts Theatre as part of their 10×10 event December 2024 (cast Eithne Horgan & Conal Crossan, Director David Ramseyer), and Diagnoses was performed at Cork Arts Theatre as part of their 10×10 event May 2025 (cast Lorna Hughes & Maeve Murphy, director Rob Cogan).

** Stealing A Kiss was also brilliantly, touchingly brought to life by by my friend, actorJames McManus and Shelagh Stuchbery as part of a fundraising night in Rome for the Rome Savoyards Theatre Group.

***Stealing A Kiss was first published on Books Ireland

if the head had it

counting down

V

If the head had ever had it, now it had gone. Shaping west, making out with anything that comes its way, scrambled Fray Bentos aerial, dog food brain. Made my money in cool Velcro pants that’d hug a greyhound tight, chased rabbits round and round, back to front, y oh why am I so shy? See him then, dwarf’s cap, a tight mince-pimp-walk like he’s just secreted a foil capsule up his choke and is squeezing his cheeks to keep it from falling; one eye out for the bluebottles, one eye out for a score.

‘Please, I’m all at sea, I need to land!’

‘Go, fetch!’ and he chucks it over the churchyard wall.

Over I follow, scrabbling by a gravestone and digging around the dead, my mind about to spurt.

Father Derek appears. He senses my urgency: ‘God has plans for you, Michael. God has plans for me. God has plans for everyone.’

‘A planner, this God, is he?’

‘He is.’

‘That’s it?’

‘It is.’

I see it poking from under his shoe.

‘God bless you, Father.’

Up the steps to the steeple I go, knees to elbows, lungs emptying, heart poking through the chest bone, horizons all merging at the top. Sweet unwrap; sour musk tongue, head expanding – botulism from an arse’s arse, my hands join in prayer, a diver’s poise, ground swelling up and body going down.

 ‘Some come here and jump like Eddie the Eagle, making spectacles of themselves,’ is all Father Derek will say.

‘Eddie the Eagle wore glasses,’ I might reply if I were still able to. Poor calculation for a jumper though: Eddie never reached enough speed for lift off and his bulk always dragged him down.

‘God has plans for you,’ Father Derek had said.

And that made no sense at all.

*

Passing over the rooftops, pink-grey grime of ridged Toblerone, chimneystacks belching out reclaimed pallet fumes. Mum’s house sits silent, a fog of doom, her black cloud engulfing the kitchen, Guinness pinafore bustling, the toucan cast out of paradise to crumple at her lap as she gets to polishing, casting out demons: her son, a jumper, a bailer out:

‘There’s a priest, a rabbi, an imam and a junkie standing together in a hot air balloon. The balloon is falling to the ground. One has to agree to jump to save the others. The religious men start praying.

“I’ll get my needle,” says the junkie.

”No!” the religious men shout but too late, no calculation needed and the balloon plummets to the ground.’

The whistle on the kettle screeches. Father Derek arrives to offer prayer, his dark figure looming on the glass panel of the front door, and Mum screams as if she’s seen a ghost.

*

The first time was with Katherine, artistic bohemian Katherine from the other side. Her father was an architect, her mother an art teacher, fragrant stock to a lowlife like me. A newbie at university studying maths, a geek in every sense from my home-knit Feargal Sharkey cardigans to my market-stall trainers, I was ripe for sabotage. Katherine wore cool black polo necks, smoked white filtered Kents and blew out circles above my head to tighten the noose, to rein me in. When she unfolded a pair of black silk pants from her bag, a syringe rolled out onto the mattress between us. She’d spotted the flaw, smelled desperation through the cracks, and knew there’d be no hesitation.

*

The funeral is underway, and my brother Aiden is stalling: ‘Michael, Michael, what can you say about Michael?’

Father Derek shrugs his shoulders as if to say ‘don’t expect me to answer that!’ Aiden is struggling because in common with practically every one else in this sorry congregation, he hasn’t seen me in years. Not only that but he’d never forgiven me for plaguing Mum when things had got rough, borrowing and stealing from her to pay a debt, to keep alive on the streets, to keep things going. Hypocrite that he is, with his fine infidelity suit, the serial womaniser with the brood safely tucked in at home, flaunting his pitiful giblet to any woman he could pass muster with.

‘Michael was a beautiful young boy, who was good at maths but sadly lost his way, God rest his soul. May he find peace and salvation for his sins.’

Is that it? Is that the best he can do? The mood overall is tense rather than sad. There is some general sobbing and more and more chair scraping. People want out.  Mum looks like a cadaver, the flinty cheekbones protruding under her eyes arched like chicken wings, her irises exploding bloodshot from tiny strained vessels into the white of her eyes. She looks like a junkie too now.

*

Mum in the cold clasp drape of her bed, eyes up to the cross. I blow low notes through the tiny hairs in the bassoon of her ear and she responds with a faint smile and sighs.

‘Is that you?’ she asks, and tries to sleep in case she finds me there.

I think of smothering, an act of kindness, but no, I fill her glass by the bed for her to put her dentures. They drop in with a fixed grin and small bubbles chase up to the rim. I kiss her on the cheek, and her eyes close.

In her sleep I am washed clean, and she is rocking me on her knees. Numbers silenced in my head for a moment, I cling on and try not to fall.

IV

1975, the year of being born, and me not yet fourteen, in a pair of coach seats to my own, near the back away from the dark lords and dusky maidens upfront – the brothers and nuns – and two up from the VIP sofa rear, the cool kids, their piss awful laughs and catcalling. An away-day escape to the jaunty seaside, mixing up hormones, tangling barbed wire braces, gum, stutter and smarting cheeks with the local convent girls.

Aiden is back there with tarty Frances, fingering away under her satchel, discreetly poised over her ugly lampshade gingham skirt. She’s at it too and he makes a low moan when he comes – then a handy tissue bound in gents fluid tossed (!) towards the back of Kevin Connor’s head, miraculously fixing onto his trailing locks – and Aiden tells me later that Frances holds onto his prick like no other. I think of a girl’s fingers squeezing around a racing handlebar and get a slightly sick feeling deep inside the holy pit.

‘Are you children behaving?’ shouts a Brother, too lazy or too frightened to venture to the back.

‘All Hunky Dory,’ yells a boy with a rebel-tinge of henna to his spike-top.

‘No sticky fingers round here, Bro,’ says Aiden softly enough, so only Frances and his friends hear.

The hyena giggles start quiet at first, then pump up to bursting, but before madness breaks out and revolution hits the air, they artfully puncture things, hiss it all out, hot and wild eyed, gasping like they’ve stepped out of a furnace. Frances lets go a stunted scream, finally faking her arrival: ‘took your time, Aiden,’ she says, punching him on the arm, then re-arranging her skirt into an innocent pose, satchel returned to the floor by her feet.

I recite multiplication tables in my head, temples numbing out the deluge of unwanted sounds, numbers way beyond the yellowed sweaty school texts: 22×24 is 528, 23×24 is 552, 24x 24 is 576, yes, oh, fucking yes!!!

From the top of the town, the sea arrives onto the coach window, framed beside the hairy-man driver, a carpet of cool, a flagrant call to undress; I hope we don’t get to see his gorilla arse and wild garden back parting the waves.

We straggle onto the pebbly beach, each group finding a rock to collect behind, to undress, fleeting hands sneaking modesty towels (‘too small, Ma, I told you it was too small’) away from skinny blue-white chicken flesh:

‘Do that that to me again you feck, and I’ll skin you of all your skin!

‘That makes no fucking sense, Jon, and you know it.’

‘Shit off or I’ll shit on you!’

‘That’s better, but you’ve a way to go before anyone could call you a poet.’

I find a rock of my own and start counting down numbers in elevens until it’s time to go: 233,000, 232,989, 232,978, all the while not being able to keep my eyes off the sea, its swirl, rise and fall; the grating shingle pull back, the letting go; patterns forming further out, globs and gloops, bubbles popping onto the surface; the draw under.

Soon enough the weakening sun rots amongst a mass of grey sweltering clouds. We congregate under a tin roof shelter, assemble for foul smelling sandwiches, fish paste as pink as Angel Delight. The milk is sour as sick but we drink it anyway. The Brothers look troubled in their inappropriate thick clothes, like bachelor herdsman driven out for the yearly pull, practising lines on each other; nuns huddled up too close in the cramped shelter, agitating towards the saviour tea flask for another sup.

‘You look nice in that horsehair vest, David,’

‘Thank you, Tom, you look very nice too, a grey tank-top suits you. And isn’t it nice weather we’ve been having, Sister Anne?’

Blood violates her cheeks, a faint animal sound emitted through dry untouched lips; it may be a response or a cry for help.

Sister Bernadette steps into the breech: ‘And isn’t tea always welcome on a day like this.’

A murmur of approval, an away-day Amen.

*

At the end of the pier is a concrete tower, a small derelict lighthouse. It’s fenced off by barbed wire, with a large sign saying ‘DANGER, DO NOT ENTER’, and some nut job has scrawled in red-blood-ink under: ‘Enter and you will surely die. Suiciders welcome.’

A group of lads, Aiden, naturally, now disentangled from Frances’s grip, have left the watchful eyes of the Brothers and made their way through a gap in the fence and gone inside. I follow up damp winding stairs. We meet on a small metal balcony at the top. A flimsy rusty railing holds us from the sea, circling way down below.

‘Jesus, Aiden, Mad Michael has followed us.’

‘Piss off, Michael,’ says Aiden.

I stare through them, eyes to the horizon

‘Mental boy, you’re not wanted,’ says one of the others, pushing me in the chest.

‘Leave him alone,’ says Aiden.

They let me be, and start discussing what order they should jump in. Pat, the one who called me Mad Michael, says he’ll go first. Obviously, they all want to go first but after a while they agree and he gets himself ready, the railing trembling as he climbs onto it. He tries to compose himself at the edge, taking in deep breaths, his body teetering, arching forward, the sea looming below. He’s like that for at least a minute.

‘Go on, Pat, get on with it, for fuck’s sake!’

‘I am, I am, just don’t rush me.’

‘Ha ha, his legs are shaking.’

‘Like Elvis, whoa, whoa.’

‘Shut up, will you!’

‘Jump then, you faggot.’

The boys form a chorus: ‘jump! Jump! Jump!’

‘I can’t, I can’t!’

‘You’re a frozen bloody chicken, Pat,’ says Aiden. ‘Get down’.’

Pat climbs down and Aiden takes his place.

‘Jump! Jump! Jump!’

‘Fuck this, lads,’ says Aiden after a few moments swaying at the railing.

Another boy tries. Same thing.

As he gets down, I jump up onto the railing, glance down at the sea, and go. All speeded up. The rush as I drop, breaths emptied out, my heart so heavy, it’s like it’s slipped down my chest and into my legs, and then a smack as I hit the surface of the water, a sheet of metal, which jars my body, re-aligning things so I can break through. I feel my left leg ripped sideways as if a Great White has grabbed it.  I go under.

III

Big as the house he set himself against, Dad’s bullish shoulders heaving down, the hammer striking the wall. Dust, plumes of brick ash, a one-man demolition, and the wall came crashing down. If he whacked you, you were winded for hours, flesh smarted and glowing, a bruise spreading under the skin, a sulphurous flower opening out, poisoning the bloodstream, his anger spreading through you.

Six weeks before the seaside sortie, and Mum is pushing me towards the bed in the far corner of the ward, the scent of decay and old man piss flooding the nostrils, Dad’s death trolley waiting to take him away. Only Dad is 52. Shrunken, corpse-like apart from the sorry groan to greet me, an outstretched arm, emaciated and gleaming with sweat, his anchor tattoo shrivelled in the creases of his skin.

‘Don’t smoke, son,’ he says. ‘It’ll rip you.’ He pinches my hand, an echo of his force reduced into something singular and unmanly. He winces and points to the drip by the bed.  ‘Hit the button, please,’ he says, a formal curtsey I’d never heard him use before. And he says it again: ‘Please, son. Please!’

I do as he asks and the morphine plops down the line and into his vein.

‘More, he says. ‘But don’t let Nurse Ratched see.’

Mum arrives with a carrier bag and sits by his bed. ‘I’ve bought some rhubarb and some apples.’

‘For the love of God, woman, I don’t want it. None of it.’

I hit the button and after a moment he sighs and relaxes back into the pillows, his face beatific and wan, the trace of a smile

‘It’s an air bed,’ Mum says. ‘It’s just as well he can’t smoke anymore.’

Three weeks later he was gone. Ashed. Dusted away.

*

After the dive, I was rescued by a fishing boat, heaved in unconscious. When I woke in hospital, the pain was ballistic but I knew a cure. The drip was attached and screams abated, all those sums, numbers melting away. A pale mist descending onto my eyelids, an icy rush into the vein, a moment of nausea I’d come to know well, learn to push through, and then this new delicious feeling, a cossetted weight in and around me, cocooned, released from harm and responsibility.

The ward radio is on. ‘Thank you for the music, for giving it to me’.

‘Abba, I should hate Abba, but fuck it, they’re lovely. Clean and modern, booted out in whites and turtlenecks like they’re living the Space Age: lovely.’

‘They often talk like this on the drip,’ a nurse tells Mum.

‘Will he be okay?’ Mum asks, the bag of old rhubarb and apples by her feet.

‘Fuck, yeah,’ I say.

‘Michael, don’t you dare speak like that. Not even when you’re ill.’

My leg is cast as Tutankhamen, mummified and snow white. Soon Aiden comes in and draws a cock and balls and his idea of a vagina, hormonal witless hieroglyphics, and I’ll write the names Frida and Benny in unfamiliar girlie bubble writing beside. But mostly I sleep, and pretend to be asleep when Aiden and Mum are around, sink into the mattress, slip slowly under, swim down the depths, thrilling underwater lagoons, pearl roof caves, coral cathedrals, find sanctuary with a Terry Wogan priest in an aqualung, who makes the sign of a cross with a finger through the water.

‘Waterloo: a famous battle between the English and the French? Or water loo, a form of improvised sea toilet – you can tell they’re releasing when they suddenly stand still, eyes to the horizon and pretend they’re thinking something profound – or the name of a song written for Eurovision by the popular Swedish pop group, Abba?”

‘Would I be right in saying it’s the name of a song written for Eurovision by the lovely Swedish pop group, Abba?’

‘Lovely is right, Mad Michael, you have won – ‘ 

 ‘Push the buzzer, Terry.’

And before the nurse comes running, another dose, precise and perfect, is released.

Lovely. Just lovely.

II

Once Katherine glowed, ‘a gift to the dark’ people used to say. After years on the street, any glow had dimmed. Best viewed in shadow, stressed and skeletal, ravaged like a street cat, missing teeth, clumps of hair ripped out, eyes blazing and approaching any man in the street that has a pulse.

‘Five for a blow job!’

‘I’m not going to give you a blow job.’

‘What? No, don’t be funny, please. Come on, my arse could be yours for ten, do anything for as long as you like.’

‘You don’t have an arse, you skinny bitch.’

If he carried on, I’d step out of a doorway and give him a slap: ‘run, student boy or the ghost of her teeth will chase you around town and bite off your cock!’

‘My knight in shining armour but you should just fuck off, he would have given in.’

‘Nah, don’t think so, Kat, you were barking up the wrong tree there.’

‘Woof, fucking woof!’

‘Come on, we can share.’

‘You won’t want me to do anything?’

‘Damn right, but some peace and quiet would be nice.’

We kissed, her mouth sucking me in, but if I closed my eyes her lips felt full again, tongue tipping, lightly touching where once were teeth, that tingle through my body again.

We shared a squat, damp as a paddy field, the acid smell of vomit, always losing our sleeping bags so eventually we didn’t bother. I came down with pneumonia so badly that I ended up in hospital, and when I was kicked out after two weeks, Katherine was gone.

Rumour on the street was that her parents had mounted a rescue. I always thought she’d come back, but as years passed, no sight or sound. Then, one day, I saw her across the road, kitted out like a de-mobbed nun on her first weekend away, shapeless in a flowery skirt and frilly blouse, an auntie’s wig up top, and a set of dentures that would grace a small horse.

‘Kat,’ I shouted but she didn’t so much as look up.

For good measure, an elderly couple – the retired architect and art teacher I’m guessing – caught up with her and pulled her along.

A few days later she came and begged me to help her get away.

We scored just like the old days but I hadn’t taken into account how clean she’d become. A miscalculation, and it took her away for good, eyes up to the night sky, filling with dark; the needle traces, apart from the latest, magically disappeared in the snow of her arms, her gleaming white falsies meeting in a fabulous unintentional grin.

I

After she went and died, I took up bothering Father Derek. Not the most patient of men, easily given to cliché, but at least he tried.

 ‘God has plans for you!’ he said.

I really should have asked what he meant. And a better man than me might have jumped but I actually tripped and fell. Statistics could have taken that into account and helped lessen the load.

Lying on Mum’s lap, the numbers in my head re-surface, start to count me down, 5-4-3-2-1, and I want to shout out ‘Thunderbirds’ but I’m already gone.

*

if the head had it was published in 2022’s autumn’s issue of the American journal Exacting Clam https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-6-autumn-2022/