The Giant's Causeway

On emerald green, I stopped at the sea
And thought my way to you.
These miles of chopping blue
That marked the distance in us.
It was cold - I remember - despite the sun
My cheeks burned with the wind.

What did I think, then?

Perhaps I saw your face in all things,
Or heard in the waves your whisper,
Your voice.
Imagining the lap of the rocks
And warm earth between,
Enticing forward.

I also wondered then, if on that immigrant's
coast your thoughts sailed back to me?

Daffodils - St Annes 2006

The daffodils came early that year,
Bringing green shoots to the brown-fogged
Miser of winter, its snow now seeping the earth.
In the park, where children sing soon to scream,
They budded yellow at the tip -
Threatening to burst and to spill
Beneath the war memorial. The brooding
Soldier and all his loss made good
By the earth's solid promise to renew and forget.
The daffodils came early that year,
How could they see the hard frost that would
slaughter them like the fresh mown grass,
would bite at their heads like animals?
The frost came later that year:
As unexpected as the letter,
The phone call late at night,
Always the same - news that can't wait.
The young do rise the old do fall.
Young boys smile and want to fight,
Girls become women come what May
And daffodils will nod their heads
While the walkers pass by on their way.

Spring

Heaving sighs breathe heavy into the aisles of yesterday,
A raven chokes above the bleak sky and rain plods the ground
Damp with leaves ushering under boughs less golden.
White upon white slowly ebbs back as brown monotony
Retakes its hold on innocence; again the earth whispers.
A punctuation mark of a crow streaks the leadened sky
Heavier than air, falling in droves on droves of misery.
The hills shiver in their cold canopy of frost which cracks
At water’s insistence, soon to break with idolatry of the missing:
All those ghosts of time clanging in the midnight frieze.
The blunt heads of daffodils come rashly early
Cannot sink back, claw back into some other place til
Sun arrives finally to light hard places and set black shadow.
Now, very now, a snowdrop pokes out its finger to test
And bravely comes to life.

am

Embarrassed, morning lifts her eyes,
Stares light shafts, paints in colour.
Coffee buzzing, coughing like a man - awake -
only just, Percolates and fizzes.

Softly, through a gauze of silence
Voices and a hum of low traffic;
Broken sirens and snapped out market stalls.
Silence packed away with clattering force.

The air seems crisp with a hope electrical pulses
A new place of desire and hope - and dread
Dawn now blushes strangely like
A shy lover after the night.

To kiss night out and embrace with the mistress
Day, a liaison of broken promises.

Empty Rooms

Vacant, as they might say,
Left open, solitudinous spaces
Swarming with memories
Of things yet to come:
A thousand legends viewed
Through mists and ghosts.
A hundred times and the
Vision flocks and peels.

The bags packed, all gone
Imagining the place alone
As we slide along in holiday time
The posters down, windows closed
A summer’s sparkling sea
Washes the memory clean
Salt purifying and in drying
Crystallises

The sun. Lights up the faces,
Shadows cower in places
It’s the theory of these spaces
Which shall keep us all warm.

Is this adultery? A Short Story for the Weekend

The train was sardine-packed full and the afterday scent of a thousand meetings, arguments, travails and triumphs kissed and danced in the yellow light from the glittering skies. Heavy air made heavy hands film with sticky sweat, whilst suits, this morning fresh and sharp like soldiers on parade, now hung and clumped like the wounded being returned after battle. No one spoke anything but internal monologues; arguments of what should have been said but which were not; tiny victories in the discourse now that hindsight and pride had overcome the nerves and loss of thought that kept them in losing. Perhaps thoughts now drifted to tea-time noises, hot pies and salads delivered to screaming tiny bodies exerted beyond their own will. The thought of sparkling ale in glasses and the goal-cheer of a work free crowd, the intimacy of bedsheets, windows breathing sweet air to mingle and carouse with the hot panting of breathless ecstasy. Perhaps all and none of these things threaded those silent bodies together in their distance. All looked down or away from any hope of contact.

Beyond the scratched window pane the fields swept by: houses with awnings, paddling pools, open patio doors, gin and tonics, garden teas amongst the hyacinths. Inside, the air warmed like orange juice in the sun, becoming sour and stale as the human stench blanketed them all.

John sat and thought of home as he became increasingly conscious of the bony shoulders of his neighbour who, over thin-rimmed spectacles lurched over a novel snorting in a derisory fashion at some hero defeating the impossible. His once white shirt now grey with the day and his hair seemed stuck on with kindergarten glue. On the end of his beak-like nose a drop of sweat, or was it snot, dangled like a misplaced earring, a diamond. John watched it bobble, swell and drip onto the page, instantly crinkling the paper, wetting it like a blood drop, where it plopped obscenely. John thought for a moment of disease and was suddenly conscious of his breathing which seemed to suck in the heaving fabric of all the carriage. He glimpsed memories of bodily phobias, things that made him retch: chewing gum in pub urinals, cigarette butts piled in dusty ashtrays, the stink of greasy cafes’ smoke and burned eggs, the horror of the mouth and its ingestion of things, the mix of taste and smell, he turned away.

On his other side a jacketless woman of indeterminate years. She had clearly looked after herself but was now beginning, like a fruiting tree, to lose to advancing years and gravity; parts of her face seemed to be slipping off, her makeup was thickly applied like concrete to stuff up gaps and lift things into place – a re-pointing of sorts. The heat had made it look as if she had been crying. From this angle, he could glimpse a full curve of a breast, her left one, as it stuffed itself badly into a laced cup. He noticed the freckles as he imagined her filling this bra one receptacle at a time, plumping herself like a cushion in front of the mirror, pulling on her skirt over her black, he looked, skin-toned, stockings. Did women wear those beyond bedroom seductions and outside of the virtual world of broadband pornography? Probably tights, then, which now itched, he imagined, as her legs pushed back the razored hair which began to poke up its bristling edges like a daring children in hide and seek games. How hot it must be underneath all those layers of wool and nylon, how rife it must be down there with – he became aware of her looking up from her phone and he darted his eyes to the window and focussed on a field swaying in the luxurious breeze.

The day had been tough. Nothing especially bad had happened but it had seemed longer than its hours. He had been casually remembering the first few weeks of his romance with Rebecca, his wife now of twelve years. They had been young. He smiled at the temerity of himself, already involved with another but spying, like a hungry animal, something more satisfying. She was stooping towards a draughts board in the local pub, a cigarette smouldering in her left hand in her right a glass of purple dark wine. As she stooped she put the cigarette into the corner of her mouth to move a piece. It was that vision, mythologised over the years in their remembrance and in his private fantasy, which he was mulling when he realised the question was aimed at him. He tore his mind from the curve of her hip, the gentle hang of her breasts and the squint of her left eye as it fought off the smoke curling in the pale light.

That night he had walked her home, kissed her, his heart pounding, tasting the sweet tongue as it caressed his, feeling her full lips moisten his own. He had never felt a kiss like it before, full of promises whispered in corners, of happy endings and sensuous beginnings. She invited him in and they made love. It was a drunken love which he could barely remember now. What lingered was the kiss. That act had been more intimate and personal than this sex. Even when he ventured with his lips to the hot centre of her, it did not equate to the holy sensation of her lips on his. When he sank himself between her, he knew that there had been others who had done exactly this, perhaps longer or shorter inside her they felt different but in all things else, the same. When she turned for him, he knew her experience had told her that this was what men liked. As when she took control, pushed him back and sat over him until she let out a deep sigh and moan, somewhere between fright and anger, and then she pushed up on her feet and rocked hard until he gave up everything into her watching her, her hands on his chest, her breasts pushed together. Even then, he knew that only the kiss held any meaning.

And it was so. Each time they met the kiss was the thing that astounded his senses. He felt like he was fifteen again and was kissing for the first time, experiencing what would normally disgust him. Every time the sex got more daring, rougher, they talked in lurid fantasies that in any other setting would feel like an absurd joke but to them seemed deeply erotic each fantasy out classing the first in its depravity. They moved on in this way each time becoming more pornographic and somehow less real. She offered him all that lingered in misogynistic imaginations yet seemed to be empowered by it all. Yet all the time it was her kiss that told him he was real.

The train lurched slightly before it yawned into Fenchurch. Here his bony companion wiped his nose and stood to get off. The mature lady on his left repositioned herself and before him the view opened up. He breathed in a fresh cool breeze from the open door and surveyed his new horizon. He had noticed her when she got on. She was younger than his forty years but not by much and he was pleased first by her choice of clothing, suggesting style and youth but also caring. Her nails were smooth, dark red, her face, despite the heat was fresh, the lipstick still exact. Her hair had not the reckless appearance of many of the others who had, in the humid air, given up and tied it loosely behind themselves. Beyond this observation there was nothing. Yet now that the crowd had shifted he noticed through the precise ordering of her to something that made her stand out to his imagination.

She was reading a novel, a hardback, not from a library, and she was over halfway through. She smiled occasionally and her brow furrowed from time to time. Her checked blouse and jeans said nothing of what she might do with her time and it was in this thought that he began to construct her character. He thought she looked like a Julia. He did not know why but it suited her despite her dark hair. She wore no rings and for a moment he allowed the thought of her lesbian tendencies to interfere with his passage of narration. Julia had, perhaps, had a relationship end and she was happy but wary. Perhaps she needed to regain her faith in men. Why did she need a man? Perhaps she was in a relationship but it was casual. It may even be that she was single, desperately so? No, better that she enjoyed her single life.

Therefore, Julia became, in his eye, available. He imagined where she might live. He could not help but feel that she dwelled in a cottage on the edge of a small town. From her bedroom window (why bedroom) one could see rolling fields forever bathed in the golden sun, edged with trim straight hedgerows where mice took shade and occasionally spotted with oak trees where one might picnic on a July day with a newspaper, the cricket on am and a chilled Chablis. Perhaps he leaned back onto her lap as she read to him passages from her latest read stroking his hair, discussing their next trip abroad, or their plans for Christmas.

Her cottage was old but not thatched. Why would thatch not work? It seemed too biscuit-tin, too much. But perhaps it was an old farm house where now the stables were a small set of art studios. She was perhaps involved in the arts perhaps as a painter, no her hands were immaculate. Perhaps, then, she was a photographer. The house itself rumbled into small corners where solace and shade were easy to find. The kitchen was vast and privy to their countless dinner parties where her friends, who adored him as dependable although hopelessly uncreative, came to feast from food that he had sourced locally and cooked with easy perfection. He had, in this place, a reading room where he would be undisturbed to peruse the daily papers and periodicals and eventually, he would, after coffee, drive to town, no walk, to his practice where the locals would spend their gossip over hip inspections and being told that antibiotics were useless on a common cold.

A child began to cry a fierce bubbling scream, impossible, surely, from one so small.

John idly scanned the countryside outside careful now to avoid looking at the smart lady next to him whose tummy pushed her shirt buttons to near popping as she forgot now to hold herself in.

As he looked he thought back to his early holidays with Rebecca. They too used to sit in shade planning out their future. For a while after their first child was born, the glue that held a man to a woman was that kiss. As all magazines foretold, the hot explicit sex had tailed away to something more furtive, dishonest and sly. Sometimes he was aware that she was simply offering herself as a receptacle for him. At other times she would use it as a bargaining chip, a promise unfulfilled. It became a lie. Sometimes when she came into the bedroom, he would pretend to sleep. The sense that he was no longer her fantasy did not perturb him, moreso was the thought that to her he had become the old miserable doctor that she had teased about when he slept after their afternoon consultations. From time to time she would surge with desire but would ride him until she had drunk her fill. Then she would impatiently wait for him to finish his business. By the time their third child had entered the world, even the kiss had become tight and pursed. He blamed it on her being too tired at first, until he noticed his stomach in the bathroom mirror. Subconsciously, he had sucked himself in but one evening with Rebecca lying on the sofa, asleep, the children in bed he locked the door on the bathroom and watched himself as he used to when he was an adolescent. His fantasy was of Rebecca; it always was. She was there, as she was now but offering herself up to him wholly as she once did. As he relaxed into the rhythm, he closed his eyes sifting through scenarios and when he looked up to see himself he noticed the bulge as if he were pregnant. The shock was palpable, he shrunk away in his hand and he wept silently for all the wasted hours of his life.

He had always meant to talk to Rebecca but it never seemed right. He half expected that the conversation would lead them back to the days of no-rules sexual abandon. But even that held no consolation now, not now that the kiss had gone. How does one embark upon this subject? His father had grown tired of his mother’s tirades and one day when John was eighteen and embarking on his medical training, his father just left. I’ve raised the lad, he had said, and now you must consider my family role as redundant. With that he was off. His mother had quickly remarried and had moved with Paul to live in Spain, of all places. Neither had, despite their experience, taught him the signs of love, so dearly won, in regression.

He had not the audacity now to speak with her. Even the little triggers of desire were firing on empty breeches. He remembered how he could pat her on her rump and she would know his thoughts. He recognised easily when she needed him. Now he was told no in a thousand silent gestures. These past six years had been a barren land for him but it was only in the last two years that he had noticed the kiss, so precious before, had now vanished.

Greenhithe. The rails groaned. A cider-infused man, ruddy beyond his years clambered on, roll-up still glowing, a puppy on a string, his boots, grey and turned up at the toe showing that they had always been too big. He muttered happily to a seated office worker that “glad I don’t have to work” and opened a warm can of beer, the foam spurting and gushing over his hands as he flicked the foam away onto Julia’s lap. She didn’t seem to notice as each bubble popped and the mass of them reduced to a wet spot on her knee. He observed the man, his lank greasy hair in a long pony tail, the sides shaved a silver ring in his nose, unshaven but without a full beard and for a moment, he envied him his summer days on park benches, he envied his lack of knowing, of ambition, that which drove us all into air-conditioned numbness. He was sure his lack of commitments and loyalty meant that his desires were always fulfilled. His target set so low that he always hit the bullseye. He picked a bag of biscuits and began to feed the puppy which now sat aside its puddle of urine.

John sighed and thought about what he would do when he got home. Rebecca was usually late on Thursdays as she took the children to her mother’s in Rivenswood for tea. It was now five, he would be back by five forty they normally got home at about nine o’clock. He would probably open a bottle of wine, scan through the internet and please himself in this way.

He eyed the passing villages in the beyond. He imagined her cottage and how, when he got home she might be in the garden, this Julia with her golden promises, she would be smiling at a novel as she was right now, her nose crinkled in a way which made him want to kiss her eyelids. She would have curled herself into a garden chair, of wood not the cheap plastic sold in supermarkets. On the table, beneath the branches of a beech tree, was a pot of tea and an empty cup, the core of an apple consumed, by the look of its browning skin, sometime ago. As he stepped onto the smooth patio she would turn to him and smile, placing down her book and rising to meet him with a deep kiss that spoke all the questions she could have. Perhaps they would make love now in the cool shadow of the lounge with its French doors open to the tangle of robust stalks of flowers that coloured the garden scene. The light breeze would cleanse his body of his work and send him deep into another more human world. Afterwards, they would dress and return to the shade of the tree, the sun still strong, the breath of summer still hot in their idyll. They would share crisp wine, he leafing through papers, she her novel. They would share the joy of cooking, simple things learned on holidays and retire when the air became clammy, to the lounge where she would fall asleep on his lap as they watched a movie.

These things seemed the world now to him and yet, as a stir of excitement shivered through him, it became replaced by what did await him: an empty home, echoing in itself the joy of Christmases and summer days withering like a torn wrapping paper on a damp November street.

Before he met Rebecca he lived alone in the city. He had what he thought to be a perfect little home a short walk from the centre. The flat was above a florist’s and on Friday nights he would enjoy a drink with friends after work often ending in a curry. Saturday mornings he would stroll into town browsing the shops, stopping for breakfast and a leaf through the Saturday supplements. He would browse book shops for something to read which he never seemed to finish before the promise of another book came along and he would leap into that world and embrace it like a drowning sailor until the next raft came along. He loved to watch rugby and always alone in his flat with the sounds of the city edging in through the sash windows. He would sleep lightly and slowly drink a gin and tonic before he would prepare for his Saturday ritual of fine dining. He had always loved to cook and moreover cook for others. His guests were friends and occasionally romantic interests that sometimes did and sometimes did not end in his bed and end on Sunday morning with the agony of realisation. Sundays he might take a walk in the park or read his new book. Always he spent the evening in the dark seductive hug of a cinema, alone, his face lit up by a thousand lives and possibilities. It was, perhaps, a lonely little existence but he was happy with it and when his offer of dinner went cold on the table with Rebecca’s need being urgently taken care of in the sitting room he realised with a tinge of regret that his lonely life of anonymity would be lost. He occasionally fantasised about what his own life would look like without her.

He felt above all, tired.

“Are you okay?” He looked up, confused. “It’s just that we’re at Gillinghurst, it’s the end of the line”.

He looked around at the empty carriage, the sun now deep yellow, the air cooler, fresher than it had been when it smothered him to sleep.

“That lady next to you wasn’t happy, you kept using her like a cushion”, she bit her bottom lip, he focussed and saw her smile at him. It was a smile that made him sit up and stand and offer, ridiclulously, his hand.

“Thanks”, he managed, “I’m John”

“Julie, I’m not far from home, you might like a lift back up to Ravensfield”

“How” – ?

“I’ve noticed you before, you always get off there”. She smiled again and gestured towards the door. He picked up his briefcase and paced stiffly towards the bright lemon glow of the platform. She followed. He followed her. He watched her as she paced in front, confident but feminine, her buttocks curved yet taught. He raised an eyebrow to himself, his heart skipped.

Her car was small and he, being tall, had trouble entering with any grace. She laughed at him. He enjoyed being the cause of her laughter. As she drove she asked him “So, what do you do, John?”

“I’m in medicine, well I was a Doctor but now I advise doctors on benefits of medicine, new ones, you know”.

“Not really. You don’t treat patients, you tell doctors what drugs to use to treat patients?”

“Yes, not very sexy is it?”

“No, not unless it’s – “

“Oh, no – not that at all. I was a cardiologist but I’ve done research into the treatment of certain – look this is a bit dull. What about you?”

“Well, I’m between jobs. Not that I’m unemployed. I illustrate books, children’s books, and I’ve just come back from a launch today so I’m searching for another contract. I live down there” she pointed down a lane lined with hedges roofed with towering oaks “my mother’s house originally but she left it to me when she died – you’d think that was thoughtful but you should have seen the tax bill”.

“Look, I’m happy to get a taxi. It must be an hour’s round trip to the station and by the time I get the train I’ll be very late and I certainly don’t want to put you out”

She turned back on herself, took a wild left and accelerated down the lane pulling up at a thatched cottage, red brick, low set with exposed wooden supports. The tyres crunched on gravel. “We’ll call from here Dr John – the taxis know where to come so you shouldn’t get home too late, what’s waiting? Pizza and chips?”

“Well”, he thought of lying “my wife won’t be home yet, she’s out with our children”.

“In that case, you won’t want to get back late, smelling of wine with tales of being stranded in Gillinghurst with a single girl with an artistic temperament. She might get the wrong impression”.

“Yes, quite”

He was intrigued and frightened by her forwardness as if she could read his thoughts and second-guess where his imagination wondered. She opened the door into a cavernous, cool hall, wooden stair leaving to the heavens, a studded oak door ajar through to a brightly lit kitchen, the sun retreating behind a tall tree which he could not identify. She opened the fridge and pulled the cork from a half empty bottle of wine and kicked off her shoes, pulled down two glasses and slopped the wine into one.

“Unless, you feel you wish to relax while you wait and tell your wife that you missed your train to have drink with a friend?” She smirked and filled up the second before going to the garden. She did not offer him the phone.

He thought now of Rebecca, enduring her mother’s tirades about Daily Mail stories, the children playing in the garden before supper and a terrible seizure of guilt and discomfort weighed down on him. He looked out at that gorgeous woman, smiling at the sun and glimpsed a future of memories so profoundly happy and at once empty. He imagined her in all sort of ways, sketching in her studio while he bathed, sharing meals and wine, planning, kissing, making love. It could be all there. He walked to the garden and sat clumsily on the thin garden chair. He smiled a tight smile at her and looked at the line of her chin, smooth and pale. At once his heart sank and he realised that his idle dreams of their future were forever bound in his imaginary sepia photobook. She, unaware of his longing and of his fantasy world, wiped a dribble of wine from below her lip, flapped her top to shake off the droplet there and snorted violently, giggling at her own clumsiness. He moved towards her, his arms outstretched a quickly pulled handkerchief thrust towards her, she stood too quickly and stumbled into him. Without warning they faced each other, so close he could feel her exhaling on his chin, smell her wine-smeared breath. She reached up with her lips, closing her eyes, he leant forward until, trembling, his lips touched hers, he felt them open, calm and relax from the strain of laughing her tongue coming forward to taste him. He relaxed slowly, feeling an embarrassing swelling, she took him into her hands and guided him back into the kitchen where she unbuttoned the blotched blouse, touched him, was surprised and excited by the difference of him from her younger lovers, she kissed him again, longer and deeper and popped each button. His thoughts of Rebecca faded into a fog where now he felt free and raging, torrential in his excitement he took her over, escalated her, pushed her down, manipulated her like a toy.

She laughed and giggled through it but not at him, with him. He found this appealing. Started already to love her playfulness was shocked at how easy this was. She was unfamiliar to him and she did not know what made him excited and so this lasted for some time. He was sure by the end of it that she had not reached her climax but he was exhausted and gave out. She covered him up on the sofa and walked from him, he dreamily watched her walk away from him.

His eyes glanced through the windows the concrete sidings taking over from the trees and grass. He stood and straightened his jacket, rubbed his weary eyes and picked up his briefcase. He looked down at Julia but she was still engrossed in her novel. The train lurched and screeched to a stop and John, renewed by his thoughts stepped into the golden sun of a summer’s evening.

A Jacobean Love Song

Dark seems but soft, enfolded sweetly sleeps
Your beauty, rising frame and sighs within.
A light, then morning unearths its cold sun.
Chill dawn masses breathes and surges, deep out
Beyond the cold black pane, white envelopes
Green with youth once, pastures now coveréd;

As you will become. As life takes
Hold and you ascend from me;
I only have the warm depression
Of where you slumbered to hold.

Yet.

In thoughts in waking sleep
You tread with hot fervour:
Lips and eyes and curve of back and…
The dark smothers with a satin glove
As I in you slip slowly to love!

Well, we let that cold black darkly burn, Life:
Winter’s grip strangle nature quickly dead,
The round of our lust in which love is read,
While we explore in hot blood, life rough strife
Do urge spring’s uprising and new flowers
Through all of that which encompasses hours!

Mother

I was twelve when the brutal sun pooled
In white hot hard squares on the carpet.
Through the blank window frames
The tinny rasp of cicadas, in frenzy, crescendoed
To a foreign cacophony pf buzzing.
Inside, though, it was contrasting cool.
I didn’t know then how you,
With patient quiet,
Longed for emerald hills
And swift pouring rain:
Cigarettes in back alleys;
High jinx from school;
Trouble in the park.
After our grimly restrained hysteria
The moment - embarrassing then -
Now ascends a new territory.
With your burden, 'til now your own,
You reached for the rice – father's return -
And shook it like much wives’ good advice.
Within stirred an unwanted life.
You yelped then and water
Sprung in tides, not for the lice
That quickly sulked in corners,
But for the other far off things

Old Photos

Folded around its fraying edges,
Sun-stroke blurred and beaten,
Forever captured; two faces gleam in
Looking back: one, a boyish me
And the other a youthful you.
There I sit – in hopeless forever,
Hugged into the crook of your elbow,
The bottoms of your trousers – too wide –
The space between us, lengthened
Like shadows in cool evenings.
I don’t recall the moment when
But it seems too sunny to see
Like driving at dawn
With the news always on
And I hear her “look at me!”
As I repeat now
With small bodies eager for moving.
But then, as her finger pressed
I was already looking away:
Even now I think I’d
Drop
From that bridge
And then, if not now, I knew
You’d save me.