David Hadley's Blog, page 199

Stanley Knife and Florence Nightgown

The field could be anything they wanted it to be. It could be a football pitch, a lonesome prairie, an alien planet, an unexplored jungle, a battlefield; it could change from day to day, or even hour to hour. But whatever the field was, the small copse of hawthorn trees was always the camp.

Adam sat on the lowest branch of the biggest tree. He liked to be there early, before Gary and Simon. He liked to have the quiet time, time to think of what they would play that day. He wondered why it always seemed to fall to him to decide what they would play. He had grown tired of trying to think up new games as the long summer holiday had dragged along. Now it was almost over, he found it hard to think back to where all the time had gone.

The worst time for him had been the one week he had been on his own, when Gary and Simon had been away on holiday. Adam sometimes wished he had a brother, someone to play with all the time. Although, Gary and Simon always seemed to be arguing and fighting.

Adam glanced up. All around the camp were tall plants with red flowers. About this time every year the flowers seemed to turn into cotton wool - or something like cotton wool - which blew everywhere, even into his mouth. It tasted horrible and his mother always moaned about the amount of the stuff that stuck to his clothes. He had once asked his mother what the huge red-flowered plants were called. "They're just weeds," she had said, and turned back to her washing-up.

Adam could hear the sounds of argument coming through the long grass. He stood up on the branch and held on to the trunk of the tree. He could see Gary's head as it bobbed through the grass. Occasionally, the head would stop and turn. Adam could see the grass parting for Simon, but he was too small to be seen above it. Adam sighed and sat back down on the branch, hoping that the argument would wear itself out before too long. He hated it when Gary and Simon were sulking at each other all day. He changed his mind about wanting a brother to play with.

"It was mine, and you broke it." Gary sat down under the tree. Simon had been crying, Adam could see the grey muddy tracks down Simon's cheeks as he stood, uncertainly, at the edge of the camp. Simon wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt and sat down opposite Gary, well out of his reach.

"What are we going to do today then?" Adam said.

"I don't care as long as he doesn't play," Gary said.

Adam thought about asking what had happened. He decided he did not really care. He was tired of getting involved in their constant disputes. He would be going to the junior school at the end of the holiday. He began to wish that he would find some new friends there, friends without brothers.

"Let's explore the jungle," Adam said, jumping down from the branch.

"I'm not exploring with him." Gary crossed his arms.

Adam turned to look away from them. "There was this man, an explorer, he was called Stanley - I think. He found this other man: Livingson, who was lost in the jungle. He'd been captured by cannibals, but he escaped and Stanley rescued him."

"What was his name, Stanley what?" Gary said.

"I don't think he had another name," Adam said doubtfully.

"Knife," Simon said quietly. "I heard our Dad talking about Stanley Knife. I asked Dad who he was, but Dad just laughed."

"Don't be stupid, knife isn't a name," Gary said.

"Anyway," Adam said to Gary. "If you be this Liverson, then we can come and rescue you."

Gary was silent for a moment. "Yeah, right then," he said and got to his feet. He turned to Simon. "I think the cannibals are going to capture you, and eat you." He laughed and ran off into the long grass.

Simon smiled weakly at Adam and began to trace lines in the loose dirt with a stick. "I hate having a big brother sometimes, everything is always my fault. Anyway," he smiled again, "I bet it was knife."

Adam nodded and looked away. He thought the whole thing was typical of grown-ups; they never answered your questions properly. They were either too busy or they said they didn't know. Adam wondered what was the point of being grown-up if you did not know the answer to everything. He decided that when he grew up he would know the answer to every question in the whole world.

"Come on then, let's go and rescue Liverson," Adam said.

"Are you Stanley Knife?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Who am I then?"

"You're, ...you're his faithful servant," Adam tried to think of a suitable name for a servant. "Passport Two."

"Passport Two?" That's even sillier than Stanley Knife." Simon laughed.

"It's the name of the servant of someone who went all around the world in a balloon. They made a film of it," Adam said defiantly. "Come on."

Simon followed Adam out into the field. "I'm not going to get eaten, I don't care what he says."

Adam and Simon wandered through the thick jungle, fighting savage natives and ferocious wild animals. Stanley Knife was wounded in the arm by a poisonous spear and Passport Two was mauled by a man-eating tiger, but they bravely struggled on in their desperate mission to rescue Liverson, despite the overwhelming odds against them.

Suddenly, they burst into a clearing. The long grass had been flattened, as if by a huge roller. In the centre of the clearing was something black.

"Careful, it might be a tranquilliser spider," Passport Two whispered.

Stanley Knife drew his sword and crept slowly up to the deadly spider. Before it had a chance to leap on him, Stanley sliced it in half.

"It's a pair of tights. Look," Adam pushed at the black nylon heap with his toe.

"Why would someone leave them here," Gary said looking around.

"Perhaps there's been a murder," Adam said. "Look, it looks like they were fighting and squashed the grass down flat."     

Simon looked around nervously. "There's no body and there's no blood," he said with relief. "Anyway, why would he need to take her tights off to kill her?"

"I dunno," Adam said. "But on the telly, when they talk about murders, they always say they found some bits of clothes and things."

"Look, what's this?" Simon poked at something on the ground with his stick.

"It's a balloon."

"I know that, but what is that stuff in it?"

Adam screwed up his face in disgust. "Looks like someone's blown their nose in it."

Simon turned away. Adam looked down at the pale pink balloon. It looked like it could be blown up quite big. He moved closer, the stuff inside did look a bit like snot. But, he decided, it looked more like the stuff snails made their shiny tracks with. He thought it was probably something - some sort of trap - people used to catch snails and slugs. His Granddad was always complaining about how the snails and slugs ate all the cabbages on his allotment. Adam had decided he quite liked snails and slugs because of that, and he secretly hoped there would be a plague of them and they would eat all the cabbage in the world.

Adam looked carefully at the balloon. He was relieved to see that the snail, or slug, had escaped. He wondered if it was something he could ask his Mum or Dad about. There were some things he could not ask about; things that made his mother's face go red and her voice go strange. "Rude things" and things that he would "understand when you are older", things like why there were girls and boys and why they had different toilets at school.

But the biggest rude thing had been the day Gary, Simon and Adam had found a magazine, which seemed to contain nothing but pictures of ladies without any clothes on. They had puzzled over the magazine for several hours. There were pictures of women, standing in fields and on beaches, with no clothes on throwing balls to each other, or just smiling at the camera. But there were no cartoons or stories; none that made any sense anyway.

Adam had decided to take the magazine home to ask his Mother about it. But he only just managed to hold the magazine up to show her, before it was snatched out of his hand and ripped to shreds. His Mother called it rude, disgusting and - strangely to Adam - filth. He knew that showing, what was called, his private parts to anyone except doctors and nurses was rude, but the ladies in the pictures had not looked filthy to Adam. They had looked clean, shiny even, with nice bright smiles. He wondered how anyone could be called filthy when they were photographed in the bath or in the sea, like the women in some of the pictures. There had even been a part of the magazine called Bathing Beauties.

Adam and Simon left the small clearing without looking back. They turned onto a small path.    

Gary ran up to them. "Come here," he whispered, "and be quiet."

Adam and Simon looked at each other in puzzlement, but followed Gary, trying to be as silent as possible. Gary led them to a small hedge; he crouched down and pointed through the hedge. Adam and Simon crept up beside Gary and looked through the hedge.

A girl, somewhere around Adam's age, with long, dark red hair, was sitting at the edge of the field. In front of her, a row of dolls lay on the grass. The girl had a toy stethoscope around her neck. She crawled along in front of the row of dolls checking each one with the stethoscope. Adam and Gary looked at each other and nodded.

The boys burst through the hedge, and stood in a rough semi-circle around the girl. She looked up at them.

"We are cannibals," Adam said. "And we have captured you."

The girl looked at each of the three boys in turn. She nodded and stood up. "I'm Florence Nightgown, a nurse," she said.

"Don't try to run, there is no escape," Gary said, stepping closer to the girl. She shrugged and nodded again.

Adam and Gary looked at each other and stood either side of the girl. Adam reached out to grab her arm, but found himself unwilling to touch the bright pink wool of her cardigan.

"Put your hands behind your back, so we can tie you up," Adam said quietly. "Please."

Florence Nightgown submitted to the orders of her cruel captors, knowing escape was impossible. Simon led the way, followed by Gary, who kept turning back to check the captive was still there. Adam brought up the rear. As the girl was about to step through the break in the hedge, she turned and looked back at the patients in her hospital. "You're all dead," she said to the dolls.

[….]

[An extract from Field, a short story published in How I Became the Fat Bloke and Other Stories]

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Stories like Lives

We let these things go because they are too hard to hold onto. We let the days slip between our fingers and swim off down the river of time into the endless sea of the past. We let lovers slip away into the night, leaving only the echoes of themselves fading from our fingertips as they walk away into memory and regret.

People fade into, then out of, our lives like some film coming into focus as they walk into shot and then blurring, fading away, as they leave the scene and our story moves on.

Stories are like lives, with their beginnings and endings and casts of characters, some major and some minor. We are all characters in the stories of each other's lives, moving in and out of each other's narrative and always changing the world and changing history.

There is glib talk of moments, events that changed the world, events that changed history. That is all history really is, though, the story of a series of events that changed history. Everything changes history; otherwise, there would be no story to tell.

History is a story and all our lives are a story too. Everything and everyone always has some tale to tell.

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Time will Tell

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Time will tell.

Time will tell you everything, if you have the time to sit and listen. Sitting there, in that chair, listening to just the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, he learnt all the secrets of the universe.

He learnt how to move through time and space, to visit the past and the future, how to travel the universe and how to reach the furthest stars. He learnt to understand the true nature of love and how to hold a woman close in the darkest hours of the night. He learnt how to fight for what he believed was right and how to hold a sword and how to aim and shoot a gun.

He walked strange exotic streets and rode in gilded golden-curtained coaches with the princesses unwrapping each other from silk and diaphanous veils just for him.

He learnt how to touch and be touched.

He learnt how to feel the tremulous heartbeat of small living things as he held them in his hand waiting for them to take to the air of freedom. He learnt about you, and I, and learnt all our secret names.

Most of all, though, he learnt how to sit still and let time pass without worrying about all the time passing him by.

The White Attic Room

Carla's room was right at the top of the house. It was small, under the sloping roof with angled odd-shaped windows set into the roof. She took me by the hand and led me there.

It was an odd-shaped room, seemingly with more corners than walls. It was obviously some kind of afterthought, shaped out of the spare places of the house and turned into a room.

However, it was a bright sunny room with bare white walls that seemed cool and inviting in the heat of that summer. The windows were open and I could hear the cries of the gulls as they circled the cliff top and this big old rambling house which stood up their like some royal personage on the throne of its cliff.

There was just a small three-drawer sideboard, also white, and her single iron-framed bed in the room. On the bare floorboards as a small striped brown and cream rug.

There were no pictures, posters, no record player, no discarded clothes on the floor, just a single plain-covered hardback book on the floor by the bed, and nothing else.

Nothing else except the two of us. When I turned towards her, Carla was already reaching out for me, smiling that smile of hers, which I already knew, and I knew what it meant.

She'd smiled that smile many times before, already for me that summer, down in the dunes, over on the far cliff-top over the other side of the bay, in the woods, the old abandoned barn and several other places.

Yes, I knew what that smile of hers meant, and – so – I smiled too as I stepped forward into her arms.

Monday Poem: A Marker

A Marker

It will all end here, a few stones piled up
to signify another pair of hands
that reached out, but they could not touch the world
which lies just out of reach of stretching fingers
that need to hold onto this world that twists

so easily from the grasp, evades each hand
that reaches out towards it, hoping to touch
and waiting for the world to take and hold
us by the hand and lead us back to a place
we can pretend is something like a home.

Fruit Security and Public Thoroughfares

When there are days like this, it helps to have some sort of container for the raspberries, at least if you are considering venturing out onto the public roads. As you will be aware the 1987 amendment to the Use of the Queen's Highway Act of 1867, expressly forbids anyone to venture onto the roads, paths and other avenues of communication (except – for obvious reasons – canal towpaths) without their fruit being secured in some sort of container.

As we all know, the fruit riots of the early to mid Victorian period resulted in several deaths, many hundreds of injuries and some of the largest elderberry stains ever seen in peacetime England, certainly in the post-Reformation years.

Of course, in the Victorian era there was much concern over the access the working class had to such middle class foodstuffs such as fruit. It was felt that - in the moral climate of the time – that fruit led to licentiousness and other forms of moral delinquency that the god-fearing Victorian middle-classes would find too upsetting to contemplate, especially if, say, approached by a wick trimmer brandishing his gooseberries in an overly provocative manner.

Of course, there were certain Victorian gentlemen wiling to pay young women – and even – occasionally – athletic-looking young boys to fondle their plums or give their banana a good squeeze, but most Victorians overlooked such things.

We would like to think times have changed in the intervening years, but even in this day and age, any attractive young lady out on the street with her melons on display will be on the receiving end of a great deal of – often unwelcome – interest and speculation.

World Enough and Time... and a Bag of Chips

Ah, but, if we only had world enough and time... oh, and a bag of chips, then perhaps we could see what has become of our lives. There was a time… but then I'm sure you remember that, especially when you dropped your bag of chips due to the passion of the moment.

Anyway, those were the chip shops of our youth. Back in those days, they were everywhere and all our kisses were salt and vinegar flavoured.

It doesn't help though, to dwell too long on the past, especially if it suddenly makes you remember what happened to your most-prized mandolin... and that incident with the butter.

Still as they say... or do they?

To be honest I've never come across a bit of concise, but meaningless, bit of folk wisdom condensed down into some half-remembered pithy aphorism that deals with all the subtleties of a situation like that. Not one that specifically mentions a naked Subbuteo cup-final between consenting adults, anyway.

Who would have though that green baize could be so erotic?

Those were the days... and the nights. Although, some of the afternoons did tend to drag a little, especially in those long dull hours before the chip shops opened.

Waiting for Me

Well, what if....

There are always possibilities. There are always times that can seem as though they offer all the ways you want to go. There, in an instant, it seems the future lies in the palm of your hand, just waiting for you to close your fingers around it and clutch it tight to yourself, never to let go.

I have been there and I have held on to those moments. I have seen the world begin to shape itself around me and the road I walk down.

I have created the distant horizon and shaped the sky that barely touches it. I have peopled that sky with a bare handful of small white clouds to contrast against the eternal blue. I have sculpted those dark distant hills that keep the lands of my creation safe from the unknown that lies behind. I have turned the twists of the slow lazy river to flow between the sides of these valleys I walk down. I have traced this roadway that goes to meet the simple wooden bridge that crosses the lazy river to go on towards the village that nestles beyond, filled with those who know me. A place where I know the one small cottage waits where I have placed you, waiting for me to come home.

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Dark Matter and the Nature of the Universe

All of this is pretty much about all of the thing that it is... unless there is some of it lost down the back of the sofa cushions – what is known to astronomers, cosmologists, and that nice lady down at the chip shop, as dark matter.

Dark matter is dark which is why it doesn't show up very well in the dark. Light matter is another matter – this accounts for over 98% of the stuff in the universe that is beige.

The rest is just stuff.

Planets, we know, are made mainly out of dirt, except of course for the Earth a lot of which is made out of rain.

Moons, of which the Earth has only one, but other - more showy and insecure planets - have many, are, of course, made out of cheese.

Saturn has rings – which is only to be expected really. Uranus exists only as a place for schoolboy jokes to get a punch-line. Pluto is made out of cartoons. Mercury gets bigger the closer it gets to the sun and smaller as it moves away. Mars is made out of nougat and caramel covered in thick, thick milk chocolate, although recently scientists have discovered that the surface of Mars is not as thick as they once believed.

The rest of the universe is made of stuff, with a few billion holes, where the light from the universe next-door shines through, which we call stars.

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Crawl into the Mind

What if all of this was nothing at all? What if it was less substantial than one of those dreams you leave behind on your morning pillow when you step out of that bedroom to face the day?

After all, this is only words, mere marks on the screen, scratches on paper and movements in the air. They do not amount to that much, easily ignored.

You can turn off the computer, close the book or just walk away, leaving the words to fade into nothingness.

Think of all those words we have ever spoken and how many of them really mattered. The silences when the words are left unspoken are often more eloquent, more meaningful than a whole jugful of words poured into the ear that does not want to listen.

Although, words too can be the poison dripped into the ear of the sleeping king that brings about the downfall of the entire kingdom. Words can tell a jealous husband about his wife's handkerchief and words can promise kingdoms around cauldrons and tell of great loves that will last all through time.

Words can creep and words can crawl into the mind and stay there for the rest of your life.