PEACHES AND CREAM

My first fuck wasn't Geraldine Welby, no, and if I met her now I wouldn't if she asked; godbotherer. Still, she gave me a few pointers. Not that I knew what to do with a pointer once I had one. Our first close encounter wasn't really what you'd call an actual fuck, in the conventional sense, more a kind of sudden awareness that took me unawares, if you follow.

 
In the long vacation from school I would fly out to wherever my parents were based at the time and spend the whole summer playing with the servants, swimming in the warm sea, going to functions and stuff, like you do, or I'd go fishing off the end of one of the jetties and catch nothing but bloaters, bloaters and more bloaters. Annoying; everyone else caught everything else in the sea and I caught bloaters. When I took a skiff out, oh yes, then I caught pomfret and parrot fish and nearly a shark once. Well, the shark nearly caught me but I didn't know. Somebody shouted to me as I beached the boat and I looked back to see the fin flashing as it turned away, slicing through the water, not very fast, straight out of the inlet. I nearly had my first fainting fit but instead that evening I had my first fuck on the verandah of the P.A. Chairman's Residence. 

There were three boys out from school and we tended to stick together, playing cricket for the Commerce Club 2nd XI usually against teams from the Forces or a P&O side made up of spindly clerks with no idea what good coaching can do for boys with a cruel disregard for age or size. The P.A. Chairman's do was for families and there were girls there, Geraldine Welby for one, and she cornered me as usual. I think she took it in turns but it seemed that she was always nearly touching me, her skin kind of feinted by me and she smelled of Johnson's Baby Powder, and I suppose I did too which may have had a lot to do with it all. I think of it as the shark attack evening now. 

Parties were very organised affairs with acts, sailors in costumes usually, but that's another story and half way through the evening I felt quite ill. Scoffing too much of The English Cold Store peaches and cream probably but whatever it was, I was taking a stroll round the verandah to get some air and at the back of the house I met a girl completely different to Geraldine Welby, to anyone or anything ever. She held a glass and she raised it, tipped back her head and for a moment just stayed like that, then she ran her tongue over her lips and as she looked down again she saw me. She filled the glass from a yellow labelled bottle of Gordon's Gin, took a sip, put it down and looked at me. She reached under her dress and something ripped. The sounds from the party on the lawn drifted faintly as she slowly raised her dress and fixed it in a black patent belt. Her naked legs were not like naked legs I'd seen at the pool. 

She carefully undid my grey flannels, button by button, pulled us both down to the boarded floor. I began to tremble and she helped me. She dug her nails into my buttocks and held on to me. The pain made me wince but I wouldn't have stopped for anything. I did, though, pretty soon, I couldn't quite keep up the momentum. No amount of coaching would have made a difference then, no. She rearranged her dress and sipped her gin. I stood up and turned away; only my mum and matron had seen me naked from the front like that. Well, not quite like that. 

"Good boy", she whispered as I limped away. I heard the rasp of a match and smelled cigarette smoke. 

ARRIVAL

The southwest wind came at high tide
Bringing smokey rain,
And wave upon wave breaking
Over rocky shore,
Twisting the sand, creamy
With bursting bubbles.
Hanging air was warm to touch.
Morning was at noon,
Day and sunset dissolved
Into evening's grey.
The sky sparked, birds,
Quick and low, flew homeward.
Insects mostly hid.
Snakes in the grass sipped
Electric air, laced
With the smells of fear.
Pariah dogs observed
From every sheltered corner,
And small boys
Running in the rain,
Their silver skins
Like fishes flashing,
Catching monsoon's moon.

KISSING COUSINS


Is it yourself? Says Murphy. How are yer?

It turns out the first coachload is early this year. A convention of nuns, a side
of beefy hurlers, a pair of peculiar fun lovers, thirteen born again ugly arseholes
and a long thin sciolist looking to sharpen up his act.

You visited the spot? Says I. It's been a long time.

Sure, me and Malone first at the wall, the others in a line, taking aim.

I'm reminded. Murphy, the Misses Hoolighan ... ?

Ah, the brave colleens, well, me and Malone, we trowed one innem each, before
and after, took turns on the road back, let them off by the gate at Raheenagh 
Church. Father Twomey heard their confessions, they said, tree Hail Marys. We
dropped the guns in the Deen, you know the score

Yeah, I know the score. Up the Republic and bless the dollar. My regards,
says I, to Malone.

BICYCLES

I find myself a completely different person today. It is as though
yesterday I was the same as the day before and the day before and the
day before. My life was like Tordenskjold's famous parade. It was as
though I was the same soldier on the parade of my life. I would march
past the reviewing stand of career, marriage, sex with strangers, sex
without strangers, Porsches, bicycles, the cat Dennis and my dead dog
Bastard, who I remember still with a deep affection. The cat I don't
care for. He is her cat. The fact is he hates me. Because I love her.
Even when I put on a different uniform and march past the stand again,
the cat knows. It was I who took Dennis to the veterinarians and had a
stranger cut off his balls. I represent the incalculable forces of the
garrison. And I am sleeping with his mistress. No. Life was always an
endless Kierkegaard. Like Tordenskjold and his famous parade. Soldier
after soldier. I was the same soldier that I was and thus the parade
continued. Stages On Life's Way. Kierkegaard. How did he know? What
is the point? Pointless to ask. I make a leap of faith and I land on
the same spot. Run and I go faster. Still no answer. What would Hegel
have said? Fuck him. Kierkegaard often argued with himself. How many
Kierkegaards does it take to change a lightbulb? One to postulate.
The whole thing is absurd. I know. I know. The individual exists in
a state of absurdity or how else would he know about the others? It
doesn't bear thinking about. Unless you were Kierkegaard. And look
what happened to him. But now I am a different man. Rationalization
is the concrete failure to understand the point. Now at last it is
over. Last night it happened. The car was in the shop and I was in
a loan. They call these courtesy cars but they never apologize for
the terrible smell of smokers. It is as though they conceived that
consciousness and the external object formed a unity in which both
could not exist independently not Hegel. Fuck them too. Today life
is different because I drove home backed in to the drive and ran
over the cat. I don't blame Dennis. He was expecting the Porsche.
No. The endless parade is over. I am completely different. There
is an end to it. She has told me that Dennis will recover but she
knows I always hated him. Of course the opposite is true. How am
I to explain to her about the soldiers? The endless Kierkegaard?

DEAR READERS


My story is a sad one. I flew off a cliff a few years ago. Yes,
I am that Ignatious Malone. On a summer day full of promise
and brilliant lighting conditions, I was lying on my stomach on
a slab of rock on a cliff edge in the West Country, photographing
a shipwreck. Suddenly, a shimmering whiteness came gliding
into view and there was this ethereal being hanging above me
dangling its legs. 'Oh my god!' I said. There was a crack of doom,
and I thought I heard a deep voice say, 'On the button, Sunshine,
your time has come.'

The crack was the slab splitting - doom enough, no?
I began to fall. I fell a long, long way, broke my fall, and
a leg, when I hit a ledge, then I fell some more, caught
my left arm in bushes, tore my shoulder out, spun round
and slammed into the cliff face with mine, felt my jaw
dislocate, mouth bloody, which stopped me screaming so
when I finally reached the bottom, one more broken
limb didn't seem to matter that much, especially with my fingers
bent back the way they were, snapped across, though
not all of them which was lucky because the camera strap
around my neck was choking me dead. I was just able to free
myself when I passed out from the pain, but not before the
ethereal being reappeared, floating just above me, 'Told you so,'
it said, and the next thing was that I felt myself flying through
the air, on my back, breathing through a mask. Two days later
I woke up in hospital, mummified, breathing through a hole.

It was early in the morning, so when I screamed it took a minute
before a blue nurse stopped by and stabbed me. I had three
unbroken ribs apparently, one good arm, and my internal organs
would improve with time, she said, once they relocated, of course, 

and I'd be surprised how attractive a broken nose could be,
on my face.

I saw a sweet little old nun coming  down the ward and she caught
my eye, gave a holy wave and came toward me, and I thought, 'Sister,
have I got news for you.'

PROOF


I bought a font at the sale, all but complete. Roman type, nothing
fancy. A couple of galleys and some artwork, probably the last job in
hand before old Perkins died. I bid for a set of illustrated calendars,
but it went way too high for me. The family, I think, and I was glad I
didn't get it.

'Never mind,' Mary said.

I took her to lunch. She was twenty, no something, and very bright. She
always said I discovered her. Sure, I gave her name to an art director I
knew and he took her on for a few months. Then she stayed, with him. She
wrote well. It isn't art, it's lying on demand. She understood that and
she had some crazy ideas. She would phone and spin me the tale, tape it.
Sometimes we'd spend a few hours together, like today. I took her to the
sale to show her where she came from. Ink and hot metal. I had bought a
framed foolscap page of printers correction symbols for her. 'Look at
this,' she said, '"transpose sections"'. She thought the mark was like
half a battlement, and I suppose it is. '"Insert double quotation marks"
is like somebody sleeping'. Well, like I say, she had some ideas.

She got a little drunk and leaned on me in the car. I drove her to her flat,
she leaned on me in the lift. I made coffee but when I took it into the sitting
room she was asleep, her feet under a throw. I covered her and left.
Insert full stop.

A SUNDAY 


Strolling, not aimlessly
But as the snail,
Determined, I chanced upon
Wrigley and his dog.
The sea breezes
Cooled us where we stopped
Chatting of this,
That, and the other thing.
Elgar, Wrigley's dog,
An animal of brutal mien
But soft hearted,
Solicited my attention
By gently nuzzling
My summer shorts,
And at last licking
The inside of my thigh
Since I was so busy
With his master.
Abandoning that confabulation
I leaned down
And gathered up the monster,
Gripping behind the ears,
Like you do, hugging and, well,
Hugging some more.
Elgar is a dog
Whose affections are large
And pressing
If he likes you.
I am one of his favourites.
There are few things
More congenial
Than the friendship
Of an honest dog.
We strode off together, Wrigley,
Wrigley's dog,
And me, until we reached
The Lifeboat Station,
Where we parted.
I watched them a moment
Before walking up to the town.
I decided on lunch
In The Railway Hotel,
An extravagance
On this fine day, sure.
And why not?

There I am, then, at a table
With a tablecloth.
Louisa brings grissini and a menu
And I resist,
With some difficulty,
Licking the inside of her thigh.