You were in a spot of bother then?
I would think so, John, yes.
Involving?
Nothing fucken good. Horses, definitely. And somehow I think a plain girl but gamey and with greenish eyes.
He calmly shaves. The burn of his jaw is a cool ordinary feeling and the afternoon is calm and bright or at least it is for a while. Cornelius considers him carefully and for a slow, held moment –
You have the longish nose, he says. Like a particular type of dog I can’t place.
*
Sometimes in the black oily panic of the night when the city sent unsettling dreams across its towers and violent bowers –
the shapes of night in the park
the dark trees crouching
the trees so fiercely bunched
these creatures about to spring
– it was then he would travel to the island in his mind, and he would quieten when he lay his sore bones down among the rocks for a while and let the water move all around and the sky hang down its cold stars – its cold, cold jewels – its stars.
Cornelius?
Yes, John?
I want to get to my fucking island.
I know that, John.
I want a boat and a tent and fucking supplies and I want to be brought to my fucking island and then I want you to fuck off again for three fucking days. I mean that’s all I fucking ask! Is three fucking days a-fucking-lone!
If we were to move now we’d have a pantomime on our hands. The pressmen?
Paranoia oozes in black beads from the tips of his fingers – the day has carved his nerves up bad.
He is fearful and dizzy and cutting off from the real again. The Maytime comes at him like razor blades.
You’re eating the fags, John.
Evening sidles up to the window to taunt the parlour room. He smokes and he drinks a mug of strong tea.
Would you look crooked at an egg, John?
You know I nearly would.
He eats a boiled egg with soldiers of toast and at once he’s brave as a trooper. It’s a duck egg of maiden blue. He sings a bit and it’s got a yodelled twist on the line, a duck’s waddle in the quaver.
Lovely, Cornelius says.
He spoons up his egg – maiden? – and sups his tea. He feels like he’s moved into a nursing home. And not before time.
Cornelius paces the stones of the floor, gravely, but now he stops up short.
Time have we, John?
I don’t know the time.
We’ll chance it.
They sit in front of the television – a tiny black-and-white with a clothes hanger stuck in – and they are just in time – Cornelius twists the set precisely to align it with the stars – because the music strikes up, and Cornelius nods in satisfaction.
Muppets, he says.
*
You know they’ve wanted me on?
Who, John?
The Muppets.
Ah yeah.
They’ve made approaches three fucking times.
Cornelius grins.
Okay, he says.
Honestly.
I see.
For real!
Cornelius thinks about it for a bit, and shrugs.
I suppose they had Elton John on the other week.
No surprise there.
He was superb, John.
Did you really, really think so?
I did.
No accounting.
Are you going on, John?
I’m not.
Why not?
It’d be too fucking whimsical. Anyway the technical fact is I’m retired, Cornelius.
Hah?
And not being a dry arse but it’d be too light. You’ve got to play along with all the routines. You’ve got to do the hokey cokey with Miss fucking Piggy. You’ve got to do all the wisecracks with the frog. And to be honest, Cornelius, I don’t know if I’m in the mood these days.
I think you should go on, John.
Really?
What harm in it?
Well . . .
It might take you out of yourself, John.
I suppose it might.
*
Night drags itself across the hills like a weary neighbour, acheful and slowly, one drugged foot at a time, and he takes – himself wilting – to the dead father’s room. It is a room hushed with odd feeling and the boards creak beneath his monkey feet. As he settles between the ice-cold sheets, there are streaks of grey light still in webs across the Maytime. He drags a curtain against the world and sky. The ocean is out there, too, and moving – he can hear it as he puts his head down, and he wishes again for love and home. He falls at once to a heavy, troubled sleep.
Why should I run the way that I run?
*
He wakes to an unknown darkness. He is unsettled by a dream. Its shapes hold for a moment but fade as quick. He comes up to himself slowly, as though through dark water. He is in the dead father’s room. Okay. There is a wardrobe full of old suits. It sits there like an accusation. All burly-shouldered and dour, this wardrobe. Now this was a life here once, as though to say. The arms and the legs of it. He feels that meek in its presence. He sits up in the bed. The wind rises and moves through the house again. He gets up from the bed and parts the curtain and looks on down the night. It is so clear and all the stars are out. He looks on down the sky, the way it falls away from the mountain, the night-blue and gasses, which is tremendous to a man in his T-shirt and shorts at four in the morning. Oh but that fucking wardrobe. The wardrobe is a presence in the room.
Don’t be scared, John.
He goes to the wardrobe. He runs his hand through the suits in there. It gives a shivery feeling. He takes one out. It is very old and heavy. A word appears in his mouth – worsted. An old-fashioned word – two slow farmer syllables. Wor-sted. West Country farmer. Pebbles in the mouth. Wooor-sted. The material is a silvery blue in the night. The suit looks as if it would be a fit or just about.
Death be good to him, he says, and he slips an arm into a sleeve. He shucks the other in – it’s perfect. He tries the trousers and they go on just right, too. He tries out the voice in a whisper then –
Well?
He is up the hills. He has a black collie with a patch eye. He has a great knobbly blackthorn stick. The dog runs the edges of the field that fall down to the stone walls and sea. He whistles for the dog. He can hear him come back through the long wet grass. He can hear his panting and the parting of the grass. The bay beneath is so placid. He pulls back the wardrobe door for the mirror inside, for the dark-stained silver, and he stands before it, and cries –
Darkie! C’mere, Darkie!
Cornelius appears in the doorway and is pale himself as the risen dead.
John?
Yes, Cornelius?
How