Pot Shots

Reading:

TWO’S COMPANY
‘May I?’ She slipped into the seat across the table with
a little silken kiss of her legs. She smiled and raised
her glass, rattling her bangles. ‘Cheers!’
The ship began to roll with the open sea. ‘I love going places,’
she said. ‘Don’t you?’
I topped up my own glass and shook my head. ‘Not at night.
Water and darkness, I feel lost, like crossing the river Lethe.’
The mascara, the eyelashes, gave her the wide-eyed gaze of
a doll. ‘Are you a writer, or something?’
Nice of her to ask. ‘Sort of. I’ve had a few things published.
Nothing special.’
‘It must be wonderful to write.’ She watched the lights of the
ferry going the other way. ‘Ships that pass in the night,’ she added
dreamily.
So why was she drinking with a stranger, on this ship, in the
middle of the night?
A distant beam of light swung in a lazy arc. The French coast.
‘Hasn’t the time gone quickly!’ She smiled again, over my shoulder.
‘All right, darling?’ Bill had to take his pill and go and lie
down as soon as they got on board.
I saw them again, down on the car deck, with two stickers,
Bill and Sandra, across the top of their windscreen. Then we
were off, in a cloud of exhaust.
Ships that pass in the night. And hangovers that don’t.

***

CAT FLAP
The more you wait for the phone to ring, the more it
won’t. It was the front door entry phone that made me
jump. A woman asked if she could leave a notice at our block of
flats about a missing cat.
Two of them waited downstairs by the door, wrapped up
against the bitter east wind beneath a sky as grey and hard as
pumice, while the face of a bright young tabby stared back at me
from their sad notice. Her name was Biscuit.
‘Poor little Biscuit,’ I said, but they’d already gone, too cold
and too eaten up with anxiety to hang about.
At least it got a bit warmer in the next few days, with billowing
white clouds, and rain to trickle down all those other notices,
stuck on fences and round lamp-posts, of the same furry little face.
‘Any luck?’ I was sure it was one of those women, now in
plastic mac and calf-length green wellies. ‘Biscuit,’ I reminded
her. She frowned and hurried on down the street.
It was worth a shot, for someone who had a thing about calflength
green wellies and two ladies who might be more than
just good friends.
I switched on the kettle, dropped a tea bag in a mug, and tried
not to wait for anything.

***

DOG DAYS
They call it ‘la canicule’ in those parts, meaning little dog,
a heat wave that comes with the appearance in the night
sky of Cirius, or the Dog Star. The Dog Days, in other words,
when you can almost weigh the heat, and if you’re a dog you just
lie around and pant and scratch your fleas.
Except for the grumpy pug-nosed Pekinese under the table
next to ours in the restaurant. With a fancy blue ribbon tied round
his neck, he just whined and whimpered and yapped.
Nor, I think, was it the heat. It was another dog, nearly the
size of a mule and with a coat as thick as a Persian rug, flopped
out beneath another table. It was going to take a lot to shift him,
but the whimpering and whining did it in the end.
He opened one bleary eye and with a herculean effort clambered
to his feet. The table above him wobbled and tipped over,
sending a cascade of knives, forks and spoons, plates and glasses,
clattering and crashing onto the patio f loor. It nearly ended in a
fight, and not between the dogs.
So much for a romantic evening under the stars. Maybe that
very bright one was the Dog Star. Closer to hand, the hot dry
hills withdrew, dark and mysterious, into the night.

***

CHILLED OUT
Roberta emerged from the kitchen with a gust of steam
and Brussels sprouts. ‘Has everybody got a drink?’ she
called in an attempt to be jolly. ‘Adam, what are you drinking?’
‘Bacardi and Coke, mum.’
Roberta couldn’t help herself. ‘Why,’ she asked in that oddly
hesitant way that got right up some people’s noses. ‘Why do you
always have to be different?’
It was the same every year. Adam crashed his glass down on a
table, spilling the contents, and stormed out of the room and out
of the house, slamming the front door behind him.
I finished my sherry and made a less spectacular exit. The
deepening murk of mid-winter threw into relief other interiors,
with fairy lights and Christmas trees and orgies of goodwill.
One brightly lit room was more like a tableau. A large dining
table was abandoned to the dirty plates and dishes, nut shells,
orange peel, paper streamers and spent crackers. Not quite. Old
grandad was fallen forward in his chair with his paper hat on, fast
asleep face down in his plum pudding and custard.
Someone in an open neck shirt and hands thrust deep into
his trouser pockets for warmth, joined me in contemplation of
the scene.
I turned to Adam. ‘Says it all, really.’

***

RED ALERT
Herpes Zoster is not the name of an ancient fire god, it’s
shingles, but the pain is like being burnt alive.
‘Oh, you poor boy!’ Rosalind cried. ‘You should be home in
bed.’ I know, but she wasn’t there to tuck me in, which is why I
brought my copy round to their offices. To see her.
Not for long. The red light flashed by her phone. Toby had
first call. Stripped down to those broad scarlet braces dyed in
the blood and guts of his minions, he’d bawled and bullied his
way up the publishing ladder and didn’t know how to stop. Listen
to him now.
Rosalind came rushing back out of his office and was straight
on the phone, to change the f light to New York for Toby and
his wife. The shame and the humiliation. The weekly hotel date
with Toby, then to yell at her like that, for everyone to hear and
half the street as well.
She finished, looked up and made a big thing of blowing her
nose. She tried a brave little smile, smoothing away some of those
tell-tale lines of care.
‘We’re a fine pair, aren’t we!’ Yes, and why couldn’t we have
had a go? At least I’d still be there when she woke up.

***

OLD PAL
Treading water, Debbie and I rose and fell with each little
wave before it broke with a sigh upon the shore.
Back on the beach, Miriam sat in her patch of shade, chubby
legs red where the sun had briefly touched them. She couldn’t
swim and anyway she’d be too scared of the sharks and the jellyfish.
How different could two sisters be?
At least Miriam had found a friend in Pal. With his long snout
and pointed ears, he made me think of the jackal-headed Egyptian
god Anubis. But we called him Pal on account of the name
on the tins of dog food Miriam bought for him, together with
a bowl. He’d filled out nicely in the last few days, and his coat
looked much better too.
I came out of the water and Pal sat up and licked his balls.
Debbie followed and tripped over him, reaching for her towel.
‘Better say goodbye to him now,’ she said sharply to her sister.
‘There won’t be time in the morning.’ I’d clean forgotten. We
were off again tomorrow.
There was a moment when the temperature dipped before
the hot blanket of night came down. The moment to watch Pal
settle down on the sand next to his bowl. He’d be waiting in
the morning.
I pressed Miriam’s hand and whispered, ‘He’ll be all right.’

***

NIGHT WATCH
When I climbed the stairs, there were heaps of dead wasps
on the floor and a faint smell of death hung in the hot
and airless room. Others still buzzed and wandered up and down
the window panes, till they’d drop in their turn.
In the silence of the house, a ceaseless rustling and nibbling
also reached my ears. It came from above the ceiling, over by the
wall. A wasps’ nest in the roof.
I’d always quite liked wasps, with their gaily striped bodies,
long slender wings, little nodding heads, their taste for honey and
jam, and they didn’t sting if you left them alone.
A point to reflect upon, as I lay prostrate upon the bed, nauseous
and feverish, pulse racing madly, face and hands swollen
and the colour of strawberry jam. Trying to shove a piece of paper
into the crack in the ceiling, where they were dropping down
into the room, wasn’t leaving them alone.
I’d loved that house for so many years, filled it with books
and paintings, and with the incense of wood smoke, that lingered
through each winter and greeted me each spring.
Now I was selling the place, I had betrayed its trust, and it had
summoned those wasps to drive me out or kill me first.
I lay wide-eyed in the dark listening to that infernal rustling
and nibbling and prayed for the long, long night to end.
Remember this. We don’t haunt places. They haunt us.

***

DINNER DATE
Hoagy Carmichael and The Nearness of You. Nice and
slow and not too much of a sweat.
Seated at the baby grand in a corner of the big dining room,
doors and windows open to the boom of surf at lunch time, to
the oil-calm sea as the blood-red sun went down, I watched her
watching me across the floor.
I’d already spotted her down by the pool, lying under a shade,
reading a book, quite happy to be left on her own. She was no
spring chicken, but she’d kept a figure that said she still had something
to give. You can tell.
Now at dinner, one of a jolly party, hair just starting to grey
and brushed back over the ears, and in a silvery dress that shimmered
as she moved, she chatted and laughed on cue, while her
eyes were otherwise engaged.
Her husband, it had to be, losing it on top and gaining it
round the middle, dispatched the waiter with a gin and tonic
for the pianist. I nodded and smiled my thanks, and she didn’t
know where to look.
The Nearness of You. With a scraping of chairs, still laughing
and chatting, they all got up to go. One last quick glance over
her lightly tanned shoulder for us both to remember.
Too bad, we tacitly agreed, that’s life.

***

CURTAIN CALL
Another first night and Tony as Canon Chasuble elbowed
his way back to the bar with a painful dig in the ribs
for Peter who made an exquisite Algernon. Peter’s special friend
Jeremy, the director, noticed and took a step forward. He played
rugby too.
Julia fiddled with Lady Bracknell’s wig and pressed my hand.
‘See you round the car park in ten minutes.’
Outside in the cold and sobering night, I wondered about all
the bitchiness behind those happy smiling curtain calls. And was
it worse among amateurs who felt they’d missed their true vocation
and all the more jealously guarded their hopes and dreams?
Coming up the path to the car park a figure in dog collar
and gaiters tripped and fell into a puddle. I heard Peter’s giggle.
Tony picked himself up, fists clenched. Jeremy emerged from
the shadows.
Julia tugged at her seat belt. ‘Let’s go.’
We drove over Hampton Court Bridge and into a cosy world
of large half-timbered houses, gentrified pubs, and a church that
flew the flag of Saint George.
How did it go? Saint George for England! Saint Pancras for
Scotland! A good old chestnut for Tony in the Tudor Players’
Christmas pantomime, if he still had his teeth.

***

LOST LADY
‘Excuse me.’ She sat on a low garden wall with a shopping
bag beside her. The voice was as fragile as the rest
of her. ‘Do you know the name of this road? You see, I’ve forgotten
where I live.’
It’s not every day you meet someone who’s just lost a piece of
their mind. It was a shock.
I waved a hand about me. ‘Do you recognise any of this?’
She shook her head, then raised a thin, blue-veined hand
against the sun. ‘I say, just behind you, isn’t that a beautiful rose!’
The creamy white bloom was tinged with crimson, a floral
menstruation, something she wouldn’t have to worry about
any more.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and down the road there’s a big bush of lavender.
I love watching the bees, especially the bumble bees, buzzing
and bobbing from flower to flower.’
‘I can see,’ the old lady said, ‘that you haven’t lost a sense of
wonder. You must be a very happy man.’
I shook my head in turn. ‘The more aware you are of everything
around you, the more you can get hurt.’
The other smiled sweetly. ‘All the same, talking to you has
made me feel so much better!’
I smiled back. ‘Me too!’
That’s the trouble with conversations. You soon forget what
started them.