The knots that love ties

Long serving

I was sitting on the bed in my cell in the prison in Birmingham, waiting for Luigi. I stood behind the door when they allowed it to be open in ‘freedom hour’ as I called it, waiting for him to sneak in for a few minutes. I like women really, but there were none about in a men’s prison! In fact, I love women rather than men. Luigi was just a convenience while I was here. Well, I was here for fifteen years, and he only five. I guess he had a better lawyer. He had killed his lover, kneeling on her throat. He claimed he was in a frenzy because of all her insults, but of course she was not around to deny it (or confirm it). And I got fifteen, when I had done nothing; my girlfriend had been with a bloke she was cheating with, one night. I think it was for money. Well, the money was because I wasn’t working and lived off her, and that was precisely what made them send me down for so long. I never knew who he was – the one who had really done it. Me sponging off her didn’t go down well with the judge and his jury. Nor with my mum, who believed the police. What was their evidence? It was a squashed condom beside the body when I got home that evening. I was a bit worse for wear from the pub – well, a bit more than worse. I’d had a fight, lost as usual, and came home with some scratch marks. The police couldn’t even be bothered to test the DNA from under her fingernails – nor the condom. They always check DNA in TV crime stories. I think the Pollies had a budget for lab tests, and I didn’t rate as worth the money. All I saw was some bloke leaving the exit as I came back into the building, but I couldn’t identify him, couldn’t describe him for the policeman. There was twenty-five pounds, in notes, under a vase on the kitchen shelf. It hadn’t been there when I went out. All I saw was my dead Laure. And there she was, no longer in her body. Alive only in my heart.

          Well, that’s my story. People always say I have a chip on my shoulder. 

          Even my solicitor believed the police. I am the only one who knows the truth. There is something about that that buoys me up; I am the only one who knows the truth. I would lose something, wouldn’t I, if someone else believed the truth too. I am the ‘truth-man’ I tell myself. It is a bit silly, isn’t it, but it keeps me going in a strange sort of way.

          It was thinking of that now, the time the ‘Poo’ fell down the stairs (that’s what I called the POs on the wing – prison officers). I was present at the top of those stairs when he fell. He wasn’t the worst of the POs. He smiled at me once when I had a black eye. But the rest of the squirms (the prisoners – I call them squirms because they wouldn’t like to be called worms) pointed at me. So, I was the one who’d given him the shove. Because he’d died, with a smashed-in head, he, the poor Poo, couldn’t confirm if he’d been pushed. I was up in front of the governor, who questioned me as if I was already guilty of a second murder. Well, I’d done one, hadn’t I? (Well, no, I hadn’t, but only I knew that.)

          ‘You’ve got a record, haven’t you, my fine one,’ he said without much question in it. 

          I nodded my head. Perhaps I was keen to conceal more truth that only I knew. But I knew better than that. So, I explained, ‘No, sir. It was someone behind me. I didn’t see who. All I saw, sir, was someone’s arm smash his metal dinner plate into the side of the officer’s head, just above the left ear ‘ole. He went down like a sack of potatoes, sir. Right down the stairs.’

          He looked blankly out of the window, as if he knew I was just making it up. ‘I don’t know why we bother with the likes of you, Smallthorpe.’ And that moment I remembered again my father’s constant judgement that I was a-bothering him. 

          ‘You’ll be dealt with.’ 

          So now I had another secret truth I could harbour for the next fourteen years. Well, there is remission, so it could be less. 

          But perhaps not much remission if I have killed a Poo! 

          ‘You don’t like me, sir,’ I said with more protest than cheekiness.

          ‘True.’ He didn’t bother to look at me, as if I was just a rat found in one of the cells. ‘You’ll be moved to Strangeways – that’s in Manchester. There’ll be another trial.’ And I was dismissed. This time my cell door was kept locked so I would be ‘safe’. 

          But later, after I was in Manchester, and months later after I was moved there, I was given a lawyer who said he was unfortunately in a hurry but wanted to hear my story. So I told him again what I’d seen. He nodded and apologised for hurrying off. Eventually, after a few more months, I was on trial. The judge listened to the stories and added ten years to my sentence, twenty-five altogether. He too expressed his exalted view that I was not something the country should be bothered about. And once again I knew I had nothing to be proud of, except … I now had a couple of truths no one else knew. 

          I loved my Laure, even though I used her money, and l left her on Saturday nights to go and get drunk. It was my one treat of the week. And I did not care if she had her ‘types’ into our flat for their fun with her. She deserved that. To be honest, I did not know why she bothered with me. But we had sex when we wanted. Or perhaps when I wanted. She was quite generous to me in that way. Her name was Lauren. And I called her Laure. So I thought it was a little amusing when, after she died, the real ‘law’ came after me. In a way, it was then a relief; I did not have to sponge off her, and the prison kept me fed and looked after me well enough.

          After a while, they sent me back to Winson Green. And I met up with Luigi again. He was not too keen to see me. I was a killer of Poos, so it put me out of favour with the prison officers. Therefore, anyone who befriended me was out of favour with them too. Luigi was a big man, and he had a big stomach; I often asked him if he was going to have twins. He didn’t like it. Perhaps he didn’t like me. But to be honest, I was somewhat more likable than almost anyone else in the high-security wing. I didn’t know if perhaps he was, as it were, in love with me. It could have been so.

          One day, I had a visitor and was taken to the visits hall. I had never been there before – because I’d had no visitors. Well, once the lawyer visited, but that was at Strangeways. I entered and there were various people sitting around waiting for the squirms whom they’d come to see. I at once noticed a very striking woman standing silently by one of the tables. And it turned out she was visiting me! I hadn’t seen a woman for, say, three years. So I was a bit nonplussed and even nervous, and especially as she was BEA-U-tiful. But then, perhaps any woman would have knocked me over as a beauty, after three years of enforced doing without. I was taken to her table, and she looked at me as if I was something special. I knew I was special, as I knew truths that no one else knew. But it turned out I was not that special. She had come to tell me that she knew I had not killed Laure. She was Laure’s sister.

          ‘I’m Ellie,’ she said. ‘Was there, you know.’ I was puzzled at what she said. But I couldn’t fully listen when I was looking at her long blonde hair. She wore a blouse which had the shape over her chest that I could only dimly remember women had. Her mouth was wide, and with luscious lips that I could hardly hold back from kissing. But Ellie looked serious, and this was going to be a serious conversation. She had a story to tell. I tried to concentrate. 

          ‘She rang before he arrived. She had known Stephen for a while; Strong Steve he had been known as. But she had got a bit anxious as he seemed to become violent at times. So when he was going to come for his Saturday evening ‘thing’, you know, she called me, and I was there. I sat in the kitchen while they were in the living room chatting and laughing and then getting cross about what he wanted her to do, I think. I heard them getting violent, Tommy.’

          This was the first time I had met Laure’s sister. I hadn’t known she had one, and it seemed so familiar when she used my name … Tommy. 

          ‘I was frightened, and I didn’t do anything. I’m sorry. I let her get killed. And then I didn’t say anything when they arrested you.’ Ellie seemed almost in tears. I put out my hand to her, but a Poo came up, in case we were exchanging drugs or something. So I pulled back, and didn’t know what to say. I wanted to hug her and make her feel it didn’t matter. But, of course it did, because she had let her sister be killed without doing anything. But perhaps she was right; what could she have done against him?

          ‘Who was he, Ellie?’

          ‘Well,’ she started, and swallowed, as if nervous. I wanted to tell her not to be nervous. I was OK about everything she had done. But I didn’t say that, as I was not thinking in words at the time. ‘She saw him sometimes. She saw other men sometimes. When you were out. Getting drunk, you know.’

          I nodded. I had often guessed all that. ‘I used her money, didn’t I? So she made money her own way. I know.’

          She looked at me with a little relief. ‘Well, this one was a bit dangerous, she thought.’

          ‘She was right, wasn’t she?’

          ‘She was right, Tommy. And she paid for it.’ I thought I, too, was going to have a tearful eye or two. But she went on. ‘So I’ve come to say sorry to you. As well as to her. I should have done something to save her. And I should have said something to your lawyer. I should, shouldn’t I?’ I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. My secret truth was now shared. ‘I want to make it up to you. I can’t make it up to her, can I? But I might make it up to you.’

          I wondered whatever she meant. I looked at her desirable body. I did want it. After three years. But she didn’t mean that. 

          Of course. ‘You don’t have to do anything for me,’ I said, and added, ‘I’m OK.’ It was not entirely untrue. ‘It is nice someone else knows I’m innocent.’ I felt I was sharing something with this wonderful woman. I wanted to tell her she was wonderful.

          ‘I owe you. And I think I can help you now.’

          I wondered how on earth she could help me. Would anyone take any notice of me and my sentence now? If she went to the police, would they be likely to believe her? They’d not bother to reopen the case just for me. I was sure. ‘I don’t know how you could help, Ellie. It is really awesome you want to. But no one is going to be interested now, are they?’

          ‘Listen, Tommy. My brother, Jack. He was always the bright one. Laure and I hated him for it. But he did well. You won’t believe this, but he made it to being a lawyer. And he’s keen on looking into all these miscarriages. He works for some charity that looks into these things.’ I wondered what she meant by ‘miscarriages’ but realised she meant it was when the judges got something wrong. Like mine had. ‘We don’t meet much. But over Christmas we met at our Mum’s, and I told him, in secret. About my secret. And he got really interested and wants to work on it for you. So, he said I had to ask you if you wanted him to look into it.’

          I had to think for a bit. She was sighing and breathing deeply as if full of something she was feeling. But it made her chest move up and down in a way that was driving me crazy. ‘You don’t have to do this for me. But, of course, if you can help. Yes, of course. And you are a really lovely person. I think you’re, er, smashing,’ I said, using that old-fashioned word that my father used. 

          ‘I don’t know why you’d want to be bothered with it all, now.’

          Her eyes did water then and she found a tissue in a pocket. I looked and wanted to hug her to make it all better. But I guess she was wanting to make things better for me. It was a new moment for me. Someone did want to be bothered about me. I was confused.

          She stood up. ‘Good, I’ll see to it.’ She looked at me as I stood up too. 

          ‘Will you come and see me again?’ I didn’t want to lose her.

          ‘Of course. You’re looking good. They keep you fit here.’

          She was complimenting me! I could not believe I had made some impression on this hard-to-believe woman. ‘I work out,’ I lied, as if they provided us squirms with a gym. I wanted to hug her, again. But one of the POs was moving towards us as we stood, and obviously there is a rule against touching visitors. I said, as she was starting to walk away, ‘You look good too. What’s your brother’s name?’

          ‘Jack, but now he likes to be called Jake. Laure and I used to call him “Joke”.’ But she was several paces away. And gone. I had never known anything about Laure’s family; she never met them, so I didn’t.

          One of the squirms was coming out of the room with me and said, ‘She fancies you, mate.’

          I smiled. ‘Just tell ‘em they’re gorgeous.’ ‘Is that how it’s done?’

          ‘Easy,’ I said, as if vastly experienced.

          ‘I’ll try it. When I get out.’

          ‘It won’t fail.’ But he was bloated and old, with sagging cheeks.

          I felt good – floating on honey, as they say. News gets around, because the next day Luigi said, ‘So you’ve got yourself a tart, it looks like. Who was she?’

          I didn’t reply immediately, but then just said, ‘Lawyer.’

          ‘What? Lawyer? Going to get you off? She must have the hots for you…’ I turned away, and he repeated his question. ‘She didn’t look like a lawyer?’ But I didn’t want to discuss it.

          Nevertheless, Luigi kept on and perhaps he was a bit jealous, as he had the hots for me, too. As you do in a prison. So, after a few days, I swore him to keeping it secret and told him the story. He listened – quite fascinated – and told me it would make a good story. I thought about that. So a day or two later, I asked him if he’d write it down for me because I can’t write. Or read. 

          So that is what you are reading now.

          But the story goes on. A week afterwards, the lawyer came. Jake. He looked a bit like my poor lost Laure: dark hair and largish eyes. I could see her in front of me when I half-closed my eyes and imagined. I could feel what I had lost: my Laure. I wished he had not come. But he had good news, he said, and he listened to my story. He knew of an excellent lawyer to represent me in court, a barrister. But the basic issue was whether they could appeal and get the case reconsidered. You see, Ellie’s testimony could not be corroborated now; the leads she would give must have changed totally. His name, where he came from, his appearance and so on, Steve what’s-his-name wouldn’t exist anymore – vanished as much as my poor Laure. They’d never follow any leads on him now. 

          So, to appeal had to be a complaint about the non-investigation of me. I agreed to everything he said. It seemed quite out of my hands. It didn’t even seem to be about me. So I thanked him and went back to the wing. Supposing I won the appeal, what would I do on the outside? Who would bother about me with Laure gone. Perhaps Luigi would. I laughed to myself.

          The day came, and I was shuffled off to the court in my handcuffs, a criminal let out for the day. The barrister came to meet me briefly in the corridor outside the courtroom. And to my surprise, she was a woman. Just as disorienting as that moment when Ellie had visited me in prison. She was smart, brisk, the most impressive being I had ever met. It took me back to all those previous years when I had known I was not really fitted for the life out there – like everyone else was – so I was kind of relieved when I was put away. I was a sad fumbling idiot. But she looked at me as if I deserved her efforts and attention. She told me it was an important appeal. Both the original conviction without proper investigation, and the second occasion with the PO – both without evidence, she said. 

          They weren’t interested in Ellie’s testimony, so she wasn’t even there. The whole court spent a lot of time discussing me! And I did my best to tell my story and they tried so hard to get it all clear. The upshot, on the third morning, took only ten minutes. My convictions had been ‘quashed’. 

          I wasn’t stupid. This was the moment when I had to think whatever would come next for me. I was taken back to Birmingham to collect my things – not that there was anything much of value there – and then they let me go. I had my freedom, they said sullenly, as if I wasn’t worth it and had wasted all their time looking after me in prison for three years.

          I had no job, no skills, no home. I did have a probation officer. Jim Jones. I’d seen him once, and then briefly when I got back after the court case, the previous day. He didn’t seem keen as he had to ‘fit me in’. I apologised for bothering him and he explained I would be let out immediately, probably that afternoon. And I had nowhere to go. He asked about friends, and of course there were no friends. And no relatives. Then I thought of my mother. Jim told me to ring her, but I no longer had her phone number. He told me surely I could go straight to her after I left the prison. I agreed to that, and he told me I’d get some money, and also the fare to my mother’s. He arranged the fifty quid and a train ticket back to London. 

          I wanted to contact Luigi, who had left the prison a month or so before, with his remission for good behaviour. I wondered if my mother was still at her house, and if I could remember where it was, and how to get to it. I was leaving the heavy prison door in the afternoon. The door slammed shut and I felt as capable as a learning disabled dog. But as good fortune would have it, a car on the other side of the road hooted. The door opened, and Ellie got out. The other door opened and Jake got out. Lucky, wasn’t it? What do you think? Apparently, Luigi had followed what had gone on with me and invited me to stay with him. So they thought it the best thing for me. I agreed. They took me back to London. It seemed a long journey and they swapped over the driving between them a few times. 

          It was late evening. Ellie helped me out of the car as we stopped outside Luigi’s house. It was a big house, and I couldn’t help being suspicious about where he could have got the money for it. Ellie took me by the arm, and I felt like a boy being taken to school on his first day.

          Luigi gave me a big hug when he greeted us – and a bit of a thrust with his pelvis. I was careful about retaliating – or, I mean, responding. But it only took him a moment or two before he noticed Jake. I think his attention suddenly changed. My attention was, of course, fixed on Ellie, and on her attention, which she was giving me. Ellie and her brother left soon after, saying they were tired after the drive up to Birmingham and back. But they’d see me the next day. And so they did. There was a bit of extravagance at a restaurant to celebrate my release, in fact, the overturning of my conviction.

          When we left the place, I hung back after the meal with Ellie. I wanted to ask why she had bothered. Not just with the crime and the sentencing, but with rescuing me when I felt abandoned outside the prison. She didn’t say a word. But she turned her head and kissed me on the neck as we walked slowly behind the other two. It felt like a happy ending, as the other two streaked ahead to get back to the house. I think Jake may have stayed the night with Luigi – I didn’t really notice as Ellie occupied me all night. Perhaps it was a really happy ending. And, in a sense, it got happier. Before it got worse again!

          They explained to me at breakfast that the police had been so remiss in their investigation of both the crimes I had been convicted of that I was due some compensation. ‘Maybe’, they temptingly said, ‘a half a million’. I didn’t believe it. I really did not. 

          It was at about this point that Luigi wanted to get on with the story we had written together in the prison, me telling him, and he writing it down. I was not too keen, so I was quite relieved that in fact he had something else to say about it. It wasn’t that he wanted to continue writing about what was happening now. He had taken the trouble to go over what he had got, and that was up to the quashing of the conviction. He said it was a good story with a happy ending. So he had sent it off to an agent, a literary agent. And what’s more, the literary agent knew a publisher who was putting together a book of stories, an anthology of contemporary stories. ‘What could be more contemporary than a miscarriage of justice,’ Luigi said, spreading his hands as if demonstrating the obvious.

          I told him I would do what he thought best. I had not, I told him, ever thought of being a literary writer. Luigi agreed; he had not thought of me like that either.

          ‘So,’ I asked him, too, ‘have you ever thought of being a writer?’

          ‘Well, my mother used to write scripts for TV documentaries. I suppose you always think of what your parents do.’ 

          Mine had not done anything like that. My father just dug the garden until he died in his mid-forties of lung cancer due to his heavy smoking. And my mother took in washing and ironing, and was a barmaid three evenings a week, seeing that the locals got what they wanted. There were stories that went around the housing estate about her pub work. I’d never given much thought to doing the work they did. 

          I asked him about his mother. ‘So is that where all your money came from?’

          He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘It’s come from various things.’ He was indicating I wasn’t going to be told any details. Then he said – I suppose because he had to, in case I noticed in some way, ‘That story I wrote down went to the publishing company, but they didn’t pay much for it.’

          ‘Oh, we got money for it, did we?’ I had immediately wondered if he was going to hand over something for my story. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Not much.’

          He didn’t say any more, or how much we were going to get, so I asked him, ‘How much do I get then?’

          ‘Oh, it’s not much.’ And then he sat back and looked at me in a frank way and said, ‘Because my name is known in the business, the writing business, because of my mother, I sent it off to them with my name, Luigi Cartwright.’

          I looked at him in a resigned sort of way, and said with a sigh, ‘Come on, Luigi, that’s not your name. Luigi Capalbo, that’s your name. What’s Cartwright got to do with it?’

          ‘Cartwright? No, that’s my mother’s name. She’s the one who is known.’

          ‘I see. So what are they paying me? I could do with some sort of an income.’

          ‘They’re paying me, of course. Because that’s the name on the story.’ ‘And you’re not giving me any of it? What did they pay you?’

          ‘It was only about fifty quid or so.’ It seemed he must be lying. I resigned myself. As usual, I had this resistance to fighting for myself, for my rights. Perhaps if I got drunk…? But I always lost. I shrugged. But he went on after he cleared his throat, ‘Actually, the agent has got a deal with a TV company. They’ll turn it into a drama for television. For Netflix actually.’ He made it sound unimportant. But the very underplaying of it made it seem he must be concealing something big.

          So I asked, ‘And how much are they paying?’

          ‘Oh, they’re paying a bit more.’

          ‘How much exactly?’ And because he was hesitating to answer, ‘It is my story after all.’

          He sat forward again. ‘Yeah, it’s quite a bit. They’ll give us ten thousand.’

          I was astonished. ‘Ten grand. I could do with that.’

          ‘No. It’s got my name on it.’

          ‘So how much is going to come to me? I could do with that.’ And I looked around at his expensive house. ‘It is my story,’ I repeated.

          He was definitely looking uncomfortable. ‘Well, we can discuss, if you want to. I did the writing, you know,’ he added in a slightly threatening way. 

          I couldn’t believe he’d take my story and give me nothing. I wasn’t going to leave it there. ‘I know I can’t write things down. And I can’t read either. I know. But you’re taking my story.’ He got up to get another beer from the fridge. He sat down with the bottle and gave me one. He didn’t say another word. And after a few useless protests, I stopped speaking as well. 

          On the other hand, Ellie spent no time on protest. Very soon she came to talk to me, and, more or less single-handed, removed me from the pristine cavern of Luigi’s house to the tiny rabbit hole of her own flat. It happened quickly. I just went to the door with her when she left Luigi’s house, hoping to give her a kiss on the cheek, but she grabbed my arm, taking me down the three steps, and we hopped into her car. ‘You’re coming with me, young man.’ And she laughed as if it were some kidnapping kind of joke. 

          I laughed too. ‘I’d never resist being kidnapped by you, Ellie.’ Life after prison could still be fun. So, no protest at that. I was merely perplexed that she could bother herself with my fate. I suppose I knew I was a sort of trophy from her sister’s life, and we often shared memories of Laure. 

          ‘I was always a bit jealous of Laure, you know. She was the oldest, of course, and always had the best,’ she confessed. And when she talked of the best, she couldn’t have meant me. But she quickly added, ‘Not with you, I mean, not jealous because she had you.’ Then she looked confused. ‘No, I didn’t mean …’ She didn’t know how to continue. But she meant I was not a bloke she could have been jealous of Laure having.


          So, I said, ‘Well, we never met did we, Ellie? I was only with her for a couple of years, till she …’ I paused, ‘died.’ I had nearly said, ‘till I killed her’. It was so automatic to think I had murdered her; I had done three years as her murderer, hadn’t I? In prison you become your crime. And nothing more.

          ‘I never found anyone for myself – not like she did.’ She looked at me in the passenger seat.

          ‘You’re lovely, Ellie. I can’t say you’re lovelier than her – I couldn’t say that about someone dead. But you are such a beautiful woman, I’d be happy all my days, Ellie.’ She looked across at me again, as if she was checking the real me: more or less an escaped prisoner. Just following the advice that I always gave other blokes in prison, ‘Tell ‘em they’re beautiful’, so I added, for her, I suppose, ‘I don’t know why you’re bothered about me. I’m a slob.’ She flashed another look at me, which seemed to say, as it were, ‘you’re a bit of a slob, but we’ll see to that’. 

          I felt relaxed; there were not going to be secrets between us. We said no more for twenty minutes till she got me to her little flat on the first floor, at the back. It was virtually a single room with cupboards for a kitchen and bathroom. But if this was going to be home for me, it needed nothing more – only her. It was as if nobody had lived here before, but that didn’t matter, we could make it ours.

          Immediately we entered, she apologised and told me as she was an actor – I hadn’t known that – she could only afford a small place to live. She made cups of tea and we sat down, looking at each other. Were we going to start a new phase in each other’s lives? She started off. ‘I’m a bossy type. You’re going to have to get used to that.’ I looked blank and nodded slightly. I had never been used to anything else. ‘Good,’ she said and then went on with her plans. ‘I don’t know what Laure did with you. 

          But I’ve done some thinking.’

          ‘I didn’t do much. I did the housework.’

          ‘I know,’ she said, as if I had interrupted her. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. I know what Luigi has been up to. He’s not been fair, has he?’

          And because she seemed to be asking a question, I answered. ‘No. That’s right. he’s a crook. You meet them in prison.’ I laughed. 

          ‘Right. He’s a real murderer.’ And she looked at me. ‘Not a sham one.’ And she laughed. ‘Jake will take on your case. There is money in it for him, he thinks.’

          ‘What case is that, Ellie?’

          ‘His stealing your story. It’s a kind of plagiarism. Isn’t it?’

          ‘Oh, I’m not so worried about it. If anyone is interested in the story, I’ll tell them it’s mine. Maybe he’ll give me half of the ten thousand.’

          ‘Is it that much, Thomas? Ten thousand. I didn’t know it was so much.’

          ‘That’s for the film rights.’ ‘The film rights? I didn’t know.’

          ‘So he didn’t tell you everything?

          ‘No.’

          ‘He’s a shit. You rescued me from him.’ I wasn’t so worried about money in the longer term. ‘And don’t forget,’ I reminded her, ‘Jake thinks I’ll get a lot more than that for compensation. You know … the miscarriage of justice.’

          ‘And don’t forget I rescued you, Tommy. From Luigi. Don’t forget that.’

          ‘I’ll never forget it, Ellie. The beautiful Ellie.’ There I was doing it again, telling a woman how beautiful she is.

          She looked at me hard. ‘You’re a beautiful man, too. I want to have sex with you. Right now.’ 

          So we did. The sofa let down into a bed, and one part of me began to stand up for sex with her. Again it was good. After we finished, she lay silent for ten minutes or so. She seemed satisfied. ‘How can I bloody think what I’m thinking? I’m so lucky she is out of the way and I can claim what she had.’ But what she said confused me. It couldn’t make sense. ‘I’m a selfish shit, I am.’ And she was speaking as if she had stolen something good from her dead sister: stolen me from here sister! 

          ‘You’re a fantastic love-partner, Ellie,’ I said, to reassure her she was not a shit. Then, what I said next seemed awkward. ‘Don’t ask me to compare you two – you and Laure. I did love her so much, Ellie. And I am sure that in a little while, I’ll love you just as much. Just as much, Ellie.’ I looked at her. And she looked back. She smiled. And it wasn’t just jokey. It was love. I knew it. ‘I don’t know how I can deserve you.’

          She looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘You know, every man I’ve had got fed up with me telling them what to do. I think that was how Laure was too, wasn’t it? She wanted to be in charge. 

          It was what got her killed as far as I could tell.’

          ‘It’s OK, Ellie. You can tell me what you want.’

          ‘But it’s not just about sex. I take charge all the time.’

          ‘That’s OK. I won’t mind – too much. I can be in charge sometimes.’

          ‘When we’re here, in bed.’

          ‘That’s a deal,’ I said jokily. But I knew she had given me a bit of a warning.

          ‘I’ve worked out a plan, I’ve got for you.’ She said it apologetically, knowing I might baulk if she was to plan my life.

          ‘Okaaaay.’ I was cautious. ‘You’d better tell me.’

          ‘No, let’s get up, now, and I’ll cook supper. You are going to stay here for a while. Over the meal I’ll tell you what we’ll do.’ 

          It sounded a bit like going back to prison– which in some ways I half liked. We folded the sofa away. And while she cooked, I watched her: her lythe body, its curves I had just loved with all my passion. I really did want to tell her how beautiful she was. And I could see how amazing she must be on stage. Then, I thought of Laure, and what Laure would think. And then I thought how Laure had played with all sorts and not just me. Would Ellie get tired and fed up with me and go and find playmates elsewhere too? At this point I could not care less. I just enjoyed watching her beautiful movements and gestures, the sex in her body as she moved, and careful and lively as she constructed our supper.

          ‘Are you doing some acting at present?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer that.

          She didn’t lay out her plan either. But later in bed, she sat up. ‘Listen, I think you ought to let Jake take over a bit and get those sloppy lawyers of the government to pay up.’

          ‘OK, Ellie. Half a million sounds, er, Ok – ish.’ I spoke modestly, and laughed at my silly joke. But she didn’t. She really wanted me to come off rich. 

          And so Jake did get moving. It was out of my hands. I signed a few papers as they required, practising holding a pen and making a scrawl. 

          She did teach me a bit about letters and words on paper. But I never got to being able to read competently. ‘I keep being bothered, Tom, that you’ll get fed up with me organising your life.’ 

          And she added, ‘But you don’t seem to mind.’ ‘I don’t mind,’ I said and I shrugged my shoulders. 

          ‘This is a small little place.’ She looked around. It was untidy. ‘There are so many papers to be gone through. It’s good you’re happy with me looking at them. It’s looking hopeful. A quarter mill!’ She looked at me and smiled as if she were very pleased for me. I still struggled after six weeks to believe I had fallen into such good fortune. Heaven knows, I had not committed murders, but I was not worth much more than someone who had. Now, I told myself I must stop griping on when suddenly I’d become God’s blessed. 

          198        199

          Over the next months, Jake and his company pursued my money through the various stages. It took longer, of course, and Ellie became impatient. She decided I should get a job and help pay the rent until we were all settled. So I worked in a bar. They were not too choosy about a ‘jailbird’ as they called me. And I did quite a lot of hours. I liked the work, like my mother had. It was simple, and it was satisfying to satisfy the customers – most of them. And behind the bar I did not get into the usual fights that had punctuated my weeks when I had been with Laure. I grasped the challenge of paying all the rent for Ellie’s little flat. She complained at being left for longish periods in the tight little living room, and we discussed what I had put Laure through and why she liked to go and find her fun on her own. Apart from that, everything seemed to be going swimmingly, as my grandmother used to say.

          Until now …

          I had to tell Luigi to tread carefully as he listened and wrote down this monotonous account. I told him I could get fighting now. Something happened. Well, everything happened! 

          I had come back from work on a Saturday night, my belly well filled and my heart still full of happily loving Ellie as she would greet me when I came in. But I didn’t come in. The door was locked – with a new lock. My key did not work. And the battering I gave the door with my boot did not bring anyone to open it. Ellie was not there. I was dreadfully concerned that something had happened to her. Having spent years with Laure’s murder in mind, of course that was my first thought. Though I did have a second thought. Possibly she was entertaining herself with someone else right now, hence my enthusiastic kicking of the door.

          I backed away, helplessly. My only recourse was to go to Luigi even though it was late on a Saturday night. He was intrigued by my predicament and listened sympathetically. Also, he made notes and a script for our book. Then, after a fitful night, I went back to our flat, which remained steadfastly inaccessible. The last thought, which came at the end of all the possibilities, was to call the police. But that I’d never do – of course – even if it was likely Ellie was a corpse inside. I knew she was not, as the change of the door-lock indicated some specific planning. I was reduced then to waiting till Monday morning when I could storm Jake’s offices to find out what his sister was doing. Luigi had to listen for the rest of the weekend to what my fighting rage would do when I found out what was actually happening. 

          So, when I arrived at Jake’s offices at nine am on the dot, I was not in the best of moods. And I demanded to see him. Immediately. Of course, he never arrived till ten in the morning, I was told. I think his office got the message that my mood was not friendliness, and they told me to come back later. I did. At ten o’clock. On the dot. I was coolly told he was in an interview with a client!

          Seeing red does not describe it. It was years since I had been this angry. So I marched in. As Luigi is copying this down, he is telling me to calm down. But I had no intention of calming. I charged through the lawyer’s office, scattering their papers. A rather large young man, a trainee perhaps, stood guard at the door from the office to the interviewing rooms. He barred my way, and one of the office staff, who was not hesitant, like me, rang the police for immediate help. That brought me to a halt.

          I scrammed and briskly fled down the street before the Pollies got there. I don’t have much more respect for a Polly than for a Poo. But I watched from a hundred yards away as they arrived and entered the building. Soon, they left again, switching off the blue lights. I was no longer their entertainment for the day. I waited around for half an hour and then went back to give my sly apology. I don’t think they believed in its sincerity but were politely accepting. I noticed a stiff and upright uniform standing over the desk of one of the girls. He looked up at me and came over. I began to explain that Jake was in fact my solicitor. The receptionist nodded and looked at the lists of appointments on her screen. She told me a time in the afternoon when Jake would be free. So, as nonchalantly as I could, I left the solicitor’s. I looked back after a few moments and the lanky Polly was also leaving, as if his job was done in scaring me off.

          I had some time to wait, so I sauntered back along Willesden High Street to the old flat that Ellie had just abandoned. I was not surprised to find some man, an agent, showing prospective new tenants around it. I can say that red was again what I saw, but this day was for practising restraint. I had always needed practice at it. I watched while they helped to carry out the possessions that Ellie had not emptied from the flat. Mainly, I presumed, they were my possessions.

          Innocently I asked the agent, ‘It looks like you are letting the flat. Could I see too?’ He refused of course but told me to go to his office to book a time. That was my plan. At the office of his agency, I asked for my possessions back, which they had confiscated. But of course they would not do that for some shabby type straight off the street. But that was my plan. They told me where they would be sending the possessions: to Ellie at her address. So, of course, now I knew where she had gone! Was I going to go and check? You bet!

          And you can bet, too, on how it turned out: just as I had begun to suspect, and as you had begun to suspect as well. It is the strange case of the punchline being an anti-climax, actually a sucker punch line. When I went to the address given, of course there was no answer, and after hammering on the door as if it would open to save itself the stress, the next-door neighbour came to see what my commotion was about.

          ‘I am looking for … Ellie,’ I said quickly, finding I didn’t even want to say her name.

          ‘Oh, Ellie and Jake. They’re a lovely couple, aren’t they? So gentle and sweet.’ I stared at the woman. She was middle-aged, maybe a bit beyond middle-age, spreading around the midriff, and a bosom like a cradle any infant would swoon for. ‘Jake’s at work of course, and Ellie’s been away touring with her theatre,’ she paused, ‘oh, six months or so, I should think it is.’ She muttered on to herself, and then said. ‘You a friend of Ellie’s? She’s a wonderful lass, isn’t she? You could trust her with anything.’ 

          I just stared at her, and felt this whole business had become an exercise in staring blankly, blank as an idiot. Then she started staring at me, as if I was someone to be wary of. Wary of me, do you believe it? At that point, I turned and made off. And I was sure she was looking at my fleeing heels. Luigi was chuckling as he recorded my scorched and dying heart.

          I realised my appointment time was coming up, back at the solicitor’s. So, I sauntered back, collecting myself, as they say, as if I had lost dribs and drabs of me all over the place. Actually, I think I had. It was no surprise, when I reminded the receptionist of my appointment, that she looked at me in a casual offhand way, ‘Oh, he says he’s very sorry. He had to go off, quite urgently, he said and asked me to cancel the appointments for the afternoon. But I didn’t have a contact number for you. I’m afraid, he said he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.’ That was no surprise, not the slightest. I stalked out into the street.

          But a moment later, I stalked back in again, to ask about why he had rushed out for the afternoon. The receptionist was a bit cautious but confided, ‘I think he’d gone to see about some business he had with you. He had to go to the bank, then on somewhere.’ 

          What could he have done in the bank with my money? Not hard to guess. No surprise – to me, or to you. Or to Luigi and his pen.

          I came out into the street. They’d made off together those two; I’d lost my woman (no, she had never been mine), and I’d lost my money, which they’d obviously run off with. Now I had not even that mousehole of a flat to go home to. What was left for me? I decided there was only one thing left for me in my life – such as it had been. I would commit a murder and go back in prison as a proper murderer for the rest of my years. 

          I could almost welcome that.

          But one last question. I have to say, it was not for Luigi to write down. Who shall I do?, Ellie, the non-sister, and Jake, her real love-partner, they’d gone off into the mists. So who’s left…. Luigi? He’d cheated me, hadn’t he? On my first story. So, he’ll do, for all three of them. I smiled to myself – happy ending. 

His view of himself

The morning’s coolness dripped from the trees before the sun’s power was turned up. The park steamed with green in the early summer morning. He stared to either side, trying self-consciously not to appear as if he was noticing something. The whir, he imagined in his head, would have been coming from directly behind him. Then it cut; and then it would be coming from directly ahead. He walked calmly into it as if it were not there. The whirring faded, or it was as if it panned slowly right to the lake and the tiny island of yellow trees stranded alone in the middle. 

            On the bench seat, he sat watching the scene. What had brought this mother with her child out so early, both so crisply dressed, well-ironed, combed? – a whole other, stranger’s world, the links unknown to him. The woman in the light linen cotton skirt was holding the camera up to snap her toddler chasing the ducks with a fragment of bread in his hand. She shot two quick pictures of him, calling at him. Then she put the small Japanese mechanism in the large pocket in the front of her skirt, smoothed her hair with a tired gesture and took the child back to the push-chair. They went off on this bright light morning towards the dusty brown buildings where the rush hour was picking up. 

            All the interweaving themes of her 30, or may be 35, years moulded themselves into the pattern of her life now. Then, at this point – his watching moment – her unique stream of being emerges marginally from her hazy distance. It is a thin sliver of time pressed against the next. On the bench, he watched; he had been the one, serendipitously, to capture this slice of her, but only this one. There was a companionship in putting together these two unknowns, these transient untouching moments. 

            His night had been hard and long, yet the morning so bright. The air cleared for a new day in the city.  He simply sat for some moments today in the park on his way home, before going restfully to bed. 

            She had disappeared with the toddler in the pushchair when he next looked.  The clump of bushes which had swallowed them had then begun to disgorge more people, single – purposefully stepping across the park to their workplaces.  He didn't want to feel the companionship of more unrelated strangers.  He got up to begin his walk home; this life moment was finished, the next to be experienced. Cut.

 

For as long as he could remember it had been happening.  He knew it was imaginary.  He was home again after the night-shift. He looked up from the bathroom basin, cleaning his teeth, and saw himself in his mirror.  The camera whirred, zooming in on his white-frothed mouth – every detail a fascination.

....ooooOOOOoooo....

He slipped into his side of the bed by mid-morning, some hours after Angela had got io her side. He looked across; the peaceful repose of her face like a ripe and tempting fruit.  He turned away and curled up to sleep.  The camera shut down.

            He was alone, the stream of his life-patterns stilled. A little viewfinder in his head kept a watchful attention going.  He thought of her next to him.  She would get up several hours before he woke; do various pieces of business, shop for a good meal and cook it by the time he woke.  Then their strands would part – she going into her workshop, the gems the precious stones, her precise tools firmly made, adjusted for her jewellery work; and he would read a book, the papers perhaps, watch the early evening news, and then march off across to the bus, to the walk across the park, to the Whitehall dungeon where he was night man receiving the incoming coded messages for the Ministry.

            Beyond the closed shutters of his eyes, he could see her jewellery laid out sensuously, the gallery owner who took them, taking pictures of her very best pieces. The pure surface of her skin a throbbing rose-pink as his flash-bulb glowed in the champagne light.  The owner's expensive lens explored her pores in close-up, the glistening, polished silver white circling her nipples, the crushed gems bursting colourful, from her navel. He lay in bed thinking of those photographs. In her undone red-wine enthusiasm she had proudly shown him those icons that had been photographed. Her wide loose smile hung over the sensuous records of her craft. They stung him as they riffled through his amazed, perplexed fingers. The pain of his jealousy had so sensitively been wrought from her body by the owner.  The pain numbed his limbs, numbed his desire for her; he slept. The owner was her owner.

....ooooOOOOoooo....

The fever of those photograph-memories woke him in the night.  The glossy images still lay as if in his quiet fingers: the precious metallic orchid, Faberge-like, nestling in the fur of her armpit, in the fur of her pubis; the strong restraining gold-link choker stretched her chin up; the thrust of the thin silver-gilt hair grip left a small charmed gem extruding bright blue from the red of her secret place; even the pearly drops of that fresh saliva, splashed upon the diamond-set necklace she clenched gently between her teeth.

            His fever drove against the sleep in his mind.  The restlessness became wakeful, his eyes watched the dark; and the camera watched every stroke of his insomnia.

....ooooOOOOoooo....

When he woke, he noticed the long absent shape in the bed alongside him where she had lain. Together with his own imprint, two patterns that intersected in the bed-clothes without touching.  The thought of that shape beside him, that emptiness, came back as he strolled early in the evening with the promise of dusk in the sky, its same separate shape in the clouds moving inevitably into the horizon behind him.

            Yet again the record of his journey to work, the slow pan of his walk through the park, the lake, the ducks always as usual.  The fascination of every detail was an intruding comfort.  His stardom upon the stage of the world, a stardom only in his self-consciousness.

            He remembered his father's jaded sadness on those mornings on holiday, one equally bright summer.  His mother rose in her early morning moods, he remembered. Those agonised summer days that year, I could not bear them, he said to himself, wondering if the camera could pick up the slight watering he felt in his eye.  Inside his head he could hear himself speaking out, with feeling: “I remember that time as long, long ago - and very formative.  I was a child of ten maybe, becalmed apparently before adolescence, but churning inside about Mum and Dad”.

            He could see the image, his own talking face, filling the screen, an intimate documentary now, "I can reach back even now, twenty-seven years ago. I had a room in the better-than-average guest house at Brightlingsea. Mine was next to my parent's room, on that holiday. They were next along the dark soft corridor. My mother hardly spoke to my father and me, she just looked at us - there had been a frozen grey look in her eyes, pale flashes whose light had died. I had a balcony that looked out over the sea.  Its rhythm lapped on the shingle; car noise, now and then, went along the road by the front beneath the balconies of the house.  My balcony ran along the house to theirs.  A heavy wooden trellis separated the two.  If I stood by the trellis, I could listen in to what they said late at night.  The window-doors were open.  They didn't know I remained awake worrying.

     ‘I found that I could climb round the white trellis barrier and could look through the heavy lace curtains - they were almost night curtains. The rather open pattern framing of squares let me see in. By coming up close to the mesh, I could frame my parents in bed. Mum sat bolt upright, her chin expressing a fastidious contempt, my dad lay in a position that seemed to mean he was relaxed but with one tense arm across her, and slowly touching her skin more mechanical than loving.  “I'm fed up with hearing”, she said “that you think I'm cold”. “Well,” my dad said tensely, appeasing, “it's not exactly that.  But...” his pause was to indicate to her he was trying to be considerate, thoughtful “... we don't, you know... make love together much... do we?”  Mum tensed up in her body, growing more vertical against the back of the bed, her posture like a victim knowing that the thumbscrews are going to go on being tightened, wondering how much more she could bear before screaming out. 

     ‘My dad sensed this and left the rest silent - which was no less torturing to Mum than his considerate appeals, I guessed. If I moved my head back a bit, I could just get her face in the slim gap in the curtains.  She was as still as a stone.  By moving my head forward, I could get, in the opening of the mesh, a wide angle of her shoulders, even more and the whole of her immobile body.  I could move forwards and backwards and animate the immobile image of her. Eventually my father moved away.  I believed his kindly submissiveness, when I was that age, to be merely his duty to her.  Their bedside lamp went out.  I clambered back to my room and lay a long night considering in every proportion the image of Mum's face in the squared opening, in every possible position that I could manoeuvre it with my movements.  In the morning, I went into their room to see them; my father lay in bed alone.  Mum's nightdress was on the chair, only her shape in the other side of the bed.  Dad was brightly friendly as if he owed it to me, and I owed the same back to him.

     ‘Mum didn't appear for the rest of that day and I didn't see her till breakfast the day after.  Instead, my Dad and I did things together, like we had not done before. We both pretended it was normal - but it wasn't.  That day we drove miles, the whole day we went from one thing to another.  I remember a vast old tower, built in the middle-ages in a town further along the coast.  The tower, I believe, had once looked out over the sea - in the time of Henry VIII, perhaps.  It was round on many floors and my dad played at locking me up deep down in the dungeon underground - and then I played locking him up.  But all the time I thought of my Mum somewhere else, I couldn't imagine what she was doing - or whether she was thinking about me.  I remember then thinking how I would tell her everywhere we'd been, not let her get out of anything we had done, not let her feel left out.  My Dad took me to see a film, in a cinema, for the first time in my life.  I don't remember what film it was; I think he'd chosen it at random.  But I do remember the dark place like the prison tower we had been to – and the enormous faces that came up on the screen, filling the wall; faces just framed by the rectangular opening of light.  As the curtains swung back at the end, I know I was reminded of the curtains in my parents' window.  My Dad and I did not speak as we went home.  I know I went to sleep before I could think of going out across the balconies. But I know the following night, after Mum had come back to us, I did go and spy on them again – I made their faces fill up the opening of light, just as I'd seen in the cinema.

     ‘I listened to their talk as I moved their images around under the control of my eyes.  They talked about me – my Mother seemed near tears; and my Dad tried comforting but didn't seem to care too much.  They seemed to think she would miss me for some reason; and that I would miss them.  Mum seemed to be going away and I felt very sorry for her – and all their talk about me seemed so natural, so much what their lives were for.  If they were planning things that were going to be bad for me, we were such a sad family of three.  The only family I really knew; but a sad one compared with what I thought other families were.  And I felt sad for me that I was part of that kind of family.  And it was sad even, perhaps especially sad, that no-one knew I was there and knew about all of this.  But I was alone, and no-one knew how alone I was.  Then I thought to myself, when I was back in bed, supposing this was a film, something or someone making a film of all this; then the whole world could know.  I wouldn't be alone, I would fill a whole wall with me, and what the world would want to know about me.  That was when it started.’

....ooooOOOOoooo....

The image on the television screen thrown up in his mind’s eye, stilled - the face, confiding and intimate, relaxed. It faded into darkness.  His work beckoned, another night in the obscure darkness of the Ministry dungeon, the lonely darkness. He rose from the park bench, the evening light jaded by the street-lamps as it died slowly away. He walked solitary and sedately into work. The rest of the world relaxed.

            Eight days out of fourteen and then a six-day `fortnight-end'.  Angela often relaxed her own routine too on his days off. Though they both continued to spend the nights awake and the days asleep, they seemed to coincide in their times more. On these occasions every now and again she would indulge her forbidden craving for drink. Her particular intake was a liberal supply of salted brown ale, followed by repeated (several times) bottles of Greek retsina wine enhanced with lemon juice and a very sweet liqueur, or with honey sometimes. Invariably, on those occasions she ended up in a damp patch of her own urine that seeped through the pores of her jeans and into the bare grain of the pine chair; and equally the consciousness of her mind would dissolve into a similar shapeless puddle and seep out of existence.

            On this occasion he had hired a video camera for his, and their, entertainment. Firstly he had cooked for her: a fresh salmon mousse made with olive oil and goose fat, enough peanut butter to give a mystery to it and the freshest Scottish salmon he could find in London; then a salad of very crisp, barely red tomatoes sliced fine slivers of two cheeses, mozzarella and feta, with a meagre dressing of Worchester sauce and tarragon-flavoured olive oil; then for a main dish he served fine sirloin cut in cubes and plunged in garlic-flavoured boiling butter, and mixed with similarly fried croutons cut from a sweet milk loaf, and all garnished and covered with mange-tout steamed to body heat and slivers of deep fried courgettes in lemon-spiced wholemeal batter; for desert there were curd and almond-filled meringues spread with double cream into which gritty brown sugar had been stirred. 

            The whirring camera concentrated upon the framed view of his baroque gestures with the sliver gilt serving spoons.  She reached the beginning of her meal. She, and he, smiling across the table with the expert cuisine that served the camera, and all who would eventually watch it. He was careful to plan the video, its sound and vision displaying their meaning for each other. Smiled and her head engulfed he mouthfuls slowly.

            He proceeded carefully through the stages he had made, the whirring record of their joined mealtime.  ‘Evidence,’ he thought.  And then stacking the plates neatly, he took his wife's body through the flat keeping her pressed, firmly and gently, to his own body. She, an imagined accomplice washed in the shower till she ran clean with water and a steaming pink freshness.  He undressed her, she vaguely curious, her clothes in wet lumps in the bottom of the shower. Then wrapped carelessly in her huge bath towel, he welcomed her back to the scene of his camera and fitted her snugly into the shape on the bed she had left those hours before.  He imagined the screen filled with her form, the image lingering slowly.  He returned in a few moments with the various things he had conjured in his mind, his own breathing a little stronger now.  He took the video camera in his hands with the care of a mother moving her baby; and rested it lovingly and precisely in the corner of the bedroom so its angle of view took in as much as possible of the scene he was going to play out with her.  He set it going.

            He unfolded her body in a picture precise as he had longed for. Her towel opened as if a flower in his mind, in bloom, on display as the occasion for display and beauty. Would she awake, he wondered, before he had accomplished his scene for the camera.  He then left her for a moment on a journey he dreamed.

‘He gathered an accumulation of jewellery from her workshop; that he had quickly raided. Then back in their intimate boudoir, he took a small pin and prodded it at her eyelid.  She did not move, her stupor now a full anaesthesia. Her helplessness was vastly exposed, a landscape of vulnerable innocence and unconsciousness, a victim tempting menace.  He slipped his hand beneath her body hardly knowing any longer if it was cold meat or deeply loved woman. The camera, he imagined, recorded each of his careful movements with an avid, fascinated compassion.  He rolled her over and straightened her arms.  He felt for the slender bone above each elbow and slowly used a length of fine silver wire to form a figure-of-eight around the arms to pin them behind her, threading the wire a number of times till she was properly fixed.  Then he rolled her back onto her front again, her back arching painfully over her bound arms. She lay there, her head lolled to one side, the sinews of her shoulders looking taut and strained; her lovely mouth was relaxed and her lips slightly apart for her breathing.  The red around her eyes was paler now but it appeared, as ever, as if she had just finished crying.  In spite of the stillness of her unconsciousness and the dull, undisturbed rhythm of her breathing, there was still a lithe presence in her body which he now stared at with a fearsome coldness.  Her legs spread easily apart when he moved them with gentle pressure; and the handful of small gemstones slipped easily from his fingers into her vagina.  Their multiple colouring glistened with the moisture there as he pressed handful after handful from the vast old-fashioned sweet jar into the deepest part of her. It took more than he ever thought – the huge beauty of the stones crammed into the precious secrecy of her spaces.  He thrust more and more into her until, like a briming, slopping milk-pail some of the gems slowly leaked back out of her.  Then he took the lips of her vagina to cover over her rich feast by stretching them tightly together; and using a long and elegant hatpin she had made, he ran it back and forth through those lips, side to side, like sewing the succulent stuffing into the Christmas turkey; the precious stitchwork in the seam of a rich altar cloth.  The glowing red gem of the hatpin came at last to rest, precisely over her special spot, like a buoy marking the twisted agony of a wreck.

            ‘Her breath was blowing in and out of her body now. Her legs seemed to judder and one at a time came straight, till the burning red jewel glowed from the deep pointed pit of golden hairs.  His hands hardly dared to touch her as if her beauty would scorch him.  Her head was lolling slightly from side to side in a lighter level of unconsciousness.  He slithered one small gem under each eyelid which made the twitching reflex eye-movements more visible.  An unwilled mechanical process was beginning.  Slowly he began to fill each of her nostrils with more small stones, pressing them as far back into her as he could, on both sides.  Gradually she could contain no more there and a few trickled back across her cheeks to lie in tiny puddles of colour on the bedsheet.  Her mouth was wide open, gasping rather, now.  He imagined the rhythm of her body and the methodical movements of his fingers, framed symmetrically in his imagined viewfinder, the screen filling an entire wall with the sense of an undefended menace.

            ‘After this he poured a slow stream of gemstones from the jar into her gasping mouth; the sucking in of her breath drew the stones like a gurgle of water round the plughole of a basin.  Stronger, more jerky, hiccupping and silent coughing movements took place.  As her mouth and throat slowly filled her gasps and the choking intensified. Eventually her mouth was full, abrim to her even teeth.  Her rose-pink lips stretching uselessly aside began to darken.  The heaving of her chest was now airless.  She could take no more into her.  Her eyes flickered and lost their bright stones.  He stroked her fine and welcoming breasts - he kissed and caressed them, moving his moist lips over them as her body fought writhing and dipping, in extremis, mindless and hopeless.  It was over more quickly than he expected; the last twitches of dying muscles in her neck, in her legs, soon stopped.  He lay against the smooth, soft, beautiful body.’

It was finished.  The camera he imagined whirred to a stop, his performance over.  He rose slowly with sad movements; and turned to the video, its record complete; he switched it off.  "It is over," he thought, "finished".

....ooooOOOOoooo....

On the next day, he returned the camera he had rented; its journey parting with him forever.  He placed the memory-stick in the machine at home in order to watch from the comfort of their large settee.  The image on the television screen came up quickly; Angie lying in her washed drunken beauty, relaxed, her beautiful generous lips slightly parted with her breathing, as if drawing in strength from his side of the bed.  From the right of the screen his naked body appeared, still glistening from the shower. He moved slowly over the bed, and the sensitive point of his penis tipped her lovely mouth in the slightest silent greeting.  Her lips drew into a smile and her mouth invited him in.  The swelling end of his penis became a red glowing gemstone that thrust right into her opened body. Each orifice welcomed him

            On the settee, she murmured slightly and moved lovingly towards him as she watched. Her head nestled into his shoulder.  Close beside him, too close to focus, her ear-ring with its frail green stone stared through her trim hair, as if a watching eye in the midst of the fur of a cat. Angie’s eyes, softly with love and tears, intoxicated him, coldly observed him. Two strangers (again) wedded on screen. The machine whirred on. Only the camera in his head restless recording it still. Till eventually all three – it, him, Angie, all three – were composed in rest.

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