Written years ago but unpublished

I sat in the park, wondering why it was so dark, when my instinct (as well as my wristwatch) told me it was Noon. Even the TV weather forecast had indicated a sunny day, not this wall-to-wall sky of stars and empty gaps. The trees shook in a breeze: a sudden unexpected disturbance of the otherwise still air which, in my experience, only happened during the small hours of night. There was an ill-lit moon which, true, did manage to pick out for me variously sized children playing on the swings and roundabouts; courting couples cuddling on the grass in the normally discreet fashion that daylight usually dictated; park-keepers tending to the seemingly dark monochrome flower-beds with trowels and hoes; the flapping silhouettes of shrikes even darker than the sky itself...

I woke with a scream.



Grace had come in from the kitchen, red-faced, near to tears, holding her left fingers, which were already forming blisters following a relatively bad scald on a plate that had been under the grill.

"Shit!" she said quietly, as she battled with various emotions: annoyance with herself, annoyance with me (for leaving the plate there as the cheesy mash crusted), determination to appear brave, determination to make me sorry for her state of crumpling up under the pain.

I took one look at the fingers and suggested it was a hospital job.

"Naw! I've dashed cold water over them," she near sobbed out.

"I'll find the Germolene," I offered, getting up from before the blank-screen of the TV. I found it quite calm staring towards the erstwhile entertainment centre, despite its being broken.

At that moment, our three children arrived home from school. They usually turned up in ones or twos, but, today, was different. Apparently the town centre where their schools were situated had been evacuated following a bomb scare. Hence, their excitability. As it was too late in the day for them to need returning, they scuttled up the stairs to their own individual live TV sets in bedroom land, having given a cursory glance at Grace's hand—deciding whatever she'd done to it was not serious enough to prevent an establishment of untimely routines for their precocious evening. And, yes, by the time I had managed to find (with some difficulty) the topless tube of old-looking Germolene, I, too, saw that Grace's injuries were far from life-threatening.

Only life itself can threaten life. Death is merely the spin-off.

Well, my name is Jeremy Twist (unrelated to the Dickensian character), married to Grace Twist, née Saraband, both of us pretending we had three children, whereas, in reality, we had none at all. Not for the want of trying. There was something physical in our make-up, as if we were always connected—even when, bodily, we were miles apart. As far as any unlikely bystanders were concerned, this invisible phenomenon crossed some hyperspatial ocean, whilst, to Grace and myself, it was more like a telephone wire of plaited flesh, quite otherwise transcending our fitful and clumsy attempts at normal sex.

Such mixed-up matters were not, however, very conducive to procreation. Much to our sorrow.



I shook off these crazy preoccupations. I needed to go shopping for sandwich bread and cucumbers, together with a quarter of Earl Grey. My Aunt Teresa (Terry) was coming for tea. She was younger than me but I still called her Auntie, more as an in-joke rather than anything of more nephewly respect. Grace was quite friendly with sweet Terry, too, both of them sharing sisterly shopping jaunts up west in combined attempts to beat Council Tax bills to the bank. How I had such a young, yet fullblooded, Aunt was to do with the wide spread of child-bearing in which my Mother's Mother had indulged—in tune with a different age of non-political correctness and sexy sexism.

Maternity, in the old days, was a combination of mutual back-slapping and career gossipping: starting as soon as the womb could warm sufficient spaghetti connections into autonomous life and continuing until it was cold enough to keep plasma as well as pasta indefinitely. Birth and cryogenics were just two sides of the old coin. In vitro fertilization another way of spinning it. Or just another way of dying.

"What time is Terry actually coming?" asked Grace, as she bent close to the hieroglyphics of a knitting pattern (one for a toddler's jodhpurs). Her needles clacked together on her lap, each spoke at cross purposes with the skein of wool she was simultaneously trying to ball up. She hadn't even started casting anything on.

"Auntie's due about three," I answered, casting off.



Lady Teresa Mandeville (Terry to her friends and relations) was at this very moment holding court in her own Commonside apartment. Despite the aura she still retained from a sweet childhood, many of her visitors were quite scared of her knitted brows when (as they thought) they had said something quite innocent. Today, was a case in question. Rifty (Thomas Riftage) was a dwarfish individual who often ensconced himself in Terry's corner, hoping not to be noticed, merely basking in the state of having company. He was a rare and antiquarian book-seller, whose brain was like a bookshelf of dog-eared dust-wrappers without the books inside to keep them from flopping over. The whites of his eyes, like old pages, were foxed. Rifty had merely announced—quite uncharacteristically—that Terry (their hostess) looked decidedly blooming today. What was he after?
"I beg your pardon," said Terry, her voice thickening through lack of refreshment. She was storing up her appetite for nibbles at mine. She hated consuming anything. So, she delayed and delayed, threatening anorexic angst in various parts of her body. Mind and flesh were two-way filters of impending infection. Not that she perceived the battles within her in such a light.

"You're looking fit and well, dear Terry," continued Rifty, oblivious of the uncharted waters into which he had accidentally waded. "Better than I've ever seen you." He was digging a pit both for himself and for his shit—in that order.

Terry imagined digging her cultivated nails into his neck.

Then into her own, to prevent the shit becoming shit.

Bulimia was never quite her sick-bag. She preferred prevention to cure. Diversion to hindsight.

Often, my wife Grace, was party to these lunchtimes at Terry's apartment, after which they could both abscond to the frock shops. But, today, there were two other girls, so young they were not fully grown, of similar flimsy frame as Grace's, and Terry was free to admire their slender charms amid the diversionary company of Rifty and the portly man who kept a butchers shop on the other side of the Common. She forgot the name.

The two girls were called Felicity and Carmel. Now that Grace was thickening slightly more at the waist, it was such a delight for Auntie Terry to be bringing up these svelte creatures to take Grace's place. Soon, Grace would indeed be consigned to the dark. And, then, Lady Teresa Mandeville would no longer—the sooner the better, perhaps—need to visit me for unseemly afternoon teas. But, not quite yet. There was still at least some mileage for her in Grace Twist.

After Aunt Terry had left, the company were trusted to stay in the apartment and help themselves to the refreshments which had been kept out of sight for the sake of propriety.

Out of sight, meant out of mind. Now, as they mindlessly tucked in, the butcher (whose name can now be revealed as Michael Ogham, a small tradesman of high standing, despite his calling) beckoned Felicity and Carmel to have a dance. He was turning the handle on Terry's wind-up, ready to insert the rusty needle into the well-grooved jive music. He imagined the two girls laid out on his bloody trestle back at the shop, his axe raised to part joint from joint, knowing exactly where the bones were in such revealing skin-tight shapes so as to avoid nasty crunches and unacceptable pain. Meanwhile, Rifty had got for himself spiked chunks of cheese and pineapple and was shaking his smiling head from side to side in readiness for the rhythms. But never judge a book by its cover. Inside, Rifty was a turmoil of anxiety about the ensuing darkness. It had been his dream, not mine, after all.



Outside her apartment, Terry had managed to hail a taxi, despite most of such black beasts crawling over the innermost parts of the city, rather than here around the Common. The driver was ignoring her presence in the backseat. She had forgotten to tell him where she wanted to go (my place in Croydon) and he had, supposedly, forgotten to ask. Still, she had managed to make this identical journey on several previous occasions. And thus was tantamount to déjà vu.



"It's gone three," said Grace, as she packed up her knitting.

"Not much past," I said. I peered into the darkening window overlooking East Croydon Station. It was the season when evenings arrived earlier every afternoon.

The sandwiches were already made. The minute cucumber steaks sticking from the sides like scarred finger-tips. Grace was so tired she had cocktail spikes propping up the eyelids. Cherries on splintered skewers. Old-looking tea in the samovar was already refusing further to infuse. Thickening into an ointment mixed with dark brown blood.

Crawling out of Grace's eyes, towards mine, a twisted plait of uncast ectoplasm stretched.

Through the unlit air, the window cast its glow upon the street below.

There drove to a halt outside a black set of wheels, headlights doused, and Terry alighted, trailing two wee spirits in her tailwake. But unseen, straggling behind, was that nameless fat Shite of a butcher with a chopper...

I screamed as I desperately tried to open my dust-wrapped eyes.

I had forgotten fate had already allowed me to locate the Germolene.