In The Golf Club

Scene IV

(The golf club bar. It is dingy and dimly-lit. The 4th Trombonist is acting as barman. Pious and unrelenting he pours lager over the heads of the customers. Whilst the following exchange is advancing, the customers throng, jostle and joke incessantly. Gordon and Firtree are sat on stools some ten feet from the bar. Each has his drink. The juke-box plays Amarillo Zippodder's "Crazed 'Bout You" as many times as necessary.)

Gordon: Nice whisky.

Firtree: You think so? Not a mixture?

Gordon: No, not on my nelly.

Firtree: Your nelly?

Gordon: That's what I said.

(Pause)

Gordon: Been playing?

Firtree: Praying, actually.

Gordon: Preying?

Firtree: No. Praying. To Jesus.

Gordon: I say, really?

Firtree: Well, no, just my little joke.

Gordon: You'll never believe what happened to me on the fourteenth. I was trouncing old Thompson, the building chappie, by a clear seven points when we were interrupted by a balloon race. One of the blighters landed on the fairway.

Firtree: Gawd, did you chase them?

Gordon: Tried to, but they turned on us with empty propane canisters. Smashed up our clubs, too. Spoiled the game completely. You know - it's impossible to go on when you've been put off your stroke like that.

(A bunch of drunken young men lurch backwards knocking Gordon and Firtree off their stools.)

Gordon (still on the floor): Have care, you swine.

Firtree (rising painfully): Oh my ribs - something's smashed.

Gordon: See what you've done, you bastards, my friend's haemophiliac.

1st drunken youth: We don't care if he's made of delicate china or fine cut glass.

2nd drunken youth: Or built like Humpty-Dumpty. Eggshell surface - a bag of wind inside.

(The lights fade. A whistle pierces the stillness. A single beam of light returns - directed on a solitary drunk.)

Solitary Drunk (thinks): We burnt his feet, by the side of the fishpond. The wind blew backwards, rushing repeatedly through two silver tree-trunks. A renegade ice-cream van careered through the undergrowth, an ominous green light within. He staggered up, his feet peeling and blistered, and crawled off to look for his mother, on her way home from the supermarket. But she had run off with her new boyfriend - Cyclops. They had taken a taxi to the station and were already arguing.

"Do you always wear blue socks with brown shoes?"

Cyclops began to stammer an excuse, but kept silent. They passed by a huge red-brick factory which caused the very air to stink of rotting carrots discovered under one's mattress on a winter's night.

Then, the station. The taxi pulled up, but neither mother nor boyfriend showed any sign of stirring.

"I'm bored" said Maria (the mother, that is).

"I'm not going to cringe before you any longer, you toadthug."

"What a cheek! You frisky cad!"

"Don't ever ask me again. Come on, let's get the train. Pay this citizen."

"Don't talk to me like that. My father was a foreman, my mother was a nurse, and I was made to swear, I'd never end up worse."

An Only Child

Sebrana rose - she'd had enough. The kettle was left to boil as she slipped through the Judas trees, her eyelids pinned to her cheeks.

Night it was and fine, bright one too. The wind sounded like rustic pipes, blown by a dolt.

She walked head-down across the clodded meadow, pretending to be with Gordon, her imaginary lover, who whistled a tuneful waltz in her ear. They were in the desert - on a sand dune - it was jolly.

Back in the forest, as tall as trees, Sebrana sobbed on Gordon's shoulders. Now they had grown even larger and used mountains as armchairs in their cosy apartment.

In truth she was alone. Even the little animals seemed to avoid her. If she had carried a knife in her bag she could have stuck it in her heart. Kept it there as a souvenir. Of Gordon, vanished, running into the night, lost in the forest.

Sequel

Gordon eventually reached the house and entered by the conservatory. Once inside he ran upstairs into the bathroom and removed his sore eye. In the next room he could hear a hungry baby wailing for attention.

He slipped his plastic clammy fingers over the door-handle, pushed the door open and took a step inside.

One day, in the Caucasus Mountains, a goatherd had a dream :

He was in a red polystyrene beaker in a turgid canal - floating whichever way the wind blew. From this vantage-point he saw the moon, with a face, bend down and kiss a mad dog. Marching past, a military band were playing a foxtrot, but stopped and drew swords. The dog was slain. He saw tears on the eyes of the moon-face.

Back in the bottom of the beaker he found a handful of salted peanuts - and, shortly afterwards, woke up.

Back in the house, Gordon side-stepped into the corridor. The lights began to flicker incessantly in the umbrage, causing his thoughts to flash back to the freak meteorite storm that had occurred in his bedroom when he was nine years old. The next day he had found a smooth, rounded pebble in a clear mountain stream. His mind and indeed his life was full of such irrelevancies.

Suddenly he cried, "Yike!" as an enormous jellyfish, crimson with purple spots, plopped off the glass roof onto his neck. As it slipped down his shirt he sat on the foam carpet, sobbing.

Another door opened. Gadfly, the boy jockey, appeared with a handful of radishes.

"What's up?" he queried.

"I need your help, I've been the victim of a vile ambush" said Gordon, opening his shirt-front to let the jellyfish slop out over his lap onto the foam. It scurried down the passageway towards the stairs.

Gadfly sniggered. "That's Tony. He loves his little joke"

"Tee hee" thought Gordon.