We never knew Davis

Too late, as ever with Davis. He was buried in the one suit he owned, inside the breast pocket of which he’d popped the letter before going out into town for his last night.

It could have been the start of a poem or suicide note, you simply couldn’t tell with Davis. He’d written both before, sometimes in the same project. He had worked for two years in a series of mainline railway stations in a variety of jobs. He was tall and slim, dark, he wore spectacles and what used to be known as stout boots. He was an atheist and a big drinker but only on Fridays.

He was my friend and we often went rambling over England. Davis had emerged from Pentonville prison in 1882 as a rumpled man, convinced that his role there as the Chaplin had resulted in his crisis of faith. He came directly to my home in Yorkshire to remind me of our childhood together and of the fact that his ‘descent into religion’ was the only reason that my wife Mary was my wife rather than his.

To an extent, of course, he was correct.

Mary, Davis and I had revolved around each other before he had taken up the cloth and Mary had taken my hand. Writing now, forty years after his death in 1884, I can see that Mary and Davis loved each other.

She is my friend and we have a house, two grown children – both boys, now men and both abroad. We talk about Davis but although our conversations are joined at the words, they are separate and personal.

Not for the reason you think though.

I was in the knowledge, you see, that Davis had murdered Mary’s father.

George Rugley refuses to talk about the house on the green in the village of Wallington. Save for a petition to have it demolished and the ground on which it stood since 1899 concreted over, George is adamant in his silence.
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The churchyard was soft

Haring down the hill into the village on his five-speed – past the preparatory school, past the scout hut and the post office Рthen cornering tight right, hardly time to change down, past the hair salon.

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On the run

This is what it was like before I was born. Before I asked you what death was like and before you showed me.

I’d never seen the image of a dead man Рa corpse picture – let alone the real thing. Back then, I’d never seen a cold morning without breakfast or hope of supper. I hadn’t seen a very great number of things, although I hoped to.

I think I’d seen you – back before I was born. Standing in line, waiting to be dropped into life. I like to think that we’ve had some personal contact, albeit briefly; me to receive orders or maybe make a request. You to look me up and down, smile in a fatherly way and pack me off into the great adventure of life.

I’d like to think we’d had some acquaintanceship so that we touched maybe before I learnt all about touching in that other way. But sitting here now, looking forward to being caught or to killing and running again – maintaining the chase – I somehow doubt it.

Your rosary feels small and looks like a string of seeds. It’s doing me as much good as any charm. Might as well be a rabbit’s foot or a crescent from Islam. I don’t know. I wish you did.

Before I was born, when I was good, before the blues, cigarettes, tests, longing, loathing and this wet night in a ditch, I seem to remember your bright face smiling, beaming. Beautiful, as beautiful as anything that has crossed my path since. Much more beautiful than my mother, who was never that.

I was good before I was born, made up of all the particles from that start of the atheist universe as I was, I was as good as anything because I was anything.

Now I am bad – a butcher.

Coming back with no fear

He stole the car. He stole the car and crashed it into the fence and died and went to heaven and came back because it wasn’t his time or because there wasn’t enough room there or in the other place. Whatever the reasons he was to come back, was Tom “Bopper” Keys.

“You will find it all rather difficult I’m afraid. Going back will be confusing, but we’ve decided that, as most of this was our fault, we’re going to remove your sense of fear as a bonus”, explained his rather forlorn and embarrassed spirit guide, no name no pack drill.

“Oh, righto, no worries then, cheers”, replied Tom looking from purgatory into the world and not seeing much that surprised him, “Is it working yet?”

“No, not yet, it won’t start working until you’re back on earth.”

Boom, there he was, inside a box, under the ground, with only foetid air. He was returned again but not born again.

“Bugger it,” he considered as he began scratching languorously as his new ceiling panel, “Bugger it, this is going to take some time,” he continued.

“You’re not afraid though, are you?” Queried his spirit guide.

“No, no I’m not. Right-ho. No worries then”, and he continued to dig his way out patiently.

A sales problem

He lost her hard but all he can think is that sales are wonderful but filthy things. They are the public’s gaze made concrete. It’s getting to the sales channels that involves the grubbiness.

We are all battling for the market and battling with the stall holders and the licensors for a chance to put a For Sale sign up on a pitch, and then close it. Closing it is the game, he considers, for the artist, the car salesman, the video game maker… but not for the lover. The lover, not the fucker or the seducer. The lover.

Now, he’s given up drinking and smoking. He also appears to have given up any form of structure that could count. Where is the car? He should have remembered to pick the car up from the garage, which would have enabled him to do the grocery shopping, which would have allowed him the chance of a happy relationship. He didn’t want to go out into the humidity and the people. It’s too hot. 32 degrees or somewhere around it, and his forehead is peeling, ripping into raw shreds with the humidity.

That’s not to say that he’s not happy. He was. He is. It’s all very jolly Рand he awards himself a point for not swearing at this point. This is something else that he’s given myself: the chance to be happy by awarding himself points for easily achieved goals.

He should have picked up the car. If for nothing other than the fact that it would have got him out of the house for a few hours and he need the exercise. He see all these other people beavering around the place, getting on with things and whether or not they seem happy, at least they seem attached, or engaged or not bothered.

Their feet seem connected to the ground, their hands grip the bannisters of the stairs leading to public squares where they sit eating sandwiches and reading the papers.

Time was when this would make him feel very paranoid, as if they were doing all of that purely in order, in order to show that he wasn’t. For him, easting a sandwich in a public place was a performance. Was he eating the correct sandwich? Was he in the appropriate public place? Would the combination of food and situation look attractive enough to ensure at least one passing look that passed with a significant enough pause to mean positive contact? Or would he have got the mixture wrong, ensuring that the looks were simple, half-covered guffaws?

That was when he was earning enough money to afford the time and the sandwich let alone the vanity and the eye contact.

Now he doesn‚Äôt bother to attempt the concoction. Watching other people simply having lunch hours or park picnics doesn’t make him hate them with envy and pain. He rather likes it in fact, or at least the idea of it.

Not having to get drunk is also worth 10 points, even in the heat. Not waking up hungover and slack jawed definitely has its advantages.

He are, is, are, am, going to join a gym next week in fact, when he can get out of the house. Jemma wants him to, despite the cost… to her earnings. She’s learnt that not only will it make him feel better, it will also make him feel. She’s been through a lot coping with him coping. HIs little black dog, his trophy of specialiness has become a yappy thing to her. She should really have left him on more than one occasion. Certainly the time that he declared that he should hold on to his depression because that was him when she thought it was fast becoming the thing to have for a modern western professional. At least now that ‚ÄòStress‚Äô got fewer column inches.

People nod a great deal when you watch them through glass windows, eating outside. But he digresses.

The other time she should have walked was when, drunkenly, he threw away both the wedding bands, and “invested” their savings in yet another new computer, scanner and high-speed Internet connection in order to set-up his own design company.

This had come from visiting the MCA during some exhibition or other on some designer or other. Of course, at that particular upswing, he knew that he could do better. How diffficult could it be?

Extremely bloody hard if you have no colour sense, no contacts and only a rudimentary idea about connecting lines. Nevertheless, there was more expenditure.

He created more design theories in a three day high than any actual designs in the three month period up to and including the time that Jem sold the kit and recouped about 60 per cent of the outlay.

Theoretically he was brilliant. Practice however, meant judgement of solid creativity.

Now he’s got a cheap handheld, and the occasional job writing ad copy from the remainder or his friends.

But, yes, he digresses.

HIs weekend had been poor. Drunk on the Friday, through Saturday punctuating the slurs and falls with love cries and fights with Jemma. All of this in the house that she was trying to turn into a home.

He didn’t want to go out, and he didn’t want to stay in. He wanted to smoke dope and drink his way into a good idea or a fab