The Hat-Stand Union Read online

  I might go bowling later, he said. His breeziness destroyed me.

  I came back to the bridge, Constantine.

  Do you remember that student play we did?

  I was your muse and you were my chiselled visionary.

  You refused to use the zoom button on the camcorder,

  I believed we were making history. Now you work in Cineworld

  and I am a seagull – no – no, I am an actress.

  But the art we made, Constantine, it was so gritty, it was so real:

  ‘I worked as an ’ooker daan the East End, me lovelies,

  it’s an ’ard life being an ’ooker ’cause punters sometaans

  dan’t pay up then who ’as to foot the bill to the ald pimp?

  Muggins ’ere. How else cauld me gets ma ’eroin

  to inject into me veins? Can’t complain tho.

  Where’s me burger and chips?

  Where’s me copy of the Sun?’

  I can do it now, Constantine, I can act.

  Before, my accent was vulgar and stereotyped

  but now my hands move fluidly and I flex her pain

  through the muscles of my past. Is Trigorin here still?

  Has he not gone bowling yet? I love him, Constantine,

  I love him more than I used to. An idea for a short story.

  There is a hole in the air. A small, perfect hole

  in the air and the whole sky is cracked around it.

  The gunshot noise came later, in memory. I was

  already miles away, getting into character

  for tomorrow. I was holding a packet of polo mints

  between two fingers, puffing out cold breath, pretending

  I was Lauren Bacall, smoking a Vogue.

  Who gives a rat’s ass about our creativity now? Curse

  the lot of them. My boy is dead from love of me.

  I am mad for love of someone else. Someone else

  is forever enthralled by what’s-her-face who plays

  that Russian bird in Coronation Street.

  Mea culpa, Constantine. Under the sapphire moon,

  there will always be poets with throbbing notebooks

  looking for Juliets with pharmaceutical party bags,

  Ophelias in tie-dye tourniquets. Lucrative business –

  tragic women. I could have been Portia or Beatrice.

  I could have been the eldest of the Mundy sisters

  in Dancing at Lughnasa, scattering chicken-feed

  on the west coast of Donegal.

  The Dry Well

  In the dry light of morning, I return to the well.

  You think you know the outcome of this story.

  Sunshine is a naked, roaming thing like hurt.

  A well is a chance embedded in the ground.

  The well was dry yesterday and the day before.

  You think you know the lot about sunshine –

  an early bird knows sod all about perseverance.

  Good people, you lay down your curling souls

  on the dust and surrender. I swing my bucket.

  If the well is dry today I will come back tomorrow.

  A Dialogue between Artist and Muse

  John Donne A fly is a more noble creature than the sunne,

  because a fly hath life and the sunne hath not

  A fly I find you extremely patronising

  Hey Las Vegas

  Hey Las Vegas, can nothing save us

  from you? Hey bottle-bins and Tesco Metro,

  Monday yawnings, flu symptoms, the station pub

  at Waterloo. You’re all Las Vegas

  and I’m hooked on you.

  Hey Las Vegas, you’re a cheeky sausage

  aren’t you? Swapping my lovers while I’m under

  the covers watching their tattoo change. Kisses begun

  in the city of sin – be it York or Durham –

  taste of you, Las Vegas.

  Hey Las Vegas, can a Yorkshire lass match

  her drinks with you? I built a bedroom casino,

  bet my hotel Bible and lost a week. Just one, Las Vegas,

  pinch of comatose, powder up the nose

  and I’m a queen for you.

  Hey Las Vegas, I wore my Elvis costume

  for you, a curtsey in Wetherspoons from muscle

  cramp: your promise, like a flung bouquet

  off Humber Bridge, to break my fall

  Las Vegas, like the A63.

  Genesis

  The people from the London suburbs don’t believe in God.

  We read books about slavery on American soil and relate

  to the need for mental escape and concur that the homeless

  get a raw deal and the kids in the state schools should get bikes,

  free bikes or free books or something and we fall in love

  pragmatically and suffer consequences like we pay our taxes

  and everybody knows how a therapist makes his money.

  The people from the British library don’t believe in fate.

  We drink coffee at the end of meals and sigh for the economy

  and we cut ourselves in high school but now we have more dignity

  and liberal education has airy-fairy elements and the newspapers

  are wrong and vivid imaginations write ‘Where am I?’

  on Ouija boards.

  The people from the West End theatres don’t believe in heaven.

  We eat bagels with smoked salmon and smoke electric cigarettes

  and the afterlife is something cavemen invented to make sense

  of death and we drive cars that are too big for us and everyone

  gets divorced and we criticise each other’s choices when we love

  with all our hearts.

  The people from the Oxford drinking establishments don’t believe in ghosts.

  We drink mulled wine at Christmas and Dickens

  was sentimental and no one gets this far without a square set

  of shoulders and pharmaceutical companies created our dysfunctions

  and we could think our way out of a genocide situation and we

  prove this every day in the darkness of our studies.

  The people from the half-bought houses don’t believe in karma.

  We play tennis with tanned arms and come out to our parents and

  wait for the backlash and never wear the same t-shirt twice

  and apply for jobs we won’t enjoy and have sex with our eyes open

  and carry burning debts of duty and care about the war

  occurring in our partners’ heads.

  The people from the city side of the river don’t believe in elves.

  We count to ten before we explode and observe the red axes

  in the big glass cabinets that say ‘break in case of emergency’

  and we walk over wrought-iron bridges with little briefcases and

  we never think about skipping and we keep our chins up

  without the help of buttercups.

  9 Possible Reasons for Throwing a Cat into a Wheelie Bin

  The RSPCA has said it will be speaking to a woman caught on CCTV dumping a cat into a wheelie bin in Coventry – BBC News

  1) You mistook the cat for a crisp packet.

  2) You believe the cat spoke to you and requested a lift to the inside of the wheelie bin.

  3) You mistook the wheelie bin for a house.

  4) You wanted the cat to relate to your own suffering.

  5) The cat was on fire.

  6) The wheelie bin was full of cream.

  7) Your mother was a cat-lover and she hated you.

  8) The owner of the cat put your child in a wheelie bin.

  9) The cat was planning to steal your husband.

  Day Room

  Some crazy people believe they are Napoleon.

  I am Alexander I of Russia, enthralled by Napoleon.

  I declared, somewhat tardily, ‘We can no longer reign together!’

  after my sma
ll friend invaded me in 1812.

  You think I’m joking.

  Lip-chewing Meg is deluded about being Napoleon

  but I am Alexander I of Russia, betrayed, muddled, conflicted.

  This is not a metaphor. From my football coach

  I learnt Rousseau’s gospel of humanity, from my babysitter

  I learnt the traditions of Russian autocracy and when I said

  ‘The limits of liberty are the principles of order,’

  what I really meant to say was:

  I give up.

  I’m taking my dying empress for a change of air.

  Faith

  The atheist is good in bed and debates.

  Jacuzzis make the atheist uncomfortable, their public bubbles.

  Numbers feel more theatrical around the atheist, listen:

  TWO THOUSAND AND TWO.

  ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE. We sleep

  as if our bodies are bound together with electric cables.

  The Christian purifies me much like Klonopin

  (or watching a large man ride a tricycle),

  plays Spanish guitar with bleeding fingers

  and we sleep as if we are hiding beneath a train.

  I don’t want to talk about the agnostic.

  This game is dangerous and, anyway, I can’t be bothered.

  Like a wasp, the agnostic is surrounded

  by dying comrades. Hospital beds and normal beds

  all travel in the same direction, lugging our mothers

  like rolls of Turkish carpet on their backs.

  The agnostic lets me bitch about the atheist and the Christian.

  We sleep as if we are alone.

  ‘Do you think you’re God?’ the agnostic asked me once,

  ‘You swallow pebbles to make your body lighter.

  Someone lends you five pence and you fall in love.

  You’re like a medieval beggar without legs

  pulled along in the dirt by your own needy smile.’

  Maybe the agnostic didn’t say that.

  Let me sit for a minute quietly and gather my thoughts.

  Dolores

  Handfast on my other hand, it was

  a sad and sinless way strung with

  star-proof mirrors: I touched

  no one and only a few touched me.

  ‘Come on!’ screamed the mistress and redoubled

  her perfume. She was not prepared to rest

  her forehead any longer on that kettledrum,

  not unless you popped a tasty deathworm

  in her tequila.

  ‘I miss the way I used to call the shots around here,’

  the first line of the ant-farm anthem.

  ‘Arghhh,’ I said, accidentally out loud

  and the fair vast head of love

  denied my feast-day.

  There Once Was A Boy Named Bosh

  There once was a boy named Bosh

  who had a Shallow family. Daddy

  Shallow dealt in motorcars, his favourite

  word was ‘repercussion’ and he always

  kept Mother Shallow in pocket if not

  in peace. She was a narcissist who’d

  perfected the wilting flower. Doctor

  Shallow gave her pills for her nerves.

  ‘We all have nerves,’ said Bosh, but

  Brother Shallow was found hanging

  in the attic like an off light-bulb so

  Grandma Shallow did the cooking

  and Shallow neighbours constructed car-pools

  to get Bosh to school. Teacher Shallow

  collected money for nearly-dead children

  in hot places and Bosh was supposed to

  say a little something in assembly but

  Brother Shallow was all-the-way dead

  and where’s his money? The Shallow girls

  found Bosh mean and sexy when he got

  blind with self-loathing. Mother Shallow

  said, ‘Why can’t you play football?’ because

  she only cared about external achievements

  and Daddy Shallow polished himself in his

  dark Mercedes. ‘It’s like they are zombies,’

  Bosh thought, ‘Who don’t have any blood:

  eating their McDonald’s onion rings, telling

  me they’re hurting too,’ so Bosh started

  drinking lots and lots of beer and whisky

  like an adult does when he loses something

  big like a poker game or a piece of paper

  with a number on it. ‘My Shallow family

  are so Shallow,’ Bosh said, ‘they probably

  wouldn’t notice if I was hanged too,’ and

  Bosh was wrong about this, but Bosh put

  a dressing gown cord round his neck as

  Daddy Shallow watched American Beauty

  downstairs and Sister Shallow swallowed

  leeches in her bedroom to get skinny and

  Mummy Shallow wrote in her pink leather diary.

  Thoughts inside a Head inside a Kennel inside a Church

  I had become increasingly

  suspicious of those around me

  especially after the kidnap attempt

  and two masked soldiers raided my house.

  I hid in the grandfather clock.

  People noticed my language was no longer

  one with the peacemaker of Europe.

  I’d become addicted to my paramour’s story,

  I had specialist books out:

  What My Paramour Thinks About So-called Liberal Reforms.

  The Ninety-Nine Sleeping Positions of My Paramour (with Diagrams).

  Instructions My Paramour Feels Your Dog Would Obey.

  I couldn’t smoke a cigarette

  without apologising to the walls.

  My friend set me up with sandwiches,

  a flask of sugary tea

  and helped me build the kennel:

  ‘There is nothing more relaxed, more tranquil

  than living alone in a kennel in a church.’

  No more kidnapping scares

  nor menacing phone calls. No unmarked jeeps

  waiting in the street. I didn’t receive

  a Valentine’s card saying ‘no one likes you, love from us all’.

  I couldn’t stand up straight

  due to the low roof. I’d run out of toffees

  and what with no TV,

  no Travel Scrabble, no rowing machine,

  there was literally nothing to do

  but pray.

  The Only People in Paradise

  Yours are the victories of light: your feet

  Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet:

  But after warfare in a mourning gloom,

  I rest in clouds of doom.

  from ‘Mystic and Cavalier’ by Lionel Johnson

  I’ll have a laugh with Lionel Johnson in heaven

  staying up to praise the plaintive asylum burning

  in the first mellow bars of light. What a lovely way

  to spend an afterlife, watching dark angels go by,

  two players lounging by the ruinous church door.

  I’ll say hey Lionel, recognise these visions?

  On earth, you made doom verse out of them.

  Who knew, crunchy and delicious, they’d be

  a tree of innocence with ashen apples on it?

  And at the silent disco on Friday night, we’ll whisper

  ‘D.J. please… Drop. The. Beat’, as the Fire Girls snake

  the Twist o Flex of the Seraph, and Oliver Reed gets drunk.

  Fantasy Role-Play

  You had two children. They were present, like crickets,

  too young to do anything but lie there and feel.

  Your husband was a reactive blink to an inappropriate comment.

  Your house was the shape of a lucky horse-shoe.

  There were archways and guard dogs and roses. ‘I love you,’ I said

  as you
closed the door, screamed, opened it again, then silently

  packed little Lionel and Greta into my car, stuffed your satchel

  with apples from the tree you were married under

  and got into the passenger seat.

  We listened to ‘Dig a Pony’ by the Beatles

  and sang, ‘She can penetrate any place she goes!’

  while the kids played rock-paper-scissors in the back.

  You wouldn’t let me kiss you for the first two weeks.

  I had to wear a plastic Spider-Man mask.

  One day, we were sitting in the Black Magic bar

  of the Dawdle Bug hotel, wondering how to get

  Lionel and Greta into private school. You looked so beautiful

  drinking a pint of soda water with your big gloves on.

  I said, ‘Do you regret dropping your husband like that?

  Leaving your perfect life? Sleeping on the road?’

  ‘My name is Marcella,’ you said,

  ‘I worked as a maid in the Jeffersons’ household.

  The woman you loved was a cold and passive mother

  and her husband was needy, disloyal and collapsible.

  They were always fighting, throwing plates, cleaning products, fridges

  at each other, mushing Lionel’s face into his broccoli,

  shunting Greta around like a mini vacuum cleaner.

  When you arrived, I saw the chance to give them a better life.’

  ‘Do you really think I can give you a better life?’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ said Marcella the maid, ‘Lionel and Greta