And over all the days and months and years we kept our goings and comings at a fair steady old rhythm.
And that hunger that came on us at times we sated with the flesh of one another.
And even when that wore off of us there was always the nearness and the certainty of one another.
And as sure as God and as sure as I’m sitting here I gave my life to her and never taught myself a thing outside or above what was needed to keep her business going and her books balanced for fear at all she’d someday up sticks and leave me.
And even my own father when he was old and faced with his end said Gor, you know, I wonder would it have been as well had I left you off that time to work with my cousin in the demolition beyond abroad the way you’d have seen something or done something, maybe.
And I took his hand and squeezed it the way I never once had when he was in his health and said No, Daddy, I was as happy here.
But happy I’ll never again be, I’d say. She’s gone from me now and for a finish and for good and for glory and I won’t see her again. And the shop and the petrol pumps and the bungalow and the bit of money that was put away all along the years is belonging now to some nephew or other from above in the north that never in all his days set foot in this village and he wants to know will I stay on the way I can keep a good eye on things for him and I think I won’t, I won’t I’d say. I’ll finish up this pint and go home and take off this tie that has me choked all day and tomorrow or the day after maybe I’ll walk up to the Height where she asked to be buried, God alone knows why because there’s no one here only me that’ll ever lay a flower on her grave or pull a weed from it.
And I’ll stand and say a prayer and before I turn from her I’ll say Sorry, Busty, for the time I told you to go way and fuck yourself, the way I should have that time years ago when I stood unrepentant before her in her dark kitchen.
Ragnarok
THE UNIVERSE WAS once a dot, laden with the weight of everything that ever would be.
A man in a nylon shirt and unforgivable shoes came here a few days ago. You can’t have four hundred students, he said. In a school with two classrooms? I uttered phrases and words strung with mumbles: short semesters, intensive modules, research courses, distance learning, assignments, assessments, awards. And on and on I went, punctuating my litany with hard sucks on my inhaler, coughs and wheezes and dissembling and obfuscation. I was fabulous. He poked his narrow nose into each room of this place. Suramon sat dutifully at his teacher’s desk, facing the ranks of his invisible class. Where are your students? the poorly heeled fellow asked him. They are not here, Suramon replied, gesturing grandly at emptiness before clasping his hands tightly together on his desk. Where are they? the fellow asked again. A pen had leaked in his shirt pocket. I do not know, Suramon replied, his brown eyes twinkling as they lighted on the inky haemorrhage. Perhaps you have frightened them away.
He insisted I desisted. All scholarly activity was to cease. Pending the outcome of an investigation. I hadn’t realized, I told him, that an investigation had commenced. The students were put on notice. I had a letter issued immediately to each and every one of them, to the addresses they had supplied to us at enrolment. Agata huffed and whined and pursed her heartbreaking lips. There was shuffling and banging and shouting from downstairs yesterday, raised voices, screams even. I plugged my headphones into my record player, and reclined, and listened to Olaf Aaberg singing about Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods. Olaf the Giant. Beautiful Olaf. He choked on a fishbone in a restaurant in Oslo. Ten stout men bore his pall to the flames.
A long man shouting short sentences burst in here this morning. He had men to pay. Kids to feed. He wanted what was owed to him. I felt sad for him. I told him I knew how he felt. I tried to placate him but he wouldn’t stop shouting so I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and alternated a low hum with a loud lalalalalalala. When I opened my eyes again he was sitting silent and wide-eyed, unblinking and red. He was a rugby player once, I’m fairly sure. Thickly handsome. A backward forward. Jesus, he said, and shook his head, and hulked away. He left some papers on my desk. I haven’t touched them yet. I admonished Agata for letting him in. Sorry, she said. She’s very beautiful and so I forgave her. I forgive you, I told her. Oh, okay, she said, and rolled her ice-blue eyes away from me, towards heaven, and back to her magazine.
Some manner of navvy rolled in an hour or so ago. I spotted him as he skidded to a stop, lengthways across two wheelchair spaces. DENIS O’SULLIVAN BUILDING CONTRACTOR it said on the side of his van. I rang down to Agata and said under no circumstances was she to buzz him in. I am not a stupid, she said. I watched through my privacy glass as he stood roaring at the door, stabbing the buzzer. Eventually he seemed to tire and crumple; his chin dropped chestward and he was silent and still except for a slow, rhythmic shaking of his head and a corresponding hunching and dropping of his broad shoulders. He pulled the windscreen wipers from a Mercedes that he must have supposed was mine before he left. I don’t know whose it really is. One of those chaps from the auditors next door, I suppose. A pair of bored and oily men came to the house for my car weeks ago. They attached a hook and chain to it and dragged it onto their truck-bed. Olive cried and hid from the neighbours. I’ve been driving her Micra since. It’s a slow and uncomplicated little thing. Just like Olive.
Another breaking voice on the phone. Something about the apartments we were building. Who’s we? Me and my echo. Me and my impatient ghost. I am a director of seven companies. I can’t remember all their names. Workers protesting, occupying the sites. Union goons on colliding warpaths. Subcontractors suing. All the pies my fingers were in are stale and crumbling. But still my fingers won’t come out. Something else about the horse. Lame, or dead. Olive’s voice on the phone, tear-strangled and shrill. Something else about our daughter, or our son, or a credit limit reached, or breached, or rescinded. Agata swept in and brought clarity with her. She hasn’t smiled at me in weeks. There’s a light I can move towards: a smile from her. I took four folded fifties from my wallet for her weekly ‘expenses’ and watched her perfect closed face as I handed them to her and she glanced at them and secreted them fluidly in some dark delicious fold. I ache to follow the money in there, to hide in the hills and valleys of her. Busy, busy, she said. Yes, I agreed, happily abetting her lie. She pierced me with a sigh and left, taking a random folder with her.
Pyrite, someone was saying just then. I’m not sure exactly when. Blocks crumbling like Weetabix. Class action. There was something on the radio about this the other day but Olive’s stereo emits mostly static since she left her aerial up in the carwash. Thank God, I thought, we escaped that one, at least. Now here it is, joining with the others at the mouth of my cave. A pack of red-eyed fang-bared beasts, sensing my weakening, slavering, waiting for my fire to die so that they can enter and devour me flesh and bone. Agata will tend the flames and hold them at bay. Until the firing runs out. I haven’t many fifties left.