Gallie, whose blonde locks were now streaked
with auburn, was watching
Friendly Neighbours.
In his grey mood he felt sickened by the carefree,
cosy, sun-drenched families the soap portrayed
so assiduously. She seemed wrapped up in the
program as usual.
'Hi Gallie! New hairdo?' he posited.
'Hiya! Yeeeeeah. I felt like a change so I
thought I would treat myself to low-lights,'
said she, glimpsing away from the television.
'Do you like it?' she asked, when a quiet scene
arrived in the soap.
'It suits you.'
He was being sincere. He thought she looked
extremely cute with the dual-coloured hairstyle.
He wondered if she had had it done for
his
benefit.
It was eight by the time Dominic called at the
house. His appearance had changed. His bushy
hair had been trimmed back to neater proportions.
Another change to his physiognomy was even more
striking: he no longer sported his moustache.
Howard invited him in.
Karen and Steve where at some party: a pretentious,
arty party probably, thought Howard. Marlon
was invisible as usual; Greg was out with his
mates and so just the three of them were together
in the lounge. Gallie looked at Dominic with
wide-eyed, animated pleasure.
'My dear Gallie,' enthused Dominic, 'I just
love those delightful colours you have painted
into your hair. You look every bit a picture;
a ravishing oil painting!'
Dominic's praise was so effusive yet heartfelt
that Gallie gushed her thanks with not a moments
heed to the television. Howard ruefully wished
he had praised Gallie's hairstyle so effectively.
Gallie warmly returned the complement, praising
Dominic for removing his facial hair.
Howard, Gallie and Dominic sat in the living
room chatting. Howard fetched his tape player
from his room and slotted in a
Police
album. After a while he suggested they buy
vodka and strike up a party, even if there were
only three of them. A visit to the local off-licence
saw them supplied with lagers and a bottle of
Vladivich vodka.
Back at the house the conversation was lively,
with laughter and rapid changes of topic. The
bitterness of the vodka was tempered with orange
cordial and the effect of the liquor itself.
Howard felt progressively more magnanimous as
the currents of alcohol surged through his bloodstream.
The Police tape ended and Gallie slapped a Berlin
album into Howard's player.
'Most curious thing, the other day Howard said
that all the stars in the sky are dying.' Dominic
said this in a peculiarly moving way. Howard
could see that Gallie responded with a keen
intensity to this conception.
'Ahhhh! Really! How so very sad,' she said and
sighed with deep empathy, as if mourning the
fate of the stars.
'Not really,' said Howard, startled at having
his pet subject, astronomy, hijacked. 'I think
you'll find
we are dying far more quickly
then the stars. They'll be happily twinkling
away over your grave.'
'Ohhhh!'
Howard's allusion to her death seemed to prompt
Gallie to smoke another cigarette. Realising
that the box of matches on the table was depleted,
she trawled her handbag for a lighter. Dominic
noticed something and asked about it. Gallie
retrieved a small black plastic object and explained
that it was a rape alarm. She mentioned that
it was
loud. Moving a dainty finger
along the surface of the alarm towards the contact,
she warned them again of the volume.
The siren was ear-splitting. Not only was the
decibel level high, the sound was an discordant
cacophony so repulsive that Howard felt disorientated.
To his relief the noise stopped. Gallie popped
the device back into her handbag, saying that
the University were distributing the alarms
free of charge to any female student requesting
one.
'Anyone for anymore Vladivich?' said Howard
He glugged out the vodka to Gallie, Dominic
and himself and then handed round the orange
squash.
'The Russians can distinguish different types
of vodka just by looking at it. They can depict
subtle hues and colours apparently.'
'The jolly Russians must say, "
This
is undrinkable! Let's export it to England",'
laughed Dominic.
'I
doubt it Dominic,' said Howard. Suddenly
there was an edge of crabbiness to his voice,
'the stuff's distilled in a big, shitty factory
by the Redater bypass.'
Howard's intoxication did not prevent him from
being painfully aware of what had precipitated
his petulance. He was hoping to land in bed
with Gallie and - one hour into the soiree -
she was flirting with Dominic!
'Is that right? I hadn't the faintest that there's
a Redater bypass in
Russia!' said Dominic,
laughing again.
The joke was enough to detonate giggles from
Gallie. Howard rolled his eyes skywards. The
night was growing nightmarish, all the more
so because he had felt high only minutes before.
Another half an hour passed. Gallie and Dominic
were happily enfolded in each other's arms.
'You know,' said Dominic to Gallie, 'it's perfectly
incredible how you make me know all the answers
before I know the questions. I'd say you are
a crystal ball divining my soul.'
They began kissing! Howard looked on helplessly,
his face aghast and his stomach nauseated. The
full-blown horror of the situation was sinking
in fast.
Two hours later, slumped alone in his room on
his unmade bed, he sipped from the nearly depleted
Vladivich bottle. He was feeling utterly and
direly maudlin. He foully cursed the day he
had met Dominic. Gallie's room was next to
his own. Emanating from that room he heard
Gallie and Dominic's ecstatic conversation,
the excited chatter of lovers. Their laughter
made his insides coil and seeth.
He heard Gallie's door open. The lovers were
emerging. He took a swig from the bottle.
There was a knock on his door.
'Hey, Howie!' It was Dominic's voice: Dominic's
jovial, cheerful and - to his ears now
sickening
- voice. 'We're about to grill some Birdswing
French bread pizza. Would you care for a slice,
dear chap?'
'No,' said Howard. His voice was raised. 'I
think I'll stay here and tear off my toenails
with my teeth. Go away you...
you -'
'Ohhhh, do come, Howie dear!' It was Gallie.
Even now her voice was sweet. 'Pleeeeease come
and join us!'
Howard pondered the cruel,
cruel irony
of that last request. He almost melted upon
hearing Gallie's words. He knew now he
loved
her.
'No, I'm not hungry. Sod
off!'
With deepening agony, he punched his mattress
and screwed up his face like a child. He determined
to try to love her no longer.
***
*****
***
The following morning Howard was rudely awoken
at eight by the thundering of Greg staggering
up the stairs to his attic room. Uneven, elephantine
footsteps stomped overhead, followed by the
thump of a weighty body dropping to the floor;
and then the house was still once more. Howard's
head ached harshly, his dry mouth tasted foul
and he felt
bad: a noxious depression
of hurt, guilt and rage. Unable to slumber,
he hauled himself out of bed. The University
timetable had vindictively thrown up a lecture
at nine. He already knew he loathed that lecture.
He felt sick.
'
Gallie! Dominic! Oh
no! Oh
my God!' he croaked.
The awful reality began to hit home. He shuddered
at blurry recollections of the night before.
He cursed repeatedly and exasperatedly.
It was excruciating to admit that at that very
moment, Gallie was almost certainly snug under
a warm duvet, cuddling Dominic - Dominic, his
school friend, her
boyfriend!
He put his hand to his head and looked blearily
at the mirror screwed to the wardrobe door.
He pulled anguished faces in it.
Cursing as he went, he trudged downstairs to
the bathroom and gurned miserably in mirror
whilst scraping his painful razor over his face.
Once dressed, he walked up to the television
in the lounge and turned the dial that switched
the ageing device on and rotated it to increase
the volume. In his temper, he turned the dial
too far. He reversed the rotation and the dial
detached in his hand. The television displayed
the primary colours of Breakfast TV to deafening
sound. Cursing, he reached to the small plastic
stick that poked out of the television where
the dial had been fastened and turned down the
sound. The television served to provide a distracting
medley of background clamour.
Any distraction
was welcome. He glanced at the little round
blue clock in the bottom corner of the screen.
It came as no surprise to discover the kitchen
sink was full of grotty washing up semi-submerged
in greasy water. One of the taps was trickling
a smooth line of water into the ooze. He found
an unsatisfactory but clean plastic container
in a cupboard and filled it with water. His
mouth was carpet dry. He still felt intoxicated,
not high - the opposite - rather he felt unbalanced.
He made toast under the grill and smeared marmalade
on it, adding to the proliferation of crumbs
on the kitchen surfaces.
He tried to read the previous day's paper for
a few minutes. Then he grabbed a pen and a
pad of paper and made his way, step by wearisome
step, to the university.
Many other students trod the streets towards
various nine o'clock lectures. Feeling groggy,
he agonised on how Gallie and Dominic had hit
it off.
Was that her?
He squinted across the street at a blonde girl,
of a similar shape to Gallie, whose face was
hidden from him. He walked directly into the
steel post of a
No Parking sign. He
recoiled. He cursed. The physical pain of colliding
with the pole was intense. It was soon complemented
by the humiliating sound of girls in fits of
giggles behind him. In his concussed state of
dazed and indignant fury, he looked straight
ahead and continued his trek, acting as if nothing
had happened.
He had been mistaken. The girl he had taken
to be Gallie, with such disastrous results,
was not. His skull reverberated like a callous
bell. He tentatively felt the burgeoning lump
on his forehead. His headache amplified. He
felt as if his guts were screwed up into some
infernal knot. He cursed under his breath.
He attended a mathematics lecture. He found
that he was struggling to understand what was
being said. He copied down a stream of baffling
equations from the board, catching snippets
of the lecturer's explanations as he did so.
He began to seriously regret joining the course
late. Missing the first few weeks had deprived
him of much of the context of what was being
discussed. The equations that were scribbled
on the board looked beautiful to his eyes.
The mathematics seemed almost hieroglyphic with
their long integral
S's, the
sigmas,
the
d's, the
x's and the
y's.
His unfocussed grasp of what the equations represented
only added an air of enigma to their symbolism.
Yet his inability to concentrate upon or comprehend
the lecture added a new dimension to his feelings
of anguish.
After a burger and chips canteen lunch with
a couple of his course mates, Howard registered
financially and academically for his course
with the University and claimed housing benefit
at the DHSS welfare office in the town centre.
He took a shortcut down a sloping side street
towards the bus station. He passed an obese
woman who waved a red handbag and shouted, "
Jesus
loves you!".
Shortly afterwards he was overtaken by a sprinting
man. Further down the hill was a tall, gaunt
man dressed in black and sporting a strange,
white haircut. Howard paused. It was Drijk!
As the sprinting man passed him, Drijk flicked
out a foot. The man dived through the air and
crashed heavily to the ground.
The obese woman hollered hysterically as she
waddled past Howard towards Drijk and the stricken
man. Howard took cover behind a tree and looked
on.
'That's not nice!' screamed the woman, 'Jesus
saw that! Let he that hath no sin cast
the first st-'
Drijk kicked the writhing, prone figure in the
head. He lay still.
'I am
Lucifer! So fuck off,' declared
Drijk in unfeasibly low growl.
He spat and contemptuously threw the screaming
woman a red handbag that resembled the one Howard
had seen her holding earlier. She clutched it
to her colossal chest. Drijk turned and walked
calmly away. The woman crossed herself manically,
shook her head and knelt over the motionless
body.
Howard turned and nervously retraced his steps
back up the hill.
 | | | | |
| From: |
call me Ishmael | Subject: | 2001-10-15 07:38:46 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-11-02 10:09:08 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-11-02 10:15:55 |
| | | | |
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