Snap Shots

by Alan Blackwood

  One quick glance was enough to tell us that we ticked every box, looks, demeanour, personality, sensuality, ten out of ten. The yin and the yang of two people trapped in the sanitised white light of the tube train and in such a state of shocked recognition that we dared not look again, nor hardly move, nor breathe.

  Warren Street, Goodge Street. Supposing one of us got up to go? Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square. How long could this go on, this bubble of enchantment while the rest of the world came and went all around us?

  Waterloo, the bubble burst and we both jumped up like a pair of marionettes. She stood waiting by the doors, her back half turned to me, and if I’d reached out and touched her we’d have blown every fuse from High Barnet to Morden.

  Down onto the platform, up the steps, along the winding corridor, onto the escalator.

  The milling crowd at the top.

  Black Coffee

  Edith said she could tell everything about a person by their handwriting. Look at mine. Those big pendulous loops told her I had a wild imagination. They were something she’d like to discuss at this international symposium on handwriting and would I go as her guest.

  You couldn’t make it up, I thought, gazing through the window of Tonopah Joe’s Truck Stop, where we took a break on the long drive back to the airport. Cinder-grey hills ringed the horizon, dust devils spun in the air, and a heap of rocks, smoothed and polished by sand and wind, now roasted under the noonday sun like giant coffee beans.

  And what of Tonopah Joe, a dwarf in baseball cap, orange sweatshirt, tartan shorts and sneakers, or a Nibelung of the Wild West who crept out at night to chip away at those fabulous beans.

  Edith took a sip of the hot black brew in her cup. ‘Good coffee,’ she said.

  ‘The best,’ I agreed.

  Creepy Crawlies

  ‘Don’t the females eat their mates?’ asked a young man with acne and a squint.

  ‘Sometimes, Derek.’ Kate’s hands were full with Judy from Trinidad, a large lady with eight legs dangling like hairy fingers. Open Day at the Insect House, though as Kate reminded us, spiders are arachnids not insects.

  So what of this arachnophobia, this primal horror lodged so deep in our collective unconscious? Hard to say, with the tiny money spider and her promise of good luck. Easier to understand with the kind we sometimes find in the bath or kitchen sink. Bloated grey bellies suspended between eight long segmented legs and a manic turn of speed, when not spinning cocoons in dark corners, waiting motionless, eyes unblinking, for the moment to pounce and bite and paralyse and gorge.

  Kate placed Judy back in her glass case, her tropic enclave, where Derek could take a closer look. With his squint how many legs could he count on her? Sixteen?

  Try him with a millipede.

  Heavens Above

  Under the anodyne white light of the chapel, electronic organ music oozed from somewhere and mum’s coffin moved slowly towards the curtains at the back. She believed that when she died she’d go straight to heaven and into the arms of Jesus. The vicar had just said so too.

  So what about the Bible and the Creed? They spoke of a Judgement Day when Christ would return in glory to call us back from the grave and admit us to heaven or cast us into hell. And where would that leave my mum’s small heap of ashes? Once you started, the doubts, the questions, just kept on coming.

  Afterwards, I thanked the vicar and shook his hand. What did he really think and believe? He’d been doing it for so long maybe he didn’t care any more. Let him get home to his tea.

  And let my mum rest in the arms of Jesus. Or whatever.

  Delhi Belly

  ‘Monsoon?’ Geraldine scoffed. ‘Rubbish!’ Okay, but with the sound of that rain I could hardly think to play Scrabble. ‘Otiose?’ she snapped. ‘That’s not a word!’

  She’d invited me on one of her trips buying gems and jewellery for her boutique. We’d stay with Florrie and have such fun.

  ‘What about a drink?’ The chink of ice in Geraldine’s glass was half the fun. Fine, those ice cubes from the kitchen freezer should keep her happy. Scotch on the rocks for one.

  ‘Poor lassie,’ Florrie said in the morning as we watched the ambulance depart. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing I gave you.’ Florrie lit another cigarette from the stub of the old, the last gasp of the Raj, and clapped her hands at a fat old crow perched on the window sill. They helped to keep down the cockroaches. This one dipped a wing as it took off, a bellyful of cockroach.

  The aircraft dipped a wing over the fuzz of lights below. ‘Drink, sir?’

  ‘A whisky and soda perhaps.’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Yule Tide

  In the fading light of day, seagulls flapped and squabbled and churned up the water in a large rock pool. They didn’t know how lucky they were.

  Back in the darkened car park, fairy lights from a dozen windows winked and blinked at us with a clockwork apathy.

  ‘Think of them in there,’ I said to Jennie. ‘Half past three in the afternoon, hot, bloated, fartless, the Queen on the telly, a row in the kitchen.’ I turned the key in the ignition. ‘I know, I’ve been through a few of ’em.’

  Not any more. A bracing walk by the sea and back to smoked salmon, lightly steamed potatoes and asparagus, lemon sorbet, and a nicely chilled bottle of bubbly.

  ‘Hungry?’ I asked, as we breezed along, just before the engine coughed, spluttered and died. I wrenched on the hand brake as the first gust of wind and rain came out of black night.

  Jennie pointed to the fuel gauge. Empty. ‘When,’ she asked, ‘shall I open the champers?’

  Half Cut

  ‘Can you take over for a minute?’ he begged. At the corner of the alley, in grubby vest and shorts, Julian was down on his hands and knees, gripping a pair of scissors.

  He rented a studio in his friend Yvonne’s house. She’d gone away for the weekend, leaving him with instructions to feed her prize Burmese cat Mistinguett. The latter was on heat, and when she started her infernal caterwauling, Julian threw her out. Come Monday morning, he was crawling round the village trying to lure her back home, making the sound that Yvonne made with her scissors as she cut up little slices of fish for Mistinguett.

  Right now you’d never guess that Julian’s paintings sold for mega bucks in Paris, London and New York. If I found Mistinguett perhaps he’d give me one. And perhaps he wouldn’t, by lunchtime back at the Bar du Chateau and on his fifth pastis.

  I turned the corner. ‘All right,’ he bawled, ‘go fuck yourself!’

  Snip snip.

  Old Pal

  He made me think of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis with his long pointed snout and pointed ears. But Miriam named him Pal on account of the tins of dog food she bought him together with a bowl. He’d come sniffing around on our first day at the beach and he’d filled out nicely in the last few days. And while Debbie and I frolicked in the sea, Miriam sat on the beach in her spot of shade, plump legs stuck out, red where the sun had briefly touched them, with Pal by her side.

  Night came quickly in those latitudes. Across the Bay, the darkening outline of Basse Terre ended with the blip of one small island, and back on the beach Pal was settling down next to his bowl. He’d be waiting in the morning.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Debbie called to her sister. ‘We’ve still got all the packing to do.’ We were off again first thing tomorrow.

  I pressed Miriam’s hand and whispered, ‘He’ll be alright.’

  En Vacances

  Swifts and swallows crowned brightest day with little shrieks of joy as we drove through Pont Saint Esprit, Bridge of the Holy Spirit. Dora clapped her hands. ‘What a lovely name, dear!’ Reg swiped at a fly.

  Auntie Dora and Uncle Reg, who used to send me socks for Christmas. I hardly remembered them but they’d remembered me, or Dora had. Now on a coach tour and with a few
hours to spare they’d dug me out. I’d better take them somewhere.

  ‘Take your cap off, dear!’ In the gloom of the chapel, painted columns rose to a vaulted ceiling of midnight blue patterned with stars, and candles flickered before the statue of the Virgin.

  ‘It’s all so lovely.’ Dora reached for my hand and whispered, ‘Thank you for taking us out like this. Reg doesn’t say much, but I know he’s loving it too.’

  Back in the car, cap back on and nose starting to peel, Reg swiped at a fly.

  Time Check

  We sat for a moment, still trying to get our heads around it.

  All of fifty years since we’d parted. Either of us could have been anywhere. Yet there we were, in the same compartment of the same tube train on the same day of the year. Millions to one against, must be.

  ‘Did you know it was me?’ she asked, as we toyed with the coffee that neither of us wanted.

  ‘Yes.’ Grey-haired and wrinkled now, but the same girl forever and a day.

  ‘How are you anyway?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘And you.’

  We looked out the cafe window, anywhere but at each other. The chasm of time was too great to span.

  ‘Still working hard?’

  ‘On and off.’ I glanced at my watch.

  ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Another silence, as heavy as uranium, then with a scrape of chairs we both got up.

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘No, let me.’

  Command Performance

  It was quite a shock to see Bob’s face staring back at me from a page of the newspaper. For years, he’d been squatting outside the bank, strategically placed for a handout, and when I dropped a few coins in his cap he always had a cheerful word for me, while Sam nuzzled his cold wet nose into my hand.

  So what had Bob done to attract this sudden fame? He’d been convicted of begging while living off benefits in a smart council house.

  Okay, he’d sucked me in, but it was a good performance, out there with Sam under a dirty old blanket, come rain come shine, half starved, chewing on a bun, with the dregs of cold tea in a plastic cup, before going home to champagne and caviar, or something of the sort.

  And something in between, I’d say, where he’d gone to stay for a while as a guest of Her Majesty.

  Though Sam hadn’t been invited.

  Water Sports

  Millicent screamed. She’d disturbed a tarantula spider under a piece of wood, not some tropical monster but the real thing, native to the Midi, though still of a healthy size.

  Always something up with Millicent. She wanted to work up a tan, so here we were, among the dry stone terraces, the parched rows of lavender and withered vines, the dead and dying almond trees, cracked and twisted under the weight of heat, the abandoned farmhouses, when the land got too hard to work.

  But wait. Close by one of them, a pair of wooden shutters set into the hillside opened upon a large cistern of crystal clear water. I could have jumped straight in. Just don’t let those shutters close on you again. Nothing to cling onto in there, no one to hear you, no one to know, up there in the lonely sun-baked hills.

  Her face now a lobster red, Millicent kicked at the empty water bottle.

  I beckoned. ‘Come over here and take a dip.’

  Red Alert

  Herpes Zoster isn’t the name of some ancient fire god, it’s shingles, though the pain is like being burnt alive.

  ‘Oh! You poor boy!’ Rosalind said. ‘You should be home in bed.’ I know, but she wasn’t there to tuck me in, which is why I brought my next lot of copy to their offices, just to see her.

  Not for long. The red light by her phone flashed angrily. Rosalind grabbed pen and paper and rushed into Toby’s office. He’d bawled and bullied his way to the top of the magazine business and couldn’t stop now. That wasn’t all.

  The shame and the humiliation, her weekly date with Toby, the hotel dinner and after, then to shout at her like that, for everyone to hear.

  Back at her desk, Rosalind made a big thing of blowing her nose and tried a brave little smile. ‘We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?’

  Yes, and why couldn’t we have had a go? At least I’d still be there when she woke up.

  Travelling Light

  He lurched down the aisle of the compartment, unwashed, unshaven, clutching a black plastic bin bag and gripping under one sweaty armpit a small dog with a piece of string tied round its neck in place of a lead.

  We cringed as he passed by, and heaved a sigh of relief when he found a seat, shoved the dog between his feet and began to rummage around in the bag, creating plenty of space for himself

  The train meantime had gathered speed, leaning into the track as it followed the broad silvery curve of the river and flooding the compartment with light. Gone was the watercolour world of meadow, wood and stream. The sun now ruled from a cloudless sky over vineyard and orchard, pine and cypress and dusty olive grove.

  Closer to hand, eyes closed to the sway and rhythm of the train, one small dog was cradled in his master’s arms.

  The world on a string.

  French Kiss

  ‘The girl in the boulangerie is quite nice,’ Gordon muttered.

  I’m surprised he’d noticed. He was out of his house, round the shops and back again before you could say, ‘Bonjour’. What had induced him, a solitary bachelor, to move abroad and to our village in the first place? He couldn’t speak a word of the language, and those stacks of coins by his window weren’t the hoard of a miserly Scotsman. They were the change from his shopping he didn’t know what to do with.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ I replied. ‘She was asking about you.’

  Gordon turned an incandescent red beneath his Caledonian whiskers. He swilled the wine round his glass. He put it to his nose. ‘I fear,’ he stuttered in his confusion, ‘it is still a little t-too young.’

  Speaking of age, girl was pushing it. She’d been around, and handling those baguettes, still warm from the oven, probably turned her on.

  ‘Shall I give her your love?’ I asked. ‘And kisses?’

  Lost Lady

  ‘Excuse me.’ She sat on a low garden wall with her shopping bag. The voice was as fragile as the rest of her. ‘Do you know where we are? I’ve forgotten.’

  I waved a hand. ‘Do you recognise any of this?’

  She shook her head, then raised her own thin, blue-veined hand against the sun. ‘I say, isn’t that a beautiful rose!’

  The creamy white bloom was tinged with crimson, a floral menstruation. ‘Yes, and just down the road there’s a bush of lavender. I love watching the bees, especially the bumble bees, buzzing and bobbing from flower to flower.’

  ‘I can see,’ she said, ‘you haven’t lost your sense of wonder. You must be a happy man.’

  I shook my head too. ‘The more you think and see and feel, the more you can get hurt.’

  ‘All the same, talking to you has made me feel so much better!’

  I smiled. ‘Me too.’

  The trouble with conversations is that you easily forget what started them.

  Smoke Signals

  That boulder must be a meteorite, black and shiny and of an unimaginable weight. God knows how it got to stand at the corner of the Rue de l’Horloge, where my neighbour, face of a wrinkled walnut, woolly stockings and clogs, sat on fine summer days and watched the world go by.

  I awoke each morning to the squeak and groan as she opened her shutters, and settled down each evening to the squeak and groan as she closed them again. The smoke from her chimney was a different matter, a yellowish cloud with a whiff of “ordures”. I might have complained to the Mairie, but returning one springtime I didn’t need to. As i
mpossible as it seemed, the shutters squeaked and groaned, the chimney smoked no more, and the meteorite was an empty throne.

  I looked in vain in the cemetery for her grave. But seen from my terrace, as swifts and swallows wheeled and screamed in the radiant evening light, how black that chimney appeared.

  Spontaneous combustion. What else.

  Bear Facts

  ‘Okay!’ Madame Butterfly, as I called her, tapped on my bedroom door, saw me in my pyjamas and fled.

  Still in them, I was out of the hotel and across the street, where that old black man was slumped on the sidewalk with his bits and pieces, including a teddy bear, one ear half off and big button eyes, wide with appeal. ‘What,’ they asked, ‘what is to become of me?’

  Two bucks and he was mine. Behind us, as the song said, little cable cars climbed half way to the stars, to the top of Russian Hill and a view over the Bay to Alcatraz Island. And with a small strip of cloth above each eye, unusual for a bear, I’d just met Eyebrows Alcatraz, the bear who got away.

  Next thing, the hotel elevator took us down instead of up, where Madame Butterfly waited with more fresh linen.

  She’d seen the pyjamas, so it must be the bear. ‘Okay!’ she gasped, leaving me and Eyebrows to climb half way to the stars, as far as the second floor.

  Needle Work

  To get round it I must step off the pavement onto the road and walk past a line of parked cars. Why the hell should I have to?

  Prince Albert, I believe, introduced the Christmas tree to England. Today huge plantations of young fir trees were destined to be uprooted and cut off by those roots, trussed up for the shops and, like this poor victim now in front of me, placed in the corner of some hot and stuffy room, bedecked with fairy lights and trinkets. And when the fun and games were over, chucked into the street for someone else to dispose of, or not.