Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

  I’m in mourning, he said. For my life.

  No, why?

  Got rid of my clothes in Oz, and my wardrobe hasn’t recovered. But maybe there are things here Glan might like?

  Okay, give him the pink.

  Deal. It’s his. If I can wear it just once more.

  I’ll hold you to that. But where did that blood come from? On the hanky?

  Nose bleed. I walked into the door.

  V

  What we used to do, said Parry, was find a pebble. A round pebble, as heavy as possible. Or lots of smaller pebbles. From the heaps of pebbles near the slipway.

  Grey or mauve or stonewashed blue, those pebbles. All the same, you’d think, but no. Every pebble was different.

  Sometimes I’d have to go for pebbles like that for the garden or the allotment. My mother always had a use for them, even if it was only as part of the rockery.

  Then I’d find one of our big pans and boil the water, making sure the pebble was fully immersed. Then added salt and a little pepper to taste. I’d boil that pebble for an hour, add more salt, and there it was.

  Where was what? asked Serene.

  Our soup.

  Soup?

  Limestone soup.

  Serene looked around as though she was lost.

  What did it taste like? she asked.

  Limestone soup tasted like you would, straight after a swim off The Horns. Or like you if you’d dared to touch bottom at The Chasm.

  Serene made a face.

  Limestone soup tasted like the sea. It tasted like the sky. The air in Caib Caves.

  Never been there.

  Yeah, it tasted like Glan would taste. Straight after an afternoon swim. Or better, a midnight swim. Because at midnight, or any time in the dark, a swimmer tastes different from a swimmer in the day.

  What colour was this limestone soup?

  Grey, if I boiled a grey pebble. Pink, if it was a pink pebble.

  But… said Serene. Stone soup? Why should I believe you?

  Why shouldn’t you believe me?

  Serene held the pink shirt to her face.

  Oh, what were you wearing? When you last wore this? It’s a perfume I recognise. I’ve smelled it before.

  And she breathed Parry in.

  He smiled at her, that long-breasted girl in her gaudy. In her mauves and purples. Then he looked away.

  FOUR

  I

  Something was coming down the street. A vehicle gaining colour and speed. But it maintained a stately pace, as if the mist was reluctant to set it free. Parry took another box of DVDs from the back of the car.

  The vehicle was pink, Parry decided. And long. Yes, here it came. One of those limousines you saw nowadays. A stretchlimo that groups booked for evenings out. Chauffeurs in peaked caps, champagne flutes. You could hire it all.

  Yes, here it came. Despite the hour, despite the weather, the limousine roof was open. A young woman, brandishing a wineglass, was standing up in the back seat, toasting it seemed, anyone who might be passing. But Caib Street was empty. All of The Caib was deserted.

  It was about noon, Parry decided, and he had never known the town quieter. This morning he had passed the surgery. A man was lying on the gravel forecourt, maybe dead or simply unconscious.

  Parry had considered his discovery. And asked himself why he should feel no surprise. He looked at the man’s face. Aged forty, bruised cheek, hair matted. The sleep of oblivion. Inside, Parry hadn’t had time to explain.

  Yes, doctor’s coming, said the receptionist. Thank you for telling us. The doctor is aware.

  Outside once more, Parry had given the man a last look. How tenderly he had been sleeping, the mist around him like dry ice from some cabaret act, rising out of the ground in shreds, in industrial rags. The doctor was aware. Then everything was fine.

  The pink limo drew level. The young woman, who was obviously drunk, and on her way to or from a party, toasted the street. He looked around. There was nobody else in view. So Parry waved his hand in brief salute.

  Stop, the girl shouted. Stop.

  And the car had come to a halt outside Badfinger. The front door was open, boxes piled around its entrance. Thirty-three, Caib Street, the only shop that boasted signs of life. Parry’s shop.

  No, the woman shrilled. No, no, no. I wasn’t talking to you. I wasn’t fucking talking to you. Or to any other dirty old men.

  Another woman in the back seat stood up. Another blonde with a wineglass.

  No. Not you, she hissed through a bridal veil. Never you.

  The limousine gradually took off again, a pink blur soon lost in the fret. On the pavement, Parry stood looking after it. Then he started to manhandle another cardboard box.

  Time to wake Glan. He shouldn’t be allowed to sleep late. And it was late. Parry looked up at the window as if he expected the young man to appear. Glan, ghost-pale, his hands clenched in his armpits. Shoulders and hairless chest shivering. Yes, it was time Glan revealed himself to the world.

  Parry decided he’d make porridge for breakfast. He smiled to himself. Yes, porridge with a drop of Drambuie. To sweeten things up. Stop the anaesthetic wearing off.

  II

  Outside, the mist rubbed itself like a cat against the glass. Oh yes, Parry thought, he’d seen this mist before. This was familiar weather, ancient in the bones of anyone brought up on The Caib. Colder yet in the bloodstream of anyone fool enough to return.

  What had he been? Possibly seventeen. Acne-eaten, unprepossessingly thin. Exams were coming up and Parry’s regime was to work for three hours every night, then stop for supper. Strong tea, roasted cheese.

  Then start again. Today, he could hardly credit such diligence. Such pointless resolve.

  He remembered the television droning on downstairs, his hands over his ears. What was the time? Easter, but light nights at least. A blue evening sun intruded into the room. He screwed up his eyes and stared again at the notes. He had read the pages twenty times. But they made no sense. So he’d go out for an hour. To clear his head. He’d go out to see the whale.

  The idea scared him. But at once he was putting on his coat, calling down he’d be back soon. Slamming the front door.

  Yes, he was going to see the whale. While the tide and the light allowed he was going to see the whale.

  He even made up a song as he walked.

  Dare not fail

  To see the whale.

  The whale that had been in the evening paper. It was a small whale, yet weighed an estimated ten tons. There it waited on the rocks at Caib Caves. Piebald, wedged in a crevice.

  From the photograph Parry imagined a heap of melting ice, such as fishmongers tipped out in the evenings. To smoke in the gutters of The Caib, soon yellow with dogpiss.

  Yes, he was going to see the whale. He must not fail. His very own whale. The certainty of it pumped out his chest and filled his belly. And Parry ran over the common. Beyond the district known as the West End.

  Parry had expected throngs of people such as himself. Everyone would be eager and amazed, all come to gaze at the whale. The ten tons of whale calf, grey as ice, that now fumed in the gulches of The Caib.

  But it was strange. There was no one. No one to tell him he had arrived at the right place.

  Later, Parry had not been able to explain himself. When his parents asked, the coastguard and even the police enquired, he had shaken his head. Shaken his head and wept and kept silent. Why had he done it?

  He couldn’t answer why. There was the whale, as long as a bus. Or a rowing boat. A rotting hulk, a carcass. Of interest only to the gulls screaming overhead.

  It was the gulls that showed the way. The gulls that pursued the whale-lice through the runnels on the whale corpse.

  And the police told him it must have been you. Yes, you, son. Come on, boy. Parry must have done it because no one else was present. It had to have been him. No question.

  But Parry hadn’t answered. Merely sat before the inspector, the coastguard and h
is parents. And cried.

  No, the boy couldn’t remember. But it must have been him. Oh yes, it was him all right. The seventeen-year-old Parry who everyone said was old enough to know better. Who had taken his penknife out of his pocket. And carved his initials into the body of the whale.

  Cut his own incredible initials into the velvet hull of the whale. The body of the leviathan, as one of the coastguards insisted on calling it.

  Who else, the inspector asked, would have carved those letters in the whale flesh? RIP?

  Bit of a giveaway, that, one of the policemen had smiled. Which had made Parry feel worse. Made Parry cry harder until his father had told him to shut up, he had cried enough.

  Stop your sobbing, was the phrase.

  III

  Yeah, good song, thought Richard Ieuan Parry now, finishing his toast. Nothing had happened. No charges been brought.

  Parry had not killed the creature. So he had submitted to the lecture. No one had even asked where the penknife had come from. Parry said he didn’t own a knife.

  The next week there was another story in the newspaper. The body of the Sowerby’s beaked whale that had been washed up near Caib Caves had been towed off the rocks. And disposed of.

  His mad period, as he might have described it. First of many. Yes, that had been a difficult year all round. And coming back to The Caib put everything into new perspective. Coming back was not easy.

  But yes, maybe Parry had gone mad. For a while. Until it dawned on him that madness was allowable. That madness was part of the process. That going mad was necessary. Fail in that, fail in madness, he had considered, and there is the true failure of nerve.

  Not that he’d been especially mad. Not a bit of it. But the incident on the water chute, coming so quickly after the whale business, had perplexed his parents.

  It was early summer and the fairground had recently reopened. Parry had undergone two hours of maths tuition with Rosser, a young graduate.

  Yes, maths tuition on top of the history, the geography, the bloody Chaucer. Parry had failed mathematics twice so far. This was his last chance.

  Or so people said. Needed a grade six, just a six, everyone told him. All his friends had passed. Everyone else in the year had managed it.

  Even the yobs and slobs with their mohicans, their mohawks, the teds in their drainpipes, the hippies, the mods and all the legions of the damned in their immaculate ties and blazers. They had all scraped at least a six. And so were embarked on the next stage of their lives. Were off and running.

  All except Parry. All except Parry and the losers, the weirdos. And here he was with Roz Rosser, with his pebble lenses and lingering aftershock of TCP.

  Normally, tuition took place at Rosser’s. But that evening, it was inconvenient. So the lesson was held in Parry’s front room. On the dinner table that smelled of lavender furniture polish. Or sea lavender, as his mother once insisted. It grows in the rocks, you know.

  I’m starving, announced Rosser, after what felt like hours. Fancy some chips?

  And they had somehow found themselves in the fairground. Sharing one of the measly portions from the Farmhouse Fry.

  How about a ride? Rosser had then asked. Out of the blue. Yes, Rosser had suggested the idea. It must have been Rosser’s idea. Because Parry never had any money of his own. So it was obviously Rosser’s suggestion to try the water chute. But nothing at all had happened. Nothing at all.

  Only that Rosser touched Parry’s leg. Yes, Rosser had put out his hand and touched Parry’s left leg. The inside of his leg. Rosser had put out his hand and left it on the inside of Parry’s left leg.

  Had left his hand there while there was screaming and laughter and the echoes of laughter. Laughter from the ghost train. Screaming from the waxworks. Screaming and laughter from everywhere else in the fairground, that mid May evening with the petrolblue sunset. And the swifts had come back. Returning that moment.

  Because Rosser had been the older boy. Had been twenty-five at least. And that was what everyone was expecting anyway. Wasn’t it all somehow falling into place?

  Because when the water chute ride was over, why was Parry’s headmaster waiting where the carriages pulled in?

  Yes, why was the headmaster waiting for Rosser? Immediately the carriage door was opened? Like police on a tip-off, Parry thought now. Nothing happened, Rosser had protested immediately. As if he was waiting to make his protest. As if he understood such a denial would be expected of him.

  Nothing happened, added Parry, as if he sensed such a rejection was his due. His right.

  But poor Rosser, thought Parry now. Whatever he had hoped or planned to do. Rosser who had touched his left leg. And allowed his hand to rest there. For a moment. An instant, a shaming eternity. But hardly a moment.

  To be greeted by his headmaster in hat and mackintosh. Under that May sunset. With the head of English also there. In Nescafé-coloured trousers.

  FIVE

  I

  The town had been quiet but not silent. There was a sound Parry recognised from the past. Some old muezzin of the back streets, voice cracked and plaintive.

  Parry hadn’t heard such a voice for years. He thought the tribe extinct. But here was the voice once again, the voice that called for iron. Old iron. And once again it called. A voice in the acid mist that rolled over the coast. Eerie in the saturating fog.

  Iron. Old iron. Out of season that voice. And out of time. But there it was again. Rasping like a jay.

  Yet, there was music in that voice. A rusty desperation. And maybe, not so desperate. The voice of a back-street singer, restoring the world to order. A singer who sang of what he knew and understood. Grief in that melody. Ancient resignation.

  Parry had listened, head cocked, but the voice never came again. It had vanished utterly.

  II

  Who is the patron saint of lost causes? asked Parry.

  Search me, said Mina.

  Saint Jude, said Parry. Lost causes and grievous situations.

  Please don’t say it, said Mina.

  Say what?

  ‘Hey Jude’, that’s what, said Mina.

  Am I so predictable?

  Collars up, the couple walked seawards through the mist. They turned in at the entrance of Clwb y Môr.

  Haven’t been in here for ages, said Mina. Thought it was all shut up. Talking of lost causes.

  Parry smiled at the young woman behind the bar.

  I know you, he said. You’re John Vine’s daughter. I’ve known you since you were kneehigh to a great green cricket.

  And you’re Parry, replied Nia Vine. Always Parry. Never your first name. Which is Richard. So I know about you too. You’ve just opened that new shop in Caib Street. What’s it called now?

  Tesco, said Parry.

  Something … peculiar.

  I’ll say, said Mina.

  Oh yes, Badfinger, said Nia Vine. Terrible name for a shop. I’ll give it three months.

  As long as that?

  I was being kind, said Nia. You’re in a dead spot.

  Called The Caib, said Parry. The only way for a new business to work here is giving away free drinks.

  It was 9pm. Parry had come to Clwb y Môr because of the poster he had been asked to display in Badfinger. This proclaimed that if you could ask for your first drink in ‘the language’ then that drink was free.

  Now Parry tested himself. He found Nia Vine as good as her word. There was a crowd at the counter who might not have been renowned for their linguistic abilities.

  Admire the spirit, said Parry. You remind me of myself.

  Australia lost its allure has it?

  Everyone comes home, said Parry. Eventually. It’s one of the golden rules of business. Of life. But yes, I know what you’re taking on.

  Which is? asked Nia.

  Apathy. Alienation. Despair. Dandruff. Put them together and it’s quite a challenge.

  Sounds tough.

  Missionary work usually is.

  Fou
nd yourself in missionary positions before now? asked Nia.

  Had my moments, said Parry. He looked around. But my problem has never been too much space. Now at Badfinger, we could do with some of the room here. Anyone helping you out?

  Nia shrugged. The committee are good people. But they’re getting on.

  Parry gestured to the woman at his side. This is Mina, he explained. She keeps the off-licence next to Badfinger.

  Basement Booze, added Mina as an explanation. Parry had shown Mina the poster about free drinks and she had laughed and said if they were that desperate for custom, then fine. As long as the Queen’s English was still allowed.

  And Mina’s named after a poet, said Parry.

  So you keep telling me, said Mina.

  A pretty peculiar poet, too, he said.

  Oh yes?

  But quite a role model.

  III

  While they were waiting for the drinks, Parry said he’d go off exploring.

  The corridor to the toilets was a municipal cream. There were three different rooms, all with smashed locks. These held nothing but broken tables and chairs and two ancient fruit machines. At the far end of the corridor was a larger space with a stage, and a sign that said ‘to the dressing rooms’. On stage were papier-mâché segments of a model whale, painted grey and blue.

  Next, Parry climbed the stairs. In an empty bar, he found a crate of Schweppes’ mixers, a medical skeleton, a book titled Hymnau Calfinaidd, and an album by Showaddywaddy, The Arista Singles Volume One.

  The damp was worse up here. The paint on two walls behind the counter had disintegrated into dust. Above a chapel harmonium a tendril of ivy lay under a broken pane. There was another flight of stairs, leading up.

  The noise from the bar below was filtering upstairs, but Parry thought he heard someone else in the room he had left. He paused and walked back, looking around. But saw no one.

  Exactly as I thought, he announced returning to the front bar.

  Any hope for us? smiled Nia. And looked expectant. As if Parry might know what he was talking about.

  Of course, Parry said. Turn it all into apartments. Perfect sea view. In fact, so perfect that the sea’s coming through your excuse for a roof. Who owns this place?

  Not sure, said Nia. The committee administers everything. There’s a chair, and a treasurer. But the vultures are massing.