Far Out
written by: David Milner
Astride him she stands, legs as wide as a mile, young Goddess lily white under the shifting shape of halo to the light of chandelier crystal caught in the tears of his eyes, this world he lives in now. Threatening to eat him alive, only he can adjust the frequency to his ease with women… the demands of his blood. God damn it… the sexiest man alive is STOP Roll this movie frame by frame back faster than the speed of… He will catch the spirit of the age.
Marie placed her left hand under the light switch on the wall and gently wrapped her right hand round the handle of the bedroom door. Holding her breath, she opened the door to the width of her head and peered down the hallway. The door to the lounge was ajar and looked like it was auditioning for a part in a horror movie. Marie tightened the belt at the waist of her chiffon robe. Most of the night he was crying, or raging more like, at people screwing him over, names that sounded like American gangsters. Last time she’d seen him he was standing by the long window, curtains open, arms stretched like Jesus on the cross, completely naked. Four in the morning, thankfully no one about. She’d come to on the sofa, having passed out. Tall, shaggy dark hair and beard, big in the chest, impressive physique. He’d said he was awol, hadn’t he? At the club. Well, Marie knew what awol meant, but what did he mean? And what was it he’d said as he turned from the window, his arm lifted skywards, legs apart, his dong dangling… “thousands of years building the ego to get out there now we are breaking down the ego?” Cock and ball philosophy?
“The self… dispossessed… weightless in space… hahahaaa… a satellite at the frontier of pure consciousness…”
The eerie quiet setting her teeth on edge, Marie pressed her body against the door then moved quickly across the soft wool of the carpet to the wardrobes. She’d already rifled through the pockets – inside and out – of jackets and buttoned blazers hoping to find a spare cigarette; as she’d looked under the bed, rootled in the drawers, looked under and round the back of the dresser. They hadn’t screwed. Too drunk and stoned. Just a bit of slap and tickle then he was sobbing, quietly, the tears draining him of capability. Going on that he was being suffocated. That he was nothing but a “chattel slave in a tailored suit?” She couldn’t bear to see a man cry, there was something so desperate and final in a grown man’s hopeless tears. Awol on acid – what the naked ape must have been referring to. This was the heavy comedown.
There was no use calling the agency, not yet 9 o’clock. Esther didn’t get to the office till half past. Marie cast her eyes over the room, felt like she was walking hand in hand with herself through one of her older dreams, the wardrobes, the fixtures, fittings, Moroccan art on the walls, chaise longue, silk and velvet drapery, speakers in each corner, the full colour television set shaped like an astronaut’s helmet, the king-sized bed. Windows open you could fly a kite, the ceilings so high. Here she was, living in a flat – an apartment in Mayfair – fit for a princess royal to parade in… and, oh, Hanif, should he find out she was bringing sexy hunks back, there’d be hell to pay. Talk about life in the fast lane!
This time of the morning her mum would be getting Peter ready for school, and chastising him no doubt for getting in a bit late. Be nice to hear her voice. Christmas round the corner be plenty to natter about. Marie was missing home. All its fussy comforts. Two months shy of 19 years, was she becoming jaded? Seen it all, maan! Perhaps she could persuade Hanif to drive her home?
An anguished cry from the lounge made the young woman shriek.
“That fat Greek looking at me…. he has the BALLS!”
What was he going on about now? She pressed her ear against the door.
“Fat bald I don’t take shit from you fuck of a Greek… I don’t take shit… You think I’m small fry?”
The brightness of the low winter sun momentarily blinded him through the windscreen as he tapped his fingers lightly on the face of his wristwatch, hoping this action would fix the time it was losing. Kids in bonnets and braids, shorts, and regulation caps, some of them with mummy, or the au pair (this part of town) on their way to St. Georges Primary School. It was ten to nine or so. Sid, in the driving seat was taking a packet of Senior Service from the side pocket of his dark grey jacket.
“Open the window, would you?”
“Was about to.” Sid replied, before winding the window down, lighting the cigarette, flicking the spent match into the cold air, then resting his head back, taking a satisfying drag. Bert smoked. But he didn’t like blazing up in a confined space. He focused on the watch. Jean had bought it. Present on his fortieth. It was losing a minute or so on the hour. No amount of winding or tapping helped. D.I. Bert Rowe – ‘row, row, row your Bert’ – hadn’t told anyone that Jean had left him. Supposed to have been a weekend staying with her sister, which became a long weekend. A full week went by before she telephoned. Then a second week gone before she rang to inform him that she wasn’t coming back. She’d told their daughter, Linda. Linda had rung him. There wasn’t much to say. It was something Bert had seen coming. And hadn’t done anything about. Jean hadn’t asked for a divorce. He doubted that she ever would.
“How long are you reckoning, Guv?”
“You’ve someplace else you’d rather be?”
“Only tucked up in bed with Julie Christie.”
“We’ll give it another half hour.”
“Yeah, she keeps tellin’ me…” Sid chuckled.
A different type of woman might have taken a vicarious thrill out of the fact that her husband was a detective in the vice squad. Not Jean. Raised in an atmosphere of crippling modesty, she hated it. Thought it a step down for him. Bert wasn’t an ambitious man. Twenty years of service with a few feathers ruffled along the way, Detective Inspector was the highest rank he was going to attain. He’d settled into vice. Clandestine legality suited his temperament. And there’s a lot of it about, he’d tried to humour her. The way Bert looked at things he was in the moral ventilation business. As there was always a lead (one way or other) for the journalists and editors of daily newspapers to fashion. Keep Mr. and Mrs. Provincial enthralled and outraged in equal measure, primed and eager for more sex sodden tales. Jean couldn’t see the funny side, nor the equivalence.
He was looking forward to being alone. It was his natural condition.
Always the same, like coiled rope interlocked, never an over-elaborate pattern, hovering just above ground level or carpet, the level he was on, tempting him to perceive if only he could truly see. Electric impulses on the optic nerve. Or was he feeling more than sensing light through his eyes? Yes, because he knew the pattern when he dropped acid would appear, communicating on a deeper level the enduring mystery that is consciousness. If only he could see where it was leading him. He was here, a self–sustaining chemical system. Didn’t know where… the carpet below the mysterious vision was delicately coloured, coarse at the touch, he could smell its structure, feel the bugs teeming with life, bug upon bug life the same in all living things. He noticed the dirt under his clipped fingernails, particles of dust in the joints and wrinkles of his knuckles. Killer’s hands. Hands of a lover. Could fix things. Hands of a car mechanic… Happy as a sand boy then, head under the bonnet of Ford Prefects, Vauxhall saloons, Chryslers, all curves and chrome, smell of leather and oil, no worries, sun on his back, flesh smeared with honest toil, knew who he was, fuel and air carburettor, the logic of internal combustion… Breaking things down to… component parts. Atoms absorbing and radiating light. The great fusion of hydrogen and helium. The wolf eats the lamb… the wolf dies, decomposes, to nourish the grass that feeds the lamb; it goes like a dreamscape visitation dissolving at his feet leaving him to figure it all out…. Live and let live. Intricate weave under… chandelier… table on its side… broken glass… black African wood carvings… stereo system… cabinet full of exotic booze. Powerful acid, boy. A double dose from the Frisco batch. Bonzer! George felt his ribcage and chest swelling with laughter. Naked on all Fives hahahaargh… usually his dick shrank to the size of a pequin chilli pepper but here was a Georgian tipstaff, a force of surging George, savage poet potent. Where was he, what is this place? In time and space. Ah, the chick… the bubble ass chick, bend me shape me anyway? Was that some other? Did she know? Know them? His breath slowing, gently does it. He can see the stars and stripes flapping in the wind, through the window, in the English sunlight. American stars and bars above that fascist golden eagle… some welcome for his benefit… well stand the fuck up, man, be counted, let ‘em see what ya got…
You wanna suck my what?
A figure in the window, male by the height, possibly topless. Car wasn’t parked close enough to damn the bag of shit, commit his face to memory. Had his jollies. Bag of shit.
“Young this tart, eh? How old?”
“She isn’t a runaway.” The figure had withdrawn into darkness. Bert shifted his gaze toward the bald eagle on top of the embassy. He had read somewhere this breed was falling in number.
“Makes yer sick… hardly out of school, up to all sorts.”
Sid got on his nerves. In precisely the way he was supposed to. Likewise, Bert himself got on Sid’s nerves; and everyone got on every bugger else’s nerves. That was Vice, full of strange motives and competing methodologies, you kept an eye over your shoulder. Sloppy eater, for one thing, was Sid. And he farted, picked at his teeth and picked at his nose, had an off the peg opinion for every shitting subject under the sun. Good driver though. Mustard. Could have earned a bundle in the right kind of firm.
“Any news on who owns the gaff, Guv?”
“No.”
“Typical.” Sid huffed. (What he didn’t know didn’t hurt him.)
D.I. Bert Rowe needed a narrative. A space where he could let his tactical imagination roam, following lines, however faint from here to there, something he could (if needs be) manipulate. The work was exploitative. He’d been told to concentrate less on the ownership and more on the comings and goings. This was a containment job. Police work by special committee. (At your service, Ma’am!) They didn’t bother with the camera half the time. Slim chance the film would ever be processed.
“What about… this… Arab twat?” Sid, meticulously picking at his molars, was in a ruminative frame of mind.
….And the rat was back, scratching behind the skirting boards, disturbing his reason. Half asleep, the other night, he thought it might be Jean returning. No. Not at so late an hour. It was Rowe’s Rat, come to gnaw on the pulpy tissue of his brain. If this entity in the heart of Mayfair didn’t belong to the Arab potentate, then it didn’t belong to the nephew of the Greek shipping magnate; and it didn’t belong to the yank movie mogul; and it wasn’t the ageing French actress; nor the society photographer, or the Oxford educated barrister, or the pig farmer from Yorkshire. They all had their clever fingers in the pie, the Rat sneered. And gnawed, you’ve been told – row, row, row your Bert – focus on the faces coming and going. Cui bono?
“….and he turns to her and says, Nah, that’s just me dandruff!” Sid laughed heartily, as he often did at the jokes he inflicted. Bert, only having heard the punchline, and thankful for that, heaved his shoulders and hissed through clenched teeth. A play of light on the tip of the eagle’s gold-plated wings. He gave his wristwatch a tap.
“Could be dust in the mechanism…?”
“What, Guv?” Sid asked, laughter subsiding.
“Yes, very good, funny.”
Sid was pointing at his crotch, “That’s just me dandruff! – ahh, it kills me…”
“Fancy a bacon sarnie, Sid?”
“Round ‘ere?”
“Go to your usual caff. Drop me round the corner at the chapel.”
Sid shifted his backside in the seat, “You want me to…?”
“No need.” Bert cut in, adding “I’ll see you back at the Zoo.” He raised his wrist to his ear. Sid turned the key in the ignition.
The curve of the buttocks, the thighs, the abdomen and the expanse of chest, the manly ridge of collar bone rounding onto the sculpted muscle of the arms. Marie wished she could draw. Her brother Peter, he could bring anything to life on paper. Maybe have this hunk feed her grapes, wearing a loincloth, top up her drinks, find her a cigarette! The useless prat was staring at the carpet, swaying gently, gormlessly mumbling like a friendless kid stranded in a playground.
“It’s Turkish, the carpet.” Marie mused.
“Persian Sarouk.” Replied hunk.
“How d’ya know that?”
“I’m not a dummy.”
“Never said.”
“I need to regulate my stability in a changing environment.”
“Exactly.” Marie nodded; didn’t want to make a fuss, bloke was lost in a weird trip. She wanted him out of the flat.
“Have you seen a packet of fags, lying about, y’ know, on yer travels?”
He began to laugh, till his balls quivered, he was that tickled pink… Marie’s eyes widened as she espied the edge of a cigarette packet peeking out under the armchair. The hunk dropped to his knees with a thud.
“On yer travels…” he began, “on yer travels…” vainly imitating her accent, then resuming his own. “Yeah, that’s right. I dig it… I dig.”
Stress levelling out, lighting one of the Dunhill Internationals, Marie replied airily, “Yeah, chuck, people tell me it’s the real deal.”
He was a still life model, on his knees, arms at his side.
“I’m not what you see. I’m not even what I see.”
His eyes under the fall and shadow of unruly dark hair seemed curiously familiar. It was as if she’d seen the stillness of those eyes, had been seeing the stillness of these eyes everywhere? Marie was certain she had never met the guy. She wanted him out of the flat.
“I feel safe here… with you. I have plenty of dough.” His hands moving over naked thighs expecting to find pocket or two.
And the view from the window was perfectly normal. The bare winter trees of Grosvenor Square standing tall.
It was a cold morning, yet Bert Rowe felt more of a chill as he entered the chapel. It had been built in the early part of the eighteenth century, renovated in the 1920’s or thereabouts, its simple elegant style retained. There was something neutral in the orderliness of the design, as though this House of God was the very idea of Anglican paradise. She hadn’t noticed him. Or was affecting not to notice him.
“He out on his rounds?”
“There are some wealthy widows in this Parish.” Said Val the cleaner, a friendly smile crinkling the corners of her mouth.
“Change is the only constant these days.”
“That one of your quotes?” Of late Bert had come to resemble a man in need of a place to stay; all that was missing was a battered suitcase.
“He doesn’t like me.”
“You’re Old Bill from armpits till breakfast, what d’you expect?”
“Sympathy from a Curate-in-Charge!”
Valerie laughed, and gave the solemn, grimly handsome man a balancing look: the old woollen suit getting shiny with wear, his hair going the colour of withered daffodils. “Any news from Jean?”
“Nope.”
“Crikey, she hasn’t gone off and joined the Housewives Register lot?”
“Linda’s pregnant.”
“Linda, oh my…Last time I saw her was…”
“Size of a bus, she is, which is apt as the bloke she’s marrying…”
“Is a bus driver?”
“Ten years older, in his thirties. And neither of them heard of the contraceptive pill!”
Her old friend shrugged his way within hugging distance; but all that was years ago.
“A baby can bring a family together.”
“She hates me.”
“Don’t be so vain! Not everyone hates you, Bert.”
Rough and tender memories of Val in low-lit worn-out rooms swirled in the laughter Bert let forth, hadn’t laughed so long and loud in Christ knows when; he felt the coldness of its echo from wall to wall around him, hoped that Val’s laughter carried more of the same. It was all they had to offer at the altar.
“I need to make a call, Val.”
“Be my guest, Inspector.”
Hopscotch in the rain was the abiding memory with his daughter, the pink chalk washed away and carried on all the same, like her mother, into submission.
He’d forgotten her birthday… couldn’t remember if Jean had reminded him. Twenty-two, just another year. Like most women, Linda thought, or told herself, that she could see right through him. She was free to marry who she liked. Easy enough for him to carry the mantle of the disappointed father, playing that old game simplified daily interaction. The only thing that mattered now, kept the blood on red alert in his veins, was the chance, however slim, to bring down one of the bloated toads. He didn’t want to nick piss-ass pop stars, hangers on, tarts ‘n arseholes. Waste of time. Bert had set his sights on the ones that get away.
He was slouched in the doorway to the spacious lounge watching the busty blonde bombshell from Bolton indulging herself in a spot of housework, brushing broken glass, fag butts and other debris into a dustpan. The soft material of her black pyjama style slacks tight around her youthful buttocks, her large bra-less (but of course) breasts jouncing under the loose-fitting black sweater. It was a performance, of sorts. Bert lit a cigarette, blew out a smoke ring, which floated and twisted suggesting a question mark then dissipated before his eyes.
“Who is he?”
She spoke deliberately, “I told you, over the phone. I don’t know, his name.”
“A pick-up?”
“No money changed hands.”
“He left his wallet at home?”
“Drop dead, you rotten get.”
She barged past him, knocking ash from the tip of his cigarette, and swayed her hips petulantly across the hallway toward the kitchen. Bert smiled. He wished that his daughter, and Jean come to that, had a tenth of this young woman’s spirit. First few times he met her, Bert sensed a sentiment of loyalty in Marie – granted, he’d been at a low ebb – probably nothing more than the way she’d been brought up. She was a bundle of energy, in conflict with her biological instinct; time would tell, have its way, clip her wings, fatten her hips, bring her down to migraines under lower ceilings. But for now, or as far as he knew anything about it, Marie was at the epicentre of the revolution that wouldn’t kill its children.
Tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear, she was filling a kettle at the sink.
“Get rid of him.”
“He’s off ‘is nut! Leave him be, give him time to come down a bit?”
“What’s he taken?”
“L.S. stupid D. He has a strange accent.”
“Jamaican?” Bert snapped back.
“He’s white, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“Describe his accent.”
Marie fluttered her fingers through an upward curve, “Sort of tee da dah dee.”
Bert felt the muscles in his neck tighten, “American?”
“Maybe, I don’t know… sort of jet-set educated posh?”
Bert closed his eyes, took a breath, and sighed.
“Go and see how he is, Marie. I’ll make the tea.”
She was useless, endearingly useless. Not one fucking note of information he could whistle. Hanif the pimp was just as bad. Normally, he would have had this pair dragged over hot coals. Normally. Waiting for the kettle to boil Bert noticed a bottle of Retsina by the terracotta bread bin. He picked it up, turned the bottle in his hand, bottom lip protruding as he considered the sickly yellow liquid. Marie’s footfall was heavy in the hallway.
“Bert…Bert…” she was stammering.
“What?” Bert gulped audibly, tightening his hand on the bottle. “What?” And no, no not a dead in the bath, please God.
“It’s him… Oh, ‘eck he’s…”
“What’s happened?”
“He… he’s James Bond!”
Sink, sink into the wide bed, leave the luxury of self-debasement to the cities that never sleep, sink to unfathomable dreams. He did this. Did this suffering all by himself, made no better by lysergic promises, material reality found its way through all the shit you got to offer. Did it to himself. What if he was… paralysed from the neck down, fear on him now, heart rushing in his ears like a river about to burst its banks… Fear, not knowing the next move.
George Lazenby moved his eyes between his captors, dimly appraising them. He spoke to the girl dressed in black, “Where am I?”
“You’re safe.” She smiled.
He remembered her face glistening under a mirror ball. But who was this wheezy old cat in tie and creased shirt beaming at him like a fag?
“What you need is rest, James… sorry, Mister Lazenby. And vitamin C. Vitamin C, yessss.”
Bert was acting like Old Mother Hubbard, clattering about the kitchen…
“What’s the matter with yer?”
“Place full of fineries and not an ‘effin orange or piece of fruit?”
Marie would never have imagined him to be so… talk about star struck? Bert was spellbound! “There’s a tin of pineapple chunks.”
“Pineapple chunks!” Bert’s eyes swivelled, he clicked his fingers, click, click, click in her face, she could have swung for the old wazzock! Fumbling hands together they opened the tin, they poured the contents into a tall glass, up to three quarters, the rest topped with tap water. Bert stirred the mixture with a stainless-steel knife.
“Shouldn’t it be shaken, not stirred?” she opined to no avail, and continued, “Bert, I think, what he needs best…”
But Bert was leaving the kitchen, tall glass in his left hand, clicking the fingers of his right, “He’s got a premiere. Of the film, coming up.”
“I think he was trying to tell me something.”
“Tell you something?” The old detective stared into the young woman’s face.
“He wasn’t James Bond last night.”
“Where exactly was this last night?”
“Oh, Bert, if you could have seen him. So sweet, wasn’t grabby or anything… like a big-eyed labrador…”
“Are you taking the piss out of me, girl?”
“You wouldn’t understand”, Marion Shaw from Bolton, Lancashire, smiled.
She’d picked up James Bond in a discotheque, took him back to the swanky Mayfair apartment. Who would believe? If only she’d had a Kodak Instamatic camera! Anyway, sexy Marie knows how to keep her cakehole shut.
Exhausted. Couldn’t lift his arms, legs. Trapped. He can see a classroom, and his chubby knees under the wooden desk, the Pom teacher… mister…? Mister Selwyn is showing the boys and girls the man in the circle, the Vitruvian Man, the drawing that demonstrates the geometric harmony of the human form. Leonardo Da Vinci… a mind beyond its time. George had made the decision. Let them say he’s crazy, a dumb ass arrogant son of a bitch. Bond isn’t where it’s at. Bond was a busted flush. Twenty million dollars’ worth of irrelevance. Cheap bastards paid him the crack sweat of Connery!
The girl in black sweeps diagonally by, here comes the strange cat with caterpillar eyebrows, smell of ether on his breath as he speaks…
“Go on, son, drink this; soon ‘ave you back up and at ‘em.”
Fibrous yellow bits in a glass. He gulped and gagged on the sweetened slime. He could make a run for it, bollock-naked into the London streets? Wouldn’t make the door, his legs were marshmallow; and he didn’t want to fall into the arms of the beaming faggot. He looks leftwards, where the girl is… rolling a joint on top of the teak cabinet…. voice of yellow teeth from the right….
“You’ve got the film opening, any day now, yes?”
George groans into the soft pillows, glass falling from his fingers.
“Bert!” She tilts her head to the ceiling, “You’re not helping.”
“I am. He has. I’m right.”
Having unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, Bert once again buttoned it and straightened his tie. Because, amid the up-to-date talk of nowadays he stood for something. He hadn’t yet forsaken his wife. Jean might like a trip to the cinema… With these thoughts, D.I. Bert Rowe exits to the kitchen.
George doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The girl sits at the edge of the bed, shakes her head sweetly from side to side, a delicately wise smile on her lips. He knew what she meant. All he had to do was close his eyes… float downstream… Yahweh or My Way…
“Where I’m from, George, used to be known as Cottonopolis. World leader it was in the spinning and weaving of cotton.”
“What is the reason for this?” He genuinely wonders as he watches threads of smoke rising from the nicely rolled joint.
“It’s free-flowing water we have up there, and skill of the workers.”
“I hear that.”
“Me Nana, me mum’s mum she was a weaver. Loom operator and overseer, tough as hobnail boots. Still have the old mills, not as many, o’ course. No need for ‘em, times have changed. They look lovely in winter, like they’re meant to be, you know what I’m saying, love? Part of history.”
“You miss home?”
“Oh, I do, George, I do. I’ll be going back soon, for Christmas… And, who knows…?” She pauses and holds the joint toward him. “I’m hoping for snow.”
Maybe he will remember this moment forever. He raises his fist to the rock of ages, baby, to man’s first footprint on the surface of the moon. A salute to the soul. He puts the joint to his lips, stressing the cotton sheet as he stretches his legs.
Things were going to be just fine.
- Far Out - September 22, 2024
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