Red Peter

December 2008

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Contents:

Four Poems – Sarah Sarai page 3

Iron Lung – Jason Jordan page 6

Five Poems – Tom Daley page 14

Sheena Up A Mountain Wearing Flip-flops

– Martin Reed page 21

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 Five Poems – Sarah Sarai

Go Figure!!

My head is a goldfish bowl, which, no problem, !

must be filled with water and stocked if I am to have
a life of any interest. With 360+ optically powered!
points of reference coming going rushing by, I do. !
Erectness is a plus. Who needs sleep? Perfect posture
is compensation. Goldfish flit in a calibrated solution
of rocky depth and so many viewpoints. With water !
as the brain mostly I intellect steamers, ebb and flow,
good tidings, day long. Almighty I am Queen Royale!
of my castle, dipping pink-finger probes in murky me.

Pyramid Theme

Stored in your hothead attic, fired by

your generator belly: a pianissimo voice, gutsy.!
Conflagration twines to this high neuronic playfield.!
A winged archeologist excavating
the Pharonic cache, spies through windows
to your soul. Ah! A telltale crate, pried.!
A insider job? A coup interuptus?
A push to reverberate where you live?

Courage, like Leonardo's rivers

seeking their source,!
flows up.!!

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Long Distance

Thursday I talk with my mom.!

She's answered the phone:!
she's receptive;!
has lain on her side!
to hear the ring.

She says she and Pop walked Manhattan!

for years: Wall Street, Harlem, parks.

I ask how she's doing.

"They feed me.! Nice food, water each day. !
The meals are delicious."

Again. "How're you doing?"!

I'm proud I ask twice.!
"It got worse. My face twisted
last month, I can't leave my room.

"She's had operations.!!

"Makes me cry, Mom."!

"Don't."

Her face melts, hardens, melts.!!

Friday, I'm lost in Tribeca.!

Heat bonds to my skin
like a man I shouldn't love.!!

Mom's in L.A.!
She lies on her back!
feeling its skin
grafted.

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You Say You Did?

My face fell in.!

One cheek collapsed.
Cancer nibbled!
from my jaw up
for twenty years.
Christian Science
failed me. Not one!
practitioner!
said, Help, get help,!
see a doctor
to heal flesh, bones
use medicine!
not faith alone.!
Faith did not work.
Oh, my heart broke.
Yes, yes a fool,!
your mother is !
a fool. Bandaids.
I used a web!
of Bandaids, more
each year to hide
black knobs, disease!
called Mortal Mind!
which spread across!
my cheek and life.
You girls, you didn't
try to stop me.!
You say you did?
I don't recall.
I'm eighty-one.
I'm so ashamed.!

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 Iron Lung – Jason Jordan

I’m in bed, still half asleep, when I feel a light tap on my shoulder. I turn
over to look at what appears to be a lung, which has sprouted eyes, ears,
a nose, a mouth, arms, fingers, legs, and toes. It’s flesh-colored, of
course, but it’s holding its hands on its hips, or what I think are its hips,
and scowling at me.

“Uh, hi,” I say.

“I need a drink,” it says.

“What?”

“I said I need a drink.”

“I’m still dreaming, right?”

“No. Now let’s go.”

“It’s 11 AM…on a Tuesday. By the way, where’d you come from?”

“I crawled out your ass.”

I position myself so I’m on my side facing my lung who’s standing on the

bed. When I do this, though, I feel pain and soreness down around my
ass like never before, like I just took the biggest crap in the world.

“You really did crawl out my ass, didn’t you? Why didn’t I feel it?”

“You did, but you fell back asleep afterward. Either way, a sore ass is
better than a sore throat,” it says.

“You’re telling me. And what’s all this talk about drinking?”

“You haven’t drunk in weeks, and we’re sick of it!”

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“Who’s we?”

“Us organs. The cool ones. The ones that can get out in the world and
enjoy themselves. The
ones you have two of, in other words.”

“Oh, so like my kidneys and tonsils?”

“Yeah, exactly. The right ones are a drag, so we’ll invite the left ones to
go with us. Plus, you need at least one of each to stay around and man
the fort.”

“And how are they supposed to get out?” I ask, afraid of the answer I
know he’ll give.

“Well, what you’re about to do is go into the bathroom and give birth to
your left kidney. The
left tonsil will just crawl out of your mouth.”

“And if I refuse? If I push you off the bed and go back to sleep?”

“World of hurt, son. On my signal, every organ in your body that’s on my

side will attack the ones that aren’t. You’ll be in more pain than you can
even fathom, so it’s best you do what I say.”

“I guess I don’t have much of a choice then. I’m off work today anyway.”

I get up and head into the bathroom where I sit on the toilet, figuring
that the left kidney will know what to do. The pain is excruciating, but
momentary. It’s like giving birth, as my lung said, or like passing a
kidney stone. I hear a plop and immediately feel drops of cold water hit
my ass, which lets me know that the kidney is out. I glance down to see
it crawling out of the toilet bowl with its miniature arms and legs. Once
on the seat, right in front of a sitting me, my kidney turns around and
halfheartedly salutes. I wave, not knowing what else to do. Similar to

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my lung, my kidney also has facial features. Different, however, is the
fact that my kidney looks like a kidney bean, which is fitting, I guess,
and maybe too obvious to mention. It jumps off the seat and darts out of
the bathroom before I have a chance to really study it, though.

I’m feeling better—despite the soreness—when I sense something

walking up my tongue. I hear and feel a few knocks on one of my front
teeth, so I open my mouth as wide as I can to let out my left tonsil. It
jumps from my mouth to my leg to the floor and out the door, which I
catch in my peripheral vision.

After I get dressed in my bedroom, I walk into the living room where I
see the three organs gathered by the door, conversing about stuff I can’t
quite make out.

“So you guys are serious about this?”

“Yeah,” says my lung.

“What am I supposed to call you all anyway?”

“Call us whatever you want,” my kidney says. “In fact, make up names
for us. It’ll be fun.”

“You’re all dudes, right? Not chicks?”

“You’re a dude, aren’t you?” my tonsil asks in a squeaky voice.

“Yeah.”

“Well so are we,” my tonsil says.

“Okay, fine.” I point to my lung. “I’m gonna call you Iron.” I point to my
kidney. “I’m gonna call you Bean.” I point to my tonsil. “I’m gonna call
you Hockey. Now, where do you guys wanna go?”

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“The Ole In ‘N Out,” Iron says.

“Why there?”

“It’s open and it’s a cool place.”

“Fair enough. Let’s go, but I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

The Ole In ‘N Out is a standard bar, though it’s split into two halves—In
and Out. The In side has booths and the bar itself, the shelves behind it
littered with bottles of every shape and size, containing liquids of every
color imaginable, while the Out side has pool tables, arcade machines,
pinball machines, and a jukebox, plus a few tables and chairs. Even
though it’s broad daylight and the In door is propped open, the place is
still dimly lit due to the closed blinds that cover the three, large
windows on each side.

We walk in, and because I expect Chuck to be behind the bar, I’m
surprised when he’s not. He always works the day shift on Tuesdays, or
at least he did when I was a regular, drinking almost every night. No
one else is in the bar either, but the mounted TV’s on, though the sound
is off, and Coldplay’s blasting out of the overhead speakers, so I know
someone’s around here somewhere, or was until recently. I grab my
organs gently and place them on the bar before I take a look around. I
venture toward the back where they keep all the stock, but there’s no
Chuck. I push open the door to the women’s restroom, since it’s right
next to the stockroom, but there’s no Chuck. I push open the door to the
men’s restroom, and there’s Chuck, passed out on the floor.

“Shit,” I say. I take my seat at the bar beside Iron, Bean, and Hockey,
who are standing on top of the bar since the stools are too low for them
to reach the bar from. “Chuck’s passed out in the bathroom again.”

“Well,” Iron says, “what are you waiting for?”

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“I dunno. Should I call somebody?”

“Who cares? He’ll come to soon enough. I meant get me a drink!”

“Oh, all right,” I say, not really sure about what I should do. I mean,
we’re paying customers, and Chuck isn’t dead, so I don’t technically
have to call anybody. Why not help ourselves this once? Still, I’m a little
apprehensive about going behind the bar, especially since another
customer could come in anytime. “What’re you guys drinking?”

“Iron City,” says Iron.

“Falls City,” says Bean.

“151,” says Hockey.

“Comin’ right up,” I say. I open the beer cooler, take out an Iron City and
a Falls City, and pop off their caps. “How do you want your 151?”

“On the rocks,” says Hockey.

“Sure thing,” I say. I serve all their drinks in shot glasses because their
hands and arms are so small.

After I finish preparing the 151, I grab a Blue Moon, which I pour into a
beer glass, for myself. There’s a tray on the bar that has lemon, lime,
and orange wedges in it, so I pilfer an orange wedge, squeeze the juice
into my glass, and drop the wedge in. A long time ago, whenever I was
waiting for a drink on a busy weekend night, I’d lift the lid of the tray
when the bartender’s back was turned. They’d always close it when
they noticed the open lid, but when they turned around again, I’d lift it
again. I wasn’t ever caught red-handed, but I suspect they knew it was
me.

“What’re you having?” asks Hockey. “Kool-Aid?”

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I laugh, about to sit back down. “No. Blue Moon. It’s good stuff.” I realize
I’ve forgotten about the money, so I remove fifteen dollars from my
wallet. I get up from my stool to write a note about what we had, which
will help keep us out of trouble, unless Chuck is actually dead. I thought
I saw him breathing, however, and now I’m too afraid to check a second
time. I put the note and money next to the cash register. Afterward, I
place an upside-down tumbler on top just to make me feel more at ease,
perhaps trying to further ensure that nothing will happen to the note
and money.

“Turn that shit off, will you?” Iron asks. Thinking he’s talking about the
TV, I reach for the Power button, but he says, “No, no no. Coldplay. Turn
that Coldplay shit off!”

“Hey,” Hockey says, “I like Coldplay.”

“Coldplay sucks,” Bean says.

“Yeah, they do,” I say, which makes the vote three to one. I turn the
sound system off, but unmute the TV.

We sit and drink and talk. An hour goes by, two. We have seconds and
thirds, fourths. Eventually, shots. I have a difficult time keeping track of
what we drink—the longer the note gets, the messier the handwriting
becomes—plus I had to take a hundred out of the in-house ATM to
convince myself that I wasn’t shortchanging the place. Iron calls it a
night, even though it’s only dinnertime, and hands me a small, red pill. I
pour a glass of water and take it.

“It’s about time,” Iron says. “We gotta be getting back.”

“Okay.” I just sit there, occasionally taking a swig of my beer.

“You know what that entails, right?” Iron asks.

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“Yep.”

“We gotta crawl back up your ass, so have another shot. Actually, two
more.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” I down the two shots and finish my beer. This
makes me feel like I might vomit, so I barge into the bathroom where I
step over Chuck, who’s in the fetal position, and into the stall. I close the
door, lower my pants, and sit on the toilet where I pass out.

Sometime later, I wake up to discover that my ass is even sorer than it

was before. I figure that Iron, Bean, and Hockey returned to their
rightful places in my body, and I kind of miss them already, although
they aren’t exactly gone. I take a moment to gather myself. Once the
stall door is open, I notice that Chuck’s no longer on the floor.

“This is not good,” I whisper, my head still reeling. I think about possible
explanations for Chuck’s absence, as well as my own obligations at this
point, but I’m too antsy to stay in one place, so I exit the bathroom.

I’m halfway to the bar’s entrance when I hear, “Back from the dead?”

I instantly recognize Chuck’s voice. I stop dead in my tracks, turning

my head slowly in the direction of his voice, which came from behind
the bar.

“Yeah.”

“Me, too. You still driving that blue Accord? The one with the flames?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s gone now. Towed, I’m sorry to say.”

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“How do you know?” I ask, nonplussed.

“When I woke up, I saw your shoes, so I opened the stall door to see who
was in there. You’ve
been here a while, eh?” He holds up the note. “I checked the street to see
if you parked there, and like I said, I didn’t see your car.”

“I parked right in front.”

“It’s gone then.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“So, can I get you anything else?”

“Sure.”

“What’ll you have?”

“I’ll have a taxi,” I say.

“Very popular choice,” he says. Then he walks over to the phone on the
wall and picks up the receiver.

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 Five Poems – Tom Daley

Meine Warme Flasche

Guy-soothe, scholarly and stocky,

incubator steam and feathery.

Top thatch, eleganza.

No migraine, my immaculata.

Boy so shy, winsome,

sometime regret to ask a body how it rue.

Pec-plumped, bowling ball bicep.

Disremembered nary a conjugation

or declension. Pockets packed, stark in sack.

Libido lurching girdles of Hercules.

Sweats early running

every morning, in plenty warning,

matron panties shower his shoulders,

hurled from flung sashes and Mrs. Calabashes.

A glistening listener, a thick to consider,

never one to unkilter compassion.

Loves his mother’s mother’s people,

their diagonal crosses,

their sheep stomachs tucked up with fruits and taters.

Though stepped each Sunday School

to the tintinnabulations of John Calvin’s steeple,

was child wild for Mary medals,

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incense, miters, stoles and rosaries.
Pets and likes it when I bites just radius and ulnar,

or takes my chewy fingernails to scritch his spine and lumbar,

his lassitudinal kindness, his scowl and thunder.

Steeps his deepness like his counsels,

bounces between his furtive and his architectural assertive.

Snaps to sleep and creaks by crankiness, boon of humor,

my mainly rave and crave.

Gait and Grace

If you’re still singing, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man

Right Out of My Hair”, he ain’t gone yet,
baby, he is still lodging in there,
tenacious as a louse, crawling around with his saddle sores
and his bowlegged jitter, his parade sleek on two legs,
one a fraction longer than the other, so that he seems
to favor one, but done with such smoothness

that you imagine he is dipping his hipbone forward,

a gesture broken into one part mating dance
and one part orthopedic compensation, and bright,
perhaps too bright a dance
for that hour in the morning, but distinct nevertheless,
even viewed all the way down the factory corridor
like a camel caravan humping over the horizon,
maybe miragey, even friable,
but with a certain signature wobble and grace.

And it’s a distinction, yes it is, to indict him

as the inciter of your sidelong, raspberry rush towards

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the miracle of his mouth, mouth broken,
like a beautiful, collapsing wave, into crooked teeth,
teeth the color of paper left out in the sun, a sweet
dinginess which he used to show you before the day you asked
one question too many.

And you blame him, too, for the sad state that plummeted you
into this week-long flu fever, replete with the sublimation
of tears, tears you refuse to cry for a shy and crazy boy
whose only vice is the helpless vagary of his eyes stalling
inevitably, soberly into those high beams of yours.

And he, oblivious to your suffering as a baker is

to her redundant slaughter of yeast, he with his cherubic
gangliness and his Potemkin village indifference, he still
blasts those fusillades in your direction, those
temptations-cum-taunt that he denied
with a St. Peter fervor.

All the livelong war, he quieted them down,

he spun them into some ginger snap confection
to chew on in lieu of cud, but when the war
has been declared victorious, when the saggy-paunch
power brokers plant their smirking knuckles
over the marble top desk at the deposed puppet’s palace,
when the generals in their desert duds whistle and say,
“The gig is up,” then he is back with it,

back with the tantrum and the doldrum,

the miracle shower of his glance he drizzles
over you, baby, like talcum powder. And if
in the blowback from his casual ministrations, if
you break out in a rash all over your nether parts,
if you prickle like boar bristle where the sun rarely shines,
well now, baby, that’s homework he wasn’t assigned.
He blows his blameless mouth harp out

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to a windy lonesome, and, baby,
that man’s in your hair to stay.

Fire Alarm

Smoke lollygagging in the factory aisles, plinking and hissing like jazz,
the color of down on a mons veneris

Smoke feinting and blurring through cardboard gaylords stacked to the

ceiling with saxophone impertinence

The smoke has affronted, has puzzled the occupational safety nurse, her
clipboard in hand pressed against her breasts the day before the
snowstorm

Her hamburger breasts augmented like a major chord in the puffy,

mustard-colored light, her hair straight as a fiddle bow, her hair relaxed
as the last remnant of a tirade of French horns

Smoke hangs like a weatherhead, mounting and piling over the fork
trucks recharging during the lunch break

Smoke eager as a spring, smoke of one piece, a continuous sheer fabric

pulling itself back into raw cotton

In the shop the fire alarm commences and the man wakes up who sleeps
through lunch with his chin tucked into his adam’s apple, his legs
crossed and kicked up over the lathe bed, his left arm slung over his
right

He puts on his coat and crosses the gravel of the railbed where the
maintenance man waits for him having unlocked the gate to the parking
lot

They are huddled there under the gray clouds in the parking lot,

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standing in their assigned areas, waiting to be counted

A hundred, or two hundred, huddled against the t-shirt cold, mortal,

imprecise, jovial, with gratitude for the smoky disruption of a steel
tedium.

Time jammed into them, time a solvent which sluiced them into
clownish, irreverent soliloquies; even the youngest of them yellowed in
the light of impending snow.

Blue Bantam

Blue Bantam hands me his small telescope. I focus on the houses on the
opposite shore. In the backwash of his gin gimlet breath, I can decode
the discreet inquiries women have posted to his lips and earlobes.

We stand on a dune. The telescope pans a stretch of beach—the old site

of the August carnival at the Methodist girls’ sailing camp. One year
when we were boys, the patchouli of the camp girls tugged Bantam
there. He caught hell later for pied-pipering us to sniff the festival for
ourselves.

The telescope reorganizes the site, magnifies the fossil record of

intervening hurricanes and lame-duck capsizing, of slack nylons and
flesh that burgeoned into girdles.

To brush against Bantam was to tingle, to be studded by generosity. In

his twenties he puzzled us with poems he penned à la Rilke, treatises on
angels and underworlds. In a few words on a postcard he sent every
year or two he detonated something daring in between my sinuses and
cerebellum.

As they follow women, Bantam’s eyes pulse with the synchronicity of a

lighthouse. If he catches their attention, he dons a boyish fragility. He
lets on that he can be collected and, there he is, fetching as a sand dollar

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bleached on a shelf of low-tide afternoons.

Bantam’s latest girlfriend actually bothered to keep up with his

liquoring. “Make that two!” she would insist when he was ready for
another drink. Calibrating an exact duplicate of his intoxication, her
mission was to engineer a reversal of the magnetic field repelling her
intimacy.

Wrapped in towels that day on the dunes, she shivers, blurts, “I’m going
on the wagon.” Suddenly, I am scanning the shore with the telescope
turned the wrong way. Everything—the old campground, the houses on
the peninsula across the bay—has midgetized.

In my sights, Blue Bantam ’s cockscomb crystallizes, darkens like burnt

dessert. Once a sturdy and piquant applejack, in the heat of the
telescope’s inverted lenses our boy reverts to cider. The cider slides
down the throat quickly but without any spank, dreggily, like the
backwash of a wave that shakes itself apart before it reaches shore.

Star Island Saturnalia

A musician-pilgrim perches between a sharp and a slope, her sincerity

bruised to a stir, her bereavement worn out by the moon. Here is Miss
Maguff’s Cliff, where the island schoolteacher was heaved out to sea on
a rogue wave. Rogue wave in the heartlight, rogue wave menacing a
Chinese junk moored in the harbor, menacing the slit-eyed turret that
still conjures U-Boats and torpedoed ships, ships that hang against the
sky at the horizon before they tilt into the deeps.

From far away as Atlantis clouds shuffle in on a weather that scatters

over the stone walls of the parsonage. The weather worries the glass of
the upstairs bedroom window like the parson fidgeting between
Corinthians and Ezekiel.

In the hotel lobby, battered by the hunger of old varnish, piano chords

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saturate the gaps in one’s agnosticism. Insouciantly trendy clerks beg
off the ten spot for the lobster until tomorrow morning. They are
simultaneously wary of their own cheerfulness and irked by their dour-
faced comrades who stand in crisp caution beside steam tables.

One might meet a Unitarian priestess here with her hair frizzed and
incongruously dyed the color of tooth decay, her cheeks nudging her
eyes into the aspect of a heartfelt and selfless agitation.

And there is always a blonde Rapunzel whom a day-tripper will compare

to Sara Jessica Parker but she inevitably has more of a Lorelei-perched-
over-the-Rhine feel to her, a diminutive Wagnerian madchen with
accompanying ringlets and marvelous, beneficent smiles.

Some visitors to the island lift surprised eyebrows at the notion that the
specificity of chipped creamed cod might trump, several ways to
Sunday, the generality of meatless Fridays in their memoirs. Like a
rogue wave, the odor of childhood meals suffuses the dining hall and
rinses away, if only during the dinner hour, a vague tang of creosote in
the pitchers of heated wash-bowl rainwater collected from the hotel
roofs.

In the camera screen the outline of the lighthouse and its island presses
deeper into the purple night, the backdropped purple night. The little
cemetery huddles with its headboards shading its prone skeletons.
From there, bits of bone wash like fever down to the ferryboats where
lithe adolescents, their wet bathing suits outlining their pudenda, their
hair shiny as seal-skin, race to serenade disembarking and sometimes
even departing pilgrims.

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 Sheena Up A Mountain Wearing Flip-flops – Martin Reed

Don't laugh like. Me and Sheens camping in Snowdonia. Doing the big
friggin outdoors thing. Me and Sheens in a field in the piss friggin rain.

Friggin ay.

I mean why on earth are we doing this? With all that shite blowing up
the other night we just can't wait to get away. The tent's coming down
after I've polished off this tinnie and then we're out of here on the twelve
fourteen. At twenty eight you'd think I'd be too old to get homesick, but I
welled up last night when I thought of the flat. I'm even missing
Birkenhead. In a way.

Not as much as we're missing our Danny mind. Sheens has spent most
of the trip pining for the little man. He's all right but it's what parents do
isn't it. You worry for him when you aren't with him, even though you
know Lydia Worsley's looking out for him and she'd never let anything
happen.

I wonder what a one year old would make of this. The whole friggin
adventure of tents and rain and mountains. He'll be off for his nap about
now, just starting to fight it, shaking his head. No way, I'm not tired like.
Little bugger.

Of course it's just as well our Danny isn't here. Crazy women shining
torches in your tent at three in the morning doesn't exactly make for a
good night's sleep.

***

It's coming up on half past ten. Always a bad time for Sheens. Just one
of those things. She goes into herself around this time, then slowly
comes back up in time for lunch. I know there's nothing I can do. She
just has to ride it like. But I unzip the tent enough to squeeze my head
in. She's curled up on the floor in her sleeping bag, clothes piled thick on

21
top.

You all right, love?

I know she isn't. She curls herself tighter.

You cold, love? I know how you're feeling like. My bollocks are like ice
cubes.

I'm about to leave her but I think I know what she's thinking. Listen,
Lydia Worsley won't let anything happen to him. He's all right, our little
man.

She uncurls her head for a moment and whispers something. I can't
quite hear but I think she says that Lydia Worsley doesn't always know
best. There's no answer to that, so I just say, Keep warm, love, I'm out
the front having a fag and a tinnie if you need me.

I zip her back in, safe. There.

***

It was a different picture this time yesterday morning. A bit weird like.
My head was dead heavy when I woke, what with psycho woman in the
night and a tin too many the day before. It took me a while to realise
Sheens wasn't there and when I did I almost panicked enough to sit up.
Then I heard her singing outside. Singing like. Perfect Day. I mean
where the frig did that come from?

You all right, love? I called, and she like yelped, ripping open the zip and
she came diving in, still in her jammies, landing on top of me soaked
through with rain, giggling.

We're going up a mountain, she laughed.

The frig we are. It's pissing down.

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Look, she said, poking her finger into the ceiling of the tent so it
squashed against the top layer. Rain from outside trickled down her
hand onto her arm, pooling at the elbow before dripping onto my
sleeping bag. There were wet patches all over her side of the tent. I
think she'd been doing this all night.

She said she wanted to do the big mountain because it was something
she'd never done before, and she might never have another chance or
get hit by a meteorite, and besides there's a café on the top where we
can get a cup of tea and a sarnie.

I told her she was mad as frig but she could have her mountain.

So off we went.

***

On the bus on the way up to Snowdon she was like a schoolgirl. In the
two years I'd known her I'd never seen her like that. She so often
seemed distant, especially since Danny was born, making me feel like I'd
fallen for someone through frosted glass. But yesterday morning there
was something in her that seemed like she'd turned a corner. Something
girlish like. Something fun. I watched her as she stared wide eyed out
the window.

Just look at that sky, she said, it's swallowing mountains whole.

She told me when we first met that she was complicated. She told me
there were things about her I didn't want to know, that I couldn't ever
know, and when she said it like that of course I didn't want to. I never
understood until everything came out the day Danny was born, the day
we met Lydia Worsely.

Things have a habit of coming out. Like they did at the hospital. Like
they did here the other night.

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 ***

We'd been getting back to the site after lunch and seen this middle aged
couple setting up their tent next to ours. I said Ay to them and the bloke
said, It's a bit wet for it and I said, I couldn't agree more, mate. But his
missus didn't say nothing. She just went all nervous like and
disappeared to the toilet block.

Your missus a bit shy like? I asked. But the bloke just shrugged. We
didn't see them again all day, then in the night just as I was managing to
get some sleep at last I was woken by shouting and an angry unzipping
next door.

There were voices coming closer, his and hers, babbling.

What are you playing at? came his voice. The bloke from next door.

It's her, I know it is, came hers.

It's the middle of the night.

Let go of me.

It's the middle of the night, please.

It was her, in the flat opposite Rita's, don't you know what she did to
them?

All the while quick jerks of torchlight played on our tent walls, steadily
getting brighter. Another angry zip. Ours this time. Someone's eyes
shining in for a moment before I was blinded by the torch, shining first
at me then Sheens, still asleep.

It's her, screamed the woman, it's her, look, let go of me. That bloody
monster.

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I was so dumbfounded I couldn't say or do anything. I hadn't a clue
whether it was real or a bad dream, which is probably just as well
because my usual plan is to slap first and think later.

As Sheens stirred I could hear other voices outside. The camp site was
waking and the woman must have realised because she moved away
from our tent, screaming the worst things, all the terrible horrible
things I had never wanted to know, all the things they'd said about
Sheens back then, all those friggin awful truths. I didn't dare go outside.

I looked at Sheens, lying there. She was taking it all in like. What a thing
to wake to. She closed her eyes and rolled over, the accusing voices still
rattling through the rain. How could she ever hope to sleep with that
going on? Although maybe it was no different to always, except the
accusing voices usually come from inside.

***

On the mountain, it didn't occur to us until we'd been walking an hour

that perhaps we hadn't come best prepared. Sheens just laughed as she
said she should've brought her trainers. I pointed out that I was friggin
soaked; that I was getting wetter and colder. She told me to stop
whining and the only reason I did was because it was just beautiful
seeing her like this. We'd passed half past ten a while back and she
hadn't done her usual.

I told a sheep staring out from behind a rock, I've never known her so
happy.

The sheep carried on staring.

Mind you, it wasn't just the sheep staring at us. In spite of the crappy
weather there were still plenty of others heading up, overtaking us with
their backpacks and woolly socks. They nodded as they passed each
other, saying its a bit of a rough day for it, all knowingly like. Then

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they'd spot us stumbling along and you could see them tutting, not so we
could hear, but enough so we knew they were doing it.

That pisses me off, I said to Sheens.

Just ignore them, she said, they don't matter.

She walked on and when I looked round again we had the mountain to
ourselves.

You'd think we'd have got used to being judged after everything that's
happened, but it still riles me.

***

The first time I met Lydia Worsley was at the hospital, six hours after
our Danny was born. She spoke gently, quiet like. I could hardly hear
over the din of the ward so she had to say it twice. She said, In a few
minutes you probably won't trust me, but you need to know I'd like to
help you.

***

I stood at the edge of a drop which fell away into mist and nothingness.

Tell your Mam I saved your life, Sheens laughed grabbing my arm,
pretending to push me over. Then she pretended a bit more roughly and
grinned, Tell your Dad I didn't.

She ran off up the slope shouting something about the first one to the
top, her words drowned by the wind and a fighter jet screeching
overhead.

***

When Lydia Worsely arrived on the ward I think Sheens had seen her

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coming and knew right away what she was. She started to shuffle
herself off the bed towards our Danny, asleep in his cot, then stopped
suddenly, holding her stitches. She wasn't ready to move that quick.

Clueless me though, I just said, Hello, how's it? What else could I say? I
couldn't work her out. I just thought she was one of those hospital
visitors who trundle round the suicide attempts trying to perk them up.

***

It was half past ten in the morning when Lydia Worsley took our Danny
away, and she didn't look back. I couldn't even see his face to wave to
him. I stood at the foot of the bed, watching our little blanket bundle
glide out of the ward, aware of a quiet sobbing behind me which I
couldn't bare to face. I could only look at the door as it shut, hiding our
Danny from view.

***

The mountain was all closed when we got to the top and Sheens went off
on one. The good time was officially over. There was no café, just fog,
wind, rain and a building site. A laminated sign strapped to a six foot
fence said the old café had been trashed and the new one wouldn't be
open till next year.

Fuck! Sheens rattled the fence, then kicked it.

Hold on, love. Don't spoil it now. There might be something else.
What? You think they'd shove two fucking cafés up here?

I don't know like. I thought there might be a little gift shop or

something. You know. Postcards.

Fuck off, she muttered marching back into the wind. I nearly had to jog
to keep up with her.

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Come on love, I called after her. She was climbing again but up steps this
time, to the real summit and when I caught up with her she was
grasping a round waist high stone plinth, as though the wind would
have taken her if she hadn't clung on with everything she had.

***

When Lydia Worsely told me everything I couldn't believe a word. I

needed to hear it from Sheens.

What did you do to them, your other kids? Why did they take them?
What Lydia Worsely told me, Sheens, is it true? It's a year later now and
she's still figuring out how to answer me, which suits me in an odd sort
of way. Until she tells me herself it's just other people's words and I can
half convince myself they might not be true.

She's shown me photos like. Of a happy family. The kids. Christmas

trees. Her ex. All the things I know we'll never see with Danny. But
when I asked her why she never mentioned it before, she just said she
needed someone who didn't know.

***

We stood shivering at the top for ages. Just staring out into the freezing
friggin fog, wind blowing right through us, right into our bones.
Completely friggin relentless. But it was where we belonged for that
moment, Sheens gazing out into the nothing, and me not sure whether
to comfort her or back off, not sure if the trickle on her cheek was a tear
or just rain. But there she was, the daft friggin bitch, on top of ruddy
Snowdon wearing a t-shirt, shorts, a Woolies kag and a pair of pink flip-
flops. The state of us.

I wanted to say something but before I could she turned to me, and I saw
they were tears, and she just said, Why did they do it again? Why didn't
you make a fucking difference? Why weren't you fucking enough?

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 ***

When Lydia Worsely spoke to me nine months ago she said I had a
chance to make things different. We'd been meeting Danny a couple of
times a week at a drop-in centre and apparently they'd been watching
me.

You need to know that it isn't you we're worried about. This was Lydia
Worsely all over: everything she said you needed to know. She said I
could change things for Danny, if only I wasn't with Sheens.

I asked, How would you know I could change things?

I can't remember how she answered.

***

So right then. We're all packed and the bus heads off in ten minutes.

I don't think we'll be doing this again, so with the tent in its bag I look
around for a hedge to dump it. It was only seven ninety-nine from
Argos, cheaper than the pitch so, you know, no harm done. But then I
see this kid, must be about eight or nine, standing by his tent a few down
from where we are, staring at us. His Mam and Dad will have warned
him to steer clear of the child molesters in the tent at the end, and he
most likely wants to see how many friggin dead babies we've got in our
bags.

You can't blame the kid but it's that being judged thing again isn't it. The
thing that no matter how hard I try I can't quite get my head around.
And you know what, it friggin fucks me off. So I grab the tent and walk
at him, across the yellowed grass where mad bitch had been, on past the
others, staring the lad out as I go. Then just as he looks like he'll bolt I
slow down and lob the tent at him. It lands at his feet with a wet thud.

Pressie for you, son. Get a girlfriend and take her away for a few days.

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It's a laugh.

I turn back and make for Sheens waiting by the bags. She struggles with
a smile for a moment but it's a bit too early, so it fades.

***

On the way down the mountain yesterday there was a moment when the
cloud around us thinned and we could see for miles. We watched while it
lasted. Just for a minute.

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