Jerusalem

  “Why isn’t God here, and what are these lights and colours?” He is shouting at the empty room, no longer capable of understanding his own utterances. The pensioners in all the other dimly lit compartments seem as agitated as himself, all waving their Saint Christophers and bellowing the same unfathomable questions in a maddening roundelay. His world subsides to disconnected jigsaw shapes as names and meanings drift out with the ebb-tide of his ragged breath. Barely aware of his own body or identity, only a distant clenching of his gut reminds him that he’s hungry. He should eat some food, if only he can call to mind what food is. The locale rotates, its articles of furniture all circling him like merry-go-round horses, and it comes to him that when he ran down the long road through time with his dead grandchild on his shoulders they survived by eating blossoms which were somehow made from shrunken women. Snowy notes a vase of luscious tulips on the table as this glides past in its dawdling fairground orbit, and it seems to him that fairy-fruits and flowers are as like as makes no difference. With his free hand, unencumbered by the quite forgotten medal, he commences greedily to stuff his rotten mouth with petals while the neighbouring patriarchs in their adjacent rooms all ill-advisedly follow his lead. Choking on glory he is elsewhere, and a devil dressed in white is saying

  “Oh, he’s here alright. Or at least, here is him. The fireworks are what’s left after the gravity and nuclear forces pass away. Only electromagnetism is left standing.” Snowy groans. “So this is all we get, then? But we’ve come such a long way.” The rehabilitated demon smiles and shakes his head. “Not really. You’ve not yet set foot outside the Boroughs. You’ve just both been running on the spot for several billion years.” Beyond the two colossi is the precipice that marks the highway’s end in tumbling veils of brilliance. Raised up from that awful cliff-edge as a marker is the rough stone cross he last remembers seeing set into the wall down at Saint Gregory’s. Growing around and on it are a colony of succulent, ripe Puck’s Hats. His mouth floods with salivary ectoplasm but he finds that

  he can’t swallow, stringy throat obstructed by amazing Easter colours. In their never-ending file of parallel apartments, he observes that all of Green Street’s other elderly male occupants are doing just as badly as himself, walking in circles with their eyeballs bulging and bright scraps of masticated tulip flesh that turn their straggly beards to painters’ aprons. It’s a rotten turn of luck that they should all be in such straits at the same moment, when in normal circumstances they’d see what was happening and pop next door to slap each other on their backs. He’s breathing a bouquet, he’s breathing wreath, the panic in his lungs cascading to his heart. He can feel something clutched in his left hand but can’t remember what it is, and all the time

  he’s waiting for the arch-builder to tell him something vital and conclusive. At last Mighty Mike turns to enquire, “Vernalimt whorey skung?” Vernall, what limit are you seeking? Unprepared, Snowy considers and replies, “The limit of my being.” Here the titan offers him a sympathetic look. “Tenyhuafindot.” Then you’ve found it. The time-vagrant nods. He understands that

  this place is the end of him. If there’s significance he has to find it for himself. His pool of vision, rapidly evaporating at its edges, shrinks to frame his slowly opening hand. A metal disc rests on his palm and raised up from its surface is the image of an old man with a glorious baby riding on his shoulders. It means something, he is certain, and the final question to traverse his failing mind is

  “Where do we go after this?” May’s voice sounds almost petulant. The reformed fiend and Master Builder shrug as one, as if to point out that the answer’s obvious. Gradually,

  Snowy understands. He isn’t breathing. That’s because all of the oxygen he needs is to be had from the placenta. Squirming in his mother Anne’s spasming birth canal, forgetting everything,

  he moves along the lightless channel carrying the infant with him and knows that, inevitably,

  he is going back to where he started.

  CORNERED

  to judge, that’s what keeps going round and round with me well I suppose you could say I believe that everyone should have the benefit of what’s the phrase, I worry sometimes when I can’t remember things, benefit of the doubt, there, everyone should have it well not everybody obviously not some of them round here, with them what they should have it’s more doubt of the benefit in my opinion you take her, the one with stripy hair Bath Street St. Peter’s House I think she lives you see her on Crane Hill up from the Super Sausage black girl well not black mixed race, from what I hear she’s on the lot the benefits the crack the game part of the pond-life the Monk’s Pond-life I should say I mean it’s not her fault up to a point and if you’re from a disadvantaged background then statistically it’s like predestination how you end up but I still think and perhaps I’m just old fashioned but I still think everybody has to take responsibility for their behaviour obviously sometimes there’s extenuating circumstances we’ve all done things that we didn’t want to when there wasn’t any other choice although some people I’m not saying it’s their fault but they don’t try to help themselves they just biodegrade until they end up like old bubblegum that’s on the pavement year in year out in the end you barely notice it’s another social residue part of a natural process people like that and I don’t mean ordinary decent working people, people like the Super Sausage girl are unavoidable bacteria and if you like the street’s a gut it cleans itself, the lifestyle, it gets rid of them eventually where was I

  oh benefit of the doubt yes I remember it should be extended, I think, to those of a certain I don’t want to say class that’s not me and anyway that’s been made into such a loaded term, but of a certain standing in the town let’s say a kind of public figure I suppose you’d call it, getting things done nearly forty years and always always on the people’s side it comes with being from a Labour background and I’ve never been a champagne socialist a Mateus Rosé socialist at one time possibly, that I’ll admit to, though I’ve always had a common touch at least that’s what the wife says no I’m only joking what I’m saying is, I’m part of this community been living down here all these years bit of a local landmark you might say close to his roots and I think people most people respect that when I’m seen out and about like now they smile and nod and recognise me from the paper and I think I’m generally appreciated but of course there’s always one or two

  it’s quite a nice night not what you’d call summery but better than it has been Mandy’s out walking the thin blue line with her police friends what with one thing and another it’s not often these days that we’re home at the same time I often say we’re like those couples that you used to get in weather houses those old novelty barometers we had one up in Scotland when I was a scruffy little muppet although no doubt there’d be those amongst the worthy opposition or in my own party for that matter who’d say that was still the case, no with her being out I didn’t fancy rattling round the place as if I was a dried pea in a cocoa-tin and since I stood down from the council what three years ago to as I put it spend more time at home with Mandy there’s not been so much to do I thought I might as well go for a turn around the block perhaps call in and have a swift half somewhere before wending my way back it’s been a few years since I did that on a Friday night although at one point it was every week we change as we get older in what we can stomach and of course a Friday night in town these days is asking for it really with the way it’s gone these sixteen-year-old numpties, half a dozen theme pubs every street it’s like that Enoch Powell speech only rivers full of vomit and not blood although you get a fair amount of that as well down at the A&E it’s definitely a decline I blame bad government and yes to some extent people themselves they have to take responsibility for what they’ve done but it’s too easy I think saying everything’s the council’s fault what people fail to understand is that our hands are often tied but anyway

  in Chalk Lane there’s a moderate breeze but not so as you’d notice really left
or right here should I go uphill or down a left will take me up into the Boroughs and that can be well not dangerous but on a Friday night and all of the remaining pubs are either dead or full of people that you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with, right it is then and so into Marefair, going downhill, following the path of least resistance

  just across the road there the Black Lion looks like it’s on the way out I can remember when it was all bikers not what you’d call threatening but things could be unpleasant around chucking-out time with the noise and everything it’s not fair on the residents a load of half-baked pissheads revving up shouting the odds but anyway they’re gone now long gone and we’re rid of one more obstacle stood in the way of Castle Ward getting the new development and I suppose you could say the new people that it needs to be a different place a decent neighbourhood to move up in the world not that we’d ever sell that’s not what it’s about it’s an attachment to the district, not for how it is but how it could be living down here all these years of course it’s not our only property but it’s the one that we’re identified with part of our brand if you like I mean the oldest most historic part of town we’d lived here years before I’d heard more than the barest outline, to be honest I was never all that interested but when you find out about some of it well it’s fascinating you take Peter’s Church across the road there put up in the first place by King Offa as a chapel for his sons at their baronial hall in Marefair then it’s rebuilt by the Normans in eleven something and hold on what’s that

  a teenage boy it looks like floppy brown hair jeans and trainers with an FCUK shirt on that’s too big for him a lanky streak of piss he’s in St. Peter’s doorway underneath the portico and shovelling something up into his arms as if he’s in a hurry it’s a sleeping bag, he’s dossing at the church the mangy little twat I’ll have a word with Mandy when I see her next oh hey up here he comes stumbling along the path between the flowerbeds out the church gate with his bag like an enormous boneless baby clutched against his scrawny chest and scuttling across the street he’s in a rush alright although I can’t imagine where he’s got to go

  “Good evening.”

  not a word straight past me and away up Pike Lane Pikey Lane somebody’s changed it to and frankly you can see why though I’ve never liked the term myself well it’s derogatory isn’t it, you know something about the way he ran at me across Marefair like that I felt a bit weird for a second not quite déjà vu but it reminded me of something though I don’t know what it can have been did someone run at me like that across a street before or oh wait I know what it was it was that dream I had I put it down to dodgy seafood at the time when was it eighteen months, two years ago, I was in Marefair in the dream as well but it was night I couldn’t find my shirt or trousers and had I gone outside in my pants and vest to look for them I can’t remember but I know the street looked different in the moonlight was there any moon the dreamlight anyway there were all buildings from the present jumbled up with places that were knocked down years ago and there was that damp creepy atmosphere the Boroughs seemed to have when we were first moved in and in the dream I was just starting to feel a bit anxious and self-conscious about being out in just my underwear when I saw somebody across the street this old chap with a trilby covering his bald head and he ran, he ran at me across the road exactly like that boy just now but he’d got it was horrible he’d got dozens of arms and where his face was it was just a lot of eyes and mouths all screaming at me screaming like he hated me I don’t know what I’d done to make him hate me like that but I woke up in a sweat with my heart going and there wasn’t anybody there it’s just this place with nightmares in its timbers like old farts trapped under bedsheets in my bones I’m still a Marxist to the core I don’t believe in ghosts

  and anyway that’s just the sort of fright you give yourself when it’s the middle of the night but you look at the place now on a nice Spring evening you see what it could be, there’s St. Peter’s with the long light on its limestone and then here just up the road Hazelrigg House where Cromwell bunked down before his demanding day at Naseby when you think about it frankly it’s a marvel, Doddridge Church just up Pike Lane back there across the years people have said it must be awful living in a tiny neighbourhood like that but honestly it’s not it does us anyway a bit of smartening up we could be happy here and if the district’s small well then so what I’m not a big chap in the height department so it’s big enough for me it’s like the Bard said what was it I could be bounded in a nutshell and yet count myself king of infinite space were it not that I

  something like that anyway no it’s a lovely night I’m glad I came out for a walk I’m glad that I’m not in my vest and underpants there’s no denying that it’s changed, the neighbourhood, changed since we first moved in was it in ’sixty-eight around that time I mean the south side of Marefair well that’s still pretty much the same at least the upstairs but with different businesses moved in below kebab shops takeaways what have you and the rooftops are all largely how they’ve always been across the street though on the north side it’s a different story there’s the ibis obviously Sol Central the whole complex when they put it up it looked like something out of the first Batman film but now I don’t know on a Saturday or Friday night you tend to see a lot of couples checking in who don’t look like they’ve known each other long drunk blokes with hard-faced younger women or sometimes with spotty lads of course it’s not my business I think everyone should have the benefit of the old doubt but when you think about it yobbos fornicating right where a Saxon baronial hall one stood and after that the Barclaycard headquarters it still doesn’t seem right almost sacrilegious, here we are, the crossroads up the hill directly opposite there’s Gold Street and already I can see where further on towards town centre there’s the usual muppets wandering in the middle of the road girls with their arse-cracks showing and it’s only just gone seven

  on the other hand there’s hardly anyone about in Horseshoe Street downhill one of those random lulls in foot or vehicle traffic where all of a sudden it goes silent like a Western main-street just before a shoot-out there was once a time I might have wandered down that way and had a pleasant evening out, all of the pubs there used to be the Shakespeare at the top here and the Harbour Lights another biker hangout in the ’Seventies I always used to wonder why they’d called it that when we’re the furthest point inland but I suppose it’s just another wistful evocation of the sea the way that Terry Wogan called the Express Lift tower the Northampton lighthouse anyway the Harbour Lights the building’s still there but they’ve changed the name the Jolly Wanker, well there’s a big letter W and then an anchor but it’s obvious what it’s saying now I’m all for free speech but I don’t agree with that I don’t see any need you wouldn’t catch me drinking in there anyway I’ve too much self respect besides the whole street looks like it’s unravelling

  I wonder how much longer the Victorian gas-holder’s going to be there it was talked about a few times when I was still on the council, council leader a good many years and in the end you have to balance practicality against nostalgia well that’s all it is when it comes down to it nostalgia for a place or thing that no one really gave a fuck about to start with but because they happened to grow up in such and such a street they don’t want anything to change which is to my mind unrealistic nothing stays the same forever everything is going downhill places people we all make adjustments we all start out as idealists or at any rate as something passing for idealists but that’s not the real world in the real world everything and everybody ends up as a Jolly Wanker and that’s their fault it’s not wait a minute there’s somebody do I know him someone standing halfway down the hill on this side of the dual carriageway I’m sure I’ve seen his face just standing there and staring at the billiard hall across the street black leather jacket on he looks like a real villain oh he’s turned his head he’s looking up the hill towards me better look away

  perhaps if I went uphill up Horsemarket I could st
op in at the Bird in Hand whatever it’s called now the place on Regent Square up Sheep Street just to say I’d had one just to say I’ve got a social life even when I’m the only one at home that man though I won’t turn around in case he’s looking I know him from somewhere I’m convinced of it a face like that you don’t forget it in a hurry with that big hook nose his eyes at different levels different angles to each other honestly his face, it looked like a collage it looked like that old ghost’s face when it runs across the road towards me in my nightmare every other week perhaps he lives round these parts one of the menagerie like that chap that you see walking his ferrets although now I come to think was it on telly that I saw him in a film an advert something of that nature horror story I should think from how he looks but on the other hand how likely is it somebody from telly being in the Boroughs it’s more probable I know his face from Mandy’s work with the police you know the evening sun, Horsemarket on these lower slopes, it looks quite nice

  a restaurant an Italian place across the street don’t like the lettering

  black movement on the paving not a heart attack the shadow of a bird that’s a relief