Still Life
Some of this stuff really happened,
and I was there to observe and record.
Some of it I made up.
Every Morning
She
Comes down to the quayside
Every morning
Wistfully watching and waiting
Hoping her boat will come in
And he'll step onto the jetty
Waving, whooping and waltzing
Making an impression on the sandy shore
Throwing a fish to the lingering cat.
But after a while
And a rueful smile to herself
She
Turns away from the steel sea.
Later that morning
People might see her warming her hands
On a mug of hot chocolate
In the café at the end of the pier.
But she can't help
Stealing a glance out to the steel sea
Just in case
Her boat is coming in.
Brief Encounter
Just another identikit station café
In brown and orange livery
Not really the most private
Or salubrious venue
To be discussing his disciplinary
Sitting, wired, tired and uninspired
In his dark, calm blue suit
Understated and smart, businesslike brogues
Cleanshaven chin and skull
Crisp white shirt and a sober tie
Picked out by his ex-partner.
Opposite, leaning louchely back
In a creased trenchcoat
Shirt crumpled and open-necked
With an equally unironed face
Framed by lank actor’s curtains
Were the half-ajar eyes
Of his representative
A man made up of mostly lines
In this case representing
An unfettered lack of interest
In finding some wrinkle in the law
In fact, in anything
But his next strong coffee
And of course
His fee.
On the table a messy chessboard of
Flat whites and flatter pastries
Unretracted statements and ballpoints:
Reaching the endgame of the tight chat
Trenchcoat asked without inflection
‘Can you get the check, mate.’
Suit paid with a card and an audible wince
Ironically contactless, given the circumstances
And from the looks of it
It wouldn’t be the only thing he paid for
By close of play.
Chalk and Cheese
For as long as she could remember
She had been angry
Never told anyone
Nobody else’s business
A permanently red face
The only indication
Of her unfading fury
That colleagues put
Down to hypertension
For as long as he could remember
He had been happy
He never told anyone
Nobody else’s business
A permanent glowing grin
The only indication
Of his continual cheer
That colleagues put
Down to indigestion
In a rom-com, the expectation
Would be hate at first sight
That she would detest his face
That he would suggest less salt
But that eventually
They’d learn to love each other
Despite, or because
They were such opposites
What really happened was
They only met the once
Passing in the lift
Never spoke
Saturday Dad
He’d much rather be at the match with the lads
Not stuck on a train with the brat, being a Saturday dad
No love lost or found between him and the missus
A fractious phone call reveals they’re both taking the piss
The brat snatches his mobile, snaps abstract shots of nothing,
Crawls under the train table. In his head, dad grabs his coat,
Drags him out like a suitcase and deposits him on the platform.
He doesn’t. Nothing shows on his face - but his calm gives way to a storm
When the brat calls him something obscene, his thunderous response is
‘NO!’
Condemns his behaviour, which was boisterous at most
Not acknowledging the brat’s parroting of last night’s banter
He shouldn’t have been listening to him and the lads, should have been fast on.
He never asked to be a father: failed into a marriage with her, then the brat.
Doing the right thing got harder and harder. Ended up on this train, being a Saturday dad.
Supplementary
She was stuck with a marriage
Like an old, unsharpened pencil
Over the years she had got used
To how it felt, but ultimately
It was pointless
He was a lonely librarian
Called Ronan, living his life
As a misheard dad gag. The ice
Was broken at speed-dating dos
But it soon froze over again
They met by accident in a
Designer coffee bar when she
Slipped and slopped her
Iced latte in his lap - now you’d
Think this would have chilled
His ardour. But no,
It was love at first dab
They trysted weekly at the
Twisted Melon, a seedy motel
In the crumpled outskirts of town
Where moral compasses
Ran out of direction
She could never leave her
Lightweight husband though
The unbearable mass of
Wasted years would surely
Snap every balsa wood bone
In his body
And Ronan the librarian
Understood. He might aspire
To be the minimum wage in
Her emotional economy, but he
Was content to be a
Supplementary benefit
The Walk
He never
Wanted to go on this walk
Anyway
He smiled sweet as
In acquiescence, but
As soon as her back was turned
His face soured
Like a toddler tasting lemon
He would much rather have
Spent the afternoon
Observing the surf
In the company of beer and chips
In the beachside cafe
But no
It was decided
The walk began
Relatively uneventfully
Birds fled, too briefly to identify
Over acre upon acre of reeded shallows
That alchemised from silver to lead
As clouds gathered in a
Meteorological boil
Blew brollies to brackets
And drenched them both
The beachside cafe
Beckoned
With the wind whistling round the corner house like the sound effects in a Radio Three Afternoon Drama, you’d sit with your Gran at the old dining table, finishing a nine hundred and ninety-nine piece jigsaw, because the last piece was *.
In the attic at parties, a cross-legged circle would form on the threadbare carpet and you’d shake your head when you were offered a drag, and they’d grin and close ranks with this sentence: You don’t know what you’re *.
*
And there was that time when you’d plucked up sufficient courage to visit your dad in the cabbage-smelling hospice, even though you were on the other side of town, and you were out in plenty of time, in the rain, for the circular, but you got there too late to say goodbye, because, of course, the bus was *.
The therapist is staring at the little motes of dust as they sparkle in the fickle fingers of summer sunlight poking through the blind, and at the end of the session she chews on the end of her biro and says: I’m not sure if we’re getting anywhere here. It’s as if there’s a fundamental part of you that’s *.