CHRIS MADOCH - FICTION FIXES

D FOR DANGEROUS

He is certain the Picasso behind her is real. Small but genuine.

A bronze lap-dog paperweight- Paris circa 1950. A Papillon.

A non committal albino arrangement of white flowers in a white vase.

The wrong side of fifty, she is small, her black stockings in black shoes; small feet swinging like dead crows beneath the seat of her chair. A swivel high-back that threatens to engulf her. A black vinyl hole. A junkyard of Jungian therapy.

The simple dress is vintage Jean Muir, charcoal grey. She may have bought it new. It might have been a fond find, second time around. Frameless spectacles, a ghost against her neutral face. Pale green eyes.

Smokers' teeth.

'You were very young.' she says, her small voice direct but expertly measured so as not to be immediately intimidating. She smiles- 'Minors, in the legal sense.'

A reflex movement starts the clock. Counting and accounting.

'Yes. Yes. Underage.' How could he have said otherwise. 'We were new to it, youthful.' His eyes closing. His hands rising to touch his pained face. An inner blackness aching to swallow him.

Youth had left him now.

'Maybe you were altogether too young.' she adds, a fresh note of encouragement vivid in her voice. An ink pen poised over Madonna blue paper.

He coughs.

She imagines his infected phlegm rising then falling. Instantly craves a cigarette. She knows that she can't have one. Not yet. Instead, pours water from a glass carafe into a whisky tumbler.

Offers it.

He declines.

She sips. Watches. Sees his unhappiness unfurl like a winged thing nested inside him. A vulture restless in the wild wood of him. She shudders. Beak and talons.

Hates birds.

'Yes. We were fresh at it. Vulnerable. Tender as jailbait.' A small trace of glee.

She pounces, 'Go on. Go on then.' Purrs. One claw already in the thing's wing, her fangs sensing blood. 'Go on from 'Its danger'.

He attempts a grin. A loser's grin. It is his defeated champion, mascot of an old army of sadness, his eternal backing off from confrontation.

'Right.' says Connor, his present jetting into his past without so much as a bye or leave, 'We sensed its danger. We smelled it. Its danger was tangible. Unwashed. Fear sodden. You could slice it and serve it between unbleached hands of bread with rough cut ploughman's pickle. We were dangerously young. God! We were young and we were dangerously hungry to be old.'

Reaches for the crystal water, gulps some.

Spit to spit, he quickly thinks, we must be inexorably joined, this bitch and me, our DNA mingling in a specimen dish.

She reads his sudden wanting, his need, his fragile stability. The waste of space.

'Take your time.' she tells him, her tone stroking, 'It's your time Connor. Remember. Your time. It's your investment in yourself.'

Connor Cloud, the notable documentary film-maker- Glue Boys In Guildford, 1987, Gay Men In The Fens, 1998. Forty nine, mena-porche-al. Twenty eight regrettable pounds to the bad. Gap clothes. CK underwear. Handmade shoes. Expensive scent. Close to breaking down. Bestride two horses- the then and the now. Bound. Certain to fall, to eat dung.

'We were schoolboys, fifteen, green as envy. Brackenwood it was, one of the old grammar schools. Traditional. It looked backwards for it's inspiration. Winchester, that was the benchmark, the masters' intellectual champagne, magnums of demi-sec. We were white, we were bubbly, but we were unforgivably sweet. The sprouts of proles, all scrubbed up, hard boiled, served with a sprinkling of sugar. And we were only ever Asti Spumante. Cheap, low alcohol fizz with preposterous delusions of grandeur.

Homosexuality was understood, pigeon-holed and seldom referred to.

I remember being dizzied by a first glimpse of the PE master's pubic hair. Mike Hutchins, an Australian on an exchange. Bronzed. Blonde. Above his tied towel, a tan line, and there, slap bang in the hot spot of my field of vision, a damp curl, flat against the whiteness of his lower abdomen. A damp curl making a question mark and, therefore, questioning.

There were thirty of us, wet. Hot foot from the showers, twelve year olds or thereabouts, skin pale, spotty, groins promising, our voices neither here nor there. Erectile tissue threatening.

He saw me.

He watched me, how I was trapped. And he smirked. Smiled softly before turning and leaving to leave me be.

An eerie erotic image on a loop of video tape. I've used that smile again and again.

In the dark, whacking off, he'd endlessly leave, leaving slowly to leave me be, over and over.

Nine months after, I was sharing a library study table with Leo Bax. A close friend. His mother dead. A dead dancer. His father owned a company that installed swimming pools. He was short, Leo, stocky, half-caste. His skin the colour of café latte. We did everything together, homework, play, oral sex. He had a fat cock, thick enough to make me gag. Boy's cum that smelled boy sour but tasted sweet, like tired milk.

'Look', he said, his amber eyes alive with devilment, his eager hands unfolding the newspaper cutting. Toronto. A month out of date. 'A blast from our past.'

He was right and I felt blasted by it.

Mike Hutchins Suicide. Mike Hutchins the youngest of a group of seven men accused of operating a paedophile porn ring was today found dead in his prison cell where he was being held on remand pending trial etc.

It was an odd photograph.

He looked relieved, winded, grounded, like an aberrant angel caught by God.

I was instantly twelve again, open mouthed, towelling my armpits dry. It was instantly twelve midnight again, a boy between the sheets, hard as rock, my mind on his questioning curl, answering yes, yes, over and over.

Leo, older than me, had had him. That's what he said. He told me.

Thirteen, and in a stock cupboard in the Drama block. Hutchins went to fuck him, bracing the boy against forty copies of Macbeth and a stack of Alan Bennetts. But his erection left him so he leaned down and sucked on Leo 'till he came, the boy's peepers fixed on Becket's Waiting For Godot and a programme from the previous year's pantomime.

'Was it good?' I begged him.

'Yes!' he said, his eyes gone glassy as the dangerous memory kicked in, 'It was fucking fab! Fantastic!'

As much as anything else, its dangerousness excited us.

Animated, Connor stared at her sufficiently long to cause a measure of social discomfort.

She sensed his ascendancy and was immediately in two minds- cautious but curious. But her knowledge of the strict guidelines had her reaching for the panic phone. Connor raised both his hands in a gesture conveying astonishment and disbelief. He straightaway withdrew. She understood. Left the receiver untroubled in it's cradle. But the door opened loudly.

The yawning door space filled with the bulk of a suited man.

'Yes?' Her voice made no attempt to hide her irritation.

'We thought you might be in need of assistance?' the apologetic question delivered in a fawning monotone that Connor immediately recognised from hours spent listening to extras getting to grips with single lines of script.

'It is fine. And we are fine.' That was enough to make the stranger leave and have the door re-closed with pointed gentleness.

She caught Connor's eye then, then pointed to the security cameras at ceiling height in four corners of the room. Connor shrugged. So what, he thought. Everything railing against him was already on film.

She moves the glass of water.

'Its dangerousness excited us..?' she said, almost carelessly. A cover for the new hint of urgency which she knew had crept into her voice.

Connor coughs, starts again.

'Leo was always very frank about what he wanted. He'd say fish and chips and I'd say alright. He'd say sex in the woodshed and I'd say yes, I don't mind. It was always that matter of fact. Boys, see- beautifully uncomplicated.

No room for artificial intricacies and emotional melodrama. Easily half the worry of girls. We did it once with his dad mowing the back lawn, the noisy Qualcast inching nearer as we flew to orgasm. Body fluids moist in the dry sawdust, caught like spilled candle wax. The green machine suddenly silent. My legs shaking. The evidence urgently rubbed out by Leo's tennis plimsolls. His dad calling that he was getting us lads a drink of cold milk. Me relieved. Leo, close to a fit of the giggles, shoving my damp shirt-tails in his mouth. Leo composed, whispering to me, it's the danger, the danger, it's the danger that does it for me! Me instantly agreeing. Me agreeing with him, not because I always seemed to agree with him but because I felt it too. I thought it thrilling didn't I. I filed it away in my memory as unforgettable- the danger.

After that we made a game of it- cocks out on the back seats of buses, cocks out as we cycled into town. That sort of thing.

Cocksureness.

Only what happens is, and after a surprisingly short time, really, shorter than you'd ever think, you jade the appetite for it, create another boredom threshold. Go off the boil. Lose your wood. We sussed it soon enough. In the end, nothing short of a suicidal sixty-nine in full view of the massed kop at Anfield would have done the trick.

We never went there. I'm so glad.

What we did was worse, infinitely worse. Oh yes. We chose another avenue to hell.'

Connor stopped.

She smiled.

Connor loathed the smile. It was too small. A fake.

Beyond the flowers the view through the sixties window was unobstructed, semi-rural, planted out with perennials, and privilege. Connor saw it was a sight denied the common herd. And he suspected the existence of a ha-ha somewhere in the mid distance, where the clipped lawns ended and the grazing began with it's cow pats and buttercups.

And close to the horizon a spire, as might be expected, it's great lingam thrust into disinterested space. A flaccid flag of St George wrapped around a pole. And, nearby, a strange crop of media masts. A wind-sock and a helicopter pad.

'Go on.' she said, again conscious of her own agenda, and less inclined to hide it. 'You were walking that last mile down an avenue to hell.'

'Yes. But at times it felt like we were running. Running cross country. Ice in the puddles. Light rain making our kit transparent. Gorse bushes biting at our flying calves. The masters belting out abuse or encouragement. Some of it mewling. Most of it lewd. Move your arse Cloud! You would son! You fucking would if it had my fist up it!

It was my idea.

And, in all fairness, it was my turn. And Leo fell in with it. That was a surprise. Then he took the whole thing over and what I'd always intended as a fantasy found it's own peculiar momentum. It ran away with itself, rattling on to merge with life and finally form it's own hideous reality.

I always thought it was fiction. Always believed we made the whole thing up. To this day I can still kid myself on that I read about it, on some wet Sunday, in one of the tabloids.'

An alarm starts. The sudden screaming bird of it jangles her nerves. She stares at the telephone. Waiting. Nothing. The car alarm stops. She imagines the bliss of seeing damaged feathers floating above the car park. She visibly relaxes. Signals with a finger that he should continue.

'The Reverend Allan Flude was new to the parish. Young. On probation. Hiding. We saw it at once- a trail of social baggage that he thought he'd got well shot of. A past he was still escaping from. It hampered him, haunting his freedom of thought and movement. Most people took to his style, took to his measured carefulness in good part- the product of an eager Christian consideration and creative sensibilities, so it was generally agreed.

Leo and me, well, we believed otherwise.

I resolved to prove my theory right. And, somewhere along the line, I formed the extraordinary idea that I could make this creature wholly mine. I could know him. I could have knowledge of him.

Not a child. Not seventeen. Not kind. No. Not kind at all. Not bound by anything.'

Connor suddenly shouting, 'We were boundless!'

She is scared, triggered.

Sweat has collected in glassy beads along his hairline. He raises both hands to comb through his tired hair with splayed fingers. Body fluid moistens them. He rubs his anxious hands against his flexing thighs. Dry again. Connor thinks he might be involuntarily leaking. Begins to rock slowly.

Immediately, she reaches beneath her and brings out a chromium dish, the shine of it reflecting shards of collected light. A primed hypodermic. The extreme needle sanitary. Nothing sharper, it's tip glinting. Balls of bright white cotton wool, soft, blunt. Skin coloured sticky plasters. Her manicured hands twitching.

He sees.

Knows the score.

Stops rocking. Dreams of dreaming.

The door suddenly opens.

He does not struggle. It would be pointless.

Later. His limbs seem familiarly leaden. Through the naked window he can see how time has flown. Rooks punctuate the evening sky with marks and exclamation. The distant trees have taken on the pallor of spilled ink.

Her hands are highlit by a desk top halogen.

His hands are tied.

'Allan Flude.' she reminds him, her tone emotionless, perfunctory, 'The preacher. Remind me of the bent preacher again.'

Flude came to Connor's mind immediately, as easily as switching on the TV.

As always it's the same brief show composed of edited highlights. Always in the same place- the green painted residential caravan sited in the Rectory orchard where they watched amateur films, where, later on, they made films and watched them too. Where Flude was finally found bollock naked, his heart stopped, the TV showing snow, the video ejecting gay hardcore. A small brown bottle of butyl nitrate open on the green Wilton, the bleaching effect of it widespread as if it were the ghost of spilled blood.

'I wanted sex with a grown man.'

'Yes. It's always about what you fucking want.'

Her reply surprises him. 'Why.' she asks, feeling increasingly cruel, 'What could you possibly find so repulsive about female genitalia?'

The question stuns him.

She's the cunt, he told himself. As if butter wouldn't melt inside the covered furnace of her, her pudenda breathing like a separate animal, it's gums stimulated by blood-flow, it's teeth bared, longing to snatch at his puny inches. She could chew him to the bone, spit him out and move on.

He wasn't fooled.

This one could sell her unborn foetus to laboratories. Oh yes. This one is all heart!

'The smell!' he says, finally, his tone derisory, 'The god awful stench!'

Fuck the rules, she tells herself.

She lights a Marlborough Lights cigarette, revelling in the mild anarchy of it. She'll flick it's ash into the chrome tray. Stub it out on a cotton wool ball.

'The preacher. Let's get back to the damned perverted preacher.' she says, re-focussing, deliberately moving things on.

'Well, we ingratiated ourselves. It was easy- servility with intent. He knew what we meant from the start. He had to have known. It's never an easy thing to conceal the game you're playing. And we were far from being expert at it. Then we contrived to be found by him, in flagrante. Gobs full. Lost in that world of boy to boyness.

Flude watched us for a while, just as we suspected he would, rustling himself.

Then he picked up our discarded shorts and coughed discreetly. No fuss. No flap. No lecture. Simple as that.

In less than a week we had our first threesome.

Me intoxicated by his masculinity, punch drunk on his genitalia. Me near to sleeping in the crucible of his hairy chest, my arse sore and singing lullabies. Leo close to coming for the third time, kissing him alternately- soft and hard then soft, then hard. You could untie me, you bitch.'

She does not respond.

She is stood at the window, staring out at nothing. Letting the nothing of it lubricate her journey inward. Days, weeks, crying on the phone, clutching at straws, burying the truth like a cat buries it's shit.

Being brave.

Being angry.

'He introduced me to film. Film making. Film developing. Film editing. It was his creative seed. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be who I am today.'

She turns to watch his fears being soothed by his remembered ego, sees him clothe himself in calmness knowing for certain who he is.

'Allan Flude, deceased. He introduced me to it all.'

She's heard it before. The predictable all of it.

He always gets this far down the line and reverts. His misunderstood genius failed and failing. Increasingly impotent. Overweight and gaining. Starts to ramble on excitedly about his significance, his contribution to the genre.

It gets in her way, deeply irritates her.

He was there when the sick preacher died. So what!

She walks towards him.

Connor is deep into a purple performance of his romanticised CV.

Out of the blue and without thinking, she strikes his face harder than she remembers ever striking anybody.

He screams like a burning child.

The door opens. 'Fucking get out!' she screams, her fist on it's way for the second massive strike.

Connor screams again.

The door closes.

Hot blood leaving Connor's damaged nose like truth through a crack in the plaster of lies.

Blood and spittle leaking from Connor's mouth.

Her mouth opening. 'I had a son.'

The agent starts again, 'I had a son. He disappeared three days after his fifteenth birthday. He was gay. Fresh out. He'd told me and I didn't mind. I didn't mind at all, not in the least. But I minded him being missing. Oh yes. I minded that very much. And even all the resources of this all knowing place have not been able to help me stop the minding. But you, you sad apology for a human being. You might just hold the key. So I tolerate your excursions into self-aggrandisement. That key might unlock a whole new area of investigation for me.'

Connor is disinterested.

Connor is self-interested, coughing, spraying droplets of blood at the breastline of her Jean Muir. It disgusts her.

She hits him again. The white flowers spilling.

Connor screams. Involuntarily urinates. The ministry floor no stranger to piss.

In the sudden mess of everything she screams another demand at him 'So tell me you evil bastard! The production company, D4 Dangerous, tell me about that! Tell me everything you fucking know about the snuff movies.'

BITTER SUITE EMBITTERED

In order of appearance-

A WELSH MALE VOICE CHOIR OF RUGBY PLAYERS

Either in fact or recorded with appropriate sound effects.

VICTORIA (VICKY) WORTH (WORTHLESS)

A Welsh woman of thirty years.

ANGEL PRESENCE

An opaque predominantly male wraith. Either in fact or as an hologram effect with live voice over.

SETTING

We are inconveniently between here and there. The indistinct building is vast, inhuman and due for demolition. Out of the partial blackness we are made party to a large and virtually empty flat. A virtually derelict flat. We could be anywhere but this is Cardiff, Wales, UK. There is a pale lemon three piece suite comprising a fixed armchair, a three seater sofa and a recliner. All rubbed grubby. We see a few cardboard packing cases, a small cluttered table, a TV and a telephone with answering machine. It is a bleak place as befits a bleak time in the bleak life of a bleak person. The light is spare, unshaded, and we can smell the cloying dust. In the presence of this abundance of 'lifeless' despair we deal with our emerging disgust and a growing sense of distance. Nobody in their right mind would elect to live here. But, someone does evidently exist here in this living space. There are poignant indications of a woman's touch- new pale lemon boudoir slippers and a large lemon vase of countless Easter lilies.

Scene One

(The suspect veil between this world and Vicky's is raised. Night. A downlight fades up on the fixed armchair. We hear waves of dull urban noise. An offstage door opens then closes. From the street we hear the arrival of massed men. We don't see the Male Voice Choir but we hear it as it begins to sing- The Lily Of The Valley. When the singing stops, we hear a sash window opening in a rush. Immediately we hear an offstage voice shouting.)

OFFSTAGE VOICE

Dear God! Look at you. All of you. And look at the bloody time. Why is it you lot of boy scouts have not got buggering homes to go? Eh? Push off. You heard me. Back to the fucking valleys now. Go on. Sodding shove off!

(We hear the window closing in an angry clatter. We hear the told choir dispersing with cursive mutterings. Silence, save for dull waves of urban noise. Eventually the annoying phone rings then the answerphone cuts in.)

VICTORIA WORTH

(Upbeat answerphone message.) Organic chocolate- 90% cocoa, it's the new sex. No, don't hang up. Whoever you are, and let's face it you could be just about anybody, I need you to leave me some sweet crumb of comfort, nutter or not. So oblige me, please..after the Welsh-speaking tone.

FEMALE VOICE

Vicky, pick up. It's me, Vicky. (Pause.) I'm dying, you sick bitch. It's Neath. Neath Accident and Emergency. I'm fucking dying, alright. (Pause.) Yes. It is. It's true. It is. I got the fucking news today. (Pause.) Just like my mother. They said. Just like my mother. (Pause.) You're next. Call me.

(Silence. We hear the sound of a reluctant toilet being flushed and a tired door opening and closing. Vicky enters in yellow fleecy pyjamas. She is carrying a toy bear- blonde, a large bottle of lemonade and a bottle of Cinzano. There is an old glass on the cluttered table. She sits in the fixed armchair, slips on the slippers then plays the phone message. We hear it repeated. She gives no response. She erases the message. The machine resets itself. She switches on the TV.)

More than three thousand members of an ancient coastal community in Kerala are feared drowned in India's worst floods for more than half a century. Britain and America are in the van of..

(The TV suddenly dies along with the lights and all things electrical. Darkness is the victor penetrated by street lighting.)

VICKY

Fuck!

(Using the light of a cigarette lighter she exits to feed the meter. We hear a clunk. The lights return. She re-enters. The answerphone resets itself but there is no life in the TV. Vicky hits it hard. Nothing. She hits it repeatedly. Still nothing. She slumps back in the chair.)

Fuck!

(Pause. She eats chocolate. Then it's as if something appears to spook her. But she takes a deep breath and settles down. Smiles.)

My famous Dad, the actor, well read, well spoken, his caramel voice embroidered with the ethnic traces of both Burton and Hopkins, he was always very good with TVs. Bloody marvellous he was. Yeah. Magic. Totally. Televisions always bugged him. They always had to be put right see, tuned proper, be proper colour balanced, be spit and polished, shone to a gloss and proper bloody back-lit. (Pause.) He'd use them mini pseudo aquaria in a variety of popular nautical settings. Frigging kitsch things. Things needing to be properly positioned. He said. (Lengthy pause.) Oh God! Fuck it! All of it. All of it. The lot. The mindless recyclable shit of it all. This. (Pause.) Proper little fusspot he was. Mum said that. Proper little fusspot. Proper little teapot. Gay bastard. That was her delicate turn of phrase, her minute trace of quaintness. 'Proper little fusspot.' Griddle cakes his favourite. Griddle cakes her speciality. Delicacy she said. Delicacy- mm, what a useful camouflage that turned out to be. The world of delicate and delicacy. (Pause.) It worked. Indeed it did. It worked for her. (Pause.) He was actually, matter of factly gay as it happens. Unusual I thought. (Pause.) Bloody unusual for someone born in Glamorgan. I thought. And, fucking unusual for someone born in the Glamorgan of miners used to rattling rattles in support of Swansea Rugby Football Club, he enjoyed a certain sexual equilibrium and was absolutely unafraid to lift shirts. Respected for it, it was said. They said. And I can't say that I ever saw him much. (Pause.) She brought me up under her name, on her lemon yellow ownsome, under her own head of steam and unseemly steaminess- too many half-cock TVs to fucking mention and, every one of the buggers always on the irritating mind-numbing blink. And no electric mementoes of the Isle Of Wight alive with plastic fish. None. No backlighting. No wonder. None whatsoever. (Pause.) Worlds apart they were, my parents. Chalk and cheese. He was fawn like vanilla fudge. She was pink like boiled lobster. (Pause.) No. You fucking listen. You listen to me. It's me. I can't help myself. I tell her story over and over like it was some mystery, some fucking York passion play- like the barddic tableaux of it might one day explain the Satanic aberration of me away, magically. Poof! A poof like 'im. Gone. Gone way beyond belief and gone beyond sweet grief with the usual wave of Merlin's wand. (Pause.) Frigging history! (Pause.) Yes I know. No fucking need to phone and say I told you so. Her mother's death before her became her death- it's in my blood. Now it's yours. Yes. Inherited from way back. (Pause.) It's in my blood. Every cell. Indivisible now. (Pause.) And there is a little bit of me wishes to erase the hell-bound lurid and gigantic bits of me. God! The daily, page three, tabloid bits of me. Tits. Tits. And airbrushed bits. Imagine- me exposed in The Sun for breakfast, I wished. Oh how I wished it. Once upon a time. (Pause.) Black coffee and Marmite toast. Sunburn on my shaved mons veneris. That's taste for you. That's proper taste. Oh yes indeedy. Me, naked and childlike in the earthly garden of delights. Tumbles in The Mumbles. Merlin's weekend dogged to death patch. (Pause.) Not no more. Not now. (Pause.) Him with his dirty mac and spitting stick. Fuck the fairies and the fucked-up tales of fairies. (Lengthy pause.) It was a real ambition once. Now it's an admission of something sad. Good Lord! (Pause.) There are worse things for a chapel girl. There are. There are worse things for a chapel whore. Roars of low esteem. Axminster burns. VD. (Pause.) There are powerfully sinful bits of me need a right proper exorcising..evil bits. Evil bits only to be repeated in the sight of Catholic crucifixes. Sly bits meant to be heard again only in the presence of holy water. (Pause.) Well water from St David's. Tears from elsewhere. (Pause.) There's no way out of this maze of life. Rootless, me. Mapless. No route from A to B. And there's no sense. No sense in innocence. It's senseless. There's no forward play no more. No proper video. Original. Creative. There's only sodding rewind. Rewind and play. Rewind and play. Only rewind and fucking play. (Pause.) Oh yes. See-saws. Slides. Swings and roundabouts. (Pause.) And there is no fucking denying it, absolutely no fucking denying it. Look at me! Well, take a fucking good look at me! I am my bitch of a mother's daughter. Like peas in a pod we are. (Pause.) These eyes are her eyes. Look. Enormous Welsh grey blue. (Lengthy pause.) My breasts are bigger. (Pause.) My thighs are smaller. (Pause.) She's millimetres taller. (Pause.) Dying. (Pause.) Dying, she says. (Pause.) Maybe already dead and buried. (Lengthy pause.) She was adopted. Cast aside then chosen. And I say this in public at every given opportunity because it might make the basis of some rudimentary excuse for her vastly bizarre behaviour. And, to my certain knowledge, there are several suspect Science Degrees in Anxiety Counselling which might light up 'JACKPOT' at the thought of such fluffy obviousness. (Pause.) She should be fucking researched head to toe inside and out. Without a doubt. There's no question. (Pause.) Mankind might benefit from her lifetime of cunt-for-hire service to every kind of man. (Lengthy pause. Then explosively.) Look mum! No fucking diverting TV! No stress busting dockside soap. No fly-on-the-wall valley documentary! No piece of fairy cake TV! Fake TV. No fucking fascist Anglo TV. This is real this is. My shit reality. (Pause. She eats more chocolate. She lights a cigarette.) She had this frighteningly fat friend, mum- a fellow pilgrim from her Mormon phase. I remember her well, very well meaning, obsessive chocoholic, extremely fat and psychotically forty. Frigid as a freezer full of lambs' liver she was. This clinically obese friend, she'd been routinely abused by her father, every Friday she said, after fish and chips and mushy peas. You could set your watch by him she said, a right pig of an Eastender who always refused to be delayed by the rigours of routine genital hygiene. (Pause.) She'd make her rotund protestations- all to no avail. I'll not elaborate. Leave it well alone. I'll leave the smell of Dagenham to your own imagination. Pigs, I love the creatures but there is a line to be drawn here. (Pause.) Well, anyway, there was the common ground, the foundation of friendship and twisted fixation. They were superglued see- bonded by sexual curiosity and a sweet tooth. Filthy familial abuse, that and the political fashion at the time for what the unwieldy newspapers referred to as Greenham Common Chic..them fucking ugly badged up dungarees, and lime-green moon boots. All of it the matronly forerunner of Grunge, fashion with two fingers- my interior design inspiration. Fuck off Vogue with flair, see. Fuck off L'Oreal with flair. There are women who are in fact never fucking worth it. (Pause.) No. No. No. All this, all this shit, the lot of it, it is intentional, absolutely fucking intended. It's no good you getting the wrong end of the stick. I've never been a victim, me. No. There'd be a reason then. Well, there would. So much cosier. All this would be reasonable then. Safe. Saccharine sweet. But, no, I've never been a victim me. I've not been raped by my dad. Pussy repulsed him. I've not been licked out by a lesbian mum. (Pause.) I've been soured. I've been soured countless times. Soured. There's been hours of souring. It's not the same. (Lengthy pause.) I like my brave face best of all. (Pause.) Everything fucked up, see, it's always rooted in something else. Oh yes. Even rootlessness. (Pause.) Listen. Most afternoons I'd come home from school to a council-house front-room full of sour women- bi-curious single mothers, all bloody Peruvian socks and folk art painted satchels stuffed with feminist propaganda. Give me a friggin break. Visualise it for me! Come on now. Just fucking visualise it! Pastel Doc Martins and Jesus sandals. No bras. No plucked eyebrows. This was Grunge in embryo! The gobby I want I want foetus strident! Two bloody great fingers to Max Factor. (Pause.) And here was a vast mobile library of oral history- first hand accounts of 'How WE dealt with our repeat abortions'. 'How WE learned to live with cellulite and without men'. Oh yes. And, 'How WE suffered'. (Pause.) My home was not a bleeding home. My home was a total stranger to certainty. My home was this moving feast to victimisation, a mercurial shrine to mutual misery. It was this brick caravan. A sick staging post for my 'sickening for something' mum and her salon of embittered souls. (Pause.) Sad. Miserable. Definitely diflas. (Lengthy pause.) A magnet for Cancer. It was asking for the furry fragments harbouring disease. It was. You can see it plain as day with hindsight. (Long pause.) But I did fancy one of the Mormons. I remember him like he was here now. Now. Here and now. Starched shirt heaven he was. Mmm. Mmm. He was so spanking clean and his kit always sparkled. A voice like an angel. A gob suited to poetry. A smell like Fabreeze. (Long pause.) That fat friend of hers was a whiz at waste not want not home-knitting. She'd often make winders of my outstretched undernourished arms. We'd be connected then, and then, being so close, I'd easily detect her sweat. Bitter sweat. Acid drops, like the tart stories tripping of her tongue. (Pause.) Well, it happened that her eldest son, oh yes, the fat girls always get up the duff and marry a munter, her eldest son a would you believe it throwback to her own dirty father, a boy with an intelligent quotient not much bigger than his thirteen years, had been laying the widespread art of mutual masturbation and oral sex on his none the wiser siblings. Mummies and Daddies it was. They said none the wiser but we know. We always know. Screen memory, that's what. We know where innocence went. And we know when. (Pause.) So, Mummies and Daddies it was. And, later in the cross examining, and- through the transport of children's TV to a parallel universe, fucking Doctors and fucking Nurses. Erotic role play learned from erotic role models. (Pause.) This bit's sore see, this bit's very swollen, very very swollen indeed. What this bit needs is a special kiss. It does. It really does. It really needs a very very special kiss. (Pause.) Oh the mystery of it all- life, death and the universe, perversely unknitting itself. The magic. Tragic it is. The plain stitch you could say, and the pearl, undone. (Pause.) Oh, the eight year old brother, in particular, the one with flaking skin, he'd taken to it like a duck to water. Born to it, so the story goes. (Pause.) Destiny I suppose. A like-it-or-lump-it lot, or fate. Just one of the many several themes of my obsessive verbal thesis- even then, in my abusive childhood, building like sharply contrasting thread. Take another look at me, go on. I'm sitting a bachelor's degree in Creative Suicide. University of Fuck Ups Bridgend. Now then. Show me some fucking respect. (Pause.) At that clinic they told me to steer clear of contrasts. Contrasts, they said, oooh, terrible things, they can do your head in, drive you totally insane. Shades of grey, they said, indefinable, neither one thing or the other, so much better for the psyche than black and white. So much better for you. For you, you with your profile. Well, shit like that can stick in your memory forever. (Pause.) And you pass it on. You do. You pass it on. (Long pause.) Fat Sharon knitted me a chic cardigan as it happens. Fat wool. The cardigan of many colours, the coat of all the ends of wool that no-one else wanted. The sore pink stood out like a sucked thumb. Talk about fucking contrast! (Pause.) I had absolutely no idea what oral sex was, then. Talking about it. Talking about what you might do, given just half a chance- that's what I thought it was. All gob, I thought it was, all gob and no fucking action. (Pause.) All gob and no fucking action. That's poetry for you- the oral sex of the thinking classes. (Pause. Stubs out the cigarette.) I've hated my emotionally disabled mother for far too long, far too long. So long it's been debilitating. (Pause.) Bitter, as bitter as fat Sharon's perspiration, that's what I am now. Not thinking. Not doing. Not doing a thing. How close to a definition of death is that? (Pause. She finishes the chocolate and throws the wrapper away.) Angel, I told you. I told you didn't I. I told just you. I never told anyone else. No-one. It's our little secret this is. Sacred. (Pause.) She shone this bright halogen torch right up my vagina once, twice. And I've never fucking forgiven her for it. That's secret. That's sacred. (The electric goes again. The sudden darkness is penetrated by street lighting.) Fuck me! (She feels her way to a window.) Alright, alright. Hold on to your fucking black and white minds. Hold tight to your secrets. It's just another power surge. We get these intermittent surges. Outages says Owen. We get these electrical surges all the time. It's the collective desires of the independence movement. They're firestarting someone's heart. Something's not connecting right. (Pause.) It don't matter to me now- I sold my computer. I abandoned all my internet abilities and liabilities. (Pause.) There's a full Moon though, look, wide as you like, a pale untanned cracked arse, full on Moon. (Pause.) Crikey! Catatonia on the universal radio. He'll be tuning in, my Owen. There's special that is. (Pause.) Well, like I tried to explain to my imaginary therapist, the halogen with it's phallic penetration, that was altogether too much light to put upon my front bottom. And once in real therapy I remained very tight lipped. (Pause.) Plainly. I was at a vulnerable age then. They do say, don't they, people from all quarters, that you can never get enough internal illumination, well this was way too much. Black and shiny. Battery driven. A floodlit cricket pitch. An invasion of privacy, a palpable surfeit of look-see. This was way too much. (Pause.) I remember, clear as you like on rewind. Rewind stop and play. There was this plain as day determination on my mam's face. Extraordinary now that I come to think about it. (Pause.) Yes. That's what that expression was- ugly self-interested obsessive sexualised determination. (Returns to her chair and lights another cigarette. After the first drag the electricity is restored.) Mam! Is that you? But Lord, oh Lord, my own sweet love child is elsewhere. Taken from me. Gone. As good as dead, mam! MY BABY!! She needed things. Shiny things, emotional treasures. Things I'd lost the power to give. She needed my illumination, my guiding light. (Long pause.) Angel? Where the fuck are you. I need you. I need you. I need you. I need you. Are you there?

(We see a form appear in the room, pale faced, dressed in black. He approaches her but will not venture into the sharp light.)

ANGEL PRESENCE

I am always relatively near.

VICKY

As near as my mother's breath, her soft voice soothing in the throws of my violent Asthma? That near? Dear? As near as her fingers in the tangles of my freshwashed hair? The water warmed but not too warm and softened, thick with valley camomile. Closer maybe? The closest even? As murderously close as her cold blood crusted beneath my broken fingernails? (Shouting.) Did you fucking hear me screaming!?

ANGEL

Ever near. Nearer. Never separate.

VICKY

Always! You promised. You said for fucking all ways! You said. You promised.

ANGEL

Promises like prayers can drift forever on the air. For always. Yes! I said as much. Inseparable.

VICKY

Good. Yes. That's good. That's very fucking good for me because I need you Angel Presence. God damn you for ever truly being! But I really do need you. I need you for my lost darling and for me. (Pause.) And 'What kind of shoes are those you wear, that you can ride upon the air?'

ANGEL

Let's get to it. What then? What in particular? What would you need me for now? (He retreats to the shadows. Long pause.)

VICKY

An ending would be nice. No more bloody loop the blasted bloody loop. That would be very nice. An ending at last. An ending, at last, to this endless cunting everything. An ending. Oh cunt yes. How's that for fucking starters? (No reply. She pours herself a drink. Pause.) I woke up, see. Twelve- remodelled by early onset puberty. I was pale and pre-menstrual. Lonely. She was out, partying, getting a new life. Out in a man's dress suit, parading herself as a man. Brazen as you like. A man she'd lifted out of the closet. (Pause. Screams.) DADDY! (Long pause.) The babysitter was asleep, mouth wide open catching spiders, her knitting for Ethiopia held in cartoon freeze frame. (Pause.) The tall lodger had returned. His lodging's door was accidentally ajar, the light inviting. I saw. I saw him. Oh yes. I saw. These eyes- enormously Welsh, a mix of grey and blue. I saw he was on his bony back on the lodging's floor, naked, pallid, his scrawny outline marked by pallid skin coloured candles. Lit. The lot of them. He was lit up like a thirtieth birthday cake. Spam on fire he was. And he was chanting softly- words. Words I'd never heard. A magic language. Vague tongues. Could've been Druid. And he was entirely oblivious, working away, jerking himself off, the body fluid an unappetising grey-white, more juicy than snot. (Pause.) It's Nature's way, that- bleedy multi-seeding overkill. (Pause.) But hell. This was something new, something I had never previously seen. Maybe, this was something I was meant to see. Maybe it was dyed in the wool with Jungian significance. (Long pause.) There are no errors down here, in this place, never. No victims. Nothing said is ever wasted. Only sour things are really tasted. (Long pause.) I'll tell you then. I'll tell you when my turn came. (Pause.) Here's the dangerous black and white of it. He was fairy tale handsome. Half dark, half light, a maestro Destino holding tight to his wriggly seed and living in wait for idealistic, unsuspecting me. (Pause.) Bang! (Pause.) The determined spermatozoa of this South American psychotic finally blending like a raspberry slush puppy deep within me. Whoosh! All natural and unnatural rush. All..fuck me, all arse about face, all..well, oh my gosh. (Pause.) She came the full term later- baby, baby, baby, baby, the grapefruit flowering of my ice cold screw with Mister Destino. Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch. Ouch and endless whining uterine pain. Nothing fucking grey about that. Nothing fucking grey about that at all. Pain and punishment, it was, in proper real overkill. Lemon. (Pause.) Oh God! God love her. Baby Lemon. (Pause.) She was this magic carnival of blood spattered caramel skin whose sick as a fuck father flew from consequences like birds from active earthquake zones. (Pause.) He migrated into madness. (Pause.) We share a common ground. Not at all a cricketer. Not at all a heterosexual. Not at all one solitary thing he'd ever said he was. Not one solitary thing. (Pause.) And… And, this is not an episode I care to dwell on anymore. (Pause.) Angel! (Pause.) Angel, change my bloody tune. Please! (Long pause.) This is the thing. It's not that I hear voices. There is no choice. I tell him things. I tell things to my personal Angel, see, it's easy, that's how I lay it on him, look, it's easy-peasy. Yeah and what's magic is that we can always edit out the bits that don't fit in the frame. The bits that frighten, the bits that we don't like, we can always trash them and abandon them on the cutting room floor. That's life. Cut flowers. Cut ties. Lost babies. (Long pause.) They came in the end, like educated thieves. The stealers of fresh souls. But they were stale, smelling of the London Underground. Interlopers. Handbags, briefcases, voices thin like tin. (Pause.) She was perfectly still..little Iona, my baby lemon. Hardly breathing. (Pause.) In the end they told me I was ill. Obviousness, it's not a trait I immediately warm to. (Pause.) It has not been the same from that day to this. Not so much as a plastic pot to piss in. No peace. (Pause.) And there is never the literary room on all of them endless and meaningless forms to tell it to whoever..as it is or as it was..with grit and poetry. (Pause.) Life, my fucking lonely life! Life without the crying of Iona. My lemon Iona. Mine. (Pause.) She was mine, something of me to live beside. How Welsh is that? (Long pause.) Peculiar. But not so very strange- if ever I tried to tell them bitches at the super-real DHSS how it might be, how it will be even, their scrubbed hands bright with screaming wedding bands would press some silent bell that sent a silent signal to security. (Pause.) There are always devices under the counters of the state. Always. There's no point in making a proletariat fuss. That's the point of sale for you. (Pause.) It's the gypsy vibe, that's always done for me. Romance. Romancing and Romanies. All the valley roads leading to eternal Rome. (Pause.) Oh, I lose count. I have been removed that many times! I have been removed to places of detention, kept in against my will after school. It's countless. Countless. I must not write rude words. I must not write rude words. I must not write fucking rude words. The cunts. (Pause.) I have even been removed from where I've already been removed to. (Long pause.) Removal by subterfuge. They do that to pariahs- the social. Listen. The institutionalised social conscience of the nation weeds and reseeds with the venom of gardeners intent on improving on God's work. It's true. Blinding. They deliberately confuse the roots of the great unwanted with constant changes of venue. Demolition and resettlement. That's the preferred weapon. That's what this is. Lemon demolition. (Pause.) And they would gas us if they could. Oh, yes they fucking would. And, even as I speak, they plan to re-house me, temporary, in the midst of a known infestation. Low-rise they call it. How's that for compromise. (Pause.) Victoria Worth, this is without a doubt what defeat tastes like. Oh! They made me believe it. I am not worthy. They made me see it, alright. The initial 'v' is for victim. Putative victim. Oh yes. I disputed it, me. It's a Ms, I said, a fucking big M with a fucking small S. I have no title, madam, though Lady Victoria Worth of Merthyr Tydfil, does have a certain frigging ring to it, don't it. Martyr me go on. The social climber that I am. (Pause.) A little civility- it's the least you can do. Is it too much to ask a Civil Servant to be fucking civil? (Pause.) There, top of the form, left hand side- 'Your given name.' Given at the outset. V for vermin. Welsh vermin. (Pause.) Yes. She's the vermin of the valley...oh, my Lord. Sing that why don't you. Canu. Canu. Sing that, if you will. (Pause.) I seem to have spent the most of my life being kissed goodnight by disease ridden rats. (Lengthy pause.) Angel?

ANGEL

(Emerging from deep shadow.) Yes.

VICKY

Oh. You don't mind. Please. Please don't mind. I thought you might be sleeping.

ANGEL

We creatures created by conflict seldom sleep.

VICKY

No. No, that's right. We never ever really sleep do we? We fly. We eat crap. We are the flies who ride upon the air.

ANGEL

What is it?

VICKY

You already know that. You fucking said. All seeing. All bloody knowing. Tricky dicky. Clever arse. Tart from heaven that you are. Ineffable, that's what you said. Don't look now, your fucking halo's showing! You're fucking glowing you are, radiating, leaking rivers of unbearable loveliness. You know the truth. Go on. Be a friend. Give us the proof.

(Angel sits on the arm of the sofa nearest to Vicky.)

ANGEL

Nearer by the year? Is that really what you want?

VICKY

Yes. Alright. Nearer. Take me home with you if you like!

ANGEL

As near as next year say?

VICKY

Oh yes! Please. Next year. Yes! Tomorrow, even. You know me Angel. You know me. I loathe sitting in a shitting queue, never could abide waiting. Tomorrow could not be soon enough for me.

ANGEL

Fine. The very near future it is. I'll begin. (We hear a blast of trumpets.) 'Mother, Whore, Daughter, Holy Ghost'.

VICKY

Hey! Bollocks! What the hell are you doing!? Look, skip the fucking intro! We're already irretrievably lapsed. You said so. Go on, fast forward to the main feature. Wide-screen, HD and surround sound, that's it. Full on. Full frontal. Give me the full bloody monty! There is no saving me now. Oh God! Let me clap eyes on the one true ethereal blue planet spinning against a spangly star filled sky. Me taking the tabs again bang on time, visionary drugs as properly prescribed by my physician. Me being a good girl, a good patient. Patient. Mum. Struck dumb. Me eking out my tiresome dying. Me eking out the illusion of living the long death like we do. (Pause.) That massive copper gong thing. God! Give me. Give me. Give me that muscled up fuck machine and the massive copper gong thing. (Pause.) And ice-cream, cinema ice-cream. Oh! Mr Angel Presence, please! Please! We gotta have Neapolitan ice-cream. And..and..and that mighty MGM lion with his mighty shaggy mane roaring 'SHOWTIME'. 'SHOWTIME'. (Shouting.) Give it to me! Fucking give it to me! I'm just gagging for it, gagging for it, gagging for it.

ANGEL

Of course. (He leans forward and touches the TV which instantly bursts into life.) Here it is then, what's to be, an irritating little gift really. Magic as it's meant to be. Just like that- a present of the tiresome future. Near enough for you? See, the picture's great! (Pause.) Looks familiar don't it. It is. Your drab life in celluloid. See, the same, the same, and then more and then more of the bleeding same. And a cracking good cinema surround sound to boot. Look. The cabinet highly polished to a mirror gleam. The colour perfectly balanced. (Pause.) And, for my next shot at a spot of psychic phenomena, something of a curiosity in serious sepia tones- a true video record of the lonely death of your maternal grandmother.

VICKY

(Shocked.) But..!

ANGEL

Oh yes. It's a white knuckle ride alright.

VICKY

Look! (Pause.) God! (Pause.) It is me. It's me. Look. I mean she's so like me it might as well be me. No! No, wait a minute. It is me. It's me! It is me. Look- fuck! I am my mother. I am. (Pause.) Shit! (Pause.) So! So is this what this is all about? (Pause.) Yes. That's it. That is what you're saying. That is what you're showing me. And, look, yes. Yes. I am my mother's birthmother. (Pause.) Fuck! (Pause.) It really is me. God! Sixty eight, stuck fast in a terrace in Nant-y-moel, dead to the world and sleeping for all eternity. (Pause.) Demolished now. The polished floors no more. Gone. Plank by plank. (Angel returns to the shadows and the TV blacks out.) Now what? (Then violently.) No! Don't do this to me. No! (Pause.) Fuck you! (Very long pause. Then gently.) Where are you sweet wraith? (No reply. Pause.) Gone. (Pause.) The bastard! Just like a man. See! See, do not, whatever you do put your trust in bargain basement demons. They can be flawed too. Fantastic but true. Flawed phantasmagoria, flightless and on the fucking floor, it is their way. The left hand, underhanded way of the unknown. The way of the milk white diamonds of the universe. (Pause.) Chipped. That's what they are. Chipped. Corrupt. Fallen and imperfect. (Lengthy pause.) It's us, though. That's what it is. That's all. Us. It's all our fault. It's the fault of all our unrelenting wanting. We make them. And we make them dangerously fickle. And, sometimes, we make them behave..too humanly. We make them say and do like we do. Saying and doing things like lovers in love with the idea of love. (Pause.) Sometimes it rains rainstorms in my head. Hidden tears. Long, long years of them. (Pause. She pours another drink.) That's where I went wrong. That's what screwed me, finally did for me- giving out on the first date to lovers in love with the idea of lust. Giving out to would be angels. (Long pause.) No. (Pause.) I can't say that I've given too much thought to my being my mother. God! There's way too much Karma vested in those thighs for mere mortals. (Pause.) I may. (Pause.) I may. (Pause.) I may warm to it..given time. It's all a matter of balance. See-saw. Slide. Swings and roundabouts. (Pause.) She breastfed me. That's one for, a plus. A tick in the meagre Yes list. (Pause.) Her adoptive father though, Frank, who's public persona was almost perpetually Christmassy, on account of his rosy cheeks and hirsute nature, he said to me, bold as you like, how he'd always wanted to kiss my tits and rent me asunder. Well, blow me down! Frank. (Pause.) The ways of the covert paedophile are many and mysterious like ungodly goods that insinuate into our paradise from other dimensions. Ungodly goods seeping into our paradise club from other locations. Foreigners. Interlopers. Weirdoes. Just like the souls of penny-pinching proprietors who place soiled sheets ironed and reversed in overnight accommodation in cheap hotels. Cheap lives. What the eye don't see the heart won't grieve. (Pause.) Granddad! No! (Pause.) Why!? Why steal from me like that? (Long pause.) In one foul-mouthed and foul admission he laid to waste this cherished garden from my memories of childhood. Sweet, not bitter. Sweet cider apples. Cherry trees. The honeysuckled swing where he sat me on his knee and swung. The indescribable scent in Somerset like something sent from heaven. That's gone now. (Pause.) Now, that's definitely one for the burgeoning against column. And, as we speak, surprise fucking surprise, the holy Noes have it. The holy Noes have always had it. Now and forever. Amen.

(The phone rings and the answerphone cuts in.)

VICKY

FEMALE VOICE

Vicky, pick up. Baby, it's me. (Pause. The line goes dead. Long Pause. She erases the message and waits for the machine to reset. Long pause.)

VICKY

Shit! Look at me, Miss Piggy, stuck in fucking Cardiff, all out of chocolate. (Pause.) I hate paedophile pink. (Pause.) I never do pork sword pink. Not anymore. No.

(Blackout.)

Scene Two

(The next day. We hear intrusive urban noise. The curtains are closed but sunlight is piercing the gloom. The low light gently reveals Vicky asleep on the sofa wrapped in a pale lemon blanket. She is dreaming and clearly agitated. Angel appears out of the shadows and stands behind her head. Slowly the urban noise gives way to the sound of streams and birdsong. Vicky calms down and continues sleeping. He finally turns to us.)

ANGEL

We first met on this corrupt and morally disgusting plane, in Spartan, corrugated space. Welsh social space with a scuffed pink and peeling grey interior. Cramped on account of the adjacent Bingo. An oddly uninviting annex to a community centre in Ogmore Vale, it was. The both of us new to it, green as you like, quite unused to the parameters of our peculiar being. My human guise creaking, ill-fitting. Not at all weathered. Uncomfortably new-born. In fact about as uncomfortable as a new leather shoe. You know the feeling. Made to measure- proper posh, but bristling with exactness. And her holistic state, the whole caboodle, from the low moan resonance in her base Chakras to the bitter tears in her third eye, it was not at all anything her New-age reading had prepared her for. Lord! All the gurus in creation could not have coached her for it. (Pause.) The Cymraig rain, see, drummed on the metal roof like machine-gun fire. Bon Jovi drowning the thin lipped hymns. Metallica peppering the Medium's prayers with demonic laughter. The magician's smell of damp leather and mothproofed wool insinuating itself amongst the dull felt hats and loose hosiery. In a flash I could see she was distressed so I filled her ears with the ambient sounds of freshwater rills and birdsong. And, in her holed heart, I pressed this museum quality copy of the essential guide to the whys and the wherefores of the heavenly hosts. Immense. Pure Celt it is. A golden harp emblazoned on the cover. Oh, my kind is mentioned there. Des Anges. We've won entries in The Book Of Being. (Long pause. The sound of streams and birdsong fades. Silence.) The Presences, that's us- the angels strictly without wings. Personal trainers of the damaged soul. Experts in the development of spiritual muscle. We have right. (Pause.) Oh yes. I have this God given provenance. Title. My line is imbued with historical significance. There is longevity- the legitimacy of being timeless. Certainty. Form. Presence. There's nothing in the least bit iffy about me. (Lengthy pause.) The bugger is there's always an unruly queue at these functions. Listen. Like iron filings we are. Chips off the old block of God drawn to the magnet of life as you know it. And this particular clairvoyant, an unusually attractive channel being blessed with an ambivalent sexuality and a genius intelligence, that and a five star, state of the art, faster than the speed of light, landing platform, he had it all. He had it all and hardly an inkling. But, you could see your face in it. You could fine tune. Adjust things. Shiny, see, like a kiddies playground slide. As a consequence, it was mayhem. A ruck outside The Millennium Stadium. All the obliging bums of all the arriving angels gladly giving wellie to the brilliant gloss of it. I was out of the scrum, second in the line-up. Not exactly a volunteer but volunteered for the duty by the due process of spiritual evolution. Cast aside then chosen. Adopted. Nothing to complain of there, other than the irritation of having to endure the sheer banality of the first connection. There should be some sort of over-ride, we said. There should be a union. That was the general feeling of the queue. We all wanted to pull the plug and move on. The lot of us. It's true, well, some visitations seem hardly worth troubling the ether for. (Pause.) This faceless soldier, his symmetry destroyed by a stray mortar, still only an apprentice flier, well, he said he was a trench friend of Rupert Brooke, said he'd waited decades, more than half a century, to tell his grandson to plant anemone corms. There. As if anemones might draw him somehow closer. Closer to what? Closer to an understanding that life is death? Yes. Closer to an understanding that life is death. That's what! (Pause.) I see it now. Of course I bloody see it now. All of it. The lot. But my impatience then was paramount, the eagerness completely blinding me to the poetry in the message. (Pause.) Anemones for estrangement. That's it. Anemones for estrangement. (Pause.) Attachment and death. They are the breath of love. (Pause.) And life on Earth can be this formidable estrangement from the after life. For some of you, the burden of it all is barely bearable. Yes. (Pause.) And he called me. Come on down, he was screaming, come on down. Me. And I was there, just like that, ahead of myself. Right in there. Right in there and cramping his already trembling cortex. Impatience see, rampant excitation. I was in there before his moving lips had so much as half a chance to settle. The congregation heard him gasp. Lord! First I was in, then I was out..an escaped thought trapped in revolving doors. The medium immediately sat down. His face pale and growing paler. And then he shouted out in some confusion, fearful, tearful, Victoria Worth, Vicky with a V, as if the name itself was something that he needed to be rid of. Victoria Worth. (Pause.) She spotted me. Yes. She spotted me. By some short circuit in her poetic sense she clocked me moving between the dimensions, a part of me here, then flit flit, a part of me there. I was not happy. I was not happy. But, our eyes met then, the hands of them wet with tears of joy, and they were waving in unbridled delight. Meeting. Parting. Repeating. Exploding. This was applause. This was proper applause. Ascension and Unification. The Angel Presence and his given 'job' well met. (Pause.) We've been inseparable since. Blood brothers. (Pause.) And, you know, she really is her mother, really, and hence she is her mother's mother. The poor cow. (Long pause.) There's a dead stream runs through Nant-y-moel, it's smooth rocks kissing Coke cans and Co-operative shopping baskets. There's life for you. It wasn't always like it is now. Iona Davis daughter of Thelma and Arthur John. The sapling gran. The Mam-gu and the Nain. She'd fish there with jam jar and string, her hair a mass of smiles, like Shirley Temple. And she'd unwind a mile of bootlace and dip pale toes into the summer chill of silver tumbled from the Sugar Loaf mountain. They were real childhoods then. Frail things. Brittle twigs of bitter Liquorice and plump Sherbet Lemons. Old summers, the beginnings of the end of such innocent things. How could she possibly know that there, lurking like a demon in the shadows of her future, lay Somerset with it's strictures, sins and ruin? (Pause.) She will wake now. (He retreats to the shadows.)

(Vicky waking. Increasingly agitated. She takes a tablet. She goes to the windows and draws the curtains. Sunlight floods in. She suddenly dives into a packing case, finds a pink chiffon hat and puts it on. She turns her back to the brightness. Then, in a shrill voice, her arms beginning to beat violently at her sides, and building to a crescendo of noise and activity, she mimics her mother.)

VICKY

Victoria Worth! Missy manners! Victoria Worth! And what fucking time do you call this? Vicky with a V. This is the fucking absolute pits. It's just not cunting decent. Not cunting delicate. No cunt. Not in the least. Just like your waste of a father. Vicky with a V. Vicky with a V. Just like your frigging father. It is just not cunting decent. Look at you. By God! You are a lazy little slut. You are. You are a lazy, lazy, a lazy little slut. It's just not fucking normal. It's awry. Fly. Fussy. Just like your Earl Grey father. Him shoving shit uphill most days- it's just not normal. Fudge packing. It's just not normal. It's just not fucking normal. And don't you ever go on thinking that he gets away with it. He doesn't. Oh! You'll thank me in the end. There's a whole long list, a list as long as my arm of fucking things it's not. So, best you shake yourself my girl. A little bit of discipline it never hurt anyone. Nobody. And no daughter of mine is ever going to sleep in after midday without an illness. Blood and guts. That's what we want to see. Show me enough blood and bloody bloody guts and we'll think about breaking open the frigging First Aid tin. Maybe. And, whilst we're on the subject, blood- filthy discharge, menstruation, it's not an illness you know. No it's not. It never was. Never. And it never is. Really! Vicky with a fucking V. It's not even Biblical. Not at all. Not to my knowledge. The bishops kicked it out God bless 'em. And it never will be if I can help it. Do you bloody hear me? I shudder to think what Mary might have made of tampons. (Lengthy pause.) You're not ill are you? (Pause.) 'Course you're not ill. You're just soft in the bleeding head, that's what. Short of stock in the lighting shop, you. Right. I know what. Shift that fat arse out of that bed and into the bathroom, sharpish. Come on. Shift that fat arse into that fucking bathroom and get a good hold of that bathsize bar of carbolic. That'll do the business. That'll sort things. Shove it in the filthy crack of it. Right up. That's right dearie- tickle your cervix with cleanser. And shift that fat arse! I can smell the problem. I can. Phew. Course I bloody can. May God strike me down! I won't kill you. No. I promise you that. Now, don't tell me. Don't you even start. All your sweaty little creases, all your cheesy nooks, all of your crannies, all your top and bottom fannies, they could do with a right good soaping. You can't tell me. You can't tell me nothing. I'm a Primary School teacher, me. I know it all. Educated they call it. I know it all madam. The whole curriculum. (Pause.) There's bells, here, ringing in my ears like heaven knows what. It's deafening. You've been suppurating my girl. That's what you've been up to. Ding ding. That's what I'm being told. You've been suppurating. Secretly suppurating. Bleeding suppurating. Jeezus! You're not even on the bus, you. You're all dreams you, Victoria Worth. Brain dead. Stationary. Head in the clouds and peaches in your blouse. Dreams, dreams and designer jeans. That's you to a T. New-age. New-age Vicky with a fucking V. And look at you. New-age? You make me feel so old. You do. You know you do. It's deliberate that is. Wilful. I look at you and.. (Pause.) Oy! Fucking look at me when I'm talking to you! (Pause.) I look at you and..no. Go on. (Pause.) Look at me, all pent up in chiffon and a secret bustiere. And look at you. Just look at you. Go on. Take a fucking good long look at yourself. Here's a mirror- me. Suicidal? You're kidding me. No. No way. You're far too self-interested. Don't you ever give me that one. Selfish you, selfish with a capital S. Top yourself! Get away! You delusional little bitch. You fucking irresponsible, childish, little bitch. Don't you ever dare lay that modernist magazine strategy on me. I'm your mam cunt. Blame your father, he's the unnatural depressive. Flawed or what! He's floor level that's what. Snake height he is. Sticking his dick in shit! It's just not humanly possible to sink any lower. He's the one. He's the one investing in hellfire and damnation. He's the one with more than a pecuniary interest in the fluctuations of the fucking pink pound. I hate that, do you hear me, Vicky. Pretty Vicky. Vicky with a V. Here pretty, pretty Vicky. Kissy kissy Vicky. I fucking hate that! I'm dying here and he's minted, making his media millions. See! See what you do!? You make mumsie feel fucking failed, fucking failed and forty eight. Fucking failed and forty eight. Fucking failed and forty eight. Fucking failed and forty eight. (Pause.) He's dumped me, darling. The undecided one. Do you hear me. The dick's dumped me. Said I'd make a better lesbian! Me. Yes! You heard me right! He said I'd make a better lesbian, darling. Fit for licking a clitoris, he said. I can't say I've ever felt so cosmopolitan. (Pause.) He was fit though Vick. God. Better than Cappuccino. Muscles building on the muscles. Rock hard. He was very fit. (Pause.) Mind you, more than once flaccid in the cock department. But, fair dues, he said he wanted children. Two boys he said- kids to emulate his favourites, The Righteous Brothers. That was no go. Awful for him. What a bummer really. Me with the snip to cap it all. He could see his dreams evaporating. He was crestfallen, pet. Cheated see. Emasculated. The rage rising in him like lemon vomit. (Pause.) Well look at you, pathetic dumpling. And look at me for pity's sake, me at my age. Creased. More wrinkles than a Shar Pei. The spirit worn and all those shiny disco outfits cast adrift. Me, buggered, dull, beyond repair. Me, beyond repair and bleeding internally. The specialists have nothing left to staunch the flow. Nothing. Unstoppable it is. I always was unstoppable, me. Scorpio see. (Suddenly softer and mocking. The arms floaty.) You read today's paper, treasure? They found a cure for galloping gut rot yet? Anything good on the old TV? Neighbours, maybe. There's reality for you. I like a good dose of community, me. (Then instantly still. She puts the pink hat back in the packing box. Then chillingly strident.) Cut. Cut it Angel, and print it.

(Blackout.)

Scene Three

(Later the same day. A blast of street noise. All the curtains are dancing in the breeze against open windows and the flat is flooded with denuding light. No sign of Angel. We find Vicky entering in bra and pants, her hair done up in a towel. She closes the windows. She searches for a towelling robe and finally puts that on. She sits down and lights a cigarette. She hears the electric kettle click off. Leaving the cigarette burning in the ashtray, she exits and returns having made a cup of green tea. She takes a long drag on her cigarette.)

VICKY

It's green tea this, green tea with bits of lemon. Citrus. My favourite. I do have this obsessive affinity with the bitterness of it. (Pause.) Now and then I do relent. I soften. I repent. I relapse and relent, and sling in an artificial sweetener. Aspartamine, it can be the high-light of my benefit dependent day. Secret prayers said for a sugar-daddy. Sacred wishings whispered at the temple of Prozac and Hermesetas. There's hoping for absolution for you. There's longing for wealth. (Pause.) There's proper psychotherapeutic absolution for you. Proper goal-setting. Aims. There's ruthless for you. Charting the progression of inescapable ordinariness from here to fucking here. Anything to produce a certificate. Ambition- it's the grail of the hopeless. For the vast majority of us, empty. Empty of meaning. Well, there's always more empty than plenty. (Pause.) Hollow as the grave. That's what we are. (Pause.) And you know, don't you, you know just how bloody lucky I am. How bloody grateful I am to Buddha that he ever breathed. You know, don't you, how it's such a blessed relief to live this life as it really is. Glory me! I'm in this state of constant religious ecstasy, me, living this life as it really, really is. (Pause.) Right. Right. And what the hell would he know, Jabba the fucking holy Hut. Tens of thousands of broken lives melting in the crucible of Tiger Bay. Death happening, easy as a downpour, all in the blink of a Buddhist's eye. (Lengthy pause.) And just think, just think for one moment. All of these innocent young leaves come hand plucked from the ancient Chinese mountains. A high born tea naturally low in caffeine. It's long history full of testimony to it's health giving properties. (Pause.) We're all full of shit. That's the long and the short of it. We're all full of shit. (Pause.) Mam, I drink it for my health. I drink it to balance out all the cheap fags, all the chocolate, all the sherbet lemons. Astringent, anti-oxidant, antibacterial, that's what the packet says it is. It's very natural. Oh yes. Pure. Unsullied. (Pause.) Naturally it's natural. It's tea. Tea in it's entirety. It's believable. Utterly convincing. And it's consumer fucking fashionable that's what it is. (Pause.) But, there you are. It's how I am. It's this fussy little facet of me. It's my little bit of icing on the lardy cake of life here in Cardiff. Green tea. The brew of crises. And, would you believe it, it comes in this very eye-catching, bio-degradable box designed to compliment this year's range of ethnic tiling. It's sooo happening this. It's this glossy product that looks bloody marvellous in hand-crafted oak kitchens. It does. It really does. Mega posh it is. Satin finish. No kidding. (Pause.) Did you see mine? No. Best not to. You'd only throw up. (Pause.) Mine is a dangerous galley full of chipped Formica and a slow growing fungus, living evidence of seventies swiftness. That and a millennium salmonella in embryo. Camouflage, that's been my tactic to date. Hide the worst of it. Pretend it isn't there. And I've tried to stuff my kitchen display areas full of things that holler hope. (Pause.) Well, there's another badge of the underclasses- bright and cheery displays of top-notch non-essentials in, otherwise, sub-standard housing. Glaring it is. Conran chairs, say, understated but vivid with their deadly designitis, glittering in a prefab scheduled for demolition. (Pause. Bellows in frustration.) Fuck! Fuck this constant pain! (Lengthy pause.) Paracetemol and Codeine, it's never enough. Not now. (Pause.) This whole condemned block is a health hazard. Home to roaches, see. My Home Bitter Home. They had a thought though, the authorities. They'd spruce it up a bit. Put a gloss on it. They even renamed it Mandela House. As if a new name would conjure up a new beginning. That was the beginning of the end, that's all, the prelude to the demolition order. New Labour? What the fuck do they know. (Pause.) Look, it's simple. It's a wealth-free zone this, always was, but it's still awash with brand-named anti-bacterial surfactants, negative Fung-Shui and unwashed Sushi dishes- richly lacquered souvenirs from mind-trips into Elle Decoration. Glossy see. You got to put a gloss on. You just got to. And the air is permanently fogged by incense sticks courtesy of crap craft fairs where sad white Rastafarians are all out to flog you something suspiciously devotional. You tell me, mam, where is there the incentive to give up smoking. (Pause.) Don't you know anything? (Pause.) No mam, I know just nothing. Like you said, I'm braindead. Stationary. I'm always at the bus stop. Begging at the railway station. Just like you said. (Long Pause.) I wonder. Where do you keep the itch of your politics- out of reach I reckon. Out of reach of a bamboo backscratcher. So, you don't fucking know. It's like I thought. Cunt. Minds numbed by pseudo-diplomacy. Niceties I call it. (Pause.) Well, give us a minute. It's no big deal- shitting in the diplomatic bag of all your niceties. See, the poor poor of this part of the world, often as not, die of something much more immediate, something the rest of society overlooks, long before the cancer sets in. Violence for one. Millennium rape and pillage. There's another. The blistering bad breath of the red dragon. There's a mythic symptom. You can smell it as it dares to kiss you on the cheek. The cheek of the politicians. Men and women with Celtic halitosis. (Pause.) We've cuts, you know, bleeding cuts, deep cuts, cuts that never heal and bruises that never fade. And we've head pain, mam, pain beyond pain, cunting pain, pain beyond the pale and sleepless nights of pampered Surrey women. (Pause.) Oh don't worry. Our kindly, black Sri Lankan doctor's seen it all before. It's all routine to him. It's routine now he knows the language. It's all so clear. All so black and white at last. It's all so bloody routine now it's got to be a bore to him. (Pause.) Catch a symptom. Go on. The air is thick with them. (Pause.) Issue driven TV. There's one. (Pause.) Abuse in childcare. There's another. (Pause.) Solvents and ecstasy. That's it. Fear. Fear and fucking rampant apathy. (Pause.) Green tea. Crisis tea. The list's endless. This special urban brew will be the death of many of the downtrodden round here. Death lurking in the damaged elevator. Death jerking himself off on the fire stairs. (Pause.) Death? Yes. Death! No more breath. It's very fucking plain. And we've got all the symptoms. But just you try getting a prescription for that on the fucking NHS. (Lengthy pause.) Listen to me. Please, don't you go losing me now. (Pause.) The thing is, I am still strangely drawn to skin like parchment. Always was. No grandfather, see. No tad-gu. No taid. (Pause.) My mother's mother's brother. That was as close as I was ever going to get. There was skin like parchment. He was no more than this fading face, a vaguely Chinoise face in a crowded brown photograph. A makeshift orchestra it was, somewhere in Bridgend. Some summer it must have been. Outside. Outside in his shirtsleeves. Pin striped cotton rolled up to the elbow. (Pause.) And in his pit worn hands a bow. Resin on his fingers. (Pause.) Well. Did he ever smoke and drink green tea and do 'contrary' mixed with 'out of bounds Bohemian' like she did? They were artists, I'd told myself. Artistic they were. Creative. Talented. Born to it. Revolutionary. They painted, see, wrote erotic poems and played instruments. (Pause.) They were my reason for being. I decided that, me. They'd help me, from the other side. That was more than reasonable. With their discarnate assistance I could act, paint, sing, write. Do anything. Make a proper name for myself. (Pause.) After more than half an hour on a bus behaving like a food processor, I found the place, and I found Angel. (Pause.) It was raining like hell. He's not well though, that's what I was thinking. (Pause.) The medium. The medium looked like he was dying. There were spinsters in the congregation crying. There were widows weeping, wetting their parched skin. (Lengthy pause. Vicky lit like a ghost, repeating Angel's words, putting herself in the third person.) [ 'She spotted me.' ] That's how he tells it. [ 'Yes. She spotted me. By some short circuit in her poetic sense she clocked me moving between the dimensions, a part of me here, then flit flit, a part of me there. I was not happy. I was not happy. But, our eyes met then, the hands of them wet with tears of joy, and they were waving in unbridled delight. Meeting. Parting. Repeating. Exploding. This was applause. This was proper applause. Ascension and Unification. The Angel Presence and his given 'job' well met. (Pause.) We've been inseparable since. Blood brothers. (Pause.) And, you know, she really is her mother, really, and hence she is her mother's mother. The poor cow.' ] (Pause. Vicky 'returning', repeating, frail and frightened.) The poor cow. That's as it is. For me. For me and Iona. My little sherbet lemon. Poor cow- that's how my fond Angel always tells it. (Long pause. Desolate. Then to the audience pleading and despairing.) Iona. Me. Mam and Mamgu. It's there in the fucking unalterable biology. You can see that. The endless loop of it. (Shouts.) The endless fucking loop of it! (Pause.) No let up. Never. (Pause.) Never ever. (Long pause. Then a tearful and defeated realisation.) Shit! (Pause.) You can see me can't you? That's it! You can really sense me…with all your senses…all of you. Oh God! Dear God! (Pause.) Duw. Duw. I've no rational explanation. Nothing remotely adequate. None whatsoever. (Pause.) What on earth must you lot think of me. (Pause.) I'm so sorry. It's rude of me, I know. But I've got to go. There's a place and a time see. There's always a proper place and time. That's the God's truth. Shit! I've got to be there, again and again.. Got to. Got to. Got to. (Exits to the lavatory.)

(Blackout)

Scene Four

(Again the suspect veil between this world and Vicky's is raised. Night. A downlight fades up on the fixed armchair. We hear waves of dull urban noise. An offstage door opens then closes. From the street we hear the arrival of massed men. We don't see the Male Voice Choir but we hear it as it begins to sing- The Lily Of The Valley. When the singing stops, we hear a sash window opening in a rush. Immediately we hear an offstage voice shouting.)

OFFSTAGE VOICE

VICTORIA WORTH

FEMALE VOICE

(Silence. We hear Vicky puking, the sound of a toilet being flushed and a door opening and closing. Vicky sobbing. An increasingly ghostly sobbing echoes thinly into eventual silence.)

(Blackout.)

THE END

CRASHING

Hobb House, Llandeilo, Carmarthen, announces itself with calculated understatement.

No name. No number.

Its bearing being everything, it is an abiding presence, the power manifest in a multiplicity of frosted roofs and wind swept chimneys. After the cattle grid, the half mile approach draws its crescent on the landscaped acres with poplars at the carriageway edge, trees grown to be sentinels, always tall and always at attention. The mid-winter light here often low and sliced as if by a giant mandolin.

Hot foot from the M4, a stretched BMW has the returning lord and master suitably cosseted. It might as well have been a hearse, stuffed with floristry, so certain was it in his troubled mind that he would never have the need to travel in it again.

Home at last.

No sign of Christmas, none whatsoever.

And in this home, his hard seat in Wales, he senses no charity.

*

Bristol.

In a salubrious suburb, its pavements littered by fallen leaves. No litter to speak of.

The windows of detached houses lit by white tree lights. Nothing flash. Nothing flashing. Nothing vulgar.

An argument persists.

There is almost always one in this street. Couples mostly. Doing well. This is December, consumer hell.

She is at him in the Shaker kitchen diner. Her car keys close to gouging his handsome eyes out.

‘Don’t come then. Don’t. Well, I might not be back before Christmas Eve. Maybe I’ll need to stay ‘till the New year. How the hell do I know before I get there?’

He doesn’t respond quickly enough.

‘Oh. I get it. You’re glad you are. Aren’t you? You are fucking glad! Christ almighty! She’s had a heart attack she has, and you’ve spotted an opportunity. You bastard. Have you no imagination? And do they know that at the BBC?’

No answer.

‘She’s had six foot firemen, paramedics and a crash team, filling her damaged little flat in Cardiff. Allsorts they were. The police! She must have been frightened. Terrified.’

Silence.

‘Imagine the pain when your heart crashes?’

She goes to look at the view above the sink and drainer. A hard, low maintenance garden, full of planters, a pond and a pergola. Something her mother had lovingly designed, she remembers. Yellows with red hot flashes at the height of summer. A colour bite taken from snapshots of a holiday in the Dominican Republic. Bare now, save for some evergreenery.

She turns on him again. ‘I imagined, in here, in my imagination, I might be in need of your support. Its what wives expect in a crisis. But, as usual, I go to the cupboard of our mutual admiration and find the shelves bare. There’s nothing there for me Ben. When did you last consider doing some emotional shopping for us?’

More silence.

‘We need time, Ben. We need playtime. We need comforting.’

Even more silence.

‘Are you struck dumb by this or what? You were never close I know, but this takes some beating. Or has the cat got your lying tongue?’

Then she screams at him, ‘We need fucking sex we do. I do! Oh! Fuck you! You’re screwing me, one way or the other, Ben Howard, and it’s not in a nice way.’

Ben, ever the professional actor, calm but pointed.

‘Angie, this is not about us. This is about your mother.’

‘Right.’

‘You’ll take your mobile- and the charger?’

‘Right. Where are you going?’

No answer.

Then Ben finishes with, ‘I’ll make sure the house is secure. Switch off the tree lights, that sort of thing. You drive safely on the M4 now. I’ll call you.’

Angie says nothing. Reaches for her Burberry bags, then leaves.

Ben waits for the sound of her Fiat negotiating the street, hears the anger fuelled acceleration, then immediately reaches for his mobile.

It’s set for voice commands.

He shouts at it- ‘Petra. Petra.’ A broad smile lighting on his face as the dialling dances in his ear.

Disappointment wipes away his smile as the connection switches to an answer service. ‘Shit!’

He’ll go anyway.

*

Chelsea, a semi-precious stone’s throw away from some of the best shopping in the world. An average white fronted terrace with small walled garden and no parking place will set you back a tidy sum. The real estate value of a whole street could put a considerable dent in third world debt.

Chic. Discreet. Vulnerable.

Petra Hobb is in the spa bathroom of her father’s London guest house, the much larger Victorian property in Knightsbridge being subject to extensive renovations. She is scrubbing away the afternoon’s dalliance with a lesbian acquaintance. The cleansing over rough. Punishing. Obsessive.

Its not the first time her bi-curiosity has got the better of her. Now she feels regret, post-masturbational regret. And she believes she reeks of strawberry scented rubber and fresh sardines.

Her vagina still singing lullabies.

Her fingers still tingling with memories of that cervical caress.

Time, constant hot water and cologne, are on her side. Ben’s journey rarely taking under three hours. Besides, the visit was only half promised.

He’ll come.

Forced spontaneity. Things grabbed in a crisis.

She thought, that is my life in a nutshell.

In the sitting room her blue jeans and blue cashmere top disturb the glamorous uniformity of flesh coloured walls, carpet and sofas. The bland European theme continuing with the occasional furniture and the fireplace being pale elm, the lighting integral and dimmed. The four heavy gilt framed pictures offering peach and café latte toned views of something else they owned somewhere in Provence.

She puts the Chinese lacquered box on a glass topped coffee table. The intention in that small act sending her mind immediately elsewhere.

She’d shared the last packet with no-one. Had too much. She’d woken up in custody, backwash vomit having dried to a crust in her much abused nose.

Daddy had the slate swiped clean. The powerful daddy that is, not the flawed daddy. Not the daddy still gripped by grief for her long dead mother, scared he’s losing touch, gambling too much.

And now the drugs box is empty save for dregs and the platinum essentials.

She wets her forefinger, runs it around the inside of the box, then returns it to her lips, remembering the girl’s insistent kissing, how it made her thrill, almost as much as snorting cocaine.

She feels the addict’s need attack her, take her by the throat and squeeze real tears from her sleep starved eyes. Ben will have a new supply, she tells herself, here soon if the M4 behaves.

He’d promised her a white Christmas.

*

Henry Hobb positioned his leather desk chair in such a way that he supposed there would be no contamination of his treasured first editions.

The large, floor to ceiling, French windows seemed accommodating enough. He drew the heavy moss green curtains back as far as they would go. The extra light immediately exposing the surprised spines of great literature.

In the middle distance there was a gardener at work, thinning the fallen oak mast to let the coming crocuses breathe. He instantly recalled an early photograph of Petra sat there, amongst the spring blooms. Her face alive with simply being so young. She would have been four or thereabouts. Ten years before her mother was taken from them.

He could feel his dead wife’s ghostly censure on him.

Janet would never have buckled. Janet would always have struggled on. She had said as much to her weakening bones and diseased blood but they never listened.

He wouldn’t listen either. He’d decided.

The swivel chair inviting him to be final, to lay all troubling things to rest.

There it shone, like Satan’s grin, plumb in the middle of his tidied desk, the chosen instrument. Small. Metallic black. A virgin.

Time to pick her up. Time to bang out a sexy tune to shatter the quiet.

*

If you’ve seen one Intensive Care Unit you’ve seen them all.

Angie had seen her share.

You bury one parent, then care part-time for the other and that ambience, never really captured by films or the TV, presses your buttons like nothing else.

The fear button. The boredom button. The button of disgust.

Angie sat in the hospital café idly stirring her tea in some symbolic reflection of the way she could feel her life being stirred, slow, deliberate, until all traces of sweetness in it had been dissolved.

She’d given Ben a stir, as if it ever made any difference.

She’d always known there would have to be sacrifices. No-one marries a leading light in the Royal Shakespeare Company without anticipating having to make sacrifices.

Charismatic, perpetually handsome, he was a constant target.

Listen to me, she’s telling herself, where’s your confidence gone, you sad cow. It was you targeting him with a vengeance, you scoring a bullseye on three consecutive dates, you getting him to swear oaths before God, family, friends, enemies and the media.

She bit deep into the brittle biscotti. The bastard.

The look on her mother’s face. Pain and confusion leeching it of colour. The eyes, dimmed by an opiate, still managing to plead at her daughter- her only child, from the far side of the chemical den where wraiths swim.

Death seeming hungry for her last morsel from the banquet of life.

The lurid memory jolting Angie into uncoordinated life, making her career through tables and chairs, driven by guilt and the suspicion that time may have cheated her. She moves into a run, choosing stairs instead of lifts.

Pairs of people parting at her obvious panic.

Less than sensible shoes threatening to turn an ankle.

In her heart she’s already screaming louder than she’s ever screamed, ‘Mummy!’

Then, near the ICU, she experiences the slow motion of a world in crisis. All the sounds made baritone and bass. She’s swimming in a sea of gel. Hell already at her mother’s bruised breast with new paddles and a large syringe.

Breasts where she had been suckled after birth. Where she had often slept. Where she had wept too often, when her own heart had been broken.

A brief moment then, like the time between spotting a basking butterfly and its erratic flight to freedom.

Time when you won’t believe your own eyes. The green line staying straight and never wavering. The blip not blipping. And the alarm piercing, begging to be switched.

Then resignation.

The crash team’s bodies speaking in silence the language of defeat.

Angie breaking through the mire of her disbelief, being shrill, ‘Mummy!’ Then crashing backwards into childhood mumbling, ‘No. Don’t go. Don’t you dare leave me. Don’t you know? Mummies never go, Mam. No. Not ever.’

Angie closing her weary eyes to the wretched poster of Santa being jolly above the death bed.

*

Ben as ever addicted to Radio Three- classical music and the arts, the cabin of the Jaguar is filled with carols. Melodious stereo, loud and magnificent. Every now and then he’s been joining in, mindlessly singing phrases like ‘In the bleak mid-winter..’ and ‘In heaven the bells are ringing..’. Its hell’s bells he told himself. Its always been hells bells.

He shrugged. Mulled it through. Then decided, pleased with himself, that heaven and hell must be one and the same.

He was not going to mock any further- it was, after all, a school nativity play that had set him on the long road to where he was now. I was a pernickety Joseph, he remembered, demanding both a hammer and a saw to hang from a heavy leather belt. And I cried and cried until they got my whiskers right.

Where the M25 gyratory makes love to the M4 motorway is where he is now, clean shaven, all tooled up for an evening of rich totty. Petra goes the final mile more than most. Just the thought of her cunt’s moistness and warmth making him twitch.

The traffic slowing, tail lights thickening, forming a swarm of glow bugs.

Don’t look left or right, you might be recognised.

Global fame had touched him. He regretted his part in the re-make of Last Tango In Paris. Shots of his half erect cock had never kissed the cutting room floor. Now gay guys gazed at him, their minds set on lipsmacking satisfaction, and red blooded heteros always hollered at him ‘Go on my son! Give ‘er one!’. They’d want to watch. They’d want to cheer him on.

Either way it chilled him, seeing how easily something as precious as privacy could be eroded by the wind and rain of media heat.

Petra had a phobia about paparazzi.

She was fourteen and knocked unconscious by the crush at her mother’s funeral. Her pink and black Chanel muddied. Her cheek blooded. The front page fame of it fucking her good and proper.

The radio carols ended abruptly, being replaced by a penetrating newscast… ‘The breaking story tonight concerns the financial health of the global giant Hobb International. News of an imminent crash has led to an unprecedented run on its stock. Investors have jammed switchboards across the world.’ Ben killed the sound.

The silence thick as drifted snow but black as coal.

Petra mustn’t know.

Not tonight.

*

Angie sits in her smart Italian hatchback in the hospital car park, exhausted, finally resigned to the fact that she has lost her mobile phone. Vandals have struck fatal blows to the public facility. Without involving the police, communication this time of night is not possible. Well, its not impossible, but in truth, she isn’t inclined to do any more to enlighten her errant husband as to the turn of events. Besides she is freshly bereaved, if not exactly grieving yet. Her mind being elsewhere contemplating its response to the shock. Her brain remembering the vodka minis in the glove compartment.

On the passenger seat, a bundle of greeting cards all set to be gorged by a post box, and an extra tree present she’d bought for Ben, something that had triggered her wicked sense of humour at the time- a head to toe health check by Britain’s finest. ‘I shouldn’t laugh.’ she’d told the sales assistant, ‘But I can’t help it. He’s going to hate this. He’s going to absolutely loathe it.’

Hot tears then, mad, and as clear as vodka.

‘Mam. Oh god! Where in heaven have you gone? I’ve bought you new slippers too. Fleecy on the inside. Wrap round style with Velcro. Just as you like them. That and a new dressing gown. Marks and Spencers. Maroon with a pink ribbon edging. No need to be cold now. No. No need at all. Oh! And this is a big surprise, but you might as well know. There’s a hamper coming to you. Fortnum and Masons. All the way from London. And I got us tickets for the Christmas Show at the new Millennium Arts Centre. Cinderella it is. With Ruth Madoc. You like her don’t you mam? You bloody love her.’

*

With all the phones in suspended animation, the house was silent, the animal of it laid flat on its back and purring.

You could still hear London thrumming, the dab hands of night revellers still keeping the spinning top humming. In between their physical jerks the lovers lay together, lulled by it, almost to the point of sleep.

Petra’s hands would have none of it.

At the first sign of any limpness she would stiffen him up and let her tongue speak to his frenum, talking thrill, thrill to the point of spill. And then she’d quickly overstretch his scrotal sac- the pain a pleasure.

The mounting spillage thwarted.

She’d take his clenched hand to her wet labia and beg to be fisted. And with his hand inside her, she’d find his aching anus and get expert with her thumb, making him remember buried memories of life and lust at stage school. Making him cum in gun shots, an assassin blowing holes in her bronzed cleavage.

Making him disturb the house with sounds in the bathroom, then with more sounds in the kitchen. Sounds of making up a tray of coffee, cake and coke.

In the small hours they sat and talked. Not as couples do- exchanging words with the same empathy as sharing body fluids.

Petra spoke and Ben listened. The actor content to be the audience for once.

Petra, constantly crashing, still aching for the therapeutic benefit of organising her mind’s files. Not enough water under the bridge yet between the satiated now and her recent hospitalisation. There was no satisfaction then.

She’d been bereft of pleasures, her confidence murdered by the stones of ordinariness, her love of self destroyed by mirrors and newspaper photographs.

She’d been dejected, repeatedly rejected.

The creative products of her essential being all came winging back with opaque notes of lied about interest.

The deceitful art world cruelly painting her out, forever pushing her back beneath the surface of a blank canvass. It must be so abhorrent to the Chelsea Art Club, the very idea of God the dog allowing the marriage of wealth and talent in one so eminently fuckable.

She was talked of as the personification of sin, the next Madonna, and record labels courted her until they discovered that she couldn’t sing, a factor in itself not insurmountable. But the truth is she wouldn’t sing.

As she tells it, in her psychiatric defence against the charge of terminal uselessness, it is a fact that her father had fucked her on her sixteenth birthday, which may or may not be true. Since then, and this is true, she has never sung another note.

According to Petra, he’d sent everyone home prematurely, all the guests, the caterers, the welsh band, and the karoke DJ. That much is true. And then he’d allegedly raped her in his library, surrounded by the massed thoughts of scholars and self-made men. The black Bakelite phone ringing only once by way of interruption- a civil servant from the Prime Minister’s office leaving a coded message. A verifiable truth. Henry Hobb grunting with supreme satisfaction, his wasted seed insinuating itself in the deep pile of the Chinese silk carpeting. The great man with the little dick- a legendary Tom Thumb, two inches when erect, knowing right away that his hereditary title was in the bag. True.

Global money spreading favours like honey on the shit bread of life.

*

Angie is nearing a crossroads full of booze and bitterness, to her left a stopover in a motel, straight on down the M4, home. Finally she decides to give way to caution. She veers left at the very last minute, comes very close to shitting her jewelled thong, the nimble Fiat finding grip and sanity without scaring her wits further.

She woozily negotiates the facility’s friendless maze with slow deliberation, reading signs out loud, just like someone without English as a first language. Eventually she’s almost there. Only the one feature roundabout left to negotiate.

They’ve made something of an effort with the decorations.

The shrubs on the roundabout scream like drunken drag artists ablaze with fairy lights. In the all glass reception there’s a modernist, metalwork, life-size nativity, flanked by screens of electric blue tinsel and crowned by a chandelier of matching candles and baubles.

The precise forensic reason for what happened next is still a secret part of the Bristol Police’s ongoing enquiries.

What journalists know from an amalgam of eye witness reports and leaked information is that a new Fiat hatchback driven by the deceased, name as yet unknown, mounted the walkway adjacent to the motel’s reception at speed. It proceeded through the glass fascia and came to rest destroying the tableaux of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, elements of which penetrated the windscreen of the crashed vehicle. The driver and sole occupant received extensive head injuries and was further impaled through the sternum by a short metal rod, the support, we believe, to a blue, glitter covered halo. She was found to be dead when paramedics first reached the scene.

The usual scale of investigation is underway.

Foul play is not suspected.

Closing their battered, end of year notepads, two hardened scene of crime reporters, no longer shocked by what life or death offers, look at each other, knowing they are sharing the exact same, cynical thought- Drive home safely now, and a merry Christmas to you all.

*

It takes not so much as a millisecond to seed a news story.

Within the hour an advance party has it potted up and on its way to bearing fruit. Sooner rather than later, thanks to the M4, the prime pickers arrive complete with their high tech factory vans and satellite links. Despite the law, that’s how the private and the forbidden is harvested in our free society, processed and canned as a commodity to reach our homes fresh and inviting, tantalising our tastebuds with the fate of the celebrated, the rich and the famous. Tabloid readers and indiscriminate TV audiences alike, are addicted to this juice of life in crisis. They consume gallons of the stuff, the juicier the better.

The dedicated live-in staff at Hobb House have never seen the like.

The full moon of exquisite lawn that once appeared to float in the pale gravel at the front of the main entrance has been violated. Its been cratered, criss-crossed by the wheels of space wagons made intemperate by deadlines and stark carelessness.

The gardeners, despite the early morning hour, are fearful for their future and have come to clear debris and to make amends.

The youngest one, the one who abandoned the waking crocuses to break through the windows following the shot, to raise the alarm, he seems slower than them all, his movements leaden, practically useless. His team know why.

Only Owen, carries the ugly burden of reality in his mind.

Of all the staff, only this apprentice plantsman, knows the spread, the height and width of brains and bone and blood arrayed in such a sudden death.

He’s seen the lot.

He drew the moss green drapes, denying the view from outside.

He locked the study door from the inside, then telephoned the police.

He kept the warm corpse company until the sirens arrived.

Of anyone, anywhere, who may have had feelings for the dead man, Owen was the first to spot the gun, the first to read his final words condemning the world economy to a crash of unmanageable proportion.

Still innocent.

Still dreaming of marriage, kids and a mortgage- a life he’d spent years buying into, the desperate worry of this inside information would be killing the lad, knocking him for six, were it not for the valium from the local doctor.

Cook was busy.

It made a change to have so many mouths to feed. Faces that were quick to smile and compliment her on her welsh fare- toast and butter, biscuits, scones. The tea brewed thick and strong and sweet.

‘It’s the least I can do. We’ve never been mean with the catering, not here.’ she kept telling everyone, ‘He was a generous man, a very generous man. And, in the circumstances, the very tragic circumstances, it’s the least I can do.’

*

‘Shall we switch all the phones back on?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘What will you tell her?’

‘I’ll think of something. I’ll say something like I needed to visit a director. That we drank too much. That I couldn’t drive. That I made the sensible decision of crashing out on his elegant sofa.’

‘And the mobile. Explain away the mobile phone.’

‘I was late for the meeting. In the rush I left it in the car.’

A Chelsea breakfast- coffee, orange juice, freezer croissants- fresh baked, warm and moist. Their happiness the cherry jam in a chicklit novel.

Petra pouting, set on getting her own way, ‘I bet I’ve got text messages.’

‘Oh, go on then.’

After the fusion dance track intro, the text alerts bounce in like happy bunnies. The first of the known scources is her personal trainer- gorgeous, gay, a rock solid friend, ‘Your dad is all over morning TV. I am so sorry. I’m here for you babe. Love Matt. xx.’

She throws the mobile clear out of the dining room into the hall, where it lays, dumb and disassembled.

Maybe its hot.

Maybe its a stalker.

She’s screaming ‘Switch on the TV Ben! Switch on the fucking TV!’

Ben switches on the small TV. Sixty seconds in and he’s racing for the bathroom. He returns with emergency pills. She takes them on auto pilot.

Ben finds the Chinese lacquer box and prepares a line of coke for her.

Left nostril, right nostril, she snorts it like a zombie.

She’s behaving strangely, breathing evenly, not making a sound, the tears are cold, laying glistening ski runs down her frozen expression.

Ben drifts a deliberate hand in front of her eyes. No change. No blink.

She is crashing.

He races to the Telecoms box, makes all the network live.

Immediately phones ring in painful competition all over the house. A cruel cacophony. Media hounds scenting blood.

He silences them all at a stroke.

He needs to reach her therapist. Now!

He powers up his mobile.

He’s got just the one answerphone message. He dials the service expecting a venomous tirade from Angela. Great. He’ll delete her and move on.

The ridiculous female phonebot speaks- ‘You have one voice message, message received today at two a.m.. First voice message..’.

A man’s voice.

A serious man.

‘Mr Howard, my name is Superintendent Murray from the Bristol North Police. I would be obliged if you could contact me as a matter of urgency. It concerns your wife.’

The message ends like a beheading, the guillotine efficient. Ben saves it. A dull thud hitting the heart as he hears the head kiss the basket.

Petra has still not moved a muscle.

A rant of difficult images and equally difficult commentary continues to roll on the TV. Then, in an advertising break, Ben makes his call. The one he senses might destroy his plans for Christmas.

On the small screen it is snowing on a picture perfect but pretend family, paid kids, paid mum and dad. Accompanied by ‘Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly’, they’re in a supermarket carpark happily filling their boot space with cut price seasonal goodies.

Waiting to be put through, Ben is idly watching this cheap charade- filmed, he decides, in September with fake snow, when he notices the car in the advert. Really notices it. It looks very familiar, and so it should.

The car is identical, except for the number plate, to the new Fiat hatchback, in Midnight Black metallic, full leather interior, alloy wheels, the one he bought to keep his wife quiet, less than a month ago.

How odd, he tells himself, superstition teasing the thespian in him, a primitive response he dislikes and distrusts. Suddenly he’s put through, and he’s been spooked into assertiveness, showing no caution whatsoever, ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. I’m Mr Howard, Mr Ben Howard, the actor. She does this frequently you know. So bloody frequently its got to be a crashing bore. Now, Superintendent, what fresh and fantastic lies has my wife been spreading about me?’