STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                          Part Three

                          Joe stepped out of Morden underground station.  The sun had gone. The sky was low and leaden, Joe looked up at its heavy grey and his heart cowered beneath its weight.  He looked across the road at a line of shops and offices.  They were block buildings of varying heights, flat, impersonal and dead.  There was no sign of life or landscape behind or beyond them, only their rectangular, two dimensional outlines against the grey sky.  Joe watched as a man walked into a building society and a woman walked into a wool shop and in his imagination, once inside the doors, they both stepped off the edge of the earth and were doomed to a fall that would never end.  They would fall forever.  Forever they would fall and fall and never stop falling.  The thought gave Joe vertigo.  He felt faint and his head swam.  Dark fear and quiet madness surged through him.  He turned away in case the man and woman did not reappear, in case it was true that he was only twenty yards from the edge of the earth.  He tried to calm himself but his brain impulses  would not touch reality, instead they filled his head with this nightmare, over which Joe had no control.  Morden was the southern end of the Northern line, but to Joe it was the end of the earth.
                    He turned back into the station.  The foyer was deserted except for a thin man in an underground uniform who sat in an upright  box with windows.  Joe thought the man was dead, his shoulders were slumped, his face was sallow and his eyes were dull.  The ticket office shutters were pulled down and the ticket machines were silent like tombstones.  Joe stood bewildered, not knowing where he was or who he was.  He put his hands in his jacket pockets.  In one pocket he felt his granny's pearls and in the other he felt the flick knife.  He remembered who his granny was and who he was and he remembered where he was and why he was there.  The dead man moved slightly in his box, so Joe went over to him and asked the way to Orchard Road.  The dead man told him and as Joe was walking away he remembered that he had a brother.  He went back to the dead man and pulled the piece of paper Annie had given him from his jeans pocket.  The dead man gave him a second set of directions.  Joe thanked the dead man and left.  The dead man nodded and was dead again.
                       Joe aw his feet moving over the pavement, one in front of the other, towards another murder.  He had no internal feeling.  His legs moved by their own motor action.  He had no memory of the past, no thoughts of the present and no plans for the future.  Time was lost to him he was numb and emptied, without fear or worry.  He walked on by remote control. 
                      As he turned into Orchard Road, a violent wind tried to disturb the path he had chosen.  It blew cold against him, it pressed hard on his chest and face,  it blew dust in his eyes, it tried to blow him backwards, away from another killing.  But Joe did not heed its warning, he leaned into the wind and fought against it, he put down his head and drew in his shoulders and his thin body cut through the wind like a knife.
                           Joe found himself at the door of number twenty-five.  It was a mauve door, it reminded him of a blackcurrant mousse he had once eaten and it gave him the same queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.  He pressed a bell in the middle of the door and he felt his finger sink deep into the soft cold mousse.  The mauve door was opened by an old lady with a blue rinse.  A sugary perfume rose from her.  Her face was caked in make-up ; a coffee cream foundation and turquoise eye shadow, her ginger eyebrows were painted on too high and too arched and her lips were bright orange.  Joe stood on the front step, his lips were parted but his voice was lost, it was somewhere far away from him, it had been anaesthetised along with his brain.  He stared blankly at the hideous colours of her face.  The old lady smiled kindly and spoke,
                                                                                              " Jason told me to expect you.  Do come in luv ! "
               Her sweet voice came to him from a distance, as though he was on one side of a waterfall and she was on the other.  She turned away from him.  Joe closed the door behind him and followed her down the passage.  She was short and fat, she wore a white pleated skirt and a white crochet cardigan.  From behind she looked like a cup cake topped with pale blue icing.  She led Joe into her living room, it was soft and cushioned in pink and white, like candy, and her perfume filled the air.  He sank into a marshmallow sofa next to an electric fire with fake coal and moving, orange glow.  The old lady chatted away happily, but he could not distinguish her words from the sound of falling water.  Then she left the room and Joe was left alone, still sanding behind the waterfall, as though it were a two-way mirror into a dream where he saw himself sitting silently in a room made of candy. In one corner there was a white standard lamp with a pink lollipop shade and the mantelpiece was ornamented with small animals made of frosted sugar.   He heard the distant rattle of teacups and looked up to see the old lady standing in front of him with a laden tray.  She put the tray down on a low table beside him.  There were two white cups and saucers, a teapot in a pink and orange cosy and a victoria sponge cake filled with raspberry jam, on a frilly doily, on a cake stand.  She sat down on an armchair and smiled.  She leaned close to Joe and half whispered, her words were clear but her voice was still far away,
                                       " Jason said he'd sent you over 'ere with a present from 'im. "
                                                                                                                                         She was excited like a birthday girl awaiting a special gift.  Joe saw himself respond by taking his granny's necklace from his jacket pocket and handing it to her.  The old lady was overwhelmed, she gasped and a tear fell from her eye.  She gazed at them in her hand and then put the pearls around her neck.  She waddled over to a looking glass on a wall to see how they looked and then she waddled back to her chair full of pride and joy.  She chatted on as she poured the tea and her words were like quiet echoes of a voice trapped outside that only just reached his ears.
                 " Oh, he's such a good boy is Jason ! He was married to my girl Ida you know.  He was always a good son in law.  Even when she upped and left 'im he never stopped his little treats and niceties towards me. " Her voice lost its sweetness and turned bitter, " I never heard a word from her of course.  Me own daughter.  Gorn from the face of the earth as far as I know.  Wicked, selfish girl. "
                   She was looking for a knife to cut the cake with, but she had forgotten to bring one in.  So Joe took the flick knife from his other pocket, flicked it open and  cut the cake for her.  He cut into the soft sponge again and again and the jam spewed out everywhere and wouldn't stop flowing.  The old lady fell back in her armchair, her eyes were wide open and her body quivered with surprise, her chest and belly were covered with raspberry jam.  Then her shaking stopped, she was calm and her eyes were closed.  She seemed to have fallen asleep, so Joe unclasped the pearls from her neck.  He went into the kitchen where he washed the sticky jam from the necklace and from his hands.  He put the clean pearls back in his jacket pocket and left by the back door.   



















































   

                              STARSHINE THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four                                                                                                   Part Sixteen



                  When Joe woke the rain had cleared from the sky and left the ground wet, everything was coated with a watery film that shone beneath a strong sun and the puddles were like white gold.  Joe squinted against the glare.  He got out of the car and stretched his aching body.  The cellar door was padlocked so he walked round to the side door.  He knocked and eventually he heard the weary shuffle of Mad Maria's espadrilled feet.  The door  opened.  Mad Maria greeted him with her quiet, high pitched, insipid laugh.  Joe looked at her directly, his face unsmiling and tensed.  There were heavy shadows beneath her dark eyes, she turned away from him nervously.  Joe hated her whimpering, feeble laughter, be it happy or sad.  He followed her into the bar where he sat on a stool while she resumed her scrubbing, on hands and knees, in the far corner of the room. She knelt with her back to Joe, a bucket of steaming water at her side.  The feint splash and swoosh of water followed by the hollow sound of hard bristles on floorboards went on in  a steady monotonous rhythm.  Joe watched her, his contempt was bitter, he despised her conscience and her lowliness.  Wearily and steadily she mopped and polished and scrubbed without end, as though dust and dirt were the forces of evil and it was she alone that kept them at bay.  Joe looked at her pink overalls and daffodil yellow rubber gloves, her pale legs tinged blue with varicose veins and her grey knot of hair in a net at the back of her head and he was sure that the talk of church and candles was his own dreaming.  Mad Maria had not said the words he had imagined that she had said.  She had no words.  She was wordless, mindless, afraid and weak, all she had was her scrubbing brush and her laugh.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                          Annie came in, her air was in  a high, girlish pony tail.  She wore tight jeans and a cream mohair jumper, white open toed stiletto shoes and blood red nail varnish on her fingers and toes.  She was smiling and her green eyes were full of joy.  But her joy was stopped in its  tracks at the sight of  Joe's pale thin, face.  The sparkle had gone from the blue in his eyes and left them vacant and rimmed with red.  Joe could see nothing of her horror.  He wanted her, he felt his heart going out to her and he thought he was in love.  But Joe did not understand that it was somebody else's heart from somebody else's story.
                  " I brought the car back, " he said " I'm sorry I was so long with it.  I didn't mean to be. "                      " It's no problem, I never use it. "  Annie averted her eyes.  Joe wanted Annie to be cross with him for disappearing with her car for so long.  He wanted a reaction that showed it mattered to her and that he mattered to her, but she gave none. She said something about having to make up the rolls and see to the pies and she was gone.
                   Joe found her in the kitchen.  He stood in the doorway.  Annie was drawing a wire through a large block of cheddar.  The sight of the cheese wire sent a shudder through him, his mind was jolted but he could not find the memory.  Annie would not look at him, his appearance horrified her.
         " When did you last eat ?" she asked.  Joe did not know.  He could not think and he was not hungry.  So he did not answer.  There was a silence then Annie tried again,
                                                                                                                         " Roy's in a clinic down Morden way.  Maybe you should go there. "
                   Another jolt went through him and this time his memory was jarred and he remembered the little task that had to be done for Jason.  Annie reached for her handbag.  She gave Joe a slip of paper with Roy's address on it.  Her head was lowered so that their eyes would not meet.  Joe tried to take her hand but she took it away and went to the other side of the kitchen where she busied herself at the sink.  Her movements were brisk and unnatural.  While Annie thought Joe needed help, Joe thought she wanted him to visit his brother and he wanted to visit his brother because he wanted to please her.
                       " I've got a little business to take care of in Morden this afternoon. So I'll pop in on him. "  He waited for a response,  but she gave none.  " See you tonight then."
                 " We'll see, " she said doubtfully, as if she knew something Joe didn't. Joe did not understand so he rubbed her words from his mind and they were quickly erased.
                  " Can I have a ciggy ? " he said
                  "In my bag, take the box !"  She had never let him take things straight from her bag before.  Joe supposed she was too busy and anyway her hands were wet.
                  " Take some money too!" she said, still not looking at him.  Joe still carried a wad of notes from a card game that seemed an age ago, but he took a fiver of Annie's anyway. Then he left, knowing that he had wanted to kiss and hold her and not understanding why he had not.