SUNSHINE, THE OCEAN ANDTHE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                   Part Ten




                              In the drawing room Joe lost his smile.  The air was leaden, filled with Clare's anger and Joe felt all his hope turn bad inside him.  The necklace was broken, the pearly beads were scattered over the carpet.  Clare sat stiff and upright in a chair beside the dying fire. Her hair was mussed as though she had dragged her fingers through it in grief and despair. Joe looked at her bitter profile.  She would not turn her head to him.
                                                                        " Damn you !"
                                                                                                   She spat out the words like an old crone.  The godmother whose love he wanted had turned into a witch, an evil witch.  Confusion and pain ran amok, the chaos inside him paralysed him so that even his tears could not flow.  He understood nothing.
                     " Damn you ! " she said again.  " Damn you and damn those beads.  I can smell the blood on those beads.  How dare you bring them to me ! "
                     Joe fell to the floor, his tears flowed, they flooded and choked him.  He had thought he was safe here , but Clare knew of his guilt.  He screamed and writhed unable to bear what she could see.  He was a prisoner of his own fear and guilt, he did not even know how it was that he had come by them, but he had and fear and guilt were his and they imprisoned him.  His hands were covered in blood and death, he did not know why, but they were and they were his hands.
               His screaming stopped, he sobbed and his body trembled and shivered as the crying left him.  He opened his swollen eyes.  He saw Clare rekindling the fire.  Her joints were stiff, he could see that it pained her to move.  He no longer felt her anger in the room.  He felt weak but there was a calmness in him after his crying.  Clare sat down again. Joe looked up at her,
                                                                                                                           " Forgive me, " he said and more tears fell silently from his eyes, " Forgive me. "
               " Come here. " she said softly.  He went to her, he knelt beside her and laid his head in her lap.  They sat in silence and she stroked his hair. Then she said,
                                                                                                      " Why did you bring me the pearls? " Her voice soothed him, there was no anger in the question, so he answered easily."
                 " Because you used to have some pearls.  You treasured them.  You said they comforted you."
                  They sat in more silence.  Then Clare began to talk, her gentle hand still stroking his hair and Joe listened knowing that her words would bring him solace and healing.
                  " Yes I treasured them.  But they were never a comfort to me. That necklace was a yoke that made my head hang sad and heavy, and the years that I wore it were long and weary.
                           It was given to me the same day I saw George for the first time in the woods, the same day that I planted his apricot stone.  I did not run from my husband as his mother wanted me to.  Instead I chose to be a dutiful and loving wife.  So his mother awarded me with the pearls.  She handed them down to me as they had been handed down to her and in my innocence I accepted them as a gift and thought them very beautiful.  But they were a punishment.  I had not heeded her warning so she handed me down a yoke, a bondage to a poisoned man, an enslavement of fear and ignorance of my own heart, a weight that would bury my soul and my self expression and then taunt my emptiness.
                Even when I left my husband and sucked and spat his poison from my wounds, I still wore the pearls believing them to be my friend. But they were never a friend, they remained as a scar of my marriage, an excuse for weakness.  The necklace was still a yoke in which I locked myself so that I was never quite free, always restricted, still afraid of myself.  The pearls became a burden of shame and bitterness at my willingness in marriage to be hollowed out and broken like a china doll.  I had put up no defences.  I had been weak.  Instincts and intuition had been ignored even though they had cried out to me each time his slow poison had reached in and taken another part of me.  I had laid them by the wayside while I travelled a dark road.  I had courted my own madness.  I could not forgive my husband, neither could I forgive myself.  
                         Like the crocodile in the dream.  I swam from it in fear, a fear that it had put into me.  But when I climbed out of the water and looked back it had not moved from the centre of the river.  Just as my husband had filled me with fear, he could not finally kill me or destroy me, but in my fear and madness I imagined that he could.  I could have left him any time, I could have swum for the shore and left him stationery in the middle of the river.  It was the fear in my imagination that weakened me all the more and so prolonged my marriage and my unhappiness.  As in the dream I did eventually reach a shore and my body became strong again and the barren landscape of my life became fertile. 
                       More and more I began to find peace of mind when I lived in Bath and on my travels in Europe.  I stayed away from darkness.  I ran from the shadows to the light and saw beauty in everything.  I found joy but not love.  I found joy in solitude, in loneliness.  I made the world mine, I made it what I wanted it to be. I would not let the darkness in. I would not let other people in, in case they brought the darkness with them.  I skirted the darkness, I narrowed my life to avoid it.  Still I wore the pearls and still they restricted me.  I knew there was a bigger world beyond the one I lived in, a vast world where darkness lived alongside light, where there had to be evil for there to be goodness. I knew there was a life to be led in that world, a long and full life that was waiting for me to lead it.  I kept trying to reach it, but while I wore the pearls I could not.  All the gates were locked and I was afraid to unlock them.  I knew what had to happen but I could not make it happen while I carried my fear and my shame.  I had to know that weakness was not shameful but a strength in itself.  I had to realise that my marriage was just a small part of my life and that what it had taught me about myself would stand me in good stead.  I had to forgive my husband.  But forgiveness was a hard mountain to climb.  I kept thinking that I was reaching its summit when more of the mountain would appear, and the summit would still loom way above me, its sides smooth and sheer.  I could not forgive my husband for his cold, loveless eyes and stony heart.  I could not forgive his constant need to take and destroy.  Though his life was surrounded by riches it was spiritless, it was a poor and squalid life with no feeling and no colour.  And because his soul was so full of hatred, his bitterness had constantly ridiculed and destroyed mine so that my soul had had to fight to stay alive and so many times it had nearly died.  I could not forgive those years that had been so wasteful and so full of pain. 
                           I kept on trying to climb that mountain and every time I slid back a little I would try and understand the good that had come from marriage.  I had leant to trust my intuition, to trust my instincts.  I knew now that I believed myself, I believed that what my eyes saw was true and there could be no doubting them.  This discovery meant that I could live a full and burning life, it meant that I was filled with myself, I was no longer empty and waiting to be filled with whatever came my way be it good or bad.  I was no longer a china doll, hollow and broken.  I  was me, strong mind, strong body and strong spirit.  All this was good, but I still could not reach that mountain top. My heart had to expand to acknowledge the darkness in order to find the light, to accept evil in order to find good. My shoulders had to broaden to carry sorrow and joy alongside one another.  I knew all these things but I could not make them happen alone.
           So you see Joe, it was only when George threw those godforsaken pearls back into the ocean that I became free.  George freed me.  Love freed me.  He unclasped the necklace, he broke each pearl from its knotted string and scattered them over the ocean where I watched them sink out of sight beneath the dark waves.  And suddenly there were no chains around my heart, no reins that held me back.  There was nothing I could not do, there was nothing and no one to fear. It was a sweet and long awaited release.  It was like new birth, new life out of the old one in one light breath, young yet wise, tender yet wild and the breeze was light and easy around us and love whispered and love smiled.  The end of one journey and the beginning of the next.
                     If I had not been freed then maybe my own heart might have turned  cold and stony and my soul might have finally died having been unable to climb the Forgiving Mountain's high summit.  And even though I had left him, my husband would have defeated me because I would have likened myself to him and my life would have had no beauty, only bitterness and sour immortal tears.
                    The pearls had at last disappeared and I forgave my husband and hoped that one day he might be rid of his poison and find an end to his misery. 
                    The boat rocked gently, the water lapped at its sides.  We watched the stars in the sky and their reflection in the water.  Our souls were reflections of each others', to be filled by each other was to be filled by ourselves, at last we were whole.  We made our plans for the future. We had both been the poorer for wealthy lives so we would leave George's money in its wax sealed leaden box, where it would wait for the Unicorn.  We would come back to this house where the clock no longer moved so that time would not push and pull at our lives and when it was all over and one of us died, then the other would take no food, fade and follow after.
                      Then we went back into the confines of the Ark and I no longer feared its beasts because I knew that beyond lay the Starshine and the Ocean, and it was there George and I would live and burn with a light that would see and know and feel all that lay between the ocean bed and the highest star.  Once my fears had left me I knew that I could live both inside and outside the Ark and now the Ark was no longer my prison I looked again at its passengers and was able to see the beautiful alongside the ugly.  The crocodiles and the snakes still made me shudder, but alongside the evil there were the selfless and the generous.  The lion was strong and warm.  I saw the elegant shy-eyed gazelles.  I saw the apes laughing and fooling.  There was much that was joyful alongside the sorrowful.
                       Only the Unicorn was missing.  George and I had left the Ark to go and find the Unicorn, but once we found Starshine and the Ocean we had stopped looking. George said the Unicorn was long gone beneath the waves and that my pearls had followed him. George knew the Unicorn better than I, he had often thought that he himself might be the Unicorn.  But I was still curious.  I often wondered about the Unicorn. " 
                     Clare's hand lay gently on Joe's head,
                                                                                 " And at last I have found him, " she said. 
                     Joe lifted his head from her lap and looked at her. Her eyes thanked him.
                     " It was you I was waiting for before I died.  I wanted to tell you how it all began. "
                     At last Joe knew who he was and knowing that he was the Unicorn made him feel at peace.  He knew that his crimes were not his but a part of everything and he knew that there was a place for him even though it was not in this world.  His burdens of fear, guilt and confusion were lifted from his shoulders and he huddled on the floor at Clare's feet like a contented little boy.
                     " Tell me about the Unicorn. " he said
                     So Clare begun one last magical story while Joe closed his eyes and waited for the comforts of sleep.
                    " The Unicorn was beautiful, pure white, sleek powerful flanks and clear blue eyes in a proud head adorned with its regal horn.  The Unicorn was headstrong and free.  He had never known the chains of fear, he had no dealings with greed or self pity, only desire and with desire as his companion he climbed the mountain with ease to stand on its summit and know freedom.
                   The Unicorn knew that to fear death was to fear life and when the flood came he sought refuge in it, rather than in the Ark.
                   He stood on the mountain top and saw that the flood was coming.  He watched the long procession of God's creatures enter the Ark two by two and he knew that he could not follow.  For once inside the Ark the confinement would destroy him.  If his freedom were taken from him then he would be empty and his desire would be misled into chaos and confusion.  With nowhere to run and no mountains to climb he would be shackled to the fears and sorrows of those around him and his emptiness would be filled with their poisons until all his pure white turned black and insane.  And inside his prison the crazy, black unicorn would toss its head and wild mane, its eyes would darken and quiver with frightened white.  It would buck and rear and gallop in mad, directionless circles, wreaking havoc and destruction, and spilling the blood of its fellow inmates as its twisted horn impaled the innocent and the guilty alike.
                   So the pure white unicorn stood on his mountain top and watched the Ark sail away and the water whispered to him and closed around him like a gentle shroud and he was unfearing and free as the flood carried him away. "












                













     

                                     STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                      Part Nine



                        The room in the tower was just as he had left it.  He gazed at all its strange artefacts, the willow pattern punch bowl filled with earth, the dolls, the shells, the wooden ark with its wooden Noah and his wooden wife and all their two by two wooden animals and the picture on the wall of a rowing boat on the ocean on a starlit night.  Clare's past was a story in a tower, each relic on its own was bewildering, but together they made a story that Joe was beginning to understand.  Most of all he understood the china bride, because like her, his own life was broken and hollow.  And just as the china doll had been kept alive by the apricot stone planted in the punch bowl, so had Clare and the tower that contained her story become Joe's own seed of faith where he believed he might find his own truth.  But there was still so much to understand.  He wanted to know why Clare had feared the animals of the Ark.  He wanted to know more of the love that had come with George and his gift of beautiful shells from the ocean.  He wanted to understand why George had thrown her precious pearls to the sea when she had held them so dear and they had comforted her so much.  Joe had left his granny's pearly beads downstairs on a table beside the sleeping Clare so that she would wake to them and be pleased. The thought of  her pleasure at his gift excited him and made him feel warm.  He wanted to see her smiling eyes. He was impatient to feel her warmth towards him.  He wondered how long she would sleep.             
                     Sunlight streamed through the window, over the desk and onto the floor.  The school desk was still a mystery to Joe, he decided to leave it that way for the time being and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the jig-saw puzzle.  He began to try and fill the frame he had left.  His fingers worked feverishly with the pieces, turning, rejecting and fitting.  He was eager to make a picture he would understand.  He wanted to find the clues and make a pattern of his life so far, so that he could start again from a place where he knew who he was and what his life had meant, just as Clare had made a journey that had had no meaning until its end where a new journey with George had begun. He wanted to make sense of his bewilderment just as Clare had made sense of hers.
                    Hours passed.  Joe had completed a starry night sky and its reflection in calm, dark water.  The centre was yet to be resolved, many pieces were still waiting to be placed and interlocked.  He was certain the jig-saw would grant him his wish and show him a rowing boat of his own where he would find hope and happiness as Clare had done.  But daylight had turned to dusk and Joe could strain his eyes no more.  So he left the tower and went downstairs with a hopeful soul and a smile.
                            

                                 STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                Part Eight

 

                     The underground sped down its black tunnel.  Joe closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts, but they only rattled and jolted with the train and would not be gather.  The train stopped and exchanged passengers.  Joe saw that it was a quarter past twelve by the platform clock, but he did not know to which day the time belonged. He knew that after this killing there was only one more.  He promised himself that everything would be fine once the killings were done.  He wished he could be sure of his promise.
                     The train drew into High Street Kensington station.  He got off, walked up the stairs, past the barriers and through the shopping arcade where a million people walked through him, their unfocused images came at him too fast and made him giddy. He got out of the arcade where the low light, shop windows and clean tiles had closed him in.  But out in the sunlight and the cold air the flow of air was just the same, they marched on him, stern and forthright while Joe shrank away.   The High Street was full of colours, the colours in shop window displays, the colours of the cars on the road and the big red buses, the colours of people's clothes.  The colours were too many and too bright, they added to his disorientation.  He panicked as a loud whirring vibration came up from behind him.  A roller skater appeared from nowhere, a tall slim negro in tight red and white trousers, head phones and a Walkman clipped to his belt. He circled Joe three times and each time Joe saw his own fear reflected twice over in the black mirrors of the negro's shades.  Then he was gone and weaving his speedy way up the High Street, twisting and turning, cutting his way through the crowds.  Joe's panic dissolved into paralysis and vacancy.  His head was light, he forgot his fear, he forgot everything.  He waded his way mindlessly up the street, he saw his feet and legs walking, but had no sensation of his own movement and did not know whether he walked fast or slow.  He lost all feeling and although he was tense and shaking with the cold, his flesh could not feel it.
                         He found the door he was looking for next to a fashion boutique.  He looked at the nylon haired mannequins in their expensive and fashionable clothes.  They did not look back at him, their impassive gaze went over his head and he was glad to be unnoticed.
                         He pressed the bell marked ' Sutcliffe '.  The entry phone was answered immediately.
                         " Yes. "
                         It was a woman's voice, sharp and edgy.
                         "Uh, Jemima ? "
                         "Yes! "
                         "It's Joe.  I've got something from Jason. " 
                         The door buzzed so Joe pushed it open and went inside.  He climbed the carpeted stairs and found the flat door ajar, so he went in.
                         "I'm in the kitchen. "she shouted.
                         Joe's feet sank deep into the cream shag pile as he crossed the living room to another opened door from where her voice had come.  The fitted kitchen was in marble and black wood.  It was spotless.  Jemima sat at a glass topped table, her tools laid out in front of her, ready and waiting.  A new syringe in a sealed, plastic  package, a silver spoon, a gold lighter, a strip of black Velcro to tie her arm and a bottle of sterilised water, all in a line, neat and orderly.  And in the middle of the table was the cash in new, crisp ten pound notes.  She wore a pinstriped skirt and a black bra.  Her blouse and jacket were draped over the back of her chair.  Se had ivory skin and long , black shiny hair.  She looked at Joe accusingly, her eyes were fierce and dark as ebony.
                                                                                                         " About bloody time !"
                           He said nothing.  He took the cash and gave her the paper fold.  She opened it and began the procedure.  She was dextrous and precise.  Joe leant against the wall and watched her in wonder and in sorrow.  She was very beautiful.
                                                                           " If Jason sends you again, don't be so bloody late.  I've got a business to run, I've got appointments to keep. "
                          She looked up at him and saw the sorrow in his eyes.  She regretted her harsh words ,
                          " I'm sorry, I'm edgy.  I just need the smack that's all. "
                          Joe nodded and shrugged his shoulders as if to say he understood, but he didn't.  He had never understood Roy being wasted and humbled in a mindless squalor of dirty needles and fixing in toilets and he understood Jemima even less with her wealth and her clean, orderly life.  She looked healthy except for the track marks on her arm and the hunger in her eyes.
                         " You look as though you could do with some yourself. "  she said.
                         She put some powder in the teaspoon with a few drops of water.  She mixed it with the end of the needle, then heated the spoon over the lighter.      
                          " No, I never use the stuff. " said Joe. 
                         She looked up quickly, dismayed.  She uttered a quick " huh " of disbelief that Joe did not understand, having forgotten his weight loss, faded eyes and pale face.
                        " Why don't you sit down anyway ! " her impatience had returned and her words sharpened again. 
                        " No thanks !" Joe didn't want to watch.
                        " Well bugger off then. "
                        Jemima turned her attention to the teaspoon and Joe went into the living room.  It had a light, airy feel to it. Abstract paintings hung on white walls. There were two low settees in soft, white leather and a low, glass coffee table on which her handbag lay open on its side, credit cards and lipsticks spilling out of it. 
                       He looked out of the back window.  A black mini was parked in a side street on a single yellow line, a warden stood over it and wrote out a ticket.  Joe put his head back round the kitchen door,     
                       " Is that you mini out the back, the black one ? "
                       " Yes, why ? "
                       " You just got a ticket. "
                       "So bloody what. "
                       The tie was round her arm, she was waiting for the vein, needle at the ready.  Joe left her to it.  He didn't want to witness her last and lethal fix.
                       There were black silk sheets on a king sized bed in a bedroom of pale grey that led into a bathroom of dark speckled cork tiles and a sunken bath of jade green.  Joe turned on the gold taps and watched the falling ribbons of soft, clear water fill the bath.  He undressed, took his cigarettes and lighter and eased himself down into the hot water.  He thought that these were the surroundings and the life he wanted when he inherited Clare's three million.  So he pretended that this was where he lived and tried to imagine that this was his life. He tried to feel what it felt like, but it felt like nothing and the nothingness frustrated and disturbed him.  The more he tried to relax the tenser he became.  He chain smoked and let the ash and dogends fall into the bath where they floated and danced on the movements of the water.  He got out and dried himself.  He was angry because to bathe in hot water in a  deep sunken bath was nothing.  He lay on the bed and rolled around in the silk sheets, trying desperately to feel the sensations of wealth and luxury, but they only felt cold and slippery and made him cringe. He felt his nerve endings tingle and his tension grew until it was unbearable.  He leapt off the bed and dressed quickly.  Luxury and good taste meant nothing to him, he couldn't feel life through them, he couldn't feel their worth and neither were they any good to Jemima now that she was dead.                   
                      He looked at her dead body in the kitchen.  She sat on the chair, her legs stretched out and her head dropped forward so that her long black hair hung down over her face.  But for the needle in her arm she looked like on of the mannequins from the shop downstairs that had yet to be properly dressed and positioned. 
                      Joe went back into the living room and took the car keys from her handbag.



















     






















 

                                   STARSHINE, THE OCEAN ANDTHE UNICORN

Chapter Five                                                                                                   Part Seven



                  Joe opened his eyes to a blurry image of Jason's ugly misshapen face and heavy jowls leaning over him. 
                             " Wakey, wakey rise and shine !"  Jason spoke with a gleam in his eye and a fixed, sour smile.  His words were syrupy with cynicism and contempt.  " I've been worried about you son.  Quite the little sleeping beauty.  For two days.  Dead to the world."
                Joe felt as though he should indeed have been dead, but had woken up alive by mistake.  His mouth was dry and the daylight burned his eyes.  Jason filled the kettle at the yellow stained sink.  The electric ring did not work so he crossed the room and put a coin in the meter.  Joe lay still, limp and too weak to move.  He was barely able to keep his eyelids from falling as he watched Jason's bulk move about the room, filling its height and width with his size and presence. 
                " I've got another little job for you son.  Now I'll make this one easy for you, seeing as you've been so under the weather. "
                  Joe did not have the strength to fight the dark malevolence that came from Jason, so he lay  still and let it flow over him knowing that the orders would once again be deadly and that he would once again obey them.
                   Jason stood at the foot of his bed.  He took a black notebook from his coat pocket and a pen from inside his jacket.  He jotted something down, tore the page from the notebook  and put it on the table.
                   " Jemima Sutcliffe.  A very beautiful, sophisticated young woman with a very nice gaff in High St. Ken. "  He pocketed his pen and notebook and took out a tiny square of folded paper which he held up for Joe to see before putting it down on the table beside the name and address.
                    " She'll be expecting you with this within the hour. "
                   Then he looked around Joe's bedsit with mock pity and disgust.  He looked at the lino curling up at the edges, the rickety furniture, the loose window frame and the empty doorway. He was writing his initials in the grey dust on the table when the kettle began to sing.  He reached it in one stride, spooned coffee into a mug and poured on the water.  He held the mug out to Joe. Joe heaved himself up and sat on the edge of the bed.  Jason leaned down and once again put his face close to Joe's ,
          " And get yourself a decent meal for Christ's sake ! "
                  Then Jason was gone and the room seemed bigger.  Joe drank the coffee, it was foul, thick and acrid.          























  
                     
                  

                                       STARSHINE THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN

Chapter Five                                                                                                        Part Six



               ......He stood before Clare's crazy, ramshackle house.  The white light of the moon shone down on the turrets and lichened roof.  He saw Clare standing in the front window.  She looked at him but would not invite him in. The door was once again closed to him and the brass door knocker leered at him disdainfully.  He looked at the curved staircase that led to the door, he tried to move towards it but his feet were bound and held fast to the ground by thorny creepers.  He looked back at Clare, he held out his hand to her and across his palm lay his granny's pearls shining in the moonlight.  Clare looked at the pearls sadly.  Joe wondered at her sadness.  Why did she not want the pearls he offered her ?  Why did she not want his love ? His ignorance frustrated him.  He felt hot tears running down his cheeks and his eyes pleaded with her to let him in.  But Clare did not move and her gaze was stony. Once again Joe felt himself barred from the riches inside the house.  The warmth and depth of its treasures were not for him to know or understand, its hidden secrets were not for him to hold.  There was something inside the house he had to reach and know, but Clare's eyes told him of his unworthiness and the door was locked and his entrance forbidden.  His desperation grew and in the chaos of dreamtime and dream space he found himself far away from the house at the bottom of the hill.  He looked up to where the house stood in its veil of moonlight and he began to run towards it.  Loose gravel scattered beneath his feet as he trudged up the steep pathway but the faster he ran forward the further he was from the house until it receded into nothing and all that was left was his outstretched hand holding a necklace of pearly white beads.
                   Then the beads were gone and he had a rifle in his hands.  He was standing in a mud ditch, his feet in black water.  On either side of him there were soldiers in a long line as far as he could see down the winding ditch.  They were silent, tense and waiting, so he waited too.  He looked up at the sky and there were a million stars.  Then the order came and he scrambled up the side of the ditch and ran toward the enemy, crouching low, his bayonet out in front.  He ran through the rattle of gunfire and the whines and screams of shells.  Barbed wire dragged at his ankles and once again his feet were bound to the ground and he could not move.  But this time he felt no fear or despair but welcomed the explosion that buried him beneath a wave of mud, deep down in a beautiful silence and he praised the great weight of the earth as it crushed his body and pressed the last breath from his lungs..............