STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
                                                       Chapter One.   Part two




                     That night Joe walked through Soho, hands in pockets and head bowed against the cold that hung in the fog and the dark.  He turned into an alley and followed the echoes of his footsteps, listening to the hollow sound that rang from his body.  As he came to the end of the alley he knew that he did not want to die, ever.  He did not know where the thought came from, so he removed it from his mind and in its place stepped fear.  He moved on quickly, blinded by the fog and watched by the dark.  Panic started rising as he felt a gr eater need than usual to be sheltered, to be safe.  It was too quiet, it was deserted.  He wanted to lose himself in crowds and noise.
                      Headlamps turned into the street and shone a pathway through the fog. The vehicle crept forward in low gear, staying just behind Joe.  He heard the slow crunch of tyres over loose gravel. He saw the wheel hub from the corner of his eye as the car drew alongside him, its tyres scraping the kerb.  Joe's heart stopped.  Car doors flew open.  His attackers brought him to the ground and held him fast.  Joe closed his eyes as if his death would not come if he could not witness it.  A winding blow to his guts and his eyes snapped open again to see the glint of metal knuckles on black leather as the gloved hand withdrew.  Jason Donaldson crouched down, his heavy, ugly face in front of Joe's.  He held a cigar dangerously close to Joe's left eye.  Joe could not move away from it, someone had him in a strangle hold from behind.  He waited for the terrible pain.
                     "You've annoyed these two gentlemen." Jason said, indicating with two slight nods of his head the man behind Joe and another who stepped forward so that Joe could see his grim, oriental face looking down over Jason's shoulder.  He held the black briefcase in one hand and the Duty Free carrier bag in the other.  Joe knew what was coming.  It was bad.  It was not good to annoy Jason Donaldson.  It was not good to annoy the chinamen.  These things always ended with the end.
                    Jason stood up, six foot seven, his tailored coat stretched over his massive shoulders and his hat perched on top of his fat head.  Joe was afforded slight relief as the intense heat of the cigar left the vicinity of his eyeball.  Jason took the briefcase from the chinaman.  The metal clips broke as he jarred it open.  He held it upside down over Joe and let the brightly coloured monopoly notes fall so that they swirled and landed over and around him.  Jason threw the case down.  Then he took the carrier bag from the chinaman and again he held it upside down, high over Joe's head. Sand fell over Joe's head and shoulders and some found its way down he back of his shirt.  His mind's eye again glimpsed the grey trousered leg, the tan shoe and green gabardine.  The bastard had got at the carrier bag as well.  Jason looked down at him,
                                                                "Silly money, silly gear, silly Joe!" He paused. "Where is it? And what about our nice Mr. courier?"
                     Joe knew that the truth would sound hollow and it did.  "Nice Mr. courier fell off his bar stool.  I don't know anything about the silly money or the silly gear."
                      "Try again Joe.  You're mits have been in this case." Jason kicked the broken case at Joe.  Joe looked into Jason's eyes, they seared and Jason knew it was pointless.  He had always relied on his cheek in life, and his reaction to death was just the same.  "Yeah, that was twelve hours ago.  What kept ya?"
                    "We figured we could wait twelve hours for you if you could wait twelve hours for us.  And you did."
                    Joe wished he had trusted those nagging instincts when he had bent the case clips and used those twelve hours to get clear.  But he kept his eyes bold and square on Jason's face.  "Thanks! What is it that I'm waiting for?"  Now it was here he wanted it over quickly.
                    Jason drew on his cigar "My friends here have a proposition to make to you"  Joe's breath shallowed as he listened for a promise of life.  Jason continued, "Was that the first man you killed?"
                    Joe said nothing.  The question astounded him.  But Jason took his silence, or at least pretended to take his silence as an answer, the wrong answer.  "You're useful Joe."
                    "What!  A hit man?"  Joe tried to laugh but the strangle hold tightened.  Joe's laughter turned to panic and he protested  "I'm a petty thief.  I'm small time.  I don't kill.  I never killed that bloke.  I'd be well out of town if I had."
                    "Maybe.  Maybe not." said Jason.  "Maybe staying in town is a ploy to prove your innocence."  As if innocence mattered in Soho's underworld.  Joe could see that Jason knew he was telling the truth but that somehow truth was beside the point.  Jason's smile was evil.  He continued  "We're not interested in a guilty party.  We're interested in a fall guy.  You were put in charge of a great deal of money to be exchanged for a great deal of heroin.  You lost us both.  You owe us.  You will work for us to pay off your debt.  You will take the highest paid job we offer, that way your debt will be paid quickly.  At an assassin's going rate you owe us six jobs. Lucky for you it wasn't a bigger haul.  One a week Joe.  You kill one a week for the next six weeks.  I'll tell you who, when and where.  That'll pay the cost of your little slip and after that we'll make no more demands on you."
                    The chinaman behind Joe released his choke lock.  Jason went on "If at the end of any one of the next six weeks there has been no killing, then it'll be you who'll die.  Don't bother running from us.  We'll always find you."                    

                                     STARSHINE, THE OCEAN, AND THE UNICORN

Chapter One

                                                                           Silly Joe

                      A winter sun pushed its yellow rays through glass and warmed the vast interior of the airport terminal.  Joe stood a while, the black briefcase on the floor between his feet, his eyes tightened and his muscles tensed, still feeling the bitter air of outside.  He was a lithe, slim figure of average height.  His blond hair was short and tidy, his features neat and clean, his blue eyes quick and alive. He wore blue jeans and a cream bomber jacket.  There was a bold,fresh faced cheek in his good looks, the mark and charm of a young cockney villain.

                     His knuckles were pressed hard into the thin cotton lining of his jacket pockets.  He took out his hands and uncurled his fingers in the warmth, then he folded down his collar and eased his neck from side to side, he deepened his breathing and felt his body relax from his face to his toes.  His relaxation went to far, he stood heavy and immobile, his mind dazed.  His bright blue eyes gazed at his surroundings, but registered nothing of the bustle.  People everywhere, standing, walking, hurrying, pushing trolleys.  The showing of tickets and passports, the sticking on of labels.  Eyes intent on departure boards and ears intent on announcements.  There were long intense seconds while Joe's deadened brain fought to recapture his bearings and remember the task that lay in hand.  He picked up the case and moved slowly through the crowds and the hurried, nervous chatter.

                       Joe took the lift up to Left Luggage.  He regretted it and wished he had climbed the stairs instead, as the movement pushed upwards beneath his feet while his stomach was pulled down.  He handed the briefcase over a counter to a tall, gaunt grey haired man in black trousers and white uniform shirt with epaulets and breast pockets.  Joe was given a ticket with a number on it.  The grey haired man walked away between two rows of stacked cases, trunks and brightly coloured rucksacks.  Joe watched as the black briefcase was stowed deep inside the stacked luggage. Satisfied it was hidden and safe he left by the stairs.  He reached the bottom, walked a few paces and climbed another set of stairs to the bar.    

                      Joe adjusted his eyes to the subtle lighting that fell from the edges of the ceiling to be absorbed in the dark red and mauve carpet.  A few customers sat on plastic chairs at formica topped tables.  The bar had three sides, it came out from the wall in a square.  Only one customer sat up at the bar and Joe recognised him from a photograph he had been shown.  It was the courier.  He was a big man, he wore a dark suit, his elbows were spread wide on the bar top and his backside over lapped the stool.  His head rested on his arms, his face was turned to one side and an elaborate handle bar moustache showed beneath a black trilby hat that covered his eyes.  His legs dangled loosely above the floor and an inch or two of hairy shins were revealed between his trouser bottoms and grey socks.

                       Joe parked himself a few stools further down the bar, one buttock on the stool and one foot on the metal foot rail.  He rooted in his pockets for loose change, cigarettes and matches.  The bartender was at the back of the bar polishing glasses.  Joe attracted his attention and the old white jacketed, dickey bowed barman hobbled over .  His bald head and wrinkled skin fitted in with the tacky decor.

                       "Scotch." said Joe.  He lit a cigarette and put the change on the bar.  The old man served him the drink, took the money then hobbled back to his glass polishing.  Joe looked over at the sleeping courier.  He wondered if the jet lag was real or just a pretense he was supposed to act along with.  A cup of black coffee was by one elbow, it had been joggled and the white china cup was stained on the outside where the coffee had slopped over into the saucer and onto the bar.  The courier's Left Luggage ticket was right in the pool of cold coffee.  Joe's eyes scanned the bar, nobody was looking his way, the barman was busy with his polishing and there was a fruit machine against the wall just beyond the sleeping, overweight, moustachioed body. Joe decided on his move. He knocked back the scotch and squashed his half smoked cigarette hard into the ashtray and walked over to the fruit machine.  He fed in some coins and pressed buttons, lights flashed in the corner of his eye, but he was watching the barman, checking that his curved spine was still bent in the opposite direction.  The old man made sucking noises with his dentures as he polished and set each glass back on its shelf with a little tinkle.  A clatter of coins fell and made Joe jump.  He scooped them into his pocket and with his eyes on the barman all the time he moved behind the courier and took the sodden ticket from the pool of coffee.  Before putting his own ticket on the bar he gave the courier a gentle nudge with his shoulder.  The body hit the floor heavily and the barstool clattered down with it.  The trilby rolled away and the couriers dead, bulbous eyes stared at the ceiling.  Joe's heart fell through his guts and pressed on his bladder.  He still had both tickets so he turned from the bar.  He knew the barman was watching him as he walked away as though he had seen or heard nothing of the dead body's fall.  Joe stiffened his legs against the urge to run.  But once out of sight of the bar he ran.  He stumbled up the stairs to Left Luggage.  As he reached the top he saw the tail end of the black briefcase, a grey trousered leg, tan shoe and green gabardine disappear through the lift's closing doors.  Joe felt the cold sweat between his body and his clothes.  He lurched at the counter and gave his ticket to the supervisor.  It was the same uniform but a different man.  This one was short, fat and bald.  He looked at the numbers and tut tutted at the state of the sodden one.  He walked away and came back smiling with the black briefcase and a duty free carrier bag.  Joe smiled too.  Now he was annoyed at his paranoia.  He paid and looked up to see the short fat man's eyes were gleaming and his smile was cynical and slightly sour.  Joe turned quickly to forget and ignore it.  He tried to soothe his rasping lungs and put his nervous thoughts in order.  It was time for a calm, unhurried walk back to the car

                   Outside Joe's unhurried stroll was quickened by the cold. He gripped the briefcase and carrier bag too tightly and looked down at his own footsteps covering the distance to the red brick layers of the multi-storey car park.  He found the beige Ford Escort easily.  He got in quickly and put the bag and case on the floor in front of the passenger seat.  The ignition was good.  He backed out of the space and headed for the motorway where he turned west when he should have turned east.

                    Joe stayed in the slow lane and tried to think clearly.  The traffic flow moved around him or whizzed past.  He turned on the radio but it addled his already confused brain, so he turned it off again.  He took the next exit and came off the roundabout without knowing where he was heading.  He checked the mirror for pursuers.  There were none.  He listed the facts and the possibilities but each conclusion felt wrong.

                    So the courier was dead and Joe had come away with the gear and he had also repossessed the money in the briefcase.  Could he stash the money?  Would they think it was he who had turned the courier into a body ?  The bartender would certainly think so.  To a boy like Joe life's ultimate goal was to find himself with the keys to the car and a windfall.  He had both these things but nothing felt right.  The oddity filled him with an awful sense of foreboding as though fear had already dragged him to depths unknown.  Joe fought with himself to feel lucky, normal even.  One look at the money, just one look at the money, that would straighten his head.  A layby came up suddenly, he swerved into it.  He left the engine running while he lifted the briefcase onto the passenger seat and grappled clumsily with the code numbered lock and the metal clips.  It took him a while.  Finally, there in front of him he saw the full and tightly packed contents of garish wads of monopoly money.  Joe stared at the gaudy oranges, reds, pinks, greens, yellows and blues.  He neither blinked nor breathed.  Mind, body and soul blanked for some moments until time re-entered and jogged Joe's consciousness.  Clockhands and the world still turned so Joe clipped the case shut.  He had slightly bent one latch and it would not catch properly but he twirled the code rings anyway, having no idea where they had been previously set.  He put the case back on the floor, swung the car round and headed back towards London.

                  Back on the motorway Joe kept his foot down and flew along the fast lane.  He had to cut out the time he had wasted.  He had to deliver the goods and finish the errand as though he was none the wiser.  The outcome would be the same if he had not looked inside the case.  He had the gear inside the plastic bag and he had done well to recoup the money for them when the courier had been in no fit state to accept it.  Joe pushed the vision of the grey trousered leg, tan shoe and green gabardine from his mind and replaced it with his new scenario which his head rotated for the next few miles until he felt innocent of any knowledge of the funny coloured dough.  But the bent latch on the case nagged at him.  He convinced himself it was ridiculous to worry over such a detail, it could have happened anytime.  But if the nagging escaped his thoughts it gnawed at his stomach.  And so it was all the way to Soho's Chinatown.

                   He parked the car outside "The Golden Wok" restaurant.  The sweet and sour cooking smells wafted over the pavement from the kitchen where the busy crashing of utensils, sizzling of fat and hissing of steam could be heard through an open door, calling to the hungry lunch time trade.  Joe left the keys inside the car as he had been instructed to and walked away.

'Voyages'

i looked for you in the night
like a swimmer searching for a lost diver
i glimpse your face in the dim light
like a blind fish in dark water
i reach for you and hold you
and feel the lonely throb of old sorrows
tremble from your heart

my hands
gentle as the hands of prayer
summon the cool peace of empty cathedrals
to soothe you,
stroke your face, your hair
like the whisper of a breeze at evening...
and now that you smile
we drift together
to the warm house of sleep

and it's only love moves through me
nothing less
nothing more
and it's only love that frees us
guides us on all our calm or troubled voyages
to a safe and friendly shore.

Writer and Muse

I am the vessel
That carries her voice
She embarked on my journey
And left me no choice
She came aboard quite suddenly
How could I refuse
I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the child
Who is loyal to no other
She took me for a daughter
Though she is no mother
She adopted me quite ruthlessly
And began to enthuse
I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the prisoner
Waiting for bail
She is the judge
Who threw me in jail
My sentence may be life
Bid who can I accuse
As I am the writer
And she the Muse

I am the dove
That flies from her sleeves
She the magician
Whose timing deceives
Plucking quills from my tail
How she does abuse
I am the writer
And She the Muse.

(January 1989)

                                                         The Gooseberry Set
                             The Bohemian Life and Times of Martha Rowe-Dente
                                                      An Authorised Biography
                                                   By Genevieve Hedgley-Hogg


              At her beginning Martha was born into a scramble of pink and hairless siblings, all eyes-a-bulge beneath blind sealed lids in the squabble to compete for a place at the teat.  Alarmed by the rudiments in the basics of survival, Martha knew that she must search out beauty down the by-ways to dreams and once fixed upon this noble purpose, promptly barged two brothers and yanked at a sister to gain the firmest nipple for the longest suckle of the sweetest milk.
             Once grown away from Mama's warm and patient belly, Martha preened her auburn fur and took a wide eyed look over and about and around.  Twitching her nose to the air, Martha turned tail on Mama's skirting-board home and scampered the pattern across the linoleum floor with a hippety skippity run, run, run right out of the parlour's back street door where the gutter welcomed her with a half hot dog dobbed bright with a yellow mustard that overkeened her big brown eyes until they smarted a mite too much and moved her on to a stale bagel to neatly nibble on in little mousey crescents before proceeding on her way to skipperty whoops through a grating into the Miller's cellar where she flipped top over tail to belly first most flop onto a softfall sack of flour.  A timely repose...... until bumpity wake up and down bounce behind the back of a horse drawing a barrow upon which herself was found to be on a ride atop a pyramid pile of softfall sacks all a-judder to the cobbles dancing down the street until the salt-sea breezed on Martha's whiskers and the horse hoof clipped its clop, rocking the wheels on quarter turns by a Steamer-Ship-Cruiser on the Water-Dock-Front.
             Two stevedore arms threw Martha and sack across the burly-broad of a double-bend back and then down into the hold of a ship's black echo where a fellow mouse introduced himself as the Honourable Ismbard Rowe-Dente, Philosopher and Poet.
             He was a kind mouse and escorted her to the ship's kitchen where they sat by a porthole eating gorgonzola and patais de fois gras as the ship sailed away from the huge green lady giant wearing a star crown and holding a flame. Ismbard explained that she was THE BIG LIBERTY and they were leaving her country now and sailing to London England where he had lodgings behind a mahogany bookcase in Cordwray Square off Gooseberry Street and Martha was most welcome to join their commune and even be his Mousewife.
             Martha accepted and settled down her life in amongst composers of nutshell symphonies and sculptures in turnip and potatoes and Martha too found her own limelight as an artist of some repute in the medium of many coloured lentils and the odd dried pea.  
 

                                                       CHRISTOPHER'S PENNY


Christopher Jessop steals a penny.
His hawk-eye swoop selecting any
But the old and dulled from crust and rind,
Patina'd from their daily grind.
He pockets a belief that luck shines new,
With a flourish of his his wrist to enhance and accrue
An enchantment beyond the Mint's Royal form
But a mock magicians vanity mis-invokes the charm
And a pen'eth bright talisman to ward off strife
Begins the miscalculation of the rest of his life
As Christopher audaciously chooses his worth
From Fortune's coin-fat, sow-ear purse.
Fate does not expect to be picked,
Chosen, stolen, manipulated, tricked.
Destiny plays on empty selves,
Sturdy bookcases of vacant shelves
Where volumes amass and pages unfold,
Connecting the chapters of lifetimes told
With counter plots that combine and cleave
As chance encounters interweave
Each symbioses episodic code,
Bound, titled, embossed and stowed
Upon oaken ledges across spine-lined walls,
While driftwood libraries of penny-dreadful lives
Are the pulp and plunder of pirated archives.


Postulation is his coin-tossed way
Of little to do about much to say.
Arrogance intoning superior stance
Promptly flicks the penny askance
To barely skim Friendship's crown
As self-indulgence spirals down
Its centrifugal, gyroscopic fall
Sucking attention from one and all.
A desperation perfectly able
To systematically make itself stable
By the duplicity that dwells behind the eyes
Where fierce heat actuates cool surmise.
The sycophantic swooping on samaritan prey
With his talons drawn for their deeds of the day,
Ready to translate each charitable act
As a matter of dutiful, subservient fact
While Flattery's fists uncurl their plea
To deliver impassioned falsity
Abundant with gratitudes empowering request
And chaining Goodwill to bogus behest.
A concave belief boasts a mute penny's charm,
Enforced by the hand with the begging-bowl palm
Of Christopher Jessop's obsequious game
Where Grandmaster versus the timid and tame
In his faking of a path to a victory at last


Christopher's penny bribes a belief
In self-exemption from misfortune's grief
To focus the fanaticism in dementia's eyes
Through desperation to delusion's disguise
Of foppery chancing a brocaded arm,
Languidly cradling the gilded charm,
Loquacious in pretenses of grandiose ability,
Elaborating his non-existant nobility
With a wile both witty and debonair
Able to outstare what is not there.
Where an unremarkable coin was found,
Plumes and kerchieves trail the ground,
Bowing and scraping to an imperious role
In deference to Christopher's splendid soul,
Baroque etiquette beckons admiration
With curlicue gestures of self -adulation.
Until the penny's charisma tires
And egotism's patina conspires
To rewrite itself in parody
With melodrama's tragedy
Of error eluding shame,
Prompting bigotry to recast blame
In zig-zag acts of counter-claim
As scripted accusation through turns of rage
Where justification exits the stage.



A shiny penny, a deliberate fake,
An amulet inducing the ultimate mistake,
A deviation across Christopher's palm
Heralding elitism's dysfunctional charm
Whereby he over-supposes himself
A crust above the upper-shelf,
An attitude throwing choice
Out of the mouth and through the voice
To assume assertion's delirious pride
Covering in one misguided stride
The dead-step distance of a cul-de-sac
Where cement never sets beneath soft tarmac
So he browbeats certainty into Fate's round hole
In angular accordance with his self-styled role
Of bonhomie brimming fear,
City sorcerer and urban seer
Tipping elation to spill distress
Laced with a tantrum's verbal prowess
Of inaccuracies summoning an image-mirage
To spellbind his faery entourage
With wizardry's wind-bag affectations
Expounding long-bearded incantations
To compound fracture a frail wish-bone
As magus minus alchemist's stone
Melds head-call ego to tail side coin.

                                                                         Mary's Bridge


Mary Forest walks a bridge
Across a gully steeped in mist
As on a stair not actually there
She treads her way upon the air
Each stepful, a half-pace to a truth never found
Before the consecutive heel meets the ground
In just such a nick of delirious time
Her stumbles are kept from falling
Callous inglorious depths
Blind through fog, the whitest of fears
Sensing her ridicule by silenced jeers,
Pierced by the angry jutting of chins
Of rugged scorn on opposed rockfaces
Massively dropping to their temporary bases
Where the merest trickle of the sharpest doubt
Is the blade that gouged the entire gorge out.
Crossing these breaches of self-infliction
Are the bridges that span self-belief's suspension
Where the stalwart traverse the humped back stone
Anchored from whence and toward,
While Mary is offered only upturned bellies
Of rotting timbers, unsecured,
Over which she now scrambles
To the loud snap and crack
Of a long strained hope too ferociously yearned.

Mary washes her sorrows with sins.                



                                                                               2



Midway across is an icy draught
That creeps through flesh and catches hearts
On a note of pain in the key of flight
Its perfect pitch kills the beat of life
To leave its victims turned to stone
Standing upon the bridge alone
As if before an invisible door
Forbidding an entry that cannot be seen
By its own non-existence its closure remains
In equidistance from losses to gains
Where souls sway as the raging trees,
Rooted, yet flailing in the mounting breeze,
The Herald of Almighty Storm.
In the wake of The Storm not arriving
Comes weariness in place of calm
That might have rewarded her patience,
Her waiting, her withstanding harm.
But incentive is a vague nostalgia,
A perspective of sepia'd passio
n and pain,
A leeching of colour from a prime desire
Necessary to Mary's creative fire
Long since extinguished by a rain-sad cloud
Dissolving belief to build self-doubt
As a phantom bridge of crumbling pride,
A disintegration to no other side.



                                                                                3

Mary Forest does not fall,
There is no vertiginous gorge at all.
The drop is Delusion harnessed to Desire
Where Sorrow and Disappointment conscientiously conspire
To lead her across Humiliation's rift
On the pride broken back of an illusory bridge
And suspended so high in her dizzy minds eye
A life-locked, death-white, bone chilled fright
Has muted true talent, once forthright,
Now left at half-mast to Vocation's call,
A ragged flag in a bitter squall,
Tattered by the hoists of expectation.
Disastrous insignia flown to distraction
That were better folded deep in the hold
Of some secret vessel that might chart a life
Without emblem or figurehead inviting dissipation
Of the one sure course and true.
For while Tall Ships are dispatched to port after port
Of Umbridge, Pique and the Cape of Forlorn,
Their rudders shifted by others' scorn,
The sea-mist boats and low grey barges
Steer their own invisible voyages
By the hand of self-recognition,
Through storm after storm, past fear and submission,
To the places that shout "AHOY".      




                                                                             4

Mary Forest has known such a place,
"Ahoy" and welcome to this sacred space
Of knowing who you are and what you must do
Without recourse to the counter view
With which others will try to wear you down
By the glower of a strange and eerie frown
That understands nothing of a Path or Way
But fearing your success, insists you stay.
So Mary has embarked on her peculiar Life,
Undaunted but aware of its inevitable strife,
And so she strode far and wide,
Bonny and bold with nothing to hide.
'Til an evil twang from an enemy bow
Shot an accurate arrow from her crown to her toe.
Poison tipped and poison barbed,
It fastened its septicaemic fear,
Year, after year, after year, after year,
Bringing Mary to the fever of her hallucinatory bridge
Where from such parallel, pre-constructed crossing,
Her foe, already maimed, had maliciously aimed.
And Mary will duplicate the venomous quiver
Should the malignance grow and her soul not deliver
A formula once lost as a remedy regained,
And by this rediscovery reinstating the pure,
Walk from her bridge by miraculous cure.