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..............























    

                                  STARSHINE THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter five                                                                                                       Part six



                   The rain had stopped.  Each footstep rang loud and hollow as Joe ran through the wet back streets of an empty night.  He reached his front door and the echoes of his running footsteps ceased.  He climbed the four flights of stairs in darkness.  He tried to catch his breaths, but they came to fast and choked over each other making him cough and gasp.  His legs ached and his knees were giving way as he staggered to the black , empty doorway of his doorless bedsit.  He reached inside to turn on the light , but there was nothing in the meter, so he turned on nothing but more darkness.  He accepted the darkness, realising that that was all there is.  He found the bed, kicked off his shoes, took off his jacket and jeans, climbed between the cold sheets and shivered.
                   He tried to remember happiness, but all he could feel in his memories were motions and pretences of laughter and love.  He remembered stealing cars and joy riding with friends who no longer had faces and making love to girls who no longer have names.  He remembered night time burglaries, his pockets stuffed with money and jewels.  Then the drinking and the crazy laughter at what they had done. And each excitement was followed by a gaping dissatisfaction and loneliness where it was dark and there were no searchlights.
                     The adrenalin buzz had turned to insane fear ever since a man with a handle bar moustache and a trilby hat had fallen off his bar stool at Heathrow airport and ever since Joe had looked inside a black briefcase and seen the garish colours of  neatly stacked monopoly money.  The faceless joyriders, the nameless girls and the crazy laughter had all gone and now Joe lived in a place that was dark and cold and deathly.  Why or how he did not know.  He understood nothing of his role or direction.  All he knew was that he was killing in order not to be killed and his reward for staying alive would be three million pounds. 
                       He curled up with his knees to his chin and his arms tight across his chest.  He rocked himself to try and make himself warm.  He hung onto the thought of three million pounds.  He tried to imagine friends with faces and girls with names, easy living, fast cars and hotel suites. He was desperate to feel the enormity of the fortune, but it meant nothing to him and he drifted into sleep feeling nothing but the cold.

















                 

                                         STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                Part six




                  The cellar was dark except for the cold gleam of metal barrels that were stacked on their sides in a pyramid  of circles that eyed Joe in the pitch black.  He had got the keys out of the Morris Minor and then found the cellar door had been left ajar with its padlock hanging open.  So he had gone inside to escape the drizzle, rather than walking back round to the pub door.
                  He stood in the dark.  He felt the uneven flagstones beneath his feet and he saw a feint cloud in front of him that was his breath in the cold air.  All he could hear was loud water, rushing and gushing like wild rapids that carried away all of his thoughts.  Then there was silence.  He stood in the blackness and the silence and everything was forgotten. 
                   A light went on. It hurt his eyes.  He blinked and remembered who and where he was.  He felt the car keys pressing into the soft palm of his tightly clenched fist and remembered he had to return them to Annie. And there she was coming down the cellar stairs.  He saw her pretty stockinged legs as they gracefully descended, followed by her slender cat-like body as she came out of the shadows and into the light.  She was carrying an empty crate.  She did not see Joe.  He moved towards her and met her at the bottom of the stairs.  She looked up, startled.  She said nothing. She was scared.  Joe did not understand her fear.  She let him take the crate from her and she watched him put it down on a pile of others beside him.  Then he held out the keys,
                                                                                      " I forgot to give you these."
                     She took hold of them and tried to snatch them away quickly, but Joe had hold of her wrist and drew her to him.  She pressed her hands against his chest and tried to push herself away from him, but his arms were locked around her. She was nervous, she started to shake.
                  "Why are you shaking ?"  he said softly.
                  " I'm cold. "  Her shivering put a tremor in her voice.  " Joe I'm tired.  I don't want you to stay tonight."
                   He was silent.  He closed his eyes and saw again how she had kept her distance all evening and not raised her eyes to his.  He remembered that morning when she had not kissed or touched him and how much he had wanted her to.  He felt a hot tear trickle from the corner of his eye.  He felt anger and rejection begin to burn in the pit of his soul.
                      "But we're lovers. "  His throat was dry, his voice was quiet and strained.
                      " No, Joe. " She looked down and shook her head slowly.
                      " But I'll have so much money. "
                      " No, Joe. "
                      " I'll have so much."
                      " No ! "
                      " Its true, I'll have three million pounds. "
                      " No Joe. "
                      " We'll go away some place. "
                      " I said no. "
                      His anger flared and the white hot flame was bitter.  He pushed her into the pile of crates.  She fell and the crates fell around her.  She tried to calm him.  She tried to tell him that everything was alright and they could go upstairs and make love.  But Joe heard nothing through his anger.  All of him burned.  His mind wailed and writhed and memories rushed at him, screaming into the fire where they tossed and turned and burned.
                    He saw the moustachioed, trilby'd courier at the airport fall off his bar stool and stare at the ceiling.  He saw a black briefcase, a grey trousered leg, a tan shoe and a green gabardine.  He saw the glint of evil laughter in Jason's eye as he laid down the deal of six murders in exchange for his own life.  He saw the multi-coloured money thrown over him and he felt the sand fall over his bowed head and down his back. He saw the long, blue tongue of Bernie Summers in clear, shiny plastic . He saw the huddled body of a security guard he had not been supposed to kill, inside a nailed up crate.  He saw a burning car and heard a widow's screaming.  He saw the bulging eyes of Jack O' Neil, sitting on a toilet he would never leave.  He saw the sweet old lady in her candied living room and he saw the raspberry jam flow from the Victoria sponge cake and out of her chest and belly.  He saw Maria in a church, lighting five candles.  He saw the old Jew's sad eyes forgiving him as he reached inside the shattered counter and took back his granny's pearls.  He saw his granny's toothless kindness and bedtime stories of deep down in the sea.  He saw Roy's fury at the door when he had brought back the shiny, red bike.  He heard Roy's sobbing when he found the broken kaleidoscope hidden in a shoe box under a bed.  He saw Roy's demented eyes like blue glazed china.  He saw the dark shadow of Roy's back as he sat on the end of a bed in silent horror. He saw Roy in blue striped pyjamas, shaking and sweating I a hospital bed at the end of a long, dark, shoe box room.  He saw Annie's sensuous joy as they made love in her bed and he felt her soft flesh beneath his and he felt himself hard and pushing between her thighs to enter her where he felt her warmth and softness close around him.  He hated all of them.  He hated the dead courier for being dead. He hated the green gabardine for having no face.  He hated Jason for making him kill.  He hated all the people he had murdered for being his victims.  He hated Maria for lighting candles.  He hated the old Jew for his forgiveness.  He hated his granny for her kindness.  He hated Roy for not helping him, for suffering when he did bad things and making him feel shame.  He hated Annie for loving him and then not loving him.
               Then he saw her lying beneath him.  She was crying, her tears ran black with mascara.  Her hair was mussed and blood trickled down the side of her face from a gash on her temple.  Her dress was torn over one shoulder and one white breast.  Her shoulder was bruised.  Joe pulled out from her and stood up.  He tucked in his T-shirt and zipped up his jeans.  He stood over her and saw what he had done.  Her dress was up around her waist, her black lace knickers were torn away and her suspenders no longer held her crumpled silk-stockings.  She cried and shivered. She lay awkwardly like a broken doll, her arms and legs disarranged over the crates and her vagina exposed and weeping with his unwanted semen.                                                                                                  
































    
  



         
                                    .

                                   STARSHINE. THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                      Part Five


                     It was early evening in the Drake's head. Regulars were beginning to gather for the start of a night's drinking.  Annie was behind the bar, she wore a slinky black dress with three quarter length sleeves and a diamante broach.  Her red hair was pinned up and held in place by two black haircombs.   She smiled and laughed as she served her earliest customers, the faithful and the thirsty, and they absorbed her warmth and returned her laughter.  Joe stood by the door and watched her.  He had come in from the dark and the rain.  The cold rain still ran through his clothes and his hair and the sound of the waterfall still thundered inside him and parted himself from his body.  His actions were not his own.  Movement and words came upon him, not from him, they came from somewhere and   "nowhere and he performed them.  He walked up to the bar.
                    " Hello Annie ! "
                     Annie looked at him and the light in her green eyes died.  He was not Joe anymore.  Cold rain still fell from the sharp bones of his pale face.  He was crippled inside.  He was deaf, dumb, mad and his blue eyes were faded and blind.  She feared him.  She struggled to control her fear, she pushed down on it as it leapt inside her heart.  Her customers felt her tense, they felt her warmth falter and become unsteady.  Joe felt nothing but the cold rain on his body and the waterfall inside his head.
                " What are you doing here ? " asked Annie, there was a tremor in her voice, she was nervous.  The rushing water in Joe's head muted her words, he did not understand her surprise at seeing him, he thought he was meant to be here, so he did not answer her question.
                " I saw Roy." he said instead.
                " Didn't you see a doctor ? " said Annie
                " No. " he said flatly, making no effort to understand her troubled and frowning face. " I just saw Roy.  He seemed O.K. "
                 Annie turned away from him.  She pushed a glass against an optic until it was half full of whisky.  She gave it to Joe.
               "Go and sit by the radiator, you're soaked. " 
                Joe took his drink and crossed to the far side of the room where he sat alone at a small round table with his back to a cast iron radiator that reminded him of old schools and hospitals where the same clumsy radiators still existed.  The heat crept inwards through his wet clothes and the warmth of the whisky inside him crept outwards to meet it. 
                 All evening Joe sat alone behind his waterfall, detached from the rumbling of far away talk and laughter.  His eyes saw the colours and movement of smoke in the air, of people on bar stools, or talking across tables, their hands wrapped around glasses that were lifted to their lips and then put down again.  He saw men leaning over the pool table taking careful aim and he saw men leaning back a little to throw darts.  He saw the flashing lights of a fruit machine wink its laughter at its forlorn opponent.  But the scene was no longer familiar to him, all the colours were jumbled and disconnected into a pattern he did not understand and could not reach.  And likewise Joe was no longer familiar to the people around him.  They saw his wasted, drawn face, dark shadows round his faded eyes, wet clothes hanging on skin and bone, they skirted around his table and made no sign of recognition.
                       Joe went up to the bar for whisky after whisky and each time Annie served him without raising her eyes to his.  And when she came out to collect empty glasses Joe would watch her move around the room in velvet stilettoes and seamed stockings.  And each time Joe waited for her to come and clear his glasses and empty his ashtray, but each time she stayed away.  The evening wore on, his table was crowded with glasses and his ashtray was piled high and still Annie did not come to him and he did not know why.
                  The final bell rang dully in Joe's ears.  The pub gradually emptied and as the colours and patterns slowly drifted away Joe remembered the car keys.  He had left them in the car, in his mind's eye he could see them still in the ignition.  
                  























             












         

                                           STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN

Chapter Five                                                                                                       Part Four



                     Joe stood in a doorway and looked into a long, thin room  like a shoe box.  The walls were brown, a naked light bulb shone weakly from the middle of the ceiling.  At the far end was a window, a metal grid frame divided it into eight square panes.  The window was high up on the wall so that no view could be seen, only sky.  It was an evil, foreboding sky, stormy grey tinted with a sulphurous yellow.  Beneath the window there was a hospital bed.  A man wearing blue striped pyjamas sat propped up on the pillows.  The room was full of stale, cigarette smoke, the smell mixed with the strong disinfectant in the corridor.  Joe closed the door on the disinfected corridor and walked into the shoe box. He stood beside the bed and saw that the man in the blue striped pyjamas was his brother Roy. The pyjamas had struck him as odd because as kids they had gone to bed in vest, socks and pants and the habit had stayed with them, they never owned pyjamas.   But now Roy was wearing pyjamas, his brown hair was still greying but it was clean and combed and his face was shaven, his blue eyes were clear, but he looked weak and his skin was pale and waxy.  There was a low table at the side of the bed and a chair. On the table was a small tin ashtray piled high with dog ends and overflowing with ash and beside it there was a lighter and an empty cigarette box.  Joe took the box that Annie had given him from his back pocket.  He offered one to Roy and put one between his own lips, he lit them both, he put half the cigarettes in Roy's empty box and sat down.  They sat in silence.
                    Roy drew hard on his cigarette, he tipped back his head and stared at the ceiling through the rising, gently curling smoke he had exhaled.  He had lain for many long hours of many days in the dim light of the shoe box while a million broken pieces inside him had  rearranged themselves from the dull colours of chaos and fear, anger and pain to the brightly coloured patterns of  wholeness and hope.  There had been times when the colours had been so vivid and the patterns so clearly defined that his soul had left his tired, suffering body and flown to the summit of a high mountain where he stood, strong and free from the heavy chains of fear, and that freedom was like a vision of the whole of his future in one moment. And he would look down from the mountain at all the crags and crevices that were his shame and his anguish.  The landscape was himself and the summit was the understanding of himself.  Having climbed and fallen so many times he had at last reached the top of the mountain where he found an honesty and an acceptance of himself that made him whole and self-possessed so that he would never be lost again.  But these moments would fade and would fall again into darkness and fear.  Joe's presence in the shoe box made him fall and his soul returned to the ice cold suffering of his body and the burning pain in his heart. 
                    When Roy had first decided to enter the clinic he had not been sure that a cure would work until he had gone round to tell his brother that he was going to try.  It was then, when he discovered the place Joe had fallen he had realised through his horror and sadness that there was something of himself still left that could be pieced together and cured.  But Joe had fallen somewhere too deep and too dark.  There was no helping Joe. Joe was dead. Roy glanced at the man who had been Joe who sat beside his bed, but he looked away again quickly, he was unable to face his little brother's outer shell and empty eyes for fear that the delicacy of his own healing would be once again blown apart and fragmented so that he could never mend. 
                    Joe sat and looked at his brother.  There was silence but for the roar of the waterfall that was still in his head.  His cigarette smoked itself between his fingers, beside his knee.  Roy's face twitched and winced and would not look in his direction.  So Joe looked up at the window.  The storm had begun and each square pane ran with rain so that the sky became colourless and blurred.  When the cigarette had smoked itself to the filter and burnt out, Joe flicked the long tube of ash to the floor and added the butt to the pile in the ashtray.  Then he scraped back his chair and got up to leave.  Roy was very ill and needed rest and Joe wanted to get back to the Drake's Head to see Annie.
He left the shoe box and closed the door, and behind the roaring of the waterfall he heard a distant sobbing.  It was Roy's sobbing.  Joe stood in the sterile corridor and wondered if he was hearing the past or the present.