STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                          Part Three

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



















































   

                              STARSHINE THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four                                                                                                   Part Sixteen



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


















     
                


















                                                                                                     

                              STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                              Part one




                     The mother of pearl beads gleamed faintly through the gloom of the pawn shop, a tiny string of soft whiteness in the dimness of the room.  The necklace lay on top of a tangled pile of old buttons and worthless jewellery, tarnished silver and unpolished brass, beneath the glass top of the counter.  Joe wiped away a semi-circle of grey dust with his arm.  He looked down at his granny's pearly beads.  Above them in the dull glass he saw a face he did not recognise, a pale, sharp boned face with a redness around the eyes and blue in the hollows of the thin cheeks.  Joe did not understand, he did not know where this face came from, he did not like this face.  Joe raised his arm and brought his sharp elbow fast, the face cracked and splintered.  Joe reached in through the broken glass and took back his granny's beads.
                     A door opened from the back room, Mr Samuels stood in its frame, his hand rested on the doorknob.  He wore a brown velveteen dressing gown, tied at the waist. His grey hair was mussed and his large sad eyes were wide and startled, surprised out of sleep.  He looked at the shattered counter, then he looked behind Joe at the shop door and saw the broken catch, then he looked at Joe holding the necklace possessively like a child obsessed with one treasure.  Mr Samuels looked at Joe's ghost white face and the old man's brown eyes were made sadder.  Joe's face told a story the old jew had seen before.   Forgiveness was easy but not enough, for the story was over, Mr Samuels knew that but Joe did not.  Joe knew nothing, his mind was blank and numb, no comprehension, no vision, no voice. The jew could see the blankness in Joe's face, nothing would register, be it good or evil, nothing would reflect, be it forgiving or deceiving.  Mr Samuels held out his upturned palms and shrugged his shoulders.
                                      "So what's the problem? You want your necklace? So take it !"
                His voice was kind and forgiving, his sad heart showed on his face, but his pity could not be seen by Joe whose soul was in pieces, all jumbled and crazed.
                  Joe put his granny's beads in his jacket pocket and left the shop.  The night was fading into dawn and the air was cold.  As he climbed the steps from basement to pavement Joe's mind cleared for an instant  and showed in a moment of absolute clarity that everything he had ever done , he had done without knowing why.  He had no control yet he was controlled, but by whom he did not know.  Then he saw Jason and immediately his clarity disappeared and the clue to his confusion was clouded.  The clue having left him, only his madness remained, an empty silence locked inside his willing, automated outer shell.
                      The long black car had parked behind the rusty, blue Morris Minor, bumper to bumper.  The black windows were sealed bar for the front passenger window which was open and filled with Jason Donovan's ugly , fleshy face.  His steady eyes looked out from beneath his heavy lids.  His slow monotone speech was bland but menacing.
                                                                              " Joey boy ! We didn't know where you'd gone.  We don't like it when we don't know where you are.  A whole week's gone by. "  He paused, " Never mind, you just came back in time for another little job. "
                      He held out a brown paper bag.  Joe stepped close to the car and took it.  He saw the smallness of his own hand next to Jason's titan hand and palony fingers.  Joe could see the driver and another of Jason's slant eyed, dark suited, yellow muscle men who sat in the back with a taller dark haired man who wore shades and a green gabardine, he had a thin moustache and a scar down the left side of his face.  A far off note jangled inside Joe's empty silence, but it was brief and feint and died without so much as an echo.
                   " So where did you go ?" asked Jason, disinterested as the electronic window began to whine and rise.
                   " My godmother's." said Joe brightly and truthfully.
                   " She don't feed you enough." was Jason's cynical reply before the black window closed and made the car's occupants invisible.  The sleek, silent machine backed away from the Morris Minor, pulled out slowly and drifted away.                                                      
                           Joe was alone.  The cold air had bypassed his clothes and skin and reached the centre of his bones.  His body shook and his teeth began to chatter. He looked inside the paper bag.  There was a flick knife and a photograph of an old woman with a blue rinse, and an address on the back of it;
          25 Orchard Road,
                Morden
                       Joe returned Annie's car to the back yard of the Drakes Head.  He closed the high, wire mesh gates behind him and got back into the Morris Minor to get out of the cold wind.  The early morning sky was dark grey with a heavy rain waiting to fall.  Joe looked at the plastic crates stacked close around the car, yellow, red, green and blue, all of them filled with empty bottles of brown, green and clear glass.  Then the rain began to fall.  Swollen raindrops broke and merged on the windows and windscreen and soon the shapes outside were blurred and the colours made patterns .  Joe remembered Roy's kaleidoscope many years ago when they were boys with short trousers and scabbed knees.
                            Roy used to sit for hours in the front room with the kaleidoscope to one eye and the other eye closed.  His body would be quite still but for his hands turning and shaking the coloured glass.  Everything around him would be wild and frantic.  Their mother shouting and trying to cook the tea, Bessie and Tim screaming and fighting, the radio on loud, but nothing could pierce Roy's serenity.  He would sit on the lumpy sofa, close to Joe but so far away, travelling through his one open eye and never wanting to return.  Joe remembered how lost he felt when Roy was gone.  He would sit and scowl and feel his temper rise and muddle because it had no direction.  He could not direct his anger at the kaleidoscope.  Roy would not let no one touch it, it was his own and inside it was his own world where no one else could go.
                          One day while Roy was out playing football Joe had taken the kaleidoscope and looked inside it for the place Roy went, but all he could see was church windows.  He hated church windows.  He wanted to know where Roy went but the place would not show itself to him.  Frustration seared inside him and burst out like fire.  He threw the kaleidoscope across the room and it smashed against the wall.  He ran across the room to where it had fallen and picked it up.  He put it up to his eye but there was no pattern through the end, only a white circle and in amongst the shards of coloured glass that lay useless along the bottom of the cardboard tube, there were pieces of shattered mirror.  Joe put the broken kaleidoscope in a shoe box and hid it under his bed.
                   When Roy came home he searched the flat, every corner, every cupboard, every drawer.  His search was silent and obsessive, a small whining sound came from deep inside him like a puppy searching for its mother and knowing she would never be found.
                   At  bedtime his feverish search continued in their bedroom.  The more obsessive Roy became the more helpless Joe felt.  The thought of admitting his guilt drew further and further away as fear overcame honesty until fear ruled and honesty had disappeared.
                       Roy found the shoe box. He wailed and sobbed.  He climbed into his bed where for hours his sobs shook his body in great tides of wretchedness and loss.
                       Roy said nothing to Joe, as though the deed had been too bad even for Joe to have done it.  As he lay in bed and listened to his brother's shivering and sobbing, Joe felt his guilt weigh heavy and he knew it would stay and weigh forever because Roy would never accuse, so how could he ever admit.  And he wondered why he always did bad things.  He did not want to do bad things but he was helpless and everything he did was bad.
                      And now in the car Joe tipped back his swimming head and his exhaustion drifted into sleep, made uneasy by the memory of his brother's  desolation and the knowledge that he was still helpless and bad.                      





















  
                     

                                   STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                              Part Sixteen




                  Joe sat cross-legged on the floor in the round tower.  It was night.  Many moons had risen and many glasses of brandy had been drunk since Clare's story had begun.  Joe looked through the window and saw that the moon had waned to a half circle.  He drank back another glass of brandy, it burned through his empty body.
                   As he had listened to Clare he had wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold and be held by her.   But he could not, because he was not George.  He had listened to her story and had understood, but now that the telling was done he understood nothing.  Clare had taken him into her world, he had seen and heard her world but now she was sleeping, she had left him alone in his own world where it seemed to him that nothing could be seen or heard.  His understanding of Clare's world made the confusion of his own more dark.  He sat in a dark room with a black void in his mind and all he had was a sadness that trickled from his eyes because he did not understand.
                   In the feint light of the half moon he looked at the outlines of all the strange objects in the room and he left his blankness to be drawn back through Clare's words.  He knew about the punch bowl filed with earth, he knew about the broken china bride and the dead daughters from the two emptied halves of the barren Russian doll.  He knew about the shells and the wooden Noah's ark and about the picture on the wall.  But he did not know about the school desk beneath the window or the puzzle at his side.  He made up the sides of the jigsaw puzzle and joined them to the four corners, but there was nothing in between.  Nothing but the blackness of the void.  Then a cloud covered the half moon and the black void darkened and in it Joe forgot Clare's world and lost his mind. He saw pearls sinking in black water.  They were white and pure and perfect.  He wanted them. They were beautiful.  They were precious.  They were jewels.  Their loss terrified him.  To watch them sink was like death.  He grasped and clutched at the black water but the pearls had disappeared.

                                     STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                              Part Fifteen


                             We travelled down through Italy together and two weeks later we boarded a ship for Naples, a liner that was England bound.  George had been to a barber, a tailor and a cobbler, but still the captain was wary of our simply cut clothes and missing luggage.  We stood on the quay, me with my one small carpet bag and George with his muslin bundle.  The captain stood on the ship with his blue, gold buttoned uniform.  He leant heavily on the rail of the deck, his arms and hands spread wide to support his enormous, sagging weight.  He looked at us over the bulk of his chest and belly and his long white moustache drooped and pointed down towards us, like a walrus amazed at our impertinence in wanting to join his floating menagerie of fashion and luxury.  But when I produced the last of my money, the walrus took it without flinching and George and I were provided with the smallest cabin and a passage home.
                             That night the liner docked at a small Sardinian fishing port.  George and I sat down to dinner in the ship's grand dining room  The diners were dressed in evening dress.  The women were powdered, feathered and jewelled and the men were cumerbunded and Dickie bowed.  I could feel their eyes on me, scorning my blue, cotton dress my single string of pearls and my pale, ungloved arms.  The light glittered falsely from  crystal chandeliers on to the white, starched tablecloths and napkins.  Food was placed in front of me and my glass was filled.  I froze, I stared at my plate without seeing what was on it and all I could hear was the fizz of champagne close to my ear.  I was angry. 
                             Their scorning eyes were the eyes of crocodiles and snakes. They looked down from their high pinnacles, awaiting my answer. It was a trap.  To answer their scorn was to admit humility.  Though I had journeyed and found all my answers I did not speak, for they had no ears to hear my words.
                I looked around at my fellow voyagers. I saw thick skinned rhinoceri, their horned arrogance, accusing and ready to charge.  I saw the savage mouths and hungry eyes of big cats ready to kill.  I saw stupid, self important ostriches and I saw camels with tall, haughty necks, lowered eyelids and mouth's filled with the bitter taste of old pennies. Their wealth surrounded them but encased nothing and their possession of nothing drove them to destroy.  They sought power in destruction.  Those who broke their rules were humbled and so too were those who obeyed them.  Their disdain was unrestrained, while their eyes had never turned inward to see their own vile piety.  I hated them, I hated their hatred.
                   I looked at George, he was serene.  We looked into each other.  My anger looked at his serenity and his serenity looked at my anger.  I remembered the way he had looked in the woods and I tried to imagine how I had looked to him.  I remembered being lost and having no sense of belonging, whereas George had belonged but was dissatisfied and sad.  Only then did I realise that my being lost had meant that my journey was predestined, whereas George's was inspired by me and as I had stumbled at the very beginning of mine, so I had opened the gateway to his. Now our paths had met.  George had lost his anger on the way, but I still carried mine.  As he looked at me over our table of uneaten food and undrunk champagne, he could see that my anger would not go, that I needed his help. He took my hand and whispered,
                                                                               " Let's get off the Ark and go and find the Unicorn."
                   We walked along the harbour wall and down onto the beach.  The dusk sky turned through mauve and indigo.  The village lay quiet in its shadows, shying away from the liner's painted  metal bulk and fairy lights.  We took off our shoes, the sand was chilly and silken on the soles of our feet.  We found a little wooden boat, it looked sad, upside down and stranded, so we turned it over and dragged it down the beach to the sea's first beckoning waves that washed up around our legs.  We jumped into the boat and George began to row.  Only when we were far out into the ocean did he ship the oars and we drifted like a tiny shadow in the night.
                               There were a million stars in sky and ocean.  There were no horizons.  The night was timeless and silent.  Water lapped quietly against the sides of the boat as we rocked gently over the push and pull of the waves. 
                      George told me of his beautiful, lonely house and of his money sealed in a leaden box and buried deep in a bank vault.  We decided to live in the beautiful house with our love, and the fire it sparked would build walls of flame that would keep us warm and the rest of the world at bay.  We didn't want his money, we would keep that sealed and safe in the vault for the Unicorn.
                       We made our lover's pact.  When death comes to one, the other would fast and follow.  George unclasped the string of pearls from around my neck.  He broke them and threw them one by one into the ocean.  They floated awhile amongst the mirrored stars and then disappeared beneath the water.  The immortal tears had at last been shed, their anger and their bitterness were no longer mine, the ocean had reclaimed them.
                         So Starshine and the Ocean were one, they were reflections of each other.  There was an energy in our souls that burned like another spirit, a third presence, a ghost we both felt. We knew that the ghost was love and that it would remain with us for the rest of our lives.
                          We were no longer looking for the Unicorn.  Everything was complete. 

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                              STARSHINE,THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                              Part Fourteen


                   For three days I trekked the streets of Florence.  I absorbed its beauty, its domes, its towers and its colours.  The earthy yellow of its houses and the fiery red of its roves.  But its beauty made me feel all the more lost, all the more lonely.  I was aware of the emptiness around me, where there was no one to touch me, no one to whisper my name.  I sheltered from the heat in the cool of churches and art galleries.  I stood in wonder in front of many statues and paintings , but always their beauty merged with my loneliness.
                    On the evening of the third day I walked down a narrow street.  Washing hung between windows, way overhead, five stories high.  The buildings leaned inwards as they reached up to the ruby sky. I came out into an open piazza of long shadows and a deep orange light that came from the gold of the setting sun falling over the city's reds, yellows and browns.  At the far end there was a church raised up above the piazza with steps leading up to it on three sides.  I crossed the piazza and  climbed the steps.  A beggar was sitting there in the shadows, as I passed him I felt him move.  I walked into the church and knew that he was following me.  I could feel him behind me as I walked down the aisle to the alter. I was angry and a little frightened.  I had entered the church to be alone, to think, to clear and settle my mind and to reconcile myself with my loneliness.  I stiffened, kept my face forward and my back towards him.  I reached the end of the aisle and still he was behind me.  I grew impatient, I took some coins from my purse and turned harshly to offer them.  My anger turned to joy that pierced my heart.  He took the coins.  I felt his touch on my palm of my hand.  He wore a leather jerkin, his shirt and trousers were torn and his feet were bare.  His face was bearded and tanned.  His clear blue eyes looked into me and saw that I was no longer lost.  And I could see that in his wildness and raggedness he was no longer sad.  The woods and all the questions our lives had had to find and then answer were gone.
                        He carried a small bundle of muslin, knotted at the top.  He put the bundle on the floor and knelt down.  He untied the four corners and laid out the muslin to reveal the most beautiful shells; spined and smoothed, fanned and curled.  He looked at me and smiled, like a child, proud of his treasures.  I knelt down and gazed at their beauty, their weird shapes and colours of pale rainbow and speckled orange. 
                  "They're for you !  I took them from the ocean !"
                   At last the waiting was over.  His voice was beautiful, it did not hide from emotion, his voice was his heart, it unlocked my loneliness and made me whole.
                    The shells were for me, his thoughts had been with me and the seed I had treasured, all this time.  We had never been parted.  We were one and the same.
                  " What's your name ? " he asked.
                  "Clare." I said.                      













           
                     

                                       STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                           Part Fourteen



                One night I dreamt of my room in Bath.  I saw the willow pattern punch bowl in my window. I saw a tiny green shoot push its way through the dark earth.  The sleeping, dreaming seed that had lay dormant all this time, had at last decided to grow.
                 I sat up in another strange bed in another Spartan hotel room.  The floorboards were bare, the mattress was thin, the sheets and bolster were of white cotton with a thin blue stripe.  The half opened shutters showed me another blue sky, another hot day.  I had been travelling for many months through France, Switzerland and Italy.  I had seen their rivers and their chateaux, their mountains and lakes, their cathedrals and their ancient ruins.  I had wandered through their landscapes from city to town and they had filled me.  I had no need of the past's memories or the future's dreams, they had left me, and for the first time in my life it had been the present that had overwhelmed.  Each passing moment had been lived, breathed, seen and felt.
                  But that morning I woke to my first day in Florence and I was lonely.  I longed for love.  I sat with a Russian doll I had recognised from my paintings and immediately bought in Switzerland.  She lay open in my lap.  I pulled each one apart, daughter after daughter, until I reached the last tiny figure that would not open.  It was me.  But it was not a child's love I longed for.  I had grown thankful for my barrenness.  I was glad to be excused the bearing and rearing of children.  My spirit had grown too selfish to be drained into others, yet it longed to meet its reflection, it longed to meet itself in another, it was lonely and crying, it wanted to be held but it still feared the destroying arms of evil and possession.  I wanted to be held and hold a sibling spirit that would see me and know me and never stop my flow or my journey.  I wanted to hold and be held by George.