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.