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.