P ~ Curly Kale

Hen has blazed a trail back to the Fine City, to another house that
he does not come from. He was the second to arrive; he came over the
back garden wall and dropped down beside the raspberry bushes all
lowered like peacock fans to him. Manley, towelling a coffee cup
inside, heard knocks and came to the back door where Hen was hammering.
Cole arrived at the front door simultaneously and Ford rolled up in a
transit van the next day, rumpled and muttering.

It is now the morning after their first house party; the four original
harpies came, along with meat sculptor Joe Hell, Olly Kiff, Joel of the
CWS and dear old Kettle. Hen crouches at the edge of the kitchen - his
toes are a line of velveteen stones along the gripperstrip, unsheathed
for inspection. The nails are edged like burnt paper, the gripperstrip
is a gold thread running under the hooks of his bangs. (A gripperstrip
is a dividing piece between two carpets or carpet and lino. Bangs is
what the Ameircarns call the fringe.) Hen misses the Ameircarns and is
already looking for more.

So here is Hen, crouched at the edge of the kitchen, reconstructing
the party from the props around him. There are peanuts everywhere in
between the lacquered floorboards. Olly had thrown them one by one at
Manley, who returned fire. One leg of Hen's cargo pants is lying sucked
dry under the lounge table - the legs come off at the knees. Helen had
leant forward, he recalls - when they were sitting next to each other -
and she'd unzipped both legs. He can remember her fingers cold on the
gizzards strung from his shinbone. The leg under the table - she'd
managed to roll that over his boot, but the other one she'd left around
his ankle, and it had kicked around there for the rest of the evening.
It was there all the time he'd sloped drunkenly back to the harpies'
hellhole house after midnight, all along Unthank Road, and thrown up in
someone's garden hedge. He'd never been more of an Englishman - as the
vomit slipped from the top of its ladder, Hen had a close-knit family
of more than 58 million. Drink multiplies one friends and enemies with
every unit, Manley - a hosing down of the brain.

There were words too, earlier in the night, drizzling like cooking oil
from his tongue. He was higher than the listener, probably resting on
the arm of the settee - Emperor Hen.

"The most difficult part of writing," he zzed, "if I step down and
take the matter seriously, the most difficult part is fathering the
text. Being an example is easy - it's guiding without leading that's
beyond me. I'm lousy - it's in the genes, and I owe it to my master.
I've either got it on a leash or else I'm standing by in an idle
stupor, letting some cosmic matriarch do the teaching. Meanwhile I have
to hope the text finds something in my example to admire and be proud
of - that's my dad, it'd say. Otherwise I might as well adopt the hump
and run lifestyle."

Hen decides that it is probably not the worst slurred speech he has
ever given. He tries to picture the listener but the paint just runs
and runs.

Now Hen is inside the boundaries of the kitchen, weeks later, after
the CWS's second night of wine and literature, and the first with
hashcakes. This time Trimtin, Kettle, Joel, Joe Hell, Tom and Tom's new
girlfriend all gathered snugly in the lounge around the electric fire.
Hen is still stoned and groggy - and still pleased that his surprise
had gone down so well. He'd played them Rama Lama Ding Dong by Rocky
Sharp and the Replays - just the kind of leftovers the CWS likes.

"Hen! Where have you been hiding this?" Trimtin had asked. "It's
treasurous!"

"We have to cover it!" said Joe Hell.

Hen, he and Kettle were now playing songs together in a band - at the
tip of obscurity, on the precipice of success! When you hear them, it
gets you like a habit - songs in the key of danger!

But here is Hen, the morning after, surveying such a dead woman's
decaying mouth of a kitchen. Here is something to miss so hatefully
about his old house in Laurel Road - the hideaways of food and bare
worktops. His new kitchen is all bare hideaways and worktops crusted
with debris. This is no good - the communal system isn't working. Ford
has already announced he's quitting it.

Cole's television and sound system is the centrepiece of the lounge,
and a pillar of communism.

"Television has made us more experienced than the older generation,
Manley. Neither of us had evil stepmothers."

"And yet, thanks to television, we know exactly what it's like."

"Not to mention drug addiction, prostitution and being Black. We're in
the unique position of being able to see the whole truth."

"Don't even mention Death, Hen. Death is brought right into our living
rooms."