4. Away with Words (iii)

After he'd gone, I finished my coffee and sat in the armchair to read. Through the bedroom door, I could see the two black sacks sitting there, waiting. I got up again and shut the door. But I could still sense their presence. I'd leave it until later.

I read two pages. My eyes began to blink.

When I woke up, it was dark.

I went and got my jacket and boots.

Time.

 

I heaved the sacks down the stairs, then shouldered them and set off along the seafront. I'd just got past the clock tower and was heading towards the esplanade path when a police car passed me and pulled in at the kerb. Down came the passenger window. A constable poked his head out.

"Good evening, sir."

"Evening," I replied, coyly.

I saw myself as he was seeing me: a tall, thin, middle-aged man, dressed in faded black denim jeans and jacket, DMs, beanie, hollow-looking about the eyes, couple of bulging bin-bags over my shoulder. A gothic Father Christmas, maybe. Suspicious, either way.

"Mind if I ask what you're up to, sir?"

"Just taking some rubbish down the recycling skip, officer."

He stared at me, frowning.

"Isn't that the other way, sir?"

I looked along the seafront, then back again.

"Yeah, it is. I just wanted to catch a bit of fresh air, too."

"I see."

He spoke to the other officer in the car a moment, then turned back to me.

"Bit late in the day for rubbish disposal, isn't it?"

I glanced up at the clock on the tower. It was stuck at four-thirty. AM or PM - it didn't matter.

"Yeah, sorry. I was forgetting that it gets late early now. I mean... dark."

Another stare - one that suggested a 'hands-on-the-roof-legs-apart-anything-you-say' type scenario. I dropped the sacks to the pavement, thinking that without their bulk I'd look a little less intimidating.

It was the worst thing I could have done.

BANG went one of them, like a gunshot, as it hit the deck. It split down one side and spewed its contents across the pavement like an exploding post box.

The officer got out now, wading into my cascading pages.

"Alright... what's going on here?"

"Sorry," I said.

I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to move, in case he tased me.

He picked up a page, holding it towards the light of a street lamp. He screwed his eyes up as he read - like he was trying to decipher code. Maybe he was, in a way.

"'Lines Written Upon Reading Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey', by Harriet Candlewick."

Jesus! Of all the things he could have picked up.

"It's one of my poems," I said. "That's why it's in the rubbish. I wrote it for The Lady."

He eyed me over the top of the page.

"Which lady might that be, sir? The wife? A girlfriend? A member of the nobility?"

"No... the magazine The Lady. They didn't accept it, though."

He looked thoughtful. "I don't think I know of such a publication."

I guessed he was only about fourteen.

"I don't think it exists any more," I said.

His tongue was working away in his cheek, like he was trying to dislodge something in there. A tooth, from the look of it. I stared at his shoes. I noticed how shiny they were, even in that light.

"So... you're saying you wrote this, sir."

He couldn't have made it sound more like an accusation if he'd tried.

"I did. A long, long time ago."

"You're a writer then, are you sir?"

What could I say?

"For my sins. I try, anyway."

His face twitched.

"And you're telling me you're Harriet Candlewick, are you?"

"No... it's a pen name I used. My name's Harry Chadwick."

Why was I telling him my name?

The wind was starting to shift the pages around, making the pavement resemble a snow scene. He looked at the sheet again, coughing to clear his throat.

 

"My youth still roams in deep... sequestered lanes

and haunts those hills with innocence that, long departed,

happens near when lonely hours beg a comfort suited to

the mood..."

 

For fuck's sake! He wasn't going read the entire fucking thing, was he? I'd happily do a night in the cells. Community service. Anything but hear that again.

 

"...I taste those rains that quenched with joy of days

that lived for me with tenderness of love, that freshened

to my heart the hopes of years. I catch the musk of summers

when, in youth, I trod those fields in quest..."

 

"Everything alright, H?"

He stopped, mercifully, and we both turned at once. Looming up out of the shadows - his face glowing from the tip of his rollie - was Sherlock.

"Fine, mate," I said, relieved. "All under control."

He stepped into the light and stood beside me: a chunky-faced, dead-beat super-hero in worn Wranglers, scuffed Skechers, badge-patched camo jacket and lumberjack cap. I hoped his rollie was of the unspiced variety. He stood there, chest out, hands behind his back, rising up on his toes and down again in a frightening pantomime parody of my tormentor. The officer didn't seem to notice. But he gave Sherlock a sharp and level eye.

"You know this man do you, sir?"

"I do," said Sherlock. "This, cuntstable, is my long-time friend, neighbour, drinking partner and fellow partisan in the ongoing struggle against the indomitable forces of daily life. I'd recognise him if you painted him white and dumped him in the Arctic."

He looked around at my billowing pages.

"What's all the paper caper then, Harry? I only cleaned along here this afternoon. Look at it."

"Sorry, mate," I said. "Bit of an accident with my recycling."

The officer stepped forward, towards Sherlock.

"And what's your name then, sir?"

"This is Sherlock, Inspector," I said - hoping the promotion might soften him up. He eyed me sharply, though.

"I think the gentleman can answer for himself."

"I'm Holmes," said Sherlock.

The officer's face altered again. That tooth must've been a big bastard.

"Alright, Holmes... Sherlock was it you said? Tell me, then, Mr Sherlock Holmes. You wouldn't be trying to perjure yourself, would you?"

"I didn't realise I was under oath," Sherlock said.

I could see this spiralling out of control. I grabbed Sherlock's arm and gave it a squeeze.

"Sherlock's just his nick-name, officer. His real name's Cyril, but no one calls him that."

"That's right," Sherlock said. "Sorry, I should have made that clear. Cyril Leslie Arthur Stanley Holmes at your service."

The other policeman in the car leaned across the passenger seat and looked out.

"Do we need any support here, Aaron?"

Aaron looked at my poem again.

"No, I think we can handle this," he said. "I'll just finish up here with Mr Harriet Candlewick and Mr Sherlock Cyril Leslie Arthur Stanley Holmes and we'll be on our way."

He handed my poem back to me.

"Just make sure you clear all this mess up, sir. And try not to leave it so late to do your... rubbish run next time."

He went to get back in the car again, then stopped dead as something further along caught his eye. I looked, too... and there was Yoyo, looming up largely in full confrontation mode. He was toting a plastic carrier bag - the 4-packs inside showing in clear and bulging relief. It said Mace on the side. An interesting word. Several definitions - two of which immediately came to mind. He made a bee-line for the car, laying his free hand on the top of Aaron's open door like a butcher laying a side of meat on a chopping block. He had ACAB tattooed on the back of one of his hands. I was hoping it was the other one.

Aaron seemed to deflate slightly.

"You having some grief, Harry?" Yoyo said.

I put my hands up. "It's alright, Yo. All sorted, mate."

I stepped forward and took hold of his arm. It was like grabbing a tree.

"And you are, sir?" Aaron asked. "Dr Watson? Professor Moriarty? William Shakespeare?"

You could see Yo's circuits tripping over. Nothing was connecting, though.

"He's Yoyo, officer," I said.

Aaron looked at me, then at Sherlock. Then back at Yoyo.

"I don't doubt that," he said. "Now... if you'll excuse me, sir..."

He lifted Yoyo's arm from the door. Then he got in and shut it, and they pulled away and sped off in a swirl of A4.

"Bollocks," said Sherlock. "I was starting to enjoy that."

 

The two of them gave me a hand. We collected everything up, like a bunch of inept bank robbers grabbing at fifties, and stuffed them all back in the remains of the sack. Then we carried it all between us down to the far end of the Hummocks and under the cliff. The oil drum was there, as hoped. In went the lot, with a hefty squirt of white spirit on top. Sherlock handed me his lighter to do the honours. I fished 'Lines Written Upon Reading Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' out of my pocket, screwed it into a taper, set the flame to it and dropped it in. It went up like a haystack in a drought. All my old stuff, flaring and sparking, into the void of that cold November night.

We sat on the sea wall and watched it go - a can apiece from Yoyo's stash, slipping down a treat. It was then that it finally hit me - what this was all about. I'd been so determined about doing it that I hadn't really stopped to think about how it would make me feel - apart from warmer from the heat. There was stuff here that went back a long way. I'd carried it through the greater part of my life - lugged it around from bedroom to bedsit to flat, building it up as I went along. Here were the hopes and dreams of my adolescence - the tales and characters and situations that had seen me through decades of evenings and weekends. Notes scribbled down on bus journeys or in train station waiting rooms, or in pubs or cafes. Little ideas. Character sketches. Scenes and dialogues. My work - the children of my imagination. The things that had once meant more to me than money, and still did. The things I'd lived for - that I'd focused my entire life around.

As if reading my mind, Sherlock gave me a nudge.

"It's a brave thing you're doing here, Harry... sending your stuff up in smoke like this. Not sure it's something I could do."

I chuckled to myself. A fair bit of Sherlock's life's work had been devoted to the cultivation of a certain crop that went up in smoke all the time.

"Time to put it behind me, mate. All it was doing was taking up space. Room space. Head space."

"All the same," he said.

He didn't finish the thought.

And he had a point.

Was it the right thing to do after all?

Too late now. The curtains had closed. The dear departed had been consigned to the hereafter. Soon, there would just be a pile of ashes.

I took a long pull on my can and pushed a finger into the corner of my eye.

"I had a result, anyway," Yoyo said, breaking in nicely.

I looked at him. "Katerina?"

He grinned. "Yep. Next Friday night."

"Well done, mate."

Sherlock lifted his cap.

"Am I missing something?"

"You've missed it, mate," Yoyo said, gleefully.

"He's got himself a date, mate," I said. "Woman in the new Polish food shop."

Sherlock's eyes widened.

"Blimey, that's only just opened. You didn't hang about."

Yo shrugged. "You know the old saying, mate. There's two types of bloke in the world. The quick and the lonely."

Sherlock took a contemplative sup from his can. I could see his eyebrows working.

"Correct me if I'm wrong... but she's quite young, isn't she?"

Yo gave me a look and winked.

"Old enough," he said.

Which was probably true.

"Good luck, then," Sherlock said. "Make the most."

The fire, so fierce at first, was soon down to the last few commas and dots.

Sherlock took out his baccy pouch and started to roll one.

"Well, Harry boy," he said. "Let's hope it's the start of a new beginning for you. We all need one of those. Even Yoyo here."

On that thought, we stepped back up to the path. A mile ahead of us, the town nights flickered in the cold night air.

"It's only words, anyway," I said. "Always plenty more where they came from."

(continued)