E - Helen's A Whore's Name

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportional to the
quantity of coffee he drinks."

Sir James Mackintosh, 1765 - 1832

Hen has his feet up in the kitchen, and tries to lie supine across the
moulded plastic seats, so's to go to sleep. Whichever way he curls, a
grazed tooth worms in between ribs and nuzzles bad nerves. So he keeps
turning until his hair has bowed upon his face and his leg is caught
under the table.

"Owy!"

The door bangs open, and Manley blazes into the kitchen, humming a rock
song. He dances straight into the cooking cove and up to the
worktop.

"Where's you been?" asks Hen, puffing and trying to sit up.

"Coffee!" Manley growls, and tosses a silver packet in the air. He
catches it one-handed and shakes it like a maraca, before tearing into
it with stumbling fingers. "Want some?"

"More than peace and prosperity."

Hen finally frees his leg and assembles himself in an upright position,
as Manley fills the cafetiere with scoop after scoop and puts the water
on to boil. The cleaners put in an appearance earlier in the morning,
so the kitchen sparkles with sweeping washcloth trails and the smell of
cleaning fluid hangs like a ghost.
Manley sniffs and his lip wrinkles.

"So while I've been out getting supplies, what have you been
doing?"

Hen scratches behind his ear, then sneezes. Wiping his nose with his
naked arm, he says, "Found myself two more harpies - Si?n and Lianne.
That makes five."

"That's enough to last you a lifetime. You talk much with them?"

"Actually, we went shopping."

"Wo. Now there's an achievement for you."

Manley's gaze whistles over Hen's head and claps onto the H0
cupboards.

"Hang on. What's all this about?"

Hen doesn't even need to look - he slides deeper under the table and
waits for Manley to finish perusing. The scene is thus: all eleven
cupboards have a felt-tip drawing selotaped to them, depicting the
cupboard's owner as a smiling cartoon chef, wielding cooking
implements. They can be told apart by their hairstyles. Titles are
written underneath, and Manley reads them with frequent spasms of
alarm.

"The devil! Why am I the Mystery Chef?"

"Because they've never seen you cook."

"Who?"

"The harpies."

Manley runs a hand stiffly across his stubble, as if he were vacuuming
it, then goes to open the window and attend to the kettle. Hen finds he
has sunk too far, and sits himself up again, adding, "You should be
grateful, you old thug. I'm the Leaf n' Beef eater. Not really very
character defining, izzit?"

"At least they acknowledge you eat. Lordy, they must have stayed up all
night making these things. Or are they extremely bored?"

"It's what Besse calls 'bugging.' Let's go bug the boys, she says,
writing 'H1 4 H0' in the steamy window. She loves us, or at least, she
wants to get our attention. I sat up with them a couple of nights back,
when they were talking about it. I think she must make them with Si?n,
who's one of the ones I met today. Helen and Mary aren't involved, and
Lianne doesn't strike me as the kind of person?" Hen pauses,
ruminating. "Didn't you see the ones on our doors last week?"

"Not in any way, shape or form," Manley answers, filling the cafetiere
with boiling water.

"I guess if you went to bed early you'd have missed them. Varghese came
back drunk from the LCR and ripped them all down, then someone posted
them under the store cupboard door. We were Snow White and the seven
dwarves. I was Mopey and you were Sweety."

Manley leaves the cooking cove and drops down like a broken marionette,
onto the seat opposite Hen. He sighs, and reconsiders the
cupboards.

"I don't think they don't know us very well, you know."

"Give 'em time," says Hen. "They gave me a personal horoscope when I
got back this afternoon. Watch the coffee while I run and get
it."

Manley has little choice, and Hen is back in a trice, banging open the
door and waving his horoscope. Manley takes it from him and thumbs
through, blinking dazily.

"Knew you were a tea man really, Hen," he concludes. "You don't look
like you have the stomach for coffee?" then, anticipating Hen's rebuke:
"So who do you reckon did this again? Si?n and?"

"Besse. She's the Ameircarn, and she owns the felt-tips. I've seen them
in her room. I tell you what, Manley - they may not know jack about us,
but I've got notes galore on them. This is the advantage of being a
scrap poet, ah? People are always throwing out scraps."

"And you don't discriminate, because you're Leaf n' Beef Eater! Mix in
my invisible cuisinery, and we'll rule the world with the iron fist of
morality," Manley claps his hands, glances at his watch and looks
longingly at the cafetiere.

"I went to the launderettes with Helen just the other day," Hen
enthuses. "Or perhaps it was last week. Anyway, she drew me a map of
the floor, with all their rooms labelled. So we can get our own back -
I was thinking Mr. Men. Little Miss Devious, Little Miss Fiend, Little
Miss Tipsy, Little Miss Sinister?.and for Lianne, Little Miss Manga.
Shouldn't take much time to knock them up."

Manley casts Hen a deep frown. The thorn-tips of his eyes shrink to
black pins.

"If you revenge everything you do, you'll turn into one of them. Just
what else have you been finding out?"

A fat grin comes over Hen, showing the viaduct of gum above his ragged
teeth. He tries to stifle it by driving the heel of his hand into the
side of his face.

"Hen?"

Hen gets a hold of himself with a shrug and a bite, then pulls back the
neck of his t-shirt to see the writing open like a murder of crows in
flight across his chest. It takes a moment to find the notes on Helen
and Besse?

"Hen - what are you doing?"

"Memory technique, Manley - when you want to remember something you
pretend to write it on a part of your body. Look again and it'll come
back to you."

"Does that really work?"

Again, Hen grins, and starts to read, "Besse - at first I had her
pinned as a squirrel, for the way she looks piercingly through her
glasses, like she were guarding a treasure, turning it over and over in
her palms. But no, she's a cat. An elegant, wily old cat. She will
crouch in the corner of the kitchen window sill, or curl up at our
feet, or press her head up against one of the other girls' shoulders.
She purrs out her sentences, softly with that mild New York whine, and
wears the Cheshire cat smile - thin and long as a cut throat razor.
Prowls around in bare feet.

"Let's see - the oldest harpy by nearly two years. Here for one year,
studying English literature. One wall of her room is covered with
quotes, photographs of parents and friends from home, posters of James
Stewart, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford etc. Naturally, her 'kitties'
feature also. Novels by Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf feature
prominently on her bookshelf, and she sometimes knits on her
immaculately kept bed.

"Biscuit hair bundled neatly behind her head, knitting needles
sometimes pushed into it?. Loves bugging."

Hen folds his arms in triumph, while Manley, with the stunned look of a
naked sheep skull, tries to gather up his fingers from the table and
check the time. He mumbles something to his wrist, and gets up to pour
the coffee.

"Gur?milk, Hen. Any milk?"

"Mine's the unopened one on the bottom shelf. Now. Helen. She's a fine
little creature. Let me see?tallest and most willowy harpy. A heron,
but also a silver-spotted skipper butterfly. Autumnal in both flesh and
fashion - coppery skin, covered in dark moles, rich rust hair. Slinks
about on bare feet, like Besse.

"From Leeds. Slightly short-tongued - always saying 'lovely', or
'fabulous' or 'disgusting,' but doesn't ramble much. Born socialite -
picks up friends like sticky leaves, from bars and corridors. Won't say
a bad word about any of them. Room covered in hip kitsch - silk thows,
postcards of a young Mick Jagger, lava lamp and trinkets. You get the
idea. Blows kisses at us, pirouetting on thing legs, her feet long and
deeply curved - unlike yours, Manley. You're practically
flat-footed."

Manley looks down at his socks, and Hen continues:

"'Helen's a whore's name!' I concluded last night, which caused a stir.
But they'd misunderstood me."

"Clean cups. Got any clean cups?"

"One, in my box. No, I mean, I wasn't suggesting that Helen was a
whore. They were talking about the name 'Dave.' 'Dave,' they said, 'is
a builder's name.' Well, technically, that's right. I mean, if there
is, somewhere in this terrible world, a builder whose name is David
(and I know there is, for I lived next door to him until I came here,)
then it follows that the name of a builder is David. Rearranged, one
may logically say David is a builder's name. The name David belongs to
a builder. It's just like, say that you and I know a prostitute who
goes by the name of Helen. Now, our prostitute possesses that name. It
is hers. Ergo, 'Helen' is a whore's name!"

"Right. Here's your coffee."

Manley sits back down at the table, shaking his head. They both fall
into silence, sighing and sipping, sipping and sighing.