Q - The fascinating Kettle

"We will meet dear Bethany

at the bus stop at Seveny

Why so early we meet?

So we can get a seat!

At 8.30 it starts

so take?hearts

to sell on black market err."

So read Cliff's message, received by my suddenly useful mobile
telephone. It was not difficult to translate; 'Bethany' refers to our
mutual ally, Kettle, rather than the harpies' new accomplice, 'Seveny'
is seven o'clock, and the matter that begins at 8.30 is an Aisle16 gig.
Aisle 16, it should be explained, are a group of performing comedy
poets, led by the Duke of the Creative Writing Society, Luke Wright.
Kettle, Cliff, Cole and I regularly attend their performances in order
to offer moral and financial support, and to enjoy their tantalising
rhythms and enthralling lewdness. In fact, it is tempting to say that
there is no more enthralling a lewdness that I know of.

The end of the message presumably descends into bilge, or else I am
missing something crucial that would have benefited me greatly. Having
no idea as to what this might be, however, did not mar an excellent
evening, during which I, bewitched by the glamour of the Aisle16 show,
proposed to Kettle, Cliff and Cole that we form our own performing
troupe in days to come and call it 'Hats Off.' Unlike many of the ideas
I lay gauntletlike before the harpies, this went down very well, and we
started out on plans for our introductory skit right away. Cole would
arrive on stage and in a quivering voice begin reading an assemblage of
dense, nonsensical black poetry. Precisely before the audience
recovered their voices, we remaining three would bundle him off and
begin a sing-song.

"You would, of course, be the very talented one who made us all look
like fools," supposed Cliff, addressing me with the pointed end of his
playful wit, "and Beth would be the little, dark one."

"I'm not dark!" Kettle protested, whereupon I reminded her that her
last poem had included something akin to a suffering, naked woman in
pursuit of a bloody snake.

"That was one poem! I'm not usually dark."

I made several noises with my tongue that I hoped indicated my
unwillingness to believe her fancy.

"Alright, so I'm the little, dark one."

I first met Kettle when she approached me on the slab steps outside
the Hive, on my second day here, after our introductory session. I was
busily tickled that most of the creative writing students, upon
emerging into the seams of daylight, had lit up cigarettes and were
sighing in relief at being at last permitted this small indulgence.
Kettle is also a smoker, and her voice, I noticed at the time, is a
little rough and stony, eroded by the smoke.

"I noticed that you're wearing an Al Stewart t-shirt," she said,
honestly and truthfully, for she had and I was.

I responded with vague intrigue, concealing the office building of
elation that thrummed within me at the sight of this phenomena, this
girl who made mermaids look common and coarse, this person who had
heard of Al Stewart!

I learned that she had come to know him from a past skit with a man (I
suspect her of having many skits with men - she denies the figure is
many,) and is now, like me, a follower of Al. Al being a modest and
always simply attired troubadour, Kettle immediately seemed an unusual
sort of follower.

She is short and small and punklike, as I have mentioned, with the
look of an urchin and streetfighter. Her hair is cut short, schoolboy
length, and sometimes spiked or whipped up - it is dark, but more to
the tone of a very thick varnish than of coal, and often split with a
bolt of bright pink or red. The same varnish effect is also evident in
her eyes, which are made to seem small and distant by the smears of
deep violet applied around them.

She clothes herself in oddly-cut, ragged-looking, extravagant or
overtly feminine outfits, sometimes adorned with badges, and is quite
happy tramping around in heavy boots. Other matters I have picked up
over a lengthier period of time. Kettle seems more willing, for
instance, than any of the harpies, for another instance, to express her
pleasure at the appearance of certain young men (though I don't deny
Lianne and Besse at least are very capable of this feat.)

"The one who played the brother - he was easy on the eyes," she once
said.

But her delight is forever incomplete, I am led to believe - eternally
unsatisfied, perpetually unfulfilled and permanently less than whole.
It was Becky Lawrence, another girl on our course, and a prospective
newspaper hack (she already writes for the student rag, Concrete,) who
noted, at a much later date, that Kettle "wants to find a beautiful
man. Find him in her writing; create him from something surreal, like a
story about fish perhaps."

I could've hanged myself with my new UEA college scarf for not picking
up on that myself, since there is, I must observe, the potent aroma of
brooding desire and lonesomeness to so much of her writing.

What a complex little limpet she is.