Wicker and Stone and Coral (Part 2)

“…south on the A46 for forty until we hit the M5 and take that past Cheltenham and Gloucester until we leave it at Bodmin and aim for Padstow. Won’t be too poison long.”

Just like her packing the car Lester was impressed. He knew she wouldn’t have taken the time to mark out the route in the OS so wondered jealously how she had come to know where they would need to go and why he didn’t know and why he hadn’t been allowed access to that part of her life – he quickly thrust away these thoughts, though, so that he could bask in the splendours of all that was left of her to discover. “Shouldn’t be too poison long yes and it’ll work out good us leaving about now, we’ll get to the narrow lanes when it’s dark and easy driving,” Lester remarked unremarkably.

She took little notice of what he had said, as was her way when driving. She ‘owned’ a 1967 Sunbeam Tiger Mk II that occupied most all her thoughts and words when she drove it. Lester had never unearthed how or where she had found it nor if, as with her house, it had ever been paid for; and his preoccupation with the vehicle’s suspicious origins had grown from an appreciation of just another of her loveable quirks to something blurring between adoration and fear when he had learnt that the Tiger II was only properly marketed in America, and only six right-hand drive models were sold and these to the Metropolitan Police for traffic patrols and high-speed chasing.

“The trouble with owning a Mk II is that all you’ll ever hear is ‘That thing’s just a souped-up re-engined Mark 1A!’,” she carried on, letting out a Cat-Swan guffaw that brought Lester’s sharpness back to razor. “…and they’ll say that a V8 Mustang is better and was cheaper back in ’67 as though this one is bitter, but WHO CARES ‘cause it’s not about money or prowess it’s about feeling and I know for big time I’d rather have a true free tiger for company than a small feral fucking horse,” she was breathless now and the car had been accelerating steadily to match her. “It’s the British racing green” – the car was a murkier colour than that easy – “and the chipped datchboard and the sometime growl you can hear coming through the vents and the personal way the rumble of the engine makes me feel ‘cause of how I sit and how heavy I am and what’s come before that makes this car…”.

Lester wondered if her ramblings and babblement and rattling off of opinions and facts about her Tiger II was her own method of clearing the mind, allowing her to think deep serious, and he wondered on her grasping at mindfulness until he drifted into sleep, knowing that she would be content with just his company and would continue to regale him with her well thought out lecture regarding the perfect imperfection of her car whether he was conscious of it or not.

Lester had for years known dreams as belonging to other people, something alien and confusing to him. Now his sleep was almost as vibrant as his time with her, because even his subconscious was devoted to the things she did or said. In the car, Lester dreamt up an expanse through which he strolled. An expanse flowing from Myrtle to Jungle to Mint to Forest to Moss to Artichoke and any which way without prejudice through all tints and shades of green. There weren’t a sun to speak of but a set of eyes. Sky-eyes. They rose and journeyed across the sky as the sun’s example had always set out. He strolled easily but with purpose toward these eyes suspended over the expanse; eyes brown and focused, crinkled with smiles, that beckoned him closer and darted life into all that was lucky enough to be glanced at. Everywhere the eyes looked an area two yards by two yards would snap pure into frightening clarity with Lester at its centre against a woolly and hazy landscape. 

All the while he strolled an ominous tone was growing around the locked gaze Lester shared with the sky-eyes. Was it ominous? It pointed, he felt, to some natural process. How, then, could it be so? Nature is no way ominous, but there. Constant and unbiased and infinitely more experienced and knowledgeable than all else might claim to be. At first quiet as a footstep on a carpet of Kidney Vetch, louder and louder still the tone grew from sound to noise to roar, becoming more then less discernible as its volume increased. Lester heard the repetitive shwing of something metal throwing off its load, a load that clattered smoothly onto something wooden. His feet became heavy and seemed to sink into the Moss, florists who loved the stuff for decoration began reaching their hands out of that green and clutching him down, they tangled themselves into the Jungle whose tropical climate caused sweat to bead on his legs. The sky-eyes no longer were smiling but widened with worry. The shwing and smooth clatter rose to a crescendo and Lester dreamt that from first one ear then the other flowed green.

He woke to a maieutic murmur that established itself gradually, shaking off an intense tinnitus of bells and whirring, “…but dad always said Dylan was doing nothing in the ‘70s and no one was arsed about him and if Harrison hadn’t asked him to come join the Concert for Bangladesh crowd he’d have disappeared into nothing.” Her lecture had overrun into experiences and knowledge of music and of the time when her family started to take her thoughts and opinions more seriously. Lester had heard this one heaps but it was one of his favourites because she’d sometimes break way into Here Comes the Moon or Times with passion and a half decent voice. He was relieved then unsurprised that the retreat inwards offered her by the Tiger II had not left her so distant from external reality as to render her incapable of driving. “Tell you what I bet yewnmeezeff were glad that Harrison was the one what organised it all. Ida been scared proper if it were anyone else that they’d’ve tried taking the money for themselves and what not but I feel like the lot went to relief for those poor Bengali fellas. Bloody lucky that George knew Ravi and all too…”.

It had grown darker. The last streaks of red and orange, pink and even purple sunset retreated away towards the horizon. She felt he had woken and reached for his hand, the two falling perfect into grooves moulded over the three years they had known each other. “You know where I go when I talk pure and all don’t you?” 

“I know your senses double-back and head inwards sweet, but I’ve no specifics no not none.” Lester’s interest in her was reaching upward if it was possible.

“Just automatic. I think myself growing all small and diving into your mouth and working my way into your bloodstream where everything in you finds me as an old friend. I flow through you and listen to the rush of blood through your pipes and it drowns out all else all anyhow so I can think deep serious. Your red blood ones sustain me, the white blood ones make me feel at home, your blateluts keep me safe. It’s cosy in your blood too. It runs thick with heart and ideas and independent thought of my own. Sometimes I’ll be going along suspended happy until my hair's gone fixed grey and my jowls are droopled; other times I snap back to big me when I’ve gone longer than I can stand without your voice or big thoughts of you; other times still I find I’ve come to rest on top of your heart, that perfect healthy heart of yours, and I sit there in Lotus and know I’ve had a successful retreat inside.” Lester felt honoured and wondered if her growing small was why his heart went all heavy during her driving lectures and inwards turn.

“I don’t get much honesty you know, ElAitch,” she offered, bringing to the surface those thoughts she had had time to reflect on during the drive.

“You speak nothing but honest to yourself all the time and, besides, I’m honest with you. I say what I think or feel and what I don’t say you know anyway.”

“I know that as much as all else. You’re out during sun though so most hours I’ve shit all access to any bar my own and that’s no doubt biased,” her hand squeezed his as she poured out honesty in search of honesty. “That’s why I read and read again my Huck Finn you know, ‘cause it’s honest proper in a time and place where no one had any.”

“Shall I read some to you, is that your game Brett White?” he ventured gently, falling out of her grasp as he fumbled under his seat for where he knew she kept her book. He resurfaced, turned to her favourite passage, one hand holding Huck Finn down firmly to stop him squirming while the other came to rest back in hers, and read:

“…We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest.”

Lester put all he had into making a sound like the crack of lightning, bringing out a smile in Brett White who, after just the first few words, had been mouthing along with him since she knew the book back and forth and every which way you like and back again.

“It was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know…”.

She continued on mouthing the words of the first few lines of Huck and Jim’s following conversation before these articulatory gestures were matched-up to speech of her own choosing, “Nature honest seen and told by an innocent fella.” This book had become her favourite in the way that all things should, at a certain time and a certain place under certain circumstances this book and this passage had resonated with her in a certain way. “If everyone read this book some once a year they’d be no doubt nicer all about. The world could be fixed all over in a decade mayperhaps. Though I don’t know well if the message of it works from lingo to lingo. Some smart clogs would figure it easy. There might be some resisting from the psychologists I suppose, ‘cause we’d have solved all their questions with a simple ‘don’t be a cunt’ book but hey-ho welcome to the real world fellas.”

“Are you certain it’s simple like that?” “Could be. We aren’t that complex. Not always anyhow. Everyone wants to see too many greys in everything, there aren’t that many I’m telling you now. Read that and they’ll start subbing in some colours maywise the boring mopey fuckers.” Lester felt her grip tighten and it seemed to him that she was trying to squeeze the honesty she thought he had within him in abundance out and into her skin. “Are you well, sweet?” “I’m well, ElAitch,” she replied, as the last of the daylight went out from around them.