EPISODE 35; AN ATYPICAL STORY FROM THE AUTHOR.

Welcome to my blog which today consists of a story.

                                                         THREE WOMEN

   I don’t know what was in the white powder that I gave to Lucy. I did know it would kill her. She drove off in her little red car, smiling and waving. See you soon, she said. I knew she wouldn’t but as there was no point in saying anything, I waved back and then came into the caravan to make lunch for my boy, Duggy.

   Lucy was the first. I wish I could remember who the other two were.

  I was a little confused by what I had done. She’s such a nice person, Lucy. She talks a lot but doesn’t really bother anyone. I put the powder in a drink and said, Try this Lucy. It tastes horrible but it’ll fix your cold in no time. She believed me. Why wouldn’t she?

   She won’t know that I caused her death. No-one will. If it wasn’t for the other two I wouldn’t really have anything to worry about. Did I give them the powder too? On the same day? Or did it take longer than that? It’s dead weird not being able to remember things properly. If I don’t know the truth, what will I say if anyone asks?

   I have this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. I could get into big trouble over this. They’ll think I did it on purpose and lock me up for years. Suddenly I’ll be gone and what will happen to Duggy then? It’d really hurt him to lose me and it’s not fair that he should. Sometimes I cry when I think how unfair everything is. This time it’s partly my own fault because I’ve not been good at seeing the consequences of things.

   There’s so much to think about yet most of the time I can hardly think at all. I’m in a sort of fog, a bit adrift from the world around me. I feel like I’m in a movie where the sounds and mouth movements don’t match. Do you know what I mean? Does it happen to you?

   I call Duggy my boy. I’m not his real dad. I sort of ended up with him when me and Sue split up a couple of years ago. She said she didn’t want him anymore but I reckoned someone should so I’ve been giving it a try. It’s hard being a man in this world if no-one teaches you properly. I’ve shown Duggy lots of mean tricks like how to handle a knife and skin a rabbit. When he’s big he’ll know how to look after himself. He can even drive the car. We get along fine most of the time. I don’t smack him and I don’t shout at him. But he knows who’s boss. He was eight years old a couple of weeks ago. I laugh when people say he looks like me.

   I suppose Beth was the second one. That’s my guess, that’s what it feels like. She’s the most likely, being the only one I’ve got anything against. She shouldn’t have left me like that. I’d been good to her, the best I’ve ever been. I would have given my life for her. She’s the only woman I’ve asked to marry me. And she said no.

   Making love with Beth was like making love to the other half of me. It wasn’t that the sex was fantastic or anything like that but inside of me, in the heart I guess. I was warmed and happy. It was a terrible shock when she upped and left saying, I’ve changed, I want to try something different. Of course I know she meant someone rather than something. As if he could love her even half as much as I do.

   It is possible she came to see me here. She does sometimes when she wants her car checking out. She drops in on the way to pick her kids up from school so that she doesn’t have to stay any longer than she needs to. She smiles and flirts a little, just to make sure I’m still interested, still in her power. Then she casually mentions the car and that it’s been ‘not been sounding right’. We both know what she is doing. I feel ashamed for her but I still fix the frigging car because I love her and can’t bring myself to let her down. If I’ve killed Beth then she has to take some of the blame.

   Three. I’m sure it was three. There’s a hazy picture in my head, like a photograph that’s coming out blank. I can see a white border and I just know there should be three faces there. Lucy, Beth, and someone else.

   Will the police connect Lucy’s death with Beth’s? I doubt it. Lucy said she was going to drive up north that afternoon. I think she’ll have died at the wheel of the car. The powder takes three or four hours to work. I can remember that. When they find the body they’ll just assume she crashed. All her friends know what a poor driver she is. She’s written off cars before. With that powder in her body she shouldn’t have felt a thing. She was so pretty, it’d be a shame if she were disfigured.

   I could ask Duggy if Beth came to visit that day. She brings him sweets though I’ve told her they’re not good for him. But I don’t want him to know I’m worried or that I get the days mixed up. And I don’t want him speaking to the police.

   I’m so tired. If only I could sleep properly. That’s why I got the powder in the first place, to help me sleep. I haven’t dared use it because it’s so damn strong.

   Maybe it is time to move on, to get away from this field of half-remembered sorrow. We could go abroad. Duggy could learn French or something. I could fix cars. I wouldn’t need the language to fix cars. Maybe we could find somewhere near the sea. I love to swim.

   Molly must have been the third. Molly’s my best friend. We can talk about anything. Not like Lucy does, not all surface stuff. Real talk. About men and women and what goes on inside our heads. She’d be shocked if she knew what I had done. But why would I kill Molly? Without her they’d be no-one to talk to, no-one to listen to. No-one who can make me laugh.

  I wish I could get rid of this sense of something being wrong. It’s like a shadow on my brain that stops me settling in myself. I snapped at Duggy earlier when he asked for a drink. I had no reason to. I’m too easily irritated. Perhaps I should see a doctor about my nerves because I don’t usually let things bother me so much. Maybe it’s having a child around all the time. People say I should let Duggy go to school. He’s been asking to go but I don’t like the idea of them getting hold of his mind. They’d turn him against me and he’d start wanting all those stupid things that the other kids want. There’s got to be a better life for Duggy than TVs, phones and computer games. I can’t afford any of that stuff anyway.

   Death happens all the time, doesn’t it? The police don’t have to be suspicious. They wouldn’t have to link Beth and Lucy at all. And if they did, they wouldn’t think of me. Even if they found out that both of them had been here, it wouldn’t have to seem so strange.They could see I had no motive, no reason for upsetting anyone. I’m just anxious in case they start asking me questions. I don’t want them to notice how confused I am.

   I don’t think I can stand much more of this. I don’t feel good at all. I’m lost in this field. All I want is for things to be all right, to get on with my life. It’s not reasonable that I have to go through all this. I’ve never been a bad man and never set out to hurt anyone. Molly understood that. It’d be great if she could turn up now and make me smile.

   It doesn’t seem possible that I could have given the powder to Molly. She would have noticed any deception in me. She was clever like that and I could never lie to her.

   I hope Duggy didn’t see anything. I wouldn’t like him to think that his dad was horrible to his friends. This whole thing leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. Believe me, there was no premeditation, no foresight. It wasn’t planned. I’ve never made plans, never known where I wanted to go. When I travel I just get the feeling to leave where I am. I pace up and down for a couple of hours trying to guess what’s wrong then I call out, Okay Duggy. We’re going now. He never asks me where anymore because he knows I don’t know and he knows I don’t like being asked about what I don’t know.

   So I reckon that’s how it was this morning or whenever it happened. I was probably having quite a nice time with Lucy as I usually do. Or maybe she could see the fog in my head and wanted to get away. Somewhere in this mind the idea would have arisen. More than an idea. Ideas are things that live in the head and can’t get out. This would have been something more, like the moment when I discover I’m leaving, a complete event in itself that isn’t really anything to do with me. It’s not that I don’t think about what I’m doing. I move around the caravan putting everything in its place. It hardly takes me any time at all now. Then I check out the car and make sure Duggy is fed and ready to move. For a short time everything is just right and the fog lifts.

   Once the decision had been made, I bet I felt real good. I bet I moved with grace. Lucy’s a good person to practise on because she’s so naïve and trusting. I don’t know how people get to be like that in this day and age with the world being so hard and everything. I guess it makes you want to protect her. You wouldn’t shout at her or get pissed off with her, even though she says such stupid things. Maybe it was wrong of me to take advantage of her innocence but at least she wouldn’t have sensed anything, wouldn’t have become disappointed.

   Beth told me she wasn’t going to see me anymore. Today she told me.

   When I was little we lived by a wood. Mum would send us out to play by the swings at the far end of the trees. I loved being outside although my sisters usually complained and told mum they wouldn’t look after me unless she gave them extra sweets. I didn’t think I needed looking after. It wasn’t my fault that I was younger than them and I hated it when they laughed at me. The day the man found me stuck in the tree, they’d made me go up and then run away shouting and dancing. I wet myself up there. I called for my mum but I knew she would never come.

   I’d never let anyone treat my Duggy like that. Especially girls. I’m not sexist or anything but when women won’t love men properly then what do they expect us to do? There has to be consequences. If there’s a problem here then my sisters ought to be punished for what they did. I hated them from that day on but they never cared and never said sorry.

   I loved Beth too much to ever hate her. I know what people say about love turning to hate but it was never like that for me. I’d pay money to hate her. I awake in pain because of her. She’s that feeling inside, of everything that has ever been taken away from me.

   Beth said she wouldn’t see me anymore because she didn’t think it did either of us any good, that it hurt me and made her feel guilty. That’s what she said. I nodded and said I understood but I didn’t understand at all. I’ve known many women. Made love to loads of them. I’ve been left a few times too but losing Beth was losing myself. I’m just not there anymore.

   I told her I’d been given a chinese medicine that would help her kidney complaint. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist taking one more thing from me before she left. If she had cared about what I thought, I would have spoken then, would have told her how much I loved her and that if I was harming her it was only because I couldn’t stand the pain one more damn moment and that she was standing in my sunlight, taking my life away.

   She would have looked at her watch and said she needed to pick up the kids.

   I’d forgotten the kids. I hope they’re not around when she dies. Beth was such a selfish person. Maybe their father will be glad to take them on. She’d never given him the chance. I was doing well with her kids too. They were part of her so I gave what I could. I think she should have appreciated that.

   If Beth has gone then it really is time to move on. I was hanging out to be with her. I bet tomorrow I’ll get that feeling and I’ll be gone before I know it.

   Molly went too far, that’s the truth of it. She didn’t say anything when I told her what had happened, what I’d done. She just listened like she does, like it was nothing special. I hadn’t meant to say a word but my head was fogging up and I thought it might help to talk. I felt a bit embarrassed when I started because I don’t find it easy to chat about what goes on inside of me where people can’t see. I worry that I won’t be understood, that people will judge me without hearing the full facts. I thought Molly knew me, really knew me. I thought she was on my side. When I saw that look of doubt on her face there was no choice in the matter. I grabbed the breadknife and lunged, all in one movement. She wasn’t frightened. Not at all. I think she could have swayed out the way if she had wanted to. She smiled. Not at me, at death. I was sorry to make such a mess of her though I knew she had no great liking for her body. I dragged it out and tried to bury it beneath a tree but I was tired and a little dizzy so I just left it there.

   There are people outside now. I can hear them. I don’t think I’m going to get away from all this trouble. I really hoped it would be all right.

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EPISODE 34: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR TELLS A STORY

Welcome to my blog which is spending the last hour of christmas day recovering from a fast drive on the empty M5 and waiting for the Australia-India Test Match to start. I generally support the Indian cricket team even when they play England which means that despite being an english born white I would have failed the Tebbit test of Britishness. These days we often hear political prattle about British values but fortunately no-one seems to listen. Tonight I was stopped by the police travelling at 63mph in a 30mph area. The policeman asked if I had any excuse. I said no. And then he let me go because it was Christmas night. Is that a British value?

I bet Australia win. What I want is Sehwag to get 200. Australia are batting. 0-0 after five balls. I'm tired, my head is spinning. No way can I stay up all night to watch this.

Here's a story, called EIGHT AND TEN. We'll catch up on the gossip next week.

1

   “It’s your dad’s fault,” declared Ruth, supporting this firmness of opinion with a practised stance of aggression.

“What is?” enquired Matthew, still trying to tie a knot in his shoelaces.

“Everything. Fucking everything!”

Matthew blanched. “You shouldn’t say that word.”

“Why not? Nobody’s listening.”

“It isn’t nice.”

“What a sissy you are. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Sounds all right to me.”

   It sounded all right to Matthew to as well, when Ruth said it. In his own mind he repeated her profanity but there it was all wrong.

“What’s my dad’s fault?”

“I told you, everything. Like the fact that you and I won’t have anything to do when we grow up. Like the fact there won’t be a world to grow up in. Like the fact that you’re stupid.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are so.  That’s why I have to tell you these things. If you knew already, I wouldn’t have to, would I? And if you had a brain you would be doing something about it.”

   Knots accomplished, Matthew stood up. “I don’t know what you mean,” he muttered as he looked over to the beckoning woods to the west. “Shall we make a camp?”

   Before he could move, or even breathe, Ruth shockingly reached out, grabbed his head in her hands and forced it up to meet her wrathful eyes. “Matthew Grimsley, would you please pay attention for once in your life? While you are playing cowboys and Indians in those ignorant woods there’s a real war going on out there in the world and your dad is to blame. Me and the others have decided that it is time for you to do something about it!

  Releasing him with a rough dismissive shake, Ruth turned her back and marched off towards the road knowing full well that Matthew would have to call her back. For a few moments he tried to summon the will to have done with her but this he could not do for love already held sway in his heart.

   “Ruth,” he shouted between sobs, “Ruth, tell me what you mean!”

   Briefly Ruth pretended to hesitate then, with a glee hidden from Matthew, she recommenced her march, leaving him no choice but to follow.

   With the boy in tow Ruth felt that she could walk for miles and miles. Bored with the road she returned to the fields, hedgerows and streams, all of which she conquered with easy strength whereas her smaller pursuer was often panting for breath or untangling the brambles that had greedily seized upon his skin. As the hours passed, however, Ruth relaxed her domination, slowed her pace and finally allowed Matthew to catch up.

   “You’re tougher than you look,” she congratulated as they rested on an old tree trunk that lay in the centre of a beech copse.

   “No I’m not,” replied Matthew, emboldened by his trial. “You just don’t look at me properly.”

   Ruth, for once disinclined to argue, smiled. “Maybe it isn’t all your dad’s fault,” she conceded with flirtatious grace. “There are lots of people responsible really. Maybe he can’t even help it.”

   “I still don’t…” began Matthew.

   “But still he shouldn’t do it,” interrupted Ruth, her face full of sudden frown. “He’s got to be stopped.”

   Bewildered, Matthew sucked his lips anxiously. Ruth continued. “Just think Matthew, what you will feel like if we all wake-up dead one morning because of what your dad has done. You will wish you stopped him, won’t you?”

   “Yes,” said Matthew, uttering the only word his frozen mouth would come up with. “Yes.”

   “Well, there you are then. You do understand.” Ruth looked at her watch. “Fuck. It’s teatime. Tell you what, I’ll pop round your place in the morning to see how you’re getting on. Just remember to be brave and then everything will be all right.”

2

   Rarely had Mrs Grimsley been disappointed by Matthew’s response to her speciality spaghetti and sweet corn dish.

   “Are you feeling unwell Matthew?”

   “Just not hungry Mum.”

   “You’re always hungry.”

   “Not tonight Mum.”

   “Must be missing school,” teased Dad. “Shortening the holidays is a good idea if you ask me.” 

 Mrs Grimsley inspected Matthew more closely. “He is pale, you know.” 

   “I’m all right Mum, honest.” In fact Matthew felt terribly sick and had done ever since his father had come home from work. When the big man had bent down to give his son the customary hug a sudden twitch had developed in Matthew’s eye. Convinced that his dad would be able to read his thoughts, Matthew had run out of the room. The twitch returned as his parents inspected him.

   “You want your brother back from Camp, don’t you?” said his father sympathetically. “It’s no fun without someone to play with.”

   “He’s been out with that Ruth Williams most of the day,” reported Mrs Grimsley. “Maybe she’s run him into the ground.”

   “Ah,” replied his father. “A bit of a hoyden but she’s a nice kid.” As Dad turned his attention back to the food there was a moment of stillness in the room and a feeling of relief began to sweep through Matthew. If he could just swallow some food then he’d be okay.

   “Ruth Williams is a liar!” he heard himself shout.

   Immediately his mother’s face tightened. “Really Matthew, I’m sure Ruth is no such thing.”

   “She is, she is! I know she is.”

   Dad sighed loudly, put down his knife and fork and adopted his ‘let’s be reasonable’ voice. “I think you will have to give us some examples, Matthew. Tell us, when has she lied?”

   “Lots of times,” mumbled Matthew, bitterly regretting his outburst and, in vain, trying to hold back his tears.

  “Shall we start with one lie? Maybe you could tell us one lie,” suggested Dad, his tone on the edge of mockery.

   “I can’t.”

   “There we are then.”

   “I mean I can’t tell you,” wept Matthew.

   “Why can’t you tell us?”

   Matthew’s head was aflame. He could feel his scalp burning and his mind racing with thoughts that he couldn’t speak. In the distance he heard his father’s interrogation.

   “Why can’t you tell us?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “Why don’t you know? You should know what you’re talking about when you start calling your friends liars.”

   Fearing that the boy was on the point of collapse, Mrs Grimsley distracted her husband with chocolate pudding, then intervened. “He’s not well, probably feverish,” she declared. “Hard to make sense when there’s heat on the brain.”

   “No excuse for lying,” complained Dad, spilling double-cream on the cloth.

  “Of course not. But he’s sick and going to bed. Maybe he’ll be more coherent in the morning.”

3

   The new day dawned behind dark cloud and seemed, wisely perhaps, hesitant to emerge at all from night’s timely cocoon. Matthew awoke, of a sudden, with a deep foreboding in his being. At first it was silent, brooding, menacing, then, as his eyes opened and the day became real, his disquiet erupted into an overwhelming torrent of threat, danger and despair. So torn was Matthew, so devastated, he thought for a moment that Ruth’s dire prophecy must have come true and during the night the world had ended. His limbs shook as he dressed and it was only the insistent calling of his mother from downstairs that dragged his dreading body to the kitchen.

   The adults, he discovered, had put aside the tensions of the previous evening. Matthew heard his mother comment, “Matthew looks better,” and saw his father’s absent nod. Later when Dad left for work he gave his son a cheering wave. Instinctively Matthew waved back and for a good half an hour after that his mood lifted a fraction. Ironically it was Mrs Grimsley who rekindled his fear.

   “Is Ruth coming around today?” she asked casually.

   Matthew gulped. “I don’t think so,” he lied. “I was thinking of going out on my own.”

    “Maybe I’ll give her a ring and ask her for tea. We’ve still got chocolate pudding.”

   “It’d be better if you didn’t, Mum. Not today.”

   “Why ever not? You’re not going to be making-up more stuff about her, are you Matthew? We had enough of that last night.”

   Controlling himself, Matthew forced a pleasant smile. “Dad might be tired when he gets home from work, that’s all. Might not want two kids hanging about.”

   Preoccupied by a malfunctioning washing machine, Mrs Grimsley failed to notice the squeaky insincerity of his son’s voice. “Dad’s lucky,” she said. “Enjoys his work. He’ll be happy you have someone to play with.”

   “What does he actually do, Mum?” asked Matthew, suddenly swept to the brink of an abyss inside of himself.

   “You know what he does, he works for the government,” replied Mrs Grimsley.

   “But what does he actually do?” Matthew heard his voice go even higher. Simultaneously he became aware of a dreadful thirst. His mother, maddeningly, tinkered with the failed machine then, sadly, shook her head. “I’ll have to get the man in.”

   “But Dad, what does he do?” begged Matthew.

   Mrs Grimsley looked at him in surprise. “He advises them on things,” she answered vaguely. Now run off and play outside before the rain comes.”

4

   “You’ll have to use your brain,” said Ruth as she threw yet another stone into the stream. “If you think about things hard enough you can usually work out what to do.”

   “I can’t,” confessed Matthew. “I just get more and more stuck.”

   “Maybe you’re what they call simple-minded,” damned Ruth carelessly.

   “I’m not Ruth, I’m not. I do very well in school.”

  “Reading, writing, anyone can do that. “For thinking you need a sharp brain.”

  Angry with Ruth, furious with himself, Matthew let the water cover his shoes and soak his socks. “I still don’t know what my dad has done wrong,” he protested. “When he comes home at night he doesn’t look like he’s been bad all day. Maybe you should stay for tea and see for yourself.”

  Patiently Ruth sighed – the accentuated heave of her shoulders being sufficient to convey just how much tolerance she was having to call upon. “People get misguided sometimes,” she declared. “Haven’t you ever been doing something which you think okay then along comes a brother or a teacher or a mum and they tell you that you’ve been naughty and now you’re in trouble?”

   “All the time,” acknowledged Matthew, grateful to have at last heard something that almost made sense to him.

   “Maybe your dad is the same. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s being naughty.”

  Matthew almost burst with disappointment as the brief glimpse of comprehension disappeared. “But what does he do, Ruth? What’s he doing that is so naughty?”

   “You told me yourself.”

   “No I didn’t.”

   “Yes you did. You said he advises the government. That means he tells them what to do so when they go round being horrible it is your dad’s fault. I can’t see why you’re being so dense about it.”

   “But how do you know all this Ruth? Who told you?”

  “I heard my mum and dad talking.”

   “About the government?”

   “No silly. Everybody knows about the government. Don’t you watch the telly? They’re always on about what the government is up to. My dad says it’s the governments that cause all the trouble in the world, telling people what they have to do and taking all their money away, then fighting wars and getting all the common people killed off.”

   As the chill from his damp feet brought a cough to his chest, Matthew climbed out of the stream and sat on the rock next to Ruth. “What did your mum and dad say about my dad?” he asked quietly. “I thought they liked him.”

   “Liking has nothing to do with it,” revealed Ruth. “I bet lots of people liked Hitler but that didn’t stop him gassing the Jews.”

   “But what did they say about my dad?” repeated Matthew, feeling as if he’d been asking the same question all his life without ever receiving a straight answer.

   “I need to pee,” said Ruth, already running toward the bracken. “Keep guard and don’t look.” So Matthew kept guard, didn’t look and didn’t find out what he wanted to know.

      The nightmare that awoke him that night had culminated with images of his father rounding up the local children and herding them into a barn to spray them with poisonous gas. Among the crowd he’d seen Ruth and her little sister calling him to help but there was nothing he could do. Terrified Matthew must have cried out because there was his father patting him fondly on the head.

   “I had a horrible dream,” trembled Matthew.

   “Never mind, it’s over now.”

   Matthew found himself unable to respond to a hug from his father. “No it isn’t,” he whispered.

   “It is, of course it is.”

   “No,” insisted Matthew sleepily. “Ruth won’t let it be.”

5

   Nor would she. Matthew’s brother was still away at Camp when, three days late,r Ruth caught Matthew unawares playing pooh-sticks on Snaggle Bridge.

   “How’s it going?” she asked, as one comrade to another.

   “I’m winning,” grinned Matthew. “Do you want to play?”

   “All right.”

   Ruth won, constantly. Matthew became bored with the game and took to sneaking admiring looks at Ruth’s coal black straight hair that bobbed energetically as she raced from side to side of the bridge. His love for her almost took his breath away. Nevertheless he attempted the ploy that had developed in his mind since their last meeting.

   “My dad says that your mum and dad have got it wrong,” he announced. “It isn’t true what they said he did.”

   “Ah, but I never told you what they said, did I?” countered Ruth.

   “Not exactly,” admitted Matthew. “Near enough.”

   “No such thing!” replied Ruth, strongly. “It so happens that all they actually said was that your dad was chief advisor at the Waverly Government Research Centre. I worked the rest out for myself didn’t I? Some people don’t have to be told everything to work out what’s what. If you know how to use your brain you can go a long way in this world and I don’t want anyone taking the world away before I get to it. Tell your dad that!”

   Having brought herself to a passion she hadn’t expected, Ruth stormed off. For once Matthew didn’t follow her. Instead he sorted himself two sticks of equal length, threw them over the low stone wall of the bridge and then hurried to see which emerged first. Both of them, however, ran aground in the weeds. “Fuck,” said Matthew out aloud. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

   That night it was Ruth’s turn to manifest as a blood thirsty tyrant in Matthew’s haywire psyche. He knew it was Ruth from the hair which, although streaked with blood, bounced recognizably as her alter-ego declared war on an unsuspecting world. A gory hell of murder and mayhem filled his brain until finally there was only he and she left alive. Brandishing the two harmless sticks he had earlier used in the game, Ruth charged him. Realizing he could defend himself, but deciding not to, Matthew knelt on the ground and accepted the blows which, although harmless, woke him up.

   This time he did not cry out but wept softly to himself, more in pity than in fright. Even so his father heard him and came quickly to the bed.

   “Nightmares again?” he asked quietly.

   Matthew nodded.

   “Do you want to tell me all about it?”

   Again Matthew nodded. “I want to but I don’t know if I can.”

   “Try,” whispered his father. “Try. See what happens.”

   For a long while Matthew said nothing. His father’s warm hand stroked his forehead while his own uneasy fingers fiddled with the edge of his pillowcase. Various words formed in his mind but they were strangled by his doubt about this man who had always been his friend and protector. What if Ruth’s accusations were true and his dad confessed to evil-doing? Would they still be able to love one another, father and son, like before? Better perhaps, thought Matthew, to say nothing, to keep what remained rather than lose it completely for the sake of truth.

   Matthew’s dad had got to his feet and was leaving the room when Matthew suddenly thought of Ruth worldly ambitions and of the thousands of people who could be hurt if his father were guilty of some inexplicable malevolence. Who would speak up for them if Matthew wouldn’t? And who would his father listen to if not the son who loved him so much?

   “Dad,” he called.

   “Yes?” answered his father gently.

   “Could you turn the light on? I’m going to try and tell you about it, about my nightmare.”

6

   It didn’t take Matthew long to find Ruth when he set out to find her quite early the following day. In truth she had been hanging out by the woods hoping he would turn up, though this, of course, she tried to conceal when he gave her a hearty greeting.

   “Won the lotto or something?”  she enquired sarcastically on seeing his broad smiles.

   “Just feel good, that’s all.”

   “Gone back to your toy world of let’s pretend, I bet,” sneered Ruth. “Go on, tell me. I know something’s up. I’m not stupid.”

   From the moment his father had left the bedroom, Matthew had been preparing his statement to Ruth about how his dad was an innocent administrator in a department concerned only with barley production and that Ruth was totally wrong because he had nothing at all to do with what the government did. Just as he began to speak, however, Matthew’s love, like an explosion of light, suddenly revealed the girl’s heart and her fears for the course of her life. The pity he’d felt after his nightmare again overwhelmed him and he knew that he had to help her.

   “I’ve spoken to my dad,” he told her. “I let him know what we feel about what he’s doing. You needn’t worry any more, Ruth. My dad’s going to tell the government that they shouldn’t do bad things that will make life more difficult for us. I know he means it Ruth. You can always tell when parents really mean things, can’t you?”

   Ruth nodded, then hugged Matthew awkwardly. “Thank you, “she said.

   Matthew hunched his shoulders in embarrassment. “It was you that did it really,” he told her. “Without you I wouldn’t have known what was going on.”

   Suddenly Ruth was off. “See if you can catch me,” she called as she ran. Knowing that even if he could, he wouldn’t, Matthew chased after her.

  

  

  

EPISODE 33; DAVID CAMERON AND THE TYRANNY OF CHRISTIANITY

Welcome to my blog which has been and will continue to be remiss in its duty to record the emergence into public light of a 60 year old author. Before diverting off into a rave about the evil of Christianity I will, however, take the time to acknowledge that there has been activity in the authorial career and that the article on Spirituality has been accepted by the journal I sent it to. With luck they will print it next August. August! Meanwhile it has gone to peer review. I admit this is hardly J.K. Rowling territory but it does mean that once every decade or so there is a response to what I send out.

When I was a teenager I loved history, much of which I first learned in the books of H.E. Marshall which with their swashbuckling narratives gave me a sense of how much of history is just that, stories. As I learned a little more I saw that history was similar to Shakespeare’s plays in that you can take the same material and interpret it in a hundred different ways. This became most evident when Mr Stacey, my A Level history teacher, so subtly taught us a Marxist Interpretation of historical events that he was reprimanded by the examining board and we were forced to take the exam again to improve our grades. Mr Stacey, to state the obvious, was not a teacher at my catholic school but at Brooke House, a small private tutorial establishment that I was sent to after my second expulsion from Wimbledon College where I had been given a very catholic version of the world.

Over the years my interest in history faded and when I read of the troubles in Ireland and the Balkan reprisals for events long past, I tended to think the less looking back the better. But having no history doesn’t work either. (As evidenced, for example, by the British forgetting Thatcher and voting for Cameron.) A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine went to London to Occupy St. Paul’s and came back in love with London’s history and determined to unveil the magical and Mithraeum History of London. As part of his quest he’s bought a number of books, one of which he thrust upon me. Initially I was disinclined to read it because quite often ‘new age’ interpretations of the past are so esoteric or so irrelevant that I can’t maintain my interest. This book, ‘Not in his Image’ by John Lash is a different matter altogether although it is synchronistic for it to come along just a few days after I wrote my piece called the Roman Catholic Church inherently abusive. Mine was an instinctive and emotional judgement, John Lash gives me reason and history to back up my armoury.

He begins with the murder of Hypatia by a Christian rabble. Hypatia (ca. AD 350–370–March 415) as I now know was a Pagan noblewoman, a neoplatonist philosopher, a mathematician, an astronomer and, possibly, the last known teacher of the Mystery Schools, who lived and died in Alexandria, Egypt.  Lash takes the murder as a dividing line between two eras, the gnostic pagan and the Christian. What is phenomenal about is book is his analysis of Christianity which he describes as ‘salvationist ideology’ with a ‘redeemer complex’.

The Redeemer Complex, Lash’s proposed term for the ideological core of the Judeo-christian-islamic religion, has four components:

Creation of the world by a father god independent of a female counterpart;

The trial and testing (conceived as historical drama) of the righteous few or ‘chosen people’;

The mission of the creator god’s son (the messiah) to save the world;

The final apocalyptic judgment delivered by father and son upon humanity.

This narrative can be called Salvationism – a totalitarian belief system that asserts divine intercession in history and imbues suffering with redemptive value. Assumes superhuman rescue of humanity from its problems and off-planet, remote-control authority on morals and divine retribution. A Salvationist way of life entails obedience rather than learning.

Key to the growth of this idea has been, according to Lash, an enactment of the victim-perpetrator bond that we recognize in families, ‘the insidious tendency for those who are harmed and betrayed to become emotionally attached and morally identified with those who harm and betray them. Implies that some victims will become perpetrators in their own right.’ The teachings of Jesus in the new testament, ‘do good to those who harm you,’ ‘the meek shall inherit the earth,’ ‘turn the other cheek’, all preached surrender to and love for the enemy, for the oppressor.

I was thinking about this point last week when chatting on-line to a Ugandan peasant from the Mkobo tribe. I was asking her what rituals or customs the tribe had around death and dying and whether they still practised them alongside Christianity. She said no and that non-christians would be shunned. This is the victim-perpetrator syndrome in action. Along came the Christian invaders who felt perfectly justified in murdering non-christians while at the same time offering the victims redemption in heaven if they followed the god of the pillagers. Mind fuck.

One of the many beauties of this book for me is its contextualisation of Christianity which because of my Christian culture and catholic education, I have not been able to adequately distance myself from enough to see it as a whole idea. A particular delight is Lash’s examination of Jesus and what a masterstroke it was (of St. paul’s ? of fate?) to graft the loving face of Jesus on to the murderous militancy of the religion which from its outset indulged in massacre and genocide to actualize its political agenda. Let me quote Lash once more on just how damaging the Salvationist creed has been.

‘Roman Christianity is not the entire problem, all Salvationist belief systems are but it is the most triumphant of perpetrators. It has conjured hell on earth, eradicated the gnostics, destroyed the Mysteries, destroyed the learning of antiquity, torn out the pagan heart of Europe, murdered midwifes and healers, abetted the Nazis, colonialized the globe, burned and hung the tribal children of the Americas, bankrolled the despoliation of nature and the pernicious deception of Third World peoples, and to hide its crimes, it cast a spell of guilt and ignorance over sixty generations’ (P248).

One of the new words/concepts generated by terrorism and the likes of Tony Blair and his doppelganger Cameron is ‘extremist’. We are often told not to condemn all Islam because ‘These people (the terrorists) hold extreme Islamist views’ and are not representative of the majority. This is both true and untrue. It is true because the majority of muslims, christians and jews, the so-called ‘moderates’ do not wish to act out their historical narrative but they do wish to preserve it and believe in it. (Or, worse perhaps, to tolerate it and not believe in it.) As Lash says, ‘There is another hard and bitter lesson to be learned from history: how good people can be accessory to evil by sharing the belief system of the perpetrators. Belief implicates those who belief, and it implicates them absolutely.’

Over the years I have been castigated when ranting about Christianity for the blaming the whole caboodle for the sins of a few (million). Vicars are well-intentioned, I’m told, and Christian values are love and peace. Yeah right. Abuse of little boys and girls is something to do with sexual abstinence, I’m told, and nothing to do with telling our children that they will suffer eternal damnation in hell if they sin against the superman or find their gods in nature or in themselves.

David Cameron, a banker’s testicle in looks and brain, exhorts the country to remember it is Christian with Christian values. What shall we do? Set a pagan mob upon him, to strip and kill him? Or hang, draw and quarter him and leave his head on a pike as a warning to others of his ilk? Sadly no, it wouldn’t be nice and it’d set a terrible example. I know, let us have discourse and intelligently, unbiasedly, examine the matter. Let us look at the evidence, let us experience it.

No? Oh well. Happy christianmass to all who sail in her.


John Lamb Lash: NOT IN HIS IMAGE: gnostic vision, sacred ecology and the future of belief.
Chelsea green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont.

EPISODE 32: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR DOES AN UNSATISFACTORY DANCE ON THE GRAVE OF FATHER PETER ORR SJ AND FAILS YET AGAIN TO SINGLE-HANDEDLY DESTROY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

Welcome to my blog which hopes to take advantage of your inattention to slip in a bit of uncharitable reminiscence. Should it turn out, by one of those miraculous co-incidences that fate is so partial to, that you do read on and you become offended by any inference that I think that catholicism is in itself child abuse then marvellous.

One of my meaner goals of my life has been to witness the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. And in this I have been fortunate to some extent, especially when I cast my eyes towards Ireland - which I rarely do because Ireland and the Irish annoy me and always have done.( I am of Irish stock myself so that probably acts as some defence a charge of racism and really it is the English indulgence in Irish stereotyping, ‘oh the plucky witty guiness swilling leprechauns from the emerald isle to be sure to be sure’  that particularly bugs me.) Of course there is a long way to go before the Pope is popped and the riches of the church redistributed among the non-catholic poor. But a man can hope.

I have the Roman Catholics  in mind today because I want to tell you about how much I hated Father Peter Orr SJ who died a few weeks ago in his 80s. I haven’t seen this man for 41 years and it was quite a shock to suddenly see his face in the obituary coloumn of Jesuit magazine that an old friend sent me. Having held Father Orr’s name in my mind for so long as the archetypal jesuit abuser, I expected, I think, that a flood of memories would come back on confronting his image and discovering (as I’d assumed) that he was dead. This has not been the case. Instead I’m trying hard to reconstruct that period in my life to see why his name has been so firmly etched in my mind. Sadly, one person I could ask, the friend who sent me the obbituary, hates thinking about those days so much that he won’t even meet me outside email world.

I must have started at Wimbledon College Grammar School in September 1963, three months before my 10^th birthday. I’d been to a catholic primary near Guildford where I’d been caned, more than once by the headmaster, Father Peter(?) Freed, who really was a shit. I can see him now, tall, youngish, prematurely balding. On one occasion I’d been accussed of harassing two girls from a nearby school. It was absolutely a case of mistaken identity but I wasn’t believed. The injustice of it all struck deep and destroyed my trust in authority. I think it disturbed me also because after that I noticed a capacity in myself to bully the weak and that shamed me.

For some reason I was a very popular boy at grammar school and was nearly always voted class captain. I was tall and strong for my age and would captain the rugby team which I loved and run the athletic events which I hated. To my enormous chagrin I was crap at cricket and scared of the fast-bowlers. (Only when I was 14 did I get glasses and realize what the problem had been.) Right from the first day I was plunged into a world of unreasonable authoritarian violence. At any point of the day, it seemed, a master or priest could find a reason to smack you with a plimsol or a ruler, hit you on the hands or bum with a ferula or mock you mercilessly in front of your peers. If you ever spoke back or questioned anything you were told you were cheeky or disruptive and punished with detention or more whacks with the ferula. In my first year there, the sixth form prefects were also allowed to cane you or make you do tasks for them. I was lucky that I was sort of adopted by one of the prefects who looked after me and protected me from his classmates.

The first class I was in was called Figures 1. After that came Rudiments, Lower grammar, Grammar,Syntax, Upper Syntax. We learned Latin, Greek, French, physics, chemistry, maths, english, history and art. And of course Religious Doctrine. We were given daily catechism tests.

Q: Who made you?

A: God made me.

Q: Why did god make you?

A. Um…

SMACK!

Father Colliston gave us our sex education classes. His general refrain in life was ‘it’s a mystery’, which at the time seemed an unsatisfactory explanation for much but now covers just about everything. His most memorable teaching on sex was that it was a mortal sin to wake-up in the morning with an erection. This was even worse, he told successive classes of 14 year old boys, than having impure thoughts becaused it showed lust was deep within you. A mortal sin is an offence so severe that should you die without having confessed the sin you will go to hell. Hell! And believe me the jesuits knew about hell and they dished it out whenever they could.

Father Marsden was the french teacher. Why don’t I speak french? Because every time I opened my mouth he either mocked me or punished me.

George McParland (?) was the P.E. teacher. Friendly bloke. Still whack you in passing for a laugh. He used to make fun of my name and my face. Said I looked like a squirrel. As soon as I was old enough I grew a beard because I believed there was something wrong with my cheekbone structure, because of him.

Father Murphy came later on. He was young. Strangely, the year he taught physics I came top whereas the rest of the time I failed. It was on the rugby field he began to pick on me. I was 15 then, six foot, eleven stone, long hair, attitude. The school had employed a proper rugby player who played with Esher to train us. Because I was the biggest and the best they began to target me with Mr Barron (?) always grabbing the ball and running straight at me to see whether I flinched or not. In Rugby if you do backoff you end up getting hurt so time after time I’d have to tackle this fifteen stone metal-boned scrum-half. The consequence was that the frustration and anger would build up within me and I’d lash out during games. In one match against another school I got sent off for kicking a lad in the head in a rage and was banned from playing away matches. Then I got sent off again and was banned altogether and expelled. This was my second expulsion from Wimbledon and came just a few months after them having accepted me back after the first expulsion which had been something to do with Father Orr.

But quite what, I don’t recall. I wish I could. I have a few memories and a few dates. My mother liked Fr Orr, but she liked most priests. He even came to the house once or twice which would have been very unsual as he was a schoolteacher not a parish priest. In 1965/66 he took me to see the movie Doctor Zhivago in London. I was already then fairly obsessed by Russia because I was a vociferous reader and all the longest books in the library were russian novels. Maybe this was why he took me, I don’t know. I’m sure he never touched me or acted out of propriety although he was famous for coming into the showers after rugby and insisting the boys drop their towels and showed them their knees. ‘Show me your knees, boy.’ I think I was aware I had some sort of power over him and this wasn’t normal behaviour. In July 1967 the Upper Sixth, the 17 year olds, went on a school-trip by train to Moscow with Father Orr in charge. Although I was 14, I was allowed to go and was the only one there under 17. Again, nothing untoward happened with the priest. Then in March 1968, a few months before my O Levels, I was expelled after loosing my temper in the classroom and telling Father Orr to fuck off and that if he came anywhere near me I’d hit him. I’ve truly no idea how it came to that.

My partner fears that my delving into this could cause repercussions but that’s in part because she hears what I say rather than reads what I write. There won’t be because no-one reads this anyway and even if they should there’s nothing incendiary here; I only wish there was because these people shouldn’t have pissed me off in the first place.  I don’t fear for my own psyche either because I am already aware of how much my personal identities are wrapped up in these formative yearsand believe any unwrapping, or recogition of how this happened, can only be a gain. (I hope.)

EPISODE 31: IN WHICH JAIDEVA SINGH IS LAUDED

Welcome to my blog which hopes to attenuate a rather dull week by entertaining me with jewels from the Shaivite texts as delivered by the highly laudable (can you be lowly lauded?) Jaideva Singh. The titles of his books on their own make me drool.

Siva Sutras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity

Spanda-Karikas: The Divine Creative Pulsation

 Vijnanabhairava or Divine Consciousness: A Treasury of 112 Types of Yoga

Pratyabhijnahrdayam: The Secret of Self-recognition

The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment.

A Trident of Wisdom: The Secret of Tantric Mysticism: Translation of Paratriskia-Vivarana  

Thakur Jaideva Singh (1893–1986) was a renowned musicologist, connoisseur of classical music and a great scholar of Indian Philosophy and Kashmir Saivism. He was a versatile genius and a rare combination of philosopher, Sanskritist and musicologist. He was a lecturer of Philosophy and English in the D.A.V.College, Kanpur. In 1945, he was appointed Principal of Yuvarajadutta College, Lakshmipur–Khiri. As the Chief Producer in All India Radio (1956-1962) he contributed a great deal to the uplift of classical music. He was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1974 as a mark of recognition of his outstanding scholarship and was awarded honorary D.Litt. Degrees by the Banaras Hindu University and Kanpur University. Thakur Jaiyadeva Singh wrote many books, important among which are Kabir Vanmay in three volumes (editing and commentary), and English translations of Pratyabhijnahridaya, Buddhist Concept of Nirvana, A Brief History of Indian Music, Vigyanabhairava and Shiva Sutra. The last six years of his life were spent working on ‘The Secrets of Tantric Mysticism’ by Abhinavagupta. His shaivite guru and teacher was Laksman joo.

For a long while I wondered if the poetry and the sounds of the translations of these works were inherent in the work or the contribution of the translator. Having now discovered Jaideva’s pedigree, I suspect his contribution is immense. It has been said ‘the discussion of shaivism always brings joy’ (Muktananda) so in time when the mundane world’s glitter is being tarnished by talk of austerity and suffering (which, not let us forget, has always been there for the majority) let us take a walk in Shiva’s garden with Jaideva Singh. For this we will need shiva drishti, the outlook of shiva. And this is?

Verse 65 (Dharana 42) of the aforementioned Yoga of Wonder and Astonishement, or the Vijnanabhairava, recommends this meditation as a hint:

Sarvam jagat svadeham va svanandabharitam smaret

Yugapat svamrtenaiva paranandamayo bhavet

The yogi should contemplate the entire universe or his own body simultaneously in its totality as filled with his (essential spiritual bliss). Then though his own ambrosia-like bliss, he will become identified with supreme bliss. Then through his own ambrosia-like bliss, he will become identified with the supreme bliss.

There’s a lot of bliss in shaivism. They are an enthusiastic lot these primordiasl. You would want to perform to them.

Kuhanena prayogena sadya eva mrgeksane

Samudeti mahanando yena tattvam prakasate

O gazelle-eyed one, by the employment of magic, supreme delight arises (in the heart of the spectator) instantaneously. (In this condition of mind), Reality manifests itself.

This is dharana (meditation) 43. The explanation that follows is: When a spectator beholds some wonderful magical performance, his ordinary normal consciousness is raised to a plane where there is no distinction between subject and object, where it is freed from all thought-constructs and is filled with reverential awe, with mute wonder and ineffable joy. At that plane of consciousness is revealed the essential nature of Bhairava. This is only one example. When by contemplating on any scene – vast, awe-inspiring, deeply moving, the mind is thrown into ecstasy and mute wonder, it passes into nirvikalpa (thought-free) state, then that is the moment when suddenly and instantaneously

Supreme Reality reveals itself.

It’s a subtle business translating from Sanskrit, especially the sutras, because there is so much double and triple meaning. This same dharana can read; ‘O gazelled-eye one, by tickling the armpit, there occurs instantaneously great joy. If one contemplates over the essential nature of joy , Reality manifests itself.

I remembered this book, Vijnanabhairva, last week after writing about Avatar being ‘about the scenery’  because many of the drills are done outside, particularly the ‘feel-it’ exercises which I suppose I’m not allowed to tell you about because of copyright reasons. Eldon M Braun in his avatarlite ‘The Source Course,’ refers to ‘grokking’ an object. This word comes from Robert Heinlein’s book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’.  

 ‘Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.’ 

What I mean is more to do with direct apprehension than intellectual understanding.  Palmer calls it ‘extended feeling’. We don’t necessarily understand our own bodies but we inhabit them so thoroughly and identify with them so completely we are hard pushed not to think we are them. I’m not a good actor but I imagine if I had to play the role of a stone, or a tree, or a bird, or a person or a sky, I’d imagine inhabiting the form, the body, first and feel my way in like that.

I struggled and fretted my way through these feeling drills until one day I began to notice I was getting somewhere in that I knew that if I wanted I could switch into this other mode in which I’d somehow be both more present and less involved. The world around me would seem more like a painted picture than a solid reality. It isn’t that I could then vouch for the following sutra but I began to have an inkling of the actual experience of something I had long contemplated:

Verse 100: Dharana 77. The same self characterized by consciousness is present in all the bodies (forms); there is no difference in it anywhere. Therefore, a person realizing that everything (in essence) is the same (consciousness) triumphantly rises above transmigratory existence.

More to the point, I also realised that this ‘feeling’ mode could calm my mind and, if I let in, bring me into the present. It is similar, maybe, to a glass of wine or a joint after work in that there is a shift of perspective, a crossing of a threshold, and you sort of push the world picture a little bit away from you so that you can focus better. I implied in my last piece that I preferred this sort of open-eyed meditation as opposed to eyes shut contemplating inwards. Of course they are both part of the same spectrum or continuum so preference doesn’t really come into it. What I’d forgotten was the outdoorsness of many of the tantric dharanas in the Bhairava, many of which are concerned with empty space and boundlessness. As I have already used up my words for the week I will leave you with some delectable dharanas. Next week I’ll write about dead catholic priests and writing. See you then. Be happy.

A yogi should cast his eyes in the empty space inside a jar or any other object leaving aside the enclosing partitions. His mind will in an instant get absorbed in the empty space (inside the jar). When his mind is absorbed in that empty space, he should imagine that his mind is absorbed in a total void. He will then realise his identification with the supreme.

If one making himself thoroughly immobile beholds the pure (cloudless) sky with fixed eyes, at that very moment, O goddess, he will acquire the nature of Bhairava (pure consciousness)

In the same way, at completely dark night in the dark fortnight, by contemplating for long over the terrible circumambient darkness, the yogi will attain the nature of Bhairava.

The last meditation i'll mention is for my 18 month old grandson Ralph who hates getting out of the swing.

O goddess, owing to the swinging of the body of a person seated on a moving vehicle or owing to self-caused swinging of his body slowly, his mental state becomes calmed, then he attains divyaugha (spiritual insight) and enjoys the bliss of supernal consciousness.