Journey XI – The Retreat

The Retreat came upon us suddenly, although she’d been preparing me for it for a while. We came to a curve in the path and suddenly there it was, looking something like a Highland castle converted into a school or a hospital, or an asylum – a mix of ancient stone turrets and battlements and Victorian sash windows and gutters. It was raining hard again. Autumn was moving in fast and Miranda would have to leave me here before the winter. She didn’t know exactly what would happen but she was optimistic. She didn’t expect to see me again. That’s how it is in the afterlife – people and places are very rarely encountered a second time – though sometimes, in a future life, people recognise each other at a party, in the street, and can’t think where from. But not Miranda – she said she wasn’t going back, ever.

The last few weeks, I suppose it was, had been blissful for us. After that last encounter it was like we were free at last. Maybe more so for me – I didn’t know what was coming. I did notice that every time we came across signs of recent human activity again she was distant and preoccupied for a while, but then she’d perk up quickly and be even more lively and sexy than ever. The land was a green and rolling and full of life and the road was broad and easy to follow. We were relaxed and cheerful and it seemed like she might choose never to say goodbye. What was more, there were moments when she almost seemed to be a normal size. I began to think there might be a future for us somehow. I kept trying to bring up the subject of her finding somewhere, maybe somewhere she could settle, be happy maybe, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t belong anywhere she said, and she never would.

It was late summer, an Indian summer almost and we’d not had the tent out for quite a while – it had been too hot. We just slept under the sky and marvelled at the lack of stars and moon (and yet there was that clear silvery moonlight). There were late summer storms too, which drenched us and made us laugh and dance. Her silk wrap became completely transparent and she looked at me challengingly, biting her lip.
Our feelings for each other were getting irrepressible. We watched each other intently. She seemed to be waiting for something, but what could I do? I didn’t even like to touch her because I was afraid I’d damage her.

I needn’t have worried. One night we were both lying out on our bedding. It had been raining heavily and everything was steaming. I just had a cloth over my hips, but it was clinging to me. Her sarong was clinging too and I could see every curve of her. Neither of us could sleep. She got up and came over to me. ‘Turn on your back’ she said softly. I did and she stepped onto my arm, climbed onto my belly and lay down on her side facing me, looking at me. She seemed unsure what to do next. I pulled some of my clothes over to put under my head so I could look at her properly.
‘You’re afraid to touch me, aren’t you?’
‘You said...’
‘Shhh...’ she said ‘It’s ok. I trust you. I’m not that fragile. Give me your hand.’ and she sat cross legged against the palm of my hand, and let the silk fall down around her waist. I tried not to look too obviously at her sweet pointy breasts but it was hard, in every sense. It was very hard.
‘You can look’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t mind. You’ve been looking at me all this time. Do you think I’m not flattered?’ and she settled down lower against my hand, and I could feel the silk ride up and expose her cool bottom on my belly. ‘I’ve been looking at you’ she said, mock coyly. ‘You’re a very handsome young man you know’ and she leant forward and lay there, looking with curiosity at the curved blond hairs above my navel. ‘Your skin is so soft. Perfect skin’ she said, a little breathlessly, then paused. ‘You look worried’ she said and propped herself up to look into my eyes, still stroking my skin with her hands, still breathing deeply. ‘I do understand’ she said.
I was in agony, trying to hold myself in. Nothing could possibly happen between us. Why was she doing this to me?
‘I do understand’ she said again, sitting up. ‘I know what you want, and it’s not possible, obviously. But there are other things. I’ve thought about this a lot, as you can imagine.’
‘Me too’ I say, almost inaudibly, croaking slightly.
‘I know, and I didn’t expect this to happen – you know that. All I know is we must have each other, somehow.’ And with that she got up, turned and walked toward my hand. ‘Move your hand’ she said.
I felt reluctant and ashamed, but I couldn’t refuse. I put my hand on my thigh and she looked at my cock there, like a stranded manatee under a tarpaulin beside her diminutive figure. She walked down toward it and peeled the cloth back, knelt down and touched the swollen purple knob delicately with her hand and I groaned. She turned and grinned at me.
‘I’ve seen this before you know’ she said, and I gestured silently (for I couldn’t speak) that of course, she must have seen many men’s... ‘No, I mean I’ve seen yours, like this’ pointing at mine, ‘every day actually. I did my best not to watch...’
I’d guessed this but I’d been suppressing the knowledge. Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed me, but also pride, actually – there was no hiding it. She knew everything about my daily habits (although thank whoever we didn’t need to crap in the afterlife.) She’d been there when I’d got myself off, every day, sometimes more often than that, sometimes several times a day. She’d seen the expression on my face, heard the noises I made when I came, and yet here she was. She smiled wickedly as the news sank in.
‘So...’ she resumed, standing up, posing a little, making her breasts look extra perky. ‘It’s not very fair is it?’ she said, pausing for dramatic effect ‘Would you like to watch me?’

I won’t go into the details. She’s gone now, my gorgeous nymph, and I am here. This is the next part of the journey and I have to accept it, alone.
They’ve given me quite a big high-ceilinged room – I think it used to be someone’s study. Two of the walls are lined with dark wooden bookshelves, but most of the books are gone. The ones that are left look like the ones nobody would ever want to consult ever again. The whole room has a long-unused smell to it. Little dust has settled because no one has kicked any up recently. The walls are painted off white and I have a desk, a single bed with a shiny green quilt and a faded green candlewick bedspread on it, and there’s a small cupboard. It’s all a bit like the stuff my grandparents had. There’s also a lot of metal chairs stacked up, a huge easel and a big old brown leather arm chair by the enormous floor-to-ceiling bay window. They tell me they’ll find homes for some of the excess clutter soon. The spiders seem friendly enough.
Autumn is here. It’s cold. I wish she was here. I feel like a patient but I don’t know what I’m sick with.

Those last days together play in my head incessantly. After that first time everything was a bit awkward for me, not to mention weird but she seemed relaxed enough about it and although I never really got comfortable with the situation I accepted her lead. She told me a lot about women and sex and so on. I think, although of course nothing much physical could ever happen between us, in a way, that was a good thing. It made me think about it, and ask questions, and it made it not such a big deal. We watched each other all the time, played little games. It was fun. It had never really occurred to me before that sex might be fun. I guess I’m still technically a virgin but I don’t feel like one.
I look around the room, wondering if anyone will watch me having a wank here, some musty academic gnome perhaps. I don’t care.

It wasn't such a bad place. That first morning after I arrived I went down to breakfast and met some of the other residents seated along the trestle tables that occupied only a corner of the huge old dining hall. They seemed friendly enough, but not very talkative. That was ok, I didn’t feel like talking either. I sat for a while before I realised the food was on a counter at the other end of the room. I went and got some porridge with spiced stewed fruit. It was the first real food I'd had in what seemed like years and exactly what I needed. After I’d eaten most of two bowls I leant back on the bench and looked around. The others were mostly sitting eating quietly. People left, others arrived later, all had the same sort of hooded gowns on, although the colour of the material varied. Mine was a faded grey mauve felt, and was obviously not new but it kept the draughts out. I looked at the faces of the others along the table. Some had their hoods up. There were both men and women but I was relieved to see that everyone seemed pretty sexless. I didn’t want to think about anyone that way for a long time. No one said anything to me except when one of the staff (I guessed she was) came over to ask if I’d go up to see Theodore to sort out my duties when I’d had enough to eat. She gave me directions.
I sat for a while anyway. I had very little clear idea what I was here for, except that Miranda had told me that this was the next settlement on the route and I should take advantage of their hospitality for a while, at least until next spring when I could move on. There was no coffee so I sat with my warm fruit milk for a while, trying not to think about her, feeling cold and empty, like a cast-off skin where the living animal has gone elsewhere.

Theodore seemed a nice enough sort of chap, a professor at some American university he said he'd been. He made vague perfunctory noises about settling in and getting to know the ropes and tossed me a list of jobs that needed doing, asking what I fancied having a go at. I wasn’t feeling very motivated and he clearly wasn’t that interested in me. His room was thick with books and papers and various other bits and pieces. I never did find out what he did but he clearly wanted to get back to it. I didn’t want to think about work and I suppose I wanted someone else to make the decision for me so I stood there as he looked at his desk and muttered. I tried to look like I gave a toss but it was a feeble pretence. Finally, I think he got fed up with me dithering and said go and see Jim and he gave me directions, the only parts of which I remembered was ‘down the stairs’ and ‘through the kitchens’.

Asking around, it turned out you had to go through the kitchens, which were in the basement, to get out to the gardens, which was where Jim was in charge. Gardening. Great. Not at all what I had in mind, but I couldn’t be bothered to complain. Instead, I took my time finding my way around. The kitchen was down some stairs from the dining hall, and the dining hall, I knew, was off the central quadrangle – a broad square of cobbles with the entrance on one side, and some very ancient looking trees set into it. Everything was grey and wet and hushed. The trees were beginning to lose their leaves. Few people were moving about as I found my way – I had no idea how many lived here. Maybe it was me, but there was a definite air of sadness about the place, or perhaps not quite sadness, but something else that made people slow and silent and distant. Maybe they had all recently lost the loves of their lives too, or maybe it was the time of year.
The kitchen was livelier, and certainly hotter, but dark and wide with a low ceiling, and a very palpable sense of it carrying the rest of the building on its fat, stone pillars. Still no one said anything much. I asked the way to the gardens and someone who was cutting up vegetables pointed with his knife to a large doorway at the far end of the room where I could see cool daylight leaking in around a corner. I went through and found myself in a wide chamber with huge stone sinks, and various gardening tools leaning up against the walls. Dark empty doorways lead off into storerooms on either side but it was completely open to the outside ahead and I could see greenery beyond.

I walked around the garden, deliberately not asking about Jim immediately so I could take my time and look around. It felt good to look at the trees and feel the misty rain fall on my face again. The garden appeared to be laid out with long rectangular borders with grass paths in between and a high buttressed wall all around. Many of the borders were freshly turned over and just bare earth, but in places there were rows of sprouts, cabbages, leeks and the straggling remains of bean vines still hanging onto their canes, and a whole range of smaller herbs and salads in rectangular patches. The walls all had trees trained up against them – strapped onto ropes in disturbingly strict horticultural bondage. All the fruit had been collected. No windfalls lay about. Occasionally I would come across a gardener, hood down, obscured by a waterproof cape, kneeling on a mat, doing something in the dirt or lugging something about. The rain was not hard but it had made the soil sticky and it stained everything black. The gardeners ignored me or nodded expressionlessly. My dad would have loved it. He’d have been in his element.
Further on I discovered this was just the upper terrace, and wide stone steps lead down to at least two more levels of walled gardens with fields and sheds with goats and ducks and probably all sorts of other things. I decided it was time to find Jim and ask him what he wanted of me.

Jim, I have to say, I took to immediately. He was where they said he’d be, with the goats, showing someone how to arrange their bedding. ‘Jim?’ I said, and he turned, hugging a mass of hay and smiled at me. ‘Gabriel’ he said, dropping the hay and striding forward in the mud and the manure to shake my hand. ‘Good to see you’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just let me get Annie started here and I’ll be with you’ and he turned and carried on with that as I waited. I couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing shorts and sandals under his cape.

I’m not sure anyone else really liked Jim. He was always cheerful and helpful and full of energy, and he didn’t often wear the gown, because it would only get wet and muddy and need washing all the time. ‘Nobody’s forcing them to wear the bloody things’ he told me as we headed for shelter. ‘People are strange’ he said once we get to his “office” – a shed among the dung heaps and wheel barrows.
‘Stunning bloody weather hey?’ he added, grinning at me.
I nodded and shrugged, not sure if he thought stunning was good or bad.
‘Good weather for ducks’ he went on, ‘although, actually if you take a look, the ducks are hiding in their shed, under cover. Sensible creatures.’
Jim seemed to have got the idea from somewhere that I knew something about gardening. I didn’t like to disappoint him. His passion was food he said. His life was food and how to grow it. He talked about everything growing in the garden in terms of how much food it could provide, but this was no bland commodity he was talking about. When he said “food” you could almost feel it nourishing you. He looked at the huge heads of cabbages and sacks of spuds as raw sustenance – for work to be sure, but also for philosophy, music, art, love (‘although there’s precious little of that around here’ he confided in me, stagily.) and of course, for growing more food. But he wasn’t interested in mere bulk. He showed me the modest greenhouse where he had managed to get ginger and lemon grass to grow. The ripe vapour of tomato, coriander and basil was pleasantly stupefying. Lemon trees stood in pots, ready to be brought under cover for the winter, and fig trees, trained against the walls, were already screened off so the frost wouldn’t interrupt their setting fruit.
Over the weeks that followed I was introduced to compost heaps and beehives, carp ponds and wells, dovecots and vegetable clamps, wild rocket and good-king-henry.
‘So animals do breed here’ I said to him one morning, looking at a clutch of jostling, newly hatched chicks. He just smiled at me like I was a little dim.
‘Well there always seem to be more of them here when we need them’ he said cryptically.

Jim’s main ally in all this (although her attitude to the system was more amused aside than out-and-out ribaldry) was Jo, who ran the kitchen. Jim and Jo conspired together on the menus and crop rotations well into the night, aware that most of the residents would have been equally happy with boiled veg and bread but determined to spring culinary excellence on them anyway. The delight of the few that appreciated their efforts was enough, and really, they didn’t care if no one but they enjoyed it. It was what they did. Over the three and a half years I was there I managed to split my work between the kitchen and the gardens, so I got the best of both worlds, and I saw the whole process from soil to groceries to plate to belly to fertiliser and back to soil. All that winter I was out in the gardens, digging, repairing, mulching and harvesting or in the kitchen if the weather was rough. And Jim had been right. I did have a feel for this stuff. I guessed it must have been watching my dad in the garden all that time. Something must have stuck.

It did take me quite a time to accept the situation however. For a while after I arrived I spent all my time in my room, looking out of the window, or wandering around wondering where everybody was. It was not a big place, with just two stories of bed and bathrooms on two sides of the courtyard, plus the kitchens below and attics above, but the corridors were badly lit, took odd turns, went up and down small staircases, and were just generally very hard to work out. In short I kept getting lost and ending up in all sorts of dusty corners, looking out at unexpected views. I very rarely saw anyone up there, and then only fleetingly. Sometimes it seemed the place was haunted. It was certainly very creepy. At night I avoided leaving my room if possible even though the tall dark shelves and piles of random furniture (which were never taken away) cast odd shadows and made the room feel strangely occupied. I never felt quite alone at night, but I got used to that. Outside my door was much worse. The sounds of things moving or being moved about in the corridor in the small hours kept me awake for several nights at the beginning. I asked, but no one seemed to know what had been going on, and they changed the subject.
Daytimes in my room though were a different matter. I took my food up there and spent a lot of time, as I say, looking out of the window which had a phenomenal view out over the gardens to the land beyond which was nothing but trees as far as the eye could see – an endless rolling forest landscape.
Back in life, when I was in the sixth form and had some free afternoons, mum took me into work a few times to see some of the old folks homes she had dealings with, to meet the matrons, and see if maybe care work might interest me. Actually, it had nothing to do with what I was interested in. It was about finding some way I could earn my keep. The other people at school were surprised that I didn’t run a mile when I told them what went on there – the shit and the dementia and the dribbling, but it interested me, the way people end up, what happens to them. In particular it was the tranquility of the place, the dim routine, the gentle squalor, life breaking down and letting go. I particularly remember one afternoon in the sun room about tea time, with the geraniums half dead on the windowsill there, and the budgie chirruping to itself, and the old ladies (there weren’t any old gents) dozing in their chairs, and it was warm and there was vaguely unpleasant but somehow comforting smell of beef stew, toiletries and just a hint of excrement, and I sat in one of the chairs, with its floral print and wooden legs and began to drift off, and I remember thinking that it was actually quite nice here, and you could drift off and fade into the upholstery and it would be an ok way to go.
That’s what it felt like in my room those first few weeks – peaceful and dull, warm in the sunshine (but chilly at night), and just looking out the window, paying occasional attention to a bird in the trees below, or having something to eat. Actually it was better because I had no need to get up to go to the toilet, or to eat, for that matter. I could just sit there, and not be missed, fade away, with just the ghosts of my predecessors for company at night. I sat in the stiff old leather armchair and drifted. Sometimes I went for a little stroll in the garden and Jim tried to tempt me with chores and I fiddled about obligingly in the dirt in a half-hearted sort of way until I got cold or wet or bored and I went inside again.

I did think about Miranda over this time though, up in my room especially, of an evening, because nothing much else happened after dark, after dinner, and I made up fantasies and stories about her, and us, together somehow, which always ended up with me finishing myself off in the way I knew she would have approved. She wasn’t just a sexual fantasy though. During those last few weeks we’d talked about so many things – we got on so well I thought, and I began to think about how we’d be together, permanently. I knew that wasn’t possible, but I dreamed of us living together, travelling together, doing the normal things couples do. I had to ask her what she thought of that and her only concern was that she’d have been fifteen years older than me. I said I didn’t care about that and she said she didn’t see why not then, and smiled happily at me. That was when I knew I loved her and I suspected she might feel something similar about me, but I never told her. I wish I had. Maybe things could have been different somehow.
Now, to be honest, I’m not even sure she wasn’t just a hallucination all along. Now, in the cold light of day (a phrase that seems especially – what was the word she used? – apposite, in this place) I find I can’t quite believe she even existed. I realised this forcibly the other day when I discovered I wasn’t going to tell anyone about her (even if anyone here had been prepared to listen) because I knew how bizarre the story would sound. And also how predictable – a young man’s sexual fantasy, a young man who had been alone in the wilderness for who knew how long, and was close to losing it, to getting completely lost. (For hadn’t she conveniently appeared at just the moment when I was most in danger?) I could see their expressions, part sympathy, part knowing smirk, part bafflement at the fact that she was the size she was. (What the hell did that mean? Was this a fixation on my sister’s Sindy dolls?) And then I look at the rucksack, bent and stale in the cupboard, and it does have little transparent ‘windows’ in it. It occurs to me that they might be there so the traveller can see what’s inside. It doesn’t seem a very plausible explanation until you consider the alternative. Maybe they’re just for decoration.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Voyage XVII – Confrontation

Lately I’ve managed to spend quite a lot of time with Lucy and the others but I don’t seem to be able to shake Ray off even so. Evenings, if I go to the bar at all, I get hauled over to their table. I politely (almost inaudibly) decline but they won’t have it. They cajole and jolly me along, get my drinks ready for me, play only the games I can tolerate, share their disgruntled opinions on everything – the food, the other travellers (some of whom appear to be foreign), the guides, the weather. But if this sounds cosy, it’s really not. The whole performance carries such an undercurrent of resentment, exasperation and what I can only call contempt – on their part, not mine, that I just sit, tense and bewildered through the whole performance, wondering what they can possibly want from me, and how long it will be before I can politely scarper.

Today Harry is snarling sarcastically about how long it takes him to get to work, what with the traffic these days (as if it’s something he’s going to have to do again soon.) He goes on to complain about people driving too slowly, so he has to keep using his brakes and that’s more wear and tear. I know he speeds everywhere because he’s told us, so that sounds like a recipe for disaster.
‘What I really hate is these berks stopping suddenly right under your fucking nose. I feel like getting out and taking my wheel wrench to their windscreen – see how they feel about picking the glass out of their stupid faces. If they don’t know how to drive they should just stay off the fucking highway. And another thing...’ I sit there, watching him. I look at Sol, who appears to be entertained by all this. I glance at Liz, who’s trying to look busy. Harry seems to like talking about how stupid other drivers are. It’s his favourite topic. I can see Liz doesn’t like it but he doesn’t care. Once before, he told us about how he ran someone off the road, literally, in his Range Rover and then went over to the driver, who was injured, sitting there at the wheel, and told him what a fucking wanker he was and how he deserved everything he got. Then he drove off and left him. Ray and Solly were laughing but I’m never sure if they laugh because they think it’s funny or because they’re scared of him. Sometimes I think they’re laughing at him, like the time Harry was complaining about how rude all the other drivers were – always blaring their horns and yelling and I’m thinking I’ve never noticed that but I don’t say anything and Ray and Solly seem to be trying not to laugh and Harry asks what’s wrong and everything goes quiet and Solly and Ray just look at each other, like they don’t know what to say and then Solly goes ‘Fucking wankers’ and Harry takes a moment and goes ‘Yeah, fucking wankers’ and they all carry on with the conversation like nothing’s happened.

They move on to talking about receptionists and shop assistants (not for the first time) and how sluggishly and sullenly they got served in various shops and restaurants back in the world. Brenda is with him all the way. They fume at all the stupid, fat and usually foreign checkout girls and waitresses they have had to deal with over the years. Brenda hates having to wait for anything at all it seems. What could possibly be worse? Why should she have to wait? They do it on purpose, the shop girls apparently, because they know she’s better than they are. They should get off their fat arses. Then there’s public transport and how much she hates having to wait for the bus. ‘I can’t think of nothing worse’ she says. Then there’s having to sit so close to other people, and their belongings. She makes it sound like they’re all carting their dead and  decomposing pets around with them in bin liners. She goes on to tell us in miniscule detail about the time her car was at the garage, having to sit in a crowded bus, her face near to the bottom of a black man in overalls after he’d stood up to let her sit down. She tells us word for word about the stand up row she had with him and the driver as if it was a great and moral victory, and how everyone on the bus looked at her afterwards with satisfaction and respect. I somehow doubt it. Sol gives us his analysis of the problem (not enough road building) and Harry adds his usual fascist two-penny-worth about human sewage and where they should all be sent. Ray sits and smiles, as usual.

Normally I listen but try not to get involved. I rearrange my hand, sip my drink or whatever. Anyway, I keep quiet. This evening though, I don’t know why, I say, quietly but clearly, ‘Brenda? Why does all this upset you so much?’
‘What?’
‘Having to wait for things. You seem incredibly angry.’
I don’t know what got into me. It just came out. I tried to say it conversationally, casually, but it must have been obvious to everyone how I really felt. I just felt really irritated with her. I was just sick of listening to her bitching about how things aren’t quite the way she likes them when there’s so much real misery in the world and she’s whinging about having to stand in a queue. She’s just so spoilt. And so’s Harry – complaining about people driving too slowly for him. I just had to say something. I’d tried to be tactful but there it was.
‘So I suppose you enjoy having to hang around, queuing for hours for every little thing Gabriel’ says Brenda angrily.
I consider my response carefully. It’s like how time is supposed to slow down when you’re in a car accident. You can watch everything happening. You can’t stop it, but you can study it.
‘I didn’t say I like it’ I say. ‘I just think sometimes, there’s no point getting upset about it. It’s just the way it is.’
You could cut the atmosphere with an ice pick. I sit and wait, studying my cards.
Finally Harry feels he has to say something. ‘Well Gabriel’ he says looking at me very intently, and smiling as you might to a very silly child. ‘Perhaps some of us haven’t got anything much to occupy ourselves with. Some of us, on the other hand, are extremely busy.’
‘Well I have a lot to do too...’ I say, quite reasonably I think. I feel oddly calm – in free fall. ‘I just think sometimes you can’t avoid having to wait. That’s all I’m saying. Brenda seemed upset about it. I’m just saying if I have to wait for something I take the opportunity to do some reading. Or do a bit of thinking.’ I look at Brenda, then at Harry, then back at my cards.
‘“Thinking”?’ he says eventually, laughing a little nervously I thought, like I’ve suggested he try defecating in Woolworth’s. ‘Thinking...’ he repeats vaguely, shaking his head, as if he’s heard of it somewhere but can’t remember exactly what it involved.
‘We don’t have time to think Gabriel’ says Brenda.
‘No’ I say, nodding, trying to look sympathetic. ‘No, I can see that.’
It occurs to me as I say it that I could be taken to be implying she’s not very bright. She’s not sure.
‘Boredom I’d call it. Nothing better to do. I...’
‘But I don’t get bored’ I insist, looking directly at her now. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’
‘What, art you mean?’ smirks Sol, contemptuously.
‘Yes, amongst other things’ I say, again reasonably but even as I do it I know –  it isn’t that I’m trying to be reasonable. No, I’m trying to wind them up but in such a way that any attack from their side will seem extreme and unprovoked. 
‘And you still reckon you’ll make money that way?’ says Ray.
‘I don’t think that’s the point’ I say, shrugging.
‘You don’t think that’s the point.’ He looks around at the others, as if I’ve just said something very comical.
‘What about when you get yourself a mortgage then, and a family?’ says Harry, leaning into my face and with some menace in his tone. ‘I worked bloody long hours to keep them...’
I watch him talk at me for a while. I’ve heard it all before – ‘Blablabla... sweat of my brow... blablabla.... fingers to the bone... all the hours God sends... blablabla...’
What does he want, a medal?
‘...with bloody little gratitude I can tell you.’
Liz is dragging feebly at his sleeve. He swipes at her and she ducks back. ‘You do your best for them and what do they do? Chuck it back in your face.’
I observe his boiled pork face engorge and splutter. I keep my mouth covered so his spit doesn’t land inside.
‘But you weren’t forced to have children were you?’ I say, all innocence. I don’t know where this came from. It just came out.
‘What? No. Course not. What are you on about?’
‘It’s just... You’re always going on about how having kids affected your life so badly. It just sounds like you didn’t really want them around, like they were forced on you. I mean surely you knew what it might involve?’
Liz and Brenda both look keen to intervene, to explain things to me, but Harry won’t let them. Ray and Solly, I note, stay well out of it.
‘What it involves...’ he begins, but doesn’t seem to have anything to add. Instead he rudely shushes the women again and goes back to telling us how hard he worked, as if I should admire him for that or be hugely grateful somehow.
‘But you chose to have children’ I insist. ‘Nobody forced you to work all those hours. You didn’t have to make all those sacrifices. It was your choice. You must have known what it would be like. I don’t see why you’re complaining.’
‘What I’m complaining about...’ He sits back heavily, very angry. ‘Will someone explain to him?’
‘I don’t think you understand what it takes to bring up a family young man’ said Brenda firmly.
‘Yes I do’ I say. ‘It’s bloody hard – I know that. I’m not even sure I'd want to do it myself.’
‘You selfish little shit’ shouts Liz suddenly, as if a devil as sprung up and is sitting smirking before her.
‘But you did want children’ I insist, leaning forward. ‘You chose that path. What did you expect? You can’t blame them for their own existence.’
‘What the fuck are you on about boy?’ shouts Harry. Everybody’s huffing and shifting about in their seats, ready to have a go. People at some of the other tables are looking uneasy.
I lean back and cross my arms, observing the consternation. His face is really dripping. He must have been heading for a heart attack when he died.
‘Answer me this’ I say, glaring back at him. ‘Why did you choose to have them? What did you want them for? What did you think they’d do for you exactly? Huh? Or did you even think about it at all? What exactly were you expecting from them?’
I come to a halt. I feel my heart going so fast, so hard and I’m hyperventilating a little. I hope they can’t tell. I collect myself. I press on. I know I’m talking too loud but I really don’t care.
‘So you have all these children and you act like you’re doing them a big favour and they should all be grateful to you and be nice quiet little miniature versions of yourselves and do as they’re told and make you proud. But we’re not your little toys. We’re not here to make you feel better about your life. We’re here to be us and you can’t fucking stop us. Don’t talk to me about selfishness’ and I push my chair back hard and stand over them. I hear the chair fall over. I ignore it and turn to go.
‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re on about’ shouts Liz at my back. ‘You think you’re better than us. You spit on our lives, on our families...’ and she turns and cries on Harry’s chest and he makes a big show of holding her tenderly.
Ray stands up and turns to me and says ‘I think you should leave son. Go see your... friends.’
And suddenly I get it, why they’ve wanted me around all this time. I look around at them, one by one, at their outraged incomprehension and I see – what? Parental disapproval, that’s what, after they’ve tried so hard. I’m just so ungrateful.
I calmly pick up my drink and head for my cabin. It’s late. And I feel bloody brilliant.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Joe XI – A levels

‘Tell me about school, and try and do it without saying “It was alright” or “I don’t know.” Go.’
‘I hated it. It was shit. How’s that?’
He looks impressed ‘Brief, to the point, certainly. What happened? Did you get into trouble a lot, or get bullied or what? I seem to remember, before you said not.’
I look about. I don’t want to talk about this shit. Can’t he tell?
He flicks through some papers, finds something, reads rapidly, moving his lips and gesticulating a little as if re-enacting our conversation. ‘Blah blah blah... invisibility. You relied on being inconspicuous apparently.’ He raises his eyebrows. I nod.
‘What were you avoiding?’
‘Attention.’
‘Obviously. Why?’
I want to say I don’t know but I stop myself just in time. Then I decide I really don’t know and just say so.
‘Did you think you might get into trouble?’
‘Not really. Mostly it just seemed less complicated that way.’
‘Dealing with people was complicated?’
‘Definitely.’
‘But you had friends.’
‘Sort of. There were a few I hung around with at breaks sometimes, but we weren’t close. Actually they were really irritating. I spent a lot of time on my own.’
‘So, why didn’t you go and make other friends?’
‘I don’t know... Shit, sorry.’
‘I’m going to install an “I don’t know” box if you’re not careful, except there’s no money here of course. Anyway, go on. Other friends?’
‘I just didn’t want to hang around them, make a nuisance of myself. That sounds pathetic doesn’t it.’
‘It didn’t occur to you that they might want to be friends with you?’
‘No. And I’m fairly sure they didn’t. Everybody was just in their groups already – they didn’t want me coming over and saying (I do a whining voice)“Can I be in your gang?” It would have sounded feeble anyway, like I thought they were so cool.’
‘But other kids do that all the time, though not usually in that voice. They go up and say “Can I join in?” or, you know, “Can I come along?” well, Kirsty did anyway.’
‘But she was a kid wasn’t she, and girls are different anyway.’
‘I don’t know. Little girls can be complete b... I don’t know whats.’
‘Well, maybe I was too proud.’
‘So you stayed with the losers because that way you didn’t have to risk rejection. Is that it?’
I think about this. Was I just too proud?
‘No, I really think the other groups didn’t want me around’ I decide finally. ‘I was a bit of a weirdo. It would have just been pointless humiliation, and actually, if I’d been in with the cool kids it would just have been complicated in a different way.’
‘How?’
‘I think they were quite, like show-offs, you know, joking around, being cheeky, taking the piss out of the girls and so on.’
‘You weren’t really like that I suppose.’
‘It would have been really hard work.’
‘Whereas with your loser friends you didn’t have to try at all. Wasn’t there anybody else you could hang around with?’
‘I can’t think of anyone in particular. We didn’t mix much with other classes, so that was it – weirdos or dudes – take your pick.’
‘Or girls presumably.’
‘There weren’t really any boy-girl friendships then.’
‘What age was this?’
‘Secondary school, up to about sixteen. It was better later, in the sixth form.’
‘How was that?’
‘Well I hung out with the people who’d been in the class above and they were kind of weird, but cool too – university types I suppose. Some of them went travelling – inter-railing and or went to a lot of concerts. Some of them were really clever. Some of them actually discussed chemistry in free periods...’
‘God how dreadful.’
‘I know...’

‘How was your school work?’
‘I don’t remember much about it actually. It all seemed a bit of a mess – I was always handing stuff in late, getting into trouble.’
‘And yet you were always near the top as I understand it – one of the brighter students.’
‘That’s not how it seemed at the time. It just all seemed like a huge mess.’
‘Did that worry you?’
‘I just didn’t think about it really. ‘
‘But it must have become a problem, with dead-lines and so on.’
‘I suppose it was always in the back of my mind. It just all looked like a horrible muddle, and then it got worse because I missed stuff or didn’t really understand and then we moved on to the next topic and I was just completely lost. I have no idea how I passed my O levels.’
‘But would you describe yourself as fairly relaxed about it?’
‘No, I just stayed away from it as much as I could. I think if I’d actually thought about all the stuff I was supposed to be doing I’d have had a breakdown or something. I had quite a lot of time off, feeling sick, headaches and stuff. Or in the sixth form I just went away.’
‘Where to?’
‘Over the Downs. I’d set out for college in the morning and just walk straight past the school and up onto the hills.’
‘And the teachers? What did they do?’
‘I don’t think they knew really. I mean, obviously they knew I wasn’t doing very well. They didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Did they ask?’
‘Ask what?’
‘Did they talk to you about why you were having trouble?’
‘Well, they did the whole “Pull your socks up or else” speech. Everybody was just fed up with me.’
He gets up and begins to pace about ‘You see this is what really pisses me off’ he says. ‘They can see you’re struggling, or something’s not right anyway and they know you’re bright, so if you’re not stupid they assume you can’t be bothered and the only strategy they have available is to give you a bollocking, like that’ll do the trick. It really gets my goat – I mean, it’s not the fifties any more – haven’t these people heard of educational psychology?’
‘But it’s not all that easy to talk to teenagers...’
‘What? Who the hell told you that?’
‘Er... well my mum, for a start...’
‘I bet she did. I bet she did.’ He’s really pacing now, double time. ‘Shit I can’t believe it’ he says. ‘Really makes me mad. So I suppose when you came to do your A levels that’s when it all fell apart because you couldn’t just muddle through any more, and I bet they still didn’t ask you what was going on, just told you to buck your ideas up.’
‘I don’t think I knew what was wrong either, to tell them I mean.’
He shakes his head frustratedly. ‘How long is it since this all happened?’ he says.
‘A year, eighteen months? It was before the end of the first year things started to go really wrong.’
‘You think you’ve changed much in that time? Apart from having died and so on of course.’
I shrug.
‘But we’re having this conversation now, and are you “hard” to talk to? Are we not having a conversation?’
‘Yes but...’
He leans over me, a hand on each arm of the chair. He looks intently into my face. ‘I could have helped you’ he says fiercely ‘and I’m not even a trained fucking shrink. Even I could have got you your passes. Shit!’ he says and bangs his fist down. He goes and resumes his seat. ‘I wish we had more time’ he says.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Voyage XVI – Fantasies

I go back to my cabin and get out my drawing things. It’s getting dark now but the lighting in here is really good – like one of those daylight bulbs you can get. I lean back and look at what I’ve been doing lately. The fact is they’re mostly of Lucy, but not from life obviously – from my imagination.
Back home, when I was about thirteen I suppose, I started making my own pornography. I just started one day when I didn’t know what to do next and I was doodling and the lines of a woman’s body just emerged from the pen like magic. I suppose I’d spent so much time looking at the magazines they’d just got printed on my brain. So, I never could get hold of enough real porn, and most of it was pretty dreary to be honest, so I started making my own.
I didn’t have a type – I drew redheads with freckles and olive skinned women with black hair, slender women and voluptuous women, mature women and teenage girls, shaved women and hairy women, women undressing, women masturbating, women together. After a while I didn’t draw anything much else, and I think I got quite good at it, considering I’d never actually seen a real live naked woman in my life (and certainly not an actual vagina) and still haven’t to be honest.
God knows what would have happened if mum had found any of it.

I’ve been thinking about what Joe said, about being gay. It’s funny but I never really thought about it before. Freud said that everyone naturally has homosexual tendencies (and other tendencies too). I never really wanted to put men in my drawings at all. I’m not really sure why. I tried once or twice but it felt sort of, I don’t know, sort of ugly. If I think of men having sex it just seems sort of clumsy and a bit disgusting to be honest. I don’t know where that idea comes from. I try to think of Joe like that, sexually I mean. He’s a nice enough looking bloke I suppose. If I was going to handle someone else’s penis I suppose his’d be as good as anyone’s. I just don’t really fancy it. I suppose I should be a bit more broad-minded, in a ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ sort of way but I think I’d have some sort of sense even without trying it, that I’d like it, but I don’t. Margaret Mead said that extreme heterosexuality is actually a sort of perversion. Anyway, I just like looking at women. I think they’re absolutely fantastic, and if that makes me a pervert, well, so be it.

Sometimes I spent almost all night in the Wendy house, looking at porn, thinking about women. It was really dark and a bit dingey in there, damp and dusty, with the ivy coming in and the spiders and such like, but it did feel very peaceful, especially if the rain was really battering down outside and the trees were whipping about on the railway embankment or the fog-horn down at the harbour was going. I usually went down there in just my dressing gown and wellies so I could cover up immediately if anyone came, and I kept the drawings and photos in a sketchpad so I could close that up quickly too. Nobody ever did. My mum used to wonder why I was exhausted in the morning. Sometimes I couldn’t get up in the morning at all.
I used to think about women I knew – the one who ran the pet shop for example – she was a little weird looking (quite a long nose and big googly eyes) but you could tell she would be a good shape under her clothes, and then there was Amelia’s friend Katrina. She was fucking amazing. Really tight jeans – you could see the outline of her vagina when she sat down. And then there were some of the girls at school – Camille especially, and then later on there was Gill of course. She was the best. I used to imagine coming across her while I was out walking on the Downs in the wind and rain – her in just a plastic mac and boots after she’d been out riding. I imagined seeing her sit down on the wet grass, open her coat, letting the rain wash over her pale breasts and belly (not caring if anyone was looking), watching her slip her knickers down over her boots and throw them aside and then begin to touch herself. Or else I imagined her walking up the hill ahead of me – seeing her bare arse under her coat and watching those two fleshy folds between her legs squeeze and slip together as she walked. I don’t know why but it was always cold and drizzling, or else snowing in these fantasies. I always liked the feel of the cold air on my skin and the wet grass. I don’t know why.

Of course the actual girls at school thought I was a joke. I don’t think I ever actually made an appearance in my own fantasies – that would have been just too ridiculous. I was just forced to watch them, but that was ok.

Actually though, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it was just about sex. I really wanted more than that. I suppose I’m a bit of a romantic too. Honestly, I really wanted to sit on a balcony by the sea with a girl and watch the sun go down and sip champagne or something, and pick flowers for her, and make her sloppy compilation tapes with people like Dusty Springfield and The Walker Brothers. I wanted to slow dance with her to Body Talk. I know, I know. It’s a ridiculous record. I can’t even remember who recorded it now, but every time I hear it I despair. I just wanted that, to do that – to hold onto her (whoever she was), moving together, lost in each other, oblivious, going round and round on the dance floor, breathing into her hair, my hands on her hips at the end of the evening, and her not embarrassed and wanting to get away but there with me, as relieved and amazed as I’d be. And when they turn the music off and the lights go on, to look shyly into each other’s eyes and hope that this was not all.
Jesus Christ I wanted that. I never asked any of them to dance, I admit. If they weren’t going to say yes in private they certainly weren’t going to say it in public.

Well anyway... I don’t know if any of the other blokes felt the same way – we never talked about it, but that was what I wanted – I wanted to be in love. I still do, more than anything in the world. I want a girl who will come to parties, and come for walks in the country, and most of all I want her to share my bed. I want someone to sleep with, and that’s not a euphemism. Ok, I admit I want her to be sitting there on the balcony watching the sunset with no knickers on, but I also want to bring her croissants and orange juice in the morning.
That’s what all this is really about. All that stuff Joe talks about – about careers and so on. I can’t tell him all this. Of course I’d love to earn a living doing something I like, and rent a nice room in Brighton or out in the country, go to university, maybe travel a bit. I’d love to do those things, for myself. But really, the main thing is, when I do those things, maybe I’ll meet her, and what’s more, maybe she’ll want to get to know me and I’ll have a proper relationship. I don’t feel very manly for admitting it, but that’s what I want.
And then we have the reality, as mum would have said.
I don’t know where all this comes from, this hope. Mostly my life has been fairly useless, but somewhere, part of me has always had this idea that, if only I could meet a girl and she got to know me properly, without all this shit about money and living with my parents in the way, that it would be alright, and I’d stand a chance.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Joe X – Dreams

Another day, another session, and he’s consulting some papers on his lap when I come in. He doesn’t look up but says ‘I got you a coffee. Two sugars, right?’
I sit down. ‘Thanks’ I say.
‘I want to pursue this question about your, er, putative career...’
I snort with derision. My “career” indeed. That’s a laugh.
‘Why do you find that funny?’
I shake my head and try to avoid saying ‘I don’t know’. I do know, it’s because it’s unimaginable, me, with a career. I have an image of all those people in suits or uniforms being terribly important and responsible and serious about life. I can’t imagine myself like that.
‘Ok’ he says, trying not to look exasperated, ‘what would you most like to have done, no, what would you most like to have changed about your life? Anything you like...’ He clicks his fingers ‘...different. What would it be?’
Again I sit and my mind goes all over the place. So many things, none of them very realistic...
‘Go on, a place of your own? A round the world air ticket?’
God, I think, yes, either of those. To get away, be myself somehow. I nod and he smiles, and I think he’s going to say ‘But you need to earn the money first’, which my mum would have said (she used to take great pleasure in “bringing me back to the real world” as she called it) but he doesn’t.
‘Alone or with someone else?’
I consider the people I know, go through them one by one. There’s nobody.
‘Maybe I could meet people when I’m out there’ I suggest.
‘Highly likely’ he says.
I have this image of a group of fairly cool but not too pretentious people, maybe about my own age, maybe more varied, male and female, hanging out in a bar, or just in someone’s room, and I feel completely relaxed with them, and we chat but I don’t feel I necessarily have to say anything. It’s just easy, and there’s a girl...
‘What are you thinking about?’ he says.
‘Oh, this fantasy I have, of a group of friends, a girlfriend...’
‘What are they like?’
‘I really don’t know. They’re just friendly, relaxed...’
‘Anyone you know?’
‘Not really.’
‘What about the girl? What’s she like?’
I feel a little inhibited at first, but then it occurs to me I wouldn’t mind him telling me about his boyfriend (maybe I should ask him some time) so I go on to talk about her, how she’s witty and funny and likes a lot of attention, and how we spend a lot of time in bed just cuddling and listening to music...’
‘And having sex?’
I smile sheepishly. ‘Lots of sex’ I say.
‘I should bloody well hope so’ he says, cheerfully.
I take a moment to enjoy the fantasy. He watches my face. He sees it turn from happy reverie to hopeless.
‘What happened there?’
‘It’s just... the money. I lived with my parents for fuck’s sake. What am I going to do?’
I see him think about how to put it. ‘I actually don’t know Gabriel...’ He sees me sag a bit ‘But hang on. That’s not the point. The point is there’s no point in thinking about work and savings and insurance and all that crap if you don’t know what you want it for. You’re putting the cart before the horse Gabriel. We don’t live to work Gabriel. Live in your dreams for a while. Work out what you want to do, feel it, see it as a possibility. Then you find your way...’
‘But that’s all I have done Joe. I’ve done nothing but dream, and it just doesn’t make it seem any more possible.’ I’m almost in tears again, lost.
‘But what you’ve said doesn’t seem very impossible – friends, a girlfriend, a place of your own, a trip abroad...’
‘But it does. I have to work.’
‘That’s the finding your way part. We can talk about all that another time. The take-home message for today is just that your hopes are not unrealistic. Really. Ok?’
‘Ok.’
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Journey X – The Temptation

Miranda tells me firmly that we must find me a place with other people that’s safe and comfortable and where they’ll take good care of me. Then I’ll be able to maybe find a new guide and move on. She gets up, looking considerably closer today, purposefully striding about, in the rain too, gathering up our stuff, talking to herself. Meanwhile I’m sitting on a stump half asleep, sipping my coffee. It’s all a little too busy for me. It’s barely light yet and we had a visitation in the night – silent thankfully. They just hung around watching me swearing at them. I got the impression I’d hurt their feelings more than anything. Well, if they will hang around looking spooky all night what do they expect? Miranda said I shouldn’t take the piss. Things are bad enough for them already but I think (I didn’t say this out loud) if they want to get lost they should just go and get on with it, not keep bothering us non-lost types. They’re really beginning to get on my wick, keeping me up all night...

We pass on through more of the same forested, mountains-and-valleys landscape as before. Miranda says it reminds her of the place she grew up, with lots of heather and bracken and little streams. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m really just beginning to want to get somewhere. I told this to her and she gave me an odd little smile.
Meetings with the lost spirits are getting further and further apart. Miranda tells me they tend to gather in some areas more than others and she seems decidedly livelier here, away from them (‘although there’s always a few loners about’ she says). The countryside’s still pretty wild out here and we have the place to ourselves. Once again my thoughts turn to the proximity of her scantily clad little form. All in all, maybe I prefer it that she’s too small (or far away) to actually have sex with. I like the way we get on and chat and flirt and look after each other and I think maybe sex would spoil it, or anyway, I’d probably mess it up somehow – make a twat of myself. It’s better this way.

Our final encounter with the lost spirits happens on a night of heavy rain – another night of total darkness and we’re camped in a bog. Miranda is convinced this is the right path but is very frank with me – there will be lost spirits again, and they might not be so easily dissuaded. I don’t ask how she knows.
For a few nights now she’s been running off at night like before and I am once again unhappy about it but not so easily fobbed off with her reticence on the subject. I pester her and tell her I’m not going to ‘leave it’. So she gives in and tells me she’s been protecting me, going out and keeping them away. I ask if that was how she got hurt that time before. She goes very quiet.
‘With some of them you have to be prepared to give them something in return’ she says vaguely, not looking at me. ‘There has to be some sort of offering. That’s the way it is.’
I look at her. I don’t know what she means. I don’t think I want to know.
Then suddenly she looks up at me and says brightly ‘We’ll soon be there. It’ll soon be over.’
She turns to go and I catch her arm and hold her back. She looks at my hand, at first wearily, then irritably. I let her go.
‘It’s ok’ she says, and is gone into the darkness.
I never did find out what it was they got up to out there. The thought made me feel sick, especially in the light of what we saw later. I didn’t sleep. I sat and waited for her to come back and we slept together in the morning.

So we come to a place where the valley becomes extremely narrow and steep sided, with ranks of stunted oaks growing out of the sheer sides. The valley floor is narrow and sodden and thick with rushes and reeds. It sees the sun only briefly but floods regularly and we struggle to find a patch of dry ground to pitch the tent on, hoping not to get washed away if there’s a flash flood. Evening comes. We watch the mists come down and wait for frightening things to start happening. There’s nothing more, she tells me, that she can do to hold them off. We sit and wait to see what happens.
‘Will they hurt us?’ I ask quietly, the rain dripping off my hood into my lap. She’s hidden there, in my cape, peering out. She looks so tiny – barely visible.
‘Not necessarily’ she says, like there might be something worse they could do.
‘What then?’ I say. ‘Will they capture us?’
‘Something like that’ she says.
‘Something worse?’
She says nothing. We wait.
‘I could try swearing at them again’ I suggest.
‘Probably worth a try’ she says without much enthusiasm, ‘if it makes you feel better.’
More silence.
‘If I hadn’t lead you astray you’d have been somewhere safe a long time ago’ she says quietly.
‘But you tried. You took me to that hill town place.’
She shakes her head. ‘I was being selfish. I needed somewhere to rest, recover. I wasn’t thinking about you.’
I look down at her. She looks so sad, yet strangely defiant.
‘I really don’t mind you know’ I say, and I want to tell her it was worth it because I love her. It seems a stupid thing to say, while we sit there, peering into the darkness, watching for spirits.
‘I just didn’t want to lose you’ she says ‘and I wasn’t ready to go, maybe. I thought I was.’
‘Do you have to go? Can’t you change your mind?’
She begins to reply but instead says shush and holds her finger up. I stand and listen. There’s a low roaring sound coming from away up the valley. As it gets louder I can feel it in the ground. It’s different from last time, more like a sobbing or a pulsing, like a machine or a heart beating deep in the soil. We stand there together, listening to it growing in volume. It sounds like a flood. It occurs to me it might be a flood. I look about for an escape route but Miranda is not moving. She knows that it’s pointless to run. The sound gradually expands to fill the landscape, coming from all sides, surrounding us and then we see them, figures of all shapes and sizes emerging from the shadows, changing all the time, growing and shrinking, materialising and melting into the darkness all around us. There are so many of them. It is overwhelming. They cluster around us and press their faces into ours – repulsive, terrifying, seductive. A tiny spikey one with a slug for a tongue insists that I am no better than she is, deep down. A bloated giant bawls at me over and over again to listen to him. A wraith wrings her hands and grizzles that there was nothing she could have done. There is so much bitterness and recrimination. It bludgeons, seeps and injects itself into my innards like gas gangrene – the things they’ve been through, what they’ve suffered, and what suffering they’ve inflicted on others. For that is the difference here. The spirits that have collected here have done terrible things. They are not merely victims. These really are the monsters. I look about me, try to tell them what I think of them but the wind takes my words away. A groaning throbbing lament drowns out everything that I might have wanted to say. This heaving mass of the unforgivable before us is past all understanding.

It seems like hours we stand there as they heave and jostle around us. The noise and the stink are terrible. It is the sound of all the agony and the degradation and the abuse they’ve endured and caused and I can feel it entering me, probing, trying to find something in me to latch onto. They want to know if perhaps I could have done those things too, or if I’d have them done to me perhaps? Or would I like to watch? because that can be arranged. It’s intolerable and meaningless. All their stories are long lost. What they did has no explanation any more. They try to explain their actions away nonetheless.
I curl up and keep my eyes shut – try to keep it all out.  
Everybody has it in them they say. Every man has his price. What would I be prepared to do, hmm? If I was desperate enough? Hmm?
Who is to judge them? Who can blame them? After all, it had to be done. Everybody else was doing it. It was legitimate trade. They were just doing their jobs. They did what they did for the purity of the race, to the glory of God, for King and country, for vengeance, for the family’s honour, for the greater good.
And didn’t they deserve it after all, those scum, because they stood in the way of progress, because they were different, because they were weak, because they didn’t matter, because they happened to be there and they were alone and nobody to protect them.
It was the final solution. They were asking for it. They probably enjoyed it.
Wogs, Queers, Bitches, Pakkies, Kikes, Commies...
And on and on and on...
Gradually their jeers and harangues begin to wash over me, to have less and less effect. There’s no connection. It’s just noise.
I look down at Miranda, her hopeless eyes fixed on them and I sit down with her.
We sit and observe them, these horrors, impassively and I pull her toward me. She looks at me and doesn’t understand but realises that she is safe with me. We sit and look at them and they begin to seem small and ridiculous. The wind and the noise die down and just a frustrated grumbling and whining follows. I can sense them milling about, knowing there’s nothing they can do and yet unwilling to give up. Finally, as morning comes the last of them discretely disappear and Miranda and I pack up and move on as quickly as we can. She looks up at me with a new kind of expression, almost like she admires me or something. ‘We need to get you home’ she says.
The path takes us up to the top of the valley by late afternoon and there before us lies a broad rolling landscape of meadows and woodlands and lakes. It looks like heaven. 
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Voyage XV – Sex education

The voyage has definitely settled into a routine now. I don’t actually spend a lot of time with Ray and the crazy gang, although I’m always aware of them. I find them hard to ignore. I am drawn to them though. I admit it. There’s something about them, something ugly but fascinating. Don’t know. Have to think about it.

Then sometimes I sit near to Lucy and the others. I feel a bit stupid, hanging around them like a little dog, hoping for some attention but quite often Damian or one of the others’ll say hi and how am I. I’m never sure if Lucy welcomes my presence but she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t say much at all to be honest.
But then there’ll be other times, like that wet day in the library when I found her looking at those pictures and she’ll call me over and say ‘Have you seen this?’ with a look of disgust and fascination on her face and I’ll go over and she’ll read me a passage from usually a history book, or something on politics and she’ll start on about how they don’t know what they’re talking about because of something she read back when she was writing her thesis and these people just haven’t got a clue. Then she turns the book over, her hand still on the page so she won’t lose it, and checks the author and it’s never anyone she’s heard of, but then she has to go back and look again. It’s like she can’t leave it alone.
Her main thing seems to be about the “objectification of women” and the “male gaze”. I thought at first she was talking about gays. She thought that was funny. I didn’t mind her thinking I’m funny. I never went to university of course, although I read a lot. I’d read The Female Eunuch, which impressed her a bit, although I wasn’t sure I agreed with a lot of it. I always had a problem with this stuff because it’s always seemed to me that women are very much in charge, but then with a family like mine that’s not too surprising is it. I tell her about this and she tells me that I experience women as emasculating. I tell her I never really wanted to be like the other blokes anyway and actually I’d like to come back as a woman next time if that was possible (but as a lesbian of course) and she’s just full of scorn, like it’s just their exclusive club and how dare I presume to even want to join? She goes on about menstruation, and pregnancy and sex discrimination as if being a woman is all about being proud of your suffering, and I want to say ‘But what about all these other fantastic things about being a woman?’ but I don’t feel qualified.
‘For a start’ she says, ‘You can’t know what the heck you’re on about, pretty much by definition, simply because you are a man. You simply cannot identify with a woman. You cannot know what it means. The whole way you view the world is different. You have this idealised image of what a woman is but no conception of the reality, and I really can’t be bothered to go into it with you. Trust me, you couldn’t handle it.’
I look at the page again. I can’t handle being a man either.
‘I don’t know’ I say. ‘I just like women, better than men anyway.’
‘Sure you do’ she says, obviously unconvinced. ‘But you like the ones with nice tits better, am I right?’
‘I think that’s different’ I say tentatively.
‘Oh you do.’
I’ve been thinking about this and I have an answer ready.
‘It’s like, if you’re friends with someone, you don’t just like them for one thing. Maybe you like that you can go out to gigs with them, and maybe their record collection, and maybe sometimes you have a laugh together, but you know they’ll never be the person you go to, to tell your troubles to, or for a walk in the country. You do those things with someone else...’
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘With women, the way they look is maybe just one part of why I’d spend time with them, and maybe if what they look like is the only thing, then maybe I’d just want to have sex with them. But if I wanted to have a relationship there’d need to be other things, like...’
‘Like doing your dishes, or saying “there, there, poor baby”...’
‘No, like going out walking or talking about life, or having a meal out.’
‘As a prelude to sex. It’s all about getting women into bed Gabriel. Don’t fool yourself.’
‘No’ I say, ‘I reckon it’s possible to be friends with a woman and not be thinking about sex with her.’
‘Has that ever happened to you?’
‘Well... no, but I’m sure it could.’
‘I think you’d have to be gay. Really.’
I almost ask about Damian and Matt but don’t really want to know. I don’t really feel qualified to say anything here. I never had a female friend in my life but then I never had a proper girlfriend either, so what do I know? Come to that I never had much in the way of real close friends at all – not ones I could really talk to.
‘All that men are doing when they look at a woman’ she continues, ‘is deciding if they want to fuck her and then working out how to make it happen. It might not be obvious. He may end up being a friend because he still thinks he’s in with a chance, or maybe he thinks he’ll get off with one of her friends.’
‘But even then, what if he does actually like her and enjoys her company, even without sex?’
‘How do you mean?’ she says, with exaggerated patience.
‘Well, women talk more about people and life and...’ I suddenly remember the sixth form common room, a group of us, sitting around for lunch, and then afterwards if there was a free period I always ended up chatting to Rachel or Camille, or Sally. Ok, I did fancy Camille, but I knew she was out of my league, and Rachel was taken, and Sally just really wasn’t my type, not physically. I can’t believe I forgot about them. I wonder what happened to them. Rachel, I know got married quite soon after leaving, and the others went to uni of course. The blokes were always talking about physics or Michael Moorcock or Genesis or something and I just didn’t know anything about that stuff, but I could talk to the girls, Rachel and Sally especially for ages. Camille I was always a bit self-conscious with. I’d forgotten about that.
I explain some of this to Lucy and she listens and then says ‘Still...’ and goes back to her book.

My mind wanders back to my sisters too, to Amelia especially. I always liked her toys – the doll’s house, and the books she had. And then there were her friends and her clothes and make up – I just loved all the colours and textures and smells of it all. I should point out that I never tried her stuff on, or not seriously – I’d have looked ridiculous, obviously, and I’d have wanted to be beautiful, not just a boy in drag.
Maybe I should have been a girl. You do hear these stories about people who are anatomically one sex but genetically the other. Who knows? I know I hated being a boy anyhow.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.