Mark Lewis
[ Biography ]
Fog Banks and Beaches
You shiver awake. It's another day. You remember that phone call yesterday. Some bloke down Weston-Super-Mare. He assured you that if you could get there first thing with the special offer, he might be interested. “Might be interested”, is as good as it gets these days. Moving fast from now on would be helpful, especially as you have just slept through the alarm.
George Michael. What a name to be born with. You can't sing, you're overweight, middle aged and balding. You drive a clapped out Vauxhall Astra. It means that at work, a lot of the 'michael' is indeed taken out of you. Especially if you are the least successful salesman in the team, you've never earned a bonus and you are regarded by the pack of hyenas around you as lucky to be employed at all. Lucky, yeah you think, lucky with the wife, the kids, wherever they are. No, don't you do that, you say. You know she took them back to her Mum's in Pengard, so stop it. You know you're seeing them next week, so you give yourself a shake and get positive. You tell yourself, selling haberdashery products will never shake the world and being a faceless man ignored daily in wool shops doesn't lift the soul, but hey, you're alive.
While brushing your teeth you remember that before selling buttons you used to be interesting and productive. After today maybe you can be again, so you smile away, as you pull your belly flat in the steaming mirror.
You decide on the A38. It was supposed to be good weather, but they got it wrong again. So you spin towards the Churchill turnoff, reflecting on your winding road. You love your kids and you know that the next time you see them you'll feel good. You might even start to allow yourself thoughts of reconciliation. And then you wonder where the last ten miles went and you groan as you enter the unknown, through a sudden pudding of Somerset fog. Too late for a deal now anyway you think as you become aware of a bank of red lights, like a fairground from your youth, but you can't hear the music.
Don't know, can't remember.
Yes you do. I mean, lying there warm and cosy, then suddenly the dark sky above you is sliced open to a bright light. Like a sudden tear in a sheet, but not a tear, a clean, pure cut and this light blinding you. And then those distorted robed images with faces hidden like Berber warriors.
But I wouldn't have known Berber warriors.
No, I know. Not being pushed or pulled. Not fighting, but not sure to come out or stay in the dark warm of that floating bath. A slice, a pull, a stitch and there you are.
How did they know I was ready? Were they sure? The pelvis may have been too small but I bet it was comfortable. Down there somewhere in the dark of the mind I suppose some vestigial memory could tell the truth ready or not, but up here in the light, who knows.
Is that headlights?
Light headed, they say that don't they, near the end and then it gets cold.
That was the absolute beginning.
And since then?
At first fun, but something taken away, destroyed.
Not that bad surely?
The emptiness screamed at and when that void was filled, loved and crushed together ...
Blackness.
If it's that bad, why did you get up this morning?
Wouldn't be in this situation now.
True. What went in between?
Between?
Then and now. What moulded that helpless crimson creature, wet and warm and untimely ripped, shitting and puking, into a crushed soul?
Ah, there's a question.
What's that noise, sirens?
Doppler effect.
Where did you remember that?
School I suppose. The air pressure changes the frequency of sound as something moves towards you and then past and away again very fast.
Strange what you think of at such times.
Can't have been all of my fault, can it?
Bit hard on yourself.
I started on a mountain. It was grey. Remember the puffing streets? Walking was always knee bent against the climb. The one long house up the street with the hundred front doors and the hundred old lady doorkeepers on the step. The cooking-apple plunged into sugar bowl, the sugar sandwiches and warm coal stove. That old one, who was she?
Didn't I read somewhere that at these times there was always great clarity?
The jumble of tight furniture in the front room like an alleyway junk shop, waiting for the van. The too big man in the too small bed. The size eleven foot through the glass cabinet that was never fixed. Is it too late to call a glazier? Where's my mobile?
No blood I noticed, not then, not now, strange. Bloodless.
Should be grateful.
The walk around the corner that morning, ears flapped and tied in tartan. A hand, kind, old.
There was a journey from the mountain to the sea. A café below and empty rooms upstairs of torn lino and hollow sounds. A new home. Unwanted, I think.
Before that there was a slide. A green bank with a sheep trodden path and wet from earlier. Who discovered that God of a slide? Who turned that ewe's highway into a mountainside helter-skelter, that joy by the small grey schoolhouse sparking with silver wet streaks slashed across the black scars of the long coaled walls?
You were proud of those new blue jeans and plastic leather zipper jacket like American Mustang pilots' bought at the market that day.
But you were prouder of your devilish wet muddy bum, as soggy thick as any of the others'.
There was nothing more to discover than that mudslide, bumping down, a three-year-old God.
But this was before God. Long before God and girls and whiskey and beer and chewing gum and the first ciggy that makes you spit as you pull the baccy from your lips, too afraid to take that grey cloud inside your body proper. But later, that glorious grey cloud, ah yes!
Remember that thought? Surely the chest will explode, or toenails fall off, or going blind with wanking or something? Just pretend to inhale. None of the others will know. But the one who has done it before, he'll know.
Before or after the slide there was a big shaggy head, leering around a door, drunk they called it. Smiling silly though and odd, not dangerous. That first taste of beer, like how can they drink this stuff when cherryade is better? But later, a pattern followed through generations, a pint too many after saying just the one. Something understood, like tea, like dying for a cup and my feet are killing me, like how stupid is that? And transformations without change, conditioned by growing up into how unique we think we are.
Then the disappointment.
Remember the coach trip to the seaside, the mothers, the children and the priest? It was organized by the church to keep the sinners honest and maybe to keep them coming to put coins in a basket. Sandwiches and sand and plastic telescopes for the ships, and the castles, mine the biggest of all?
So here we are my friend, years on, still moving, just, knowing less or nothing. The years are achieved, but by definition gone, therefore lost, therefore nothing achieved, not even the years. Well dreams are clear, hopes are clear and plenty of time, so they say…and there's a light.
Where?
Over there.
It's blue.
Flashing.
How did we reach this point?
Could have been avoided.
Really?
Struggle with the ups and downs and that's it.
Exactly!
Sand dunes and sea gulls screaming and wind howling and sea scrishing.
Sea scrishing? You just made that up.
Good isn't it.
I'm not going to make a thing of it right now, under the circumstances.
And wobbling air and sand sticking to olive–oiled skin and noisy sandwiches and long walks on that hard damp sand just after the tide rolls over, when it loses that leg-exhausting, pale, soft, best-death-roll, warm quality.
Could kill for a fag and a beer. Will I taste it? Remember the taste, please God remember the taste!
At least the fog is clearing.
Why did I get out of bed this morning? It was certainly touch and go there for a minute. Didn't feel right, but hey, positive ... and looking for an edge. So here we are, right on that edge. No future except what's the other side of that light. I wish somebody would shut it off. Can't see a thing when I look at it. There's a pair of sunglasses in here somewhere.
There were hazard warnings out all that morning, but only after they'd realised their mistake. Only after the police had reported one of the worst traffic accidents ever encountered on the A38.
Come on now, ups-a-daisy, on the table. Keep still now. These buttons are very stiff. Must wrap up, it's very cold outside.
Yes, cold Mummy. Why is it dark? Is it nighttime?
No darling it's morning, but it's very early morning. In the winter it's always dark at this time.
What time?
Four o'clock.
What's four o'clock? Like tea time four o'clock. Like cake time?
Right, there you are. No, sit on the chair and finish your milk. Nanna will be here soon. You'll stay with Nanna while we fill the lorry.
It's a big lorry isn't it? The biggest lorry in the whole world. Because we are putting our house in it.
No, not the house, all the things in the house, like the settee and beds.
Is the house staying behind?
Yes darling, it's staying so that the people who bought it from us can live here.
But where will we live without our house?
We've got another house where we're going. We'll live in that one.
The carnage at the Churchill Junction to Weston-super-Mare was horrific. It was reported that hardened members of the emergency services were really shaken on arriving at the scene. Some couldn't help thinking of bombs and terrorists.
Remember I told you, by the sea and the beach.
I can play on the beach, can't I Mummy?
Of course darling.
When will we be there?
This afternoon.
Is that far away? Far away, far, far, over the moon in the sky.
A young doctor was one of the first to arrive. He had come out on his maiden trip with the airborne team from Bristol Royal Infirmary. They had joked with him over coffee that he was on a good skive.
Cooee! It's cold out there.
Tea in the pot if you want one.
Nanna! Nanna! It's the morning very early in the winter.
Don't I know it my little bundle. Ready to go? Has he had breakfast?
The first vehicle the doctor approached was an old Vauxhall Astra, upside-down, crushed, the driver hanging there, still held into his seat by the seatbelt, half his face and head missing, his brain exposed.
Right, hat on.
No, don't want my hat.
Yes, you must. Come on, chin up so I can tie it properly, or your ears will drop off with the cold.
No they won't.
You'll see. When will you be around?
Hopefully about seven, then we'll be off.
Come on then, catch my hand tight.
Bye Mummy, see you later after my breakfast.
That's right darling; give me a kiss bye bye. Do what Nanna tells you and be a good boy. And be careful on the ice. It'll be very slippery.
Goody, ha, ha!
Did I imagine it, or was there a demon's cry, a crush of screaming metal?
Yes. Fog came down thick as suet.
Of course it did. I remember. You said something earlier about no future.
Did I? Wonder why?
No future. Curious. We use the phrase often in down times, but don't actually consider it to be true, unless we are of the suicidal persuasion. We are safe in our moment of depression because secretly we know there will always be tomorrow. But now, truly no future. Curious how cold it feels, and a bit alone, except for you of course, my traveling friend.
Sometimes it's good to be alone, don't you think? In those moments, late and dark, those are the moments when a thought, a piece of music, a story, allow you to get down deeper than ever, through bone and blood, right down to the other side, to your soul, to your truth, to the soul that belonged to somebody before you and to the person before that and to the person holding your soul after you've gone.
And it refreshes?
Just thinking. Hold tight to love. Let go to death. It was all my fault.
Is that it?
How could the seat belt still hold him there? Remarkable, thought the young doctor in that second before he threw himself to one side and vomited. A captain from Blue Watch helped him to his feet. The doctor made a quick, but unnecessary examination of the body as the captain found and took the man's wallet for identification purposes later. They both moved on to other vehicles where they could do more good.
'At least he wouldn't have been aware of a thing,' the young doctor said to no one in particular, but only really to calm his shaking self. 'Must have died instantly, in a split second, feeling nothing'.
The Fire Captain nodded reassuringly while looking through the wallet. 'His name's George Michael.' he said. After a deliberate pause, he continued, 'Wonder if he could sing?'
The young doctor smiled for the first time that morning.