Truth, Lies, Dreams
The party for high school girls and boys was up some stairs in a hall on the island but when we arrived there we were already late; somebody had hung a wooden sign from the lintel ‘No Boys’ with an ‘X’ underneath. Presumably girls were still allowed and they were trying to stick to a quota.
Read moreSo, me and a few other sixth formers went to the café next door to wait until the entrance requirements would change. A monk with egg stains on the front of his black habit ushered us in. He showed our group to a table next to a claw foot bath filled with water by a window that overlooked the harbour. I lay fully clothed in the bath and a boy in a blue golf shirt took a shine to me. He was on the fat side and the monk sniggered when the boy lay on top of me in the bath and tried to kiss me.
I told the boy that I wasn’t interested or that it was not my thing even though he tried again; then I pushed him away and got out of the bath to see if the club had opened up.
I walked next door and this time the sign had been turned around to allow boys. The sign next to the door indicated that girls would not be allowed. So, I went back to the café to tell them it was alright to go up.
When we went to the hall it was dark and kind of empty. A disco ball cast mirrored lights on the dance floor but there was no one dancing.
Then another boy ran up the stairs to tell us that the the boats back to Hong Kong would be stopping now because of the storm. And sure enough when we we got to the pier the wind and a cold spitting rain lashed my face and only one metal hulled green boat with only a simple roof and an accompanying tug boat was there to take us back.
Rain water gathered at the bottom of the hull, and the boat looked kind of flimsy. I wondered whether to get on it.
The other boys, too, were looking at the options. Was this the last boat?
Then another boat, a little bigger than the green one—a wooden boat with side windows and an inner cabin—pulled up, so we got on that one instead.
And the wind and the rain continued to lash our faces.
Photo by John Salmon via WikiMedia Commons.
The wind struck in an instant, just as the forecast said it would. Rain lashed the white washed walls of the houses by the sides of the canals and the water from the canals splashed over the barriers, splashed across the paving, and flowed under the doors of any canal-side cottages not already protected by sandbags.
Read moreThe bicycles that were chained to the iron railings grumbled and groaned against their chain linked locks as the wind pulled their frames.
I could have been in Camden on the Regent’s waterways, but this was Amsterdam. Already wet I pushed open the door to an antique shop by the lock side bridge. I jammed the door shut against the wind.
‘That came faster than I thought,’ I said to no one in particular.
I walked up to the shop counter. A French woman wearing a black and white hooped roll necked sweater stood next to me. She was cute, flat nosed, with her short mousey hair arranged in a very Frenchy bob. As I took off my red oilskin hat my elbow accidentally grazed her sweater. Her breast yielded to the slightest touch. I was a little embarrassed. But my touch was not enough to notice, I hoped, given the extremes of the rain and wind outside.
‘They were right about how fast that came,’ I repeated, then I dusted myself down as if drying off like a dog.
‘I saw what you did there,’ hinted the French woman.
A man stood next to her. He looked at me with an irritated and jealous eye.
’You touched my breast,’ she added bluntly, ‘But that’s okay. Now we might as well hug.’
I hadn’t meant anything by grazing her breast but now it occurred to me that we were destined to meet up.
The French woman gave me a warm hug with her head angled briefly against my shoulder, and her breasts felt gentle and warm against my chest. Instantly I felt better about my actions, but also nervous because I had never chatted up a French woman before.
Then the shopkeeper led us into the back of her shop to a large dining room where all of us would be served.
There were three tables in the room. One large traditional dark wood claw foot dining table to the left where most of the people had been seated, another empty table in the middle of the room, and one more blue table on the far side of the room which seated another group but which lacked the formality of the others given its lack of white table cloth.
I walked up to the claw foot table. Diners were already seated on the side closest to the wall. Another man sat at the far end. And I could have sat opposite the diners against the wall but I wanted to leave space for the French woman to join me, so I opted for the seat at the head of the table nearest me. I waved her over to come join us.
The French woman sat down but she took the seat over one so that another guest might sit between us. I smoothed down the table cloth in front of me and looked at the array of cutlery in front of me.
The hors d’oeuvres came first. A simple asparagus salad on a small glass plate. I was conscious of using the outside fork and knife first.
I chatted to the table. When the waiter delivered my salad I realized he was the man who had been irritated with me at the front of the shop. I was afraid he’d give me a smaller portion but when he plonked the plate down between the cutlery, I could see no discernible difference between mine and the other diners’ servings.
I was the chatty Cathy at the table.
The diners talked about a French man I did not know, and the French woman gave me a knowing smile. I was nervous. How could I get close to her once more? How could I feel and sense the smell and warmth of her hug again.
There was a lull in the conversation. I did not want to dominate the table with speeches. Silence bloated the guests. The French woman gave me an encouraging smile.
‘And then there was the story about Paris,’ I began.
‘No, no. Paris was a man,’ I added. I grew concerned that the story about Paris would be inappropriate. I wondered whether the French woman would appreciate my funny story about Paris.
But it was too late.
Because I had begun.
Photo by Jorge Láscar via Flickr.
We are on a huge military cargo plane going back to the UK when, through the opening in the back where the hatch opens out for the parachute soldiers to jump, I see a beautiful ocean view, with sparkling blue waters and a whale bouncing in an and out the water parallel to a coastline.
Read moreI am not usually excited by whale sightings, but this whale continues jumping in and out of the water, and even though it is far down below us, the sparkling water and the sandy coast make for a paradise.
‘Look, a whale!’ I cry out to my fellow passengers.
As the planes rumbles on it appears to descend and the view becomes clearer.
‘Maybe they are dolphins,’ I declare, and sure enough, there are schools of them bouncing in and out of the sparkling waters, swimming north up the coast line, and coming nearer into view as the plane descends,.
Our plane comes to land at an idyllic outcrop – an unexpected break point in our return flight. We file out and walk along a narrow path along a sandy road, with beachfront restaurants to our left, and shop-seller stalls to our right. The place seems foreign to what I have seen before but magical too. Maybe it is Moslem or Caribbean, I cannot tell from the coloured stripes and robes of the shopkeepers.
‘What is this place?’ I ask a tourist in a white bucket hat sitting in a restaurant to my left.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, and I think, How can you not know?! You’re here, aren’t you?
I continue on, and stop at a stall to ask the proprietor. ‘What country am I in?’ I ask.
The woman replies, ‘We’re in Africa.’ But Africa is a continent, I think.
Then I reach down to a small black girl by the woman’s side and ask again, ‘Where are we?’
The girl looks up and says to me, ‘You are in Ecuador,’ and I think how marvellous.
I must tell Siobhan that we have to go to Ecuador proper, and not just for a stopover. Never mind if Quito is high up in altitude, it will surely be good for her if we only stay for a short time.
Then the airline stewards lead us to our restaurant which is on an island off the sandy coast. We step into the water until we are up to our necks, and I pull out my iPhone so it won’t get wet. I lift the phone above my head but too late, I have to shake the water off it.
The phone will be alright, I think. I’ll take it back to the airplane and leave it there, because I don’t need it while we are here, in paradise, on this island.
Photo by Pauchok via GoodFon.com.
My dream has a sense of foreboding.
I am in a flat. It’s night. I think it’s Dee’s flat but she’s away and there is nothing to eat except for two family size bags of cheese puffs. They are unopened and I don’t want to open them without her say so.
The curtains are drawn, and it feels like I’m in a dorm room although we are on the ground floor.
Read moreI leave the flat, the sky gunmetal grey, billowing clouds, the bright lights of shops shining in the dark.
I need to find something to eat…
Instead, I am in an Uber coming back to the flat. The driver asks me, “Can I drop you here? It’s just through there,” he points.
We are in a parking lot behind a row of shops or office buildings, like you would find at the back of a strip mall. Presumably my road is on the front side of the building. The Uber driver can’t go any further.
He points at an alley behind two green industrial dustbins, and the other side of the bins, and through the alley, I see the lights of Main Street.
After I am back on the road, after I’ve wandered some distance, I realize I am lost and I don’t know my way back to the flat. I try to Google Maps the way, entering the word ‘Northeastern’ but I keep misspelling it. I try again, only shorter this time: ‘NEU dorms’ but still my phone auto-corrects the spelling.
A group of young students (or are they a family?) pass me by on a narrow market street. I’ll try them, I think, although I never ask for directions.
I’m already missing Dee. Like I should call her.
“Do you know the way to Northeastern?” I ask a tall young man from the group.
He is tall and handsome, short black hair with a square jaw and rugged American-like features. He looks like an athlete.
“Sure,” and he points with a firm palm towards the market building ahead of me.
The market was from where he came. “I’ll help you,” he says. “Through here.” He comes with me into the building and we walk together along narrow paths between the market vendors.
We pass the meat section and cross over to the fish stalls. A fishmonger ahead of us, his fish laid out on chopping blocks looks up at me as he brings his cleaver down on a silver tuna’s neck. A clean strike reveals the clear red meat of its torso. The spine shows as a single bloody circle in the middle of the meat.
“Continue on through there.” The young student points left side of the fishmonger’s.
“Yes, I can make it from here.” I tell him.
And I continue past the fishmonger’s. The shiny market floor tiles are red, they are washed with the water that flushes the entrails of fish to the gutter that passes along the center of the aisle.
Beyond the fishmonger’s is the exit, the other end of the building. I am about to leave when, across the way, I spot a toilet. It is nothing but a large rusted door encased in a wall, a metal clasp slightly open, the door panel with the symbol for a man, barely visible, etched in the panel.
A sign on a metal plate says ‘Staff Only’, presumably it refers to the fishmonger’s, but I reckon they won’t mind and so I enter.
The toilet has dark rough hewn walls but inside it’s bright enough as, from a small opening at the top, the light comes from the fishmongers outside. The light casts a glow across coarse white painted walls and floor.
The stench of stale urine is unbearable. It attacks my nostrils. In the far corner of the toilet is a hole, the end of a sloped floor, where I presume you piss. I am about to set myself to do just that when from somewhere in the ceiling, water pours down the walls and across the floor, presumably to flush the toilet.
The water spills across the coarse floor. It comes close to my shoes, but the stench of piss is still in my nostrils.
I step back enough to avoid the water as it drains down the hole.
Photo in public domain from Raw Pixel.
After dozing off again, I find one of the frogs back with me in the hotel room. I have to let him lie in a small container of cold water for a while, to let him recuperate.
Read moreI put him in a long rectangular Tupperware, and put a lid on it so he cannot escape, but every time I put down the container, he starts hitting the lid with his head, almost knocks it off.
So then I fill the bathtub in the room, it is filled quite high, and I let the Tupperware float in it so that this time, if he escapes, he will only escape into more water.
The bathtub is only filled with water from the tap and is not the boiled, sterilizer water I used for him but I’m sure it will be OK for the time that he needs to get better.
Then I leave the room.
And it is only when I get back that I see the horror.
Artie is floating under the water of the bathtub his small body rotating slowly under the surface, the frog paddling around him, the Tupperware up-ended.
Artie must be dead, I think, as I pull him out. A bit of claw catches my hand and comes away from his paw, lodges with a piece of fur at the soft base of my thumb.
I lie Artie’s limp body, belly down, across the lip of the bathtub. I stroke his back, and press hard, up from his hind legs with both thumbs, push his fur up towards his throat until the water ejects from his mouth into the bathtub. And I repeat it again and again until the water spurts out, until after the third or fourth time he splutters into life, and rolls out of my grip onto the floor.
“Oh Artie,” I cry as he walk away.
He no longer has his buff coat but looks more tabby and smaller than he was before; when he was chasing the frogs.
I leave him to return downstairs where they have the constructors out on the patio. They are mending the tiles, resurfacing them with white squares in a diamond shape, white to match the balcony wall which surrounds the patio. And I want to see how the construction is going.
When I get there I’m surprised to see Artie once more. This time he is lying on his back, his body splayed across the balcony wall. A small but deep gash is visible across the white fur of his belly, bleeding,
“Artie,” I cry out once more as I rush towards the wall.
Next to him sits a contractor and, at the far side of the patio, two more. They wear grey hard hats and are eating sandwiches, it’s their lunch break. And they stare back nonchalantly at my commotion.
Then a second cat bounds out from the French doors of the hotel, across the patio and up onto the wall to my dead cat. Only it’s Artie who ran out of the hotel and the dead cat is not Artie after all, although he shares the same tabby markings and size.
Artie sniffs at the dead cat briefly before leaping towards the two contractors at the end of the patio. He ducks between them as they slouch and chew their sandwiches.
“Catch him!” I yell before he disappears under their legs.
Photo by Eu_eugen via Pixabay
