Friday
Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins
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Friday, 7th January 2005
And in the bedroom s neutral smudge
Steve Moore turns on his back and coughs
Opens his eyes, kisses the
Portrait miniature good morning
With the night-steeped glass
Like cracked ice to his lips
He checks his I Ching
Horoscope, the daily hexagram
This morning s being Kwan, or
Contemplation, with its fifth line
Governing the week ahead. The text
Attached to this is: Contemplation
Of my life: the superior man
Is without blame
His breakfast is a muesli of heart
Pills in half a pint of decaf (health
Food), over which he mumbles a few
Words to Chris about arrangements
For the shopping or the evening
Meal. The morning paper, when it
Finally arrives, is still awash
With details of the Indonesian
Earthquake (surf s up, uh-huh, uh-huh)
And so he goes upstairs to check
His emails, to crack open the white
Post-pack envelope containing his
Crisp print-out copy of this
Manuscript
He lies back on the bed
To read it with some eagerness
And trepidation (it s about him
After all) and mostly he enjoys
It, likes the writing even though
It s libellous, especially the
Physical descriptions when he d
Previously believed himself to be
A lithodonist in his early thirties
Some bits make him laugh (the
Passages concerning Westcliff and
The failed Latin American
Relationship elicit a faint wince)
And some bits weird him out
Especially this paragraph
Belatedly, he realises that
It s the eleventh anniversary of
That strange night back in the
Early nineties when the roof
Came off, hair of the snake
That bit him. He reads on
And reckons that the next bit is
Taking liberties, it s cheeky and
Manipulative, and what s worse
It s cheating
He skims through these final
Pages, on to the conclusion
Noting with increasing irritation
And amusement that the narrative
Recounts how he concludes his
Reading, then goes out to take his
Morning constitutional, along a
Route described precisely in the
Text, that will deliver him to
Some lame and postmodern trompe l
Oeil excuse for an ending by the
Brinklow Crescent burial mound
The thing is, even though he
Feels compelled to validate this
True-up-until-now tale for the
Sake of friendship and his eye for
A neat magical or literary
Conceit, he had been planning to
Go down the hill to the car-boot
Sale, see his personal Pirates
Of the Caribbean about hooky Hong
Kong action DVDs, perhaps get
Better copies of some Shan Kuan
Lin Fong movies he already has
But reading it spelled out in
Black and white like this, he
Feels ashamed, deep in his wretched
Soul, that he should even think
Of abdicating his responsibility
To furnish an important work
With its appointed ending just to
Further his embarrassing addiction
To some Taiwanese bird on a wire
Grudgingly, he thuds downstairs
And gets his jacket, calls from
The back door to Chris down in
The greenhouse, explains with
Some difficulty the complex and
Metaphysical necessity for his
Excursion, only half way through
Remembering that this was
Mentioned in the story, in the
Manuscript
He stands on the rear doorstep
And looks down the hillside garden s
Terraced slope towards the wire
Wool-coloured cumulus approaching
Over London from the north
Deciding that he d better take
Along his rolled umbrella, then
Recalls that this was mentioned
Too
He trudges back through kitchen
Living room and hallway to step
Out into the sweet, familiar
Cul-de-sac. Insistently, the
Narrative demands that he walk
Up the footpath on to Shooter s
Hill Road. As he does so, on his
Right he passes near the bottleneck
By which the close opens to
Donaldson Road just downhill
And thinks about the day last
Year when he d glanced down
Towards the corner that he s
Crossing now from the front office
Window, Chris s coffin room
Before their mum died and he
Moved into the big front bedroom
On the corner, a blonde woman
From some doors away that he knows
Well enough to say hello to
Was caught in a screaming fist-
Fight, possibly about a parking
Space or something, with a black
Girl from just down the street
Before a neighbour came outside
To intervene. The incident
Disturbed him, a behavioural
Lapse that the encircling houses
Hadn t seen before, not in his
Memory. Maybe with the working
Class dismantled or demoted to an
Underclass, the hill s inhabitants
Dimly become aware they re on the
Bottom rung now, start reacting to
The pressure from above just as
Their social predecessors did
Before them?
He can feel a scummy tideline
Creeping up the hillside as he
Walks along the short, dark corridor
Of trees that leads to Watling Street
How much of this tranquillity could
Wash away soon, could be gone?
Stepping out on to Shooter s Hill
Road, opposite the grimy gateposts
Of the old Memorial Hospital
He pauses and considers a
Rebellion, thinks of turning downhill
To his right rather than up
Towards his left, in flat defiance
Of the bullying manuscript s
Instructions, although actually
It s pretty miserable down there
The day-care faculty for psychiatric
Outpatients at the old Cottage
Hospital that s half way down
Is boarded up, and at the bottom
Of the hill where the old gallows
Used to be, the police station
Has recently been put up for sale
This is the spot Pepys mentioned
Back in 1661
I rode under a man that hangs
At Shooters Hill, and a filthy sight
It was to see how is the flesh
Shrunken from his bones
The hanged man symbolises a
Protracted and uncomfortable
Initiation, Odin dangling on the
Tree nine nights, the lunar number
To acquire the runic wisdom of
The Norns.Thinking about it, he decides to turn left after all
And stroll towards the Bull, up Shooters, Shooters, Shetters
Shiters, Shutters or Shotover Hill or Shotters Held or Shouters Hell
This last bringing to mind his neighbours and their noisy corner
Punch-up. Down in Woolwich, down in Plumstead these days there are
Gangster turf wars, drive-bys, shooters gradually reclaiming the
High ground named after them. He feels a slow, insidious encroachment
In the air, suppressing a faint shiver. Then again, it's January
Crossing Shrewsbury Lane where it joins the main road, he walks on
Past the repositioned pub with Cretan Crescent bullhorns raised up
From its terracotta, an amounting block from the inn's old location
Further up the road, cemented into place there by the kerb but wrong
Way up, set on its side with risers horizontal and treads vertical
It looks as if it's there for Escher's men or rolled up centipedes to
Climb before they cross a pavement threshold and continue down
Amongst the water sources and substrata, down into the earth. A foot
Of topsoil, then a yard of dark brown clay, two feet of blue clay
Thirteen feet of peat, river-drift gravel eighteen feet, two feet of
Hard blue clay, soft yellow clay and sand in layers one foot, and
Then forty feet down there's three yards that's hard grey sand
With layers of tenacious clay of various hues and shells and
Under that there's dark green sand, round pebbles, Thanet sand
And flint and chalk, and intricately carven chunks of alabaster
The remains or germinating seeds of Somnium. Yesod, the lunar
Dream realm of the Kabbalists, the Hebrew word that means foundation
And suggests a different, buried moon. He sighs, and carries on
Past the attractive late-Victorian semi with the patterned
Decorative brickwork, standing where the Bull originally stood
Continues on by the amazing and apparently Carpathian water tower
Towards the Eaglesfield Road turning just ahead and on the left
There on the corner, shabby and dilapidated, stands a handsome pre-
War Modernist Art Deco house, Four Winds, white-walled, flat-roofed
Planning permission to demolish it and put up an apartment block long
Since applied for, probably not there much longer. Maybe this could
Be the house that Paul Buck's uncle lived in sixty years back. That
Was at this end of Eaglesfield Road, with a rumoured tunnel running
From the air-raid shelter in his garden underneath the road
And into Castle Woods, another half-conjectural subsurface
Space. Earthmovers possibly will find it while demolishing Four
Winds but myth requires a fragile quantum state, breaks down
Into river-drift gravel if observed, so either way it's finished
Unappealingly resolved and soon. A kind of socio-historic
Wind erosion, wearing all the elevation's visions, hopes and
Mysteries to grit then flinging them away, that's what it is
Resigned, he heads down Eaglesfield Road with the golf course where
His father died and brother worked across the road upon his right
And Eaglesfield itself rising there on his left, the open parkland
Where sometimes he will escort the goddess so that she can see the
Squirrels, the surprising childlike streak in her that takes some
Getting used to. Eighteen months ago or more she startled him by
Asking for a teddy bear, a tiny one in scale with her small portrait
Made him visit Hamley's to acquire a costly Herman number suiting
Her specifics. Figured this for a sure sign of his decline into
Dementia, then found out about the handmaidens of
Artemis, the bearskin costumes that they used to wear
So maybe after all there's meaning, even in this second
Childhood stuff. Maybe there's signal in the noise
He passes on from Eaglesfield Road into Kinloch Road, then takes a
Left down Bushmore Crescent past the current Shrewsbury House, re-
Sited from its previous location as the birthplace of piped coal
Gas and the home of Princess Charlotte, moved to this spot and once
Years back, the location of the local library. He came here as a
Kid to plough through E. C. Elliott's Kemlow series of juvenile
Space adventures with their wacky jacket copy. "What's the mystery
Of the Martian Ghost Run?" "Bah! There is no mystery. It's just a
Boy's imagination," laughs the Chief of Space Satellite K, orbiting
Round the Earth. The Subdued Isles were full of stars and rockets
At the Crescent's end, he turns left into Mereworth Drive, its
Impressively diverse variety of shrubs and hedges planted in
Neat border strips between the pavement and the road, a quaintness
He associates with crumpets and the 1950s, fireside rugs and
Cumbersome spread copies of The Eagle. A uniquely English dreamtime
That is almost now extinct, the great diverse proliferation of
Imaginative periodicals gone with Dan Dare and Kemlow to oblivion
"Bah! There is no mystery. It's just a boy's imagination."
From the drive he turns left into Plum Lane, and there straight across
The road is Brinklow Crescent, and the grassy railed enclosure of the
Bronze Age Chieftain's burial mound, the skull-faced, lugworm-bearded
God of Shooters Hill, the promised end of his perambulation, of the
Story.Why, he wonders, with the many resonant spots on the hilltop
That there are to choose from, does his character arc finish its
Parabola and dive into the dirt right here? Then he remembers the
Instructions in the will he'd had drawn up, his ashes to be strewn
Across the mound, a final fusion with the landscape he emerged
From, one more angstrom added to the hill's height, some four
Hundred and eleven feet, eight inches, eighty-five points, five
Feet one inch higher than the gold cross of St Paul's Cathedral
When the smut and soot of him is rained into the foot of the topsoil
With a bit of luck, he'll filter down through the biodegraded
Remnants of the firs that great Linnaeus fell upon his knees and
Worshipped in, wrapped in a golden fleece of blossoms, down through
All the brown and blue and yellow layers, through the solid and
Unrealised blueprint bore of 1810's projected tunnel under Shooters
Hill to Blackheath, deep amongst the relic couplers and shattered
Eggshell moon-domes of his Downside Palace, of his Nonesuch
He stands motionless upon the corner of Plum Lane and Mereworth
Drive, gazing at the hillock dead across the road uneasily and
Wishing he were done with this, squints homeward up Plum Lane to
Where it joins with Shrewsbury Lane, will take him back up to
The Bull, the celebrated travellers' rest of 18th century verse
At Shooters Hill we made a halt
For Polly's saddle was in vault
And Joe was dry, and so was I
But George was wondrous testy
So we went cherry-merry
Into Kent, into Kent
Winking, blinking, down we went
An unexpected shudder ripples through him to his tingling soles and
Runs to ground, a horror that is startlingly physical. He wants to go
Home, winking, blinking, but the manuscript contains a final
Pointless action that is in all probability included for no other
Reason than to make him look and feel ridiculous. He hesitates
Resentfully he follows his concluding orders and rotates in a
Half circle, with his back now turned towards the sulking lump
He's looking at an unremarkable semi-detached home, very like
His own, with on the left a massive oak tree that has overgrown
The pavement, monstrous knuckled roots sunk in the tarmac put
Down to replace the slabs already ruptured and upturned. He wonders
What to say if anyone emerges from the house and asks him why
He's standing staring at it (please don't let it be some scared
Old woman who mistakes him for the still-at-large South London
Rapist), wonders how long he's expected to remain here. Feeling on
His forehead the first splash of wet, he creases it into a frown
Okay, let's freeze the picture there. Let's formalise it as a frame
Description. Final panel: he stands facing us, a head and shoulders
Frontal close-up in the centre foreground, light precipitation
Forming on his spectacles, a look of mild annoyance in his eyes. In
The midground that's just behind him, Plum Lane is a dark stripe of
Macadam running left to right across the picture roughly level with
His shoulders, with above that a thin, pallid band of path before the
Railings and the dead grass of the barrow. In the upper background
Are first trees, and then the roofs and chimneys of the houses
Slightly further down the slope, with over all the great reach of the
Brimming granite sky, its vapour masses heading south across the city
And towards us. Pay attention to his spectacles, refracted light
Turning the puzzled eyes beyond the lenses into abstract clots of
Pearl and white. Just change the point of view a little, move an
Inch or so to one side or the other and the optical illusion fails
Comes to bits. You realise that the glasses are in fact a pair of
Dormer windows set into a housetop downhill, visible through parted
Trees that form the edges of his face, a patch of negative space
Strung across the gap between them. A wood pigeon swoops down
Through the area that formerly appeared to be his nose, his cheek
Into the dappled sideburn shadows, and his swathe of silver hair
Is only raincloud mustering above the shiny tiles that were his brow
The corrugating wrinkles there beside his lips, the thin moustache
And sparse goatee are random stains and shadows in the grave mound's
Withered overgrowth, vertical railings where there seem to be lapels
His jacket melted into Plum Lane's damping tarmac, and the whole
Mae West broom of his countenance disintegrates. No matter how
Much shifting back and forth you do, there on that dreadful corner
Just across the street from Brinklow Crescent, you won't find the
Magic spot again, won't bring him back in focus. There's nobody
There, there was never anybody there, except a fluctuation in the
Visual purple, a perceptual misunderstanding, a trick of moonlight
Presently the view of London is arised by weather
Rain comes clattering down
In bright tin sheets
Upon the empty street