HORSE (P)RIDE

“What would he do in this situation?” she thought to herself. She ran the programme like somewhere inside of her there was a fragment of him that was independent of his being. She turned the corners of her mouth down slightly like he did when he was thinking and narrowed her nostril, tilting her head back. He was turning it over in his mind. Next thing she found herself patting her imaginary pockets for tobacco but then remembered she had finished the last of it earlier that day, during midmorning coffee. She spotted something out the corner of her eye and for a moment clicked out of character to snatch up a piece of hard wood lying by the side of the bench. It was a bit of root or wood knot. A stem of branch came out one side and had been cut clean through, most probably with the long handled pruning sheers that hung in his garden shed. It felt just right. It was the perfect pipe. She parked herself down on the bench and gave it a couple of fairly hard taps on the front of the seat to clear out any old ash. She may not have any tobacco but several times she had seen him chewing on his unlit stem pondering a problem. She put the end in her mouth. It was too green to be perfect. There was a hint of sap there but the bitterness could pass for the acridity of tobacco. After a while she pulled her left foot up on to the chair as only the thinnest of men are wont to do, and held on to her shin. After a couple of muted clicks in the back of his throat she shook her head slowly.
“It’ll never do,” she said to herself. “The girl has done it to herself and now there’s no helping her.” Hillary was immediately unconvinced that her father would be so harsh. “Hillary,” she attempted again. “Whatever were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry papa,” she said. “I never realised it would do that if I let it out.” Her father looked at her with a quizzical gaze and took the pipe out of his mouth. “You are a very naughty girl. We’re going to have to shoot him now and I’m sorry to say that that is entirely your fault. You should never have let him out of the field.” Hillary could feel her eyes filling as she spoke. She had no choice. She would have to try and retrieve the situation herself.
Pride comes before a fall and she had been certain she could handle him. He was big and boisterous and on one of their long walks things had got a little out of hand. She loved him desperately and in the end all the inner admonishments of her father could not stop the impending disaster. Now she was pregnant and he had bolted. Where she knew not. In principle at least she could recapture the huge cart horse that was careering round the country lanes of Whittering, kicking out at cars and pedestrians, but she could never regain the other, or lose what she had growing within her. Deep within her darkestness. She had been insane to try to ride the horse to Beachy Head. Now she would have to drive the car. She had seen her father do it often enough. But she was not her father and now she was no longer her father’s little girl.

REMEMBER NOSTALGIA

“A Bittersweet songing for things, persons, or situations past.”



She had passed him a crumpled page torn from a notebook. He read it:

“Weep not upon the pillow or the down
Cast not that is your grace upon the wind
As sweet is fair that shadows not the frown
Blown in by tempests that have come behind.

The solstice can portend an endless day
And too can herald up the longest night
The coldest hour’s before the morning ray
The greatest tears before all’s set to right.

And yet, within the sunshine of that youth
When every petal still was yet to bloom
The light was clearer and all illumined truth
Could comprehend until the edge of doom.

But now the years have forced their wisdoms taint,
And all I thought was good, I see just ain’t.

William Shakespeare 1778”

“It’s nice,” he said and held it out for her.
“It never occurs to us that our greatest writer may be yet to come,” she said looking at him earnestly. “William Shakespeare in this sonnet addresses the issue of nostalgia for the first time. We can return to Uclid or Euripides and will find nothing of nostalgia there. Admittedly Uclid was a mathematician, a discipline not known for it’s introspection on things past. But it’s a great name. They don’t make them like that anymore. Unlike Euripides which is still a first name amongst the people of Andora where a 2 litre bottle of Gin still only sets you back €12. But even these havens from national taxation are being swept away in the headlong rush to a reunited Europe.” Trevor couldn’t think of a response. “I remember the 1970’s like it was just 30 years ago,” she continued. “The paucity of my relationships. The power cuts of ‘74 and the three day week. All the consequence of industrial action. Do you remember ‘industrial action’?” But it was rhetorical. Trevor said nothing. “And I’m not talking about a one day tube strike. Oh no!” and she shook her head and made that ‘I’m serious now’ look with her eyebrows. She might start banging the table. But she didn’t. “This was the real McCoy,” she opined leaning back in her red plastic chair. “Class action: Capital versus labour. And I don’t mean New Labour either. I mean labour with a small ‘L’: Marxist labour. Can you recall?” Sure Trev was old enough. He remembered the three day week. And that shit kitchen they had seemed to live in back then. But did he want to go there. Enter in. Enter her mind. So he did nothing. Said nothing. She chewed on the inside of her mouth. “There were those Flying and secondary pickets.”
“Yes,” he said. Either way he could set her off. The occasional response might be just right.
“Closed shops, police brutality. I remember one time, the miners had built a snowman which the police ran down with an armoured van. The next day the snowman was back, only this time build round a caste iron bollard. How they all laughed, playfully pelting the ambulance with snowballs and half bricks when it eventually got through the crowd to the blood soaked occupants.”He knew Lillian was taking the piss. Playing with him. Playing at ‘me is crazy girl’. But hitting her would just make matters infinitely worse. He could feel a tightening in his chest. He had to leave. She wasn’t done: “And in those days there was no global warming either. The country baked itself to a crisp in 1976 but we were spared the unending whinging and hypothesising. It was all so much more straight forward: ‘Another 8 cows died of starvation in Northumbria last night.’ There was something comforting about it all.” Trevor smiled. He couldn’t help himself. For a brief second he wished this was the old Lilly. The one he had married. Now the sparkle had become a gleam and he thought about slitting himself.
“Now what?” he wondered as she leant forward opening a palm toward him. “Like Angela Rippon and her legs,” she proffered. “She didn’t have to get her tits out did she? See what I mean? And Nationwide!” she said like it was its own explanation. “If you came from elsewhere it must have been a nightly punch in the guts. An assault on your parochial pride. Just imagine how the Welsh must have felt. No wonder they were burning down holiday cottages.” Trevor got up slowly and kissed his wife on the forehead.
“Bye bye my love. I’ll see you soon.” He turned and walked as casually as he could toward the door. He thought about looking back for a final wave but the look of wet pain could be more that he could endure. He chose not to and departed.
“For great stretches of history nothing happened,” she continued, nodding confidently to herself. She would not dwell on his betrayal now. She could save that for the merciless dark of night. “One generation would live much like the next. Nostalgia would have been hard to foster. Not the case now. However, we are in danger of heading off to the other extreme: the past is different from the present to be sure but it is raked over with such intensity and regularity it no longer lives in the past as such. It is constantly being reinvented, updated to fill the multitude of colour supplements, glossies and TV channels.
I remember when Channel 4 first came on air. Someone was mourning the passing of an era: No longer would we come into work or school and be able to chat about the collective TV experience of the night before. With four channels everyone would end up in their own viewing bubble. Oh! How sweet and naive. Look at us now: TV bubbles, iPod bubbles, goodness knows what else. Hubbles, bubbles, toils and troubles as the Great Bard might have said. Mind you: I’m nostalgic for the iPod already ever since those phones came along broadcasting to the whole bus. Like we all wish to know for example that: “I want to be your wifey.” I don’t what to know. I suspose many do not. “I want to be your wifey.” Did you want to know that? “I want to be your wifey. I want to be your wifey.” I can do without it. But there you go. Things change, so people have to change with them. Wifey or no wifey. But it’s all bread and butter and short cake. Like the look at the old school rooms up in the attic of my soul. And let’s not forget. Let’s not forget. Let us never, ever forget…

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