Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

  This grove had already been called ‘Sunflower Street’ by Jack Parry. The son marvelled at the size of the blooms. He recalled transplanting self-seeded sunflowers in May and not giving them a thought.

  Those stems had promised little. Yet many of the heads were now monstrous. As cumbersome as nylon backpacks, Parry considered, pleased with the image. Other sunflowers had branched, so that twenty, even fifty faces jostled above a single stalk.

  Parry liked the corner of the allotment best where the beans had climbed over the sunflowers and canes. Three crops, tangled together. Poor husbandry, he imagined. But the results were spectacular. He could stand in the same position and pick three different fruits.

  Blame your father, who else? Dora Parry had complained. I wish he was a better salesman than a gardener. But he’s hopeless at both.

  Eccentric might be a fairer description, said Jack Parry, peering up at a sunflower face. Now, eccentric I could bear. In fact, eccentric might be considered a compliment. I wouldn’t mind being known as eccentric. Jack Parry the celebrated eccentric. Implies depth, does eccentricity.

  Implies a lot of things, said his wife.

  Implies intelligence, does eccentricity.

  A sunflower’s more intelligent than some, said Dora Parry.

  Freezer’s full, said Parry. Next-door freezer’s full too. And that’s the only other freezer in the street.

  Not cold enough, they say next door, muttered Dora. And who sold it to them do you think?

  Can you make raspberry-ripple ice cream? Parry asked his mother to head her off.

  No. Your father’d eat it.

  Go on, Jack Parry had said. Who could resist raspberry rabble? I mean ripple? How about some raspberry ripple for the raspberry rebels?

  III

  Parry remembered going over the rocks. The outcrops were covered in lichen.

  Yellow as eggyolk, Parry had thought. A good sign too. Clean air. Despite The Works and its sulphur, the breeze was refreshing.

  It was near here that Parry had found a lark’s nest. It was cupped in a hoofprint, a little mattress of straw and samphire leaves.

  There were three skylark eggs, and he remembered trying out the words. Storm-coloured. Yes, that was it. The scribbling on a skylark’s egg. Exactly the colour of the rainclouds that hung over The Caib.

  As a boy, Parry had collected eggs. But his heart hadn’t been in it. Someone in school, maybe Sev, had once brought in a whole collection. Hawfinch, black redstart, the green china lantern of a mute swan, muddy from the bullrushes. The scarcer the better.

  Yes, the rules of diminishing returns. Seductive even then. He could recall blowing a wren’s egg, the smallest egg he had ever found. Its orange bubble hung against his lower lip and chin, grown to a glassblower’s ball.

  Larks had been common in those days. They tumbled out of the wind. Because it always blew on The Caib. The wind was forever restless. Until the fog arrived.

  Wind’ll put the caibosh on The Caib, just watch.

  That’s what his father said. And almost before his phone had time to ring, Parry had taken it from his pocket and switched it on. Getting ready. For the summons.

  But there was no breeze today. The mist welled around the scarps, hung on the gorse.

  As to skylarks, now they were scarce. Victims of thieves such as Parry and his friends.

  Where were those boys now? he wondered. Ransacking the City, perhaps. Still taking what didn’t belong to them. What could never belong.

  Parry’s phone rang. The yolk must have been addled in that egg, he thought. That wren’s egg, gone bad.

  He listened but did not say anything. There was no voice, but a rustling. As if something was being unwrapped. Something slowly and laboriously revealed. Maybe something precious. As, yes, it was.

  Parry listened for a minute longer while the rustling continued. There was a life there. A presence at the end of the telephone. Maybe something insubstantial. A skylark, perhaps. He thought of a skylark’s heart beating in his hand. The maze of hot capillaries. Or a lark’s egg warm against the kiss of the egg thief. The lips of the snake.

  Dad? Parry said. Dad, is that you?

  The rustling continued. As if words were being unwrapped. As if at last the caller would be revealed.

  Hey, Dad. It’s me.

  Jack Parry had been a salesman. His son had once worked out that he had driven a million miles in the last thirty years of his career. Although, ‘career’ might be the wrong word. Selling things was what Parry did. Or found himself doing. But yes, one million miles. Four times to the moon.

  Not that Jack Parry had been a good driver. He was usually in the wrong gear. Especially on hills.

  Yes, his father the professional driver, the commercial salesman. His father on those endless local roads, the fernbanked lanes and the motorway when at last it was opened.

  He remembered Jack’s tuneless whistle in the dark of dawn. And the summer afternoon when it was good to be driving. A man, out and about. A man like Jack Parry.

  Parry still marvelled at his father. Jack, he thought now, was a rakish name yet. Jack the Lad. Good old Jack. You had to expect something from a Jack. Dependable Jack? Loyal Jack? Possibly untrustworthy Jack. The son smiled at the thought.

  Yet when Parry considered his father, it was the dust he left behind him, the summer slipstream that the boy loved, the rush of that early car they had owned. In its British racing green.

  Or his father’s sweat on the steering wheel, the black polished arc before him, on the Hillman Hawk, the Humber Hawk. And then the cheaper Fords, the old green Austin, as business became difficult. As competition increased. As the roads filled with other salesmen. With men stronger than his father. With men more ruthless. With better drivers. With men who could sell anything.

  And always the car radio playing. First days of Radio One, and before that ‘Whistle While You Work’. How Jack Parry had despised the jaunty songs written specially for the proletariat. To keep them happy, he said. At their toil.

  Once Jack Parry had pointed to a hayfield.

  I used to ride on a gambo, he said. That was real haymaking. Over on Morfa Field, the whole village came out together.

  Yes, working together. We drank lemonade flavoured with fennel. My mother made it. That, or stone ginger. Blades of grass prickling your neck. Sunburn and nettlerash everywhere. Rats in the grass. Hares too.

  The radio stayed on, despite the dismal soundtrack. Window down, Jack Parry’s right elbow rested on the rubber frame.

  Sometimes it was coffee machines that Parry sold. Occasionally it had been portable Scheidigger typewriters. With cutprice typing courses for housewives.

  Before that it had been slimming powders. Then paperback books.

  Easy come, easy go was Jack Parry’s attitude. Some things worked. Others were duds. Blow-up globes was another line. Once there had been encyclopaedias. Then ice boxes. Packets of mustard and cress.

  What Parry remembered was his father’s weight increasing. Chocolates, choc ices, ham sandwiches with pink ham, naked as a nestling’s throat. It all became Jack’s comfort food.

  Yes, raw ham and buttery hanks of an uncut loaf, made up breakfast, lunch, tea.

  It was all one intermittent mealtime. Washed down with Coca Cola. That’s what the boy could never understand. His father’s insatiable thirst for Coke.

  It’s horrible, he always said.

  Yes, agreed Jack. Gripewater for grown-ups.

  Then why drink it?

  You’re right, laughed the father. It only makes me piss.

  Then why?

  Piss like a panther.

  What?

  Or piss like a porcupine.

  And Parry would collapse in laughter. Then wait in the car while Jack went behind a hedge.

  IV

  Slowly, in the driver’s seat, the cushion collapsed. And Parry it was, along for the ride, who occupied the front passenger seat. At Whitsun, at August.

  The boy rar
ely talked, allowing his father to drive. Glad to be with his old man. The pair together.

  In summer, his father’s window was rolled down. There was a smell of gorse in the air. A tang of petrol.

  And how often were they together at night, passing The Works like some blitzed city? Both of them silent. As if in awe. Whilst the miles of fire went by on the plain.

  This was The Works that had been built where the dunes once rose. Where the plover pools had stretched, green as battery acid. The Works that now employed everyone.

  Everyone included the losers, the wasters, the no-hopers. Everyone who had given up. Everyone who wanted to collect a pension. Everyone except Jack Parry.

  Why don’t you work down there? Parry had once asked his father. He was afraid to use the giveaway words: The Works.

  Down there? asked Parry. Also avoiding the word. With everybody else, you mean?

  Yes.

  Would you like me to?

  The boy pondered.

  Dunno.

  Go on, say. Tell me.

  Well…

  Good money, said Jack Parry. Or better money than now.

  Then why? Don’t you?

  Perhaps I will.

  Parry had looked at the flares from the chimneys. Yellow and silver, the flames. Ninety-five chimneys he had once counted. Now the fires were reflected on his father’s face. A ghostly brightness, blue-silver, yellow-silver. Like the foil wrapping of the chocolate biscuits Jack Parry had discarded and which lay at his son’s feet.

  Ninety-five flags of fire. Ninety-five separate blazes that called the workers across the mountains, the sandblown plain.

  Yeah. Perhaps I will, said Jack Parry.

  Really good money, said his son. And laughed.

  Jack Parry laughed too.

  Yes, perhaps I will.

  And then Jack laughed louder.

  And perhaps I won’t. Yeah. Perhaps I bloody won’t.

  Parry loved it when his father swore.

  That’s it, Parry sniggered. Perhaps you bloody won’t.

  Because I don’t want to be like all the other fuckers.

  Parry choked.

  Because you don’t want to be like all the other fuckers?

  No, I don’t want to be like all the other fuckers.

  And they had made up a song. On the spot. An industrial blues.

  It’s called, said Jack Parry, ‘Why we don’t want to be like all the other fuckers’. And they had sung it while The Works smouldered before them. Streetlamps revealed the sulphuric squall that lay over the town.

  But the town itself was invisible. A spectral citadel. Yes, The Citadel. Which is what Parry had began to call The Works in his teenage years.

  About this time, Richard Parry remembered asking his father why he didn’t play the guitar. Or any musical instruments. The response was predictable.

  Well I’m good at comb and paper, Jack had said.

  No. A proper instrument.

  Once tried the ukulele.

  No. Proper.

  Uke’s proper.

  You know.

  Used to fancy the bassoon.

  No, no.

  Bassoon’s a proper instrument.

  Why not the guitar?

  Bassoon’s classical. There are bassoon concertos in the classical repertoire.

  Why do you have to turn everything into a…

  What? asked Jack.

  Nothing.

  No. Say.

  A joke.

  Do I?

  Yes, said Parry. Always. Always

  Oh, dear, said Jack. Sorry.

  You always, always do.

  Oh. Double dear.

  And why, asked his son, warming to the subject, both laughing and crying now, why didn’t you teach me the guitar?

  Jack Parry looked abashed.

  Or the piano. Or the, or the … the fucking ukulele?

  And they had both broken into laughter then. Snorts and aching guffaws. The son louder than the father.

  Yeah, sorry, spluttered Jack Parry. We failed you there good and proper. Bad parents, aren’t we. You could have been the new George Formby.

  Who? screamed Parry. Who the fuck’s George Forty?

  And they had collapsed again.

  Who the…? Who the fuck is who? asked Jack Parry, wiping his tears away.

  George somebody, you said, spluttered his son. George the fucking Third.

  And obviously ruined your life?

  But why?

  Your miserable fucking life.

  Why not?

  Why not what?

  Why not teach me. Why didn’t you teach me to play?

  Yeah, good question, said Jack Parry when he had recovered.

  Because, everyone…

  Because everyone plays nowadays. Is that what you mean?

  Yes. Everyone. Plays nowadays.

  I don’t, said Jack Parry.

  No. You don’t.

  I definitely don’t.

  But it’s only you.

  I’m the last one, said Jack Parry.

  And me, said the son. I’m just like you.

  Like me? You’re like me?

  Yeah. Like you.

  God help you, then, said the father. Like me? There’s nobody like me. Is there?

  Only me, said Richard Parry.

  Oh no. Not you.

  Yes. Me.

  Well, said Jack Parry, putting another ham sandwich into his mouth, taking a draught of the foaming Coke.

  Could be worse.

  No it couldn’t.

  Yes it could.

  No it couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly be worse…

  A guitar? You’re sure.

  Yes, said Parry. A guitar.

  I could have sold guitar strings instead of typewriter lessons. Sold guitar lessons.

  But you don’t. Do you?

  Look, I’ll buy you a guitar. Like everybody else, I’ll buy you a guitar. In fact, I’ll buy everyone a guitar.

  Don’t want a guitar, said the son.

  Now you don’t want a guitar.

  No.

  First you want a guitar. Then you don’t want a guitar. What do you fucking want then?

  His son had choked again.

  A fucking ukulele, he at last managed to say.

  And they had dissolved for the last time.

  V

  But while Jack continued to sing their blues, his son grew quiet.

  Parry looked about him at the other cars. He saw redbrick terraces, back-street foundries, tyre depots, Chinese chipshops. And everywhere the barbed wire that hung above the walls of The Works.

  He wondered whether he would spend his life there. Or celebrate his escape from that future waiting for the children of the plain.

  In fact, ‘Citadel’ was a word Parry loved. It was the title of a song by the Rolling Stones.

  Parry had once enjoyed that song. But only because it featured his favourite musician, Nicky Hopkins, who had played on the recording.

  Yes, that Nicky Hopkins, Parry would smile at anyone he thought was listening. A genius. Yes, a session genius. But always in the background, as the classic sessionman must be.

  Parry would explain this in his sitting room above Badfinger, in the shop itself, or The Paradise when ordering a bottle of red.

  Nicky Hopkins? Parry would announce. What a musician. Could play all day. All night. But someone who never received his dues.

  Then, poor bastard, he has Crohn’s Disease. I’d say he was dead by fifty. Surely no more. And by then, he was alienated. Had a bellyful, if you pardon the expression. So he hated the industry.

  You know, Parry would say, if he had drunk enough, I was going to write Nicky’s biography. Got the title, the only title possible. ‘Sideman’. Like it? Yes, ‘Sideman’. Says it all.

  And, remember this, Nicky Hopkins even played with The Easybeats. We had a poster of him in Hey Bulldog back in Oz. People used to ask who it was, this young man with muttonchop whiskers. Just a kid. Spare as a sparro
w. Always bent over a white piano.

  That Dutch couple who ran the Goolwa Motel? They thought Nicky Hopkins was wonderful. Understood about good and bad luck, see. Classic yin and yang. Yes, they’d say. Nicky, Nicky, poor Nicky. He wasn’t famous enough. Yet maybe he was too famous.

  Remember, he was the pianist on ‘She’s a Rainbow’. And that’s enough for some people. His role amongst the immortals is guaranteed by performing on that single track. Despite the harmonies.

  Yeah, Little Nicky. With his dodgy guts. Being a genius and making it seem easy.Not everyone could forgive him that.

  And Lulu? She loved Nicky as well. And if Lulu loved you, that was good enough for me.

  Her eyes on the stars. Beautiful-looking boy, she thought he was. With great hair. Remember, he played the harpsichord on ‘Citadel’. Brian Jones was on that track too. Another angelic bastard. Brian played the mellotron. One of the first rock musicians ever to try that instrument.

  Yes, poor Brian. Brian and Nicky, carrying their own doom. That pair, cursed by their own black magic. Gave their best away too easily. Not ruthless enough. Or perhaps too ruthless. Who’s to say after all these years?

  They weren’t the inheritors, you see. Not the true inheritors. But we know the ones who cleaned up, don’t we? The ones who kept their ears open. And are doing it still. That doesn’t take much guessing.

  Listen. Nicky Hopkins played on ‘Imagine’. And thirteen different albums by the Stones. Thirteen! That’s more than Brian. The Stones thought he was the business.

  Keith kept making the call. And Nicky kept answering. Got him playing on ‘Citadel’, adding all sorts of colour. That was Nicky, see. Colouring the tone. Enriching it. Adding crimson where there was only the idea of red. Experimenting with scarlet. With cadmium red. Black keys and the white keys reversed. Remember they used to do that to harpsichords.

  And the sound like gemstones. Or a fringe of firelight. Think of making a sound like that. Creating music like that. And that was why people like Keith Richards wanted his number.

  VI

  When Parry’s phone rang there was no one there.

  Hey, Dad, I know it’s you, said Parry. Look, I’m coming round soon. I promise, Dad. I’m coming. Soon.

  TEN

  I

  All those brassy trumpets, said Parry. The flowers were insane. But it was the heat that ruined it for me. Or made it too difficult. I was used to a sky the colour of oyster shells. But Adelaide was blue, accusing. The mirages in suburbia trembled like cellophane.