Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  One field with tall white storky birds. Well, they were white like storks, but elegant like herons. Egrets, said Charlie. It was strange, seeing a brilliant white bird in a field, comporting itself, dipping for bugs amongst cattle legs, then sliding off, dismissed by speed, itself shrinking with everything else, to the palest of specks between dull wedges.

  He stood for hours as each brief future rushed on by, swooped into a perfect past.

  By the end of that time, he knew.

  He knew what perfect had to do with. It wasn’t beauty, as you dreamed when young.

  It meant it was finished, that was all.

  – This green thing, he said, when Charlie came to join him a second time.

  – We spoke about it, said Charlie. We dealt with that.

  – No, said Peem. But I was at this conference on bottled water.

  – Swinkie’s Symposium, said Charlie, was that the one?

  – ’Fraid so.

  – What about it?

  – I felt I was drowning amongst these people. You feel so helpless.

  april 25

  swooping swallows stitched it

  She enjoyed Djemma el Fna. But she liked to stay in the riad most of the day. She looked at picture books in the library, she sat across from the fountain, she secluded herself on her loggia, and found herself alone on the roof. There were no tall buildings overlooking, none in all the city, and that seemed to keep the city whole. The swooping swallows stitched it together, with playful vibrant cries, and loop upon loop of invisible thread.

  She too, whole, as far as she could be, momentarily whole. It was a great deal to be grateful for, momentary wholeness, after what had happened with Peem, with Alison, even her job. It was not all, but that, of course, was what went wrong in the beginning for her. Wanting it all, yet not being able to give time to, or properly enjoy, the tiniest portion.

  Wholeness; all. She turned the two concepts loose to comment on each other, and grazed in the safety of the Marrakech riad, across its patient tiles, from one seclusion to another, a cup of sweet mint tea in hand, under the orange trees.

  Then she went back up on the roof, and looked at the High Atlas Mountains, rising frankly, close and beckoning, their browns turning to rose in the late April sun.

  routine

  They got into a neat routine, Peem and Charlie, and it seemed to suit them fine. They were staying in Charlie’s pal’s spacious flat, in Lagos, just above a homely piri-piri restaurant, The Firefly. They had no fireflies to light their way, but every day the sun lured them to a different dampish habitat, where the marsh birds sensed the calmness in them, and didn’t hurry to hide.

  And every night in the smoky restaurant, with endless football dinning on TV, they chose the piri-piri chicken, the salty bacalau, or beer and swordfish.

  april 27

  i never heard cheep

  They had the use of an old blue Mercedes, right-hand drive; people were always donating well-made cars to holiday destinations, where they might be pensioned off and subside. Charlie drove. Every time he pulled out to overtake, Peem was exposed to oncoming drivers who seemed to have reconciled themselves to this being their last moment on earth.

  – And I’ll tell you another thing, said Charlie, as he noted the whiteness of his companion’s knuckles. Never accept a lift or a taxi anywhere unless you have checked one thing.

  – What’s that? said Peem.

  – Whether the driver believes in an afterlife, simple as that. If he’s hedging his bets on this life, and is only half-committed, let him drive on.

  – Seems like a valuable screening principle. I wonder if it could be applied further.

  – Sure, said Charlie. I would include Prime Ministers and Presidents. As soon as they show the slightest hankering to believe in an afterlife, shoot them.

  – They could hardly complain. They might even thank you, in a roundabout way, for speeding them to a better place. I take it you would apply this to all fundamentalists?

  – What does it mean, this fundamentalists? I never heard cheep about them in my young day.

  – Fundamentally wrong, I suppose, said Peem. Fundamentally missing the point. I met one or two when I was on my wanders. I can’t remember what any of them said, except there was a bad time coming, so better have faith, in as large a dollop as your system could stand. For me and plenty others, the bad time is already with you, or has already been. Say for example your skull’s been crushed but you’re still dottering along, I mean.

  – Yes, said Charlie. Look out for a sign that says Alvor, that should be us.

  They saw storks, squatting high on nesting posts and making a racket. They saw tall herons, ash-grey herons, miserably conspiratorial, twenty-four of them, standing amongst the reeds. Herons had this marvellous weapon, the long beak. The lightning beak, according to Charlie. But Peem never saw them use it.

  They saw three spoonbills swishing their beaks through saltpan shallows. They witnessed the dirty pink grotesqueries of flamingoes. It was no wonder that Alice had so much trouble with one, when she sought to use it as a croquet hammer. The flamingo always tried to twist its head to look at her, when all Alice wanted it to do was propel her hedgehog.

  And they saw coots, avocets, godwits and gallinules, satisfied or peckish, brilliant in the sun.

  Peem’s favourite by far was the black-winged stilt. Stilt was the clue. It could stand in two feet of water up to only its knees and fool you. It could pace with monstrous heel-lifting deliberation through cloyings of mud.

  Yet as it wafted into the air, looking for another café, it was elegance itself, long parallel legs making a slender wake. The stilt was a stilt. It reminded him of no-one. And there was joy in that too.

  films about philosophy

  Ingmar had indicated or promised a tour, and he didn’t disappoint, though he did not accompany Lucy on her trip over the Atlas, but only found for her an excellent Berber. Lucy wondered if there was something patronising about that, or at least patrician. Battened upon daily in her occupation by so much hype and jargon, she jibbed at Ingmar’s description. Perhaps she recoiled from the term as though it might be racist.

  But he was a Berber, and if he hadn’t been, and if he hadn’t been excellent, you couldn’t have trusted him in these real mountains, up through the twisting steeps, then aslant through the imperfectly ploughed snowdrifts at the swirling top.

  Equal opportunities could go so far, but a sense of properness sometimes further. Did you really want a pustular booking clerk from Putney piloting your Landcruiser at 7,000 feet? Did you want an alien Leopard coming in and making his high hide, to slavver over your native city?

  She might ask something else. Was it proper for folk to knuckle under, or even, like her, run off to the sun—?

  But, when you are in the Atlas, the Atlas have to come first.

  The debut of GrottoLotto was set for May Day. She would ask Ingmar in good time where she could go online and rebook her flight back.

  The mountain villages were startling, flat, mud-walled, with Sky dishes. There were goat-paths leading down from the road, and up the other side of the river towards them. She wondered if the goatherds and their families would stay in and watch GrottoLotto, and whether they would be able to buy tickets for it, so high up. Did they have broadband and credit cards? She wanted to ask Karim, but it went way beyond her phrase books in Berber and Arabic.

  Halting French might do the trick.

  – Karim, s’il vous plait. Est-ce que les gens ici ont le broadband, ou le dial-up seulement?

  – S’ils ont beaucoups des chèvres, ils ont aussi le broadband.

  – Merci. Et, est-ce que les gens ici aiment beaucoup La Loterie?

  – La vie, c’est leur loterie. S’ils gagnent trop d’argent, ils doivent demeurer en ville. Les Berbers et la ville sont les bons cousins, mais non les bons voisins.

  – But you live in the city, vous demeurez en ville?

  – Mais chaque jour je prends l’auto su
r les montagnes. Mon âme s’est nourrie et satisfiée par les voyages que je fais, jour par jour.

  Lucy cupped two open palms below her heart and then moved them up beyond her cheekbones, and out – beyond.

  – Your soul, you mean? Your soul is satisfied?

  – Je le crois, said Karim, without taking his eyes from the road.

  Once they had dropped on the other side, and into the bony fringes of the Sahara, and across the great, braided, alluvial watercourses with the patches and plots of green vegetables perched on their banks, they came to the vast film studios in Ouarzazate, that Ingmar had half-jokingly mentioned as a possible target for their one-day jaunt.

  They turned down left and approached the massive junk lot of clapboard and recycled sets for Egyptian, Arabian, Palestinian and Tibetan films. Lawrence of Arabia, The Man Who Would Be King, Cleopatra, Kundun, Alexander and Kingdom of Heaven had all been shot there, at least in part. Just about everything of the sandy genre, apart from The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan and Bhaji on the Beach. Karim stayed outside to save on fees, to contemplate and – most centrally probably – to avoid boredom.

  At the moment there was nothing going on, apart from some desultory tours. There was a plethora of polystyrene pillars, fierce paper Anubises, and artificial palms.

  The film-lot guides were young and full of fun and, it being early season, there was one guide between only four of them, plus a tag-along apprentice learning the spiel, the numbing statistics, the film jokes.

  – Ah, so you are Alexander the Great! the main young guide said in triumph to one of the other three tourists.

  – I am called Zander, said the white-haired gentleman. I wish it to be known that I do not use any Alex prefixed to my name.

  – Zander the Abbreviated, said the witty lad.

  – If you wish, said the man. One cannot achieve greatness merely by length of name.

  – How did you achieve it then? said the wit.

  – I profess philosophy, said Zander.

  – Philosophy, said the guide. We don’t see so many films about philosophy these days.

  – The fact that there are few films about it is greatly to the credit of philosophy, said Zander.

  – Well, said the youngster. Why you out here, Mr Zander, if that’s how you feel?

  – That is a good, though not insurmountable question, said the philosophy man.

  Get on with it, thought Lucy. This was getting to be like one of the more turgid passages in Icarus ’68, so-called.

  – I am from Crete, said Zander, and you will be aware that we have a certain priceless historical monument: a cradle, if not the cradle, of European civilisation, at Knossos.

  – So you were a Professor in Crete, said Lucy. How interesting.

  – I was a Professor of Philosophy in Aberdeen, Scotland, said Zander Petrakis, a part of the neo-Greek world that you are not unfamiliar with, if I am correct in deducing from your slight accent?

  The guide turned to the other two.

  – What did you think of Aberdeen, Uberdeen? asked Lucy. Or Leopardeen, I should say.

  – I am aware of the attempted transmogrifications, said Zander. But a city cannot so easily redefine its spots. I studied these spots, I have suffered from these spots, for the best and worst parts of forty years.

  – Were you in Aberdeen in the Sixties then? With long hair?

  – I arrived in effect on the last day of 1967. I met the long-haired, the self-deluded, the internally exiled and the desperate.

  – And were you none of those yourself?

  – A philosopher is required to manage the world’s fate, his people’s history, and both the peaks and vicissitudes of love.

  – A Stoic perhaps is required to. There are philosophies too of the heart, you may be aware.

  – We would need longer, I submit, to discuss the contradictions of that fully. Let us progress. I do find it a pleasure to have met you. Now I must assess whether Atlas Studios could host the making of a Knossos film, and save my land and heritage from much ignorant trampling.

  Lucy wondered about him briefly as a possible ally in the battle against LeopCorp, UbSpec Total, Swink, Rookie Marr, Guy Bord, and GrottoLotto. Not to mention that turncoat Alison.

  – I’ve never been to Crete, I must confess. But your myth is part of all of us. The labyrinth, the horrible monster at its heart. Daedalus, prisoner and inventor. And Icarus, who tried to fly without listening.

  – Thank you for reminding me, Ms—?

  – Ms Legge, Lucy Legge.

  – But what we will be faced with, Ms Legge, if that film is made, is only labyrinth as folly. Film is the great art form of the last century, but two-dimensional only. A film about Knossos can only be a façade.

  The granite is no façade, thought Lucy.

  – Now, Lucy, I must prospect further. What is that on the horizon, with so many high walls? he asked the guide.

  – The Kingdom of Heaven.

  – Have they finished with their lot?

  – Ouarzazate, what does it mean, Karim? Qu’est ce-que il veut dire? En Berber? said Lucy, as they were driving away west and beginning their climb.

  – Ouarzazate. Sans bruit, sans nuisances, sans embrouillement.

  – Without noise, without confusion. C’est évidemment un nom ancien, a name given long ago.

  april 30

  their gift for each other

  Peem and Lucy bumped into each other at Leopardeen Airport, at the carousel. There were passengers from about three flights looking glum.

  – Hi, said Lucy. Waiting to be reconciled with your baggage?

  – Reconciled to waiting, said Peem.

  – I think it’ll be all over the place. They only changed the name of the airport last week, so not all the airlines will have the Leopardeen labels. And there are no doubt two dozen old Aberdeens, and a dozen mimic Uberdeens scattered across the globe.

  – I did not think death had undone so many, Peem said.

  – Donne?

  – Dante. I am the age I am, and only now coming to the Inferno.

  – How have you been? Are you reconciled? I was going to get in touch, but you’re not on email.

  – Never mind me. I’ve had a nice quiet time looking at birds. How about you?

  – Oh, Morocco.

  – Lucy, Charlie, I should have introduced, Citizens’ Advice man. He’s been looking after me.

  – Hi Charlie, said Lucy. Full time job, eh? You back specially for tomorrow night? Son of Spectacle? GrottoLotto?

  – Charlie thinks my second name’s Endrie, said Peem.

  – Dree, said Lucy. End-dree? You know what that means in the old Ewan MacColl song? Endure your fate.

  – How does it go again? I think I know it.

  – Work and wait and dree your weird, sang Lucy.

  – Pin your faith in herrin sales, said Peem.

  – And oftimes lie awake at nicht, sang Lucy.

  – In fear and dread o winter gales, they attempted to sing together.

  – Weird for sure, said Charlie.

  Some of the other passengers had found good reason to shuffle their way round the carousel.

  Lucy and Peem stopped rattling on, and took each other in. The play of a smile. Whatever they’d squandered, they hadn’t lost their gift for each other.

  They plucked their bags, and spoke even faster for half a minute.

  – So if things go bust, Peem, and they may well, said Lucy, forget GrottoLotto, forget Spectacle. Make your way to the beach. See ya.

  – Lucy, both of you, do you want to share a taxi? said Charlie.

  – Okay, said Peem.

  – No, Charlie, said Lucy, got a ton to do. Better head off, thanks.

  I left my Traveller in the long stay.

  the clowns are in it for the long haul

  After he had dumped his stuff at Maciek’s, Peem asked Charlie to drop him off at the Shack. Still there after all these years, the red corrugated roof, the black door,
down at the quayside.

  – Come in for a minute, said Peem, with one hand on the passenger door. You must meet Iris.

  Charlie steamed around till he spied the last space in a pub car park. For Patrons Only, it said. They set off on foot along the waterfront.

  – What’s Iris like? said Charlie.

  – Wait till you meet her.

  They found the place was packed. Folk of all ages: lorry drivers, office workers, pensioners. It was tea and sandwiches, bananas, cakes and juice mostly. The place was humming with chat.

  – There’s no space, said Charlie.

  – Wait, said Peem.

  There was a steady traffic to and from the toilet. Though more seemed to go than came back. There was no sign of Iris.

  – Look, there’s a seat, said Peem. You take it. I’ll be back.

  He went hunting for her. There were three doors in the toilets, Men, Women and Staff Only. He chose the third. In the dark partition between toilets and kitchen, a hand went on his forearm.

  – Iris? said Peem.

  – No, said the voice.

  – I need to see her.

  – Forget it.

  With that Iris poked her head through, and light from the kitchen fell on his face.

  – Oh, said Iris. It’s you. I’ll see you later. No, put on a mask and come through. But say nothing, unless you have something to say.