One Thousand Nights and Counting Page 3

  – The Weatherman, anyway, had said

  the hot spell wouldn’t hold, and of course why should it?

  He showed us the LOWs, poised at the edge of the world,

  the Weatherman, and he grinned and said, ‘Good night.’

  Then they showed our match! They did a feature

  on Gallid, what an old star he was, and they say

  they showed Brack and I, falling around on the lawn

  some time after eleven. Lucky they did,

  really, because we don’t remember a thing.

  We were out of our little skulls, in the jungle.

  4

  Before I finally – hell, and it’s been a while –

  tell about then, the end of the last dry night,

  it’s worth remembering what had been going on.

  We’d had a shit-hot summer, that’s for sure,

  and the office guys were free to roll their sleeves

  and booze or participate, or both, and they did.

  There was a song that stayed top of the charts,

  wouldn’t fucking budge. It was called I

  Want It Now – interesting thing about that:

  they told me the tough little singer was last seen nude

  and paddling through the studio, I mean really,

  great video, or what? But her band were drowned.

  What else – the Town won every bloody game

  up to that day. I’m kind of proud of that.

  5

  The animals. Big question, yes, of course:

  How did the mad prophetic son-of-a-bitch

  find them all? – what’s the word – the logistics.

  Answer: haven’t a clue. We did see lorries

  parked on the slip road. There was that night with Coops

  and my Ex, she was also Coops’s Ex, creeping

  up to the lorries and banging them and hearing

  nothing. I mean, the hollow boom. So we thought

  these had been left behind by some small firm

  suddenly gone to hell. So we went home.

  In retrospect they must have been full of insects.

  And there were the quiet trains.

  Haggit’s kid kept saying in the morning

  ‘There are trains all going by and no one hears them!’

  6

  You’re starting to think: morons. But what was suspicious?

  We assumed they were fuel trains, the secret ones,

  and we weren’t about to sully our hands with politics.

  Anarchists, we weren’t. Morons maybe.

  But I haven’t forgotten the buses.

  Green, beige, pink and blue buses,

  obsolete, used in the tourist season.

  We thought – who wouldn’t – the old crock was cashing in

  like everybody else. I mean, old Haggit,

  bless his last words (‘You’ll drown’) was by that time

  selling water, and Coops’s surgery

  was pay-as-you-enter, pay-as-you-stitch, and I

  was preaching at a very slight profit.

  All we thought was that he was doing what we were.

  7

  I’m trying to read the diaries I had

  but it’s all smudged, and I have to hum that song

  to haul it back. Then there’s a certain smell

  fumes up that summer like nothing else on earth . . .

  – Burning green leaves, his trees dying the death.

  They tried to pass a law, you know, to stop him,

  pretending they gave a toss about his woodland

  when all they wanted to do was show him he couldn’t

  do what he wanted any more, because.

  Because it was unnerving them, in the heat.

  Because they didn’t know why he was doing it.

  Because, because. Because he was doing it.

  They rushed it through. The Council hurried to stop

  this outrage, as the last tree was lopped.

  8

  I suppose it’s still on the statute-book in some

  soaking hell. Where was I? In the jungle,

  after the match. There was, I remember now,

  a last-night-of-the-show feel to it all,

  which I’d know about, as I was no slouch on the stage

  either, and our production of Gomorrah

  was banned at once and played to shrieking houses!

  Me, I played the lawyer, my lines were

  ‘Shut up, don’t need to know’ and ‘No, you can’t’

  and – can’t remember, something about a warrant.

  Coops was a headless king, my Ex his widow,

  and Haggit played himself but not very well.

  Good days. But yes, it did feel a bit, you know,

  like, what the hell would there be to do tomorrow?

  9

  In the Winners’ Bar there’d been Olde Tyme Oyle,

  there’d been Manzadinka by the gallon, Chuice,

  Diet Light, pints and pints of Splash,

  and all the usual girls between the curtains.

  There’d been songs of winning, anthems of the Jungle

  Club, there’d been speeches and falling down,

  and taunts and chants directed at the Town!

  I mean it was quite a night, and I’ve asked myself:

  what the hell did we head to the jungle for?

  There was Brack and I, Haggit, the blue winger,

  the mascot with his mushrooms, and some girl.

  We’d most of us played for the Jungle, but so what?

  It didn’t mean we came from there, although

  the winger did – and that girl, and in fact the mascot.

  10

  Funny how all in the space of what was maybe

  half an hour, everything that was starting

  clearly announced it was starting. There was a rumble.

  There was a vast boomerang of birds

  black against the black-green of the jungle’s

  drenched sky: there was a second, different rumble.

  We had a debate. We were always having debates.

  Even out of our tiny heads, we were picking

  fair sides to wonder what the hell

  the rumbles were, and how far away they were.

  The junglies – Brack was calling them that

  and right to their little faces – the junglies all

  got nervous. The winger, who’d not touched a drop, was sure

  the war was starting – ‘Or at least two different wars!’

  11

  The girl, who’d arrived with somebody nobody knew

  and had lost him, or just left him with his drink,

  made to speak, but so did Haggit. Then

  the girl said, ‘N-n-no, it’s a great

  elephant larger than any town!’ The mascot

  gulped and seconded that, but said it was green.

  Then Haggit scoffed, and Brack said, ‘That’s no elephant,’

  as a third rumble came, ‘That’s my mother!’

  And so it was left to me to feel the cold,

  and calm them down. ‘Sod it, it’s just thunder.’

  Full marks for irony, of course, but remember,

  it had been a good nine months. Then Haggit and Brack

  got serious and agreed. Which meant the junglies

  were outvoted, as the girl had disappeared.

  12

  More obviousnesses then. Sheet lightning.

  God’s face on it, bored, on His chin.

  One of us shouting, ‘Knock it off!’ to Him.

  And suddenly it stopping, at our shins.

  ‘Ahem, let’s go home,’ ventured Haggit,

  wobbling on a log. ‘We’ll get a chill.’

  And we asked the blue winger, who in our game

  had played what they call a blinder, to help out

  for teammates’ sakes, by showing us our way.

  Brack was getting jumpy. ‘What
do you say?

  Will you help us out, us three?’

  It was very dark. He was speaking to a tree.

  ‘Fucking fairweather friend,’ he spat. ‘Blue freak!’

  And the mascot giggled and we were up shit creek.

  13

  No wonder Brack was losing it: after all,

  he was a news-hound, that was what he did.

  They’d be screeching for him, threatening his friends

  back in the newsroom – ‘Where’s Brack? IT RAINED!’

  He could hardly call in sick, after his great

  heroics in the match, and his face in the News:

  so he knew he was out of a job.

  No of course he didn’t know we all were.

  Haggit, meanwhile, he had a wife and kid,

  who’d certainly be waiting to be angry.

  But he was a calm kind of man, and he said,

  ‘Let’s work it out from the light.’ I said, ‘What light?’

  I do admit I was hardly a help. I kept thinking

  of the losers happy in the Winners’ Bar, drinking.

  14

  We waded where we thought we’d waded from.

  We couldn’t lose the mascot, who kept saying,

  ‘Whistlework, whistlework,’ and our only

  guide was the one cloud pierced

  by the moon, and only at times.

  Otherwise it was dark and the only sounds

  were the mascot and, ultimately, Brack

  drowning it. Then we were worried men

  and cold, thinking of lawns and admitting it.

  We waded on, it got drier, higher up,

  a good sign, for our port was on a hill.

  That’s why they called us mad, but we didn’t choose

  to have the sea up there, where the ancient bloke

  had made his boat, and we called him mad too.

  15

  They called us – not only mad – wait for it,

  the Golden Generation. It was our cars,

  and our carefree times, our drinks on the roofs of homes,

  our tilted velvet hats in the winter, our games

  and how we used our leisure, made it work for us,

  our softness on ourselves, our relaxed

  attitude to money. Most of all,

  because we called ourselves Golden. And hell,

  good times. But as I say – that last-night air:

  what would there be to do tomorrow? More.

  More of the gazing over the black-tiled floor

  for that single someone, more of the same jazz

  in all four corners of the cars, and more

  seasons of the League, and those hot days.

  16

  We were near the shore. We knew that by the smell

  of salt and gull, and sometimes the sound

  of breakers but Haggit shrugged and said, ‘Thunder.’

  I didn’t think so. Brack

  seemed to snag his ankle on each tree

  like he was trying to, and the moon came right

  out, and we caught each other’s eyes. ‘Right,’

  said Brack: ‘this is a nightmare. Pinch my cheek.’

  I closed my eyes, while Haggit lost his temper,

  and so it was I who heard them – girls’ voices.

  Drunk as us, drunker than us, moving

  towards us not away from us, and many:

  Brack said ‘This is a dream. Leave me alone.’

  Haggit and I just stood. We were shaking.

  17

  A second’s realisation of torchlight.

  A second second’s seeing we were found . . .

  ‘Hoo, trolls! Look who’s been in the rain!

  Ahoo, aha! A treasury of wet men!’

  ‘Is it really them?’ ‘Is it really who?’ ‘No!

  It isn’t them, it’s men!’ ‘Where was the party,

  and what were you?’ There were six or seven of them,

  they had cloaks, they were on their way from something, I

  actually thought I knew a couple. Anyway,

  they were townspeople all right, and I breathed again.

  Brack was talking about our match, our win,

  and our looking for fun, but Haggit was squatting down

  a misery in the water. One girl said,

  ‘Did you hear the wars? Did you hear the elephants?’

  18

  The wind blew. Another girl said this:

  ‘We’re swimming out to the Island for tonight!

  There’s your fun, heroes! Nobody’s there

  at this time, and we’ve got some hammocks there

  and Manzadinka, yay! out on the Island,

  and then in the morning we swim home to sleep.’

  I’m not telling you this because they all

  died out there – of course they did, they woke

  and there wasn’t land – I’m telling you why

  it sounded such fun, and Brack said, ‘Come on!’

  and went with them. It’s not like he was mad

  or irresponsible, I mean, he was,

  but he’d lost his job by then, and he had no kids

  or wives to speak of. I had to stay with Haggit.

  19

  Then there’s a blank time –

  Haggit had stopped talking, or when he did

  he was talking to Brack, and I said, ‘He isn’t there’

  but it’s very vague, though I do remember the girls

  in their blowing firelight, trying to lure us

  into the woods to change our minds, then suddenly

  running away in silence. Then the wind

  colossal in the trees, and drops again.

  All those trees, all those millions of trees.

  Could’ve come in handy. Wish I’d been

  elected, in on it, if you know what I mean –

  rather than what I was, the last to make it

  out of the sea, the miracle in wet clothes.

  Swearing oaths.

  20

  The animals went in two by two, I saw them –

  later, later, after the girls and the lightning

  illuminating the black ocean and figures

  swimming out to the shrinking island, after

  the still mascot, after the rain resuming,

  and the last dry inch of my body, and Haggit’s

  wild decision to climb to the top of a pine:

  ‘What are you doing? Come down, come down, come down!’ ‘I’m

  staying here till it’s over, son. I can see

  hundreds of clouds coming. I don’t see the town.

  Stay on the earth if you have to, but you’ll drown!’

  ‘I won’t!’ ‘You will!’ ‘I won’t!’ Well I won’t rub it in,

  but when the wall of water broke the spit

  it would have swamped those pines in about a minute –

  21

  but after I started to run, later, I saw them:

  I must have been some way inland,

  where the country rose again and rather than wading

  I splashed through groves and glades – but it was

  amazing – a dry risen corridor of light

  guarded ( I crouched and shook) through which in, yes,

  yawn, yawn, in pairs, the animals went,

  some still sleeping, some complaining,

  one or two reading, others crying,

  others terrified by the mauve heavens

  or pointing out God to friends who knew it was Him,

  I mean who else would show Himself at a time

  like this? But it was just a cloud

  and it split in half.

  22

  I backed away, and the light drummed on my back

  as I ran and ran and just as I decided

  to say a prayer before I died, I tripped

  and collided with a stone – or with a square.

  I had a square in my mind when I blacked out,

&n
bsp; and a square in front of me when I was choked

  awake by the water rising. It was a garden

  path stone, the first of thirty stones

  zigzagging up to a door where a Unicorn

  asked me the last animals I saw.

  ‘I saw two Zebras. Following two Yaks.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ the Unicorn wondered.

  I gave it. ‘Ah, then you missed your place in the queue.

  Like us. But we were always going to.’

  23

  And these in my dazed state were only words,

  though you see they stuck. I blinked, and felt

  my whole frame lifted on to a warmth

  of animal, white, white animal,

  – did I say Unicorn? Yes,

  a Unicorn, and it was bearing me

  out of the rain, into a room of lamps

  and beating lives all blurring into a focus.

  They were all animals I hadn’t seen,

  and never did again, though I saw them now.

  They all resembled what I knew, but either

  thinner, gentler, slower, or a new colour

  and I sat in a ring with them whatever they were,

  and the Unicorn sat opposite, and said these words . . .

  24

  ‘One day they came and took the Cat, who’d lied.

  They left behind the Other, who’d said nothing.