Over the obdurate face of a woman dressed in the black robes of a widow flowed a sequence of images involving: ground launch missiles, Stalinist propaganda posters, a convoy of tanks rolling through the desert. A mummified figure passed above a massed crowd of flaying and beating breasts; the bandages seemed to come loose over the very wall they were so busy knocking down. A photo bubble blew up in my mind of a boy squatting on a wall (perhaps the same wall) as if getting ready to jump down into the rubble and detritus. The year was two thousand and one; in the build-up to the war, he kept the TV on in his room; glued to it as much as the apocalypse inside his head.
When I met Scratch, I was right down on my uppers and ready to pack it all in. I told Scratch to leave me alone, but it seemed he was hell bent on helping me. He picked me up from the gutter. Scratch was a big bulky man and I walked holding onto him and hopping on one leg. It appeared I had twisted my ankle and could hardly walk.
He took me to an old disused hospital. We squeezed – Scratch with some difficulty – through a gap in the fence beside the gate and walked up the drive. If the night watchman knew of our presence, he chose to ignore us.
We went round the side of the main building. A walkway ran between the Victorian building and the more modern extension. Scratch had a file in his pocket, which he used to open a faulty lock.
The walkway was damp and wet in places where the rain had got in through a broken skylight. I was worried about rats, but thankfully I did not see one.
At the end of the walkway was a set of stairs. On the first floor at the beginning of a long corridor were several monk-like cells with glass slits, but no patients in straitjackets; in one of these cells Scratch and the girl had made their bed.
Although they both shared a blanket, I never could decide whether they were a couple or not. The girl ignored me and was for the most part religiously silent. Perhaps for this reason I remember her appearance. She had a stud in her nose. Under the Parker that she never took off was a long but frayed black dress with black and purple tights and laced up booties. She was probably no more than seventeen.
Over the following nights, I learnt about my host. Scratch made no bones about his past. Once upon a time he had made a lot of money on the stock market, but if I was to believe him lost it all in the crash. From the way he spoke (for Scratch history was not linear but cyclical) he might have easily meant 29, as much as ‘91. If Scratch had not known extraordinary wealth but merely passing wealth, he had a nice line in Nabobs pursuing Mammon. Though he firmly believed we were on the point of Armageddon, Scratch was no Seventh Day Adventist; his religion was all of his own making. God was God the Farter, our Farter who (f)art in heaven; such that I began to think him as Scatological Scratch.
During my first night in the monk-like cell I could not get much sleep. If this was due to the pain in my ankle, I had a nightmare with the old lunatics crowding round me. But Scratch who was an inspired sort of character had managed to tap into the electricity supply and rigged a dim light by which one could read and write.
While the runaway girl remained huddled in a blanket, Scratch would consult the collection of newspapers and magazines that lay scattered on the floor of the cell. Old stories would spark some memory, or thought. Needless to say, Scratch read the signs in everything – signs that represented truths as certain to him as Tuesday follows Monday.
Once, on seeing me writing in my notebook, he asked me to read out what I had written. In the short, scrappy poem, which I have since lost was an image of a young boy standing on the edge of a tall building (it was called Centre Point Suicide). I did not think much of the poem, but Scratch was enthused. He asked me to read it again, only in a louder voice, but the girl tugged at his sleeve. Scratch took note and told me to read it in a whisper.
Although I thought Scratch was quite mad, he was nevertheless cheerful and often amusing company. Scratch was like a stand-up comic with a series of scattergun jokes:
Junky hits the tailback with a loud smack. Junky flies to the moon, comes down in his room. Junky cannot find the floor even on all fours. Junky opens the fridge, standing on the ridge Junky goes down a cul de sac, Ends up in his own culo de smack.
On the second day, my ankle was a little better, and we went out to forage as Scratch put it. We picked up several useful objects for our cell, including a folding chair from a skip and some tins of soup from a corner shop. (Scratch seemed to know the Indian shopkeeper, who also provided him with the unsold newspapers and magazines.)
Scratch, who was a resourceful camper, had a little gas cooker as well as a tin opener. This idea amused me greatly. “Scratch,” I pointed out, “for a man who is expecting the end of the world, you are always remarkably prescient.”
While my remark amused him, Scratch became serious. “Irony will not save you,” he said.
“What will then?” I said. “My pen?”
“Well,” he said, chuckling, “you don’t need a pen to talk to God the Farter.”
That night, as I was falling asleep with the dryads, a loud banging assailed my drowsy sense. The girl who had woken at the same time and I were terrified; Scratch was in his element. “Must be the devil up to his tricks,” he said, chuckling.
After a while, we heard voices in the passageway. Once they had passed, curious and emboldened, I went to investigate.
On the floor above our cell there was quite a commotion: people standing around amid cameras and spots. Against a wall with all manner of scrawls and crude drawings as if designed by one of Scratch’s moving fingers stood a man in a dog collar. His hair was spiked up like the points of a star. His face was a powdery white. Behind him were two others both dressed in the same bizarre way. In their hands were dustbin lids, the origin I guessed of the banging.
Afterwards, when the film crew had left, I went to tell Scratch what I had seen.
“What did I tell you!” Scratch said, slapping his thighs. “It is always man who makes a racket on the devil’s behalf.”
The following day, I woke up; Scratch and the girl were gone. It was several days before I left the hospital. Now if I wonder whether I dreamt Scratch and the girl, I know I did not make up the film crew. When they came back the following evening, I passed for an extra in one of the scenes. On the clapboard I remember was written “ghost parting”. If you look it up on My Space, you may see my faint form limping beside the dog.