Junky hires a magician to cast away his demon… ends up dead in a burning circle of white powder.
Scratch humour
Claire was about to move house and city when she came across the box with Simon’s things in the cupboard under the stairs
Claire, who was no longer in theatre, had met Simon through work, when they were building the set for the big national production of Mother Courage. There had been many big names in the production about whom they were supposed to be all starry-eyed. Simon would not have any truck with it. It was all just a bit too posy for his taste. Mr. Maketo they called him on set, but Simon did not have a chippy bone in his body. Claire had liked him straight off. She liked his fair, curly hair. She liked his laugh. She liked his quiet, understated presence.
One night after the show, waiting for a tube, they saw a teenage boy running down the platform. Instead of stopping, the boy carried on running into the tunnel… When the tube came in, Simon went up to the driver and told him about the teenage boy. The driver did not want to take Simon’s word for it, so Simon threatened to call the transport police. “All right, mate,” said the driver, “keep your hair on.” The transport police turned up. The tube crept up the tunnel until they heard the boy moan. At the next station, there was a delay while the ambulance was called; Simon was busting for a pee, so they got out of the tube and ran up the escalators. Simon relieved himself into a flowerbed outside the station. They missed the last tube and had to walk back to his place.
That was the first time they slept together. The following day, in the bath, Claire gave Simon a wet shave. They made love again on his bed with his dressing gown wrapped round them.
As a rugby fan, Simon liked to go to the Saturday game in Richmond. Afterwards, he liked to go out drinking with a couple of old mates, John and Quinn. John was the quiet one, and Quinn was very loud and very funny with a number of funny voices off the telly. They all liked to drink of course, and so did Simon. They never got really rat-arsed, or rowdy but Simon liked his pints. Then they would talk about the rugby, the old school games. They used to tease Simon and he used to tease them back. Old Penderglass was a right terrier, he’d chew your balls off in the scrum. Simon said Quinn and John were like a married couple, but they weren’t gay – just very neutered as he put it.
On Valentine’s Day, Simon bought Claire a box of chocolates, but he didn’t know she couldn’t eat chocolates because of her skin. When Claire began to cry, Simon opened the chocolate box and took one out – popping it in his mouth. “They’re awfully good, you know.” Claire started laughing through her tears. “I just had a thought,” said Simon. “Once I finish them, you can put your jewellery in the box.”
“I haven’t got any jewellery.”
“In that case I better buy you a ring for your birthday. By the way, love, when is your birthday?”
After Mother Courage, both Claire and Simon were out of work. It did not seem to matter; with time on their hands, they went on a day trip down to Brighton. They strolled on the pier and bought some rock, and went to the aquarium. Simon took some photos of the octopus with his canon and they got them developed and put in a little album labelled Brighton Rock.
Then they went to visit Claire’s mum down in Dorset. Simon bought her a plant, and they got on famously over the garden. Simon seemed to know an awful lot about scabias and alliums, camellias and clematis, and dahlias and Duchy’s Originals. Claire’s mum gave him some seeds to grow some pelargoniums in his window boxes.
Around this time, Claire saw an ad in the paper for some bucket tickets to Spain. “Wouldn’t be wonderful if we went?”
Simon hummed and hawed; not that he did not want to go, only he had a phobia about flying. “I’m like that singer,” he joked, “what was his name? – Demis Roussos. He only ever goes anywhere by train. That’s why they always have to cancel his dates. Demis won’t rush the trains.”
Claire looked for a train on the Orient Express, but she never booked the tickets. Something came up and she went on tour up north.
While she was away, Simon stayed in the flat and drew the dole. Claire did not see him for a month of Sundays, although they spoke on the phone almost every day. For the bank holiday, she had the Sunday and the Monday off and she rode down to London on her motorbike. It was hot and they went to the park and the zoo and bought ice creams with Cadbury’s flakes. They went home and made love all night with the radio on.
Claire had been in Scarborough all that week. The weather was freakishly hot for the beginning of September. When she turned up on her motorbike, Liz, Liz’s boyfriend and Mrs. Lummy were in the front garden. The stepladder was stood against the window.
Simon had always left the window in the living room open when it was hot, but the window had been open all week and nobody had watered the plants. The police found Simon’s body in the kitchen; the gas ring was still on. “They said you don’t want to see it, love.”
Claire had never met Mr. and Mrs. Penderglass. When they turned up at the flat, she got a shock because Mr. Penderglass, who was actually Simon’s step-dad, looked just like Simon only his hair had gone grey. Over the next few days, Claire spent all the time with Mr. and Mrs. Penderglass. They invited her out to their house in the Styx.
That was the reason why she had the box; Mrs. Penderglass wanted her to have some of Simon’s things. The ring he bought for her birthday of course and the old chocolate box, the rugby shirt, the poster they had framed of Mother Courage, and the envelope with her mother’s seeds, the brochure for the Orient Express and the album of Brighton Rock.
In the bottom of a drawer, Claire found an old diary of Simon’s. There were few entries: the odd wry comment, a hanging quote from Whitman, and one from a girl called Helen Fielding and another from Mister Shandy, or Dog Breath. Nothing or so it seemed about his dreams or hopes, except one funny dream as she thought of it.
“In the dream a cow starts licking my arse… I never thought I was into bestiality. That bugger, Jimmy comes up behind me and starts doing me from behind. Bestiality I can accept in a dream, but Jimmy…”
Simon was twenty-eight when he died; Claire was in her late thirties. She was about to move house and indeed city… she was wondering what she was going to do with the box. As she thought over all those things in it and the memories they stirred, she could not help herself. She burst into tears over the box with Simon’s things.