Forever

Forever

 

Thirteen, quick witted,

and his chunky monkey

is last year’s handle,

firmly in the past,

gone at last - the way all things go,

flame furiously then glow,

quick, quick, quick, slow,

a last drip of a firework’s drop.

 

You’re wondering

should he be reminded

or should it be forgot –

you could bring it back,

an old, shared joke

between us both

that landed, kept giving

but life continues living –

cannot countenance delay,

you’re waiting for push-back

when his airspace is full of flights

already on their way.

 

For him? It is forever,

as it was for us all,

but I remember a photograph

she sent, sepia tint

or at least it had faded,

fallen from an album

of her back pages, lain for ages

amongst dust, in colour

of dusk musky rust

and perhaps those sticky hinges

had relented, set it free,

a fluttering moth of the past.

 

The lines were familiar,

but no cinnamon scent,

no warmth, no kind words,

or fingers through thick black curls -

through your mask, glimpse deep below,

where black urchins

on the seabed grow

fishes flit, skip within a silver spark

you haven’t the skill to seize.

 

It is forever, sang the breeze

dancing with the olive trees,

the carob and the weeping fig,

but Maltese lizards scutter

like castor oil slips the flask

for what is past, has passed.

Handful

Handful

 

A handful of people

arrived by boat today,

yesterday; the day before -

cast off their pine oars,

hands of sore blisters raw,

and draggled themselves 

up the shore.

 

Gooseberry crumbled

on fair beaches

where the white cliffs soar,

dreamed of those who slept

on a black ocean floor

and maybe they wept.

 

And your grouses shriek

go back, go back

attack from vantage places

on clattered moor

for Swallows and Amazons

don’t live here no more.

 

No Peter Duck, No Missee Lee,

the land from which

all visions flee,

where imagination died,

and there’s something rank

that lives inside.

 

They’ve collected invalidity,

our one-sticks.

Would like to club you dead,

but knock-up greeting cards instead:

Fuck off, fuck off,

piss off home, bro, 

you ain’t welcome

to our bread.

And she keeps a life-size placard

of Nigel Farage

and calls herself teacher.

 

Swarm greenfly of Beelzebub!

Infest carparks of district hotels,

invade quaysides by harbours,

one hand free for swigging lager -

know-nowts scream something obscene,

cursing what you should have been.

 

Beg you never to forget -

no pity lives across this land

no outstretched hand

to take a cup of kindness yet.

Miss

 

Miss

 

You’ll miss me when I’m gone -

and she might.

 

Like waters closing quarters over a shipwreck

dragged down until the upper deck

is nothing less than a defiant turret

the struts and frets

its hour upon the seabed and collects

barnacle crusts and wasted mussels.

 

Watch, boy, as she folds into folds,

pulls herself over like tarpaulin covers holes

or sticks conceal a trap

you read between the pages of some crap

book set in a mysterious coffee shop

or convenience store selling slop.

 

She owns it, you know? That shop.

Many were the years she sat, waiting,

push change with fingers, contemplating

your arrival, counting coin,

round and round

like ice poked with a stick,

behind her desk and there she sits.

 

In her domain, my Snow Queen,

oh, and how there have been

so many, in multitudes of Bechers Brook,

writing disoriginal books

with disapproving looks, ah, those looks,

and pens that stuck their foot in the craw

where you might not find

no capacitor to be kind, just a resistor.

 

Never kill your darlings, he said,

refuse her, thank god for daily bread,

here’s a lip curler of contemptuous sneer,

no room for kindness here –

you’ll end up on the cutting room floor.

 

Concourse an airport, where

her new employee, anxious, checking time,

settiing compass for some warmer clime.

Dancer

Dancer

 

In her Purple Sari of royal colour,

she comes with husband or with lover,

by hotel pools to film each other

ready to get up and do her thing -

but no swimming.

In epic fail to get wet,

models decorative ankle bracelet,

of Eastern silver or rolled gold,

perhaps right modest, right delicate,

in ornamental filigree -

and dances solo her latest flambé.

Strikes poses taken off the shelf,

taking selfies of herself,

flinging arms, throwing shapes

twists to Bollywood soundscapes.

Her camera tracks her as she goes,

it tilts and pans and flirts,

while husband-lover Striped-Shirt

is by jacuzzi, on the steps,

remembering never to forget

to stand before her in a trance,

a posey by the potted plants.

Flick water at her and you'd feel

a fountain in an eightsome reel,

but already she’s on a call

and pouting - happy for all

 to share her weighty exchange

and never finds it strange

that nothing ever really changed.

Once, a fledgling wanted to bring

joy to the world, influencer

crossing waters, a tiny dancer

and happy slapper

be one of those clowns

that jump-scared towns

when that was still a thing.

Shaky-cam, maybe travel worlds

filming Filipino street food,

posts room upgrades on YouTube,

TikTok, Instagram, X -

adds bagged laugh sound effects

that echo with joke shop emptiness

and reverberate inside hollow heads.

Salute

Salute

 

The Italians are known for it -

it’s all in the Mediterranean diet

and there are plenty of eggs in Carrefour,

I reminded her, out shopping.

And it’s an odd thing, that guilt

on which two houses of Verona were built,

you know, Romeo, Juliet and Rosaline,

and how you spend your time

like the Gatwick shuttle,

which, I admit, is not a subtle

allusion that I only know by repute.

There’s some moisture in an old flute,

but more in this iced peach tea,

counting beans – one and one is three,

but love is where she lays her head,

on my shoulder, in the bed,

brown almond eyes, brown felt skin,

and everything she believes in,

what is and is and is, is fine,

and we will know what’s right, as time

unfolds to reveal whatsoever.

I think that’s damned clever,

feel I should salute before the mast,

and yet it sticks in my flue -

jagged, in unsavoury blue, bitten in two,

and you swallow and swallow

but it’s wedged stubborn in the hollow

as if snubbing orders to do its work -

even if it relents, does the drill,

there’s an afternoon of feeling ill,

an aftermath of time gentlemen, please,

unwritten schedules and exercise

that might, in actuality, suggest,

it is your Italian that salutes the best.

Man

 Man

 

I read ancient verse which someone

once wrote:

what’s more, my son you’ll be a man

his claim composed in rhyming couplets,

conditionals, and one long sentence

like incarceration, 

a prison, where bars and fences

are punctuation –

but maybe if you eat, shoot and leave

there’s no hope of being reprieved.

Anyway, that morning,

I’d already been lightly toasted,

boss-tossed and rolled in sesame seeds,

pineapple pushed,

coffee ground and roasted -

I thought it’s time he took his turn,

I’d deploy a didactic tone,

matter of fact, firm,

didn’t want a boy’s ears to burn,

after all, so, I brought him into my office

to check his offensive data.

This happened on your watch, I said,

some veteran naval metaphor or other,

because I’d done my time,

thought Kipling would approve the line,

but who am I kidding?

His face slowly turns shades of lobster

newly chucked into boiling pan,

and I am witness

to the boy that cooks inside the man,

suited, booted

and as needled as the tiepin,

that’s holding him altogether.

How easy is it to ruffle feathers?

Just ask this old man, who’s seen it all,

watch a pigeon’s breast swell

in just cause, in righteous indignation –

and if there’s any more self-inflation,

he will cuss unforgivably, burst,

shoot, leave and abandon station.

But, for all that, the solution’s divined,

takes a little patience and time

rather than the twitching hazel rod,

and I give old Kipling a nod.

Later he returns triumphant, victorious,

his solid state of man glorious,

I take him out, share a beer.

And, sitting back,

I recalled that man who wrote verse,

poured all his wisdom

into an old leather purse,

laced it up for his boy like a corset -

and now they say maybe

he’s sexist for all of that,

there’s hidden tragedy when kids look back

entrenched and tear into it

with their teeth in braces,

get A. I. to kick over the traces,

claim he’s obsolete, should be cancelled,

nothing worthy to dismantle

or deconstruct - he never visited

their dark places of the inside,

ancient guile should no longer guide

or speak on modern condition,

know nothing of clinical depression;

ask if he's still fit for English lessons.

Brambling

 

Brambling

 

 

A hard time we had of it.

Pulling brambles in patches,

I mean –

 

those ivy leaves suckered

into sallow whitewashed brick

choking the very life

out of weaker plants

in thick patchwork quilts we ripped

through – layered veneers stripped

bare – yet,

 

even when we glimpsed light

there was more yet ready to fight,

clinging reluctant,

bound by weed,

 

and small black creatures

scuttle at speed

from top torn canopy leaves

conceal themselves

in the dank bottom weave,

watch indifferently

as brambled wrists

and fingers bleed.

 

Now, next door neighbour

and a second who neighboured her,

bustling and busty,

grin admiration,

call hullo, and kisses blow

upon the breeze

as we tear into where greenery

has created nation,

fashioned state within state,

erected thorn-barbed borders –

 

while we’re bellowing marching orders

up upon the garage top

like bunker-busters,

they’re still putting up stiff resistance,

 

while these smiling coquettes

look so pretty from a distance,

commend me on my stance

wonder if I’d like to dance

in gardens where her other thickets grow,

and I would, you know,

but did not deal with these yet.

 

And soon, I’m flying solo,

he’s gone, checking his phone,

comfort break and I’m alone -

abandons brush and spider rake,

 

I’m happy for him

to call it a day, please the boy,

and give him that half hour.

 

Later, under the shower,

minds race back to curt commands

issued from her sagging leather chair,

where little’s done

and nothing stirs.

Benn

 

Benn

 

 Anybody can be a teacher.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

Or, how about...Simon and Peter Make Your House Neater.

No, no, no. Expat and Brit – We Take Your Shit.

 

‘What are you going on about, fool?’

‘Ideas for a story, you know? I’ve done too many poems, lately, and that hungry readership of mine will be waiting to chop up the next prose. Like a hearty meal of coconut matting.’

‘Don’t kid yourself. Nobody reads your shit. The next piece of prose.’

‘Eh?’

‘The next piece of prose. Not the next prose.’

‘Does it matter if I use prose as an adjective or noun?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘You’re a bore, you know that? That’s why you have no friends.’

‘Nobody has friends at our age. It was in the paper. There’s a film about it. You get to our age – no friends.’

‘Why not?’

‘Friends take time, effort, compromise and you have to listen to their opinions – unspeakably dull. Most people are incredibly stupid, you know that. It’s easier just talking to yourself.’

‘Talking to yourself, huh?’

‘As long as it’s in your head.’

 

I was at the traffic lights, a summer afternoon. August since you ask. The third, my sister’s birthday, and no, I hadn’t sent a card – not even those lazy Pigmoon ones that take less effort than lacing up a pair of boots, or sewing two clouds together with ship’s yarn.

Where? Well, I’d tell you, but they’d shoot me. Truro is a small place.

I often set stories in Truro, but use a clever method of obfuscating the place – like ‘somewhere in the West Country’ and your average reader immediately thinks of The Virginian, or Trampas.

Trampas. An elision of ‘Tramp’ and ‘Ass’. Then there’s Casey Jones and his Cannonball Express – oh, you can send the reader on a merry dance.

Just don’t put where you set it. Or stick an orange on the end of a sword.

Obfuscating. That’s pretentious. Wish I’d put obscuring or hiding, now.

Anyway, what this story will be about, I haven’t a clue. You tend to write from real life – but no one ever believes it.

At the roundabout, which has a giant straw hedgehog on it – you see, I could’ve put ‘that was endowed by an enormous hedgehog’ but the writer must keep it plain and watch punctuation – the traffic was inching forward.

Stopped, as we were, in front of traffic signals.

 

‘Endowed? That has cock connotations.’

‘What - the bird, cock?’

‘No, like he was well endowed with a swinging cock.’

‘Most cocks I’ve seen just wander around pecking stuff.’

 

There are three lanes – one to bear left, up the hill towards other West Country towns, one to move straight across, up another hill towards a housing estate and the third to bear right along the river or even further round, to take a three o clock which would put you on the road to Tesco.

I was headed there with a shopping list too mundane to bother typing out.

Milk, lemons, salmon steaks and a bag of jelly babies.

I’d just exercised before her demand was thrust in my hand, so I’d showered - and you can’t be sure if it’s sweat or water dripping down into your eyes and causing them to sting.

Why do I mention this? Well, it obscures your sightlines if you’re blinking every couple of seconds and rubbing the sockets under your glasses, and I’m uninsured.

Because I live overseas you see? I teach in Doha – look it up – spend most of my time there. I’m just back for the summer break.

Very hot, in the desert. And because the frames keep slipping down my nose, they rub the sweat into my flesh causing nasty and flamboyant boils.

I’m a decent enough motorist. Just half blind, old and out of practise. That, the bad hearing and the tinnitus.

What do they call it, if you tend to find looking around difficult? Tunnel vision? Short sighted? Myopic?

They say they’re bringing in compulsory driving tests to renew your older driver, the bastards. They’re perfectly correct to do so, of course. 

Keep death off the road, I say.

 

‘Who are you talking to?’

‘Your actual prose aficionados, dear.’

‘Pretentious bastard.’

‘Charming.’

‘You might want to get in lane, unless you want to end up in St Clements.’

‘Ah, yes. Dog walking in St Clements. Still, better not put names. It’s a small enough place.’

‘She’s gone, you know? Eight years and counting.’

‘I don’t think about it anymore. She is dead to me.’

‘You are Angel, now.’

‘Hear me roar.’

 

OK. So we’re past the signals, indicating right and taking a graceful arc of 270 at a pretty smooth rate, indicating left, middle lane, check left rear view mirror…next roundabout and I need left lane for Tesco. Indicating…indicating, easing, easing, left, left, left…

When, suddenly a klaxon sounds. Loud and rude. In my left ear.

I’m nearly rubbing his right wing, aren’t I?

I catch a glimpse. A brothel creeper, sidling up the left inside lane, where he’s no right to be, for sure. In a van.

His face is covered in a thick briar patch, but he’s no Bugs Bunny – I mean Brer Rabbit – judging from the way his lips are moving. Forming the foulest obscenities known to man.

His face as red as an unripe blackberry. Offer the man a tar baby.

 

‘Look out, you clumsy bugger.’

‘Shut up, I’m making a split second decision.’

‘What’s to decide? Ramming speed or evasive manoeuvre, Mr Sulu?’

‘Thank you, Jim, bloody Kirk.’

 

Anyway, he drops back, comes out on my right, swearing silent through his window. I make some Arabic gesture – you pinch your fingers and thumb together – and he’s gone.

As I pushed the trolley around Tesco, I felt no joy. I had a sinking feeling that we were going to meet again.

And when we did? The consequences would be disastrous.

 

When I got back, a van was waiting for me.

Up the hill, single track road, and first gear, extra careful, being uninsured, although…

 

‘You know last night?’

‘What?’

‘When we were watching the tennis. The commercial breaks.’

‘Mostly awful.’

‘Agreed, there was that one for instant car insurance. With a pink cuddly toy. Hanging off the mirror. It’s squeaking. ‘Cuvver, cuvver, cuvver’.’

‘Oh, piss off, will you? You’re thinking of them lemmings that do cinema tickets, two for one. Compare the lemmings dot com.’

‘They can both fuck off as far as I’m concerned.’

 

As I mentioned, there was that van. Waiting for me.

Well it was blocking the parking spaces. Sat there, as it was, like the armchair I wrote about in last week’s poem. The one about an armchair. Did you read it?

Well this van was exactly like that armchair, except it was shaped more like a van with wheels and the colour was nearer to green than brown. Oh, you think? Well you try coming up with fresh similes, you twat.

If I could hear its engine, I would describe it as an ominous purr.

But I couldn’t, obviously.

The face behind the windscreen was staring fixedly. At me. Covered in a thick briar bush and glowing, off-pink.

Blocking the free spaces. 

We sat in our vehicles, ten yards apart. Each waiting for the other to make the first move. I could tell we were, neither of us, in any mood to back down. In fact, I put the handbrake on, folded my arms and waited for something to happen.

I wondered if he would take a pipe out, tamp down some tobacco and suck some fire into the bowl.

Benn’s Kitchens.

Tattooed on the side of the van.

 

‘Benn’s Kitchens? Not Ben’s Kitchen?’

‘I know what I saw.’

‘Just checking.’

‘No need. You’re not going to get a tradesman’s van advertising his own kitchen are you?’

‘Oh, do go on. It’s all terribly exciting.’

 

Well, now. Mr Benn is doing some sort of extravagant gestures at me. Using sign language to indicate what I should do next. I ignored him of course. Just sat there, arms folded.

I could feel the tension rising. A riptide moment. But then? He just gave up, swerved past me and disappeared around the corner. A snapshot of a stupidly hairy face seared itself on my left cornea and then – poof – it was gone.

Yes. Exactly like magic. Stories need a bit of that, don’t they?

 

 

So, exactly five minutes later, I was in the kitchen. I’d dumped the bag of shopping on the fake, black marbled top and was putting various things in the fridge.

I have a system. Fresh meat on the top, cold cuts on the middle, dairy stuff on the bottom. That way, you can be sure where everything is, isn’t it?

I mean, I know Mr Carnegie off of Fawlty Towers would grumble about blood dripping onto the trifle, but as he’s just opened the self-service department here, I don’t care.

Anyhow, she’s watching me, sat on her stool with feels, smoking a roll-up. I empty the ashtray once an hour or so – give it a quick wipe down. The ashtray.

I thought I’d strike up a conversation, you know, break the silence. You have to be careful. Whatever the topic, an argument ensues.

But what? How I’d nearly rammed her car into a van on the dual carriageway? That didn’t seem like it had much mileage.

 

‘Well, we could give it a whirl. Point of fact, there might be that story in it. You can be her.’

‘I don’t want to be her.’

‘Well, I’m not being her.’

‘Just be her for the sake of a trial run.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘Hello, dear, guess what? This really nasty van-man nearly drove into your car.’

‘It was you, wasn’t it? Fuckwit.’

‘But he was a villain. A scar down his face. Like Blofeld. In fact there was a white cat jumping all over the dashboard, desperately trying to get its head through the crack he’d left between the window and the door – you could see its frantic paws scrabbling in fear as it tried to liberate itself from his fearsome clutches.’

‘Stop dicking around. Make me more tea.’

 

No, this isn’t going anywhere. Let’s drop it. Instead, I thought back to the car-park incident and then  the near fatality on the road before that.

Vans. Kitchens. Mr Benn. Vans.

Shit. It was all clicking now.

 

‘You mean her new kitchen?’

‘Of course, her new kitchen. Just the sort of petty, mealy-mouthed piece of moronic information that is bound to elude me. If the brain is like a filing system, mine pushes this sort of dross to the bottom and puts Buck’s Fizz on top.’

‘Making your Mind Up?’

‘Exactly.’

So, I came straight out with. “Has the kitchen fitter been already? Dear me, that was quick, wasn’t it? The way they point their phones at the walls and squint. It’s all wonderfully technical these days, why…”

“No, of course he hasn’t.” She cut me off dead. Like a flower from its stalk.

“Well, what was that van then?”

She took a lungful of smoke. “Van? What van?”

“The one with Benn’s Kitchens? Cretin was blocking all the parking spaces when I got back just now. He took off in a hurry. I put two and two together. He’s measured up and scarpered to put together a long and expensive list of things we don’t need that I’ll have to pay for.”

“Two and two? You? Maths?”

“I can do Maths. I’m a teacher.”

“Yeah, well anybody can be a teacher.”

Now, I nearly exploded like a Vesuvian wildfire, I can yell you. Anybody can be a teacher? Well, I’d love to see her in front of a multi-cultural class of boys with English as their second language, out there in the desert. She’d last a couple of minutes. Not even long enough to say, ‘Morning Year 10, phones away please and exercise books out.’

 

‘That could be your story. Put her in front of that class you had last year. The ones who kept throwing stuff at you.’

‘Don’t remind me. Be the horns of Hades we had a devil of a time finding out who it was.’

‘Faisal and Ishmael, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it bloody was. Mohammed had an enquiry, Anita had the parents in. And that father – we couldn’t possibly convince him that it was his son being so disrespectful as to chuck pens at the teacher every time his back was turned.’

‘My son? My son? You should call him Chucky.’

‘Catching him wasn’t child’s play.’

 

Snort.

 

There was a rap on the door.

She indicated with her eyes and cigarette that I should be the one to answer it. It was clear she had no intention to move from her wheeled stool and, as she stubbed the roll-up out, it was with an amount of reluctance.

Tell the Brigadier I don’t report anywhere, particularly not forthwith.

I’m not one to be ordered about, but went anyway. Through the frosted glass a large looming shape loomed loomingly larger than me.

“Yes?” I quavered, without opening the door.

No answer, so I pulled at the handle. Recognised him instantly, of course. Disappointingly, he was not the man from the dual carriage way – so there’s seven for a story never to be told, isn’t it?

But, the briar patch was a dead giveaway. If you’re looking for clues. Are you?

“Mr Benn, I presume.”

Nothing.

“Where’s the shopkeeper?” Witty by my standards, I thought.

He glowered at me, but in as vanilla and professional a way as possible, given his inner rage. You know people like this? After all, he wanted me to give him money, lots of it. That’s a line from Python, if you didn’t know.

Yes, he wanted my cash, so he couldn’t be openly grumpy. He speaks: “In the car-park. I tried to give you some signals. You couldn’t understand. So I drove off and came back.”

Couldn’t understand. Not didn’t, but couldn’t. Twat.

“Indeed?” says I, frostily. “I think you’ll find her in the kitchen. Having another cigarette. Cursing Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git.”

And with that, I mooched upstairs to my study – where I keep the vinyl, books, CDs and my computer. It looks over the garden and above the kitchen – I could listen in if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to, of course – some bearded prig of a salesman, measuring a kitchen by (no doubt) waving his phone around – was not my idea of entertainment.

And I was still smarting from ‘anybody can be a teacher’. Mr Benn couldn’t. He would be about as much use as an emmental umbrella and smell about as bad. The two of them would get on like Mediterranean scrub and a tourist’s careless match.

I cared less.

Just sat, gazing out of my window and magpies, wood-pigeons and several of those dull brown birds with given names you can never remember no matter how many times someone tells you them.

 

‘Next door’s brambles and bind weed are growing over the fence and tumbling into yours.’

‘I can see it, lazy bastard.’

‘He’s old.’

‘Then he should get a gardener like me, the tight-fisted git.’

‘You taught his son.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

‘You offered to carry his bin-bags up to the car-park.’

‘A moment of weakness. There’s nothing nice about bindweed. The flowers look like horns of death.’

‘Consider the lilies.’

 

There was some old chat downstairs, then I heard the door being closed – he was leaving, had left and *poof* the van was gone.

You shiver, don’t you? The engines of the universe are grinding and you are but a fleck of dust caught in its fateful machinery.

This was by no means over.

 

 

‘It’s nice. Being in the house. Alone.’

‘You’re just going to sit there?’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Where’s the notebook?’

‘Why? Got an idea for a story, yet?’

‘No, but that business with the van, the briar patch fitter, the insults…that’d make a good bit of verse with a little thought. You could make the altercation a metaphor for failure – of marriage, communications, society.’

‘Smart-arse. Anyway, I don’t want to write more poetry. I don’t feel moved to write. My muse is being unhelpful.’

‘You need to get that dog commercial out of your mind.’

‘Dog commercial?’

‘The one that interrupts the tennis. You know, all those dogs doing tennis things like catching a frisbee and bringing tennis balls back, putting them on the tennis racket, going on the tennis podium.’

‘Those bastards.’

‘Butterbox Nuts.’

‘Come again?’

‘The name of the shitty dog food.’

‘I hope they choke. Dogs. On the butter, the box or their nuts.’

‘Dogs. Dragged around town in twos or threes, attached to feeble-minded, cretinous owners who leave their shit everywhere.’

‘Now that could be a poem.’

 

I sighed. Walked downstairs, fairly quietly, in case she’d returned. It had been two or three hours now.

What could be taking so long?

Maybe, on the way to the kitchen ‘consultation’ with the now fully measured-up Mr Benn, there’d been an accident. RTA, is that what they call it?

Traffic backed up to Sainsbury, an ambulance at 45 degrees, a couple of police cars, rubbernecking, mindless conversations between pursed lipped drivers and passengers using modulated ooos and ahhhs…

How long does it take to do a quote for a new kitchen, anyway?

Now there was a sharp rap at the front door. I peered through the frosted glass. Was it a female detective accompanied by a  serious faced constable, licking his pencil nervously?

No. That face had a briar patch around it. I could see the shape through the frosted glass quite unclearly.

Mr Benn was back.

I opened the door. “Yes?”

He greeted me with a grimace and an inappropriate verbal salutation.

“Do I look like a woman to you?”

“Ah, no. No, indeed. Um. It’s just that I was expected by a woman – and you know – these days – well, um, one has to be careful, doesn’t one?”

“One does indeed.”

“After all, ah, one doesn’t want to be, um, cancelled, does one?”

“One certainly doesn’t.”

I let him push past me and followed him to the kitchen, slightly confused. He looked the same – but altered. To be fair to me, I hadn’t clocked much of him on his first visit – but this Benn looked similar but dissimilar at the same time.

And Mr Benn was wearing a different costume.

Multiverse? Parallels? Conjuring tricks? Ghosts?

Your mind whirrs through various thoughts at points like these – a projectionist rewinding a film that has just been screened. Glimpses at frames, trying to piece the fragments together into a mosaic that, when finished, resembles a badly chalked hopscotch grid.

She. Who must be obeyed.

Spirited away, trapped behind a mirror, looking through onto a world that is slightly askew, unable to return due to a collision of anti-matter and matter particles that would result in the big bang.

Hope springs eternal.

Unaware of any of this, Mr Benn is staring at the kitchen ceiling. There’s a brown patch where paint has peeled due to leaky bathroom fittings.

 

‘No one’s going to believe any of this, you know. Laying it on with a trowel. Plaster to fill in the cracks.’

‘What do you know?’

‘More than you - I’m a teacher.’

‘Anybody can be a teacher.’

‘Lay on, MacDuff.’

 

I watched Benn frowning at the brown patch – and supposed, reluctantly, that this should be the most pressing question: “Where is she?”

“Who?”

Okay. That wasn’t going to open the dimensional portal. I tried something more double edged – like that scene in Thunderball – it’s my spectre against your spectre – which is totally on the nose for Bond and he deserved a Bulgarian cane- bullet up the spine for trying it. “Why have you…come back.”

“Come back? Come back? I haven’t even been yet.”

“Well, why are you visiting me like this.”

“I’m here to measure your kitchen, sir. I am Mr Benn.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He was floating on my memory. Was it the man from the dual carriageway earlier? Was it he?

“But you already came and measured it, three or four hours ago.”

He pulled out a tape. A tape, mark you, not his phone. “No, I didn’t.” He passed me the end. “Hold this, will you?”

I swotted it away, like a fly. “You’ve already been.”

“In another lifetime, maybe.” He did not seem upset by my action – instead he smiled, wistfully, gazing into the middle distance, just above my head as if something entrancing was there. Something I couldn’t see.

I looked at him again, Sherlock without a magnifying glass, opium pipe or deerstalker, examined him minutely. This Mr Benn resembled the first, but he was definitely older – with an air of infinite wisdom and a sadness that he wore like a shroud.

Suddenly, he grabbed my wrists in an urgent action. “Wait, wait. You say I was here before?”

“Well, I thought so.”

“What did I look like?”

“Well, like you, but younger.”

Letting go my wrists, he dropped the tape-measure. It clattered to the floor whilst his hands flew to his mouth in horror. “Good God, man. Do you know what this means? Do you know? Do you?” He was practically shouting.

“No. No. What?”

“It means the younger Mr Benn was here.”

“The younger Mr Benn?”

“Even he.”

“Really?”

Mr Benn was pacing the kitchen, gesticulating with his arms, wildly. “Ask to measure your kitchen did he? Show you some new designs? Latest in dishwasher technology – that kind of thing?”

“Well, yes. He’s a kitchen fitter.”

“No. He isn’t. He is a dastardly and thoroughly bad rogue. Evil incarnate. Slipping like a ghost, as he is want to do, between realities, interfering with the timelines, messing with lives and wreaking havoc as he goes. A bad egg.”

“Now look. This isn’t Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), you know.”

Gripping my arm again, his eyes widened in abject horror. “Your wife. Your poor wife. Heaven knows what he has done to her now. Let us pray it be swift and merciful.”

“We can only hope,” I replied, hoping my voice struck the right tone. “Well…ah…what sort of things is he…um…likely to do to her?”

“Evil, wicked things.”

“How evil and wicked? Tie her up, burn her at the stake – that sort of scenario, do you think?”

“Highly likely, dear boy – and worse. We must act now.”

“Oh dearie me. Dreadful. Indeed we must. Cup of tea, Mr Benn?”

“This is no time for levity, young man. We must repair to the van this instant, drive like the devil and pray we arrive before it is too late.”

“Repair the van?”

But he ignored me, seized his cloak, wrapped it tight around his thin, gangly frame and made for the exit.

But, even now, there was a knock. At the door.

“He shall knock three times.” cried Mr Benn, fearfully. The handle rattled and footsteps approached. My sleeve was seized even more tightly, dragging me down, beneath the level of the kitchen tops as if this would somehow conceal us.

We waited, scarcely daring to breathe.

And I thought I could hear the dragging of chains.

 

 

No. Not the dragging of chains. The rattling of change.

As in loose change – the sort you might find in your pocket after buying three Cornettos from the van at the seaside.

It was slammed, in a pile, on the kitchen top.

The wife had returned.

“Hello, dear. You’re back. How nice. What took you so long?”

She didn’t look particularly burnt, I noticed, as she glowered at me with all the ferocity of a stick pulled from a bonfire that has cooled and blackened until you blow on the tip.

Nor did she resemble Emma Bunton.

Before she could issue a retort, she was followed in by the younger Mr Benn, briar patch all present and correct.

 

‘The rattling of change? That’s a dreadful anticlimax, isn’t it? Bathos. Only a hack uses that. I’d go back and rewrite it, if I were you.’

‘Well, you’re not me are you? Or, are you? Perhaps I was you, of course, or perhaps you were me, or perhaps it doesn’t matter either way. Who knows, eh? Who knows?’

‘Stop tapping your nose.’

‘Why?’

‘It’d be a definite improvement.’

‘I’m giving up. You’ve been no help at all.’

‘You could try for one of those fables you knock out. They come off well sometimes. When the wind’s in the right direction.’

‘What wind is that?’

‘Curry. I had one with Simon last night. Lamb madras and they made it particularly spicy – stomach like a tumble drier full of bricks today.’

‘I feel your pain.’

 

If you cut the tension with a knife, it would be a futile gesture. After all, the scissors, knife or any other miscellaneous cutting tool you had to hand would be up against little more than air. Instead of wasting my time, therefore, I poked about with the pile of coins that had been dumped there.

My, there were quite a few – silver, copper and a small one that was rather fetching – a pretty penny, you could say.

‘You did say.’

‘Well, the thing is, I wanted to describe more exotic coinage. The romance of the florin, the half-crown, the sovereign, half a sixpence and the thrupenny bit. But those days are gone.

‘And the peso. You can’t beat a peso for flavour.’

‘Oh yes, definitely the peso.’

 

The younger Mr Benn stepped forward and seized his counterpart by the lapels. If he had a stick, I do believe he would have raised it.

In defence, the older Mr Benn looked about him for a weapon. His tape measure was still on the floor, agonisingly out of reach. “Pass it to me, young man. That I may defend myself against this blaggard.”

And I might have, but my hands were occupied. One was still poking through the change, whilst the other was helping wife onto her wheeled stool.

“How can you defend yourself with a tape measure?” I asked, a fair question given the circumstances.

“I can extend it and poke him in the eye, that’s how,” he gasped, trying to wriggle from the other’s grasp. “Also, figures terrify him. He gets muddled between the imperial and metric systems.”

“You can say that again,” snapped wife, now safely on her seat. “I had to spend three hours using these coins to help him out because his computer was broken.”

Younger Mr Benn ignored them both and snarled, “Yes. My computer was broken. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?” And he shook the older Mr Benn until his eyes rattled like lentils in a tin. “You stole my van again, didn’t you, father?”

“It’s my van. I paid for that van.”

“And sabotaged my desktop by putting your cheese sandwich into the DVD tray and pressing play several times, you old fart?”

“I don’t hold with computers, wretched things. It was cheese and onion, anyway.”

“When will you get it into your senile skull that you’re retired?”

“Retired, pah! I am the real Mr Benn, the whole world knows that – you’re an imposter, with your fancy dandy pants phone and Wi-Fi.”

“No you’re not. I am the real Mr Benn. It is I who upgraded the business. It is I that command respect throughout this town. Why, see how, as I strut through the thoroughfares, all who meet me tip their hat.”

“Nobody would tip their hat to you, you young imposturing scallywag. You’re a doppelganger. A villain who seized the very bread and dripping from my mouth. How sharper than a serpents tooth it is! It is I who am the real Mr Benn!”

“Bastard! I am the real Mr Benn.”

“No, I am the real Mr Benn.”

And they both looked at the wife, as if she would sort out this conundrum for them. Fat chance of that, she was fuming, I could tell.

“You’re behaving like a pair of naughty schoolboys,” she snapped, but with admirable restraint, I thought.

And then, her words rang through my head, like the bells of St Clements: Anybody can be a teacher.

Well, they couldn’t could they? And now here was the perfect opportunity to show why.

 

‘Yes. Being a teacher is more than just standing at the front and talking isn’t it?’

‘It most certainly is.’

‘You have to talk in several different ways for a start.’

‘Why yes. Sometimes a very soft voice, sometimes a loud one…’

‘And sometimes an in-between one, too.’

‘Don’t interrupt me. In any case what would you know about it? It is me. I am the real teacher.’

‘No you’re not, I’m the real teacher. What do you know about active learning, differentiation or adding challenge? When was the last time you tried flip learning or deployed a hinge question, eh?’

‘I’m the real teacher, bastard. You think Bloom’s Taxonomy is some sort of very exotic wildflower that populates the highways and byways of Bosnia Herzegovina.’

‘Okay. Show us your flicks and tricks them.’

 

So I had them both in the living room and sat on the comfy chairs. The wife wheeled herself in behind me, I could feel her scorn tanning my neck, but I cared less – this was my chance, my turn to put all of them to shame.

Even before either could utter a syllable, I gave both Benns my most intense teacher’s stare. The one that can command and quell even a Royal Variety performance.

“This quiz,” I improvised – because I can – “Is to determine which of you here is the real Mr Benn.” I could see they were about to start squabbling again so I put my finger to my lip. “Shhh!”

In Arabia, such a sound would be deemed insulting and culturally inappropriate – I’d had countless arguments about it – but we weren’t in Arabia, were we?

Still I had to add gravitas, so: “And the result of this quiz will be final. The loser must solemnly swear that he will, under no circumstances, interfere with the victor. And if such interference were ever to occur, the perpetrator of such interference would be deemed a bounder by all here present.”

That did the trick. Both men nodded solemnly. By Jove, I was on a roll!

“Question 1.” says I, in a deep rich tone. “Who invented the dishwasher?”

Both men raised their hands. “Me, sir. Pick me, sir,” said Benn the Elder, who’d been classically trained. But you hate that, when it happens, don’t you? So I chose the other one.

“It was Josephine Cochrane. With George Butters. Too easy, teacher. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“George Butters? You just made that up. Who on earth has a name like George Butters, you cad?” snapped Mr Benn senior, “Next you’ll be telling us that the washing machine was devised by Mable Margarine and Lewis Lard is behind the microwave oven.”

I intervened smoothly, because I didn’t like their tones. “Nobody is behind the microwave oven. And if you like, I’ll send my wife to check.”

“No, you won’t,” she assured me, arms folded, dripping venom. There was no time to lose; I could see that, if there was to be a successful outcome.

“You’re wrong I’m afraid, Mr Benn. Nobody invented the dishwasher. The dishwasher is, in this case, my best friend, Simon Spender who is a real person and not invented at all. It was, in fact, a trick question.”

I could see that the senior Benn was smirking.

“What tomfoolery is this?” snarled younger Benn, smarting on account of the way he’d been outwitted.

But the wife had clearly run out of patience. She wheeled herself forwards in a most threatening manner, wobbling dangerously on the stool as if, at any moment, it might topple forwards and deposit her in an ungainly heap on the floor in front of the contestants.

“Teaching? This isn’t teaching! It’s three silly boys wasting everybody’s time.” And she raised an accusatory finger in my direction.

“Wait, dear, wait,” I pleaded. “You have yet to see my cunning craft reach its most satisfactory conclusion. Wait – for the plenary.”

Having stayed execution, at least momentarily, I asked my next question. “Why can’t the A1077(M) be extended to meet the A1081(M) and form a concurrent motorway that would alleviate traffic congestion in the vicinity of Dunstable?”

Both Mr Benn’s frowned and rubbed their chins. It was uncanny. They looked like a mirror image of each other; nothing to choose between them.

Again, it was the younger one who spoke. “By Jove, I have it. You just made those numbers up! It was another trick question. Victory is mine.”

But, even as he uttered those immortal words, the older Mr Benn’s cracked lips twisted into a smile. “You are wrong. The two roads cannot be conflated. Because they are over 300 miles apart. If memory serves, the A1077(M) is, in any case, a left over stub of the M181 Scunthorpe Spur and but a temporary designation.”

“Bravo.” grunted Benn the younger, in a somewhat sarcastic tone that was the very opposite of celebratory.

But I wasn’t satisfied. “The significance of which is?”

“Elementary, my dear teacher. We get all our kitchen appliances from Scunthorpe.”

“Damn your hide, Hyde!” snarled Mr Benn, because he knew he’d been bested.

I raised my eyes smugly in the wife’s direction. “I declare that Mr Benn is the winner and henceforth the proprietor of Benn’s Kitchens, from this day forth, until death you do part.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Exactly.”

But the wife was off her stool and screaming. “And I declare that the three of you are a waste of skin. Plenary? My arse! Get out of my house. Now.”

“What, me too, dear?” I asked, plaintively, feeling sure I’d proved that anybody couldn’t be a teacher.

“Especially you. You get on my frigging wick.”

 

‘Good that.’

‘What?’

‘Get on my wick.’

‘Yeah, I know – I expect she’ll be round to see them before long, to see about putting in that new kitchen.’

‘Okay, you're labouring it. Show don’t tell, remember?’

‘Kill your darlings.’

‘Actually, this could be your story.’

‘No, like I said before – nobody would ever believe it. I’ll just bury it and try something different – if ever inspiration hits.’

‘One thing, though.’

‘What?’

‘Well, the incident way back at the start. On the way to Tesco. Your near miss in the car. Remember?’

‘Oh yes, bugger me – we nearly forgot.’

 

Now, after a moment’s hesitation to check if she really, really meant it, the three of us were scarpering, in double quick time towards the frosted exit.

“Quick, Mr Benns,” I shouted, “She’s off to get that coin. I fancy she has a rather sturdy catapult and is not afraid to use it.”

Mr Benn the younger was first to arrive. He grabbed the handle and gave it a mighty tug, whilst I was tripping over Mr Benn the older.

But, before anybody could escape, a large bearded figure appeared, blocking the entrance to egress. “You!” mouthed both Mr Benns, in horror, seizing their own throats with both hands as though they could not breathe and falling to their knees.

Looking up from my prone position, I could scarcely believe my eyes. A third Mr Benn! 

Neither young, nor old, he was somewhere in the middle. But the briar patch surrounding his face was a dead giveaway.

“Shut up, Mr Benns,” he snapped, stepping over the younger one who was writhing all over the floor like a jar eels that had been tipped over. “It’s him I’ve come to see.”

And he pointed directly at me – just as the first coin stung my ear.

“You. You cut me up. On the dual carriageway by Tesco. Well, I’ve come to teach you a lesson, milado!”

 

‘Ah yes. Anybody can be a teacher?’

‘Precisely.’