Nemonymous Night (part one)

II. NEMONYMOUS NIGHT

aka 'THE HAWLER' part 26

Perhaps the carpet was not quite so ordinary, after all.

I shall remain nameless, as is fitting. And at that time, nobody, not even me, was around to act as an expert on carpets, so, now in hindsight, all that could be said about it was some reference to ordinariness. Yet, had we all known, we would have indeed known that the stains were signs of some incipient endgame. They were stains worthy of the word stains, not just years of wine and grime or mishandled vacuuming or the once careless knees of Amy and her brother’s friends as they scorched their shameful toys through the rough of tufts. And the less said about the odd tread of strangers, the better.

One could hardly tell that the carpet had once been yellow. Only Amy knew that.

The carpet’s companion accoutrements were rather down-market sticks of furniture in spite of the dusting and polishing by Amy who rather enjoyed the varnished gleam of knotted wood more than the clean lines of a carpet’s cleanliness. She needed dusting herself, even at her moderately young age.

*****
“How are you today?” I ask.

Amy (who spent her childhood in this room) follows me about, as far as she can follow anyone in such a small room. Not surprisingly, she appears as if owned or, rather, controlled by the room while – with rather more panache than the situation demands – she keeps adjusting ornaments … also brushing dust into a pan.

“Not so bad,” she answers.

“News on the radio is bad again.”

“You mean about the…?”

“Yes. We’re not allowed to eat anything that comes from eggs. Not even…”

“I know, I heard it from Beth this morning.”

Amy has a pretty face, but when she speaks – even lightly, thoughtlessly – there’s a frown that appears and a deep divot within the frown’s area. Hair a fashionable matted brown, so very 'her' it’s only noticeable if it suddenly isn’t there. Apron fails to hide her sexuality and high-heels seem out of kilter with the dustpan.

“Best not to think of it,” I say. “How’s…?”

“Dognahnyi?”

“No, not him. I mean the girl … you … you know … you kick about with. You’ve been very happy I know with … what’s her name?”

I am delicately pretending to forget her name.

“You mean Sudra? No, that’s gone a bit sour. We had a argument … something very trivial … but she was so petty … I couldn’t handle it any more.”

“Sorry to hear that, Amy. What was it about?”

“Oh, something or nothing. A pair of shoes. See! You’re laughing!”

“Life turns on trivialities,” I say, knowing already about Sudra's side of the story.

I am a comfortable pair of ears, I guess, although some may have different words and put capital letters where only small ones belong, laced with swearing! What’s the word? Counsellor, hmmm, Interferer, Meddler ... someone who drags things from your soul to let it breathe more easily. I haul on your guy-ropes and see your tent rise again. I have some silly concepts about it but I’m sure my radio phone-ins do achieve quite a lot of good.

I’ve come a long way since my ancestors worked in the coal-mines. I’ve just discovered that one of them was a ‘hawler’. In the old days, he would have been involved in moving coal from the coalface, coal that had already been worked by others. I think the ‘w’ is a misprint in the 1901 census records I got off the Internet. Anyway, it is an art form in itself and one fraught with many logistical problems. Today, however, there are no coal-mines and therefore haulers have died out. Now, with the plagues, I reckon that butchering of meat may now be within a hawler’s brief. Just a whimsical thought on my part. But I try to keep my mind busy, as there is so much to worry about otherwise. Perhaps, in fact, thinking about it, a brief for meat and poultry, especially as – God forbid! – the two seem to be blending in a very disturbing fashion. Cutting prime complex cuts from now badly understood novelties of meat that combine all sorts of animal and bird in one. But I hope it’s not what I fear. I love pure beefsteak so much – isn’t there a saying, almost a proverb, that everyone once knew but I never understood – that I, and others like me, are “so voracious we eat beef till it’s raw”?

A far cry from radio counselling! Then, I need to be precise and careful. No brainstorming allowed. I still have to think quickly on the hoof, however.

****
Today, I intend to visit John Ogdon in his pub but I doubt if anyone I know will be there and I hate drinking alone. John will be too busy to talk to me. The park is second best: a good place for thinking. Susan’s on my mind and Susan may indeed be in the park with her grown-up daughter Sudra. I still can’t believe in the coincidence that Amy has been close, if not intimate, friends with Sudra. I only knew Amy because, well, I was a sort of Uncle figure to her in the old days. Still am, I guess. I originally knew her Mum before she gave birth to Amy. But that’s a long story. I met Susan (Sudra’s Mum) quite independently, and Sudra already knew Amy quite well even at that stage. A sort of secret between me and Sudra that we both separately knew Amy.

I have usually steered clear of married women, but life’s never simple. I didn’t admit to myself then that I really fancied Sudra (more than fancying her mother probably), but that’s taking us into an even longer story. I thought both of them were a case for a hawler … and I even began to use that terminology on my local radio counselling programme. It even caught on as a name for a sort of modern-day shrink. It was worth a few shillings too in the bank account. Still is.

Much is inexplicable, yet it will become explicable when put into practice and seen for what it is. I suspect that there is more to Sudra than meets the eye. She often tells me about her dreams and they are CRAZEE!.

I now gingerly walk across the park ground. I wonder what stage of the housework Amy will by now have reached in her top flat. Amy is always doing housework, these days, as if it takes her mind off other things. Ewbanking the ‘yellow’ carpet is only attempted by Amy once in a while. I glimpse Susan and Sudra. Neither of them are particularly friendly to anyone, but I guess they have a soft spot for me. Fame opens doors, in many way.

I am a hawler, after all, and most people instinctively treat hawlers with respect even if I haven’t any real qualifications for this line of business. I feel tears prick out at the thought of Amy. I wish I had been kinder to her when she was a girl. Her Mum Edith always turned a blind eye.

I imagine a plate of sizzling beef. My stomach tells me something that words can never explain. An empty nagging pain. I look up into the sky. Not even a flying pig! But, no, I am wrong. There is a flying pig, of sorts, that day. And a hot air balloon with people on board who surely have an enduring love for flying, even with any mechanical aircraft whatsoever now grounded (perhaps meaninglessly grounded – and do keep listening to the news on the radio and all may be explained). As ever these days, there are a few outlandish kites (including the flying pig) that citizens have taken to flying from the ground in some subconscious grief, no doubt, at the disappearance of anything else in the sky. But, first, I need to pluck up enough courage to approach Susan and Sudra, leaving any residual thought of Amy to the vacuum.

(THE HAWLER continued here: part twenty-seven)

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