Stories using models?

A boy and his birds.

It would be fun to tell little stories using photos of these models: I love the Brothers Grimm and the gothic imagery in his stories. I used to have a toy theatre: with a simple narrative these models might be an excellent way of telling a story using pictures.

Peggy Screams

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It’s 9 pm. Peggy’s had her usual run of triple whiskies: I watch her as I type.

 The drinks are plainly not good for her; she sways as she crosses the apartment. I imagine her blackened liver and wince. She goes and sips sips sips on the balcony watching the cranes (we -rather I, because it was my idea- bought this waterside place- and it's good to stand on the balcony and watch the cranes and the people milling about from the restaurants below) which is a dangerous place to be if you are solidly drunk: you could so easily just trip and crash over the balcony fencing, tumbling to a certain death, or at best ending up in a hospital forever, showing little more life than a crushed cabbage. 

But Peggy’s so obstinate that when I entreat, “Peggy darling, pleased please take care it’s a long way from the balcony to the ground!” she just shrugs it off with a bland mid-western “mmmmhmm”. She’s listening to Simon and Garfunkel, and I watch her get up- she usually has a bath about this time…she’s got a clean towel, and I see she’s bought some new shampoo. I can’t see what this one is: it’s in a small golden box, which itself probably cost fifty quid to produce. The last shampoo was made of cucumbers and walnuts and ox musk (no kidding).

 The soap Peggy uses isn’t normal either. Instead, she buys this creamy/gritty stuff which is called cleanser. It’s made from moringa seed extract. It’s just for your nose, maybe your cheeks too, though it’s best not to use it at all: I used it to wash my hands once and Peggy didn’t speak to me for a week. If you want to wash the rest of your body Peggy style you have to use another product, which is called Body Cleanser and is made of seaweed and parts of an Amazonian cactus. Anyway, she’s wandering into the bathroom and I hear this terrible piercing scream. “Oh fuck! oh fuck!” she cries.

 “What is it darling!” I respond immediately, leaping out of my computer chair. “Look”, says Peggy, between gasps. She’s rigid with fear, melodramatically tensed up, like one of those petrified forms from Pompeii, and I have to stifle a giggle. “What?” I say, lovingly. “That”, yells Peggy in a cross between a moan and a yell, pointing. I peer in the deep yellow light of the bathroom, scouring with my eyes round the bath, searching. “No there!, THERE!" she shouts. And yes, sure enough, there it sits, miniscule, helpess and meek: a teeny brown spider. I gently scoop it up with my fingertips and free it on the balcony.

 

This is a follow up to these posts: http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/10/giant-bee.html and http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-about-peggy.html

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More about Peggy

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I suppose, like me, being a reasonably sensitive person, you were appalled by Peggy’s heartless response to the gigantic and extremely dangerous insect that landed on my chest when I was sleeping like some sort of nightmarish apparition, threatening the very fundaments of my mental and physical health. Peggy’s family, in the not so distant past, were Germans. The came from Pomerania and settled in Oklahoma, where they opened a small chemists- Bienenzüchter’s- which later translated, not entirely accurately, in a patriotic - or perhaps cowardly, given local pressures? - gesture into “Feelgood’s Drugstore” during the First World War and which still stands, serving ices, coffee, preserved food, and remedies on the corner of 8th and Main Streets, Choctaw, OK. After the World War Two, the cheapness of motor cars facilitating, Peggy’s parents' moved from the cramped flat above the shop to a suburb, where she grew up with two sisters and no obvious misfortunes. They attended the local Lutheran church with clockwork regularly (happily insensate to its teachings), and tried to earn as much money as possible while simultaneously spending as little. The children attended the local high school and graduated with neither honours nor shame. They were not especially respected or liked, nor disliked either- they were quite the sort of people essential to sustain any normal, working community. Perhaps seeing the lines of moaning, malingering Choctawans bleating for cold remedies or listening to them griping about minor complaints, affected young Peggy as she helped in the family shop at weekends, without respite, year after year, all the while her school friends were skipping or constructing elaborate picnics for their dollies, or later experimentally necking with other pustulous adolescents under the bushes of the nearby park? Did the endless work of stocking shelves, breaking down boxes, mopping spillages and running little local errands, while painfully mindful of her schoolchums’ frivolities, make her bitter; unusually indifferent to the distress of others? Did the business at the pharmacy counter teach her to regard human suffering as nothing more than a potential source for commercial gain? I cannot say. And I detected no callous traits in her parents when I met them- indeed, they seemed rather conscientious people: sympathetic, if a little earnest. * I sit here, writing this now on the computer this cool evening. Peggy is over at the drinks trolley (again!): more whisky than ice, that’s for sure. This is a follow up to The Giant Bee, posted here on October 30 last year: http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2009/10/giant-bee.html

The Giant Bee

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The Giant Bee

The beast was about 3 inches long, I could see its yellow-black stripeyness fuzzily tickling my chest.

Yes, I awoke to find a giant bee crawling on my chest.

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, listening to music. 9.pm now. I lay there trembling, feeling the beast`s legs move across my chest.

Peggy was there. She was sarcastic, I shouted “Peggy, there’s a giant bee on my chest.”

No response.

“Peggy,” I shouted again, there’s a giant bee crawling on my chest.

Peggy laughed, "well I’m sure its not even half your size" She was referring, I think, cruelly, to some slight weight gain that I have sustained in the last few months.

When we first met I was turned on by Peggy’s sarcasm and unkindness, especially when we spoke about my career as a portrait painter. We were at a party to celebrate the opening night of an poorly written and performed play, and she had said with a smirk, "I’m sure you’re going to be a great success, the next Michaelangelo," and laughed. This was an especially ignorant joke given that Michelangelo never painted a single portrait, but it nevertheless succeeded in being annoying and flirtatious: we made love that night, and I forgave her, as I was to do many times thereafter.

“Peggy, you bastard,” I shouted, ‘It’s a giant fucking bee, get the fucker off me!”

And she laughed again, “Haha, you big baby”. So it was with tremendous courage and force of will that I had to shake the thing off myself, it fell heavily to the floor, I leapt up, got a kitchen knife, and in one swoop cleaved  the monster’s thorax from its abdomen.

I knelt down to in inspect the beast- it was huge; oddly some limbs kept moving after detachment- most alarming. I’ll probably have nightmares about that for some years to come, detached bee parts visiting me in my sleep.

Peggy came in then, as I was kneeling there, “you turned Muslim or something, honey. Think Allah will save you from the killer bees?”. “Oh ha ha, Peggy, more wit.” But she was drinking coffee and munching toast and totally nonchalant, perusing the TV programme, not seeming to care in the least what I thought.

Myself, I got the knife and lifted the two sections of giant bee onto an atlas which was leaning against the sofa, and which I’d been looking just before I dozed off (looking at Finnish lakes, to be precise) and I went up to Peggy. and said, “Here. Huge..”

“Eah,” she said, not bad, “They are showing "The Lord of the Flies” tonight, the original.”

Well, that is my Peggy. All sarcasm and unhelpfulness. She is originally from Oklahoma.

*

Story in Two Parts - Part Two - in which I open the drawer.

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The flat smells of boiled vegetables. The humming of the fridge, the smell of a unmade bed from one room, the sight of a sock discarded in a ball near a door-frame. I enter it: there is a chest of drawers on the left as I enter. I pull open the top one on the left, it’s heavy and moves jerkily: some handkerchiefs, a leather belt and a pair of sunglasses. I open the second- there is a postcard, it depicts a sunset.

Then I pull the drawer below. It contains a hand. The hand is dry and shrivelled and pale: I recoil. I have found my man. I sit and wait.

I wait there for an hour, and then I hear voices outside. The man has returned, he is talking to another man. I hear, “It is easy, locks like this, child’s play”, and the lock turn. The door opens. “How much do I owe you?” “Forty pounds”. Then, after a pause, “cheers”.

Then he comes in; measured steps, slow his breathing steady. He walks into the bedroom, his face damp with sweat, his hair too. He is balding unevenly. His jersey has a hole on the front, and I sense something desperate, pathetic about him. “Yes,” he says, “You found me.

“I came to take what is mine.”

 “Take it’, he says, it’s yours, and opens the drawer and gives me the hand.

The End.

*

The Illustrations in Parts One and Two of Story in Two Parts are from "The Universal Alphabet/ The Girl in the Mirror", a set of little paintings, which can be seen on Flickr:

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/sets/72157608815122656/

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Thanks to Neil Endicott for encouragement.

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Two Little Dogs

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I was doing my bit as the Victorian Photographer, recording every nuance of nature’s moods, when I came across a fine tree. I stood back to take a picture. Then I saw the two dogs below. They must have watched me as I walked all the way along the down the lane to where they were, patiently observing me as I framed the the image. “Hello”, I said, but they just ignored me. I guess I wasn’t the first photographer they’d met coming along that lane. 

 

When All's been Said and Done - an Annie Story

I`m walking down Piccadilly. The weather is atrocious. A wind blows in gusts across Green Park.

Sometimes I hate myself. I have periods of psychic pain. Sometimes I feel as if the world is full of violence, and my mind is just numb from it. At other times I`m overcome by anger, I want to use the energy of that but I can't find an outlet.

Occasionally, I have flashes of Annie. Annie and myself, mostly just talking.We shared a dreadful flat in Camberwell and we were mostly depressed.

So what? We loved each other.

One day Annie awoke and said, "What the fuck is going on?"

"What," I said.

"I mean," said Annie, " What are we doing. It`s all so shit. we aren't`t going anywhere.

"Oh fuck," I said. I was sort of hoping she wouldn`t notice how bad it all was.

We were living in a little flat in Camberwell which we shared with some guys from Morocco who never spoke to us. It was all a bit squalid and strange and neither of us had much in the way of work or money.

Dear Annie...a letter I found.

Here is a letter I found inside a book (Voltaires's Candide). It is undated.

Dear Annie,

It is a long time since I last heard from you: I hope you've been well.

Things have been unusually grim here.

My room is at the end of a long corridor, and overlooks the courtyard. It is small and I have to lie on the bed to take my shoes off. I have a wardrobe, a small desk and a bed.

I sit at the desk and look out the window. Usually I hear little from the courtyard except the sound of water running down the drains. At times the face of one of my neighbours appears in one of the windows, usually a pasty faced woman, with grey hair. I cannot see her features more clearly. There are net curtains on most windows, the atmosphere tranquil, like a Dutch painting and I would not be surpised to see a clog-wearing servant appear with a white smock and bonnet and broom at any moment. Also, twice I saw a siamese cat, perched with absurd elegance on the seat of an old bicycle.

I am fighting the goblins still: we have reached a sort of truce: the room has been deivided in two, we marked the floor with a white chalk: I get the left side, they take the right.The line cuts the bed, but that cannot be helped, at least they aren't shreiking all the time.

I hope to see you soon,

I suppose I wrote the letter some years ago in Camberwell, but it is undated.

I Love You - An Annie Story.

"Do you often think about escape?" asked Annie.

" Don`t so much now, but I used to. I used to think about it all the time, and sometimes the desire to escape became so strong that I wanted to commit suicide."

Annie began laughing. "You are quite preposterous," she said.

*

A pause.

*

"I love you," I said.

"Do you? Do you really?" said Annie.

"Yes. I do. I love you more than anything."

"Really?"

"Yes. I do, I really do."

Beside the lake.

*

Beside the Lake

I walk beside a lake. You're over there, standing on the sand quite far but close enough to see the grim look in your face.

I think how pretty is your reflection, how your dress falls, a perfect curve from your shoulders. It's an ivory white dress and your dark brown hair flows down to your shoulders too, so from here your silhouette against the water is a series of arcs, each echoing the other. Your hem folds over the edges of your tiny shoes. I remember how delicate and soft your feet are, with no calluses. 

You are wearing a champagne coloured Hermès scarf round your neck, French style. I gave it to you when I came back from Paris last year and we had just started seeing each other. You let me tie it round your neck: I recall that moment, the smell of you so close: you, your perfumes and shampoos: nature and art in union; intoxicating...

Mirrored in the water, every now and again a ripple breaks your reflection, but only for so long as to remind you how serene and magnificent is your image, a medieval queen of sorrow.

I stand there, weighed down by irritation and despair. I also have an itching in my scalp, partly a psychosomatic response to our recent row about the missing train tickets which I accused you of losing, and partly because the shampoo seems to have run out. To my credit, I did not mention this in the argument, though admittedly I am not a big fan of hair washing as it seems to make my thin hair go flat and the size of my face then seems abnormally pronounced.

But we have argued too recently for a conversation. All we can do is scowl at each other.

It hasn't been a great vacation but you do dress well. I feared you'd take off the scarf during the arguments and fling it at me in a gesture of disgust: I am glad you didn't, though I don't know if this was for sartorial reasons, because of the chill in the air, or because you simply didn't realise how much this would have hurt me.

Anyway, I'm sorry: I should have taken more photos of you with the new Samsung cell phone. I'm truly sorry about that because I'm sure our friends- especially Angela and Floyd- would have liked to see them. I'm sure they would have admired each image and added appropriately witty sweet comments on Instagram.

Now, I think I will go back to the cottage and make some gin and tonics before we catch the train back. The train tickets were in my overcoat pocket all along, but I'll say they were on the mantelpiece under The Observer's Guide to Pond Life.

*

Image: Across the Lake, Monotype http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/3208933837/in/set-72157612697830853/

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Read to The Vicious Circle Writers' Group, April 12, 2021

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11.30am, The Prince of Wales, Billy (the third of the Billy stories)

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"Hello, Schweppes Corporation -Hello, May I speak to John Fisher?"

 "John Fisher is in a meeting. Can I ask him to call you back?"

 It was 10.45, then 11.00, then 11.15. No call. 

 Enough: I put on my coat and started for the Prince of Wales.

 But as soon as I got outside it started to rain. Insane weather, so suddenly switching on like that, and so heavily wet. I ran to hide in my car.

 I sat in the Rover, smoking. An old friend: the seats of worn green leather creaked reassuringly in the same way every time I sat ; the instruments solid, designed to reassure. It had been inherited from an uncle who died when he was driving across the South Downs when he stopped and went under a tree to relieve himself and got struck by lightening along the stream of his urine. 

I drove the hundred yards to the Prince of Wales, pressing my face close to the windscreen to see, the rain so heavy, it was like sitting inside a drum. Thankfully, there was a space right outside the pub. The pub is cavernous, Victorian, and designed for the needs of hundreds of thirsty dockers. But the mechanisation of the port, and use of containers means that it rarely serves more than 20 people at any one. That’s fine by me.

 It has a giant, circular bar, so grand it dwarves the barman, a silent, pale, northern fellow . I guess he moved down here and just swallowed up by the giant sad bar, losing all colour.

 I entered: as always there below enormous plate windows seated on the maroon vinyl banquette, the elderly solitary drinker. I look across to him and nod: he raises his glass in his thin white arm. “Here’s to your lordship’s health!”

 There is a billiard table there. I like to play in the silence of the pub with the guys who hang about there. I am an excellent player and that secures me a place in The Prince of Wales socially. In any case, the players don’t talk. They just stand about sipping pints of beer and all you hear the resonant clink of the balls and the murmur of people at the bar, and occasionally the scrape of chalk on a board if they decide to keep a score, which isn’t often. It’s very satisfying and makes a gorgeous contrast to the brittle world of celphones and emails at the desk in my office.

Anyway, that’s where I met Billy.

 Billy was a scrawny dilapidated sort of guy who appeared here and there except when you might want him to. I never quite figured out what he did or why though. I never imagined for a second that it might be legal.

*

Illustration: a sly fellow, April 2021

 

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Beth, or The Missing Girl. Part 2

I set out the dinner things in my dining room before leaving for work that morning in anticipation of our returning there. The day passed quickly. I worked in a travel agency which specialised in tours for elderly people. Often their tours had a cultural element: I was responsible for setting these elements up; finding guides and organising itineraries. I had spent the day in discussion with the Austrian Board of Tourism. They were going to find a guide who spoke English for a day in Vienna. That day would be concerned with the Secession in Austria.

My desk was at the back of the hop. At the close of day I heard the door open.

I looked across: it was a woman. But it was not Beth.

She turned to me: hello

Hello, I said

Do you do any trips to Russia, she asked.

Madam, I said, I strongly advise you against visiting Russia. It's government is scarcely legal and the whole place is awash with cannibals.

She broke into a laugh. I've been to Russia many times. I want to know about going to St Petersburg. My mother wishes to go to see the Hermitage.

I went to get her the brochures.

She left. Ten past six. No-one.

Perhaps Beth was late. I decided to wait. I went through he racks straightening things. I went into the kitchen and tidied the mugs. I got a cloth from there and a can of furniture polish and I sprayed it on the surface of the desks. Then I polished them with a cloth.

I got sick of waiting. I dialled her number. No reply.

I went out of the shop. There was no-one standing outside.

Then I got a call at home some days later in the morning at 9am.

"Is that Clancy?"

"Yes," I said

"Maybe you don't remember me. Its Cath."

"O."

"I'm Beth's sister."

"Ah," I said

-Well," she said, "You should know something."

"What," I said

"Beth is dead," said the voice.

"O," I said.

"Yes," she said.

She put down the phone.

*

That can't be right, I thought.

Beth, or The Missing Girl. Part 1.

I want to tell a story: an entertainment or a diversion; something to delight you or make you think.

But all I have on my mind is Beth.

Some months ago my mother forwarded me a letter from Beth. The letter was quite general. She was now living in London, in Hackney. There was a telephone number too.

I called it immediately.

"Hello, it's me, Clancy."

"Clancy! I wondered if you would get my letter."

"Yes, I got it today. How are you? Long time."

"Yes," said Beth.

"You're in London now?" I asked

"Yes, I moved some time ago."

-What are you up to?

"Nothing much. This and that."

"Okay," I said. Something about her reply made me feel guilty; something in the tone of voice, as if I had betrayed her by not making more effort to keep in touch. That sense of guilt impelled me.

"Do you want to meet for a drink?"

"Ok," she said. I didn't recognise the tome from the person I knew. There was something listless about it.

"Why don't you meet me after work?" I said. "What about tomorrow, or today if you're free."

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Ok, I said. "There was a lag in the conversation.

"Meet me after work. 112 Farringdon Road."

"What time?"

" I finish at six. Come then."

"Okay," she said. She put down the receiver, It feltoddly final about that. I didn't get it.