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

Ardbeg- the fourth of the Billy stories

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"Weeping, death, a lonely and desperate place. Goblins everywhere"

Ardbeg

Here’s a memory, true of course...

  I was walking down Wentworth Street when I saw Billy. It was one of those overcast days, when you just wander about expecting it to rain. I’d been to the train station just for somewhere to stand. I looked at the huge sign with all the destinations which I had never been to and maybe never would.

 I wore my light buff raincoat and felt like a detective. My shoelace had become untied so I bent down to tie it and as I was bending down I saw him, blue t shirt and jeans, that pink English face skin so pink it always seemed weird to me (I am quite dark, you see). He was standing outside the station talking to some fellow and, I saw his face in profile, the sharp nose and too small mouth. From my crouching tie position I yelled “Billy” loudly, and then the pink face that was Billy turned. I wondered if he saw me: he turned and started to run, so I went after him. I caught him at the corner, grabbed his arm.

 But it wasn’t Billy. It was some other guy. Indeed, he didn’t really look like Billy at all, except for that English pinkness. “Fuck off,” the stranger said.

In those days I’d avoid going home. "Home" meant a two room garret, a place seemingingly perfect for solitude, with a neat kitchen and living area, ample bookshelves and a sweet bedroom, all cosied by the sloping roof.

 

 But the place had been taken over by goblins. They’d sit on my bed and mock me with cackling sounds, or messed with my stuff, taking the CDs out of their cases and putting them in the wrong ones so I couldn’t find the stuff I wanted to listen to. Or they reversed the books on the shelves so you took ages to find the thing you wanted. And the fruit smeared on the kitchen cabinet handles. Why? 

They had black skin and screeching voices and wore almost nothing except woolen caps and their hair was crazily unkempt. They stank of coal and urine and I didn’t like them much. So I was always looking for someone to hang out with or else working late in the little office near the harbour, with a desk, a phone and a computer and where I would sit trying to figure out a way to make some money. 

I reckoned that if I didn’t show up at home they’d just move on to bug someone else. They' been there for two months already. I got to the office and stood there looking out at the forlorn sky and how the boats weren’t moving and everything was too grey even for someone who likes overcast days. And even the gulls flew slowly.

 I had some whiskey on the table, a good bottle still half full with the solemn words ARDBEG proud on the front and I poured a good slug into my dirty cup and it softened it all.

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Read to Alburquerque Cyberscribes 26 April, 2021 

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