Author: jim clayton

dogs in hats

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Billy is as thin and white as forced celery, wisps of white hair streaming back from his chiselled forehead against all natural gravitational laws, his etiolated white hands clasping the armrests of the chair like roots he put out to suck the nutrients from the stuffing. He barely acknowledges me as I let myself in. Whether that’s because of a general remoteness, or because he’s drunk most of the various spirit bottles placed artfully around his feet, it’s hard to tell.
‘How come you didn’t answer your phone, Billy?’
He turns his sad blue eyes up to me.
‘Oh. Was that you ringing? I looked for my phone but I couldn’t find it.’
‘Shall I give it another ring and see where it is?’
He shrugs.
I go to recents in my phone, and call.
After a moment, a loud buzzing starts up on the cluttered table immediately in front of us. His phone is under a red reminder.
‘Found it!’
‘Great’ he says, in a whispery voice leached flat by long hours of nothing in particular. ‘Gis it here, then.’

It’s hard to know what to do about Billy. The best you can say is that he has a workmanlike approach to drinking himself to death. There’s no joy in it; no wild ride. For some reason he’s simply hitched himself to a slow and dreadfully monotonous kind of decline, like he’s found himself in an armchair that began sinking beneath a quicksand of liquor bottles. When the glass level reaches the bridge of his nose, I don’t imagine he’ll struggle at all. He’ll merely turn those eyes in the direction of whoever’s there to notice, and slide out of sight with a clink.

I unzip my bag and loop the stethoscope round my neck. When I straighten I notice the four dog photos taped to the wall on his right. The photos have been printed A4 size with the colour running low, so everything’s a little fuzzy. You can see it’s the same dog, though, a lugubrious hound sitting in the same position in the kitchen, wearing four different hats: a fisherman’s floppy cap; a Norwegian style knitted hat with flaps; a panama, and then something from a fancy dress shop – a plastic policeman’s helmet fastened under its chin with elastic.
‘Love the pictures!’ I tell him. ‘Who’s dog is that?’
‘Karen, my carer,’ Billy whispers, sadly. ‘She knows I like dogs. And hats. So – there you go.’

the throwdowns

~ jim clayton ~ 4 Comments

They’d been working at it for a while, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

I knew the place as Broken Tree Hill. Just beyond the recreation ground there were two fields – pastures for cows most of the year – both leading down steeply to the woods beyond. The field to the left was the broadest. It passed behind the health spa that had been built back of the manor hotel. You could hear people laughing in the outside pool doing aquarobics, or in the summer see them shielding their eyes on their loungers to watch as you walked by with your dog. There was a group of three pines in the middle of the smaller field to the right. One was still vigorously in leaf, but its two companions hadn’t fared so well. One had been brought down in a storm sometime, no-one knows when. It was still off the ground though, supporting its weight on a lattice of stripped branches. The third pine was dead, too, wormy and rotten but defiantly upright, its stripped branches raking the sky. If the blown pine was a boxer struggling to beat the count, the standing pine was an ancient actor making her melodramatic farewell to the rapturous clouds in the balcony.

I took many photographs of the trio on Broken Tree Hill. It was impossible not to. There was an inherent drama in the scene, early morning, late at night. I spent hours getting it from all angles – particularly the actor pine. She was so compelling, like she was pointing something out, some spot in the ground or the future or both, and if only I was smart enough or stood still long enough I might be able to figure out what it was.

The local gangs had made their marks on the trees, of course. It was a natural hang out. They’d sprayed graffiti on the trunks – a smiling cloud, doobie, a knife. There was a nylon rope with a stub of wood hanging from the living pine. A scattering of bottles and cans in the tangles of blackberry and the rabbit burrows. Lately I’d noticed they’d started chipping away at a hole near the base of the actor pine, trying to bring her down. The heartwood was soft and friable in that strangely geometric way dead wood falls to pieces. They must’ve made it halfway through by now, and I was amazed the old tree had managed to keep standing through the strong winds of the early winter. There was something else keeping this tree up, I thought. She still had something to say.

But this morning when I came through the gate the change was immediate. A gap in the skyline as stark and outrageous as a slap. I hurried over.

The kids had given up on the chipping and burnt it down instead. They’d filled the hole with junk, and a few boxes of what at first I thought were matches but which were actually those little fireworks called throwdowns, the ones you chuck on the pavement that snap like firecrackers. It seemed appropriate. And now the old pine lay stretched out on the grass, the branches that had gestured so beautifully to the sky broken in pieces all around.

Another dog walker came over and we stood there and talked about it. She’d seen the fire and taken pictures of it on her phone, a demonic bolus of red flame around the base, a shimmer of grey smoke.
‘You can get too sentimental about these things,’ she said, putting the phone back in her pocket. ‘Storms take trees all the time. We burn wood in the fireplace. Lightning strikes. And years ago – many years ago – dinosaurs would’ve shouldered them over without a thought. Kids are a natural phenomenon, too. It’s just a shame they get possessed by this destructive instinct from time to time. They shot all the windows out of the youth club out with an air gun, for God’s sake! I mean – where’s the sense in that?’
I had to agree.
‘The creative impulse turned on its head,’ I said.
‘Absolutely.’
I fished my own phone out.
‘Did you see that photo in the paper the other day? Of the black hole? They’ve given it a name now. Powehi. However you say it.’
I scrolled down and we both read what it is and what it means. The adorned fathomless dark creation.’
‘I like that’ she says as I put the phone away again. ‘It’s a good name for something like that. So – basically what you’re saying is that these kids are like a black hole?’
‘Mini ones. But they can turn it around. You have to hope.’
We stood and surveyed the scene in silence for a while.
‘Oh well!’ she said. ‘Must get on!’
And strode away.

 

sig

 

 

 

captain! captain!

~ jim clayton ~ 1 Comment

The cluttered sitting room is dominated by a large, brightly lit vivarium along the wall and two ornate bird cages in the window alcove. The canaries in the cages hop and chatter wildly as I come into the room, but the vivarium seems empty.
‘Don’t worry. He died, he didn’t escape,’ says Malcolm.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Malcolm sighs.
‘Tarantulas,’ he says. ‘Not the easiest.’

Malcolm’s wife Sara is sitting with her back to the vivarium – a weird contrast, not just because the fierce light on the stones and the stark blue background throws her into a kind of unbalanced neon shade, but because she holds herself so completely still, as motionless as the tank is empty.
‘Hello,’ I say, reaching out to her. She’s so fragile, if I shut my eyes I could imagine I’d shaken the wing of one of the canaries instead.
‘The doctor was round this morning,’ says Malcolm. ‘He did some tests so we’re waiting on them. He said you’d be coming round to see what else you could do.’
We go through the story, Sara nodding in agreement from time to time but not offering much else. She’s not in pain. She doesn’t feel unwell as such. She has a few, minor, long-running issues, but nothing’s particularly worse. She’s just lacking in energy and not feeling herself.
‘Six months ago everything was fine,’ says Malcolm. ‘Well – you know. We were taking the bus up town. Going to the garden centre for bird seed and crickets. Going on holiday. We went to Lanzarote. Here’s us on the Yellow Submarine,’ he says, handing me a photo.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s a submarine, my friend. And it’s yellow.’
‘Like the Beatles?’
‘Who?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. Look. It’s a submarine! It doesn’t go down far, but you get to look out the window and see all the fish.’
‘Sounds great.’
I look more closely at the photo. They’re standing side by side, Malcolm with his arm round Sara. He’s looking red-faced, sunburned, the flash from the camera making his face greasy and over-inflated. Ironically, it seems to have the opposite effect on Sara, ghosting her out. Her eyes are dark, intense, like she’s focusing on the moment the submarine surfaces again, the hatch unwound, and she can step back out into the open air.
I hand the photo back.
‘Once or twice she’s gone off and been brought back by strangers.’
‘Oh?’
I smile sympathetically at Sara. She smiles back in an approximate kind of way, shrugs her shoulders.
‘If you say so,’ she says.

the creation of uncertainty

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

The Babylonians believed that Tiamat, the goddess of chaos and the oceans, lay with Abzu, the god of fresh water, and from their union the unnamed world was born. The Ancient Egyptians believed in a primordial craftsman called Ptah, who was so accomplished all he had to do was think about making something and it was instantly done. For the Kuba of Central Africa, the sun, moon and stars were vomited up by the god Mbombo after a spell of nausea. In Norse mythology, Odin, Vili and Ve kill the frost giant Ymir by cutting him to pieces. His brains become the clouds, his blood the oceans, his hair and bones the trees and hills, and his eyebrows become Midgard, where humans eventually live.

Despite the eternal claims of these stories, nothing stays the same. Civilisations come and go, and so do their creation myths. Cultures merge, absorbing one another’s icons and totems. What was once a powerful pagan earth goddess becomes a gargoyle to ward off evil spirits, a mask to hang on the wall.

IMG_0537And these creation myths play out on a smaller, more domestic scale. Each family will have its own version; we’ll all be well rehearsed in the specifics – the love notes in the office, the scratched pram in the hall of the flower shop, the book reading on the riverbank – and we’ll busily extend them with tropes of our own, working them into a weave that feels like something, a verifiable connection between the past and the future, a richly illustrated truth. It isn’t, of course. It’s just another way of imposing order on the world. And like any myth, one day it will have to change. Parents will die or become old, facts will emerge that don’t fit the narrative, affairs, abortions, revisions, elisions, things done and not done, dates that don’t work, things that trip the flow of it all and leave you wondering how you could ever have been so naive.

sig

five short chapters from the age of gods & mortals

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I.

prometheus was generous / he was basically alright / he leaned down from the clouds to the ground / to give all the smokeless mortals a light / and if his punishment was a bit over the top and livery / for such a naive and unauthorised delivery / still, the laparotomising eagle always took flight / and the poor guy’s liver grew back each night

II.

the medusa / was a serial user & abuser / every day a bad hair day / (the classic gorgon confusion / any new relationship a foregone conclusion) / but perseus got the heads up / on the practicalities of this particular pre-nup / wore cool mirror shades / that paid off in spades / and just as he practised in rehearsal / did all his sword fighting in reversal / ended up tossing her hissing head in a sack / and whistling heroically, sauntered back

III.

scylla and charybdis / a couple of mean-minded sisters / who took a terrible maritime toll / one a monstrous snake and the other basically a hole / they lived either side of the strait of messina / guarding the water inbetweener / royally and orally destroying / anything buoyantly annoying / until odysseus / stealthy & inconspicuous / taking the line of least resistance / managed to / find a way through / and okay – so a half dozen heros got eaten by scylla / but at least the boat made the homebound flotilla

IV.

labyrinthitis is rarely fatal / except if you’re a cretan youth or neonatal / because that’s where a bunch of them got sent / every year as punishment / the labyrinth was this crazy maze / built by daedulas in happier days / before icarus and his fickle attitude / to altitude / failing so spectacularly in his fatherly devotion / by hurtling curls-first into the ocean / so anyway / the labyrinth / basically a plinth / in the middle / of an underground puzzle / with a griddle / for the minotaur to get snacky with the kiddle / until down came theseus / muscles gleaming with greaseus / who straightway cut him to piecius / lopping off his head / and then winding his way back with a ball of thread

V.

the chimera! the chimera! / most terrifying creature of the antic era / body of a goat and the head of shakira / and the tail from a snake / and fiery breath that would burn and bake / and giant paws that would pound the ground and make the houses shake / which the general population found pretty hard to take / until – step forth bellerophon! / ripped & ready for the slay-a-thon / he leapt up onto pegasus, his horse / tough as a rhinocerorse / but aerodynamically better of course / together they swooped on the hapless creature / and ran it through with his most prominent feature / (a long & lethally lead-tipped spear / which pretty much did the trick, I hear)
medusa

 

 

the feral dream girl

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘Peter died six years ago, but it may as well be six minutes.’
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
She shrugs and shakes her head.
‘Oh, well. I had a long time to get used to the idea. Poor Peter. He was a long time sick, you see. But that’s all in the past. D’you know what I miss the most? The conversations we had. About the silliest things, any time of the day or night. He was a fascinating man, Peter. That’s why I married him, I think. Or one of the reasons. He would always go to great lengths to understand the other person’s point of view. His hospital bed was just there, where you are now, and I was off to the side, reading or dozing or running backwards and forwards to let the carers in, the nurses and so on. The number of people who came and went through this room. I could’ve written a book. Should’ve. And now it’s just me, sitting on my own, staring out at the birds, thinking about not very much.’
‘Do you have family?’
‘No. Not really. All my brothers and sisters are gone now and we didn’t want children. There are some nieces and nephews dotted about. I see them from time to time, which is lovely, but they’ve got busy lives and what have you and I don’t want to burden them. I don’t mind. I’m perfectly content. No – we didn’t really want children, and I never gave it any thought. I did have a strange dream about it, though. I’d fallen asleep in this chair, and I woke up inside the dream, so to speak. I could tell, because even though everything was much the same, the light was different, more – I don’t know – electric. And there was a wild infant child standing to the side of me. A girl. She was standing right there, just about where you are now, rocking from side to side and staring at me. I wasn’t frightened or anything. I just held out my hand, and eventually she came forward, and let me stroke her hair a while. Then something startled her, and she ran out through the open window into the garden, which was so thick with trees it was like a tropical jungle. And she ran off into all that, and I watched her go. But I wasn’t worried for her, because I knew she would be safe out there, among all the animals, the bears and the wolves and so on. You read about those children, don’t you? The feral ones, the ones who run off into the forest and get brought up by animals.’
‘I remember something about that. It’s difficult to know whether it’s a story or just neglect. Probably a bit of both.’
‘Yes. There is that. People often make up stories when the truth is too painful.’

a scarcity of goats

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘Can I see some identification?’
‘Of course’
I pull my ID card as far out on its elasticated string as it’ll go; Maud grabs it and pulls it closer, and I’m forced to step forwards, caught off-balance, like a fisherman surprised by a particularly feisty trout. She presses the card to the end of her nose and scrutinises it with her eyes shut, squeezed so tightly in fact that a little tear appears in each corner. ‘Well. That all seems to be in order,’ she says, letting it go with a snap. ‘So sorry about all that,’ she says, flapping her hands and lifting her chin in the air. ‘But one cannot be too careful. Especially these days.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Please. Go through to the living room. And do excuse the mess. I’m not normally such a slattern.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a mess. Or maybe only a creative mess.’
‘You’re kind. But no – let’s face it. Let’s call a mess a mess. And if any creativity comes of  it, I’ll be the proverbial monkey’s uncle. Or aunt, in this case.’
Maud feels her way to the armchair and plants herself squarely into it.
‘There!’ she says. ‘Good. Lovely. Now then. What can I do for you?’

Maud is as sharp as you could want in a ninety-five year old. When I ask her to demonstrate how she’ll put the eye drops in after her cataract operation, she shows me a faultless technique, tipping her head back and using the bridge of her nose to brace her hand against.
‘There!’ she says, blinking hard and rolling her eyes. ‘Happy?’
I tell her how impressed I am.
‘I’ve never seen anyone use their nose like that. Just out of interest – what line of work were you in?’
‘Originally? Well – I started off as a goatherd!’ she says, carefully placing the tube of eye drops on the table next to her, then lacing her wrinkled hands together in her lap. ‘Not London, of course. Yorkshire. There was a scarcity of goats in London after the war.’

letterboxes and the fine art of surviving

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It was just after nine / I’d come to see Maureen, a patient of mine / suffering self-neglect & cognitive decline / her niece / Denise / met me outside the flat / we buzzed and rang but had no luck with that / we shouted through the letterbox / the hallway resounding with our pounding and our knocks / but the flat was quiet & the door stayed locked / Denise / had no keys / because her aunt wouldn’t give her a set / even though she was prone to forget / whether to eat or not / and left things on the stove when it was hot / and needed reminding to take her medication a lot / but – you know – this whole thing was a long time in the making / (Denise was pleased for the trouble everyone was taking) /

we stood there in the hall / wondering what to do, who to call / Denise was realistic / she said this behaviour was characteristic / Maureen was definitely home / but just wanted to be left alone / the risk was low she was on the floor / so we probably didn’t need to kick down the door / it would’ve been too destructive / counter-productive / so instead / I said / I’d talk to the GP / quite urgently / actually / because we needed to see / that Maureen had capacity / to say the hell with the world and other curses / and no to a visit from the district nurses

I shook Denise’s hand, said goodbye / picked up my bags, walked outside

back in the car / eating an energy bar / planning my visits / I listened to a professor of theoretical physics / it was compelling / there was still no way of telling / he said / the essential difference between alive and dead / no experiment yet devised / that could have the matter verified / it was somewhere in the realm of chemical & electrical causation / in DNA packed full of coded information / software / versus hardware / somewhere deep in there / and if that wasn’t enough / he went on to talk about all this other stuff / how space & time came into existence / how early bacteria showed a strange resilience / there, at the beginning of multicellularity / moving and evolving with marked singularity / tackling insults to their integrity

I thought about Maureen, locked in her flat / and what I was going to do about that / and I heard our efforts echoing down the hall / all the way back to the start of it all / to the shore at the dawn of Time’s Big Bang / the very moment when it all began / that drenching, wrenching, cataclysmic spasm / that flash of heat in the heart of the chasm / that revolutionary, evolutionary phantasm / of subatomic ticks and tocks / to Denise and me, shouting through a letterbox

something good is just about to happen

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Harold doesn’t just suffer with anxiety – he’s anxiety incarnate. He is fret and worry and apprehension and dread, bound together with chains of despair. He is one hundred percent uneasiness, with a side order of foreboding. Anxiety has invaded his body, worn him thin as a pier post submerged by the tide, the black water rusting out the bolts, leaving just a pair of drilled holes for eyes.

‘But how do I know you’ll come?’
‘I will come, Harold. I promise. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’
‘But what if you don’t? Who would I call?’
‘You could call the office. The number’s in the folder. But I should be there in twenty minutes, traffic permitting.’
‘What do you mean, traffic permitting? You mean you might not get here at all?’
‘Well – sometimes the traffic’s a bit sticky, Harold. But twenty minutes should do it.’
‘But it might not do it. It might not. And then where would I be?’
‘I think you just have to trust that things will work out.’
‘But you can’t guarantee it.’
‘No. I suppose when it comes down to it, I can’t.’
‘So you can’t promise me you’ll come?’
‘I can promise I’ll try.’
‘And you you’re not lying to me.’
‘No. I would never lie to you. I’ll always be honest. Even though it might not help sometimes.’
‘Because I don’t want to be told one thing and then something else happens.’
‘No. That’s not nice at all.’
‘So you’ll be here in twenty minutes?’
‘Twenty minutes. Try not to worry.’
‘But it could be longer?’
‘I’ll see you in a bit, Harold. Take care.’

I ring off. Take a breath.

Take care? Why did I say take care? It sounds too final – the kind of thing you say when you don’t think you’ll see someone for a while. Certainly longer than twenty minutes.

Even over the phone I can feel the glittering mycelia of anxiety reaching out to me. I shake them off. Take a breath. Drive more positively than normal. Get there in ten.

*  *  *

When Harold comes to the door it’s like someone throwing a curtain aside on a  monologue.
‘I was worried I’d caused a stain on the road.’
‘A stain Harold? What do you mean?’
‘A stain. I could see a black patch on the road outside, and I was worried my milk had leaked from the bottle. There was a workman outside and I asked him about it.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said it wasn’t the milk, it was the repairs they’d made to a hole. He said if it was milk it would’ve dried by now. But it could’ve been the milk, couldn’t it? The milk could’ve leaked and caused damage to the road? And then what would I have done?’
‘It definitely wasn’t the milk.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. There are many things I’m not sure about, Harold, but I can absolutely guarantee your milk hasn’t leaked and damaged the road surface.’
‘But it was all black and shiny.’
‘That’ll be the bitumen.’
‘Bitumen?’
‘Yep. I would think.’
‘What’s bitumen?’
‘It’s a tarry substance they use to resurface roads.’
He frowns.
I take the opportunity to redirect his attention.
‘Would you mind if I came inside, Harold? The doctor wants me to take a little sample of blood…’
His round eyes deepen.
‘Blood? What on earth for?’
‘Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it.’
‘But why does the doctor want you to take my blood? Am I ill?’
‘It’s nothing to worry about, Harold…’

It carries on like this all the way in to the living room. I put my right hand lightly on his shoulder, hoping the human weight of it might reassure him a little. When we reach the living room he hitches up his trousers, lowers himself with enormous care into a ruined armchair, then sits with his hands gripping the armrests, his spindly legs close together, his slippered feet flat on the floor. Only when all this is safely done does he turn his drilled gaze onto me.

I try the usual tactics. I ask him about his family, what job he used to do. I ask casual but specific questions about his daily routines. What he eats. How he sleeps. I ask about his bowel habits. How he’s managing. I make banal comments about the weather. I make him tea, and so on. But despite adopting the conversational profile of a pebble, every last thing gets turned into evidence of imminent ruin and disaster.

I settle back.

The walls are covered with pictures: kitsch, mini motivational posters, one of a kitten in a boot saying I hate Mondays; some with blocks of text saying stuff like Only I can change my life… or something good is just about to happen – but the one that really catches my eye is a copy of the Mona Lisa with a photoshopped spliff in her hand.

I look back to Harold and smile.

‘Am I ever going to be well?’ he says. ‘And don’t lie to me.’