Authors: Simon Armitage
So George has this theory: the first thing we ever steal,
when we’re young, is a symbol of what we become later
in life, when we grow up. Example: when he was nine
George stole a Mont Blanc fountain pen from a fancy
gift shop in a hotel lobby—now he’s an award-winning
novelist. We test the theory around the table and it seems
to add up. Clint stole a bottle of cooking sherry, now
he owns a tapas bar. Kirsty’s an investment banker and
she stole money from her mother’s purse. Tod took a
Curly Wurly and he’s morbidly obese. Claude says he
never stole anything in his whole life, and he’s an actor
i.e. unemployed. Derek says, “But wait a second, I stole
a blue Smurf on a polythene parachute.” And Kirsty says,
“So what more proof do we need, Derek?”
Every third Saturday in the month I collect my son from
his mother’s house and we take off, sometimes to the
dog track, sometimes into the great outdoors. Last week
we headed into the Eastern Fells to spend a night under
the stars and to get some quality time together, father
and son. With nothing more than a worm, a bent nail and
a thread of cotton we caught a small, ugly-looking fish;
I was all for tossing it back in the lake, but Luke surprised
me by slapping it dead on a flat stone, slitting its belly
and washing out its guts in the stream. Then he cooked it
over a fire of brushwood and dead leaves, and for all the
thinness of its flesh and the annoying pins and needles of
its bones, it made an honest meal. Later on, as it dropped
dark, we bedded down in an old deer shelter on the side
of the hill. There was a hole in the roof. Lying there on
our backs, it was as if we were looking into the inky blue
eyeball of the galaxy itself, and the darker it got, the more
the eyeball appeared to be staring back. Remembering
George’s theory, I said to Luke, “So what do you think
you’ll be, when you grow up?” He was barely awake,
but from somewhere in his sinking thoughts and with a
drowsy voice he said, “I’m going to be an executioner.”
Now the hole in the roof was an ear, the ear of the
universe, exceptionally interested in my very next words.
I sat up, rummaged about in the rucksack, struck a match
and said, “Hold on a minute, son, you’re talking about
taking a person’s life. Why would you want to say a
thing like that?” Without even opening his eyes he said,
“But I’m sure I could do it. Pull the hood over someone’s
head, squeeze the syringe, flick the switch, whatever.
You know, if they’d done wrong. Now go to sleep, dad.”
The couple next door were testing the structural fabric
of the house with their difference of opinion. “I can’t
take much more of this,” I said to Mimi my wife. Right
then there was another almighty crash, as if every pan
in the kitchen had clattered to the tiled floor. Mimi said,
“Try to relax. Take one of your tablets.” She brewed a
pot of camomile tea and we retired to bed. But the
pounding and caterwauling carried on right into the small
hours. I was dreaming that the mother of all asteroids
was locked on a collision course with planet Earth,
when unbelievably a fist came thumping through the
bedroom wall just above the headboard. In the metallic
light of the full moon I saw the bloody knuckles and a
cobweb tattoo on the flap of skin between finger and
thumb, before the fist withdrew. Mimi’s face was
powdered with dirt and dust, but she didn’t wake. She
looked like a corpse pulled from the rubble of an
earthquake after five days in a faraway country famous
only for its paper kites.
I peered through the hole in the wall. It was dark on the
other side, with just occasional flashes of purple or green
light, like those weird electrically-powered life forms
zipping around in the ocean depths. There was a rustling
noise, like something stirring in a nest of straw, then a
voice, a voice no bigger than a sixpence, crying for help.
Now Mimi was right next to me. “It’s her,” she said. I
said, “Don’t be crazy, Mimi, she’d be twenty-four by
now.” “It’s her I tell you. Get her back, do you hear me?
GET HER BACK.” I rolled up my pyjama sleeve and
pushed my arm into the hole, first to my elbow, then as
far as my shoulder and neck. The air beyond was
clammy and damp, as if I’d reached into a nineteenth-
century London street in late November, fog rolling in up
the river, a cough in a doorway. Mimi was out of her
mind by now. My right cheek and my ear were flat to the
wall. Then slowly but slowly I opened my fist to the
unknown. And out of the void, slowly but slowly it
came: the pulsing starfish of a child’s hand, swimming
and swimming and coming to settle on my upturned
palm.
He splashed down in rough seas off Spurn Point.
I watched through a coin-op telescope jammed
with a lollipop stick as a trawler fished him out
of the waves and ferried him back to Mission
Control on a trading estate near the Humber Bridge.
He spoke with a mild voice: yes, it was good to be
home; he’d missed his wife, the kids, couldn’t wait
for a shave and a hot bath. “Are there any more
questions?” No, there were not.
I followed him in his Honda Accord to a Little
Chef on the A1, took the table opposite, watched
him order the all-day breakfast and a pot of tea.
“You need to go outside to do that,” said the
waitress when he lit a cigarette. He read the paper,
started the crossword, poked at the black pudding
with his fork. Then he stared through the window
for long unbroken minutes at a time, but only at the
busy road, never the sky. And his face was not the
moon. And his hands were not the hands of a man
who had held between finger and thumb the blue
planet, and lifted it up to his watchmaker’s eye.
A man was hitching a lift on the slip road of the A16 just
outside Calais. Despite his sharp, chiselled features and a
certain desperation to his body language, I felt compelled
to pick him up, so I pulled across and rolled down the
window. He stuck his face in the car and said, “I am
Dennis Bergkamp, player of football for Arsenal. Tonight
we have game in Luxembourg but because I am fear of
flying I am travel overland. Then I have big argument with
chauffeur and here he drops me. Can you help?” “Hop in,
Dennis,” I said. He threw his kit in the back and buckled
up next to me. “So what was the barney about?” I asked
him. Dennis sighed and shook his classical-looking head.
“He was ignoramus. He was dismissive of great Dutch
master Vermeer and says Rembrandt was homosexual.”
“Well you’ll hear no such complaints from me,” I assured
him. We motored along and the landscape just zipped by.
And despite some of the niggles and tetchiness which crept
into Dennis’s game during the latter part of his career, he
was a perfect gentleman and the complete travelling
companion. For example, he limited himself to no more
than four wine gums from the bag which gaped open
between us, and was witty and illuminating without ever
resorting to name-dropping or dressing-room gossip.
Near the Belgian border a note of tiredness entered
Dennis’s voice, so to soothe him to sleep I skipped from
Classic Rock to Easy Listening. It wasn’t until we were
approaching the outskirts of the city that he stirred and
looked at his Rolex. “It will sure be a tight one,” he said.
“Why don’t you get changed in the car and I’ll drop you
off at the ground?” I suggested. “Good plan,” he said, and
wriggled into the back. In the corner of my eye he was a
contortion of red and white, like Santa Claus in a badger
trap, though of course I afforded him complete privacy,
because like most professionally trained drivers I use only
the wing mirrors, never the rear view. Pretty swiftly he
dropped into the seat beside me, being careful not to
scratch the console with his studs. “Here’s the stadium,” I
said, turning into a crowded boulevard awash with flags
and scarves. Dennis jogged away towards a turnstile,
through which the brilliance of the floodlights shone
like the light from a distant galaxy.
And it’s now that I have to confess that Mr. Bergkamp was
only one of dozens of Dennises to have found their way
into the passenger seat of my mid-range saloon. Dennis
Healey, Dennis Hopper, Dennis Potter, Dennis Lillee, the
underrated record producer Dennis Bovell, and many,
many more. I once drove Dennis Thatcher from Leicester
Forest East service station to Ludlow races and he wasn’t a
moment’s bother, though I did have to ask him to refrain
from smoking, and of course not to breathe one word about
the woman who introduced rabies to South Yorkshire.
From the last snowfall of winter to settle on
the hills Damien likes to roll up a ginormous
snowball then store it in the chest freezer in
the pantry for one of his little stunts. Come
high summer, in that thin membrane of night
which divides one long day from the next,
he’ll drive out in the van and deposit his
snowball at a bus stop or crossroads or at the
door of a parish church. Then from a discreet
distance, using the telescopic lens, he’ll snap
away with the Nikon, documenting the
awestruck citizenry who swarm around his
miracle of meteorology, who look upon such
mighty works bewildered and amazed.
Damien, I’m through playing housewife to your
“art” and this brief story-poem is to tell you
I’m leaving. I’m gaffer-taping it to the inside
of the freezer lid; if you’re reading it, you’re
staring into the steaming abyss where nothing
remains but a packet of boneless chicken thighs
and a scattering of petis pois, as hard as bullets
and bruised purple by frost. At first it was just
a scoop here and a scraping there, slush puppies
for next door’s kids, a lemon sorbet after the
Sunday roast, an ice pack once in a while for my
tired flesh, then margaritas for that gaggle of
sycophants you rolled home with one night,
until the day dawned when there wasn’t so
much as a snowflake left. And I need for you
now to lean into the void and feel for yourself
the true scald of Antarctica’s breath.
A young, sweet-looking couple came into my pharmacy.
The woman said, “I’d like this hairbrush, please. Oh, and
a packet of sugar-free chewing gum. Oh, and I’ll take one
of these as well,” she added, pointing to a pregnancy-
testing kit on the counter. I slipped it into a paper bag, and
as I was handing back her change I winked at her and said,
“Fingers crossed!” “What did you say?” asked the man.
“I was just wishing you luck,” I said. “Why don’t you
mind your own business, pal,” he hissed. “Or is it giving
you a big hard-on, thinking about my girl dropping her
knickers and pissing on one of those plastic sticks?” A boom-
ing, cavernous emptiness expanded inside me—I felt like
Gaping Ghyll on the one day of the year they open it
up to the public. “You’re right, sir,” I said. “I’ve
overstepped the mark. I’m normally a model of discretion
and tact, but not only have I embarrassed you and your
good lady, I’ve brought shame on the ancient art of the
apothecary. Please, by way of recompense, choose
something and take it, free of charge.” The man said,
“Give me some speed.” “Er, I was thinking more like a
packet of corn plasters or a pair of nail scissors. What
about one of these barley sugar sticks—they’re very good for
nausea?” “Just get me the amphetamine sulphate,” he
fumed. Then the woman said, “Yeah, and I’ll take a few
grams of heroin. The pure stuff you give to people in
exquisite pain. And you can throw in a syringe while
you’re at it.” “But think of the baby,” I blurted out.
When people have received a blow to the head they often
talk about “seeing stars,” and as a man of science I have
always been careful to avoid the casual use of metaphor
and hyperbole. But I saw stars that day. Whole galaxies of
stars, and planets orbiting around them, each one capable of
sustaining life as we know it. I waved from the porthole of
my interstellar rocket as I hurtled past, and from inside
their watery cocoons millions of helpless half-formed
creatures with doughy faces and pink translucent fingers
waved back.
C was bitten on her ring finger by a teensy orange spider
hiding inside a washed-and-ready-to-eat packet of sliced
courgettes imported from Kenya. The finger swelled and
tightened; how could the epidermis stretch so far without
tearing apart? But the real problem was in her toes: pretty
soon she lost all feeling in her feet and dropped to the
floor, and moment by moment the numbness increased
as if molten lead were flowing through her veins to her
lower limbs. However, her mind remained clear, and with
great foresight she thumped the leg of the kitchen table
with the outside of her fist, causing the telephone handset
to jump from the docking station and fall safely into the
hairy tartan blanket in the wicker dog basket. She called
her brother, Sandy. Sandy’s voice said, “Hi, I’m at the golf
course, leave a message.” She called her mother. Her
mother said, “Forget the spider, where’s that pastry brush I
lent you, and the silver candlesticks you borrowed to
impress that boss of yours at one of your fancy-pants dinner
parties? Where will it all end, C? It’ll be the melon baller
next, then the ice cream scoop, and soon I’ll have nothing.
Do you hear me? Nothing. God knows I didn’t bring you
up to be a thief but you have a problem with honesty, C,
you really do. Did you find a man yet? Now leave me
alone, I can hear the nurse coming.” C’s dog padded over
and licked her chin, then went back into the living room to
watch daytime TV.