It
is a combination of the morning’s three and a half hour shift (the afternoon
free to compensate for his work on Saturday morning, a situation that for each
member of staff rolls around roughly once a month) and the subsequent hurry
through summer noon to make the station in time as finds Brother Skunk arriving
on the concourse uncomfortably hot and irritated, his Levi’s pulled loose at
the back from the dragging weight of hipflask.
The
package he carries he continues to shift around in his hand and from one to the
other, aware that the colourful paper in which it’s wrapped is warping into
small damp craters beneath the sweat from off each fingertip, and that the
whole of it is become a constellation of these odd little pocks only adds to
his irritation.
Beneath
the high glass glare of its ceiling, the station’s interior somehow manages to
appear to Brother Skunk brighter even than the day from which he enters, and it
is as his eyes accept this sudden shift he becomes aware of her staring
straight at him from beneath the broad white brim of her hat; she fans her
smiling face with the spread arc of all four tickets as he approaches.
Skunk:
Happy birthday. Again.
When
they embrace she makes funny little biting gestures at his ear-ring’s tiny
skunk as he inhales to some depth the scent of sunscreen from off her skin.
ache1:
Ooh, is that my present?
Skunk
(quickly putting the package behind his back): Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll find
out on the train.
Both
spilled from the full belly of summer less than a handful of days apart, the
same in years between the births themselves, their plan for today is simply to
get out of town for even just a few hours, to wander the grounds of some
ancient castle or palace in which neither have any interest whatsoever, and on
returning for him to stand her a meal as complement to their celebration of his
own birthday the week before.
To
those amongst whom they pass now arm-in-arm for their designated platform they
appear the absolute model of summer’s young couple, their laughing and chatter
offset only by his slightly irregular footfall with the resultant suggestion of
her supporting him as they walk, and the ugly little E.T. doll dangling from
her fist.
Taking
his seat on the train he feels finally able to unwind and exhale from himself
every negative aspect of the morning. He ignores the hipflask on the table
between them over which she has placed her hat, presenting her at last and with
both hands the brightly-wrapped box which ache1 greets with a rapid
burst of applause.
Skunk:
Here you go. Happy birthday, Linus.
but
his innocuous use of her former nickname inadvertently upsets the very
equilibrium into which he had only just this minute relaxed.
ache1
(visibly shaken and with sudden anger):
Don’t call me that.
It
is as if the word had pierced her, leaving a barb of itself broken off and
embedded in her spirit. She sits back in her seat and closes her eyes.
Skunk
(lost): Sorry. I’m... I’m sorry.
repeating
the apology with no comprehension whatsoever of its necessity, and the untouched
box now suddenly become an embarrassment to them both, made all the more
conspicuous by the bright cheer of its colourful giftwrap.
Brother
Skunk waits hopeful for the change in her demeanour, but it does not come.
When
she turns her head to stare out of the window he sees her eyes register nothing
in all the movement beyond the glass and his ankle begins to effervesce; he
grinds it off the panelling ashamed and angry at whatever was in himself
ignorant enough to result in such an impasse and the unpredicted quick
dwindling of the day’s anticipated simple pleasures.
He
watches the scenery shift before furtively examining the inside surface of the
window for her reflection, its retrieval hampered by the early afternoon
sunshine and his vision’s repeated default to the landscape passing behind. In
his eventual success he is so aghast to find her eyes staring directly back at
him from the glass he expels an involuntary yelp, quickly following which his
cheeks erupt in blush.
ache1
(laughing): Oh God you maniac!
and
still laughing grabs her present from off the table, shredding the giftwrap to
expose another smaller packet wrapped in identical paper along with a slightly
battered box with broken corners. Skunk removes his hipflask from underneath
her hat and unscrews its squeaky cap. He surrenders to her the first shot,
following suit.
ache1
(resuming with genuine intrigue): What is this?
as
she proceeds to remove from the box a second-hand Polaroid camera she will have
lost by the week’s end.
ache1: At least we didn’t
lose any pictures. If it had been a real camera we’d
Skunk (angry): It was a real
camera.
ache1: Yeah but ah, you know,
a proper, a film camera. If it’d been a film camera we’d have lost all our
photos.
Skunk (sighing): Yeah well, there is that,
I suppose.
She
locates him in its viewfinder.
Skunk:
You’ll need the film first.
pushing
toward her the smaller gift.
Eventually,
with the discarded paper, packaging, and instruction manual shunted along to
the table’s end, she frames him again in her shot, gleefully unhesitant to
interrupt his primer on the rudiments of photography.
ache1:
The first one should be of you.
Skunk:
You could, does it have a timer? You could take us both. Or come round here and
just hold it out so’s
ache1:
You first, us next, then him.
jabbing
her thumb at E.T. in the seat alongside.
Skunk:
You know there are two types of people: those as read instructions, and
ache1:
Say Jesus.
Skunk:
Jesus.
The
small flash echoes as a dark square central to his vision then bright upon the
inside of his eyelids’ blink. Some internal mechanism loudly grinds out the
photograph which ache1 removes and flips onto the table while easing
out and round into the seat beside Skunk to sit with the camera at full stretch
of her arm, photographing them together. She then takes a picture of E.T.
across the table and is back in her own seat before any one of the three images
is fully realised.
As
they both sit hypnotised by the photographs emerging from out each Polaroid’s
milky film base,
Skunk:
Now this is the important part. This bit here
indicating
the broader white framing at the bottom of each image
Skunk:
is called the Whitman Strip, and that’s where you write the date, the location,
and your Whitman quote. Or equivalent.
ache1:
Walt Whitman the poet?
Skunk
(sarcastic): No. Slim Whitman the country and western singer. Jesus. Of course
Walt Whitman the poet.
Momentarily
forgetful of the day, her hand is already in motion when the recollection and
subsequent delight at her attire and it being her birthday brighten even the
inconvenience.
ache1
(biting back her smile): I left my pen in my jeans.
and
then looking about the carriage
ache1:
We could always borrow one.
Skunk:
Don’t worry about it. I don’t actually know any relevant quote to write anyway,
it was eh, it was a friend of mine, not him but ehm, his brother wrote him a
quote on a Polaroid, a Walt Whitman... I don’t even know what it was, but,
ache1:
What about someone else?
Skunk:
Nah, it has to be Whitman, the first one anyway. Them’s the rules. But after
that it’s... open season.
ache1:
Said Elvis.
Skunk
(laughing): Yeah you can quote Elvis on one of the others if you like.
but
between them they decide it only correct to postpone all annotation until the
Whitman line has been writ beneath her portrait of Brother Skunk.
Skunk:
Oh wait, no, there’s “I contain multitudes” but that’s not exactly... It’s, I
suppose it is relevant to the, to that strip being the bit that contains
all the chemistry to develop the photograph, but, you know they should actually
print, they should pre-print that on all the Polaroids so that they all have
that on them. “I contain multitudes – Walt Whitman”.
He
turns the three photographs round the better to see them.
Skunk:
Jesus. E.T. looks more like me than I do. If we get back in time we can
go to the shop and I’ll get a line there. Whitman’s on the lists so we’ve got a
whole heap of him.
ache1
is watching everything through the viewfinder.
The
weather holds for her birthday excursion and their expectations of the
afternoon are fulfilled, each taking an elemental joy from simply being in the
company of the other whether negotiating the eventual castle’s spiral stairwell
or walking barefoot over its surrounding grass embankments, the hipflask
emptied across the hours.
There
is so little time on their returning to town they must hail a taxi to make the
bookshop before it closes, arriving just as his fellow cogs are winding down
the day. He races to the poetry bay and pulls one of the thick Whitman
paperbacks from its place, flipping through its pages even as the fluorescent
tubes are extinguished overhead.
cog:
C’mon Skunk, this is supposed to be your half-day.
His
eyes dart amongst the stanzas in the dim light, desperate for anything even
remotely relevant as might be remembered between here and the door where she
and the rest of the staff are impatiently waiting, when from the page leaps “I
glorify thee above all”
and
after reading it again aloud to be sure
Skunk:
“I glorify thee above all”
he
is off and out and scribbling it and the day’s date and their destination upon
the Polaroid with a pen borrowed for that very purpose
Skunk
(writing): I glorify thee above all
but
to remain of its actual context ignorant for years, shaken to the very centre
of his unhealed heart in that eventual recognition of a lovesong’s lyric sung
to welcome death.
