Backflash

Bill was a Mammoth Basher.

It was a beastly shame!
He'd bashed up all the Mammoths
Wot once freely roamed the plain.
Except the Biggest Mammoth,
Who had expressed the wish
To put his foot down hard on Bill
And listen to the squish.

It didn't bother Bill at all. He often beat his chest,
And clothed his insecurity with anti-mammoth jest.
But he kept his eyes on the horizon,
And he never went to bed,
Till all his wives said: “This ain't good enough!
We want that Mammoth dead!”

It is isolated here, up on the bog, in the far corner of Europe. And yet it is amazingly connected with the rest of the world. I am too rooted in an earlier age. I do not think I am yet reconciled to the internet, although it has become my umbilical cord to my islands of the past spread around the world. Twenty years ago the telephone had not reached Curryaun. Now television is horrifying and irresistible. I find it all the more unbalancing to step outside at night to have a pee, and see the sky aswirl with brilliant stars and Mars rising huge and yellow over Tom’s blackthorn hedge and then the moon suddenly splashed out like a broken egg among the torn white clouds. The only sound is the strange vibration of the night jar as it turns in the darkness above the house.

I watched television last night, drinking as much cider as my day’s exercise ration told me was expedient and my diabetes would permit. It was not enough; but then it never is. This illness prohibits excess, and excess has been my place of refuge for as long as I can remember. I am left fighting against myself on all fronts. It makes no difference that I have dropped the old persona. The ghostly form of my amputated nature still hovers around me and I can still feel the pains and aches in it. I am told that if I disobey I shall die sooner than I wish, but that if I do what the doctors tell me there is still a chance that I may stay alive long enough to find out if there is another life after the one I have already trashed.

The film I watched on television was a good one, but bloody. It was chosen to steer my taste away from Schwarzenegger, so far as that is possible. It was an art film and so as well as murder there was lunacy and a substantial opportunity for me to empathise with the protagonists and to recognise their reflection in me. Schwarzenegger is easier. He works on me like an extra gallon of cider without adding to my blood sugar. But I am always half-open to some self-improvement, particularly since my favourite methods of self-destruction are now beyond my reach and I am under a modicum of supervision.

After the film C turned in, and I stepped outside the cottage for my final look at the stars and then followed her to bed and fell past her into a cidery sleep as suddenly as if I had stepped off a cliff. I must have taken the film with me and we hit the ground together harder than I would have wished, for when I awoke this morning it was embedded in my head and I was convinced I had murdered C during the night as she slept.

There was no warmth beside me and no movement in her quarter of the bed.

I hesitate to open my eyes in the morning without an hour or so of pre-emptive consideration and I lay awake for a while feeling the desperate hands of the sheet clutch at my body until it was sure I was still alive. When I had woken enough to find the strength I to called out her name. Her answering grunt relieved me immensely but remnants of my dream still clung to me like a hangover.