Whistle on the wind by Steve Smith

I remember it like yesterday: building blocks of heat stacked neatly around the church hall; little kids in mini tuxedoes, orange pop in hand, running around and playing; big kids with pint pots and brandy glasses, running around and playing; the speech; the cake; the disco; and the fight. It was a great, great day. And there she stood: Gina, Gina, my semolina - good enough to eat. Then there was me, dragged through adolescence, never a ladies man, shy and awkward, suddenly a man, a man to be respected and envied. I saw the looks on their faces; they are never sincere, they think your actions foolish, they talk in whispered voices, they laugh, they point fingers. 

Gina, Gina, semolina, where are you now? With him. Where am I? I am here. I am always here.

Where I am is dark and I hear nothing except an occasional creak or groan. It presses down on me, on my face, on my body, everywhere. It is so dark and so heavy. I am alone. I cannot move. 

We started so well. We approached our life together as a perfectly formed hill. The kind you draw in Primary school with a house on top. You know it, a perfect green semicircle. We met at the bottom, we progressed upwards together, we married at the top, and then fell down, all the way to the bottom. I tumbled, I rolled, I lost sight of my semolina; she was gone. He took her from my hill. I fell not. He tripped me. 

She allowed him to take her. She done it. She opened herself to him. She opened her legs for him. She pushed me away with her sweaty leg. She kicked me down our hill. Gina, Gina, my … semolina. I love “she.”

I feel the black stuff rising around me; everything looks black, I cannot see, but I know it is black. Black. It reached my ears and took the sound. A rush, then silence. I taste it on my lips: the bitterness. I smell it in my nostrils: the toxic fumes. Diesel.

We had it all. We were there. The deal was in the bag; the door had opened; she stopped, turned away and left me at the door. I waited. I waited too long, and when I turned to walk through alone, the door had gone. I looked today, I did, I really did. I was going to do it, take the deal, sign the papers, make the man, show her. I cleaned up, shaped up, got to the station, boarded the train, sat in my seat and … and now this.

I took a coffee, boarded the 11:17 to salvation, hit the buffet car and came off the rails again. What can I say?

I no longer have a body. I am detached at the neck. My eyes are open, but I cannot see, I cannot feel. I never saw it coming. I never believed it could happen. It does happen. It happened to me.

It is time to move on, get up, get through this, this thing in front of me. Push it, push it Johnnie boy! Like a hand on the back of my head, I push myself forward, slow at first, then the hand lets go, but still I accelerate. I want to stop! Stop it! I am a cautious man, I need control. I bust through the carnage, into the air, raindrops hitting my face. I see the clouds approaching fast. I would put up my hands, if I had hands. I close my eyes and feel the wet vapour against my face. Eventually I open my eyes and see black. Black. White dots splatter the sky; stars that twinkle not; the burning slow-motioned sun. Its flames pull up, lick itself and disappear into a molten sea of fire. I turn myself and see … see the sea, the unbelievable. The blue, blue world, covered in fluffy cotton buds to mop my tears. I blink the lids I have not and watch it turn.

Back I go. Returned by the rubber band that tethers me to the earth. I stop in the clouds and let them twirl around me. I breathe them in and I breathe them out, before I press the ground floor button and begin my descent.

Scattered like a child’s toy: the train, my train. Blackened and smoking, coughing and groaning. I see luminous ants crawling in and out of the death holes; red and blue blinking white blocks surround the scene. Closer in, there is me and my strawberry jam covered blackened face. I see the man and woman on the grass verge with their dog. He points at a severed arm. The woman follows his finger and nods. The dog licks his nether regions; he has seen an arm before. I move down next to them.

‘They say you see all sorts of bits of people at train crashes,’ he says.

The dog stops to look in my direction. If I had a tongue, I would show him. I interest him no longer and he continues to sanitise. I look down at myself and see nothing; there is no shadow, no glow, the grass is swaying in the breeze and I am not here.

Gina, Gina, semolina. Where are you? Will you have time for me now? Will you? Will you think of me?

Tumbling backwards up the verge, I reach the railings and the people.

‘There’s a leg! Look!’

‘The smell! Can you smell that?’

‘It’s blood!’

‘There’s a hole in the fence over there, let’s get nearer!’

Get nearer to death. Worry not, it will come to a cinema near you soon enough.

Depressing around here, I fancy a drink. I skedaddle backwards across the road and into the pub. Why backwards? Because I can. Would you not, if you could?

There are young men playing pool; I might stay awhile and watch. I never liked the game.

‘I ain’t gonna ring ‘er am I?’

‘Naah, course not.’

‘Don’t wanna hang abaht wiv some burd, do I?’

‘Naah. Don’t blame ya Gaz.’

‘Jus go arand and give her one in the week dun I? Someing to do, init?’

The other smiles, crestfallen; the television fills his weeknights.

I look at the ball on the table, shining under the light. I see tiny dimples and miniscule flecks of bright blue chalk. I hear the light buzzing. I listen more carefully and it slows to a knock, knock, knocking. A tick, tock, ticking. The world stops, nothing moves and I see a river of light particles teeming from the bulb, moving towards the ball, bouncing off, fading to black over the edge of an invisible waterfall. I move to Crestfallen and look in his eyes; I see sadness there, anxiety. His hormones rage around his lubricated eyeball, desperate for something to calm them. I imagine patting him on the shoulder, and I whisper to him that things might improve. Something moves to my left and takes my attention. I concentrate on the chair by the wall, hard, hard, harder still, and see a man appear there. He laughs silently. On each chair, there is now someone there; each one laughs. There are people leaning on the bar, laughing. Someone behind the bar has his arms crossed and smiles. I think of shaking my head, closing my eyes, opening them again. There is nothing. The world jolts into life, as if someone let the record go, let the earth spin. Gaz takes a shot. He misses.

I move through the wall into a clothes shop. Two young women stand behind the counter. The shop is empty; there are better things to see by the tracks.

‘I think he really loves me,’ says the white girl to the Asian.

‘Really?’

‘We see each other every night.’ She pauses. ‘Well, almost every night.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, he should see his mates on a Friday night. He says he still needs his mates. And he does, dun he?’

‘Yeahhhhh.’

‘And I’ve got my mates, ain’t I?’

‘Yeahhhhh … course you have.’

‘So, Friday and Saturday nights, we see our mates, and the other nights we see each other.’

‘Yeahhhhh … do you think he … you know, gets off with other birds?’

‘Naah … not my Gal. He really loves me.’

She is not convinced. The other really cares not. Both have arms crossed, one looks one way, one the other.

‘So, you got a bloke then, or you gonna have an arranged marriage?’

‘My family will organise an arranged marriage, but I can see other blokes too.’

‘So, you got a bloke then?’

‘Not at the moment, no.’

‘I fink arranged marriages are a good idea. I do. No messing abaht wiv dodgy geezers. Get a nice fella. They check him aht, don’t they?’

‘It’s normally another family we know, yeahhhhh.’

‘They don’t make ya though, do they?’

‘Naah! Course not.’

‘Riiiight.’

I must get away from here. Gina, Gina, semolina. I am coming for you!

I spin around, like a whirlwind, through the wall, into McDonalds. Busy. People buzzing around, burgers, chips, full fat milkshakes, apple pies, donuts, balloons, scrunched up burger wrappers, boxes, environmental friendly cartoons and bent straws. I spy a family: a man, large; a woman, larger; two kids, overweight and clinically obese. The burger is going up, up - mouth opening - teeth crunching down - gristle cracking - grey meat separating, sticking to teeth - relish squirting roof of mouth - chipolata fingers on shiny dimpled hand slowly rising, pressing against her cheek, moving across glistening mouth. She hums with pleasure as it slides down her throat, its enzyme covering throttling the greasy molecules into a grey sludge, destined for bubbling stomach acid, pooled in her hefty gut.

I watch, silent. I stare hard at the window, others come into focus, they look at me briefly as I concentrate on them, but turn away. There is a man next to me, he has not turned and he watches me still. I ignore him, but he speaks:

‘This … is your revelation. Watch and learn.’

I see him now. He is a grey old gentleman, dressed smart, his voice soothes and does not frighten. I want to speak, to ask, but I cannot. I am like a shaft of light from a window. I have no mouth, no eyes and no ears.

‘When you have learned, you can try again.’

Learned what? Try what again?

‘You will know … know when it is time.’

‘Joey! You idiot!’

A drink spills. The mother glares; the small boy is silent. She cuffs the top of his head. Hair droops across his face, hiding a tear in each duct.

I turn and the man is gone. I move across the floor, through trays of chicken burgers, double burgers, bacon and molten cheese. Nothing. Behind the counter, nothing. The room cuts to silence and a young man, spotty and greasy, lifts the flap of a charred sesame seed bun with a slurp. I hear the ripping of the bun like the tear of a newspaper. A projectile launches from his mouth, landing on the relish, stirred by his finger. The bun drops into a box. His laugh booms around the room, slow and deep, mixed with his colleague’s high-pitched snigger. The item drops down the shoot, falls in a bag, and is taken away by a man in a suit. Bon appetite!

To the church, revelation and salvation. Gina, from here, we were married.

A man of the cloth walks down the centre of the aisle, a smile on his face. A man of God. A young teenage boy, dressed in frills, stands, looking forward, positioning items on a table. The man walks behind the boy and puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He stiffens and lets go of a figurine. He turns to the man of God. His face is pale, his eyes wide and I see a doughy mixture of spittle connecting his dry tongue to the roof of his mouth. The man ruffles the boy’s shock of ginger hair, dropping his head to one side to speak:

‘Go through.’

The boy gently moves through a door to the right. The man makes the sign of the cross and follows.

Gina, Gina, my semolina. My little Yorkshire pudding, where are you now? Are you with him, or with someone else? Would I ever have been good enough? Will you ever tell me what I did that was so wrong? Why did you let me fade away?

Away from here, across the oceans, through the vessels loaded with drugs, weapons and desperate people. They heave up and down; misery and death packed together neatly in cargo holds. To dense forests far, far away; to the bulldozers, to the protesters, to the government soldiers, to the guns and bullets, to the falling trees and their almighty crashes and smoky ruin. Little pieces of tree, plant and animal, hurled into the air against their will by the swarthy man, his stubbly face and the cigarette hanging from his lips. I see the bright eyes of a thousand creatures, looking at the yellow machine. It appeared with a low rumble, became a gruesome roar, tearing at their lives with giant metal claws. Of those running, I hear their hearts thumping, the resonant sound of a million forest drums beating as one. I stand in front of the machine, but it moves through me as if I am here not. I see his woollen black socks, grubby blue jeans, boots and his yellow stained fingers up close, before a hole in the trees is all I see.

Up into the sky, I let the world move around and head for home; home is where the heart is, home is where the answer is.

In a hotel room, I see an old man on top of a young woman, some newly acquired money neatly folded and shut into the red purse her grandmother gave her. He is moving up and down, telling her how well she is doing, how he is enjoying her. He says rude things and moves faster. She thinks about her young baby, in her cot at her parent’s house, sleeping soundly; of her mother, sitting, drinking tea, hoping her daughter’s audition is going well; of her father, in the pub, talking to his pint. She forgets the pain and lets him finish. He thanks her for her time, thinks of a tip while he showers, before he goes home to his wife. I watch the woman brush her hair and air the sheets for the last appointment of the day. As she waits, she takes the purse from the handbag, from under the towel, from the bottom of the wardrobe, and turns it in her hand. She smiles at it; it is well worn, with a couple of small patches torn off. She unclips it, smells inside, not for the money, but to feel the time her grandmother gave it to her, when she was a small child, years ago, one sunny day in the back garden. I look hard at the woman. She can smell that hot day, her grandmother and the happiness of years gone by. She snaps it shut when she hears a noise outside the room, opening it again when the noise fades. She draws in deeply and it feels like she can touch the memory. I look harder, and see a figure sitting beside her, I cannot see the features, they are blurred and hazy, but its arm is around the woman’s naked torso.

Through the wall into an empty space, I drift slowly to the ground. Children are here, five of them, sitting in a circle on the gravel by the side of the building.

‘Don’t let it go Tommy!’

‘I won’t!’

Tommy is holding a cat; the cat is struggling to get away, but Tommy’s other hand clamps its head, making it look like a bucking bronco. Another sweet child moves forward on his knees. He takes the leg of the cat and suddenly twists his hand, snapping the leg like a small stick. Tommy struggles to hold the animal, squeezing the head harder to keep control. The other children look shocked, but lean forward, fascinated at the struggling feline and its limp, swinging leg. The sweet child takes the other front leg and does it again.

‘Let it walk Tommy, let it go!’

‘It’ll get away!’

‘Just let it go, let’s see!’

Tommy puts the cat down carefully. The front legs move as if they belong to a puppet with no strings. The cat falls on its face and the children laugh. It struggles to get up. I see it has a bright red collar, a name tag and a bell. The bell jangles but cannot be heard against the hoots and groans of the group.

‘Oh man,’ says another, ‘that’s cruel.’

‘No it’s not,’ says the sweet child, ‘this is cruel.’

He scoops the cat up, runs over to a group of nearby metal dustbins, lifts the cat in the air and slams its head onto a lid. He repeats it twice more, then stops to look at the dead cat. The crowd are silent.

A man turns up the alleyway. The sweet child throws the cat to the floor; the others scramble to their feet in a cloud of dust and small stones and run in the opposite direction. The man approaches, sees the cat, looks away and keeps walking.

I see more: hungry children beaten and locked in cupboards; the naked daughters of men twisting around poles, watched by other men; old women beaten and raped for their cigarette money; family friends taking the innocence from sworn-to-silence and ashamed young girls and boys; homeless people, sworn and spat at by drunken young men who do not spare change, but offer career advice instead. “Get a job!”

Time passes for the world and I am a glint of light in a rock pool, seen only by small crabs and a trapped sea horse.

I remember holding the sandwich in my mouth, as the train began to shake, eyes wide, so anxious I thought my chest would explode. Some were screaming and some were petrified stone passengers like I. The landscape in the window looked normal, apart from the bumping; it was as if the track had suddenly developed lumps, a well known track disease. I remember the bang from the front, the feeling of all control lost as the carriage turned sideways, the sandwich falling from my mouth, of gripping my seat rest as the roof was torn off like the top of a can. I know now what it is like to be a piece of spam. In the moment of greatest panic, I remember the front of the carriage moving upwards, then coming back at me; and then the silence, save my hissing ear: the snake of death pulling my life through my bleeding and battered mouth.

For the gift of only one more day. That is all I needed. Back from Manchester with my book deal; something to give her, to give them; to show them I was back. The chance to say sorry is all I needed; is all I need. Sorry, Gina, Gina, semolina. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I span out, let go of the wheel, deserted my post. I can go back in time not, to undo that which has been done, nor do and say some of the things that I never found the time to do.

Raindrops fall on my pond, scattering and shaping my light. I rise up, pull together and fly across the green fields, following the contours of the hills and valleys, trailing rivers and streams, dipping in and out, until I reach it.

The church is tall, hard and foreboding. It towers above me, angled over the great oak wooden doorway. I am now only the dull light of the retreating sun on a stain-glassed window. I crawl slowly over the cracks to a hideous gargoyle, assume its shape and we are one. The misty rain falls lightly onto the two figures standing by a hole, my hole. They wear caps and talk quietly. I reverse into the main body of the church and see people gathered below. The vicar is talking, talking about me; it’s my name, but he refers to someone else, as this John is a family man, a good husband and a good father.

The rows are all empty, bar one. Gina, Gina, semolina is here; a small child by her side; my mother; Gina’s mother; my sister; and a couple of other family members, cajoled into a boring service and jam sandwiches. None of my friends are here. I wonder about this. I have and I had no friends, only people I knew. My best friend was a full bottle and a clean glass.

Gina, Gina, semolina, why do you cry? She holds the child close to her and he cries too. My mother looks sad. Gina’s other hand grips her mother. Semolina is so wonderful, a glowing testament to compassion; she has faults, we all do; mine is and mine was a gaping chasm. I was right all those years ago, when I told a friend in a pub that I could never hope to keep something as beautiful as her. I’m sorry Gina, I really am. I tried. I tried as hard as I could, but I could see failure stalking me at every turn. My father told me, before drink-drowning in his grave, that men had to look after themselves, and that women would look after each other, and we were here just to make sure they had what they wanted, which meant children and money. “Take what you can, when you can,” he told me, over a glass of whisky one night. I believed him and swallowed his wise words.

The congregation stops for silent prayer. I listen for their words, but hear nothing. The wind picks up and whistles through a gap in the window. Gina and her son, my son, look up from their hands at the barely visible twinkle from the burning embers of natural light bending through the window. I want to reach out and touch them, but my position is set. I think of mouthing “I’m sorry” from my empty face, but what’s the use?

‘I love you Johnnie,’ Gina whispers into her hand, ‘and I always will.’

She is still looking, until the vicar takes her from me:

‘Thank-you,’ he says softly, looking down at his notes, before returning to the row of faces. ‘I would like to offer an apology for the noisy window. We have a man coming tomorrow to fix it. It doesn’t close properly.’

They smile, the service concludes and they file out. I choose not to watch myself being lowered into the ground; it never made my lifetime wish list, and I see no reason to add it now.

I stay where I am and watch the benches on which they sat. They being my family, they being people who cared enough to want to say goodbye. I choose to believe that of all the attendees, including him. I choose to be optimistic for the future. It is quite a new outlook for me, but, as they say, it is never too late.

I move to the largest stain-glassed window, through which the last of the day’s sunlight comes. I watch the vicar come back to tidy up, say a prayer and depart, locking the big door with a clunk and a surprisingly small key. The last of the rays draw patterns on the glass, withdrawing completely at the last possible moment, darkening the window and the church below.