Stranded in Sub-Atomica
After four years of wrangling over unpaid rent the housing co-op,
the one he helped found
in the seventies, obtained an eviction order and repossessed.
He went, owing thousands,
back to Sussex, where his mum and dad cleared out upstairs,
aired his old bed
and, despite the disruption to their twenty year routine, made him
as welcome as they could.
Vic and Jill, who followed him into the flat, had to hire a skip
to shift the shit he’d left.
There were piles of comics, old newspapers with articles circled,
some with pages hacked out -
behind the settee the missing pieces, filed in cornflake packets -
a pamphlet biography
of Rosa Luxemburg, copies of Green Anarchist, assorted tracts
from the WRP,
A Nietzsche Reader, stacks of PG Tips boxes which leaked residue
like bracken spores
when moved and gave a deep brown dusting to the work tops
and the grease-caked floor.
At the back was an exercise bike, unused, and supermarket bags
stuffed with paper and rags
and heaped waist high and supermarket bags full of rubbish and more
supermarket bags.
His parents watched him eat his meals and hide behind the Times.
Attempts at communication
tailed off into embarrassed silence. His mum and dad held hands as he
retired to the bedroom.
The flat stank and there were insects, insect larvae, wood-lice and slugs.
Jill went down the shops
to buy disinfectant, rubber gloves, heavy-duty bin liners and bleach.
For ten hours, nonstop,
they sifted, sorted through and binned his worldly goods. He sat
and stared across the Downs
waiting for dark. There was a record player which worked, except that
the speakers were blown,
and clothes among the rubbish, which leaked onto the clothes, and more
rubbish in the cupboards
and mouse crap on the cooker and there were notes - scribbled notes -
endless scribbled notes -
minutes of meetings that detailed who said what to whom, on what night
and what they really meant,
drafts of letters of complaint, accusations to associates of unspecified slights,
filed but never sent
and character assassinations of everyone he knew, presumably for reference.
In short, documents
recording every nuance of his descent into paranoia and indifference,
were bagged and burnt.
By midnight all that remained were lousy carpets, a table, two chairs
and on the back wall,
in coloured marker pen and thick wax crayon, lines, loops and patterns,
messages scrawled
in an erratic hand, drawings of people labelled with their names and crimes,
broken hearts,
runes, animals, misquotes from the Tao. A cross between a Venn diagram
and an astrologers chart
it described the universe revolving round, set in a childish, yellow sun,
a giant ME.
Vic went to the car to fetch the wine and glasses, brushes and emulsion.
In Sussex he
shrank back into his chair as the moon was covered up by heavy cloud.
The couple viewed
the mural for a while, traced the lines with finger tips, then set to work
painting it out.
In Sub-Atomica the princess struggled in the clutches of the arch-fiend
Doctor Doom
and Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, threw himself into the fray against
the villain’s goons,
hurling balls of fire. He must reverse the evil Doctor’s shrinking-ray
or be marooned
forever. Somewhere outside Brighton dawn’s first light was filtering
into an empty room.
Page(s) 34-36
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