Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

       ‘Coming for a drink?’

       A grey Friday evening, mid-September. I looked up from the computer screen and blinked.

       ‘Sorry?’

       ‘A drink. It’s Friday. Nearly seven o’clock. You know, the weekend. Remember?’ Guy had already put on his raincoat and was waiting impatiently by the office door.

       I looked at my watch. ‘I’d like to, Guy, but I’ve really got to put in a couple more hours on the Crabflower account’.

       Guy shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’m off to down a few Japanese beers. Have a good weekend’.

       ‘You too’.   But Guy had already gone, and I turned back to the computer screen.

       I worked on without interruption and it was nearly ten before I realised that my eyes had stopped transmitting messages to my brain. Reluctantly I switched off the computer, picked up a thick file marked ‘Crabflower’ and placed it carefully in my briefcase.

       Out in the street I pulled the main door shut behind me, turning my key in the deadlock until I heard the click that satisfied me it was secure.

       Shaftesbury Avenue was packed with people celebrating the arrival of the weekend. Tourists filled the overpriced steak houses Londoners made for the cheaper pleasures of Chinatown;  cinemas disgorged one audience before consuming the next. I negotiated the crowds, trying to maintain my usual pace, cursing the leisurely gait of tourists with time to kill. I turned left into Charing Cross Road, then made purposefully for Tottenham Court Road underground station.

       On the Northern Line platform I was depressed to read the familiar words Check destination in front of train.  8 minutes. I stifled a sigh, took a John Le Carre novel from my briefcase and started to read.

       I hadn’t read more than a page when a train shunted into the station. Eight minutes had become two and, to my amazement, it was an Edgware train, which meant I wouldn’t have to change at Camden Town.  I moved swiftly to occupy the one available seat in the carriage, fastidiously removing an empty coke can before sitting down. As the train pulled out of the station, bound for Goodge Street, I reopened my book.

       My eyes were tired and it was a struggle to keep them open. I concentrated hard, aware that if I didn’t read carefully, I’d have little hope of keeping track of the plot. I didn’t bother to look up as the train stopped at the different stations. I travelled the Northern Line so often that some autonomous mechanism in my brain registered progress. Two stops after Camden Town I would automatically get up and step out of the carriage onto the platform at Belsize Park.

       No sooner had I supposedly done this than I realised that something was wrong. I was at Tufnell Park, not Belsize Park. Either my train had been diverted or I had taken a High Barnet or Mill Hill East train under the misapprehension it was bound for Edgware. I swore under my breath.  Unable to face the prospect of travelling back down to Camden Town then up to Belsize Park, I decided to take the lift to street level and hail a cab.

       As I emerged into the dismal night at Tufnell Park. I glanced at my watch. Quarter to eleven. It had been a very long evening.

       My mobile trilled. I took it out of my briefcase, extending the aerial as I did so.

       ‘Hello?’

       ‘Hello?’

       ‘Who’s calling?’

       ‘Is that Rafferty?’

       ‘This is Tim Simmons. Who’s calling?’

       ‘I can’t hear you very well.  Listen, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all evening. It’s going ahead as planned. I was to tell you: the spuggies are fledged.’

       ‘The what?’

       ‘The spuggies are fledged. Can’t tell you any more at this juncture. Glad I got hold of you,  Rafferty. Good night to you now. God bless.’

       The connection was broken as the speaker hung up. Perplexed, I collapsed the aerial and returned the phone to my briefcase. I was so bemused by what I’d heard that I almost failed to notice the taxi with its For Hire sign illuminated, which had stopped at the red light. I scarcely had time to get in and say ‘Belsize Park’ before the lights changed and the cab moved quickly away.

       The driver was completely silent until we came alongside Gospel Oak station on Mansfield Road. Here he suddenly became quite animated.

       ‘I used to know a bloke collected tickets at Gospel Oak. Never smiled. Churlish sort of a bloke - surly, if you know what I mean. Bred polecat ferrets. As a hobby, not professionally.  One of the buggers got loose once, played havoc with his wife’s knitting. She gave him merry hell, oh yes’. He shook his head in fond remembrance of the incident.  I gave a noncommittal grunt.

       ‘Funny sort of a hobby if you ask me’, he went on.  ‘I mean, you hear about people breeding ferrets up north - Huddersfield, Bradford, that sort of place - but it’s not what you expect in Gospel Oak. Anyway’, he added weightily, ‘it’s not what I expect in Gospel Oak’.

       This time I didn’t respond, and he fell silent again. As we emerged onto Haverstock Hill I gave directions to the house in England’s Lane where my flat occupied the top floor.

       ‘£5.75, governor’, said the driver, pulling up outside. Automatically I checked the meter before fumbling in my pocket. I had precisely £5.82 and a £20 note.

      ‘Thanks very much’, I muttered apologetically, handing over the pile of coins, and I was out of the cab before the driver could count them. As I opened the garden gate I heard him mutter something. For the briefest moment I thought it was ‘Thanks very much, Mr Rafferty’,  but I knew I must be mistaken’. To the best of my knowledge I’d never met anyone called Rafferty.

       The house was divided into three flats. I collected my post from the bottom stair, where, as usual, it had been placed in a neat pile by Mr Cohen, a retired bachelor who lived on the ground floor. I climbed the stairs wearily.

       It was with a great sense of relief that I let myself into my flat and closed the door behind me. As I put down my briefcase, I could hear the insistent pulse of the answerphone in the living-room.

     I pressed the answer and message buttons before collapsing on the sofa.   I lay back with my eyes closed, waiting for the message. The tape rewound and there was a loud click before the recording began.  For a few seconds all I could hear was a high-pitched wail, as if someone was trying to tune a radio. Then I heard a gruff voice, strangely distant and indistinct.

       ‘ - sure you’ll get back to me once it’s all over. It’ll be good to touch base. God bless, now, and don’t forget the spug -’  The rest of the message was lost in a crackle of unintelligible static.  Suddenly my eyes were wide open. I hadn’t recognised the voice at all, and I was at a loss to make any sense of the message. I felt like a very large Scotch, but was loth to stir from my position on the sofa. All at once the world seemed a strange, unfathomable place.

       Slowly, this seemed to matter less and less. Exhaustion overcame me, and I fell asleep where I lay.

       I was awoken, from a dream which combined the events of the previous evening with elements of the plot of the John Le Carre novel I’d been reading, by the impatient ringing of my doorbell. I came to with a start, momentarily surprised not to find myself in bed, and was halfway down the stairs before the bell rang again.

       It was the postman, and I realised as I opened the door that it was much later than I had imagined.

       ‘Too big for your letter box’, the postman explained, handing over a large envelope together with a bill for Mrs Crutchley, who lived on the first floor, and some junk mail for Mr Cohen. ‘Be seeing you now’. The postman whistled cheerfully as he retreated down the garden path.

       I closed the door, still only half-awake, and opened my mail. The envelope contained a giant birthday card. With a sudden shock I realised that today was the seventeenth. So yesterday had been the sixteenth - my birthday - and it had passed without my even noticing it. The card was brightly coloured and showed an ostrich trailing a banner which read Guess who’s 21? !!! Opening the card I read the words Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy!!! Below this a number of letters, which had clearly been cut from a newspaper or magazine, had been stuck to the card, forming the message Meet at. Dr Johnson’s summerhouse -T.

       T? Tara? Would Tara send a hideous card like this? Would she send me any card now, after all that had happened between us? But if it wasn’t from Tara, why Dr Johnson’s summerhouse? We’d always met there for our walks on Hampstead Heath, had even continued to meet on the site after the summerhouse had been razed to the ground by some arsonist. As if changing our meeting place would bring us bad luck. In the end, that had come to us anyway.

       In the living-room I noticed the pile of mail I’d brought up with me the night before. I’d been too tired to open it then. Now it occurred to me that I might actually have received some cards on my birthday. I thought briefly about having a shower, shaving, putting on clean clothes;  decided I’d open my post first.

       There was a letter from my bank manager, urging me to consider taking out a loan. A new catalogue from a company I’d bought a waxed jacket from several years before. And two birthday cards. The first, from my mother in Bournemouth, contained a TSB cheque for £5. The second, from my godfather - who I hadn’t seen since I was five - wished me continued good health and happiness.

       I reached for my briefcase. I had plenty of time;  it was only just ten. I’d read a couple of chapters of John Le Carre before cleaning myself up a bit. Then I’d have a bite to eat and drive up to the Heath. Perhaps Tara would be waiting for me on the site of Dr Johnson’s summerhouse. Perhaps she wouldn’t. Either way it seemed likely I’d find out who’d sent me the card. And maybe why.

       It was a dismal day, damp with drizzle, and I had no difficulty in finding a parking space close to the entrance to Kenwood. As I made my way down the familiar path to where Dr Johnson’s summerhouse had once stood the hands on my Rolex showed five to one.

       There were very few people about. It was not the sort of day that Tara and I would ever have chosen for one of our walks, but my instructions had been quite explicit.

       I felt rather foolish pacing up and down. but at one o’clock precisely I was joined by two men. Both were improbably dressed in trench coats and balaclavas, and one of them was wearing a pair of Ray-bans despite the weather conditions.

       ‘Come with us, please, Mr Rafferty’, said the taller of the two. I thought I detected the suggestion of a Belfast accent.

       ‘I think there’s been some - ’, I began, but was interrupted by the second man. who sounded faintly Italian.

       ‘This way, Mr Rafferty. No arguments, please’.

       Both men were substantially bigger than me and it seemed unwise to protest further, so I allowed myself to be escorted off in the direction of Kenwood lake.

       We crossed the bridge and entered the wood. Only when we came to a clearing did we stop.

       ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr Rafferty’, said the Irish one.

       ‘We’re confident you wont object to the questions we propose to put to you’,  the Italian continued. ‘We’re sure you’d like to help us just as much as you’re able to’.

       I felt a sudden chill.

       ‘But there is one small favour we need to ask of you. Your eyes, Mr Rafferty - I’m afraid we have to blindfold you’.

       By this stage it hardly occurred to me to dissent. They tied a thick black scarf around my head, then there was a long, silent moment before anything happened. I became aware of deep, rhythmic breathing very close to each of my ears. My companions were standing either side of me.

       ‘Why did you come here, Mr Rafferty?’

       ‘I - ’

       ‘What do you know about the Gospel Oak?’

       ‘What happened to Simmons, Mr Rafferty?

       The voices alternated in my ears with startling rapidity. It became clear to me that I was not intended to respond. That I had no answers to their questions.

       ‘Who was the taxi driver?’

       ‘What was the fare?’

       ‘Who killed the Pope?’

       ‘Who killed Tim Simmons?’

       ‘When was sexual intercourse invented?’

       ‘Who’s screwing your girlfriend?’

       ‘Who torched the summerhouse?’

       ‘What happened to Simmons?’

       ‘Who won the cup?’

       ‘What do you know about Cable Street?’

       ‘Who bred the ferrets?’

       ‘Who fledged the spuggies?’

       ‘Who was in the summerhouse?’

       ‘Was Simmons there?’

       ‘Was Rafferty?’

       ‘Who paid the driver?’

       ‘Where are the Russians?’

       ‘How do you take your whisky?’

       ‘Who killed the Pope?’

       ‘Who won the cup?’

       ‘Who liquidated His Holiness?’

       ‘Who swung from the bridge?’

       ‘Where do I change for the Hammersmith and City?’

       ‘Who killed the Pope?’

       ‘Who is the man on the Clapham omnibus?’

       ‘Who’s at silly mid-wicket?’

       ‘How do I get to Blackfriars Bridge?’

       ‘Who’s swinging there today?’

       ‘Who played left back?’

       ‘Was he left-footed?’

       ‘Where’s your girl friend?’

       ‘Who’s she with?’

       ‘Who’s screwing her?’

       ‘Who paid the bus driver?’

       ‘What was the fare?’

       ‘Mr Rafferty?’

       ‘Mr Simmons?’

       I had sunk to my knees and was conscious of the dampness of the ground some time before I realised my tormentors had fallen silent. Light rain continued to fall.

       Suddenly the blindfold was torn from my eyes. I blinked, and for a moment had difficulty in focussing on the little group that surrounded me.

       Guy was there. And Tara. And several others from the office, too. My tormentors had taken off their balaclavas and stood there grinning.

       ‘Happy birthday, Tim!’ said Guy cheerfully, thumping me on the back. I noticed that his other hand was on Tara’s shoulder.

       ‘Happy birthday, Tim!’ echoed the others.

       But that was yesterday, I wanted to say. Instead I smiled weakly, slowly understanding everything.  Almost everything.

       ‘Thought this would be more original than a strippergram’, Guy grinned.

       I looked at the smiling group around me, at Guy and Tara in their new-found intimacy, and felt a hole in my guts.

       ‘Nice one, gang’, I managed to say.  ‘Nice one’.