by Robert Hacker Jessett
Chapter XV
The day finally arrived and Bob met Veronica at Clapham Junction.
Veronica was in dressed-down Jesus mode, the frills had gone and the duffle coat had made a comeback, but she was still wearing the hairclip with the 3 little love hearts.
They walked slowly back to the flat.
Bob had kicked Zak off the sofa and told him to make himself scarce for 24 hours, which he’d reluctantly agreed to do.
It being a Saturday, Greg would be DIY-ing at Nina’s, so Bob and Veronica would have the place to themselves.
‘Perfect groundwork,’ thought Bob, ‘that’s if Zak didn’t manage to fuck things up somehow.’
Bob had frantically tidied up, doing his best to disguise the part squat, part
student hall of residence, part snooker club feel of the place.
Doing things like stuffing piles of unopened mail that had been gathering on the fridge for possibly years into a plastic bag and wedging it behind a wardrobe.
He opened all the windows, washed out all the ashtrays, lit up a joss stick,
removed any evidence of drug usage or pornography and hung the living room rug on the balcony.
He also threw out some old underwear.
He had no idea why though.
He went down to Sainsbury’s, bought a ready roast chicken, some readymade
Yorkshire puddings, boil in the bag vegetables, a couple of bottles of Blossom Hill and a Delia Smith cookbook that nobody would ever read.
He’d contemplated trying to bribe Greg’s mum into cooking something for him covertly, but Bob thought the less he had to do with Greg or anyone related to him the better.
Veronica stepped inside.
It felt like the opening steps of a coronation.
He took her coat and she presented Bob with a plastic bag.
It was full of miscellaneous Korean groceries that her ‘church family’ had given her, which included these strange chewy gum-like biscuits that Bob found disgusting, ginseng tea bags and some kimchi.
A kind of culinary exchange thing.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Bob.
‘Let me get you one Bob.’ Veronica replied.
‘I’m the host, that’s my job.’
‘Oh don’t be like that Bob!’
‘Ok…..I’ll put on some music then.’
Bob relocated to the living room and started flicking through his records.
He still hadn’t converted to CD, despite much proselytizing from Greg and was in a real dilemma about what to play.
He’d just come out of a brief period of fancying himself as a bit of a DJ and there were a lot of white labels kicking around.
Not now Bob.
The first album to catch his eye was Bleach.
Too rock-ist, thought Bob — a music genre he’d recently fallen out with — it was probably just about ready for the charity shop.
He’d have happily swapped it for one of those Mantovani albums that seemed to be omnipresent in every charity shop in London at that time.
As far as musical guilty pleasures go, they don’t get much guiltier or pleasurable than Mantovani.
Every time Bob heard Charmane he felt like McMurphy in the asylum, which was reason enough to not play it right now.
‘Hmmmmm?’ picking out Bobby Womack’s Greatest Hits.
Too syrupy, not quite Barry White but getting there, no no no.
Nothing difficult………
He happened upon Van Morrison’s Moondance, stopped and thought for a second.
A bit cheesy perhaps considering the situation?
But at least it wasn’t going to go bulldozering into Veronica’s head.
So a quiet Moondance party it was.
Veronica reappeared holding two cups.
‘Ginseng tea,’ she announced passing one to Bob.
‘Thanks, mmmmm.’
They sat on the sofa drinking and smiling a lot while the Van Morrison music was busy in the background.
‘Do you like Van Morrison?’ Bob asked.
‘Oh yes yes!’
After the usual banalities, the conversation veered onto Veronica’s faith and Bob asked her if she believed in creationism.
‘Yes I do.’
‘But hasn’t science more or less rendered that an impossibility?’
‘Science doesn’t own the truth Bob.’
‘Neither does Jesus.’
‘Ok, but why should everything have to be proven or disproven? I have faith, as have the vast majority of humanity since the beginning of time, having faith is part of what makes us human, having faith is believing in something that cannot be proven, believing in love is a type of faith, how can you prove love? You can’t, but most of us know it exists as we’ve felt it at some point in our lives, just being able to trust and love something far greater than yourself, not something you can necessarily touch and see that needs to be proven and quantified by some egg-headed scientist in a laboratory.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what happens when people lose faith?’ she asked.
‘Errr…dunno, tell me…?’
‘Their lives become empty, suspicion and anger come in to fill the void and they lose their humanity.’
‘Like me?’
Unfortunately for Bob, Veronica was in a churchy ‘seesaw up’ no frills mood and he realised that bringing up the subject had been a bad move, time for a change of subject.
‘Fancy a top up?’
‘I’m fine thanks, what are you cooking anyway?’
‘An English……what else?’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ Veronica laughed.
‘Bob?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Quick question.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why do you keep your teapot in the fridge?’
‘What?’
‘Your teapot was in the fridge, strange place to keep it, why’s that?’
‘I err…….. dunno.’
Bob suddenly had a dreadful thought and got up and went into the kitchen.
Sat next to the sink on the side was Zak’s innocuous looking LSD-laced little teapot.
He took the lid off and had a peak inside, it was like looking down a dark well.
There was a tiny drop of steaming liquid left on the bottom.
It had a strange sort of rainbow-like translucence about it and Bob could just about make out some speckled microbes scuttling around the bottom like a swarm of microscopic sperm-like tadpoles.
‘You ok Bob…?’ called Veronica.
‘Yeah, fine…..’
He wasn’t.
Chapter XVI
It’s times like these you’d think panic would set in.
After all, Bob had just spiked the God-fearing daughter of The Bishop of Gloucester — who he was gently trying to seduce — with a dose of LSD powerful enough to resurrect the soul of Timothy Leary.
But he didn’t panic.
Nonetheless, he did realise he was lying in the middle a train wreck, the like of which was beyond anything that could be salvaged.
The music had stopped and Bob walked over to the record player to turn it over.
‘You ok Bob?’
‘Yeah, fine.……absolutely.’
‘Where’s my English Bob, I’m starving,’ she laughed.
Big silvery smile.
What a genuinely sweet human being.
‘Oh Veronica, what have I done?’ thought Bob.
He looked up at the poster of Van Gogh’s Wheatfield that Zak had been bitching about. The swirling brushstrokes seemed to be pulsating lightly, his stomach had started to tingle a little and he looked over at Veronica’s big silvery smile that seemed to be getting bigger and more silvery.
‘Can I use your toilet?’ she asked.
‘Course, just out on the left.’
Bob looked up again at the Van Gogh picture, the wheat coloured sun seemed to be swirling in unison with the Moondance music.
The 2 Vans were having a party.
Flies were buzzing around like atoms.
Moondancing trumpets went tip-toeing through Bob’s head and seemed to flip lightly round the room in a sort of quadrophonia.
Bob heard the toilet flushing in the distance.
He thought about love and shivered.
Van Gogh’s sun was swirling.
‘Bob?’
Veronica was back. Her eyes seemed to have got bigger and a little rounder.
‘I feel a bit dizzy,’ she sat down on the sofa.
‘Me too.’
Bob sat next to her.
Van Gogh’s sun was swirling with more intensity and the wheat had now joined in.
The electronic trumpets were getting louder and the atomic flies were trailing and reflecting in the yellow Van Gogh sun.
The needle on the record had got stuck on the line where Van Morrison goes belting into the chorus of:
“Can I just have one more Moondance?”
Repeating the line “Can I? Can I? Can I?” over and over.
Veronica started talking what can only be described as complete gibberish.
‘Oh…..cho nun chal ittaga, Bob…..I feel so dizzy….oh…choesoyo chin cha ipchagga.’
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
‘What?’
The swirling wheat and Van Gogh sun were making Bob feel sick as they danced with more intensity to the repetitive music, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the picture.
Suddenly the sun exploded and a shock of wind took a hold of Bob and Veronica’s guts.
Veronica let out a deafening subsonic scream, echoing round the room with the electronic trumpets.
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The trumpets were getting louder and louder.
‘Pagaupsumnida incha popshida, mashike toyon gamsa hamisida!’ said Veronica.
She had her face in her hands, she looked up at Bob, her eyes looked as if they were about to jump out of her head.
Bob and Veronica grabbed each other in a tight clinch and started to scream.
Bob took one last look at the Van Gogh that had mutated into a hairy corpuscle mollusc full of squirming maggots.
The atomic flies were laughing louder, echoing and dancing.
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‘OHHH!!! CHAL IPSAMNIDA!!’ screamed Veronica as she clung on to Bob for dear life.
The trumpets getting louder and more Dalek-like.
They both fell back on the sofa.
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The maggots were everywhere, crawling over their faces and enveloping the entire room.
The laughing atomic flies were harmonizing with the Daleks.
Bob jumped up, fell back down again and felt himself sinking.
All he could feel was the wind.
The maggots and the wind.
The wind.
The wind was blowing harder. Sinking expanding twisting. Oblique minutes expanding into 10,000 years curling back with the wind into milliseconds.
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Can I?
Can I? I I am mineral
Metal frozen
Fossilized a hill a mountain
the ground
The Earth.
Expanding. The golden magma expanding below, inside, the sun, the magma, the magma, time expanding and erupting into a billion burning eyeballs flying at a the speed of light through time space, evolving, expanding, copulating, reflecting, cascading, enveloping, surging, vomiting, giving birth, drowning
Water
Air
Land
Raining down onto secret flowers
the dreams of everything
towering
the light
the light
the light
the flames the fire the light
refracting
the
t
u
m
b
l
i
n
g
h
o
w
l
s
o
f
w
i
d
o
w
m
a
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n
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w
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s
t
h
a
t
h
a
u
n
t
t
h
e
s
o
u l s
o
f
the dead
and torment
their children
the same force that breathes light across the universe
LIFE
so let the raindrops of life and
death
sprinkle down on Mother Earth
as it rains voices of women
as though they were dead even in
memory
it’s you too who are rained
down
wondrous meetings of my life’s
oh little drops and these
rearing clouds take to
whinnying
a whole universe of heard
cities
listen to the rain as regret and
scorn
weep an ancient music listen to the
bonds fall that hold you in above and
below
above and below
above and below
above and below
a
n
d
n
o w
t h
e
r
e
is
peace
peace
peace peace
the pulse
the lake
the silver water
floating
Breathing in motion with the lake
the lake
the sea
above, all things are curling, eddying clouds, forming, dancing, curling,
dispensing,
reforming, spitting, chanting, laughing
Bob Bob Bob
Robert the self
Bob felt a human hand on the back of his neck
The lake had dried
It was his own hand, he looked down and saw 2 more hands on his lap.
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His own hands.
The insignificance of himself.
He looked up again at the invertebrate clouds reforming like young dragons that were slowly thinning Van Gogh’s Wheatfield sun was swirling, now in the opposite direction and Bob was staring up at a cream man-made ceiling.
Bob suddenly realised.
I am. I Can.
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My name is Robert.
Robert Young Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
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Robert Young Robert Young Robert Young
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Robert Young Robert Young Robert Young
Robert Young
I live here. Can I?
I’m made of matter and atoms. Can I?
Flesh and blood. Can I?
Food and water. Can I?
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It felt like hours, days, weeks, years could’ve passed. Can I?
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Time was abstract and peripheral. Can I?
Bob felt as though he had briefly glimpsed the secrets of everything but wasn’t quite sure what it was
He wanted to go back.
………….Bob…………
Bob…………………… then
……………….Veronica?
He looked over, reached out.
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?> Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
‘Veronica……Veronica….did you see what I saw? Could you touch it? Did you see it too?’
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?> Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
Bob looked around but he couldn’t see Veronica.
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?> Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
‘Veronica.’
‘Veronica.’
He scoured the room, looking under the sofa and behind the shelves.
‘Veronica …….’ He looked in the bathroom, the toilet, his bedroom,
Malcolm’s bedroom, back to the living room.
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?> Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
‘Veronica, did you see it too’
‘Veronica.’ Bob looked in the kitchen, in the fridge and under the sink.
‘Veronica ….Veronica!!’
Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?>Can I?> Can I?>Can I?>Can I?
Bob finally realised the needle was stuck on the record and stuck a foot into his precious turntable, kicking Moondance and screaming.
‘NO YOU FUCKING CAN’T!!!’
………………..Silence.
Broken by the sound of a passing car
Or was it a tidal wave?
Bob noticed Veronica’s little hairclip with the 3 red love hearts pulsating on the wooden floor.
But no Veronica.
She was gone.
