Arthur felt inhibited. He decided to take a holiday by the seaside where, he was told, Bridget, his sister, had once lost all her sexual inhibitions …
Arthur frowned. That child was now his. His cold-hearted sister had abandoned the baby. And Arthur was too kind to refuse responsibility to become Bridget’s lifebuoy for her drowning waifs and strays...
The child knew that Arthur wasn’t his real Dad … being Arthur's nephew conceived one unseasonably snow-driven night on a closed pier – to the sound of gurgling.
Waves.
Arthur found it difficult to shed his own sexual inhibitions … with a brat in tow. Most of the women wanted clean-cut flings without such appurtenances as a sister’s off-load.
Arthur used a bench to sit on the promenade – between two showers – watching the sun set over the sea. Or was it rising? He had lost all sense of timing. Bridget’s boy sat beside him pretending to cast imaginary fishing-lines towards the distant horizon.
“Trying to catch the sun, son?” Arthur asked.
The boy nodded. He had Bridget’s nose.
Unknown to both – an electric ice-cream van had drawn up beside the kerb. Raspberry rippling ... and Magnums making melted chocolate sculptures between the two cones of the gurgling lady with the wafers.
Eventually … “Want an ice or a lolly?” she called to the large silhouette that was Arthur and to the small silhouette that was his sister’s child - from both of which silhouettes upon the promenade bench the sinking sun retreated with timely abandon.
One silhouette turned towards the voice – whilst the other silhouette merged into the darkness that gradually subsumed them together, sucking both like scooped cocoa ice-cream towards its single heart. Towards the sucking, dragging, flesh-grinding shingle...
“I’ll have a Melon Mivvi,” said the voice that emerged as a cross between a deep filling and a frozen sculpture … as if two throats (one dark choc ice, one lemon sorbet) spoke with a single tongue-like ladle.
The ice-cream lady only had sorrow to keep her company; and, with no customers, she took a Lyon’s Maid from the deepest fridge of all … from the frozen core that knew no love …
Waves.
(unpublished)
Posted by augusthog
at 4:37 AM EDT
