Prologue

There were five of them, like a bag of snakes.  Only five; but they got so tangled up with each other that unless you looked closely you would have thought there were a whole lot more.

They writhed and slithered around each other, and what started as an embrace soon turned into a stranglehold,  and then the struggle became so wild and savage that instead of more than five you thought there was just the one;  one single animal thrashing and flailing in agony.

*

Of course I’m speaking figuratively;  in real life you hardly ever saw all five together, and when you did they were quite easy to tell apart, because they were not actually snakes or one single animal but just a bunch of people who’d known each other half their lives.

And I may have exaggerated the agony bit, because, let’s face it, I’m an artist, and we do like a good drama better than almost anything else, except maybe a large drink.

Speaking of drink:  the first time I ever saw all five of them together was in a pub.  There was sawdust on the floor, and a cranky old piano producing an insanely cheerful [out of] tune which fooled nobody.  Now you’ll be thinking I’m talking you back into Victorian times, but it wasn’t actually all that long ago – a couple of years or so.  When we were all still fresh and full of hope and energy, before reality got hold of us and drank us dry.

But that’s not what you’re here for. 

You want to hear about the bag of snakes.

So, there they were, all around one little table, with other drinkers crowding in on them and pushing some of them closer to another than they had been before.  I believe that’s where it all started.  Touch does that.  Touch, even in a crowd, perhaps especially in a crowd, tingles and teases and all sorts of other alliterations.

I’ll sketch the little picture for you, but it’ll be a bit of a caricature – not one of those rosy misty Good Old Days pieces of crap that sells for thousands of dollars on the other side of the water.

*

The first one you look at is the blonde (everybody always looks at the blonde first).  She’s so sure of herself, with her perfect skin and the tight-fitting sweater, very still and calm because she doesn’t have to look around the room to know that most of the guys are checking her over, and putting their imaginary hands up her tight-fitting sweater, knowing full well that if they put a non-imaginary hand anywhere on her, she’d just freeze them with her ridiculously beautiful eyes.  This is Alicia.  You’ve met other girls like her – ones with rich daddies and goodlooking mothers - but you rarely get close; unless you have an equally rich and handsome pair of parents, and all that comes with that.  She is a bit of a cliché, I know, but I can’t help that.  It’s what she chooses to be.

When you finish looking at her – and you may want more time than I just gave you, but I’ve already lost interest because I’ve looked at the blonde before, and finally figured out that everything you see is all there is – but you’re not listening. 

*

Ready now?  Then let’s move on to the girl on the left.  She’s smaller, rounder, warmer;  she wears fluffy things in rich earthy colours, like red clay or damp moss or autumn leaves.  Her hair (hair is so important,isn’t it?  You can see the girl perfectly well once I have told you what colour her hair is, even if I don’t bother to sketch in the face) – her hair is reddish-brown. 

No, it probably isn’t her real colour. 

What kind of question is that?  Does it matter? 

What matters is that she is the kind of person who wants to have reddish-brown hair, and if nature hasn’t provided it, then she’ll help things along.  It’s the wanting that tells you so much more about her than any bit of accidentally having the right colour ever could.

And why didn’t you ask me about the blonde’s colour scheme?  You were so awed by that shiny sheeny silvery silky stuff, rippling across her back like waves of metal, that any form of critical thinking just evaporated. 

(Or did you ask, and I did not hear you because my mind was full and empty at the same time?)

Never mind.

Back to the picture of our little group, the silent tableau in the noisy throng.  Lucie – the redhead - does not look around the room either,  but not because she knows that the guys are checking her out (some of them are), but because she doesn’t even know that there are any guys anywhere.  Except for the one she is leaning against, the one between her and Alicia.

He is older than the other four, hairline just starting to recede, and his snappy clothes and rigidly controlled waistline cannot undo the anxiety in his pale sandy eyes.  He does not belong in this place;  his discreetly displayed wealth (the sharp shoes, the overly simple watch, the ever so casual shirt) cuts no ice with the mad youngsters who are singing along to the clanking  piano now.  There are no expensive drinks in this bar, and nobody is impressed with anything. 

He hugs little Lucie close to him;  she is the badge on his chest that tells anyone else why he is in this pit of spit and sawdust.  Is he also aware of Alicia’s bare upper arm against his ribcage?  She certainly feels the slow rhythm of his breath.  Does he realise that their thighs are butted up against each other? 

His name is Redmond, or at least that’s what he tells people;  he may have started life as Gary or Dave.  In other words:  I suspect that he used to be Frank but now isn’t. 

*

Suit yourself.  I thought it was funny.

*

Leaning as far away from Frank – sorry: from Redmond – as he possibly can in the crowded space is a younger man;  broad shoulders, good jaw line, sweater and jeans.  Felix.  Almost handsome.  Hair of indefinite colour hangs boyishly across his forehead.  He pulls the corners of his mouth down when he laughs – he laughs a lot, and not always at appropriate moments - and jiggles his left leg whenever he’s not speaking.

But it is his right leg that interests me, the one that has Eddie  perched on it; not because she is his girlfriend – he is affiliated with the beautiful Alicia, not that you would know it from the physical distance between them – but because there were only four chairs and she is the smallest, and light-boned like a bird.  A scruffy bird, one that has been mangled for a while by a cat but let go because, let’s face it, not enough meat. 

She is dressed in variously faded blacks;  shivers now and pulls a baggy grey cardigan across her somewhat flat chest, and smiles and smiles so awkwardly that I want to run over and rescue her, but it’s only a sketch made from memory, so I’m a bit late by now.  Eddie looks around the room not just the once, but regularly as if she is expecting a sudden person or event, and carries on smiling tightly just in case someone looks at her sitting on her best friend’s boyfriend’s knee, but nobody is checking her out, nobody looks at her.

Except me, first from the other side of the room, now across time too, of little use to her.

*

And there you have the bones of it.  The essence.  You can see how some of it is going to unfold.  You can see how it all tangles.

I know:  bones don’t unfold, essence doesn’t tangle, but I am tired now, and I don’t want to be in this story anymore.  I never was in it properly, no writhing and slithering for me, never one of the snakes in the bag.