THE PENTRICHOR
At the end of my street, high up on a ledge, alone sits the ancient Pentrichor. Most people don’t see him, don’t look up quite so high; don’t know they are watched as they stroll on by.
He is small, (about the size of a cat); and cream coloured (like the stucco of the terrace house where he sits); he has wings (like an eagle, he can fly); he is very, very old ( he cannot die).
By day he sits as still as a statue, absorbing the sun and watching while waiting. But at night he uncurls his warm body and unfurls his great wings, then swoops from the ledge through a gap in the trees. Into the park, where he lands on a plinth and patiently waits, purring and brupping like a cat on a lap.
Soon she arises, the lady in white and he rubs his soft head under her chin. She strokes him and says ‘Oh Pentrichor, my Pentrichor, I love you my friend’. Then they walk and they talk about things they have seen. But as dark turns to light they say their farewells and retreat to the place where they wait for the night.
Fifty thousand times they have repeated this scene. Since the night her body was discarded on the marshy banks of the Thames. Killed by a husband who made, not love, but a thousand cuts with a knife on the beautiful body of his pretty young wife.