CONSTANCE AND THE CIRCUS CLOWN

There was one important thing that Constance, Librarian at Brumpton Public Library, did about once a year and that was to provide evidence of the real need the town had for a public facility like a library by enticing by fair means and occasionally foul as many people as she could to be in the place when there was an annual inspection by a very important councillor, and that councillor, unwittingly (or wittingly) assisted her in what might be looked on as a kind of deception by notifying her in advance when that inspection might be.

Which led her to knowing what she should do.

So on a particular Tuesday morning there was quite a throng in the library because a whole week’s worth of readers had turned up in one go. And when you get that sort of accumulation in a place it can always look crowded. And crowds are always accompanied by a hum of this or that, spluttered coughs and the odd sneeze, whispered jokes and suppressed cackling responses. It all looks and sounds very busy.

The Councillor duly, as promised turned up and looked around, paused and spoke to half a dozen people (he wasn’t too keen on the public so he didn’t even try to discuss literary matters with many more than that) and, after about twenty minutes, breezed out having made complimentary comments to Constance and notes of an affirmative nature on his clipboard And when he left he was soon followed by most of those who had been busily consulting the book shelves whilst he was there.

No sooner was he gone and Constance was breathing an annual and very huge sigh of relief when the door squealed open and the most flamboyant of figures walked in.

He was dressed in eccentrically contrasting colours, wore a huge pair of trousers into which at least three people could have fitted without their waists being unnecessarily compressed and had a bulbous red nose that almost clashed with the red of his idiotic hat.

Ah, thought Constance, a clown from the circus. I hate circuses and in particular I hate clowns and their silly trousers but there is a circus down the road on the way to Swanspottle and I guess it must have a clown… Well, Constance, be polite and make the best of an awkward situation.

“Good morning, sir,” she greeted the clown as pleasantly as she could, which anyone would have thought was very pleasant, but he forlornly replied with an almost pathetic, “Hello there, is this the library?”

Constance looked around her. Yes, there were plenty of books, some of them untidily in the wrong place as a consequence of the recent crowds, but it most certainly couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a library.

“Yes sir, it seems to be,” she replied, sliding just enough sarcasm into her reply to indicate that if he looked around he might notice what manner of institution he was in for himself without needing to ask a busy library official.

“I have come for inspiration,” he told her, “is there a suicide section?”

What a question! Of course there wasn’t! Who, in their right mind, wanted to read books about suicide? And if someone did, what perspective on such an awful thing?

“I’m afraid not,” she replied, “though there may be references in encyclopaedias and dictionaries if you’re after a definition.”

“I want advice on how to do it,” he replied, “I’m desperate…”

So would I be if I went about in trousers like that, thought Constance, I usually have what almost amounts to a fetish for men in uniforms, but if this is a uniform it is ridiculous! But, out of politeness, she contrived to bury her thoughts and address the issue in hand in a sympathetic tone of voice.

“Are you troubled?” she asked, knowing it was the most obvious of all questions but unable to think of a less pertinent thing to ask.

“I am in dire distress,” replied the clown, “you may have heard of the traditional weeping clown? The stereotype of a man whose task it is to provide joy and laughter being frazzled within, being desperate under his skin? Well, I am that clown. I am the funny man with tears flowing down his cheeks. I am the comic that nobody loves…”

“Is that all?” asked Constance, probably foolishly and certainly at a loss for anything else to ask.

“Do you want more?” wept the big-trousered and extremely pathetic man. “I will give you more! I will enrich your life by melting my own into the dust of misery. I was in love with an angel and that angel cast me out, disposed of me like so much garbage. I performed to my public like a genius with laughter at my finger-tips, and nobody laughed. I had gallons of water poured down my trousers until my little thing shrivelled to nearly nothing, beg your pardon for mentioning it, and everyone was stony faced. I was summoned to the ringmaster’s caravan and, without preamble or a chance to explain myself, given the sack and ordered off the site! I am now an unemployed clown and I left the circus in such haste that the only clothes I have are the ones I stand up in! And who can go to be interviewed for a new position in life if he’s wearing these trousers? And if he has this nose virtually superglued to his face

“So I have decided to end this miserable existence,” he said mournfully, “I have decided that enough is enough and I must take my last breath on Mother Earth. I will not hang around for another day. I will go from this place with an instruction book on how to commit the most perfect suicide, and find a lonely place, and do it. And my epitaph must be here lies the clown who drowned in his own tears…”

Constance was appalled at this outpouring of self-pity and was about to tell him to pull himself together, go to a charity shop and buy some proper fitting trousers and seek employment in the world, when the door swung open, and a truly beautiful woman swept it. There were few readers who passed through that door with such wonderful flaxen hair, with so perfect a complexion, with such a smart and yet feminine sense of dress.

And she stood for a moment as the door swung shut behind her, and then, with the biggest smile on her face, a smile that introduced Constance to the most perfect and even white teeth, she cried out,

“Oh here you are, dearest Marvello! I have been looking all over this sweet little town for you and I ought to have guess straight away that you would make for the library, for you are such a deep and thoughtful lovely man! I went to see that awful man in charge of your circus and he told me that you have finally seen sense and left! Oh what a miracle! You no longer need to dress up in such a silly pair of trousers, and you can dispense with that ridiculous nose! Now come on, don’t be upset! I only said I’d leave you if you stayed with the circus and you’ve seen sense and left it! I hate circuses anyway, nasty unhealthy places! You can come and work for daddy instead, he always said he wanted you to!”

“Angel?” stammered the clown, “I thought…”

“Oh, you know what thought did, surely?” she trilled, “now come on, let’s smarten you up and you can come straight to daddy at his office down at the council building! He only said to me yesterday that he really needs a smart young man to inspect council premises for him, to make sure that things are exactly as they should be… and you’re that man, Marvello. Or will be when you go back to your proper name!”

And the two of them swept out of the library, beautiful woman and unhappy clown, leaving the library in a wonderful peace.

“Well well well,” said Constance to herself, “so he’s going to inspect council buildings, is he? Like the library, I should think? Well, if he ever comes here to inspect my domain I know a thing or two that I might remind him of, to keep him on side, so to speak!

“I’ll remind him of when he wanted a suicide manual!”
© Peter Rogerson 09.01.18

THE MINGELLA BOY

There was a chill in the air as Michael Spokes wandered down the lane towards Kathy’s house. It was the height of summer and the chill seemed out of place, but he hardly thought of that. His mind, instead, was wonderfully preoccupied by thoughts of Kathy.
Kathy was his girl, his very own loving property. He knew that she was, and what’s more he knew that she knew it too. He’d told her so many times and even though she had sometimes creased her face with that little frown that he found so endearing when he said it he knew she understood. She just had to.
He sighed and hardly shivered at all despite the chill.
Kathy was one of those gorgeous lasses that only get born once in a generation. She had the smoothest most unblemished skin, the longest, gorgeously fragrant, hair that was neither dark nor blonde but something enticingly between the two, the bluest eyes, the most perfect of legs that seemed to go on for ever, the pertest of bosoms – and the finest of tastes when it came to the things she chose to wear.
“You’ll have to wear that tiny plaid skirt,” he had said not so long ago, and although she had said it was too short for comfort (folks can see my undies from behind when I bend down) in the end he had worn her down and she had worn it despite worrying about the visibility of her knickers, just to please him.
Then, on another occasion he had extolled the wonders of a particularly pungent perfume, had said how it made him feel horny just to sniff it and she really must plaster it all over herself, and she had grudgingly said something along the lines that if he really insisted, but plastering it was one step too far and she’d read it might be carcinogenic, and he’d sniffed and muttered something about selfish women, and had grudgingly accepted what she offered. But he had liked that smell.
So she was his girl, all right.
Why, only last week he had become almost uncontrollable with a wild lust that suffused his whole body at the very sight of her, and even though she had said it was quite the wrong time of the month and she didn’t want that kind of thing right now, after he had insisted she had acquiesced and he knew it was because she loved him. Anyway, what did the time of the month have to do with it? He had told her it was an old wife’s thing, like saying making love on the Sabbath was wrong, or on Fridays or any of the other days the medieval church had decided was ungodly for lovers.
Yes, she was his girl and he was going to make everything all right with her. Not that anything was particularly wrong, but he wanted to be really, deeply loved, and maybe he wasn’t, just yet.
He had a bunch of flowers for her, and not a cheap bunch from the garage but a really decent bunch from the garden centre on his way to her home. He’d just bought them on the spur of a romantic moment – flowers were the sort of thing you need fresh, aren’t they? And women love them, don’t they? Oh, she might have once told him that flowers should be attached to the roots that they grew from because they were living plants and mutilating them by cutting them was quite inappropriate in her opinion, but that was garbage really, wasn’t it? She’d love this bunch because it was so … so pretty. And what’s more he could smell the fragrance of the bright blooms wafting at him as he walked along, the perfume of lovely flowers on the chill breeze.
But it was to be more than flowers.
She’d be wearing that gorgeous little skirt with its sexy pleats and bright tartan pattern, all red and warming and inviting, and she’d smell of that special perfume she wore, again all inviting, and her hair would be long and clean and fragrant, and she’d smile at him and before you could say Jack Robinson he’d have a hard-on and she’d giggle and tell him not to be greedy, he’d have to wait and she’d put the kettle on…
So he had a diamond ring. A bright and shining thing, beautiful and made of the feelings in his heart. She’d love it even though she’d said she never wore jewellery because it was either tacky and cheap or genuine and much to expensive to wear in public. But what did she know about such things?
Her home, when he arrived there, had a sudden bleak look to it as if something secret had been going on.
He hoped that Mingella boy hadn’t been calling on her. She’d get rid of him all right, she knew that he, Michael, was due to call and anyway the Mingella boy was a pest. He fancied her, but no chance. Not with his, Michael’s, girl. They were a pair, as intertwined as any two people could be and she would be wearing … she would be fragrant with …
He knocked the door and the Mingella boy opened it.
“You’re too bloody late,” he said, dully, “so fuck off…”
Nobody spoke to Michael Spokes like that! It was a no-no, as forbidden as farting at the queen or putting two fingers up at the pope. You didn’t do it. Nobody did!
He put the flowers on the ground by his feet and clenched his fists.
“She knew you were coming,” growled the Mingella boy. “She was expecting you. That’s why she did it. That’s why she killed herself, with tablets…”
And suddenly Michael Stokes could feel the cool breeze as it flooded out of his girl’s home. Out of Kathy’s front door. That’s what it was, blowing at him as he’d walked along. He might have known…

© Peter Rogerson 24.02.16

THE POLITICIAN’S VET

St John (who pronounced his name Sinjun because it gave him what he peculiarly looked on as a suggestion of archaic antecedents, which was useful, him being a politician with no great lineage) knew he was going to die. He’d arranged it like this, the funeral preparations, the patch of land in the secular graveyard (as close to a stream as they’d permit because he had a life-long fear of dehydration), the black-bordered announcement in the local press, the cards inviting an exclusive band of mourners to say their farewells to him.
St John was, if nothing else, thorough.
His ex-wife Gloria would be there. He knew she’d turn up for no better reason than to make absolutely sure he was dead because that’s how she’d wanted him for years. Dead. As a dodo. Extinct. Despite her startlingly good looks she’d been a bitter-minded cow and he’d never come to understand what he’d seen in her that had made him propose marriage in the first place. Maybe, he reasoned (though it wasn’t reason, not properly, not intellectually) it was because he had thought she was pregnant. Or maybe because it was nice and convenient to have someone at home ready for sex at the drop of a hat, when he felt in the mood to screw a woman, which wasn’t actually that often. Not often enough for her anyway, he thought. He was, he believed, a new man, a metrosexual being, able to see charm wherever charm might lie, even in the eyes of his fellow man. And Gloria hadn’t understood that. She’d called him “gay”, which he knew he wasn’t. Not exactly.
But back to the funeral. His funeral.
His current wife Annie would be there too. That would bring some tension to the proceedings, the two most warlike women under the sun glowering at each other as his box (he didn’t like the words coffin or casket) was lowered into the moist earth to the music of the trickling stream nearby. The sparks between Gloria and Annie would be a wonder to behold, and Annie would most likely win if it came to fists. He’d love to be awake, though, so witness all that tension. But the dead are rarely witnesses at their own funeral, so he wouldn’t be.
He’d be dead, probably sewn back together after the post-mortem had tried to sort out what had killed him. His organs will have been taken out (probably none-too gently seeing as you don’t have to be too delicate when handling cold flesh, especially if time’s a precious commodity and you’ve got too much to do) and poked at, sampled, tested and returned roughly to where they’d started out in life. It would take an intuitive pathologist to work out why he was a corpse rather than a living, breathing man, though.
When the St Johns of this world arrange to die they don’t do it in any obvious way. He’d taken ages trying to work out a foolproof death so that the police turned their eyes eventually on David and accused him of murder. The sliver of cold steel being pushed like a miniature submarine through his veins and arteries by the pressure of his blood would kill him (he reckoned within the hour of its insertion, carefully, in an artery running up his wrist with a veterinary syringe). He’d researched it, and it would all happen whilst David was with him. And he’d leave that syringe as a great big whopping clue … they’d find it and wonder why the man upstairs in the spare bed, (always the spare bed, much as he dreamed of it they weren’t a couple, not yet and now now ever), was one syringe short in his bag.
If Gloria and Annie had known about him and David they would have curdled worse than they did. David was the one love of his life, the single most important person in his entire world, and suddenly he hated David because David was getting married next week, to a woman, and to add insult to injury, to Gloria of all people.
“You introduced me to her. You must have known what you were doing, and when you divorced her I knew why. It was to give me a shot at happiness with a beautiful, gorgeous woman… and I’ll take the gift, my dear friend…”
“You bloody what?” he had exploded. “I thought you and me… David, it’s supposed to be you and me!”
“You and me?” sighed David, “I never could quite get my head round that … but you’ve always known me … there never would be any you and me, I’m not like that, though you are a truly good friend.”
“We were more than just friends?” he had said, knowing in his heart that they hadn’t.
David nodded. “You proved it with your gift to me,” he murmured. “Gloria is special, you know, more special than you realised when you rowed with her.”
“She just wanted…” He was going to say “sex”, but couldn’t. It would be an admission of who he was, an admission given words and sound.
“She’s a lovely woman,” whispered David.
“I guess she is, though I never really saw it,” he had sighed. “I needed cover … not that many of the bloody homophobic masses vote for gay politicians, you know, and I needed a wife like a woman needs a necklace, for decoration. I tried, but I couldn’t … love them. A man like me can’t, not properly, but I needed my wives (one at the time, obviously) for photo opportunities. And when Gloria saw me for what I was I found Annie, only too ready to become an MP’s wife. Yet all I’d really wanted deep down was you.”
“And that would never have been either,” sighed David, sadly.
And that had been that. Annie was out at one of her endless afternoon teas, David was upstairs in the spare room, sleeping the sleep of the lightly doped – and he, the potential leader of a nation, was going to die, to be murdered, and leave evidence that would quite clearly implicate David.
Within the hour.
He arranged the invitations neatly on the table, switched on the television for background distraction and picked up David’s syringe. It might hurt, but what was a painful prick when compared to death? He rested back in his armchair looking as casual as he could so that they’d say he must have dozed off – and David being the only other person in the house would get the blame. He didn’t like David very much any more. Love can be so close to hate, so painfully, horribly close.
He sipped a sleeping draft and when he knew his eyes were shutting and he was almost asleep he touched the syringe against his arm.
He pushed the needle firmly where he knew it would find an artery and depressed the plunger. This was it. He would die some time in the next hour or so. Then the undertaker would come as arranged, the notices would be posted and the police would do their worst. He supposes a plan that included his own death wasn’t the best idea, but it was what he wanted. He always got what he wanted, one way or another.
And the door opened.
“Oh, you found my syringe,” grinned David. “I thought you might. I washed it out, cleaned it properly and filled it with saline, though I’ll properly sterilise it when I get home. there was some muck in it, looked a bit like a six inch nail through a magnifying glass! I should learn to be more careful, I really should….”

THE RIVER

THE RIVER

Jennifer Rolouge stood on the bridge at midnight and stared down into the inky black of the river running below her. Somewhere a distant train hooted at the night, and a lazy-sounding dog replied with a bored bark.

Jennifer wanted to die. She had decided over the past few hours that there was nothing left under the sun for her to live for. Timmy had left her, taken his toned body with its bronzed skin, those rippling muscles he had tempted her with and told her that there was someone else. And not just any someone: a princess, a jewel encrusted member of the royal family and one well known for her depravity.

Jennifer knew just how much Timmy loved depravity. He lived on it: it was food and drink to him. No evening under a taunting moon, awash as all evenings were with the best of wines, was worth living if he didn’t end up in bed with somebody beautiful. And for the past few weeks that somebody beautiful had been Jennifer.

Sometimes it had bordered on being too much for her, but never quite. She had told herself more than once that had he been less small in the genital region he would surely have expected too much of her average body, but he was small, so she was safe enough from his demands and excesses.

It wasn’t him she had learned to love, though, but the aura he took with him everywhere he went. He had confidence, enough for twelve good men with loads to spare, an easy way that oiled its way through life. He didn’t work, but then he didn’t have to. Things came to him – wealth, people, this bloody princess, and he expected them to. And all the plenty needed somewhere to flow, and some of it flowed to her.

And then he had ruined Jennifer’s life.

She only knew how much she wanted him when he’d told her to leave him and never darken his doorway again – and that was minutes after he’d ravished her and used that inadequate penis on her for one last time. It was as if his dismissal of her was all part of a game plan she really ought to have known about, but hadn’t because nobody had explained life to her.

She stared into the turgid depths oozing like midnight oil below her.

Soon she would jump. Soon she would end the misery of life without Timmy. Soon her lungs would be filled with the black water and her life would be snuffed out. Soon her misery would be ended because that’s what death does to misery.

She pulled herself onto the nearby parapet and prepared to leap, but something pulled her back. It was a sound a definite sound. She heard, like a pre-echo of her plans, the whisper of a splash. Not her splash, not her search for eternity, but someone else’s.
She jumped back down onto the safety of the bridge and her eyes opened wide with horror as the writhing figure of the cause of her grief drifted into view, moving with the turgid speed of the river from beneath its arches.

It was Timmy, whitely reflecting the moonlight, and someone had placed a glittering gemstone ring on his tiny flaccid penis.

And he was dead.

Jennifer thought for one brilliant moment that she might jump in and join him. But then she thought, no, that would be silly, let the silly sod die, there’s more than one fish in the sea.

Or the river.

© Peter Rogerson 09.02.15