We Are But Smoke

Introduction to ‘We Are But Smoke’.

Were this the dextrous verse of Fitzgerald, scrawled with insane devotion for the love of his fragile Zelda, one’s appetite to read and become a part of the love shared in a bygone era would be great.
The mind would be cast back immediately, authenticity assured, and, perhaps best of all, one would be drawn to romance again, given a new set of ideals, if only for a brief passage of time.
Those days are gone, though, and now petty little worries that seem so great have all but taken over.
Romance is a sad relic of the past; a black and white television, a commodity well past its peak, a replaceable thing.
I once saw two aged tramps kissing on the steps of a derelict church near King’s Cross in London.
I was in a taxi, in a traffic jam and in a mess.
Having just returned from another pointless holiday, this time to Zanzibar, I’d used the incredibly plausible yet laughable excuse of needing to write in peace for having gone, knowing full well that my heart was shattered and needed isolation.
How was I to know that the malaria pills I’d been prescribed had recently been banned in the US for sending half their army personnel round the twist?
Could I ever have imagined dreaming of riding a push-bike downhill at breakneck speed with Winona Ryder kissing me all the way from Liverpool to Los Angeles, as if we were trapped inside a game-machine? No is the answer, but that is what happened when I slept at night, bolting upright in a bed of sweat.
Legal drugs aren’t as good as illegal ones.
When I told fellow travellers that I’d taken Lariam, they either moved to another table and peered over at me wearily or they laughed and told me stories of how this drug had ripped people’s lives apart. The worst one, which I found hilarious on a couple of drinks, involved a newly wed couple standing on the edge of a cliff in Kenya. As they gazed over the beauty and terror of the wild, holding hands, seemingly in bliss, the groom pushed her over the edge and blamed it on the drug.
In any case, I’d only just got back but I was miles away, head swaying around on shoulders lame and limp from a tiresome stopover in Saudi, where I’d met an Australian diamond excavator who was proud to tell me how he would quite happily pay Kenyan policemen to turn a blind eye so he could kick a black guy to the point of no return.
What he did was this; after a spot of dinner and a few drinks at the local bars, he’d shag a whore without paying (‘Lucky I don’t kill ya’, bitch!’ was his stock reply upon their measly demands). Then, he’d survey the streets for a suitably downtrodden and homeless negro. Once he’d made up his mind which one to beat to a pulp, probably someone in his late thirties and not too big, he’d find the policeman on duty and pay him a nominal fee to avoid later problems. What a horror!
When we went to the hotel for the eight-hour stopover, we had to go through customs and this massive man was caught with porn mags on him, and he was told to pay a fine of $200. As we all watched the Arabs scurry back to their frost-glassed office to look at the mags, this racist pig was now being escorted by an official to the cashpoint machine. Instant karma.
We arrived at the hotel and he picked on me for company, plucking out a bottle of Jack Daniels from his suitcase.
‘Didn’t find this, did they?’ he chuckled.
I tagged along because his stories were so immensely enjoyable. They were by far the most horrifically explicit I’d heard in a long time, and I thought how well they could feature in future fiction. He just waffled on as I watched the moon from the side of the pool drinking his whiskey in the middle of the desert, blissfully unaware that he wanted to kill me.
The holiday was a nightmare and I could hardly wait to get home, which, at the time, was a semi-squatted housing trust block notorious for hard drugs and general underground unrest, a stone’s throw from the Serious Fraud Office.
As I sat in the taxi, watching these two deliciously happy tramps, who weren’t slobbering over each other but were kissing very passionately, I began to feel waves of love sweep over me, through me, coming at me from all directions. Tears welled up in my puffy eyes. Why couldn’t I be like that? I began to worry that the taxi-driver might see me crying, but the two tramps didn’t give a hoot what the passers-by thought, who either detested them or, like me, found them to be utterly charming. Their complete lack of self-consciousness showed me up as just another wanting member of an uninspired race.
So it seems that Man’s, or at least this man’s, ability to love has been shattered.
With youth/drug culture, we have inherited adult bigotry/illness. Women may know the value of love, as men underwrite the cost, but equality has done nothing to forge a revival of Love. Multicultural development has cost the family dear, and brought about political correctness and social unrest, just as efficiency has changed the face of the worker. Human rights have made a laughing stock of the law, and every police force in the land wriggles out of responsibility by having their hands firmly tied behind their backs.
Modern winds, quiet yet constant, shall blow into gusts and gusts into whirlwinds, shaping the way to a different world, that of a bygone era, regenerated by the despair and hopelessness of lonesome folk who gave up on it years ago.
The dark side of the moon will be filled with sunshine and lovers will spend their new lives there, in the sun on the dark side, on the beach of the moon.
Joan of Arc will cut the cord to the new world and many will perish as her golden scissors slice the satin. Falling in the wind, the cord will land on the stone of destiny, and the moment they collide, the people’s minds will suffer or flourish, be terminated or given entry to Love.
This story is for those two shabby lovers on the steps of that locked-up church. Whoever you are, and wherever you are, thank you. You are old, but you are younger in spirit than the youth of today. You are eternal in my mind.

WE ARE BUT SMOKE

‘We are but smoke,’ said the drunk to the parson at the altar. But the parson scoffed at his words, and, inhaling the foul stench of this fallen man, ushered him out of his beloved church.
The drunk left quietly, although he tripped on the aged, ignored carpet as he took his jagged stroll down the aisle. The parson watched him with beady eyes, as unforgiving as a wild animal about to feed. He couldn’t help but sman when the drunk tripped up once more, this time into the light.
But the drunk had tripped up on purpose. He too smaned, but only when he had left God’s house.
As the sun began its descent, diminished into a visible ball of rusty fire, there over the brow, the drunk noted how wonderful it was that he could stare at the sun without squinting at all.
What a gift, he thought.
With that feeling of love, he strolled down the road. He stopped and began to burrow into his satchel, into his pockets, even, as he tried his damnedest to remember whether he’d put the coin in its secret place, his left boot.
A gentleman, who had seen the adulation of the drunk as he stood on the steps of the church, had been curious enough to follow him so that he might watch any dilemma that fell upon the eyesore-drunk as he left the village.
This particular gentleman was none other than Sir Gerald Devilliers, by far the wealthiest man for a hundred miles. He was ruthless in his dealings but also a compassionate, insightful sort who liked to give to the honest and needy whenever he saw fit.
It was obvious that the drunk was searching for something, and the gentleman saw his chance of giving the poor man recompense for life’s little shortcomings.
‘Would you be looking for this, young traveller?’ the gentleman shouted over.
There was a large coin in his hand. He had even gone to the trouble of pretending that he’d found it on the cobbles, thus his stooped posture and outheld hand.
The drunk turned to him, surprised, then looked about to see if the gentleman had been referring to another gentleman, someone worthy of his call.
Then, he said with a feigned sigh, ‘Folk like me are forever looking for lost pennies, sir, but that one has been found already, and you found it, so it be yours now,’ and carried on rummaging through his pockets and holes. He was a shy man, especially when sobre, and he wanted the gentleman to leave.
But the gentleman stood his ground. ‘This is a shilling, not a penny, and I found it about your person. I even saw it come from your trouser-leg’.
The drunk, with the shilling rolling around his head like a spinning-wheel, managed to turn to the gentleman, albeit awkwardly.
‘But kind sir,’ he said. ‘I do not carry shillings on my person. Only pennies do I carry.’ He was quite sure that this would deter any further acts of roundabout kindness from the gentleman, who he assumed only meant well.
The gentleman was having none of this. ‘That may well be the case, young traveller, but I can assure you that I found this here shilling,’ (the drunk watched a shimmering shilling, gently quivering in the chilling still of the sun, in the hands of the gentleman, and with his mouth open) ‘from whence you came, which was the church.’ He straightened up. ‘I have been watching your every movement since you left its steps and can assure you that this coin fell from your person. It is upon these grounds that I implore you to take it back.’ His eyes turned to stone as he said this, knowing full well that a stern eye was a sure way to get what he desired from a peasant.
Stubborn as an Irish washerwoman, yet without her angered tone, the drunk replied.
‘I say to you again, kindest of sirs, I do not carry shillings. Pennies are what I carry.’
And at that precise moment, a penny dropped from his left boot as he upturned it. Neither pair of eyes left the other; the gentleman’s stony, the drunk’s riddled with false pride. ‘And there is my penny,’ he said, relieved that he’d won this silly battle of morals.
He beamed his eyes on to the cobbles but, alas, the penny had escaped him.
A short time passed as the gentleman stood his ground. The drunk scampered about, scouring everywhere for the penny. He started mumbling to himself, accusing himself of idiocy and downright foolishness.
He wasn’t far wrong, thought the gentleman.
On his knees, busy checking the cracks of each individual cobblestone, he searched on for the solitary penny that would afford him a skinful of mead with which to sleep happily in the moonlit meadow.
But while the drunk searched, the gentleman quickly stooped down once more, this time to place the shilling under his foot and to pick up the penny that had rolled over to him. He had trapped it underfoot without the drunk noticing, for he had his stony eyes on, and when he has these eyes on, his subject is unaware of all that surrounds him.
He then placed the drunk’s penny in his pocket and coughed for attention.
But the drunk had drifted on his hands and knees into his own little world.
The gentleman raised his voice, and the drunk turned to him, looking more stupid than ever as he raised his eyes to meet those of the gentleman.
‘Look under my foot and you will find the coin that left your boot,’ he said sternly, peppered with wry heartiness.
The drunk eyed the foot wearily, suspiciously, and made his way over, searching the ground one last time.
When he arrived, the gentleman lifted his foot slowly. By turning it to the right, he revealed the shiny shilling.
The drunk felt a shiver shimmy up his spine and shook his head as it reached his neck.
‘But that is the shilling you found earlier.’
‘Oh no, it’s not. You see, when your coin dropped, I saw it roll over to me, lucky as I may be, and trapped it under my foot.’
‘But your eyes were watching mine.’
‘As yours were watching mine, young traveller. The only difference is that while my eyes were holding yours, I could see all around me.’
The drunk put his hands in his pockets, almost admitting defeat as he raised his lower lip in beaten fashion.
The gentleman continued. ‘I have practised a watchful eye for years now, for there is many a good family in my employ and always will be, for I look after those who are honest, and banish those who are not.’
The drunk tried one last attempt to redeem himself. ‘But, sir, I know for certain that all I carry is pennies,’
‘are pennies,’ corrected the gentleman.
‘and that there is a shilling, probably the same shilling that sat in your hand a moment ago.’ He looked down at the brand new coin. ‘It’s not even scratched. How could it be mine? It couldn’t have travelled from there to here without getting scratched, surely?’
‘A coin travels on its side, man. You must know that!’
The gentleman plucked a spare shilling from his breast pocket, for he was a man who carried shillings, and displayed it for the drunk to gawp at. ‘You may dream up as many foolish items of speculation as you wish, but the plain truth of the matter is that this shilling came, on its side and not on its surface, from your boot. Goodness me! Now take the thing and be gone with you!’
The gentleman coloured his loss of patience with a tapping of foot. This threw the drunk into a state of pure confusion. The shilling sounded.
The drunk thought at two extremes; one, that if he did what he was told, bad luck would surely follow, sooner rather than later, and two, that if he declined the gentleman’s offer, not only may he sadden him but he would feel supremely stupid, with neither the penny or the shilling, which meant he could not obtain a skinful to warm his tired bones.
Again, a short time passed.
The drunk then looked at the gentleman with his wet lakes of eyes, and said, ‘I should like, as I do not believe in my heart that what sits at your foot is mine, to strike a bargain with you, kind sir.’
The gentleman placed his hands in his pockets and eased his stance. ‘I am not one for bargains as a rule,’ he said stiffly, ‘but I shall hear you out. What is your bargain, young traveller?’
‘My bargain is this, kind sir.’ He even cleared his throat. ‘If, after the sun has disappeared over that hill, the shilling rests in the very same place as it stands now, whilst we stand away from it, I promise to take the shilling.’
In wonderment of where his pearly wisdom had come from, the drunk looked pretty pleased with himself. He then continued. ‘You see, I cannot take that which is not mine. It is my greatest promise to myself, for once, a long time ago, I stole from a man and have suffered a great deal more than I had gained, because I became a drunk with the sum that I swindled him for.’
The gentleman agreed to his bargain on the spot, and so they chose a place where they could see the sun and the shilling without too much trouble.
The sun stood halfway over the hill to their left, shimmering away like a mirage, a semi-circular friend bidding farewell after a hard day’s work. The shilling, a dozen or so yards away, was easily visible.
‘Here comes Mrs Davies,’ said the gentleman. ‘She works at the foundry and oversees all who work as mignons. Now, if anyone in the world is going to see that shilling, even from the corner of her eye, then that person is Mrs Davies. Just you watch.’
But the drunk couldn’t stand it. ‘I can’t,’ he said, almost laughing with excitement. Instead, he shot his humble eyes over to the gentleman to watch for his reactions as she passed. That way, he could tell without watching.
As she came close by, a voice rang out from across the street.
‘Mrs Davies! Oh, Mrs Davies! You left your gloves here this morning!’ Mrs Davies, a large woman in her forties, dressed in a pretty tweed coat that was a little too thick for the time of year, waved to the young woman standing outside her father’s bakery and then walked across the street to fetch her gloves.
‘Thank you, Julia,’ she said.
‘Everyone forgets something once in a while, Mrs Davies. Here they are,’ replied the beaming young woman, happy to do the honour of returning the gloves to their rightful owner.
‘Do you know? I almost left them at home this morning. I don’t know what it is about today.’
‘It must be that wondrous sun. It’s been a beautiful day, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Mrs Davies. ‘It certainly has, Julia dear.’
They both turned towards the sun as it edged its way beyond the hill, sighing simultaneously as women do best together.
There sat the innocent shilling, winking away at them in the half-light across the street as they beheld the sun.
After a short while, as if taken from a trance, the women said their goodbyes and Mrs Davies went on her way, only she stayed on the same side of the street, and so missed the shilling altogether.
‘Mrs Davies. Who would have thought it?’ exclaimed the gentleman, with more than a little irony in his voice. ‘She never misses a thing.’
The drunk smiled slightly. This was the first time he’d seen the gentleman at a loss, and, even if he knew that it was really only an exaggeration of the gentleman’s sentiment, the drunk relished a certain empathy with him. When he realised he was counting chickens in his head, the smile wiped itself from his face and he resumed the disdainful look.
Just then, two young lads of ten or eleven came bounding down the street. One was holding a stick and guiding a large, thin, wooden ring with the stick’s friction. The other was chasing behind.
The gentleman half-whispered to the drunk. ‘They’ll never see it running that fast.’
‘I wouldn’t like to wager on it,’ replied the drunk.
‘But you already have,’ said the gentleman.
As the children approached the vicinity of the gentleman and the drunk, the boy with the stick looked over at them. It was only a momentary side-glance but it was enough to lose track of the ring, which went sideways and across. It came to rest peripherally around the shilling.
The boy chasing caught up to his friend and laughed. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘I could have done better than that.’
‘Oh yeah? I’d like to see you try,’ exclaimed the boy with the stick.
He threw the stick over to the ring and eyed his friend. ‘Go on, then. Bet you can’t roll the ring down to the river without it falling over,’ he said scornfully.
‘Huh! Easy!’ said the other lad, who made his way over to the ring and the stick.
The gentleman looked over to the drunk, but the drunk had something stuck in his throat. Desperation was strangling him. Pride and longing had twisted his stomach up and forced his face to turn red.
But just as the lad could have caught sight of the shilling, a small gust blew and a leaf bounced over a few cobbles to rest on the shilling.
Neither of the men could believe what they were witnessing.
The lad who had the stick before cried out for his friend to get a move on in an attempt to force an early error from him, so his friend picked up the ring and the stick and ran towards the middle of the street to prepare his game correctly.
‘Go on, then,’ said the other boy, eager to see his friend fowl up as he had.
With the ring in line, the boy pushed it off and ran for it. Off they went, down the road and into the valley.
‘That was very close,’ said the drunk, now quite sure that the shilling was destined to be his. But as he grew worthy of the coin and the sun became a mere shiver over the brow of the hill, the gentleman nudged the drunk. As he turned to face him, he was urged to look to his right, towards the church.
The parson was approaching.
‘Here comes Reverend Henderson, the local parson,’ said the gentleman with a grave undertone. ‘He always goes to the inn at this time and is sure to pass by the shilling.’
Sure enough, the parson plodded heavily towards the coin.
The gentleman and the drunk watched the leaf, willing it to stay rested. The drunk’s expression grew weaker by the second. ‘There will be a wind in a moment,’ he whispered, and just as he had said, a wind blew and lifted the leaf into the air.
At that precise time, the parson caught sight of the pair. With a slight moment of indecision, he made his way over to them, losing track of the coin and the inn completely.
As he approached, the drunk stiffened, for he knew that the parson had words for the gentleman against him.
‘Why do you stand with this pitiful man, this sad man who claims that we are but smoke?’ The parson waved his hand up into the air as if it was smoke.
‘I stand here for my own good reason, parson,’ replied the gentleman. ‘But what was it you said about our man thinking that we are but smoke?’
The parson straightened his posture and rearranged his cloth. ‘This man came into my church and so I went to talk with him. But before any reasonable conversation had started, he cut me short and said, ‘we are but smoke’. Obviously I had no alternative but to eject him from the church.’ The parson felt sure that his stance was both correct and just.
‘But surely the man believes this to be true, and only wanted to pass on his thoughts to you,’ said the gentleman. ‘Otherwise, he would not have said this thing that so disturbed you.’
‘But we are flesh and blood, Sir Gerald, body and soul,’ said the parson. ‘And besides, to say that we are but smoke is stupid. It’s ungodly.’
‘But I believe we are but smoke, lit by the sun from the bonfire of the universe, travelling in the winds of time,’ said the drunk, without looking up.
The parson made out to laugh, but it was scathing and short and full of contempt. The gentleman stood there.
‘I am sure that this man is quite a poet, searching for answers that perhaps we discarded long ago,’ said the gentleman finally.
Now the sun had disappeared and the drunk was doing his best not to fidget or look over towards the coin that lay bare on the ground. A dog approached. It stopped and looked to the parson to see if it would be invited across to them. Strangely enough, the parson turned to it and clapped his hands.
‘Here you go, boy,’ he said heartily, as if it was his best friend. Nobody in the village liked him. ‘The inn beckons, I believe,’ he said, glad to have a friend to go with. ‘I still say that this man is a drunk and an open liar, mind you.’ His voice was confident, for he was quite sure of himself. ‘I mean, really. How can we be but smoke? I am flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of Christ and God!’ he shouted, hitting his chest with a clenched fist.
With the dog at his side, the parson smirked at the drunk. Pointing his index finger at him, he told the drunk, ‘May you rot in Hell, traveller’, with eyes glistening at the thought of impending gin. The dog wagged its tail and moved towards the shilling.
The parson followed it over, saw the shilling and smiled. Looking at the pair with happy contempt, he went to pick it up, flicked it into his palm and headed off to the inn, smaning all the way. The dog yelped behind him, sure that he had just helped the parson in some way, and that he may be in for a reward.
The gentleman and the drunk said not a word. There were no words.
In the gentleman’s mind, a bee was flying around. He couldn’t move. In the drunk’s mind, a spider was laughing at him. He felt alive in his own coffin. All this as the parson skipped to the inn, laughing heretically with a yelping dog.
The parson’s noise suddenly died. He had reached the inn, and the door clattered shut behind him.
‘How shall we remedy this unseemly incident, kind sir?’ asked the drunk. A sleepless night; no mead, no bread, no broth.
‘Well, that’s the question that flies around my head this very moment, yet I know nothing about how to remedy it.’ He seemed uncharacteristically ill at ease, even vaguely aghast at the idea that he had no answers, although his eyes were clear and his heart was solid. ‘We are but smoke, young traveller, but you missed one small detail. And that is, if we are all the same, just smoke that whistles through the air, how is it that the parson can walk off with a shilling not belonging to him without a speck of guilt or recrimination, whereas you cannot forgive yourself for stealing from a friend many years ago?’
The drunk offered a short cough. ‘He wears the cloth upon his flesh and breathes with the blood of Jesus, sir.’
‘Yes, young sir. And what’s more, I should like to invite you to my inn for a glass or six of my best mead. You are in my keeping this evening.’
The drunk went to stand back, but didn’t. He gave way without loss of heart, and followed the landlord to the inn.
In time, the drunk straightened himself up, married Julia, the baker’s daughter, and, after ten years’ service as a stable-hand to Sir Gerald’s fillies and flat runners, took up as landlord to the inn, now renamed and known to this day as ‘The Drunk and Parson’.