FACES AT THE STAGE DOOR

I lay in bed in a nursing home overlooking the sea. Only three things happened to me there and these were all animal: Eating, Going to the Bathroom and Treatment. My mind was an uneasy bog through which pushed shapes and forms that had been buried and sucked under. I could not ever read. It seemed a waste of eyesight.

Slowly, when Sister had gone and my room was too still to bear, I pulled my book of cartridge paper towards me.

My fountain pen had ‘Jet Black Quink’ in it, which is really the colour of Royal Mourning gone dirty.

I began a fantastic face with little Greek lips and a mask. I will have all different faces, I thought. I did next a boy whose face was much darker than the flesh on his chest, as if he had taken off his shirt after, not before, long exposure in the sun. I did him. I did all the faces. They were terribly sad. They were all waiting outside closed doors. The bluestocking woman with ‘Russian’ hair had grown a megaphone from each eye, she was so keen on piercing into the future. The boy with the sunburnt face had tattooed on his chest two hearts pierced by an arrow, and on the hearts was written ‘Alfie and Maisie’. But that was last year and now he had nothing left but resentment against these silly marks on his white body.

They were all waiting outside the stage door. Their parts were learned, but they did not know what they meant.