Honey

Honey makes her way through the barbed wire and rubble, the wires resounding through the air in bionic fashion,

e-e-e-e-e,

We can rebuild him, she thinks, abstracted. She notices a butt on the ground, not so much a butt as a discarded cigarette, barely smoked, a casualty of terror. A part of her aches, she hasn’t had a smoke in several days, one going begging almost gives her a physical pain.

The word that came down, the word that the plant which had provided her a steady if modest living for the last six and a half years, would not reopen, at least not until the ground on which it had stood could be certified safe, pretty sure, has left her not just lost but with no direction home; she’s wandering aimlessly, wondering aimlessly, where am I gone? Where did I come from?

Another wanders toward her, also seemingly adrift, the smoke wandering about leg and midriff, an unwelcome incursor- Are you all right?

No, clearly not all right, in need of a hug. Honey has no hugs in her. The anguished eyes of the stranger (she can’t even tell male from female at this stage), glazed eyes of Honey, what the hell’s to be done. Dancing gingerly by on, not god given feet., no. Stumbling on, Honey sees a bone on the ground, in the sand, she’s on the beach now, barely knows it. It’s a bone, bleached dry by the sea, the sun, it may or may not matter.

I think it’s a jawbone. Doesn’t matter; Honey picks it up, Maybe she has missed the tactile after all. Not a person, not even a pet; an unresponsive recipient is needed. She almost smiles, seems like its been a long time since she touched something real, something…organic.

A reverie broken by a shrieking seabird overhead. As if it was a herald, or perhaps whipping the air by its passage, it’s closely pursued by a harshly chill wind. The sun dives behind a family of inbred clouds, the youngest displaying webbed toes. Honey pulls her coat against the bite, her namesake hair lashing her face and flying off over the dunes. No, that’s the bird. Still dazed.

Hard to believe she’s still on her feet. It’s been thirty hours or something - but the intense rumble always underscoring every moment of waking life taunts sleep like a lover grown contemptuous through overexposure, spiteful.

Walking back to a wide street made lonesomer still by its desertion, Honey drips into a seat at a dusty café somehow doggedly remaining open. A sticklike figure with airline bags propping up its eyes takes her order for black coffee. Are we trying to taunt the rumble back? Or join in the general beatup on sleep, mindless mob mentality…a tune in her air, piped weedily through transistors, one of the latest crop of strumpets bloodying the charts. Stupidly catchy, Honey tries to think about something else- a green abstract thing takes up not-so-valuable real estate on one wall. Squinting a little, Honey thinks she sees a point of interest, but it’s just the artist’s signature. John Keeling. The waiteress? brings coffee, a plate clattering in the kitchen.

He’s local, lives down the road.

A slow look. You know him. More a statement than a question.

Not really. Almost a shrug – we’re all doing minimalist body language today, sometimes speaking volumes, sometimes whispering. One way or the other, we’re not committing, safer that way. Sure, we should all be hugging each other now, teary eyed? Honey doesn’t have it in her, and she hopes terrified that each and every soul passing her way feels the same.

Nonetheless, maybe on some level this emotional ennui will pass and she’ll come shuddering to a new plateau of feeling- rage, horror, empathy and the like.

And maybe that’s what propels her, slightly invigorated if hollow, down the road with a home-printed business card in her hand, about thirty doors down to a nondescript house with a brown fence. Standing, not even knowing what brought her there, looking at the card, the house, the fence, the cat sidling its way along a neighbouring wall, looking like it too doesn’t really want to make contact with anything but can’t help itself.

She almost doesn’t need to knock on the door. She’s thinking, he’s not here, he’s got the hell out like everyone round here who can, then the door opens. He’s blinking in the light, looking like a rudely awoken dormouse.

Either he can’t or he won’t. Which? One says brokenass, the other bespeaks principle.

You’re an artist.

That sounded stupid, Honey and you know it. Blink. I was interested in one of your works. At the café.

You were?

She’s not really. But she had to say something. Now standing stupidly on the porch which she notes is coated with the same shade of dust that Mr. Keeling here seems to be wearing, she’s stumped. Can I come in?

Blink. He steps aside, a dark and musty hallway opened for her inspection.

He follows her in. Which one?

Stops, confused, What?

Which one, which painting were you interested in?

Oh…a little flustered. The green one.

Transmission of Light.

Now she’s really confused, for such a bland abstractionist he seems to be taking a surreal line of conversation.

What?

The green one. That’s what it’s called.

Oh…of course. Yes.

Yes.

He leans against a doorjamb, halfway down the hallway, uncommitted. Is this your studio?

Jerks his head around like he’s forgotten she’s there already. Um, yes. Gods, he’s awkward.

So, yes, show her round, it’s a big room, filled with easels and canvases like you’d expect, the smell of oil and turpentine permeating. Colours abound, but somehow they all seem to be the same painting. iIs he obsessive? Is he going to turn out to be a creepy little freak? Some redeeming feature better show up soon. Ah, and then Honey sees the out of place thing: no, it’s not the old gramophone with its attendant stacks of 78’s, she almost expected that. It’s a pair of ballet shoes. On a display pedestal. Too small to fit any but the smallest, finest, most delicate of instruments. Satin, and embroidered, something almost breaks in Honey’s heart as she zeroes in on them.

Whose are these?

They ah, they were - my daughter’s.

Look, blink. She died.

Oh- I’m…I’m Honey.

His turn now, blinking confusedly at the hand extended in lieu of a hug or an apology. He takes it as if it’s a gift from a distant relative. His palm is dry, his eyes come into focus.

It was some time ago. A year.

Okay. Look somewhere else.

What are your paintings?

Now, here’s your chance John. They’re expressions of love.

They are…love letters.

Now she sees what she’d missed before. Looking closer at the nearest canvas, there’s a letter O buried in the layers of oil. Looking away, adjusting her eyes from the bright orange to a deep sea green, she sees a V.

Her mother?

Now his unsteady composure comes close to fracturing, then John Keeling, artist, firms up. Randomly, she notices neither his clothes nor his hands are paint-smattered. He hasn’t painted anything today at least.

If you’re interested in the piece, the café sells the work and takes a commission.

Oh. Okay, thanks. Hard to imagine this shaping up as a love story. As it stands though, it’s time to retreat and regroup. The hollows behind Honey’s eyes seem to be yawning, and to be honest Mr Keeling’s looking a little shaky on his pins and all. Honey resists the temptation to put him to bed with a hot water bottle and begins to entertain notions of such a fate for herself.

Pause at the porch. What were you doing? When it happened?

Oh, um. I was-

His hesitant stammer is starting to irritate.

I was trying to make a phone call.

Well, he follows through at any rate. That gives Honey something to mull over as she walks to what used to be her home. Trying to make a phone call- not just on the phone. To whom? Why an attempt and not the action? This unassuming, only slightly charming freak has at least piqued Honey’s interest. One other question, though, still nags and chews at the space behind her eyes narrowed, burning against the biting.

What was I doing?

A broad beam of steel flashing through the light. A cataclysm of sound like the end of the world; everything crashing down around her ears. No, that’s not right. The streak of a plane overhead, whining hyenaelike: Stukas, no - that’s history channel. Did a wave descend in terrible vengeance on the land, its spiting lover? Gods, that’s Moby Dick for all I know.

Get back to that.

Okay then, where was I? Kitchen, yard with the snaggletoothed cat who’d perhaps claimed me in his older tomcatting years, scratching in the dirt with a stick while he watched with vague intent. Street, garden. Picking caterpillars off the tomato leaves on a particularly sunny Autumn day. Do I grow tomatoes?

Was I hurt? Honey stops.

Looks at herself as if for the first time. Broad of body, of an acceptable height. And wearing, what? Something brown, relatively shapeless; all in one piece. Honey wonders whether she is, or should be in pain. Feels her face, which despite a certain blandness doesn’t seem to be messed up in any way.

Nothing sensitive to the touch.

And nothing to give anything away. Nothing but streets of hollow abandon, joined here and there in reverie by twisted metal and brick and mortar. A warzone without a war to go to; perhaps just memories of deeds long lost, like the battles whose names they claimed. The Ghost of Chunuk Bair, laid bare in spidery handwriting, an original manuscript by Poe unearthed in the ruins of an eighteenth century New England house.

And yet here Honey is, at the gate of her own seemingly undevastated home- at least the façade tells no tales of strange wars come calling, forcing entry when no response in kind was forthcoming.

At least, she thinks it’s her house. Her feet have carried her here and stopped, with no real reason to doubt the reliability of her autopilot. But she’s standing before the front gate, hesitant. She actually wonders for a moment if she’s walked a full circuit and is standing outside John Keeling’s house again. But no, pretty sure- she nods to herself, pretty sure.

The gate’s lower hinge is nearly rusted through; its arc grinds to a halt against the path at halfway open. She remembers that, steps round and walks up to the door, pauses and raises a hand as if planning to knock. She studies her hand for a moment, thinking vacuously, slowly it descends to the pocket she assumes is there, flushes out a key. It’s almost like a choose-your-own adventure as she places the key in the lock with ridiculous solemnity, turns, pushes, enters the little house, its walls bending in around her. This is where I live. Honey turns that thought round and round in her head, examining it uncritically. It holds about as much tenancy as she feels she does in this place, at least until she takes stock, finds common ground with its chattels and trappings. Such as they are. A spare, dim corridor with nothing much on the walls- a three-d picture of a pair of white herons causes her to wobble slightly as she passes too close- gives way to a greylit room to the right, a singular bed, single. Faded green coverlet fraying at its edges.

Did the Rupture come and leave me behind?

A broad window looks out on a narrow tree, its evergreen leaves patting the pane with the familiarity of a boy and his dog. The patina of shade it provides blends almost perfectly with the threadbare carpet of grey. A few books, myth and legend, scattered. The mantle of dust seems to be quite at home, making it seem that, while she knows this place to be hers (pretty sure), no one has lived here for some time.

There’s a kitchen visible through the door to the left, small enough for one, just, but Honey can’t go in there just yet. She still stands, still, surveying her broken empire, its conglomerate nations losing their unity in disparity.

The wall to her right stands in opposition to the spareness of the room, with its occasional detritus of a life perhaps lived on its unfurnished floor. A ragtag fleet of newspaper articles and headlines travels across the blank expanse of its scrim, shorn face, pursued by a squadron of photographs and scrawled notes on a peck of pickled papers, not her hand but (she assumes) familiar. Honey gravitates to the largest patch of black on white.

Here, a clue? There, a red herring? Closer.

BETTER DAYS TO BE EVACUATED

In the wake of events of Thursday, March 12 and there it ends, torn.

BD Girl wins dance scholarship and there’s an article, but Honey’s eye is drawn now to another tear in the fabric of space/time, in the form of a parched pink notepaper with that same spidery scrawl. Pinned to the wall, she plucks the pin and, replacing it, turns from the wall with the fragment in her hand, walking slowly to the bed, pinned, her own eyes.

Dearest

Darling

Loved One of mine

If there was but a moment more time

To tell You I would be there

When You needed me more

My heart,

My arms

My apologies-

But here Honey can’t read on: it’s not quite the moment of catharsis we were hoping for perhaps, but with something akin to a sob, Honey falls sideways on the bed and into what we hope is the deepest sleep.

The photograph of a distant relative watches over her, smiling for now.

Deep waters are not always untroubled, however. Honey flows through a lively world of street scenes, urban landscapes of honking cars, lights, neon fluorescence – daylight, talking signs and people, hustling. Love letters. A small child, a girl, gleeful, dancing in the street, a silent musical. Buying bread, nice bread, bustling home again to have lunch with -

But the face at the table is gone, blinking, as Honey wakes to a dream.

There’s no cat and no tomatoes. Disgruntled, Honey finds a jar of pickled something, no bread, so sits with a spoon and sups. She’s no stomach for reviewing any more torn pieces of a life she assumes is hers. It’s almost sunny outside. She sits on her stoop and listens for a bird. Thinks she hears a seagull - she almost forgets this is a coastal town sometimes, the departure of land into sea here seems so…inconsequential; barely a wave goodbye.

For a moment, she thinks she hears a phone ring.

The rumble seems to have faded, for now.

So, regrouped, restored if not stimulated. Looking up and down the grey, dust-caked street Honey finds no reason to stay put, nothing to care for or submit to for the caring. Blank windows give nothing away and invite no closer approach. In the distance, above the rooftops, she thinks she can see the plant, swaying. Withered and dead. But no point dwelling is there? To dwell: to lead astray, bedevil. Honey picks herself up and, without a stretch, begins her journey back whence she came.

Turning back onto Main Street, such as it is in its diminished state - she’s faintly aware of things having been bigger once, perhaps a world of fewer boundaries, greater scope, than these few tenement blocks of faded commerce, not in service - across the road, there’s a crank and a yang, metal and wood, joists and dwangs, and the Word comes down with a crack.

The Word is BACK.

Honey stares at it numbly. It’s just there, and that’s what it says.

Gazing slowly upwards, past the shattered glass and splintered sides, and there’s more, standing incongruous against the grey sky: HOUSE.

BACK. HOUSE.

Honey almost turns then and runs back down the street to her grey haven. Her heart picks up a trot to a canter and she sways slightly…till she sees the sum of the cosmic equation: ANTIQUES.

Only the second time today, Honey almost smiles again.

Her eyes swim into focus on the musty darkness within.

One thing, one damn thing, survives the dereliction of Backhouse’s duties, settled on a dusty shelf as if protected from evil by a sphere of white magic, a music box. Well, it’s a jewellery box, but it’s open and the ballerina stands goddesslike, untouchable still, untouchably still, at its centre.

Honey’s had an inkling, but now she’s pretty sure the universe is trying to taunt her. With something. For something.

Now, standing before this transcendental collectible, Honey thinks back again, through the last hellish days of wandering as if homeless in her own backyard, and back, through years of tending -

No, working at the plant, a satisfyingly nowhere job, on the outskirts of town, where she could focus the minimum, the least of her attention so she had all the time in the world to dream….

of what?

There were sunny days, a childhood- those ones are always sunny aren’t they. There were possibilities, open if not unlimited, stretching formless away into the unclear summery future- somehow resolved into the nuclear winter of now. A body, let’s face it, grown too heavy for dreams of a dazzling dancing career, a slow moving life tending to, no, working at a plant, now withered, and died -

Now poisoned, the earth -

To be evacuated - but with that black and white image, newsprint, so easily invented & manufactured, the strands fade, the connections become brittle and Honey is still standing, still before the motionless tribute to sound and movement that will not favour her with so much as a sideways look.

So, if all that’s left to her is instinct, to follow what may or may not be a preordained path, Honey reaches in, past the shards of glass standing jagged and fearsome as Cerberus ‘tween her and Persephone (Demeter trying so hard, steeling herself), looming in, plucks the box from its perch.

Maybe she can take it home.

Clutching the box like a baby, like a loaf of fresh bread, she half expects to hear a shout - a clamour of arms. Down the street, a distended jalopy stands with doors akimbo in reproach. She bustles past it with a new wind flapping in her ears. It’s a few blocks, she remembers, is where she last saw another maybe like her, thought, she wasn’t the only survivor. I know, there were others, but they somehow seemed apocryphal, archetypal. They’re constellations set in the sky long ago as pointers for oceangoing wayfarers, by gods in a rare moment of clemency.

A lapse of attention.

Honey stumbles, nearly falls. For an instant, the world rushes by, all noise and blaring. Colour and black cars. Honey’s head swims out, then catches the tide back in.

Then she’s there, almost breathless. Stops a spell before the same dilapidated gate - half expects to see the same grey cat. But there’s the faded green door, with its wind-driven rivulets of dust migrating across the porch in pilgrimage to a dead artist’s home/town/museum.

Once again, she doesn’t need to knock. John Keeling emerges blinking into the light, once again, transmitting a lively need: his larder is empty too.

The café serves them panettone- it was fashionable for about five minutes, Honey recalls, now it’s all they have and it’s toasted. Black coffee to the colour of white music and the walls.

They have it with pumpkin soup. Peppered. The waiter/ess leans in close to Honey and says in a low voice, Don’t let anyone else blow on your soup.

(No idea what that means, but Honey assumes it will become clear)

She hadn’t noticed - there’s a manuka honey-coloured piece behind his head and she can make out the letter K. I see it too and that’s definitely a K. with a period.

Are these all…

This year. He really seems to be trying to tell her something. His glasses - he wears glasses, she suddenly notices, did he always? What’s the matter with her? – his glasses gleaming green against the painting on his right, are working with his eyes in earnest delivery, even with them he still squints when he speaks from near or far away. His checked shirt - he’s in check even, a kind of stasis - has a breast pocket, from which extends the end of a small pad of pallid pink notepaper.

A spidery scrawl, where he sits, a cypher. Saying Grace?

Her name – no. Not now.

She assumes she’s paying. The food and the money flow dreamlike – just happening, never mind, so on the same discontinuity highway she finds herself

accompanied by John - can we just call him John yet, are we that familiar? – in possession of the green painting, Transmission of Light. There’s an L buried in relief, beneath the layers of yellow and blue that have been painstakingly built up over…well, not so long apparently. They have in fact, like all the other pieces, been built up urgently over a pretty short period of time. Obsessive, as noted.

Not even sure he was always an artist even.

And as they sit in the kitchen, in the day grown dim preternaturally early, he lights an old fashioned oil lamp. The power bills got too high, squinting against the lens. We let the ah, lighting go.

She knows, she’s the one who let it go. A moment, the girl was distracting her. Why does she think this? She says, slowly. You tried to call me.

She wouldn’t stay at home. His hands adrift at his side. You know.

I know. Not out loud. Not even to her self.

I was trying to make a phone call. Quietly. But things are moving faster.

There’s a bill on the table. Addressed to - Honey refuses to look, puts the box on top of it, to show him. She opens it. He stands, his hands are lost in space now. She opens it.

And for once, let’s avoid any classical follies, we won’t credit Honey with unleashing all the woes of the world on us, on herself, like she did that day with a lapse of attention while tending her plant, not attending, and the dance of the atoms ended –

and yet the ballerina dances, as the music begins, the most delicate of instruments, a bell shimmering over a clear glass of water. She turns, on a lean, not lifting a leg but pirouetting on an elliptic orbit, at last sparing a sideways – now a backward look at the last place she called home. Pure Grace.

and yeah, it’s not fair on him, as his hands clench and unclench, John Keeling’s looking like a man who’s lost it all and then had a wrong thing returned, a broken covenant. Helpless and frustrated in the face of fate’s denial of forgetfulness for some, insistence for others, he tries, to press on.

,His voice shakes, but he needs to say it. You have the first one.

Timbers fall nearby and Honey starts. She was entranced in a memory of a life that could have been. If the word hadn’t come down. Murmur, The first? If the plant hadn’t died. A horn blares past the window.

That dirty rumble’s back.

You have the first one, Honey. How did he know my name? Yes, I told him.

She wanted to tell you her self. I never…I never could stop her. She knew how happy you’d be. Honey’s head whirls and John’s becomes a new point of focus, blinking eyes and all, nothing much on top to speak of, yet somehow now demanding of her eye, her ear. And something more.

His voice firms, becomes softer. I have more letters for you.

Love letters. Honey K. They were all for you. Now she feels those strands of the past trying to reach her once again, a dream of a dazzling dance career, a child dancing in the street, amidst the evacuation, Paris – No, not Paris, don’t get confused now, Honey K.

You’re here.

You’re here.

In my heart.

Your need is my need-

Better Days. She thinks now.

The plant, Honey. You let it die. The earth, poisoned.

The black cars, blaring.

The plant, Honey, you destroyed it. The town, gone.

The sirens howling.

Please be here.

A lapse of attention. Went into the red. You couldn’t have seen it. The dark sedan. On the outskirts of town. Honey sees it for the first time again. A child, at my elbow; a little girl, dancing in the street. A pink and grey European sunset. A shout, a clamour of arms. It wasn’t your fault.

I lie. He leans closer.

If you’d only come back.

If you’d only come back.

If You’d only come back –

And it’s still not a catharsis, not yet. There are poems unread and depths of legend to be plumbed. Honey has yet to find Grace, but the connection with the only other true survivor of this disaster has brought her to a place where this may begin. May be.

Certainly the headlines will continue to bring horror long after she, he, they stop dreaming. The lost notes of their missing life will live alongside false memories and hypnotic suggestions for some time to come. John Keeling’s going to put on some tea, on the gas range, and maybe he’ll prove to be that man who can shoot darts of love into a woman’s subconscious and awaken her like the sleeper of old. By bringing the Word. Or at least the letters, spelt out in the sand, washed away by the tide once and again.

L O V E Y O U H O N E Y K.

And his job’s not done; nor is hers.

But now Honey wakes, with a start.