Sun Dance (3 page)

The tube gathered speed. Passengers leant against me. Suddenly the day’s tension snapped. Enough of politicians and their bogus altruism, to hell with Heathrow! I’ll get off - but where? After five years buried in the abstraction of particle physics, why miss a chance to dive into this honking-bonking, kiss my wallet world of aspiring millionaire-dom?

Wealth, lovely wealth, its scent followed every glamorous hairdo, clung to elegant suits stepping out of taxis. Sophistication romped along a neon runway of brittle, soul devouring fun. Excitement zipped. Covent Garden and a dose of opera? Tube adverts proclaimed, ‘Lucia di Lammermoor.’ A new production, a heart ripping tragedy. Too staid. I needed to compensate for the afternoon with a jazz club sweating out Dixie-land. Supper in Chinatown at two in the morning, then where, Soho?

Downhill all the way. I fancied a spot of decadence. Yes boy. From attempting to track the illusive nature of existence surely I could wallow in its spin off; an outbreak of dissipation threatened. Time to step aboard London life, balance on its gloriously undulating surface, ride its exuberant peaks, be carefree in the troughs, be as irreverent as stuffing a whoopee cushion under the Archbishop of Canterbury at a hypocrite’s funeral.

After dealing with that pack of jokers a malt beckoned. A large one plus a reflection point. I needed a spot of relaxing debauchery, a high stool and a barmaid with a sympathetic eye, maybe lap dancers, anything to remove the taste of politicians, even a 40 inch TV filling its plasma face with the inanity of snake eating celebrities. Tube stations came and went, Hyde Park, Kensington.

Try as I might the evening’s prospects yielded to cynicism. I retraced a meeting which had left me stunned. Political careerists fiddling their expenses, directorships in companies receiving government grants. My despair at their lack of foresight and honesty was matched only by loathing. Self-seeking men, mere soft handed talkers with little experience in a commonsense life of practical skills, nor with any obvious courage to face a bullet, could by manipulating words inflict the carnage of Iraq, send soldiers to their grave, unleash the horror of killing and maiming untold innocent women and children and sitting at a desk they could think up the obscene mockery of calling their actions, ‘shock and awe’. From the haze of cigar smoke curling from dens of nepotism and religious dogma came the smoke of depleted uranium shells, and leukemia.

The tube train journeyed through a conduit of bitter thoughts. I looked out of the carriage window. Platform after platform still thronged with faces, many far from exuberant. White faces, grayed by the fluorescence of office hours, wooden faces, blank and indifferent, yellow faces, green under the glare, brown faces, sensitive and thin, black faces with shining skin and egg white eyes; what feelings did they register? Aspiration, despair, love, sorrow, greed? Hardly- more a dullness of eye which reflected the linear graph of a living that awaited the impact of some spike of circumstance, good or bad.

East bound, west bound, a red circle round Piccadilly, shiny tiles mirroring adverts. Toothpaste and the perfect grinning teeth, the rosy glow of an outdoor existence courtesy of liver pills, a week’s sunshine care of Thomas Cook. Hurrying days, scurrying people grasping at media- hyped expectations, the superficial creating the superfluous in a mirage of wealth and happiness. A hurly-burly of feasting on the planet’s diminishing resources. Rolling out the powder keg of economic growth whilst champion of freedom and democracy, the American Dream wearing ear plugs locks the masses in a chamber of their own making and lights the touch paper.

Did nobody sense a trap?

Unsure of where to alight, I stayed aboard the rush hour medley of clanking acceration and the whoosh of air rank with electric discgharge. A trickle of sweat hovered on the edge of a collar too tight for its wearer. It occurred to me that city suits and their umbrellas required extra space. Meeting a fellow traveller eye to eye seemed rare. Too disturbing, maybe suggestive? Certainly eyes didn’t linger, a momentary glance, perhaps; instead they studied the red artery of the Central Line or some futile exhortation, a latter day version of the High Street sandwich board, ‘Repent, the End is Nigh.’ Few appeared convinced, nor were following the advice.

Being several inches above average height I looked across swaying heads, felt the press of bodies dependent upon a stranger’s hand holding a strap or clutching the corner pole. Tubby flesh leant on me, a dog collar in a grey ‘mac’ with the vacant eyes of righteousness. Hoping not to give offence, I shuffled aside. A briefcase, discretely strapped to my left wrist contained the unwelcome research paper. My right hand was free in case of trouble.

Several shoulders down the compartment the woman’s head caught my attention. Her hair tumbled shoulder length in a natural mass of gentle waves, thick and golden. Far from affectation she held her head with a natural pride which appealed to such an extent that had I been beside her I could not have helped but speak. The instant attraction caught me by surprise. She had the long slender head of a Nordic woman. At no more than a first glimpse I knew this woman belonged to latitudes of the fiord lands, larch clad and silent.

Train lights flicked along tunnel walls snaked with cables, bodies lurched at each bend. I remained gazing at her proudly shaped head with a fixed intensity. The press of strangers went un-noticed, clatter and smell faded from any awareness. A dark cliff formed before me, sea pinks bloomed on ledges above an empty shore from which came the tang of salt air. Rippled by the tide, sand shone white beneath limpid water. Beyond the gable of a house, fields long abandoned sloped to hill and moor, forsaken by time and remoteness; the lost freedom of a people.

A small boat lay beached on the edge of a bay. The woman stood bare foot, tall and easy, a hand on the boats gunnel. Her hair shone as wavelets tipped with sunlight. Warm and downy it slipped golden through my fingers. She turned towards me, tossing her beautiful head. Her eyes held the blueness of a day where sea and sky were one.

My image could only have been momentary; the crowded train returned. Staring at the woman’s averted head became obsessive. Alarmed she might alight at the next station, vanish amongst the mass of commuters, I determined to reach her side. “Excuse me, excuse me please.” No response from the passenger jammed against me. Good manners failed. I must speak with her. Drawn, it almost seemed by the intensity of my attraction the woman turned and our eyes met.

The impact drained all other thought. Steadfast and deep set, sparkling as the first of a morning sun will dance on crumbling waves. Her eyes were those of my vision, the eyes of the woman beside a boat. The bay, the boat and the eyes of this woman became a single imprint, for their blueness was of the sea which flowed in the blood of the Viking.

She gazed at me unwaveringly. It was no passing glance; on her face I saw the expression of a person focused somewhere distant from the crush of a tube train, in her eyes a look of inexplicable searching. In return I made no effort to hide the appeal of their beauty.

At last she smiled, her eyes moist and shining.

Orange white, the world erupted in a flash of searing brilliance; it shattered the carriage; laser blinding, instantly engulfing everything in a split-second. Steel ripped into steel, screeching, screeching, ear splitting screeching. The carriage tipped into blackness, dragged along the tunnel wall, a contorting mass of twisting metal. Glass flew in lethal shards, seats buckled. Electric wires fizzed and crackled. Throat gripping smoke poured through the compartment, acid thick in a choking blanket of terror.

Bodies crushed against me. I fought for breath. Cordite filled my lungs. Screaming, screaming surrounded me, the agony of mutilation. Body parts splattered the seat that pressed into my back. Above was the hideous rattle of a person trying to breathe through a windpipe cut by splintered glass. He grappled with me, pouring blood from his neck and fighting death. I wrenched one arm free, felt my face. Blood, warm, horribly slippery, trickled down my neck. Mine or his? Both of my legs, immobile. I gave up attempting to free them, conscious only of groaning.

Time is but the measure of movement in space. It slowed------ became slower. I was falling,---- falling. Its passing bore no relevance, except as the medium by which to dwell on those whom I loved. They flooded into being, beside me, looking down, in tears. I tried to speak to them. This was death; a futile death, no purpose, no glory, no sacrifice for fellow man.

Amidst fading thoughts came a voice; it trailed away, drew me towards a distant blueness, the intensity of sunlight through the prism of life.

“We shall meet, we …,” I watched the woman become fainter and fainter, till alone her eyes remained, smiling out of a gathering blackness, comforting as the warmth of an entwining body. Deep within the cloisters of some wave sculptured cave soaring voices sang a requiem to beauty, the sole expression of truth. Strongly, then faint as an ebbing life, it echoed amongst the hollow chambers of a dying consciousness.

Masked faces under yellow helmets gently eased out another mangled form. Was it me?

Voices, muffled voices, “Cut that bloody briefcase off his wrist, that’s what’s holding him, I’m pretty sure he’s dead. Get him on the stretcher anyway. Pass that mask, Joe. We’ll give him oxygen, yes the pure stuff. Switch it up. Now boys, lift. Steady, he’s a big lad.”

A moments awareness rushed through me. I floated on the sensation of breathing. My eyes were open. Sirens wailed, lights flashed, stretchers and urgency. I fought a terrifying dread.

The ambulance driver leaned back. His words floated on a cacophony of wailing sirens.

“Which way Chief, hospital, or the morgue?”

As a newborn child on the edge of sleep is aware of breathing, so a mind without awareness of any other self, concentrates upon the rhythm by which some hidden urge demands survival. Slowly, though it need not have been, for time had no meaning, only a dim sense of un-ending space seemed present. It beat with the pulse of waves that fall endless after a storm.

No bodily sensation intruded, merely a lightness suspended amidst flickering colours. They grew then faded, to re-appear with the brilliance of a rainbow on thunder black clouds. The air took on a pureness, a freshness known to the heady cartwheels of childhood when limbs stretched to grasp the joy of living. Each breath stirred scenes which hovered on the brink of an awakening to a horror embedded in the sub-conscious. All paled into a crimson haze, through which the first barbs of dawn pierced the fog that hung over a torpid sea.

I opened my eyes, green- was everything green? Light bored into aching sockets, garish lines of fluorescence. Serious eyes looked down out of masked faces, their voices muted. Without moving my head I glanced to one side. Tubes dangled. Blood red shone above me. It seemed bright as the first tip of sunrise streams across still, mauve waters, and breathing the pureness of sea air, gradually the ocean took me, closed over my head, green and drifting, green and drifting as the lightness of a sail on the motion of a long, long swell.

Over the stern of a gently swaying boat the white haired old man hauled in a line. Gasping fish filled the boxes on the bottom boards of his boat. Great cod with round expressionless eyes fought against asphyxiation; each gasp became slower, their mouths opened and closed less frequently. Gnarled fingers held the fish by a gill, drew a hook and slipped the silver body to flap its tail amongst the rest. A dark brown sail lay across the thwarts. An island fell away to starboard. It stretched untamed like some ultramarine creature under vast marble clouds. White sculptured columns they rested upon an advancing streak of grey.

The fisherman lashed his tiller and stepped to the mast. A lug sail clawed aloft, barely filling its canvas in the fitful puffs of wind that beset man and boat. He glanced astern. A black line split the sky over the white of a frothing sea. The air hot, then cold. The canvas shivered. Without warning the sail cracked, belly full. Jabbing waves surrounded the boat. Pointed crests broke over the gunnels.

A white head crouched, one hand to free the tiller, the other struggling to loose the main sheet. Stern lifting, heeling hard, he fought a broach. Fish boxes slid. The wind from howling turned to screeching. Mast stays, old tarred rope, rod taut. A hissing sea began to lift and spiral. Crack, crack, the sail backed. Devil’s violence, the mast crashed onto a gunnel. She broached. Beam to sea, she rolled. Boxes slid, dead fish poured into a tumult of lashing spray. Crooked hands grasped the gunnel, their grip was torn away. A face looked up. The face of a Viking.

A shock of white hair, a bobbing head amongst seething wave tops in a green, green world. One light above, dimming, dimming, until only eyes of understanding held the horizon in their blueness, and stared out of a long box.

Consciousness came to me as great white sheets swirling about a floating form. My eyes opened. I struggled to focus on the green figures. Bent and hovering forms against a halo of light. And again, the smell of blood, warm as though oozing from a dying form. I clawed wildly. Escape, escape.