Death

Part 3

Chapter 1

A long walk, long walks for the air: for airing out his grievances. He needed to walk to the end, though not making that decision; I feel he was aware that this walk was to be to the end. And the end was not in sight, at first only the beginning, though perhaps it is the beginning and the end. He took to the caravan park,
Ted would be there, Ted had spent years there, he liked being near the sea, and hearing sounds of families, of the kiddies at play, high spirits in the summer. In the winters he might go back to Beverley visit family, but returned to zero when the sun shone. At zero, the caravans sat, some of the kiddies must have peered at Ted as that old man, a certain rambunctious age, not rambunctious, but evil, perhaps they were evil. “Fuck; old tosser I bang yer” but Ted being Ted he’d tend not to hear, take his strolls with Kirsty, often northerly, never so far as Witherensea, not far from zero. Zero ended at the sea and made its way through the sea to the end of the world, to the ice, god knows it were chilly enough here “Eh Kirsty?”
The times he did hear were before the certain age, good kids, water pistols up to autumn, then conker season, and the beginning of football games, some of the fatter lads might tumble about with a rugby ball, a bit rough sometimes nothing serious. He wrote letters to Barry, they’d known each other, quietly over years, he let him know, told him about the little ones who he’d let in his caravan to teach card games. God he wrote the most diabolical poetry, sweet really, there was one went like this, written through uncertain tears after his card game, after they’d gone back to beleaguered parents, glad to have helped, it went like this:

ACE we are so innocent,
TWO we, teething, cry,
THREE we stumble, graze our knee,
FOUR we poke our eye,

FIVE we brag that we are great,
SIX we learn we lack,
SEVEN we suffer friends who hurt so
EIGHT we hurt them back.

NINE we learn that people die,
TEN we grow more old,
JACK the lad we fool until our
QUEEN has left us cold

KING we are alone again
Inside our castle’s Keep,
ACE we are so innocent,
And so forever sleep.

Sweet really, sweet, I like his idea that time comes back round, like a game of cards in which aces can be high or low. Really sweet, that’s all I ask from poetry, will do for me, and Barry the same, no arbiter of taste, a connoisseur rather of sentiment. The kiddies, what games did they play in that caravan? Rummy? Their parents were just glad for a night off, holiday after all. I wouldn’t have let them in with that dog there; Yorkshire Terriers the worst thing lent the name.
So back to the beginning, and on a walk to the end, no place better exists than the beginning to begin, at zero, prime meridian. Knowing, but not knowing, thinking, not considering, Barry, returns to zero, at which all beginnings and endings should converge, but seeks nowt more than distraction, merely momentary rays of Ted’s serenity, meet the kiddlywinks, get away from death; unused to loneliness, he wants a bit of a stroll by the sea, not the damn docks but real sea, the true North Sea, where she’d come from. Silly.