A text for five voices.
Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.
i. Blank copy
I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
or glide past
the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
sit there
for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
Print
I press
Copy
instead.
The machine whirs
The light goes
across
And out comes this copy this
Copy of
nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
This is a copy
of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
something more
something
imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
Carefully
on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
I’m looking out of the window as I recall
without much interest
that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
Until the window is as blank as my copy of
nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
sit
down
yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
Oh shut up I tell it
out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
scrawled over in heavy black print
and ****** coloured columns
and smelling
Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
(or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
to me
like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
I ***** up
and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
What difference could it possibly make
whether I throw this piece of paper
which I will now have to print again
in the black part of the bin for waste
or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
Yeah.
ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
**** it.
Yeah.
Then out loud:
**** it.
Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
a hypermarket
a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
And I will go on holiday
I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
or a couple of hundred
pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
I don’t know
“Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
Down with planes.
And I’ll drive my car home and I will
stop
worrying
about
everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
now I have difficulty
telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
in rapid succession
dit dit dit
rapid eye movement
radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
I make notes on it.
My copy of nothing.
Without really realising
I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
disappear
into the paper
and it is clean again.
ii. Ringing sea
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
having ***
with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
Which belongs to me.
It’s my face. I – own it.
It’s my- my- my-
And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
His face
His face
His face It’s him
It’s him
It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
a face I know intimately
and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
Dit / dit.
Dit \ dit.
Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
and apply it
carefully
sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
(only mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
There are some flowers tied to a railing
somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
It’s the not knowing.
The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
Now I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
out of
my shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
howling now
catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
whether my husband will call me or
text me when he lands
and I hurl
my phone
into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
not the geography
not the conflicts
not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
invasion and,
subsequently,
explosion.
We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
with brilliant, burning clarity
my phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
is as wet
as my bottom half
because the rain
is torrential
and I can still hear the phone ringing
but I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
and I can’t tell if I’m
further out
or if the tide’s further in
and the ringing grows louder
as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
the stars rush by overhead.
iii. Acid rain
Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
Purple
or green
I think.
One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
going downhill at 100 miles an hour
the wind blasting through me
the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
everything is turning together
but I’m on a different
axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
it feels a bit surreal
but the world stops spinning
a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
but I can’t find the right one
even though the fridge must be longer than
the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
red tops and blue spreads
and green and purple and green and purple
and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
Missing
presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
(cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
so
until then
they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
filtered onto the trains and buses
and out from the sprawling car parks
to the motorway, and
onto connecting flights back into Europe
but none of them will stay in Luton
Missing
presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
which is a *******
moves with the mundanity of machinery
like the big car factories by the airport
the lights on, the production lines rolling
but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
excitedly
or dejectedly
but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
dead and alive in the air;
one or the other on the ground.
My teachers say I have an
“odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
I look at the departure boards.
Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
green and purple
green and purple
Missing
presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
so they keep darting
this way and that
until my vision is painted over
green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
with charge
across the green and purple grass
scorched by a hundred thousand landings
a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
glinting in the rain
surrounded by blinking amber
there is my bike
its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
pedalling down the runway
pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
the acid rain eats away at my clothes
and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
Lighter
and lighter until…
The wheels lift away from the ground
and in the air I am dead and alive
and maybe nobody will
ever
see me
again.
iv. Burning sky
The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
What?
We’re not going very fast at all
But it feels like any minute
we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
and I feel aware of being
light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
since we left Victoria but the fight
we had there
in a bistro by the port we
said things we
said things that
we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
the people kept talking about pirates.
They kept warning us about pirates.
You’re sailing where
they say
You must be careful
they say
It’s notorious
they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
Real pirates.
Nasty pirates.
With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
If we’d make national news.
Would it be David Cameron to announce,
regrettably,
we don’t negotiate with pirates,
or would it be someone less important?
Maybe just the foreign secretary.
What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
oh
I
Sorry
I’m crying.
I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
everything
literally falls to pieces
My mug of coffee falls from my hand
shatters on the deck
and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
No, really.
That’s not a metaphor.
There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
There.
****.
**** **** ****.
What is that?
Marc!
I call for Marc.
Marc!
There is fire in the sky.
– Katherine.
Fire in the sky.
Fire in the
Fire in
– Katherine.
Fire
– Katherine.
What
Marc, what?
– Are you awake?
I think so.
– You were calling out again.
Calling
– Calling out. You were shouting.
What
where
What time is it?
Where
– Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
They delayed again while you were sleeping.
Dubai?
– Katy I really think you should see a doctor.
Don’t call me that.
– Pardon?
Katy.
Don’t call me that.
Like
– Like what?
Everything’s okay.
–
Everything’s not okay.
– There’s
doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
well actually since before it even happened.
You think I’ve been confused.
– Not right.
Not you.
You’re **** right.
– Forget it.
Thank you.
– Go back to sleep. ****.
– Are you still seeing it?
The plane? On fire.
You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?
Yes.
– It’s affecting you?
I’m
just
unhappy,
Marc.
– That’s not just it though is it?
What’s that supposed to mean?
– Something about seeing that
plane has scared you.
We don’t know it was the plane.
The one that –
– No. But, right place, right time.
They said
Maybe.
– It’s still a coincidence.
It’s not
What
– A sign.
From god.
Or
whatever.
Whatever you think it means.
Katherine.
The thing I don’t know, Marc
is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
or that it wasn’t.
–
Imagine.
Vanishing.
Into thin air.
– I know.
No, you don’t.
Disappearing
into thin air
Or falling
out of it.
– Falling.
You can’t imagine that.
– I can.
– I can, Katy.
I ******* can
Imagine.
Falling.
Disappearing.
Into thin air.
*******
invisible.
I am
right
******* here,
Katherine.
I see you.
I see you Marc.
But you’re not
solid.
I’m not
solid.
See?
It passes
right through.
Now you see me.
Now yo–
v. 2015
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
and I’ve been asleep all day.
I get dressed and grab my camera
and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
his daughter is four now
he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
and he’s moving, he says,
near me apparently
to Southend.
“London Southend” he jokes
with a roll of his eye
and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
I wonder what is lost between the
Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
and the English spoken by the translator.
The space between words.
The space between looking left
and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
except for the British delegates
including the man from Reuters who speculates
that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
as it falls
and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
or glide past
the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
double,
cut with water.
not because I like it but
because there’s something about scotch that feels
moneyed
heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
even though that’s a lie.
I’m just a man who takes pictures.
And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
A news alert on my phone says a piece of
plane wreckage
washed up
on Réunion
in the Indian Ocean,
east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
and I imagine
swimming
in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
maternal
spiritual
nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
slept
then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
don’t tell anyone.
What
I say
and she says
I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
just in case
she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
no-one is looking at her
but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
I see the photo I took this evening about
a dozen times
or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
It was going from here to Beijing.
Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
that
time
precisely
my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
It looks like I’m going to Beijing.
Written 2016-2020.