St Elmo's Fire

I.

I pulled over into a lay-by and wound down the window just after the Bedminster services. The forecourt had been doused orange from the light of sodium lamps, and a till attendent had muzzily counted out change from my purchases of twenty pounds worth of unleaded and a bottle of blackcurrent-flavoured mineral water that didn't really taste of blackcurrents. I switched the ignition off and breathed out exaggeratedly through the open window. Streamers of steam unwound from my mouth like a chameleon's tongue. Fieldfares churred in a thicket of hawthorn, and marsh frogs burped from a unseen pond. A bat - a Pipistrelle, from its size - curved round the moon.

I dimmed the headlights as a post-van sped past, then switched them off altogether. An arabesque of shadow flickered through the window, and the dark traceries of an elm bough shimmered on my lap. The patterns of shade looked like calligraphy. They wavered on my legs. I stared at them for a while, then leaned back and nuzzled into the skin-warmth of the leather seats.

I switched on the radio, and heard through the faraway static the murmur of moustache-stroking commentators in the West Indies, quietly contemplating England's off-swing - "Let's see what Wisden's has to say about that inswing". There was the clack of a cork ball off a willow bat, and then the hiss of applause dissolved into the sea-wash of interference altogther.

Dark blue light lit up the eastern sky. A few crickets simmered in the verges.

The moon was bronze-shod. Dust and pollen in the summer atmosphere blending with the diffuse light of the sun coming up, giving the moon the warm glow of newly-fired metal. As it began to fall towards the horizon, it deepened in colour and softened in outline, taking something of the tarnished copper of a carp under the water.

Frank used to swim in the Tavy River as a child, and in between sitting cross-legged on sand spits mid-river, leafing through John Buchan novels and fencing off Sticklebacks into limpid pools, and later, annotating Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders in a self-concious high romantic fashion, lying back in the current and watching cloud nebulas collide and seperate in the skies of August, he once told me that the algae that proliferated in the mid-august river used to turn his underwater limbs a rusty orange, so that while doing the breaststroke against the streaming current, his gold limbs resembled a giant frog.

The engine ticked itself cool.

II.

Frank’s funeral was on Tuesday. I had driven over from Bristol on Monday, to attend a wake with Frank’s oldest friends, his partner, and – written into his will – a case of vintage damson wine, which Frank had bottled on a balmy, narcotic summer night in 1983, and which was to be consumed by the congregation at the earliest suitable occasion following his death. Frank’s quick, flowing handwriting was etched in blue India ink on each fawn-coloured label, and both his writing on the labels and the explicit ordering of his will was classically Frank – robust, generous, and timeless.  Frank's neat copperplate was adorned with playful curlicues and baroque flourishes; a Alexandre Exquemelin pirate, a suave corsair. The end effect was that of an East India Company buccaneer struggling to reign himself in.

The ink smelt of juniper, and rose up from the pale label as we handed the bottle around.

Frank was aware of death, in a vague, puzzled way, but I don’t think he ever really expected to die. I don’t think anyone did. Frank was less a human being and more a force of nature on legs. At sixty-three, he woke up at 6am in the summer, 7am in the winter, happily splashed himself clean in a tin bath in June, amiably plunged his head into the freshly-broken ice of a water-butt in December. Two years ago, he told me how he woke up at 5am, shouldered a hatchet and flask of applejack, walked to Wiskit wood glugging the brandy contentedly, felled two yew saplings, and, packing the branches in the back seat of his Reliant Scimitar – a vehicular version of himself, powerful, dependable, noisy and increasingly with age, backfiring – drove towards Bristol.

I remember the confusion of that morning. I had been up since 6am, mostly sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the whorls and burls in the walnut grain, blearily superimposing pontillist drawings and paleolithic finger fluting onto the doodling in crayon of my daughter. In the cool light of the morning, the vivid Crayola weals turned into hematite and ochre daubings.

At 8am, after a pint of coffee, and several cigarettes, my stomach was distended and my thoughts scattered, and the nerves were still there. I went upstairs to shower and shave, prepare my suit, and check the calendar for my parents arrival (Multipy ringed in red marker), my father’s memory being what it was. As I rose from the cane chair, I saw a movement at the window.

A bark-like face hoved into view like a new moon. Frank’s teeth, yellow, tomb-stone things, beamed impishily back at me. I opened the French windows.

I asked him patiently what he was was doing lurking in my garden at 7.30am on my wedding day. I was too tired to be surprised, and anyway, this was Frank.

‘Ah, well, I broke in. I was going to knock, but I thought you’d be asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I vaulted the wall. Not as easy as you'd think, your brick-work is in terrible disrepair. I've got my trowel in the back of the car, I'll patch it up for you tomorrow.'

Frank scratched his chin with an audiable rasping sound and looked please with himself. 'Still, hopped over alright and landed on Jane’s begonias, which broke my fall nicely, although you want to have that blackthorn stump out, because’ – he peeled a few crushed petals off his jeans, in no way embarrassed by wholesale flower destruction, and grimaced - ‘I landed right on it. With my arse’ he said gravely. ‘Got any secateurs? I wouldn’t say no to an egg’.

I smiled despite myself, sighed like a prince, and asked him if he wanted anything else with it. Like champagne.

Frank looked blankly at me, like a cow that’s been shown a card trick.

‘Bit early for champagne. I'll have a cup of tea though, while I'm waiting'. His eyes shone, and a few laughter lines unfurled on his cheeks.

I asked him if he wanted it soft or hard boiled.

‘Neither. I’ll have it fried ‘til it clangs and slapped between white bread, thanks. Lots of ketchup’ said Frank, rubbing his calloused hands and peering interestedly around the kitchen.

He launched himself towards a sea-shell on the mantelpiece, one I had found near Derek Jarman’s driftwood garden, near Dungeness in Sussex, bleached white by the saline winds and deeply furrowed and punctured by boring worms.

‘Nice little piece. Jarman’s, of course. That’s theft, that is’. Frank’s face cracked into a wide grin. Early sunlight glowed off his tombstone teeth. My mouth may have begun to open in half-hearted protest, but was stopped by Frank, who was now draped artfully over a kitchen chair and looking thoughtful.

‘He always artificially bleaches them, y’see. Couple of bags of salt, boiling water' said Frank conversationally, leaning forward and turning the shell over and over in his hands. 'Change and replace three times, and Bob’s your proverbial uncle. Those grooves were made with a file, too. Look, he’s nicked a chip in it here, see?’.

I glanced down to see a tiny notch in the calcite, clearly made by tools, before he whisked it away, grabbed a pair of secateurs on the sideboard, snorted, and ambled out the door. A moment later, there was a knock at the window and a glimpse of a tuft of mad grey hair heading off down the path.

‘Coffee, Jake, and lots of it. Three teaspoons, same of sugar. Imagine you’re paving a road with tarmac. That sort of consistency. Think gravy, Jake, think gravy’. And he crashed off into the foliage.

III.

Frank Taylor was, in some ways a rural throwback. While other people in his adopted Suffolk village had installed central heating and double-glazing throughout, Frank cut chestnut logs, cleaving the green-wood into logs and drying them in sheaves for the winter, or sheared them into quarters for kindling, the axe squealing through the sappy heartwood.

When his friends conceded the battle to arthritis and cataracts and did away with the steering wheel, or bought new mild-mannered cars to pop down to the shops in, Frank tinkered away on the ancient Scimatar until the engine bellowed like a rutting stag and clouds of Castrol exhaust smoke swamped the lanes around his house like haunted mists.

Frank called his car either The Car or That Bastard Car, depending on cirumstance but his friends called it (with a faint grin and well out of earshot) The Colonel - partly because of its noble form, moustachio-like front grill and decisively military acceleration, but mainly because of its resemblance to a puce-faced, hard-of-hearing distinguished gent, roaring at everyone to speak up.