Jersey Evening Post Writing Competition

Winning entry 1992:

The Doofer (short story)

Winning entry 1993:

In Memory of Richard Marsh (poem)

Runner up 1994:

The Magic Town & To a Lover who admits to a belief in reincarnation (poems)

Winning entry 1999:

Driving Lessons (poem)

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The Doofer

Mouse was hunting for the doofer.  The search was slow and painstaking for though the house was tidy, the doofer was small.  As she hunted, she pondered the words: Mouse, her pet name that pre-dated her marriage, where did it come from?  Her brown hair, perhaps, which fell across her face now as she got down to look into the gloom under the spare bed; and why did they call their son, Smartie, when his proper name, Mark, would have come a syllable more quickly off the tongue?  And why, for that matter, did the small electronic device that allowed the television to be operated from the three-piece-suite go under the name of 'the doofer' in their household, when everyone else called it a remote control?  Perhaps Mark had coined it in his earlier years before he mastered his speech, and, like the half-dozen other mispronunciations and misnomers of his, it had remind current ever since.

Mouse went into the bathroom - it was not likely to be there, but she had to be thorough - then into the bedroom.  John often took the set up there, piled up the pillows and settled back in front of a late film.  She looked under the bed: nothing there, only the half-dozen stumpy legs sitting in their castors, and under the pillows only their folded night-clothes.

About once a week it was missing and it was her task to locate it.  That did not trouble her - her job description, if she had had one, would have included the recovery of lost items under the heading 'Domestic Management' - but this time as she searched a cloud of irritation hung over her.  She had been at a crucial stage in the preparation of their dinner when John had called out from the lunge, 'Where's the wretched doofer gone this time?', his tone of voice so vexed that, 'I'll go and look for it, dear' had been the only reply possible.

'Got it?' he called up now, from below.
'No.  Do it manually.'
'Won't work.  Volume's too low.  Can't hear a thing.'
John's comments seemed to come from different parts of the lounge below: he was searching himself.  That was a turn-up for the books; it had to be something he didn't want to miss.

Mouse crossed the landing to Mark's bedroom.  He was uncovered.  She pulled the duvet up to his chin, anchoring it under the mattress.  It was a futile gesture; she would find him on top of the covers when she went up, the wrong way round, hands and feet like blocks of ice, but it pleased her to lean over him and listen to his breathing for a minute.  She thought how much more like a baby he looked when asleep, then her brows contracted in a little frown: John was not keen on their having another child.  Not keen at all.  He said she should be thinking of getting some part-time work instead.
'I expect you're right,' she had replied.

Perhaps that was why she was called Mouse.  She made a mental note to bring the subject up again, and not to back down.  In the darkness of Mark's room she compressed her lips a fraction.

Suddenly she started back.  A tiny light glowed in the corner of his bed, where his right hand was thrown back.  Immediately she thought of fire, seeing this point of red light glowing vividly like a spark on a hearth, but then she laughed softly.  Smartie had taken the doofer to bed with him!  Why hadn't she noticed when she took him up?  His hand was still pressing on one of the buttons; that was why the little light was on.  Carefully she uncurled his fingers to take it away from him, and then went quietly downstairs.

'Thanks, Mouse,' John said, taking it from her.
'Smartie had it in his bed.'
'He never did!'
'Yes.'  Mouse laughed indulgently.  'He still plays with it sometimes.'
'I know.  You shouldn't let him,' he chided her.  But she had found the doofer; he had it back again, resting on the arm of his chair where he liked it.
'He might bust it,' he added.
'Then where would we be.' she murmured, and went back into the kitchen.
'They're not cheap, you know,' John called out.

She let him have the last word, and got on with the cooking;  after a brief, vexed pause from the lounge, the sound of the television flared up again.

It would not be easy to wean Smartie off the doofer: its pre-eminence in the house seemed to have been understood by him; it was one of his staple toys.  As a baby he had sat a few feet from the television, his legs splayed, the doofer on the floor, poking the buttons with his stubby forefinger;  he had been quite unaware of the power it gave him and had looked up, wide-eyed, each time the screen lit up at his bidding.  Now he had mastered it entirely.  When it was time for his afternoon 'podan' - there was another infantile coinage Mouse had preserved - he sat in his little wicker chair, selected his channel and then set about adjusting the volume, colour and brightness.  He watched with the doofer grasped firmly in his right hand and Mouse reflected that if the arm of the chair had been wide enough he probably would have rested the doofer there, just as his father did.

Mouse did not watch much television.  By the time she sat down in the lounge either Mark or John had the set under control.  Sometimes she put it on at midday if there was something in the news she was concerned about; to see if the situation had got better or worse since John put on the breakfast bulletin.  And recently an afternoon discussion programme had been recommended to her: twice she had found the time to sit down with a coffee before some lively topical debate, while Mark played with his toys at her feet.  In one of the programmes she had heard people talking about  their private lives with a frankness that surprised her; the women especially seemed adamant about having control of their lives.  Again she had asked herself, why shouldn't she have another baby?

Standing over the sink, she giggled.  She had just remembered John's excitement when the old set had been taken away and the new one, with infra-red remote control, left in its place.  It was shortly after the birth of Mark, and John had said the new television would help her relax and recover.  She recalled how he stood in the lounge for a good half hour, experimenting with it: to have seen him pressing his back against the end wall, as far as he could get from the set, pushing it to its limits!  And his delight when he found he could bounce the signal off glass.  He still finished the evening's viewing by whipping his arm up the doofer in his right hand, firing the on-off switch into the framed print above his head, so that the set went off by ricochet.  It made her think of a gun-slinger drawing his six-shooter on the villain in one of John's late films.

The morning after the night Smartie took the doofer to bed with him, one of Mouse's friends telephoned, urging her to watch something that afternoon.  Mouse doubted if she could manage it, there was shopping and washing to be done, Mark had to be collected at twelve, the dinner would not cook itself, and so on, but she got ahead with the chores and at tow o'clock went into the lounge with her lunch on a tray to watch the programme.  The doofer was not to hand so she turned the set on manually but the volume could not be raised above a whisper.  She smiled grimly as she frisked John's chair and the sofa; now she understood how irritating it was for him when the thing disappeared.  It was no use.  She scoured the house for five minutes, then gave up, turned off the television and got on with her meal.

When John got in he took off his coat, kicked off his shoes and went straight into the lounge, as he always did.  He liked to sort through his briefcase in front of the early evening news.  Pouring his tea in the kitchen, Mouse heard the sound of the television crescendo and the channels changing in quick succession.

'Where did you find it?' she called out.
'The doofer. I searched everywhere.'
'In my briefcase.'
'Your briefcase?'
There was a slight pause, then he called back, 'I took it to work.'

She practically dropped the teapot.  When she went through to him the tea was slopping into the saucer and soaking the biscuits.  John turned sheepishly in his chair.

'Thought I'd spare you the trouble of looking for it,' he said.  She said nothing and handed him the tea.
'Thanks, Mouse,' he said.
She had never felt this sort of anger before: thinking it better not to speak she went back into the kitchen.  'Keep it out of Smartie's clutches, eh?'  John called after her.

Dinner was eaten in near silence.  The television seemed to have lost its power to prompt conversation between them.  The film they were watching was interrupted  by a commercial break, and without taking his eyes off the screen, John reached for the doofer and changed over.  Why did he always do that?  Did he think she was so stupid that she would go out tomorrow and buy all of the items advertised?  As usual they watched a two-minute burst of something that looked rather interesting to Mouse, but such involvement as was possible in the period was hampered by John's trigger-happy flicking back to see whether the commercials were over.  If they had been speaking he would have said, 'Anything's better than commercials, eh?' and she would have agreed.  But was that true?  Many of them were well made, rather amusing, more entertaining, in fact, than the film they were watching.

Mouse sat with her eyes on the television, inwardly smouldering with indignation.  Questions were coming thick and fast now.  Why had he taken the doofer to work with him?  Why did he choose what they were to watch?  Why didn't he want her to have another child?  What was she going to do?

The next day she got busy.  Having queued for the Family Allowance at the Post Office she went shopping, then treated herself to a taxi home.  When John came home she told him his dinner was warming in the over and that she was going up early.
'Aren't you feeling well?' he asked, turning on the television.
'I'm fine, thanks.'
'Oh.'
His eyes strayed to the screen.
'Good night, then.'
'Night, Mouse.'

Upstairs she arranged the pillows and sat on the bed.  A new portable television sat ready and waiting on the dressing table, its green light winking at her.  The magazine listing the programmes was on her knee.  She leafed through and then bit her lip as she came upon something she had always wanted to watch.  She glanced at the clock: she was just in time.  She picked up her doofer and gingerly switched the set on.
 
 

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In memory of Richard Marsh, (drowned on naval exercises, 10/3/82).

Richard, recipient of my longest epistles,
this is a letter you won't have to read;
remember I tried to convert you,
to give you the password you didn't need?

Under a smoke-screen to hide us from Finals
you argued with me about God, your talk
ship-shape for Dartmouth,
your gait more a march than a walk.

You knew where you were going, you said,
your blue eyes fixed on the horizon,
scanned from the bridge of your first command,
your fair hair clipped for a career in the sun.

Yet you were, drawn, weren't you, when you met
the Christians in their joy, Bible-handed, off somewhere
or heard the singing in an upper room and found,
later, in the bar, their looks too bright to bear?

Look at me now, confused, apostate,
your being, apparently, in hell, added to my wrongs;
did I fail you? Tell me, what were your dumb cries
as you drank the sea to slake your burning lungs?
 
 

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The Magic Town

Your husband wanted a quick sale,
waved the sign at the street like a flag
of surrender, tempered your distress
with a visit to a northern town
comforted by hills, where property's cheaper,
and the promise of your own car.
After you went the lights burned so late
I abandoned my vigil, it was so clearly
not you behind the makeshift curtains;
you always went up early, to your husband's chagrin,
makers of spells needing their sleep, or time
in their books, away from the television.

Perhaps they were all charmed,
the circle of your friends who found
gifts bestowed on them each time they called,
or was I the only one whose hand
received a light caress in taking hold
of my portion in what you had no use for?
They've lost their properties now, just things,
there's nothing here that wears your scent,
or conjures up images. I could rub
their surfaces for hours, no spirit in your guise
would appear to me, offering favours.

Your house has cast off its aurora
yet your magical effects linger
around the town, its least bright quarters
invested with special status by our walks,
our rendezvous. And though it's true
I shall never meet you in the streets,
or accompany you home across the park,
the town holds your warmth like a stone,
and I can imagine, centuries on,
archeological surveys will find
traces of our emotion here, like barrows.
 
 

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To a lover who admits to a belief in reincarnation

Older than your father whose déjà vu
told you he started out a wimpled nun,
you show me in your present apparition
galleries of self-portraits. Who are you,
and how can you expect your love to not
ridicule this leap-frogging of the grave,
from ruffian jabbering in his cave
through bird and beetle back to the year dot?

Put your borrowed arms round me, I won't mock
your creed, despite the séance tape you played
on which you drown, and the rape of a maid
in medieval times; it's poppycock,
of course, this strange affiliation to the dead,
the provisional way you smile and nod your head.
 
 

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Driving Lessons

'Step on the gas, or you'll cause an accident'
he snaps.  I am driving my father across town
on his last visit - I am driving my father mad
with this snail's pace, slowing for people to cross,
the way I do since my son was knocked down.

There's a horn blast behind but I hit the brakes:
a woman with more kids than she can hold onto
smiles at me as she leads them across, and at the old man
beside me pulling his cloth cap over his eyes with a frown.

'How long have we been bipeds?' I ask him.
'Six million years.  But folk still had to watch their step
when there were dinosaurs about.'  He knows I know
that's anachronistic.  He sneaks a look at the burgeoning queue.
'Jesus God!' he mutters.  'Did I teach you to drive?'

'Studies show,' I say, appealing to the scientist in him,
'communities severed by busy roads grow whole again
when traffic slows like this.  People make friends
across the street, take more exercise ...'
But he has put his head in his hands.
'Thank Christ no one knows me round here,' he groans.

His hands are smaller than I remember them,
teaching me to drive, grabbing the wheel of his rented car
when I veered into playing fields or towards the river.
That black mark on the back of his neck
his doctor has pronounced benign.  In front of us
a man his age nods a thank you, and crosses sprightly.

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