Smithereens Press Chapbooks 'Zero at the Bone' by David Wheatley | Page 51

SCENE SEVENTEEN
MCALLISTER
The birds blown off course that turn up here
are doomed, all doomed, he likes to tell me.
So she hasn’t turned up: do I blame her?
I mean, where’s the incentive? Words fail me.
The hungry sea will devour this shoreline yet.
Dinner’s ready, Perdue, and oh, we’re it.
There’s always Hull for afters, if it’s still hungry.
Unappetising prospect, I agree.
But Orwithfleet, Sand le Mere, Ravenser Odd...
these waves have got some secrets in the hold.
And just suppose I too had something to hide,
like the small matter of... [Pause.] sticking it somewhere I shouldn’t
with some bird of passage, first chance I had...
That’s news will keep, for the moment at least.
She should be the one telling me to get lost,
not me out combing the sand-dunes, in search
of a mobile signal... Just who’s left who in the lurch?
I don’t claim... I never said I was perfect.
I’m rightly shanghaied now though, rightly fucked;
I mean, shagger that I am, impotent,
powerless to come between her and all harm.
Just let her turn up, no damage done,
and I can make it all better, start again.
My fresh-start act. That’d be true to form.
[Pause.] Your man told me the other day how the knot,
one of those little brown birds of his, takes
its name from of all people King Cnut.
Who did not try to hold back the waves, but showed
it cannot be done, shake your fist and shout
all you want. [Pause.] Oh I’m on top of your tricks,
the whole pack of you, don’t think I’m so blind.
I hear the tide. But I’m in no mood to be drowned.
47