Bone
Sometimes, after she left me, I would dream the moon itself was howling.
September 30th, 1962. I watch Spurs beat Villa 1-0 in a scrappy match at White Hart Lane, get the train back to Enfield Town and then walk down to the Cricketers to celebrate my twenty-seventh birthday. Alone.
I drink, and watch some blokes playing darts, and drink a bit more, and soon enough the clock behind the bar says it’s half eleven. The barman’s let me stay after closing, just for a bit, but now he gives me the old ‘Sorry, mate, I want to go home’ look, so I finish off one last whiskey and walk out into the misty night. I light up a Modern Tip, take a deep, long drag, and set off down Chase Side, a bit pissed but almost content, sure now that what I'm going to do tonight makes sense. An old woman dragging a little shopping-trolley behind her shuffles towards me, whistling. There’s a tiny dog, a Pekinese it looks like, tucked up in the trolley, its head sticking out, its pink tongue lolling cutely from its mouth. It makes a half-hearted attempt to lunge and lick me as I pass it. I smile. The earth can spin magic when it wants to. If I could whistle, I’d whistle too.
It’s cold, getting colder. It seems to take forever to get there but, eventually, I cross over Lancaster Road and spot my future owners standing in the shadows outside the Hop Poles. I take a deep breath. I can hear music from inside the pub, a band playing Sweet Home Chicago. Badly. Unusual for the place to still be open, I think. A police car passes. I look up. The sky is starless and vast and just for a moment I could be anywhere. I feel my whistling mood start to dissipate. I don’t want to be here, not really - it’s not what I’d have chosen a year ago. It’s not what anyone would choose. I wish I could rewind. I wish...
No time for all that, though, no time for all that. I walk towards them, shoulders back, chest out, trying to do my never-really-convincing 'no-one messes with me' thing. I stop walking. The horse is huge, just as I expected. If it stood up on its hind legs, it'd be three times my height. Its coat looks sleek, dark brown, though it’s hard to be sure. It turns its great head towards me, looks down at me. Its eyes are black, inert. I see it take a deep breath, hear it exhale again as I approach them. The cart behind the horse is sepia-tinted, rickety, of another time. Two big wooden wheels at the back, two smaller ones at the front.
The Rag And Bone Man, like his horse, is massive. He’s standing there, leaning on the cart, bearded, long-haired, smoking a fag. His skin looks dark brown in this light, his features hard to make out under his flat cap. I can see no eyes, nothing distinct there at all. He's wearing an overcoat and holding a lead in his left hand, a lead that's attached to a dog's collar. Which is attached to a dog. The collar looks heavy, silver, studded. The dog, of course, is enormous - wolflike, mean, malignant. An image springs to mind of Spike in Tom and Jerry; I smile and The Man says, 'What's funny?' ‘Nothing,' I say, ‘Sorry.’ No eyes. He definitely has no eyes. I wonder if he can see me. How he can see me. It starts to rain. 'Shall we go in the pub?’ I say, ‘Talk in there?’
‘We can’t go inside your places,’ says The Man, ‘you know that. We’ll do the first part here,’ he adds, his voice suddenly gentler, suddenly almost kind. ‘Right.’ His dog lifts its great head, stares into my eyes. I try to stare right back, show I’m not frightened of it, see into its soul or something, but I can’t do it. Ginny always said I’m no good with animals. Or children. Or women. All I see for sure in the few moments I can bear to face the thing is that there’s certainly no gentleness there, no kindness. Just a willingness to do whatever The Man wants. I shift my gaze first. I hear the horse whinny, snort. ‘The songs,’ The Man says, ‘the ones you want to play for the woman, and for the child, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. They told me you'd show me the way. I can’t even manage to play ‘F’ properly. G, Em, C, and D I’m fine with.’ I notice the nervy, jokey tone in my voice, remind myself to be serious. This Man isn’t exactly famed for his sense of humour.
The dog groans, saliva dripping from its mouth.
‘You know we’ll own you? Inhabit you? You do understand that?’ I nod. And The Man, facing me, abruptly drops the dog’s lead then, holds his hands out in front of him, says something I can’t understand in a voice like tar and phlegm and dusk, then turns towards the cart. There’s a bang and stinking smoke covers us all. I cough, close my eyes: the stench is awful, the smoke stings like needles. There’s a rumble like thunder, a second’s silence, I open my eyes and the smoke has disappeared as quickly as it came. A little cheesy, a little melodramatic, if you ask me, but I decide not to say anything. There’s a scratched, knackered old guitar in The Man’s hand now. It looks like a Kalamazoo KG-14. Cheap, a bit crap: $12.50 it would have cost, originally. It looks just like Robert Johnson’s. Oh yes: I know my stuff. ‘Here,’ The Man says. I take the guitar from him. A car drives past. No-one has come in or out of the pub since I got here. The music seems to have stopped. It’s quiet here, so quiet. I can smell cigar smoke, aniseed, piss, petrol, creosote, something like seaweed, more piss, something like the gas from my old heater. ‘Try it,’ The Man says, unclipping the dog’s lead from its collar.
So. This is what it’s come to: standing on a street corner after midnight, on the frayed edge of the city, playing an old, old acoustic guitar. ‘It doesn’t need tuning,’ says The Man. There’s pride in his voice. I start gently, slowly, a few notes, a couple of scales, a riff or two, and then I get going: Come On In My Kitchen, Terraplane Blues, Kind Hearted Woman Blues, then some Muddy Waters, some Howlin’ Wolf, and on to stuff I swear I’ve never played or even heard before, stuff that’s more jazzy, more weird. Jesus. This is... incredible. My fingers are fast, elegant, cutting. I’m slick and fiery, chords and individual notes kissing each other on the cheek, then fucking, then kissing again: clean, then dirty, then clean. I try the first chord of the baby’s song, then the second. By the time I come to the F, I’m flying. The best feeling in the world. I play the one I wrote yesterday for Ginny: I’m bending, twisting, screaming, sighing, coming. Ecstatic. Perfect. There’s no gap between my brain and my fingers, my fingers and the strings, between me, the guitar, and the music. No gap between me and God.
The Man holds his hand up finally, tells me to stop. I do so, reluctantly, breathing hard, realise I’m dripping with sweat. ‘Thank you,’ I say. The Man half-smiles. He takes the guitar from me, puts it gently on the cart. ‘It’s five o’clock. Let’s go to the Bridge. We can do the rest there.’
Five o’clock! I wonder whether I’ve really been playing for hours. I start to ask him but before I get a word out, The Man jumps up onto his cart. The dog, no lead in sight now, no collar either, glances at me, then follows him. There’s a whipcrack and they move off round the corner into Baker Street. I trot to catch up, unsure whether to walk in the road or on the pavement beside them. I decide to walk behind.
The air is so, so cold now, fierce and icy. We head up towards Clay Hill. The harsh clops of the horse, the creaks of the old cart, the low moans and grumbles of the dog and - floating in and out - the echoes of the blues they’ve gifted me, all carve through this Middlesex night, rendering it ancient, reclaiming it somehow from now, from time itself. An owl hoots. A street lamp starts blinking on and off. For the first time tonight, I feel a little scared. Thrilled and scared.
There’s no traffic. There’s always traffic here, of course, even at this time, but there’s none, none at all. As we pass Captain Marryat’s old house, I glance up, as I always do, at the blue plaque, and catch a face at the window staring down at us, a face that quickly disappears behind a curtain. The Captain died a century ago but I know this face is his. I know. It’s that kind of night.
We head past The Goat and up Forty Hill. Quarter of an hour later, we get to Maiden’s Bridge.
‘Here,’ says The Man. The horse stops, and he and the dog jump down from the cart. I can hear Turkey Brook flowing beneath us, unusually harsh and wild, unusually loud. There’s a sharp breeze, spots of rain. The Man walks slowly up to me, the dog by his side. He stops, then comes closer. He’d be staring hard at me if he had eyes. He gets closer and closer, bends his head down until his nose is almost touching mine, the tips of his boots actually touching mine. His breath smells like stale wine and burnt flesh. I’m looking where his eyes should be but there really is nothing - just skin. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ I say. He takes a step back. The horse snorts. The dog snuffles, walks round and round me: first one way, then the other. After a couple of minutes, it sits down next to me and I feel its nose touch my right hand. I watch it open its mouth, place its jaws carefully round my hand. I feel warm drool sliming over my hand and my fingers, feel the beast’s four canine teeth rest on my skin. It’s ready, waiting for its master’s command.
When we first met, before we got together, I lied. I told Ginny I could play the guitar, that I could make it sing, that there was no separation for me between music and life and love. I told her one day I’d take her to the Delta. She laughed, though I could tell she wanted to believe me. When she left and my world had turned to dust, I knew the only way to reclaim her was to show her she was wrong about me, show her my soul, my core, my joy, show her everything I hadn’t been able to show her because I couldn’t open myself to her, because I was scared, because, as she said, I was ‘too fucking dull’ and ‘too fucking bookish’ and my ‘fucking so-called life had been ‘too fucking easy’. I wanted so much to give her the music in me, the music we all share, the music that’s ours, theirs, yours. I wanted so much to make her feel the way Robert Johnson made me feel. But I didn’t know how. Or, rather, I wasn’t sure how. Until now.
‘Ready?’ The Rag and Bone Man sounds impatient. ‘Yes.’ ‘We need to give you the... medicine. Now. Before sunrise.’ He takes a step back. For a moment, I can still feel the damp, dripping warmth of the dog’s lips on my hand and then I feel its teeth sink in, cutting, slicing, ripping through skin and soft tissue, ripping through bone. I can hear screams and they’re mine. The pain is all the pain in the world, pain way beyond this world, and then hell’s spit surges into me, there’s a moment of sweet calm, and I drift away.
I’m in Mississippi. I can tell by the trees and the sky. Theres a little mist around but the sun is bright. I’m on a small wooden stage in a sort of woodland clearing, playing the guitar, playing beautifully to a big crowd of kids, kids of all races, kids singing freedom songs with me, kids singing the blues with me, kids smiling, happy. This is where I belong. This is the future. Suddenly I hear shouts, screams, see a mob of men charging through the crowd towards me. Shit. I drop the guitar, jump off the stage and try to run but I trip and fall and soon clubs and iron bars are smacking into me, boots are stomping on me, hands are round my neck choking me, and I know it’s time to die. They’re going to kill me because I deserve it, because I’m not who I say I am. One of the men yanks me up off the wet grass and smashes his fist into my face. I feel - I hear - my nose crack. Just before I lose consciousness I see one of them has a noose in his hand. He throws it over the branch of a tree right above me.
I wake. I hear the drone of a plane, and birdsong. There’s a strong smell of alcohol, whiskey maybe. I’m lying on my back on cold, stoney ground. I can feel the neck of the guitar across my abdomen. It must be morning, though the moon is up there still, competing with the sun. I smile: I’m alive. Just a dream. I’m in London, not Mississippi, and it’s done. The stuff is in my veins. The stuff is in every cell now and I feel good. They can come for me, get me to do whatever they want. They’re welcome to my soul. The only thing that matters is that I can play like Robert now. The only thing that matters is that I’ll get Ginny back.
I lift my head and shoulders and reach for the guitar. And I see it. Mocking me. At the end of my right arm there’s just a stump: bloody, torn, mangled flesh wrapped round a crimson-grim, raw mess of bone. A stump. No hand. No fingers.
No hand.
No fingers.