in the back of one of her cupboards. I saved it for the
following day.
Caught in heavy rain it dissolved inside my pocket –
liquid lemon gold.
The alchemist of Boatswain’s Clench.
I wrote down in my notebook,
licked the golden paste off of my fingers.
I felt shivery – cold down to my bones.
I lit the stove and stoked it up – hot as it would go.
A hornet woke up in the corner of the
studio, buzzed angrily, curled its sting against the glass.
The alarm went off.
Martin Cooper glared at me from the river’s
edge, picked a big rock up and threw it in the water.
Do I seem ungrateful, Ava?
goodjob goodgirl bigbreak
That night the B&B owner told me that her son
was having trouble with his baby – eight weeks old. He’d
asked her to come up to London and help out.
You’ll be fine here won’t you? You know your way
around the place, and honestly it’s nice for me to know
that it’s looked after while I’m gone.
A house all to myself, Ava.
Time and space and light and air
and the only thing I owed
them in return was art.
Oh I went mad, Ava.
There was this tiny museum at Boatswain’s
Clench, at the top of the village.
Various tableaux with mannequins inside.
One was an old pub scene – low lit.
Fibreglass figures in matted wigs, tankards, waxy
jackets.
The audio was triggered when you walked into the
room – a rumbling chatter of lively, gravel-voiced men,
clinking, swishing liquid, humming a half-remembered
tune – that tune Ava,
I don’t know what it is,
can’t find it anywhere, it plays, it loops, I can even hear it
now…
