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Before Your Very Eyes
Alex George
Extract from ‘For Sidney Bechet’ from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Extract from ‘Doubt’. Writers: Smith, Gallup, Tolhurst © Fiction Songs Ltd Reproduced with permission.
For my mother and father,
Alison and Julian George, with love and apologies for the language
On me your voice falls as they love should, like an enormous yes.
For Sidney Bechet
Philip Larkin
Table of Contents
Simon Teller kissed the card.
It was a hesitant, surreptitious, don’t mind me kiss. A small, I’m not really doing this kiss. His lips barely puckered as they brushed against the white cardboard. It felt good. He read the card once more, and then kissed it again. As he did so, he made a ‘mwah’ noise. Then, feeling rather silly, he put it down on the kitchen table.
‘OK,’ he said out loud. ‘Good.’
He picked the card up again, and walked into the sitting room.
There he cursed silently. That was the problem with these converted flats. The builders had got rid of all the fireplaces. Without fireplaces you had no mantelpieces, and without mantelpieces – well. Where was one supposed to put invitations?
For that was what Simon Teller had been performing his solitary act of osculation upon. An invitation, yes, but the word failed to convey the full import of the rectangle of reinforced card that Simon held. This was no ordinary invitation. This invitation was the key to God knows what, the ticket to God knows where, the introduction to God knows who.
Simon went over to the record player and lifted the stylus on to the waiting vinyl. Sonny Rollins broke into an effervescent ‘St Thomas’, his joyful, bristling, honking saxophone reflecting Simon’s own mood. Simon propped the card up against the stereo and stepped back to admire it. There was no doubt about it: it looked good. All right, the handwriting was messy, and the green ink had smudged badly. But that didn’t matter. What mattered were the names scrawled along the top of the card.
Angus and Fergus.
Yes yes yes.
Angus and Fergus were Simon’s neighbours. They lived in the flat immediately above his. They had moved in about
