Read Her Last Call To Louis MacNeice for Free Online Page A

seven.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Magnum.’
    ‘Get here soonest, leave the humour at the office.’
    Poured a Scotch, took a fast slug, muttered ‘crazy bloody bitch’ and rang Doc.
    ‘That you Coop, how’s she cutting?’
    ‘I found her.’
    ‘Good man, where?’
    ‘Brixton.’
    ‘Figures. Did you deal with her?’
    ‘We had lunch.’
    ‘What? Are you stone raving mad. Tell me at least you got the shooter back, tell me that.’
    ‘I managed to get away from her.’
    ‘I’m confused Cooper, or you’re winding me up. We’ve been hunting her, half the firm on overtime, me calling in favours from every breed of wanker and you’re saying
you
escaped.’
    ‘I’m going to change the locks.’
    ‘Fuck-me-pink, you need to change your bloody attitude.’
    He hung up.
    A large package arrived next morning. The postman had to ring as it took me ages to undo the new locks. Grunting, I pulled open the door. As he handed me the package he winked. I asked, ‘Something wrong with yer eye mate?’
    ‘Nothing wrong with ME.’
    ‘Keep that up, it will change.’
    And slammed the door. Scrawled all over the paper was ‘S.W.A.L.K., a heart, I love you stallion, and LIPS’. I said, jeez, who could this be? Tore it open, praying to hell-and-gone it wasn’t incendiary. I already knew it was explosive, a book fell out.
Autumn Journal
by Louis MacNeice. Swore, this fuck again. I was very tired of the guy. Still, the book had a nice feel to it. Old leather cover, gold-leaf pages and one of them index fingies you see in bibles. She’d written a note, what a surprise.
    ‘My David, David Mia
Without you
What warehouse of the soul
awaits me now.’
    Deep, I said, very friggin’ deep.
    I used the index and read:
    ‘And I remember Spain
at Easter, ripe as an egg
for revolt and ruin
though for a tripper
the rain was worse
than the surly
or the worried or the haunted faces.’
    I wasn’t getting this. Maybe he was one of those guys you had to hear aloud. So I cleared my throat, looked around a bit self-consciously and took my shot.
    ‘The churches full of saints
tortured on racks of marble
and the Escorial
cold for ever
within the heart of Philip
as if veneer could hold
the rotten guts
and crumpled bones together.’
    Yeah, well, some people had a flair for it. The Doc, now he’d read the telephone directory and you felt moved. I reckon the Irish always sound as if they mean it, as if it’s personal. Us lot, we’ve always one ear open for the hint of ridicule.
    My old man, he fancied his voice. Sunday evenings he’d read to my mother and I from the Good Book. All the Old Testament stuff. Jeez, he was hot for that fire and brimstone, unmerciful punishments and ferocious suffering. The torment of the damned got him hot. Silly fucker would drone on about begots and begats. My mother punctuating the silences with compliments and praise, she can’t have been right in the head, or could she possibly have been taking the piss? How I wish it were so. Truth is, she was the worst kind of criminal. She supported him in his tyranny of bullying and beatings, encouraged him in the nurture of those fuckin’ pigeons. The face of gentility and aspiring middle class, she was the public face of the beast. After he took his dive, she became a professional widow, leapt into black weeds and wore them like a trophy. ‘Hey – see me – not only had I a husband but I buried him
and
of course, there’ll be no other man.’ As if anyone would have the cow. I got the fuck away from her as soon as I was able and it wasn’t soon enough.
    Long before the psychologists, the heart-juicers came trippin’ along with fancy names like dysfunctional, our family unit was full fledged fucked.

    The old man’s Christian name was Alistair. Not that he’d a drop of Christianity. He had a framed tapestry in our pokey hall which said:
    MAN PROPOSES
GOD DISPOSES
    Yeah.
    Alistair the righteous, the unholy more like. ‘Don’t think he’d planned on bein’