Siren

By Philip Matthews

Siren: ‘It is a good advance you humans have made, Bernard. Once inamorati drowned in order to join with us. Now we can join easily in water with no harm to you. That is good. It is better to commune here in this life and not among the shades, as before. The way is clearer now, as you will see.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Matthews
• Release date: Jul 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005469078

Philip Matthews

Writer's life, hidden, frugal, self-absorbed, no TV or social media, a few good friends - but the inner life, ahhhhh. Recommend it to anyone.

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SIREN

PHILIP MATTHEWS

He dreamed a veilèd maid

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

Heard in the calm of thought…

P.B. Shelly

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9781005469078

Copyright Philip Matthews 2021

For over a century this has been understood: magnanimity is like profit to the charitable, in the way that kindness shores up a damaged life, making space for – not love as such – but more what used to be called regard, that is, acknowledgement of another presence and its truth. That is the danger of the other, that the revelation might be more than one could bear: that fortune is contagious, for good or ill. Why we like the famous, laughter, success, appearance.

Not what you’d need to read first thing in the morning, not long out of bed. But this is what is written here, a scrap of paper on the kitchen table – probably torn from one of the paperbacks stacked on the windowsill in the main room. This is what comes of strong weed out under the moonlit sky, lapping water in the offing, gentle breeze in the mellow night. Will he ever get used to the great outdoors, two thousand miles of ocean at his back, the nearest person probably at least two miles away? This is not the back garden, familiar windows all about, decent folk abed already, steady low music from the BT player down on the grass, being stoned serving only to prove that he is at home.

Stoned out here means your head goes around the world, out to the fruity stars, bouncing off that full moon – last night dropping into the placid ocean. No one is watching, maintaining control: people who know you expecting you to be who they know. Out here, you are not anybody at all – just barely controlled impressions like storms on the horizon. And the momentary thrill – do I dare or do I dare? – then the recoil to a fateful doubt: Am I going wrong?

That gets him out of the house this morning, out under the bright big sky, low hills over that way, a lot of ocean the other way, bright sun in the clear sky down the middle. That’s the problem with being free to do anything you like: you only discover how frightened you are of doing anything at all. Like there’s no cover anymore, no sanctions, no neighbours to keep a check on you, no limits. It’s true what the man said: total freedom is total inertia – just stuck out on an empty beach on a bright Spring morning with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

And that’s when he sees the woman standing on the rock down towards the water’s edge. A naked woman. Just standing there, arms by her sides. His response? A solid dart of fear, like a hot knife down his spine: seeing himself in the night on his knees not far from where he is standing now, crying for someone to come and love him. That kind of fear: like a fervent wish could transport you to another reality, especially when you are way too stoned, too exposed.

He does look around him to see if the rest of the world has changed much. There is the holiday home he is renting out-of-season not far away, his car, the contorted rowan tree out the back, low hills, clouds, and of course the sun ever-shining down on him. And still the woman stands naked on the rock down near the ocean, water calm towards the island to the left, tight heavy rollers hitting the beach to the right.

So he has flipped, no longer reality, projecting a fantasy in broad daylight. With this sinking thought, he sees the woman raise her right hand and wave to attract his attention. If he turns his back to her, closes his eyes and thinks this fantasy away, then it will be alright. He even vows that he has learned a lesson. He had never believed in hallucination, no matter how stoned, no matter what drug. If there was such a thing, he would have hallucinated when Miriam dropped him. He can remember the nights strenuously visualising out of his memory of her – a youth of nineteen buried beneath the bedclothes – making his lost love as real as he could and feeling the cold suck of rejection at his back, a bottomless pit he would never plumb no matter how hard he wanted to.

‘Can you please help me?’

He is startled by the sound, never mind the words, how it emphasises the low rumble of the ocean, which he realises he has never consciously heard before, even though he has lived here now for two months. Two thousand miles of ocean pressing onto the wet sand with such a patient steady boom. The sound is suddenly so vivid that he can feel the ground tremble, though he knows that is just his febrile imagination busily distracting him.

The woman on the rock can’t be real.

He will walk away, back to the house: he is walking away, back to the house.

‘Please.’

The strange – eerie strange – thing here is that her voice is as though right at his ear.

Now he is certain that she is not real – yet he turns and looks down the beach to see her standing on the rock, right arm still raised. Nothing for it then but to walk down over the soft sand, curious and apprehensive, not sure just what will happen if she is really there on the rock – or how he might feel if she is not.

The first thing he notices is that her hair is dry, which prompts him to ask:

‘How did you get there?’

He is aware, fully aware, that he is projecting here, like he has stepped forward out of himself – something he has never before done. And yes, there is the background nervousness as he wonders how he will get back to himself, how he will feel is she suddenly pops out of his sight and it is just another day in his life.

And she replies:

‘Some Columbian friends dropped me off as they were passing on their way to make a delivery.’

He accepts this explanation wholly and without question, and asks:

‘Where’s your luggage?’

She shrugs, a very life-like shrug, even her modest breasts trembling realistically:

‘I didn’t bring any. It was all very sudden.’

He nods as though this too makes sense. He wonders if there is another question he might ask her, then asks without thinking:

‘Why here? This is the middle of nowhere.’

She nods now in turn, her long brown hair shimmering in the sunlight:

‘It was the most convenient spot for them.’

He really has no answer to this, so plausible is her explanation. And then, just as he notices that the rock stands in the very centre of a wide pool of water, seaweed in places to show it is a permanent feature, she asks him:

‘Can you help me down, please?’

The pool looks deepish, so he counters:

‘Can’t you just jump down? It’s not very high.’

She looks so disappointed by this answer that he immediately bends down and removes his shoes and socks, rolls up his pants, and steps gingerly into what he expects will be – and turns out to be – cold seawater. At once the woman jumps down into the pool, landing just in front of him.

He does notice at once the curious aspect of this event: her two feet enter the water without disturbing the surface in any way whatsoever. He is both startled by this and yet not disturbed in any way. This is a fantasy – he accepts that now – while yet allowing that it is a real fantasy, meaning that he accepts that it is a true fantasy. And he is not even surprised by what she says to him next:

‘It is a good advance you humans have made, Bernard. Once inamorati drowned in order to join with us. Now we can join easily in water with no harm to you. That is good. It is better to commune here in this life and not among the shades, as before. The way is clearer now, as you will see.’

His very first impulse on hearing this is to reach forward to touch her hand. It’s not there: his own hand passes through her hand.

The disappointment is sudden and very deep. He turns away and wades back out of the pool, bends to take up his shoes and socks and marches away up the beach, floundering on the soft sand, the harsh grains grinding against his cold wet flesh.

His strongest thought is this: if he had somewhere to go, he would go there. Trouble is, he has nowhere to go.

Now he is standing in the middle of the main room, looking out the long holiday window at the panorama of low hills and islands, the intervening ocean, sunlight shining on everything within his view. It is like decision time, he very resolute with his arms akimbo, teeth pressing into his lower lip. His thoughts are not rational. He is thinking that fantasy doesn’t really work, that much he has learned this morning. Off your skull in the middle of the night, knees buried in soft sand, doesn’t get you what you want. What did he mean, anyway, asking for someone to love him? He has parents who still love him, seeing it all his life in their eyes and so knowing what love is like. How helpless it is, how vulnerable – think Miriam, fool. Strange how he can suddenly see it: what love is like, the love he sought last night, that is. Like the word he used last night before going out to beg a blessing from the open heavens: regard. How the French use it: like actually seeing someone, seeing the discontinuity, the fragmentary, someone always just coming into view.

‘I see only the colours, Bernard. That’s all.’

She is standing over by the fireplace, near the wonky stove and the turf debris that always seems to surround it. He remembers only now that he had noticed her absence on the rock when looking out at the panorama, that there was even a passing feeling of relief that he could walk out of his fantasy so easily.

Her nakedness is all the more noticeable here indoors. He asks:

‘Can you flit about – with no effort, I mean?’

‘I’m just with you, Bernard. That’s all. Wherever you are.’

It’s the word you that gets to him, sounding like a penetration into him. For an instant he losses the sense of distance from her, so that he feels as though she is merging with him in her intangibility. Then he hears the word colour – which has a special resonance with him – so that he says to her:

‘You have a blue tinge to your flesh, you know. Like coloured glass.’

And she does have a blue tinge, sometimes faint but just now very evident. It’s a blue that hovers between cold and electric, her body shifting in appeal, the yearning in him like a piece of elastic.

She is watching him with a speculative interest:

‘That’s why they call us Sirens, Bernard. Sitting on the Rock of Ages, combing our hair.’

And he sees her combing her hair, blue sparks leaping from her like angel dust. This is too much, his sensibility still trembling like a bell after the weed:

‘And why are you naked then?’

‘It's how you have me, Bernard. A man looking at his bride.’

Now that does shake him: quiet holiday home out of season in the middle of nowhere and he looking down to see that her body is entirely hairless. And, yes, he does see his bride: a sex doll. His candour astonishes him, but only after he has spoken:

‘Is that the best I can do?’

And her frankness also astonishes him:

‘Well, it is sex that you are thinking about, Bernard. Isn’t it?’

His voice is plaintive this time, which he doesn’t try to control:

‘I didn’t mean to. Honest.’

And she does laugh – a silent laugh:

‘Does it matter? I’m not here anyway.’

Now he is confused. He is the kind of man who wants to confess to some woman – not knowing what is to be confessed – only knowing that women prize knowledge over hugs and kisses, knowledge a road where sex is a fence. But this fantasy-woman already knows – of that he is certain. So what is she looking for from him?

He is eating breakfast at the kitchen table: oats, grapes and milk, lots of milk. His eyes are closed: the only way he can be with himself now. At school the phrase used was reserved, a reserved boy – which the unkindly termed mother’s boy, that is, a pet. He drank his lessons like cold water, a lot of cold water, while he covered the back pages of his copybooks – which he knew from experience would never be used – with drawings of cats and dogs. Why cats and dogs? Simple: there are many different varieties of each, and he could on a whim invent new breeds himself, fantastical creatures that might never have been able to walk, breed, eat or shit. One teacher caught him – the steady Mister Gormley – who looked at his pets, then at him, then just nodded, knowing that little Bennie Gilmartin did the work required of him by the education system.

‘So that explains the colours, Bernard.’

The woman is seated on the far side of the table from him, still nude though not so provoking just now. He has discovered that she is surprisingly obedient of him, while he has also discovered that he fears this apparent submission of hers, if only because she isn’t real and he is therefore in danger of getting too involved – even obsessed – with his fantasy.

Just now, however, he has a much greater fear:

‘You can read my mind?’

The slight movement of her lovely head indicates that she is being patient with him:

‘I see only the colours, Bernard. As I have already explained. But allow me. Those strange creatures you drew: remember that you used coloured pencils. Those coloured shapes I saw then made me so content, Bernard. You have no idea. How you loved the reds then, and how you feared the blue. I could see that so clearly: what being alive really meant. I could feel the pull of the red, while I used to embrace the blues, to keep you from completely abandoning them.’

He is nodding, remembering how the tray of pencils changed over time, the reds and yellows being whittled down, while the blues, dark and light, remained untouched, seemingly like erect sentinels to him even back then in his childhood.

‘I don’t think I feared them as such. It was more what I felt lay behind them. Maybe death, but more something like extinction, the light out for ever.’

She is nodding, for all the world at the moment like a real person holding an intimate conversation with him at breakfast time:

‘That was love, Bernard. Though it took years for you to discover that.’

For an instant, a tiny tiny instant, he wished that she was real, that she was a woman who loved him here in this isolated holiday home, with whom he could chat over breakfast.

But love?

‘It was Mom who gave me my first drawing book. I didn’t know that she had known about my doodling at school. And she gave me those fat wax crayons. I didn’t like them at first, you know. Very clumsy, blobs of colour. But the colours…’

‘Yes. I swam in those colours, those soft pastels. So rich and deep.’

He’s suddenly impatient, the slide of emotion seeming false.

‘No. Enough of that.’

She has pulled her head back, hair falling away from her shoulders:

‘But I do love how red and blue play through you, Bernard. How the blue tints your reds – making them fierce like life must be for you – and how blue catches fire in you, your will clamping against the death you fear so much.’

Excess here too, the woman like a child with goggling eyes, though her language he finds earnest but excessive. He gets to his feet, places the bowl and spoon in the sink, turns to ask her if she would like tea or coffee, then catches himself on. But she does say:

‘Have tea, Bernard. The colour of your coffee in the morning is dull, though it is fine in the afternoon.’

Her nipples are distended, though he can’t think why, that is before he realises that she shouldn’t be able to do that. Again he is candid in a way unlike him:

‘Can you get aroused?’

She smiles with a touch of abandon, like a giddy teenager:

‘Pleasure, Bernard. Tea gives me great pleasure. Do you know the colour? It is a dull red, the kind of tone you get if you add a steady green. I don’t ordinarily like green, but it does make the colour of tea very inviting. Does tea taste as good as it looks to me?’

Her nipples are even more distended by now. Yes – and it is not left-over high – but the sight is very erotic. He manages to get the kettle going, a teabag in a mug, his back to her, his penis nodding against his boxers. Still with his back to her, watching the kettle fuss as it heats up, he says as firmly as he can:

‘You must dress yourself. You really have to do that.’

Her voice is right at his ear:

‘Then you must dress me, Bernard. You see me as you want to see me, remember that always.’

The only thought he has – can have, it seems – is the fear of seeing her again just now, especially now standing just behind him, naked all the way down her body. But even this thought convulses him: the full erection struggling against his clothes, the heat like an oil over his entire body. He can only say:

‘I can’t…’

And then his hand is squeezing the erection, squeezing his hot member until it spurts. He buckles again the cabinet, head down, a low groan.

‘It is love, Bernard. You need to understand Eros. It is Eros that draws us together, all down through the ages, my dear man. Eros for me is music, but for you it is the carnal drive. That is how you are made, my love. Let us be blissful now together, you with the pulse of pleasure and me with the sweet music.’

Eyes closed again, mug of tea hot in his hand, his loins still a-tremor: he resists the feeling of joy. He’s not a puritan, could screw around college like any randy student – good at it, too, easy charm, smooth hands. That was birds-in-the-hand, this is bird-in-the-bush: even the memory of her fantasy-breasts sends a pulse down his dick. He sees he could easily wank himself to death with her standing there naked in the room. Better drowning by far, get it over and done with.

‘Eros is the bond between us, Bernard. That is love, aching to re-join.’

Keeps his eyes closed:

‘No. This works two ways. You must control the flow on your side too. You need to do that.’

He feels the chill so clearly that he opens his eyes. She is sitting at his side on the sofa. Even her knees work magic on him.

‘There is no flow, Bernard, as you call it. It is you who sees the separation, and so the flow is in you, from you into me. I am where you are, my hands your hands; these legs you admire now, your legs. Do you understand yet? You love me with passion, and you always will.’

He puts the mug on the floor, stands up and declares:

‘Then it is better if I drown, as your lovers used to do.’

She stands up too, and moves to be close to him, the blue sheen on her skin tremoring so slightly that a corresponding chill begins to stream down his own body.

It’s the longing that will kill him: that’s the truth as he sees it now.

She shakes her head, tresses sliding over her shoulders:

‘No, you won’t die, Bernard. You will learn, though you may have to learn the hard way. The way of exhaustion.’

She steps back so that he can see her entire:

‘So begin the lesson, my beloved.’

And it is true what she has said. Watching her nipples engorge, he finds that he is the one engorging them. That he is as though pulling something out of himself. And even as he wonders how far this can go, he sees her open her legs slowly, bending so that her groin comes forward.

Sex-doll.

His arousal is tremendous, like nothing he had ever experienced before with any woman. Not big, not eager, just a strength in his penis that would allow it pierce stone. Not really an arousal in the sexual sense: more like his entire body comes to a peak of preparedness.

And at the peak of his exhilaration the fantasy-woman just disappears.

‘It was your painting of the blue flower that drew me out, beloved. Remember that for me now.’

He is seated on a tuft of dry bog above the ocean, seagulls swooping in the sunlight, water glinting playfully. All alone for miles about, he finds it safe to speak out:

‘It was Miriam’s older brother. He was in his twenties and I was seventeen then, I had just started the art course at college. He called himself an enthusiast, and said his equipment was prosumer – which meant that core elements of his camera were to a professional standard. SLR, he called it, single lens reflex. Art is supposed to be strictly anti-camera – it has to be, I suppose, after all it was the invention of the camera that turned the painting trade into an art-form. I mean, so painters could go on making a living. Anyway, I liked some of his photographs, mainly because I liked the subjects he was attracted to, mainly cloud formations, flowers and trees. He said it was because these things were always unique: no two flowers or trees were ever alike. Of course, this kind of distinction wouldn’t mean very much to the average viewer, so he didn’t get to exhibit very often. But that picture that you like, this is how it happened. He had been up some mountain to get the sunrise and the kind of streaming cloud formations often seen in the summer in the mountains. Coming down afterwards, he came upon this bank in a bog covered with the usual heather and bilberry. But there were also a bed of blue flowers he had never seen before. Now, just as he prepared to take some shots, didn’t the sun rise above a shoulder of the mountain off to his right. There was still a hint of the dawn russet in the light and he was amazed by the effect of this subtle light on these blue flowers. So he took many shots as quickly as he could, especially of one particular flower, which rose prominently about the others. There was one particular shot among these that really drew me. Martin – that was the brother’s name – suggested that I paint it. I was reluctant at first, really daunted by the exactness of the whole image. So far, I had been daubing at best, a kind of freehand patterning – in effect playing with colour. He pressed me, and only when Miriam joined in did I feel I had to make a stab at it anyway. What Martin did for me was this. He open the digital original of the photo in Photoshop, overlaid it with a set of lines that broke the image into six by six squares. I had to learn new techniques. I needed to use paints rather than crayons or pencils. I hated oils from the very beginning at college, and so concentrated on acrylic instead, which was cleaner and the colours more vibrant. Hated canvas too, saggy and coarse, only good for throwing paint about. I like fine fibre board instead. As for the painting itself: I was surprised how easily I could in effect copy the detail of the photograph onto the board, and learned very quickly how to vary the colour range to better suit the paint image. That was fine. But when I came to the flower itself – well, I can tell you that I was reduced to tears. I did not think I could catch the subtlety of that blue. Look, there was blue, there was a paleness – not white – and then there was an overlay of the faintest russet – not red itself, but a colour tempered in a way I could not fathom. I daren’t try to work on the board itself, so I tested and tested on another piece of board. It was only when I remarked the problem to one of my teachers – an old woman who had been famous for a year back before I was born – that I got the answer. Know what she said? She told me to paint wet-on-wet and to trust myself. Took a week. Needed to find the paleness first: this was the lightest grey possible. Then the russet overlay. I toned off scarlet with a hint of yellow and a smidgeon of blue, and created a very liquid wash. So come the day: up early, the first prayer uttered since puberty, then made a soft wash of Cobalt Blue. Ok. So to the board and dive in: lay a thin wash of the blue, add a dab of the grey, work them with eye and hand only. You might not believe this, but I knew when exactly to drop some russet on top. I let it spread and settle, then took a sheet of toilet paper and touched it for an instant to the surface. Went away for a long walk, wanting to whistle but not knowing how. The finish is coarser that the photo image – which probably says a lot about modern cameras – but the painted image was pure art. I could see myself in that flower in a way I could never see myself in any photograph, no matter how good it is.’

He’s thirsty, so he gets in the car and drives to the village and sits alone in the back of the bar with a pint of stout, looking at the wall opposite. Nothing else.

‘It was the flower that brought me out, Bernard. When you saw yourself in the flower, beloved, you were looking at me.’

He has a second pint and afterwards stops by the village general store. He needs milk and oatmeal, looks for grapes but finds only small hard peaches available. Nothing for it but to take them, he remembering the big juicy peaches on a hot afternoon in Marseille, juice running down his arm. Had been afraid of the sun at first, but could never get over the sight of the local people getting on with their lives as though it was just another day. Never anything but a tourist despite living there for almost a year.

Problem at the checkout: not enough change after the pints, so he had to dig out the wad of notes from his back pocket. Did it as discreetly as possible, still about twenty of the fifty-euro notes left, but old Mrs O’Donnell never misses a trick. The big note awkward for her today – quiet midweek – so they settle so that he receives change for twenty, while the thirty euro balance will serve as credit for the future.

‘Marseille, when?’

He’s driving out along the empty road traversing the undulating open bogland, so he can take the time to answer, speaking out:

‘Long story.