What is
I
have a real monkey’s paw in my bedside cabinet. It sits in there, alone in the
dark and obliviously indifferent to the concept of being careful what you wish
for. My great-uncle Job had a job as a
tea salesman, journeyed out to Assam in the thirties, and returned with a small
dismembered hand which had once been attached to a langur. They were plentiful
in those days of empire, endangered now of course.
Anyway,
I got married last month to Jennifer. It was no whirlwind romance- we had known
one another since school, on and off, and like the two outcasts we were then,
eventually found the glue that stuck us back together. We all find our own
level, sooner or later.
Jenny
died, though, just eight days ago. We had our honeymoon in Stonehaven, strolled
along the grey promenade where the North Sea stretched its chill upwards to the
concrete wall where we walked. We wrapped up just like mum said but that didn’t
stop Jenny dropping dead from anaphylactic shock. She had ordered her epi-pen
and I had only nipped out to get a paper. I got back to the room to find her
fitting and red and throttled by peanuts in a biscuit.
I
buried her and just walked straight home. Oh, friends and family were what you
would expect after the funeral- solemn and sensitive. Come with us, this is no
time to be alone. But it was a time to be alone.
She
never knew about the paw. It cannot possibly work, of course, but naked grief
and desperation can make a man wish all sorts of things. Believe all sorts of
weirdness. I have it in my hand now. It is grey and leathery and sad, no power
in there surely.
........
I
wake at just after three. The night is so quiet outside, even the trees still.
I hear no traffic, no sirens, no voices of revellers below. I switch on the
light and feel tears at the corners of my eyes. Can we cry in our sleep?
I
open the cabinet and take out the petrified paw. I hear in my head the distant
calls of a langur. He jumps from branch to branch among the trees, rustling and
doing that wide monkey smile. I close my eyes and, holding the paw, make the
wish that Jenny can once again be alive. Here, in our bed where she belongs. I
let go an involuntary chortle. I smile and catch my face in the small mirror on
the bedside cabinet. Jenny is still not in our bed- her side is cold and
deserted. The old clock, inherited and mahogany, creaks its own existential
struggle. I lay back down on the bed, dropping the paw on the sheepskin rug.
She is not coming. The front door remains undisturbed, no slurping, earthy
steps of the risen dead are ascending the stairs.
Silence
sits with me, filling my head, my ears, with nothing.
So,
why, tell me why, is there a faint, oh so faint, tapping at the window. You
rise, both stupefied and hopeful, to open the curtains...
* *
*
Garry
Stanton is an Edinburgh-born, Fife- based writer and musician. He has, like
most creators, tried many other endeavours but has found them all deeply, or
even vaguely, unsatisfying. He is a published songwriter and poet, and
has written two novels, currently languishing in the cosmic slush-pile. Oh
well.
