'Lives in flight’
‘Lives in flight’ interweaves the moments of high and lost hopes of five
characters whose paths collide, fall away and re-join over a period of 30
years.
Through
120 snapshots the story told is of five characters fleeing a void, yearning if
not for an immortality, some small rapture in the present.
Rosie’s
running from the pain of loss, Atzi from isolation, Harry from oppression, Juma
from insignificance, and Max from chaos.
Rosie
escapes by going into madness; Atzi finds solace in the excitement of her own
body; Harry tries for immortality by building a mountain; Juma would conjure up
miracles, while Max simply gives herself up to the earth.
‘Lives in flight’ is assembled from fragments drawn from the landscapes of
these five lives – fragments forming patterns that explore instinctual
yearnings and the fears of all our lives.
The
Characters
HARRY
(Harold Hamilton Haines – born Billy Haynes) moves from a childhood blighted by
poverty and injustice through short spells for fraud in Pentonville and
Wandsworth prisons to an empire built on a dubious commercial loans investment
business and a 25 roomed Regent’s Park house – all at the cost of marriages to Rosie
and Atzi. The collapse of a final grand scheme to build a mountain 2000 km
above sea level off the Dutch coast, sees him left wheelchair bound in a quiet
country garden where he sits no longer railing at God and the world but quietly
buying up stars in the sky he will name after him.
ROSIE
moves from a frightened child pretending craziness to ward off her tormentors,
through a lonely adolescence, and into marriage and children with Harry – who becomes
yet another tormentor. Rosie cracks. Her children removed, she is left broken
until adopting religion with a zeal so maniac it takes her into a craziness
where even she can no longer tell if it’s pretended or not: is she finally
seeing out her days in a convent - or is it a madhouse?
JUMA
is wrenched from family and home in Nairobi; finding himself in Balham South
London with nothing but a Bible, he becomes convinced he is the secret Elijah.
Clever enough to escape sectioning he dares to take the stand at Hyde Park
Corner and declare the founding of his church - the Ministry of Miracles!
Notwithstanding success of the church with its phenomena of Holy Ghost babies
he fails to impregnate his wife Atzi. He lets this cursed woman go and indulges
in the glory and the riches of his church - until a warrant is issued for his
arrest and deportation on charges of child abduction. On the 39th
day after fleeing arrest, Elijah awaits in a Crystal Palace bedsit on the word
from God as to when he should make his announcement: Elijah has come!
ATZI
survives a broken and lonely home, with a mother given to crazed nervous
breakdowns, only by centring herself in the ecstatic excitements she explores
through her own body. Yet discovering that she would prefer to be alone than in
relationship leads her to despondency and a frustration so great she pushes one
partner over the balcony of Greek hotel. Juma saves her and they marry– but she
is forbidden to pursue her developing passion to photograph herself and her
body by this man of so successful a church. Atzi however begins to think the
miracle baby business of this church is one big con – wouldn’t she at least be
pregnant? She marries Harry. Failing still to conceive, she retreats into
herself again, accepts to live alone in the country house Harry buys where she
continues to make series after series of photographs of her body – pictures
viewed in exhibition and even by Max with whom Atzi has a fleeting relationship
– as semi-pornographic, which thoroughly demoralises and demotivates Atzi:
finding no excitement in her body, her survival failsafe finally vanished, she
is left with only that same hopelessness experienced as a child.
MAX
moves from an early sense of being different and feeling alienated (and
discovery of her alcoholic mother dead) into a world where she trusts no one
and finds solace only in nature – nights spent, windows open, with a solitary
burning candle, days walking alone across windswept landscapes. But she falls
for the child-like, institutionalized Petra, who when ‘taken away’ from her
(through death due to Lyme’s disease) so enrages Max she turns to a banned weed
killer, Lasso, to inflict neurological damage on her aggressors. After a spell
in Holloway she finds herself alone again and starting all over: she retreats
to the country, determining this time to put trust in nothing save the earth
and the seasons – meeting Atzi is as a weird if momentarily comforting ship
passing through her night: Atzi’s suicide no more than the burning of another
year’s autumn leaves.
The
Collisions
(Extracted
from snapshots of around 660 words each ordered into the categories):
-
Beginnings
-
High
Hopes
-
Lost
Hopes
-
No
Hope
-
Endings
Harry:
feels like he’s in hell – couldn’t even torture poor Patsy! Feels like he’s
stuck with the left-overs of the world! He lifts the standing garden fork, and holding
it horizontally, spears it viciously into the wall of the garden shed.
Atzi:
after the ecstatic moment, she knows only this offers meaning: there is nothing
else – and she will never let it go, will always feel and need this connection
to herself: this is her centre, this is where she knows herself best – perhaps
the only time she really knows herself.
Juma:
beholding nothing less than a Visitation: she stands in a heavenly white
sunlight surrounding the whole of her naked body as a pulsating aura. The
Madonna. He falls to his knees, knowing God has spoken. Dare he tell anyone?
Only his elder brother - who replies, ‘Ma gonna whop you peeping on big Sis’
like that!’
Rosie:
a roar of laughter from behind her: her three brothers terrorising her; she
pulls away – feels herself going – going mad, she supposes - her long hair
whipping around and straggling her face. ‘The Wild Woman of Borneo!’ She flays
at them. Screams. They see she’s flipped. Gone. They back off. She gives a
final roar, thinks, I quite like being mad.
Juma:
insignificantly walking along Shaftesbury Avenue, dressed in blue gingham
trousers, a white coat and carrying a string of onions as he returns from
Berwick Street Market to the pizza bar in Dean Street. He cannot bear it. It’s
not that he minds being at the beck and call of white people, it’s the silent
glances that ask has he washed his hands today – just as when working as a
railway porter he saw the tickets extended to the clipper rather than being
handed over and risk the stain of black fingers transferring back to white
hands.
Max:
rooted by the flame, watching the smoke she blows circle the flame; sometimes
she’ll reach out a finger and see how long she can hold it above the flame; but
mostly she just stares into the flame, aware of the universe around her,
feeling herself connected through the wavering flame. And maybe she thinks,
this is as good as it gets, and maybe I’ll want for nothing more
Juma:
witnessing a drop of blood fall from the forehead of a statute of St Rita – a
signal he can now take the stand at Hyde Park Corner: ‘I say again, this church
shall be named, The Ministry of Miracles!
Max:
bored as she contemplates suicide; so fucking bored; bored with the orgasm;
bored with hers; bored with her own; bored with the television, bored with
Tesco, bored Monday through Sunday ; so bored she can’t even be bothered to top
herself!
Harry:
meeting Rosie: when she’s upset by the boys throwing stones at the ducks on the
pond, he takes the ringleader behind a bush and seriously smashes his face in.
Atzi:
she hits him with such force, he reels across the hotel room, body gathering an
involuntary momentum which causes him to crash through the doors to the
balcony, and tips him over the balcony rail . . . and then there’s not a
movement: she just wants to stand there in the silence of the night, breathing
deeply, allowing each breath to swell her chest with a burning pride.
Rosie:
‘I’m a married woman! Married!’ There’ll be children, wedding anniversaries; marriage
she thinks is a celebration of life – thinking of children, one thinks of
immortality: death, depression doesn’t exist!
Max:
meeting Petra, a girl-woman, thin, fair, lithe – definitively feminine. ‘I’ll
always be here. They said. Doctors. It’s a chemical imbalance. What they said.
It’s not the moon – they said.’ ‘Rubbish.’ ‘What?’ ‘You won’t always be here.’
Atzi:
on her wedding night: she knows she’s had more men than he’s had hot
dinners. ‘Let your power, your Godliness
enter into me,’ she says, as he takes up a dark lipstick and marks her
forehead. ‘It is the wound made by a thorn thrown from the crown of our
Christ.’ ‘You mean, old Rita? Sex with a Saint?’
Rosie:
opening her dressing gown, daring to reveal her body to him; lets the dressing
gown drop to the floor. ‘I really am quite attractive you know.’ In the morning
she’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, Harry. I realise I went too far last night.’ He won’t
reply for a long time; then he’ll say, ‘It’s over. I want a divorce.’
Harry:
wandering now through his first major purchase of the 25 room Robert Adams
designed house in Regent’s Park – envisaging the Orangery and extensions he’s
planning, the restoration of the ballroom; then coming back to the study in the
penthouse which he inhabits while the works are taking place – he sits there
trying to measure himself against the tyke he was and the empire he’s built
now. Billy Haynes. Harold Hamilton Haines.
Atzi:
sitting front of the full length mirror, looking through the viewfinder,
wondering what men see when they look at her: she doubts their excitement is of
the same intensity as hers, doubts they see the same image at all; suspects
Juma sees – just a cunt.
Max:
witnessing Petra sitting in a corner, naked, face paralysed, blood seeping from
scratch wounds she’s given herself; and Max knows there’s no cure for Lyme’s
disease: it just gets worse and worse with brain inflammation and Christ knows
what.
Harry:
after a weekend with the kids, seeing their face, mouths open and crying and
trying to say something as the car draws away; their faces then in the rear
windscreen – distant, lost; and he stands there, his shadowed silhouette and
white face the only thing visible in the gloom of the grand doorway.
Juma:
eyes closed, his face glowing, vibrant with joy, ablaze with glory as the
congregation roar and Mama Mabona calls out, ‘This is a Holy Ghost child!’ When
he opens his eyes Brother Amos is staring at him. ‘What?’ he asks. Bother Amos
gives a smile and a wink.
Harry:
witnessing fire crews swarming around the house she’s burnt to the ground. He’s
locked the kids in the Range Rover, turns to the smoked glass limo approaching
that is actually a private ambulance he’s called. Two medics guide a bewildered
Rosie away. Out of my life he thinks. Thank God. And finds himself thinking
then of the time with Rosie around the Holland Park Pond and of the duck he had
to throttle – to put it out of its misery, he supposes.
Max:
she’s going crazy, Petra’s driving her crazy – so she’s running, running away,
running through a fucking great furious storm - her clothes sodden, her eyes
stinging, and thinking she wants to get lost in the elements, soar up with the
wind, ride over the rain, transcend with the mists into nothingness – oblivion –
absorbed into creation itself! Stops. Exhausted. Already wheezing, bent over,
head throbbing. And she’s only reached the Ponders End Lock.
Rosie:
she’s going to walk out, out through the main gates; if she’s stopped she’ll
say, ‘I was just going to buy a Kit-Kat?’ She’s not stopped. Stands rigid as
she waits for the bus: that way people will pass her by without staring, and saying,
‘Isn’t that another escaped mental patient?’
Rosie:
she speaks only once as the Magistrate settles the Contact and Residency Order,
asking, ‘And this is until they’re 18 years old?’ By which time, she thinks, I
shall have missed their lives and I shall be withered, for without them I see
only the emptiness of the childhood room in which I grew up.
Atzi:
‘Hold my cunt with your hand,’ she says and she looks at him and feels so full
of love. ‘I never want this to end,’ she says – knowing it will: as he lies
there now she’s aware he’s already conjuring another deal, a new scheme,
another scam. Harry.
Rosie:
starting again, going for a job at a Survivor’s Centre. ‘Tell me about
yourself,’ says Tom Topps. ‘Have you had experience of abuse?’ ‘I’ve probably
been abused my whole fucking life,’ she says. ‘Well, that sounds like
qualification for the job, doesn’t it?’
Max:
steps through the wicket gate knowing it would be pointless even to try to
reclaim her possessions from the cottage – those small mementos, the necklace
of paper coils Petra made, the cactus that flowered without fail each April.
She takes the long walk up from Brixton to the Tulse Hill halfway house. ‘Max,
isn’t it? I’m Di’. Been here three months. Still on probation I am. Cunts. Come
in and have some char, eh?’ I want to die; yet I will live looking for small
flames of excitement and want for nothing more.
Atzi:
she can’t explain why she takes these photographs, doesn’t want to have to find
explanations - not even for Max, sitting there amid all the prints, with
coffee, and talking of exhibitions. ‘I’m not sure I’d want the world and his
dog looking at me,’ says Max. Atzi stares. One thing you do want is the world
looking at you, Max thinks.
Harry:
leaving Wandsworth Prison in his chauffeur driven Jag’; time he left
Pentonville he took the tube – Billy Haynes. Still niggles at him somewhere and
he wished he wouldn’t. Loser. Thought I’d let him go.
Juma:
knows there are those against him: authorities enquiring into child trafficking
have said there is no DNA connection between the children seized and the parents
with whom they were found. Well, of course not! Are these not children of the
Holy Ghost? Would the DNA of Christ have matched that of Mary or Joseph?
Harry:
he wanted to be there on board when the first dredger went out to gather up the
first of the billions of cubic meters of sand needed for the core stage of the
mountain; they’re doing maybe 10 knots when the massive complex of the dredger
shudders, then vibrates with a powerful shock running from stem to stern – a crack
sounds and he’s briefly aware of a blackness enveloping him from above as he
pitches into the deck.
Rosie:
she decides she’ll burn everything, that she would rather it had never existed,
not any of it, her life; it was a litany of failures and she wants it gone. So
she burns the lot, puts it in a brazier and sets fire to it, thinking, I’ll
pretend I don’t remember any of it; I’ll pretend I’m senile; early dementia –
it can happen!
Juma:
an hour to midnight now; he has not eaten in 40 days – a few nuts, some fruit;
often he has fainted, once he was found by other tenants, collapsed and nearly
naked in the bathroom; they wanted to call a doctor but he waved the offer
aside and assured them the one who was to come would favour them for their
kindness. Now the last hour, one more hour to hold.
Atzi:
it’s taken her 10 weeks trotting in and out of Tesco and each time buying the
allowable limit of paracetamol; one hundred and fifty 1000 mg. tablets ought to
be enough now. So she begins writing – haltingly: ‘You see, the suns and the
rains, of themselves are not enough . . .’
Harry:
sitting in his wheelchair in the garden of this place he’s bought in
Robertsbridge, in Sussex; he doesn’t see many people now; he refuses live-in help.
He watches a lot of television; mostly the sport. But he’s content sitting in
his garden because there he thinks he’s confronting the force that pitched him
down. ‘I ain’t scared! I ain’t running! I ain’t even complaining!’ he’ll
sometimes yell up to the sky.
Rosie:
she’ll walk to her room through the cloisters - why some call them corridors
she doesn’t know; she’ll retire, but her mind won’t stop unless she’s
remembered to take her pill; usually it’s brought to her on a small tray and
she’s thankful for that. She’ll stay awake awaiting the bell to ring the Great
Night Silence; but before ever hearing it, she falls asleep, comforted by
knowledge of what a good decision it was to join a community that looks after
its own. But then religious folk always do, don’t they?
Max:
reckons they burn more than they might, plants that could be rooted, potted,
nurtured; but forking over the smouldering vegetation she knows it’ll all come back
again; Petra and Atzi too, they’re there in the embers and she knows she’ll strew
the mulch across the earth then come the autumn she’ll look for the sparks
flying across the stubble. Our lives. Our legacies. That’s it.
*
