Adam Dustagheer

Overheard on East Coast Mainline train, passenger alighted at York - 15:47
- 17/03/2012

We always delivered… Sure, we didn’t always get the perfect solution, but
there was a solution there, a decision made, it took into account the
reality and constraints of the situation, and delivered.

Why?

…

Because we were arrogant enough to think we always knew best?…

No…

More than that we realised that failing to deliver, meant failing to win,
and that we would let down all those who we fought for… the minute you
forget that, it’s time to pack up and go home

A little devil gargoyle on Stonegate in York

And the phone rang for the hundredth time that day, that hour for all she knew. With a sigh she made to answer it, as she had hundred times that day, or perhaps hour. Her hand hovered over the grey plastic lump, involuntarily performing a small dnace above the handset. She then snatched it up,

“Caroline Cooper’s office. Margaret speaking. How can I help?
“Is caroline there?
“Not at the moment sir”, Margaret heard the voice demanded deference. Its tone seemed to register a sense of danger in the part of the hind brain that comes from reptilian ancestory.
“A shame then.
“If I could take your name please
“My name is of no consequence. However, if she would like to work again after today’s little performance, she’d do well to call me. I’m contactable via my office at …
“And the number for that?
“Google it. I would like to add that whilst she may regret her actions I don’t. In fact this is an offer of some lucrative work.

And with that the line went dead. Margaret sighed as she placed the receiver carefully on the desk. Since her boss had cheerfully imagined the country’s two most recent Prime Ministers being involved in the occult the phone had not stopped ringing. What had possessed her wasn’t clear, and its not like she had accused them directly of it, but it had resonated. By god it had resonated.

Some inadvertent clairvoyance

Free copy of a new political action thriller… enjoy

The priestess card

Wheel of fortune pt1

“What goes up…”

The pale gold disc flipped slowly upwards, following an invisible arc it seemed to lazily drop.

The queens head, the coat of arms, head, arms, head, arms. As seen from above it had barely moved laterally but from his vantage point below it had seemed to have made the earth shift beneath it.

The lighting added to the effect. Shafts of brilliant light cutting through the dusty motes. A jacobs ladder created by drawn blinds in the bright afternoon sunlight.

As gravity ceaselessly pulled the round metal slice down towards the bar table, and reached shoulder height a fat hand hovered above it.

There was a sound, and now in this brief respite this high pitch sounded like the receding sine of someone playing a wine glass.

The dawning silent moment of peace was shattered as the five chubby pink digitss slammed the coin hard into the wooden desk top.

“…must come down”, the spittle covered lips, red and greasy, spoke. They belonged, as did the fat hand and indeed the pound coin that had just been tossed to Derek Digger.

The moments

The Hermit

He looked back at a life told, crisply printed on fine paper, and neatly bound between two hard covers. Along the fat spine ran his name and his motto.

Daniel Sinclair - Talk is cheap.

Daniel, or ‘Just call me Dan’, ran his fingers over the freshly unboxed pile of books. He examined them individually if expecting to find inconsistencies in each one. He flipped one open, and deftly thumbed the lid from a thick black felt tipped pen.

He turned the front cover to reveal a photo of the now greying man whose everyday approach and matinee idol looks had won him the love of a nation. The quotes beneath said it all.

“A Prime Minister they shall remember for centuries for what he did in office, tells us candidly what he thought out of hours”

“The people and places that made the man we called Dan.
The bloke next door, if you lived at 11 Downing st”

He poised the pen, and began to compose the first dedication of many on his first preview copies.

———

She clipped out the photo carefully

He had aged, but not like her. I mean she had always been older, hadn’t she? That had been her allure, and him. So vital, so cocksure, ready to take over the world. So certain of how it worked. The naivety of youth, not realising that his life had been so easy thanks to oh so many others. But so sexy. So deeply attractive. She still felt her heart quicken at the thought of him, and that look. That deep intense stare, that she knew was for her. Every time he gave it down the barrel of a camera, she felt him.

She trimmed around his neatly coiffed hair. Yes, he had aged but as men do become distinguished. Not just as a man, as a statesman. But she knew that he still thought of her as she watched him give her his look, into the lens of the worlds media.

The last picture clipped, she put down her scissors and beam to paste the images onto the thick green card pages of her scrapbook. She looked at the other volumes boxed in neat plastic crates beneath her bed. Each on a unique chronicle into a year of Daniel Sinclair. 30 fat rounded tomes, warped by addition layers of newsprint and glossy magazine paper glued into them.

She closed the book and placed it with the rest. Pushing the box beneath her bed, out of sight. She began folding the now lacerated papers when something caught her eye.

“Daniel Sinclair will be launching his new book ‘Talk is Cheap’ this week. A candid look back at a controversial and successful career”, her heart skipped a beat. Maybe he had decided it was time. Maybe she didn’t have to worry she would ruin it for him, maybe she should tell him. She stood up from the high backed arm chair and looked into the full length mirror. 73 years old, though she could pass for younger. Her eyes sparkled with the prospect of the fulfilment of a long held promise.
———-

She did really leave the house that often. He daughter did most of the shopping, well for food and things. It wasn’t as enjoyable as it had been, she preferred to order things by phone. She hadn’t really gone out for years, well not to town not to the shops.

She peeled back the plastic zip locked vacuum sealed bag. The hiss of air rushing in through the thin plastic teeth.
She pulled out a blue dress that she hadn’t ever worn but bought after the woman modelling it on tv shopping channel had reminded her of herself.

She ran a brush through her thinning grey hair, and tried to apply dessicated lipstick that had remained in it onyx black case for years.

She slipped on shoes. The leather pinching her heel like her house slippers did not.

She went to the shops to but a copy of Talk Is Cheap by Daniel Sinclair. She wanted to see what he had said about her, about them, and what they had shared.

She returned home. The thick black book, in a thick black carrier bag. She hadn’t, couldn’t open it. She had to sit down. In her room, at her table. With him. In the way she had been with him all these years.

She sat a her dresser, with him. The way only she could be with him, together despite the fact she was alone. She had waited vigil, keeping her promise. The promise she had made those intense eyes, the secret she had kept to protect him. To keep that naïve belief, that had changed the world.

She couldn’t wait to see what he had said about her. Or maybe it would be coded, a brief note in the acknowledgement to ‘V’, or maybe to ‘V and F’. No that was absurd, how would he know about F?

She opened the book with a trembling anticipation that she hadn’t felt for three decades. She felt closer to him now than she had that night.
——-

There was a queue. There was a mob. A line snaking through the low shelving units that populated the store. It criss crossed the central aisle, at the front stood a tall blonde woman.

Daniel Sinclair stared at her. She was beautiful, that was undeniable but she held his gaze so intensely. He felt awkwardly caught by her. Like making eye contact on a furtive second glance, and a private leer shared, held, exposed.

A shop assistant in a shapeless dark red polo shirt walked across his view, breaking the spell. He was addressing the crowded queue as Dan’s thoughts cleared. He watched the blonde woman walk towards him.

“Erm. Who to?”, his voice croaked slightly. Her gaze, if anything, grew more powerful with proximity, he studied her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones. He knew she couldn’t be more than thirty, but he recognised it as being a younger version of a familiar face.

“If you could make it out to Valerie Wimslow, please”, she asked. The name unleashed something. That rolled through him

He remembered the intensity of the woman, the scent of her. He hadn’t thought of her for years, although she could have appeared somewhere in the second chapter.

“I know Valerie. God I havnt seen her for years, must be almost…”

“Exactly 30”, the woman clearly anounciated.

“Yes 30”, he agreed, “how is she?”

“She is no longer with us. She slit her wrists two weeks ago”. The woman pushed a large scrapbook into his hands.

“If you could sign this please, Dad”

——-

The scorpio card

A man hands an envelope to a woman on the tube then runs off as the doors shut…

A love letter?
Bomb threat?
Marketing ploy?