Black and White

(Somebody at risk of harm - but to themselves or somebody else?)

It’s black and everywhere is white.

Or is it white and everywhere is black?

I can’t figure it out. It’s black everywhere and it’s white everywhere.

I look up and it’s black. I look in the distance and it’s dark, nothing is clear, but white specks are floating into my vision. They scurry, form shapes, re-form and disappear, only to be replaced by more phantom figures. I look down and it’s white everywhere. My feet stumble in the white.

The white around my feet crumbles and swallows my feet as I try to move. I breathe out and my breath clouds, mixing with the swirling phantoms. It is snowing and it’s very late at night and I don’t know where I am going. What am I doing? What am I about to do?

What have I just done?

Was it right? These things are never black and white.

This is one of my clearest memories of being at North Riding University. The winters were always severe. Snowfalls would sometimes cut off the new campus from the rest of the country, especially, it seemed, at week-ends. Menial staff like cleaners and porters would be trapped, and have to sleep in the main refectory or the chapel till Monday. On this winter evening the snow is more hideous than ever. It is so cold and ice-sharp, it is dry and doesn’t even have the decency to melt on your exposed flesh of your face, till your skin burns and you cannot feel the cold anymore. It dances around me furiously, piling into my eyes as it gathers, onslaught upon onslaught from an unseen black canopy over head.

The centre of campus, the piazza, is totally deserted. Lamps burn pointlessly overhead, illuminating a dazzling, deserted tableau.

I stumble on.

Almost miraculously a figure appears in the distance. Small in stature yet definitely male, he makes his way directly towards me through the driving snow. His hands are thrust deep into the pockets of a duffel coat, though the hood is down and his head is bare in the outrageous blizzard. I can see his close-cropped red hair – coupé en brosse as the French would say, and red stubble of beard – it is the only colour in this monochrome scene.

"Are you Malcolm?" he says, almost conversationally.

"Malc," I nod, correcting. "Call me Malc."

"My name’s Chris. We spoke earlier. Have you taken any pills?" He has the politeness to grin slightly as he asks.

"I can’t remember," I mumble. "I’ve been out in this – " I shrug, indicating the whirling ice-flakes. "It’s been so long," I add after a pause. "Yet, I feel so… hot."
"Are you feeling dizzy?"

"Dizzy? No… no, I don’t think so," I lie. I’ve taken some tranqs, but that’s understandable.
"It’s been five minutes since you called the Nightline office. You said you hadn’t taken anything then. Just that you thought you were going to. That’s why I came out to meet you." He almost laughed. "Lovely night for a walk, eh?"

"No, not dizzy. Just hot. Here," I tugged at the clothing at my neck, "let me take my scarf off."

Nightline was a little organisation run by the Students’ Union. It was there to help member students through the night when ever they had problems, like an essay they couldn’t finish for a nine o’clock deadline, or an impossible finals exam coming up – that would be usually in the summer term, of course, though some schools had mid-year class tests. Also, other problems, like money worries, late grant checks back then, difficulties with parents, fear you were on the wrong course, love affairs running less than smoothly – in fact anything that could disturb the student psyche, a student-based version of The Samaritans. They were said to be particularly keen on helping undergraduates talk through their sexual orientation – nothing like becoming queer to excite the would-be psychotherapeutic volunteers that would stay up all night once or twice a term to run the Nightline service, from the VP-Internal’s office in the Union. Their busiest time, and type of call, though, was always during exams, or the suicide season, as it was known.

I flapped inanely at my coat, trying to find a pocket. "Could you take this?" I said at last, handing him the scarf. I am a personification of confusion.

"Sure."

Despite his casual, amiable manner, I knew he was studying me closely.

"There is something else," I said. "My girlfriend."

"What about her?"

"I think I may have… harmed her."

"Harmed? In what way?" said Chris.

"A bad way."

He remained calm, but it was with a hint of effort, of self-control. "Where is she?"

I told him the room address in the hall of residence at the east end of the campus. Sure enough, his demeanour descended from controlled calm to the edge of agitation. The snow dramatically raised its dervish dance around us as we headed out into the frigid night.

We get to Marion Harding’s room and the door is ajar. We step inside and Marion is sprawled in an ugly fashion on the floor of the cramped bed-sit room. I am all confusion and unable to explain what might have happened. Chris is bent over the body as police from the North Yorkshire Constabulary arrive. I am suddenly the model of clarity and perception. "He did it!" I exclaim. "I saw him strangling her. He’s the one I called you about. Look – her scarf is hanging from his pocket!"

There, on the nightstand, is a sad little epitaph to the recently deceased. Marion’s diary, open at today’s page and, in her handwriting, the note: "Meet Chris tonight." It is there, in black and white.

When I graduated from NRU in Business Studies, it was an easy step to take a job in London, just after the Big Bang of deregulation on the stock market and financial institutions. It was easy to make a killing here too. I dutifully became obscenely wealthy and, as the Eighties segued into the Nineties and the bubble subsided, I quietly stepped back from coke-fuelled trading in the City to semi-retirement in my Docklands flat. The only thing I really lacked was a partner, a girl by my side. But the only woman I had ever loved had turned me down back in my college days because she was already seeing a sociology major called Chris, who, amongst his many good works, volunteered for the Nightline service at NRU. The only woman I ever loved was Marion Harding. I found out, one winter’s evening when my heart could bare the pain of rejection no more, when Chris was on duty at Nightline. I gave her one final chance to reject him in favour of me. She failed to do so and I took the only course of action I could see open to me. If I could not have her, then nobody would. It was a choice as clear as between night and day. Framing Chris was an exquisite bonus. He had the means, opportunity and possible motive – an arranged meeting to break up with him and go out with me, perhaps. He was sentenced to life. Or as good as, in this penal system.

Now I sit in my apartment, staring at the ancient brick architecture and genuine maple floor and gaze blankly across the river, and I wonder what it has all been about. Light floods the open plan room but not my dark secret. How life would have been different with Marion at my side, when there is a knock at the door. Callers are unusual, but I answer just the same without hesitation.

A figure stands there, bent and with lined face. "Remember me?" he says.

No, I do not, and say so. I expect an explanation. There is something vaguely familiar about the close-cropped red hair. He hits me suddenly with something so hard, all I see is a flash of light. Though I know I must be falling, it is as if the floor pivots up to meet me in the back. I am dazed and confused and can find no breath.

"Perhaps you remember this," says the red-haired figure now kneeling on my chest. "This scarf is just like Marion’s. The one you planted on me all those years ago. The one you strangled her with and used to send me to prison for life!"

He is looping the scarf around my neck. I can hardly breathe as it is with his full weight upon my chest, and the blow to the face moments earlier – what did he hit me with? There is blood in my mouth and I feel terribly hot.

"They say life should mean life," he says – I’ve not a clue what he’s on about – "in your case, it will do!"

The scarf slithers around my throat and he tugs it tighter still. I can get no air and my lungs are exploding. At last, I suddenly realise who he is and why is here and what he wants.

Just as everything begins to go black.

Maybe it is what I want too.

The end.

The Road To Perdition

What might happen if you let students - an intemperate bunch at best by all accounts - to throw a party behind the students union bar. Nostalgia about what might have happened afterwards

"Where does this road go?"

"It doesn’t go anywhere – it’s stationary."

"Stationery!" I said in mock surprise, at an attempt of surreal humour. "You mean it’s made of paper? It’ll collapse into the Bristol Channel!"

"It’s stood here for years," said Tariq. "Solid as a rock." All night he’d adopted this insouciant tone. At first it had seemed hilarious. Then funny. Then slightly amusing. Now, in the grey morning, it was getting just a tad irritating. This may have been in inverse proportion to how sober I was. "What’s to stop a big gust of wind blowing us off this bridge and into the water, dozens of feet –"

" – hundreds of feet – " He corrected.

" – hundreds of feet below?"

"Well, there’s that railing there."

"Then what?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Would the authorities come and rescue us?" I pressed the point.

"God, no."

"Why not?"

"Well… if they’d seen us here at all, they’d have come and arrested us for trespass."

"But that’s still no reason not to rescue us."

"It is, if you think about it," Tariq reasoned, reasonably. "You see, if they’d not seen us to arrest us, they’d can’t have seen us to rescue us, can they? Besides…"

"Besides – what?"

"Besides, the fall would kill you, and even if it didn’t, you would drown in the current. If the hypothermia didn’t get you first. So it’d hardly be worth their bother."

I digested this. We’d been walking for about half an hour on the path-and-cycle-way that ran alongside the elevated approach to the Severn Bridge. This, Tariq had informed me, was a cantilevered path. I looked up ‘cantilever’ much later, and it said: "A cantilever is a beam anchored at one end and projecting into space." I could aver that this was true. The path was "temporarily closed for safety reasons" with a small barrier but we’d scrambled over that. We were now barely out over the water and hadn’t even reached the huge concrete structure, the size of a large block of flats, into which the suspension cables were anchored. There was absolutely no cover of any kind and we would have been clearly visible for miles to anyone who’d cared to look.

"Well I’d hate to put them out, if they’re so busy not seeing trespassers and all. I mean we’re hardly hidden from view." Even to myself I was beginning to sound a little grumpy.

"No, but we are a long way off. That’s probably why they haven’t seen us." Tariq still seemed as chipper as ever. "That and the fact that no-one in his right mind normally crosses on foot."

"Tariq, exactly why are we crossing the Bristol Channel by suspension bridge on foot at nine o’clock in the morning."

"Ah. You do you remember last night?"

"Which bits?"

"The later bits."

"The bar-staff party."

"And afterwards?"

"Nope." I strained to recall something. Something that might have been important, the sort of thing that explained why I was here now doing this thing. "Not really. Little bits. The bar closed. We tidied up in twenty minutes and that left us forty minutes in which to cram an entire party evening’s drinking, before the Students’ Union building shut and we all got slung out. We started drinking and… I don’t think I remember anything after that."

"The people all lying around on the grass?"

"Not really. Were they drunk?"

"It was hard to tell. They were all unconscious." Tariq seemed remarkably unconcerned about this, much as he was about everything else.

"Don’t you think they might have been drunk before they became unconscious?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Let’s face it, everyone was drunk. In fact, every thing was drunk by the time we were thrown out."

"Why weren’t we unconscious?"

"Must have been down to our robust constitutions," Tariq grinned. "Anyway, that’s when I suggested that we go down to Keele motorway services and hitch a ride with the first truck-driver who’d give us a lift."

"You did what?" I’m not sure how much I was surprised, feigning outrage, or genuinely outraged. "Why couldn’t I have just been unconscious like everybody else?

"You said you thought it was a good idea."

"I said that? Why didn’t you disagree with me?"

"I thought it was a good idea, too. After all, it had been my idea. So that’s what we did. You insisted on going back to your room first for some reason, then we set off."

"You can’t just hitch-hike away from a hangover."

"Oh no? Look at you now? Up, fresh as a daisy, out in the bracing open air. Imagine all those others – just waking up with their heads throbbing. Have you got a hangover?"

He had a point. But so did I. "No – but I’m nearly getting my tits blown off in this ‘bracing air’!"

"So it wasn’t such a bad idea."

"But… but how? What happened?"

"We got a lift to Aust Services back there and the driver said he was having a stop-over, so we said we’d walk."

"But why are we crossing the River Severn bridge on a pathway closed to the public?" I persisted.

"Because it’s there!"

"But we don’t have to be!"

"And to get to the other side, of course."

"Of course. How silly of me."

"Because, on the other side is where my uncle lives. He owns a pub in Caerleon. The Red Lion. Or the White Lion, I’m not sure which. But I’m sure we’ll find it. And he can give us a lift back to Keele."

I was starting to worry that this was actually making some kind of sense, when it shouldn’t. "Tariq, don’t take this personally, but you’re, sort of, of a dusky Asian hue and you’re from Bolton. How come you’ve got an uncle who owns a pub in south Wales?"

"What’s wrong with that? I’m a good barman back at the Students’ Union, aren’t I? Serving booze to white folks runs in our family."

"I suppose you’ve got a point. How far is it to Caerleon?"

"Oo… only a few minutes’ walk. We’ll soon be there."

"Tariq, we’ve been walking for hours and we’re not even half way across and I can barely see land in either direction."

"It’s just a trick of perspective. The bridge is only a couple of miles long – at most – including the approach sections.

"Then – how far to Caerleon?"

"Not far. Only about 15 miles."

"Only!…"

"There’s two things to keep in mind. Firstly, don’t look down."

I looked down. We appeared to be walking on thin steel plate. Well, it looked like steel plate. Its apparent thinness was revealed because at frequent if irregular intervals there were holes right through the metal, for no readily apparent reason, about the diameter of a ten pence piece, revealing the steel to about the thickness of a ten pence piece. Clearly visible below that, about as far down as a ten storey building, curling, twisting brown waves, like a pit of vipers, wriggled, waiting with waning patience for their prey to fall amongst them.

"What was the second thing?" I croaked.

"We’ll be alright, just so long as we don’t hit a spot of bad weather."



We reached about half-way across the bridge, and became the centre of a sphere of air, sky and water, with just a puny piece of engineering to indicate Man’s existence. At that point, some weather – a spot, bad – blew in from the general direction of America, and it seemed to be in a hurry. The metal at our feet was matched by the metal sky overhead, and the metal water below disappeared from view as we became entombed in a racing ball of cloud. Every step we took seemed to turn us sideways. To have jumped up, losing contact with the armour-like decking, would have been suicidal.

Then the rain came in. To call it rain was a bit of a liberty, insofar as the only resemblance this phenomenon had to rain was that it was wet. Horizontal spears of water daggered into us, making us yelp. But this was just the beginning. We started to realise we might be in serious trouble when it became unwise even to lift one foot off the slicked surface, and we attempted a cross-country skiing movement. Progress went from slow to slower. Then, as the bullet rods and hydro-tracer puckered and cratered my denim jacket, making it dark as though stained with blood, we fell to our knees. As an afterthought, we decided to lie down altogether and time froze – as, indeed, did we – until the venom of the elements subsided once more. Eventually, the wind lessened, we got to our feet and we plodded on in what was to me a bubble of misery.

Long after we were no longer over the waters of the Bristol Channel, the road continued in an elevated arc round to the west parallel to the bum of Wales. Hours seemed to drag past. Eventually road met land, and we were able to get off the motorway and walk on the grass embankment alongside. Caerleon, whatever it was like, still did not hove into view. I was not sure how it would appear but I was imagining something like Valhalla. The morning grew old and tired.

At long last, we crossed under the motorway to get on its northern side and approached a motley collection of buildings. This was Caerleon. This was Caerleon? It was, probably, quite a pleasant village – it even had some Roman remains somewhere, to which some human remains were in danger of being added – mine – but it was hard to appreciate under the circumstances. Its one merit was that it contained a public house where we could find shelter, rest, food and, most importantly, transport to take us back to the home whence we’d so pointlessly come.

It took some time for Tariq to identify the correct pub. It turned out that Caerleon, with a population of just two thousand souls, had twelve of the establishments. The one we wanted was in fact called The Black Bull – Tariq had been close, apart from an appalling lack of awareness of colour and zoology.

The only thing was, we were too early and the place was still shut.

We had nowhere left to go.

All we could do was wait for his relatives to wake, open up, let us in and take us back to the little student residence blocks we called home.

"Drink has driven me to this," I exhaled, and, exhausted, slid to the ground, where fatigue enveloped me like a foggy pall, and I sank from the conscious world.



When I finally saw my room again, many, many hours later, several things argued for my attention. Firstly, not only was the door unlocked, but it was slightly open. Secondly, the light was left on. Thirdly, an empty vodka bottle was embedded, neck first, into the wall plaster. It came back to me. I had taken this bottle back to my room "for later," but having got there, I had drained the last of its contents then flamboyantly thrown it at the wall, as if completing some dramatic toast. To my befuddled amazement, it hadn’t shattered and I hadn’t the heart to attempt to heap further injury upon it.

And that was how, for me, the one and only Keele University Students’ Union bar-staff party ended.

The End