Barrie Darke

Barrie Darke

Barrie Darke has had several plays performed, and has worked with the BBC, but prose was always the main thing. He lives and writes in the north east of England, and teaches Creative Writing in a basement. He has also worked in a prison, where he learnt more than the students.

He has been published in the US by: Menda City Review, Nossa Morte, Demon Minds, Infinite Windows, Underground Voices, Big Pulp, Pseudopod, Inwood Indiana, Bastards and Whores, Onomatopoeia, Orion Headless, Xenith, All Due Respect, Fiction365, Scissors and Spackle, Fear and Trembling, Drunk Monkeys, The April Reader, Big Stupid Review, Dark Moon, Writing Tomorrow, Otis Nebula, Futures Trading, The Opiate, Badlands, Cobalt, Wilderness House, Digital Fiction (pending), Merchants of Misery Anthology, Literary Nest, Eunioa Review, AMInk, Scribe, Oddville Press, Litro, Archive of the Odd, Concrete Desert, Quarterly Journal, Litbreak, and Works Progress; in the UK by: Byker Books, New Writing North, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Delinquent, Theurgy, Horrified Press, Writer’s Muse, and The Metric; and in Australia by Otoliths.

---

Mood Indigo

I KNOW THAT inventors nowadays are different. They wear black polo necks and jeans and wire-rimmed glasses, and the men among them have neat stubble and buzzed heads. They work in completely empty rooms, done out in white with ice blue tints, and somehow this doesn’t drive them completely crackers.

Godolphin, however, was a refugee from the old days. He wore a brown suit that hadn’t once crossed the entrance of a dry cleaner’s. His glasses were fastened to a chain around his neck, though he still conspired to lose them regularly. He had curly grey hair extruding from the back and sides only, exposing an occasional scab on the crown and making his face even more pointed, thrusting, and squinty. His work was scattered across every room in his large house, where he picked his way through tottering piles of papers. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that he owned more books than all of the local libraries combined, none of them I’d be able to make any headway with.

He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he could reliably be found in the pub for a couple of hours on a Thursday evening. This was his slot to unload whatever was on his mind that week, to log with us his seamless progress or his devilish setbacks. In conversation, he was more transmit than receive, and you either forgave him for that or you didn’t, so his audience fluctuated. I was a constant: I enjoy local characters, what can I say, and I think he was glad of me, glad to have me around. I tended to not always be in a relationship, and any career I had built was slapdash and hotchpotch. This made me the perfect test subject for those times, such as now, when he came in, sat down wonderingly, and declared, ‘I’ve got it.’

*

Godolphin liked to work in an area he called ‘the functional esoteric’. To illuminate that term, here are the most recent efforts of his I’d been the beneficiary of, for your education and delight.

Although he’d never been in a romantic relationship in all the time I’d been friendly with him – it was a rare woman who could endure being stolidly ignored for weeks – he’d read a few things about them. At this point, wonder of wonders, I actually was with someone, had been for over a year. Trudy, she was called, a very sweet person.

He came into the pub and asked me to roll up my sleeve, so he could strap a thin, flesh-coloured band around my arm.

“This,” he said, “should save you some trouble, Mr. Bostock.” 

I’d invited him to call me Alan, but he always observed proprieties like this. 

He went on, “I’m sure you’re aware of certain habits your partner has. Those that start out charming but soon begin to grate?”

“Yes,” I said. It was best not to take his questions as rhetorical.

He nodded at my arm as I rolled down my sleeve and fastened my cuff, “That should alleviate some of them.”

“You should give it to Trudy instead,” I laughed.

He didn’t laugh. 

“Let me know how it goes,” he said.

In truth, I had begun to notice one such habit: if we were watching the TV at her house, where she had dominion over the remote, she would turn the volume down if there was a swell of music or a sustained burst of machine gunning, and then not turn it back up when the scene returned to hushed dialogue. I pointedly never did this with my TV. I wasn’t far away from saying something about it, no doubt with my usual mistimed, misjudged, misfiring humour.

The next time it happened, the armband was in place and I didn’t even notice. I had to think back later to recall whether or not she had fiddled with the volume. She had, but it hadn’t registered with me.

When I told Godolphin, it prompted one of his rare smiles – always of relief, never of pleasure.

A couple of months later, Trudy and I broke up. We’d been bumping along solidly enough when a huge fight erupted, huge and from nowhere. Almost, you might say, as though it were backed-up: we hadn’t had any of those safety valve minor squabbles, the kind people have over annoying habits, as a for instance, that the bulk of relationships need. The fight was about them, however; it was about nothing less than our very future together. We couldn’t reconcile it.

Godolphin glumly accepted his share of the blame when I put this to him. I can’t say it altered our friendship much. Sorry, Trudy.

The next effort, on slightly safer ground, was a device that allowed you to more speedily appreciate difficult art. This came about when I told him I’d set myself the challenge of reading Finnegans Wake while listening to Trout Mask Replica every evening and was hating it. His eyes sparkled, and within a month I had a headset clamped to my skull when I slipped in my CD and opened my book.

I raced through them. I burned them up. It would be fair to say I almost wept hot tears with the revealed beauty of both. But I quickly found that I didn’t return to them much and didn’t think back on them too fondly. Soon I was once again reading tubby legal thrillers and listening to whatever pop of the moment the streaming playlist threw up.

‘You didn’t appreciate them because you didn’t have to work at them,’ Godolphin said. He was talking to himself more than me, though I nodded in agreement all the same. He sighed and sat back and barely spoke again that night.

Next, a couple of months ago, he handed me a pill. This was to get me over that nasty hurdle we all have from time to time of feeling hopelessly alone in a convivial crowd. I tested it out that weekend, and found it to be very fast-working. It not only got me over it, it made me garrulous, I didn’t want the night to end. A few people even asked me if I’d had good news and I didn’t know what to tell them.

“What do you think went wrong with this one?” I asked Godolphin a few Thursdays later.

“No guessing games,” he snapped, “Just tell me, Mr. Bostock.”

“It worked fine in a crowd,” I said, “But when it wore off, and I actually was on my own, I felt so isolated I wanted to cut my throat.”

“Noted,” he said, wearily.

So, this time, I tried to scan ahead for potential downsides. I knew it was up to me to do this; Godolphin, still, was the eternal optimist when it came to his own babies.

“Aren’t they a good thing?” I asked him, “Can’t we learn from them?”

‘Have you learned from them, Mr. Bostock?”

“God no,” I said. 

“There you are then.”

“Will it turn me into a sociopath?” I asked, “They’re not afflicted by this.”

“I can’t be expected to predict that in anyone,” he said tightly.

I probed with a few further objections, each weaker than the previous. But even if I’d found a dozen, I still would’ve gone ahead.

“This,” he said, “could be my best work. I’ve had the idea rolling around for years, but not till now have I …” He drifted off, lost in those years.

It was an early warning system for those episodes in life that lead to bad memories.

“That might not sound like much to you,” he had explained, “but when you get to my age the bad memories fill the room. They have grey dresses and white faces.”

“Good God,” I said, to humour him. I was only twenty years younger, and had no need of a lecture on that type of memory.

“Carry this with you,” he said, handing me a pack with a few bare wires attached, ‘at all times.’

“How does it warn me?” I asked.

“Oh, you’ll see,” he said, “You’ll see.”

In the middle of the next week, word went round the office about a new project. It would’ve involved a small bonus if it came off, and it was more or less within my skill set, so I decided to put my name forward.

I was halfway across the floor to my boss’s office when my head filled with such a sound, such a sound. It turned my bones electric blue; it made my nerve endings blister. My eyes watered immediately, and I couldn’t prevent a gasp. I managed, for the sake of my suddenly alert co-workers, to turn all this into a sneeze–a sneeze I would have to return to my desk to deal with.

When I was sitting down again, I told myself that, actually, I wouldn’t put myself forward after all. The sound dropped away at once. 

“Holy God,” I muttered.

Later, I heard the new project floundered direly, and one of the luckless volunteers was fired in a blatant can-carrying exercise. He didn’t look pleased about it, naturally, but was I mistaken in thinking he looked particularly displeased when he glanced at me on his way through the door with his possessions tucked in a cardboard box? I don’t think so.

Godolphin was delighted by this, in his own clipped way. Not for long, though.

“Can we tweak it?” I asked.

“Why?” he asked, his face instantly thunderous. “And who’s we?”

“It’s nothing much, it’s not the principle idea – it’s the sound, that’s all. It’s more than is needed, I think. What is it anyway?”

“It’s designed to repel, Mr. Bostock. Repel you from the course of action.”

“Yes, yes, I get that. What is it?”

“Insects. About a billion of them, compressed together.”

That made sense. One of the impressions I got, as I headed for my boss’s office, was that it was filled with something that would engulf me. 

“It worked, did it not?”

“It did. I have no quibble with that. Something less appalling would also have worked, is all I’m saying. I’m only trying to–

“Give,” he said, holding out a hand for the pack and its wires.

I passed it over. He turned down my offer of a drink, the better to stamp straight back to his workspace. I felt a little bad about that … But then again, once I’d made up my mind to tell him, the warning hadn’t gone off, so perhaps it was the right decision.

He pressed the improved version on me a few days later. Rather than wait till Thursday, he knocked at my door. This time it was a silver ring to be worn on any finger I liked–it adjusted to fit.

“I trust this will be more to your liking, Mr. Bostock,” he said with a mix of pride, grievance, and hope that was fairly characteristic of him. It made him sound vulnerable. Perhaps that was why I allowed him to use me in this way when no one else would. Without me as an outlet, he would pop, and that would be a shame. Something good would come of him one day, I was certain of that, within reason.

“Much appreciated,” I said, “Coming in for a cup of tea?”

“No thank you, I won’t,” he said, already halfway along the garden path.

I slipped the ring on my right pinkie and went about my business.

On Friday, I found myself out for drinks after work. Long after work, as it turned out. It was a humdrum night, so I’ll skip those details.

Coming home, I felt hungry and spied a burger van. Now, this was not a resplendent van, and it was parked in a disreputable area. I had only taken two steps in its direction when I felt a needle pierce my groin. It made me squeal and stop and double all the way over. I thought something had gone wrong in the worst possible place; I foresaw surgeons muttering woefully as they opened me up down there.

Then, I remembered Godolphin. I stood up as straight as I could, turned on my heel, and walked briskly away from the van and its many odours, the sting fading with every step. I passed a few other vans without the agony recurring, but I’d lost my appetite by then.

“No good, Mr. Bostock?” He said the next time I saw him.

“’Fraid not,” I said, handing the ring back.

For the first time in our acquaintance, he apologised. He chuckled while he did so, but still, it was just enough to keep me from telling him to stuff his early warning system. In fact, when he asked me round to his house a few days later – this also not being able to keep till Thursday – I dropped everything and went.

He opened the door, stood back to let me in, and stumbled with fatigue. I can’t say whether or not the modern inventors stay up for days on end and go without eating, or if that’s delegated to their unpaid interns, but Godolphin felt he wasn’t earning his schemes unless he did it a few times a year. He sat me down and handed over a slim slip of plastic, the size and thickness of a playing card. It was a dark blue, very soothing to see, though the more I looked at it the more I saw the shade wasn’t constant.

“This should be it,” he said, “Should be. I’ve based it on the colour spectrum. That means it turns red when danger is near. Red for danger, Mr. Bostock – that shouldn’t be too difficult to keep in mind, should it?”

“Fingers crossed,” I said.

“The blues are safe, which may be counterintuitive to music lovers, but I considered the red the most important barometer. Anyway, Now. Once you leave the blue, heading for green, you’re in for a short-lived bad memory. A memory to cringe over, but one that’ll pass. Then onto yellow. This is the kind of memory that’ll circle round your brain pan on sleepless nights. You know, those grand embarrassments over the idiocies you committed during parties and so on. With orange, we turn more serious. Orange represents the stuff that’ll cling to you for years, never far from the inner eye. And finally the reds. The reds, Mr. Bostock, will haunt you on your deathbed, should you be lucky enough to have one. Is that all clear?”

“Yes,” I said, “Yes, very clear.”

“Good. Stick to mood indigo, that’s my advice.”

I nodded. He looked disgusted. There was a reference there to an old song, but I had missed it.

Well, you can imagine. 

The number of calls I didn’t return, the tonnage of emails I didn’t open. There were new work colleagues whose hands I didn’t shake, keeping my distance, and I didn’t care what they thought. Self-preservation was more important than a bad impression.

Buyer’s remorse? Never again. 

I knew which aches and pains to ignore and which to plonk myself down in front of the GP over.

There were buses I let charge past, content to wait for the next one however late it made me. Sometimes I went out on rainy days and sometimes I stayed inside on sunny days and some days I stayed in bed altogether.

I knew the music to skip when it came on.

On the other hand, there were all those jobs I couldn’t face, wanted to put off doing, that the colours told me would be fine, however unpleasant they were in the moment.

One evening, on another outing with work, I checked in as we approached a pub. They climbed steadily through the golds as I watched, which hadn’t happened very often. I was tipsy and having a fine time of it.I did consider putting the card back in my pocket and ignoring it – but no. Better take heed. I told the others I wasn’t feeling tiptop all of a sudden, must’ve had a bad pint, and nimbly took myself off home. Matters were nicely in the blue again when I reached the bus stop.

The next day they were all present in the office, smiling winningly, talking the night over with chuckles. There was no stormy atmosphere between them, no terse words, no black eyes. They told me it was a shame I couldn’t have carried on with them. I agreed.

I mentioned this to Godolphin, creeping up on the idea that there might’ve been a glitch. He regarded me with frank contempt. 

“Think it through, Mr. Bostock,” he said, “If it wasn’t a glitch, what else could it be?”

This put me on the spot. “It … ah, it could be that some, some seed was planted on the night none of them know about yet? And later it will …?”

“It could be that, yes. It could also be something far simpler. Think, man.”

“I … well, it could … I don’t know. Sorry.” I sat back. He was the brains, after all.

He shook his head in exasperation. 

“Bad memories don’t always land on you from the outside. Quite often – and I strongly suspect this is the case here – they’re generated by you.”

“Ah,” I said.

“They had a perfectly pleasant time. If you had been with them, you would’ve done something to ruin the night.”

“Yes,” I said, “I see. Sorry. I should’ve thought of that.”

“You should’ve, yes.’ He calmed down. ‘Out of interest,’ he said, ‘what do you think you might’ve done to put the kibosh on things? Spread some gossip? Turned into a violent drunk? Propositioned the receptionist?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I lied.

Anyway, he allowed I was looking happier than I had in all the time he’d known me. This didn’t make him any happier, of course–his mind was already torturing itself with the complexities of his next opus.

And he was right: I was happier than I could remember. I kept waiting for the demerits to materialize. I kept waiting to feel capsizing-ly bored with my frictionless life. It never happened.

When Marsha started in our office, on her very first morning, I felt a gulping shiver when I saw her. I shook her hand without checking the system first, just walked over, and said hello, quite deliberately. She had dark hair and dark eyes, a tall and slender frame, Spanish or Italianate in looks. This on its own wouldn’t normally give me a shivering gulp. When I sat back down at my desk and consulted the card, I knew what I would find. For the first time, it was a complete pile driving red.

I tried. I said hello, I said goodbye, and that was it. I said I had a prior engagement when the office took Marsha out for a drink one evening. I told myself I was too old at forty-five to start a new relationship anyway, and that office relationships were a particular no-no. I brushed off the news that she was single with no children. I refused to acknowledge that she had a lovely, gentle way about her but a waspish sense of humour.

So I tried – for as long as a week, I tried.

In the second week, I woke up thinking about her. The card was on my bedside table, and its glow on those pre-dawns filled the room, painting an infernal patch on the ceiling. It wasn’t enough to stop me from indulging in small talk with her between the hello and the goodbye. I established that she was a fan of music that could’ve included Trout Mask Replica. One slow afternoon I made her laugh, the card so red it could burn out retinas. On the days I couldn’t get to speak to her, it barely slid back to crimson. It knew what was on my mind and, dare I say it, in my heart.

I didn’t consult with Godolphin. I knew what he would say, if he bothered to say anything at all. I left the card in a drawer at home one morning and later that day asked Marsha if she wanted to try a new restaurant that had opened across the road from the office.

It was what … six, seven months before I saw Godolphin again? I was no longer capable of much surprise by then, but I was surprised to see him when I opened the door in my hostel by the sea.

I wondered if he was using the system himself, if he’d checked it before knocking. Perhaps he didn’t care enough for the sight of me to stick painfully with him. He certainly flinched, though. It was late in the afternoon, and I was in a dressing gown.

“Mr. Bostock,” he said, “Hello there.”

I waved him in. I hadn’t spoken in weeks and didn’t trust my voice until I’d had a glass of water.

“Are you well?” he asked.

I drank and cleared my throat. 

“I think it’s going to be a long process,” I said.

“You’ll get there,” he said, for form’s sake, “You’ll get there, I’m sure of it.” 

He looked around at the bare walls. 

“I thought I should track you down.”

“That’s very good of you.”

“Not at all.”

“If you’ve come to get your invention back, I’m afraid I don’t have it. Why would I? The worst is known now. I snapped it and threw it away.”

“Oh no, it’s not that. I abandoned that idea after… well, He nodded in my direction, though not exactly at me.

“That’s a shame. But perhaps not everyone would be like me? Perhaps you could tweak it…”

He shrugged, “Perhaps, but why risk it?”

I sat on my bed. Godolphin stayed standing.

“Do you know how she is?” I asked him.

“I’m afraid I don’t, no. I mean, I never met her, never knew her.”

“Of course not, no,” I had instinctively kept her away from him. We had nights elsewhere–some of those nights…

“It all happened off-stage for me, as it were.”

I cleared my throat again. I wanted this enunciated as clearly as I could, “I would like people to know it wasn’t her. None of it was her fault. It was mine. Like that time with the pub when I wasn’t there, if you remember?”

“I remember.”

“Good. Let them know it was all me. I hope people know that and don’t blame her.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, “This is not an area I’m comfortable with, but I’ll do my best.”

“I hope she’s doing all right, I felt tears starting, “She deserves to be well. More than I do. God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Look at me, what a blubbering mess.”

“It’s not a problem, not a problem,” he said stiffly.

I took a few minutes to compose myself, wrench my mind off those nights. He waited patiently. 

“So,” I said, “Do you have yourself a new guinea pig these days?”

“No,” he said, “Lord no. I’m too old for these madcap schemes now. No, I’ve had my time. Let others push forward.”

“That’s a shame,” I said again.

“It never amounted to much in the end,” he said, “Still–I enjoyed it while I was involved; I can say that. I very much enjoyed it.”

“Yes. That’s good,” I said. 

“Yes,” he said. 

Neither of us made much in the way of eye contact.

“Listen,” I said, “Perhaps we could find a pub? Have a chat about…?”

He stood up a little straighter, “Oh no, no. I didn’t come to take up any of your…” “You aren’t, honestly.”

“No, no, Mr. Bostock. I best be getting back.”

“If you’re sure,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure.”