The clash of her sparkling rings and painted nails: there is something indecent about us all as we grow older.
I know she is a shocker with her flashy jewellery and clumpy ornaments, and bright hair tints and high colour make-up, but Agnes still has the way of drawing me in. Yes, let’s talk about indecency.
Starting with me! Just take a look! Pot belly, saggy tits and spindly legs. I am not the picture of your western hero am I?
The thing is I doubt I ever was. Fighting the road? There is the inertia of my ageing days! I like to think that nobody gives a shit, and least of all her. But I know that isn’t true either. She is still so demanding. I need to get away.
There is the famous story that the soothsayer Tiresias went through a similar change in older life. Grew big breasts. Became just like a real woman. I asked him about it that time when I made a journey of a very different kind – katabasis – and had the opportunity. What did your wife think afterwards, I asked. What did she say?
“All I know is this:
he went out for his walk a man
and came home female.”
(Mrs Tiresias is a poem from The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy published in 1999)
At the end the wizened old crone had given me a knowing wink, as ‘she’ left me. A wink, as if to say that the two of them had eventually worked it out. Living together. I don’t think Agnes would be so forgiving. “Stand up and be a man!” would be more her kind of thing.
When I am alone I sit for long periods of time in front of the door. It is almost closed. Almost closed, but not quite. There is the slither of a gap, and a dim light on the other side. I can believe.
Oh dear, but nobody is going to knock from there, are they? Who would knock from the other side, and ask to come back here? I mean really, some kind of frickin’ idiot it would have to be.
And nobody is going to answer if I start knocking either. Knock as much as you want. Bloody your knuckles, nobody is going to answer. OK. Because I’ll let you into one of my dirty little secrets. I’ve tried, and I’ve learned that it is not the way it works (‘held fast by Justice’).
Still, I could insert my little finger if I tried.
The trouble is the hinges have all rusted. That is what I think as I look into the mirror, and see the pair of frightened eyes staring back. Lost.
That is the issue. The children I mean. However much I have been trying to forget. Forget them, especially the one whose name translates along the lines of “Born Far Away”. And the prophecy of course. In these epic cycles there is always some damn oracle isn’t there? Some jack-ass in the story, who gets put up to give out a dire warning.
And spoil things. Otherwise in many respects my life would be fine really. Real fine and dandy. But it is too late now. It is because of what I know. That along he comes one day and spoils things. Don’t believe in death?
I want you to know that in this story, apart from the indecency of the father, I haven’t really done anything wrong. After all mostly with Agnes it is all make-believe, smoking mirrors and magic. We are not talking Oedipus. But just try telling that to the child.
And I would. Tell him that is. If I could have the chance. Honestly I would. But this story is broken. Lost. And all there is, is this door that isn’t quite closed. Not quite. And a dim light which I keep trying to make myself believe is coming from the other side.