The Palm House

In the middle of Sefton Park which is on the south side of Liverpool there is The Palm House, a dome-shaped botanic palace of glass which glistens in the summer sun. It glistens in the other seasons too, but best when the summer sun teases the tropical fronds inside and has them reaching for the roof.

Meanwhile, miles away on Southport beach which stretches more desert-like every day as the sea recedes centimetre by centimetre back towards Ireland and the Isle of Man, a man, Bryant, walks solitary and increasingly alone with his morbid thoughts. He schlepps more than walks, for schlepping is what morbid people do, walking is for the more vigorous minded. He scuffs his feet in the little pools of sea-water left behind by the reluctant tide. He wishes his girlfriend was more trustworthy and he didn’t have to watch her all the time for signs of infidelity, impending or already committed.

Timing was everything. His falling for her so heavily seemed to freak her into all sorts of inappropriate behaviour. Inappropriate to his falling for her, at any rate. It all served to squash his spirit and turn him into a very insecure creature indeed. Still in love, but tragically disillusioned and blighted; the love was now a poison between them. At this moment she, having had to leave the decent job where many of the misdemeanours occurred, was busy cursing him while changing soiled bed-clothes in a local care home.

She smashed a mirror in their – her – flat, screaming that she might as well make the curse official. She took in two young cats and taught them to hate him and slash at his wrists at every opportunity. One of them – a Marilyn Monroe of cats, all glamour and fur – saved her noxious farts to wake him in the night; they were like mustard gas and stung his eyes. The other, a runt, waggled her arse at him teasingly as if the little moggy knew that that was his only chance of female nookie in this abode.

He was a tortured man.

He’d begun his Merseyside existence due to another woman: the most on-off relationship since the Burtons or since Samson had been smitten by Delilah. They’d started off in London where she was an art student, and then he’d slouched after her to Dublin where her mother had married a psychopath, then to Liverpool where she’d started her teacher training. He was like a pathetic Ian Beale figure, crying and pleading his way back into her life, and following her around like a beaten dog given yet another reprieve. They’d ended up in Birkenhead (surely the graveyard for any relationship) in a bought house opposite where Wilfred Owen used to live. It’s my guess that the poet chose to go and fight in the war rather than stay there.

To say that Birkenhead is a cultural desert is an insult to cultural deserts. People used to take day trips from there to Bootle in order to luxuriate in its aesthetic splendour.

Now he was in sunny Southport, a veritable Las Vegas compared to scruffy Tranmere, in the throes of another doomed relationship. Paranoid, insecure and suspicious (a firm of divorce lawyers?), he’d taken to following her around like some sort of private detective. Once, he’d adorned a disguise and sat up the other end of a train carriage from her and peeked at her over the top of his Guardian, then scouted her around Liverpool to find out if she was meeting one of the many suspects he had in his fevered mind. In the end, she hadn’t met anyone except her mum as she’d told him would be the case when he had her under questioning that morning.

“You off to Liverpool today, then?”

“Yep, off to meet my mum and take her to lunch”

See? He couldn’t be expected to believe a tale like that!

She’d gone to St. Ives for a long weekend with her friends. He wasn’t invited. He didn’t like her friends and had made up derisory names for them that were only semi-funny. He called one of the ‘Lumpy’ and another ‘Lurch’. This meant, of course, that he too went to St. Ives, again in heavy disguise. He wore a fake moustache and dark glasses. He wore a long raincoat in the sweltering heat. This had the effect of melting the shoe polish with which he’d smeared his hair. His face was streaked black like a mascaraed woman in deep mourning.

He was sure ‘Lumpy’ had pointed him out to the rest of the group and they’d left the restaurant without ordering.

One other time he’d followed her to the Palm House. There she met an old friend of his, Donald Blewitt, from university. They’d kissed as lovers do upon meeting and proceeded to hold hands and laugh, kiss and cuddle their way around the plantly substances.

This time, he went home and waited for her….