BLOOD WEDDING

Gilbert was upset. His late night pot of tea sat in front of him as he looked out over the olive grove. Gilbert was sad. The ashtray was half full before him. The dogs barked desultorily as the barn owl passed over the roof of their run: hunting. A waxing moon rode above the big walnut tree behind their run. The outside lights were still lit. The wind had dropped away but the temperature was failing to recede. He was covered in a fine, slightly acrid film of sweat.

Gilbert was upset and sad because he had misled Abby about the gun. He seldom lied to her: he would rather not have to. In all his life he had lied with an alarming and shameless regularity. He had lied to almost everyone who had ever know him. He had lied to people he had never met and never would - he was a writer after all - no, not lied but misled certainly. But not to Abby. Meeting her had straightened his life out and changed him almost beyond recognition. And now he had lied to her.

It was a well-meaning lie, but nonetheless it was a lie. The gun was not just for target shooting. Gilbert had no idea whether it would do him any good in the world of the Laz but he felt more comfortable now that he had it by him. Would a real gun work against a fictional character - Dick had said hadn't he that all of them were originally fictional - he just did not know. All he knew for certain was that this farrago had to be brought to a finish before the Laz could breath life into his nefarious plan. Post modern fiction had to be rescued from this nemesis. There was no denying now that Gilbert and Laz were locked into a conflict so desperate, so hopeless, so doom laden that a truly terminal outcome was ineluctable.

He drank the last of the tea in his mug and lit another cigarette. It was a struggle that he would gladly have passed on. He poured the last of the tea from the pot and went to the toilet to piss. He came back with the muffled refilling of the cistern behind him and smile on his face.

He was smiling because he had just recalled the conversation that he had had with the cafe owner yesterday. Gilbert had gone to the counter so that he could pay for the drinks of the old couple at the front of the cafe. The couple that they had been watching. The owner, short, plump, and florid had demurred his offer graciously and had explained that he had already covered their bill himself. The man was a cousin of his father's and a man of great honour. In more detail, and with more candour than Gilbert would have expected from any man, the owner had then explained in some detail about how the man with the weeping eyes had just recently been released from prison and that the woman tending them was not his wife but his mistress. Our gentle old man had just served some 25 years for multiple murder. "It was blood murder - sometimes people have to die - sometimes murder has to be" the owner had shrugged "what could he do? It was honour."

Gilbert smiled to himself again and repeated " - sometimes people have to die - sometimes murder has to be".



(to be continued ... )