This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll by Tim Roux Page A

privacy. Besides, he doesn’t seem to have much to do with them at all which is abusive in a sense but not the way that a court would see it. They’ll want bruises and broken bones or starvation or something, and even then they will be reluctant to interfere.
    So, the kids and I are left living in the same town but not in the same house or the same routine. The Hull poet Tony Flynn recently killed me when I discovered his poem ‘Growing’ which describes his feelings about being divorced and not having seen his child for two years. He had obviously said something consolatory to the effect that at least they could see each other every now and again, to which the reply was something like “what use is that?”.
    And as it happens, it is two years since I was kicked out by Cathy.
     
    ‘Growing’ by Tony Flynn
     
    You are the child
    I left behind. Two years older
    than when I saw you last ….
    Apart, we grow old
    together, through the same years.
    At least our two hearts beat
    a harmony in this.
    But you are right,
    it is no consolation.
    To be in the same world
    is not so much.
     
    As you can probably tell from my lyrics, I take my poetry very seriously and Tony is definitely one of my favourites. He wrote another poem, called ‘A Strange Routine’, which I thought about quite a lot when I moved out of Cathy’s life and Harry moved into it, where he finds himself sleeping naked alongside another man’s girlfriend in a house where the other two had shared a life, looking after the man’s plants and hearing the echoes of their conversations.
     
    ‘A Strange Routine’ by Tony Flynn
     
    Rooms fascinate: a white rocking chair,
    empty picture frames, a glass of water
    left beside the bed, mirrors reflecting
    a vase, and then the vase …..
    Ghosts of conversation hush to my step.
    Goldfish darken in their bowl:
    it’s time I changed the water, time
    I fed them: time I watered his plants.
    A strange routine, a temporary lodging.
    I sleep in another man’s bed, naked
    between his sheets, dreaming on his pillow.
    I perform his small duties about the place.
    The street below me is familiar, but
    not from here, not looking down
    like this; listening to traffic, uneasy,
    its constant drone. At night I wake
    beside a woman, and she, turning, calls me from a dream.
     
    Sleep, sleep my love ……..
    His accent on my words assuring her.
     
    I thought of Harry sleeping in my bed alongside my Cathy. It must have seemed strange to Harry to have had all my life around him, to be an impostor, but that will have gone by now, not that Harry will have done any of my chores. I can’t imagine him doing anything around the house and I didn’t do much, I have to admit. I do a lot more with Jade. He will have made everything in my house his own by now exactly in time for him to up and leave again, bowing to family pressure and deciding that he doesn’t really want Cathy after all, or not enough to risk his material comforts being snatched away from him by his censorious and punitive parents. Prat. And if I got back with Cathy I would be the one feeling disorientated.
    Back home in Victoria Ave, Jade has returned to life with a vengeance. She has leapt off the couch and is all over the place - a totally renewed woman and looking stunningly beautiful. You know that self-satisfied beaming, glowing look that some pregnant women get - she’s got it in spades - and she is demanding sex from me constantly to make up for lost time.
    For a while there, I have to admit that I had forgotten who Jade was. She became a kind of ghost, but now she has transformed from ectoplasmic to electric.
    She wants to go out every night and see friends. Jackie has worked wonders for her and got her job back. I have sold another two houses this week. You wouldn’t have believed one of them. Even I was amazed that anyone could possibly think of living there when the guy said “I’ll take it”. He’s probably buying for rent. I certainly wouldn’t rent