How Green is Your Valley?

t/w: alcoholism 

I bring the glass to my lips, allowing its bitterness to fill my mouth. I savour the feeling, washing the rum against the rough insides of my cheeks before squeezing my eyes shut, swallowing hard. A drop dribbles from the corner of my mouth, racing down and adding to the network of brown stains on the front of my white sweater. A tightness in my neck. I run my tongue over a cragged lip.

One last drink. One last drink and then I’ll go. I’ll tell my Germany story again.

The bloke behind the bar swims into sight and casts a long enquiring gaze in my direction as he furiously rubs lipstick smears from the rim of a clouded wineglass. Dark stains form dull patterns on the arse of his jeans from an evening of hand-wiping. His eyes trace the outline of my face as I raise a single finger with an assured nod. 

He stops, placing the glass down and running his fingers through a receding wisp of salt and pepper hair. Eyes still raking over me. Gazing back, I lock my face into an expression of innocent curiosity. 

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” He cocks his head as he finally speaks. “Why don’t you go home, Danny.”

“C’mon mun, just one more. It’s only me in yer now, what harm am I gunna do?” I throw my hands into the air and gesture behind me. The pub is empty aside from a drained pair of Guinness glasses and a wind that rattles around the gaps in the door.  

“You’ve had more than I should’ve given you anyway. Be fair Danny.”  

Fair? What the fuck does fair have to do with anything? I’ll show you fucking fair.  

How green is your valley? How black are your feet? 

His shoulders droop as he sighs, tossing down his filthy checkered dishcloth. He pushes his way around the cracked bar and places a firm hand against my chest, muttering gruffly into my ear. His patched beard tickles my cheek, and I giggle as he levers me backwards. Gareth, I think his name is, or maybe John or Dave. My eyes linger on a strange web of spots on his pallid cheek as he presses me through the door, slamming it shut in my face and leaving a lingering aroma of cheap beer and shitty breath. Smug prick. 

The cold air hits the back of my throat, and I gag on the tang of stale ash. The air shimmers.

I stagger forwards and find a hand to wipe away a line of spittle crystallising at the corner of my mouth. My other hand plunges into the tight fabric of the pocket at my arse. My last remaining fag. Need to stop being so fucking generous. Holding it up to the light, I can see flaky tobacco bursting out of a hobbled neck. I send it away with a flick. Fuck it.

How green is your valley? How cold is your heart? 

This is a familiar street.

A Tesco Express bag, tattered beyond function, slithers across the ground and tangles itself around my boot. Reaching down to free myself, I stumble and crash sideways into a plastic bin, spilling moulded bread, pasta leftovers and a torn condom wrapper across the hazily lit floor. I roll over onto my side and hack phlegm. 

“For fuck sake!”

The serrated concrete is cold against my cheek.

I push off the ground as hard as I can. A dull throb is beginning to pulse through my knee. Breathe deeply and keep moving. Save it for the morning. A young boy kicks a ball against a paint-splattered wall. He melts away before I can reach him.  

How green is your valley? How short is your smile?

I’ve reached the high street. My legs know their way.

I pass Tommy’s Butchers, catching sight of myself passing the shop like an echo in the warped glass window. I stare into my own eyes, marking their outline. It’s odd. That’s me looking back. I’m staring into my own opaque soul. All I see is hazel.

“Cunt!” My reflection sneers at me. “Cunt!”

I laugh as hard as I can, pushing the sound out of my stomach like a retch. I allow the glee to slowly drain from my face, watching the changing shape of those foreign eyes, and then I spin away, laughing again, arms spread wide like a child trying to take flight. Rotate slowly on the spot. My vision traces the shape of the half-moon. I need another drink.

Sound encroaching into my head. It seems to have reached me suddenly, almost delayed, as if my ears have just caught the tuning.

Music: quiet but piercing.

I glance around, looking for an open window, a locked shop having a late night session. Maybe I’ll know them. Maybe they’ll have booze. Or something better. Maybe it’ll be a woman, lonely and drunk and half-naked. Glass of wine in hand. Maybe she’ll want me. That’d be good. 

But no; there is nothing. Nothing but darkness and ghosts.

But can that melody just be in my head? Surely not. I can’t just be imagining it. No, I can feel it melting through the frost-lined air. I scan the shopfronts, the empty leering alleys, hunting for the source.

Oh shit. It’s her. That old girl. The one who sits in the entrance to the Spar. I’ve often dropped a few pennies into her battered plastic takeaway tub. I even bought her a coffee once, which she accepted with a toothless smile: two green teeth clashing against purple gums. Her skin is grey, and her hair matted, as ragged as her weather-beaten rug. A spice victim. A guitar, its body splintered with cracks, sits in her folded lap. 

Her head is bowed. But her grime-thickened fingers still tenderly strum the guitar’s three remaining strings and, from behind that curtain of greying hair, she sears a golden, evanescent melody, filling the deepening night.

“Take my breath away,” she sings. “My love, take my breath away.” 

I can feel my heart driving in my neck. A thunder in my throat. No sound exists in the town beyond that voice. The wind has stopped.

“Take my breath away.”

With a wrench, I tear myself clear. It’s too much, like pressing molten iron to a frozen stone. I can’t bear it. Not tonight.  

How green is your valley? How soft is your soul? 

Thoughts swirl around my mind. A miasma of wild and fragmentary imaginings. My feet scramble on the cobbles and I stumble forward, clutching at a pillar, vision swimming. My chest heaves and I vomit, spattering my boots with a dark sludge. I gasp for breath.

I need to be alone. I need to be on my own with my ghosts. I can feel them around me now, shifting among the streetlights, dancing across the faces of deserted windows. I can hear them whispering too, confirming half-truths that I am desperate not to believe. 

How green is your valley? How long can you hold? 

Yes. I think that these must be the hours to listen to my ghosts. 

For under the ever-blackening sky, all the streets are silent.