Flamingo Tears

By Geoffrey Hinton Humphries

The odyssey of a supreme court judge tainted with scandal: a brilliant female barrister, two women, one a pathologist and the other a lawyer, who run an underground little theatre, and the judge’s mother. They are privileged, comfortable and confident. The world about them changes. The sea recedes.
Lightning and thunder are constant in the background. Stories and rumours contaminate that which had been previously taken as a day-to-day normal. Confusion and tragic assumptions are made when the safety of truth is trumped by versions of something more convenient. All around them, fiction has become the constant fall-back against the unpalatable real.
Everything is perplexing and challenging. Though for all of them, there is something on the tip of their minds that they should be recognising. All is not new. Some things are being repeated historically, over and over again. They are acutely discomforted by the fact that the truth is uncertain in both words and intentions. They are out of kilter participating in a new version of life. An unreal version, that confronts and challenges them day after day: a challenging version devoid of rules or precedent. The points of the compass are confused. There is a risk, undefined, in making eye-contact. They have been thrust into a version of life that is not simply fake: they bleed too much, and know pain, and fear—or not! Is it all just a performance?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528963701

Geoffrey Hinton Humphries

With a background in judiciary, forensic probity issues, litigation, university and clinical medical research, ethics mediation and arbitration in Australian state and federal court referred disputes, Geoffrey Hinton Humphries has had years of dealing with people in varying degrees of disputation and conflict. Outcomes have ranged from exhilarating to deeply sad. The mix of the personal and professional histories significantly contributes to the dystopian fiction of his novels and short stories.

Book preview

Flamingo Tears

Geoffrey Hinton Humphries

Austin Macauley Publishers

Flamingo Tears

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

About the Author

With a background in judiciary, forensic probity issues, litigation, university and clinical medical research, ethics mediation and arbitration in Australian state and federal court referred disputes, Geoffrey Hinton Humphries has had years of dealing with people in varying degrees of disputation and conflict. Outcomes have ranged from exhilarating to deeply sad. The mix of the personal and professional histories significantly contributes to the dystopian fiction of his novels and short stories.

Dedication

Barbara

Copyright Information ©

Geoffrey Hinton Humphries 2021

The right of Geoffrey Hinton Humphries to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or distortions of historical events. Any resemblance to actual living persons, or actual events is purely coincidental. Historical events have been distorted.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528922197 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528963701 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Cover photographic image, Pink Flamingo head detail, by Jens Meyer.

WELL, AS THESE THINGS GO …

A thick black, hard edged line on the map, became That Border. Everyone understood what was meant by referring to That Border!

Queues of vehicles of all shapes and sizes formed.

A group of children kicked a football end-to-end on the verge of the highway.

Their, or His, Bloody Border was augmented by portable barricades anchored down with sand bags, labelled in black stencilled letters, Flood Mitigation. Not for Sale. Ribbons of red and white striped plastic flapped and spiralled in an endless screw twist, in the hot wind.

Sentry boxes, porta-loos, canvas shade cloths and caravans were provided for the comfort of the troops.

The barricade defences were replaced with wire fencing.

Their fucking fence was fortified with corrugated iron work, and electrified wires.

Uncoordinated red and blue laser lights constantly winked and blinked.

Lolly Pop signs, signalled commands.

The vehicle queues stretched for kilometres. Fast food sellers set up tents on the centre island of the Highway.

Garbage bins overflowed with all the disposable this and that’s.

Babies developed blistering rashes, as mothers had to make do with improvised nappies.

There was concern, that the grey Shire-cross police mounts were suffering in the heat and dust. They had to ship bales of feed, via another state, because of course the feed was on the one side, while the horses were on the tuther! A child, out of

All the while, kindness, and goaded on by the other boys’, threw an apple over the barrier!

Child arrested. Interfering with police. Brat! Where were his parents?

All the while a select few lads, and ladies, those elite authorised, observers of the blessed mob, sat in the top row of the Torch Theatre balcony, knitting barbed wire. Up in the precious refined air of the Podium, the commentariat take very little interest in the goings-on, in the pit below! They hold a hand to an ear, and whisper sensitive codes of shoes, ships and sealing wax, and cabbages: and grudgingly must stand for the Lord’s Prayer.

Bless this House, and all who sail …

Or-da: I say, Or-da on my left! Shit! Where is the coulisse? The Coulisse! Shit and damnation! The Flat! Theatre Flat! The bloody painted scenery! Ring the bells! Ring ‘em! The background. Where is our background? The flat! The coulisse. Hell! Flats and coulisse! Stage craft! Stage business! Dress the stage! Site-lines! This is hysterical. Fuckin’ hysterically real! Smoke if you got ’em! Not one of them wondered why they were playing their parts, against the brick rear wall of the kitchen and the dunny. Shit! Mise en scene? My arse!

[Back Drop: Back lit film screen.

Teenager sitting on an Ag-bike, looking at the fence separating her grandparents’ home property, from the rich but neglected agricultural land, partitioned off by decree, on the other side. All access is denied. They are quarantined. There is no channel of appeal. No pleading of extenuating circumstances. Over their fence, is the land of the forbidden, the pristine, uncontaminated, protected domain of Tuther Side, as the locals had dubbed it. The term had long since stopped being amusing. Penalties became ever more strictly enforced.

Signs and notice boards, loaded with routine orders and promulgations quickly succumbed to shot gun target practice!

[She revs the bike, and charges at the fence. ]

[Audience: some discordant clapping]

[The top strand of the fence, High Tensile 1.80mm, with 100mm barb spacing, flicks over the handle bars of the bike, tearing off the rear vision mirrors. The wire caught her just above both elbows and largely bisects the lower chest.]

[Gasps from audience. Exclamations]

[Bike rears up, and stops.]

[Audience oohs! And ayahs! Coughing]

[Audience mobile telephone rings]

[Audience, bellows of complaint]

[Audience, group form around telephone user, phone-cameras flash. Angry screaming and yelling]

[Group of actors, bring chairs out to the front of stage, and sit down to watch the audience, amused. Some clap.]]

[Backlit movie. Child playing a tuba]

[Sound up: tune of Colonel Bogey]

[Backlit film. Tuba player joined by other children playing brass instruments.]

[Light and sound snap off. Long pause]

[Sound up. Mix. Agbike revving. Police sirens. Neighing horses. Children squabbling. Arguing voices. News TV broadcast]

[Back lit screen. Teenager dismounts from Agbike and smiling walks past applauding film crew. Exits left]

[All on stage freeze]

[Teenager. Enters stage right, smiling, and unbloodied. She waves at the cast as she crosses the stage and exits stage left.]

[Entrance stage right: lolly girl, scantily dressed in feathers, wearing a large hooked nose. She carries a large tray. Cast bunch up around her, excited. Some take up ice-cream cones from the tray. Others rattle boxes of hard lollies. The girl is obviously being sexually molested and abused.]

[Cast Laughter.]

[Audience: boos and cat-calls. Piercing whistling. Chanting! A few in protest, most are goading on the violent assault on the girl.]

Once Upon

So, nothing is changed, same as usual; it has become the norm, as they say. So, the story goes, a cracking yarn, anecdotes and theories, all hanging more or less tidily together and confirming this, that and the other. Until overcome by a better truth of course. Inevitable probably that another version will sidle up and trump all the aforesaid and so-forth bullshit. So E&OE and of course, it goes without mention, allowing for accidental slips. So, bump on in!

SO

Spog sat in her chair. They couldn’t be sure but she seemed to be looking out of the window overlooking what had been the Gulf. Dub kneeled beside the chair, holding her hand up close to his lips. Rick too looked out of the window while holding Spog’s bony, heavily veined left hand. Head down, Roma gently stroked Spog’s bare feet. Tink stood in the corner of the room, her gloved right hand jammed up hard into her left arm pit, lips moving. Snoodles sat on Spog’s shoulder. His arms and legs began to rattle. Knees creaked and crackled. He coughed, and wheezed.

Spog said, with precise enunciation, You are the ply-iest of plywood doors! You are Sundee-Bon-Bons!

Dub kissed her hand then pressed her knuckles hard against his lips. Looking up at her, he smiled, and gently reached up and closed her eyes. Rick went behind the back of the chair, and reaching over, carefully placed the knotted scarf under Spog’s chin, keeping the mouth closed. She fiddled absently with the folds of the scarf, not trying for some sort of perfection but simply having to do – something!

Later, Dub tore down a flimsy wooden louvered door from a bedroom. They placed Spog on it and covered her with a sheet. They sat Tink in her cupboard, she immediately quietened. With Dub reaching behind and taking the front edge, and the two women lifting the rear corners, they picked up Spog’s litter, and went down the stairs one step at a time. It was not a heavy load. They placed it on the trolley, with a tin of kerosene and a crumpled telephone directory.

Neither Rick nor Roma queried Dub as to where they were headed. He took up the handle and steered the way, while the women pushed. They had to pick-up the litter and scramble over heavy sandstone boulders lining the base of the cliff. They all felt sick with the heat and stress of the effort. The backs of their shirts were covered with insects. Sweat patches were blotched with tangles of maggots. Lightning, now so common as to be barely noticed, zipped and crackled in the far distance.

The women looked at it. A Grand Piano, barely recognisable, in splinters, draped and folded over three massive boulders. Wires coiled up from its innards. Some moved against each other, in the wind. Trembling hisses and clumped think sounds: seemingly purposeful. A sight and sound on such a scale as to be worthy of a reason. As the wind eased, edges of wire slid over each other, plinking the softest of scratched notes, pinging up into the roil of clouds.

They watched Dub carry Spog over to the wreck roil of cloude, and lay her inside the belly of the instrument. He placed the shattered remains of the lid over her, poured the kerosene and lit it. He turned and went back to the women. They looked at him, each kissed him on the cheek, and they all turned to go. They had been followed. An elderly man, with a corpse tied to his back, with lengths of coloured electrical extension cord stood looking at them. Dub straightened up, and stood to one-side, gesturing for the exhausted old man to pass. The man shuffled forward, trailing throbbing white lines and blobs of maggots, across the stones from a writhing scat, covering the wrapped corpse, his back and trousers. They quickly shrivelled, with head parts rearing up as they baked on the rocks. As he drew abreast, the man did not look up, just simply croaked, Thank you! Such a rare thing, it straightened Dub up, momentarily puzzled by an unguarded polite voice: a human being, saying thank-you!

Dub and the women, put their arms about each other, and crying headed back to the trolley and home. None looked back. There they heard the roar, and crackle of sparks, as the pyre was boosted by additional fuel.

Weeks later they tidied up Spog’s few belongings. A dirty pillowcase contained a clean night-gown, a colourful tea-cosy and hand-knitted bed socks.

The play? Bit of business: dentures discovered in the bag. A douche?

Play! What play?

Nothing! Nothing! Sorry! Forget it!

Rick picked up the whale Scrimshaw, once the property of level one, unit three and scrubbed her licked index finger on some discolouration, before replacing it, exactly back onto its place within the ring of dust on the shelf. She did not look around at the others. She could clearly visualise, the bit of business where the denture is discovered, and the cast silently mull over its significance or whatever!

--------------------------------------

The other three were unaware of what she was seeing. She would stand in the middle of the room terrified, looking out through the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. They had stopped asking her to try and explain as best she might, but eventually gave up. It became just another questionable, incomprehensible fact amongst a huge number of mysteries; impervious to rational consideration. Yet another bit of the non-fit mosaic jiggle puzzle, characteristic of their days and nights.

She was looking at Silver Gulls that seemed to be under command and control of some kind. Something irresistible. Rendered helpless and confused. A flock of gulls had gone mad. They all faced south, packed tightly onto the ceramic floor tiles of the balcony. Layers of stacked birds. The bottom strata of carcasses compacted into a desiccated and flattened tangle. The residue feathers surrounding the bum areas heavily stained. Empty eyes, blank sockets stare through the sliding glass doors, fronting the lounge room. A fetid brown fluid has dried to a sandy stain over the quality Italian tiles. Cockroaches had busied themselves, and left empty carapaces. Living birds squirted small clumps of faeces wreathing with fine hair like worms. Each bird in the ruck fed on the tarry puddle of excrement of the bird to their immediate front. The exception was the eight birds in the first row, most with their heads twisted up onto the verandas brick wall. Some had died, most were dying, and as their intestines emptied and stopped, the birds in the row immediately behind became agitated, then frenzied as they pecked at the anus of their supply source. Eventually heads became bloodied, as they fought to reach the inner most cavities. All the birds where stained by the squirted froth mix of blood and a fatty sludge. Best described by those who think they know, or are merely creative, as faecal staining of the peri-cloacal feathers.

--------------------------------------

It was probably a Latvian immigrant who brought it in. Perhaps a Finnish person, or a Scandinavian, an infected traveller, apparently symptom free carried the pathology from any one of the Baltic States. Of course, the role that may have been played by Finnish immigrants to Minnesota has been subtly discounted, and latterly hardly mentioned. Probably now classified by those in the know and custodians of these things, as a bit wonky! A wonkish suggestion, entirely without foundation, and so to say, probably slightly offensive, as he would have opined, without any suggestion of seriousness. Diphyllobothrium denoriticum, they tagged it: lots of chitteration to label a tape-worm. Others have concerns about Filapial worms and mention the loss of fish in the great lakes of Africa and Canada. Fresh water fish became infested with multiple worm types by feeding on infected water fleas, and the procercoids passed through the wall of the gut into a body cavity, of the fish and became, as is well known and understood, plerocercoids. Consequently, opportunistic scavengers also become trapped in the cycle of infection. Dogs were the first to be stricken. They quickly became struggling bags of bones. All breeds, shapes and sizes, dragging their hind legs and dry tongue lolling, wandered the streets and park lands. As is well known dogs always come back to their vomit. It might be some thought that the dogs wanted to hasten the process; get the damn dying bastard thing over-with probably a stupid opinion; they were just dogs after all. Whatever the truth about it all, the animals eventually flopped down in gutters, or crawled under the historic brass-band rotunda, to be picked up by patrolling gangs of Sectators in their bright orange over-all’s, black sculptured turbans and gauze surgical face masks. The gang’s prefect set the pace of the column of workers, by tapping a long swagger stick covered in rattling tin bibs-and-bobs, on the ground, in-time with the heel of his left boot.

Gulls must have fed on the dog and fish carcases, or the putrid excrement, and so the cycle was set. Of course, there was the added tension, of coping with the possibility, gaining some support, that the spread may be associated with vaccinations and inoculations, or some such, and the whisper-thumpers point to the example of the Ring disaster of 1939. Blacklock had foreseen the possible linkage and described it in 1940, and his work remains persuasive. Whatever the actuality, the fortress had been breached. There seemed to be three states of people. The alive, darkly shrouded ones, veiled with gravity: slightly stooped forward, gloved hands tightly fisted against their chests, protection against biting insects. They glide along two by two, seeming to float, not so much as a glimpse of legs or feet, Russian Berezka girls or something as such. Perfectly symmetrical arched eye-brows, black against the smooth white complexion. Almond eyes peeping out of their black helmet slits into the squint light. Secondly there were the increasingly rare, well hidden, head down eyes averted, human specks as the three of them had become. Insignificant hermits, curled up on the apartment’s ceramic tiles seeking some comfort from the weight of heat, pressing down on them. They drifted on the currents of happenstance within the tangles and confusion of their cloistered world on the garrisoned planet. They had spent most of their lives on a patch of earth that was less than two square miles. They saw themselves, as insignificant dust in the constant burning glare. A searing, pulsing glare that burnt by reflection, into tender under-parts. Under eye-brows, nostrils and beneath the chin. Eyes became surrounded by red and white shadows of squint spectacles. A constant itching annoyance sparkling from salt crystals, blooming on rails and brass drain fittings on the concrete landings, and sand specks of mica. Nothing was truly clean and white. The blood of nose bleeds was tinged with blue. Periods of the day, were not tagged by discerning hours, but instead by subtle changes in washes of colour.

The days had long passed, when Spog and her lady helpers would cover mirrors, draw curtains, remove cutlery, and serviette rings off tables. Spog pulled on an oven mitt, covering wedding and engagement rings, as the staggering crackle of the electrical storm rolled down from the hills. Such instances later, became the stuff of fantasy, quaint episodes, recalled with a smile and a chortle of regret. Rumblegumption Spog called the thunder and lightning, Old Rumblegumption! She was frightened never-the-less, and was strict in putting the proper precautions in place.

They were referred to, in the early days as cavers, but that tag seemed to go out of use. Not for any particular reason that any of them knew. Intent on being a little amusing, he had asked his companions, if they knew that Bray was a term, sharing its origin with such terms as powder? Dust? Flour? They did not respond. He did not pursue the discussion. He would have liked to talk about the weight of smoke, or similar. Instead he looked down into the yacht basin grave-yard, and again picked out the book: an old family bible, its mud stiffened pages, fanned open.

Hey! Paul! Me old china. Got a bloody reply from those Ephesians yet?

He thought it, but knew it had gone stale. Not worth a snort or smile.

Finally, there must inevitably be the dead. Known and unknown, family groups or individuals. Many funeral piers were set up along the beach. After the heat of the day, beacons of flame belched up with tumbles of black smoke, along the curved line of the sea-wall of the boulevard. Dry lightning marched on rickety stilts across the horizon.

Most of their adjoining apartments in the high rise, at least those without checker plate steel clad doors, remained ransacked and empty. Beach sand and grit dust, blown in through the smashed windows, formed streaked patterns over floor tiles. The silicone sparkles crunched and rasped underfoot, requiring particular care in order not to slip and fall. None of them fossicked any longer. The three welcomed the quiet, though they pined for radio music. There was no power. It was suspected that the lift shafts had become suicide pits, which none of the group investigated. The flight of stairs was a bother, but the women rarely went out, it was becoming too dangerous to attempt to trade. It was left to him to have to cope with the midday challenge of the stairwell.

It was the unavoidable necessity of having to go down to the basement car park that he hated. Every day at twelve, he wheeled an empty wheelie bin to the landing at the top of the staircase, and lowered buckets on ropes over the balustrade, guiding them down carefully to rest beside the chocked open door-way entrance to the basement. Gripping the rail with a two hand slide he descends the concrete stairs, left foot leading, right coming down to join the other, step by step. The basement was a concrete hall. They had been confused early on, when they realised that the gulf’s tide was receding, yet the basement had developed a sheen of moisture, and large puddles, that produced over time small islands of salt. Of course, he understood that there had to be an explanation. Water must find its level. There must be a natural cause giving effect. But he had lost the knack of seeing the simplicity of things natural. He had lost the feeling for it.

The concrete blocks on the lowest courses of the structure developed a cancer of decay with diamond salt crystals and bare reinforcing rods bleeding red stains rusticles. Around three abandoned cars, open suitcases, shoes, empty tins, dozens of discarded methane gas bottles, and a child’s tricycle formed a lumpy salt patina, possibly awaiting archaeological discovery and analysis. The two desiccated bodies had matching mottled black and brown complexions. Wrinkled cardboard like parchment, roughly stretched tight over the sharp edges of their skulls. Patches of matted strings of bailing twine served as residual tufts of hair. The driver’s head was arched back over the seat’s headrest. Stained, capped teeth framed a muted scream, aimed at two fluffy dice, hanging from the rear vision mirror. One angle of the mandible was dislocated, caused by gold fossicker extractions, using hammer and plyers. Overhead across the ceiling a lattice of red pipes, each tagged water only, in bold blue letters. Dotted along the pipes, clawed sprinkler roses, most still with their plugs of red wax seemed at the ready to respond to something. A few had tangles of nobbled lime hanging down. Icicles that might eventually fuse with a column of salt growing, drip by drip, up from the floor. It would probably take centuries, so he refused to consider it, or watch for progress. Adjacent to the buckled garage roller doors, a ransacked air-conditioning plant and boiler room. The boiler, its front section gaping, had dripped a mixture of rust and black soot for months, perhaps years. A cone had formed in the drip zone on the floor, beneath the red stained lip of the firebox and its clusters of tubes. The needle on a gauge was fixed at twenty past, whatever: the dials face was blank. A noosed asbestos gasket ring, dangled over the one remaining intact hinge.

The women had not seen it, but Dub had described, for them, the puzzling fact that there appeared to be salt stained, almost frothy, parallel lines, equally spaced down the doors of the car. Dub queried whether they could be tidal marks. flood lines of some sort. The women were puzzled briefly, but would have said that within the scheme of things, flood marks or whatever they were, would have to be considered small change. Of little or no concern.

From little things, big consequences flow, Dub spoke to the ulcer on his leg. Neither women responded.

The basement scene had triggered the habit response. Always the same thought. The remembrance of the trivial minded gasbag Martyn. Master of MG sport car restorations, particularly the MGA. In later years, forgetful that he had often repeated the conversation, Martyn recited the story of how he and a few others in the know had discovered that the best place to source antique and vintage vehicles were places like California. Desiccated California being constantly basted with billowing rolls of Arkansas and Oklahoma baked dry, fine silt top soils. It would be a costly mistake to try to hunt up classic car bargains in Europe or the US eastern sea-board. Salt and rust are ‘car-killers’, Martyn would repeat for emphasis. The problem was that in the countries above the snow line, local road authorities and municipal workers sprayed tons of salt on the roads and car parks to speed the snow melt. The residual salt, churned up by the cars tyres quickly rusted out the chassis and structural strong points, rubber perished and blisters formed course jagged edged blebs upon every slight scratch or imperfection in the duco. It was a constant irritation that despite chastising himself and growing frustrated and bored with the intrusion of thoughts about Martyn’s resurrected shiny red and green MG’s, they were persistent in meddling with his consciousness. Martyn had been one of those in the huddle, a fellow participant of a particular time, one of the crew playing out their history, not a friend, but a tolerated acquaintance. It seemed so unlikely but Martyn developed a reputation for being able to fix things. It was said that Martyn could make good and repair anything so long as he had a ball-and-pain hammer and a BSA bike spanner. Martyn never evidenced any understanding that speaking is as much an act as doing. Martyn Taradiddle that was it,