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Malcolm Starke died today who rang us most nights so late that it could only be him He’d been there forever sinking audible coins into the payphone at the flats where he was watchman and they tried to fire him once for being sockless Greeting me with Alasdair’s name or him with mine he would catch us on the line and in a voice of infuriating softness tell us about Turkey the times he went to Turkey and the National Gallery which is on Trafalgar Square We’d lurch and charge around in absolute quiet sometimes laying the receiver on a chair, drawing long daggers into our hearts cocking our necks on invisible rope slashing our throats with giant swords bellowing fuck off with our huge silent teeth For birthdays he knew us apart and on scraps of scissored foolscap drew us into trains and carriages drew us in turbans and pyjamas drew us Turkish, presumably No likeness at all, covered in tipex, I kept them all I have every one They were always two days early never the same he’d never met either of us But you knew him at university You kept inviting him round after he was arrested for talking to girls and embarrassing people And though you sometimes seemed the least patient of us three, though you’d thank us when we’d told him you weren’t at home, you raised us in a house where Malcolm Starke might ring at any moment, where he was never far away and he was ours He felt that nuclear waste could be disposed of by firing it into the sun He felt that a sinister committee had taken remote control of his valuable brain That sometimes they didn’t ‘play fair’ with him He