2/5/11

My Black Hearted Love
By Philip Suggars



The unicycle was Nick Cave's pride and joy. He used to clean it every Sunday. Dressed as always in his black jacket with its shiny elbows, skinny tie and black jeans, the wayward licks of his hair pushed over his ears or knotted behind his neck with a red scrunchy.

"Hello, Nicholas," I used to say, waving at him to catch his attention.

"Isn't she a beauty?" Nick Cave used to say, pointing to the unicycle's glinting frame, "as light as she is practical".

He'd sit cross-legged outside his house with a plastic bowl filled with sudsy water, the breeze blowing foam across the driveway like summer snow. Then he would set to cleaning every inch of the Unicycle with a toothbrush, taking breaks for a cup of tea and sometimes looking up at the sky, squinting as though expecting bad weather.

Each morning he would go for a ride on his unicycle, after polly, my wife, had left in her car. Polly had all of Nick Cave's records. They were sealed into plastic sleeves and arranged alphabetically. Next to them was a column of bootleg cassettes and a coffee table book of black and white concert photographs. An altar at the foot of our bed.

I don't know why I followed Nick Cave that particular morning. I hadn't slept well and had dreamt that a chorus of sirens camped on the rocks near boat house had been singing to me. In any case, as the sky bruised and Nick Cave rode his shining unicycle down the long black tongue of the coast road, I scurried after him, ducking behind bushes and sneaking through the long shadows of the pine forest at the edge of the track that led to the sea.

Nick Cave dismounted from the unicycle in a graceful bound and leant it against a boat hut. There, as I knew she would be, stood Polly in a white silk dress. I lay behind a dune. In a well practiced flourish Nick Cave removed his jacket and spread it on the sand, insisting that she sit.

"He's such a gentleman," I thought.

He produced three silver batons from his backpack, and tossed them up into the blue sky, juggling them into seamless orbits. Polly chuckled like a child. She "oo-ed" and she "ah-ed". When the performance was over Nick Cave produced a cheroot which Polly lit for him, her pale face glowing in a way I had not seen it do for years. And that was the moment when he reached into the pit of my stomach with those long, dextrous fingers of his and squeezed. I couldn't breathe. I knew what I had to do.

I crept up to his unicycle and pulled out my pen knife. I ran my hands around the tyre, past the thick, white treads that looked like dirty teeth, to the fleshy rim. I paused. The knife glinted red as it slipped into the rubber and gutted the tyre like a fish. It hissed and gurgled. I gripped it and pressed hard until it was empty and lifeless. When I'd finished Polly had already left Nick Cave stared out to sea, smoking the remains of his cheroot. I crept after Polly, my hands shaking.

It's autumn now and the wind blows the salt cold in from the sea, throwing leaves at our rattling windows. Nick Cave and I sit silently in creaking leather chairs across from the fire. The same fireplace where I watched the flames turn Polly's silk dress into whorls of curling ash. I think of the wind as it blows over that lonely mound of bare earth in the pine forest and I press my head against Nick Cave's chest. He places his long fingers on the back of my neck and I smile.


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Philip Suggars is a London based writer with one huge eye in the centre of his head and an extensive collection of vintage binoculars. His story "An Unnatural History" won an honourable mention award in the 29th New Millennium Writings contest.