Best Mates...

Helen here.

Whilst dear PP was sleeping off an industrial strength migraine I slipped into town for some shopping only to find the place abuzz with the horrid news of yet another lethal stabbing. Two youths had fought a duel outside a wine bar in the middle of the day leaving one slain and the other, wounded and dazed, wandering off into the crowd. The assailant was soon arrested and is now facing life in gaol for a moment's frenzy.

The cause of death? Some small slight, some words of disrespect, some petty feud? Probably no more or less than that. We are become like Borges' Argentinians, ever vigilant to respond to a perceived offence necessitating violence. This is not my life, nor is it the way of the Wolds as we know it, but as the hero of 'The South' even we now are becoming embroiled in this culture of respectful death. Must I too pack a blade in my purse lest the greengrocer's assistant look at me in some wrong way? Should my sword be ready to run through the next ticket inspector who questions the validity of my cheap day return?

The chemist's daughter, it seems, was one of a hundred or more witnesses to the crime. She had been due to travel by train and was passing the wine bar as the fight began. She says, apparently, that it seemed at first as nothing more than two bodies slowly dancing in a clumsy embrace. Then one fell to the ground, rising again for a while then crumpling to bloodied stillness. The other - dropping his knife - gazed over at the gathered crowd then slowly walked through the people as if they were not there; as if he could not see any one of them, isolated and alone in the shadow of the valley of death of his making.

On the bus home a young shaven headed man was telling anyone who would listen that the victim was a 'mate' of his. (How sad to lose a friend that way I thought, though there was little in the tone of voice of true personal grief.) Yet in the next breath I heard him say "...and it was my other mate what did it", as if somehow proud to have two 'mates' who could be so callously, yet casually, lethal to each other.

Choose your friends with care and your enemies with caution no doubt. Keep the one close and the other closer certainly. But when the one is the other? PP does not permit despair and for being that rock of hope I thank him, else I would today be in complete despair for our terrible, terrible world.