story with no ending

It meant a great deal to both of them to keep the dirt out of the house. To her, especially. When she used a dustpan and brush on birch-effect flooring, then fleeing nature, sparse at the worst, rapidly thinned away to half and tenth and hundredth. Her breathing lightly elevated, she pushed the swing-lid aside and gently knocked the pan contents into perfect chrome waste storage. Then she grabbed the vacuum cleaner and whizzed the last pencil-line of dust into its inner liner where as she imagined it festered harmlessly with a cool pink pulsing glow.

This line of dust might be embellished with one red larch-needle though whenever possible they did not park under trees. The worst was shed skin whitening the chest of drawers and knots of hair in the carpets, for Martyn did not wish her to cut it short. Then there were cobwebs that invisibly grew in the ceiling corners, crumbs of toast and the fluff of mohair. All this she dusted or wiped with squirts of abrasive shine from the sink and surfaces.

They walked on hard-top from porch to car-port and car-park to work-place. Though the foot-and-mouth controls had been lifted they felt no desire to step off the tarmac. Shopping he moved like a dancer in immaculate trainers and lifted her slim body laughing over a crash-barrier so they could take a short cut through the trolley-park. Though their eyes feasted on the sight of new skimpy things shivered into slim gold-lettered shop bags they did not fear their purchases being sullied on exposure to their well-ventilated kitchen area or to the calfskin recliners in the living-room.

Butter pats chill
Swimmer you asked me a question gropes in his lane
my nicole my enid my hillyer my barrowboy frank monte carlo
Coarse sunlight blazer

It was while shopping that they relished seeing the pavements and their sealed geometry extending widthways, but later in the evening when they returned for drinks and friends they were yet more deeply aware of the brilliant solidity of kerbs and the slowly ascending travellator gleaming with a hint of night chill. She was driver since Martyn was having a beer and they admired the sapphire curved lines and the promise of efficient halogen in the dimmed reflectors of their parked vehicle lathered in the car-wash.

And thinking of foreign airports and their wide plazas of marble that were perfectly smooth for baggage trolleys and the motorized vehicles of those unfortunate enough to be uh-huh yet nevertheless able to trip abroad. They were exceedingly fond of swimming and working out and were conscious of their healthy-bodied looks as of their cars which were ordered in a show-room for their dedication did not end in the gym but extended to the workplace where both knew how to look good in a suit and eagerly picked the brains of their colleagues in order to learn how to excel.

It was not that there was no nature indoors for she nursed the satin leaves of African violets in a glazed planter whose compost silvered with specks of water-retaining jelly was a full two inches below the rim. The grains of plant food left emerald trails in the water which she accurately applied to the saucer beneath with a long-stemmed watering-can. When it came to Saturday morning she did the crawl on the zebra throw while Martyn slid himself quietly right up to the thump and back. At length they sagged appreciatively, but she knelt aloft nevertheless from the bed-fabrics until he felt ready to disengage and head into the wet-room to rotate the clock-heavy controls of their powerful shower. They deluged beneath it hearts still racing and stepped into all-enveloping bathsheets.

Sometimes it was true while flicking channels a fountain of rally-driver’s mud would fire across the large TV screen though without any risk of marking their oatmeal rug, a golfer’s divot would loop into blue, or rugby forwards would emerge streaked from rucks on a badly cut-up pitch but these were not their preferred viewing. They liked terminators and bad cops doing a tough saint’s work, the squealing choreography of cars in flight, the horrendous threats of aliens and evil men, the eye-candy babe who does not stay right there til I get back or if she does gets taken hostage, and the firework warehouses and spaceships whose incessant chain of detonations signalled the finale of the DVD. At such a time relaxed in the week-day evenings small disasters would spill from wine-glasses and wedges of pizza whose sturdy cartons lined with greaseproof paper could not protect against every basilled glob of mozarella or gleam of diced onion.