Splitting Rainbows: Must All Dreams End?

Splitting Rainbows

- Must All Dreams End?

A West Wales Odyssey – Book One

by David Parkins

Copyright © 2016 by David Parkins

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favourite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. ISBN: 9781370440764

Published by David Parkins

The Cover, Dedication Page and Epilogue images

are courtesy of Shutterstock under license.

The Title Page image is by David Parkins.

The characters depicted in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people, either living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

WARNING –

THIS BOOK CONTAINS EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT –

SUITABLE ONLY FOR PERSONS OF 18 OR OVER.

This book is uncompromising in its honest treatment of sex, which is a very important aspect of the lives of four of the individuals involved, and warning is given of the very explicit and extreme nature of some of the sexual scenes and practices depicted in the book, and of the language associated with them.

Please have the good judgement to pass on by if you think you might be offended!

And if you choose to delve instead, then don’t complain afterwards!

Contents

Splitting Rainbows

Dedication Page

Author’s Ramblings

Marshall’s Prologue

Anna’s Prologue

Part One – Anna and Marshall

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Part Two – Paula, Marshall and Claire

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Part Three – Anna, Marshall and Caroline

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Splitting Rainbows

- Must All Dreams End?

For My Ladies of the Night

- Wherever you both may be

__________________________

Author’s Ramblings

To many of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is often quite amusing to hear or read assessments of that period from today’s perspective. To me at least, some of these are so ridiculous and idealistic as to be laughable.

To be sure, these were times of comparatively swift social change. It seems almost incredible now to think that homosexuality only ceased to be a criminal offence in Britain in 1967. There are many other important things that have advanced from those times too but women’s rights were not really one of the speediest among them - and there is still some way to go today. I know from my own family experience just how powerless women were in the 1960s. My own late mother, trapped in a loveless marriage, without any financial independence and up against still very unequal rights, was never going to be able to break free of her situation. Even my first wife was ostracised by her family and friends [mostly female] when she left her then husband to be with me. People thought she was no better than she ought to be and this was well into the 1970s!

From some very confused beginnings and the ‘let’s protest about everything’ mentality of that period, we did eventually get the beginnings of the Green movement - possibly the only protest movement that has anything like matured. The obvious conclusion though is that this was because its concerns were with the one issue that matters most in the end. The survival of everyone and everything on this tiny piece of rock hurtling through space.

In my view though there has been more hype and bullshit written and spoken about that period than just about any other. The love and peace thing was largely a myth. As I recall there were just as many vicious little pricks around then as at any other time and not all of them had male appendages either. Hugh and Margaret, if you are reading this down there on the Isle of Wight, I have one message for you, delivered in the true spirit of those times - go and love yourselves!

This love and peace myth was cynically exploited for commercial gain and became one of the few growth industries of the period. All those Flabby Liars of the Aquarian Age as Leonard Cohen said.

Then we get to music - probably the main engine of the whole sub-culture of that time. Rock bands of the era proved in the end to be, by and large, the very same bloated capitalists they were all singing about in their music, as they counted the money in their offshore bank accounts. This hypocrisy was surpassed only by the pretentious nature of most of the music they made, particularly as the 1970s set in - yet more three chord songs in 4/4 time, wrapped up as some kind of musical advancement in the form of an ultra-tedious three-hour instrumental version of ’On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep’. At least it seemed like three hours anyway!

So, when it arrived, this particular ageing hippie was more than ready for the opening bars of the Sex Pistol’s ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ album - it was the best thing he’d heard in rock for years. It did indeed have ‘balls’ and ‘attitude’ – the prerequisite for all good rock music.

And don’t get me started on those geriatric rockers who re-form bands because they now feel it is the right thing to do from an artistic viewpoint. Lurching onstage with their hearing aids and Zimmer frames and drinking mugs of tea whilst singing about fighting in the streets. They treat their audiences to a succession of fifty-year-old songs, usually played very badly, in order to bolster their retirement funds as they fall below the thirty million quid mark. Just as bad are the fans that will pay to see such a spectacle.

In the same spirit, here is my personal plea to Mr. James Page - stop fucking around trying to re-mix yet more old and sub-standard Led Zeppelin tracks found in some lightless basement and play something new instead.

Obviously, it is my fervent hope that any reader of this book will take something from it - though please don’t feel it is compulsory! On one level, it is part thriller and there is nothing wrong with that. I cannot tolerate the pretentious term ‘serious literature’. Some of the very best fiction being produced today falls within the categories of ‘crime’ or ‘thriller’ and it was nice to see a crime novel get shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize recently. About bloody time!

On another level this book might fall into the erotic fiction category. I don’t know if it really should though, as I have just tried to write honestly about sex and the complex and multi-facetted thing that human sexuality is. The sexual behaviour of giraffes is complex enough!

In Britain, there is so much hypocrisy in the way sex is treated by the media. Sexual imagery is still used everywhere to sell products and promote ideas but it becomes yet another kind of commodity, to be exploited by that same media, when they report on some Three in a Bed sex scandal involving a celebrity or a politician. These are people doing things that for the most part many of their own readers are wishing they were doing themselves, whilst of course giving a required ‘tut tut’ - just so as to cover themselves. The honest British attitude to sex! So, folks, if you are going out Dogging or Swinging tonight - take heart. At least you are not being hypocrites.

If my readers take anything from this book though, I hope it will be that their hearts are broken by Part Two and the fate of the three beautiful, kind, generous, vulnerable, confused and ultimately hapless individuals involved.

We all [or most of us anyway] live life through a mixture of our hearts and through the skin of our teeth, balanced in whatever proportions any given situation we have to deal with might require. We cover our vulnerabilities and insecurities with little pieces of armour that we hope will protect us from the outside world but sometimes these are just not enough. For more of the time than we’d ever probably care to admit, we only see the sides of our family members, our friends and crucially, our husbands, wives, partners and lovers that we are either allowed to see, or have the perception to filter out for ourselves.

Our three characters in Part Two of this novel did their best, and so we should not sit in judgement of Paula, Marshall or Claire. As we read on we might conclude that it could have had a very different outcome if only they’d…but they didn’t! Hindsight is always 20/20.

If anyone infers from this section of the book that it should be taken as some kind of warning NOT to be involved in a ménage à trois should those circumstances arise in your life, then they haven’t been paying attention! In my view, such a relationship can work but it requires rational and thorough planning before embarkation. By the nature of things however, this is probably a luxury that is rarely granted to those concerned - as when such a situation arises, it is almost always set against a very highly-charged emotional backdrop.

If you want to explore this subject in literature further, then in my view there can be no better read than Remittance Girl’s extraordinary novel ‘Beautiful Losers’. It will touch you in ways you cannot begin to imagine until you start reading it and are drawn under its spell. It is available from Amazon as an eBook.

What I hope Part Two of Splitting Rainbows does show though is just what we can reduce each other to - and without anyone being to blame. We are probably all prepared to give up or strip away much more of ourselves than we would like to admit, in order to keep something we feel we need. Think of people you know and their relationships. Most find their level or have it placed upon them by circumstance, and then they live it. They settle for what they can get.

I have not given any of my character’s surnames and this is deliberate. Whatever you need to know about them is given to you as it is required. What is important are their interactions and the dialogue between them. Neither have I been too specific about locations. Some of you familiar with West Wales will surely be able to locate some of these from my descriptions but in general the characters are left free to inhabit the landscapes of your imagination.

As I am writing this, the news is just coming through about the passing of Leonard Cohen. The world suddenly seems a much poorer place and it feels like a pretty bad swop to lose Mr. Cohen in a week where we have gained a President-elect Trump. I think I have read every poetry book that LC has written, both of his novels, own all his CDs [many I had previously on vinyl of course] and seen him in concert many times. He has been the soundtrack to my life since 1967 and has helped me through some very dark times, as he has done for many others, including perhaps, some of you reading this book. What more could you ask from a fellow human being? Thank you, Leonard. Now, for much more than a second, your heart can be at ease.

I have gone down the e-book route for this novel as, egotistical soul that I am, I couldn’t face the ‘Blue Pencil’ being struck through whole passages or sections of my manuscript by any potential paper publisher – even if I could find one with the ‘balls’ to publish it. I have agonised over every word, stripped back the surplus ones and said exactly what I wanted to say - and so wish it to appear to the reader just as it is. If any paper publisher wants to ‘get physical’ with the book, then of course one is always open to offers - but only if it can be published as is.

A woman I know slightly continues to insist that the character Marshall in this book is really me. He is not. Like any writer, there are obviously elements of themselves in their characters but I certainly wouldn’t have made all the life choices that Marshall did - at least I hope not!

I do agree with him on one thing though - Jazz is The Thing.

David Parkins

West Wales,

November, 2016

Marshall’s Prologue

Hello brethren, how’s it hanging?

My name is Marshall. Let’s not worry about surnames though as I could equally well be any one of you sixty-seventy-year-old ageing hippies who might be reading this before your afternoon nap.

Now I don’t know exactly how many of you geezers were like me but if you were, you'll have lived your lives by the skin of your teeth, trying to get by in whatever way you can. You probably kept just within the rules for the most part, mainly because it was easier, but if you found you had to - then the rules were there for the breaking.

Also, if you are anything like me, you will look at most of our present-day peers with utter despair! We old hippies can at least be proud and grateful we have not ended up like that - going on river cruises and wearing cardigans! If we ever get like that then pass the gun over please! We just do not do the things so many of them do and ain’t that just fine?

Now I never knew many of you fuckers who weren’t sex mad and I was certainly no exception. Even so, what singled us out from the other youthful factions of those halcyon days was that we were secretly romantics at heart. And here I’m not talking about the ‘New Romantics’ - Yikes! But I mean, can you imagine Mods or Rockers reading poetry to girls in order to get into their knickers? This means of course that you dressed up the old sex bit in the guise of romanticism, especially when you thought it would be of some persuasive benefit to you. You probably also had a kind of loose definition of being faithful. Well it’s not so much that I was unfaithful to her Man but…

Now we get to music - the very life blood of any ageing hippie.

We’ll take it as a given that you were an album man. Kind of embarrassing wasn’t it then, when Hey Joe and Purple Haze came out and charted and then you had to sneak into the record store and buy a Top Ten single - That’s Right Pop Pickers! Can you put it in a 12 bag, Man? Thanks, Cool!"

Now, with your old mate Marshall here, rock seemed a bit tame after a while so - and this is where he is going to part company with many of you - he made the journey through fusion to jazz. I can hear much gnashing of the remaining teeth and scratching of the greying beards from here - and don’t disturb the wildlife too much! Well if you didn’t follow me on this journey then you missed out.

I’m probably going to part company with many of you on this point too. From this distance, surely you can find it in your hyper-tensioned hearts to admit that much about that period was just a con! I mean If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear flowers in your hair? What offal! We did a lot of preaching back then, making value judgments in self-important voices, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell. For example, we said guns were always wrong, whilst to many of the oppressed they were instruments of freedom and liberation.

Then there was the treatment of our ladies! Most of us were just the same as the ‘suits’ in the way that we behaved towards them. Of course, I was very different in my treatment of them. I loved them all! As you will all know by now, memories can get distorted but those encounters described in the following pages really did happen – at least I think they did. In true Mr. Zimmerman style though I had to mix up the context and order of the actions a bit and rearrange the faces and names - but if any of you are reading this and recognise yourselves, I still remember you all and I still love you all - even if you probably hate me. I even inhabited Desolation Row with one or two of you.

Anyway, despite any differences we may have, readers, I hope there is more that still unites us than divides us and that we are all still friends, as we move towards that great ’love-in’ in the sky - leaving behind a severely over-stretched, vastly over populated, rapidly overheating, genetically impoverished and generally neglected planet. So, if any of the following pages cause you to weep, just make sure you go easy on the tissues!

Come along with me now on my convoluted, happy, sad, triumphant and tragic journey. I hope it makes you laugh. I hope it makes you cry. Oh and I hope it frightens you too. So, with the utmost respect for all you grizzled old sods, I can only sign off in one way –

Hang Loose, Man!

Marshall

Anna’s Prologue

Hello fellow travellers of the Astral Plane! - cut out that bullshit I can hear Marshall saying!

My name is Anna. Let’s not worry about surnames though as I could equally well be any one of you sixty-seventy-year-old ladies who are reading this, whilst just about remembering things that you would never ever tell your grandchildren that you did. Those were indeed the days weren’t they sisters? Although if you are anything like me you’ll probably not be ready to give up on some of those things just yet. So, we’ve got some grey hairs - that doesn’t stop the other bits from working!

It’s true what Marshall says though - didn’t our men folk treat us badly in those days? We’d never put up with that now but we were so very keen to please them back then. Just to be the girlfriend of the hippest looking hippie was our ambition. We put all that effort into getting him and then what did he want to do? Share us around in the spirit of free love. You either objected or learned to like it - and I took the latter route. The thing is though, I did it on my terms and not theirs. I really did do all those things you know!

A toast to our men though, where would we be without them? It’s a pity so many of them have fallen by the wayside.

And if you thought the late sixties or seventies were wild - well where were you all in the eighties? Oh, I