I’m in the process of winding down small press publishers, Swift Publishers, who published several bestsellers and two of the books I am most proud of.  Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told (in the US The Forgotten Plague), which was one of three non-fiction Books of the Year for the New York Times, and my only contemporary novel, Taking Care of Harry. 

I’m also in the process of converting the Protext version of the TB book into Word, in anticipation of preparing either a paperback or a kindle, or both.  I don’t know how many it sold world-wide – it was translated into Chinese twice – but the UK (Swift) hardcover alone sold 22,000 copies.  But we’re now down to the last 60 or so.  A pity that the beautiful full colour pics will no longer be available either in paperback or Kindle.  But I can’t really complain. 

I’m also taking a good hard look at Taking Care of Harry.  I suppose that the usual custom is to give readers a glimpse of the beginnings of a book but I’m going to give you the final page instead.  I do so partly because I want to hoist the standard here, as I did in the book, for Captain Beefheart’s Tarotplane as one of the great blues tracks, however surreal, of all time…

I am still standing there, with the tide now washing around my thighs, as the first false dawn is breaking.  I can't feel my legs any more.  I am floating on this gentle cloud of grief as a silvery light makes one of the horizon and the sea.  I am confusing the light with the presence of the woman as she comes up to me without my asking her, gently, slowly, just as she entered my bedroom that night.  That last occasion when I needed her. 

       'You're shivering, Mylie!'

       'Yeah!'  I hardly recognise my own voice because my teeth are chattering. Still riding the languid wave of my grief. 

       'You're freezing cold.  You'll die of cold if you don't come out.' 

       Some time, during the hours I have been standing here in the slowly rising tide, I have found myself thinking about Captain Beefheart.  About his relationship with Frank Zappa.  About the fact they knew each other from way back, from when they were kids and they went to the same school. 

     When Zappa commissioned the Troutmask Replica album from Beefheart, he finished it in a three-hour take.  Zappa couldn't believe he did that.  So he started asking him questions.  How could it be finished?  It took a week, sometimes weeks, to complete an album.  And Beefheart, with his deep, growly Western accent, said simply,

       'It's over, Frank.'

       You see it's all there in Beefheart's words.  She understands, Pfion.  I am only just beginning to grasp how musical she is.  Maybe I've been humming, or singing, and I haven't noticed.  But I read understanding in her eyes as she keeps looking at me like that.  Asking without words if it is okay to join me.  To come aboard the Tarot Plane.  I reply with my eyes, equally wordlessly. 

       'You never finished it – your story.'

       'What story is that?'

       'Captain Beefheart.'

       I smile, the ghost of a smile.  'I was talking crap.  Don't pretend you were even listening.' 

       'It wasn't crap.  And I was, I was listening.'

       I hesitate, inviting her to prove it to me. 

       'He was prepared to look silly, if that was what it takes.' 

       'Takes for what?'

       She smiles to herself.  'To set himself free.'

       There is a moment's hesitation between us and then she astonishes me when she steals the music out of my head.  She starts to hum it first and then to sing it, exactly where it is running in my mind, word for word, note for note.  To sing it softly, with a hoarse kind of softness, this woman who has taken the battering you accept from life, so that I hear my song coming to my ears from her lips.  It is coming to me from that distant place that is the meeting of worlds, the consummation of air and sky.  It amazes me that she has remembered it perfectly from that single hearing, when I thought she wasn't listening. 

       Pfion is hugging me now.  Rubbing my arms.  Pulling me backwards, against the inertia of my stubborn legs.

I let her drape my arm around her shoulders, so she can support my flagging legs.  I say, 'The last I heard of Captain Beefheart, he was a sick man, making a living as an artist in the Mojave Desert.  You know what he said?  Do you want to know what he said?'

       'I want to know.' 

       When I lean over to kiss her, the kiss feels strange because my lips are numb.  But she holds on to my kiss, so that our lips cling together a little longer, as if to remain in my memory a part of this bitter-sweet ecstasy that has enveloped me here in the water.

'He said that the difference between art and music is that art you can physically drown in while music you can mentally drown in.' 

       'Yeah, but what a way to drown!' 

       'Yeah!' I say.