[Here is the first half of the fifth penultimate section of 64, entitled Honeymoon. In this section the tone changes somewhat, as we return to the main characters, Peleus and Thetis, and follow them on their honeymoon as they travel across the English Channel to Calais and then down through France and Spain to Gibraltar. This section, like the previous one, is not based on anything that explicitly appears in the original Catullus poem.]

(24)

Foreplay

Peleus is eager to get there and get his leg over.

The car ploughs through the darkness of country roads,

blue lights flashing on the dashboard,

his feet pumping angrily at accelerator, brake and throttle,

Thetis grumbling as they go over bumps.

*

The ferry across the channel is grounded by fog

so the happy couple check in to a cheap hotel.

There is no disabled access. The wounded of Dunkirk passed through here

years ago, coming the other way.

The groom—ever the gentleman—attempts

to hump his bride breathlessly over this temporary threshold

as she wriggles and groans.

*

The place is more Bates Motel than bridal suite.

You can hear the faked shrieking orgasms of whores through paper-thin walls

and see the stains other guests have left on the unclean beds.

Thetis flops onto the sheets and casually flips her knickers off

with a teasing wink.

Hubby staggers back from the minibar with two opened bottles of beer

and chucks up over her prolapse…

*

Hastings looks resentfully out at France over the sea.

The morning mist is of the kind on which pixies and the wisps of spirits

and persistent coughs thrive.

Water heats in a kettle.

They breakfast silently on black instant coffee

in prison-orange plastic mugs.

 

(25)

Crossing

It is hard to tell whether the catamaran cares little for the violence of the waves

or the waves for the catamaran. The queues for the toilet are long.

Staff mop up puke from tilting cheaply-carpeted corridors and urge

passengers towards fruit machines and duty-free booze.

Peleus thinks the peaked-caps of the long-suffering stewardesses make them look cute

and flirtingly orders a prawn sandwich, as his wife throws up in the bog.

Pale-faced passengers wander groaningly around, zombied by the churning sea.

A Goth kid tries to be cool, lies back and pulls a black hat down

over his face and lasts a while,

before spewing up spectacularly, all down his trendy long dark trench coat.

Peleus laughs… Sea legs are his forte.

Thetis wobbles back from the toilet on her crutches.

The pair hobble together hand in hand onto a foreign wharf.

 

(26)

Europa

Hubby has always had it that wogs begin at Calais.

It is lunchtime and almost everything is closed.

Workers siesta on discarded cardboard boxes

flattened out into ad hoc crucifix-shaped beds.

They drift into a bar, where there is whiskey and pool,

peeling posters proclaiming the patriotic credentials of the Front National,

a smell of booze and unfamiliar food.

The grinning gold-toothed bad-breathed landlord

keeps them topped up as they totter

around the pool table and the juke box.

They are happy that this place is not that much different from home,

though the toilets are foreign as hell,

Thetis shrieks.

*

Calais looks out bitterly towards Hastings across the newly fog-bound sea.

Ferries honk and wink at one another in the dark.

Thetis has had enough, zonked out on the dirty unmade bed,

as hubby drains the minibar and watches moored ships

rocking quietly and creakily swaying cranes;

wisps of yellowish petrochemical pollution mar the air.